Fara i Viking - Chapter 4

Chapter IV – Based on Legends

When Tino woke the next morning he was distinctly warmer and more comfortable than he remembered being when he had gone to sleep. A comfortable heavy weight rested across his shoulders and whatever he was cuddled against was emitting a fair amount of heat. At first, Tino was not certain he actually wanted to get up, he was so much more comfortable than ship beds usually allowed. He was warm, cozy. But the logical part of his mind wondered what had changed since he had gone to sleep. Then he remembered that he had gone to sleep in the same bed as Berwald. Instantly Tino's eyes shot open. It took a moment for them to adjust to the light – the lights were turned on now – and focus on the object in front of him. When they did he nearly screamed.

No more than a few centimeters from him was Berwald. His face shadowed by the overhead lights, but obviously still asleep. Tino had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from letting out any sounds of alarm. He knew he had a tendency to cuddle up to anything warm in his sleep, but he had thought that even his subconscious would be smart enough not to do that with Berwald. So that weight over his shoulders was, yes, it was Berwald's arms, and the warm object he had been cuddling against was his chest. Tino flushed bright red in embarrassment even though Berwald was asleep and probably completely unaware of the position they had gotten themselves into. But how did Tino get out of this without waking him up?

His thoughts swirled around so fast in his head it was making him dizzy. But as he stared at Berwald's face while trying to think of a way out of this situation, he could not help but notice something. First of all, Berwald was not wearing his glasses, which was not unusual, considering he was asleep, but without them his face looked softer. There were no shadows on his face cast by the thin rims and arms. And he was not scowling. Berwald's face was relaxed in sleep, his brows at a softer angle, his mouth not so stern. Cautiously, and unable to help himself, Tino reached up and let his fingers run over the lines of the other man's face. The tiny faint wrinkles on his forehead, between his eyebrows where there was no longer a crease from his scowl, the small dents on his nose where his glasses rested. Seeing him this way, Berwald was not so frightening. In fact he was rather handsome.

The large man's eyelids fluttered and Tino quickly pulled his hand away and began carefully trying to inch his way away from the warm body. But he did not make it very far before Berwald's eyes opened, the scowl returned to the man's face almost as soon as he opened his eyes and his stare bored straight through Tino. "I'm sorry," the smaller man squeaked in alarm, and quickly sat up, knocking Berwald's arm off his shoulder in the process. "I... sometimes grab things in my sleep," he tried to explain, and began getting out of bed.

"Good morning." Tino startled and turned to see Eiríkur approaching the side of the bed holding two mugs of steaming liquid and smelling of coffee. "Something you two want to tell me?" he asked, and Tino could not tell if he was joking or not.

"N-nothing happened," Tino insisted, quickly climbing out of bed and barely pausing to accept the mug that Eiríkur held out to him. "We just... shared the bed and... Sometimes I grab things in my sleep." He could feel his face heating up and quickly hid behind the mug, drinking down a large gulp of the steaming liquid, wincing as it burned his tongue on the way down.

"Right," Eiríkur replied, sounding unconvinced, which made Tino wonder if he had seen everything and then blush even brighter. "Well, Mathias and Aleks aren't up yet as far as I can tell," he commented. "So you can take your time getting ready. As soon as they're up we can go see Eduard, but I don't expect them to show up any time before lunchtime."

Berwald grunted in reply and Tino looked over his shoulder to see that the man was now up as well. The engineer sat on the edge of the bed, his hands cradling the second coffee mug that Eiríkur had brought them. He had put his glasses back on and the softness that had been in his face while he slept was gone. A part of Tino was sad, but most of him was frightened of that expression. Berwald must have been really angry with him. Tino turned around again quickly and took his cup of coffee with him into the bathroom.

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As expected, Mathias and Aleksander did not show up at their doorway until Eiríkur, Tino and Berwald were finishing up their lunch. The meal had not been anything terribly fancy, some rehydrated meals from a hole-in-the-wall at the end of the corridor that called itself a restaurant. It certainly was not as good as what Berwald had cooked after their raid on the supply ship, but it filled their stomachs comfortably.

