by John Meaney
‘You can’t be serious.’ Roger reached up to his own smartlenses, then stopped. ‘I can’t.’
‘That’s a good inhibition to have, son.’
‘While I’m among ordinary humans, you mean.’
‘Yes. You do belong here, Roger. I meant that.’
‘And Labyrinth? Isn’t that where I was born?’
Dad looked away as if checking the sky, but if they weren’t shielded from SatScan then they wouldn’t be speaking like this.
‘Maybe I’ve been wrong.’
Roger tried to work out the right words to say, some persuasive rhetoric that would change Dad’s mind all the way. Nothing occurred to him.
‘You’ve had to live with secrets your whole life,’ said Dad. ‘We even wore smartlenses around you at home when you were a baby.’
‘I know.’ Meaning, he’d heard the stories before. ‘I don’t remember that, or the time in nursery that you had to mindwipe the teacher.’
‘It was a very selective amnesia,’ said Dad. ‘And you only betrayed yourself once.’
‘Betrayed you, you mean.’
There was a tightness in Roger’s voice that he hadn’t intended, a roughness of accusation.
‘It’s important, what we do here. But there’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you, son.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The most important things in my life are you and your mother.’
Such simple words. There was a directness in those jet-black eyes that Roger could not withstand. Then he rubbed his face and made himself smile.
‘What about your other lover?’
‘My-? Ah. Well. Her.’
‘She’ll take you any place you like, any time. Doesn’t it make you want to fly away from Fulgor, away from everything?’
Dad’s answer was filled with surprising vulnerability.
‘You’ll never know how much.’
Neither said anything as Dad replaced his smartlenses and his normal expression, settled back in the seat, and closed his eyes, pretending to work.
They alighted on the edge of a piazza, in the shadow of an aqueduct. Dad paid the aircab, the fare a simple four-dimensional money matrix in the two-hundred-dimensional phase space of Fulgidi finance. Occasionally Mum or Dad complained about the complexity of buying or selling, especially if any Luculenti were involved; but Roger had never known anything different.
The cab ascended into the green sky, looped behind a grandiose quickglass tower, and was gone. This week’s architectural fashion favoured trompe-l’oeil illusions, and many of the two dozen towers in sight looked translucent or oddly shaped, including several that were formed from ‘impossible’ polygons, or appeared to be. Skywalks hung among the towers like necklaces, sparkling where the sunlight struck.
‘You’re mediating some kind of deal?’ Roger said.
‘Uh-huh. The more sophisticated Fulgidi merchants become, the more resourcefully they find ways to disagree with each other.’
‘I never thought of that.’
‘So often they fail to negotiate because their plans are just so twisty and complex.’
There was something different in Dad’s tone, as if talking to an equal. Or perhaps that was some kind of wishful thinking.
‘You’ve got to go straight away?’
‘I’m afraid so. I want to catch some of them before the meeting starts. How long have you got to wait?’
‘Another forty-seven minutes.’ Roger knew the answer automatically. ‘I thought I might buy myself some jantrasta, maybe some chocolate.’
‘Chocolate.’
‘Some new thing from Earth.’
‘Wasn’t that the name of an old programming language? Anyway, have a good first day.’
They hugged.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
As Dad walked away, he reformatted his clothes so that a pale-grey cloak hung from his shoulders. He walked towards a sheer ceramic pillar, support for an aqueduct, then brushed past a steel buttress. Only Roger saw what happened next.
Dad’s hand disappeared inside the solid-looking steel, came out in a fist, then tucked inside his cloak. Out in the open like this, SatScan would normally notice such a manoeuvre - but an attenuated tingling in his nerves told Roger that Dad had deployed a smartmiasma to make subtle optical shifts in light travelling upward.
It was called a dead-letter drop, and his parents had taught him the basics and the variations years ago; while the technique itself was centuries old. Tried and true, was how Dad described it.
For even espionage has its traditions.
TWO
EARTH, 777 AD
Ice covered the upper slopes, reflecting cold orange dawn. Above, circled two black ravens. On a wide irregular ledge, Ulfr crouched, spear in one hand, his other fist inside Brandr’s leather collar, tight against the war-hound’s bunched and trembling muscles.
Their prey, so magnificent, so handsome, paused beneath their ledge, perhaps hearing the beating of hunters’ hearts, or sensing their breath upon the air. Antlers raised as nostrils flared, chestnut eyes widening, searching for the source of unease.
Ulfr’s thumb rubbed the true-aim rune that Eira had inscribed upon his spear-shaft. The gesture brought back the memory of chanting, and the altered perceptions that came with the ritual. Now, the stag seemed to grow huge in his vision while the landscape faded. Life-blood beat in the long artery in the neck: Ulfr could see the pulse.
Soon it would be time.
