Divide and Conquer (8 page)

Sera let her eyes roam across the battlefield. Now that she was looking for something other than Dak, she realized that half the men bore some form of the SQ symbol. It was carved into helmets, painted on the hulls of ships, even woven into the cloaks thrown over Viking shoulders.

“They’re everywhere,” she said in shock.

Bill turned until he was facing her and she could feel the warm puffs of his breath against her cheek. “Is there any way they could know that you’re here?”

She shook her head. “No, not unless . . .” She caught herself just as she was about to mention Dak. She knew he wouldn’t have said anything to give the three of them away. Then she remembered the Viking who’d accompanied Siegfried to the cathedral — the one with the scar across his face.

“There was one of Siegfried’s men that seemed like he might have been suspicious. Why?”

Bill leaned back against the wall, his hands worrying along the edge of his dagger. “You represent a threat to the power it’s taken the SQ eleven centuries to amass. If they even suspect there’s someone from the future behind these walls, they’ll stop at nothing to get to you.”

Sera looked back at the battlefield. There were soldiers for as far as she could see. Individually they were like drops of water that combined to create a massive ocean. “How can we hope to fight so many?”

Bill hesitated before answering, which, Sera was coming to realize, was never a good sign.

“I think you have to face the possibility that Paris might fall,” he said at last. “And if that happens, you have no choice but to warp out of here and keep the Infinity Ring from falling into SQ control.”

D
AK SPENT
most of the next few hours trying to avoid getting killed, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Even though the Franks were wildly outnumbered, they had the benefit of thick walls between them and the Vikings. Plus, they were fighting to defend their homes, which made them especially formidable.

To make his task of staying alive (and in one piece) even more difficult, Dak wore no armor and carried no weapons. He just had the stupid flag, which meant he couldn’t sneak away either. Every time he tried to hand it off to someone else he was met with hearty slaps on the back and congratulations for making it as long as he had. Apparently, standard-bearer was a very short-term gig with a high mortality rate.

The only benefit to his position was that he had plenty of time to race around the fortifications, searching for a way inside. He knew that trying to use force would be useless — if thirty thousand Vikings couldn’t break down the wall, what hope did an eleven-year-old boy have?

His only chance would be to use his brain, which was overflowing with tales of fortresses being taken in various ways. His favorite had always been the story of Château Gaillard, a supposedly impenetrable medieval castle. Among its many features was an extra bathroom built in the chapel. Following the orders of King John of England, a little room had been constructed so that it hung off the side of the building, with a hole in the floor. It’s what passed for luxury in those days.

When the French king Phillip II attacked Château Gaillard, the people inside felt pretty secure about being able to wait out the siege. But then came a soldier named Ralph the Snubnose who noticed a stain under a hole off to the side of one of the walls, and, using the nose for which he was named, figured out what the hole was used for.

That unlucky soldier had to climb his way up the toilet chute and through the hole to get into the castle (ew!). It worked — the guy surprised everyone inside and opened the gate to let his army in.

If that’s what it took for Dak to find a way back to Sera and Riq, he was willing to try it — which is how he found himself staring up at the top of the tower when the men inside rolled a massive stone grinding wheel until it tottered just on the edge. One tiny tap and the thing would come crashing down.

Dak stood next to a group of Vikings wielding pickaxes against the base of the wall. They were so focused on their task that they had no idea of the danger looming above. Dak didn’t even pause to think about the fact that some of these Vikings were with the SQ . . . which technically made them the bad guys.

“Move!” he shouted. He swung his pole around to shove two of the men back and then dove at a third, tackling him to the ground and rolling.

The stone wheel seemed to fall in slow motion, like a clip from an action movie. Dak could have sworn he felt the compression of air around him as a circular shadow grew larger until it seemed to swallow him.

He was pretty sure he was about to be squashed like a bug.

At the last minute he tucked his knees to his chin, just as the wheel slammed into the ground, barely missing his toes. The impact caused his teeth to jar and his whole body to lift into the air.

Men cried out in anguish. One of them had both of his legs pinned, and Dak thought he might have seen a hand sticking out from underneath — the hand of someone who’d been crushed and killed.

Around him Vikings leapt into action, striving to pull the injured men free as smaller stones and arrows fell around them. Dak tried to control his breathing, tried not to vomit all over himself as he dug into the mud to help. He felt his chin wobble and his throat burn with the promise of tears.

With great effort he swallowed them back. He glanced up at the tower, where Frankish soldiers leaned out over the edge, taunting the injured and dead below.

