Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  I snapped off a few rounds, advancing toward her, but I didn’t go far. As soon as Luka reached her, she sent him flying into the trees again.

  This isn’t going to work! a small voice in the back of my mind screamed. Do something else!

  Owraythu screamed incoherently, almost foaming at the mouth, her rage was so great. Meuhlnir strode forward, pointing at her. “Thun!” he cried.

  Owraythu’s screams became silent, though her mouth continued to work. Her gaze found Meuhlnir, and she grimaced and coughed, her body doubling over with effort. “Silence me not!” she shrieked. She gestured at one of the fallen trees, and it leapt into the air, slammed into Meuhlnir, and drove him into the base of Iktrasitl like a train slamming into a car parked on the tracks.

  That left only Althyof, Veethar, Frikka, Sif, Yowrnsaxa, and me to fight. And the Alfar—wherever they’d disappeared to. I snapped my pistols up and fired again, stepping to the right, moving toward Veethar and Frikka. Hope they know what to do, or we’re going to lose!

  In the corner of my vision, I saw the Three Maids still standing where they had when we’d entered the glade. They’d turned to watch the battle but made no move to support either side. I pointed Krati in their direction and fired a round at their feet, and still they stood, like pillars of stone in a windstorm. “Do something!” I screamed at them.

  “Move and be consumed!” shouted Owraythu at them. She whirled to glare at me, spinning her index finger, though she kept it pointed at the ground. “You started this!”

  “Yeah, I’m a bastard that way,” I said. I pointed Kunknir at her face and fired twice in rapid succession.

  She screamed and rushed at me, one hand up to scratch at my face. I didn’t see the spinning, maelstrom of power streaming behind her spinning index finger until it was too late. She flung it at me, a whip crack of maleficent power.

  The string of crackling, baleful power sawed into me, ignoring my flesh, but causing me as much (or more) agony as if she had used a chainsaw on me instead. My vision grew dim, and the only thing I could hear was a curious wave-at-the-beach sound. I fell to one knee, and she was on me, all clawed fingers and hissing, spitting fury.

  A cold wave of dulcet relief washed over me, and my vision returned. I rolled to the side, and as I did, Owraythu’s face crumpled in confusion. The Alfar stood at the edge of the forest, one on each side of the gap Owraythu had made, writing silvery runes in the air as fast as their hands could move.

  Wisps of silver twisted through the air and wrapped around Owraythu as though an invisible spider wrapped her in a cocoon of webbing. She shrieked and thrashed, but as one strand broke, two more found her. Her eyes widened, and she peered down at the silvery strands, her face a parody of surprise. “What’s this?” she muttered.

  Yowtgayrr muttered something that sounded like my name.

  “What?” I asked, rocking to my feet.

  “Run,” he said, his face a mask of concentration. “Get away!”

  I looked from him to Owraythu, seeing the gleeful expression on her face and the silver wisps that were turning black from the inside out. I turned back to Yowtgayrr, shaking my head. “We have to fight together!”

  “There’s no fighting her,” said Frikka.

  “Draw her away. Hide. We will see to—”

  Owraythu laughed, and it was a sound I imagined coming from every twisted fuck of a serial killer, madman, or genocidal dictator in history.

  “Get Hel and get out of here!” urged Veethar. “You know how! We need time!”

  I nodded, getting it at last. I stumbled to Hel, who still stood clutching her head. I grabbed her by one colossal paw and pulled her toward the woods. She came willingly enough, though, to be honest, she didn’t appear to know who I was. Behind us, Owraythu screamed as a thwarted child might.

  We ducked into the trees and trotted into the shadows. I wove a proo and moved the other end to the place where Kuhntul had taught me how to spin my own preer. I pushed Hel into it and jumped through behind her, closing the thing as soon as we were out the other end.

  “Change back, if you can,” I said. “We need speed now, not bulk and muscle.” She gazed down at me, but her eyes didn’t track to my face, and she made no move to regain her human form. With a sigh, I grabbed her paw again and pulled her through the forest, beginning the speed boosting trowba Althyof had taught me by rote.

