Painkiller: Odin's Warriors - Book 2 Read online

  Amelia didn't say anything more, so Ella changed the subject yet again. "Something new tonight?" Smaller eyes rolled far back. Ella groaned. "So, the Scarlet Kiss again?"

  Amelia beamed, and handed her the book off the bedside table.

  Ella opened the yellowing pages, to Chapter Five, and leaning closer toward the lantern light, cleared her throat.

  "The trail had gone cold. Too cold like the Mississippi in a freezing winter, below the headlights of his sedan. He scratched his handsomely chiselled jaw, white jets of warm vapour issuing from his rugged nostrils. What’s so damn important about this Jade Falcon, he thought flippantly, enough to kill for. He'd have to start over again, this time at the morgue."

  "Oh, I get it," said Amelia. "Everybody wants the Falcon. But nobody knows where it is. Where could it be?"

  "Yes, you do," said Ella. "We've read the book. A million times."

  "Ssh. I'm being Detective Tracy." Small fingers stroked her chin. "To the morgue! It's in a corpse!" And the child collapsed back onto the bed, stiff as a board, arms stuck upward.

  Chapter Nine

  THE JETTY

  "KING BEOWULF HFFYLSON, can I talk to you for a moment?"

  The Viking turned in his throne seat, surrounded by his kin singing songs, drinking, and reimagining tales of courage, and his brown eyes lit up. He rolled up the parchment scroll he'd been examining, and handed it to a nearby advisor. "Ella Gruder, this is a welcome surprise. I don't believe you've sought my counsel before."

  The Viking quarter of Fairholm, lay closest to the docks and river district, than any other settlement. And with Fairholm under siege, and the Vikings acting as blockade runners, and Odinsgate protection guaranteed at least for the near future, hundreds upon hundreds of Vikings had made their way to the Republic Shores, for a bit of fun, mayhem, feasting, drinking, and fighting not necessarily in any order. Or for that matter, performed one at a time.

  The King's temporary residence was an old stone mill, that had been converted, but as Ella looked around the building, still retained all its rustic charm. Where the great horse-drawn crushing mortar had once rolled, the circular stone lip now provided seating for benches on its perimeter with a massive firepit bang in the middle with plenty of room for animals and fish to be cooked over. Always with the feasting.

  I'm not sure what the fuss was about, thought Ella, thinking about how Mick described the Viking Hall the bomber crews saw after that disastrous first encounter, back near the crash site at the Foot of the Gods. Mick still gagged at the memory of the stench. Maybe Beowulf doesn't have to put up appearances any more.

  "I don't believe I've had to," she said. "Is there somewhere we can talk in private?"

  Beowulf grinned, and rose off his throne chair. "I know a place," he said. He clicked his fingers, and Manx followed him, as he walked to Ella and gestured for them to walk back outside, into the overcast skies. His personal guard remained discretely out of earshot, but close enough.

  Ella followed the King and his dog down the busy city streets until they reached the docks, then the river, upwind from the rendering factory. They walked south along the congested waterfront, crammed full of Viking supply ships, and salvage craft, heading in both directions, until they reached the site of an old pier, its timbers half rotten, reaching twenty feet out into the river. For a man of his size the King nimbly danced upon the creaking decking, his wolfhound matching each step, and sat at the end, letting his legs fall out over the water. Manx rested upon his haunches, as Ella eventually sat beside the King. His guards formed a half-circle on the river bank, backs to them.

  "When was the last time you dangled your legs over a river?" said Beowulf, staring into the shallow waters.

  "I can't remember when. There's never been enough time."

  "Enough time to fight evil, but not enough time to enjoy such things we fight for?"

  Ella stared down into the contents of the river, seeing small schools of silver fish flit around the sunken wooden stumps.

  "I guess not. There's always something to do."

  "There's always going to be something to do. Work fills any empty space, if you let it. But enough of this. Speak."

  "It is about the raid, Beowulf. Twelve or so men will not be enough to take an entire castle even if by surprise."

  "It's a hard fight, I agree."

