A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  He said, “Now will you join with us to fight Elven?”

  37

  16th-Side A:

  The Grannam Tower

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

  Patterson rubbed a hand across his mouth, which felt as if he’d been to the dentist. “Finished?” he asked McGowan. “Greedy sod. Relieve Skelton, let him come and get some.”

  Heavy steps on the stairs made Patterson look around. Men coming off guard tramped in, exclaiming as they smelled the stew. Clattering their rifles onto the table, they reached for the bowls their mates passed them.

  Patterson noticed that his throat was sore. He ignored it. He had no time to come down with a cold.

  Per leaned against the fireplace, watching. Many of the Elves rubbed their mouths or prodded at their cheeks. It had to be the work of the poison. How long before they guessed?

  Patterson, sitting on the table’s edge, assessed his men’s mood. The annoying soreness in his throat was worse, and now there was a pins-and-needles sensation in his lips and tongue. His throat felt as if it was drying out, the tissues drawing together. He continued to ignore it, even when the sensation stretched down his throat and into his chest.

  Ferris was pressing a fist to the base of his own throat. Jackson rubbed his own lips, and Wang licked his own sleeve as if wiping something from his mouth. Put all that together with his own symptoms … Patterson looked around for Per Sterkarm.

  Sterkarm was sauntering toward the door onto the landing. Patterson pointed and yelled, but his dry mouth only let out a creak, and his gesture went unnoticed.

  Per Sterkarm looked around, met Patterson’s eyes for an instant, understood … and leaped for the door.

  Patterson started after him, shouting—but his voice dried, his legs wouldn’t work, and he staggered. He grabbed the table to keep from falling and saw Sterkarm bound onto the landing, turn, and slam the door shut. The key clicked in the lock.

  Patterson wanted to yell but found even drawing breath made his heart thump sickeningly. His throat was no longer merely sore, but burned as if he’d swallowed acid. The pain streaked into his belly and flared out from his gullet into his chest. His hands, like his mouth, prickled. The prickling intensified, flaring up and down his arms, a whipping with nettles.

  He saw his men’s faces, terrified. Ferris and Jackson mopped at their drooling mouths. Wang clutched at a settle, jerked double, and vomited—and he’d just come off-duty. He was one of the last to eat the stew.

  Patterson knew if he moved from the table, he would fall, so as he leaned on it, he sought out Gareth—and there he was, still by the pot of stew he’d been so proud to make, clutching his guts.

  Patterson tried to speak, but had to clutch at his own belly as the scalding worsened. His throat and mouth were sandpaper dry, yet drool poured from his mouth and dripped to the floor. Fire crackled, flared, prickled up and down his arms and legs.

  Evans spouted vomit like an overflow pipe and crashed to the floor. He, too, had been one of the last to eat. Panic ran through the others. They threw up their arms, shouted pointless questions: “What’s going on?” “What’s happening?”

  Ferris thumped to the floor. As if in response, another man spewed and toppled.

  Patterson’s belly was at a rolling boil. Foggily, he tried to follow a thought. They’d all eaten the stew … They’d all eaten …

  Spew rose from his own guts, burning, choking. His legs melted beneath him, as if made of wax. As the vomit came up, his men vanished in a blur. It hurt.

  Vomit poured from him, wrenching his already scalded innards. His whole world became that outpouring. Gasping, panting, water streaming from his eyes, nose, mout … His guts contracted to force up more. He heard his men choking and gasping nearby but couldn’t care. …

  He came to lying in the stink of his own vomit. His belly muscles were wrenched and aching; his innards still burned; flares of fire still played up and down his body. He was exhausted. But he remembered his men. And Per Sterkarm.

  That bastard, that psycho little bastard. He’d done it. He’d put one over on them—somehow, God knew how, but somehow he’d poisoned the stew. Why, he asked himself. Why did you trust him? You knew him, you knew what he was, and still you trusted him. …

  He promised himself that if he survived this, then by Christ what he was suffering would be a day at the seaside compared to what he’d make Per bloody Sterkarm suffer, the treacherous, lying, poisoning, cowardly little bastard. …

  He raised his head to check on his men, but a thick white fog filled the room. Was anyone left standing? He heard vomiting and someone crying, but it was as if his ears were stuffed with wool.

  Had to chec … He tried to get to his knees, but slipped and floundered in vomit. Its sickening stink rose into his face and he was sick again. He tried again to get up, but his arms wobbled, he choked for breath—and took a header into a deep, cold white snowdrift.

  On the tower’s landing, a cool breeze slanted through the narrow windows. Per leaned on the oak door, with its great iron lock, and listened. The thickness of the walls and door muffled sound, but he heard vomiting, sobbing, and falls.