"You ate without us?" Mathias asked, horrified when he saw the empty cartons that littered the floor where the other three had eaten.

"We didn't know when you were going to show up," Eiríkur replied. "Though you might go get something yourselves."

Mathias pouted. "That's not nice of you. You could have at least left us some leftovers to eat."

"And you could always go down to the shop and get some yourself," the teen told him. He picked up a piece of paper and tossed it at the two men standing just inside the doorway. Aleksander caught it. "There's a menu, go feed yourselves if you're hungry, it's not my job."

"We did eat already," Aleksander replied, and set the paper menu back down on the arm of the sofa. "This glutton just likes to complain. Are you all ready to go?"

"I think so," Eiríkur replied, and turned his gaze to Tino and Berwald.

"Yes!" Tino chirped and hopped to his feet, running over to the peg on the wall to get his jacket and strap on his gun belt. Berwald nodded silently and rose slowly to his feet, straightening out his clothing as he stood.

"Right then, let's get going," Aleksander turned on his heel and stepped back out the door. "Hopefully Eduard will have found us something useful."

"Something useful about a make believe treasure?" Mathias asked skeptically.

"He said himself he has heard rumors about its location and Eduard is not the superstitious type. If he believes in something then there's a good chance it's real," Aleksander reasoned.

"Eduard would never lie about this sort of thing," Tino insisted as he trotted up to the door and joined Aleksander outside their tiny apartment. The rest of them stepped outside as well and Eiríkur shut the door behind them, making sure it was locked so none of their few belongings would be stolen by the less-than-savory people that were usually found on the space station.

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"Right on time" Eduard praised after opening the door and ushered the five men inside. This time his younger brother was nowhere to be seen. "I think I've got everything you'll need to become legendary treasure hunters."

"You mean you really found it?" Tino asked excitedly.

"Of course I did," Eduard was proud in his declaration. He quickly turned back and headed for his computers. Taking a seat, a quick press of a few buttons brought multiple pages of information up on the large screens. "Didn't I tell you? If it exists, I can find it."

"So what did you find?" Aleksander asked, pulling a chair up beside the hacker and taking a seat.

"I searched under multiple names, an item like this shows up in a whole bunch of different mythologies, so the information is really scattered. But this is what I was able to piece together." As Eduard spoke he navigated the cluttered screens with ease, pulling up the information that he needed as he spoke. "Tino and I know it as Sampo, you four might be more familiar with the term Grotti's Mill. I'm almost positive they're the same thing. Neither is really described in detail in legend, but they have the same properties. So if they aren't the exact same thing, then they are at least the same type of technology. Technology that has been around for a very long time, and wouldn't the government like to get its hands on it. The main thing it's credited with is being able to create gold out of thin air. We know that's a physical impossibility, but most of the accounts were written by rather primitive people who probably just didn't understand what they were seeing.

"Anyway. There have been a couple very recent rumors that a treasure like this is hidden in the ruins of Asgard. Problem is no one really remembers where Asgard is and even if they did I doubt something like this would be left around where you could just walk in and take it. We know the Aesir were highly technologically advanced and built their things to last. They wouldn't want something like this getting into the wrong hands, so it would be under lock and key.

"In fact, I was even able to find an old legend about that," Eduard announced rather proudly and flicked to another screen. "We know about Sampo because it was used by humans at some point. The story is that the Aesir gave these things to a few humans back on Midgard, and that is why it shows up in so many different cultures, but then they took it back at some point later because they thought the devices were being abused. And they probably were, come to think of it.

"Now, the story says that when the Aesir took back all of these things they locked them up so that no human would be able to get them ever again. At least no single human. But they did not destroy them, because they thought they could be put to good use. Maybe they thought one day we would become less selfish and use it for the good of mankind, but obviously we didn't reach their standards before they died out. To make sure that no human could get this thing and use it only for their own gain, they put it in a safe with four locks, and gave one key to each race in the galaxy. So the Humans had one key, the Trolls had another, the Dwarves had one, and the Aesir themselves. This way the safe could only be unlocked when all the races cooperated with each other.

