Man with the Iron Heart

by Mat Nastos

  * * *

  From his position in the second-most rear and easily most elegant railway car in the train, Himmler watched Heydrich scowl across the small, round table that separated them. The expression, when coupled with the increasingly inhuman nature of the man’s face, was enough to generate pure terror from the white-coated steward attending every need of the pair of Nazi warlords.

  For Himmler, however, the man’s countenance was exhilarating. The leader of the SS and architect of the Final Solution had watched the man closely for hours, making sure to observe every subtle nuance of Heydrich’s actions and every twitch or alteration of his manner, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Being so close to one filled with the essence of the Jotnar – one of the prime members of the Great Old Ones themselves – had been thrilling for the Nazi. Being near that much potency contained within mere human flesh was intoxicating, to say the least. Himmler longed to claim that power as his own.

  Soon. Aloud, he asked, “What is it, Reinhard?”

  “Death. It is in the air. Can you not feel it?”

  Closing his eyes, Himmler felt nothing out of the ordinary. What wonders could dear Heydrich sense through his bond with Hel’s wolf, Garm? “I feel nothing more than the cool wind of the mountains through the window. Are you sure? Perhaps some water. You’ve had neither food nor drink since we left Prague, my friend.”

  The muffled sound of gunshots had Heydrich leaping to his feet. The man shoved his head out of the coach’s open window at the sound of splintering wood. A growl filtered through the glass before Heydrich jerked his head back inside. He stormed toward the door at the rear of the railcar. “Grimm is free.”

  Himmler nearly spit the mouthful of warm tea he’d had the misfortune of drinking deeply just prior to Heydrich’s pronouncement. How? The puppet of the All-Father was chained. Humiliated. Defeated. And under the guard of a contingent of some of the most experienced veteran troopers in all of Germany. There was no way he could escape.

  Was there?

  “Do wait for me, Reinhard. We will go together and check on our guest.”

  Exiting the train dropped the pair of Nazi commanders into a raucous sea of soldiers running to and fro with guns at the ready. They seemed to be searching for something or, to Himmler’s horrified realization, someone missing from the train.

  “Where is Grimm?!” Heydrich began screaming at the top of his lungs, grabbing one soldier and then another before casting them to the ground in his rage. “Where is the tool of the Aesir? Answer me, fools!”

  “He-he’s gone,” answered a private who was unfortunate enough to be caught in Heydrich’s clutches. “He and the others escaped. They leapt from the bridge and were lost in the river below!”

  Blood spritzed the side of Himmler’s face, as Heydrich’s taloned hand tore into the the private’s jugular. Another bellow burst loose from the Jotnar-host’s lungs.

  “Calm down, Heydrich,” said Himmler from beneath a furrowed brow. “Now.”

  The newly-restored green, monocled eye of Heydrich focused on the outwardly calm facade of Heinrich Himmler. Murder burned in its depths. The man-monster stalked forward, chest heavy in anger.

  “Do not dare to speak to me like one of your servants,” snarled Heydrich, energy flowing from beneath the edges of his goggle. “I will dine on your liver, mortal!”

  A well-manicured hand reached dexterously into the small breast pocket at Himmler’s chest and pulled forth a tiny medallion carved of moonstone, onyx, and hematite. Heydrich paused upon seeing the symbol of Hel dangled delicately from Himmler’s hand.

  "Lady of the darkness, ruler of the night. We sleep within thy shadows to wake into thy light.”

  The last words from Himmler’s mouth enticed a glow from the hanging pendant that dimmed the light in Heydrich’s unholy eye and slowed the clockwork gears of the arcane engine powering the cold iron chest-plate binding him to the mortal plane.

  Himmler smiled as agony convulsed through Heydrich’s body and into the darkest part of his being, that part where the substance of Garm had taken root. When Himmler repeated Hel’s prayer a second time, Heydrich and Garm screamed in unison, their torment echoing across two dimensions. A third recitation to the Goddess of the Norse Underworld and Mistress of Ragnarok forced the merged man and Great Old One to their knees. Smoke streamed from cracks opening up along every inch of exposed flesh on the Reichsprotektor’s body.

