Tales of Downfall and Rebirth

by S. M. Stirling

  She eased around the building, keeping close to the wall. Smoke from a chimney identified the kitchen, and through the bars on the window of the next building a light showed. She dashed across the yard. The door was barred from the outside—carefully she slid back the heavy board. Sword at the ready, she opened the door.

  Terrified faces greeted her, but the dice had come up sixes at last, and she recognized the woman, who seemed to be in charge of the children here.

  “You, Mousey! Do you want freedom? Show me where they keep the thralls! Now, while the duke’s men are distracted, we can surprise them.”

  “The pens, guarded—” the woman began.

  “But not by many,” Thora said grimly, “not tonight!” She flourished her sword. “Mousey, help me now—you’ll never have a better chance.”

  Hope sparked in the woman’s eyes. “My name Maria,” she replied. “Manuelito, mi hermano, there. He fight for sure.”

  At the side gate, there was only one man on guard. As they approached, Maria ran forward.

  “There’s trouble—the señora, she need you!”

  As the man came into the moonlight Thora saw handsome features and guessed why he might believe the duchess wanted him.

  “But I, on the other hand, find you entirely superfluous!” She came in with a rushing lunge that drove the point of her sword into his throat while he was just beginning to draw. Maria was already opening the gate.

  * * *

  The slave pens had been built on an outthrust halfway between the castle and the fields. Thora thought she could have found them by the smell of night-soil that drifted up the hill. A log palisade surrounded an area the size of an old city block. Inside were metal sheathed pre-Change buildings where Maria had said the slaves were locked when night fell. Thora began to work her way closer.

  The night was chilly, and the guards, two of them, were sitting in a lean-to close to a small fire. That was good. The firelight would negate their night vision. They had sleeveless leather jacks with metallic strips riveted on and swords. Spears and bows leaned ready against the shed’s wall, so they were not totally incompetent.

  Thora told herself that would make killing them more satisfying. She’d survived boarding battles with pirates, but it was different with your comrades beside you and no time to think about what you’d just done. The catch and crunch as her sword went into the gate guard’s throat was still with her, and the little jerk when she pulled back that meant the point had lodged in a vertebra. She realized she was shaking, stopped and pulled in a deep breath, then one more, wishing she had her bow, wishing she was not alone.

  She had just resumed her stalk when one of the men by the fire sat up suddenly, staring. She froze, but the man was not looking at her.

  Maria was walking toward the fire. She had torn open the neck of her shift and let it gape so that her breasts were bare. Silently Thora grinned.

  Guess I’m not alone after all. She just uses different weapons than me.

  Now both men were on their feet, slavering. Thora worked her way from shadow to shadow until she was behind them. Just out of reach Maria paused. As one man stepped toward her, Thora darted in and hamstrung the other. Maria sped past her and Thora danced forward, point and buckler moving in confusing swirls.

  “Gawd damn, ’tis a bitch!” the first guard exclaimed. “One for each of—” He glanced at his groaning comrade and laughed. “That’s two fer me!”

  He outmatched her both in weight and reach. But nobody made it through Bearkiller training unless they were both fast and strong. He came in swinging and she swayed aside. Steel screeched as she deflected his blow and her blade sliced along the inside of his arm. She dodged back to give him time to feel the sting. Blood loss would slow him soon, but she was in a hurry. She came back to the attack, feinting up and to the left, and when his sword followed the move, knocked it the rest of the way up with the buckler and drove past to sink her own point past the edge of the jack, into his armpit and up into the shoulder joint from below.

  His sword went flying from suddenly nerveless fingers. She freed her blade, brought it up and across in a smooth stroke that cut short his cry. Blood spurted in a glittering stream as he fell.

  Maria was back with a length of board. She bashed the man Thora had hamstrung in the head and flipped him over, wrenched his dagger from its sheath and sank it into his eye as he tried to rise, then fumbled with his belt-pouch and came up with a key.

