Ulrik understood the bird’s selfish hunger.
If they didn’t find food soon, things would become dire.
23
After crossing a river which had provided water, but no fish, Val called a halt to the day’s travel. “We need to find some food,” she said. “Anders, please see what you and Skjold can find. Even small creatures will help us.”
They made a small camp not too far from the bank of the river, in a stand of trees, where they would not be seen by anyone or anything that passed. Then several of them scoured for naturally growing vegetables and wild berries, while Ulrik and Morten attempted to make a fishing net out of a blanket, stringing it across the low river. They had tied ropes to the four corners, with Morten standing and holding the thin cords on one bank and Ulrik on the other.
The group spent hours searching and coming up with little. Val went into the next village with Nils and Stig on the ATVs, and they once again found a deserted pile of rubble that had once been homes.
“Again, nothing,” Nils said. Val could tell by the tone of his voice he was only commenting on their misfortune. The complaining would begin later.
Stig said nothing. He had grown more serious about their mission, and Val thought he was attempting to fill the void left by poor Trond. Although Stig was shorter, he was still a powerful man, and she was glad to have his brawn on the team. She had begun to trust him more, although not as much as she relied on Ulrik.
A small handful of berries grew on vines tangled around a pile of plastic fencing. She picked them. But the amount of fruit would not even fill her own slim stomach. The men with her required five to six times the amount of food she consumed—and Stig twice as much again.
“Anything we find will help,” she said softly.
“Val, we have looked,” Stig said, compassion in his eyes. “We are doing our part, but there is no food to be found. We need to move from this barren area. You have led us this far. You can lead us away from here. Perhaps it is time to consider a direction besides due south?”
It was the most the sturdy man had said to her in weeks, and the admission of his faith in her leadership was a surprise. But then she realized it had been some time since she had heard him siding with Morten on any issue.
Low fields surrounded them, but the area had not been farmed in generations, and while the soil looked good, all it grew now were wild grasses.
“My stomach groans,” Nils said.
Stig knew better than to complain about how hungry he was.
“Let us go back and see what the boys have captured from the river,” Val said. She was feeling as dejected as Nils and Stig. She had been eating less than she needed so the others could have enough. Her muscles ached, and when she stood up or sat down too quickly, her vision blurred and she felt lightheaded—once nearly falling over.
Val led the way back to camp, trying hard to not think about food, but failing. When they entered the camp, they found a lumpy shape wrapped in a large tan blanket. It was not the blanket the men had used for fishing, but the one they usually laid on the ground as a tarp for their camp. Val approached the misshapen lump and tugged the edge of the rough blanket away.
Beneath it was a dead buck. If it were standing, its shoulders would have reached as high as Val’s. She turned to Nils and Stig with a huge grin on her face as she poked a finger in the deep arrow hole just behind the dead animal’s neck.
“Anders has come through for us,” she said.
Nils and Stig both whooped.
“Start to prepare it, and get it over a fire. I will go and see how Morten and Ulrik have fared with the fish. I think we will all eat well tonight.”
Val walked toward the river. She was feeling happy for the first time since before they had encountered the massive bear. A good meal would turn around morale and set them back on the path. She wanted to make good distance in the coming weeks, so they would be past the southern German mountains by the time winter gripped the land.
At the river, Morten and Ulrik were walking toward her, dragging the soaking wet blanket between them. Both men were covered in mud and dripping wet.
“Any luck?” she asked, unable to hide her grin. The looks they gave her in return answered for them. “It is of no concern. Anders took a huge buck. No one will be hungry tonight.”
They walked back to the camp, where Nils and Stig had just finished skinning the animal. Ulrik set up a spit, while Morten made a large fire pit.
In no time they were smelling the deep rich scent of cooking meat, and their mouths were salivating at the thought of it.
The meat was ready as Anders, Erlend and Oskar returned to the camp. They all looked surprised at the spectacular feast awaiting them.
“But...” Anders began. “Who caught this monstrous deer?”
Val squinted at the man. “We thought you shot it.”
Anders shook his head. “I have seen nothing all day. I did not fire even one arrow today.”
Val and Anders looked to each of the others in turn, but they all shook their heads.
“Who in the nine worlds left the bloody deer here, then?” Val demanded.
She felt the hackles on the back of her neck raise. Without a word, they formed a circle around the camp, hands reaching for weapons. They remained that way for a long time, waiting for an attack that never came. By the time they ate, the meat was blackened, and tasted like the dread they felt in their stomachs.
Someone was watching them, observing from afar. And apparently, whoever it was, the person was a far better hunter than Anders. They discussed the problem softly for hours, with three of them always on guard at any given time. They would need to take shifts throughout the night.
“Why would they leave the food for us?” Erlend asked. “You said it was covered, Val?”
She grunted an affirmative. The conversation and speculation had continued, but she was ready for sleep.
“So obviously, whoever left it there did so on purpose, and wanted us to eat,” Oskar said. “They even covered the deer to keep the flies away.”