  I ran through the forest surrounding Iktrasitl, leaping the usual detritus found in any forest, dodging limbs and tree trunks, all the while pulling Hel behind me like an enormous bear-shaped child. There were no animal sounds, no sound of wind through the tree tops, only the incessant wailing of Owraythu as she vented her anger at the sky.

  She was somewhere off to the southwest, following the course we’d used to leave the glade, and I bent our course northeast. The sound of trees falling punctuated her screams. Hel reacted to none of it, only followed blindly, chuffing and grunting from time to time.

  I hoped Owraythu continued looking for us and left the others alone. I wondered how much damage Owraythu had inflicted on Jane and Meuhlnir and hoped Sif could mitigate it.

  We slowed to a trot, and I let the trowba fade. “Kuhntul, where are you?” I muttered between breaths.

  The sounds to the southwest ceased, and my stomach lurched. I put on more speed, wishing for the umpteenth time that Hel would snap out of it and help me.

  Owraythu shrieked far away, and a rumbling, crackling sound roared to life. A fierce wind blew as if something sucked the air behind us.

  “Kuhntul!” I cried.

  Another of Owraythu’s incoherent howls split the air, and the sky above the canopy of the trees rumbled in sympathy.

  “When she figures out where we are, we will need to run faster, Hel.” I shook the massive paw I held. “Can you change back? It will be easier if you are in human form, and I have an idea to gain more speed.”

  Hel turned her massive ursine head down to stare at me. Blood trickled from her left ear, and her eyes seemed so empty.

  I shook her paw again. “Snap out of it! You’ve got to change!”

  Her jaws opened, and her tongue writhed between her fangs.

  “This one knows where you’ve gone!” screamed Owraythu in an earsplitting voice. “This one perceives your deceptions!”

  Far behind us, the explosions started again. As we jogged on into the forest, the sound of the trees splitting got louder and louder. I could imagine the scene—Owraythu beelining toward us, flapping her hands at the trees that stood in her way, ash trees exploding into sawdust and splinters.

  “Change!” I shook Hel’s paw again.

  “M-ma-m… Math…ur!” she hissed. “Mathur!” As soon as her jaws, tongue, and throat had changed enough to allow it, she said, “What happened? Why are we running?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t beat her. We’re giving the others time. Owraythu’s on our trail and gaining.” I glanced back at her to make sure everything was sinking in. “I’m going to make a series of preer. We need to sprint to each opening and jump through, no stopping, no pausing. On the other side, keep sprinting while I spin up another.”

  “That sounds…dangerous.”

  I waved my hand at the sounds gaining on us from behind. “More dangerous than Owraythu?”

  Hel grunted.

  I let go of her hand and formed a proo. With a twist of its hook, I sent the terminus as far into the trees as I could see, then pushed the entry point in front of us.

  “How did you learn to do this?” she asked.

  “No time! We’ve got to run!” I said. “Now!”

  We slapped at the entrance and popped several hundred yards ahead.

  “Again!” said Hel.

  We repeated the process again and again and began to leave Owraythu behind. A low vibration rattled to life behind us, reminding me of a diesel locomotive in the distance. We kept running and jumping through preer, but that sound only got louder and louder.

  “She’s stoppe
d yelling,” wheezed Hel.

  “Can’t be good.”

  “No. Faster, Hank!”

  I pushed the proo as far as I could see, and then willed it farther still, and though we popped through it safely, it was no use. Whatever Owraythu was doing, she was gaining on us despite everything I could do.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “When we come through this next proo, be ready to grab onto a branch—that or fly!”

  Without waiting for a response, I spun a proo to the branch where the eagle had dropped me. “Go!” I said and pushed her into the proo.

  We popped out in midair, about a yard above the branch where Kuhntul and I had sat for our chat. Hel yelped as she fell but wrapped both hands around the bough. She looked around, then peered down the trunk of the great ash tree.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  I shrugged and gazed out at the destruction Owraythu had wrought in the forest near Iktrasitl. I’d hoped to find Kuhntul there, but she was gone. “I’d hoped she would be here. She said there was a weakness inherent in the Plauinn being here, but she forgot to say what.”

