C. Dale Brittain

by Voima

  When at last he had eaten his fill and pushed the silver plate away—he noted with some surprise that no maid came to take it, that everyone here, both lords and servants, appeared to be men—the Wanderers gathered around him. There seemed to be about a dozen of them, though they were hard to count since he could not look at them directly for more than a few seconds.

  “You may wonder, Valmar Hadros’s son,” began one of them, “why the immortals would want a mortal’s assistance.”

  “I did wonder,” he said after a brief silence, in which he realized they really were waiting for his answer. His heart beat almost ashamedly loudly, as it had the first time he had prepared to face Gizor with a real sword in his fist rather than a wooden sword, or the first time one of the castle maids had kissed him.

  “You have to understand,” the being continued, “that our realm is not exactly like mortal realms, although of course patterned after them. And one difference is that mortals are not meant to come here, and thus individual men and women, if they do come, are much more powerful than they are at home.”

  “If I have to understand,” said Valmar hesitantly, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Well,” said one of the Wanderers, whose slightly amused tone made him think it was the one he had met originally, “you might be surprised to learn that here you have destructive powers of awesome proportions. A land modeled on that of mortals might be destroyed by mortals—and the beings in it.”

  “So is the onset of night caused by mortals?” he asked. If he could just slow his heart, he thought, he might understand all this better. They were counting on him, the immortal lords of voima were counting on him, and he could not fail them.

  “No,” very quietly. “It is our fated end approaching. But a mortal can help us defeat those who are even now preparing to replace us when we are gone.”

  “But even if you defeat some other immortals,” he replied with a frown, “will not fate still find you?”

  They did not answer for a moment, as though uneasy themselves. When one did speak at last, it was with no hint of amusement.

  “A seed dies and is reborn as a stalk of wheat. A mortal dies and is reborn as a voiceless, nameless spirit. Some deaths are glorious, some are sad, some merely an empty end. But because we are immortal we do not have access to Death, to its opportunity for a new beginning in a new form, which might with voima be molded into an even better form than before.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” Valmar asked timidly, fighting his fear but fearing he already knew the answer.

  “After you have helped us defeat the others whose presence has become so much more irritating with the approach of night, we would like you to do us a favor. It is just,” with a brief pause, “the smallest favor. We would like you to descend into Hel for us and find the lords of death.”

  PART II: Flight and Pursuit

  CHAPTER SIX

  1

  “Tell the captain to put us ashore before we reach harbor,” said Roric quietly.

  Karin, standing beside him at the rail, turned toward him in surprise. The wind tugged at her braids, and the sailors were all bustling about now that they were within a few miles of King Hadros’s harbor. The choppy salt water of the channel behind them was empty except for one small sail on the horizon.

  “Surely you, Karin, in planning this theft, realized that Hadros would send a raven-message home,” he continued in an undertone, staring at that sail. “Gizor One-hand may not be one to talk to ravens, but I expect they can talk to him.”

  “But Gizor may have been with the king!” she protested.

  “Then he sent his message to whichever warrior he left in charge, or even to Dag. It doesn’t matter which. Does you father have a blue and white striped sail on his warship, by the way? As soon as Hadros realized we were gone, he sent a raven to tell those here to capture us when we landed—probably to hold you until your father arrived, but to kill me outright.”

  Her eyes were wide. “Would he try—again—to have you killed?”

  “I defied him. If that’s Hadros right behind us, he may have added the refinement to wait to kill me until he could watch.” He smiled grimly. “You and I may not have been outlawed yet, but we are already outcasts for stealing this ship, my sweet. Your friend the Wanderer would be pleased. Little blood-guilt will fall on our killers. But the seamen for the moment seem ready to obey you. Make up some excuse why we need to go ashore—Birch Point should be a good place.”

  She gave him a last quick look and started toward the stern where the captain stood at the rudder.

  But Roric reached out suddenly to catch her arm. “Wait a minute,” he whispered. “Can you see them?”

