Valknut: The Binding (4 page)

“Cowering at shadows,” she muttered. “I’m
sure Junkyard would be impressed,”

Wincing in pain from banged up legs and a
wrenched shoulder, she crawled deeper inside, feeling ahead until
her hand brushed cardboard. Hopefully it wasn’t covered with
grease. Or worse. She lay down and tried to convince herself that
she was comfortable, that a million eyes weren’t watching her from
the shadows. She couldn’t imagine actually sleeping. The noise, the
rough track, the strong scent of manure on the breeze, not to
mention Jungle Jim’s story, would keep her awake.

In the dark, the cardboard felt like a tiny
raft on a sea of metal. The train hit a bumpy stretch and she
clutched the cardboard’s edges, irrationally fearful of being
thrown off. Dust floated thickly around her and she sneezed.
Something skittered over the floorboards nearby. Was it an animal?
A rat? Or shifting debris? She wanted to move the cardboard closer
to Junkyard and Jungle Jim, but a strange lethargy overcame her.
The wheels settled into a rhythmic clickity-clack. The cardboard
drifted farther into the metal sea, taking her with it, until the
smells and noises faded away and she was asleep.

The dream came, and it was like no other she
had ever had.

***

She was floating.

She no longer felt the train and its infernal
vibrations. Her bones rested easy in her skin. She heard the train,
with its banging and clanging and eternal clickity-clack,
but—there! Now that, too, faded away.

Something rough curled around her neck,
loosely, like the touch of her night-tangled hair. She opened her
eyes.

She was floating.

Her hair drifted about her head as if alive.
The rough thing about her neck was a rope. Its lazy, snaking length
tethered her to a thick branch above her head.

She was floating, but she did not float
free.

The branches of a great ash tree stretched
all around. She looked for their twig-fingered ends but couldn’t
find them. The limbs reached for the horizon, curling over it as
though cradling the world in a leafy bower. Deer and goats leaped
among the branches, nipping young leaves and tender sprigs. Wasps
hummed all around, taking their fill of dripping sap. An eagle
cried far above, its perch lost in the tree’s distant crown.

She floated among them, but apart. She was
not of this world.

Whirling wings and black feathers exploded
through the branches. Two ravens danced and tangled in the air
before her. One landed on her right shoulder. It cocked its head as
though listening to her thoughts. The other settled on her left
shoulder. It turned its eye on her and she could feel it leafing
through her memory.

A squirrel raced its tail up the tree trunk
as if running from the devil. He scrambled to a nearby branch and
smoothed his red fur, attempting to regain some dignity. Then he
hopped closer, nosing his face into hers. One eye shone vivid blue.
The other was nothing but a puckered hole. The hair rose on
Lennie’s arms.

The ravens croaked and launched from her
shoulders, their claws drawing bright dots of blood. They fluttered
to the branch, flanking the squirrel like bodyguards.

The squirrel plucked a twig and used its
splintered end to trace a symbol on Lennie’s left hand.

“With this Valknut, I bind you to me in
service against the Wolf,” it said in a deep voice. “You be not
king nor warrior chief, yet I claim you. In this battle, you shall
prevail or perish.”

She thought it was a silly statement coming
from a squirrel, but before she could say so, its one eye began to
glow. The twig writhed in its paw, lengthening, straightening, its
ragged end growing sharp, until it became a spear so large the
squirrel couldn’t possibly hold it in its tiny paws. Yet it lifted
the spear and threw. A sharp pain lanced Lennie’s side. Before she
could cry out, her weight fell hard on the rope about her neck. Her
spine cracked with a red bloom of agony. The air burst into flame
around her, and the tree, the ravens, the squirrel, even the very
light were gone.

She dreamed no more.

Chapter 2

The knots in Junkyard’s shoulders eased when
he heard Lennie crawl into the dark interior of the boxcar. He
rolled to his back, stretched, and resumed his cross-legged
position by the door. Despite what he had said, he had no intention
of sleeping.

Another murder. The victim, Tin Can Petey,
was an old hobo with a dopey, gap-toothed smile and sheepdog hair.
A bit eccentric, maybe, but harmless.

As harmless as my brother.

