by James Axler
His first clash was against a mutie who had two heads. One was red-bearded and wild-eyed, but the other lolled on the wide shoulders, mouth sagging open and a thread of mucus crawling over the smooth chin. The man was wielding a large ax that looked as if it had been made from a honed-down shovel. Ryan was able to stoop under the first wild swing and deliver a vicious cut across the side of the knee. Bone cracked. The mutie gave a gobbling shriek of pain and fell sideways, dropping the ax. Ryan braced himself against the pitching of the long ship and shot left-handed, putting a bullet through the more active of the heads.
As it began to die, he saw that the other, passive head had come to life. The tongue, gray-blue, was darting between the scummed lips and the eyes were rolling with a wild malice.
It was unusual for Ryan Cawdor, but he used another round on the dying creature. He put a bullet neatly between the eyes of the auxiliary head. "Make sure," Ryan muttered.
Screams of bloody anger filled the air all around him. Someone stumbled into him, and he started to swing the panga.
"It's me, Ryan!" Mildred screamed. "Give me a fucking gun."
"Get someplace safe."
"Where?"
He looked around, seeing the steep prow and the invisible figurehead above it. "There. Can you climb up?"
"If you won't give me a gun, the least you can do is give me a hand up."
Ryan cupped his hands and let her step into them. Grunting with the effort, he heaved her into the air. He felt her take her own weight, her feet scrabbling for a purchase on the wet, slippery wood.
Something plucked at his sleeve and Ryan spun around, hearing a sound like an angered hornet. A crossbow quarrel quivered in the figurehead, inches below Mildred's white sneakers. But when he stared into the fog, there was no sign of who'd fired the bolt.
A squat figure came staggering out of the gray wall, clutching a deep gash in its shoulder. Since it wasn't one of the Vikings, Ryan flicked out the blade of his panga and opened up its throat into a pair of raw, crimson lips. The mutie fell at his boots, long nails gouging splinters of white wood from the greasy deck.
"A stand! A stand! Come to the bow!" The bellow was unmistakably that of Jorund Thoraldson. "By Odin, tome!"
Suddenly there was some little order out of the murderous shambles. The rising wind was beginning to peel tendrils off the surrounding fog, making it possible to see more of what was going on.
The second dragon-ship had been cut clear and was drifting to the north, with two of the muties' boats attached. But the crew had been given a few heartbeats of extra time to repel their boarders. The Vikings were defending solidly, beating the muties back and tipping any dead or wounded straight over the side. Already the slate waters were overlaid with spreading patches of scarlet.
But on Jorund's vessel, the battle was slipping the other way.
The baron, blood streaming from a half dozen gashes, waved his smeared war-ax over his head. To his relief, Ryan saw that Krysty and J.B. were also fighting their way to the bow, back to back. The Armorer used a slim-bladed flensing knife, darting it out at the muties with the precision of a surgeon. Krysty had obtained a short sword with a wide blade, and was using it to keep the enemy at bay.
There was no sign of either Doc or Jak. Ryan glanced around and saw Mildred perched snugly now on the head of the dragon.
The mist came and went, but during a momentary clearing, it was possible to calculate how much the odds favored the muties.
The first wave of attackers had taken a dreadful toll among the Norsemen. Other than Jorund, fewer than ten warriors — including Erik Stonebiter and Sigurd Harefoot — gathered in the bow of the long ship to stand against at least thirty muties, who were mostly toward the stern. The muties controlled all the deck area around the mainmast.
Ryan wished he'd been able to snatch up his rifle as well as the pistol. The cache of their blasters had been his first target when the boats came ramming in. He would have put the Heckler & Koch on full-auto and sprayed the living hell out of the cluster of attackers.
But Ryan had never found spilled milk much worth thinking about. Let alone crying over.
The muties started to edge toward them, grinning confidently, when Sigurd Harefoot, crooning a wordless chant to himself, began to remove his clothes.
"Fireblast!" Ryan exclaimed. "What the..."