  Hel grunted. “What do we do now?”

  The forest had been flattened in a large swath, and the trees on the edges of the flattened area had been stripped of bark. A short distance from the glade, the straight-line path widened into a circle—like a crop circle back on Mithgarthr but one made with trees in a forest rather than grain in a field. From that circle, another straight-line path swept away to the northeast—toward where we had been fleeing. I followed that path with my eye until my gaze caught up with its head.

  Trees flew like pick-up sticks, and a perpetual haze of wood dust hung in the air. Even so, the path grew at an incredible pace, as if someone drove a massive snowplow at high speed through the forest.

  “She’s still chasing us,” mused Hel.

  “Think she’ll catch us?”

  Hel chuckled and then sobered. “It’s sad to think of what must happen when we escape her for good.”

  I turned and gazed at her. “And what’s that?”

  She shrugged, avoiding my gaze. “Things are…unsettled. Osgarthr cannot go on as it has these past centuries. Unguided. Aimless. Drifting through time. I see that now.”

  I sighed and turned my gaze back to the explosive progress of Owraythu through the forest. “And who’s to guide them?”

  Hel chuckled. “Isn’t that still unresolved?”

  “So how will we resolve it?” I asked, thinking I knew the answer, but dreading the confirmation.

  She twisted on the branch and looked at me. I could see her studying me from the corner of my eye. “The way people always decide such matters.”

  I scoffed. “Are we forever tied to the past? Do we always have to follow the footsteps that lead to where we are?”

  She shook her head and looked down at the ground, far below us. “I don’t have the answer to that.”

  Owraythu’s buzz-saw progress through the forest halted, and she vented her anger at the sky.

  Hel sighed. “I wish she’d stop all that incessant screaming.”

  “Hasn’t there been enough war among the Isir?”

  She glanced at me again and turned her face away. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could speak, the air rang as if someone had struck an immense celestial gong with a metal mallet. The harmonics of the sound ripped across the sky, echoing from horizon to horizon. As the sound faded, the wet popping sound of dislocated joints ripped across the sky.

  Hel grimaced and said, “She’s summoned the Plowir Medn.”

  “Awesome. I thought they were your allies.”

  Hel grimaced. “So did I. They betrayed me to Owraythu and Mirkur.”

  “When they teleported you away from our last battle.”

  “Yes.”

  Faintly, the sound of many piping voices lifted in a kaltrar, and the sound of it reverberated in my brain—the ultimate coercive ear-worm. I couldn’t make out the words—the language of the Plowir Medn was slippery and convoluted to my ears—but I didn’t have to understand the words, the intent became clear half a heartbeat after they began.

  The air in the upper atmosphere up near the clouds seemed as shivery as heat-haze in the distance for a breath in time, then the shivers erupted in every direction at once as though a bomb had exploded in their midst and sent everything flying. Iktrasitl shivered with resonance, and the trunk moaned and creaked. The temperature of the air surrounding Hel and me increased at a dramatic pace.

  “Uh oh,” I muttered.

  “Time to go!” snapped Hel.

  “Go where?”

  “Anywhere but this branch!”

  From above came the staccato jackhammer sound of Ratatoskr scampering down the tree trunk. In the crown of the tree, Tindur shrieked a challenge at the sky. The dragon below rumbled like the warning growl of a large, pissed-off dog.

  “Can you do your trick with the dragon below us?” I asked.

  “My trick?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I can do my trick with any dragon.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t know where the dragon is, so we’ll have to convince the Nornir to tell us where to go.”

  Hel hurried me along with a finger-twirling hand gesture. The red-blur of Ratatoskr’s frenzied approach descended toward us, and the air around me glowed with heat. With the sickening crunch of a shoulder dislocating, a Plowir Medn appeared in the air five feet in front of us—which was, of course, in midair. With a squawk, the Plowir Medn started to fall. He uttered a stream of squirmy consonants.

  “Hank! We can’t let him go!”

