The Glaciermen #39: Viking
Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"
Hey everyone!
This week’s segment is a day late because, well, yesterday was a pretty big day for me as an American.
But today is today! And we’re here for some more of The Glaciermen! Things are only going to get crazier as we start descending into the final act.
Also, welcome to any new readers—if you’re looking for the beginning of Part Two, you can find it here in the index.
(One quick note, if you’re looking for some great free books organized by genre, check out my promotions page, which is linked at the bottom.)
And now, let’s dive in…
(Here’s the previous segment if you missed it, and the first chapter and index, if you’re new).
Recap (spoilers!): Lee won the battle against the tempting lure of the godseye—this time—and was able to find the power within to warm himself and Tyra.
Viking
Inqtink huffed as he picked up the next stiffened corpse from the pile on the sled. He grumbled to himself as he carried it across the chamber, irked at his recent streak of bad luck. It was lowly physical labor, the kind of thing normally tasked to the Sikanuk slaves, but those pesky chasm dwellers weren’t allowed into the sacred chambers, so instead the hunters would draw straws among themselves to see who got stuck with the task. Inqtink had drawn the short straw—again. To add insult to injury, his godseye was beginning to go stale, and he would not get another chance to freshen it up until the job was complete.
As Inqtink dumped the body on the growing pyramid at the back of the chamber, his mind was elsewhere. He was certain that lumpy-nosed Toqlo was cheating the straws somehow, but he had yet to discover his trick, so lately he had strongly insisted on drawing first to get the best odds. But the last three times in a row, despite drawing first, he still pulled the short straw—and Toqlo had been holding the straws each time. He just knew that ugly fool was to blame, somehow. He trudged back across to the sled, mulling the whole way.
He leaned down to lift the next body from the sled. It was donned with oddly undersized clothing, but all the surface dwellers wore strange clothes, so Inqtink paid it no mind. As he lifted it onto his shoulder, his face lit up with realization—he figured it out! Toqlo must have somehow made all the straws short, that way when Inqtink went first he would always pick a short one!
His anger flashed, and in a moment of tantrum he swung the corpse toward the floor. The body slammed hard into the ice, face first. In its frozen state, the neck of the body broke with a grisly crack, the hooded head bending back from the shoulders at an impossible angle. Inqtink cursed at his sudden idiocy, and reached down to push the head back into its normal position, hoping no one would notice and get mad at him.
As he moved the head, the hood pulled back, and Inqtink yelped as he saw the face. The nose was smashed from the impact, and the frosted-over eyes looked back at him with massively dilated pupils. A dull, pleasant smile was locked on its lips. After a moment of shock, Inqtink ran off at a sprint, hollering the alarm and leaving those frosted eyes to stare endlessly at the ceiling of the chamber. They did not belong to a surface dweller. They were the cold, dead eyes of Taqtu.
• • •
Lee held his hand up for Tyra to stop. They had been feeling their way along the main tunnel in total darkness and had finally now reached the last few yards of passage leading to the killing pit. The eerie blue light of the ritual torches ahead cast dancing patterns down the tunnel. The mist had faded, which meant the ritual was over and the captives would be presumed dead—and, more importantly, that there would be no guards, but Lee wanted to be sure before barging in with the girl, and frankly, he was not sure how she would react to seeing the freshly frozen dead corpses of her compatriots, so he preferred to that she wait back while he took a first look.
He crept forward on all his stomach, silent as a cat, until he reached the edge of the pit. He peered over the edge and gasped in shock. In the center of the pit, among the corpses of the dead, cross-legged as if he were meditating, sat the bald, tattooed man from before. Very much not dead, he wore no shirt, and steam rose from his heavily inked skin. The man was built like a bear, with gray and white bodily hair faintly obscuring dark tattoos all across an incredibly muscular torso. The tattoos formed intricate woven patterns interlaced with sharp symbols.
How is he still alive? Lee thought, though something told him he already knew the answer.
“Oi!” came the voice of the girl from behind Lee, startling him.
Shit! Lee thought, She was supposed to stay back.
The man’s eyes opened, then looked straight at Lee and Tyra behind him. The girl began speaking a million miles an hour in her native tongue, completely indecipherable to Lee. While she spoke, the man rose to his feet and calmly walked to the edge of the pit. Lee rose to a crouch and took a cautious step back. The man was tall, only a few feet short of the edge of the pit, Lee realized, and could have easily jumped up, grabbed hold of him, and dragged him down had he stayed close to the edge.
