Wanderers: Ragnarök

by Richard A Bamberg

  “That’s crazy. Ophelia said Ragnarök will come about if someone gets Abigail’s grimoire?” Cynthia said.

  “That’s what she said.” From the look on the women’s faces, I could see I couldn’t stop there so I proceeded to fill them in, leaving out any references to my having to choose sides or to my being a Wanderer.

  CHAPTER 22

  Walt and I were in British Columbia, a few miles up the coast from Gibson and not much more than a couple of hours from downtown Vancouver and all the perks of civilization. I had nothing against the majestic wilderness of Canada’s Pacific seacoast, but it was the dead of winter. Even being a Wanderer’s apprentice didn’t mitigate all the natural beauty of wind-blown rain, salt spray, and thirty-five degrees. I was five years into my training and I could raise a good shield against magic, mundane solids, and the elements. However, controlling my personal ward against the weather while I slept required more concentration than I had.

  We camped fifty yards back from the shoreline at the base of a cliff face that towered a hundred feet or more above us and yet did nothing to block the wind. The coastline was verdant with spruce and firs lining the cliff top, clinging precariously to crevices, and sheltering portions of the beach where the land rose above the usual tide lines. The coast would make a lovely vacation site – in July.

  The beach was layered with surf-smoothed rock that varied from football size down to grit that found its way into my riding boots. Walt claimed it was good training for me to camp outside and maintain my ward while I slept. By midnight, I had a nearly frozen layer of salt spray on my face. Our familiars, my manticore, and Walt’s griffin, liked the weather even less than I. We’d released both of them from their motorcycle forms and sent them hunting farther inland.

  Verðandi had sent us here. Being Fate’s tool was a real pain in the ass at times. She never came right out and said go here, kill so and so, and then take the rest of the week off. She’d give us an urge to go to a particular place and we’d go.

  I threw back my frozen blanket, fired my personal ward back up, and stood. Walt slept comfortably, protected from the elements by his own ward. I muttered a curse and threw a couple sticks of driftwood I’d collected earlier into the fire pit. I triggered the fire tat circling my left bicep. It glowed into life and flame blasted from my closed fist to engulf the wood. I held the focus for a few seconds and then let the tattoo darken to invisibility. The burning wood crackled merrily. I stood with my back to the sea and expanded my personal ward to form a protecting cocoon around my fire and me.

  The heat felt marvelous.

  “Something wake you?” Walt asked. I stared at him, warm in his thin blanket and well-controlled ward.

  “Hell, Walt I’ve had enough of freezing my ass off. Why don’t we go into town and get a nice room?” I groused.

  “Rafe, you must be able to maintain your ward while you sleep, otherwise, one of these nights you won’t be waking up. If you’re comfortable in a warm bed, you have no incentive to maintain the ward. Getting rudely awoken by the elements will force your subconscious to spend more effort maintaining the ward.”

  Walt looked to be approaching thirty, but more than eighty years had passed since he’d left his twenties behind. His strawberry hair just covered the tops of his ears and a thin, neatly trimmed, mustache hung over Walt’s upper lip.

  A small scar, hardly more than an accent mark that women found mysterious, decorated his right eyebrow. The few women Walt bedded were often shocked by the wealth of heavier scars that marred his unclothed flesh. I’d picked up a couple additional scars from our journeys, but nothing like the claw marks, knife and bullet wounds, and magical burnings that marked his skin as that of an experienced man. We aged slowly and could heal grievous wounds to our bodies but would still scar. A healer capable of mending wounds without leaving memories in the flesh was a rare find.

  Walt rolled away from the firelight and pulled his blanket against his chin. “Don’t stay up all night.”

  I stared at his back. “Walt, this is a crazy way to live. Fate never explains, never asks us if we understand, and never cares if we survive.”

  For a moment I thought Walt had gone back to sleep. He said, “Rafe, she’s Fate, not your mother. You were military; you know what it’s like to take orders.”

  “That’s not the same. I knew what I was fighting for.”

