by Carrie Ryan
DAK TUGGED again on the bars to his tiny cage, hoping that perhaps in the last five minutes they’d grown loose, but nothing budged. It was like being in the brig of the Santa María all over again except this time he was freezing and alone.
Dak was beginning to accept that history could kind of stink.
He’d been so sure that his knowledge would keep them all safe. And now look at him: waiting in a cage for a Viking chieftain to grow tired of him and toss him to the wolves.
As if just thinking the word wolf was enough to cause one to materialize, Dak heard a soft whining and then the brush of a cold nose against his knuckles. He squinted his eyes in the darkness to find Vígi standing by his cage, her ears pinned back in worry.
She paced around the cage restlessly, stopping every now and again to nudge his hand. He tried to pet her but could only manage to draw two fingers along the ridge of her snout.
“It’s okay, girl,” he whispered. He was surprised to hear his voice quaver a bit. He was glad that at least some living being cared about what happened to him.
A large form lumbered out of the darkness, rain dripping from his metal helmet and causing his thick cloak to hang limp and heavy from his shoulders. Dak squinted, trying to make out who it was.
“Well,” the Viking said, striding toward the cage. Vígi’s tail thumped the ground as he neared. “You do keep surprising me.”
Dak recognized the voice before he saw the face: It was Rollo. The giant tugged on the bars of the cage, bending them open as though they were strings of cheese, and leaned his head in. “Now, you want to tell me what that contraption jammed down your pants is?”
Dak was totally busted. He squirmed in his cage, but that didn’t deter Rollo, who merely reached in and plucked the SQuare from behind Dak’s back. His finger must have brushed the ON switch, because it chirped to life with a bright light.
Rollo squealed in surprise, holding the SQuare away from his body as though it were some sort of poisonous bug that was crawling up his arm.
“Careful!” Dak cried. “Uh, please.”
“What is this thing?” Rollo asked, his eyes illuminated with wonder and by the light of the screen. Vígi bared her teeth in a growl, the hair between her shoulder blades standing on end so that she looked like a buffalo calf.
It was time for Dak to admit that he’d royally messed up. His cover was blown; no lie could dig him out of this hole. And he couldn’t fight the man either. Rollo could fell Dak with the flick of a finger. Plus, he was pretty sure that even though Vígi seemed to like him, the moment Dak threatened her master it would be all over for him.
“Back by the fire,” Rollo said, his gaze still riveted by the glowing screen, “you couldn’t say what year you were born.”
Dak felt his cheeks warm. He was a genius with history and dates; that he couldn’t answer that one simple question was a massive source of embarrassment.
He fumbled for an excuse. “I get nervous in front of, uh, chieftains.”
Rollo waved his words from the air. “It’s not me you have to worry about with this lot,” he said. “I’ll follow Siegfried when it’s in my best interest, but that doesn’t mean I support him in all endeavors, if you know what I mean.”
Dak wasn’t sure that he did and so he stayed silent.
The SQuare’s screen went dark and Rollo sighed with dismay. Vígi relaxed, leaning all her weight against Dak’s cage. Dak absently scratched at her ears and she grunted contentedly.
“My great-grandfather was one of the men to sack Lindisfarne Priory almost a century ago. It’s true that Norsemen can be a dangerous lot who go off on voyages simply for the fighting and pillaging, but my great-grandfather was not a violent man. He was simply looking for someplace to settle down and start a farm with his wife.”
He smoothed his palm across the screen of the SQuare over and over again but he seemed lost in thought. “He told my father that he was surprised at how bloodthirsty the men were that day — more so than he’d ever seen before. He’d been hearing rumors about a new allegiance among several of them, some sort of quest for power that caused them to burn the Priory and kill everyone on the island.”
Dak thought of Siegfried and Gorm, and the calculated coldness of their eyes. He had no doubt that they and their ancestors could be a ruthless lot.
“My great-grandfather tried to avoid most of the pillaging, but as he was exploring the lower passages of the Priory he came upon a young monk who was trying to hide a few books. As soon as he saw my great-grandfather, the monk threw himself on his knees and begged for mercy.”
Vígi shifted, shoving her head farther into the cage, and Dak realized he’d stopped petting her. He was holding his breath, afraid of what Rollo might say next.
It occurred to Dak that he liked the giant and didn’t want anything to ruin that feeling.
Rollo continued with his story. “The chieftains leading the raid had made it clear that everyone on the island must die. But when my great-grandfather drew his sword, he hesitated. The monk began to tell him about a group of scholars called the Hystorians whose job was to protect the past, present, and future. He said that if he died, a group of wicked men would gain boundless power that would eventually destroy the world.”
Dak swallowed when Rollo hesitated. “What did he do?”
Rollo handed Dak the SQuare. “He let the monk go free. And he told my grandfather, who told my father, who told me what he learned in the Priory that day: that there are forces in the world greater than we can understand, and if we ever had the opportunity to grant mercy where it felt warranted we should do so without hesitation.”
With a grunt, Rollo rose to his towering height and extended a hand toward Dak. “He taught me to be on the lookout for the extraordinary and to protect it. I’m pretty sure he was talking about you.”
