Chicks in Chainmail (6 page)

She promised herself that she would do her best. After all, how much harder could the Father of the Norse gods be to deal with than a Republican Congress?

Heimdall wound his horn, and Bifrost glittered as Hillary Rodham Clinton marched into
Valhalla. Her borrowed cape trailed behind her, and her Ferragamo pumps squished on the floor. Skillful questioning of her adolescent witnesses and memories of her college classmate had produced more information.
Valhalla was a long hall, wrought of wood, its beams intricately carved with beasts gripping and biting each other. Feasting boards running the length of the building were crammed now with hungry blond men. They ate with an appetite that positively made Bill look picky. Despite all the meat they were washing down with ale, they hadn't started to acquire the gut her husband was getting on him, and it didn't seem to hurt their arteries any. Maybe it had something to do with a warrior hero's metabolic level, or you didn't have to worry about cholesterol once you were dead. She had never given the matter much thought, and she didn't think Colin Powell had, either. At least they had stacked their weapons outside. One or two slammed horns down on the board.

"Uh oh," said the oldest remaining Valkyrie. "It was my turn to serve. See you."

"Stay right here, young lady!" commanded the First Lady. Only women were serving, and she was certain that the trays they carried exceeded OSHA weight regulations. Besides, the Valkyries were clearly underage—or, being immortals, were they? She noticed that the men did not harass the girls. That, at least, was something.

Valhalla
's central firepit cast its flame up into a kind of atrium (okay, so that was Roman, not Norse, but she was a lawyer, not some SCA weirdo). Nevertheless, the hall still reeked from fatty foods and secondhand smoke.

At the opposite end of the hall from the entrance where she stood, Wotan Allfather, ravens on his shoulders, slumped on his throne. Well, thank goodness, they were ravens, not spotted owls. Still, Hillary wondered if he had a permit to own wildlife. Leaning near him sat a man or god or whatever with red hair. He grinned and winked at her in a way that made Hillary wonder if he'd heard the latest Foster jokes.

Hillary handed her cloak to the youngest Valkyrie and strode forward. With no Chief of Protocol around, she'd have to wing it. She remembered how Jacqueline Kennedy had curtseyed to Prince Philip after JFK's assassination. What was the protocol for greeting gods if you were the wife of a head of state?

Seeing a grown woman who wasn't a Valkyrie and underage and who wasn't a goddess, one of the warriors reached out and made a grab at her. Hillary grabbed up a drinking horn and brought it down firmly on me man's blond head. Pity he had nothing between the ears but testosterone poisoning. He was rather a hunk, otherwise, and she had a definite yen for light-haired men.

"Straighten up, soldier!" she snapped, relishing the unfamiliar speech. "You think you're at Tailhook? This is
Valhalla, not the Las Vegas Hilton!"

The man shook his head. Too many blows on the skull, Hillary decided, and too much ale or mead or whatever had made him punchy. She walked toward Allfather, nodded formally, then advanced with her best candidate's-wife smile and handshake. The girls clustered in behind her. How sad that they were afraid of their father. Hillary only wished that she were able to see her own father again, now that she had apparently Crossed Over. She made a tart mental memo to add, in her prayers, that this was hardly her idea of heaven.

"I am Hillary Rodham Clinton, First Lady of the
United States of America," she announced.

"Fine. You're not supposed to be here, but grab a pitcher and give the girls a hand," said Loki. "After dinner, we can discuss what to do with you. I've got some ideas." He leered.

The man was worse than Clarence Thomas. Hillary flared her nostrils in disgust.

"Sir, I want to talk to you about your daughters," she said firmly. "The President and I relieve that children are our most precious gift. I am very concerned about your daughters' welfare. Where is their mother?"

"Erda?" Under the hat he had not removed in the Ball, Wotan focused a bleary eye—he only had the one—upon her. "Oh, here and there. Mostly underground."

"Are you divorced?"

Somehow, Hillary couldn't see Wotan having married an activist. Ever.

She stood and waited to be offered a seat. When no such offer was forthcoming, she waited Wotan out.

