A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  “Per!” Toorkild barked. “To me!”

  He expected Per to leave the old woman’s side and run to him. Instead, Per stood gawping, while struggling to hold Swart. This wasn’t like Per. “Come away!” Toorkild said.

  Per, looking up, saw his father’s men on the hill’s brow, pointing to the bodies of Ecky and Sim, and calling to one another.

  Swart lunged up the slope, eager to greet Toorkild, almost pulling Per from his feet. He let go of Mistress Crosar’s arm, the better to hold back his hound. It would not be good to have a large hound leaping at people while armed Sterkarms and Grannams formed battle lines. Swart, hard to hold even when Per was well, dragged him to his knees. “Swart, down!”

  Mistress Crosar, also painfully aware of the living Sterkarms’ interest in the dead ones, called out, “Master Sterkarm, I—”

  “Hold tha noise, tha limmer!” Toorkild said.

  Davy, hearing her so insulted, scrambled toward her. His movement brought Sterkarm lances down again. Some Sterkarms dismounted and drew their swords. The thin screech of iron scraped on iron rang through the air, sending thrills through the hair on many scalps.

  Mistress Crosar turned on Davy, halting him with one spread hand. He breathed angrily, glaring at the Sterkarms beyond her.

  Per, on his knees, hugging Swart, shouted, “Daddy! Harken now! Elven killed Ecky and Sim. Elven.”

  That brought stillness to the hillside. Mistress Crosar stooped and took Swart’s collar, allowing Per to stand. He rose and took a step toward his father, but stopped when he realized that it was his closeness to the Grannams that ensured—for the moment—their safety. “Look at their wounds.” He nodded toward the bodies. “Elven killed them, with Elf-Pistols. The Grannam … Daddy, Entraya is sick, and they cared for her.” With one hand, he gestured toward the little shelter.

  Toorkild slowly dismounted. He had no words. The other Sterkarms simply stared.

  Mistress Crosar said, “Master Sterkarm, be so kind, allow me to speak. Your son came to us, asking our help against Elven—and he has right of it. We should stand together, Master Sterkarm, against Elven, who mean us all harm.”

  Per’s head turned sharply. This sudden agreement from one who’d called him a cock crowing on a dunghill was startling. He glimpsed Davy Grannam, also staring at her, open-mouthed. She was as cunning, Per had to allow, as his father’s brother, Gobby. Turning back to his father, he called, “Grannams be our friends now, against Elven!”

  There was movement higher on the hillside. A woman sauntered into view, set her hands on her hips. “Yanet!” Per bawled. “Entraya be poisoned!”

  Yanet sidestepped down the slope. “Poisoned?” she called. “Dead?”

  Mistress Crosar answered. “No dead yet. It would gladden me, Mistress Sterkarm, if you would look at her.”

  Yanet paused for an eye’s blink. She recognized Mistress Crosar from market days but, even if she had not, would have known from her clothes that she was a lady of rank. By addressing her as you and Mistress, the woman flattered her. If there hadn’t been a band of armed Sterkarms behind her, she would have been thou to Mistress Crosar, and Goodwife at best. Yanet was tempted to make an unflattering reply.

  But she could feel aggression in the air around them, like the tingling around polished amber. The men were angry as yowling tomcats, nose to nose with bristling tails. At the first jangle, they would be on one another. She and Mistress Crosar both knew it.

  “Yanet,” Per said. “Make her better, be so good.”

  Yanet came on down the hill. She saw in Mistress Crosar’s face that she, too, had heard that plea often before—pleading for a sick child, a hurt man, a wife bleeding after childbirth. Be so good. Make them better. She saw her own knowledge reflected in Mistress Crosar’s face: Often, it was not possible.

  “Oh, my poor laddie.” Reaching him, Yanet put her hand on Per’s shoulder. “Take me to her, then.”

  Swart rose and lunged after Per, almost pulling Mistress Crosar from her feet. “Master Sterkarm,” she cried to Toorkild. “Be so kind. Take hound.”

  Unwillingly, Toorkild came down the hillside toward her. Several of his men followed, swords drawn. Mistress Crosar felt anxiety rising in Davy, like yeast bubbling in fermenting ale. “Put up, Davy!” He hesitated, looking at the Sterkarm blades, and Mistress Crosar called, “Master Sterkarm, have your men put up. Be so kind.”

