He bent down and picked up his sword-cane, its steel sheath, and joined the two. He must have dropped them when the shock of the Seal’s breaking hit him. She took that as a cue to sheathe the
naginata
blade as well, custom for the weapon. Prospect of battle over, for the moment.
She was studying him with her head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed. “Okay, little man, what was that nonsense about a wyrd?”
“Norse and Anglo-Saxon lore, a fate or personal destiny that you can’t escape. Irish equivalent is a geas. Or the Arabic
qismah.
Kismet.”
“I know what one is. I thought that was supposed to be some kind of curse laid on you by the gods. Or the Fates, if they aren’t gods. I recall you saying Legion hadn’t ordered us to fix the Seal.”
“As you keep reminding me, we
are
gods.”
“So you are self-cursed?”
“The best kind of curse. Find them throughout literature and myth. Tragic flaw, and all that.”
Mel shrugged and shook her head over the tail-chasing idiocy. “If you insist, Mister Driven-by-Fate. Okay, what comes next? Where do we drive now?” Then, “Implied verbal contract. That’s so . . .
very
comforting. You think we have at least twenty-four hours to get out of Dodge? Or don’t let the sun set on our asses within his lands?”
What do we do next? Good question. I hadn’t planned to find the Seal too late for me to save it. For that matter, I hadn’t planned on ending up some place where I couldn’t just walk home again. Or take a bus.
“I think first thing, we try to find a way home. Then you can get that cold beer and hot bath.”
“Sounds like a plan. You’re invited.”
Huh? I’ll assume she meant just the beer. Safer that way.
Albert looked around, actually
studying
this place rather than searching for threats and then concentrating on the one he’d found. Fog still shrouded the peculiar Nordic gloom of dark wet softwood forest, but the gray seemed to be lifting. They stood at the focus of a grassy clearing, shaggy with spring growth and glistening from the wet, a half-circle centered on Fafnir’s cliff face and obviously not natural. Three tidy stone-dust paths led from the cave mouth. One central, that was the one they’d come in on, one off into the woods along the sharp stone rise in either direction.
No signs saying,
This way to the egress.
After all, Fafnir knew where the trails went. If
you
didn’t, you shouldn’t be here.
“Got a three-sided coin to flip?”
She sniffed at the air and then switched on the blank introspective look that said she was listening to her winds. “The path west leads to another stream and then the river, seems to be fishy. No sense of an exit of any kind. East, climbs this ridge and down the other side and ends up smelling of river and overloaded cesspools and pine lumber. I’d lay odds on a sawmill camp, probably where those riverboats dock and load.”
She sniffed again. “The path we came in on, there seems to be more to it than fish. My winds don’t know what. But you remember, when we turned to climb that ridge, the path went on upstream.”
“So we should be good Buddhists and follow the Middle Way?”
“Someday your tongue is going to get you in trouble.”
Albert shrugged. “Has before, will again. I’m used to it.”
He glanced back at Fafnir’s cave.
Yeah, she’s right. Sometimes a cold beer outweighs saving the world. It’s not as if they’ll thank you . . .
Throw in a deep-dish pizza or hot greasy lamb kebabs on curried rice and I’ll let the gods return.
He limped back the way they’d come. Retracing steps, somehow that made the pack weigh more. Through the field, into the wet dark forest full of the smell of spruce and rot and mushrooms, up the first set of ancient steps—now he knew who had sized the treads and risers, could fit them to Fafnir’s stride. He had to pause on each step.
“Give me that damned pack, you pig-headed idiot.”
“You’ve been sick. You need that spear to hold you up.”
Mel paused and cocked her head. “You said something about me feeling better. Why, yes. I am. As soon as that Seal broke, I felt the difference. Still tired, still hungry, but I can see better, hear better. My legs are longer than yours, better suited to these steps. And I’m not the God that Limps.”
So she’d noticed. He had to admit, the pack had gained a lot more weight than the couple of pounds of iron could explain. He shrugged out of it and took the shotgun in return. Hell of a lot lighter.
“What’s this loaded with?”
“First round is birdshot, close range and won’t go through a wall to kill innocent bystanders. Rest is police-standard buckshot. Have some rifled slugs in my vest.”
