by C. Gockel
Sleipnir lifts his head and pricks his ears. Of course, he doesn’t have Gleipnir on, so Odin would send his most merciless rider. Sleipnir’s ears plaster against his head. He hates Riddari. He wants to run, just to spite the cruel man.
He feels a soft hand on his neck and hears a sniffling noise. He glances down and sees tiny Claire has leaned her head against him. Where her face touches him he feels wetness and warmth. If Sleipnir runs now, the blame for his escape will go on these humans. His ears prick forward, and his nostrils widen, taking in the collective smell of sadness from Claire, Amy, Bohdi, and even Dale. Director doesn’t look sad, he only smells agitated. Sleipnir doesn’t begrudge him that. Director is the leader. He has to be most worried about his herd.
Sleipnir huffs and stamps a hoof. There must be some way he can make an escape and let the blame fall on the Master’s men. He looks to Riddari standing at the head of the warriors. Sleipnir’s ears flatten. Or even better, a way to make it look like it is all Riddari's fault. Sleipnir swats his sides with his tail, though no fly buzzes on his skin. It is just sheer irritation. Loki was the God of Mischief, and Sleipnir has been told on occasion he is a mischievous horse―Riddari had even whipped him for his “antics.” Surely, just as his lineage has given him the ability to talk and slip through time, it should give him an idea of how to make an escape look like Riddari’s fault?
His nostrils widen, and he lifts his head high. He does have an idea … He almost laughs, but then Claire sniffs, and he doesn’t feel like laughing anymore. He wishes he could speak human tongue just so he could say goodbye. With a sigh he steps back and nibbles a little at one of the decorative pillows in her hair.
x x x x
Amy watches as Sleipnir gently tickles Claire’s pigtails with his lips.
“That’s a kiss, String Bean,” Dale says.
Dale is big and loud and sort of a stereotype of what Amy imagines a Texan to be. But he does know horses … and has been talking to Sleipnir like he’s a person since he came back from his chat with Steve. Amy swallows and wipes an eye. He might be an all right guy.
Sleipnir touches his nose to Claire’s shoulder and then kneels down on his front legs.
“What’s he doing?” says Steve.
Amy’s eyes widen in recognition. Sleipnir had done the same for her and Bohdi in Asgard. “He’s asking Claire to get on.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Steve starts to say … but Claire has already scampered onto Sleipnir’s saddle-less back. Sleipnir gently rises and starts to walk slowly to the door. Amy follows.
The sight out front makes her heart fall even farther. Across LaSalle Street is a line of Einherjar warriors and Valkyries in alternating formation, spears at their sides. Another man with a riding crop and spurs stands in the middle of the street.
Steve’s phone starts ringing. He puts it to his ear and she hears him say, “We’re bringing him out right now.”
Two agents open the double doors. Putting down the phone, Steve grabs Sleipnir’s mane. “You are not taking her with you.” Turning his head, Sleipnir snorts, and taps out No with a hoof. And then he walks forward, slowly and regally.
Amy exits through another door, Bohdi, Beatrice, and Steve behind her. As she steps out into the cold air she gasps. The street is barricaded. And there is press everywhere; there is even a helicopter in the sky.
Steve coughs into his hand. “I thought if he was going to trot free, it would be good for the press to be here. Thought positive public opinion might have saved us our jobs … and possibly kept us out of prison,” he mutters.
Amy bites her lip. It had been a good idea. Too bad it didn’t work that way.
She follows Sleipnir’s path with her eyes. Claire is sitting with her back straight, head high. She looks so tiny and determined. Cameras click everywhere, and Amy thinks that at least one of the pictures is sure to win an award. A beautiful, graceful, little girl with warm brown skin on an eight-legged white horse. It’s a picture from a fairy tale.
Around her agents spill out of the building. “Form a line,” Steve says―and they do. One agent moves into position across from every Asgardian warrior.
As both parties square off against each other on opposite sides of the street, cameras click around them.
Sleipnir approaches the man standing in the middle of the street and bows down again. Collective “Awwws” rise from the crowd.
Wiping her eyes, Claire gets off and leans forward to say something to Sleipnir. The big horse does not respond. Nor rise.
Beside Amy, Steve steps forward. “Claire, come here!”
Biting her lip, Claire bolts across the street and rushes into her father’s arms.
The man with the spurs gets onto Sleipnir’s back and gives him a harsh kick and a swat with the crop. As the stallion rises, the man cries, “He isn’t wearing Gleipnir.”
Claire sniffs in Steve’s arms, and Amy can actually feel Steve tense beside her, and she swears she can hear his teeth grind. She feels her own stomach drop. Bohdi cut Gleipnir with his knife, but they can still knot the harness back on Sleipnir’s muzzle―it will be tight and cruel, but she doubts that will stop them.
