She pulled her ax from its holster on her waist, then ran at the front of the oncoming ATV, angling to intercept him. The Hanger leaned forward and sped up, swerving even harder for the shoulder. Val adjusted course, but she wouldn’t be fast enough to get in front of him.
Behind the Hanger, she saw the others coming hard on their ATVs, and Ulrik was coming up fast on one of the motorcycles. He slid ahead of the ATVs, and then the men formed a wall of vehicles, side by side across the road. The Hanger wouldn’t be able to turn back, no matter what.
Val knew she wanted to attack the man, but she didn’t dare risk hitting Agnes with her ax, or causing them to crash. She wasn’t able to come up with a different plan, so she carried on running, and as the vehicle was nearly level with her, she leapt, one arm reaching out for Agnes, and the other swinging the ax toward both riders.
Her left arm slid between the Hanger and Agnes, grabbing the girl and tugging her off the back of the ATV. The Hanger still had a handful of the girl’s hair, which ripped clean out of her skull, spraying a thin arc of blood from where a chunk of flesh had stayed attached to the hair tugged out at the roots.
Still airborne, Val hugged the girl close with her left arm, while finishing the swing of her right arm and letting the ax fly. She saw the blade sink into the Hanger’s back, at the shoulder blades, but she was twirling and spinning through the air, with the girl’s body slamming into hers. Her vision was obscured by what was left of the girl’s long hair, and then her back made contact with the pavement.
Agnes’s weight crushed the air out of Val’s lungs, and her chest compressed, a rib painfully snapping. Her skin tingled all over, her body’s pain receptors dancing in anguish.
She threw her free arm out for balance and to stop her from rolling onto her precious cargo. Instead, they skidded on Val’s back. Her head, on the bottom of the sliding human tangle, snapped and bounced back off the ground, and then her stomach lurched. She realized their skidding journey had come to a halt.
The world was a blinding blue and green, as Val took in the spinning sky. Then as Agnes slowly raised her head up, and into Val’s view, looking down at her with wide eyes, Val realized what she was seeing.
Color.
Her goggles had been knocked off her face and down around her neck.
Agnes looked down at Val’s face, staring into the first set of green eyes the girl would have ever seen that were not in a mirror.
54
Quiet.
Val thought of the word often. It was the one she had uttered to Agnes before rolling the girl off her stomach and quickly pulling her red-lensed goggles back into place over her eyes.
“Quiet,” she had said.
Agnes had obeyed the command, and to Val’s surprise, the girl had never asked another word about it. But the look on her face had said everything about a lifetime of being ostracized, about the girl’s sense of isolation and about her shock and relief at seeing there was another person in the world like her. Val understood perfectly. Those were all the things she had felt, when she had first seen Agnes in Venice.
The Hanger had survived the ax embedded in his back, but all the fight had drained out of him, and he had simply coasted to a stop further down the road, slumped on the handlebars of his hijacked ATV.
Val approached the man and saw that Ulrik stood over him, ax at the ready. But Ulrik had thought the same way as Val had—this would be a great opportunity to find out how the Hangers had known they would be coming through the mountains after wintering in the castle. It was clear to Val that the Hangers had been lying in wait. The question was why.
“Who are you?” Val said.
The man’s reply was hostile and in German.
No problem, she thought. I have Heinrich for the German, and Ulrik’s ax for the hostility.
She called Heinrich over, and told him to pass on the message about the ax. The Hanger responded with a quieter tone.
“He says they were told we were coming through the mountains,” Heinrich translated.
“Who knows of our journey? And why would they wish to stop us?”
Heinrich translated her questions, but the Hanger made no reply.
Ulrik stepped forward and dropped the pointed tip on the end of his ax head downward, where it landed on top of the Hanger’s booted foot with a thud.
The man jerked in pain, but did not scream out. He did, however, start rambling in German. Heinrich had a hard time keeping up.
“A man named Borss contacted them by bird. They were told we were after the genetic material, and when we would be coming. The Hangers were promised a fortune if they would deliver you and Agnes back north of the mountains.”
“Wait, Heinrich. Did this Borss know of Agnes? Did they know what we were looking for?”
Heinrich translated the questions and the Hanger mumbled his answer, still not removing his head from the handlebars of the ATV.
“No,” Heinrich said. “The Hangers knew only that we were after a ‘prize’ of some sort.”
“And this Borss? I want more information on him.”
Heinrich translated, but no reply came. He looked at Val and shrugged his shoulders.
Ulrik stepped backward, swinging his ax head up and around, before allowing the blade to cleave through the Hanger’s booted foot.
The man didn’t move.
“This one is done playing,” Ulrik said before striding away.
With Agnes safe—except for some lost hair and a small flap of torn skin, which healed a few weeks later—they had recovered the stolen ATV, and with their two new motorcycles, they continued west.
They had run out of fuel for the big motorcycles before Milan, and rigged a second seat on another of the ATVs, managing eight riders on the six remaining quads. Agnes always rode with Val, who never let the girl out of her sight again.
