by A. L. Knorr
“I didn’t invite them,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
Ninurta laughed, a rolling sound of liquid mirth. “No need to worry. As we flew in, I made certain they will not interfere.”
He took another step and raised a hand to his ear dramatically.
“Listen.” He turned left and right in mock anticipation.
A second later, there were three sharp cracks from among the hills followed by a crunching rumble like distant thunder. In the echoing stillness that followed, a single, pain-riddled shriek carried over the snow. Every hair stood on end at the sound.
“That was the sound of sniper’s rifles suffering catastrophic failures,” Ninurta declared, turning back to me with a sharkish grin. “Now, it’s just you and me, my dear.”
A hummock of earth just behind the demigod exploded with flying snow. Emerging from the eruption like a musclebound jack-in-the-box was Marcus, a loop of rope clutched in both hands. With a speed that belied his bulk, he threw himself on the giant, just managing to slip the noose around Ninurta’s neck and cinch it tight before Ninurta spun with feline agility. One hand blurred out and Marcus was spun like a top before crashing to the ground poleaxed.
“Marcus!” I screamed even as I launched a dart of will to flatten the wedge restraining a trio of man-thick logs. There was a slow, creaking groan as potential energy became kinetic energy and they rolled down the steep slope.
Ninurta was hauled backward with bone-snapping force as the rope attached to his noose followed the logs. I’d dared to hope the force would snap his neck, but I saw his fingers rake deep grooves in the snow before he vanished over the cusp of the hill.
I rushed to Marcus.
He was on his hands and knees, blood flowing freely from his nose and mouth.
“Are you alright?” I asked, kneeling in the snow next to him.
I eyed Ninurta’s followers warily: wide-eyed and motionless. Without orders, they were useless.
“I’m fine.” Marcus spat, streaking the snow with blood as he fought to climb to his feet. With one hand he gripped my arm to steady himself while the other fumbled to free the crude weapon belted to his hip. Determined to have a weapon that wouldn’t betray him, Marcus had fashioned, a primeval axe made from a sheared tongue of slate wedged and bound in place to a tree bough.
We heard the splintery crash-thump of the logs striking the bottom of the slope – where we’d strewn jagged rocks as big as beer kegs to ensure an unpleasant end to Ninurta’s little trip.
“Let’s finish this,” he snarled wetly, baring his teeth in a red grin. “Together.”
With blood smeared across his skin in dark splotches, hefting his slate bladed axe, he looked like a frenzied warrior from the dawn of man.
“Together!” The fire in his eyes was infectious. My wings opened and swung forward, feather-like tines of steel – both sword and shield – responding to my every whim.
We were halfway to the cusp of the hill when Ninurta sprang, fleet as a stag, to the top of the slope.
“A valiant attempt,” he said mildly before letting the snapped noose slip from his fingers. He brushed snow from his coat. “But I am afraid it’s not good enough.”
“I’m just getting warmed up.” I snarled the lie and almost believed it as I launched forward. Marcus, clutching his stone axe in both hands, prowled to my left looking for an opening. We’d planned this attack formation as a hail Mary. I hoped we lived long enough to see if it worked.
Two wings, one high, one low, lanced out, razored pinions ready to slice him into three pieces. The metal creations responded naturally, flowing as quickly as my mind could think. The first two strikes were almost spoiled by my shock at their alacrity.
Ninurta’s agility spared him my first assault. He danced backward, slipping away by scant centimetres. I followed him, alternating probing stabs with two wings while the other two remained bent to guard me against attack.
But no attack came.
He sprang and slid along the crest of the slope, his feet somehow never running afoul on the slick, snowy ground. I went after him, wings lashing up, down, and across. Marcus jogged alongside us like a dog hoping for scraps. My feet hit a frost slicked undulation in the ground, and in trying to stay upright I sent a slash so wide that Marcus had to duck beneath my wing stroke.
“Careful,” Ninurta taunted with a rich, rolling laugh. “This dance is not for the clumsy.”
