Heinrich left the rabbit he was preparing with a thick sauce. “You have actually seen green eyes before?” he asked, incredulous.
“Oh yeah,” Oskar started. “It was years ago. Morten and I...”
“Oskar!” Morten snapped at the younger man.
Oskar’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clack of his yellowing teeth.
“Is it a secret?” Anders asked, suddenly interested. “I would hear of this encounter with another green-eyed person.”
Morton raised his hand and said, “It was—”
But Val stood and said, “I, too, would hear of this strange encounter. Come, Morten. Tell us.”
A dark look floated across Morten’s face, and it did not escape Val’s notice that he glared at Oskar before beginning. “You must understand that it was many years ago, when we were quite young, and very hungry.”
Val tilted her head to the side, as if to say ‘How is that relevant?’
Morten looked lost in thought for a moment. “Oskar and I took a job to kill a man and abduct his woman. We were told that she was the wife of another man, and that she had fled with our target to a cabin by the sea. We were given vehicles with tracks for the rear wheels. They made travel through the snow quite easy. The man hired us under the agreement that we asked no questions.”
He lapsed into silence. Oskar looked suddenly rebuked, as if he had only just now remembered that he should act sorry for his part in the affair. Anders seemed unaffected, as if murder and kidnapping were common occurrences. Heinrich looked horrified, and Val loved him a little for it. But she had more important things on her mind.
“You say the man had green eyes?” she asked.
“No,” Morten shook his head. “The woman. Brilliant green, just like Agnes. Anyway, we killed the man, and delivered the woman. We got food and gold. We were young and we were desperate. I always thought the man who hired us was lying about her being his wife, too. I just could not prove it. We left right after the job, heading back to the sea.”
Now Val’s attention was riveted on Morten, and her heart jack-hammered in her chest. “Where was this green-eyed person living?” She tried to keep the venom she felt in her blood from entering her voice. She had no idea if she was successful.
“Somewhere on the gulf of Sweden. We had crossed Lapland to the south, which was why the man had given us those motorized sleds. They were like the ATVs, but with skis on the front instead of wheels. Oskar wanted to keep them, but I just wanted away from the place. It was the darkest time of my life, and I am not proud of it.”
Oskar remained silent. Heinrich turned back to the cooking, and Anders continued the conversation with Morten about the strangeness of green eyes, as if an admission of murder and abduction had not been made.
Val sat still, barely breathing. Her body hummed with adrenaline and her ears buzzed with white noise. It took her a few minutes before she could even form a coherent thought.
Her mind filled with rage, as it would over the murder and abduction of any innocent person, but in this case there was a personal connection. Her mind flitted back to that locked section of her subconscious, where she kept her very few treasured memories of her very brief childhood.
The seals.
The polar bear.
The cold.
The house was on fire. There was a terrifying arc of blood from the man on the frozen shore. Her father.
Black smoke boiled into the sky. Someone was telling her to follow the seals into the water. She had a cloak, that fitted to her body, like a seal’s skin. She couldn’t breathe. She was underwater and she couldn’t breathe. Looking up out the hole in the ice. Her limbs going dead.
Who had told her to get in the water?
Then it was there. Filling the surfaces of her mind.
Blonde flowing hair.
The woman’s initial nonchalance, followed by concern and then panic.
And those startling green eyes.
Her mother.
Watching the woman’s blood-matted hair dangling down from the back of a strange vehicle with wheels inside treads.
Morten and Oskar had killed her father and abducted her mother.
Two conflicting thoughts kept Val immobilized for another half hour as they rampaged through her mind’s eye.
The first was that she was going to have to deal with Morten and Oskar. And there would be blood.
The second was what Morten had said about the woman.
They had delivered her alive.
59
Twenty miles north of the cooling tower, they came to the remnants of a city named Brussels. As was their habit, they moved cautiously around the fringes of the city. This one was surprisingly intact. The buildings all stood, but they were coated in the green they saw everywhere as the plant kingdom slowly swallowed the empty world. Without new humans being born, the flora faced no competition.
Val had swallowed down her fury, examining the situation from different angles. She needed to ambush the men, preferably away from each other. She felt confident she could take both Morten and Oskar in a one-on-one fight. She wasn’t sure she could take them at the same time, and she was concerned that the others—particularly Ulrik—would try to stop her.
Her biggest challenge was finding a time where the two men would be apart from each other, and away from the rest of the group. And now that she had had the time to think clearly, she realized she needed the men—or at least Morten, who was the better and stronger fighter—to get Agnes safely back to Halvard. They were just ninety miles from Rotterdam, where she would need to collect Halvard’s machine part. And that close to the sea, the area would likely be populated with pirates and brigands.
They had not come across many people on their travels. Most of the last vestiges of humanity had clustered in gangs and groups. Small towns and communities, often led by those who were stronger or better suited to maintaining control. She wondered about Troben and his community of Venetians, and not for the first time mourned their loss. They were the closest thing to a proper civilization she had encountered since leaving the North. While she did not particularly crave the company of civilized people, she would rather have them than scum like the Hangers.
