I Bring the Fire Part V: Warriors

by C. Gockel

  “Sigyn and the twins aren’t working for Odin,” Bohdi says quietly, rocking a little on his feet and staring down at the bug in his palm. “I’m positive.”

  Steve looks at Bohdi. What had Bohdi said? His only magical power was to detect lies? That ability alone makes him a powerful weapon.

  Walking over to Bohdi, Steve puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “And I trust you.” He inclines his head to the door. “Will you go get Sigyn and her boys for me?”

  Bohdi stares at him for a moment, and then nods his shaggy head. Still cradling the bug in his palm, he turns and walks out the door.

  x x x x

  In Steve’s hospital room, Amy walks along the window ledge that has been turned into a bookshelf. It’s lined with biographies, and oddly, books on Buddhism. Sigyn is sitting on the bed, reading a book about Eisenhower. Beatrice is munching on a tuna sandwich from the cafeteria. Valli is standing in the middle of the room, remote control in his hand, flipping through the channels.

  Beside Amy, Nari pulls a paperback book off the window ledge. “A biography of Peter the Great,” he says. “Does Director Rogers revere this man?”

  From across the room, Beatrice pipes up. “Steve always says to know his enemy.”

  Amy blinks and turns to her grandmother. “Is that why he reads the National Review?” She’s caught Steve reading that right-wing magazine a few times.

  Dropping her sandwich to her lap, Beatrice says in a scolding voice, “Dear, just because you don’t agree with—”

  From the floor at Beatrice’s feet Fenrir lunges toward Beatrice’s lap, grabs her sandwich, and then scampers under the bed.

  As Beatrice and Amy stare, mouths agape, over the TV speakers an announcer says, “The Democratic Party has announced that Gennie Santos, Chairman of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force, will be their new candidate for mayor.”

  Sigyn puts down her book. Nari turns to the screen. Beatrice stands, brow furrowed. “Gennie Santos is a good person. I’ve met her. Did wonders after the first invasion, helping to get the city repaired ... Still, it’s a shame.”

  Amy’s eyes flick to the screen. The television shows a podium set up in City Hall. Gennie Santos stands behind it, face unsmiling. She’s a stout, no-nonsense looking woman. Dipping her head to the microphone she says, “It is with mixed emotions that I accept the nomination for mayor—”

  In her pocket, Amy’s phone starts to buzz with a text. She pulls it from her pocket and sees a note from Bryant. Amy, we have the suitcase of serum. Some FBI agents are here saying they can have it? Kind of want to avoid a felony if we can.

  Amy stares at the screen. She expected this, didn’t she?

  She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a long breath, and then types back, Yes.

  “The serum that made Steve magical?” Nari says, and Amy nearly jumps. He’s standing so close she thinks she can feel his body heat. Or maybe that’s just her, feeling warm.

  Before she can answer, the door opens and Bohdi walks in, hand upraised, fingers lightly grasping something. His eyes go to Amy and then to Nari. The hand clenches and something slips through his fingers and to the floor. Fenrir dashes from the bed, and Amy hears her jaw snap shut.

  “Bohdi, what was that?” Amy says, running to Fenrir.

  “A dead fly,” says Bohdi.

  “Why were you carrying a dead fly?” says Valli.

  “Because I killed it,” says Bohdi.

  Amy swears she hears the whole room blink in collective bafflement.

  And then Beatrice tsks. Amy turns her head to see her grandmother standing with her hands on her hips, staring at where Fenrir is cowering under the bed, looking vaguely guilty. “Amy, I think you created a monster.”

  Amy remembers Bryant’s text, and her whole body goes cold. Her legs suddenly feel weak.

  “Doctor Lewis,” says Nari, and his hand is suddenly at her elbow. But Amy looks to Bohdi. “The FBI took the rest of the serum,” she whispers. “Just like you said they would.” She turns toward Nari, but can’t raise her eyes to his. “I’m not the spreader of magical democracy you thought I was.”

  “And I was just about to ask you if we could use the serum to bring back my memories,” Bohdi says. Amy’s eyes shift to his. He gives her a thin smile

  Amy’s hand goes to her pocket where the book and the extra test tubes are still safely tucked. “It’s—” Nari gently squeezes her elbow. Amy freezes, as warmth floods her. Nari’s magic? She looks to Loki’s son. His eyes are on Bohdi. Raising an eyebrow, Nari says smoothly, “You said that it was impossible that the serum brought back memories.”

