The Sterkarm Handshake (27 page)

But everyone was grinning at him and nodding, patting him on the back, shaking his hand and then pressing something else—a sausage, an apple—into it. He grinned back. They were murderers, but the security guards were beyond help now and he had to think of himself. It was better to have these murderers grinning at him and offering to share their food than drawing their knives.

When he'd been kissed and hugged at least once by every man there, he was allowed to sit down by the fire. Per was stretched out full length, his head in Andrea's lap, his eyes closed and with one hand holding Andrea's against his face. His other hand was in Sweet Milk's, who sat beside them.

Behind them, inside the chain-link fence, the fire still consumed the Elf-House, and could be heard roaring and crackling. Now and again there was a crash as some other part of the building fell, or the metal twanged in the heat. Sparks and smut showered about them. Silently, Joe and Andrea looked at each other: the only two Elves in Man's-Home.

Andrea looked down at Per's face in her lap. He was asleep, and looked very young and beautiful. She wanted to ask him, Why kill those men? but didn't dare. Instead she told herself that there was no need to ask. Per hadn't actually killed them. He'd only ordered the Elf-House to be burned down; he hadn't shouted any orders about killing people.

She looked around her at the armed, helmeted men, drinking from bottles and horns, laughing and congratulating each other, and realized just how alone and helpless she was. Trapped, in one of the sixteenth century's poorest, hardest, most lawless and godforsaken parts of no-man's-land, with the notorious Sterkarms. Her bones felt as if they were filling up with ice water. Far from questioning Per's actions, she thought, she'd better keep on very, very good terms with him.

The idea made her want to stand up and dump him on the grass. Instead, her mind lurched out of the tracks it had become lodged in. I'm not
trapped
, she thought. If FUP built the Tube once, they can rebuild it. And they will.

It was with that thought that she felt the first jab of real fright.

Some of the men stood, pointing down into the valley and calling on others to look. Andrea, sitting on the ground with Per dozing in her lap, couldn't see, but Sweet Milk and Joe stood, and both reported that horsemen were coming up the valley toward them.

“Is it trouble?” Joe said. The wariness of the men around him was worrying.

Sweet Milk said, “It be Toorkild. Coming to see what fire. Per!” He nudged Per with his foot until Per opened his eyes. “Keep out of sight.”

Wearily, Per sat up. He turned a sleepy face to Andrea, leaned over and kissed her. They had no need to move in order to hide. The men standing in front of them and around them screened them from view.

Toorkild, with two other horsemen and a couple of pikemen on foot, came picking his way up from the river, rounding boulders and hollows. He'd been told as soon as the big fire had been sighted from the tower, and had left as soon as his horse could be saddled, to join his men already encamped on the hillside. He was full of anger and anxiety, and at the sight of the Elf-House collapsing in flames, he thought his son lost forever. He kicked his horse to a trot, careless that it was trying to carry him up a steep slope, and yelled, “Why does it burn? What happened here?”

His men answered him by laughing and grinning at each other. Incensed by their stupidity and insolence, Toorkild reined in, and dismounted and made toward the nearest men with his fist clenched. They dodged away from him and he yelled for Sweet Milk.

Andrea heard the panicked note in Toorkild's voice and got to her feet, thinking the joke cruel. Toorkild saw her. He gave a start, and his face as he looked from her to the burning Elf-House and tried to work out how she came there sent the men around him into loud laughter.

Toorkild was already looking for Per when Sweet Milk gave Per a hand and pulled him to his feet. Toorkild's face filled with gladness and relief. He didn't wait for Per to go to him, but started forward, opening his arms. Per abandoned all dignity, broke into a big smile and ran to him.

Toorkild clamped Per to him as hard as he could, with an arm at the back of his son's neck and an arm about his waist. “A thousand thanks!” Toorkild said. “A thousand, thousand thanks!”

Per was trying to ask about his mother, about Cuddy and Fowl, but his face was pressed into his father's neck, beard and hair, his chin and mouth pressed against the iron plates in Toorkild's jakke. He pushed, trying to get free, until Toorkild wrapped his cloak around them both, enclosing Per, after the chill of the hillside, in a warm fug that stank of his father and his parents' bed, of peat smoke, horses and other homely things. Per gave in then and leaned against his father, letting Toorkild hold him, if that was what he wanted. “My little lad,” Toorkild said, making Per laugh. Toorkild's hands were pressing against the back of his head and patting all over his shoulders and back, as if to check that he hadn't been cheated of any of his son's substance.

