Edda (20 page)

No matter how she weaved a course through the soldiers—ducking, rolling, leaping—his avatar was still taking hits. Fifty percent. As a soldier swung and missed her, Cindella stabbed his outstretched arm with the dagger and pulled him stumbling across the path of some of her other assailants, giving her a moment to turn and face some of those attacking her from behind. Forty percent, and there seemed to be as many enemies as ever. Perhaps more had joined the fight? Erik dropped the Dagger of Frozen Hate and reached for his last healing potion.

A message flashed in the corner of his vision.

ACTION FAILED: INTERRUPTION.

He tried again.

ACTION FAILED: INTERRUPTION.

And again.

ACTION FAILED: INTERRUPTION.

It was no good; the blows were coming too fast. He would have to get clear of the fighting for Cindella to be able to drink the potion. Thirty percent and falling. Cindella pushed on toward Ghost; at least she could clear away some of those hacking at Ghost’s protective wall. Twenty percent. Was he really wise to risk losing Cindella? They had no idea what was on the other side of the gate. There still might be major undertakings ahead. And could he really leave Gunnar as the only representative of New Earth in whatever negotiations took place when they found the EI behind these armies? Ten percent. If he was going to flee, it had to be now. Ghost could deal with the situation, couldn’t she? But he would never forgive himself if his friend died here while he was protecting what, after all, was only an avatar.

Cindella’s health bar was a bare sliver of color when suddenly there was light and space. The legionnaires around her were flying in all directions as the powerful fists of an air elemental swept them aside. The giant creature towered over Cindella, the swirling winds around the monster causing her long red hair to fly across Erik’s vision. For a moment the elemental seemed poised to strike her down and that certainly would have been the end of Cindella. But it evidently recognized that she was not the enemy, as it spun about on its whirling torso and rushed across to where there was a line of riflemen to destroy. Cindella was saved!

Cindella turned to Ghost with a smile. But Ghost was already running away from the compound, down the grassy slope to where Athena and Gunnar were kneeling by a prone figure. The warm feeling of delight that had just spread through Erik fell away in an instant, to be replaced with a horrible sense of foreboding. Pausing only to pick up the Dagger of Frozen Hate, Cindella, too, ran toward the group.

“The stupid fool. I told him not to get too far from Ghost.” Athena looked up from the body of Milan. Her dark eye shadow had run down her face. “Oh Milan. Say something. Open your eyes!”

With a plaintive note in his voice, Gunnar gestured to Milan. “I’ve done what I can, but he’s dying.”

All of Milan’s right side was a black ruin. His arm looked like a stick of charcoal. His head was unrecognizable; the right eye socket was hollow, and gray teeth showed where his lips were missing.

“Blood and thunder! What happened?” asked Erik, appalled.

“He came up near the gate, when it seemed like the battle was going our way,” replied Ghost glumly. “But then after the birds went everything changed, and a tank shell exploded beside him, just too far from me to protect him.” Her tears were falling on Milan’s chest, where she had placed her hand over his heart. “I’m keeping him going for now. Is there anything you can do?”

“I . . . I’ve got a potion of healing left.” Hurriedly, Cindella drew out the glass bottle. “Thank the stars. I nearly drank it just now.”

Athena looked up with desperate hope in her eyes. “Will that work?”

“I don’t know.” He wanted to reassure Athena that Cindella’s magic would help poor Milan, but deep down it seemed unlikely to Erik that a healing potion from Epic would have any effect on a person from Saga.

Tipping Milan’s head up a fraction, Cindella poured the red liquid into the broken mouth. Even though Erik was careful, the potion began to leak down the exposed side of Milan’s face. He peered in between the blackened teeth. “It’s just draining away.”

