Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two (5 page)

Afterwards, Ulfr grinned, and patted his head.

‘Come, brave friend. Let’s get clean like true warriors.’

The lake was like steel, reflecting clear sky, and part of the discipline was not to cry out as you waded naked into coldness, pressed your nostrils in, and ducked under. Then Ulfr launched himself up, shaking arms and head, every sinew alive, the water foaming. Now it was time to yell, in lustful triumph and challenge to Norns and gods alike: may they damn themselves as they played games with human lives.

Brandr churned water, swimming with mad joy.

Ulfr dried himself and Brandr with the cloak-fragment he carried for that purpose. Then he dressed, and stood watching the lake as he cleaned his teeth with a fresh willow twig, spat out, then dragged his bronze comb through his hair. Last-minute work with his tiny nose-and ear-spoon, and he was clean, warrior-presentable.

Heithrún was gone from their sleeping-place. As one of Chief Gulbrandr’s
volva
s, she would have work to do: healing or scrying, or leading a traumatized warrior into dreamworld to mend his spirit.

‘She’s a mistake,’ he said to Brandr, who was at his side.

The war-hound gave a gruff, abbreviated bark.

He knows it, too
.

From the ground, he picked up the weapon that Heithrún had given him: her own staff, refashioned as a spear.

Me, the troll-slayer
.

He went to find the rest of his own party.

When he reached them, Chief Folkvar was staring after a white-haired woman who was walking away: Eydís, senior
volva
and Heithrún’s teacher. Then Folkvar noticed Ulfr, stared, looked away, shook his head, and turned back, finally with a beard-spreading grin.

‘Piss on all mystics.’ He clutched the Thórr’s hammer amulet at his throat. ‘I need some Kvasir’s Blood.’

Was she saying something about me?

Big Vermundr filled a horn from the deerskin bladder slung over his shoulder, and held it out.

‘Here we are. Get that down you, Chief.’

‘Ah.’ Folkvar swigged half of the mead. ‘Sweet. What I needed.’

‘Ulfr?’ asked Vermundr. ‘You want some?’

‘Not if there’s anything else going.’

‘Goat’s milk.’ Hallsteinn offered a cup. ‘Nice and warm.’

‘Brilliant.’ Ulfr drank it down, feeling better. ‘So what’s up with old Eydís? Is she casting spells on you?’

‘More like, she’s spitting mad because some young warrior’s been entrancing her student.’ Folkvar held up two fingers in a V. ‘Doing some log-splitting with his axe-head.’

‘A very small axe-head, from what I hear,’ said Hallsteinn. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of though, eh, Ulfr?’

‘It’s not the weapon,’ said Ulfr, ‘it’s how you wield it.’

‘Must be all that solo practice,’ said Vermundr.

‘Oh, for Thórr’s sake.’

‘Actually,
he
has a massive hammer. No comparison.’

Ulfr shook his head, but he was not blushing; nor was he blind to Chief Folkvar’s frown, or deaf to his silence.

What did Eydís say to him?

At least Ulfr’s judgement was confirmed: bedding Heithrún had been a mistake. Yet he would do it again, given the chance, which seemed unlikely. For the Thing was breaking apart, each tribe and clan returning home, with nothing resolved.

Twin ravens arced and spiralled overhead, warning Stígr of something but not danger. A strange mist boiled: silver pinpoints whirling in sunlight, invisible when he turned his back to the sun, beautiful when he faced the light. But the more his eye beheld wonder, the more his scar-filled eyeless socket itched and crawled. He was close to the village of that bastard Ulfr: a dangerous retracing of paths.

Stígr’s hat was shapeless, keeping cold sunlight from his face, allowing him to make out the dun-brown form at the base of a pine-tree. Someone wounded, dead, sleeping or pretending weakness for the purposes of ambush.

The ravens would have warned me
.

He twisted his shoulders to loosen them, hefted his staff, and walked towards the human form.

‘Help me, sir.’

It was a young voice, that of a youth fewer in years even than Ulfr, the fresh-faced bastard who had bested Stígr. Damn them all, these young ones: bodies in one piece, minds fresh, untainted by self-hate. This one lay splayed beneath a high, slab-like outcrop.

‘Sir—?’

‘I’m here.’

Stígr pushed his cloak back over one shoulder and knelt, still holding his staff.

‘Did someone attack you, boy?’

‘No, I … fell.’

‘All right. Shh.’

Both legs were twisted, one with an extra angle where the shin had sheared through. The best thing Stígr could do now was summon help, if people were near.

‘Are you with Chief Folkvar’s clan, boy?’

‘No, Chief … Snorri.’

So. Not with Stígr’s enemies. One of their neighbours.

‘You need help,’ said Stígr. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sigurthr, sir.’

‘A hero’s name.’

With the staff, Stígr pushed himself to his feet.

‘Close your eyes, brave Sigurthr. Close your eyes and rest now.’

He raised the staff as the boy’s eyes closed.

‘Rest, because everything will be all—’

It came down fast, the iron-shod end. The wet crunch seemed distant.

‘—right.’

Like stepping on a snail.

Eira stood at the edge of a mist-cloaked lake, at the border between two worlds. She had slipped in and out of trance dozens of times since pre-dawn glimmered; now, as a vast prow rose shadow-like in mist, she moved entirely into dreamworld. It was hard to look at, this immense, other-worldly ship, for it belonged to the realm of ghosts, and its hull was formed of dead men’s fingernails: so many dead to create a vessel one hundred times the size of anything the living might build.

And
he
was on board: her brother Jarl, slain by Ulfr out of mercy but still dead.

—
Oh, my brother
.

His shade moved from ship-deck to lakewater in some fashion she could not see. Then he waded closer and stopped, ankle-deep but not wet. He was grey, and if Eira squinted she could see through him.

