The Hunter Victorious (24 page)

A small, tight smile crooked the corner of Barat Krol’s
mouth. He reached in and despite the fact that the technician scrabbled away and tried to fend him off, he seized him and
pulled him out like a pile of dirty laundry.

The boy—he was no more than a youngster, really, despite his attempt at a thin, stringy mustache—began to cry and a fetid
stink filled the air as he soiled himself. He covered his face with his hands and it was obvious that he thought he was going
to die. Barat Krol gave him a hard shake. “Stop that noise. We have freed the only ones who had a need for tears. You had
best save your breath for your prayers!” The boy wailed and cried all the louder.

Barat Krol flung him away in disgust and wrenched a leg off one of the tables. He hefted it as he walked toward the crying
boy, no sign of sympathy on his face.

“Wait a minute ’ere,” Septua said thoughtfully. “’E might do us better alive than dead.”

Barat Krol was not easily persuaded. After all that they had seen, he felt the need to inflict pain and suffering upon one
of those who had caused such agony.

“It was only a job!” wailed the boy, thinking to lend his voice to the dwarf’s point. But if he had thought to plead his innocence,
he had chosen the wrong argument.

“Do you not have eyes? Do you not have a heart? Could you not see their plight, feel their agony?” Barat Krol raised the chair
leg, ready to club the boy, to see the blood flow. His whole body shook under the stress of his anguish.

“I couldn’t stop them! Nobody would’ve listened to me!”

“Did you try? Did you even try?” Barat Krol was frightening to see, shivering with the need to strike out.

“’Ere now, Barat Krol, I un’erstan’ ’ow you feel,” Septua said appeasingly, daring to place a hand on the Madrelli’s arm.
“But think about it a minute, ’ere. We got us a pris’ner, eh? Don’cha see? Leave ’im live an’ mebbe ’e’ll just show us what
we come lookin’ for!

“Wot’s the rest?” Septua nodded into the steaming, frosty interior of the small freezer.

“Other stuff.” The boy wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “You know, other breeding stock: sheep, cows, chickens, stuff
like that.”

“Let’s take ’em!” Septua grabbed at the handle covered with frost and cursed as he jerked his hand back, minus a patch of
skin, the flesh already beading with blood. He sucked the bloody patch and glared at the boy, who raised his hands and backed
up. “You have to use gloves, see! It’s way below freezing in there!”

Still cursing, Septua donned the protective gloves, which were many sizes too large and came up well over his elbows, before
he attempted to retrieve the remainder of the freezer cylinders.

“Now, show us the substance,” directed Barat Krol in a tone that invited no argument.

The boy was clearly miserable as he slowly led the way back into the main laboratory area. He was all but dragging his feet
by the time they reached the largest of the rooms, where many of the most hideous experiments had been carried out. Barat
Krol had begun to realize that the boy was stalling for time when he heard the sound of footsteps and mingled voices. The
workers were returning! Only then did he realize that the Klaxon had ceased its unrelenting braying. How long had it been
silent?

The first of the workers entered the room and stopped, astonished expressions on their faces that might have been comical
had the circumstances been less serious.

Barat Krol was the first to react. He seized the boy by the back of the neck, the fragile column dwarfed by his enormous paw.
“One step, one sound, and the boy is dead!”

One of the men turned and ran. Barat Krol cursed and threw the boy aside like a rag doll, scattering the small knot
of workers like dry leaves as he followed the worker down the hall. When he returned at a more leisurely pace, he wore a look
of satisfaction and Septua guessed that he had finally satisfied the need to punish someone for all that he had seen.

The look on the remaining workers’ faces was a bonus. If any of them had been contemplating escape, they quickly changed their
minds.

“What do you want with us?” one of the braver technicians asked.

“They want the Madrelli formula,” the boy answered tearfully. “I tried to keep it from them.”

“Look, Stephus, they have the ova!” one of the women exclaimed, pointing with horrified recognition at the frosty containers.

“They said they’d kill me,” the boy said miserably. Almost as one, the workers shot a quick glance down the hall.

“Don’t worry, Tani,” the one known as Stephus said. “No one will hold you to blame. Let us give them what they seek before
they kill us all.”

The substance was no less unusual in appearance than the ova had been. Barat Krol had been prepared for anything, a beaker
of fluid, a box of pills, anything but the chunks of dry, chalky material that Stephus casually pulled out of a larger box
sitting in a corner like a bit of debris.

“This is it?” Barat Krol asked, shaking the box and hearing the contents rattle dryly. “The fate of my people rests on these…
these rocks?” He turned toward Stephus and his lips twitched, revealing his long, sharp eyeteeth.

“No, no! Uh, I mean yes!” Stephus hurried forward to take the box out of the Madrelli’s hands. “Look, I can understand why
you might think that something so important is worthy of more respect, but the fact of the matter is that we have so much
of it on hand that, quite honestly, we don’t
give it its proper due. Here, here, taste a bit of it on your tongue. You’ll see, it’s just what I said it was!” He thrust
the box back to the Madrelli, a pleading, anxious look on his face. Clearly he recognized their danger.

The Madrelli reached out and touched his finger to the powder, flicking a tiny clump up with the end of his thick yellow fingernail.
He touched it with his tongue and instantly the suspicious, distrustful look vanished, replaced by a look of sheer joy. “This
is it!” he cried. “We’ve found it!” he thumped Stephus on the back, sending the technician stumbling forward, and when he
turned, he was smiling as well. “See, I told you the truth. Can we go now?”

“I never said you could go nowheres. I just said we wouldn’t kill you, mebbe,” Septua said with a sly grin, and over their
loud protests he herded them into a large storage room with a sturdy door and bolted it behind them.

