When he had left Valmar, fervent to take his fate into his hands, he had not anticipated spending long hours and days crossing a rich realm, trying not to be seen. But when he demanded to know where they were going the other had only said, “Do heroes ask questions when they go to meet their fate? You will know soon enough.”
In this land Goldmane seemed tireless, able to gallop for hours, and he could ride almost indefinitely. At first it was like being in the heart of a tale, galloping wild and free far, far, beyond the narrow fields of Hadros’s kingdom, the wind whipping and singing around them. But in the tales the heroes were always galloping towards a glorious goal. When this being had first appeared riding up to the mares’ pen, he had seemed terrible, a force before which trees and clouds must bow abashed. But someone who could have stepped out of a nightmare in mortal realms was in contrast here timid and easily frightened by even the most trivial threat.
They must, Roric thought, be covering scores, even hundreds, of miles a day, and yet the countryside did not change. The entire time he watched for landmarks so he would know his way back again, yet as the miles disappeared behind them he became less and less sure he could find the way. There were plenty of distinctive features, steep hills overlooking bright lakes, the clustered outbuildings of manors, rocky outcroppings that looked to his eye as though they should have castles on them although they never did, wide rivers with meadows on either side of the ford; and yet these features seemed to repeat themselves endlessly with very little variation.
It was like the countryside he had always known and yet different: larger, much greener, with no weeds among the grain, no stones pushing up in the hay fields, no marshy thickets in the bands of trees between manors, no tumbledown buildings on those manors, no biting insects-and no sunset. Every hill they climbed, every valley they entered glistened as though seen through freshly rain-washed air, yet no rain fell. When they paused in their riding to sleep, it was warm enough that he was comfortable curled up under a tree without even a cloak to spread over him.
It was late spring-or had been-yet here the wheat was nearly ripe, the lambs well grown, and the rowans in the manor courtyards hung with swollen red berries. He had the disconcerting sense that perhaps here it was always summer, for none of the manors by which they slipped had the woodpiles that should by this season be readying the dwellers for the sharp bite of winter.
In late August, when all nature seemed to have forgotten colder weather except for the sea-ducks whose mournful calls marked the end of summer, Roric had often thought that it would be good if winter were not fated, had wished idly that each day could continue as warm as the day before. But here he began to think the lash of snow and the killing frost might in themselves be purifying, that without them lushness would blossom into over-ripeness, and then into rot.
They saw a number of housecarls and maids, usually in the distance, but no one who could be the great folk who must live in those well-tended manors. And on the second day of riding, he realized what else was missing: there were no fairs and no market towns. It was as though all these fine manors were self-sufficient, that the folk who owned them spent their days inside tooling the leather or hammering the iron or spinning the wool, so that none need go to market and buy.
Not until they reached this hall had his companion relaxed his vigilance. The manor was built on top of a steep rise, hidden beyond a pine forest. After a short ride among the trees they passed under a wooden gateway, and the trees immediately began to thin out. And once past the pines and up a sharp slope they had found verdant meadows and spacious stone buildings.
Others then had come running to meet them both. The buildings, at least, remained solid when he looked at them. The manor’s fields were bursting with grain; its cows, larger than Goldmane, were heavy with milk; and the ale horn never needed to be refilled.
Everyone had seemed delighted to meet Roric.
At first, he had thought the being who summoned him must be a chieftain, even a king, until he had refused to answer questions. Then he decided this was a warrior like Gizor One-hand, sent to bring him here, and asked nothing further. But when he arrived the band of men who greeted him still included no one who seemed to be the leader.
Roric cut his meat with the knife he had tried to give the Weaver and glanced toward the open doorway. It was late afternoon, motes of dust dancing in horizontal ruddy rays, but it had seemed late afternoon the entire time he was here. The beef was so tender the juices ran down his chin. He wiped them with his sleeve and wondered if this was Hel. If so, it was unlike he had ever imagined; for this kind of Hel he and Karin should have been dead together months ago.
But he had never heard, even in the oldest tales, of a man looking on Hel with living eyes. He would have thought it was the Wanderers’ realm into which he had stumbled, except that they had traveled so furtively. They might instead be somewhere in the far southern lands, even beyond the realms where landless men sought booty. If so, if he got home again, he would take Karin, take a ship and a few good men, and return here to make a kingdom for himself. Karin and he between them would make sure their men did not over-ripen into softness.
In the meantime, these people had not yet told him why they wanted him.
It was not the next morning, because there was no morning here. But he had slept and wakened when one of the slightly indistinct men-he might as well think of them as men-came to find him. As they went outside he hoped, feeling itchy for action, that at last he would be told why he was here. But the other did not speak at once.
Birds chirped blithely as buxom maids finished milking the oversized cows and set them loose in the pasture. Neither maids nor housecarls had yet spoken in his hearing. Roric leaned on the fence and considered the disconcertingly misty person beside him. He thought he was the same one who had brought him here, but it was difficult to be sure. Last night in the hall, he and all the others had seemed so jolly almost to be foolish. If these were the lords of voima, Roric thought with a half smile, it might explain why mortal life was often so disordered and hard to understand. But his smile faded as he added to himself that here he at least was going to do all with his strength that fate allowed him.