So if he saw one of those grouse-things, they had a potential snack. Good to know. But he wasn’t going to carry the shotgun at the ready.
Up the next set of steps, shotgun slung across his back, still fire in his hip but not as much, into the fog on the trail, switchback, trail, steps, trail. The fog grew thicker, colder, wetter. It forced him into tunnel vision. His focus narrowed to one foot in front of the other. Lean on the cane. Pause to rest. Gray. Black shadows. Trail. Gray. Black shadows.
The Seal spoke out of the shadows. He might have shrugged off its weight, but not the touch of it. It remembered fire—both the recent blazing pain of the salamander’s death and the ancient heat of forging that had brought it some strange form of life. The salamander lay bound in the Seal, some trick of Mother’s witchery at the synagogue, and he could smell that touch of sandalwood deep in the iron.
It
wasn’t exactly dead, either.
But locking an elemental’s soul inside cold iron? Sadism. Now that he had held the Seal again, he could feel that
other
terror and pain, deep within.
Circuits and spells wove through the fibrous wrought iron, the words of Suleiman bin Daoud, Solomon son of David. I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Or even behind Me. Not even Balkis the Beautiful, goddess of Sa’aba. But we won’t tell her that. We’ll make this subtle, so she won’t notice. Sneak up on them all, slowly, with centuries of patience.
Like a sponge. Soak up the fog, soak up the power, slowly, slowly, the rivals diminish, fade, slink away into the shadows. If tribal gods forget, we can beat them defeat them eat them. One God to rule them all one God to bind them. Take their lands their goats their oxen their women. Savor their precious delicious tears and lamentations. Smell the sweet incense of their burning cities. Their gods forgotten. Never were.
Forget.
Forget.
Forget.
He’d fallen into a delirious death-march, tired, so tired.
Shut up and just keep moving. One foot in front of the other. If you’re moving, you’re still alive.
Stairs. Trail. Stairs. Shadows. Pause. Lean on cane. Rest.
Cold.
Wet.
Dark.
Resinous incense. Roasting meat. The sweet smell of burning cities that warm the hands of God. Warmth. The rankness of wet cloth drying by the fire without first washing. Cedar incense, more precise. Roasting . . . chicken? A white dove, pure and without blemish, was a sacrifice acceptable in God’s eyes. If you couldn’t afford better. Oxen were better. Priests have to eat.
Hungry. His stomach growled. Albert opened his eyes.
He lay under a dark stone overhang spreading out to light—sky, blue sky and trees in low-angle sunlight, cedars and maples and birches. Smoke. His gaze wandered down the smoke to a fire, snapping, sparking, smoking, crackling, hissing from wet wood, a wooden spit above the heat with three, four, five small chickens roasting. No—grouse or pheasants or some other plump chicken-shaped bird.
Movement caught his attention beyond the fire, cloth hanging on rope, on parachute cord—clothes drying far enough from the fire that sparks probably wouldn’t burn buckshot holes. How’d she get five birds with one birdshot cartridge? She?
Mel. She stepped into view, walking carefully around stones, to turn the spit. Wearing clean coveralls from the pack. Her old coveralls on the line, ragged but somewhat cleaner than he recalled. Next to his jacket, shirt, pants, socks, underwear, also ragged and somewhat cleaner.
All of it.
Well, she’d seen him before. He’d seen her. No big thing.
But he didn’t feel naked. He stirred, summoning up enough strength to lift his arm. He found green cloth, stretchy, baggy as if a couple of sizes too large—her leotard. She’d slipped that on him. He hadn’t pulled it out of the pack, when dressing her after she got sick. Still dry, in the plastic bag, despite the river crossing.
He wasn’t lying on rocks. The bed felt springy, but it wasn’t the inflated float. Then his nose told him—cedar branch tips, under one of the reflective blankets, woodsman’s bed. Smelled clean, strange smell after the week or so they’d been out.
“What?”
She glanced up from tending something on the far side of the fire—pot? Steam beyond the smoke?
“Good. I was hoping you’d come over for the party.”
“What happened?”
