Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  Thirty-nine

  When we emerged from the Vault of Preer, we could hear bedlam above us. We crowded and jostled our way up the steps, out of the longhouse, and into chaos.

  Horses whinnied and screamed. Smoke and the wails of thralls wafted through the air like pollen in the spring. There was a confusion of bodies running to and fro, yelling and, in some cases, howling their fear at the heavens.

  Althyof pulled two long, thin daggers from the twin sheathes at his belt and started singing in a very strange tongue. A cadmium red aura faded into existence around the blades. The Tverkr nodded once to Meuhlnir and moved off into the smoke, seeming more to dance away than to walk. Meuhlnir grunted and walked in the other direction, his hammer out and his eyes sparkling with pent up lightning.

  The three Alfar that had sworn to be my bodyguards drew their weapons and took up positions around me. Urlikr was to my left and a step behind. Skowvithr stood next to him on my right. Yowtgayrr stood between me and everything else, swinging his blades in small, experimental circles.

  “No,” I said. “That isn’t going to work, Yowtgayrr. You are in my field of fire.”

  He shook his head. “My place is between you and whatever wants to harm you.”

  “No, trust me. I can take care of most of what I can see. I need protection for the directions I can’t see.”

  Yowtgayrr looked me in the eye for a protracted moment and shrugged. “As you say.”

  “I will shout ‘reloading’ when my weapons need ammunition. At that point, feel free to step forward. I’ll then shout ‘ready’ when I’ve reloaded, and you’ll need to step back at that time. I’ll try to remember to yell ‘firing’ before I shoot. These are loud, and it can be distracting at first.”

  “Understood,” said Yowtgayrr.

  “Okay. Since the others have taken the right and the left, we’ll go straight forward.” I put words to action, with the three Alfar close behind me, trying to see everything at once.

  I pulled my pistols and made them ready. The small bucklers clipped to my forearms were a bit awkward, but didn’t seem to affect my movement. I could hear the strange, shrieking howl of the demons that had pursued us across the plain. “Demons,” I said to Yowtgayrr.

  “And Svartalfar,” he said with a scowl. “I can smell them.”

  “Then there is likely a dragon around, too. A big white one, but he might not be able to fly. I met him before.”

  Yowtgayrr nodded, face grave.

  We pressed on through the smoke, seeing dark shadows of running men, but unable to tell who or what they were. We were moving toward the large stables. Flames licked at the sides of the wooden building.

  Three neckless, matte black figures loomed at me from the smoke. “Firing!” I shouted pulling the triggers of both my weapons twice. The roar of the firearms added to the din, and two of the three demons spun in opposite directions and fell to the ground, their chartreuse ichor splattering across the ground.

  The middle one let loose with one of those eerie wailing shrieks and then sprinted forward. Something was wrong with the way it moved—not just that its limbs were too short, but something insectile and twitchy in how its muscles bunched and relaxed. It held its stubby little arms out in front of its too long torso, hooking its three fingers into talons. Its mouth was just a straight slit in the middle of what passed for its face, and I fired Kunknir into that slit at point-blank range. The thing’s head deflated like a popped balloon, and its ichor splashed over its shoulders as it fell to the ground.

  The three Alfar stood staring—shifting their eyes between me and the bodies of the demons. Yowtgayrr nodded and pointed forward. I turned to meet the two Svartalfar menacing us. Their eyes tracked Kunknir and Krati as I spun toward them, and they began to circle in opposite directions—splitting up to keep me from targeting them both at the same time. Unlike the demons, their movements were graceful and showed an economy of movement like a trained dancer or master martial artist.

  “Firing,” I said. I snapped two shots with Krati at the one circling to the left—more to distract him than to do real damage—and he dove to the ground, impossibly fast. Giving my attention to the Svartalf circling to the right, I shot him once in the face with Kunknir.

  “Behind us!” shouted Skowvithr. Steel clashed on steel as the Alfar met the threat.

  I swung Kunknir across the front of my body and squeezed off a round at the remaining Svartalf. I didn’t have a good shot, and it was more to make him keep his head down than anything else, but the bullet took him in the center of his chest, flinging him to the ground with a splatter of charcoal colored blood.

