You just stay right there, Smoothie.
She stood perfectly still, the sun glinting off the sheen of her leather jacket, with its armored pads, metal studs and white fur collar.
Twenty feet.
Ruck leaned forward, bracing for the impact.
Then the woman became fluid motion, swinging her arm up and hurling something the size of a rectangular rock into the mouth of the tunnel. Then she rolled to the side, her body disappearing behind the tunnel wall.
Ruck had just a second to be startled by her sudden departure, and then the world turned to fire and noise. The tunnel erupted around him. Fist-sized chunks of rock pummeled his body and his ride. The noise shattered his eardrums, which bled down his shoulders. His head roiled from the chaos until he found himself lying on the ground, his body tangled with the hawg and pinned by immoveable piles of stone.
The headlamp from the hawg was on his stomach and lit, but the handlebars were gone. His head ached, and his arms were numb from the shoulders down. The beam of yellow light struggled to pierce the cloud of dust and smoke in the air, but it slowly increased over the next few minutes, brightening a cave no larger than how far Ruck could spread his arms—if he could have done that. But his arms were useless. He couldn’t move his legs either. He could only move his head slightly, side to side, but it filled his eyes with starbursts, so he stopped, and remained still.
A fresh mountain breeze snuck through the smoke. It was enough to clear Ruck’s fogged-in mind. The woman had somehow collapsed the tunnel. The small space around him was enough to move in, if he could get his arms or legs working.
He shouted for help, but heard nothing. His ears throbbed with pain, and the world was eerily silent. There was no one to help him. The smooth woman, if she was still alive, would not lift a finger to assist him. He decided to wait a while, and then call out for his brothers.
He wasn’t panicked. He knew he could get out, even though he couldn’t see much more than the walls around him. He would just rest for a while. It would all be okay. Kinsker had given him the responsibility. He needed to be a calm leader.
He drifted off to sleep.
When he woke, he had no idea how much time had gone by. The hawg’s headlamp had died. He could still feel it there, pressing uncomfortably on his hip bone. The cave was completely dark now. But the fresh breeze was still rolling through. He still could hear nothing, though. And his legs would not move. He tried to move his head again, and once more the shower of green and pink sparks radiated around the inside of his eyelids, but cast no light in the darkened cave.
He screamed, but still couldn’t hear his own voice. He could, however, feel his throat going hoarse. An hour later, he couldn’t feel his throat anymore. His mind had fled, leaving him a screaming, gibbering maniac trapped in the dark.
He screamed for two days before he died.
Val had thrown the makeshift bomb, after twisting the dial on the detonator with her thumb, nudging it just a few clicks around. The previous bomb had detonated much too soon, so she figured the detonators were not working properly. But if she had set it for too long, the Hanger would have come ripping out of the tunnel, crashing into her.
She had placed her faith in the short timer, and rolled to the side of the tunnel.
The explosion was devastating. The mountain shook, the pressure stole her breath and the mouth of the tunnel fired stones as if they were bullets. Anders dove behind a craggy knob of stone on the hillside, and covered his head with his arms as a fusillade of rubble pelted him.
Val was protected from the projectiles, but the searing heat and scorching air filled her lungs as she breathed deeply following the initial pressure wave that mashed her against the wall. The mouth of the tunnel held, but the roof collapsed, turning the passage into a wall.
When the conflagration was done, Val staggered away and checked on Anders. He had a few small cuts on his forehead, but he waved her off. She leapt down the low hill to the now debris-strewn path, taking long strides toward the two parked ATVs, where she had last seen Nils. But she didn’t see him now.
As she got closer to the vehicles, she could see that her ATV had been battered by flying debris. The green plastic fenders had been cracked and shattered. The whole side of the vehicle was covered in gray dust and small pebbles.
But then she saw that the damage was more severe. A jagged, elongated stone, like a squeezed dinner plate, had punctured the side of the fuel tank, and the invisible fuel was hissing out of the rupture. She could detect the faint smell of rotten eggs. Nils’s ATV was parked just beyond hers. It had been shielded from the blast by her own ride. As she walked around the vehicles, she spotted booted feet on the ground. She rushed around the fenders and saw Nils. He was rubbing a knot on the side of his head where he had been hit by a flying rock.
“Nils, will you live?” she asked him, but her voice was soft and playful. She knew he would be fine.
He groaned and stood up, dusting himself off, then checked his two-seater ATV for damage.
Val pointed to her own punctured fuel tank, as Anders came walking up the path toward them. “It looks like you and I will be riding together from now on, Nils.”
He looked at the rock that had punctured her fuel tank like an arrow head, shook his head and then motioned toward the jury-rigged extra seat over his ATV’s rear propane tanks, inviting her to hop on.
Val walked around the ruined ATV and gently pushed Nils out of the way. “Yes, that is where you will ride, Nils,” she said, swinging a leg over the saddle of her new ATV.
47
Seagulls swooped overhead in great armadas of wings and claws. They were huge, with wingspans ranging from six to ten feet.
