Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 114

by Neil Clarke

  He slid back to Conn, yelling, the men stirring awake, all but the dead, but then the dragons reached them, and Hakon’s men swarmed over them.

  VIII.

  Raef had never heard exactly how the Jomsvikings had offended Thorkel Leira, but clearly the wergild was going to be very high. The big Tronder had killed three men already and he was lining up the rest of the prisoners for the same. He had started with those who were nearly dead anyway and now another wounded man stumbled exhausted between two slaves, who made him kneel down and twisted a stick in his hair.

  Raef had already counted; there were nine men in the line between him and Conn. The Tronders had tied their hands behind their backs and strung them along the beach, here, and bound their feet together, like trussed lambs. Down the shore, on the pebbles between them and the beached dragons, stood several men, passing a drinking horn and watching Thorkel Leira at his work. One was the man in the gold-rimmed helmet, captain of the iron ship, who was Eirik the Jarl; another was his father, Hakon the Jarl himself.

  Thorkel Leira took a long pull on a drinking horn and gave it to one of the slaves. As he took hold of his sword again, Hakon said, “You, there, what do you think about dying?”

  The Jomsviking, kneeling there, his hands bound, his head stretched out for the killing stroke, said, “I don’t care. My father did it. Tonight I’ll drink Odin’s ale, Thorkel, but you will be despised for this forever. Slash away.”

  Thorkel raised the sword and struck off his head. The slave took the head by the hair and carried it off to the heap by the shore.

  Conn said, “You know, I don’t like how this is going.”

  Raef thought the Jomsvikings were too ready for dying. He was not; he rubbed his bound wrists frantically back and forth, and up and down, trying to get some play in the rope. The sun was hot on his shoulders. Another man went up before Thorkel Leira.

  “I don’t mind dying, but I will do it the way I have lived, facing everything. So I ask you to kill me straight ahead, and not bent over, and not from behind.”

  “So be it,” said Thorkel, and stepping forward raised his sword over his shoulder and struck the man straight down the face, cleaving through the top of his skull. The Jomsviking never flinched, his eyes open until his body slumped.

  Thorkel was getting tired, Raef thought; the big Tronder had trouble getting his sword out of the body. He called for the drinking horn again and drained it. Now another was kneeling down in front of Hakon and Eirik and the others, and Thorkel again asked him if he were afraid to die.

  “I’m a Jomsviking,” the kneeling man said. “I don’t care one way or the other. But we have often spoken among us about whether a man remains conscious at all after his head is cut off, and here is a chance to prove it. Cut off my head, and if I am still conscious, I will raise my hand.”

  Beside Raef, Conn gave a choked incredulous laugh. Thorkel stepped forward, and slashed off the head; it took him two strokes to get it entirely off. The two jarls and their men crowded around the body and looked. Then they stepped back, and solemnly Eirik the Jarl turned to the Jomsvikings and announced, “His hand did not move.”

  Conn said, “That was pretty stupid. In a few minutes, we’ll all know for ourselves.” Along the rope line, the Jomsvikings laughed as if they were at table hearing jokes.

  Thorkel turned and glared at him, and then the next man knelt before him, and when he turned to this one, he missed the first stroke. He hit the back of the man’s head, knocking him down, and then his shoulders, and didn’t cut off his head until the third try.

  “I hope you have better aim with your prick, Thorkel,” Conn shouted.

  The Jomsvikings let up a yell of derision, and even Eirik the Jarl smiled, his hands on his hips. Someone called, “That’s why his wife’s always so glad to see me coming, I guess!”

  Half a dozen men shouted, “You mean Ingebjorg? Is that why, do you think?”

  Thorkel’s face twisted. He wheeled around, and pointed at Conn.

  “Bring him. Bring him next!”

  The guard came and untied Conn’s feet. Raef suddenly saw some chance here; he licked his lips, afraid of croaking, a weakling voice, and called out, “Wait.”

  The Jomsvikings were yelling taunts at Thorkel, who stood there with his mouth snarling, his long sword tilted down, but Eirik heard Raef and looked toward him. “What do you want?”

