Divide and Conquer (4 page)

Dak’s translator device switched smoothly to French again, and he overheard Gauzelin and Riq speaking back and forth, discussing their response. The bishop was clearly telling Riq to give in to the Viking demands.

Riq nodded in understanding and then turned to Siegfried. “Bishop Gauzelin tells me that Paris has been entrusted to us by the emperor. It is our responsibility to protect it.”

Dak’s jaw dropped and Sera frowned. “That’s not what the bishop said,” she whispered.

“Not at all,” Dak agreed. He had absolutely no idea what Riq was planning.

Riq continued to talk, falsely translating what the bishop actually said. “If you had been given the duty of defending these walls, and if you instead gave in to the demands of a foreign army, what treatment do you think you would deserve?”

Siegfried laughed, a deep booming sound that echoed off the stone walls. “I would deserve to have my head cut off and thrown to the dogs.”

Riq crossed his arms over his chest and Dak was impressed with how imposing he looked among the massive Vikings and the frail priests. “So you understand our position and why we will not yield.”

Siegfried stepped forward until he was towering over Riq. In an instant he’d gone from laughter to fury. Sera’s grip on Dak’s hand tightened, something Dak didn’t even think was possible until he felt bones grinding together.

“If you do not bow to my demands,” Siegfried growled, “then tomorrow our war machines will destroy you.”

Riq grinned. “Bring it on.”

Dak almost groaned at the use of such a misdated
phrase but it seemed to have the intended effect of catching Siegfried off guard. The Viking furrowed his brow in confusion before stepping back to join his men. “You’ve made your choice. Tomorrow face the wrath of Odin’s finest warriors.” Then they turned and strode from the hall, long cloaks billowing behind them.

The bishop appeared alarmed as he turned to Riq. “What did they say?”

“That we should be ready to fight,” Riq answered. It was clear he’d meant for no one beyond their small group to hear the words but even so his voice carried into the crowd. Soon there were strained murmurings that transformed quickly into a startled buzzing as the news made it through the throngs packed into the church. The air hummed with the threat of panic.

Sera finally released Dak’s hand, and he grimaced as blood rushed back into his fingertips with a feeling of pins and needles. “What did he just do?” she asked.

Dak stared up at where Riq and the bishop continued to converse. He couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the older boy for taking such a crucial role in changing the course of history. “I’m pretty sure he just started a war.”

He watched as Sera’s expression morphed from startled to alarmed. But it was envy, not the pending war, that occupied Dak’s thoughts. “Riq’s totally going to go down in the history books for this, isn’t he?”

W
HEN
D
AK
told Sera there were over thirty thousand Vikings across the river, she hadn’t really understood what that meant. Now that she was standing on top of the Grand Châtelet — the huge wooden tower on the mainland guarding the northern bridge to the island city — reality hit her. Hard.

Armored men spread out as far as the eye could see, covering the ground of the mainland’s north bank more thickly than blades of grass. Even though dusk was falling fast she could see them milling around, setting up camp and sharpening weapons. In the distance, a large band of them hacked at a massive fallen tree with their axes, honing the tip of it to a point. Another group worked to set up what looked to be a complicated catapult.

It wouldn’t be long until they pointed everything they had at the ancient wall ringing the island and let loose with all their might. Sera looked behind her into the city. The wall was old and crumbling, most of it constructed over four hundred years ago by the Romans (according to Dak). She couldn’t imagine it holding up for long. Even worse, she’d counted maybe two hundred armed Parisian men during the day. Compared to the legion outside, their force was minuscule.

“You do realize that we’re outnumbered, right?” she asked.

Riq glanced up briefly as if calculating. “If each man here personally takes down one hundred and fifty Vikings, we should be fine.”

“One hundred and fifty heavily armed, bloodthirsty Vikings,” Dak clarified.

Sera stared at the two of them. Neither seemed to grasp the magnitude of the situation. “Oh, no sweat, then.”

Sera still felt uneasy at the way Riq had so completely twisted history. No matter how much Dak tried to reassure her that his read on their mission here was the right one, she didn’t like how little they knew about what was really going on. She was someone who preferred to amass facts, parse through them, and only then come up with a plan of action that had been considered from every angle.

All of this was happening too fast. The only thing that made Sera less anxious was that at the very least the Parisians now had a fighting chance. Originally, according to Dak, after the bishop handed over the city, the Vikings had waited through the night to lull everyone into a false sense of security before destroying the island in the morning. Now, because of Riq, the Parisians had fair warning and were able to marshal their forces and make a plan for defending themselves.

It was an old plan, actually. A few decades before, King Charles the Bald had ordered that cities along the Seine build low bridges across the river to keep Vikings from being able to sail inland too easily. But the bridges themselves were vulnerable to attack. Towers were supposed to be constructed to protect the bridges.

A lot of cities had started the fortifications but never really finished them. Because of that, there was nothing to keep the agile Viking ships from sailing inland from the sea, and they’d taken advantage of this, sending out raids that had decimated French cities that lay close to the coast.

Paris hadn’t finished its fortifications either, and now that the Vikings were set to attack, everyone was pitching in to hurriedly build another level on the tower guarding the north bridge.

