The Gods of War Read online

  "So you were just curious." Tek was suddenly annoyed. Was he so pitiful as to be nothing but a curiosity to the established gods?

  "I did not mean to give you that impression," the older god replied placatingly. "I came because we gods often help each other."

  "Or stab each other in the back," Mentor added. Both of the gods looked at the small teacher in surprise.

  "How?" Tek asked after yet another awkward silence.

  "To show an event that took place during one of my children's finest hours. So you understand that a hero is not a sacrifice, though some of the other gods like to think so."

  THE LONG HAND

  by Terri Beckett

  The island is mine. Has always been mine, since the first men lifted their eyes to the sky and blessed the warmth and light I give them. The fresh summer green, patchworked all over little fields that hug the contours of the land; the hedgerows, and the darker greens of the woodlands—oh, it is fair, this island. And precious—more than they know, those who fight to keep it from the enemy. It is mine: my heritage.

  The battle nears. It is the Lugnasad, my time of power; and in other older days my children knew it and did me honor with festivals. Those festivals have other names now, but it does not matter—still they serve me, my sons and daughters, the children of Lugh. This is no mere mortal war. Loki and his minions ride the storm. It is time again for the Old gods to go into battle, for our very lives.

  The high summer noonday was breathless with heat, unstirred by wind, scented by bruised grass and the heady almond fragrance of meadowsweet. The only sounds were the hum of a wandering bee with a heavy payload of pollen, the rustle of a turning page, the murmur of desultory conversation. The sun burned red and purple through the closed eyelids, and under the bulk of battledress blouse and flying jacket, skin prickled with sweat. It was an illusion of peace. Within a few paces the ranked Spitfires waited, noses canted skywards. The airfield drowsed under the August sun, and the tarmac shimmered with heat haze.

  "You readin' that then, Taff?"

  "Get your own Sunday newspaper, English." Pilot Officer Llewellyn Laurence Griffith, inevitably known as Taff to the rest of the 152 squadron, and Black Welsh to his fingertips, folded a protective arm across his copy of the Telegraph. "One with the short words in, is it?"

  "Bloody dog-in-the-manger Welshman . . ." The grumble subsided as the importuning colleague tried for reading matter elsewhere. Taff cracked an eye and squinted into the hazy blue. He supposed he could write a letter to Blod—he owed her one, or maybe two. That would mean finding paper and pen. Using the brain. Too much like hard work. He turned his head to where Tommy Markham reclined beside him, head pillowed on his lifejacket.

  "What are we on, bach? Still 'available'?"

  Markham grunted assent, more than half asleep. He was the baby of the squadron, having come to them straight out of flying school with eight hours flying time on Spitfires. Within a fortnight he had increased this to forty-five, and practice sorties had given him much-needed experience. He also had the kind of luck that new pilots rarely survived without. One of his predecessors had arrived on a June morning and died that same afternoon, before many of the squadron had even learned his name.

  "We got time for a pint, then. It's your round."

  Markham groaned good-naturedly and sat up, his tousled fair hair flopping over his eyes. The sun had freckled his fair skin, and he looked like the schoolboy he had been only months ago. "It's always my round," he said, stating a fact rather than making a complaint.

  "That's because your da's filthy rich," Taff told him kindly.

  "And because Taff's a tightfisted Welsh bastard," someone else said, grinning. The jokes were ancient—"last time Taff opened his wallet, moths flew out"—and untrue. Taff swore happily at the insult and tossed the discarded newspaper into the nearest grasp. Then, slinging an arm across Markham's shoulders, he started across the dusty green of the airfield towards the Officer's Mess.

  It was darker inside, and marginally cooler. Markham ordered two pints—when it came Taff lifted his in a genial salute. "Cheers, boyo."

  The froth of the head had barely touched his lips when the shrill belling of the telephone froze everyone in expectation, and the cry of "Scramble!" came almost as a relief from the tension. Taff set his beer carefully down on the bar and grinned at the barman. "Be right back, laddie," he said, with a coolness he did not feel. It didn't matter how many times this happened—the rush of adrenalin made his heart thud harder and sank a cold tight knot in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't fear—well, he didn't think it was entirely fear, anyway. At first, when he had time to think about it, he had guessed that any warrior, in any time, must have felt the same way when they went into battle. It wasn't something you talked about. It was something you lived with.

