The Dream of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  “Not since we returned last night,” said Erland. He was the only one of the five returnees present. A blood-soaked bandage covered his right eye and much of his head. The bodies of Vilmar and Sten had been found, bloody and broken, on the roadside.

  “Their house is empty,” Agnar said. “I checked it myself.”

  “Dead?” Arnulf asked.

  Agnar shook his head. “Not that I saw.”

  “Are we certain he returned to the village?” Sigurd asked.

  “We were carrying the foreigners,” Erland said. “Jannik went on ahead.”

  “So he may have strayed off the path and let you pass,” Sigurd said. “Did anyone see him in the village last night?”

  No one spoke.

  Arnulf turned to Sigurd, anger sweeping over his face. “Jannik betrayed us.”

  Sigurd nodded slowly. It was hard to come to any other conclusion. He cursed himself again. How had he not seen it? He’d pretended to return to the village but had gone to Svelvig instead. How long had he been planning his betrayal? Jannik had voted to stand up to Harald, but that may have been a ruse.

  “It changes nothing,” Ulla said. “We cannot stand against Harald. We must submit to his authority.”

  Arnulf no longer seemed so sure. “If Jannik betrayed us, he must pay.”

  Sigurd nodded. “Jannik betrayed us, and Gunnar betrayed us before that. Or have you all forgotten that Gunnar was once one of our own? Our mistake wasn’t standing up; it was not killing that rat when we had a chance.”

  “What would you have us do, then?” Ulla asked. “You failed once to defend this valley. You think you can do it now, with half our men dead?”

  Sigurd gritted his teeth to keep from shouting at Ulla. “We must take the fight to Gunnar. Fight alongside the foreigners.”

  “Have you learned nothing?” Ulla snapped. “Even a child learns not to stick his hand in the fire twice.”

  “Look around,” Sigurd said. “What do you see?”

  “What do I see? I see burned houses and dead children!”

  “Exactly,” Sigurd replied, barely controlling his fury. “They killed indiscriminately. Didn’t bother to take the women or the children as slaves. Why not?”

  “Because Harald was making a point,” said Njáll. “He doesn’t need our people. He only wants control over our land.”

  “Have you ever known Harald to give up easily-acquired plunder?”

  No one spoke.

  “Harald demands tribute from all his dominions,” Sigurd growled. “Those who resist fare even worse. You heard about old Kjetil, who led a rebellion of some of the estates to the west. Harald had him executed and took both of his daughters and all of his goats. Not only that, but Harald left half his force in place until autumn, to ensure that he would have no more trouble in the area. Where are Harald’s men? Why did they leave so quickly?”

  “They knew we would return,” Arnulf said.

  “Maybe,” Sigurd replied. His rage had subsided a bit. “But seeing what they did here, I would guess they had a force of at least fifty. If they’d wanted to waylay ten men coming down from the hills, they had the opportunity. In fact, the only way they could have avoided us is by passing the bridge, crossing the river farther west and doubling back.”

  “That would take them right past the foreigners’ ship,” Arnulf said.

  Sigurd nodded. “That’s what Gunnar is after. We were right to try to ally with the foreigners. Taking the ship was Gunnar’s intention all along. Jannik provided them an opportunity to raze our homes as well. They probably waited in the hills, watching for us to return. And now that we’re here, they’ve headed back to the ship.”

  “So Gunnar played us for fools,” Ulla asked. “We defend one place and he attacks another. How many times do you have to be burned to stop playing his game? What if Gunnar returns while you are gone?”

  “And does what?” Arnulf asked. “Brings our cattle back to life? There’s nothing left here for him to take. I don’t like it, but Sigurd is right. Gunnar is going to attack the foreigner’s ship.”

  “And what is that to us?” Birjitta asked. “Let them have it!”