“What I want to know is how our mysterious benefactor could find and shoot such a huge buck, when—no offense, Anders—we have not seen a single animal in days.” Morten ran his fingers through his shaggy blonde hair. Without the gel or animal fat he had used to slick it, back when they were in Stavanger, it had become wild and uncontrolled. Most of them could use some grooming.
The fire crackled near the great blanket—they had cleaned the buck’s blood from it—and most of them reclined on it, the smoke from the flames rising up and away from them. They had considered not using a fire at all, but Nils had observed that their spy already knew exactly where they were.
“How this person could catch a deer when we cannot, is the only part of this mystery I have solved,” Ulrik said, lying down and rolling to his side, pulling his blanket over him.
“How?” Morten asked.
“Easy,” Ulrik said. “Whoever he is, he does not have an ATV with a loud, buzzing motor to scare away the game.”
24
A month passed, and despite being perpetually on guard, they caught no glimpse of their mysterious assistant. But when food was scarce, they found game left for them near the camp or along their path.
Val nicknamed the person ‘Ull,’ the god of the hunt. She had no illusions that it was an actual god helping them. She knew it was a human—and a man by the tracks he sometimes left in mud. She was sure he was alone, too. But they had been unable to find him. After a while, Val had given up on it. Ull had his reasons for hiding, and would reveal them when he was ready.
They had discussed the possibility that the food was poisoned that first night, but if it had been, none of them had gotten sick—and cooking the meat thoroughly would have killed many illnesses. So they were cautious, but they stopped being paranoid.
Ull seemed content to follow them from a distance. Perhaps making certain we are not here to kill him or anyone else we find, Val though
t. She was aware of how they looked, this rag-tag group of avenging Northmen on their strange motorized mounts.
They were a few miles to the south and east of Frankfurt when their food shortage problem ended for good. A wooden, painted sign at the side of the road read: Waldaschaffer Forest. The Vikings drove into the gloom cast by huge, looming trees lining and arching up over the road, forming a natural tunnel. The road itself was bumpy and potholed—a result of decades of frost and thaw, and no one to maintain it. Trees grew from cracks in the ancient asphalt. Many were shorter than a foot, and easily knocked down by the ATVs. Others were five or six feet tall, and as thin as a broom handle, but strong enough to stop one of the quads or knock a rider from his saddle.
Two slow miles later, the road widened a bit, and the trees fell away to reveal a huge valley, surrounded on all sides by yet more forest. In the middle of the valley were the crescent-shaped ruins of an ancient town. Beyond the rubble, strange, brownish blobs filled the fields.
Val thought they were huge boulders until she saw them move. Then she realized they were animals. A massive herd of them, spreading out farther than she had ever seen.
“Cows,” Oskar said, pleased with the find.
“No,” Ulrik said, his voice grim. He pulled his ax from its holster on his ATV, and stepped off the quad.
“What are they?” Val asked him, drawing her own ax.
“Pigs. If they stay calm, we should be able to slaughter a few and reach the far side. But if they are angry and stampede?”
“We will take to the trees if need be,” she said. “The forest has acted as a natural boundary, penning them in this valley.”
“Yes,” he said. “But look at the size of the herd. They seem to be eating well. The real question is whether the herd is tended or if they just found each other.”
“Well, we need some of those animals. We cannot continue to rely on our friend, the ghost.”
The valley was a mile across, with the road running straight through the middle of it. The crescent-shaped ruins that nature had mostly reclaimed, sat to the left of the road. They saw nothing to indicate that the herd was tended by humans, but people had ingenious ways of hiding.
“We go off-road, sticking close to the forest, where we will have cover,” Val said.
“It is a good plan,” Ulrik said.
She steered her ATV off the road and down into a wide pale green field on their right, then raced along the edge of the field, never further than a few feet from the safety of the trees. Ulrik followed her, and the others went after him one by one, wary and eyeing the distant herd of animals.
Their caravan had made it halfway along the perimeter of the valley when the smell hit them. The wretched scent of feces, mud and rotting vegetation was so all-encompassing that Val thought she could feel it not only in her nose, but crawling on her skin.
“It is like a fire giant’s ass crack,” Stig shouted.
The mass of distant pink and brown pigs turned almost as one creature at the sound of a raised human voice. The buzzing engines of the quad-bikes had not even raised a single porcine head. But the spoken words of a human being had the entire herd turning together, like a flock of birds.
The stampede threw up a cloud of rich brown dirt and dust as it barreled across the wide open fields. Val figured they had less than a minute. “Into the trees,” she shouted, but realized no one would hear her over the grunting and shrieking of the oncoming mass of thundering animals. She turned her ATV into the trees and drove several feet into the forest before parking behind a thick oak.
The others retreated into the dense woods, as she ran back to the edge, her long ax in hand. She pointed up to the last stragglers—Morten and Oskar—intending that they take to the trees to avoid the pigs.
But Morten was spoiling for a fight, and Oskar, as ever, was beside his cousin.
Val was about to argue with them when she noticed Ulrik and Stig were both gearing up for the fight as well.
Okay, she thought. We need the meat anyway. Let us kill some pigs.
