A Sterkarm Kiss

by Susan Price

  Toorkild ran to his own bed, where he’d seen Isobel fall. He found her sitting on the floor, her face white and streaked with streams of blood.

  “I be well, I be well,” she said as he crouched beside her. “Nobbut a ding on head.” She caught at his wrist as he made to rise. “Thine jakke, thine—”

  “Away!” Toorkild said, and pulled himself free. His sword and belt hung at the end of the bed. As he slung it on, he yelled, “Sterkarm!” and gestured for all those on their feet—men, women, it didn’t matter—to follow him. He and Sweet Milk led the way to the door. Why worry about armor when you had none with you? They’d come to a wedding, not to a fight. Their helmets, their jakkes, were at home. More fool them, for trusting Grannams.

  Isobel, grasping a post of her bed, hauled herself up. If her husband was going to hunt Grannams in his shirt, then she would find some kind of weapon—a spoon, if that was all there was—and join him. But as she stood, she sickened, and reeled, and fell on the bed.

  Outside, the banshee screamed, heralding death.

  Joan’s courage left her. Her glimpse through the curtain had shown her the Sterkarms being attacked. Was it a raid by another family—by the Beales or the Nixies? Dropping the beaded curtain, she ran back to her wedding bed, jumped into it, and, ridiculously, pretended to be asleep. Pulling the covers over her head, she curled into a ball and shook. She had no weapon, nothing with which to defend herself, and who would defend her? Not the Sterkarms.

  Andrea, standing on the dark, cold hillside under the barrage of noise, watched appalled as the people, struggling, running, howling, filled the spaces between the shacks and buildings. There didn’t seem to be anything she could do except watch. How had this started? Had the Sterkarms—oh, she hoped not, but had they lived up to their reputation for treachery?

  She caught a glimpse of Toorkild, standing head and shoulders above the crowd—standing on something. He was too far away for her to see his face with any clarity—she recognized him more by his shock of hair and beard and his movements.

  Somewhere behind her—somewhere quite close—someone dragged a stick along a railing. She jumped, and looked over her shoulder into the darkness, where there was nothing to be seen except darkness. When she turned again, Toorkild was no longer standing head and shoulders above the melee, and was nowhere to be seen among the scrum.

  Quickly she realized two things. One, someone was behind her on the hillside, in the dark, dragging a stick along railings. Two, there were no railings for anyone to drag a stick along.

  She ran down the hillside toward the illuminated skirmish below. Better to be in danger in company than alone.

  In and among the Elf-Halls people milled, running, shouting. People half dressed, yet armed; people staggering and reeling drunkenly, shoving, falling. Light wheeled and flashed over them until, like a silent and lasting lightning flash, all the great Elf-Lamps came on. The wailing, the bangs, the shrills and explosions made the frightened, angry yelling of the people small and faint.

  Per struggled among them, shoving through, jumping to see over heads, fending off hands that grabbed at him or aimed blows. He was yelling but paying no attention to what he yelled. And then he glimpsed his father. Toorkild had climbed up on something, was standing above the crowd and was pointing, yelling, his face red, his teeth white, his dark hair and beard making a wild, hairy halo around his head. Another halo appeared, briefly, around Toorkild’s head, and Toorkild dropped out of sight. Just dropped.

  Like a swimmer, Per dived into the crowd.

  Windsor stood in the back of an open MPV, with men in camouflage fatigues. He said, “Right. Let the bastards have it.”

  10

  16th Side: After the Fight

  Per struggled toward where he’d seen his father fall. Panicked people shoved by, yelling, bashing into him, sending him staggering. Hands grabbed at him, pushed him. Angry, frightened men lunged at him drunkenly. He was aware, remotely, of his eyes stinging, as if smoke had got into them. He seized a man by the scruff of his shirt and his hair, trying to heave him out of his way, and his eyes gushed tears, blinding him. Letting the man go, he put his hands to his eyes, to wipe them, but the tears were a flood stream. Light dazzled and starred, his eyes closed. However hard he tried to keep them open, they smarted and closed. Breathing was harder. His chest and throat tightened. Choked and blinded, his heart pounding with fear of attack while blind, he groped around him, touching hair, touching skin. Was this Elf-Work? His hand closed on air, then smacked against other groping arms. He struck out at them, angry and afraid, and the arms struck back. But Per hadn’t the breath for fighting. Bent double, eyes sore, he waited for the next blow from his unseen opponent, but none came. The noise around him had changed. Instead of cries of alarm and anger, now there was a confused groaning and sobbing. Forcing himself to stand upright, he tried to raise the rallying cry but couldn’t draw the breath.