  Bohdi’s eyes narrow at Nari and he takes a step forward. “No,” he says, voice rising to almost a shout. “I said that there is a big freakin’ hole in Dr. Lewis’ hypothesis about why the serum works.”

  Amy jumps a bit at his outburst.

  Bohdi’s eyes flick to where Nari’s holding Amy’s elbow, and he mutters. “Scientifically illiterate Asgardian.”

  Amy’s jaw drops. That’s just ... hurtful. Why is Bohdi being so weird and mean?

  “What flaw is that?” says Sigyn.

  “Yes,” says Amy, her skin going hot at the accusation and his weird behavior. Is he jealous—has he forgotten he’s her pretend boyfriend?

  “Explain,” says Nari, his body shifting closer to Amy. Almost unconsciously, Amy steps a little away. It’s not that she doesn’t like Nari …exactly ... it’s just she’s not entirely sure how much she likes Nari and how much she is being affected by his charm.

  Bohdi draws back. His jaw gets hard, he looks to Amy, and back to Nari, and then says, “Never mind. Steve wants to talk to you, your mom, and Valli in the Promethean wire room.”

  The three Asgardians glance to each other, and then, sliding from the bed, Sigyn says, “We will come with you.”

  Bohdi rubs the back of his neck. “So …none of you are working for Odin, are you?”

  “How dare you insult us!” shouts Valli. He lunges in Bohdi’s direction. Bohdi ducks and runs out of the door. Valli charges after him, and Amy hears Bohdi shouting, “Just checking, don’t—erp!”

  Sigyn rushes through the door, Nari hot on her heals. “Let him go, Valli!” Sigyn snaps. Amy hears a bit of a scuffling and a door shutting.

  Amy goes and peeks around the corner. The hallway is empty ... no bodies of weird, bipolar probably-Indian programmers lying on the floor. She supposes she’s glad.

  At her feet, Fenrir whines her “I am so hungry” whine. Shaking her head, Amy says, “Come on, grandma, let’s go get some food for my monster.”

  x x x x

  Ten minutes later, Beatrice and Amy are in Steve’s room trying to cut grilled chicken breasts into bite size chunks. Hard enough with plastic silverware, harder still with Fenrir doing a happy dance at their feet. The door opens and Amy looks up. Bohdi is standing there again, alone, flicking his lighter. “Steve needs to talk to you, too.”

  Amy blows her bangs out of her face but doesn’t move.

  “It’s important,” Bohdi says. He takes a breath. “Lives depend on it. I’m sorry.”

  Wiping her hands on her hips, Amy says, “Sorry for what?”

  Bohdi looks up pointedly at the ceiling. “Can’t talk about it here.”

  Beatrice puts her hand on Amy’s arm, “Amy, you don’t have to go.”

  “Please?” says Bohdi. He looks worried and concerned.

  Patting her grandmother’s hand, Amy says, “I’ll be fine. It’s just down the hall. Will you stay here with Fenrir?”

  “Humpf,” says Beatrice, but doesn’t protest when Amy follows Bohdi out the door.

  As they walk down the hall, Bohdi says, “I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Amy feels a chill run through her. Before she can ask what anything might be, Bohdi opens the door to the hospital room that’s been turned into a magically-shielded conference room. He holds the door open. Amy hesitates a moment before she goes in.

  Dale is gone. Steve
is leaning against a window ledge at the far end of the room, arms crossed over his chest. Sigyn is seated on the bed. Valli is pacing. Nari is sitting on the room’s two chairs, but stands up when she enters the room.

  Walking into the room, Amy lifts her shoulders. “What?”

  The door behind her closes, and Steve says, “Bohdi seems to think that you might know a way through Jotunheim Southern Wastes to the realm of King Utgard.”

  Amy feels all the air leave her chest. She does know. She wraps her arms around herself and shivers.

  x x x x

  “Where in Norns’ names are we?” Thor bellows. He turns to Loki, nostrils flared, and face red.