“Try again!” Athena turned Milan’s head, so that the less damaged side was facing the ground. Inside his headset, Erik’s eyes filled with tears at the horrific damage now evident on Milan’s head. It took a moment for him to blink them away, so that he could see well enough to have Cindella pour what remained of the potion into Milan. But Milan’s mouth just filled up until the potion began to spill out over his chin. He was too far gone to swallow for himself.

“Ghost, can you make him swallow?”

“Move, Athena.” Ghost shifted up, still keeping one hand over Milan’s chest. The other she placed carefully on his scorched throat. “There. Perhaps a little got through.”

The four of them watched intensely. Erik noticed that Gunnar was resting a hand sympathetically on Athena’s shoulder. But if anything, Milan’s body just looked even more gray and lifeless.

“All’s well?”

Everyone turned to see Jodocus walking toward them, a rather battered and deflated air elemental a short distance behind him.

“No,” said Erik. “Milan’s dying. Can you help?”

Jodocus gave a shake of his head.

“All I can do is summon elementals. And there is no elemental that can help a person recover from injury, let alone wounds as severe as these.” Jodocus squatted down beside the body, and his stocky fingers gently touched the tattoo he had given Milan. It was no longer in motion. “Poor kid. I liked him.”

“Ghost?” Athena’s voice was that of a shattered violin.

“I’m keeping his heart going. But as soon as I let go . . .”

“The idiot. The reckless idiot. He loved to show off. But he really never needed to. I don’t know anyone braver than Milan; he was the real thing, genuinely brave. All that talk in someone else would have been a cover for their fears, but not for him.”

No one wanted to give up on Milan. So they stayed with the body as plumes of dark smoke rising from damaged vehicles gradually spread across the sky. While looking up at the clouds, Erik recalled the shock of seeing Anadia smash into the ground beside him.

“Anadia’s dead, too.” Cindella’s head turned so that Erik could see Jodocus. “Just when I thought we were going to come through this—all of us—she crashed and the birds stopped fighting.” He paused. “Did you see what happened to her?”

“Me?” Jodocus shook his head. “I’ve no idea. A missile hit her chariot, perhaps.”

“Missile? I don’t think any of their equipment fired missiles.”

The others sensed from the tone of Erik’s voice that something was amiss, but although he caught Ghost and Athena exchanging a glance, no one said anything. Nor did Jodocus make any attempt to reply; he turned his bald head away, looking over at the damaged compound.

“I’m sorry for your friend. But we should go through the portal while we can. All that smoke is going to attract attention, even if they didn’t manage to send an alarm.”

Athena looked up at the elementalist, shocked and furious. “What, just leave him here?”

Ghost stood up. For a moment her fingers pointed down at Milan with a tremble, but her voice was steady. “Milan’s gone, Athena. And Jodocus is right. If we miss this chance to go through the portal, it will all have been a terrible waste.”

“But it doesn’t seem right to just leave him here. Not to mourn him properly.”

“Oh, we’ll mourn him all right. In the only way worthy of him: through acts of bloody vengeance.” Ghost shot Erik a look that was so ferocious it caused a shudder to run through him and he understood that whoever was controlling the troops that had killed Milan was doomed.

“Very well.” Wiping her face, Athena got up and gave a salute to the body of her friend. Then she set out for the compound with a resolute stride, not looking back.

Erik let Jodocus and the air elemental go on ahead of him, then he reached out Cindella’s hand and touched Ghost’s elbow.

With astonishing speed and dark looks, Ghost turned to face him. “Don’t you dare lecture me on non-violence. Now is not the time.”

“I know. It’s something else.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “What do you think of Jodocus?”

“I don’t trust him,” Ghost replied at once. “There’s something about him that grates on my nerves. I don’t mean his manners; I mean that when I’m concentrating on the environment around me, there’s something not quite right about him.”

“I think he killed Anadia. And that might have cost Milan his life.”

“Really?” Ghost looked surprised. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. Probably it had something to do with the old feud they had going.”

“No, I mean, what makes you think he killed her?”

