Bloodsong

by Melvin Burgess

  Bryony nodded. He would do his best to be quick; she would do her best to wait. They kissed one more time. Then Sigurd jumped up onto Slipper and ran at a gallop for the great pipe that had led him down in the first place.

  “Love!” he shouted through the flames as they closed in around him.

  “Love,” she shouted back. He glanced once more over his shoulder, then the flames beating against the metal around him roared in his ears, the terrible pain of burning enveloped his senses, and the sight and sound of her was gone.

  Riding into the fire wasn’t easy, especially since Sigurd had done it only a few days before. The pain was terrifyingly real. There was the acrid stink of burnt meat as the new flesh forming on Slipper’s alloy bones burned, the screaming of the horse under him. He drew breath; the fire penetrated his throat and his spittle began to boil on his tongue.

  “All this for love,” thought Sigurd deep inside, behind the pain. But he was unharmed. Knowing that his living flesh could only be burned on that one spot between his shoulder blades where the blood had not touched, he padded the place with fireproof rags.

  Acid winds on fire in bright green, yellow, and blue raged around his head. They rode on, dodging and diving between passages, down vents gushing fumes and flames, through rooms filled with explosions in blazing colors. Slipper dashed to and fro, up and down, scanning ahead to avoid perils.

  As they got closer to the surface, the way got harder. The vast explosion caused by the destruction of Fafnir’s arsenal had crushed the top levels of Crayley; flattened pipework and rooms full of rubble blocked the way. But the city had lied when it said it was far from the surface. Fire and smoke showed them the way, whisking and rushing through narrow passages and flues under pressure. Slipper followed them, rushed forward, launched a missile of his own to unblock stone-fall and crushed machinery. He had a dozen senses more than us, but even so there were many false turns as he found his route. At last they were under a final lid of rock and crushed debris. Slipper loosed one more rocket to blast through the last few meters of wreckage, leapt forward into the heart of the explosion—and they were suddenly out in the open, in the bright light of a drizzly spring day, leaving a wreckage of wet rocks, shattered earth, and mud behind them.

  The bawling of the city stopped suddenly as the rocks fell back into the crater. Slipper, burned to his metal bones once more, collapsed on his side and laid his head down to rest after the trauma.

  The quiet of day filled Sigurd’s ears.

  He could feel his whole body drinking it up, just soaking it in. All that goodness. Rain is magic, he’d forgotten. Cool, beautiful water falling from the sky, like a blessing. He got to his knees in a muddy puddle, dipped in his hand, and tried to splash his face, but he was still too hot and the water vaporized at his touch. So he just took in a huge lungful of the beautiful cool air and let it out in a long stream. It formed a plume of steam, like a dragon.

  The smells! Wet rock, wet earth, green plants. He picked up a tuft of moss and sniffed it. It smelled of earth and life— it was like nothing you could ever imagine. He thought to himself, Isn’t the world a million times better than anything you could make up? What single god could ever think of all this? We could only know a fraction of all the gods that exist. There must be legions of them for every living thing.

  And Bryony was away from this. Every second she spent down there was like murder. What was the point if she wasn’t here too? Suddenly Sigurd felt more alone than he ever had, and burst into tears. He felt as if he had traveled to another world and back.

  A little later, somewhere not far off, I heard dogs barking. If they were halfmen, I could get some clothes off them. I got up and moved on. Maybe they even knew something about Fafnir’s skin.

  I wandered about for a while trying to find the source of the noise, but in among the canyons and scattered boulders, it was difficult to trace. The ground had been torn to pieces, rocks lying about broken and smashed in fields of clay and debris. Sounds seemed to come first from one place, then another, then it stopped altogether. I was trying to work out landmarks but everything was so jumbled about it all looked the same. It was a huge, rough garden someone had just built but life was already returning. There were little seedlings creeping out of cracks everywhere, clumps of moss and little ferns shooting up. Everything was young. It was as if the whole place had been just made. It made me smile. It was another thing I could show Bryony. You can’t begin to imagine how much I was looking forward to getting her up here. Just to hold her hand and show her this wrecked place would be like showering her with presents. Look! Here are the mosses, here’s the sky, this is rain. It’s all yours!

