by Aeryn Leigh
"A what?"
"A monster," said Snorri, "and there's many more where they come from."
Chapter Fifty-One
From Serpent's Fire
The suns rose. Amelia rubbed her eyes and noticed Message Bear had a note stuck in its pocket. She opened it. 'Glad you got your cat back. Don't lose her again! Griffin' it read in the morning light.
Around her the men woke and grumbled their way upright. They ate a quick breakfast and pushed the boat into the river, to the front of the jetty. They loaded Abe and James onto the boat, the horses, Amelia, Zia, and Skippy, then everyone else, the king and his dog last.
"Ready?" said Beowulf, once everyone settled on-board.
"Your wounded men," said Mick, "where are they?"
"Going on a journey themselves," said Snorri. He passed Beowulf the longbow, then gave him an arrow, it's tip wound in oil-soaked cloth.
Beowulf stood on the prow and addressed them.
"From serpent's fire they came, from serpent's fire they leave.
One could ask for no better men, for battle in our stead."
He turned in the direction of the pyre. With a flint he lit the arrow, and hoisted the bow.
"Farewell, my friends." He pulled the string back, aimed, and shot the flaming arrow into the pyre. The wooden mound, entwined with oil covered kindling, lit up with ease.
"But your men —," said Mick.
"Are escorting our friends to Valhalla," said Snorri.
The men from the other world watched in silence, as the funeral pyre roared, and the fires tried to reach heaven. Snorri unfurled the sail, and Hellsbaene moved down the river, picking up speed around the bend, towards Odinsgate, with Amelia singing astride the dragon's head prow.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Uncomfortable Truths
Refugees wandered this way and that, cut adrift from the Inquisition's crusading army, as whole villages, houses, and towns went up in fire. The survivors either had been out collecting, harvesting, or travelling, for whole populations were rounded up, and either confessed or burned.
Except for the children. Instead all children under the age of ten were taken back with the army, informed Merrion.
Please, not Amelia.
"Confessing is a quicker death," said Merrion. "Refusing to convert, which is confession really, means being burnt alive after torture. The children are brainwashed, raised as God's Chosen and become fanatical soldiers and labourers, quite a lot of whom perpetrated these acts today."
The words stuck in Ella's mind over those following days, the scale of what the Inquisition could do hammering away, with mallet and chisel, the uncomfortable truths and whispers long concreted over in the decade of life in the Third Reich of home, of Germany. Every hour, every moment on the bumpy grass or dirt tracks jolted another realisation.
Of what she'd been.
Is this what the Nazi's do? Minorities wholesale put on trains and taken to camps to be 're-educated'? Processed, laboured, and worked to death? She'd heard the rumours – after all, so had nearly everyone – but it couldn't have been real. But why was Germany fighting the Russians, the English, the Commonwealth, and the United States? If they were the Good Guys then Germany was the Bad Guys.
But why did the Good Guys bomb civilians day after day, night after night? To break our morale?
Maybe, said a quieter part of her mind, maybe because it's the lesser of two evils. You separated from your girlfriend because it wasn't safe to be together anymore, because gays were being taken in the middle of the night. She went to Hamburg, and you stuck your head in the sand and concentrated on your flying, your career. Did you protest, march against the Nazi Party? No, you went back to being an obedient, good little girl, pretending to like boys. Like everyone else you knew, troweling over the dirty dark secrets of society with buckets full of wilful ignorance, praying it wasn't you in the searchlight.
Being a reluctant poster child for the Nazi regime for propaganda. Blonde haired and blue eyed, a true Aryan woman.
Hell, you even met Hitler, and shook his hand for a photographer.
Would Hitler and the Nazi Party stop because someone asked them nicely? Would the population of Germany ask them to stop and please reconsider? You don't respond to a bully with words and weakness. But then again, wasn't that how it started? Germany got bullied at the end of World War One with obscene war repatriations and finally got tired enough to strike back at injustices, and the Nazi Party formed in that vacuum and found power.