  “Fates enlisted our support in restoring what wrong in our world. She gave you the same speech she gives all of us: nothing.”

  “Why can’t I just scribe a circle around us and the fire?”

  “This is training for what you can’t do, not camping out.”

  Maintaining my personal ward in an adverse climate was the kind of tedious work I’d always hated in school. I watched the fire for a few more minutes, and then dried off my blanket by raising the state of the water molecules until they evaporated. I dropped my personal ward back to minimum coverage and lay back down. I was asleep in minutes.

  A ping somewhere between my ears woke me as an enchantment impacted my ward. I cast aside my blanket and leapt to my feet. Walt stood facing the roiling surf. I backed away from the shore until I stood opposite the dying fire, a short distance from Walt. I activated my shield, just as I felt Walt doing, and then hyped my senses. The black, sleet swept shoreline sprung into bright awareness. A low thrumming reached us through the earth and a hundred yards off the beach, the sea swelled and rose as something huge moved toward the surface.

  “That didn’t take long,” Walt said.

  “Any idea what the hell it is?”

  “Some mystical beastie, I wager.”

  The swell turned into a breaking wave easily forty feet high.

  “Christ! Let’s hope it’s not Godzilla.”

  “I’d settle for Godzilla,” Walt said. I glanced at him. His lips were pinched white.

  I braced myself for the impact and put everything I could into my shield. The wave broke halfway between the shore and where we stood with our backs to the cliff. Great gouts of gravel mixed with the sleet and surf to pound into our shields. The water poured around us and broke against the rock wall behind us. Moments later the water receded, save for small pools where larger rocks were relocated from their resting spots on the beach.

  “Holy crap!” A head emerged from the sea at the back end of hundred-foot long tentacles. “Squids don’t get that big.”

  “It’s a Kraken,” Walt said. “A giant squid with an especially bad temper. Not a myth at all, though I thought it was long extinct. Wonder how it got here?”

  An eye the size of my Harley’s rear wheel swiveled past us without pausing, as though we were beneath its notice.

  “What are we suppose to do about it?”

  “Send it back,” Walt said.

  “Yeah? I don’t have a tattoo for opening a portal large enough for this thing.”

  Walt reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out his well-worn grimoire. “Give me a minute to work the spell.”

  “And if it decides to swim away?”

  “That’s why you get the big bucks, kid.” Walt never called me kid unless he was nervous. Besides, Fate didn’t pay us a salary. I wondered if I could have negotiated that part of the job.

  “How ‘bout, we stay really still until it decides to go away?” I looked at the nearest tentacle – as thick as a horse near the beast’s body, but tapered down to a foot across at the end – swept the air above us. Platter-sized suckers graced most of the length. Walt rifled through his grimoire until he found the page he needed. He held it high and started to read aloud.

  The Kraken stopped its directionless gaze and swiveled one great eye to stare at us.

  Oh, hell.

  Well, service to Fate is a calling that cannot be denied.

  Kraken was a creature of the deepest ocean. Fire would hurt the Kraken, but if I used fire, it’d head for deeper water and Walt needed it to stay in the vicinity until he finished his spell. I focused on the chiller tat
around my right bicep. The tat glowed pale blue and a similarly colored bolt flashed out from my right fist to strike the surf. I put everything I could draw on into the first shot. The surface of the water froze instantly for more than a hundred yards around my aim point. I held the tat’s charge and concentrated; the water froze deeper and deeper around the enormous beast.

  The Kraken moved its gaze from us to the sea around it. Its tentacles thrashed and ice shattered. Car-sized ice boulders flew upwards and then rained down. Water rushed in to fill the void and froze as I maintained my spell. My ears reverberated like the bell tower of Notre Dame as ice fell against our shields. The Kraken ignored the new ice and turned its attention to Walt once more.

  Walt finished his spell and the air around the Kraken shimmered. The great beast lowered his head toward us. Its parrot beak gaped open and then snapped shut. Its head entered the shimmer and disappeared from view. Moments later the rest of the Kraken’s body disappeared into the widening shimmer.