  And then I thought, But the skin could be anywhere. It could be buried under a billion tons of rubble. Anywhere!

  I speeded up even though I could have run as fast as light and it would get me no nearer to Fafnir’s skin if it was buried under this lot. Then I turned a corner and I heard the noise again—yip-yip-yip, and a barrage of squealing and enraged grunting.

  “Get im get im get im! Graaah! Heee ha ha ho ho. Faaaark!” Now I was close, it sounded like mainly piggy squealing, although there was something barky about it too. I rounded a corner and came across this bizarre scene. There was a crowd of halfmen—well, half beasts, really. They had long bodies, high in the shoulders like a hyena, or an ape on all fours. There was a bit of human there, but not much; they had low brain boxes, and long snouts. Pig-dog people, but a lot more pig than dog and not much people. I like pigs—I grew up with them— but they can be bastards, really brutal when they get a temper on them. They’ll eat anything and do anything—a big mean pig is the last thing you want to get cornered by. This lot were hunting in a pack like dogs—really dangerous. They were huge too—about three meters long, one and a half at the shoulder and their heads were maybe a quarter of their entire length, full of ugly yellow tusks, big as chair legs.

  They stank of shite, stale meat, BO, and pork, and they were making an earsplitting racket, squealing and shouting and grunting and snorting and barking—unbelievable. You’d have thought there were about three hundred of them from at least four different species, rather than just fifteen from one.

  They’d gathered on the slope of a huge slab of rock maybe thirty meters long and perched right on the top of it, about fifteen meters off the ground, there was dinner. Dinner was a long skinny dog—a sort of cross between a monkey, a man, and a dog, really. He was tall and thin, with long arms and legs and big hands and black and white sheepdog hair falling forward on his face. He had a fairly human face, jaws stuck out a bit, plenty of teeth, and a high brain box: a true halfman.

  The pig-dogs had him right where they wanted him. They weren’t hunting anymore, they were just having fun. The rock he was on was steep but not that difficult to climb and the halfman was unarmed. They were just taking their time, lolling about shouting abuse up at their prisoner. “Hey, man! Gonna eat your leg!” That sort of thing. They would, too. Their heads were as big as a small table and they had jaw bones like road diggers. They could take your leg off at the thigh with one bite.

  The halfman was in a hopeless situation. He was crouching down holding on to the rock with both hands, glancing behind him as if he was scared he’d fall off. Whenever he did, the pig-dogs broke out in a new fit of squealing and jeering to make him look back at them.

  “Come on down, the water’s great!” one of them yelled, and they all started rolling around on the floor and grunting and laughing like a bunch of comedians.

  We all have to eat, but the dogman had a high head. We high heads need to stick together. The other lot didn’t look as if they knew much except where the next meal was coming from.

  On the other hand, if I got in their way, I might be seconds.

  I was thinking, Well, but what could I do anyway? There were so many of them. I ought to be creeping quietly out of the way—but then it was taken out of my hands. They spotted me. Not as dumb as they looked, see; they had a few l
ookouts posted. I turned round and there was one right behind me grinning like a bastard.

  “Yeah! Goin sumwhere, eh? Naaaaah!” it said. It gave a high-pitched squeal and the others were on their feet at once, giving me the once-over with those piggy eyes. One of them let out a whoop—it must have been like meals on legs for them—and they came running to see who could have first taste.

  I had no weapons except for the stub of the sword. I was stark bollock naked, I didn’t even have my hair, for god’s sake. They were big guys, full of teeth and hunger in their big mouths—and the sheer size of them! Their shoulders were up around my chest. There’s nothing more dangerous than something with just enough brain to think and not enough to care. They were going to go through me like dicing carrots.