  Behind me, my three Alfar protectors fought in a fierce battle with five other Svartalfar. Yowtgayrr spun in tight, graceful circles, keeping three of the Svartalfar busy, slashing at them and parrying their attacks. He made them look clumsy—like children fighting a master. Urlikr decapitated his opponent with a scissor-like motion of his longsword and dagger and then moved to help Yowtgayrr. Pale rose blood dripped from a shallow cut across Skowvithr’s cheek.

  The Svartalf facing Skowvithr held a black, single-edged short sword in each hand, and whirled them about, keeping them in constant motion, crouched low to the ground. With a cry, he sprang at Skowvithr, hacking at him with both blades. Skowvithr parried and fell back from the onslaught, eyes wide, mouth panting. I pointed Kunknir at the Svartalf and shot him in the chest. Skowvithr nodded his thanks and wiped at the blood streaming down his cheek.

  Yowtgayrr and Urlikr were keeping the three remaining Svartalfar busy with feints and vicious, sweeping cuts with their longswords. The Svartalfar fell back into the swirling smoke, and we followed them in.

  Subharmonics from a basso roar made our weapons vibrate in our hands. “Dragon!” I yelled. “We can’t fight it in this smoke.”

  “Agreed,” said Yowtgayrr.

  We backed toward the corrals. The dragon roared somewhere in the smoke as it pounded toward us. The beast was moving fast, and we were moving slow. We turned and sprinted toward the corral.

  Thunder boomed, and lightning lit up the smoke on the other side of the paddock. Althyof wasn’t visible, his glowing, cartoon daggers not withstanding, nor were any of the others, but the sounds of battle surrounded us.

  We broke out of the smoke and leapt over the fence surrounding the closest corral. We ran toward the opposite side, hoping to put as much distance between the edge of the smoke and us. Behind us, the dragon let loose another deafening cry.

  We reached the far edge of the corral and turned around, putting the corral fence to our backs. Yowtgayrr stood to my left, while Urlikr and Skowvithr took up positions on my right. I had nine or ten rounds left in Krati, but only two or three rounds left in Kunknir and didn’t want to try reloading with a dragon charging at me, so I ejected the magazine into the pouch Prokkr had added to the belt.

  As the weight of the magazine hit the pouch, one of the little clips holding the magazines for Kunknir rotated in a clever way, making the magazine stick forward at an angle, so I could just slide the gun down over it. As I did so, the clip released the magazine. Prokkr was a genius.

  The dragon thundered, sounding very close, but I still couldn’t see it. Seven Svartalfar edged out of the smoke on our far-right flank but didn’t seem to see us, so I held my fire—I wanted all the rounds I had for the dragon.

  The Svartalfar edged farther to the right, eyes glued to the smoke. I wasn’t sure if they were stalking someone or trying to avoid a pissed-off dragon, but as long as they continued to ignore us, I was happy to leave them be.

  The smoke seemed to solidify and bulge in front of us. Then there was a strange growling noise. It sounded like a big, pissed-off dog, only much louder and deeper in pitch.

  The smoke swirled away and there the dragon stood. It had its long, sinuous neck arched so that its head was only eighteen inches from the ground, and it was glowering right at me. It didn’t seem to notice the Alfar on either side, or if it did, it did
n’t care a whit about them. It opened its mouth.

  I started pulling the triggers of each weapon as fast as I could. Bullets poured out of both guns, and I could see rounds from Krati ricocheting from the dragon’s scales down the left side of its neck. At the same time, slugs from Kunknir were slamming into its open mouth, shattering its fangs and pulping its tongue and lower jaw. The dragon jerked its head up and to the left, trying to get its mouth and face out of the stream of lead I was throwing at it.

  Rounds from Krati, which couldn’t penetrate its scales, threw sparks into the dragon’s right eye. I was still firing both pistols, intending to empty both magazines into the dragon’s face if I could, and rounds from Kunknir seemed to curve in midflight to slam into the side of the beast’s head. Unlike the lead slung from Krati, the Kunknir’s bullets cut right through the dragon’s scales as if they were tissue paper.

