Bloodsong

by Melvin Burgess

  Faster, faster, Grimhild—you only have ten minutes. But look, she’s turned round again! What is it now? The clones are below ground, much safer than her children, who are so vulnerable up there on the first floor. But another thought—the clones couldn’t run away. Oh, help! She stopped, panting on her scooter in a frenzy of indecision.

  And of course she didn’t have ten minutes at all. The Portlands had stealth; the radar was late. Only two minutes after the siren went off, a missile crashed into the palace. It lifted one side of the roof half a meter into the air before it fell back down with a violent thud and burst into flames. It was one of those occasions that Grimhild cursed her dog’s mouth. She’d had a good voice, deep and silky. “Hot smoke,” her husband had called her. Now she couldn’t even ring through and ask where the damage was or who had been hurt. Alarms were ringing furiously throughout the building. In a total panic, the old bitch abandoned her scooter and started bounding down the corridors on foot. Like a little nightmare she was, sometimes running upright on her little doggy legs, one black, one white, her child’s arms and hairy elbows pumping furiously up and down, sometimes going on all fours with her bum high in the air, sometimes rolling forward in a series of somersaults in her efforts to go faster and overcome her awkward anatomy, suited to neither.

  But there were no more missiles. Gunar had his defenses on high alert. It was a risky move on old Bill’s part. The great powers in the east and Africa made sure that western Europe never had much of an air force, and the four planes Bill had sent on this mission represented a sizeable percentage of his air power. Only one missile got through and two of the planes were lost, but perhaps the gamble had still paid off. The missile had only tipped the private accommodation, but it knocked out several systems and badly damaged communications at a time when Bill was at his most dangerous.

  Grimhild didn’t need to run all the way. There was a heavy pounding behind her and Ida appeared, her mouth open in her flat face, her blue eyes alarmed that something might have happened to her beloved. She scooped the old bitch up in her arms and, pausing only to stroke her head and tousle her fur, carried on— she never has to be told—down to the underground incident room, where the family was to gather in such emergencies.

  Once there, Ida put her down and went to lean against a wall, panting; she’d had a bad fright. Grimhild looked around—all well, thank god! Gunar, Hogni, Gudrun, not a scratch. Grimhild ran from one to the other, licking and stroking their faces and hands, whimpering, barking excitedly. But where was Sigurd?

  He arrived a few minutes later, led there by a guard. There was blood and his skin was shining with a peculiarly fractured light. He had been closest to the blast. He’d actually heard the missile swooping in, had got out of bed, and was on his way to the window to see what it was when it struck. The blast had pushed his windows in, shattered them to shards and dust. It was these tiny fragments on his impenetrable skin that made him shine like crystal.

  “I need a shower,” he said, and had to fend Hogni off from an embrace, for fear of cutting his friend.

  But something caught Gunar’s eye. Not the light fracturing on Sigurd’s skin, but the blood on his back. Blood meant humanity; humanity meant vulnerability.

  He sent the guards out before he said anything. This was for family only. Then he asked his question.

  “You’re bleeding, Sigurd. How is that possible?”

  Sigurd smiled and reached behind himself, to touch his vulnerable spot.

  “There’s one place that Fafnir’s blood didn’t touch, where a leaf was stuck on my back. I still have my own skin just there. Still human in one place, anyway,” he joked. Gunar looked at him curiously and Grimhild growled right in her throat. That was something to know—and the boy was mad! Why give himself away like that? But Sigurd was pleased to share his secret with his new friends, it gave him pleasure.

  “We’re equal now—if only because we can all stab each other in the back,” he said, and he laughed at the thought.

  There was a shocked silence. It’s a rare thing, a strange thing, when someone with such power shows their weakness— and so casually, as if it simply hadn’t come up before. He trusted them so quickly, so completely, so foolishly. Sigurd glanced up at them in surprise—why were they staring at him? Old Grimhild broke the frozen moment by crossing the floor to her adopted son—that was how she thought of him already— and taking his hands in hers. Sigurd smiled, looking down at her. When the others gathered around him to touch him and inspect the place on his back, she left and went to the bathroom for tissues and cotton wool, and cleaned his wound with her own hands. Sigurd knelt patiently in front of her while she dabbed the blood off. Everyone watched quietly as she did him this service.

