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Many have read the legend of Beowulf who fought the monster Grendel with his bare hands and courage only. But that man was not the first Beowulf. Far from it…
The last time he saw his father Norwulf, Beowulf stood on Woden’s stony headland watching him push the steer board to turn his dragonship Strake toward open water. Norwulf had looked back and raised one arm in farewell before turning to shout a command to the rowers. Their oars dipped into the green water, biting in to drive the twin-hulled ship forward then rising, dripping from the waves. Beowulf watched his father’s head rise and fall with the ship’s motion on the waves, growing ever smaller until all he could see was the Strake’s sail. The white rectangle floated above the waves for a while longer until at last it too merged with the green sea and disappeared.
Beowulf relived that moment often now. Strake had left in the spring and it was past high summer. His father should have returned with his ship loaded with cloth and grain and metal trinkets. But he had not come back and Beowulf felt very much alone as he stood on the promontory gazing at the white-foamed Dansk Sea.
There was a fresh wind blowing in from the water, carrying the shrieks of summer gulls as they coasted above the waves looking for easy pickings. The wind tousled the flaming hair that framed his serious face. He breathed in the salt-tinged air, trying to release disappointment as he exhaled. This was his favorite time, the one hour that was entirely his own: after he brought in his goat flock but before old Greta’s Lokk song announced the evening meal. Each day he looked forward to coming here to watch the sea, hoping for his father’s return.
He knew the cycles of the tides and seabirds well. With the whale roads empty of any ship they were all he had to observe. Even the island’s fishing boats were in for the evening now. The tide was going out, which meant the shore birds were foraging in the gleaming wet sand, pecking for shellfish and sand hoppers. In a few hours the wind would reverse and the land breeze would blow out to sea, carrying smoke from the cooking fires of the longhouses that lay behind him in the center of the bay.
He turned his attention from the seascape to the axe lying on the ground beside him. The blade side of the head fanned out in a half-moon with faded designs etched near the haft. The other face was a blunt hammerhead. To a man the axe might have been a utility tool but to Beowulf it was the weapon of a mighty warrior, heavy in his hands and deadly sharp when wielded. He called it Thunderhead. It had been in his family for generations and his father had given it to him when he was still very small.
“This is a man’s axe,” Norwulf had said. “The two sides represent a man’s duty to his family. The blunt side is for working and the sharp side is for fighting to protect what you’ve made. It takes as much strength and courage to drive a peg through a wall to anchor it as it does to split a man’s head-sometimes more.”
Those words and the reverence with which his father had placed the hammer into his hands resonated with Beowulf. For all he knew, Thunderhead was a god-blessed weapon, and it was certainly more interesting to imagine it so. Ancient runes were etched on its head, in the same style as the runes that marked the old stones in the high hills. He used Thunderhead for splitting wood and such mundane tasks, but he cleaned and oiled it often to keep sea rust from it and took care to keep its blade keen. When he was alone, here and in the high pastures where he watched his goats, he swung his weapon at imaginary beasts and fought heroic battles against the windblown trees and lichen-covered rocks of Woden.
He picked up Thunderhead and swung the axe through a series of exercises his father had taught him. First a circle-eight swing to the left and then the right, gradually gaining speed until Thunderhead was a blur of wood and metal. Then he executed a series of blocks and parries using both the head and handle. He reached the end of the exercise and began again and again, working until sweat stood on his brow. Then he stopped and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his green jerkin. There were additional routines that added complexity to the exercise, but Beowulf had only learned the first levels.
Until his father returned there was no one to teach him the rest. So he concentrated on perfecting the moves he knew. The greater his skill the better his slim chances were of being accepted into Selig’s crew once the new dragonship was built. There were fewer able men in the village now that his father’s men had disappeared with the Strake. That meant men older and younger than normal would be able to serve.
Selig was not only captain of the dragonship under construction but Woden’s new First Hand. In Norwulf’s absence the grizzled priest Kordin had led a prayer of passing for Norwulf and all his men, which meant Beowulf had no father according to Skarlish law. During the ceremony stinging tears had filled his eyes. The tears came not from mourning his father’s death but from the bitter anger of injustice he felt.
Declaring Norwulf dead was just another way to stab his father in the back. The Skarlish were proud of their honor but there was no honor in declaring a missing man dead so you could take his title and responsibility. He hated Selig for that, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to serve in his crew. Manning an oar for Selig was the only way he’d get off the island to find what truly happened to his father.
