Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  ‘Untrue.’ He shook his head to clear it. ‘The killer did. Other god-slayers must have. I am merely the first of my people to do so.’

  He looked out again. Some clouds had returned but rents in them gave him glimpses of rivers, forests. What wonders existed out there? What people?

  ‘The ones who dispatched the assassins, Luck. The ones who would destroy my world. The enemy.’

  That shriek came again. It was an eagle, not a hawk, but of a type he’d never seen before. A big brown one, gliding along the ridge-line. He watched it, and the bird one-eyed him as it passed. Could he lure it down? Eagles were scavengers more than killers, he might play dead. But was he strong enough to possess an eagle? Not yet, perhaps. And birds were always harder than beasts. Insects, he’d learned to his cost, were impossible.

  He needed to rest a while, lower down the mountain where the air might be heavier. He needed to get there quickly.

  He looked at the boat. This was the reason he’d dragged it all this way – because he’d recognised that on its base were sled runners. He’d guessed by them that the vessel was made for snow as well as water. Now was the time to prove it. And the quickest way down the mountain, to that better air, was over the vast sloping snowfields before him.

  On the waters of Askaug he’d paddled small craft close to the shore. On the slopes near the town he’d ridden sleds. This vessel was sleeker, lighter. But boats were boats – and sleds were sleds. He was sure he could steer it as one, as the other, as both.

  The slope immediately below him was humped with what had to be boulders. To his right was an open flat field that narrowed into a gulley, or a chute. Mist obscured how long it ran. But it would be far easier to steer down that than around the humps.

  He dragged the boat to that part of the crest. Paused for a long while as breath returned. When it had – enough anyway – he pulled the paddle from within the craft. Unlike the oars that he used at home, this one had gently carved scoops at both ends. He’d discovered on the Lake of Souls how useful that was, for propulsion, for direction.

  ‘What worked on water should work on snow, don’t you think?’ he asked the eagle as it glided past him again. The bird did not reply, so Luck replied for him. ‘Of course it will,’ he said, and lowered himself into the small vent at the back of the boat. When he’d first done so, the sides had held him snug. Now he had room to move. ‘The first thing I’m doing when I get you, bird,’ he called after it, ‘is the killing and eating of a cow.’ He took the paddle in two hands. ‘Follow me,’ he cried and, shifting back and forth, slowly moved the craft forward till the front end was over the edge. He leaned forward, the boat tipped onto the slope and began to slide.

  It was easy. He dipped the paddle to the left, swung that way. Did the opposite, swung right. It was … fun! When had he last had fun? Where was it stated that a god had to be serious all the time? And the joy of moving without his legs pushing him! It was like a longship with the wind filling its sail. He picked up speed – and then it was even easier. A dip of the paddle here, he swung; a dip the other side, he swung back. Since his right arm was weaker he had to brace and dig in a little longer on that side. But the method worked and he guided the vessel down the slope, into the mists, as stone walls narrowed around him, laughing all the while.

  Until a wind gust whipped the mist away – revealing a gap ahead of him, the end of the chute, and only sky beyond it. Saw that in the one moment he had. Far too late to do anything about it.

  With a great yelp, Luck launched into the air.

  He had flown, of course, as a bird. But then he’d been in control. Here there was none. The prow of the vessel dipped and hurtled like a falling arrow to the slope that seemed so far away and came up so fast. He hurled himself back, his thrown weight jerking the tip of the vessel up just enough so it didn’t spear the ground. It slammed into the snow nonetheless, sending a shockwave through him. He heard a crack, and wondered if it was a rib. His? The boat’s? But he had no time to do more than wonder, for his craft slewed hard right, making for a hump of snow that could only be a boulder. He jammed the paddle in on the left, snapping its carved end off but swinging him anyway, enough to miss the boulder by a finger. But his slew now took him fast the other way, to another white hummock, and he jammed the paddle in the other side, snapped that end too, leaned hard away, missing again – but this time only by a hair.

