The Arctic Circle, February 26, 1:00 p.m.
“Anybody see them?” Karen Turner murmured, scanning the glacier-filled valley below while she squinted against the blinding expanse of white.
Nothing. Dammit.
Her teammates, the other five members of the Medusas—the first all-female Special Forces team in the United States military—muttered grim negatives as well.
Somewhere out there was a Norwegian Special Forces team charged with tracking down the Medusas and treating them like hostiles if caught. Translation: if the Norwegians caught them, they’d beat the living crap out of them in the name of teaching the Medusas a lesson about daring to play with the boys.
Karen sighed. Their supervisor, Col. Jack Scatalone, had warned them this wouldn’t be easy. He’d said that foreign Special Forces teams would take grave offense at women trying to do the same job as men. American women soldiers had been allowed into combat in the 1990s and American soldiers had had a decade of getting used to the idea under their belts already. Not so in most other parts of the world.
Problem was, for the Medusas to be effective in the long term, they had to be able to work seamlessly with their foreign counterparts when crises arose around the globe. In today’s world, Special Forces teams had to pool their resources and work together because almost all security threats crossed international borders.
That meant the Medusas must overcome foreign teams’ reluctance to work with women. And that meant training with them, or more to the point, sucking up whatever crap teams like this one handed out to the Medusas until they earned the foreign soldiers’ respect.
If the Medusas couldn’t win over their foreign counterparts, they stood no chance of being combat effective. It was that simple.
Which was why the Medusas had been hiking around out here for twenty-four hours straight. Only about five of it had been in actual daylight and all of it had been in bitter cold. Welcome to February in the Arctic.
The Norwegian team had been on their tails relentlessly the entire time. The bastards had actually laughed during the mission briefing when they’d found out their job would be to track down and capture the Medusas. They’d even offered to give the women a couple hours extra head start.
Of course, the Medusas had declined. It hadn’t been until after she and her teammates said no that the Norwegians casually mentioned four of the six men on their team had been Olympic medalists in biathlon—combined cross-country skiing and target shooting. Great.
Her boss, Major Vanessa Blake, asked over the throat mike and earpiece setup they used, “How much longer can you break trail for us before you give out, Python?”
All of the Medusas had a snake nickname and Python was Karen’s field handle. She considered Vanessa’s question. She was getting dehydrated, and between trying to stay warm and outpace a bunch of damned Olympians, she was way down on calories. It took six thousand a day out here to function. Fortunately, her creeping panic at watching these guys inexorably eat up the gap between themselves and the Medusas could be used for fuel, too.
She replied, “Another hour, I suppose. Two if we don’t have to climb any mountains.”
The terrain was slashed by steep valleys and deadly crevasses in the permanent snowcap. Someone had to go first and break the crust of snow, generally sinking about waist-deep in the process. They’d each taken their turns at it, but because of her size and strength, she’d been taking double shifts on point.
By her reckoning, they’d covered about twenty miles. She glanced at the sun skating low across the horizon. It would duck down out of sight soon, even though it was barely afternoon.
“Hey, Viper,” Karen said. “Did Scat hint at what these guys are planning to do after they catch us and rough us up?”
Major Vanessa Blake, the Medusas’ commander, snorted. “He didn’t tell me squat. Besides,” she added with a hint of laughter in her voice, “we had better things to do than worry about upcoming training.”
With Vanessa and Jack both active in Special Operations, he in Detachment Delta and she in the Medusas, their personal relationship had to squeeze in between their missions and training. What her boss saw in Col. Scatalone, Karen couldn’t fathom. But then, she had never really forgiven him for calling her oversized and mannish in her initial training. Oh, she knew he’d only been trying to mess with her mind. Nothing personal. Head games were part and parcel of any military training. Still, he’d nailed her Achilles’ heel, and the memory of it stung.
“Gee, you mean you don’t sit around and talk shop when the two of you manage to get a moment alone?” Karen quipped.
