King's Sacrifice

by Margaret Weis

  "You will explain to me as we ride," said the Bear, "everything that is going on."

  The grons picked their way down the steep mountainside with an agility remarkable in such large and seemingly ungainly looking animals. Nola, a muffler wrapped over her nose and mouth, ostensibly to protect her face from the cold but in reality to keep out the smell, held on tightly to the Olefsky in front of her and closed her eyes at the sight of the sheer drops into jagged-edged rock canyons below.

  Tusk, jolted and jounced, imagined gloomily what his rump was going to feel like after a few kilometers of this treatment, sighed and wished he'd remembered to bring along the bottle of jump-juice he'd left behind in the spaceplane.

  "How far are we going?" he asked his Olefsky.

  The young man turned his head, grinned and nodded.

  Tusk sighed again, pulled off his gloves, switched on his translator. "How far?"

  The young Olefsky leaned at a perilous angle over the gron's neck and pointed. Tusk, holding on for dear life, peered over a ledge that plunged straight down into the tops of a forest of fir trees. A valley with a lake of shining blue water nestled at the bottom of the mountain peaks. A castle, standing at the foot of one of the mountains and looking—from this distance— like a child's toy, was apparently their destination.

  "That far, huh?" Tusk groaned, sank back down on the gron's broad but unfortunately lumpy backside, and hunched himself into his parka. "When'll we get there—some time next month?"

  The Olefsky thought this particularly hilarious, to judge by his laughter, which sent small rocks bounding down the hillside. Reaching into his coat—it was either his coat or part of his long beard, Tusk couldn't be certain—the younger Olefsky pulled out a bottle and offered it to the mercenary.

  "You try?"

  Tusk brightened, took hold of the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed. "What is it?"

  The name of the stuff came through the translator roughly as "that which keeps the feet from freezing."

  "Hell, I'll try anything once." Tusk took a swig and immediately understood the nomenclature. The burning liquid ran through his body, up into his head, and clear down to his toes.

  Cradling the bottle in his arm, Tusk settled down to enjoy the ride.

  Bear and Dion followed the others at a distance. Though the Bear had asked the young man to tell him his news, Dion could not, at first, reply. He had never been in a land like this before, had never breathed air this pure and cold, sweetly sharp with the spiced smell of pine. The grandeur and harsh, savage beauty of the towering mountains was overwhelming to the senses. He gazed up at the tops of the peaks, towering high above him, white against an azure-blue sky, and suddenly knew what it must be like to stand at the foot of the throne of God.

  "Now," said the Bear, settling his bulk comfortably on the gron, "you will tell me the truth about what is going on."

  Dion lowered his rapt gaze from the heavens and did so.

  Bear listened attentively, did not interrupt, asked no questions. But the broad, cheerful face, turning occasionally to look at Dion over a massive shoulder, lost its grin, became unusually grave and solemn. When Dion concluded, Olefsky heaved a sigh that was like a gust of wind, tugged thoughtfully and painfully on his beard.

  "I should have stopped Maigrey. I should have talked her out of going," Dion said.

  "Ah, laddie, you would have stood a better chance telling that river to change its course or commanding the sun not to set tonight. You may be a king, and one of the Blood Royal, but you are mortal and there are some forces you cannot control." Bear glanced back over his shoulder, one shrewd eye glinting from the mass of hair and beard.

  Dion, remembering the rite of initiation, hearing Maigrey's voice saying to him almost those very same words, said nothing but sat brooding and silent, watching the snow clouds move in to shroud the mountain peaks. A few flakes, sparkling and white in what remained of the sunlight, meandered past him, settled on the Bear's fur coat.

  "She would have gone to him no matter what you did or said to her, laddie. You know that, in your heart, so stop pummeling yourself over it."

  "Maybe so," Dion said doubtfully. "But why? That's what I don't understand."

  "Don't you, laddie?" Bear shifted his girth on the gron's back to regard Dion intently. At length, he shook his head, turned back around to guide the beast. "Well, but you are very young."

  The words came drifting back through the snow.