My breath billowed out in gasps of steam. I looked at Ninurta and saw his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm, his breath gentle, vanishing puffs in the cold night air.
“Dance with this!” I lunged at him with all four wings arched forward.
The topmost two shot over his shoulders as he sank down just enough to avoid them creasing his suit. The lower two stopped dead when his hands clamped over the seeking blades. I felt the terrible strength of his will as much as the power of his muscles.
I tried to drive the blade plumes upward with body and mind, but nothing happened. Then, as I tried to twist the wayward upper wings for another attack, I felt his powers pushing back. Like a swallow in a windstorm, my wings flew backward. My back arched as I threw my abilities into holding them in place, even as Ninurta’s powers twisted them behind my back. I screamed in defiance, but he only smiled that deep-sea predator’s grin.
Just when I thought my mind, body, or possibly both, were about to snap in Ninurta’s psychic grip Marcus darted forward, coming in low and hard to slam the jagged edge of his axe into the back of Ninurta’s knee.
The self-styled king of kings fell to one knee in front of me, his dark eyes wide open at the temerity of the blow. The pressure on me dropped markedly.
“Dance time’s over,” Marcus roared, twisting the axe free and raising it to hack at the back of the giant’s skull. Ninurta slipped away from the stroke with his trademark agility, twisting as he did so to cock back a hand as Marcus’ momentum carried him forward.
Marcus saw the counterattack coming and threw himself backward hard enough that the blow missed him. He sailed through the air to crash and roll back, kicking up lumps of churned snow.
Dark eyes blazing, Ninurta lunged after Marcus. His huge fist pounded the earth with a thump like a mallet. Marcus kept rolling. staying just ahead of Ninurta’s furious pummelling strokes; but he had seconds before he was out-manoeuvred and flattened or driven over the edge of the slope to the rocks below.
I managed to free one wing. Fighting the oppressive power of his omnipresent metallic awareness, I could only achieve a wide slap at the demi-god. But the wings were made from industrial-grade steel, acquired from the shed’s roof. Being battered by one was like taking a series of frying pan blows in rapid succession.
Ninurta rocked back at my ringing strikes but somehow held his feet. Impacts that would have fractured another man’s face hadn’t even left a mark.
A growing sense of desperation had me ripping another wing free, and this time my anger hammered it into a lethal thrust toward his chest.
The rage driven stab ripped through the tailored suit like tissue paper, driving toward flesh. I’d expected resistance, the constriction of meat clinging to the impaling blade, but instead I heard a sharp clang. The thrusting wing slid off Ninurta’s chest and along his ribs to the squeal of metal grating on metal.
Folds of shorn fabric fell away to reveal unmarked flesh.
My stomach retreated toward the soles of my feet as I took another swipe at him. This time, looking me right in the eye, he raised an open hand. Blades that should have sliced his arm off instead sent up a burst of sparks as they bounced off his open palm, utterly impotent.
“I seem to have misjudged you, my child,” he said. “If this is the best you can manage, I vastly over-estimated your abilities.”
“You talk too much,” Marcus barked as he renewed his attack.
He feigned a swing at Ninurta’s legs and then hewed down on the demigod’s shoulder like a lumberjack splitting a log. The force
of the blow required Ninurta to shuffle slightly to the side, but the blow had little effect.
Marcus pressed in, desperate to knock Ninurta off his feet. Blow after crushing blow struck against Ninurta’s shoulder, arm, and back, but he did not fall.
“You are becoming tiresome.” Ninurta grabbed Marcus by the front of his shirt and tossed him toward the shed. Marcus flew, landed hard and rolled across the snow, coming to a stop just outside of a yawning bay door. He was slow to rise.
“Surrendering at this point could spare you and your pet no small amount of pain,” Ninurta suggested in that annoyingly unruffled tone.
I took a deep breath and let out a growl. Ambush and brute force hadn’t worked; what did I have left?
My metallic sense buzzed with strange tones and swirling auras that I wouldn’t expect out here. It was more than just the helicopter, the auras resonated as though within reach.
