I will go mad.
Mikkel Madsen sat, eyes closed, on a cot in a cramped glass-walled cell in the quarantine unit of a cargo ship. The cell held only the cot, a chair, and a small table. To his right was the heavy glass door, locked for the next four weeks, and below it an airlock for passing in provisions. To his left was the mercifully solid door to the facilities, but he'd been warned that it was alarmed, and if he stayed in there for more than half an hour, they'd come for him … because, of course, they thought he might transform into a troll in there, despite being immune to the Rash. Paranoid Icelanders.
Behind him was another glass cell containing Reynir, and beyond it an empty cell. Before him was Sigrun's cell, where she was already pacing, a few steps this way and then back again, over and over; beyond her was Emil's cell, where he sat on his bunk with his head in his hands; and beyond that was Lalli's cell. Lalli was invisible to him, but he knew where the little Finn was: he was under his cot.
The Icelanders had even quarantined the kitten, and that went well beyond paranoia into sheer insanity. The humans might be lying or mistaken about their immune status; blood tests could conceivably be wrong; but cats were always immune. No one in his right mind would quarantine a cat, but then, on this topic Icelanders were not in their right minds.
The cells were equipped with microphones and speakers for each of the other cells, all of which they could control. The others could hear him if he left the microphone live and they wished to hear, and he could hear them likewise. They had all left their microphones live and he could hear Sigrun's footsteps and various sighs. He knew their voices so well that he knew that bored sigh was Reynir and the frustrated sigh was Emil.
I have no duties, nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to guard, nothing to fight. For four weeks. I will go mad.
He'd been in quarantine before, of course. When he entered sensible countries, which is to say, not Iceland, he would sit in a room for a few hours while the authorities tested his blood to confirm his immune status, and then he would go through a decontamination shower, his person and possessions would be scanned by cats, and he would be on his way. When he entered Iceland, as he had half a dozen times, the paranoid Icelanders would put him in quarantine for two weeks anyway. Cells on Iceland's quarantine island were much bigger than this, though, big enough that a man could pace properly.
And every cell had a punching bag so a man didn't have to pound on the walls.
Mikkel regarded the glass walls speculatively. Thick glass. He'd smash his hands to bloody pulps before those shattered. On the other hand … he studied the chair.
Those legs are probably bolted on. I can tear one off … or if not, I can just use the whole chair. I can break out if I have to. I can break them out if I have to.
But I don't have to. They're safe here.
His thoughts drifted back to the week at the outpost.
Each morning Mikkel woke to find Lalli sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him, waiting. With a nod to acknowledge the other's watch, he took his shower, gave Lalli his tuna fish for breakfast, then opened cans for the others. While they endured the meal and took their showers, the scout went out to check for incursions that might have occurred during the night. Though Mikkel knew the Finn was a powerful mage and was out in daylight, still he was on edge until the other returned and told them in his very bad Swedish that there was no danger.
After that the whole party ran out in the cold and the bright winter sun, and Mikkel stood guard while Emil fueled the generator with well-aged firewood and then Emil, Sigrun, and Reynir had snowball fights until they were tired, or Emil and Sigrun built snowmen and Reynir worked on his flock of snow-sheep. Lalli stood near, but not too near, also on guard. When the shadows grew long, they all went inside and suffered a supper of tuna fish, and Reynir washed their clothes so they would have clean clothes in the morning.
When they were all asleep and Emil was snoring, Mikkel took his blanket and stretched out across the threshold so that nothing could get in to harm his team, and none of them could go out into the cold and the dark and the silence, and be lost.
Mikkel Madsen sat, eyes closed, on a cot in a cramped glass-walled cell and listened to his team.
There was a new sound.
Mikkel's eyes snapped open.
It was just an attendant in sealed protective gear, pushing a cart. Lunch-time, then. After a week of old tuna fish, and before that Mikkel's miserable candle soup, he was looking forward to something edible. The attendant pushed a tray into each airlock, and Mikkel waited until he was gone before attempting to open the airlock; he suspected it would be locked while the attendant was in the room. Sigrun's frustrated grumble told him he was right.
His tray had not only a covered dish of food, but a book. The Icelanders knew that quarantine was hard and they tried to be kind to their captives. They offered alcohol or sedatives, which Mikkel declined because he'd seen too many soldiers crawl into a bottle and stay there; that was the easy way out. And they offered books, which he eagerly accepted. In quarantine in Iceland, he'd been given history books, which he had devoured for hours on end. Here though, he'd been told, there were no history books except those the team had brought, and those were too fragile and too valuable to be given to him.
The book was a collection of sea stories. “Adventures on the high seas!” the back cover promised. Well, that could wait. He lifted the cover of the food and found …
It was a mass of gray, glutinous, glop. There was no other description for it. It smelled terrible, and there were little black flecks in it. He watched them carefully, suspecting that they might attempt to crawl out. Finally he took a spoonful and put it in his mouth.
Spitting it into the toilet and rinsing out his mouth, Mikkel deeply regretted leaving behind the decade-old cans of tuna fish.
He carefully replaced the cover on the dish and returned the tray to the airlock. He wondered how the Icelanders ate it, as the processes of starvation would have to be well advanced before he could.
So, the book. He looked it over thoughtfully; looked at Sigrun, who had made her own hasty trip to the facilities after trying the … food. He thought the troll-hunter would soon be bored enough to start pounding on the walls without something to distract her. As her second in command, it was his duty to prevent that.
Duty.
Mikkel opened the book and began to read aloud.
Mikkel read aloud all afternoon and Sigrun and Emil sat back on their cots to listen. He glanced over once to see that Reynir had fallen asleep, smiling slightly, lulled by the sound of his voice, and he wondered if Reynir was walking on the waters of the dream-ocean that went on for ever and ever, and what he found there. But that was not a question to be asked before the Icelanders who watched and listened to them, waiting for one of them to transform into a ravening monster.
Supper arrived, and Mikkel removed the tray from the airlock with trepidation. When he cautiously lifted the cover, he found a bowl of … something … which was not identifiably animal or vegetable, and possibly not even mineral. The smell dissuaded him from even attempting to eat it. As he replaced the cover and shoved the tray back into the airlock, he wondered if the cook was trying out recipes for stewed grossling.
“Old canned fish,” Sigrun said yearningly, and “This stuff's worse than your soup!” Reynir exclaimed, and “Mikkel, how long will it take me to actually starve to death?” Emil asked.
Mikkel rested his forehead against the glass wall. After due consideration, he answered, “I believe it would take at least a month for you to starve to death. I am concerned that it will take Lalli less time, however.”
“Mikkel,” Sigrun said finally. “Tell them we can't eat this muck. Tell them they have to give us real food.”
He sat on his cot, addressed the air in Icelandic.
“We subsisted for the past week on canned tuna fish left behind by the Navy a decade ago, consumed straight out of the cans. Before that we were reduced to using candles for nourishment. We do not require elaborate meals. I presume that you have either canned or dried food from which this … substance … was produced. We would prefer to receive opened cans or dried food. It is not necessary to cook or otherwise prepare it for us.
“Thank you.”
The team slept hungry, and breakfast was two cans each of tuna fish which smelled even older than that from the outpost. “This is –” Emil began in a complaining tone.
“It isn't stewed grossling, so you can eat it and you won't starve,” Mikkel cut in. “Don't complain or we may get something worse.” To the air, in Icelandic, he added, “Thank you. This is satisfactory.”
By the end of the quarantine period, they would have cheerfully chosen stewed grossling, poisonous though it was, over more tuna fish.
The book was modern, worn, scuffed about the edges, and water-stained here and there. The name written inside the cover showed that it had not come from the ship's library (presuming that the ship even had a library), but had been offered to him by a crewmember. Mikkel treated it as the well-loved treasure that it was.
All morning he read aloud about terrible storms and ice in the rigging and tentacles snatching men into the deeps, and Sigrun and Emil sat back on their bunks listening, gasping and cheering at the appropriate moments, and Reynir dozed as the voice flowed over him, and if they were not happy, they were at least free for a time from the misery of confinement.
Lunch was more tuna fish.
After they had choked down their food, Sigrun said, “That last story reminded me of the time the Finns hired my team –”
“Sigrun,” Mikkel interrupted, “please turn off the speaker from my cell. You too, Emil.”
“Why?” Sigrun was both puzzled and annoyed.
“I want to translate for Reynir, and with the speakers, you'll hear me as clearly as he will. It will be very distracting.” As she and Emil reached for the switches, he turned to Reynir, staring in utter boredom at the ceiling. “Reynir, turn off the speaker from Sigrun's cell.”
Reynir asked no questions, complied. As he sat back down, Sigrun began her story again and told war stories all afternoon. She spoke, Mikkel translated, Emil and Reynir listened in fascination, and Lalli, hiding under his cot from the horrible bright glassy strangeness, listened to the two familiar voices and was comforted, just a little.
Supper was more tuna fish.
Mikkel woke several times in the night, heart pounding, and listened to his team for a long time before he slept again.
Breakfast was, again, tuna fish. Emil was complaining; even Sigrun and Reynir were grumbling; and Mikkel rested his forehead again the glass door and tried to remember how long it took to develop scurvy. He didn't think that information had actually been in the summaries he'd been given in his brief training as a medic; the presumption was that he would know what scurvy was and take measures to prevent it. He was afraid, though, that it occurred within a month of poor diet, and they'd already subsisted on tuna fish for ten days … Finally he told the air, “We need something else. We need something green.” Realizing the options that left open for the demonic cook, he hastily specified, “We need green vegetables, vegetables which are green in their natural state.”
When the attendant returned to remove their trays, he presented them with a deck of cards. “We have only one to lend you, which one of you wants it?” he asked.
Sigrun looked at Mikkel. “Well, I certainly don't!” In their time in the tank, she'd made it clear that she not only did not know any card games, she thought the concept was stupid.
“I guess I'll pass,” Emil said hesitantly, looking over at Lalli under his cot.
“Give the cards to Reynir,” Mikkel ordered, pointing in case the attendant didn't know which was which.
When the attendant had gone, Reynir removed the cards from the airlock and looked helplessly at Mikkel. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Do you know any solitaire games?”
“Solitaire games?” Reynir echoed blankly.
“Ah … yes. I will teach you.”
And so Mikkel spent an hour teaching solitaire card games to Reynir while Emil tried to coax Lalli to talk to him, trying to teach him Swedish or get him to teach Finnish, and Sigrun paced, a few steps this way and then back, over and over. At last Mikkel sat back to read aloud and Sigrun and Emil listened while Reynir tried out the unfamiliar games.
Lunch was something green.
“What is this slop?” Sigrun demanded, and “It isn't tuna fish,” Emil said resignedly, and “I believe it is spinach,” Mikkel said finally. And they ate it, because they strongly suspected that any alternative would be worse.
In the afternoon, Emil went back to trying to learn Finnish or teach Swedish and Mikkel, listening, wondered why he bothered.
Onni will take Lalli back to Finland where he belongs, I'll take Emil home to Sweden, and very likely they will never meet again. Why is he doing this? But then, I taught Danish phrases to Reynir as if he might need them … do we all have this feeling that this is not over?
He couldn't ask, of course, not with the Icelanders listening to every word. And so he left Emil to his endeavors and tried to teach Sigrun to play the ancient game of Battleship. They had paper and pencils, so they drew grids and he explained the concept.
“Now, you color in three squares in a row or column; that's your battleship. I'll do the same, and then we take turns naming the squares the way we've marked them. If I name a square that's part of your battleship, then you tell me it's a hit, otherwise you say it's a miss. And the same when you name a square on my grid. If I hit all the squares of your battleship, then it sinks and I win. And if you …”
“So you have a leviathan?” she asked, puzzled.
“What? No, I have a battleship. So do you.”
“But … no, that doesn't make sense. You have a leviathan attacking my battleship, isn't that right?”
Mikkel saw it abruptly. The five surviving nations all had navies, for they had to patrol the coasts by land and sea as you never knew what might ooze out of the waves, and they had to patrol the sea-routes, for though any vessel that put to sea was either very small and very fast or very large and very well-armed, still some sea-grosslings were too tough for anything less than a battleship to tangle with. But it might more accurately be said that there was only one navy with several uniforms, for any naval vessel would come to the aid of any ship, and every navy had the same weapons, tactics, goals … and enemies. No battleship had fired upon another battleship since the Great Dying.
She's an innocent Norwegian troll-hunter who has no idea of the inhumanities of man to man. And I'm not going to disillusion her.
“Yes, I have a leviathan and it's … throwing grosslings around the ocean trying to hit you while you fire the battleship's guns trying to hit me.”
So they played Battleship, and Mikkel always had a leviathan and Sigrun generally won because Mikkel cheated.
Dinner was cans of spinach.
Sleep was as fugitive for Mikkel as ever.
And so the days passed. Meals were tuna fish or spinach, depending on which one they were most sick of.
Mikkel read aloud every morning. When he finished each book, another was supplied, and he was at pains to thank the air for the generosity of the crewmember who had lent the latest book. He did not know that the crew had begun to spend their free hours sitting beside the monitoring booth, listening to him read.
Reynir played cards when he was not napping or staring at the walls, while Emil continued his efforts to teach and learn from Lalli, who had gone so far as to crawl out from under his cot and crouch on the floor to talk. Sigrun and Mikkel played Battleship, and after a while she began to cheat too, so he cheated more, and soon their games devolved into arguments about whether their targets were or were not in various places, and they didn't mind because it made the games last longer.
At night, Mikkel spent many hours listening to his team sleep.
And so the days passed.
And at last the quarantine was over.
They were freed from quarantine just an hour before the ship docked, as tug boats pulled it to its berth in Reykjavík's harbor. Their own clothes were returned to replace the quarantine outfits which had been supplied for four weeks. Putting them on, Mikkel found that all of his repairs had been carefully picked out and restitched by someone with genuine talent, and that the clothes were cleaner than they had been since the expedition first set out so many weeks before.
Leaving their cells to Sigrun's ecstatic cry of “Freedom”, Mikkel was handed their kitten in a carry cage, and Lalli, with great relief, received back his rifle. All their other gear, and the all-important books, had been left isolated in a cargo hold under UV lights until a few days earlier, and then packed for them. That luggage was supposed to be delivered to them once they had established lodging.
Reynir's brother Bjarni, a crewman on that very vessel, joined them. He had visited Reynir for a matter of minutes in quarantine, but his heavy protective gear had prevented Mikkel from even getting a look at him. Seeing him now, Mikkel understood that the other — shorter, dark-haired, with a square face and dark brown eyes — was unlikely to be his teammate's biological kin, but they greeted each other with brotherly affection. A surprising number of other crewmembers turned out to say goodbye and offer to shake Mikkel's and Sigrun's hands. He supposed that their experiences in the Silent World had been a major topic of conversation for bored crewmembers during their quarantine.
And so they came to Reykjavík.
Mikkel had been there before, of course. He had been to nearly all of the major cities of the Known World. He did not really like visiting Iceland, for the civilians seemed figuratively, not just literally, insular. It was understandable that they viewed their island as the center of the world, for indeed it was. It was the home of three-quarters of the surviving human population; had maintained a relatively high technological base thanks to its geothermal power; was well-defended from grosslings by its powerful army and navy that patrolled its coasts by land and sea; and had proven its ability to survive without contact with the rest of the world for a generation after the Great Dying.
Yet Mikkel thought that Iceland was the past, and that it was the little nations which were the dynamic future of humanity. It was they who were pushing back the grosslings, restoring what had been lost. The Swedes were the pioneers there, and had designed the protocol which Norway also used and Denmark, in the form of Bornholm, had meant to use.
The Army set out with heavy earth-moving equipment to build a wall which they then patrolled. Behind the wall, teams of Hunters swept through, searching out every grossling nest that had been left within. After the Hunters came the Cleansers, who burned down anything that might offer a grossling shelter from the bitter winter winds. After a couple of years in which scouts and Hunters made sure the land was truly cleared, the Reclaimers came in to plow the fields for farms. In a generation or so, they did it again with a new wall. The city of Mora was now behind three such walls and surrounded by fields, pastures, and little farming villages.
It was a slow process but it would accelerate. More land supported more population, and more population could reclaim more land. No one now living would see Sweden reclaimed, nor Norway, and certainly not Denmark, but the people of the little nations had faith that one day their lands would be cleansed and normal life — mammalian life, not just human life — would live without fear once more.
But the Icelanders had no part in that great effort.
The team had gotten their sea-legs in their weeks of quarantine, all but Lalli who was, of course, sea-sick for days before the Icelanders realized the problem and supplied him with anti-nausea drugs. As they finally set foot on solid ground, the others were somewhat unsteady while the Finn staggered, stumbled, and fell.
Without a word, without even glancing at each other, his team surrounded him protectively until he was able to stand. They did not offer assistance, though they would gladly have helped him, for they all understood that he wanted no help if he could do without it. When he was back on his feet, they all proceeded somewhat slowly toward the city center following Reynir and Bjarni, who were animatedly catching up on their recent experiences.
“Oy! Over here!” They looked around at the Swedish call. “Welcome back to civilization! So glad to see you!” It was Torbjörn Västerström, joined by his wife Siv, Taru, and Trond.
Emil endured the embrace of his aunt (“Oh, little Emil, you're okay!”) while Sigrun was less respectful to the General than Mikkel would have preferred (“Still alive, huh, old man?”). Mikkel lost track of Lalli for a moment, and scanned around in alarm, finally spotting him standing against a wall, well away from the others, beside another man, older, half a head taller, stockier of build, and squarer of face, but withal so similar in features that he might have been the younger man's brother. So this was the cousin, the mage: Onni.
Reynir's parents, meanwhile, had caught up with him, a short blonde woman who threw her arms around him and sobbed in relief, and a red-haired man who was a taller, broader, older, version of Reynir.
“My perfect, sweet, little —” Reynir's mother began, then pulled his hair hard. “Stupid idiot child! You insolent brat! If you loved me you would never have done this!” Mikkel backed away, trying not to listen in to the family reunion, while Reynir said weakly, “Mom … Mom …”
She turned on Bjarni next. “And you! You always get your little brother into trouble! I know you played a part in this!”
Her husband patted her shoulder soothingly. “That's enough now.” And to Reynir, “How could you do this to your mother? Do you have no heart? Or brain?”
Their penitent son could only bow his head and murmur, “I didn't mean to, I just — sorry.”
His father turned away, disgusted, and addressed Trond. “Thank you for bringing back my very unintelligent son. Without you he never would have returned from the Silent World.”
“Sure,” Trond agreed, dutifully shaking his hand. “He wouldn't have been there in the first place.”
“I have to repay you!” The Icelander announced to the team. “You all must be in need of a room while you are here, and I have plenty of those in my home. My family would be honored to be your hosts for your stay.”
Reynir, somewhat recovered from his scolding, smiled at them hopefully.
“What's he saying?” Sigrun whispered to Mikkel.
“Free lodging,” he replied succinctly.
“The carriage to my town departs in a few hours,” their host finished.
“Ahem,” Mikkel cleared his throat, extending an open palm to the General, the man who'd gotten him into this mess with a promise of pay. “Paycheck, please.”
“Talk to him,” the General answered briefly, pointing to Torbjörn, who immediately answered, “Of course! Let's go to the bank!”
“You guys have money already?” Emil was confused.
“Yes, we do!” Siv told him enthusiastically, “Several collectors reserved and pre-paid for books based on the item list we were sent. The rest are on their way to an auction held by the Nordic Council. But we already have enough to pay you all! With bonuses!”
“I had been under the impression,” Mikkel said thoughtfully, looking back at her, “that the collection of books was … unofficial.” He had, in fact, gathered that the entire expedition was a pretext set up by Torbjörn to restore his family's fortunes by sale of books, and that that part of the project had been kept a secret from the Council which was financing it.
“Well, ah, once you had your problems, everyone was really interested in the expedition, so we said the books were just part of the exploring, you know, seeing what might be out there that people would want to recover. And then you found that antique shop, and everyone was really excited about that. So, you know, we just sort of … glossed over our plans. And the Council will get their money back, so everyone's happy.”
Mikkel had not been terribly disturbed when he first understood that the expedition's sponsors were probably defrauding the Nordic Council; he didn't much like the Nordic Council and anyway had a problem with authority in general, but it was good to know that they weren't at risk of arrest.
They were, however, at risk of ambush by news creatures. Their trip to the bank was interrupted when an older man stuck a microphone in Lalli's face and attempted to question him. Onni's response was admirably simple, in Mikkel's opinion, for he simply shoved the man aside and kept walking.
Sigrun exclaimed, in something between dismay and excitement, “A horde of reporters! There's three of them!”
“Good evening from Bæjarbladid newspaper!” A reporter told her in Icelandic. At her blank stare, he continued in Norwegian, “Madame, would you like to share your exp—”
“Yes!” she cried enthusiastically, disappointing Mikkel, who'd wanted to take Onni's approach to reporters.
Beside him, a woman had approached Emil, saying in Icelandic, “Sir, tell me all about your journey!”
“I don't speak Icelandic,” he answered in Swedish, trying to catch up to Mikkel.
“Swedish? I can do Swedish,” she persisted.
He answered in stumbling Finnish, and she replied in what sounded like even worse Finnish, at which point he gave up. “Fine! You got me! Swedish!” Mikkel thought Emil should have taken Onni's approach too, but then Emil was smaller than Onni.
The first reporter, undaunted by Onni's reception, now approached Mikkel. With Sigrun happily describing their adventures and the third reporter dragging reluctant answers from Emil, the big Dane couldn't just knock the man down and keep going, so he resigned himself to the situation.
“Tell me about the white clover, Trifolium repens,” the man began. “Is it true that it thrives in soil with troll remains and is taking over all the land?”
Ah, just the sort of opportunity Mikkel welcomed! “Yes, I vividly remember all the Trifolium repens,” he answered with every indication of sincerity. “On the roads, all over the walls, everywhere!”
Before he could expatiate further on botany in the Silent World, the General interrupted, shooing the reporters away without even knocking them down. “Thank you, that is enough. We have bank business to tend to!”
Mikkel accepted his envelope of money, at something of a loss. When he'd joined the expedition, he'd thought to use it to buy a farm, try to find a wife, try to have a family. At not yet thirty-five, his twin brother Michael had five children, and was expecting his first grandchild. The people of the “little nations” — those other than Iceland — grew up fast, married young, and had a lot of children.
And yet, somehow all of that had missed Mikkel.
Life in the age of the Rash was very hard. The nations outside of Iceland were short of fuel, short of raw materials, most of all short of people. All of the little nations together would have formed a small city before the coming of the Rash; Sweden was the largest, with a little more than twenty thousand people; Finland had barely half that in all its territory. Denmark was not much bigger than Finland, and Norway a little bigger than that.
Farming was done with muscle power, human and animal, and that inevitably meant accidents. Yet in all of Denmark, there was not a single trauma center, not even one professional surgeon, and very few full-time doctors. Transport was generally by ox-cart or horseback, so if anyone was injured, he got whatever care happened to be available in the area and he lived, or he died, as his luck would have it.
When Mikkel Madsen was fourteen, he was considered a man in all the little nations. When Mikkel Madsen was fourteen, he chopped off his cousin Pettar's leg.
Mikkel did not leave the family farm again for three years. He threw himself into the innumerable tasks of a large farm. He built fences, and barns, and stables. He broke ground for new fields. He cared for the livestock. He was still growing, and the work filled out his frame and hardened his muscles. He became immensely strong.
The family had seen Mikkel returning, blood-covered, carrying his unconscious cousin in his arms, the tourniquet applied just this side of too late; he'd saved his best friend's life, but at terrible cost. The family knew Mikkel was troubled but did not know how to help him, so they let him work as he wished. His father encouraged him to leave the farm, to go into town on market days, at first very gently and then with increasing sternness as the years passed, and at last he gave in.
Mikkel was tall, powerfully built, if not handsome at least not actually ugly, brilliant, a son of the prosperous Madsen family, and immune. Of course the young women were interested in him. But Mikkel had never learned to flirt and it didn't fit his nature anyway. Moreover, his peers, male and female alike, struck him as insular and fundamentally unserious. They knew the Rash was out there — as how could they not in the age of the Rash — but it was out there. They simply didn't imagine that it could reach out to them in their comfortable environment and try to snatch them away. In the arrogance of youth, he thought they were quite stupid, and sooner or later, he inevitably said so.
So Mikkel drifted while his siblings found love and formed families, until he was twenty-one and the Army announced their intention to reclaim the mainland. He signed up the next day.
And at Kastrup, Mikkel Madsen learned that the world was far more terrible than he had ever imagined.
Mikkel put the money away. He would think about it later.
Fortunes in hand, the team split up to their various activities. Lalli departed with Onni and after a moment Emil followed them. Reynir, who didn't get a share because he was not a formal member of the team, went off with Bjarni. Mikkel got directions from Árni, Reynir's father, to the best restaurant in Reykjavík, and he and Sigrun went there in search of lunch.
After their miserable diet for the past months, they would have eaten broiled hockey puck and been grateful. Their lunch was, on the contrary, a genuine feast. They had soups and salads, crab cakes and lobster tails, lamb chops, vegetables, fresh fruit, even bread, and everything, everything, was properly prepared and seasoned by someone with a delicate hand and exquisite taste.
When all the food was eaten and the dishes cleared away by the attentive staff, when the two sat back with their eyes closed, sipping the last of the wine, Sigrun said it best. “We won't eat better in Valhalla.”
Mikkel could have stayed there forever.
But, of course, they couldn't stay forever. The carriage would be leaving soon and they had to hurry to the station. The team piled into a carriage together, joined by Onni and Bjarni, while the rest of the party took a second carriage.
Their weeks in the Silent World had affected them all. In prior visits, Mikkel had never thought about the many buildings in Reykjavík. They might be in use, or not, and if they were empty, then they were just part of the remains of the Old World, left to decay or be pulled apart for materials. But now … all of the immunes were looking around uneasily, unable to entirely shake the feeling that something might lunge out at them.
“Lots of empty houses around this city,” Sigrun muttered.
“Reynir,” Mikkel asked, “do you know if any of those buildings are in use?”
“Ah … no. They're just there. I think there used to be way more people living here back in the day. But people moved from the city, because of like … food and stuff. A lot of towns away from the shores didn't even exist before that. Like ours! You'll all love it!”
Mikkel's translation for Sigrun and Emil, and what was probably Onni's translation for Lalli, did nothing to relieve anyone's uneasiness. The buildings really were empty and so …
But at last they were out of the city and the team was able to relax a bit. They slept, but for Onni who remained awake, alert. Even Mikkel dozed off and on, lulled by the motion of the carriage. Hours passed, and it was late evening by the time they reached their destination: Brúardalur.
Reynir's home really was very large. It proved to have no fewer than eight bedrooms (one of which was serving as a sewing room for Reynir's mother, Sigriður, but was hastily cleaned up). The three young men of the team, Reynir, Emil, and Lalli, were sent to sleep in Reynir's room. Sigrun and Taru got the rooms normally used by the two daughters, Guðrún and Hildur, while Trond got the room of one son, Ólafur; Siv and Torbjörn got one spare bedroom; and Onni got the erstwhile sewing room.
Mikkel (“Oh, Mikkel, you saved our son, you're family now!”) had the opportunity to share Bjarni's room. His insistence that he would be perfectly comfortable on the floor was waved away, Bjarni taking a mattress on the floor and Mikkel being given the bed. Before they could shut the door for the night, the kitten, or rather the cat at this point, joined them.
Even through two closed doors, Mikkel could hear Emil complaining. “Hold on a second! All this time trudging through hell and I only asked for one thing! A private room and a bed, how is that too much?!”
Mikkel chuckled – that was a familiar tone – and betook himself to bed, if not in a private room, at least in a real bed. He slept badly, as usual, but every time he woke up, their cat — Missekat as he called her — was purring beside his head.
Breakfast was another genuine pleasure. There was milk, and there were eggs, and there was toast with butter and jam. As they ate, Mikkel asked the sponsors curiously, “You have any plans for how to use your profits?”
“We do!” Taru answered enthusiastically in Icelandic, “We're going to look into building an expeditions agency. With the rising acceptance of ventures into the Silent World, there's going to be a demand for teams for hire.”
Siv picked up the answer in Swedish for Sigrun's benefit. “We'll be able to hire plenty of people right off the bat! Scouts, hunters, medics, everyone needed! So many people are interested after the publicity of your journey! Of course, all of you get priority, if you'd like a job at the agency. We'll pay well, too. Interested at all? Sigrun?”
“Mehh. I think I'll go back home.” Mikkel suppressed a sigh of relief. It was his duty to bring them all to the end, one way or another, and he would do it. But it would certainly be much harder to deliver her safely home if she signed up for another expedition.
“And you, Mikkel?” Siv persisted.
“Hmm. Well. I will be in need of a new job, in time.” Once they were all home safe …
“Why don't you come with me?” Sigrun offered. “There's always jobs in my town. Wanna be a brick layer? Butcher? Mail-man? Food taster?”
“Your town has positions for food tasters?”
“There will be if I tell my dad we need them! At least one.” He met her eyes, then looked away. This was not a conversation they should have.
“Well,” Siv put in, “you know you will always have a place with us, if you need it.”
After breakfast, they all went out to stretch their legs. After four weeks in quarantine, they were desperate for fresh air and a view without walls. “So … are we allowed to just go wherever? Freely?” Emil was uncertain in this strange place where he did not even speak the language.
“Bye, kids, we'll see you later if we see you! Go wherever you want!” Sigrun called cheerily as she and Mikkel strolled away, the cat in hot pursuit. When it began to rain, they bought umbrellas and the cat rode sprawled across Mikkel's broad shoulders.
“We should get her trained,” Sigrun commented.
“That will take time.” She shrugged indifferently. “We have to decide, you know,” he went on, “where she goes. She's our cat, the team's cat, but when we all go home …”
“Yeah …” she answered slowly. “I hadn't thought of that … but training takes a month or so, so we'll all be here for a while, and we can decide later!”
They walked around the village in the rain until it was evening and, as they approached, Sigriður called to them, “You're late for supper!”
Mikkel had stopped, courteously allowing Sigrun to go in first, when a hand fell upon his shoulder. He spun sharply, hand rising to strike … but it was only Onni, a satchel slung over his shoulder. Knowing that the Finnish mage had even fewer possessions than he did, few enough to fit in the satchel, Mikkel said, puzzled, “You look like you've gotten ready to leave.”
The other ignored the comment. “You're the one they made me talk to on the radio all the time.” Well, it wasn't quite all the time, but it probably felt like it, Mikkel thought a bit remorsefully, replying, “That's correct.”
“You sounded fatter.” Well, that was the famous Finnish tact at work.
“What do you want, Onni?”
“I need a favor. You're decently dependable, right?”
“Depends,” Mikkel answered warily. He owed this man for the firebird, he needed to repay him, but he had other duties as well …
“I'm going back home to Saimaa, and I don't want Lalli to follow me. There's nothing for him there.” The Finn held out an envelope. “Give this letter to him tomorrow. It'll be too late for him to run after me.” Mikkel accepted the letter and Onni hesitated before continuing, “And another thing. That Swede is the first person he's managed to make friends with. I need you to make sure Lalli sticks with him when they leave Iceland. I don't want him to be alone. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I –”
“Thanks. Goodbye.” And the Finn was walking away, leaving Mikkel standing on the doorstep with the envelope.
Mikkel blinked at Onni's retreating back. This was all very strange, but Mikkel did owe the man and if that was what he wanted …
He had just entered when Reynir rushed out the door, obviously in pursuit of Onni. He made a mental note to ask Reynir later if he'd learned anything from the Finn, and turned to consider Emil and Lalli.
They had been walking in the rain as well, and they had not had umbrellas. Mikkel saw Sigriður's hand at work in the fact that they were sitting wrapped up in blankets beside a roaring fire. Emil, he knew, spoke only Swedish and a little Finnish; Lalli spoke only Finnish and a little Swedish. If Onni wanted Lalli to stay with Emil and did not want Lalli to return to Finland, then logically Lalli would have to go to Sweden with Emil.
“Emil,” he began. “What are your plans for after you leave here?”
“I dunno … I'm going back to being a Cleanser? Try to get a promotion maybe.”
“Would the Cleansers accept a new recruit that didn't speak Swedish?”
Emil looked sidelong at Lalli, already seeing where this was going. “Uh, yeah, they don't exactly have standards.”
“Good to hear!” Mikkel patted the Swede on the head. “You're going to take Lalli with you and have him sign up with them also. This is an order.” Pushing the two towards each other in hopes of conveying to Lalli that they would stay together, he told the Finn firmly, “Okay.”
Obedient as always, Emil nodded and, as Mikkel walked away to seek his supper, turned to Lalli to say, “Uh … I hope you enjoy looking at things burn?” Lalli stared at him blankly, having understood none of this.
With Onni gone and his guest room vacant, Mikkel was immediately moved into it. Having not had actual privacy in months, he felt on the one hand grateful and on the other hand somewhat unsettled, unable to hear anyone breathing, though at least he could hear Emil snoring. When the house was very quiet – but for snoring – he sneaked into Reynir's bedroom and laid Onni's note on Lalli's chest.
He heard no more about Onni for quite a while.
The next week passed quickly. The team hiked every day, now all carrying umbrellas, for they needed exercise to recover from four weeks of enforced idleness. Siv and Torbjörn left after a couple of days, and Mikkel and Sigrun took the cat for training the next day. As she had to have an official name for this purpose, they agreed to call her 'Pusekatt', her Norwegian name. As they left, Sigrun grumbled to Mikkel, “Too old for grade A training! That cat's a grade A if I ever saw one! Idiot Icelanders!”
With Siv and Torbjörn gone, Emil begged to be allowed to take the empty guest room, and was at last able to experience a real bed, and privacy of a sort, as Lalli chose to sleep under his bed as he had once slept under Mikkel's.
Reynir's remaining three siblings, two sisters and a brother, all came home to see their little brother. Emil and Lalli were banished back to Reynir's room after enjoying the guest room for only a couple of days, so that Taru could still have a private room. The two daughters, Guðrún and Hildur, then shared Guðrún's room and Ólafur shared Bjarni's.
After a week, General Trond also went home. When Árni told him, “Thank you for your service. It was an honor having you here,” Trond was characteristically irascible. “Stop being polite because I'm old and in the military!” Relenting a little, “But thanks for the hospitality.”
Offering his hand, Mikkel said only, “Safe journey, General.”
The General shook his hand, looked him in the eye. “Good job in difficult circumstances. Well done.”
“Thank you,” Mikkel answered quietly. It was quite the highest praise he'd ever received from the General.
Ólafur moved back to his own room, to the great relief of Bjarni, as Ólafur was even larger than Mikkel and snored worse than Emil.
Mikkel could not sit idle, nor even hike with Sigrun all day. He offered his services to the shepherds, and after a certain amount of argument (“You do not owe us for hospitality!” “I can't just sit around!”), he was permitted to build and repair fences and barns, and even help with the sheep. His family had never had sheep so he was unfamiliar with their care, but he was a quick study.
