Ransacker

by Emmy Laybourne

  She was not praying for control, far from it. She was praying for power and vengeance.

  * * *

  THE LUNCHTIME MEAL had been prepared. The men came to eat in shifts. Sissel waited until she saw Peavy take his plate.

  “Who’s running the store, Mr. Peavy?” she called across the camp.

  “Oh,” Peavy said. “I expect Howie’s got it all under control.” He set his plate down on a rock and strode over to peer down at her.

  “Aw, look at your pretty skin, all marred with blisters. I told them you’d pull some nasty trick, but they didn’t believe me.”

  “Do they know about all the money you’ve been stealing from the store?” Sissel said loudly.

  She didn’t know it to be true, but the way Peavy twitched, she reckoned she’d struck a chord.

  “Were you really keeping an eye on me and my family, because it seemed like you really enjoyed playing store.”

  “Shut it!” Peavy said. Baker and a couple of other men had wandered closer, clearly listening.

  “And there’s all the whiskey you drank—”

  Peavy grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. Not enough.

  “He was the joke of the town!” Sissel called to the other men. “The great, fat joke—”

  Peavy slapped her across the face. “I said shut it!”

  “Peavy!” came O’Brien’s voice roaring across the camp. “Get away from her! You talk to her again, or so much as look at her, you’re going back to Chicago in a casket.”

  “She’s lying!”

  “She’s a sixteen-year-old child trying to bait you, you buffoon.”

  Sissel’s cheek stung. The inside of her mouth had been cut by her teeth. She spat out some blood.

  She brought her two bound hands up to fish a hair from her mouth with her fingers. She pressed her pointer finger into her mouth, making the wound hurt.

  Was it enough?

  “Come, Hanne,” Sissel prayed. “Find me.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Hanne scouted away from the others. She told them to follow, if they wanted to, but to keep back. She wanted nothing to do with them, did not even want to let their questions break her focus, not for a second.

  All she wanted, now, was for her Berserker sense to possess her.

  There!

  She turned her head toward the sensation. Sissel was smacked. Her mouth cut and bleeding. It was not enough to show Hanne where to go.

  The fleeting image was gone.

  “Take me,” Hanne moaned helplessly. To be on the edge of her Nytte this way, neither fully possessed by it, nor having it at rest, was anguishing. And with her sister in danger? Anguish in heart and body.

  She wanted the monster Berserker to come possess her. She wanted swift, merciless action.

  “Take me!” she shouted.

  * * *

  O’BRIEN WALKED AWAY from Sissel, still shouting at Peavy.

  Sissel took a deep breath and threw herself forward off the cot. She smashed down onto the ground and drove her head against a large, flat stone.

  Her head made a thwacking sound against the stone. It cut into her head. She jerked her head up again and brought it slamming down.

  “Sir!” one of the men shouted, pointing. O’Brien turned around and launched himself at her. He prevented her from hitting her head a third time.

  “Oakman!” he yelled. “Where’s the damn doctor? Oakman!”

  Blood and snot and tears were running down Sissel’s face.

  “I’m right here!” Oakman ran out of the woods, buttoning his pants. “For heaven’s sake! What happened?”

  “Oh, find me, Hanne. Find me,” Sissel prayed.

  * * *

  HANNE RAN.

  Finally, finally, the Nytte possessed her fully and she stopped thinking. Only ran. Up, up, through the trees.

  Pine needles, dirt, thin trees, dark shadows. Sissel was up ahead.

  There! A man with a long rifle.

  Someone to kill, finally.

  The man hid at the base of a large conifer. Two barrels aimed out from the crook of his arm. Eyes shaded by a flat-brimmed hat.

  Hanne did not care to be quiet. She came running at him.

  “Stop!” he shouted. Then he fired. A chunk of tree at her shoulder exploded. She ran on. Another shot. Pine bough shattered above her head. Three more steps.

  She crashed onto him, snatching the gun from his hands. She pressed it onto his throat.