  In a heartbeat—almost as if it moved of its own accord—Kunknir was in my right hand, and a round hole smoked in the center of the little blue fellow’s forehead. The wormy kaltrar ceased, and the Plowir Medn fell like a rock.

  “Hank! The proo!”

  Moving as fast as I could, I spun up a fresh proo and dropped the exit right at the base of Iktrasitl. Hel snapped her hand out but stopped before she slapped the proo. “For what it’s worth, I thank you for rescuing me.” Without waiting for my reply, she touched the proo and disappeared. Before I could follow her lead, Ratatoskr streaked by, head down, tail pointing at the sky, talons ripping into the bark of Iktrasitl. As he passed me, he chirped, sounding for all the world as though he were an ordinary squirrel.

  “It’s you!” he called.

  “No time to talk,” I said, reaching for the proo.

  “Who is this invader? Who destroys the forest? You must tell us!”

  “Owraythu and the Plowir Medn!” I snapped my hand out and brushed the proo. When I appeared at the base of the mighty tree, Hel was already walking toward the small campfire where the Nornir sat under normal circumstances.

  “Where are they?” she demanded.

  Veethar stepped out of the forest from the far side of the glade and waved us over. “Come,” he said.

  “Where are the Nornir?” asked Hel.

  “Come away!” Frikka urged.

  “We need to find out where the dragon is. Hel can—”

  “No time, Hank!” said Veethar. He waved his hand again.

  “Where is everyone?”

  With the wet sound of hundreds of joints tearing from their sockets, scores of Plowir Medn appeared in ones or twos all over the glade and in the first few rows of trees.

  I drew my pistols and fired—acquiring a target, squeezing the trigger, finding a new target, and firing, again and again. I circled around the glade, moving clockwise toward the south.

  “We must not let even one of the Plowir Medn escape!” Hel yelled to the others. She pointed at the closest blue figure. “Predna!” she hissed, and the emerald green flame engulfed the diminutive figure.

  I kept moving and firing, moving and firing, hot brass flying away in arcs, hot lead streaming into blue bodies.

  Veethar and Frikka swept into action, Veethar using his sword and his special relationship
with nature to attack the Plowir Medn from every side, while Frikka acted as his skyuldur vidnukonur.

  Where is everyone? I wondered.

  The Plowir Medn formed into small groups—three or four bunching together. One of each small party stood to the rear and chanted in that slithery language of theirs. The other two or three produced jagged-looking bladed weapons and crouched, cutting strange patterns in the air and making war-faces at us.

  I continued circling and picking off exposed or solo Plowir Medn. Hel splashed fire around with abandon, and soon wood from the fallen or exploded ash trees danced and popped with green flame. She kept moving closer and closer to the edge of the woods—a group of the blue-skinned people were leading her away from the glade!

  “Hel! Get back!”

  She didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t even look at me. Her face wore a mask of rage and hate, and her eyes seemed to blaze from her cheeks like motes of the emerald green fire she threw at them.

  I stopped circling and moved toward her, pointing and shooting in that familiar gait that seemed to be a part of me at a genetic level. “Hel! Look out!” I cried as two other groups of Plowir Medn moved to flank her. Again, she either didn’t hear me or didn’t care what I had to say.

  I targeted one of the flanking groups and poured a stream of lead into their backs, snapping Kunknir from target to target like a trick-shot artist. With Krati, I sprayed suppressing fire at the other group, hoping that at least some of the rounds would find a new home in something soft and squishy.

  Where in the hell is everyone else? I fumed. We need help here!

  Hel glowered at the four Plowir Medn in front of her, and I came to realize that they were speaking to her—taunting her, goading her. Can’t she see it? I shifted Kunknir from the flanking group to the group that was leading Hel into the woods. The sightline wasn’t great, but with the enchantments Althyof had woven into my Kimber .45, I could pull it off without risk to Hel. I stopped advancing for a moment and snapped off four quick shots, ejected the empty magazine into the pouch on my belt, and slipped Kunknir down over the next full magazine while I watched two of the Plowir Medn stagger and slap their hands over bloody spots that appeared as if by magic on their torsos.