The Ice King

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Jess saw Ridley fall as she scrambled onto the tractor. ‘He’s got him!’

  ‘C’mon, lad!’ shouted Neville, perching himself on the back with one leg hooked over the bucket arm. ‘Shift yer arse!’

  ‘I’m bloody tryin’!’ bellowed Harry. By now the draugar were avoiding the fan, closing in from each side to grab at the tractor’s two passengers. As Harry speeded up to avoid them he had to take the fan out of gear, and they closed in once again. ‘Too many of ’em – if we can pick oop t’Prof and Ridley and fook off out of it we’ll be bloody lucky!’

  ‘We’ve got to get through,’ Jess shouted. ‘Look!’

  Instead of meeting the King’s great blows, Hal was dodging them, trying frantically to stay out of his opponent’s reach. A backhand swipe grazed his arm – no more – and he was flung clear across one edge of the fire. The King closed in – then flinched back as Hal swept a shower of burning debris up into his face. Then he was dodging again, with the energy of desperation. Harry changed gear, and the tractor roared forward. One huge figure clutched at the slowing blade, slipped and vanished under the wheels, almost capsizing the tractor. Then Neville fired, swore and struggled to reload as a tall and terrible figure came striding out of the night. In two great bounds the Queen had drawn level with them and with a third she grabbed the trailing edge of the bucket arm. As she hung there the tractor bucked, heaved, and slowed to a crawl, its front wheels barely touching the ground. Harry jerked the wheel violently, trying to throw her clear, and Neville’s cartridge flew out of his hand. He yelled to Jess and jumped clear just as the Queen swung herself onto the back of the tractor. Then its racing front wheels struck the ground, and it leaped forward at full tilt. For an instant Jess met the pale eyes gleaming under the tangled hair – and with a scream she, too, sprang away and fell sprawling. She could see precisely where the tractor was headed, and what would happen, but she was winded, helpless, powerless to warn Harry of the black-clawed hand already reaching into the cab. Then, with a shattering crash and a screech of metal, the whole front of the snowfan went smashing into one leg of the power pylon. The tractor reared up and rebounded, the fan dissolved into a shower of twisted metal, and the pylon moaned and tilted slowly over at an impossible drunken angle. The impact flung the Queen from her narrow perch; she spun through the air, landed with a shattering crash and lay still.

  Jess could see Harry staring back over his shoulder, his bloodstreaked face distorted with animal hatred as he pulled the coughing tractor clear of the pylon. Then the exhaust billowed smoke, the engine roared, and the whole machine reared up on its back props as the bucket swung out and down and bit into the snowbound soil. A massive scoop of earth and stone lifted skyward and went cascading down onto the Queen, burying her in a rain of debris – the bucket scooped again, and then went hammering down again and again, till the earth was flattened and still. The props retracted, and slowly, deliberately, the half-ruined machine went lurching backwards over the spot.

  Harry waved wildly at Neville and Jess, making a Churchillian victory sign with his cigarette stub and gesturing out into the darkness. Silhouettes were moving swiftly between them and the altar fire, the scattered army of the undead massing to meet them.

  ‘ ’Elp me up, for Chrissakes,’ gasped Neville, but Jess heard only the voice behind her – a low unsteady moan that grew inhumanly loud and high in an instant. They both swung round – and then Jess flung Neville backwards and threw herself down half on top of him as the buckled pylon leg gave up its struggle and the whole structure toppled sideways. There was a lunatic screech of tearing steel and bursting struts. Its cables brushed the treetops into a rain of sparks and flame, then the whole mass of steel went crashing and jangling down onto the hardened ground, bounced, crumpled and lay still. In its wake came the cables, leaping and snaking, right across the little clearing, across the crippled tractor, and onto the heads of the draugar.

  The bounding wires whipped the leaders aside in a rain of blazing sparks to lie charred and smoking in the snow. Others tried to leap free from webs of cable and fell in sparking ruin, tumbling their neighbours to destruction. Explosive crackles and hisses lit the whole clearing with flashes of stark blue flame. One huge figure bridged two cables and jerked upright in a ghastly aura – a spark leapt to his neighbour, and to another, and all three tumbled smouldering among the whitened scrub. Another touched one of the pylon’s ruined insulators and was flung halfway across the clearing in a trail of fire. The mists vanished in wafts of stinking smoke, hiding the dangers of the wires; Jess retched at the stench of burning, rotten meat.