It had rained throughout the night, and Sera had watched it for hours. She’d lost track of Bill, and now she had an unfounded fear that if she were to doze off, Riq would disappear, too.
A faint light began to seep along the horizon, struggling through the clouds, and church bells rang from not far away. She’d stayed up all night. And now it wouldn’t be long before the fighting commenced once again.
Riq peered out the window, his face twisting into resignation at the dreariness of the morning. He turned to her, leaning back against the rough stone wall and crossing one foot over the other. “What’s the plan, then?”
Sera had never considered herself any kind of leader before. But now it seemed Riq was looking to her for guidance. And why not? This entire mission had gone off the rails, with every move they made only causing things to get worse. She dreaded imagining about how their actions had already impacted the future.
“Well, we botched the negotiation. If we could have made the Parisians and Vikings see eye-to-eye, maybe convinced Siegfried not to sack the city at all, then maybe he would have settled here and never gone on to Normandy, and his great-great-great-grandson Bill Helm might have been a farmer instead of a vanquisher.”
“Sorry.” Riq grimaced, as he’d been the one who’d mistranslated the discussion between the Vikings and Bishop Gauzelin the first morning the Vikings came into Paris. If they’d been able to decipher the code on the SQuare before leaping into action, they might have already fixed the Break and warped on to the next. And Dak might still be —
Sera waved a hand in the air. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone.” She paused. “Well, I mean technically it could be undone as we could go back through time, but it can’t be undone without causing more problems. The Wellsian radiation alone would —”
Riq was giving her that look that meant what she was saying was over his head. She cleared her throat. “Anyway, so, we’ve already mucked things up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it right. I still think our plan of keeping the
Vikings at bay for as long as possible is a good one. At the end of the day we need to limit Siegfried’s power one way or another. And if the Franks win, we’ve done that. According to Bill, Bishop Gauzelin and Count Odo have sent for reinforcements from the king, Charles the Fat. Now it’s just a matter of holding out and waiting for help.”
“So what do we do in the meantime?” Riq asked.
Sera tried to grin but she was pretty sure it looked more like a grimace. “We help. We keep Paris from falling to the Vikings. And if Dak doesn’t make it back to us” — she took a deep breath — “then we go after him ourselves.”
OF ALL the experiences Dak had imagined having on his travels, this wasn’t one of them. Under Rollo’s supervision, he’d stripped off his shirt and was only allowed to keep his pants on so that he could hide the SQuare.
Most of the men surrounding them, preparing for the first of the morning battles, were completely naked with mud smeared across their bodies. If there was anything they all had in common it was that they were horrifically ugly with noses that had been broken too many times to have any cartilage or bone left, and thick eyebrows that connected across their foreheads.
A bit of panic churned in Dak’s stomach. No matter what Rollo insisted, there was no way Dak was going to pass as one of these men. His entire body was the size of one of their legs!
“This isn’t going to work,” he whispered to Rollo. The giant merely grunted in reply, motioning for Dak to smear more mud across his bare chest. Dak continued to sneak glances at those around him.
“So, you’re saying I don’t get any kind of armor?” Dak asked as Rollo pulled a wolf skin around his shoulders so that the head of the wolf rested on top of Dak’s own.
“The spirit of this animal will protect you,” Rollo answered, completely serious.
Dak wanted to say, “Yeah, because it worked so well for the animal,” but he kept that thought to himself.
“You know you’re insane, right?” Dak asked instead.
Rollo heaved a sigh. “I told you, Siegfried’s men are already searching the camp for you. If you have any chance of getting back inside the city to your friends, it’s in going with the first wave of battle. And that means becoming berserkr.”
A hulk of a man, completely naked except for a bear skin draped over his shoulders, walked through the group, offering each a flagon of what smelled like wine or some other kind of fermented fruit.
Dak braced himself when it came to be his turn, expecting the man to either burst out laughing or become enraged and pull his limbs apart with his bare hands. But the brute hardly seemed to notice Dak, just handed him a flagon and continued on.
Curious, Dak raised it to his lips only to find his hands empty. Rollo scowled at him as he poured the contents of the flagon onto the ground. “This isn’t for boys,” he said, which made Dak all bristly . . . until he realized what the drink was doing to the men around him.
One by one they began to shiver, their teeth (those who still had them) clacking together noisily. Sure it was cold outside and most of the men were naked and wet from the rain, but they were such brutes of men that Dak assumed they’d be immune to chilly weather.
Rollo leaned over and whispered into Dak’s ear. “Once the berserkergang begins, stay to the left and toward the back. Whatever you do, don’t get between a berserkr and the enemy.”
Dak nodded, his stomach sour with anticipation and worry. The more he thought about Rollo’s plan, the less confident he felt. There was no way this was going to work. “Maybe we should just take our chances with —”
Rollo ignored him and instead handed Dak an axe like the one he’d had before. “Let them do the fighting. When they punch through the wall of the fortification, that’s when you make your move.”
“How do you know they’ll breach the city?” Dak asked, his panic increasing exponentially as he thought about Sera and Riq, not to mention their mission of keeping Siegfried out of Paris.
