Sleipnir

Chapter Five

My footsteps rattled around the cavern like angry wasps inside a falling nest. Whoever said to beware asking the gods for gifts knew what they were talking about. (Which made me wonder how many other mortals had been royally screwed down the ages.)

I hadn't asked for much; just something to believe in on those endless nights in the missile site's guard towers, where hours and hours of deadly boredom alternated with occasional moments of lethal peril. Just something to believe in, for those excruciating seconds when all hell would break loose, and a man didn't know which direction death might come from next.

Well, I'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for. Odin had let me have it, both barrels.

And in all the chaos, I hadn't apologized to Gary.

He'd only done exactly the kind of thing I'd always admired most about him. Given his silver tongue, I should have realized he could talk his way back onto our shift again before the scheduled HK factory tour. I certainly should have realized that morale really was that important. Soldiers who don't give a damn anymore make mistakes that get people killed. Both of us had ended up mad enough at each other—and at the system in general—to be just that little bit less cautious than normal. When the gods are watching, that's all it takes.

I should have apologized.

Archibald Johnson took Gary's place on Tower Five. I hadn't said much. The guys understood, and let me stew in silence. As though echoing my mood, ice formed on the tower's windows—from the inside—and blocked my view. Double chain-link fences and a treeless perimeter were all I had to look at for the next few wretched hours, but they beat looking at Archie Johnson.

I rubbed the windows with a scrap of dirty toweling, and muttered obscenities at the heater. I couldn't really fault it. Whoever had ordered it, back Stateside, they hadn't taken into account the plywood-and-glass box on stilts where it was going to be used. The idiot obviously hadn't figured on German winters, either. The heater was doing its best, faced with impossible demands.

I winced. I'd made some pretty impossible demands of my own, then ended by telling my best friend to go to hell.

I was not proud of myself.

So I scrubbed the windows and scowled out at the perimeter, with a black sky and black thoughts and glittering ice for company, and wondered how to apologize. My breath froze into little slivers of ice on contact with the glass. Tomorrow morning—first thing—I would put on my best hangdog expression and go find him.

Earlier, Wally had said that Gary was going into town tonight with some of the guys: Hill and Rosetti and a couple of others I didn't know very well. Wally had also said he'd looked mad as a two-dollar whore stiffed by a fifty-cent john. Which hadn't sounded at all like Gary Vernon, and made me feel even lower and slimier than I already did. A night off ought to leave him in a better mood, anyway; maybe good enough to accept an apology from a first-class asshole.

I sighed, and used my sleeve to wipe away ice crystals. Deep shadows lurked beneath the trees out beyond the perimeter. They hid secrets from the stars. Too quiet out there. Some nights silence was a relief; but others... Nights like those a man was glad when the sun came up to find him still breathing.

I decided to listen in on the phone, just to hear human voices. Chuck had just delivered the punchline of a joke. I winced, and wondered what had led up to "—so she sucked his apples!" Laughter erupted over the line.

When the chortling died down, the platoon's Clark Kent finally decided to include me in the conversation. "Say, Barnes," Wally asked, "what are you planning to do after you leave us behind? You're getting pretty short, now, aren't you?"

"Me?" I forced a rusty-sounding laugh. "Anything but re-up." For some reason, that earned laughter.

"What, you're not tired of the Army life, are you?" Crater snickered. "How about Vernon? He's due to re-up or didi out pretty soon, too, isn't he? Do you know what his plans are?"

I sighed. "Yeah. He's going to give college a try, go ROTC, and come back to haunt you bums as a butter bar."

"ROTC?"

"A second lieutenant?"

Chuck's response was even more eloquent: "An effin' officer... ?"

"Sure. First a grunt, then a Special Forces officer, then a state rep, then a congressman, then president—and pretty soon he'll be running the whole show." Laughter greeted that assessment.

I wasn't kidding about Special Forces, though. Just because he'd resigned from the program as an enlisted man did not mean the door was closed—at least, not for Gary Vernon. For just about anybody else, yes; but not for Gary. Sneaky Peek, that was his goal, and I wished him all the luck making it to Special Forces. He probably would, too. Gary could work within the system, or at least get around it on the sly without getting into trouble.

I envied him that skill. When I saw something wrong, I needed to fix it right then. I'd already gotten busted for doing the right thing when an officer had told us to do the wrong thing. And, knowing myself, I figured I'd do the same thing again if it came down to it; which was why Gary had a future in the Army, and I didn't. At least he had a goal. The only thing I knew for sure was there was no way I was going to re-up into this Army.

"Shit, sounds good to me," Crater muttered. "Maybe things'd get done right for a change."