"He goes baresark," Erik said at his side. "The frenzy of battle takes over the spirit of a warrior and he fights naked against the foe."
"Berserk," J.B. echoed. "Heard of it. Best stop him, or they'll cut him down."
The young Viking turned to grin through the blood that masked his face. "He would cut down any man who tried to stop him. He does what he must."
Mildred had dropped agilely to the deck once more. "He ain't just talking," she said.
Sigurd had built himself into a frothing anger, and he whirled his ax above his head. He had cast aside the horned helmet he'd been wearing and began to shuffle toward the muties, wearing only his high, laced boots. His chant had become a wild shriek of surging rage. Ryan saw one of the muties at the back of the crowd frantically trying to cock an antiquated crossbow. He leveled the pistol, but Erik gently pushed it down with the tip of his sword. "No. No man must aid a baresarker."
Nobody told Jak that. Invisible to the muties, the boy had suddenly come creeping up over the side of the ship, his lank hair dripping lake water. He saw the man readying the crossbow and reached for one of his own slim throwing-knives. Gripping it underhanded by the hilt, he aimed it with a lightning flick of the wrist.
It parted the misty air and struck the mutie in the side of the throat, its blood spurting like crimson steam from the wound. The creature slid wordlessly to the deck, the weapon falling from limp fingers.
Sigurd didn't see it. Ryan doubted if the man could see anything at all, suspecting that the insides of his eyes were now coated red with insane, bloody rage.
"Ooooooooodin!"
If Ryan had been forced to face the charging man with a blaster, he'd have put six rounds through his head, just to be certain. If he'd only had a panga in his hand, then he might well have dived for the water.
Several of the muties were of the same opinion as Ryan.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan thought he glimpsed Doc trying to scramble over the side of the dragon-ship. When half a dozen of the attackers leaped for their lives, they knocked him back into the lake.
The berserker was magnificent. But he was also doomed.
Prevented from helping him by their own rules of combat, the rest of the Vikings could only watch as Sigurd Harefoot trod his own path toward the glories of Valhalla.
He took five of the muties with him, hacking them into tatters of torn flesh with his great war-ax. Arms, full-grown and residual, were lopped off. A head was parted from its neck, yet its body remained upright for several ghastly seconds, while arterial blood spurted high over the filling sail.
Once they realized that this was truly a solo charge, the muties gathered courage and united against the single warrior. The pale flesh became blotched with patches of smeared blood, red mouths dribbling away Sigurd's life. A long spear, hefted by a skinny, noseless woman, caught him in the groin, its barbed hook tearing at his genitals as the mutie twisted and wrenched at it. The Viking screamed then. Once. A thin cry, like a child wakened by a midnight horror.
The ending was swift after that. Sigurd managed once more to clear himself a space, but the muties surrounded him, their knives pecking out his flesh. He dropped to his knees, a last cry to Odin ringing the air. Then he vanished, and there was only the slaughterhouse sound of metal on bone and meat.
There was a moment of stillness on the long ship. Ryan saw Jak, crouched in the stern, heard the noise of men and women swimming for their lives through the fog-layered waters. The second vessel now seemed under the control of the Norsemen, its oars fanning out as she turned toward them.
The surviving warriors stood stricken by their comrade
's death, not seizing the moment he had bought for them by his valiant passing.
"Come on!" Ryan shouted. "Now!"
J.B. was instantly at his elbow, as was Krysty. Mildred snatched a battered handmade .22 from the belt of one of the Vikings and was at his heels. Erik Stonebiter was first of the Norsemen to move, followed by the baron. Then the others.
As he charged, Ryan pumped all but one round from his pistol into the mass of muties, seeing several fall back, dead or wounded.
The final phase of the fight was very brief.
Led by Ryan, with Jak waging his own vicious war from the rear, the assault against the muties finally took its toll. The few who fled over the side were picked off by the other Viking ship, which was maneuvering skillfully across the lake.
