The Dakota Cipher

by William Dietrich

  ‘We have Pierre!’

  The voyageur was alive!

  And so was my enemy.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ I ordered, reloading.

  Slowly the English nobleman rose from the grass and hauled the Frenchman with him. The voyageur who’d rescued us was battered, his shirt loose, his eyes blackened, and his leggings in tatters. It looked like he’d been dragged across the prairie instead of marched. His hands were bound.

  Little Frog gave a gasp, dark eyes bright with tears, and glanced desperately back at our tunnel.

  But it wasn’t Pierre who startled me.

  Instead it was Cecil Somerset himself. The handsome, proud face had been shattered by the rifle ball I’d fired during the canoe pursuit from Red Jacket’s village. His right cheek was cratered. Parts of his teeth and upper jaw were missing and his right eye was an empty socket. The wound was red and yellow with infection and pus, and his other eye was painfully squinted against the insects that buzzed at his head to feed on the corruption. The dashing aristocrat had been turned into a frightening monster. How long could the Englishman live with such a hideous wound? He must be keeping himself alive by force of will – because he wanted whatever was under the tree. His broken sword was jammed in his belt.

  Another figure rose in the grass. Aurora! Makeup gone, hair greasy, clothes filthy and tattered from hard riding, yet she was still strikingly beautiful, tanned as an Amazon, holding a hunting piece of her own. Her fine bones and lovely figure were still there, and despite my logical loathing I couldn’t help but be wrenched by her allure. To underscore the gulf between us, she lifted her gun and deliberately sighted at me with no hesitation.

  And then Red Jacket stood, too, one sleeve empty but holding a tomahawk in the other hand, his English coat ragged but still a brilliant scarlet in the weird light. His look was simple hatred. He’d rip out my heart if he could. His mongrel band of Dakota and Ojibway renegades stood too, a scarred, vengeful bunch who looked more like pirates than princes of the plains. They looked greedy and foul, nothing like the proud warriors who had helped us on our canoe trip.

  ‘My. Isn’t this a fine reunion?’

  ‘We want you dead, Gage!’ Cecil called in a voice made raspy from wounds and pain. ‘We want you to die horribly! I have twenty of the best warriors in the world here to make sure that happens! But we’ll spare you all – Bloodhammer, the women, even little Pierre here – in exchange for whatever artefact you’ve found.’ He tilted his head back to look up at the tree. ‘I must say, the Rite never expected this.’ Another flash, high above at the top in the clouds we couldn’t see, and a rumble of thunder. The light cast him in an eerie glow.

  ‘The Egyptian Rite knew what we were looking for?’

  ‘The Egyptian Rite knew that Ethan Gage is always looking for something.’

  While Cecil looked as cocky as a man can with just half a face, his Indians, I noticed, were distinctly uneasy. They hadn’t expected this great tree either, with its weird storms and brooding shade. They too were thinking of the Wendigo.

  ‘You call me little Pierre?’ Pierre croaked in protest. ‘No man says that of the great Pierre Radisson!’

  ‘Silence!’ And Cecil struck him with a leather quirt, and then slashed him again and again as if reminded to take out his own pain and frustration on his captive. Little Frog gave a cry and a sob. I quivered with disgust. It took every ounce of discipline not to kill Somerset at once, but if I shot the monster, the others would strike Pierre down and rush us before I could reload. The voyageur swayed but stayed upright, eyes closed against the blows.

  Magnus had given the muskets to Namida and Little Frog and now he picked up his axe, ready to charge like a Viking berserker. ‘Not yet,’ I cautioned him.

  Finally the Englishman stopped whipping our friend, gasping from exertion, while Pierre winced in miserable pain. Cecil’s one eye glittered with terrible madness, a tormented fury completely different than the passion of Magnus Bloodhammer.

  ‘I am not a patient man, Ethan Gage,’ Cecil said, wheezing. ‘The Rite knows what the Templars were trying to assemble, while you’ve no idea. Give it up, whatever you’ve found, and you make the world a better place. You can have this snivelling frog and this entire cursed prairie! I leave you and the savages to it! Give it over and we can be friends again.’ He tried to smile, but the disfigurement made it a grimace. ‘Maybe I’ll give you my sister again.’

  ‘Don’t believe him,’ Magnus hissed.

