A Sterkarm Kiss (21 page)

He always had been, she thought. When he'd seemed so sweet, when she'd known him before, in another dimension—he'd been a killer then. Raised to it, trained to it. But she'd always managed to overlook it. She'd overlooked it so successfully that she'd kissed him, cuddled him, lain with him. She felt like the mistress of some concentration-camp commander, cooing over him when he came in from a hard day's torturing and murdering—wiping the blood and stink off him, kissing him.

She felt sick. She felt filthy. She didn't know what to do.

“Do you ken,” Gareth asked, “places called Lang Stane and Urwin's Gap?”

The expressions on their faces told him that they knew them very well.

“That be where Grannams lie in wait for you,” he said.

“They lie in wait for us?” Per looked at Sweet Milk. “They be no coming to attack?”

“Not as I understood it,” Gareth said. “I could no ask them directly. I gathered that they expected you to be attacking them—”

“And they've set ambushes,” Per said, again to Sweet Milk, “where they think we'll come through hills! That be why we've seen no sign of them, for all our watching!”

Sweet Milk nodded slowly.

“Show us where they are,” Patterson said, nodding to Gareth to translate, “and we'll take 'em out.”

Sweet Milk said, “The Elf-Carts,” and made a dismissive, wiping gesture. He shook his head.

Gareth opened his mouth to translate, but there was no need. Patterson grinned and said, “Tell him we can still use our legs. We were never planning on using the Elf-Carts.”

Gareth translated that. Sweet Milk gave the Elves a sidelong glance of amusement, though his face never shifted into even a glimmer of a smile.

“Can you ride?” Per asked, and mimed riding a horse. Several of the 21st siders laughed, shaking their heads.

“Yes,” Patterson said.

“Be ready then,” Per said and, swinging around on his heel, drew in a long breath and expelled it in a yell of “Sterkarm!” His carrying bellow rang through the tower and jerked up the head of every man and woman who heard it—and they passed the alert to everyone who hadn't. They dropped what they were doing and came toward the shout, to be met by Per, shouting, “Horses! We ride.”

Gareth turned to Patterson to translate and found that he and his men had gone. They knew what they had to do too.

It was little more than an hour later that Andrea heard the ride leaving. She refused to leave her refuge to see them go but went to her bower's one window, opened the shutter, and leaned out. At the end of the narrow alley in which her bower was built, she could see the horsemen passing, above the heads of those who crowded the alleys to watch them. The little, stocky, barrel-chested horses—almost all of them black—with their shaggy coats and long, uncut manes and tails, clopped by, shaking their heads and rattling their harnesses. The eight-foot lances towering above the riders' heads, but not gleaming, as in storybooks. The Sterkarms didn't want any gleaming, flashing lance heads to announce their coming to any lookouts. The lances had been rubbed with a mixture of grease and soot, both to preserve them from rain and to darken them so they wouldn't catch the light. Their helmets had been treated in the same way, and the many small metal plates of their jakkes were hidden between two layers of worn leather.

She couldn't catch any sight of the 21st men, though presumably they were going with the Sterkarms. Leaning out the window and listening, she heard the horses, yells of “Sterkarm!” and the shouted good wishes of women and children, but she didn't hear any of the MPVs' engines start.

That meant there would be MPVs at the foot of the hill, and she could drive herself … But that idea soon faded. Each would have a personal key, which could be used only by a specific driver. Even those cars driven by several different people would have a code to be punched in before they could be started. She didn't know the code, and she didn't have a personalized key. Neither did she have the skills needed to start a car without its keys.

For a while she sat on the bed and thought seriously about walking to the Tube. It would be a long, hard trudge across very difficult country, but she'd be doing it to escape, to spite Windsor. She didn't know the way, but there would be a track left by the cars … She didn't have the courage, though. Even supposing the track was clear and she didn't get hopelessly lost, there was no telling what raiding parties were out there. Grannams, and allies of the Grannams, looking for revenge. Sterkarms from outlying districts who had never seen her before. She could perhaps rely on them leaving her alone because she was an Elf, but—there was no law, out there on the 16th-side moors. Angry men need not worry about any retribution. She kept seeing the blood pouring from Joan Grannam's throat—but it was her own throat—and hearing Joan's dying gasps and choking in her own voice. She wasn't going to chance it.

