C. Dale Brittain (56 page)

“Outlaws don’t bother to challenge anybody,” said the man, grinning—or maybe it was just the scar.
 
“Why worry about blood-guilt when anyone can kill
us
unchallenged?”

“I came to you in friendship!” Valmar yelled back.
 
“What can I possibly have that you would want?”

“Your armor and your horse,” said the man assessingly, “and that boy riding behind you—I’ve figured out it’s not really a boy.”

She laughed and spoke for the first time.
 
“And
I
have noticed that you are a mortal and will die if I kill you!”

The tall woman with the warriors suddenly stepped forward.
 
“Eirik!” she shouted, seizing him by the arm and spinning him around.
 
“I have had enough!
 
You keep capturing other women and expecting me still to be for you alone!
 
Well, I do not need another man in order to leave.
 
I can leave on my own!”

“Wigla!” Eirik said sharply, then, “Wigla?” almost pleadingly, as she stalked away from him, through the circle of warriors, and off across the valley.
 
For nearly a minute he watched as she went, straight-backed, taking long strides.
 
But his men never turned their attention from Valmar.

Then Eirik gave his shoulders a quick shake.
 
“Don’t know why I put up with her so long,” he said to his warriors, grinning again.
 
“But
you,
my sweet lass in armor …”

“This lass in armor,” said Valmar, “is an immortal.”

“And you, Valmar Hadros’s son, are not!”
 
He gave a sudden shout and all the warriors charged.

The white stallion reared, kicking out with iron hooves.
 
Warriors kept an alert eye on the hooves and tried to dart in past them.

But Valmar had been training for this fight for a very long time.
 
He leaned low over the horse’s neck, laying about him with the singing sword.
 
These warriors were ragged, with poor armor, but they fought with grim courage.
 
Again and again he deflected a blow, then darted his blade in past the other’s guard.
 
The woman behind him gave most of her effort to staying on the horse’s back, but twice when someone tried to slip up behind Valmar she stabbed him briskly.

This was a battle out of legend, thought Valmar, as steel rang on steel, men screamed in pain, and he realized dispassionately that any slowing of his reflexes might cost him his life.
 
This was a real battle, such as he had waited for all his life and never experienced, with enemies on every hand and bright blood spurting.

And this time, he realized, he was killing real people.

He froze, tasting bile.
 
He had destroyed the hollow men, wounded but not killed a Hearthkeeper, and had just now killed half a dozen humans.

In his second of hesitation they were on him, knocking the sword from his hand and wrestling him from the stallion’s back.
 
He kicked wildly but they held him down.
 
His sword and armor were taken from him.
 
While Eirik laughed triumphantly they trussed Valmar and the woman with long cords, though the warriors were still having trouble with the stallion.

“There!
 
We defeated you, friend of the immortals!” cried Eirik, his face in Valmar’s.
 
He appreciatively hefted Valmar’s sword, the one the Wanderers had given him.

“Am I worth six of your men?” Valmar replied hotly over waves of nausea.
 
His father had boasted of how many men he had killed by the time he was Valmar’s age; Valmar would never boast of this to anyone.

“This one might be!” said Eirik, licking his scarred lips and leering at the Hearthkeeper.

She, however, seemed very little concerned in spite of being tied hand and foot.
 
“After you taught me fear of death, Valmar,” she commented, “I have no further fear of anything.
 
And it may be interesting to see for a while what mortal women have to put up with from mortal men.”

“No, don’t, it’s horrible,” he said sickly, his eyes half closed.
 
He had thought he was going to meet other mortals because they represented a link with a happier past, and all that had happened was that he had killed them here in immortal realms, where no one had ever killed anyone until he arrived, and had allowed the woman who obsessed him to lie bound beside him, subject to the crude lusts of outlaws.

Eirik glanced behind him at his warriors, starting to gather up their slain comrades and tending to the wounded.
 
“Maybe you and your friend Roric
have
been more trouble to me than you’re worth,” he said thoughtfully.
 
“At this rate I won’t have any warriors left at all.
 
I don’t know what you’re doing wandering around here by yourself, but would you like to join us?”

“What?” gasped Valmar.

“It’s one way to make sure I don’t have to worry about you as an enemy again,” Eirik replied.
 
“The alternative of course,” with an evil grin, “would be to sacrifice you to the lords of death.
 
The sunset seems to take forever around here, but the sun
is
getting lower.
 
As soon as it’s gone we’ll sing the songs for our slain comrades and call on death to take them.
 
So start thinking about your choice!”

3

No more chasms opened in the earth as Karin and Roric hurried toward the ridge the Wanderer had indicated.
 
“I know this place,” said Roric suddenly.
 
“There was a cave here that led into the back of your faeys’ burrows.”

Karin looked around wildly at the white limestone thrusting up through the grass, almost expecting to see the faeys here.
 
But—
 
She could not leave without Valmar.
 
She had gone beyond terror to a state where she could scarcely think coherently, but she clung to the knowledge that she had come here to rescue him, and rescue him she would.

“Let’s make sure the way is still open while we wait,” said Roric.
 
He led her a short distance from where a spring bubbled from the earth to where its water fell over a lip of stone into a sinkhole.
 
