The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (38 page)

More creatures come, and I resume the slaughter,
with Heimdall close on my right doing the same. When three fresh
carcasses have fallen at our feet, joining a growing mountain, I have
the chance to locate Baldr's light again. I nudge Heimdall and point
it out. His two keen eyes turn in its direction, and he nods: at the
next opportunity, we will go.

We butcher two more who come within blades'
reach, and then there is a pause and a gap in the solid wall of
brightly colored skins and limbs and spines. Through the gap, I set
my eye on the light and break into a run. I cannot look back to see
whether Heimdall follows, but I hear him behind me, shouting to the
Einherjar by way of excuse, "I go to Odinn's side!"

On our way we must pause and slay a dozen of the
creatures. Heimdall's two eyes and unhurt right arm serve us both
well, such that by the time Baldr's beacon shines directly in front
of us, I am certain I would not have made it without him. The swarm
seems thicker here, the fighting fiercer, and the dead are piled
deeper. A few hard-fought steps further, over land blanketed in the
dead, the mist-cloaked forms before us resolve into the remnants of
Baldr's chosen guard, battling the swarm in the bright glow shed by
Baldr's own right arm and swiftly moving blade. Near the edge of the
light is Odinn himself, ringed by a band of Einherjar, but still
doing his part with furious two-handed strokes of a broad-headed ax.
His white beard drips black with Myriad gore.

Ever slashing and stabbing, wading through dead
flesh up to my knees, with Heimdall by my side, I push toward the
light. Baldr and his guard and Odinn are moving too, I realize,
making their way inch-by-inch toward—what?

The chasm
. Before we can join up with the
All-Father and his son, Heimdall and I find ourselves beset by a
solid wall of Myriad. We kill and kill, but they keep coming as if a
fresh wave of them has just risen  up from the depths. Through
the gaps, which are brief and narrow, I search again for Baldr's
light. When my eye finds it, I redouble my already frenzied
left-handed attacks; the light is obscured. Though no less bright, it
pours out now from the cracks between a half-dozen or more creatures
that adhere to Baldr, assaulting him, overwhelming him. His guards—as
I watch, one's head is separated from his body—do all they can,
but for every beast they kill, another swoops in to take its place.
Have the Myriad understood, in whatever serves as their collective
mind, that Baldr is important? Have they  decided, if they are
capable of decision, that his light must be extinguished?

A creature that is a single, nightmarish,
fang-filled mouth confronts me, and for the time it takes me to
ensure that I survive and it does not, I lose sight again of Baldr's
light. I climb over the newly-dead thing and go forward, searching
the misty battlefield. There! I see his glowing blade, slashing and
slashing, taking its toll of motley creatures thrown into stark
shadow by the weapon's brilliance. Some fall, but more come, and
still more. I press forward, glad to see Heimdall when I risk a
glance to my side, but I know. I know that Baldr is doomed.

As I watch, helpless to intervene, the creatures
who were upon him scatter and choose new targets, leaving Baldr
another lifeless lump in this sea of flesh and bone and blade and
horn, his light shining no more. I cry out in grief and rage, and so
do Heimdall and those few of Baldr's picked men of the Aesir. There
are enough voices raised to pierce, briefly, the swarm's accursed,
unceasing shriek.

With Baldr's loss, every Aesir in sight rallies
to Odinn, who bears his grief in silence, expressing it only with his
ax, even though his pain must dwarf ours,. Heimdall and I fight our
way to the Einherjar guarding him, and we join them in carving a path
for Odinn through the swarm. Hacking at the wall of inhuman enemies
surrounding us, there is no way to know how close we are to our goal,
the chasm's edge. I learn how close we are only when an Einherjar to
my left takes a step forward, stumbles—and vanishes. He is lost
to the abyss below, but in his sacrifice, he saves the rest of us.
The call goes up to halt, and our slow forward progress ends.