  "So, I have been thinking about all the things I did before the storm. Before the war. I helped test a glider, something called a DFS-230." Her voice rose in excitement, as her butt shifted left and right on the hardwood planks, like a little kid waiting for presents.

  The Viking looked at her, and waited for her to continue. She didn't. "I've seen your training gliders on the hill."

  Ella laughed, and folded back a lock of red hair behind her ear. "Not these kinds of gliders. They carry nine troops plus pilot, have a seventy-two-foot wingspan, weigh about two tonnes fully laden, and are about thirty-six feet long." Beowulf watched her long arms wave around and up and down illustrating every point. "They are assault gliders, with one purpose. Not to drop men with parachutes, but to dive almost vertically straight down on top of its target, and then bang!" smacking her palms together, "deploying a parachute brake at the last moment," her right forearm was almost vertical, "pulling up hard and coming to a stop in about the length of this jetty, more or less. And that's when you disembark, oh, and wreak some, you know, carnage."

  She regarded the man next to her, who had her undivided attention.

  "I believe this is in your area of expertise? Dangerous, mountainous odds against, and the chance of such glorious battle that it will be sung in the halls of Valhalla. I wanted to ask you first. And not presume."

  The King twisted his braided red beard around with his right index finger. "Go on."

  "Well, I propose we build two of these assault gliders, and tow them from behind the seaplane I am building. Ah, we are building. The pair of Wright-Cyclones from the B-17E have enough horsepower to pull them, I am confident of that. If we do this, it will triple our assault force, and besides, you and the bomber boys seem to get on pretty well fighting — together."

  She reached out and ruffled the wolfhounds head, warm and with the oddly reassuring smell of unwashed dog. Manx rolled back his eyes in delight, and his cold nose rubbed her wrist.

  "Can you think of eighteen Vikings mad enough that might want to come along?"

  Chapter Ten

  CONVENTIONS

  CAPTAIN LAURIE JOHN looked out over the faces below, over the rough wooden platform upon which he stood. His mates. He turned to Beowulf, who nodded, then back to the assembled group. The sky was blue, dashes of grey clouds here and there, the twin suns poking over the edge of the adjacent forested hills. Some birds even chirped. Familiar birds, alas not. He longed for the warble of singing magpies.

  "It's a fine morning, let's hope it stays that way. I guess we all know why we are here. We're out in the back blocks of the Pit. This is our new training ground. Well, we don't know exactly why we're here, ever since that damn portal brought us through over the Channel, but I think we lose enough sleepless nights thinking about that as we do. It's been a year, more or less, since most of us got here, the Vikings and Merrion aside. General Versetti gave us a mission, and I intend to see it out. That Inka invasion force just sitting outside the Bay gives me the willies."

  A flock of birds squawked overhead making for the nearby tree line.

  "Now I hate speeches, and I hate talking. Yes, thanks Mick, shut up. Now you buggers, it's time to get back to basics. Until Hellsbaene and the support ships are ready, and Ella here sorts out the flying boat, and the assault gliders, guess what we are going to be doing every day until then? Basic Training. Going to get our butts into daily hikes and runs again."

  Andrew groaned.

  "Don't worry mate, my knees won't like it much either. Griffin, you will oversee weaponry, and instructing everyone with the captured MP 40’s, plus whatever else he deems fit. Griffin?"

/>   The big man nodded.

  "Beowulf, and his warriors, will be helping us out in hand-to-hand combat and melee weapons, since they're joining us on this little adventure. This assault glider idea of Ella's makes me a whole lot more comfortable. Which is still like sleeping in a bed full of rocks I reckon, but it's a start. I'll be helping out where I can. Merrion, I need a couple of things from you, mate. All the intelligence you have, and a scale model of the keep stronghold, and surrounding area and terrain. You're good with knives, you can help us out as well. We'll also need a secure room to act as our temporary headquarters, but I think you've already started on that. And one final thing, we'll all be sleeping under one roof back at the house, errr, mansion."

  Laurie got off the platform, to the small mound of earth in front of it, and sat. He picked up a green blade of grass, and wound it around his index finger.

  "Anybody like to say anything?"