  Toorkild waved a hand impatiently at his men. With suspicious faces, they sheathed their swords. Davy, as unwillingly, put up his own.

  Toorkild took a leash from his pouch and unwound it. Reaching Mistress Crosar, he fastened the leash to Swart’s collar and took the hound from her. “Mistress,” he said through set teeth, “be so good, pardon me, I mun gan to my son.” He walked away to the shelter, Swart trotting beside him. His men followed, stiff-legged and glowering. The Grannams drew away from them.

  Mistress Crosar walked behind Per and Yanet toward the little bothy and saw Joan rise from the gorse thicket where she’d been sulking and move to join them. The wee hussy, thought her aunt. She’d done nothing to help but now hankered after the pretty Sterkarm lad.

  It would be good to get Joan away from this unlucky place, but she saw little chance of it. They were outnumbered, and once they left the slight protection offered them by Per May, their time would be short. It could be seen from the Sterkarms’ glowering that they suspected them—and would forever suspect them—of having killed their friends.

  “Hurry,” she said to Davy, who trailed behind her. The closer they were to Per May, the better.

  Davy gritted his teeth and lengthened his stride to walk at her side. If Mistress Crosar must join a Sterkarms crowd, then he would stand beside her, even though it was like asking him to inspect an open barrel of gunpowder with a burning torch. One ill-judged movement, one word out of place, one glance taken the wrong way …

  The shelter was surrounded by Sterkarms. Joan hovered at their edge. Mistress Crosar seized Joan’s arm and pulled her along with her as she pushed into the crowd. Surprisingly, the Sterkarms made way, though with sour faces. She was an older woman, which made them slower to attack, and she had a reputation as a healer. Davy did not find it so easy to follow her. Men stepped in his way, staring him in the eye. Silently, they dared him to try to push past.

  At the center of the Sterkarm crowd, Yanet knelt, her upper body inside the shelter. Mistress Crosar leaned on Joan’s arm and lowered herself to her knees beside Yanet.

  Joan, finding herself left standing among large Sterkarm men, who muttered and glared at her, quickly sank to her knees beside her aunt.

  A little warmth had gathered under the frail walls of branches, leaves, and cloaks, made warmer by the heat of their bodies. There was a scent of earth and broken stems. The Elf-May lay stretched on a bed of fern. Behind her, in the dappled shadow, crouched Per. His clear eyes caught the light from the entrance and gleamed as he looked eagerly to the women.

  Yanet felt at the Elf-May’s cold skin and put her hand inside her shirt. She grimaced at the weak, slow heartbeats.

  “Wolfsdeath,” Mistress Crosar murmured, looking at Joan, who turned her eyes away.

  “Wolfsdeath?” Yanet said. “Do you dip your knives in that now?”

  Mistress Crosar closed her eyes, exasperated, but Per answered for her. Looking at Joan, he said, “She was dosed with it.”

  “By a fool, then,” Yanet said.

  Joan stared at a leafy wall. Mistress Crosar said nothing.

  There was a rustling at the doorway as Toorkild stooped to look in at them. “Yanet! Will she live?”

  “Hush your noise!” Yanet replied and looked to Mistress Crosar, who said, “She be warmer than she was.” She watched as Yanet felt the Elf-May’s hands and, rummaging beneath the cloak thrown over her, pulled off her boots to feel her feet and legs.

 
Per leaned anxiously over the Elf-May, staring a question at Yanet. The woman sat back on her heels, reached out, and took his hand in hers. “If she lives to see morn,” Yanet said, “then maybe.” She lifted the cloak. “Get under there, keep her warm—it be all tha’rt good for!”

  There was nothing more to be said or done. “Let me out,” Mistress Crosar said, and hindered by her long, thick skirts, she edged backward from the shelter. Toorkild Sterkarm, surprisingly, gave her his hand and helped her up.

  At once, she felt the chill of the breeze—and there was Davy standing among the Sterkarms. He and Toorkild made it even colder with their glowering. The Grannam and Sterkarm men all strained, like ill-trained hounds, for a chance to bite one another.