  Then the guards reentered with the first news of the fronts opening up to the south, to the north, and to the west. The fighting was already raging. The Niberlins had been caught on the hop. Forgotten, Grimhild quietly left the room and scooted off, down to her own private quarters, the bloody tissues stuffed tightly under her arm. Behind her came a steady thud, thud, thud. Ida was on her tail.

  She had Sigurd’s genes. She would begin the procedure at once.

  While Grimhild was gleefully running off with her bloody rags, Sigurd, with Gunar, Hogni, Gudrun, and various generals and aides, was collating the flood of information coming in, trying to work out responses and allocate resources to the fronts opening up all around them.

  Old Bill had attacked to the south and west on a number of fronts, including one pushing through to Alf’s kingdom. Alf was small fry but Bill had no intention of being caught between two enemies. There were other fronts to the north and the east from Portland allies. So far the Niberlins had had no reports of their own allies.

  Sigurd listened to the reports with growing distress. As he looked at the map, he could already see patterns emerging, futures evolving. He would win this war; he knew that. There would be many deaths and a great deal of pain and destruction. The fight would not be long but it would require his full attention. It had already started. But—Bryony! It was no longer a question of just riding through. The Portlands held the land around London. There would be roadblocks, armed guards. Slipper would be instantly noticed. Sigurd was strong but he could not win an entire war on his own. This was bigger than him, bigger than love. He could not leave a war started in his name, not for love, not for hope, not for any reason.

  “I’m too late,” he thought. As he bent over the screen with Gunar, watching the news flash through, he felt his heart turn cold inside him. Was this to be the cost? It didn’t make sense. Destiny and desire had gone hand in hand for him so far, but suddenly his world was falling in two. What he wanted and what was were different. It made him feel sick, as if the ground was lurching under his feet.

  Gunar pointed at some significant information. Sigurd nodded, but in his heart he was thinking, Bryony, Bryony Bryony! Was he going to lose her? And the baby, the unborn baby?

  And there was more of course—his mother and Alf to the west, who were even now being overwhelmed by the Portland armies. Too late for them—he could only pray that they would escape. Was he to lose Bryony as well?

  That could not be allowed to happen.

  Sigurd nodded to himself. He couldn’t move at the moment, but he still had time. Crayley wouldn’t harm her until it could get her baby and that wasn’t due for some months yet. But right now, this very second, he had to concentrate on winning a war.

  He shook his head and turned his attention to the map. Inside his mind a web of thoughts began to unwrap themselves. He could see the strategy unfolding, not just now but into the future, too, as if the map was giving up its secrets to him, foretelling the shape of things to come. He knew exactly what he had to do.

  He looked up. The others were staring at him.

  “Can’t you hear us, Sigurd?” said Gunar.

  “Okay,” said Sigurd. “This is what we have to do.”

  They listened, then began to a
rgue. A lot of it seemed to make no sense. But how could he explain? It wasn’t simply clever working out and intelligent guesses; it wasn’t even that he knew what Bill would think and how he would react under certain circumstances. He simply knew the course of things. Reluctantly Gunar gave the orders Sigurd wanted. It went against what he could understand; but what else was Sigurd for?

  So the fight began.

  It was a desperate few hours—perhaps, in terms of heart’s fear, the worst of the war. But the Niberlin armies were on the alert, the commanders well trained, able to take control and fight their own battles while HQ drew up the big picture. The first strike was at four; by half past Sigurd was issuing the first orders. By ten the following morning the situation had stabilized and they were moving on to the attack.

  The long haul of the war was underway.

  The following night, when it was possible to snatch a few hours’ sleep, Sigurd lay in his bed, exhausted. Now he knew what war was. Behind the maps, men, women, and children were dying in their thousands. Soon it would be tens of thousands, and on it would go. Blood, pain, ruination, mutilation—what for? Was anything worth this price? Only one thing: peace. But it was a disgusting irony that you had to create the very opposite to win it.

