Asgard's Heart

by Brian Stableford

  "In terms of our mythology, we were always monotheists. A single tribe very quickly produced the notion of a single god. That idea, in its turn, gave way fairly readily to the notion of a universe that, although godless, is law-governed and ordered as a great machine. Our historical scientists believe that is why the Tetrax are the most scientifically- advanced race in the galactic arm, although we are no older, in evolutionary terms, than any other.

  "We have nothing in our cultural and mythological heritage which resembles the complicated notions of your ancient Greeks or Norsemen—the idea of Gotterdammerung would be entirely alien to us. We have not even the kind of covert dualism that is built into your supposedly monotheistic religions, which oppose a law-making god with an adversary or a subversive chaos. It may be, I think—for reasons which are purely accidental—that you have far better resources in the imagination for representing what seems to be going on around us than 994-Tulyar had. It may be that coincidence has helped to model your mythical thinking on a pattern which really is reproduced in the universe, in a conflict of godlike beings with which we have somehow become entangled."

  My head was beginning to ache again, but not with the effort of thought. What Nisreen had said was fascinating in more ways than one. One of the ways in which it was fascinating was that it might help to explain why I was being fitted up by fate to take a part in whatever was going on around us. It suggested that there might be something about the human mind—as moulded by its historical and cultural heritage—which enabled it to adapt to the context in which the war inside Asgard could be seen to have meaning. It suggested, in fact, that my other self, copied and encrypted by the Isthomi and then sent forth upon his heroic quest through Asgard's other dimensions, might indeed be enabled to achieve something which no other humanoid could do as well.

  For the first time, I paused to wonder how he was getting on, and what he might be up to in those realms of Asgard which were the true habitation of the gods. Was he yet in sight of Valhalla? Or had he suffered instead the dire penalty of hubris?

  I didn't suppose that I would ever find out, but my insatiable desire to speculate made me think about it anyhow, until I was interrupted by Susarma Lear, who stuck her head into the back of the transporter and said: "We got lucky."

  "You mean we picked up the trail of the other truck?" I said.

  "Not exactly," she replied. "There's no sign of the trace it was supposed to be laying down for us, and we might easily have lost it for good—if it hadn't started transmitting a Mayday. The opposition are still on this level . . . and they're in trouble."

  She was right, of course. We'd got lucky. But I wasn't about to start cheering yet. Until we found out just what kind of trouble the opposition was in, we had no way of knowing whether we could avoid the same fate.

  22

  The last traces of the weed had vanished. Once again the mists had withdrawn and the sea was calm, but I knew that it was only another calm before a storm. As I watched the oars dipping into the water I regretted that the goddess who was the architect of this Creation had chosen to define our environment in terms of an ocean; I thought that I might have felt more secure on solid land. She had assured me that soil and rock would have been no less eager to seize and choke us than the waters of this hallucinatory ocean, and that we would still have had to isolate ourselves in some kind of vessel, but the sea still seemed uncomfortably alien to me.

  I had asked why, if unfamiliarity to our enemies was the chief criterion determining her decision, she had not elected to provide us with a void to cross and a ship like Leopard Shark in which to navigate it. She had replied that an analogue of stressed space would in her estimation be far easier for our enemies to come to terms with, and the shell of a starship too easy for them to crack. It was, she told me, far safer to be in a realm of uncertain magic, where the enemy could not readily estimate what deceptive power they might assume, or what power we in our turn might have to use against them.

  "But we do not know that ourselves!" I had protested.

  "That," she had replied with finality, "may be our greatest advantage."

  I did not think that I had settled well into the identity of a man of magic. Some men might have taken comfort from the suspicion that unknown forces lay latent within them, holding the potential for a miraculous rescue even in the direst of circumstances, but it was not a possibility in which I could invest much trust. I would have preferred to know just what I was, and what I could do, and to be confident that my resources would be adequate to the task in hand. Alas, even men of flesh and blood rarely know such things, and it is a lucky man indeed who has the pleasure of certainty in regard to the last of those matters.

  The next encounter began with a disturbance in the water, which was not so evident on the surface of the sea but which began to exert a marked influence upon the course of the vessel, dragging us off our bearing and away to starboard. I watched the oars as they began to fight against the drag, those to port relaxing while those to starboard tried to work increasingly hard.

  "Look!" said Myrlin, pointing away to starboard.

  There, far away from the boat, we could see a swirling motion in the water beginning, and rapidly increasing. What had caught us was the outer edge of a great whirlpool that was endeavouring to suck us into a clockwise spiral. It was immediately clear that whatever force was working in the water was more powerful than the oars, because our course was indeed curving away along the arc of a great circle.

  Myrlin grappled with the helm, holding it hard over in an attempt to steer us to port, and the prow of the ship began to come about. Instead of taking us away from the current, though, he simply succeeded in exposing a greater target to the rushing water, which began to sweep us sideways.

  Myrlin spun the wheel, trying to turn the ship back again in order that the oars could gain some purchase, but the

  force of the surge was now so great that he could not bring the vessel around. The oars were flailing now, as impotent as they had been when the weed prevented their dipping beneath the surface.