  Dion bit his lips, his hands clutched at the gron's hair, fingers dug into the animal's hide. The gron snorted, cast a rolling eyeball backward to see what was amiss.

  If the Bear noticed, he made no comment, nor did he look behind him.

  "I am sorry for Sagan," he said in a low voice. "A dark and dreadful destiny is his, doomed to kill the only thing he loves."

  Dion was shocked. "Loves? Who said anything about love? Not between those two—"

  "Said!" Olefsky roared, causing the gron to shy and dance nervously along the path. "Said!"

  The Bear brought the animal to a halt, turned around. "By my heart and bowels, laddie, who wakes every morning and takes a deep breath and says to the air, 'Air, I love you.' And yet, without air in our lungs, we would be dead within moments. And who says to the water, 'I love you!' and yet without water, we die. And who says to the fire in the winter, 'I love you!' and yet without warmth, we freeze. What is this talk of 'said'?"

  "But how could two people who love each other do such terrible things to each other?"

  "Love and hate are twin babes, born of the same mother, but separated at birth. Pride, misunderstanding, jealousy prod hate, urge it to destroy its sibling. But love, if it is armored with respect, will always prove the stronger."

  The clouds had covered the sun, a grayness settled over the world. The snow began falling thick and heavy, tumbling straight down out of the sky, not a breath of wind stirring it. The flakes settled on Dion's eyelashes. He blinked rapidly, trying to brush them away. He could taste the icy whiteness on his lips and tongue.

  The Bear shook himself, much after the habit of the animal whose name he bore, and shifted back around, facing forward, kicking the gron in the sides to start the animal moving. The others had gone ahead, vanished completely out of sight. The woods, filling up with snow, were suddenly, incredibly silent. Dion wondered if Olefsky was angry, but the Bear's voice, when it spoke again, was filled instead with a sadness as soft as the falling snowflakes.

  "Why do you think Sagan spent seventeen years of his life searching for the Guardians? Oh, to find you, of course, laddie. You were important to him. But not nearly so important as finding the other half of himself that had been so long missing. And why did she wait seventeen years in one place for him to find her? Because she could no more run away from the missing half of herself than her body could run off without its heart."

  "But he was going to execute her—"

  "And did he?" The glinting eye peered at Dion through the snow that was whitening the matted hair.

  "Well, no. But only because Maigrey forced him to fight a duel—"

  "Forced him, did she? A Warlord, aboard his own ship with a thousand men at his command, and one woman forces him to fight her in fair combat?" Olefsky chuckled. "And when that duel took place, laddie, did either actually kill the other?"

  "Only because the Corasian attack came—"

  "Lucky for them the good God intervened, or they would have had to come up with some other excuse."

  "Sagan vowed to kill her," Dion said after a moment. "He asked God to give her life to him. "

  Bear heaved another sigh that dislodged the snow from his shoulders. "Yes, laddie. And that is why it is said, 'Be careful what you wish for.'"

  "But if he does love her, then he couldn't harm her. And if he does do what the dream foretells, then it's because he wills it. Nothing and nobody, not even God, could force Derek Sagan to do something he didn't want to do."

  "And yet, he is gone, isn't he? And would he
have chosen this time to go? The good God be with him, I say. And with his lady. But I am surprised to hear you talking seriously about dreams and destiny and the good God. You used to scoff at such things."

  Dion brushed back his snow-wet hair, smiled ruefully. "I've done some thinking about it. I'm not saying what I believed was wrong. I'm only saying that now I'm not quite certain what's right."

  Olefsky cocked the glinting eye over his shoulder again. "Perhaps you aren't as young as I thought."

  The Bear's castle, or Lair, as he dubbed it, half joking and half not, was made entirely of stone and was massive, imposing, medieval, and drafty. Dion had the strange feeling that they had not left the spaceplane and ridden down the side of a mountain. They had left the spaceplane and ridden backward in time.

