Berserker Series, Book 1

by Emmy Laybourne

  While Owen thought for an answer, that same cow made another break for the tree line. “Watch your stock!” Owen called, and Daisy went right after her.

  “Me?” Hoakes continued, as if Owen had answered. “I’m going to have a drink, then get myself a bath and a hot shave. You had a hot shave?”

  “Not yet,” Owen said. Owen handled his own shaving needs, such as they were, with a kit he’d purchased in Bullhook Bottoms with his first paycheck. It was a prized possession.

  “It’s a mighty fine thing. I’m gonna get a shave and a haircut, then I’m going to go up to stay with my sister in Great Falls. Her husband died in a mining accident. She needs some help, I guess. What you gonna do?”

  “Look for some work in Helena for the winter, I suppose.”

  They rode on. The snow fell in clumps on the backs of the cattle.

  Owen was used to keeping his own counsel, but he’d been mulling over an idea and Hoakes seemed someone a man could confide in.

  “I guess I do have an idea,” Owen ventured. “You want to hear it?”

  “Sure I want to hear it. What else do I have to do? I’ll hear any damn thing you want to tell me.”

  “I’ve got an idea to raise cattle dogs. Breed them. Train them. Then sell them.”

  “Well, but a man’s got to train his own dog for it to stick, don’t it?”

  Owen shrugged. He didn’t think so.

  “Whistle twice,” Owen said.

  “What say?”

  “Whistle twice for Daisy.”

  Hoakes let out two long, breathy whistles.

  Daisy stayed put, but looked over and cocked her head as if asking, “What’s wrong with you, fellow?”

  Owen whistled correctly—two quick chirps. Daisy came at a bound and placed herself on his right. Perfect position.

  He rewarded her with a nod.

  Neither man was compelled to comment on the failure of the experiment.

  They rode without speaking for a moment, Owen riding ahead of Hoakes as they went through a narrow section between a boulder and a knot of scrub oak. The trail ahead was steep and striated with descending switchbacks.

  “Men have gotten by doing stranger things, I guess,” Hoakes offered loudly, coming back alongside again. “But you’re a mighty fine cowhand. I mean, that’s a real living.”

  Owen nodded.

  On the one hand, he wished he hadn’t mentioned his idea to Hoakes. On the other, to hell with it. If he wanted to have any friends in this life, he’d have to talk sometime. And it was such a nice dream.

  Owen saw himself with a little ranch. A small bit of land, just a couple acres. He wanted a couple of cows for dairy, and chickens. Then he’d just start looking for good dogs. He wanted to breed Daisy with a collie with longer legs, increase the stride some.

  He knew he could make good money at it, as long as his customers were willing to learn the commands he’d teach the dogs. Men had offered him money for Daisy plenty of times.

  Hoakes had moved his horse in front of Owen. The trail was narrow again, scrub oak on either side.

  “Hee-yaw there!” Hoakes shouted. Owen couldn’t see around the man’s broad back, but he heard the sound of cattle lowing and hooves clattering on rocks.

  “Stuck cow up here!” Hoakes called.

  Because the path was narrow and falling steeply off to the side, Owen wheeled Pal back and went around the thicket to the left, picking his way through the brush lower down the hill to get a better view.

  There was a ledge, with a sharp drop and only one path leading down from it. A steer had his leg trapped in a rock right at the only place the beef could scramble down. Seven or eight cattle were milling behind him. They couldn’t get past the downed steer, and they were trapped.

  It was a slick, rocky ledge they were on, with a wall on the right of about five feet and a drop to the left of a deadly fifteen.

  From his vantage point below and slightly beyond the downed animal, Owen saw he had to make the cattle climb up the wall of rock behind them, to a path running above they couldn’t see. They wouldn’t like it, to scramble up that way, but they could do it.

  He called to Daisy, “With me!” and charged Pal up at the cattle, shouting, “Ha! Ha! Get up! Get up now!”

  The ground was slick and Pal balked, but Daisy nipped at his heels and together, man, horse, and dog drove up the cattle.