  The slope rushed up at him. He stuck what was now a pole left and right, somehow steering a course between disasters. He wanted to stop, but had no idea how to do it. He was going too fast. Velocity had him and he could only surrender to it. Jam the stick in – left, left, right, left, swerving through doom.

  And then he felt it, the slightest decrease in speed. Focusing on the ground straight ahead, he saw an area of smoothness. He had reached some wider plain of snow. Stabbing the paddle in on his right he moved across that, slowing, slowing – not enough. Not enough for the other thing he saw ahead – a shelf of snow with beyond it only sky.

  He jammed the stick down. It was ripped from his grasp. He thrust his left arm deep and his shoulder was nearly wrenched from its socket. The boat swung, still did not stop, hurtled onto the slightest of rising slopes, heading for flight.

  Luck jerked his arms up before his face and closed his eyes.

  Everything stopped. Wind on his face. He had to be falling. He had nearly drowned once before the avalanche, in the ocean when he was only seventy. He remembered the sensation well. The panic and then the calm. The sinking into oblivion. Here, though, there was no water to ease him down, simply air all around. Any moment now he would be smashed onto rocks far, far below.

  Nothing. He lowered his arms. Forced open his eyes. Stared into the sky. Looked down. He was still in the boat, which was half on land and half in the air. He was on the land side … but only just.

  He took a breath. At least the air was better here. Then the tip of the boat swung a little down. He leaned back and it swung up again. Slowly, so carefully, he lowered his hands into the snow and began to push himself and the vessel back.

  When the prow was above the white, he collapsed back. Once he was ready, he rolled himself out of the boat, and sat up.

  The clouds had gone again. Winter sunshine revealed the land. Above him was Molnalla’s crest – far above him: that mad ride had brought him a long way. Carefully he crawled again to the ridge he’d nearly plunged over. The mountain fell away below him, straight down to jagged rocks far below. He and his vessel would have been broken there, dashed to pieces. He’d have survived it – if the dashing didn’t include his head being ripped from his body. No guarantee. After those rocks the slopes began again – steep, but not too steep, leading far, far down and all the way to the valley floor. The tree line began where those gentler slopes did.

  He looked to each side. To the right was something not so sheer. He thought that if he could get his courage back and took it very slowly, he could descend there on foot and reach those easier, treed slopes.

  And then he noticed something else. He’d passed over it before, thought it just another tendril of mist rising from a pine-top. Until he remembered that mist did not coil – only smoke did. With that he saw, down the mountain and halfway to the valley floor, so grey and black that it near dissolved into the granite around it, a huge building. It had walls, turrets, towers – the first building he’d seen in all his hundreds of years that was made not of wood but of stone.

  Luck sat back. ‘Found you,’ he murmured.

  He dragged the boat a little further away from the edge, then sat down. He needed to think. Hunger, though, made thought hard. What did he know of this world he had entered? He had glimpsed evil in it – twice. Once in the glass globe that the assassin had brought to Askaug and again in the one that Peki Asarko had at the Lake of Souls. But did that mean the whole world was evil? He doubted it. Like anywhere there would be good people here an
d there would be bad. With good people capable of evil, and bad people …

  ‘Philosophy, Luck? Truly? Now?’

  He shook his head, tried again to focus. Thought of the drug, the power required for seeing in the glass, its allure. Yet he doubted he was now to encounter a world populated solely by bald, black-toothed, black-eyed cravers. Who would till the fields or tend the herds if all were lost to sweet smoke?

  His heart had slowed to near normal, his breath was coming clearer. Only his stomach truly irked him, its emptiness. If he was going to use the only weapon he was truly gifted with – his mind – he would need to feed it. He hadn’t come this far, survived what he had, to blunder into a stronghold and be taken.

  Food. There would be none in the expanse of white that surrounded him. But there were trees below – and creatures dwelt in trees.