It looked disturbingly dark to her, but he started climbing down.
 
“I followed the stream back, and there I was, among the faeys near Hadros’s castle.”

She leaned over the edge of the little cliff, watching his progress.
 
“The stream flows back here into a pool,” he called.
 
His voice echoed hollowly.
 
“And I think if I go back just a little further—”

There was silence.
 
“Roric?” Karin called, then “Roric!”
 
She swung over the cliff edge and was scrambling after him when she heard his voice again below her.

“There’s nothing there.
 
There’s no way past the pool.”
 
His voice was dull, almost expressionless.
 
“I had thought I could get you home this way, but I’ll have to try something else.”

“There may be no way until the Wanderers open it for us,” she suggested.

“There was a way before.”
 
He climbed back up beside her.
 
“The Wanderer must want us to stay here, not returning home yet.
 
I wish I knew why.”

They sat on the grass on the ridge, looking across the darkening landscape.
 
Only a quarter of the sun’s disk, glowing a dark red, still emerged above the horizon.

“What’s that?” asked Roric after a minute.
 
“It looks like signal fires.”

“Eirik’s men?” she suggested.
 
“But who would they be signaling?”

“I don’t think those fires are Eirik’s,” said Roric, suddenly very tense and quiet.
 
“Listen.”

From off in the other direction they could hear voices carried on the wind.
 
There was a steady beating, as of a sword against a shield, and the voices were singing to the rhythm.
 
As they came closer, the words gradually became more clear.

“… in fellowship, forged in war,

“Following Eirik and his swift sword!

“Conquering now, and forever more!

“Women all love us, for we brave death,

“Taking in victory with every breath:

“Stronger and truer than all of the rest …”

Karin jumped up.
 
“I don’t need to hear any more of Eirik’s songs!” she said sharply, hands over her ears.

“And after our last meeting I’m not eager to meet him again myself,” said Roric.
 
“Let’s get down behind those trees.”

They watched from hiding as Eirik’s men went by, singing enthusiastically.
 
They led a magnificent white stallion that did not seem to want to be led.
 
Karin looked for but did not see Wigla.

“It looks like they have captured someone,” said Roric, “or maybe even two people.
 
Do you think it’s some of those beings from one of the manors?
 
You’d think Eirik would realize no one is going to pay ransom for any of them.”

Karin gave a gasp and started to leap to her feet.
 
“Roric!” she said in a whisper as he pulled her down again.
 
“They have Valmar!”

He craned his neck, looking.
 
In the heavy shadows of sunset it was growing hard to see clearly.
 
The young man lying passively in his bonds, allowing himself be carried, did look like Valmar, but bigger, more muscular.
 
A young woman with curling dark hair was also being carried, bound.

Then Karin saw what else Eirik’s men were carrying.
 
Piled on litters were six dead bodies.

“Stay still,” said Roric in her ear.
 
“It’s no use rushing them.
 
When the Wanderer returns we should have a chance in the confusion to rescue Valmar.”

“I think I know what Eirik is planning,” Karin whispered back, feeling cold from her throat to her feet.
 
“Some of his warriors were killed, and he is going to make an offering to the lords of death.
 
We don’t have time to wait.
 
Eirik is going to offer Valmar as a sacrifice.”

Roric’s eyes bored into hers.
 
“But this is the immortal realm of voima!” he hissed.
 
“They cannot summon the lords of death here!”

She shook her head.
 
“Try telling that to Eirik.
 
Look at how he’s having the bodies carefully laid out.
 
He called on death from his fortress—and something answered …”

The sun was now only a brilliant red line, pulsing with light.
 
The warriors stopped at the top of the ridge, only a few dozen yards from where Karin and Roric lay hidden by leaves and shadow.
 
“It should be dark soon at last!” Eirik called to his men.
 
“Bring some of the food; we’ll need it for the sacrifice.”

The men brought a basket of bread and a skin of ale.
 
Taken from one of the manors, thought Karin, who could see even at this distance that the bread was moldy.

“Too bad we don’t have any of the women,” Eirik commented, fists on his hips.
 
“The calling should really be done by a woman.
 
Trust Wigla to desert me just when I needed her.”

“How about the mountain cat here?” one of his men suggested.

Eirik went to look at the bound woman with the curling hair.
 
“We do seem to be having a run of women who think they can fight like men,” he said thoughtfully.
 
“I never did get a chance to teach the princess more womanly ways.”

Karin ground her teeth and kept silent.

“So,” said Eirik, “how would you like to make the offering and call on the lords of death to take our brothers?”

“They will not hear you here,” she replied confidently.
 
“I know the Wanderers had some plan of sending a mortal down to Hel to ask Death to come, but the lords of death are not going to answer a call from our realm.”

“What do you mean,
our
realm?” Eirik sneered.
 
“You think you are a lady of voima?”

“That’s right.”

Eirik paused, then paced up and down for a moment, looking irritably to where the last of the sun still lingered.
 
“If you really are an immortal,” he said after a moment, “what are you doing lying tied up here, or riding around with this young man who claims to be a king’s son?
 
You should be off ruling earth and sky!”