  Dear Lord, look down and save us. Mistress Crosar was weary to the bone and ached all over. There had been too many miles walked and ridden, too few good meals, too little easy rest. It all sharpened fear to a thinner edge. But with Joan there, it was no time to start a battle. “Master Sterkarm,” she said, “what shall we do? Elf-May must bide awhile, if she be to live—and your son wishes her to live. Will you let us take my brother’s daughter and gan our ways?”

  Toorkild’s face was ugly with truculence. “I ken well what your armed men mean to do, woman!”

  “If I give you my word?” Mistress Crosar said.

  “The word of a Grannam and a limmer!”

  Hearing a Sterkarm speak of broken words made holding her temper hard, but she did it—and held out her hand to still Davy. “Then what must we do, Master Sterkarm? Cut one another to pieces? Shall Davy here kill your son—and will murdering my brother’s daughter make you happy to lose him?”

  Toorkild, his mouth twisting with indecision and anger, said nothing.

  “Order us killed, Master Sterkarm! Order it!”

  33

  16th-Side A:

  The Grannam Tower

  The Elves: Patterson, Gareth, and the Mercenaries • Changeling Per

  At least, Gareth thought, Changeling Per hadn’t moved far from the bed he’d been ordered to make him stay on. He’d left it, climbed on a stool, and thrown boxes down from the top of the wall bed—but now he was back on the bed again, so that was all right. Probably.

  From the uncomfortable wooden chair on the hearth, Gareth watched Per examining the boxes and hated everything about him: his height, his good looks, his strength. He was doubly hateful because, if you sneered at him for being a pretty boy, you couldn’t deny that he rode, fought, and had the guts to walk, unarmed, into a tower held by armed men who didn’t trust him.

  Somehow, the fact that Changeling Per was also a thief, a thug, a murderer, and a liar didn’t prevent Gareth from feeling like a poorly drawn, watery-colored cartoon of a man beside him.

  Per, seated comfortably on the bed, picked up all the boxes, one after another, and sniffed them. The smallest was round. He could almost close his hand around it. Shaken, it made a sound like rattling beads.

  The largest box sounded as if it was filled with sand—and a couple of stones that clunked against the sides.

  The others boxes rattled when shook, too. One seemed to hold something large, like a pebble. The second made a dry shuffling, like tally rods shaken in a box. The third sounded like the rolling of larger beads.

  Per, with a jerk of his head and a smile, beckoned Gareth to join him. Gareth hesitated, but—well, he was meant to be keeping an eye on Per. And he couldn’t help but be curious about what the boxes might hold. Gems, maybe. Doubloons. Moidores. Perfumed unguents … He went over to the bed.

  The largest box’s lid fitted tightly. Per had to force it open with a sigh. “Shukker,” he said.

  Gareth leaned over, trying to peep into box—then hastily glanced at the doors.

  Per licked his finger, stuck it into the sandy stuff in the box, before sucking off the grains stuck to his skin. He screwed up his face in distaste. He didn’t eat many sweet foods and found such pure sweetness sickly. He held the box out to Gareth.

  “Brown sugar,” Gareth said, and was unable to resist sticking in his own finger. It seemed years since he’d tasted anything really nice and sweet. Everyday 16th food was, well, plain.

  Per opened the smallest box. It was so well turned, with such a tight lid, that he had to get his nails under the edge. Curiosity drew Gareth closer until he stood beside Per. The lid gave with a pop, and Per tilted the box to show him the tiny round black beads that filled the box.

  Per sniffed the box nose. “Pairpah!” He tipped some beads into his palm. Dropping the box, he put a single bead into his mouth, offering the rest to Gareth.

  Gareth looked toward the stairs where Patterson might appear, then took a black bead and put it in his mouth. It was sweet at first, even flowery. Then he bit the bead and his tongue glowed. He spat it out and saw Per doing the same. Belatedly, he realized what Per had said, and nearly laughed. “Pepper!” Whole black peppercorns. He’d seen them before, in a plastic tube in his mother’s kitchen. He hadn’t expected to find them here.

  Per was enjoying himself, not only teasing the Elf, but spoiling the Grannams’ expensive spices. He chose the box with the rolling pebble inside and opened it.

  Gareth stooped to sniff the warm, milky scent that rose from inside. “Nutmeg!” His mother grated it onto rice pudding. A fierce longing pierced him for his mother’s safe 21st kitchen.

