As the horde grew closer, he saw that one of the animals on the fringe of the pack, waiting for a perfect opportunity, was an actual wolf, white and gray, with black paws. Like the dogs, it was missing patches of fur, and one entire leg was hairless, with just the paw still covered in black fur, like the creature was wearing a sock. Directly on the top of its head, a massive boil had pushed upward, as if the creature’s brain was trying to escape.
But the ape in the center of this strange animal grouping was terrifying. It stood slightly taller than Ulrik, and it walked on all fours, like a dog. If it were to stand on its short hind legs, it would tower over him. The creature was broad and thick, its back and hind legs a silvery white in color. The animal had a vertical scar down its face, and a look of intelligence in its eyes. Most disturbing was that it wore human clothes. Canvas trousers covered its legs, and the beast wore a blanket over its chest like a poncho, tied at the waist with a belt containing a few small pouches. It held back, as the dogs came on, like a leader sending the soldiers in first. But Ulrik was having none of that. He wanted the beast’s blood.
As a hound came rushing at him, he swept his leg out, kicking the creature Morten’s way. Morten promptly skewered the animal with his sword. The other dogs broke right and left, around Ulrik, heading for the others, gnashing teeth and yipping, as foam sprayed from their mouths.
He ignored them and strode toward the waiting ape. As he did, the animal’s human-like golden-brown eyes never left him, and its nostrils—black as night—flared in and out, as it took deep breaths, anticipating the fight.
It is intelligent, Ulrik thought.
The creature’s mouth turned down in a sneer, then it leapt in the air, heading straight for Ulrik.
Its vertical and horizontal leap was stunning, clearing five feet up and twice that in distance, bringing the massive ape straight for Ulrik’s head. He lunged upward with his ax, and at the last second dove to the side. The spike at the tip of the weapon’s handle, between the blades, rammed into the creature’s nose. Then as Ulrik’s weight pulled the ax sideways, the blade sliced across the animal’s mouth and shoulder, biting deeply.
Ulrik rolled away, tumbling on the ground and twisting as he came back up, the ax at the ready for another slash.
The ape howled in pain, its mouth opening to a huge diameter, the lips peeling back. Its long yellowed teeth spread wide enough to swallow a human head whole.
Behind the ape, the dog pack snapped and bit at Nils and Oskar as the two men lunged and swiped at the canines. On the other side of the stalled convoy, Anders fired arrow after arrow into the flanks of the hungry dogs, but they kept moving, snarling and yipping, sensing a tasty meal. They might die for it, but none of the animals showed the slightest sign of backing off. Morten held three of the larger wolf-hounds at bay with long sideways sweeps from his sword.
The ape ran at Ulrik this time, lowering its shoulder, and before he could bring his ax in, the animal rammed his stomach, sending him flying backward, the ax clattering to the road.
Ulrik had wondered in his youth what flying would feel like. Now he was actually doing it. The beast had hit him so hard, his body had left the earth, though he was quickly returning to it. He did the only thing he could think of—he rolled himself into a tight ball, hoping that he would be able to roll with the fall.
When he landed in the tall grass, he was pleased to still be alive. It hurt, and it stole his breath, but as hoped, his body rolled and tumbled through the tall weeds until he was unsure of which direction was up. He could see nothing past the golden grasses, but he could hear heavy grunting coming his way. He felt the rippling footfalls of the creature barreling toward him.
And then there was another sound he could not identify. Something like a low thrumming hum.
He was down to just two knives. He grabbed both of them, blades pointed downward, and he scrambled to his hands and feet, keeping low in the tall grass, hoping the creature would not spot him right away, so he could get his bearings.
The thundering footfalls grew closer. Coming from the left, he thought, when he heard the animal’s grunting. Instead of turning, he leapt upward and left, swinging out blindly with both blades.
