Asgard's Heart. Brian Stableford
above my head. When I looked up, I could catch a glimmer of light filtering through the translucent foliage, but could see almost nothing.
The insects, mercifully, were quieter now, and when I rose to my feet, the ones I had been disturbing with my snake-act decided that I was no longer a threat to their sanity and well-being, and they gradually ceased their awful keening. I was able to stand still and listen.
I didn’t know what kind of sound would be made by a mantis-dragon stomping through a giant’s garden, but I figured that its progress would probably alarm the insects just as much as mine, and once I had ascertained that there was no cacophonous whistling in the neighborhood, I came to the conclusion that I was relatively safe.
Because I wanted to see where I was, I decided to climb a tree. This wasn’t easy, because there were no authentic trees in the place—merely overgrown bushes with limp branches. Nevertheless, the topmost parts of the canopy, which extended all of ten meters into the air to bask in the glow of the fifteen-meter ceiling, were borne aloft by relatively sturdy stems, and I was able to pick my way through the ferny stuff to a stem bearing a particularly solid leaf.
There was an insufficiency of decent footholds, and the stem swayed alarmingly when I shifted my weight. The pain in my wounded back didn’t help, either, and I had a fearsome headache caused by a combination of shockwave concussion and screeching insects, but I managed to climb, drawing on those hidden resources of strength which our bodies prudently save for moments of terrorized hyperactivity.
When I got to a reasonable coign of vantage, with my feet on one leaf-stem and my hands clutching another, balanced as safely as I was able, I looked around—and promptly wished that I hadn’t.
Big the monster mantis might be, but it obviously wasn’t very heavy. Its great long legs were protruding in every direction—I could count ten of them now I could see the thing in all its hideous glory—and it was moving three or four of them at a time, finding new purchase wherever it could. It was coming over the top of the canopy, and it was already turning from its previous path to head straight for me, having caught a glimpse of me with its three remaining eyes the moment I stuck my head out into the open.
I wasted no time in clambering down—I jumped, half-falling and half-sliding through the thick vegetation. With the ground still cluttered by the root-ridges, though, there was no way I could hug the turf and crawl, so I ended up in a furtive crouch, trying to step over the ridges as fast as I possibly could, hoping to reach a space I could share with the inhospitable insects.
One of the great pincers smashed down beside me, trying to stab rather than to grab, missing me by a margin that was far too small for comfort. There was a tearing sound from above as the other grabber began tearing at the foliage, trying to get a sight of me. I jinked to the left, and then to the right, trying to confuse any extrapolation of my path its mechanical brain might be making, but it obviously got another brief sight of me, because the hand came groping through the vegetation again, closing with a vicious snap no more than a dozen centimeters from my left ear.
The insect chorus was in full swing again now, filling my ears with raw sound, which had not even that elementary aesthetic propriety that one might imaginative credit to the last trump.
I stumbled over a root, but thrust myself instantly to my feet again, and ran on as fast as my feet could carry me across such disadvantageous territory. The arm reached out for me just once more, unsuccessfully, and then I suddenly found myself confronting an open space—a clearing where the only things which grew were no higher than the top of my boot. It was star-shaped, and maybe twenty or thirty meters across. When I saw it my heart leapt, as I realized that here was somewhere I could really run, but almost immediately it sank again, as I realized that it was somewhere that the Gargantuan predator could see me clearly as I ran, and get a clear shot with its flamer.
It was too late to change my mind—my legs had already carried me out into the open—but in trying belatedly to alter the direction of my charge, I turned my ankle and fell, rolling as I did so to look back at the thing which was looming far above me, its head seeming tiny now because it was so high, its legs lashing out in search of purchase so that it could anchor itself for one final, fatal grab.
I saw its swiveling head rotate and stop, so that two good eyes stared down at me, and I saw the barrel of the proboscis come into line as the arms pulled back, ready to thrust.
And then the thing stiffened, as if struck rigid by some inner convulsion. A curious shiver passed along its body, and then it collapsed, falling all in a heap like an unreasonably complicated puppet whose strings had been simultaneously sheared.
I shielded my face as it fell, and ducked towards the ground because I feared that it would fall on top of me and crush me, but its loathsome head came down to one side, missing me by a meter or more. I stood up again, and looked around—feeling, although I didn’t know why, slightly foolish.
Myrlin was standing on the far side of the clearing, with something on his shoulder that looked like a bazooka with a slender, solid barrel. Susarma Lear was by his side, looking uncannily neat and trim. She was still holding the crash-gun in her hand, and she used it to beckon me urgently.
“Come on, Rousseau!” she yelled, audible even above the sound of the insects. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
I picked myself up, knowing that I was filthy, ragged, and bloodstained, feeling as if I had just been stamped on by a giant boot, and limped across the open ground. The news that my life no longer seemed to be in imminent danger must have been transmitted to my hormone system, because all the adrenalin seemed to drain away, and my limping gait became a drunken stagger. I felt as though my legs had turned to rubber.
Incongruously, I fell over. I remember thinking, dimly but clinically, that I must have lost a lot of blood.
Myrlin shrugged the silent weapon from his shoulder and let it drop. He took three titanic strides forward and picked me up as though I were a rag doll. Then he threw me over his shoulder where the weapon had rested, and set off at a run.
Inexpressibly glad that someone else had finally taken responsibility for my poor battered body, I thankfully blacked out.
CHAPTER SIX
Inevitably, I fell straight into the grip of a dream.
I express it thus because that’s precisely what it felt like. It was as if something had been there, forming and growing according to some inner process of its own, ready and waiting for whatever it was that constituted the essential me to lose its grip of consciousness. When I blacked out, it was as if a great cold pool of darkness sucked me in and gobbled me up, consuming me more completely than any mammoth-sized mantis-machine ever could have.
The sensation of falling didn’t last long, and there was no jarring end, but I found myself suddenly alone, standing on an infinite plain as featureless as the surface of Asgard. The stars were bright in the sky, and I knew that a cold wind was blowing, although I couldn’t feel it on my skin. It was as though it blew straight through me.
I looked down at myself, and was unsurprised to find that I was a phantom—a pale, glimmering, translucent thing. My ghostly form was clad in a phantasmal tunic, cut in a style which I associated with ancient Greece, but the cloth was torn and stained with blood, and I knew that I had been mortally wounded by the thrust of some savage blade—a sword, or the head of a spear.
I was dead, and waited for my journey to the Underworld to begin.
Riding across the sky on a great night-black horse with shadowy wings, a woman in quilted armor came to meet me. Her hair was very pale, but there was no color in her, and I couldn’t tell whether her piercing eyes were blue. I knew, though, that something was wrong, and that the imagery was out of joint. Surely this was a valkyrie, come to carry some fallen Norseman off to the halls of Valhalla, whereas I had been slain without the walls of beleaguered Troy, and was destined for a very different kind of paradise.
When the night-mare landed beside me, and she reached down her tautly-muscled arm to lift me up, I raised my own hand in protest, as though to tell her to go away, but she only gripped my arm in hers, and