by Voima
“Yes,” said Karin, quickly and with assurance. If she had not known him she would have been frightened by him. From this angle his profile looked like a hawk’s, and he appeared to be looking into a rather ferocious distance. “I trust him completely.”
Surprisingly, the woman was willing to be reassured. “I shall talk to my husband when he comes back with the sheep,” she said, leading the way into the hall. The same housecarl was still leering at Karin, but the woman sent him away with a sharp word. “But I think we will let you stay here tonight.”
They were given the loft room over a storehouse adjoining the hall, a bed for Karin and a pile of straw at the door for her warrior. “I cannot even remember the last time before tonight I had a good meal,” said Karin sleepily as Roric slid under the blanket beside her.
“And it has been even longer for me.”
“Shall we take up their offer to stay here tomorrow?”
“Goldmane could use the rest,” said Roric. “And we must have lost Gizor’s pursuit by now.”
She thought that he was more concerned about his stallion than about her, but she was too tired, too glad to be back in a bed after sleeping rough with one ear always cocked for pursuit, to become irritated.
Roric put an arm around her and nuzzled her hair. “Remind me where we are going,” he said, sounding much more awake than she felt. “We have been running from Gizor and Hadros for three days. After a certain point, I either have to be going toward something, or I shall stop running and fight.”
She shifted around to face him, though the loft room was too dark to see anything; the window at the far end was no more than a rectangle of gray. “We are going to rescue Valmar, of course. We cannot let the Wanderers kill him, send him to Hel for their own purposes. With him safe, we at least have a chance to reestablish peace between you and Hadros. And you were the one who wanted to win a kingdom up there.”
He kissed her on the throat and shoulders. He really is still awake, she thought with a small sigh, sliding her arms around his neck.
“Maybe this time,” he said, lifting his lips from hers, “I shall meet the real Wanderers in their realm, and then I shall make my story something glorious.”
Karin ran a finger along his jaw, now freshly-shaved, starting to wake up again herself. “Do you want to kiss me or talk about the Wanderers?” she asked with a hint of laughter in her voice. “Because I can tell you, Roric, I do not believe in them any more.”
“I do,” he said slowly, rolling back and pulling her head onto his shoulder. “But then I was in their realm.”
“Well, I do not intend to deny their existence. After all I spoke with one twice, even if I have not been where you have gone. But I cannot believe they have any power ultimately, or that we mortals should do anything to serve them.”
“Valmar has gone to serve them from what you tell me. Why should we be so determined to save him, if he is doing exactly what he wants? Especially,” kissing her forehead, “since his being gone means no one can possibly try to persuade you to marry him.”
She shook her head, the hair sliding across his face. “No, Roric. If I return to my father’s kingdom, handfast to you and with Valmar gone forever, the war between my father and Hadros will break out again.”
“And we will win it this time,” he said agreeably. “Hadros is an old man now. For that matter so is Gizor—chasing us should finish breaking his strength. And Dag and Nole will be but little help to Hadros. I saw your father’s castle; I would be able to defend it nearly single-handed.”
“You were not there when Hadros took our castle,” Karin said quietly. “I was. Even as a little girl I understood why my father had to surrender. It was either that or starve in a few weeks anyway—after seeing our fields burned and our tenants killed.”
“This time I will bring the tenants inside the walls,” he said, still in a voice that was almost light—but not quite.
“So that is your plan?” she asked in alarm, “double back, find a way to cross the channel, fight Hadros in open battle?”
“It is you, not me, who is so concerned about seeing your father again, about behaving as a future queen should behave. Or else you can stay up in the north country with me as my queen after I win a kingdom single-handed, as Hadros seems to think I can.” She could not tell if he was merely joking or again fighting deep bitterness. “If the Wanderers prefer a king’s son to a man without a father—leaving him instead for the trolls—then I shall have to win my fortune in mortal realms.”
“You realize, Roric,” she said, pushing herself up on an elbow, “that in trying to learn who your father is, you have never asked who your mother might have been.”
She felt him shrug. “Some girl from one of the manors—probably not even a royal manor. Hadros lets his serving-maids keep their babes, but on some of the poorer manors they dread an extra mouth to feed—or even a bastard child growing up to challenge the rightful heir to the inheritance.”
“But you weren’t just any baby. The queen herself raised you as an infant. Do you think you might have been hers?”
Roric sat up abruptly at that. “The get of Hadros’s queen and—whom? Another of the Fifty Kings? One of the warriors? Gizor? He may have been a more handsome man in his youth. But no, Karin. Hadros would never have raised another man’s son as his own.”
“But you weren’t raised as his own,” she said reasonably. “Valmar is the heir. And if he is your half-brother as well as your foster-brother, then there is even more reason to rescue him.”
He flopped back down again. “If Hadros learned his wife had been gotten with child by another man, he would have killed first the baby, then her.”
“Maybe so,” she said uncertainly. “But I, the last few years, have usually been able to talk Hadros around. Perhaps his queen could do the same.”
“You have not been able to talk him around on marrying me instead of Valmar.”
