Man with the Iron Heart

by Mat Nastos

  Moving forward, he said, “My name is Philipp Frank, and this is Ludwig Wittgenstein.” The man began talking quickly as MacAndrew tried to lead the two to covered ground. Frank told of a black society, a secret group of men of vast might and influence that had been flexing its power throughout Europe for more than forty years. How the group aided the Third Reich in the rise to prominence in Germany, pushing its leaders into a direction that best suited their own pursuits of power.

  Ducking into the entrance of the heavily-fortified main keep, Wittgenstein picked up the tale. “They’ve been trying to open a breach in the aether between the Earth and a realm of chaos where the Old Ones–”

  “The Jotnar?” said MacAndrew.

  “Yes. The giants of ancient myth and legend. The aether is where they have been trapped, sleeping for countless eons. If the Edda Society can awaken the Jotnar and allow the monsters’ power to traverse the Yawning Abyss, they’ll be able to aid in Hitler’s conquest.”

  Frank finished with, “And the world will burn.”

  Disgust backed Ian MacAndrew up against a wall. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They were insane. “Why would anyone help demons invade the Earth?”

  Opening his mouth to answer, Frank’s response was silenced by a nine millimeter bullet that took him in the eye with a loud pop, dropping the man like a rag doll to his knees, dead.

  A wail of desperation, hopelessness, and anguish gushed out of Wittgenstein, who fell to the ground beside the freshly-created corpse of what could only be the man’s lover. Incoherent babbling was all MacAndrew could make out as he spun, raising his own weapon in a defensive stance. An army of bodies clad in the pitch-black uniforms of the SS greeted him. Just beyond the mass of obsidian uniforms stood Heinrich Himmler.

  The Reichsführer’s nasally voice spitting out, “Subdue them.” It was all Ian MacAndrew heard as a tidal wave of fists hammered into him, stealing consciousness away.

  * * *

  Shifting his scrutiny from the bloody men splayed out beneath his boots to the conflict Reinhard Heydrich was slowly losing, Himmler sighed. It seemed he was going to have to help his old friend deal with the white-skinned intruder. Such was the way of great men: always having to clean up from the failures of the lesser ones.

  Himmler called out to the ever-present Corporal Krupke who was hovering anxiously nearby. “Bring the relic to me. It is time to end this farce.”

  * * *

  Although his opponent fought like a demon, and his blows hit with force enough to shatter a mountain, Grimm knew he was winning the encounter. The Jotnar-possessed Nazi was beginning to tire. His tether to the realm of the Great Old Ones was too new, and quickly frayed from the vast expenditure of energy Heydrich required to face the German in direct combat. Perhaps if enough time had passed and the connection had been allowed to gain strength, things might have been different. But the monster was going to be defeated by its own ego… its own conceit. The Jotnar would never admit to weakness and that would be their downfall.

  Pile-driving the hilt of Balmung into the center of Heydrich’s armored chest, Grimm knew he had to keep the beast confined to the ring of flames around them. Like all the Great Old Ones, Garm had known the chill of Jotunheim for all of his existence and was unable to long tolerate fiery exposure. The licking tongues of the inferno wouldn’t be enough to destroy Heydrich or his astral master, but it would weaken him enough for the Sword of Siegfried to end the Butcher’s existence on this world and the next.

  Heydrich fought back wildly, his fists ratcheting into Grimm’s stomach as he tried to escape the larger man’s iron grip. It was not enough. Blow after blow he launched at the Aesir’s pig, but the abomination that was Donner Grimm would not bow to his power. The Blood Howl, the power given to Garm by Hel herself – that which would kill Tyr in the height of Ragnarok – did little more than slow the raging warrior. Every attack the Nazi tried seemed to wash off of the German’s skin with no effect, and the damned heat drained away his life force with every moment the monster was held in its confines. Donner Grimm would not be stopped.

  The white giant threw a meaty punch that rocked Heydrich’s head sideways. He stumbled, eliciting a roar that had nowhere near the power it should. Then the filth of the Aesir was on him.

  Pinning Heydrich to the ground, Grimm gazed up into the night and bellowed, “All-Father, Gray Wanderer! Grant me wisdom, courage, and victory. Friend Thor, grant me your strength. And both be with me.”

