by JD Moyer
He leapt up, quickly closing the distance between them. She pulled the dirk from its sheath and held it ready. “There is no way out, as far as I know,” he said, ignoring her blade. “But you can ask Raekae for yourself. I do not know if he made this place, but he is the one in charge. He controls the host.”
“What is the ‘host’?” she asked.
“Who. Who is the host. You are. Your body. Your real flesh and blood.” Henning slowly reached for her free hand. Though she did not trust him, she did not pull away. She felt safe holding steel, while he was unarmed. He held her hand and gently touched her palm with his fingers. “Not this. This is an illusion.”
He snatched away her dirk and slashed it across her palm. Never had she seen a man move so fast. She jerked her hand away and jumped back. Henning stood still as a statue, watching her. The gash filled with blood. She closed her fist. A rivulet of blood dripped onto the wooden deck. Her palm throbbed, but the pain was bearable.
“Tomorrow the wound will be gone. Your hand will be as good as new. Maybe then you will believe me when I tell you where you are, and what has happened to you.”
Chapter Nine
Trond and Esper camped in a glade just off the Silver Trail. Except for the distant howling of wolves, a lone owl, and the crackling embers of the campfire, the forest was quiet. Still, Trond slept poorly. For much of the night he stared up at the stars and rings, thinking of his sister and listening to his brother softly snoring. Finally, at twilight, he fell into a deep slumber, but was soon awakened by the sound of Esper making breakfast. “Must you be so loud?” he complained.
“Since when do you greet frying pork with complaints, brother? Your mood must be foul indeed.”
Trond’s stomach was still knotted with worry; he picked at his food with no appetite. Esper cheerfully wolfed down the remains of Trond’s meal after finishing his own.
They continued west along the Silver Trail. Trond, feeling weary, followed a few paces behind Esper. He wondered if it was possible to catch a bit of sleep while walking, and tried, during a straight section of the trail, to close his eyes and let his feet find their own way. This experiment ended when he collided with his brother.
Esper skidded to the ground. “You oaf!” he cried, standing and dusting off his knees.
Trond blinked and slapped his own cheeks, trying to wake up. “Why did you stop? It was your own fault.”
Esper pointed to a rock in the center of the trail, twenty paces ahead.
“You stopped because of a rock?”
“Not a rock. A hand.”
Trond squinted and lurched forward, but Esper grabbed his sleeve and held him back. “Go carefully.” Esper nocked an arrow and crept forward cautiously. Trond drew his sword and moved parallel to his brother, on the other side of the trail.
It was, in fact, a hand: a giant one, the skin gray and dirty, fingers curled inward, nails long, sharp, and crusted with filth. A good section of the forearm was attached, severed clean by sharp steel.
“Where is the rest of it, I wonder,” said Esper, kneeling and examining the big hand.
“And who wielded the sword?” Trond said, hoping that it was his sister who had done it.
Esper poked at the hand with his dirk. “A clean cut. Could one of your blades have done this?”
Trond nodded. “Perhaps. Certainly one of Jense’s.” Truthfully, Trond doubted that a sword of his own making could cut so clean. The heavy forearm bones were not even cracked or shattered, but sliced clean through.
Esper looked up at him thoughtfully. “Do you remember Katja’s story? About the giants?” Trond had forgotten it, but now it came back. Katja had gone off on her own, far down the Silver Trail. She did not return for three days, and on each day Arik gave the brothers a taste of his birch lash. It was their responsibility to look after Katja, even if she rejected their assistance. Katja finally returned, with a tale to tell. She had seen giants living in the ruins of an ancient castle. Trond and Esper, still smarting from Arik’s blows, had been in no mood to hear her fantasy.
“I thought she was making it up. To make us jealous,” Trond said.
“I thought the same,” confessed Esper. They stared at the monstrous mitt. Esper pointed at the ground nearby. “Look, signs of a fight. This mark here – that could be from Katja’s boot. And over here – a trail of blood.”
Trond saw a few droplets of blood, but soon he lost the trail and simply followed his brother. After a hundred paces, Esper veered to the right. Soon they stood on the rocky south bank. Trond took a drink of water while Esper inspected an outcropping extending into the wide, shallow river.