  Neville saw the King rear upright on the altar, above the smoke, seeming to glance towards him. Then, as if following the glance, a shadow advanced through the smoke, picking its way across the wire as if some vestige of understanding remained. With a curse Neville wriggled forward to where his gun lay in the snow, scrabbling to find some undamaged cartridges. He rammed two into the breech and levelled the gun at the figure, now hardly ten feet away.

  ‘Nev?’

  He knew the voice even before he looked into the grey, ruined face, into the staring eyes of Tom Latimer.

  ‘Gotta help me, Nev – can’t help myself, not yet. See, we can beat this! I can tell you things! For – for the love of God –’

  A hand closed over Neville’s and squeezed his fingers closed. The gun exploded, and the body before him doubled up and went spinning back onto the wires. Sparks leapt from the fingers, the hair blazed, smoke erupted from the nostrils and mouth, open in a last futile appeal, and the body was lost in flame.

  ‘The legends said never to listen to them,’ said Jess flatly.

  ‘But it sounded like ’im – wanting help –’

  ‘It sounded like Jay, too –hey!’

  They both stared. From the tractor, right at the heart of the ensnaring wires, came a cheery shout.

  ‘Harry!’ bellowed Neville. ‘You daft bugger, I thought you’d got yourself fried!’

  ‘Me too, wi’ this draped all over me – but they’re always digging up power cables wi’ these things, so they insulate t’cab!’

  ‘Oh, Harry, Jesus, you moron!’ shouted Jess tearfully. ‘Hang on, we’ll come get you out –’

  ‘No!’ roared Harry. ‘Do that an’ you’ll ground me, an’ we’ll both go off like bleedin’ Christmas trees! Get around this mess, rescue the prof, then phone Electricity to shut off t’juice! Christ knows why t’circuit breakers ’aven’t gone already!’

  ‘Will do!’ said Neville with a grin. ‘Don’t go away!’

  Harry replied with a spectacular gesture, then slumped back in the driving seat. This was one place those things couldn’t get him. Tall shadows came and went in the smoke, as if searching. But just let them try and come any closer! Grinning, he fumbled for his cigarettes, then remembered the petrol. If any of that had got spilt in the crash – Bad enough, with all these sparks about. He looked around nervously – and stopped, staring wide-eyed at the scarred bare earth behind the tractor. It was rippling, swelling …

  And suddenly, with the leaden slowness of a dream, he saw it bulge upward and burst around the Queen’s bare torso as her arms flailed the earth aside. She sprang up at the tractor, her matted hair flying, her streaked breasts swinging, and a pale light gleaming on her lean dark limbs and flanks. For a moment, cowering back, he hung between lust and terror, as if a dark fantasy had sprung to devouring life – then the ruined cab door ripped open and he saw the hair spill back from her wide dark eyes, smelt an earthy, musky reek of decay, saw the slender, black-nailed fingers reaching out like a caress for his outflung hand –

  The others heard the scream, and whirling, saw for a frozen moment the reaching and recoiling hands, dark against light – and the searing streak of blue that sprang between them. The tractor vanished in a cloud of flame. An instant later the night erupted in a brilliant flash and a blast that left them staggering, dazzled, and half concussed, ears ringing. A rain of debris pattered ac
ross the clearing, the dangling cables creaked and swung in the blast.

  Then, with a terrible snapping creak, they ripped free from the next pylon at the summit of the slope, and fell looping downward. A huge pine tree burst into flames as they struck it, raining down torchlike branches that popped with exploding sap and raised answering fires in the dry underbrush. Huge sparks went slamming across the clearing as if an immense hammer was beating down on it. In the heart of the clearing the mass of draugar wheeled and plunged, mindless, as if a commanding will had fallen away, and went down in blazing, exploding ruin amid the entangling wires.