  Per tossed the nutmeg box aside and reached for the two remaining. The first held reddish brown twigs with a woody smell. Per broke off a flake to taste. A sweet, sharp flavor: cinnamon. And such an amount! His mother would be envious. …

  Thinking of his mother made him flinch. Which mother? The one on the Elf-Gate’s other side, who grieved for his father and must now grieve for him … Or the mother in this world, whose face he’d smashed with a lead ball … He made himself smile and gave a cinnamon stick to Gareth.

  The last box, opened, released the strongest scent of all—rich, winish, flowery. It held small, nail-like cloves. Per shook the box under Gareth’s nose. “We should cook hare. Make a feed for every body.”

  “There be nothing to cook with,” Gareth said. Per kicked his heels against the bed’s wooden frame and jumped up, weaving past the table and settle to the hearth. “You’re not to leave the bed!” Gareth cried.

  Per ducked into the chimney and unfolded the hinged pot hook from the back wall. He lifted a small cauldron from the hearth, hung it on the hook, and turned to Gareth with spread hands, as if to say, “There!”

  Gareth looked guiltily from Per to the doorway.

  “Build a fire,” Per said. “I saw the makings belowstairs. Fetch them and—”

  “I’m staying here with you!”

  “Ach,” Per said. “It would no take an eye blink. Down stairs and up. Where will I gan? We’ll stew hare with peppers and cinnamon. Good eating!”

  It sounded good. Gareth was reminded of television programs about rustic Italian cuisine. “Just whack it in the cauldron. …” Cooking with the Sterkarms. You couldn’t get more rustic than that.

  A delicious hare stew might win approval from the other men. Good old Gareth. …“How are you even going to skin it?”

  Per smiled and left the hearth—and Gareth’s heart turned over as he headed for the door. But Per went only to the large cupboard behind the door. Its shelves were empty. All the Grannams’ valuable plate and cups had been locked away before they left. Per yanked open a drawer, which rattled. Inside were spoons made of horn and wood and other everyday tools. From among them, Per held up a small, wooden-handled knife with a short, strong, sharp blade: a kitchen knife.

  Gareth’s face became a rictus of fear and dismay, but before he could shout or move, Per threw the knife onto the table. “Take it.” Per held up both hands. “I’ll tell thee how to joint hare. Tha canst do it. But we mun build a fire! Downstairs with thee, fetc
h kindling and peats!”

  Gareth snatched up the knife and put it in his pocket. “Get away from there!” He was surprised when Per obediently returned to the bed and lay on it again.

  With frequent looks over his shoulder to check that Per was still on the bed, Gareth sorted through the drawer, finding one more small knife. He put that in his pocket, too. Other drawers held nothing but cloths and lavender sprigs. He shut the drawers, feeling that he’d disarmed the enemy. Patterson hadn’t even thought to search the cupboard for knives.

  Per saw and noted Gareth’s satisfaction. “Fetch peats from downstairs. We’ll build a fire, cook a stew.”

  Gareth leaned against the cupboard, feeling strong. “I’m staying here.”

  “What art feared on? I’ve nowt to hurt thee with but peppercorns. Away and fetch peat.”

  Gareth shook his head.

  “Shall I come with thee?”

  “Stay on that bed! And call me you!”

  Per laughed, and didn’t mention that he’d already left the bed twice. “I’ll walk before, ah, you. I’ll carry peats and kindling, like your servingman. You can say I was never out of your sight.”

  Gareth said nothing while thinking of the men thanking him for the juicy hare stew, of Patterson praising his initiative. If Per walked well in front of him, while he held a knife at the ready …

  “In two blinks, we’ll be back abovestairs,” Per said.

  Gareth ran the idea through his head again. What harm could it do? What could Per, unarmed and outnumbered, gain by attacking him? Even Patterson would have to admit a good bowl of hare stew was worth breaking the rules. “Okay,” he said. “But you go first. … Be quick! Be quiet!”

  With a huge grin, Per jumped from the bed and headed for the door.

  16th-Side A:

  Wild Country

  Mistress Crosar • Yanet and Andrea

  Heartbeats and sighs. Wind sighing in trees or heavy rain falling deep into a dark sea.