Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 6 (The Galactic Chronicles Series)

by Vanessa Ravencroft

  Loki even offered to accompany Thor, decked out as his handmaiden and soon, the great rams were ready to draw Thor's wagon across the heavens. Mountains split open, forests burst into flames, and the rumble from the mighty wagon could be heard from a long way off. Thrym believed it to herald the arrival of his bride. He bade his hall to be decked and the tables readied for a great feast.

  "As night fell, the great meal had begun. Thor alone ate a whole roasted Ochsen, eight salmons, and every bit of the sweetmeats that had been served for the women; this meal he washed down with three barrels of mead. Thrym thought this just a bit odd, but Loki whispered to him that Freya had not eaten for eight days, as he was too overcome with longing for the Giant Prince. Now that was more to the brute's liking, and he felt a desire to kiss his betrothed. But as he lifted "her" veil, he pulled back in shock ... the eyes he encountered glittered as with madness. Again, Loki explained that Freya had not slept for many nights, from longing for her groom.

  Then the giant's oldest sister came forth and bade "Freya" to take her golden bracelets from her arms and give it to her; with these she would insure the old giantess' favor and good will.

  Meanwhile Thrym, impatient with the ways of women, called for the hammer to be brought and laid in his bride's lap. Thus would their union be sealed before the Gods.

  Those words were music to Thor's ears. No sooner did he hold his hammer in his hand than that he sprang from his chair and his the first blow killed Thrym outright.

  None of the clan of the giants survived that night, not even the old woman who had asked for his bracelets in return for her favor. He paid her in blood instead of trinkets."

  She closed the book with a loud thud that brought me back to reality. "And it was thus that the God of Thunder reclaimed his hammer."

  "What is an Ochsen?" I asked.

  "It is a huge animal with horns, twice the size of the biggest Fangsnapper you ever going to see. It is an animal that lives on Earth, I never seen of course"

  "Not even Uncle Hogun could eat an entire Fangsnapper!"

  She laughed. "No, I am sure not even your huge Uncle Hogun could do that." She put the book aside, got up and brushed over her skirt." And now it is time for my little warrior to go to sleep."

  "He could not have done it without the help of Loki and the wise Heimdahl." I concluded.

  She nodded." This is very true, Eric and that is the message in this story. It means not all problems can be solved with raw strength and weapons but sometimes other methods are more effective. Of course, Thor being Thor ended the story his way and made sure no one would ever again get the idea and steal his hammer."

  My Father had entered the room, his eyes glassy and his nose red from too much ale and mead, made a growling sound that rolled from the bottom of his massive chest and then said." Loki is a trickster and he deceived Thor many times after. No Neo Viking should ever listen to this particular story. "

  Mother pursed her lips and said." But he is one of the gods and half-brother to Thor and he did help the Thunderer to get his hammer back!"

  Father tried to think of a reply but could not really argue with that so he glared at me." This is no place for a warrior born. Look at you, lying on furs in the boudoir of a woman. You are too old now to be in your mother's dressing room. All this warmth will make you soft like a woman. You are to go outside right now and keep watch on the tower. The cold wind will clear your mind of all that soft rubbish and steel you to be a man!"

  Mother protested." Isegrim he is five years old! What is wrong with me reading him the legends of the Gods? He is not going out on that freezing tower in the middle of Longnight. There hasn't been a guard up there for 500 years! He is no warrior yet, he is a little boy!"

  Father uncoiled his ever-present whip; that he carried on a sling attached to his wrist. The whip was made of a length of steel cable. He bellowed loudly and angrily:" Know thy place woman! It is not proper for a wench or anyone to question my decisions!"

  I could smell the mead on him as he rushed by me towards mother.

  She stood there not moving an inch and held her chin high. "You do not scare me with your whip! You are drunk. Now leave my chamber! My Father will hear of this if you do not leave now!"

