Death & the Viking's Daughter

by Loretta Ross

  “He’d talk if you could push him on it,” Edgar said. “You’d have to get him away from his father or shock him into blurting it out.”

  Salvy sighed. “I’m open to ideas. Gentlemen?”

  Death cocked his head to the side. He could hear Wren’s voice over a loudspeaker from the depths of the building, not clear enough to make out the words but just definite enough to reassure him she was there.

  “Even crazy ideas?” he asked.

  “How crazy?”

  “Well, it was Randy’s …”

  Sunday night was cold and clear. Trees rustled as Wren passed in the darkness. Dew glittered in the light from her cell phone and a light mist rose out of the hollow. Wings shushed softly overhead and an owl spoke in passing.

  The pocket on her dress was anachronistic, but she needed a place to carry her phone. The night, under the trees, was pitch black and eerie, especially when she passed the place on the trail where Bob—or Trevor—had lain dead for so many seasons. At the edge of the woods she paused to rearrange her garments, and then she stepped out onto the lakeshore.

  A waxing gibbous moon rose over the water and cast its reflection toward her in wind-driven ripples. On the opposite shore, way off in the distance, she could see a handful of yard lights like a scattering of low-lying stars. They were still waiting for rain, and the remains of the old highway had risen above the surface of the lake. It made a ragged, narrow black spear tracing across the silver water.

  Wren wore a long white shift and a dark blue overdress. A braided blonde wig hid her red hair. A veil on a flowered circlet topped off the costume. Randy had suggested bloodstains made of red ink or colored syrup. Death had vetoed that, and instead had sprayed her lightly, just in patches, with light blue fluorescent paint.

  Across the water she could see flames rising from the Vikings’ bonfire and hear ancient music and voices raised in song.

  Her cell phone shivered in her pocket. She took it out and read the text message from Death: Benders are here. Go when ready.

  Stowing it again, she took a deep breath and walked along the dead, frozen grass to the point where the road began.

  It was cold. Wren wore sweats beneath her costume and kept her hands inside her sleeves. There was ice on the worn surface of the road and a thin glaze of it floating in shards on top of the lake. The berm surrounding the roadway had eroded badly and the road itself was almost gone in places. She paced it carefully, watching where she placed each step. The lake opened out on either side, surrounding her and isolating her.

  She felt like she was walking on water. She felt that if she looked down, she’d sink.

  Near the middle she came to a place where the path across the water was barely wider than the width of her shoe. Black wavelets floating with slush lapped at the edges and reached for her feet, and the lake around her seemed bottomless. Stars reflected off the waves.

  The entire distance, from one shore to the other, was slightly less than the length of a football field. She was about two thirds of the way when her vantage point shifted and she could see the longboat, tied up at the primitive dock. A path led from the boat to the village and a dark figure was walking along that path, head down.

  If all was going according to plan, that figure should be Henry Bender, walking toward the boat to retrieve a cloak. One of the young girls who’d been playing the pipes the night before—who also happened to be Jacob Larsen’s daughter—was supposed to ask Henry to get it for her.

  When asked about the body in the woods, Henry had told Salvy that he didn’t know who “she” was. For whatever reason, he obviously thought they’d found Ingrid. The idea behind Wren playing ghost was simply to shock him into admitting to whatever part he’d played in the events of that long-ago day.

  Wren hurried her step, getting closer. Wanting to see Henry’s face when he turned and saw her. She watched him climb aboard the longboat, a moving shadow in the night. He stooped, came up with a drape of dark fabric over his arm, and moved to return to the gathering.

  She knew the instant he spotted her. He froze, one foot in the boat and one on the dock, and his face was whiter than her skirts. She came closer, but not too close. Not enough for him to see her as she really was. Light from the fluorescent paint shimmered along her arm and up the side of her skirts and danced along her blonde braids.

  Henry made a sound deep in his throat, like a wounded animal moaning in distress.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered. “No. Oh, please, God. No. Oh, no.”

  Wren made her voice as thin and ghostly as she could. “Henry!” she called. “Henry, why?”

  Given his habit of hiding his face and his willingness to flee from the sheriff, she was expecting him to collapse, or to break and run.

  Henry threw the girl’s cloak aside and drew a long sword.

  Wren froze. “Uh oh.”

  He staggered toward her, waving the weapon in front of himself unsteadily. “Undead spirit, still you haunt me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! But you have to stay dead!”

  Wren turned and fled back the way she’d come. With an anguished bellow, Henry charged after her.

  The dark sliver of roadway was slick and treacherous beneath her feet. She stumbled and skittered over the frozen potholes, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t turn an ankle or fall in the icy lake. She was young and healthy and athletic, and Henry was middle-aged and out of shape, but he ran with a madness upon him.

  He was less than ten yards behind her. She could hear his footsteps pounding on the wet asphalt and his ragged, heaving breaths.

  Shouting trailed after them. There had been quite a few people watching their encounter, hidden in the boathouse and within the shadow of the dark trees. Both of the Bogart brothers were there, and Neils and Jacob Larsen and Salvy and Orlando Jackson.