  Mastered, the body of Reinhard Heydrich knelt low before Heinrich Himmler, barely able to remain upright and babbling uncontrollably for forgiveness.

  “Do you think the Edda Society would allow one such as you to be brought forth without a leash in place?” asked Himmler, the symbol swaying on a pendulum from the chain looped about his fingers. “I may be a mortal, but no fool am I.” Heydrich’s eyes would have burned Himmler to cinders if he had been able. “Now, dear Reinhard, do return to our coach and wait for my presence.” Thin, oiled hair bobbed as the Reichsführer dismissed the creature who he was sure now plotted his demise. “That will be all.”

  Men cleared a path as Himmler moved along the line of cars toward the front of the train. It took him but a moment to find precisely the man he needed. There, standing off to one side of the stream of soldiers securing the location, stood a particularly large individual in ebony and silver, and bearing the bear skull symbol Himmler had been searching for.

  “Hauptsturmführer Hagen, ” called Himmler.

  The burly head of the elite SS forces stationed in Prague strode briskly over to his commanding officer, his rough hands smoothing down wrinkles in his starched, black duty uniform caused by the recent bout of action. Standing ramrod straight, the man saluted Heydrich with enough force to splinter wood.

  “Heil, Herr Reichsführer!”

  Himmler studied the soldier for a moment before speaking, taking in every inch of the heavily muscled man with no neck and the cunning eyes of a serpent. “Grimm is free.”

  “Yes, Herr Himmler,” Hagan said. “The men set to guard him could not hold him.”

  Himmler gestured to the state of Hagan’s uniform. “Nor could you, it would seem.”

  Hagan had the sense to keep silent, but the flash of yellow in the man’s eyes showed the beast that lived within the soldier was eager for the hunt.

  “You and your men have held the totems of your masters for two turns of the moon, yes?” asked the Nazi General Plenipotentiary, already fully aware of the answer to his question.

  “Yes, Herr Reichsführer! We have trained with them for the changes of two full moons. We are ready!”

  Himmler turned to climb into the transport vehicle idling nearby to take him to the planned slaughter awaiting him in Lezaky.

  “Ensure the machine and the Edda scientists are safe then take your Schwarzbär and bring down our missing rabbits,” he called back over his shoulder to Hagen. “You may do what you wish with the little ones, but bring me the head of Wōten’s pawn. Our game with him is at an end.” He glared at Hagan. “Do not disappoint me again.”

  CHAPTER 17

  BERSERKERGANG

  The final rays of sunlight chased after the fleeing trio of men like fingers of flame dancing between the tall spruce trees of the ancient Czech forest. In spite of having lost all trace of pursuit in the first hours after their escape from the Lezaky-bound prison train, Grimm had pushed his companions hard in their flight. Driven by something neither of the two smaller men could identify.

  Sweat dripped down MacAndrew’s face and into his beard in salty rivulets too numerous to count, and his breath had been coming in increasingly ragged puffs as the kilometers disappeared beneath their feet. Even with his military conditioning, the Scotsman knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace set by the tall German’s unfaltering stride. A wheezing, wet cough grabbed MacAndrew’s attention, pulling his gaze back over his shoulder to stare
at the third member of their flight-bound trio.

  Wittgenstein fared far worse than the two men he ran with. Heydrich had fed deeply upon the man’s life-force in his rage against Odin’s protection of MacAndrew, draining him from the robust fifty-year-old they had first met to the withered, depleted husk struggling not to be left behind. With eyes half-closed, white froth bubbling up at the corners of his mouth, and a heaving chest, MacAndrew knew their comrade would not be long for the world if they continued. The man had to stop, to rest, even if it meant pausing and allowing whatever unseen pursuer Grimm drove them away from to gain ground.

  They had to stop.

  The steel-toed boots issued to the veteran by Her Majesty’s service slowed their rhythm and stopped. Hands – thickly calloused by decades of soldiering – gripped knees aching with middle age as MacAndrew sucked a series of deep gulps of air into his dry, pained lungs.