“Per's father,” Andrea explained to Joe, who was staring. Looking around, she saw all the Sterkarms watching fondly, axes and spears in their hands. Sweet Milk had a big soppy grin on his face and, she was almost sure, a tear in his eye.

Toorkild let Per lift his head from his shoulder, so he could see his face. “Tha've all thy color back!”

“Elven put new blood in me.” Leaning on his father as he might on a doorpost, Per raised his injured leg, showing how easily he could flex it. “They stuck it with glue! And it never went bad-ways. There be no scar.”

Toorkild patted the raised leg wonderingly. “Well, well. There be Elf-Healing for thee.” He wrapped his cloak more closely around his son, almost hiding him from sight, and nodded to a man who happened to be in front of him. “Thee. Back to the tower and tell good-wife her bairn be home and safe. Tha've been a worrit to her since afore tha was born,” he added to Per, and then declared to the hillside at large, “If Grannams come and take all my kine this night, I'll no care. Entraya!” He spread one arm for her. “Me bonny lass!”

Toorkild, in his time, had certainly killed, she thought, but she went forward anyway and was pulled into Toorkild's strong, warm and reeking embrace alongside Per. She'd forgotten, even in her brief leave, the full fug of sixteenth-century stink: the breath-pinching mixture of old and new sweat, of leather and horses, of old cooking and smoke and damp. Per had probably missed it.

Toorkild smacked a prickly kiss on her cheek “For bringing my little lad back whole to me.” Another squeeze, another kiss. “And for bringing back thysen.” Growing wet eyed and sentimental again, he pushed her and Per together and kissed each of their heads in turn. “My little lad, my little lass. When shall wedding be?”

Oh my God, Andrea thought. In a dizzying moment, she lived through years of marriage to Per: a small amount of pleasure and happiness offset by sixteenth-century childbirth and—if she survived that—all the humiliations of Per's infidelity, the grief of children's deaths, the frights and shocks of constant petty warfare and daily drudgery. She thought: That isn't the life I wanted. Not even near.

It wasn't likely to happen, though, not once FUP rebuilt the Tube. But something worse might.

Toorkild was looking over their heads, at the smoke and flames that had brought him out there. “Who fired Elf-House?”

Despite the food and rest, Per was still tired, and had been resting his head on Toorkild's shoulder. He lifted it and said, “I did.”

Toorkild grasped Per by the shoulders and pushed him away, shaking Per's head on his neck. “What? Without yea or nay? Without a by-your-leave?
Thee
fired Elf-House? I'll—” He raised his hand to slap.

The raised hand was no more than a threat, and Per easily stepped back out of reach. “I did it to save thee from Elven!”

Andrea was startled. She'd supposed that Per had burned down the Elf-House because it was there rather than for any reason, still less this reason.

“Whiles tha was sitting on tha fat arse, scratching thasen and belching,” Per said, in the manner typical of Sterkarm arguments, “I saved thee!”

Shocked by this ungrateful insolence in the son he made so much of, Toorkild smacked Per across the mouth—a meaty sound. Per was still for an eye's blink, from pure surprise, and then threw himself bodily at his father, as if to shoulder-charge him off his feet. Toorkild's greater bulk allowed him to stand his ground, and Per was bounced back before being hauled forward again by Toorkild's grip on his jakke. Father and son then began swinging wild slaps and blows at each other.

“Clod-head!”

“Fat old dotard!”

“Tha milky-mouthed dizzart!”

“Half-dead old—”

“Shitten-arsed—”

On the open hillside, the shouts were braying and harsh like the cawing of crows. The occasional slap that connected had the sharp crack of a twig breaking.

Andrea folded her arms, feeling a mixture of exasperation and dread. Was this the company she was doomed to for the rest of her life? Joe's face, as he watched the scuffle, was confused and a little scared. In the space of a few minutes he'd seen Per and Toorkild go from being—to Joe's twenty-first-century way of thinking—embarrassingly affectionate to hitting each other. Leaning her head next to Joe's, Andrea said, “Don't worry. This is business as usual.”

