A bucket brigade was assembling down the main street, and as the sheriff began directing volunteers, Hanne and Owen slipped, unnoticed, into the jailhouse. Owen turned, and shut and locked the door behind them.
There was a boughten wooden desk, highly varnished, paired with an old Windsor chair. There were papers on the desk, and the wanted poster for Knut was at the top of the stack. But there were no keys in sight. And none in the shallow front drawer of the desk, either.
“He must have locked them in the safe!” Hanne gasped.
“I’ll work on it,” Owen said.
Hanne opened the door that led into the cell area. It was so dark Hanne felt blind for a moment.
“Knut?” she whispered.
Most of the room was the jail cell, but there was a small entrance area, a square cut off from the rest of the space by iron bars and the locked gate. The two small windows set high in the stone walls each showed a square of twilight blue. Low benches ran along the sides.
There was a great slope-shouldered figure on one of the benches.
“Hanne? Is it you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Knut! We’ve come to free you.”
“Oh, Hanne,” her brother said. He rushed into the light. “I’m so glad. I can’t tell you how glad!”
“Are keys kept in here, Knut?” Hanne began to pat along the wall, hoping to come across keys on a hook. It was so dark in the room.
“You must meet my friend, Hanne. I’ve met the nicest man.”
“We have only a moment,” Hanne said.
“But he’s from Norway, too! And he wants to take us home, to a very safe place, don’t you, Ketil?”
Hanne felt her blood turn cold and leaden.
“Indeed, I do,” came a voice from the shadows. “You must be Hanne.”
A blond man stepped out of the dark and rested his forehead against the bars. He was very handsome. His sly smile dazzling.
“Your brother told me all about you,” he said. “A female Berserker. You are a rare creature, Hanne Amundsdotter. I have such wonderful things to show you.”
Hanne’s heart was in her throat. She gulped and gulped again.
“He’s a Berserker, too, Hanne!” Knut said. “He came here to find us and bring us home to protect us!”
“There’s no time for such talk, Knut,” she managed to say. “We must get you out of there. They mean to hang you.”
“They can try,” Ketil said. His voice was low, like a purr. “But, Hanne, we could take them all.”
He was terribly handsome. Hanne felt a thrill she did not want to feel, a tightening in her center, like he was pulling her to his side.
Owen came into the room, standing behind Hanne in the entrance space.
“It’s no use,” he said to Hanne. “We’d need dynamite to get that safe open.”
Hanne fumbled to reach Owen’s hand. She squeezed it hard, telling him to be wary.
Owen brought up his shotgun.
“Knut,” Owen ventured. “You all right?”
“Yah,” Knut said. “Hello, Owen! This is my friend Ketil. He’s good.”
“A Nytteson does not need a key,” Ketil said in Norwegian. “Knut can smash down the wall.”
He turned to Knut. “You can do it if you only try.”
“The wall?” Knut asked.
“Oar-Breakers like you, there’s no limit to your strength,” Ketil said. “You’ll see; it might hurt your body, but it will feel good in your soul.”
“I think maybe I could, if my sister says so…,” Knut said.
“Yes, do it,” Hanne said. She had to force her voice to be calm. “Because the sheriff may be back at any moment.”
Knut touched Hanne’s fingertips on the bars and smiled, then he lurched away, throwing his shoulder into the rock wall.
“OOF!” he exhaled. The whole building shuddered, but the wall did not give an inch.
Knut staggered back. Hanne could see the flesh of his shoulder through his torn shirt. There was rock dust in his hair.
“Again,” Ketil commanded. “Harder this time, you can do it!”
“Raah!” Knut shouted, hurling himself at the wall.
“Good!” Ketil cried.
This time the stones moved, bowing out.
“Hurry!” Hanne urged her brother.
A banging came from the other room.
“Knut, hurry!” Hanne shouted.
Knut staggered to his feet. His arm hung at an angle that was all wrong.
“Again, boy! Now!” Ketil shouted.