  “Kill me first,” Raef said. “I love my brother too much, I don’t want to see him die. If you kill me first, I won’t have to.”

  Eirik scowled at him, and Hakon made a snort. “Why should we do what you want?” But Thorkel strode forward, the sword in both hands, shouting.

  “Bring him! Bring him! I’ll kill them both at once!”

  The slave untied Raef’s feet, and pulled him up. Conn was already standing, and his feet were already untied. Raef gave him a swift look, walking past, and went down before the jarls on the shore.

  His ribs hurt where he had taken blows in the battle, he was walking a little crooked, and he was tired and hungry, but he summoned himself together. Thorkel’s slaves came up beside him, and pushed him on the shoulder to make him kneel down; one had the stick to twist in his hair.

  He stepped back from the hands on him. “I am a free man. No slave shall put his dirty hands in my hair.”

  The Norse all laughed, except Eirik the Jarl, who snapped, “He’s just stalling. He’s afraid to die. Somebody hold his hair for him, and we’ll see how he does it.”

  One of his hirdmen stepped forward. “My privilege.” He came up before Raef. “Kneel by yourself, then, if you’re free.”

  Raef knelt down, and the Tronder took hold of his long pale hair and stepped back again, and so stretched Raef’s head forward like a chicken on the block. Raef’s heart was hammering in his chest and he was sick to his stomach. His neck felt ten feet long and thin as a whisker; he watched Thorkel approaching in the corner of his eye.

  He said, “Try to do this right, will you?” Up on the beach there was a chorus of jeers.

  Thorkel snarled. He swung up his sword, the long sun glinting off the blade, and brought it down hard.

  With all his strength Raef lunged back and out from under that falling blade, yanking after him the man holding his hair, so that the Tronder’s hands passed under the falling sword and Thorkel slashed them both off at the wrist. The Tronder howled, his arms spurting blood. Still on his knees, Raef staggered his upper body straight. The Tronder’s hands had clenched in his hair, and he had to toss his head to get them out.

  Thorkel wheeled around, hauling the sword back for a fresh blow. His hands still tied behind his back, Raef rolled sideways against the big man’s ankles, and brought him crashing down, so that the sword flew out of his hands.

  Raef struggled to get to his feet. Thorkel sprawled on the ground. Even the Jarls were laughing at him. But Conn had leapt forward even as the sword fell. He knelt astride it, ran his bound hands down the edge, and leapt up again, freed, the sword in his fists.

  Thorkel staggered up. Conn took a long stride toward him, the sword swinging around level, and sliced Thorkel’s head off while the big man was still rising.

  A roar went up from the Jomsvikings. Conn wheeled toward Hakon.

  “Hakon, I challenge you, face to face!”

  Eirik the Jarl had drawn his sword, was shouting, waving his arms, calling his hirdmen to him. Raef lurched to his feet, close to Conn. Conn’s hands were dripping blood; in his fury to get free he had cut himself all over. Quickly he turned and sliced through Raef’s bonds. Eirik and his men were closing in on them.

  Then Hakon called out, again, “Hold. Hold your hands. Who are you, there, Jomsviking? I’ve seen you two before.”

  The Tronders stood where they were. Conn lowered the sword. “I’m not a Jomsviking. I’m Conn Corbansson.”

  “I thought so,” Hakon said. “These are the sons of that Irish wizard, who helped Sweyn Tjugas overcome Bluetooth. I told you Sweyn was behind this.�
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  Eirik said, “So.” He lowered the long sword in his hand. “Still, we’ve won. Good enough. That just now was cleverly done, and to go on is a waste of men. Thorkel’s dead, he needs no more revenge. Let me have these two.”

  Hakon said, “Well, I remember the wizard, who once gave me good advice. I will not say his name. Do what you like with them all.”

  Eirik said, “You, Corbanssons, if I let you live, will you come into my service?”

  Conn said, “You are a generous man, Jarl Eirik. But you should know I swore at Helsingor never to go back to Denmark until I was King of Norway, which I don’t think will sit well with either Sweyn or you Tronders. But those men—” He swung his arm at the hillside, at the twenty men still roped together on the grass. “Those men will serve you, better than any other. Those are the true Jomsvikings!”