  “Come! Manuelito’s ready—has them all!”

  As they ran toward the old warehouse Thora could hear a feral murmur from within. Maria jammed the key into the massive padlock and turned. As it came off, the doors burst open and the thralls surged through.

  “The guards in the barracks are fighting the Hraefnbeorg men! You lot, grab tools and go help them—” Thora gestured up the hill. “I need a dozen more for the castle. Maria, where would the captives be?”

  “The pig’s torture chamber!” growled the man who must be Maria’s brother, reflexively massaging his shoulder joints. Thora thought she recognized those eyes. “Where he go for fun. You and you.” He pointed to three women and several men. “You hate him most. You come.”

  “I know where,” said Maria. “Follow me!”

  Thora was sweating beneath her brigandine but adrenaline surged through her veins. What was happening in there? They had had Deor and the captain for nigh on half an hour. Remembering the way the duchess had looked at him made her belly churn. She swung her dripping sword toward the castle.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  * * *

  “I would rather have whiskey, but they give me blood . . .”

  Deor blinked, wondering what had happened to his beautiful dream. The shape of the house wight wavered in and out of visibility, a hunched, misshapen being who glowered at him before receding back into the wall.

  A rainbow flicker of candlelight danced across stones. He tried to reach for it, winced at the rasp of rope around his arms and began to struggle, caught in the old nightmare in which he was stuck in a place he did not belong and could never get away. The candle approached once more, cupped in Duchess Orsa’s hands. Her face was a demon-mask, lit from below.

  “Wake up, little hero!” She slapped him with the back of her hand, gashing his cheek with her rings.

  “Why?” Pain shocked him to awareness.

  “Because I fancy a toy that doesn’t stink?”

  She came closer, her scent sweet as corruption. He flinched as she set her lips to his cheek and licked the blood away. She laughed, ran her fingers down his chest to his loins, and kissed him. He tasted his own blood and wrenched his head away.

  “Oh come now,” her voice grew hard. “You’re too pretty to be a virgin.”

  He spat. Colors still tended to waver, but he could see. Duke Morgruen sat at a rough table, pouring wine from a crystal carafe into a massive silver chalice. For a moment this vision was overlaid by an image of fire and blood. The warriors wore the badly cured leathers of wild men. One of them drank from the chalice and in the next moment was struck down. The chalice rolled across the floor . . . and then he was looking at the stone wall of the chamber, where chains and manacles hung. Coals glowed in the brazier, with some unpleasant looking devices resting on a rack nearby.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Deor said aloud. “You want the Montivallans to like you . . .”

  “We did—” the duke said regretfully. He brightened as the door swung open.

  Two of the bravos Morgruen called knights pushed their way in, dragging a third man. Horror shocked through Deor as he recognized his father. A bandage had been wound around Godulf’s torso, but at the rough handling the stain reddened once more.

  “Gently, lads, gently,” Morgruen said as they lowered the baron into a rough chair. “Wouldn’t want our guest to leave us too soon!”

  From outside came
an unfamiliar oath, then two more guards manhandled Captain Feldman into the room. His hands were bound and a purple bruise was swelling on his brow.

  “What’s the meaning of this, damn you? What have you done with my men?” roared the captain as the guards shoved him down on a bench and took up position around the room.

  And what about Thora? thought Deor. Had they tossed her to the duke’s guards, or had she fought her way free?

  From the state of Deor’s head, they had all been stupefied by something in the cupcakes. Before the Cataclysm weed had been a cash crop here. This must have been a really big dose. He blinked as spectral figures moved between him and the others, mouths opening in silent agony.

  Morgruen shrugged. “Oh, they’re being taken care of. You’ll all be taken care of. The only question is how. Really, I was looking forward to working with you. I’m afraid your little redheaded whore’s outburst about my thralls put an end to that possibility. But she’ll not get far.”

  Thora was not a prisoner! Deor sagged, beginning to fade out once more.