  The man’s hat had fallen off. His hair was the color of cinnamon. He struggled to heave her off him, his hands clutching the rifle as she crushed his throat with it.

  Even before his coarse gasps stopped and his eyes went wide, then lifeless, Hanne was locating the next target.

  “Pryor?” a voice called.

  Her Nytte let her see—a big man, clothed in a green coat, aiming another rifle in her direction from a ways off.

  Hanne crept over the dead man, pried the gun from his dead-claw grip. Perhaps she’d use it as a club.

  Her lot were behind her; she could sense them vaguely. They were not in danger. Sissel was ahead, up the mountain.

  The woods had gone all silent. The quiet of stalking and hunting. The birds held their song. Men held their breath.

  * * *

  AT THE SOUND of a shot, Sissel began to weep with thanks. She lay back.

  It was only a matter of time now.

  Oakman was measuring out a dose of laudanum, but at the sound of the shot chaos erupted in the camp. He dropped the bottle and it shattered.

  * * *

  HANNE COULD SEE every leaf in detail; every pine needle stood apart from its fellows. The second man was hiding behind a bush, his belly flat to the ground. His breathing was fast. He was trying to steady it.

  She darted through the trees, her feet soft on the carpet of pine needles.

  “Hanne!” came a distant shout. Owen.

  She stilled herself, but the man caught sight of her.

  He fired.

  Now Hanne dashed for him. She ran straight at him. He fired again, and she dipped her shoulder. The bullet went screaming past to blow a hole in a bystanding tree.

  The man was at a disadvantage, lying under that brush. His clever hiding spot meant he could not up and run. He backed frantically out on his hands and knees.

  Hanne helped him. She grabbed him by the ankles and threw her weight backward, hauling him out.

  He mule-kicked her in the face, landing the blow at her jaw. She tasted blood and smiled.

  “Please,” she said, her voice a low rumble, “let’s fight.”

  The man scrambled to his feet. He was big boned and well muscled. A squashed nose from some previous fight. Tawny skin, dark hair. An ear like a mashed potato.

  He drew a bowie knife from a sheath at his hip.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “Shut up and fight.”

  Now the dance of darting and feigning. He swung, she dipped away. He passed the knife to his other hand. Wiped sweat on his pants.

  He lunged at her and she slipped under his arm, elbowed him in the kidneys. He took the blow with only a grunt and swung again. The blade grazed her arm. A bright slash of red opened up.

  Hanne retreated, clutching her arm. A tree was behind her, and she pressed her back to it.

  The man thought he had an advantage. He came forward. As he swung, Hanne reached up and grabbed the tree trunk. She lifted her legs and double kicked him in the chest.

  He staggered backward. The knife skittered out of his hand into the pine needles. Hanne launched herself from the tree, kicking him again. He hit the ground hard.

  Hanne straddled his head. He reached for the knife, just out of reach.

  Hanne pushed her cut forearm into the man’s mouth. Pushing it down so he could not bite or breathe.

  He choked on it. Eyes wide in horror. Her blood coating his lips and whiskers.

  Hanne heard a noise in the wood. Aha! There was another s
neaking up! Slipping from tree to tree. Now she had to finish this one.

  She hammered on the sides of his skull. One, two, three and he was dead.

  The sneaking-up man saw Hanne kill his comrade.

  Wide-eyed, he backed away.

  Then he shouted, “Fall back!”

  He cupped a hand over his mouth and hollered, loud, “Fall back!”

  * * *

  SISSEL FELT MOISTURE on her face. Light rain.

  Sissel could have laughed for happiness. Stieg! Rain meant Stieg, she was sure of it. With the rain came a billowing fog. Within moments, thick mist cloaked the entire camp. Oakman had left her side to locate another bottle of laudanum.

  “Who called to fall back?” Hall demanded.

  “I couldn’t tell, sir,” said another man.

  The men cursed as the fog enveloped the camp. She heard the table clatter down as someone shinned his knee on it.

  “Damn this mist!” one of them yelled.