  “This is our only chance,” Sigurd said, trying to remain patient. “My men and I are exhausted. When we got here, our houses were on fire and our families were dead. I just held my son while he died in my arms. I want nothing more right now than to open my wrists and allow the life to flow out of my body. To be free of this sorrow and pain. But we have no choice. If we are ever going to get our vengeance against Gunnar, against Harald, we must strike now! The foreigners have weapons that will—”

  “Enough about the foreigners!” Ulla cried. “It is because of them that my husband is dead. If you are still men, kill the three of them and put their heads on a stake!”

  “We’re getting nowhere,” Arnulf said. “Ulla, shame on you. Whatever events have transpired since they arrived, the foreigners are our guests. Anyone who wishes to harm them will have to go through me.” He picked up his axe from where it rested at his side. “Come on, then. Let’s get this over with.” He moved to stand in front of Reyes, who watched the proceedings with a baffled look on her face.

  No one volunteered to take up Ulla’s cause. Her face turned a deep crimson. Sigurd saw Reyes moving away from the group, and at first thought she was afraid for her life, but then he noticed she was pressing her hand to her ear, the way the foreigners sometimes did when they were communicating over long distances with each other.

  “Good,” Arnulf said, setting down his axe. “Now, the next question. Sigurd is right. We are all tired and grieving, but if we are ever going to strike back against Gunnar, now is the time. Who wishes to fight?”

  “Hold on,” Sigurd said. “If we are going to have a chance, we need all the fighting men. We must vote, as we did before. All heads of households. If we vote to fight, all able-bodied men go to the lander. If not, we surrender.” As Sigurd said it, he realized he had no intention to surrender, no matter how the vote came out.

  “We don’t need to surrender,” Ulla said. “We can stay and rebuild.”

  Arnulf shook his head. “You said it yourself. We no longer have enough men to defend the village. If we rebuild, we’re simply inviting Gunnar to attack again. There are only two choices: attack now or submit to Harald’s rule.”

  “We can’t stay here either way,” said Gunhild, who had listened quietly up to this point. “Most of our animals are dead and our food stores are smoke and ash. Even if we were safe from another attack, we don’t have the resources to rebuild.”

  “What do you suggest, Gunhild?” Arnulf said.

  “We go east. Many of us have kin around Uslu. They will take us in, at least temporarily. We will bury our dead there and take time to grieve. Those of us who can find work may wish to stay there. Those who wish to return here will do so.”

  “Don’t be coy, woman,” Birjitta snapped. “You know full well that if we bury our dead in Uslu, we will never return to this valley.”

  Gunhild nodded slowly. “It is as you say, Birjitta. I mean only to say that no one will be barred from returning. But yes, we need to be realistic. We do not have the numbers to sustain a community anymore. Sigmund the blacksmith and Odd the baker are both dead. Even if we all wished to return, we would be hard-pressed to survive the winter.”

  “We could go north,” Njáll said. “We may be able to convince the people of the valley to make a united stand against Harald,” Njáll said. “Now that Harald has made his intentions clear, we should have no trouble rallying men to defend the valley.”

  There was little enthusiasm for this idea. Many had kin in Uslu, but the people to the north were mostly strangers. They would not bury their dead in the north.

  “Go north, go east, stay, fight, surrender,” Arnulf muttered, shaking his head. “Too much to decide in too little time, with no sleep.”

  Several men nodded wearily. Sigurd looked around at the people and saw defeat. There was
no way this group was going to vote to take the offensive against Gunnar. Not after what they had just been through. But Sigurd knew he could not let his son’s death go unavenged. He would take the fight to Harald if he had to do it alone.

  “Arnulf is right,” Sigurd said. “It is too much to ask you to decide your future right now. I do not know myself what I am going to do tomorrow. But I do know one thing: I must avenge my son’s death.”

  “It is well that you should do so,” Arnulf said. “But must we first not at least bury our dead?”

  Gunhild spoke again. “Those of us who make the journey to Uslu will take the dead with us. We can salvage some carts from the debris, and may yet recover some mules or oxen. Sad as it is to say, we have little else to carry.”

  Sigurd nodded. “I am very much obliged, Gunhild.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Gunhild said. “I don’t intend to carry anything but my own weary bones—if that.”

