Freja wakes at first light, on the final day of her eighteenth summer. It takes her a long, disori-ented moment to remember why she’s not in her bed, why she’s sleeping on the ground, wrapped in a thin blanket with a balled-up cloak for a pillow. She rolls half-over and feels for the oilcloth wrappings that protect her weapons. Her fingers find the hilt of her sword through the cloth, then the blade of her dagger, and her heart settles down into a steady rhythm. She sits up slowly. Her head brushes against the fabric of her tiny tent. Today, she thinks. Today, we see.
As she crawls out into the dew-damp grass and climbs to her feet, Freja sees that she’s not the only one up early today. Two stickmen are working their way around the fighting ring forty yards distant, pounding the stripped earth flat with heavy iron tampers. She watches them spiral slowly toward one another. Step. Thump. Step. Thump.
“They take this seriously, no?”
Freja turns. A tall, ghost-pale woman stands behind her, long grey cloak falling from her shoul-ders, arms folded across her chest.
“It’s their last tournament,” Freja says, “for the last human city on Midgard.”
The woman steps up beside her.
“Does this make them sad, do you think?”
Freja shrugs. She has no interest in what the stickmen feel.
“If it bothers them,” the woman says, “they could let Yggdrasil live when it’s over. Then they could have all the tournaments they like, no? They could keep us as pets, and bring us out to fight with them whenever they wish.”
Freja turns back to the stickmen. They’ve almost reached the center of the ring.
“It doesn’t matter what they wish, if our champion wins.”
The woman laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“If you win, you mean?”
Freja’s eyes narrow, but she keeps her voice level.
“It’s not impossible.”
The woman turns to look down at her, and Freja can almost hear her thought: I could snap your neck like a chicken’s. It’s true, Freja knows—but first, she’d need to be quick enough to catch her, and Freja is confident that she’s not.
“I’m Karina,” the woman says.
Freja glances up at her.
“Freja Jonsdottir.”
“I know who you are,” Karina says. “You’re the Little Scorpion, no? You have a reputation.”
Freja nods. There are fewer than fifty thousand humans left in the world. Nearly everyone has a reputation now, of one sort or another.
“You and I are the only two women in the draw,” Karina says. “With luck, we won’t meet un-til tomorrow—if we both manage to live that long, of course.”
Freja gives her a sideways glance.
“I intend to.”
Karina laughs again, this time with a little more warmth.
“As do I, Little Scorpion.” She takes a half-step back, and favors Freja with a bow. “It would be a terrible honor to die by your blade.”
#
The sun is a hand’s breadth above the horizon when the dry-bones rattle of the stickmen’s drum calls Freja to the fighting ring. The two she saw earlier wait there, along with another one, at least a foot taller. This one stands apart from the others. A long red cape hangs from its thin brown shoulders, and a ridiculously small triangular hat perches atop its bald, chitinous head.
“A high priest,” Karina says from behind her. “I’m impressed. We only got under-priests when they took Vanaheimr.”
Freja turns. The cloak Karina had worn earlier is gone now, replaced by a loose cotton tunic and knee-length leggings. A two-handed broadsword is slung across her back.
“You were at Vanaheimr?”
Karina nods.
“I’m confused. Why are you still alive?”
“I didn’t fight,” Karina says, “and I didn’t wait around for our champion to lose. I got one look at the stickmen, and I ran.”
Freja stares up at her as the other fighters fill in around them.
“And yet, you’re here now.” she says finally.
Karina sighs.
“Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be anywhere left to run.”
Freja thinks to respond, but before she can, the high priest steps forward. Freja’s people have lived in the shadow of the stickmen since the night that a falling star first brought them to Mid-gard, but she’s never heard one speak before. Its voice is like the buzzing of a swarm of bees.
“Today,” it says, “the people make claim on this city. Who comes to defend it?”
After a pause, Karina raises one hand.
“I do.”
One by one, the others gathered around the ring echo her, until finally only Freja remains. The high priest’s flat black eyes fall on her. Freja sighs.
“Right,” she says. “I do.” She folds her arms across her chest and looks up at the stickman. It stares back at her, unblinking. “By the way,” she says finally. “I like your hat.”
