The Crimson Sky

by Joel Rosenberg

  Nothing did. Not even the universe.

  Ian sighed.

  Ian shook his head. Trying to take the long view had never been a workable strategy for him, and probably wouldn’t ever be. It just wouldn’t be the same, when the nearest physician was in an ER in Grand Forks.

  “So why all the interest?” Doc asked. “Just curiosity? Or what?”

  Curiosity? Sure. “Mainly, it’s a bad habit,” Ian said.

  “Do tell.”

  “I… try too hard to figure things out.”

  “And that’s a bad habit?”

  “Can you figure everything out, Doc?”

  “Hey, I’m a doctor. Of course I can.”

  Ian shrugged. If Doc didn’t want to give a serious answer, well, then Ian didn’t have to, either.

  Sherve bit his lip. “Okay, fine. There’s a lot I can’t figure out, but I don’t let it bother me.”

  “Good for you. I do. It’s more a compulsion than anything else.”

  You try to outgrow it, but you never can.

  What you grow up with is normal; it’s only later that it turns crazy on you. It was normal to have a father who would strike out at you with his words or his hand, and it was normal to try to figure out what you had done wrong that had made him do it, this time.

  If only, you thought, if only you got all your ducks lined up in a row, if only you understood everything, and knew everything, then you could do everything right and this time he’d smile at you, he’d hug you, he’d like you.

  But that was bullshit. Ian hadn’t gotten beaten for not cleaning his room (the books were out of order and the loose papers were shoved under his bed), although he hadn’t, and he didn’t get shoved down the stairs for dawdling on his way home from school, although he had. Those were the triggers, the excuses, not the reasons. You couldn’t stop it by figuring it all out and doing it all right, because it wasn’t about you, and it didn’t matter what you did.

  The trouble was, he couldn’t stop trying to figure it all out, and when he wasn’t watching himself, that old superstition welled up, that old myth that only if he knew everything, if he understood everything, it would all be all right.

  Hosea’s hand griped Ian’s shoulder. “Do not whip your own spirits,” he said in Bersmal—for privacy perhaps, although both the Thorsens spoke Bersmal as well as Ian did. “I beg your pardon, Doctor,” Hosea said, this time in English. “I told Ian to be easy on himself. There is a reason that they call it ‘abuse,’ you know.”

  “Yeah.” Doc shrugged an apology. “It was a stupid question. Kathy Aarsted’s the same way.”

  “Kathy Bjerke,” Ian said, correcting. “And it wasn’t Bob Aarsted who abused her.”

  Doc grinned. “You can put money on that, kid. If you can find somebody fool enough to bet with you.”

  Karin Thorsen still wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  You know, he wanted to say, maybe it’s about time we put all that behind us.

  The last time he had taken a Hidden Way to Tir Na Nog, it had been at her pressuring, and she had rushed him into going through in an attempt to preempt either her son’s or her husband’s having to walk the soil of Tir Na Nog once again.

  “It’s okay, Karin,” he said, quietly, knowing what she was thinking about.

  Thorsen’s face was as impassive as carved granite.

  Hosea smiled, and Sherve nodded his agreement. “It worked out well enough, in the end.”

  The fact that a gorgeous woman, even one in her early forties, could wrap a man just barely into his twenties around her little finger with no more than a chin quiver was hardly news.

  Besides, Ian had a thing for gorgeous older women. One—particularly gorgeous—and remarkably older—woman, in particular.

  How old was Freya? And how could you measure such a thing? What was the proper yardstick? Given that the Old Gods had retired to Tir Na Nog long ago, and simple years wouldn’t do. Was it eons? Legends? Ages?

  Never mind.

  The problem was here and now.

  Ian’s hand dipped into his pocket, and his fingers closed around the warmth of the ring once more. He slipped it onto his thumb.

  He concentrated, and thought, Really, Karin, it’s okay. I’m not mad, not any more. She had viewed him as more expendable than her husband and son, and she had quite cleverly manipulated Ian into a dangerous situation that could easily have gotten him killed. But Ian wasn’t angry at her. He was jealous of Torrie and Thorian, sure—nobody had ever been that devoted to Ian Silverstein—but he wasn’t angry.

