Freya turned a quivering, tear-stained face toward me as the plane thundered northward through the night.
"Jarl Keith, he's dead. My kinsman was so great among the Aesir and has lived so long. Now he's dead."
I felt a hard lump in my throat. Handsome, steadfast Frey had been my first friend among the Aesir.
"We cannot help him now, Freya," I said. "Damn Loki and his fiendish schemes!"
"Aye," said Freya bitterly. "My kinsman is but the first of many Aesir who must fall because the arch-traitor has been loosed."
"And that happened only because I brought the rune key into Asgard," I said in heavy self-reproach. "I have been an evil guest to the Aesir, Freya."
She clasped my hand. "Don't think thus, Jarl Keith! It is not your fault that Loki's powers brought you and the fateful rune key here. Sooner or later, he would have accomplished it somehow. All my people always feared that."
Dawn was paling in the sky. During the last half-hour we had flown over most of the length of Midgard. Against the rose-flushed sky a few miles north of us stood the high, lofty little island of Asgard, with its eyrie of gray castles amid which Valhalla loomed mountainously. Already the flying arch of Bifrost Bridge was glittering as the short polar spring night ended,
"We'll have to land on the field this side of the bridge," I mused. "There's not room enough to land safely in Asgard."
I brought the plane down safely on the bare plain of the mainland promontory. As we emerged from it, over Bifrost Bridge from Asgard a long stream of Aesir warriors came galloping. At their head rode a yellow-haired, yellow-bearded giant, his great hammer swinging.