Leaning down, Steve whispers in Claire’s ear. “Stay here with Dr. Lewis. I’m going to give Sleipnir one more chance to escape.” Turning, Amy watches as Steve lifts his arm from Claire’s shoulder and kisses her head.
Claire nods and doesn’t protest as Steve steps toward Sleipnir and his rider. Raising his head, Steve says in a booming voice. “He doesn’t need Gleipnir. That horse is a sentient being and he doesn’t need that magical shackle.”
Cameras click. The crowd murmurs.
As the volume of the crowd dies down, Steve says, “You saw―he let my little girl ride him!”
Another collective “Awww” rises from the crowd.
“Bring us the Gleipnir!” says Sleipnir’s new rider. The rider nods to a Valkyrie. The winged woman approaches the line of humans, hand outstretched. Steve pulls Gleipnir out of his pocket.
Beneath the rider, Sleipnir taps out No with a hoof.
Stepping from the line, Amy says, “He doesn’t want to wear it!”
Claire steps out too. “He’s saying no!”
Steve stops. When he speaks, he turns in the direction of the crowd. “Our veterinarian is right. We taught Sleipnir Morse code. He’s been telling us for the past hour that he wants to return to Odin…” He shakes his head and holds up Gleipnir. The halter glistens bright and white against Steve’s very dark skin. “But this is a shackle! It forces Sleipnir to obey. It makes him a slave!”
The crowd gasps.
“Give us Gleipnir!” says the rider.
From the line, Hernandez, holding a phone to his ear, calls out, “The Director says to give it to them.”
Turning from the crowd, shaking his head and frowning, Steve walks over to the Valkyrie, and puts the magical halter in her hands. The crowd grumbles.
The man on Sleipnir’s back says something Amy can’t hear. The winged woman approaches Sleipnir’s muzzle, Gleipnir upraised.
Sleipnir steps back and taps hard with his hoof. No.
The Einherjar digs his heels into Sleipnir’s haunches and barks something, Sleipnir screams in pain, and blood appears at the big horses haunches. The crowd gasps. The Valkyrie takes a step closer, and Sleipnir backs up, ears pressed flat back, furiously tapping No with his hoof.
The man on his back kicks him hard again and barks an order. Einherjar run from the line, spears upraised. They’ve almost surrounded the horse and rider, when Sleipnir and the man on his back disappear.
The crowd roars.
The Einherjar are in a circle around the space Sleipnir used to be when Sleipnir reappears a few paces away, the rider still on his back. Before the Einherjar can even turn, Sleipnir ducks his head, arches his spine, kicks up his hind legs, and gives a mighty twist to the right. The man, obviously an accomplished rider, doesn’t fall off. But Sleipnir, still balancing on
his four front hooves, slings his hindquarters higher, and twists to the left and then to the right again so fast he’s almost a blur. The man on his back plunges to the pavement. Amy’s jaw falls. It’s a sequence of movements that a horse with four legs could never pull off.
As soon as his back hooves are on the ground, Sleipnir rears. Churning his front hooves in the air, he utters a sound that any person who’s ever been around horses knows is a laugh. The crowd goes wild.
Sleipnir vanishes again but reappears a few seconds later beyond the crowd on Jackson Street. He rears up one more time, his hooves pointed in the direction of Grant Park, and bellows another laugh. And then he disappears.
The Einherjar shout something. Steve holds up his hands. “You shouldn’t have tried to enslave him. But he told us he wanted to be back with Odin. Maybe if you go home you’ll find he’s already there?”
There’s a ghost of a smile on Steve’s lips when he says it. Amy raises an eyebrow―her boss doesn’t believe that for a minute. The man Sleipnir threw climbs shakily to his feet. His neck bobs as he swallows.
One of the Einherjar barks a command in Asgardian. The Valkyries give a cry and take to the sky. The warriors, and rider, disappear. Every magic detector in the FBI agents’ pockets starts chirping like mad … and then go silent a few moments later. The press starts to call out, “Director Rogers! Director Rogers, do you have a statement.” Giving them what Amy thinks of as his patented politician smile, Steve strides to meet them, one arm around Claire’s slender shoulders.
Beside her, Bohdi chuckles, “I would not want to be the guy that ordered Gleipnir put back on.”
Amy taps her chin. “We handed Sleipnir over, after he insisted that he really wanted to go home … So Odin can’t really blame us …”
Dale whistles. “That’s one slippery horse.”
Bohdi smiles. “I approve.”
The street is noisy with the clicks of cameras, the shouts of reporters, and the resuming of traffic. Even with that, echoing through the city’s concrete canyon, Amy swears she hears a whinny.
~Fin
Keep reading! Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V is Available now!
All Stories By C. Gockel & Contact Info
The I Bring the Fire Series:
I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves
Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II
Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III
In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5
Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV
The Slip: A Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir's Point of Smell
Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V
Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI
The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story
Other Works: Murphy’s Star a short story about “first” contact
Author’s Note:
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