by Aeryn Leigh
Odin’s Warriors: Hellsbaene
Book 1
Aeryn Leigh
Hellsbaene Publishing
Copyright © 2017 by Aeryn Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
No puppy dogs or prehistoric animals were hurt in the telling of this story. However, one laptop, a keyboard, and a truckload of coffee, didn’t make it.
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for Aurelia
O Divine Poesy
Goddess-Daughter of Zeus,
Sustain for me this story
And make it sing.
Let me be receptive,
Make the tale come alive for us,
In all it’s myriad ways,
O Muse.
Thank you.
Contents
Prologue
1. Fire Storm
2. The Dream
3. The Sky Is Blue
4. Liquid Lunch
5. Hello Beautiful
6. The Scarlet Kiss
7. Test Briefing
8. The Angels Push
9. Leapfrog
10. The Devil’s Bargain
11. Story Time
12. The Big Show
13. Hade’s Express
14. Skippy
15. Another Perfect Day
16. The Roar Of Liberty
17. Business Calls
18. The Silver Black
19. The Arc Of Triumph
20. Got Her
21. Damage Inc.
22. Wrath
23. Down To Hell
24. Going Down
25. The Sleep of the Innocent
26. Two Recalcitrant Nuts
27. Search Parties
28. Official Seal-of-Approval
29. Finding Amelia
30. Hope of a Better Day
31. Not In Kansas
32. Laurie Wakes
33. Not bad For A Yank
34. Furnace Of Madness
35. Relinquishing Command
36. Not Alone
37. Ella Vows
38. Drilling M 30
39. The Village
40. The Inquisition
41. Beserker
42. Who Are You?
43. The Glory of God
44. Kingly Warriors
45. Friends
46. Gray’s Anatomy
47. The Finest Warriors I Have
48. Odin's Playground
49. Nothing To It
50. Hellsbaene
51. From Serpent's Fire
52. Uncomfortable Truths
53. Any Port In A Storm
54. Odinsgate
55. Demonstration
56. Archimedes Lever
57. Decisions
58. Farewells
59. Breaking The Express
60. Marine Escort
61. New Friends
62. Sacrifice
63. Emperor
64. Reunions
65. Puppies!
66. The Purity Of God
67. The Rusty Axe
68. From The Ground Up
69. Good News, Bad News
70. War Room
71. Start Praying Now
72. Guns And Angels
73. Capture, Convert, Kill, Then Burn
74. Engineering Problems
75. Death And Chocolate
76. A Kingly Gift of Horsepower
77. Griffin Takes Stock
78. A Nice Pot of Tea
79. Ella’s Gee Bee
80. The More Things Change
81. Triple It
82. Heil Blitzkrieg
83. Family
84. On the Origin of Species
85. No-One To Blame But Yourself
86. Live Bait
87. Armoured Snouts
88. And So It Begins
89. Pounds Of Flesh
90. Scything Through Wheat
91. Bugger Me
92. No Battle Plan
93. Tanks
94. Psychological Warfare
95. The Twins
96. Another Way
97. Freedom, Or Death
98. Amelia Defiant
99. Special Delivery
100. A Symphony Of Shrieking, Tearing Metal
101. It Ends, Now
102. Five Minutes Alone
103. Amongst Mates At Last
104. A Small Matter
105. A Friendly Card Game
106. Full Circle
Author’s Note & Info
Prologue
The Viking flagship Hellsbaene carved through the dark ocean waters, a veteran of many battles, fresh with recent scars. Behind it, the rest of the skirmish fleet followed, back to the safety of shallow waters from their midnight raid on the enemy outpost, unsanctioned by his king.
As the longships sailed under full mast, with the pounding of war drums counting out each heave on the sixty-oars, its prince considered their hard-fought prizes, his hand upon the ten-pound bastard culverin smoothbore mounted just to the side of the dragon-head prow. Fingers traced over the raised iron markings, the symbol of a royal crown, the numerals 1732, at the rear of the nine-foot cannon.
In the morning rays coming over the horizon from the twin suns, amidst the captured chests of gold, barrels of gunpowder and braces of Spanish flintlocks, between the swivel murder guns mounted along the side rails — the Viking prince looked at his ship, his kin, his fleet, inhaling the sea spray filling his senses — and knew there was never a better time to be alive.
Chapter One
Fire Storm
The line of black in the sky seemed to go on forever, a long winding serpent. The bomber stream made its way for Hamburg, relentless.
Merciless.
Letters, English letters, that spelt Operation Gomorrah.