Rollo smiled and for a brief moment Dak saw the Viking in him — that part that drove him from home toward battle after battle. It caused the hair to raise along his arms. “No one can stand against the berserkergang,” he said.
Church bells rang in the distance, waking the fortified city for another day of battle. Dak stared across the expanse toward the river. Already he could see men patrolling the ramparts. Between here and there Vikings were attempting to roll siege engines across the bumpy ground closer to the tower.
“That’s the problem,” he murmured. The only way for him to get back to Sera and Riq was for Paris to fall. But if Paris fell, they’d fail at fixing the Break.
He didn’t know what to do. Everything he knew about history had already changed. There was no mental guidebook he could consult, no set of facts he could rely on to figure out what the best move would be.
“Maybe —” he started, but his voice was swallowed by the horns from the Viking camp. He was running out of time. His mind raced. There had to be a way to fix this Break, some detail he was missing. He scoured through various historical events in his head, tilting and turning them for any weakness.
A thought came to him. As more and more horns began to blast he clutched Rollo’s arm. “There’s one other thing you can do to help,” he shouted. Rollo frowned; it was clear he couldn’t hear him.
As if the horns had triggered it, the berserkrs around him stopped chattering as their faces turned a dark purple, their cheeks swelling as though they’d swallowed some sort of poison. Their already hideous faces became the masks of monsters.
Dak motioned furiously for Rollo to lean closer and then he shouted instructions into his ear. When he was done, Rollo straightened and gave a nod.
And then, with a massive roar of rage, the berserkergang began. Rollo slapped Dak on the back, shoving him toward the group. “Good-bye, friend,” he said. Vígi whined, straining at the frayed leash holding her by Rollo’s side.
Dak nodded his thanks and began to run.
Their situation was so much worse than Sera had thought, she realized as she stood with Riq on the ramparts of the wall ringing the Île de la Cité. The rains during the night had led to flooding, which wasn’t helped by all the debris the Vikings had spent the day before throwing into the river. That, coupled with the half-sunk/half-burned Viking ships, meant that an enormous amount of strain was being put on the already damaged bridge. And if the bridge fell, the Vikings would finally be able to surround Paris.
Already she could hear the supports of the bridge groaning. Parisians were trying to relieve the pressure by prying loose some of the larger obstacles but the bridge was built so low to the water that nothing was working.
It didn’t help matters that it was still pouring, rain turning everything into a sodden mess. She could see on the faces around her that the Franks were ready to give up.
They couldn’t allow that to happen.
From across the river she heard horns wail and men scream with rage. It reminded her of their first day, the moment just after they’d warped when the ground shook with the stampede of the massive Viking army.
That morning Siegfried had pulled most of his men back at the last minute, only wanting to show the Franks the force of his might.
Today the Parisians wouldn’t be so lucky.
“Maybe you should take the Ring and get someplace safer,” Riq suggested.
Sera shook her head. “We’re in this together,” she told him but as soon as the words left her mouth she was hit with a bout of dizziness. Her stomach lurched and she stumbled. If it weren’t for Riq grabbing hold of her, she would have fallen.
She squeezed her eyes shut but that didn’t stop the feeling that something was horribly off about the world. The words she’d just uttered, “We’re in this together,” echoed through her head again and again, and her heart ached with each incantation.
Phantom hands cupped her cheeks; a face like her own peered down at her with eyes brimming with love. She was warm and safe and loved and cherished.
And then it was gone, but Sera couldn’t bear to open her eyes and return to the harshness of their reality. She wanted to live inside the Remnant.
“It’s okay,” Riq was murmuring, but she didn’t believe him. It had never been okay.
Riq maneuvered her until she was sitting with her back against one of the crenellations and he pushed her head between her knees so that she could catch her breath and keep the world from spinning.
He didn’t have to ask her what had happened. It was clear from his expression that he understood. “We have to fix this Break,” she finally said when she’d caught her breath. “It’s the only way to stop the Remnants. I don’t know if I can take them any longer.”
“We will,” Riq promised, his hand warm against her back. Sera marveled at how not too long ago she’d viewed Riq as an annoying third wheel who did nothing but cause trouble. Now she realized she’d almost call him a friend.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
He nodded, the gesture growing still as he looked over her shoulder out toward the river and the fields beyond. His eyes widened as an expression of horror crossed his face.
“What?” Sera demanded. She shifted to her knees. Riq tried to keep her from looking, but she finally dodged around him until she could see what had caused him such fear.
A band of naked men was sprinting across the field, furs of various animals trailing from their shoulders and gleaming weapons waving over their heads. They screamed and roared, their faces purple. Aghast, she averted her eyes . . . and that’s when she saw Dak at the edge of the pack, axe raised in the air as he ran at full speed toward the fortified walls.
SERA RACED down the ladders and to the bridge. Waves crashed over the sides, making the stone surface dangerously slick. The north tower on the mainland looked very far away, but that didn’t stop her. Riq called after her, but she didn’t wait for him to catch up. More than once she slipped and fell, wincing as she scraped her palms and skinned her knees.
