Drust, still falling back with the others, step by painful step, watched in awe as a wolf that had to be over ten feet tall padded out of the smoke and the fog and loped past them into the battle, exhaling frost. And when they finally reached their next defensive chokepoint, Highway DCCCXXC, he had enough time to look up into the aquamarine veils that danced among the clouds, and spotted a dragon riding through the night sky . . . just in time to see it descend, exhaling something white and deadly at the ground between them and the invaders to the south. Lightning arced down from the blue-lit clouds, and for an instant, Drust was blinded. Then the ensuing clap of thunder nearly deafened him, too. A high wind kicked up, roaring from north to south, pushing debris and needles of sudden, icy rain directly into the faces of the oncoming monkey-dogs, flayed men, and everything else. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down. And it would make it harder for the soldiers further south to aim.
And that was when the giants appeared, standing between the humans and the advancing creatures, who’d been tied up with the gargoyles. At first, Drust thought that these were the jotun he’d seen on the far-viewer, the creatures spawned from human residents of Gotaland and Fennmark and other places in northern Europa. His eyes widened, however, as he realized that each was over twelve feet in height, and the males seemed to be completely transparent. Made of ice. And the women glowed white under the blue-green auroral lights in the heavens, seemingly carved of snow. “Hrímþursar!” one of the Goths to his left shouted through the wind, his eyes wide. “Frost-giants! This really must be Ragnarok!”
The defenders scrambled backwards as the winds picked up still further. Drust vaulted over another set of poured-stone barricades, just in time to see one of the barricades lifted by a frost-giant, and swung like a club, hurling three or four attackers back, their rib-cages shattered. Then the frost-giant loped to the edge of the highway and hurled the poured-stone barricade like a spear. Drust couldn’t see the result, but pictured it protruding from the windshield of a troop transport, having crushed both driver and engine, instantly.
Once all the human defenders were in cover, the wind howled, frozen rain cutting into the back of his neck, pressing him against a poured-stone wall. “Sadb! Hold on!” he shouted through the wind, and locked an arm around her waist, pulling her as close as he could. “This is like that hurricane we waited out, back in eighty-three! The winds have to be over a seventy miles an hour, and they’re still rising!” And the wind’s armed not with rain, but with frozen sleet. Taranis’ teeth, it’s digging into every inch of bare skin I have, and the back of my coat is glazed with it . . . He got her between himself and the wall, sheltering her as best he could, and then lifted his head over the wall, trying to sight in on some enemy in the distance. He couldn’t get a clean shot on anything. There were hundreds of gargoyles and giants wrestling with the monsters, all along both sets of lanes. Periodically, he’d see a giant kick a monkey-dog over the guardrail, hurtling it to its death. Or spotted a gargoyle biting the head off a flayed man.
Hours later, the defenders were forced to give ground, as the tanks rolled into place, and opened fire. Grenades and rockets were out of the question at the moment, thanks to the storm. Once, Drust saw that massive white wolf reappear, and he saw the creature bite the side of a tank . . . and its teeth crunched through metal plating designed to withstand the shells of other tanks. And then he saw several valkyrie swooping in, and the god-born women tossed grenades inside the new opening, before flying off, getting out of range of the blast.
A great voice rang through his head. Fenris, you’ve led your charge, as you requested. Odin orders that you now return to Valhalla!
The wolf bayed. Drust was already so cold, he thought he might be courting hypothermia, and yet chills ran down his spine anyway. The creatures south of his position staggered backwards, and then turned and ran . . . or tried to do so. There were too many of their fellows behind them. Briefly, it became a stampede. Then the wolf turned, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, and another voice filled Drust’s mind. Malice-Striker, I grudge you every instant you spend fighting this battle. For it is here that I was meant to die.
The clouds parted just enough for dawn to peek through over the ocean to the west, sullen and red, and Drust, who’d been on his feet all night, swayed a little with exhaustion as he and Sadb were waved off the line with the rest of their impromptu squad, and fresher soldiers moved up onto the highway. A makeshift warming station had been set up in what had once been a furniture store along the feeder of the highway, and a hot cup of broth was pressed into one frost-bitten hand, along with a hot, meat-filled corn torta for the other. Drust shook as he ate, and, staring out the boarded up front windows of the store, found himself looking at something he would have thought impossible. “Sadb . . . do you see that, love? Am I touched in the head now?”