  He and Markham were neck and neck in the dash for their aircraft. The mechanics had already started the engines, the roar of the Rolls Royce Merlins beating at the ears—others held the parachute packs ready for strapping on. Taff shrugged into his, clambering into the tiny cockpit of the Spitfire, fastening the seat straps and giving a quick thumbs-up to signal the man to shut the side door. Straps tightened, he pulled on the helmet, plugged in the R/T lead, and checked the engine. It was a routine as natural to him as cleaning his teeth now—he waved to the groundcrew for chocks away, opened the throttle, and taxied out onto the runway to take his position behind his Squadron Leader, Jon Brittan. From alert to take-off, the procedure had taken just ninety seconds.

  It took only minutes to reach 20,000 feet in a climbing turn above the base. The haze was more obvious here, cutting visibility in the deep summer blue—Brittan took a roll-call of his squadron, getting the "A-OK, Skipper," from each of them before lining them up in formation. Taff settled himself more comfortably in the tiny space, and trimmed his Spitfire so that it responded to the least pressure from hands or feet. The clean sky wrapped him round. There was no movement in the cockpit, save for the slight trembling of the stick that made it seem alive and not merely the central control of the machine he flew. The ever-present nervous tension engendered by the interminable waiting had been changed into a cool alertness.

  Once my children fought with weapons of stone, of bronze, of iron. Now they go into battle in the very air, in frail constructions that defy the pull of earth, and the weapons at their command are terrible. Swifter than eagles, they hunt their prey, and strike—or die.

  The static in the headphones was reassurance of the squadron's presence—each sealed in the confined space of the cockpit the pilots felt the invisible threads that bound them into one unit, the brotherhood of warriors that transcends differences.

  Taff checked his armament, the eight Browning.303 machine guns and the Hispano 20 mm. cannon—he could need both in a hurry. As if on cue, the enemy came into sight, seeming to hover like so many midges over the south-east horizon, too far and too many to count. Brittan's voice crackled tensely over the R/T. "Bandits ahead. A whole gaggle of 'em, four o'clock. Tally-ho!"

  A head-on engagement, the reasoning went, could break up the enemy formation—the German crews, sitting as they did unprotected in their glass-fronted bombers, would have to have nerves of steel to continue undaunted by a frontal attack. Those who broke formation would be sitting targets.

  But these were Stukas, dive-bombers, heading for the vital radar installations along the coast, with an escort of Me 109s. The Spitfires smashed into the Stuka formation as they were maneuvering into line-astern for their dives. Taff and Markham broke right and left on command, opening fire on the Stukas, seeing their rounds hitting, breaking off when the escorting Me 109s came stooping out of the sun to protect their charges. Taff hit the firing button of his cannon, jolted in his straps by the force of it, its angry chatter making his ears ring, and saw the Stuka that was his target attempt a crabbing side-slip, trailing smoke. He abandoned it to its fate—they were over water now, and the chase was on. The R/T was a babble of voices, shrill o
r hoarse or obscene, no longer remembering or caring that every word was logged back in the ops room.

  "Jaybird to Red Team. We're going down low."

  As the hounds course the hare, as the hawk stoops on the rabbit; chivvy them, drive them, strike them down!

  From one hundred feet above the waves, the white caps seemed stationary, and the cross-shaped shadows fled across them like clouds. One Stuka, streaming flame, touched down on a wave top, digging in and flipping over onto its back in a welter of foam. Another throttled back into a steep turn, and Taff, on its tail, overshot. The air was alive with tracer, coming from behind—it hit the flank of the Spitfire with a noise like hailstones, but everything still worked, and Taff deduced the damage was light.

  "109 on your tail, Taff. Break right."

  "OK, Slap, I'm on him." Markham s voice, and a jubilant: "Got the bastard!"

  "Good show, Tommy," from Brittan.

  The 109 split apart as it hit the water—Taff pulled into a steep turn and got altitude, looking for another target.

