by Tim Marquitz
“Wotan, Gallow’s Burden, hear your children! Your enemies of old bash at our gates!” she cried out.
The knife flashed from underneath and the slab of muscle in the horse’s throat fell open like a wide, red mouth. This time the blood flew in a giant splash, hitting Geir like a sheet that wrapped him from brow to knee. Fat droplets spattered me, and where they lashed my skin it burned, and the life force inside those globules made my muscles twitch and spasm under my skin. Idunn released her hold and the horse stumbled sideways. When it crashed to its knees, I felt it through the ground. Idunn stepped away as it fell over, kicking feebly in a pool of its own lifeblood.
She touched Geir, and he turned to face me. My friend looked over my head like I wasn’t kneeling on the ground before him, held down by mystical arm rings. He seemed unaware of the blood drying on his skin, oblivious to Idunn moving behind him and pressing herself to his back.
Jealousy flared through me as her hand came around his hip to grasp him to stroke him and to lift.
Idunn kissed Geir’s side, her lips coming away wet and bloodied. It looked like smeared lipstick, as if she’d been doing something wicked with that mouth. Her other hand, knife pinned to her palm with her thumb, fingers outstretched, slipped through the blood on the other side of Geir, rubbing along the indention of his hipbone. His eyes rolled back as her nails left tracks.
Her voice lolled as if she were drunk. “Odin, Delight of Frigg, come among us now.”
The knife turned in her hand, the fragile edge lying across the hollow of Geir’s thigh.
One swift jerk and it sank deep into his femoral artery.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Geir stood in Idunn’s embrace, her iron blade penetrating his flesh. He moaned a lover’s moan and she wedged the knife free.
Blood sprayed in a wide arc that passed down my body washing away the horror at watching my friend die, baptizing me into my part of the ritual. It splashed into my eyes, burning them like ocean water. It filled my nostrils with its iron and copper stench. It ran across my tongue, through my open mouth, and dripped down my throat, salty and thin.
I was split in two as the magick opened my mind and I saw across the universe with my blood-blinded eyes, across the Bifrost and into Valhalla. Odin looked at me with his one grim eye. On each shoulder were black ravens, their beaks moving by his ear, snipping into the gnarl of his gray beard as they told him all they saw, their feathered heads brushing the wide brim of his low-slung hat. I recognized his face as the face of the titanic iron figure that loomed far over the pit.
Idunn had built an iron Odin.
A touch drew half my mind back to the pit. Idunn’s fingers rubbing blood from my eyes. I blinked and could see her again. Odin still sat in Valhalla and I was aware of him in the back of my mind watching all that occurred.
I looked up at my priestess, the ancient dwarven witch who had more balls than her brothers ever had, and I loved her. I loved her as a man loves a woman, as a sword loves war, as an infant loves milk. My eyes drank the sight of her and it filled my soul to overflowing.
She leaned in close. “It is time, Arne.” My body tightened at the sound of my name from her lips. “Are you ready?”
“I am.” I tried to see all of her at once.
“You will fulfill this oath tonight?”
“For you, I will.”
Her fingers lifted my chin and my eyes moved to the people lining the upper edge of the pit. Nannette stood watching, her tiny hand held by the viseadmiral. Tears dripped off his chin. She gave a small wave. Idunn shook my face, gently. “Do it for them.”
I nodded.
She kissed me on the forehead, her lips soft and pillowy.
“One-eye, Dangler, Enemy of the Wolf,” she whispered, “hear the daughter of Ivaldi, last of the earthen race. By iron and blood and flame, take this man as your avatar and save your people.”
I had one moment of pain that jolted deep behind my eyeballs as the knife slid from my right ear to my left. In the back of my mind, I saw Odin stand from his throne. The two ravens fluttered and flapped on his shoulders as he walked forward.
And then I was yanked from my body with a peal of thunder.