  Andrea, rounding the corner of the Sterkarm dormitory, saw that the brightly lit area in front of the inflatable was full of people, half dressed, half awake, half drunk, running about and beckoning others on. She hurried toward the entrance of the building but saw something that made her stop dead and raise fists to her face. A man wearing camouflage fatigues and a large, face-covering helmet and carrying some sort of gun—he was unmistakably a 21st sider—darted across the open space in front of the dorm, dodging the confused people. Near the entrance he dropped to one knee, raised his weapon, and fired into the inflatable building.

  Andrea shouted, “No!” but couldn’t move. Cringing, she waited, horrified, for the dorm to explode, to burst into flames.

  Isobel hauled herself upright again and stood, clutching a bedpost. She shook her head and cursed herself for being weak.

  The dorm, when she looked about, was almost empty, except for a few very small children cowering on a bed against the wall while a row of women stood in front of them, armed with candlesticks and knives. Isobel let go of the bedpost and determinedly set herself to cross the room and join them.

  Something flew through the beaded curtain and landed, smoking, on the floor.

  The women cried out in anger and shock, and two of them ran forward and swiped at the thing—it was a canister—with their candlesticks. And then they dropped their weapons and put their hands to their faces.

  Isobel took another two steps toward them and found herself blinded.

  And Joan, having pulled on her shift and nerved herself to find courage, for the sake of the Grannams’ reputation, edged through the bead curtain from her bridal suite, to see her mother-in-law crawling on the floor, sobbing. She halted, appalled, and saw a group of other Sterkarm women twisting and writhing as they turned their faces this way and that, and mopped at their eyes with sleeves and skirts. A heap of children squealed and sobbed on a bed.

  Joan drew back into her suite, unable to understand what was wrong with the women. As she stood there, bewildered, her own eyes smarted and flooded.

  Everyone Andrea could see was doubling up, clutching at their faces—but the dorm didn’t explode or burn. Something arced over the heads of the people. It looked like a large tin can, trailing smoke. The can was lost to view as it fell among the people—but another and another came arcing into view.

  She stopped again, thinking: What are they? Grenades? Shells? She didn’t know whether to run forward, shouting warnings, or to run away. As she hesitated, her eyes spurted tears. Putting her hands to her face, she found water streaming from her eyes and felt them smarting. She couldn’t open her eyes. They were closed with tears, gummed shut with a barrier of water she couldn’t see through. The air had thickened, or her throat narrowed. It was harder to breathe.

  Tear gas! She’d seen film of it being used to break up riots—she even had a friend who’d been in a crowd at a demonstration when the police had fired tear gas among them. Her first reaction was gratitude. This woul
d end the fight between the Sterkarms and the Grannams, which would certainly have resulted in murder. It had to be Windsor’s doing. Good for him! For once. There’d be some sore eyes among the 16th siders and some coughs, but no one would be hurt.

  Her gratitude changed to fear when she felt a hand close around her arm and someone pulled at her. She reached out wildly with one hand, groping, and connected with something hard and rounded—a helmet.

  A man’s voice, rather muffled and indistinct, said, “It’s all right, miss. I only want to take you to the truck. Get you out of here.”