The other women chuckled, although the sound was strained. Everyone was worried these Norwegians would make short work of the Medusas. If that happened, the Medusas stood no chance at all of earning the men’s respect. And they all knew what rode on that outcome.
She pulled herself a few more inches forward on her elbows and in the maneuver scooped more snow into the neck of her white thermal windbreaker. It melted slowly, dribbling down the front of her shirt. A blast of wind hit her cheeks above her scarf as she peeked out from behind a rock outcropping. It sprayed her with needle-sharp crystals of snow and made her misery complete. What bad guy in his right mind would operate in an environment like this? It was hard to fathom when in their work the Medusas would ever have need of the ability to work in such a frigid wasteland.
“I smell a rat. Jack’s messing with us. There’s more to this exercise than a simple chase to the North Pole.”
Vanessa laughed. “You’re always suspicious of him.”
“Yeah, and I’m usually right, too,” Karen retorted.
“We’d better get moving. For some reason, I’m happy to delay the moment when these Norwegians catch us.”
Karen nodded and shouldered her pitifully small pack of supplies. Jack hadn’t let them bring out more than a bare minimum of food or fuel—to use if and when they ever got around to stopping and resting. She headed down the slope, plowing through the waist-deep powder. She hoped the Norwegians were enjoying strolling along the trail she’d made for them.
She scooped up a handful of snow and ate it. The good news was, with her working this hard, eating snow didn’t dangerously lower her core body temperature. In fact, it helped keep her from sweating. So what was the crawling sensation along her spine then? It was like beads of sweat rolling up her back and across her shoulders. Not good. She announced reluctantly, “I feel like I’m being watched.”
“Check six, team.” Vanessa ordered quickly.
The six women dropped flat in the snow, pulled out binoculars, and scanned the valley they’d just crossed.
Katrina Kim, the team’s sniper, murmured, “I may have movement at two o’clock, range four hundred yards. Top of that last ridge we crossed.”
Four hundred yards? Karen swore under her breath. If the Norwegians were that close, it wouldn’t be long until they caught up with the Medusas. She had to admit, these guys were good. They’d picked up the Medusas’ trail and closed a gap of several miles in a single day. She moved her field glasses further along the crest of rock. If the Norwegians were on that ridge, they’d fan out to cross it.
For a couple minutes, she saw nothing. But then a faint movement caught her attention. It could’ve been just a gust of wind stirring up a whorl of snow between those two boulders. Or it could be a soldier in white arctic gear sliding across the wash of snow close to the ground.
Karen reported, “Possible movement. Two hundred feet left of Katrina’s siting.”
Vanessa ordered under her breath, “Let’s put the ridge at our back between us and them. Full stealth mode for crossing the ridgeline. Huddle on the other side.”
Karen crawled the last few feet to the top of the ridge and slimed along on her belly, digging through the snow at snail speed. The idea was to tunnel through the snow deeply enough so her profile never rose up above the surface line of the snow. Easier said than done. It involved shoulder-killing shoveling and eating copious quantities of snow. But eventually, Karen panted on the far side of the ridge from their tails.
She surveyed the narrow, rocky valley stretching below her feet while the other women joined her over the course of the next couple minutes.
“Okay, now what?” Misty grunted, grimacing.
Karen felt for her California-born-and-bred teammate, who had to be hating this cold. Nothing sucked quite like frostbiting a good tan. “Take a look down there.” She pointed near the bottom of the rift. “See below us where those two long lines of rock outcroppings narrow down like a funnel?”
The others nodded.
“What if we set an ambush at the bottom of that? It’s not like we’re gonna be able to outrun these guys all the way to our meeting point with Jack. So why not turn and fight now at a place of our choosing instead of theirs?”
Vanessa replied, “We’ve only got an hour or less of daylight and relative warmth left. They’ll have to slow down then.”
Karen commented, “Yeah, but so will we.”
Vanessa nodded. “True. What did you have in mind?”
“What if we make a big, obvious trail through that funnel and out the other side of it, then we back up and spread out in that open area at the bottom of the funnel and bury ourselves in the snow for an ambush?”