  He'd had a sneaking suspicion, on first entering the castle, that the moat and the drawbridge, the gigantic iron portcullis, the flagstone courtyard with various animals underfoot, were all for show, a pretentious bit of playacting by a man who hadn't quite grown up. But when he saw Bear in the huge stone hall, warming himself before a roaring fire, fondling some sort of enormous dog with one hand, his other hand wringing water from his beard, Dion had to admit that Olefsky lived this way because no other way of life to him would have been living.

  And after a few moments, Dion began to understand how the big man felt. Chilled to the bone, his face blue and pinched with cold, snow crusting his eyebrows and eyelashes, the king crowded close to the crackling blaze. Steam rose from his wet clothing. He thought how fascinating it was to watch the flames, what a pleasant smell the wood smoke produced, and how good it felt simply to stand here and revel in the luxury of such a simple pleasure as being warm.

  The walls of the high-ceilinged hall were covered with tapestries and shields. Bright-colored flags and bunting hung from a ceiling partially obscured by haze from the fire's smoke. What articles of furniture were present in the hall were plain and functional—consisting of a wooden table that was nearly as long as the hall and numerous heavy, high-backed chairs. The Bear and several of his hulking sons manhandled the chairs to stand before the fire. Olefsky, with his blunt, rough courtesy, invited his guests to be seated.

  This simple act was rather difficult for the guests, due to the size and girth of the chairs. The short-statured Nola had to practically climb into hers and nearly disappeared from sight when she tried to rest against the chair's back. Tusk sat rigidly on the very edge of the seat, trying to look as if it didn't bother him that his feet didn't quite touch the floor. Dion, taller than his friend, was somewhat more fortunate. His feet touched the floor but he discovered that he could not rest both arms on the armrests at the same time. He couldn't reach that far across.

  They had just settled themselves and Tusk was commenting that he didn't think he was going to have to cut off his frostbitten fingers after all, when a woman entered the room, carrying in her hands a large wooden tray filled with tall flagons. Bear walked forward to meet her, saluted her with a kiss on her cheek.

  "The shield-wife," he said, presenting the woman to his guests with as much pride as he would have presented them to the sun, had he been able to catch it. "Sonja, my wife."

  The sun might have brought more light and warmth into the room, but the contest between the two would have been close; Sonja's blond hair shone almost as brightly. She was tall, nearly as tall as her husband, and as wide around, with big bones, big hands, big arms, and a smile that was the largest thing about her.

  "His Majesty, the king," said the Bear, waving a hand at Dion.

  The young man slid out of the chair to his feet and bowed politely. Sonja, laughing, blushed and curtsied, continuing to hold the tray of mugs, never spilling a drop. Bear introduced Tusk and Nola.

  "Do not get up," he added, waving at them. "We do not stand on ceremony here."

  "Vilcome," said Sonja in a booming voice, pitched only slightly higher than her husband's deep bass.

  "That is the only word she knows how to say in Standard Military, I am afraid," said the Bear. "She is a great warrior and there was never such a woman for bringing sons into this world, but she has no gift for languages."

  Sonja, seeming to know what her husband was saying about her, laughed again, blushed deeper, and shook her head. She handed round the flagons. Made of metal, filled with a steaming, warming, sweet-tasting drink, each enormous flagon had obviously been designed to be held by an enormous hand. Dion nearly dropped his, and he felt new respect for Sonja's strength. She held five of them, plus the tray, with ease.

  "Vilcome," she said again, watching him anxiously as he grasped the flagon firmly with both hands and sipped at his drink.

  "It is very good, thank you," he said to her in her own language. "And I am honored to be in your home. May its walls keep trouble always out and happiness always in," he added, dredging up from somewhere in the back of his mind that one was supposed to invoke a blessing on the house when one was the guest of a Solgart.

  "You do our house honor, my king," she answered, heartily pleased to hear him speak her tongue. "Its walls were built to shelter you and may they be torn down stone by stone before they allow harm to come to those within."

  "I knew I should have brought my translator," muttered Tusk, trying—as most people will when in the presence of those speaking an unfamiliar language—to look as if he had at least some idea of what was being said. "I left it upstairs, in my room. If you'll excuse me ..."

