The Book of Doom

by Barry Hutchison

  “Right, then, Dragon!” Odin bellowed. “What say we—?”

  The sole of the Angelo-demon’s foot slammed against Odin’s armour. Vikings were scattered like skittles as the flailing form of the Allfather cannoned backwards across the hall. Those still on their feet watched as Odin was driven clean through the wall and into the snowy wilderness beyond.

  For a moment, there was no sound, save the falling of plaster and the swirling of wind through the newly formed hole. Then, from somewhere in the crowd, there came a battle cry. It was hesitant and uncertain, but it was a battle cry all the same. Others soon followed.

  “Slay the dragon!”

  “Cut off its head!”

  “Stop talking about it!” roared one of the Norsemen. “And just kill the thing!”

  He and some of the Vikings nearer the back of the crowd began to push forward. They shoved with an enthusiasm reserved for those who know full well that there are several dozen other people between them and anything dangerous.

  Those Vikings who were unfortunate enough to be near the front were much less gung-ho. They had seen the full horror of the creature, they had felt the searing heat of its breath and they had decided that while they might already be dead, this thing could almost certainly make them deader.

  The crowd heaved, half of it pushing forward, the other half pushing back. Those pushing forward had managed to seize the element of surprise, though, and the throngs quickly began to tighten round Angelo.

  With an inhuman screech, he swung a scaly arm, batting half a dozen Vikings into the air. Even before they landed, he was sweeping his other arm out in a wide arc. Ten, twenty, thirty Norsemen crunched down across the room.

  Those pushing from the back did some quick mental calculations and realised they didn’t have nearly the number of human shields they’d had a moment ago. They hesitated, their swords no longer waving so enthusiastically, their shouting now barely audible over the cries of their kinsmen.

  Roaring, Angelo smashed both enormous fists down on to the floor. The ground quaked, yet more Vikings fell, and for the first time since they had been erected, the walls of Valhalla began to tremble.

  Over the sounds of the screaming and the roaring, Zac heard another sound. It was a high-pitched whistling, like something slicing through air. He looked up to see one of the shields from the ceiling zipping towards him, and leaped sideways in time to avoid being sliced cleanly in two.

  With a metallic ba-doing, the shield embedded itself several centimetres into the stone floor. It was a decorative piece, too large for even Odin to wield in battle, and as Zac looked up he thought he saw Herya scuttling away from the space where the shield had been hanging.

  Cupping his hands round his mouth, he shouted to the Valkyrie lurking somewhere above. “Oi, watch out! That nearly hit me!”

  Another shield began to fall. It flipped over, mid-plunge, and landed face down on the stone right beside Zac. The clang rang out like the tolling of a church bell. The echo lapped the hall half a dozen times, before fading away.

  “And again!” Zac shouted. “What are you doing? Trying to kill me?”

  Zac felt a gust of warm breath breeze over him. Angelo had turned away from the Vikings and now stood glaring down at him, shoulders hunched, fists clenched.

  “Oh... hi,” Zac offered as brightly as he could. The fire danced higher in the demon’s hollow eye sockets. It opened its wide jaws, and Zac saw something spark at the back of the cavernous maw.

  He swore then, loudly and creatively, but the words were drowned out by the crackling of the flames from Angelo’s throat. Zac dived and tucked himself in behind the upright shield just as the inferno hit. He felt the metal go red-hot; coughed as his lungs filled with the tang of fire and brimstone.

  There was a hiss from the floor. Zac looked down to see drops of molten gold pooling together on the cool stone. He looked up. The flames were still licking over the top and round the edges of the shield, melting his defences away.

  “Stop!” he wheezed. “Angelo, stop.”

  But Angelo was no longer listening, because Angelo was no longer there. Only the demon remained, scaly and sizzling and – Zac hated to use the word – hulking.

  Gold flowed in rivers round his feet. The shield was little more than a gleaming wafer now. Zac’s time was up.

  “DRAGON!”

  The word raced round Valhalla, deep and booming and oh-so-very angry. With a whoosh of inrushing air, the fire stopped.

