by Dyrk Ashton
Fell words foul the atmosphere and a searing wall of fire erupts from the ground, encircling the area. Kleron walks through the flames. Partially silhouetted, his eyes glow red, his burns ghastly in the harsh dancing light.
Max strikes no less terrifying a figure himself. For a moment they’re still, staring at each other, before Kleron speaks. “Max, you’re missing something.” He cocks his head. “Two somethings, actually.” Max growls in response. “You have defied me.” Kleron looks to Hugin. “As have you.” Hugin preens the feathers under his wing, unconcerned. “No locusts. Not on this world. And I had parleyed. If you were party to it, I would be dead.”
Max’s eyes shine at the thought, his repulsive mouth curving in a grin.
Kleron says, “But don’t mind me. You can take it up with the true master.” Max’s grin fades, and Hugin ceases his preening. “The Great Khagan is not pleased.”
The Nidhogg groans and drops to its side, where it lies with ribcage heaving, sucking for breath.
“Those were the Master’s pets,” Kleron adds. “For the battle to come. You had no right.” He nods to the Nidhogg. “Put it out of its misery.”
Max clearly wants to defy him again, but crawls on his six remaining legs to the Nidhogg. His jaws open, slimed fangs fold down, and he stabs them into its neck. The Nidhogg jerks, then exhales and becomes still. Max pulls his fangs from the beast, folding them back into his mouth.
“Now, come with me,” Kleron says. “Be reunited with your children. I will put in a good word for you, in spite of all this.” Max looks away, the shine dimming in his eyes. “Or you can stay, continue your reckless behavior, and take your chances with Father and The Prathamaja Nandana.”
Max considers a moment longer, then crawls to Kleron’s side. Kleron reaches out with a burned hand. “We have been irrevocably scarred by this war already, Maskim Xul. Let us heal, and fight together.” Max takes his hand. Kleron touches a new silver device in his ear with the other hand. It blinks green and he opens his mouth, emitting a series of clicks and squeaks. “The locusts return,” he says to Hugin. “Slip them away, and follow.” Hugin glares, then nods. “We go to the Great Khagan.” Kleron flaps his wings, dragging Max up with him, and slips away.
* * *
Wind roars through the broken windshield. Peter blocks locusts the best he can, killing those that come through alive with his bare hands. Leaning over the console past Myrddin, he aims Gungnir out the window. Blue light gathers around his hand. He fires a beam of lightning through the swarm, then shouts with the effort. The beam explodes along its length, creating a tunnel for the Wheel to fly through. The other locusts back away.
Peter scans conduits that run from a panel on the wall to the console, then up across the ceiling and out the inner rim. He yanks the panel door off, revealing a plate of black glass that looks much like a solar collector. He narrows his eyes and his right hand swirls with electricity.
“Now, Myrddin, full throttle.” Myrddin licks his lips and pushes both joysticks forward as far as they’ll go. Peter slams his palm against the panel.
Every surface of the Wheel glows, inside and out. The core blazes like an exploding star, and space and time as we know it cease to exist.
* * *
Floating. Complete silence. No wind. Lit green from the rim windows, red from the interior illumination, Fi looks to Zeke, who’s as shocked as she is. She speaks, but has no voice, not even in her own head. Out the front window, rainbow ribbons of light streak by, the colors playing across Peter’s stern face. It’s as if they’re entirely still and it’s the light that’s moving past them.
Peter pulls his hand from the panel. There’s a boom as if the sound barrier has been breached and they’re flying in a regular sky, the Wheel clanking and rattling. Wind howls through the broken window. Moonlight glints on ocean waves below. No locusts.
“This is our world,” says Peter, his voice carrying over the sound of the wind. “And there, the shores of Norway.” Through the windows is a dark landmass, spattered with clusters of light from cities and towns. “We’ll slip to another world and land there, then slip back.”
A sound of wrenching metal comes from the core. One of the spinning rings twists and breaks free. The Wheel jerks, shudders, and dives.
“No one listens to Mokosh,” Mrs. Mirskaya shouts over the wind. “Now we go boom.”