  It’s okay. All is forgiven, he thought, willing her to believe him. It was true. You were allowed to persuade your friends that you had forgiven them, if you had; it wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t an abuse of the ring.

  The ring pulsed, painfully tightening and then releasing on his thumb in time with his heartbeat.

  Hosea nodded in agreement.

  Karin Thorsen sighed, and visibly relaxed, and cocked her head to one side. “You look far away.”

  Hosea chuckled. “That he’s been.”

  He sat down next to Ian, reached for a roll of lefse from the plate on the table, and took a tentative nibble. Nice—the usual way to eat the soft potato flatbread was to spread a thin layer of butter over it, sprinkle on a little sugar, and then roll it up, but Karin had substituted a generous portion of her summer raspberry preserves—and maybe a little lemon zest?—on the lefse before rolling it up and cutting it like sushi.

  Hosea was capable of putting away more food than Ian would have thought possible to fit into that skinny frame, but he didn’t follow the local custom of a heavy breakfast any more than Ian did.

  “That he will be again, I don’t doubt,” Hosea said. “The winter out on the plains here is an acquired taste.”

  Was Ian’s restlessness that transparent?

  Hosea nodded, answering the unasked question. Yes, it was that transparent. At least to him. But maybe not everybody else could see it.

  “Be that as it may,” Thorian Thorsen said, rising to his feet, “for now, Ian Silverstein and I have a shift to take, and little enough time to get there.” He rose to his feet and took a last bite of toast, washing it down with a last swig from his coffee cup. “Come, Ian Silverstein.”

  “You bet.”

  There was an old tan-and-Bondo Ford LTD station wagon parked down the road that led to the small stand of trees surrounded on all sides by snowy fields, which was all that remained of what had been some sort of sacred place a few hundred or a few thousand years before. Off in the trees, a wisp of smoke worked its way through the gray branches, only to be caught and shattered in the light wind.

  Thorian Thorsen eased the Bronco onto the hard-packed ground next to the Ford, leaving plenty of room for Ian to swing the door all the way open, which he did. The air in the Bronco had been wonderfully warm; the outside air hit Ian with a cold slap.

  You know it’s cold when you take a sniff and your boogers freeze, Ian thought, adjusting the cuffs of his parka to nest over his gloves before he shouldered his bag and Giantkiller’s cue case and followed Thorsen down the path of squeaking snow and into the woods.

  It was a short walk, and it was good to get out of the wind, even though the naked trees only broke it up a little. At minus-God-only-knows, even the lightest breeze sucks every bit of the heat right out of you, and any relief whatsoever is always welcome.

  The area around the cairn had been cleared that fall, and a warming hut, built out of an old ice fishing house, had been brought in. One wall had been cut almost completely away and left open toward the fire, which was still burning on a circle of three flat stones just behind the dark hole in the snow, itself in front of the old stone cairn that dated back to God-knows-when.

  It wasn’t Lakota—Jeff Bjerke’s mother was a quarter Lakota, and she had talked to some tribal elders down in Pipestone and Rosebud—and the history of this part of the world before the Lakota was kind of sketchy. The various Plains Indian tribes had been t
oo busy trying to scratch a living out of the forest and plains between making war on each other to take copious notes.

  Or maybe it was just that they were considerate of future archaeologists?

  Mmmm, probably not.

  There was something about a fire that was even more warming than the temperature, which was just as well, given the temperature. Fire had melted down through the snow, and the snow had turned to water, trickling down into the hole. It was easy to ignore the hole in front of the fire, and in fact, it took some work to look at it for the first time.

  Ian wondered, again, how much water it would take to fill up the hole.

  Was it even possible?

  Probably not. The properties of the Hidden Ways were built into the very structure of the universe, and it wasn’t likely that men or Man could change them. It was hard enough to notice them.

  Davy Larsen was already halfway out of the warming house, a Garand rifle cradled in his arms, the muzzle carefully pointed in a neutral direction, the butt of a .45 semi-auto sticking out of his open parka.

