by C. Gockel
Harding’s voice crackles back. “All quiet here. Park is with me.”
They still have gear at Mission Control; Steve can’t let them leave it unattended.
“Beatrice is at the inn,” Nari pants beside him.
“Beatrice,” Steve says, “What’s going on?”
Jogging beside him, Bohdi says, “Is it because I broke the guy’s arm?”
Beatrice’s voice snaps back over the radio. “No, it wasn’t that. It’s the baby.”
“The baby?” Larson asks.
“What’s the situation, are they armed?” Stave asks.
Beatrice’s voice buzzes in his ear. “Only with torches and rocks, a few pitchforks and shovels.”
And then Thomas’s voice cracks on the line, fury transparent despite the static. “They tried to stone Bjorna and Cannonball!”
Steve stops in his tracks just before the team draws onto the main thoroughfare. He nods for Berry to check around the corner. The grizzled warrior has a mirror mounted on his rifle. He tilts it around the building. Eyes on it, voice steady, Berry says, “We’ve got more problems.”
Lewis’s voice buzzes in Steve’s ear. “What was Cannonball doing outside?” Steve’s skin heats despite the cold. If Amy’s voice is in his ear, she can’t be safely tucked below ground; if she isn’t safely below ground, then Claire …
Berry interrupts his thoughts. “Heiðr and five Frost Giant hunters, armed with crossbows and axes, coming this way.”
“Lewis, don’t come closer,” Steve says.
Lewis’s voice buzzes again. “I need Bohdi and anyone else you can spare. I can clear the mob without violence!”
Steve doesn’t have time to ask how. Tilting the mirror, Berry narrows his eyes. “Coming closer …”
Heiðr and five armed hunters … Steve looks to the forest they just emerged from. He hears no bird calls, and Harding and Thomas have not been attacked. “Heiðr wants to talk,” Steve says. Loud enough to be heard around the corner, Steve shouts, “Lower your rifles!”
And then he turns to Bohdi. Steve doesn’t know what Lewis has planned, but considering how bad this situation is getting, maybe Chaos is just what she needs to make it work. “Get to Lewis. Redman, you and Valli, too.” He isn’t surprised to see that the kid has already started backing back toward the trees. At Steve’s words, he spins and sprints in the direction they just came. Redman and Valli take off without a word, but Larson shoots Steve a glare.
“Follow my lead,” Steve says. With that, he walks around the corner of the shanty and walks out to meet their hosts. Heiðr is at the front and center of the group. At her hip she wears an old-fashioned silver pistol. He hears the footsteps of his team behind him but doesn’t look. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He doesn’t need to look. Sometime in the past few weeks he’d learned to identify them all by the sound of their footsteps. He hears Berry, Sigyn and Nari first, and then Tucker, Gerðr, and finally Larson.
Standing a little straighter, Steve says, “Heiðr, looking for us?”
The hunters, four men and one woman, raise their weapons. Heiðr’s jaw gets hard, her hand falls to the pommel of the pistol on her hip. “What have you done?” She snarls, “I give you shelter and friendship, and you align with dwarves, allow for the birth of an abomination, and incite my people to riot!”
Steve’s jaw gets tight. He fights to keep his lip from curling, and his hands tighten on his rifle so hard his fingers ache. Heiðr herself told him that she’d invited dwarves to the Iron Wood to repair “Gullveig’s magic.” Apparently, appreciation for their mechanical skills does not extend to appreciation of dwarves as fellow beings.
Heiðr paces in front of him. “If I had known that Gem was harboring that—” She utters a word that doesn’t translate and then continues to rant, “—Bjorna I would have killed them both.”
Steve is glad he doesn’t have the gift of strength—he thinks his rifle would bend beneath his fingers if he did. He hears Tucker spit. Steve takes a deep breath and holds it for ten. They need Heiðr’s cooperation. They don’t know the full story between the Black Dwarves and the Frost Giants … not that he believes tribal grievances could possibly justify the death of two women and a newborn.
He exhales. He has to talk to them in the language of their twisted backward-ass culture. It’s a good thing he’s had plenty of practice in his life dealing with racism and smiling at bullshit. Ducking his head in false contriteness, he says to Bjorna, “I am very sorry and ask your forgiveness. Black Dwarves are unknown to us, we didn’t understand they were …” He pauses, trying to find the word.