  Father screamed: "No one gives me commands in my Burg, you are but a woman and your only duty is to please me! He slashed the cable across my mother's face. I heard the crack of the steel cable , my mother's cry of agony and there was blood everywhere.

  Chapter 10: Ragnarsson Rock

  Six years later

  I woke up, bolting upright in my bed.

  That night had burned itself into my mind and once again it had revisited me in form of a horrid nightmare.

  My mother died that night. It happened six years ago.

  As always I could not sleep. I never was able to go back to bed after such a dream,. So I went to my small desk by the drafty window and sat down to put my thoughts into a little PDD my Grandfather had given me.

  It was the only Off World High Tech thing I owned. If father knew I had it, he would have taken it away from me.

  It was my first grade teacher Mr. Atkins who suggested I keep a diary of my thoughts and of daily events. He said thinking things over and writing them down would help to get a different perspective about things.

  My father had killed my mother with his steel cable whip that fateful night and he had beaten me as well, I almost died that night and more often than not I wished I had died too, so I could be with my mother.

  I was still a child but ever since mother had died I was not allowed to be kid. While the details were a mystery to me and I did not understand it all, but I was now old enough comprehend why father hated my mother and me so much and why he had killed her.

  Midril, the cook had explained it to me more than once, and she knew every rumor, gossip and story there was to know.

  Father was the oldest heir to the Olafson Clan. It was an old Clan and its lineage reached back to the time when the first settlers arrived on Nilfeheim.

  Lineage and being of the Old Clans had great value in our society, but the Olafson Clan was poor and had very little resources. They had to hire their men out to other clans because they could not afford their own Hunt Subs or fishing boats.

  My mother on the other hand was of the Ragnarsson Clan, also one of the Old Clans and perhaps the richest off them all.

  Her father and my Grandfather was credited with increasing the wealth and influence of the Ragnarsson Clan even beyond our own world.

  Grandfather's only son, my mother's older brother had died training for the Ancient Rite of Passage, he and his hunting Sub were crushed by an angry Tyranno Fin so the story went. There were no other sons only a daughter, my mother.

  While it would be perfectly normal for a woman to inherit on almost any other world in the Union, here on Nilfeheim, it was the First Born son that got everything and decided what share his mother, brothers and sisters would get from an inheritance.

  Marriages between Clans were arranged between the parents and daughters were given a dowry by their fathers, the young people had little choice in who they were allowed to date, love or marry.

  The old clan chief of the Olafsons, my Great grandfather Ivor had made such an arrangement with the old clan chief of the Ragnarssons.

  Once the last male of the Ragnarssons died, the clan would cease to exist and all its wealth, possessions and influence would be absorbed by the Olafson Clan.

  My father, however was in love with another woman,

  Her family, Nubhir herders without a name was as poor as one could be and a union to a future clan chief out of the question, however it was her, Father loved.

  So he hated my mother from the start as he hated everything the Ragnarsson Clans stood for. Matters turned worse when Grandfather made me the heir to all, as I was the first born in the line of the merging Clans and the first male child carrying Ragnarsson and Olafson blood.

  Of course, as long as my mother
's father lived, the Ragnarsson Clan existed and only on his death I would inherit.

  Father hated me and would have loved to kill me but the fact that the very Burg we lived in was not his and if I died before Grandfather passed away kept me relatively safe because the old Ragnarsson scion could decide to donate the wealth or give it all away to someone else once he was no longer bound to his oaths.

  I put the pad down. I was tired and I glanced over to the bed, but there was no rest for me in a night like this. I could not go back to sleep without seeing the lifeless bloody heap that had been my mother, being awake was better.

  It was almost time for the kitchen servants to get up and prepare breakfast.

  Our Burg was home to about eighty families and most of them got up very early to tend to their daily chores.

  Breakfast was served in the High Hall for members of the first family and in the common hall for everyone else.

  The High Hall was where my father and the exalted members of the clan would eat. Of course I was not part of that since mother died, as I was barred from setting foot into the High Halls.

