by J. D. Moyer
Tem bid Sigurd good night and made his way in the dark, stepping carefully, vaguely cognizant that falling and splitting his head open would be deeply unwise this far from the medical facilities on the Stanford. He followed the sound of metal clanging on metal toward the ‘new’ smithy, as he still thought of it, and from the rhythm and timbre of it he decided his uncle was making a sword.
He opened the smithy door to see a blade, glowing white, but it was not his uncle holding it. It was a woman, her long, dark hair pulled back, pale skin and flushed cheeks, hammer raised. She glared at Tem with naked rage, livid at being interrupted, but when she recognized him her anger melted into a sly grin.
“Hello, Tem.”
“Saga. I’m sorry…I heard the hammer. I thought it was my uncle working.”
“Jarl Trond told me I could use the smithy tonight. And I would guess right now he’s snoring loudly after making love to his plump wife.”
Tem was taken aback by this blunt assessment, but he had to admit it was likely true. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“No. Stay a minute. Look at this, let me know what you think. You were a bellows boy once. And I remember you holding Völund’s hammer.”
Did she also remember Völund keeping him locked in a hole? Did she also remember his father cutting Völund’s throat? But it was true – the Kaldbrek smith had let Tem take a turn at the anvil long before his uncle or Jense had let him hold a hammer.
“Come closer. I won’t bite. You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“A little. Elke’s öl is strong.”
She laughed. “Not really. Ringship life has weakened your liver. But really, tell me what you think. Your uncle has been teaching me. He’s less stingy with his knowledge than Jense.”
“Jense regrets not teaching Trond to forge godsteel sooner.” He took the glove Saga offered him, and held the sword, still faintly glowing orange, by the tang. It was a one-handed blade, more-or-less a Viking-style sword, light and well-balanced.
“This is good.” He was envious, he realized, but also impressed. Saga had put in the time and effort, and it showed.
She smiled. “I know.” And then her hand was on his crotch, squeezing gently. “It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you.”
He pushed her hand away, but he’d waited a moment, and she’d sensed it. Against his will he stiffened, and she noticed that too. His first time had been with Saga, and several times after that, long before Maggie.
“I’m…with someone.”
“Right now you’re with me.”
He couldn’t argue with that, he thought, as she cupped the back of his neck, pulled him close, and kissed him. Well he could, but he didn’t want to. It was exhilarating to touch Saga, as exciting as the first time. She smelled of charcoal smoke and sweat and metal, good smells. And he was here, in the Five Valleys – why shouldn’t he be with Saga?
Things were different here. Life was more brutal, and potentially much shorter. There were none of the layers of redundant safety mechanisms that made ringship life possible, triple airlocks and boarding decontamination procedures and endless safety checklists. Everything safe. Everyone responsible. Everything planned and analyzed, measured and managed.
It was a burden sometimes.
“Stop thinking. Be with me.”
He did as she told him. Then, and for several hours after, in the hay-lined nap nook, until they collapsed unconscious, filthy and exhausted.
Chapter Four
When Tem woke, Saga was gone. There was no fire in the furnace, though the coals still glowed warm. Every tool was in its place, the floor swept.
He dressed and poked his head out the door of the smithy. It was early still, though he had no idea of the exact time. Any means of communicating with the ringship were back at the hovershuttle.
He crept down to his old fishing spot on the bank of the Upper Begna, removed his clothes, and took a quick dip in the frigid water. It wasn’t the same as a hot shower followed by a cup of coffee, but he was just as awake. He dressed, still wet, but the intelligent material of his clothing wicked the moisture from his skin and dried itself.
He knew he would probably regret his tryst with Saga, but he didn’t yet. The memory of her was too fresh in his mind. He wondered how much she had changed. Now that she was jarl, was she less impulsive, less prone to outbursts of rage? Maybe she had mellowed a little, become more sensible.
Or maybe not. It still felt dangerous to be near her. That was part of why it was so exciting. And yet he felt a pit in his stomach when he thought of Maggie.
He trudged up the trail, feeling a chill from his wet hair, despite the warmth generated by his clothes. Tante Katja’s cabin was not far from Trond’s large house. He was worried she might still be asleep, but his aunt answered the door moments after he knocked. She looked at him with bemused skepticism.
“Gone for a swim this early?”
“Let me in – it’s freezing out here!”
Katja had looked alarmingly lean the last time he’d seen her, but she’d filled out since then, and her skin had some color. She looked healthy. The black threads had completely faded away over the years.
“What a racket last night. First Elke’s house, and then a great deal of noise from Trond’s smithy.”
“Saga was working late.”
“Someone was. It’s quite close to here, and sound travels.”
He looked away. He’d thought they’d been relatively quiet. “Why didn’t you come to Elke’s last night?”
Katja sighed and rubbed his shoulder. “It’s difficult between me and Mother. You’re lucky to get along so well with Car-En.”
“Not all of the time.” He’d had his conflicts with his own mother over the years, but ultimately he’d been glad of her decision to uproot their lives and move to the ringstation. Though even now he had mixed feelings. He would always be of two worlds because of that choice she had made for him, to bring him to the Stanford.
