The Dawn of the Iron Dragon Read online

  The Dawn of

  the Iron Dragon

  A Novel by Robert Kroese

  Book Two of

  The Saga of the Iron Dragon

  Copyright ©2018 Robert Kroese. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other—except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.

  Contents

  Frankia and Environs, 885 A.D. (Map)

  Vikings Attack Paris (Picture)

  The Story So Far

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Epilogue

  Ready for More?

  Review This Book!

  Acknowledgements

  Cover Art

  Historical Note

  Glossary

  More Books by Robert Kroese

  Frankia and Environs, 885 A.D.

  Vikings Attack Paris

  Scanned from the German history magazine Der Spiegel Geschichte: Die Wikinger - Krieger mit Kultur: Das Leben der Nordmänner. Spiegel-Verlag Rudolf Augstein GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg 2010, p. 33. Picture is in the public domain. Original artist unknown.

  The Story So Far

  In the 23rd century, humanity has been hunted to the verge of extinction by an alien race called the Cho-ta’an. The crew of Andrea Luhman, an exploratory ship in the service of the Interstellar Defense League, has been given a weapon that could alter the balance of the conflict: a “planet killer” bomb left behind by an extinct race. Pursued by a Cho-ta’an warship, Andrea Luhman flees through a hyperspace gate to the Sol system, but a fluke accident sends them back in time to 883 AD.

  Its primary thrusters badly damaged, Andrea Luhman limps into orbit around Earth, and a four-person crew, led by an engineer named Carolyn Reyes, is sent to the surface to fabricate a replacement part. The lander is shot down by a Cho-ta’an ship that followed Andrea Luhman through the gate. The Cho-ta’an ship falls into the North Sea, and the lander crashes in Norway.

  The crew of the lander soon find themselves with a new enemy: Harald Fairhair, the King of Norway, who is determined to acquire the spacemen’s technological knowhow. Befriended by a group of Norsemen led by a man named Sigurd, the spacemen fight back. In the ensuing battle, the lander is destroyed, and Sigurd’s son is killed. Sigurd vows vengeance against Harald. The spacemen, having lost contact with Andrea Luhman, flee with Sigurd and their Viking allies to Normandy.

  The survivors settle in the Seine Valley, where they plan a last-ditch defense against the avaricious King. In the spring, Harald’s ships cross the sea and attack. The attackers, with the help of a Cho-ta’an who survived the crash, break through the defenders’ walls.

  Realizing they are defeated, the spacemen and their surviving allies board a ship and flee to Iceland. In the wake of their defeat, it becomes clear to the spacemen that they need a goal that is greater than mere survival. They re-commit themselves to their mission of repairing Andrea Luhman and delivering the planet killer to the IDL. To do this, they must somehow build a craft capable of reaching space: a ship that will come to be known as the Iron Dragon.

  Prologue

  Bishop Gozlin slowly paced in his bedroom, holding his hands behind his back to keep himself from chewing his nails. He’d already bitten several of them to the quick.

  Shortly, Count Odo would call for him, and Gozlin would have to update the count and the rest of the defense council on the state of Paris’s defenses. The state could be summed up in one word: inadequate.

  It was unusual for a bishop to hold the position of chief of defense for the city, but these were unusual times. Paris’s defenses had mostly been built during the time of Charlemagne, when the Frankish empire was ascendant. Since then, the walls had fallen into disrepair and the number of men-at-arms had dwindled. King Charles the Fat was preoccupied with rebellions farther south, and it was generally believed that the Vikings would not dare come this far south. That assumption had been proved wrong.

  Hrólfr, who had thus far contented himself with raids along the coast and the northern part of the Seine, had assembled a force of nearly ten thousand men to lay siege to Rouen, some seventy miles north of Paris. Odo’s spies informed him the Vikings showed no sign of planning to return home before winter. The cowards at Rouen had bought Hrólfr off with a few hundred pounds of silver, freeing up his men for an assault on Paris. Gozlin had assigned forty men to work on barriers across the river but he doubted it would be enough to dissuade Hrólfr’s fleet. If the Parisians were lucky, it might buy them a few days.

  Some, including Odo himself, held out hope that the Norsemen would wait until spring to attack, but Gozlin didn’t believe it. Several Danish ships had already arrived at Hrólfr’s fort, just north of Rouen, and more were rumored to be on the way. Those men were not going to sit on their hands all winter.