But a raven cawed overhead, causing the stag to jerk upward and catch sight of Ulfr, the whites of its eyes showing as it jumped back; and there was nothing Ulfr could do but fling everything into the moment. He slammed the spear downward in a throw of power, not finesse. Then he was launching himself, springing from rock to rock, while Brandr flowed past him, cutting off the route to the forest.
Clenching and unclenching the big buttock muscles, dark hooves arcing, fastened spear bobbing from its side, the stag ran, clattering across stony ground, swishing through gorse and heather, fleeing the hunters, Ulfr and Brandr, sprinting in its wake.
The stag kicked out but Brandr dodged.
‘To me,’ called Ulfr.
Brandr loped back, then trotted alongside Ulfr as he dropped the pace. Ahead was a desolate, beautiful stretch of heathland and ice, and the stag might continue for hours yet, perhaps until the day’s end. The hunt was about to become a test of endurance, more suited to a youthful warrior than to his hound; and Ulfr would have to make sure that he kept track of Brandr’s fitness. Many times he had run with Brandr across his shoulders.
They immersed themselves in running.
Eira sometimes said the Norns weave fate at varying speeds, and the present slowed into a single, elongated moment as the pale sun rose to its midday height. All was movement, breath from the working of torso and arms, warmth in the legs’ big muscles, the feeling that he could run forever; while Brandr kept pace.
At some point, the spear sucked free of the wound, and the blood-streaked stag ran on, faster for a while. Ulfr dipped to retrieve the weapon, slowing for a moment, before resuming the rhythm of the chase, heartbeat and footsteps in time with the chanting in his head, the mesmeric hunting song he memorized as a child of five, some twelve summers ago.
He was smiling and Brandr’s teeth were bared, hunters together, doing what they were born to do, bound by love, sharing joy in the toughness of the moment.
It was late afternoon when the stag failed to clear a rock, stumbled and went down. It lay on its side, kicking, saliva frothing at the sides of its small mouth, eyes wide as Ulfr leaned over, one fist against his chest as he uttered the words of Thórr’s blessing. So clear and dark and insightful, those eyes—
Now.
—that seemed to fill with mist, like the surface of a lake at dawn, while the final breath was hoarse, drawn out, lasting beyond the final kick of limbs.
‘Thank you,’ said Ulfr. ‘You honour us with the treasure of your gift.’
Afterwards he made a dry heather fire using flint and iron, wrapped the remaining liver pieces in mud and put them to cook. Returning to the stag’s body, he unwound cords from his waist - cured sinews from the bear he slew last winter with Hallsteinn’s help - and bound its legs together.
Then he sat with knees drawn up by the fire, one arm hugging Brandr close, sharing warmth while the liver cooked; and the carcass of its former owner stared with lifeless eyes.
Night was a grey-black cavern, clouds like shrouds obscuring the stars, and the moon’s glow was dull. Ulfr passed the village boundary, the dead stag heavy on his shoulders, Brandr trotting at his side. Ahead, the long halls were cast into silhouette by orange-lit smoke from the fire-pit that lay beyond. There was a thunk of axe-head in wood, then another, followed by sarcastic laughter. Ulfr wondered who was winning the competition, who was losing, and how much they had bet.
Then a moan resonated through the night and he stopped, the carcass pressing against the back of his neck. He squatted down to shrug the weight off, almost springing into the air with release as he stood once more, freed of the burden.
Brandr snarled.
‘With me,’ said Ulfr.
Was that a raven’s shadow passing overhead through night-time clouds?
‘Me next,’ he heard. It sounded like Tófi’s voice, followed by: ‘Good aim.’
This time there was a definite cry.
‘You whimper like a girl.’ That growl could only come from Thórrvaldr, bear-like warrior and the village’s weaponsmith. ‘Your manhood’s next. I like to aim for small targets.’
‘That’s too small even for you,’ said someone.
What in the name of Niflheim was happening? Ulfr circled his shoulders, trying to loosen the bands of pain, and tossed his spear from one hand to the other. Then he strode past the single men’s living-hall and halted, taking in the firelit drama that was worse than he had feared.
Jarl, his friend and Eira’s brother, stood bound to the hall’s doorpost by leather ropes, his shoulder split apart, jagged white-grey bones soaked in sopping red, gashes and wounds across his torso and bare thighs, a leather gag in his mouth, the terror of Hel in his eyes.
An axe sailed end-over-end through the air and smacked into Jarl’s stomach, burying its iron head, splitting his liver. Ulfr thought back to the stag, then pushed the memory aside.
‘What’s going on?’ he called.
Behind the men he knew, a cloaked man pulled down the brim of his hat, and slipped back into shadow. Then a tall warrior with long moustaches and braided hair stepped in front of Ulfr. It took a moment to recognize him: Skári, who had gone a-viking as far as Hibernia, normally emotionless, his expression odd and twisted in the firelight.
