Ian couldn’t help smiling. “You into javelin-catching?”
Harbard didn’t smile. “I have always found it blessed, not cursed.”
“So,” Ian said, “you want me to take your message to the Vandestish, and in return you’ll heal Hosea?”
Harbard nodded.
“And what if they tell me no, to go to hell?”
“I doubt they will disbelieve you.” Harbard shook his head. “And you can, if you choose, threaten them with my curse.”
Ian snorted.
“My curse has… some value.” Harbard took an apple from the apple barrel, and set it down on the table in front of him. He closed his single eye, and held out his hands, murmuring in a harsh, guttural language that Ian couldn’t follow …
The apple writhed and shivered, split up the side, browning and rotting their eyes, leaving behind only a blackened twist of ash, a stain burned into the table-top, and an awful stench.
“Go,” Harbard said. He took the heavy metal ring from the table and placed it in Ian’s palm.
Harbard’s hairy fingers were probably twice as thick as Ian’s, but the ring, which before had fit only Ian’s thumb, now fit on Ian’s ring finger snugly, without being tight, and when Ian moved it to his thumb, it fit there, too, comfortably. It didn’t look any different, but…
“And bring my word,” Harbard said.
“I shall,” Ian said. “And I expect to find Hosea here, and well, when I return.”
“If you return, young Silverstone, you shall.” There was a twinkle in Harbard’s eye. “If you return.”
Chapter Seven
Margrave Erik Tyrson
The Margrave of the Eastern Hinterlands sat still while his valettes finished his midafternoon sponge bath, and then dressed him. In truth, he would have preferred to do for himself—there was something vaguely unmanly about being washed and dressed and primped by women, even if the women were young and comely.
But that was not a matter of choice, and hadn’t been for many years. Since he had won his hand, he could no more properly wash and dress himself than he could plow a field. Relaxing to the inevitable was not possible for Erik Tyrson, but simulating it was by now a matter of reflex.
Much of his life was spent doing that. Too much. This day, he had spent the morning hunting. It wasn’t a matter of sport for him—Erik Tyrson had been born a peasant, and then as now, members of the peasantry were far too busy with the more important matters involving scraping a living out of the soil to take valuable daylight time out to amuse themselves.
Boredom was often the peasant’s lot, usually inescapable; idleness, never.
But it was a matter of appearances. His claim to the margravature of the Hinterlands was as solid as any noble-born’s could have been: he had married the margravess, after all, in a ceremony witnessed and protected by the Brotherhood of the Sons of Tyr—a full twelve Tyrsons had raised their metal fists and shouted their approval when the bloody wedding sheets had been displayed to the waiting crowd in the courtyard below their wedding chamber—and was the father of the margravine, his first five tries having produced but sons.
But everybody knew he had been born a peasant, and while he never would fully acquire all of the manners and mannerisms of the nobly born, it was a matter of importance that he pay due homage to the forms, at least, and do his best to imitate the manners and usages of the highborn.
The forms required that the nobles write poetry, so he spent hours in a window seat off the great room, quill in hand, writing poetry, even though the best he could manage was clumsy doggerel that he wouldn’t dare to read to anyone else. The forms required that he have strong opinions about food and wine, so he worked with Cook to develop a personal style in cooking, even though he could barely have cared less what he ate, as long as there was enough to fill his belly once a day.
And while as a boy his idea of hunting had consisted of setting highly illegal traps for the deer that were properly the quarry of the nobility, the forms required that he hunt from horseback with great enthusiasm, so hunt he did, and enthusiasm he simulated.
He sat patiently on his dressing stool while the younger and more buxom of the two valettes knelt before him to lace and tie his boots. This one was perhaps the best dresser he’d ever had. She had just the right touch with her clever fingers, lacing his feet solidly into the boots without leaving them too tight. She finished with a complex knot that she sealed with a quick splash of wax from the dressing-candle, then smiled as he got to his feet, ignoring the way he clamped his left hand around the grip of his scabbard. A Tyrson’s sword was a sword, yes, but mostly it and the enameled metal hand that held it were a badge of honor. One could be born nobly; one could marry into a title; but nobody could be a Tyrson without being first judged worthy of the Pain, and then surviving it.