  Die for the future, or live for the present. So much to give up! So much lost forever.

  Bryony! His beloved Bryony. And his unborn child.

  “Casualties of war,” he whispered.

  Bryony was trapped below the bludgeoning holocaust, imprisoned but safe. The forces of war could not get near her. Crayley would see to that. She was safer down there than anywhere in the country, at least until the baby was born. But at what a cost! Solitary confinement in Hel. Even up here, even now when he was feeling the agony of a nation at war, he could imagine how it must be for her, trapped and alone. But there would be a way. If he had to burrow down with his bare hands, if he had to die a trillion deaths, he would bring his love to the surface.

  Since I have to fight this war, he thought, I shall fight it hard. I’ll crush this Portland army so that I can get to my Bryony sooner. Nothing will stop that. We will have our time when the war is over. She’ll be safe for a few more months. I’ll have her out of there when the war is over, or I’ll die trying.

  With this thought, that he was only postponing rescuing her, Sigurd turned over in his bed and went to sleep.

  When the war is over. How many lovers have believed that?

  And in the underground, Bryony waited for her Sigurd to come back for her. He had been gone under a week when the war broke out, but the gunfire and shellfire did not penetrate Crayley. She was expecting him every day, every hour almost. Sigurd had no way of communicating to her all that was happening to him—Hogni, the ambush at the Monkey’s Paw, the gathering crowds, the breaking war. But when Jenny visited him the day after the attack on Democracy Palace, Sigurd had his message prepared. A piece of blue ribbon—a pale, sad blue, he thought—with tiny words written on it in black ink: WAR, DELAY and—HOPE.

  Bryony wept. Hope? What about SOON—what about NOW? Hope! Hope was a lie. In a rage she beat herself against the wall, but then stopped suddenly and held her hands protectively over her stomach.

  “Sorry, little one,” she murmured. She could not allow herself to think like that. She was surrounded by her enemy— the walls, the floor, the roof, the fire, the very air. It was all Crayley. The machine was everywhere. But inside—inside was hope, inside was love. She had to hang on to that.

  Bryony looked down at her little scrap of ribbon and thought how the last fingers to touch it had been Sigurd’s. She had to wait, not for hours, not days, maybe not even for weeks.

  She tried to think of all those millions of people living over her head, fighting one another, but in her world of one, she found it impossible. They had everything—why should they want to fight? War—such a definite thing. But hope, what was that? The color of the air, the wind in another country.

  The baby growing inside her.

  “He will do everything he can,” she whispered. Yes, he would do whatever was possible. But for now she was on her own, fending for herself, looking after her child in an uncertain future.

  Something tickled her arm—Jenny Wren, wiping her beak on Bryony’s arm. She laughed and touched the little creature on the head. “Not all alone, then,” she said. Jenny cocked her head and piped. Bryony sighed. More time to kill. How would she fill it? But she already knew the answer to that.

  “Sabotage,” she whispered. The city was weak. She would damage it. Pipelines, the old electrical nervous system, reservoirs. All it had were those creaky old bots. What sort of a creature was she, to sabotage her own home? But Crayley would never be home to her, even if she lived here all her life.

  Bryony wagged her finger at the machinery piled up behind her. She smiled—she had a new hobby. She headed back to one of her huts to make her plans.

  Then came a time when survival was all there was. It would break your heart and turn your stomach to see it—the village squares and alleyways heaped with bodies, the crushed buildings with the stink of rotting flesh hanging over them, and the flies crawling out of the fallen bricks. Murder and arson on such an industrial scale, and all for peace. How can peace ever win a war? Such bitter destruction can only ever leave a legacy of hate. What a foundation to build on!