“How do we breathe? It’s not like we have snorkels out here,” Aleesha asked. She was the team’s doctor and an avid scuba diver.
Karen thought fast. They’d need long, hollow tubes of some kind. “What about our tent poles? We could stick them up through the snow and breathe through them.”
Aleesha frowned. “They’re aluminum. We could freeze our lips to the metal. We’d need to hold them with our hands right above our mouths to prevent cold from traveling down the tube to bare flesh.”
Vanessa added, “We’d also need to be able to see the hostiles, and to coordinate when to jump them.”
Karen pictured their flexible mini-periscopes. “I think our peek-a-boos are narrow enough to fit down a tent pole. We could stick the lens of one up through the snow and have one of us watch for the tangos to walk into the trap. When they’re in position, the lookout could call the attack over our radios.”
The others nodded. Aleesha added, “I want radio check-ins every two minutes to make sure nobody accidentally smothers. And we can only bury ourselves under a few inches of snow. The heat from our bodies will melt the snow around us and form a shell of ice. That can’t be allowed to get so thick and hard we can’t break through it. So, every fifteen minutes, I want us to break through to the surface.”
Karen nodded along with the others. Aleesha, a trauma surgeon in her pre-Medusa life, was the resident mother hen in charge of looking out for their health and safety. And she did a great job of it, too, even if her methods were occasionally a bit unorthodox.
In short order, Karen waded right down the center of the natural rock funnel while the others followed. Then, carefully, they backtracked to the ambush point, walking backward the whole way so their footprints wouldn’t give them away.
Since this shindig was Karen’s idea, she was elected to man the periscope, which was just as well. She was a bit prone to claustrophobia, and burying herself alive in snow wasn’t her idea of a great time.
Rigging up the breathing tubes and burying the first several Medusas wasn’t hard. Karen was fourth. She blew up a plastic storage bag they used to keep equipment dry and put it in front of her face. Fully inflated, it was roughly the size of a basketball. Once Vanessa and Misty had buried her in a relatively comfortable crouch, she breathed the air out of the bag, deflating it, and leaving an open space in front of her face to maneuver her hands and twist the periscope back and forth in its aluminum tube. One tube in her mouth to breathe, another tube near her eye to peer out the periscope. The arrangement was awkward and uncomfortable, but it worked.
Vanessa’s muffled voice came from above. “How’s the view?”
Karen took a look. “Tilt the end of the scope up a little more. All I can see are your mukluks.”
After a couple more minor adjustments, she could see the clearing for the ambush and the last hundred feet or so of the approach down the mountainside. She watched Vanessa bury Misty and then pull a plastic sheet pre-piled with snow over herself.
“How do I look?” Vanessa asked over the radio.
“Like a snowball,” Karen replied.
“Great. Now, we wait.” A pause, then Vanessa added, “You do realize, of course, that Jack’s going to throttle me. He hates it when we pull stunts like this.”
Karen laughed. “You’re the dope dating the guy who trains us.”
Misty added, “When have we ever held back if someone was in need of a good gotcha?”
The others keyed their mikes to join in ribbing Vanessa. It also served as a radio check. Everyone was transmitting loud and clear. They got down to business and settled into the silence of predators lying in wait. After a few minutes, Karen actually felt warmer. The layer of snow covering her was providing much-needed insulation as the sun set and darkness began to fall, along with the outside temperature.
And as the minutes dragged by, doubts began to creep in along with the cold. Had she mistaken that slowly moving white shape? Were they merely sitting here burning what little lead they had on their pursuers—on nothing more than the strength of her word?
The moon rose, although she couldn’t see it. But a wash of pale blue lit the snow, highlighting the false trail they’d laid in sharp shadows. They unburied and reburied themselves four times, marking the passage of an hour.
Where were the Norwegians? Surely they’d made up what little remaining gap there was between the teams. So why hadn’t they barged down here into the trap? Were they just cautious bastards, or had her false trail and trap been too obvious? She was blowing this mission, and her teammates were too loyal to her to tell her so.