  Several in the group chuckled. Even Sigurd managed a smile.

  “Who then will go with Sigurd?” Arnulf asked. “It is a brave and important thing he is doing, but there is no shame in going to Uslu. The dead must be laid to rest, and the living must live on.”

  Four hands went up: Braggi, Brynjarr, Njáll and Agnar. Sigurd was disappointed at the number of volunteers, but heartened that both of his gunmen were among them.

  “All right,” Arnulf said. “Then the rest of us will go to Uslu, myself included. I let my Edda down once, and I cannot do so again. I will carry her to Uslu in my arms and bury her with my bare hands if I have to.”

  “What of those of us who don’t wish to travel to Uslu?” Ulla snapped.

  “Then you’ll stay here and rot with your boys,” Arnulf growled. “We’re a community. We live or die together.” He reached out to take Sigurd’s hand. “May Odin himself be with you,” he said.

  “Thank you, old friend,” Sigurd said. “I will see you in Uslu soon.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Gabe spotted the first of Gunnar’s men shortly after dawn. They were coming straight across the plain from the forest to the south, iron helmets gleaming in the ruddy light, making no effort to conceal themselves. His eyes were glazing over from exhaustion, but he counted somewhere between fifty and sixty of them. They made a wide arc around the lander, fanning out across the plain until they formed a semicircle about a hundred meters out from the lander, a few meters separating each man. Many of them had bows slung over their shoulders. For now, they seemed content to wait. Gabe popped two more of the stimulants and tapped his cuff.

  “You copy, Reyes?”

  For several seconds, Gabe heard only muffled scratches. Then Reyes’s voice, barely above a whisper: “I’m here, Gabe. What’s up?”

  “Found my Vikings,” he said. “You were right. Not a horned helmet in sight.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Fifty-five, give or take. They’re about a hundred meters out. I think I spotted Gunnar. They came from the south.”

  “Must be the same group that sacked the village,” Reyes said. “I think they left shortly before we got here. You know how I suggested there was a spy among Sigurd’s people?”

  “Jannik, right?”

  “How the hell did you know that? I just figured it out myself. Sigurd’s men were talking about him.”

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think. Should have known as soon as I laid eyes on that asshole.”

  “What are Gunnar’s men doing?”

  “Nothing, yet. Just watching the lander.”

  “Any idea why they’re not attacking?”

  “I’ve got a guess. They’ve got me surrounded to keep me from running, but they left a gap at the south end of their formation. They’re waiting for reinforcements.”

  Reyes didn’t speak for a moment. “They’ve got you outnumbered fifty to one and they’re waiting for reinforcements?”

  “I guess Gunnar was pretty impressed with my gun. What’s your status?”

  “It’s grim here. I was listening in on a meeting of the village’s survivors when you commed. Can’t follow much of it, of course, but I think they’re blaming us for the attack.”

  “Understandable,” Gabe said. “What are they going to do about it?”

  “One woman in particular seems to have it in for us. I think Sigurd and the others managed to talk some sense into her.”

  “Any chance I’ll be getting some reinforcements?”

  “I’ll try, but frankly I’m going to be happy if we get out of here alive. You’re going to have to hold them off for a few hours on your own, at the very least. I’m sorry, Gabe.”

  “Copy that,” Gabe said. He surveyed the line of men arcing around across the plain, regarding him stonily. Most wore helmets of leather or metal and carried round wooden shields. Spears and axes were the most common weapons; Gunnar and a few of his lieutenants carried swords. Toward the middle of the line, Gunnar was conferring with several of these men.

  They had to be waiting for more men. That was the only explanation. If this was their complete force, they would have encircled the lander and launched their attack without delay. Whatever Gunnar had told Harald, he’d definitely impressed upon him the danger of these foreigners—as well as the value of the lander. Gunnar had probably left to sack the village before the full force was assembled, with the plan to meet the rest at the lander.

