Lane peered down into the endless depths. She thought she’d only clipped him on the side of the head when his sword shattered, but she might have hit him more solidly. Either way, he fell without a sound, his eyes rolled back in his head. He might be back.
She looked again at the swirling depths. Probably not.
She looked behind her at the gateway. The doors slid shut, but the gateway remained. Satisfied, she picked up her hammer and walked toward the great double doors.
They were enormous. The giant Surtr would have been able to pass through without ducking or sidling through. They were made of old hardwood, rough and grey with age. It almost looked petrified. She looked at her hammer, trying to find a way to stow it, and a long loop of leather dropped free from the handle.
“Handy.” She slung the hammer over her shoulder. Satisfied it wasn’t going anywhere, she shoved the tip of her crowbar in between the great doors as far as it would fit. Putting one foot against a door, she pulled on the bar. The doors were old, and heavy, and enchanted with runes of fortification and sturdiness. The crowbar was cold iron steeped in the blood of the Wild Hunt. Both groaned as Lane applied pressure.
The sole of her foot tingled. She slid her crowbar out of the gap she’d forced between the doors, pulled off one gauntlet and laid her hand against the door. The wood was old. It had been old when her mother was born. The tree it came from had been old when men climbed out of the trees. She knew that tree. It was withered from abuse, but it still stood, despite all that had been done to it.
She felt the tree still in the wood. It felt her. It was part of her. She pushed, trying to open the doors. Instead, she passed through them as if they weren’t there.
She wound up sitting on her ass on the floor, her head ringing. The wood of the door had allowed her passage, but the metal bar across it at eye level had been a bit of a shock.
Lane sat on the floor of a conference room, lying next to a table. She jumped to her feet, scanning the room for threats. Immediately she regretted it. The walls ended at about waist height. Above them was something else. It was a grid of some kind. She had no frame of reference for that, so she dismissed it and focused on the room.
Black conference table: shiny. Black leather chairs: overstuffed. Dark carpeting: plush, bad footing. At the far end of the table, an older gentleman with an eye patch, his head in his hands. She checked her footing, unlimbered her hammer, and spoke quietly, “You OK, Mister?”
The older man looked up as if surprised. After a moment of staring blankly, he stood quickly, shoving his chair back as he did so. “Quickly, my dear. We must flee, before they catch us.”
Something was wrong, she wasn’t sure what. The old man came around the conference table toward her. She glanced around the room, raising the hand with her hammer to ward him off. “Stop. Something’s wrong.”
He didn’t stop moving. “Yes, we need to get back to Midgard as quickly as possible.”
She sidled away from him, trying to keep the table between them. Behind her, the doors creaked, warping within their frame. The feeling of wrongness got stronger the closer he came. “Look, Mister. I don’t want to hurt you, but I need you to stop.”
He didn’t. His eyes focused on her hammer. She spun about, putting her back to the table, keeping her crowbar between them. His eyes widened when he saw the accumulated gore on the bar. “Child, I must escape this place. Your hammer is the only way out.”
As he passed the doors, they twisted, splinters protruding like a thousand tiny barbs. The doors twisted as he passed, keeping the barbs toward him. She didn’t understand, but she knew. “You’re one of them.”
The grandfatherly old man stopped in his tracks. He had been moving like an older man; now he drew himself up to his full height, easily equal to Lane’s own. With a gesture, the table, the walls, the conference room itself vanished. “One of them? My dear girl, I am all of them.”
He shimmered, and suddenly he wasn’t an old man in a suit. He was some kind of Viking warrior, furs wrapped over chainmail, plates of armor on one shoulder and one arm. He spread his arms, and a sword appeared in his left hand, a shield in his right. His laughter rang out through the void, “Look down, girl. Or don’t you dare?”
Lane’s eyes were fixed on his as she shifted her bar into motion, “Don’t need to. Ground’s not a goddamn psycho.”
“Give me the hammer, Lane.”
“Come get it, creep.”
Without another word he came at her. He was fast, way faster than an old guy should be. He was strong, stronger than anything she’d ever felt. For an endless moment, she was sure he would get through her guard. She couldn’t gain even a heartbeat by deflecting his blows into the ground. Instead, he swung about, coming at her from below.
It was then she realized that wherever she planted her feet, they stuck. When she wanted them to move, they moved. She couldn’t help it; one word leaked from her mouth as she parried his attack and sent him reeling with a backhanded blow of her hammer, delivered with all the strength allowed her by her perfect traction. “Groovy!”
He caught the blow on his shield, and now he shook his arm as if it stung. That didn’t matter to her. Instead, she focused on the sizable dent in the boss of the shield, the cracks radiating outward through the wood of it. She grinned wider. She never did have much of a bluffing face. Jun Fan had tried to train that out of her, but it was the one thing he couldn’t do.
Instead, he’d trained her to be fast enough that it didn’t matter.
