“Look at Gansi—asleep, and the fever is broken. What the woman did makes sense. She cut the evil out, and let fresh blood wash the wound. She bound the wound with fresh and boiled binding.”
“Boiled!” Ótta scoffed. What difference would that make.
“I don’t know, but I sense it is the correct thing. She tended him carefully and when she could have fed him poison, she somehow took his pain from him with her magic. When the shouts came down the valley, she kept her silence.”
“To keep her head… not much of a choice,” Ótta pointed out.
Raol shrugged. Ótta was right. At the instant she would have shouted, he would have cut her voice out before that sound could reach any listening ear.
“What are we to do then…? They know we are here. The men in the boat… this woman who has stolen your wife’s likeness… the flying dragon? Our boat is hidden out of fear. This is not why we obeyed and returned. We obeyed to do the gods’ will, and here we cower on a beach, trying to eke a living from these putrid and lifeless waters clogged only with lifeless floating skins of who-knows-what.”
“What do we do then?” Raol asked simply.
“I don’t know. You have been our leader throughout. We have willingly followed. Proudly followed… I don’t know,” Ótta threw his hands in the air. “We can’t sit and wait to be butchered.”
“Do you want to find a new hide? We have already seen by night how this whole coast is infested. At every pillage, we have faced the same… blasts from the fire sticks. Quite how no more of us have been taken by them I don’t know.”
“And what have we achieved for the gods?” Ótta posed.
“Some damage.”
“Small damage.”
“Yes… small damage.”
“How many lives?”
“I suspect as many as we have men. It is a battle we are winning then. As many as we have numbers dispatched, and none of us, save for Gansi, yet marked.”
“And how many do you think there are of them?”
Raol knew there were countless foes that had massed on this land since their return. Every bay and headland seemed to twinkle by night with those strange un-flickering watch lights. Every home they had attacked had the same box full of blue light and people living dramatic lives within.
“Do we turn then?” Raol asked. “Do we turn for Iceland? To our people? Perhaps back to our continent in the east, and raise a proper army?”
“You cannot ask me for those decisions,” Ótta insisted. “But you must contemplate them and ask Odin for the answer—this calm won’t last.”
And it was as if those words brought a new menace.
Like a mosquito in the gathering dusk, a small dragon began to descend in from high above and out to sea, in over the beach.
The men scattered for deep cover once more.
Chapter 19
Cripple Cove Loop Parking Lot
Latitude: 47°48'28"N
Longitude: 52°47'13"W
Tegan’s bizarre voice message blipped to life on John’s mobile app, her voice so hushed he had to press the phone hard against one hear, cover the other and step far away from the huddle of rescue searchers.
“I’m in a bay off Cripple Cove Loop near Biscayan Cove. Men have me captive. They are terrified, but I’m safe. Only danger is to attack them. First scout silently. Please understand… this will sound crazy… these men are from the past… can’t explain more.”
“What the hell does it mean?” John passed the phone to Gaby who had moved with him and badgered him to listen too.
She shut her eyes tight, moving even farther away.
“She’s alive, John. She’s alive. We have t’ give this to the police.”
Gaby felt like she’d hit the lottery, but even as her jubilation boiled out, captive echoed in her mind.
Tegan was a captive of men—probably the ones who had perpetrated the murders. The worst possible images overwhelmed her mind and all she wanted was for these assailants to be eliminated.
“She says to play it cool. ‘The men are from the past’… What the hell does that mean? She sounds desperate that we listen.”
“Just give it to the police, they will know what t’ do.”
At that moment, a second message pinged.
“Call Pete. His number on spare phone in my room. Tell him to call Daxton and say Daxton’s right about time slip. Vikings I think.”
“And that? Vikings? What kind of Vikings?” John asked, bewildered. “Has this girl lost her mind?”
“I have her phone with Pete’s number in the car, the one Pete kept calling. Where are the keys?”
Gaby fled toward the car with John in hot pursuit.
The police coordinator looked up from the drone they were preparing to launch with all haste, before sunset.
“Poor blighters,” he remarked to the pilot. “I can’t imagine…”
“Alright—set,” the pilot confirmed and stepped back.
The small search group backed up with him and the drone went racing vertically into the sky on a hornet’s nest of sound, immediately canting over and zinging away due west, heading fast toward the bay with the wrecked boat.
“Bring me in high,” the camera operator instructed. “I can zoom in for a look.”
The drone was already at eight hundred feet, touching thirty miles per hour, lateral speed. From that height, the camera monitor on a harness at the cameraman’s chest showed the whole coast from the point down beyond the bay of interest.
Two and a half minutes later they had overflown the coast, providing a perspective back toward the bay.
“Hold her there,” the cameraman instructed the pilot.
The camera began probing the cliff either side of the bay and then began to explore deeper into the bay, to the shale beach and then across to the bottom of the cliff face where the pilot had reported a mess of planking.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the cameraman was saying quietly to himself. “What type of thing is that?”
The quality of the image showed a unique overlapping planking section of hull. It was almost artistic in its beauty.
