by John Meaney
As he stood up, Ilse cocked her head, and looked from him to Gavriela and back.
‘You know, Jürgen, never mind Erik. You and Gavriela could be brother and sister.’
Dmitri stared at Gavriela; she stared at him.
‘I fear that’s no compliment,’ said Dmitri finally.
‘But she has a point.’ Father smiled at Ilse. ‘You have a good eye, my dear.’
It was nice that he approved of her.
Mother said to him: ‘It’s your father that Gavi follows in looks, don’t you think?’
‘Are you Jewish, Jürgen?’ asked Ilse. ‘It’s all right if you’re not, because unfortunately I’m Gentile myself.’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘My ancestors,’ said Father, ‘were Vikings, I’ll have you know. Some of them, anyhow.’
‘I don’t see how mine could have been.’ Dmitri laughed. ‘But we’ll never know what our forebears got up to, will we?’
Mother frowned, disapproving of risqué humour, or the hint of it.
‘Excuse me, Frau Wolf.’ Dmitri gave a Prussian bow. ‘I’m fatigued after a long day, as I’m sure you must be. Goodnight, everyone.’
‘Goodnight.’
Gavriela escorted him to the door. He went out, checked the street, and nodded.
‘I’ll be safe, I think.’
For a second, dark flecks seemed to move through his eyes; then they looked normal.
‘What are you going to do about tonight?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps a little counter-agitation. Their movement is not powerful, not yet.’
She had been thinking of the men he had killed; but there was the other thing as well.
‘The speaker tonight was persuasive.’
‘Ach, yes. Have you heard of Gustav Lebon? He theorized that a mob thinks with a single mind. I never quite believed it before.’
‘But the vision that he—that he created overhead. I mean, um, in their minds.’
Dmitri sucked in a breath.
‘So you did see it, Gavriela Wolf. I wondered if you did.’
‘The visions are real?’
‘Yes, but only some of us can.... No. Excuse me, I’ve made a mistake.’
His expression, half lit by the nearest streetlamp, half in shadow, was shutting down.
‘What kind of mistake?’
‘We’re different.’
‘What does that—?’
But his coat, undone, whirled around him like a cloak as he turned. Then he was striding into darkness, and for a moment he seemed to have vanished before reaching the street corner; but she was tired and in some kind of shock, her eyes barely able to focus, so who knew what she had seen?
She went back inside to the comfort of her family home, a comfort that once felt eternally stable, but now seemed a cracked stone fortress built on shifting ground, deep inside an earthquake zone.
NINETEEN
LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)
This was how Roger’s dream went.
First there was the calling, her sweet voice reaching for him.
‘Help me. Roger, help me!’
And the dark cemetery all around, like some nightmare from history, prompting his panicked question: ‘What? Where in realspace is this?’
But she was there, the one whose name he knew, somewhere in his mind.
‘Help us,’ she said.
‘How?’
Then the ghostly figures were in shock - because of him? - and suddenly everything changed as a cloaked figure - no, a man in a billowing overcoat - leaped through Roger - am I dead? - and his hands flashed silver with reflected moonlight, like the martial-dance motions Roger drilled over and over but had never used for real; because these were knife-blades and those were flesh-and-blood men; and in a few seconds they were dead.
One of them died with a thrown blade piercing his cervical vertebrae. Roger had some idea how difficult it was to hurl a weapon at a moving target; he could not have done it even if the man had been still.
The knifeman had saved the girl, or woman, whatever, and whatever her name was. Then he turned.
Blackness rotated in his eyes.
‘You’re one of them!’ Roger yelled, but halfway through the words something yanked the night away, the cemetery spiralled into nothingness, and he popped out of nightmare, fully awake and wondering at the content of his own exclamation.
His room was a marvel of silver and gold, lined with panels whose infinitely recursive designs could not be painted in realspace; and it was furnished with every convenience: food and infocrystals available through fist-sized portals in the air. By Labyrinthine standards it was economy class; for him it was luxury.
Against it, the memory of Lucis City and its quickglass towers became ordinary. Or perhaps all humans, including the Pilot variety, were ingrates, forgetting that most generations scrabbled in poverty and died young, that the ancestor species foraged in undergrowth and ran or climbed from predators, everything raw and immediate and simple.
Dazed by a change of universe and the weird philosophical notions spinning in his head, he scarcely noticed the fading memory of dream, and those awful graveyard surroundings, cooked up perhaps by his work on the Zürich simulation for Dr Helsen, the simulation that he knew with too much accuracy - for he had worked on coding characters, not historic streets and buildings - for Dr Helsen, she of the darkness, the strangeness . . .