A grim silence followed that cheerless observation, and not even Wally seemed able to steer the conversation into something less depressing. Everybody fell silent for too long. When the phone beside my hand finally crackled to life again, I actually jumped.

"Hey, Barnes," Chuck said into my ear when I answered, "commander of the relief is coming around."

"Thanks."

That was part of our ritual. When the commander of the relief walked the perimeter to check on the towers, you warned the next guy down the line he was on the way.

Sergeant Pritchard was on tonight; he walked into view between the fences and I challenged him. He issued the countersign and I waved him on past; then, as Pritchard walked under my tower and headed on toward the next one in line, I picked up the phone and warned Crater. He acknowledged and I cradled the phone again.

And was startled stiff when gunshots rang out over toward Tower Five. I grabbed my rifle and checked the magazine as voices erupted over the phone.

"... Johnson, you stupid shit-for-brains moron!" Wally was snarling, which surprised the hell out of me. He never used that kind of language. "You shoot at Count Dracula again and I'll rip your balls off and beat you to death with them!"

Uh-oh.

"Be cool, Johnson"—that was Crater's voice—"it's just an owl. Put the rifle down. Pritchard's on his way over, you don't want to shoot him."

"Goddamn huge—no bird that big—" Johnson sounded terrified.

I grimaced. Maybe it wasn't so bad that Johnson couldn't shoot worth crap. More than one newbie had gone screaming into the night when our resident eagle owl swept down out of the dark on his five-foot wings. The Count hunted by our perimeter's lights; we'd sort of adopted him as a mascot. The largest owls in Europe, eagle owls had been extinct in Germany until recently, when the Frankfurt Zoological Society had helped sponsor a reintroduction program. Ours was one of those released into the wild, and it had been a big story in the local press.

We were all pretty proud of the bird, which we'd immediately dubbed Count Dracula; but Wally—well, hell, Wally thought of that bird as his personal friend, and had even looked up the local equivalent of the game warden to learn more about it, and find out how well it was adjusting to its new home. If Johnson shot his bird... hell, Wally just might kill him.

I'd be more than happy to help.

"Johnson!" I snapped into the phone. I heard a gulping wheeze on the other end and knew I had his attention. God alone knew he ought to listen to me by now. "It's a goddamn owl, Johnson; are you listening to me? An owl! And if you shoot it, every man on this shift will help Wally rip your brains out. I said, are you listening?" Another burbling sound indicated that he was. "Good. Pritchard is going to be coming around any second now. Have you put that rifle down yet?"

"Yes."

"Good. Don't shoot at shadows, Johnson. If you can't see what it is, call somebody else."

"All right, you made your point." His whining snarl was almost back to normal.

I gave him an inarticulate growl of disgust. Wally's voice was quiet when he spoke. "Thanks, Barnes."

I hoped I didn't sound as curt as I felt when I growled, "Sure, Wally. Any time." I probably had—nobody spoke to me for the thirty minutes it took to straighten out the mess with Johnson and do the stupid paperwork to log in the shots fired.

That suited me fine... at first.

Unfortunately, after the ruckus over the owl died down, nobody said much of anything to anyone else, either. The feeling in the air was wrong, somehow. More wrong than just bad tempers and low morale. There'd been no sound from the phone for over fifty minutes before I really noticed the change in the quality of the silence. It was almost as though the darkness were listening to us sweat. An uneasiness I couldn't define crept over me as I stood listening to my lungs in the bitter air.

The night was amazingly clear, full of stars and sharp shadows. Nothing stirred anywhere on the perimeter. Even the trees stood motionless, tall black spears stripped of their leaves. My watch dial read a quarter to midnight. For some reason, that observation worsened the tension I was feeling.

God, I was in a hell of a mood tonight.

A spurt of static startled me into glancing at the phone.

"Hey, uh, anybody out there?" Crater's voice crackled through static.

The silence held. I started to move toward the phone; then shrugged and turned back to the window. I didn't feel like talking; hadn't felt like it since yesterday's fight with Gary. Instead I wiped off more ice crystals, and let my gaze drift across the grass, down to the treeline.

Last summer we'd chased a couple of kids out of those woods. They'd been going at it pretty hot and heavy when we showed up. The boy had said something about a bet while they pulled their clothes on; then they'd disappeared without another word.

The woods had been quiet that night, too, but peaceful... . Hell, I didn't know what was wrong. It was probably just me, and my sulks had finally affected the rest of the guys. The silence in the tower grew in my ears until the skin on my back began to crawl. I rubbed both arms in an unsuccessful attempt to get the hairs to lie down flat. Finally I turned and tried my own luck.

"Hello? Anybody listening?"

