“I can smell it,” I replied and tapped my nose.
“Smell it!”
“Yes, I have an excellent sense of smell.”
“And…”
“And I'm pretty sure that if we follow the line of light and dark, then I will at some point sniff it out.”
“Pretty sure. Is that all we're going on to rescue the so-called love of your life, smell?”
I gave Merryweather a flash of annoyance before replying, “I had two guides who could've easily found it, but as you're aware, I haven't now.”
“And full circle back to poor Aurora.”
“Something like that. But don't worry, I'll find it.”
“It must give off a hell of a stink,” Merryweather said chuckling to himself. “Poor old smelly Nordics,” he sang.
“Not really,” I replied with a shake of the head. “Just an overpowering perfume of lavender.”
“Lavender!”
“Don't ask me why, but it does. They all do.”
“Strange,” he pondered, “I never smelled it on Aurora.”
“That's a good point, I can't say I did.”
“Do you think you could smell it through a snowstorm?”
“Possibly. Why do you ask?”
Merryweather didn't reply, instead, waved the forefinger of his right hand around and around. Realising it was his way of saying look behind you, I did. I wished I hadn't. There, rising like a wall of pure white that eclipsed the insipid, ruby sun, came the snow.
It hit us so fast, I actually lunged for Walter to prevent us losing each other. Rather than recoil from my touch, he grabbed a hold of my shoulder with such ferocity that it quite surprised me. His taloned nails bit deep into my collarbone, but better that than be split up in that most feral blizzard.
“What do we do now?” Merryweather yelled.
At least, I thought he did. I saw his lips move, his face leer through the snowstorm, but heard only the wind.
I tried to signal a reassuring smile, but didn't know who I tried to kid; I was already lost. Only the fact we hadn't moved since grabbing each other gave any indication of which way to go. So, with heads bowed, we set off in what I for one hoped was the right direction like two hamstrung ducks.
On and on we waddled through that white hell, our feet moving without command, our unwilling forms towed in their wake. All sense of forward propulsion was lost to the storm. We might have been stepping on ice, slip-sliding on the spot without ever making progress for all I knew and just prayed we weren't. The only sign we progressed through time at all was judged by the ever-shortening timescale between Merryweather's incessant bleatings.
“Are we there yet?”
“No, Walter!” I'd bellow back.
“Did I just smell lavender?”
“No, Walter!” I yelled.
“I'm sure I sense the sun to our left. I'm worried we've turned about face!” he bellowed without taking a breath.
“We haven't, Walter!” I shouted back.
The last one was actually a lie because I had no such sensations, and could barely tell if we even stood, never mind walked in any given direction.
He would no sooner ask if we'd done such-and-such, then do so again. My right ear felt as though it had become frozen to his lips, so often he called out. A veritable tirade of nonstop worrisome questions spewed from him. In truth, I feared for his mental state.
* * *
To be awake whilst sure you were sleeping was a most peculiar sensation, but that's how it felt. The wind, a cacophony of spectral voices, melded together as one incessant cry of torture. It was as though the planet's pain, a realisation that it would soon be no more, had risen from its core to let out one final torturous scream. I was never a man prone to fear, but for a time, I covered my ears to all that anguish, all that terror. I wondered if I would be the same when my time came, go kicking and screaming into eternity, then realised I'd probably be glad to go if I couldn't be with Linka.