  Ella spoke, her right hand scratching her head beneath the ponytail's knot. "The seaplane is not going to be ready for at least another two months, Captain. Nor the assault gliders, and the ships to house them in open waters. That should give you enough time to get these boys into shape." She grinned.

  "Congratulations," said Laurie. "You just volunteered to be our physical trainer." He had the satisfaction of seeing her face fall, just a fraction. Merrion snickered.

  Captain John stood up. "Come on lads, let's go. Ms Gruder, lead on. A run around the Pit's perimeter should clear the cobwebs out."

  IN THE GIANT WOODEN HANGER, half-a-mile away and only lit by high slotted windows, rested the motley collection of captured war material from the thwarted invasion. Outside it, in the field covering a few acres, rested all the remaining artillery pieces and ship’s weaponry salvaged from the Bay.

  Chief Warrant Officer Rob Lee, now Chief Engineer, considered their booty. Of over twenty crude tanks that rumbled off the landing barges, crawling like upended bathtubs, three failed in the shallow surf, victims of mechanical failure. Ten had been destroyed outright, blowing up in great explosions as their fuel tanks and flamethrower fuels ignited, and he mused, made for a wonderful grenade as they did, their metal skin killing just as many as their own. The rest, the Republic army had disabled, either by luck or design, jamming their metal tracks with rocks and debris, or getting close enough to ram a grease gun into a view port and empty the mag. Those six remaining, sans the one Griffin insisted on restoring for his training grounds, now sat in the hanger — well had sat — as both his and Thorfinn's apprentice mechanics dismantled them, trying to reverse-engineer the war machines.

  Of particular interest were the combustion engines inside them, a stonking huge flat-head straight six-cylinder, all iron, oil, and rust. And the spark plugs. Oh, the spark plugs, he thought. Such a little thing, but if you don't have one, oh boy you're in trouble. And the Republic had trouble in spades. Not enough high-quality oil. Or any oil in sufficient quantities for that matter. No glycol coolants. High-octane gas? Good spark plugs? Ha! The million and one things mechanics took for granted in 1944 rolled back a century or two, back to square one.

  But not for the Inquisition. They had the knowledge, and the industrial capacity to follow through. And here it was. Parked on their doorstep, waiting, suffocating.

  He rolled the Inquisition spark plug around in his palm, and walked back out the side door to the next large room of captured material. Weapons.

  "Afternoon, Griffin," said Rob. The gunnery sergeant waved to him from the end of three eighty-feet-long trestle tables, that split the room. On each table, piled thick, Inquisition guns had been sorted. Short-barrelled muskets and flintlocks, the sheer randomness comprising the bulk of the invading army rested on the first. On the second, fewer in number, but an awful amount even so, rifled muskets and muzzle-loading rifles of all kinds.

  But it was the third table, behind which Griffin stood, which gave them sleepless nights, and to this table Rob joined his friend and bomber crew-mate, sorting through all the black, squat guns. The sound of Athena snoring echoed from beneath the table.

  "It's a damn horrible progression," said Griffin. The number of guns on the third table barely counted one-fiftieth of the total guns taken from the invaders. He picked up the nearest one. "All the squad leaders carried one. Look familiar Rob?" Rob shook his head. "It's based on a German MP 40. We also call it a Schmeisser. Damn it. Open-bolt, stamped steel construction, fully automatic. But can also fire single shots if you’re careful enough. That bastard SS Colonel got busy when he arrived."

  "Well, at least Ella shot him."

  "Yeah," said Griffin, putting the gun back down. "But the dog now knows new tricks." He laughed. "Try saying that quickly. Gotta remember to say that to Amelia. Heh."

  "So do we," said Rob. "We're making our own grease guns based on the one's we brought over. It's slow-going though."

  "Ugh, don't get me started, man. Rebuilding primer cups and modifying guns to fire black powder cartridges. It's a fucking nightmare. The Inquisition doesn't seem to have this problem. I checked a random pile of their automatics. Hardly any fouling."

  The lunch bell rang from outside, muffled. Griffin's stomach rumbled.