  The horde of ravens screamed in answer and the sky opened up on Grimm’s pronouncement of the last syllable of his prayer, split by a javelin of lightning that arced down from the heavens themselves. The stroke engulfed both men in the white light and the wrath of Odin in the center of its conflagration. The twelve Nazi soldiers who had maneuvered close enough to attack the German were caught in the incandescent holocaust and vaporized.

  A soul-curdling scream wrenched itself from Heydrich’s gut as the crackling power danced about before fading into the ground. The monster curled himself into the fetal position, smoke rising from his body in cruel wisps of white.

  Grimm raised his left hand and called down a second thunderbolt, embracing it within himself and allowing it to lance down through his body and into the Butcher’s twitching, whimpering carcass. Blistered skin peeled off of exposed arms and face, hair smoldered, and the thick, smoked glass of the glowing goggle covering Heydrich’s left eye cracked, allowing the viscus energy contained within to seep out.

  A voice, weakened by its encounter with the wrath of the Gods of Asgard, pleaded to the giant standing victorious overhead. It promised vast riches, women, and unfettered power, all if Grimm would grant mercy to Heydrich.

  “Mercy?!” The idea of his foe requesting such a thing outraged Grimm. “That which my wife… my daughter begged your servants to give them before their lives were snuffed out?” The German gripped Heydrich about the throat and jerked him into the air with the ease of a man hefting a small child. “I grant you the same mercy you gave them!”

  Grimm snapped Balmung into the air, preparing to receive the essence of the storm one final time.

  “I am afraid I cannot allow you to do that, slave of the All-Father,” rang the voice of Heinrich Himmler, snatching Grimm’s intent away from Heydrich. “I still have work for dear Reinhard.”

  Himmler appeared high overhead, standing in a wide opening among the battlements over the castle’s entrance. Wrapped in a thick, protective suit made of woven lead and belted about the middle with a broad girdle, only the very top of the Reichsführer’s head remained exposed through the high-collared neck of the garment. In a hand gauntleted in steel plates carved with curious runes, he clutched the shaft of a human thigh bone, its surface pock-marked and browned with unknowable age.

  Energy that assaulted all five of Grimm’s senses fell from the bone, dripping like cooling molasses down along Himmler’s arm before falling to the stone at his feet. Each drop scorched the polished rock wall where it touched.

  Deep within Grimm’s mind, a timeworn voice screamed out for him to run. “He wields the Bone of Ullr! You are not yet ready to face its might! Flee, my wolf! FLEE!”

  Faster than thought, the throng of ravens dove at Himmler’s unguarded perch. Glass splintered in the windows of the inner ward, shattered from the awfulness of their cawing cries. Diseased light reflecting back in the lenses of his spectacles, Himmler raised the Bone above his head, giving its puissance permission to devour the oncoming swarm. In a flash, only carbonized bones remained, the sole indication the birds had existed at all.

  White hair coated in ash, Grimm paused for a moment, unsure of what to do. Odin commanded him to escape, but had he not just stood against one of the Jotnar given form and bettered it on the battlefield? Surely facing Himmler would be an easy task for the Fist of Odin.

  The Nazi high commander lowered the artifact toward Grimm
and took the choice from him in a volley of putrid light.

  Far above, circling alone, a one-eyed raven watched the fall of Donner Grimm and wept.

  CHAPTER 14

  IMPRISONED

  June 1, 1942. 9:40 AM, Prague Castle Dungeons.

  The cold, acidic tang of stale underground air and wet rust burned the back of Ian MacAndrew’s nose and the soft flesh of the top of his mouth. He tried to force his eyes open to take in what he could of the dark, dank room he and the others had been deposited in four hours earlier after their failed attempt at assassinating two of the most powerful men in the Third Reich. Unfortunately, the Scot’s right lid refused to cooperate. Ministrations from the gaunt, silent interrogator who had joined them shortly after their arrival had rendered most of MacAndrew’s face bruised and swollen, with dried blood caking the lashes of his rebellious orb like dark red cement.