She pushed the viseadmiral’s hand off her face. As she ducked away, she saw the woman, Idunn she remembered, move the knife away from Arne’s face. Her heart jerked in her tiny chest as she saw the blood bubble out and run down his chest. She didn’t know what was happening, why he let this happen, but he didn’t look like it hurt. He only looked surprised for a moment, then his eyes rolled back and he slumped forward to lay beside the other man, the horse, and the goat.
The viseadmiral’s hand closed on her shoulder, and he leaned forward, looking down at Idunn. “Did it work?”
She didn’t answer. She wiped her face with the back of an arm. She stopped halfway, looking at the knife in her hand before dropping it. She trudged up the ramp out of the pit.
The viseadmiral cursed quietly, like her father did when he was angry.
The people beside them shuffled, moving now that the scene in the pit was over. Their voices began, asking each other and no one questions. They grew louder, moving more. Someone jostled her, hitting her in the back with some part of themselves and she was scooted closer to the edge of the pit.
The people were talking so loud it was hard to hear the noise at first.
It thrummed under their feet, vibrating through the rock.
It wasn’t until the iron giant above them moved that they took notice.
I found myself in the dark.
A vast darkness with only a glimmer of light.
I moved toward that light, pushing forward. I found Odin standing there. He reached for me and on his arm were three rings, one at the wrist, one at the forearm, one at the bicep. A great scar ran beneath them from his wrist up his arm to disappear under the ringed hem of a mail shirt. He pulled me forward, pressing me to his massive chest. I didn’t fight. I couldn’t fight him. His beard tumbled onto my face and the ravens pecked at my eyes through it.
His voice shook my bones. “What say thee, son of man? Let us go take this fight into the frozen bastards’ teeth.”
He pushed harder and I sank into him, disappearing in his vast godliness.
The viseadmiral pulled her hand and she stopped stumbling along behind him. A young man with short hair stood in front of them, talking to the viseadmiral. She wanted to watch the iron giant as it moved but he had drug her away, across the cave and into a tunnel. The iron giant didn’t scare her like the ones made of ice. Somehow, she knew Arne was protecting her.
“The Americans are twenty-six minutes out.”
The viseadmiral looked at the people gathered behind them. “Is the crew ready?”
“And waiting.”
They began walking, faster than before. She almost had to run to keep up. The lights on the tunnel over their heads flickered and the people behind them buzzed with worry.
“Keep it together, people. We’re almost there.” The viseadmiral’s voice rolled along the stone walls, flattening the building panic behind them.
Too many steps to keep up with and the tunnel opened to a steel grate platform overlooking another cave.
Through her scarf came the cold saline smell of the winter sea.
She looked down and water rushed far below. Pieces of ice coated in luminescence drifted by, bobbing and swirling with the current. The platform shook and rattled against her boots as the people spilled out onto it, and she worried the entire thing would collapse and drop her into the freezing water below. The viseadmiral pulled her to the top of a ramp that led toward the water. Looking down, it she saw a long, round ship with a line of towers jutting from the middle of it in a line. It sat placidly in the water like a mechanical whale. They walked down the bouncing gangplank of steel. She held the viseadmiral’s hand tighter.
“Don’t be afraid, little one. I don’t like these ramps either but I’ve never had one fall.”
&n
bsp; She glanced back at the people filling the ramp behind them. “Have you ever had this many people on one before?”
He didn’t answer but quickened his step, pulling her along.
My eyes opened to jagged stone.
Looking down I found my legs wrapped in a cage of steel scaffolding. The torches still burned around the pit at my feet. My eye rotated, spinning as the image of the pit raced toward me, growing until I could see the bottom floor and the corpses strewn there in a pool of blood gone sticky.
I felt nothing. No connection. That wasn’t me. This was me.
The world was different. I was different. My body wrapped around me, heavy, ponderous, but powerful.
No longer simply Arne, I was an Odinson, and I could feel my enemies above me.