  "No, no!" Bear shook his head, tugged on his beard. "We don't hold with those things. You will have no trouble communicating. I forgot that this one"—he nodded at Dion—"has the head of a computer."

  The drink, that Bear called mead, was passed around. Sonja brought out a large jug, set it near the fire to keep it warm, and refilled their flagons the moment the level seemed likely to drop near the mid-point. The drink—wine mixed with honey—slid easily down the throat, warmed the body and the mind, and soon Dion noticed a golden glow light the hall, the table, the chairs, everything and everyone in the room.

  Bear's sons gradually drifted into the hall, coming from performing various chores, some bringing in bundles of wood to replenish the fire, others stacking spears and bows in a corner, while still others—the younger ones—brought in baskets of fruit and nuts that they shyly offered to the guests.

  The boys—there were fourteen of them—all looked alike, each looked exactly like the Bear. Dion could distinguish the fourteenth son from the first only by the fact that the fourteenth was a baby, who, in the company of the large dog, toddled in to see what all the commotion was about.

  "I have a daughter," the Bear said proudly, "that I most particularly wanted you to meet. But since we were not certain when you would arrive, she has gone out on a hunting trip and will not be here for dinner." He looked slightly downcast over this, but cheered up, adding, "She will most likely be back tomorrow, however, and you can meet her then."

  Dion said something polite, glanced at Tusk.

  The mercenary grinned back at him, mouthed, "Bringing home the ox!"

  Sonja rose, excused herself to supervise the preparation of dinner. Dion, knowing that business was never discussed among Solgartians during the all-important anticipatory time before eating, sat in his golden haze and listened to Bear tell stories about their battles, which were fought for honor and pride as much as conquest.

  Dion knew, from having studied the Solgarts under Platus's tutelage, that their political system was always in seeming turmoil; wars were common, taking place between families, cities, countries, and sometimes entire planets. But the wars were generally friendly in nature, no one held grudges and the fighting would all cease in a moment if Olefsky—who was their leader and who watched over them as the mother wolf watches over cubs rolling in the dirt—said the word.

  "We tried peace once," stated Olefsky, "and we didn't like it. The young people grew restless and bored and got into mischief. A good, clean war is much healthier and does less damage."
>
  "These shield-wives ..." Tusk was slightly drunk. He waved a vague hand. "I've heard . . . somewhere . . . that you people have some sort of warrior engagement party. Couples proving how well they can fight together." He grinned at Nola, who had climbed out of her chair and was on the floor, playing with the baby.

  "It is a custom that dates back to ancient days, when wars were fought honorably with steel and muscle, not in the coward's way we fight today."

  Bear heaved a great sigh, his eyes grew moist. He smoothed his long beard with his hand. Dion could see, through the golden haze, sunlight gleaming off bright armor and shining spear tips.

  "Couples often fought together. The man, being the stronger, wielded sword and spear. The woman fought at his left side, his heart side"—Bear pressed his hand over his breast— "carrying a huge shield that she used to guard them both. If her man fell, she laid the shield over his body, picked up his weapons, and fought on until death took her, when they would be buried together.

  "And if the shield-wife was killed ..." Bear's face grew stern. "Woe betide the one who felled a shield-wife. Her man would never rest, not even if war ended, until he had avenged her death or died himself.

  "Now, war is different." Bear shook his head over the degeneracy of the age. "Some of our own young people wanted to use bombs. We refused to resort to such cowardly weapons. They make killing too easy. One should look an enemy in the eye, know that he is a man like yourself. Thus, we permit only the short-range hand weapons. And we still keep the tradition of the shield-wife, though it is now only a contest. All newly engaged couples must prove their worth on the field of honor, prove that they will protect and defend each other with shield and sword before they can be married."

  Nola—the baby in her arms—looked at Tusk, who smiled at her. The golden haze around Dion was suddenly dispersed by a chill wind that tore his dreams into shreds. He rose to his feet, without any clear idea of where he was going or what he was doing. He just wanted out. At that moment, however, Sonja came to invite her guests to dinner.