Ryan was battling a pair of twins, who were joined at the hip, and each had a curved sickle in his hand. He stabbed one through the shoulder, but a flailing blow from the other struck his panga from his hand, sending it thunking into the deck planks.
"Drop, Ryan!" a voice screamed from somewhere behind him.
It wasn't a moment to agonize over the decision. He fell to one knee, hearing the whistle of the scythe as it nicked a lock of curly hair from the top of his head.
There was the sickly crack of an undercharged pistol, and he felt another tug at his hair. He saw the bullet strike home just below the mutie's breastbone, sending it backward, pulling its less wounded half with it.
"Sorry!" Mildred cried. "Goddamned gun fired way low."
This time there was no attempt to take any of the beaten muties prisoner to sacrifice back at the steading. Every man and woman — and some that could have been either — was slaughtered and tipped over into the reddening water.
Not a single one survived the raid.
* * *
Jorund Thoraldson spoke to the survivors, as the second long ship heaved alongside. "The losses have been severe, but we have beaten the enemy. It will be many long days ere they come at us again." There was a halfhearted, ragged cheer. He held up his hand, and his wrist and lower arm were sodden with dark, drying blood. "Against the winning cast of the dice, there must be measured the losing side. Many of our brothers sleep with Freya this night, and there is hardly a man among us without a wound."
That was true enough.
Ryan had a cut along the back of his right hand, and something had bitten him in the calf, drawing blood from the ragged wound. Krysty had dislocated a thumb, but Mildred had promptly but it back in place for her. Mildred herself had escaped without a scratch. J.B. had a bruise the size of a large egg across his chin, and more bruising around his ribs, where the tallest of the muties had gripped him in its several arms and hurled him to the deck. But Mildred had pronounced that no ribs had broken in the fall. Jak was furious because one of the muties had tumbled into the water and disappeared with one of his beloved knives still buried in its left eye. Other than that he was physically unharmed.
Doc had been hauled into the long ship, coughing and spluttering, having been pushed into the lake on three separate occasions. His dignity was a little dented, and he was shivering with cold. But he was very much alive.
The companions stood together under the figurehead, waiting to hear what the baron was going to say to them. Mildred was next to Ryan, apologizing yet again for nearly putting a .22 bullet through the top of his skull.
"Doesn't matter," he insisted. "You going to keep the blaster?"
"No way, Jose. Chucked it straight into Lake Superior, where it belongs."
At last, Jorund turned to them. He looked at each of them, though his eyes skated over Jak's pinched face and completely avoided Mildred. "It is sooth that we have won, partly through your aid, outlanders."
"Now I trust that you will abjure all your suspicions," Doc said in his rich, deep voice, "and allow us to go our way unhindered?"
"Let you go?" Jorund asked in tones of utter disbelief. "After this and these deaths? Oh, no, outlander. No!"
Chapter Thirty
It was late afternoon when they eventually reached Markland, and the sun had vanished behind fresh banks of swelling fog.
There were more funerals to arrange, and the keening of the women rose above the small ville. Since so many dead were warriors, Ryan wondered whether the Vikings would deplete their shrinking number of slaves still further by butchering thralls to accompany their free-born masters on their last journey.
As the six friends were being escorted ashore, Ryan made another effort to speak to the baron about their discoveries along the coast, and what that horror would inevitably mean to the survivors of the steading. But the big man resolutely turned his face away from him and marched up the beach toward his large hut.
Ryan beckoned to Erik Stonebiter. Glancing around at the other men, the youth moved a few reluctant steps closer. "What?"
"We found something very important."
"You broke faith. Nothing you can say is important to us."
"Wrong. We know what killed the children and the man who made the beer, and what's probably killed many others in the ville."
"We know, too."
Ryan was taken aback. "You know! Then why the dark night don't you do something about it? Why don't you move from this place?"
"No. The gods punish us. That is the sickness. And you... you outlanders are part of it. Sent as messengers of evil. Storm crows, all of you. All but the white-hair."
"Bullshit, you bigoted little asshole!" Mildred exploded.
Erik held his hands before his face, sticking out the index and little fingers at her, like twin forks.