  The beasts’ eyes were wild, and it seemed, for one second, that they’d turn around and come trampling down on Owen as he and Pal scrambled up the slick bank, urging the cattle to go up to the path above them.

  Daisy growled and barked and Owen shouted again and the cattle jumped up the hill.

  Whistler came riding back. “What the hell, Bennett?” he yelled.

  But then he got a sight of the steer and figured out what had nearly happened.

  Hoakes drew up to the lowing steer and slid off his horse.

  “Easy now,” he said to the stuck beast, who was rolling his eyes and bawling. His leg was broken.

  Owen stood catching his breath. His horse was lathered and steaming in the sleet. The cattle he’d routed were headed past Whistler, joining ones ahead.

  Now Owen had to go back down and help Hoakes with the steer. They’d likely have to shoot the animal, and explain what had happened to Mandry. He wouldn’t like losing a big beef like that, not fifty miles from Helena, but they could all see things could’ve been much worse.

  Anyway, now there’d be steaks for dinner.

  “Hey, Owen,” Hoakes called up to him. He had his hat off and was scratching his bald head. “I’ll take one of those dogs, you get ’im trained up for me. I’ll pay good money for him, too. I could learn to whistle better.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Streaks of peach-colored sky came through the firs in the woods behind their aunt Aud’s house in Tysse. It was dawn, and they had ridden through the night. Hanne felt like a wrung-out rag. Grief, shame, and horror had possessed her in alternation during the night’s ride.

  Time and time again she had pleaded with Stieg. She must turn back, return to their village, and turn herself in to the constables.

  Stieg had stopped responding to her.

  Now they were in the thick pine wood above the valley where their aunt lived. She shared a house with several other unmarried women. Some were widows, though their aunt was simply a spinster—never married.

  Together the women made and sold beautiful blankets and weavings.

  Aud was a Storm-Rend, gifted with the ability to create winds with her breath, and she was blind.

  There was great animosity between Amund and his older sister, Aud, over something Amund had done, in the past, something Aud had never forgiven. It meant that the children saw their aunt only rarely. But Hanne had gathered from things their father had let slip that Aud’s blindness was a result of overexertion from using her Nytte.

  Blind or not, Aud was a marvelous spinner, with her sensitive fingers and a habit of whistling to the wool as she worked, gently warming the air near the bobbin.

  “Why can’t we go to her house?” Sissel complained. “I want to get warm, Stieg. And bathe. And Hanne could bathe.”

  Sissel’s face looked drawn and pinched. She had not complained during the long, cold night. Hanne sensed that something had happened between her sister and older brother. Something must have happened. It was uncharacteristic of Sissel to suffer in silence.

  “And what of her friends in the common house? They’d all see us,” Stieg said. “This is the first place the police will look for us. Better for them to think we never came this way, Sissel.”

  “Then why come at all? If we can’t go in and eat and be warm!” Sissel pouted.

  “Because I don’t know what to do!” he shouted. “I need her advice!”

  “Stieg, there’s only one thing for us to do. We go home and I confess to the constable,” Hanne said.

  “No,” Stieg said, pacing the terrain with his long legs. “It wasn’t you. I
t was the Nytte.”

  “It was me! I did it!”

  “No!” he insisted. “You, Hanne Amundsdotter, would never commit such an act. You were possessed by the Nytte. And no one will understand that. No one outside our family.”

  “Anyway, if you think about it,” Knut said in his slow, thoughtful way, “why would they believe you?”

  He was standing next to the big dray horse, scrubbing it down with a handful of dry leaves and fir needles. “You’re just a girl, Hanne. They would not believe you could kill three grown men. Not with such skill.”

  “That’s right!” Stieg said. “Well done, Knut! They would not believe you!”

  Knut smiled his great, bashful smile. Stieg clapped him on the shoulder. “You three wait here. I’ll get Aunty Aud. She’ll know what to do.”

  Hanne lay down on the carpet of fir needles. She thought she’d never sleep, but a maelstrom of exhaustion pulled her under.

  * * *

  SHE AWOKE TO Stieg shaking her. Morning had come and the sunlight shone through the branches of the fir trees.

