Page 37 of Alien Viking's Plunder

“This is as good a place as any to wait for the dfergir to catch up. It’s better if we choose the place for the fight, not they.”

Josie looked around. She could see why this would be a good place for an ambush. The frozen river with a thick layer of snow over the ice formed a flat surface without cover, while the river bank they had just climbed up provided cover that Bragr and she could hide behind.

“Do you have anything to throw?” she asked, looking at her own spear.

Bragr looked at the trees around them. “We don’t throw things at an enemy. We fight face to face.”

I’ll take that as a ‘no’.“Can we fight those dfergir and expect to win?”

11

- Bragr -

It was a question he would have loved to know the answer to.

He stared back to the spot where he expected the dfergir to appear. “They’re following us, and my guess is that they are catching up. We are getting hungry, but I can’t hunt for game while they’re this close.”

“I can go for longer without eating,” Josie said. “And I have these.” She opened a pouch on her belt and took out a handful of the small pieces of wrapped candy that he’d offered her back on the Kraken.

“We canwalkfor longer without eating,” Bragr agreed. “Butfightinggets harder when you’re hungry. It’s just how it is. And we have to expect more fighting in this forest.”

He took in the landscape and decided on a plan. He and Josie would keep walking on this far side of the river so that their tracks appeared to continue. But then they would turn to the side and double back here. The dfergir would see their tracks continue and would not be alert for when Bragr suddenly jumped out of the snow and came at them from behind, Brisingr swinging.

He grabbed Josie’s hand. “Come on.”

They did as he planned and were soon back in the same spot, having made convincing tracks continuing into the woods across the river from where the dfergir would appear.

“They can be here at any moment,” he said and started digging into the snow under a tree where the signs of activity would not be visible from a distance. “We have to get out of sight.”

Josie helped dig, and soon they had a shallow ditch they would both fit inside. Bragr cut branches off nearby trees and used them to line the ditch. That way they wouldn’t have to lie directly on the snow.

They laid down and made themselves as hard to see as possible. Bragr would have preferred to simply hide behind a tree, but their trunks weren’t thick enough to cover him completely.

Josie was on her side and pushed her behind into him. “It’s going to get cold,” she whispered.

The soft, warm touch immediately caused his crotch to swell, to the point where he worried about the bulge in his pants being visible above the snow.

“Let me know if the cold gets too much,” he replied. “I can embrace you closer.”

This close to her, it was impossible to ignore the warmth from her body, the sound of her quick breathing, her racing heartbeat, her little movements, and the sweet scent of her. She didn’t smell alien at all, just female. A sweaty female who had walked through the wilderness for hours and days. It was an intoxicating mixture of sensations that made it impossible for him to control his body’s excitement.

“How will we know when they’re close?” Josie whispered.

“We’ll know,” he grunted, not really sure. Then he heard something and squeezed Josie’s hand so she’d be quiet.

It was the fast footsteps of dfergir walking in line. The soft shuffling sound resonated through the snow and came closer. They must have passed the frozen river and climbed the bank, and now they were following the tracks into the woods.

To Bragr’s surprise, he could hear their voices as they spoke their harsh, guttural language between them as they walked. It was usually not a good idea to speak too much in the woods, to not attract enemies. But perhaps that was different for dfergir — perhaps theywantedto be heard, perhaps that was a way to keep attackers away.

The sound of their speaking slowly faded. Now Bragr didn’t have much time. The dfergir would soon reach the spot where his and Josie’s tracks would turn and go back here. That would alarm them.

He counted to twelve, then quickly rose up from the snowy trench and drew Brisingr. Just spotting the back of the last dferg among the trees, he ran after them, fast and silent.

There were eight of them, short and wide, walking with a waddling gait on their short legs. They carried their axes and mattocks and hammers over their shoulders, each weapon almost as long as its dferg owner was tall.

“Brisingr is out!” Bragr shortened the sword’s battle poem as he came within striking distance.

The rearmost dferg was so shocked he fell to the side while trying to whirl around, his heavy ax dragging him to the ground. The next one spun and raised his mattock in a strange defensive stance.

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