“Vile,” hisses one of the Frost Giants. “They are short, venal, cowardly, and have dog eyes!”
“Their eyes do glow, and they are short.” Nodding, Steve shrugs. “But how could we know the rest?”
Heiðr lifts her chin. “Order your men to step down.”
Steve’s headpiece buzzes with Cruz’s and Thomas’s voices simultaneously. “No, Captain!”
Steve takes a deep breath and lets it out in a slow sigh. “I wish we’d known.” He shakes his head and tries to look grieved. “Now it’s a matter of honor—we can’t step down.”
“Honor!” Heiðr shouts, stepping closer. “What honor do you speak of? ”
Steve pulls back, feigning shock. “Well, they’re part of our tribe, aren’t they?”
The Frost Giants’ eyes slide between themselves.
Steve lets his jaw drop in a pantomime of incredulity. “What? When you assist in bringing a child into the world, they do not automatically become part of your tribe?”
“But they’re dwarves,” one of the Frost Giants says.
“They’re human!” Steve allows himself to roar. And then he switches to the whisper he knows is more terrifying. “Did you not hear me? They are part of our tribe!”
The Frost Giants take a step back, raising their weapons as they do, and Heaven help him, but Steve is too pissed to care or be afraid. He feels his veins throbbing in his neck, and his blood rushing in his ears.
One of the men nods. “The humans must honor the customs of their tribe. Honor is what separates them from dwarves.” He lowers his weapon slightly.
The female huntress among them shifts on her feet. “Some of our warriors sympathize with the peasants.”
“I cannot risk the acrimony of our own, even the peasants,” Heiðr hisses. Steve doesn’t flinch.
Taking a step toward Steve, Heiðr raises a finger to his chest. “You explain the situation to them.” She inclines her head for him to pass, but doesn’t get out of his way. Crossbows still aimed at his head, Steve gives her a tiny nod and strides around her and her team.
A few moments later, Larson whispers, “Well, that was tense.”
Steve’s skin heats. “That was tense? We’re now going to have to perform crowd control without tear gas or rubber bullets, and without inciting a blood feud. That was easy, Lieutenant.”
“My magic won’t work,” Nari says, eyes rolling up to the tree branches. “It works with popular opinion. Perhaps, Captain, it would be best if we just obeyed the laws and customs of this land …”
Instead of provoking rage, Nari’s words hit Steve like a soothing balm—he sees the wisdom of them. The men around him slowly lower their weapons as though in a daze. Then Sigyn wallops Nari on the back of the head and shouts, “Stop it, Nari!”
Steve blinks, and notices a branch curling toward Loki’s more civilized son. It goes limp as Nari rubs the lump. “I can’t help it! It’s what the people want.”
And therein lies the weakness of democracy. Exasperated, Steve raises his rifle again, and his men do likewise. They follow standard urban warfare protocols, hugging the shanty walls, taking turns on point. But as they round the last corner toward the inn, the crowd of one hundred-odd Frost Giants doesn’t turn at first. Shouting and thrusting torches in the air, they’re all facing the inn. All but two of the inn’s copper shutters have been bolted shut. None of his t
eam are on the stoop, but Steve sees rifle muzzles protruding through the two shutters on the upper floor.
“Come out, face justice!” roar the Frost Giants. “Come out or we will come in.” A torch goes hurtling toward the shutters, but bounces off harmlessly and snuffs out in the snow. Steve puts it all together—the stone walls, the copper doors, shutters, and roof; the tree completely enclosed within the inn—the place is fireproof. Was this a common occurrence for Gem?
His headset beeps and Rush’s voice comes over the channel. “Permission to shoot, Captain!”
“No,” Steve says. “Hold off. Lewis? Patel? Where are you? What do you have planned?”
At just that moment, the crowd, only about fifty feet away, like a dim, dangerous animal seems to notice they’re there. One by one, heads and bodies turn. Steve takes in the rough clothing worn by the members of the mob. They’re taller than the average human but shorter than Heiðr’s warriors. His eyes scan the crowd; there are a few warriors, too. Steve’s team has enough firepower to take down the whole crowd, but if they kill a warrior, they open themselves up to a blood feud. The mob grumbles, and Steve takes in their gaunt frames and their threadbare clothes. They’re hungry and probably cold. Is that what is feeding their fury? Can he play to that?