Sweet Milk, thinking the quarrel had gone far enough, locked his arms around Per from behind and swung him clear of the fight, while Hob and Sim got in Toorkild's way, saying, “Now, now,” and “Lad thought he was doing right.”

Toorkild's enthusiasm for the fight had evaporated as soon as he'd smacked Per across the mouth harder than he'd intended, but he put his hands on his hips and stumped about aggressively, saying, “Thought he was right? I'll give him right. What's he know about right?” His stumping took him farther away from Per.

With Sweet Milk still holding him by one arm, Per shouted, “Tha never
listen
!”

“Listen? What be there to listen to?” Toorkild shoved his way grandly past Hob and Sim. “Nowt but the bleating of milky-mouthed lambs!”

At Toorkild's approach, Sweet Milk placed himself in front of Per. Trying to get around him, Per said, “Elven be too strong!
That
be why I burned 'em out! But tha'll never listen!”

“They were trading!” Toorkild and Per circled around Sweet Milk as if he were a pivot, without seeming to notice him. Sweet Milk turned and turned with them, pushing now one away, now the other, though there was no longer any serious threat of violence between them. “Burned wine I was to get! Wee white pills for pains! How will I get them now?”

“Listen!” Per said. His brief anger burned out, and he sat down suddenly on the hillside, hanging his head. “Listen.”

Toorkild, clucking anxiously, hurried over and crouched by him, unfastening his cloak and throwing it around Per's head and shoulders.

“Elven put new blood in me,” Per said. “And look!” Though Toorkild told him to sit still, he got to his knees, unbuttoned his jeans, struggled a little with the zipper, but eventually pulled it down, and pushed down the jeans to show the faint red line across his thigh.

The Sterkarms crowded around, bending low to get a good look, jostling each other, some even touching the faint scar. Those who saw it urged friends to push through from the edge of the crowd and get a look. Andrea and Joe kept well back from the scrum and glanced at each other.

“Flesh was hanging open like a mouth,” Sim said. “I saw it, me.” Sweet Milk nodded, so everyone knew it was true.

Everywhere, men were shaking their heads. “Elf-Healing, eh?”

“Elf-Work.”

Toorkild reached around Per and pulled up his jeans but didn't know how to fasten the zipper. As Per pulled it up, the Sterkarms pressed close again, to watch. Diverted, they began to feel the cloth of the jeans approvingly, and to comment on their strange cut, and to ask Per to run the zipper up and down again.

“Listen,” Per said, but something was being murmured and whispered through the crowd, until Hob shouted out, “No bugger else will be Elf-Healed! Tha've made sure of that, burning down Gate! Toorkild, fetch him another clout!”

“Listen!” Per said.

Toorkild, standing over him, yelled at Hob, “I'll clout thee, tha gobby sheep's-get! Nobody tells me—”

Per got to his feet and elbowed his father in the chest. “Daddy, listen! Everybody, listen! Elven are—
listen!
Elven be like king of Ireland.” The Sterkarms looked at him suspiciously. “Who had cauldron.” His listeners all knew the story, but weren't sure what he was getting at. They folded their arms or leaned on longbows or lances, waiting. “And when his men were killed, he put them in cauldron and they came back to life again. So he could no be beaten until cauldron was broken. See? Elven have Elf-Work that takes away pain, better than espirin they give us!”

“Aye, and we'd like some of it!” a man said. Sweet Milk, arms folded, stared him down.

“Elven can take away their own pain as well as ours,” Per said. “They feel no pain. They can stick together their own hurts, and put new blood into
themselves
, and raise themselves up when they're all but dead! And they outnumber us! I was in their town. There are more of them than leaves in wood or ripples in stream. Let them come as they please, and we'll be overrun. How can we fight them when they feel no pain and mend themselves? It'd be like fighting king of Ireland.”

“Break their cauldron!” someone called out, and guffawed.

Per pointed to the collapsing, burning Elf-House. “I did break their cauldron.” He sank down to the ground again, weary. Andrea left Joe's side, pushed her way through to Per and sat beside him. He smiled at her and took her hand, and she kissed his cheek, grateful that, for now at least, she didn't seem to be included among the Elves.