"Their mother… yes… we never quite got around to making things legal. But I just talked to her before the Fimbulwinter started. More bad news. She always was a downer."

"Is there a stepmother?"

Wotan grimaced. "Not so loud, lady, please! Or we'll have another fight on our hands. Nag nag nag. The goddess's always
right
! I tell you, it's enough to make a god pray for Ragnarok."

Asgard trembled underfoot. Hillary heard the lashing of branches as the World-Ash creaked.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall; and down will come Asgard, Wotan and all
.

"I didn't mean it!" Wotan shouted. "Everybody eat, drink, whatever. I didn't mean it!"

The feasting warriors pounded on the boards, waiting for the gins at Hillary's heels to serve them. Hillary turned and shouted at them.

"Gentlemen, you're not homeless, and this isn't a soup kitchen. Help yourselves or take turns serving."

The ravens squawked at her. "Oh, nevermore to you, too," she retorted.

Behind her, a Valkyrie giggled. Wotan merely blinked.

"Siddown, lady," said Wotan. "Loki, get up and give the lady your seat."

"She can sit on my lap."

"like hell she wilt" said Wotan. "You want me to call my sister?"

Loki got up fast and disappeared from the hall.

"He's probably going to run straight to the Frost Giants and tell mem I'm losing it."

"Foreign policy isn't my strong suit, sir," said the First
Lady
. "But
it
might be possible to send Secretary of State Christopher out here—wherever here is—or establish diplomatic relations. Maybe NATO…" She was out of her depths, she knew it. However squalid this Allfather was, he was a god,
the
god here, and therefore her only chance to return to her world.

Again, a Valkyrie giggled. Launching itself into the smoky air, one of the ravens pecked the girl on the face, returned to Wotan's shoulder (his cloak was white with traces of the bird's tenancy), and began to preen its ruffled feathers. The young Valkyrie cried out as much in anger and shock as in pain.

And Hillary lost it. "This is no fit place to bring up innocent girls," she said. "Child labor, an awful environment tor their self-esteem, and too much alcohol consumed while their father abuses them and has already driven their eldest sister away."

"That's not all," whispered the youngest Valkyrie. She scratched at the rim of her bronze training bra.

"If I were their mother's lawyer, I'd advise her to sue you for custody."

The raven uttered a shrill cry. Was it Huginn or Muninn, thought or memory—and how had Hillary remembered
that
? Wotan leaned forward, setting down his drinking horn.

"
You're
a lawspeaker? You?"

"Yale Law," said Hillary Rodham Clinton. "I taught at the
University
of
Arkansas
. And I was a partner in the Rose Law Firm,
Little Rock,
Arkansas
."

"I can use a good lawspeaker," said the Allfather.

Hillary thought of mentioning her hourly rate, then wondered if the Arkansas Bar had reciprocity with Asgard.

"Girls," Wotan spoke to the Valkyries who had huddled behind Hillary for protection, "I think we can overlook this little oversight on your part. In fact, here!"

From the depths of his dark cloak and garments, he produced rings and bracelets that he tossed, one to each girl. They squealed in gratitude, then oohed and aahed over each other's trinkets.

"You're
buying
those girls' affection!" Hillary accused Wotan. "They need your care, not trinkets!"

"Woman, don't you ever shut up? The last woman with a mouth like yours, I married, and I've been sorry ever since."

Inappropriate words slipped from Hillary's mouth. "Life's a bitch, and then you marry one." She flushed, appalled at herself.

But Wotan roared with appreciation. "Here's to you, lady! You can teach the girls some of your spunk. Oh, they're good enough on a battlefield, but can any of them tell a saga or unlock the wordhoard and produce a well-wrought verse? Not a bit of it."

He detached the gold torque from about his neck and tossed it to her, "Consider this as your retainer."

Hillary caught the torque, hefted it, considered the current price of gold, and set it down. She'd only have to account for it anyhow, and Al D'Amato was enough of a pain as is. Still, she nodded thanks. No point in being rude. Or, she thought, with the beginning of inspiration, ruder. If she couldn't think of a way out of here, she was stuck for good; and judging from Wotan's comments about Frost Giants, an endless winter, and the twilight of the gods, goodness had nothing to do with it.

