Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

I had a third arrow ready, and fired at the open mouth as it gaped. A black forked tongue flickered out, and the arrow caught it, embedding itself just behind the junction. There was no doubt that the monster felt this blow because the head flinched, sucking the tongue back between the fangs, arrow and all. For a single fleeting moment I clung to the hope that I might have struck a mortal blow, but then the mouth gaped again, the great curved fangs standing stark and white, and the head struck at me with lightning speed.

Had I not been crouched beneath the rail I must have been caught and killed, but my reflexive reaction was to duck, and I felt the two great fangs strike at the carved parapet to either side of me, splintering the wood, but impotent to hurt my body.

As I sprawled on the timbers I looked up into the left eye of the monster, which was incredibly huge at this intimate range, although it was only as big as a man’s whole head. I sensed such venomous hatred there as to make my blood run cold.

When the head drew back again I knew that I had a few seconds to spare in which to launch another arrow, and while I notched it to the string I determined to aim at that evil eye, to rob the monster of part of its sight, perhaps even to penetrate its brain.

As the head poised itself in mid-air, ready for the second strike, I managed to get myself into a firing position, and loosed my arrow. It sped in company with at least one other, but the monster swayed very slightly, and both bolts glanced off the armoured scales behind the brow, apparently causing no harm at all. The coils of its astonishing body were coming so tightly about the boat now that the lurching and heeling had stopped, and the wind which tried to catch our sail had likewise dwindled away, so that everything seemed uncannily steady as the head struck out again.

I tried to roll to one side, but the head was simply too big to be avoided in that way. Fortunately, it was not the gleaming fang that struck me, but rather the horny ridge above the root of the fang, which caught my shoulder and knocked me away from the protecting rail. The bow shivered in my hand, and split as I rammed its end into the timber of the deck. I let it go, and tried desperately to regain my balance.

Another arrow, which must have been fired by the goddess, pursued the monstrous head as it reared backwards for another strike, and embedded its point in the black lip between the fangs, but the leviathan cared nothing at all for such a wound, and I knew that this time it would not miss me when it struck again.

I struggled desperately with my sword, trying to haul it from its scabbard, but the scabbard was trapped beneath me where I had fallen, and I could not get the weapon out.

I stared the monster full in the face as the head paused for an instant, quite still in the clouded air while that baleful eye measured the strike.

Then Myrlin stepped in front of me, his great hammer held in his right hand, and as the vile head thrust itself forward yet again he hurled the hammer with all his might. It flew, more like a thunderbolt than a missile, to meet the serpent’s head mid-way. I could not judge the precise point of impact, but I know that the hammer sailed into the open mouth, to catch the upper palate nearer to the throat than the lip.

With Myrlin’s heroic strength behind it, the thrown hammer was much more powerful than the sea-serpent’s thrusting head, and the impact snatched the head backwards with such violence that I felt sure the cervical vertebrae must have been broken. The monster was hurled backwards, tumbling back over its own circling coils, crashing into the surface of the water.

Myrlin cried out in exultation, and my own voice began to join in, but our anticipation of victory was premature. The great coils were still about the ship, so close on every side that they had almost caught it fast, and when the head disappeared those coils went mad, closing upon the vessel with such a convulsion that they caught it by the bow and the stern, and turned it upright from end to end.

Out of the water rose what I first thought was a second head, but was in fact a great crested tail, which struck at the thrown-up ship with all the violence it could muster.

The mast broke like matchwood, and all the timbers of the hull and the middle deck cracked and splintered. I saw the gorgon’s head, severed from its place atop the prow, hurtle through the air to disappear impotently beneath the storm-tossed waves. I heard the goddess scream, and remembered what she had said about the ship being no less a part of her than the armour-clad flesh which she had put on. In that scream, I was certain, I heard the sound of her death.

But it mattered no longer to me whether the ship was seaworthy or not, for I could not help but part company with it, hurled tumbling through the air to come down, not in the turbulent water, but upon the flesh of the monster itself, near to where my first and second arrows had struck.

For one sensible moment I clung with all my might to a handhold found among the scales, as though I might seize the beast and ride him to his lair in the ocean depths, but then I was snatched beneath the waves, and hit the water with such violence that all the breath was knocked out of me.

As I struggled desperately to remain conscious I tried with all my might to gasp for air—but there was no air to be had, and all I could take in was foul and icy water, which seemed to carry a tide of noxious poison into the very heart of my being. I was still on the surface of the strange cold sea, and my red armour seemed to have no weight at all, but something was dragging at me from below, trying to suck me down into the depths. I grabbed at a spar that was close by in the water, but it was by no means large enough to serve as a raft.

Still winded and desperate for air I looked wildly about, and saw a much larger piece of wreckage bearing down upon me from the crest of a wave. Clinging to it with evident desperation was Myrlin’s huge black-armoured body, and had I been able I would have yelled with joy to see that he was still alive. I stretched out my hand, trying to catch hold of the edge of the makeshift raft, but the roiling of the waters carried me away. I still could not cry out to beg for help, but I saw Myrlin lift his head and was sure that he must catch sight of me, and save me from the force that was trying to pull me under.

His eyes met mine, and for a moment there was a flicker of recognition, but the instant did not last. It was as though some kind of magical fire flared inside his head, so that his eyes were suddenly lighted from within, burning like angry beacons, and his body was seized by horrid convulsions which were determined to shake him apart.

He would surely have reached out to save me, if he could—but he could not, because the demons had him, and were destroying him even while he clung to the wreckage that had given him momentary hope of salvation.

I felt that the demons had me, too, because I was pulled down by invisible hands, deep into the awful waters, which closed above my head. I knew then that the breath of life for which I fought so hard would never come.

The last thought I had before consciousness left me was that I had discovered what it felt like to drown.

The moment our lights picked out the shape of the other vehicle Clio brought us smoothly to a halt. Susarma Lear was sitting in the driver’s seat, but she wasn’t pretending to drive. Urania, with Clio on her lap, was sitting between the two of us.

“Better get up to the turret,” I said to the colonel. “We may need the guns.”

Susarma moved back, and moments later her place was taken by Myrlin. There had been no sign of movement near the other truck, which was facing a blank wall. Its lights were reflected back from the wall to produce a halo effect around it. Its doors seemed to be sealed.