—
Sweet sister, it is not your time to sail on dread
Naglfar,
not yet
.

She nodded.

—
Are you … well, good Jarl?

It was a strange thing for a trained
volva
to ask. The dead could not be well; nor could they answer such questions. But Jarl was her brother, and she loved him.

—
You will be with me soon enough, dear Eira. But that is not what you wish to ask
.

The time of her death was in the Norns’ hands: her death and everyone else’s.

—
I don’t know what to ask
.

—Yes, you do
.

Old Nessa had trained Eira well, with love and harshness; but the discipline was slipping from her now.

—
I miss you, by the gods
.

A shake of a spectral head.

—
My own feelings are a memory
.

Eira shivered. She placed her palms on the bronze ovals that cupped her breasts, worn outside her robes. The narrow supporting chain made a chinking sound, muted by corpse-mist.

—
I don’t know what I seek
.

—
Things will happen, my sister. No need to search for them
.

To be a seeress was to live with ambiguity; but this was Jarl, for whom her feelings were certain.

—
Tell me, please, what I …

A distant sound filtered through fog: a muted whimper, or something more.

—
The answer is yes
.

Jarl was aboard the vast, dread vessel again.

—
What do you mean? Why are you—?

—Forgive him, sweet Eira
.

Something was happening beyond the mist. Something behind her.

—
I don’t know what you—

—
He did right by me. He honoured me
.

Then it sounded clear: a woman’s scream.

—
Jarl?

But the vessel known as
Naglfar
was slipping back as the mist roiled and thickened. The dead were gone. The world was cold. Now, from beyond the mists, there was more to hear: the roar of men; a crescendo of hooves; the clash and thud of weapons; the crackle of buildings set alight. And the screams of children dying.

Roger would have liked to return to Ascension Annexe on leaving the Admiralty complex; but he had company – Clayton and Clara – and
her
existence was the one thing he had kept secret. Dad’s legacy: the one wonderful thing that survived, beyond memories of a loving upbringing.

It was Clayton who summoned the fastpath rotation that took the three of them into a palatial apartment suite. The first surprising thing was the ease of the rotation; the second was Clayton’s saying: ‘This is your new home, and we hope you like it.’

Clara looked at Roger – her expression saying,
you’re not as surprised as I am
– then her face blanked.

‘It’s what we call a safehouse,’ added Clayton. ‘But then you’d know the term.’

‘I’m a big fan of
Fighting Shadows
.’ But this was Labyrinth, not Fulgor. ‘Er, it’s a holodrama series. Was.’

One more fragment of a global culture lost. For Roger, the present had been severed from the past. His future was a landscape seen through the thickest of lenses: distorted, unknowable.

‘Why would you need a safehouse,’ he added, ‘right here in Labyrinth?’

‘Good question,’ said Clara.

Was that an edge to her voice?

Clayton, looking at Roger, said: ‘I’m asking for trust here. This needs to be secret, so you’ll have to stay inside.’

But it was not Roger’s trust he was asking for – it was Clara’s. At least that was how Roger read the subtleties of communication: the tonal emphasis, the implied semantics of words unsaid.

‘You think I’m in danger,’ he said. ‘From someone with access to classified information?’

Clayton blinked – perhaps because he had not expected Roger to work that out – and the corners of Clara’s mouth twitched.

‘That’s a good assessment,’ she said.

After nodding, Clayton gestured to the sofa and chairs, which moved closer.

‘Did you ever think of following your father’s career choice?’ Clayton sat down and leaned back, the upholstery morphing around him. ‘I’m sure you’ve got the aptitude.’

‘Commodore Gould wanted to recruit me,’ said Roger. ‘My one time here, besides when I was a baby, he showed me around—’

Micro-expressions from both their faces told him that he had forgotten to mention this earlier.

‘I’m sorry,’ he added. ‘I thought I’d told you everything. There was a Pilot, a prisoner, in a cell somewhere in Labyrinth, and the darkness manifested around him. It was weird and huge, the way it appeared, though I don’t think the prisoner was as dangerous as Helsen. If that makes sense.’

He definitely had told them everything he knew and suspected about Dr Petra Helsen, intellectual bully and probable causative agent behind the whole Fulgor Catastrophe; and he had drawn a holosketch of the bearded man who might be her accomplice. He had even mentioned the nine discordant notes that accompanied the sightings –
da, da-dum, da-da-da-dum, dada
– sounding only in his head, not the external world.

‘That knowledge should not leave this room,’ said Clayton. ‘No word to anyone about this prisoner.’

Once more, it seemed that he spoke to Clara while addressing Roger.

=I agree.=

All three of them looked up.

After a moment, Clara said: ‘So we’ve something in common, then.’

Roger had learned that few people heard Labyrinth directly.

‘Looks like it,’ said Clayton. ‘So let me be more open. When you report to Colonel Garber, not everything needs to be mentioned.’

Clara looked like an endurance athlete, her body-fat minimal. For a second, her face showed every muscle tensing below the skin. Then: ‘I’ll not endanger Roger.’

‘Thank you,’ said Clayton.

‘And thanks from me.’ Roger heard the relaxed tone of his own voice, and noted it as interesting, nothing more. ‘Since I’m the one you’re keeping safe.’

The idea that he might be in danger was simply a fact: one more datum to process.

Everything changed when Fulgor died
.

His world or his parents: pick either disaster, or both.

‘Before the murder,’ said Clayton, ‘I believe Commodore Gould told the Admiralty Council that you failed the test, Roger. It’s in the report files, with the actual test details unspecified. Your father took several minutes to be able to see the darkness. Gould said that you stayed there for longer, and noticed nothing.’