by Kevin Hearne
The Svartálfar did not fall in behind but rather advanced on the left to flank, and that would require a response at some point from the draugar. The Álfar spread out to the right flank—yes, probably wise to keep them away from the Svartálfar. The dwarfs with their rune-carved weapons reinforced the middle, the Vanir behind them, and then finally the tightly packed ranks of the Einherjar advanced, shields and axes ready.
I pumped myself up with bindings for strength and speed and then cast camouflage as well, even though it was an energy hog. If there was ever a time not to hold back, this was it. I needed every advantage Gaia was willing to give me.
The Fae host began to move faster, a roar of defiant voices Doppler-shifting louder and louder, venting their rage and stress, as all living creatures asked themselves why they were rushing toward their probable deaths and struggled to come up with a reason that was worth it. Mere orders don’t really cut it, not when you have time to think about what’s coming, and not once you realize you’re probably going to get cut down but you’d be cut down for deserting as well. The only way out is through, and that’s where battle cries come from: an abyss of desperation and sheer, utter rage that someone is standing in the way of your own safety and the safety of those you love.
I didn’t see the actual first clash of the armies, since I was somewhat to the rear of the initial action, but I heard the clang of metal and the death grunts and smelled the spray of blood, saw the lines of fighters in front of me crumple together like an accordion, saw the pixies surge forward in pairs, razor wire held between them as they flew on either side of the draugar and clotheslined them at the throat, neatly slicing through them so that their heads toppled off like unbalanced watermelons. It took all their strength to do that, though, so they had to ascend rapidly and loop around after each kill to build up speed again. Some of them didn’t climb fast enough and got cut down. Some of the draugar saw them coming and became incorporeal in time so that the wire passed through them harmlessly, which meant the pixies could continue forward or try to come around for another pass, and when one pixie opted for one thing and the other didn’t, it ruined the attack, one or more of the pixies died, and the razor wire got dropped. Which is not to say they made no difference. They did. They must have cut through close to a third of the necks they set out to sever, and that eased the first crush just enough to keep from getting overwhelmed, though it was a close thing.
We knew the weakness of the draugar, and they knew it too: They were prepared to parry a swipe at their heads and then they got to counterstrike anywhere, because their opponents were vulnerable everywhere. The draugar were brutal, strong, and effective warriors, if not especially creative. They absorbed any damage to their bodies and simply kept coming, death rattles quaking in the air as they took joy in slaying without consequences—for they could suffer no fate worse than they had already suffered in Hel, and returning there would be returning home now.
The helmets were proving problematic for most of the Fae. They were providing just enough protection to keep the draugar standing after the first blow, and they rarely had to absorb a second. Many of the Fae were falling as a result and I felt ineffective. I couldn’t very well go through the middle of the Fae lines without potentially doing them harm with my cold iron aura, so I sprinted around to the right flank, where the Álfar were advancing, keeping the Fae between me and the dark elves on the left. There I could finally join battle myself and be grateful once again to the ancient enchantment on Fragarach’s blade that allowed it to cut through any armor. The draugar had no protection against my sword, and it cut through necks or crunched through skulls quite well. I could at least hold my own against them, even if their endless numbers meant I could not advance.
The Fae did not enjoy any such advantages. They were getting cut down as often as not, a one-to-one ratio that didn’t favor our side when we were already so outnumbered. We could hope for reinforcements—the Norse and Olympian gods had yet to wade into the mêlée—but they would need to do far better.
The Álfar and Svartálfar pinched in from either side, and while both had a visible impact, it was the dark elves that proved to be far more effective. Their ability to become incorporeal served them well against similar abilities of the draugar. They dissolved into smoke, using the discipline they called Sigr af Reykr, and then materialized inside the guards of their targets, thrusting black blades up underneath the chin and into the brain. The left side of the field began to visibly wilt under that onslaught, just as the Fae line visibly crumpled before the draugar. The Álfar, to my mind, were doing very little to reduce the draugar numbers. They had shields and terrific armor that protected them against the draugars’ strikes but made few killing blows of their own. They earned a biscuit for suffering few losses and containing the enemy, I supposed, but they weren’t winning the battle so much as not losing.
