A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  She’d panicked and run back to her own time—with a lasting memory of Per’s smile and his face, bloodied and bruised from the beating given him by Windsor and his men.

  The bruises had healed, but the beating had left its mark. Per’s men still called him May, or the Girl. The nickname would probably last for his life, however old, scarred, and wrinkled he became, but his face wasn’t quite as pretty as it had been. He was a little older, his fair beard stronger, his face bonier and more set. And there was a slight hump in his nose.

  His smile, though, was still the smile she remembered: sudden, big, and bright, completely of the moment. He leaned his head close to hers, blowing warm breath in her ear in a way that made her jump and giggle. “We shall be at shieling soon.”

  The men they rode with knew Per well. They whistled, blew raspberries and sang “Shall We Again Hunt Bonny Black Hare?”

  Per didn’t answer them, but smiled and squeezed Andrea’s hand. The horses plodded companionably alongside them, snorting out moist breath.

  “Per,” Andrea said, “listen, be so kind. There be things I must tell thee. …” They passed thickets of tall thistles from which flocks of chiming birds rose. He looked at her seriously, but it was hard to find words. She didn’t know how to explain that she’d visited another 16th century; and still less did she want to tell him about the other Per she’d met and bedded there. Nor did she want to mention that other Per’s wedding to Joan Grannam. And certainly not the death of Toorkild Sterkarm. But it was tricky, skirting around these things while warning him that Elf-Windsor would soon send armed men against him.

  Their climb brought them to the crest of a hill, which led down into a pretty meadow. A few spindly trees grew beside a little stream, brown as tea. Andrea didn’t bother commenting on the scenery. She was too tired, and anyway, she knew the Sterkarms found it unremarkable. They lived with sights like it every day and had no brick and concrete cities to compare with them. To them, it was simply what the world looked like. They lived in this natural beauty during monthlong downpours as well, in bitter, frozen weather, and in hungry times when they thought about food, not the view.

  Cattle still grazed this meadow, together with a few sheep and goats. Andrea could see no sign of other people. There would be herdsmen with the animals, but they’d hide themselves until they were sure of who the newcomers were.

  The animals moved away from them as they trampled through the grass. The cattle were small and black with long horns. The sheep were black, too, with curving horns and long wool that was more like hair. All of them seemed small and skinny to 21st-century eyes, but they were the Sterkarms’ wealth, and they killed for them.

  Shouts came from behind them: “Sterkarm! Per May!”

  They turned and saw some half-grown lads and girls struggling toward them, one lad carrying a child on his shoulders and a girl carrying another in her arms. Further back, a party of older people and children trudged along.

  Per let go of Andrea’s hand and led his horse back toward the people. Some of his men followed.

  “They burned us out!” said one of the girls.

  Per led his horse past her to the exhausted woman behind her, taking the child she carried from her, while his left arm remained through Fowl’s reins. The woman stood stock-still, too exhausted to thank him or move another step.

  Andrea, following Per, felt sharp sympathy for the bedraggled woman. She’d have guessed her to be fifty or even older, but this was a poor, 16th-side woman. She might be no more than thirty. A scanty diet, constant hard work, repeated childbirth, and an outdoor life had a drastic effect on looks and health. She went to the woman, offering her an arm to lean on. To her surprise, the woman shook her off, and wouldn’t look at her.

  Per noticed the woman’s offense. He said only, “Come to bothies, mistress. There’ll be food there, and rest.”

  Andrea noticed women, old men, and youngsters all glaring at her but hastily looking away when they saw that she’d seen them. It was plain that her help wasn’t welcome.

  “Elven shot our cow!” said the girl, with a heartfelt cry. “They burned house, burned fields.”

  The armed horsemen gathered up children to ride on horses and shoulders. Arms were offered to struggling women and packs taken from old men. Andrea found herself alone in a widening space. Per joined her, carrying a sleeping child. Fowl trod behind him.

  “I only tried to help,” she said.