“What now?” he asked the Madrelli.

“We must find Uba Mintch, get this to him. He will know what to do and how to do it.”

They were striding through the corridors, Septua half running to keep up with the long-legged Madrelli, when suddenly the
lights blinked out with no warning and they were thrown flat.

“What the—” exclaimed Septua, rising to his knees and feeling around for the precious canisters. “What ’ave they done now?
’ow did they make the floor shift like that?”

“Quiet,” Barat Krol whispered, and in the dim red glow of the emergency lights Septua could see that the Madrelli had not
risen from the ground, nor was he searching for the containers. He was lying still with his head pressed flat against the
floor, and Septua studied him in puzzlement, wondering if he had been injured in the fall. He hurried to the Madrelli and
knelt beside him. Barat Krol waved him down and when
he did not move, seized him by the hem of his robe and jerked him down and pressed his head against the stone floor. None
too gently either, as Septua began to point out.

“Quiet,” Barat Krol commanded. “Shut your mouth and open your ears. Listen!”

Septua did as he was told. As soon as he placed his ear against the stone, he heard it: a deep, rumbling, throaty growl, as
though there were something alive inside the earth. It was an ominous sound that could mean nothing but trouble—bad, bad trouble.

Then, even as he listened, the growling sound stopped. It was as though the earth, the world, was holding its breath. And
then there was a sharp, brittle snap, as though he had broken a dry branch over his knee. Yet this was no branch, but something
critical inside the earth. Immediately following the sound, the floor shifted once again, throwing them hard against the far
wall. This time, as the walls and ceiling began to crumble, raining down upon them, even the red lights were extinguished.

The vendors had barely had time to down their first cup
of bland, unsatisfying herb tea and initiate conversations with tentative buyers when the earth began to move. Those who
were standing felt it in the soles of their feet: an urgent, tingling vibration followed by the stiff jolt that threw them
to the ground, as well as the carts and wagons and even the more sturdily built stalls.

Merchandise rained down upon vendors and customers alike as they scrambled awkwardly, trying to regain their footing. The
inner cone reverberated with a cacophony of screams and shouts and the unmistakable sound of hysteria.

The ground ceased to move and slowly people began to crawl to their feet. Still, there were cries and crying, and over near
the far wall a cart had caught fire and was burning briskly, adding to the confusion.

Voices were raised in an angry babble as people sought to find someone or something to blame for the catastrophe. Then, even
as anger overcame fear, the ground moved again. This time it was more severe and, as they lay in a tangled jumble of arms
and legs and irreplaceable merchandise, the rocks began to rain down on them from above.

Not even royalty can escape such cataclysmic events. Earthquakes, floods, fire, pestilence, all are democratic in nature and
favor no one class. All men, rich or poor, peasants
or kings, are afforded the same opportunity to die. And so it was in this instance.

At the time that the earth moved, Otir Vaeng, under Skirnir’s insistence, had just convened the Council of Thanes for the
first time in weeks. The Thanes had been grumbling among themselves, for under the terms of the law, the council was to meet
on a regular basis. The Scandi nation was a monarchy, but the Thanes were historically given a large degree of input. Although
it was seldom that they were so bold as to oppose the wishes of their king, in turn, it was a wise king who saw to it that
he was not in opposition to his Thanes, for they were the strength behind the throne.

When the quake struck, the council had just been called to order. Everyone, from Otir Vaeng down to the lowliest page, was
in attendance, for even a fool would have realized that something of importance was about to be announced. Nature, however,
has no respect for the words of man and they were drowned out by the earth’s voice, loud and anguished. Torn from the rocky
bowels, a scream of elemental agony burst forth, a twisted, tormented wailing screech of rock grating against rock that was
far more frightening than the jolt that followed.

It was the second shock that caused the most damage and the most deaths. The council chambers was one of the few places in
Aasgard that reflected the Scandis’ former splendor. It was a large, circular chamber with a high, vaulted ceiling. Stone
panels of finely detailed bas-relief circled the room at the point where ceiling met wall. Enormous marble statues marked
the positions of various families and it was the location of these statues in proximity to the throne that ordained one’s
standing in court.

The room itself was egg-shaped, for the floor fell in tiers from the highest (and thus the lowliest position, in their convoluted
method of thinking), to the lowest level, where the
innermost ring of Thanes sat clustered around the throne. The statues were not neatly placed all in rows but ranged up and
down the tiers.

There was but one entrance in and out of the chamber, for the Thanes had clung to the pomp and ceremony that was all that
remained of their previous glory. Flutes and tambors accompanied their entrance as the pages cried their names aloud. Sigmunds,
Raggnarrsons, Andersons, Ericksons, Johansons and Rasmussens, they were all there when the ground shifted and their world
changed forever.

A few of the wiser, less pompous heads among them had cautioned against the style of architecture, warned that the porous
rock was not stable enough to warrant hollowing out such a great expanse without the means to support it. They had been ignored.

Those same voices had cautioned against the installation of the bas-reliefs, which told the story of the gods choosing the
Scandis above all others and leading them out of the darkness that was earth and entrusting them to Valhalla—a pretty tale
that grew more and more bitter and ironic to those few who still cared to lift their eyes to view it. But these voices of
caution had been ignored as well. Oh, the others went so far as to add a few extra bolts to appease their fellow Thanes, but
behind their backs the cautious ones were scorned and regarded as cowards.

There had been no voices raised in opposition to the statues. Perhaps the prudent Thanes had grown tired of being laughed
at, or perhaps even they could see no harm in erecting the enormous vanity pieces.

It is doubtful that it would have mattered even if they had prevailed in only one issue or the other, for all three architectural
elements were responsible for the horror that followed.