  He did not have long to wait. Another 109 was abruptly in front of him, so close that Taff could see the square wingtips and tail struts, the dirty grey-black camouflage, even the goggled and helmeted pilot. For a split-second the two were staring at each other before Taff swung the Spitfire to get dead line astern and opened fire with all eight guns. The Spitfire juddered, rattling his teeth. He kicked the bottom rudder and skidded inwards, down and behind the stricken enemy. It twisted out of control and into the sea with the fire blooming in its belly like some monstrous flower.

  Taff turned again, a steep g-pulling climb that grayed him out momentarily as the blood drained from his brain. Out of nowhere, a 109 came to him, guns spitting—Taff managed to side-slip, but felt the rounds hitting the fuselage in a series of rapid hammer blows. He had no control, everything was dead, and the Spitfire was screaming seawards in a dive. He couldn't pull out of it. He struggled with the canopy, but something had jammed it. God, he thought, this is it . . .

  This is the one. Even the name fits my purpose. There are magicians in your ancestry, boy-bach, but they were children at play. Witness my power—now!

  And suddenly he found himself alone in the sky, in level flight. "Damn, that was close . . ." He sagged against the straps, limp with relief. The cloudless blue around him was silent. The high-speed battle was out of sight. All the instruments were haywire. This was something that happened in the mayhem of the dogfight, but it was unnerving since it would take several minutes for them to become operational again. The sun was hot through the perspex canopy—below, the sea was a sheet of hammered silver. The curve of coastline, palely fringed with beaches, might be the Isle of Wight, or France. Abruptly, he realized he wasn't sure which it was. Surely, if he was over France, there would be the telltale bursts of flak?

  "Red Two to Jaybird," Taff said. The R/T hissed, but there was no answering hail. "Jaybird, come in. This is Red Two." Nothing. And besides the nonfunctioning instruments, there seemed to be something very wrong with the controls—the stick was dead, the rudder pedals frozen. By rights he should still be in a sickening tail-spin for the chill embrace of the Channel. That he was still, amazingly, airborne, had to be some land of a miracle.

  "Something like that." The voice seemed to be directly in his ear, bypassing the R/T. "Tommy?" he croaked. "Skipper?"

  "Neither. Try again." The thread of a chuckle. "Ah, once you'd have known my name . . . Riding the air as you do, Llewellyn Laurence Griffith, pure-bred Cymru out of Dolgellau, can you tell you have never heard of Lugh the Long Hand?"

  I'm hallucinating, Tan thought. My oxygen's gone, and I'm hearing things.

  "Not quite," said the laughing voice next to his ear. "Well, child of mine, are the old stories still told in Wales, or have we faded altogether from the memories of men?"

  The brightness outside was making his eyes burn and tear. It did not exactly dim, but it did change. Coalescing out of the sunlight, a man-shape formed in the air. A golden man. Taff blinked. The vision didn't go away. "My Uncle Gwydion told me tales, when I was small," he said aloud, "about the Children of Don." He had not thought of that wealth of legend for decades, but they were clear in his memory as if it had been only yesterday that he had sat at his uncle's feet and heard wonders. Except that those were children's tales. The reality glowed at him, almost too bright to look at.

  "My blessing on him, then, that we are remembered." The golden man smiled.

  "Oh, you are remembered, lord. In stories, like."

  "In whatever fashion. It is only when men forget us that we . . . fade."

  "Lord . . ." What impulse prompted him to use that title? But it felt right. "Lord, where am I? I mean . . . am I dead?"

  "Not yet, my son. You are between worlds. Below you—that is my country, the Summer Country, Tir-ran-Og."

  "The Land of the Ever-Young . . ." They shall not grow old, whispered a memory of a once-heard poem, as we that are left grow old . . .

  "Yes. And you will take your place there, with the other heroes, when it is your time."

  It occurred to Taff that he ought to be afraid. He was out-of-control, several thousand feet above an unknown landfall, with an hallucination—if it was an hallucination—talking at him. He didn't know why he wasn't afraid. He felt very calm, quite at ease. Perhaps he was dead and hadn't realized it yet. A wave of regret swept over him. Things he had yet to do, places he had yet to see—people he did not want to leave. Uncle Gwydion, who had raised him after his parents had died, still as black-haired as his nephew and with the same blue far-seeing eyes, caring for the sheep as he had done all his life as if they too were his children; and Blod, with her primrose hair and violet eyes and apple-blossom skin . . . he and Blod had an understanding, and he'd meant to speak to her next time he went home on leave . . . His friends and colleagues in 152, bound closer than brothers . . .