Twenty-seven fighters have come out to this empty field to make one final gesture of defiance before the stickmen. One of the under-priests produces a box containing twenty-seven chits—twenty-two black, and five white.
“Good,” Karina says when she sees she’s drawn a black chit. “Best to get to it.”
The under-priest is at least eight feet tall. Freja has to rise up on her toes to reach into the box. She’s the last of the twenty-seven. It takes her an uncomfortable five seconds of feeling around to find the final chit. It’s white. She’ll not fight until the afternoon.
“Bad luck,” Karina says. “Your first opponent will already be blooded.”
Freja rolls her eyes.
“We’ll all be blooded soon enough.”
The under-priest collects up the chits. When it has them all, it shuffles to the center of the fighting ring, and calls the first bout. When it ends in a bright spray of arterial blood, Freja finds herself focused on the dying man’s eyes. He drops to his knees, and the sword he’d been clutching falls from his hands. The man who’s just killed him steps back, a look of mild disgust on his face, pulls a cloth from his belt, and wipes his blade clean.
“Not so bad,” Karina says. Freja turns to look at her. She’d forgotten the other woman was there. “The dying, I mean. He didn’t seem like he really minded, did he?”
“His throat was cut,” Freja says. “I’d guess it won’t always be so easy.”
The next bout proves her right. The fighters could be brothers—both tall and blond, long-limbed as stickmen. They dance around one another for a minute, then two, until Freja begins to wonder whether they might not actually intend to fight at all.
“They need to get on with it,” Karina says.
Freja glances over at her.
“What if they don’t?”
“The under-priests will kill them both,” Karina says. “A fight without blood is a fight without honor, no?”
I wouldn’t know, Freja thinks to answer, but before she can, one of the men in the ring bats aside a weak feint and lunges inside the reach of the other’s blade. An instant later they’re apart again, but one is disarmed, while the other has a foot of steel jutting out from the middle of his back. For a long moment, neither seems to understand what’s happened. The one who’s been impaled looks down at the sword hilt protruding from his gut, then up at the man who put it there. He staggers forward then, his own sword waving drunkenly. The other looks to the stickmen, but the under-priests show no sign of interfering. He leaps back as the dying man closes with him, but too late to avoid a long cut across his chest and belly.
What follows is a gruesome game of chase, one man bleeding and unarmed, the other seeming-ly unable or unwilling to die. It ends after what seems to Freja an eternity, when the impaled man trips and falls. The impact drives the blade another eight inches through him. He thrashes briefly, then stills. Freja closes her eyes and breathes in, breathes out. Her stomach clenches once, then settles. When she opens her eyes again, the ring has been cleared, and Karina is star-ing at her.
“All good, Little Scorpion?”
Freja swallows bile, takes another deep breath, and nods.
“Good,” Karina says. “I fight next. Wish me luck, no?”
As it happens, Karina needs little luck. Her opponent is a short, stocky man carrying a long, heavy-bladed sword. His hands tremble as they step into the ring. After two bloodless passes, he fumbles his weapon, and Karina nearly beheads him when he stoops to retrieve it. She cleans her blade on the back of his tunic, then returns to stand by Freja as if nothing had happened.
As the morning wears on, Freja finds the bouts easier to watch. Some men die badly. Some men die well. One short, vicious fight ends with both combatants bleeding out into the dirt.
“Huh,” Karina says. “I suppose we’ll need to draw chits again for the afternoon. One of us will be lacking a dance partner.”
Freja doesn’t bother to respond.
It’s nearly midday when the last two fighters of the morning step into the ring. One, Freja rec-ognizes from Yggdrasil’s practice fields. His name is Arn. She’s sparred with him a half-dozen times. He’s competent enough, but slow-footed and prone to over-reach. His opponent is the biggest man Freja has ever seen. Instead of a sword, he carries a hammer with four feet of ar-mored handle and a head that looks like it must weigh thirty pounds.
“What’s this one thinking?” Freja says. “War hammers are for armor.”
Karina nods.
“That they are.”
The men in the ring close with one another. Arn feints tentatively toward the giant’s belly. The hammer whistles around with surprising speed, catches Arn’s blade near the hilt and tears it from his hands. Arn’s jaw sags open. A half-second later, the fight ends abruptly with a sicken-ing crunch.
