The Bear of the North did not move. Neither did Val. She stayed on her haunches, peering at the fallen man, blood gushing from her nose, and one lens of her goggles smeared, but not cracked. Her long hair cascaded down around her face.
The hungover men in the arena were quiet, but Ulrik looked around at some of the stunned faces. Not all of them would follow her into battle, but many of them looked at her with a newfound respect. Because they know they could not have defeated the Bear.
Eventually the woman stood. She pulled her ax from Vebjørn’s neck and then used it to hack at the meat of his shoulder, sprays of blood and chipped bone arcing away from the wound, until she could pull her knife from its deep puncture hole. She gave it a shake and a spray of Vebjørn’s blood sliced through the air, landing several feet away on the white, sun-washed concrete. She dropped her long ax into its metal loop on her belt, but kept the gore-drenched knife in hand. Finally she nudged the man’s head enough with her booted foot until she could pry the hand ax free with a slurp.
A weapon in each hand, she looked at the men arrayed around her, many ogling her with awe, and she spotted Morten the Hammer. Standing beside him, his companion Oskar looked pale-faced and ill.
Val approached Morten until her bloody face was an inch from his own.
“Do you have anything more to say, Morten the Hammer?”
He looked back at her, his face impassive. “We will follow your lead.”
From across the arena, Ulrik smiled. It was going to be an interesting trip. Glancing up at Halvard and the Jarl on the balcony, he saw that the older science-man looked pleased. The Jarl looked like he was about to be sick.
6
“How far is it, this place by the sea?” Val asked Halvard. They were standing in a rectangular room with a large table at the center. It was covered in old maps, curling and with chipped edges, water stains, and in one case, a blood stain that obscured a portion of the map’s land masses. The cloying scent of the many candles arrayed around them filled her nostrils, making her broken nose ache.
“It is far,” Halvard said, looking grim. “I would accompany you, but I am in no shape to make it the distance. If you could go in a straight line on land, which you cannot, and if you could cover eight miles a day, which is doubtful, it would still take you most of a year, just to get there.”
“And then we need to get back,” Morten said. He was far more helpful since Val had revealed the depth of her skills, but he still had a defeatist attitude. Arrayed around the room were the rest of her chosen men from the original group to whom Halvard had explained the plan. Trond with his newly shortened beard and bandaged side, Ulrik the Fearless, Morten’s friend Oskar, and the hunter Anders with his bow. Perched on the man’s shoulder was a huge bird of prey, its head hooded with a leather sleeve. The bird’s talons looked like they would pierce the leather coat. Also present was a short, broad, grumpy man named Stig. Ulrik had assured Val he was a fighter from the south of great repute. Besides the old science-man, one more man stood quietly in the corner. Halvard had introduced him to the group as his student, a man well versed in the history of the old world, from before the Utslettelse. His name was Nils, and while Val believed Halvard trusted the man’s knowledge, she was skeptical of his ability to make the journey. The man was wiry and pale. She suspected she weighed more than he did. Killing him would take no effort, for Val or any other man in the room, including the aged Halvard. The other Northmen who had heard Halvard’s explanations on the first day had turned their noses up at the idea of journeying so far. Even with the fate of the human race at stake, many had taken their warriors and returned home. Once those that remained had learned that the mission required stealth, they too had sent their men home. Only Val and the hunter Anders had arrived on their own, so they hadn’t needed to bid farewell to disappointed kinsmen.
Val turned to Halvard, concern creasing her forehead above the red lenses of her goggles. “And how will we travel this distance? You say we cannot voyage by sea, because of the pirates. Are we to walk for a year?”
Halvard nodded, as if he had anticipated the question. “I have something else in mind. Follow me, everyone.”
One by one, the assembled fighters and their historian filed out of the room after the old man. He led them outside the building and through the narrow, winding, cobbled alleys that carved up the small town. Remnants of the Old World were everywhere, but for Val, the village looked like most of the others she had seen. Rock and brick, chimneys and fireplaces. Wooden buildings and repurposed Old World things for which no one knew the names.
Val walked in the lead of their small group, following on the heels of the old man. She knew the town had been set up as an intentionally confusing maze of twists and turns to foil invaders from across the country or pirates landing from the sea. Marauders were everywhere.
She attempted to mentally catalogue their path, but soon gave up on memorizing the convoluted route. At last the old man stopped by a pair of metal doors, set at a low angle that led down into the ground. “Here we are,” he said, as if that explained everything.
He bent and pulled open one of the doors. Val leaned in to help him lift the second. The doors, which looked rusted and disused, opened on well-oiled hinges. Below them was a set of stairs fashioned from laid flat river stones. The old man quickly descended and Val followed. The others came after her, and as she squeezed down the narrow stone passage, she wondered if mighty Trond would fit through.
The stairs came out into a huge subterranean room—far larger than the Jarl’s longhall, and the walls were made of cracked concrete. In one place where the wall had crumbled away, it had been repaired with river stone and some kind of mortar that looked out of place. Candles lined the walls, and at the far end of the huge space were nine things the size of tables. They each had four black wheels protected by green molded armor. Each was topped by a black seat. They also had black handles that stuck up in the front and twin silver containers on the back that looked like kegs of beer.