Tante Katja made them breakfast: oat porridge, strips of salted venison, and dried apples. It had been a week now without coffee and he was beginning to adjust – he felt alert, with no headache. Other ringstation citizens might not suffer from caffeine withdrawal; most had implants that closely monitored and managed their physiological responses. But his mother had forbidden such technologies for him, and as an adult he’d just never gotten around to the necessary medical procedures. Maybe he was holding on, in some way, to his ‘natural state’ as an Earth-born child. He didn’t even wear a m’eye lens.
Over breakfast they talked about family. He told her about Esper, how his father was teaching archery to ringstation children. In turn she told him about Trond’s many children, his cousins, and who they took after. Her cabin was as he remembered it. Biter – a godsteel longsword forged by Stian, the first smith of Happal – hung on the wall. A shelf of ancient books she’d retrieved from nearby ruins sagged with weight. Another shelf housed a spyglass that Happdal lookouts had once used to watch for Kaldbrek raiders, in darker times.
“I need your advice,” he said after they’d eaten and cleaned up. “I was part of a contact delegation to Sardinia—”
“How did that go? What are they like?” Katja asked, switching to Orbital English. She’d learned the language from Esper, Car-En, and Tem, and tended to use it when discussing anything outside of Happdal. His aunt showed more interest in the greater world than most villagers. She’d never expressed any desire to visit the Stanford or any other ringstation, but the lives of ancient peoples fascinated her. The few known surviving communities on Earth were windows into that past.
“They’re surprisingly resourceful. We knew they were gardeners and herders from Svilsson’s and Han’s early observations, but somehow they’ve developed a full-blown agricultural tradition in the last fifteen years. They’re much richer and more technologically advanced
than we thought.”
“Do they have flying machines?”
“No. Not that advanced. But there was an old woman there – Sperancia – who I think has a greater understanding of science than the others. I suspect she’s introducing new technologies to their community.”
“Is she from one of the ringstations? The Liu Hui?” Katja was familiar with all the members of the Ringstation Coalition.
“No, I don’t think so. I think she’s lived in Bosa – their town – for a long time. She’s been there since Han’s field research, at the very least.”
“Then how does she know so much? Books?”
“Maybe. But I noticed something about her appearance.” Tem described the faint black threads he’d noticed beneath Sperancia’s skin. The same as he’d seen beneath Katja’s skin before her body had reabsorbed the remnants of the artificial parasite.
Katja paled. “You think she’s a gast.” That was what the villagers had called Raekae, and the long line of bodies he had possessed.
“I can’t be sure. There are so many things we still don’t understand about technologies from that age. Rogue experiments, real mad scientists – it was a wild time in history. But there were enough clues….”
“You must have been terrified.”
Her reaction gave him pause. It wasn’t what he’d expected, but of course it made sense. Given what had happened to him as a child – his experience with Umana – it would be understandable if he’d felt uneasy at seeing evidence of another Crucible host. Umana – the ‘Squid Woman’ – a psychopathic tyrant with cybernetic tentacles, had used the Crucible technology to enslave previous hosts within her mind. Among her many heinous deeds, Umana had kidnapped Tem in an attempt to get at his mother. And come to think of it, maybe he had experienced a brief flash of panic when he’d first seen Sperancia up close.
“No – I wasn’t terrified. She was nothing like Umana. She seemed like a kind and sensible person, and the other Sardinians looked up to her.”
“But still – you know what’s possible.”
“Of course.”
“And you want my advice?”
“You’re one of the few people in the world who understands what the Crucible is. Who really understands it.” Katja had lived through the Crucible taking over her body, hijacking her senses, and attempting to map and virtualize every neuron in her brain. But she had found an ally, Zoë, a previous host who had been trapped, existing as a copy of herself within the Crucible’s quantum core. Zoë had created a world within a world, escaping control of the slaver Raekae, and had orchestrated an escape for Katja. That escape had cost Zoë’s life, and the lives of every other previous host enslaved by Raekae, as well as Raekae himself. Katja had not survived unscathed. But she had lived to tell the tale.
“You need to kill her,” Katja said flatly.
“Kill her? No. That’s impossible. We just made contact with the Sardinians. And Sperancia hasn’t given us any reason to believe she’s anything like Raekae or Umana. If she is a Crucible host, it’s somehow different. Maybe with Sperancia, the Crucible is operating as planned: a community of minds inhabiting a single body, with shared control.”
“But even if that’s true, what happens with the next host? All it takes is one person, hungry for power, and then you have a monster. Umana slaughtered a whole town. She would have killed all of us if we hadn’t stopped her. Everyone in the Five Valleys, everyone in Ilium. She wanted Earth as a park, with no people at all. And the Crucible let her rise to power. Without it, she’d probably have lived out her natural life without causing too much harm. It turned her into something else.”
“There’s no indication Sperancia is looking for a new host.”
“You said she was old, didn’t you? That’s reason enough. As the host ages, the Crucible master looks for young bodies to steal.”
Katja herself had been young when Raekae had taken over her body. The mad inventor, in his quest for immortality and power, had stolen her youth. The young woman Tem remembered as a child, laughing and carefree, had never returned.
