The Dream of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  “Yes, sir,” Yngvi said glumly. He returned to the house and closed the door. Sigurd sat down on a stump.

  Yngvi’s mother, Thora, had died three summers ago. The illness had come on her suddenly, eating at her insides and stealing her appetite. She wasted away over twelve weeks, eventually succumbing just before the autumn equinox. She had been a strong, fierce-minded woman, and it had cut Sigurd like a knife to see her reduced to a shell of herself. He spoke of her little, but was reminded of her every time he looked into Yngvi’s penetrating, slate-gray eyes. Sigurd’s neighbors urged him to remarry; he was wealthy by local standards, and there was too much work for him and Yngvi to do alone. There certainly was no shortage of pretty young girls in the valley. But Sigurd had no interest in those pliable, rosy-cheeked girls; he missed his beautiful, stubborn, infuriating Thora.

  As the men approached, Sigurd’s thoughts turned back to his work. If these guests didn’t stay long, he and Yngvi might be able to finish the roof today. That was good: the sky promised snow in the near future. He and Yngvi had taken advantage of the brief thaw to carve up some chunks of sod from the valley floor. His house, like most in the valley, was constructed primarily of pine logs, but dirt and grass on the roof helped keep the heat in. That was not as much of a concern in the spring, but it would be good to give the grass a full summer to put roots into the layer of soil underneath.

  The man in the lead walked toward Sigurd. He was a great strapping man with a forked, braided beard and a jagged scar that ran from his brow across his left cheek and down to his chin. As he approached Sigurd, he grinned and held out his hand.

  “Welcome,” Sigurd said, with feigned enthusiasm.

  The big man clasped Sigurd’s hand. “Sigurd Olafson,” he said. “You have quite the reputation in these parts.”

  “As do you,” Sigurd replied with a smile.

  The man acted as if he hadn’t heard him. “I’m Gunnar Bjornson,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of King Harald.”

  “I know who you are,” Sigurd said. “I remember your father.”

  “Ah, very good!” Gunnar said. “I didn’t realize you were so old.”

  “Are your men hungry?”

  “We won’t dip into your stores,” Gunnar said. “But if there’s ale in that keg, I’ll gladly accept some.”

  “Shall I get the benches ready for you?”

  “I appreciate the hospitality,” Gunnar said, “but we won’t be staying long.”

  Sigurd poured a mug of ale and handed it to Gunnar. “You can tell your men they’re free to drink as well. I’d suggest we go inside, but it seems more pleasant to me out here. Besides, as you say, you won’t be staying long.”

  “You heard our friend,” Gunnar said to the men. “Finish up and you’re free to stand outside and have some ale.” He took a long draught of the ale and wiped his beard with his sleeve.

  “What can I do for you, Gunnar Bjornson?” Sigurd said, straining to keep his irritation in check.

  “The question is what I can do for you. You have heard news of the alliances Harald has made with the villages in the north?”

  “Alliances?” Sigurd asked, with an amused tone. “Is that what you call these arrangements?”

  Gunnar met his gaze. “And I’m certain you’ve heard about the Danish raids.”

  “The Danes don’t come this far inland.”

  “They would if we didn’t stop them at the coasts.”

  “That is up to you. Send them our way if you tire of them.”

  “It’s only fair that you help provide for a common defense.”

  “We have sent able-bodied men when needed, both to Trondelag and to Vestfold. With little to show for it, I might add.”

  “You’re being modest, Sigurd,” Gunnar said. “It is not every farmer who owns a sword like that. Is that a Frankish blade?”

  “It is.”

  “Few Danes carry such a sword. Did you kill the king of the Danes by any chance?”

  “I took this sword off a Saxon knight in East Anglia, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Oh, yes! I knew you had some business with the Danes. I’d forgotten which side you were on.”

  “I was killing Saxons,” Sigurd said. “If there were Danes killing Saxons alongside of me, that’s no concern of mine.”

  Gunnar let out a bellowing laugh. “Well said, sir. If some of your old friends decide to visit you here in Haavaldsrud, though, that will be of some concern to you, will it not?”

