Fate of the Gods

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Hang on. Almost there.

  Another excruciating moment passed, and then the pain vanished as quickly as it had come. Javier opened his eyes and saw the undulating void of the Memory Corridor.

  You all right? Monroe asked.

  “Yeah.” Javier took a deep breath. “Does it do that every time?”

  They say it gets easier.

  “I can’t imagine it getting worse.”

  I’m about to load your ancestor’s identity. This will feel more like what you’re used to. Are you ready?

  “Sure.”

  I’ll count you down again. Three, two, one …

  Javier felt an invader in his mind, an occupying force marching through his thoughts, trying to replace them. Monroe was right. This felt familiar. Javier would soon have to surrender his own mind to synchronize with the simulation. He looked down at who he would become and saw a lean frame, perhaps early twenties, with white, pale skin, and freckles on the backs of his hands. He wore close-fitting wool and leather armor, with a short beard and a shaved head.

  We don’t have any information on this guy. You’ll have to get to know him.

  “Then let’s do this.”

  You got it. Loading full simulation in three, two, one …

  The Memory Corridor darkened, turning to night. Black shadows emerged, and stars sparked to life overhead. A moment later, Javier stood on a narrow forest path, listening to the wind shake the trees to either side. He smelled wood smoke on the air, coming from the east, which meant the camp lay nearby.

  But what camp, Javier didn’t know. That thought had come unbidden, an advance scout ahead of the main force. Javier let down his guard to admit an army of thoughts like that, surrendering his mind to that of his ancestor, and Thorvald Hjaltason took the field. The Svear crouched and slipped away into the cover of the trees, following the trail of smoke, creeping toward the camp, and Javier became aware of the completely silent way in which Thorvald moved. The way his ancestor extended his senses into the almost total darkness of the woods. The hidden blade strapped to his wrist.

  “He’s an Assassin,” Javier said.

  So it would seem.

  That wasn’t Monroe. That was Victoria.

  “So you’re watching me now?”

  Yes. Monroe has important work to do.

  Javier felt uneasy with the idea of a Templar managing his simulation, even though his ancestor in New York City had been an Assassin hunter, Cudgel Cormac, the grandson of the Templar Shay Cormac.

  It seems you have both Assassin and Templar ancestors.

  But Javier knew which one he preferred and settled back into formation behind Thorvald, allowing the Assassin freedom to pursue his objective, whatever that might be. Though summer had come, winter still had its sword drawn, and the night air carried its cold edge. The aroma of wood smoke grew stronger, and Thorvald kept to the thick of it, downwind, in case his targets had dogs that might scent his approach, while the wind covered the sounds of an owl he disturbed with his passing.

  Soon, he saw the distant flicker of firelight through the trees, and at that point, he went up. The canopy of the trees concealed his approach as he climbed, leapt, and swung his way toward the encampment, free-running through the branches and trunks in the same way Javier’s Templar ancestor had traversed the rooftops of Manhattan.

  When he reached the camp, he came to a stop, high in the shadows, and settled down to listen. The fire popped below him, sending up sparks and smoke nearby. Five men sat around a stone ring, sucking on the heads of the fish they’d had for dinner. They were bondsmen who had fled their masters before settling their debts, and had been living in the wilds, which their faces and clothing spoke plainly. Thorvald supported their freedom, but something had brought them back to the Uppland, something worth risking capture over, and he needed to discover what it was.

  For a long while, the bondsmen said little.

  But Thorvald knew patience. And he waited.

  When the fire burned low and needed more wood, one of the men, with a nose like a raven’s beak, ordered another to fetch it.

  “Fetch it yourself,” the other said. “For the last time, I don’t take orders from you, Heine.”

  “And you best mind your tongue, Boe Björnsson,” Heine said. “My memory is as long and sharp as my spear.”

  “And yet, you forget that I broke your nose.” Boe stared at the first man from across the red coals. The other three hadn’t moved, but seemed to be watching the exchange with mild amusement.

  “I haven’t forgotten.” Heine paused. “You’ll know that, before the end.”