  “I had no idea you would be so old-fashioned about such things,” Morgruen went on. “Hard times require hard ways. Don’t tell me the peasants who built those castles you were talking about were all volunteers.”

  “We put an end to that.”

  “You could afford to.”

  The captain’s face flushed. “You can’t hope to get away with this! By God, when King Artos hears—”

  “Who will tell him? Even in the old days ships were sometimes lost. The Ark will be one more that never returned. They’ll drink to your health on the holy days and get on with their lives. So sad. But there it is.”

  “I will . . .”

  At the sound of his father’s voice, Deor focused once more. Godulf sounded a little weak, but perfectly clear. He was sitting up now, his pale face showing every groove and scar. He had always been the great oak that sheltered them all. Deor had never thought of him as looking old.

  Morgruen smiled. “Ah—my lord baron, you are with us once more. I apologize for the rough invitation, but you should not have resisted.”

  Deor’s bonds were too stout to break. He giggled, wondering if he could bore them to insensibility with Anglo-Saxon poetry, then started to recite the futhorc, hoping it would give him some control. But he could not keep the order. Each one opened into a vision—the rich fields of Feo, a forest of birch trees, a standing stone . . .

  “Kill us, and there are still the men at Albion Cove,” said Godulf.

  “True, but the wild men have been very active this year . . . not to mention the pirates. Once the sailors are dead and the boat burned, who’s to say who killed them? Of course, if we make alliance all this will be much easier to arrange.”

  “And help you murder my guests?” Godulf shook his head. “No.”

  “Not even to preserve your son?”

  “Such a pretty boy,” purred Orsa. She pricked Deor over the breastbone. “Your concern for him when we left the burg was touching. He didn’t react to me, but some of our men would find him delightful. Whether from self-interest or sentiment, I suggest you rethink your stand.”

  Reidh, thought Deor, legs twitching. Get me out of here!

  “You can’t imagine you will get away with this—” Captain Feldman exclaimed.

  “Why not?” The duke grinned, and the rainbow ripples surrounding the candle flames began to grow dark. “If all the men from Montival are dead, they cannot accuse us to your king, and if everyone who knows who really killed them also dies, when colonists from the north finally arrive there will be no one to complain.”

  “There are your slaves,” said Godulf.

  “My workforce? But by then I will have bred up an obedient peasantry. I take the children and raise them separately, you see. The only law they know is mine.”

  “Reminds me of the Cutters’ breeding pits,” muttered the captain.

  “I don’t need your approval,” the duke told Godulf. “Become my vassal and your own guilt will keep you silent.”

  Deor felt himself fading out again. Ear . . . the grave . . . The house wight was back, and the ghosts. Death didn’t require a legendary conflict. Men died for senseless reasons all the time—from the scratch of a rusty nail, or a fall. Compared to the Cutter High Seekers who the captain had described Morgruen had been little better than a wild man with pretensions. Until now. Was it the drug that made Deor feel as if something lurked in the shadows, waiting to be invited in?

  “When the old world died”—Godulf’s voice was low, and he had become even paler—“it was kill or be killed. We did what our weird required to win a chance to start over . . . to live the Dream . . .” he said bitterly.

  Morgruen gave a short laugh. “My dream rules now. Do you think your heir will rescue you? I had no real reason to attack Hraefnbeorg before, but if you refuse me, I will destroy the burg. In the meantime, this boy will be an entertaining hostage.”

  “Ask for mercy, boy. Persuade your father,” came a whisper in Deor’s ear.

  He jerked back to focus as the point of Orsa’s blade hovered before his left eye.

  “No!” He wrenched his gaze from the dagger to his father’s face. “I’m only the spare. Don’t sacrifice your honor for me!”

  For the first time since he had been dragged in, Godulf met his son’s eyes, and Deor saw an agony there that was more than physical.

  “Is that what you thought? You were our hope, Deor, our promise that the bad times were finally passing away!”

  Oethal . . . A vision of Hraefnbeorg bloomed in memory, but he could feel it fading.