“For armor or not,” Karina says, “I think the hammer will do.”
They’re granted two hours to rest and eat before the afternoon’s fighting. Karina follows Freja back to her tent.
“The giant,” she says. “What do you think of him, Little Scorpion?”
Freja glances up from her food sack.
“I think he’s a fool.”
Karina settles in beside her.
“Really? How so?”
Freja stares at her for a long five seconds.
“Do you not have food to fetch?”
Karina grins.
“I do not. Honestly, I expected to be dead when lunch time came.”
Freja sighs, digs into her bag, and hands over two biscuits and a leathery strip of beef.
“Many thanks,” Karina says. “You were far more optimistic than I, no?”
Freja shrugs. In truth, she came here assuming that she would need provisions for the entire tournament, and more for the long walk home.
“So tell me,” Karina says as Freja pulls out cheese and biscuits and a paring knife for herself. “Why is Gunnar a fool?”
“Gunnar?” Freja says. “Is he the giant?”
Karina nods, chews and swallows.
“Gunnar Kristofson. I’m surprised you don’t recognize him. He was well-known in Vana-heimr.”
“A city which he, like you, apparently declined to defend.”
Karina’s eyes narrow briefly, and Freja wonders if she’ll need to fight her here, with a paring knife instead of a sword. Karina’s grin returns after a moment, though, and she shakes her head.
“A fair point, Little Scorpion. Still, I don’t see how that makes him a fool.”
Freja cuts a thick slice of cheese, and takes half of it in one bite.
“It doesn’t,” she says. “It makes him a coward. When he brings a hammer to a tournament where we’re forbidden to wear armor, though—that makes him a fool. No matter how strong he is, a hammer can’t be moved with the speed of a sword. A quick blade will gut him like a fish.”
Karina laughs.
“It seemed to work well enough for him this morning.”
“It did,” Freja says. “I don’t understand why, though. I’ve sparred with Arn before. He’s slow, but he’s not that slow. It was almost as if…”
Karina finishes her second biscuit, then leans across to pat Freja on the shoulder.
“Keep thinking, Little Scorpion,” she says as she rises to leave. “It’ll come to you eventually.”
Karina draws the afternoon’s white chit.
“Bad luck,” she says with a. grin. “I was hoping it would go to you.”
No white chit, but when she’s called to fight, Freja sees that luck is still with her. Her opponent is the winner of the morning’s second bout. Someone has patched the gouge that runs across his chest, but the cut goes through to the muscle, and it’s soon clear that he has no strength in his right arm. Freja gives him the dignity of two clean passes before swatting his blade aside, slashing the tendons in his wrist with her dagger, and finishing him with a single upward thrust to the heart. He drops without a sound.
“So,” Karina says when Freja returns to her place alongside the ring. “You’re blooded now. Congratulations.”
Freja opens her mouth to reply, but before she can, the under-priest calls Gunnar to the ring.
“Now we’ll see,” Freja says, and gestures toward his opponent. “I watched this one fight this morning. He’s…”
“Dead,” Karina says. “He’s dead.”
And so he is, having been nearly decapitated while trying to parry Gunnar’s first stroke.
“But…” Freja says. “He only needed to duck…”
“This is true,” Karina says. “However, this is also irrelevant, no?”
The under-priest calls the next bout.
In her tent that night, Freja dreams of her father.
She dreams of the gate to Yggdrasil’s western road, where she waited through nearly every day of her tenth summer, after her father rode out with King Raynold to face the stickmen at Glit-nir. He promised that they would push the stickmen into the sea. He promised that he would be home before the first leaf fell.
The stickmen broke the army of Yggdrasil in less than an hour. Raynold rode home alone, hol-low-eyed and shaking, shorn of his hair and stripped of his armor, to tell his people that the stickmen had come to take Midgard from them. First, though, they would teach humans how to fight with honor.
Freja’s father never returned.
In her dream, a cloud of dust appears on the horizon. She watches through slitted eyes, until fi-nally it resolves itself into a horseman in full armor. As he comes closer, she recognizes her father’s horse, and her father’s armor, though his face is still hidden behind his visor. Finally, he reaches the gate. Freja climbs to her feet.
“Father,” she says. “I knew you’d keep your promise.”