Suddenly, the lines that seemed so clear when they’d warped here became fuzzy. He knew that many of the Vikings must be SQ and therefore his enemy. At the same time, he’d spent the afternoon with these men, listening to their shouts as they worked together and fought together, sometimes even trading jokes. They had protected him with their shields and accepted him as their bannerman.

They couldn’t all be evil, could they? And even if they were . . . did they deserve to die like this?

Dak was still trying to sort it all out when he saw what looked like a curl of smoke rising up from the top of the tower. Riq appeared then, leaning over and shouting something down at Dak, but there was too much noise for him to catch what the older boy was saying. What on earth was he doing up there to begin with?

Riq began to wave his arms frantically, but it wasn’t until Dak saw the lip of a steaming cauldron that he understood what he was trying to say. Riq was warning Dak, telling him to get out of the way. Already drops of the burning viscous liquid were falling like rain, hitting the ground around him with popping and hissing sounds.

Dak looked at the Viking soldiers grouped around the injured men, their shields held over their heads to keep their fallen comrades safe. They had no idea what was coming. He wanted to save them — but it was already too late.

Riq’s expression was bleak when he stumbled upon Sera and Bill. As soon as she laid eyes on him, Sera’s stomach tightened into frightened knots. “What’s wrong?”

Riq said only one word, his voice almost a whisper. “Dak.”

She leapt to her feet, ignoring the way her hands were beginning to tremble.

He’s okay
, she thought. He just had to be. But the longer Riq avoided her eyes the more she began to fear the rest.

Bill stood and moved next to her, his arm just barely brushing her shoulder. His hand slipped into hers and she squeezed, not realizing until that moment what it meant to have someone by her side for whatever Riq was about to say next.

“What happened?” she whispered.

Riq shook his head. “It was chaos.” He drew in a deep breath as if to steel himself to say the words aloud. “Dak was with a band of Vikings trying to dig under the tower. They . . .” He swallowed a few times. “The Franks dropped cauldrons of hot pitch and wax down on top of them.”

Sera felt like the floor was dropping away from her. The sensation was similar to the aftereffect of a Remnant: nausea, dizziness, and a confusion about time and space.

Riq wiped a hand across his face. “I didn’t realize it was happening until it was too late, or I would have stopped it.”

“Did you see his . . .” No matter how hard Sera struggled, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word
body
.

But it was clear Riq knew what she was asking. “Some of them jumped into the river. . . .”

A ribbon of hope began to thread its way through Sera. “So he could have escaped? He could still be alive.”

Riq hesitated before answering, and the pause buoyed her sense of optimism for a moment before it all came crashing down.

“Sera, the ones who dove into the Seine were on fire — that’s why they were so desperate for water.” His voice broke as he added, “I saw Dak’s body floating down the river. He was facedown, and he wasn’t moving.”

D
AK FOUGHT
his way to the surface of the river, his lungs burning. He’d only recently been tossed overboard from the
Santa María
, and he hadn’t survived that to end up drowning now.

Finally, his head broke free and he felt fresh air on his cheeks. His first breath was a choking wheeze that sputtered into coughing. Around him the battle still raged, though the tenor of it had changed. Small flames peppered the ground at the base of the tower, but most of the Vikings who had just been fighting there were gone.

Dak couldn’t bear looking at any of the nearby bodies. It was too much — too real that the men he’d been working alongside were now dead. His stomach twisted, and he gagged on a mouthful of vile river water.

It didn’t take Dak long to realize he was a target while treading water in the middle of the river, but his options were severely limited. The wall prevented him from climbing to land on the island side. And men who staggered to shore on the mainland were quickly brought down by arrows and bolts. Those seemed to be the lucky ones — other Vikings fought to pull off their heavy armor even as it dragged them down into the depths of the water.

Throughout all of this the Franks taunted their enemy, shouting: “Right badly burned, aren’t you! Go jump in the river to save your flowing manes!”

Dak was really beginning to hate those guys, and not just because they were trying to kill him. Which gave him an idea: If they wanted him dead, so be it.

He slumped in the water, letting his body go limp. His back bobbed along the surface as his legs dragged below. The current tugged at him, pulling him away from the tower and the bridge to safety.

Every now and again he lifted his head, just barely, to take in a lungful of air. When they’d taught him the dead man’s float at the pool for PE, he’d thought it was useless (even though it was the only thing he was really good at in that class) and he hadn’t resisted letting his teacher know how he felt.

As Dak floated to safety he made a mental note to find Mr. Foltz and thank him when he got back to his own time.