“What...what are they?” Val asked.
Halvard turned to the assembled fighters and smiled wide with crooked teeth. “These will get you there and back. Mechanical horses. They were called ATVs in the Old World. For All Terrain Vehicles. Because they have four wheels, they were also sometimes called ‘Quad-bikes’ or ‘Quads.’”
Ulrik approached the ATVs and ran his finger lightly over one. “These are machines? How do you make them move?”
Halvard approached him and pointed. “These were fitted with tanks for propane gas,” he indicated the twin tanks on the back. “You will need to find more gas to keep them running. It will only take you a few hours to learn to ride and steer. With them you will be able to cover many miles in a day, on the roads that still cover the world. They may be old, but these vehicles are hardy. They are able to roll over most smaller obstacles like stones or tree roots.”
A man approached from a small doorway at the far end of the room, which was next to an immense rusted metal door. The man was smaller than Ulrik, but covered in hard muscles, and coated in dirt and grease.
“This is Erlend. He has restored the ATVs, and he will teach you how to drive them. We have nine quads, and with Erlend, you have a group of nine for the journey. He will come with you to repair the vehicles, if they should break down.”
“Hello,” Erlend said, swinging a leg over the side of one of the quads.
“How do you bring these...ATVs...to life, Erlend?” Val asked, stepping forward to join Ulrik in appraising the vehicles.
Erlend turned a key on his mount, then flicked an engine switch and stood up on the kickstarter. The motor growled to life, a noise louder than anything most of the assembled fighters had ever heard—except for Val, who had once heard the roar of a polar bear up close.
Halvard startled the group by raising the massive metal door at the far end of the room, using a chain pull. Daylight flooded into the yawning space, as the vibrations from the vehicle’s engine
rumbled the floor. Val had just begun to step closer to the machines, when Erlend released his hand from a spring-loaded silver lever on the handle of the quad, and it shot forward, racing out the open door and onto a wide open field of grass beyond it.
Val watched, fascinated, as the man alternately sat on the ATV or stood up on it, leaning his body left and right, steering the vehicle around the field, until it was aimed at a hard-packed pile of dirt half as high as a man.
He sped up as he approached the mound and then raced up the pile, and the vehicle lunged through the air. Val’s mouth fell open as he leaned backward at the last second of the quad’s arc through the sky, and the rear wheels dropped into the grass and caught again, before he raced off across the field.
When Val turned to look at Halvard, who looked smug and proud, she saw that the men around him all wore expressions of astonishment or sheer terror on their faces.
“Which one is mine?” Val asked.
7
Halvard stood alone with Val at the top of one of the tallest, still-mostly vertical structures in town. It had once been a ten-story-tall apartment tower, but now it was mostly a rusted collection of bare I-beams and corroded metal stairs. The steps were coated in detritus from thousands of birds and the vegetation of several different invasive species of vine, as well as a few random trees that had mysteriously chosen to grow on the upper reaches of the building.
Halvard used the building for his birds.
At the top he had created a huge pen for the creatures. They were beautiful to behold. He knew from having read old volumes that their ancestors had been called carrier pigeons. But these birds were huge, with a wingspan of over eight feet. His great grandfather had domesticated them and had used them to converse with descendants of fellow scientists who had weathered the great annihilation. They had kept in touch through the decades, even as the world fell apart around them. One station in Venice, Italy. Another in what had been Tokyo, Japan, and another in Seattle. They shared their experiments and their failures, using the birds to converse, as their ancestors had hundreds of years before the 21st century. Only now their messenger birds were large enough to eat humans, if they were so inclined. Luckily, Halvard thought, they would rather eat us out of grains.
“You will send a message ahead?” Val asked him. It was their first time to speak alone, and Halvard had much to tell her.
“Yes. To a man named Troben, in Italy. His grandfather was from Stavanger, and he journeyed across the continent to see what remained of the world, after the Utslettelse. But he stayed in Italy, and kept in contact with us using the birds. Then his son, until Troben and I.” Val was nodding, indicating she was following the story, while she appraised the huge bird Halvard called Sulten, which meant hungry in Norwegian.
“So this man Troben will have the genetic material for us?” she asked him.
“Yes, but there is more. Much more.” Halvard was afraid she would react badly when he told her the next part. The team was about to depart in the next half hour. Even now the others were down on the ground, packing up their ATVs in preparation for departure.
“I suspected there was,” Val said, turning to look up at him. “Tell me.”
“After you have reached Italy and secured the genetic material, you need to get something else on the return voyage. Something crucial.”
Ulrik watched Val return from the tall tower with Halvard. He had seen the bird with the mighty wingspan streak away from the roof, and he’d kept track of how much time had elapsed afterward. He knew Halvard and Val had been discussing something for some time—and even if he hadn’t been paying attention, the pale cast of Val’s face under her raven’s wing makeup and goggles told him she’d received some grave news.
