Winter Song (13 page)

    "Is that," you tried to form words to fit the concept, "why you have a ballista?"

    Arnbjorn said, "Yep. The Norns' ballista has only a limited range, so to reach round the planet, we pass on the parcel. It may be that this wasn't for Steinar at all, except for him to act as a relay."

    You and the other men strode down the hill until your group reached the edge of the Rock-eater herd; you pushed your way through, initially still moving quickly, but gradually slowing as you pushed deeper into the herd that was moving across your path.

    "Bloody things!" The Thrall shoved a rock-eater head over heels.

    It gazed at him reproachfully. It was about a metre tall, shaggy, with short stocky legs. Small ears poked through long, fine fur on either side of a head shaped like an extinct Terran animal called a gopher.

    It must have taken an hour from when the rockeater died to push your way through the seething mass of purring beasts. Several times the Thrall complained at the pace, until Arnbjorn told him to shut up. "If Steinar's been indoors in the last couple of days, then he'll know from the Oracle that he's due a package from the Norns. He may guess that it's landed here. I'm not scared of him, but I'd rather not have a fight if he arrives with a half-dozen of his goons and we're still here."

    Eventually you reached the carcass. Perhaps instinctively avoiding a dead member of the herd, the other rock-eaters swirled around it as a stream flows round a rock.

    You stood over bits of splattered flesh and fleece, in the midst of which was a smouldering circular object, metallic, clearly artificial. "We'll take it home –" Arnbjorn pointed to a set of characters on one side of the object "– and enter these codes into the Oracle. They'll tell us where it was destined for. Let's go!"

    The Thrall opened his mouth, but before he could speak, something shaped like a man – but hairier and shorter with a hairy face and set of nightmare fangs – detached itself from the swirling flock and rushed at your group, yowling and keening. Some of the notes sounded impossibly high, verging on ultrasonic.

    Arnbjorn tossed the object at you and lunged forward, sword bared.

    It stopped.

    Human and alien gazed at one another for long moments, and then with a final yowl, it retreated.

    "Troll?" you said, as the group set off toward Skorradalur.

    "Of course," the Thrall said. "You really are so ignorant you don't recognise one?"

    You gazed at him, trying to work out whether there was more meaning than first seemed to the question. You've learned that sometimes the simplest-sounding questions are actually the most complex. To put so many layers of meaning into such an inefficient communication method as mouth-to-ear seems to you the height of folly. They really should re-design their communication systems. But of course that isn't possible with their current technology.

    You decided that if there was a second layer of meaning, you couldn't extract it, so answered the question as it was asked. "Yes," you said. "I really am that ignorant. But now I have 'troll' filed, and will recognise it: hostile, indigenous life-form. Sentient?"

    "Absolutely not!" Arnbjorn said. "What kind of sentient life-form eats another?"

    "Humans eat trolls?"

    "Course not!" The Thrall erupted with laughter. "They eat us, you damned fool! We've fought them for centuries, just as they've slaughtered us mercilessly. Thor, what kind of fool are you?"

    "Human, augmented," you replied.

You resurfaced, again not knowing what – if anything – triggered the return. It was evening once more. You stood in a small room, facing stairs that lead to the upstairs rooms. There was a white box in one corner. An image hovered in front of you, of mountains and lakes.

    "This is Surtudalur," Bera said, "where I grew up. You can see the edge of the farmhouse, poking out from beneath that lava flow."

    Without warning, she hid the maps. "Someone's coming," she said, and pulled you into the corridor and up the first few stairs, placing a hand over your mouth. "We might get in trouble, the amount of time we spend in here," she whispered. "Pappi likes us to learn from the Oracle, but only the things he wants us to know. Hush, now!"

    You watched Ragnar back into the study, clutching an object under his arm. It was the spherical aid package. Arnbjorn followed, his voice imploring: "If we can check the codes on the Oracle, we can establish whether it's Steinar's, or whether some innocent community has got caught up in your feud with him."

    "If it was intended for Steinar," Ragnar said, "it will be red-flagged as missing, and if you enter the codes it will sound tiny electronic klaxons all over the place. No, leave it alone."