  Realizing he was wearing a hole in the carpet, he chided himself and got on his knees to pray. Better to offer these matters to the Lord than to wear out his mind and his rug treading the same ground a thousand times. Perhaps Saint Germain, who watched over Paris, cou
ld be persuaded to intercede on the city’s behalf.

  As he prayed, there was a knock on the door. “Yes?” Gozlin said, after saying a quick amen. Undoubtedly Count Odo had summoned him at last.

  A servant peeked his head in. “Your Excellency,” the man said, “there are reports of more ships at the mouth of the Seine.”

  “Danish?”

  “It appears so.”

  “How many?”

  “There are conflicting reports, Your Excellency. I would not trust the initial reports, as they’ve been passed on several times and may have been garbled in the process. When our man returns this afternoon, we should have a better—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Dagobert, just give me an estimate. What are you hearing?”

  “Five hundred ships, Your Excellency.”

  The servant’s words hit him like a hammer to the chest. Five hundred ships! Did the Danes even have five hundred ships? He nearly called Dagobert a liar, but he quickly reminded himself he had insisted the man give him a number. He took a deep breath.

  “Very well, then. When our man returns, please inform me. We will need to confirm these reports.”

  “Of course, Your Excellency.” Dagobert hesitated, his hand on the door.

  “Is there something else?”

  “No, Your Excellency. That is, there is a man at the gate who claims to know something of Hrólfr’s plans. He offers to help us defend Paris. I took him for a mountebank.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “He says he has been working with Hrólfr, helping him to assemble his forces.”

  “And now he expects us to believe he is switching to our side?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. He offers as proof his knowledge of Hrólfr’s weaponry.”

  “What sort of weaponry?”

  “Siege engines, I believe. He also claims to know the exact date the Norsemen will attack.”

  “Nonsense. I doubt even Hrólfr himself has settled on a date.”

  “As you say, Your Excellency. I will send him away.”

  “What does this man want in return?”

  “Money, Your Excellency. He is asking for three hundred pounds of silver.”

  Gozlin let out a stifled cough. “He is at least a top tier mountebank, in any case!”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. He claims to offer a guarantee of victory. If Paris does not prevail against the Norsemen, he says he will forfeit the silver and offer himself up to the executioner’s axe.”

  “Fascinating,” Gozlin said. “I think I should like to speak with this man, if only because I do not believe I have witnessed this particular form of madness. Does our strange visitor have a name?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. He calls himself Sigurd Olafson.”

  Chapter One

  Carolyn Reyes let the wheelbarrow skid to a halt against the half-built sod wall and let out a relieved sigh. The wheelbarrow was a slipshod apparatus barely deserving of the name, just a box with a solid wooden disk for a wheel and two pegs for feet. Rolling it over the rocky, uneven ground of the valley was alternately grueling and terrifying, depending on the way the volcanic terrain crested and dipped. Still, it was better than moving the turf chunks by hand.

  “Careful!” cried Ulf, who was working on placing the turf pieces Reyes had already delivered. He’d attempted to teach Reyes how to place them but had given up in exasperation after an hour. Placing turf was delicate work, appearances to the contrary: if the pieces weren’t placed optimally, the wall might crumble as it got taller, or, worse, the whole thing would begin to sag after a few strong rains, creating gaps that would let the weather in and weaken the house. Reyes had been relegated to working the wheelbarrow. Not far away, a score or so other men and women worked at clearing the land or building their own turf walls. One longhouse, some thirty yards to the southeast, was nearly finished.

  Reyes smiled apologetically at Ulf, who responded with a dismissive wave and went back to his work. Deciding she’d earned a break, Reyes walked the short distance from the wall to a nearby rise that offered a better vantagepoint of the burgeoning settlement. Six turf buildings, including the one Ulf and she were working on, were taking shape in the vicinity. Other than clearing the land, little else had been accomplished in the five months they had been here. Reyes wiped the sweat from her brow and arched her back, stretching her sore, overused muscles. She was tired.

  She and the other settlers had been working long hours every day since they’d finalized their claim on this land. She had to remind herself to rest occasionally, as it was easy to work oneself to exhaustion. The weather was warm and pleasant, and the days were almost sixteen hours long this time of year. It was now mid-August, and soon the days would grow much shorter. At this latitude, there were less than five hours of daylight for much of the winter. As the settlers possessed no artificial lighting, it was vital to take advantage of the daylight while they could.