Knut let out another inhuman roar as he threw himself against the unbudging stones. This time he did not relax after the charge but plowed his weight into the wall until the rocks began to move. Grating and grinding, the rock wall continued to bow outward. He dug his feet into the earthen floor of the jail and pushed on, finding new purchase when his feet slid, until the rocks fell outside. The early evening light shone through the hole he’d made. Hanne could see his shoulder was bleeding and battered, the bone jutting under the skin in the wrong place.
“Are you all right, Knut?” she cried. Another bang rattled from the room behind them. The sheriff might knock the whole front door in.
“Come, little brother,” Ketil said to Knut.
“He’s not your brother,” Hanne said. “Knut! You must wait for us outside.”
Ketil started to push Knut toward the hole.
“Stop!” Hanne said.
“Hold it right there!” Owen said.
“Lower your gun or I snap his neck,” Ketil said.
Knut cried out in pain. Ketil had dug his fingers into the torn flesh of Knut’s dislocated shoulder.
“You’re hurting me!”
“I know. And I’m sorry for it, but I am taking you and your family back to the Baron. And I want your sister to know I mean business.”
“Let him go!” Hanne cried. “I’ll kill you!”
Ketil laughed. “Come, try.”
Knut let out a cry of anguish as Ketil forced him out the gap in the wall.
“Knut!” Owen called. He damned the jail and the bars that kept them from following. “Wait for us!”
“Hanne!” called Knut, outside the jail now. He sounded confused and hurt.
The Nytte came roaring into force, like a flash flood ripping through a gorge. Hanne’s grip on the bars tightened; her neck strained as she tried, without thinking, to pry the bars apart.
In the room behind them, the sheriff rammed the front door.
“Come on out, little girl. Let’s see how much of a Berserker you are,” Ketil shouted back into the jail through the broken wall.
Hanne roared in fury.
“Calm down, okay? He’ll be okay—” Owen said.
Hanne pushed past him, stalking out into the jail’s front office. Owen followed on her heels.
Then she grabbed Owen by the collar and threw him to the floor as a gunshot, and then another, came firing through the front door, sending the handle and lock into splinters. The door was flung open, smashing into Owen’s knee. He grunted in pain.
“What the hell are you two doing?” shouted the sheriff, red faced and spitting with fury. He stood looking down at them, smoking six-shooter in his hand. Hanne sprang to her feet, grabbing the pistol by the barrel. It seared her palm. She did not feel it.
She swung the weapon, struck the sheriff across the temple with the handle, and felled him.
Hanne prowled out into the street. It was chaos, townspeople running and calling to one another. The fire had spread, engulfing the hotel in its entirety. Flames exploded through the glass, showering the street with shards that shone yellow and orange into the night.
The volunteers had stopped trying to quench the flames, and were now wetting down the buildings around the hotel, trying to keep the fire from taking the whole town.
Hanne scanned the crowd. Where were Knut and Ketil? Where were they?
With a wrenching jolt, Hanne felt them, behind her in the street.
br /> “It’s the killer!” she heard a man shout. “The Norwegian from the jail!”
There was a scream and more shouting.
Ketil was dragging Knut toward a livery stable, jerking him by his injured arm. The townspeople put down their buckets and wet blankets and surged toward Ketil and Knut. There was a deputy with a pistol. And a dark-faced rancher with a shotgun. A gap-toothed farmer with a rock in his hand.
“Get that boy!” the rancher cried. “He busted out of the jail!”
The farmer rushed to smash Knut on the head.
Hanne jumped forward, snatching the rock from his grip with one hand and grabbing the farmer by the throat with the other. His eyes bugged out with surprise, at her sex, at her strength, at his own feet lifting off the ground. She threw him into the crowd, crashing his body onto the deputy, who lost his footing and fell heavily.
Ketil laughed. Hanne rushed to Knut’s side. Ketil still had hold of him.
“Very nice,” Ketil said. “Let’s see what else you can do.” Knut was pale, moaning. He sank to his knees, and the crowd surged at them.
They wanted to kill her brother.
Time slowed as the Nytte unfurled around Hanne, counting heartbeats, locating weapons.
She felt every cell of her anatomy come alive, down to the strands of hair braided around her head like a crown.