  A moment later, what was left of the shield became a shimmering sludge on the floor, and Zac saw a demon turn to face a god.

  Odin was standing at the far end of the long wooden table, axe in hand, several centimetres of snow piled up on top of his helmet. His white beard was dark with soot, but his expression was darker still. He flipped up the patch with the surprised eye drawn on, revealing a fourth and final patch beneath. The eye drawn on this one scowled furiously, with flecks of red painted at the centre of the pupil.

  With one hand he swung the axe down on the table. The wood split along its entire length, and the two halves fell neatly in opposite directions. Odin began a slow march along the newly formed path, and with each step the god took, Zac felt his ears go pop.

  “I welcomed thee into my home, Dragon, and you repay me thus?” Odin growled. He ground his teeth together and tiny blue sparks spat from his mouth. “You attack my Viking brothers. You destroy the Great Table.”

  “Um, actually, I think that was you, Allfather,” whimpered a voice from somewhere beneath a pile of groaning Vikings. “To be fair.”

  “And you defy the all-powerful Odin,” continued the god, ignoring the interruption. “Here in Valhalla. Here in Asgard, you defy me!”

  Odin was halfway to the demon now. The handle of the axe creaked as he tightened both hands round it. “I, who have slain giants in my sleep. I, who created all of Midgard from the blood, bones and flesh of my fallen enemies.”

  He stopped just a few metres away from the monster. “I, who has a dirty great axe and a very short temper.”

  The few Vikings who were still intact and fully operational gave a cheer at that, but it was a cautious one, as if they weren’t completely sure that Odin was going to win. The last thing they wanted was to get any further into the demon’s bad books.

  “Thou hast put a right bloody dampener on an otherwise fine afternoon, Dragon. And for that thou shalt die!”

  HE THING THAT had until just a few moments ago been Angelo, vomited Hellfire in the Allfather’s face. The flames licked hungrily across the old god’s weathered skin, turning his eyepatch black and melting the snow that had been balanced on his head.

  Although he was several metres away, the heat forced Zac to draw back. Odin growled with pain, but otherwise didn’t flinch. He raised the axe before him, using the flat of the blade to block the worst of the fire.

  Angelo’s tail flicked around like a striking cobra and his clawed fingers curled into fists as, step by agonising step, Odin advanced.

  Zac kept his distance and just watched. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he had absolutely no idea what to do. He’d spent a lifetime thinking on his feet, finding solutions to problems before they even happened. Now, though, standing in a mythical land, watching a Norse god fight a transforming angel-demon, he was fresh out of ideas.

  As he drew close to the demon, Odin swung the axe in an upwards curve. The blade clipped the brute on the chin, snapping his head back and making him shriek and howl furiously.

  The Vikings cheered, but Odin’s brow knotted when he saw the blade hadn’t cut through the scaly skin. He swung again, hacking this time at the demon’s barrel-like ribcage. The blow struck like a battering ram smashing against rock. The Angelo-thing staggered, but the axe had failed to draw blood once again.

  “What manner of creature art thou?” Odin wondered, before four jagged knuckles crunched into his nose, splattering it across his face. With a roar as savage as any the demon had made
, Odin hurled himself forward, letting the axe fall to the floor.

  The demon lashed out with its arms and tail. It opened its mouth to cough up more flame, but Odin’s hands clamped round its jaws, pinning them shut.

  “Let’s see you do your fire trick now, Dragon!” cried the Allfather. Fury was etched into every line of his face, but there was something else there too, beneath the blood and the beard – a bloodthirsty joy. The Allfather was loving every minute of this.

  Thrashing wildly, the monster stumbled, a fireball stuck somewhere near the back of his throat. Zac moved quickly from their path, as god and demon crashed towards the wall, then carried on crashing right through it.

  There was a hiss of steam as the demon’s fiery hide hit the snow, and then both combatants were sliding down the hill, each raining blows on the other as they ploughed a trench through the melting slush.

  Zac rushed to the hole in the wall and looked out. Angelo and Odin were twenty metres away already, and they were still picking up speed. He looked ahead of them, down the slope. There, just beyond where it levelled out, Asgard dropped sharply off into nothingness. They were hurtling towards the edge, and they didn’t even realise.