  She didn’t have to work this hard, she knew. In fact, Ulf and the others probably would prefer it if she stuck to administrative tasks. But she felt it was important that she learn to survive in this new land, and she hoped to earn the respect of the others by demonstrating that she was willing to do manual labor. If anything, though, her efforts had had the opposite effect. She couldn’t match the Vikings in strength, skill or endurance, and she knew that some of them—unaware how much of the Norse language Reyes had picked up—grumbled behind her back that she should leave the real work to those who knew how to do it. After all, didn’t she have a schedule, plans and maps to attend to?

  They had a point. There was plenty to keep her occupied on the administrative side. But that was the problem: there was so much to be done on the Iron Dragon project that it was overwhelming.

  O’Brien had coined the name while they were still en route to Iceland, and it stuck. The name somehow both made the project seem more real and served as a buffer against the sheer insanity of their undertaking. “The Iron Dragon Project” sounded like something whimsical but not impossible.

  When she’d first proposed the idea of building a craft that would allow them to return to Andrea Luhman, orbiting twelve hundred miles above them, she’d known it would be an immense undertaking. But when she looked out at the primitive settlement taking shape before her and reflected on what still needed to be done, it was difficult not to despair. The project was so big and so complex, with so many dependencies upon other dependencies, that it had taken her months just to get a handle on where to start. Fortunately, she’d had some time to think.

  After fleeing from Normandy, the three spacemen and their Viking allies had made landfall near Reykjavik, in the southwest of the country. Reykjavik barely qualified as a village at this point, but the majority of the land in the area had already been claimed by other settlers, most of them from Norway. The refugees spent the next year with Sigurd’s relatives. Most of the refugees found some work to do, from shearing sheep to weaving cloth or building houses, while Sigurd and the three spacemen surveyed the island for a suitable site for a settlement.

  They had ultimately bought several hundred acres of land bordering the southern coast, about a hundred and fifty miles east of Reykjavik. Except for a few fishermen along the coast, the only occupants had been a man named Osmund, who scraped by fishing in the stream, and an Irish hermit called Áengus. They’d bought Osmund’s parcel, and Áengus had turned out to be harmless. The settlers had pitched camp a few miles in from the coast, christening the place Höfn, meaning haven.

  It was no mystery why this land had not been claimed: it was nearly worthless, from the typical Norseman’s perspective. There was little game, and not much but scrub and weeds grew in the rocky soil. A stream ran through the valley, providing freshwater, but it was too narrow and shallow to support a significant number of fish. The only mineral resource was bog iron—big chunks of iron-rich volcanic rock that littered the marshlands. There were no trees to speak of; the only material available for building was turf: sections of v
egetation and soil that had to be chopped from the marshes with spades.

  Despite the land’s lack of resources, Reyes and her companions had judged it suitable for their purposes. They would make use of the bog iron for certain, and there was another resource bubbling up from underground that would be invaluable when the project was farther along. The main benefit the parcel offered, though, was secrecy: they were a long way from the power-hungry Harald Fairhair and the kings of Europe who might take an interest in their project. Their only neighbors were farmers and fishermen.

  They had learned the hard way the costs of getting involved in politics. Their Norse allies had been invaluable to them, but the spacemen had also made dangerous enemies. Undoubtedly Harald’s ships scoured the North Sea for them even at this moment. The spacemen had considered seeking an alliance with one of the other European kings, perhaps Aethelwulf of Wessex, but in the end Reyes and the others had agreed that as far as was possible, they would stay out of politics. The alternative would be to manage an ever-widening network of enemies and alliances, all while trying to remain hidden from the Cho-ta’an, who presumably still lurked somewhere in Europe.

  If they could remain unseen by the Cho-ta’an and unnoticed by the powers of Europe, the primary obstacle they faced was the passage of time. It would take decades to build the infrastructure capable of producing a craft that could reach orbit. Would Reyes, Gabe and O’Brien even live to see it? If they did not, would they be able to impress upon the next generation the importance of their mission? They were the only three people on Earth who had glimpsed the end of the human race—and that end was 1300 years in the future. It would take a lot of faith for someone born in medieval Europe to commit to this project without any direct evidence the Cho-ta’an even existed.

  Reyes arrested this line of thought before it could get out of hand. This was just one of many dead-ends her mind might wander down on any given day—and one of the reasons she tried to keep herself busy with physical labor. Beyond the sheer scope of their project, the amount of time it would require, and the dearth of natural resources, another challenge loomed large: they didn’t have the brainpower needed to run a space program.