Though he would never have admitted it to himself, the end of the expedition had knocked him far off his normal equilibrium, and the long, safe, quiet sojourn in Iceland did much to restore him. He slowly lost the impulse to stand watch all night, telling himself repeatedly that the entire Icelandic army and navy were standing watch over his team. The first few nights alone in the guestroom, he slipped out in the darkness and ghosted down the stairs to check the outside doors. Not that he actually meant to sleep across the threshold, no, none of that …
He found that two of the family's big sheepdogs were sleeping across the thresholds. This seemed a bit odd, since there were no grosslings, but he reminded himself that the family was rather wealthy, and in every human community, there could be thieves. He made his way silently back to his assigned room and slept less poorly than usual. He did not know that the dogs had been brought in at Emil's request, conveyed through Siv, for his benefit.
Sigrun established a shooting range in a safe location and began working on Emil's marksmanship. As Lalli trailed along with him, she thought he might want training as well. This idea was abandoned after the Finn put three shots in the same hole at a hundred meters. Some of the young people of the town wandered by, curious, and she offered via gestures to train them also. Several took her up on this, but they used her rifle, never bringing their own. When Mikkel asked Árni about this, he was told that, to the best of the Icelander's knowledge, there were no rifles or other firearms in the village.
“But –” Even Mikkel was somewhat speechless at this.
“There are no grosslings here, Mikkel. There are no wolves, and no one would let their dogs kill sheep. There's nothing we would want to shoot.”
Mikkel translated for Sigrun and Emil, and the three, the children of the little nations, looked at each other in some amazement at the concept of such complete safety. Denmark, which is to say Bornholm, was the safest of the three, but its army and navy were proportionately much larger than those of Iceland and its dangerous coasts much closer to the population. Firearms were common in all the little nations and most people had at least some training.
“Well, uh …” Sigrun said finally. “Some of those kids do want to learn, and I don't want them using my rifle. If they don't have their own … would it be very hard to buy one, just one, for them?”
Árni answered the translated question thoughtfully. “I've never tried to buy a firearm, but I suppose we can send to Reykjavik for a rifle. There's no law against having one so I don't know why we couldn't.” And so it was arranged, and so two days later Sigrun was teaching three young people from the village with the “village rifle”.
They didn't see Reynir for the next couple of weeks, as he had enrolled in a “comprehensive expedited summer course in magic”, held in a larger town an hour's ride away.
Pusekatt's training finally ended after they'd been in Iceland for a month, and Mikkel and Sigrun went to fetch her. She was, as predicted, officially assigned to grade B, and Sigrun told her delightedly, “You're coming home with me!” The cat seemed to agree, purring in Sigrun's arms, and Mikkel nodded silently. She had to go with someone; Reynir had no need of a trained cat; Emil and Lalli would be with the Cleansers, which had their own cats; and he himself … well, no telling where he would end up. The captain of troll-hunters was the logical person to take the cat.
“What exactly did she learn to do?” he asked.
“Well, she was already very skilled at noticing the simulated presence of trolls, by scent and sound.” He suppressed a smile. As a mere kitten, she'd saved Reynir's life by detecting a troll under the snow. “But she now knows how to properly inform any nearby humans. No more hissing! But she will demand treats; we weren't able to wean her off of that.” He suppressed another smile. The kitten had subsisted on a diet of candle soup and regarded tuna fish – even decade-old tuna fish – as a treat. It would not be difficult to keep her supplied with acceptable treats.
Reynir came home that evening. He was properly trained in “farm magic”, but bitterly disappointed that he was not, nor ever would be, trained in battle magic; as a non-immune, he could never qualify to be a mage in the Norwegian military as he desired. As he related this, Mikkel frowned thoughtfully at him. He had not known that the Icelander wished to go to Norway with Sigrun. He rather suspected that Sigrun had not known that the Icelander wished to go to Norway with her. But then he shrugged. It didn't matter. Reynir would have to stay in Iceland and that was the end of it.
The next day was a day of departures. Ólafur left for a fishing expedition; Bjarni had a mechanic's job waiting for him; Hildur, being a nurse, couldn't take too much time off. Guðrún did not leave, and Mikkel overheard her telling Reynir that she had a beau in town, a man nearly as big as Mikkel himself. Reynir's response was troubling: “Huh. I guess Mom won't rely on having me around that much then …” But surely the boy wouldn't run off again. Surely he'd learned his lesson.
Taru was the last to leave that evening. Departing, she reminded Mikkel, “Let me know if you change your mind and do need a job. I should take a swing by Keuruu and see if I can recruit Onni too.”
“That's not where he went,” Mikkel answered, frowning.
“Oh? But he said –”
“I spoke to Onni just as he was leaving. He said he was going to Saimaa. And Reynir spoke to him too. He told Reynir the same thing.”
Lalli, sitting quietly, looking out the window, stood, asked Taru something that included Onni's name. Her answer sounded puzzled. Turning back to Mikkel, “Maybe you remember wrong? I can't think of a reason why he would go back there.” Mikkel shrugged. He knew little about Onni and not much more about Keuruu – a military outpost – and Saimaa – an immense lake system dotted with small islands.
“Well, I really have to go,” Taru finished. “I'm sure we'll run into each other again.” And she was out the door and gone.
And then it was night, and in that night there were events of which Mikkel knew nothing, but which were to profoundly affect his life.
Lalli hardly ever spoke; indeed, since their liberation from quarantine, Mikkel had heard his voice only a handful of times, though according to Emil Lalli continued to participate in language lessons, however reluctantly. If Lalli seemed unusually subdued at breakfast, Mikkel did not notice, for the Finn was always subdued, and in any case the Dane was thinking about a barn he was repairing, and what he needed to finish it.
After breakfast, they separated, Mikkel to his barn, Sigrun to her shooting range, Lalli and Emil to a long hike, and Reynir to use his new farm-magic knowledge to renew runes around the pastures. Mikkel did not return for lunch, his meal – a small loaf of coarse bread and a chunk of cheese – being brought to him by one of his fans, a boy of perhaps six who remained, watching him adoringly, until the boy's mother called him sharply back for other chores.
Finishing his meal, Mikkel regarded his handiwork thoughtfully. It was good work, and when he completed it that evening, the barn would stand sturdy against the winter storms for many years. Idly he wondered if his pay from the expedition would allow him to buy a farm here, in this beautiful valley with these kind people and all these sheep …
But no. It's safe; there would be nothing to threaten, nothing to guard against. I would get bored – I'll be starting to feel it soon – and then I would say or do something to hurt these good people … no. I have to go. We have to go. Missekat is trained and there's no reason to stay longer. I must take Sigrun home to Dalsnes, and then Emil and Lalli to Sweden. I've neglected my duty for too long.
That evening, the barn finished and its owners' thanks ringing in his ears, Mikkel returned to Árni and Sigriður's home, and supper. If Lalli was subdued, no one noticed, for Mikkel proposed that it was time for them all to move on.
“Yeah, I need to get home,” Sigrun said. “It's almost the start of hunting season, and I need to get back to my … team.” The hesitation was only slight, but Mikkel heard it. “We can sightsee a little in Reykjavik first though, right? Just for a day? I didn't get to when we went through there.”
“I guess I'd better get back to the Cleansers,” Emil added. “They're – we're – going to start back to work soon. I can't miss that if I want a promotion.” He glanced at Lalli. “And I guess he needs some training, too.”
“Then we're agreed. We could leave … tomorrow?”
There being no disagreement with that, he advised their hosts of their plans. Sigriður urged them to stay just a little longer, but Mikkel thought her husband looked a bit relieved at the thought of sending the four guests on their way. Reynir regarded him with sad, betrayed eyes which the Dane did his best to ignore.
Their last night in Brúardalur was very quiet.
Mikkel was up before the others, as always, but Sigriður was already up and had prepared a feast for their breakfast. Sigrun wandered down unusually early since, like him, she felt ready to move on. She was peacefully sipping her herbal tea when Emil came down the stairs holding out a piece of paper.
“Hey! Lalli wrote me a note. Someone needs to parse this for me.”
Someone was, of course, Mikkel. Sigrun would not even try to decipher handwriting. “If it's in Finnish, I don't –”
“No, it's in Swedish. Kinda?!”
Mikkel accepted the paper, attempted to read it aloud. “'Hello, here paper. Movement home, is important doing. Was nice know. Butter good. Lalli.'”
He and Emil looked at each other, shrugged identically. “Did you by any chance pick up a Finnish-Swedish dictionary during your sojourn in Reykjavik?”
“Yeah, I, I thought it would help because he can read, but …”
Reynir came down the stairs, looking around. “Uhhh … is Lalli gone? Do you know what this is about?”
“I … I think so,” Mikkel said slowly. “When Taru left the other evening, she said she'd look for Onni in Keuruu. He told her that was where he was going. But he wasn't going to Keuruu; he told me he was going home to Saimaa, and he told you the same thing. Lalli heard us talking …”
“Saimaa! That was the name! I couldn't remember when Lalli asked me –”
“What are you two talking about?” Sigrun and Emil asked almost together.
“In a minute,” he waved them to silence, and to Reynir, “Lalli asked you?”
Yeah, he wanted me to meet him in, well, in our dreams. I mean, he thumped me on the forehead and then himself, so I got the message. He never wanted me to before. He didn't even want me around his, his place –
Right. Night before last, it was, we went to sleep and I met him there, me and my dog, my dream-dog. We can talk in dreams, so he asked me where Onni went and I couldn't remember what Onni said, but I remembered there was an 's' in it. And Lalli got really upset because he said Onni lied to him and he said Onni never lies.
But people do lie. When they care for you, I mean. My parents lied to me, but they only wanted to keep me safe, to keep me here …
Anyway, I tried to take him to Onni's place. I've been there before, several times. I can walk on the dream-sea, but it seems like Lalli and Onni can't, not unless they're with me. So he needed me to take him there, only, only, I can't find Onni's place anymore. I feel like it's there, but we walked a long way, and we got into these, like, tall rushes, and my dog was scouting ahead, and then he came back. He looked real scared and he didn't want to go that way anymore.
So I told Lalli we had to go back, we couldn't go on, not if the dog was scared, because he knows things. He warned me about those ghosts, and he found Anne for me. Well, sort of …
Uh, yeah, but that's the end. Lalli wanted to go on, but I made him go back with me and then the dream ended.
And now he's gone!
Mikkel summarized the story for the other two, fell silent, tried to think.
Lalli left during the night. Why didn't the dogs stop him? Because they're guard dogs, idiot! They'd raise the household if someone tried to come in, but if a member of the household wanted to leave, they'd just wag their tails. If I'd been on watch … but he wasn't a prisoner. In the Silent World, maybe we could tie him up to keep him out of trouble, but not here. Here, if he wants to go somewhere so dangerous that Onni lied to keep him out of it … so dangerous that Onni used me to keep him out of it … I can't stop him.
The answer was obvious. So then I have to go with him, help him, guard him, take him safely to Onni. Or die trying, of course. This is how I repay Onni for the firebird.
“Well,” he said aloud, finally. “He's trying to go back to Finland, to Saimaa, to find Onni. He'll need my help to get passage. The Finns don't travel much, so I doubt he'll find a single Finnish-speaker in Reykjavik. Yes, he'll need my help.”
“I'm going with him,” Emil stated firmly. “He's my friend and I won't let him go into danger like that, alone.”
Sigrun was studying Mikkel's face. “You're not just helping him get passage. You're going with him.”
He could not deny it.
“Then I'm going too. You two can't go into some weird place chasing after him and his nutso cousin without even a troll-hunter along!”
And then of course Reynir wanted a translation and Mikkel had to explain. “If you're going to Reykjavik, I'm going with you,” the Icelander answered, and there wasn't much Mikkel could say to that. They couldn't tie up Reynir to keep him out of trouble either.
They ate breakfast, of course. Sigriður had gone to a lot of trouble for them and they couldn't just run out without doing justice to her work. Lalli had a head start of hours, but given his linguistic limitations, Mikkel did not believe he could find passage before they caught up with him. Even if he did manage to find a ship going the right direction, well, a Finn trying to book passage in Reykjavik would leave a broad trail and they would surely be able to trace him.
At least, Mikkel hoped so.
A Finn trying to book passage in Reykjavik had left a very broad trail indeed. By the time the team arrived, several hours behind him, he seemed to have wandered all over the port, showing a little drawing to anyone who would give him a moment, even stevedores and dockhands. Mikkel gathered it was simply a drawing of a ship going to a piece of land marked with the Finnish flag.
Some had not understood at all; some had understood and tried to help; others … Had he been alone, had he had the time, Mikkel would have found a way to make them regret making a fool of his lost and helpless teammate. But he was not alone and there was no time. Lalli had not found passage, but he was no longer at the port, and they needed to find him.
Sigrun's sightseeing in Reykjavik consisted of going from inn to inn, hotel to hotel, searching for anyone who might have seen a lost Finn, but after inquiring at half a dozen locations, they had found no one who had seen him. “Face it, big guy,” Sigrun said finally, as evening shadows grew long, “he's gone to ground somewhere in this maze and we'll never find him. But he'll be back at the port tomorrow, and we'll catch up with him there.”
That was however Mikkel's concern. Reykjavik was the most populous city in the world, not merely larger than any of the little nations, but larger than any two of them put together. If he'd actually “gone to ground”, there were any number of places the scout could have hidden himself away. Mikkel had never seen him climb, but was certain the little Finn could climb like a squirrel. He could be hiding, alone and fearful, down an alley or on a roof … and though Reykjavik was considered quite safe, there was always that possibility, very small but real, that he could have run afoul of someone dangerous.
Yet they could not wander aimlessly through the city searching for him. Mikkel allowed himself to be persuaded to stay in a hotel for the night, deeply worried though he was. He would have been greatly relieved if they had just gone on another block, for he would have seen Lalli staring broodingly out the window of the hotel where he had found rest.
Bright and early in the morning, the team was back in the port, scattered around so that they would see Lalli wherever he appeared. It was Mikkel who first heaved a sigh of relief on seeing his teammate, alive and apparently uninjured. Lalli had returned with a more elaborate drawing which he was showing to an utterly baffled clerk. “Don't mind him,” Mikkel told the man, coming up behind Lalli as he struggled to make the clerk understand. “He just got lost from the rest of the group. I'll take care of him.” The clerk, who was one of those who had tried to be helpful, was himself relieved to see the little Finn in good hands.
Mikkel kept a hand on the little scout's shoulder, not that he really thought the man would run off, but he'd heard from Emil just how fast Lalli really was and didn't want to risk losing him again. “Come here,” he told the other, “I've travelled from here several times. I know where to buy the tickets.” Lalli of course had no idea what Mikkel was telling him, but he trusted the big Dane to help him and he did not try to run.
Sigrun caught up with them first. “Your relative bailed on you, eh? Well, I hope you appreciate getting some help tracking him down. I was ready to go straight back home already but Mikkel really wanted to help you out first for some reason.”
Emil joined them next. “Seriously?! You couldn't just ask for help instead of leaving a note?”
And finally Reynir was there, the cat standing on his shoulder with her forepaws on his head, enjoying her view of the big city. He simply smiled sheepishly at the little Finn.
“This is the office for the 'Krabben' lines, correct?” Mikkel asked another clerk.
“Mmm,” she answered, bored, sipping her herbal tea.
“Four tickets to Bornholm, please.”
“Five tickets,” Reynir put in.
“Four tickets. Reynir –”
“I'm not staying behind. You get five tickets, or else you get four and I get one.”
Knock him out, tie him up, leave him behind … Mikkel thought longingly. But such solutions did not work in the Known World. He turned back to the clerk, who had observed the interaction with no sign of interest. “Five tickets, please.”
“Mmm. Boarding ends at 19:00. Don't be late.”
The Krabben line ran large ships from the Old World, lovingly maintained, heavily armed, equipped with actual cabins with bunks and private facilities. The team had two cabins, one for the young men and the cat, and the other for Mikkel and Sigrun. “Now this is good!” Sigrun observed to him as they boarded, “This is how you're supposed to travel!” In their cabin, she threw herself on her bunk with a sigh of pure pleasure. “This has the old tank beat all hollow!”
Mikkel looked around. Clean and roomy, certainly it seemed better than the tank, which had been crowded, uncomfortable, noisy, smelly despite his efforts to keep it clean, unreliable, and dangerous … but in the tank they'd had the ability to defend themselves. Here … if a leviathan attacked, they'd live, or they'd die, according to the skill of ship's defenders. He said nothing.
The ship's food didn't compare with the best restaurant in Reykjavik, nor even with Sigriður's cooking, but it was good. In their first meal aboard, Reynir was full of praise: “Man, I should have saved up money last time and travelled like this to Bornholm! This is great!” Emil, who had not understood any of that, grumbled, “Hmph. Really would have preferred a private cabin …” And Lalli, of course, was queasy, Mikkel's remedies not having kicked in yet.
“Sooo,” Sigrun said, “are you gonna let me know why you suddenly care so much about the pipsqueak's family reunification?”
Mikkel hesitated. If she did not feel the … debt … to Onni that he felt, then he should not pass it on to her. “It's not complicated. I promised I wouldn't let Lalli wander off on his own. And I don't appreciate people pulling shenanigans around me. The older Hotakainen better have a good excuse.” He owed Onni for the firebird, but that meant Onni had no business running off into the wilderness to get killed without him.
“So after that we can go straight to Norway?”
“Yes,” he replied, and he felt an unaccustomed warmth at her words.
But there were other problems. “Reynir.”
“Yeah?” The Icelander looked up from trying to show the cat the view out a porthole.
“I heard you tell your parents you were only going to Reykjavik.”
“Oh yeah, I did say that. Don't worry, I left a note with my sister. I might not be able to officially join the Norwegian army, but there's plenty of places out there that need a mage. Bought some protective gear and I'm ready for a cool gig! If nothing else, after this, I'll follow Emil and Lalli where they go and ask their employer for a job. Farm maging isn't my thing, you know.”
Emil and Lalli looked up at the sound of their names, but Mikkel thought it best not to translate that statement. He wasn't sure there would be an “after this”, especially for the non-immune, but there seemed to be no way to prevent the others from following him … and he had to go with Lalli.
The ship was only attacked once, by things with long beaks and spindly hands, which leapt out of the water at the ship but were immediately harpooned by their naval escort. As travel went in this year of the Rash, it was a very peaceful trip.
And so they came to Bornholm's quarantine island.
“Do you want to go home?”
Mikkel was gazing out the thick, heavily reinforced, windows of the observation deck. Passengers were not permitted on the upper deck; indeed no one went out on the upper deck if they could help it. It was rare that something would reach out of the waves and snatch away a sailor, but it did happen. He looked over at Sigrun.
“In time. I was home for over three years. I doubt they miss me yet.”
“Do you miss them?” She half-laughed. “I don't even know if you have brothers or sisters!”
“I have three of each. And you?”
“I don't have any. Something … went wrong when I was born.”
“Ah. I am sorry.”
“Oh well. It was long ago. I've tried to be … all that they would want. And I have lots of cousins.”
“As do I.” He returned to gazing out the window at his distant, invisible, home. “Bornholm is filling up. In a generation, maybe two …” After a pause he went on. “The Icelanders think Danes are nostalgic, that we went to the mainland out of some foolish misplaced emotion. But Bornholm is filling up. We'll need land, and soon, and we have nowhere to go except the mainland. We're not like the Swedes, or even you Norwegians. We can't just reclaim land around a city. That's why we went to Kastrup. We have to build a base, we have to be able to supply by sea.”
“And Kastrup …”
“We knew how to fight grosslings. We know how to fight grosslings. No one ever understood how all the soldiers of Kastrup could have fallen to grosslings in one night with no survivors, but of course they didn't.”
“No?”
“I couldn't see the ghosts. I don't know if any Dane could. Maybe it's something special about Icelanders and Finns. But even if they could see the ghosts, they didn't have Reynir along to protect them with his runes. So, a scout wandered into a place where ghosts were gathered, they followed him back, and they attacked. As they attacked us. The soldiers had no chance.”
He fell silent as they both remembered the night at the plaza, at Amalienborg, when the ghosts attacked them.
“But the ghosts are gone now. Reynir led them away. And we know how to fight grosslings. We can go back, try again.” He sighed. “Not soon. I can tell the Army about the ghosts, but they won't believe. I wouldn't believe without my experience. They won't try again just on my word. The loss at Kastrup was … devastating. There are few families that were unaffected. I lost two cousins.”
He was silent again, as his cousins, his soldiers, his war-time friends, so many dead, crowded in on his mind's eye.
“But they will try again, surely. They won't just give up.”
He looked over at her, letting her face drive away the memories.
“They will. They'll have to. Bornholm is filling up. And if nothing else, the Orphans will want to honor their fathers' memories by retaking Kastrup.”
“I hadn't thought of the orphans,” she answered, a little ashamed of having missed that.
“Oh, there were many orphans. But there are more. There are the Orphans of Kastrup.” He turned his gaze back to the empty sea, unsure if he wanted to go on.
We've lost so much technology, but we've not lost all. We have – the Army has – a, uh, a sperm bank. Every immune man who joined was required to … contribute. I did. We all did. The idea was that if a man died, his widow, his girl friend … any woman with a claim on him … she could … give him what immortality comes of children.
And then there was Kastrup. After that, it wasn't just widows and such. Any immune woman who wanted to honor the fallen … so there are well over a thousand Orphans of Kastrup. They're still being born. I have two nieces and a nephew who are Orphans. They know of their fathers' fate and they want to go back, they want to avenge them. But the oldest of the Orphans are only nine. It will be a decade or more before they can possibly return.
But they will return. And they will prevail, because the ghosts are gone.
Our expedition was not in vain. We achieved better than we knew. Better than we could ever have dreamed.
“Then you … do you have, ah, any …”
“No. I did not die at Kastrup so I have no Orphans. I have no children or, well, my brother Michael has five, and as we are twins, they are mine as well.”
“Wait, you're a twin?!” She stared at him wide-eyed in mock horror. “There's two of you?!”
Mikkel laughed – actually laughed, and how long had it been since he managed more than a chuckle? “No, Michael's not like me. He's a farmer, and a good one, and happy to be so.”
“I want to meet him someday.”
All humor left him. They were going to Finland to face … whatever it was that Onni, powerful mage that he was, feared so greatly. She would go with him; he could not make her turn back. He had no idea if he could protect her. He could only hope that she had a someday left to her.
“Someday,” he answered somberly, and gazed out the window in silence.
“Reynir.”
The Icelander turned from the window, face eager as always. “Yes?”
“We'll reach Bornholm tomorrow. You've come the long way round, but you've finally made it. My family is large. I'll give you a letter to them, and they'll host you for as long as you wish to guest with them. They will show you all of Bornholm! We don't actually have any palm trees, but my mother has a colorful flower garden which will be in bloom now. There is a two-week quarantine but it's much better than those four weeks we endured.”
“Oh, that's great! I'll do that as soon as we get back!”
“No … no. You're staying on Bornholm. You're not going with us.”
“I am. You can't leave me behind. I'll follow you.”
“Reynir,” Mikkel said sternly, “listen to me. I don't know what we're walking into, but Onni does. Onni clearly does not expect to return. He lied to Lalli to keep him away, and he enlisted me to take charge of Lalli and see that he isn't left alone. Onni is a powerful mage, we know that. If he's going into something too dangerous for him, then it's much too dangerous for you.”
“You're going into this, this danger, whatever it is.”
“Lalli is going and I can't stop him. I would if I could. Since I can't, I will go with him and protect him.”
“Emil –”
“Is going because he is Lalli's friend. Because he is Lalli's only friend. I can't stop him either.”
“They're my friends too!”
“But they're immune. We all are. You are not. Wherever we're going is undoubtedly grossling territory – almost all of Finland is – and we will not have a tank this time. We'll be camping out, and it is far too dangerous for you.”
“I'm willing to risk it.”
It was cruel, but it was his last card to play. “Tuuri was willing to risk it. Tuuri died from risking it. You never wanted to go to the Silent World in the first place.”
Reynir winced but did not waver. “I want to go now. I'm going with my friends.”
“Foolish child! Do you not understand? We're likely none of us coming back! I don't want you to throw away your life with ours!”
“I do understand! And I think you're more likely to come back if I'm with you. I'm going!”
Mikkel glared at him in frustration. They were almost of a height, Reynir only slightly shorter, but beside the big Dane, the Icelander looked like a stripling. Yet strength availed him nothing here. He couldn't stop the non-immune. He couldn't stop any of them.
Mikkel turned on his heel and walked away.
Lalli was first off the ship, desperate to reach solid land, with Emil close behind and Mikkel and Sigrun on his heels. Missekat, unsatisfied with Mikkel's broad shoulders, had draped herself comfortably across his head. Sigrun was happy as always to see a new place. Reynir trailed along last of all, looking around with interested excitement.
“Wait,” Emil complained, “we're not even on Bornholm! This is some fake island!”
“Yes, that is correct,” Mikkel replied. “You can't go there without quarantine, much like Iceland. This is the international trade and travel hub.”
“Whatever, it's not like anyone wanted to go there.”
Reynir, behind them, stopped unnoticed, looking around in dismay. He'd thought he would at least manage to set foot on Bornholm.
It was perhaps surprising that Mikkel, world-traveller that he was, could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had passed through this island.
Mikkel joined the Army at twenty-one, having joined up when they announced their intention of reclaiming the lost mainland, moved by an impulse which he could not explain even to himself. He was completely hopeless at marksmanship, but he was enormously strong and the Army had not so many recruits that they could turn him away. Assigned to construction, he helped build supply docks, including the one where, much later, his team received supplies.
When a swarm of grosslings broke through the guards and Mikkel, armed with a reinforcing bar and his steel-shanked boots, demonstrated his devastating effectiveness at close-quarters fighting, the Army realized what they had, handed him a shotgun, and reassigned him to guard duty. For his competence and leadership, he received promotions; for his insolence and resistance to authority, he received demotions. Thus, he spent much of the next two years as a Corporal, often lower but never higher.
In two years he was badly wounded twice, once when his left arm was laid open from elbow to knuckles, and again when he was thrown aside by a giant, suffering a compound fracture of the right leg and lacerations of both legs. The first time, he spent his brief convalescence in the Öresund base hospital reading military history books. The second time, refusing a wheelchair and demanding crutches since he could still use his left leg, if carefully and painfully, he requested and received medic training. When he recovered, he did not request reassignment as a medic but instead returned to guard duty with his soldiers.
A man like Mikkel could not avoid coming to the attention of higher officers. He had his detractors who thought he should be discharged as unsuitable, and his defenders who thought his merit as a fighter outweighed his issues as a soldier. When his most powerful defender passed away from a heart attack, Mikkel Madsen's army career hung by a thread.
Being the man he was, Mikkel inevitably severed that thread.
Demoted to private and being sent back to Bornholm in disgrace, Mikkel accepted detached duty with the Norwegian army in the form of General Trond Andersen. A week after he was sent away, the army at Kastrup, Mikkel's soldiers and many friends, was wiped out to the last man in a single night.
Mikkel did not return to Bornholm for almost seven more years.
Mikkel led the way, having gotten vague directions from the crew on the Krabben ship. At the Tukkitukku office, he enquired in Icelandic, “Hello, is this the docks to Finland?”
“What does it look like?” Well, that certainly sounded like the sort of clerk one would find at the Finnish company's office. He took it as confirmation.
“Did a surly, stocky, mid-twenties young man with ashen hair travel through here about four weeks ago?”
“What am I, the remembering man? Nobody remembers people from weeks ago!”
Off to Mikkel's left, Lalli had pulled out a small package, carefully wrapped and sealed, from which he extracted a folded photograph. Showing it to a Finnish dockhand, he got an answer and immediately turned to the clerk, clearly ordering a single ticket, for he held up one finger as he spoke.
Mikkel blocked the little scout's hand and ordered “Five tickets to Saimaa.”
The clerk looked at Lalli and then Mikkel. “You people work out your differences elsewhere.”
“Five tickets to Saimaa,” Mikkel ordered sternly. “The young man will go with us.”
Grumbling, the clerk accepted Mikkel's money and handed over the tickets. Lalli glanced at the Dane, surveyed the others. With genuine sympathy Mikkel told him, “I don't know why they're with us either.”
They had several hours before their latest transport, a lumber carrier, would depart, so they went looking for food. Reynir trailed along behind as usual. “Reynir,” Mikkel called, “don't wander off.”
Wait, what am I doing? Let him wander off. Let him get lost. Let him miss the ship. There are plenty of Icelandic speakers here; they can help him go on to Bornholm as he wishes, help him find my family … but no. He'll follow us anyway. And if we've gone on without him and he tries to follow us into danger … no, he has to stay with us, under our protection.
Mikkel was accustomed to controlling his circumstances, but somehow he seemed to have completely lost control of this situation. Onni had run off into deadly danger; Lalli would follow Onni; Emil was determined to stay with Lalli and that was to some degree Mikkel's own fault, for he had told Emil to keep Lalli with him; Sigrun would not allow the three of them to go into danger “without even a troll-hunter”; and Reynir was convinced they needed him along with his farm-mage skills. He would have taken Emil, Sigrun, and Reynir to their homes and left them there if he could – though taking Reynir to his home and leaving him hadn't actually worked – but he could not.
They were all going to the Silent World together and he would have to do everything in his power to keep them all alive until they returned.
And he would.
The food at the Bornholm quarantine station was good, a relief to Mikkel since Bornholm was his home and he would not have liked it to show poorly to the others. Reynir did not get lost after all, and in the early afternoon they boarded their ship. Emil, predictably, complained: “We're back to travelling in rusty trash cans again, huh?” Mikkel glanced around, but it seemed no one in the area understood Swedish, so he let it pass without comment.
Their ship was not a passenger ship, or rather carrying passengers was not its primary purpose. It was a lumber hauler, but also transported soldiers and workers between Finland and Bornholm. It had no cabins, but only bunks in the open hold, and the team joined a couple of dozen others in choosing bunks, for the journey would take two days. It was as well that the team had much experience with crowded, uncomfortable, smelly accommodations.
The team scored bunks close to each other along one wall, Mikkel in a lower bunk, Sigrun in the bunk above him, Emil in the bunk at Mikkel's head and Reynir in the bunk at his feet. Lalli took a blanket and rolled under Emil's bunk, where he remained for the rest of that day and the next, coming out only for necessities.
None of the crew spoke anything other than Finnish, but their duties required little conversation. They provided food at intervals without any need of ordering, there being no choices. The food, mostly a kind of hash, was edible even though the team's standards for edibility had been raised somewhat over the past month. Some of it might even be called good. Emil brought Lalli food after each meal though the Finn ate little of it as neither Mikkel's herbal remedies nor the anti-seasickness drugs they'd picked up at Reykjavik were doing much good.
Sigrun and Mikkel were eating supper on the first day when Sigrun glanced casually to her left, then tipped her head slightly that way. “Big guy …”
Mikkel glanced to his right equally casually, murmured, “I see them.”
“Try not to start a brawl.”
“I don't start brawls.” He stood, approached the four men who had gathered together giving him and Sigrun hard, suspicious looks. “Is there something you wish to discuss with us?” He asked in Icelandic, the language they were most likely to understand.
There was a mutter of Finnish among the men, and more drifted over to join them. The situation was rapidly becoming more dangerous as Mikkel found himself facing eight or nine hostile, tough-looking men, all younger than him.
“Why are you following Lalli Hotakainen?” The question was asked in badly accented Icelandic by a man who appeared to Mikkel to be a soldier by his bearing.
“Lalli Hotakainen was entrusted to my care by his cousin, Onni Hotakainen.”
As this was translated to the others, their hostility was largely replaced by confusion. Such informal guardianship arrangements were common in the age of the Rash, legalistic formalities having been jettisoned by the surviving communities, small, widely separated, and under deadly threat as they were. If someone needed some help in dealing with the world, as Lalli did, other members of the family would provide it, and if no family member was available, such care would be provided by a trusted friend. That, in itself, was no surprise to them. What was a surprise, not just to the Finns but to Mikkel himself, was that Mikkel Madsen was the best Onni could do for a trusted friend.
“But – you don't speak Finnish!”
“I don't. I spoke Icelandic with Onni. I never met Lalli or Tuuri before the expedition.” Although they might have inferred from his words a longer friendship with Onni than he'd actually had (assuming he had had a friendship with Onni), all his statements were true, and he doubted Lalli would or could dispute them.
“The expedition?” There was more Finnish discussion. “You were part of the expedition to the Silent World?” At Mikkel's nod, “You should not have let her go.”
“Onni couldn't stop her.”
“Well, that's true. She was always willful. So you went along to protect them.”
“To protect them all.” Lalli might be aware that Mikkel had not been sent by Onni, but he could not know exactly why the Dane was there in the first place. That answer would be safe enough even if the scout chose to answer questions from the other Finns.
“Lalli doesn't appear happy about your care.”
“He isn't. He wants to return to his cousin. Since Onni did not forbid him to do so, nor charge me to keep him away, I will not stop him. However, he remains in my care until we find Onni.”
“Don't look for Onni at Keuruu. He resigned from the army weeks ago.”
“We know. He's gone to Saimaa. We will find him there.”
“Then what about these others?” The soldier gestured at Sigrun, who was watching with an assumed indifference, and Reynir and Emil, sitting together. Reynir, Mikkel saw in a quick glance, was holding Emil down with a hand on his shoulder as the Swede seemed to be considering jumping to Mikkel's side.
“They were also part of the expedition. We are a team. We are escorting Lalli as a team.”
The translation of this answer drained away the last traces of hostility. Men drifted off as casually as they had approached. “Then the gods grant you all good fortune,” the soldier answered formally, and they parted amicably.
“Well done,” Sigrun told Mikkel as he returned to the table. “What was their problem, anyway?”
“They wanted to know what business we had with Lalli.”
“Lalli sicced those guys on us?”
“Oh, no, I don't believe so. The man I was talking to was a soldier. He is acquainted with Onni and Tuuri, so I suppose he just recognized Lalli and was concerned about him. I imagine those men tried to ask him what was going on and he wouldn't talk to them. You know how little he talks to anyone. Although … it occurs to me that Lalli himself doesn't know why we're here.”
“What? I mean, you promised not to let him wander off on his own. End of story.”
“I promised Onni that. But Onni never told Lalli that, and none of us can talk to him. Not about anything that complicated, at least. I think that explanation is well beyond Emil's linguistic abilities. So no, I don't think he does know. All he knows is that he can't seem to shake us off. Maybe those men could tell him … although they won't because they'll assume that Lalli already knows and I don't think I'd better ask them to.” Mikkel sighed. “The older Hotakainen has a lot to answer for, here.”
Emil and Reynir had come over for an explanation of recent events, but they were distracted as heavy shutters began closing over the portholes. “What's going on?” the Icelander asked Mikkel nervously.
“These are dangerous waters. These little lumber ships rely on running dark, silent, and fast to get through. We'll have to be very quiet until the shutters are open again.”
“Don't we have an escort?”
“No. There aren't enough warships for all these lumber ships, but the Danish navy patrols these waters, and they even have sonar. Sit quietly now.”
The fact that the Navy still had sonar was a testament to generations of diligent efforts. Though knowledge of the technology had not been lost, the surviving world population was simply too small to build complex electronics on top of everything else they had to do simply to survive in their menacing environment, and so devices such as sonar were kept working by cannibalizing parts from failed devices to keep others running.
In time there inevitably would be no more sonar but for now, Mikkel knew, there were warships with sonar out there hunting for sea monsters to protect this ship and others. Still, behind his neutral expression he all but vibrated with tension. Not only were they on a poorly armed vessel, not only were they dependent on the crew or unknown warships for protection, but they wouldn't even be able to see danger approaching. Working for the General, he had hated going to Finland for that very reason, and now it was not only himself that was in danger, but his entire team. This was going to be a nerve-wracking journey.
