They were no strangers to warrior madness, his reavers; but they had known no one who could enter and leave that raging state as a matter of conscious will. It was why they approached him always with respect and care, knowing that only his war-hound, the ever-faithful Brandr, was allowed close without qualification.
And so, the village.
Understand them as humans, so you know their weaknesses; and as they are distracted by the everyday concerns of work, acknowledge they are simply things with vulnerabilities and openings you have identified, because now is the time to act, so form the wolf’s-head hand shape and make the cutting gesture – now! – as you pull your weapons free of the ragged cloak that hid them because this is it, the battle and frightening confusion, the stink and the rage, the slippery greyish guts sliding out of meat – there – the slickness and stickiness of blood, warm as it coats your skin, alters the way you grip your sword-hilt, as if that mattered when all around is chaos and red rage as your vision narrows, and the screams are distant whispers because that is what happens in battle – the howling world grows quiet – and the scheming part of you approves of the vanguard – run, my fighters – of the berserker fighters sprinting uphill, uncaring of the difficulty, using the effort to push their bodies further into warrior insanity; while the others take down the fighting villagers like two wedges inserted from the sides before all tactics are forgotten because you are in the midst of it yourself and there is only room for this:
The rage.
For Eira.
They took her, it took her, the deadly Norns or the Middle World itself, and this is your response: to kill them all.
And you’re deep among them now, whirling and lunging, your victims’ limbs and torsos slippery with the fluids of war, with blood and sweat and worse, but your hands are raging claws so you grab and twist, smash a hilt into that face, slam an elbow down – got it – to the back of a neck, tear them off balance by the nose and eyes, knee into liver, and a warhammer is yours for the grabbing and three skulls – four – are crushed beneath your blows before the weight of numbers tangles you up so you drive the handle into a larynx, use hooked thumbs to rip outwards from an enemy’s nose – lovely – taking both eyes, then elbows and teeth are your weapons in a maelstrom of moving weight – hit me harder – of impact – harder, you weaklings – where vision counts for little and feeling is everything while the spirit drives the fight because you will never, ever give up until they’re—
Breaking free, breathing hard.
—dead, because you’ve done it: see that, the slumped pile behind you, tangled corpses and the flailing of the dying; and their squeals grow louder as hearing returns because you are sloughing off berserkergangr as if it were a handy cloak to be donned and shed at will. Your own warriors are staring because they have seen the wolf and it is you.
Yes!
These are your reavers, these haters and lovers of the blade, and you snarl with salt blood in your mouth, because this is victory that burns, howling, inside you.
YES!
Now they will follow you for sure.
Across the sea, on an island linked by a causeway to the greater land, a different form of agony falls upon the pain-filled, one-eyed man called Stígr where he thrashes on a wooden cot, contained in a coating of sweat, scarcely aware of the tightness of bandages or the poultice-stink. Neither his wounds nor his memories of evil – of all the filth the darkness has caused him to perform since his limb-tearing crucifixion and the rape of his soul – torture him the most. Something far worse is hurting him now.
It is the gentleness of the monks’ hands as they tend to him, and the peacefulness of their spirits, that make him weep and groan.
FIVE
MU-SPACE, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)
It calmed every Pilot, this golden void of mu-space, or so the theory went. But Piet Gunnarsson, his mood matched by that of his ship, was restless in what should have been a sleep period, drifting near a crimson nebula whose thousand subtle hues were worthy of meditation and artistic awe in their own right. He had screwed up twice in a matter of subjective weeks, and it haunted him.
Most recently, as part of the squadron keeping distant watch on Fulgor, he had allowed a ship to slip past because it was heading towards the hellworld, not launching from it, and because its Pilot was Admiral Schenck. Call it respect for authority, from someone trying to make amends. Except, except. . .
It turned out that, if Piet had obeyed protocol and signalled his fellow Pilots to check the situation, instead of just accepting the admiral’s genuine credentials, he would have found that Schenck was a creature of corruption – whose exact relationship to the Anomaly enveloping Fulgor was not clear to Piet – and capturing him would have been a triumph.
Several tendays before that, through simple self-absorption in his own troubles, Piet had ignored a distant fleet of Pilot vessels heading for Fulgor, thereby missing the opportunity to help rescue some of those poor people now merged into the Anomaly.
Two personal failures later, and here he was, still tasked with keeping a distant eye on Fulgor, remaining in position when the rest of the watch-squadron besides Alice, currently in command in realspace, had flown home to Labyrinth, and a fresh squadron – two wings, each fourteen strong – took their place. At any time, half were in realspace on watch, and half were in mu-space, as Piet was now, theoretically resting.
The other ships and Pilots appeared to have no difficulty with the concept, as they drifted here, quiescent. But Piet’s thoughts roiled, imagining Alice – why exactly had she stayed? – and the others on watch in realspace, some hundred kilometres from the surface of the hellworld: far enough away to prevent the Anomaly from reaching through the realspace hyperdimensions to absorb them, or so the Admiralty analysts believed.
The watchers’ brief was to destroy any small craft that lifted from the surface, or flee before a larger fleet, because no one knew how long the global mind would remain satisfied with living on a single planetary surface. Perhaps it would take a thousand or a million years for the urge to spread to manifest; or perhaps it was already preparing to launch.
**Anyone else picking up movement?**
The signal was from Jakob, on the other side of the nebula.
**Not me.**
Movement in mu-space? There was no reason for anyone else to be here.
**Me neither.**
Negative replies came from everyone but Piet, who was immersing himself in long-range sensitivity, listening, at one with his beautiful ship as he-and-she cranked up maximum gain, alert for the tiniest pulse of mu-space energies that had no realspace names; and after a moment they found something.
This is it.
With luck this could be salvation, a resurrection of pride, and – dare he think it? – perhaps a reason for Alice to take an interest in him the way he hoped.
Even as Piet-and-ship flew towards the disturbance, the nature of the approaching craft remained questionable, right up to the moment it came within viewing distance (via the tunnelling of impacted fractal-vector quasi-bosons through the ship’s protective membrane, no photons involved). Then it was too late to call the others, because ship-and-Piet had insufficiently accurate bearings, in this choppy region, to send tightbeam signals.