Humiliation started to send its unwelcome heat through Karen’s gut.
“Radio check,” Aleesha announced.
Karen waited her turn and duly reported in. Before long, it would be time to break out of their icy shells again. When they all came up to the surface, she was going to suggest they bag the ambush and press on before it got too cold to breathe, let alone hike these steep mountains. Before they blew what little chance of success they had left by going along with one of her stupid ideas.
She was already tasting the crow she was about to eat when, to her vast surprise, she saw movement on the trail leading down to their hiding spots. It wasn’t an actual person, but the shadow of one, cast by the rising moon. Son of a gun. She gave two clicks on her radio mike to alert everyone.
The stillness around her was intense. She forced herself to exhale normally and not hold her breath as her anticipation climbed sky-high. Everything rode on the next few seconds. Her future. Maybe even the future of the Medusas.
The shadow was replaced by a man. He wore full winter whites—waterproof pants and a hooded parka made of white thermal nylon. He glided across the snow like a ghost. Karen clicked her radio once. One hostile.
And then another man came into view. Another click. And another man. A third click. All in all, there were six men. The entire Norwegian team was traveling together. The tangos’ rifles—painted white—were slung over their shoulders. Perfect. That meant hand-to-hand fighting for this ambush.
The Medusas had talked earlier about the most efficient way to convince the boys that the girls knew what they were doing, and they’d all agreed that unarmed combat was the way to go. They’d probably lose to the men, but if the Medusas even held their own a little bit, it ought to impress the hell out of the Norwegians.
The men eased forward in a standard threat formation. The guy in front looked right, the guy behind him scanned left. The third guy looked right and to the side, fourth guy left and to the side. The last guy turned around periodically to scan behind them. And they walked right into the middle of the Medusas like lambs to the slaughter. Karen grinned around the end of her breathing tube. She took immense satisfaction in the idea of showing these guys and Jack Scatalone a thing or two about the Medusas’ cunning.
A few more steps…
There. The men were in perfect position to get jumped. The Medusas had practiced this sort of move so many times there would be no question about who took what target. They’d move as one and leap on the men like wolves.
All she said was a muttered, “Go.”
She exploded up out of the snow, taking the rear guard closest to her. The soldier whirled, not nearly as stunned as she could’ve hoped for, but he barely got his hands up in front of him before Karen was on him. Three things the guy didn’t know about her: first, she’d grown up on a pig farm in Iowa and had done heavy manual labor all her life. When she joined the military, she’d taken up power-lifting. Which was to say, she was really strong for a woman. Second, she was a marine. And the jarheads cut women no slack at all when it was time for hand-to-hand combat training. Third, she had an ax to grind with the colonel who’d sent these men after her.
She took the offense and charged her target because he wouldn’t expect it of a woman. And he didn’t. She knocked him over with her shoulder and followed him to the ground, landing on top of him. But from there it got tough. This guy was strong and fast, and he obviously had wrestling training. He put a nifty hold and twist on her left arm that she thought was going to wrench it out of the socket. She rolled with the pain and collapsed on top of him, rapping his temple hard with her forehead. It stung her like crazy, but it had to make him see stars.
He went defensive then, rolling with incredible speed and power to the side and out from under her leg. She dived for him, grabbed his chin from behind, and gave it a very gentle tug to the side. Had this been a real attack, she’d have wrenched his chin sideways with all her might and most likely broken his neck in the process. If—big if—these guys’ rules of engagement were to play fair, she’d just put a lethal move on him, and he was honor bound to yield the fight to her.
Her opponent stopped fighting instantly.
Thank God.
He rolled to his back beneath her, leaving her sprawled across him, breathing hard. Their frosty breath mingled between them. He reached up—slowly—to push up his snow goggles and pull down the knit tube covering his mouth and nose. Yowza. Hunk alert. He was one of those tanned, smooth-skinned, square-jawed, achingly handsome Nordic types. In the moonlight, his eyes looked silver.
He scowled up at her. “Uncle.”