  ‘Of course not. This bunch even cheats at dice.’ I called to the Englishman, ‘It would help if your sister stopped aiming at me!’

  ‘Then lower your own gun, Gage! Save your friend! It’s time to be civilised again! What’s past is past!’ Again, the hideous grin.

  ‘Send Pierre and I’ll stand easy!’

  ‘Stand, and we’ll send Pierre!’

  Aurora swung her gun away. I lowered mine. Cecil gave a push, and Pierre staggered towards us. Then the voyageur stopped.

  ‘They’ve killed me already,’ he croaked. ‘I’m ready for the next life, Ethan. Don’t give up whatever it is you have. These are evil people and must not have it.’

  His words hung in the air, all of us frozen by his refusal to advance farther.

  Then everything happened at once.

  Aurora snarled, swung her gun upward, and fired into the Frenchman’s back. As his knees buckled Little Frog screamed in outrage, fired, missed, and I thought she might charge, but instead she threw down her musket and bolted to our burrow. Namida shot, too, and one of the Indians went down.

  I’d fallen flat, just in time to avoid a volley of Indian bullets and arrows that thunked into the titanic tree, but Magnus grunted and spun as at least one shot clipped him. Namida dropped to reload, too. Then, as Lord Somerset fell on Pierre and brandished his broken sword to take the Frenchman’s scalp, I raised myself on my elbows and fired into the monster’s chest, a bullet I suspect he half wished for. Cecil pitched backward, his broken sword flying from his hand.

  Aurora shrieked in renewed fury.

  Magnus was running at her silently, lifting his axe despite his wound.

  Then the earth heaved.

  It was as if a wave bucked the tree and the ground rolled. Sheets of lightning far bigger than anything we’d seen before rippled overhead, sparking as it struck the branches, and there was a wail of agony behind so chilling that I froze. It was Little Frog, screaming! Namida was terrified, clinging to a root like the rail of a ship, and Yggdrasil, or whatever the devil this overgrown twig was, rocked and swayed, loosened roots making pops and burps like a giant smacking its lips. Was it an earthquake? Magnus was thrown to his knees by the lurch, and Aurora, her gun empty, was crawling desperately away in the grass.

  All the Indians except Red Jacket were shouting and backing away.

  Then Little Frog burst from the hole, clothes smoking, and rushed past me towards Magnus, crying something in her tongue.

  She was wielding the hammer!

  Her arm was horribly blistered and swollen, and her charge was more like a stagger. She’d paid some terrible price to reach within the cage of roots and wire to snatch the weapon to avenge her lover, Pierre, and when she did the entire tree had quaked. She fell and slid on the grass, her grasp coming loose, and the hammer skidded away from her. The Indians froze, looking in wonder at a weapon that glowed as if it had come from the forge. Now Red Jacket was charging with his tomahawk, knowing our guns were empty. I yanked out my own hatchet. We’d finish this as I should have when he kicked me at Rendezvous.

  I wouldn’t have come close to Thor’s hammer, but Magnus snatched it up with a bellow, screaming in pain as its energy coursed through him. He seemed to swell in stature, his beard and hair jutting out from electrical force, his own hand scorching at the touch. Yet even as he cried out he lifted the weapon skyward, spinning it in a crazed circle.

  The sky erupted with fire. Lightning cracked in an arcing circle around the crown of the tree, bolt
after bolt, some striking Yggdrasil but others lancing down to spots on the ground. Wind howled and then screamed, and clouds that had been merely menacing before began to boil and churn. The Indians scattered except for Red Jacket, who remorselessly chopped at Little Frog as he darted by, staving her temple with vicious efficiency. She dropped, instantly dead. I crouched, ready for him. And then Magnus threw the hammer and lightning blazed where we stood.

  Namida and I were hurled back against the trunk of the ash as if punched, and Magnus reeled backward too. But the force of the bolts struck Red Jacket head-on with such searing power that it stopped his charge as if he’d hit an invisible wall, freezing him in agony as energy sizzled like a corona. His coat burst into flames. Then his eyes boiled and jutted, his tongue swelled like a loaf of bread, and he was kicked backward a dozen feet, his moccasins flying off.

  Thor’s hammer had worked!