"If you can get those keys, you can get into the safe, and then the device is yours, easy as that," Eduard turned back around and offered a smile at the five pirates that graced his presence. "The trouble is getting the keys," he concluded, "And finding the safe."

"How hard could that be?" Mathias asked.

"It depends on how willing people are to hand over those keys," Eduard replied with a shrug. "If you get the other three and get to Asgard all you have to do is find the safe and find their key and then you're home free. It's the other three that will be a problem."

"So where are the other three?" Aleksander asked.

"One is with the Trolls on Jötunheimr. One is with the Dwarves and Svartálfaheim. The Human held one was a little trickier, but best I can tell the last record of it is being sent to a monastery on Muspellheim for safe keeping, but that planet is no longer inhabited," Eduard replied.

"And what about the location of Asgard?" Eiríkur asked, "Do you know where that is?"

Asgard, homeworld of the highest race of beings in the galaxy, the Aesir. It was practically legend, and there were plenty of people who did not believe it existed. Those same people usually did not believe that the Aesir had existed, though the evidence was all around. When, millennia ago, the advanced race had visited Midgard, they had bestowed some of their knowledge upon the humans there, and that was what turned them from timid explorers who had yet to leave their own solar system, to the galaxy crossing pioneers they were today. But very few had ever been to Asgard and returned to tell about it. And then the Aesir had died out, gone extinct, or so they had been told. And because no one had heard from them since, everyone assumed it to be true.

"No one has been there for ages and the records keeping back then was abysmal," the hacker shuddered at the thought. "But I can at least tell you what system it's in. They didn't bother to write down any coordinates, but some old world pilot was nice enough to leave a journal entry describing the system in detail. It's behind the Hrimthurs asteroid belt."

"You mean I'll have to fly through that thing?" Aleksander sighed in annoyance.

Eduard only shrugged. "Or go around it."

"That would take nearly a year from any of the planets where the keys are," the pilot huffed a bit.

"Well, I never said it was going to be easy, but you're the ones who want to go treasure hunting," Eduard shrugged.

Actually it was only Mathias who wanted to go treasure hunting, but no one said anything. It was unlikely they would be able to deter their captain anyway. At least he was no longer interested in breaking into highly secured government research facilities. "So all we need to do is get these keys and legendary treasure falls into our hands?" Mathias was grinning from ear to ear as he ran over the plan in his head.

"I guess you could put it like that," Eduard replied, though a little hesitantly. "If you get all the keys you will, hypothetically, be able to open the doors to the temple and, theoretically, the treasure is just sitting inside waiting to be claimed. Whether or not that is actually the case is anyone's guess."

"Okay," Mathias was willing to cede that this was all mostly here-say and legend passed down by word of mouth, none of it was hard fact. But that made it all the more enticing to the excitable captain. "So how do we know what the keys are when we find them? I mean, Muspellheim and Asgard are abandoned, so we just have to go pick them up."

"None of the legends describe them," Eduard informed him solemnly. "They could look like old fashioned keys or modern electronic ones, or they might not look like keys at all. It's impossible to say."

"That complicates things," Eiríkur murmured.

"As though they weren't complicated enough already," Aleksander sighed. "Traveling to four different planets to collect unidentifiable artifacts that may or may not even still be there, to open a temple that may or may not still be intact for a treasure that may or may not have even existed in the first place."

"Sounds like an adventure!" Mathias said enthusiastically.

It certainly would be. There was no arguing that. "So..." Tino could not help asking just to be sure. "Does this mean that we're going to do this?"

"Of course!" Mathias enthused. "Weren't you all the ones who wanted to learn about this in the first place?" he pointed accusingly at his crew. "And now you don't want to do it?"

"It is preferable to the suicide mission you wanted to take us on before," Aleksander reasoned. "But not by much."

