Over croissants and tartine (which of course Tristan practically inhaled without tasting), Tristan and Felix caught me up on all the dazzling adventures and misadventures I had missed while I was in San Francisco and London, the chief topics of conversation being: the Walmart raid; the ATTO heist shenanigans; and word from Frank that a shipment of high-temperature superconductors had just appeared on the doorstep of the East House. (Given that the Fuggers owned the company, this put us in their debt.) To bring me up to the minute, there was this further summation: Frank was busy wiring up the superconductors in his cellar to create an ODEC; Julie had rented a hotel suite in Le Havre and was staying there to ensure a base of operations near the port; Rebecca and Mortimer were even now joining her there from their sundry deployments; and Esme was expected to arrive in Le Havre at any moment from Jersey.
Thord, amazed by the first-time effects of caffeine, was pacing agitatedly around the farmhouse (by around I mean circumambulating it barefoot despite the winter chill). Anne-Marie had fairly decent English, and as she moved from our end of the room to hers, she seemed so unfazed by what she was overhearing that I assumed (correctly) Tristan had already told her more than the average abettor would know.
“So if I’ve got this all straight,” I said, “now that you’ve stolen the ATTO from the Fuggers who stole it from Magnus who stole it from DODO, the Fuggers are wondering what became of what they thought would be their ATTO.”
Tristan nodded. “From their point of view, it vanished from the container port in Le Havre. They had a tractor-trailer ready and everything. They were expecting to tow it away from there and take it to . . . who knows where.” He waved his hand vaguely toward the interior of France. “Someplace safe, anyway. We still don’t know who their witch is.”
“It’s rather unsportsmanlike of us to deprive them of an ODEC on the heels of their making it possible for us to build our own.”
“Sportsmanship is for sportsmen,” muttered Felix, a bit nasally with the ice pack pressed to his face.
“Anyhow, it was all happening at the same time an ocean apart and we’re telling you to come here, so we had to be here,” Tristan added.
“What do you mean, telling me. You’ve already told me.” Then I realized something didn’t make sense. “Wait—how did you Send Mortimer back to tell me to come here?”
“We haven’t yet,” said Tristan. “Julie’s going to Send him when they get here.” Seeing the look on my face he added, “I know, it’s pretty freaky, don’t think about it too much.”
“I can’t even . . .” I shook my head. “Never mind. So who’s Thord, and what’s his involvement in all this?”
“Yes,” said Anne-Marie suddenly, from the kitchen area. “Who is Thord?”
“He’s obviously one of the Vikings Magnus recruited,” said Felix. “But no idea why he’s here now.”
“We could just ask him. I don’t think he’s used to coffee,” Tristan joked.
Tristan went outside to collect Thord, still clad in his terry bathrobe (which somehow simply made him seem even more naked). He arrived inside staring wide-eyed at the exotic domestication of the great room. Anne-Marie—whom he regarded with the greatest respect, even fear—gestured to the end of the bench, which he plopped down onto wordlessly and quickly, like a chastised child. I told him my name, and asked if we might interview him, explaining that Tristan and I both had limited abilities to speak his language (which had linguistic ties to what Tristan had learned in these very fields, when they were still woods, a thousand years ago). He agreed, and began by confirming Felix’s assumption.
“When we returned to Sverdvik after the raid, I was the only one without the scars in my back,” Thord said. “This was because I had been injured by the bang-stick. I said to Magnus, ‘Fuck you and your plan, Magnus, I did not want to come in the first place and now look.’ So I did not let them carve maps in my back because I knew that I would then be part of his plan forever.”
Anne-Marie had cleared the coffee and pastries, replacing them immediately with beer, and now was setting out plates of charcuterie and a fresh loaf of bread, which Thord began tearing into at an impressive pace. He chewed for a few moments, gazing out the window at the sun on the trees, while I translated for Felix (and Anne-Marie, who was swapping out ice packs for Felix’s nose). Thord swiveled his blue-grey eyes back to us, washed the bread down with a swig of beer, and continued: “Magnus after that began to have dreams. They were dreams of his past—of his boyhood in Normandy and his days as a Varangian Guard. But in every single one of those dreams, his life was cut short by murder. He consulted a witch who explained that he was in fact seeing other Strands, and that on each and every one of those Strands, the young Magnus had in fact been assassinated by agents sent back in time by his enemies. Magnus became like ice on a frozen river when it is being melted from below by the warming water of the coming spring, and becomes thin and brittle and you can almost see through it.” Having delivered this poetic metaphor, Thord belched, sighed, and speared a slice of ham. “He understood that he would cease to exist entirely, or be turned into a mere wraith, unless he made an alliance with others skilled in Sending and Homing. Thus he had the witch Send him forward to the ODEC in Boston. There, of course, he found himself in the power of Gráinne, who was most angry with him, but also satisfied, in a way, that Magnus had come crawling back to ask for her help.”
After another pause for him to eat (and belch) and me to translate, Thord continued: “Gráinne and Magnus made a pact to fight the Fuggers and get this ATTO back in their possession.” He waved in the direction of the yard. “Magnus cannot do magic, but he can fight, and is a good leader. Gráinne can do magic, but only in an ODEC, and she is otherwise helpless and weak in this world of Walmarts and so on. So, they could help each other. Magnus supplies muscle so that Gráinne can get things done. In exchange, he becomes rich by raiding gold from wherever he chooses to go, back in the old days. So, Magnus came back to Sverdvik saying, ‘The Fuggers have stolen the ATTO from us, now we are going to steal it back, I need volunteers.’”
Tristan nodded. “Gráinne, through Blevins of course, made arrangements to fly ATTO #2 over to Portsmouth on a cargo plane. Magnus and a bunch of Vikings manifested in that ATTO yesterday—those must have been his volunteers from Sverdvik.”
Thord listened to my translation of this, then nodded. “He tried to recruit me. I repeated to him that he could go fuck himself. The others went, as you said. They would cross from England to Normandy on a big ship and then follow the ATTO from Le Havre to the fortress of the Fuggers, wherever it might be, and then slaughter them and get it back. Or perhaps hijack it en route.” He shrugged. “Like we do.”
“But the plan failed,” Tristan prompted him, as I quietly translated for Felix.