  “So you’ve told me,” Boe said. “Many times.”

  “You doubt me?”

  Boe laughed. “Have I fetched the wood?”

  “No. But you’ll wish you had when I gut you—”

  “That’s enough, Heine,” one of the other men finally said, having apparently grown impatient. “Save it for the real battle. After that, you can kill each other at your leisure.”

  The real battle? Thorvald didn’t know what that meant, but it seemed that these bondsmen had come back to Uppland expecting a fight. But over what? And against which enemy? These questions needed answers before Thorvald could leave.

  Heine rose to his feet, glowered at Boe with a look Thorvald knew well, and then stormed away from the camp into the woods. The others settled down to sleep, and Thorvald watched and waited some more.

  The fire turned to embers, filling the camp with the red light of Muspelheim, and the men began to snore. Then Thorvald saw Heine returning, but not as a comrade. He came slinking through the shadows, staying just over the firelight’s border, until he stood near Boe. Thorvald knew what he intended before the bondsman had even pulled out his knife.

  A breath later, Boe’s eyes shot open as Heine pounced on him, smothering the man’s mouth with one hand as he drove the blade into Boe’s throat with the other.

  “You see now, don’t you?” Heine whispered like a snake.

  Boe thrashed weakly, silently, but he was already a dead man, and Heine held him down until the life went out of his still-open eyes. The murderer pulled his knife free, wiped its blade and his hands on Boe’s cloak, then snatched up his pack. The other three men slept on as Heine vanished into the woods.

  Thorvald left them with the corpse and pursued Heine, but without overtaking him right away. Instead, he simply kept pace until Heine had put enough distance between himself and the camp to avoid rousing the others. Then Thorvald surged ahead through the branches to lie in wait, and as Heine scurried below, Thorvald fell upon him, driving him hard into the ground.

  Heine buckled with a crack and a whimper, and before he could make another sound or fight back, Thorvald touched his hidden blade to Heine’s throat.

  “Struggle and you’ll drown in your own blood,” he said, crouching over him.

  Heine swallowed and the apple of his throat moved the tip of the blade. “Who are you?”

  “You haven’t realized it yet, but your back is broken. You think you’re in a position to question me?”

  A moment of night-silence passed in which Heine looked down at his legs, but they didn’t move. His face paled against the darkness.

  “You see now, don’t you?” Thorvald said. “Answer my questions, and I might give you a swift death.”

  Heine’s nod was slight and full of fear.

  “You’re an escaped bondsman, but you’ve come back. Why?”

  “I heard I could earn my freedom. My own land.”

  “How?”

  “By fighting the king.”

  Thorvald had not expected that answer. Eric had enemies, but none who would be foolish enough to rise in rebellion. “Why?”

  “Because he is a usurper,” Heine said, almost spitting the last word.

  “So it is for Styrbjörn that you fight?”

  Heine shook his head. “I don’t know. We were simply told to be battle ready.”

  “Your fighting
days are over.”

  “Then finish me.”

  Thorvald held the hidden blade to Heine’s throat for a moment longer, but then he pulled it away, and with a flick it disappeared, back inside his leather gauntlet. “No,” he said, still crouching. “I need you to give the other bondsmen a message.”

  “What message?”

  “That I will be hunting them. I stand for their freedom, but if they return to the Uppland in treachery, I will find them and kill them. If they are already in the Uppland, or pretending loyalty, I will root them out. If Styrbjörn is returning, there will be war, and if the bondsmen will not fight for their king, they will fight for no one. Do you understand?”

  “How—how do you expect me to deliver this message?”

  Thorvald rose to his feet and looked down at the wreck of a man, his useless legs bent at wrong angles. “In the morning, when your former companions discover your treachery against Boe, they will come looking for you.”

  Heine’s mouth opened. “No. Please—”

  “You will tell them exactly what I have just told you, and in that act perhaps you will reclaim a small amount of honor. Then I expect you’ll plead with them for mercy.”

  “They will show me none.”

