The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  “And if he did?”

  “Then I shall send word to Rome. If we are to defend England from Dwarves and devils in addition to Vikings, we are going to need more men than can be mustered from Wessex and Mercia.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It was three days before anyone knew Osric had fled. His absence was noted much earlier, but it was assumed he’d been killed in the bombing. There was so much carnage that it was difficult to tell how many had been killed or who they were. In the end, sixteen fatalities were identified, including Joseph Poncella, who had been sitting right behind the podium, and Eirik, who died trying to save Reyes. The rest of the dead were engineers who had worked on the Mustang. Many more were wounded. One of these was Reyes, who had been struck by a piece of debris despite being shielded by the security officer. She remained unconscious and non-responsive. Their chief medical officer, a Saxon woman named Beatrice, suspected brain trauma. Lacking diagnostic tools more advanced than a rudimentary x-ray machine, there was little they could do for her but keep her comfortable and hope for the best.

  With Reyes incapacitated, Gabe was now in charge at Svartalfheim. He had a lot of questions about the bombing—whether Nikolai had acted alone, what his motives were, and how he had managed to smuggle so much explosive material out of Hell being chief among them—but for the first few days he had his hands full with damage control. One of the dormitories was converted to a makeshift hospital, and many people were pressed into emergency services as nurses or blood donors. Svartalfheim had three “doctors,” none of whom would have been qualified to hand out an aspirin in the 23rd century but who were, by medieval standards, paragons of medical knowledge. For three days, they were busy doing everything they could to keep the wounded alive.

  After helping with the wounded in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, Sigurd spent a sleepless night at Reyes’s bedside. Their three daughters were now old enough to take care of themselves, and Sigurd, anxious and desperate to feel of some use as the chaos continued to unfold at Svartalfheim, went to Gabe the next morning, volunteering to help in any way he could. Gabe deputized him as acting Chief of Security.

  Sigurd poured all his energy and rage into the job. He declared Hell off limits until Nikolai’s work area could be investigated and an audit could be conducted of all weapons and explosives. Every security officer who hadn’t been injured or killed in the blast was working around the clock to assist with the wounded, tally the dead, clear debris, calm tensions or—most critically—guard the passes. All traffic in and out of Svartalfheim, with the exception of critical shipments of supplies, was suspended. Gabe thought it unlikely that Nikolai had executed the bombing as a diversion to assist an escape attempt, but there was always the possibility that a disgruntled resident would take advantage of the situation. And, of course, anyone who did so would jump to the top of Gabe’s list of suspects. So when Sigurd pointed out that Osric hadn’t been cleared for access to the stage area and thus was very unlikely to have been mutilated beyond recognition by the blast, Gabe assumed the worst.

  “He may simply have panicked and run,” O’Brien said. This was the first official meeting of the Operations Committee since the bombing. There were a lot of empty chairs in the meeting room: Half of their member were dead or wounded. “Nikolai was a student of his and a member of his little church. Osric is smart enough to know how that looks.”

  “It looks like he’s a collaborator,” Gabe said.

  “I don’t believe it,” Helena said. “Osric isn’t the sort to be involved in sabotage.”

  “What would Nikolai need Osric for anyway?” Sigurd asked. “Osric had only Level One security access. With enough time and patience, Nikolai could have done this by himself.”

  “The note indicates otherwise,” Gabe said. After Osric’s disappearance was noted, security had searched his quarters and found a long, rambling note in Nikolai’s handwriting condemning the “diabolical machinations” at Svartalfheim. It included passages lifted directly from the Book of Revelation.

  “I’d say the note is inconclusive,” O’Brien said. “It shows the influence of Christian teaching, but it also shows a knowledge of written Frankish and twentieth century chemistry. So what?”

  “Leaving Svartalfheim without permission is a capital offense,” Sigurd observed. “It doesn’t matter whether he had anything to do with the bombing.”

  “It matters if we want to understand what happened,” Helena said.