  "They are worth fighting for, are they not, my son?"

  Taff supposed he should be surprised that the apparition could read his mind. He wasn't. If he was dreaming this, or hallucinating, it was better than floating helplessly in the cold Channel, waiting for a rescue that might or might not be in time. "Well, if we don't fight em, the buggers'll win, see . . ."

  The god laughed, and the air rippled. "Then we shall hunt them together, you and I, harrying them like Annwn's hounds!" He made a gesture, and the controls were alive again under Taff s hands. " 'Ware, son of mine! See, they come!"

  Me 109s, in tight formation. But not only them—with a weird kind of double vision, Taff could see a dark mist about them, and spectral shapes that shifted and changed.

  This was the Enemy, indeed.

  Exultation pure as sunlight ran through his veins, an impulse of delight. With a yell that owed nothing to R.A.F. slang, Taff dived into battle, scattering the 109s like sheep. He could see their tracer streaming past, lines of sullen fire. Nothing hit him. One swung and turned to him. Lips drawn back in a savage grin, Taff thumbed the cannon button, and a shaft of brilliance speared the attacker. Shadow and substance both together vanished in a fireball. He had another in his sights now, took it in a raking burst that gralloched it like a deer. The Spitfire was answering to hand and eye as if it were a part of himself, or he was part of it. The sunlight bathed them both, wrapping them warmly. Enemy fire spilled off the Spit's flanks, as from a shield, but his lances of light found mark after mark.

  As he destroyed them, so the core of their formation became visible. A darker mass loomed ahead. No thunderhead this. It was thick as the black smoke from a blazing city, but living. Aware. And angry.

  "Duw Mawr—what's that?"

  "Loki's creature." The god burned brighter by contrast with the darkness.

  "Can we kill it?"

  "Kill—no. But we can hurt it, wound it. Each thing of his we injure weakens the whole by a little."

  Taff squinted into the radiance. "Right then," he said. "What are we waiting for? Let's get the bastard!"

/>   They struck the rolling mass in a sunburst before the dark swallowed them up. Even Lugh's light was dimmed by that hungry darkness, but there was no turning back. Taff felt as if he was trying to fly through a thunderstorm. Except that this was worse.

  Lugh was the only light, and the darkness was shriveling about him. But there was always more of it, bred by the seething core of the thing.

  "You are my spear, my son. Fly straight, strike true!"

  Taff tossed him a salute and set the Spitfire on course for the black heart of the creature with a howl of challenge. The murk sucked him in. He was flying blind.

  No, not quite. Ahead of him was a blacker blackness, if such a thing were possible. It drew the Spitfire like a magnet.

  "Now, my son!"

  Taff jabbed down at the firing button, and incandescence blazed from the cannons.

  The shriek was beyond sound. The blackness writhed, shredded apart, whirling around him insanely. He pulled the stick back for a steep climbing turn, laughing . . .

  . . . the grey-out following the steep turn faded, and the high-speed battle was out of sight and all instruments haywire, which happened in the aerobatics of the dogfight but which was unnerving because it would be precious minutes before they were operational again. "Red Two to Jaybird," he said urgently. "Jaybird, this is Red Two. Are you receiving? Anyone?"

  Nothing but a soft hissing. Taff glanced down, oriented himself by the coastline of the Isle of Wight. Suddenly there was a 109 bearing straight at the vulnerable lone Spitfire, coming in for the kill.

  No one now to fly cover, to dive in on the enemy's tail and take it out with a swift accurate burst of fire. Taff swung the Spitfire up and up in a spiraling climb. The g-force tugged at him as he forced the aircraft to her limits. He had the throttle wide open, and was in the tightest of vertical turns, but the 109 hung on like a Rottweiler. Stick over now, full forward—and Taff plunged into a near vertical dive, pulling out of it just above the sea. As he came back up at the enemy, he fired a burst into the underbelly. The tracer ripped home, and Taff spiraled away as the crippled thing faltered and went into a spin.