All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) (38 page)

“No, little darkness. Not alone.”

She drew the sword from its bundle, leveled it at his chest, and he stared. He stood perfectly still, eyes on the point, making no move to defend himself or to flee. And then a wild sorrowful light flared into his eyes, and he looked past the blade, into Muire’s. “I threw her into the sea.”

“The sea gave her back.”

“And you retrieved her from the wizard. Why?”

Muire reversed Svanvitr in her hand and extended her to him, pommel first. And Mingan—he stood as if frozen, watching the hilt of the sword as if it were the head of a snake.

“I came to kill you if you would not listen,” he said. He made no move to take Svanvítr from her hand. “I have been watching the world wind down, and it is restful.”

“It is not what you are made for.” She stretched the sword further.

“I am fallen,” he said. “There can be no answer for what I have done. I am everything the tarnished were, and more.”

“Mingan, you were meant to be here, and yours is the hardest road of all. You dress in shadows, brother, but there is starlight in your eyes.”

He gasped, his hands flexing at his sides. His eyes clenched shut again, and his head jerked once, sharply. “Strifbjorn might have lived. They all might have lived, without me.”

“And they all might have died.”

“No!” he cried, and then, “No,” he whispered.

“You are forgiven,” she said, usurping another divine prerogative, and he cringed. Cringed away, recoiled—as if whatever he felt had shocked him, and spun back toward her, hands outstretched. He snatched the crystal sword, blade slicing her fingers as he pulled it free. She let go, blood scattering from her hand.

“Decide,” she said, and spread her arms out as he had, earlier. “My sword is in the kitchen. Yours is in your hand.”

He raised Svanvitr as if to plunge her through Muire’s breast, into her heart. The blade was dark, dark, dark.

Muire.

Muire took a step toward the point. Mingan drew her back another inch, lofted her above and behind his head like a javelin. Like the hand that held it, the tip of the shadowy blade shivered.

Muire!

“Decide,” she said, as calm as if she had never run for her life from anything.

Svanvítr flared savagely into incandescence.

And it was the wolf who hissed once, turned on his heel in a whirl of cloak, and ran, unable to vanish into the shadows when the shadows streamed away on all sides from the brand of light in his hand. Footsteps, from he who was usually so silent, pounded the stairs. Muire heard a board crack, heard the hesitation and then the thump as he leaped the last flight to the ground.

She closed her eyes and breathed out, long and quietly. “Well,” she said, hugging herself, wondering when she would begin trembling, “one redemption down.”

Six million and twenty to go.

T
he wolf runs.

But what he runs from is in his heart, it is in his hand. He is no ghost now; his bootnails ring on stone. Shopkeepers and urchins turn to watch as he pelts past, his cloak aswirl about him, Svanvitr singing in his head with joy to be reunited. His
intangibility, his anonymity, are stripped from him in a blaze of light, as surely as the sun at dawn strips the mist and mystery from a river. He is in the world now, and there is no escaping it. Pinned by the sword in his hand—

—at least until he pauses to think. And then he realizes, he has a cloak. The light can be swaddled away. He cannot stop it burning him—burning not his hand, his eyes, but his spirit and mind—but he can hide it, and perhaps find the shadows and the otherworld again.

He darts into a yard and tears his cloak over his head. The thick wool is soft, unwieldy. It clings to his hands and swings with heavy drape, but he manages the sword. Svanvitr is muffled.

He leans against the wall, panting, his face streaked with light. The song still burns through his mind, scourging, polishing. Stripping him clean.

Madness is nothing. Madness is an old friend, a comfort to him. He is the son of a god and a giantess. He is a god-monster. He is the Sun-eater. He was born to destruction, to mayhem, to wrath. The world is full of things that want destroying, and also full of those who do not covet destruction. So he was chained to the end of the world. There was a poem that was also a prophecy, and he lived it.
The wolf, till world’s end.

And now he is a wolf driven by the goad and the hunt, crazed by the cage and the chain. He is the wolf run mad—

Someone giggles.

He opens his eyes and looks, this way and that, expecting a child. The scent is not a child’s, though, and the giggle is . . . unsettling. He sees a woman, a human—a halfman, he guesses they’d say, with their arbitrary unconsidered rankings—dressed in blue like a waelcyrge. But her blue is dingy, the hem torn,
food stains on the breast of her dress. She’s grown, older than Muire’s pretty toy, and she holds a heavy bucket dangling from her hand. She looks right at him, though one of her eyes doesn’t seem to focus. And she giggles. And says, in strangely accented words, “Ma, there’s a man in the yard.”

Like some wolves, some humans are simple. This is one. She steps toward him, and he edges back, the sword in his hand. He could take her, swallow her. Make her serve a purpose. Sustain him, darken him, layer him in stain. With his other hand, he touches the blood-warm silver swinging heavy in his ear.

She drops the bucket at the base of the kitchen steps with a thud. She reaches for him, one-handed, as if she means to stroke the plait fallen over his shoulder. He twists his head to the side, and his collar tightens against the tendons.

He is only a wolf. And a wolf without a pack is nothing.

And his pack’s leader has reclaimed him.

He is the Grey Wolf, and no matter how the collar at his throat still chokes, it never could bind him for all time. Only until the end of the world.

The end of the world is upon them.

Betimes an old tree must fall, for a new one to find the Light.

Muffled sword in his hand, he steps into the shadows.

M
aybe it wasn’t a very good plan, but it was the only one Muire had. Considering her resources—two magical swords that weren’t much use for anything practical except cutting through anything in their path; a spell-casting, mechanically inclined rodent; a catgirl with a whip; a retired cyborg tavern-keeper; an animate steam engine; and a deeply depressed nineteen-year-old—she thought she had done as well as could be expected.

