Page 25 of Alien Viking's Plunder

“Not need,” Josie said and trudged on, her boots never slipping on the ice. “But thank you.”

They reached the first boulder, big and rough, with sharp edges. The mountainside was in shadow now, and the valley below was darkening fast. In the middle of the lake Bragr spotted the ship’s bow with the dragon head. He couldn’t see if the dfergir had defiled it, but he doubted it. They would be repulsed by the power it held.

“Josie,” he said and pointed, “look at the bow of the ship.”

She turned and looked down at the lake. “It’s still there.”

“Is it ruined?”

She touched the small black shape at the side of her head. “Look same as when close.”

Ah. So she had sharper vision than anyone he’d met. Now he wanted to know how sharp it was.

“See the dfergir on the other side of the lake?” There was nothing there that he could see.

“Nothing move,” she said after a little while. “Rocks only. And mark from bow falling.”

“How many rocks?”

She put her fighting staff between her legs to hold up her fingers. “This many.”

“Nine.” He had already counted them when they were down by the lake, worrying that the dark specks were dfergir, too. From here, he couldn’t even see the rocks, much less how many there were. Josie had better capabilities than he thought, and that could be important in a fight. The vettir were still keeping their distance, but the dfergir were known to move just as fast through difficult terrain as on flat ground.

They made their way among the boulders, climbing over and crawling under rocks when necessary. Bragr noticed that Josie struggled much less with it than he did — her small size allowed her to squeeze through openings between the boulders where he had to walk around.

The vettir suddenly realized that they had to attack now or it would be too late.

One came swooping, so quietly Bragr didn’t hear it. Only an urgent call from Josie made him look up.

Too late, he knew in the same instant, seeing only the outstretched claws of the flying horror.

8

- Josie -

There was a meatywhackas Josie’s staff hit the vettir and sent it flopping lifelessly in among the rocks. She had hit it right in the middle, a split second before it would have been on top of Bragr.

From a distance, the vettir looked like birds. But they were actually the size of Josie herself, covered in feathers like birds but with huge, bat-like wings. They had big, curved beaks and round, black eyes.

The creepiest thing about them was the sound they made, a high-pitched screech with words in it. Now the words were ‘Stick! Stick!’and ‘Peck her! Peck her!’in Bragr’s language as they circled ever higher.

“Good hit,” Bragr said, straightening from his instinctive crouch. “That should make them think twice.”

Josie examined her stick. It was still in one piece, but the impact had sent a real shockwave up her arm. “Stick not break. Hard wood.”

“Hard and soft at the same time, Josie,” Bragr said, scouting down the slope. “Best kind.”

“Talking about you or about stick?” Josie inquired.

The huge Viking frowned, then quickly glanced down at his crotch and back up. “What do you mean?”

“Bragr hard when plunder and fight skrymtir,” she said, looking up at the vettir. “Then soft when defend Josie. Try so say it like that. Josie.”

“A warrior must be like your stick, Yosie.” Bragr said, turning around and looking up the slope. “Hard when he fights his enemy, soft when he protects his village. Brisingr is the same way, or it would snap at the first cut at a tinymusr. It yields but still cuts.”

“Dddjosie,” she emphasized. “I am your village then, Bragr?”

“Brrragrrr,” he replied with hard, rolling r’s. “You may not be my village or even of my people. And yet I have protected you as well as I have been able. It seems to me that you have also protected me, the way you just knocked a vettir out of the sky. I think you’ll find every person of worth is both soft and hard. Now we must keep going to keep the dfergir away.”

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