Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  “It was only an idea,” the Fox said, as if talking things over with the author of the grimoire. That author was a Sithonian; though the Fox’s copy was an Elabonian translation, he’d already found several scornful references to the westerners who had conquered and then been all but conquered by the more anciently civilized land, and equally short shrift given to other Elabonian gods.

  Gerin plucked at his beard as he thought. Substituting butter for olive oil had worked out well enough. No matter what this snooty Sithonian said, using ale in place of wine could also succeed. And he was and always had been on good terms with Baivers. He picked up the grimoire, saying, “I’ll try it.”

  He had a silver bowl; it had been at Fox Keep since his grandfather’s day. He’d been thinking about melting it down along with the rest of the odd bits of silver in the keep and starting his own coinage. Now he was glad he’d never got round to doing that. And ale, of course, was easy to come by.

  He took the bowl and a pitcher of the strongest brew in his cellar out to the shack where he essayed his magics. Before he began the conjuration, he took a while studying the text of the spell, making sure he could slip in Baivers’ name and standard epithets for those of Mavrix. He nodded to himself: that ought to work. He didn’t think he’d need to modify any of the mystical passes that accompanied the charm.

  “I bless thee, Baivers, god of clear sight, and call upon thee: lift the darkness of night,” he intoned, and poured the silver bowl half full of golden ale. He smiled a little when he thought of that; mixing gold and silver, even symbolically, ought to make the spell work better.

  As often happened, the sound of his chanting drew Rihwin, who stood in the doorway to see what he was up to. Gerin nodded to him and set a finger to his lips to enjoin silence. Rihwin nodded back; he knew a man working magic did not need and sometimes could not tolerate distraction.

  Again, the wizard who had written the grimoire made the operator perform the more difficult passes with his left hand. Again, Gerin gratefully accepted that, because it made the spell easier for him. Soon, he thought, the ale would turn clear as crystal and he would be rewarded with a glimpse of Duren’s face, or at least of his surroundings.

  He caught himself yawning in the middle of the spell. What’s wrong? he thought. He couldn’t say it aloud; he was in the middle of the chant. As if from very far away, he watched his sorcerous passes grow languid, listened to his voice turn fuzzy.…

  “Lord prince! Lord Gerin!”

  With a great effort, the Fox opened his eyes. Anxious faces crowding close blocked light from the smoking torches that lit the great hall. Gerin’s eyebrows came down and together—last he remembered, he hadn’t been in the great hall, and torchlighting was hours away.

  “What happened?” he croaked. He discovered he was lying in the rushes on the floor. When he tried to sit up, he felt as if he’d forgotten how to use half his muscles.

  Among the faces peering down at him was Rihwin’s. “Would that you could tell us, lord Gerin,” the southerner answered. “You fell asleep, or perhaps your spirit left your body—however you would have it—in the middle of the spell you were using. We’ve tried from that time to this to rouse you, but to no avail till now.”

  “Aye, that’s the way of it,” Drago agreed. “We didn’t know what in the five hells to do next—stick your foot in the fire, maybe.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t come to that,” Gerin said. From Rihwin, the suggestion might have been a joke. Drago, though, had neither the wit nor the temperament for jokes. When he said something, he meant it.

  That odd, unstrung feeling was fading. Gerin managed to get to his feet. Van, ever practical, gave him a jack of ale. “It’s not enchanted, Captain, but it’s pretty good,” he said.

  Gerin gulped down half the jack before he choked and spluttered. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what went wrong. This time, the chap who wrote the grimoire was smarter than I am. He warned that Baivers’ influence on the spell was soporific, and that’s just what he meant.”

  “The Elabonian pantheon is so dismayingly stodgy,” Rihwin said. Like many of his educated countrymen, he preferred the Sithonian gods to those native to Elabon.

  But Van said, “Honh! Remember how much joy you had of Mavrix.” Rihwin flinched but was honest enough with himself to nod, acknowledging the justice of the hit.

  “Never mind any of that,” Gerin said; his wits were beginning to work more clearly again, and his body to seem as if it might be fully answerable to him after all. “I’ve learned something from this escapade, which may in the long run make it worthwhile.”

