And when the men had risen to avenge him, swarms of unseen hornets had driven them to the floor with a ferocity of stings unknown to men.
When the invaders had come aboard, they brought with them stings trailing chords that paralyzed the men into convulsions and agony. Unable to defend themselves, they had been trussed and hauled aboard an armada of craft and taken into their mother ship.
There, Raol and his men had been violated in curious and unmanly ways.
Men carrying fire-sticks had surrounded and attended them at every turn, but strangely visited no more violence on them.
Instead, still trussed to boards, they had been carried into the belly of many waiting dragons and shaken with gusts of breath and howling terrors, conveyed through the skies and piled into a vast hall swarming with many male and female attendants dressed in white sheeting about their bodies and faces.
Tethered to beds, Raol and his men’s bodies were stripped naked, bathed, thoroughly examined, and poked and lanced with intrusive steel torments trailing clear piping that seemed to be delivering liquids from bags.
There were pods fixed to them trailing chords too. All about them beasts flickering lights and emitting any number of clicking or piercing sounds seemed to divine their deepest feelings.
Like drunks held in the perpetual intoxication of strong liquor, the men were bound into delirium by strange magic.
Brought from their stupor, the Saga explained how they were confronted by Norsemen in their likeness that could almost speak the civilized Norse language.
These were the translators, the anthropologists fluent in ancient Norse that had been brought in to speak with the captives, Tegan knew, feeling a pang of empathy for the Vikings, so terrified and convinced that it was all a ruse and magic.
But even without any instruction, every man of Raol’s party was wise to that trickery and none divulged even a single word to these impostors and inquisitors.
No torture of the body was applied, Gansi had recorded. Raol had warned his men when he could that this cunning was to break them, to make them believe that these were friends.
It was in this time that Gansi’s dwindling life had been restored, his pain taken from him and the rotting corruption of his arm-stump miraculously halted.
Strange foods and drinks were offered, some with a sweetness and boldness of flavor to confound the senses and mind.
On and endlessly on this captivity had proceeded, the Saga explained.
Until the day when the great aurora and their liberation had returned.
Like its predecessor, it arrived without warning.
Every man was slapped where he lay and pummeled from within; each feeling his organs slam back and forth within his frame.
It was a flash not seen by the eyes nor heard by the ear. A body blow deep inside, and each man looked to the other in bewilderment, then all faces turned in their terror to Raol.
Gone were the beds and tethers, gone the attending jailers.
The men hit the earth where they lay. In a field, in a clearing with virgin bush all about them.
In that wink of time, the roof and structure, beeping and lights… all evaporated.
The men lay silent, startled and once again staring to Raol for guidance.
Above and all about them towered an ethereal swirling rainbow of ghostly colors. It had the appearance of an aurora.
Tegan found herself in a dream world, recalling how the aurora had unexpectedly appeared in the skies over the region.
By then, she’d been back at the family home in Maine. Debriefed and in recovery from her own ordeal.
Pete had called to say that Daxton’s prediction had come true. Almost like magic, the men and their boat had de-materialized and were gone. Reverted through time and the collapsing structures of the time crystals, back into ordinary matter. Their atoms shift back to the state they were before they energized.
The Saga explained how the Norsemen had found their longboat bumping against the shore, and in their retreat the normal waking world had been restored.
They celebrated that skræling encampments and imposters were gone, the peculiar floating skins everywhere in the ocean were no more, and no more flying dragons or Odin’s finger drawn against the roof of the sky could be seen.
Chapter 25
National Archives, Reykjavik
Latitude: 64°08'46"N
Longitude: 21°56'32"W
Tegan slumped into her chair, exhausted more from the harrowing narrative than by the painstaking process of translation and untangling of ancient convoluted Norse.
The entire devotion to this obsession was a futile effort; one that she knew could come to nothing—the investigative documentary was never going to happen.
The debrief had made it plainly clear that the saga had never occurred and that any attempts to breathe life into The Incident would not end well.
If that wasn’t enough, Pete had decreed the gag order as part of their negotiations and all bets would be off if she breathed a word of it.
He’d done so in his characteristic jovial and playful banter, but Tegan knew it was a rule cast in concrete.
The story she’d just read in a Viking Saga, right here in the ancient capital, was staggering. It was all laid out precisely as she’d experienced it herself, and the small rebellion against authority that forced her to deny this sliver of history at least restored some dignity and sanity in her mind.
The ancient perspective from a thousand years ago sent shudders through her. She’d seen herself there, the she-devil, so much closer to the precipice and butchery than she could ever imagine.
Iceland would never have been Tegan’s first choice for a honeymoon.
With the experience still so vivid and dominating her mind and dreams, and their whole new life still ahead of them; Pete knew that she needed the closure.
Tegan had never felt more alive than at this second as she closed the final door on a memory that never happened, in this world or that.
> THE END <
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About the Author
Michael Smorenburg
Born in 1964, I grew up in a fabulously stable family with the best siblings one could ask for and an embracing community. I also landed with my derrière firmly in the proverbial butter in another way; home was a piece of paradise; the beach community of Clifton, Cape Town, South Africa.
