Berserker Series, Book 1

by Emmy Laybourne

  Owen leaned over and made a grab for his bedroll.

  “I swear, Old Eben, this food’s so bad we should say a prayer after we eat.”

  There were laughs from the other cowboys.

  “I like your cookin’, Old Eben,” said Billy.

  “What do you know about it? You got rotten teeth, prob’ly make your food taste all rotten.”

  Owen wanted dearly not to enter the conversation, but Billy’s face fell and he looked so ashamed.

  “I say Eben’s a fine cook,” Owen ventured.

  “Now we got our other greenhorn weighin’ in,” said Whistler. “This one’s sweet on his dog.”

  His teeth whistled on the sw sound, and Hoakes laughed.

  “Thweeet, indeed,” Hoakes teased. “Whistler, you’re awfully musical tonight.”

  Whistler leaped up to charge Hoakes. Several men rushed in to keep them apart.

  “Break it up, you morons,” Mandry roared. “You just earned yourself a place sitting guard tonight, Hoakes. You can have the first shift, along with Owen Bennett and his blasted dog.”

  Owen tried not to show a darn thing on his face. Not surprise. Not anger. Nothing at all.

  “Hey now, Mandry, that don’t seem quite fair,” a guy named Jimmy protested.

  Hoakes joined in. “Ain’t it Whistler’s turn tonight?” he asked. “He ain’t set out but one night, and that was the first week!”

  “You don’t like sitting up, Hoakes?” Mandry said. “I guess you don’t like the sitting-up portion of your pay, neither. I’m happy to dock it for you.”

  “Now, I’m happy to do my share, but you know you had Owen Bennett on guard every night for more than a week. He’s a boy. Needs a full night’s rest.”

  “Well, all right, then. Old Eben, you can sit up for Owen.” Mandry turned on the cook. Old Eben hadn’t even heard him. He was nearly deaf. “Hear that, you old bastard? You’re on the watch tonight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Old Eben mumbled. He looked as surprised as the rest of them felt. “You mean for me to watch the cattle, you say?”

  Old Eben wasn’t a cowboy. He’d been a miner. He didn’t know how to keep the cattle calm. There was a trick to it—lots of tricks to it.

  Owen told himself to shut up, but he couldn’t. “Excuse me, Mr. Mandry, I’ll take the watch.”

  Mandry smiled like he’d known Owen would volunteer.

  “See there, Hoakes,” Mandry said. “He’s happy to do the watch. He wants to do it. He wants to do a double shift, don’t you, Owen Bennett?”

  Mandry’s eyes glittered with malice. Whistler had a big smile on his ugly face.

  Not for the first time, Owen wished himself an easygoing, lighthearted type of person. If he were, he could make some joke, get Mandry to laugh it off, and get out of this moment. As it was, he felt cornered and angry.

  He looked Mandry in the eye. “I can do it,” he said. “Sure enough.”

  * * *

  OWEN HAD PLENTY of time to regret his stubbornness, over the long night. He was on at first with Hoakes. They walked their horses in a circle around the herd, opposite each other.

  Hoakes liked to sing to the cattle, and it did seem to keep them nice and calm. Owen knew because he’d done guard duty with most of the other fellows, in turns, too. Some of them didn’t like to sing. But any insurance against a stampede was worth taking. Some herds got jumpy, and any sound could set them off—a big noise like thunder, or a little noise like a careless cook gonging a pan on a rock. A beef could lose fifty pounds in a hot stampede and a cowboy could lose his life.

  “Oh bury me not on the lone prairie.” Hoakes’s voice came wavering over the heads of the cattle. His voice was mellow and deep.

  “These words came low and mournfully / From the pallid lips of a youth who lay / On his dying bed at the close of day.”

  If Owen had not been so self-conscious, he might have sung back. He certainly knew the words to all eight verses by now, for though Hoakes liked to sing, he didn’t know a great many songs. Owen could not bring himself to lift his voice in return. He felt too shy.

  “Oh bury me not on the lone prairie / Where the coyote howls and the wind blows free / In a narrow grave just six by three / Bury me not on the lone prairie.”