  “What’s that?” Van asked, a beat ahead of the rest.

  “That whatever magic I can do isn’t going to let me find my son. And find him I will.” Gerin counted stubbornness a virtue. If you kept hitting at a problem, sooner or later it was likely to fall down. He went on, “Using ale for wine in the spell might have knocked me out, but, by Dyaus, there are eyes that never sleep.”

  “Not by Dyaus,” Drago said. “By Biton, you mean, or do I mistake you?”

  “No, you have the right of it,” Gerin said. “I’ll fare forth to the Sibyl at Ikos. Her verse will tell me what I need to know.” He hesitated, then added, “If I can understand it, of course.”

  III

  After the Empire of Elabon conquered the land between the High Kirs and the Niffet, the Elabonians pushed an all-weather highway, the Elabon Way, north from the town of Cassat to the river so they would always be able to move troops against invaders or rebels.

  No large numbers of imperial troops had been seen in the northlands for generations before Elabon severed itself from its province north of the Kirs, but the highway remained: far and away the best land link the northlands boasted. Even barons who did little else maintained the stretch of the Elabon Way that ran through their territory: if for no other reason, then to make sure they collected tolls from travelers along the road.

  “Hard on the horses’ hooves,” Van remarked as the wagon rumbled onto the flag-paved roadbed.

  “So it is,” Gerin said. “Nothing to be done about it, though, unless you want to throw away the road whenever it rains for more than two days straight. Getting a wagon through hub-deep mud isn’t much fun.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Van agreed. “Still, we don’t want the animals lamed or stonebruised, either.”

  “No. Well, we won’t push them hard, not when it’s a five days’ run to Ikos,” Gerin said. “As a matter of fact, the horses aren’t what worries me most.”

  “You always have something to worry about—you’d be worried if you didn’t,” Van said. “What is it this time?”

  “Ricolf the Red’s would be a logical place to stop for the third night,” the Fox answered. “Or it would have been the logical place—” His voice trailed away.

  “—if Ricolf weren’t Elise’s father. If Elise hadn’t up and left you,” Van finished for him. “Aye, that does complicate your life, doesn’t it?”

  “You might say so,” Gerin agreed dryly. “Ricolf’s not my vassal. When Elise was with me, there seemed no need, and afterwards I hadn’t the crust to ask it of him. Nor has he ever sought my protection; he’s done well enough on his own. When Elise was with me, I had a claim on his keep once he died. Now that she’s gone, I suppose Duren is the rightful heir: she’s Ricolf’s only legitimate child, and none of his bastard sons lived.”

  “Which means Duren is Ricolf’s only grandson, too,” Van said. “He’ll need to know about the boy disappearing. Or let me put it another way—he’d have cause to quarrel with you if you rode by without saying so much as a word.”

  Gerin sighed. “I hadn’t thought about it quite like that, but I fear you’re right. I’m his guest-friend from years gone by, but it’ll be bloody awkward just the same. He thinks Elise never would have run off if I’d done … Dyaus, if I’d known what I should have done, I’d have done it. He won’t think better of me for letting Duren be kidnapped,
either.”

  “Captain, you feel bad enough about that all by yourself—you won’t hardly notice anyone else piling on a little more.”

  “Only you would think of making me feel better by reminding me how bad I feel now.” The method was, Gerin admitted to himself, nicely calculated to suit his own gloomy nature.

  Sitting beside him on the wagon’s bench, Van stretched and looked about with an almost child like delight. “Good to be out on the road again,” he said. “Fox Keep’s all very well, but I like having new things to see every minute or every bend in the road—not that the Elabon Way had many bends in it, but you take my meaning.”

  “So I do.” The Fox looked eastward. Quick-moving Tiwaz, now a day past first quarter, had raced close to Nothos, whose pale gibbous disk was just rising over the tree-covered hills. He shook his head. Just as Tiwaz gained on Nothos, so troubles seemed to gain on him with every day that passed, and his own pace was too slow to escape them.