Bohdi’s voice buzzes in his ear. “Almost in place! Don’t worry, this will work!” Steve wants to ask what “this” is but a rough man strides forward and shouts, “Let us in!” The crowd follows behind him. Emboldened, he lifts his chin. “Why should we be cold when vermin are warm!”
“More rats in the woodwork,” says Berry, “coming out of the alleyways.”
“We’re surrounded,” says Larson. “Fire a warning shot?”
Steve’s eyes skim the crowd … it’s mostly men. If they kill the mob, do they leave themselves open to caring for their families? Or do they let them die slowly? “We can’t use deadly force,” Steve says.
Rush’s voice crackles on the line. “We’ll just kill a few, and they’ll all back down.”
Lewis’s voice snaps over the channel. “We’re almost ready!”
Over the radio, Gerðr’s voice buzzes. “I could charm some of them.”
“No,” say Larson, Berry, and Steve all at once.
“Ideas?” says Berry.
“Larson, bring down a branch between us and them at my signal,” Steve says. Stepping toward the approaching crowd, Steve says, “We have powerful magic! Back down or we’ll open fire.” Then he inwardly curses—the expression “open fire” doesn’t translate into Jotunn as anything more than “create a flame”. Of all the times for his magic translation to fail.
“The trees will block your magic!” says the mob leader, not halting his advance. The rest stay on his heels, but Steve hears someone say, “Maybe they can work magic here … there is the new World Gate in the arch.” Someone else says, “That was beyond the trees.” The first voice replies, “Yes, but it’s very strange.”
New World Gate? A question for later. “Now, Larson,” Steve says.
The lieutenant releases a stream of bullets into the air, and the crowd comes to a halt. Someone cries, “Thunder?” A branch falls to the ground. It’s a thin one, narrower than Steve’s wrist, neatly severed by Larson’s precise aim. It writhes in the snow like a snake.
Steve stands a little straighter. Into his small mic he says, “Tucker, Rush … all of you ... if this gets ornery, you fire at the trees some more.”
“Yes, Sir,” say the SEALs.
Steve eyes the mob. They stare at the single branch as though transfixed. Steve exhales. It’s almost done, now just to clear this up.
The leader lifts his head. “You think we’re cowards,” he says. It was not what Steve expected him to say. Dark murmurs rise among the mob. “We may not be warriors, but we’re Frost Giants … We’ll show you humans …”
The leader lets loose a howl and rushes forward. Echoing his cry, the mob swarms behind him, a dark wave of rage.
x x x x
Amy hears the crowd shouting, and then Berry’s voice in her ear. “More rats in the woodwork coming out of the alleyways.”
Larson’s voice crackles over the line. “We’re surrounded. Fire a warning shot?”
Biting her lip, Amy peers around the corner. The inn is located near the stairway that leads to the bottom of the mesa. From where she stands, she can see that Frost Giants are lurking behind the building. Sliding along the wall of the shanty, Amy peeks around the other corner. There are even more Frost Giants in the main road in front of the inn. It’s daylight, but the shade of the trees and the smoke of their torches make it darker.
She turns and sees Bohdi and Valli hovering above a large metal trunk Gerðr, Claire, and Amy had lugged up the stairs. Bohdi is busily taking his M4 apart. Redman is kneeling in the snow, rifle up, eyes on the path they came. Claire is beside him. She snagged a knife from someone—and she’s holding it the way Loki was taught to hold a knife in a fight—thumb on the end of the pommel, the blade facing out and toward her elbow so that if she slashes at someone the blade will keep her enemy from pulling the stunt Bohdi pulled earlier. Amy wonders which of the SEALs thought it would be fun to teach her knife skills—probably all of them.
“Damn, it’s cold,” Bohdi hisses. He gets to a tiny little piece that looks like an ‘L.’ “Thicker than a tension wrench,” he mutters. Then he takes another thin piece of metal from the M4, and tsks. “Good thing this is a fat lock.”
“We’re almost ready!” Amy says, running back to her own team and the trunk. Bohdi nods but doesn’t look up. He slips the foot of the ‘L’ into the lock, pulls down, and then slips in the long, thin metal piece.
