The Dream of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  Some time around midnight, when the men could barely keep rowing, clouds came over the moon and the pursuers were once again lost in the night. Birgir gave the order to cease rowing. It was a risky tactic, but it made sense: if the cloud cover held, Harald’s men might slip past them in the dark. In any case, they had little choice: the men simply had no strength left. They stopped to eat and drink, Birgir hissing at them to be quiet whenever one of them made any noise. When the somber meal was finished, the crew lay down to get some sleep while they could. Reyes volunteered to take the first watch, and Sigurd reluctantly agreed. He put another man on watch at the stern and then lay down to sleep.

  “Let me know when you get tired,” O’Brien whispered to Reyes.

  “You should rest,” Reyes replied. “Slater is up next.”

  O’Brien sighed and leaned back against the gunwale. Being worthless was beginning to wear on him. His side still ached, but he’d been weaning himself off the pain meds and he felt much better than he had a few days earlier. The motion of the boat made him a little queasy, but it was manageable. You couldn’t qualify for a position as a crew member of an IDL ship if you had any propensity for motion sickness.

  He spent the next two hours staring up at the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of a star or the Moon, but there was nothing but endless gray. Somewhere, trillions of kilometers beyond that blanket of gray, was a world called Tarchon, populated at this point only by plants and primitive animal life. Twelve hundred years from now, a probe would land on that planet and send a signal back to its owners that Tarchon could support human life. Thirteen hundred years from now, the planet would be teeming with people, one of whom was a geology student and amateur sailor named Dan O’Brien. O’Brien would marry a woman named Cara Miller and they would have two children together. Unable to find academic employment, O’Brien would join the Interstellar Defense League and be assigned to an elite exploratory mission aboard a ship called Andrea Luhman. After sending a message to IDL command that they had acquired an object of strategic importance, Andrea Luhman would vanish, never to be heard from again. And thus would die the last hope of the human race.

  Or would it? That part of history hadn’t been written yet. Maybe by some miracle, Andrea Luhman might still get back to Geneva, with or without O’Brien and the others. It was hard to imagine how that might happen, though; he might as well hope that another group of dissident Cho-ta’an were hiding another planet-killer somewhere. If he was going to count on a deus ex machina, one was as good as another.

  He wondered if Mallick, Carpenter and the others aboard Andrea Luhman had any idea how horribly wrong things had gone down on Earth. Andrea Luhman had been out of radio range by the time the lander’s crew regained consciousness, but at the very least Carpenter knew they had had a very rough landing. He had to know it was unlikely they’d ever get off Earth. Given that knowledge, what would they do? Try to limp back to an IDL outpost on aux thrusters? That would probably be pointless, but no more pointless than returning to Earth in the hopes of getting a new ionization manifold.

  No, the captain would return Andrea Luhman to orbit around Earth as scheduled. That would be about five weeks from now. The question was what he would do when it got here. If the landing party was unable to rig up a transmitter by then, what would the Andrea Luhman’s crew be able to determine from orbit? They’d have no trouble spotting the blast crater where the lander had been, certainly. Beyond that, they’d be hard-pressed to gather any information about the landing party’s status. They’d probably assume the entire party was dead. How long they’d wait for a sign the party had survived was anybody’s guess.

  He tried telling himself that it didn’t matter, that he had just as much of a chance to live a happy life in ninth century Europe as he did as an IDL geologist in the twenty-third century, but it was no use. It wasn’t just that he was never going to see his wife and kids again, although that pained him terribly. It was the fact that no matter what he did here in this time, he would be living life under a pall, like the endless gray sky that seemed to swallow Ísbátr. He and his crew had glimpsed the end of humanity, what the Norsemen snoring on the deck in front of him would call Ragnarok. Fenris the wolf would swallow the sun, and everything humankind had created would be wiped out. He wondered not for the first time why the crew was even bothering to fight for their survival. What was the point?