Reynir produced the pack of cards given to him in quarantine but no one other than Mikkel knew any game to play with him, and the Dane was prowling silently around the enclosed deck, listening to the muffled noises of the engine and trying to hear any activity in the waters around their ship. The Icelander began to play solitaire and Sigrun and Emil, for lack of anything better to do, came over to watch despite having no idea what the rules were.
The situation being intensely boring, everyone drifted down to their bunks early and caught up on their sleep. The quiet of the hold was broken only by the sounds of the engine, muffled as much as possible, and the breathing of the passengers. Anyone who snored or sleep-talked was immediately pounced upon by one of the ship's cats. Mikkel could pick out the sound of Sigrun's breathing, since she was above him, but not that of the others. He slept very badly.
The ship was not attacked that night, nor the following day and night, and by mid-morning of the next day it was in more protected waters and the shutters were opened again. Even Lalli dragged himself out of the hold to crowd with Emil and Reynir at a porthole to look at his homeland. Sigrun and Mikkel, who had both taken this trip before in their varied careers, merely glanced out a porthole now and then. It was, as Lalli had once told Tuuri, just trees for ever and ever, with the occasional ruin.
That afternoon they reached the canal, which the Finns had, with extraordinary pains and much loss of life over generations, cleared and fortified. It could not be said to be safe, but grosslings seldom managed to get into it, and those that did were small. There were hints of things peering out of the dense forest that surrounded the canal, and Emil and Reynir glanced respectfully at Lalli, remembering that he had been scouting alone in that forest since he was thirteen.
And so they landed at last at the ship's port in the Saimaa lake system.
Mikkel and Sigrun stood by one porthole, looking out at the hilly islands around the ship, while the other three crowded by a second porthole. There was yet another announcement in Finnish and the rest of the team looked over at Lalli for a hint of what was expected, while the scout continued to stare out at the islands. After a moment Mikkel shrugged, thinking the announcement was unimportant, but the soldier to whom he had spoken earlier came over to him, saying in his badly accented Icelandic, “We arrive at the docks in half an hour. Take your things with you.”
“Thank you,” Mikkel replied politely in the same language as the other walked away with no further acknowledgement. The Dane passed the word on to the other three with whom he could communicate, trusting Lalli to have understood without his contribution.
It didn't take long to collect their things. They no longer had their uniforms, Mikkel and Sigrun having shipped theirs home to their families, Emil having sent his to his cousins via Siv and Torbjörn, and Onni having taken Lalli's away and somehow disposed of them. Mikkel had doubted at the time that Onni would have done anything so sentimental as shipping them home as souvenirs, and as things stood now, it was quite clear that he had not done so.
In any case, all the uniforms were gone and the team, other than Reynir of course, had kept the seamstresses of Brúardalur and surrounding villages busy for a week producing for each of them a couple of outfits embroidered with the traditional designs of their countries, sleep-clothes, and good warm wool sweaters. Emil and Sigrun had commissioned knee-length embroidered cloaks, Emil's dark blue and Sigrun's white, while Mikkel had a new white jacket that came to mid-thigh, embroidered all the way around the chest. They hadn't obtained any more clothing for, of course, they'd all expected to go home, not wander off into the wilds of Silent Finland.
With their belongings collected and everyone waiting to disembark, Emil turned to Mikkel. “Do we have to go through quarantine? Or can we just leave, ah, the non-immune here while we go on?”
“No, there's no quarantine here. Immunity among the Finns is close to two-thirds, and they have whole villages, like this port, where everyone is immune. As long as we stay away from the other villages — the ones with non-immunes — there's no quarantine. And we can't leave him behind. I've tried. He'll follow us, and that would put him in more danger. He has to stay with us.”
Emil shrugged and said nothing, clearly disappointed. Mikkel wasn't sure what the problem was, other than that Reynir's relentless enthusiasm seemed to grate on Emil, but he knew that Emil would do his duty as required and so long as Mikkel himself controlled communication between the two, being the only translator, he could keep hostilities from developing.
Disembarking was quite informal. They were permitted to leave the ship in groups of two or three, Lalli and Emil leaving together, followed by Mikkel, Sigrun, and Reynir. On the dock, several gray and white cats, three wearing Grade B collars and one wearing a Grade A collar, sniffed at their bags and their clothing, then strolled back to wait for the next group with the half-dozen soldiers leaning against a nearby wall. Kisu, as most of the team had taken to calling their cat, greeted the other Grade Bs with a nose touch, but was completely ignored by the Grade A. “Snooty little jerk,” Sigrun muttered, but fortunately none of the soldiers understood Norwegian.
Lalli, satchel in hand and rifle slung over his shoulder, took off immediately up the hill to the main part of the village while the others hesitated, looking around uncertainly. “Now what?” Sigrun asked Mikkel, “Where do we start looking for the guy?”
Mikkel shrugged. He was quite certain that Onni would not be in any place so safe as this village or any other. “I propose we follow the one who seems to have somewhere in mind.” Suiting actions to words, he led the way in Lalli's wake. The walkway soon became a long stair with wooden treads and small houses on either side. As they trudged up the stair, Mikkel glanced over at Emil. “You did tell him that we were going with him, right?”
“Yeah, I did, and I'm sure he understood. He said it was dangerous. He said that several times.”
“Of course it's dangerous. That's why we're here.”
At the top of the stair, Lalli hurried into a shop with a sign outside on which was carved a stylized boat. By the time Emil, Sigrun, and Reynir (carrying Kisu) followed him in, he was already on his way out with a set of keys in his hand. Mikkel had not followed the others inside, for the small shop was crowded enough with four people and didn't need him too, and so Mikkel was hard on Lalli's heels as the Finn trotted down to a small harbor where rowboats were pulled up on the shore and chained to large blocks of wood. Behind the Dane, Emil was already complaining, “Really? We climbed all those stairs just to go right back down again?”
As Lalli unlocked a rowboat, Mikkel was relieved to see that the scout had in fact obtained a boat big enough for the five of them — six of them if the team caught up with Onni. He had rather feared that Lalli would take a smaller, two-person boat and attempt to leave without them, again. Still, while it was a good boat, the rest of the situation was not to Mikkel's liking.
“Hold on now!” The Danish command meant nothing to Lalli, but the firm grip on his collar was a clear message. “Are you sure we're all set to leave? We don't have a tent, we have no medical equipment. What were you planning on eating? Emil, you translate.”
“I-I'll do my best.”
Some stumbling Finnish and a long exasperated response later, Mikkel thought that Emil's translation was probably inaccurate. “Uhhh — he says his plan is to sleep under a rock and … eugh?! — eat dirt off the ground?! I want to say I refuse to do any of that!”
There was a pause while the three looked at each other in helpless incomprehension, and then Mikkel turned back to the village. “How about we take a moment to gather the equipment we need?” The others followed him, Emil complaining, of course, “Stairs again …”
Given their communication difficulties, Mikkel had had the good sense to bring plenty of blank paper and some pencils, allowing him to draw the various items that they needed, including a shotgun for himself and a pistol for Emil. Lalli and Sigrun already had their rifles and Sigrun her pistol, of course. Mikkel, Sigrun, and Reynir spread out to visit different shops while Emil stayed with — that is, kept an eye on — Lalli. By the time the other three returned, Lalli had discarded his jacket from Iceland, replacing it with a beautiful white fur cloak.
They hauled everything down to the rowboat: tent, sleeping bags, backpacks, all their own bags, cooking gear, a good first aid kit for Mikkel, and food. Studying a map of the lake complex as the others packed the boat, Mikkel told them, “We won't make it in one day under any circumstances. I suggest we stay at an inn for the night and leave well rested tomorrow.” Wherever they were going was surely not here in the low risk, protected area. They had to be going farther north up the lake complex.
There was no answer. Looking over at the team, he saw that Reynir and Emil were already in the boat and Sigrun and Lalli were pushing it out. With a sigh, he added, “Very well, I've been out-voted.”
Mikkel sat in the bow, his back to their course, and began to row away from the island. Reynir sat with their cat on the next seat back, Lalli and Emil behind him, and Sigrun in the stern.
“Emil, see if you can find out where we are headed. I would highly appreciate knowing.”
After some quiet Finnish discussion, “Where he used to live, I think.”
“I see,” Mikkel answered with resignation. “A sensible place to look for the cousin.” That didn't really answer his question, but he supposed that Lalli would at least point left or right to keep him rowing in the right direction.
Mikkel rowed, eyes half-closed but watching the water behind the boat. The others would have to watch ahead, over his shoulders, and to the sides, but he had the best view to the back. Occasionally he glanced at Sigrun, alert, her rifle across her lap, watching for danger, and Lalli, somber but still keeping watch.
We're a month behind the cousin. A lot could have happened in a month. He could be dead already. Though … Reynir said he thought Onni — or at least his place — was still there in the dream-ocean, even though they couldn't get to it. Not that that's a happy thought. What is going on in that dream-ocean? I have no idea and Reynir doesn't seem to either.
Mikkel's eyes opened wide. Was that something following the boat? It was hard to tell with the sun sparkling on the waves but … no, it was just the way the reflections fell. His eyes half-closed again, he continued rowing and thinking.
Could Onni be dead already and Reynir not know? Come to think of it, though, how did Lalli act when Tuuri … died? He was alarmed, he ran, he shouted at us … he couldn't have seen her because, face it, he was a lot faster than she was. If he'd seen her running off, he would have chased her down instead of shouting at us. So he knew what had happened. Or at least that something bad had happened. After it happened. Presumably he would likewise know if something bad happened to her brother.
So I should assume that Onni's still alive until Lalli gives some sign that he isn't.
We're going to where they used to live, some village out in the lake somewhere. But what could be so dangerous about the village that Onni acted like he was going to his death? Lalli's not looking happy about going there either.
Sigrun sat up straighter, suddenly, looking off to her left, and Emil turned that way as well while Lalli continued to scan to the right. Continuing to row steadily, slower than he was truly capable of, Mikkel looked over to his right to see what Sigrun had spotted.
It was, he thought, a troll. It had draped itself over a fallen tree, multiple tentacles sprawling around it. If not for its purplish color, he would have taken it for some sort of fallen tree itself. Part of it stretched yearningly toward the boat, but the tentacles were far too short and, Mikkel judged, it was too disorganized in shape to follow them. Sigrun half-raised her rifle, lowered it again. The thing could not threaten them and there was no need to waste ammunition on it.
Mikkel rowed steadily as the sun fell lower and lower in the sky. “There, big guy,” Sigrun said suddenly. “That rock. We can camp there.”
The rock was far from the shore and only perhaps ten meters across at its widest point. It was quite steep as well, making it difficult for Mikkel to find a place to beach the boat. Still, once they'd pulled the rowboat well up on a less steep slope and tied it to the nearest tree, they were able to pitch the tent on top and build a fire, feeling surprisingly secure given that they were camped outside of any walls.
They set watches for the night, but they were not disturbed on this, their first night in Silent Finland.
As they struck the tent and collected their gear, Reynir began to rearrange the baggage which they had thrown helter-skelter into the rowboat. Once it was all neatly arranged, he triumphantly pulled out a second pair of oars that had been stowed along the sides and obscured by their baggage. Mikkel nodded to him, smiling slightly. Without arrogance, Mikkel knew that he was by far the strongest of the team and would do the great bulk of the rowing, but it was good that the others could help. A second pair of oars was also good since one could not be sure what they might encounter, and what might happen to his oars if he needed to fight.
As Sigrun and Lalli were the best shots, and Lalli was physically the weakest of them all, neither took a turn at the oars. Emil and Reynir took turns as the day passed while Mikkel stolidly rowed, and rowed, and rowed.
Lalli gave directions silently, pointing to the left or the right as needed. No one spoke; there could be grosslings in the surrounding forests. Mikkel had much too much time to think about the situation, trying to imagine how he could have prevented it.
Onni didn't order me to keep Lalli away from Finland. He just said there was nothing here for Lalli but that's not the same thing … is it? And I couldn't stop Lalli from coming anyway, as he has a right to live his life as he wishes, or to die as he wishes. But Onni sent the firebird for us and that placed on me the obligation to repay him. He has no right to run off and get killed without me! All I can do now to repay him is to guard Lalli with my life while we find him.
I had to let Emil come too … didn't I? Onni ordered me to make sure Lalli and Emil stayed together when they left Iceland, so when Lalli came here, Emil had to come too. Should I have disobeyed that order? Yet it seemed like such a simple order to obey, just to keep Lalli and Emil together. But now …
Could I even have stopped Emil? I didn't argue with him or order him to stay in Iceland or to go to Sweden, but would he have obeyed such an order even if I'd given it? Probably not. After he and Lalli saved each others' lives in such a strange way, I don't think he'd have let Lalli go into danger without him.
Maybe Emil even feels obligated to Lalli the same way I feel obligated to Onni. I can't ask him about that, though … if he doesn't feel that way, I'd better not put the thought in his head.
And Reynir! What am I to do with Reynir? He's a mage, yes, yes, but a farm mage, not a battle mage. And Onni is a battle mage, as I understand it — he supported the Finnish army at least — and he appears to expect to die doing whatever it is he's doing. How can Reynir possibly survive whatever we're walking into?
I bought him tickets. I bought them twice. I brought him here … but he said he'd come anyway. If I hadn't bought his tickets he would have bought his own, and then I wouldn't have been able to keep an eye on him. Still, I'm responsible for his being here … Sigriður and Árni will certainly think so.
Well, I didn't intend to go back to Iceland anyway.
And Sigrun. Sigrun wants … me …
Sigrun wants me to go with her to Dalsnes. To her family. To … oh, gods, to the General. To “Uncle Trond.”
What will he think when Sigrun fails to turn up for the start of troll-hunting season? When his agents trace us — and they will — and find out that I bought the tickets? That I took the team into Silent Finland on a whim? That I let them travel like this, unprepared, undefended?
It's just as well that I expect to die here. If I don't, if I make it back, the General will probably take me apart on general principles. If Árni doesn't get me first.
With these cheery thoughts, Mikkel rowed.
They passed under bridges, well built by engineers of the Old World, still choked with decaying cars. They passed ruined towns, and things watched them out of glassless windows. They passed endless forest.
At last Lalli pointed to a pier offering access to another hilly island and Mikkel, with concealed relief, rowed carefully up to it. Several sunken boats could be seen near the pier, deep enough so as not to be a hazard to the rowboat, and one boat in good shape was moored to the pier. Good, Onni is still here and we can go home. Though … what's he been doing here for a month? And what is the danger that he so feared?
As Mikkel made the rowboat fast, the others hopped out and Sigrun went over to examine the moored boat. “Is this the guy's gear? What's his name? Onni?”
Lalli, standing beside her and likewise examining the boat, shook his head as he answered in Finnish before striding away. Emil looked over at Sigrun and attempted to translate. “He said that this is not Onni. And that Onni isn't a fish. I think.”
They shrugged at each other as Mikkel joined them and they, along with Reynir, trailed after Lalli on the wooden steps that led up the steep hill. The scout seemed unthreatened, but Mikkel kept his hand on his dagger all the same. There had to be some danger here somewhere, or why else had Onni been so afraid?
At the top of the hill they found the remains of a village. Many of the houses had burned; those that had not had clearly been abandoned for years, as their roofs had collapsed and volunteer trees were growing up through them. Despite the ruin of the village, the paving stones of the path they followed were clean and nothing had grown up between them. The team walked through in silence while birds sang cheerfully all around them.
Past the ruins of the village, there were fields, now overgrown, where the villagers had once raised crops. The path led through the fields and on to a couple of buildings in excellent shape, surrounded by a neatly tended garden where a man was working.
The man looked rather scruffy. He hadn't shaved in a few days and his hair, which had obviously once been cut short, had grown out rather untidily. He stood as they approached, greeting them in Finnish. Lalli spoke eagerly to him until the man pointed off to the east, causing the scout to respond in confusion.
As they understood none of this, Sigrun turned to Mikkel. “Sooo … what do you think this guy's deal is? Some sort of crazy hermit who's obsessed with tidying this garden for nobody?”
“I just work here, lady,” the man put in in Norwegian.
“Uhhh … sorry.” Mikkel thought her pale face looked cute flushing with embarrassment, but of course he needed to try to recover the situation.
“A curious place for a polyglot to work,” he said, courteously offering his hand. “Mikkel Madsen, from Denmark.”
“Mauri Möttönen. I'm a skald, stationed here for the summer,” the man responded in good if slightly accented Danish as they shook hands. Mikkel raised his eyebrows, impressed. It was rare to find someone who had troubled to learn Norwegian and Danish.
“Doing what, exactly?” Sigrun asked before Mikkel could continue.
“I ward the island and tend to the graveyard,” the man answered in Norwegian, his tone perfectly neutral. “One day this island will be settled again, and every summer I make sure it is not becoming infested with trolls. If it is, I fetch a cleansing crew. My fellow wardens do the same for the other islands. All of the settlements in this area were lost a decade ago.”
Mikkel frowned, thinking of what he knew of the Hotakainen family. There seemed to be just the three of them, or rather just the two cousins now. Could their entire family have been lost here? “They were overwhelmed by a troll attack?” he ventured.
“No,” Mauri stated firmly, “But that is not for me to talk about. Defense protocols have been updated since, and a similar outbreak won't happen again. That is all you visitors need to know.”
As they spoke, Lalli had walked away, trailed by the other two young men. Mikkel and Sigrun hurried to follow.
Lalli had gone into a graveyard. Mikkel walked through quietly, trying not to disturb the peace of the dead. There were many gravestones, just simple stones carved with names and years of birth and death. It did not take long for him to realize that all the gravestones in this area of the graveyard had the same year of death: 79. Lalli had stopped, silently regarding the gravestones. The others caught up, seeing that all the stones around him bore the Hotakainen name. In particular, there was a new one: “Tuuri Hotakainen 69-91”.
“So he came here to bring that,” Emil said softly.
Lalli said something puzzled, turned, and stared off to the east. As he started to walk back toward their boat, Mikkel caught him by the collar. “Stop. We're spending the night here.” It was late in the day, and wherever the Finn meant to go, Mikkel had no intention of rowing him there in the dark, nor of allowing him to go anywhere alone.
Mauri had an ample supply of food and seemed to enjoy their company, so their supper was generous and the conversation enjoyable for Mikkel, discussing with Mauri the edible and medicinal plants of the area. Sigrun mostly listened in silence. As evening shadows grew long, their host showed them to a room set up with bunks, presumably for a cleansing crew if one were needed, offering the team good comfortable beds for the night. Mauri merely chuckled when Mikkel asked about setting watches. Well, he'd been here for weeks and was familiar with the area so it should be safe …
Mikkel lay awake for a long time, listening to Emil snoring and the others breathing evenly in their sleep. At last he too slept.
Mauri had told Lalli that he had seen Onni a few weeks earlier, but he repeated the information to Mikkel, saying that the older Hotakainen had gone northeast from the village and providing a map to “where the sentinel mage lives”. He also advised Mikkel in Icelandic:
To continue northeast you will have to pass through the sentinel mage's checkpoint. He's in charge of guarding that frontier.
The last fella didn't say where he was going, but if he's tried to cross into the area, the sentinel will have caught him. The path is upstream, but you should be able to reach the checkpoint in a couple of days.
His hut is located between two rapids in a wide river pass. You can't miss it. Especially not for the seagulls.
Mikkel nodded as if these instructions actually made sense and led the way to the rowboat. Reynir stopped him as the others were piling into the boat. “Mikkel, can I sit up here in the front? Where I can talk to you?”
“Certainly, if you wish. Emil can take the first shift of rowing, and we'll stop on some rock for lunch so you can move. What do you want to talk about? You know I won't be talking a lot while rowing.”
“I know. I want to tell you about a dream.”
Mikkel sighed. “Yes, by all means.” And they set forth, heading northeastward and hoping to find something.
Last night we — Emil and I — somehow fell into Lalli's memories. We saw what happened to that village.
We were all three just children again, and Emil was this little short fat kid — I shouldn't have said that. He isn't fat anymore. He's my friend and a good man.
Lalli wasn't happy to see us wandering around in his memories, but it wasn't anything that we'd done on purpose and we all just had to go on and wait for the dream to end. So we saw Lalli's grandma, Ensi, but she didn't see us because it was Lalli's memory, you know; we weren't really there when it happened.
Anyway, she and Lalli and a bunch of others had come back from cleansing surrounding islands, like they did that every year, and they went into quarantine on … yeah, on that island over there. There was this one old woman, Hilja, who was part of that team and she was acting strange, like she didn't know people, and they all thought she was just, well, old. Getting senile.
We didn't have to sit through two weeks of dream-quarantine, because Lalli was able to blink and make time pass. So then we went with the team back to the island, the village island, and Lalli saw something wrong about a package that the old woman, Hilja, was carrying. He told his grandma but when she tried to ask about it, Hilja told her to “look into my eyes” and said that it was just a package.
When I first saw Anne, you know, the one who was a troll really but still sane, the one who led the ghosts away, Onni was terrified of looking in her eyes. He covered my eyes too. I never realized …
But I'm getting ahead of the dream. The memories.
Then Lalli showed us around. We saw all the houses before they burned down, and Lalli's house, and the school he went to for a couple of years, and Onni and, and … Tuuri's house, but they weren't there; they were off on a sheep and farm island so we couldn't meet them.
Then Lalli made time pass again, a week that time, and we saw a village party, and that Hilja woman was wandering around, still acting strange, but they still thought she was just senile. And weird.
So Lalli made time pass again, two weeks until their harvest festival. There was this man, Tapsa, who had the village cats, two of them. He went off to fetch Hilja because they thought she'd just forgotten the harvest festival. But the cats took alarm as he approached her house, so he gathered the rest of that cleansing team to investigate, and Lalli tagged along and so did we.
We saw through the window … it was awful. She had brought a little grossling into her own house! It was in that package that looked wrong to Lalli, but it was all magicked somehow so no one knew except, kind of, Lalli. They said that she must have been under the influence of a “Kade” to do this. She knew magic that Lalli's grandma, Ensi, didn't even know! So she'd infected herself and she'd turned into a troll, there alone in her house. The troll tried to get away, but they managed to shoot it and kill it.
That man Tapsa was injured by the troll and he wasn't immune. They knew … but they thought they'd stopped the spread. Only they hadn't. Ensi, she realized that Hilja had been infected and contagious and deliberately spreading the Rash at the village party. They were all infected already. There was no hope.
The others went back to try to organize things in the village, but Ensi stayed to guide Hilja's soul to rest, and Lalli stayed to watch, and so we did too.
And then …
I-I heard It talking to Ensi. The same way I heard the ghosts talking, back in Denmark. I guess Lalli heard It, because we were in his memories. But it felt like hearing the ghosts.
It told her that she couldn't save Hilja or even herself.
And then she told Lalli not to look her in the eye under any circumstances, because if he did, It would get him too. That's what Onni was afraid of when we met Anne! That just looking her in the eye would … would …
Anyway, she sent Lalli away, told him to take her rifle, that rifle that he carries, and take it to Onni, tell Onni it was a “Code O”. She said that Onni would take care of him and Tuuri and he shouldn't worry about anything else, especially not his, his mom and dad.
We all ran down to Onni and Tuuri's house and — oh, Mikkel, Tuuri was there! She was just a little girl and she was so happy! She didn't know what we knew —
Right, right. It was just a shock to see her. Onni got the two children (and us, though we weren't really there) into a rowboat and took them off to a safe location on another island. See, they'd been on that sheep island, and then in quarantine, and so they'd never met up with the other villagers. They hadn't been infected. And they just sat there, those three, hearing screams and gunshots and smelling smoke as their village burned …
Anyway, after a while, the quarantine ships came and picked them up, but they were the only survivors of the village. And no one ever saw their grandma, Ensi, again.
So you see, we have to be so careful! You have to warn the others! Don't meet anybody's eyes out here, not even … not even Onni's.
I don't know how we can ever know that Onni is, is … is himself.
Mikkel rowed steadily, silently.
“You … don't believe me?”
“I believe you,” Mikkel assured him slowly. “I'm trying to think. From what you said, this Kade thing got its hooks into the grandmother — Ensi? — three weeks before she knew it had done it.”
“Yeah … that's right. One week to the party and then two more to the festival.”
“And she didn't know, in all that time. I suppose that it couldn't transmit itself to others until it … took over, or whatever you call it. Otherwise it could easily have passed to Lalli or any others in the village. They must have met her eyes at some point.” He thought uneasily of the handshake with Mauri, where he'd met the man's eyes, because that's what you did when you shook hands.
Did I doom the team by greeting that man? Will this Kade thing take me over and use me to destroy them? The others didn't get that close to him — I think?
Lalli was just a boy but he was certainly old enough to describe the events clearly enough for the authorities to understand what they were dealing with, and if they imposed new “defense protocols” in response to the attack, then surely that man was defended. Surely. Somehow.
“The woman who was taken over first —”
“Hilja.”
“Her behavior was strange. Confused, seemingly senile. Is that right?”
“Yeah, they all commented on that.”
He spoke three languages in my presence. He talked knowledgeably about plants. He wasn't confused. So he was … probably … safe.
This is terrible. I thought I understood how Tuuri felt but, no. Wondering if I might be infected with something, wondering if I might … kill … all the others …
I can't just give up. Not without more proof. They need me. I'm probably safe. And from what Reynir said, there was at least a little time during which Ensi knew she'd been caught and she still had the ability to act. In those few moments, surely even I could manage a fatal wound. Or blinding.
I have to warn them. I can't warn Lalli but … I don't believe he ever has met my eyes. Maybe once, back in Denmark. Here, after remembering all that, he won't meet them again.
“All right. We don't know much about this thing, except that it's dangerous to look into someone's eyes. Even the eyes of someone you know. Even mine. Reynir, I looked into that man Mauri's eyes. You must not meet my eyes until we figure out some way to be sure that I am … not dangerous.”
“No! You can't think —”
“Why not? He's out here, alone, where that thing has already struck once. Did you look into his eyes?”
There was a long pause while Reynir thought about it. “No. You were talking to him and we went off following Lalli. And then again at supper, you were talking to him and we sat over by the fireplace. No. I never met his eyes.”
“Good. Now don't meet mine.”
Reynir stared in horror at Mikkel's knees as the Dane continued to row steadily onward, his eyes now tightly closed.
They stopped on a rock in the middle of the channel for lunch and to allow Reynir to take over with the second set of oars. Mikkel kept his eyes firmly on his hands as he instructed Emil to describe the dream to Sigrun. Emil's version was close to Reynir's, and Mikkel could glean no new insight from it.
“So,” Sigrun said finally. “You figure the cousin is out here looking for grandma?”
“That or he's looking for the Kade. Or both. But there's a point I want to make. We now know it's dangerous to look into anyone's eyes. I looked into the eyes of that man back in the village, when I shook his hand. That means you must not look into my eyes. Not even if I tell you to. Especially not if I tell you to. If I tell you to …” His voice trailed off. This would be hard for them to hear, especially Emil. After a moment he finished, “then you have to shoot me as fast as you can. That's the message of that dream, I think. And it applies to all of us. If anybody tells you to look into their eyes, they've been taken over.
“Did either of you look into that man Mauri's eyes? I'm guessing Lalli didn't. After that experience he probably doesn't look at anybody's eyes.”
“No,” Sigrun said slowly. “I was embarrassed. I let you do all the talking.”
“I followed Lalli down to the graveyard and at supper I was over by the fireplace. I never talked to him at all, or even got that close to him.”
“Good. Then just be careful.”
And with that they ate their lunch, which was like ashes in their mouths.
Mikkel and Reynir rowed until they reached a portage point, where Mikkel lifted one end of the boat, Emil, Reynir, and Sigrun the other, and Lalli stood guard as they carried it past the rapids and into the smoother water beyond. Reynir and Emil switched again, and they moved steadily upstream until they found another good rock to camp on for the night.
They set watches, but once more they were undisturbed.
Mikkel struck the tent and loaded the boat while Reynir prepared porridge for the team. He was careful to keep his gaze away from the others, even when Sigrun sat down on a rock beside the boat.
“If we were told correctly, we should meet the sentinel mage today.”
“Okay,” she answered noncommittally.
“He may have a boat there, or Lalli may choose to proceed by land after that. You could take the other boys and go back.”
“You're determined to get rid of us, aren't you?”
“Well, not to get rid of you, no. I want you to be safe. I want you to go home to a nice safe job of troll-hunting.”
She laughed at that, as he had intended, but sobered immediately. “But you'll go on.”
“I must. I promised Onni I wouldn't let Lalli go off alone. It's my duty and I'll do it. And now … not knowing like this … how can I go back anyway? But you can. And Emil and Reynir. They won't want to go but maybe you can —”
“Not happening, big guy. You told me you would see us all through to the end. I'm holding you to that. You're taking me back to Dalsnes, however long that takes.
“And — Mikkel, this thing murdered a whole village. Several villages. Just because it could. Yeah, I'm a troll-hunter and we enjoy hunting, but that's not the only reason we do it. Trolls are a danger to us. To the whole world. And so is this. As a troll-hunter, killing this thing is my duty too!”
Mikkel tied down the last bundle and sat back on his heels, gazing at his hands. “We don't know what this thing can do. We don't know what it has done to Onni. Or … to me. We don't even know if we can kill it.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “There's so much we don't know. But I know you and I together have a much better chance than you alone.”
There was nothing more to be said to that, and the boys were coming over to the boat anyway. They set out once again.
Mikkel took the stern position so that he could watch their back trail with no risk of meeting anyone's eyes. It was not the most efficient position for the more powerful oarsman, but it felt safest to him, and no one would argue against it. Once more they travelled in silence for there were grosslings in the forest around them, and Mikkel had entirely too much time to think about the situation.
This thing is much worse than the Rash, because at least with the Rash, there are physical signs of infection. Eventually, anyway. How can I know if this thing has attacked me?
Is anyone immune to this? Tuuri said her grandmother was immune to the Rash, and this thing caught her grandmother. So I'm presumably not immune to this. I suppose I'm getting to experience what non-immunes feel all the time.
But the Finns must have a way of detecting this thing and protecting themselves against it. If they didn't, how could they ever have survived? It could have gone on wiping out village after village until they were all gone. So that man Mauri must be protected somehow, and therefore I am safe as well.
The pendant didn't warn me about him. It warned me about ghosts; why wouldn't it warn me about this? Except this isn't directly a threat to my life so it might not, well, recognize the problem.
Everything points to my being safe, but how can I be sure of that? And the risk to the others is so great …
His thoughts ran in tight trapped circles around the problem until the team reached the last rapids before the sentinel mage's “hut”.
They had expected something like a crude wooden house. What they saw ahead of them, beyond the rapids, was an ancient bridge in fairly good shape, on one pier of which was a large bus, somehow turned sideways, on which a couple of private vehicles were piled on top of each other, and the whole thing tied together with steel cables. There was no doubt that this was the sentinel mage's place, for the air was full of seagulls calling and swirling around them.
Hauling the boat out and up the portage and down into the relatively calm waters beyond the rapids, they proceeded to a small wooden dock built around the support pier. Mikkel's call — “Hello? Anyone here?” — stirred up the seagulls into a shrieking cloud, but there was otherwise no immediate response.
“Are we sure this guy is even alive?” Sigrun asked after a few moments.
“You reckon he isn't?” Mikkel replied, puzzled.
“Seagulls love corpses, just saying.”
But at that point the sentinel mage shouted down to them — in Norwegian, to Mikkel's surprise — “Hold on, I'll be right down!”
To Mikkel's left was a long narrow staircase built of metal and wood scrap; before him was a … large metal framework going all the way up to the bridge above. To his right was a large irregular chunk of metal attached to a steel cable which also went all the way up. As he studied this, the chunk abruptly jerked upwards while an open cage dropped down through the framework, bearing with it an extraordinary man.
The man was fat. There was no other word for it, for he had a massive belly that hung over his belt. They all did their best to avoid staring in amazement, for in the little nations, and even to some extent in Iceland, there was seldom enough food to allow much overeating. Although they were careful to avoid his eyes, they saw that he had a big white bushy beard and a completely bald head. All in all, he was most unusual.
“Everyone on board the elevator!” he invited, but when they all piled in and he pushed a lever, crying cheerfully, “And up we go!”, the cage jolted upward perhaps half a meter, and stopped.
“Hmm, I forgot this thing isn't multiperson capable.” Pulling the level back, he continued, “I'll have to reset it. The lot of you take the stairs! It's good for your health!” As soon as they were out of the cage, he pushed the lever again, and the elevator shot upwards as its counterweight dropped down. The cat had been overlooked in their hurry, and stared down at them in terror as she was whisked away. Mikkel wanted to stay and puzzle out the workings of the elevator, but the others were already running up the stairs to rescue their feline teammate, and he perforce followed.
When they reached the top, they found that the ancient bridge had been transformed by the addition of topsoil, leaving a paved path between garden plots, leading to an ornate wooden door that had been built into the side of the bus. Kisu was eyeing a seagull with either suspicion or hunger, and their host was waiting with another seagull perched on his head. Dozens more gulls perched here and there, peering at them intently. “Welcome, foreigners! To my grand home!” he told them cheerfully, “I've got nettle tea brewing and ready for your arrival. I'll let you lot go on your way once you're all checked in.”
“You knew we were coming?” Mikkel asked, puzzled.
“I see very far on the water.”
“Right. This is a good vantage point.”
“I mean, very, very far.” Mikkel could hear the man's grin in his voice as he led them to the bus. “You're lucky you fellas came through my checkpoint. Unlike the last guy who tried to get into the silent lands.”
“Onni.” Mikkel put in, and “Onni?!” Lalli asked, having understood none of the discussion in Danish, but hearing the name.
“Ah yes, that was his name. It's been quite a few weeks. Poor guy figured he could just barge in without review, tut-tut. I had to row over to rescue him from the gulls that mobbed him.”
“Hold on …” Sigrun put in excitedly. “Does this mean you've got him? We don't need to look for him anymore? Give him to us! That's why we're here! Then we'll head right back! We have lives to get back to!”
“What?! Of course not! This isn't a prison! He just had to follow protocol and I let him go. He went in that direction; haven't seen the lad since. Now come! We'll talk indoors.”
“Can I ask about the, uhh, car stack?” Sigrun asked.
“Beautiful, aren't they?”
“Sure. I'm wondering how you got them on top of each other like that.”
“Oh, imagine the power of a thousand wings!” As the man raised his arms dramatically, the bird on his head raised its wings as well, and all the birds perched around them raised theirs likewise. “A simple solution to a simple problem,” he concluded, while the gulls leaned in to stare at the visitors. The team hesitated, looking around at this peculiar display, but there was really no help for it. They followed him into the bus.
Odd though the man was, he did make a good nettle tea, along with fresh bread for the humans and fresh-caught fish for the cat. The bus was, of course, long and narrow, and he had removed most of the seats, leaving only a few in the front where the young people were sent to enjoy their tea while their elders talked to the host. Their elders would have felt more comfortable if he hadn't had a display of knives on the wall behind his seat at a little wooden table.
“Look,” Sigrun said in some annoyance, “We were told this'd just be a real quick stop and —”
“Yes! I'll have you all written down in my log book and then you can go.”