She was too knocked over by how gorgeous he was to do much but nod.
“But I think you’d lose the fight anyway,” he said with a faint Norwegian accent overlaying excellent English.
“Why’s that?” she retorted. “You’re looking pretty dead to me right now.”
“Because my men have defeated all your comrades and they would now turn upon you and defeat you.”
Karen looked up. He was right. Her teammates were all lying on their backs with a white figure sitting on top of them or in some way restraining them. The Medusas looked pretty well worked over. But the good news was the Norwegians didn’t look much better. Yeah, the Medusas had lost, but the Norwegians were also sporting puffy eyes and red jaws, and were breathing hard. The promised ass-whupping by the Norwegians hadn’t been an entirely one-sided affair. Mission accomplished.
Karen shrugged. “You guys walked right into our ambush. Had we used weapons, which we most certainly would have in an actual ambush, you’d all be dead and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. However…”
Karen flexed her right wrist, releasing a knife from her forearm sheath. With a quick flip of her hand, it slid down into her palm, and she pressed the razor sharp blade lightly against the side of the guy’s neck.
“I’m already dead,” he murmured.
She shrugged again. “They don’t know that. And just because I broke your neck, that doesn’t mean you’d die right away. Question is, would your men jump me anyway, even with my knife at your neck, or would they back off?”
All of a sudden he wasn’t amused anymore. He gazed up at her long and hard, assessing her. “You’d really slit my throat, wouldn’t you?” he finally bit out.
“Absolutely. I’m a warrior, and killing’s part of the job.”
Something flickered in his transparent gaze. What it was, she couldn’t tell. “Which one of the girl soldiers are you?”
Girl soldiers? This guy had a lot to learn about the Medusas.
Karen pressed up and away from him and jumped lightly to her feet. She stuck a hand down to help him up. His gloved hand took hers, and she gave a sharp tug. Thankfully, when he stood up, he was a couple of inches taller than she was. She hated looking down at attractive men. And at six feet tall, it happened to her a lot.
“My name is Karen Turner. Captain, United States Marine Corps.”
“I thought you ladies were army.”
“Our team draws from all the armed forces. We just happen to work in an army detachment.”
He turned his head carefully, stretching his neck muscles. “Nice move,” he commented.
“Thanks. And your name is?”
“Oberstløytnant Anders Larson. Norwegian Defense Special Command.”
Karen nodded. And abruptly noticed that all the other men were staring at her.
“You beat him?” one of them asked incredulously.
She frowned across the snow. “What’s so hard to believe about that? We are trained Special Forces operatives. And that does include hand-to-hand combat training.”
The guy who was just now climbing carefully off Katrina—a martial arts expert whom even Scatalone engaged with extreme caution—grumbled, “Yeah, I noticed.” The guy’s nose looked broken and he was spitting out blood.
“What are your orders now?” Vanessa inquired. “Is playtime over and you head out, or do you plan to proceed with us to our rendezvous point?”
“The last bit of your route today involves technical mountain climbing. Your colonel asked us to give you ladies some help with night climbing.”
The Medusas already had plenty of night mountain-climbing training, but Vanessa answered smoothly, “We’d be happy to learn anything you gentlemen can teach us.”
Karen frowned, but her boss made eye contact with her. And that was enough. The reminder had been relayed. They were here to get along with these guys. To act like the professional soldiers they were and make believers out of the Norwegians. As always, the thought that she was a no-kidding special operator cheered Karen. She’d fought for ten years to be allowed to do this job. It was a dream come true to actually get to do it.
Anders commented, “You ladies moved quickly today. Are you too tired to continue at that pace, or shall we proceed in the same fashion?”
Karen snorted. “Surely, you realize that now we’ve got no choice but to keep up with whatever pace you set.”
Anders grinned. “I was counting on it. I’ll take point.” He rattled off a marching order that alternated his men and Medusas. Then he glanced over at Karen. “You fall in behind me. You can take point next.”
Oslo, Norway, February 26, 5:00 p.m.
