by Kate Elliott
Was that a tear on Wolfhere’s cheek? Hard to tell, and the heat of the fire wicked away all moisture.
Sanglant smiled softly and glanced at Heribert, who only shrugged to show that, in this case, he had no advice to offer. “Travel with me and my company of thistles, Wolfhere. What better option do you have? You don’t trust Anne. King Henry has pronounced you under ban. At least I can protect you from the king’s wrath.”
Wolfhere smiled mockingly. “It isn’t the king’s wrath I fear,” he said, but he raised no further objection.
VII
A DEATH SENTENCE
1
STRONGHAND had seen in his dreams that it was the habit of humankind to make their festivals an interlude of excess and self-gratification. They let fermented drink addle their minds. They ate too much. Often they became noisy, contentious, and undisciplined, and they spent their resources extravagantly and as though their cup of plenty ran bottomless.
Even the chieftains of his own kind had grown into the habit of celebration after each victory. They might command their warriors to parade treasure before them, or they might lay bets on fights staged between slaves and beasts. By such means, and in the company of their rivals, they boasted of their power.
He had no need of such displays. The ships of his dead rivals lay beached on his shores and now swelled the numbers of his fleet. Weapons he hoarded in plenty, and the ironsmiths of twenty or more tribes hammered and forged at his order. The chieftains of twenty tribes had come to Rikin Fjord at his command to lay their staffs of authority at his feet. They had accepted him—some willingly—as ruler over all the tribes: first among equals, as the humans styled the regnant who reigned over those who called themselves princes and lords. He had named himself Stronghand, by the right of naming given by the OldMother of his tribe. He was, after all, the first chieftain to unite all the tribes of the RockChildren under one hand.
But he felt no thrill of triumph, no ecstasy of power. He had no wish to celebrate. He nursed in his heart and mind only the chill knife of ambition and the cold emptiness that marked the absence of the one whom he had known as a brother in his heart: Alain, son of Henri, now vanished utterly from mortal lands.
Stronghand no longer dreamed. This lack was a nagging source of bitterness and sorrow.
But dreams were not all of his life. He did not need his dreams. He had thought through his desires with all due calculation. Not even the loss of his heart would divert him from his purpose. After all, ambition and will serve best the one who is heartless.
From his chair, staff in hand, he surveyed the assembly gathered before him: a host of RockChildren spread out on the gently sloping land that descended toward the strand that marked the water’s edge. Twenty-two staffs lay at his feet, and the chieftains who had surrendered their staffs to his authority stood at a respectful distance. The warriors of Rikin tribe stood behind them, intermingling with those warriors who had sailed to Rikin with their war leaders. Beached on the strand and anchored farther up and down the fjord lay at least eighty ships, each one manned with no less than fifty warriors. Yet even this large assembly represented only a portion of the army he could call on now.
They were many, and more waited in the fjords that were home to the other tribes. But the humans still had greater numbers in their own country than all of the RockChildren leagued together.
That was what Bloodheart and the old chieftains had always failed to understand. The humans might be weaker in body, but they had the implacable strength of numbers.
The assembly waited. Distantly, wind sang down from the fjall, where the WiseMothers conferred in the silence that is the privilege of stone. Behind, the SwiftDaughters shifted restlessly. They did not have the patience of their mothers and grandmothers. Not for them the slow measure of eternity. Like their brothers and cousins, they would tread the Earth for no more than forty or so winters before dissolving under the press of time.
Rikin’s OldMother stood at the entrance to her hall, witnessing, as was her right and obligation. He felt her respiration on his neck, although she neither spoke nor made any sign.
This was his day. After all, even when she relinquished the knife of authority to the YoungMother and began her slow trek up to the fjall, she would live far longer than any of her children. His great endeavor must seem to her like the sport of young ones, briefly fought and briefly won.
Yet he intended to make of it as much as he could.