  I dressed and headed down to the kitchens. That early there was little chance I would run into Isegrim or my brothers and I could sit by the hearth and Midril would give me some hot rolls in exchange for hauling supplies from the basement.

  As I reached the backyard where the entrance to the kitchen was I could already smell the fresh bread Midril was baking.

  Isegrim was the head of the Clan, but Midril was in charge of the kitchen and her staff. She ruled over it with her ever present long wooden cooking spoon. She often that spoon wielded like a club or sword and she had knocked me over the head with it on more than one occasion. Admittedly in her defense I usually earned it for stealing a hot cake or a piece of roast.

  Most of the commoners and most of the servants , especially those that came from the Ragnarsson clan treated me well and I knew some felt sorry for my fate and they all knew what ad happened to my mother, although no one ever really talked about it.

  The kitchen yard was on the eastern side of the burg, a small cobblestone yard bordered by the high sea wall onto the west side and the entrance to my tower to the south. There was a small gate on the opposite site from where you could reach the old tunnels that used to be an escape passage from the days of the Clan wars.

  Parts of this was now converted as storage, were we kept barrels of Tyranno oil and bales of sea weed.

  A long forgotten secret corridor was there as well complete with a concealed door that led right between the walls of the Great Hall where you could sneak in and listen to everything that went on, and through a concealed crack you could even see some of it.

  Just as I had reached the yard, Midril opened the door and sloshed a bucket of hot liquid onto the cobblestones.

  She saw me and stemmed her fists in her wide hips." Why am I carrying the mop water outside if you are already up and linger around like a starving Snapperfish? Get your behind in the kitchen and finish mopping the Common Hall and when you're done the bread and the breakfast ham will be ready."

  The kitchen was big and warm and always spotless clean. She would not have it any other way. The kitchen was pretty much the same since they rebuild the burg over 1000 years ago. The only modern equipment was the large convection oven, the big bread dough mixer and water heater. Everything else was traditional and old-fashioned, Thickgrass-seaweed compressed in into dense bricks served as fuel for the main stove, not that there was need to use fossil fuels as the Burg had a power generator running on hydrogen, but that was not traditional. Food had to be cooked over fire.

  I grabbed the mob and headed for the still empty Common Hall, the stone floor was gleaming clean but that did not matter to Midril who wanted it mopped never the less.

  Suddenly there was loud screaming and horrible noise of crashing and breaking from the kitchen. Something not human shrieking with an ear piercing sound.

  I ran towards the noise, slipped and fell on the slick floor as I reached the kitchen.

  The tidy kitchen was now a tumbled mess. The liquid that covered the floor right by the door was thick dark and red,. It was blood! In the center of the gory puddle a badly mangled body

  I only recognized Gudrun, one of the cooks by the frilled apron the mangled corpse wore.

  A large Fangsnapper tore through the kitchen, smashing furniture and throwing utensils everywhere. It was about to attack Midril again. She already had lost an arm, bleeding heavily, still on her feet, brandished her wooden spoon against the dagger sharp rows of teeth of the furious beast.

  The back door was smashed to pieces and marked the way were the animal gained entrance to the kitchen. Despite all the confusion and horror I wondered how the beast got here. I could not understand how the Fangsnapper managed to get through the steel gates or get ovr the high outer walls.

  Our burg was in the middle of the ocean and far away from the hunting grounds of these beasts usually only found in the southern pole region.

  I struggled to my feet, slipping twice again. There not far from the dead cooks hand lay a big cooking knife. I did not think much and what I did then was more instinct than any planned course of action.

  I grabbed that knife and with a jump was on one of the big stainless steel kitchen tables and catapulted myself brandishing the knife with both hands onto the back of the beast and plunged the razor sharp steel into its back right behind the skull.

  The Snapper screamed even louder tried to shake me off. I didn't have a very good hold. With my left hand cramped around the left head fin, my legs clamping as hard as I could to the still moist body of the beast and plunged the knife as often as I could deep into the same wound.