“That's all you do? You keep a list of people who want to go into the woods here?”
“I make sure nobody goes in unnoticed … and nothing comes out unnoticed. You are all aware of what happened in this area?”
Mikkel picked up Missekat, or Kisu as the others called her, and began to stroke her, content to let Sigrun handle the questioning.
“Sort of,” Sigrun answered. “There was an outbreak on the little islands, like a decade ago.”
“Yes! And you know what a Kade is?”
“Uh … kinda?”
“Nasty nuisances, aren't they? I suppose I ought to introduce myself properly! Hello! I am Väinö Väänänen, the sentinel mage assigned to guard this section of the lake, with my personal army!” He gestured at the gull still sitting on his head and several others which were peering in through the open door. “Day and night we make sure nothing worse than an infected donkey decides to start migrating thisaway! And of course make sure no foolish travellers go in willy-nilly and bring something back through their minds. As happened back then.
“See, there used to be several settlements on the archipelagos here. Very low levels of immunity. And that one year, the outbreaks happened. On every single island simultaneously. Nothing much could be done. It was concluded that a Kade had moved into the area, and did what a Kade does. There weren't proper protocols in place to screen for that stuff back then.
“It's retreated back into the woods and is still out there. You can feel its presence waft past sometimes. But the cowardly chicken won't come close now that it knows we're prepared for it!”
“Okay. If it's so dangerous here, why even allow people in?”
He passed a bit of bread to the gull on his head. “People have the right to risk their own lives. There's a plethora of particularly dangerous specimens past these shorelines. Every one of them that is taken out by a foolhardy hunting party is a future disaster prevented.
“But the deal is, if you get infected you do not get to come back out. Not even for quarantine.
“And now you know that! Which means you're ready to be on your way. Let's have you written up. My office is right over here.” He led the way to the other end of the bus, past the knife display, and the party followed, Mikkel draping the cat over his shoulders.
“This is my filing cabinet over here. I admit, it's a bit of a mess.” He opened the doors of the cabinet and all five of them froze in horror.
The cabinet was dripping with blood.
Mikkel stepped to the side, putting himself between the sentinel and the younger members of the team, while Sigrun shifted to put herself shoulder to shoulder with him.
“I'll need a personal item from each of you,” the man told them, holding out a hand casually to receive their offerings.
“So you stab us with them?!” Sigrun demanded.
“What?! No!” He seemed genuinely shocked at the suggestion. “So I'll know if or when you've died out there. Now,” he made shooing gestures, “go on, fetch me some items!”
They retreated to consider this, but for Lalli who remained to ask questions in Finnish. Onni's name figured prominently in his words, indeed he practically shouted it. Glancing over, Mikkel saw the man gesturing at a small model of an owl near the bottom of the cabinet. Though blood had run down the cabinet wall behind it, it itself was clean and Lalli appeared relieved.
“So what gives with this guy? Do we trust him?” Sigrun asked the others harshly. Mikkel translated for Reynir; he himself was unsure.
“I … ah … well, there's a legend I've heard of,” Reynir offered. “There were a couple of travellers, I think they were brothers, and one of them was going somewhere —”
“Quickly,” Mikkel put in.
“Right, yes, so he left something or other behind and if he got hurt or killed the thing would bleed and then the other one would know something had happened. I guess this guy knows how to do that spell so maybe it's safe to trust him. But that means all those things in there are all, um, people who died out there.”
“I think,” Mikkel said, “based on Lalli's expression over there, that Onni left a token here and that it does not indicate that he is dead.”
“So we go on,” Sigrun said with a sigh on hearing Mikkel's translation. He considered urging her again to turn back, but desisted. If he didn't turn back, she wouldn't either, and he would not turn back because Lalli would not. But Reynir …
“No,” Reynir told him flatly.
“I didn't —”
“But you were thinking it. I won't stay here and I won't go back. You need me.” Well, he'd lost that argument days ago. He let it drop.
They passed over their things, a hair brush from Emil (“I have another but that one's my favorite …”); a hair-tie from Reynir, who removed it from his braid and replaced it with a string; Mikkel's small scissors (I probably won't live long enough to worry about my sideburns); a pendant which Sigrun fished out of her shirt, surprising Mikkel who had not known she had any jewelry; a small wooden model of a cat which Lalli placed carefully beside Onni's owl; and even a small piece of Kisu's collar which Mikkel cut off before handing over his scissors.
“Well then,” the sentinel said, relentlessly cheerful, “Come back this way when you return, so you can pick up your items! And to avoid great suffering! And …” he added, turning to Mikkel, “I need to have a quick word with you about your firearms.”
“What about them?” Mikkel touched the shotgun's strap protectively, having no intention of turning that over to this man.
“They're very dangerous.”
“Yes, I'm aware,” Mikkel answered drily. “It's a quality I value in a troll-killing tool.”
“Yes, agreed. But you'd better use it sparingly; the noise will get you killed out here. You'd normally get away with a few gunshots without attracting critters from too far … but these woods harbor one exceptionally nasty critter. It is sensitive to piercing sounds, such as gunshots, and can sense them from dozens of kilometers away. It is named 'Surma'. And it's fast! So if you do have to resort to using that thing, you make sure you change locations real quick, because it is already on its way.”
“We'll … keep that in mind.”
“Excellent! Shoo now! You have nothing to worry about for the first couple of kilometers. I keep this place safe and tidy! You'll know when you've reached the end of my territory.”
And just like that, they were pushed to the east end of the bridge and sent on their way, gulls shadowing them and Mikkel's many questions unanswered. They found the end of the mage's territory, marked by a fence with a gate, and a sign informing them in Icelandic and Swedish, and presumably also in Finnish, “Danger: bad creatures outside. Please close gate after you.”
“What a helpful sign,” Sigrun sighed. They passed through the gate, and Reynir closed it behind them.
Finns are strange and mages are strange and Finnish mages are strangeness-squared.
The evening breeze rustled the … things … which Onni (presumably) had hung all over the tree under which they'd camped, and Mikkel looked up uneasily. Onni had killed, butchered, and skinned some number of grosslings, painted some sort of symbols on their hides, and hung hides and a variety of bones and other body parts all over the tree. It was rather creepy — it was exceedingly creepy — as darkness fell.
How did Onni do it? Not with a rifle, not if the Gull Mage, as Sigrun calls him, told me correctly. Multiple shots to bring down these creatures, and then the time to carve them up and create this … display, would have attracted the Surma-thing and given it plenty of time to catch up with him. If he did it with magic, and didn't collapse helpless on the spot, he's a lot more powerful than Lalli. A lot.
Putting that mystery aside, this all happened a month or so ago; if he made a mistake — just a single mistake, just one splash of blood into a scratch as he killed the grosslings, just a misjudging of whether the Rash was fully dead in the corpses — and he could by now be dead. Or worse.
Mikkel rubbed his eyes for a moment, listened hard. He trusted his ears more than his eyes in this twilight, but for now all he heard was bird-song and insect-song and frog-peeping. And of course the things in the tree stirring in the breeze. Nothing was approaching. He spooned up some more of his stew. Reynir was staring into the fire, lost in his own thoughts, occasionally remembering to eat as well.
“If you get infected you do not get to come back out. Not even for quarantine.” We should have stayed longer. We shouldn't have let that cabinet of his shake us up so much. I should have asked him to explain that statement. If he meant infection by the Rash, well, only Reynir and Onni are vulnerable, and how would we know if they're infected, except by quarantining them and waiting? Does he mean that non-immunes can't return? Ever? Surely he would have said so if he meant that!
So he meant the Kade, right? He had to mean the Kade, and that means he has a way of detecting it, and that means he would have detected it in me, and that means I'm safe from it. Surely. Surely.
Mikkel sighed quietly. Emil started to snore and he nudged the Swede with his foot, pushing him slightly on his side and quieting his breathing.
It doesn't matter as a practical matter, though. If that thing is out here, then I, or Onni, or any of us, could be caught. We have to keep being careful.
And it is out here, somewhere. Why else did Reynir and Lalli react that way?
Reynir closed the gate behind them and Mikkel looked back to see all the seagulls which (or who?) had accompanied them turning back, settling on trees in the sentinel's territory. Not one had flown past the fence.
“Okay, thanks, bye!” Sigrun called to them, then turned away, facing the silent forest, the Silent World, before them. “All right, we're on our own again. You!” She pushed Lalli gently forward. “Lead the way. Show where your mage senses want us to go.”
Lalli stumbled forward a step, stopped, and in the quiet of the day, Mikkel heard him swallow hard. “I gather he doesn't know where we ought to head either,” Mikkel commented to Sigrun. Another misbegotten mission. Worse than the last, looking for one man who's a month ahead of us, could be anywhere, and may already be dead. Or worse. He sighed. It didn't matter. If Lalli went on, and he undoubtedly would, then Mikkel would follow and so would the others.
Lalli went on, and Mikkel followed, and so did the others.
Mere meters from the fence, Reynir slammed to a halt. Sliding the shotgun from his shoulder, Mikkel asked him sharply, “You sense danger? Where?” Sigrun's dagger was in her hand already and Emil and Lalli had both stopped, looking around alertly.
“N-no!” Reynir was shuddering. “It's just … the air out here feels … creepy. Not dangerous, just … creepy!” After a moment he went on, “Okay … the feeling is going away.”
Mikkel looked around again, shrugged at the others, reslung the shotgun. They started forward, Reynir asking the world, or possibly Lalli, “Did you feel how weird the air out here is too? It's not just me, right?” Mikkel, being the only one able to understand the question, rolled his eyes but didn't answer, and Lalli turned back and replied in Finnish, which no one understood except, to a limited extent, Emil. Lalli turned away, took a step, and stopped to shudder in his turn.
Mikkel dropped the shotgun into his hands again, looked around for enemies, reslung it, rubbed his forehead. Just months ago I would have told them both to quit this silliness and get going. Now … I feel like a blind man. What do they perceive? Are we in danger? Can I do anything about it if we are?
As if answering his thoughts, Reynir commented, “There can't be anything dangerous too close by, though. Kitty isn't looking very worried. I guess we can just, uh, keep going. Sorry for the false alarm, everyone.”
Mikkel looked at the cat, yawning and stretching, and remembered Tuuri, at Kastellet, saying that there was no danger because the kitten wasn't worried. There had been danger there and she had not perceived it. He looked around once more, uneasy, and then followed Lalli, who had set forth again. There was nothing else he could do.
They had found the tree in the late afternoon. Even Lalli had appeared surprised by it, but Mikkel thought that he had caught, just for a fleeting moment, a trace of a smile on the little scout's face.
“Well then,” Sigrun had said drily. “At least we know we're on the same path as the guy. Art I like! We're making camp for the night right here.”
Emil had objected, of course, wanting to camp anywhere but the “slaughter site” as he rather accurately termed it, but Mikkel had agreed with Sigrun: “This is a good spot. Onni appears to have set up camp here, which would signal that this is a relatively safe spot. Presumably no troll nests in the immediate vicinity, and we have water. As good as can be!”
Reynir had taken out the rod he'd had jauntily stuck in his pack and used it to draw a rune around their camp. With all he'd seen, Mikkel should have been less surprised than he was that the rod left black lines where it had passed and that the lines were developing a slight blue shimmer as the sky darkened.
“Do you have any insight on where we might find our lost mage?” Mikkel asked quietly when the silence had gone on long enough.
“Nope, not really,” Reynir answered around a mouthful of stew.
“Does Lalli have any more of an idea?” Mikkel asked without much hope.
“I don't think so,” Reynir answered truthfully. “I think we're just going … forward.”
And by going forward without any sort of plan we risk getting the whole team killed. Especially you, Reynir.
“I believe that, for now at least, we might just be banking on sensing his presence if we happen to get close enough," Reynir went on, "Which maybe doesn't sound like the most solid plan …” And wouldn't be a solid plan even if we were looking for him in Reykjavik. Mikkel kept that thought to himself. “… but it's better than nothing! And hopefully Onni has left a lot of camp spots behind as a trail.”
“Hopefully,” Mikkel agreed. “Go to sleep now. It's my watch.”
His watch passed quietly. The insects and the frogs sang and there were no sudden silences to alarm him. At length he stepped over to the open tent and looked down at Sigrun, dreaming in the moonlight.
I can let her sleep. I can take her watch. I'm not too tired and she's so peaceful … No. She'll be furious. Wake her up.
Mikkel shook Sigrun gently awake. “Your watch.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” She yawned. “All quiet?” At his nod, “Good enough.”
“I stand relieved,” Mikkel said softly, and lay down in the warm spot where Sigrun had slept.
The morning was clear and bright, good weather for travelling, not quite so good as a bright winter day, for grosslings would be more able to move about, but still good. As Mikkel and Sigrun struck the tent and packed up their things, Lalli wandered off to examine a string which ran from tree to tree, pine cones tied to it at random intervals. Reynir joined him, Mikkel watching alertly, ready to shout if the non-immune strayed too far from their protection, but Reynir understood his peril, staying close to one or another of the immunes at all times.
Mikkel in his turn took a look at the string, but all he could conclude was that the string was not old and had not been there over the winter, judging by its condition, and therefore that Onni had left it. What Onni intended by leaving it remained a mystery. Reynir simply shrugged when Mikkel asked if he had any idea.
They followed the easiest path, an old and very overgrown road, The vehicles that had been left upon it in the last traffic jam of the Old World had been flung aside with great force, many of them hurled into the branches of the large trees on either side.
“Giant. But not recent, you agree?” Sigrun asked Mikkel quietly as they walked side by side, Reynir a few meters ahead of them, Lalli and Emil some meters beyond him, and Kitty leading the way.
“Agreed. Look at the branches that have grown into the vehicles over there. I think the giant came through many years ago. Decades.”
Sigrun looked around again, nodded. “Good thing. I don't want to run into whatever did this. Taking out a giant … well, I've done it, but not with a green team like this, and certainly not with a non-immune tagging along!”
The day was very quiet and nothing attacked them. They found more strings with pine cones and the occasional leaf, which at least assured them that they had not strayed from Onni's path. As evening shadows grew long, they camped again, sitting around the fire mostly in silence, for there was little to say. All night, insects sang undisturbed and in the morning they set forth again.
They found the airplane mid-morning. It was one of the smaller types and had evidently tried to land on the road, tearing itself apart against the trees and the vehicles already there. So much aluminum, theirs for the taking … but this was not a quest for treasure. Mikkel looked around, carefully fixing landmarks in his mind, ensuring that — in the unlikely event that he survived this adventure — he could come back to this spot.
And then they went on.
Not all the vehicles had been thrown into the trees, and not all of them were … empty. Kitty turned abruptly to face one small car, bushing out and sending speaking glances at the human team members. They cursed softly in their various languages and tiptoed quietly past and away, the car and whatever lurked within remaining behind, unmoving.
They were still too close for comfort when they came to a crossroads in the road they were following. Onni's strings extended across the road leading to their left and the road straight ahead. “Which direction do we pick?” Sigrun whispered.
“I think we can follow the guidance of these things,” Mikkel whispered back, tapping one of the strings. “From my observations it appears as if Onni has been fencing off roads that he did not take.”
They studied the situation for a moment before he went on. “Perhaps he —”
Branches cracked, smashed out of the way as the troll-infested car crawled after them on multiple multi-jointed claw-tipped legs.
“Go go go!” Sigrun shouted, and Lalli seized Reynir's hand and ran down the road to their right, dragging the Icelander behind him, while the others ran as well, staying between the non-immune and danger. They had run perhaps a hundred meters before Sigrun slowed to a stop. “Huh. It's really, really slow,” she observed, not even slightly out of breath. “We don't even need to run.”
“Okay,” Emil agreed, panting slightly, “but I'm pretty sure we'll have to deal with it eventually.”
Lalli continued to pull Reynir along, determined to keep him far from the danger even if, as Sigrun said, they were relatively safe.
“I know how we get rid of it,” Sigrun answered with a predator's smile. “Mikkel! Dig out the axe! We're trapping this little slowpoke neatly and quietly.”
A few powerful strokes, and Mikkel had two saplings cut down and trimmed.
“That's it, come this way!” Sigrun crooned, still smiling, beckoning the creature on. “Comesie, comesie, good trollie trollie.”
The troll-infested car crawled determinedly toward the annoying uninfected being before it, pushing between two trees … and Mikkel from one side, Emil from the other, rammed their saplings through its window openings and out past the trees. With one sapling crossing in front of the trees, the other crossing behind, both held in place by the car's own frame, the car-troll was unable to move in any direction and simply thrashed its dozens of limbs in a desperate and frustrated attempt to reach its intended prey. The troll was so deeply entangled with the structure of the car that it appeared quite unable to free itself.
The three of them gave each other thumbs-up, Mikkel allowed himself a smile that was a little more than slight, and Sigrun, grinning, told the creature, “Enjoy your new spot!”
They went on and the rest of the day was very quiet. They camped by a stream that ran into a pool, one of Onni's campsites, Mikkel was pleased to see, for he had decorated another tree with grossling parts. Emil rolled his eyes in disgust but didn't argue or complain. Reynir, once again, drew runes around the campsite.
While Reynir fixed dinner, Emil and Lalli on guard, Sigrun and Mikkel strolled over to the most recent strings. Sigrun tapped the pine cones thoughtfully. “I'd really like to know what these are for. Because now I don't think they're for marking which path he didn't go. See?” She pointed. “There's a bunch of them over on that side too!”
Mikkel studied the far strings, unconnected to those near the campsite, and sighed. “I suppose we'll just have to ask the guy once we find him.” There being nothing else to say, they returned to the camp.
“Reynir,” Mikkel asked as they approached, “care to share what the intended function of this stave is?”
“Sure!” Reynir was enthusiastic as ever. Sometimes he made Mikkel feel quite tired. “It's based on a design I've seen being used for directing sheep! It'll subconsciously suggest to any roaming creatures to change their path a bit, and steer clear of our campsite. Basically it says: 'Hey, why not walk around that way instead? Might as well!'”
Mikkel considered his words. “I presume it won't provide protection in case we are detected.”
“Nope!” Reynir was entirely too cheerful. “Only affects aimless wanderers. But it'll keep things from accidentally trampling over us as we sleep! We just have to stay unnoticed.”
Mikkel nodded slowly. Staying unnoticed was the problem, but they should be safe for the night. They all settled down for their supper of stew for the humans and a fresh-caught fish from the pond for Kitty.
They were just scraping the last of the stew from their bowls when Kitty sat up abruptly, bushing out and hissing. Somewhere off in the forest, back the way they'd come, branches were breaking.
“Uggh, It managed to break itself free?” Sigrun waved a hand in a gesture of frustration and disgust. “Fine, let's trap it and kill it this time.” Mikkel glanced over at Reynir to see him already putting on his mask, and smiled slightly at the Icelander. Reynir's responses were getting faster.
The car-troll had broken loose by actually breaking the posts between the front windows and the windshield. The top of the car had fallen sideways and was now dragging on the ground, making the creature even slower. For a moment they regarded it, thinking the problem easily solved … and then they saw what followed behind it.
It was a giant. Worse, it was armored, for it had grown within a cylindrical tank, a railway car, which had, presumably, once contained milk, judging by the faint remains of a cow logo on its side. The thing had many large, multi-jointed legs, but they were all under the front third of the tank; the back of the tank dragged, slowing it.
Mikkel looked down at the rune on which he stood, its faint blue glow just beginning to be visible as the evening fell. Reynir followed his gaze, shouted at him, “No! It's not going to work! It clearly already knows we're here!”
“Run run run!!” Sigrun cried, and they did, Mikkel pausing just long enough to scoop up his backpack. The tank-troll followed. “At least it's also really —” But her last word was cut off as the thing lunged, throwing itself forward, slamming into trees and sending the team fleeing, Emil and Kitty to the left, the others to the right. They survived only because the massive creature was slow on turns and unable to catch them when they dodged. Daringly, Emil and Kitty ran around behind it, between it and the car-troll, which was still doggedly following, and rejoined the team.
“Everyone get into the woods!” Sigrun ordered. “It'll get stuck on something and we can shake it off our trail.”
Mikkel was no sprinter and he had shrugged on his heavy backpack as he ran. It was hard for him to keep up, so he was still far back when the giant picked up and hurled a log at them. Fortunately the log crashed into a tree before swinging around and knocking Lalli down. Mikkel ran desperately, but he was slow and the footing was difficult for a man whose balance was always a bit uncertain. Emil and Reynir had lifted off the log and freed the little scout before he could reach them.
As he came even with Sigrun, she growled, perhaps to him or just to the universe in general, “It's already made so much noise, it won't matter if we make some more.”
“I'm inclined to agree, but I'd also argue that —”
But it was too late; she'd drawn her pistol and emptied the magazine into the giant, the bullets ricocheting off its tank armor. “We'd need something heavier than bullets to really damage its insides,” he finished.
They ran again, Mikkel half-carrying Lalli, who was still a bit stunned from being knocked down. The tank-troll was slowed by smashing its way through trees, and the density of the forest prevented it from throwing more logs. Still, it was slowly gaining on them. Emil looked back at the onrushing giant, his eyes wide with fear. “I … I'm going to try something. If I can get an explosive inside its shell, it'll get absolutely shredded! I need you to keep it distracted from me!”
Sigrun and Mikkel glanced at each other for a bare moment before Mikkel had to return his attention to his feet. Emil was neither troll-hunter nor soldier, and was, by a few months, the youngest of the team, but he was the Cleanser who could do more with less and if anyone could blow up a giant, it was Emil. “Go,” Sigrun ordered, and to the others, “Let's go grab this thing's attention! This way, big guy!”
They ran to the right, shouting, while Emil ran silently to the left. Sigrun and Lalli stopped in plain sight of the thing, the Captain calling, “That's right! Good boy! Turn slowly and nicely, I know you want to squash us!” It turned and Mikkel saw Emil vanish behind it.
The tank-troll turned away from the tempting uninfected beings before it. “Excuse me, what are you doing now?” Sigrun shouted, still trying to get its attention. “Why are you trying to crawl in that direction?” The creature turned to the right towards a rocky hillside, crawled away with Sigrun and Lalli racing along beside it and Emil carefully climbing the rusty ladder on the back. Mikkel followed far back with Reynir, carrying Kitty, by his side. “Has it had enough?” Sigrun asked Lalli, pointlessly. “Is it trying to flee from us by climbing up on the boulders?”
The monster had by no means had enough. Pulling itself up on the boulders of the hillside, it abruptly threw its weight to its left, rolling on its long axis down at the two who had been parallelling it, rolling towards a shallow lake.
“No!” Mikkel cried quite unconsciously as first Lalli, then Sigrun, dived into the lake and the tank-troll rolled in after them, Emil clinging desperately to the ladder.
Mikkel charged unhesitatingly into the lake, headed for where he'd last seen his teammates. Sigrun surfaced in front of him — she can swim, you idiot! — and shouted, “I lost the little guy! I saw him jump away from the tanker somewhere over here!”
Waist-deep in the murky water, they felt around, Mikkel imagining all the terrible injuries one could suffer diving into unknown waters. But it was a shallow dive, I saw it. He shouldn't have gone deep enough to hit anything … but the water's shallow … where is he?
Reynir, who had been left on the shore, ran into the lake as well, Kitty held out in front to check for threats and, apparently, for lost teammates. He carried her past his two elders, then, seeing her wriggling and looking downwards, dropped her on his shoulder, reached deep into the filthy water and heaved. Lalli came up gasping and choking, vomiting water, but alive.
The tank-troll was still struggling towards them, but the floor of the lake provided little traction for the heavy monster and they were able to stay ahead of it, Reynir still supporting Lalli. With the giant right-side-up again, Emil climbed on top. Mikkel watched when his footing was stable enough for him to direct his attention elsewhere. Emil had opened an access hatch on top — the giant's tissues, under pressure within the confines of the tank, bulged out — Emil had drawn his pistol and plunged it in — multiple muffled shots — Emil was climbing down shouting, “I did it! I planted the explosives!” Covered in grossling blood and slime, his face nonetheless glowed with excitement. “It's going to get shredded!”
The rest of the team waded to the shore, waited for Emil to join them, and then ran, Sigrun shouting “Let's go go go!”
The explosion was impressive, even contained as it mostly was by the tank. The sound shook the forest and Mikkel remembered, uneasily, the warning about “Surma”. We've made entirely too much noise. And yet, what else could we have done?
The tank-troll pulled itself out of the lake, continued its pursuit more slowly. The team paused for a moment, looking back. “Well, that's a bust,” Sigrun said, “it's still coming for us.”
“No,” Mikkel answered with only a little more confidence than he really felt, “it's done for.” The tank was holed in several places and blood was spewing from all of them. “It might hold on to life for a moment, but that wound will drain it. Come, let's head back to the road. It will give up the pursuit soon.” He glanced over at Emil, who was still smiling with pleasure despite being coated with blood and slime, and at Lalli, who was dripping water and algae. Switching to Icelandic, he added, “Reynir, keep some distance from Emil.” Reynir was already looking at Emil in terror and staying well back, Kitty riding on his shoulders.
Emil quite suddenly looked down at himself and realized just how filthy he was. With a cry of horror, he ran to the nearest pond in this well-watered forest and threw himself in, rolling around in a frenzy to get it off, get it off, get it off! Mikkel glanced back to see Lalli patiently standing guard, and so the other three went on without them. The two young men could easily catch up.
“This day hasn't been annoying enough,” Sigrun muttered as they reached the road, for the car-troll was still dragging itself along in pursuit. “Kill it?”
“Let's find another place to trap it,” Mikkel said with a sigh. “We'll kill it then.”
Behind the car-troll, once again, came the tank-troll, wounded but still determined. There being no honor among trolls, it crawled right over the smaller troll, mashing it quite flat and unquestionably killing it. The team continued, walking since the thing seemed unable to put on its former bursts of speed. Emil and Lalli caught up and they fell back into their normal positions, Kitty leading, Emil and Lalli behind her, then Reynir, and finally Mikkel and Sigrun as rear guard.
They had walked in this way for about five minutes when the tank-troll finally staggered, stopped, trembled on its many legs, and collapsed with a crash. “Goodbye, was nice meeting you, big guy,” Sigrun said with no hint of mockery. Mikkel glanced at her and decided not to comment. “Does anyone remember what equipment we left behind at the campsite?” she went on.
“Uhh, the food pot?" Emil offered, "And the big tarp! Some blankets? And … junk.”
Sigrun sighed. “All right, it's worth trying to pick those up. We'll have to check if we attracted any more critters. If we didn't we can —”
“Hold on now!” Mikkel interrupted, dropping a big hand on her shoulder. “You're forgetting a certain troll with the initial 'S'.” With all his exposure to magic, he had learned that it was a bad idea to name things unnecessarily. “If what we were told is true, that thing might very well be on its way to our previous location. For all we know, it is currently back there on this road even as we speak.”
“Yeah, you're right,” she agreed reluctantly. “We can just try to find some new equipment. I guess.”
They camped for the night in a ruined house. It rained. The roof leaked.
Pots and pans hold up for decades even in a ruined house, but little else does. There was nothing resembling a tarp or a blanket to be found in their shelter. Mikkel tied the best cookware to his backpack, and they set forth again. They could probably find some place to raid along the way, and if they couldn't, well, they'd bivouac in some other ruin. At least it was a good sunny day and few grosslings would be active.
They had a long quiet hike in the bright sunlight, stopping once for a lunch of the dried fish which the Gull Mage had given them. In the mid-afternoon, they found rusty coils of barbed wire beside the road, and beyond them what was clearly a post-Rash settlement. Carefully working their way through the coils, they reached an opening in the crude wall that surrounded it.
“Tsk,” Sigrun observed, “some idiots tried to build a settlement next to a road. Rookie mistake! Looks ancient, bet they didn't last past the first few years. Probably had a whole bunch of non-immunes in there. Nothing to see here, moving on!”
As she turned away, Emil held out a hand to stop her and pointed out, “That sign there says 'warehouse' in Finnish. Just pointing that out in case we're still planning on raiding places for some tarps and junk.”
“Hmm.” Sigrun turned back, regarding the settlement speculatively. “Hey, pipsqueak!” she said, looking over at Lalli, “Trolls. How many? Good? Bad? Understand?”
The scout studied the settlement for a long moment, clearly using his strange powers. “Some inside,” he said in heavily accented Swedish. “Not many. Not big. Not move around.”
“Sounds good enough to me,” Sigrun said with a shrug.
“You think it's safe enough?” Mikkel asked.
“Well, we're getting closer to a city, so we probably won't run into any safer places to raid any time soon. We grab what you think we need and get back on the road!”
“Someone will need to stay outside and stand guard,” Mikkel pointed out.
“I'll stay!” Emil volunteered. “I killed the last troll, I deserve a break!”
“Excellent!” Mikkel agreed, pulling off his heavy backpack. “Keep watch over your Icelandic friend.”
“Uh, what? No, I'm coming with you! I killed the last troll, I deserve more action. Sigrun can stay.”
“Nuh-uh! I'm the captain, I do not baby-sit!”
“Only one way to solve this fairly,” Mikkel intervened. “You'll draw straws. Let me gather some …” He turned away, gathered some grass stems, bit one off to make it shorter than the others. Now, how did he want this to turn out?
If Emil had volunteered — or remained volunteered — then Mikkel would have accepted that. But if Mikkel had to choose, better to leave Sigrun guarding Reynir. She was a better shot than Emil and better at close range as well. Yes. Sigrun should stay behind. He had only to arrange it … so.
Sigrun immediately seized the one stem temptingly sticking up just a little bit above the others, and then threw it down in disgust when it proved to be the short straw. Still, she was a good sport about it and dutifully remained behind with Reynir and the kitty while the other three cautiously moved into the settlement, Mikkel with his shotgun slung ready and the others with their hands on their daggers.
The builders did well, Mikkel thought, given the probable skills and knowledge they'd had. They'd built an outer wall out of whatever scrap they could find, with the single opening protected by coils of barbed wire and overlooked by a tower which appeared ideal for sniping, and then an inner wall with the single opening on the opposite side from the outer opening, and within that, a large platform raised a good twenty feet off the ground with huts built on top. Probably put the children up there for protection. Much good it appears to have done them, though.
As Sigrun had suggested, the place had been abandoned — by human beings at least — for many decades. Parts had collapsed, leaving debris and openings that could house grosslings, even very large grosslings. Mikkel and Emil looked around uneasily, glancing frequently at Lalli for hints of where enemies might hide.
“Sooo … where exactly are the bad guys hanging out?” Emil asked, glancing over at Lalli. “Can you tell?”
The mage studied their surroundings. “There direction,” he answered in broken Swedish, pointing off to their left, “Inside cover. Not knowing how many precise.” They moved cautiously forward to the building labelled as “warehouse” which, after some consideration, he pronounced empty.
The door was heavy glass, but they thought it better not to try to break it and possibly attract unwanted attention. Mikkel and Emil worked together to carefully force it open while Lalli stood guard. Mikkel stopped just inside the doorway, looking about, listening, even sniffing at the air. The place was indeed a warehouse with orderly racks of gear and seemed to have been so well-sealed that he could not even smell rodent droppings. Everything was covered with dust and cobwebs, and many shelves had bent or collapsed. There was no sign, sound, or smell of grosslings and, of course, Lalli had said there were none. Though the Dane now believed that magic existed without question, he was not entirely confident of its effectiveness and preferred to use his own senses to check. As the place seemed safe and empty, he dragged the glass door shut again, feeling safer as always with a door between him and the dangerous outside.
Since it appeared that there were plenty of salvageable — or semi-salvageable — items in the warehouse, Mikkel directed Lalli to stand watch against attackers while he and Emil searched, scrambling over fallen shelves and sneezing as they disturbed decades of dust. Emil wanted playthings: a dart board, board games, cards, an odd cube with moving parts which neither of them recognized as a Rubik's cube. Mikkel advised him, with a sigh, “You may bring anything you want so long as you carry it yourself.” Unsurprisingly, this caused everything to end up on the floor, except the cube.
Far back in the warehouse, Mikkel had collected reasonable facsimiles of the gear they needed when Lalli called softly, “Hey! Hey! Alert!” Having found a working set of binoculars, Mikkel was able to get a good look at what the scout had observed: a troll oozing its way from the ruins of a building not far away. Fortunately the troll's flesh withered and burned in the bright sunshine and it was forced to retreat. Good enough, but Lalli had said there were more.
“Well, we don't need to worry about that one,” Mikkel advised Emil, “It's already injured itself. But let's pack up and leave immediately, before we have more of them.” They hurriedly bundled their prizes into a tarp and began working their way through the debris back to Lalli.
“Mikkelll!” Lalli screamed, backing away hurriedly from the glass door as a second troll — so big as to be almost a giant — charged the heavy glass with a crash that shook the building. The glass was thick and reinforced, but a bullseye fracture showed that it would not last long. Lalli retreated towards the others.
But we can manage this. We'll have to shoot the thing — it's too big for us to take it out with daggers — and then we'll have to run for it, in case this Surma-thing is following. At least this time we have the gear.
“Stay calm,” Mikkel told the others. “We will simply gun this one down and swiftly run past it.” He dropped the shotgun into his hands and Emil drew his pistol. “We can just leave this settl—”
The troll spit on the glass, a mass of disgusting yellow stuff which hissed as it splattered to the ground. The monster reared up, pressing against the already cracked glass, drooling more vileness.
“Is that thing puking acid at us?” Emil whispered in disbelief, and then exclaimed, “Nobody shoot it! The glass will shatter and its body will splurt all over the place like a fountain! What if it burns right through our flesh into our organs? Or what if … what if … I get that on my face?!”
Mikkel reslung his shotgun, tried to think. They'd been all the way to the back and the other exit was blocked by fallen shelves. They'd never get through there in time. But there was a lot of gear in here; there had to be something they could do! If only Emil would shut up and let him think!
The troll was throwing itself against the glass, sheltering in the shadow of the building. The sunlight would hurt it, but it wasn't going to die before breaking in. “I know what we need to do,” Mikkel said slowly, hoping the plan would work out. “Follow my lead.”
They retreated to the back of the warehouse, pulling down more of the well-wrapped tarps, collecting goggles intended long ago for swimmers and heavy work gloves that fit over even Mikkel's regular gloves. Hastily cutting slits in the tarps, Mikkel made them into crude ponchos for all three. With ancient duct tape wrapped many times around their calves and the largest tent he could find draped over the three of them, they would be shielded as best he could manage. A “window” in the tent would allow them, or at least him, to see where they were going. As the troll continued to crash against the door, they quickly and quietly tied coat racks and heavy daggers together to make three boar spears.
They had barely finished when a resounding crash told them the troll was inside. “Get the tent. Get ready. All covered?” On their whispered agreements, Mikkel threw a chunk of debris hard across the room to get the troll's attention and the three ran forward under the tent, Mikkel leading, Emil behind him, Lalli last since he was the weakest, and all their spears poking out from under the tent.
The troll was before them, turning back from the distraction, and Mikkel rammed his spear into it as it sprayed the front of the tent with acid. He could only hope the tent and the tarp-poncho would protect him long enough, as he shouted, “Get it! Get its head while it's down!”
The other two were stabbing wildly with their own spears, and as soon as the thing stopped moving, they all simply dropped their spears and ran. “Sigrun! Take Reynir and go!” Mikkel ordered in his best parade-ground bellow. “They spew acid! Do not come to help us! We'll catch up with you!”