  I turned to make a run for it, but there was the lookout grinning in my face. Shit! Slipper’d wandered off, gone to get some fodder or something. He’d come, he was coming now, but that was already too late. The pack could run faster than I could fall off a cliff. I turned, conscious of my vulnerable back, and by that time they were already only four or five meters off. The lookout was behind me, crouched, ready to leap on me, his jaws wide open. They’d kept their tongues still all that way, but now they were ready for the kill, they broke into jeering and shouting. “You dead, man-face—eat him, eat him, eat the fucker.”

  The lookout jumped. I lifted up the sword—it was all I had. I struck out at his face and caught him on the nose and I split that bugger from snout to ring in one blow as he went over my head. The sword stub wasn’t big enough to go right through his back, but it had gouged a rut in him a foot deep right along. He hit the ground behind me with a heavy flap, spilled out all over the ground, coughed, and died.

  There was a sudden silence. No one could believe it, not even me. The pig-dog lay there on the ground spouting blood and guts. And suddenly, suddenly, I thought, Hang on. I’m the Dragon Man. Cut me, do I bleed? Strike me, do I cry? No, I don’t.

  Those boys were dead.

  I kicked the dead pig’s snout and spat on him. I stretched out a hand in welcome. “Come on, boys,” I said. “Come and get it.”

  There was another second of silence. Then they charged. They were all over me before I could move—bang! Jaws on my arms and legs, one on my face. I just stood there and howled. It was agony! I might not bleed but they could crush me to a pulp inside my own skin. I thought, What am I doing? Fifteen-plus giant killer pig-dogs against one little me? I must have been mad. I tried to move, but I was held in two dozen vices, and they were crushing the life out of me.

  Then one of them, who had the whole of my head in his jaws, started scrabbling with his legs up my back, trying to tear the insides out of me, and one of his claws caught the spot where the aspen leaf had fallen. It was sore.

  So I started to fight back. And you know what? It was easy. It was so easy, it was ridiculous. I sliced, sheared, poked, and stabbed, and the next thing I knew, I was standing chest high in body parts. Slipper had turned up in the middle of it but he hardly even bothered to join in. By the time I stopped he was already off grazing on the bodies. The few that weren’t dead were crawling off whimpering and moaning, limbs off, spilling blood and guts behind them. One of them had his jaw sheered off at the base of his skull. It was that quick.

  In a fit of disgust I ran after the ones still alive and killed them quick. It wasn’t bloodlust, it was pity. Better than letting them die slowly. Then—well, then I began to shake. I felt sick. What had happened? Where did I get that strength from? I was good at war games, I knew that, but this was something else. It was something new.

  And it was unnecessary. I’d always wanted to be humane— you understand? It’s part of being a man that you show mercy. War is a last resort and I hadn’t had to do this. Half of them had been trying to get away once it became clear how unfair the fight was. It wasn’t self defense, I’d done it because I could— because it was easy.

  It was proof I’d taken more from Fafnir than just his skin. I was turning into something else.

  I made myself a promise right there and then never to kill unless I had to. I was too strong. I was stuff from the stories, but these were real lives. This time it was pig-dogs, no one was going to miss them, they probably had to die anyway if the country was ever going to get back to normal. But next time it might be people. You should have seen the mess—so easy, so quick! I never wanted to do anything like that again.

  There was a noise behind me, a little clatter of stones; it was doggy, coming down from his rock. He looked a bit sheepish—he was trying to sneak off, I guess. He stood a little way off—not too near—shivering and rubbing his hands together. He was a good-looking piece of work. You know how it is with dogmen sometimes, they look all snout. This guy had a nice smile.

  “Thanks,” he said, and he gestured around at the mess I’d made.

  “Bit over the top,” I croaked.

  He raised his eyebrows and looked surprised. It made me smile, he looked so put out. I think he was putting it on. “Don’t worry ’bout it. Them pig-dogs—yow! We’re better off without em.”

  I didn’t know what to say. We stood looking at the slaughter.

  “Short work,” he said in a bit.

