‘You know there is an enemy in our midst. The force we oppose attacks from without and within. It will not allow us the space to take a stand. Time is running out—’
‘I know!’ Mallory snaps. ‘You don’t have to remind me every damned minute of the day.’ The bell tolls again, and again, turning his stomach. ‘I’m sorry. It’s the waiting. For Hunter to build his coalition of gods who refuse to acknowledge each other’s existence. For Church and the others to find the Two Keys. For the location of the Extinction Shears. For us to do anything before we get wiped out.’ Frustration drives an edge into his voice.
‘You are a man of action, I understand that. This period is difficult. But soon there will be action enough for all of us.’
Stepping onto the palace roof, Mallory sees that the defences are already in place, here and on the other highest points around the city. He knows Decebalus has trained them well since the first attack that had killed so many. Ranks of golden-skinned archers from the elite forces of the Tuatha Dé Danaan face the roiling black clouds on the distant horizon. Behind them, the Army of Dragons prepare to use the bizarre but devastating weapons created in the vast armoury of Goibhniu, Creidhne and Luchtaine.
The tolling bells continue to sound. Clang, clang, clang. In the city below, the streets clear rapidly in a mood of fear and desperation. Doors and shutters are bolted.
Mallory watches the black clouds move slowly across the great plain. ‘I don’t know how much more of this we can take,’ he says. ‘We can’t just sit here under siege until every building is reduced to rubble.’
‘Huh. The Enemy’s full army has not arrived yet,’ Decebalus grunts.
‘Thanks for the reassurance.’
As the storm clouds near, they part to reveal the creatures at their core. Three Riot-Beasts, each with twin leonine heads, eyes rolling with idiocy as they silently roar, their big-cat bodies covered with scales, feathers and fur. They are engines of destruction, throwing out crackling bolts of energy more devastating than any missile. Each time he sees them, Mallory is unnerved by the way they float without wings or any other visible means of staying aloft.
The day becomes like night as the storm clouds fill the sky, and a low bass rumble vibrates through everything. As the Riot-Beasts reach the city walls, plasma balls sizzle erratically, exploding rooftops and sending out waves of superheated air. Towers crash to the ground in a rain of masonry as the creatures blunder across the city.
‘Now!’ Decebalus roars, and a hail of arrows arc majestically. Some hit their target, but the Riot-Beasts show no pain, if they can even feel it.
Mallory nods, and Decebalus orders the firing of the greater weapons from the vaults of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. The air becomes glassy or boils in a wave of fire, and bolts of energy shriek like banshees. Sometimes the Riot-Beasts are knocked off course. Mostly, they continue on their paths of destruction, occasionally bursting into flame until the wind or gusting rain extinguishes the blaze.
‘We haven’t got anything that can hurt them,’ Mallory says redundantly. His anger boils within him, but he maintains a cool demeanour for the sake of his troops.
‘Whatever, we send out a message,’ Decebalus replies. ‘We will resist unto death.’
‘Very poetic, with an unnerving knack for premonition.’
The battle continues for fifteen full minutes. Across the city, buildings collapse and roofs are torn off. Many die. Finally the Riot-Beasts drift away as if they are leaves caught on the wind. The storm clouds follow, the thunder’s rumbling decreasing, until the sun eventually breaks through.
‘As soon as you have the figures, let me know how many died this time,’ Mallory orders.
‘Why do you punish yourself?’
‘Because until I find a proper defence, I’m responsible for every one.’
They wait until their exhausted troops file off the rooftop before making their way down. There have been too many attacks, and little chance to rest.
Now the attack has passed, you prepare to move on. You are unsettled; the threat here is palpable. But you know there is still more to see. The Far Lands is a place of subtlety and intrigue, and many things shift behind the surface of all that you see.
5
In the ringing corridors of the palace, a woman staggers, blood streaming from a gash on her temple. Her name is Marie, a scullery girl in a large London house during the Regency period of George IV; ignored by those who believed themselves to be her betters, she gained renown as a brave Sister of Dragons. Here, though, she is disoriented, terrified; the world has shifted beneath her feet.
As Mallory and Decebalus come down from the roof, engaged in deep debate about tactics, she comes to a halt, wide-eyed. Seeing her wound, Mallory and Decebalus rush to her aid, but she only shrieks and presses against the stone wall as if hoping it might swallow her.
An accusing finger points at Mallory. ‘Stay back!’ she says, and then to Decebalus, ‘He tried to kill me!’
‘When?’ the barbarian asks.
‘Not five minutes ago, during the attack.’
‘Impossible. Mallory was at my side then, up on the roof.’
Marie wavers, her eyes flashing from side to side. ‘He tried to kill me, I tell you!’
Decebalus motions for Mallory to step back as he attends to the young woman. ‘This is not the truth, Marie. Either you are mistaken, or it is some kind of magic.’