Merryweather, to his credit and my eternal surprise, didn't complain about the conditions. His head remained bowed throughout, his grip vice-like, as he trudged with the metronomic efficiency of an automaton. Once he realised I could not, or would not listen to him, he just got on with the business of walking. If anything it was I who was the first to show signs of weakening. It was a slow process, as the snows piled higher and higher, inhibiting my stride ever further. First to go was sensation. I thought Merryweather had released me and was set to panic until realising my mind played tricks on me. My body was, in fact, going numb. When I turned to my right, the blood that was my life essence sat solidified as flattened gemstones. Small pools of garnet circled the fingers that punctured my clothes and skin, yet I felt nothing. Next to go was sight. I hadn't noticed at first, the scene being one of semi-night, but evening morphed to midnight and I realised my eyes to have frozen shut. I rubbed at them, but there was no heat in those hands to defrost, there never had been. I tugged a little at my eyelashes, tried to blink, but it availed nothing. Even then, I wasn't unduly panicked. An Eternal has many gifts, if they can be called that, and being children of the night, those senses required to hunt are attuned to the task with unequivocal excellence. So, where sight failed, hearing took over, and when that failed, then smell. And that was how the two of us continued. If Merryweather shared my predicament, I couldn't have said, nor cared. Survival was all that mattered, all that concerned, for I had no intention of becoming a tall, dark ice cube frozen in time, alive yet dead. That's when I had my epiphany.
“Walter!” I cried, dragging him close. “We have to shelter!” I could not see him, but sensed the cogs in Merryweather's mind whirring into action.
“No!” he finally screeched back.
“We have to! We must take cover because we'll never walk out of here alive!” I waited a moment but got no response. I thought he'd gone into shock, so dragged him to the floor and started to scrape and scratch at the snow. I sought to dig a bivouac to house us until the maelstrom passed. The storm had reduced me to a cowering fool, but better a live fool than a dead one.
I continued to heap and pile snow to one side supposing Merryweather helped in his way. I was too tired to beg for assistance and too proud to beg. When at last I patted the top of it at a good four feet from the ground, I dug into its side to fashion a cave. The task took longer than I would have hoped, blind as I was, hands numb and uncooperative, but by the time I'd finished, I felt the thing sturdy enough to protect us from the worst of the weather. Crablike, I scuttled in on my hands and knees and reached to my shoulder to pry Merryweather's fingers from me. They weren't there. With flailing arms and swallowed curses, I flapped about my newly erected home, but never once did I touch anything other than the piled boundaries of snow. There was no human form to be found. Merryweather had gone, and despite not wanting to give a damn, I did.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
-
Albino
It was the strangest sensation, movement, without propelling oneself? Rigid limbs detected the passage of land and air, which was a relief after the numbness of the storm, but disturbed in my assuredness that I wasn't actually doing anything.
“I wish you'd let us hurt him, Ragnar.”
“Quiet, Verstra, we don't want to wake him.”
“Serstra,” came an indignant retort.
However, it was much too late for those who manhandled me; I was wide awake even if still unable to unlock my eyes. This was not such a bad thing. I'd always had the annoying habit of fluttering eyelids whenever pretending to be asleep. I had used the method on the Marquise many times although her lusty nature rendered it pointless. She, like others, always saw through my ploy, as it was almost impossible for me to remain still. Playacting was not in my nature, so I luxuriated in the opportunity to eavesdrop whilst stillness was forced upon me: I listened, and I listened well.
“Whichever of you, the same applies. You know mother's feelings on the matter,” Ragnar continued.
&nbs
p; “We could lie,” one twin replied.
“She would know.”
“Don't tell us you're as scared of her as you are of Grella.”
There was a slowing of step, a decrease in momentum, as tension rippled through my legs via Ragnar's oversized muscles.
“If you even think to speak like that again I shall cease dragging my burden and do something to the pair of you that only you will regret.”
“Sorry, brother,” came one twin's voice, a slight tremor tingling down one arm.
“Apologies, Ragnar,” came the other, sending a similar jolt of fear down my other arm. “It's just…”
“Just what?” came the booming tones of their more powerful sibling.
“Shush.”
I thought the twins pushed their luck then, but Ragnar appeared not to notice.
“I said, just what?” he repeated slower, but no quieter.
“He hurt us.”
“Your point being?”
“Our point being,” said the two as one, “we have fought wars and whales, and never once had a finger laid upon us.”
“True,” Ragnar interrupted.