I started to say more; then stopped. Fortunately nobody answered me. I was embarrassed that I'd let myself get so spooked. Christ, I could handle a little silence better than Johnson. I paced back to the window, uncertain and edgy, one ear tuned toward the phone. Over the next ten minutes three more guys called hesitantly over the line; but I didn't answer. Nobody did. There was an odd prickling at the back of my neck, and the uneasiness I couldn't explain left me in no mood to discuss anybody else's jitters. This was much worse than that afternoon at Hohenfels—

A burst of raw sound from the phone sent me six inches off the floor. My scalp tingled; the hairs stood on end. There was noise coming from the phone, like nothing I'd ever heard coming over the line before. I picked up the receiver to hear better. Metal grated and clashed against metal, and men's voices shouted hoarsely; but I couldn't make out the words. It wasn't English, or German, exactly... . And screams, too, faint but unmistakable through the static.

I thought of late-night war movies and decided someone was playing an elaborate hoax. They'd probably taped an old movie, messed with the sound a little, and were playing it back over their phone to freak Johnson a little closer to cracking. It was something Chuck could have put together in his sleep—the man was a true artist when it came to messing with people's minds.

I backed away, holding down an involuntary shiver, and told myself to ignore the weird sounds, since there wasn't anything I could do about them now. I looked out the window again—and almost fell down.

I grabbed at the heater and singed my hands in the process. The phone banged against the floor and hung from its trailing cord, forgotten.

There were no stars.

A huge patch of sky was utterly, hideously black.

And the thing that stood between me and the night sky...

I tried to swallow and couldn't; tried to blink, and couldn't. It stood multiple yards higher than the treeline. The fact that I had often seen heads shaped like that, held proudly on muscled necks arched in precisely that manner, only increased the horror. It hulked above my tower, its very size making it appear misshapen against the night sky. Flaring nostrils steamed in the frozen air, well above the topmost branches as it tested the wind for scent of its quarry.

Odin's death stallion was hunting in the darkness beyond the perimeter lights.

But who was Sleipnir hunting?

A massive cold shudder that had nothing to do with the temperature seized me.

His ears twitched, blocking out more stars as they moved. The part of my mind which functioned on that level—no matter what else I was doing—took the measure of the angle from the lowest part of the neck to the tips of those silky ears.

Assuming all eight feet were firmly planted on the ground, Sleipnir stood two hundred feet tall.

All six-feet-plus of me shook in the darkness.

His gaze swept across the ground far below, peered through the barren trees, passed across the frozen grass and glittering chain-link fence—

—and rested on me.

Time slowed. We stared at one another while the constellations watched silently. His eyes blazed with an intelligence far greater than any animal had a right to possess. He bared his teeth in a perfect imitation of a wicked grin... .

My hand came to life, groping for my rifle. I didn't give a damn what I'd told Johnson. Could I kill a thing like Sleipnir with an M-16?

Behind me, the sounds of screaming men and ringing metal shrieked, filled the tower... and still Sleipnir held my eyes.

He moved one step closer; if he'd stretched his neck, his teeth could have ripped the flimsy wooden roof off my tower. His head bobbed lower in the starlight as though he'd heard my thought. I threw myself onto the floor behind the big heater. Burning my arm on the back of it had very little to do with the yell I gave out as his enormous head filled the glass windows above me... .

My hands worked the rifle bolt and I crouched lower. My pulse pounded against throat and temples. He'd come for somebody. Goddammit, he'd come for somebody—

Well, it wasn't going to be me. Not without a fight.

The stallion tossed his head against the blackness of the night sky, and half reared. A massive, misshapen chest surged momentarily into view. Then he subsided and peered intently into my tower again. His nostrils flared wider, and his coat rippled and shuddered as muscles bunched smoothly under it. He sidled to my right, treetops whipping violently aside as he moved. He bared glinting teeth and snapped at the air above the double fences; then snorted. The walls of my tower shook as fog engulfed the windows.

I started praying—I didn't even know to Whom.

The glass cleared, and again I saw his eyes, wild and angry. Then he reared up above the trees, and two sets of flailing forefeet raked the treetops. Snow went flying in an explosion of white powder. When he subsided again, he shook his head. Rippling mane hair went flying wild in a sudden wind that roared down across my tower with gale force. The stallion's eyes held mine for a long moment more; then he turned his head away and began scanning the ground, peering off in the direction of town.

I flexed my fingers. Tried breathing again. My lungs rasped once; then started to work. I noticed my shorts were suspiciously warm and damp. Damn.