‘Magic, then!’ She stares at Mallory accusingly. ‘His face, Decebalus. He came at me as the fire rained down, in the dark of the upper floors. Instinct made me turn at the last. Good fortune was all I had, but it was enough. I did not see his weapon, but I felt it as it tore through my flesh. I did see his face.’ She points again. ‘And I ran . . . here—’
‘Think, Marie,’ Decebalus says sharply. ‘You ran into us - Mallory was not pursuing you. He was ahead.’
The woman wavers, tries to make sense. ‘Then who . . . ?’
‘The one who’s already killed two Brothers and Sisters of Dragons,’ Mallory says. ‘The Enemy’s sent an assassin to pick us off one by one.’
‘If it uses your face, then it attempts to undermine our spirit,’ Decebalus says gravely. ‘If it can use any face, then who can we trust?’
Troubled, Mallory and Decebalus deliver Marie to a healer and then seek out comfort and the sun in the herb garden, which lies beyond a maze of lavender in a walled area at the rear of the palace. The air is heavy with rich perfumes. Decebalus and Mallory find Aula tending her herbs, as she does at that time every day. At first Mallory does not recognise her. Her blond hair shimmering in the sun, the Roman Briton’s face is strikingly peaceful as she immerses herself in the garden’s atmosphere, a far cry from the fierce looks that usually accompany her caustic tones. Her mask returns when she sees them both.
‘So little to do you must trouble me here?’ she says tartly. ‘No wonder we face disaster.’
‘Your day would be bereft without a visit from the one who gives your life meaning,’ Decebalus replies with a broad grin.
Aula snorts unconvincingly then turns to Mallory. ‘She plays in the maze,’ she says.
Past clouds of honeybees, Mallory weaves through the heavily scented bushes and eventually sees the top of a young girl’s head in the centre of the maze. Virginia Dare never smiles. Occasionally, a heartbreaking, haunted look will appear in the depths of her eyes. In that moment it is possible to comprehend the many atrocities she has witnessed since the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders kidnapped her and her fellow settlers from Roanoke in the New World almost five hundred years ago. She has spent her formative years in the heart of horrors, the Void’s Fortress on the edge of the Far Lands, until her escape. Though only eight years old, her eyes say she is a hundred.
‘Is it time?’ She cradles a doll made for her by one of the kitchen staff who had hoped it would bring back some aspect of childhood.
‘Not yet. But soon. I need to ask you if you are prepared to do it.’
; ‘You have asked me twice already.’
‘Now I’m asking you a third time.’
‘Yes,’ she says without hesitation. ‘I will travel with you to the Enemy Fortress, and show you the secret way I discovered under the walls.’
‘You know what it will mean?’
‘You want to protect me, Mallory,’ she replies in too-old tones, ‘but it is too late for that. I am ruined.’
Mallory cannot look in her face; it makes him too desperately sad.
‘She’ll be fine.’
Frequently, these days, he never hears Caitlin come up on him. She stands at the entrance to the maze’s central rest zone, still slick with sweat, holding her axe loosely. Mallory searches her eyes to see who is in control this time. He doesn’t know why he tries, for even when he sees the bright innocence of Amy, there is always the dark of the Morrigan just behind.
‘It’s me, Mallory. Caitlin. The one, the only, the original.’ She smiles, kisses him on the cheek.
Virginia hugs Caitlin tightly, the first time she has looked like a little girl. ‘Have you come to play with me?’
‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
With a whisper of desperate thanks, Virginia buries her face in Caitlin’s midriff. ‘No hide and seek,’ she says. ‘I don’t like that.’
When Virginia has raced away to fetch a board game from her room, Mallory observes, ‘She likes you.’
‘We have an understanding.’
‘I still don’t want to take her to that place.’
‘She’s tougher than you think, Mallory. When it comes down to it, we all are.’
He watches the bees, and the clouds scudding across the blue sky. ‘Do you think it’s enough?’ he enquires. ‘Wanting to do the right thing?’
‘No, it’s not enough,’ she replies. ‘But we do it anyway.’
6
And so you move again through the twisting, ever-multiplying branches of the World-Tree, and now you watch the walls of Asgard crumble. From out of the swirling blizzard, blazing rocks crash with a steady beat of destruction. The Enemy’s siege machines never rest. The monstrous troops wash out of the snow in a black tide that Hunter wills to ebb but which never does. They swirl around the foot of the walls, throwing up ladders as quickly as the Aesir can despatch those who scurry like insects to the ramparts. But their greatest weapon is insubstantial: a potent atmosphere of despair radiating from every fibre of their being, infecting any who allow their defences to slip; a moment’s doubt is all that’s needed. Hunter sees shoulders sag, heads bow, weapons fall to their sides.
‘It is only a matter of time before we are overrun,’ Baldur mutters in a daze of abject disbelief.
‘This is a taste of what’s to come,’ Hunter intones above the din of battle cries, clashing weapons, the screams of the dying and the constant howl of the icy gale. ‘Nobody survives on their own.’
Amidst peals of deafening thunder, a storm cloud races along the ramparts towards them, lightning bolts flying in all directions. Only when it nears does Hunter recognise Thor, his face consumed by volcanic fury. Swinging Mjolnir with the devastating force of a hurricane, he shatters the face of a Redcap attempting to climb over the wall. The god grips the siege ladder and thrusts it back out into the blizzard. Howls rise up from those falling below.