  Warmed by the magic, he stills his teeth and surveys the terrain. The World Gate was supposed to drop them off at night fall, just outside King Utgard’s castle in Jotunheim. It’s nightfall. And based on the snowy plain that Thor’s chariot sits in and the tiny bean-shaped moon that hangs in the sky, they’re in Jotunheim, too. But there is no castle or Frost Giant habitation to be seen.

  “The Gate must have shifted!” Thor roars.

  “Well, obviously,” snips Loki.

  “Don’t get cranky with me,” says Thor.

  Loki bristles. “You’re the cranky one!”

  Pointing his hammer at Loki, Thor rumbles, “You asked to come on this trip. Now be helpful and figure out where we are!”

  Loki glares at Thor. And then he drops his head. He did ask Thor to come on this trip. For once he wasn’t ordered by Odin to attend to Thor on one of his damn fool adventures. He frowns, pulls out his knife, and embeds it into the chariot wall.

  It’s the sort of thing that Thor normally tries to pound him for … and a near pounding would completely justify Loki setting Thor’s cloak on fire. Loki would rather like to see the big oaf have to drop and roll in the snow. Thor’d come out of it looking like a Yeti and Loki could mock him for it for centuries.

  “Ach! Loki,” Thor says, putting a giant hand on his shoulder, “you’re still feeling down about Sigyn not wanting to renew your marriage vows, aren’t you?”

  Loki’s skin heats ... and so must his armor, because Thor draws his hand away and shakes it. “Ouch, that smarts,” he says. But, the giant, insufferable, bastard son of Odin doesn’t get mad, which makes Loki almost as furious as the knowledge that Thor has him figured out. Loki is here to escape from Sigyn, which is ironic at some level, as soon enough he may be separated from her for good. In Asgard, marriages are renewed every few centuries. Loki and Sigyn’s has lasted longer than most, confounding his detractors at court to no end. But now she is not certain if she wants to extend their vows, and Loki doesn’t understand why. So he’s run away … probably the worst thing he could do. But he can’t threaten her. She won’t be cajoled. And he will not beg.

  “Would you like to eat something?” Thor says. “I can roast one of my goats, you can make a fire … ”

  From where they stand yoked to the front of the chariot, Thor’s goats shift on their feet and give soft fearful bleats. They have magically-regenerating bones and have been eaten hundreds of times. Mimir says they don’t remember being eaten, but Loki supposes after a few hundred years they might have some inkling when Thor’s feeling peckish.

  One of the goats stamps its hooves. Remembering previous meals, Loki’s mouth starts to water. “Why not?” he says. “We won’t reach Utgard’s palace before he closes the main gate, anyway.”

  Thor scans the horizon. “Perhaps we should make our way to one of those small hillocks? They have trees … ”

  Loki hops out of the chariot. The goats, despite their unease, don’t fly off with the chariot in tow. The snow only comes up to his knees, but a few paces away it forms a drift. He heads in that direction. Waving a hand, he says, “No need, I can split the water molecules in the snow, and we’ll have the perfect fuel.”

  He concentrates on the drift, imagines the molecules ripping asunder and the hydrogen electrons dancing in a frenzy. The drift erupts in flame, but Loki doesn’t relax his concentration until he feels magic itself rippling through the drift, gently sustaining the reaction.

  Turning around he finds Thor scratching his head. “Do you think that could be dangerous?”

  Loki waves his hand. “I’m not that powerful. It will die out in a few hours.”

  “Hmmm…” says Thor.

  Trudging back toward the goats, Loki says, “Come, I’ll hold one while you slit its throat.” Fortunately, the goats may be uneasy, but they don’t apparently speak Asgardian.

  “Very well,” says Thor, falling into step with him. And then he says, “You know, with all that your family has been through lately, it’s no wonder that Sigyn is not herself.”

  Loki begins unhooking one of the beasts. “I said I wanted to eat, not talk.”

  Thor, the idiot, keeps talking. “It was a bad business with Valli,” Thor says. “A bad business with the dwarves … and a blot on the integrity of Asgard.” Thor’s voice drops to a whisper. “And my father.”

