C. Dale Brittain

by Voima

  3

  The fire pit burned bright in the mountain hall, half cave and half castle. Along both sides men sat sullenly drinking. Every now and then the voice of one or another was raised in joke or curse, but for the most part they drank in silence.

  Karin sat against the wall where she had been thrown, trying not to appear as terrified as she felt. No one spoke to her, but some of the warriors looked at her over their ale horns. And then the man with the permanent mocking smile from the scar on his mouth sauntered across the hall to stand before her.

  “So, what have we captured here?” he inquired, hands on his hips. The firelight, red behind him, made him dark and almost featureless, a shape and a voice that could have been a wight from Hel.

  She forced her voice to be steady. “A princess,” she said. “Fate has given you a princess.” She had never felt less like a princess in her life, but at the moment it was her only weapon. “You may extract a rich ransom for me, but only if I am unharmed in any way. If I am, all the Fifty Kings will unite to destroy you.”

  “They haven’t united on anything yet,” said the man with a harsh laugh. “Except of course outlawing me—that, I hear, they managed just fine at the All-Gemot.”

  “Who are you?” she asked cautiously. If he was more than a common bandit, someone who actually cared about the All-Gemot, she might live until morning.

  “Eirik, King Eirik to you. You don’t look like a princess to me. You look like a farmer’s daughter. And my warriors tell me you fight like a cornered mountain cat.” He pulled out a dagger and flipped it into the air, catching it smoothly and flipping it again. She recognized the knife as hers.

  “I am Princess Karin, Kardan’s daughter, heiress to his kingdom,” she said with dignity. Keep him talking, she thought. The longer she could keep him talking the better chance she had. This must be the king who had been outlawed by the All-Gemot for killing a man and hiding the body. In that case, the burned-out castle down in the valley had been his. “Look at my necklace.” She reached inside the neck of her dress to pull out the thin chain that she and Roric had intended to give to the Witch of the Western Cliffs in return for information on how to find Valmar.

  He grabbed and gave a jerk, breaking the catch, and studied it in the firelight. She furtively rubbed the spot where the chain had dug into her skin before breaking. “Fine workmanship,” he said after a moment, almost reluctantly. “Either you really are from a rich family or else you’re a thief.”

  “A thief like you?” she asked, making herself laugh. Judging from the ambush laid for Hadros’s ship, into which she and Roric had ridden, he and his men now lived by raiding those who came near his old kingdom.

  “Oh, I’m no thief,” he answered, sitting down beside her with his legs out before him. He tossed the necklace into her lap.

  Karin watched him from the corner of her eye, fearing that to face him fully would be to invite further closeness. He looked much older from close up than his youthful bravado suggested. She couldn’t tell if he was really smiling or if it was just the scarred lip. Her hand closed around the necklace casually, to give the impression she hardly cared.

  “I am an outlaw according to the Gemot,” he went on, “but I am a lover, a poet, a berserk fighter, and a king according to me.”

  “A poet, Eirik?” she asked, her tone deliberately light. “I wouldn’t mind hearing one of your poems—if you really do write them!”

  He flashed her a dark look from under his brows. “I’ll compose a poem about you,” he said and yelled to one of his men. Karin noticed uneasily that the steady drinking had stopped; the warriors seemed to be following their conversation with interest.

  In a moment someone shambled over with a rolled-up piece of dirty cloth that Karin thought looked distinctly unpoetic. When Eirik unrolled it, however, he took out a lyre of smooth dark wood. He slid his hands along its shape a moment as though considering. When he plucked the strings, tuning, the tone was very sweet. “They don’t sing songs like this back in your kingdom,” he said, maybe smiling for real this time.

  Karin thought grimly that Queen Arane might feel herself an expert on maneuvering men, but she was quite sure the queen had never had to listen to the poems of a man who might decide at any moment to kill her.

  When after a moment Eirik began to sing, his voice was still rough, but there was a deep resonance in it she had not heard before.