  A wracking cough from the opposite side of the twenty-by-twenty-foot cell jerked MacAndrew’s head around to the room’s other pair of occupants. Closest to him sat Grimm, crouched on the balls of his feet, ice-blue eyes locked on the large oak door banded in iron staring back at them from the roughly-hewn granite walls of their prison. The giant German looked like he was preparing to pounce on anyone daring to enter, and the Scotsman wasn’t convinced the ancient, black-iron chains shackled to the man’s wrists and ankles would be enough to stop him.

  Although Grimm’s weapons had been taken away while he was unconscious after Himmler’s attack, the Nazis had been unable to remove the strangely glowing girdle from his waist. Ten of the black-uniformed SS soldiers had tried, with everything from crowbars to garden shears, and all had failed, repelled by a burning light and the screaming voices calling out from the pulsating runes carved into the belt’s plates.

  The blazing, blue light, reminiscent of a clear winter’s day, and the song of Grimm’s dead family was also enough to keep the skeletal torturer away. The quiet man, whose lips curled above his gums when he smiled at the pain he inflicted, avoided Grimm completely.

  Beyond Grimm’s position in the center of the cell, huddled down in the corner just to the right of the doorway, lay Ludwig Wittgenstein. The tall, intense man with burning eyes and a mop of tussled brown hair had been subjected to the worst of the Nazi interrogator’s beatings. For all the cruelty inflicted by the inquisitor, theman remained utterly silent, never once asking a question or demanding an answer from the Austrian scientist. For having dared to reveal the secrets of the Edda Society, Wittgenstein had been thrust upon the path to humiliation, pain, and death.

  MacAndrew dared not speak the sentiment aloud, but he feared the intellectual would not be long for the world. The death of his companion at the hands of Himmler had destroyed his will to live more than any amount of torment or inhumanity inflicted upon his physical form. His spirit was gone and his flesh would soon follow.

  A series of clicks, metal grinding on metal, and motion at the cell’s entrance arrested the attention of all in the room. As if through some signal, unseen and unheard by the room’s other occupants, the ghoulish interrogator began to pack away his implements of agony with care and precision. One at a time, knives, prods, needles, and sheers were filed away into a dark bag covered in the scaled hide of a creature unfamiliar to MacAndrew’s Highland eyes.

  The chamber’s door creaked open, spilling in darkness that absorbed the feeble light of the room. Within the center of the darkness strobed a pallid, green light – the color of decay and wrongness. A tiny circle of evil that enlarged to the size of a man’s fist, centered on the left side of a face carved from the clay of wickedness itself.

  Reinhard Heydrich – if that was what he could still be called – entered the cell, followed closely by a brightly-smiling Heinrich Himmler. The second-in-command of the Third Reich had redressed in a fresh uniform, one of colorless gray and starched to blade-sharpness.

  “Ah, it is good to see you awake, my friends. I hope Herr Scharff wasn’t too enthusiastic in his enquiry. He has been known for his over-zealousness from time to time, I’m afraid.” Himmler calmly strode over to where Wittgenstein sat chained. Bowing his head in mimed regret, the Nazi spoke softly to the imprisoned scientist. “I am saddened with regret for the death of your companion, Ludwig. His pragmatism will be sorely missed.”

  For the first time since the trio had awakened in the dungeon, the fire returned to Wittgenstein. “You murdered him in cold blood, damn you!”

  Himmler tsk’d loudly at the raging Austrian in disapproval. “Your betrayal wounds us deeply, Herr Wittgenstein. The Edda Society gave you so much, in spite of the failings of your bloodline and sexual deviances.” Shaking his head, the Nazi looked the weeping scientist in eyes, holding him with the force of his will alone. “Do not worry about your dead lover, you’ll be joining him soon enough.”

  Emotion poured out of Wittgenstein; tears flowed freely down his face, undeniably reliving the death of his friend, his lover, over and again. MacAndrew felt for the man and his loss, but what else could one expect from dealing with the Third Reich other than treachery and death? The Austrian and his companion were paying the high price of dallying with the Nazis.

  “Enough of these trivialities, though. You, pale one, interest me far more than the actions of poor Ludwig there or of the Englishman’s cowardly mission in Prague. These things will be attended to by my underlings. I must know more of you, Donner Grimm.”