Hakonin’s chief came forward, last of all, and laid his staff atop the careful pile, last to come because Hakonin’s OldMother had been first to understand the scope of Stronghand’s ambition and to offer alliance. Then Hakonin’s chief, too, stepped back to wait at the fore of the assembly, beside Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter, Stronghand’s helmsman and captain, his own litter mate.
Stronghand rose. First, he cut into the haft of each staff the doubled circle that signified his rule. He stained these cuts with ocher to make each incision clearly visible. None spoke as he confirmed his authority in this manner: the staffs of these chieftains would be permanently marked with the sigil of Stronghand’s overlordship.
When he had finished, after each chieftain had come forward to receive his staff, he stared out over the fjord. The waters ran cold and still. Nothing broke that calm surface.
Nothing broke the hush cast over the assembly.
Let them wonder at his lack of expression. Let them fear him because he did not howl in triumph, as any of them would have. What need had he for howling and shrieking, yammering and outcry? Let those he struck against cry and wail. Silence was his ally, not his enemy.
While they watched, he walked through their ranks down to the shoreline. From the water’s edge, he threw a stone into the water. The stone, like any action, created ripples. What his allies did not know was that he had prearranged this signal.
They burst from the quiet waters all at once, more than he could count. Arching upward, thrust there by the pumping strength of their hindquarters, the merfolk twisted in the air and spun down. Those waiting up by the hall saw only silvery bodies, a brief glimpse of fearsome heads and hair that slithered and twined in the air, then the massive splash as the heavy bodies of the merfolk hit the water. With a resounding slap of their tails, the merfolk vanished. Water churned, stilled, and lay as calm as a mirror again. On that surface he saw the reflection of trees and a single, circling hawk. A thread of smoke streaked the sky: the watchfire set on the bluff that guarded the mouth of Rikin Fjord.
A murmur swept the ranks of the assembly, and died away. They all knew how his last enemy, the powerful Nokvi, had met his end. After losing his hands and his victory, he was thrown into the sea to be devoured by the merfolk. It was not a glorious death.
Stronghand walked back to his chair and hoisted his staff. He had no need to shout: let the wind carry his words as far as it was able and let those in the back strain to hear him.
“Hear my words. Now we will act. Already my ships hunt down those of our kind who refuse to stand with us. Yet none of us can rest while others do this work. We must build and make ready.”
Along the high slopes of the valley, scars in the forest cover marked where his human slaves had opened up new land for farming. Not much, truly, but enough to give plots to each one of the slave families that were part of his original slave-holding. He had plans for them as well. War was not the only way to create an empire.
Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter called out the necessary question. “For what do we make ready?”
“Can it be that we will turn our backs on the tree sorcerers of Alba, who thought to make one of our own chieftains into their puppet and slave?” Stronghand let his gaze span the crowd. “They made a fool and a corpse of the one who called himself Nokvi. Are we to let these tree sorcerers believe that we are no better than Nokvi and his followers? Or will we take revenge for the insult?”
They roared out their answer in a thousand voices. He let it die away until silence reigned again
. At his back, the steady presence of Rikin’s OldMother weighed on his shoulders.
“Go home to your valleys. During this autumn and winter, fit out your ships and forge your weapons. When the winter storms have blown out their fury, we will strike at the island of Alba. In the summer to come, I ask this of you: strike hard and strike often. Hit where you can. Take what you want. One sixth of your plunder deliver to me, and bring me word when you meet the tree sorcerers. I will find them and root them out, and when that time comes, the island of Alba and its riches will belong to our people. This is how it begins.”
They hailed him loudly and enthusiastically, with the howls and shouts appropriate to a ready and dangerous host. Best of all, they dispersed swiftly and with an efficiency brought about by anticipation and forethought. Already they moved less like a bestial horde intent on momentary satisfaction and more like thinking beings who could plan, act, and triumph.
He turned, to approach the OldMother, but she had gone back inside her hall. Her door was shut. She had no need to interfere, after all. She had already made her pronouncement on the day she had allowed him to take a name: “Stronghand will rise or fall by his own efforts.”