Bombs rained through the smoke riven air, exploding closer, ever closer. The air-raid sirens wailed. "Helena, hurry, we have to get to the shelter. Now." She wrapped her coat tight around her daughter Elizabeth and ran through the darkness towards her father's voice.
Ella's blue-flecked eyes flew open. Stinging with sweat. The drone of multiple dozens of airplanes high overhead, the distant wails of sirens and muffled flak bursts, filled the dark, otherwise silent bedroom. Allied bombers, returning from a bombing raid, over her Germany. Her fists still gripping the damp cotton sheets, knuckles white. She inhaled sharply, needing more oxygen to feed her pounding heart. Ella’s sight adjusted in the gloom, and to the objects lying on the bedside table.
Leather flight gauntlets, Luftwaffe special issue. With her initials sewn onto them, gold lettering against black. Helena had given them to her, on the morning Ella made history.
The first woman in the world to test fly a jet aircraft, a prototype Me-262. On their fifth anniversary, no less.
Ella thought Helena would burst with pride. She would never forget that day. That one, perfect day.
But a secret celebration. How it burned to hide their love.
And she had.
"Helena..." She breathed, and dreamed again for the millionth time what must have been their final hours, as she fell back to sleep, in the darkest hours before dawn...
A hundred miles away from the incoming bombers, Helena Kruppe would have finished the bed-time story, and tucked her child under the cotton sheets, re-assured Elizabeth that there were no monsters, told her she loved her, and kissed her on the
forehead. Helena's breath blew out the candlestick, and cast her gaze around the child's bedroom. Only a fragment of light shone through the boarded-up windows, dust motes playing in the narrow beams.
Helena sat properly, not wanting the moment to end, yet it did, her child asleep.
With a sigh, her pixie-like frame rising from the bed, she'd have made her way out of the darkened room, down the narrow, spiral staircase, and joined her family in the dim lounge, its walls covered in framed tapestries, fabric drawings of another time and place.
It smelled old. Dusty.
"We should have left days ago," Helena said to her parents, who sat on the sofa, listening to the wireless. More floorboards covered the windows in this room. "Hamburg is not safe anymore."
"And where would we go instead?" said her father, Siegfried, chewing on the end of his unlit pipe.
Her mother, Hannah spoke. "Everything is fine, we have everything we need here. The shelter is stocked, and strong. My father dug it himself. It is solid, like the Reich." Her fingers worried the pearl necklace around her neck.
Helena started to speak, but bit her tongue, trapped in a dark web of lies.
We should be in Magdeburg with them. But I made a promise.
She knew better not to bring up that subject. Her parents forbade all mention of her lover and her second daughter — more so now than ever before.
I'm the black sheep of the family, and if it wasn't for her child upstairs, wouldn't be welcome at all.
She sat in the armchair in the corner of the room, and there the minutes turned over, in silence, as her stomach churned. The wireless now played Bach. She held her metal figurine necklace up in one hand.
Regrets. I am made of regrets in a web of dark lies.
The air-raid siren on the street-corner began its scream, making all three of them jump.
"Quickly now," said Siegfried, gathering his reading glasses and pipe, stuffing a pouch of tobacco into his dressing gown pocket, picking up the lantern.
Helena was already half-way up the wooden staircase, two steps at a time. Elizabeth sat upright, her teddy bear in one arm. "Out of bed!" Helena yelled, throwing the covers off.
More klaxons added themselves to the din, and with practised ease she picked up the suitcase at the foot of the bed with one arm and the child with the other.
"Sssh, downstairs we go,” she said, Helena this time taking each step with care.
She met her mother on the landing, holding her own suitcase, and made their way to the bomb shelter trapdoor behind the stairs. Her mother passed her suitcase to Siegfried, who stood at the bottom of the shelter's ladder and took it with outstretched arms.
Elizabeth climbed down the ladder's rungs until her grand-father lifted her off onto the concrete floor, then her mother, and at last Helena.
She closed the heavy wooden door over her head, and finished her descent down the steps, into the confined, musty space.
It was earthy, solid, reassuring.
The shelter could hold up to a dozen people if needed, although that would be cramped. But with the four of them, there was enough space to see the long shadows of each other by the lanterns, lit by Siegfried, overhead.
The sirens, and then the sound of the anti-aircraft batteries started shooting, a solid thump—thump—thump. Helena held Elizabeth in her arms, consoling her, rocking back and forth. Siegfried and Hannah sat on the other end of the shelter, not looking at each other. The cat huddled under a crate.