  Loki’s hands still. During the Black Dwarf “operation,” Valli had been assigned to a squad that was mostly mercenaries, while Sigyn had remained with Valkyries and Nari had been among the diplomatic corps. Although War Rights had been strictly forbidden, some of the brutes had taken them anyway. Valli is savage and thick headed, but what he saw in the field traumatized even him. Since the operation he has dark circles under his eyes. Nari says he doesn’t sleep. Once, Valli had become exhausted enough he’d fallen asleep at Loki and Sigyn’s home, but woken up screaming. He’d lain in his mother’s arms afterwards, whispering, “They were so small, they were so small.”

  Sigyn keeps saying they fought for the wrong side. When Loki counters that had they fought for the other side they would be dead, she says there are things worse than death. Loki has promised her that he will make sure that in the next engagement Valli is a guard for the diplomatic corps, but it doesn’t make her happy.

  “I don’t know how to make her happy anymore,” he whispers. “I don’t know how to make my son better.” The words slip out without him meaning for them to.

  “You’re a good husband, Loki,” Thor says quietly. “Give her some time … and give Valli some time. How many horrors have we seen?”

  Sometimes, for an idiot, Thor is very wise. Loki can’t look him in the eye, but he nods. Noticing his armor has become cold, he concentrates, and wills it to warm again. He unhitches the goat, and then he hears a crack. Thor spins and raises his hammer. Clutching the goat, Loki turns around. The fire is going at a nice clip, but it hasn’t become dangerously large. He sees no creatures on the plain, nor in the sky.

  “I don’t see anything,” says Thor.

  “Nor I,” says Loki. Without discussing it, he and Thor trudge toward the sound.

  At just that moment, Loki feels a strange sensation, like he is moving backward, although his feet are moving forward.

  Behind him, the goat, still yoked to the chariot, screams in fear. There is a sound of tiny hooves thudding quickly in snow, and the chariot creaking into motion. Thor and Loki turn around just in time to see the goat leaping into the sky, pulling the chariot along with it. The chariot and goat are briefly a shadow in front of the tiny moon, and then the beasts lands among the trees and hillocks Thor had pointed out earlier.

  Scratching his head, Thor says, “What has scared it?”

  From behind them comes another crack, and then another. The snow in front of the blaze juts up as though caught in an earthquake, but instead of earth, ice rises and water gushes out, rolling toward Loki and Thor.

  “What … ” Thor roars.

  A white spear juts up from the icy rise.

  Before Loki can respond, a giant orca-like whale, spear atop its head, and wicked spiked plates upon its back, lunges out onto the ice. It’s twice as big as an Earth orca, though it’s skin is completely white, and unlike any orca whale Loki’s seen, it has claws at the end of its fins.

  It lunges out of the icy wa
ter they must surely be standing on, bugling a blood curdling cry.

  “We’re on the Southern Wastes!” Loki yells. “This must be Lake Balstead!”

  The beast slithers forward with unnerving swiftness, mouth open, teeth glinting in the moonlight.

  “Shut up and run!” shouts Thor.

  Sometimes, for an idiot, Thor is very wise.

  x x x x

  “Dr. Lewis?” says Steve.

  Amy jumps slightly. “Why do you need to know?” she asks.

  “We’re going to take Gerðr back to her home. Open up diplomatic relations.”

  Amy stares at Steve for a moment. And then she huffs. “Bull. You’re not taking Gerðr home for diplomatic relations.” It’s amazing what having hundreds of years of political intrigue in your brain can do for your understanding of such things.

  Steve pushes himself up from the ledge and looks down at her, his jaw very tight. She hears Bohdi’s lighter flick.

  Looking away, Steve says, “No, of course not.”

  Amy blinks. “Besides King Sutr of the Fire Giants, King Utgard is the only credible threat to Odin’s rule.” She drops her eyes. “Are you going to join forces with him?”

  “No,” says Steve.

  Amy lifts her head. “Then—”

  “We plan on taking them weapons and armor.”

  Behind her Bohdi says, “Kevlar is resistant to spear points and can withstand plasma blasts. We haven’t tested incendiary rounds on Asgardian armor, but flamethrowers work great.”

  On the bed Sigyn says, “And I doubt Asgardian armor could withstand some of your surface-to-air missiles, even with magic.

  Amy blinks and looks down again. “I don’t know if even with those things, Utgard could win. Odin still has the power to create and destroy World Gates. And I don’t know if we’d want Utgard to win … he’s still a king.”