Fantastic Hope

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  This is the true nature of fighting, not the glorious finalities of the sagas. Two warriors cut at each other until one is weakened enough to surrender, flee, or die. Neither of us could give in or run. In Aeschere’s haste to make a name, he’d ensured one of us would succumb this day.

  His next blow broke the damaged section of shield and strained my arm, the shock jarring my elbow. My hand went numb, and pain blazed from elbow to shoulder. But he was extended and his arm weakened, and I hacked it, cutting muscle and bone so blood gushed freely.

  Growling in pain, he seemed likely to flee, but he knew how that ended. He dropped his shield and swapped his sword to his left. Now undefended, he nevertheless had a weapon on my unprotected side. And he was angry and hurt.

  It was all I could do to raise the half shield in my damaged arm, shriek in pain as his weapon crashed down, and drop under the onslaught. That put me low, and I drove my point up into his belly. Fluid and humors spilled, and I smelled the stench of cut bowel. As my cry of pain faded, his rose, as he knew he was dying.

  Death was not immediate, though, and might take days. His sword was still live, as was the hand behind it.

  I clutched the remnants of my shield just as he struck. Between the splinters and the mail, it felt like a blow from a club, driving the wind from me. Spots before my eyes told me I had no time. All I could do was strike again, this time cutting his thigh. That staggered him back and to the ground, where he attempted to rise and squealed, and then fell again.

  I drew in sips of air, then breaths, and my vision cleared. Taking in a deep draught of damp swamp fog, I staggered around his fallen figure. I was a widow and a woman. There had been no honor given, and I granted none back. I batted his sword arm aside, raised my own, shouted a battle cry, and chopped.

  I would come back to this. After I saw to my son.

  I leaned the sword on the wall, and stumbled through the hut and into the small room. Before I opened the door, I knew.

  Grendel’s life had slipped away while Aeschere and I dueled. The man had won that much, denying me presence at my son’s passage, and denying Grendel my comfort. Oh, how I raged.

  With my left arm damaged, I couldn’t even grant my son a civilized burial. Here he would remain.

  I tumbled Aeschere’s separated head, its face still a mask of shock and agony, into a satchel, and slung it over my shoulder along with his shield. Little good it would do me, but it was better to have it, and my presentation would matter.

  I walked the long, dreary distance back the way I’d run.

  This time the crowd was silent, perhaps realizing no good would come of this.

  They parted for me, afraid or disgusted, it didn’t matter now. I walked forward, armed and girded, and stood before the hall, ignoring the gruesome decoration that would only bring me anguish.

  “Hrothgar, I call you out. You have wronged a widow, and wronged an orphan living with a curse. You are unfit to rule. You lack the discipline to control your men, and let them rampage after a widow, with foul intent.”

  I knelt, laid the sack down, grasped the bottom, and pulled. Aeschere’s head rolled free, tumbling across the dirt as his nose, chin, and spine bumped along it. There were sounds of shock and horror among the crowd, and I heard a wail from Aeschere’s daughter. Part of me wanted to be sympathetic, but I choked that down and kept my heart hard.

  I pointed and firmly said, “Beowulf, I call you out for killing a man with a cursed mind, knowing full well he had no kin to stand for him.

  “Instead of a father or brother, you will face me in combat. I call my son murdered, and I name you the murderer.”

  There was stone silence.

  “Beowulf, if you claim to be a man, you will meet me alone in the cave in the marsh, the only place my son could flee from his demons. Surely one old woman is no match for you. Certainly not after you slew such a monster as a man crippled by headaches and madness.”

  I turned my back and walked. I was half-sure they’d dispose of me right there, but I was a woman, and whatever honor they retained let me leave unmolested. The only friend I had left made an abortive gesture in my direction, and I shook my head sharply. This was not Edda’s fight, and she was the only hope our story might be told with some measure of truth. I could not risk her as well.

  There was no honorable end to come, no peace. There was nowhere further to flee from the presence of people.

  I returned to the hut, to kneel beside my sweet boy and beg the gods to treat him gently. After all, it was they who chose him as a plaything for their whims.

  I downed the strongest of tinctures I had left, ones I reserved for Grendel’s worst days, to ease the pain of my shattered arm and broken heart. I splinted my arm straight, at least giving me the ability to awkwardly heft a shield.

  No burial was possible, but I was able to drag the furniture close to the bed, dump out the little oil I had, and kick one weakened side of the hut until it sunk lower. The fire could take it from there. I sought an ember from the hearth, blew it bright, and watched the flower of flame dance merrily on the makeshift bier. That assured, I left what remained of my life to burn brightly with dark sooty smoke, and walked to the cave. I brought my sword, Aeschere’s shield, this journal, and a crust of bread.

  Now I see a figure striding over the dunes and the brush, armed and ready. Distantly behind him are cheers at the thought of the death of a widow and her cursed son. I am bitter, with little to find light in, but there is one final mark in my column.