The horseman stares down at her, unmoving.
“Have you won, then? Are the stickmen pushed into the sea?”
The horseman shakes his head slowly. Freja stares up at him in confusion. The fat red sun frames his head like a bloody halo.
“But… then… why have you come here?”
The horseman draws his sword, takes it by the blade in one mailed hand. He offers Freja the hilt.
Eight fighters are left to answer the under-priest’s drum as the sun creeps over the horizon. The high priest appears, gives a brief speech in the stickmen’s incomprehensible language, and then withdraws. The under-priest calls the first bout.
Freja had feared that she’d fight Karina this morning, but when her name is called, her oppo-nent is another familiar face from the practice fields. His name is Alexander. He’s at least a foot taller than she, and carrying a longer blade as well. She’s never sparred with him, but it seems he knows enough of her reputation to be wary. She knows enough of his to guess that he can be baited into over-extending on the attack. She waits through three bloodless passes, then offers him an opening. An instant later she’s inside his reach, her sword holding his in parry, her dagger embedded to the hilt in his thigh. Alexander curses, staggers backward, then looks down to see his life draining away into the dirt at his feet. He drops to one knee. Freja meets his eyes. They’re already emptying. She doesn’t turn away until he falls.
“My,” Karina says as the under-priest carries Alexander from the ring. “you’re a quick one, Lit-tle Scorpion.”
Freja shrugs.
“Look at me. I have to be.”
The under-priest calls Karina to the ring. Her bout is short and brutal. She emerges from it alive, but with shallow cuts running down both arms and across one thigh, and an already-purpling bruise covering half her face where her opponent head-butted her as she drove her blade through him.
Gunnar’s opponent in the final bout is nearly as tall as he is, but at least a hundred pounds lighter. Freja recognizes him, though she can’t recall his name. He’s a patient and efficient swordsman, surprisingly fast for a big man, and technically sound. He avoids Gunnar’s first two strikes easily, but makes no real attempt to mount an attack of his own, despite the fact that Gunnar’s second swing nearly overbalances him. They break contact and stand panting, both weapons held at high guard. Now, Freja whispers. Take him! Gunnar has his back to her, and she can see the swordsman’s face clearly. Gunnar takes one wary step to the side, then lunges for-ward, hammer swinging in a blinding arc.
The swordsman closes his eyes.
“I wasn’t sure before,” Freja says. “I’m sure now. Gunnar should be dead. If the stickmen real-ize…”
“No,” Karina says, and helps herself to another of Freja’s biscuits. “The stickmen won’t realize. They don’t know us that well. They can’t read our faces, and they don’t know what proper blade work looks like.”
“I don’t understand,” Freja says around a mouth full of cheese. “Was he so afraid of facing the stickmen’s champion that he’d rather have his brains dashed out by Gunnar instead?”
Karina watches her through half-closed eyes as she chews and swallows. Freja digs a strip of beef from her bag, tears it in half, and offers the bigger share to Karina.
“Do you know how many tournaments have been fought in the past ten years?”
Freja nods.
“Thirty-one. One for each city on Midgard.”
“And how many times has our champion won?”
Freja doesn’t bother to respond. They both know the answer.
“They don’t permit us armor,” Karina says. “Have you wondered at that?”
“They have a code. Fighting in armor is without honor.”
“Their skin is armor,” Karina says. “Our swords are useless against them.”
Freja shakes her head.
“They’re weak at the joints. A fast enough sword…”
“No,” Karina says. “It’s impossible. Thirty-one of the best swordsmen on Midgard have tried. One of us will fight Gunnar this afternoon, my friend, or tomorrow at the latest. When that happens, Gunnar must not lose. Gunnar must not be wounded. This tournament is our last chance to keep a place in this world, Little Scorpion. Gunnar is our last chance to keep a place in this world.”
Freja digs another biscuit from her food sack.
“If he can’t beat one of us fairly, Karina, how will he beat a stickman?”
Karina grins.
“You said it yourself. A war hammer is for armor. Gunnar is strong as a bear, and that hammer of his would crack a mountain. He only needs to land a single blow.”
They eat in silence then, for what feels like a very long time. Finally, Karina dusts her hands on her thighs, and stands to go.
