Part Three
Gordon Tripp, the nephew of Seamus Tripp, read through the Minnesota Pioneer with interest. Gordon had been amazed to find out that Minnesota had a daily newspaper. The edition he was reading was over a week old, but it was still an amusing diversion to read through the hodgepodge of Scandinavian and German names of the state’s newsmakers.
“Gordon!” Uncle Seamus yelled. Gordon looked up. Much of the town was assembled in the church basement again, this time for an impromptu potluck. “Pastor Hansen asked you a question.”
“How do you like your hotdish?” said Pastor Hansen mildly. Everything he said was mild.
“Just fine, thank you.” The dish was as a mild as the questioner: a mixture of cream, dried mushrooms, ham, and potatoes, all baked together and served with buttered toast. It was bland and mushy, a welcome change from the lutefisk the night before. “I was just reading that a special session has been called to the Legislature. Is that why you elected Senator Sogaard?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure what we’ll do now, given the news of his involvement with Agathe.”
“What need do you have for a State Senator, anyway?” said Elie, who was always thinking she knew better than everyone else. “Just leave the politicians to themselves and they’ll leave you alone.”
“She has a point,” said Seamus, who disliked politics, and politicians, in general.
“Says here they’ll be discussing land grants,” said Gordon. “Seems like you’d want to have someone there on your behalf, in case they decide to make a decision on your behalf.”
“Very reasonable point,” said Pastor Hansen.
“But who would go instead of Sogaard?” said Hannah.
No one knew, so the table fell to silence as they ate. Gordon kept reading. The discussion had got him thinking about laws and rules. It was strange that Agathe had fled after the flyting, since she had shown so little regard for rules or traditions in her rise to power in Nininger. Why had she suddenly followed the rules after losing the flyting to Hannah?
No matter, Gordon supposed. Some characters changed. It was a principle of literature, in fact, and Gordon considered himself first and foremost a writer. Agathe had been an interesting character in an interesting story. He tapped the journal he kept in his front pocket. Maybe he could update it again, now that the whole story was complete. No, he decided. There would be time for that on the ride back to St. Paul.
They finished the potluck and gathered their things, and headed to the train station to depart for St. Paul. The platform for Sogaard was still up. An American flag hung limp on the pole in the town square. It was cold and quiet outside, as it had been the whole time they had been in town.
The adults met together to say their goodbyes and exchange pleasantries and engage in all the rituals adults went through in these sorts of situations. Gordon and Elie stood to the side, looking around the square for the last time.
“Do we know them?” she said, pointing at three men on the other side of the square.
“I think so.”
“Who do you suppose they are?”
“Imagine them chasing us down the hill, with red eyes, and about twice that size.”
Elie held her hand to her mouth in astonishment, for the men were now crossing the square on the diagonal, heading straight for the stage station.
“Draugr!” she and Gordon yelled in unison, drawing the adults' attention.
Then there was a terrific crack, for one of the draugr had pulled down the flagpole and begun to swing it about his head in wide circles. The group dispersed: Uncle Seamus and Pastor Erik up the street, back toward the church; Gordon and Elie and Hannah the opposite direction, toward the safe haven of Hannah’s house.
The train emitted a loud whistle, the kind of thing it would sound in case of a bandit attack, but was quickly silenced by the draugr’s improvised weapon.
Gordon did not even turn to watch, though he was sure it was a spectacular sight. He ran as fast as he could beside Hannah, and a few strides behind Elie, as they turned the corner toward Hannah’s home.
And there they came face-to-face with Agathe Ericksen, standing in the center of the road. She raised a long black staff and yelled at them a terrifying curse in a tongue Gordon did not recognize. Hannah raised her own hands, at first Gordon thought as an instinctive gesture to brace against attack; but he realized she was quietly speaking a spell of her own, creating a wavering wall of protection before them.
“Run,” she said over her shoulder to Gordon and Elie, who turned left again and darted between buildings and down a path to who-knew-where.
“It looks like one of the draugr is following us,” said Elie as they skidded down the snowy trail. Gordon chanced a glance over his shoulder: sure enough, a draugr, the biggest of the three, had emerged between the buildings and was sliding down the icy path toward them.