She crouched down, ready to swing her blade down into the sow rushing toward her. The hairy ridge of the creature’s back reached four feet from the ground, and it was seven feet long. But the large beasts did not have tusks. She thanked the gods for that small favor. It was the raw velocity and weight of the animals that made them dangerous. They rushed in a frenzied stampede with no coordination or ability to turn. Val expected many would run into trees and knock themselves unconscious.
With seconds to spare, Val switched strategies, hauling the handle of her ax above her head and leaping in the air. She brought the ax head down with devastating effect, her body weight driving it into the pig’s thick neck.
Then the beast rammed her falling legs, flipping her onto its back. She clung to the ax wedged into the pig and was carried away, as the creature plowed into the forest.
25
Ulrik saw Val clinging to the sow’s back. Then she was gone, carried deeper into the forest. He had his own problems. Three large, tuskless boars were trampling toward his position.
He had seen how Val’s strategy had fared—and knew from watching her take down Vebjørn, that her ax strike was formidable. So instead of targeting the thicker parts of the animals, he crouched low and lunged out of the trees when the boars came within striking distance. His ax hummed across the field, swiping like a farmer’s scythe, and slicing into the front legs of all three animals. The severed legs skittered to the right as momentum carried the animals forward. They plowed their faces into the dirt at his feet, skidding to a halt.
He leapt onto the back of a squealing animal, targeting the next couple of attackers. He swung down, slicing deep gouges in their flanks, but the frenzied swine kept up their frantic pace, disappearing into the trees behind him. The other men would have to deal with them.
Rather than chase the pigs, he decided to conserve energy and only attack those that came for him. Balanced atop the squirming, dying animals’ spines, he could easily evade the pigs that lunged at him, and cleave their snouts, or split their skulls.
The herd was two hundred strong, and they kept coming, jostling each other in the frenzied crush to reach the trees. Ulrik swung down again, the ax head cleaving off a pig’s ear. He kicked at the creature, pushing it back into the flow of animals pouring around his initial three victims like the sea around a rock.
He’d been worried that the pigs had rushed the group out of hunger—the animals were notorious omnivores. But now that the herd kept flowing past him and into the trees, he guessed that something had spooked them, and they were moving to what they considered safety. Perhaps to some other valley surrounded with trees, like this one. Probably near a river, he thought.
In what seemed like seconds, the last of the hulking beasts skittered into the woods. Ulrik turned to watch it go, and he realized his comrades had all fled into the forest—or been carried like Val.
The boar on which he stood had stopped its thrashing, after bleeding to death from its severed limbs, all while he had stood on its back and beaten off its brethren. He felt a pang of sympathy for the creature, but he knew he would feel no such guilt later in the night, when they feasted on blackened pork.
His present foes vanquished, Ulrik headed into the forest to find the others. He spotted Nils twenty feet up a tree on his right. The thin man was in the process of climbing down, so Ulrik continued onward, following the swath of destruction the pigs had caused in their headlong escape.
Next he found Morten, who was walking his way, carrying Oskar over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Is he hurt?” Ulrik asked.
Morten shook his head. “Knocked out by a tree, the silly bugger. But he is my cousin, so I promised his mother I would always take care of him.”
Ulrik continued past him, looking for the others. Morten turned and went with him, still carrying his cargo.
Next they found Stig, who was seated in a puddle of mud on the ground, l
ooking slightly dazed.
“Are you well, Stig?” Morten called to the man.
He started to get up off the ground with a grunt. “Only my ribs and my dignity bruised.”
Morten laughed.
Ulrik followed the trail of pressed and broken low lying branches, and the torn up muddied forest floor. Stig joined Morten, and they followed the path for another thirty minutes until they came to another wide clearing. The field was far smaller than the last and showed no signs it had ever been inhabited.
In the center of the clearing, surrounded by close to fifty pig bodies, arrayed in a twisting path of destruction, Val hacked at the skull of the last living beast. She stood astride the creature, her blade whipping down at its skull with lightning speed once...twice...and then a third time, until the animal’s bloodcurdling shriek finally ceased.
The woman was covered from her waist down in dark red pig’s blood. Above the waist, arcs of sprayed blood covered her, but none of it looked to be hers. Ulrik quickly determined she was uninjured. He smiled broadly. He had taken down three of the fleeing pigs. The others had not killed any. Val had killed dozens of them by herself.
“Still questioning her leadership?” Ulrik asked, soft enough that only Morten would hear.
“Hah. No. I am instead wondering why we even needed to be here. The woman is a storm of vengeance.”
Just at that moment Val looked up at them, her teeth gritted against the out-of-control rage that had consumed her and lent her the near superhuman strength to murder the swarm of pigs in a bloody haze. Pigs’ blood had splashed across her face, covering her white teeth in crimson gore. “Who is hungry?”
They spent several days in the larger clearing, sleeping in the crescent shaped ruins. They needed to rest after the long days with little food. Instead of traveling, they spent the time smoking meat from the pigs and tanning some of the hides, to replace damaged garments, and to make basic leather armor for some of the men.
Viking Tomorrow (The Berserker Saga Book 1) Page 11