Beowulf repeated his training exercise again, his skin glowing with moisture and his face flushed. His breath still came easily; with his complexion it didn’t take much for his face to turn red. He was into the flow of the moves now, giving him time to think about his situation.
Selig was a tall man with golden hair just beginning to be touched with gray. Most said he was a fine leader for Woden now that Norwulf was gone. Some now said Selig should have been their leader all along, although people will often say such things just to please the powerful.
But Beowulf thought differently and every day he kept an eye on the sea. It was too soon to choose a new First Hand. One day his father was sure to return and Beowulf would have the fine new clothes and copper bracers a true man would wear on his wrists.
If Beowulf had been offered the rites of passage and been accepted into manhood he could have served as Woden’s surrogate Hand, administering village affairs until his father returned. But Selig and his supporters wanted to ensure Selig consolidated his power as the new Hand and even as a boy with no status Beowulf was viewed as a threat by them. There was no way the council would cross Selig and offer Beowulf the rites early. Even when he came of age he would probably be the last chosen to cross over.
So he kept to himself and did his chores, checking the sea every evening even though his hope faded a little with each passing day.
§
Thus ends part 1 of Beowulf Stormbringer, which is a serialized excerpt of a novel-in-progress. Come back next week for the next installment–but before you go, please vote on this story. Our readers are the final editors on serialtales.com. Vote for one of three options:
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North State author Jed Gebbeline comes from the pulp tradition and we are lucky to present the premiere episode of intergalactic investigative adventurer Jet McClintock, which Jed created especially for Mystery Thursdays. Space and mystery: it’s two, two great tastes in one story!
Part 1: Redheads and Power Crystals
The first laser burst burned a small tunnel through an igneous boulder behind him. He ducked to safety. But now the super-heated tip of the great rock trembled and shattered like old glass, and he scrambled forward as razor-sharp shards and blunt chunks clattered down all around him.
Once more he was an obvious target and his attackers made good on the situation.
As he flattened himself best as he could against the gritty, black soil, several hot blue beams flashed and hissed above him. Then he lunged up and right, toward a low gray pile of stones. Several bursts trailed him, instantly fusing the sandy soil into multi-hued webs of glass at the point of impact. But the beams reacted differently against the old gray stones. As he lay behind them, he noticed that rather than splitting or ricocheting off the stones, the beams seemed instead to disappear into the odd rocks.
These stones are what I’m looking for. What Du Quesne hired me to find.
But two Sst’sst’lln guards rounded into sight, their weird, boneless, snaky arms wielding short, dense clubs. He sat up and began to crawl backwards through the sand, pushing with his legs.
“Uh, come on, guys,” he said. “I’ve got nothing against clubs. And I prefer they have nothing against me … like, themselves!”
But the odd beings were upon him. And they demonstrated a fearsome proficiency with their blunt tools.
Some time had passed. But the pain was too persistent to care or guess how long he’d been unconscious. Against the cold metal floor he could feel the lumps in his face. A substance was caked to the right corner of his mouth… and his corresponding temple. Dried blood. He knew his eyes were blackened; the lids behaved like stumpy, inflexible slabs of numb flesh. Yet somehow light entered. He turned his throbbing head up from the floor. Then he slumped back down and lay still.
But he had seen enough. Enough to take in his surroundings and weigh his situation.
He was on an unknown type of craft. A couple of meters away, two Sst’sst’llns were utilizing glowing wands, coaxing opaque spokes to develop on some kind of crystalline power source. Several large, dense, five- and six-sided crystals jutted from the floor and one wall. The beings’ eyestalks kept turning toward a holographic starfield floating above the crystals. From what he could tell they seemed to be planning to make orbit. Then leaping to some other star system, possibly their own. He wasn’t particularly versed in Sst’sst’lln points of origin or their ship technology. However, he did understand a little about their culture.
Before he feigned a return to unconsciousness, he had seen one other thing. A tool box. Nothing exotic. Nothing peculiar. Just a tool box. A plain, very ordinary type of red tool box. And that was the problem. These beings would never utilize anything like that. That design. That shape. Their tentacle-like appendages preferred twisted arcs of metal for handling and gripping something heavy or unwieldy.