  “Hanne. Come here,” her aunt called.

  Aud was seated on a fallen tree. She had a brown wrap drawn over her head and shoulders. It flowed down to the log on which she sat, matching the color of the bark and making it look as if she were a growth on the trunk.

  Aud was very little, with a bent back. She was older than their father, nearing fifty, but the lines and wrinkles on her face made her look even older.

  Hanne rose and brushed the needles off her skirt. She stumbled over to her aunt to kneel in front of her.

  Her aunt’s eyes had been pale to start with. Now, in her blindness, it looked as though someone had rubbed out her eyes with an eraser—they were nearly entirely white, but for the gauzy, gray pupils.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, Aunty.”

  “Did you have any trouble?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Killing the men who killed your father. Was it difficult to do?”

  “No,” Hanne said. Hanne felt her body begin to shiver. “It was easy.”

  “And then you ate?” Aud called off to Stieg, “Did she eat very much?”

  “She ate all the food in the larder,” Stieg answered.

  “Good. You know my mother was a Berserker,” Aud said. She patted Hanne’s head. “You have the look of her, you know. I remember from before the Gods took my sight. She had the same strange set-apart eyes and pointy chin. And you have the same joyless sense of duty she had. Too serious. Too long-suffering. You hear me, child. You remember what I am saying.”

  “Aunty, I have committed a terrible sin,” Hanne protested. “It is right I should suffer. I told Stieg I must turn myself in.”

  “No. You four will go to America. It is providential that Stieg already has one ticket booked. You will purchase three more. When does the boat leave?”

  Her question was lost in the tumult. Knut exclaimed in surprise, while Sissel squealed, “All four of us?” clapping her hands.

  Aud waved her cane. “Quiet! Do not let my friends hear you! I will not have you put them in danger! No one is to know you’ve come here. When does the boat leave?”

  “Tomorrow,” Stieg answered. “I was to catch what they call a feeder ship from Bergen to Hull, in England. From there, a train to Liverpool—”

  “Good. They will find the bodies soon. You must be on a boat to England by the end of day. I have a trunk you can take, and some linens. Good wool shawls for you two—”

  “But how are we to pay for the tickets?” Stieg said. “Selling the horses and the wagon, we might be able to purchase one ticket more.”

  “I have something for you,” Aud said. She withdrew an old chamois purse from her pocket. “Come, see.” She called them around.

  Aud tilted the contents of the purse into her gnarled palm. There against her wrinkled hand were three old gold coins.

  Sissel gasped.

  “These are six hundred years old,” Aud said. “I was saving them for you, for after your father died. They are all we have left of the great treasures of our bloodline. I would not give them to you when your father was alive, for I knew he would drink them up. Now that he’s gone, they are for you.”

  She closed the pouch and reached her hand forward, confident that Stieg would take it. He did.

  “Sell one of those when you get to Bergen. Only one! There is a coin dealer in town. Do not take less than four thousand kroner for it. It’s worth even more.”

  “Thank you, Aunty,” Stieg said. He was beaming with relief. Hanne could see him planning. Four thousand kroner! That would get them to America and buy them a house! He could teach school—he could even go to university himself, if he chose to do so! She could see the relief pouring out of him, like sun breaking through clouds.

  “It is not the weight of the gold, but the age. Make sure you take it to a coin dealer,” Aud insisted.

  “Aunty, you are giving us a future. Thank you,” he said.

  “Yes, thank you!” Sissel said, clapping her hands in joy. Knut was looking back between Aud and Stieg, dumbfounded. Sissel limped forward and embraced Aud in her happiness. Aud pushed her away firmly.

  “I’m not done!” Aud said. She held out a letter. The paper was covered in an elegant, thin scrawl.

  “You have an uncle. Håkon. He’s our baby brother. When he was just a boy, he went to Canada. Now he lives in the territory of Montana, in the far west. A village called Wolf Creek. That letter is from only one year ago. Go and find him.”

  “But I thought we should go to a city,” Stieg said. “Chicago—”

  “Your sister must have guidance. Håkon is a Berserker. He can show Hanne how to control the Nytte.”