She laughed, throwing her head back. "Think I have the evil eye, do you, you sniveling little wimp? As far as I'm concerned, you and your whole damned Viking theme park can go vanish up its own ass. And I'll stand and blow you kisses as you sink in the west."
"You aren't helping, Mildred," Krysty said, shaking her head with exasperation.
"Listen, lady. This bunch of mock-macho creeps aim to see us all turned into blue cheese dip for their gods. Being all lovey-dovey and kissing ass won't change that!"
Erik Stonebiter had moved back, eyes flickering nervously at her wrath. He stumbled over his feet and nearly fell. He righted himself and ordered Ryan and the others to be taken to their hut and kept under a close, armed guard.
* * *
"Time to move on, folks," Ryan said as soon as the door of the hut was slammed shut.
There was a general murmur of consent.
"When should we make our move this time?" Doc asked. He'd sat on a bed and pulled a blanket around his shoulders, shivering with cold from his repeated immersions.
"They'll watch us tight," J.B. said, carefully honing his knife against the sole of his boot.
Krysty was looking at the rear wall of the wattle and daub building. "This opens clear toward the forest, doesn't it? All we have to do is kick it apart and do a runner. Wouldn't need me using the Earth Mother's force on it."
"They'll watch front and back real tight," Ryan replied. "If it hadn't been for that triple hot spot we'd have been away clear over the ridge. Be close to the redoubt by now."
Mildred said nothing. She sat on the packed-earth floor, head on her hands, staring blankly into space.
Krysty asked her if she was all right, and the woman looked up with a faint smile that never got within a mile of her eyes.
"I'm fine, honey, thanks. It's just that I think the cryo-process is sort of catching up on me. My head feels like the inside of a spin dryer and my body's kind of fraying at the edges. I'm real, real tired." And very quietly she began to cry.
Krysty went to her and knelt at her side, laying an arm across Mildred's shoulders. Sobbing, the woman threw her arms around Krysty and pressed her face into the side of her neck. The others looked away, busying themselves with cleaning their knives, allowing Mildred the time to recover control.
Eventually the racking sobs ceased, and she began to weep more softly. She pushed herself away from Krys
ty and wiped her nose on her sleeve, summoning up a more convincing grin at the rest of the friends. "There, Mildred is herself again. Sorry about that. Won't happen again."
Ryan helped her to her feet and patted her on the shoulder. "If it does, then it does. Nothing to worry about, Mildred."
An hour or so later, food was brought by a wizened old woman, whose iron collar had been worn for so many years that it had become wafer-thin.
"When will the funerals be? Will they do it tonight?" Ryan asked her.
"No, masters, no. Oh, there's too many of the dear ones been taken across the saddle horns of the Valkyries."
Ryan's rough body count said that around a dozen of the Vikings had been chilled, with at least two more likely not to see the next dawn.
"When?"
"On the morrow." She looked around as if she were scared of being overheard. "But the wisewoman's all taken with a fury."
"Why?" Ryan asked.
"Too many dead, masters."
He didn't understand what she was driving at. "Too many?"
"Dead. A free-born warrior will have company as he rides to Valhalla. It has always been the way in Markland."
Krysty understood first. "She means the slaves, lover, the girls who were throttled for the fire ship funeral the other night. So many were chilled this afternoon on the lake that..."
"There aren't enough slaves to go around," Ryan concluded. "With the sickness and all, the ville must be shrinking around its own ears."
"Vanishing up its own..." Mildred began, shutting her mouth as she caught Ryan's glance.
The crone nodded. "That's correct, masters. Not enough thralls. So bad a murrain for the steading these past weeks. So many gone."
"What'll happen," Krysty asked, "if there aren't girls to sacrifice?"
"Oh, the wisewoman has a plan for that. Young godling there..." she grinned gap-toothed at Jak, "...he'll provide what... Oh, Freya's tits! I wasn't to speak of that. I'll be given a good beating if they find out I spoke what I shouldn't."
