Ragnarok

by Michael Smorenburg

  A muffled sound of many voices came from within. Only the laughter was universal as it punctuated a strange language that burbled from within.

  Laughter… many laughing as if a vast banquet was being held in this small boat-like clinker house far too small to hold what sounded like a multitude of voices and applause.

  Nothing made sense. Nothing.

  There was laughter and voices aplenty, but only a single man slumped asleep in front of a leaping blue flame in a box.

  He drew closer to the window and saw the box contained small people, the view of them rapidly changing. So engrossed was he in this spectacle that he banged his face seemingly on the air, yet on glass so clear and invisible that Raol hadn’t seen it at all. The man started in his chair, and their eyes met in terror and fright.

  Raol fell swiftly back, his men low and in synch with him.

  The man’s voice rose in urgency within and a shadow moved inside the house and came to the window.

  As Raol and the men slunk backward into the shadows, the man clearly realized what he was seeing—a gang of men at his boundary.

  A moment later the door opened and the man stood there filling it. He started shouting and another shadow moved within.

  A woman came to the door and the man shouted at her and pointed away.

  In that instant, Raol saw that she had the girth and likeness of a sow. Such a hefty woman Raol had never seen before and he doubted his eyes.

  And so Raol hung there at the edge of the shadows, too afraid of Odin to retreat again.

  The man was white like him. With features like him. With a beard graying like his. With blue eyes like him, not dark and smooth faced like a savage.

  But this man was vast. Taller than any man Raol had ever seen, and bloated like only a king or invalid who sat and did nothing for years might be.

  Raol felt the urge to go forward. To embrace the man—to call those brothers to arms who had been laughing so heartily with him in the small room with their strange blue fire in a box.

  But the man was shouting, shouting, shouting many foreign words—but one repeated over and over stood out, “…GUN…”

  Gun could mean only one thing. Gunnhildr— ‘war battle maid’—he was calling the woman to join him in battle.

  It was too much risk. Having heard so many voices within the house, Raol went at the man like a maddened boar.

  He was neither angry nor violent, he only wanted to stop the man. To subdue him. To let him get a good look—they were brothers. The same tribe.

  He drove the man into the dwelling, down on top of him on the floor. Had him in an instant by the throat and turned his face to look eye-to-eye.

  “I am Raol,” he told the man. “I am the great nephew of Leif Ericson. His father, Eric, was my mother’s uncle.”

  And the man stared at him with terror in his eyes. His body soft and weak, his breathing feeble in the iron grip.

  And Gansi was over them, looking for a gap between his father and the victim, ready with his axe to cleave the man’s head.

  “Los, Gansi! Los! No. These are men like us. This man is frightened, give him breath.”

  Just then the vast woman, as tall as any man Raol had ever seen, came swarming to the door from within the house wearing strange clothing, carrying with her a long thin club that could do no damage even if she swung it with all her might.

  She didn’t raise it but held it out in front of her, its end betraying the shake and shudder of fear in her body.

  She seemed to be offering it toward Gansi—pushing the hollow end and Gansi stood to take it, his hand almost grasping its swaying end.

  And then the thing clapped like thunder and fire shot out, and with it went Gansi’s hand and much of his arm.

  The club clattered to the floor and Gansi fell to one side, staring at nothing but tattered flesh. Half of his arm below the elbow eaten in that instant by the flame.

  His eyes glazed as the berserker entered into Gansi.

  In that state, even Raol could not and would not interfere.

  This was the will of Odin. The magic that this woman had hurled came from her god, and Odin had intervened.

  Gansi went at her with a rage that Raol knew was not human. He was on his feet and covered five strides in three. Driving his forehead into her nose, it exploded like an overripe fruit.

  As she hit the ground he swung the axe with just one hand, cleaving her skull. Three more rapid blows and she was gaping all about her torso, a crimson pool seeping around her.