It was the way of the Rash: if one person in a crowd of sick people changed, then those around him were more likely to change as well. And whatever form the first took, those around him were likely to take the same form. One acid-spewing troll, therefore, implied a whole colony of them.
They were out of the warehouse now, through the opening in the inner wall, running around the half-circle between the two walls, trying to reach the opening in the outer wall, but something crashed down on the tent and Emil was screaming “Get it off! Get it off!” and Lalli was out of the tent and running beside Mikkel.
“Drag it into the sun!” Mikkel shouted, and he and Lalli were pulling the tent forward while Emil struggled to gain his feet under the weight of the troll and more trolls were diving down off the wall. Mikkel was in the sunlight, and Lalli, but Emil …
Mikkel gave a desperate yank, pulling the tent, the troll, and Emil himself into the full sunlight, and the troll, shrieking and writhing, simply came apart. Emil rolled to Mikkel's feet, and the big Dane yanked him up and ran, half-carrying him, chasing after the much faster scout and, far beyond him, Sigrun and Reynir, who had scooped up Kitty and Mikkel's backpack.
In the bright sunshine, the three scavengers slowed to a walk and shed their protective gear. As they caught up to the others, Sigrun called, “Sooo … you guys okay, or …?”
“Yes,” Mikkel answered casually. “We found everything we needed, no issues.” They had not been injured, after all, and attacks by trolls were just what you expected in a ruin.
“Geeze, that settlement!” Sigrun exclaimed, not quite so casual as Mikkel. “Were ancient people brain damaged? How stupid do you have to be to try surviving this close to a city? We have those kinds of ruins all over Norway too.”
“I wouldn't judge them too harshly. I assume they didn't yet know what was to come. After all, in the beginning many of them believed they only needed to shield themselves from a disease and humans who spread it. By the time they found out what was coming for them from the ruins they might have been surrounded and unable to resettle. Or perhaps all it took was a few infected rodents to make it past the barricades.”
Mikkel fell silent, remembering stomping vermin beasts a kilometer from his home. That was the greatest fear: vermin beasts, and not enough cats to control them. There was an on-going project in Sweden to breed immune rats, mice, and squirrels, the idea being to burn an area, then flood it with immune vermin to prevent non-immune vermin from moving in. The trouble was that the non-immune trait was dominant, and all it would take was one lusty non-immune to undo all their good work.
The team made camp in an area liberally surrounded by Onni's strings, which proved to work well for hanging up their clothes to dry after Mikkel washed them. Reynir, accompanied by a reluctant Emil, strolled off for some privacy and found recent tracks: the trail of a large and heavy bear, and the parallel footprints of a man. “We're catching up,” Sigrun observed with satisfaction when they were pointed out to her.
Their camp was situated next to a pond where each took advantage of the opportunity to bathe after Lalli confirmed it to be safe. Reynir drew his runes around their “tent”, which is to say a tarp hung over one of Onni's strings and staked down on the sides. Emil took first watch, Lalli second, then Mikkel, and finally Sigrun.
During Emil's watch, he fiddled endlessly with the Rubik's cube, twisting this way and that before giving up and discarding it. Taking over the watch, Lalli scooped up the cube and tried it himself. Though none of them knew what a Rubik's cube was, it was obvious that one might want to make each side its own color, and this they both attempted to no avail. With a rare expletive, Lalli also cast it aside and devoted his efforts to watching for danger. Mikkel ignored the cube as it had no practical purpose and would only serve to distract him from his duty. All three of their watches were very quiet.
In the wee hours, Mikkel was awakened from a troubled sleep by quiet splashes. Rolling over and sitting up, he was horrified to see by dim moonlight a number of cow beasts walking out of the lilypad-covered pond directly towards the camp. Silently, working by feel, he covered Reynir's mouth to keep him from making any noise and pressed his mask upon him. Waking instantly, the non-immune pulled on his mask and sat up, likewise staring at the oncoming herd of grosslings in horror. Sigrun, sitting on a fallen log keeping watch, held her rifle ready but otherwise stayed still and silent. Emil and Lalli were awake too now, also keeping still but wary.
A herd of normal cattle could easily trample them; a herd of cow beasts could do the same even if they did not transform in some horrible way to attack, and a few rifles and a shotgun could not possibly stop them. The team's only option was to try not to attract attention, and to hope Reynir's runes worked as advertised and didn't catch fire or do something else unfortunate.
The herd, a couple of dozen strong, had been directly approaching the camp, but instead of bulling straight through, some went around to the left and some to the right, then rejoined and proceeded off to the north to whatever strange destination they sought.
No one slept the rest of the night.
In the morning, as Emil and Sigrun packed their gear, mostly into Mikkel's huge backpack, Mikkel and Reynir took a look at the deep hoofprints of the cow beasts. “Very heavy,” the Dane observed. “At least as heavy as normal cattle. And they must have walked straight through that pond.”
“Do you know what this means?” Reynir asked him in some excitement.
“Yes. There is a lot of beast activity during summer.”
“No, not that,” the Icelander answered with a look of annoyance, “What this means is that my stave worked perfectly! I'm a proper mage now!” He gazed at the hoofprints with a proud smile. Off to his right, Lalli stooped to pick up the discarded Rubik's cube and tuck it into a pocket of his cloak.
“We're done packing, stop yapping!” Sigrun ordered. “I want to catch up to that guy already so that we can go home!”
It was a bright sunny day, the kind that kept grosslings in their lairs, and the team hiked for hours without disturbances. “Mikkel,” Reynir asked after they'd walked for a while, “how could there be an entire herd of cow beasts? I thought it was rare for animals — or people! — to change.”
“Well, it is, on a population-wide basis. But you can get clusters for two, maybe three, reasons. One is that the more an animal or person is exposed to the Rash, the more likely they are to change. A herd of dairy cows, maybe in a barn together or a small pasture, once they were infected, would re-expose each other over and over again throughout the incubation period, raising the chances for all of them to change.” Reynir nodded slowly. Growing up in sheltered Iceland, he hadn't learned or needed to learn all the characteristics of the Rash, only that it was contagious and utterly lethal to a non-immune like himself.
“Then too, there seem to be genes which affect the probability of changing. Scientists in Sweden have bred strains of mice that are not immune but don't change; if they get the Rash they always die of it. On the other hand, there are other strains that are very likely to change. So this herd, probably closely related to each other, may have been of a strain likely to change.” He gestured vaguely in the general direction that the creatures had gone.
“It's also believed that if one animal or person changes, others infected around it will be more likely to change as well, though no one's been able to pin down the effect separate from the other causes. So, anyway, mostly you run into individuals, but occasionally you'll run into a group, maybe even a herd, as we did.”
“Thank you.” Travel had been broadening — terrifying but broadening — for Reynir.
Later, passing a battered road sign for Joensuu, Mikkel wondered aloud, “Do we have any plans for when we draw near this city?”
“We'll figure it out when we get there,” Sigrun replied with an insouciant grin.
An hour or so later it clouded up and soon began to rain, gently at first and then a downpour. They kept walking, Sigrun being determined to find Onni as fast as possible so they could go home. Mikkel forbore to argue or point out that they were a month behind their quarry as he preferred hiking, even in the rain, to sitting around.
Lalli was not enjoying the rain and began checking ruins that they passed, coming up after a few minutes with a lime-green plastic umbrella and strolling along happily dry with Kitty hurrying to stay beside him out of the rain if not out of the wet road. When Reynir joined him as well, however, he started checking more ruins and came up with, surprisingly, another lime-green umbrella to give to the Icelander. Mikkel supposed that there had been a peddler of lime-green umbrellas who came through this area just before the Great Dying.
Taking pity on the cat, Reynir scooped her up and carried her, being joined by Sigrun and Emil under the shelter of his umbrella. Lalli led the way with his umbrella, and Mikkel followed in the rain as rear guard. He could have asked for his own umbrella but he was already so wet that it didn't really matter and he preferred to have his hands free, just in case.
They had walked along in this fashion for another few minutes before Kitty suddenly alerted to something to their right. All turned to look and spotted a poodle trying to shelter under some trees, whining.
“Don't let its pitiful look trick you,” Sigrun ordered quietly. “It has an ancient collar; it's a beast, not an immune wild dog. Reynir, shoo! We need to put it down as silently as we can.”
“Yeah, not me,” Emil answered as Reynir ran to Lalli's protection and Mikkel readied his shotgun. “I have issues with beast dogs.” Mikkel nodded to himself, remembering soft-hearted Emil's reaction to killing the dog beast back in Silent Denmark.
“Fine, I'll do it,” Sigrun replied, “Mikkel, be my back-up if it tries anything. Dog, come here!” When the dog didn't move, “Come ooon,” she crooned, “come over!” As it began to run towards them, “Yes! Good boy!” Dagger ready, she added, “This won't hurt a —”
The dog beast changed. Its mouth opened … and opened … and opened, becoming a maw half the length of its body, lined with fangs as long as Mikkel's fingers. Just as it lunged for Sigrun, Mikkel pulled his trigger. At such close range, a mere four or five meters, even he could not miss with a shotgun, and the monster dropped, instantly dead.
“And now we run once again,” Mikkel ordered, grabbing Sigrun's arm and pulling her along in pursuit of the others, who were already running.
“Right you are! Dog might have dog friends nearby, and beasts like roaming around when it's overcast.”
“No, no. Remember, we need to watch out for Surma.” He was puffing with effort; he was not a sprinter at all. “We never know when it might be on our heels.” They continued to run for a few hundred meters to a road with plenty of woods between them and the site of the fight.
“Yeahhh …” Sigrun continued the discussion not even slightly winded as they slowed to a stop. “I'm honestly not so worried about that. I'd say —”
Aawwooooooooooo
The howl echoed through the woods. Off to their right, something furry streaked past, briefly seen as it passed a gap in the trees. “Did you see that?” Sigrun whispered. Before Mikkel could answer, the thing raced into another gap and turned to stand regarding them.
“Hukka,” Lalli whispered to all of them. It was recognizable as a wolf beast, its body longer, taller, and skinnier than a normal wolf and black and glossy with grossling slime, its original wolf pelt still clinging to its back like a cloak, its jaws greatly lengthened and enlarged, and its tongue so long as to hang out even from its lengthened jaws.
“I think it's seen us,” Emil whispered unnecessarily.
All their daggers were out now, and Mikkel's shotgun was ready. “It's a wolf,” Sigrun whispered. “It'll stay in the shadows unless it gets agitated. We back away slowly, and make sure we don't get its pack on our tail too.”
Aawwooooooooooo
They looked behind them to see at least a dozen more wolf beasts — hukka, as Lalli called them — running down a hill on the other side of the road, making for shelter under an overpass.
“Change in plans:” Sigrun whispered urgently, “we're going this way instead.” She pointed up the embankment and away from all of the creatures. “Don't run, walk! Slow boring movements. We just have to move out of eyesight without exciting any of them. Wolf beasts like hanging out in packs, but don't like being the first one to set chase.” They moved away, slowly and quietly, without sudden movements, and the monsters remained peacefully under the overpass.
After a couple of hundred meters, the team felt safe enough to run, and they did. For some moments, all seemed well and then … far behind them, out of their sight, a runnel of water from the continuing rain dislodged a tiny pebble from the long-neglected overpass. Falling on a wolf beast, the pebble startled it into a forward lunge and all the others followed. The hunt was on.
Aawwooooooooooo
Attempting to outrun the wolves was hopeless. Even unburdened, human beings cannot outrun normal wolves, and this team was not unburdened nor were the wolves normal. As the front-running beast nearly snapped at Emil's heels, he snatched the lime-green umbrella from Reynir and opened it directly in the thing's face. Retaining some wolf instincts, the creature recoiled, falling back and away. The other monsters hesitated, startled and confused, while the team continued to flee.
Abruptly Kitty struggled loose from Reynir's grasp and ran from him. “Kitty, no!” he cried. “Come back to us!”
Instead, the cat ran to a large, sturdy oak in the overgrown yard beside a ruined house and shot up it like a squirrel. “Follow cat!” Lalli shouted in his heavily accented Swedish, “Do what cat! Into tree! Now!”
They followed the cat, scrambling hastily into the tree, Emil as the last one just ahead of snapping jaws. Lalli stabbed at the creature with his umbrella, knocking it back. “This won't end well at all …” Sigrun observed as they made themselves secure in the branches.
Aawwooooooooooo
“Any thoughts on our next move?” Mikkel asked as the monsters raced in circles around the tree, occasionally leaping disturbingly high at them.
“We can't just sit here and hope they go away!” Emil put in.
“I know we can't!” she answered, “We'll starve to death before they leave! And they're making way too much noise …”
Emil opened his umbrella in the face of a beast that leaped too close, but another leapt, clamping down on the handle, just missing Emil's hands which he hastily jerked away, and landing with the umbrella in its jaws. That was the last straw for Sigrun. “I refuse to die in a tree. That's where cowards go to die.” Mikkel glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow as he wondered about Norwegian culture and cowards in trees. “At least we have a good vantage point,” she went on.
Drawing her pistol, Sigrun gestured to the others to get ready. Emil drew his own pistol while Mikkel unslung his shotgun and Lalli his rifle. At her nod, they all opened fire and the slaughter began. Dead and dying beasts all around the tree, Sigrun hastily scrambled down shouting, “Get all of them! Don't let any get away! They'll just come back to hunt us later! Leave no tail standing!”
As the other continued to shoot down the grosslings, Lalli abruptly stopped, looking off into the woods beyond the house. “Something else bad coming!” he shouted. “Hiding!” He pushed Reynir toward the ruined house, the others fleeing as well.
“Great!” Sigrun muttered to Mikkel as they ran, “I bet it's the big guy.”
Lalli hung back, allowing the others to precede him. As he fled, just before he reached the shelter of a ruined wall, the Rubik's cube slipped from the pocket of his cloak and fell behind him. Unable to give up the challenge, he started to crawl out to retrieve it, then hastily jerked back into cover as something large loomed in the woods.
The whole team crouched, crowded together in the ruin, peeking as best they could through a gap in the debris as something crunched ominously towards them. They barely breathed as they waited and then …
Moooo
One of the cow beasts, still draped with some of the lilypads which had stuck to it as it walked through the pond, stalked slowly forward, eyes on the dead wolf beasts. Behind it the watchers could hear more crunching as the rest of the herd approached. Mikkel could feel Emil and Reynir relaxing their tension, while Sigrun and Lalli remained on alert as did he. They knew that a herd of normal cattle would be a serious threat to their small party, and there was no telling how much more dangerous these cow beasts would be.
The concerns of the military team members were justified when the herd began to graze on the wolf beasts, tearing them apart with fangs such as no cow ever sported. ”Ewww,” Sigrun muttered, speaking for all of them. “Let's vanish!” They carefully and quietly slipped through the ruins and escaped, running for all they were worth once they were out of earshot.
When they finally stopped, Mikkel and Emil were winded, Reynir and Sigrun were panting, and Lalli was completely unaffected, having spent most of his young life running around Finnish forests as a scout. Once she caught her breath, Sigrun declaimed, “What have we learned? Overcast makes all the beasts around here too eager to come out and play! In the future we set up camp and hunker in place for days like these. Rest up a bit, you know.”
As she spoke, Lalli was checking the pockets of his cloak and Mikkel recalled that he had not had the opportunity to retrieve the cube when the cow beasts approached. Lalli's face showed that the same recollection had just occurred to him. But there was nothing to be done; the toy was a good half-hour behind them and possibly eaten by cow beasts anyway. Mikkel resolved that, in the unlikely event that they found themselves in another raid, he'd keep an eye out for a replacement.
They walked on in the rain for a while before finding a good campsite with a stream nearby. They did not camp under the bridge which crossed the stream, though it would have given them shelter, for a large chunk had fallen — or been torn? — out of it, and they could not trust it not to collapse on them.
The rain slowly stopped during the night, and though they set watches, they were not disturbed.
“That 'Surma' thing,” Sigrun mused as Mikkel and Reynir began to pack up the gear in the morning and Emil made a weak sort of tea by their campfire, “I'm not convinced it exists. Has the old seagull guy ever even seen it? Or was he just being senile about what warnings to give?”
Mikkel shrugged. “He's the only knowledgeable person we've spoken to about this place, so we have to rely on him. We've been running away whenever we've made a lot of noise. That's a good policy in any case, whether the actual 'Surma' thing exists or not.”
“I guess.” Mikkel could see that she was still annoyed that he had made them run away and leave their tent and other gear behind. He was more philosophical; they had found replacement gear that was good enough. “At least the weather gods are trying to make up for yesterday!” she added, gesturing at the bright sunshine. Mikkel nodded, intent on folding their tarp with Reynir's aid. “Hey, scout!” she cried suddenly, “Where are you going?”
Mikkel turned to see Lalli running off into the woods, back the way they'd come the night before. “I don't know,” Emil replied, “But I think he said he'd be back in an hour.”
“You don't think the little ferret's taking off on us, do you?” Sigrun demanded of Mikkel, “Trying to find his nutso cousin alone again?”
“No, I don't think so. In his own way, he is part of the team and I don't believe he'd ever abandon us out here. I suppose he's checking our back trail. There could be more wolf beasts — hukky? — or the water cows, or something like that back there, following us.” He shrugged again, told Reynir that they had plenty of time to pack, and set about doing so efficiently.
“Yeah, but … that idiot is getting farther away with every passing hour! I don't want to stay out here any longer than I have to! My team back home will be hunting trolls and I'm running around Silent Finland looking for some dumb guy who probably doesn't even want to be found!”
”We're hunting trolls,” Mikkel pointed out, knowing how much it annoyed her when he was oh-so-reasonable. “We nailed a car troll and a tank giant, a poodle, and a pack of wolf beasts, in just a few days.”
“Back home we'd have got more than that,” she grumbled, sitting down by Emil to try his tea and making a face at the taste.
After about forty-five minutes, by Mikkel's estimation, Sigrun couldn't stand it anymore and chivvied the others into putting on their packs and starting to move slowly along the road they'd been following. They hadn't gone far, however, when Lalli burst out of the bushes behind them at a dead run.
“It seems our scout has returned from his detour,” Mikkel observed dryly.
“Calm down,” Sigrun told the Finn, “we weren't going to leave without you.”
The little scout was actually winded from his run, Mikkel saw with some alarm, and had to catch his breath before gasping fearfully, “Surma!”
All four of the others simply stared at his terrified face for a horrified moment and then, as one, turned and fled, Mikkel scooping up Kitty as they went.
By late afternoon they were well within the city of Joensuu and Lalli was waiting impatiently for the rest to catch up.
“All right, translator,” Sigrun asked irritably, “where are we at?”
“Uhh …” Emil looked around wildly at rusted and broken street signs, settling on one high up which had escaped most damage. “We're at the … I think … the middle?” Considering the sign a bit longer, “Oh! Or the city center is that way. Do we really plan on going there?”
“Sure, why not?” Sigrun growled. “And where else would we go anyway? The mage threads are going that way. We'll do an initial sweep around the area and assess what the danger level is.”
While she and Mikkel began their survey of the area, Reynir, with Kitty draped across his head, and Lalli moved over to examine the “mage threads” which they had assumed all along to be signs of Onni's passage. Lalli seemed to have no more idea of their purpose than the rest of them, and settled for plucking and poking at them while waiting for the older team members to decide their next move. Reynir merely leaned on them, bored perhaps, or trying to use his strange mage senses to detect enemies; Mikkel could not tell.
The sun being still high in the sky, Sigrun was soon satisfied that there was no immediate danger and waved the other four to proceed alongside the mage threads. Some minutes later, as they were about to enter an overgrown courtyard surrounded by ruins, Lalli stopped in his tracks; Emil, who'd been looking off to the side, trying to read a rusty sign, ran into his back; and Reynir, who'd been behind and to the left of Emil, stopped as well, petting Kitty as if for reassurance. Sigrun and Mikkel, following the other three, likewise stopped short at the sight that awaited them.
“Okay …” Sigrun said at last, while Mikkel stood speechless with shock. Before them was a decapitated troll spiked to a large board, propped upright between two smaller boards on which messages had been crudely painted. Mikkel could not read the sign to the left but the sign to the right! “Go home!” it commanded in Icelandic. “Army is dead.”
It was Onni's work, of course. Who else would be wandering around in Silent Finland (besides themselves, of course)? But Mikkel had not thought that Onni knew his background as a soldier nor cared if he did know, and certainly had never imagined that Onni — or anyone else — would cast it in his face that the army to which he had belonged was dead while he was still alive. Eleven years now, and the guilt of his survival when so many others had perished, though less constant, had never left him.
“Uhh …” Emil began in a whisper, attempting to translate the Finnish on the left since he knew even less Icelandic than Finnish, “it says … Go back, I have bad breath. From eating … you?” After a pause while he tried to make sense of his own translation, “Or maybe: a bad spirit wants to eat us?”
“All the eths are written the wrong way,” Reynir whispered to Mikkel, the only other person who understood Icelandic. One was in fact backwards and another upside down. The Dane rubbed his eyes, tried again to read the sign. It was not “Army is dead”, he realized; between knots in the board and drips of paint, he had mistaken the second letter of the word. Rather, it was “Here is death.” He closed his eyes, tried to push away the feelings his misreading had brought to the fore.
“A spirit with bad breath is threatening to eat us?” Sigrun whispered disbelievingly, “Are you sure?”
Emil shrugged helplessly.
Sigrun elbowed Mikkel in the ribs and, still shaken, he did his best to pass along her question. “Reynir, do you sense any spirits with foul-smelling breath in the vicinity?”
“Not really?” Reynir ventured. “Shouldn't you guys without masks be better at sensing that?”
Mikkel had just opened his mouth to reply to Sigrun when Lalli, who had been looking around the courtyard with a disgusted expression, took action. “Onni!” he shouted, followed by a loud spate of Finnish.
“Hey!” Sigrun tried to get his attention in a normal speaking voice. “Pipe down, or I'll pipe you down!”
The little scout ignored her, continued to shout, then folded his arms and glared straight ahead, waiting.
Sigrun and Mikkel looked at each other in dismay, turned back to back to study their surroundings. Shaking off his troubled emotions, Mikkel became a soldier again, on guard, for the shouting might have awakened … anything.
After some seconds, Lalli opened his mouth as if to shout again, Mikkel started towards him, meaning to shut him up, and from above and to their left, a pebble flew down to clip the scout's head.
Onni himself stepped forward into the sunlight, glaring down at all of them through a broken picture window on the second floor of a ruin. Arms folded, mask removed for the moment, face unshaven, and clothing grimy and bedraggled, he did his best to project the image of a stern and disappointed father. Lalli glared back, unintimidated and exasperated. The other four backed away in wordless agreement. Let the cousins work out their issues by themselves.
As Onni attempted to retain his dignity while picking his way down the talus slope of the collapsed left side of the ruin, whole vistas of the future opened before Mikkel. We found him! All of Silent Finland to search and the trail a month old, but we found him! My duty was to take Lalli to his cousin or die trying, and I've succeeded! And no one had to die trying, not Sigrun, not the others, not even me. This crazy adventure is over and we can go back and pick up our lives again. He sighed in relief, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and glanced over at Sigrun, who was gazing back at him with a grin of triumph and … It's affection. We've been teammates for months and through all these emergencies, so of course she feels affection. As do I. He wouldn't allow himself even to imagine anything more.
Back on the ground, Onni gestured imperiously “Come along”, and they all began to follow him, Lalli leading the way and Reynir close behind.
“Great, we found him!” Sigrun exclaimed to Mikkel, trailing along behind the others, “Mission complete! Now we can go home!”
“I think now we need to drag him kicking and screaming with us,” Mikkel replied, quite cheerful about the prospect. The Finn was larger than his cousin and stockier, so wrestling him might possibly offer a bit of a challenge to the powerful Dane. “Unless you reckon we simply leave Lalli here with him.” No longer driven by his duty, he would gladly do whatever Sigrun wanted.
“Let's see what the idiot is up to, first,” she decided after a moment, and they caught up to Emil as Onni led the way into the woods.
The euphoria couldn't last, of course. Following Onni, listening to him whisper angrily to Lalli in Finnish, and argue in whispers with Reynir, inevitably Mikkel began to think ahead, trying to plan.
We found him!
But … now what?
I suggested carrying him back kicking and screaming, but that isn't going to work. I could overpower him physically, of course, or him and Lalli both if it came to that, but Lalli blew away a giant with magic, and Onni is even more powerful. If I tried to wrestle him into submission, I think he or Lalli or both would splatter me all over the landscape.
Even if I did survive long enough to overpower him and tie him up so we could carry him back, then what? We're in Finland. We're outlanders. We can't just abduct a Finn in his own land no matter how crazy we consider his actions.
The Sentinel Mage said “People have the right to risk their own lives.” If I try to haul Onni back by force, the Sentinel Mage will make me let him go. At best. If he sicced all those birds on us …
And we can't hold him anyway. Even if the Sentinel Mage let us pass, even if somehow we managed not to be arrested and imprisoned as soon as we got back to civilization, we'd have to let him go, and then he'd be free to come right back here.
So what do we do? Leave Lalli with him and go home? Emil would insist on staying; after saving each other's lives in Silent Denmark, those two are closer than brothers. Emil will never leave Lalli to face danger without him.
And I? Will I walk away, as I did before, and leave those two children to face the terrors of the Silent World without me? There's no deadline now, no rescue ship that we must meet or it will leave without us. I don't have to leave them.
Sigrun.
Reynir.
They won't leave if Lalli, Emil, and I stay. Their lives are in danger here. I should leave with them, as before.
If I can make myself do it.
He had reached this unsatisfactory point in his thoughts when Onni brought them to a small boat drawn up on the shore of a lake. Gruffly gesturing them to get in, the Finn picked up a paddle and began laboriously propelling the boat across the lake. After a quick scan of the boat, Mikkel found another paddle and set to work helping the other man.
Gazing at Onni's back, Mikkel frowned in puzzlement, distracted from his thoughts. Though the man was unshaven and his clothing grimy and bedraggled from climbing around in ruins still wet from the rains the previous day, the man was surprisingly — astonishingly — clean for having wandered around in Silent Finland alone for a month. He was easily as clean as the searchers, who had been able to bathe regularly since they had four immunes and a cat to guard their one non-immune and to watch each other's backs.
How had Onni managed to keep clean? Indeed, how had he managed to avoid infection? Surely, even with his mage abilities, he had to sleep sometime. Mikkel glanced over at the cat sitting on Reynir's lap and entirely comfortable in Onni's presence. Cats could detect infection, but clearly she had not detected anything so far. Silent, Mikkel continued to paddle, and watch, and wonder.
As the boat approached a small island far in the lake, Reynir asked impatiently, “So are we allowed to talk yet, or —” Breaking off, he smacked at the side of his face and then looked at his hand in astonishment. “Is this a … mosquito?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Onni muttered in his heavily accented Icelandic. Mikkel remembered from his long years in Iceland that in fact the island had no mosquitoes, so that the young Icelander might actually never have encountered one before.
“Wait …” Reynir went on, wide-eyed with fear, “is there a chance that this could carry …?”
Before Mikkel could answer, Onni, leaping out of the boat and grabbing a line to tie it to a tree, replied, “No. There is not. Mosquitoes die if they ingest troll blood, so they don't. That's why you haven't run into any until now. They only survive in sheltered places that are free from trolls. It's how you can identify safe areas like this to set up camp.” Clearly feeling safe on the island, he pulled his mask down and led the way along a path where paving stones still showed occasionally through the grass. “Don't mind the animals,” he added, gesturing up at a number of squirrels watching them from high in the trees, “they're all immune here.”
Onni's camp turned out to be in the middle of a homestead. The main cabin was largely ruined and uninhabitable, but there was an intact building which the Finn identified casually as a sauna, a working well, and an intact hexagonal grill hut where Onni had been building his fires in the evenings. He'd clearly been staying in this protected location for some time, and Mikkel itched to find out why, and what he'd been doing.
“Okay,” Sigrun whispered, “here's the plan: once he falls asleep we clobber him unconscious and tie him up!”
That's exactly what I was thinking, but it won't work. Maybe in Norway, if this Viking princess dragged a non-immune back from the Silent World against his will, maybe there it would be considered proper behavior. Not here.
“Let's attempt talking first,” Mikkel replied, hoping that Onni could be persuaded to go with them before Sigrun got too impatient and took action herself. She shrugged and grumbled under her breath, but did not argue with Mikkel's suggestion.
Putting his words into action, Mikkel approached Onni, who was kneeling, building his fire, and ostentatiously ignoring everyone around him. “So,” Mikkel began, deliberately looming over the smaller man, “is there a reason why you lied to your relatives about where you were heading?”
For a moment he thought the Finn would simply refuse to answer, but with an exceptionally violent swipe at his fire steel, Onni snarled, “Yeah, how about I didn't want Lalli to come here and be killed. Enough reason for you, big guy?!”
“Aren't you the one who's at a greater risk?”
“That's irrelevant. I don't care what happens to me.” The fire now started, Onni stood to glare at the big Dane.
“Is that so?” Mikkel asked with deceptive mildness, taking hold of the mask still hung around Onni's neck and pulling it up and in front of the man's face. “Having this says otherwise.”
“I only need to —” Onni began, but was interrupted as Mikkel's clumsy fingers betrayed him and the mask, pulled too far forward, slipped from his grasp and snapped back into the other's face.
Embarrassed — again — by his traitor hands, Mikkel closed his eyes and said briefly and sincerely, “That was an accident.” Onni, holding his bruised nose, replied with a string of Finnish that Mikkel assumed was curses. He hoped that the Finn's curses wouldn't actually have a magical effect.
Still cursing under his breath, Onni stalked away, brought in firewood, and built up his fire. As the evening shadows lengthened and the air grew cool, Sigrun and Emil joined Mikkel on the benches around the firepit, Onni sitting on the far side of the fire from the others. Lalli and Reynir seemed to be looking at something over by the well. As they had no language in common and Lalli didn't even appear to like the Icelander, Mikkel hoped this sudden common interest might indicate some developing friendship.
“This is a lehto,” Onni began, waving at their surroundings. “It's protected by nature spirits and the forest gods, Tapio and Mielikki.” Having grown up believing that gods and magic were silly superstitions, and having encountered magic for the first time only months earlier, Mikkel could not prevent his face from showing some doubt, a trace of residual skepticism. “Yeah, you Danes know better than us primitive superstitious Finns,” Onni growled, “but it's a fact. This place is protected. Do not hunt or even disturb the local animals, or you will be made extremely sorry and so will the rest of us. The gods tend to judge us by the company we keep. So pass that on to your friends: no hunting! And don't disturb the plants either. Don't break off branches, don't pick berries, just leave everything alone!”
Mikkel frowned, gesturing at the fire now burning brightly between them.
“Yeah, yeah. I built a fire. But I gathered that wood from the ground; it's all fallen twigs and branches. I hunt and gather on the shore, not here. Anyway, understand that! You must leave this place exactly as it is, and we will be safe.”
“All right.” Mikkel glanced at Sigrun to his right, Emil to his left, and spoke in Danish for their benefit, as they had not understood the Icelandic conversation. “Onni says this is a magical place and we must not disturb the plants or the animals, otherwise the magical guardians will hurt us. So no hunting, no picking berries, nothing.” Sigrun nodded; she had no difficulty believing in magic. Emil, a confirmed skeptic like Mikkel, looked around doubtfully and then looked back.
“Okay. If you say so,” the Swede answered resignedly. “I hope … we're just going to stay the night anyway, right?”
“That's my hope too,” the Dane agreed.
Agitated conversation by the well came to them indistinctly and Sigrun looked over at the two young men in annoyance. “Hey, you two!” she called, “Stop squabbling over there! You can't even understand each other!”
They couldn't understand her either, Mikkel knew, so he added in Icelandic, “Reynir, calm down over there!”
“But …” Reynir answered in rather stunned tones, pointing at Lalli's empty hand, “it's Tuuri.”
Sigrun and Emil didn't understand Icelandic, of course, but they both caught Tuuri's name and turned to stare at Reynir at the same time that Mikkel did. Reynir appeared rather stunned and Lalli, standing next to him and looking towards Onni, seemed almost … accusing, Mikkel thought.
Mikkel turned back to regard Onni, who was poking at the fire. The older Finn's face expressed annoyance — but then he'd been annoyed from the first time he'd shown himself — and something else. Embarrassment? Guilt? Certainly, Mikkel thought, neither Tuuri's brother nor her cousin seemed even slightly surprised at Reynir's pointing at Lalli's hand and speaking Tuuri's name. The big Dane got to his feet and, accompanied by the other two, went to find out what was going on.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Tuuri!” The Icelander gestured at Lalli's forefinger, held out horizontally. “She's just here for a short while because Onni needs her and — and you can't see her?”
Mikkel looked at Lalli's hand, looked back at Reynir, shook his head with a frown. Reynir looked at the other two, whose faces showed complete puzzlement, and went on, “It's okay. Really. Mikkel, tell them: her spirit is right here, looking like a little bird! She wants to say hello.”
He held out his own finger as if offering a perch to a little bird, and made a kind of soothing gesture above it. All three stared at the finger as Mikkel muttered a brief translation.
There are times when I really wish I were back in safe, sane Denmark. No weird Kade-things that take over your mind and you don't even know it, no spirits of dead people turning up as invisible birds … Mikkel glanced over at Sigrun's face, utterly focused on Reynir's hand. But then, back in safe, sane Denmark, I'd never have met this crazy Norwegian troll-hunter. And that … that doesn't bear thinking about.
Lalli was backing away from the other four. His face had returned to its normal impassivity as he watched them in silence, his index finger still extended.
“Welllll …” Sigrun said at last, “did I ever say I'm sorry for what happened? So, you know … sorry.” Tuuri presumably still understood Norwegian and Danish, Mikkel supposed, so he added in his own tongue, “I hope you're well despite your circumstances.” He could think of nothing else to say.
Lifting his gaze from the presumed position of Tuuri's spirit, Mikkel saw Reynir attempting to hide a grin. “You — you —” he began, furious, recognizing that he'd been tricked, and Reynir, realizing that he had made a very bad mistake, looked wide-eyed from the angry Dane to Lalli. Following his gaze, Mikkel saw Lalli apparently conversing with his own finger in Finnish. “I do not appreciate being made a fool of, boy, and I don't appreciate seeing Sigrun made a fool of either. And she'll be even angrier if I tell her what you did. Now, is Tuuri in fact here? Is she in fact sitting on Lalli's finger in the form of a bird?”
“Yes, yes, she is, really she is,” Reynir all but babbled, “she would have heard you and Sigrun both. I mean, you were looking in the wrong place, but she's really here and really listening, really!”
Mikkel hesitated, not entirely sure whether to threaten the brat again or drop the subject, when Missekat leapt onto Lalli's shoulder, clearly intent on his hand. Tentatively dabbing with her paw at the air above his finger, she abruptly leapt away, so frightened that she clawed at Lalli's face in her haste to escape.
Not only was this the best evidence Mikkel was going to get that there was definitely something invisible on Lalli's hand, but the situation called for immediate action on his part, putting an end to the confrontation with Reynir. As he hurried for his first aid kit, Mikkel thought it just as well that he'd been interrupted; if not for the cat's actions, he really might have told Sigrun that Reynir had tricked them.