‘Asgard shall not fall!’ he bellows to the wind.
At intermittent points along the walls, the lie is being given to his words. Hordes of decaying Lament-Brood haul themselves over the ramparts, losing an arm here, even a head there, but continuing relentlessly. Aesir warriors run to confront them at the points where they have broken through the defences, but the Lament-Brood attack the moment their feet touch the walkway.
An Aesir warrior is impaled on a rusty sword embedded in the handless wrist of one of the Lament-Brood. The sword is roughly twisted and the warrior explodes in a cloud of golden moths gleaming against the white snow, a single moment of beauty at the instant of his death.
All along the walls, the Aesir stop what they are doing and watch, aghast, disbelieving, fixated on each individual moth as it struggles to pick a path through the gusting snowflakes.
A single teardrop rolls slowly over Thor’s cheek.
And then along the ramparts bursts of golden moths rise up here and there, the interval between each explosion growing shorter, like bursts of smoke and light in a magician’s stage show.
‘No!’ Thor thunders, and renews his furious hammer-attack.
The Aesir return to action, blades and axes flashing, but Hunter can see something has gone out of them. Their attacks are less sure; they glance at each other, seeking reassurance, finding none.
Forseti, one of the younger gods who had been responsible for justice in the city, is surrounded by six Redcaps. Before Hunter can react, the god is hacked to pieces.
As the moths soar, Baldur cries out, ‘My son!’ Consumed by grief, he races towards the Redcaps.
‘We must leave.’ At Hunter’s shoulder, Math’s four-fold mask turns implacably. ‘There is no hope left here.’
From his backpack, Hunter removes a silver-scaled gauntlet with brass talons. ‘It would be impolite to leave at the height of the party.’
‘What is that?’ Math asks suspiciously. ‘A weapon?’
‘The Court of the Final Word called it the Balor Claw.’ Gritting his teeth, Hunter slips on the gauntlet. ‘And now it’s mine.’
He arrives at the fray as the Redcaps surround Baldur, as they had done his son. One sweep of the Balor Claw takes the first Redcap apart. Another falls as he turns, the Claw breaking the bonds of his body at the molecular level. After his slaughter in the Court of the Final Word, Hunter has grown used to the sight of bodies unfurling, but the other Redcaps are, for the first time in their existence, rooted. In a frenzy of despair, Baldur despatches three with his sword and Hunter kills the last. Catching his breath, the god represses his grief and looks Hunter deep in the eyes. In that one moment, he accepts everything Hunter has attempted to communicate to the council.
‘The age of gods and men is passing,’ Baldur admits. ‘It is time to make the final stand.’
The Aesir fight furiously, but the Enemy keep coming, devoid of fear, wave after wave with no purpose save destruction. Their atmosphere of despair is corrosive. The clouds of golden moths are now indistinguishable from the snow.
‘Fall back!’ Baldur yells. ‘To the Groerland Square!’ Piercing the crackling lightning, he grips Thor’s arm. ‘This is no place to make a stand. We must leave with the Brother of Dragons.’
‘But the Golden City will fall!’
‘Stone and wood, brother. It can be rebuilt. The true glory of the Aesir is a light that must never be extinguished.’
Thor weighs the words for only a second and then roars, ‘Fall back! Do as the Bleeding God says!’ He grins at Baldur. ‘Lead the way, brother. I will protect your back.’
Baldur snatches the horn from his side and blows one blast, loud and clear, rising up above the howling gale and the thunder of battle. Along the walls, the gods retreat, down the steps to the avenues of Asgard radiating out from the Groerland Square.
‘You’ve made the right choice,’ Hunter says as he and Math follow Baldur into the streaming mass of warriors.
‘Asgard is surrounded. You can free us from this place?’
‘As long as your man with the hammer can keep the Enemy off our tails for a little longer.’
‘He does not stand alone.’ Baldur indicates a balcony on a tall tower where Freyja stands, arms raised to the sky. ‘She uses her seior in the city’s defence.’ The direction of the wind changes suddenly, hurling many of the Enemy to their deaths from the walls.
The Aesir will make good allies, Hunter thinks, but will even they be enough?
In the Groerland Square, a large public space centred on a statue of the World-Tree, Yggdrasil, the axis mundi around which all reality turns, the gods silently look towards Hunter, the unfamiliar expression of
confusion etched in their faces. The only sound is the heartbeat of the Enemy’s missiles against the walls.
‘Are you sure you can take them all?’ Hunter asks.
‘We shall go by Winter-side,’ Math replies. ‘There will be no Enemy there yet.’
At the foot of the Yggdrasil statue, the sorcerer utters an incantation in a language Hunter does not recognise. Amidst a sound like rending metal, a section of air as big as a barn door shimmers and appears to become a two-dimensional sketch of what had previously been there. Math pulls it open to reveal a cavernous darkness.
‘We go into the World-Tree, to follow the branches to other worlds,’ Math explains.
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