  The mystical tool flew back into Magnus’s hands through some weird magnetism between weapon and wielder. The Norwegian caught it with an agonised yell. Bloodhammer seemed infused with electricity himself, clothes smoking, hammer, sky, and tree crackling with attractant charges, he gave a great shout of agony and swung in a circle, a sheet of energy roiling out of the hammer head and blasting into the grass. Fire sprang up all around the tree, a circular wall of flame, and what Indians hadn’t been killed by the searing charge were running for their lives. Now Magnus was howling in agony, twisting about, and with his final strength he leant back and hurled the hammer straight up, as far as he could throw, the weapon turning over and over in the air.

  The sky exploded.

  Lightning bolts shot from a dozen directions to converge on the hammer and collide with a colossal clap of thunder. It was a slap of sound, momentarily deafening me, and everything went white and then dark again, the hammer falling back towards Magnus and then bouncing off the ground because none of us dared touch it anymore. It radiated energy like a weapon snatched from the sun. It was sizzling, boiling away. Magnus staggered back against the bark of the tree, shot, burnt, pained, stunned, and with his arms up against the curtain of fire he’d ignited.

  The sky went black and the only illumination was from the grass fire devouring the meadow around the tree, burning both in towards us and out towards the fleeing Dakota. Through the shimmering heat and smoke I could see Aurora, waving her empty weapon and cursing as the flames caught the grass around her. As my hearing returned I could hear her call my name and promising to meet me in hell. Then the smoke was too much, the flames lit the lower branches of Yggdrasil, and it seemed we’d set a holocaust to consume ourselves.

  We’d ignited Ragnarok, end of the world.

  CHAPTER FOURTY-TWO

  ‘Under the tree,’ Magnus croaked. His beard was smoking. ‘Down below, to save our lives!’

  We retreated down the tunnel of tusks to the chamber we’d been in before, this time without the hammer suspended in its cage of wire and roots. The wires were smoking now, the tree shuddering with convulsions overhead, and Magnus looked horribly burnt.

  ‘Little Frog snatched it to avenge Pierre,’ Namida said shakily.

  ‘And half killed herself doing it,’ I amended. Smoke began to follow us down the tunnel. The heat was growing. ‘We haven’t found Eden, Magnus, we’ve found hell.’ I automatically, without thinking, began reloading the rifle that seemed welded to my fist. How many times had it saved my life?

  ‘No, no, this is paradise, I know it!’ Magnus gasped. ‘The hammer was the apple, we should never have touched it! But the sky god’s power is still here – we are connected to heaven by a wire! It will work, Ethan, it will still work!’

  ‘What will work?’ The giant was even crazier than before.

  ‘It will resurrect Signe!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the tree of life, Ethan, that’s what the Norse Templars were looking for! They were searching for the remnant of Eden and the youth of the world that it still might contain! The hammer was a seed, to collect the sky’s energy, and the tree a machine of rejuvenation! They didn’t have the time to make it work before they were overwhelmed by the Indians, but it’s been growing for four and a half centuries. Now, Ethan, now, I can bring her back!’

  ‘Bring back your dead wife?’

  ‘With my child in her womb!’

  And in triumph, he held up the map case. ‘Don’t you wonder why I carried this across the prairie with no map?’ With burnt, smoking fingers, he winced as he tore the end of it open. ‘The texts are ambiguous, but I think they imply resurrection. That, or oblivion. I never loved anyone else, Ethan, never for a moment, not like Signe!’ And he dropped into his palm a cup of grey powder. His eyes gleamed. ‘Her ashes! Didn’t I tell you it’s the greatest treasure on earth?’

  ‘No! What do you mean to do?’

  ‘Stand back, both of you! I’m going into the cage with her and grasp the wire, but this time I think it will heal! So promise the old texts!’

  ‘Magnus, that’s insane!’

  ‘The electricity will reconstitute her! Why else would the Templars build this?’

  ‘Cecil said it was for some purpose we don’t know!’

  ‘The Somersets are the blind ones, in a dark cellar with jewels they cannot find.’ He smiled. ‘Signe and I will finally be together one way or another. I’m going to be a conduit for the lightning. I’m going to touch the finger of God! Get back, in case it doesn’t work.’

  ‘Magnus, Signe can’t be resurrected!’

