Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two (16 page)

‘—bubble aloft so long, he’s lucky.’

Falling once more.

The solitary hunt.

This is where I belong
.

Ulfr hid with Brandr alongside him, man and war-hound sharing body warmth. The landscape was crinkled ice under snow, patches of tough heather and grasses showing through, and the lakes like steel. The deer-herd moved as a compact unit, their deep wordless wisdom protecting them against lone hunters, for they were vulnerable only when split from their fellows.

Not like me
.

For all Vermundr’s nonsense about Ulfr’s being chieftain one day, this was the best life: just himself and Brandr below the sky, and the immediacy of the Middle World without men: dark-smelling soil, cold purity of air and the skin-toughening breeze, tiny thumps and crunches caused by moving deer, fine detail of their hides, and the lustrous, knowing eyes.

Ravens, in the distance.

If you catch a dark poet on his own, can you run him down as you would a deer?

Not all ravens are Stígr’s
.

But these, but these …

You are, though. Aren’t you?

Brandr’s growl was a deep vibration. Two hundred paces away, a stag raised his head to look.

‘We hunt.’ Ulfr placed his hand on Brandr’s back, feeling the quiver of muscles lusting to explode with movement. ‘But not the prey we thought.’

He rose, spear held horizontally at his thigh, and the tableau broke, deer-herd galloping away to the right, maintaining the group formation.

Live free, until we meet again
.

Then he began to jog along the icy ground, Brandr at his side as always.

But something attacked Stígr before Ulfr could get there.

It reared up from the soil, spilling roots and clay and ice. Worms wriggled, exposed to the air. It was the earth moving: swinging a disintegrating limb to hit Stígr’s shoulder as he scrambled back, shouting. The noise of the torn earth drowned out the words. From inside the moving mass came a glimpse of glowing scarlet.

Stígr pointed his staff at the creature – he moved easily despite earlier wounds and the troll’s impact just now: more dark
seithr
magic – but the staff’s tip flared with crimson fire, not his doing. He flung it from him as if burned. Ravens whipped down from the sky, attacking the mass; but the mud caught them, enveloped them, then flipped their struggling, mud-soaked forms aside.

Their intervention was enough: darkness folded around Stígr, then sapphire fire blazed, and as the mud-form lunged, Stígr twisted away – turned impossibly – and was gone: the moving soil passed through air and thumped onto solid ground.

Thórr’s blood
.

Eira and other
volva
s could work with men’s spirits and heal broken bodies; but this was the true, dark sorcery of legend. For the second time, Stígr had been rescued by demons, carried away in a manner no man could see or understand. And now the massive, moving soil-creature was turning towards Ulfr.

‘Hold, Brandr.’

The war-hound wanted to attack, but Ulfr would not sacrifice him as Stígr had sacrificed his ravens.

Soil continued to spill from the thing.

Is it attacking?

Roots and stones fell aside, the last dark soil spattered on the earth, and what remained was a tangle of glowing scarlet lines, a complex tracery of light. Before the Thing, when Ulfr had fought the troll, it had been like this: scarlet fire animating a mass of moving stones.

‘What are you?’ he said.

It blazed more strongly.

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Hanging in place, it neither attacked nor withdrew.

‘If you mean the poet Stígr, then yes, he is my enemy.’

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Ulfr lowered his spear.

‘I do not understand, troll-spirit. We fight together against Stígr, yes?’

But the blazing scarlet twisted, blueness flared around it, then its presence was extinguished: gone, like a snuffed-out flame. Only the spilled earth, and the churned pit from which it came, remained as evidence: this was no dreamworld visitation, but a tangible power in the Middle World.

In the sagas, when humans tangled with greater powers, it rarely ended well.

Back in the village, he left Brandr in Steinn’s care. Brandr and Griggr, Steinn’s hound, had played together since they were pups. Now, Steinn clapped Ulfr on the shoulder, grinning and nodding, as if he knew what Ulfr was about and did not wish to say it, but wished him luck.

Maybe this is madness
.

Outside Eira’s hut, a sheep was hobbled. He wondered why she had it: for wool, some kind of sacrifice, or simply for food.

‘If you’re eyeing up my sheep’ – Eira’s voice, from inside the hut – ‘you might as well know, you’re not her type.’

‘I’m not
that
lonely.’

‘No, I dare say you’re not. Come in.’

The interior stank of poultice and potions. Eira was sitting on her low cot, on deerskin stretched across a frame of slender branches. Rune-engraved pots were arrayed before her.

Her eyes were bright, her neck tense, her smile wide: a tangle of contradictions.

‘If you’re mixing concoctions,’ Ulfr said, ‘then I can help with the ingredients. You know, gather water, pick herbs, harvest Vermundr’s testicles. Whatever you want.’

‘I’m mixing healing potions, not poisons.’

‘Good point.’

But the poultice-smell came from her, not the pots.

‘Ulfr …’

‘You’re wounded.’ He crouched down in front of her. ‘Do you want to show me?’

‘Mind my pots.’

‘Sorry. Can I move them?’

‘Yes, if you don’t spill anything.’

He made room, then knelt on one knee, and dared to take hold of her hand.

‘Show me,’ he said.

Eira stared at him. Her eyes were passages to dreamworld. He wanted to fall inside for ever.

‘I’ll have to take my gown off for that.’

‘Oh. I’m, er …’

‘Give me a hand, then.’