Sadb peered out between the cracks of the boards, and her breath caught. “It’s . . . it’s a rosebush, I think,” she murmured. “And it’s blooming. The snow’s all melting around it . . . .”
They walked outside, hearing the sharp cracks of gunfire, only faintly muffled by the distance, and stumbled to the front of the store, where they very gently brushed melting snow off greening leaves, and touched the red petals with reverent fingers. Others, attracted by their movements, joined them, an ever-widening circle. Someone finally said, “It’s warmer here, too.”
“It’s colder than Hel’s heart up on the highway, but down here, in the shelter of the buildings . . . the icicles are melting.” Drust looked up as a stranger pointed that out, and got a face full of ice water for his pains.
“Does this mean that the Fimbulwinter is ending?”
“Does this mean that we’re going to win?”
Drust’s fingers itched. He wanted to pluck one of those roses for Sadb. He’d been able to give her very little for the past decade, and even less of late. Just a token. A reminder, that they had more than mere survival between them, though it had been a long time since either of them had expressed it. Something to take the worn, haggard look from her face. And he could see in her eyes that the roses touched her. But has his hand rose to touch one of the roses, he wavered. Ripping away a bloom from something so miraculous seemed almost a desecration. Everyone else who sees it, will tear off the flowers, he thought. Does it matter if I’m the first?
He let his hand fall, and, a moment later, when someone else did reach out to snap off one of the blooms, he was glad that he’d resisted the urge to do so, himself: the man pulled back with a cry of pain, his fingers bleeding. Sadb shook her head, and wrapped the injured fingers with a cloth, but didn’t waste anything from the medkit on the man who’d reached out to take the bloom, though his fingers were pierced to the bone.
“I figured it would be worth the price,” he said, wincing. “Might have some magic in it.”
“Not everything has a price. It’s a gift, see?” Sadb told him, stolidly. “You can’t be taking what’s not given.”
As she turned to walk away, one of the half-open blooms fell from the bush, and rolled in front of her feet. Everyone pulled back a step or two, and Sadb leaned down, and, very carefully, picked up the red blossom, with just her fingertips. She sniffed it, and, looking around, said, “To whichever spirit gives the gift, I give thanks.” Then she tucked it down her shirt, where it couldn’t be seen, and moved back to Drust’s side, her shotgun over her shoulders again. But there was a little flush in her weathered cheeks that hadn’t been there in a decade or so. “Let’s get back up to the line, Drust-love,” she told him, simply.
A loudspeaker crackled, startling everyone. “Attention, all units. Ghul have broken through the southwest barricades. They are not moving on the highways, but through residential and commercial areas. Units four forty-seven, four forty-eight, move to the intersection of Karl and North Fifteenth Street; you have point there. Four forty-nine, four-fifty, you have point at Fifteenth and Commercial Avenue. Units four fifty-one through four
fifty-eight, start erecting barricades behind them at the intersections of Thirteenth and Commercial, and Thirteenth and Karl. They’ll probably try to flank to the north and south, so be on your guard. Ghul get smarter, the more of them that are around, and there are a lot of them here.”
They got back to work.
They had an altogether too good a view of the inbound ghul as the Fifteenth Street defenders broke, falling back to where Drust and Sadb’s squad was positioned at Thirteenth and Karl. There were long warehouses along this stretch, many with stripes of color along their khaki brick facades. A few had been renovated into individual shops, now empty and barren. A florist. A flooring and tile company. Abandoned motorcars lined the sides of the roads, and chain-link fences corralled the parking lots . . . and the ghul simply swarmed over the fences, leaping over the tops and landing in low crouches on the other side, before uncoiling and scrambling forwards again, leaving an opening for the creature behind them. Some ran on three limbs, like apes. Some ran on two, in feral, hunched postures. The people retreating from Fifteenth street were backing up, firing at the ghul. Trying to delay them . . . but for every ghul they shot, two more seemed to replace it, and they just kept coming. Reaching out, with their long, dirty claws, and swiping at arms and legs. Leaping forwards, with uncanny, inhuman grace, like some sort of distorted jungle cat, and landing on a defender—Drust aimed and fired, taking the chance that he might hit the man. Even if he did, a bullet was a cleaner death than being eaten alive by a ghul.