  Schumacher had told them paradoxes didn’t exist, which seemed to imply that the crew’s appearance would have minimal effect on civilization. Harald wanted them for their knowledge of future technology, but if history had been changed by a group of time travelers in 883 AD, they’d have heard about it. Similarly, if they made it to Normandy and used their technical knowhow to build steam engines and electric generators, history would have turned out entirely different. The fact that the industrial revolution hadn’t started until the eighteenth century proved that the lander’s crew hadn’t lived to spread their knowledge. Even if they somehow survived this voyage, they were doomed to live inconsequential lives. Their lives would be, in the words of a political philosopher who wouldn’t be born for nearly seven hundred years, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

  Eventually he drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, Slater had taken Reyes’s place on the bow. He greeted her with a nod, and then they sat silently in the darkness for some time. O’Brien tried to sleep some more, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. At last he gave up, content to stare into the inky sky and contemplate his fate. When Slater’s shift was over, she got up to wake Gabe.

  “I’ll do it,” O’Brien whispered.

  “You need to rest,” Slater replied.

  “I’ve done nothing but sleep since we got here. I can’t do much, but I have a pair of eyes. I’m going to be awake anyway.” He got slowly to his feet.

  Slater nodded. “Wake Gabe if you get tired.” She lay down and closed her eyes.

  O’Brien peered into the blackness, shaking his head. Keeping watch seemed even more pointless than their struggle to stay alive. The sky was still cloudy; there was barely enough light to see water below. There could be a ship a stone’s throw away and he’d never see it. But he’d told Slater he’d do it, and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

  While he occupied himself with thoughts of his home on Tarchon, a thick fog began to roll in, and with it an uneasy sensation. He had been assuming he and the others would die a quick, violent death: if they somehow managed to evade Harald’s fleet, they would die at the hands of Frisians or Franks defending their territory. But the fog presented another possibility: they would be lost at sea indefinitely. If they couldn’t see the sun or stars, navigation would be difficult. He had seen Skeggi holding a piece of translucent crystal stone—presumably one of the mythical “sun stones” that the Vikings had used to determine the location of the sun by using the stone’s ability to polarize sunlight. This method was imprecise, though, and gave only a general idea of the direction they were heading. If you got far enough off course, knowing where the sun wasn’t much help. And he had no idea if Birgir had one of the stones; Skeggi’s was presumably with his body on Sjóhestr. The Vikings could catch fish if they got hungry, but they’d run out of water—and ale—in less than two weeks.

  As a boy, O’Brien had once been lost on the Aleron Sea on Tarchon for a few hours, thanks to a broken compass. He’d been able to call for help, but the experience was frightening enough that he’d sworn he’d never be in that position again—and now here he was, adrift in the middle of the North Sea, with no charts, no compass, no instruments at all.

  Eventually the sky began to lighten, but it was impossible to tell where the sun was. The entire sky seemed a uniform shade of gray. Visibility was still poor; he could barely see the water meters from the hull. Across the ship, he could just make out the form of the Norsemen standing watch, leaning heavily on a spear. As he turned his gaze back across the bow, a slight breeze pushed the veil of fog away momentarily, and he caught s
ight of a curved line in the distance. O’Brien’s heart began to pound in his chest. He blinked his eyes, but it was gone. Had it been a ship? Was it just his imagination? The blanket of fog remained stubbornly in place.

  O’Brien moved to wake Gabe but then hesitated. What if he was wrong? Worse, what if he was right, and waking the crew only drew attention to Ísbátr? They might be better off keeping quiet and waiting for the ship to drift away.

  But that wasn’t O’Brien’s call. At the very least, he needed to wake Gabe, who could give a tactical assessment of the situation. He stepped over Reyes, who was sleeping nearby, and shook Gabe lightly by the shoulder. Gabe jerked awake with a startled gasp, and O’Brien put a finger to his own lips. For a moment they listened, but there was only the sound of men snoring.

  “I think I saw a ship,” O’Brien whispered.

  “Where?” Gabe asked, sitting up.

  O’Brien pointed into the gray haze. “About twenty degrees to port. Maybe a hundred meters away.”

  Gabe nodded, taking a moment to assess the situation. “Wake the gunmen,” he said. “Tell them to watch the bow.”