  The dragon screamed in pain and hatred. It leapt upwards, its powerful hind legs propelling it about fifteen feet in the air, and then snapped its wings open and cupped them to catch as much air as possible. The gunshot wounds I’d inflicted a few days earlier were almost healed, but the fresh, baby-pink membrane wasn’t strong enough yet for flight, and the new skin ruptured, tearing even bigger holes in the wing than the bullets had.

  The dragon shrieked in pain and flopped on its opposite side in midair. It tucked its good wing close to its body and fell into the smoke. Wood splintered and tore, what I assumed was the stable being crushed under the dragon’s weight, and then the air rent with screams of pain and rage from the beast.

  “Hank, to the left!” screamed Yowtgayrr.

  Four of the matte black demons had snuck up our left flank while we’d been focused on the dragon. Two of them swept their talon-like fingers at Yowtgayrr, and the other two came straight at me.

  I pulled both triggers and screamed the activation word for my cloak in desperation. Slugs slammed into the demons, the ones from Krati going a little wild, but still probably fatal shots. The bullets from Kunknir slammed into the demon’s center of mass, spraying its chartreuse ichor through the air. As the cloak started to “twist my fettle,” the ichor started to fall on me, and searing pain erupted from the left side of my face.

  I couldn’t think, but I knew what to do from long practice at dealing with agony. I screamed.

  Urlikr and Skowvithr leapt to Yowtgayrr’s aid, passing right through me. The three Alfar dispatched the two remaining demons as my ethereal sounding cries of pain echoed across the corral.

  As the two bodies fell, my cloak’s enchantment wore off, my fettle untwisted, and I fell on top of the two bullet-riddled bodies at my feet. The pain was still there, but endorphins, dynorphins, and enkephalins had started doing their collective jobs of diminishing the pain. Sweat began to pour off me and vomit splattered across the ground and mixed with the demons’ chartreuse ichor.

  “Hank! Your eye!” panted Skowvithr.

  Agony beat from my left eye socket in waves, and I staggered. Yowtgayrr took me by the arm and half-supported me, half drug me over to a trough filled with water. He started splashing water across the left side of my face.

  Ichor, gooped in my left eye socket, reacted with the water, hissing and spitting flecks of acid in every direction. I gasped and tried to push Yowtgayrr’s hands away, but his grip was like iron. I covered my eye with my hands.

  “Hank! I must wash it out!” shouted Yowtgayrr. “Skowvithr, get his hands.”

  Skowvithr took both my wrists and wrested my hands clear of my face. I struggled as more water seemed to ignite in my eye socket. I shouldn’t have been fighting them, but the lizard part of my brain insisted.

  The water kept coming, as did the pain it caused. Skowvithr held on with a grip like iron. I was soaked through, but still, the water came. The pain decreased at last. I was exhausted by the time I regained my senses, and instead of holding me by the wrists, Skowvithr had me under the arms and was keeping me from falling on my face.

  Urlikr was scrubbing something in the water trough, and eventually, my exhausted mind realized he was trying to clean the ichor off my cloak. Yowtgayrr was standing bent over, hands on his knees and taking big gulps of air.

  “Leave it, Urlikr,” said Yowtgayrr with exhaustion and worry in his voice. “We have to get Hank to cover.”

  Urlikr pulled the leather cloak out of the trough and flipped it around my shoulders. When it landed, more of the pain dissipated, and I sighed with relief.

  Yowtgayrr picked up Skowvithr’s weapons, put them in their sheaths and then retrieved his own longsword and dagger from where he’d dropped them. “Urlikr, you take the rear. I’ll go ahead, and Skowvithr will help Hank. We are headed back to the longhouse, if it still stands, and will retreat down to the Vault of Preer. If necessary, we will take Hank to Alfhaym and then return to help what survivors there are.”

  “Krati and Kunknir,” I whispered.

  Skowvithr shifted me so that my left arm was across his shoulders. “In their sheath-things,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  Some of my strength returned as my pain levels came closer to the threshold the cloak was able to handle, and I took more of my own weight on my own two feet. We set off toward the edge of the smoke, in the direction that would take us back to the longhouse.

  “Dragon?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” said Skowvithr.

