The Fire Duke

by Joel Rosenberg

  Herolf, the pack leader, threw back his head and laughed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Silvertop

  Frida—no, Freya—was busying herself at the huge cast-iron stove in the early-morning chill when Ian, eyes still full of sleep, staggered toward the door, gathering his cloak about him.

  “Is there some sort of problem?” she asked quietly. On their respective sleeping pallets, Harbard and Hosea lay under thin blankets, although Ian wouldn’t have wanted to guess whether they were actually sleeping or simply lying back with their eyes closed and resting. Old Ones, it seemed, didn’t snore, or toss and turn in the night.

  He shook his head. “I just need the outhouse,” he said.

  She smiled. “It’s—”

  “I know where it is.” He stopped himself for a moment. “You didn’t sleep?”

  She shook her head. “I can do without, when need be,” she said, quietly, looking over at where Hosea and Harbard slept. “And there was much to do this night. I’ve cut down some of Harbard’s clothes for you, and there was the cooking—and no need to stand there listening to an old woman when you need to void yourself, Ian.”

  He closed the huge door behind him as he stepped out into the gray, pallid light just before the dawn.

  There was no hint that anything had happened outside, if you ignored the way the ground was torn up around the cabin. It was quiet, too quiet perhaps, save for the occasional fluttering of feathers when one of the ravens perched on the eaves would rouse for a moment, only to settle down.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Thank you,” the one on the left said.

  Ian almost lost control of his drum-tight bladder. “And good morning to you, Ian Silverstone,” it went on, its voice raucous and far too loud in his ears. “I think you slept well. Probably be the last time for a long time. Or forever.” It glared down at him—or at least seemed to glare; Ian couldn’t read its expression, not really; ravens always seemed to glare balefully—then roused, shook itself all over, and leaped into the air, climbing in an expanding circle as it vanished into the darkness.

  The other raven let out a low caw. “Pay little attention to Munin, Ian Silverstone; he always sees the dark side of things. A splendid raven, really, with a deft beak for picking the lice out from my neck, but it has been an old cynic for far too long.” It dipped its beak. “I am Hugin, and I bid you well, until we shall meet again.” It spread its broad, glossy wings, and leaped into a short, shallow glide before beating its wings and lifting itself up and into the dark sky.

  Wonderful, Ian thought. Last night a cold giant was trying to eat me, and today I almost piss in my pants after being greeted by the Tir Na Nog version of Heckle and Jeckle. And they still call me Ian Silverstone, like I’m some sort of nonstick surface.

  He made his way to the outhouse, and decided to pretend to himself that his shivering was entirely from the predawn cold.

  By the time he had returned, the grays of the distant trees had gone gray-green, Harbard—Ian found it impossible to think of him as Odin—and Hosea were gathered around the table, and Freya had ladled out heaping piles of steaming meat and some sort of fried vegetable cake, and was already pouring steaming tea into mugs.

  Ian took the chair Freya offered him, and dug in. The meat—whatever it was, Ian decided not to ask—was rich and, well, meaty, if more than a little tough, although none of the others seemed to notice.

  Harbard’s half-glassy stare was intact. “Best to eat and be on the way quickly, eh, Orfindel?”

  Hosea nodded. “I had best be on my way, yes.” He toyed with a spot of spilled tea on the table. “I promised Ian that I would see to his getting home from here.”

  “Oh?” Harbard’s look at Ian was skeptical. “He’s earned a steading, certainly, by his carrying of you down the mountain, but you’re hardly in a position to award it, and this is not the time.”

  “No. Not a home here. We need a Hidden Way. Back.”

  Harbard thought about it for a moment. “No.”

  “No, you don’t know of one, or no, you won’t tell me.”

  “No, you can’t go on unaccompanied, Orfindel. You’re too old for this, too feeble. You need a champion.”

  “Be that as it may,” Hosea said, his voice level, “I undertook to see him to safety—”

  “You didn’t promise, and—”

  “Wait a minute,” Ian put in. “He didn’t promise? How would you know?”

