Sword and Shadow (9 page)

Chapter Twelve

The rest of their journey northward turned out to be mostly uneventful, except for the brief excitement of the sighting of a pod of orcas off the port side as they were skirting the string of islands that, on her home Earth, would have been Japan.

Here, apparently, the islands were avoided as if they housed the very gates of hell. Or whatever similar underworld legend these people possessed. The sailors swore that they were home to a race of giant one-eyed cannibals and that no ordinary man who ever set foot there had been seen again.

Val kept her thoughts on the matter to herself, other than to veto the notion some of the crew had about setting rowing their prisoner ashore and leaving her there. The way she saw it, the bitch would keep until they were finished with their mission and had the time to deal with whatever secrets she held.

The ship had also been fortunate enough to dodge rough weather so far, for which Val remained quite thankful. She heard and gave thought to the crew’s whispers as to how odd it was not to have ran across a heavy storm in this late season, but could not explain it herself.

As they began to encounter icebergs and long, wide ice flows, the Captain and crew’s trepidation grew more apparent. One good strike by one of the icebergs would shatter the vessel into so many toothpicks.

Raven, when apprised of this one evening, simply smiled and shook his head. “I’ve protected the ship against such things,” he said enigmatically, gaining himself a dark look from the Captain, who didn’t entirely trust him. That came as no surprise.

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“How?” asked Goban, who trusted him, at least to a certain point, but obviously wanted to know more.

“You wouldn’t understand it even if I explained it to you,” Raven answered back with a knowing smile. The ex-mercenary threw up his hands and stalked away.

“I trust you,” Bryon told him, quite unnecessarily. His attitude hadn’t fallen into worship, but it hadn’t missed it by much. The Governor’s son clearly couldn’t believe that the culmination of the prophesy his people had awaited would ever leave them vulnerable to such a mundane threat as an iceberg.

As the sea thickened and the ice flows grew more numerous, Val caught Raven doing something on the bow of the ship late one night, actually scrawling some elaborate pattern of interconnecting lines on the deck itself.

She watched in silence as he stood, raised his hands to the sky, and began to do something she could only describe as a dance, his hands weaving in the air as he moved.

The purpose of this mysterious ritual became clear the next morning when they emerged onto the deck at the cry of one of the sailors to find the ship encased in a brilliant sheath of red, suffusing the very air around them with warmth, but also rolling outward from it and burning away the surrounding ice with far more intense heat.

They sailed through the waters like this for nearly five days. On the sixth morning they woke to find the ship nestled against the ice, the bubble of invisible fire apparently drawn back to the ship itself. They were as warm as ever, but the reaching effect that melted the ice away had disappeared.

But their eyes were drawn past the bow of the ship, to the mountain of red-tinged ice some miles away, reaching boldly into the sky. The thing was all sharp planes and vaulted spires, clawing their way toward the heavens.

She still recognized it instantly for what it was, and fear warred with fascination within her breast. It was a starship, at least as large as 82

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Earth’s great mage ships. They all stood in the utter stillness, shocked into silence by the awesome sight.

“What
is
it?” murmured Goban by her side, in the quietest of tones, as if he was afraid that to question its existence would awaken it and seal his doom.

She faltered as she tried to come up with an explanation that would somehow fit into his worldview. “It’s a kind of ship,” she finally answered.

“But a kind that sails between stars rather than the seas.”

He stared at her, shocked beyond words. “What’s it doing here?”

“Now
that
is the question, isn’t it?”

“The legends say nothing about this,” Bryon said.

She smiled at that. “‘Legend’ is often just another word for a ‘load of bullshit.’ You know what we have to do, don’t you?” she asked the two of them. “We have to make the trek across the ice to that thing, and try to find out what it is and what it’s doing here.”

Bryon nodded slowly, eyes suddenly filling with naked fear. With good reason, she decided. She was afraid as well, maybe as afraid as she’d ever been. “Shouldn’t we wait for Raven to awaken?” he asked.

Val shook her head. “He’ll catch up.” She had the sudden feeling that they were running out of time, that they needed to reach it as soon as they could. She wasn’t worried that the vampire wouldn’t be able to make the journey alone.