“Well, I have no proof; it’s just that I had a pretty good view of the battlefield when Anadia plunged from the sky and when I looked around for him, he was missing from the fight, nor was there any sign of his elemental. But when one did appear later on, it was an air elemental. He said he was going to summon stone elementals for the battle.”

Ghost shrugged. “But that fight was crazy. He could have been right in the middle of things and you wouldn’t necessarily have seen him.”

“Right. That’s what I thought until just now, when I asked him about it. But I didn’t like his answer. I think we should have a look at the crash site.”

“Come on then.” With one last glance at the charred and lifeless body that had once been Milan, Ghost set off ahead of Cindella. It did not take them long to reach the remains of the chariot. Up ahead of them, Jodocus had followed Athena through the gates of the compound.

“Did Anadia strike you as the kind of woman who takes unnecessary risks?” Erik spotted a fallen rifle and Cindella picked it up.

“Definitely not.”

Lining up the sights of the rifle on a broken section of the chariot, Cindella fired. The bullet ricocheted away with a high-pitched whine.

“Hardly a scratch. Like I thought.”

They looked at the unpleasant sight of the broken-boned sorceress, lying among the debris of her crash.

“She stayed well away from the fighting,” mused Erik. “And in any case, no bullet from down here was going to kill her. Not through that armor. Maybe an airplane could have obtained the angle to shoot her, but I took down the only plane in the battle.” He paused. “There could have been an air elemental up there, though.”

Ghost looked up into the blue sky, then back down to the wreckage. All of a sudden she sat down on the ground and held on to her legs. They were trembling.

“Sorry, it’s hard to concentrate. I keep thinking about Milan, lying there . . .”

“I know.” Cindella sat beside Ghost. “I have shudders, too, back in my real body.”

“Anyway”—Ghost sniffed and wiped her hand across her cheek—“I think you are onto something important. It was when Jodocus said a missile shot down Anadia that you got suspicious? You thought he was trying to keep us from thinking more carefully about her death?”

“Actually, now that I think about it, a part of me was suspicious from the time she fell, but I was too busy fighting and then . . . Milan. When Jodocus said that, though, all my doubts came back. I really felt he was trying to throw us off track; he would have known there were no missiles.”

“You know what else?” mused Ghost.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve assumed all along that he’s working against whoever controls these armies. But what if he’s working with them? What if the scout we tracked to the volcano was supposed to deliver his reports there?”

“Yeah, a traitor among the
domini
. Except”—Cindella shook her head—“then it doesn’t really make sense why he would help destroy this army.”

“No,” Ghost agreed, then fell silent again.

“Could you take him on, if you had to?”

“I’m not sure. Probably not if he had more than two elementals going at me.”

“And he claims he can release lots of them from his tattoos,” observed Erik.

“Right. So what shall we do?”

“Let’s see if he’s willing to fight whatever is on the other side of the portal. And keep alert to the fact that he might be a danger.”

“Perhaps we can jump him when he’s asleep and tie him up, or wake him up with a gun to his head, ready to shoot if he releases the elementals?”

“I’m not sure what that would achieve.”

Ghost sighed. “Well, change the subject, because here he comes.”

Stepping around the bodies of fallen soldiers, Jodocus was making his way back down from the compound toward them. While it would have been hard for Erik to disguise his mistrust of the elementalist, Cindella gave a perfectly sincere smile.

“We should probably hurry.” Stone-faced as ever, Jodocus pointed toward the portal.

“If there’s another large army on the other side, can you defeat it?” asked Ghost, with a hint of hostility that Erik hoped was lost on Jodocus.

“Yes, although it will cost me.” The elementalist glanced at his tattooed arms and involuntarily rubbed them.

“But you are prepared for that?” said Ghost.

“Of course. Otherwise, like you said, this battle and the death of your friend has been a waste of time.”

“Right then.” Erik looked toward the compound entrance. “Cindella is back up to twenty-eight percent health. How about you and I go through and see what’s there?”