“I’ve seen this before… something like this. A pretty old boat, that. Very odd construction. Maybe let’s edge in.”
The pilot brought the drone on a descending flight path into the bay.
The cameraman panned wide again, pulling the view back to take in the whole scene. Everything looked normal save for a pile of litter on the beach.
“Someone’s been busy,” he remarked as he zoomed for a moment to pick over the debris. “Disgusting,” he said offhandedly.
The drone dropped lower and lower, the camera panning about.
Everything was absolutely deserted.
“Can we take a closer look at the boat. See if it’s a wreck?”
The drone was now not much higher above the sand than a walking man.
It skidded along the shoreline over to the cliff.
“Wow… somebody doesn’t want this found. It looks very intact. You can see how it’s pushed in under that overhang so you can’t see it from above… Lots of cut bush piled on it… looks freshly cut too.”
He was pointing at his screen with half a dozen heads jostling for a view over his shoulder.
“What’s this got to do with a missing woman though?”
The question was rhetoric and one on everyone’s lips.
“I swear to God, this is a museum piece. I don’t know anything about boats, but this is waaaaay out of the ordinary.”
“Not much light,” the operator pointed out. “Let’s do a recce of the bush and river before it’s too dangerous.”
The cameraman nodded his agreement.
The camera panned to wide again and the drone began a sweep along the front of the bush.
“Our industrious litter collector has certainly been busy,” the cameraman observed. “Check it out… woven into the bushes there.”
“Probably a squatter,” the pilot agreed.
“I’ll get some men down to take a look in the morning,” the police sergeant advised. “You think she may…?” he didn’t finish.
“Could be… let’s quickly check out the river course… the sun’s going.”
The drone rose up just above the height of the treetops and followed the course of the black river below, showing through the canopy in places.
“Yeah… nothing to report there. Let’s go see the bush camp again.”
The drone bounded up into the sky to an elevation of one hundred feet and came in over a tapestry of discarded plastic of all types: bags, builder’s sheeting and splayed plastic bottles.
“Can’t see anything. Not a gap… but, hang on. Isn’t that a… a…” he pointed on his screen and zoomed in, gasping the word, “…person?”
Staring back out of the monitor was a wild man, bushy beard and eyes like a tiger.
“Well would you look at what we have here!!” The police sergeant stared in disbelief and then spoke into his two-way radio. “Dispatch… get me the Captain.”
From a football field’s distance, John and Gaby were watching the huddle around the drone operator.
They’d retrieved Tegan’s spare phone from the car and powered it up. During the agonizing moments it took for the phone to log itself onto the network, they’d seen the drone shoot into the sky and whisk itself off toward the setting sun.
Still waiting, they’d watched the huddle around the operator and cameraman knot ever tighter. Evidently it was interesting viewing.
John had insisted that Gaby was too flustered to efficiently deliver Tegan’s message and had commandeered the phone.
At last the phone was settled and John selected the only other number besides ‘Daxton Scientist’ stored on it: ‘Gunrunner Pete’.
The call went out and the handset in John’s hand reported that the target phone was ringing… and ringing… and ringing.
“Come ooooooonnnn!” John growled, scowling repeatedly at the handset’s display as if this would hasten an answer.
Gaby could see that something very interesting was happing over at the throng. She was torn between running to them to offer their news and seeing theirs, and staying here to oversee John delivering Tegan’s instruction.
“Hey baby,” the Ozzie accent finally came cascading out of the earpiece. “I thought y’a didn’t love me anymore!”
“Is this Pete?” John cut in.
“Yeah… well, hello… Who is this? Is this Tegan’s phone?”
“It is, I’m John, Tegan’s dad, and…”
“Well, hello sir,” Pete responded, confusion ringing in his voice.
“Pete, sorry no formalities, we have a crisis on our hands. Tegan’s in trouble. Her instruction was to contact you…” he spoke to Gaby, poking with his nose toward his own mobile in her hand “What’s that chap’s name? The scientist?”
Before Gaby could respond, Pete did, “Daxton? Cronner?”
“The first one I think, yes,” John said and then spoke over Pete who was trying to guess what it was about. “You have to just listen, Pete. We’re up in Newfoundland. Tegan was investigating some gang attacks in the area and she seems to have stumbled into their hideout. This is going to sound nuts, and I don’t understand it, but she said that the scientist guy you mentioned will know. She said he was right… something about time slips and Vikings.”
“You’re shittin’ me…” Pete blurted and then apologized for the phrase.
John ignored the minor infraction and apology.
“I wish I was and I wish I had the foggiest idea what this is all about…”
Gaby interrupted to fill John in. She had a smattering of an idea of what Tegan was looking for and the outrageous hypothesis that she had shared.
“Not now, Gaby,” John cut her off irritably. “Sorry Pete…”
Pete had simultaneously been saying something.
“Pete… say again.”
“Do the authorities know?”
“Yes. There’s a search underway. We’re up at the most northeastern peninsula of Newfoundland. There’s a drone up now, looking at some clues a chopper picked up earlier.”
“Are the cops there?”