  Without the paddle, he would be unable to control the craft over the snow. And his one experience of boat sledding did not make him wish to repeat it. Sighing, Luck slipped the loop on the prow over his right boot and started, in his ungainly lurch, to tow.

  There had been a few times in his long life when he felt that his parents’ choice of name had not been so inappropriate. When he’d met and married Gytta, and the wonderful years that followed. When he and Bjorn had discovered hibernating bears and possessed them to make their escape from Peki Asarko.

  Those were two. The mountain goat limping past on a broken leg was certainly a third.

  Exhausted, he’d fallen asleep when he’d reached the treeline, slept – and woken to the goat.

  It limped through the trees – a female, not too old, with her back leg so badly broken she made no attempt to lift it, just dragged it along. Hurt in a chase perhaps, a misjudged jump, which meant that the chaser might not be far behind. If the beasts on this side of Molnalla’s slopes matched those in Midgarth – and there was no reason to think they didn’t – a lynx or a wolf might be close. Time to act.

  Close to four hundred years of doing it made his movements smooth, silent and imperceptible. He had his slingshot out of his pack, a stone fitted, one finger in the loop and his thumb on the knot, without the goat looking up. She paused, perhaps twenty paces away, when the faint whirr of rope through air came. She even turned to seek the source and looked at him. Too late.

  The moment the flung stone struck right where he’d aimed, between the eyes, Luck had dropped the sling back into the boat and was up, shuffling across, Hovard’s knife in hand. There was no need to hurry, though. The goat was already dead.

  He crouched beside it. The fierceness of his hunger seized him. Feeling for the beast’s rib cage, he drove his knife in just beneath it and sliced down. There was blood, guts spilled out. All his years of cleaning out the entrails of animals he would preserve made his search easy. Severing all that held it, he ate the liver fast, still warm.

  Tempted though he was to go on, he stopped. He’d had enough for what he must do next. And he’d done enough too. The scent of death was strong in his nostrils – and he was merely a god. Those with a better sense of smell would already be aware and be racing for a meal. He pulled himself to the closest tree and awaited them.

  He knew their cries – the single red kite circling high, soon joined by others; the high shriek of the eagle, perhaps the one he’d seen before. They would descend soon and he would take one if he must. But there was one he hoped for, one he’d taken many times before. His brothers always chose the hunting birds, hawk or eagle. For countless reasons, he always preferred another.

  And it came. Luck heard it first with that distinctive beat of wings, almost like a slow hand-clap. It gave out its throaty caw – Luck always thought it more bark than cry – and the voices of the other birds went up in pitch. Angry, no doubt. For they knew the true king of birds had arrived. And it wasn’t the eagle.

  The raven swooped down. Glided over the goat’s corpse, turned back, folded its wings and dropped to sit on its flank. Bending, it began to tear at the spilled guts.

  Luck studied it, its blue-black plumage, the darkness of its eye. Generally, the bigger the beast, the easier it was to possess. A bear was easier than a wolf. A raven harder than an eagle. But large or small, scaled, furred or feathered, all shared this trait: they were easiest to take when they were fucking, fighting or feeding.

  Focusing within, Luck rolled his inner eyelids up, dissolved his body and entered into the raven’s.

  There was resistance. Ravens were powerful in flesh and in spirit. For a long, ghastly moment, Luck’s Other hovered, as if pushing at a door that would not budge. Slowly, so slowly, then quickly, then suddenly, it gave. He was in, and feeling the world through feather and gripping claw. None of the possessed gave up entirely and they would always fight to regain control. The more powerful the beast, the shorter the time a god could reside within. Luck could be a mouse for a week if he chose. He knew that, given his own weakened state and this bird’s power, he had but hours. He would have to use them well.