  “Damn!” I exclaimed. “Muy impressive, Walt. A little anticlimactic, but impressive nonetheless.”

  “We’re not done here.” Walt scanned the beach around us.

  “What do you mean?” I followed his gaze, looking for a new threat.

  “Naturally occurring portals aren’t big enough to bring the Kraken through; that’s why it hasn’t been here for millennia. Someone brought it here.”

  “You’re bloody well right ‘someone brought it here,’” a voice called from above us.

  Lightning overwhelmed my vision the earth around us as our shields deflected the bolts. The glow was bright against my enhanced senses, but the spell was tailored to prevent sensory overload. While thunder still reverberated around us, I looked up to see a black dragon glide silently overhead. It was at least fifty feet from snout to the end of its tail, palm-sized scales covered its body. Its great bat-like wings beat the air once and then froze in a glide again. Legs graced with talons as large as my arm were folded against its torso.

  A tall figure sat at the juncture of the dragon’s shoulders and neck.

  “Rowle!” Walt shouted. “I should have guessed only you would be insane enough to bring a Kraken back.”

  It’d been years since my only meeting with Rowle. He was the only Wanderer I knew of who found a way to escape Fate’s destiny. Now he roamed the world at will and masterless. Walt suspected him guilty of crimes that begged retribution, but nothing we’d been able to pin on him. As far as I knew, he’d never attacked a Wanderer. The dragon lit lightly on all four legs a short distance away; its rider slipped to the ground and the dragon launched itself back into the air.

  “Rafe, don’t get between us,” Walt said. He pointed toward the cliff face. “Move over there and keep your shield tight against magics.

  I did as instructed and watched as Rowle walked toward us. He was an impressive figure, a few inches over six feet and maybe two hundred pounds. Shoulder length auburn hair partially covered aristocratic features. A dark colored great coat covered him from neck to ankles and all I could see of his other clothing was the black boots that he braced wide against the rock.

  He stopped fifty feet away, facing Walt. “You should know better than to interfere in my business, Walt.”

  “It’s my business too, Rowle. If you’re going to muck about in the natural order of things Fate has to intervene,” Walt said.

  “You mean one of Fate’s lapdogs, don’t you?”

  “I prefer Fate’s warriors.”

  I could feel magic flowing toward the three of us. It was vaguely visible to my enhanced vision as currents flowing through land, sea, and air as each Wanderer summoned additional power. I’d used a fair bit of energy in freezing the water and it’d take me longer than Walt to recharge completely. From all Walt had told me, Rowle was the most dangerous man on Earth. He had all of a Wanderer’s capabilities plus a couple hundred years of acquiring Night Magic. I guessed it was time to see whether that magic could be defeated by the power of an ordinary Wanderer and his apprentice.

  Rowle turned toward me, looked me up and down, and after a few seconds, the bastard smiled. “So how’s the apprentice doing? Is he going to be anything special?”

  “Leave him out of this, Rowle,” Walt snarled.

  “Walt, my offer still stands. Leave Fate and join me. The two of us would be unstoppable. Oh, excuse me, your apprentice, Raphael isn’t it? is also invited.”

  “I gave you my answer,” I said. “I still serve Fate.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to be free to choose your own destiny, to stride the Earth as gods?” Rowle asked.

  I felt like giving him the Spiderman spiel about great power and great responsibilities, but what would be the point? Heroes are supposed to fling witty quips when facing a villain, but I was still an apprentice hero and couldn’t be expected to be ready with snappy dialogue at the drop of a glove. Or could I?

  “Sounds more like strutting the Earth like a demagogue,” I said.

  Rowle had no appreciation for snappy dialogue. “Whelps that need to learn respect for their betters should also learn when to keep their mouths shut.

  Walt laughed. “What’s the matter, Rowle, lose your sense of humor? Leave my apprentice alone. If you’re looking for a fight, I’ll give you what you seek.”

  Rowle smiled and spread his arms. “I’m willing to leave him be, but do you think he’ll stand by and not try to help you? What kind of apprentice will watch his mentor die and do nothing?”