She fully expected to find more gangs as the group approached the water. And she would still need to travel five hundred miles to reach Stavanger. Her vengeance would need to wait for the opportune moment. And it would need to be held at bay until she extracted the information she wanted most: the location where the men had delivered her mother, and the name of the man who had hired them.
Ulrik had become silent, keeping an eye on everyone with suspicion in his face. Her own mistrust of the others had led to him mistrusting them all. Val didn’t think the man had spoken a word in three days. Perhaps sensing something wrong with him, and having had time to forget the pungent horrors of the lamprey field in France, Agnes had begun walking closer to Val.
“We need to find a place to stay for the night,” Val announced. “I am tired. This city looks dead. We should be safe here.”
They had been following a road with a huge metal fence still standing on their right. In many places the fence had been knocked down—or had fallen down—and it was now being covered by grasses and shrubs escaping from the forest.
Without a word, Ulrik led the group into the trees. Words were barely necessary at this point in their routine. Even Agnes knew what to look for in a suitable site. Multiple exits. Cover from the road. Shelter, in case of rain. Nearby fresh water.
As they walked through the thick tangle of trees, Val caught glimpses of sunlight reflecting off glass or metal. A building was nearby. The forest was alive with the chittering of small birds. Their presence was comforting. If there had been danger ahead in the form of strange beasts or rampaging groups of people, the birds would have found another home.
“What is this?” Ulrik said. That he had spoken aloud alarmed Val. She hurried to his side, and Agnes followed close on her heels. The others took a slower pace,
but followed her out of the trees and into a clearing.
Before them stood a magnificent structure of green metal bands and thousands and thousands of panes of glass. The building was reminiscent of the castle they had seen in Germany, with long halls, curved roofs, and domed cupolas of varying sizes and shapes. Some of the panes of glass were stained by generations of bird droppings, and some of them were strange shades of pink and blue, as if the glass had been dyed.
Val had seen colored glass in the North, but it was rare. Most structures were built without glass, their inhabitants spending most of their days out of doors anyway, and tolerant of insect life. But she had never seen entire palaces constructed from glass. Inside the amazing structure was an explosion of flowers and trees, often pushing right to the roof. Off across a field to their right was a wave of black solar panels, floating like suspended leaves over the undulating grass.
As they approached the building, Val shook her head to ensure her eyes were not playing tricks on her. It was raining inside the building, but the sky above was clear and the sun was shining.
“The panels must power a pump to spray water inside,” Heinrich guessed.
“Why would you capture trees and flowers inside a building made of glass?” Agnes asked.
No one knew the answer. Walking closer through the tall grass, they saw that several of the panes of glass were broken, and in a few places tree branches had made a burst for freedom, sending thin tendrils up through the cracks toward the sun.
“It is strange, but appears safe. We will stay here tonight, after checking for less obvious dangers.” Val began a perimeter check to the left and Ulrik went right.
Agnes stayed by Val’s side, peppering her with questions she could not answer.
Later that night, after they had eaten a stew with wild herbs and carrots, the summer sun was finally dropping off the edge of the world. Val waited, lying on her blanket under the stars, wondering when her opportunity would come.
They had seen a sign calling the strange glass palace the ‘Royal Greenhouses of Laeken’. Upon exploring the interior of the oddly enclosed structure, they had examined the flora. In many places, with the solar powered water sprinkler systems and heaters for the winter, the trees and bushes had grown so thick inside the enclosure without anyone to tend to them, that it was impossible for a man to pass through the long corridors or even into the massive domes. With the clear sky, they had chosen to camp outside the structure in the grass.
It was a full hour after the others had fallen asleep—Heinrich snoring loudly, Anders making soft humming noises in his throat and the rest breathing heavily—that Oskar finally rose, as he did each night, to go and relieve himself. Peculiarly shy, he usually went far away behind tree cover. As soon as he left the clearing, Val was up, her four-inch knife blade unsheathed. She left her axes and leather boots by her pack.
Barefooted, she moved quickly through the grass, rushing low through the wilderness, the shushing of grass against her legs obscured by the sound of a hooting owl.
She arced around Oskar’s path, reaching the trees almost at the same time as he did. Then she moved cautiously through the cover of the forest toward the sound of pattering urine on fallen leaves. She was within four feet of him—just on the other side of a large gnarled tree trunk—when she heard his piss stop. She froze in place, her knife raised, thinking the man had heard her. But then he sprayed the last few drops, and sang a few words of a song to himself, before she heard the distinctive burr of a zipper being tugged upward.
His feet shuffled through the undergrowth, and Val lunged around the tree, the knife raised. Before Oskar had fully turned in her direction, she had clapped a hand round his mouth and the two of them were propelled to the ground.
They crashed into the low plants, and Val’s blade came up in front of Oskar’s panicked eyes. Then it found its home snug against his throat. As soon as the metal touched his clammy flesh, he ceased struggling and stopped trying to scream. The greasy man was a fool, but he knew when his life was at risk. His eyes were wide in the silver moonlight, wondering why his leader had attacked him. The scowl on Val’s face left no room for misinterpretation. She meant to do him harm.