He gestured, and Tenth Son came forward. “When our allies have all left the fjord, let the ones assigned as reavers go forth to harry in Moerin’s lands. Let them make sure that none of those who once gave allegiance to Nokvi still live. But let a few skiffs patrol the coast, and let some of our brothers, the quiet and wily ones, travel where they can. They must listen. It may even be that some who claim to be our allies now will talk against us. I must know who they are.”
“It will be done.” Tenth Son beckoned, and certain of his trusted lieutenants hurried forward to carry away Stronghand’s chair. “Are there any you trust less than the others?”
Stronghand considered. “Isa. Ardaneka’s chief, because he came only when he saw that all the others had allied with me. A Moerin pup will need to be found, to groom as chieftain over what remains of that tribe. But send on this expedition those who can walk with their eyes open.” A thought occurred, and he turned it over and around, examining it, before he spoke it out loud. “Let them take slaves with them, ones who are both strong and clever. There may be much that can be discovered from among the slaves of the other tribes.”
Of all his people, only Tenth Son had ceased being surprised when Stronghand made use of his slaves in unexpected ways. Tenth Son canted his head to one side, in the way of a dog listening, and looked thoughtful. “It will be done,” he agreed. “There is another way to look for the tree sorcerers. News of them must surely come to the merchants who sail from port to port. Although Bloodheart lost the city of Hundse—” What the humans called Gent. “—much treasure still came to our tribe by his efforts. Some of these treasures we could trade, and the ones who trade could listen and seek news in that way.”
The words afflicted him as mightily as would the sun’s brightness, shorn of cloud cover. He had not expected his brother to think so cleverly. “I must consider what you say.”
The SwiftDaughters moved away about their own errands, those things that mattered most: the continuation of the life of the tribe. No wonder that they left him to work alone, unremarked. In their eyes, such enterprises as raiding and plunder, fighting and conquest, were insignificant and trivial. In a thousand winters the rock would remain much as it always had, while his bones, and his efforts, would have long since been ground into dust.
With chieftain’s staff in hand, he took the long walk up to the fjall. Long halls gave way to abandoned slave pens, empty except for a few ragged slaves too stupid to leave their confines. Always, as he passed, he would first smell and then see a half dozen or more scraping mindlessly at the dirt or rocking from side to side in the ruins of their old shelters. The decrepit lean-to barracks in which the slaves had once wintered had been torn down and the wood and stone reused to build decent halls. Deacon Ursuline and her people had been industrious in the weeks since he had taken the chieftainship of Rikin.
Fields spread everywhere along the lower slopes, fenced in by low rock walls. The human slaves once owned by his vanquished brothers had been given a measure of freedom under the strict supervision of his own warriors and those of his slaves whom he trusted. Now they toiled to grow crops where crops were suited to the soil and drainage. Higher up, half-grown children shepherded flocks of sheep and goats and the herds of cattle on which the RockChildren depended. Slaves at work in field and pasture noticed him pass, but none were foolish enough to stop working or to stare.
Fields gave way to meadow and meadowlands to a sparse forest of spruce, pine, and birch. As the path banked higher, the forest opened up, shedding the other trees until only birch grew with a scattering of scrub and heather shorn flat by wind. The last of the stunted trees fell away as he emerged onto the high fjall, the land of rock and moss and scouring wind. The wind whipped at his staff, making the bones and iron rods tied to the crosspiece clack alarmingly. His braided hair rustled and twined along one shoulder, as if it retained a memory of the living hair grown by the merfolk.
A rime of frost covered the ground. The youngest WiseMother had made some progress on the trail since he had last come this way. He brought her an offering, as he always did: this day, a dried portion of the afterbirth from a slave. Let it serve as a symbol of life’s transience, and his impatience. He did not stay to speak with her, since even a brief exchange might take hours. Instead, he walked on along the trail toward the ring of WiseMothers. At first they appeared like stout pillars but as he closed in, careful to avoid stepping on the snaking lines of silvery sand that marked the trails made by the deadly ice wyrms, the WiseMothers’ shapes came into focus. Although they had all but stiffened entirely into stone, the curve of limbs and heads remained apparent, a vestige of their time among the mobile.