  “Drawing conclusions is premature,” O’Brien said. “I want to punish someone for what happened to Reyes and the others as badly as the rest of you, but the fact is that Nikolai is dead, and we have no solid evidence to indicate anyone else was involved. Nikolai’s co-workers denied knowing what he was up to, and Nikolai didn’t implicate anyone in his note. Until we find Osric or something else turns up, we don’t have any basis for punitive action.”

  “What are we doing to find him?” Gabe asked.

  “Our resources are stretched thin, as you can imagine,” Sigurd said,” but I’ve got men checking all the villages within a hundred miles. If he’s anywhere in Iceland, we’ll find him.”

  After another three days, though, no sign of Osric had turned up. By this time, the situation at Svartalfheim was beginning to take on a semblance of normalcy again. A thorough investigation of Nikolai’s work area turned up nothing of note, and the audit of weapons and explosives indicated that nothing else was missing. Anyone who’d any contact with Nikolai was interviewed. For all indications—except for Osric’s disappearance—Nikolai had acted alone.

  Everyone who could be spared was reassigned to the search for Osric. No one in any of the nearby settlements had seen the priest, and the prevailing theory was now that Osric had slipped and fallen into a ravine. Even Gabe seemed willing to let the matter drop. Sigurd, however, wasn’t so sure. He sent boats from Höfn to the east and the west, instructing the crew to inquire about the priest at the remote fishing villages along the coast. A week later, the coxswain of the boat that had headed east reported that a man matching Osric’s description and claiming to be an emissary of the Pope himself, had begged his way onto a karve bound for Hordaland.

  Sigurd reported this to Gabe, who called an emergency meeting of the Operations Committee. The mood was even more somber than that at the last meeting. Reyes remained in a coma, and Ibrahim ibn Muhammed, an engineer who had been with the project almost since the beginning, had succumbed to his injuries. Many others were still incapacitated. Work had resumed in Hell and elsewhere at Svartalfheim, under a cloud and at a reduced pace. Even if they didn’t know the details, everyone could feel it: more than ever, Pleiades was running on borrowed time.

  On top of everything else, more bad news had arrived: a karve that was supposed to deliver a shipment of gold from Jutland had arrived with an empty hold. The crew reported that the gold collection site had been abandoned, the bodies of the workers torn apart by wild animals. Evidence at the scene indicated the site had been attacked by armed men.

  “So that’s it then,” Gabe said. “Svartalfheim is burned.”

  “How much did Alaric know?” Sigurd asked. Alaric had been the foreman at Camp Jemison.

  “Enough,” Sigurd said.

  “The evidence we have points to bandits,” O’Brien said.

  Gabe shook his head. “I might be willing to risk it, but we’ve also got our runaway priest to worry about.”

  “Hordaland is Harald’s territory,” Sigurd said.

  “Even Harald doesn’t track every ship into and out of Norway,” Helena said. “If Osric managed to get onto a ship, we have to assume he’s resourceful enough to evade capture long enough to get to a church. Either he catches a ship bound for Frankia or England, or he goes south until he reaches one of the missionary churches in Norway. Once he makes contact with an agent of Rome, it’s over.”

  “It sounds like we’re disposing of the hypothesis that Osric had nothing to do with the bombing,” Gabe said.
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br />   Helena shook her head. “Osric had no way of knowing there would be a ship about to embark for Norway. He panicked and ran, and he got very lucky. For our purposes, though, it makes little difference. Osric was always loyal to Rome. I knew that and I let him in anyway. This is my responsibility.”

  “You couldn’t have known this would happen,” Sigurd said.

  “She’s right, though,” Gabe said. “It doesn’t matter. We know what Osric is going to do. He’ll make a beeline for a church or a monastery, and eventually news of our operation is going to get to Rome.”

  “The one we need to worry about,” said Helena, “is Theophylact, the Count of Tusculum.”

  Gabe nodded. “Historians believed Sergius was basically Theophylact’s puppet. The good and bad news being that Theophylact was definitely the sort to have made use of twenty-third century weapons if he’d had the chance.”