  The first thing to do was eat more. The raven was hungry and so was he and both could feed, with his new body absorbing raw flesh better than his human one. So they tore at the goat’s heart, ripping it from its housing with sharp jabs – and just in time. For other birds were descending now, and in moments kites, crows and that same one eagle were there. Snatching up the severed heart, Luck flew to a tree.

  While he held down the heart with his talons and tore at it with his razor beak, he considered his next actions. He regretted that when he still had them he hadn’t used his hands to hide the boat. He might need it again on the return journey to Midgarth. He would certainly need what it contained, especially his slingshot and the globe.

  A sudden, raucous increase in screams. Luck looked up to see the predator he’d expected – a lynx – run snarling down the hillside to possess the kill. Birds scattered in all directions though none went far. The battle for scraps would continue until they all were gone. But Luck would not witness it. Swallowing the last of the heart, he regurgitated some gristle, spat that out, raised his wings and shivered them. He felt the power in them, and both the bird’s, and his own hunger, abated. He was ready.

  He swooped between the trees, down the mountain. Ah, the pleasure of flight after the agony of that endless climb! He only controlled direction; the bird took care of the flying. It was one of the joys of possession, this part surrender to the beast. Especially for him, who limped through the world. To soar! This was freedom … and could not last. For the raven’s superior senses soon told him: the smell came when he was still two thousand paces away. Sound swiftly confirmed scent.

  Man.

  It was a single bell, a deep, slow tolling. The scent was more complex. The tang of cooking meat made the man within the bird hungry again. Wood burned. Yet there was another smoke in the air, which a raven could smell when a man or a god could not. A taint that brought a different kind of hunger – a craving, sudden and intense. He’d felt it before – once in Askaug, once in the middle of the Lake of Souls.

  Up ahead someone was using a seeing globe.

  The trees ended with this thought. He settled into the last of them, upon a branch, for this far down the mountain pines and firs had at last given way to birch and beech. The land that still fell away beneath him had once been treed, judging by the greying stumps. It rose briefly again to a vast plug of rock. Atop that was the fortress.

  The different tribes of Midgarth built their defences in different styles, depending on where they lived. In the south-west, in the wide valleys, tall walls of lashed trunks were erected around each town on four sides. In the vast northern forests of Palur, beyond Kroken, men built solid huts up in the canopy with as many arrow slits in the floor as in the walls. At Askaug, perched atop sea cliffs, they only needed the one horseshoe-shaped wall, with the gate tower on the landward approach. But wherever in the land they built, his people used what was abundant: woo
d.

  This fortress was built only of stone. And yet it looked as if it hadn’t been built at all; was another part of the mountain spur beneath it, thrust up whole by subterranean gods. Rock did not end. Walls did not begin. All were one.

  It had different levels. There was a giant main building which could have swallowed Askaug’s mead hall three times and spat out a fourth. This sat at the centre of a rectangular yard, paths bisecting it that led to buildings not much smaller. Huge walls surrounded the whole, following the top edge of the rocky outcrop, studded with cylindrical towers, each capped in a cone of black slate.

  Luck launched himself, gliding down and around the fortress, so he could view it from the front. There was a gatehouse there – again of a size so massive that it made Askaug’s look like an outhouse. Vast wooden gates – the first thing he’d seen not made from stone – opened onto a roadway which switchbacked down the mountainside towards the distant valley.

  Sight and scent had held him. Now he used the raven’s exceptional hearing. There was a low hubbub: both animal – cattle, chickens, dogs – and human. Though there were few openings in the walls of the buildings, through them voices came: the murmur of conversation through one, men singing – no, chanting – through another. The loudest noise was the bell, still sounding from the tallest tower which rose straight from the centre of the main building. At its apex, just beneath the conical cap, Luck saw the bell, large and bronze, rocking slowly back and forth, its ropes pulled by unseen hands in some hidden room below. Below that …

  Halfway down the tower there was a rectangular window, with tall wooden shutters standing open either side of it. Lamplight flickered within the room. Something else was within it too – the taint of sweet smoke.