  “Indeed. It will be the business of the people who live in this valley. Not yours.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Sigurd. You can’t live like this forever. A string of independent settlements, barely scraping by. Don’t you see the way things are going?”

  “I see well enough. If the sun is bound to move from east to west, it doesn’t need my help. We appreciate your offer, Gunnar Bjornson, but the people of this valley have always provided for their own defense.”

  “The people of this valley are fools,” Gunnar said with a snarl.

  Sigurd’s eyes narrowed. “Do you care to name any of these fools? Or shall I dismiss your judgment as idle talk?”

  Gunnar smiled weakly, seeming to regret his outburst. “The farmers and fisherman in this area may believe themselves capable of standing up to the Danes, but you harbor no such conceits. You know what they tell me when I advise them of the danger they are in? They say, ‘We leave such matters to Sigurd Olafson.’”

  Sigurd shrugged. “I have neither vassal nor slave. If men listen to me, it’s because they believe I have something of value to say. How many have you spoken to?”

  “Just the heads of some of the larger households. I’ll be making several more stops today. Harald wants to make sure the people are informed.”

  “Harald wants to rule all of Norway. Whether his subjects are properly informed is far down on his list of priorities.”

  “Harald will rule all of Norway,” Gunnar said. “Over the past few years, he has consolidated his holdings along the coast. The jarls from Sogn to Halogaland have already sworn their allegiance. Only Hordaland and Rogaland in the south remain, and they are weak.”

  “The valley remains independent as well,” Sigurd said. “Or have you forgotten why you are here?”

  “We set out from Trondheim a week ago,” Gunnar replied. “I’ve spoken to half a dozen jarls and scores of landowners. I have received oath of loyalty from several, and many more will come over to Harald’s side when the time comes.”

  Sigurd laughed. “Then I congratulate you on your success and wish you the best in your future endeavors. Clearly you don’t need my help.”

  “The Danes are going to strike,” Gunnar snapped. “Maybe not this year. Maybe not the next. But they will. And what happens when they do will largely be the consequence of your actions. Good men will be killed. Your stores and your women will be taken, your storehouses burned. Do you really want that on your conscience?”

  “You would have us submit to be looted by Harald to forestall looting by the Danes? No. We are free men,” Sigurd said. “Our choices are our own.”

  Gunnar sighed heavily. “The people say you are stubborn as well. I don’t expect to change your mind in one meeting. I only ask that you reflect on what you have already lost—and what you stand to lose.” He glanced toward the house.

  Sigurd’s heart suddenly pounded in his chest. Fists clenched at his sides, he eyed the sword at Gunnar’s hip. “Is that a threat, Gunnar?”

  “You misunderstand me, Sigurd. I only mean to say that violence is the way of the world. It behooves you to plan for it.”

  “I don’t need to be lectured about taking care of my family by a man who left his own father to die.”

  Gunnar regarded him coldly, fingering the hilt of his sword.

  “Oh, yes,” Sigurd went on. “I know who you are. When I was very young, I used to go down to the creek with some other boys to fish. Some days we would catch more than we could eat; other days we woul
d catch nothing. But we never went hungry, because there was an old fisherman who would sometimes come down to the creek with a bag full of dried fish. He only came when the fish weren’t biting. I don’t know how he knew. Whenever he showed up, we knew we may as well give up for the day. But we kept our lines in the water, because we knew we wouldn’t get any of the dried fish unless we kept at it. I thought Bjorn Odinson was old even then, but I remember hearing later that he had gotten married to a woman from the south and had a son. I was happy for him, because I didn’t think it was right that such a kind man be alone. Years later, his wife drowned in an accident and his son, unable to bear his grief, ran away. This boy was only seventeen, but he showed great prowess as a warrior and there were rumors that he had gone to work for a chieftain to the west named Harald. Bjorn was quite old and feeble at this point; he died three years later. The son did not even return for the funeral, and, in fact has not been seen in these parts until very recently.”

  “You know nothing of my family,” Gunnar said through gritted teeth.