The WiseMothers congregated in a circle at the rim of the nesting grounds. Here he paused, checking the stones gathered into his pouch, watching the smooth hollow of sand that lay before him. Only the WiseMothers knew what they were incubating under that expanse of silver sand.
One stone at a time, he made his careful way out to the hummock that bulged up in the center of the hollow. The smooth, rounded dome radiated warmth and smelled faintly of sulfur, but once he was standing on it, he was safe from the ice wyrms that inhabited the glimmering hollow around which the WiseMothers gathered. There, in the solitude afforded him by the perilousness of his surroundings, he contemplated the path he had walked so far, the place he stood now, and the journey that still lay before him.
A stray leaf fluttered over the hollow and came to rest, so lightly, on the sand. A gleaming, translucent claw thrust up from beneath the sands, hooked the leaf, and yanked it under. All was still again. The wind sighed around his body. He heard a distant rockfall as a low rumble, so far away that it might have been a dream. But when he closed his eyes to slide into the resting trance, the same blank emptiness met him, dull and gray.
Alain was still gone, their link shattered.
He was utterly alone.
Night fell. Standing as still as any ancient stone lost under the canopy of stars, he heard the WiseMothers speaking.
Move. South. Press. East. Shift. The. Fire. River’s. Flow. Westward. Ten. Lengths.
The. Sea. Waters. Will. Rise.
Listen.
Earth. Cries. For. Earth.
What. Was. Torn. Asunder. Returns.
Make. Room.
His were not the only new ideas. Others among his people were learning to think. The words of Tenth Son rose in his memory: “We could trade. We could seek news in the ports of humankind.”
In the old days, before the rise of the warring chieftains in the time of Bloodheart’s own sire, the RockChildren had traded with the human tribes and, of course, with the fisherfolk. The wars for supremacy had changed all that. The rich harvest brought by slaving, the ease of plunder, and the joy of raiding had altered the old ways. What need to t
rade for what you could take for nothing?
Yet every stone thrown into calm water casts ripples. Just as tribes that warred incessantly among themselves could never truly grow strong, no clan which built its power solely on plunder had any hope of long-lasting success. The store of riches Bloodheart had amassed would serve Stronghand, but by themselves these treasures were just objects. They had only what worth others set on them. Of course that was a kind of worth he could exploit. War had its uses, yet it alone could not achieve all things.
He stood in the center of the nesting grounds and listened to the waking “awks” of gulls. The horizon paled toward dawn. Any one life span mattered little in the long unwinding of the world’s life, whose span was measured by the conversations of the WiseMothers and not the transitory and quickly forgotten struggles, as brief as those of the mayflies, of mortal creatures. That he thought and planned did not make him any more consequential than the least of Earth’s creatures. But maybe it gave him more freedom to act.
A ruler who controls trade controls the passage of goods, controls taxes laid upon those goods, controls who gets what and what goes where. There was more than one way to stretch the hand of rulership over the ruled.
With dawn, the WiseMothers settled into their daylight stupor. One stone at a time, he made his way back across the sands of the nesting grounds. The day, shortening as autumn overtook them, was half gone by the time he reached the safety of solid ground. He retrieved his staff from its hiding place in the crack of a towering rock and started down the path that led off the fjall and into the valley. Passing the youngest WiseMother, he laid a sprig of moss in her rough grasp, and walked on.
An arrow of honking geese passed overhead. A kestrel skimmed a distant rise. Stronghand crossed from fjall to birch forest and down into the denser pine and spruce woodlands. In the distance ax blows rang to a steady rhythm. The chopping ceased, and a man called a warning. The sound of a tree cracking and falling splintered the air. The thud of its impact shuddered along the wind, and that same voice shouted orders.