  Gansi now turned on the man, whimpering on his knees and Raol stood aside. Two blows and the man was dispatched. Gansi kicked the lifeless body over and over until Raol pulled him off.

  “Gansi… Gansi! My son. NO MORE! It is done! We must move, this is an unnatural place.”

  Fruit stood in a food preparation area and very quickly, more food was found, cunningly hidden behind doors. A small cupboard even had food in it as cold as if it were winter.

  Everywhere were the skins and gourds with the rune markings and painted images, blaring loud crisp colors. But now, rather than flaccid and limp without contents, these were turgid and weighty, evidently filled with contents.

  The men took armfuls of what they could carry and withdrew just as shouts from other nearby dwellings erupted and shapes appeared in doorways, watching them go.

  But, cowards that this tribe were, nobody gave chase.

  They were almost at the longboat, collecting men as they ran—terrified men who had heard the crash of the thunder and heard Gansi growling in pain. Just then, the dog like a wolf came at them out of the dark, silent and swift.

  It chose the injured man.

  This is its cowardly instinct, Raol reminded himself.

  It savaged Gansi’s good arm and he dropped his axe and kicked the animal off. The beast howled and was gone into the night.

  Now with both arms injured, his fellows had to haul him into the boat and they pushed off.

  Confused shouts full of outrage and lament drifted across the still waters as they stroked out into the dark.

  Then shafts of light as bright as daylight—like the sun shining deep into a cave—began dancing around the scene, sweeping up and down the roadways and bushes and down onto the shoreline.

  Lights like these were a strange magic, not flames on a stick, but purposefully directed. The terror of this sight lent the men superhuman strength and endurance, and they pulled fast out into the blackness, navigating to their hideout by the stars.

  “Gansi… how is it?”

  As soon as they were far enough away, Raol came to squat by his son lying curled amidships where he had been dropped.

  The boy couldn’t say anything, but he was at least alive; shivering with the shock of it. Incapacitated. His arms crossed over himself, speechless in the total darkness.

  Raol felt over his lad’s body—the shoulders a handful of taught knotted muscle—and down over the bicep, but when he reached the lad’s left forearm the boy winced and pulled away.

  It was wet, and sticky, the ragged flesh with a protrusion of jagged bone splinters.

  No…! Raol silently prayed. No, Odin… no! We have done your bidding. How can you allow this to befall us?

  The boy would never pull an oar again, they’d be lucky not to lose his whole arm. He’d never again swing an axe properly as he would need to if he must lead one day.

  “And the other side?” he asked the boy, not expecting an answer.

  Two injuries… both arms! A dog bite? Why did it take him? “Why…. Why? Why my son?” he beseeched the night.

  A man might survive one such wound, but two? Two aren’t twice as bad as one, they’re much, much worse than that. The shock alone could kill.

  Raol had seen that before after his many battles.

  A dog bite would fester. A dog bite from the wrong dog could drive the man to frothing madness within a day. A dog bite could be worse than merely an amputated hand.

  The boy kept shiv
ering and wincing, but Raol had to understand how bad it was, so he ignored the growling in pain and explored the elbow area of Gansi’s right arm, already starting to swell.

  The implications ripped his heart.

  He lived for this boy. The lad would carry the family legacy forward. In one devious moment, his whole life’s purpose had come unraveled.

  Gansi had seen many a battle wound dealt with in an emergency, so he would take no offense and it needed no explanation.

  Raol urinated carefully over the open wounds around the elbow, holding sufficient over to do the same for the tattered stump.

  He gently massaged the warm, corruption-killing liquid down into the bite holes as best he could, and then he went back to the shattered left arm with the same treatment.

  “This will keep you safe from corruption,” he quietly repeated to his son as if it were the incantation of the words that held the magic.

  They were far from the land already, and there they saw increasing activity.

  The searching lights were many and more arrived all the time, some at speeds faster than a horse’s gallop, smoothly with two searching beacons ahead as they came onrushing.