  They were all giving chase now, but none were close enough to intervene in this bizarre and deadly footrace.

  Wren reached the opposite shore and left the roadway, heading for the shelter of the woods. Her foot slipped on the wet grass and she went down to one knee.

  Henry’s sword sliced past, just missing her head, and plunged into the ground beside her hand. Wren swore and dragged herself up, gathered her skirts, and dove down the game trail and into the ravine where Trevor Burt had died.

  It was dark under the trees. As dark as if someone had spilled India ink over the world. The phosphorescent paint on her costume shimmered, looking more ghostly than ever, like random streaks of glowing ectoplasm. Henry saw them and ran toward her, then tripped and fell hard.

  Wren splashed across the creek, put herself behind a tree, and called out to him.

  “Henry! What did you do? You know my secrets. What did you do?”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” He was sobbing. She could hear it in his voice, and when a stray moonbeam found its way through the branches, his face shone with tears. “You should have kept your mouth shut. You should have minded your own business. It wasn’t my fault.”

  He tracked her to the tree she was hiding behind. She could hear the others drawing closer, the sheriff shouting for him to halt and drop his weapon. Henry wasn’t listening. Perhaps he wasn’t even really there, in the present, but rather was back on that July day in 1978.

  Wren backed away, trying to put distance between them, and her foot caught on a vine. She fell back hard and suddenly Henry was right there, standing over her, raising his sword in both hands with the tip of the blade pointed straight down. If he brought his arms down, he’d stab her through the heart.

  “I’m sorry, but you have to stay dead,” he said.

  “Oh, God,” Wren breathed. She knew now why wild rabbits would freeze in the face of danger. Staring up at her own mortality, she couldn’t move.

  The winter-bare branches rustled above her head, and then Death was there. He’d found her, but he’d come in at an
angle that put him too far away to stop Henry. He simply threw himself on top of Wren, putting his own body between her and the deadly blade. As soon as he did, the paralysis of fear gave way to panic. Wren fought him, desperate to roll him out of the way. He was holding her down, as determined to save her as she was to protect him.

  She had a sense of movement in the darkness, a swish of weaponry cutting through the trees, and then there came the ring of metal on metal.

  Another figure had joined them on the creekbank. The night hid its identity, but whoever it was was also armed with a sword and was swinging it at Henry Bender with the abandonment of fury.

  The newcomer attacked Henry, slashing at him again and again. Bender countered the attacks, but the force of the blows drove him back. There was shouting all around them now. Wren could hear Salvy and Orlando Jackson ordering the combatants to stop, and Randy, with an air of desperation, calling out for his brother and for her.

  As the battle moved a little ways away, Wren relaxed and cradled Death in her arms. He must have run all the way, and he was gasping for air.

  “Who is that?” she whispered.

  He lifted his shoulders a little.

  “You bastard!” The second fighter was a man, but his voice was a low growl, so thick with fury that Wren couldn’t immediately identify it. “You lowly, sniveling, cowardly little bastard. What did you do to my sister, you son of a bitch?”

  “It’s Jacob Larsen,” Wren said, surprised. “Jacob! Don’t kill him! He has to tell us what he knows.”

  Jacob swung his blade again and again Henry countered the move.

  “My sister’s blood is crying out for vengeance!”

  There was a quick, sharp flash of blue-white light and an electric buzzing sound. Henry froze suddenly and started to shake. Violent shivers ran through him from head to toe. He dropped his sword, fell to the ground, and lay there twitching.

  Jacob lowered his own weapon in shock. “Thor?” he breathed. “Did he get struck by lightning?”

  Orlando Jackson stepped around the nearest tree. “Not exactly. I tasered his ass.”

  “… And then I caught Death and Wren making out in the woods.”

  “Henry was chasing me with a sword,” Wren protested. “Death saved my life!”

  “Maybe,” Randy said. “But I’m the one telling this story and in my version, I caught you making out in the woods.”

  Wren’s dad had turned up in Salvy’s boat. Apparently he’d been waiting just around the point in case they needed him. He was ferrying them back across the lake to the Viking settlement, and Randy was catching him up on what had happened while they were out of his sight.

  Edgar pulled up to the Viking’s dock and Randy jumped out and tied up the boat. He helped Wren out and they both tried to help Death, even though he scowled at them and slapped at their hands.

  Henry was moving on his own again, though still a little shaky from the Taser. He was cuffed, with his hands behind his back, and Salvy and Orly lifted him bodily to the solid wooden dock. Edgar and Jacob joined them and they moved toward the shore.

  “It’s damned cold out here,” Salvy said. “Let’s take this party up to the fire.”

  When they entered the circle of firelight, everyone there stood to meet them except for Claudio Bender. He was sitting in a clear space, in an elaborate, wheeled wooden chair that was decorated like a throne. The officers lowered Henry to a seat on the nearest bench. He had his eyes closed tight and was mumbling under his breath.

  Wren went to kneel in front of him, Death at her side.

  “I’m not Ingrid. Okay? You can look at me. It’s all right. My name is Wren. I’m not Ingrid. I’m just wearing a costume.”