  “Whose time is at an end has yet to be determined and Raphael will do what I tell him.”

  Like hell, if Walt thought I was going to stay passive he didn’t know me as well as he should.

  Bolts of black energy leapt from Rowle’s open palms. It splashed against Walt’s shield and vanished. I saw Walt’s lightning tat glow and activated my fire tat to complement his spell. Our spells converged on Rowle. We held our concentration and the rocky beach boiled to slag around Rowle’s shield.

  An ominous rumbling came from above me and I looked up to see Rowle’s dragon dislodging a house-sized mass of earth and stone from the cliff face. Well, hell and damnation, since when did familiars get involved in fights? I kept my fire tat on and shifted as much energy as I could gather into my physical shield. Seconds later, I was knocked to my knees by the impact of the landslide.

  I must have missed a few seconds; a severe hit on your shield can have a similar effect to a concussion. My fire spell had gone out, but my shield was still intact even though I was buried under tons of rock and debris. I took a breath and tried to stand, but my shield had collapsed down to where it was barely four feet high.

  Facing where I thought Rowle to be, I brought together my forearms and activated the tat woven across both arms. The energy blast tore away the debris covering of my shield and I held it until I could see I’d missed Rowle. Narrowing my shield to the size of the gap I’d torn in the debris, I stepped out onto the open beach.

  Walt stood in the same location. He had braced his feet against a flood of energy that was impacting his shield, which had shrunken to a circle directly between him and Rowle.

  I felt rather than saw something coming and glanced up in time to see Rowle’s dragon swooping toward Walt; its jaws opened wide.

  “Walt!” I screamed and activated my cold spell.

  My spell froze the dragon’s wings into immobility, but a half second later; its teeth snapped shut around Walt’s legs.

  Walt’s scream died in his throat as his torso fell to the gravel.

  CHAPTER 23

  Cynthia and I rode Beast to Abigail’s home. Cris claimed she had some old friends to catch up with, but promised to catch up with us at Nuevo Retro later. The old Wiccan wasn’t home, and it was after the usual opening time of her store.

  Cynthia followed me to my room so I could change into another set of jeans and a shirt, Cris had laundered my clothes, but the damage to them was substantial and the blood hadn’t come out. My leather jacke
t had cleaned up well enough. It, like my boots, had been spelled to maintain its structure better than leather did naturally. It wasn’t as tough as Kevlar, but I didn’t have to worry about some nasty’s blood staining my good jacket.

  Cynthia, while still not as warm to me as she had been before my breakfast revelations, found my undressing entertaining enough to require close observation. I slipped out of one set of briefs and into another. She had already had her hands and body over anything I had to be bashful about.

  Dressed neatly enough for company again, I followed Cynthia back out to Beast and we rode the short distance to the courthouse square.

  There was a small overflow parking area behind the shops. We left Beast in the shade and entered through the back door of the building’s hallway. The door to the bar was locked, but I could see a waitress puttering about, getting ready for the lunch crowd. Cynthia led the way down the stairs and into the Nuevo Retro. Abigail sat behind the counter reading a thick book.

  “Good morning, Abigail,” Cynthia said.

  “Good morning, dear. I see you managed to find our lost sheep.”

  “Good morning, Abigail,” I said.

  She lowered one eyebrow toward me, smiled, and turned toward Cynthia. “It’s about time you two got on with celebrating the goddess’s gifts.”

  Cynthia glanced at the floor but didn’t blush. I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her to me. I kissed her on the cheek before saying, “Please, Abigail. That’s a little personal. A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

  “It’s okay, Rafe,” Cynthia said. “Yes, Abigail, we celebrated the hell out of the goddess’s gifts this morning and we’ll probably celebrate more tonight.”

  The old gal smiled. “Glad to hear it, dear. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite, as long as you take precautions. Now, a shipment came in this morning. Could you add it to the inventory for me? I’ve got a couple of errands to run, but I’ll be back after lunch.”