And then Hel got involved, unseen somewhere in the back, having shrunk, along with Loki, to normal size. But her influence on the battle was outsized in proportion: She took control of the fallen Fae—those that still had their heads, anyway—and raised their corpses from the dead to turn and fight against their former comrades. Pixies and pumpkinheads, spriggans and sprites, all rose from the field and turned on their erstwhile friends, thrusting bronze swords and spears into living bodies, faces lit with surprised expressions as they died.
Since Fand and Manannan were at the front, they were among the first to be attacked, and Manannan didn’t care. He just kept with the hewing and cleaving; he was wielding Moralltach, the blade that spread necrosis through the body with a single cut and that Leif Helgarson had used to slay whatever iteration of Thor that had been. Against draugar it worked well, surprisingly, since they were already dead. But part of their flesh must still have responded to nerve impulses, and Moralltach’s infection made sure they couldn’t, so they collapsed, doubly dead without being beheaded. The Fae fell to its iron content as much as to its enchantment, and Manannan put them down for good.
But Fand wasn’t able to defend herself against her own beloved Fae. Or perhaps she would have, given time enough to think it through. What happened instead was that she froze, confronted with a reanimated spriggan she quite probably knew by name and had seen fall moments before, and it did not hesitate to take advantage of her hesitation. Its wooden digits already lengthened and sharpened into claws, it closed in, heedless of its own defense, and I saw Fand’s mouth drop open in shock, then widen further along with her eyes as the spriggan’s deadly claws punched through a gap in her armor and pierced something vital. She must have cried out, though I couldn’t hear it, and the light winked out in her eyes as she slumped, already dead before she hit the ground.
Being in camouflage allowed me a bit of time to pick and choose my targets, since the draugar in front of me were uncertain what seemed to be killing all their buddies. They came in slowly but they kept coming, and I hacked a few more down in panic, because I had a horrible premonition of what would happen next. Fand and I had never gotten along, but she was deeply loved by the Fae and by Manannan Mac Lir—and Manannan was someone I did admire and respect and with whom I’d enjoyed a long history, even friendship. I hurt for him instantly and felt hot tears watering the corners of my eyes. I had to take care of two more draugar before I could glance over again, and that’s when Manannan realized that his wife had fallen, because the same spriggan who’d killed her tried to take him out too. The strike on his right side failed to penetrate his armor, and the bite of Moralltach put the spriggan down, but he realized he shouldn’t have taken an attack from that side unless Fand was no longer protecting it. He looked down, saw her still and beyond care, and he fell to his knees beside her, throwing his sword away to gather her up in his arms and scream her name to bring her spirit back to this side of the veil. That was precisely what I’d feared. The undead Fae and the draugar didn’t stop to let him mourn. They kept coming, as they kept coming at m
e. I beheaded another draugr, flicked my eyes briefly to the left, and saw multiple attackers cut down the grief-stricken Manannan Mac Lir, one of the eldest and most noble of the Tuatha Dé Danann, far more a god of love in his behavior than Aenghus Óg ever was, a man capable of loving and giving to all, and he would never have come to this end if it weren’t for me. I went on a bit of a tear after that, hacking through these confused spirits in long-dead husks who had no particular motivation to press on except to escape Hel for a while.
“I’m so sorry, Manannan,” I said, wondering if those words would ever reach his ears, somewhere in Tír na nÓg on the other side of the veil. When I was next able to look over, the Fae host was in full retreat, demoralized completely by the deaths of their leaders and the realization that should they die, their corpses would rise to fight those who remained. A maddening, amplified laugh bubbled up from the vicinity of the volcano: Loki was amused.