“This rock is stained with blood. Perhaps the creature washed the wound here.” Enlivened, Esper resumed his search, but after a short while gave up, discouraged. “I saw both blood and tracks up to this point, but there is nothing else. The trail goes no farther.”
“Do not give up,” said Trond. “Perhaps he walked in the shallows for a time, to cool his giant feet. We should search farther up the bank.”
They found nothing more. Defeated, they returned to the trail and continued west.
“Do you remember how far it is to the ruins?” Trond asked.
“We only slept one night, arriving the next day. We must be getting close.”
The woods thickened. Some of the oaks reached across the trail, closing the canopy above. The loamy, uneven earth slowed their pace. At first the shade was refreshing, but eventually Trond flagged. His restless night was catching up with him, and he fell behind. Seeing Esper pull ahead angered him; Trond redoubled his pace and overtook his brother. Esper chuckled as Trond passed. “No race, brother. The first to find our sister will be the first to receive her scorn and ingratitude. She will insist she did not need our help.”
Trond ignored his brother and pressed ahead, putting ten paces between them. Green leaves and twigs crunched beneath his feet.
“Stop!” cried Esper from behind. Trond pressed forward. Let Esper stop and nurse his tired feet. Trond would take a nap up ahead, and let his younger brother catch up.
Trond’s foot caught on a root. At the same moment, he glimpsed a quick movement in the brush. Perhaps a snake. Something yanked on his leg, ferociously hard. The world inverted and the ground rushed away. Trond writhed in the air. He was high up, caught in a snare, hanging by his ankle. He looked for his brother, expecting to see Esper laughing.
Esper looked up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape. Then his brother’s gaze shifted, his expression changing from surprise to horror. Then with dismay, Trond watched his brother turn and flee.
Chapter Ten
In bright midday light, cloak camouflage deactivated, Car-En limped down into the broad valley that was home to Happdal. The time for concealment and subterfuge had passed; she was going to openly Intervene.
She’d deactivated her feed to the Stanford. Her m’eye was still recording, but there was no reason to let Adrian in on her plan. He would find out eventually, and try to stop her, but at least she would have a head start.
At first she drew only stares and wide-open mouths. She imagined how she must look to them: strange clothes, brown skin, emaciated and injured. At least she was not obviously threatening. She’d hidden her rifle and pack away in the woods. The villagers might not identify the rifle as a weapon, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
A pair of bucket-carrying dairymaids backed away, sloshing creamy milk onto the dirt. A pack of boys stared and pointed, then sprinted off. An old man, sitting on a stump and smoking a pipe, watched her impassively. She smiled and nodded in greeting.
“My name is Car-En. I am a visitor. I wish to speak with Arik, or Elke.” She spoke in Orbital English, but the names would be clear enough. Her m’eye prompted her with a display of the words she had just spoken, translated into a rough approximation of the Happdal dialect. Over the last few months her ki
t had mostly deciphered the local language: roughly one part Old Norse, one part Corporate Age Norwegian, and a smattering of words not found in the Stanford’s linguistic databases.
The old man drew on his pipe and blew a smoky cloud. Closer, she saw that he was not that old; under his wiry white beard his bronze skin was smooth. “You’re not from Kaldbrek, are you?” he asked. Her cochlear implant provided a translation. She shook her head. “Not from the valleys at all?” He raised an eyebrow. “From the south, past the Long Lake?”
She was from the sky, she thought. She wanted to tell the truth, but how much would he accept? She compromised. “I’m from very far away. From the north-west.” True enough; she had hiked south-east from the mule station to reach the village.
The man shifted his eyes, glancing behind her. She turned to see a thickset man approaching, sword drawn. It was Lars – the brute who had challenged Katja the night she was kidnapped. His face was a wreck: a long, inflamed scratch on one cheek, bloodshot eyes, his left eye socket bruised blue and yellow. Car-En showed her palms. “Peace,” she said. She repeated the word in the local dialect. “Grið.”