She passed the time by thinking over what a bloody fool she'd been, to leave Mick and come back to this godforsaken time and place. What did you expect? she asked herself again and again, in amazement. If the Per you knew before was good-natured and sweet—or capable, at least, of being good-natured and sweet at times—then it was because his father, his uncle, and his cousin hadn't been murdered. She thumped her head on the pillow and told herself: It's no use grieving over the Per you knew and mourning his loss—he isn't lost. This Per and that Per are one and the same. The Per you knew was just as callous and murderous as this one. He'd just never had reason to show it so close to home.

Hours later and dusk was thickening to dark; her hunger became so sharp that she couldn't bear it. She got up, opened the door, awkwardly dragged her ladder to it, and dropped one end into the alley below. Climbing down, she set off to find herself something to eat. The kitchen would give her some flatbread and cheese, if nothing else.

The kitchen was an outbuilding across the yard from the tower's door. It was built all of wood, so that when it burned down—as kitchens were prone to do—it could be rebuilt quickly and cheaply. A thatch of heather roofed it and hung well over the walls, to carry the rain away from them. The entrance was always muddy where water had been thrown out, and was strewn with peelings and other rubbish. The tower's pigs, chickens, cats, and dogs were usually hanging about the door, since they knew as well as the tower's human occupants where the food was to be found. And there was one of the tower's human occupants, an old lady, sitting on an upturned tub under the eaves, eating from a bowl.

Andrea hopped over the mud, stuck her head into the hot, smoky interior, and asked the nearest woman whether she could have something to eat. “Just something quick. Whatever's to hand.”

Her question started a bustle, with women fetching other women and shouting to others, but eventually she was given a broad, flat wooden plate on which was a bowl of groats, a lump of cheese, some shards of flatbread, and some slices of smoked tongue and mutton. She was about to leave with this substantial meal when she heard someone say, “Funniest-looking wounds ever I saw!”

It was the old woman. She took another spoonful from her bowl and swallowed. “I said to 'em, ‘Toorkild shot by a ball! Never as I live! I've seen some wounds in my time,' I said, ‘but that was never made by a ball! Never in this world!'”

Andrea hesitated. Old people talk to themselves, in the 21st as well as the 16th. If she asked the old woman what she meant, she probably wouldn't get any sense out of her but would have to listen to a long, wandering monologue. She took a step away, to return to her bower, but then turned back. “What dost mean?”

She had to repeat herself before the old woman noticed her, and then she just stared while licking her horn spoon.

“Thou said Toorkild was never shot by a ball,” Andrea said. “What dost mean?”

“Them holes!” the old woman said, jabbing at her own head with a forefinger and speaking as if Andrea was stupid. “The ones in Big Toorkild's head, and Gobby's and the lad's! The ones they said was made by pistol balls! They never was!”

It was dry under the overhanging eaves, but the ground was thick with rubbish. Still, Andrea trod through it to stand at the old woman's side. “Why dost think that?”

The old woman jabbed at her forehead again. “Too small! Ever seen a hole made by a ball?”

“Well …” Andrea said. She'd thought she had.

“I've laid 'em out,” the old woman said. “I've washed 'em. Two of me own, an' all. Seen enough to last me three lifetimes.” She held up her thumb and forefinger, making a circle. “A ball be a big thing, see thee. Big ball of lead. It hits something hard, it flattens. Pick one up that's hit a wall, and tha'll see.” She filled her mouth with groats again.

At the back of Andrea's mind some dreadful knowledge was gathering. She almost wanted to leave before it broke on her.

“One hits somebody's head bone,” said the old woman, “it makes a muckle hole. A muckle, rough, jaggedy hole. And a muckler one ganning out.”

“It did,” Andrea said. “They had no backs left to their heads. It made a gey muckle hole ganning out.”

“Ah,” said the old woman, wagging her horn spoon, “but a wee hole ganning in. That be what I say, see thee. It made a wee, wee hole ganning in—no bigger than the end of me finger. That was no ball. No ball made that hole. That be what I say.”

Andrea's mind worked so fast, she could feel the synapses sparking as the thoughts and memories flashed back and forth, connecting. A tiny hole going in. No large, soft lead ball, then, that would flatten on impact. No—it must have been made by something small, narrow, and very hard, traveling very fast, that would punch through the bone, like—a bullet?

“They be all busying themselves running after Grannams to kill,” the old woman said. “Can no look at what be in front of 'em. Can no see for tears. They want to live a bit longer, and bury two sons, and
then
they'll see what be what.”

Andrea had stood on the hillside above the wedding camp. She'd stood on the hillside and seen the floodlights come on, lighting up the melee, as the Sterkarms and the Grannams scuffled. And from behind her, in the darkness, she'd heard a strange sound, like a stick being dragged across railings. A short stretch of railings.