  “And you know nothing of mine. Or my people. Have as much ale as you like. I have work to do.” Sigurd turned and went into his house.

  Chapter Ten

  Thea Jane Slater sank into her chair as the lander’s thrusters fired. In the past few seconds, her weight had gone from zero to four times her ordinary weight: the lander was pulling over four gees. It was an unpleasant way to travel, but if the lander didn’t slow below fifty thousand kilometers per hour, it was going to cruise right through Earth’s gravity well and continue into deep space. If the lander came in too fast, it wouldn’t get a second chance: it would run out of fuel before it could reverse course.

  Carpenter had done the math and assured them they’d be fine. It didn’t feel fine, though. To Slater it felt like her skull was going to collapse from the pressure. They could have disembarked earlier and slowed more gradually, but Mallick was concerned the Cho-ta’an ship might try to follow them down. By disembarking at the last minute and decelerating at the maximum possible rate, they hoped to be in orbit before the Cho-ta’an even knew they’d left Andrea Luhman.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The Cho-ta’an ship had been slowing for some time, probably to give themselves time to react in case the humans did something unexpected—like sending a lander down to Earth. Less than two minutes after the lander began to decelerate, Carpenter’s voice came over the comm.

  “Bad news, guys,” he said. “The Cho-ta’an ship is slowing.”

  “How much?” Slater managed to shout through clenched teeth.

  “They’ve flipped around. Looks like close to full reverse thrust. They’re going after you.”

  “What the hell?” Slater replied. “Why?”

  “I can only assume they’ve figured out what we’re doing. They can see our thrusters aren’t working and have deduced you’re making a repair run.”

  “Can they catch us?”

  “They’re still several seconds back, and they’ve got to be pulling their hair out trying to calculate an orbital trajectory. I mean, they would be if they had hair.”

  “Damn it, Carpenter,” Slater groaned.

  “Sorry. Point is, you’re in no immediate danger. It’s going to take their full attention to avoid bouncing off the atmosphere or missing the planet entirely. If they manage to make orbit, we’ll revisit the situation.”

  “Copy that,” Slater said.

  Slater closed her eyes, fighting to breathe. Her hands and feet had gone numb, and her eyeballs felt like they were pushing into her brain. Part of her wished the Cho-ta’an ship would just get it over with and take them out with a missile. But the ship seemed to have exhausted its missiles, and whatever other weapons it had wouldn’t work at this range. In any case, as Carpenter said, the Cho-ta’an were going to have their hands full just trying to achieve orbit. Calculating an orbital trajectory was no small feat, and trying to do it on the fly was borderline suicidal. The Cho-ta’an had clearly decided the lander was a threat. How much they had guessed about the crew’s insane mission was impossible to say.

  Some twenty minutes later, the lander was arcing around the curve of the Earth at fifty thousand kilometers per hour, still decelerating at four gees. Gabe and O’Brien had lost consciousness; Slater envied them. She remained conscious, although it didn’t really matter, as the lander was handling the course adjustments at this point. This was the moment of truth. If Carpenter’s calculations were correct, the lander would descend into an orbit of thirty-six thousand kilometers, falling to Earth at the same rate as its momentum carried it past the planet’s surface. That’s all orbiting was: falling and missing the ground.

  It worked, of course. Carpenter could be a pedantic jerk, but he knew his stuff. Slater breathed a sigh of relief as the thrusters cut out. It was such a relief not to weigh three hundred kilos anymore that she didn’t notice at first that they were experiencing near full Earth gravity.

  “Orbit attained,” she gasped.

  “Nice flying,” Carpenter’s voice said over the comm.

  “All I did was hold on,” Slater replied.

  “It was enough.”

  Slater smiled. Behind her, Gabe and O’Brien began to stir.

  “Ugh, my head,” O’Brien groaned. “Are we in hell? Did we die?”

  “No such luck,” Reyes replied. “We’re in orbit around Earth.”