“Your Grace,” she said. “You are dressed.”
“Truly. What word have you?” He was ready to face the world, or, at least, his little piece of it. Truth, he was ready to face his daughter, even.
“Your Grace,” she said, “a messenger awaits in the Great Room.”
He nodded as he walked toward the door. As the door was swung out in front of him, his two waiting sons sprang to attention, then fell in beside him as he walked.
Aglovain Tyrson, like his father, held his sword scabbard properly clamped in his mechanical left hand—a Son of Tyr was always to have his sword at the ready—while Burs Erikson’s was belted about his waist.
Give it time, boy, give it time, he thought. His daughter was, quite properly, the margravine, the margravess-to-be, but his boys would need to marry their titles. Herris was now a town warder in an internal county—his bride’s parents had abdicated in his favor—and Hralf was affianced to a border countess. Already several minor ladies of the Court had sniffed about Aglovain, and understandably so: The boy was accomplished in style, and—by Tyr!—had become a Tyrson at barely fifteen. A few more battles, some additional proof of his virtue and soundness, and he would surely be able to marry a countine at least. Count Aglovain Tyrson—that had an acceptable ring to it. Even a margravature was possible, or perhaps more for him, or for Burs?
The Great Room was cold and drafty, even in mid-afternoon, even with a fire roaring in the huge hearth at its head and two smaller fireplaces set into the western wall. A margrave, of course, would be seated at the head of the table, where the fire would broil his back. That was the trouble with these damn castles—they were either too hot or too cold. It was offensive that a peasant’s shack with its cooking hearth would be more comfortable than the home of nobility.
A lean, homely soldier in the green and gold livery of the Hinterlands waited patiently by the door. His name was… Deibur, perhaps? That or something similar. The margrave was bad with names.
“Greeting, Deiter,” Aglovain Tyrson said, studiously not giving his father a private smile. It was Aglovain’s job to protect his father in more ways than the obvious, and he took his responsibilities as a Tyrson and as the son of Erik Tyrson seriously.
“I’ve ridden long and hard,” Deiter started, “and report that, as Your Grace had suspected, travelers have visited the one called Harbard, and three of them have this morning been dispatched to the west.”
“To the Hinterlands? To the Seat?” Burs broke in, excited.
“I cannot say.” The soldier shook his head. “One of them carries a spear that seems to have some strange virtue about it. They will be watched.”
“And guided,” the margrave said, coldly, thoughtfully. “If necessary.”
He dismissed the messenger with a wave of his hand.
It would be good enough, perhaps, if Burs were to win his hand in battle with the Dominion, but there were other possibilities. And if this Harbard the Ferryman were the one that the margrave had long suspected he might be, one day his messenger would be the Promised Warrior.
Could this be the day?
Could the margrave himself have brought that on?
Oh, Tyr, father to us all, make it be so.
He turned to Aglovain. “Ask the margravine to join me at table tonight. We’ll be dining in my rooms. You will sit at the head of the table in the Great Hall.”
There were matters to discuss and plans to be made, and that had best be done in private. Besides, with all their other responsibilities, it was all too rare that the margrave had some time alone with Marta, and once he married her off, that would become an even rarer delicacy.
Savoring that sort of delicacy was one of the manners, of the nobility that he had acquired with ease.
Aglovain nodded, bowed, and left.
The margrave turned to Burs. “You might spend the rest of the afternoon sparring with the master-at-arms,” he said. “I shall write some poetry.”
He turned and walked away slowly, with dignity.
The forms, after all, must be obeyed. It would be improper to rub his hands—metal and meat—together with a shout of triumph and a smirk of glee.