Raising all four wings to shield myself, I reached out with my metallic sense and nearly recoiled as my mind touched Ninurta.
His body seethed with off-key metallic songs, constantly circulating streams of metal in tune with his every movement. He was so suffused with various elements I wasn’t sure there was any difference between living flesh and living metal. It was awe-inspiring and terrifying in equal measure.
My mind felt a pulse of Ninurta’s will at the same time I heard a dark chuckle.
“Do you understand now?” He squared his shoulders and opened his arms as though welcoming the next attack. “Do you have any idea?”
“I have one.”
I threw out my ringed hand, punching not against his body but into the metallic auras with my mind. I gathered them in my mental fist like the strings of a cello and drew them out. It was like wrestling a cyclone out of the sky, but with the rings feeding into my own power, the streams warped and flexed my direction.
I heard a sharp, pained intake of breath.
“What are you doing?”
Ninurta’s roar snapped my eyes open and what I saw startled me so much I nearly lost my grip.
Thin wisps of red steam rose from the demigod’s skin, tiny motes reflecting the moonlight in flashes. The wisps formed thin contrails lazily snaking their way toward me. Staring in amazement at the success of my gambit, I caught a glimpse of Ninurta’s face. Something alien came into his features: fear. For the first time in a very long time, Ninurta, king of mad kings, was scared.
The expression was quickly buried under an avalanche of rage. His glare threatened to light me ablaze, as I felt his power surge outward in a hate-fuelled shockwave.
My attention divided between the metal I drew from his body and what I was seeing, that barest distraction was the chink he drove through, breaking my hold on his living metal. The bloody fog and its cargo of metal particles flew back to Ninurta to be absorbed into his flesh.
“I am no longer amused.” Ninurta’s voice was as hard and flat as a bar of beaten iron.
The rage simmering in his eyes filled me with dread as he stalked forward. I needed to move, but terror numbed my mind and slowed my limbs.
Ninurta didn’t wait for me to pull myself together.
Like a tidal wave his power crashed down on me, folding my wings around me with such force I was knocked flat. The cold slap of snow against the back of my neck broke my shock just as the wings began to contract, razored pinions cutting into my clothes and flesh. With a mental heave I shoved outward, holding them at bay as I fought for control.
The wings twisted around each other in our competing grips, growing more and more mangled. I drew deeply on the power of the rings again and managed to break his hold. Drawing the remains of the wings together like a huge knotted bludgeon, I launched it at Ninurta.
The gnarled metal club spun end over end and I drove it on with all I had until it struck Ninurta full in the chest. Demigod and missile sailed through the air to smash into the helicopter. The side of the aircraft buckled around Ninurta, shards of glass and metal flying, pinning him inside.
He wasn’t beaten, but the fight was over. Cuts from the wings leaked blood over my torn clothes. Pain worked with exhaustion to drain me completely and I struggled to find the strength to climb to my feet.
I looked at Marcus, limping toward me, one of his legs stiff and dragging. He nodded, his battered face fighting to give me an encouraging smile. He was waiting on me, patiently like always.
Ninurta emerged from the ruined aircraft and I felt his anger sizzle through the air like heat rippling off a furnace. He rose not just out of the wreckage but into the air to glare down at us.
Marcus spat and made a staggering throw with his axe, the lopsided missile sailed off into the dark, missing its target.
Ninurta floated toward us, seeming to savour the dread inspired by his slow, sinister approach.
We’d fought hard, but we could still buy more time.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Marcus and I made a lurching retreat back into the utility shed.
Ninurta didn’t stop us. I threw out a lash of power to drag the bay door shut behind us, plunging our world into darkness. Hand in hand we picked our way toward the rear of the shed.
“So this is how you would die then?” Ninurta’s disdain was clear even through the closed door. “Cowering like cornered vermin? You are utterly unworthy of the gifts of my blood!”
“Keep waggin’, gaffer,” Marcus said. “Just keep waggin’ that tongue.”
“I could crush you like a parasite picked from a beast’s back.”
