The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (13 page)

The sky is barely tinged pink with the first
whisper of evening, but I am exhausted of body and mind. I shut my
own eyes, still my swirling thoughts, and succumb to sleep.

I awaken to a rain of small, hard objects on my
face and lurch upright to find the slayer standing a few  feet
from me, dressed and ready with ax perched on shoulder. The hard rain
was of dirt and pebbles. It is not yet light, but there is enough
blue glow to see the slayer's hard face, which conceals the amusement
she must surely feel. What other reason could there be to wake me in
such a way?

She is too important to risk offending, so I do
not complain. I am impressed, but not surprised, by the fact that she
has managed to rise and fully ready herself without waking me. Her
ability to move without the slightest sound is uncanny.

She turns and starts climbing the rocks. Shaking
sleep from my eyes, I scramble up and survey our camp to find that
she has left her pack and water-skin for me to carry. I grab them,
and my own gear, and follow her.

We trek for three more days, through valleys and
across mountainsides. On just one of the days do we  come across
giants, but there are six of them, and to my relief the slayer
declines to take on such odds. The air grows colder, the trees
farther between, the soil frost-encrusted. One night, flakes of frost
fall from the sky. I have never seen such a thing in my present life,
and neither do I sense that it was anything familiar to me in the
previous. But then, on the scale of things I have seen in the two
hundred-odd days of this existence that are without precedent, this
ranks fairly low. The foremost position in that category is held by
the Myriad, and I rather hope that nothing I see will ever be so
horrible as to unseat it.

The slayer does not so much as blink at the
falling frost, so it must be nothing novel to her. But then, one
might think I would be novel to her, yet she treats me with
indifference, so it is hard to tell. Novel or not, the frostfall does
make me dread the night to come. Even though she has not "borrowed"
my cloak from me since that first night when she lacked dry clothes,
the nighttime cold here is sharper and bitterer than at Neolympus. 

 Before night comes, the slayer leads me
with a sense of purpose to what seems at first an unremarkable spot
on a frost-covered mountainside. But when she levers a few rocks
aside with her ax handle, a little hollow is revealed which turns out
to contain a second pack. From it she retrieves a long coil of rope,
gloves of oiled hide, and a hooded mantle of gray fur. These can only
be her own belongings stashed here on a previous passage. A good
sign, I decide, for if she has passed here before of late, then it
would seem likely she is now on a return path to her home, a place I
am eager to  reach.

Unfortunately, it seems less likely that on that
her previous passage, she foresaw returning with a tagalong in need
of extra cold-weather gear.

I have barely had time to think this thought
when the slayer tosses the mantle at me. I want to keep it,  of
course, but say politely instead, "It's yours."

I should know better by now than to protest. She
is already walking away, slipping on the tight gloves which would not
come close to fitting me anyway. And so I throw the mantle over my
shoulders, hoist her gear, and make to follow.

As I throw the pack over my shoulder, I glimpse
a shape on the ground and swiftly conclude that some  small item
has fallen from the second pack, the near-empty one now carried by
the slayer, likely as the mantle and gloves were removed. I stoop to
pick it up in cold fingertips.

My blood freezes, and I cry out a sharp,
formless syllable.

The slayer halts and looks back. Running to her,
I hold out by its thin leather thong the decorated tooth which I
remember well despite having seen it only once, around Ayessa's neck
in Hades, moments before the swarm hit us.

I scream at the slayer, daring her not to answer
or to pretend incomprehension, "This is hers! Ayessa's! Where
did you get it?! 
Where?!
 
Tell me!
"

She does not move, does not blink. I stop a few
feet from her, clutching the tooth tightly in bloodless fingertips,
eyes filled with rage. I wish to appear crazed, and I am.

"
Tell me now!
"

When my display fails to crack the slayer's mask
of disinterest, I am forced to take the next step and lay hands on
her.

"
Where is she?!
" I lunge to
grab her by the shoulders, but my hands only brush armor as she
easily, silently, evades my grasp. I round on her and make another
attempt.