  By the time the living could see, there was only a scorched circle with the collapsed, blackened hulk of the tractor at its heart, flames still licking around it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ stammered Neville through bloodless lips. ‘Oh sweet Jesus. That fuckin’ p-petrol …’

  ‘Nev! Over there!’ Jess grabbed his arm, pointed towards the altar. The King had sprung up, as startled by the blast as they had been. The smoke cleared. At his feet lay Hal, one arm dangling over the edge of the altar stone. Then came a crack, louder than a gunshot, and from the heart of the fire a wide crack opened and the whole stone split in two beneath the King’s feet. He staggered – and Hal rolled clear.

  With a bellow of pure hatred Neville charged forward, raising the shotgun, and Jess overtook him, brandishing a flaming branch. The massive form stooped towards the fire – then froze, at another shout. Beyond the fire Ridley struggled to his knees, working the action of his riot gun. The King stood for an instant, glanced quickly around at the ruined battlefield. Then he sprang lightly off the altarstone and went loping away uphill into the darkness.

  The pop of Neville’s last cartridge mingled with the deeper roar of the riot gun; Ridley peered, fired again, cursed, and hobbled across to the altarstone to join the others. Jess was draped over Hal, hiding him, weeping uncontrollably.

  ‘Hal – Hal, honey – sweet God, oh Hal, we’re here, it’s okay, please be all right, please, we made it, we saved you –’

  ‘Saved me?’

  There was a lashing anger in his voice none of them had heard before. Jess recoiled, eyes wide, as he struggled to sit up, towering over them all on the shattered altarstone. ‘You – you damned fools! You interfering – sons – of – bitches! Can you do nothing you are told? You have destroyed us!’

  He looked beyond them to the ruins of the tractor, and almost choked on his wrath. ‘That – It never had to happen! You did that! God damn you all!’

  ‘I don’t have to take any of that crap from you!’ barked Neville. ‘Harry knew what ’e was risking, same as us – and as for sitting tight, we might’ave done if you’d told us why! Instead of making out you were ruddy God Almighty or something. I reckon we’ve done all right, and Harry most of all!’

  ‘Hal, please, he’ right!’ pleaded Jess. ‘The draugar are gone, they’re burned up –’

  Hal looked up, and his face worked with fury. ‘Gone? Oh yes, gone. And what’s to stop him bringing them back?’

  He stood up, flexed his arms, clenched his fists – and suddenly huddled forward on his knees, shivering. ‘I had the power,’ he whispered. ‘I could feel it – the strength … I challenged him to holmgang, I was supposed to defeat him, and then they would all have faded away, even the Queen, she had not enough strength in her. He was the only one strong enough – it was him who brought them all back. And when you interfered, when you broke into the fair fight – then it went … I could feel it slipping away, and then there was only me … He caught me, flattened me, he would have killed me – if the Queen had not been threatened. He left me, used his strength to pull her back … He can do it again. But we can’t, can we? Not for Harry. And he’s gone free … to heal himself, gather his einherjar and … and begin all over again. Damn you! Damn you all! To Hel and darkness!’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RIDLEY SNATCHED his radio out of his pocket. ‘Control? Yes, I’m okay. Any patrols getting through? Okay, search of area around Fern Farm, general alert for escaping suspect – huge bastard, long dark hair, dressed in rags, visible arm injury. Bloody dangerous – don’t approach, shoot on sight!’ The radio crackled violently. ‘You heard!’ said Ridley darkly. ‘Shoot. Or run him down. He’s our killer – just him. He’s more than a match for two men. Harry Hardwicke’s dead.’

  ‘Christ! Poor bugger. I’ll warn the lads –’

  ‘Make it stick. Patrol nearest the Fern Farm approach road to come pick up Professor Hansen at my car and see he gets to hospital. He’s been badly roughed up. We’re off on chummy’s tracks. Ridley out.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ grunted Hal.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Neville firmly. ‘You’re a bloody mess. What was all this about ’aving power, then? Power from where? What’s got into you?’

  Hal laughed weakly, clutching at his bruised ribs. ‘I wish I knew. I thought I did, once, clearly. But it all seems so far away now …’ He sighed. ‘Something happened, that night. But maybe I was just … interpreting it … in my own terms. You could say I got some help. From the same place the Ice King got his … or not quite. But when the law was broken it was taken away.’ He stood up suddenly, staring out over the lifeless emptiness of the clearing, its sterile snow melted and trampled to a brown slush. It steamed gently around the ruined tractor, the tangles of cable and the shapeless charred lumps that lay beneath them. ‘Or was it? That pylon falling – like lightning – could a few cables really do that much? Ha, det var noget! Maybe he still wanted to make the odds a little fairer –’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re bloody on about,’ snorted Neville. ‘Knock on the ’ead, I guess – better stay with ’im, Jess.’