Two brawny carpenters sprang forward together from behind Knut to try to drag him to the ground. Hanne felt the farmer’s rock leave her hand. It hit one of the carpenters on the head. She heard the crack as it punctured his skull.
“Hanne, don’t!” someone yelled.
The other carpenter was now under her, his weighty hammer ripped from the leather work belt at his waist. She placed the prongs underneath his throat. The man’s unshaven neck strained as she pulled his greasy hair back. He eyed her, gasping and terrified. She saw her reflection in his eyes. A fierce, feral face. Mouth grim. Eyes narrowed.
“Stop, Hanne! Breathe!”
Her hand faltered. She just needed to drive the hammer up. She felt stillness around her. The crowd had drawn back from her.
“Don’t do it. Heill nótt something!” It was a voice near her side. One of the townspeople? No. Warmth came to her. Oh, she knew that voice. She loved the sound of it.
“Heill nótt the nift!” It was her own cowboy, Owen, speaking to her. He was kneeling near her, his back to hers. He had his rifle up and trained on the crowd. He was protecting her.
The hammer wanted to plunge the prongs into the man’s neck, but Owen’s voice called her off. “Heill nótt the nift, Hanne.”
He was saying old words, trying to speak the old language. Owen reached out his hand and placed it on her shoulder. Warmth rippled through Hanne’s body. She shuddered, and she was herself again.
Hanne tossed the hammer aside and pushed off the carpenter, sitting back hard onto the frozen ground. Her breath steamed into the dark night.
“Everyone just stay calm,” Owen said loudly. “This isn’t what it looks like!”
All eyes were on Hanne as she regained her senses. There must have been at least fifty people gathered around. The firelight from the hotel glowed in their eyes. They looked angry and confused. She and Owen stood about three feet from where Ketil had regained his cruel hold on Knut. Knut whimpered in the momentary lull.
“I like your style,” Ketil said low, to Hanne, from the side of his mouth, in Norwegian. “Vicious and quick.”
Hanne took in a deep breath. She rose to her feet.
“Get back!” shouted a voice in the crowd.
“She’s dangerous!”
“Someone go for the sheriff!”
“Shoot ’em all down!” called another.
“Please don’t shoot! I am the murderer,” Hanne announced, holding up her hands. “It was me who killed the people back in Norway. And you saw what I did just then. It is me the police are looking for. My brother does not belong on that poster. He is innocent!”
“She killed my Thomas!” a young woman screeched from the side of the fallen carpenter. Blood soaked her dress—the dead man’s head in her lap. “She killed him with a rock!”
“Hanne!” came Sissel’s voice. She pushed through the crowd.
“Hanne! Knut!” Stieg cried. He was right behind Sissel. His clothes and face were covered with char, and there was blood on his collar, but he seemed all right.
“Stay back!” Hanne shouted to Stieg and Sissel. “Please! I’ve already confessed. I will go to jail. You all can go free!”
“Put ’em all in jail!” someone shouted.
“No! Please,” Stieg shouted. He tried to argue with the crowd, insisting that everything could be explained.
Meanwhile Ketil hissed to Hanne in Norwegian, “If you want your siblings and your beau to stay alive, you’ll help me kill our way out of here. Follow my lead!”
Ketil released her brother’s arm and raised up his hands, as if innocent. It was a ploy. Knut fell to the ground, moaning.
“I surrender!” Hanne yelled, her arms raised high. “Please, hear us out!”
But a man came pushing through the crowd. “The sheriff’s dead!” he exclaimed. “Brained! With the butt of his own gun!”
“She did it!”
“Get her! Get them all!”
As the mob closed in, Ketil threw his head back and laughed.
* * *
WITHIN SECONDS—
A man had a gun at the back of Knut’s head and another held Stieg by the arm. The young clerk from the shop tried to pull Sissel away to safety, and Sissel screamed. A stocky miner raised a shovel to strike Owen on the back of the head.
Hanne watched the mayhem all round. She loved her sister and her brothers and Owen so much.
But she did not want to kill. She would not kill any longer.