They gave Milan and Turin wide berths, avoiding the Gasmen’s sphere of influence. With pursuit gone, and no more threats to face, the group had quickly lapsed back into their old travel routines, clearing many miles during the mornings and then scavenging for propane and hunting for food in the late afternoons.
Val’s injuries—a broken rib and some burnt flesh from road rash—were the worst they had sustained, and the sharp stabbing pains in her chest had dissipated after a few weeks, until they coalesced into just a dull throb in her chest. The bullet wound on her arm had healed faster. The other Vikings had been knocked around, but no one complained about their injuries. Nils’s jaw was swollen and purple, but even he said nothing about his pain.
Things were fine until they reached the French foothills of the mountains, and discussion turned to how they should proceed.
“The passage through the mountains is smaller here,” Nils said.
“I do not dispute that,” Ulrik countered. “I am simply saying we should return to the castle once we are on the far side of the range. It was a safe location, and we know the way. We know where to find food and water.”
“Yes, but we also know the challenges awaiting us in that direction,” Anders countered. “Are there still more of the Hangers in the foothills on the German side? More of the swastika-faced Long Knives? What about the Blue Men in Denmark? Is this Borss still hunting us?”
“Forget about Denmark,” Morten said, poking at their campfire with a long stick from where he sat on a dry log. “I have no wish to face the sea creature under the bridge again. Whichever way we return to the north, crossing the water will be our biggest challenge.”
“Morten is correct,” Ulrik conceded. “But returning along our path through Germany is at least known territory for us, whereas this plan to go through France...”
They had heard rumors of hideous creatures in France from as far away as their homeland in the North. Seafaring Northerners had brought back tales of vicious pirates patrolling the waters of the North Sea, and the English Channel. There were also horror stories to scare small children, of sea creatures that had come ashore to claim the worl
d as their own. They were alternately described as an army of monsters that moved like sharks with the legs of horses or as the bastard aborted children of the sea goddess, Ran, intent on chewing a hole in the world.
Either way, everyone was skittish about traveling through France.
Anders had suggested they make their way through France to Belgium and the Netherlands, stealing or fashioning a boat to get them to the shore of England. Then they would travel north and finally cut across to Stavanger. Ulrik favored the familiar path, and Morten had actually sided with him. Heinrich had been quiet, and Nils only contributed geographical information to the argument. Oskar seemed uninterested, as he roasted a long-legged rabbit on the fire.
Agnes slept nearby, and Val sat observing the debate. She already knew which way they would travel. Although she had collected Agnes successfully, her mission was not yet complete.
Finally, Anders turned to Val and said, “What do you think, Val? Surely the sea is the better way to return home, pirates or no.” His hooded bird slept on his shoulder.
Val stood and walked to the fire. She reached into the spit and pulled the rabbit Oskar was cooking away from the flame, then used her knife to slice away a piece of meat, handing Oskar the rest. “There is more to our mission that Halvard did not share with the rest of you.”
Her comment was met with stunned silence.
“As he did with his ‘genetic material,’ he did not give all the facts up front. If he had, it might have been quite difficult to find those of us willing to take up this task.”
“What else is there?” Ulrik asked.
She sat and took a bite of the seared rabbit flesh. When she had chewed and swallowed, she told them. “It is a special machine part. I have a drawing of it. Halvard said the machine part is as important as Agnes,” she smiled at them, “although he did not call her by name, of course. I am interested in having words with the man about his methods when we return, but it changes nothing. We each took on this journey for a single purpose—to save humanity. Without Agnes, and without this machine, Halvard has assured me that the human species will die out. If we had only his word for it, I would question whether to trust the man. Especially now, after his deception with Agnes.”
The men grumbled their agreement.
“But the lack of births...” Ulrik said.
“Precisely,” Val agreed. “We have the proof. If we ever want to see another child born into Midgard, we need to succeed.”
“Yes. This is what I am saying,” Ulrik went on. “Surely the safer path—”
“I am sorry, my friend,” Val cut him off with a wave of her knife and the last bit of blackened rabbit she trapped against the blade with her thumb. “But the machine part is very specific, and can be found only in one place.”
Knowing what was coming, Ulrik sat heavily on his log, sticking his tongue into his cheek thoughtfully, as if grasping what this new stage of the journey would entail, despite his complete lack of knowledge on the unknown terrain.
“We go through France.”
Anders nodded as if she had made the only sensible choice. His fingers nimbly fletched an arrow, replenishing his depleted stock with a minimal amount of movement, so he did not disturb Skjold’s slumber.
“And then, if we live long enough, perhaps we will take the sea route home.”
In their quieter moments wintering in the castle, Heinrich had told her stories of the creatures that had come into Germany from France. She looked at him now and saw his face was haggard and gray in the firelight. He met her goggle-covered eyes, with a look of resignation.
Neither of them thought the group would make it through France.
55
France turned out to be fine. Until it wasn’t.
Five days into their journey across relatively peaceful fields and derelict towns, cruising on mostly good roads, the worst they had seen was a two-headed wild boar that Anders had passed up, fearing that the meat might be more harmful than a night without supper.