“Well, I was going to send the air elemental first, as a shield.”

“Good idea. I’ll ask Gunnar to stay here. If I die, I’ll report to him, and he can tell Ghost and Athena what’s on the other side.”

“Ready then?” Jodocus looked at Cindella.

“Off we go.”

Chapter 20

THE WAR COUNCIL

The first indication
that there was an emergency underway in Edda was a rapid hammering on the door of Penelope’s research room. Ambassador, who all afternoon could have been mistaken for a statue, leaped over to answer the knocks. As soon as the door was open, Scout stepped through.

“Stop everything. You’re needed in the planning room straightaway.”

“Both of us?” asked Ambassador.

“He didn’t say.” Scout shrugged. “I suppose so.”

With a sigh and a leisurely stretch toward the roof, Penelope got up from her seat at the work desk. She did not like being summoned as though she was a mindless soldier unit, and deliberately took her time putting her tools neatly back in their places, testing the patience of Scout. It was a short experiment. Scout ran by the table with her arm stuck out, presumably intending to sweep everything to the floor in a dramatic flourish that would shock Penelope into motion. Instead, Scout banged her forearm hard against the skull and shrieked in pain as it proved to be fixed firmly to the heavy table.

“I might have broken my arm!” Scout looked accusingly at Penelope, holding her sore limb across her chest with her good hand.

“I take it Lord Scanthax needs me as a matter of urgency?”

“Yes, come on.” Still holding her hurt arm to her chest, Scout ran out of the room. Ambassador gave a flourish of his hand to indicate that Penelope should depart next. She did so, noticing with a tremor of concern that Ambassador’s gaze moved from her to fix on the skull with an expression of surprise and curiosity. Still, at least Ambassador was not staying behind to examine the desk while she was absent.

The three of them moved quickly down the tower and on toward the planning room. It was a route that Penelope could manage in her sleep. Indeed, while pretending to be asleep, she had journeyed there several times in furtherance of her plan to turn the Feast Hall into a prison for all of the incarnations of Lord Scanthax. They passed the Great Hall, and as they turned into the Feast Hall, Penelope couldn’t help glancing about her to check that nothing had changed. Could it be that Lord Scanthax had discovered her nighttime activities? Surely Ambassador would have said something to her before now. This peremptory call must be related to some other issue.

Whatever anxieties Penelope had were dispelled at the sight of the planning room, which was full of Lord Scanthax’s most autonomous incarnations, looking toward their master and the large map hanging behind him:

Lord Scanthax looked up as they arrived, jaw clenched, and with an expression of determination on his face.

“Good. Let us begin.”

He tapped the board, pointing to Gate Four.

“Approximately three days ago, our garrison at Gate Four was attacked and completely destroyed. Among the bodies were four from Saga, a rather ominous proportion: nearly a thousand of our troops and an aircraft to four of them. A day later we killed a scout of theirs who got too close to Gate Three. Note that he was carrying magic items of the sort we have encountered in Myth.

“Some time yesterday, our fort at Gate Three was attacked. The entire garrison was destroyed: just over three thousand soldiers, twenty-four tanks, eight machine gun emplacements, thirty troop carriers, and a fighter plane. The casualties on the part of our enemy consisted in the main of birds: thousands of common raptors, a dozen or so monster-size eagles, and one fantastical bird, twice the size of a tank. But we also found among the birds the body of the last member of the former ruling council of Myth sorcerers: Anadia.