Though the scratches on Lalli's face were shallow and would heal cleanly, he had to submit to Mikkel's ministrations, for the medic would not be put off. Even one immune to the Rash could succumb to other forms of infection, as they had good reason to know.
With Lalli properly cared for, Mikkel stalked over to Onni, who was sitting by the fire doing his best to pretend to be uninterested in current events. “So you decided to conjure the soul of your dead sister from the afterlife,” Mikkel stated. He might have been a skeptic nearly all his life, but he had read a lot of myths and legends, and he was certain that conjuring the souls of the dead was widely regarded as both unwise and unsafe, and quite possibly outright evil.
Onni grunted a wordless acknowledgement.
“I assume you have a good reason why you'd do something so unorthodox,” Mikkel continued sternly. Onni himself had said that “the gods judge us by the company we keep”, and Mikkel didn't care to be subject to whatever judgement might come as a penalty for conjuring up Tuuri's soul.
“Yep.”
“Are you going to tell us what that is willingly, or …?” Mikkel put as much menace as he could into the words, glaring down at the smaller man.
“Yeah, whatever. Look, I —”
Mikkel took a step forward, looming as only he could, and Onni raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
All right, all right. I needed help. I found the Kade and was trying to get in a position to attack, but I couldn't do it. By a few weeks ago, I knew that I needed help, and I didn't want to bring anyone else in to maybe get killed. Not even you.
But Tuuri — my sister is already dead. So I …
Well. You outlanders don't know anything about us. I have to explain what any Finnish child would know!
Okay, yes, I'll explain what you need to know. When we die, our … I don't know the word in Icelandic. There probably isn't a word in Icelandic, because you outlanders are different. I don't know your gods and you don't know mine.
Yes, yes. When we die, that part of us that is eternal, um, soul, I guess you'd say, follows the Bird Path to Tuonela to sleep in peace. There are ways to get from here to Tuonela, which I won't describe to you because you wouldn't understand and if you did, if you tried to do it — and you're the sort who might — you'd just die. And the Swan might get angry at me. Angrier.
So, there are ways to get there, and I did. I found Tuuri sleeping there and I was going to bring her back, but the Swan — she's the guardian of the dead, among other things — caught me.
“You know very well what I do to the living who try to disturb the peace of the dead,” she told me, and I do. Most people who try what, what I tried, don't come back. “You better have a very compelling reason, or else!” she told me and she … hurt me.
I told the Swan that I needed Tuuri's help to kill the Kade and free my grandmother's soul, because I won't be able to do it alone. The Swan didn't think that was sufficient excuse, because after all, she thought, the Kade will die someday and then our grandmother's soul will come to Tuonela as it should. Only it won't, because her soul won't ever be released unless someone releases it, and that has to be me because nobody else will do it. If the Swan killed me for my intrusion upon the peace of the dead, she would never have that one soul of our line. Lineage is very important in these matters.
So anyway, yeah, I convinced her to let me bring Tuuri back to help me but … there's a price. And a time limit. She told me, “You can have this summer. You can borrow that one soul to help, and I expect two back. One way or another.” And her parting words to me and Tuuri, once we got back here, were, “Fetch me the wayward soul of your line, and do it without giving me a headache.”
So you see: I can't go back with you, no matter what you say. I have to do this by end of summer.
Or else.
Mikkel stared at the man describing so casually the deadly trap that he'd gotten himself into. Onni interlaced his fingers, extended his arms, cracked his knuckles, and continued, “We don't need any of your help, but since you've decided to barge in uninvited … I suppose you might as well do something useful.” Falling silent, he leaned back, hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.
Mikkel glanced to his left at Sigrun, who had settled herself on one of the benches around the fire pit and was studying Onni with a hunter's intensity. Unable to understand his words, she seemed to be evaluating his body language. Mikkel doubted she was deceived by the man's pretense of ease. To Mikkel's right, Reynir had seated himself on another bench with the cat in his arms and was listening with a worried expression. In his mage training, he might have learned the same sort of myths as Mikkel had. Lalli was still off by himself talking to the invisible Tuuri, and Emil, bored with a conversation that he could not understand, was idly dropping pebbles into the well.
When no one spoke, Onni went on, “Do you lot have some clue about what I'm dealing with here?”
“Yes,” Mikkel replied, “I believe we've been given adequate information. You're hunting your grandmother, who is now a 'kade'.”
“She's not a kade,” Onni corrected, “Her soul is part of one, among several other souls. It's hard to tell how many; it feels like just a big clump, spirit-wise. But you can sense they all used to be mages of some sort. Mages that were caught off guard along its path.” He stared into the fire, face deliberately bland.
After a moment's consideration, Mikkel asked, “If it is a conglomeration of souls accumulated over time, then who is the original part of the kade?”
“Who knows? Who cares?” Onni was annoyed again, though Mikkel didn't think the question was foolish, believing that knowing your enemy got you a fair way towards defeating it. “Some random person of the old world, who would have been a mage if they didn't become infected.” Onni waved a hand in dismissal. “Whoever it is, was weak! It is physically nothing. If it can't get to my mind, it's toast in my hands!”
Mikkel frowned, wondering if Onni was justified in his confidence or arrogantly overestimating his power. The thing was intelligent, and if it had been around since the Great Dying …
“It knows,” the Finn went on, “it knows I'm coming for it, and … it got itself protection.”
Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter. The reason he needed Tuuri. And, perhaps, something “useful” for us to do.
“A horde of bears!” Onni exclaimed with a gesture of frustration. “Or three of them. I can't tell if they are following the kade, or if the kade is following them, but they seem to always be near one another. I haven't been able to get close enough with those things being in the way.” He sighed. “It's the big leader bear that is the problem. As far as we can tell, it's the mother. It takes care of the two smaller ones. It keeps them on track, grooms them, protects them.”
Mikkel stared at him, appalled. He'd known of packs and herds of grosslings — indeed they had recently encountered such — but he'd never heard of something akin to maternal behavior among grosslings. If such could persist among bear beasts, then what might persist among trolls? His horrified imaginings were interrupted as the other continued, “A few days ago some scrawny troll tried to crawl past them, and the big bear all but smashed it flat!”
Mikkel frowned again. Something didn't add up here. “Are they really such a threat if you're able to stay close enough to observe all this?”
“Wow, good job being all smart on me!” Onni sneered. “Yeah, I don't do that. Tuuri does. She's the one who keeps an eye on them. I've only seen them from way far away.”
Mikkel consciously tamped down his own annoyance. The man tried to do this alone, which he knew was dangerous, damn near suicidal; he's seen all his plans ruined; he's under sentence of death if he doesn't succeed; and he's been wandering around Silent Finland for weeks alone but for the soul of his dead sister. And now we show up, bringing his last surviving relative into the very danger he tried to protect him from. Of course he's annoyed, even angry.
“The big one's been hunted before. There are arrows and spears sticking out of it. Who knows how many hunters it's killed! The other two are smaller, like I said, maybe its, um, cubs. They're all three pretty decayed but still, they're bears … Anyway, we've identified the weak link in the group,” Onni went on, “A sickly, ugly monstrosity! There's something wrong with its skin that makes it really sensitive. Just touching one of my threads makes it run away in pain. The other two could break the threads, but they don't because I've placed wards on them.” He glared at Mikkel, daring him to argue against the magic. Reynir was nodding thoughtfully.
“By controlling the direction of movement of that one,” Onni continued, seeing no disagreement, “we can control the whole group. We've been attempting to drive them somewhere where we can trap them, or drive them off a cliff, or something!”
Once again, things didn't add up. Mikkel felt he had to have missed something. “I don't understand why you're doing this bear-herding in a city. I'd assume it would be safer anywhere else.”
“Yes, thank you for your wisdom,” the other snarled. “I never thought of that! They ran into the city, we're trying to get them out!” He clutched at the air as if he could drag the bears out by main force. “Every time I tried to get them into a good spot they would divert and run closer to the city! And now that I'm finally getting pretty good at herding them properly, you all show up and give me another thing to worry about!” He was working himself up into a fury, shouting “I would have been fine ON MY OWN!!”
“There, there,” Mikkel said with his best calming smile, seeing that the man was on the edge, and quite possibly too dangerous for them to handle if he lost control. Patting the air soothingly, the medic went on, “let's take a breath. I sense you might be a little stressed.”
Quietly rising from her bench, Sigrun moved to stand behind and between Mikkel and Reynir; with the benches being somewhat raised, their three heads were nearly level with one another. Mikkel could feel the tension radiating from her, the concern that Onni might actually be furious enough to attack them.
Onni glared at him for a long moment, hands raised and fingers in a position that might be the beginnings of spell-casting, before slowly relaxing and leaning back, still annoyed.
“What about Surma?” Reynir put in, desperate to change the subject. “Are you not worried about that one at all?” Meanwhile Sigrun grumbled to Mikkel, “Someone better translate all this later.” Mikkel hid a tiny smile at her irritation.
“What now?” Onni was at least puzzled rather than angry.
“Surma! Didn't the seagull man tell you about it?”
“Oh right, that thing. Haven't come across anything like that over here.” He shrugged indifferently. “I think it's something the old man made up to keep people on edge.”
Mikkel and Reynir looked at each other.
“What's with the look?” Onni had found yet another reason to be annoyed.
With an uneasy smile, Reynir explained, “Well, hah, we're pretty sure we've got it on our tail.” Mendaciously he added, “Mikkel's been shooting his gun a lot!”
“Of course he has,” Onni put in disgustedly.
“Hey now,” Mikkel began, but got no further, for Sigrun had laid her head on his shoulder. He felt her red hair tickling his chin; he swallowed hard, suddenly finding it quite difficult to breathe; his hands trembled within his gloves; he could not prevent a small blissful smile from touching his lips. Every glance they'd exchanged, every word she'd spoken to him, every thought of affection he'd pushed away, flooded back into him.
“At least, Lalli saw it, a bit outside the city. We've been really quiet since then though!” Reynir was still talking. Good, let him talk. Mikkel didn't care anymore what the others said.
Sigrun turned her head and her breath was warm against his cheek. His captain, his Viking princess, his crazy Norwegian troll-hunter, was whispering to him: “Translate. Or I will hurt you.”
Mikkel gulped, pulled his scattered thoughts and emotions into order, and began a hasty, somewhat jumbled, recitation of Onni's story while the older Hotakainen summoned his younger cousin with a peremptory gesture and engaged in a Finnish discussion in which the word “Surma” featured prominently.
“We can't take him back?” Sigrun asked, dismayed.
“I'm afraid not. He's got to kill that kade-thing by end of summer, or he himself will die. You know Lalli won't leave him; Emil won't leave Lalli; and I …” He hesitated, not wanting to say it, not knowing how she would react. “And I won't leave them.”
“Of course not,” she agreed. “You and me, we'll deal with all this and bring everyone home safe. That's our duty.” Seeing the relief that he couldn't quite hide, she punched him rather hard in the shoulder. “Idiot! Sure I want to go home! Sure I want to go back to my life! I want —” she paused. “I want us all to get back to our lives! So if this guy's gotten himself in some mess with bear beasts and the kade-thing and spirit-things, well, then, we just have to get him out of it. Together.”
“I'm worried about Reynir, though. A non-immune, here, and us trying to fight grosslings. Then too, from what Onni said, the kade captures mages. Maybe non-mages like us are safe, but wouldn't Reynir be threatened by that too?”
Sigrun shrugged. “The nutso cousin's not immune and he's a mage. He's survived so far. We'll just protect Freckles as best we can. You have to admit that we've done pretty well so far.” And with that Mikkel had to be content, knowing that Reynir wouldn't leave even if ordered to go with Sigrun or Mikkel himself as escort. After all, he'd already refused to go home when it was safe for him to do so.
Onni stalked over to them. “You don't even know what you've stirred up. You don't know what that Surma thing did. Lalli couldn't tell you. He told me. That thing carved up the whole herd of cow beasts that you lot saw. It sliced right through them and left them in pieces scattered across the clearing. It was fast enough to get every last one of them before any could get away. It was hiding from the sunlight so all Lalli could see of it was its claws, but they were at least a couple of meters long.
“And you people stirred it up and brought it in here where I'm already trying to deal with the kade and the bear beasts! Do me a favor and promise not to shoot things when you're anywhere near me, all right?!” He turned on his heel and stalked away.
Relieved by his conversation with Sigrun, happy at the prospect of actually fighting the various monsters of which they'd learned, unable to resist tweaking the man, Mikkel smiled broadly as he answered to the other's back, “I'm afraid I can make no such promise! It has recently come to my attention that I might have to shoot some bear beasts soon.” Onni's answer was in Finnish, which was just as well as Mikkel suspected it was unprintable.
The mystery of Onni's surprising cleanliness was solved: he'd been using the sauna in the lehto. The boys, as Mikkel privately thought of them, were once more firmly instructed not to damage any plant, sent off to gather firewood, and then given the first use of the sauna, it being too small for all six of them to use at once. While Sigrun stalked around the homestead, considering the problem, Onni displayed an unexpected affection for cats, not only petting Kisu but making such good friends with her that she rolled over and allowed him briefly to rub her belly. Mikkel leaned on the well, watching them both but mostly Sigrun, doing his best to focus on their situation and not on how he'd felt when she laid her head on his shoulder.
Mikkel had never had a successful relationship with a woman. Not that he didn't want one; he did. And not that women weren't interested in a big, strong, smart, healthy, immune man; they were. But he was more than a big, strong, smart, healthy, immune man; he was Mikkel Madsen, and once a woman got to know Mikkel Madsen, and once he got to know her, somehow it didn't work out. Watching Sigrun, his mind wandered back to the various women who'd rejected him over the years and, of course, to Dagmey — but he would not think of Dagmey. For many years he had been not thinking of Dagmey, and he was quite practiced at it.
Not thinking of Dagmey worked well to keep him from thinking of Sigrun. He focused on what to do about the various enemies they faced, but he had not reached any conclusions when Sigrun scribbled on a piece of paper, then turned to the two men to say, “Attention, listen up! I've put my best thinking into this, and I've drafted our plan of action to take those bears down! With nobody getting eaten.” Mikkel smiled slightly at that; he was entirely in favor of nobody getting eaten.
“The others, except you and me,” Sigrun went on, looking directly at Mikkel, “probably won't get it, so you'll have to explain it to them.”
“Very well,” Mikkel agreed.
“This is our plan,” Sigrun concluded, holding out a rather worn sheet of paper on which she'd drawn out her idea.
The plan was actually simple and clearly drawn. Step one: find a pit of some kind. Step two: put spikes at the bottom and camouflage the hole. Step three: lead the bears to it and at least one falls in. “I call it 'Operation Bear Hole',” Sigrun explained.
The two men studied the plan side by side. It was straightforward, and it fit with what Onni had been attempting to do all along, but there were many ways it could go wrong. As neither man spoke, Sigrun turned to Mikkel, worriedly. “See, I don't think he gets it.”
“I think he gets it,” Mikkel assured her. He rather imagined that Onni didn't like it on general principles, just because he hadn't proposed it.
“We'll go and find a place for the trap tomorrow,” Sigrun directed. “We'll take those bears out one by one,” she added with predatory glee. Mikkel nodded; he would propose improvements to the plan as they went. It would be easier that way.
With the boys evicted from the sauna, the older three took over, Sigrun and Mikkel enjoying real cleanliness for the first time since leaving Iceland. Mikkel closed his eyes, tried to think about their plans for tomorrow, but behind his eyelids, Sigrun shone like a sword-blade in the sunlight.
She put her head on my shoulder!
That memory kept the nightmares away almost all night.
The plan was not so simple as finding a pit and preparing it, of course, though finding the pit came first. They decided to split into three pairs, with one member of each pair able to see and hear Tuuri, who would fly among them to carry word of the progress of the search. Emil would go with Lalli, naturally, as Emil was the only corporeal person other than Onni who could communicate with the little Finn, and Onni could not go with his cousin as that would leave only Reynir able to interact with Tuuri.
Sigrun did not speak Icelandic while Mikkel did; hence she could not talk to either of the remaining mages and he could. Mikkel thought that, in the interests of friendly teamwork, she should go with Reynir and he should deal with Onni. The troll-hunter shrugged, indifferent to the decision, and walked away with the Icelander at her side.
Onni turned to glare at Mikkel. “So I have to put up with you.”
“Just so,” Mikkel answered, smiling slightly, before immediately turning to lead the way. He didn't intend to antagonize the man, and it would be easy and oh-so-tempting to do so.
“If it were easy to drive the things,” Onni growled after a while, “we would have done it already.”
“I don't disagree.” Mikkel kept his voice mild. “But there are six of us now, and four of us can safely approach the things more closely than you can.”
“Huh! You're going to approach the beasts? Have you missed the fact that they are bears? Even if they weren't Rashed, they'd still be deadly if you approached them without firearms. Or even if you approached them with firearms, probably. But then there's this Surma so you can't use your shotgun. Not around me, at least.”
“We don't want to approach the beasts, but we can risk it more than you can.” Mikkel reminded himself not to argue with the man. “Anyway, there are just more of us to react to the beasts' behavior, keeping them going in the right direction, which would not be possible for one man alone, even with, ah, Tuuri's assistance.”
Onni grunted something like reluctant agreement, and they searched in silence for some time.
“Why did you tell him?” Onni demanded at last.
“I didn't,” Mikkel replied quietly, having rather expected this question. “I couldn't. I don't have any language in common with him, and besides, I gave him your note. I assumed you'd told him where you were going; there was no reason for me to tell him even if I could have.”
“But then how —”
“I didn't know it was a secret. You didn't lie to me, and I didn't know you'd lied to Lalli. How could I? Just before she left, Taru said she would go by Keuruu to look for you, and I thought she was mistaken — I didn't know you'd lied to her too — so I told her you wouldn't be there because you said you were going to Saimaa. Lalli was in the room, and even though we were speaking Icelandic, he must have heard the word 'Saimaa'. He worked it out himself from that.”
“Idiot Dane,” Onni grumbled, in Icelandic so that Mikkel could understand him. The Dane said nothing; it would not help matters to quarrel with the Finn. They returned to searching in silence.
There was no shortage of pits and collapsed streets in Joensuu; a near century of neglect had allowed many underground pipes to flood, back up, and break through the streets. Still, all the pits they found in the first couple of hours were either too shallow to control the bears or much too wide for the team to conceal.
“This is a fool's errand,” Onni complained after a brief conversation with Tuuri, of which Mikkel heard only the mage's side, entirely in Finnish. “The others haven't found anything better. We should drive them out of the city and try out there.”
“Does Finland have a lot of sinkholes we can use?” Mikkel's curiosity was unfeigned. He knew little more of Finland's geography than he had observed in searching for Onni.
“No.” Onni's answer was curt. “But there are bogs. And some cliffs.”
Mikkel shrugged. “The people of the old world did dig basements and things. We can spend a day or two looking before we give up and try to drive the beasts out.”
“I am on a deadline, you know,” the Finn put in dryly.
“I know. And Sigrun knows. And we will do everything in our power to help you.”
Onni sneered at that but didn't answer.
By noon they were still searching when Onni paused, peering off to their left. “What is that?”
Mikkel put a hand on his dagger. “Grossling?”
“No. There are some in that building —” he pointed ahead and to their right “— but they're not active. No, I saw a flash, over that way.” He backed up carefully while Mikkel looked around, hand still on his dagger. The Dane believed in the mages' ability to detect grosslings, but he didn't rely on it, counting instead on his eyes, ears, and even nose to give him warning of approaching enemies.
“There!” Onni announced. “It's light reflecting off glass. Angled glass near ground level, not part of a building. That's strange.”
By silent consent, they turned to check out the glass, and were both surprised and pleased to find an intact peaked glass roof over an underground corridor with closed doors at each end. The doors at the left end, Mikkel saw, led into an elevator, glass-enclosed from the ground up, that went up the mostly intact building at that end; the doors at the other end led into another ruin. As all the doors were closed, this seemed to constitute a good pit trap. The extraordinarily thick tempered glass of the roof, and for that matter of the building to the left, had held up rather well to storms and animals over the decades, so no debris had fallen into the corridor.
“This looks good,” Mikkel offered, “great find.”
Onni shrugged, turned away, closed his eyes with an expression of concentration. Mikkel watched for a moment, then turned to check in all directions for attackers, operating under the assumption that the other was doing something magical which might prevent him from watching for approaching grosslings.
A few minutes later, the mage held out a finger, spoke briefly in Finnish, and watched the invisible Tuuri fly away. “No one else has found anything better,” he observed to Mikkel, “so this is probably what we'll use.” After a moment he added grudgingly, “It'll work better than a bog, I suppose. And the bear beasts are not too far away.”
Sigrun and Reynir, with Kisu the cat, ran up minutes later to join Mikkel and Onni on one side of the corridor, while Emil and Lalli ran up on the other side. “Nice!” Sigrun exclaimed at once, “Excellent size for a bear hole! Time to set it up!”
The first step was, of course, to break the glass. This was easier said than done as the glass was tempered; in the end they had to start the break by placing a piece of gravel on each pane and hitting it with a sledgehammer taken from a nearby store. Mikkel, as the strongest, was the logical person to wield the sledgehammer, but he silently shook his head when Sigrun offered the tool to him and she, remembering prior incidents of his clumsiness, merely nodded her understanding and swung it herself. The force of the blow, focused on the small area covered by the gravel, was enough to break the glass, and from there it was a matter of kicking the remaining pieces out of the frame.
The biggest risk was that the sound of breaking glass might constitute the sort of sound that would attract Surma which, according to the Gull Mage, was “sensitive to piercing sounds, such as gunshots”. The sound was more of a dull thud followed by cracking — and surely glass cracked in the city all the time — so they believed it unlikely to attract the monster's attention. Still, Mikkel was on edge, half his attention devoted to watching and listening for an approaching giant even as he assisted in gathering and sharpening stakes. Lalli, the nimblest of them all, climbed down a rope held by Mikkel in order to set up all the stakes, before the whole team worked together to cover the pit with thin branches and boards, topped by fresh leaves.
“Good job!” Sigrun announced in the late afternoon, “Can't even tell it's there!” The cat evidently really couldn't tell it was there, as she started towards it and had to be scooped up by Reynir before she fell in.
“Now we're only short on bears,” Mikkel observed to Sigrun in Danish, studying the trap with a critical eye. “I presume we'll spend the next day or two looking for them?”
Reynir, still holding Kisu, looked around abruptly, listening to something the others could not hear. “Tuuri says she knows where the bear beasts are,” he said, pausing again to listen. “She says it's her job to keep track of them, and they're asleep in a parking place a couple of blocks away.”
Onni nodded. “We'll get them when they awaken at dusk. Now we prepare the path here.”
All afternoon was spent with Mikkel, Sigrun, and Emil pushing or dragging sturdy pieces of debris into position to close off alternate escape routes, while the three mages worked together, Lalli collecting pine cones, leaves, and similar natural materials which Onni attached to threads, chanting softly over them as he worked, and Reynir stringing the completed threads between trees, posts, and other standing bits of ruin.
At last the task was done, the path constructed, and it was time to assign everyone their places.
“No,” Mikkel answered.
“Yes,” Sigrun retorted.
“No,” he repeated. “It's too dangerous. I'll do it.”
“You will not.” Her tone was flat, refusing any argument. “You're too slow to run from them and you can't crawl under that truck. If you do it, we won't catch the bears. And you'll die,” she added as if as an afterthought. “I'm not going to allow that. He can run —”
“Emil can't outrun a bear. None of us can.”
“He doesn't have to. He can run fast enough to reach the truck and he can get under it. And you can't. So don't argue about it. Someone needs to coax the bears out once everyone is ready, and it won't be you. Anyway, you and I have another task, and we all need to get this done.”
Mikkel turned away. She was right that Emil would have a better chance than he would, but Emil was the youngest of them all. He should not have to take any risk at all.
“It's time,” Onni said, gesturing at the sun, now nearly set. “Everyone take their spot.”
“Emil,” Mikkel said heavily.
“What?”
“It's time.” Emil would not have understood Onni's Icelandic.
“Yeah, uh, okay.”
“Are you sure you understand the plan? Where to run? You must not make a mistake, Emil.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I can do it.” And Emil was walking away.
Emil was walking away, obedient to his orders, and behind Mikkel's eyes were all those other young men who'd walked away, obedient to his orders, and died, and they were all walking away to their deaths again and again and again. Mikkel's hands trembled, his head bowed as he fought back the images. He had to get control, had to keep going, and if he lived through the day, then it could all come back tonight. But not now!
He had it under control. He was a soldier and he would do his duty. He took his position beside Sigrun, ready for the battle.
The plan was relatively simple and they all had their assigned places and tasks. Emil would throw rocks at the bear beasts to lure them to charge him. Onni, by far their best archer, would then shoot the furless cub and, according to him, the beast would flee directly away from the pain and the other two beasts would follow. The Finn had to be right, or the big bear would tear Emil apart. Mikkel considered praying for Emil's safety to gods in whom he did not entirely believe, but they most likely would not regard the prayers of a godless Dane anyway, so he dismissed the thought.
Mikkel and Sigrun guarded a long stretch of the street which was blocked only by Onni's magic strings. They had not been able to move enough hulks of vehicles in the way, and so if the beasts passed through the strings, they would escape. Mikkel had his shotgun and Sigrun her rifle and pistol, but these could be fired only in the most dire circumstances, for their use was sure to draw the Surma creature and force the whole team to flee, abandoning Onni's quest and most likely dooming him. For the purpose of redirecting the beasts, the two were armed with old street signs in relatively good shape. According to Onni, the naked beast should be cowardly enough to flee from two people waving things in a threatening manner. Of course, the non-immune mage didn't and couldn't know for sure since he himself could not get near the beasts.
Mikkel glanced at Sigrun as they waited. If Onni was wrong about anything, if the furless beast kept coming despite the threats, if the big beast got ahead of it and charged them …
They might well be dead within the hour. Mikkel wanted to say something, but what was there to say? He faced front, waiting and listening.
“Come, little bears,” Emil called, his voice thin with fear as well as distance. “Hey! Wait! Where are you going? Don't walk away!”
Mikkel and Sigrun looked at each other in alarm. Reynir had conveyed from Tuuri the news that there was only one exit from the partially collapsed parking garage when the bears were sleeping. They should have to go towards Emil in order to escape. If they retreated back into the ruins of the garage, the team could not safely go in after them.
“Come back!” Emil shouted. “You're supposed to charge at me in rage!”
There was a silence while Mikkel tried to think how to salvage the situation, and then … RAAAAH! Certainly the bear beasts were enraged now.
Mikkel rolled his shoulders, straining his eyes in the twilight as he watched the spot where the bear beasts would appear. If they appeared. If the whole plan didn't go awry. Crashing noises and continued roaring made him fear that Emil's shelter — a truck in relatively good shape — would not suffice to shield him. And why hadn't Onni gotten the beasts moving?
A high-pitched squeal, and the crashing stopped, followed by yelps of anguish. The two hefted their crude weapons uneasily as they waited for the beasts to make their way along the blocked-in path and charge towards them. In a matter of seconds, the first beast appeared, and it was the furless one, the one they needed, still yelping as it fled, leaving a trail of blood. For a moment Mikkel thought that Onni's strings would be effective, for it tried to slow as it saw the string before it. Its legs, seemingly eaten away to naked bone by the ravages of the Rash, were unequal to the task and it slammed into the string and fell with an even louder squeal of pain.
Staggering to the bare bones of its legs, still tangled in the string, the creature reeled towards the two watchers. “Quick! Silent corralling move!” Sigrun murmured, and they ran forward, waving their improvised weapons and hissing at the thing. With a terrified squeak, the furless beast turned and fled up the street in the intended direction as the two darted behind a wall. The big beast should be in hot pursuit of its cub, but it might take the time to attack them if it saw them.
Somehow Sigrun had managed to push Mikkel ahead of her, putting herself closer to the danger, and he grimaced, thinking he should have arranged things better even if she didn't want his protection. Still, as they hid shoulder to shoulder, the thudding of the big beast's gallop passed them and continued up the street as intended.
As soon as the sounds told them the creatures had passed, they were running up the parallel street. A crash ahead told them that the trap had worked; something had fallen into the pit. As they ran up to the trap, Emil and Onni joined them, the cat running along behind them. Mikkel closed his eyes and shook his head just for a moment as relief flooded through him at the sight of his youngest team member alive and unhurt.
The third beast — a truly strange creature that seemed to be without head or internal organs, as if it had been crudely gutted and yet left alive — hesitated at the edge of the pit into which the other two had fallen. Before the hunters could act, the naked beast rose high enough to scrabble at the edge of the pit, clearly being pushed from below. As it pulled itself out, the third beast leapt across the pit, landing on the furless creature's shoulders and fleeing, followed by the other. “At least —” Sigrun began to murmur, interrupted by a crack from below. The big monster was breaking the spikes on which it had fallen and which projected through its body.
Mikkel looked around in alarm for Onni, the only one with a silent distance weapon. He saw the Finnish mage was looking the wrong way, hurrying to join Lalli and Reynir, who were waiting in safety behind a partial wall. Turning back to the pit, the Dane was horrified to see the big grossling gather itself and then leap more than its own body height, catching its massive claws on the edge of the pit and heaving itself out while the hunters retreated out of sight. Standing on the far side of the pit, the creature paused to pull some of the new spikes out of its body with its teeth and drop them with what Mikkel could not help interpreting as a contemptuous gesture. Apparently satisfied, the monster departed in pursuit of the two smaller grosslings, leaving a trail of blood.
“Bears can't do that,” Emil whispered, and no one answered because no one else had thought bears could do that either.
“Didn't work as perfectly as I wanted,” Sigrun whispered after a moment. “But they're injured! Badly! Let's follow!”
Mikkel and Emil followed Sigrun across the one solid plank which they had laid along the side of the pit to serve as a bridge, but when she turned to call the mages to join them, Onni quite suddenly hissed something in Finnish to Lalli on his left while smacking Reynir in the face with the back of his right hand. The three mages stood in a row with their eyes firmly covered with their hands. None moved or spoke.
Sigrun scowled, tapping a foot impatiently. “All right,” she said after several seconds, “I'll give them five minutes, then I'll poke them.” Beside her Kisu, the cat, was staring at the mages with intensity and, Mikkel thought, alarm. “Who knows what they're trying to accomplish,” Sigrun added.
The mages had just moved their hands and opened their eyes when, quite suddenly, a mess of maggots began to ooze from Sigrun's left sleeve. Mikkel stared at it, frozen for a moment in disbelief, before Sigrun noticed it and with a surprisingly unhunterish shriek of horror struck it away from her. “What is this disgusting goop?”
Meanwhile, the same sort of mess was oozing from Reynir's right sleeve, and for several seconds they were both frantically scraping the stuff off and stamping it into the ground. Mikkel ran a hand through his hair, at a loss as to what to do. This was clearly unnatural. Magical, even. Which meant that it was the work of the Kade, and no one had said anything about the Kade having the ability to … conjure? manifest? teleport? … masses of maggots. If it could do that, what else could it do to them?
“Don't mind the maggots,” Onni said, quite coolly under the circumstances, “it's trying to intimidate us. Doesn't work.”
With that, he raced away in pursuit of the fleeing beasts and, after a quick look to confirm the safety of the rest of the team, Mikkel ran after him. Even with the presumed assistance of the invisible Tuuri, the non-immune mage had no business running around Silent Finland without an immune guard.
At length Onni stopped and Mikkel caught up with him. They stood together and looked at the thick trail of blood, black in the twilight. “The bears are running out of the city,” the Finnish mage said, and an odd note in his voice make the Dane glance at him. Why, the man was actually smiling! Mikkel had never seen him smile before, and the expression seemed quite unsuited to his face.
“How far can bears travel in a night?” Mikkel asked. There being no bears on his home island of Bornholm, he was unfamiliar with their abilities.
“Far. But with that much blood loss? Less far.”
Not precise, Mikkel thought, but then, these bear beasts had demonstrated abilities beyond normal bears anyway. “Less far” was probably the best estimate they could manage.
“They'll be easy to track this time,” Onni added, “and they'll be tired.”
The two men turned back to join the others, now maggot-free, and the team made camp in a ruin which the Finnish mages agreed was well away from any grosslings. They would not follow the fleeing beasts in the night; the day would be longer and the sunlight would help them track the creatures while it kept the creatures from moving.
“I suppose you didn't get the Kade,” Mikkel commented to Onni as the team prepared to bed down. Lalli would take first watch, then Mikkel and finally Sigrun. With so many people and such short and bright summer nights, they didn't all have to stand guard every night.
“No, I didn't. It tried to ambush us but we were ready for it. I struck at it but, well, it got past us. It's still with the bears,” he added, answering Mikkel's unasked question. “Now that they're out of the city, it'll be easier to deal with them.”
I hope so, was Mikkel's unspoken thought as he lay down beside Sigrun and tried to sleep. Swarms of maggots featured prominently in his nightmares.
The next day dawned dark, chilly, and rainy. “Just the sort of weather to bring out the trolls,” Sigrun grumbled, “and the beasts can keep going.” She pulled up her collar and sighed, looking out at the rain while Mikkel and Reynir packed up their minimal camp. As the team headed out, Mikkel paused long enough to check for anything overlooked, made sure the fire was out, adjusted his heavy backpack, and followed the others.
They arranged themselves in a new order: Sigrun and Lalli leading, Onni and Reynir following with the cat riding on Reynir, and Emil and Mikkel bringing up the rear. They walked in silence, for grosslings would be active in the woods. With Tuuri scouting invisibly ahead, they needed not fear an ambush by the bear beasts, but smaller beasts might evade her sight. Since all the team members other than Emil were capable trackers, at first they had little trouble following the bear beasts’ trail as they trudged through the rain. The occasional smashed grossling proved the bear beasts were still formidable and aggressive.
By noon the rain was dying down, allowing them to stop and collect blueberries to supplement their dried fish for lunch. Afterwards, even as the rain slackened, their pace slowed. The trackers spent ever more time studying the ground until at last Sigrun called a halt, waving Mikkel forward for a low-voiced conference. “I think we’ve lost the trail. I’m not sure what we’ve been following these last few minutes, but it’s not the bears. We’ll have to go back and see if we can find it again.”
“After six people have walked over it. Perhaps we should split up. Lalli is probably our best tracker, and we could send him out alone, just to find the trail.”
Lalli glanced over at the sound of his name, then looked up, his gaze following something the other two could not see. “The birdie must be back,” Sigrun said. “If she’s spotted the bears, we won’t need the trail. You know, every troll-hunting team ought to have a flying scout.”
“Onni staked his life to get her here,” Mikkel reminded her. “Useful as she is, it would have been better if he hadn’t done it. And we don’t need anyone else doing it.”
“Yeah, yeah. A flying scout that isn’t a ghost. I can dream.”
Onni looked over at them with his usual expression of annoyance. “Tuuri hasn’t found the bears, but there’s a big dead beast over that way.” He pointed off to their right. “It’s not a bear, but she thinks the bears must have done it. Or else there’s something else big and vicious running around in these woods.” Mikkel thought of the monster called Surma, and kept quiet.
Following Onni’s instructions, the team made its cautious way through the woods, water dripping on them from every branch as they passed. They came out on a shattered road; ahead and to their left was a ruined gas station. Sprawled before it lay a grossling that had started its existence as an elk. Eight jointed legs tangled around its body and its deformed head was half-severed from its long neck. A pool of wet blood around the corpse proved the monster had died that morning rather than the previous night.