  “Which means that he doesn’t get his hands on our tech,” O’Brien said.

  “Or he kept it a secret,” Helena said.

  “You want to let Rome in on the conspiracy?” O’Brien asked.

  “I’m just listing possibilities,” Helena replied.

  Gabe shook his head. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from this debacle, it’s that religiously motivated people are unpredictable. The Church leadership in this period is as corrupt as they come, but it only takes one principled ideologue to ruin everything. No way we’re expanding our circle of trust to include the Church leadership.”

  “I agree,” Sigurd said. “Trusting Harald and Hrólfr was a calculated risk. Trusting Rome would be foolishness.”

  “We may not have a choice,” Gabe said.

  “How so?” O’Brien asked. “Rome has no military.”

  “They don’t need one,” Helena said. “They have influence.”

  “Influence over whom?” O’Brien asked. “Even if the Pope—or this Theophylact—could muster every ship in the Mediterranean, he’s not going to get a fleet past Harald.”

  “You’re assuming we can trust Harald,” Gabe said. “This has always been a marriage of convenience. We know the Pope has a security arrangement with the Norsemen. I don’t think we can count on Harald to be on our side in a political fight between us and Rome.”

  “We have to assume the worst,” Sigurd said. “Gabe is right. Svartalfheim is burned.”

  “That leaves us only one option,” Helena said.

  O’Brien shook his head. “We’re not ready.”

  “We’d better get ready, then,” Gabe said. “From the point on, all resources are to be redirected toward Operation Ragnarök. O’Brien, send word to the satellite facilities. The wolf is on the loose.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “It would seem that miracles do occur on occasion,” Theodora mused.

  “Indeed,” Theo replied. “After all this time, a message from our prodigal priest, by way of the King of Wessex, of all people.”

  “I understand Edward fancies himself the King of the Anglo-Saxons these days,” Theodora said.

  “Does he? Well, delusions of grandeur aside, he has his hands full with the Danes in the north of his country. He’ll not spare a ship to help us deal with the Dvergar.”

  “Nor will the Franks or the Lombards,” said Theodora, “and for the same reason. There’s only one king that might be able to answer this threat, and I doubt he is inclined to do so.”

  “You still believe Harald Fairhair is in league with these Dvergar, as you call them?”

  “I do, now more than ever. What I’ve learned over the past several years dovetails with what Gurryek told us, and with the message from Edward’s emissary: there exists a network of men and ships, with the blessing of Harald, working in concert for some grand, secret purpose. I’ve suspected for some time the nexus of the conspiracy is in Iceland; Osric’s dying words merely confirm it.”

  “It matters little where they are if Harald and Hrólfr are protecting them. Rome depends on the Norsemen for its own protection from the Lombards and Saracens. If we turn on them, they’ll leave us to be destroyed by our enemies.”

  “Perhaps we don’t have to turn on them,” Theodora said. “You remember those counterfeit coins I discovered?”

  “The ones with more gold than the real ones, yes.”

  “I’ve done some more investigating lately. I authorized my moneylender to offer a bounty for the counterfeit coins if the merchant holding the coin can tell him where he got it. He has been recording where the counterfeits are coming from. Three weeks ago he told me that most of the coins passed through one of six cities, all in Normandy or Denmark. Each of these cities is in a county controlled by a close relative of Harald Fairhair.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “Meaning that the counterfeit money is coming from Harald.”

  “The King of Norway is counterfeiting Byzantine coins?”

  “No, you halfwit. He’s accepting counterfeit coins. A lot of them.”

  Theo nodded, now understanding. “It’s a quid-pro-quo relationship.”

  “Exactly. Harald is giving the Dvergar protection and cover for their conspiracy, and the Dvergar are paying him well for it.”

  “But if that’s the case, then Harald’s loyalty to the Dvergar might go no deeper than our loyalty to the Norsemen. It’s just a business arrangement. All we have to do is offer Harald a better deal.”