  O’Brien nodded and then did as instructed. While he woke Sigurd, Agnar and Brynjarr, Gabe briefed Reyes and Slater. Reyes joined Agnar and Brynjarr at the bow, guns ready, while Sigurd conferred with Gabe. O’Brien, standing behind Reyes, still saw no sign of the ship, and he was becoming more and more convinced he’d imagined it. Even if he hadn’t, there was no telling where the ship was now, or if there were any others nearby. Sigurd walked away from Gabe, disappearing into the fog. Moments later, figures began to move about on the deck. O’Brien thought he heard oars hitting the water.

  Gabe approached them. “Sigurd is going to bring the boat around to port.”

  “Port?” Reyes asked. “We’re not going to try to evade them?”

  “Evidently not,” Gabe said, as the boat began to move. “Ready your guns. Stay alert. Don’t fire until I give the order.”

  Gabe disappeared again into the fog, and the others kept watching over the bow. The air against O’Brien’s face told him they were creeping forward. They were planning to attack. O’Brien was torn between fear that he’d imagined the ship and fear that he hadn’t.

  Agnar, to his right, gave his shoulder a tap. O’Brien turned to see Agnar pointing into the fog. At first, O’Brien saw nothing, but then his eyes focused on the shape of a dragon looming in the fog. He tapped Reyes’s shoulder and she nodded. The others had seen it as well. Within a few seconds, the bow came into view to the left. Standing just behind the dragon carving was a man with a bow, staring obliviously in the opposite direction. Somewhere behind O’Brien, an oar clacked against the deck. The man on the bow spun around and for a moment shock came over his face. He opened his mouth to issue a warning, but before he could make a sound an arrow pierced his throat. The man stumbled backwards with a gasp. Another arrow hit him in the shoulder and he tumbled backwards into the water. Glancing back, O’Brien saw Sigurd set down his bow and draw his pistol. Braggi was rousing the rest of the men.

  Ísbátr was now less than twenty meters from the enemy ship, its bow aimed at the starboard gunwale a few meters behind the dragon figurehead. Men on the other ship began to stir in response to the noise. Several of them spotted Ísbátr at once and began to shout warnings. The crew scrambled for their bows.

  “Fire!” Gabe shouted.

  A series of gunshots rang out across the water and three men on the enemy ship fell to the deck. Four more fell in second round of shots. Arrows fired by men standing on the sea chests or leaning over the gunwales felled three more. Harald’s men were falling almost as fast as they could get to their feet.

  “Gunners, move aside!” Gabe shouted. Those with pistols moved along the gunwales toward the stern as men from behind them poured toward the bow. The men braced themselves for a moment and then, when Ísbátr’s bow struck the hull of the enemy ship, they leaped forward, spears and axes in hand, landing on the deck of the other ship. The enemy ship’s deck was higher, but their angled approach allowed them to jump directly from Ísbátr’s bow to the enemy deck.

  *****

  Sigurd led the charge. It was a slaughter.

  A few men on the enemy ship managed to fire arrows before the melee began, but half of the enemy were still asleep, and the others barely had time to switch from bows to spears before being cut down by Sigurd or one of the others advancing from Ísbátr. The gunners, along with several archers, lined up along Ísbátr’s port gunwale and continued to fire, taking out any man who dared stand. After a third of the enemy ship’s crew had been killed, wounded, or thrown overboard, the men began to throw down their weapons. The surprise attack, along with the shock of the foreigners’ weapons, was too much for them. Harald’s men surrendered.

  “Throw your bows overboard,” Sigurd barked, and the prisoners did as instructed. Sigurd saw that among them was a large man with a forked, braided beard and a jagged scar that ran from his brow across his left cheek and down to his chin.

  “Gunnar,” Sigurd said, grinning as he stepped toward the prisoners. Gunnar had been attempting to hide at the rear of the group, but now that he’d been spotted, he thrust his chin forward defiantly, making his way to the front. His left shoulder was still in a sling.

  “Before you do anything,” Gunnar said, “I suggest you remember that I’m a representative of King Harald himself.”

  Sigurd guffawed. “Gunnar, you’ve always had a gift for words, but your gift has failed you today. I had little sympathy for you before you opened your mouth, and I have none now.” He turned to Agnar and Brynjarr, who stood beside him. “Tie his hands and feet.”