The cart hit a log, and Ella bit her tongue. Copper.
Maybe there are various kinds of bullies Ella? Does an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth really work? In the greater scheme of things, if somebody … a nation is doing terrible things, and the people around them do utterly nothing out of their own self-interests whilst cheering them on, then aren't they just as complicit and valid targets if polite words don't work?
Justified bombing of civilians?
Helena.
She burned. She burned in a dark concrete hole and no-one saved her. I didn't save her. I should have been with her, left the country, fled with our children, been anywhere else but there. She begged me to leave, for us to escape to America. But no. My flying. My life. I didn't say anything, I didn't fight the Nazis, and she burnt alive in a hole and nothing I can do will ever change that. It's my fault.
I failed.
And now I've lost Amelia.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Any Port In A Storm
"Light the signal fire," said Beowulf. Snorri climbed to the top of the mast, and lit the lantern. He swung back down on a rope, and took position on the prow. Snorri picked up the bone horn and gave three short blasts that boomed off the hills. Skippy jumped up and howled. In a moment, ahead of them and to the right, three horn calls came back at them.
Odinsgate loomed out of the morning mist, from the northern mouth of the tributaries, in a city made from stone and a lot more wood. The river opened up wide in the bay before the ocean, and as Hellsbaene sailed closer, the high stone walls revealed themselves, as high as the top of the ship's mast.
"Medieval," said Andrew in rapt wonder, looking at the ringforts they passed on their approach. The concentric circles of forts overlapped one another, each raised above the plethora of tiny islands that surrounded the large island upon which Odinsgate rose from the bay. Each ringfort he observed had four gates, each opening to the four points of a compass. Helmed men stood and looked at them from the ringfort's walls, returning Snorri's waving from the prow.
"Artillery," said Daniel from the other side of the boat, pointing at the cannons mounted on top of the ringfort walls. "What era is that from?" he said. The crew of both bombers looked at the perimeter defences with the exception of one. Laurie continued to vomit over the side, as he'd done for most of their trip. "Medieval," Laurie muttered, wiping the back of his sleeve against his lips.
"Civil War?" said Griffin, his good hand holding onto the main spar for balance. Amelia sat on his shoulders, spellbound by the sight before her.
"I don't think so," said Andrew. "Maybe a century before that?"
"They do have a Napoleon look," said Lucius, looking at Betty half-wrapped at the stern and wishing yet again that an ammo belt fed into her. He chewed on a fingernail.
Laurie swigged water from the canteen and rinsed his mouth out. "Are we bloody there yet?" He glanced up at the cannons. "What Lucius said." And threw up again.
"Where did they come from, Beowulf?" said Lucius.
"Oh, a little boat that ran aground," said Beowulf. He saw Lucius's expression and laughed. "You'll find out soon enough."
"Will Mummy be there?" Amelia said, clutching Zia tight.
"I hope so," said Lucius. Griffin shot him a look. Lucius turned around and studied Odinsgate, as now the boat swivelled and approached the city from the east.
The island looked to be over two miles across, with a wall that followed the islands shoreline. The longboat moved close en
ough to now see battle damage, as if great wrecking balls with a drunken operator had torn apart stone work. Behind the outer wall, an inner wall, higher and with fewer holes, encircled the main city itself, and every hundred yards or so a guard tower rose from it. The towers too had cannons.
"I see our friends have been busy," said Snorri, peering through his telescope.
"Friends?" said Andrew. He wished he could tell his old University mates about this. He sighed.
"The Inquisition. Probably another expedition testing our defences," said Beowulf. "You can see, stoneworks are no match for cannonballs," he said, pointing at a stone guard tower that had taken a direct hit or three, destroying the top half.
"Does it happen often?" said Lucius.
"Until the fall of last winter, no," said Beowulf. "The truce held. Company." A longship approached, heading from the eastern gate. A man held every oar, and heaved with each pull, heading straight for them. Small murder cannons were mounted on either side.