  “Swiftly the red-sail sought the dead castle,

  “Swiftly from ambush came death-proud warriors,

  “Swords and eyes flashing, giving no quarter,

  “Hands firm, hearts strong, killing the seamen,

  “Led by King Eirik, they slew the invaders,

  “Laughed in their faces, came home to the mountain hall,

  “High above sea, high above river,

  “Carried off a princess of mocking gray eyes,

  “She’ll ask not to be ransomed, for Eirik’s her lover.”

  At least, thought Karin wildly, he seemed to accept her as a princess.

  An appreciative murmur came from the men—their battle already the stuff of song. But the murmur seemed to irritate Eirik. “Is that all you can manage?” he yelled. “You should be celebrating! We killed as many of them as they did of us!” There were shouts of appreciation this time, even a few jokes, that made him square his shoulders as he turned back around.

  He rested the lyre on his knees then and turned toward her the face that might—or might not—have been smiling. “So how do you like my poem?”

  Mocking gray eyes? she thought. If he likes mocking, he can have all he likes. “Well, maybe you are a poet after all, Eirik. But how did a king and berserk warrior do something as dishonorable as conceal a body and get himself outlawed?”

  He turned a shoulder sharply to her and started wrapping up the lyre in its cloth again while she wondered, scarcely breathing, if she had gone too far.

  “I didn’t want to upset a woman,” he said after a moment, his voice low and harsh. “I told her he’d gone off raiding to the south. When he didn’t come back, I knew she’d believe he thought no more of her, and she’d give up her folly. It would have worked if his brothers hadn’t started poking around where they weren’t wanted.”

  Karin thought this over. A woman, his woman, had loved someone else, and Eirik had killed his rival to get him out of the way. Only the discovery of the body had revealed the murder.

  But where was the woman? Looking around the hall, Karin saw nothing but men, but they must have women here somewhere. In which case, even if she could distract Eirik temporarily, she would not be able to distract a woman ready to knife anyone she considered a rival to her king.

  “Where is this woman now?” she asked. Might as well find out the worst at once.

  “With the rest of them,” he answered with another dark look. “Laying out the bodies your men killed. If you’re a princess, was that your prince on the stallion?” When she did not answer, thinking that whoever Roric’s parents were he was no prince of the blood, he added, “You will need to be there at the darkest part of the night when we make the offerings to the lords of death.”

  Karin was starting to wonder just how happy Eirik’s woman could be with him, since he had apparently murdered her lover, when these last words sank in, making her bite her lip to keep from crying out. She took two breaths and then asked carefully, “You do not mean to the lords of voima?”

  He held the wrapped-up lyre cradled in his arms. “Of course not. An end is fated even for the lords of voima, but death reigns forever. Even you down in the southern kingdoms know there are no Wanderers in Hel.” In spite of the scar, his mouth was most definitely not smiling.

  “We offer something of ourselves, of course,” she stammered. Keep him talking, she thought desperately. Maybe this was not as bad as it seemed. Maybe it was. “We burn a few hairs to the spirits of those who have died in order to honor them, then make an offering to the lords of voima to thank them for lettin
g our friends live with us beneath the sun. And of course we sing over their graves and drink the funeral ale. But the lords of death are not named among us . . .”

  “We, on the other hand,” he said, rising to his feet, “name them often, for we send many a proud warrior to them.”

  “And when you call them,” she said, no longer able to conceal her terror, “do they not come?” But he did not answer, only showed his teeth in what might have been a smile and strode away.

  Karin shrank back against the wall again. A king already outlawed, so that any man could kill him without blood-guilt falling on him, would have little more to fear from anyone. Her threat to have the Fifty Kings unite against him was hollow. Queen Arane’s kind of manipulation was also useless if they planned to sacrifice her tonight to satisfy the appetites of the nameless lords of death.

  If Roric was going to rescue her, he had better arrive soon. But his shout had been cut off—was he even alive himself?