Val and the Vikings stood next to a twenty-foot-high curved stone column. They could see the remains of a second on the far side of the road, but it had long ago been shattered, and now only a rounded stump remained. Ahead of them, the road dropped away, crumbling bits of asphalt filling the shallow waters. In the distance, a mile across the open harbor, they could see a low island, it’s surface completely covered with red-roofed buildings. A ten-foot-tall wall of steel surrounded the island, hiding the true size and scope of the city within.
The only thing Val could determine for certain, was that they were not going to be driving to the city formerly known as Venice, Italy. Part of her couldn’t believe they’d made it to the first of their destinations, though only she knew about the second. The journey here had been arduous. Many had said it wasn’t possible. But she was now looking at Venice with her own eyes. The question was, would they find the man named Troben inside? And would he have the “genetic material” Halvard had sent them after so many months ago?
They had parked the ATVs in the squat trees growing along the arrow-straight road, and done their best to conceal the vehicles with fallen leaves and snapped branches.
Then the group had stared at the distant island until they had heard the birds. They crouched low in the bushes, concealed from the mighty winged creatures. The birds swooped and dove at the water, rising back up with four-foot long struggling fish clamped in their oversized beaks. Mighty Skjold, dwarfed by the giants in the sky, wisely stayed on Anders’s shoulder, even without its leather hood.
The hungry birds passed by, receding into the distant sky. Val stood up and walked back to the water’s edge.
“Will we swim or make a boat?” Ulrik asked. “There are plenty of trees. It would not take us long.”
“No,” was all Val would say. She lingered at the edge of the shattered road, waiting.
The others stood quietly for a while, but their curiosity got the best of them.
“Are we expecting something?” Oskar asked. “We have come this far. Let us get to this island and retrieve what we came for.”
Val said nothing.
“What you have come for...” Heinrich said. “It is inside this floating city? This ‘genetic material’ that will save all life?”
“Yes,” V
al said. “Just wait. I was told we should wait.”
Ulrik stepped up beside Val, peering out to sea. Morten joined them at the water’s edge, and then Nils. Anders hung back in the trees by the ATVs. He looked bored.
“Are those...” Ulrik started to say.
“Yes,” Val said quietly.
In the distance, small white objects zoomed past the front wall of the city. They looked like more of the gigantic birds, buzzing the surface of the water.
The shapes zipped left and right, leaving streams of white water behind them. As they got closer, Val saw them for what they were. Boats. Small white boats which were incredibly fast.
Faster than the ATVs or even the two-wheeled bikes of the Hangers, she thought.
She stayed in place, but her hand slid down to the head of her long ax at her side. Two of the boats stayed a long way off, darting back and forth, and then making sharp turns, carving up low walls of the white-frothed green water. The third boat slowly approached the fractured road where Val stood. Behind the boat’s small windshield, holding the steering wheel, was a small man with short dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. He was slim, like Nils, but the man’s face was shaved clean despite being at least fifty. His skin was tanned and leathery from the sun, but his cheeks suggested his ancestors had come from the North. Beside him was a broader man, who also had Northern looks, but his skin was paler, as if he ventured outdoors only rarely. He was armed with a black metal crossbow, and the tip of the weapon was pointed at Val’s chest.
The boat’s pilot threw the engine into reverse, and the vehicle slowed to a stop, the water from its wake rushing up to lap at the broken edge of the road, keeping a safe distance. If the Vikings were to attack, they could turn and be gone in seconds.
The man with the crossbow spoke in an old and very formal version of the Northern dialect the Vikings all used. “What do you seek?”
“Halvard from Stavanger has sent us,” Val said.
The man looked to the boat’s pilot, whose face showed just as much surprise. When he looked back to Val he said, “Odin’s beard, we were expecting you months ago.”
“We had to winter north of the mountains,” she explained.
The pilot maneuvered the boat so its side was parallel to the broken edge of the road, and just before the sidewall of the vessel reached the asphalt, the larger man lowered the crossbow and tossed rubber fenders—cylindrical tubes with ropes—over the side to prevent the boat from scraping the jagged road.
“Come aboard, quickly,” the man said.
Val and Ulrik stepped aboard the white boat, then Nils and Heinrich joined them.
Morten called Anders, and a second boat came in to the shore to collect the two of them and Oskar.
Then the three boats drove away, the man with the crossbow warily checking the shoreline as they departed. “Have a seat,” he said. “The ride will be bumpy.”
Val and the others sat in chairs with leather coverings that looked as new as their ATV saddles had when Erlend had first shown them the quads. The crossbowman sat as well, and the pilot stood in front of his seat, gripping the steering wheel. He sped the boat up until it skipped across the water’s surface.
The jouncing ride was mercifully short, and they soon approached the rusted steel wall that rose up out of the water around the city. Green algae crawled up the sides of the wall. Lumps of sea life grew under a film of dark brown slime.
Two towers climbed up from the top of the wall, and between them a large steel gate rose up, hoisted slowly by metal chains—and from the slow and jerky ascent, Val assumed there were people inside the towers tugging on the other ends of those chains.
When the bottom of the gate was high enough that the bow of the boat could clear it, the pilot inched forward.