She hears Steve commanding Larson to fire at the trees, and then the spray of bullets.
There is a click, and the trunk lid pops open. Gerðr had already investigated the contents of the trunk with magic, but she didn’t know enough telekinesis to pop the lock and verify. Amy breathes a sigh of relief. Just as Gerðr had said, the trunk is filled to the brim with fireworks. Some are tiny, less than the width of Claire’s fingers, fastened in bundles by a long fuse. Others are about three-quarters the length of Amy’s forearm, and half as wide as her palm. Charmingly, instead of having rocket-shaped heads, they have wax heads shaped like beasts: red dragons, gold manticore, blue unicorns, and green wyrms.
“The little ones should be enough,” says Redman. He begins scooping some out and handing them to Claire.
Amy, Bohdi, and Valli do the same. But Bohdi takes a few large ones as well. Gerðr hisses from the corner nearest the back of the inn. “Someone is coming. Why are we doing this for a dwarf?”
Just in case, Amy stuffs a large firework into a pocket that doesn’t have Mr. Squeakers or Loki’s book in it. No one answers the Frost Giantess. Redman inclines his head to the large firework Amy just snagged. “You can’t fire those without an arrow shaft to mount them on.” Amy keeps it. Footsteps sound from around the corner, and Redman says, “I’m on it.”
Amy starts in the other direction, Bohdi at her side, leaving Valli, Gerðr, and Claire to guard the firework stash.
They round the corner and find the crowd in the intersection has turned away from the inn. They don’t pay any attention to Bohdi or her. Amy glances at Bohdi, he nods, and then they dart forward. Bohdi whispers, “We can just toss out the baby fireworks—that should scare them just enough.” Amy nods in assent. A little magic fire is all they need.
They’re almost at the intersection when someone in the mob directly in front of them yells, “You think we’re cowards.”
Amy’s heart sinks. And then she hears more shouts. “We may not be warriors, but we’re Frost Giants … We’ll show the humans!” The Fire Giants begin moving, presumably toward the rest of the team, a slow train of fury gathering up steam. A few heartbeats later and the intersection is almost empty.
Sprinting into the intersection, Amy says, “Light a big one!” She hears Bohdi’s lighter flick and the hiss of a fu
se. Spinning, she grabs the firework and shouts, “Light another.” The crowd is racing away from her. Amy takes a few steps forward, pulls back her arm, and hurtles the missile above their heads. It whistles as it flies through the air, lands in front of the crowd, and erupts in a bright volcano of green sparks. She hears screams.
In her ear, she hears Thomas’s voice. “Jesus Christ, Lewis, I did not expect that! Good throw!”
Behind her, she hears Bohdi curse. Looking back, she gasps. There is a lit firework in his hand—but his wrist is caught in the iron grip of a branch.
She doesn’t have time to be afraid. Grabbing his arm, Amy jumps in the air and snatches the firework. Landing with it in her hand, fuse hissing, she takes a step forward and throws again. This time the missile doesn’t have time to reach the ground. It explodes above the heads of the mob, sparks falling down in a torrent of blue rain. Halting in panic, ducking in confusion, the mob turns around, and like a giant beast, advances toward Amy and Bohdi.
Amy turns toward him and jumps up, trying to release his wrist from the branch, knowing she’ll be too slow. They are about to be trampled.
x x x x
The mob swells toward them like a giant lumbering, murderous beast. Wrist ensnared above his head, Bohdi wants to kill them all. “Bring it on, motherfuckers!” The words come from his lips but he doesn’t remember them forming in his brain. Branches whip toward him and Amy, twisting around their waists, tying them together, and making it impossible for him to kill anyone. He snarls in rage and is hoisted into the air, more branches rapidly wrapping around his waist.
Swinging above the mob, Bohdi tries to strike at them with his heels. But he’s too high, and it just makes him angrier and his bonds tighter.
“Bohdi,” Amy says, “It’s okay, they can’t get us.”
Bohdi snarls in frustration. He can’t get them, and that’s what’s pissing him off, doesn’t she get it?
“Bohdi, they’re gone!” Amy says, as they swing helplessly above the ground.
Bohdi feels his rage cooling—because it’s dissipating with the crowd—or because the branches are sucking the magic away, or both?