6. The Skald

Skalds, in younger days, were poets and singers. They were held in the highest regard; they were held, in fact, to be the voices of the Aesir upon the earth.

-

“Ich weib nicht.” Seraat muttered into the cell phone. “Sie schienen interessiert.”

Her contact said inaudible.

“Zugestimmt, aber es ist unmöglich, sicher zu sein.”

The person on the other side said something in anger, then gave an order

“Verstanden.”

Isaac poked his head through the tent flap. He could have sworn he heard Seraat saying something, but she was alone. The wind whispered through the camp, unsettling the trees in the distance. A refugee campfire flickered, making Seraat’s face twist and warp with shadows.

“Seraat?”

“Isaac?”

“Were you saying something?

“No.”

He sat down beside her. “I can’t sleep.”

“It is a momentous day tomorrow.”

“Yes…”

“It is a very bold plan that the Strategists have devised.”

In later days, Isaac would remember Seraat as he saw her here; face downcast, black ponytail lying limply on her back, stirred only by the wind, face somehow sad and poignant. Regretful, even.

“What’s wrong Seraat?”

“Nothing.”

There was a quiet.

“I should speak honestly. I am remembering things.”

“Oh…”

“I was thinking of Darren.”

“Who’s that?”

“I loved him, once. To me, he was more important then the sun, the moon and the stars… I even offered to resign my post at the Directorate for him.”

Isaac could not think of anything to say.

“We were engaged to be married. I remember when we told my father, he smiled. He rarely smiled”

She did not continue.

-

Fafnir and Tyr were kept in a large, prefabricated hangar; an angular, grey building that stood out garishly against the green forest.

Isaac, having little else to do, decided to visit it.

As he entered, he was immediately struck by the number of restraints around either CAU; standing each with six metal bars wound around them, keeping them attached to a large machine of unknown purpose. Their empty, dull eyes always unnerved Isaac; they looked dead, almost. A balcony wound around either CAU at the level of their neck.

And that was when he noticed a kid on the balcony sitting before them. Ascending the stairs at the other end of the room Isaac joined the boy. He had a mop of red hair and dark eyes, gleaming with mischief.

“Well, you must be the newbie,” he said, pleasantly. He was sitting in a chair on the balcony floor opposite Tyr. Before him were a set of cards on a table, as if he were playing Twenty-One with some invisible person floating in the gap between Tyr’s head and the railing. Isaac was about to ask him what he was doing when the CAU’s eyes flashed red.

“Are you sure?” asked the boy.

The eyes flashed red again.

“Alright…” he muttered, drawing a card, which proved to be a three of clubs. Isaac totaled the numbers up in his head, and found that the invisible person had exactly twenty-one.

“What the-” demanded the boy. “I swear, she’s cheating!”

“Wait, are you playing cards with Tyr?”

“Yep,” said the boy, turning to Isaac. “I’m Jacob Sailing, back-end pilot of Tyr. Nice to meet you.”

Isaac shook hands with the boy, rather startled. “So… who’s the main pilot?”

“‘Main Pilot?!’” demanded Jacob, in mock outrage. “That’s discrimination against back-end pilots!”

“I’m sorry!” cried Isaac.

Jacob looked surprised. “I kid, I kid,” he said, reassuringly. “Jeez, newbie, if you’re going to survive on this dreary earth, you’re going to have to learn to take things a little less seriously. Life is just too rough for that.”

“Umm- ok…”

“Sarah’s the front-end pilot, by the way. She’s my sister.”

“So… are they… aware of each other? The CAUs?” asked Isaac.

Jacob glanced between. “Well, I get the impression that she knows he’s there. She calls him something along the lines of ‘That Blue Idiot’. It might be weakling or coward, though.”

“Ah.”

Isaac heard the creaky, unoiled door squeak. He turned and saw a girl with a mop of red hair just like Jacob’s. “Uh-oh,” Jacob said, with mock fear.

“Jacob! Jake!” she yelled up.

“Ah, she only calls me ‘Jake’ when she’s pissed,” noted Jacob, apprehensively.

There was the sound of heavy boots pounding the stairway. Isaac saw a sharp, almost elf-like face. She hurried across the walkway towards Jacob.

“Dammit, Jacob, I told you to stop playing cards with Tyr!”

“She likes playing cards with me! What’s wrong with it?”

“Tyr is not some toy for you to play with!”

“That sounds perverted.”

There was an awkward silence.

-

Seraat watched from afar. She leaned on the wall of a prefab hangar, plastic warm against her back. The skald – Lemana – had drifted into the base. Seraat, of course, knew of this girl; a drifter, a poet, and singer. She was about five-foot six inches, probably Native American, a Hopi, perhaps. Lemana was sitting on a rocky outcropping, above the muddy soil and below the grey, ugly sky. Ever since the beginning of the war there had been an unpleasantness about the sky, as if it had died and begun to decay… The buildings suddenly began to look like tombstones.