  Owen shivered. He wore a wool poncho over his oilskin canvas coat. He pulled it up somewhat on his neck. It was getting colder now. They’d be lucky to make it to Helena before the first snowfall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One moment Hanne was deep in the feather bed, cuddled near her sister, her body heavy with the rich sleep of the hard worker; the next her bare feet slapped the cold floor and she was upright.

  She was propelled to the door. Her hands found the latch. She pushed into the hall. There was danger in the barn. Her heart beat with such urgency and alarm, she had to run. She tore down the stairs, three at a time. Her nightgown caught against the rough-hewn wall, but she did not feel the fabric tear.

  Then she was outside, striding toward the threat. The barn. She heard the voices of men, three of them, arguing with her father.

  “We’ve waited long enough!” came a low voice. It was Nils Paulsen, the gambler from the pub. Hanne knew this instantly.

  Her feet went across the mud.

  She saw every detail of the dark farmyard. The pitchfork left out by accident. The pots with Sissel’s foxglove plants and wild roses, fallow now, until the springtime. There was a matched team of chestnut-brown horses standing next to the barn, asleep on their feet and still harnessed to a wagon. Her breath made frost, but not much because she moved too fast.

  “You wouldn’t shoot me,” she heard her father say.

  The heavy barn door was thrown open; it was she who threw it, but she did not feel herself do it.

  Four men turned, shocked. At first, she saw only the gun.

  “Hanne, no! Hanne!” her father shouted.

  Hanne stalked in. Three attackers, this was new. She had only fought animals before, and only one at a time. The man with the gun was in front, with two cronies behind him. The horses were in their stalls, huffing and stamping, displeased. The chickens roosting in the rafters were awake and clucking with alarm.

  Hanne inhaled deeply. She felt wonderfully alive. She smiled.

  Her mind expanded with a vision, an all-knowing sense of who was where and how the bodies of the men were made. She could feel them, feel how strong they were and where they were weak and what they might do. The man with the gun was lazy and slow. He was not the true threat—it was the skinny man behind him, the one with the cap pulled low to shadow his eyes. The skinny man wanted to kill her father. He had such a strong revulsion for Amund that he was red hot, ready to strike. The third man was calm and more deliberate. A man experienced in fighting. He would be last to join in.

  “Hanne, this is between us. Go back to bed,” her father was saying. He had his hands up to her, imploring, and his voice was gentle. He had not spoken to her kindly in a long time.

  But Hanne’s eye was on the scrawny man behind him, his hand on a knife he had hidden in his pocket.

  It was thrilling, the power she felt. She was grinning, her body thrumming, taut as a bowstring. It was delicious.

  “Maybe she came in for a bedtime story?” Nils, the man with the gun, said, a sneer playing on his lips. “I could tell her a good one.”

  “Hey now!” Amund said, spinning back to face Nils. “Leave her out of it. She’s sleepwalking, is all.”

  Then the scrawny man leaped at Amund, knife arm raised. Hanne jumped forward, pushing her father down, then vaulted over his body to where the ax lay half sunk in the chopping stump.

  The ax was in her hand, and then it was flying through the air, landing with a solid THUNK in the solar plexus of the scrawny man. His body flew back, and his knife hand swung up, releasing the knife into the air. Hanne crouched and sprang for the weapon.

  Time was as slow as dripping honey to Hanne. She was swimming through the air, passing in front of th
e man with the gun. She felt her thighs brush against the front of his body. Then she picked the knife out of the air as easy as if she’d been picking an apple off a tree.

  She kicked out and kneed the gunman in the throat.

  The gun went off twice. BAM! BAM!

  He was on his back and Hanne was next to him. She slashed twice, once on each side of his throat, and the blood geysered up.

  The calm man, the one who knew how to fight, was backing away.

  “No,” he said. “Please. I want no part in this.” But she was already advancing on him.

  The knife was too slippery in her hand so she dropped it.

  The man backed away from her. He nearly tripped over a rake left standing near the hay and then he grabbed it, arming himself.

  “I don’t want to fight you, girl!” he said.

  Hanne pressed forward, backing him into the corner. He swung. WHAM! The metal teeth of the rake dug grooves into the log wall.