I guess procrastination isn’t a modern invention
, Sera thought darkly. She had suggested finding a quiet spot for the three of them to hole up in while they worked on the encoded information on the SQuare. But before they’d had a chance to sneak off, the bishop had asked Riq personally to help out. That’s what he got for jumping in as a translator — he’d become too high profile to fade into the background.

Which meant now Sera was tasked with holding rough-hewn wooden planks while Riq and Dak hammered them into place. It wasn’t enough of a distraction from the intimidating view, and her mind drifted back to the danger lurking way too close for comfort.

“I’m still not convinced this can work,” she said. “Even with the advance warning, I don’t see how so few men will keep the Vikings from taking over.”

Dak didn’t even stop what he was doing as he responded, “Originally, they didn’t. The Vikings creamed the Parisians and pretty much took everything they could get their hands on before claiming the city as their base of power and moving on to conquer more.”

Sera glanced at Riq, wondering if Dak’s answer was as unsettling for him as it was for her. But Riq seemed engrossed in his task and perfectly willing to ignore both of them. “And you think we’ve changed all that?”

Dak paused. “Maybe?” That his answer was in the form of a question didn’t do much to allay Sera’s fears.

“On the plus side,” Dak added, “at least now we get to see how a battering ram works.” He grinned in his familiar way.

“That’s not really something I would put in the
plus
category,” Sera muttered.

Dak ignored her. “Speaking of how things work,” Dak continued. “As soon as it’s dark I’m going to sneak down to the riverbank so I can check out one of the longships. I want to see firsthand if the re-creation at the Smithsonian was accurate.”

Sera felt her eyes bulge out of her head. “What?” The word came out almost as a squawk and several heads turned her way, causing her to blush. She lowered her voice and gripped Dak’s shoulder. “You’re not leaving this tower, Dak Smyth!”

“It’ll just be for a second,” he argued. “I’ll be careful, I promise. Everyone up here is focused on getting the tower fortified, and all the Vikings are wrapped up in their preparations for tomorrow. No one will notice me, honest.”

Was Dak crazy? He’d done some reckless things in his life, but Sera couldn’t believe he was actually considering leaving the safety of the tower, and alone at that!

“It’s out of the question,” she told him, and for the briefest flash of a moment she felt the dizzy, uneven sensation that preceded a Remnant. She’d had these feelings before — that her life was somehow missing something that she was brushing right up against — but they’d always happened when she was at home near her barn or when she looked in a mirror.

This time there was something about the phrase she’d just said, her tone of voice and inflection, that felt as though it should have been familiar somehow. She pressed a hand against the wall to steady herself, sweat breaking out along her temples. Dak didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did he must have thought she was just upset at his plan to sneak out (which, for the record, she was).

“Listen, Sera,” Dak said, setting down his tools and facing her, “when I snuck you into my parents’ super-secure workshop and you saw all those whiteboards
filled with their plans for the Infinity Ring, I didn’t try to stop you from working on it. In fact, if I remember correctly I even brought you a nice ham sandwich.”

Dak knew exactly how to make Sera feel guilty and, since she was already unsteady in the wake of the passing Remnant, it was difficult for her to come up with a good response. So she settled on “That was different.”

“How?”

“Because there weren’t thirty thousand Vikings nearby ready to kill you!” Once again Sera’s outburst drew the attention of the workers around them, and this time several narrowed their eyes.

Dak stepped forward and put a hand on her arm. Sera knew as soon as he did it that she’d lost the argument.

“I promise I’ll be careful,” he said. His eyes were pleading and his voice earnest. “You know how important this is to me. My entire life I’ve lived and breathed history, and now’s my chance to actually experience it firsthand
.
Please, Sera.”

Dak was right; he’d let her play around in his parents’ lab even though he knew he’d be in huge trouble if they’d found out. He’d taken the risk because of how much it meant to Sera. She sighed dramatically and Dak flashed her an enormous grin.

“One boat, that’s it,” she told him sternly. “And first, we figure out how to find the Hystorian. That’s most important.”

Dak’s response was a groan. “But those puzzles are so hard! And when we asked about a roofless inn, everyone looked at us like we were crazy!”

She arched an eyebrow, a skill she’d perfected after spending several hours in front of the bathroom mirror. “Then I guess you won’t get to see your boat tonight.”

Dak buried his head in his hands and Riq slapped him on the back. “Get to work,” he said, almost gleeful at Dak’s despair.

As it turned out, while Sera was a whiz at calculations and really complicated machines that required using tiny precise instruments, she wasn’t all that skilled at constructing fortress walls. Finally, after she’d gotten in the way one too many times, the bishop suggested that a better task for her might be running messages back and forth between the two defensive towers guarding the bridges on either side of the island.

She was just crossing through the center of the city on her way back north when someone fell into step next to her. She glanced over to find a teen boy, probably not much older than her, with closely cropped hair and an angular face. Immediately her guard went up — she recognized him as someone who’d been hovering around Riq, Dak, and her for much of the day, never far out of earshot.

“Lovely night,” he said, and she grunted in response. That didn’t keep him from trying to engage her in conversation. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. Have you been in Paris long? Where are you from?”