“Please,” she says. “Our last chance, Little Scorpion. Set aside your fear. Die today, or die to-morrow—what difference does it make, really?”
The sun is halfway down a pale pink sky when the drum calls them back to the ring. The four remaining fighters stand shoulder-to-shoulder as the high priest gives another buzzing speech. When it steps aside, the under-priest shuffles forward and calls Gunnar into the ring.
Freja finds that she’s holding her breath.
The under-priest calls Karina to face him.
As she steps forward, Karina glances back at Freja. She grins, mouths something, and winks. It takes Freja a long second to realize what she said. It would have been an honor.
Gunnar raises his hammer to high guard.
Freja closes her eyes.
As the under-priest clears Karina’s body from the ring, the last fighter leans down to whisper in Freja’s ear.
“Not a bad death, really. Better than I would have given her.”
Freja turns to look at him. He grins, and claps his hand to her shoulder.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s dance, Little Scorpion.”
Freja cuts him on the first pass, and again on the second. After the third, he’s no longer grin-ning. After the fifth, he can no longer stand. He drops his sword and closes his eyes, but Freja refuses to step in and finish him. He’s still breathing when the under-priest carries him away.
Freja wakes in the pre-dawn darkness to the sound of the stickmen tamping down the earth in the fighting ring. She sits up and stretches, then crawls from her tent and out into the pale star-light. There’s only one of them this time, making its way slowly around the ring. Step. Thump. Step. Thump. She walks closer, and is surprised to see that it’s the high priest. Apparently, its position doesn’t excuse it from manual labor.
Freja watches it work as the horizon slowly brightens. Finally, it reaches the center of the ring. It sets the tamper aside, and turns to face her.
“You are small,” it says. For the first time, Freja notices that its jaws are still when it speaks. “Are you a child?”
“A child?” Freja says. “I’m six years past my first bleeding.”
It seems to consider this, then shakes its head slowly and says, “This means nothing to me.”
“No,” Freja says. “I don’t suppose it does.”
They stand in silence. Finally, the high priest shakes its head again, and reaches for the tamper.
“This is our world,” Freja says.
It turns its head to regard her.
“If our champion wins today, it will be ours.”
Freja steps toward it, into the ring.
“Why do you do this? If your champion wins today, you’ll murder the last of us. Our people have done nothing to you.”
It lifts the tamper, rests it across one narrow shoulder, and seems to consider.
“No,” it says finally. “This is not true. We know your people, though you seem not to know us. We have fought with you on many worlds, and in the spaces between the worlds as well. There as here, your people fight without honor. A thousand times, we have offered challenge. You do not accept. You do not refuse. You fly at us in swarms, and our fighters die like animals. Your people have taken far more from us than we can ever hope to take back.”
Freja opens her mouth to answer, then closes it again, shakes her head and says, “I don’t under-stand.”
As the high priest turns away, it makes a sound that could almost be laughter.
“No,” it says. “I do not suppose you do.”
The sun has barely cleared the horizon when the drum summons Freja to the ring. She’d been dozing in her tent, dreaming of her father again. He’d offered her no sword this time—just stared down at her through his visor, then put heels to his charger and ridden away.
As she climbs to her feet, she sees Gunnar is already there by the ring, waiting for her. She stands and stretches, then reaches back into the tent to retrieve her weapons. By the time she reaches Gunnar’s side, the high priest has begun his incantation.
“Are you ready, Little Scorpion?” Gunnar whispers.
Freja looks up. This is the first time she’s been this close to him. Her head is barely higher than his waist.
“Ready for what, Gunnar?”
He keeps his eyes on the high priest, but his face twists into a scowl.
“Ready to do what must be done.”
Freja closes her eyes. The high priest has finished now. She breathes in, breathes out. The sun burns red through her eyelids.
“Yes, Gunnar,” she says. “I’m ready.”
They step into the ring. Gunnar paces slowly to the opposite side, then turns to face her. He brings his hammer to high guard.