The crew lowered them over the side, outfitted with the gear Raven had gathered before they’d left. The great beast Cerberus joined them, leaping without hesitation from the deck to the ice far below and waiting for them to descend with an obvious air of impatience.

He stood patiently as they fumbled their way through attaching the sled to him, his muzzle stretched into what she could only perceive as a patient doggy smile as they buckled the harnesses to his massive frame and loaded the sled with their equipment.

They’d only gone a mile or less before the daylight faded into twilight, then into nightfall. Goban and Bryon stopped in their tracks, staring at the sky with matching looks of terror spreading across their faces. She laughed gently and did her best to explain that they’d reached the top of www.samhainpublishing.com 83

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the world, where the winter sun only rose slightly above the horizon before sinking back into obscurity.

She was the only one not surprised when, out of the blowing ice mist, came a solitary figure, long coat swirling around his calves, black hat firmly in place. He wrapped an arm around Val and stared with her at the great mountain of icy alloy stretching into the sky. “You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, clearly amused by something.

“No. What?”

“It means that if there are weapons aboard that craft, they rightfully belong to Goban and Bryon.”

“How so?”

“Right of salvage,” he answered casually.

She pulled herself out of his embrace and stared at him. “You expected this, didn’t you?”

“
This?
No. But something like it, sure. Most of the time legends are based on something, and the fact that these legends of this place specifically mention weapons…well, you get the point.”

She couldn’t argue with his logic. The agencies were not responsible for artifacts that preceded their very existence, which, she could only assume, this one did. Maybe she and Raven had made this journey possible, but whatever they found inside most definitely belonged to the natives. “You do realize that we can’t teach them how to use what we find.”

His answering glance told her very clearly how he felt about that dictum. He had no intention of following it, no matter what she had to say on the subject.

She sighed. “Fine. Do what you’re going to do anyway.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Even bundled against the cold as they were, the bitter winds began to slash through their clothing and drain their strength. Only Cerberus seemed unaffected.

Being immune to the cold himself—clearly quite comfortable in his normal garb—Raven performed some minor bit of magic that not only 84

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shielded them from the cold, but also returned some of the energy they’d lost.

For his part, Bryon seemed to see this as just one more piece of evidence that the vampire was the savior he’d been awaiting. Goban thanked him gruffly, and Val herself rendered him a grateful smile as they trudged onward.

After several hours Raven called a halt and sent them to bed. When they arose, with the first peeking of a semblance of dawn, he was nowhere to be found, but as soon as darkness returned, so did he.

They pushed on.

It took them three days to make the trek, but, finally, they came to a halt at the base of the monolithic construct. They halted some hundred yards away, gazes caught by the sheer immensity of it. She’d been wrong to compare its size to that of a mage ship, for it dwarfed even those formidable constructs. It stood as tall as one of Earth’s great skyscrapers—the Transworld Tower, for example—but massed as much as ten of them all jumbled together into a great edifice of crimson alloy.

“So where’s the door?” she asked in hushed tones. Speaking too loudly seemed unwise for some reason, though she thought herself a bit silly for buying into it. Raven was the only one of the four of them who didn’t seem awed to whispers by the damned thing.

“We’re going to have to get through the ice to figure that out,” he replied, quirking one feathered brow at her and mocking her gently for her fear. As near as she could tell, the vampire wasn’t afraid of anything.

Except maybe love.

“Can’t you just throw one of your transit things in and let us go in that way?”

He gave her a curious look. “Yes, but I’m not sure that would be the wisest course. An actual entrance of some kind would give us access to whatever security system there is inside. I am fairly certain that to enter without first disabling something like that might be would be a grave mistake.”

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Vampires shouldn’t use terms like ‘grave mistake,’
she decided. It just didn’t sound right
.
The argument, however, was sound. “Fine. Then I guess the ball’s in your court.”

He gave her another look, this one tinged with surprise. His face, she realized, was prone to more expression than she’d been led to believe vampires usually displayed. In many respects, he was among the most human of his breed. Whether this was deliberate, or simply an aspect of his personality, she couldn’t begin to guess.

He motioned for them to step back and began to do his thing. In moments, water ran from the construct in growing rivulets, the thick layer of ice melting away at the touch of his magic. Some other effect forced the water to flow away from them, forming something of a moat as it ran in deep rivers around the sides and vanishing behind the massive vessel.