She hadn't known what the sound was then. Now she thought: It was a rifle. A muffled, silenced rifle. There had been a sniper on the hillside behind her, in the dark. With a telescopic night sight. And that sniper had lined Toorkild up in his sights and shot him through the head. With a hard, narrow, high-speed trajectory, 21st-century bullet. Making a small, neat hole as it went in, and blowing off the back of his head as it left.

What Grannam had such a weapon? What Grannam could have used such a weapon, so skillfully, if he'd had it? Surely it would have taken a crack shot, someone who'd practiced with the weapon a thousand times.

Andrea felt as if she was hanging, suspended, in cold, empty space. It hadn't been a Grannam who'd shot Toorkild, Gobby, and Ingram. It had been an Elf. One of the Elves who were now on the ride with Per and Sweet Milk. Which one? The affable Patterson?

She imagined him, on that dark hillside, centering the crosshairs of his sight on Toorkild's head. What a laugh.

And if it had been an Elf who'd fired the shot, it didn't take much thought to work out who'd given the order.

What other orders had he given?

17

16th Side: The Tower

Gareth stumbled yet again, and picked himself up, and scrambled on, because he dared not rest and be left behind, alone, in bandit country. To himself, silently—because he hadn't the breath to swear aloud—he swore that if he got out of this and got home to the blessed 21st, he would never leave his couch again. Ever. He would lie there and watch television, eat crisps, and drink Coke, and never, ever again leave the comfort of town. He didn't think he'd ever been so miserable in his life. And he could get killed or maimed, too. Bloody Andrea. Lucky Andrea. All that squawking about equality, and women were still getting out of stuff like this because they were too girlie to go raiding in the dark. Per, Sweet Milk, and even Patterson had been unanimous. No girls.

It hadn't been so bad, to start with. He'd felt quite bucked up to be part of the ride as it left the tower. He hadn't been riding, of course. He'd been walking, with Patterson and the other Elves, along with several Sterkarm footmen—fierce, hairy types, wearing blackened helmets and carrying vicious things that looked like big axes with very long handles. It was a “jeddart axe,” one of them told him, adding, “It'd take thy leg off. Shall I show thee?”

Then, at first, it hadn't been so bad following the riders across country. True, it had been rough, with scrambles uphill and rocky streams to ford, but the footing had been firm, and it hadn't really mattered if he trailed behind. They were still in sight of the tower, and it felt safe, though as he panted to keep up, he felt that he should have taken more notice of all those 21st-century admonitions to eat less junk food and go more often to the gym.

The horsemen led them out up the high moors, down into steep, rocky declivities and up steep, wooded sides where riders had to dismount and duck and twist among branches.

The going got harder and harder—and, he supposed, he got more tired. They climbed hillsides calf deep in heather and bilberry where, every time Gareth lifted his foot, he had no idea whether it would come down sooner than he expected on hard, hidden stone—jolting him and throwing him off balance—or whether it would plunge unexpectedly deep into an unseen hollow—making him stumble and stagger—or whether it would sink into a soft, muddy bog, nearly sucking off his sneaker, soaking and miring him to the knee. It was exhausting, this staggering and toppling and wind-milling for balance. It made walking every mile like walking five, and it was completely different from walking on pavement. Gareth realized that he had never before experienced what it was like to walk “rough country.” What he had thought of as rough had been mere parkland.

He fell farther and farther behind. The Sterkarm footmen climbed the hill steadily ahead of him—breathing a little hard and certainly not frisking, but showing no sign of ever tiring, either; and they were wearing heavy tin-pot helmets and carrying long knives and axes. Their legs and lungs, he thought, must be made of steel and leather. Gareth longed fiercely for a rest, even if it meant sitting in the wet grass and heather. Stop, just stop, please. I don't even know what I'm doing here. What do they expect me to do—kill people? Damn Andrea. Bet she was curled up by a fire, drinking cream.

A halt was called eventually. Gareth sank down among the tough, prickly moorland plants, his feet and legs throbbing with weariness. His back ached. Even his face ached. Give me the 21st, he thought. Cars, planes, escalators, lifts—and if you must exercise, you can do it in a nice, warm, dry, clean gym.

Per sat on the ground, his horse's reins looped over his arm, and kicked at the turf with one heel. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. Fowl, his horse, nudged him and nibbled at his ear, but when Per pushed his head away, he cropped grass instead. There was little talk among the men. At last Per said, “Sweet Milk?”

Sweet Milk was sitting beside him, his heavy helmet laid on the ground. He looked up. “Aye?”