When there is enough of a break in the swarm in
front of me, I see it ahead, past the ridge formed of arm and leg and
tentacle: the great rent in the ground from which Myriad by the
thousands shoot skyward before descending upon our diminishing Host.
Once the peaceful boundary between allied realms, this gap today is a
fountain of horrors, a wellspring of destruction. I fear that we
cannot last long this near to it. But having reached it, we fight to
hold our place, slaying creatures which tumble back down whence they
came. For every one we send back, many more fly out. It is simple to
see how the Chrysioi lost their world to this invader, and how folk
unknown to us in other worlds surely have lost theirs. This world is
sure to follow—unless—

Through the swarm's shriek, a sound reaches my
ears. I know it. I have just heard it. It is the roar of Jormungand.

Heimdall shouts, "The Serpent! The Serpent
comes!"

The All-Father at once stops fighting, lowers
his ax and looks to a sky half blacked-out by the swarm. There is
tranquility in the look on his cracked lips and single eye. I know
what he intends, for I have seen it. I have known since he put the
Gjallarhorn in Heimdall's hands. The flight of Jormungand fulfilled
the third of my visions from Mimir's Well. Odinn means to fulfill the
fourth and last.

The air around me crackles, and in a flash of
sorcerous fire, the space in front of us and sky above is cleared of
Myriad, which blacken and fall. I can see the chasm's edge. Odinn
strides toward it and turns, putting his back to it. He throws down
his weapon. His gaze goes upward. So does mine and a thousand others,
if a thousand of us still live. All witness the same sight: the great
black wings of Jormungand, throwing Host and swarm deep into shadow.

The Serpent roars again, wheels and dives, its
neck and tail arrow-straight, two hate-filled golden eyes fixed on
the enemy whose blood it craves, Odinn, who stands fearless in wait.

Jormungand is fast. So must be his prey if the
day is to be won. Odinn has no time for final words, if he  had
thought to give any. In silence, he takes a single backward step into
nothing.

He falls. I do not move closer to the edge to
watch his form grow smaller and smaller until it becomes invisible
among the darting horned, spined and tentacled shapes. I already have
seen Odinn's fall. It is  the last of my visions.

My eye remains on Jormungand, who keeps on
coming, filling more and more of my halved sight. It looses another
ear-splitting roar, venom flying from its teeth. A drop passes not
far away, obliterating five or more floating Myriad before landing on
a mound of corpses. The piled flesh smokes and melts away like a
burning candle left forgotten for days.

With every second, the Serpent looms larger and
larger, appearing to head straight for us. The swarm near me thins as
its component creatures realize the threat posed by the Serpent and
as one soar upward to meet it. So small are they compared to
Jormungand that even a thousand of them vanish like so many gnats
against its bulk. But the strength of the swarm lies in its numbers,
and as the Serpent descends, a greater and greater number of Myriad
abandon the battle against our Host to stream skyward.

On the ground, where the last of the green mist
swiftly dissipates, even the bravest of Aesir and Vanir, now bereft
of an enemy, scatter to ensure they are not in Jormungand's way. I am
one of few who stands fast, looking up, for I know the Serpent's
path.

I stand watching as the Serpent comes nearer and
nearer, gathering around it an expanding cloud of Myriad which it
ignores as it flies arrow-straight on the course it chose the moment
it scented Odinn's blood. Onward it comes, until its body is all that
I can see, just black scales and talons and teeth and leathern
wings—amid a halo of misshapen blots of red and green and
yellow, the enemy which would spell doom for us, yet proves hardly a
nuisance to the risen Serpent. Onward it comes, gathering the
swarm—and passes me by without slowing to plunge instead
straight into the chasm in pursuit of the one on whom it would have
its vengeance, he who has sacrificed himself that his people, and
even his  enemies, might live. Down the Serpent flies, buffeting
my borrowed body with the winds of its passage.

The last part of it to vanish is the snake-like
tail, and behind it flies the swarm in its countless numbers, giving
chase to the beast which could devour them all in a few gulps if it
were to divert for but a moment from its single-minded purpose.

It will gorge itself upon them, I know. Either
it will swallow Odinn and then turn its fury on the swarm, or the
Myriad will make of itself enough of a hindrance that Jormungand must
face it first. Whatever transpires deep inside that crack in the
world, I know that Asgard and Vanaheim and all the realms except for
already-conquered Niflheim are safe, at least for a time. Mimir's
Well must have told Odinn that, else he would not have chosen this
course.