Today, Clifton is world renowned as a playground of the super-rich, but back then it was all a boy could want; a wild and bounteous South Atlantic on the doorstep flanked by towering mountains on all sides, and precious few rules in between.
It was there that I fell in love with adventure and nature, and these in turn prompted my endless questions about what made everything tick. Religion, back then, provided the stock standard answer, but as time went by, science increasingly won my inquisitive vote.
In my mid-20s, the travel bug bit, and when my head cleared, it was the millennium and I found myself living in San Diego, California, founding an online marketing company. But Africa has a heavy gravity, and I was drawn back home, where I have happily remained.
Humans are, of course, the universe finding out about itself. We are of nature; we are matter… the stuff of stars, all too briefly made conscious and self-aware. Each of us is privileged to add our small voice to the symphony of life.
This book and my other novels are my small contribution into that great chorus.
Wherever you may be in time and place, it’s been a very great privilege to entertain and now chat with you.
Please do stay in touch:
I use: #VikingNOVEL
facebook.com/MichaelSmorenburg
www.MichaelSmorenburg.com
Mic
[email protected]
Other Titles by Michael Smorenburg
A Trojan Affair explores actual unfolding events.
The silent heavens stretched above a pious town locked in the grip of drought have become valuable beyond measure—the fracking bounty below its feet... irresistible.
When Dara, 17, half Indian and raised in Oxford, England, arrives in the heartland of a Calvinist bible belt—a place his astrophysicist mother has come to build the biggest infrastructure in the history of science, the $2.5-Billion SKA radio telescope—he becomes the lightening rod for the town’s anger and suspicion of outsiders.
Based on actual unfolding events, A Trojan Affair is a contemporary geopolitical thriller where science, religion, politics, greed and racism collide, tearing a community apart and setting generations against one another.
LifeGames Corporation is a psychological thriller with elements of horror & high-technology.
Catherine's Ad-agency has won the most lucrative prize in the world—a LifeGames Corporation contract.
Everyone knows what LifeGames does: Immersive Virtual Reality training
And everyone knows that LifeGames certification is the ticket to the top of world politics, military and business.
But the intricacies of LifeGames are a jealously guarded secret; a secret Catherine is at the threshold of learning… The first tantalizing fact; Artificial Intelligence runs the entire operation and hypnotizes candidates to believe that their simulation is reality.
To learn more she must cross a forbidden line. Indeed, to retain the contract, Ken, the narcissistic boss-man, has made it clear that crossing the line is a deal breaker.
The Praying Nun
A story in 2 parts, 'now' and 'then’ — come along on a gripping saga of adventure, intrigue and discovery of a shipwreck that has no identity; until 30 years pass and the Smithsonian fills in the missing pieces — then leap back two centuries to witness a tale of disturbing brutality and exhilerating human courage… The Praying Nun will leave you shocked to the core and pondering human nature in all its forms.
Part I - A True Story of Discovery and Excavation, 1985
In 1985 an uncharted shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Two divers, the author and his friend, salvage artefacts from the ocean floor and try to identify the ship’s identity and cargo. In 2015 the mystery was finally solved by the Smithsonian Museum of Washington. The ship was the São José de Africa, a slaver that ran aground in 1794 with 400 slaves aboard, half lost on that day, the other half salvaged and sold the next day to defray costs. At this time, the recovered artefacts reside in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the US, in 2027 they will be returned to the Iziko museum in Cape Town.
Part II – A Love Story of Terror and Tragedy, 1794
Naked and shackled, Chikunda, and his new wife Mkiwa are heaved aboard the slaver São José off the coast of Mozambique, bound for the slave markets of Brazil. Once below decks, down in the stinking holds with 400 other captives, Chikunda instinctively knows that it will all be over. When the Captain discovers that Chikunda and his wife are Christians, the couple are spared a horrific fate below decks, but this reprieve does not protect them from what fate has in store.
The story of Chikunda and Mkiwa, though fictional, is based on the best known facts about the ship and the slave trade in general as contained in records, news reports, and journals available at the maratime archives, through accounts reported by the Captain, crew and from others who witnessed the disaster and its aftermath.
Praying Nun sequel—coming soon…
An as yet Unnamed Sequel to The Praying Nun will launch 4th Quarter 2017
Survivors of the slave ship wreck struggle to survive as slaves into the early 1800’s continues.
A third sequel to this “Slave Ship Saga” trilogy will launch in the 2nd Quarter 2018.
LifeGames/Ragnarok sequel—Coming Soon…
The Manhattan Event—Worlds Collide LifeGames Technology spreads its wings.
With Ken gone from the helm and the company’s key technology mothballed, what becomes of LifeGames?
Of course—exciting things!
More than that, those who read my other novel, “Ragnarok—Worlds Collide”, will be equally inquisitive as to the fate of “the missing planes”.
Well… both of these matters are resolved in my new book to be published in early 2018.
Strangely, it is a novel that brings together the two plots (LifeGames & Ragnarok) into a single tale of deception, intrigue and mind control at the highest levels.
You’re gonna love it!
Email me to get an early copy:
[email protected]
Ragnarok Page 20