  She stared toward Birch Point, now less than a half mile away, then abruptly dropped below the level of the rail.

  “Good thinking on Gizor’s part,” said Roric in admiration. “He guessed what I was planning to do and has his welcoming party all ready.”

  Karin tried to tug him down beside her. “But I only saw one man! And I would not have seen him except for the sunlight reflecting from his helmet.”

  Roric remained standing. “They know we are on this ship, whether they spot us or not. At this point, it is better if they do not know we spotted them! You can be sure that the man whose helmet we saw was not Gizor himself.”

  Karin pressed herself against him and he put an arm around her, to the evident interest of the seamen not too busy with the lines and oars to pay attention. “Then what shall we do?” she asked in a low voice, no longer the determined woman who had first taken him to the Mirror-seer and then stolen this ship. He held her tighter.

  “Go ashore at the harbor as though in all innocence,” he answered, thinking rapidly. “Gizor must feel I insulted his honor by escaping before, so he will be well prepared this time. Because Hadros took many of his warriors with him, Gizor will not have enough for an ambush at every possible place. He will—I hope—have left the rest at the castle, knowing there is little place to hide them at the harbor. If we do not suspect an attack, he thinks, we will go straight to the castle and be captured easily there. If we do suspect, we will make for Birch Point rather than the harbor. We should have a twenty-minute headstart on them, maybe more. The alder thickets and the bog will slow them down, and they will not have tried to take horses in there. As soon as we hit land, we run. It is not as though we had any baggage to slow us down!”

  The entry into the harbor seemed to take an eternity, as the sail drooped, losing wind, and the sailors pulled at the oars. The first approach to the dock was not quite on line; the captain, quietly cursing his own steering, had to have the seamen back water, away from the hidden rocks that guarded the harbor against those who did not know the line on which to sight, and tried again. Roric kept his eyes on the shore until they ached, but he could see no motion through the trees.

  When at last the oak planking touched the dock, he was over the side in a second and helping Karin over. There was still no sign of Gizor. Roric was suddenly in high good humor. “We shall join you at the castle shortly,” he called to the seamen. “Before it grows any darker, I want to go to the Weaver’s cave and burn an offering for our safe passage!”

  They walked the first fifty yards, straining for the jangling of armor and weapons, passed a line of trees that shielded them from the harbor, and began to run.

  The afternoon was nearly gone, and the oak trees cast long, dark shadows. They ran hand in hand, their feet on the sandy track sounding unnaturally loud. “If they come around by the shore, we’re ahead of them,” panted Roric. “But if they cut inland from Birch Point, if they guess we are not heading for the castle but—”

  Their way was suddenly barred by three helmeted men. One of them was missing his right hand and held his sword in his left.

  Roric jumped back, his arms wide for a second as though to hide Karin behind him, then whipped out his sword. “Decided to try for me a second time, Gizor?” he shouted.

 
The old warrior looked past him for a second, said, “Karin?” in what sounded like surprise even from inside his helmet, then turned again as if in sharp decision toward Roric. “If you give yourself up,” he said in the tone Roric had never trusted, “we will not hurt the girl.”

  The two warriors with him spread out slowly, one to each side. Roric recognized them—Rolf and Warulf, Gizor’s most trusted warriors, the two who had been with him when they attacked the manor guest house.

  “You did not plan to hurt her anyway!” Roric shot back at Gizor. “Even you know it would be your neck if she was harmed.”

  “Surrender while you still have the chance,” said Gizor warningly. “I’m not going to let you trick me a second time. King Hadros wants you, alive or dead.”

  “If you give yourself up now, I shall not kill you!”

  “Such a braggart, when it’s three against one?”

  Roric laughed defiantly. “Such a coward, to make it three against one?” He moved lightly, testing out the sandy surface, almost dancing as he laughed at Gizor, remembering quickly how these men fought. Rolf was fast, so fierce on the attack that he almost forgot to defend himself, and Warulf was virtually unbeatable if you came at him on his right side, but a little slower against attacks from his left.

