His heart will be the freer of care.
There were catchier verses among the best-known poems. There were some that stirred a warrior’s blood, and others shining with cleverness. But this call for ordinariness was something that Eira used to sing.
‘I know my fate, so damn you, Norns.’
Blood and death and hatred.
And my heart is not free.
Bound to a rock, like Fenrir or Loki, was more like it.
Yet while he imagined a solid rock and a fell creature tied to it, what he saw in the distance was very different: a moving mass of soil and stones, misshapen, squat yet huge, far bigger than a man. Something rippled in the air in front of it, then twisted out of existence.
‘You’ve let him escape again!’
It was the troll, and it was hunting Stígr.
‘NO!’
In the distance, the troll stopped moving. Then it, too, began to rotate, pulling the air with it until it was gone from sight—
Bastard creature.
—before rearing from the earth two spears’ lengths away.
‘Shit and blood.’ Ulfr leaped for the reins. ‘Shh. Brandr, come. Shh now, Kolr.’
Blowing into the stallion’s nostrils, he held the big head, wrestling against the strength of equine neck muscles. Hobbled, Kolr could not run, but he might still rear and fall.
‘Easy, that’s it.’
The troll remained quiescent, only small amounts of soil spilling from its outer form, making no attempt to reveal the glowing spirit within. Perhaps it understood the effect it was having.
‘All right, stay like that. Good boy.’
He rubbed Kolr’s nose once more, then stopped. The spear – Heithrún’s gift to him –was shining at its point. The embedded rune, normally invisible or close to it, was glowing scarlet, as it had once before.
Perhaps it’s not just for killing trolls.
So he unslung the spear, walked close to the troll – ‘Stay back, Brandr’ – and planted the haft on the ground.
‘Do we hunt Stígr?’
More soil spilled from the troll-form.
<<Distance we slay.>>
<<One-Eye is there.>>
<<Tunnel to death.>>
<<Brother must die.>>
Ulfr had no brother. Trolls had no ability to speak clearly. But that did not matter so long as it could help him kill Stígr.
‘Which way do we go?’
And why were they wasting time instead of galloping after the bastard?
<<Come.>>
<<Come.>>
<<Come.>>
<<Come.>>
All of the Middle World began to rotate, in all directions at once.
Sorcery!
It curved, as the darkness surrounding Stígr curved, and yet this was different, as blueness sparked and hissed all around, and he knew he was not alone as reality revolved again and spilled him out onto ordinary ground.
Revealed in its true form, the troll-spirit hung beside him, a glowing tracery of scarlet lines, bright even in the sunshine.
Sunshine?
Ozone was in the air, and he was standing on a grassy promontory amid gleaming buttercups, while reflections like steel blades glinted off the crashing waves of the sea. In the distance, a stone building rose, taller than any man-made thing Ulfr had ever seen.
Neither Kolr nor Brandr were here.
Stígr?
From somewhere, he could hear the sound of nine dread notes.
Good.
The troll had carried him far from home, but his enemy was near; and that was all he needed.
FORTY
MOLSIN, 2603 AD
Tannier raised his hands like a witch-doctor calling down the thunder. He stared at Roger, focusing; and as he did so, a myriad tiny nozzles on the quickglass walls shifted to aim at Roger.
The three Zajinets, newly revealed in their hiding place, gleamed but did not move or communicate. Were they scared of the darkness they felt approaching?
‘What are you?’ Tannier’s face was blanching. ‘I don’t know your species.’
But he was staring at Roger, not the Zajinets. And he was controlling the surrounding inbuilt weapon systems currently focused this way.
‘It’s me,’ said Roger. ‘I’m no alien.’
Tannier shook his head, as if trying to shut out noise.
He thinks I’m an enemy.
‘Tannier, I’m your fr—’
Golden fire spat, coruscating across the quickglass walls. Then Rhianna flowed past Roger, whipping the heel of her palm against the side of Tannier’s jaw – he had not seen her approach – and the knockout was immediate. He did not fall, but his brain had short-circuited – out on his feet – and that gave Rhianna the opportunity to take hold of his head between both hands and say: ‘Relax.’
Already out of it, his mind dropped into a type of trance, as Rhianna continued, soft-voiced, to tell him to soften his muscles and let go.
‘And when you awaken you’ll see and hear everything that’s around you so do it now!’
She snapped her fingers.
‘What did you–?’ Tannier turned fast, locking his gaze on Roger. ‘Shit, you wouldn’t believe what I just saw.’
‘I bet I would,’ said Roger. ‘Keep sharp, because that bitch Helsen can mess with anybody’s mind.’
But the walls were melting open at two points in the room, some sixty degrees apart, seen from his position near the centre.
Rhianna’s gown had become jumpsuit and cloak. She whipped up the cloak as a white collimated beam of smartions tore at her, smashing apart on the shield her cloak had formed. Tannier gestured, causing a smartmiasma to propel itself from the walls and ripple through the air, heading for the man who had fired on them.
Which meant the other attacker had to be—
Helsen.
The nearest Zajinet was writhing and flaring, while the other two floated back, distancing themselves. Roger raised his fist, tu-ring pulsing.
Now.
Helsen’s face was a snarling mask surrounded by twisting darkness, and she was clearly about to attack but he had no idea how. A pre-emptive strike was his only chance.
His ringware attacked on two fronts, launching subversive infiltration against every piece of smart-tech Helsen wore, carried on her person or held inside her body, while direct control of D-2’s quickglass caused the walls to spit out a cloud of smartatomic needles. On a timescale of femtoseconds Helsen was fighting back; but the floor rose up around her, swirling, because Roger had intuitive, cerebellum-mediated control of the quickglass itself: he could move it as if it were his body.
Even that might not have been enough, were it not for the shrieks of public alarms, and Tannier’s grin. Whatever comms interference Helsen and Ranulph had put in place, Tannier had bypassed it. Perhaps they had failed to realize he was senior law enforcement with appropriate authorization; or perhaps they had counted on the mind-altering trance to keep him out of the fight.
Darkness whirled around Helsen. And something more, involving sparks of sapphire blue.
No.
Roger glanced back at the Zajinet, now thrashing against invisible bonds.
‘Stop her!’ he shouted to the other two Zajinets. ‘Don’t let her leave!’
They might not emit sound, but they could either hear it or process the neural patterns involved in speech production. Blue light ran along their quivering forms.
You think you can teleport away?
‘Fuck you, Helsen.’
He pulled away his smartlenses and let his inductive energies rip, tearing across the room. When his vision returned, smoke billowed from the place where Helsen had stood, but there was no stench of burning meat.
Shit.