  Karin clenched her fists. At the worst, she tried to tell herself, she would see him again very soon in Hel. But there was no love in Hel according to the old stories, and no glory, just as there were no Wanderers. The only love and glory to be found were beneath the sun or in the songs sung when you were gone.

  She scanned the hall furtively, looking for a possible escape route. The great doors through which they had entered had been barred behind them; if she made a dash for it, they would be on her before she worked the heavy bars free. Smaller doors led off in several directions, but she did not know where they led and did not want to race blindly through a strange castle with pursuers right on her heels.

  She could wait until they all fell asleep, she thought—several of the warriors had already slumped over—and make her escape then. But the darkest part of the night was coming very soon, the time Eirik said they made their offerings . . .

  He was not there for the moment, having passed down the length of the hall and gone through one of the smaller doors—probably to where they were laying out the bodies of the men that Roric and Hadros’s men had killed. Could she try her mocking gray eyes on one of these warriors, smile and tease him into taking her off somewhere from which it would be easier to escape? But she rejected this as impractical—as well as revolting. Too many of the warriors were still awake for her to get one aside for private conversation.

  She could feign illness, ask to be shown to the women’s loft. That way she could leave the hall without immediately having them all in pursuit. She coughed convincingly and rested her forehead in one hand. It did feel feverish.

  But as she began a weak gesture of supplication toward one of the warriors watching her, Eirik came back.

  He took her wrist and jerked her to her feet, paying no attention to her cough. “The women want to see you,” he said and pushed her ahead of him the length of the hall, then through a narrow passage that seemed carved from living rock. The fire in the hall behind them and a flickering red before them were the only light, and she could not see Eirik’s face. She stumbled on the rough surface, but his hand on her arm kept her upright.

  “Do you want to know what kind of offerings we make to the lords of death?” he asked, a harsh laugh in his voice. “Are you wondering if we slit the throats of living victims, or whether we set them out on the mountain top for the dragon?”

  She was glad he could not see her face. She swallowed twice and managed to answer calmly, even with a chuckle. “Don’t tell me a berserk warrior believes in dragons, Eirik. They only appear in the old stories.”

  But he did not chuckle in return. “You’re from the south, Princess,” was all he said.

  And then they emerged from the passage into a firelit room where six naked bodies were laid out. A woman with stringy black hair down to her waist turned around sharply. Several other women remained bent over the bodies, washing them, but this woman advanced to meet them with a bearing as proud as a queen.

  She looked Karin up and down scornfully. Her eyes were an unexpected light green. “So this one claims she is a princess,” she said. Karin kept herself from shrinking under that gaze by an effort of will. “But what I hear is that you were riding through the rift valley by the dead castle with no companion but one warrior—scarcely an activity for the heiress to a kingdom, Eirik!”

  If they put her out on the mountain top, Karin thought, then she might—just—have a chance to escape before a dragon or whatever creatures of voima inhabited this land came to eat her. But if this woman thought that a princess was trying to take her man away, even a man she might hate herself, Karin would never even have a chance to meet the dragon.

  “I was riding with my lover, fleeing those who wished to separate us,” she said, her chin high. “If you ask a ransom from my father I am sure he will pay it, and then I shall return to the man I love.”

  Eirik laughed derisively behind her. “Not likely. A man who eloped with a princess will be an outlaw, not someone to whom a ransomed princess will be likely to return. But here’s an idea,” he added thoughtfully. “Since he’s an outlaw, he’ll need to find new brothers. He’s a good fighter, as my men can attest, and I’m now short six warriors. How about if both of you join us?”

  “Eirik!” cried the woman, stepping up to him with a hand raised as though ready to strike him. She was as tall as he, and her green eyes flashed in the firelight.

  But he pulled a knife—Karin’s knife—from his belt and showed it to her in his right hand while making a fist with his left. “One more step forward, Wigla,” he said quietly, “and I’ll give you a choice between these.” She stamped her foot in disgust and whirled away from him.