Seraat drove these thoughts from her head. She had seen this ‘Lemana’, as she called herself now, in Colombia, a long time ago. The girl strummed on her guitar, singing a song that was stolen by the wind before it could reach Seraat. She began to wonder if she and the skald were not on the same side, in this particular battle.

Isaac emerged through a side door. Seraat caught the sound of shouting as the entryway shut. “What is the trouble?” asked Seraat, interested.

“Something about playing cards,” Isaac replied, dryly. He craned his neck to catch a glance at the guitarist through her small audience.

“Who’s she?” he asked.

“They call her Lemana,” said Seraat, taking Isaac by the hand and leading him towards the small ring of people. “She drifts from district to district, playing music. She’s known for her rather – ahem - inappropriate lyrics.”

They came closer, and Seraat began to pick out the words.

“This is not a song,

any proper woman would sing,

but it has been very long,

since a proper woman has done anything.”

The upbeat guitar melody started to crescendo.

“I was born twenty years ago, twenty years, twenty days and two nights,

I was born in a box way down low, without the gift of light.

I will die one day, with a drink in one hand,

And a lover in my other as well,”

“And that day I will meet my maker, meet him beneath the Gates.

And when I meet St Pete, he’ll ask me the question, ask me solemnly,

And I shall say, with a wink and a grin, ‘My God is Forty-Two’”

The audience applauded; it was a catchy, happy tune, and they were starved for happy songs. They tossed the girl spare rations, which she collected in an old army helmet that looked as though it had been in service in 1911. As she examined her spoils, Seraat released Isaac’s hand and approached the stranger.

“So,” she said, “It has been a very long time.”

Lemana looked up at Seraat, dark eyes staring up at her calmly. “Yes.”

-

A strategist stared into the canyon the zombies – draugr, as HQ had termed them – lumbered down the ravine, sightless eyes gazing towards the horizon. A few Jotun were lumbering down the pass, oblivious to the activity on the cliffs above. The valley looked unpleasantly red in the late afternoon sun, slowly sinking in the west. Everything was turned a shade of red, the grass, the stones, even the uniforms and armor.

Sarah stared at the newbie from across the ravine, then down into the gap itself. The squadrons who had drawn their respective short straws were down their, hiding in a trench. The draugr lumbered forward, accompanied by their Jotun escorts. The draugr were disgusting things, Sarah reflected; skin looking as though burns had peeled most of it away. Twisted scars ran across their skin, giving them a look of eternal agony. Some were bloated, like new corpses; others were thin and gaunt, like an ancient mummy from days of Pharaohs and Viziers.

They remained stealthy. The Jotuns usually did not bug you if you did not bug them, especially if they had some place to be. So Tyr and Sarah observed from the ridge unmolested. Most of the Jotuns were normal, with cracked, rock-like skin and six leering, eyes, but one was different; it had white, smooth skin and twelve eyes, six on the front and six on the back.

“Alright,” Kline’s voice sounded over the radio. Sarah glanced across the ravine to where Fafnir lay prone. “Let’s go over this one more time. When the draugr hit the mine field, the squadrons in the ravines will open fire. The Jotuns will start to attack them, at which point the conventional forces on the cliff will begin to fire rockets and cannons from the top of the ridge. When the Jotun begin to retaliate, Fafnir and Tyr should both pull CAU-scale rifles and begin their attack. If worse comes to worse, we’ve got flamethrowers stationed in a fallback position. Understood?”

“Yes,” several voices shouted, all at once.

-

Isaac heard the rumble of claymores from the valley. A series of gargling, half-dead screams sounded from the creatures, blasted limb from limb. There was the low hissing as the normal Jotuns began their assault. Rockets and artillery began bombarding the valley, adding to the cacophony of screams.

“Fafnir, Tyr, now!” cried Kline.

Fafnir shot to its feet and squeezed the trigger. Instantly, Isaac was aware of the fact that the draugr, though suffering grotesque injuries from artillery and rockets, continued to march forward. Nothing he could do about that. He simply targeted the Jotun, riddling them with bullets. Several draugr collapsed, but it was not enough.

“God dammit,” muttered Kline, watching as the draugr advanced unabaited. “Trench Squads, retreat to the fallback position. CAUs and Ridge Squads! Follow them along the ridge!”

Fafnir and Tyr walked along, followed by their conventional comrades, steadily bombarding the living dead. The soldiers in the ravine picked up the pace, firing backwards every now and then. The draugr continued to swarm from the north.

The flamethowers lurked in a large bulwark of mud and rock. The retreating soldiers took up defensive positions along the crude building and prepared to fight. The flamethrowers were placed into position. Isaac stared down at the oncoming hoard.