Wotan toasted her with his drinking horn and motioned one of his daughters to fill one for her. Fastidiously, she sipped.

"Good, isn't it? An, it's not the mead of knowledge, but good, strong brown ale…"

An idea blossomed in her head. The Valkyries pressed closely around her, basking in their father's approval and in their success in acquiring Hillary to tend them. Well, they would just have to learn otherwise. She'd bet that this Wotan wouldn't even file his 1099s, let alone the forms that a U.S. citizen with foreign income must file; and she was in enough trouble without being on either side of a Nannygate scam. They seemed like nice enough girls. But she didn't want to be their mother. She wanted to be
Chelsea's mother. And Bill's wife. And a policy honcho and a law partner and all the other things that made her the person she hoped to be.

To her horror, her eyes filled. She wanted to be home, or at least at
Camp David!

The Valkyries, bright in their new ornaments, took over the job of serving in the hall. One plied her with beef and lamb, with never a bit of broccoli; another filled her drinking horn, and Hillary forebore to ask for mineral water or decaffeinated iced tea.

Temporarily, at least, she was at a standstill. Time to regroup, she thought, and thank goodness she'd sat in on the military briefings that his staff had insisted Bill attend. What a useful, sneaky way of thinking. Almost like being a politician.

"Tell me about your daughters, Wotan," she purred with the smile that had won her applause when, in this very suit, she had testified on Capitol Hill. "They seem like such healthy, pretty girls. One of them's away, you said…"

"Brunnhilde." Wotan leaned his chin on his hand. His one eye drooped, but not before Hillary saw the sorrow in it. "She… disobeyed me. Brought a woman here, too. But it was a family matter, and we're keeping it in the family."

Hillary decided to table that for the moment.

"Now, you mention that the younger girls cannot write poetry. Considering that you yourself are a poet…" no, what was the word? A
skald
. "… What arrangements have you made for their education?"

In the days—this being eternity, time was flexible—to come, she pushed Wotan as hard as she could, but Allfather resisted admirably. The Valkyries' stepmother must have more brass about her than her breastplates; most men caved in long before this under the sort of pressure that Hillary could bring to bear. But he agreed that she could spend time with the Valkyries. They grew more and more assertive, laughing when the warriors they had rescued protested at KP. Hillary had to mediate one minor crisis when Rossweise called the goddess of love and beauty a bimbo—and then defined the word. (Memo to self: Speak somewhat more discreetly.) Just because Hillary said she looked like Gennifer Flowers, only with real blonde hair. Egil sneered, wanting to know how Hillary knew Ms. Flowers was a
real
blonde, so Hillary had to threaten a slander action. She'd had hopes of that, but Wotan only laughed.

Still, no one would tell her about Brunnhilde. Hillary started to rack her brains. What had happened to the eldest Valkyrie? Damn, she wished she had listened to that medievalist her senior year; but who would have thought Old Norse would have proved at all relevant? Wotan said something about a family problem. That could cover a lot of things, including child abuse—which in this family wouldn't surprise her one single bit.

The Valkyries coaxed her out of her knitwear into a gown. Nothing could be done about her hair, and she hoped to be gone before it grew.
God in heaven, how long have I been here?
She would wake in the darkness before Bifrost's glow shone down on Middle Earth and worry about that. Maybe weeks here were but the twinkling of an eye back in her world. The idea made her break into a cold sweat and work even harder for a way back.

Gradually, she got the Valkyries to exchange their kirtles and wholly unsuitable metal bustiers for the homespun equivalent of jeans. Now they looked more like teenagers than some fascist soccer team. Maybe, if they worked out a trade agreement (
Norway might have turned down European Economic Union, but Hillary knew there would turn out to be more reasons why GATT was a godsend), she'd be able to get the girls running shoes. Those greaves had to be uncomfortable. She didn't anticipate much trouble on the trade front: Vikings seemed to have specialized in free trade, didn't they?