Junkyard tried to picture Tin Can Petey as he
had last seen him, playing spoons by the fire in an Owatonna
jungle, but he couldn’t separate Petey’s face from his brother’s,
murdered the same way a year before. He closed his eyes, succumbing
to the memory that had looped endlessly through his head on so many
sleepless nights since Austin’s death.

Back then—a lifetime ago, it seemed—there was
no Junkyard Doug. Just Captain Douglas Harding on his last day of
leave. He could still hear the ring of the early-morning phone call
that had started it all. He had reached for the phone, certain the
caller was Lieutenant Matthew Patterson, who had stopped by for a
few beers the night before. Doug had just found Matt’s wallet
behind the toilet.

“Hey, Matt,” he said, smiling. “What exactly
were you doing in my bathroom last night?”

The other end was silent for a moment. Then a
deep voice said, “Captain Harding, this is Colonel Norton. I have
some bad news, son. Can you be at my office at 0830 hours?”

An hour later, the Colonel’s adjutant showed
Doug into a large, sparsely furnished office. As soon as Doug saw
the somber face of the Chaplain seated next to Norton’s desk, he
knew.

Something had happened to Austin.

The Chaplain told him that an FRC railroad
detective had called. They’d found a man’s body on a freight train,
on the platform of a grain car. The wallet was still in the back
pocket of his jeans. Austin’s wallet. Doug had put Austin on a
train just two days before.

Doug moved through the next few hours in a
stupor. He felt gutted, robbed of the ballast that had given him a
sense of place, of duty. After his father had died years before,
Doug had tried to be as much a father as a brother to Austin. It
was for Austin that Doug had forgone college scholarships and
signed with the army, sending his paychecks home to give Austin the
childhood Doug never had. Where Doug had spent high school working
at a scrap yard, Austin played sports, went on dates, even ran for
school president. Doug had shaved his head, survived basic, and got
his butt shot at, all so Austin could grow a ponytail and join the
flannel and denim brigade at the University of Minnesota.

And now Austin was gone. Murdered. Doug was
to fly to Topeka to ID the body.

Doug packed without thinking, shoving a
mismatched assortment of army and civilian clothing into his duffle
bag. Out of habit, he stood before the mirror to don his dress
greens for the flight. Cleaned and pressed, pants tucked neatly
into his jump boots, the uniform looked perfect. But the face that
looked back at him belonged to a stranger—too pale, already too
haggard to fit the uniform.

When the Humvee arrived to drive him to Pope
Air Force Base, he grabbed his bag and reached for the beret
hanging on the coat rack. Next to it, his brother’s jean jacket
hung from a hook, forgotten in Austin’s rush to catch a train. Doug
lifted it down and held it like a baby. It clinked with buttons
that encrusted it like barnacles, a lifelong collection obtained
anywhere from science fiction conventions to political rallies to
garage sales.

The Humvee’s horn blared. Doug ignored it and
fingered a stark, black button pinned to the jacket’s
collar: 
My brother jumps from perfectly good airplanes
.
He had given it to Austin on his eighteenth birthday. Doug’s
fingers moved on, touching other buttons—the rusted California
Raisin button that had gone an inch into Austin’s foot while he
swam in Lake Josephine, the 
Resistence is
Futile
 button signed by Patrick Stewart himself at a Star
Trek convention. Every button had its own story, which Austin would
tell to anyone who listened. Doug unzipped his duffle bag and
stuffed the jacket inside.

As Junkyard Doug, he had worn that jacket so
much over the following months that he sometimes forgot that it
wasn’t his. But never for very long.

The train bumped over rough track, rattling
the old boxcar. Junkyard opened his eyes and lifted his chin to let
the cool, night air stroke the heat from his face. Light spilled
from a three-quarter moon, glinting off Austin’s collection.
Sometimes the jacket was the only thing that kept him from giving
up on the hunt—and on his own life. Without its constant reminder,
his disguise would have become reality. As it was, he had nearly
forgotten what it was like to have a bed, daily showers, and
regular meals. Or to meet the eyes of strangers without their gazes
sliding away as if he didn’t exist.

If he didn’t find Austin’s killer soon, even
the jacket might not be enough to save him.

