Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  Inside the lodges the only light came from the door and smoke hole, but it was enough to confirm apocalypse. Bodies were curled at the edges, as if shrinking from the shafts of light. Everyone had a hideous eruption of sores, mouths gaping for a final breath, eyes sightless, fingers and toes curled in agony.

  There was no stone tablet, however. I systematically overturned every robe and trade blanket, poked into every underground cache of corn, and turned up nothing. My heart hammered from anxiety. I was sweating, not from fever but fear.

  I was ready to give up my macabre quest when I finally heard a voice croak from the sod lodge farthest from the village gate. A survivor? I crawled to enter the dwelling again and realized an old man I’d seen propped on a shadowy backrest, presumed dead, was in fact barely alive. He was skeletal in his leanness, covered with pustules, with odd pale eyes and long gray hair and—most unusual—a thin beard. He looked like a chief or elder so while he groaned, muttering something in his own tongue, I made a second quick inspection. But no stone tablet, or anything else out of the ordinary. Still, perhaps this was Namida’s medicine man. Could the women interrogate him? I laid him, moaning, on a buffalo robe, my own flesh crawling at having to touch his corrupted skin, and grimly dragged him into the sunlight. He squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered like a child, but I didn’t know what else to do. I pulled him across the dirt yard of the village and out past the dead sentry at the gate, calling to my companions.

  “Namida! I found someone alive!” She rushed but I held out my arm. “Remember, he can make you sick!”

  “It’s Yellow Moon,” she said, eyes wet with grief. “He’s so old I thought he’d be the first to go. Instead, he’s the last. He has the medicine.”

  “Ask him what happened.”

  The conversation was halting, the old man gasping for breath. “Some men from the village went to the Missouri to trade furs. When they came back with blankets, everyone became sick.”

  “Does he still have the tablet with its writing?” asked Magnus.

  “The men who traded died first. He tried to make medicine, but…”

  “The tablet!” The Norwegian’s hands were twisting on the shaft of his ax. Namida asked again.

  The medicine man’s words were a mutter. He was fading. I felt like a torturer myself, making him talk like this in the bright sun.

  “When everyone began dying, he moved the stone to a cave by the river. Someone, or something, guards it.” She leaned to try to hear and I held her, fearful the disease could somehow leap the gap between them. “Dakota have been sighted riding nearby. A man in a red coat.”

  I cursed to myself. “Which cave?”

  “He says you have spirit power, because you were unafraid to come into the sick village.”

  “Has he seen Pierre? Was he with Red Jacket?”

  But the old man was gone. I shivered, feeling like a plague myself. The rolling plains around us suddenly seemed menacing, the grass brown, the river low. The season was growing late, and Pierre’s disappearance had rattled me. It reminded me of Talma vanishing in Egypt, and then having his head delivered in a jar.

  Everything was going wrong.

  Chapter 37

  “WHAT CAVE IS HE TALKING ABOUT?” I DO DREAD THE POKING about in underground burrows that seems to go hand in hand with treasure hunting.

  “There’re some in the dirt banks of the river,” Namida said. “Birds and animals use them for nests, and children for play.”

  We walked down to the sluggish stream running back east. Downriver, past a grove of ancient cottonwood, the waterway cut a narrow gap through hard-packed clay and gravel, producing steep bluffs. The face was dotted with holes and caves, some as small as swallow nests and others big enough to picnic in. Our dead informant hadn’t explained which of these cubbies he’d used, but all but a half dozen were either too small for a man to crawl into or so broad they were useless as hiding places.

  I looked at the mouths of the most likely ones with experienced wariness. “Do they have snakes here?” I asked Namida.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like snakes.” Or fire, gunshots, boxing, sword fights, vindictive women, or overly ambitious superiors, but there’s no need to make a list. My meaning was plain enough.

  “Elven hoards were guarded by dragons,” Magnus said helpfully.

  “Thank you for that erudition, Mr. Bloodhammer. And unless he has a dragon, I’m wondering why our friend the medicine man would chose a place as obvious as these caves.”

  “He was dying. How many choices did he have?”

  “What is dragon?” Namida asked.