  Harbard’s glare was like a cold wind blowing up Ian’s back. “I do not like being interrupted, Ian Silverstone. Do not do it again.”

  “Husband …” Freya frowned. “I would not have you speak so to our guest.”

  “As you will, as you will.” Harbard raised his hands in surrender. “I will let it pass, this time.”

  “Answer the boy,” Freya said quietly. “He’s earned that, and more.”

  “Answer the boy.”

  Harbard scowled. “Oh, very well. One reason I know that he didn’t promise is that his promises bind him more securely than you can know, and it wouldn’t be a matter of discussion. Another is that he clearly doesn’t know whether or not there is a Way open around here, and he’d not promise that which he can’t deliver.” Harbard shrugged. “But if your guts are of whey and water instead of sinew and muscle, I’ll see you to a Hidden Way that would send you back; there is one … nearby.”

  Ian forced a smile. “Why don’t you just double Dutch dare me?”

  “Eh?”

  “Or maybe if you said, ‘neener, neener, neener?’ I mean, ‘if my guts are of whey and water’ you’ll help me get home? If I’m a chickenshit coward, you’ll get me out of this? You must think I was born yesterday,” he said.

  Harbard grinned. It was the first time that Ian had seen him grin. He was missing an incisor, but otherwise his teeth were straight and white and all there. “It would depend on your point of view, child.”

  Ian found himself liking Harbard, but not exactly trusting him. There was something about Hosea that inspired faith, something Harbard lacked.

  And that’s what it came down to. He believed that following Hosea might be dangerous, but that he wouldn’t be betrayed. Harbard could easily leave Ian’s body in an unmarked grave, and think nothing of it.

  “I’ll stick with Hosea.”

  “I am to consider myself flattered, I take it.” Hosea eyed him levelly. “You’ll ferry us across?” he asked, turning to Harbard.

  Harbard nodded. “That could be arranged.” He looked pointedly at Freya, who shook her head.

  For just a moment, Harbard’s face clouded over, and while Freya met his glare full force, it was only for a moment.

  “It’s not fair to ask it,” she said.

  “Then don’t ask it, wife,” he said. “But if you don’t, I shall.”

  She sniffed. “And your asking would have weight? You have hardly said two words to the boy, you went out and killed the Köld not because of the boy, but because it had the temerity to threaten your home, and you’ve decided that that gives you the right to ask him—”

  “I am who I am.”

  Hosea smiled. “I think you ought to be careful of saying that, youngster.” He stood, and pushed his chair back from the table. “You presume much, perhaps.”

  Harbard’s face clouded over for just a moment, but the moment passed. He raised his hands in surrender. “Have it your way, wife. I shall ask nothing.”

  Hosea walked to the door, taking his cloak down from the wall.

  Freya sat down next to Ian and looked him in the eye. “I do not ask anything,” she said, raising a palm to forestall a growl from Harbard. “But I will tell you that should the Brisingamen come again into my hands, I’ll protect it better this time than I did last time.” Her smile was reassuring, but it wasn’t blinding, it didn’t cloud his mind or leave him painfully in erection. “I swear it.”

  Hosea had already shouldered his cloak and slung his quiver, and now hefted his rucksack
to his back. “Nothing remains the same,” he said.

  Freya turned to him, a ghost of a smile playing across her lips. “I’m still who I am Earendel, or Hosea, or whatever your name really is.”

  “You have been and always will be Freya,” he said. “There was a time when I would have gone out and hunted it down for you.” Hosea smiled.

  “There was a time when you did give it to me.”

  There. It had been said. Hosea wasn’t just Orfindel, an elf, or Old One, or whatever they called themselves. He was the Builder. Ian shivered. Torrie’s Uncle Hosea, Ian’s traveling companion, the Builder?

  The Doomed Builder?

  Well, why not? He was having breakfast with Odin and Freya; why shouldn’t his traveling companion be the one who had built, well, apparently everything of importance, the father of the dwarves, the—

  “And you let it be broken, dispersed,” Hosea said, gently, interrupting Ian’s train of thought. “Which you wouldn’t do now, I suspect; fertility deities are more trustworthy in retirement than otherwise, if less persuasive.”