  She ducked. He swung again. More gouge-holes in the wall on the other side.

  He thought he could keep her away with a rake! Hanne darted forward. She ran right up the wall of the barn, feeling the bark of the old, rough logs under her bare feet. He swiveled to watch her, mouth agape with wonder, and let the rake drop.

  Hanne took two steps on the ceiling. Then she had the man’s sweaty head in her arms, and as gravity brought her back to earth, she yanked his skull to the side, breaking his neck.

  Hanne opened her hands, and the man’s head hit the floor with a THUMP. She stood, taking in the room, one foot on his chest. Her hands open and ready. Four bodies, none moving.

  Her attention fell on the body of her father. The life force of her father, that which she had been called from bed to protect, was draining away. She scrambled over the warm bodies of the dying men to him.

  Amund had been shot in the chest.

  Hanne’s eyes scanned the room for something she could use to stanch the flow of blood. She looked down. Her nightgown was sheer, clinging to her body with blood. It was already saturated—it would not help.

  There came her brother Knut to the door, Stieg behind him.

  “Oh! Oh!” Stieg cried. He recoiled from the sight, stumbling back.

  “Father!” Knut rushed over and knelt next to Hanne, placing his great hand over their father’s wound. He pushed right down over the mess of shattered ribs and torn flesh.

  Hanne could hear Stieg retching outside and Sissel coming near, asking what had happened? Who had fired? Then her sister arrived and her thin screams pierced Hanne’s ears.

  Hanne looked around. With awkward jolts, like a sled bouncing to rest at the bottom of a long hill, time was returning to normal speed.

  A gnawing began to gather in her gut. Suddenly she was ravenous. She was nothing but an empty stomach, screaming to be filled.

  * * *

  HANNE ATE. Barefoot, in the kitchen, she ate the whole week’s baking of flatbrød. She’d eaten the leftover stew already. She’d eaten it with her bare hands, her knuckles scraping the kettle. Her siblings bustled around her.

  “Pack your woolens!” Stieg told Knut. “We may need to stay in the hills. I don’t know!”

  Knut clomped around the house, gathering supplies under Stieg’s direction. Tears dripped down his face as he moved. Sissel sat slumped against the wall. Her face was so pale, she might have been in shock, but there was consciousness in her eyes as she watched her sister eat.

  “Sissel!” Stieg yelled. “Get up! You must pack. You must pack for Hanne and yourself.”

  “Look at her,” Sissel said. “She’s an animal.”

  Hanne heard, but did not break stride. She had the preserves open now. Bringebaer jam. She scooped it out with her fingertips.

  “It’s the curse that comes with her Nytte,” Stieg said. “If she doesn’t eat, she’ll die.”

  Sissel did not move. She was mesmerized by her sister’s feeding.

  Stieg grabbed Sissel by the arms and hauled her to her feet. She began to cry.

  “She killed those men,” Sissel wept.

  “Sissel, pack your bags and dress! If you do not, we will leave you behind and you can answer for the slaughter in the barn yourself!”

  “Three men!”

  Stieg dragged Sissel toward the bedroom she shared with Hanne.

  Sissel took hold of Stieg’s lapels. “Brother! It is her crime. Why do we flee?”

  Stieg dropped her arms. She rocked back. Stieg’s eyes were a cold, bleak gray.

  “If you want to stay, that’s your choice, Sissel. I am taking Hanne … away. Knut will want to come. But you can stay here. You can have this house and everything in it all to yourself.”

  “Stieg, no!”

  “You can cover for us. Tell them that Father killed the gamblers. Tell them we were so upset, we’ve gone away, but that you wanted to stay behind so the truth could be told.”

  “Stop it—”

  “You’ll make a good marriage, with the farm as yours—”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Then dress and pack!”