When he slipped back into sleep, it was dreamless.
TWENTY
EARTH, 777 AD
Nine days before they left for the chieftains’ gathering, Chief Folkvar ordered Ulfr to meet him at dawn on Heimdall’s Rock, a promontory that overlooked not just the settlement but the whole valley. Using a willow-twig to clean his teeth as he walked, Ulfr wondered what was going on. Beside him, Brandr walked with his tail wagging, unconcerned.
Perhaps Ulfr could learn some lessons from his warhound.
Early though he was, Chief Folkvar was already at Heimdall’s Rock, fur-cloaked and bear-like. It was not a comparison that would have found favour, for a bear was no warrior spirit.
Unlike me.
But whoever named Ulfr could not have known his fate or character in advance. No one could anticipate the Norns.
‘The men are practising,’ said Folkvar. ‘I told them to.’
‘But not me, chief?’
‘I mostly practise alone, with stones and against the post.’
Folkvar meant small boulders for lifting and hurling, the upright oak post for straining against and striking. The post was a wrestler that could not be thrown, a warrior that could not be knocked down.
‘And I practise later than the others,’ Folkvar went on. ‘Do you know why?’
Ulfr looked down at Brandr, whose tongue lolled.
Because you like being alone, Chief?
He held back his answer, uncertainty like a half-clenched hand inside his guts, then spoke. ‘Chief, you are not the youngest among us—’
‘No. Nice of you to remind me.’
‘—but you don’t work alone to hide your weaknesses. So I believe it’s to let you watch the others at their practice, without distraction.’
‘Hmm. Perhaps. So, Ulfr.’
‘Chief?’
‘Come watch with me, and tell me what you see.’
From Heimdall’s Rock they could see down into the practice square. Some two dozen men were hard at it, some with training weapons bound with hemp sacking for safety. One twirled twin hammers solo, his opponents only in his mind’s eye.
‘Tell me of Hallsteinn,’ said Folkvar.
‘He is the strongest.’ Ulfr stared down, considering how intimidating the warrior would be up close. ‘His eyes become blank stone when he works hard.’
‘Losing himself in the fight?’
‘Yes. Brave as Thórr, but injuring others when he doesn’t mean to.’
‘All right.’ Big fists on his hips, Folkvarr mused, then gestured with his chin. ‘Te
ll me of Ormr.’
The man in question was using fast footwork to keep his opponent out of range and unbalanced.
‘Devious.’ Ulfr grinned as Ormr scooped his opponent’s ankle with one hand and whipped him to the ground. ‘Like that. Focused.’
‘So what would be their weaknesses leading other men into battle?’
Ulfr tried to read Folkvar’s expression.
Why is he asking me such questions?
But those grey warrior eyes gave away nothing besides proud certainty.
‘Hallsteinn might overcommit,’ Ulfr said finally. ‘Go berserker, and take everyone down with him. Honourable, but an honourable defeat, not victory, against a clever enemy.’
‘And Ormr?’
‘The opposite. He would be like the clever enemy, but—’
‘Tell me the truth of your thoughts, Ulfr the Wolf. I require this.’
‘Ah, he might hold back, unwilling to take the losses, so losing the chance for victory. But that’s only my thought, Chief.’
‘Which is what I asked for.’
Ulfr looked down at the practice area.
‘They could do with Kormr’s skills.’ He pointed at a smiling man who was making corrections to his partner’s technique. ‘People bond to him because he cares.’
‘And his weakness as a leader?’
‘I’ve never seen him, well, act ruthless.’
‘Is that part of being a leader?’
‘Yes,’ said Ulfr. ‘Especially if you act that way only when necessary.’
‘Hmm.’
‘If you could bind all their skills into one warrior, he’d be the man to follow.’
‘Good.’ Folkvar’s hand clamped on his shoulder. ‘Think on that. A chieftain is always alone, but has Kormr’s ready way with the clan.’
‘Er—’
‘Meanwhile, we could do with meat for our travels, while those remaining here would appreciate the same.’
Ulfr smiled.
‘Then Brandr and I will hunt.’
‘And in the silent moments, you might have time to think.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Begone now, young Ulfr.’
So Ulfr climbed down from Heimdall’s Rock, Brandr beside him, and when they reached level ground he began to jog, Brandr loping at his ankle, scanning the terrain by sight and feel, while a part of him tried to puzzle out the conversation that had just occurred, to decipher the implications.
Two weeks later, they were in a landscape of sweeping ice and rock, of lakes that looked like steel, surrounded by swirls of tough heather, brown-green and purple. Spectacular crimson streaked the wide sky. A distant column of steam rose from broken earth.