“Well,” Sigrun said, surveying the mess, “Good! We’re clearly on the right track.” She gestured at bloody paw prints leading away. “And it’s easy to see which direction they went.” The team set off in pursuit once more.
As the shadows grew long, the weary team camped once more. They had made over thirty kilometers on rough trails, a long way for even such hardened travellers as themselves. Sigrun and Mikkel took the watches and Tuuri circled unseen above, always on watch.
The morning dawned bright and clear, but clouds loomed to the west and the air smelled of rain. Groaning a little, the team set out at once, hoping to catch up with the bear beasts before the grosslings recovered from their injuries and outran them, taking the kade beyond their reach.
When they had made, by Mikkel’s estimate, another fifteen kilometers, they stopped for a lunch of more fish and blueberries. Sigrun and Mikkel sat on a log side by side. As they ate, Sigrun shook her head. “Those bears sure don’t lack stamina!”
“But we do. I don’t know how much longer we can keep up this pace.”
“So we just have to catch them today!” She looked around at the team. “Five more minutes, then we get moving again.” They grumbled, but no one objected and five minutes later they were on the road again.
In the late afternoon, with heavy clouds moving in and the first sprinkles of rain falling, the travellers trudged along an eroded road up a long hill. At frequent intervals, they clambered over fallen trees or leapt across meter-deep gullies. “What is this place?” Reynir asked, breaking the long silence.
“Shut up,” Onni answered without looking at him. “This hill’s called Koli. And there are bear beasts somewhere nearby.” Abashed, Reynir fell silent. Mikkel, having overheard the brief discussion, studied their surroundings with renewed unease. Where were the bear beasts?
As they rounded a curve, they found a parking lot filled with rusted and decayed vehicles, with a ruined building beyond it. To their left, a narrow railroad led uphill with a worn stairway beside it. At the base of the railroad was a small wrecked building. Spotted here and there on the broken asphalt were drops of fresh blood.
Kisu, the cat, approached the nearest blood before freezing and looking to her left and up the hill. Her fur bushed out to its greatest extent. Every team member turned the same way, all the immunes drawing their daggers and adjusting their firearms for quick drawing. The dense foliage on the hillside blocked any view of lurking monsters. Mikkel moved up beside Sigrun, Emil following.
“Emil,” Sigrun said, “take the little guy and go back with the helpless ones. If the bears charge, you run. Mikkel and I will stop them.” She turned to give Mikkel a quick, ferocious grin before turning back to watch the hill.
“Watch out for Surma,” Mikkel added. We probably can’t stop that big one, even with firearms. But we can slow it down and injure it, and maybe the others can get away.
Even as he thought this, Kisu’s fur settled back to its normal sleek appearance and she sat down to lick a paw, the signal cats used for “all clear”. “Seems they were nearby, and now they’re not,” Sigrun said with a casual tone that fooled no one. “Nice.”
“Now is a good time to decide on the new plan,” Mikkel said, “and to make camp.” They moved into a van which still had an intact roof, the best shelter they’d had since Lalli’s home island. Emil and Lalli gathered firewood, and the Swede lit the fire just as the sprinkles of rain grew to a downpour. Kisu snuggled down in the remains of the driver’s seat, seeming asleep but for her ears, which moved now and then as if listening for enemies.
“Okay, so here’s what we do!” the irrepressible Sigrun began. “It’s very cliffy around here, right? So we go and stand by the edge of a cliff and lure the bears to us. And then we jump out of the way when they come at us!”
It occurred to Mikkel that the trolls Sigrun had hunted were less intelligent than these bear beasts, guided by the kade, had proved to be. “Let’s call that our plan B,” he said diplomatically. “Does anyone else have ideas to share?” When no one spoke, he asked in Icelandic, “Onni, any suggestions for what we should do?”
“I don’t have suggestions. I know how we’ll circumvent the bears.” Mikkel looked over at him, an eyebrow raised. On the one hand, he appreciated the man’s help. On the other hand, he worried about the man’s perhaps misplaced confidence.
“The cubs are our key,” the Finn began. “Clearly the mother will prioritize protecting her family over defending the kade. Therefore, we need only distract the mother long enough to trap and immobilize one of the cubs, after which the mother should stay by its side, and won’t come to help the kade, which will be easy pickings.” He looked away, out into the forest. “Then we can go home.”
Neither Mikkel nor anyone else had a better idea, so with the plan made, they settled down to sleep with the rain drumming down on the roof. Emil and Lalli stood watch, but Mikkel woke repeatedly to look around in the firelight and confirm that all was, so far, well.
It was still raining in the morning as they set off up the narrow stairway. Onni insisted on leading the way with Tuuri as his guide. Mikkel, Kisu draped across his broad shoulders, moved in behind him, blocking Sigrun from the most dangerous position. Grumbling, she took the spot behind him, Reynir behind her, and Emil, then Lalli, taking up the rear.
At the top of the hill there was a complex of decaying buildings. Lalli set off alone before Sigrun could order the team to stay together so, rolling her eyes, she sent Emil to follow him. Mikkel and Onni, trailed by Sigrun and Reynir, searched for a sturdy chain that was both unrusted and long enough to be useful.
“Here,” Mikkel said, holding up a still-shiny chain that had been wound around a fallen pulley. “This is stainless steel. It’s not so strong as carbon steel, but carbon steel would have rusted away by now in this climate. This should be adequate for our purposes.”
Onni gave him a rather odd look but accepted the chain. “Now we need a carabiner,” he said. “Lalli’s looking for that.” And, indeed, by the time they had gathered up the chain and made their plans, the younger Finn returned with the promised carabiner. To Mikkel’s pleased surprise, he had found one still in the plastic packaging that was used before the coming of the Rash. It was perfectly intact and useful, and Mikkel spared his young teammate a brief smile.
The rain continued to fall and the steep path continued to climb and the team continued to trudge forward. At length Sigrun tapped Mikkel on the shoulder to pass on the word from Reynir that Tuuri had located the bears. The team stopped to discuss their next actions.
“It is decided,” Mikkel announced. “Myself and Onni will chain the weaker cub to the tree with this. You three,” he said, turning to Sigrun, Emil, and Lalli, “have the honor of distracting the mother bear for long enough.” Turning to the remaining man, he remembered to switch to Icelandic. “Reynir, you stay out of the way.” Beside him, Onni instructed Lalli in Finnish.
Sigrun hesitated, frowning, and Mikkel looked hard at her, willing her to agree. We can’t do this together. One of us must make it through to help the survivors get away. Perhaps she reasoned the same way, for she nodded and answered with feigned unconcern, “All right, see you on the other side of bear chaining.” As she walked away, he heard her mutter, “I still think my cliff idea was better, just saying! We take care of really annoying trolls that way all the time in Norway.”
Mikkel refrained from answering. The bear beasts were not acting normally — if there was a norm for grosslings — and he doubted whether they would be foolish enough to go over a cliff. In any case, the plans were made. The chain draped around his shoulders, he followed Onni.
“Onni!” he said sharply. “You’re not wearing your mask!”
The Finn gave him an annoyed look. “You’re perceptive. Finally noticed! No, I’m not. These aren’t the kind of grosslings that breathe disease, and if I get scratched or bitten doing this, I’m doomed whether or not I have a mask. I’m leaving off the mask so I don’t keel over because I can’t breathe. Good enough for you?”
Mikkel nodded his reluctant agreement. To see a non-immune in the Silent World without a mask was troubling at a deep level, but Onni was correct. He was in little more danger without a mask than he would be with one. They stalked the bear beasts in silence as the rain continued to fall.
Pebbles flew from the cliff to their right, most falling harmlessly but a handful striking the furless cub. It squealed, twisting around in an effort to dodge the hail of stones. The mother bear beast, smarter or possibly prompted by the kade, charged at the three who stood atop the cliff, waving their arms and, in Sigrun's case, thumbing her nose.
As the big beast scrambled up the steep rocks, the three above fled while Mikkel and Onni raced forward to fling the chain around the skinless cub. Now was the critical moment, when the monster or the other cub might sprout new limbs or open a maw big enough to engulf a man, when the mother grossling might turn back to defend her cub instead of pursuing the others.
But no such disaster occurred. To Mikkel's surprise, the attack went smoothly. With the chain around the cub, the two men ran back to the nearest tree and raced around it, Onni clockwise and Mikkel counterclockwise, wrapping the chain repeatedly around the naked creature as it whined miserably. The diciest part of the operation was running behind the tree, for it was close to the edge of a cliff and they had to watch their feet. Still, in seconds the job was done. Mikkel snapped on the carabiner and the two men fled into the undergrowth.
Atop the cliff, the mother bear, hearing the cub's squeals and whines, slid down the pine tree into which she had chased Lalli, and clambered back down the rocky bluff. Mikkel and Onni joined Sigrun in peering over a boulder on top of the cliff. As the mother beast circled the trapped cub, tugging on the chains and licking the squealing cub in an effort to soothe it, the Finn whispered, “I was right. They will stay there now. Keep an eye on them. I'm taking care of the kade.”
Sigrun watched him hurry off to a small natural clearing, then turned back to watch the bear beasts below. “Let's hope big mama doesn't change her mind and get tired of sitting around. And that mage guy knows what he's doing!”
Emil joined them behind the boulder while Lalli and Reynir climbed down from their respective trees and, with Kisu in the Icelander's arms, leaned against trees beside Onni's clearing. The mage built a fire, the smoke from which stung Mikkel's nose when the wind brought it their way. Emil smothered a sneeze.
Below, the mother bear turned from biting and pulling at the chain, which only further pained the cub, to biting and clawing at one of the tree roots. “Is that thing seriously trying to eat through the trunk?” Sigrun said, looking side-eye at Mikkel. “It's going to take some time, but … Sooo at what point do you think we need to abort the operation? Ninety percent through?”
Before the Dane could answer, the damaged root gave way with a CRACK and the tree began to tilt. Another root broke — another — another — and the tree was toppling sideways over the cliff, carrying the furless cub with it. The mother beast ran to the edge of the cliff, watching the cub fall.
The endless rain pattered on Mikkel's head. His thick hair hung in wet locks and a stream ran down the back of his neck. His clothes were soaked through. He watched with an impassive face as the skinless monstrosity fell over the cliff, taking with it all his hopes and dreams.
We haven't been able to kill or even really slow down the big beast, and now it'll come after us without restraint. Onni's in a trance … I could grab him and run … but there's no point. I can't outrun this beast; none of us can. Let him be. If he stays motionless in trance, perhaps the beast will leave him while it chases down the rest of us. Perhaps he can kill the kade and avenge the murdered villagers before the beast kills him. Perhaps this whole crazy expedition will not be for nothing.
He felt Sigrun shoulder to shoulder with him.
We could have gone to Dalsnes. She could be leading her team and I could be her medic. Or her food-taster. Or her … anything. But instead we're going to die right here.
He dropped his shotgun into his hand. “Run.” Behind him, Emil was moving, trying to flee for whatever good that would do. Sigrun didn't move. “Run,” he repeated. She drew her pistol without a word. He nodded, just a little, and they waited for the bear beast to turn on them.
“It’s not charging!” Mikkel looked back at Sigrun as she slapped him on the shoulder. Below them, at the base of the cliff, the bear beast was howling, an ear-splitting noise that all but drowned out the captain’s shout. “Run! Go go go!” Mikkel turned towards the beast just for a moment, seeing that Sigrun was right. They might — probably would — need to make a stand against the thing, but not yet.
They ran. Though Mikkel’s legs were a little longer than Sigrun’s, he was big-boned and heavy-set, while she was slender and supple as a reed, her red hair a shining beacon even in the heavy rain … He hastily pushed that thought aside as unproductive at this moment, when they were running for their lives. But they were running for their lives, instead of selling their lives dearly to guard their team’s back trail, and with life unexpectedly still pulsing through his veins, he yearned for her.
Extremely unproductive. Don’t look at her. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Sigrun swiftly outdistanced him, catching up with Emil, who had run when ordered. As she took the lead by Emil’s side, Reynir was close behind her and the cat raced before them, bushed out so near to grosslings. Onni had roused from his trance while Mikkel’s back was turned and was running, but he and Lalli were well behind the other three, perhaps because they were now wasting their breath arguing in Finnish. Whether because they had finished their argument or because he was reluctant to argue before Mikkel, even though the Dane didn’t understand them, Lalli sprinted ahead, leaving Onni and Mikkel side by side.
“Do you have any preferences on our next move?” Mikkel asked. He forbore to mention that Onni’s earlier bright idea — chaining up the naked cub beast to distract the mother bear beast — had worked less well than they had hoped.
“Yeah, I’d prefer you all travel back in time and decide not to come here!”
Can we do that? I would say no, but what do I know of the powers of magic? So how would we decide not to come? He stumbled over a root but caught his balance and kept going, now somewhat behind Onni. Lalli is the key. If I can stop him from coming here, then no one else will either. So we should travel back to the day that Taru left — no, that won’t work. We’d have two Lallis, and now-Lalli knows Onni’s situation. He’d just get then-Lalli to go with him, and then we’d all be here again. Twice, even.
Mikkel ducked under a branch and looked ahead. Sigrun was still in sight, and he could only hope that she had some shelter in mind. So maybe we shouldn’t all travel back in time. Maybe me alone. I could tell then-me not to mention Saimaa to Taru, so Lalli wouldn’t know and wouldn’t take off after Onni. He and Emil could go be Cleansers in Sweden, and Sigrun and then-me could go to Norway, maybe with Reynir if he insists, and now-me would … I don’t know. Something. Only — what happens to now-Sigrun if I travel back in time without her? Maybe Sigrun and I could travel back together. But then what happens to the others?
He put on a burst of speed and caught up with Onni. “Can you do that?” he panted. “Send us, or some of us, back in time? And if so, then —”
“No! Of course I can’t do that! Are you stupid? If I could do that, do you think I’d waste it on you lot? I’d’ve gone back to save my sister!”
With an effort, Mikkel refrained from answering the insult. Let it go; it’s his way. Just as well we can’t go back, I suppose. We can focus on what to do right now. He allowed himself to fall back again to serve as rear guard. Onni had no useful suggestions, so there was no point in talking when he needed all his breath to run.
Behind them, the bear beast’s wail was dying away, and not because of distance. It’ll come after us now. No, not it, she. That grossling is — remains — a mother bear. A mother bear that feels love for her cubs and grieves for them when they die.
He stumbled again, his left foot slipping sideways on wet leaves, and he fell to one knee before pushing himself up and sprinting as best he could. Even a rear guard needed to stay close to be effective. We’ve always understood that animals that lived together tend to stay together even when infected and transformed. It’s thought to be a matter of habit. Cow beasts may stay in herds, wolf beasts in packs, even trolls in groups like the bipeds in Copenhagen. What did Sigrun call them? The “Royal Danish Dance Troupe”? I assumed they were just some patients from a hospital, still together because they lacked the motivation to separate.
He caught up with Onni, who gave him a glare and sped up to put distance between them. Mikkel settled back in a steady pace that kept him close to the others. Ahead, he caught glimpses of a building that seemed fairly intact. We’ve always said that grosslings are mindless, motivated only by a desire to spread the disease or kill the uninfected. Certainly they’ve acted that way. Mostly, at least. In Silent Denmark, before we knew about the ghosts, I thought the trolls that attacked us had somehow begun to organize. But once we knew of the ghosts, I dismissed the thought. Of course they couldn’t organize; they’re mindless. Only now … those bear beasts aren’t staying together out of a dimly remembered habit from before their infection. They’re staying together because they care for each other. And if beasts can feel affection, why not trolls? Were we destroying families, back there at Kastrup?
Sigrun was pointing urgently at a building to their right, surrounded by decaying vehicles. “In there!" she ordered. “We can’t take a stand out in the open!” Focusing on their next action relieved Mikkel from his horrifying thoughts. Before he could catch up with the others, Sigrun and Reynir smashed out the glass in the front door. Emil threw his cloak over the jagged shards along the base, allowing everyone to clamber over without injury. Mikkel, last to arrive, reached for the cloak to return it to the Swede, but Emil snatched it away with a glare. I’ll admit I’ve slipped things in his pockets before, but does he really think I scooped up a toad or something for a prank while we were fleeing? If we survive this, I’ll have to try to treat him better.
Onni and Lalli stepped to the side, muttering to each other in Finnish, and Reynir drifted over to join the other mages. Sigrun took the lead, cautiously checking around the lobby where they found themselves, Emil and Mikkel spreading out behind her. The mages and the cat weren’t sounding the alarm for grosslings, but there could be plenty of other perils in an abandoned and ruined building. The stairs ahead of them, leading to an intact upper floor, seemed safe enough.
“Let’s find a way to the roof,” Sigrun whispered, evidently not confident that there were no grosslings in the building. Mikkel understood. He preferred not to rely on the strange senses of mages and cats to warn him of danger. “If we get a good, hidden vantage point,” Sigrun went on, “we can —”
The cat and the Finns all whirled to the picture window behind them. Before anyone could react further, the mother bear beast flung herself into the window, cracking it but not breaking through it. Baffled, the monster backed off, roaring furiously at the sight of the hated human beings.
“Follow me!” Sigrun shouted to the mages, pushing Mikkel ahead of her, Emil already halfway up the stairs. “Take higher ground!”
Mikkel climbed the creaking stairs, staying close to the wall, where the stairsteps were likely to be most sturdy. The last thing they needed was for the aged structure to collapse under his weight before the others could join them. Behind him, Sigrun stopped, shouting, “I said, follow me! Do you people not understand Norwegian?”
Mikkel turned back, seeing that the mages — Onni first, then Reynir, and finally Lalli — were running off deeper into the building. Emil, almost at the top of the stair, had stopped as well. “What —” the Swede began.
“Fine,” Sigrun said in a frustrated tone, “come on! We need to not split up!” The other two followed as she ran back down the stairs, Emil all but treading on Mikkel's heels. The three slammed to a halt as the bear beast lunged once more, smashing through the picture window to land four-square in the lobby between the two groups. Sigrun threw out an arm to stop the other two. “Never mind, they know how to take care of themselves. Go go go!”
Mikkel hesitated as Sigrun pushed him, trying to get him moving up the stairs. The non-immunes have only Lalli to protect them. I should follow them. I owe them my protection. And yet … I can't get past that thing and charging it would just get me killed. Sigrun shoved him again, snarling “Move, you big lump!”
Mikkel surrendered to necessity, turned and ran up the stairs, slowing just enough to let Sigrun pass him. As they fled along a hallway smeared with grossling slime and strewn with the remains of trolls, he heard the stairs groaning under the weight of the bear beasts.
Shortly after they reached the second floor, the first troll attacked; it was small, and Sigrun killed it with ease. Still, scrabbling and thuds told them that more trolls were hiding in the rooms and now waking up to the presence of prey. They kept moving, climbing the next flight of stairs. Behind them, the bear beasts advanced, implacable.
As the three hesitated on the third floor, scanning back and forth for any means of reaching the roof, they heard a sound. Like no sound he'd ever heard before, it pierced through Mikkel's ears, through his head, and he staggered, clutching his head in pain.
And then it was gone. Mikkel looked at the other two, who had likewise clutched their heads.
“What was that?” Emil peered around warily for the source. “Some kind of troll attack?”
“Not that I've ever heard of,” Sigrun answered. In the rooms around them, scrabbling noises rose to a frenzy. “Well, great, it's stirred them up. Let's move; we've got to find someplace to make a stand.”
Mikkel did not have the luxury of holding his head in despair. This is a deathtrap. Every troll for kilometers around must have taken shelter in here over the decades. There must be a collapsed door or something that we couldn't see. And yet, what else could Sigrun do? The bear beast was practically on top of us. We couldn't outrun or outfight it outside, and if we hadn't run in here, it would have torn us apart within minutes.
He looked over his shoulder. The bear beast was not visible, but he could hear it. At least the other three ran the other way. The bear isn't after them. If we can't kill it, maybe it will be satisfied with killing us, and they can escape. If they can fight through the trolls in here, with two of them non-immune …
As Sigrun led the way down the hallway, four trolls burst through a rotting door behind them. The three took positions, daggers out … and the trolls scrambled away towards the stairs.
“They didn't see us,” Emil murmured.
“They didn't need to,” Sigrun murmured back. “Trolls hear you, smell you … they had to know we're here.”
Mikkel ignored the discussion, preparing himself to fight. More trolls were coming their way, varying in size but most small. He wondered if only smaller trolls could fit through the opening to the outside. As the creatures approached, Sigrun pushed the other two back against the wall, her face intent. “Hold still,” she whispered, “See if they'll just go by.”
The trolls crawled, slithered, scrambled past the team without turning heads or eyestalks towards them. As more appeared, Sigrun whispered, “Okay, let's go. Don't touch them. We've got to find a roof access. If we can just get up there, we have a chance.”
Following her down the hallway, Mikkel looked up at the ceiling. Watery sunlight shone through holes where the roof had rotted through, and below these holes, the floor was a mass of mold. The big Dane trod quickly and carefully past such spots, keeping close to the wall, but still the floorboards creaked and cracked under his weight. Maybe the bear beast will take time to kill these trolls. Maybe it will fall through the floor. If we can get up on the roof, and if Sigrun can get a clear shot at the thing's eye, maybe she can destroy its brain. But even if she manages to kill it, there's still the Surma creature; it'll be drawn to the shots. If we're up on the roof, though, maybe we could kill that too. If only we knew what it was!
Only when the thing moved into the weak sunlight did the team realize what was ahead of them. What had appeared to be the far end of the hallway was a massive troll, almost a giant, which had taken on the shape of the hallway itself. It was now squirming forward, completely blocking their path.
Sigrun looked back towards the departing trolls and, beyond them, the stairway already groaning under the weight of the bear beast, then turned back to the oncoming monster. Her shoulders were set and Mikkel thought that, for the first time, she believed they were doomed.
Not yet! Not if he could help it!
Mikkel yanked at the door to his left, and the doorknob came off in his hand. With a curse, he flung it aside, pushed his hand through the hole, and heaved. This time, the rusted hinges failed and the door fell towards him. Shoving it at the approaching troll, he took a quick look into the room. It was dimly illuminated by one filthy window, had an intact roof and floor, and was void of trolls. It was good enough. “Everyone take cover in here. Quickly.”
The three stood silent as the massive troll squirmed past, the floorboards squealing under its weight. The bear beast will have to tear through that to get to us; that should slow it down long enough that —
With a resounding crack, the floor underneath Mikkel gave way and he dropped, the other two losing their balance and falling after him onto something soft and yielding. The cat leapt down, landing on Mikkel's head and pushing his face into what proved to be the slime-covered body of yet another grossling.
This one was a giant, an immobile mass which extended from the remains of a double bed across the floor to the door. As the three struggled to pick themselves up, the giant raised its head — larger than a horse's head and equipped with teeth like a crocodile — from the bed and shrieked. Sigrun, still pushing debris off her body, shouted, “Somebody shut that thing up!”
Mikkel wiped slime from his face and tugged at his shotgun, the strap still tangled with a fallen board, while Emil pushed himself up and drew his pistol. Before the Swede could fire, the picture window behind the bed exploded inward and the giant's head … came apart.
It happened so fast that Mikkel didn't see it. Something had reached through the window and slashed the giant's head into pieces. Before any of the three could react, the cause became clear: a giant leaned through the shattered window and seemed to survey the room.
It could be nothing other than the dreaded Surma. Its body resembled that of a vast human being, starved to skin and bones, with enormous fingers elongated into razor-sharp claws perhaps two meters long. Its skin was yellowish, almost translucent, and every bone stood out clearly. Its head was missing, replaced by what appeared to be a chunk of concrete with two pieces of rebar poking forward. It had no visible eyes, ears, nose, or even mouth, but it was clearly capable of navigating in some fashion and, of course, it reacted to sound.
The three froze, staring. After a moment, the giant seemed satisfied and climbed the rest of the way into the room, seated itself on the remains of the bed and the dead giant, crossed its legs and folded its arms, and appeared to settle in for a nap.
Mikkel turned his head slowly to look at the door. There was debris between him and the door, and opening it would surely make noises that would alert the thing. The claws of the creature's left hand were bare centimeters from his shoulder and, after seeing its speed, he had to acknowledge that attempting either to attack it or to open the door would merely get him and the others killed. They had no choice but to stay still and quiet. Slowly, carefully, and very quietly, the three settled themselves against the debris and waited for some sound to distract the monster.
It was perhaps five minutes before they heard it: something clawed at the door. Surma leaned forward, tilting what passed for its head back and forth. The clawing continued, followed by a thump, and Surma lunged. The giant passed the three in a heartbeat, hurling itself into the door.
The door, the wall around it, and the floor all collapsed under the impact, and for the second time in mere minutes, Sigrun, Emil, and Mikkel fell to a lower level. Since the dead giant's body had fallen with the floor, they were cushioned from the worst of the fall.
Wiping slime from his face, for he had tumbled face-first into the corpse again, Mikkel sat up to see Surma and the large bear beast sprawled motionless in a heap of debris. They had fallen into a restaurant, many tables and chairs crushed under the monsters but others bizarrely intact with their moldering tablecloths in place. Sigrun and Emil sat up as well, and Mikkel was relieved to see that, despite their adventures, bruised though they were, none of them were badly hurt. After a quick look at the situation, Sigrun pointed off to their left, to a glass door leading to the outside. As quickly and quietly as they could, the three worked their way through the debris to the door, the cat riding on Sigrun's shoulders.
They had just reached the door when the bear beast got to its feet and roared in fury at the sight of them. As Mikkel and Sigrun seized the door handle, Surma swiped at the other grossling. Incredibly, the bear beast was not slashed to ribbons, but instead hurled into a wall, bringing down more debris and a small troll which the bear beast casually smashed while charging into Surma.
“They're distracted,” Sigrun whispered. “Quickly now!” Together, she and Mikkel yanked at the door, once, twice, without success. “It's locked!” This lock was not rusted enough for Mikkel to force with brute strength. While the battle raged behind them, the three glanced around for anything to break the lock or the window. Sigrun came up with a serving fork with which she attacked the lock. Mikkel watched for a moment, biting his lip in worry. He was the strongest of the team, but also the most clumsy. He might break the lock, but he might break the glass of the door in the process, and the results of that were not to be contemplated.
He turned back to the battle, where the bear beast roared in fury and Surma slashed at it in eerie silence. His eye was drawn to a movement on the remains of the floor above. The surviving cub, the one that seemed to be without head or internal organs, the one which he had almost forgotten about, was still up there, apparently watching as the bear beast and Surma rolled around in frenzied combat.
As Surma flung the bear beast away once more, the cub threw itself out and down, landing spread out like a rug on the giant's back. Surma tried in vain to shake the thing off, and even from across the room, Mikkel heard the hiss of burning flesh. The creature was secreting acid!
The Surma monster reached up with one massive hand, raking the cub beast with its razor-sharp claws, and flinging it in pieces not far from the watching humans. Surma's back was bleeding heavily from both the acid attack and its own claws, and the monster hesitated, as if unsure of its next action.
The bear beast had no hesitation. After one long look at the tattered remains of its second cub, it charged Surma with all its strength, sending both of them hurtling through the glass door, completely over the patio outside, and crashing into the forest far below.
The three humans stood silently peering out into the forest, Mikkel marvelling at their survival.
“I don't think they're thinking about us a lot anymore,” Sigrun said at last. “So, I guess our problem is solved over here.”
“Uh, one of them will win and still be alive, though,” Emil pointed out.
“Yeah, yeah, you're right. That means this is our chance to find the others and get out of here.”
With a few nervous backward glances, they turned away and picked their way through the debris to the interior of the hotel.
The fight between the bear beast and Surma had demolished the restaurant, leaving the floor covered in unstable debris. It was, perhaps, inevitable that someone would be hurt as they made their careful way through the mess. That someone was Emil, who tripped and fell hard on a fallen beam. As he picked himself up, he groaned and swore under his breath.
“What is it?” Mikkel hastened to help him.
“My side. The side of my chest. It hurts.” He continued to swear as Mikkel felt along his ribs.
“I think you've cracked a rib. Maybe two. I don't — dammit, I have nothing to bind it up with. You'll just have to take it easy until we get back to the camp.” Mikkel seldom swore, doing so only in deep frustration.
“Yeah, like that's going to happen,” Sigrun said. “But we'll do our best to keep the trolls away from you.”
Emil sighed and then winced. “Right, I'm good. Let's go on, then.”
Once they got to the front lobby, where they had entered, they followed a trail of fresh grossling slime leading down a hallway. It seemed they all felt that the grosslings were making for the missing mages, and they could only hope that they were not too late.
Bringing up the rear as usual, Mikkel was the second to be hurt. His foot slid sideways on a tilted board and slipped into a hole amidst sharp-edged debris. As he worked his foot out, trying not to cut himself too much, he heard Emil and Sigrun talking ahead.
“Wow, there's a lot of them,” Emil said.
“They're distracted, though. Or — whoa! Not so distracted now! Burn them!”
“Bad idea; the building —”
“Burn these things before they swarm us!”
Whoosh!
Grosslings shrieked from the hallway beyond.
“I told you this wasn't a good idea,” Emil said.
Mikkel yanked his foot out, disregarding pain and injury. The others needed him now.
“Mikkel!” Sigrun called. “Can you come over here and do some smoke-diving?”
He ran painfully to join the others, seeing that the hallway beyond was full of burning grosslings, with flames running up the walls. To his right, and perhaps four meters ahead, was a heavy steel door. Beside it was a small, round-cornered window; the grosslings were concentrated around that window.
“I figure the mages are inside that room with the window,” Sigrun said. “I'll hold off what's left of the trolls while you get the idiots to safety. Emil stays here. The cat, too. Good?”
“Good.”
“Yeah, good,” Emil said, frowning and twisting, trying to find a position that didn't hurt. Kisu crouched close to the ground, staring down the hallway and growling.
“Surma,” Mikkel added, glancing at Sigrun, who nodded. In the heat of battle, she might be tempted to raise a battle-cry.
The two ran into the burning hallway, kicking flaming debris (and grosslings) aside. As Sigrun slashed and stabbed at dying grosslings that still charged at her, a quick look told Mikkel that the door opened outwards, and he yanked it open. The three mages were within, alive and apparently uninjured. Onni and Reynir wore their masks, which would protect against smoke as well as infection, but Lalli was already coughing.
“Out! Go to Emil!” With no other choice, Mikkel raised his voice to be heard over the sound of flames and shrieking grosslings. If Surma is still alive, we need to get out of the building now!
Lalli ran out first, dagger in hand, and turned to join Sigrun in holding off the grosslings; Onni shoved Reynir ahead of him, and the two ran together, with Mikkel close behind. Once Sigrun and Lalli caught up, the reunited team fled from the flames, Reynir scooping up Kisu as they ran. Sigrun led the way out of the burning hotel, Emil gasping behind her, the three mages behind him, and Mikkel taking the rear-guard position.
As they all stopped for breath in the fresh air, “We're done,” Sigrun said, keeping her voice down. “Let's get out of here quick, before either claw-hands or the bear shows up again.”
Still gasping and leaning forward, Emil pointed wordlessly past her to the mother bear beast, now padding up a game trail from the forest. The bear beast dripped both blood and water as she stalked implacably towards them.
We can't kill her, Mikkel thought, despairing. The Surma-giant sliced up an entire herd of cow beasts, but it couldn't kill her. We're all suffering smoke inhalation and we have two non-immunes. It's just us three against that thing, and Emil is wounded. Well, Lalli will fight too, for what he's worth. He pushed past the mages to stand to Sigrun's left while Emil stood to her right. This is the last battle. It ends in a few minutes. If her beliefs are true, then perhaps we will meet again in Valhalla.
“Hold,” Sigrun murmured. “It's a bear.”
The three drew their daggers, and Mikkel looked to Sigrun for the cue to attack. He understood her meaning: beasts often acted as they had before infection, and a bear might pass by humans who offered it no challenge. But this beast had not acted like a normal bear at any time. He expected it to strike.
The bear beast stalked past Mikkel, pausing to look directly at Sigrun, who glared back unflinchingly. The creature snarled, and Mikkel raised his dagger, readying himself for a final, useless attack.
The beast turned away.
Mikkel stared, stunned, as the creature stalked up the hill to his right and disappeared into the hotel. They were still alive.
Sigrun shook herself slightly, as if surprised to find herself in one piece. “Okay,” she murmured, “let's get out of here right now before it changes its mind!”
Mikkel, Sigrun, and Emil started downhill, but turned back when they realized they were alone. Reynir had followed them for a few meters, but stopped, looking back at Onni and Lalli, who seemed to argue in low tones while watching the hotel. Abruptly, Lalli ran into the hotel as Onni turned back to the others.
“There is a ceremony,” Onni told Mikkel. “It's — hmm — it's a ceremony to put the bears' spirits to rest. That bear beast is near death, and we need to see where she falls so we can do it.”
“That's great. I'd rather Lalli didn't get killed before she falls, however.”
“He'll be all right. In her current condition, he's faster than she is. And since she didn't attack all of us, I don't believe she'll attack him.”
Mikkel rolled his eyes, but nodded agreement. “Very well. We need to go back to the camp now. Emil has a broken rib or two that I need to tape.” He didn't mention that he had slashed his foot through the boot as he yanked it out of the debris. There was no need to draw attention to his clumsiness.
They were only halfway to their camp when an anguished howl echoed through the forest. Onni turned, then ran towards the sound without a word. “What are you —!” Sigrun shouted before pursuing him, and the other three perforce followed, Emil and Mikkel wincing with every step.
They found Lalli looking over the cliff, just where the tree and the naked bear beast had gone over. He glanced back at them, then turned away. Mikkel looked over at Onni, who shrugged and waved everyone forward.
The bear beast lay motionless below in a pool of blood. In front of her muzzle lay the mangled naked beast and the shredded remains of the second cub. “Alive?” Mikkel whispered to Onni, not quite trusting Kisu's purring as Reynir held her.
“No. She is quite dead.” Lalli turned to his cousin and the two Finns conversed for a minute before Onni nodded and addressed Mikkel again. “We can camp here. Neither of us perceives any menace around here, and Lalli has work to do for the ceremony.”
“We need our gear from the camp.”
“So go get it. I'm staying here, though.”
There was no help for it. Lalli was busy, Emil was wounded, and walking wasn't doing Mikkel's foot any good. “Sigrun, we're going to camp here. Lalli and Onni have some, ah, religious ceremony they need to do. For the bears, apparently.” Sigrun gave him a puzzled look. “Well, yes, I have no idea. But, anyway, we need our gear from the camp. Will you please go get it?”
“Sure!” Sigrun trotted off, dagger in hand. Mikkel shook his head, realizing that the crazy Norwegian troll-hunter was looking forward to finding more grosslings along the way.
By evening, the rain which had bedeviled the team for days finally ended. The older members of the team ate their meager supper beside the fire while Lalli cleaned the skulls of the bear beasts, and Emil and Reynir watched him. The second cub, the one which appeared to be a walking bear-skin, proved to still have its skeleton and internal organs. All but its spine were greatly shrunken and distorted, and its skull was scarcely larger than a vertebra. Seeing it, Mikkel shook his head at the ability of the Rash disease to deform living creatures. It was no wonder that so many died as they transformed.
With all the skulls cleaned, Lalli stacked them together, fitting one inside the next, and set the result aside before yawning hugely, taking his blanket, and making himself comfortable for the night.
