29.

HENRAEK

 

It is cold out here in the Jötun Mountains, cold enough to make a man consider becoming religious, because this is clearly some sort of punishment for a life ill-led.

The hours spent traveling here were the longest of my life, constantly replaying every conceivable thing that could have happened to the boys in my absence. I know Dyvik said the reason their center was built out here was because it was the safest location in the country, but none of that means shit when my boys might be in jeopardy.

I push open the doors to the train before it’s even fully stopped, my feet slipping on the slick platform. There are piles of snow here, waist high. I can’t imagine what it’s like once winter proper comes. I hurry out of the station, headed toward the small outcropping of buildings in the distance.

Then I hear an echo that chills more than any icy blast cascading down from the mountaintops.

It’s the echo of gunfire.

I start running, doing my best to avoid the icy patches in the road, only falling twice.

When I come to the edge of the buildings, I feel a swirl of disorientation, as if I’d traveled in a gigantic circle and ended up back in Rën. The buildings are the same style, though taller, and the arrangement is slightly different. But what terrifies me is that the sounds are the same.

The streets ring out with rifle shots and shotgun blasts, with pained screams and shouted directions of attack, with the injured groaning and the scared crying.

Groaning, because some of the bodies lying in the streets wear the grey fatigues of Ragjarøn.

But crying, because some of them wear regular clothes. Because they are not soldiers, or even civilians.

They are children. They are Donael’s age, and younger.

Ragjarøn is hunting and fighting and killing children.

The side of a building shatters not two feet from my head, ripping me out of my horrified stupor. I throw myself down behind a pile of snow, which will do nothing to protect me from a bullet but keeps me out of the line of fire.

What am I supposed to do? How will I save my boys?

I hear someone yell, then heavy footsteps coming in my direction. I huddle down farther, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible because I have absolutely no play in this.

Then a shadow passes over me, and a body hits the ground beside me, his back rounding and absorbing the blow as he rolls to his feet.

It’s one of Magnus’s boys. Axel. He has a rifle tucked against his shoulder, then pops up to standing, takes aim, and fires off a round of shots before ducking back below the snow drift.

“Henraek,” he says, almost as if he’d expected to see me here. “Where’s your weapon?”

“I- I-” I sputter. “I don’t have one.”

Axel reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a handgun, checks the magazine, then hands it to me. “Won’t help much against their rifles, but it’s something.”

“I’m not here to fight.” As soon as I say it, bullets rake the building above us. I jump up by instinct and pop off a few shots to push them back, only realizing what I’ve done once I crouch back down and see Axel smiling at me. “I came here to get my boys.”

He nods gravely and I feel my hands disappear.

“What happened to them? Where are they?”

Before he can speak, more bullets pepper the wall.

Those cocksuckers. Axel goes to stand but I yank the rifle from him, jump to my feet and spray the area to the right, then left, then center, concentrating on a car where the shots were coming from. Five seconds of firing and one tags the gas tank, making the whole car jump three feet in the air when it explodes in a great ball of fire.

I duck back down and shove the rifle at Axel.

“Where are they.” I’m not asking anymore.

“They fled into the mountains yesterday with our leader, Hemdälr.”

My body sinks, my vision narrowing to pinpoints. So close, yet so far. Everything I love remains perpetually just out of reach.

“I thought this was where the camp was.” I wave around, indicating the city.

“It is. But when Ragjarøn stormed the city yesterday, most of the camp fled.” He motions across the street, where I now see two boys hidden in a third-floor window, their rifle barrels barely poking out from behind curtains. Snipers. God damn, if these boys haven’t been well trained. “A handful of us stayed behind to hold off the troops, let our people get to safety.”

“Then they can’t be that far if it’s only been a day.” I can still catch them. I can find them and I can bring them home. There is still hope.

Axel shrugs. “Hemdälr is local. He knows these mountains. He was born here.” He pauses to let off a few shots, then comes back to me. “All I know is that they’re headed north to some village called Umåyø. We’re supposed to reconvene there once we’ve eliminated the troops, then make our way to someplace Hemdälr told us about.”

“And then what?”

He gives me a look scarily reminiscent to his father. “Keep moving or train to fight back.”

Ragjarøn will continue to send troops. The boys won’t be able to outlast them forever. And every day that passes, my boys trek farther and farther away from me. I can’t let them go. I can’t wait.

“Which way is north?”

He points it out for me, just beyond the buildings to our left.

“I have to go,” I tell him. “I have to find them.”

I try to return the handgun but he shoves it back, then fishes out another magazine for me. “You’re going to need it.”

I nod, then borrow the rifle from him and take out two more cars with a few well-placed shots. Consider it my parting gift.

“Good luck,” I tell him.

“You too.”

I crouch down and wait. Then, when a lull in firing comes, I sprint across the street, zigging and zagging to remain a hard target. When I pass the buildings on the other side, I stand more upright, letting my legs move faster.

Within two minutes I’m away from the buildings and all the fighting. The terrain has changed quickly. Where before there were flat, paved surfaces, there are now skull-sized rocks tossed around as some sort of path. I slow down and catch my breath, looking up at what’s before me.

I can’t even see the top of the mountains, shrouded in fog, thousands of feet above me. A valley runs in between two of the taller peaks, a harsh V carved in the middle of the severe terrain. Simply looking at them chills my blood, imagining the cold and the wind and the ice.

But my boys are out there. I don’t know where they are, but I will find them.

I pull down my goggles. I pull up my balaclava. And I start walking.

“I’m coming, boys,” I say to the mountains towering above me. “I’m coming.”