Free Strontium-90 by Vaughn Heppner

bodyguards. Then Chuikov charged the old UCLA tackle. It was a good fight, but Chuikov had forgotten none of his wrestling moves. With the first suit’s help—I held his soul—they wrestled the older man onto the chair as I turned on the machine.
    He screamed.
    I ran to the machine and popped out the soul of the head of Homeland Security. I had always thought this country needed a few changes.
    No, I decided, there were going to be many changes.
     

Thule
     
    The toll of time doth beat for all.
    Even the gods at last must fall.
    So when each man shall surely die,
    What but his fame shall reach the sky?
    -- From: The Lament of Ulfer Aufling
     
     
    GREENLAND A.D. 1126:
     
    Henri fled across the ice from baying Irish wolfhounds . He’d gotten greedy again at dice and won too much. He clutched a long, spiral-fluted horn. Blood dripped from its ivory tip, the droplets freezing into tiny red pearls. His painful breath—each frigid gulp felt as if raspy sharkskin rubbed his throat.
    A monstrous glacier loomed before him, a mountainous heap of artic frost . The reflected sun-glare was blinding. Henri squinted as he ran. Then the ice-shelf shifted, it rumbled beneath him. Henri lost his footing and plowed face-first into the crystalline snow. At a great splintering sound, his head whipped up. He spat hoarfrost from numbed lips and in horror witnessed jagged cracks ripping across the ice. The mountain before him, the glacier trembled like an old man. White rimy boulders, frozen balls of ice, shook loose from the sun-dazzled cliffs. They rolled, cracked against ledges and sailed into the frigid air. One rock splintered into icy shards and hurled icicles that plunged into the snow around him. Terrified, Henri clutched his head.
    The land seemed alive with a malignant will . Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the quake quit, and the air was cold and still again.
    Stretched as he was on the snow, Henri shivered . The ice sucked at his heat like a leech. And to think that for this time and place it was unseasonably warm, that it had been warmer here for the last three years than anyone could remember.
    The wolfhounds bayed anew and Henri scrambled to his feet, sprinting . If those he’d cheated caught him…. His breath steamed misty-white and his ears stung. He was a small man with dark hair and said by many to have sly features. Usually he smiled. Usually he composed poems and love ballads. In the past and with a laugh he had often told tavern wenches that he preferred wine and ink to sword and blood. Few paid a farthing however for his poems, so he survived in the end because he had an unnatural knack at dice. Oh, why had he cheated the hunters?
    Fool ! Fool!
    He glanced back.
    The shaggy hounds streaked across the ice, baying savagely, with mist smoking from their fanged maws. The horn clenched in his fist—he might spear one and inadvertently snap the flawless ivory. Then what would he tell Margot? He thrust the spiral-fluted horn through his belt, and he threw himself upon the forward slopes and ledges of the glacier, scrabbling for height.
    Margot, sweet Margot , if only she could see him now.
    Then an odd sensation of malice filled him . It was malice hoary with age, malice vast and brooding.
    He frowned as he heaved and levered himself higher . His leather mittens scratched against the ice that numbed his hands. His boots slipped three different times. The wolfhounds lunged up the glacier after him, their claws digging for purchase. With terrible swiftness they leaped and climbed, using the same speed they had earlier shown killing walruses.
    Henri rolled onto a freezing ledge.
    The hounds scrabbled after. By a valiant effort and a flying leap, one of the brutes thrust his front paws onto the ledge. Those paws bled.
    Henri shouted in fear . He scooted backward and jarred against a frozen wall. The wolfhound rose up. He had a black tongue. Henri thrust the sole of a boot into death’s teeth. With a yelp, the hound lost