Ice Man Read online

  The pain ebbed as Kell wrapped it tightly with stiff bark, using the extra pair of stockings she’d had in her purse. Then he packed it all with snow, and put another layer of bark over it.

  “The cold is for the swelling,” he said. “You can’t put the snow next to your skin, it will burn. The bark will hold the snow and keep your shoulder from swelling too much. We have to keep it cold, I’m afraid. Luckily we have lots of snow.”

  “Luckily,” she whispered, feeling faint.

  “I’m going back outside. Keep the fire going with this.” He pointed to the pile of firewood and she nodded.

  For the next few hours, Allie felt as if she floated between two worlds. She kept drifting in and out of consciousness. Kell came back and incredibly, he had a fish. How had he caught a fish? She had no idea, but she watched, fascinated, as he grilled the fish, and he helped her eat, holding her in his arms. How could someone be so strong? He’d picked her up out of the snow as if she weighed less than a child, and he’d built an igloo and caught a fish.

  He kept adding the snow between the layers of bark so that she’d heal faster. The pain had almost gone, and only a deep ache remained. She shivered with cold, and was thankful for the hot soup Kell had prepared with the rest of the fish and hot water.

  Afterwards he helped her outside so she could relieve herself. She looked at the night sky, amazed at how close and bright the stars seemed. Then she turned and her breath caught in her throat. In the dark, the igloo glowed like a frosted glass lamp, lit from within by the fire. She forgot the cold and the dark, and stared, entranced, at the little igloo. She’d never seen anything as lovely in her life. A shiver of pure delight ran over her.

  When she crawled back into the igloo she curled up on the pine branches and tried to get comfortable. Kell cradled her in his arms, and she meant to talk to him; she had so many things to ask him, but her eyelids grew heavy and her head nodded.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  She looked up, startled. She must have fallen asleep despite the prickly, bumpy branches. Tentatively, she moved her shoulder. No sharp pain greeted this movement. Her head felt clearer too, and her panic had worn off.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He sat down next to her with a movement so fluid it took her breath away. Truth be told, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She’d never seen such a hard-muscled body. He gave her a wide grin. “What are you looking at?”

  She felt a flush heat her cheeks. “I was staring at you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “At me? Does what you see please you?”

  He had to be kidding. He was like a Greek statue come to life. “You look like a sculpture I always loved. It’s a marble statue of a warrior from Gaul, and there is something about it that reminds me of you.”

  His eyebrow lifted even higher. “My mother was a Galli, that’s what the Romans call the Gauls. My father was a Celt from the Tenes empire. He immigrated south and met my mother. They moved to the island Tu’Og where I was born and lived most of my life.”

  She wanted to know everything about him. If she could, she would have crawled into his skin and shared all his thoughts and memories. “What year were you born?”

  He sat by her side and gently took the layer of bark off her shoulder. “I was born in the year of the wild swan.”

  That didn’t mean anything to her. While he gently manipulated her shoulder, rubbing the stiffness out of it, she thought of how to find out exactly what time period he came from. “Who was emperor of Rome when you were there? Did you hear about Alexander the Great or Jesus? Had Christians arrived in Europe?” All those events had taken place around about the time he’d lived. She suddenly found herself wondering if he’d seen anyone she’d have heard about.

  He held up his hand. “One question at a time, woman! First of all, Rome had no emperor, the kings were banished and it is…sorry…it was a republic.” He frowned. “It seems so strange to think we are two thousand years removed from the Rome I knew.”

  “Did you ever hear of Brannus?”

  His face cleared and his eyes shone. “Aye, who hasn’t? The Celtic warrior who stormed Rome. My father fought with him. Rome gave Brannus a ransom in gold for not attacking her, and Brannus divided it among his captains. With that money, my father bought a large farm on the island, and thus wooed and won my mother’s hand in marriage.”

  Allie’s heart sped up as the implications of what he said sunk in. “Did you ever meet Brannus?”

  “Aye, he came several times to visit and regaled us with his tales. As a lad, I wanted only one thing--to become a warrior and fight with Brannus.”

  She could picture him with a shield and a sword, his hair flying in the wind, his eyes blazing with fire as he faced his enemy. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Brannus died, and I did wield a sword, but it was against the invaders from the North.” His expression suddenly turned bleak, and she changed the subject.

  “Why do you say the year of the swan? What kind of date is that?”

  His eyebrows lifted again. “Our tribe has always kept track of time thus. Each year the elders decide what event marked it the most, and they name the year after that. When I was born, ten wild swans came and stayed for a while in our pond.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m just glad I wasn’t born the year after. That year the pigs got into the cider bin and ate all the fermented apples.”

  Allie considered for a minute. “The year of the drunk pig?”

  His smile was blinding.