  “A big snake.”

  “We find a stick and poke.” So we cut a staff and poked and thrashed each likely entry just before entering, indeed finding one nest of rattlers that, fortunately, guarded nothing.

  Our branch couldn’t probe deeply enough to find the end of the last hole, however. It had a barrel-size entrance and scrape marks as if something heavy had been dragged. “Here it is, then,” I guessed. This cave was deep and, I assumed, extremely dark. I hesitated.

  “I’ll go,” said Namida. “I played in these caves as a girl.”

  “But the old man said something about a guardian, didn’t he?”

  “It’s my tablet,” said Magnus. “Stand aside. If there’s rock writing in there I’ve got the muscle to drag it out.”

  “Do you want my rifle?”

  “No, thanks. You don’t have to reload an ax.”

  So he shimmied in, his enormous hatchet thrust out ahead like a blind man’s cane. “It’s bigger inside!” His moccasins wiggled and disappeared, and there was quiet.

  Namida suddenly squatted to examine something in the dirt.

  “Find anything?” I called into the mouth of the dirt cave.

  “Stink.” Magnus said. “And something else.”

  “Is it hissing?”

  “It’s a slab, heavy,” he grunted. “Give me a hand!”

  Swallowing, I stooped to follow.

  “Bear droppings,” Namida said behind me.

  And then there was a roar.

  I’ve heard unsettling sounds in my life, but the deep, guttural ferocity of this one seemed primeval. I didn’t know nature was capable of making such a bellow! A blast of sound from the cave entrance, an animal roar, a great human cry inside, and then a snarl as something was struck with a thud.

  “Magnus!” I cocked my rifle.

  The entrance to the cave exploded.

  Bloodhammer came first, somersaulting out backward as if he’d been catapulted. The hard earth around the entrance burst like shrapnel, gravel flying in all directions, as he skidded down scree toward the river, rolling with his arms wrapped around something massive and profoundly heavy. His ax skittered away as if batted like a ball of yarn.

  Behind charged the biggest bear I’d ever seen, bigger than I knew bears could be. The animal was absolutely massive, gloriously golden, its back humped with muscle, its paws striking sparks as claws the size of Arab daggers scraped the ground. Oddly, there was a stout leather quirt around its neck. So this was the guardian! The women screamed, I yelled, and just barely had time to point my rifle and fire.

  Fur and muscle jerked where the ball went in, and then the animal turned on me with gaping mouth, saliva flying.

  Well, now I knew why the cave had become a hiding place. The old medicine man had chosen a grizzly bear den! And a den the monster had somehow been drugged and tied to, until aroused by one Magnus Bloodhammer. It snapped a coiled leather rope as thick as my thumb as if it were string.

  Then the monster was on me, its smell rank, and in desperation I jammed my gun muzzle into the beast’s mouth. The pain distracted him, and a swiping paw missed. It choked on my weapon, shaking its head in confusion, and then snapped it from my grip and threw it away. I chopped with my tomahawk and hit a haunch, but that was about as effective as a bee sting. So I went slack, preparing to die. My world was fur, musk, dust, and this ca
cophonous roaring that threatened to break my ear drums. The bear seemed a hundred times stronger than I was.

  But then the animal bellowed even louder, rearing up on its hind legs.

  Namida had snatched up Magnus’s ax and buried it in the grizzly bear’s back.

  The animal snarled, twisting to get at this instrument of torture, muscles rippling, claws flailing at what it couldn’t reach. Blood geysered.

  Little Frog was throwing rocks at the animal, sobbing.

  The bear dropped to all fours, shuffling to turn to these new tormentors, my own cringing form momentarily forgotten. Somehow I found fiber enough to begin crawling toward my rifle, wondering how I’d load it in time.

  Then Magnus charged back up the slope with a Viking wail, holding something huge and heavy over his head. He grunted, heaved, and with all his might brought a stone tablet down on the animal’s head. There was an audible crack of skull bone and the grizzly actually went down with a whoof, grunting, dazed by a blow that would have completely dashed the brains of any normal animal. I reached for my rifle and rolled upright, pulling out the ramrod to load it.