Peter pulls Myrddin out of the pilot’s seat and takes his place. “We’re not going boom.” He flips switches, twists knobs, jams on foot pedals, and manipulates the joysticks. “Not if I can help it.”
The core whines louder, growing brighter. Peter spares a glance over his shoulder. “It’s overheating. Anything we can do about that?”
Mrs. Mirskaya unbuckles her safety belts and moves away from the others, grasping chairs and other handholds to steady her against the wind that howls through the interior, then punches through one of the green glass windows of the inner rim. The light and heat are as intense as a blast furnace, but she raises a hand and begins to chant.
Crystals of ice like tiny gems float from the ends of her fingers toward the core. The remaining two rotating rings cut through them, but don’t impede their progress. There’s a cooling effect as they touch the core. Peter checks the dials. “Not enough.”
Myrddin pulls his gambanteinn, says two words, and another window shatters in the rim. He starts up with his ancient Celtic language, aiming the wand through the porthole. With the two of them chanting together, the brightness of the core begins to dim.
* * *
In a fishing village overlooking a fjord, a dozen Norwegians gape up at a wheel of fire hurtling through the sky.
* * *
“Slipping,” says Peter. There’s a change in the color of the sky, and a swarm of locusts ahead, but it swiftly parts to let them pass. Red rocky ground below, mottled with forests, bluish-green. And they’re still dropping, but not slowing at all.
They swipe the peak of a mountain, blasting rock into the treetops below, the impact knocking them all about in their chairs.
The second inner ring wrenches away, then the last. The core slams into the rim of the Wheel near the entry hatch, then drops away.
The hum stops. Lights go out. Mrs. Mirskaya and Myrddin hold on to whatever they can as earthly gravity returns.
“Peter!” Fi cries.
“Hang on!” he calls back.
Edgar checks the colonel, who nods that she’s fine. He tightens the straps on Mol next to him.
They clip another ridge of rock, which sets the Wheel to wobbling out of control and spinning like the wheel it is.
Through the windows, starlit sky and trees blur past in quick succession while the ground gets closer and closer.
Peter shouts, “Prepare for impact!”
Frantically holding on and blasted by the wind, Fi shouts back, “No shit!” Mrs. Mirskaya snorts. Even Pratha grins.
Crashing through the trees, shattering branches and trunks, then hitting the rocky ground, bouncing, rolling, plowing through anything in its path.
Windows around the hull shatter, sending glass flying through the interior while the passengers spin round and round.
The landscape opens and levels out. The Wheel slows until it tips over to wobble like a coin, then finally comes to rest on its side.
* * *
Blue moonlight illuminates the interior through the portholes on the upward side. “Holy fucking fuck.” Fi yanks off the safety straps and scrabbles up from her chair. “Let’s not do that again, ever fucking ever. Jesus Christ.”
Peter says, “Zeke, are you all right?”
“I think I bit my tongue,” he says, rolling it around in his mouth. “Nothing serious though. I’m good.”
Peter looks to the others. “Edgar?”
“All well, milord. Colonel?”
“Surprisingly unscathed, thank you,” she replies. “Though this is not quite what I had planned for the day when I sipped my morning tea.”
> “Molossus?” Peter asks Mol, who’s bitten through his safety belts and leapt down to shake himself as if he just climbed out of a lake. Mol barks in affirmation.
Fi’s glad to see the others are well, but part of her still wants to snap at Peter, “And once again, I’m okay too.” But she knows the answer. He’d say, “Of course you are.” And now she knows it’s because she’s Firstborn. It’s starting to sink in, though slowly. The reality of it taking shape in her mind. And it scares her.
Myrddin stumbles around the curve, holding his head. “Quite a ride, that was!” Mol barks in agreement.
Pratha’s eyes narrow. “Baphomet.”
They find him wedged in his broken seat near the lockers and hatch where the core hit the rim. He looks up into the light of the gambanteinn but says nothing. Against his chest he cradles his wrist, squeezing it with his right hand. His left hand has been sheared off, the chain that held it dangling. Blood pours from the stump. And still he just looks at them.
PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NORWAY
Fi stands on a rise of wind-worn stone, Mol by her side, looking out over the moonlit landscape of this world. Crags of yellow and red rock, valleys of pink grasses, and forests of conifer, taller than any seen on our world. At the foot of distant snow-capped mountains, the forests burn red. Ribbons of locusts twist in the far sky like black eels in dark blue water, moon and firelight glittering off their chrome helms.
Fi needed a moment to herself. Not so much to think, but to breathe and clear her head. That’s not an easy task, though. Much like Kleron haunted her after she met him, now she’s beleaguered by this new terror, the one they call Khagan.
The skin prickles on her forearms and the back of her neck. It’s not from thoughts of Khagan, though. She knows exactly where to look for the source.
She narrows her eyes at the moon and says, “I see you watching me. Whatever you are.” The moon stares blankly back. The eerie feeling intensifies, then is gone, and Fi feels foolish for talking to the moon. “Some things never change,” she mutters to herself. “I’m still crazy.”
Lower on the rise, Peter appears from a slip, striding toward her with head down, contemplating something unfathomable. Fi follows him with her eyes as he walks past without acknowledging she’s there, then he stops and turns back. “How are you, Fi?”
Part of her wants to kick him in the shins, another to hug him and cry in his arms. The mixed emotions perplex her and make her angry, but then the anger bothers her too. She takes a deep breath and says, “I’m fine.”
Peter shuffles, seeming to want to say something else, and Fi herself wants to say more. Peter offers a spare smile, then peers over her shoulder at the locusts. “They’re keeping their distance. At least Kleron’s word is good in this.” Fi eyes the locusts once more, and when she turns back, Peter is walking away to where the others have gathered. Fi watches him go, then follows, Mol bounding ahead. She limps and rubs the bite of Maskim Xul on her butt. With the adrenaline rush of the day fading, it has begun to ache once again.
From the open hatch on what is now the upper side of the Wheel, Mrs. Mirskaya hands Fi’s pink backpack down to Edgar. “That is the last of it,” she says. The colonel takes it from Edgar and carries it to the rest of the gear piled nearby.
Peter goes to where Baphomet sits on the ground against a low, flat-topped stone, his arm with the missing hand extended over it. Pratha’s seated opposite, holding Baphomet’s wrist and examining the flat seared flesh that weeps blood. Lying on top of the stone is Baphomet’s severed hand. “Can it be saved?” Peter asks.
“No,” says Pratha. “Even if I cared to try, and though the cut is clean, the Astra chain has killed the nerves, bone and flesh. It would have to be cut back on both sides, carpal bones removed. The hand would live if reattached, but it would not line up and there would be no feeling or control, simply warm flopping meat. He would be better off with a prosthetic. Though why bother? I doubt he’ll live long enough to use it.”
Baphomet meets her gaze, but doesn’t hold it for long.
“That remains up to him,” says Peter.
“I’ll prepare it and set it to healing,” says Pratha, “but that’s the best I can do.”
“That’s all anyone can ask,” says Peter. Without warning, Pratha grips Baphomet’s forearm harder, encircles the fingers of her other hand below the wound, and slides the skin back like pulling up a sleeve.
Baphomet grunts and instinctively tries to jerk his arm back, but there’s no pulling away from Pratha. Peter strides away, leaving her to it. “Hold still, you baby,” Pratha says to Baphomet. “I need to nip the end of the bone, then I’ll suture your hide over it.” Still holding his forearm, she lifts Edgar’s sword.
Peter approaches Edgar and the colonel. “A town lies nine miles to the west in our Norway. There’s a path, I can show you to it, then a road, but the going is rough to start.” There’s a sound like a butcher’s knife chopping through meat and bone, and Baphomet groans.
The colonel glances over briefly, then says, “That will not be a problem. I’ll contact my people from there and be back in England within hours.” She turns to Edgar, holding out her hand, which he takes. “Again, it has been an honor, Sir Galahad. I now have a better idea of what you—what we all—are up against. You have my information. As I said, contact me should you need anything. There are more of us, you know. We do not wish to be left out of this fight. I imagine it’s going to be a big one.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” says Edgar, shaking her hand.