Chapter Eight
Minor Betrayals
New York to Chicago, a quick run through the tunnels at O’Hare to catch the next United 727 to Minneapolis—Maggie and Rick Foss at Ladera Travel had worked out that it would be faster to take a United flight and change at O’Hare than to wait for the next direct Northwest flight to MSP—a quick run from the far end of the gold concourse to the far end of the green (and why was the gate you had to get to always as far away as physically possible?)—and Minneapolis to Grand Forks.
Jeff Bjerke was waiting for them out in front of the terminal, his LTD with the light bar on top firmly parked in the No Parking zone, both the front and back passenger-side doors of the LTD standing open.
“Are we under arrest, Jeff?” Maggie asked, letting him take her bags and toss them into the back seat.
A thin smile crossed Jeff’s broad face. “No,” he said. “But things are quiet in town—”
“As per usual.” Maggie made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a snicker. Torrie would have silenced her with a glare, but glaring at her didn’t silence her.
“—and what the heck, your Dad said you could use a lift,” Jeff finished. He motioned Maggie into the front seat and shut the door after her.
Torrie smiled. She was wearing her preferred travel outfit of a loose sweatshirt over stretch top and leggings, and if Jeff would rather glance at Maggie’s legs than Torrie’s on the trip home, that wouldn’t hurt anybody.
“You going to run the siren?” Torrie asked, throwing his own bags in the back seat and climbing in. He leaned forward and rested his arms on the back of the front seat.
Cop cars in the city had a wire grid on the back of the front seat, presumably to keep already-handcuffed prisoners from leaping over the partition, kicking the driver unconscious, then taking the handcuff key off the keyring—with their hands still locked behind them—unlocking the handcuffs, and making an escape.
Cops in the city probably didn’t have enough real problems to worry about, Torrie thought.
But, then again, making the back seat of a patrol car useless for anything except transporting a prisoner wasn’t a problem for them; cops in the city didn’t use their patrol cars as the family car in their off-hours.
“No, no siren,” Jeff said, after a few moments. “Unless you think we need it.”
“Damned if I know,” Torrie said. “I don’t really know what’s going on.”
“Your father didn’t tell you on the phone?”
Torrie shook his head. “Nah. Dad … doesn’t like talking on the phone.”
“Well, okay, then let’s use my nice little cop toys. You sit back and buckle yourself in,” Jeff said. He reached down and gave a momentary whoop-whoop-whoop on the siren that caused the traffic in front of them to melt away to the right. “It’s gotten a bit weird.”
Part of the unofficial but entirely de facto Hardwood Town Council was well into a rump session around the Thorsens’ kitchen when Torrie came downstairs, running his fingers through his damp hair.
“Feel better, Torrie?” Doc Sherve mumbled around a mouthful of lefse.
Torrie’s stomach growled at the sight of it. Norwegian favorite—soft potato flatbread, rolled with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.
Ah, the comforts of home…
“Definitely,” Torrie said, stretching. Too many hours in too-small seats had Torrie’s back and legs aching, and while the best cure for that was a shower and a good workout, and a night’s sleep, he had settled for the shower.
“Welcome back, Thorian,” Reverend Oppegaard boomed, the voice that had never needed a sound system pitched to be merely loud, not painful. As usual, he had taken the chair in the corner, where his snowy white beard and amply cut sweater made him look like Santa Claus in mufti as he puffed on his pipe next to where the vacuum panel on the wall quietly sucked most of his smoke away. He didn’t smoke his pipe indoors anywhere except here and his study at the church, and that was such a hellhole of caked-on smoke that even the notoriously stingy board of directors had unanimously voted to build him another study in the church basement so that he wouldn’t have to do his ministerial counseling in the church kitchen.
Here, the pipe left only a pleasant hint of burley and perique in the air. The Nutone central vacuum system hadn’t been designed to be a smoke filter, but that was before Uncle Hosea had gotten his hands on it.
“Yes, do be welcome to your own home.” Minnie Hansen sniffed, whether in greeting or in feigned irritation with the minister’s smoking was anybody’s guess; the two of them had been genially feuding like a pair of fourth-graders for generations. She didn’t look up from the needlepoint—or was it cross-stitch? The difference was important to old Minnie, but Torrie could never keep the two straight—in her lap, but during her decades teaching school, it had long been said that Minnie could see more out of the corner of her eye and the back of her head man most people could straight on, something Torrie could swear to, having been in her class.