She hadn’t ever wanted to feel awed by his power, but it was at times like these that she found she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t really frightened of him, but it was occasionally closer than she would have liked.

“There is a chance that the main door is buried beneath this sheet,”

he said, once he’d cleared away the ice. “But I have a feeling that there are multiple egress points.”

On something that large there would almost have to be, Val thought.

Perhaps a hangar bay door for shuttles or something similar, and multiple entrances for docking with space platforms and other vessels.

Her only question was whether they’d be able to identify them. The ship’s alien origins seemed obvious—it would be a mistake to consider it from a wholly human perspective.

“There.” Raven pointed to a darkened indent some fifty feet above them. “That looks like a hatch to me.”

She nodded. It did to her, as well. “I assume you can get us up there?”

“I can,” he replied with a frown. “But I’m going to investigate it by myself before I do.”

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That made sense. If it reacted violently, he had a much better chance of avoiding or surviving the attack than any of them. It still chilled her to think of him putting himself in danger. He was fast, tough, and oh-so-dangerous, but he was not invulnerable.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” came a booming voice from somewhere behind them. Cerberus, whom they’d already released from the harnesses connecting him to the sled, growled menacingly. “Call off your dog if you do not wish it killed.”

They all turned to see a pair of particularly large human figures standing some fifty feet away. Both had flowing blond locks and the thick, sturdy frames of warriors. They were also dressed in such a way to indicate they had no reason to be particularly concerned with the cold, in rough-cut tanned leathers and matching fur coats hanging around their knees.

One wore a black eye-patch and a long salt-and-pepper beard. One bare fist held the haft of a wicked-looking spear, its butt resting on the ice, its broad, leaf-shaped blade pointing at the sky.

The other was clean-shaven, with a piercing, hawk-like gaze. Loosely in his right hand he held a sword that glittered oddly in the dim light. His other arm, bent across his chest, ended in not a hand, but a spiked ball like the business end of a brutal mace.

“You meddle in things that are none of your business,” said the bearded one, his voice the same as the one that had spoken originally. “If you leave now, we will not be forced to kill you.”

“
We
will decide what is and is not our business,” Raven replied, his voice ringing out in tones as chill as the arctic night in which they stood.

“You do not frighten us.”

Speak for yourself,
Val thought, but she said nothing aloud. They frightened her very much. She had an inkling of who they were, and the notion of going up against immortals—particularly with the reputation of these two—scared the crap out of her.

As the frigid wind whipped around them one questioning thought rang like a clarion call in her mind:
What in the hell are Odin and Tyr
doing here?

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Chapter Thirteen

The vampire’s words hung in the frigid air as the two immortals seemed to size him up. He had an air of competence and confidence they clearly couldn’t get a handle on, and neither seemed to like it much. They had to know he was a mage, but Val would have bet dollars to donuts they didn’t know what else he was. This world’s ignorance about vampires, and the fact that they’d probably been here for centuries, suggested they knew next to nothing about the undead.

That gave Raven something of an advantage, but she wasn’t sure how much it would be against a couple of immortals. She knew the legends about them—their history on her Earth, and how they varied considerably in terms of power and capabilities. Something told her that this pair wasn’t going to be a pushover, no matter how you sliced it.

There was something about that spear, and the sword in Tyr’s hand, that send a chill of familiarity through her. It was whispered that the only thing that could kill an immortal was something known as
high crystal
, and that it looked like colored glass to the unschooled.

There was little doubt in her mind that the weapons the immortals carried were crystal. A wave of fear crashed over her as she thought of Raven going up against them. The smartest thing to do would be to turn and walk away, but she’d learned enough about the vampire in the last several weeks to know damn well he’d never do it.

“The Defender and the Avenger,” murmured Bryon, his eyes wide and fearful.

Well, that explains that,
she thought. These two were the other ‘faces’

of the Three-Fold God, the ones Raven—assuming he was indeed the so-called ‘Redeemer’—would be called upon to defeat. The fact that the 88

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prophesy existed was not enough to assure his victory—just that he
might
win. Like all prophesy, it hinged on possibilities rather than sureties.

One thing she knew for sure was that if Raven fell, they’d never make it back to the ship. They’d die out here without a doubt. And, even if they did, the ship would never be able to plow its way back through the ice.