He helped her remove jewellery and then the robe. Her body was beautiful. Either the poultice or the wound it covered was damp, and he tried to look; but her fingers were at his belt, tugging it open. Pulling off his clothes took an instant, then he was lying alongside her on the cot, pressed against her.

‘I had a vision,’ she said, ‘of a great warrior’s spear. And … I think I’ve found it.’

‘Eira. Gods.’

‘It’s just you and me, my warrior.’

Then he was plunging like salmon in a mountain stream, lost in cascades of sensation, everything he wanted now granted to him, because this was Eira, his seeress, his love, and she was all and all was her, while thoughts of scarlet fire and the spirits of trolls, of one-eyed poets and murderous ravens, were banished to Hel’s grey realm.

For as long as he could keep them there.

Clayton was an athlete of the old school, using his battered electromag-banded suit to work his strength in all directions, after a sparring session with combat mannequins set for random bursts of anaerobic violence. Session over, cleansed and refreshed with dodecapear-flavoured carb-ion fluid, he travelled to the Admiralty on foot, taking his time, trying to keep calm, to think of anything other than Darius.

Shit
.

That was Darius Boyle, his former partner, now home on indefinite leave – his career surely over – from the side-effects induced by that careless cow Sapherson. Working for the intelligence service was far from a sedentary occupation; but you did not expect to be sidelined by your own medics.

Stupid, moronic cow
.

Except that Sapherson had clearly been under orders to burrow deep. Orders emanating, as far as Clayton could tell, from the desk of Admiral Boris Schenck, chairman of the Admiralty Council, ferociously intelligent, aggressively conservative and proto-isolationist: the biggest asshole in Labyrinth.

This afternoon’s meeting was with Pavel, the venue a conference chamber deep within the hypergeometric core of HQ complex. After passing through the security levels, Clayton stepped out into the chamber to find Pavel waiting, his face calm. It looked like the calmness of someone exerting conscious neuromuscular control, slowed-down breathing and visualizing kittens, or whatever it took to stave off images of failure.

‘What’s your assessment,’ said Pavel, ‘of Clara James?’

‘I like her. Fast-thinking, decisive.’

‘Despite her place in the command structure.’

‘You mean’ – Clayton felt his mouth pull up to one side – ‘on account of her reporting to Colonel Garber, whose nose is permanently docked up Admiral Schenck’s rectum. Tell me this is not on the record, boss.’

Pavel did not respond to the humour.

‘We’re off the books down here. I need someone clear-sighted and professional, not irrational, revenge-oriented thinking.’

‘Sorry. Forget I said anything.’

‘Good. There
are
some questions to be asked about Admiral Schenck’s decisions.’ Pavel gestured, and a four-dimensional tree-structure rotated in a holoview. ‘Game-theoretic analysis of his objectives leads to some dubious results.’

Running operations off the books was neither new nor safe. Running them against stated policy could be considered treason.

‘Are we opposing Schenck in some way?’ said Clayton. ‘Forget emotion, but if that’s what you’re after, I’m in.’

They had worked together for years. Professional trust had always linked them.

‘I have – sources – within Internal Investigations,’ said Pavel. ‘There are certain enquiries I’ve been keeping track of.’

Espionage thrives on psychological paradoxes. Subverting the internal watchers, though: that was a covert
pièce de résistance
, the kind of victory every operative held dear: sublime, unshareable. Except that Pavel was revealing it now, exposing himself. If it were true, the revelation was a sign of trust; if false, a test for a potential traitor.

‘What enquiries?’ Clayton was not committing yet. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The response to Admiral Kaltberg’s death,’ said Pavel.

Clayton focused on everything he knew – and still remembered, despite Sapherson – about the case.

‘She was a good officer,’ he said. ‘Gould deserves all he gets.’

‘A little while ago, I would have rated Max Gould about as highly as I rated Adrienne Kaltberg.’ Pavel banished the holo diagram. ‘I’m not sure my opinion has changed.’

That was only a little indirect.

‘You think he didn’t do it?’ said Clayton. ‘Are you sure?’

‘No, I’m not sure at all. Not about that.’

There was an implied offering there, and Clayton took it.

‘What are you sure of, boss?’

Pavel turned. Off to Clayton’s right, the air shivered, wavered, and rotated.

Fastpath
inside
the core shield?

A small, thin, black-uniformed man stepped out, only a tiny golden collar-stud betraying his rank.

‘Admiral,’ said Clayton.

This was Admiral Asai, a man with a reputation for agile strategic thinking, and the ability to pull off astounding tricks of expertise, both as an individual Pilot and at the head of a fleet. Clayton had never met the man. Beyond the technical realm, Asai was an enigma, his political philosophy unknown.

‘I’m told you’re considered reliable, Mr Clayton.’

‘Sir.’ Clayton smiled. ‘That’s two layers of indirection removed from whether I actually
am
reliable.’

Asai raised an eyebrow, turning to Pavel.

‘It’s not his fault,’ Clayton went on. ‘I know a conspiracy when I see one. Likewise a deniable operation. It makes me nervous.’

‘So.’ Asai bowed his head, just a little. ‘If Boris Schenck is not a traitor, then what we propose will not affect him adversely. We are not moving against him personally, or those who support his ambitions.’

Clayton began to assess the implied information: that Schenck had an extended set of supporters, call it a political network; and there was another, possibly separate network with the potential for action.

‘And if he is a traitor?’

He threw the word back at Asai.
Traitor
could mean many things; it was specific charges that made the difference. Pavel started to speak; but Asai raised his hand.