But this ordinary red tool box had a very five-fingers-and-a-palm friendly handle on top.
And that troubled him more than the Sst’sst’llns and their weapons.
A rhythmic hissing, blurping sound was followed by a sharp jab to his left leg.
“All right, all right,” he said. He turned his head up toward the creature. “Thanks for the wake-up call.” He sat up. “I hope room service hasn’t closed. I’m starving.”
But the creature only gurgled and hissed, indicating an opening and closing iris in a wall beyond the techs and the crystals.
“Going for a stroll, are we?”
But the creature brought forth a dull amber rod and touched his back with it. His brain seemed to light up, every cell energized. He stood up quickly.
“Hey! What the hell was that?”
He was alert… restored.
A strange voice entered his mind, possessing a quality that reminded him of a metal cylinder slowly rolling across a stone floor.
“Move now. The Supervisor desires optical confirm and interrogation of your presence.”
“Great,” he said. “I feel better than I have in months, and I gotta take a test.”
The Sst’sst’lln gestured with the amber rod.
“Move now. Move now. Move now.”
He didn’t feel like finding out what a second touch would do.
As they approached it, the iris stopped, mid-closing. And then its individual metallic slats twisted counterclockwise, seeming to fold and slip back until the round aperture was large enough to allow passage.
“Move now. Move now. Move ….”
“All right, all right, I get the picture.”
Beyond was a peculiar space. To refer to it as a round room would have been extremely generous. Instead there were asymmetrical alcoves and bumps distorting the “roundness” of the space. And within each of these smaller spaces were crystals of various sizes and colors, each station manned by a Sst’sst’lln. But standing near the center of the room was quite a different being. One more like himself.
“Who the hell are you?” the tall, red haired woman said.
“I might ask you the same,” he said.
“Yeah, but, y’know, you … don’t have a room full of subordinates, all armed, and ready to defend to the death their employer. Get it?”
“In the interest of not ‘getting it’, yeah I do.”
Her green eyes studied his face.
“You’re McClintock, right?”
He simply grinned and shrugged.
“You operate out of the Gamma Cygnus system, yeah? Du Quesne and all her intrusive little busy bodies?”
“Well. We all work for somebody. Don’t we. Who do you work for?”
She turned toward a set of violet crystals, and pretended to examine them.
“We’re about to make orbit. Then leap to the… to another system. Give me one reason why we shouldn’t make you a permanent satellite?”
“I’m an exceptional conversationalist.”
“Not exceptional enough, I’m afraid.”
She produced a set of blurping, hissing sounds and two more Sst’sst’llns were flanking him, both wielding long green crystalline rods.
“Ah, that’s nice. You don’t see too many people bothering to learn another species’ language these days.”
“Do you know,” she said, ignoring his comment, “what the colors signify in the weapons of the Sst’sst’lln race?”
“I’m still doing research, it seems.”
“They represent the severity of the devices’ effects. The blue rods produce a high intensity laser beam that can bore through anything. The amber rods can clear a beings’ nervous system or paralyze it. Or fry it, leaving the victim little more than a vegetable. I understand that you have had opportunities to ‘research’ these devices, as you put it.”
McClintock shrugged and grinned.
“I’m a quick study.”
The tall redhead smiled coolly.
“Then study this. I have utilized the services of Sst’sst’lln workers for almost ten years now. And in all that time I have never seen them use their green crystal weapons. The effect of these devices is so terrible, it seems, even they would rather not use them.
“But you seem to be an exception they’re willing to make. You, they feel, are too great a threat to their supervisor. And in Sst’sst’lln culture, a supervisor is a king. Almost a god, really.
“They … don’t like threats to their gods.”
The rods jabbed him in the ribs. And the beings drove him toward a large iris.
“As soon as we make orbit, you’ll get a chance to practice your act … in the vacuum.”
“You’d be surprised how well I perform in an empty house.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. But her face remained emotionless.
She hissed low and long. And the technicians waved their appendages about the crystals, and he could vaguely feel the craft begin to rise. A few seconds later, he was prodded with the green rods again.
The iris slipped open with a soft metallic ring. A shallow–roughly four meters–cylindrical space extended away, terminating in an iris made of a clear material. This was obviously the Sst’sst’llns’ idea of an airlock. Beyond, through the glasslike, overlapping, twisting slats, he could see the dusty atmosphere and the dark, rocky surface of the world below them, and the infinite blackness of space above.