  At such times the gods show themselves. The destiny of individuals and nations all roll up into one. Rich pickings for the immortals. Mad gods shouting from under the ruined brickwork and twisted girders of fallen buildings, sane gods weeping with the dead at dawn, as the beautiful sun casts first light on scenes of sickening violence. Odin, he would be there of course, reaping the rich harvest of the dead, listening to choirs of the slaughtered, gathering secrets like a crow pecking out eyes, stacking up souls like brickwork. Was this all he wanted? The Allfather, to whom the future is as clear as the past. What can the powerful do in the end but add to their collections?

  Andvari’s ring sat prettily on Bryony’s finger. Deep in the underground, it was working out its debt of misfortune. But how? Is the war a misfortune? Such a terrible loss of life, but good can come if evil is defeated. Bryony’s life is sour enough; perhaps its influence went no further than that.

  In the first few days, the Niberlin losses were terrible, but the attack back was swift. Furiously old Bill Portland ordered a burnt earth policy in the hope of terrorizing the population into submission. The Portlands were better armed than the Niberlins. They had extensive foreign aid, not to mention that terrible halfman army, created from the best technology and the most extensive genetic library on earth. Soldier, weapon, and vehicle were no longer clear distinctions in their divisions. The preemptive strike had increased their natural advantage. Despite huge popular support, no one would have backed the Niberlins at this point.

  Now Sigurd showed his true worth. Within hours of the first battle, Gunar, Hogni, and Gudrun had learned to leave strategic planning entirely to him. It was not always possible to work out why—he often didn’t know himself—but his warfare was so surprising, impossible to predict, and so full of strange tricks that he often seemed to be more like a stage magician than a general. Several times he had the Portlands’ armies fighting each other in the dark, or attacking their own towns, and even managed to divert shipments of arms from abroad into Niberlin hands. He seemed to understand what the Portlands were planning even before they did and danced round old Bill like a little bird between the feet of a rhino. Within two weeks he had forced the enemy back to his previous boundaries. A month later, old Bill was negotiating for a peaceful settlement. Without Sigurd, it could have gone on for years.

  • • •

  Summer was here, and the war was drawing to a close. Sigurd was now sixteen years old and he felt like a death machine. For weeks his brain had been churning out plan after plan after plan, most of which he didn’t understand himself. He had only just begun to realize how much of him had been designed by his fat
her Sigmund and reinvented by Odin. His genius did not require thought or consciousness; he produced strategy even when he slept. It scared him. Half designed, half divine—how much was left for himself to be human?

  But now it was nearly over. For Sigurd as with the rest of the nation, it was not without losses—Hiordis and Alf had both died. He’d had no time to mourn them but now it was time to make the peace and there would be space for the living to count their dead.

  It was June. He had been at the surface for two months. He was riding Slipper along a rutted track, off the main roads, on his way to the Old House, a country home of the Niberlins, to meet up with his allies and look over the proposals Bill Portland had put to them. They knew already they were going to reject them. No doubt he had many tricks left to play, but Bill held no more cards. It was just a question of whether they allowed him any conditions at all.

  The Old House was set in large overgrown gardens, with an orchard, untidy flowerbeds, lawns, and terraces. There were numerous little outhouses and a stream that led into a small lake, half choked with lilies. Beyond were wooded river valleys and rough pastures on the hills above. Once an old livestock barn, the house had been originally converted nearly seventy years ago. Several generations of Niberlin children had spent their summers here, helping on the local farms with the harvest and the lambing, knocking up the pig swill, cutting down the thistles. It was the home of their fondest childhood memories.

  The big central space under the roof had been kept as a kind of covered courtyard; the rest of it, the withy, the stables, various lean-tos and outbuildings, made up the rooms. There was a staircase up to a walkway around the main hall that led to the upper story and various attics and platforms high in the roof. The garden was tended by a single overworked gardener, who fought a losing battle against the rambling, weedy tumble of leaves and flowers they all loved. The old man wandered to and fro with his hoe and wheelbarrow, moving plants and clearing the weeds when something looked in danger of disappearing. The place was a haven for birds. There were swallows in the roof, barn owls in the attic, martins on the walls, birds in the air, birds on the grass, in the hedges and flowerbeds and the holes in the walls. The place was infested with them.