Some of the Fae rallied to Brighid’s fire—she was again airborne on a pillar of flame, looking invincible in that armor she’d forged herself—but most of Fand’s army was broken, streaking back to the point where they’d shifted into the plane.
The lone bright spot was the yeti, Oddrún and Ísólfr, who could not be overwhelmed and whose whirling blades were devastating against the draugar. They slowed and disoriented attackers with sprays of frost to the face, then stabbed them with the tip of those blades that drank the soul within—no decapitation necessary. When they saw Manannan fall, they rallied to his side and beat back the swarm of undead Fae even as the living Fae broke into a retreat. Then Ísólfr held off multiple attackers while Oddrún encased her father and Fand together in a block of ice to prevent them from being reanimated by Hel. She pushed them along a slick track of ice she created toward Brighid’s forces, with Ísólfr and then the yewmen covering their retreat. I rather hoped the yeti would simply continue to the south and leave the field, for both their victories and their losses already exceeded anyone else’s.
I had no illusions that the Fae who joined with Brighid’s forces to fight in the second wave represented anything but a few individual triumphs; in the first clash, we’d been routed, gods had fallen, and the forces of Loki and Hel had only been strengthened by fresh meat for the necromancer’s commands. The dark elves were already tiring, and the Álfar were doing little but maintaining the right flank—and they were themselves in danger of being flanked by the remainder of Hel’s army.
We would need to do much better or the people of Sweden would never see the sunrise. Nor, for that matter, would much of Europe.
yama King Wuguan looks like the sort of fighter that relies on brute strength to win the day. He’ll gladly take some hits so long as he gets in a good one on you, because he thinks one is all it will take. And maybe he’s right. Even if he doesn’t finish me like One-Punch Man—an anime hero I’ve been enjoying recently—he’ll probably do enough damage that he can administer the coup de grâce with little resistance. So it’s probably best that I get out of the way of his leap. I can’t engage his sword when it’s way above my head.
And I feel that this is a test somehow. Wukong clearly wishes to see if I can defeat Wuguan before he teaches me anything else, and I suppose it’s fair. If we’re supposed to fight eight progressively tougher Yama Kings, I should be able to defeat the guy at the halfway point if I expect to stick around until the end.
Is it perhaps a test for Wuguan as well? Is he trying to move up in the hierarchy of Diyu or perhaps escape it entirely for a cushier job in one of the heavens? I know nothing about him or what must be his very long history, other than what I see.
It occurs to me as I scramble to my right—Wuguan’s left—that I’ve been fighting alongside beings that are older than Atticus, and that’s the sort of realization that can make you feel pretty small when you’re only in your thirties. Especially since I’ve gradually gotten a sense of the scale that such a lifetime represents after listening to Atticus’s stories. He lived nineteen centuries or so without access to plumbing, for example, which makes me cringe. The few times I’ve had to go without a toilet were unhappy and uncomfortable and I kept thinking about what could bite me. He must think we’re all pampered hedonists.
I take nothing for granted regarding Wuguan’s leaps, because if he could skate around in the air like the Monkey King, then normal physics would not apply. I automatically execute a blocking maneuver for an attack that isn’t there yet but abruptly arrives a moment later. The impact nearly rips Scáthmhaide from my hand. He does have those abilities, he’s as strong as I feared, and he is much faster than his bulk would suggest.
The battle continues to rage around us, but a space is cleared somehow for our duel; the damned must have received some signal—there must be plenty riding on this for both of us. The Monkey King and his clones are still fighting the rest of the demons and the damned all around the mountain, protecting the people of Taipei and not simply watching the duel, except in brief glances. I don’t understand why I was singled out for this, but I doubt Wuguan will pause to explain. And I doubt I will have much time to win; if he’s in Wukong’s class as a fighter, then he outclasses me.