"This should be fun," said Mick, sitting by the stretchers.
"I'll handle it," said Beowulf.
The longship stopped two lengths away.
"Prince Beowulf. What brings you back so early?" said the armoured man on the prow. He looked closer down the Hellsbaene's length. "Why, is the fort too cold for..." His hand flew to his sword. "Newbloods? Blumen?"
"We need to see my father, Jerland, quickly," said Beowulf. "And yes. These men are under my sworn blood oath — all of them."
Jerland Rothgar spoke to the man beside him. Oars moved. The longship pulled alongside with a graceful turn, and ever so softly, the sides of the two boats touched. Laurie noticed Lucius's hand rest upon his sidearm.
"These are interesting times," said Jerland, as he scanned Hellsbaene. "But what of your fort? You are not due back for another two moons."
Beowulf paused. He looked at his dog.
"It is an urgent matter," said Snorri, "one that could not wait."
Jerland looked at Beowulf, who nodded. "Well then," said the armoured man, "we had better escort you in." The man behind him blew into a smaller horn. "Welcome to Odinsgate," said Jerland, and a chorus of horn blasts rang out from the city gate. Taking the lead, Jerland’s ship led them in.
They passed under the outer Eastern Gate, the men noticing above them all the many different ways of death arrayed as they passed under. Canals carved into the island criss-crossed between the outer and inner ringwall, and what seemed to be wider transport versions of the longship they sailed in lay moored between the rings. Seagulls squawked, fighting over scraps of food left on the decks.
"Seagulls," said Amelia. "They look familiar."
"First bird I've seen yet that does," said Laurie. "Are they travellers from Earth?"
"Good question," said Daniel. "Given everything gets sucked through that storm-front maybe any flying wildlife is pulled through too."
"These 'seagulls' have been here as long as anyone can remember," said Beowulf, "which given our history, may not mean much."
"What's wrong Beowulf, you're all sad in a sudden?" said Lucius. "You're home, which is more than any of us will ever get."
"Home," said Beowulf. "If you say so."
More horn blasts called out, and the two boats went through the inner ringwall gate.
"Fuck me," said Mick.
"You keep saying that," said Lucius, "and at one day, someone will."
Odinsgate teemed with life. It certainly smelled of it.
Children ran past the edge of the canal, squealing and shouting. A pair of old men sat on the edge with fishing sticks. Hundreds of double-storey wooden houses lay before them, as if a giant up-ended a mile-wide bucket up of square, rectangle and triangle wooden blocks and tried to be neat about it. Men and women filled the streets, carrying baskets, or pulling carts.
They moved towards the centre. But in front of them, glimpsed above the roofline of the city's building in the distance, another ringwall, stouter than the two before them, and a stone and wood castle sat beyond it, the top storeys of the castle made of wood on stone foundations. The canal came to an end, the little river becoming a small lake.
"Why do ports look the same no matter where you go?" said Bear. He hadn't spoken in days until now, thinking he was going mad.
Jetties ran around the circumference, like spokes in a bicycle wheel. Flat cargo longships moored alongside, and wooden cranes lifted cargo in and out onto horse-pulled carts on the lake's ring-road. On the far side, four longships rested, and the fifth was halfway in the process of being pulled into a dry dock. They headed for the longships.
Jerland signalled them to dock in an empty berth, and his ship parked alongside once Snorri eased her to a stop.
"You can stop with the buckets now," said Snorri. "I'll see to it that Hellsbaene is next ship into the repair dock."
"Oh, the buckets," said Griffin, on his turn for bailing. "Right." He'd stopped bailing when they'd entered the city and now water sloshed a foot deep in the bottom. "Sorry." He smiled and winked at Amelia who giggled.
"I have your word," said Lucius, standing next to Beowulf. His stomach didn't like any of this, as if a swarm of butterflies had been let loose. Armed Viking warriors congregated at the end of the jetty they moored at, carrying various bladed and crossbow weapons. All wore at least two flintlock pistols.