  Gizor took a breath that made his chest rise and fall hard, but he answered quietly. “We just want to make sure you surrender peacefully.” He turned his head slightly, as though watching the other two advance. “Throw down your sword now, Roric, and I give you my oath I shall not harm you.”

  “The others will instead?” Roric laughed again and tossed back his hair, then wheeled suddenly. Gizor had stopped a dozen yards away to threaten him, giving him a few seconds now before they could all be on him at once. The warrior to his left—Rolf—was fractionally closer.

  It was three against one, him with no armor and no shield, but it was no worse than it would have been at the manor guest house, where he had taken the Wanderer’s advice and run to save his skin.

  Roric sprang in attack just as Gizor had always taught him. But then he had been fighting to prove his ability—now he was fighting for his life. The warrior’s shield stopped his first sword stroke. Roric parried a return stroke, then went in low for a thrust that almost got past the shield.

  Then he dropped, rolled to the side, and leaped up, dodging the sword of the other warrior coming up behind him. It whizzed along his left arm and took a nick from his hand.

  But now he had them both before him, and Warulf's left side was toward him. From the corner of his eye he could see Gizor, advancing but strangely slowly. They were all men he knew, and these warriors too seemed momentarily reluctant to push their advantage.

  But he could not stop now. He swung his sword two-handed, with a yell and all his strength. It ricocheted off the very top of Warulf’s shield, then found the narrow crevice between the warrior’s mail shirt and his helmet.

  The man collapsed with a rush of blood from his neck, brilliant red in the twilight. Roric leaped back, yelled again, and parried two strokes from Rolf. Gizor had taught him well. His own first strokes bounced, first off the shield, then off the helmet. He feinted to the side, ducked a blow aimed at his face, and found the opening to thrust his sword in low and upwards, into the belly.

  Gizor came at him while he was wrenching his sword loose.

  He tried to turn, his balance off, the track beneath his feet slippery with blood.

  But the old warrior’s rush was very slow, his battle cry almost a shriek. And then he saw the dagger protruding from the back of Gizor’s shoulder, thrust through a slit in the mail.

  It was Karin’s dagger. She held a downed oak branch, and as Gizor raised his sword against Roric, she hit him with it across the head with full force.

  She snatched up the dagger as Gizor collapsed at her feet and stared wildly at Roric, the oak branch dangling from one hand and her eyes half-crazed. He grabbed her other hand and began to run. She threw the branch from her with a cry. Their footprints were bloody the first half mile.

  “I knew I had chosen a good woman in you,” Roric gasped when they stopped to catch their breath. “But I had not realized before how good!”

  Karin’s gray eyes in the dusk looked almost normal again. “We should have killed him while we had the chance,” she said between her teeth.

  “You had the chance,” he said, started to wipe his forehead with his arm, then realized it was covered with blood.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she said in a suddenly small voice. “I could not drive my dagger into his neck. I would never have made a good shield-maiden. But you should have killed him, Roric.”

  He took her hand to pull her onward. “By the Wanderers, Karin, as we were fighting it suddenly came to me, he might be my father.”

  They were walking now, away from the road, across the sandy hills between the trees. “I do not think he can be,” said Karin slowly. “I know you were found at the castle gate, suggesting you must be from this kingdom, but he would certainly know you were his son. Even King Hadros could not order him to kill his own child.”

  “He might not have known I was his,” replied Roric, “if he had fathered me on some girl from one of the manors.”

  “You look nothing like him,” said Karin firmly. “You indeed look like no one in the kingdom. Well,” she added after a moment, “when I first met you, you did look a little like Nole does now.”

  Roric made himself smile. “All fast-growing skinny boys probably look alike. I hope you do not intend to tell me I was fathered by a boy ten years younger than I am! But they would not have taken such care of a foundling had not someone known who I was.”