To the left of the window-like iris, in the wall, he noted, were three fist-sized, squat cylinders: a black one, a blue one, and a red one.
The weapon-wielding guards began to back out of the airlock space. And that’s when McClintock leapt up and punched the black button. The clear aperture instantly opened, the resulting vacuum dragging him and the Sst’sst’lln guards from the ship.
Out into deadly space.
§
Thus ends part 1 of Mystery of the Absorption Stones. Come back next week for the next installment–but before you go, please vote on this story. Our readers are the final editors on serialtales.com. Vote for one of three options:
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Jorg knew he would never forget her. Her blue eyes, her long blonde hair, her smooth green skin. Amber was everything he was looking for in a woman–did it matter so much that she was an alien from a planet he’d never visited?
Truth Calling comes to us from Red Bluff author Dylan MacMillan, who describes himself as a ‘bad employee but a decent writer’. He didn’t reveal his employer, but as long as he can keep his job while working on fiction ideas in his head we say, “more power to him!”
How and why it started, I don’t know. The only thing I know for certain was that I’ve never been more afraid of getting an instant message. This was worse than getting a message from my manager telling me I needed to come in to work all weekend–much worse.
The first message seemed innocuous enough. My Crackberry went ba-ding while I was waiting in line for coffee. I didn’t look down until I placed my order and was waiting for it to come up. I wanted to see what the message was, but I was afraid of looking like a self-important douche in front of the barista, because she was kind of cute. A lot cute, actually, and she didn’t look like the kind of girl who thinks guys who order while looking down at their Crackberries are cool.
So I tried to play it mellow. Inside, I was hoping she’d heard the sound and thought better of me for holding off on looking at the message. It was too noisy, of course, but that didn’t stop me from imagining. Having a rich internal life is important for happiness, or so I’ve always believed.
I pulled the phone out of my pocket and tapped the screen. It lit up and I touched the message indicator. Act naturally. Glance at this message, shake your head, and press Delete.
I shook my head. It was obviously spam. I deleted the message and put the phone back in my pocket.
Ba-ding. I glanced up. My coffee wasn’t ready yet. Nothing better to do than check my messages again. Hopefully it was something real this time rather than some random spammer.
You are in danger. Get your coffee and leave by the side door.
Now this was just getting stupid. I was getting angry now. Someone who knew me must be in the coffee shop trying to mess with me. I looked around, trying not to tip my hand. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but that didn’t mean anything. They could be sitting outside, they could have seen me come in, or they just knew my schedule too damn well. I cursed myself for living such a predictable life.
I deleted the second message. Then someone yelled my name: “Charles!” I looked it up. It was the pretty barista, ready with my coffee. “Roast, straight up.”
I dropped the phone in my pocket and smiled at her. It may have looked like a grimace, actually, because I was still pissed about the messages. She pushed the cup across the counter to me and turned away. I took the cup to the creamer station and put in a single brown sugar.
The tram stop was nearest to the side door anyway, so leaving by that means had nothing to do with the message. It was what I was going to do anyway.
Ba-ding. I didn’t want to look but I had no way of knowing if I was getting an important message from work or not. I had to look. That’s why they pay for your phone.
Good. Go to your stop. And whatever you do, don’t look behind you.
Christ on a cracker, what a load of crap. Whoever it was, they needed to try something more original. But I glanced behind me anyway. A man in a dark suit was walking behind me, about six paces back. Nothing to do with me, right? I thought to myself.
Wrong.
§
Thus ends part 1 of Truth Calling. Come back next week for the next installment–but before you go, please vote on this story. Our readers are the final editors on serialtales.com. Vote for one of three options:
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[Warning: This tales contains strong languages and imagery intended for mature readers. If you are not comfortable with this, please do not proceed. - Ed.]
Before the meltdown people like to say things were normal. They’re full of shit, of course. Things were fucked before the meltdown. Maybe they were less fucked up than they are now-they were surely less, in fact-but they were still fucked up.
I think a clock started ticking the minute we came down from the trees. Great, you built a hut. Ooh, the first farm. My goodness, a lawn tractor. Nuclear weapons, they’ll stop wars for sure. Who would beat on their chest and drop bombs if they knew a hydrogen bomb would be headed back to wipe out everything they loved? People, that’s who.
