67

 

Ulrik’s body ached. His stomach hurt, and his ribs were either bruised or cracked. The tingling in his arms told him they were asleep, as he had been, but a dull pain radiated from his hands to his shoulders.

The side of his face felt swollen and tight. And his jaw ached. His left eye was swollen shut, and he kept his right closed to make anyone watching think he was still unconscious. He gently probed the inside of his mouth and felt all his teeth still in place, but one molar nudged a bit under the pressure from the tip of his tongue.

Raindrops pelted the right side of his body. I’m outside, he thought. The ticking of the rain filled his ears, and he strained to hear anything else. When he was convinced he might be alone, he slowly cracked his right eyelid.

It was either dusk or the storm clouds had darkened the sky to a dull slate gray. He hung up high over a grassy field that was turning to mud in the downpour.

He looked up and the memories flooded back.

The chanting.

The beating.

The clanging of the big metal hammers.

The thick iron spike.

His wrists were chained to either side of a foot-long pine board, and a thick black iron nail, a foot long, had been pounded through his hands, and the board, attaching them both to the dark brown wooden pole from which he was suspended.

They have crucified me.

Ulrik’s hands had been laid one atop the other, and the nail—an inch wide, unfinished iron spike—had been forced through his hands between the middle and third metacarpal bones, forcing them apart and pushing the fingers apart so his hands resembled the horns of an ox.

Blood dripped down from the holes, but it had started to crust and coagulate, despite the rain. His fingers had turned white from blood loss. The only reason his weight hadn’t torn his hands through the spike was because his body was being supported by the manacles around his wrists—not the holes in his hands.

He considered wiggling his fingers, and then thought better of it. It would hurt if he could do it at all, and it would do exactly nothing for him.

He looked down and saw his bare feet dangling below him. As far as he could see, he was only attached to the pole by his hands and his wrists. The distance between his wrists was just enough to keep the weight of his body from suffocating him to death, although he was already finding it hard to breathe.

He didn’t have long before whatever strength he had would leech away into his toes and flood out into the rain.

The field below him was empty. With storm clouds blocking the sky, he had no idea how long he had been nailed to the pole. It couldn’t have been too long, or he would have suffocated for sure. His body felt battered, but still strong. He didn’t know much about crucifixion, but he imagined weakness would come soon enough.

He struggled to open his left eye, and its lid cracked just slightly, allowing a thin sliver of muted sight. It would be enough. He craned his head around left and right, ensuring that the field below him was in fact completely vacant, and that no guards were posted in the nearby buildings. He was high enough to see the warehouse where the Vikings had been defeated, and the distant river beyond it. The building where they had been detained looked deserted now.

The rain intensified. He could no longer see the river past the curtains of cascading water. He could feel the water sliding between his aching wrists and the iron manacles around them, lubricating him to no avail. The cuffs were thick, and he didn’t think he would be able to get his wrists out of them, even if he could get his hands free from the nail.

He could see only one way to do it, and it was going to hurt more than he could imagine. He needed to psyche himself up for it, and filled his mind with thoughts of failure; at protecting Agnes, in allowing Val to be captured, at the betrayal of Anders, and at the deaths of Morten and Oskar—the latter of whom he had been marched past when the Vectors took their prisoners out of the warehouse. His fury mounted when he thought about how he had failed not just his people, but the whole human race. Even the Vectors would die out if he and Val did not get Agnes to Halvard and his gene science.

Then his thoughts replayed what they had done to him. How they had beaten him like a dog, and how they had pierced his hands and left him to die.

But he had not died.

And they were fools.

Every last one of them.

He heaved with his massive stomach muscles, pulling his thick thighs and knees upward, and then lowered them. It was agony, but the pain was nothing compared to what it would be, and if he could not perform this first stage, he would not have the strength for too many tries.

He sucked in a deep breath and swung his legs up again, pulling hard with his arms and sending screaming tendrils of pain rushing down his shoulders to his heart. His abdominal muscles contorted in on themselves, and his chin mashed to his chest as his legs swept up over his head and over the wooden plank holding him prisoner.

He thought his neck would break, but then his ankles wrapped around the upper part of the pole, and took some of the weight off his bent arms. If anyone saw him now, they would think he was trying to eat his hands off or maybe hump the pole.

The truth was more terrifying. He struggled to shinny his body backward, until the pole was between his thick calves, and then his knees. He clamped onto the pole with his powerful thighs driving his knees into the sides of the slick wood, feeling a rough splinter drive into the meat of his leg.

He would not scream from the pain. Not yet. He would need that scream soon. Very soon. If he waited too long, he would pass out again.

All at once he let go with his thighs and pulled down with his back muscles, his legs flipping forward. They snapped down and back and as his legs came through the halfway part of their arc, he screamed and tugged forward with his arms, while bucking with his back. At first the scream was a focusing of his power and rage, but as the iron nail was tugged through his hands, his scream turned into one of abject pain. His left hand—on top of the right—felt a brief second of resistance, before it snapped free of the spike and the arm started to flop out into space. The right followed closely behind it, and then both arms jolted to a stop as the chains around his wrists were fully extended.

His ankles wrapped around the pole below him, and he pushed up against it, his legs slipping on the wet wood. His hands still functioned, but burned with each movement.

But Ulrik did not care.

He pulled against his left wrist and reached up with his right hand. He grabbed the blood-slicked nail. The muscles of his forearm shook and vibrated, but his hand held on to the nail, and he pulled himself up slightly. He could feel the edges of the hole in his hand stretching under the strain.

Then he raised the left wrist and banged the metacarpal bone under his thumb against the tip of the nail until the joint broke, and his wrist collapsed, sliding cleanly out of the iron manacle.

Now partially freed, he released the pole with his ankles and let his body spin from the ruined hand grasping the nail. His vision clouded with a fugue of red hatred.

When his body faced the pole, he wrapped his powerful thighs around it and pulled himself up with the manacled hand, shinnying his legs up and taking the strain as soon as he was able.

With a final burst of strength, he hooked his arm under the pine board, and threw his body backward. The nail shrieked and squealed, and then the board, the nail and the chain all ripped loose, smacking him in the face before it fell away to hang from his wrist by the chain still attached to his right arm.

Pulling back in with his abs, his chest hugged the pole. He swung his right arm, flinging the chain, board and nail around the back of the pole. He tried to catch it with his left hand and missed on the first attempt.

Lightning flashed somewhere close, sizzling the sky and his retinas, before the roar of the Thunder God filled the sky. Ulrik screamed again in rage and black hate. He swung the chain again and the board slammed into the back of his left hand as he grasped for the metal links, filling him with a white hot light. His roar was lost in another peal of thunder.

He started laughing as he swung the chain a third time and filled his heart with the promises of pain he would inflict on the Vectors. This time, his mangled left hand caught the chain. He pulled the thing tight, tugging it hard and leaning backward. He slid his feet to the front of the pole and pushed against it. Then all in one move he released the vice grip his knees had on the wood.

Tugging on the chain and pushing against the front of the pole, he ran downward. In what seemed just a few steps, his ankle mashed into the squelching muddy ground. His left hand released the chain and his body fell to his right, collapsing in the soft muck.

He pushed himself up in the mud, and in the distance he saw Heinrich, good Heinrich, running toward him through the rain. As good as it felt to see a friendly face, he was filled with rage.

But he was still laughing.

And they were going to pay.

Every last one of them.