The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (4 page)

"Pyrakmon!" I shout over the enemy's
distant scream. "Lead us to safety!"

I have no authority to command him, but that is
what this is. If he refuses, I will turn my weapon on him, backed by
as many Atlanteans as will follow me. If we are to die, better that
it be at his huge hand, fighting for a slim chance at life, than
pointlessly against impossible odds.

Having fought the Myriad with no weapons but his
rawhide-wrapped hands, Pyrakmon is coated from  head to toe with
the ichor of the creatures that he has evidently torn asunder.
Briefly, the Cyclops stares at me. His single eye is unreadable,
leaving my mind to race through contingencies while fingers knead
sweat-soaked sword handle.

At last he nods, alleviating a tiny fraction of
my despair. Death has become just slightly less imminent.

"Follow the giant!" I cry to all who
yet live. I throw myself in his direction, trusting Crow and Ayessa
to follow before our tethers yank one or more of us to the ground.

Follow they do, and so do all within the sound
of my voice. If any Atlanteans still cling to life among the corpses,
I can only wish that their pain is short-lived, for we have not the
luxury of time to seek them out and carry them with us.

In great, bounding strides, the Cyclops runs
toward the mountainside and ascends a shallow part of the slope.
Behind him trails a cluster of forty-odd battered souls in borrowed
bodies, all trying their best not to cast looks at the doom behind.
After too long an ascent and too many glances over my shoulder, we
crest the slope. Pyrakmon leads us around one of the jagged
mountain's many crags. My  last glance back before we round it
shows me the sight I have been dreading: the green mist spilling up
over the rock shelf. I would cry out warning, but we all see it, we
all hear it, and anyway our legs can carry us no faster than they do
now.

Pyrakmon's round eye scans the mountainside,
telling me he does not know precisely where he is leading us. He
never stops moving, though, outpacing us all with his greater stride.
He slows, and for an instant I think all is lost, for the fog any
second must envelop the ground on which we stand. Then Pyrakmon's big
eye locks onto something, his thick body pivots, and he races with
new urgency. I look ahead on his trajectory and see it too: a patch
of metal embedded in the mountainside reflecting the sky's pink
light. I point and cry out to my brethren, adjusting course to aim
straight for it rather than following the uncertain-til-now giant. It
will save only a few seconds at most, but every second is precious. I
do not let myself become hopeful, since the overwhelming likelihood
is that we Atlanteans will every one of us shortly return to the
senseless abyss from which Medea dragged us.

The Myriad are visible behind us now, a roiling,
shadow-laden cloud that eats up the mountain stone by stone, gaining
on us. Ahead, Pyrakmon reaches the patch of metal, which I now see
consists of six thick chains linked in the center by a hexagonal
panel. Right away, one thing strikes me about this door: the cyclops
dwarfs it. There is no way he will fit.

That is his concern, I tell myself. Not mine.

I am among the first Atlanteans to reach
Pyrakmon's side. Pushing past the few there before me, I see the
Cyclops fumbling with a rod-shaped key in gore-slick fingers as thick
around as three of mine. Without thought or hesitation, I throw down
my shield and snatch the key for myself. After my first, hurried
attempt to slide the notched rod into the hole at the panel's center
fails, the key slides in.

I could have been faster, I cannot help but
think. I hope that my failure does not doom any one of us.

There is a heavy, metallic clank, and the thick
links affixing the six chains to the lock panel burst open.  
 With a leaden thud the panel falls, key still embedded in it,
and slides to a rest on the rock near my feet.

"Go!" Pyrakmon roars in his landslide
of a voice.

I whirl and see the green cloud looming large.
My brothers and sisters, all forty or so who remain, become a crush
of bodies clambering to reach the small passage at my shoulder which
is barely large enough for a man to crawl into on hands and knees.
One Atlantean whom I don't know by face, much less name, if he has
one, elbows me aside, discards his shield and climbs in.

I make no effort to stop him. Given a few more
minutes, I might try to effect an orderly exodus. But we have no time
at all. The best I can do as their leader, if that is what I am, is
to ensure that the tunnel stays packed with bodies and that none of
us are trampled before the Myriad arrive.

