“What? You say that now?” If he weren’t sitting on the ground, David thought he might have punched him again.
“You said, ‘This is the place! This is it!’ ”
“It still may be where Jesse wants us to be,” Xander said.
“But maybe Time doesn’t.”
David sighed and said, “We don’t know enough to be doing this.”
“This is how we learn.” Xander extended a hand to him.
David glared at him.
Xander said, “I’m sorry, okay? I just want to rescue Mom so badly, and I’m afraid we’re running out of time. It drives me crazy, all the waiting and preparing, sleeping and keeping up appearances. I just want to go for it, you know?”
“You’re right about one thing,” David said, grabbing his brother’s hand. “You are crazy.”
Xander leaned down to push on the bed’s mattress. It was straw with a loose covering of stitched-together animal hides. He said, “You won’t say that if we find what Jesse wants us to find. Maybe it’s the key to everything, something that will help us rescue Mom, save the world, and get out of that house once and for all.”
“I doubt it,” said David. “If there was something like that, he would have told us before. I think it’ll help us, but not solve all our problems.”
Xander said, “You never can—”
“Shhhh,” David said. “Hear that?”
He realized that what he’d thought was the sound of wind from the other side of the portal was actually voices. A chorus of screaming voices. Over them, like the cracking of a whip, were sharp, high-pitched shrieks. They rose, then broke into stuttering laughter.
David’s skin went cold. He turned big eyes to Xander. “What is that?”
Xander shook his head.
“And I definitely smell smoke,” David told him. He could see it now as well. Gray swirls came through the door and began to gather into a cloud, away from the gustiness outside. He moved closer to Xander and grabbed his arm. “I don’t think Jesse would send us to a place where people scream like they’re being torn apart and something’s on fire.”
Xander moved toward the door. David clung to his arm, shuffling behind him. They stepped out of the cottage. The screaming pierced David’s ears; the smoke stung his nostrils. He swept his gaze over the hills and woods. Then he saw a towering stone building, a castle. It was a couple of hundred yards away. Beyond it, an ocean.
The two boys edged to the corner. More thatch-roofed cottages dotted the landscape in a sweeping arc behind the one into which the portal had deposited him and Xander.
The cottages were arranged in a crescent around the castle, on one side of it and behind it. Theirs was the last one in line.
Thank goodness for that much of a break, David thought—for all but the closest cottages were blazing, their straw roofs feeding huge fires, like flaming hair on wood faces. People were yelling and running: some into the hills and woods farther from the castle, some toward the fortress. But by far, a greater number of people had already fallen: their bodies pocked the field between the cottages and castle as though a giant hand had scattered them like seeds.
A roar of voices rose up some distance away.
“It’s some kind of siege on the castle,” Xander said. “Probably from the sea. The front of the castle’s on the other side. These are just the peasants’ huts.”
“If the assault is on the other side,” David said, “what happened here? What killed those people?”
As he spoke, a man broke from one of the cottages. He ran toward the castle as though demon dogs were on his scent. In the next instant, David saw the thing that was after the man, and it turned out to be much worse than mere demon dogs.
A beast sprang from between two cottages. It was tall, with the head of a wolf and the body of a bear. It loped on its hind legs. It carried a sword as thick and long as an arm. The thing bellowed, howled, and barked as it went after the running man.
David screamed. It felt as though his organs compressed within his body, pulling in for safety.
Xander clamped his hand over David’s mouth. “Shhhh,” he said. “He hasn’t spotted us.” He dropped down and yanked on David’s shirt.
David collapsed to the ground, flat on his belly. He couldn’t take his eyes off the beast. The thing’s gait was wild and ungainly, but fast. It was gaining on the man.
“Run,” David whispered. The man had halved the distance to the castle. David couldn’t see an entrance, but there must have been one that the man knew about. Either that, or the guy was blind with fear and simply running—not to anything, but away from the beast. David understood. Run, run!
The man tripped. He crashed and slid, kicking up dust and grass. He looked back, screamed, scrambled to get up. “Come on, come on,” David whispered.
“Shh!” Xander said sharply.
The man was up, his legs moving, moving. But the beast was on him. It didn’t swing the sword, as David had expected, but lunged through the air, landing on the man’s back. They went down together. The beast’s sword hand rose and came down, hilt first. He pounded and pounded. Then his massive wolf head lowered to the man’s throat. The head shook like a dog ripping at a bone.
David dropped his face into the dirt. His breathing came fast. He knew he was hyperventilating, but he couldn’t stop himself. He breathed in dirt, coughed it out.
Xander pulled David’s head into his armpit. “David! Shhhh!”
“What—” David spat the word out with muddy globules. He forced himself to lower his voice. “What is that thing? That beast?”
“A berserker,” Xander whispered. “An elite Viking warrior.
He’s wearing a wolf ’s head like a hat. His cloak is bearskin.
He’s just a man.”
“A man?” David said, pulling his head from Xander’s grasp. “He’s eating that guy.”