  “As you showed none to Boe.”

  Thorvald turned his back on the murderer and strode away, back down the forest paths along which he had come. He wondered if Heine would call after him to beg, but he didn’t. Thorvald didn’t know whether the man would convey the message, but the words didn’t actually matter. Heine’s body would be message enough. His fellow bondsmen would want to know what had happened to him, and even if he told them nothing, they would know they were in danger. For their cowardly lot, perhaps that would be enough to send them back into hiding. The larger problem would be Styrbjörn, if he was indeed preparing to attack.

  Thorvald needed to return to the Lawspeaker with this, and he didn’t think it could wait until morning.

  He hurried through the forest, back to the clearing where he had tied his horse, Gyllir. The brown stallion, like the rest of his northern brethren, stood only fifteen hands tall, but he was agile, and strong, and never tired. Thorvald mounted and spurred him toward Uppsala, where the king of Svealand had his hall and the gods had their temple, galloping through the night along lonely roads.

  Toward dawn, as the sun reached over the hillocks to the east, Thorvald reached the line of posts that led to the holy place. Each stood twenty feet tall, hewn from the straightest pine, placed upright every fifteen feet in beds of stone. He followed this line of pillars, each carved with images honoring the gods and the heroes who had risen to live with the gods, past the mounded barrows and graves of kings, until he came to the temple itself.

  The morning light glinted off the shields that adorned its walls and roof and the golden paint that gilded its pillars. The temple’s size also distinguished it from other noble halls, standing twice as long and half again as wide as that of King Eric. But that was as it should be. This place housed the gods.

  Thorvald dismounted before its great doors and led Gyllir around to one of the outbuildings near the temple, a small hut with walls of clay and a turf roof. He tied his horse outside it and pounded on the door.

  “The gods aren’t awake yet, and neither am I!” came a shout from within.

  “It’s me,” Thorvald said.

  Footsteps approached, and then the door opened. “Thorvald, come in. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  Torgny the Lawspeaker waved him inside. From behind Thorvald’s mind, Javier studied the old man, who might have been the most ancient human being he had ever seen, and certainly the closest thing to a wizard. Torgny wore a long tunic, belted loosely at his waist, that gave the impression of a robe, and his hair and beard were both flowing and white. His milky eyes, and the way he held his head up without fixing his gaze on anything, let Javier know the Lawspeaker was blind.

  Thorvald stepped into his hut and shut the door behind him. The single room contained little light, save the few slanted beams that cut their way in through cracks and gaps in the walls. Torgny also possessed few pieces of furniture, but the two men took seats on opposite sides of a wooden table near the old man’s bed.

  “Are you hungry?” the Lawspeaker asked.

  “That can wait.”

  “When food can wait, the Valkyries ride.” Torgny leaned closer, over the table, and lowered his voice. “Tell me what you have learned.”

  “It’s Styrbjörn.”

  “What about that upstart?”

  “The bondsmen you sent me to find. They had come back for war.”

  “Styrbjörn means to make war against Eric?”

  “I’m not certain, but I believe so.”

  Torgny pushed back from the table, rapping on its edge with the fingers of both hands. “I have heard rumors, of course. He took command of the Jomsvikings. But he’s been raiding against the Danes. I thought he was the Bluetooth’s problem.”

  “Perhaps he was.”

  “But perhaps not any longer.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  Torgny looked down into his lap, his head bowed, a posture he adopted when deep in thought. Back when Thorvald had first met the Lawspeaker and had seen this habit, he’d thought that the old man might be dozing off. Though that might occasionally happen, in spite of Torgny’s denials, Thorvald had nevertheless learned it was foolish to ever assume the Lawspeaker wasn’t listening.

  “Go east, to the sea,” Torgny finally said. “If Styrbjörn is coming, he will bring his fleet through Mälaren.”

  “Yes, Lawspeaker.”

  Torgny looked up, and his eyes found Thorvald’s, as if the old man could see him, and it felt as if he had more to say.

  “Yes, Lawspeaker?”