The irony is that it wasn’t even nukes that wiped the whole thing out. It was accountants, bankers, traders-guys in suits who came up with ever-more-clever schemes to pass money around electronically, adding no real value while siphoning off profit and sticking other people with the bill. Their systems built an imaginary pyramid of dollars that were really just hot air and eventually the whole thing came tumbling down around us.
It didn’t help that we were raping the land repeatedly the whole time. There’s only so much Mother Nature can take. She’s a bitch and a whore, but she has limits. Greenhouse gases, rising oceans, dying species, the whole lot. We had all that, and when the financial system that supported the food system broke down little things suddenly became more important.
Like getting your next meal, for one. Who the hell knew how to grow anything anymore? Not me. Oh, we tried. We stuck seeds in the ground and poured water on them. But even if anything came up, it just meant someone else wanted to come along and take it. If you didn’t want a shotgun shell hole where you head was or a gaping wound in your throat, it was best to look as if you didn’t have anything at all. And it turns out the best way to pull that off is to have nothing.
Which is pretty much what I have.
I’m better off than most, I guess. All four limbs are intact and in decent working order, although my left knee is a little gimpy at times. Some teeth are chipped but none have fallen out yet. I’ve never managed to lie with a girl but my dick isn’t scabby, either. I get moments of pleasure from it when I’m holed up somewhere safe, like the culvert no one knows about or the roof of the old Subway restaurant where there’s a nook in between two rusty fan housings that I covered with a piece of plywood. Good times.
I used to have a proper human name. Two names, in fact. Now I just go by Blinder, a good one-word name like the rest of us Leftovers use. That’s what they call us and that’s what we are. Leftovers. Two-legs who live like animals, no longer supported by the social system we had grown to depend on.
There are still those who live in glass castles, pretending the world’s still the same as it was. Office building fortresses made of bulletproof glass, sustained by underground supplies, hydroponic gardens, solar power, and spite for the rest of us. Haves, we call them.
I think the Haves knew this was coming. Hell, they made sure it was coming once they figured out they no longer needed consumers to play their reindeer games with them. Stamps says they ran into a dead end once there was nowhere else left for them to expand into. The system was built on eternal growth and when you can’t find that growth you have to change the game. You can acknowledge reality and share what you have or you can make everything so fucked for everyone else that what you have feels like more and more. One compared to zero is infinitely more than two compared to one.
I can say that kind of shit because I’m edumacated. I had two years of high school before the place shut down. Kids coming up now know less and less. It’s amazing how fast book learning fades away when you find you no longer use it or need to.
A prison education, now that’s fricking useful. How to make a shiv. Or bathtub gin. Those are skills that can keep you alive and eating. Reading a book or writing a thesis: not so much in demand.
I heard there are other parts of the world that aren’t as bad off as we are. It’s probably a lie, but it would be nice if was true. Like if there countries that still lived closer to the old ways so they could grow their own food and survive without at ATM.
The ATMs were one of the first things to go. Fuckers took pickaxes and crowbars to them when the banks started to fail. They could even spend the stacks of twenties they pulled out, for a while at least. Some Leftovers still hang on to that stuff like it’s going to come back into style someday.
You know what I would like to come back into style? A hot bath. I haven’t sunk so far that I can’t tell I stink most of the time. You try jumping into a dirty river in wintertime. I don’t want to be a clean corpse; I’d rather be a living stinker. But it would be nice to sluice away the dirt and emerge shiny and wet from warm, bubbly water.
I don’t know why I’ve stayed around the old city. There are a couple black castles that you see dimly lit up at night but you can’t get close to them unless you want to get shot. Further out, I hear there are some farms starting up. I could work on a farm, I guess. But somehow I stay here. No different than when we were humans, I guess. Still trying to follow the old paths that used to bring us comfort.
It’s not like I love this place. I don’t think you could say I was surrounded by friends. Wasn’t popular in high school and am less so now. Maybe I’m somewhere between human and Leftover, and in times like these you need to pick a side.
Someday, I will.
§
Thus ends part 1 of Meltdown Leftovers. Come back next week for the next installment–but before you go, please vote on this story. Our readers are the final editors on serialtales.com. Vote for one of three options:
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