“Willst lead?”

“Lead?” Sweet Milk was puzzled.

“Be captain.”

Sweet Milk was surprised, and took his time answering. Per was head of the Bedesdale Sterkarms now, and the laird of the Bedesdale Tower. He had always been eager to lead, and no one could challenge his right to lead this ride—not even his uncle, Gobby, had Gobby still been above ground and breathing. Carefully Sweet Milk said, “Th'art captain.”

Per was silent. He could barely think of two or three words to link together, his mind was in such a roil. He could feel the red, banked heat of anger at the back of his eyes, in his belly. Grief gripped him—so much grief that he hardly knew how to feel it. He couldn't get hold of even a small corner of it—it was so unwieldy and heavy that it threatened to flatten him. How could he mourn his father, his father's brother, and a cousin all at once?

And always, creeping just below his awareness, was the insidious, sickly memory of what he'd done. He'd been with the Elf-May when his father had been killed; and he had himself killed Joan Grannam, a girl, his wife.

She was a Grannam! A treacherous bitch, bred of a treacherous family. A slit throat and a quick death had been better than she deserved. She should have been strangled slowly. She should have been shut in a cage and starved.

No matter how he tried to shout it down, back the sickly guilt slithered. She had been helpless, defenseless, a woman, a girl child. He could not have killed her father, old man though he was, so easily, with so little risk to himself. Coward, his thoughts whispered. He heard the Elf-May, Entraya, saying that Joan had not killed his father. Joan had not hurt anyone.

But she would have if she'd been able! His banked rage flared up again, fiercely. Kill one Grannam bitch? He would kill the whole kennel of them! Every bitch and every bitch's get! There would not be a Grannam left breathing. But as his rage rose, tears rose too, as grief bit, as memories of his father, and what he had lost, rushed in. His mind dizzied, his sight blurred, he felt tremors through his whole frame. And a ride needed a clear head to lead it. It needed cool planning. A leader who would turn back, or turn aside, if the risk was too great. One who could, without mistake, choose the best way through the hills for their purpose—not the shortest way, perhaps, nor the easiest, but the best for their purpose. A clear head was needed just to remember all the many unmarked ways, and how the weather would have affected them, and how they connected up with all the other unmarked ways. There were a thousand things to consider, and he could think of nothing except his own anger and grief. Reaching out to grip Sweet Milk's arm, he said, “Thou art captain. I can no—” He shook his head.

Sweet Milk studied him. For an eye's blink he thought of refusing. He didn't grudge Per the tower and flocks he'd inherited; but he did begrudge him the favors of the Elf-May, who had seemed to be willing to dance with Sweet Milk until Per had smiled at her. Let Per lead the ride and make whatever mess he could of it … But Sweet Milk knew that he was the best man there to lead, and that even in better times Per would have looked to him for advice. If he refused, if he sulked, then he endangered every other man. And Per, too. His foster son. Toorkild's son. And was it Per's fault that he was young and pretty?

Sweet Milk nodded. “I'll lead.” He stared around, at the sky and hillside. “I grieve an' all.” He'd seen his own father murdered long ago, when he'd been far younger than Per, and no death since had hit him as hard. Even so, it was hard to see Old Toorkild dead. Toorkild had taken him, a loose man, into his own family and, finding him capable and trustworthy, had made him foreman, and even foster father to his son.

There was a song—he couldn't remember it—
The best of friends will turn his back one day, and take for his bed cold cold clay …
Something like that. Friends, wives, children, they all died.

Gareth felt something looming over him and looked up, startled, to see Patterson standing by him in his camouflage fatigues. Grasping Gareth by the arm, he hauled him to his feet. “We need to ask some questions.”

Gareth levered his aching body to its feet and limped after Patterson, between horses and men, to Sweet Milk and Per. “Ask them are we near. Do we know where the enemy is?”

Gareth translated. Perhaps he was a little offhand about it because he was so tired. Neither Sweet Milk nor Per answered, but Sweet Milk rose to his feet. The eyes of every man in the party were on him instantly. Leading his horse by the reins, Sweet Milk moved off. Per rose and, leading his own horse, followed him. Every man followed after them.

Oh God, Gareth thought. How much farther? How many more hills? How much longer?

Captain Davy, who called himself a Grannam, sat on the steep hillside, his knees drawn up, and glumly watched the scout who was scrambling sidelong to him along the steep slope. He didn't need to speak to the man. He simply raised his brows and cocked his head.

“No sign nor whiff,” said the scout.