  “Sheriff, this is an outrage,” Claudio seethed. “My lawyers—”

  “Right now your son is in custody for assault with a deadly weapon,” the sheriff said. “I’ve read him his rights under the Miranda act, but I haven’t formally charged him yet. If you’d rather wait until it’s official, I’m sure I can come up with a lot more counts to add to the tally.” Salvy cut a look at Claudio. “If I get a search warrant for your properties, how many stolen items will I find?”

  Claudio huffed indignantly. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Someone whose arrest would make front page news?” Death guessed. He grinned. “Your cousin wants his painting back, by the way. The girl you told to put the envelopes in the lab techs’ lockers can identify your son.”

  The old man deflated. “You’re raving mad,” he whispered, sinking back into his seat.

  “Maybe. Just shut up now.” Death turned back to Henry. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”

  Henry moved his mouth but no sound came out. In that instant he looked older than his father.

  “How about this,” Death suggested. “How about I tell you what I know and you can fill in the blanks for me. Will that work?”

  Henry hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

  “Okay,” Death said. “I figure it went like this …”

  twenty-one

  “It was the summer of 1978,” Death said, “and you were twenty years old. You’d been going to a prestigious private university, but you got caught trying to smuggle a rare book out of the special collections room at the library. They didn’t prosecute but you got expelled.” One of Neils Larsen’s colleagues had known this part of the story. “You also got kicked out of your fraternity and barred for life.” He regarded the shivering man with sympathy. “That must have been difficult for you.”

  Henry laughed bitterly. When he finally spoke, his voice was thin and whispery. “At the time, I thought it was the end of my life.”

  “You still had a good chance at getting accepted at another college, but you needed to make up your lost course credits, so you moved back home and enrolled in summer classes at the University of Cincinnati. In late July, your father came down here to meet with a group of University of Missouri faculty members about a potential archaeological dig in Belgium. But you had classes, so you stayed back in Southgate. Right?”

  Henry nodded. A log popped on the fire. The crowd around them was silent, hanging on his every word. Wren, sitting next to him, smelled like shampoo and spray paint.

  “But it wasn’t all bad,” Death continued. “That last weekend a traveling Renaissance festival came to town. It must have sounded like fun. You went on Saturday. Did Trevor go with you?”

  “Yes.” The word was barely audible.

  “Did you dress up for it?”

  Henry nodded again.

  “As a Viking, right? But you had something extra as part of your costume. Something you weren’t supposed to have.”

  “It was only eleventh century,” Henry said, voice hoarse. “Barely even in the Viking era. They weren’t even certain it was authentic. One of the professors thought it was a sixteenth-century reproduction.”

  “What was it?” This was the one thing Death hadn’t been able to figure out.

  “A dagger. Just a dagger. Probably part of a dowry.”

  “A dagger. Right. A dagger that belonged in the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri. Yes?”

  Henry studied the backs of his hands. “I know.”

  “So you’re walking around the faire, you and Trevor—he had problems of his own, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. A woman said … something.”

  “She said he tried to rape her.”

  “Yeah. She said that. I wasn’t there.”

  “But you bailed him out.”

  “He was my friend.”

  Death exchanged a glance with Salvy. “Weren’t you worried then that he’d jump bail and leave you out that money?”

  Henry shrugged. “I have lots of money.”

  “But only one friend?”

  He hesitated for a long minute, then no
dded once, reluctantly. “Yeah.”

  “So you went to the faire. And there was a girl there. A pretty girl?”

  Henry stared into the fire but his eyes were distant and Death knew that, whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t the flames. “Yes,” he whispered. “She was. She really was.”

  “And she was dressed as a Viking too. So you went over to talk to her. Maybe try to impress her a little? Were you wearing the dagger where she could see it? Or did you show it to her?”

  “I showed it to her,” Henry said. “God help us all. I showed her the damned thing.”

  “And that’s where it all fell apart. Because Ingrid Larsen had spent the previous year doing volunteer work with the Museum of Art and Archaeology. And she loved everything about Vikings, too. I’ll bet she knew every single Viking artifact in that museum.”

  “She helped restore the handle,” Henry said. “She recognized it right away. And she knew who I was.”

  “Did she threaten to expose you?”

  “She was so angry. She acted like I’d stolen it from her. It was all we could do to keep her from screaming it out right there in the middle of the faire.”

  “So you decided to ask your father for advice.”

  Henry nodded again, a jerky, reluctant motion

  “How did you convince her to come with you to Missouri?”

  He fiddled with the hem of his cloak. “Trevor helped,” he said. “Trevor made her. I gave him money so he could run away and start a new life somewhere and he said he’d help me first.”

  “Did he threaten her?” Salvy asked.

  “Yes. With the dagger. We walked out of the gate together and got in my car and drove to the airport. I didn’t ever mean to hurt her,” he said. “I only wanted to ask my dad what to do. I thought maybe we could say she stole it. We talked about that in the plane. People would have believed it if we said it. It would’ve been just her word against the two of us. And I’m Henry Bender and she was just a girl.”