The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (14 page)

Again I am sure of her doom, but just in time
she dives, rolls, springs back up and instantly is running again in a
different direction. Towards me, I realize. I slow my pace and
experience a moment of relief,  thinking that she has come to
her senses and opted for retreat.

I do not think that for long. Without slowing,
she lifts her ax, and I comprehend that I am a target of attack. I
skid to a halt in the frost and raise my blade in a defensive stance.

"You're mad..." I breathe.

A second later, she is on me, and our combat
ends before it can start. Sweeping low with her ax, its blade facing
backward, she knocks my feet from under me, and I fall. My backside
hits the cold earth first, then my head, and in a flash of movement
which makes me flinch, her ax blade strikes the soil an  inch
from my ear.

The giant looses a bellow of rage, and footfalls
shake the earth. Surely he is not retreating, but coming for us.

I stare up briefly into the slayer's unfeeling
blue eyes, but then my eyes are on the sole of her boot as she raises
it and stomps on my face before I can raise hands to ward it off. I
barely manage to turn so that the blow strikes my temple, driving the
cheek opposite into the frost.

By the time I open my eyes again, she is running
off to rejoin the battle with her towering foe, who doubtless would
be pleased to bring his own heel down upon us both, grinding our
bones to dust. His mood has shifted from amusement to rage. Blue
blood runs down his calf—hardly a trickle, so tiny are 
the slayer's blades to one of his size.

All thought of giving aid to my mad guide driven
from my mind by the tang of my own blood on my tongue, I drag myself
to my knees and do all I can, which is watch the unequal combat
before me and hope that its outcome is not the most obvious one.

As the slayer comes within range of the
blue-skin, she suddenly changes course so that his hammer blow
catches only the wind in her wake. Then she pivots and changes course
again, darting past his already bleeding calf and slicing it again
with sword and ax.

Another swipe just misses her, for like the
slayer's legs, the giant's hammer does not rest. The upstroke of one
attack reverses to become the start of the next. Each swing fails to
find its target, yet none fails to still my heart in worry.

For a while, the slayer does not attack but just
races around the blue-skin, dodging his hammerhead in what I soon
understand is an effort to exhaust him. Finally, when his hammer hits
the ground and he is sluggish in raising it, she races past his
wounded leg and slices into it yet again, sword in ankle, ax in calf.
He cries out and makes a hurried attempt to pulp her, but she recedes
from reach.

Perhaps he understands her strategy now, for
rather than attacking again straightaway, he faces her and settles
into a ready stance. For once, she too ceases her frenzied movement,
standing just out of his reach.

Before long, she feints one way, then the other,
then bolts along an arc that will take her well within the long reach
of the giant's weapon. Turning slowly to track her, he lifts his
hammer, then lets loose another sweeping, horizontal blow, the kind
which are harder for her to evade. I half expect to see her 
limp form fly into the air. Instead, she springs up just behind the
flying hammerhead, after which I momentarily lose sight of her.

Then my eyes find her golden braid trailing from
the giant's silver-haired forearm. She has leaped onto it, having
discarded her sword so that her left hand might be free to grab his
ample hair. She swings her ax twice, hacking at his arm, doing no
visible harm. The giant cuts short his now misdirected attack, and he
stumbles, shaking the ground with each step, and sends one hand on a
path to remove the nuisance from his limb.

Yet this fly does not sit and wait to be
swatted. Impossibly, the slayer scrambles up his moving right arm to
stay a few steps ahead of the great clap with which he brings his
hand down upon his own skin. From his bicep, she leaps into the
giant's beard, disappearing behind the silvery curtain. His hand
jerks upward, he grabs the beard and tugs, but his combing fingers
emerge empty. They plunge back in and quest underneath the hair as
though he seeks to scratch an elusive itch. But the slayer is no mere
itch. I know she must be busy hacking at the hollow of his neck or
the soft underside of his jaw.