  * * * * *

  “Mr. Steele. We have no time for niceties. Let me fill you in. We’re tracking two people, a man and a woman. Here is a photo of the woman, and one of the man.”

  Steele looked at the pictures. He noticed the woman’s thick, auburn hair at once, and he wondered if anyone ever saw past her incredible hair. It curled in wild abandon past her shoulders. Whiskey-colored eyes stared at him a bit pugnaciously, and a wide, unsmiling mouth completed the image. Not a raving beauty, but with hair like that, she must have a fiery temperament.

  The man’s photo intrigued him. The man appeared not to even notice the camera and looked off into the distance. He had wide, strong shoulders and the tilt of his head suggested a natural arrogance. He had dark brown eyes, so dark as to be almost impenetrable, and he wore his light brown hair cut short so that it curled around his well-shaped head. Steele put the photos down. “What did they do?”

  “They’ve stolen something very valuable from this base and we need it back. They left last night on a stolen snowmobile.”

  “So they have had a twenty-hour head start. Do you have any idea where they are heading? One of the towns here?” He pointed at the map.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Where are they from?” Steele knew from experience that people ran towards something familiar.

  “The woman is from Montreal. The man is from…Europe.”

  Steele caught Captain Bide’s hesitation but didn’t press him. “So they will most likely be heading back to Montreal.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How long did the storm last?”

  A pause, then: “About five hours. It wiped out all the tracks they might have left behind them. We have no indication in what direction they went.”

  Steele leaned on the table, studying the map. He took a compass and traced a circle, then another. “Let’s say they drove for five hours straight and set up camp, waited out the storm, then started out again. A snowmobile can go thirty of forty miles an hour. In rough terrain much slower, but it’s fairly flat around here, despite the forest. The storm would have slowed them, but not by too much.”

  “We have a helicopter with everything you need to track them.”

  “A helicopter. Good. I’ll take this map and we’ll start with the circles I’ve drawn. Grid-mark them. Let’s go.” Steele folded the map and looked at Captain Bide. “Don’t worry, I’ll find them.”

  The captain nodded and sho
ok his hand. Before he left, Steele looked around the huge hangar. “What is that? It looks like a Viking longhouse.”

  “It’s meant to,” said Captain Bide. He didn’t offer any more information, and Steele shrugged. He’d been hired to find two fugitives, not to ask questions. His curiosity had been sparked, however, and he glanced once more at the antique log house in the middle of the ultra-modern hangar.

  “Didn’t you have guards for the valuable object?” he asked.

  Captain Bide’s mouth tightened and he shook his head. “We had a security perimeter, a fence that should have kept anyone out. It never crossed our mind that anyone would want to steal it, or that the thief would operate from inside.”

  Steele’s interest deepened. He’d said thief, not thieves. And in his experience, more people wanted to steal valuable objects than worthless objects. He said nothing; he simply asked to use the facilities before getting into the helicopter and starting the search. He’d been traveling for five hours already and wasn’t looking forward to sitting motionless in a cramped seat again.

  When the helicopter lifted off, he had the map on his lap, binoculars around his neck, and an infrared scanner at his disposal in the helicopter. In case they tried to hide beneath the snow, the scanner would pick up their body heat.

  The pilot flew above the hangar, then looked at Steele.

  “Which way do we go?”

  “Towards the nearest town. South.”

  Chapter Six

  The first thing Kell noticed was the dogs. They had curly tails and looked like wolves. Tied to a sled, they pulled it like horses. The man standing on the back of the sled wore furs, and for a minute, Kell had the strangest impression he was seeing Vix or Tor. Then reality hit him and it felt almost as if the earth jolted on its axis, and he staggered.

  “Are you all right?” Allie asked.

  He nodded, unsure of his voice. He had not slept that night, or very little. Worry about Allie, and keeping the fire going, had kept him awake. He’d gone to check his snare, but it had been empty, so they hadn’t eaten any breakfast. Allie and he had left the igloo standing. They had planned to walk half the day in one direction, and if they didn’t find any settlements, they would turn back and spend the night in the igloo again. But as it transpired, they hadn’t walked very long before they heard barking and the dogs had appeared.

  The man drove his dogs up to them and spoke. Kell understood nothing, but Allie did, and soon the man and Allie had come to an understanding. Allie beamed, her eyes bright with excitement. “I told him we need a place to stay for the night. He knows of a woman who rents a room.”

  “We need to get a snowmobile.” Kell said firmly. He knew the importance of transportation. A man was nothing without his horse, his snowmobile…or his dogs. He noted how the dogs were tied to the man’s sleigh, and how easily they pulled it. He tapped Allie’s shoulder. “Ask him how fast his dogs go.”

  “Why?”

  “Do they go faster than the snowmobile?”

  Allie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “But they would not need to drink gasoline all the time. Do we have far to go?” It seemed to him they’d always been stopping to quench the snowmobile’s incessant thirst for gasoline.