“Crawl back,” Xander said. “Stay low.”
They began sliding backward on the ground. The beast—the berserker—was standing over his victim now, hacking at him with the sword.
Xander whispered, “They were known for their ruthlessness in battle. They were insane. Sometimes the Norse ships that carried them would put ashore at a village they had no intention of attacking, just so the berserkers could vent their rage on the villagers. So they wouldn’t turn on each other.”
David groaned. “You said berserkers. More than one?”
“Oh, yeah,” Xander said. “They were organized in what we would call platoons.”
Platoons of those things? David thought. Platoons?
“Stop!” Xander said. “Down!” He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed his cheek into the ground.
“What?” David said. Then he saw: the berserker was standing, his shoulders rising and falling, panting from the exertion of having just killed a man.
And he was staring straight at them.
CHAPTER
thirty - three
“He sees us!” David said.
Xander raised his head.
The berserker lifted his faces—the wolf face and the human one, which was so drenched in red, David could see it glistening from a hundred yards away. He let loose a howl, which became a scream, which turned into a hyenalike laugh. He loped toward the boys.
“Run!” Xander said. He got to his feet and pulled David up.
As he rose, David watched the berserker drawing toward them. That wolf head bobbed up and down like a prancing pony’s. The sword made huge circles in the air beside the man, as though it were a propeller enabling him to fly across the field. To David, he was flying, closing the distance faster than any man should.
Movement caught his eye, and David forced himself to look away from the berserker. More of the insane warriors, all of them with animal heads—some wolf, some bear—loped out from among the burning cottages into the field behind the first berserker. One was dragging a body by the foot. Together, as though through a shared consciousness, they turned toward David and
Xander and started running.
The brothers scrambled back. David broke away from Xander and shot into the cottage.
“David, no!” Xander said. He grabbed hold of the door frame. “Not here,” he said. “They’ll break in, burn us out.”
The berserker screamed—so close, David braced himself against the back wall for the inevitable: that thing crashing into Xander.
Xander held out his hand. “Come on, Dae!” he said. “Maybe we can make it to the castle!”
David couldn’t move. He shook his head.
His brother’s eyes flashed wide. He stepped inside and slammed the door. He pushed his back to it. David squinted, waiting for the impact on the other side. Three seconds . . . five . . . ten.
“Xander . . .” David whispered.
His brother stepped away from the door.
A sword broke through where Xander’s head had been. Instead of pulling it out to strike again, the berserker moved the sword in a sharp, jerking motion. The wood under it split and broke. David couldn’t imagine the strength it took to cut through a solid wood door with a straight-edged broadsword.
David stuttered his brother’s name. He shot a look around the interior: no place to escape, no place to hide.
Xander flashed crazy eyes at him. He said, “We have to make a stand.”
“What? No!”
Xander’s desperate expression said, What choice do we have? He drew close and put his back to David. He clutched the ax in both fists and raised it above his head.
“Xander,” David said.
“Yeah?”
“I think I peed my pants,” David said. “No, I’m okay.”
Xander scowled over his shoulder. “You’re cracking jokes? Now?”
“I wasn’t joking.”
The sword kept cutting—ripping through the door.
They could hear the howls and screaming of the other berserkers. Getting loud. Getting close.
“They’re coming,” Xander said.
David tried to squirm out from between his brother and the wall. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he had to do something. He had to move.
Xander pushed back harder. He swung his arm around to keep David in place. “No, David. Wait . . . wait . . .”
The screeching voices continued.
“Maybe they’ll attack the other cottages first,” David said. As if one at the door isn’t enough to turn us into hamburger.
“We can hope they turn on each other,” Xander said. “Like I read they sometimes did, waiting to fight.”
“Not when they have us to fight,” David said. But he really didn’t think the slaughter of kids would amount to much of a fight.
Xander glanced back at David. “Sorry, Dae. I should have listened to you.”
“We would have wound up here sooner or later,” David said.
When the sword was knee-high, the berserker withdrew it. The gash in the door was jagged, an inch wide and four feet long. The wolf face thunked against the wood. Its nose was pressed to the gash, as though sniffing for fear.
Plenty of it in here, David thought.
Below the snout, a man’s eye peered at them. The iris was a thin blue halo around a huge pupil. All around it, the eye was bloodshot—more red than white.
“Go away!” Xander screamed. He made like he was swinging the ax.
The eye, the snout, whipped out of sight.
“They say werewolf legends came from berserkers,” Xander said.
David nudged him. “How do you know so much?”
Xander smiled back at him. “I wrote a paper on them last year.” He took a step toward the door.
“Xander!”
“Just looking.” Keeping the ax high, he stepped right to the gash in the door. He put his face to it. “I don’t see—”
There was an explosion of human-kinetic energy on the side wall: wall one second, man the next. The berserker had hit it with so much force, planks splintered and whole boards spun into the room. The thing paused just long enough to lock eyes on David.