  ‘You think I care about this life if she can’t?’ And he reached like a madman towards the web of root and wire, grasping towards the rod that ran to the top of the tree. For the first time since I’d met him, he seemed at peace. Odin the one-eyed had finally found what he roamed the world for.

  I fled.

  As I hauled Namida back up the smoking tunnel, I saw him reach for the wire as Adam reached for the Almighty. ‘Come back, lost love!’ His fist squeezed the ashes.

  And then there was a roar, a world-wrenching sound that dwarfed that of the lightning before, and I suppose our hearing was saved only because the clap brought down on Namida and me a roof of earth as the tunnel and its tusks collapsed on top of us. Magnus had triggered the apocalypse, and everything was snuffed out in an instant. We were buried alive, in ground that shook like a wet dog.

  I clung to the Indian woman I’d dragged to this hell, cursing that I hadn’t followed my own instincts. I was to be entombed in a nameless prairie, never to report on woolly elephants, British scheming, or the sexual charm of aboriginal maidens!

  And then, as Magnus had promised, we were resurrected.

  Not in the biblical way. Rather, the earth erupted, carrying us up with it as a root ball as wide as a village was ripped out of the ground. First there was terrifying, suffocating blackness as the tunnel caved in, and then the light of our explosive rebirth, a tumult of earth, rock, and wood as roots flailed and soil flew up in great geysers of flying dirt. I dimly heard and felt a titanic crash of thousands of tons of wood striking the ground, shaking the earth even more. Then bits of burning foliage rained down out of a storm-tossed sky like little candles, lighting a gloom of dust and cloud. I spat soil and gasped for breath.

  Finally it was quiet except for the hissing of a gentle rain. Or was that ringing in my ears?

  Shakily, I sat up. Namida and I were black with earth, coughing, clawing it out of our ears, eyes streaming. My rifle jutted from the mess like a dirty stake. We were in a crater big enough to make a respectable lake. The great ash tree, our modern Yggdrasil, had been blown skyward by Magnus’s rash experiment and had fallen, flaming, to earth. It stretched a quarter-mile across the prairie, flames boiling from its branches. As it toppled it left a hole where the roots had been. Its root pan formed a vast disk and individual roots jutted two hundred feet high into the air, while the weight of its trunk had hammered a depression into the ground. Cracks in the earth radiated away from the trench where it had fallen.

>   The greatest tree on the face of the planet had been killed.

  Of Magnus there was no sign. The cave was gone, of course, obliterated in the explosion and toppling. So was the cage of roots and wire, Signe’s ashes, and the Norwegian himself. He had connected with Valhalla, and vanished.

  Maybe the couple found a common grave in the pit of the tree’s crater. Maybe they were vaporized by the energy they harnessed. Maybe they were remade in some better place.

  And me? As always, I was left in this bitter world.

  Oblivion from sorrow, I realised, was Bloodhammer’s real Eden. He wanted an end to his mourning, one way or another – and had got it. Norway, royalty, treasure? In the end it didn’t matter. Magnus had found the paradise of being subsumed.

  Namida and I crawled from the crater to its rim, shaking. I dragged my now-battered rifle with us, knocking soil from the muzzle mouth, and used it to shakily lever myself erect. Then I helped up the Indian woman.

  The grass fire at the tree’s base had consumed all the fuel and burnt itself out, leaving behind a smoking ring. Fires still radiating out from its periphery were dying in the drizzle. We found the bodies of Little Frog and Pierre and Cecil in the bare ground under the tree where the fire hadn’t reached, and the smoked, charcoal husk of Red Jacket. Several other blackened corpses lay in the devastated meadow. Of the rest of the Dakota, and Aurora Somerset, there was no sign.

  I did find the hammer, curiously inert and shrunken. Much of its weight had evaporated in our apocalypse. The husk remaining was dull grey now, a lump of iron, no longer hot to the touch. Our wayward use had disarmed it.

  ‘Thor’s hammer, he called it,’ said Namida, looking at the weapon in wonder.

  ‘Just old metal, now.’

  ‘There are some things men shouldn’t find.’ She began to weep for her lost friends.

  I looked skyward. The storm clouds had flattened to a sullen overcast, and the rain began in earnest.

  CHAPTER FOURTY-THREE