  At that there was a yell that went on for a while. Raef saw that Eirik started to smile, his hands on his hips, and Hakon shrugged and walked away toward the ships. Eirik gave a word, and the Jomsvikings were set free.

  Then Hakon the Jarl came up to Conn. He was as Raef remembered him, not tall, with a crisp black beard, and the coldest eyes he had ever seen.

  He said, “King of Norway, was it? I think anyone you do choose to serve will find you more trouble than help. But tell me what you will do now that you are free again.”

  Conn glanced at Raef beside him. “We won’t go back to Sweyn, that’s certain. We promise to go somewhere else and not bother you.”

  Aslak came up to them and shook their hands and clapped them both on the back. Even Havard grinned at them, over Hakon’s shoulder.

  Hakon said, “Then go. But if I catch you again in Norway you’re done.”

  “Agreed,” Conn said, and went on down the beach, Raef beside him. After a while, he said, “I think we hammered that vow.”

  “We, it is now,” Raef said. “Don’t get so drunk next time. We should both be dead. Like everybody else.”

  “But we’re not,” Conn said. He had lost his sword, his ship, his crew, but he felt light, fresh, as if he had just come newly alive again. “I don’t know what to make of that, but I will make something. I swear it. Let’s go.”

  First published in Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

  About the Author

  Cecelia Holland is one of the world’s most highly acclaimed and respected historical novelists, ranked by many alongside other giants in that field such as Mary Renault and Larry McMurtry. Over the span of her thirty year career, she’s written almost thirty historical novels, including The Firedrake, Rakessy, Two Ravens, Ghost on the Steppe, Death of Attila, Hammer For Princes, The King’s Road, Pillar of the Sky, The Lords of Vaumartin, Pacific Street, Sea Beggars, The Earl, The King in Winter, The Belt of Gold, The Serpent Dreamer, The High City, Kings of the North, and a series of fantasy novels, including The Soul Thief, The Witches Kitchen, The Serpent Dreamer, and Varanger. She also wrote the well-known science fiction novel Floating Worlds, which was nominated for a Locus Award in 1975. Her most recent book is a new fantasy novel, Dragon Heart.

  Gray Wings

  Karl Bunker

  It was just carelessness. I’d gotten into the wake turbulence of an old jetliner that was still low after taking off from Lagos. The wingtip vortices off of those old buckets can trail behind them for fifty or a hundred kilometers, and . . . well, I was careless.

  So I tumbled and spun and twisted and generally had a bad time of it, and then I fell. By the time I was wings-up and face-down again, I didn’t have much altitude left and the ground was rushing up to greet me. My wings had folded in tight during my tumble, and at the speed I was falling I’d rip my sternum open if I tried to unfurl them too quickly. So I went easy, feathering open slowly. I turned into the wind, trying to translate my downward momentum into forward. I furled out more and more, listening to the fibers that held my chest together go snap, snap, snap.

  But it was working; I was falling slower. There was a treeless valley to my right, so I teased out a banking turn in that direction. I skimmed over the crest of a low hill, glancing down to watch the ground blur past me with two meters to spare. Then I looked up again—too late.

  There was a building straight ahead of me, and all I had time to do was close my eyes. I hit the thatched roof and ripped through it with a whooshing, crunching sound. Then there was another fraction of a second of blind freefall, and then my hands and chest and stomach hit a hard-packed dirt floor and I skidded to a stop.

  I was lying inside a low building. There were broken lengths of wood and piles of straw scattered around me, underneath me, on top of me. I took a slow breath, then started looking at my body, moving as little as possible. There was a long ragged gash across my shoulder and partway down my right breast, but it was already closing. My left leg was worse, with both bones below the knee broken, the tibia piercing the skin and the fabric of my unitard. That seemed to be it for body damage. I turned my head carefully and looked back at my wings. “Shit!” I yelled. The main spar of both wings was snapped just before the elbow joint, the bloody carbon fibers extending like brush bristles from the broken ends.