  “Aye, but it be bad.”

  “I ken that! To burn house, to—”

  “Nay,” he said. “It be Hungry Month.” She looked at him. “Summer is over and harvest not yet in. Last year’s stores be gone, almost.” With lowered voice and a tilt of the head he indicated the tired and trudging refugees, “These have been scraping meal-kist’s bottom for last of oats. Waiting for harvest. And now harvest be burned in field.”

  “Oh.” Andrea had read about “scorched earth tactics.” That was what Patterson and his Elves were doing: burning the fields and the crops, depriving the Sterkarms of food. While the Elves, of course, would be supplied through the Tube.

  And that was why she received such glowering looks. She was an Elf, even if she was Per May’s Elf.

  She looked up at a shout and saw long strings of people coming down the meadow to meet them, skirting thin white birches and the gorse bushes bright with yellow blossom. There was Toorkild, Per’s father, looking for his son.

  One boy raced ahead, shouting Per’s name. Per put down the child he carried and ran to meet him. They thudded together in a wrestling hold, clutching each other and performing a strange, crab-like dance as they tried to trip each other. Per, after struggling a little, lifted the boy up bodily and swung him outward, legs kicking. They both ended on the ground, but Per was on top. He got up, pulling the laughing boy to his feet.

  Andrea knew the boy: Ingram, Per’s young cousin. She started to laugh with them, but then remembered that other world, where Ingram’s body had been brought home tied across the back of a horse. He’d been buried in the same grave as his father and brother. Her mood turned cold.

  Ingram, happy to see the older cousin he’d always wanted for a big brother, tried to grapple again, but Per was embarrassed at having forgot himself. “Nay, these folk here be in no holiday mood.” He scooped up the child he’d put down and dumped it in Ingram’s arms before hurrying on up the meadow to meet his father, who jinked downhill toward him through the knots of people.

  They met, and Toorkild lifted Per off his feet in a bear hug. Per was Toorkild’s only son—his only child—and every time Per rode, Toorkild knew he might never see him alive again.

  Andrea, following Per, found the bothy people drawing away from her, until she walked alone. Per’s uncle, Gobby, joined Toorkild, and watched her come with puzzlement. A more unpleasant expression came to his face, and she knew he’d recognized her.

  It was becoming clear to Andrea that no one, except Per, was glad to see her.

  “Keep smiling,” said someone beside her—and in 21st-side English. It was Joe Sterkarm, grinning through his beard. “We Elves have got to stick together.” She laughed. At least she had one other friend this side of the Tube.

  As they reached Per, Toorkild asked him, “Hast seen thy mother?”

  “She’s no here?” Per said.

  “She should be,” Gobby still stared at Andrea. “But she’s no.”

  “Have any seen her?” Per asked, but now Toorkild had noticed Andrea.

  Putting Per aside, he took a step toward her, peering at her face. “Be it Elf-May?”

  Andrea put on her best smile and held out her hands. “Master Toorkild! Master Gobby! It gladdens me to see you again!”

  “Then you be a sight gladder than us, Elf,” said Gobby. ‘Gobby’ meant “Big-Mouth” or “Mouthy,” and Gobby was never slow to say what he thought. “How comes she here?”r />
  When Andrea had last parted from these Sterkarms, it hadn’t been on the best of terms. She’d helped some captured Elves escape the Sterkarm Tower, and the escapees had taken Per hostage. That had never been her plan. Per himself knew that. But his father and uncle regarded her as a traitor for trying to help her fellow-Elves at all.

  The Sterkarms of 16th-side B thought her a traitor, too. She just couldn’t seem to stay friends with these people.

  The loose people they’d collected on the way were gathering around them. “Daddy,” Per said, “while we talk, these people are tired and hungry. We must do something for them—Elven burned them out.”

  Whether he felt for the homeless people or wanted to turn his father and uncle’s attention away from Andrea was impossible to tell, but Andrea was grateful. Toorkild and Gobby shouldered packs and led the way up the meadow, pushing aside curious cows.