  I hope that Edda, the wisest and kindest woman I ever knew, will come looking, and think to check the spot where we stored the more perishable herbs in the cool cave. That is where I will leave this journal.

  I take heart in one warm thought. My lord fell in battle, and dines in the Valhöll. Grendel was killed in combat, and has also gone ahead of me to revered Aasgarð. When this is over, I shall be reunited with my love and my dearest son. What this world never gave me, the next will. I am at peace. Perhaps the All Father will even grant the spirit of my infant daughter to us.

  I will close this now. There are no more words to write. The rest must be action.

  I have no illusions about how this will end. Beowulf is a professional warrior, and I am only the mother of a monster. I was lucky once, and now half-maimed.

  But if they will sing of him for a thousand years, they must also sing of me.

  BONDS OF LOVE AND DUTY

  MONALISA FOSTER

  Calyce Dobromil leaned forward, her hands planted solidly on her workstation lest her knees give out. The gleaming pearl-white walls of the gestation lab seemed to spin around her like a veil or, more fittingly, a shroud. It spun and spun, tightening, as she gasped for air. Her mind grabbed at the possibility that she might be asleep and would wake at any moment. But the universe showed her no such mercy. It was perfectly clear in its ruthlessness, in the fact that she was indeed awake.

  A message floated above her workstation like a cloud, all bright and golden and deceptive. It should have been a thunderhead, dark and malevolent.

  Destruction and termination orders shouldn’t be so antiseptic, so mundane, so much like every other communiqué that came down once a day from the Ryhman Council. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths. When she opened them, the order was still there: destroy everything related to creating the donai. And floating underneath it, a scrolling list of the designations of each child under her care.

  The oldest such child was twelve, a genetically engineered soldier whose nanites had just started turning him into his final donai form. Designated NT527, he was from one of their slow-growing—but most successful—batches and only two days shy of being sent off for formal military training.

  The youngest were fertilized ova. Two hundred and forty of them—among them, twenty females. And then there were the five gestation tanks in her lab, the youngest still a bl
astocyst, the oldest just a few days past twelve months’ gestation.

  Calyce had given the last fifty years of her life to creating and raising the donai. And now the council expected her to “terminate” them as if they were condemned prisoners. Even lab animals were “sacrificed.”

  She pushed away from the workstation and dragged her hand across each gestation tank, blinking back against the pressure building up between her eyes. There had been a few unfortunate donai that hadn’t developed properly. She’d mourned every one of them but taken solace in the ones that had survived and thrived, the ones she’d nurtured. And then she’d proudly sent them off to defend humankind, her duty done, her desire to nurture serving a higher purpose.

  The twelve-month-old floated in the amniotic fluid, sucking on his thumb. Dark, curly hair covered his scalp, framing the nubs at the tops of his ears, the vestigial points that would become more prominent as he reached adulthood.

  The tank had reported a case of the hiccups that had lasted twelve minutes, and a surge in heart rate from a dream that had lasted twenty. No anomalies. His nanites were keeping pace with his growth. Six more months and she’d decant a healthy boy, and they would bond as if they were mother and child. Bonding the donai to humans was essential. It made them want to defend their creators. It was as necessary as air, water, and food. It made donai loyal. It kept them sane.

  Calyce blinked back tears as she returned to her workstation, waved the termination order out of existence, and stuck her hands in her lab coat’s pockets.

  Every morning, whether on duty or not, she was always the first in the lab, checking on her children. But soon the others would trickle in, and once they did, her moment of opportunity would be lost. She’d been here the longest and had seniority, but she didn’t dare count on the others. If she was wrong about any one of them, that one could stop her.

  She tucked a fallen strand of gray hair behind her ear, took a deep breath, and passed her hand over the console controlling the tanks. The biometric scanner underneath her hand confirmed her identity. She programmed the workstation to flood the pods with a lethal dose of sedative in order to buy time. And walked away.

  In the adjoining lab she opened up the safe with the fertilized ova, setting the tubes marked “female” into a specimen container. Twenty tubes marked “male” went into a second container. Small enough for her to carry easily, the containers would keep the ova from deteriorating for years if necessary. All she had to do was get them away from this place, far beyond the reaches of the council.

  * * *

  —

  Andret was a name that NT527’s Tante had given him. It was a name he was going to miss. He knew that once he left the creche, NT527 was going to become his “name.” He was packed to go, eager almost, his body ready and primed, instincts pushing him into quick and easy aggression. Sometimes those instincts got away from him, snaking through him like lightning, and the training at the creche was no longer enough to contain it.

  He was down to needing only a couple of hours of sleep, and no amount of exercise or drills were enough to tire him out. Soon he would not need sleep at all. Even now, he could easily slip in and out of the donai rest-state that replaced sleep.

  Andret was ready. Ready to fight, to defend. He was ready for more. He wanted to test himself, to push his limits.

  As the oldest donai at the creche, he was bigger, faster, and stronger than his brothers. They no longer posed a challenge, and he’d squeezed too hard, punched too hard more than once. Even the human trainers in their armor no longer wanted to spar with him.