“And the one time we are not only harmed but slandered, we are unable to correct it.”
“You know the law,” Ragnar grumbled like an aftershock.
“The law is obsolete,” Verstra replied.
I felt I began to tell the twins apart more easily than their brother did. Verstra walked to my left, whilst Serstra to my right, a guard of honour to their hated foe, namely, moi.
“If there was no law, there would be no you.”
“What!” Serstra blurted.
“I would have polished the pair of you off years ago.”
Ragnar chuckled to himself like a landslide mid-fall.
“Oh, ha, ha,” the two voiced in sarcastic unity.
“Things will change when there is a new power on the Nordic throne. I hope I can still count on you, brothers?” Ragnar growled the latter in a no-mood-to-argue tone.
“Oh, yes,” said one.
“I don't see why not,” said the other.
“Good, because sedition is a crime best served cold.”
“Well, we're in the right place for it then,” Verstra shot back much to his twin's amusement.
“Hm, well, I have no desire for it to remain that way.”
“Us too,” the twins replied in unison.
“All this running around the countryside after Aurora has given us a taste for freedom,” Verstra went on.
“Then you wish to leave as much as I?” Ragnar enquired.
“More so,” replied the two.
“Then it is settled. We strike at the first opportunity and pray to Odin it's before this damn planet is as dead as mother.”
“Ha! We like that,” said the twins.
“Just make sure you're ready to move.”
“I don't see why it should be so hard to finish her,” said Verstra.
“I agree,” replied his twin.
“What makes you say that?” Ragnar asked.
“Grella being gone, of course. Poor Jean-boy here has inadvertently done us the biggest favour of all in sorting him out.”
“We cannot be certain he has,” Ragnar's booming baritone replied with an air of caution.
“He must have. Grella would not have left him not even if Aurora had been with him.”
I did not like the emphasis placed on had but resisted the urge to share my lucidity. Accordingly, I carried on eavesdropping.
“That disturbs me,” Ragnar puzzled.
“What does?” said the two.
“If Aurora went to all that trouble to run after him, and then follow this vagrant halfway across Europa, why would she leave him?”
“He probably killed her, too,” said one twin.
“He's known for it,” said the other.
“I suspect us misinformed,” Ragnar replied.
“How so?”
How I desired to add by whom, but restrained myself.
“He does not strike me as the mindless killer we were led to believe.”
“Look what he did to us,” the twins interjected.
“It is because of that.”
“What!” A joint show of disbelief.
“Believe me, it was easier to kill than maim you, brothers. He knew you'd heal and did no more than necessary to demonstrate his displeasure.”
“How can you say that, Ragnar?” Verstra questioned, and I thought him about to burst into tears.
“It is the truth,” Ragnar replied.
Ironically, it was, and I felt a sense of newfound admiration for Ragnar in that he had both recognised and acknowledged it. At the time, I was surprised he had not aided them, foul of temper as he was, but his words explained much.
“I still don't believe he could best Grella,” pouted Serstra.
“Don't say you agree with Ragnar and not me, brother,” Verstra sounded most put out at the suggestion.
“Frankly,” boomed Ragnar, “it's Aurora being the missing one that troubles me most, for I know with indisputable certainty, he could not kill her.”
“You always overestimate her,” the twins chirruped.
“Better to be over than under, boys,” Ragnar replied less forcefully, and I realised he'd tried to crack a joke; he needed further practise.
“Bah!”
The twins' jovial responses were too jovial for a man being dragged against his wishes. So, as my eyelids, at last, became unstuck, I made my move.
“Good morning, boys, if it ever is morning in this godforsaken hellhole,” I declared. The shock to the three was apparent by the slack jaws that gawped like broken coffin lids. “Are you taking me for a ride?” I winked.
Ragnar was the first to speak quite unworried by my awakening, unlike the twins, whose contorted faces tried and failed to dispel their fear. I hadn't realised until that moment just how much my humiliating them had affected each. “It would be best for you not to resist, little man. We have been instructed to collect you, but not in any particular bodily state,” he grumbled.