They were off the ATVs for their mid-day break, which was growing longer as the warm spring days turned to summer humidity. They had set up a camp under a large elm tree, with their ATVs parked a hundred feet away across a field, under a line of pine trees. Blankets were spread out on the ground so they could nap in the afternoon heat under the shade of the tall elm in the field, away from the heat reflecting off the strip of blacktop. The shelter from the blazing sun dropped the temperature on their skins slightly, and the occasional cooler breeze made the weather perfect for napping.
It was too good to last.
“More of the slime trails,” Nils called from further out in the field, where he had walked to relieve himself. His spirits had long since returned. Val had spent more time with him of late, talking well into the night, and learning as much as she could from him about the world.
“How many this time?” Val asked from her blanket. She was only half interested.
For the last two days they had periodically seen long thick streaks of slime across the road or in the fields near it. The stripes of greenish mucus-like substance were often a foot wide, and would stretch for fifty or more feet before abruptly ending. She and Nils had discussed what they might have been with Anders, who was their resident expert on animals, and with Heinrich, who knew the creatures in this area better than anyone else.
But the thick bands of slime had left them all shaking their heads in confusion. They were either left by the world’s largest snails, or by something they could not even imagine. The only thing they were sure of was that the slime was organic.
“Many,” Nils said, turning to come back. “Every few feet.”
As she watched him, Val noticed something in the distance, well across the field, beyond Nils. Frequently scanning for the often absent Skjold, had left her distance eyesight keen. Dozens of dark humps in the grass, like horses or large dogs, if they were laying down on their legs. The lumps appeared to be stationary, so she took her eyes away from them, looking back to Nils as he approached.
But then movement pulled her eyes back across the field. The shapes were approaching—and fast.
She lunged to her feet and pulled her ax from its black holster. “Nils!”
He turned to look behind him when he saw her armed. The move would cost him. One of the creatures was moving on a collision course for Nils. As it got closer, she could see it clearly, but still had no idea what it was.
“Up! Wake up!” she yelled, as she ran toward Nils, and pulled her smaller hand-ax with her left hand.
Ulrik was the first to his feet, ax in hand. He ran for Val, but would be too late.
The animals were strange. Their faces were all teeth in wide open, circular mouths. Thick curved horns, like those on a ram, topped their heads. The bodies were long, as tall as a human, with flat, beaver-like tails that drooped down behind them. The creatures’ skin was slick and shiny, like a fish, and slime oozed from the flat tails. The creatures hunted in a pack like wolves, and they were fast.
Really fast.
Nils was just pulling a small ax from his belt, when the first creature leapt at him, its thick horns headed for the man’s chest. But the creature didn’t gore him. Instead the animal’s tooth-filled maw opened wider, like a snake about to swallow an egg, and the teeth clamped on to Nils’s face. Nils flailed backward, the animal toppling with him, its tail twitching and flapping like a fish pulled out of water on the end of a line.
That thought triggered recognition for Val, and she knew what this animal had once been: a lamprey. She had seen the eel-like things attached to trout that men had caught in the North. Although those were usually no longer than a foot in length, and as narrow as a finger. Their leech-like mouths attached to prey and sucked on, rarely letting go until there was no more blood on which to sup.
Before the attacking animals had cleared Nils’s fallen body, Val’s ax blade sliced through the creature’s mid-section, severing the lower legs and tail from the upper part of the bo
dy. Instead of blood, a gout of the slime spurted from the animal. Val wanted to pry the rest of the thing off Nils’s face, but there was no time. Two more of the creatures had lunged upward at her on their powerful legs.
She reversed her strike with the smaller, sharper ax leading, and cleaved one animal right down the middle of its face, each thick ram’s horn passing on either side of her wrist. The beast’s momentum propelled it onward, adding strength to the cut. A burst of the slime shot forward, coating her arm up to her shoulder.
The second lamprey creature struck out at her other arm. The mouth closed over the elbow of her black leather jacket. Sharp teeth slid through the fabric and into her skin.
She screamed as the teeth sank in, but spun and tugged her hand-ax from the bifurcated face of the other lamprey. With a quick swing, she cleaved the creature clinging to her elbow, just behind its eyes. As the body fell away, she was horrified to see its bodiless head still sucking at her elbow. She jabbed the tip of her hand-ax under the creature’s lip and pried it off, flicking the open ring of mouth and teeth through the air.
As she ran for the next attacking lamprey, Ulrik was by her side, hacking at the creatures before they left the ground. While the others joined the fray, Anders hurried to Nils’s side, struggling to remove the monster from his face, but she knew the sad truth of it.
He would be too late.
The thought filled her with a sudden fury.
She screamed again, but this time in anger. She rushed ahead into the herd of the lampreys, which had been whittled down to fewer than twelve, but more were coming from every direction, drawn either by the sounds of battle or scent of blood. Her long ax bit into the face of another, as its ram horn mashed into her shin, adding the irritation of a minor pain to her already pulsing anger.
For the next half an hour she murdered every lamprey she could reach, hacking and tearing at them, until she was covered in a chunky coating of slick mucus.
Viking Tomorrow (The Berserker Saga Book 1) Page 23