Seconds passed, then minutes, each moment an eternity. The ground began to vibrate beneath, making the lanterns swing wildly. Helena looked at the dust motes in the air, and held her child even more tighter. The sound of explosions, the muffled whistling of bombs falling through air.
Helena began singing.
Time passed, as the night tried to claim day with its light-show of explosions.
Half-an-hour went by, and detonations and sirens still screamed over the silence.
How many bombers are there? She wondered. It's usually all over by now. God, it is getting hot and stuffy in here, no thanks to an overly warm tail-end of summer.
More whistling. An explosion close by shook the shelter. And another.
Elizabeth began crying. Helena looked at her father. There was another long whistle, louder and louder.
A Titan smote the building above.
Elizabeth screamed as a great oak beam shattered the trapdoor, spearing half-way into the shelter, smouldering.
Dust and smoke filled the enclosed space, making them cough.
"Out, out!" Her father yelled, leaping up and swatting the flames away with the hessian sack. "To the shelter at the theatre. Hurry!"
Helena put Elizabeth on her back, and followed her parents up the ladder, twisting around the beam. The house still stood, at least the bottom half of it. Embers and smoke choked the air.
Helena stumbled after her parents outlines in the smoke, trying not to twist her ankles in the rubble.
She stood on the pavement outside.
The scene resembled a woodcut of Dante's Inferno. The wind howled like a furnace sucking oxygen, and she joined the throng of people fleeing to better safety. Along the pavement she ran, following her parents who proved nimble even for their age.
Elizabeth released her hold and slid down her mother's back. Helena stopped. Her parents continued, not even looking back, only a couple of blocks more until the large-capacity theatre shelter.
"Rupert!" said Elizabeth in a panic, running back towards the house to fetch her cat. Hannah turned to chase Elizabeth, until flying debris struck her in the chest. She sank to her knees, winded, trying to scream at her child to come back this instant.
Nothing came out.
She turned back around, looking for her parents, and saw them, in the distance.
And then she saw the tornado of fire.
It reached up into the heavens, twisting, writhing. The asphalt beneath burst into flame. People tried to run before it, yet were lifted into the air like leaves on an autumn wind and disappeared into red. The firestorm passed the theatre, and she saw her parents try to take refuge in a nearby building foyer, but they disappeared into the fire's maw. Swallowed.
Legs started moving, her legs, after her child, not knowing how she was moving. Helena caught her in her arms and ran back, back down into the family shelter, past the smoking timber beam, Elizabeth screaming for Rupert all the way. Helena poured the last of the water jug onto the hessian rug and pulled it over them in the far corner, her legs tight to her chest either side of her child.
The noise roared.
Deafening.
She sang to her child and sang and sang as her tears evaporated, even as it grew harder and harder to breathe, as their lungs burned and alveoli crinkled like cellophane, fighting for air, and then, agonisingly later — would have fought no more.
Days later, a leather-clad hand, embossed with gold lettering, reached out and took the twisted, melted aluminium off the burnt shrunken figure, no more the size of a child, and what looked like a tiny blackened sack of desiccated potatoes on its chest, in the half-light of day.
Tears fell onto the ash, making craters as they landed. "My beautiful Helena,” said a cracked, choked voice, "my beautiful Elizabeth..."
Her voice. Ella’s. With one anniversary present, they held its reciprocal gift.
The tears stopped.
Chapter Two
The Dream
Fire. Flame. How hard can loss feel, feel as if it is physical, the pain of your heart as if a white-hot poker slowly rotates through it, the loss of people you loved. She cowers in a long brick tunnel, as the demon comes towards her, but it passes overhead, keeps going.
A breath of relief, and then it turns. Stops. Looks at you, and moves towards you, embracing arms with razor claws open wide...
Ella Gruder awoke. In those first seconds, she saw the after image of the monster in front of her, receding, against the backdrop of her bedroom. Her normal bedroom.
The apparition grew smaller and smaller, shimmering, then disappeared.
I just saw that, she thought. When I wake up, the dreams finish. Usually. But not this morning. I ficken well saw it. Her heart hammered, she felt sick. Dreams shouldn’t go on after you wake!
The curtains, half-opened, let in the dull grey light of the sky through boarded windows. Why didn't you shoot it?! You have the power in the dreams, she chided herself. Next time, shoot it. Imagine holding a MG42 or something!
Ella stumbled out of the double bed, hearing the voice of Amelia, her child, in the kitchen behind the door. She opened it and walked through, still blinking, bringing life into her stiff joints. The smell of fresh toast and coffee filled her senses.