My pulse still pounded fiercely in my ears, and I blinked sweat out of my eyes despite the intense cold. I eased cautiously to the windowsill, and peered up over the edge as the apparition moved one step away from the site, then another.

The phone fell silent behind me. I started, and glanced around at it. When I looked out again, I saw the stallion rear again. His front legs raked the night sky. I half expected the stars to explode in a shower of sparks as his hooves caught them. There was something—I couldn't tell what—held in his teeth.

Then he was gone.

He didn't fade away. Or disappear. He just... wasn't there. A rumble of thunder struck the tower; then everything fell silent.

Slowly I eased my rifle down; slowly wiped my hands on my pants.

My watch said midnight exactly. I looked at the phone, expecting it to burst into life any second; but it didn't. The silence lasted right up to the end of watch.

I spent the rest of that watch staring out at the snowless treetops and fighting shudders that insisted on crawling up my spine every few moments. I studied the night, traced its frozen patterns from sky to ground and back. It was different, worse than before, tainted somehow with the scent of blood.

Which was crazy.

Count Dracula dropped from the night sky, so close to my tower windows I actually yelled and brought my rifle to my shoulder before I got control of myself again. The Count struck a mouse and devoured it while I struggled to get my heartbeat back down under 120 again. Reluctantly, I had to admit that I now understood—at some primal level I'd never experienced before—why Johnson had shot at that owl. My fingers gripped my rifle so hard I looked later for dents.

When my relief finally arrived and I climbed down, I moved so slowly I felt like a geriatric case; except that I kept trying to look in all directions at once, which I couldn't have done if I were genuinely as old as I felt. I glanced briefly at the guys as we made the round of the towers; but carefully met no one's eyes.

No one seemed anxious to meet mine, either, and none of them appeared to be in any better shape than I was. Crater was determinedly ignoring the sky altogether as he slouched up to the silent group. We assembled in the dark, and no one broke the silence as we trooped into the psychological safety represented by the mess room.

Johnson was a basket case. It took Wally, Crater, and Brunowski to get him into his bunk. When Wally and Crater returned, leaving Johnson in Brunowski's care, we gathered around the coffeepot. No one seemed willing yet to meet anyone else's gaze.

Crater spoke first. "Did, uh, anybody hear anything kind of, well, weird—"

"Yeah," Chuck cut in, his ruddy face sweating. "Kind of like screaming and shit, and metal hitting or scraping or something—"

I didn't want to listen to the half-whispered comparisons of what I'd heard over the phone tonight. I didn't like thinking about it; it soured my stomach thinking about it.

Nobody mentioned Sleipnir, and I sure as hell didn't either. There's a reason pilots who report UFOs get the rest of their careers scrubbed. I scowled into my muddy coffee and saw those impossible eyes staring back.

The door flew open with a bite of ice in the wind and Pritchard staggered in, pulling off gloves with hands that shook. He drained a cup of coffee in one gulp and poured a second, then let out a sigh that was mostly shudder. We waited.

"Bad wreck," he muttered, his voice choking.

"Say again?" Wally asked.

"Bad wreck. Somebody go find Brunowski."

Nobody moved.

"What happened, Sarge?" Wally asked quietly.

Pritchard stirred, looked around, saw we were waiting. He seemed to brace himself. I knew, without a word spoken, that the biggest shoe of all time was about to squash us flat. I found myself gripping my coffee mug until my knuckles showed white.

Pritchard finally spoke. "One of our trucks missed a curve; hit the trees doing sixty-five."

The ensuing silence was broken by a reverent whisper.

"Fuck..."

"Rosetti's got a busted skull and no teeth in front. Hill broke both his arms. A couple of guys in the rear broke damned near every bone you can break. —Shit!"

He'd spilled coffee on his shoe.

"Gonna be hell on you guys, 'til we get a full complement again on the other relief."

Pritchard still wouldn't meet anyone's eyes—he had more to tell, and didn't want to spill the really bad news. Memory of Sleipnir standing taller than the trees, something grasped in his wicked teeth, hit me hard. I felt sick, didn't want to think it, wanted to throw up, rather than ask...

"Gary Vernon?" I barely recognized my own voice.

Pritchard looked up again. He met my eyes for a second, then let his gaze slide away.

"He bought the farm, Barnes. Dead before the pieces quit bouncing. Sorry."

I slammed my fist down on the table. I never noticed the hot coffee that sloshed over my hand as the mug I was holding shattered. I just stumbled outside. The stiff breeze from the north compounded the effect of the sub-zero temperatures to freeze the moisture on my cheeks instantly; but after the skin froze I hardly noticed.

The air smelled like more snow. I didn't care.

He'd come for a warrior, bloody goddamned monster.

He'd gotten one.