  Deor swallowed. “‘Each of us must accept the end of life here in this world, so before death we must seek honor while we can . . .’ Beowulf said that, and you taught us to live by it, even”—his voice faltered despite his resolve—“if no one ever knows how we died.” For the first time in Deor’s life, he met his father’s gaze as an equal.

  He looked at the duke in appeal. “Free the thralls and we’ll help you train them—kill us and you will be all alone!” For a moment he could feel the balance wavering. Something darker than shadow hovered in the room. Choose life . . . Deor thought, choose!

  The duke giggled suddenly. “There can only be One . . .” He heaved himself to his feet and grasped the leather-wrapped handle of one of the instruments that had been heating on the coals. Its tip glowed like an evil red eye. “A pity, really. You were a beautiful boy—”

  As he swung it toward Deor, Godulf surged upright. “Not while I have breath, you troll!”

  Haegl . . . Nydh . . . Hailstone strike them all, for our need is near! The nearest guard drew, but Godulf was already falling.

  “Os! Ing!” Deor cried aloud, and the words resonated as if through the mouth of a god. “Aelfen aid!”

  Deor’s vision prismed. He saw blood blooming crimson on the bandage across his father’s breast, and the shape of his spirit rising to confront his foe. Death confronted Life, and it was Godulf’s spirit that blazed while Morgruen was swathed in darkness. The duke dropped the glowing poker as other spirits flickered into visibility around him.

  Then the door crashed open and the shapes grew flesh. Suddenly the room was full of struggling figures led by a red-haired valkyrie, faces contorted with rage. Flailing shovels, rakes, clubs, they overwhelmed the guards. Orsa’s scream turned to a gurgle as a gaunt woman grabbed her by the throat and bore her down. Deor glimpsed Captain Feldman wielding one of the guards’ swords with his bound hands.

  Duke Morgruen swept out his own blade. He had been a warrior once, and the superior steel of his sword scythed through the farm tools and the arms that bore them. The bitter tang of blood filled the room. The thralls fell back and Morgruen started toward Captain Feldman.

  “Isa! Ice! Limbs grow stiff and blood grow cold!” Deor put all his will into the spell, a
nd then, “Whiskey for the wight that helps us now!”

  A chill passed through the room and Morgruen’s sword slowed. A shadow by his feet grew solid, and as he tripped, Captain Feldman swung. Then the duke’s body thumped to the floor, spraying blood, and his head went spinning across the room.

  Thora was coming toward him.

  “Are you all right?” The outer layer of her brigandine had been slashed across and blood splattered her face, but at Deor’s smile, her hazel eyes glowed. Then a rainbow shimmer veiled his vision and he knew no more.

  * * *

  On the third day after the fight, Godric and the full fyrd of Hraefnbeorg came trotting up the road, spears in hand, shields on their backs and crossbows thumping at their sides. His brother had made good time.

  By dawn the last of the drug had left Deor’s system, and he found himself in charge. As soon as it was light, he had given the fastest horse to the least wounded of the huscarles and sent him off with the news.

  The wait gave them time to establish some kind of order. Three of the huscarles and one of the sailors were whole enough to be helpful. Maria and the children were nursing the two who were not, along with the wounded thralls, while her brother tried to forge the others into some kind of community. Many had been killed and some had run for the hills, but the rest stayed to hunt down their tormentors. Deor wondered how long it would take for the scent of blood to leave the ground.

  He had found a bottle of whiskey labeled OBAN, and left it in a dark corner for the house wight. Deor hoped the being was pleased—his inner senses had been numb since Duke Morgruen died. Perhaps, he thought, what he had done had burned them out.

  Godric had not said much, but Deor knew now how his brother would look when he was old. They stood together to watch the burning of the dead, and then, just in case any of the escaped thralls were too crazed to be grateful, Godric assigned a dozen of his men to escort them and told Deor to take their surviving guests back to the burg.