Davy sighed, a throaty rasp. Like the rest of the Grannam men lying and crouching on that slope, among the boulders and tall bracken, he was wet, hungry, and bored. Clearing his throat, he spat and said, “Where frig are they?”

He started to worry again. He had brought his party here, to Urwin's Gap, because if he had been a Sterkarm it would have been the way he'd have chosen to come into Grannam country. But it was a guess, and he'd posted men in other places to watch and listen and bring him warning if they came by another way.

But he knew all too well that the Sterkarms were clever, devious animals, and would guess where he was waiting, and where he'd posted watchers, and could find some way to avoid them all—and he hadn't enough men to watch every hillside and dale. He'd had to leave some ways—those he'd thought most unlikely—unwatched. Were they already past him, and burning and killing in Grannam country? Were they at the tower?

Were they sneaking up on him here? Impossible, he told himself, but still he worried. He'd posted men to watch the approach to his position, and he should hear of the Sterkarms' coming long before they reached him, but … Sterkarms could hide behind a grass blade, horse and all.

Had he posted his men at the best places? Should he move them? But that would mean reducing his forces by sending other men after them, to give them his orders. Had he laid his ambushes in the best spots? In his head he flew over the hills; bogs, lakes, and woods like a crow, sending his men first by this way, then by that, fretting, worriting—only to decide, yet again, that he could do no better than he had done.

Come on, come on, he begged the Sterkarms. Let's be done with this.

Mistress Crosar climbed the stone steps within the tower's wall and came out on the tower's top. A stone walkway ran around the peaked, tiled roof at the center, and she followed it around to the corner where the small lookout turret rose, almost like a pulpit, with steps leading up to it. Close by, on the roof, was the dark shape of the beacon, an iron basket holding logs and kindling, with a lid to keep all dry.

She pulled her hood closer around her face, to guard herself from the wind that made her eyes water, and peered at the dark shape of the man on lookout, hunched against the sky. The bell was beside him, its rope close by his hand.

Mistress Crosar did not speak to him. There was no need to ask the only question she wanted to ask. If he saw anything to alarm him, he would ring the bell.

It had been pointless, climbing the steps to grow chilled on the roof. If the Sterkarms came, she would know about it soon enough, whether she was in the yard, the kitchens, or her bed. But when she had started climbing the stairs, it had seemed, somehow, that looking out from the roof would bring some ease to her worry. It had not. So down the stairs she went again, to sit, with clenched teeth and tight lips, beside her fire, where she thought of Joan and hoped the girl was not too badly treated and not too scared.

She had always said that no matter how much gold the Elves promised, no matter how much cloth and white pills they gave as presents, they should not marry Joan to a Sterkarm. “Never shake hands with a Sterkarm”—that was old wisdom.

But there. Her brother had thought he'd known better, as men always did. And now he was dead. You fool! she cried at him in her heart, and pounded her fists on her knees. You fool, you fool! But then she wiped away the small tears that had seeped from her eyes. What profit was there in raging at a dead man? Whatever came next, she must deal with it—and test her own wisdom.

Andrea ducked through the kitchen's low door. It was dark, hot, and smoky inside, and smelled of food cooking and of old food. “Can you tell me,” she asked politely, “where I can find Mistress Sterkarm?”

The women working in the smoke, gutting fish and cleaning pots, looked at one another and called out. Where was the mistress? Anybody ken? “In tower,” one answered. “Poor lady.”

Andrea left the kitchen and crossed the yard to the tower. The wooden door and the iron gate, or yett, behind it were standing open. The bawling of sheep came from inside, and when she entered, she found that several sheep and cows had been penned up in the low, barrel-ceilinged room. It smelled richly of dung and fleece, and Andrea was careful where she put her feet as she crossed to the iron grid that protected the stairs. She climbed to the first floor and the hall.

There were more people than usual gathered in the tower—almost all women and children—because the tower was expecting an attack. They weren't out in the country round about, as they would normally have been. Andrea stood in the doorway and looked around at the women by the fire and at those crouching on the benches, and she couldn't see Isobel among them.

“Where be Mistress Sterkarm?” she asked.

One woman pointed to the ceiling, where strings of flatbread and onions and legs of smoked mutton hung. “Up above,” she said. “Poor lady.”

The second floor of the tower was the family's private room: a bed-sitter it would be called in the 21st. Up there Isobel and Toorkild slept—had slept—and ate, and sat in the evening, if they had wanted to be private. Andrea left the hall and climbed again, to the landing outside the topmost room. The wooden door was shut.