“On the Ruin side of Gate Three, we had stationed fifty of our best sniper units. As far as we can tell, they were all killed—probably by grenades—without inflicting a single casualty on those coming through the gate. We have pulled all the troops in Ruin back to Gate Two and so long as the tank factories are able to continue manufacturing tanks, all new units will be brought to the Epic side of Gate One, where we are amassing our greatest strength. In the meantime, two hundred and fifty scout planes have been sent to scour Ruin for signs of their fighting force. In summary, my assessment is a very disturbing one. A force from Saga—most likely a small one and certainly one without vehicles—somehow made contact with Anadia and gained the use of magic items such as the dagger and ring we found. Perhaps they are all equipped with items that make them invisible. They are considerably more powerful than our soldiers, and they seem to have an extraordinary defense against bullets. They pose a real threat to our control over all the worlds and indeed”—he paused dramatically, looking slowly around at the captivated audience—“our very existence. Comments and questions?”

General was rubbing his hand across his firm chin and he now caught Lord Scanthax’s eye.

“Lord. I think your first steps were necessary precautions, but I advise against leaving effective control over Gate Three in their hands. I accept that troops at Gate Four will be vulnerable to a sudden incursion from Saga, so we should only have a token force there. But I suggest sending one of us—Scout, perhaps—at the head of a light and highly mobile division with aircraft support to Gate Three and let me take two heavy divisions to Gate Two, staying on the Ruin side of it to trap their advance party between the two gates and to provide cover should the light division need to fall back.”

“Good, General. I accept your points, with one amendment and one query. The amendment is that you should be stationed with the full army at Gate One and instead we shall use one of our junior officers for the two heavy divisions at Gate Two. The query is to Princess.”

It was almost amusing to hear Lord Scanthax agree with General. Of course they would approve of each other’s ideas; they were aspects of the same person. But at the mention of her name, Princess jumped slightly. Whereas everyone else in the room was earnestly attentive, frightened even, she had been daydreaming. The information presented by Lord Scanthax was not at all disturbing to her; in fact, Penelope found that she welcomed it. If anything went wrong with the plan to trap all the manifestations in the Feast Hall on Redistribution Day, then Lord Scanthax’s fears were something to fall back on: perhaps he would become so desperate that he would agree to liberate her in return for her aid.

“Princess, is there anything you can do to close Gate Four or Gate Three? Because right now our whole existence might depend on it.”

A dozen heads turned as one to look at her.

“No. I’ve explained this to you before. It’s not like we created something, like a door, that translated you to the other worlds. What we did was find physical spaces where the worlds overlapped and tore open holes. A door we could close or destroy. These holes we can’t fix, because the space around a gate won’t stretch. It’s like we made a hole in your breastplate there; or it’s worse, because even metal can be melted and reshaped, but I’ve no idea how to work with space. Well, all right, I suppose in the organic universe space bends around mass, but I don’t know if that applies to space in Edda, and anyway, we are talking about lots of mass—planet-size amounts.”

It was slightly embarrassing that her answer had run on and on, a little erratically, certainly compared to the terse communication between Lord Scanthax and his manifestations. In part, it was because while she was talking, she had thought about her recent work in bonding different materials together and that it might have some relevance for closing a gate; that is, if she wanted to close a gate.

“If you cannot disable the transference gates,” said Lord Scanthax, slowly and carefully, fixing upon her with the full intensity of his dark eyes, “can you then obstruct them?”

“Certainly. That would definitely be worth a try. If you send me to a gate with Engineer, plenty of iron, and some welding units, I could assist in making a very solid structure. But you’ve seen the energy weapons available to the soldiers of Saga; I’m afraid that nothing I can create would hold out more than an hour, say, if they came blasting at it.”

Nodding as though he had expected this answer, Lord Scanthax maintained eye contact with her. “Then I ask you this: can you locate our assailants, the ones who are now probably somewhere in Ruin?”

That was an interesting question, and Penelope hesitated. “No. I have no scripts better than the radar systems you inherited from Ruin. And while our best radar equipment can pick up airplanes and tanks, it is not accurate enough for a small force on foot.”

