Sam felt new magic join the already suffocating stench that filled the air along with the smell of smoke and sulphur. From all around, complementing the night, fog began to rise; Sam’s narrow range of vision shrunk yet further.
The fog, against expectations, didn’t dull the noise of the drums. It seemed to amplify it, and their low boom carried through every street, bounced off Sam’s ears and hummed up through his feet. He smelled death and fear. Odin. This is Odin’s work. He’s a Son of War, he’s trying to get to you.
The walls shook again. The rain of burning stones and sulphur had turned into a storm. They didn’t stop coming, filling the sky with fire as they poured down. Sam heard the hiss of the catapults being released, the crackle of the stones racing through the sky, the thud and roar as they struck, the drums, the battle cries of the Ashen’ia, and he marvelled at how deathly silent the city would otherwise be. Without war, it would be utterly still, the endless sunlight of the desert catching the black marble and the sleeping figures within to make the city rather beautiful. If anything, that made him more desperate. He ran faster.
Sam saw a dark stairwell leading into a tower in the wall, and sprinted up it. He reached the top as Seth’s army began their own war cry, hammering against their shields and sounding no more convincing than the Ashen’ia.
There were more of them than he’d imagined. Seth must have been pressing thousands into his service as he swept through Hell, threatening to destroy them with the power of the Pandora spirits unless they did what he wanted. They stretched across the desert, looking almost pretty, a hundred thousand specks of fire in the darkness, like a galaxy seen from Earth. Hundreds of catapults, loading and firing. Sam could sense demons, angels, avatars, even some humans in the throng. All going to charge the Ashen’ia, all going to die. For One. Many dying for the One, the ultimate inversion of the noble ideal. Many dying for his father’s cause.
He could hear the Pandora spirits singing through the air. They circled over Seth’s camp, waiting to attack. Suspicion, Jehovah’s spirit, was there too. No doubt Jehovah was with it, pretending to be one with Seth’s ambition, steering events to his own end. And yes, here came Jehovah’s power, filling Seth’s army with the fervent belief that they were dying for the greatest cause ever. Filled with that kind of magic, they could eat their way through the walls.
It was weaker than it had been, however. Jehovah had clearly been shocked by Sam’s attack.
No one heard him. He felt the song of the Pandora spirits reach a pitch, and as one they hurtled towards the city. Still the catapults kept on flying, turning the city ablaze and shattering the night and silence. Fractured stone fell from the black walls of Tartarus, cracks spreading through the marble. Sam looked along the wall and saw a couple of lights go out. Saw the gates open. Knew how.
Silence, but he knew Thor had heard him.
Sam’s mind stayed focused on the gate. Perhaps the Ashen’ia would find it. Perhaps they’d close it in time. Perhaps Thor hadn’t managed to do his work properly, perhaps… perhaps Sam had distracted him enough.
He turned his mind to the Ashen’ia, even as Seth’s army gave one final, defiant yell, and charged.
Swearing, he began to run down the stairs from the tower. He’d distracted Thor, and now had to get away before Thor actually found him. Sam ran through the streets, heading away from the fires that blazed in the city. The catapults started anew, but they weren’t targeting the walls any more. They were trying to level the city, house by house, destroying the spirits bound to each one. Which means Seth knows the gate is open.
He kept on running, ignoring the sky of fire above. The earth shook again and he heard thunder rumble as dark clouds began to move in, faster than natural. Lightning struck, somewhere near. More tremors, this time more violent. Tremors increasing as the three Waywalkers outside the city combined their power to tear the ground itself.
Sam staggered and fell. He landed with his palms pressed to the earth and through that connection tried to sooth it. But they were three and he was one, and not even he had that much power. The tremors increased again, picking up the whole world and tossing it around as if in a washing machine, only with fire and lightning serving as soap and water. Sam heard stonework crack, heard the terrible creaking of ancient masonry giving way. He closed his eyes and waited for the tremors to subside, trying to remember what he’d been told in Japan about earthquake survival. Find somewhere protected to hide or get out into the big, wide open. Neither seemed greatly available so he curled up and waited. The noise shook him most of all, the terrible cracking of a world being torn apart. And even when the tremors subsided, still the noise persisted with the clatter of falling stone, the creak of upset buildings tossed to one side, the roar of the armies, the crackle of the flames, the snapping of the catapults freeing their burdens.
As he cautiously picked himself up he heard a gentle ‘whumph’ somewhere to the west and saw the sky beyond the wall light up orange. He heard screams. Someone had poured a vat of boiling oil on the hapless attackers. Sam wondered how many demons Jehovah was deliberately sending against the best-fortified section of wall. Soon the Ashen’ia would begin to die. Soon there would be no one left alive apart from Seth, Odin and Jehovah. And somewhere, perhaps, Sam.