  He turned, restless in the small, dark room. Even in the darkness, he could see as clearly as if it were day. Motes of dust floated by. Heat flowed along conduits inside the walls. He could even hear the breathing of the younger donai sleeping in the next room.

  Human footsteps echoed down the corridor. He could tell it was Tante Calyce from the rhythm of her gait.

  She stopped in front of his door, and he heard her take a deep breath. Fear tainted her scent.

  He sat up as the door slid open. The lights came on. His eyes adjusted almost without delay, the leaves of layered, engineered irises falling into place to shield him. The patterns of heat over her body indicated stress. In each hand, she carried a specimen container.

  “I need a pilot,” Tante Calyce said. The stress in her voice was like a scream, even though she’d whispered her words. Small for a human, gray hair pulled back at the nape of her neck, she had bright blue eyes surrounded by fine lines that matched the ones around her mouth. A red tunic topped matching trousers and black, polished shoes.

  He stood up. “Yes, Tante. Where would you like to go?”

  “Away from here, Andret. As far away, as fast as you can.”

  The look on her face forbade any questions, any argument.

  He pulled on a shirt, trousers, and boots as impatience tightened the set of Tante’s shoulders. He followed her out, slowing to match her pace as she walked toward the launch bay. To the other humans in the creche, she would look like she was going on about her day, casually walking down the hall with him as escort, perhaps toward some task that needed donai strength. But they didn’t have his senses, and his senses told him that she’d rather be running.

  The launch bay lit up as they entered. Ships, large and small, fast and slow, gleamed in their berths, waiting. In less than an hour, human instructors and donai students would be flying them over the training range.

  “This way, Tante,” he said as he headed for a small fighter. He’d planned on taking the ship up later, prepping and arming it before he’d gone back to his room to “rest.”

  “How far can it take us?” she asked, skepticism playing across her face.

  “Through the phase-point and beyond.” He’d been trained to navigate the extra-dimensional space of the phase-point transit system. There hadn’t been too many opportunities to use it, not with the training ship’s limited range, but he’d been allowed to explore the nearby systems on his own.

  “Can the ship’s controls be overridden?”

  He blinked his surprise. What a strange question. Perhaps it was part of some test. With just two days to go, he’d expected something, although he’d expected it to come from his flight instructor, or perhaps from the combat instructors. He’d imagined a test where they all came at him at once, them in armor, him bare-handed.

  “Do you want me to disable the override system, Tante?”

  “Yes. Disable it. And the transponder. I want us to disappear. Do you understand?”

  Andret nodded and helped her into the fighter. She settled into the right seat, setting the containers atop her lap. Perhaps it was a test of loyalty, of his willingness to obey humans. Though it was hardly a good test. He’d have done anything for her, and not out of loyalty.

  The ship recognized him and holographic controls appeared over the flight console. His hands danced over them, tapping out the startup sequence.

  Tante Calyce let out a small gasp of surprise as her seat folded around her.

  “Perhaps you should set those containers down. For your own safety, Tante.”

  She shook her head. “Andret, promise me, if they chase us, you will fly like your life depends on it, because it does.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “Tante, your body can’t handle those forces. Not even with the inertial compensators.”

  “Like your life depends on it, Andret.”

  “I cannot allow you to be harmed.” Was this part of the test? Tante despised mind games. Unlike the newer caretakers, she refused to play them.

  “Please. For their sakes.” She tightened her arms around the containers.

  Understanding knifed through him, reverberating through his body, making his muscles tense, his blood race. Trust and a cold calm chased away both questions and emotions. He turned back to the console and started the
engines.

  A minute later they were out over the flight range, overrides engaged, transponder off, the pull of the launch bay’s safety protocols defeated.

  At two minutes they were flying straight up. Gravity tugged at his chest, a mild annoyance. Next to him, Tante Calyce struggled to breathe, the harsh sounds of her gasps clearly audible over the engine noise.

  At three minutes, the scent of human blood reached his nose and his donai augmentations went into overdrive. Everything was sharper, clearer. His reflexes were faster. He bared his teeth as he sped toward the smallest of the system’s five jump-points so none of the larger, better-armed ships could follow them.

  He hoped that the acceleration wouldn’t kill the human that had given him life.

  * * *

  —

  Calyce slipped in and out of consciousness, catching glimpses of Andret’s determined face. Like all of the donai, his primary irises were amber. They circled gold pupils. In the angry lights strobing around them, she caught glimpses of the soldier he would become. It wasn’t the bared cuspids and their resemblance to fangs. It was the way he moved, the perfect way he performed every task as if he’d been born to it.

  I made this.

  Over the last few years, the council’s attitude toward the donai had changed. The donai were no longer held up as the heroes that gave their lives for humanity. Gestation orders had declined. So had the size of her staff. The governor in charge of the donai program had rotated out the caretakers like herself who’d served for decades, replacing them with new ones that resisted bonding with the children they’d been tasked to raise.