Strifbjorn might have done better. But Strifbjorn was a war-leader, and she would never have his help again.

And after all, it might work. Because Muire suspected Thjierry would never allow herself to be placed in a position where she was not the primary opponent. And so she would never expect Muire to play the distraction in her own plan.

Selene had already retrieved Muire’s armor, along with Svanvitr—now disposed of—and Muire’s fiddle. Cathoair and Cristokos helped her dress, and though she didn’t need the help she permitted them to perform the service as befitted their sense of ceremony.

When Cathoair kissed her on the forehead, she even managed him a smile.

Kasimir came for her a little before sunset, and Muire walked out into the Riverside market square to meet him. No slinking in alleys tonight. They went to Thjierry openly, as befitted angels.

While Muire mounted, a crowd began to form, ringing Kasimir at what they perceived as a safe distance. The attention made him restive. Not nervy, as a horse might have been, but Muire could read in the set of his tail and the arch of his necks that he was basking in their fascination. She tapped him on the crest with her knuckles. “Stop posing for your statue. We’ve a long way yet to go.”

I thought you might like to see it now, given the odds against us living long enough to see it cast.

Thanks
. But she straightened the wires of his mane so they all fell down the same side of each neck, and settled herself in the saddle.
Ready when you are, beloved
.

He preened under the pet-name far more than under the grooming, and with a flick of his tail was airborne as effortlessly as if he cantered around a paddock. Heavy wingbeats bore them upwards, the air groaning under the weight of his massive steel form. Muire felt the wind in her face, sliding between the joints of her armor, and let herself laugh.

Kasimir’s answering whinny had something of a stallion’s shriek of challenge in it, as they climbed into the sky.

T
he last thing Muire had said to Cathoair was, “Do what Selene tells you,” and he was damned if he was going to let her down. He wore the sword she’d given him awkwardly across his back. They hadn’t found a scabbard to fit it, but Aethelred had sewn two steel rings to either end of a length of webbing, and
slipped through those, with the baldric run across his chest, it stayed well enough.

If all went as planned, he would have to draw it before long. He thought of that, and tried very hard not to anticipate disaster.

Selene followed, like a guard; Cristokos and Cathoair walked ahead of her, side by side. She held her whip in her hand, uncoiled, and Cathoair had a moment to consider that if he were not the person—the unperson—he was, he might be having a hard time trusting her. But Selene was as honest and uncomplicated as a drink of water, and he found he appreciated that. Especially when she was at his back with a weapon, walking with him into a fight.

They came to the Broken Stair, and Cristokos stood aside so Cathoair could be the first to climb it. As he came to the top, he saw that there was an unman sentry posted, just as Selene has said there would be, and Cathoair—Selene and Cristokos behind him—walked forward slowly, his hands in plain sight.

“Achilles,” Selene said. “Look what I found.”

“He’s armed,” said Achilles, and Selene made a noise of agreement. “I have the weapon with reach,” she said. “It was just as easy to let him carry it this far. Would you summon us three hoverboards, please, and then disarm him? Prisoner, spread your arms wider.”

The golden-eared dog called for rides as Selene requested, while she said, very calmly, “While we are in the air, your board will be slaved to mine. Your duty is to stand very still and not fall. If you try to escape, my whip can reach you. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” Cathoair said, and bit his lip.

Then Achilles came back to him, and hesitated. “Who is
this?” he asked, looking at Cristokos, who stood with his hood raised.

“Cristokos,” Selene said. “There was something wrong with him, but now he’s better. He turned in the nearman.”

“I should call it in—”

“Please do.” Cathoair tried not to stare at her tail, lashing. “That would be convenient. But first his sword, Achilles?”

“Bend down, please, sir.”

Cathoair did as ordered, and heard the sword blade ring like a glass bell as Achilles pulled it free. The web baldric fell to the ground as the unman backed away, getting himself and the blade away from Cathoair’s greater reach. And then he jerked, as if shocked or startled, and looked down at the thing in his hand, and dropped it to the stones. “Selene—”

He went to his knees, and Cristokos was instantly beside him, the striped hood thrown back and his black hand and his pink hand wrapped tight on Achille’s wrists as the canine curled into a ball. “Shh,” he said. “Shh. That one will endure. It is a promise.”

Cathoair drew a deep breath and went to retrieve Alvitr. From above came the hum of the hoverboards descending.

T
he rattle of a helicopter greeted Muire before they had halfway ascended. She wasn’t surprised; Thjierry had to be expecting them, given what she was doing to Kasimir’s valley. But she did lean over his necks and urge him to climb harder, higher, faster. She didn’t think Thjierry would shoot at them. But she hadn’t thought Thjierry would sacrifice an entire world to save one city, either.

As the helicopter swung into view, Kasimir beat for altitude.
It was a glossy glass and metal bubble, spider-black, long mantis legs folded tight under the cabin. When Muire turned to look, she glimpsed the machine gun and rocket ports. “Go!” she shouted at Kasimir. “Go! Go!”

I do not fear that machine,
he said, but he heeded her demands and fled it, putting himself between the helicopter and the glass and brick walls of the university so the pilot dare not take a shot.

I don’t want to have to kill the pilot.

Oh
, said the warhorse.
Of course not.

He turned on a feathertip, a spiral as tight as a bedspring, and Muire felt the bend of his spine through her seatbones. Down now, down plunging, whizzing between buildings and, when he pulled out, over the heads of shrieking students. The helicopter roared after, electing a more conservative height, and Muire locked both hands on the pommel of the saddle and let the wind pull her arms out straight. Mouth open, whooping with joy as Kasimir ruptured the air.