The man crossed his arms over his chest and listened patiently to the girl while her voice rose and fell in excitement, sometimes pointing to Lee, sometimes making violent motions in the air. When she finally finished, he spoke a few words to her, gesturing once with his head at Lee. His voice was deep and strong, resonating out from beneath his gray-streaked beard and long mustache, both of which Lee now noticed had been braided at the ends since he last saw the man in the tunnels. The girl paused for a moment, then gave a one word answer. Her tone carried an air of obviousness.
The man turned his attention to Lee, who suddenly felt a pang of anxiety, as if he were under the heavy weight of judgment. For some reason, Lee felt an urgent need for this man to like him.
“Tyra says I should trust you, ice man. I’m inclined not to, given the circumstances of our first acquaintance, but she told me what you did for her. You saved my niece’s life, and have my thanks.”
Lee blinked with surprise, caught off guard both at the man’s perfect English, and at the revelation of his family relation to the girl.
“My name is Bjørnar,” the man continued, “I’m to understand your name is Lee. Now, Lee, are you going to help me out of this pit or sit there staring at me like a fool? I’m sure those man-creatures are keen to return soon.”
“I… uh, yeah. Of course,” Lee said, struggling to fully compute what had just happened in front of him, that this man, despite being stuck in the pit, had somehow taken charge of the situation with ease.
“There should be a ladder around here somewhere,” Lee continued, still unsure of himself, “So, um, I’m just gonna go and try to find that.”
As he went around toward the other side of the pit, he began putting together the pieces. The man being Tyra’s uncle was a surprise, but not in a way that did not make sense. Plenty of people go on trips with their family. But he had survived the killing pit. No one survives the freezing mist. No one except Lee.
He knows about the warmth… those tattoos, and his braided beard, and his name, Bee-yor… Buh’your—screw it, I’m just gonna call him Viking. I bet that’s exactly what he is too, a viking.
Lee could not remember much about whatever he might have been taught in school about vikings, but he was sure about one thing: there weren’t supposed to be any real vikings any more. Yet here one was.
He reached the other side of the pit, where the cauldrons for making the freezing mists had been stacked together along with other various implements. After some rifling through, Lee found a length of rope ladder. The rungs were femur bones, probably human, and were strung together with ropes of fraying woven fibers. The ladder was old—old enough that it could very well have been the same one Aguta had used nine years before to help Lee out of the pit.
“Oi, Lee!” came a hissed whisper and a tug at his wrist.
Lee nearly jumped out of his skin. It was just the girl. She must have snuck around the pit while he was looking for the rope. She pointed to her ears again.
Uh-oh, Lee thought, as he went still to listen.
He could hear it—easily even—the sound of hoots and yells echoing dully out of the tunnel they had arrived through.
Viking must have heard, too, because he was already making his way across to their side of the pit. Lee yanked up the rope ladder, heart pounding, and rushed to the edge to toss it down. There was nowhere to secure it, so Lee was simply going to have to hold on to it while the big man climbed up. He looped the top femur-bone rung behind his neck and firmly grasped a rope runner in each hand. Viking eyed the dilapidated ladder, skepticism etched on his face as he looked at the fraying strands, but there was no other option, so he grabbed ahold of the bones and put a foot onto the first rung.
Lee strained against the weight, the top rung digging into his neck and shoulders. Viking must have been as dense as lead. The ladder rocked and swung as he clambered his way up the first few rungs. Lee groaned with effort as the full weight of the burly man pulled down on the neck and hands.
The bone rung around Lee’s neck snapped clean in half with a loud crack. The sudden break was too much to handle, and without the third point of support, Lee’s grip was not strong enough to maintain his hold on the rope runners. Weighed down by the big man, the cords slipped through Lee’s grasp, burning his hands. Viking’s reaction was more graceful, and he managed to land on his feet as the bones of the ladder clacked down around him.
The yells from the tunnel were louder now. They were out of time. Lee looked down at Viking standing in the pit. Tyra nervously shuffled from one foot to the other.
“Leave me,” Viking said. “Take Tyra and keep her safe.”
Lee shook his head, “You’ll die. We could stay and fight.”
“Go!” the man insisted, his voice like stone.
Lee bit his lip, looking to the tunnel where the shouting was coming from. This wasn’t fair. None of it was fair, but he had no choice.
He pulled the extra knife from his belt and tossed it down. Viking caught it right out of the air by the handle.
Lee turned to leave, but before he went, he looked back at Viking and said, “If you don’t let them know you’re alive until they're close, you can probably take a few of them with you.”
He gave Lee a nod that was filled with grave understanding.
The Glaciermen #40: Fugitives (Part One)
Skip the lines—the next part is out—keep reading the Glaciermen right here!
And that’s it for now folks
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– Xavier Macfarlane
Author, The Glaciermen
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Another solid chapter. I hope the Viking makes it through. He was an interesting addition to the cast of characters.