I swung my arms up and they rose. Scaffolding fell away, collapsing in a racket and din I could barely hear as I turned. I dug thick iron fingers into the rock and began to climb, the breaking stalactites against my back felt like crumbling dirt. I climbed and dug, goaded by my need to find the frost giants and crush their bones in my hands.
For a thousand meters, I crawled through the earth until I hit the hoarfrost. Light I did not need to see filtered dimly through it, giving it a soft blue glow. Driving my fist upwards it slammed into the ice, knocking free car-sized chunks that rolled down my body.
It barely left a dent.
I growled in frustration. They were close. I could sense the giants gathering above me and I knew they could sense me below their feet. Pounding the ice again rained down more hail.
Something flickered to the left of my head.
On my shoulder sat a raven made of purple light. Its beak moved and Idunn’s voice sounded in my head.
Gungnir is in your hand.
The holographic raven blinked out of existence but I knew what to do. Holding out my left hand, a shaft of plasma boiled up, lancing into the ice above me. Steam turned to snowfall around me as it cut a swath through the ice. Pure sunlight, dimmed but unhindered by frost, streamed down on me and I began to climb.
She could feel the ship beneath her moving, the feeling of sinking. It sat like a pressure on her chest. She’d dropped her coat and hat in the warmth of the enclosed place and sat on them beside a metal bench. Almost all the people were there, sealed in the same room, huddled together in groups and clumps, only a few sitting alone like her. The ship made no noise as it moved, the only sounds were the breathing of everyone. No one spoke but the circadian sound of inhiation and exhalation had aligned into a rhythm they all matched without conscious thought but once locked into the meter they couldn’t break it, and so they breathed, in and out, in and out, in and out, in perfect unison.
Her parents sat against the same wall a few feet away. They’d crawled toward her and she’d turned away just enough to let them know she didn’t want them by her. Her mother moved, ignoring her signal, until her father grasped her by the arm and pulled her aside.
Nannette closed her eyes and breathed with the others, using hers to pray to a one-eyed god she didn’t know for Arne.
The frost giant crumbled as I smashed my iron fist into its chest. Its midsection was still hollow from where Ragnhild had blasted it apart, closed somewhat by ice but still weak. My blow broke it, bending its spine back over its legs until it shattered with a thunderous CRACK! and fell to the ground in two pieces. Its broken corpse crushed two building into splinters of frozen wood. My boot settled on its head as I stepped forward to meet its brother and I ground its skull under my heel.
The second frost giant grabbed for my beard and I slammed the brim of my hat into its face, driving the edge of iron deep into its mouth. This giant was taller than me but they were always taller than me. It made no difference. No son of Jotun could stand before an Asgardian. Twisting my head snapped the jaw off his face. It fell between us, bouncing from my chest to his and back again. I wrapped my arms around him, crushing the jaw between our bodies as I lifted him from his feet and hurled him skull first into the hole I’d climbed out of. He went in, jamming midway down, legs flailing in the air. I grabbed his ankles and pulled his legs apart, driving my foot between them. The impact drove him further into the hole another twenty meters to his waist.
I began to twist his legs, walking around until I could walk no further and his body was hyper-extended as far as it could go without snapping.
And then I broke him.
I heaved back on his legs and the ice of his skin split apart into shards. The thrill of battle was upon me, riding me like it once did the berserkers who worshiped me in killing and madness.
I did not see the third Jotnar until it struck me from behind.
The blow drove me to the ice, and I spun to face my enemy, pushing off the ground. The frost giant towered above me, nearly as large as Ymir of old.
“You are not Odin.” His voice grated across my ears. “I know that half-blind fool.”
“You will recognize me when you look up from the grip of the grave.”
“You are a human in a metal body. You cannot stand against us.” His hand swept to the side. A half dozen more frost giants plodded their way toward us.
Odin’s anger exploded and I wanted to lunge, to drive myself into the battle, but part of me knew he was right. I would not win this fight. I wasn’t Odin, not truly. I was Arne inside a mighty Odin Mech. I was more than Arne. I was Odinson. I knew it, even though I couldn’t define what that meant.