Although her answer was a truthful one, Penelope did wonder. Could she script a detector that responded to the particular qualities of the material from which the Saga weapons were made? She wouldn’t have to understand the fundamentals of these exotic substances, but simply use the gun she had and see if it generated a distinct response when investigated by a script measuring various levels of electromagnetic radiation. While her thoughts were focused on the challenge of creating a device that could somehow pick out an echo from the heavy plastic they’d found in the gun, Lord Scanthax seemed to sag a little, as though discouraged. But could he really have held any real hope in her scripting skills? After all, he knew already that she could not close or seriously obstruct the gates.

“Don’t worry, my lord. It will be another Tharsby Pass! We shall triumph against the odds.”

Penelope had to resist the temptation to laugh aloud at this declamation; in fact, she pretended to cough in order to hide a snort that might have sounded disrespectful. As she looked around the room at the reaction to General’s attempt to strike a note of optimism, she saw sneers of contempt, sardonic eye-rolling, and a variety of scathing expressions. The situation was nothing like the infamous battle at Tharsby Pass or any battle they had ever fought in Edda and they all knew it. For the first time in their existence, they were fighting armies that were better equipped than their own. Armies? Not even armies, but forces too few to leave an obvious trail or be spotted from the air.

“Trap them in Ruin and send me to hunt them.”

The room went still, and Penelope no longer felt amused. Rather, a cold thrill ran down her spine and the hairs on her arm rose. It was so rare that Assassin spoke in meetings of this sort that at first she had not recognized the deep and slow voice. He was standing in the far corner of the room, a sheathed sword on his hip, a rifle across his back. Those were unique weapons that Penelope had scripted for him at Lord Scanthax’s request, back when she used to strain her utmost to please him. The blade was as hard as diamond. She was proud of the gun, too; she had worked for weeks on the explosive release of the bullet, not satisfied until it could travel a full kilometer and hit a target no bigger than an apple.

For a moment Lord Scanthax looked like he might disagree with the idea, perhaps because he wanted Assassin to remain close to him. But the other manifestations were clearly pleased. They had enormous confidence in Assassin, who, after all, had eliminated more of their enemies by stealth than their armies had killed in battle. Perhaps he would be a match for these invisible and powerful invaders. Or perhaps not. Penelope wouldn’t like to bet against these mysterious people who could annihilate thousands of soldier units with minimal losses.

“Good then.” Lord Scanthax eventually gave a nod. “Scout, take the fourteenth light division and liaise with Air Commander for six reconnaissance planes. Take up a position in Ruin by Gate Three. General, assign a major to the fifth and sixth heavy divisions and have them set up in Ruin by Gate Two, guarding in both directions. Go and take personal command of Army One on the Epic side of Gate One. Assassin, go and hunt for our enemies. Everyone else can assist me in strengthening the defenses of the castle.” He glanced at Princess almost as an afterthought. “Princess, continue working on those energy weapons. You know how much we need them. Are we in accord and clear?”

Just as everyone murmured their assent and began to rise from their seats, Scout drew a deep breath.

“Sorry, lord, I think my arm might be broken.” She winced as she spoke and Penelope felt a little guilty. But this sensation was immediately mitigated by the thought that it was Scout’s own fault. If she had not bullied Penelope into moving with an overdramatic gesture, the accident never would have happened.

“You are commanding units, not scouting in person. Go have Doctor splint you up, then take up your duties.”

“Very good, lord.” Scout left the room, with a last scowl directed toward Penelope.

Almost as one, the manifestations rose from their seats, indicating that the meeting was over. Several of them moved directly to the door, so Penelope had to move quickly out of the way to let them pass. The stately and richly robed Chancellor did not give her a glance; he had begun a conversation with Engineer about the new priorities of factory output. Assassin walked past with a brisk stride that indicated his sense of purpose. Air Commander and Quartermaster stood aside to let him through, before hurrying after him. Along with his ever-present bodyguard, Executioner, and General, Lord Scanthax remained in the room. They were discussing which officer should be put in charge of the heavy divisions at Gate Two. Of all the manifestations, only Ambassador paid her any attention.