  Ian didn’t know much about guns, and wasn’t much interested in them. They didn’t have any, well, life to them, not the way a sword did.

  And, besides, Hosea had said that they wouldn’t work in Tir Na Nog. No, that wasn’t quite it—he’d said they wouldn’t work, or would work too well. Ian didn’t particularly like the idea of confronting a Köld with a gun that would either blow up in his hand or only make clicking sounds. Come to think of it, he didn’t particularly like the idea of confronting a Köld, not if there was another good option.

  “Morning, Ian, Thorian,” Davy said as he limped toward them, his words turning into a yawn.

  “David.” Thorsen nodded.

  “Hosea and Karin well?” he asked, politely, although there was just a hint of emphasis on Hosea’s name.

  “He’s doing just fine,” Ian said. “Haven’t seen a seizure all winter, and he’s down to his old doses of the anticonvulsants, Doc says.”

  “Well, that’s good.” Davy grinned as he held out the rifle to Thorsen. “Wouldn’t want him addicted,” he said. “Here. Have a rifle.”

  Thorian Thorsen accepted the Garand and yanked the bolt open, catching the ejected round with a surprisingly quick movement of his right hand, which Ian had never seen anybody else dare to try, much less pull off in such a casual, matter-of-fact manner.

  His gloved hand thumbed it back into place, but not before Ian noted that the bullet was silver.

  As well it should have been. One of the manufacturers made bullets called Silvertips, but these weren’t them. These were cast from jeweler’s silver—the silver carefully mixed with old typesetting lead to give the bullet more heft and make it expand better in either human or nonhuman flesh—then formed, swaged, and loaded in the Thorsens’ basement with that funny-looking machine that reminded Ian of a blender with a thyroid condition.

  Any bullet would hurt a Son of Fenris, at least for a few moments, but it took more than lead to put one down dead. It could be done, mind; the skeletons of six Fenrir lay buried in a field not too far from here as proof that that could be done, that they could be killed.

  Giantkiller could do it, too; Hosea had tempered the edge in his own blood.

  Ian set the cue case down on the crude table, opened it, and brought out Giantkiller in its scabbard. The new bell guard that Hosea had fitted to it was too shiny; maybe he should take some steel wool to it and blur the surface. His sword, like all the blades that Hosea had made for them, had been tempered in the blood of an Old One, and that gave it a certain authority. Magic? Not quite. But close enough—Giantkiller had slain a Köld and Ian himself had killed a fire giant with its hilt in his hand, and it was perfectly capable of doing in a Son, if it was necessary.

  As it might be. This exit from the Hidden Ways had remained open at least since the Night of the Sons, and showed no sign of closing.

  Could it be closed?

  Even Hosea couldn’t say.

  And if it was closed, did that make them safe? Or was there another exit, another adit, perhaps a thousand yards or a thousand miles away, that would open instead? You couldn’t fill it up, you couldn’t close it. Not so you’d be sure it stayed closed.

  But you could watch it, and the men of Hardwood took their turns on watch.

  Ian shrugged. What else could they do? Announce to the whole fucking world that there was a Hidden Way in a small clearing in a stand of trees surrounded by cornfields in eastern North Dakota?

  What if somebody believed them? What if word of the Night of the Sons got out? Werewolves, attacking a North Dakota town, killing two people and injuring more?

  Look what one silly little story had done to Roswell, New Mexico.

  And this would be far worse, because it was true.

  It isn’t only evil that hates the light. So does privacy. So does normality.

  So does life, at least as lived in Hardwood.

  Hardwood could become famous, and while the Hidden Way would conceal itself from those who didn’t know what they were looking for, life here would wither and die in the light of the flashbulbs of the National Enquirer.

  That sort of publicity would be the end of life in this little town, and this little town suited its people just fine, thank you, and if keeping yet another secret would protect that life and that town and those people, then Hardwood could watch over the Hidden Way until the end of time.