  Seeing that Sissel was moving toward the cupboard where she and Hanne stored their clothes, Stieg turned and went out. Now he had to go to the barn and do his best to make it look somehow as if his father had killed three men and died in self-defense. His father, who could barely hold a knife, much less wield an ax.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME they were ready, Hanne had gorged herself into a stupor and had lain down in bed. Sissel had had to dress Hanne as if she were an invalid, pulling the bloodied nightgown off her and dressing her in her drab, loose-fitting work clothes, fastening her apron as best she could over Hanne’s prone form. Sissel kept her eyes off her sister’s greasy, sticky hands. There was still blood on them, under the jelly and the butter and the salmon fat. She had stuck Hanne’s bare feet into her heavy, wooden-soled shoes. She wasn’t going to pull her stockings on for her. It was too much to ask.

  Knut loaded Hanne into the wagon. She lay in the back, on the rough wooden slats, legs askew. Sissel came, hoisted over the side, next. She pulled away from her sister and sat with her arms curled around her thin body. Then Knut began to load in the few possessions they had packed. A bag of linens. Stieg’s fine carpetbag, plump and ready for the journey. A gunnysack with Hanne’s and Sissel’s clothes stuffed in. Knut’s own clothes in a careless armful.

  “Good, fine,” Stieg said. His face was pale and he was sweating, despite the cool air. “We go, then!”

  There were many hours left in the night, and a half-moon shone down from a clear sky. Stieg climbed onto the wagon seat and chirruped to the horses. Knut walked alongside, his hand on the slats of the wagon. The two horses could not be burdened with his weight.

  Hanne and her siblings moved away from their little stone house and log barn on the hillside. It had belonged to their mother’s family. Each of them had been born within those old walls.

  Sissel took one last look at the farm over her shoulder. Tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She dabbed them away with the hem of her shawl.

  * * *

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, they reached a stream and Stieg said they could stretch.

  The wagon jolted hard as the horses moved down to the stream to drink. Hanne was pitched forward. Suddenly she gasped, leaning back up straight. She stood in the tilted bed of the wagon. She looked at her hands, then at her siblings. The night sky. Her bare ankles, stained with blood, poking out from under her homespun skirt.

  “Oh, Stieg!” A choking sob broke free. “Dear God … What did I do?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Watch your stock!” Owen called to Daisy. Daisy circled around and caught sight of the cow cutting back behind them, toward a stand of aspens at the tree line. Daisy was covered in mud. Owen was, too. A thick, wet snow had been falling since right before sunup, the kind of wet, clumpy snow that made a cattle drive a messy prospect.

  Daisy went after the straggler, wind
ing through the skinny, ash-colored trunks. After a good nip on the heel, the cow came back, bawling.

  Owen didn’t blame the cow for trying to get to the trees. They were in the rocky foothills of Hedges Mountain, and the going was difficult.

  The beasts streamed down narrow paths between boulders and scrub, their hooves churning the packed earth into sandy mud. Slippery. It would be wise to go slow, but Mandry had made no mention of the trail conditions at breakfast. He’d just cursed the weather and told the men that if they hurried, they could be in Helena for a hot bath by Friday.

  Owen’s horse, Pal, was taking his time. The other cowboys poked fun at Pal’s name. Did Owen think his dark gray quarter horse with the black mane was a palomino?

  In a rare moment of privilege, Howard Bennett had allowed Owen to name the colt. He’d named it Pal purely because he wanted a friend, and the scrawny, buck-kneed colt had looked like he could use one, too. It was a foolish name, and it caused Owen some embarrassment to remember it. But the horse knew his name, and Owen couldn’t change it on him now.

  The cattle at the back of the herd were the slower ones. Owen felt to rush them was to risk losing them. It’d be easy to slip and topple down the hill. Easier still to break a leg on the rocks.

  Hoakes, also riding flank, drifted back to chat with Owen around midday.

  “Hey there,” he said. Melted snow was dropping off his whiskers.

  Owen nodded and a little snow plopped off his hat brim, down onto his poncho. It was a good poncho, tight knit, and though it wasn’t waterproof, it was wool so it stayed warm when wet. He whistled twice to Daisy—telling her to come to his side.

  “Awful slick out,” Hoakes said loudly, to be heard over the sounds of the herd clomping over the rocky ground.

  “Yep.”

  “So what’s gonna be the first thing you do with your pay when we get to Helena?” Hoakes asked. This was a common question circulating the camp. Thinking about the pay to come helped make the long days pass quicker.