  MacAndrew squirmed a bit at being labeled an ‘Englishman’. He was a son of Scotland and proud of it. Of course, considering his current and rather bleak position, it was neither the time nor place for him to be protesting the nature of his national pedigree.

  “Please, help me to understand why a child of the Fatherland would aid its enemies in this time of war.”

  A glare was Grimm’s only response to his questioner.

  Shaking his head, as though he had expected such a reaction from the giant, Himmler waved one of the soldiers forward from his position in the rear of the room. The young man passed Balmung, safely sheathed in a wrap of leather and iron, to the Reichsführer’s waiting hands.

  “A fine blade,” said Himmler, removing the weapon slowly from its scabbard. “Our oracles say it is as old as the Rhine itself, forged from metal not of this world. Where did you get it? Who gave you the lost Volsung blade?”

  A gob of spit struck Himmler. Another wave of a pudgy hand received a thin, white handkerchief from the attending soldier in exchange for the glowing sword.

  “How did you come by the belt of Thor? How did you awaken it?” Himmler was growing impatient with the giant’s stubbornness, and MacAndrew was sure that if this Edda Society hadn’t needed the answers to those questions, the white warrior would have been slain outright. “Tell me of Megingjord’s secrets!”

  Grimm leaned low, appearing as if he finally had something to say. Everyone in the room froze, waiting for his answer. Himmler leaned in close, daring not to miss a single syllable from the pale one’s lips. Grimm strained forward to within an inch of the Nazi’s ear, his muscles strained, causing the chains binding him to moan in protest.

  “I will kill you, Nazi.” The calmness in Grimm’s statement was more frightening than any boast or threat MacAndrew had ever heard. It was a statement of fact for the man. A promise. “I will feel your throat crumple beneath my hands before I die, and I will send you both screaming to the shores of Nastrond.”

  Uttering a clipped phrase in the ancient language of Thule, Himmler lashed out with the silver-and-black field marshal’s baton that seemed never to leave his grasp, striking the raging Grimm across the finely chiseled bones of his left cheek. Aided by arcane energy that bubbled from his symbol of power in the Third Reich, the impact from the smaller man was enough to drop the giant to one knee.

  Himmler clucked in disappointment from beneath his thin round glasses as he jammed the tip of his rod under Grimm’s chin, forcin
g the prisoner to look up into the blazing hazel eyes of the supreme commander of the SS.

  “Pity that such a fine example of the Aryan ideal would betray the Fatherland,” sighed Himmler in mock regret. “What wonders our Reich could have achieved with a man like you in our service.”

  “Butcher!” Grimm lunged against the restraints chaining him to the cell’s rear wall. “You killed my family!”

  The violence and suddenness of his action tore a shriek of straining metal from every iron link in his bonds. For an instant, MacAndrew was sure the man would break free. The reaction from Himmler was another blow from his enchanted baton and a flash of sickly, green light where it tore a red line in the pale white flesh along Grimm’s jaw, staggering him once again.

  Pulling himself to his full height of five-feet-nine-inches, Himmler stroked his weak chin as he considered the giant lain out before him. Recognition hit the Nazi commander a heartbeat later.

  “You! I know you!” Himmler turned to the creature that had once been Reinhard Heydrich and smiled. “Do you recognize the man, dear Reinhard?”

  “He stinks of the Aesir,” hissed Heydrich through the parody of a harlequin’s smile.

  “Indeed. The man is the one-eye’s lackey,” nodded Himmler. “But more importantly, he was a part of our Jew’s failure in Kelheim. Isn’t that correct, Herr Wittgenstein?” With no response from the injured Austrian forthcoming, the small Nazi leaned forward to gaze into Grimm’s ice-blue eyes, unafraid of the hatred radiating from them. “Where is Wotan now, my friend? Why is he not here to save you? Where is your god now?”

  “Forget words!” The tension and waiting had clearly grown too much for the impatient Heydrich. Having a minion of his hated foe so close, bearing the weapons of Asgard, had obviously pushed the demon inside him to madness. “I will tear him in half and take Megingjord for myself!”