  The word hung in the air like a spell. Earth. None of them had ever seen the cradle of the human race. There had never been any point in making the trip before. Earth had been rendered uninhabitable by the Cho-ta’an before any of them were born. Although they’d seen the vids, heard the stories of Earth’s grandeur and beauty, it existed for them mainly as an abstraction. People talked about Earth the way people had probably once talked about the glories of ancient Rome. They thought of it more as an unattainable ideal than a real place.

  But when Slater put a view of the vast blue-white sphere on the overhead display, all four of them gasped. It was like nothing they’d ever seen. Even Geneva, the jewel in the IDL crown, with its towering black spires jutting up from vast mountain ranges cloaked in pristine white snow, paled in comparison. It was like something out a dream. She found herself blinking tears out of her eyes.

  “My God,” O’Brien said, echoing her thoughts. “I had no idea.”

  They gaped in silence for some time as the white and azure swirls rolled slowly beneath them.

  “What if…?” Slater began.

  “What if what?” Gabe replied.

  “What if we could save it? Earth. What if we can prevent the Cho-ta’an from destroying it?”

  “Let’s not go down that road,” Reyes said. “You heard what Schumacher said. We have to assume paradoxes don’t exist. It’s a bad idea to try to do something you know is doomed to fail.”

  “Maybe it’s not a paradox,” Slater replied. “Maybe there’s more than one reality. Maybe in one reality, we succeed in saving the Earth from the Cho-ta’an.”

  “Metaphysical questions aside,” Reyes said, “how the hell are we going to do that? We’re four people. And humanity doesn’t even meet the Cho-ta’an for thirteen hundred years.”

  “Four people with encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-third century technology,” O’Brien said. “Imagine what humanity could do with thirteen hundred years of preparation.”

  Gabe laughed. “You really think that’s how history works? That we’re going to land in the center of Constantinople, wow the natives with gyroscopes and pocket calculators, and then institute a thirteen hundred-year plan to defeat aliens humanity hasn’t even met yet?”

  “Doesn’t sound a whole lot crazier than what we’re actually doing,” O’Brien replied.

  “No, Gabe’s right,” Reyes said. “You’re not talking about defeating the Cho-ta’an. You’re talking about rewriting all of human history since the Middle Ages. That’s a bad idea. Civilizations take time to adapt to technological change. There’s no telling wha
t kind of carnage we might unleash.”

  “Or prevent,” Slater said. “The Black Death, the Inquisition, the Holocaust….”

  “The Renaissance, the Reformation, the development of representational government,” Gabe muttered.

  “We’re not having this discussion,” Reyes snapped. “Not now. Feel free to indulge in fantasies on your own time. We have a mission to execute. We land, we fabricate a new manifold, and we get the hell back to Andrea Luhman.”

  Slater wanted to argue but thought better of it. They remained in silence for some time, watching the Earth slide beneath them. The thrusters had kicked in again, gradually decreasing the lander’s velocity relative to the surface below. As the lander slowed, it would begin to fall toward the surface. The idea was to time the fall with the ship’s deceleration so that when the lander hit the atmosphere, she would be traveling just faster than the rate of the Earth’s rotation at the equator. If the ship were going too fast when it hit the atmosphere, she would bounce back into space. Carpenter had calculated a nice, gradual descent that would allow them to land somewhere near the center of the continent known as North America. Mallick’s idea of an uninhabited island was nice, but the impromptu nature of their mission required a bigger spatial margin of error. Australia would have been ideal, but the lander’s trajectory put it on the opposite side of the globe. Europe and Asia were considered too populated and technologically advanced—the crew didn’t want to have to contend with Frankish knights or Mongol hordes in addition to the other challenges they’d face. So they’d decided on North America. Carpenter’s flight plan would take them right to the center of the continent, a place once known as Colorado, known for its rich mineral deposits. The region was sparsely populated by tribes of preliterate humans.

  “You there, Slater?” Carpenter’s voice said over the comm.

  “I’m here. Go ahead.”

  “Bad news. Looks like the Cho-ta’an ship pulled it off. Whoever’s flying that thing has balls of steel. They’ve settled into an orbit about three thousand klicks below you.”