  “Why now?” the old man asked, almost to himself.

  “Pardon me?”

  Torgny spoke louder. “Our Brotherhood has so far been successful in keeping the Order from infecting this land, but our enemy is out there, and we must remain vigilant.”

  Javier realized then that both of these men were Assassins, one the mentor, one the student. It seemed that Thorvald did what Torgny no longer could.

  “Why do you mention the Order?” Thorvald asked.

  “I am worried about what Styrbjörn brings with him. His sister married the Bluetooth, who has had traffic with the Franks and with Rome. It is possible that Styrbjörn, whether he is aware of it or not, has become a tool of the Order. He must be stopped, Thorvald. Even if I am wrong and he does not serve the Order, he does not bring freedom to Svealand. We must keep Eric in power.”

  “I understand.”

  “Go,” the Lawspeaker said. “Watch the seas. I believe you will see Styrbjörn’s ships before long, and when you do, report back to me.”

  “Yes, Lawspeaker.” Thorvald bowed his head. “And what will you do?”

  “I will speak with the king,” the old man said. “I will tell him that war may be upon us. Then I will eat my breakfast.”

  Natalya sat in the common room with Owen, and things were still a bit tense between them after the confrontation they’d had in the corridor. For a long time, neither of them spoke.

  She hadn’t meant to unload on him like she had, but it was getting hard to feel so alone. It didn’t seem like any of the others thought the way she did about any of this. It didn’t seem like Yanmei’s death upset them the way it should. The way it still upset her. It didn’t seem like they worried about what would happen to the Trident after they found it, or more important, who would control it. Natalya found it exhausting to be the only one who seemed to really see what was going on.

  “At least you don’t have to worry about going into the Animus this time,” Owen said, breaking the silence in the room.

  Natalya nodded. “I guess.”

  “I thought you said the past was a prison.”

  “It is.”

  “Then why—”

  “I d
on’t like going into the Animus, but at least if I do, I can try to do something to stop the Assassins and the Templars from finding the Trident.”

  Owen looked at her for a moment. “I guess that’s true.”

  Natalya knew that both times Owen had been in the Animus, he’d experienced the memories of Assassin ancestors. But he didn’t seem to be committed to the Brotherhood like Javier already appeared to be. “Which side are you on?” she asked him.

  He fumbled with the zipper on the Assassin-issued leather jacket he still wore. “I don’t know. My own side, I guess. Like Monroe.”

  “Isaiah showed you a simulation of your father’s memories, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. Before he went all megalomaniac.”

  “Did you learn anything from it?”

  “Nothing I can trust. Monroe is right. It would be pretty easy for the Templars to manipulate a simulation so I see what they want me to see.” He paused. “But I don’t trust the Assassins, either.”

  Maybe Owen did see some things the same way Natalya did. “So what are we going to do?”

  “Like you said, we need to save Sean. So I’m planning to play along for now. Stopping Isaiah is what’s most important. At least Griffin and Victoria both know that.”

  “Their truce won’t last forever.”

  “No,” Monroe said behind them, “it won’t.”

  Natalya and Owen both spun around, and Monroe, standing in the doorway, held up his hands.

  “Relax, I wasn’t spying on you. I just got here. You two ready?”

  Natalya nodded and rose to her feet. Owen joined her, and they followed Monroe from the common room and back down the glass corridor to the Aerie’s main hub. From there, they crossed to a wing of the facility where Abstergo scientists had been doing research prior to Isaiah’s defection. They passed several darkened laboratories filled with equipment and surrounded by glass walls. Natalya saw what looked like artificial arm and leg prosthetics, as well as different pieces and types of Animus technology.

  “It’s been a long time since I was here,” Monroe said, leading them into one of the labs.

  Automatic lights switched on at their presence, illuminating the long room and filling it with a barely audible buzzing. There were several wide workstations and cubicles along the walls and also down the middle of the room, each with its own white desk, a bank of computer monitors, and other tools and instruments. Natalya recognized the centrifuges, but didn’t know what most of the other devices were.