A woman’s scream pierced the boxcar’s steady
rumble. Junkyard swore and scrambled out of the moonlit doorway.
Jungle Jim still lay sleeping on his cardboard bed in a patch of
moonlight, but Junkyard couldn’t see Lennie in the boxcar’s dark
interior. No one could have swung inside from the roof and gotten
to her while Junkyard was in the doorway. Could they? He had only
closed his eyes for those few seconds.

He waited, listening, but heard no voices or
sounds of struggle above the drone of the wheels. He felt around,
found his pack, and yanked a flashlight from a side pocket. The
light would make him a target, if someone had managed to enter the
boxcar from above. He wouldn’t turn it on until he had to. For now,
he held it like a club and began to worm across the dirty floor in
the direction of the scream.

In the dark, every noise seemed amplified and
full of threat. He paused, listening, ready to launch to his feet.
Dust irritated his nose but his hands were too gritty to rub it. He
sneezed into the jean jacket’s sleeve, rattling Austin’s buttons.
Cursing silently, he lifted his head and waited. Nothing happened.
He moved on.

After what seemed like a month, his fingers
brushed something warm and yielding. He gasped and jerked his hand
back. The clean smell of soap and lavender reached him through the
odor of rotting apples that stained the floor. No self-respecting
hobo or thug would smell like lavender. He came to a crouch, pulled
a knife from his jump boot, and switched on the flashlight.

It was Lennie. She moaned and turned her head
away from the light. Knife ready, Junkyard swept the beam around
the boxcar. Jim had rolled off his cardboard and lay wedged against
the wall by the door. There was no one else. He returned the light
to Lennie and looked for anything that might have made her
scream.

She lay unmoving on a piece of cardboard,
arms and legs rigid, fingers clutching its edges. Her face twisted
in fear, but her eyes moved under closed lids.

A nightmare. Junkyard stared at her, working
his jaw. He had dragged himself through dirt and who knows what
else, terrified of finding her mutilated corpse, expecting a knife
in his own back at any moment, all for a lousy nightmare.
Disgusted, he straightened his cramped legs.

He was about to return to his post when
Lennie groaned and rolled to her side. Her t-shirt rode up,
exposing flesh above the waist of her jeans. A dark stain glistened
on her skin. Junkyard leaned closer and drew a sharp breath. Blood
pooled in a puncture wound the size of a fifty-cent piece. The
injury looked deep and fresh—the skin around it was clean and there
was not yet blood on her t-shirt.

An injury like that hadn’t sprouted on its
own.

He whipped the flashlight around and searched
the boxcar again, this time methodically examining every inch. An
attacker had nowhere to hide and Junkyard saw no object that could
punch a hole like that. A puncture wound that big could be serious,
especially if it went as deep as it looked.

“Upper right side...right side,” he muttered.
“Uh, spleen...no—no, liver. Could have hit the liver. Damn it!
Lennie, wake up.”

He patted her face, but she didn’t respond.
He directed the flashlight at her eyes and pulled back first one
lid, then the other. Pupils responsive—at least until her eyes
rolled back into her head. “Come on, Lennie, you gotta wake
up.”

She didn’t move. Abandoning caution, he
strode back to his pack in a fraction of the time it had taken him
to crawl across the floor on his face. He tore through clothes and
gear until he found the first aid kit. By the time he returned to
Lennie’s side, blood was beginning to well out of its neat circle.
Better staunch it fast, or she’d never make it to Minneapolis.

Wedging the flashlight between his knees, he
pressed his palm down hard on the wound. His hand slipped over skin
made slick with blood. He fumbled the kit’s lid open with his other
hand and spilled half of its contents onto the floor. The train
lurched and his only roll of gauze took off for the door.

“Shit!”

He let go of Lennie and scrambled after it,
but the wind caught the roll’s trailing end. Before he could catch
it, a streamer of gauze fluttered into the night. Swearing
fervently, he returned to Lennie’s side, ripped the bandana from
his head, and wadded it into a ball. Her shirt had fallen over the
injury again. He pushed it back, ready to apply pressure.

A wound the size of a dime stared up at him
like a mocking red eye, so shallow he could see a layer of skin
under the blood.

“What the hell?”