Wukong pointed out on the roof of his shop that my fighting patterns are recognizable and easily countered. They are essentially Chinese methods that Atticus taught me, after all, and old ones at that—so old that they’re almost new again. But Wuguan knows them as Wukong does. I show him something he’s going to recognize and counter, then mix in something he doesn’t: My staff whirls around in my right and he expects it to land in my left hand, so he slaps it away, expecting me to be open to counterstrike—and I will be. Except that I’ve palmed a knife and thrown it at his right eye while his arm and sword were out of position, a gamble that pays off as it sinks home. His reflexive flinch ruins his counterstrike, but he surprises me with a stiff kick to the midsection as I try to close in, covering his retreat. He’s annoyed to be feeling pain instead of dealing it, and I’m out of breath and on my ass, my diaphragm bruised and a couple of ribs cracked. He yanks the knife out of his eye and tosses it at me, and I’m able to roll in time to have it sink into my left upper arm instead of my own eye. I pull it out and crank the healing on high.
We both take time to reset after that. He presents his left side, sword held defensively, so that he can keep his remaining eye on me. I roll to my feet and wonder how I’m going to surprise him now that he’s wary. He still has a tremendous advantage in strength and reach. In the plus column, he won’t want to be taking those huge leaps anymore, for fear I’ll get around to his blind side. In the minus column, that armor means he’s not vulnerable anywhere else to a knife throw and now he’s going to be guarding that weakness intensely.
Which…might be good? I check to confirm that I have two throwing knives left. I palm one in my right hand and twirl it. That’s right, big guy. Lookit the shiny knifey.
A couple of twirls with the staff in my left while I’m still twirling the knife in my right, and I’m watching how his eye tracks this. He flickers to the staff but keeps his eye on my knife and also on my hips to watch for telltales there. Good. Movements with my left arm and wrist he won’t be watching—or he’s confident he knows what I’ll be doing there. That’s where I need to surprise him. I lunge forward with a conventional attack and throw the knife to see what he does. He blocks the staff and ducks the knife, then slashes at me with a damn fast cut that would have taken off my beard if I had one. Good to know.
I pluck out my last knife and make the same throwing motion but don’t release. He buys the feint and I do a double-tap with Scáthmhaide wielded in my left hand: once on the flat of his blade, knocking it aside, then thrusting forward into the space where I think his cheek will be as he ducks my phantom throw, and it connects hard. He howls and staggers back, that left eye now instinctively closed, and he can’t see until he opens it again. I throw the knife for real this time and it sinks into his
throat. He’s losing blood and is unable to breathe in addition to having trouble seeing, so he’s not at the top of his game when I come in to finish him. I tee off on his face and he falls backward, his head a shattered mess inside his helmet. Fare thee well, Wuguan.
His death—or, rather, his melting away—has the curious effect of destroying all his minions a minute later. They converged on me after the duel but then exploded into goo before I could engage more than two of them. The mountain is clear and I’m expecting the Monkey King to give me some approval at this point, but instead when I look at him he leans on his staff and frowns.
“You could have let that go on a little longer,” he says.
That makes absolutely no sense to me and I say as much. “What? Why would I increase my risk that way?”
“You defeated him so quickly that he lost face and recalled all his souls.”
“But that’s good, right? We won! People are safe.”
Wukong shakes his head and waggles his hand at me. “Four more Yama Kings to go. And now that you’ve humiliated one of them, they’ll be coming for you. Not Taipei. Not the mainland. You.”
“Oh, well, that’s just great. You could have warned me ahead of time that in addition to my own life or death, I’d have to worry about fragile egos too.”
“I didn’t think it would be necessary. Fragile egos are at the root of almost every conflict. My ego is certainly what motivated me in my younger years. Did you know that I once demanded to be called the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven?”
I throw up a hand to stifle a laugh and try to turn it into a cough. “I may have read some stories that mentioned that.”
He’s not fooled. “You may laugh. I deserve it. But I am no longer of that mind, and I have a different name now.”