She lunged at the old man; the point of her crowbar aimed at his eyes. His shield came up, his sword stabbing out beneath it. She stepped right over it, her feet finding purchase on the air above the sword. Before he registered her going over him her hammer, swung underhand, connected squarely with the boss of his shield. The shield slammed back into his face. She heard his nose and his shoulder shatter as she sprinted clear of him, spinning to face him when she judged herself out of his reach.
He turned to face her, blood streaming from his nose. The boss fell from his shield, the wood broken to pieces beneath. Murder in his eyes, he shrugged his shoulders. Clenched teeth muffled his cry of pain was muffled, but his arm hung normally. He flicked his wrist and the remains of his shield spun off into nothingness. He wiped the blood from his nose, no new blood spurted forth. He opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could say anything Lane taunted him.
“Bring it, Grampa. Your kung fu is weaksauce. You keep stepping up with that, I’ll pop your head like a zit next time.”
The old man’s face became a thundercloud of murderous rage. He flew backward with a hop, opening the distance between them to at least ten yards. Sliding forward, Lane followed cautiously. Before she’d moved more than a few feet, he flicked his wrist again. The sword was gone. In its place was a wickedly barbed spear.
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“You worm. How dare you! I am Odin, Lord of Valhall, and will not be taunted by you! I am Alfodr the All Father, and you owe me obedience!” Odin’s voice went low, menacing, and Lane stopped, her crowbar weaving a figure eight in the air., “Worst of all for you, worm, I am Geirvaldr the spear master, bearer of Gungnir.”
She recalled Killer’s lessons. The spear Odin held was a boar spear, designed to bind in wounds and do horrible things to them. She had to get him mad enough to miss.
“Come on, old man. You get one shot. Then I’m seeing if you can grow a new brain. The old one isn’t working too good.”
He laughed. Not a good sign. “Foolish mortal girl. Gungnir hits whenever thrown, kills whenever it hits, and always returns to my hand. I will pull your intestines across the breadth of time and space if you do not open the portal now.”
There was no reason for him to lie. Lane set herself, crowbar spinning and hammer back to swing. “I don’t think so. Take your shot, old man.”
The old Viking pulled back and threw the spear with all his might. It flew, straight and true, toward Lane’s gut. Guided by instincts honed to perfection she swung. The hook of her bar caught the spear, the head of her hammer smashed into it in the same moment.
The explosion threw her from her feet. She slammed into the doors, hanging incongruously in midair. From Odin’s direction came a dim cry of fear and anger. Her ears filled with a high-pitched whine. She shook her head, but it wouldn’t go away. The wood of the door shifted, and she landed on her feet. Her legs refused to hold her, and she sank to her knees.
Looking down, she saw the remains of the spearhead pierced through her armor. One smallish chunk scratched at her. Another went clean through from front to back. The last major piece had lodged in her belly. Fury burned in her as she realized that not even pulling off an impossible deflection had saved her. She looked up, and her anger erupted into incandescent rage as she met Odin’s eyes.
And saw fear.
Slowly, painfully, she pushed herself to her feet. Her hammer was as much crutch as weapon now, too heavy to move properly. Her crowbar she could move with one hand. She did so now, spinning it in the air between them. If only she could hear properly: the whining kept getting louder. Maybe she would pass out. That sounded right from the blood pooling in her boots.
“You can’t even fight me without pulling some invincible crap, and you’re still pissing yourself because I broke your toy?” her words, forced from her with superhuman effort, came out in a roar of defiance, “Come get me, coward!”
She saw her knowledge of his fear turn that fear into anger. His sneer told her without doubt that he was about to pull another little trick. His voice was no longer the thunder of a god, it was the whine of a petulant child, “Memory! Thought! Bring me her eyes.”
Two huge ravens formed out of the aether, each easily as large as her torso. They flew outward, upward, angling to stoop on her from behind to avoid her spinning bar. She wished they would get on with it; by the whining filling her ears she was about to pass out.
The ravens screamed.
They stooped.
Thunder filled the endless sky, and the ravens exploded in a cloud of feathers and gore. Through the sudden rain of avian death, Gwen’s voice, amplified and metallic, screamed defiance to the uncaring heavens.
“Get the hell off my Knight, you goddamn Norse perv!”
A metallic spider the size of a jeep crouched over Lane protectively. While she appreciated the gesture, the guns mounted beneath its torso thundered continuously. She really thought she might be permanently deaf after this; except she still heard it when another gun dropped out of the bottom of the spider and started tossing fiery lightning balls in Odin’s direction.
“Whoa. Fiery Lightning Balls. That would make a good name for a band.”
Gwen’s voice sounded from directly above the spider, “Lane, keep your head down and leave the banter to me, k? You’ve lost a lot of blood. I think I can fix that, maybe, but not if the one-eyed monster gets to spurting his crap all over us again.”