  It was boring, mainly, is what it was, but of all ways you could suffer in the world, boredom was Ian’s absolute favorite. You could let your mind wander when you were bored, and while he preferred to keep busy, that was better than some things.

  If only it wasn’t so damn cold.

  If only—

  He heard a distant whimper, and was on his feet even before Thorsen was.

  Guns were foreign to him, but at least a gun stood a chance of stopping a Son before it came close enough that he could feel its breath on him, so as he tore off his gloves to draw Giantkiller, he grabbed the pistol out of his pocket, as well.

  The sound came again, and if his ears weren’t playing tricks on him, it was coming from the direction of the fire, from the exit, from the Hidden Way.

  Finger off the trigger until you have a target, he reminded himself, hoping that his hand was trembling more from the cold than from fear.

  But shit, he’d been frightened before, and he’d be frightened again. It didn’t matter how you felt, as long as you did the right thing.

  “I’m to your right, Ian Silverstein,” Thorsen’s voice said in a rasp. “Careful, now.”

  A thick, hairy hand reached up from inside the hole and grasped the edge of it, followed immediately by another, and for just a moment, a shock of black hair, and then a heavy eye ridge over two wide eyes peeked out.

  And then, with a sound that was more a groan of pain than a grunt of effort, the fingers slipped and disappeared back down the hole.

  Later, he wasn’t sure that his claim that he had thought it through was accurate.

  It was more reflex than reason that had him drop the gun to one side and run for the hole, leaping down it without so much as a moment’s hesitation.

  It was probably stupid, but he did have Giantkiller in his right hand, and as he landed on the hard ground at the bottom of the hole, he broke his fall as best he could with a roll like a skydiver’s.

  Pain tore through his left shoulder in a horrid red wave that pulled a scream from his lips but didn’t loosen his grip on his sword.

  He slid on the icy ground and into—

  —and into the Hidden Way, and the curious silence that had no ring of tinnitus in it, the lack of cold that had no warmth, the absence of pressure that gave no release.

  —peace. And silence. And an absence not only of pain but also of feeling.

  Ian stood, surrounded by the gray light that seemed centered on him, vanishing off in the distance of the tunnel.

  He wasn’t cold anymore. Nor tired,
nor hungry, nor full, nor much of anything. Not even in pain. His ankles, his hip, no matter how well he’d broken his fall—

  But even his shoulder didn’t hurt. He worked his left arm. It didn’t seem to want to move easily, but there was no pain at all.

  He remembered banging his head against the hard ice at some point, but that didn’t hurt either, and even though his probing fingers found a bump, and came away tipped with red blood, there was no feeling of wetness of blood running down the side of his neck because there wasn’t blood running down the side of his neck.

  There was a timelessness, a feelinglessness that came with the Hidden Ways, and while he should have been expecting it, each time it had come as a dull surprise, and this time was no different.

  It wasn’t a bright shock, not reassuring or even frightening—in some ways that would have been better: that would have meant he was feeling something—but just a surprise, just different.

  He was breathing—but hot heavily, not panting, not gasping, just breathing in and out—but he had the strong sensation that he could just stop and it would make no difference at all.

  The body lying on the floor of the tunnel wasn’t breathing. It was a short, thick man, wearing rags that looked like they had once been a tunic of sorts, belted only with a length of tattered rope.

  Or not a man. The forehead was too low, and sloped, and the hair was thicker on his arms and legs than Ian had ever seen on a human. He had been badly hurt. A gash on his right thigh leered wide and red, and another on his ribs revealed white bone.

  He wasn’t bleeding, not anymore. The dead don’t bleed.

  Ian nodded. It was a vestri, of course. What Ian would once have called a Neanderthal, perhaps; what the legends had called a dwarf.

  Ian should have felt something about it lying there dead, but he didn’t. The Hidden Way robbed him of feelings in much the same way that it robbed him of feeling. Intellectually, he knew he should look around for danger, for some sign of whatever it was that had killed the dwarf, but the thought had no emotional weight to it.

  Still, he looked down the tunnel as far as he could see. Nothing. Just grayness, vanishing off into darker grayness, eventually becoming black.