  “There’s a pleasant thought,” Van said when he spoke his conceit aloud. “Tell you what, Fox: instead of sleeping in the open tonight, what say we rest at the next serf village we come upon? They’ll have ale there, and you’ll be better for drinking yourself drunk and starting off tomorrow with a head that thumps like a drum. Then at least you’ll know what ails you.”

  “I know what ails me now,” Gerin said: “Duren’s missing. What I don’t know is what to do about it, and that eats at me as much as his being gone.” Nevertheless, he went on reflectively, “Headman at the next village south is Tervagant Beekeeper. His ale doesn’t have the worst name in the lands I hold.”

  Van slapped him on the back, nearly hard enough to tumble him out of the wagon. “The very thing. Trust me, Captain, you’ll be better for a good carouse.”

  “That’s what Rihwin thought, and he ended up with his robe round his ears and his pecker flapping in the breeze.”

  Even so, the Fox reined in when they rolled up to Tervagant’s village. The headman, a nervous little fellow who kept kneading the front of his tunic with both hands as if it were bread dough, greeted the arrival of his overlord with ill-concealed alarm. “W-what brings you so far south, l-lord prince?” he asked.

  “My son’s been stolen,” Gerin answered flatly. Tervagant’s eyes widened. The news, the Fox saw, had not reached the village till this moment. He set it forth for the headman and the crowd of listeners—mostly women and children, for the men still labored in the fields—who gathered round the wagon.

  “Lord prince, I pray the gods give you back your boy,” Tervagant said. Everyone else echoed his words; noble and peasant shared the anguish a missing child brought. The headman’s hands fell away from his tunic. His face, which had been pasty, gained color. Another one who’s glad I’m not looking into his affairs, Gerin thought. He wondered just how many village headmen had little schemes of their own in play. One of these days, he’d have to try to find out.

  Not today, though. Tervagant ducked into his hut, came out with a ram’s-horn trumpet. He glanced at Gerin for permission before he raised it to his lips. The Fox nodded. Tervagant blew a long, unmusical blast. Some of the peasants looked up from their work in surprise: the sun was low in the west, but not yet brushing the horizon. The men came in happily enough, though.

  “Shall we kill a pig, lord prince?” the headman asked.

  “Aye, if you can without hurting yourselves,” Gerin answered. The thought of fat-rich pork made spit rush into his mouth. He added, “The blood from the beast will give the ghosts what they, want, too.”

  “Some of the blood,” Tervagant corrected thriftily. “The rest we’ll make into blood pudding.” In good times, serfs lived close to the edge. In bad times, they—and the nobles they supported—fell over it. They could afford to waste nothing.

  The pig, like any other, was half wild, with a ridge of hair down its back. Tervagant lured it to him with a turnip, then cut its throat. He had to spring back to keep it from tearing him with its tushes. Blood sprayed every which way as the beast ran through the village until it fell over and lay kicking.

  “That’ll keep the ghosts happier than if the blood went into a nice, neat trench,” Van said.

  The fire the villagers made was big enough to hold a fair number of ghosts away by itself. They butchered the pig, baked some of it in clay, and roasted the rest. Living up to his ekename, Tervagant went into his hut, came out with a pot full of honey, and glazed some of the cooking meat with it. The delicious aroma made Gerin hungrier than he had been before.

  Along with bread, ale, and berries preserved in more of Tervagant’s honey, the pork proved as good as it smelled. A sizable pile of rib bones lay in front of Gerin when he thumped his belly and pronounced himself full. Van had found a pointed rock and was cracking a leg bone to get at the marrow.

  “More ale, lord prince?” one of the peasant women asked.

  “Thank you.” He held out the cup they’d given him. She smiled as she filled it for him. She was, he noticed, not bad-looking, with light eyes that told of a Trokmê or two in the woodpile. She wore her hair long and unbraided, which meant she was unmarried, yet she was no giggling maid.

  When he asked her about that, her face clouded. “I had a husband, lord prince, you’re right, I did, but he died of lockjaw year before last.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gerin said, and meant it—he’d seen lockjaw. “That’s a hard way to go.”