  A pained looked crossed her face. “That’s true, but I don’t know a thing about dogs, I’m sorry.”

  “We should think about it.” Kell touched her cheek. “Don’t look so worried, please.” She had tried to fill him in about the world today as they’d walked, and what he would see and hear, and what to expect. He still felt as if he dreamed sometimes. Mostly though, he thanked the gods for Allie, and prayed that they would never be parted. But where could they stay? Would they be safe here?

  As if divining his feelings she took his hand and squeezed it. “This village will be one of the first places they check. We can only stay a little while.”

  Kell nodded. The man in the furs and the dog sleigh took them to a village, and once again he felt the strangeness of time unnerve him. The houses were made of planks and stood for the most part on stilts. Nothing strange there, but the roofs were made of something he had never seen, and the wooden houses all had such straight walls and clean angles--as if they had been made by Romans. The houses all sported coats of bright paint, and he’d never imagined such colors for houses--turquoise and yellow, and bright red. He shook his head to clear it.

  Allie tapped his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Aye.” He flinched when a giant snowmobile with a roof and windows roared by.

  “That’s called a pickup truck,” Allie said, and he nodded, storing the new words away in his mind. The pickup truck had four large wheels, he saw. Pickup trucks were what chariots and horses had become. Fine, he could handle that.

  Part of him suddenly wanted to learn to drive a pickup truck, and go roaring around the streets in it. He could just imagine him and Vix and Tor with one of those machines. They’d have gotten their women back in less than a day. And they would have impressed their tribe no end if they’d showed up in that machine. Even the Romans would have been impressed--and it took a great deal to impress a Roman.

  That thought fluttered through his mind and left a trail of melancholy in its wake. Vix and Tor had turned to dust…and sometimes he felt as if his bones trembled, as if they were about to dry up and blow away on the wind, and all this would have been nothing but a nightmare. Only looking at Allie brought him back to reality and anchored him here.

  They pulled up in front of a plank house painted yellow and blue. An old woman opened the door and motioned for them to come inside. Kell helped Allie off the sled and took both backpacks. He nodded politely to the dog master and followed Allie into the modern house, his stomach knotted with nerves.

  “Is everything all right?” Allie asked him.

  He stood on in the middle of the kitchen, looking around. A squat, cast-iron stove and a basket of firewood reassured him, but some strange cubes with doors, one of which hummed, made him uneasy. He recognized tables and chairs, rugs, and he’d known what the sink was, although it looked nothing like the Romans’ plumbing.

  The old woman beckoned them, and they followed her down a narrow hallway that gave him claustrophobia. She opened a door and they entered their bedroom.

  A wide bed with a blue blanket. A chair and more strange objects he couldn’t find a use for. One was black, square, with a shiny glass front. It had knobs on it, and it faced the bed. There were no oil lamps, but he saw some candles. Desperately he searched for things he knew, and everything he recognized was a small victory for him.

  “Will you be all right here?” Allie asked him.

  He managed to smile and nod, and realized how tense his muscles had been. He could barely unclench his jaw to tell Allie he wanted to bathe. “Where are the baths? Are they nearby in the village?”

  Allie’s face split into a grin. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Something I will like?”

  “Now, in this time, each dwelling has its own private bath.”

  That got his attention. Only the great palaces in Rome boasted their own baths. “Is there a hot spring nearby?”

  “No, we have heaters that don’t take much space.” Allie opened a door. “Ta da!”

  “Ta da? Is that what you call baths?” He leaned in the door, and he felt all the knots dissolve in his belly. A shiny tub, tiled walls and floor…the world hadn’t changed all that much. The Roman baths had survived nearly intact. He shook his head, feeling a huge grin split his face. “What a wonderful ta da.”

  * * * * *

  “No one by that description has come here. I’d know, because my wife runs the only bed and breakfast in town.” The police officer leaned on his desk, hands clasped, a frown on his face. “Maybe you can tell me why the US base is sending scouts into Canadian territory? Why didn’t they just ask for our help? All they had to do was call.”

  Steele shrugged. “They didn’t even tell me what
was missing.”

  “Damn Yanks. They know we’re here to help out, and we’ve never refused to lend a hand. When the base needed a woodcarver in a rush, we found one and sent him over.”

  “You did?” Steele hid his interest. “Hmm. Maybe I should talk to him. Where can I find him? Oh, and by the way, are there any more rooms left at your wife’s bed and breakfast?”

  He took the wood carver’s address and thanked the police officer. Outside, the temperature had dropped again and darkness had started to fall. Steele waved to the helicopter pilot, sitting in a bar across the street.

  “I’m going to stay here for the night. Tell Captain Bide I’m following up some leads. Come pick me up tomorrow at sunrise.”