  Once again, I felt quite impotent. The weapons with which I had been provided were quite useless in dealing with this kind of attack. I looked back at the female form in which the Nine had remade themselves, and saw that she was chanting, trying to raise some kind of magical force to oppose the one sent to suck us down.

  In response to her invocation a great wind blew up, which tried with all its might to carry us in the opposite direction to the drag of the maelstrom. The automata on the lower deck were busy with our great square sail, changing its attitude to catch the full force of the wind while Myrlin threw the wheel the other way, trying to pull our stern round to face the direction of the drag.

  The opposition of wind and water churned up the surface of the sea in mighty waves, and turbid spray was everywhere, lashing fiercely at our faces.

  I clung to the rail desperately, with my bow and arrows held tight beneath my foot, lest they should be lost. The ship had been tossed about by the wind and the waves before, but that was nothing by comparison with the effects of the present contest of the elements. The sky had grown dark, and the clouds which obscured it were almost black. As though with an outburst of sudden rage those clouds began to pour black rain upon us, cold and stinging. The raindrops mixed with hailstones the size of bullets.

  The shape of the whirlpool, which had presented itself quite clearly a few minutes before, was now lost in the tumult, and we seemed to be in the grip of chaos itself, lurching and listing without any apparent pattern.

  My stomach felt as if it was turning over, and I had to go down on one knee to crouch beneath the level of the rail, trying to hide my face from the scourging of the storm. I could not tell what Myrlin was trying to do, nor what advantage was being gained in the fight between our wizardry and theirs—all that I could do was wait, and hope that if the ship capsized, I would have the strength to swim in a sea made mad by the vortex in the water and the assaults of the air
.

  I heard a cry from Myrlin which I took to be a cry of triumph, and thought that the ship must at last have found itself able to respond to the helm, but immediately it was followed by another cry, shot through with anguish, and knew that the enemy had found new reserves.

  I forced my head up, to look out into the dark mists, and immediately saw what my giant companion had seen.

  All around us, rising to the surface of the water, were the coils of some immense serpent, racing round and around. It was as though the whirlpool had suddenly come to life—Charybdis suddenly transformed into Scylla. It no longer mattered which way the ship was headed, or how it caught the wind, because there was not the slightest doubt that we were surrounded by the coils of the monster. For the moment, I could see no head at all, but merely the scaly loops lying about us, two or three times wound around, and I wondered whether the creature might have seized its own tail to seal itself into a confining ring of flesh. The scales might have shone brightly had there been light enough to make them glisten, but in the grey half-light they were dull and brown, speckled here and there with clumps of dark green tendrils which may only have been some kind of weed anchored to the body of the beast.

  I snatched the bow from beneath my foot, feeling a surge of perverse elation on account of the fact that here was something I could do—here was an enemy at which I could strike in my own fashion.

  I fitted an arrow to the bow, and without rising from my kneeling position I fired at the mass closest to the starboard side. I saw the arrow fly true despite the winds which buffeted it in flight, and it buried itself in the flesh of the monster . . . but the sea-serpent made not the slightest reaction. I could see the white feathers that fletched the arrow, but no red blood, nor any other sign of hurt.

  I sent forth a second arrow without delay, and hit the same serpentine coil a few yards further on, but with no more obvious result, and I cursed, seeing that the coils were drawing tighter now around the ship, which was imprisoned in an area of water no more than a hundred metres in diameter.

  Then came the head, rearing up out of the spume no more than a dozen metres from the flank of the vessel, just aft of the mast. It was as though it had tried to toss us up, as a bull tosses a luckless matador, and had only just failed.

  The enormous head was only a little like a snake's: it had the fangs of a snake and eyes which were entirely ophidian, but it had a crest behind its head much more elaborate than a cobra's hood, and its snout was ridged to give it a less rounded profile. It was a veritable dragon's head, with rows of swords-point teeth behind the greater fangs. Its slit-pupilled eyes, golden yellow about the dark lens, caught me immediately with their stare, and the crest swelled to present the appearance of a fan-like array of webbed horns.

  It paused for just a second in the air, the head becoming steady as the eyes fixed upon their target, and I knew that it was poised to strike.

  I had a third arrow ready, and fired at the open mouth as it gaped. A black forked tongue flickered out, and the arrow caught it, embedding itself just behind the junction. There was no doubt that the monster felt this blow because the head flinched, sucking the tongue back between the fangs, arrow and all. For a single fleeting moment I clung to the hope that I might have struck a mortal blow, but then the mouth gaped again, the great curved fangs standing stark and white, and the head struck at me with lightning speed.

  Had I not been crouched beneath the rail I must have been caught and killed, but my reflexive reaction was to duck, and I felt the two great fangs strike at the carved parapet to either side of me, splintering the wood, but impotent to hurt my body.

  As I sprawled on the timbers I looked up into the left eye of the monster, which was incredibly huge at this intimate range, although it was only as big as a man's whole head. I sensed such venomous hatred there as to make my blood run cold.