“Why would I resist; this is great fun. I do so hate travelling by air and get to see so much more of the place from down here. Hang on, I may have got that the wrong way around?”
“You think you're so funny, don't you,” spat one twin.
“Yes, funny,” agreed the other.
“Better to think it than look it.”
By reflex, Verstra put his free hand to his still half-closed left eye.
“Oh, God, I hope your brother doesn't put his hand where I stuck the other whalebone.”
The kick to my ribs was excruciating, but worth it. The twins were mine to harangue, and Ragnar knew it.
“Don't bloody listen to him!” he roared, tightening his lock about my elevated feet.
“Good advice,” I quipped. “I never listen to me either if I can possibly help it.”
“You sound just like…”
“Hush your mouth!” Ragnar bellowed, cutting Serstra off mid-sentence.
“Sorry, brother, I wasn't thinking.”
“Ah, that's your problem, so young and impetuous,” I teased.
“We're far more ancient than you,” his twin brother snapped.
“Well, boys, in that case, I offer my humble apologies. I'd always had you pegged for infants.”
“I know what you're attempting, Jean,” Ragnar rumbled.
“Do you? Regale me with your knowledge.”
“You seek to antagonise us into doing something we may regret. Perhaps, even into releasing you. We shan't though. The only way you are leaving is over our dead bodies.”
“Either way is fine,” I chuckled.
Ragnar's fury almost burnt a hole in the back of his head, but he continued his steady march north.
“You have my admiration, Ragnar.”
“Do I?” he replied, without turning.
“Indeed, you do,” I enthused. “I think you're doing well to even walk strai
ght after the ease with which Grella put you down.” Ragnar did not respond, but the cracking of my ankles showed my jibe had hit home. “By the way, as seen as you've already alluded to him, have you seen my good friend Sir Walter Merryweather running around anywhere? I lost him in the snowstorm and am growing worried for his well-being.”
“For who?” said Verstra.
“I doubt you've concerns for whoever-he-is or anyone else,” said Serstra expanding upon his brother's question.
“Why do you say that?”
“You don't feel for anyone.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“We know things.”
“Do you now,” I replied.
“Be quiet, Serstra,” Ragnar boomed, stirred once more into action.
“I will not,” Serstra bit back.
I listened intently as the two shouted and cursed at each other; it was quite entertaining in its own way. But in between the bravado and the moments of silence, I caught a definite lapping sound. If we were near the border of the ocean and ice, then we had almost reached Hvit. I chanced raising the stakes, unwilling to turn up at their mother's door trussed between the three like a hunter's trophy.
“You're quiet,” I said turning to Verstra. “Scared I'll hurt you whilst the other two argue?” The response was instant as the flames of anger stirred him. He required both hands free to retaliate and the instant his grip loosened, I struck.
Catching Verstra by the wrist, I swung the albino as hard as I could towards his twin. The two clattered together in a crunch of bones that even I winced at. Ragnar, caught off guard, felt my fist to his jaw, as I doubled over at the waist to punch him. He let go in obvious pain, but the blow did not floor him, which frustrated as it had been my best shot. Survival being the wiser side of valour, I ran.
As the elder Nordic reeled and the other two writhed about each other entangled in a snowdrift, I ran for all I was worth. The darkness of night was to my left, the lapping ocean to my right illuminated in the dusk of a perpetual ruby glow. The sun winked over the distant horizon and I knew myself to be heading in the right direction. But time was against me. The Nordics were quicker than I even if their orca fuelled might wasn't up to their usual standards. I had only the element of surprise, and I used it to its fullest. I sprinted as though my life depended on it, which it probably did. My legs creaked in protest; I ignored them. My arms pounded the Arctic air aching from my imprisonment; I refused to let them hinder me. I ran like the wind but knew it not fast enough.
Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2) Page 24