I pumped myself up with bindings for strength and speed and then cast camouflage as well, even though it was an energy hog. If there was ever a time not to hold back, this was it. I needed every advantage Gaia was willing to give me.
The Fae host began to move faster, a roar of defiant voices Doppler-shifting louder and louder, venting their rage and stress, as all living creatures asked themselves why they were rushing toward their probable deaths and struggled to come up with a reason that was worth it. Mere orders don’t really cut it, not when you have time to think about what’s coming, and not once you realize you’re probably going to get cut down but you’d be cut down for deserting as well. The only way out is through, and that’s where battle cries come from: an abyss of desperation and sheer, utter rage that someone is standing in the way of your own safety and the safety of those you love.
I didn’t see the actual first clash of the armies, since I was somewhat to the rear of the initial action, but I heard the clang of metal and the death grunts and smelled the spray of blood, saw the lines of fighters in front of me crumple together like an accordion, saw the pixies surge forward in pairs, razor wire held between them as they flew on either side of the draugar and clotheslined them at the throat, neatly slicing through them so that their heads toppled off like unbalanced watermelons. It took all their strength to do that, though, so they had to ascend rapidly and loop around after each kill to build up speed again. Some of them didn’t climb fast enough and got cut down. Some of the draugar saw them coming and became incorporeal in time so that the wire passed through them harmlessly, which meant the pixies could continue forward or try to come around for another pass, and when one pixie opted for one thing and the other didn’t, it ruined the attack, one or more of the pixies died, and the razor wire got dropped. Which is not to say they made no difference. They did. They must have cut through close to a third of the necks they set out to sever, and that eased the first crush just enough to keep from getting overwhelmed, though it was a close thing.
We knew the weakness of the draugar, and they knew it too: They were prepared to parry a swipe at their heads and then they got to counterstrike anywhere, because their opponents were vulnerable everywhere. The draugar were brutal, strong, and effective warriors, if not especially creative. They absorbed any damage to their bodies and simply kept coming, death rattles quaking in the air as they took joy in slaying without consequences—for they could suffer no fate worse than they had already suffered in Hel, and returning there would be returning home now.
The helmets were proving problematic for most of the Fae. They were providing just enough protection to keep the draugar standing after the first blow, and they rarely had to absorb a second. Many of the Fae were falling as a result and I felt ineffective. I couldn’t very well go through the middle of the Fae lines without potentially doing them harm with my cold iron aura, so I sprinted around to the right flank, where the Álfar were advancing, keeping the Fae between me and the dark elves on the left. There I could finally join battle myself and be grateful once again to the ancient enchantment on Fragarach’s blade that allowed it to cut through any armor. The draugar had no protection against my sword, and it cut through necks or crunched through skulls quite well. I could at least hold my own against them, even if their endless numbers meant I could not advance.
The Fae did not enjoy any such advantages. They were getting cut down as often as not, a one-to-one ratio that didn’t favor our side when we were already so outnumbered. We could hope for reinforcements—the Norse and Olympian gods had yet to wade into the mêlée—but they would need to do far better.
The Álfar and Svartálfar pinched in from either side, and while both had a visible impact, it was the dark elves that proved to be far more effective. Their ability to become incorporeal served them well against similar abilities of the draugar. They dissolved into smoke, using the discipline they called Sigr af Reykr, and then materialized inside the guards of their targets, thrusting black blades up underneath the chin and into the brain. The left side of the field began to visibly wilt under that onslaught, just as the Fae line visibly crumpled before the draugar. The Álfar, to my mind, were doing very little to reduce the draugar numbers. They had shields and terrific armor that protected them against the draugars’ strikes but made few killing blows of their own. They earned a biscuit for suffering few losses and containing the enemy, I supposed, but they weren’t winning the battle so much as not losing.
And then Hel got involved, unseen somewhere in the back, having shrunk, along with Loki, to normal size. But her influence on the battle was outsized in proportion: She took control of the fallen Fae—those that still had their heads, anyway—and raised their corpses from the dead to turn and fight against their former comrades. Pixies and pumpkinheads, spriggans and sprites, all rose from the field and turned on their erstwhile friends, thrusting bronze swords and spears into living bodies, faces lit with surprised expressions as they died.
Since Fand and Manannan were at the front, they were among the first to be attacked, and Manannan didn’t care. He just kept with the hewing and cleaving; he was wielding Moralltach, the blade that spread necrosis through the body with a single cut and that Leif Helgarson had used to slay whatever iteration of Thor that had been. Against draugar it worked well, surprisingly, since they were already dead. But part of their flesh must still have responded to nerve impulses, and Moralltach’s infection made sure they couldn’t, so they collapsed, doubly dead without being beheaded. The Fae fell to its iron content as much as to its enchantment, and Manannan put them down for good.
But Fand wasn’t able to defend herself against her own beloved Fae. Or perhaps she would have, given time enough to think it through. What happened instead was that she froze, confronted with a reanimated spriggan she quite probably knew by name and had seen fall moments before, and it did not hesitate to take advantage of her hesitation. Its wooden digits already lengthened and sharpened into claws, it closed in, heedless of its own defense, and I saw Fand’s mouth drop open in shock, then widen further along with her eyes as the spriggan’s deadly claws punched through a gap in her armor and pierced something vital. She must have cried out, though I couldn’t hear it, and the light winked out in her eyes as she slumped, already dead before she hit the ground.
Being in camouflage allowed me a bit of time to pick and choose my targets, since the draugar in front of me were uncertain what seemed to be killing all their buddies. They came in slowly but they kept coming, and I hacked a few more down in panic, because I had a horrible premonition of what would happen next. Fand and I had never gotten along, but she was deeply loved by the Fae and by Manannan Mac Lir—and Manannan was someone I did admire and respect and with whom I’d enjoyed a long history, even friendship. I hurt for him instantly and felt hot tears watering the corners of my eyes. I had to take care of two more draugar before I could glance over again, and that’s when Manannan realized that his wife had fallen, because the same spriggan who’d killed her tried to take him out too. The strike on his right side failed to penetrate his armor, and the bite of Moralltach put the spriggan down, but he realized he shouldn’t have taken an attack from that side unless Fand was no longer protecting it. He looked down, saw her still and beyond care, and he fell to his knees beside her, throwing his sword away to gather her up in his arms and scream her name to bring her spirit back to this side of the veil. That was precisely what I’d feared. The undead Fae and the draugar didn’t stop to let him mourn. They kept coming, as they kept coming at me. I beheaded another draugr, flicked my eyes briefly to the left, and saw multiple attackers cut down the grief-stricken Manannan Mac Lir, one of the eldest and most noble of the Tuatha Dé Danann, far more a god of love in his behavior than Aenghus Óg ever was, a man capable of loving and giving to all, and he would never have come to this end if it weren’t for me. I went on a bit of a tear after that, hacking through these confused spirits in long-dead husks who had no particular motivation to press on except to escape Hel for a while.
“I’m so sorry, Manannan,” I said, wondering if those words would ever reach his ears, somewhere in Tír na nÓg on the other side of the veil. When I was next able to look over, the Fae host was in full retreat, demoralized completely by the deaths of their leaders and the realization that should they die, their corpses would rise to fight those who remained. A maddening, amplified laugh bubbled up from the vicinity of the volcano: Loki was amused.