  She took a step toward him, then stopped, her arms crossed over her chest. “You think I could not… persuade him, or even you? Is this a challenge?” Her lips smiled; but her eyes didn’t.

  Hosea shrugged. “I don’t think it matters. I think you believe that a goal and the method of attaining it are so closely linked that you would no longer try to seduce me or Ian in order to lay your hands on the Brisingamen, because I think you believe that your possession of it would be as cursed as if you had, say, murdered for Otter’s Gold.”

  Harbard’s single eye glared, and he stood, a growl deep in his throat.

  “What would you say to me, Old God?” Hosea asked. “Would you say that you were younger and angrier then? Would you say that your kind has e’er been responsible in its use of power?” Hosea shook his head, sadly. “I think not. And I think you’ll agree.”

  Harbard nodded slowly.

  His sword belted about him, Hosea hefted his bow, still unstrung. “Ian, let us be on our way. Harbard? Would you be kind enough to ferry us across? Now, please?”

  “Yes.”

  Freya handed Ian a bulging leather sack. “A change of clothes for each of you, some food for the road, and a small trinket,” she said. “As promised.”

  Harbard considered the matter for a moment. “And another thing, perhaps,” he said. “Your blessing, for the boy.”

  She shook her head. “My blessing? It’s already his.” She touched a finger to her lips, and then to his forehead. “As it will always be.”

  The corral surrounding the windlass was empty, save for the windlass itself, a trough of suspicious-looking water, and a few scraps of hay and dribblings of grain in a large bin next to it. The corral was U-shaped, one arm terminating a few feet into the river, the other running up and over a shorebank ridge, encircling a dark cave opening in the ridge.

  Harbard first dropped the bale of hay from his right shoulder, and then the sack of grain from his left—Ian half-expected the seams to split, but they didn’t—then stuck two fingers into his mouth, and whistled.

  A distant tattoo of hoofbeats sounded, and two horses emerged from the cave at an easy lope that nevertheless ate up the distance quicker than Ian would have thought possible.

  Except that one wasn’t a horse, not really. A horse didn’t have four legs on each side, moving in a rippling cadence that ate up distance faster than any horse could run.

  “Sleipnir,” Harbard said, as it stopped in front of the fence, a powerful snort sending dust flying as much as its hooves had.

  It was a huge beast, easily the size of a Percheron or Clydesdale, and longer. There was nothing elegant or smooth about its mottled gray coat and the long, uncombed mane that reminded Ian more of an old man’s beard than a horse’s mane.

  Nostrils the size of fists flared wide, and it pawed at the ground.

  Its eyes were full of intelligence, if not kindness, as they glared down at Ian. It was all he could do to meet its gaze, but he did.

  “How … does that corral hold it—”

  “Him,” Hosea gently corrected, pointing a thumb. “Him.”

  “—him in?”

  Harbard’s smile was not gentle. “It’s not to keep him in; it’s to keep others out. So they don’t get eaten.” He extended a palm with a bloody chunk of meat on it toward the horse. Ropy muscles under silken skin moved quickly and Sleipnir’s head shot out like a striking snake, and the chunk was gone, and in a flash, Sleipnir had turned and was galloping back toward the cave; he vanished within its mouth. Ian had to bring his hand up to protect himself from the driving dust.

  “He stays with me,” Harbard said, more quiet and thoughtful than Ian had heard him before, “for much the same reason that Freya does: it’s his will, and mine, that he should.” He beckoned to the other horse.

  “Silvertop,” he said.

  It was black, black as coal, black as night, black without color or gloss, save for the bright white blaze across its forehead that was picked up in its long, untrimmed mane. It was large, too, but not as huge as Sleipnir, and it had only the normal four legs, although each of its legs seemed thicker, sturdier than it should have.

  And there was the same look behind its eyes, of intelligence that had no trace of kindness or warmth in it.