“True gentleman that you are, you proved that I am
not
some kind of substandard goddess who gets sick while others display proper godly strength and immune systems. You caught whatever I had. Less lucky, because you were dressed when you started leaking at both ends. Hence the laundry flapping in the morning breeze. Before you ask, you’ve been out of it for two days and nights. The evening and the morning are of the third day, about an hour after sunrise.”
He struggled up to leaning on his elbows, looking around some more. This looked like an established camp—fire ring of blackened stones, and the crotched stakes holding her spit had seen some weather. He lay in a cleared area, prepared and leveled. Some of the stones moved to each side would weigh hundreds of pounds. Whoever used this had left a cache of firewood tucked way at the back of the overhang, dry and ready.
The stone overhang stretched out twenty feet, thirty feet, and would deflect almost all weather. He guessed they were at least ten feet above the stream, he could hear it and smell it beyond the crackle of the fire. Fafnir’s fishing camp?
“Hope you’re not using up his firewood. Bad manners.”
“No. Blow-down cedars well away from the path or the stream, dead wood, enough heartwood to start the fire and dry the rest. Cut them up with the folding saw from the pack. I’ll leave more wood than we found.”
He nodded and inched up further to a full sit. His head spun a bit before clearing.
“Five grouse? Good shooting.”
“Didn’t shoot them. They’re dumb, sat frozen pretending I couldn’t see them until I got close enough to whack their heads off with the
naginata.
”
Grouse are dumb,
and
she’s fast.
He finally spotted the backpack, leaning against some rocks and propped inside-out to dry. The tent and rain-fly lay beyond it, stretched out for the same purpose. He felt the Seal lurking over there, still whimpering, still crippled. But not rusting.
“I guess Fafnir isn’t following us?”
“Winds don’t give me any word of him or Bilqis.” Then, after a pause, “Look, I’m sorry about hooking them up as an item. Tabloid gossip. Touchy subject, you thinking she’s your mother . . . ”
Albert shook his head. “I got used to her men-friends centuries ago. Plenty of practice. As I said, not impossible. I’m getting used to her not being my mother, too. That explains a lot. Like her sending us on a wild-goose chase through a minefield and plague. And why I don’t look anything like my brothers and sister, who don’t look much like each other.”
“Brothers? The way you talked with Fafnir, I got the idea that Mime and Siegfried and some of the other legends got . . . stretched in the telling. Including five different names for the same person.”
“Yeah. I’m the only smith in the so-called family. Wagner came along and screwed everything seven ways from Sunday. Mixed about twenty different legends into one, and made up crap on the spot. Now I remember why I never liked Wagner.”
“You up to eating? Birds are done, just keeping warm, and I can dump this wild asparagus into the water and have it ready in a couple of minutes.”
She’d been hungry as hell, just about as soon as she came out of her fever. Albert consulted with his stomach. Yeah, food sounded like a great idea.
But . . . “I don’t think that’s
wild
asparagus. Fafnir likes his food. Now I know why I could find wild onions and garlic so easily.”
She stirred stuff in two pots, dumping green and brown handfuls into steam. “Left plenty, even for a giant. It was bolting, starting to turn woody. Doing him a favor by forcing new sprouts. These morels would have gone by, too. Don’t have any butter, but we can make do with grouse drippings . . . ”
No, I’m not going to ask her if she’s
sure
about those mushrooms. She’s got easier ways to kill me.
The grouse had cooled enough to barely scorch his fingers and tongue. Good.
Damned
good, seasoned with juniper or something like, and garlic, and how she kept them that juicy while fully cooked on a spit over a campfire . . .
And salty asparagus just crunchy-steamed and sautéed morels savory with grouse fat. He mumbled appreciation around mouthfuls.
She studied the pile of bones and the empty pot lids used as plates. “You know, I remember a fish stew that vanished just as fast. If I went through the same things you did, the last day or so, I’m surprised you didn’t just toss me in the river and have done with it. That must have been ugly.”
“Was. But
you
didn’t, now. Same thing. Common decency.”
“Philosophy one-oh-one, necessary prerequisite for any ethical system is reciprocity—do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Morality has to work both ways, in order to be moral. From what I’ve seen, damn few people or gods practice that. Common decency is about as common as common sense.”
Which is to say, not common at all.