Then they were helping the human defenders over the wall they’d managed to build. Mostly old rubbish. Cars that they’d muscled into a line, furniture and rubbish pulled out of the businesses to either side. Drust had winced inwardly as he tossed one of his old company’s ley-powered computers on the pile. The irony was as stinging as the fumes of the kerosene with which they’d doused the rubbish.
And when they’d gotten their people over, and when the ghul were starting to pile over the wall, someone with a working flamethrower lit the whole breach on fire. “Back up!” Drust shouted. “Keep backing up! We need to get back to the secondary barricade, or they will flank us!”
He saw one of the defenders they’d just pulled over the wall topple over, and Sadb got there first, trying to help the man stand back up again . . . and then pulled back, her hands wet with blood. “Drust!” He got over to her, where she crouched over the man, who’d just curled on himself, spasming in pain. She leaned in to say in his ear, “I think one of them pulled out his liver, but he probably only knew he was hit, not how badly . . . .” It was hard to hear her over the roar of the flames, and the low keening of the ghul on the other side.
Drust slung his rifle over his back, and picked up the dying man’s weapon. It was a working flame-thrower, and some ghul seemed to have just enough brains remaining that they might try to use it. “Nothing we can do for him,” he told her.
“Don’t want to leave him to be eaten,” she returned, frowned, and then looked down at the man. “I’m sorry. Best I can do for you.” She lowered her shotgun to the back of his head, and Drust saw the moment of relief in the man’s agonized expression, before he looked back up to make sure no more ghul were coming over the barricade at them . . . and then there was a blam as Sadb pulled the trigger.
Highway kindness, to go with highway eyes.
“Let’s go,” he urged her, pulling her by the elbow, backing away now to the secondary barricade, which was still being built behind them. Round after round from her shotgun, and a few blasts from the flamethrower kept the few ghul who’d gotten over the barricade at bay.
From the air, Sigrun’s perspective on the battle was entirely different. She could see the ghul swarming over the tops of fences, and even climbing up onto rooftops to lope across the tiles there with their usual unnatural grace. She could see how they were moving north and south, through the complex of buildings, and sweeping around to come at the defenders from both sides . . . but at the same time, she could also see that the defenders at Oakbend and Service Street were about to be surrounded. Further east, a pocket of humans had been resisting on the Barleyseed Bridge, over Coyote Creek, and only a handful were left alive there. And still, up on the highway, the battle continued against genuine soldiers, skull-faced women and monkey-dogs, and whatever else. We need to have the hrímþursar diverted here, she told Nith. Two hundred would do.
You may command them, he reminded her.
You called them, she told him, smiling faintly under her mask, a wash of pride rushing through her at the memory. Nith had entered the keep at the center of their realm, and roared, calling all the frost-giants to the garden, and told them all that the last battle was upon them all. And that while he did not compel them, he did request that they honor their ancient alliance with his progenitor, and enter the human realm . . . not to invade or despoil, but to defend and protect.
And they had.
In the here and now, she pointed out, both to him, and on the wider, humming band of voices that connected all the gods, There are too many ghul. The humans won’t hold it without help.
Hrímþursar! To us! As soon as you are in position to hold the line, we will advance on the tanks and artillery positions, before they can properly set themselves! Nith’s voice rolled out, and Sigrun could see the frost-giants below beginning to move at his command
I’ll move to the east, Thor called. I can put a dent in the ghul population.