    "But, Pappi–"

    "I said, leave it alone!"

    There was silence, before Arnbjorn said in a high, tight voice, "Very well, Gothi."

    The Other was starting to stir, and from the struggles, a thought arose: why do they put up with his petty tyranny?

    Though you struggled for control, it was such an interesting question that when they left – seconds apart – and Bera removed her hand, you couldn't help echo it aloud.

    Bera wrinkled her nose. "Think how hard it is for him, running this place. Some years we have good winters, when there's enough food that we can pretend that things are getting better. Some years are so bad that we even eat rock-eater and snolfur and endure the resulting sickness and cramps. But every year, every month, every day, we have to count what we have. How much can we spare? If it's stressful for each of us, what must it be like for him? Even the strongest would buckle under that kind of strain."

    "So he is," you struggled for the right words, "mad? From worry?"

    "Maybe, partly," Bera said. "Half the reason he is Gothi is that others in these parts who could do the job don't want to; while the ones who want to be Gothi have neither ability nor the others' support." She nudged you down the stairs. "He wasn't always this bad. But he loved Gunnhild as much as he loved life itself. Since then… Can you imagine how it feels to lose someone you love so much?" She sighed. "Oh, Loki, I love you as a son, but I so miss Karl. I can talk to him." She looked suddenly horrified. "He won't hear this, will he?"

    "No," you answer. You felt the Other rising to the surface, and like a drowning man, stood on the mental equivalent of his head.

    Bera continued, oblivious to your inner turmoil. "Since Gunnhild died, the many good things about Ragnar seem to have withered away, while his bad side's grown worse."

    You felt the world receding; the last words you heard before falling back to the scattered world of the subconscious were Bera's: "I suppose we probably still love Ragnar for who he was, rather than who he's become. That's why we tolerate his behaviour."

    Then the silent abyss swallowed you up.

    Until the next time, you vowed.

EIGHT

Ragnar noted with grim satisfaction that the figure of the utlander no longer limped as he strode along the ridge above Ragnar, but devoured the cloud-wrapped fells with long strides. The alien had finally lost the stick, the last reminder of his weeks-long convalescence.

    On the high ground, the snow had settled, while on the lower-lying fields, it was taking longer and longer to melt in the occasional bouts of sunshine; soon it would cover the ground in a wafer-thin blanket of white.

    Behind them Gudmundir completed the triangle of shepherds. While it needed three of them to drive the flock home, only one man needed to stay with them while they were out on the summer grazing. Gudmundir – Gummi – lived out on the slopes in the summer under a havalifugil-skin tent that was lighter than canvas but far tougher. During the winter the shepherds, Thralls all, moved back to the house; this year it would be even more crowded with one more mouth to feed but Ragnar was convinced that Allman would not only earn his keep, but repay the debt he owed for his care.

    As the days after Allman's arrival became weeks, Ragnar took dour satisfaction in seeing his hairless labourer pacing the hills and valleys with the returning sheep, straining at the bonds of what was obviously his prison. Ragnar could cope with Allman's resentment and grudgingly accepted that the dark-skinned man worked without complaint, even in conditions that taxed the toughest Isheimuri. Bera's doe-eyed reproaches were harder to bear, and made Ragnar angry because the Gothi had no answer to them.

    With a start Ragnar realised that the flock was drifting toward a bog. "Drive the sheep closer!" he bawled. Allman didn't understand the system of whistles and waves that the others tried to teach him, or pretended not to. But on Ragnar's bellow he drove the sheep toward Ragnar and his dog, so that they would clear the edge of the bog. As the flock climbed again, the rustling of the long grass marking their passage, they funnelled across the shallowest part of the stream that fed it, which was too deep and fast-flowing further up the hill to ford there.

    It took them half an hour of ducking backward and forward, Ragnar's dog splashing into the water and leaping out again like a mad thing, to get the flock across the stream. A snow shower overtook them, dotting the air with tiny flakes that stuck to Ragnar's lip and tasted crisp against his tongue, and spotted the long grass that was already yellowing with white.