As soon as he cleared the grass, he saw the situation, and realized that the ape had made an error. It wasn’t running toward him—it was running beside him. Ulrik’s body spun in the air like a child’s thrown plaything, the tips of his knives grazing the side of the ape’s head as it barreled past him. Blood arced away from the creature. It howled at the impact, but it was moving too quickly to stop.
Instead, the animal dove down into the tall grasses, rolling forward and twisting to a stop on its four limbs. The beast roared and pounded the ground in aggravation, about to lose itself in an ape-like berserker rage.
The thrumming noise grew louder, distracting the enraged ape, and pulling its gaze back the way it had come.
Something huge rushed past Ulrik, and he dove left, not knowing what it was, but recognizing that it was large and fast.
When he landed on his feet he understood.
It was some kind of massive vehicle—a much larger version of the ATVs. Val was driving the thing, and Heinrich was hanging on to its side, his cudgel in hand and already bloodied from one of the dogs. The vehicle had long metal prongs on the front of it, and as he watched, they raised slightly, moving up to chest height for the large ape.
The animal stood its ground.
Just before the vehicle rammed into it at full speed, the beast leapt at the thing.
But Ulrik didn’t see the impact. Instead, something tackled him from behind, clawing at his back. He toppled over into the waving stalks of grass, losing one of his knives, but swiping with the other. It connected with something hard, but then teeth sank into his wrist.
The wolf, he thought.
He reached out with his free hand, grasping the back of the creature’s bulbous head, preventing it from thrashing his arm. He thrust his head forward, smashing his forehead on the creature’s snout and eyes, and rupturing the massive boil on the animal’s skull with a gout of warm liquid.
The canine yelped and released its hold on him, attempting to recoil from the pain. But Ulrik would not let go. He smashed his head down again on the animal’s skull, hearing a loud crack under the pus and gore, and feeling the surface of the beast’s face turn to pulp. Then he hit it a third time and a fourth. When he pulled his forehead away, the animal’s face was a jagged mess of bone and shiny blood.
When he staggered to his feet, he nearly dropped again, his head dizzy from the repeated battering he had given the wolf. As he looked around, he saw that the battle was over. The immense ape had been pierced through the chest by the long metal tines on the front of Val’s vehicle, and the German had leapt off the side and killed another dog. He was using his foot to push it off the end of a short sword Ulrik had not seen the man use before.
Around them, there were dead and wounded dogs everywhere. The last few left breathing whimpered and squealed as Anders fired arrows into their heads and then retrieved the bolts for his quiver.
Val climbed down from her mechanical steed and walked over to Ulrik, pointing back the way her vehicle had come. She was pointing to a cart filled with cylindrical propane tanks. The cart did not have an engine or handlebars like the ATVs. He realized that Val and Heinrich had towed the thing.
They had arrived just in time. He honestly didn’t think the group would have been able to take the ape. His head was still ringing, and he suspected some of that was from his trip through the air.
“We heard you needed some fuel,” Val said.
“Your timing was perfect,” he told her.
But instead of sharing in the joy of the moment, she looked up at the sky.
He cast his eyes up in time to see the first vanguard of snowflakes descending from the suddenly leaden sky. As he turned his head down to look at her, the flakes settled on the black leather shoulders of Val’s jacket.
/> “You are wrong, Ulrik. I think we were far too late.”
36
“I warned you the Völkisch were morons.”
Zeilly pouted as she followed Borss up the snowy incline. The man pounded through the snow as if the extra weight he carried in the form of the spiked metal chestplate and gauntlets was nothing. She was not weak, but she could barely lift the chestplate. Borss was a mountain, though, and with the spikes protruding from his torso, he looked like a mountain that wanted to kill things.
She had to make her way through the drifts by following in his footsteps. In some places the snow was hip deep on her.
“Soon it won’t matter,” Borss boomed from ahead of her. “My informant tells me they are snowed in for the winter. In the mountains.”
“Then we can pursue them. Capture them where they wait,” Zeilly persisted.