  The Svartalfar I’d seen earlier were no longer visible, and we slipped into the smoke without incident. Yowtgayrr walked in front of us with the grace of a big cat hunting prey. I strained my ears but didn’t really have the energy to distill the chaotic sounds I could hear into anything sensible. Horses galloped past us in the smoke, trumpeting their fear, but there was nothing we could do for them.

  Yowtgayrr stopped short and pointed to our right. Something tall and ugly came at us from out of the smoke. It was taller than a man and had black horns coming out of the side of its head, and I decided it must be what Meuhlnir had called a fire demon in his tale about Muspetlshaymr.

  The fire demon saw us and raised a sword that looked like it was more jagged scrap metal than the work of a smith. He opened his mouth and bellowed, and I could see the fiery glow dancing in the back of his throat.

  Yowtgayrr set himself to meet the demon’s charge, but I pulled Kunknir from its holster and fired four times. The reports rolled through the smoke like thunder, and the bullets slammed into the demon’s head rather than center of mass, which is what I’d aimed at. The demon’s head rocked back on his shoulders, and he stood up very straight and then stiffened before falling over backward like a felled tree.

  The longhouse loomed out of the smoke ahead of us, and we started toward it.

  The dragon roared from behind us, sounding close. Yowtgayrr whirled, his eyes scanning the smoke.

  “Can we make it back to the longhouse?” I asked.

  “If we don’t meet any other demons or Svartalfar on the way,” whispered Yowtgayrr. “I think it is a bad risk.”

  “You want to fight it?” asked Urlikr, sounding like that was the last thing he expected.

  “Hank drove it off before,” said Skowvithr. He pointed me at the ground and helped me down. His longsword made a hissing sound as he drew his weapon and stepped to the side.

  I pulled Krati and made sure it was ready to fire. My hands shook with the weight of the pistols in my hands, so I bent my legs in front of me and rested my elbows on my knees. “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Just keep clear.”

  “I’m not sure we shouldn’t engage the beast, at least to keep it distracted,” said Yowtgayrr.

  I shook my head and opened my mouth to speak but said nothing as the dragon’s head snaked out of the smoke. It was dripping blood and chunks of gore from its mouth and the ruined left side of its face. Its eye beckoned, but I kept my gaze firmly on its snout. I raised my guns, but before I could fire, a strange song lilted from the smoke to my right.

  Althyof whirled out of the smoke
, daggers glowing red, and danced in front of us. When he met the dragon’s gaze, he stopped and faced the great beast. His singing gained volume and seemed to take on an insistent note. The dragon made a strange mewling sound and tried to jerk its head away, but only twitched to the side a miniscule amount, unable to break eye contact with Althyof.

  The Tverkr began to move, increasing the tempo of the cacophony of caterwauling clamor his song had become. The dragon’s head seemed to weave back and forth as Althyof danced back and forth in front of it, weaving his daggers around in time to the ever-increasing cadence of his dance. The dragon made one more mewling sound, and its nostrils twitched.

  Althyof stopped singing and began to chant—sounding all the world like a strange form of Gregorian chant in which the monks valued harsh sounds and discordant notes. The dragon’s eyes seemed to lose focus but remained glued to the Tverkr. As the chant reached a tumultuous zenith, Althyof whirled forward, arms out straight at his sides, daggers held point-back in his fists, making him look like some kind of whirling saw blade.

  The dagger blades seemed to stretch and morph until they formed long red blades. Althyof shouted a few more syllables and then leapt at the dragon’s neck. The red blades chopped and sliced through the dragon’s scales and flung dragon blood in great, blanketing arcs. He kept spinning and chopping and slicing, and the blood kept splattering and sloshing and splashing until the head of the great white beast fell to the ground with a muted thud. Off in the smoke, we heard a scream of anguish and then the crash of the dragon’s body impacting the ground.

  Covered in gore, Althyof turned and walked toward us. His daggers shrank back to their normal sizes, the red glow becoming more of a muted red outline again. He stopped and looked down at me and made a little moue. “Not to worry, Isir. All is not lost.”

  “We were taking him back to the longhouse,” said Yowtgayrr.

  “Of course, you were,” sneered the Tverkr. “Shall I escort you and keep you safe?”

  “How much gold would that cost us?” asked Yowtgayrr in acidic tones.