    The Terraformers had avoided genetic engineering wherever possible. "We're men, not changelings," one Former had said on the Oracle, but they had tweaked both grass and sheep to withstand the toxins, in the case of the sheep by simply excreting them. Glowing blue sheep-shit had proved oddly fascinating to Allman when he first saw it, but who understood the ways of aliens?

    Once Ragnar thought he saw shadows in the mist, and wondered whether the trolls were growing bolder again. They hunted in packs like snolfurs. Pack rats, Ragnar thought. It had been a couple of years since they had driven the last invaders off.

    Once they had forded the stream, it was only a halfhour's walk in the increasingly heavy rain up a steep slope, and they crested a ridge. There they could gaze at Skorradalur squatting in the rain.

    Ragnar's knees ached as they descended the steep slopes toward the farmstead. The turbines were turning well, he noticed. It was principle that made Ragnar's Grandpappi insist that they diversify their energy sources. The Oracle claimed that Man had drained even the supposedly limitless geothermal springs of Old Iceland, and while Isheimur would keep them in steam for centuries to come, the Isheimuri had no desire to repeat the follies of history.

    Then he saw the mill at the end of the line, next to the ballista, and Ragnar grunted in surprise at the same time as Karl said, "Is that windmill supposed to have stopped?"

    "No," Ragnar said. "Bastard thing's seized up. Orn should've fixed that." That there was a long ladder resting against the side of the tower implied that Ragnar's tenant was trying to.

    When they had driven the sheep into the pens inside the barn, Ragnar and Karl entered the yard where Orn the Strong was wiping his hands on a cloth. "I can't fix it," Orn said, before Ragnar could speak.

    "Bugger," Ragnar said. "We'll have to call out a roving mechanic in the spring." One more example of the colony's falling back before the march of stagnation irritated Ragnar.

    "It'll cost a bloody fortune in food or labour," Orn said. "Why don't we just leave it as it is?" He fell silent before Ragnar's glare.

    "Do you know what the problem is?"

    "I think a cog in the yaw drive has seized," Orn said. "I've taken it off-line, 'cause it'll only face one way. If the wind gets too strong from t'other direction, it'll wreck it completely." Orn sighed. "Knowing what it is and fixing it are two different things."

    "Come on," Karl said. "Let's both of us take a look." He gazed at Ragnar, silently asking permission.

    Ragnar shrugged. "If you think that you can fix it, go ahead. But secure the sheep first."

Ragnar spent the afternoon going through some of his outstanding cases. He and the other forty local Gothis met briefly three times a year, at the Spring, Winter and Bride Fairs. And at the Summer Fair, he journeyed onto the Althing, when serious and important disputes were resolved, including appeals against existing judgements.

    Ragnar believed that the provision of competitive "governmental" services was Isheimuri society's greatest strength: the fear of losing clients to rivals checked inefficiency and abuse of power. Isheimuri law owed its resilience and flexibility to decoupling authority from geography. Long-term feuds were difficult without the twin poisons of hereditary title and domain. Difficult, but not impossible.

    Ragnar's job was made easier by the Oracle. He could occasionally chat to the other Gothis, although they were so rarely indoors that the "chats" were usually voicemail replies. It was a patchy system made worse by distance and mountains. What they would do if that patchwork ever wore through wasn't something Ragnar liked to contemplate.

    He'd left a few messages about Allman with his counterparts, warning them that some sort of travelling seer was in the area, and asking who – if anyone – already knew of him. So far, all answers had been negative. It had had one positive side-effect, pre-warning them that Allman was a trouble-maker.

    Ragnar didn't want the utlander going elsewhere to complain. If Allman was dissatisfied with Ragnar's decisions, he could – were he a freeman – switch to a different Gothi without having to move away from Skorradalur; chieftain or client could freely terminate their arrangement, so in theory Karl could swear allegiance to another Gothi. That his status was uncertain was both a complication and a possible bonus. Allman was legally outside the law as far as Ragnar was concerned, so while he had no obligations other than debts, nor did he have any rights. Ragnar had put a roof over the man's head, his people had shared his food with the utlander, and he wasn't going to let Allman follow Bera's example by shaming him by running off with his debt unpaid – even if that debt had been calculated by Ragnar.