  If he could speak of her and Roric joining him, Karin thought while the fingernails bit into her palms, then maybe she was not going to be sacrificed after all to the lords of death. Or maybe he was just mocking her again with this offer.

  “Are the bodies ready for the ceremony?” Eirik asked. “It must by now be midnight.” He took Karin’s arm firmly again. “I’ll take her along and send you some of the men to carry the bodies out to the mountainside.” He laughed again at the expression that Karin was unable to conceal. There was no more humor in his laughter than there was in his scarred lip. “Not looking forward to meeting the lords of death, is that it, Princess?”

  4

  When Gizor did not answer him at once, Roric slapped his blade against his palm and said, “If you are my father, tell me at once, for I have no wish to be a patricide, but that is the only thing that will keep your spirit from Hel this morning.”

  “You are No-man’s son,” Gizor growled at last. “I have no sons. And if I did, I would kill them rather than know them for oath-breakers who had turned against their sworn lord.”

  He shifted as he spoke, and Roric, moving to continue facing him, realized the old warrior was maneuvering to put his own back to the sunrise, so that the sun would hit Roric in the eyes—one of those eyes still half swollen shut—when it rose over the eastern cliffs. A misstep here, thirty feet above the river, would be fatal.

  And this battle could be fatal even if he survived it. Gizor had three times tried to kill him, and had insulted him far too thoroughly last night for Roric to let him live or his own honor would be gone. And yet that honor would also be destroyed by killing another of Hadros’s oath-sworn warriors.

  “When the king brought you home,” Gizor said almost absently, as though in speaking he hoped to distract Roric while finding his own best position, “it was clear you were the whelp of some housecarl on one of the manors.”

  Roric, concentrating on the island’s surface and moving himself to what he hoped would be a better position, stopped dead. “The king brought me home?” he said in a tight voice. “I always heard I had been found outside the castle gates.”

  Gizor froze for a second, then shrugged. “King Hadros brought you inside the hall when he found you outside.”

  But that was not what he had said. Roric stood absolutely still, his jaw clenched. Why had he
never considered this before? If he was the son of King Hadros and some serving-girl, the king might well have brought him home to raise as a foster-son, especially since Valmar had not yet been born. How else had the king persuaded his queen to raise a serving-girl’s baby herself, except by telling her that he intended to make this baby his heir if she herself could not produce a son? But then Valmar had been born, followed by Dag and Nole, and five years ago the queen had died.

  He had never felt he knew the queen well once he grew past early childhood, had indeed talked to her but seldom once Valmar was born and he was taken to be raised among the men. Was she the kind of woman who would have taken in her husband’s base-born child? Karin, he thought and almost smiled, most certainly was not.

  He did not have a chance to wonder further, for it was then that Gizor attacked.

  He came at a rush out of the sunrise, with the yell he told all the young warriors would startle their enemies and even freeze them momentarily. Roric had heard that yell too many times. He braced himself to meet the charge, catching Gizor’s sword on his own.

  Steel rang on steel, and Roric ducked another blow as he sprang sideways to get the light out of his eyes. He caught himself six inches from the edge. Hadros’s son, he was thinking. I am Hadros’s son.

  “Who then is your father, Gizor?” he shouted mockingly. “I never hear you mention him. Was he some slave brought up with the booty from southern raids?”

  Gizor did not answer, instead keeping his sword constantly moving, thrusting, slicing, cutting in great arcs at Roric’s unprotected head.

  Roric had fought against him in practice dozens, indeed hundreds of times. But he had never known Gizor to fight like this. His steel flashed twice as fast as it ever had then, and he used moves that he had never taught any of the young warriors how to counter, as though he had been saving them in case he ever wanted to kill the men under him. Roric retreated as well as he could on the narrow top of the island, never taking his eyes from the other’s sword.