Mikkel looked over at the skulls. That didn't seem like much of a ceremony. He shrugged and poked at the fire; he had other problems on his mind. “Onni, what is the situation with the Kade? Do you still need to deal with it?”
“No.” It seemed the Finn had nothing more to say.
“It's gone, then? We can go home?”
“It's gone.” Mikkel's glare seemed to make him uncomfortable. “We — Lalli, and the Icelander, and … and Tuuri — we were able to free our grandmother's spirit. The Swan of Tuonela took the original Kade’s spirit away. I told you of the Swan.”
“You did. As I recall, this Swan was going to take your spirit?”
“If I didn't free my grandmother's spirit. But I did, so she and my sister have gone to Tuonela. As they should.” He stared into the fire.
So Onni had lost his sister again, and this time for good. Mikkel could think of nothing to say to this except, “I am sorry, Onni.” The Finn nodded without looking up.
“Hey, what's that all about?” Sigrun asked.
“I asked him about the Kade. It is gone, and Tuuri's spirit has gone as well.”
“Well, great! This stupid adventure is over?”
“It is. We are free to return to civilization.”
“Finally! Then let's set watches and get some sleep. I want to get moving early. Home!”
The watches were assigned to Emil, Lalli, Sigrun, and then Mikkel. They were undisturbed, and it did not rain.
As the late summer dawn broke, Sigrun was on her feet, urging everyone to pack up. To her frustration, Lalli ignored her, placing the skulls on his head and climbing a dead tree. Distracted from packing, Sigrun watched his actions with fascination. “Wow, what a sense of balance! Not sure how useful that is in hunting, though. Or scouting, either. Maybe he's good at not falling off cliffs?”
Mikkel shrugged and continued rolling up blankets to stuff into his pack. Up in the tree, Lalli carefully hung each skull on a separate branch. Both he and Onni, watching from below, chanted something in Finnish as he did so. Sigrun fell silent, recognizing that she should not interrupt this ceremony. When it was done and Lalli was climbing down, she turned to Mikkel.
“Hey, could you ask the grumpy one if he's going to come willing with us back to civilization? And don't tell him that we'll knock him unconscious and drag him back if he won't.”
Mikkel smiled slightly. His foot hurt, and he was not looking forward to the long hike back. He welcomed the distraction of a prank.
“Certainly. I'll ask exactly that.” He switched to Icelandic. “Onni, are you listening?”
“What?”
“Sigrun wants you to know that we plan to knock you unconscious and drag you back to civilization if you don't come with us voluntarily.”
“Great, thanks.” Onni didn't turn around as he answered. “I wasn't planning on staying here, so …” He sighed and waved a hand.
Disappointed at the reaction, Mikkel turned back to Sigrun. “He'll come.”
“Great! Now let's head home. To Norway, that is!” She turned to survey the group. “I'll get Dad to hire all of you, including all these mute and language-limited mages.”
“Are you certain your father has that many vacancies to fill?”
“Ohh, don't you worry about that! More people, more better! All right, let's get moving. We'll eat once we're back on the road.”
The group moved slowly, Lalli leading, Sigrun taking rear-guard, and the “helpless ones”, in Sigrun's tactful phrase, in between. Though Mikkel had wrapped Emil's ribs, hiking was still painful for the Swede, and Mikkel himself was limping, helped along by a stout stick used as a cane to reduce the strain on the sutures he'd put in his wounded foot. He had wrapped his foot tightly with the remaining bandages and wrapped his torn boot with a torn-off strip of his jacket, hoping to keep his foot dry. He suspected that his foot would soon be soaked in filthy water despite his best efforts.
At first, Emil and Mikkel walked together with Onni and Reynir behind, until the Icelander's incessant chatter drove the Finn to call a halt and propose that the non-immunes should each have an immune guard at all times. Though he recognized the true reason, Mikkel agreed with the ostensible reason and requested Emil to walk with, and guard, Onni while Mikkel served as Reynir's guard. The group set off again, now with Emil and Onni following close behind Lalli, then Mikkel and Reynir, and finally Sigrun.
“Tell me what happened with the Kade,” Mikkel said. Remembering Reynir's scattered approach to storytelling, he added, “Start with you and the other two running away from us.”
“Oh, yeah, that. I heard Sigrun shout something, and I thought I should turn back, except, except I felt there was a reason I should go with them. I mean, I was there, or at least I was in the vision, when the Kade attacked. So I went with them.”
He looked to Mikkel as if for approval, and Mikkel nodded. Who was he to question dreams and visions?
“Onni led us to that room where we were. And Tuuri, she was with us then. He was pretty mad at me, because he didn't want me bothering him while he was busy, but there wasn't anything I could do at that point except stay, and I was sure I was supposed to be there. Anyway, I closed the door and we all, um, went to sleep. So we could go into the dream-world, not being idle, you know.”
Mikkel gave a “go on” gesture.
“I was in my pasture with my dream-dog, so we ran all the way to Lalli's place — I told you about that before — and he was there and Tuuri was telling him to go back, stay away. We wouldn't, of course. When I'm there, in the dream-world, you know, I can feel where Onni and Lalli are. I wonder if I could feel my mom and dad, if I tried. I never have —”
“Getting back to the Kade?”
“Oh, yeah, okay. Anyway, I could feel where Onni was, and me and Lalli and my dream-dog, and this big cat that was with Lalli —”
“It's a lynx,” Onni said, looking over his shoulder at them. “It's his luonto, like the owl is mine.”
“His, uh, luonto, okay. So we all went to join Onni, with Tuuri scolding us all the way.” Reynir gave a wistful smile. “Onni wasn't happy to see us there either, but he said we could act as bait for the Kade.”
Mikkel looked from Reynir to Onni's back before returning to his usual watchfulness.
“We didn't wait for long before the Kade attacked. At first it, well, it screamed, I guess is the best word. It was painful to hear, but it didn't really hurt us, so I don't know why —”
“I do,” Mikkel said. “We heard the scream too somehow. That's what called all the trolls to cluster around the room you were in. They went right by us without attacking.”
“Oh, wow.” Reynir paused, but there seemed nothing more to say about that. “Well, then the Kade came for us. It was … it was a giant of mist and darkness, and eyes. So many eyes.”
“Eyes?” Mikkel asked in alarm. “Did you look into them? Any of them?”
“Well, sort of —”
“It didn't matter,” Onni interrupted, glancing back at them before looking ahead even as he continued to speak. “I slashed its corrupting eye; I destroyed that eye just before we all ran away from the bear. If I hadn't been interrupted then, I'd have killed the Kade myself.”
“We had to run,” Mikkel said. “You saw the condition of the bear after tangling with Surma, who, I remind you, sliced up an entire herd of cow beasts. She did die finally, but she kept going a long time after that fight, and we have no weapons that could do anything like that much damage. If we'd stood and fought the bear while you fought the Kade, we would all be dead.”
“Yes, yes.” Onni waved a dismissive hand. “In any case, we were in no danger of corruption from looking at it, but while I was delayed, it gathered more lost spirits and, hmm, built itself that giant body, as the Icelander said.”
When he didn't continue, Mikkel turned to Reynir and cocked an eyebrow.
“Right. It didn't have a head, just this big maw in the front, and Tuuri flew right into it: brave little spirit!” Mikkel glanced at him and caught that same wistful smile. “It struck at us, tried to smash us, and Onni blocked it somehow. He was just amazing.” Reynir's smile widened, and he looked at Onni's back with worshipful eyes.
“It knocked us away, into the water.” Reynir straightened, squaring his shoulders. “Me and Vúvúff — ah, that's my dream-dog — we can stand on water, so we helped Onni and Lalli onto a bank. Then Tuuri must have done something to the Kade, because it started biting at itself, like it was itching, and then it kind of … tore itself apart. I thought that was great, except then it mostly pulled itself back together, and the pieces turned into these beast things of mist and darkness and started chasing us around. Tuuri flew out again with this, uh, this bird thing chasing her. I didn't see too much of what happened to her, because I was trying to keep the things from hurting Vúvúff.
“But Onni had this sword, and he was slashing those beast things to bits. It was great!” Reynir smiled broadly at the memory, then sobered. “Only each one had a big eye inside, and when he slashed one up, the eye just flew back to the giant.”
“We were whittling it down,” Onni said without turning, “but slowly. We would have finished it off, eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“Onni chopped up all the beasts, and then Tuuri came back with the bird thing chasing her. She and Onni and Onni's owl were trying to keep that thing away from the giant, but I guess he didn't want to chop it up —”
“Of course not. Our grandmother's spirit had been corrupted into that form, but it was still her spirit. We wanted only to draw her back, to guide her back to herself. We never wanted to hurt her!”
“Well, yeah. Anyway, they were doing that, and Lalli and I, and Vúvúff and the lynx, we were kind of off to the side, and we didn't — I didn't, anyway — know if we should try to help.”
“You shouldn't have. We didn't need your help.”
“So we were just there, and this big red swan flew down to us.”
“The Swan of, of …” Mikkel struggled to remember Onni's story.
“The Swan of Tuonela,” Onni said in annoyance. “It is her duty to lead the spirits of Finns to Tuonela, to rest from our labors.”
“That swan, yes. She said she was there to gather the spirits that were 'overdue' to go to Tuonelly.”
“Tuonela,” Mikkel and Onni chorused.
“Tuonela, okay. I asked her to help us, but she said she couldn't because it was against the rules. Whatever the rules are. Then she led us — no, she didn't lead us, no, we just followed her even after she told us not to. Anyway, she flew into the giant's maw, and we climbed up its body (ugh!) and got in while it was, I guess, distracted by watching Onni and Tuuri. When we got in, it closed its mouth, but it was a lot bigger inside than out, and it wasn't dark, just kind of dim. The Swan flew a long way down this tunnel to this enormous … cavern, I guess you'd say, all full of pools. She dived into one pool, and what could we do but dive in after?”
“I suppose,” Mikkel said absently, studying a shadow under a tree off to his right. He thought he'd seen motion, but perhaps it was just the breeze.
“We swam after the Swan and, wow, I thought I was going to drown before we got to the other end of that underwater tunnel! So then we were in another cavern, and there was this huge, huge eye in the middle, looking up at the ceiling. But it wasn't complete, it lacked the transparent thing in front?”
“That's the cornea,” Mikkel said.
“That's because I slashed it,” Onni added.
“Right. Well, there was water, something like water, flowing out of it. We didn't know what to do, but the Swan was over there grooming herself, and she accidentally hit herself in the eye, and that gave me the idea that I should look inside the eye. Not that she was trying to help, or anything! She wouldn't do that, not at all!”
Onni looked back, frowning. “This is all very odd. She wouldn't help anyone; that's not her task. I wonder what was going on, back in Tuonela, to make her want to intervene.”
Mikkel looked over at Reynir to find the Icelander looking back at him. They shrugged identical shrugs.
“Well, I don't know about that. Anyway, I climbed up the eye (yick!) and looked inside. There was a glow, down deep, so Lalli held my feet while I stretched down and pulled it up. It was a bird skeleton inside a ball of clear ice. I didn't know what to do with it, but the Swan told me to give it to her. I did, and she shook it really, really hard. The ice broke up and the pieces nearly hit us! But then, while she was shaking it, the flesh — well, not the flesh, but where the flesh and feathers would have been, this glow surrounded it until it looked like a silver bird, like Tuuri, but a different breed, like a swallow, maybe.”
Onni dropped back now to walk on Mikkel's right side. “The itse — the spirit, you would say — always takes the form of a bird, for it must follow the Bird Path to Tuonela, but the type of bird depends on the person.”
Emil looked back at them. “Mikkel? What's up?”
“I'm getting the story of what happened to the Kade. I'll tell you and Sigrun once I have it straight.”
“Okay, but I'm really supposed to be Onni's guard.”
“I'm sure he'll rejoin you when the story is complete.”
“Once the bird took shape and started flying around,” Reynir went on, “the giant, the monster of mist and darkness, just broke apart, and the eyes that were inside it started flying away. But the Swan went after them and collected them in her beak. She even flew right into that bird thing that was, ah, containing the grandmother's spirit, and she got that one too. They didn't look like skeletons then, or anything, just like big eyes. When she shook them, though, they turned into birds too, and one of them was this big crane. Tuuri flew to that one, so I thought it was the grandmother's spirit.”
“It was. We knew the feel of her.”
“They talked, Onni and Lalli and Tuuri and the crane, but I didn't listen in. It was not my place.”
“No, it was not. And there is no need for you to hear of what we discussed.”
“Of course not,” Mikkel politely agreed, though he was indeed quite curious as to what the grandmother had experienced while a captive of the Kade, and whether she had learned anything of the Kade's motives. Alas, however, his curiosity was not to be satisfied.
“Some of the eyes flew away, though,” Reynir said. “Tuuri asked the Swan to get them too, but the Swan said she would get them when it was their time, or something like that.”
“Some of them got away?” Mikkel asked in alarm. Had they done so much, and yet failed? “Does that mean there's still a Kade out there? Or many Kades?”
“No, I think not,” Onni replied. “The spirits that escaped, hmm, they did not cloak themselves in darkness, nor take any form. I believe they are lost spirits that the Kade captured to assist in its defense after I destroyed its corrupting eye. That the Swan left them behind makes me believe they are not dead. Indeed, I believe they may be the spirits of non-immune mages who were infected by the Rash, so their bodies are still out there, alive but twisted, deformed, and suffering.”
“I thought you said that mages infected by the Rash became Kades.”
“Not always. A Kade is an extremely hateful, envious person; the Rash offers such people the power that they craved but never had. A person who isn't like that will not accept the offer of power — and its price — and will not become a Kade.”
“But their bodies are still out there, as trolls.”
“So I suppose. I cannot imagine otherwise why the Swan let them go.”
Mikkel walked in silence, thinking of the troll in Silent Denmark, the troll who had kept much of her humanity and had, with Reynir's aid, taken away the vengeful ghosts created by the Danish “cure”. How many such trolls might there be, still retaining something of their human consciousness? The bitter cold of the first decade after the coming of the Rash was thought to have killed half or more of the trolls at that time, and hunters killed more with every passing year. Still, scientists estimated that there were tens of thousands of trolls still surviving in each nation of the Known World other than Iceland. He found it best not to think of the suffering of those trolls; such led to despair.
“So now you have the story,” Onni said. “There is nothing more to tell.” In a few swift steps, he was beside Emil once more, and the team proceeded in silence.
The Sun was past its zenith and beginning its long slide to dusk when Lalli signalled the group to follow him off the overgrown road and into the deep forest.
“What's wrong?” Reynir whispered, looking about fearfully.
“I don't know. Be still,” Mikkel murmured in return. If Lalli had detected enemies ahead, they didn't need the Icelander's voice attracting attention, though it would be most odd to encounter grosslings in the bright sunlight. A few steps later, the group broke through a screen of underbrush and found themselves in a glade surrounded by berry bushes. Lalli stepped away from the others, gesturing at the ripe berries. “Is food here,” he said in heavily accented Swedish, his voice no softer than usual.
“Lunch break? Good!” Sigrun said. “But come on, this stuff's bird food. I'm going to find some real food.” She trotted off farther into the forest, soon vanishing in green underbrush. Mikkel watched her trim figure until it was lost; her passing made little noise, and that was soon overcome by cheerful bird-song.
Reynir looked around at Onni, Lalli, and Emil, who were already plucking berries from the bushes. “We're stopping for lunch?”
“Just so. Sigrun's gone hunting, so perhaps we'll have some meat later.” With two mages to watch for grosslings, and sunlight to keep enemies at bay, Mikkel thought it safe to let down his guard. He sank to the ground beside a well-laden bush, relieved to be off his injured foot. Though he'd kept it dry so far, there was a scent of rain in the air, and he feared his crude wrapping would soon soak through. Immunity to the Rash didn't confer immunity to other infections, and the first aid kit to which he'd clung through all their adventures had little of antibiotics remaining.
But still, if it happens, it will take time for infection to set in, and by the time it is too severe for me to walk, we should be back to the boat. And who knows, perhaps I can find some useful herbs. Not in this glade, though. He leaned back with a sigh and began his meal of berries.
Bang!
Mikkel lurched to his feet, catching up his heavy walking stick for a club. “Reynir! Behind me!” The Icelander ran to him, berry-stained hands clasped tight in fear. Across the glade, Emil had run to Onni's side, pistol drawn. Mikkel frowned in concern. We've supposed the Surma-thing is dead since the bear beast came back alive, but are we right to do so? Is the giant charging for Sigrun even now? And why did fire she at all? She was hunting; surely she just fired on prey. No war cry, no call for our aid against a swarm. Of course, she was just hunting. Only … is this silence because she's now unable to shout? Though Mikkel pushed that thought away, it persisted, biting at the corners of his mind.
Onni and Lalli conferred in quiet Finnish before Lalli darted soundlessly away in the direction from which the gunshot had sounded while Onni and Emil retreated to join the other two. The immunes stood side by side, alert and watchful, with the non-immunes behind them. All waited for what might come next.
What came next, some minutes later, was Sigrun and Lalli, a well-cleaned fawn slung over a branch carried between them, one end resting on Lalli's shoulders and the other in Sigrun's strong hands. “We need a fire! Emil, little Viking, get to work!”
Emil hesitated, unwilling to argue with his captain. “Sigrun,” Mikkel said, helping him out, “he can't light a fire here; he'll set the forest on fire. Let's go back to the road first and find a spot that's not too overgrown.”
Emil gave him a grateful glance as Sigrun laughed. “Okay, okay, lead the way, but lead fast! It's been ages since we had some good red meat.” She, at least, had no lingering concerns about the noise-seeking giant, and indeed it had not appeared. Not yet, anyway.
Reynir and Onni cleared a relatively intact section of the road, pulling up the weeds which had grown in cracks over the decades, while Lalli gathered firewood and Mikkel butchered the carcass. Emil watched the preparations, forbidden by the medic to stress his cracked ribs, until all was ready and he could set to work with flint and steel. In a remarkably short time, the Cleanser had a good hot fire to roast the venison, and not long after, they were enjoying a hearty lunch.
Soon enough, Sigrun was on her feet, waving at the group. “Come on, come on, let's go.”
Mikkel looked around, frowning. “Where's Lalli? He was here a minute ago.” When no one answered, he switched to Icelandic. “Onni, where's Lalli? We need to get moving.”
“He'll be back soon.”
“It's going to rain soon. We need to find shelter — we need him to find shelter for us — before the grosslings get frisky.”
“He knows that. He'll be back in time.”
“Mikkel, what's he saying? Where's the twig?”
“I don't know. He's gone off somewhere, but he's coming back. Supposedly before the rain hits.” Mikkel shrugged; who could understand the vagaries of Finns?
Sigrun looked down at the seated group, her face a study in frustration. Two non-immunes; two immunes, both wounded (not even in combat); herself; a missing scout. “We can't just sit here in full view of any troll that wanders by. How far is it to that city we went through? Jonny-something?”
“Joensuu. Forty kilometers or more. We'll not reach it today.”
She stared at him. “Yeah, probably not. At this rate, we probably won't reach it in a week.” She seemed to realize the implied criticism. “Not your fault, though. You've been keeping up with the rest of us. It's just … it's just that the scout's run off, so now we're going even slower, and we've been out here so long.”
And she really wants to go home. She never wanted to be here at all. She came with us because — no, don't think that. She came because she thought we'd all get killed without a troll-hunter captain, and she was probably right. Now we need to go home. If Lalli would just get back!
The threatening rain had come, the first sprinkles pattering on the leaves, when Lalli returned carrying a canvas bag, which he tossed at Reynir, and a grimy box, which he dropped at Mikkel's feet before turning to talk to Onni. Reynir had missed his catch and gotten the bag in his face; he held it out to Mikkel and asked, “What am I supposed to do with this?”
The box had broken open, and Mikkel found himself looking at a pair of pre-Rash boots, sturdy and waterproof, still clean after so many years. There was no lining, but such would have rotted anyway, and Mikkel had good socks. He turned to Onni. “Please thank him for this. That was very thoughtful of him. I didn't expect this at all.” After so many examples of Lalli's ability to find what was needed, he should not have been surprised, and yet he was.
“What am I supposed to do with this bag?”
“Use the bag for the leftover meat,” Onni answered in annoyance. “Were you going to carry it in your hands? And you — Lalli got you the boots so you don't slow us down. Put them on and let's get going. He's found a shelter nearby.”
Mikkel smiled to himself as he stripped off his own boots. For all their prickly nature, the two Finns were still part of the team.
The boots fit well and were warm, comfortable, and, above all, waterproof. All of these things the promised shelter, a small two-room cabin, was not. The roof had fallen in at one end, and mold streaked down that wall and extended hungry tentacles onto the adjacent walls. Despite ample ventilation, the place reeked. The windows were broken, but there were shutters which the prior tenants had failed to close; the team remedied this omission as they moved in, there being no need of windows for illumination. Still, the walls were sturdy enough that they would not collapse during the night, nor could trolls or beasts easily smash through them. Giants could, of course, but giants were rare.
Reynir scraped debris from the fireplace, making it safe for Emil to build a fire; the chimney was plugged with more debris, but just as there was no need of illumination from windows, there was no need of a chimney. Smoke drifted through the fallen roof, mingling with the incoming rain. Beggars, and travellers in Silent Finland, can ill afford to be choosers, and as such things went, this was a good shelter.
Reynir, as usual, took charge of the meal, roasting the remaining venison. Onni and Lalli took over one corner, Onni sitting up to watch with his mage senses for approaching grosslings while Lalli curled up to sleep beside him. With a sigh, Emil slid down the wall to sit next to Lalli.
“Are you all right, Emil? Do you need your ribs rewrapped?”
“No. I'm fine.”
Mikkel shrugged. He's probably fine, just tired and in pain. I should have watched for willow trees. A little willow bark tea would help him. And, to be honest, it would help me too. He sat down as well, pulling off his boots and inspecting his injured foot. His stitches, messy as they were, had held, and the flesh was only mildly irritated. As he pulled his sock back on, Sigrun sat down between him and Emil, handing each a share of venison.
“You guys okay?” The men mumbled agreement through mouthfuls of meat. “Good. Emil, you take first watch, I'll take second, Mikkel takes third.” They agreed again. “This is a pretty good place, so if it's still raining tomorrow, we'll stay right here.” More agreement. “Okay. Now. The night won't be too cold, and we don't need to attract attention with that fire. There's a bucket over there that will hold some water, so I'll fill it, and you tell Freckles I'm going to put the fire out.”
Mikkel swallowed hastily as she stood. “Yes, of course. Reynir! We don't want that fire drawing in trolls, so Sigrun's going to drown it.”
“Oh, yes. Sure.” The Icelander retreated as Sigrun strode past, scooping up the bucket as she went and taking it with her to catch water from a sagging gutter.
“It's a good fire,” Emil said dreamily. “She shouldn't kill it.”
Mikkel glanced over at him. “There will be other fires.”
“I know, but each one is different. This is a good fire.”
“Get some sleep, Emil. Your watch is coming soon.”
Taking his own advice, Mikkel slouched back a little more and closed his eyes, listening to the others, listening to the rain, and
they are fleeing from the bear beast, but Emil trips and the beast is upon him, tearing him apart. Mikkel fires his shotgun at point-blank range, but the shot disappears in green fur. Sigrun shoots, trying to hit the eye, but the beast has no eyes. Talons sweep past so fast that Mikkel cannot follow them, and Sigrun is gone; there are pieces, there are eyes staring at him from a ruined face, and there is blood, there is so much blood. Onni is shouting, and Lalli is running, dragging Reynir behind him, but Surma slashes and Onni is gone; the beast pounces and Lalli and Reynir disappear together. Mikkel is alone, and the bear beast and Surma turn to him and
“Your watch, Mikkel.”
Mikkel jerked awake, shaking, and pushed himself to his feet.
“My watch.”
The rain stopped during the night, and the day dawned bright and clear. “The gods smile on us,” Sigrun said with a smile of her own. Mikkel glanced at her but didn't argue. For all his skeptical Danish upbringing, he had seen Kokko, the bird of flame, with his own eyes. Who was he to say that the gods did or did not smile on travellers?
They reached Joensuu after four good, sunny days. Sigrun had hunted a rabbit or two on three days, and another deer on the other; Lalli had found good shelter every night; and they had encountered few grosslings, and those were easily killed. As Joensuu was infested with trolls, they hurried through it to find Onni's boat. Mikkel was surprised at first to find it still where they'd left it, but of course they'd been gone less than two weeks. It only seemed like years to his tired mind.
The lehto was unchanged, of course. As before, the younger three were sent to gather firewood and enjoy the sauna while the older three sat down for a well-deserved rest.
“Onni, please tell Lalli his is first watch, then mine, then —” Mikkel began.
“We don't need to set watches here. It's safe.”
“Something could swim over —”
“No. It's safe. It's protected by nature spirits and the forest gods, Tapio and Mielikki. We don't need to set watches.”
“Very well.” There was no point arguing with the Finn, and Mikkel could watch all night. The nights were still short, after all, and he had done it before. A sound caught his attention, and he turned to find Reynir behind him, glowing from the sauna.
“It's yours,” the Icelander said, pointing back to it, and waiting while they made their way inside. When Mikkel came out, warm and sleepy, he found that Reynir had already laid out the bedrolls. Mikkel's own bedroll looked inviting, and an afternoon nap would help him stay awake all night. He stretched out and closed his eyes, and
Mikkel walks up the lane to the farmhouse, hand in hand with Sigrun. As they enter the farmyard, his baby sister, Mette, looks up from weeding the vegetable garden and runs to him, embracing him with a glad cry. His brothers and other sisters are there too, pounding him on the back, hugging him and Sigrun both. Somehow they are inside the farmhouse, and as his mother hugs him, he looks around to see Mille helping Sigrun into the family wedding gown, and of course it is long enough because his mother has adjusted it, and
Sigrun shook his shoulder. “Mikkel, wake up. We need to get going.”
Mikkel awoke, looking around in confusion. It was broad daylight, and the others were rolling up their bedrolls, making ready to leave. Somehow he had slept soundly all night, and for the first time in weeks, he was truly rested.
As he rolled up his own bedroll, Mikkel found underneath an elaborate rune, still glimmering faintly in the sunlight. He straightened, spotting Reynir ostentatiously attending to his task of putting out the fire.
“Reynir.”
The Icelander looked up, freckles standing out dark against a blushing face.
“What is this rune?”
“It's just one for restfulness. I didn't expect you to sleep so soundly. Really! It shouldn't have worked like that. It was supposed to just make you more comfortable. Maybe it's this place making it —”
“I would have been very comfortable if I'd been eaten by a troll because I didn't wake up in time.” Reynir ducked his head, ashamed. “Is this the only one? Did you do this to anyone else?”
“No, no, just you, because you looked so tired, and I thought —”
“All right, I know you meant well. But don't do this again, not to me, not to anyone!”
“I won't! I won't!”
Mikkel turned away so the others would not see him rolling his eyes. Reynir had meant well, and he did feel rested. But that dream … it would be so easy to ask for that dream again. And again. And again.
On a bright sunny morning, three pleasant days later, they stood before the fence that marked the edge of Väinö's territory. It was not, perhaps, surprising that the sentinel was there to greet them, his seagulls wheeling above.
“Now,” Väinö said, “let's make sure all of you are clean.”
Mikkel looked at the others and then back at the sentinel. This was the fear that he had pushed back and away in all their difficulties. What if he wasn't clean? What if the Kade had infected him, back when he looked into the eyes of Mauri? What if he had then infected the others?
Onni said something to Lalli, who stepped forward with a bored expression. A gull landed neatly on his head, walking in place for a moment, before pecking him hard, squarely on top of his head.
“Seriously?” Sigrun said in horrified astonishment. “The pipsqueak is possessed?”
Mikkel closed his eyes in despair. For all that they'd accomplished, they'd failed. He'd failed, and now they would all die because of him.
“No no no!” Väinö said. “Not at all! This is the sign that everything is fine and dandy, no possession detected! You get pecked: you're clean.”
Mikkel opened his eyes to stare at the man in disbelief. Pecking meant no possession? Off to his left, a second gull was pecking at Onni as he tried in vain to shield himself.
“You don't get pecked …” the sentinel continued, “well, you don't want that.”
“Oh,” Sigrun said, rubbing her head in anticipation of pain.
“Who wants to be next?”
Mikkel set his teeth and stepped forward. He had to know. Even as a gull landed on his head, he described the situation for Reynir.
Peck!
Mikkel's knees went weak for a moment. It was all right. He was all right. Everything was all right. They could go home.
As the other three submitted to the examination, and were duly pecked, Mikkel looked over at Onni and Lalli. They, it seemed, had known about this, and he thought with some resentment that Onni could have warned him.
They all passed the sentinel's test and, still rubbing their abused heads, were treated to fish sandwiches and nettle tea in his peculiar home.
“Yes, I knew you were on your way back. I knew you were alive because of the tokens, of course, but also, well … you were such an odd — that is, such a remarkable — group that I sent a few gulls to watch you. It wasn't protocol, but the gulls get bored in the summertime, so this kept them on the wing.” He smiled at the gulls perched around the room, and they raised their wings in response.
“And I'm amazed that somehow you got Kaunoinen, that bear beast, you know, to go after Surma! She — the bear, that is — was never a problem. She didn't attack anyone who didn't attack her or her cubs first.” Mikkel looked away, guilty. “Though she killed her share of adventurers who thought they could take her. That giant, though. That one had a body count. I had no hope that you could kill it; I thought the best you could do was to avoid attracting it.”
Väinö shook his head with a rueful smile. “You did attract it, though, the first day or so, setting off that explosive. Lucky you were, that it went the wrong way when you ran! But all that's by the by. You're all here, alive and uncorrupted, which I did not expect when you set out, and the Kade, Surma, and Kaunoinen and her cubs, are all dead. Or gone, perhaps, in the case of the Kade. We've argued sometimes, we sentinels, whether the Kade is — or was, that is — actually still alive.”
He looked them over, smiling. “You've done well, very well indeed. Now let's return your items and send you on your way.” Suiting actions to words, he left them at the table, and brought back all the tokens they had left with him: Emil's hair brush, Mikkel's scissors, Sigrun's pendant, Reynir's hair-tie, Lalli's cat and Onni's owl, and a bit of leather which Mikkel recognized after a moment as a piece of Kisu's collar.
Mikkel pushed the leather back to Väinö. “This one I think we can leave.”
“Oh, sure, if you don't want it.” The older man tossed it behind him, and three gulls pounced on it. He ignored the squawking squabble as he ushered his guests to the door.
Rowing downstream was both faster and easier than rowing upstream had been. They reached Toivosaari, the Hotakainens' village, by early afternoon. “Stop here,” Onni said. “Stay in boat.” He and Lalli climbed out, tied up the boat, and disappeared up the hill into the village.
“So what happens now?” Sigrun asked.
“We wait. Onni told us to stay here. He didn't say why. Perhaps they are doing something at the graveyard, or talking to Mauri. That's the caretaker,” he added, seeing her puzzlement.
“Um.” She blushed a little in remembered embarrassment, and Mikkel's impassive face stood him in good stead. He found her blushing face charming, and it would not do to let her know, for she would probably push him overboard.
An hour passed as the four leaned back to enjoy the warm sun and the chance to rest in this long, long journey.
Another day, maybe less, and we'll be back at the port town. A few days on a ship, and we can be on Bornholm. At long last, Reynir can see my island. Sigrun and I can walk to the farm — no, Poul can take us all there in a carriage; we won't have to hike anymore. And I'll introduce Sigrun to the family and … But what if she doesn't want to meet them? What if I've misinterpreted everything?
Mikkel shivered. What if she says goodbye?
Fortunately, Onni and Lalli returned to interrupt these thoughts. They offered no explanation of their actions; Onni merely cast off and took up the second set of oars. Mikkel focused his mind on rowing, pushing away all thoughts of the future.
That evening, they camped for one last night on the same rock they'd camped on when they came upstream. They could have continued for hours, but they could not reach the port town before dark. Sigrun felt safe enough to allow Emil to build a small fire, since the rock was unreachable for trolls on the bank. Supper was nettle tea and dried fish, and though they set watches as usual, they were not disturbed.
Mid-morning, Mikkel brought the boat neatly alongside a pier. Reynir, sitting amidship, tied it up, and the group clambered out. Mikkel looked around with emotions for which he had not even a name. He hadn't expected to return alive, and now he had. He looked over at Onni: Onni, whom he'd owed for the lives of his team. Mikkel had paid his debt; he had taken Lalli to Onni, and brought both of them back to safety.
And all the others were here too, alive and in safety. “All right,” Sigrun said, not even looking at him, “we're here. Now let's get back to real civilization.” Leaving the others behind, she trotted up the pier to a kiosk labelled in three languages. The two Mikkel could read, Swedish and Icelandic, read “Tickets”. Leaning into the kiosk, she said, “Hey, do you speak a human language? When's the next boat ride out of this country?”
Mikkel rolled his eyes, chuckling. Trust Sigrun to approach the situation with tact and courtesy.
“Hm, let's see,” said a man's voice in Swedish from inside the kiosk. “The next boat out is … after Winter.”
“Excuse me, what? It's not even the end of Summer yet!” Actually it was, Mikkel thought as he approached; Summer had ended … about the time that the mages had fought the Kade. But Sigrun wouldn't let a detail like that derail her complaint.
“How can the boat line already be closed?” she went on.
Mikkel caught up with her, peering into the gloomy kiosk. The man within — balding, bearded, wearing glasses — pointed to an entry on a schedule posted on the wall in front of him. The Dane studied the schedule with care, but there was no doubt about it: the man was not being difficult because of Sigrun's tactlessness; there really wasn't another boat until Spring.
“Well, we take passenger safety very seriously. The nights are already getting longer and darker, which means more troll activity around the canal, so —”
Sigrun gave an inarticulate cry of frustration.
“There's very cheap lodging in town for over-winter stays,” the man finished.
Sigrun stalked down the pier without acknowledging his words, and the rest of the group followed, Mikkel explaining in two languages what had happened.
The “very cheap lodging” turned out to be the only lodging in town, and Mikkel's share of the expedition money, still stashed in an envelope in the bottom of his backpack, was barely enough to cover it for all of them. Reynir and Onni had never had any expedition money, and the other three had been wise enough (or in Lalli's case ignorant enough) to leave their shares in the Bank of Iceland, with branches all over the Known World … except, of course, Finland.
The clerk at the Inn and Restaurant (its official name) spoke heavily accented Swedish, so at least Mikkel could make the arrangements himself, Sigrun peering over his shoulder and the others crowding in behind. “I want my own room,” Emil said. “All I've wanted this whole year is a private room with an actual bed!”
“Yes, yes, Emil, you shall have it. Onni, does Lalli want his own room? Or will he room with you?”
Onni didn't pause to consult his cousin. “He wants his own room.”
“Good. Okay, we would like six single —”
“No,” Sigrun said. “Five single rooms and — no, wait, four single rooms and one double.”
Mikkel turned to stare at her, at a loss for words. Or rather, the words that sprang to mind (“Are you sure?”) were too foolish to voice.
Sigrun grinned at him. “Yes, that's right. Four single and one double.”
“Four and one,” the clerk said, and Mikkel passed him the money without looking. Sigrun took his arm, and they walked together into the sunlight.