But the Arne part of me knew I was never meant to win.
That wasn’t my mission. Not the reason for all the sacrifice.
Ragnhild.
Geir.
Me.
A trio of dark spots crossed the sky past the giant’s head. My eye spun again, drawing the dots closer in my vision.
Three finger shaped missiles were arcing toward us.
ICBMs.
I didn’t have to win.
I just had to fight.
Screaming from my iron mouth, I pulled Gungnir into my hand and flung it at the frost giant. The plasma shaft launched forward. He dropped his arms to block it and the liquid fire cut right through them to blast its way deep into his chest. Steam boiled up, obscuring the frost giant’s face. I pushed off the ice, leaping over the freeway beneath us, I was on him, hanging onto his chest with my iron legs and his neck with my arm. I locked my hand behind his head and rode him to the ground. Buildings fell to debris under our weight but the city was forfeit and I did not care anymore.
All that mattered was this moment.
Me on my enemy, his throat under my fingers.
Nannette safely away.
I screamed a war cry and squeezed harder, feeling the frost giants skin break as my hands clamped down. His brothers had gathered round and they pulled and pushed to try and dislodge me, but I would not be moved. I had my enemy at my mercy and my mercy was nonexistent.
I held him there even after he was dead.
Thunder sounded behind me, three quick bursts of it, and then heat washed over me, driving away the cold.
Driving us all into the dark.
A Prequel to “Of the Earth, of the Sky, of the Sea” in Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters and a prequel to “Machine Heart” in Mech: Age of Steel
February 21, 1838
The Sikh Kingdom of Punjab, Northern India
The Battle of Gujrat during the Second Anglo-Sikh War
Lieutenant Robert Cameron led the advance against the entrenched Sikh infantry under withering machinegun and mortar fire. Bullets and shrapnel crashed against the steel armor of his Juggernaut like a monsoon of hot lead.
The thunderous impacts only hardened his resolve, and Cameron fired his chest cannon into a death-spewing machinegun bunker. The explosion filled the air with black smoke, and Cameron shouted in triumph, wanting to kill as many of the enemy as possible and avenge the hundreds of men who had died charging that lone gun.
Cameron drove his Mark I Juggernaut onward against a new barrage and used the smoke as cover.
He led his squad of steel giants across the flat battle plain pockmarked with craters and blocked with barbwire fences. He had promised he would open the way for the final infantry assault that would defeat the Sikh army at last, winning the Punjab for the crown and East India Company.
He stood inside the driving crucible, an armored capsule filled with levers, knobs, and gauges within the chest of his contraption, never before seen on a battlefield. Between the volleys from the enemy, the rush and churn of the steam engine was his constant companion, as vital as his own heart’s pulse.
Illustration by NICOLÁS R. GIACONDINO
He shifted his lumbering giant into its fastest gear, barely the speed of a man marching with a heavy pack. He purposefully walked on the corpses of the fallen, using their flesh as steppingstones to keep his heavy, fourteen-foot-tall colossus from sinking into the rain-soaked ground of the Punjab.
The evidence of two failed infantry attacks, dead British regulars in redcoats, and their Bengali allies in tan uniforms, sunk into shallow graves with his every footfall. These men would be the last to die so needlessly on the killing fields of Gujrat. If only the warmachines his family invented had been allowed to enter the battle sooner.
A wave of force thumped in the center of Cameron’s chest, rattling bolts and bones alike. His earplugs and sound-dampener muffs only partially protected him from the deafening explosions as his Mark I toppled over. Head spinning, he somehow managed to extend metal arms and catch himself before he hit the ground.
The smell and coppery taste of blood brought him around a moment later. Cameron slowly regained his wits and wiped his nose on his sleeve. His hands found the control levers. Righting himself after falling over was always a challenge, but he managed to push his Juggernaut to a standing position. He extended and swiveled his main periscope on the top of the machine’s head to see if his four squad mates were still behind him.