  He wondered about the men on the tower’s roof. Were they helpless, or had they found time and strength to give the alarm?

  Thoughtfully, he set his back to the door and looked at the mouth of the stairs. If an alarm had been given, then armed Elves would soon run up. But the guard had changed and the men now on duty had also eaten the stew. If they’d gobbled it as greedily as their friends, there was no need to worry. The longer the hazelnuts whirled in the hot stew, the more poisonous it became. Probably even a mouthful would take latecomers off their legs.

  But if for some reason they’d set the stew aside … If they hadn’t liked the taste, or had been delicate souls, eating smaller mouthfuls more slowly …

  He had to decide what to do. He was alone and weaponless. Should he lock himself in the upper room with the dying men or go belowstairs to the tower’s yard?

  All the Elves in the room behind him were dying, he was sure of that, but one might yet have the strength to shoot him. And he couldn’t be certain of the men on the tower roof.

  Belowstairs, there were places to hide in the buildings that had escaped burning and plenty of things that would make weapons.

  Having decided, he pulled the key from the lock. He was about to put it in his pouch when, on an impulse, he crossed to the landing’s narrow, unglazed window. Pushing his arm through, he swung and threw the key as far as he could. It flew away toward the tower’s outer wall, and where it landed, he had no idea. There would be no easy unlocking of that door!

  Running across to the stairs, he jumped down them two and three at a time, whirling around the tight spiral. Nothing was to be gained by creeping down, and if he met anyone climbing up, his downward rush might bring him out of the encounter best.

  The tower’s great door stood open. Per halted at the stair’s foot to make sure no one stood in the shadows of the ground floor. He pushed the iron yett aside, screeching on its hinges. The sound echoed and faded in silence.

  Sure that the ground floor was empty, he crossed to the door in a stride, leaning within the thick wall’s shelter while he peered out. A few disgruntled, unfed chickens pecked in the mud, but he saw no Elves.

  He looked up, scanning the walls around the tower. If any guards were still active, the burned, fallen buildings would make it easy for them to see him.

  There was nothing gained by dithering. He ran across the yard to the kitchen but stood at its door, listening. Hungry chickens fussed around his feet. Apart from their cackling, there was a silence such as no tower should hold. From the kitchen alone, there should be yelling, clanging, clattering, walloping. A kitchen was never silent.

  Turning his head, k
eeping an eye on either end of the alley, he lifted the kitchen’s latch. Kitchens were always hot, filled with bustle and firelight. This one was cool, shadowed, silent. There was that smell, too. He’d smelled it earlier, with Gareth.

  A rat scurried across a table and leaped to the floor. Scratchings told where others escaped. Long strings of vegetables, herbs, and flatbread dangled from racks hung above, their smell mingling with that of peat ash. That other smell underlay them all. Gareth hadn’t known what it was, though he’d wrinkled his nose. Per knew it immediately.

  He found the body in a corner, half under a table. It was dressed in women’s clothes. Of her face and fingers, not much was left. An Elf-Ball had shattered her head, and the rats had been feasting.

  Per crouched beside her for an eye blink. She’d been a Grannam, but she’d been a woman, and women had always been good to him. And even if a Grannam, she’d never been an Elf.

  “They be dead,” he said, “who did this to thee.”

  He looked for a weapon. Knives of many different sizes lay on the table. He chose a sharp, long-bladed one and returned to the alley.

  He kept to the narrow lanes where buildings had survived the fire. They gave him cover as he edged past storehouses, an empty pigpen, and a chicken house. His skin prickled with alarm. He couldn’t watch all directions at once, and an attack might come from anywhere—out of any door, from around any corner, from abov …

  An Elf lay curled in the mud near the tower’s outer wall. Vomit muddied the cobbles around him. His pistol lay on the ground behind him. The Elf gave no sign of knowing he was near, but Per still approached cautiously.

  Elves weren’t so powerful. A dose of wolfsdeath brought them as low as a man—and as quickly.

  He stepped between the Elf and his fallen pistol. The Elf stirred, raised his head, and peered, trying to raise himself on one arm. Before Per could kick the arm’s support away, the Elf slumped down again, in a faint.

  Crouching, Per grabbed the Elf’s nose and dragged his head up and back. Per could felt his breath on his hand. The Elf’s helmet’s strap left his throat bare, and Per drove the knife into his neck hard, then slashed the blade forward. It took effort and loosed a flow of blood into the alley’s mud. The Elf kicked, and Per sprang up and away. When the Elf was still, he wiped the blade on his clothes and moved on.

  If the poison had sickened all the Elves as badly as that, he hadn’t much to fear—but the danger of thinking himself safe made his heart thump in his throat. There were three other Elves. Any of them might have eaten less stew, or not touched it at all. He couldn’t allow himself ease.