  When the head drew back again I knew that I had a few seconds to spare in which to launch another arrow, and while I notched it to the string I determined to aim at that evil eye, to rob the monster of part of its sight, perhaps even to penetrate its brain.

  As the head poised itself in mid-air, ready for the second strike, I managed to get myself into a firing position, and loosed my arrow. It sped in company with at least one other, but the monster swayed very slightly, and both bolts glanced off the armoured scales behind the brow, apparently causing no harm at all. The coils of its astonishing body were coming so tightly about the boat now that the lurching and heeling had stopped, and the wind which tried to catch our sail had likewise dwindled away, so that everything seemed uncannily steady as the head struck out again.

  I tried to roll to one side, but the head was simply too big to be avoided in that way. Fortunately, it was not the gleaming fang that struck me, but rather the horny ridge above the root of the fang, which caught my shoulder and knocked me away from the protecting rail. The bow shivered in my hand, and split as I rammed its end into the timber of the deck. I let it go, and tried desperately to regain my balance.

  Another arrow, which must have been fired by the goddess, pursued the monstrous head as it reared backwards for another strike, and embedded its point in the black lip between the fangs, but the leviathan cared nothing at all for such a wound, and I knew that this time it would not miss me when it struck again.

  I struggled desperately with my sword, trying to haul it from its scabbard, but the scabbard was trapped beneath me where I had fallen, and I could not get the weapon out.

  I stared the monster full in the face as the head paused for an instant, quite still in the clouded air while that baleful eye measured the strike.

  Then Myrlin stepped in front of me, his great hammer held in his right hand, and as the vile head thrust itself forward yet again he hurled the hammer with all his might. It flew, more like a thunderbolt than a missile, to meet the serpent's head mid-way. I could not judge the precise point of impact, but I know that the hammer sailed into the open mouth, to catch the upper palate nearer to the throat than the lip.

  With Myrlin's heroic strength behind it, the thrown hammer was much more powerful than the sea-serpent's thrusting head, and the impact snatched the head backwards with such violence that I felt sure the cervical vertebrae must have been broken. The monster was hurled backwards, tumbling back over its own circling coils,

  crashing into the surface of the water.

  Myrlin cried out in exultation, and my own voice began to join in, but our anticipation of victory was premature. The great coils were still about the ship, so close on every side that they had almost caught it fast, and when the head disappeared those coils went mad, closing upon the vessel with such a convulsion that they caught it by the bow and the stern, and turned it upright from end to end.

  Out of the water rose what I first thought was a second head, but was in fact a great crested tail, which struck at the thrown-up ship with all the violence it could muster.

  The mast broke like matchwood, and all the timbers of the hull and the middle deck cracked and splintered. I saw the gorgon's head, severed from its place atop the prow, hurtle through the air to disappear impotently beneath the storm- tossed waves. I heard the goddess scream, and remembered what she had said about the ship being no less a part of her than the armour-clad flesh which she had put on. In that scream, I was certain, I heard the sound of her death.

  But it mattered no longer to me whether the ship was seaworthy or not, for I could not help but part company with it, hurled tumbling through the air to come down, not in the turbulent water, but upon the flesh of the monster itself, near to where my first and second arrows had struck.

  For one sensible moment I clung with all my might to a handhold found among the scales, as though I might seize the beast and ride him to his lair in the ocean depths, but then I was snatched beneath the waves, and hit the water with such violence that all the breath was knocked out of me.

  As I struggled desperately to remain conscious I tried with all my might to gasp
for air—but there was no air to be had, and all I could take in was foul and icy water, which seemed to carry a tide of noxious poison into the very heart of my being. I was still on the surface of the strange cold sea, and my red armour seemed to have no weight at all, but something was dragging at me from below, trying to suck me down into the depths. I grabbed at a spar that was close by in the water, but it was by no means large enough to serve as a raft.

  Still winded and desperate for air I looked wildly about, and saw a much larger piece of wreckage bearing down upon me from the crest of a wave. Clinging to it with evident desperation was Myrlin's huge black-armoured body, and had I been able I would have yelled with joy to see that he was still alive. I stretched out my hand, trying to catch hold of the edge of the makeshift raft, but the roiling of the waters carried me away. I still could not cry out to beg for help, but I saw Myrlin lift his head and was sure that he must catch sight of me, and save me from the force that was trying to pull me under.

  His eyes met mine, and for a moment there was a flicker of recognition, but the instant did not last. It was as though some kind of magical fire flared inside his head, so that his eyes were suddenly lighted from within, burning like angry beacons, and his body was seized by horrid convulsions which were determined to shake him apart.

  He would surely have reached out to save me, if he could—but he could not, because the demons had him, and were destroying him even while he clung to the wreckage that had given him momentary hope of salvation.

  I felt that the demons had me, too, because I was pulled down by invisible hands, deep into the awful waters, which closed above my head. I knew then that the breath of life for which I fought so hard would never come.