There was a squeal of tortured metal as the walls of the shed buckled inwards. Toolboxes shuddered and jangled, and the two vehicles bounced and skidded towards each other just as Marcus and I passed between them. We sprang clear as they crashed together.
“Or perhaps I could sear you off like a leech.”
The walls stopped collapsing, which was just as well because the escape hatch we’d fashioned in the back of the shed had been reduced to a narrow slit. I felt a change in the metal as the walls began to shimmer and glow. My skin prickled as a wave of heat washed over me.
“Wait,” I urged Marcus, too late.
A searing hiss was followed by a choked back cry of pain, his attempt to open the hatch thwarted.
The glow of the walls grew as the heat intensified as Marcus stuffed his burned fingers into his mouth, no doubt to cool them as well as muffle any further cries of pain. The room continued to brighten as the temperature rose, making it hard to breathe.
My vision began to blur, spots springing up in my field of vision as I tried to gather the focus it would take to open the hatch with my powers. My heart hammered in my ears as I gasped, the air seeming terribly thin.
Marcus crumpled next to me, and I realised with a drowsy blink that I was on my knees on the dirt floor. I smelled smoke and realised with a level of calm that was entirely inappropriate that the smoke was coming from me: wisps rose from my clothes, my skin, and the ends of my hair.
“Or perhaps something more dramatic.” Ninurta’s voice came from somewhere far off.
The temperature dropped as the glow receded from the walls.
“Yes, perhaps I should introduce you and these hallowed witnesses to the power that brought the proud kings of Mesopotamia to their knees. Listen now to your coming death, and despair. Don’t worry; I’ll give you plenty of time.”
The portal was fading from sight as I fought for consciousness. My limbs felt as heavy as lead weights.
Somewhere high, high above the shed, I heard a strange sound.
“Now you will come to understand the power you so foolishly scorned!” Ninurta bellowed as the sound grew.
“Give it a rest,” I said, beginning to sink down on top of Marcus.
He wasn’t holding me, but touching him was good enough. Here at the end.
A rush of cold, clean air slapped my face and punched its way into my shrivelled lungs. I found the strength to lift my head and see that the hatch had been opened.
Moonlight sparkled on a pool of melted snow. It was beautiful.
A figure, nothing more than a silhouette, passed through the portal. Outside, the strange sound was growing.
“Get up,” hissed a voice. My oxygen-starved brain struggled to remember it, I’d heard it before.
Hands grip me, dragging me to my feet.
“Ibby please!” the voice begged.
With a groan I compelled my muscles into service.
I staggered a few steps through the open portal. Looking up at the now open sky, a star streaked through the heavens. Ninurta’s words bubbled up in my mind: it was coming straight toward us.
I swung around drunkenly, almost keeling over in the mud.
“Marcus!” I croaked through a desiccated throat.
A woman emerged from the hatch dragging Marcus by the arm.
Stumbling over my own feet, I went to help her. Together we yanked Marcus through the hatch and into the frigid mud. The cold and wet impact startled Marcus into a coughing wakefulness. We each got under an arm and started an ungainly run into the woods behind the shed.
The winter air stung my lungs but cleared my head. I looked over at our rescuer in the dapples of moonlight between the tree branches.
Daria looked back at me, eyes wide with fear. “Run! Don’t talk!”
I looked back just as we dropped down into a small valley – to see the falling star strike the shed behind us.
Trees groaned and bent as a ripping wind tore at their tops and the world erupted in fire.
Fourteen
We ran through burning trees, Marcus somehow getting his legs under him, which was good because the man was ridiculously heavy.
Snow hissed into churning clouds of steam. The world was wreathed in a cold fog that clung to the skin like slime. The fog mixed with ash and smoke to smother and choke. My head swam with the madness of the situation, but there was no time to figure it out.
So I ran.
My foot caught on a root and I pitched forward, sliding across the ground. At least there was no pain. I was too numb for that. Wheezing, I tried to force air into my lungs, utterly convinced that I had nothing left. Looking up, I saw Marcus and Daria staggering back to get me.