  I lay still for a while, just breathing. Then I sat up and grabbed my left shin above and below the break. I shut off all pain and deadened the muscles, and then started pulling and twisting. After a few attempts I got the broken ends of the bones lined up. I clamped both hands over the break and held, counting out 120 elephants. Somewhere around ninety my nerve-shutoff timed out and pain came roaring back, and I groaned and whimpered and sniffled.

  When I was done counting, and a while after that, I opened my eyes again. I was lying on my side and there was an old woman looming over me. Black-skinned and deeply wrinkled, her mouth was open in what might have been a smile, showing several missing teeth. She said something in a language I didn’t understand, then in thickly accented English: “An anchel, yes? We have a little girl-child anchel fallen from heaven, eh?” She laughed, then straightened up and walked away, kicking aside a pile of straw as she went to a door and left.

  I looked around at the building I was in. It seemed to be a small barn, with a hayloft and unglazed windows on all four walls. Beyond those walls, I was in the dead center of nowhere. I didn’t know where I was to within two hundred kilometers, and wouldn’t until I hit the Niger River sometime in the next day or so, where the beacon buoys would tell me whether to head upstream or down.

  The door swung open again and two people came through it: The old woman and a young man. The woman spoke in her unknown language to the man, pointed at me, then at the hole in the roof. She laughed her thin, dry laugh. The man walked up to me and bent over at the waist, examining me. Belatedly, I thought to check the front of my unitard to see if my breasts were showing. Not that there’s much to look at there, but some cultures are touchy about that sort of thing. He systematically looked me over: legs, torso, arms, face, and finally the broken wings that sprouted from my back. Then he spoke, his accent not as thick as the old woman’s. “How bad you are hurt?” he said.

  “I— I’m all right. My leg was . . . But it will heal.” I realized that he was in fact almost a boy, possibly still in his teens. He was tall and very thin and dressed in blue jean shorts and a T-shirt. “My name is Amy,” I said. “I’m flying in the Kitaroharo Race—do you know it?”

  The young man looked up, through the hole in the roof to the sky beyond. “Yes,” he said slowly. “The flyer races. They give you wings and you fly; sometimes you race. I have heard of this—seen videos.” Suddenly he dropped to his knees. He bent his head, looking closely at my leg in the dim light. “Are you sure is okay? There is much blood.”

  “Yes, it will be fine.” I peeled up the soggy leg of my unitard to reassure him. The pain had subsided to a dull throb by now.

  With one finger he traced a path in the air, close to my skin but not touching it, following the line of the scar that showed where the bone had come through. It was
a swollen, light-colored streak against the darker ash-gray of my skin. He withdrew his hand, closing his fingers. “You fix yourself? Of course—you have healing nanos, yes? Good. Very good.” He stood up again. “Dabir is me—is my name,” he said, touching his chest. He smiled, his teeth bright in the gloom. His face was beautiful, with wide, innocent eyes, high cheekbones, and a long nose that flared at the nostrils. “I am please to meet you, Amy.” The smile flashed again and he waved vaguely in the direction of the door he had come through. “Our connection is dead right now, but I can go to the village, to the computers there. Shall I call to Lagos maybe? Or you have family I should call? People who come get you?”

  “No!” I blurted. “If you do that they’ll take me out of the race, and I won’t qualify for the Asiatics this season. I can’t win this race now, probably can’t even place in the top ten, but the time limit for finishing is still six days away. I can make it to Casablanca by then—” I twisted around to look at where my wings were broken, the upper parts of the spars dangling limply, “if I can repair my wings fast enough.”

  “You can fix your wings yourself?” Dabir asked. “Like your leg?”

  “Not quite. They need to be splinted until they self-repair, and I can’t reach them to do that. I’ll need help.”

  Dabir went around behind me and crouched down again. A moment later he made a soft grunting sound. “You are bleeding,” he said. “The broken part of the wings—it bleeds.”

  “Yes. They’re a part of me, connected to my blood supply. But it’s okay; they’ll only bleed a little, and it doesn’t hurt.” This wasn’t entirely true; I could feel the two breaks in the main spars, especially when the broken ends flexed, and while it wasn’t anything like the pain in my leg had been, it was damned unpleasant.