  “Or convince him his deal isn’t as good as it appears.”

  *****

  It would have been bad form for the Pope to travel to meet the Norsemen, but as it happened, he was planning a trip to Paris that spring to consecrate a new cathedral.

  Hrólfr, now officially recognized as the Duke of Normandy, was summoned to Paris, and word was sent to Harald that his presence at the meeting would be advisable. The ostensible reason for the meeting was a proposed expansion of the role of the Norsemen in providing security for papal interests in Europe—and of course, this wasn’t far from the truth.

  Now in his fifth year as Pope, Sergius had grown resentful of the subordination of his authority to the Count of Tusculum, sometimes openly challenging Theo’s directives. In the matter at hand, though, the two men were of one accord: whatever sort of evil had taken root in Iceland, it could not be allowed to spread throughout Europe, and the Norsemen were the only ones with the power to stop it. Responsibility for seeing that this happened would fall solely on the Pope’s shoulders: neither the Count of Tusculum nor his accursed wife would be in attendance at the meeting.

  The meeting would take place in the main hall of an abbey just outside Paris. Sergius arrived three days early, along with a retinue of advisors and the twenty armed men responsible for the Pope’s security. These men were on Theo’s payroll—a source of constant irritation for Sergius, and one of the matters he hoped to address with Hrólfr. Since Hrólfr’s conversion to Christianity and his formal acceptance of the title of Duke of Normandy, the Norsemen had increasingly been called on to settle political disputes throughout Europe. Their reputation as fearsome warriors as well as their disinterest in the internecine squabbles that plagued the continent had made them the obvious choice to defend papal interests against the Saracens, Lombards, and other potential enemies of the Pope. At this point, of course, the papacy had already been essentially captured by the Count of Tusculum. Unbeknownst to Theo, Sergius planned to make overtures to Hrólfr to replace Theo’s men with a bodyguard of Norsemen, helping to ensure the independence of the papacy.

  Harald’s ship was delayed by bad weather, and by the time he arrived, six days after the meeting was scheduled to start, Sergius and Hrólfr had, with the help of several advisors on both sides, already hammered out the details of the Norsemen’s augmented role in papal affairs. Hrólfr was more than happy to provide forty men to protect the pope at no charge, as the arrangement increased his own prestige and potentially gave him more influence in Rome. Theo would not be happy about it, but Sergius hoped to mollify him with the news that
he had been able to secure a pledge from the Norsemen to take on the Dvergar.

  There were twenty men in the hall, including Sergius and Hrólfr. Half of these were Sergius’s bodyguards or Norsemen charged with Hrólfr’s protection; the others were advisors, including the man Theo had picked to be Sergius’s head of security, who was called Ignatius. The group was discussing the Saracen threat in the Mediterranean when the door to the hall opened and a yeoman announced the arrival of the King of Norway. A moment later, Harald entered and fell to one knee at the sight of the Pope.

  “Arise, my son,” Sergius said. “And welcome. I understand the weather was against you.”

  “Thor has not taken kindly to my conversion,” Harald replied, getting to his feet. Anxious murmurs arose around the table.

  “You’d do well not to invoke pagan gods in this place,” Sergius chided.

  “Forgive me, Your Holiness. I did not intend to taint the proceedings. It would appear, though, that I’ve come purely for the pleasure of meeting Your Holiness.” He turned to face Hrólfr. “Greetings, cousin.”

  “Hail, Harald,” Hrólfr said. “It is good to see you. It is true we’ve concluded much of the business, but only because we did not wish to trouble you with details.”

  “In truth,” Sergius said, “there remains a matter of some importance I would discuss with both of you. It can certainly wait for the morrow, though, if you are weary from your voyage.”

  “I would not be much of a Viking if a jaunt down the river tired me out,” Harald said. “The worst of the storm passed before we made port at Le Havre last night. If I may?” He gestured toward the empty chair on the Pope’s right.