  “If you want Gizor as your father . . .” she began darkly.

  “No, Karin. I do not want to be the son of Gizor One-hand, even if his training did teach me to defend myself, with or without a shield, against both right-handed and left-handed men. Perhaps that is what the Weaver meant when he said that knowledge of my origins would destroy me.”

  “By the way,” said Karin. “Did you really intend to go to the Weaver’s cave?”

  He abruptly smiled and squeezed her hand. “The Weaver has never given me a clear answer yet. I think I prefer your Mirror-seer.”

  He was silent for a moment then added with a frown, “But perhaps his cave at the bottom of the cliff would be our safest place. No one could kill us at such a spot without being outlawed. If Gizor is still alive in the morning, however, it will be the first place he will look for us. And I do not like the idea of sitting as prisoners in the cave until Hadros returns.”

  “Then where should we go?”

  “Certainly not back to the castle. There will be another ambush waiting for us there, even if the ship behind us was just a merchant vessel and not my foster-father and your father.”

  Karin bit her lip. “I must have distressed my father terribly. He so recently lost his oldest son to shipwreck, and now he will think he has lost me as well.”

  “The two kings will doubtless be confused when they hear the seamen’s story and learn that it was you, not me, who commandeered the ship. That was a good ploy, I thought, to prove you had not been kidnapped, even though I would have tried to talk you out of it if you could hear me! But Gizor’s story—if he survives your attack—will leave Hadros uninterested in anything but revenge.”

  They walked in silence for a moment, then Roric squeezed her hand again and asked, “How did you know just where to put your blade to penetrate his mail shirt?”

  “You forget,” she said with a toss of her head. “I am mistress of Hadros’s castle. I have seen that mail shirt hanging in the hall, with the slit at the shoulder unrepaired, every day for years.”

  And then she added suddenly, “I know where we can go, for some food and a safe place to sleep. We will go to the faeys!”

  The faeys’ tunnels were behind them now, closer to the castle. Karin took the lead, hurrying through the deepening night. Roric, coming a
fter her, listened for the troll or for armed men.

  The faeys had brought their green lanterns out into the dell. When she gave the triple whistle they ran around distractedly as always, calling to each other in their high voices, before they spotted Karin and Roric.

  “There is voima about you, Karin,” Roric commented. “I had never seen the faeys before I stumbled into the back of their burrows. You, of all the king’s court, are the only mortal who can find beings who seem so incapable of defending or hiding themselves.”

  And then the faeys were all around them, jumping up and down and laughing. “Karin! Karin! Are you a queen yet! She’s dressed like a queen! And she has Roric with her! Is he a king now? But he has blood on him! And I didn’t like the way he came into our tunnels!”

  But in their delight to see Karin the faeys quickly forgot their objections to Roric. Soon the two were sitting eating berries in the green light of the dell. The faeys, in some distaste, brought Roric a basin of water, and he washed off his hands and arms.

  “Even if they use the dogs to hunt us,” said Karin, “I do not think they will find us here.” Close to the castle but sheltered from it by night and by voima, they felt temporary peace settle around them.

  Roric slowly and carefully cleaned his sword, then leaned his forehead on his fists.

  “I keep seeing their faces, Karin,” he said quietly. “I knew Rolf and Warulf well, slept next to them, ate and drank next to them, and now they are in Hel because of me. Not a very glorious end to their stories.”

  “It also would not have been a very glorious end to yours.”

  “And a very short and pointless story mine has been so far. I am not a hero out of legend, Karin. I would never have overcome three men had they fought as desperately as I was fighting, and if I had not had you.”

  “You stopped them in their mail and helmets, when you did not even have a shield,” she said warmly, putting her shoulder against his. “You are enough of a hero for me, Roric. But do you think,” looking toward him sharply in the green light, “you might have come back from the Wanderers’ realm as a man whom steel will not bite?”