  The bothies, with their turf walls and roofs thatched with fern and heather, stood in a narrower, sheltered nook of land. Fires burned down the center of the little hamlet and a small river fell over rocks nearby. There was a bustle about the hearths as wooden bowls were filled with warm water and what food there was brought from different bothies. Guests must always first be given a friendly greeting, water to wash in, and food before they were asked a single question.

  No one pressed water or food on Andrea. She was not, it seemed, a guest.

  Per turned to her, his face worried. “Mammy should be here. She had only to come from tower.”

  She put her arms around him and his arms wrapped around her. They leaned together, his chin resting on her head. Despite their long parting, it was comfortable and natural. His hand stroked down her back, but worry for his mother distracted him. “Let’s watch for her.”

  Others joined them, to stand and sit at the end of the bothies, where they could look down into the meadow. They ate, chatted, shared food, and watched for the slightest movement on the paths approaching the meadow until the light faded and the air grew chilly. Then they returned to the bothies and the fires. Per took a seat on a turf bench beside his father and drew Andrea to sit with him.

  “No sign of Mammy,” Per said.

  “Thine Elf-Woman be here, though,” said Gobby.

  Toorkild passed his son a lump of cold porridge. “Ach, she stayed to pluck daisies.”

  “Thine Elf-Woman can scry for her,” Gobby said.

  “Father’s brother!” Per said.

  “What does she do here?” Gobby said. “Spy for Elven?” Many around the fires gave her hard glances, suggesting they shared Gobby’s suspicions.

  Andrea stilled Per’s anger by placing a hand on his shoulder and rose to her feet.

  “I’m here to warn you,” she started, her heart beating fast. “I’ve come to tell you …”

  But where, and how, did she start?

  The idea that the 21st-century people were “Elves” was probably too engrained for the Sterkarms ever to understand that they were traders from an industrial future.

  How did you begin explaining multinational—multidimensional—entrepreneurs to semi-nomadic cattle farmers and bandits? How do you explain the finance market? Or electricity? She balked at trying to explain that there were many possible futures, and the “Elves” came from just one of them.

  Could she manage to warn them that the Elves had brought shock troops with them? The Sterkarms were guerrilla fighters, though they’d never heard the term. They attacked and ran, hiding in the hills, relying on the fact that they knew their land better than anyone else, and would be almost impossible to find.

  The Elves had brought such guerrilla fighters with them this time: troops who knew every hill, dale, stream, meadow, and shieling of the Sterkarm country as well as the Sterkarms did and would guess where the Sterkarms had gone to ground as easily as Per had guessed where to find his father.

  These Elven shock troops were armed like the Sterkarms, would fight like them, and knew how the Sterkarms would fight, knew exactly where and how they would lay their ambushes, exactly how they would think. Because they were the Sterkarms.

  All the risks she’d taken, stealing a Tube pass, lying to the Tube operators, cutting herself off from her own world, would all be for nothing unless she could explain.

  She said, “I am no spy. I have come to warn you that Elven have brought with them Changelings. They look like you and fight like you.”

  Toorkild and Gobby looked at each other, puzzled and disbelieving.

  “Master Sterkarms, you ken there be many worlds. This world be Man’s Home and there be Heaven, there be Hell.” The Sterkarms could hardly be called religious, but they nodded. They understood the concept of these worlds.

  “And there be Elf-Land,” she went on. “The Elves ken of many, many other worlds besides these. Some so like this world that you would hardly tell they differed if you stumbled into one. You ken the tale of the bluebell wood.”

  Many Sterkarms exchanged glances. Andrea had learned the story from them: They knew it well.

  Bluebells were a powerfully magical, Elvish flower, and their scent was sweet and intoxicating, but you should never lie down and sleep in a bluebell wood. The wood where you slept wouldn’t be the wood where you woke, though it would seem the same. You would walk home through what seemed your own familiar world, but you would have left your own life and fate behind for one that might be better but might be much worse.