  The gruff politeness calmed her considerably, and she allowed herself to be towed along, too breathless to talk. At first, bodies bumped against her and staggered away—obviously they were picking their way through people as blind as herself. But then there was more space, and the man beside her said, “Here we are, then, miss. You’ll be okay here.” The guiding hand left her arm, and she felt lonely and helpless. Her eyes and throat burned and she didn’t know when the pain would ease. She heard other people nearby—she could hear them moving, and she heard a car engine. A lot of shouting and moaning was still going on. Putting out a hand, she felt cold metal. Feeling around, she decided that she was standing next to some kind of vehicle.

  “Andrea!” said a voice she knew, despite its muffled sound. “Silly girl! What did you do with your gas mask?”

  Windsor. She couldn’t tell exactly where he was, and that made her feel oddly insecure. She wanted to say, angrily, that she didn’t have a gas mask, and hadn’t known she would need a gas mask, but she could only cough and gasp.

  “Couldn’t wait to get your hands on young Sterkarm, could you?” Windsor said. “I saw you running out of the tent with him. Indecent haste, I call it.”

  Andrea coughed again. It was the only sound she could manage.

  “If you’d only waited, you could have done it in much more comfort. But you hot-blooded barmaids … Never mind! Out of here soon. When we’ve finished the roundup.”

  She managed to croak, “What?”

  A confused sound of grunting and panting came from close by, and someone—Windsor, she supposed—pulled her out of the way. There were clanging noises, as of something being thrown into a van, sounds of dragging and shoving and shouted, muffled orders.

  “We’re all off to have tea at Sterkarm Tower,” Windsor said. “Oh, girls! Isn’t this fun?”

  11

  16th Side: Elf-Rescue

  In the Elf-palace that had been the Grannam dormitory, bedding had been dragged from beds. Curtains and wreaths and twinkling lights had been torn down, trampled, smashed.

  Richard Grannam, Lord Brackenhill, lay on a bed near the center of the hall. His pillow and the sheet below him were scarlet, soaked with blood. His head was shattered. Other beds, near him, were occupied by people wounded or drunk. Children were clustered around them, sitting on the beds, huddled on the floor.

  The able-bodied and almost sober—men, women, and youths—stood or sat around the edges of the hall, holding clubs, knives, swords, heavy ladles, cooking spits—anything that had come to hand as a weapon.

  Mistress Crosar sat on a stool near the entrance. Among the men who stood in a half circle behind and near her was Gareth Phillips, in his Elvish jeans and fleece. He held a large kitchen cleaver that someone had brought back from the cooking shacks so it shouldn’t be stolen. His hand slipped sweatily on the wooden handle, and he had no idea what he would do with it if a Sterkarm attack came. Throw it at someone, perhaps. What is going on out there? he thought. Somebody might let me know. His throat was tight and his heart beat steadily a beat or two faster than normal, while his nerves were tightened up by uncertainty and anxiety, to the point of snapping. He still didn’t think he could actually hit anyone with the sharp blade. The flesh would part, the blood would run out— Horrible. He just couldn’t do it.

  I can smell blood, he thought. I can smell it. This is worse than anybody ever told me it was going to be. I should be paid double for this. There was a woman with a broken jaw. Her jawbone actually broken by a blow. Mistress Crosar had tipped wine down the woman’s throat and tied her jaw up. Now she lay on a bed, moaning in a nerve-scraping way.

  I’m from the 21st, Gareth thought. This isn’t my scene. If asked, he’d have said he was cool about violence, lived with it all the time. It was on TV every day—the knife attack in the city center, the shooting outside a club, and the wars everywhere, the terrorist bombs. You have to have wars, James Windsor said. You don’t win freedom or right wrongs by thinking positive thoughts or talking about it. You have to get off your arse and fight. But Gareth had never fought, apart from a few shoves and thumps in the playground. “A woman had her jaw broken” sounded so inconsequential when you didn’t have to see the misshapen face or listen to the woman sobbing and moaning in pain for hours. “A man suffered head injuries” didn’t sound much when you didn’t have to smell the blood and watch it soaking into a bed. He hadn’t known that merely seeing, hearing, and smelling these things would make his own body tremble and shudder.