“Oh, please.” She clasped her hands together. “Please, Freya. I do not want to kill!”
Beside her, Stieg pressed his fingers to his temples and began to blow an icy wind from his pursed lips. The man holding him stepped back, screaming, as frost bit into his chest. Sissel broke away from the clerk and came to huddle behind Stieg. Stieg turned the breath toward the man with the gun raised to Knut’s head, and frost exploded the gun into icy metal shards.
“I beg you, Freya! Hear me!” Hanne raised her arms into the air.
Ketil, with a bloodthirsty scream, had seized the shovel from the man behind Owen and spun it in the air. He used the blade of the shovel to sever the man’s arm.
Owen wheeled and shot at a deputy who was coming up on him from behind. The deputy’s leg was blown away in a cloud of blood.
“Help us!” Hanne prayed.
Knut used his good arm to grab a man who was charging him and threw him into the fire. The man stumbled out, clothes burning. His screams tore the night.
Tears were coursing down Knut’s frightened face, but he turned again, ready to fight for his family.
“I surrender!” Hanne screamed, even as a mud-stained miner grabbed her by the hair and tried to throw her to the ground. The man’s mouth was contorted in a sneer, and his eyes were wide-open.
Then his grip went slack. Blood vomited out of his mouth, and his eyes went dead. Ketil had stuck him through the throat with a bowie knife.
“Come, girl! Show me what you can do!” Ketil goaded. Grinned. “Fight beside me, you proud Viking bitch!”
He was using words to gall her to action, but Hanne pushed them from her mind. Ketil turned to slay again, and Hanne sought desperately the words Rolf had said.
“Ásáheill,” she burst out. “Heill Odin, hear me. Hear me, Freya! Heill Freya!” Hanne made the sign of the rune Rolf had shown her in the air, drawing with her finger. “Ásáheill! I surrender to the Nytte!”
Ketil had her by the coat collar. He shook her. Slapped her face.
“You are a Berserker! You were made to kill, so kill!”
“Ásáheill! Ásáheill! Ásáheill!” she hailed the Gods, reaching out w
ith all her being.
Hanne’s chest was drawn open as a giant breath filled her lungs. A golden light surged through her body, coursing through her blood.
Hanne looked around her and was amazed. Ketil struck her again, then threw her away from himself, disgusted.
All the people, the people fighting and hurting each other, were so beautiful. Hanne could see the light within each body. The soul, a heart-ring of sunshine, within each body’s form. She knew the humans as the Gods saw them—all of a one, kept separate only by their own constructs. She could see how desperately they loved each other and how they hated themselves, for all their hearts were illuminated to her.
She saw her own heart. The meager, bitter stories of shame she had created and so clung to cracked and fell away like shards of broken crockery.
“Did you hear me?” Ketil screamed.
She looked at him with disinterest, then compassion. He, too, had a divine spark within his constricted, misshapen soul.
“You are made to kill!” he repeated.
“No,” Hanne said, and her words echoed with the voices of Gods unseen. “I am made to live.”
Her body began to emit light. Glowing softly from within, like a cloud illuminated by the sunrise.
She turned her eyes toward Ketil and found her hand reaching toward his chest.
“Stop,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m coming for you now,” Hanne said. “It’s your time.” She saw her words, her breath itself, had shape and form. Ah! She saw breath streaming out of the mouths of all the people fighting, all their breath mingled together. Every breath a prayer.
Hanne laughed. She stepped toward Ketil.
“Stop!” Ketil shouted. He backed away from her, treading backward into the people surging to fight him.
He lashed out, whipping the knife toward her throat. She batted it away.
Ketil grabbed a shotgun out of a farmer’s grip. He aimed the barrels into her gut and pulled the trigger, but Hanne stepped up lightly into the air, moving backward in time. Just a heartbeat backward.
She stepped on the gun, driving it into the ground. When it fired, the barrels exploded. Ketil released it, smoke billowing around him.
He swung at her, and she caught his fist in the air. She smiled at him, then she used her great, easy, fluid strength to twist his wrist until he was forced down to his knees.