“There’s no way they’re going to survive,” he murmured.

“Do you really think there’s anything you can do?” asked Seraat.

“There has to be something,” he said, sounding determined.

Seraat shrugged. “One can access many unknown powers through the CAU brain. Perhaps one might aid us here.”

“But-”

“I warn you, such abilities tap into the subtle forces of the universe, which are barely understood. They can be highly dangerous. Their behavior is difficult to predict …”

Isaac glanced around, then, with one great leap, jumped down into the valley. The CAU’s knees folded beneath it as it hit the ground. Seraat hit a button and shut off the radio, along with the steady stream of outraged orders from Kline. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

“I have to do something.”

“Trying with full knowledge of your own ineffectuality is as good as suicide.”

Isaac concentrated on the oncoming swarm. They were short and tall, fat and thin; perhaps people who once had lives and families. “So, how do I access these powers?” he asked.

“I do not know. I have never tried to access them.”

Isaac grit his teeth. The draugr grew closer, dragging bloated legs along with them.

“I suspect, however, that it would not be unlike moving a limb or opening your mouth to speak.”

-

“What’s that idiot think he’s doing?” asked Sarah. “He’s going to damage that nice blue armor if he goes in like that… I’ve heard that paint is damned expensive these days.”

“Yes, Sarah, that’s really what’s at issue here,” said Jacob, dryly.

The sarcasm did not go undetected. “It isn’t like they’re terribly useful. One undertrained, the other a resynch, how useful are they, really?”

“You two weren’t unlike them, when you started.” Kline’s voice sounded over the radio. “They were bound to do something stupid sooner or later.”

“Ah,” said Sarah, nervously, face turning pink. “You heard that?”

“Don’t worry, Sarah,” said Kline, amiably. “I won’t hold your unbridled cynicism against you.”

“I didn’t really mean-”

“Hit the deck!” cried an unfamiliar voice. Sarah instinctively dropped Tyr prone. There was a brilliant flash; a series of bluish-white lightning bolts split the sky.

-

“So,” muttered Seraat. “This is Fafnir’s power.” The field of blue light flickered and pulsed, forks of energy leapt forth from it, into the crowd of draugr.

“Seraat, something’s wrong-”

A console started to beep, gratingly.

“Dammit,” muttered Seraat. “Prepare yourself.”

-

The world flickered like a television screen. Isaac saw first an infinite blue nothing, which became a sky. His sense of weightlessness evaporated, and he was dropped onto a grassy knoll. A few grayish shapes loomed in the distance, there was a steady buzz of some machine in the distance, and the infernal flickering remained but the landscape seemed altogether less alien. Then, Isaac became aware of a tree at the crest of the hill, an ash tree. He began to ascend it, and as he reached the top, he saw two people reclining at the base of the tree. One appeared to be a slightly younger Seraat… her face seemed less tired and worn, and a dark-haired, dark-skinned man he’d never seen before. They were enjoying themselves; Seraat seemed a good deal more cheerful than he’d ever seen her.

“Seraat?” the man began, oblivious to Isaac’s presence.

“Yes?” she asked, pleasantly.

“I know I’m supposed to get on one knee and be all sappy and stuff, but it’s altogether too hot for all of that…” Isaac reflected that he felt cold, colder than he had ever been before. “… but I just wanted to ask you… will you marry me?”

-

The world jumped. That was the only way to describe it; one second it was there, the next it was gone into the sky. There was a mighty flicker, and Isaac suddenly found himself in a room, an office, well-decorated and formal-looking. There was a man there, sitting behind the desk, and a slightly younger Seraat. Instead of a ponytail, she wore her hair in a tight bun.

“Why ever would you think that?” asked the man, innocently. Isaac found that, in the infernal, constant flickering, he could not make out the man’s face. From what could be seen of him, he looked middle-aged, grey haired and tan-skinned.

“Father,” replied Seraat, “I have been involved in six romantic relationships since I came here. You have not approved of one of them.”

“Yes, but those men were fools and drunks, who would have made you miserable.”

“I separated from each amicably.”

“Not Gunther.”

“Father, I have gone to very great lengths to erase Gunther from my mind. Please do not remind me.”

“Hah… Well, this new man, Darren, is it? He’s an ID scientist, a government man, I can trust him. Why do you not involve yourself with more like him?”

“Father, most ID members are my cousins.”

“Or at least GSA agents…”

“Father, this not about my past relationships.”

“Yes… yes…” sighed the man. “Darren is a fine fellow.” He paused, dramatically. “Although don’t tell your mother. Your mother would flip if she found out that more ID blood could get into the family. She never trusted the root families…”

“Father, if we marry any deeper into the ID, we will become a root family.”