She was about to take her hand from the man’s throat and speak, when she heard a soft sound to her left.
Just outside the edge of the trees, crouched in the grass, Agnes waited, watching for whether Val would slit Oskar’s throat.
60
“Agnes,” Val hissed. “You want no part of this.”
“What is this?” the girl asked. She showed no signs of fear, as she had after the lamprey field and Val’s killing spree. Now she seemed interested. She also showed no sign that she was going to go away.
Val turned her attention back to Oskar, who waited wide-eyed under Val’s hands. Val slid her hand away from his mouth. “Do you believe I will cut you?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “What have I done wrong?”
“I need information from you, Oskar, and I will cut pieces from you and stab you here in the dirt if you do not deliver it. Do you understand?”
“What do you want to know?” Oskar whined. “Anything.”
“The green-eyed woman. Tell me. Everything.” Val’s knife involuntarily pushed harder against Oskar’s neck as she said it, drawing a slim line of blood.
“Okay. Okay,” he said, panicked. “It is like Morten told. What do you want to know?”
“Where did you take the woman? Who was the man who hired you?”
“It was nearly twenty years ago,” Oskar started, his voice beginning to rise. Val quickly pressed the blade harder against his throat while clamping her hand on his mouth. She glanced back at the field, beyond Agnes and back toward the rest of her sleeping party. It would already be difficult enough to explain this to the girl. Having to explain to the others would be awkward. Oskar stayed quiet under her palm, and she slowly removed her hand.
“How many years? Exactly.”
Oskar thought for a second, and Val could tell he was counting in his head. “Eighteen.”
She pressed against his throat at the volume.
In a much lower voice, he went on. “We took her at Lulea, on the gulf. Then we took her with us back to a village on the sea, called Narvik. The man’s name was Vikord. I don’t know anything else. It is like Morten said. We were desperate for work and for food.”
Val glanced up to see Agnes attentively watching, but still rooted in place. In one swift move, Val leapt back, pulling the blade from Oskar’s neck and her hand from his mouth.
“You will say nothing to Morten about this. Nothing,” she hissed, pointing the tip of the blade at him. “You will continue to fight for me and for this group, to keep this girl alive and get us safely back to Stavanger. The human race is more important than this issue.”
Oskar sat up, rubbing a hand on his neck and smearing the thin line of blood there. “I do not understand why you have treated me like this. Have I not always fought for you?”
Val had to control herself from lunging at the man again. “I owe you a blood debt, Oskar the Abductor of Women. The man you killed was my father. The woman you took...was my mother.” With that she tugged the goggles from her face, her green eyes haunting in the beam of moonlight piercing the trees.
Oskar’s mouth hung open in shock, his eyes widening. She watched his face, as it seemed like he was working through his chances of drawing his blade and killing her.
“I would not do it, Laplander,” came a low voice from behind Val.
She whirled to find Ulrik emerging from behind a tree. In his hands he held his long ax.
“You probably would not be able to take her, Oskar. But I would definitely cleave your intestines out and drag your corpse around by them, if you did. The end of all life would be on us then, since she is the only one who knows where to find the machine part Halvard sent us to retrieve. If Ragnarok is assured, I will gut you in a second.”
The four stayed quiet for a mo
ment. Then Oskar slowly got to his feet, his hands far from the hilt of his sword. “I will not draw weapons on my comrades.” His eyes darted toward Val, with the look of a wounded dog. “Even if they would draw on me. I am sorry for what we did to your parents, Val. It was long ago, and we were dying from hunger. If I knew anything else, I would tell you.”
He turned to walk back to the greenhouse, and Ulrik laid a meaty hand on the slim man’s shoulder. “Not a word to Morten. If you fight well, and if we make it back to Stavanger, I will protect you from her wrath until the end. But if you falter, anywhere from here to there...” He let the threat hang.
Oskar looked back to Val. “I will keep it from Morten, and I will continue to fight for you. I was just fifteen at the time, Val. Younger than Agnes. And I have proved myself for you many times since we left the North. Hopefully you will find some forgiveness in your heart by the time we return.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but pulled free from Ulrik’s grasp and stalked back to the camp.
Val started after him, to ensure that his first move would not be to rouse Morten, but Ulrik stopped her with a wave of his hand. “His heart is good, despite his bluster. We have seen that these last months on the road. He will keep his word.”
“Yes,” Val said. “And I think we should rectify the issue with the machine part.” She glanced at Agnes, who had stood from her perch in the grass. “You both need to know what it is, and where to find it.”
She showed them the rough map Halvard and Nils had drawn for her in Stavanger, and a detailed hand-drawing of the wheel-like object. Then they returned to the camp, where the others were all asleep, and where Oskar laid under his blanket, wide-eyed but silent.
The next day they moved on, and Ulrik lingered close to Oskar and Morten throughout the day, watching and listening. Oskar was more helpful than ever with finding wood for the cooking fires, and he talked less, but he showed no other sign that he intended to betray his word.
Viking Tomorrow (The Berserker Saga Book 1) Page 25