  What was happening out there, now that the Grannams and the Sterkarms were all riled up? Why doesn’t somebody let me know? They’re supposed to keep me informed. This was going in a memo when he got back—failure of communication. His belly was suddenly gripped by a cold spasm, as it occurred to him that he might never see the 21st again. If things—as he half feared—had gone badly wrong, he could be killed. He could really be killed. For a second he thought he might throw up, or piss himself, but the moment passed. It’s okay, he told himself. You could get a call any moment. And if things looked as if they were getting really bad—well, the Tube wasn’t so far away. He could run for it.

  Running away would mean getting fired. Or at least loss of promotion. No house of his own, no beautiful car, no success. Well, success would be postponed—and what chance would he have of running for it if a gang of armed Sterkarms came pounding through that door, yelling murder? … Keep calm, hang on a bit longer, see what happens.

  “It will be light soon,” Mistress Crosar said.

  Gareth looked at her. She had pulled on her gown but hadn’t bothered to have it laced and pinned about her properly, so it hung in strange bags and folds. She’d left off her cap, and her fair, graying hair hung down about her shoulders. But, he had to admit, she’d been magnificent. In the attack she’d been knocked down, and it had obviously unnerved her—he remembered how her voice had shaken—but on finding her brother’s head smashed, and he beyond rousing, she hadn’t panicked or even merely wept. If she had, Gareth wouldn’t have blamed her, an aging, bereft woman. Instead, she’d drawn her brother’s sword and—well, rallied her troops. She’d cried out to everyone to arm themselves. Some men had run out of the hall in pursuit of the retreating Sterkarms, and she’d run to the entrance and screamed at them to come back. “They trick you, they trick you!” she’d screeched.

  Some had persisted in the chase, and God knew what had happened to them, but most had returned. “We mun be ready for them,” Mistress Crosar had said. “Stand around walls. If they cut through walls, be ready. Guard door, in case they come again.”

  “They’ll burn hall over our heads,” a man had said.

  “No,” Gareth had told them. “It will no burn. Elf-Work.” Thank God for 21st-century building regulations.

  Noticing him for the first time, Mistress Crosar said, “Be you with us, Master Elf? Well come. Arm yourself.”

  So someone had given him the cleaver. Mistress Crosar herself sat on her stool, guarding the hall’s entrance, with her brother’s sword, naked, across her skirted knees. Gareth doubted whether she’d ever used a sword, even in a game, but her example was doing wonders for her men. They kept looking at her and then almost preening. “Good old lass,” they whispered among themselves—after all, if Grannam women were so brave and hardy, how much braver and hardier were they, the me
n?

  The beaded curtain at the hall’s entrance had been looped and fastened back, and through the opening she and her men watched the night fade into gray. It was then, at last, that the walkie-talkie stitched into Gareth’s fleece buzzed. Eagerly, he put the little speaker into his ear.

  “White Mouse? Come in, White Mouse.”

  “Here!” he said, too loudly, and startled the Grannams near him. He listened, his face breaking into a big, relieved grin. “Okay! Okay! Will do! Mistress Grannam! Good news from Elven!”

  She was looking at him attentively, as was everyone near her.

  “It be over—fighting be all over. They be sending Elf-Carts to take you all safely back to your tower.”

  Mistress Crosar remained seated, the sword across her knees, her face tired and baffled. The man who stood by her stepped forward, and Gareth groaned to himself. He’d been expecting this man to stick his oar in all night, and now he was kicking off. Davy Grannam, the leader of the Grannams’ garrison, a man who always stared down Gareth, and even Windsor, with a hard, dark, glittering eye, who never seemed quite able to hide his suspicion of the Elves. You may fool others, his manner and his look always said, but I ken well you mean no good. At this moment he was half dressed in a long, limp shirt, but he wore a helmet and carried an unsheathed sword in his hand, and despite his disarray he seemed, to Gareth, as hard and menacing as ever. A tall, bony man—big, knobby bones, like stones, beneath his eyes, and at wrists, knuckles, and collar. His skin was weathered to brown leather. Beneath his helmet he was bald, but his beard was thick and black. He made Gareth nervous, always had. “How dost ken?” he said.