  “Silvertop,” Hosea murmured, taking a step forward, reaching a hand out for its muzzle. Its nostrils flared as Sleipnir’s had, and for a moment Ian thought that it was going to snap at Hosea, but instead it patiently allowed his touch. “It’s been a long time.” He turned to Harbard. “I had thought him to have died a long time ago. Surt?”

  “Freya had thought Surt to have done for him.” Harbard nodded. “As did I. Braggi was sure of it. But he showed up here a few years ago, and I saw no need to send him along. Freya’s ridden him now and again, when they’ve both been in the mood.”

  “And you?”

  Harbard shook his head. “No.” He produced a wrinkled apple and handed it to Ian. “Offer it to him on the flat of your hand. Keep the fingers extended, mind; he’ll not snap at you, but he’ll want the apple.”

  Ian did as he was told, and the horse snuffled over, taking the apple with one quick lunge and bite that left Ian unharmed, if shaken. “It could have nipped at my fingers,” he said.

  Harbard laughed. “He could have bitten your arm off at the shoulder, if he’d have been of a mind. This is Silvertop, sired by Sleipnir himself on King Olaf’s prize mare: half horse, half Aesir, half witch.”

  That’s a lot of halves, Ian thought, but he didn’t say it. Harbard wasn’t the sort to joke with.

  “Silvertop,” Hosea asked, “would you accompany us? We are bound for one of the Old Cities, and may have need of your fleetness before all is said and done.”

  Ian hadn’t been on a horse since he was a kid at camp, but the idea of riding rather than walking was appealing. “We take turns?”

  Hosea looked back at him as though he hadn’t been paying any attention, which was probably true. “Silvertop can carry what’s needed, when needed. But we’ll not ride him to spare our own feet, but only in extremity.” He turned back to the horse. “If that please you, Silvertop.”

  Ian wasn’t surprised when the horse nodded, its mane snapping like a series of whips. He wouldn’t have been much surprised if it spoke. It walked off, then spun around, breaking into a light canter, and ran toward the fence, clearing it in a light bound that left Ian certain it could have jumped three times as high and five times as far, then trotted back to stop in front of Harbard, who patted the horse gently on the muzzle.

  “Come now,” Harbard said. “I still have to hitch Sleipnir to his windlass; the day gets no brighter, and the ferry waits.” He looked Ian in the eye. “Fare well, Ian Silverstone. Listen well to Orfindel, for he knows as much—”

  “As he can afford to,” Hosea said, with a grin, hoisting his rucksack to his shoulder.

  Chapter Fifteen
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  The Fire Duke

  Karin Roelke Thorsen had, she had decided, long since lost her ability to panic. Not that she had ever been the panicky type.

  It ran in the family. The time that Dad had sliced two fingers off in the combine, he had calmly walked into the house and picked up the extension phone—with his good hand—on his way to the bathroom, and called Doc Sherve from there, so he wouldn’t drip any more blood on Mom’s floor than was absolutely necessary.

  Mom had once found two strange men, one of them what she still called a Negro, one of them who didn’t speak English, hiding in the chicken coop one morning, and had simply invited them in for breakfast. She hadn’t panicked; she had quietly woken Dad, and—although Karin wasn’t supposed to know; Daddy talked later—while the two men were washing up, she took his old Army .45 downstairs, checked to make sure that it was loaded and a round chambered, and stuck it in the silverware drawer next to where his kitchen chair was. He never did need to pull the gun on Thorian and Hosea, of course; instead he took them on as farmhands.

  One night back in high school, Sven Hansen had made it clear in the back seat of his old Chevy that he wasn’t going to settle for some kissing and groping this time, and Karin had stopped trying to pull her wrists out of the grip of his huge, strong hands, but had sat back against the upholstery, and then gently, quietly, explained to him that it stopped here and now or there would be consequences he didn’t want to deal with—and it did stop right then and there, and she never did have to find out how hard it would be to bite his penis off; it ended there, and she and Sven even became friends after a fashion, when he married Sandy.