  Hot blood sprayed from the wound gushing all over me. It stank sickly sweet and the odor mingled with the mouldy fish scent Fangsnappers were famous for.

  As much as I was in danger of getting seriously hurt and maimed, as much as I was afraid there was a part of me deep down that enjoyed every moment of it.

  The Fangsnapper collapsed literally inches from Midril. Only now I saw she was protecting little Elena the daughter of Gudrun. I remembered that she was six or seven years old and always in the kitchen either playing ot helping with small chores.

  The beast, in its death throes twitched to the side and I flew of its back and hit the stove. Before I felt the actual pain of being burned I could hear the hissing sound my skin as it made connecting to the hot steel.

  Now men came rushing in, servants and workers that were about to get breakfast and alarmed by the noise.

  Greifen, who was responsible for the Clans Nubhir Farm and one of our most profitable venues took charge of the situation. He bandaged Midril wound and she was rushed away, most likely to be flown to town where she would get help at the Union Clinic.

  I heard my father coming. His bellowing voice heralded im long before he appeared. He then stood in the door glancing over the mess.

  Greifen said." Your son Eric has bravely attacked the Fangsnapper with a kitchen knife and killed it. He saved the lives of Midril and the young girl. He is badly burned and he too should go to the Union Clinic."

  My father growled." I bet the cursed Elhir Clan has dropped that Fangsnapper into our yard! They can't stand the fact that we are now merging with the Ragnarssons."

  Greifen nodded." Yes, Sire, I was thinking the same. There is now way that Fangsnapper could have made it up here any other way. Sigmund, our harpooner was sure the Elhir were planning something ever since we got into a bar fight with them last week during which my fist accidently broke Hilfheim's jaw.. He is of the Elhir Clan, as you know Sire."

  "We will discuss how we retaliate on the table tonight! Now I expect this kitchen to be cleaned by this failure of a son! If he had kept watch in the tower as I expected him to do, he would have seen who did this. If he would be a real son of mine I would look upon the bodies of the intruders and not some worthless beast."

  He turned to leave." Let him
tend to his own wounds. If I hear that anyone wasted time helping that whelp I will break every bone in their bodies!"

  Chapter 11: Union School

  Isegrim, my father had married again and now I had two brothers: Lothar and Tyr. My stepmother was of course Gretel Hemstaad, my father's true love and she already saw herself in the highest social circles of our planet, being very wealthy and important. She would not let an opportunity go to waste telling anyone how important and rich she soon will be. Before she came to the burg, she was barely above a commoner and she worked as Nubhir Hide scrubber, now she had servants and staff who hated her especially for her arrogance and antics.

  She also always praised the manhood and strength of my father in the presence of guests and servants alike. Praising the man's skills in bed was a truly ancient tradition and her following it pleased my evil father very much.

  Lothar, the older of my two half-brothers was two years younger than me, but father treated him like his true heir. Lothar not only got my old room and most of my things, but he learned from very early on that he had power over me when my father was present and he love to find new ways of making my life even more miserable. Tyr was four years younger and since he was the second born father simply ignored him much as he did me, but he would not treat him like he did me.

  At first I was considering suicide. Ending it all would be so easy, but I that wish changed. I swore to myself and all the Gods, I would endure it all so I could accomplish the one task I had set for me in life: to grow older and strong enough to kill him.

  Oh yes, I feared him, a footstep or a noise that announced his coming send shivers down my spine. He would not leave any opportunity to kick or hit me. If I was lucky he was done after just one or two kicks and perhaps a lash with his ever present whip and then he lost interest in me, just like now as he walked out. He would not think about my involvement in this anymore. That a woman died meant absolutely nothing to him. He shrugged his broad shoulders as he was told who the dead woman was and said." The tables smashed were expensive. I wonder how much damage was made, that wench is easily replaced."