  “Angelo, look out!” he shouted, but they were too far away to hear, and there was no saying the demon could even understand a word he was saying.

  There was a soft whoosh and Herya appeared beside him. “We have to get out of here,” she said.

  “Stopped dropping shields on me now, have you?” asked Zac, still watching Odin and Angelo sliding down the hill.

  Herya caught him by the arm and pulled him away from the wall. “I was saving you from the demon’s fire.”

  Zac’s feet splashed through the puddle of melted gold. “OK, I’ll give you that one.”

  She bundled him towards the second shield, which sat like a wide plate on the flagstone floor. “This one’s for our escape.”

  “Escape?” said Zac, then he realised that Jurgen and the other Vikings were closing in round them, weapons drawn. They looked far from happy. “Oh, yeah. Escape.”

  “There will be no escape for you,” Jurgen growled.

  “We were having a lovely time until you showed up,” snarled another of the warriors.

  Jurgen glared at Herya. “And as for you, Valkyrie, stand with us or face the—”

  “Oh, shut up, Jurgen,” Herya said. She shoved Zac into the bowl of the shield. “And just so you know, when I spilled that drink on you earlier? So not an accident.”

  Zac looked beyond the edge of the shield to the deep trench in the snow. It was already refreezing, the sides now smooth and slick like polished glass. The shield scraped across the flagstones as Herya heaved it over towards the hole in the wall. Zac finally understood her plan. He gripped the shield’s edge as Herya shoved the makeshift sledge on to the polished ice.

  “Hold tight!” she said, jumping in behind him.

  “Yeah,” he replied, as the front of the shield began to dip and the back rose up into the air. “I kind of worked that one out for myself.”

  There was a bellowed, “Stop them!” from the hole in the wall as the slow-witted Vikings realised what was going on. But there was no stopping them now. As gravity took hold and friction gave up, the shield began to hurtle headlong down the hill.

  A blizzard hit Zac in the face. The icy winds tore at him, forcing him to screw up his eyes until they were almost closed. The snow swished past beneath the shield as it raced like a toboggan along the trench cut by Angelo and Odin.

  “They’re getting away!” said one of the Vikings as they watched the shield slice down the hillside.

  “Not for long,” said Jurgen. He crammed two thick fingers in his mouth and whistled. Eight winged shapes clambered from the shadows by the ceiling and plunged screeching from the rafters. “Right, then,” said Jurgen as the Valkyries alighted around him. “Think they can ruin our party, do they?”

  Zac ducked his head and gulped down a breath. The wind was impossibly cold. It snapped at his skin like a thousand biting insects, making his eyes water and his face go numb.

  “I’m free. I don’t believe it – I’m free!” Herya said, but the whistling of the wind stole her words away.

  “What?” Zac asked, straining his ears.

  “Nothing,” Herya said, raising her voice to be heard above the storm. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh? What do you mean, uh-oh?”

  “We’ve got company,” she said as eight winged figures swooped across the sky behind them.

  Zac squinted ahead through the snowstorm. He could see the writhing shapes of Angelo and Odin, still locked in battle, still unaware of the drop into nothingness that lay ahead of them. The sound of each thunderous punch and kick rolled across Asgard. It was surely only a matter of time before the other gods emerged from their palaces to find out what all the racket was about. Zac tried not to think what would happen then.

  “Go right!” Herya barked, snapping him back to the present.

  “What? Why?”

  “Stop asking questions and go right!”

  Zac threw his weight sharply to one side. He heard a short, sharp scream, followed by a crunch. He risked a glance back and saw a Viking lying face down on the hard-packed snow, unmoving.

  “What the Hell—” he began, before a cry of “Geronimo!” and a loud whumpf cut him off. Another Viking plopped into a soft snowdrift just off to the left of the trench.

  Zac looked up and saw the eight Valkyries cutting through the sky above them. Six of them carried Vikings, who dangled from the Valkyries’ grip, wildly waggling their weapons at the world below.