However, there is one way in which I must, and
do, abuse my authority. While forty-plus Atlanteans push into the
passage, none of them able to claim any more right to life than
another, I use my sword to cleave the rope connecting me to Ayessa. I
grab her roughly by one arm and with the flat of my blade carve a
hole in the crush of bodies to shove Ayessa in at the head of the
line.

She resists.

"Go!" I tell her. My voice competes
with the Myriad's ever-nearer, ever-louder shrieking.

She shakes off my grip.

"Get in!"

"No!"

Her protest barely registers except to aggravate
me. I will not let her die. My eyes find Crow, still linked to her at
the waist.

"Take her!" I bark, shoving her into
his arms and herding both toward the passage mouth. Crow seems
startled by the directness of my action, but he complies, taking hold
of Ayessa's arms while I wrest the lance from her grip and strip her
of her shield. She makes one last attempt to break free, but 
carried along by Crow and the crush, she reaches the opening and has
no choice but to enter and continue moving, lest she cause delay that
we can scant afford.

Vaguely, I comprehend that if we survive, Ayessa
might resent me for what I have done. But she already has no liking
for me, it would seem, and resentment can be overcome. Death cannot.

Well, perhaps not twice.

Soon roughly half of our number have found their
way inside the mountain. The other half is pressed chest-to-back in a
solid mass of limbs and heads. A few who have yet to abandon their
shields are using them against their comrades. I cannot blame them.
They want to live.

So do I. But I have reached a decision. I will
stand at the doomed giant's side and be last to leave. Were I to do
otherwise, I know that I might forevermore see myself through
Pyrakmon's single eye as one unworthy of his sacrifice on our behalf.
I stoop and grab a shield, not the same one I threw down, but that
hardly matters. When I rise, my two eyes join the giant's one in
fixing on the advancing Myriad cloud, which dwarfs that which came
before.

I ask the cyclops, half-joking, half-hopeful, "I
don't suppose you have the power to shrink?"

He glances at me, and for the first time, I can
read his look: he does wish he possessed such a power.

"Why did you stay behind, friend?" I
ask of him.

The Cyclops laughs darkly, and speaks over the
slow-moving stream of Atlanteans. "Even though my kind have ever
been a solitary lot, I have no wish to be the last of them."

I want to match his valor and declare that I
will stand here and die with him, but I know I cannot, must 
not. I have not been reborn only to perish again on this mountain.
Whatever notion of honor it is that keeps me standing here, whether
its source is Thamoth or Enyalios, spirit or flesh, must content
itself with my being the last to leave instead of sacrificing myself
alongside the giant.

Of course, I may yet wind up sharing his fate
regardless. The next minute, or less, will tell.

"Have you any last words, Cyclops?" I
ask Pyrakmon.

He thinks a moment. Neither of us, while
speaking, averts our face from the coming, terrible storm. "Trust
not the Chrysioi," he tells me. "It was Hephaestus who gave
me this key, that you might have a chance at life. But others of the
Chrysioi think you abominations, foremost of them Ares' wife, mother
of your own flesh, Enyo."

While the giant speaks, six more Atlanteans
scramble over the pile of discarded shields and into the tunnel,
leaving perhaps a dozen more yet to pass.

"What of Ares himself?" I ask.

"It was his idea, and Medea's, to summon
you. To him, I think, a fighter is a fighter."

There is no time to say more. My nostrils burn.
A green glow fills the entire expanse of my vision. The second wave
is upon us.

From out of the fog, a monstrous form
materializes. Black tendrils slither around the waist of the rearmost
Atlantean of those yet to enter the tunnel, and before I can lunge
and bring my sword down on the appendages, he is dragged off,
screaming, clawing at the rock.

His scream fades into the mist. There is no time
to lament. I lift my shield barely in time to meet an onslaught of
mottled blue flesh. I bring up my sword and stab into the creature
again and again, twisting the blade with the sole goal of butchery.
Black ichor spurts, and the thing falls heavily. Quickly it is
replaced by another of its kind, and another and another. The space
past my shield rim, seconds ago just swirling green mist, becomes a
vile rainbow, alive with color. I yield a few steps, find a fresh
target, and do not let my blade rest. A dark shape scrabbles under my
shield, bumping my mist-shrouded knees; it is one of the last
Atlanteans, moving to safety. Another moves close behind him. I will
them to move faster. With the mountain at my back, drenched in sweat
and blood, I do all I can to protect myself and the last of my
brethren.