"But think of the honor! The prestige! The... the sheer awesomeness we will get if we do this!" Mathias was clearly much more excited about this than he had been only an hour ago. "We'll be legendary! We'll be famous!"

It was pretty tempting. There was not a person in the universe who did not, deep down inside, want to be remembered throughout the ages. Aleksander shared a look with the rest of the crew. Tino nodded, Berwald shrugged almost imperceptibly and Eiríkur sighed but nodded as well. "Alright," Aleksander relayed the agreement, however unnecessarily. It wasn't like they had anything better to do.

The rest of the day was spent planning out the specifics of the trip with Eduard's help. They plotted the shortest course from planet to planet, which was still obscenely long. Aleksander estimated that, if they were able to travel at top speed the whole time and stopped only a single day on each planet to locate and obtain the necessary key it would still take them nearly ten months to reach Asgard. And that was a best case scenario. More realistically, Aleksander predicted they would be out for at least a year.

And that estimate left them with another problem: supplies. Supplies were hard to come by when you were a pirate vessel that worked under the radar. They could not rely on cargo ships happening to cross their path often enough that they would be able to steal all that they needed. They would have to stock up while they were in port, which would put a serious dent in their collective credit amount. And they were not exactly overflowing with money as it was.

But going broke was better than starving to death or getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. So while Aleksander continued the plot out their course with Eduard and learn what they could about each of the planets, the others went off to stock up on anything they might need on the expedition.

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Mathias took Eiríkur and all of their current credits with him to go hunt down some decent food and water supplies and sent Berwald and Tino off to pawn the things they did not need. Tino, needless to say, was not entirely pleased with the situation. He still felt incredibly awkward about what had happened between him and the imposing engineer that morning – and possibly during the night as well.

And so Tino trailed behind the taller man, trotting to keep up with his longer strides but feeling too shy to ask him to slow down. Berwald carried with him the satchel he had brought off the ship, the contents of which Tino still was not certain of. It looked heavy, but Berwald carried it as though it was no trouble at all.

The two made their way down to the lower levels of the space station, down from where the more sophisticated outlaws like Eduard lived to the realm of the less savory. If the black market could be said to have an actual location, this would be it. As their surroundings changed from the neglected but relatively nice corridors of the upper decks to the more crowded and much dirtier corridors below. Tino stayed closer to Berwald. It was not that these people scared him, he knew he could take any of them in a fight. At least a one-on-one fight, though probably not unarmed. But Tino hated the crowds. And he hated how the people here, criminals all of them, and the worst sort, always looked at him the way an animal looked at its prey. He did not like that they all looked at his small stature and assumed he would be an easy target. And it was times like these that someone like Berwald came in handy. The engineer's mere presence was more than enough to turn away most of those stares. He stood taller than almost everyone that they passed, head and shoulders taller than Tino already, and one sharp glare at anyone who so much as looked at them wrong sent people quickly out of their way.

Tino may have been just as intimidated by that stare, but he was confident that Berwald would never do anything to hurt him, so in a place like this it was actually comforting to have the man around.

Berwald lead the way through the market, Tino close to his side now, no longer lagging behind. The engineer knew where they were going and Tino was happy to let him lead the way. On their way they stopped at a few stalls where Berwald prodded at machine parts that Tino could not recognize. He would pick some up and look them over, and then put them down again and continue on their way, unsatisfied with whatever he saw. Eventually they arrived at a small stall where the man behind the counter greeted Berwald as though he knew him. He was a curious looking man, with short hair that stood straight up in defiance of gravity and a small scar on his forehead. He was smoking something from a long pipe that hung from between his teeth as he grinned at them.

"Ah, my favorite customer," the man smiled and leaned on the counter. He looked past Berwald and seemed disappointed that only Tino was accompanying him. "Mathias not with you today?" Berwald shook his head and the man shrugged. "Oh well, tell him to stop by if he has the time. What do you have for me today?"