Karin did not answer, thinking glumly that he was right. Roric’s father, whom he so wanted to find, was doubtless a housecarl somewhere—except that the child of a serving-maid and a housecarl would not be expected to be found with a little bone charm.
“And do not be so sure,” added Roric, “that Valmar himself would have no intention of marrying you if he came back alive. He is not like you and me, Karin. We grew up as outsiders in the only castle we considered home. For years I had nothing and no one I could trust. For the last two years I have had my stallion, and the last few months you—even if you do insist on stealing ships without consulting me,” giving her a squeeze, a smile in his voice. “But Valmar has always known that he is heir to a kingdom, and had, whenever he was hurt or frightened, the support of his big sister—you. He grew up with the knowledge that he had a high destiny waiting. Little surprise then that he should go to find adventure with the lords of voima, to seek to do something glorious to win your love, so that when he is king he will still have you beside him.”
“I never felt I could count on Valmar the way you seem to feel you can count on Goldmane,” Karin replied somewhat stiffly, “because he is just a boy. But if he needs me I have to help him. I do intend to go to the Wanderers’ realm to rescue him, and I would feel much better if you were beside me.”
“I was going to suggest you and I go solve the Wanderers’ problems for them,” Roric said quietly, “then live on together in their realm of endless summer, but you do not seem interested.”
“In the meantime,” she said, “let us stay here through tomorrow to rest Goldmane, before we decide if we are going on or doubling back.” She stroked his forehead and began to kiss him again, wishing that they did not have to run, wishing there were other options than the ones they had, that it could be only she and Roric together.
She spent the next day helping with the chores on the manor while Roric spent much of the day asleep.
It felt surprisingly comforting to be doing again the tasks that she had always done at Hadros’s castle, cooking, milk
ing, drawing water from the well, sweeping, weaving, churning the butter. And her work drew a compliment. “Your manor must have been well regulated, since your mother taught you so well.” The woman smiled as she spoke; she had been smiling all day.
Karin remembered that she was supposed to have had a mother until a few days before. “Yes. We were a smaller manor than this one. It’s nothing but ash and scorched timber now.” There were only a few maids and a handful of housecarls here, yet the woman and her husband seemed to farm an enormous number of acres, with flocks scattered across the distant fells.
“I do not think you will be troubled by those raiders again,” said the woman quietly, looking out across her lands. “If anyone pursues you, they will find much to impede them.”
“Do you ever have trouble here with raiders?” asked Karin.
“Not since I came to live here. But then almost no one travels these roads, because we are far from the sea and not on the way to anywhere that could not be reached more easily by ship.”
Karin thought that she and Roric would doubtless have to cross several more kingdoms before reaching the Hot-River Mountains. “Isn’t it lonely here?”
“Only occasionally. I have my children, my husband, and those who serve us. It is enough.” The women paused for a moment, then added quickly, “But I have been very happy to have you here today. I would like to make you a guest-gift before you leave—would you accept a mare to ride, so that your warrior’s stallion need not carry you both?”
“Why yes!” said Karin, flustered. “I mean, that is too generous! I could not promise ever to return your horse to you.”
The women gave a faint smile, as if in reaction to something Karin had not said. “I would be honored to have you take a mare from me. And do not worry—her pace will not slow your journey.”
Karin lifted the lid from the churn and reached in carefully to take the new butter from the buttermilk. “Your warrior,” asked the woman casually, meeting Karin’s eyes for one second, “is he also your lover?”
She found herself blushing. “Yes, he is,” she said, turning away to wrap the butter in cheesecloth. It was pointless to lie.
“I thought he might be,” said the woman without any particular expression in her voice, neither satisfaction at having her guess confirmed nor condemnation. “Otherwise you would not have dared flee alone with him, raiders or no raiders.”
Karin held her breath, wondering what else this woman with the sky-blue eyes had guessed.
“If even a high-born woman needs to take a warrior to her bed to earn herself a little safety in this world,” the woman continued, staring off across the hills where her own husband and the sheep had gone, “do you not think it time women found a source of strength of their own?”
Then she did not doubt the story of the raiders on the coast after all, Karin thought. “Women have strengths, certainly,” she answered, thinking of Queen Arane. “We can manipulate men, use their own strength against them, because they sometimes concentrate so hard on action that women can outthink them.”
The woman turned her disconcerting eyes suddenly toward her. “That is not enough,” she said, almost fiercely. “We need to outfight them on their own terms, not just ours.” She slowly began to smile again. “And our time may come, may come sooner than any man has looked for it.”
2
The Wanderers taught Valmar how to fight all over again.
He, along with all the young men in Hadros’s castle, had learned from Gizor One-hand and grown to expect that in a real fight he would do more than hold his own. The one time last year, when Hadros had come himself into the ring with him—it was shortly before the king had broken his leg—and had flattened him with a practice sword in thirty seconds, he attributed to his own unwillingness to attack his father all out.
“But I thought from what you said that I already had awesome powers here,” he objected when one of the enormous white beings explained to him the program for his training.