“She wants to see Arik,” said the pipe-smoking man, “or Elke.”
“Are you a servant of Haakon?” asked Lars, belligerently. “Perhaps I should remove your head. Go back to Kaldbrek, and tell Haakon we would be delighted to see him. We will prepare a feast. Blood sausage, made from his own drippings.”
“Look at her clothes, you fool,” said the old man. “She is not from Kaldbrek. And she has no weapon, not even a dirk.” Car-En winced, thinking of her carbonlattice blade. How careless she had been to lose it…
“Please let me speak with Arik. It’s important.” Again she repeated the phrase in their dialect. Lars looked confused, but the older man seemed to understand. He knocked the ash from his pipe with a sharp knock against the stump.
“Come with me,” he said. He pocketed the pipe, shook out his legs, and took off up the road at a good pace.
Lars lowered his sword but continued to stare sullenly at Car-En. She followed the old man, keeping her eyes on the town bully until she was a safe distance away.
They came to a large house made from mortared stones and oak timbers. The old man gave a cursory knock on the door but entered without waiting, closing the door behind him. Car-En heard a brief exchange of words from inside, too muffled for her implant to interpret. The door opened again; the old man beckoned her in.
Inside were two girls, no older than fifteen, and a middle-aged woman. The girls were seated at a table chopping vegetables. The woman stirred a giant pot with what looked like an oar. Car-En recognized the woman as Elke, Arik’s wife, mother of Trond, Esper, and Katja. The matriarch had the same pale blue eyes as her younger son. Right now those eyes were squinting suspiciously at Car-En. Briefly, Elke’s nostrils flared. She issued a clipped command. The girls put down their knives and squeezed past Car-En and out the door, avoiding eye contact.
Car-En held her tongue, waiting for Elke to speak. Elke nodded for Car-En to sit, but remained standing herself. The old man pulled out a chair and settled in.
“You are injured,” said Elke. After a beat, listening to the translation, Car-En nodded, and touched her hip. Elke walked around the table and stood behind Car-En’s chair. Softly, Elke ran her fingers along Car-En’s shoulder, examining the texture of the bioskin material.
“Silki?” Elke asked. Silk, the words were nearly the same.
Car-En nodded. Close enough. There were enough things to explain without getting into the details of the intelligent synthetic polymer fabric that functioned as lightweight armor, homeostatic responsive insulation, alarm notification, moisture recycling, and hygienic maintenance system.
Elke took a seat across from her. Her tanned face was beautiful, marked only by worry lines. In her youth she must have been stunning. “What do you want?” Elke asked. Not Who are you? or Where are you from? Right to the point.
I want to help you. That was the truth, wasn’t it? She’d volunteered for the field position hoping to secure her professional reputation as a post-Inhabitation expert. But at some point her priorities had shifted. She’d lost objectivity regarding Happdal’s fate. She knew these people, even if they did not know her.
Looking into Elke’s eyes, seeing her suspicion, she knew the matriarch would not accept this answer. In this case, the direct and simple truth was not the best strategy. If she was going to help the people of Happdal, she would have to deceive them. Her mind raced. Why hadn’t she thought this through? Naively, she’d marched into Happdal with only a Plan A: confess everything. But revealing the whole truth now seemed like a terrible idea. The truth was too complicated, overwhelming, and ultimately implausible.
“Your people have to move,” she blurted out. “The entire village, you need to relocate.” She painstakingly repeated herself in the Happdal dialect.
Elke’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“The…earth. It is making your people sick. The well water is not safe to drink. You need to move. Or get your water from somewhere else, perhaps far upstream. Maybe you could build an aqueduct.”
Her m’eye had provided a translation for ‘aqueduct’ but Elke didn’t seem to understand. She repeated the word and looked to the old man, who shrugged.
“Farrel says you are from the north-west. What town?”
“The Stanford,” answered Car-En. No Plan B.
“How do you know this? About the Afflicted?” Farrel asked. Elke gave him a sharp look but said nothing. Was she afraid of revealing any sign of weakness to Car-En?