“Yes… I’m looking at them now. The sun’s just setting and the drone should be over an area where they thought they saw something earlier. By the look of them,” John reported on the searchers, “I think they have something.”
Just then, the police sergeant stepped away from the group on his two-way radio.
“Tell ‘em to shut it down!” Pete instructed.
“What?” John couldn’t believe his hears.
“Tell the cops t’a pull the search, t’ not go in. If this is what I think it is, we need specialists, not local yokels racin’ in with guns blazing.”
“What is it,” John asked on impulse.
“It’s something Daxton… that scientist… discussed with me and it’s VERY sensitive. There’s no time for discussion. Stop the search.”
Gaby insisted that John fill her in as they rushed up the path toward the gaggle of excitedly confused observers clustered around the drone operator.
“Sergeant,” John appealed to the policeman who was standing just aside talking on the radio.
The sergeant backed up two paces and held up his hand to halt John so that he could finish his discussion.
John stepped into the gap the policeman had created and insisted that the policeman listen.
“Sir… I have the Captain on. We have identified a group in the valley and are mobilizing a squad. Just a moment please!”
“Please… you have to stop it. I have instructions that this is very sensitive, that…”
The sergeant had backed further away and turned his back to John, continuing with hasty plans for a frontal assault.
“Sergeant!” John was almost shouting now, his voice shrill. The drone observers were looking over at him, torn as to where their attentions should be.
It was very obvious over the past several minutes and from what John could hear the sergeant planning that the drone was over whatever captors had ahold of Tegan.
“Get them to fly that thing out of there, Gaby.” John shouted louder toward the group. Nobody reacted. “Gaby! Tell them it’s bloody urgent to get that thing away from whatever they’re looking at!”
Gaby went on the offensive, her Irish temper ignited by the terror of her daughter deep in harm’s way and the drone operators probably inflaming the situation to deadly heights.
She was yelling and the pilot was looking toward the police sergeant for an override, but John had all of the policeman’s attention and the two-way radio in his grip.
“You are interfering with police business, sir!” the sergeant was furious.
“I don’t give not one single fuck what business I’m interfering with. You are interfering with my daughter’s life. Listen to me! There is something going on here that neither of us understand. But I am in touch with someone who does. He says to pull the search. They need experts to tackle this. Do you understand?”
The explosive situation heaped confusion upon bewilderment.
“We can see them all, two dozen of the fuckers,” the cameraman was displaying his monitor for John to see. “I’ve got it on thermal imaging. Look!”
And there in yellow, blue and red relief was the whole scene laid bare, the cloak of canopy and plastic screening torn away.
There was a huddle of apparitions, all looking up at the whirring drone just above the treetops, invisible to their eyes.
Among the heftily built forms, each clutching the icy blue outline of a sword or axe, was a slight frame and a man lying prone not far away.
“Yes… you have them. Good. Now fly that fucking thing out of there!” John bawled at the man, closing with him like a prizefighter.
Chapter 20
Viking Encampment, near Biscayan Cove
Latitude: 47°48'08"N
Longitude: 52°48'21"W
; “Hvað er þetta, ha? andanum? Meira af bragðarefur, kona?”
It needed no translation—they wanted to know what the angrily buzzing drone hovering above the treetops was.
As soon as the drone began to depart, Raol began barking orders to the men, and one of the younger men had taken the opportunity of his leader’s distraction to viciously grab Tegan by the shoulders.
He was shaking her with a violence Tegan could scarcely believe was possible. The whiplash it gave her neck seemed like nothing compared to the backhand he was winding up to deliver.
She cringed, waiting for it to arrive.
G—WAPPPPPPP!
The sound made Tegan’s ears buzz and her assailant hurtled sideways, sprawling to the ground, facedown ten feet away.
“Þú snerta konuna aftur Dúlf og ég sver við Thor sem þú verður að vera dauður maður.”
Raol was standing over the younger man in a flash.
It took a moment for Tegan to comprehend that such an aging man could effortlessly clout someone so hard and follow the victim so fast to be standing over him with another blow ready if he dared to rise.
It seemed impossible.
The struck man came slowly to his knees and seeing he was covered, sat back flat on his backside.
“Þú hefur misst huga þinn, Raol,” the seated man said to Raol, wiping the side of his face and looking at his hand, inspecting the smear of blood from his mouth. “Hún hefur Heilluð þér.”
It was obvious that he was calling Raol’s sanity into question.
Raol barked an order and the men obeyed. Clearly he knew how to impose his authority.
He took Tegan by the shoulder and gently pushed her down next to the sick boy, indicating with a wagged finger that she was to stay there.
The final strains of the departing drone’s sound were barely discernible as the blanket of night began to settle over the encampment.
Tegan’s eyes were adjusting to the dusk and it was obvious that the men were making ready for something. Then she realized it was for departure.
“Oh, boy…” she said to herself. This is going to get interesting.
After the earlier helicopter had clattered away and Raol had sent men on various tasks, Tegan had spotted her mobile lying on a log unattended.
Ragnarok Page 16