  “Aye, lord prince, it is, but you have to go on,” she said.

  He nodded solemnly; he’d had quite a bit of ale by then. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  “Ethelinda, lord prince.”

  “Well, Ethelinda,” he said, and let it hang there. Now she nodded, as if he’d spoken a complete sentence.

  After supper, Tervagant waved Gerin and Van into a couple of huts whose inhabitants had hastily vacated them. “The gods grant you good night, lord prince, master Van,” he said.

  “Me, I intend to give the gods some help,” Van said. While he’d been sitting by the fire and eating, a couple of young women had almost come to blows over him. Now he led both of them into the hut Tervagant had given him. Watching that, Gerin shook his head. Too bad no one could find a way to put into a jar whatever the outlander had.

  And yet the Fox was not altogether surprised to find Ethelinda at his elbow when he went into the hut the headman had set aside for him. “You’ve no new sweetheart?” he asked her. Some lords took peasant women without thinking past their own pleasure. Along with hunger, though, that was the sort of thing liable to touch off an uprising. As usual, Gerin was careful.

  But Ethelinda shook her head. “No, lord prince.”

  “Good.” Gerin had to duck his head to get into the hut. It was dark inside, and smelled strongly of smoke. He shuffled in, found a straw-filled pallet with his foot. “Here we are.”

  The straw rustled as he sank down onto it, then again when Ethelinda joined him there. She pulled her long tunic off over her head; that was all she wore. Gerin took a little longer getting out of his clothes, but not much. By the way she clung to him, he guessed she’d been telling the truth about having no sweetheart; he didn’t think anyone had touched her so for a long time.

  That made him take care to give her as much pleasure as he could. And, at the last moment, he pulled out and spurted his seed onto her belly rather than deep inside her. He thought he would make her grateful, but she said, “What did you go and do that for?” in anything but a happy voice.

  “To keep you from making a baby,” he answered, wondering if she’d made the connection between what they’d just done and what might happen most of a year later. Every time he thought he had the measure of serfs’ ignorance, he ended up being startled anew.

  Ethelinda knew that connection, though. “I wanted to start a baby,” she said. “I hoped I would.”

  “You did?” Gerin rolled off her and almost fell off the narrow pallet. “Why?”

  “If I was carrying your baby, I could g
o up to Fox Keep and you’d take care of me,” she answered. “I wouldn’t have to work hard, at least for a while.”

  “Oh.” Gerin stared through the darkness at her. She was honest, anyhow. And, he admitted to himself, she was probably right. No woman had ever claimed he’d put a bastard in her; he was moderate in his venery and, to keep such things from happening, often withdrew at the instant he spent. But he would not have turned away anyone with whom he’d slept.

  Maybe you shouldn’t have pulled out, the darker side of him murmured. With Duren gone, you’re liable to need an heir, even if he is a bastard.

  He shook his head. Sometimes he got trapped in his own gloom and lost track of what needed doing. He couldn’t let that happen, not now. His son depended on him.

  Ethelinda sat up and reached for her tunic. “Do you want me to go away, lord prince?” she asked.

  “We’ll be crowded on this bed, but stay if you care to,” Gerin answered. “The night’s not so warm that we’d be sticking to each other wherever we touched.”

  “That’s so,” she agreed. “I always did like having somebody in a bed with me. That’s how I grew up, with all my brothers and sisters and my father and my mother while she was alive, all packed tight together. Sleeping just by yourself is lonely.” She tossed the tunic to the dirt floor. “And besides, who knows what might happen later on?”

  What happened was that Gerin slept the night through and didn’t wake up till after sunrise, when Ethelinda rose from the pallet and finally did put her tunic back on. When she saw his eyes open, she gave him a scornful glance, as if to say, Some stallion you turned out to be.

  He bore up under that without getting upset; unlike Van, he didn’t wear some of his vanity in his trousers. He looked around the peasant hut for a chamber pot. When he didn’t see one, he got up, dressed quickly, and went off into the bushes by the village to relieve himself. The reek that rose from those bushes said he was but following the peasants’ practice.