“Only the young could be so foolhardy,” drawled the one-eyed immortal, hefting the spear and setting it on one shoulder as he cocked his head at Raven. “You may be a powerful mage, but you are only a child.”

“Appearances deceive,” Raven answered smartly, lips curving into a malicious smile.

Raven stepped forward, reaching into his coat and drawing his rapier.

It was an insignificant weapon against such as these, but no less ineffective than his pistols would be. In the end, he knew, it would be his vampiric powers and magical skills that carried the battle, if anything.

He too recognized these beings from the myths of Earth, and knew he faced the fight of his life.

“Kill him,” the one-eyed immortal told Tyr in his booming voice. The other shook his head in what looked like sadness rather than denial. He set his feet on the ice and charged.

“No!” Raven yelled at Cerberus, who moved to intercept. He did not doubt the dog’s bravery, but knew that the beast would be no match for the immortal.

Raven glided forward, putting as much distance as possible between him and the others before Tyr reached him. He allowed none of his preternatural nature to show through, deliberately moving as if he were just a mortal youth—his greatest chance of success laid in their underestimation of him. The fact that he was easily two feet shorter than the immortal went a long way toward fostering such an underestimation.

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shoulder as he barreled toward him, his expression an odd mingling of regret and cocksure certainty.

The look in his eyes told Raven that the man wouldn’t play with him—all business. He’d try to cut him down in the first few swings. There was a certain nobility in that, and in that moment, he decided that he’d be honored to show him the same courtesy.

He also recognized the material of the weapon for what it was, and understood instantly that his best hope of defeating both immortals would be in gaining that weapon for himself.

The sword swept up, pulsing with an inner light as if it were a living thing. Raven waited for it to begin its descent, a diagonal slash coming from his left with enough force to split a normal human from neck to hip.

Raven ducked under it, using only a fraction of his speed, and drove the point of his rapier through the immortal’s instep and deep into the ice.

Tyr screamed. Raven straightened, using every ounce of strength in his legs to bring him up, closed fist slamming into the nerve cluster located between the forearm and the elbow. The impact flung Tyr’s fingers open and sent the pommel of his sword arcing skyward as the vampire pivoted his hips and drove his knee into the immortal’s calf muscle.

Thus deprived of any semblance of balance, Tyr rocked backward, falling away from the weapon as Raven skated sideways and snatched it out of the air. He turned his slide into a pirouette, one foot leaving the ice as his whole body spun, the mono-molecular edge of the crystal sword slicing the air with machine-like precision before connecting with the side of the falling immortal’s neck.

The body hit the ice, its neck a fountain of crimson, as the head bounced in a different direction entirely.

Raven allowed himself the briefest second of regret as the immortal’s head skidded to a halt some fifteen feet away. He hadn’t really wanted to kill Tyr, but knew he had no choice in the matter. He’d learned a long time ago that when someone intended to kill him, he could only respond accordingly.

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Odin stared, jaw agape, as Raven lifted the weapon in a kind of salute. He felt fairly certain he hadn’t really given anything away in that exchange, other than the fact that he might be a little more than he seemed. No doubt existed that he hadn’t revealed even a fraction of his true nature.

As Odin thrust a hand outward, he was ready, already switching his vision to magesight. The strand slashed toward him, transforming into a bolt of lightning as Raven brought up a strand of his own to parry. Both threads leaped upward to shatter into a thousand points of light against the hull of the starship.

Then, much to his surprise, Odin snatched another passing thread and hurled it toward the ship, vanishing into its near end in an instant.

He hadn’t expected the immortal to run.
But Odin was known for his
wisdom, was he not?
The thought carried a bitter taste and he turned away from the corpse at his feet and looked to Val. The only one of the three mortals who didn’t look shocked was Bryon, who was smiling and nodding as if all his suspicions had been confirmed.

And maybe they had been.

“Go back to the ship,” he told them.

Val was the first to shake her head, but the others joined in willingly enough. Only Goban hesitated, and only for a second.

Snarling under his breath, Raven turned, snatching a passing strand, and whipped it across the ice between them and the starship. A thick mist sprang up, obscuring it from his sight, and he turned, walked over to the Tyr’s corpse, and knelt next to it.