Not to forget Thor, that is.
‘Little light, little fire, where are you hiding?’ The voice echoed through the streets, amplified by the unnatural fog and somehow managing to carry across the sounds of war. Thor appeared at the end of the street, saw Sam, grinned.
Sam hesitated, slowed.
Thor smiled, walking slowly towards Sam, no hurry, no problem. Just a little battle against the little bastard son, nothing he couldn’t manage…
Thor, smiling. ‘I can hear you screaming, little light and little fire. Screaming like a baby. Lies to soothe the night.’
They’ve all got too much invested in this conflict to be proven wrong, that’s why. And besides, who ever trusts the exiled, bastard Son of Time who closed the Way of Eden?
Thor stopped a few metres from Sam. His axe hung down at his side, but Sam saw how tightly he gripped it in one hand. For a moment the two stared at each other, summing the other up. Sam had won their last two battles, but then he’d been assisted. He wasn’t sure that any help was coming this time round.
Thor beamed, a madness in his eye drawn out by the orange fires raging around. ‘Hear that?’ he asked. ‘It’s the sound of war. All those people fighting and dying. It’s interesting. It’s part of me. I’m a Son of War.’
‘You sold your soul to Cronus; you’re less than you ever were. And even before, that wasn’t an edifying sight.’
‘Do you want to know why I did what I did, why I gave blood to Cronus?’
Sam hesitated. The temptation was to say something very rude. On the other hand, Thor was an ambulatory killing machine, and any way of surviving, even if it meant playing father confessor, counted as good.
‘Do tell.’
‘I did it for Freya.’
There was a long silence. ‘Nope,’ said Sam. ‘Still pretty unedifying.’
Thor took
a step towards Sam – who glimpsed a flicker of something… desperate? Sam had never seen Thor look like anything except a lout with an axe. He sometimes forgot that perhaps, somewhere in there, a tiny brain was screaming for attention from the huge hunk it was stuck in.
‘I couldn’t live without her, don’t you see? I couldn’t do it! Cronus was peace, he was freedom! I couldn’t go on without Freya!’
Sam looked at Thor with something close to pity, and wondered whether he should tell him. He’d call me a liar, scream blue murder and take that saying literally.
‘I somehow doubt that Freya would want you to do what you’re doing now.’
Thor’s expression hardened. He stood up straighter, being already taller than Sam, and stared at him with a faint sneer. ‘You never knew her.’
You have a point. ‘You’d be amazed,’ Sam sighed wearily.
Thor’s sneer expanded into a grin that distorted his face away from humanity. ‘One last, heroic stand, Lucifer?’
‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ Sam muttered, and turned and ran.
Thor ran too, but Sam had the advantage of surprise and gained a few vital metres and besides, he was running like only a Prince of Heaven could, running so fast that to stop was to topple like a tree. No one had ever clocked how fast a Waywalker could run, as most were usually in the position of having nothing to run from. But Sam, with a lifetime’s experience of being the bastard son, the necessary child, the exile, the Devil, had learned to run like almost none other.
Eventually, he stopped, when he felt as if he could run no more. Here the streets were empty, calm, the noises of battle a long way off. He put his hands on his knees and stood in the fog, senses extended, mind racing as fast as his heart.
Silence. The smell of smoke and death, then the screams of the dying, explosions, crashing, the crackle of flame, the occasional sound of a trumpet as it commanded troops here and there and back again.
A song drifted through the smoke, sung in a quiet pleasant tenor. ‘He who would valiant be –’
Sam looked up.
‘– ’gainst all disaster –’
He edged towards a building, reassured by the feeling of something solid against his back, and took a firmer grip on his sword.
‘– let him in constancy –’
Shaking uncontrollably now, he leaned his sword against his knees and wiped the sweat off his hands on to his sleeves, repeating the procedure for the hilt. He tried to take slow, deep breaths; but each time he breathed in, the air shuddered down his lungs. He felt cold, and blind, and exposed.
‘– follow the Master.’ Sudden silence. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’
‘There’s no discouragement,’ sang Sam very, very softly, ‘shall make him once relent —’
But Thor was already on to a different song. ‘And did those feet, in ancient times –’
‘– his first avowed intent –’
‘– walk upon England’s mountains green –?’
‘– to be a pilgrim.’
‘– and was the holy lamb of God —’ Silence, sudden and abrupt. ‘Did they?’ The voice was just a few metres away. Light bloomed around Thor, who was leaning on his axe staring straight at pale-faced Sam.
‘Without Waywalking?’ asked Sam hoarsely. ‘You must be joking. Geographically the idea is ludicrous anyway.’
‘The Romans made it from Galilee to Albion.’
‘Was one legionnaire in both simultaneously?’
‘No.’ Thor smiled disarmingly. ‘What a pity you can’t be in two places at once either. Although, once I’m finished with you, I’m sure we can arrange matters that way.’