"I gave you my blood oath," said Beowulf. "Whatever fate befalls you also happens to me."
"And mine," said Snorri and Magnus.
"Well then, Captain," said Laurie, "shall we?" Then in a lower voice, muttered, "at least I'll be off this damn boat."
Chapter Fifty-Four
Odinsgate
Beowulf, Snorri, and Magnus stepped onto the wooden jetty and walked down to the warriors, Manx trotting behind them, and began talking in deep, hurried tones. The others got themselves off the boat, helping Abe and James up and onto Terra Firma.
Abe breathed through a small hole in his neck and seemed to be doing better, making a whistling sound with every breath through the hollow tube, and could walk, but James, missing his left arm, still suffered delirious fevers and sweats. Mick held James's left arm around his neck, supporting him.
Thorf and Bear lifted Skippy up and onto the jetty, her advanced pregnancy making even small jumps impossible. Amelia climbed up, and held Zia to her chest.
"Is it going to be ok?" said Amelia. Beowulf appeared to be arguing with the men at the end of the jetty, and then Jerland joined the throng. "They don't look happy," she said.
"Just stay close to me baby girl," said Griffin, hoisting the last of their equipment up with the help of Andrew. He picked up Betty and with a grunt stepped up and onto the wooden planks, the boat now empty and filling with water fast.
"Hang on to the cat and stay next to me and Griffin," said Andrew, "and everything will be fine."
The voices ceased, and Snorri came back to the group. "The king is in conference with the Republic," he said, "but agreement has been made. We will see the king now." He picked up Amelia's canvas bag.
Beowulf, Manx, and Magnus led the way, both pilots right behind them, and the group followed the best they could. Andrew, Amelia, and Griffin were at the tail, encouraging Skippy along as she waddled, escorted by the warrior guards. Snorri didn't stop talking the entire trip, either to the warriors next to him or the group. A tunnel from the port area sloped under the castle wall, torches illuminating the darkness and gently back into daylight of the castle's large forecourt.
"The tunnel can be flooded at any moment," said Snorri, "should attackers breach the second wall."
The group looked up at the stone ramparts and foundation of the castle, at least three storeys high, the wooden castle another two storeys on top of that. It bristled with cannons, which, hadn't stopped cannonballs striking the castle. Men worked on wooden platforms, suspended on long ropes down its side, fixing the damage.
Lucius and Laurie walked together behind Beowulf, the both of them observing every defence
and pertinent fact they saw as the group crossed the forecourt and made their way into the castle's base. Laurie caught Lucius's eye.
"It's a hard way back out," said Laurie. The whole place swarmed with warriors, and their route a mess of choke points and murder alleys in cold, unyielding stone.
Lucius swore.
The entrance hall provided relief to the claustrophobic passageways. Light poured in from open windows, and torches lit dark corners. Tall cloth banners hung from the ceiling, and from the sides of the second-storey balconies that ringed the hall warriors stood on the stone protrusions, looking down at them. Stone staircases lay on the left and right, leading further into the castle's inner sanctum. A large central rug covered the floor, and that was it.
"Wait here," said Jerland, who walked up the left stairs and disappeared. Their escorts stood behind them, and said nothing.
"No worries," said Mick, "we'll take a seat."
"Mick, there is no place to sit, silly," said Amelia, stroking Zia's purring head.
Mick laughed, and Thorfinn swapped places to support James. "Indeed," he said, and looked around the hall.
Griffin eased the four-foot machine-gun down, so that the wooden handles rested on the rug, and the barrel of Betty leant against his waist.
Time passed. Shadows crept over the floor, and still they waited. Zia played with a loose thread she found on the rug, Amelia lying on her belly next to her. Skippy panted on her side.
"She's got to be getting close now," said Andrew. The group either sat on the rug or milled about, and did a mixture of both. Even Beowulf had joined Magnus and Snorri in sitting on the far edge of the rug, the Prince using his dog's torso as a pillow. The wolfhound slept.