  Hanne looked up. “Is there a way to control it?”

  “Of course! Each of the Nytte can be controlled.”

  “Can you suppress it entirely?” Hanne asked.

  Aud shook her head. “No, that’s the wrong idea. To control it, you embrace it.”

  Hanne felt a shudder travel through her body. Embrace it? Never.

  “You know, you four were not to have been born,” Aud said. “Our mother was so ashamed of her powers and so sure they were an affront to the Church, she made us promise we would not create any more children to carry on the Nytte. I obeyed her. My brother Amund, your father, did not. He never told your mother of his Nytte when they were courting.

  “Perhaps if he had, she would have learned of the Nytte in her own bloodline. But your father concealed it from her, and by the time she knew, you four had been born. Stieg, when your gift appeared, when you were twelve, she came weeping to me, terrified and appalled. I tried to teach her what I knew of the Nytte, the ways to welcome it and learn to work with it, but she blamed me for not telling her sooner. She wanted nothing to do with me, especially as my eyes clouded over. She saw your fate in my eyes, Stieg, and I’m sure it frightened her.”

  The siblings sat in the wakening forest and thought about this.

  “And I cannot help you much now,” she said, her voice gritty with regret. “But Håkon! He was the brightest of us all. Smart. Kind. An adventurer and a scholar. He will know how to help you, Hanne. I’m sure of it.”

  Birds called to one another in the deep pine wood, and Hanne’s heart brightened for a moment.

  “Aunty,” Sissel ventured. “You said Hanne favored our grandmother.” She paused, trying to find the right words. “Is there anyone I favor?”

  “You are wondering if you will have a Nytte. And what it might be? It’s normal to wonder,” their aunt said. She gestured for Sissel to come near. Aud placed her sensitive fingers on Sissel’s face and felt it all over.

  “I think you will be lucky and it will skip you. I had a great-uncle who had no Nytte at all. He was thin and scrawny like you.”

  Sissel could hardly take this as a compliment, but was mollified nonetheless. She wanted no part of the Nytte.

  “Now,” Aud said. “He
ad south. Take the main road and move quickly. Do not worry about being seen once you hit the main road. Just make sure you are on a boat by nightfall.”

  “Wait,” Hanne said. She grabbed her aunt’s hands. “Aunty Aud, please. Listen to me. If they go with me, they will be helping me to escape from the law. But, I don’t want to be above the law. I killed three men. I am guilty of the worst sin there is! I should confess. I must confess and turn myself in!”

  Aud reached for Hanne’s hands and held them to her heart, pulling Hanne close to her face. “I know how dark you feel, child.”

  “You can’t,” Hanne whispered.

  “I know because I, too, once used my gift to kill.” Hanne looked right into the woman’s glassy eyes. She could see her reflection, a blue shadow on an icy pond. Aud drew her even closer and murmured, “And I, too, enjoyed how it felt.”

  Hanne let go and sat back, hard. She pushed away from her aunt, struggling to get to her feet.

  “Embrace the Nytte,” Aud said, as Hanne scrambled backward in the pine needles and dried leaves. “Open your heart to it, or it will be the ruin of you. And your siblings, too.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ØYSTESE, NORWAY

  Rolf Tjossem eyed the distance to the ground with some apprehension. The Baron’s horses were all rather too regal and tall. He gripped the pommel and swung his leg over, trying to lower himself to the ground with dignity, but failing as his legs went wobbly beneath him.

  The townsfolk of the dead farmer were all looking at him and Ketil. They had been watching them as they rode up from the direction of town. Rolf knew this. The glossy-maned, long-legged horses themselves would have drawn attention in any small town in this part of the backcountry. These were no European horses, but Arabians. They had brought Rolf and Ketil from Bergen much faster than the short-legged Fjord horses could have.

  Rolf himself was fairly inconspicuous. Age had helped accomplish this. He was near fifty now, his hair and whiskers more white than brown. His face had not grown more attractive as he’d aged; it was pitted and pockmarked from smallpox he’d suffered as a child.