Sam grinned a sickly grin of terror. ‘Thor, or possibly Cronus – whichever you answer to – some hard-working scriptwriter sat up all night trying to think of lines like that, and even then they had to be delivered by a bad guy with a strange accent and a white cat, not to mention a hollow volcano and a portable piranha tank. Your delivery just isn’t up to it.’
‘Such a pity we couldn’t be friends,’ sighed Thor, and attacked.
Sam had learned. Forget trying to fight off Cronus and Thor simultaneously, forget trying to do something heroic, because it wouldn’t work. Try and find the cavalry to save the day. He didn’t parry, he didn’t thrust, he didn’t duck; he simply winked out of existence.
Thor’s axe struck the doorframe behind Sam, and buried itself deep. Slowly, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise, he withdrew his axe and looked around. ‘You can’t sustain an illusion that complete for long,’ he said clearly. ‘I know the stories about these illusions. You still get hurt.’
No answer. Something moved in the fog. Thor turned in a blur and threw his axe. It struck another surface, but not before something dark had dived to the ground in front of it, sending up a puff of sand. Raising his hand, Thor recalled the axe and dived after Sam, who was scrambling to his feet, a blacker figure against the darkness.
Sam ran, Thor behind him. And for every step Sam took, Thor seemed to have taken one more. Sam turned a corner, and saw a dead end.
No worries. Fuelled by a calm terror he didn’t know was possible he ran towards the wall at the end of the street, and straight up it. It was magic more than physical prowess. People who ran up walls for a living were usually incapable of adding two and two thanks to their ruthless up-wall training, and Sam had never really studied the art. But he grabbed the top of the wall with magic and, hauling on it like a rope, pulled himself up on a support system as fragile as shadow.
He was on a rooftop, dull, black and about as interesting as the darkness around it. He didn’t slow, reasoning that if he was capable of getting on to the roof then so was Thor, but ran again, hopping the short distances between roof and roof and running blindly in whatever direction seemed most convenient. A street ahead. No worries. He ran straight out over empty air, and kept on running on magic, sweat making his shirt stick to his back with the effort. Life is one long run into the darkness, and when you do feel profound about the whole affair, it’s at the most inconvenient moments…
Another street. Another flare of magic. Another rooftop. The regular thumping of his footsteps as he got into his stride. Thud, thud, thud, thud… and just behind it another sound, accenting his own footfalls like the quavers between every long crotchet, making music out of the run: Thudthudthudthudthudthudthud.
He reached a street, and felt too weary to run over it. So he fell into it instead, rolling as he hit the ground and coming up with his sword raised in the guard position.
Thor landed lightly on his feet a few metres away, looking as if he’d just had an invigorating jog before breakfast and was in the mood for a cold shower and a bit of yoga. Sam backed away, heaving in lungfuls of air, pale face glistening with sweat.
‘Strange thing,’ said Thor, his eyes changing to the film-covered, pale eyes of a fish, voice darkening to the multi-stranded rasp of Cronus, ‘but I rather imagined the Bearer of Light would be harder to kill.’
‘Strange thing, so did I.’
This time he didn’t run. Thor charged, and Sam was ready. He was not, whatever happened, prepared to fight Thor on his own terms. He threw up his free left hand, and pushed Thor back, hard. Thor hit the house behind, staggered, shook his head, and advanced towards him again. Sam repeated the procedure again, and again, and again, but Thor was unrelenting, and every time he came a bit closer Sam grew a little weaker, until Thor was within an arm’s reach before Sam had managed to muster enough energy to pluck him up and throw him back again. Thor’s head was bleeding from the impacts, but he kept coming. And coming, and coming, and coming…
The axe sliced towards Sam’s face, and he had no alternative but to parry. His arms trembled as bit by bit his blade was forced towards the ground, and locked there. Thor’s wild face was just a few inches away from Sam, and on his breath he smelled the sweet, sickly smell of decay. ‘Where’s Daddy when you need him?
’ asked Thor softly.
‘Screw Daddy, Mummy, Uncle, Aunty and you,’ Sam hissed, and kicked out at Thor’s knee. The fact that Thor did not crumple in agony, as Sam had hoped, proved still further that he wasn’t human. Thor grinned, and brought his elbow up. It struck Sam’s face, and Sam reeled back, his grip slipping on the sword. His head was spinning, and when he lunged for the sword Thor’s foot came down first and kicked it away. Sam began to crawl back, mustering his last reserves of magic for a final, heroic stand, like the kind he’d vowed never to have. Thor’s axe darted downwards as Sam raised his hands, and stopped inches from his neck. Sam froze.
‘So,’ said Cronus in Thor’s voice, ‘you’re supposed to save the universe?’
Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series Page 24