  “I didn’t expect . . . ,” I began. Doggy started nodding eagerly, agreeing with whatever I said before I even said it. I found I had tears trickling down my face. He peered at them in confusion.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked incredulously. “You’re not crying for them, are you? You saved my life. Don’t feel sorry for them.”

  I shook my head. He had me all wrong, I wasn’t that human. Stupid! I was crying for myself. Every time something like this happens something dies inside me. I was thinking, I’m fifteen years old. I shouldn’t be doing this. I should still be at home with my mum. Then I felt cross with myself. I was sorry for myself? What was that about, in the middle of all this death? But doggy felt sorry for me too.

  “You okay?” he asked. I nodded. It was no time for grief. I had things to do.

  “Let’s talk,” I said. I saw him looking down at me—then I remembered, I had no clothes. “Sorry,” I said, but he just smiled at me.

  “I don’t mind,” he said, grinning. “Rather nice actually. Mmm.” Then he came up to me and put his arm through mine. “You need a drink,” he said. “C’mon—let’s get out of here, before the piggy friends come along, huh?”

  “No, listen—I’m looking for something. The dragon’s skin.

  You know of it? Heard any stories. I need to get it.”

  “Oh?” He looked closely at me. “Are you Volson?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Call it intuition.”

  “I need the skin. Do you know anything? Heard anything?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Fafnir’s skin. Rrrr. That wouldn’t be something easy to take. You better come along with me.”

  “You know where it is?” I grabbed his arm in my excitement, and he had to ease my hand, I was squeezing so hard.

  “Yeah, I know where it is. We can be friends.”

  Yes! The way things just unfold for me! I felt a thrill of fear go through me, because things shouldn’t be that easy. Love or war, it all just falls into my hand. I knew then that saying goodbye to the god wasn’t such an easy thing. Odin was still working for me, or through me—who knows which? Things weren’t going to stop happening. Nothing could stop me now.

  What d’ya make of him? Gorgeous. Two meters tall, easy. Muscles—not the lumpy sort, either—long, lean ones. My favorites. Very excited. And bright pink all over. And stark naked! Oh, dear! Have I forgotten something? Is it Christmas? Is it my birthday today?

  On the other hand, he chopped up those pig-dogs like a butcher making mince. He was covered in blood from head to foot, smiling down at me, that big sword end in his hand.

  I didn’t know which way to turn. And then he started crying! Bless! And then when he found out I knew something about the skin, he started beaming
all over his face and chatting away—blab, blab, blab—like a big kid who’d just found out where his mum was. Sweet. But, wowser! I wanted to put him over my shoulder and pat him better. Rrrra! Yes. All brotherly: not.

  Well, woof, woof, woof. You know what they say about me: a lot of leering lightly worn—I mean, learning. I knew who this was. Who else? Volson! The cyber-horse just confirmed it. Fucking terror! It was enormous—half tank, half skeleton, eyes like televisions. It strolls up in the middle of the fight and starts eating the dead bodies! Ugh. Who else has one of those for a pet? Horrified!

  A Volson. We thought they were all finished. Sigurd was supposed to have died after he killed the dragon. So what do you do about one of them? Better to have him on your side than not on your side; but then how can he be on our side if he wants to be king? What would Gunar have to say about that, eh? Roowf! Not happy at all.

  So I ponced over to him, very charming, and linked arms and led him off. Get him to talk, see what he was up to, gerrowf? He had some spare clothes tucked away in that monster horse he had with him, which was a shame, really. No, it was just as well—you can imagine what he was doing to me. Ruf, ruf, ruf. I thought to myself, Oooh, this is a good job, I could see plenty of advantages in being his personal minder. Pity he was in the way. So open and trusting, it made you want to look after him. Really—just charming. Full of the joys. Oooh, look at the weather, he says, isn’t it a lovely day? Look at the rocks, what a lovely view. Well, it was pissing with rain and the scenery was just crap. Possibly a bit unstable, I’d have to admit. Mad rage, weeping, then full of the joys all in the space of ten minutes. Bit dodgy. Although you knew you could trust him, funnily enough. You could read him like a book.