“Jackie.”
“Thank you, Jackie.” Even after all she’s been through, the violence and insanity she’s witnessed, the people she’s lost, she smiles, squeezing his hand before releasing it.
Peter says to Edgar, “When I return, we’ll slip over and set up camp. The boy needs food and rest.”
“Quite right. To be honest, so do I. We’ll be prepared.”
Peter offers the colonel his hand. “May I?”
“You may,” she says, taking it.
She gives Edgar one last look, and they slip away.
Fi stands over Zeke, who sits staring into a temporary campfire, holding a palm toward the flames. He shivers in spite of the heat, his coat, and a thermal blanket over his shoulders.
“Hey,” she says.
He jerks his hand back, realizing she’s there, then smiles up at her. He’s gaunt and pale again, the circles under his eyes returning. “Hell of a day, huh?”
She huffs in affirmation. “No shit.” She sits next to him. “I have a feeling, though, it’s just going to get worse.”
“Yeah, me too,” he says. He holds the blanket open. She huddles closer while he puts his arm and half the blanket around her. She leans her head on his shoulder and they gaze into the fire.
Whatever happens, Fi thinks, no matter how hard the world kicks them, they can bear it better together.
Zeke’s thinking the same thing. As long as he can keep Bad Zeke locked away. And the dancing flames of the fire stop siren-calling his name.
* * *
Pink light of morning soaks into damp tissue sky behind crests of pine forests and sharp peaks to the east.
Beneath a sparse and prickly canopy of trees, Zeke unzips the flap to his one-man tent. Instead of crawling out right away, as he intended, he sits there, looking out into the thin woods where they’re camped.
They slipped to Norway last night and set up three tents, his, Edgar’s and Fi’s. The others were talking in hushed tones near the fire when he retired, and he got the feeling they’d be at it all night. As much as he hated to miss anything they might say, he simply couldn’t stay awake, let alone focus on what was said.
After an MRE for dinner, he’d stumbled to his tent, slid into his sleeping bag and dropped dead to the world. No dreams, for which he’s thankful beyond belief. Still, he’s stiff and sore in the damp morning chill, and exhaustion yet clings to his bruised bones.
>
A light drizzle wets the air. Hardly a rain at all, but enough to make him shiver as he puts on his hiking boots, quilted jacket, then a rain jacket over that.
He watches a small flock of doves that has found a clear patch beneath a broad bush. Wings whistle in and a newcomer alights. Cooing at each other, pecking and scratching in the pine needles, then—whack—a burst of feathers and frenzy as they explode into motion, the shrill tweak of wings clacking together, a startling sound, and all have scattered but one, clutched in the talons of a hawk that swooped like a tiny phantom to retrieve its breakfast. It sails away, leaving bright red spatters of blood and fluffs of white down settling on the wet ground.
Alive one second, raw meat for a meal the next. And yet, the whistle of wings returns, the doves settling back beneath the bush to find more of whatever they’d been foraging for, as if nothing happened.
The sound of Edgar humming “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in a contented manner comes to Zeke from nearby, and with it the smell of coffee, as well as—bacon and eggs?
He rounds the tent to find a makeshift pavilion made of pine branches, open at the sides. On one knee, Edgar pokes at bacon, eggs and potatoes on a camp griddle. Smoke from the coals of the fire rises through a hole in the center of the roof.
Pratha sits on a rock beside a flat stone the height of a table, eating from a plastic camp plate. Next to her, but not too close, Baphomet does the same with his remaining hand. His left arm rests on the log next to his plate. He studies the stump, bound in gauze, as he chews. Nearby, Peter and Myrddin are lashing together a litter of stripped branches and cord.
Fi looks up from her half-finished plate. “Good morning.” Mrs. Mirskaya, sitting next to Fi on a log stripped of bark, says the same in Russian.
Zeke says, “Good morning,” back, and takes a seat on the other side of Fi.
By the time he’s settled, Edgar’s handing him an insulated aluminum camp mug and a plate of steaming breakfast. “Here you go, lad.”