Jormungand roars one last time. The sound races
up the chasm walls and fades to nothing. The shriek of the Myriad
fades, too, as swarm follows Serpent and All-Father to unknown depths
and unknown fates. Odinn wore the Aegis. Perhaps it will protect him
even in the belly of the great beast, or wherever he may wind up.
Perhaps it will not.

The mist vanishes, and those who live, among
whom I am lucky enough to count myself, behold carnage stretching
from horizon to horizon. Odinn has saved us, but it is instantly
plain to anyone possessed of at least one eye that the cost has been
terrible.

The air is still and quiet. I turn from the
chasm and trudge through piles of the dead to learn if those whom I
hold dear are yet among the living.

Crow is unharmed. So is Ayessa, whose lover
Sigrid also lives, though she cannot stand or walk. I greet 
them with held breath. Only when I glimpse Gaeira among the survivors
do I heave a sigh and resume breathing. Seeing us, no observer would
think the two of us closer than any pair of strangers who caught one
another's eye, for we share no smile, no wave, no embrace, only a
brief stare to say without words, 
I am glad
.

Exhausted, the warriors of the Host shuffle over
the battlefield as ghosts, doing as I do, seeking to learn the fates
of friends. If any had the strength left to celebrate our victory,
Odinn's sacrifice banishes any thought of it. His heir apparent,
Baldr, lies among the fallen. Two of four Odinnsons live, and one of
them is blind and an exile. No one questions that Tyr will rule.
Indeed, even before the toll is counted, various leaders including
the Vanir chiefs, the commanders of the Einherjar and Valkyriar—the
latter a deputy for absent Freya—and others unknown to me
gather to pledge loyalty to Odinn's grim-faced successor. The giant
king Thrym does not come himself, but while standing by Tyr waiting
to pledge my own loyalty, I overhear it conveyed that the giants plan
to honor indefinitely the pact struck with Odinn.

I do not know whether to feel relief or
disappointment at that. I have no wish for another war to begin in
the wake of this one, but I know how greatly Gaeira longs to turn her
ax once more upon the foe against which she is more accustomed to
using it. And I long to hear her speak.

Also present in the gathering of leaders is the
false Ares—unharmed, I am displeased to learn. Or maybe I
should be pleased, for it means that I will have the privilege of
personally bringing about Loki's downfall. Somehow, someday. But not
today. My vengeance, like Gaeira's, will have to wait.

For the rest of the day, we clean the
battlefield and measure the toll of the two battles, dumping monster
carcasses into the chasm and laying out the bodies of our own fallen
so that the living might put names to faces. For some, funerals are
quickly held, the bodies burned on pyres while the dead's praises are
sung. Others are shrouded to be carried back to their homes. The last
and largest funeral of the evening is for Baldr. I stand in somber
silence in the heat of the blazing pyre. It was mischief Baldr's that
ended up costing me my eye, but I bear no grudge. I would change
nothing. Baldr was good to me, and I shall miss him.

For Odinn, there is no body to burn. There is
just his ax, which Tyr takes into his possession. There will be ten
days of mourning in Asgard and every other place where Odinn was
hailed as highlord.

Many thousands of others who stood with the Host
have met their ends, including a third of the Einherjar and a quarter
of the Valkyriar. The Vanir fared similarly. The giants suffered the
fewest losses, with only eight frost giants felled. How that bodes on
the likelihood and outcome of future wars, no one can say, save
perhaps old Mimir.

Darkness sets. Gaeira's farm is not far, but we
will not walk there in the dark, and anyway there is more work yet to
be done sorting the dead. Gaeira and I find a spot for the night far
from the stench of  red and black blood, and we sleep. Nothing
else, just sleep, with arms round each other, for we are exhausted,
and too many have died this day for us to begin celebrating life
again. Come morning, we do our part dragging Myriad and tipping them
into the chasm, and by afternoon, the remnants of the Great Host
begin to disperse. Gaeira and I are among those who leave for home.
Her home. I have none, as such, but hers feels more like one to me
now than Neolympus or any other place.

I bid Crow farewell, promising to share drink
with him in the very near future, and Gaeira and I depart.    We
go on foot, having no idea what has become of the horses on which we
arrived; someone will take good care of them.