Mom was back at the sink, after setting a fresh-brewed cup of coffee at his place at the table.
Torrie plopped down in the seat and first took a cautious sip, then a mouthful. Good, warm coffee, brewed in the frugal Norski style that let you drink it, rather than practically have to cut it with a fork, the way they made it in the city. And forget that oily, inky, bitter stuff that the French had the nerve to call coffee.
It was good to be home. He drained half the cup in one swallow, then set it down.
“Dad back?” he asked.
Doc Sherve shook his head as he drummed his fingers on the table. “No.” He glanced down at the big gold Rolex on his wrist. “He’s taking an extra shift out at the site. He’ll be back sooner or later.”
“He shouldn’t have to do that,” Minnie Hansen said with a deliberate sniff, never missing a stitch. “We’re shorthanded with Arnie missing, and Lars out of town.”
“That’s true.” Mom sat down next to him. “Maybe you could help out there.”
“Could be.” Torrie nodded. “But I think it makes more sense to see if I can catch up with Hosea and the rest.” A lot more sense. Torrie had earned some credibility in the Dominions, while Ian had spent most of his by literally snatching the Brisingamen ruby out from under the nose of Branden del Branden and the rest of the House of Flame.
Ivar del Hival was another case—but Ian had taken to him too much. Understandable, really; Ian needed belonging the way only somebody brought up as isolated as Ian had been could. But Ivar del Hival was a ordinary of the House of Flame, and had been raised on conflict and conspiracy, like they were some sort of vitamins.
And Arnie? Old Arnie Selmo? Arnie was a nice old guy, but the emphasis was on old.
Reverend Oppegaard leaned forward. “There’s been some discussion,” he said, interrupting himself with a puff on his pipe, all the while eyeing Torrie from under heavy brows. “There’s been some… effort to get hold of you… for some time now.”
“Yes, Tor
rie,” Mom said. “I think I must have called every hotel in Europe, looking for you.”
His brow wrinkled. Mom knew that he and Maggie had intended to stay mostly in youth hostels. A lot cheaper—and a lot less conspicuous than spending some of the money Mom was busy turning the Dominion gold into on fancy hotels. And they had pretty much stuck to that, except for an occasional break, when he wanted the water hot and plenty, the bed soft and private, and breakfast delivered to the door.
He deliberately hadn’t been staying in touch—or, mainly, in hotels. The idea was to get away, to be on vacation, to walk down an alpine trail or through the halls of the Prado without a schedule.
No books, no neighbors, no chores, no Brisingamen.
Maggie walked into the kitchen wearing a pair of pleasantly tight jeans topped by a plaid flannel shirt, tucked in but unbuttoned, revealing a skintight bodysuit or whatever they called it underneath. The jeans and shirt were the sort of thing that Mom typically wore, but the peekaboo of the bodysuit was pure Maggie.
She looked strange, somehow, and it took Torrie a moment to figure out that she had applied a bit of blush to her cheekbones and put on lipstick and had done something or other with her eyes—the sort of natural look that an ex-girlfriend of his had sworn was the most difficult kind of makeup to get right. Maggie didn’t usually use makeup, and she sure as hell didn’t make putting makeup on—and blow-drying her hair, too!—a priority for right after a shower.
Torrie frowned for a moment. What’s wrong with this picture?
“Did I miss much?” Maggie asked.
“Not all that much, Maggie,” Reverend Oppegaard said, eyeing her either carefully, appreciatively, or—more likely—both. “Karin was explaining that she was having some trouble getting ahold of you two until recently.”
Maggie frowned at that, and then dismissed the problem with quick smile. “Well, we’re here. Not for long, I take it.” She laid a hand on Torrie’s shoulder as she took the seat next to him, accepting a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies from Mom with a dramatically mouthed Thank You!
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