In that moment, David took him in: the wolf head had torn off and was flopping against his back; his hairy face dripped blood, which stained his muscular chest; his shirt had been torn into strips that now dangled over his belt to his knees; the bearskin cloak hung off his shoulders like wings. His beard parted, revealing a gaping maw of yellow, canted teeth. He screamed.
So did David. It was loud and high-pitched, and he continued pushing it out as he scrambled backward along the wall.
The berserker leaped and came down directly in front of him.
The stench of wet animals, body odor, and raw meat assaulted David’s senses.
The berserker seized David’s neck with powerful fingers. He leaned in, and all David saw was mouth and teeth.
CHAPTER
thirty - four
David turned his face away. He clamped his eyes closed.
The berserker fell into him, and instinctively, David sidestepped. The beast knocked against David’s shoulder and kept falling. It hit the wall and collapsed to the floor.
His brother had clobbered the beast. Xander was standing behind where the berserker had been, hefting the ax for another blow. His eyes were almost as wild as the berserker’s.
David raised his hands. “You got him! You got him!”
Xander lowered the ax. His shoulders went up and down with heavy breaths.
David looked down at the collapsed man. “I think you killed him.”
“No,” Xander said. “I hit him with the flat of the blade, like a club. I didn’t have time to position it right.”
“Well, it worked,” David said.
“A blow like that couldn’t have killed him. Not this guy.”
A scream reached them. Through the broken wall, they saw a berserker storm out of a nearby cottage, swinging a sword over his head and plunging the blade down into the earth. His face snapped toward the boys. He howled in rage, tore the weapon out of the ground, and started for them.
“Come on.” Xander ran for the door. He hit it with his shoulder. The section between the gash and the edge broke away, and he was outside.
As David crossed the small room, the man who had attacked him began making noises. He was facedown on the floor, a shoulder and arm banked up against the back wall. He shook his head furiously, growling. His legs began to move, sliding over the hard dirt floor. David darted through the door.
“Feel the pull?” Xander asked.
David’s feet wanted to slide out from under him, as though he were standing on ice. The leather slippers were pulling toward the portal home. The snake bracelet as well tugged at his arm as firmly as a human hand. He realized he was still gripping the spool of yarn—somehow.
“Yeah,” David said. “That way, toward the far corner of the castle. But that other berserker’s coming to, and they’re crazy-fast, man.”
“Give me that,” Xander said, grabbing for the spool. He took it from David and tossed it. In midair it changed direction and spun toward the castle. It hit the ground, bounced, and tumbled away. Xander pointed. “Go for it, soccer boy.”
David ran. The spool was faster than any soccer ball he’d ever chased. He lowered his head and pushed harder. He heard Xander closer behind.
“Is he . . . is he gaining?”
“Don’t look, Dae, just run. We can’t get back if we lose that yarn. Go!”
“What?” David said. “I thought . . . we just had to . . . follow it . . . to the portal.”
“Shut up and run.”
David poured everything into his legs. The ground passed under him faster than he could remember it ever doing. He wondered if the slippers were helping, or if it was just easier to run after something instead of from something. He remembered thinking that the berserker’s first victim may not have been running toward a shelter as much as he was simply trying to get away. That strategy hadn’t worked. The man had been caught . . . and eaten.
David’s feet faltered. H
e was about to tumble, he could feel it.
No . . . no . . . run!
He pinwheeled his right arm and his broken left as much as it allowed him to do. He forced his upper body back slightly. His feet caught up, and he was running, not falling, running.
Don’t think about what you saw, he thought. Don’t think about anything but catching that spool.
It tumbled and spun ten feet ahead of him. The ground began its ascent toward the castle. David pushed harder.
Leave it all on the field, his coach used to tell him. If you’ve got energy after the game, you didn’t try hard enough.
His legs were aching now. His lungs screamed for more air than he could give them. He felt a stitch just sparking to life in his side.
“Xan . . .” he said. “Xander?”
“Go, go,” his brother said. Farther behind than he had been, but not by much.
Something sailed passed him. It thunked into the ground and wobbled. David ran past it.
“A spear? A spear?” he yelled.
“He . . . only had . . . one. Go!”
But he’s close enough to throw it past us!
Here David had thought he was giving Dash from The Incredibles a run for his money, and that thing was keeping up! Gaining!
The spool tumbled up to the corner of the castle and around it. David was right on it. He rounded the corner and stopped.
Xander’s footsteps pounded behind him. He hit the corner and crashed into David.
David flew forward, fell.
His brother was already over him, picking him up. He didn’t have to ask why David had stopped; they both could see: Vikings, hundreds of them. They swarmed the castle walls, pouring up from the endless blue ocean a half mile from the front of the castle. Their ships—narrow and long, with dragonhead prows—were grounded on the shore. The warriors had come around to this side of the castle and were heading toward the rear—directly at David and Xander.
The spool flipped over the ground, bouncing its way to the Vikings.
Then the warriors’ front line blurred. The Vikings closest to them went out of focus and wavered. The spool popped up and vanished.
“Come on,” David said. He ran straight for the fighting men.