The next time I see the giant's fingers, they
are stained with blue blood. Coursing down, it tinges the end of his
beard. He drops his hammer, which falls head-down with a resounding
crash near his feet. His bloody hands reach up and around for the
back of his head, clawing the hair at the base of his neck.

I cannot tell from my vantage whether he catches
her or the slayer deliberately jumps. I rather think the latter, for
were he to have caught her, even in his frenzied state, he surely
would not have thrown her straight down but instead cast her far
away, or else dashed her against the wall. However, even the shortest
route to the ground from the head of a colossus is long to someone of
her size, and the impact of her landing is not lost on the slayer,
who struggles to drag herself upright by means of ax handle planted
in the frosty ground. The blue-skin extends an empty hand toward her,
keeping the other clamped on his bleeding neck.

She takes a few slow, loping steps, and I begin
to think she must now finally be caught and crushed in his expansive
palm.

And then the giant falls. Down onto one knee he
sinks, and the blue-smeared hand that had been reaching for his
attacker slaps the ground instead, shaking it. Kneeling, wobbling, he
watches the slayer limp away. The ground rumbles again as he crashes
onto his side.

Halting in her escape, the slayer turns to face
her fallen foe. Leaning heavily on her ax, she sinks to her 
knees.

The giant reaches out to her with a huge, pale
arm, but she is just beyond his reach. His fingers instead claw the
ground, scoring dark runnels in the frost. His silver beard is soaked
with blue blood. The life is gone from him. My mad, silent companion
is victorious.

I stare in awe for a further minute more before
it dawns upon me that with the battle's end I am free to approach.
After recovering our gear, I speed to her side and am not surprised
to find my presence ignored. Ax and sword slung, the slayer begins
walking, rather wearily, away from the fresh, massive corpse on a
path which roughly follows the course of the great wall that towers
some thirty feet over our heads. As we walk, she scans the wall's
base as if searching for something. Before long, she stops, turns to
face it and starts sliding her open palms over the rough surface of
the hewn stone.

She cannot mean to scale it—can she? The
slayer gives wordless answer to that unspoken question by 
extracting from the satchel I bear the thick coil of rope we picked
up with the cold weather gear and looping it around my waist.

Apparently, she does not intend to scale the
wall—she means for 
me
 to do it.

Looking up, I feel less than confident of
success. Then I look at the slayer, whose eyes of cold blue are not
insistent. No, for that would be an expression, something she is
expert at not producing. Her look does not urge me on, but there is
something in it that even she cannot prevent. Exhaustion. The combat
has drained her.

Accepting the charge, I drop all my burdens and
run hands along the wall in search of the best grip. Fortunately for
me, while larger than Neolympus's walls, the construction is less
precise, leaving plenty of gaps and ledges for hand and foot.

Before I even commence the climb, I hear a faint
rumbling in the distance and look in the direction from which we have
come, where the dead giant is a small, dark lump in the frostfall.
The slayer's keen gaze is already cast in the same direction. I need
not be told what the distant rumble means, which is fortunate,
considering there is no one present who would tell me.

Likewise, I do not need the slayer to tell me to
move faster. Pressing close to the chill stone, I pull myself up. It
is a much slower climb than I would like, and by the halfway mark my
fingertips are numb from cold and abrasion, but I push on. The
distant thunder of giant footfalls grows steadily louder. When at
last I throw my leg over the top and roll onto the flat surface, I
sit up and take tight hold of the rope between braced legs to anchor
the slayer's ascent. I tug to signal her to start, but find there is
already resistance. A slight, rhythmic vibration of the rope and even
slighter scrape of her soft boots on the stone herald her ascent.

The stray thought flits through my mind that
here is another chance to kill her if I so wished, easily and without
risk to myself. But she cannot fail to know that, which means she
also knows that I would  not dream of killing her. She trusts
me. She must.

She makes the ascent in no time, naturally
forgoes greeting and immediately starts hauling up the rope, to the
bottom of which she has secured our gear. I do not know if she wants
my help, but I give it. While I am lowering the packs down the wall's
opposite face, the slayer surprises me by untying the  rope's
other end from my waist and wrapping it around one of her forearms.
Then she sits and braces herself, leaving me to make the obvious
assumption that I am to descend first with the benefit of the rope.