  She nodded, smiled weakly. Ridley had brought spare skis down from the top of the slope. Neville slipped on a pair and left the others for Jess and Hal to get down to the car. ‘Switch on the radio there an’ we’ll keep you posted, right?’

  ‘Sure,’ sighed Jess. ‘Play it careful, huh?’

  ‘You know him,’ said Ridley. ‘Scared of his own shadow. He’ll be careful.’ They stomped up the slope, casting wary glances around them as they moved between the lines of trees. Jess retrieved Hal’s abandoned clothes from a wall and helped him into them. ‘Your undershirt’s gonna stick to all those grazed bits – still, better’n letting you freeze.’

  Hal grunted painful agreement. ‘Satans, I should have gone with them. This is my job –’

  ‘Not any more it isn’t,’ said Jess, firmly. ‘And I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, either.’

  Hal smiled. ‘It could be that I shall tell someone, some day. You, perhaps.’

  ‘Great,’ said Jess crisply, tucking him into his parka. ‘So I guess I’d better stick around.’

  ‘It would help – Satans, woman, I can manage myself!’ He fumbled at the zipper with torn fingers.

  Jess looked at him sardonically. ‘Gee, nice to know you’re appreciated. C’mon, we better get back to the car, that fire of yours is getting low an’ there’s a wind comin’ up.’

  ‘Just a breeze. And not so cold. See? The clouds are beginning to break!’ He grinned down at Jess, just a little more cheerfully. ‘As you say, it is nice to know you are – appreciated. May I invite you to come walk in the moonlight, kaereste?’

  ‘La, sir,’ she said, curtsied clumsily, and sat down in the snow. ‘Ah, crap –’ Then she simply sat there, staring. Hal bent over stiffly to help her up, but she gestured impatiently, pointing past him. The torn clouds were sending scattered shadows racing across the bare white slope opposite, but among them, almost as fast, moved something else – heading down towards the road that led back to Saitheby.

  ‘He has doubled back!’ hissed Hal. ‘And look at the speed of him. Before they find him he will already be at Saitheby –’

  ‘The car – the radio!’

  ‘Too far. There is no time!’ Hal seemed to straighten in his parka. ‘We must follow him!’r />
  ‘Hal, you’re in no condition – and what’d we do if we caught him? We don’t have any goddam guns!’

  ‘I said we should follow, not attack. We could warn the town, at the least.’ He was already stepping into his ski-clamps, wincing with pain. Jess followed suit, still protesting.

  ‘Hal, that’s dumb! I could get there faster –’

  ‘Do not be so sure. Besides, kaereste, this thing is not finished yet.’

  ‘Christ, are you going macho on me again?’

  He laughed strangely. ‘This is not revenge. I do not have to prove myself. But I gave a challenge, you must understand. You are coming?’ He did not wait for a reply. By the time Jess was on her feet he was already skiing downhill, looking perfectly steady. Slithering desperately after him, Jess reminded herself that half of Denmark seemed to be born on skis. And at least the chase was lifting his spirits. The wind blew the hair back from his face, making it even more hawklike than ever; he gestured suddenly, and there was a hard, predatory glitter in his eyes that she had never seen before. ‘You see? There he goes, down across the fields – down to Saitheby. If we cut across to the road we shall have a clear run down the hill – no fences. We shall beat him there!’

  Along the distant coast road car lights were moving, very slowly – police patrol, probably. At least the others would have some help. They reached the road, clambered awkwardly over a wall buried in snowdrifts, and went skidding and swooping down the sides of the steep road into town, alongside the deep cut left by the snowfan. Jess thought of Harry, and the same anger grew that had driven her to battle in the clearing. There must be no more deaths. The bleak countryside flashed past her almost unnoticed; she kept her eyes on the tall figure just in front of her, alert for the least sign of weakness or wavering. Her own legs were aching, but she knew she could go on. And if it came to a fight, she had her own score to settle.