In a conference room high above Oslo, Norway, the senior marketing staff of Omnicom Telecommunications filed in for a late briefing on the European Union telecom consolidation that was set to go into effect shortly. They’d been having trouble syncing up their internal phone-switching systems with the new trans-European grid, and the senior brass wanted an update on how the crisis was being resolved and when it would be fixed.
Harried engineers straggled into the briefing. They really couldn’t afford to stop working to put on this dog-and-pony show, but when the boys upstairs barked, they jumped. They already were going to have to work late into the night. A few of the lead engineers had been here for the past three days around the clock.
One of those engineers, Kjell Krag, flopped into a seat. He tugged at his shirt collar. This room was hot and stuffy, and his tie, hastily donned for this stupid briefing, felt as though it was going to choke him. He’d almost had the computer code repaired in a particularly nasty section of the translation algorithm when these idiots had to go and call a meeting. He had no idea how long it would take him to reread the code and pick up his train of thought again.
The CEO, a Danish entrepreneur who’d been brought in to whip Omnicom back into shape after years of sliding stock prices, stood up and delivered a fiery monologue about how important this deal was and how he didn’t want to hear any excuses. He wanted results.
What a jerk. One did not yell and fist-shake at Norwegians and get anywhere. It only made them more stubborn. But obviously this Dane hadn’t figured that out. Egad, but it was hot in here. Kjell pulled out his handkerchief and mopped the beads of sweat popping out on his brow.
As the tirade went on and the atmosphere in the room grew more and more tense, Kjell began thinking about ordering out for a bite of supper instead of going back to work right away. In fact, maybe just to needle this guy, he’d step out of the building and go down the street to that little fish place that had just opened up. Although, the way his stomach was rolling all of a sudden, maybe he’d better skip eating.
Must be the little magic pills he’d been popping like candy to help himself stay awake. They were probably responsible for the abrupt tremor in his hands and knees, too. Either that, or the Danish big mouth was really starting to get under his skin.
He glared at the CEO, willing him to shut the fuck up and sit down already. But no. The guy just went on yapping, all holier than thou and yelling at them like a bunch of lazy children who needed a swift kick in the pants. Kjell’s face felt like it was on fire. His whole body was tense. So tense he shook with it.
Finally, the Dane shut up and sat down. Kjell dragged in a couple of deep, ragged breaths. But they didn’t do a thing to slow the pounding pulse in his neck.
The project leaders all stood up next, obedient lap dogs that they were, and lied through their teeth about how long it would take to bring the Omnicom system on line. The bastards! They were setting up him and the other engineers to take the fall when this thing didn’t happen on time!
Kjell threw a furious look at a couple of the other technical engineers, who all rolled their eyes back at him. Pressure built behind his forehead, and with each lie, another ice pick stabbed the back of his eyeballs.
“Mr. Krag!” a sharp voice cut across the room.
The Dane. Kjell lurched, breathing hard. He tried to focus down the table at the source of the voice, but his vision swam. He squinted at the fuzzy double image of the Danish asshole. Would he never shut up already!
“Do you have a problem?” the Dane barked.
Kjell opened his mouth. Tried to form words. But nothing came out except a hoarse sound from the back of his throat. His palms itched to wrap around the Dane’s throat. To squeeze until the Dane’s tongue turned purple and swelled so big he couldn’t talk. Kjell pushed to his feet. Staggered a bit, unbalanced. Steadied himself on a chair back. Focused on the Dane. Made his way through the red haze toward the moron. He stumbled. Banged into a narrow table by the wall. His hand bumped into a tall, narrow vase. Wrapped around the cool, heavy glass.
He continued forward. More voices came at him now. Sound with no meaning. Unbearably bright light. His eyeballs were going to explode! Hands grasped at him, but he shook them off. He tried again to form words, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. A few more steps, and then he stood over the Dane. Or at least the spinning image of him.