  “Runner, report in!” shouted Hall. “Baker, you stick with the girl. Take care of her.”

  Baker was the man who had restrained her in the carriage.

  He strode over and nodded to her respectfully. “Miss.”

  Baker took a cloth from the doctor’s kit. He started wrapping it around Sissel’s bleeding head.

  “I can do that!” Oakman said, returning, but Baker ignored him.

  “Fall back!” O’Brien shouted.

  Baker picked Sissel up, her hands and feet bound, and heaved her over his shoulder. He stormed through the campsite, heading uphill, likely toward wherever it was they had stashed their cache of guns.

  Slung over his shoulder, Sissel could see nothing but the backs of the man’s legs. The fog was so thick that as he moved an eddy of clear air swirled behind each leg.

  Soon, she told herself. Her siblings would save her soon.

  * * *

  HANNE RAN DOWN the squealer. He didn’t even try to fire, was just running for all he was worth toward the top of the hill.

  Ah. It was no fun to kill a man fleeing.

  Hanne picked up a rock and fired it at his head. He fell and lay twitching facedown on the ground.

  She stalked over. The rock had struck the back of his skull, above the neck, and now that part was spurting blood. He was dead enough. There was a good knife tucked into his belt, and she took it.

  Hanne looked up the mountain. She heard her brothers and Owen running up behind her.

  “Oh, Hanne,” Owen said.

  “Come back to yourself, Sister,” Stieg said. He was squinting against the daylight, a sign of a headache. “Say the words with me, ‘Ásáheill, heill, Odin! Heill, Thor!’ Call them to you.”

  Stieg put a hand on her shoulder, and she leveled a look of incredulity at him that he should touch her. He drew it away. She could see he was scared of her, and that was right.

  “I’ve created a fog,” Stieg said. “We can steal her away if we are smart about it. No one else needs to die.”

  Hanne could not tolerate this standing and talking. She began to move up the hill.

  “Hanne, you don’t want this!” Owen called after her.

  She ignored his soft words, and they floated right off, like all words do when the time for killing has begun.

  * * *

  BAKER WAS CLIMBING up the rocky trail, past glacial boulders, through shallow drifts of scree. His breathing was labored.

  Sissel bumped and banged, her stomach flattened against his muscular shoulder, her face against the top rise of his backside. She hardly cared about that, just tried to keep her head from cracking into rocks. Her bound hands swung down, wrists blistered and chafing.

  Behind them on the trail, the other Pinkertons were following. She heard them cursing the rocks and the fog and the gear they carried.

  There was another round of gunfire.

  “Hurry up!” someone called to someone else below them.

  Baker reached some kind of plateau.

  “Everyone coming?” a voice said from just above.

  “Yes,” Baker answered.

  “I heard the shots.”

  He bent over and placed her on the rocky ground. They were at a small flat landing; the peak of the mountain rose above them, all sheer rock, with scree collected in some places. Baker put his hands on his hips and breathed deeply. “Thin air,” he said.

  A burly man in a black suit stood at the entrance to a large, jagged fissure in the rock. A cave.

  This fit together with what Sissel had gathered with her Nytte. The guns she had felt had been behind stone.

  “Get her in,” the man in the black suit said. “Put her well to the back. I laid blankets there to keep her comfortable.”

  “Wait,” Sissel said, trying to stall. “May I please use the bushes to … you know?”

  “No,” the man said. “Piss yourself for all we care. Get her in.”

  “No need to be rude, Shaw. She’s just a girl,” Baker said.

  Baker picked Sissel up again, this time carrying her as a man would his bride.

  Ducking his head, he stepped through the mouth of the cave.

  * * *

  A MAN WITH a white scar running down his face came stumbling out of the mist. He was looking over his shoulder as he ran and nearly collided with Hanne.

  All she had to do was reach out and grab him.

  “My sister?” Hanne said.

  “Let me go,” the man said. “We’re under attack!”

  Hanne slid the knife from the other dead man into this soon-to-be-dead man’s belly.

  “I know,” she said.