“We’re meeting with them again soon – this time to trade. Maggie is in Ilium gathering supplies now. I promise I’ll keep an eye on Sperancia. When the time is right I’ll ask her directly about the Crucible, see what she knows. Or at least what she’s willing to admit.”
Katja adjusted a vent that fed the cooking fire, stretched, and then gestured to a pair of wooden swords leaning against the wall. “Fancy a quick spar?”
“Sure. But I’m a little rusty, so go easy on me.” He always enjoyed sword fighting with his aunt, and he was relieved for a change of subject. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to tell Katja about Sperancia, given her immediate visceral reaction. Too much trauma there – his aunt wasn’t thinking rationally.
The wooden longswords were made of hard oak. Katja let Tem take his pick, though the weapons were of approximately the same length and weight. Tem took the one that felt more balanced.
“Good choice,” Katja said. “Sigurd made both of them – practice before Trond let him work with metal. But that one is the second he made, and the better one.”
Outside, on the hard-packed earth in front of her cabin, Katja took a defensive stance. She let him attack, easily defending against his blows with short, efficient parries, always keeping the point of her oaken sword in line with his body. But his aunt seemed more chatty than combative.
“So you came alone? How did you get here?”
“In one of the Ilium hovershuttles.”
“It’s nearby?”
“It’s near the Three Stones. I didn’t want the village children messing with it.” That had been a problem in the past. The hovershuttle didn’t respond to Norse, but some of the villagers had learned enough English to issue it commands, and one joyride had come close to ending in a collision with a tree. In Bosa, someone had severed the rope he’d used to lash the hovershuttle to a dock post, though fortunately they hadn’t managed to activate the craft.
“Does it remember where it’s been, like a bird?” she asked.
“Of course. It records every route and shares that data with computers in Ilium.”
“So everyone knows you are here? There’s no way to travel in secret?”
“I could, if I wanted to, though I have nothing to hide.” Even as he said the words he felt a stab of guilt in his gut. “Why are you so curious about the hovershuttle?”
“You know I have a love for such things, and how they work. Did Trond tell you I designed a system of vents for his furnace? There’s no more need for a bellows boy to wear out his little arms for all hours of the day.”
“I haven’t seen Trond yet – he didn’t come to Elke’s last night. I’ll visit him next, and I’m sure he’ll give me a tour of the smithy.”
Katja grinned, knowing full well he’d already seen the smithy, and lunged at him. He leaned back but her wooden blade still clipped his shoulder. “Slow as ever, nephew.” He wasn’t slow at all – his reflexes were quick enough to have won him several fencing tournaments on the Stanford. But Katja had always been preternaturally fast.
The pain stirred his blood, and he struck back against his aunt, countering her quick strikes with powerful swings. She was faster, but he was younger and stronger. Not as strong as his father or Trond, but still strong, and the two-handed techniques were coming back to him.
“Not bad, little son-of-my-brother!”
Farbror Trond had more gray in his beard, and dark circles under his eyes. But he looked as massively powerful as ever, and happy. He embraced Tem in a bear hug, wooden sword and all, and kissed his forehead. “Sorry I could not join the festivities last night to welcome you. Jarl’s work.”
“I’m happy to hear Summer Trade is still happening.”
“Happening? It’s thriving! Saga is a fine jarl, and Kaldbrek and Happdal are bot
h richer for it. Our cheese for their wool, our steel for their silver, and so on.”
“I hear you are teaching her.”
His uncle furrowed his brow. “Are you jealous, nephew? You know you are always welcome in my smithy, even to this day.”
“I know, Farbror.” He felt his face redden. Why did the village make him feel like a child again?
Trond insisted he visit the big house and see everyone in his family, including Trond’s youngest daughter, Gunborg, who was already two and walking, though Tem had yet to meet her. Katja embraced Tem and kissed his cheeks and thanked him for the sparring session, but did not accept Trond’s invitation to join them. There were always too many goings-on at his house and the ceaseless noise hurt her head.
***
Lissa, Trond’s wife, embraced him. She smelled like milk, goat’s milk and probably her own, and insisted Tem eat breakfast with the family. He’d eaten a full meal only an hour ago, but somehow he was hungry again. Trond and Lissa’s brood were overjoyed to see him. The children were Sigurd, Baldr, Mette, Erica, and little Gunborg: two boys, both with their full height, and three girls who seemed incapable of normal speech. The girls only shouted, even within a pace or two of each other, though neither Trond nor Lissa nor their brothers seemed to notice. Tem filled his plate with oatcakes, honey, sausage, and bitter greens. Lissa brought him a ram’s horn filled with warm goat’s milk, spiced and honeyed, and though it was delicious the grassy smell and sweetness were overwhelming.
“I think I need some fresh air.”
“Come work with me,” Trond said. “Maybe you can swing a hammer for a few hours, since you seem to remember how to swing a sword.”
His uncle took him back to the smithy, where he’d woken in a pile of hay only hours before, and Tem was thankful that Saga had tidied up. If Trond had heard anything besides Saga working steel the night before, he gave no indication of it. And though Trond had many gifts, guile was not one of them; you could see his thoughts written on his face as plain as day.