  Then, a peculiar wailing sound pierced over the hubbub of shouts, and it came with fiery blue light of a quality such as the men had never before seen.

  There it stopped at the heart of the activity and the angry blue light kept pulsing as they made their rapid way across to the far shore.

  When they were sufficiently far away, Freyrík, Gansi’s cousin and Raol’s nephew, came to them from his position at the oars.

  “Is it bad, Uncle?”

  Raol could hear the worry and fear in the man’s voice. It was too dark for any of the men to see the extent of the injury and most hadn’t seen it at all because the withdrawal had been at such pace, but Raol not joining the oarsmen was signal enough.

  “He is strong,” Raol lied, to keep morale, but mainly for Gansi’s ears.

  Freyrík slipped away back to his oar and there were some murmurs, then Ótta was silently by Raol’s side. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  He placed the vast paddle that was his hand at Raol’s neck and let the gnarled old palm, and the power that it carried, say it all; comrades that they had been, brothers that they were.

  And so each of the men came to pay their respects and share the misery.

  Before their crossing back to their hide was complete, a new type of winged dragon appeared in the sky, clattering and barking. It too, swept a beam like the sun from its belly, over the scene and then fast away along the length of the coastline, evidently fooled into thinking they were still ashore.

  It was the one small glimmer of hope that came to Raol in his moment of abandonment, that Odin had made their escape invisible, and had led the skræling into bewilderment at their route.

  “Gansi… be strong. Odin has seen your bravery. He fights for us, we have his protection.”

  Chapter 10

  Los Angeles, Malibu, CA

  Friday, 20 August

  Latitude: 34°00′20″N

  Longitude: 118°47′43″W

  “So…” Tegan wore the sternest expression she could muster. “You got your dinner date, now I want the answers I came for.”

  “And there I was thinkin’ its dinner at LAX that y’a couldn’t resist.”

  “Oh, sure,” her voice was dripping in sarcasm, “I often push through thirty miles of L.A. traffic to catch a meal at the 8 oz Burger Bar. A girl can never get enough of airport cuisine.”

  “I am grateful,” Pete said, tipping his head in a bow. “And I’m really sorry.”

  “Oh, no… please don’t be. You nursing your hangovers is very important to me.”

  “I hang my head once more in shame, ma’am.” And he did and really seemed to mean it.

  She’d very nearly not taken the date, but in the end, her hormones had capitulated to his charm.

  Dinner the night before had fallen through; he hadn’t said as much, but his Tijuana jaunt had claimed more brain cells than he cared to admit. They both knew that, but she figured that the pain in his voice was proof positive that he was getting all the punishment he deserved.

  His fortuitous meeting at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, just north of Oceanside, had eaten up their lunch date. But Tegan hadn’t minded, she was far too busy making life-changing decisions and arrangements of her own.

  And so it was, this dinner at the airport, before he would wing off to Austin for another early morning meeting.

  Tegan had said no three times before she’d found herself and her air-conditioned Cayenne battling Santa Anna conditions and half the population of Southern California on the highways.

  “I must be nuts,” she told him again.

  “It’s what makes y’a irresistible.”

  “So… San Diego… Camp Pendleton…? Marines? Connection?”

  “All very hush-hush, I’m afraid darlin’.”

  “Kind of like my availability next time you want a date,” Tegan challenged.

  “Awwww now that’s playing dirty, Teegs.”

  “And who said you can all me Teegs?”

  “It’s a natural evolution’a your name.”

  “Only my mom calls me that.”

  “Well… great minds.”

  “Pete… I’m serious. Playing at being the big mystery man has been fun, but I want to know. I’ve been patient and earned it.” She wasn’t angry, but she did say it firmly and there was a brittle edge to her voice. Pete heard it and his smile disappeared.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not messing you around, just what I do is… well… Not really something I like to talk much about.”

  “Now that’s intriguing. Military?”

  “Some.”