‘Young Jarl,’ he said, ‘took himself a lover. Over the mountain, as if that would stop us finding out.’
‘A lover?’
‘But not a girl, see? This one pokes men. How disgusting is that?’
‘I don’t—’ This made no sense. ‘Stop now.’
‘Too late for that. Too late for shit-dick here.’
Another axe, another thunk - a butcher’s sound - and a gagged scream from Jarl, eyes wide as he stared at Ulfr, then nothing as he slumped, head down.
Too late for life.
Jarl was suffering but there was no healer who could deal with such wounds, except perhaps in the old stories, not in the hard reality of the Middle World.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ulfr.
He took two paces forward as he threw.
So sorry, my friend.
The spear cracked through ribs, ripped the heart apart and pierced the wooden post. Death was immediate. Ulfr thumped his fist against his chest, then raised it, offering the sign of Thórr’s hammer to the disembodied shade.
Soon enough, poor Jarl would begin his journey to Niflheim and the kingdom of Hel.
I’ve killed Eira’s brother.
How could poor Jarl, no matter how far he strayed from warrior ways, deserve this? Even some of the gods - the darker gods - were shapeshifters and gender-changers: Óthinn as much as Loki, the All-Father and the Trickster, both evil as much as good, ruthless and tricky. Was it any wonder that some men followed those ways instead of the bluff, straightforward lives of ordinary warriors, the children of Thórr?
The village’s foremost archer, Ivárr, was approaching with bow in hand. He looked at Jarl, then at Ulfr, and nodded.
‘No one deserves that,’ he said. ‘Well done.’
‘But you didn’t try to stop them.’
‘What, fight the whole village? Defy the chief’s orders?’
Everything was awful.
‘Folkvar ordered this?’
‘Yes, or so they said.’ Ivárr moved his chin to indicate Thórrvaldr and Snorri. ‘They were at a feast with the poet, and someone said what Jarl had been up to. I’d been outside to piss, and when I went back in for another mead—Anyway. They’d already hammered Jarl to the ground.’
‘Feasting with the poet? Jarl’s the poet. Or was.’
‘I mean the other one. He—The other one.’
Lines of puzzlement deepened on faces all around: Ivárr and Snorri, Hávarthr and Ormr, Vermundr and Steinn and Thórvalldr, glancing at each other or down at the ground, puzzling something out.
Far off in the distance, disturbing chords of music sounded: da, da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da.
‘Do you hear that?’ Ulfr knew as he formed the words that they were pointless. ‘Never mind.’
He would ask Eira. She would know what the music meant. Except . . . except she had a slain brother to mourn, riven by axes and killed by his spear, and how could this have happened?
‘We were ensorcelled,’ said Ivárr. ‘Does everyone agree?’
There were both shakes and nods of the head, and many frowns.
‘I guess.’ Thórrvaldr inhaled, expanding his barrel chest, then blew out. ‘Maybe we were.’
‘So who was this poet?’ said Ulfr.
‘Poet?’
‘I thought there was—Ivárr, you said the feast was for a poet, yes?’
‘I don’t . . . know.’
Ulfr looked from warrior to warrior, seeing only confusion.
‘Whatever happened, it’s fading.’
‘Um.’ Steinn rubbed his face. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing now.’
Then Steinn jumped back, blood fading from his cheeks, raising his hand to point at Jarl’s bloodied corpse.
‘Gods, what is this?’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘What—? No. I had a dream that we killed him. But we couldn’t have, because . . . because . . .’
While the others grew horrified at their own thoughts, Ulfr stepped forward and wrenched his spear free. A dreadful hiss sounded - could Jarl be alive? - but it was gases from the corpse, no more. His shade was already gone.
With his knife, Ulfr cut the body down and laid it straight upon the ground. Poor Jarl.
‘So where has Eira got to?’
‘She, um . . . Folkvar ordered Ári to watch over her.’ Thórvarr shrugged his huge shoulders. ‘He wanted to keep her safe.’
Thórvarr’s gaze kept sliding away from Jarl’s corpse, then slowly returning.
‘In the volvas’ hut?’
‘Uh, yes.’
Unwiped spear in hand, Brandr at his side, Ulfr walked away. Let the others deal with the body. How was he going to explain that his weapon had ended her brother’s life? Inside himself, he searched for any feeling of blood-thrill as he remembered the throwing of the spear, any sign of the same ensorcelment that had affected the others. But all he could find was a deep, desp
erate sorrow and a need to end Jarl’s suffering, nothing more. Surely Eira would accept that.
Then he was at the entrance to the hut, once shared by Eira and her teacher; but old Nessa had died last summer, leaving Eira the only volva - priestess and seeress - in this or the neighbouring valleys. The man standing guard, Ári, looked blank-faced, and his eyes were making continuous rapid blinks. Ulfr had a good idea what that meant.