Berwald looked over at Tino, who stared back a moment before realizing that he was meant to offer up the military file, and then flushed in embarrassment as he stepped forward quickly and handed the metal folder over to the man. "Wooo, what have we here?" The man took the file in one hand and took the pipe from his mouth in the other, setting it down in a small ash tray beside him. "Military specs?"

"Classified," Berwald pointed out. "Took forever t' open the lock."

"I can imagine," the man whistled lowly in appreciation as he opened the folder and looked over the papers within. "This is some pretty serious stuff. What do you want for it?"

"What d' you wanna pay?" Berwald asked.

"Three thousand?" the man offered.

Berwald shook his head. "Five," he countered.

"Thirty-five hundred," the man offered again.

Berwald shook his head again. "Five thousand."

"You still don't know how to bargain, I see," the man rolled his eyes and looked carefully at the file. "Have you even looked at this? Who's going to be able to use something like this? I'll give you three seventy-five."

Berwald shook his head once more. "Government'll want it back, at least. Fourty-seven."

The man sighed and stared at the file long and hard before speaking up again. "Forty-three and not a credit more."

"Deal," Berwald agreed with a curt nod, and stuck out his hand to shake on the deal.

"Good," the man grinned and tucked the folder under his arm and picked up his pipe again. "I'll get your money then." He did not wait for a reply before turning around and disappearing into the back of his little storefront. He would not have gotten a reply from Berwald anyway.

Tino had watched the whole exchange quietly, curiously observing the way the two men argued with each other with barely a word being spoken. He had never been involved in the bargaining for the things they needed to buy on the rare occasions they came to the Chariot. Tino was not very good at haggling and people usually tried to take advantage of him.

The man emerged from the back of his ship and handed a plastic card over to Berwald. "You'll find all forty-three hundred on there," he assured. "Check if you want, but I am a man of my word and you know where to find me if you find it at all lacking."

"'M sure it's fine," Berwald replied, and handed the card over to Tino, who slipped it into his pocket for safe keeping.

"I'm glad to hear that," the man smiled, and then his gaze slid down to the bag Berwald was carrying. "Anything else in there for me?" he asked.

"S' not for you," Berwald shook his head.

"Ah, well then, I'll let you be on your way. Pleasure doing business with you, as always."

Berwald grunted his reply and nodded his head before turning away. Tino bid the man a quick farewell before falling into step behind Berwald again. They had few other stops to make, that one had been the most important. But Berwald stopped at another stall to pawn off a couple pieces of broken machinery to be scrapped for raw materials, which were hard to come across on this side of the galaxy. The last stop he made surprised Tino, though. Instead of another questionable storefront, Berwald lead him down a narrow corridor lined with unlabeled doors. The engineer did not say a thing, and so Tino began to grow a little concerned about where they were heading. The further into the bowels of the ship one traveled the worse the people were. And Tino was already uncomfortable as it was.

Finally the narrow corridor opened into a larger space, an open area that was a crossroads of sorts. The space was vaguely circular, and surprisingly large. Other corridors branched off from it, some as narrow as the one they had traveled down, others larger. In the middle of this space a small group of children was playing. This was what surprised Tino most. He had known there were children here, like Eduard's younger brother, but they were so rarely seen that he usually did not think about it.

Berwald walked straight up to the group of kids, and when they noticed him their eyes lit up and they ran over to meet him. Tino hovered by the corridor they had come down, feeling like he was intruding on something, but continued to watch the man. The kids spoke with Berwald for a while and seemed to want him to play with them, but the engineer shook his head. He took something out of his bag and handed it to one of them, but Tino could not see what it was. Then he turned back around and headed back to Tino, passing the smaller man and heading back down the corridor without a word.

Tino followed, equally silent but much more curious than he had been before. There were a lot of questions that he wanted to ask, but he was too afraid.

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Endnotes:
Asgard – Home of the gods in Norse mythology.
Aesir – The term used to denote the principle gods in the Norse pantheon. In this context (and for simplicity's sake) applied to the entire pantheon.

Author Notes: Thanks to my beta, Narwhal123