  “Security? Defense?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Come on Pete, give me something better to work with.”

  He huffed and she saw he was genuinely stressed. He nodded to himself.

  “I’m in the movie industry, you already know that,” Tegan bargained. “Whatever it is you do, I can’t influence it. Are you ashamed of it?”

  “Hell, naagh. I’m just not in the habit-a talking… talking about it. I deal with… what shall I call them… let’s say… quite confidential matters?”

  “Military secrets?”

  “Breakthroughs.”

  “Oh… Hmmm. For? The Australian government?”

  “Not anymore. Private enterprise.”

  “Arms dealer?”

  “That sounds too romantic. More, ‘consultant’.”

  “For…?”

  “Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

  She held his stare, and kept holding it until he sighed.

  “Alright… Lockheed.”

  “You sell for them?”

  “I open doors.”

  “You sell for them.”

  “It’s consulting… market analysis… advice. I know people.”

  “Heavy stuff.” Tegan bit her lip. He was an arms trader. Together with an appetite for tequila, things were looking decidedly down.

  “Has its moments,” he allowed.

  The conversation had broken their easy and flirtatious mood and they both skirted round small talk, trying to find a way back from the deadly serious.

  “You’re disappointed?” He eventually took it head on.

  “Disappointed?”

  “In me? My... uhhmm… my work and a bit of celebration?”

  “Goes with the territory.”

  “And the territory is?”

  “Your world.”

  “Which is?”

  She wouldn’t answer.

  “Come on, Teegs. We had a vibe. This is weird. Let’s be honest, I hardly know you, y’a don’t know me. We owe nothing to one another… but you’ve put y’rself out to be here. That counts for me. It really does.”

  She looked down and folded the paper napkin.

  “For Christ’s sake,
you’re having a first date with me in a takeaway burger joint… dressed like that!”

  She could feel him melting the icy sheet she’d manufactured.

  “You’re dolled up—y’a look great. I’m a jerk. I let y’a down. I signed a big contract, your Californian locals wanted to show me the town.”

  “And, don’t forget, I drove through a parking lot pretending to be a highway to make it here. In hellish heat,” she added, starting to smile.

  “Yeah… same highway as me,” he winked. “And I could’ve flown out to Maryland in the new F-35. Now that won’t mean a lot to you, but it’s the best fighter in the world and I’ve been dying for a flip. The boyz at Pendleton offered. Instead? No. I’m in cattle class on a commercial flight—because I’m half mad and wan’ed to see you. Can we cut the crap an’ just tell me what’s wrong?”

  He said it so earnestly, so sweetly, that she melted. She didn’t realize that he’d invested of himself to be here too.

  “It’s nothing, Pete. Just…. It’s just that I’m a pacifist and I hate the arms industry.”

  “Can’t blame ya’. I really can’t.”

  His understanding worked and Tegan relented with a sigh.

  “Hey—this is all serious… far too serious. You put in effort to be here, so did I. I agree. Let’s cut to the chase; I think you’re great, and you…?”

  “Breathtaking…” As he said it, Tegan felt as if he could see deep into her soul. She felt him within her, absorbing this stolen moment they had together.

  “You’re fabulous,” she told him.

  “And you’re my kind of…” he left it unsaid, but she understood.

  “Good. Let’s have fun…” Tegan didn’t want her mouth galloping too far ahead of her. “I’ve got news too,” she said, slowing the pace. “I’m quitting my job. Taking a sabbatical.”

  “Awww, great. You’re coming with me then?”

  He said it so easily as a matter of fact that she felt an uncanny and fated urge to accept, but she blocked it.

  “Well, not exactly, but I am up to something. Also top secret. Work. Can’t tell you anything about it. You know… Confidential.”

  She tried to keep a straight face, but there was a twinkle of mirth in her eye.

  “Now y’re just taking the piss.”

  “No, seriously. It’s confidential. I can’t talk about it… But I can talk to you.”