The pilot leaned down, so the climbing gate would not need to go higher, nor would he have to wait any longer. Val and her companions ducked their heads as they passed under the dripping wet gate. She looked back and watched the second boat, with three of her men, do likewise. The third boat had turned off, back to whatever its normal task was when strangers were not showing up at the end of the missing bridge.
Inside the walls was another world.
In all their travels, the towns and cities they had seen had been mostly destroyed. This town, this floating city, was bustling and alive. And yet, the buildings all strangely rose up out of the water. Instead of roads there were canals, and tight little waterways between the tall, narrow buildings that were too tight for their boat to pass.
The buildings were all three and four stories, with orange terra-cotta tile roofs. Windows and water-stained brick and stone lined the waterways, as the boats crawled through the tight canals. People bustled about, hanging laundry from lines to dry, and popping in and out of windows, all of them with a nod or a salute to the boats, as if the occupants of the boats held some position of rank in the society.
The boat pulled up to a low stone dock, with two badly canted wooden poles rising up from the water. The crossbowman tossed out the rubber fenders, and then hopped out of the boat, beckoning Val to follow him, and leaving the pilot to tie the boat up at the post. The second boat carrying Morten, Oskar and Anders pulled in right behind the first, and Morten was quick to leap out and hurry up to Val.
“This feels wrong,” he said softly. “A trap?”
“I do not think so,” Val said, speaking normally. Then softer she said, “but be on your guard anyway.”
The building was orange stucco with patches of white, and exposed brick underneath. Nothing to suggest that they were being taken to this city’s leader—or its prison. On the roof of the building, Val had spotted a wire mesh cage, similar to the one Halvard had used in Stavanger to house his mutated messenger birds. The crossbowman led them into the darkened interior of the building and a set of rickety wooden stairs at the end of a damp hallway. The lowest two steps had buckled from water exposure. Val stepped over them as the crossbowman did, climbing the stairs into the dim second story hallway, and the other Vikings followed her.
The second story of the building was brighter and breezy, as the windows of the rooms were open to the outside. The doors to the hallways were propped open with thick rubber wedges to permit a cross-breeze. The slightly foul harbor smell of the canals wafted through the hall, as the man finally came to a closed door and knocked twice, before opening it.
Inside was the oldest man Val had ever seen.
“The people Halvard sent have finally arrived,” the crossbowman announced, and then he turned and left, allowing Val and Ulrik to enter the room.
The elderly man was tiny, just under five feet tall. He had wispy, white hair that trailed down his shoulders. And he has the same crystal blue eyes as every person on the planet but me, Val thought. He walked with a black wooden cane topped with a silver knob. Despite his obvious age, he moved with swift efficiency.
The room was a small kitchen, and the man had been slicing open a large fish with a thin fillet knife. He set it down on a thick wooden cutting board that rested on a wooden table.
“Do come in, all of you, come in.” The man’s dialect was different from the way people spoke in the North, but Val still understood him well enough. He hobbled over to a closed, brown door.
Val walked toward the man, and was about to pepper him with questions, when he opened the door and pointed in the room.
“What you have come all this way for.” The man’s speech was stilted, as if he were remembering how to use Val’s language, after many years of it rattling in the recesses of his memory but not touching his tongue.
Val peered into the room, and saw a teenaged girl with long, straight blonde hair sitting on a bed. She was reading an old, weathered book. She glanced up at Val.
The girl’s moss green eyes stole Val’s breath.
48
Kinsker knew he needed to save this stabby mess somehow. He had stood on the side of the road with Faust and fifty-eight Hangers all waiting on him as he
peered through a brass telescope. He had seen his whole plan come apart. The smooth woman and her crew were riding out of the mountains with their strange flat-bikes, and his forty Hangers—Forty of them!—had been nowhere to be seen. Not even one of them in pursuit of the foreigners as they drove out of his mountains.
He’d made the decision then, much to Faust’s obvious displeasure. He would keep the remaining men together, and they would let the flat-bikers ride to the Floating City. Then they would seize the vehicles and attack the city itself. Together, as a group, and after the damnable blonde had what Borss was after.
They stood at the shore, the Floating City and its defiant steel walls in the distance. They had spotted the flat-bikers on boats, moving out to the walled compound, but when they arrived at the very edge of the road, ready to collect the vehicles, they were gone. All of them. The Hangers had spotted the smooth woman and her team on board the fast boats the Floaters used as attack and defense vehicles. Kinsker had seen them up close. There was no way the Floaters could have gotten a single flat bike on the tiny boats. And there had been just the three boats. They must have loaded the bikes onto some broader, flatter boats, but he didn’t see them anywhere.
He crept around the edge of the big stone monument that bordered the edge of the broken road, careful to keep the bulk of his body hidden from view. The Floating City’s spotters were always alert, and they would be looking for the Hangers to pursue the woman—especially once she told her story of encountering them in the mountains, and whatever fate had befallen Ruck.
Doubt crept into Kinsker’s head. Had Ruck and all those men faced off against the smooth woman and lost? Had he and the others split off, perhaps back up toward Innsbruck?
No, Kinsker assured himself. Ruck would have wanted the woman. If anything, he would have disobeyed me, and attacked them, thinking he would be a hero.
Viking Tomorrow Page 20