It is not enough. Below me, an Atlantean
screams. I spare a glance and barely see, through the fog, a thick,
thorny tentacle wrapped around a man-shaped shadow. I want to help my
brother, but he is opposite my ever-moving sword-arm. I ram my shield
rim into the tentacle, to no effect. Just as I give him up for lost,
giant shadowy hands emerge from the mist to grip the tentacle and pry
it away. The freed Atlantean scrambles out of my sight, and a larger
shadow—Pyrakmon—takes shape, grappling with the beast. A
severed tentacle flies past my face, evidence that the Cyclops has
made short work of the thing.

All the while, I do not stop fighting. Another
of my brethren brushes past me in the fog and vanishes. I think he is
the last; the Cyclops and I are all who remain outside the mountain,
with an uncountable number of Myriad.

It is time. I wish I could better see Pyrakmon's
eye to share one last look with him, but the mist makes that
impossible. I can only keep slashing whilst moving carefully backward
over a mound of shields slick with ichor in search of a small tunnel
mouth invisible in the stinging mist. I think I am on the right 
path, but cannot be certain when, in a terrible instant, my foot
slips and I crash down on my back among the discarded shields.
Quickly I scramble to right myself but fail to find footing on the
slick, shifting surfaces.

Stumbling and lashing out at the unrelenting
swarm with my blade, I begin to resign myself. I bid Ayessa farewell,
disappointed that I will never learn what was, and what might have
been again. I wish Crow and all of my brethren a bright future in
whatever home they may find. I hope they will choose to remember me.
At least they have a name by which to do so: 
Thamoth
.

I am ready for death, and have been so for long
seconds, when there coalesces from the mist a great, round, white
eye. I realize too late to halt the frenzied slashing of my sword
that it is not the eye of any  horrific creature of the Myriad,
but Pyrakmon's. My blow has struck the Cyclops somewhere on his great
body; thanks to the fog, I cannot tell just where. Regret flares in
me, but also an irrational anger at Pyrakmon for getting in the way
of my sword and spoiling my noble death.

A second later, I realize that I have not slain
the Cyclops, or even hurt him badly. He is made of tougher stuff than
that. His great arms move toward me, and I am lifted in a clatter of
shields. My world spins. For a moment I do not know which way is up.
Then my back strikes rock, forcing the breath from my body. I brace
the elbow of my shield arm against the mountainside and feel
something cold and smooth which is not rock but metal. The link of a
chain. I am at the tunnel.

I fear to turn my back, even more to drop my
shield, but I must do both, and so without waiting for more
nightmares to emerge from the mist, I do. My free hand finds the
chain, and I use it to heave myself into the passage which, like the
air of Hades outside, is thick with stinging green fog. I want
nothing more than to keep scrambling forward until this enemy lies
far behind, but I cannot. What I must do instead is lay down my sword
temporarily and work to restore the tunnel's seal. That I have not
seen any Myriad small enough to fit inside this passage does not mean
that none exist. I was told, after all, that their forms are endless,
and for all I know their haphazardly assembled bodies are malleable
enough to squeeze into any opening.

Expecting at any moment a razor-lined tendril to
sever my head, I set down my sword so its handle touches my leg, that
I might find it again easily when needed, and quest with my hands at
the tunnel's  threshold, where I remember having last seen the
hexagonal lock plate. I find nothing at first and must walk forward
on my knees, stretching ever further down. I feel, and barely see,
our discarded shields and run my fingers over every one in reach,
assuring myself that it is not what I seek before shoving it aside.

My hands encounter the slick, soft, cold flesh
of a creature of the Myriad, and I throw myself back, seizing my
sword and setting it for an attack. When none comes, I set it down
again and resume my search. When once more I feel the cool, bloated
flesh, I comprehend the reason I have not been attacked: a heap of
Myriad corpses blocks the tunnel mouth.