  Then Namida darted in like a squirrel, jerked out the ax, and threw it to Magnus. He caught the weapon with a shout, his face aflame from fury and exertion, heaved, aimed, and swung. It was as clean and beautiful a stroke as I ever saw, a full foot of broad steel sinking into the bear’s back and severing its spine. The creature’s massive legs went slack, as if cables had been cut, and it collapsed on its belly, looking at me with bewilderment and regret.

  I kept loading just to be sure, my arms shaking. A last growl rumbled in the beast’s throat and the fire in its eyes finally died. The stone tablet lay heavily on the bear’s skull and Bloodhammer’s ax jutted from its fur.

  “By the horns of the Minotaur,” I wheezed. “Why weren’t you eviscerated in the cave?”

  “I’d grasped the tablet before it woke and blocked its initial swipe. Then it broke loose from something and knocked me back through the entrance. It had the strength of ten men, Ethan. It had the spirit of Thor!”

  “And Thor almost had us for dinner. That damned tablet of yours saved our lives.” The slab lay on the bear’s skull like a gravestone. “Let’s have a look at what we found.”

  Magnus dragged the tablet off and flipped it over.

  “It’s the magic signs!” Namida said. I made a mental note to give the girl the claws for a necklace. It’s always wise to make the best of bad situations, Ben used to tell me, and women love jewelry.

  Magnus meanwhile traced incised lines with his fingers, muttering, and then looked at me in triumph. “Norse runes!”

  Chapter 38

  USING MY RIFLE AS A MEASURING STICK, I ESTIMATED THE tablet was thirty-one inches long, sixteen inches wide, and half a foot thick. It weighed at least two hundred pounds. No wonder it slowed the bear! Half of one side was smooth and covered in odd-looking letters of a type I’d never seen before: different from our own alphabet, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the alien writing of the Book of Thoth. The script was crudely chiseled and not very deep. Had I encountered the artifact in a cow pasture I’d likely have passed by without noticing it.

  “What do you mean by Norse ruins?” I asked.

  “Runes,” Magnus explained, spelling it. “Norse lettering from the Viking and medieval days. This is what we call a rune stone. The Vikings and others carved these to commemorate an event, boast of deeds, enumerate marriages and offspring, declare a faith, or record a voyage or passage. There are thousands of them in Scandinavia. If these Indians have one, it proves my people were here.” He glanced around grandly. “All this belongs to Norway!”

  I glanced at the dead bear. “You can have it. And this tells us where to go?”

  “Perhaps, if the men with Thor’s hammer carved it. Let me translate.”

  The women were already sawing into the bear, choosing to interpret our near-devouring as the opportunity for a windfall feast. Indians are the most sensibly practical people I know.

  “Don’t forget to keep the claws,” I called to Namida. “They’ll lend a savage charm.”

  “Look, there’s more writing on the side of the stone,” Magnus said.

  “Pretty long-winded if you have to chisel, weren’t they?”

  “It wouldn’t take that long for a skilled rune mason, and some people want their words to last.” He was scratching translations in the dirt. Finally Magnus began to recite. “‘Eight Gotlanders and twenty-two Norwegians on a journey of acquisition from Vinland, very far west,’” he read. He paused. “Vinland is a land they found on the east coast of Canada, so the writer must mean they’ve come very far west from that.”

  “As have we. Read on.”

  “‘We had camp by two rocky islands one day’s journey north from this stone. We were out fishing one day. After we came home we found ten men red with blood and death. AVM save from evil.’”

  “The AVM is in Latin letters,” I noted.

  “Ave Maria, I’d guess. Hail Mary. Remember, these were Christians, at least in part. Catholics, in those days. The old runes were giving way to the new letters.”

  “Well, there’re no rocky islands on this prairie. This stone was obviously moved from its original resting place. Captured from the Dakota, Namida said, who in turn got it from who knows who.”

  “They probably mean an island in a lake,” Magnus agreed, “but that could be in any number of directions. Here’s what the side of the stone says: ‘Have ten men by the sea to look after our ships fourteen days’ journey from this island. Year 1362.’”