He reached beneath it and lifted the neck, still pumping crimson, to his mouth. He fed.

He’d been told that immortal blood was something special, and, as he drank the last draughts from Tyr’s body, he realized how true that statement had been. In one respect it was like drinking liquid fire, or, as he dimly recalled from his youth, the sensation of taking a shot of tequila and feeling it thunder down his throat.

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He let the body fall and stood, turning hot eyes on his companions, particularly Val. “I want you to leave,” he said. “This is my fight from here on out. I’m not sure I can protect you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Val said flatly. “And I don’t need you to protect me.”

“Brave words,” he murmured. “And a flat-out lie.” He crossed the distance between them in the space of a heartbeat, halting scant inches away from her. “I want you safe.”

Her ice-blue gaze met his and didn’t falter. “As long as you’re going into danger, I’m going with you.”

“I don’t have to take you with me,” he told her, reaching up to gently stroke the side of her face. “I can leave you all here.”

She trapped his hand against her face with her own. “And return to find our frozen bodies,” she answered back without missing a beat. “If you return at all.”

He couldn’t win, he realized. She was the one he was worried about, and she wouldn’t back down. If he left her here, she’d choose to remain in this frozen wasteland until he emerged. And likely die in the process.

The only difference would be that he wouldn’t have to watch her die.

“Fine. Cerberus!”

The dog loped up, fairly radiating eagerness. Raven shook his head.

“Not you, too.”

“We will not leave you to face this alone,” said Byron. “You do this for all of us and the least we can do is accompany you.”

Raven groaned inwardly. He could almost accept bringing Val along into this, if only because she was another agent, though the idea of losing her now ate at him like he’d swallowed a nest of starving rats.

Goban was a veteran, and fully able to appreciate the dangers they’d face. But Bryon—he was a callow youth still, with none of the skills to survive in what was most likely going to be a death trap. But if one went, they all went. Leaving him out here to die was no more palatable than any of his other options.

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“Gather up whatever gear you want to take,” he said finally, after giving them all a hard stare that seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

“We’re going in as soon as you all are ready.”

Val hid her satisfied smile, knowing it would only piss Raven off. Part of her understood why he’d balked—why he hadn’t wanted her to follow him into the spaceship, though it rankled a little that he still felt he needed to protect her. She could hold her own, she thought.

No telling what awaited them inside, though she had a nasty feeling Odin was the least of their worries. They’d have a lot of hell to wade through before they confronted
that
devil. The ease with which Raven had dispatched his companion had to weigh heavily on the immortal’s mind, especially since he now had a crystal weapon of his own.

They watched as he performed whatever mysterious gestures he needed to in order to craft their means of transport into the alien vessel.

“I’ll go first,” he said, once they’d gathered up their equipment. He leaped into nothingness and they hurried to follow.

The long metal corridor stretched into the distance, curving gently, its length broken by the occasional alloy hatch. The red walls seemed somehow foreboding, and the black doors even more so, but Raven ignored the creeping disquiet and bent to examine the security plate by the first one they came across.

He dug into one of his interior pockets and pulled out a small device, plugging it into the jack beside the plate and letting the tiny machine run through a series of algorithms to find the unlock code.
Interesting that
they didn’t go with a palm or retinal lock on these,
he mused, as he glanced back at his companions. The technology to build a starship of this size was impressive, and even more impressive was the skill needed to make such a large ship capable of landing in a gravity well.

His knowledge of such things was limited, but not so limited that he couldn’t grasp the engineering involved.

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Val came up beside him. “Where do you think this thing came from?”

she asked.

He only shrugged. Once they were able to descend into the belly of the ship, they might have a chance to make that determination—the existence or absence of a gating module of some kind would tell them if the vessel was native to this universe or a visitor from elsewhere. As things stood at the moment, he wasn’t willing to hazard a guess.

Five minutes later the sound of a latch retracting inside the hatch rang through the corridor. Raven plucked the device from the jack and pocketed it again, then hefted the sword from where he’d placed it against the wall. “Everybody ready?”

He wouldn’t have been surprised to see hesitation in their eyes, but there wasn’t any. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but he certainly hoped at the moment that it wouldn’t kill these folks. He grasped the edge of the hatch and pulled outward.

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