“You said you wanted me,” he said. “I have followed you without demur, but now that we are here I must know why.”
“First you must swear yourself to us, Roric No-man’s son.” The other’s voice took on again the deep, vibrating tone it had had when he first rode up to Roric and Valmar. “Swear on iron and the blood-red sap of the rowan tree that you shall obey us and never go against us.”
Roric gave him a quick sideways glance, but he was scarcely more solid viewed from the corner of the eye than directly. “That in honor I cannot do. I am King Hadros’s sworn man and Karin’s sworn lover. To another I cannot swear myself unless I am very sure my new oaths do not counter my old ones.”
“Here your previous oaths have no meaning.”
“Not to you, perhaps, but they do to me.”
The cows had ambled off. Housecarls went out from the loft house toward the fields, scythes over their shoulders. “You came into immortal lands of your own free will,” the other said in a voice that could have come out of the ground. So this was the Wanderers’ home country, then. No use trying to find it again by ship. “Perhaps we can test if your unsworn loyalty will be enough. For I tell you that there are beings here that would destroy us.”
Roric drummed his fingers on the fence. “So far-” he started to say. But suddenly, unbelievably, an enormous bear appeared around the corner. It stood eight feet high, and its fur was black and its eyes yellow. Bitter claws twice as long as a man’s fingers reached toward Roric’s companion.
It opened its mouth in a roar, showing razor-sharp teeth and a hungry gullet. In one motion, Roric seized the man by the shoulder, whirled him away, and snatched up an axe that leaned against the barn.
He had about two seconds while the bear looked at the empty air between its claws. In thos
e two seconds he threw the axe with all his strength, hurtling it end over end, lodging it in the skull between yellow eyes that turned just too late to spot it coming.
Roric grabbed the man and vaulted the fence into the pasture, then looked back. The bear crumbled with a soft moan and lay still.
“They’re especially dangerous when they’re wounded,” said Roric, drawing his sword. The man beside him rose rather shakily to his feet. He was still a little misty around the edges, but at least he had felt solid.
Roric stepped cautiously up on the fence’s lower bar for a closer look. But the bear did not look wounded. It looked dead.
A few hundred yards away, the cows, clanging their bells, looked toward them as though puzzled. Roric found a pole and poked without response, then finally, emboldened, rolled the bear over. It was indeed dead, its skull split open.
“Now do you believe me, Roric No-man’s son, that there are beings here that would destroy us?”
Roric leaned on his sword, looking thoughtfully at the dead beast. “Are any of the men here on the manor good tanners?” he asked casually. “This is a fine bear skin. I would like it as a winter cloak.” But he was thinking, “That was too easy.”
Roric and the shadowy figure went inside, and the latter said offhandedly that a tanner would start preparing the fur at once, but Roric never saw it again.
The men were finishing the breakfast porridge and beer, yet they seemed curiously at loose ends. The housecarls had gone without anyone supervising them, and these warriors-he had to think of them as warriors even with no chieftain or king to command them-were not sharpening their knives, or trying, laughing, to train new puppies, or repairing their harness, or even telling old tales to boys or doing any of the hundred small tasks Hadros’s warriors always did in odd moments at home.
But as he hesitated in the doorway all these slightly oversize, indistinct men suddenly sprang up to begin preparations for war. They took down battle-axes and heavy swords from the walls, found leather helmets strengthened with steel, and swung their shields on the saddles of the horses assembled in the courtyard. At home, they would have gotten out the polishing stone and the sharpening wheel, but all their weapons were already keen and brilliant, as though fresh from the blacksmith’s. Roric looked critically at his own sword; fortunately he had sharpened it the first day he was back at Hadros’s castle from the manor. No one offered him any weapons or armor.
Their voices rang out in the hall, all of them talking at once, some still boasting about what they would do with their mortal, some complaining irritably when another got in front of them, others speaking excitedly of honor and glory. Roric, standing in a corner out of the way, started to play with his star-shaped bone charm. With it in his hand the people here seemed slightly less misty, slightly more concrete. For the first time he began to see the variety among them: skinny legs, enormous and bulbous bodies, extremely long torsos, misshapen humped backs, and powerfully muscled arms. But their faces, for the most part, remained hidden.
He clenched his fist around the charm, then put it away. Whoever these people really were, he had thrown his fate in with them.
Their horses were perfectly solid. These stood quietly, unspooked by their masters, as an array of heavily armored shapes clambered into the saddles. Roric used his teeth to tighten the leather lacings on his gloves and set his foot in Goldmane’s stirrup.
The war band shouted and clashed their swords against their shields, and all the dogs began barking and trumpets blowing. It only missed the women seeing them off. The only women he had seen at the manor had been the maids with their vacant expressions.
After riding boldly down the hill into the pine woods and through the gate, the band became furtive again. They shushed each other and rode at single-file, glancing from side to side. Roric came to a decision. He kicked his stallion to the front of the band, then pulled Goldmane sideways across the road to block it.