Kjell lifted the vase. Crashed it down on the asshole’s head. Beautiful crunching noise of skull and glass breaking. Screaming. Make the noise stop. The Dane toppled out of his chair onto the floor. Kjell scooped up a shard of glass and jumped on the Dane. Two fountains of red. His hand. Dane’s face.
Brilliant red. Must have more. Another slash.
And then everything went white and hot. And he became Rage. He swung madly at the hands grasping for him. And the haze was painted red.
And then a great weight landed upon him, crushing him flat. The white light spun and he breathed in the rage. Tasted it. And then his entire body went rigid, arching up, throwing off the weight on his chest. His heart clenched in a mighty spasm of the purest fury he’d ever known. His breath caught at its perfection.
And then everything went black.
Northern Norway, February 26, 7:00 p.m.
In a remote corner of northern Norway, so cold and desolate that no human being ought to be there, let alone live there, an old woman huddled in a tiny sod hut. She was a dying breed, one who remembered—and observed—the old ways. For she was a noaide. A shaman of the Sami people.
Her ancestors had eked a meager living out of these northern climes since before history began. They hunted and fished and followed the ever-moving reindeer herds across the Arctic lands. And when the great herds were diminished to a fraction of their original size, her people learned to raise their own reindeer. They were survivors, her people. And this was their place, the frozen North. Europeans came and named them Laplanders, but they had always called themselves Sami. And the Sami called her Naliki.
Tonight, Naliki had a problem. Yet again, the modern world had intruded upon her people. Several teenage boys had apparently overdosed on one of the outsiders’ recreational drugs. Foul stuff, those drugs.
Except, these overdoses were unlike any she’d seen before. The boys had collapsed in convulsions, and when others had tried to restrain them, the boys had lashed out violently, raising their hands to their own parents without any apparent concern for who they harmed or how badly.
None of her traditional remedies had calmed the boys. It was only when they fell unconscious that they’d subsided. She’d stayed with them for hours, until the rigidity finally left their bodies and they settled into normal rest, she hoped to sleep off the effects of the chemicals in their systems. Then, she’d come here. To her spirit lodge. To ask the gods how to counteract this new and terrible drug.
Her runebommen, a traditional Sami drum, throbbed under her fingers in a slow rhythm, more ancient than words. It pulsed deep in her soul, calling her up and out of herself. Forward. Toward the void. Into the spirit world. She tossed a handful of dried herbs on the fire, and pungent smoke swirled around her. She inhaled deeply. Ahh, the green, summer smell brought back many memories. Of her father and brothers tending the reindeer herds. Of her grandfather, walking with her across meadows in the short alpine summer and showing her the rhythms of nature. He was her teacher when she was young. He was her spirit guide now.
She intoned words asking him to show himself, to embrace her spirit and be with her. To give her the answer she sought.
A gust of wind howled outside and the fire burned a little more brightly. The rich, earthen smell of the turf hut grew stronger. The fire flared even higher, and the spinning sensation that marked the beginning of a spirit journey made her faintly dizzy. She spread her gnarled hands wide, grasping at the warmth of the fire with her swollen knuckles and waving the smoke to her nostrils. “Show to me that which you wish me to know,” she asked the spirits in the old tongue.
A dream rolled over her, images of gods and goddesses striding forward. One of them, a beautiful blond woman arrayed in armor and bearing a sword and shield, announced in a tongue so ancient that even Naliki barely understood it, “Find the source of this new evil, then take me to it. I shall destroy the sickness that walks among you and prove that I am true. In return I ask but one boon of you.”
“Anything, Great One,” Naliki breathed.
“The old ways are lost by all but a few. Soon, they will disappear entirely. It is time to restore them.”
Naliki stared. Usually her visions dealt with weather and the fertility of the reindeer herds, or making a villager well.
The goddess continued, “Restore your people. Restore your lands. Restore the faith. We come presently, and we are the sign.”
The drum beat on, and the smoke swirled thickly, and the goddess slowly faded away. But her message did not. Find the source of the drugs and take the goddess to it.
The task was set. Naliki was the watcher. The one who would mark the coming of the gods and their sign that, at last, her people would be free.