“You do,” said the Wanderer, turning the face on him that Valmar could not bear to look at for more than a second. “But that does not mean you are indestructible. The body must be made to serve the mind and spirit. Your powers are much greater than in mortal realms, but the forces against which we fight could still overcome you if you were unprepared.”
They gave him a long series of exercises to do and often seemed to be hovering just beyond his vision while he worked, and frequently they asked him how his training was proceeding or gave him additional exercises. He labored, sweating: lifting logs, pulling himself up onto branches by his arms, running for miles to improve his wind, striking again and again with a stick against a tree. The leaves of the tree were streaked with yellow, but they did not fall. The cows watched him, pulling uneasily at the grass as though they did not like the flavor, and lowing querulously.
When he had done these exercises for what might have been weeks, they gave him an opponent, someone who had the appearance of a man but seemed to have no knowledge of anything but fighting. He spoke very little if at all, and when he was not fighting he stood stiff and awkward, staring at nothing, but when he stepped into the practice ring with Valmar he came alive, fighting as though berserk, needing multiple blows to the head to slow him down.
The red sunset sky burned constantly above him, and Valmar quickly lost track of how many cycles of eating and sleeping had passed since he came here. But his arms were finally gaining the prominent muscles he had always admired in Roric, and his beard was coming in full at last.
His father’s castle had begun to seem very far away even though this manor did not yet seem like home. He wondered, running panting through the fields, how he could have assumed for so many years that he would simply grow to manhood and gradually take over the kingdom from his father without ever having gone for adventure.
And he wanted real adventure, not just southern booty, even though he had trouble defining in his own mind what was the difference. He sang the old songs over to himself as he threw a ball against a wall, faster and faster, and tried to knock it with his sword as it flew back toward him. He did hope his real challenges would begin soon. Except for the sunset sky, this manor sometimes threatened to become no more awe-inspiring, no more thrilling of voima, than being back home.
And when he came in tired, and the housecarls took him to the bath house where the stones were already steaming and afterwards served him juicy meat and white bread, he sometimes found himself wishing that he was serving Karin here, rather than the Wanderers. There were no women at the manor at all, and he wondered somewhat uneasily if this was another part of his training.
But when one of the great shining beings came to talk to him his heart always pounded and he looked away, trying unsuccessfully not to blush, both wondering how someone as lowly and unskilled as himself could possibly serve the lords of voima and wildly grateful to fate that he had been given the opportunity.
He tried to express this one evening—except that it was always evening—to one of the Wanderers, the one who had brought him here. As he associated with them more he was beginning to be able to distinguish them, at least a little.
“I am afraid I still do not understand, Lord,” he said, trying not to mumble although it was impossible to meet the other’s eyes. “Why would all-powerful, completely good lords, the creators of sky and earth and sea beneath, need a mortal’s aid?”
“Have we misled you so seriously?” said the Wanderer in the amused tone he took so often. “Did you really imagine that we were all-powerful and completely good? There may be beings like that somewhere, but we are not they, and whoever they may be they do not talk either to mortals or to us.”
“But you created the earth,” Valmar persisted.
“No, Valmar Hadros’s son,” said the other, sounding mildly regretful. “The earth and sky and sea existed before any of us and will persist after any of us. All we shaped was our own realm, for even there we do not create—and we shaped it to
match mortal realms. You of the northern kingdoms tell the old tales of us more than do any others, even if you do have a lot of details wrong, so we have taken your realms as our model. And as you can see, the immortals’ immortal realm itself can finally change.”
“But what can I do to stop the change?”
“Help us correct a mistake we made,” said the Wanderer somewhat distantly. “We thought, as you did, that we could create, that even without women men could make their own successors if those men commanded the powers of voima. But it was not fated to be—and now that creation may be hastening the change.”
Valmar thought about this the next day—or what he could not keep from thinking of as the next day: the next period after he had eaten and slept. He practiced alone today, riding a horse from the Wanderers’ stables, turning it in tighter and tighter circles around the courtyard.
In part he gloried in the honor, the selection of him out of all mortals. It would make an excellent song, he thought, whether he lived to return to his father’s kingdom or died heroically—except that if he never went back no one would know to sing it. But also in part he found himself, against his will, wondering if this sunset land could ever be rectified by one mortal man—or even if it was worth that man’s effort.
Valmar suddenly heard a sharp hissing sound from the edge of the courtyard. It sounded like a sibilant whisper.
He pulled up his horse. Now he heard nothing. But he had an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades as though he was being watched. He sat quite still in the saddle for a moment, then turned his head suddenly.
Sure enough, there was an eye peeking around the gatepost. It drew back abruptly, but then the whispered hiss came again. He dismounted, loosened the peace straps on his sword, and stepped slowly forward.
There were words in the whisper now. “Outside. Come outside. And do not fear me.”
Valmar stopped a few paces short of the gate, just long enough to throw the other off if he was planning to attack him as soon as he stepped through, then went through the gateway with a bound. Jumping back, startled, was a much smaller opponent than he had expected, armed and wearing a horned helmet but showing no immediate inclination to fight. In fact, he realized after a surprised second, in spite of the breast plate and shield it was a woman.