  The men did as they were asked. There was no complaint from anyone on board the enemy ship but Gunnar himself, who yelped in pain as Brynjarr jerked his hands behind his back. When Agnar and Brynjarr had finished, Sigurd grabbed Gunnar by his arm, pulling him toward the gunwale. His feet tied, Gunnar was forced to hop to keep from falling over. He stared into the fog, terror in his eyes.

  “Please, Sigurd,” Gunnar begged. “What are you doing?”

  “Fishing,” Sigurd said, and shoved Gunnar overboard.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  O’Brien moved aside as the attackers returned to Ísbátr.

  “Keep an eye out for the other ships,” Gabe said. “Anybody within twenty klicks must have heard those shots.”

  O’Brien nodded, and began peering into the fog again. But he was distracted by a hand gripping his left leg. Glancing down, he saw Slater looking sitting on the deck, leaning against the gunwale. She looked at him with a strange, pleading expression on her face. O’Brien saw now that an arrow was sticking out of her chest.

  “Gabe!” he shouted, dropping to his knees. “Slater’s been hit!”

  Gabe approached, kneeling down next to Slater. Her flight suit was open to halfway down her chest; the arrow had just missed the zipper, striking her below her left collarbone. Blood pooled on her chest and ran down her neck. Slater moaned with pain. Even in the dim morning light, O’Brien could see her face had gone pale.

  “Reyes, give me some light,” Gabe said.

  Reyes tapped her cuff, turning on the LED flashlight. Slater’s wound looked bad.

  “What can I do?” O’Brien asked.

  “Keep watch,” Gabe said. “Let me know what’s going on.”

  “Copy that.” O’Brien stood and surveyed the situation. The attackers had begun going through the supplies on the enemy ship. Barrels of water and ale were being handed over Ísbátr’s bow to be carried to the hold. Others were collecting arrows, while a small group continued to guard the prisoners herded into the stern. Sigurd was barking orders, trying to get the men to hurry up. Scanning the fog around Ísbátr, O’Brien saw no sign of the other ships, but they would undoubtedly be here soon.

  “Everything looks to be under control,” O’Brien said. “No sign of other ships. Looks like we’ll be underway shortly.”

  “Goo
d,” Gabe said. “Do we have anything we could use as an antiseptic?”

  “Ale,” Reyes said. “There might be some wine in the hold.”

  O’Brien nodded. “I’ll look around.”

  Making his way toward the hold, O’Brien ran into Sigurd. “Slater,” O’Brien said, tapping his chest where Slater had been hit. “Do you have wine? Vin?”

  Sigurd glanced over O’Brien’s shoulder to see the Reyes and Gabe huddled over Slater. He frowned and brushed past O’Brien. O’Brien watched as Sigurd knelt beside Reyes and dipped his fingers in the pool of blood collecting in the hollow of her throat. He brought his fingers to his nose and then tasted the blood. He shook his head. “Dauðir,” he pronounced.

  Gabe and Reyes exchanged glances.

  “No,” O’Brien said. “She’s not dead.” Slater had lost consciousness, but her heart was clearly still beating.

  Sigurd shrugged and walked away.

  “We need help, you preliterate thug,” O’Brien snapped. “Antiseptic. Vin.”

  Sigurd ignored him, going back to shouting orders at the men. The attackers had all returned from the enemy ship, having thrown the enemy’s weapons and half their oars overboard. Sigurd was doing his best to get the men back into rowing positions.

  O’Brien drew his knife and took a step toward Sigurd. Reyes came up behind him, grabbing his arm. “No, O’Brien. Sigurd’s one of us.”

  Sigurd glanced at O’Brien, saw the knife in his hand, shrugged, and went back to barking orders.

  O’Brien let the knife fall to his side. “Fine, then help me find some wine.”

  “Forget it,” Gabe said.

  They turned to look at him.

  “Sigurd’s right. The arrow pierced her carotid artery. If I remove it, she dies. There’s no way I can operate on her in these conditions.”

  “And if you leave the arrow in?”

  “She still dies. A little slower.”