  Once his body had pulled enough of the quickly-cooling evening air to allow a good bellow, MacAndrew called out to Grimm, hoping to catch the pale giant before he disappeared completely into the shadows engulfing the spaces between the mammoth trees surrounding them.

  “We’ve got to stop, lad! Wittgenstein cannot take much more… and neither can I!”

  “The Jotnar have sent hunters for us, little Celt, and they gain with every second you stand there moaning like a child. If we do not find some place to make a stand, they will overtake us,” said Grimm, returning to his companions. MacAndrew could hear the annoyance festering in the back of the man’s throat. “And they will kill us.”

  Standing his ground in front of the larger man, MacAndrew puffed up to his own not-insubstantial bulk. A finger thick from years of grueling training sessions in the British Army dug harshly into the thick-slabbed muscles of Grimm’s chest. “None of that will matter if we’ve already dropped dead from fatigue, mate.”

  While the two younger men argued, Wittgenstein wandered ahead, leaving the barely-visible deer path they’d been following behind to mount a small rise. In the distance just beyond, the forest thinned where the River Labe snaked back into sight. There, in the clearing, the answer to their plight winked back.

  “Gentlemen!” Wittgenstein called back, interrupting the pair’s heated debate. “I believe I may have found a solution to our predicament. Shelter!”

  Both men joined the scientist at his perch, taking in the landscape before them.

  “That will do,” said Grimm, moving off toward Wittgenstein’s discovery.

  Smiling, MacAndrew clapped Wittgenstein on the back, nearly knocking the debilitated man off his unsteady feet. “Damn straight it will.”

  * * *

  Cracked masonry, rotted timber, and stone blocks were so covered in moss and slime their original color was indistinguishable beneath the green filling in every crevice. To someone in a less desperate-situation, the broken-down, four-story structure greeting the trio would have appeared a depressing, dilapidated remnant of abandonment and decay. But to MacAndrew and his misfit group, the partially-collapsed sawmill was a godsend.

  Most of the upper levels of the building had fallen; its roof collapsed from the weight of unknowable years of neglect. Even the great mill-wheel that had once turned with the steady current of the Labe had rotted away into a mass of unrecognizable wood pulp. All that remained complete and sturdy were the fractured stone walls of the bottom-most floors, although a skeletal brick staircase edged its way up to the partial third and fourth floors. There wasn’t much in the way of protection from the elements. None of the ceiling survived and the entire edifice was open completely to the heavens, but it would be enough to fortify against the still as yet invisible assassins Grimm was convinced closed in on the escaped prisoners.

  “We can work with this. Grimm, help me move some of the fallen ceiling struts in front of the doors and windows. Perhaps between us we can set up a kill-zone in front of the mill,” said MacAndrew. He moved for the mill’s interior, hoping he’d find something usable for defense within.

  “Not in there,” commanded Grimm, barring the way into the demolished stone and wood structure. Instead he pointed to a much smaller building, a tiny shack that stood in the shadow of the larger mill house. The single-room work shed he ushered the men toward, built of solid oak bound with cast-iron bands, and hidden in the lee of the sawmill had held up far better. It would offer more defensibility than the gutted main building.

  Rushing inside, the trio set to fortifying the windows and barring the enclosure’s sole exit with whatever they could find: old tools, battered crates and barrels, and rotted bales of hay.

  It isn’t much. MacAndrew shrugged a mold-encrusted sack of ancient grain against a loose wall panel, but it was better than facing whatever creatures were nipping at their heels out in the open.

  A particularly vicious howl stopped MacAndrew and Wittgenstein in their tracks, halting their work, although Grimm’s own pace never faltered. The sounds, accompanied by the crashing and smashing of large forms pushing their way through branches and bushes, were not far from the fugitives’ position. The Nazis and their pets were close.

  “They come,” said the giant. “We must hurry!”

  “What’s out there?” whispered MacAndrew once the ability to speak had returned to him. “It sounds like dogs. Or wolves.”