At that moment, looking backward at the accelerating giant Viking zombie, considering what to do next, Gordon tripped on a rock. It was the kind of thing that seemed to happen to him a lot, and it came at a terrible time. He stumbled, turned a somersault on the snow, and began sliding, face-first, down the path. And, because of his momentum, as the path veered right he stayed straight, hurtling over an embankment and out on to the ice of a river. And not just a river, but the river: the Mississippi, so wide and powerful farther downstream, here reduced to an oversized ice rink, dotted by occasional forested islands.
“Gordon!” yelled Elie as she followed him down the embankment. He was not hurt, more embarrassed than injured, for the snow had cushioned most of the impact of the fall. “That monster will be here any moment. Keep running!”
So he pulled himself up and they made their way farther out onto the river, swerving between the deep, wind-blown snow dunes that had formed up out on the open ice.
Then they heard the draugr land on the ice behind them. It was big and apparently quite stupid in its monstrous state, and when Gordon saw a patch of dark ice in front of them he had an idea.
He explained it to Elie, motioning her to the right of the patch. He ran to the left, nearly falling through when the ice beneath unexpectedly gave way. But he worked his boot – soaking now – free of the slush and met Elie at the other side of the dark patch. There they stopped, turned to the draugr, and called out to it, waving their hands and making all sorts of racket.
The draugr, clumsy and stupid and single-minded, seemed to pick up speed, and it ran straight toward them and out over the dark patch. It then seemed to instinctively realize it was in trouble, but it had gained too much momentum to stop, and when it was about halfway out onto the weakened ice the whole patch collapsed beneath it. The big zombie slid straight into the water. It splashed about futilely in the ice cold water and began to sink. The children watched quietly.
Once the draugr had sunk out of sight, Gordon spoke. “Let’s get back to town,” he said, trying to ignore the unpleasant cold of his soaked boot.
They ran back the way they came, up the embankment, up the path, and back out to the street, where they could see the other combatants again. Agathe and Hannah had made their way back toward the church and were now engaged in a terrific battle, unlike anything Gordon had ever seen: they were running up the sides of buildings, jumping high into the air, hurling rocks and trees to and fro with waves of their wands. Not at all the way he would have imagined a battle between Viking witches after having watched the stoic flyting ceremony. Pastor Erik and Uncle Seamus had holed themselves up within the church up in an attempt to hold off the two remaining draugr.
When the children ran into view, however, they caught the draugrs’ attention, which gave Seamus and Erik the opportunity to go on the offense. So while Gordon and Elie, now exhausted from their trips back and forth, ran back toward the square to draw the draugr off, Seamus and Erik burst out from the front door of the church; Erik holding a crucifix in hand, Seamus a heavy crossbow. The draugr, suddenly surrounded, turned one direction and then the
next, confused by the options to either side.
“Fools!” yelled Agathe from a perch atop the rectory, where she and Hannah stood on either side of the pitched roof. Gordon was not sure if she meant him and his friends or the draugr.
Pastor Erik rushed forward and his crucifix began to glow brilliant white in his hand. He punched forward at the nearest draugr, whose rotted flesh burst on impact, the monster disintegrating before them in an instant.
The fight on top of the rectory had reached its peak as well, as the witches grappled, spun, and then fell to the ground in front of the church.
Hannah began to chant in an ancient language – Gordon recognized bits and pieces to be Old Germanic, the type of thing Norsemen a thousand years before would have spoken – and raised up her wand, spinning it over her head. The wand lengthened and grew leaves, and a gust of wind rushed forth, tearing Agathe’s own wand from her hands and tossing it thirty feet up into the air, where it shattered into a hundred pieces.
The dark witch cried out and turned and fled. They watched her go. Gordon knew that with her wand rent Agathe would be powerless and no longer a threat to Nininger.
“A little help!” yelled Seamus. During the excitement of the witches’ battle Gordon had not noticed his uncle catch the last of the huge draugr in a sophisticated trap and harness. Hannah, responding to his call, tossed him her wand. Seamus