There were eight men and two hounds in the party, each warrior carrying a pack of supplies over his cloak, even Chief Folkvar.
‘So, the gathering,’ said Steinn, a lean warrior with a misshapen nose. ‘There’ll be drinking and contests, I take it? And maybe a few women?’
The others laughed.
‘And plenty of Sigurd’s hair to be won,’ said Folkvarr.
Ulfr smiled and the others chuckled, appreciating the chief’s quick comeback. At one level, Sigurd’s hair was a simple kenning, a two-word allusion, which in this case meant gold. But there were overtones, evoking images of blonde maidens, and the wordplay and poetry contests whose winners might well impress those very maidens.
He remembered what Folkvar had said in private: a chieftain needs to be alone, yet have an easy way with clan members.
But then, with the notion of maidens, his thoughts returned to the settlement where Eira lived alone in the volva’s hut, beautiful and gifted, still grieving for her brother, dead at Ulfr’s hand in an act of mercy. When he returned from this journey, would things be different? Or had she sundered him from her thoughts forever?
Two shapes came running through the grass: Brandr and Grigg, Steinn’s hound.
‘All’s well,’ said Steinn, and Ulfr nodded.
Both men understood their hounds, could read the nuances of gait and stance. Brandr and Grigg had been having fun but also working, sweeping the surroundings and finding neither enemy nor prey.
Hallsteinn was making the sign of the fist, hand pressed against the small Thórr’s hammer he wore on a leather cord. In the distance was a raven, a reminder of Othinn.
‘I think there’s another band of folk travelling,’ he said. ‘See? Beyond that lake.’
Ulfr tried to work out where he was looking, then gave up. The others shrugged.
‘What do we do, Chief?’ asked Skári.
His voice still caused Ulfr to tighten up, to imagine himself cutting the bastard down. But Skári had been ensorcelled, just like the others; he would not have killed Jarl otherwise - merely outlawed him. That was what he had said afterwards.
‘We walk and keep watch.’
Their pace had been a warrior’s distance-eating lope; now they slowed, letting the rhythm of motion recharge their limbs. Ulfr kept scanning the distant ground; finally he saw movement.
‘There are others ahead. Hallsteinn is right.’
‘You have the eyes of Heimdall,’ Chief Folkvar told Hallsteinn. ‘We have our own Watcher of the Gods.’
‘Unfortunately, I have the ears as well.’
‘You can hear the grass growing?’
‘Aye, and Ulfr’s farting while he sleeps.’
‘No,’ said Steinn. ‘That doesn’t make you Heimdall, my friend. They can hear Ulfr all the way down in Niflheim.’
‘You cooked the rabbits that Snorri killed,’ said Ulfr. ‘I blame the food.’
‘It’s all right, lad. You were just snoring like Thórr.’
‘Thank you, Vermundr.’
‘From both ends, mind you—’
‘Quiet now,’ said Folkvar.
They walked on, checking their weapons could be drawn or unslung as needed, becoming watchful now.
By a frozen river with steep banks, they drew near to the other party, who had stopped but kept their swords sheathed. Their cloaks were browns and greens, blending with the landscape.
‘Twelve folk,’ said Hallsteinn. ‘Three of them women.’
Most of them, in Ulfr’s estimation, stood like hardened warriors.
‘How can you tell from here?’ asked Snorri.
‘My godlike attributes.’
‘That wasn’t how it looked when we bathed in the lake.’
‘The water was cold.’
‘Isn’t that what they all—’
Folkvar cleared his throat. Everyone stopped, shrugged off their packs and lowered them to the heather. Then they moved their shoulders, getting rid of the ache.
‘We move forward now,’ he said. ‘Slowly.’
In the river bank were hollows, not quite caves; farther along was a tumbledown wooden bridge; here and there lay boulders and thickets of heather. All were potential hiding-places, so the men kept watch in all directions as they advanced.
The other party had also laid down their packs. One of their number, a hefty man with a braided beard, advanced.
‘Hail,’ he called out. ‘I am Gulbrandr, chieftain of these good folk.’
‘And I am Folkvar, likewise chieftain.’
‘Fellow travellers for the gathering?’
‘That we are.’
Men in both parties relaxed a little as they leaned on their spears.
‘So if we are peacefully bound for the same destination, good Folkvar, perhaps we should—’
‘Look out!’ yelled someone.
‘Troll!’
‘It’s attacking—’
With a grinding screech, the thing came running from beneath the bridge: formed of moving boulders and stones, roughly man-shaped but twice as big. From gaps between stones came flashes of scarlet light.
By the Gods, it’s real.
Then the troll was on the other party, crushing two men. Blood spurted.