  "Finally. Food. Athena. Let's go eat."

  They walked out of the room, the puppy stretching out her legs under the doorway, past the guards, and into the main Armaments Factory of the Republic.

  Hundreds of men and women worked on the production lines, in rows across the room, twisting this way and that, as they finished up their task before starting their break. At the back, the glow from the metal furnaces backlit the factory, as rudimentary electric lights dangled from the high wooden roof. All around, the sounds of metal banging, clanging, and being tempered into weapons assaulted their eardrums as the pair traversed the building. On the left side, small mountains of spent brass cartridges were, one shell at a time, rebuilt by each pair of hands down the assembly process.

  Rob poked Griffin in the ribs, and pointed upward.

  "Had to be done," said Griffin. "There's certain conventions to adhere to." He grinned, and the two of them exited the building, as behind them and overhead, the large yellow flag with a coiled black rattlesnake swung gently in the current of warm air.

  Chapter Eleven

  DON’T THINK. ACT

  "IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK," said Ella, leaning back against her chair in the main hall, rubbing her fingers along the broken wooden flight model spread out over the table in front of them. The fire crackled in the pit sending smoke drifting up into the stone chimney in the centre of the room.

  "You're home," said Amelia, coming from the hallway. She went to her mother and gave her a quick hug. Griffin entered the room behind her, and placed Betty on the weapon stand, which groaned slightly, custom moulded for her shape.

  "Picked her up on the way back," said Griffin. "Thought I'd save you some time since I was going past."

  "Ah," said Ella, "thanks." Scheisse, forgot again.

  "Welcome," said Griffin, pouring himself a tankard of beer from the side bar Mick had built soon after the large building was declared home.

  "No, it's not working," said Laurie, waving to Griffin, casting his gaze over the multiple broken scale model aircraft. "The Junkers is a land-based plane, and even with the extended twin pontoons raising its height, the engines are too low to the water." He got up and refilled his own ceramic mug.

  Amelia sat on Ella's knee, and picked up a wooden splinter. "There's a lot of splinters, Mummy," she said.

  "Yes, Amelia." She frowned, and riffled through her scrapbook.

  "Do you want a suggestion?" said Griffin. "Don't think you're going to find the answer in there."

  "By all means," said Ella, closing the book with a thud.

  "You sure?" Griffin threw a rubber ball down the hallway with the pack of dogs giving chase.

  "Yes. What?"

  "PBY Catalina."

  "Ah," said Laurie, "hadn't thought of that. Yeah, a baby Sunderland."

/>   "We called it the Porcupine," said Ella. "I'm not familiar with the Catalina."

  Laurie gave a short laugh, and drank some beer. "Nice work Griffin. Sure you are, Ella, here, let me draw it for you. May I?" He opened the scrapbook to a new page and with the pencil drew a basic outline. Ella and Griffin shared a look — damn, the Old Man could draw. "Overhead wing, connected to the fuselage with a single pylon, powered by twin radials."

  "Ah, the Cat," said Ella, her memory firing up.

  "The front hull even looks like a tiny Viking longship hull, come to think of it," said Griffin, "with all those overlapping planks." He threw the now-slimy ball once more back out the room's door and down the hallway, the thud, thud, thud echoing down the timber passageway followed by dozens of dog nails on timber. Then a faint crash.

  "What's a porcupine?" said Amelia. She looked up at her mother.

  "It is a small animal covered in spikes," said Ella.

  Amelia did her best to roll her eyes all the way back around her skull. "I know that, silly," she said, "what's a porcupine got to do with the aircraft?"

  "Good question," said Laurie, grinning. "What does it have to do with a porcupine?" His eyes gleamed.

  "Because Amelia, our pilots, I mean Luftwaffe pilots, found attacking the Sunderland seaplane difficult because it was covered in machine guns. So, they called it the porcupine."

  "Ah," said Amelia, now getting excited, "that means it would be very spiky indeed!"

  "Yes," said Ella, "it would. Now, Laurie and Griffin, tell me more about this PBY Catalina — I want to know everything about it. And Amelia — please take the dogs out back and play with them there?"