Borss ignored her and continued up the slope toward a metal tower on the hilltop. She followed him to the base of the thing, the wind suddenly ripping into her through her furs, without the mountain to block the assault.
Borss, seeming not to notice the additional chill, began the ascent up the metal steps.
Zeilly followed him, counting the one hundred steps to the platform, where the messenger birds huddled in little coops. As she expected, the bird they sought—far more intelligent than the oversized mutated pigeons—waited for them on the wooden post extending from the coop.
The witch woman stood by as Borss deftly tied a tiny message capsule to the bird’s leg with twine. He experienced no difficulty, even though the metal jointed fingers of the gauntlets should have made the task impossible. But Zeilly knew—from both pleasure and pain he had inflicted on her—that Borss was incredibly dexterous.
When he finished, he extended one gauntleted wrist, and the bird nimbly hopped onto his forearm. Borss brought the bird up to his face, looking it in the eye. The messenger looked like it was intent on receiving his instructions. That or it was contemplating tearing Borss’s eyes out.
“Go to Kinsker,” Borss told the bird. He held his arm out, and the bird launched into the sky with a powerful flapping of its wings. It stopped its ascent just a few feet above Borss’s head and then dove down the length of the tower and arced out over the snowy landscape.
“Kinsker?” Zeilly asked. “That maniac? Why not use the time to pursue them across the miles. We could be there before they can cross the mountains.”
Borss, ever mercurial, whirled on her. “You want to know why not?”
Then he was in motion. He grabbed her, and before Zeilly knew what was happening, she felt the icy cold tearing at her face and the wind flapping her furs. She only just processed the fact that he had thrown her off the platform and she was plunging one hundred feet down into the snowy hillside.
She started to scream, but her body crashed into the deep drift, snow ramming into her mouth. The landing hurt, but it was surprisingly soft. She began to wretch and sputter, coughing snow and lunging upward with both arms and legs.
Her head broke the surface of the snow, and she shook her head, her hair flying, as she still clawed at the snow all around her.
Eventually she stopped and opened her eyes to see she was in a waist deep drift, nearly halfway down the hillside.
She turned and looked back to see Borss slowly descending the metal steps, no apparent concern for her safety.
But she was unhurt except for her pride. Then she started wading from the deep snow back toward the path Borss had forged on their way up the hill.
Borss passed her position, striding down the path as easily as he had forged up it. “That is why. The winter will hinder our journey, just as much as it prevents them from crossing the mountains. Besides, the rest of my forces are not yet returned from the East. Kinsker’s freaks will take care of them. And if they do not, it will be no great loss. I can always forge an alliance with his enemies.”
Zeilly said nothing as she plunged on through the drifts toward the path. By the time she reached it, Borss was several hundred yards away.
Bastard, she thought. He would just leave me. He would leave anyone.
Because he was far enough away, and because she was frustrated, she called out after him. “And if they make it past Kinsker and obtain your prize?”
When the huge man made no reply, the witch woman stumbled down the path after him. She wondered whether he had realized the snow drifts were deep enough to break her fall. She honestly could not decide.
When Borss had nearly reached the edge of the industrial ruins he called ‘his estate’, and Zeilly was still two hundred paces behind him, he finally responded. “My forces will have returned by Spring. And the Northmen will need to return northward eventually to return to their homes. Provided my informant is not killed, we will know when they are coming, and we will lay in wait.”
Finally, Zeilly thought. Now that I know his plan, I can move on with mine.
She had never intended to be his vassal forever. All she had needed was a way to seize some power for herself. And Borss’s prize would give her just that. All she needed now was to intercept one of the messages from his informant, and hopefully determine what this elusive prize was. Then she simply needed to figure out to whom Borss intended to sell it. It was what he had excelled at. Finding what one group of people had and what another group of people needed. Then taking it through guile and force. More often the latter. But Zeilly was capable of far more guile than Borss could imagine. By Spring he would be dead, and his men, terrified as always, would be working for her.
