Page 35 of Alien Viking's Plunder

“I almost wish he were here,” Josie replied, swinging her staff like a baseball bat and sending two small skrymtir somersaulting down the hill. “Then we could perhaps save more dead bodies from being…desecratedlike this.”

“Desecrated,” Bragr said slowly, as if tasting the English word. “I like it. Yes, Gornt must be taken out, one way or the other.”

The onslaught of skrymtir was thinning out, and they had no problem dispatching the final dozen stragglers.

The very last was a huge male carrying a rusty ax.

Bragr stood aside and gestured invitingly, a tight smile on his face. “This is the biggest of them all. I thinkyoushould finish this battle and complete the victory.”

Josie waited until the zombie was close enough to strike at her. It swung its ax, but she stepped quickly aside, then lunged in closer, swinging her stick like a tennis racket. It hit the side of the skrymt’s neck with a sound like uncooked spaghetti breaking. For a second the zombie stood there on straight legs, swaying, its long-dead eyes staring emptily at the sky. Then it toppled backwards and fell down the slope, end over end until it started to roll.

At the edge of the woods below, the snow was dark with unmoving skrymtir.

“I’m glad they don’t bleed much,” Josie said as she stuck the tip of her spear into the snow and twisted it around to clean it as well as she could.

Bragr stuck his blade all the way down in the snow several times, then replaced it in his belt. “The blood doesn’t give them strength anymore. It’s only Gornt’s witchery.”

Josie didn’t believe in witchcraft, but until she could explain how those zombies worked, she wouldn’t try to contradict his superstition. She was pretty sure it had something to do with that pulsar in the sky, but she would have to think more about it. “Why were they here, if he’s not?”

“Could be just to harass my people,” Bragr said. “Or we surprised them. I don’t think they knew we’d be here. How are you feeling?” He looked her searchingly up and down.

“I’m feeling good about winning,” she said. “I thought it would be much harder, but as a first battle, I guess I couldn’t have wished for more.”

Bragr plucked a piece of skrymtir fabric off her hair. “Oh, this was not your first battle. The first, that I know of, was against me at your station. Your side lost it, but then you were on the winning side against Gornt some time later, on the ship. We’ll count fights against vettir or trolls, so this was your fifth battle. And you scored a great victory, while releasing all those bodies from Gornt’s hold. You will do well on Gardr, Josie. It’s a world for warriors.”

For some reason, his words warmed her. “I never felt like a warrior until right now.”

He reached out again, this time gently stroking Josie’s cheek with one knuckle. “We fight well together. I can’t help wondering what else we might do well together.”

The breath caught in her throat. She’d had the same thought, and in her mind’s eye she kept seeing glimpses of some really hot times with him. “I’m sure you say that to all your warriors.”

He laughed, the deep voice echoing from the mountainside. “Just the ones I really like. Now we must leave. Those dfergir must be close to the ridge.” They started walking down towards the woods, aiming well to the side of the mass of lifeless skrymtir.

Before they went in among the trees, Bragr threw a glance up the hill. “There they are. They will keep following us.”

“What do they want?” Josie asked. “They’re not animals, are they?”

“They are thinking creatures,” Bragr said. “What they want is usually not possible to understand. Their language is strange, and none of my people speak it. Now I think they follow us because we were in their valley and they have nothing better to do. Once they start doing something, it takes a lot for them to stop.”

Using the headset, Josie could easily spot the creatures against the snow. They were short, but wide as they trudged through the snow, leaving deep tracks. “Are they dangerous?”

“They’re good fighters. But they will not want to marry you, like the trolls did.”

“They just want to kill us?”

Bragr walked in among the trees. “Or take us captive. It has been known to happen, but nobody has returned to tell us why. Our best guess is that they like to eat us.”

In the woods the snow was still loose. Close to the roots of the trees Josie could spot the bare ground, five feet down. The trees themselves reminded her of pines. They were tall and straight, with a dark sternness to them that made the forest seem dark and forbidding. She could easily imagine more of those skrymtir lurking close by.

She walked on, staying six feet behind Bragr, being alert for new sounds or shadows up above. The skrymtir were bad, and they could obviously do really serious damage. But they were also slow and didn’t seem able to think fast — they were mindless. The vettir were much worse, and she’d prefer to not have anything more to do with them.

They walked fast among the trees, Bragr sticking to a mostly straight line. He often had to duck to get past trees with low-hanging branches, and Josie started to worry about how he would fight when the trees were that close together. How could he swing his sword?

Huh. Here she was, an abductee worrying about the welfare of her abductor. Well, for now, she relied completely on him to survive on this alien and remarkably hostile planet—

Her head whipped to the side. Was that movement?

She stopped and stared.

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