  “Elven went into one of those other worlds, just as they came into this world,” Andrea said. “They found Sterkarms living there, who were just like you.”

  They bridled at that, turning to look at each other. Who was like them?

  “It is so,” Andrea insisted. “In that other world, a Toorkild Sterkarm married an Isobel, and they had a son, Per.” She waited until the exclamations died away. “It’s them Elven have recruited. They’ve paid them much gold and promised to help them kill every last Grannam in their world in return for their help in this one.”

  They hooted and laughed until Gobby rose and hushed them. They were in hiding, and their noise would carry on a quiet night. “Talk on,” Gobby said. Despite his earlier hostility, she had his attention.

  “Elven have brought these other Sterkarms here, into your world,” Andrea said, “to fight you.”

  She could have told them much more. How, for instance, in that other world, the Elves had arranged a marriage between the Sterkarms and their age-old enemies, the Grannams. But these Sterkarms would hardly believe that possible.

  She could have told how, while the wedding party slept, the Elves attacked both Sterkarms and Grannams, telling each family that it had been a treacherous attack by the other.

  She could have told how that attack had ended with the Toorkild and Gobby of that world dead. And how the Per of that world was fighting for the Elves in this world so he could take revenge on the Grannams of his own world for murders that the Elves had committed.

  The mere thought of trying to explain it exhausted her.

  “Elven have brought Changelings with them?” Toorkild said.

  “Aye, Changelings.” Andrea agreed. It was a wonderfully simple way of putting it. Changelings were people who had been taken into Elf-Land and lived among Elves.

  “We can fight Changelings,” Toorkild said.

  “Maybe,” she said, “but they’ll ken where to find this shieling.”

  “We keep watch,” Per said.

  “But they’ll ken where you be, Per. They be you. They ken all that you ken. They’ll find this place as easy as anybody here would.”

  He rose and hugged her. “Little bird, we’re no fools nor bairns.”

  She resisted being pulled into his embrace, thinking that she must make them realize how they were threatened—but perhaps he had understood.

  21st-side people tended to assume that they were much smarter
than illiterate thugs like the Sterkarms could ever be. But Andrea had always been impressed by how quickly the Sterkarms picked up ideas and put them together. They sometimes came to unexpected conclusions but—well—they weren’t “fools nor bairns.” She rested her head on Per’s shoulder. Maybe she worried too much. …

  From the darkening meadow below came the ringing peal of, “St-e-er-ka-a-arm!”

  She felt Per start even as she jerked up her head from his shoulder. There was a general muttering from the fires, and many started to their feet.

  “Mammy!” Per said. Seizing Andrea’s hand, he pulled her along behind him. A crowd went with them, away from the fires, hurrying down through the darkness and night scents to the meadow.

  They heard the noise of people tramping through grass. They heard greetings shouted. Then wails. Something was wrong.

  Per let go of Andrea’s hand and ran ahead. She hung back, dreading what he might be about to discover. Behind her, Gobby shouted, “Light!”

  Andrea made her way carefully down the meadow. Boys passed her, carrying burning pine knots from which sparks swirled. Splashes of firelight lit people stooping and kneeling.

  Gobby pushed past her and people drew back, letting him and Toorkild through. Following close behind them, Andrea glimpsed Per kneeling in the flame light, staring at something in shadow on the ground. He looked around for Andrea, his teeth set hard. She wormed past Toorkild to reach Per and hug him.

  On the ground lay a woman, partly wrapped in a bloodstained blanket. For a sick and giddy moment, Andrea remembered another world, another time, where she’d seen Per lying wounded on a hillside. A crowd of wailing and dismayed Sterkarms had been gathered around her then, too.

  Chilled with foreboding, Andrea stooped to peer through the darkness at the woman’s face. A flare of torchlight fell full on the body, and Andrea’s hands rose to cover her eyes. The body had no face. It was smashed, unrecognizable, a bloody hole.