"Come on," I panted. "This way. Those warriors must have entered from one of the outside courts."
We hurried down the shadowy passage from which the Jotuns had come. Then Freya suddenly stopped, pulling me to a halt.
"Listen, Jarl Keith," she urged in a hushed voice. "Something sinister is coming."
In the silence, I heard a strange, silky, rustling sound in the dark and misty passage ahead. It was growing nearer, louder–
A giant, spade-shaped head reared out of the curling mists ahead of us! Two opaline, unwinking eyes that held the dull glitter of an alien intelligence contemplated us from above a gaping mouth in which a forked red tongue flickered.
"This is what the Jotuns feared!" Frey cried wildly.
"The fates save us!" Freya prayed. "It is Iormungandr."
I also recognized that giant, scaly body of long, rippling blackness, that huge head and those alien, glittering eyes. It was Iormungandr who towered before us in the misty dusk of the chill tunnel. The ageless and undying, the great Midgard serpent itself, was glaring down with blood-lusting eyes!