The slayer ducks. The ax falls from her shoulder
and sweeps up in a telegraphed blow which I realize, even in my
frantic state, is intended only to ward me off. It fails; I am beyond
reason. I grab the weapon's haft and try to jerk it from her hand,
but it may as well be a part of her. The effort wins me a stinging
backhand across the jaw, which drives me back, yet I keep my grip on
her weapon, pulling her with me.

All this time, the slayer's look is impassive,
which enrages me still more.

"
Where is she?!
" I scream. I
put both hands on her ax handle, causing me to drop Ayessa's
necklace. "
Where?!!
"

Instead of trying to wrest the weapon from her,
I push against it, and her, in a contest which will better utilize my
advantage of size and weight.

And so it would have, were my opponent a lesser
fighter than she evidently is. She falls to one knee and yanks down
on the handle, causing my own weight to send me flying over it,
landing hard on my back on the frosty earth. I release the handle,
less from the force of the fall than because I realize the fight is
over.

Slinging her ax once more over her shoulder, the
slayer stands over me, looking down with that infuriating dispassion
of hers.

"Where... is she?" I grate.

She gives no answer, of course. Neither does she
press the fight. She turns and strides off, halting and bending over
briefly to retrieve the necklace, which she tucks into some nook of
her armor.

I scramble to my feet and give chase. When I
come within reach of her ax, she spins and lashes out with it. The
head whistles past my nose.

Even if I could best her, and even if I thought
it might work, I have no wish to try to pound answers out  of
her. I need another course.

Choosing one, I fall to my knees—and beg.

"You must understand, even if my words are
meaningless to you," I say. "Please, if you won't speak,
then find some other way to tell me if you've seen Ayessa. Is she
alive? Can you take me to her?"

My heart and breath halt as I hope for an answer
I am not certain I wish to hear.

Cold as the landscape around us, the slayer
yields nothing. The pale, pink line of her lips tightens just a
touch, whether in pity, contempt, or something else, I do not know.

I exhale in defeat and exhaustion, my breath
misting. The slayer gives me her back and resumes walking. Her single
blond braid sways as she walks. I have had my fill of that sight
these past four days.

The necklace goes with her. Some time ago,
Ayessa was parted from it. Did she drop it? Give it freely? Was it
stolen from her? By whom—my present company?

I begin to hate this woman. I hate that she
almost surely possesses the answers I seek, but will not tell. I hate
that I must keep following her no matter how she treats me, and I
hate that she knows that.    She must know, for otherwise
she would have come back to claim her gear before leaving me behind.
I hate that she is all I have.

Standing, I hoist her pack and hurry along
behind her like a well-trained beast of burden.

We sleep that night, close to one another,
sharing the small fur mantle as a blanket, faces wrapped tightly in
cloak hoods. When she shares her food with me the next morning, she
also tosses me the necklace. I thank her, and as we march I try not
to speculate on the chain of events which put it in my hand. I try to
see it as a sign of hope that the path which I follow is not far
removed from the one Ayessa took before me, and that it will soon
lead me to her.

The morning's travel  brings us to a
man-made stone wall which extends to the horizon in two directions.

No, I realize; it is not man-made, for the
blocks from which it is built are enormous, dwarfing the wall-stones
of Neolympus. This wall is 
giant
-made.

The slayer halts on a rise where we can look
down upon the immense wall from the relative concealment of some
rocks. I would like to ask her why, but I know better. The slayer
stares at the wall, one hand on her ax, and we sit in cold and
silence, two things to which I have grown accustomed  in her
company. I stare at her profile, my silent questions darting at her
like invisible arrows, as if she might bleed the answers into my
hands.

Who are you? Why do you hunt giants? Where
are you leading me? Is Ayessa safe?

These and other futile questions fall forgotten
when the ground under me begins to tremble and the slayer looks to
our right. I follow her gaze. At first I see nothing, but as the
faint tremble grows into the  steady, rhythmic thumping of
footfalls, I begin to understand.