  * * *

  INSIDE THE CAVE it was dim. Sissel’s eyes fought the green mists of light blindness as they adjusted.

  Baker must have had trouble seeing, too. He stopped, not wanting to place a foot wrong.

  Shaw came up behind them. “Her pallet’s in the back. You’ll see.” He lit a match and put it to the wick of a lantern, then lowered the glass globe.

  The light spilled out. The space cleared overheard, rising steeply from the low mouth of the cave. The ground was studded with sharp rocks, not at all flat. Sissel could see some blankets placed at the back wall of the cave, under a low ledge of rock.

  Two crates stood near the mouth. Sissel assumed they were full of guns. Next to one of the crates was a large machine of some kind, covered with a black cloth. It was on a tripod; she could see legs protruding under the cloth, angled out and mechanically adjusted to be flat on the uneven ground. A telescope, she figured, for spotting the enemy. These men didn’t seem given to half measures. It figured they would bring expensive gear.

  Shaw set the lantern onto a natural rock shelf on the wall. It sat slightly sideways.

  Peavy pushed in behind Shaw. In his hand he carried a gunnysack, Sissel assumed, with supplies of food. In the other was a long rifle.

  “Hope everyone makes it up,” Shaw said to Peavy.

  “Can’t say I like this plan,” Peavy answered.

  O’Brien came in right behind him.

  “You don’t have to like it, Peavy, you just have to do it,” O’Brien said. He blew out a tired breath.

  “How is she?”

  Sissel expected Baker to answer, but instead Shaw took hold of the black cloth covering the telescope and pulled.

  It was not a telescope.

  It was a gleaming Gatling gun, brass and black steel, ten barrels extending from the rounded hopper. Ten barrels aimed at the mouth of the cave, where her Hanne would come running.

  * * *

  HANNE TRAILED TWO big men as they climbed up through the crevices and nooks of the lower mountainside. The fog was thick around them.

  “I’m just sayin’ it’s spooky. Fog, midday, July?” one of them said, a redheaded man. He was scared and trying to cover. He had two pistols holstered at his hip as well as a shotgun.

  “Follow orders and move your tail,” the other said. He was small and lithe. Moved with a feline grace. He’d be more s
atisfying to kill than the other.

  The two men held shotguns awkwardly as they shinnied through the tight places between boulders, and they even had to set them aside at times when scrambling up.

  Hanne walked lightly on the rough scree. Her footsteps were nearly silent. She came closer and closer. Their death was following them, now just the length of a horse away, and they clattered on, oblivious.

  Suddenly Hanne was seized from behind.

  She writhed. Kicked. Someone terrifically strong had her!

  “Lower your weapons,” Owen’s voice shouted to the men ahead.

  “You’re surrounded,” McKray said.

  Stieg, Owen, McKray, they all stepped out from the mist, above, below, surrounding the two Pinkertons.

  “Please, Hanne, don’t fight,” a sweet voice said in her ear.

  She forced a breath through her nose. This boy was beloved to her. He was of her family, and she could not harm him. Nevertheless, she strained against his massive strength and let out a mangled howl of frustration.

  “Hold her, Knut!” Stieg shouted. “Hanne, we need to ask them some questions. We need to know who they are and why they took Sissel.”

  “Put down your guns!” Owen shouted to the men again.

  “Let’s all be calm,” the smarter one said. He bent down slowly and set his rifle onto a rock. The redheaded man made a show of lowering his rifle to the ground, but on the way up, he drew both his pistols. He aimed one at Owen and one at Stieg, arms open.

  The rage burned so hard Hanne could hardly bear it. Her hands wanted to strangle, her feet to kick, her teeth to bite that man dead.

  “Throw down your pistols or we will let her kill you,” Stieg said.

  The redhead snorted. “Let me tell you kids, I’m a very good shot.”

  “Oh, she’ll kill you,” McKray said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Four of your company are already dead at her hand. One she choked to death with his own Winchester, one she felled with a rock, one she pounded on his head till he died, and the last one she killed with a knife.”