No time to arrange more than this, and then Nith swooped into the wind her seiðr provided. She remembered, all too clearly, the visions, the pre-memories, of his wings being scored through with holes from rockets, and his scales scorched and leaking blood, and she swathed them both in heavy shields, once again silently thankful to Minori, Reginleif, Kanmi, and Freya, for all the time and training they’d given her. Bullets usually did little more than ping off Nith’s hide and her armor, but a rocket-propelled grenade or a high-explosive anti-tank round could—and did!—hurt. Still the Nahautl tanks all looked to have been built by Hellene manufacturers, and were all at least fifteen years old . . . and none of them were equipped to deal with Nith’s speed or maneuverability as the dragon strafed over the army’s lines, exhaling deathfrost on them. Sigrun lashed out with whips of seiðr, breaking up any anti-aircraft weapons launched at them.
And by ten antemeridian, she was beginning to wonder, Could we actually win this?
I don’t know. This has been too easy so far. Pre-memory speaks of a hydrogen spell. Nith’s head rose. But it was not here, not to the south. They required water . . . they would require water . . .
Sigrun lifted her head as he rose higher into the sky. Njord? Anything of note to the west, in the sea? Any mad godlings, or humans in out-of-place boats?
None yet. There are a few stirrings, but they are very far out over the Pacifica. Njord’s voice was concerned. A hundred thousand troops was bad, but considering the number of gods on hand who could and would take an active hand? The attack should be blunted within a day or two.
No, they were all waiting for something to go wrong. They all knew they were death-touched. It was just a question of when and how.
Unless they somehow managed to win.
Sigrun shook her head, and her eyes followed the movement of tiny people along the roads below. There wasn’t much traffic at the moment. Almost everyone in the city was tucked down inside their own fortified homes, refugee camps, or evacuation structures, ringed with guards. Reinforcements streamed south, and she could see the tiny, blue-and-red lights of ambulances taking people north, off the line, to hospitals. Move lower, she told Nith, suddenly, and he complied, filling her with a questioning sensation through their soul-cord.
This is not the altitude at which you usually fly, Sigrun replied, a shard of an idea rotating in her mind.
I usually prefer to be higher than this. The clouds here would currently impede physical vision, however.
If I’m not supposed to be with you . . . perhaps we can see some
thing more from my usual altitude, than from yours.
A rumble of mild amusement, and Nith descended . . . and an anti-aircraft missile streaked up from somewhere to the south, far behind the rest of the attacking forces, and struck the shields Sigrun still held around them. Nith hissed. That would have taken me off-guard. And it would have been somewhat painful.
Sigrun eyed the fire raining down from the impact point on her shields, and shook her head. We’ll deal with them later. Just move along the highways for a bit. The CI north, please.
Her sense of duty nagged at her, saying that she should be back at the main battlefront, and she suppressed that inner voice. It was not in possession of the facts. Pre-memory said that a hydrogen spell would be/had been used here. And that, therefore, her real duty was to prevent that from occurring here, as it had at Cimbri. And there are many gods still alive here, Nith pointed out, reasonably.
It was true. Thor and Tyr were bringing down lightning to the south with an almost continuous roll of thunder; the ghul, ahuizotl, cihuateteo, and flayed men more or less ignored the danger, and kept moving in, but the humans, even the technomancers embedded in the priests’ army, backed down in the face of that kind of storm. Of course, the defenders had to back off, too—no one in their right mind would move out into that kind of electrical field. Heimdall and Freya had moved to the east, and with their god-born, were forcing the masses of ghul back out of the city limits. Odin and Freyr would come in and relieve Tyr and Thor shortly; they’d been defending the Odinhall. Loki and Njord had the west, patrolling to ensure no mad godlings, or ships of raiders came up and landed deep inside Burgundoi’s defensive perimeter. And Sif and Baldur were at the field hospitals, trying to heal the wounded. The people who’d managed to get an ahuizotl off their backs, only to hallucinate, and turn on their own squads. The women who’d been attacked by a cihuateteo, and who’d been rescued before the transformation was complete— usually by someone reaching into the wound in their bellies and removing the parasites burrowing into their wombs, teeth-first. Most of those women wouldn’t survive. They’d bleed to death, without the healing of a valkyrie. Sigrun shuddered, and stared down at the highway. If she’d still been a valkyrie, she’d have been assigned down there, somewhere. Hold that line. Heal those people.
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