  As Zac watched, one of the Valkyries dropped the man she was carrying. He screamed as he fell, only stopping when he smacked down on to the compacted snow, just a dozen or so metres ahead of them.

  “Hold on!” Zac warned, leaning sharply left. Herya gave a yelp of shock as she was thrown off balance. Not looking back, Zac reached round and grabbed her leg, steadying her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  They swept past the groaning Viking and Zac snatched up the Norseman’s sword. It clattered into the bowl of the shield between him and Herya.

  “Might come in handy,” he explained, biting his lip and leaning his weight towards the front of the shield. It immediately sped up until the snow around them became a streak of blurry white.

  They were drawing closer to the god and the demon, but they in turn were now only thirty or forty metres from the edge. The slope was levelling off, slowing their descent, but there was no way they were going to stop in time.

  “How dare you!” screeched one of the Valkyries above. “How dare you defy the ruler of the gods!”

  “Just the Norse gods, actuall-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” said the Viking she was carrying, and then he hit the ice in front of the shield with a thud. There was no way to avoid him. Both Zac and Herya heard a faint crunch as they slid over the top of him.

  “Ooh, that had to hurt,” Zac winced. He very deliberately didn’t look back.

  “Four more coming in low,” Herya warned. There was a splat from somewhere back up the slope. “Make that three.”

  “We’re almost there!” Zac shouted. Over the sounds of the storm he could hear Odin’s voice now, cursing and swearing as he wrestled with his ‘dragon’. The hissing and screeching he could also hear was Angelo, Zac guessed. Only something truly demonic could make those sounds.

  “Left, left, left!” Herya cried. They both leaned left just as Jurgen hit the ground beside them. He landed on his feet, skidded frantically for a few wild-eyed moments, then his legs went in opposite directions and he did the splits on the ice.

  “Right, right, right!” They leaned again, narrowly avoiding a seventh Viking bomb. His fingers clawed for the edge of the shield, but they were sliding too fast for him to hold on.

  “One more,” Herya said.

  Zac gave a curt nod, keeping his gaze fixed ahead. They were bar
ely fifteen metres from Angelo and Odin now, and they in turn were barely fifteen metres from the drop.

  “Here he comes,” Herya warned. Her eyes followed the falling Viking as he plunged harmlessly into a snowbank several metres to the left. “Aaaand there he goes.”

  Herya turned. “Right, I think we’re in the clear,” she said, and then something hit the back of the shield and the world gave a sharp, sudden lurch. Zac’s chin smashed against the ice as the shield flipped over. The ice hit him like a wall of raw cold, frost biting him as he slid head first down the slope.

  He clawed at the polished ice, trying to get a grip to slow his descent, but his fingers found no purchase on the slippery surface. Behind him, also sliding, Herya was pinned beneath her mother. The older Valkyrie was shouting, screaming, but Zac couldn’t hear her over the howling of the wind and the high-speed thudding of his own racing heart.

  Odin and Angelo were nowhere to be seen. All that lay ahead now was the edge, and beyond that, the abyss. Too fast. He was going too fast. The sword slid by him. One chance, only one chance.

  He stretched out and found the sword’s handle. The edge was five metres away now. Four. Three. Gritting his teeth, he drove the blade into the ice.

  At once, he began to slow down. Those behind him didn’t. Herya crashed into him, her momentum carrying them all the way to the edge of the drop. There was a panicked fluttering of wings and Herya’s mother flew clear, just as the bottom dropped out of the world and Zac felt his legs sliding off into nothingness.

  With a sharp jerk, the sword stopped. A grunt burst from Zac’s lips as every muscle in his arms stretched to tearing point. The pain was like fire. It burned through him, making his head go light. But he hung on, his frostbitten hands locked round the handle of the sword.

  There was a weight on his legs, pulling him down. Craning his neck, he was able to see Herya clinging to his feet. Beneath her was nothing but grey mist, lit up every few seconds by a crackle of lightning.

  He was about to tell her to let go and fly them to safety when he saw her left wing. It drooped at an awkward angle, the white feathers dark with blood. An ornate-handled knife was embedded into the wing just by her shoulder. There was no way she was flying anywhere.