  That was good and bad news. Good because it gave Gabe a bit of a reprieve—as well as a chance that Reyes would return with reinforcements before the assault began. Bad because even with Reyes and the other gunmen, they couldn’t defeat a hundred Vikings. He didn’t have much confidence in the Norsemen’s ability to use a gun under fire, and they would be cut off from the lander and easily surrounded. The railgun had a maximum rate of fire of ten rounds per second, but he’d have a hard time hitting much of anything at that rate. He had plenty of ammo for the railgun, but it required a lot of power and he only had one battery. Generally a fully-charged battery was good for about a hundred rounds.

  His best bet, then, was to force Gunnar to act. Get him to attack before his full force had assembled. That should be easy enough to do: just start picking them off at a distance. Gabe was familiar enough with Viking culture to know that running away from battle was frowned upon; they’d have little choice but to attack en masse. He hoped.

  Gabe picked up his helmet from the floor of the casemate and put it on, sliding the visor down. The helmet had a shell made from a lightweight carbon fiber that would provide good protection against the Norsemen’s weapons. The flight suit wasn’t quite as tough, but it had a layer of nanofiber armor that would suffice to deflect arrows and thrown weapons. Gabe unslung the gun from his shoulder and checked the battery connection for the twentieth time. The battery light was green; the readout on the battery read eighty-four percent.

  He took several deep breaths to steady himself, then got into a crouch, resting the gun on the top of the casemate. He lined up the sights, zeroing in on one of Gunnar’s lieutenants. He’d have gone for Gunnar himself, but he wasn’t completely certain the men wouldn’t rout if Gunnar was killed. If they ran, they might return later, after the rest of the force had arrived. Better to piss them off by taking out a few of the henchmen.

  “I’ve got to be out of my fucking mind,” he said aloud, as he took aim at a big blond man’s chest. The Norsemen gave no indication that they thought Gabe was a threat. Even given what Gunnar had told them about their weapons, it probably never occurred to them that he could attack from this distance. He almost felt bad for them.

  Gabe clicked a switch on the side of the railgun, setting rate of fire to one round per second. It could fire much faster, but at a cost of diminished accuracy, greater recoil, and much faster battery drain. Because the railgun used an electrical charge rather than a chemical explosive to move the projectiles, its muzzle velocity and rate of acceleration were variable. At a lower rate of fire, the gun could control the projectile’s acceleration
rate to minimize kickback. Between the controlled acceleration and the action of the gun’s built-in inertial compensators, the recoil was negligible. The gun would still kick upwards slightly with each shot, but it was weighted so that if you held it correctly, it was self-leveling. That meant if he was careful and focused, he could take out a Viking every second.

  He tapped his cuff. “Hey, Reyes.”

  “I’m here, Gabe. What’s happening?”

  “I’m about to make history,” Gabe said. He shifted his aim as the man took a half-step to his left.

  “Don’t do anything crazy. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Sigurd is trying to get a group together.”

  “Sorry, Reyes, can’t wait. If I don’t make it through this, well… good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  “Gabe, stop! What are you—”

  Gabe tapped his cuff again, switching off the comm. He inhaled and exhaled deeply three times and then squeezed the trigger.

  There was a crack as the bullet left the gun moving at over a thousand meters per second. The noise was from the bullet breaking the sound barrier; the gun itself was virtually silent. The gun was capable of propelling projectiles at speeds of up to two thousand kilometers per second, but that seemed like overkill when dealing with guys carrying wooden shields. Besides, the higher the velocity, the faster his battery would drain. He thought he had enough of juice to dispatch all of Gunnar’s force, but there was no point in pushing it.

  His first shot hit the unlucky Viking dead center in his chest. Gabe moved the gun half a degree to the right and the gun fired again. This shot was a little low, penetrating the second man’s abdomen. The third man managed to get his shield up, but it made no difference. Splinters flew as the shield cracked in half. The first man hadn’t even hit the ground.

  None of the Norsemen tried using their bows, confident in their ability to overwhelm him in a melee. To their credit, fleeing never seemed to occur to them. Gabe heard someone—probably Gunnar—shouting an order, but it seemed perfunctory. The Vikings rushed toward the lander as one.