  “Year 1362? Isn’t that the time your Templar map dates from?”

  “Now do you believe me, Ethan?”

  It’s one thing to go charging off after treasure, but another entirely to think you might really have a chance of finding it. I was growing excited. “But why?”

  “I told you,” he said patiently. “Thor’s hammer. Dwarven mastery of the forging arts in the lost Golden Age.”

  “Dwarven what?”

  “The dwarves Eitri and Brokk forged the hammer of Thor in the furnaces of their caverns, its only flaw a short handle caused when Loki, disguised as a fly, stung the eyelids of Brokk.”

  I was sorry I asked. “So how do we find it?”

  He sat down heavily, tired from his fight with the bear. “I don’t know. If the stone has been moved, fourteen days from the sea means little.”

  “It’s worse than that. It’s taken us months to get here. Fourteen days from the sea means a place a thousand miles back east or north, doesn’t it? We’re nowhere near your hammer if this was carved by the same Norsemen.”

  “Or Eden.”

  He suddenly looked so crushed that I felt sorry for him, and worse for me. A moment ago I’d soaring hope of Viking loot. Now it was dashed! “We tried, Magnus.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “The Somersets, if they’re really alive, are on a wild goose chase, too.”

  He was staring sadly at his rune stone.

  “So.” Here we were in unmapped wilderness, next to a dead bear and a plague-wracked village, possibly pursued by any number of red savages and a vengeful pair of English perverts, more than a thousand miles from any civilized comfort, and with little in the way of food, clothing, weapons, powder, or sense of direction. Our only allies were two Indian women greedily roasting bear liver and paying not a whit of attention to keeping watch. Our sole clue weighed two hundred pounds.

  In other words, it was the usual hash I made of things, in the usual dubious company. I walked down to wash in the river, wishing this particular group of Indians had adopted the horse so that I could gallop the devil out of here. The Mandan were sedentary farmers, alas. I wished I’d seen a volcano or mountain of salt, or something to bring back to anxious Tom Jefferson.

  And then Magnus shouted.

  I came running with my rifle, but he was pointing at the stone. “I have it, I have it, I have it!” he cried, and danced a cloggish sha
mbles that I guess in Norway passes for a jig. Well, nobody ever attributed ballet to the Vikings.

  “By Jupiter, have what?”

  “It’s a code, Ethan, a cipher, like you said!” He began pointing at random numbers. “Some of these letters have odd extra markings, like dots and slashes. I didn’t understand why at first. But if you take the first seven letters so marked, do you know what they spell?”

  “Magnus, I can’t read runes at all.”

  “Gral thar!” It was a cry jubilant enough to topple a tower. If Red Jacket was within a league, he could hardly miss us.

  “Don’t shout!” I glanced warily at the bluffs. “Is that good?”

  “It means ‘grail.’ And the next are Cistercian symbols for wisdom and holy spirit. It means, ‘Their grail, wisdom, and holy spirit.’”

  Now I felt a shiver. I’d heard the word “grail” before, too, in Egypt and the Holy Land, and like Saint Bernard it kept echoing through my life. Here it was on a rock in the middle of Dakota country? The longer I lived, the odder life seemed to be, signs and portents constantly butting into what had been a comfortably dull, pleasingly pointless existence. “But what does that mean?”

  “That these men planted, or found, the grail that was their holy mission. And if the map I brought from Gotland is true, that grail is the hammer, brought here to where rivers go north, south, east, and west.”

  I looked at the brown, eroding bluffs. “Magnus, we’re not in Eden.”

  “Not here, but where this rune stone came from. Where they deposited the hammer, and probably tried to found a colony. But demons already infested this country, foes that left ten men red with blood and death. Or disease, like we encountered in the village. It was an Eden that could be violated. An Eden that had the snake.”

  “Magnus, you’re reading an awful lot into a rather cryptic tablet.”

  “When they say the sea they don’t mean the ocean,” my companion insisted. “No tribe of Indians is going to carry this heavy sledge of rock that far, and it doesn’t correspond to the hammer symbol on my map. No, our quest is nearby, fourteen days from two ‘seas’ close to where we already are.”