37
The world was ice and snow. So familiar. It had been that way for most of her young life. At just twenty-four, Val was younger than all the men under her command, including the German. She had been on her own for eighteen years, scavenging, making due, fighting to survive.
All of it had taken place in ice and snow.
But now they were stranded, the drifts and ravines of snow in the mountains so deep that no man or beast could make it through the mountains until the summer. Personally, Val thought the mutant bear from Sweden would have stood a chance, but she and her men were exhausted, and despite their restlessness, the chance to heal and regain their strength was crucial and somewhat welcome.
Unfortunately, the ghosts of the last several hundred miles followed them. Werther passed away in his sleep just five weeks into their stay at the spectacular castle. The man’s death, though natural and from a long life well lived, still cast a pall on the celebratory nature of the group’s initial stay, as the snows and storms had swept in, blanketing the landscape in brilliant white. At first, the men had grumbled that they would be stuck for the winter. But once old Werther had introduced them to the food and wine—hundreds of bottles of different vintages, stretching back hundreds of years—the mood had shifted.
Werther had explained to them all about Schloss Neuschwanstein, the formal German name for the mammoth castle. Originally built for a king, the building had been host to visitors since 1886, and then when the annihilation times came, Werther’s ancestors had cared for the palace, defending it against invasion and the passage of time, life fairly comfortable with the large array of solar panels installed high on the ramparts at the back of the castle. At the edge of the mountains, the structure had fared strangely well in the earthquakes of the Utslettelse—which the old man had called the Aufhruhr—and only minor repairs had been needed. Werther was born in a bedroom on the fourth floor of the castle’s main building, and he had known the place as home and sanctuary for his entire life.
Shortly before he died, he had called Val to his small study and sat in a huge, overstuffed chair by a fireplace. The man always had a kindly air about him, but on that evening he had been grave.
“I understand your story, dear Val. Your mission to the Floating City beyond the mountains. If there is a chance that you can save the remnants of the human race, you must try, of course.”
Val sat silent, curious to hear what the man had to say.
“You understand that I am quite old, and I will not last though another winter after this one—”
“Why say such things?” Val interrupted.
The old man waved his hand dismissively. “It is true, and we both know it. Listen now. There is no one else to care for this place when I go. I know you need to press on south of the mountains when the weather clears and the roads are free of snow. I know. But...well, things can change out there. I have not ventured far from this castle in my life, but I have taken small trips. I know what waits beyond these walls, as do you.”
Val thought back on the challenges she and her men had already faced. She stayed silent, willing the man to finish.
“This place can be yours when I am gone, Val. If things do not go well on your mission, you can come back here to live out your days with my blessing. Perhaps things will be different for you and Ulrik.”
She was suddenly taken aback. He was talking about children.
“Oh, no,” she said, a small smile on her lips. “It is not like that between us. We are only fellow Vikings. Warriors both.”
The man grinned back at her, his eyes twinkling with secret knowledge. “Nevertheless. If you need a refuge, you will always be welcome here, and I will charge you with taking as good care of her as I did, should you come.”
Three days later, the kind old man had died. Unable to bury him in the frozen ground of the gardens, and with no water to send him on a Viking funeral, they had opted for storing him in one of the solar-powered freezers in the basement, until the spring thaw. The panels were slanted so steeply on the castle walls that most of the snow and ice slid right off them. But Ulrik checked and swept them daily anyway.
The bitter wind blew Val’s long blonde hair over her shoulders, the red-lensed goggles hanging around her neck as she peered out a narrow window. She stood in the mini-turret attached to the castle’s tallest tower. The nearby mountains were her only focus now. The snows had begun to melt in the valleys to the north, but to the south, the peaks were still encased in ice. Werther had told her it would be well after spring and into summer before the roads would be passable.
Viking Tomorrow (The Berserker Saga Book 1) Page 16