“I saw the Burning ceremony,” said Car-En. “And I see that there are very few old people here.” Her translated speech was halting and awkward, but they seemed to understand her.
“You have been watching us,” said Elke. “A spy.”
Car-En nodded. “I have been watching you. But my intentions are good. I am an emissary.”
“You say our water is foul,” said Farrel, “but I drink it every day. I am as healthy as a goat. The water is clean.” He did seem to be in fine health. The lucky owner of radiation-resistant genetics, no doubt.
“It doesn’t make everyone sick,” said Car-En, lamely. “Some are immune to the effects.” She sensed that the last part of the translation was worthless, but she was having trouble dumbing it down. There were so many basic scientific concepts that were outside of their experience. Yet they were metallurgists, not completely ignorant of chemistry. Could she explain radiation to them? Chromosomal damage?
“The punishment for spying is flaying,” said Elke, grimly. “We peel back your skin, slice open your guts, and let the crows feast on your innards. While you watch.” The speech was clearly meant to intimidate Car-En, which it did. She guessed that Elke was probably bluffing, but a trickle of sweat ran down her back. The bioskin, which would have usually absorbed the perspiration, was not as form-fitting as it had been weeks earlier. Hoping for some reassurance, Car-En glanced at Farrel. He met her gaze with stony indifference.
“I mean you no harm,” Car-En said. “It is the…belief…of my people that we should help when we can. I found a cave – I can show it to you – I saw with my own eyes what is polluting the water.”
Elke picked up one of the knives left behind by the girls. She pointed it at Car-En. “My people, too, believe in kindness and mercy. So you may leave now, with your life. Show your face again and we will kill you.”
Car-En rose from her chair. There had to be a way to get through. With the point of the knife, Elke gestured toward the entrance. Car-En walked to the door and slowly opened it, her mind racing. In the doorway, she turned to face Elke.
“I saw your daughter. With the long blond braids. South-east of here, half a day’s march. She was alive and well when I last saw her.”
In a moment, Elke was on her, grabbing her arm, pointing the tip of the
blade at Car-En’s throat. “Is that what this is about? You are a kidnapper, a ransomer?”
“No! I merely saw her. I don’t know where she is. I just want to help you!” She shouted in Orbital English, not bothering to translate. Elke let go and stepped back, but did not lower the knife.
Car-En fled. Stubborn old woman. She walked as quickly as she could, in the direction she’d come, but the cut on her hip throbbed with each step. The dirt road was pocked with muddy holes and wheel ruts.
“Wait!” yelled Elke from the doorway. “Did you see my sons? Trond and Esper? One is tall and broad, the other lean.”
Car-En turned and shook her head. She could see Esper’s handsome face in her mind, so easy to recall. The same pale blue eyes as his mother, but kinder.
“Find my children, any or all of them, and you will be welcome in Happdal.”
Car-En nodded. Elke stared at her, perhaps with less hostility. Maybe, underneath her anger, she was also curious. Car-En turned and trudged up the road.
What in the hell had she gotten herself into?
Chapter Eleven
From what had Esper fled? Trond heaved and twisted in the air, upside down, trying to get a look at whatever it was that had terrified his brother. He glimpsed an immense figure lumbering toward him, but then continued to spin, losing sight of his captor. Looking east, back toward Happdal, there was no sight of Esper. Had his brother deserted him entirely?
Trond took stock of his situation. He hung by his ankle, high above the ground, but one leg and both arms were free. His scabbard dangled near his face. With some difficulty he grabbed the hilt of his sword. He would cut himself down and take his chances with the fall.
Spinning farther around, he set eyes on his foe. The manlike creature was half again as tall as Trond and twice as wide, limbs thick with muscle and fat. Its face was grotesque: oversized jaw, drastic underbite, protruding eyes, bulging forehead, a mostly bald pate draped with a few greasy wisps of black hair. Below the neck, the creature was no prettier. Its hairy feet were bare, it was naked from the waist up, and a large belly hung over its hide pants. It carried a thick branch, hardened and blackened by fire, in its right hand. The brute’s left arm ended in a stump, wrapped in dirty, blood-soaked strips of hide.