The others reined in before him, looking at him with eyes of cinder in shadowed faces. “I am not one of you,” said Roric in a voice intended to carry, “nor sworn to you. I came to your land because one of you told me you wanted me, even as a man without a father. I have waited patiently to find out what you wanted, intending to win here renown and a place for me and the woman I love. But if I am to accompany you to war I have to know why.”
One of them-he thought the one he had talked to before-came forward and slapped him on the shoulder with a hand that felt reassuringly solid. “You’re our mortal, of course!” he said heartily.
“But I do not know,” said Roric loudly, “why the Wanderers would want a mortal.”
This caused some consternation among the warriors. Some motioned as though to shush him. But the man answered after a very short pause. “Mortals have unusual powers here in the realms of voima-or so we hear! Of course, it hard to test, because mortals can only come here if a rift has been opened, which we cannot do ourselves, and they must come of their own free will.”
Goldmane suddenly made as though to bite the other’s horse. Roric had to pull him up hard. “You still have not told me why I am here,” he said levelly, a suspicion growing darkly in his mind. “Do you love to fight battles with each other, but since you yourselves are immortal, you all need to take mortals with you to war so that someone can die?”
The man put his hand on Roric’s shoulder again. “We do not intend for you to die, Roric No-man’s son. Now are you satisfied?”
He was not satisfied, but having ridden out with these people he now had very little choice.
“Let us continue,” said the man heartily, “and perhaps we can discuss issues of mortality as we ride, if that is your interest.”
At the first manor they reached, several of the men broke down the pasture fence and sent in the dogs. These chased the cows, setting the bells clanging wildly, until a shout came from the manor house. Then the dogs were quickly whistled back, and the whole war party galloped off with laughs and jeers.
“We’re making war on cows?” Roric asked with an eyebrow raised, once they had come to a stop in a patch of woods.
“No, we just like to disrupt things a bit.”
Roric thought this over as they continued onward. For some beings of voima, immortality itself might make them petty. Since they would live on forever, they had no need for brave and glorious deeds to make their memory live in song. They need have no goals or even hard work in a land of unending fruitful summer. All that mattered was the moment, the enjoyment of a joke at someone else’s expense, the glow of drunkenness. Even quarrels need not be settled because ultimately the outcome was always the same.
But he, who was not immortal, did not like the particular quarrel building behind him, which the quarrelers made no effort to keep from his ears: whether they should be delighted to have a mortal, or whether he was too independent-minded and too dangerous.
“If you are not Wanderers,” he asked slowly, voicing his suspicion at last, “who are you?”
“We are the third force,” said his companion as though it explained it all, and with no attempt to apologize for having misled him. “The Wanderers thought they could persuade you to help them against us, but we reached you first!” The face that Roric could not always see came into focus, grim-mouthed and not at all foolish.
A force distinct from the Wanderers, he thought, immortal and imbued with voima, could be dangerous to the Wanderers as well as to mortals. This would explain their furtive progress through this land. If it had been a Wanderer he spoke to originally, had these beings come to claim him in the hope he would come without question?
He slid his fingers into his belt pouch to feel his bone charm, tapped the hilt of his sword, and stroked Goldmane on the neck. He had come here with these and his wit, the same weapons he had used against King Hadros. There he had won. Here he was not sure what winning entailed.
2
“The Wanderers know less about us than we had assumed,” said Karin. She could barel
y stay on her horse, but she seemed determined to talk. Valmar had wakened, after a long night in which he had dozed fitfully sitting against a tree, to find dawn breaking and Karin trying to pull her clothes back on. She had trembled so hard and her fingers were so numb that he had finally had to tie the lacings for her.
“But you said he knew your name,” said Valmar.
“And not much more. Either he was asking me questions because he was interested in how I would frame my answers, or he really did not know I love Roric.”
Valmar considered for a moment in silence. His horse picked its way carefully down the track, and in the distance ahead he could see the spires of King Kardan’s castle. His father would be furious; he hoped his big sister would volunteer to talk to him before he had to.
“But if they don’t know very much,” he said slowly, “then why do we burn offerings to them?”
Karin stared at him with eyes that had become enormous. “I shall burn no more offerings.”
“Maybe it’s better like this,” declared Valmar suddenly. “We shall ask nothing else of voima, but make our lives into the best tale that fate allows us, with our own strength and honor and our own manhood-or, in your case, womanhood.” He sat up tall and stiff in the saddle as he spoke.
“But if we decide to ignore the lords of voima,” said Karin quietly, “we cannot forget that someone has taken Roric.”
King Hadros met them as they reached the meadow that circled the castle. He stood with his massive fists on his hips, scowling, but he did not speak at once, instead taking in his flushed son and Karin, her clothes all disordered, clinging desperately to the reins as though afraid any moment she would slide from the saddle.
Valmar observed what looked like several very different comments rise to his father’s lips and fade away again. Finally he said in a low growl, “I had taught you more honor than this, son.”
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