A moment later, when a figure appears in the
distance, I learn how little I truly understand of this new land. I
believe for a moment that my eyes must be playing tricks, for I have
judged the great barrier wall to be at least as tall as five men, yet
the giant which presently approaches us stands head and shoulders
above it.

His stature is not the only aspect of his
appearance which sets him apart from the giants I have seen until
now: he is his skin is pale white, almost bluish, and his trimmed
beard and long hair, which he wears bound, gleam silver. He wears
only a huge loincloth, which sways with each booming step, and a belt
from which hangs a satchel of a size to hold the carcasses of two or
three full-grown harts. His weapon, resting on one shoulder, is a
great, long-headed hammer. One blow from its head could crush a
man—or woman—into pulp.

Instantly, I know what my companion intends.

"No!" I say to her in a sharp whisper.
"Take me to your people first, and get yourself flattened
afterward!"

Serenely, she turns her head to look at me. As
usual, her mouth is a flat line, brow devoid of creases. But I can
detect in her blue eyes a glimmer of something else alongside the
determination to do exactly what I fear she will.

I sense that she is not fully confident of
coming back alive. Her look bids me prepare for that outcome.  
 Or so I think. How can I know what she means? We are strangers,
and her expression barely ever changes, if at all.

Turning from me, the slayer stands, hefting ax
over shoulder, and strides down from our perch toward  the wall
on a course that will intersect with the giant's. She does not hurry
and makes no attempt to approach with stealth, as she did in
attacking the smaller giants at the stream. Why the difference I
cannot know, any more than I can know what brings her out into these
wastes to hunt the behemoths  in the first place. I am but her
pack-bearer.

"Don't!" I call after her.

Whether his gaze is drawn by my cry or the
minuscule figure cutting a trail of tiny footprints in the frost
toward him, the towering silver-blue colossus looks our way. The
booming of his steps stops, the  ground ceases trembling, and a
deep rumble fills the air: the giant's voice. Thw words are
incomprehensible, but they are sharp and insistent and strike me as
better-formed than those grunted by his smaller cousins.

Whatever he says, it fails to alter the slayer's
speed or course. Drawing up to a point about as far from the giant as
he is tall, she stops and plants her ax handle in the frost.

A new, harsh sound splits the air. The giant is
chuckling. Glistening white teeth show in a smile. Slowly, his great
hammer head rises from his his shoulder, swings down in front of his
expansive, bare  blue chest and is arrested with a 
smack
 in
the palm of his free hand.

While I watch, breathless, the fingers of my
left hand work at the knot securing my sword hilt to my scabbard. I
have witnessed the slayer's skill, but this is madness. Short of some
magic yet unseen at her disposal, she cannot face this foe and emerge
victorious—or even alive. To him, she can be naught  but
an insect, a rodent.

To me, now, she is everything. I cannot let her
die.

Releasing my sword, I unsheath it and follow her
down the slope at speed. Until now the slayer has walked, but now she
too breaks into a run, ax in one hand, drawn sword in the other,
undaunted. The giant lifts his hammer high, taking careful aim. He
waits, and waits, and then, as she comes within range, he brings his
hammer down with earth-shattering force. A mighty crack splits the
air, and chunks of rock and frozen soil erupt from the point of
impact, flying toward me. I stumble and fall upon one knee, crying
out. The blow has struck her full on, I am sure.

I do not breathe. When the debris settles, she
will be but a red stain on the frost.

Suddenly she darts from behind the hammerhead;
the blow has just missed her. Quickly I rise and resume my pursuit.

The giant has no time to deliver another blow,
barely enough to raise the hammer off the ground, before the slayer
reaches his feet with both weapons poised to strike. She stands not
even to the giant's knee, and so below it is where she directs her
attack. Her sword digs deep into the front side of  one leg
while simultaneously the head of her long ax, swung upward, sinks
into the soft hollow behind his knee. As she extracts her weapons,
the giant jerks away, whirling, sending the hammerhead sweeping
horizontally, low to the ground.