Ulrik and the others had all packed up their ATVs, the strange bikes stacked with tanks of fuel, packs of food, and Erlend’s tool kit. Ulrik had suggested they divvy these things up across the nine vehicles, so if something happened to one of the ATVs—and by extension, one of the riders—they wouldn’t lose all of one kind of supply.
They had spent three days becoming familiar with riding the quads. Learning to turn the vehicles without rolling them was the hardest part. You had to stand on the footplates and lean in the direction away from your turn slightly, lifting the wheel on the inside of the turn. It had taken Ulrik a while, and he had been the last to master the technique from their group, but they were all now competent riders.
Val had taken to her ATV like a seal takes to eating fish, and she had used the extra days to converse with Halvard, learning all she could about the strange parts of the world they would see, how they should go about finding more propane for the vehicles, and what kinds of food they could eat on the road.
Meanwhile, Erlend had spent time teaching Stig, the man with a perpetual storm cloud hovering over his features, how to repair the ATVs, so Erlend wouldn’t be the only mechanic in their group. Anders had likewise begun to teach Trond some techniques for hunting with his bow, and how to hold the giant bird, whose name was Skjold. Morten had become the pupil of Nils, learning what he could about the world’s history. That had left Morten’s constant companion Oskar to help Ulrik with inventory and most days to sit on the sidelines watching the bigger man try to master the ATV.
Now, Val approached her steed, slipping her black clad leg over the saddle. Her ATV was parked next to Ulrik’s. He looked at her and considered asking what was bothering her, but she didn’t look open to a conversation, so he simply said, “Are we ready to depart?”
“Wait,” she said. She took a deep breath of the air, then slowly let it out.
“Should I be breathing, too?” he asked.
She turned to him with a frown. “Only if you will miss the smell of this air. We might not be back for a few years.”
He nodded, then took a deep lungful of the fresh seaside air. A cool breeze was blowing in from the water, and the flowers of summer were in full bloom.
Halvard stood nearby as Val kickstarted her quad, and the other eight followed her lead. The roar of the nine vehicles was like a storm of hornets. He had grave misgivings about the plan, but it was the best one they had been able to come up with. When he had revealed the additional task to Val, she had been irritated.
She turned back to look at him. He nodded at her, and prayed for Odin to keep her safe. She and her men were the last hope for the human race. Troben’s message from Italy was that there were not enough brave men there who were still sane enough to undertake such a mission. He couldn’t get the genetic material where it needed to go, so the burden fell to Halvard to send warriors to retrieve it. He had no idea if they could even make it to Italy from Norway. The road was fraught with peril, hostile mutated fauna and the last dregs of humanity, wrapped in their own crazed little worlds. And then, if she made it that far, she had to get back to him and with the things he had tasked her with bringing.
Val released her brakes and cruised off across the grassy field without a look back. The others filed behind her, their wheels kicking up small clumps of dirt as each launched off its starting point.
They were not traveling by sea, but Halvard realized he was witnessing history in motion. The nine warriors with the young woman as their leader were embarking on the maiden voyage of the last several decades. They were the first to travel to mainland Europe since before the annihilation. He was witnessing the beginning of the Third Viking Age.
8
Val drove in the lead, following the road to Kristiansand, around the southern coast. The interior of the country was too mountainous—even with the ability of the ATVs to handle variegated terrain. Also, as most of the people still living in the place once known on Halvard’s maps as Norway had gravitated to villages on the shore, they had kept the road mostly clear of vegetation since the Old World days. Travel along the coast would be easier.
They moved slowly and carefully the first few days, covering only a few miles each day and making good use of the small villages for meals an
d drink. The ATVs were a constant source of fascination for the locals, and in one case had led to an armed confrontation between Ulrik and an onlooker with no sense of personal space. After that they had sent one man into a village they planned to camp in—usually the non-threatening Anders with his hunting bird—to secure a room and the rental of barn space on the edge of town. They would then sequester the vehicles in the barn and leave one member of their party on guard, while the rest went into town for meals.
But they were halfway to Oslo now, and Val knew from experience that once they crossed over into what used to be called Sweden and was now simply regarded as ‘the wild,’ that the area was full of hungry creatures and few villages. They would still follow the coast in Sweden, angling down to the strait between the tip of the peninsula and the northward jutting mass of Denmark. And she hoped they would find a bridge there. If not, they would need to build a boat stout enough to take the quads, and that could take them well into winter and the following spring.
The light was fading fast, and they had already found that, even with the headlamps on the quads, traveling the rutted roads at night was too difficult. Besides, Val was eager to enjoy these last nights in Norway before they entered the unknown. Despite the lack of a proper village, she called a halt to their progress for the day.
The men grumbled, but they turned their ATVs off the road and followed her on a smaller path that was cracked and neglected, with tufts of grass and in some cases full trees growing out of it. The road wound a few hundred feet to a small island full of fractured concrete and lush trees, but the tiny bridge to the island was out, so they stopped at the end of the road instead. A tiny trail to their left led down a slope to a long abandoned concrete dock. Val drove her ATV down the slope, followed by the others. There was enough tree cover to keep them from sight for the night.
Viking Tomorrow Page 4