Gwen’s comment drew Lane’s attention back to Odin. She watched in horrified awe as a rain of metal and fire pushed him back, step by step. His face and chest looked like flash fried hamburger. Still, he stood, although the sheer weight of metal Gwen’s spider threw at him forced him backward one step at a time. A rushing sound, a wash of heat, and something angled into the vaguely humanoid figure downrange, lodging into his chest and exploding.
When Lane blinked her eyes clear, he knelt. Gwen shifted her aim to his center of mass, and his chest had been sandblasted away to the spine. Above that, however, his face already healed. A laugh, burbling and horrible, rang out over the field of battle. Odin tried to force himself to his feet, failed. When he was forced back to his knee, the ruins of his face took on a look of horrible rage.
He waved a hand in their direction, and pain raced through her. Every bone in her body snapped, torn apart by the strength of her muscles. Second by second, they snapped and reformed, snapped and reformed, snapped and reformed. A scream tore itself from her mouth as she tried to curl into a fetal ball, only to have that force the remains of Gungnir further into her gut.
Above her Gwen’s spider rusted, paint flaking away, guns dismounting and throwing shrapnel everywhere. It sagged toward her, barely catching itself by planting all eight legs out to the sides. Gwen moaned incoherently above her. Odin’s horrible laughter, approaching slowly, forced one thought into her mind. He wanted the hammer. He couldn’t have the hammer. She curled protectively about it, a screaming moan escaping her when the hammer jostled the spear shards in her gut.
Odin’s laughter melted into horrible, mocking words, “Foolish worms. You waste time with toys and training, and do not learn my names! My names, more important than your whole world! You forget I am Odin, you forget I am Wotan, you forget I am Alfodr, you forget I am Gerivaldr, and now you forget I am Helblindi! You forget I am he who blinds with death!”
A wet sound, like a javelin sticking into mud, echoed through the aether. The endless crackling of bones stopped instantly. Above her, Gwen stopped groaning, and tiny robots skittered across the massive thorax, leaving miniscule lines of clean metal wherever they passed. Her own pain narrowed to the shards in her gut, and even those went slowly numb.
A voice echoed in her ears. No one spoke, but a horrible mockery of Mary’s voice echoed through the aether. It took a moment for Mary’s words to register.
“Too late on both counts.”
Lane looked up, refusing to regret her motion, no matter how much pain it caused. What she saw made her gasp, sending another fresh wave of pain from her gut. Mary…
It was Mary. Despite her ruined eyes, her face remained pretty. It looked like someone had sprayed her face with barbeque sauce and tried to clean it with sandpaper, but the scratches and scrapes and dirt hadn’t changed her high cheekbones, hadn’t changed the determined set of her jaw. Below her face Mary wore a wide red halter and skirt, both of which dangled oddly. After a moment, Lane registered what she was looking at and glanced quickly away, her rising gorge forcing her stomach to clench, which set off another wave of pain. Lane looked at the only thing remaining, Mary’s hand.
It wasn’t Mary’s hand. It was too big by far, even assuming the bulk the armor added. It hung, unsupported, at Mary’s right side, gripping a great sword bigger than she was. Dangling from the sword like a piece of meat on a kabob, Odin squirmed. Turning his head as far as he could, he still couldn’t see his captor.
He sneered, “So, backstabber. What will you do with me, now that you have me?”
Mary didn’t reply. She didn’t speak, but her words echoed through the aether once more. “Odin, also known as Wotan, also known as the All Father, also known as Greatfather, also known as head of the Council.”
“Yes. Fight me, coward!”
Mary didn’t respond to the taunt. The echo of her voice remained flat, like a bailiff reading the charges of a particularly boring defendant. “No. You have played games with the fate of the human race.”
“Mortal worms are good for nothing else! Games to pass the time, and power to further our glory!”
“Do you deny the charge?”
“By what right do you judge me!”
The echo of Mary’s voice never wavered. It seemed she would repeat the words until he responded or time itself came to an end. “Do you deny the charge?”
“No, why should I?”
“So be it. Odin, you have played games with the human race. My judgment on you is this. You will play one game of my choosing. Do you accept this judgment?”
Odin’s laughter, wet from the sword driven through him, was nonetheless mocking. His voice, when he found it again, held disbelief in his own luck, “Why would I? I am a master of games, little worm.”
“Do you accept this judgment?”
“Yes! Fine! I accept your judgment! Let us get on with it. We will play, and I will win. I will kill you all, take Mjolnir, destroy the humans and leave this stinking hole of a world behind.”
“As you wish. We begin.” The echo of a whistle, sharp and ringing, sounded through the aether.
Odin panicked, insistently cried, “Wait! I cannot play unless I know the rules! What game are we to play?”
The hand swung away from Mary, leveling the sword until her empty sockets stared deep into Odin’s frantic eyes. The echo of her voice, for the first time since she arrived, held the faintest hint of an emotion; satisfaction.
“Fetch.”
The sword swung overhand like the arm of a catapult. At its apex, Odin flew free, tumbling through a perfect arc. A flash of darkness consumed light, and all that remained of Odin, his legs, hit the ground twitching.