Before every fight, even on the training fields, Freja has always tried first to understand her op-ponent. Gunnar has eluded her until now, but in this moment, everything he’s done becomes clear. He fights from high guard—idiocy for a man of his size facing another human on foot, but the only option for fighting a stickman who overtops him by two feet or more. His bulk slows him, and his hammer slows him more, but the stickmen are themselves slower than hu-mans, and they fight with massive cudgels that only a man like him, carrying a weapon like his, might hope to hold in parry. Freja’s first judgment of Gunnar was correct. He’s not built or trained to win a duel against a human swordsman.
He’s made to fight a stickman.
As they make their first pass, Freja’s mind spins furiously. Thirty-one of Midgard’s best swordsmen have fought against the stickmen. Gunnar’s hammer comes for her. She thinks to parry, thinks to close her eyes and let it come, but at the last instant she slides under its arc, moves through his reach and backs away. Each of the thirty-one has lost. Clearly, something must change. Gunnar wishes to fight the stickmen on their own terms, size to size, strength to strength. He comes for her again. She moves laterally this time, stays just outside the hammer’s arc. He stalks her now, feints once, then again, and finally charges, hammer flying. Freja dives, rolls, comes up facing Gunnar as he spins around, hammer held high.
“Little Scorpion,” he whispers. “Please.”
Freja looks up at him.
The sun over his shoulder is blinding.
She closes her eyes.
In that moment, Freja hears Gunnar’s feet shuffling against the packed earth. She hears the harsh rasp of his breath.
She hears the sharp, sudden whistle of the hammer’s head.
She sees her father at the western gate, offering her his sword.
She sees how a stickman must fall.
Freja drops and rolls. The hammer snags a lock of her flying hair as it passes by, and nearly yanks it from her head. She comes to her knees close enough to touch the back of Gunnar’s left leg. Her sword is lost, but her dagger is there in her hand. She slashes, dives, and comes to her feet.
Gunnar spins half-around and falls to his knees, face stricken, one bloody hand pressed to the back of his leg.
“Little Scorpion,” he hisses. “What have you done?”
Freja takes two steps back, and begins circling to her left. Gunnar’s slitted eyes follow her.
“I’ve hamstrung you,” Freja says. “You’ll not walk again.”
Gunnar tries to rise, grimaces, and falls back.
“You’ve killed us,” he says.
Freja shakes her head.`
“You’re wrong, Gunnar. Karina was wrong. You thought to fight them on their own terms, but you’re no stickman. You’re a pale imitation. You would have lost, just like all the others.”
“And you, Little Scorpion? You’ll win?”
Freja shrugs.
“Perhaps the others weren’t too small to fight the stickmen, Gunnar. Perhaps they were too large.”
Gunnar stares her down for a long five seconds. Finally, he casts his hammer aside, bows his head, and closes his eyes. Freja circles around behind him. His hands hang limp at his sides.
“Fight well, Little Scorpion,” he whispers as she puts her dagger to his throat. “I wish I could see it.”
The sun has nearly set when the drum calls Freja to fight for the final time. When she answers, she finds the high priest waiting for her, alone in the center of the ring.
“Where is your champion?” Freja asks.
It puts one hand to its chest.
“I will fight for my people.”
Freja steps into the ring.
“Where is your weapon?”
“You are small. If I can grasp you, I need no weapon. If I cannot, no weapon will serve.”
Freja brings her dagger to her forehead in salute.
The high priest bows.
They begin.
Freja is a thousand years dead when a new star gashes the night sky over Yggdrasil. Her great-granddaughter fifty times removed stands on a balcony five hundred feet above the glittering street below, and watches it fall.
Visitors, her earpiece whispers, in a voice like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. Your people have finally come calling.
“So it would seem,” she says.
We do not have the means to fight them in the human way.
She sighs as the dull boom of the star’s passage rolls over the city.
“No—and they will not fight with honor.”
What will you do, Queen Protector?
She glances back into the room behind her, where her husband and daughter are sleeping.
“Nothing for now, my friend. This can wait on the morning.”
And then?
She closes her eyes. Even so, the plasma trail is a bright crimson streak in the darkness.
“And then? I suppose we will set out together, you and I, to greet them.”
 |
Edward Ashton is the author of four novels, including Mickey7 (now a motion picture directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo) and that book’s sequel, Antimatter Blues. His short fiction has appeared in venues ranging from the newsletter of an Italian sausage company to Fireside, Escape Pod, and Analog. You can find him online at edwardashton.com. |
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