  “The Butcher has sent his Schwarzbär against us. Eight or ten of them by my count,” answered Grimm as he braced the last of the room’s barrels against one of the windows, blocking it off from the outside as best he could.

  “Schwarzbär? Bears? They’ve sent bears after us?” quizzed the Scotsman, half-amused at the thought of fighting off a band of circus animals. For some reason, the idea of bears seemed far less terrifying than wolves to him. “No, not bears as you know them. Something worse,” answered Wittgenstein, who squinted through a sliver they’d left uncovered in one of the rear windows to keep watch on their flank.

  MacAndrew gripped the machine pistol he’d stolen during their escape in one hand and picked up a rusted hatchet with the other. He grinned at the two men, both of whom seemed far more worried about fighting bears in the Scotsman’s mind than they should have.

  “Put those down,” said Grimm. “No weapons made of iron or fire can harm the Schwarzbär. No blade forged by man and none of your bullets will pierce their skin. Take this instead.”

  Grimm handed MacAndrew his massive hand-cannon on his way to stand before the still-opened door to outside. The veteran soldier took the weapon and examined it with more detail than he had the first time he’d held the piece.

  The gun was an odd piece: a Chinese-manufactured version of the Mauser – a Shanxi type 17 broomhandle pistol, larger than its German counterpart with its bore set to fire .45 caliber rounds. It was a beast of a weapon and MacAndrew knew it kicked harder than a bad-tempered mule when its trigger was squeezed. As impressive as the Shanxi was, the Scotsman was confused as to why Grimm had given up his firearm, especially since he’d just said MacAndrew’s own pistol was useless against what was coming at them through the woods.

  “I thought you said the creatures couldn’t be harmed by ‘weapons of iron or fire’. What am I going to do with this?” MacAndrew was getting anxious listening to the growls of the berserkergang grow closer and closer to their position.

  From the sounds emanating from the black forest surrounding them, the group was trapped. There would be no easy escape for any of them.

  “Use these.” Grimm tossed the Scot a small leather pouch filled with ten unusual bullets, all brass in appearance and covered in arcane markings.

  “What are they?” asked MacAndrew, rolling one over in his palm.

  “Reliquary rounds,” said Grimm. “They were blessed by sinners and cursed by saints. Very little can withstand them, not even the skin of a werebear. Pick your shots carefully and aim well, my friend. The berserkers will not give you a second chance
to kill them.”

  MacAndrew began loading the unusual projectiles into the over-sized pistol. The thought of magic bullets was more than a little outside his realm of operation, but no more so than fighting against Nazi werebears or any of the other things he’d been forced to endure since landing in Czechoslovakia. Magic or not, the feel of the worn leather grip of the powerful weapon in his hand helped ease the Scotsman’s nerves considerably. If nothing else, at least it would let him go down fighting.

  “What about you? How’re you going to fight them if I’ve got your hand-cannon and magic bullets?”

  A hard grin carved itself across Grimm’s handsome features. Pulling the tattered remains of the old vest from his broad chest, the giant answered as the marble muscles flexed and tightened beneath his skin. “The All-Father says it is not yet my time to walk the halls of the slain. I will ask him for aid in this.”

  “What should I do?” asked the shivering Wittgenstein as the terror and futility of their situation began to overtake him.

  “Keep your head down and try not to die,” answered Grimm as he marched past the elderly scientist and philosopher.

  In defiance of the swarm of death surrounding the decrepit old cabin, Grimm tossed open the wrought-iron bound door with enough force to knock it from the hinges, sending it flying across the unkempt lawn. From inside, MacAndrew heard the man begin the chant, the prayer to Odin and to Thor he had heard spill from Grimm’s lips twice before.

  “All-Father, Gray Wanderer, grant me wisdom, courage, and victory.” Grimm drew his sword, Balmung, once more from the sheath on his waist. With each word, both sword and the runes stretching across his arm began to glow with an inner life of their own. “Friend Thor, grant me your strength. And both be with me.”

  This time, the effect was different for the veteran soldier. Through the darkened brand on his wrist, MacAndrew could feel the energy of the call. And he felt the answer a heartbeat before it came.