I would protest, but my every muscle is already
thanking her. I would thank her with words, but they would only be
wasted.

Now it is my turn to trust her, and I do not
hesitate to lower myself over the edge. Though she cannot weigh much,
it might as well be a stone anchoring me from above as I quickly make
my way down. The slayer then throws down her end of the rope and
commences an unassisted descent, coming down like a four-legged
spider, and then, without so much as a pause for breath, we are off.

Since my guide gives me no clues, I am left to
assume that having crossed whatever boundary is marked by this wall,
we are no longer in danger.

***

As we push on, the chill eases, the ground thaws
and I begin to sweat under the furs, which I eventually shed. By
nightfall we reach a river on the banks of which the slayer does
something I fail to understand. Dragging her sword point while she
walks, she draws an oblong shape, pointed at both ends, in the soft
mud. Wiping and sheathing the blade, she goes to her pack and
extracts from it what look to me like nuts, which she proceeds to set
down on the edges of the drawn shape: one at either pointed end and
three at even intervals on each long side.

Mysterious task complete, she leads me to a
secluded spot in the rugged foothills around the river, where I
gather we shall settle for the night. Her first act on sitting down
is to take out her small knife and cut a fresh notch in her ax
handle. The new notch joins the four up near the head which stand
apart from the rest, informing me of what they must represent.

Evidently, she has previously killed four
silver-blue behemoths like the one she felled today by the wall.

Why?!
 my tongue burns to ask her.
Knowing there is no point, I am left to guess. She took no trophies
and so probably does not hunt for sport or glory. Yet she keeps
careful record. The giants I have seen her attack seem to have been
targets of chance, so she is not an assassin. Is this a mission on
which she has been sent? But why should she be sent alone, apart from
the obvious reason that she would appear to require no help.

Resting my back on a smooth rock, I expel breath
and thought and shut my eyes. I am glad that this day has left me
weary, for otherwise sleep might elude me here in the middle of an
unknown land, surely on the cusp of yet greater unknowns. Held
tightly in one palm while I succumb to sleep is Ayessa's necklace.

I begin to wonder if when I do find Ayessa, she
will be as unknown to me as everything else I have seen  since
leaving Neolympus.

The next morning, we retrace the prior evening's
path to the riverbank. In the exact spot where yesterday the slayer
drew a shape and lined it with nuts, there stands an empty boat, its
outline matching exactly the one she drew. I touch the hull and the
two oars that sit inside it and have no choice but to believe that by
some manner of magic, the slayer has created this vessel for us.

The Spartioi spring to mind. 
Sown men
.
Here is a 
sown ship
.

The slayer takes up a position on one side of
the hull, ready to slide it into the water. Tossing in our equipment,
I join her, and a few minutes later we paddle downriver, she in front
and me behind. With a strong current pushing us, the voyage is not
strenuous. The land to left and right is rugged, with row on row of
endless mountains lining the distance. The climate grows warmer, the
slopes greener. The perpetual curtain of gray clouds finally breaks,
and this morning, for the very first time in my new life, I see the
sun. I stop paddling and stare into it. Realizing the mistake of
that, I shut my eyes and bathe in its warmth. After a short while, I
put my oar back in the water and resume doing my part before the
slayer can show any sign of impatience, which, in fairness, she does
not.

The river bears us onward until from behind one
of the nondescript foothills ahead of us, a mist-wreathed fortress
rises. It is built of white stone and comprises two squat, square
towers behind a crenelated wall. Behind it, a rainbow arcs from misty
ground to pale sky. By the rushing sound that swells to a roar, the
mist is caused by the river ahead of us spilling over the edge of a
cliff.

The slayer steers us toward the bank nearest the
fortress. It is while we are jumping from the boat to shore that I
first spy dark figures atop the fortress wall, and my heart leaps.
These men are of our own size! The slayer's folk? Perhaps they will
not all be mutes...