  To his left was a two-story building with a low-hanging thatch. To his right, the tower’s high stone outer wall. As he walked, he checked the top of the wall, in case Elves were up there. It was easy to forget to look up.

  Another Elf lay in the open cobbled yard before the gatehouse.

  Per waited in the shadow of an alley, watching the buildings and alleys on the other side of the yard. But, if he watched all day, he could never be sure that some unpoisoned Elf wasn’t hiding somewhere. Per made up his mind to take the risk, crossed quickly to the Elf, and stood astride him. Yanking up his head, he stabbed and slashed his throat, then backed away toward the gatehouse, still watching the alleys.

  The gatehouse was shadowed. Per stood sidelong at the entrance so he could look inside, and watch the yard, too. He listened hard, trying to catch any sound within the tower. He heard nothing but the wind.

  There was no one inside the gatehouse. He could unbar the gate and walk out.

  And if there was an Elf alive on the roof of the gatehouse, he would be shot.

  Caution made Per take the dark inner stair that led up to the gatehouse roof. He would make sure there were no living Elves up there. Maybe he would lock the door at the top of the stair and wait for Sweet Milk to return.

  The narrow, dark stairs soon turned a corner. Per set his back against the wall and went up crabwise, the knife ready in his hand. Light shone faintly ahead, telling him that the door at the top was open. He studied the light. Someone hiding around the corner would throw a shadow. Nothing, no flicker, suggested that anyone stood on the upper steps.

  Near the door, he stopped and leaned on the wall. A chill wind blew through the opening, a clean breeze without the smell of smoke, dung, old thatch … He listened. The tread of a boot would be heard on the stone roof. He heard nothing but the wind at the tower’s corners.

  Maybe the Elf he’d killed in the yard had been the gate’s guard. Sickening, he’d stumbled down the stairs, looking for help, and had collapsed in the yard. If so, then the roof of the gatehouse was empty.

  Per breathed deep to steady his heart, which had begun a slow, strong pound. He could go back down the stairs and lock the door at the bottom—but he didn’t know how many Elves had survived or where they were. Sick as they might be now, if they hadn’t swallowed a fatal dose, they’d feel better in a while. …

  As so often before, Per became bored with weighing the chances. The day of his death and the manner of his dying had been fated long ago. Dithering and havering drained away the life and courage, gaining nothing.

  Knife at the ready, he jumped through the open door onto the roof and spun to see the places behind the door where an Elf might hide. The explosion of the Elf-Pistol was as loud as a cannon: It rolled around the sky and boomed back from the hills.

  16th-Side B:

  The Sterkarm Tower at Bedesdale

  Isobel Sterkarm

  The day’s work done, the people gathered in the hall of the Bedesdale Tower. Some stood at the table, helping themselves to bread and pottage; others warmed themselves at the fire. The murmur of talk and contented chewing was interrupted by a cry of “Per!” from the stairway.

  Several men named Per looked around as Isobel Sterkarm ran into the hall, her face alive, her eyes wide. She stopped short, seeing them all staring. “Per?”

  “Which Per, Isobel?” Yanet asked from the fire where she oversaw the fair sharing of food.

  “My Per.” She looked around, noting the faces turning from her. “I heard him call.”

  Yanet hung her ladle on the side of the pot and went to Isobel. “Isobel. He ganned with Elven.”

  Isobel became very still, but her head rose. “He has come back.”

  Yanet looked about the room, her face questioning, at men who had been in the gatehouse or stables. They shook their heads.

  Isobel understood the exchange of looks. “I misheard.” She turned back to the stairs.

  Yanet followed. She saw Isobel run up the flight of stone steps and ran after her, but the door of the private room slammed in her face. The key turned in the lock.

  38

  16th-Side A:

  The Sterkarm Shieling

  Toorkild Sterkarm • Yanet • Kaitlin • Joe • Andrea

  After leaving the Changelings at the Elf-Gate, Joe and Kaitlin squabbled a weary way through the hills, following little rivers that Kaitlin called “waters,” and leading their tired horse in scrambles up and down wooded hillsides, hoping to avoid any Elf-Patrols.

  Joe had come to know the country near the Bedesdale Tower, but away from familiar landmarks, it was all, to him, just a lot of sky, hills, water, and wet fern. The occasional cow gave him no clue about which direction to head to find the shieling.

  Yet Kaitlin claimed to know. Her head barely reached his shoulder, and when she looked up at him, there were those big, round blue eyes. He wanted to believe her. For both their sakes, he was keen to reach the shieling again. But at heart, he doubted that someone so small and pretty could possibly lead the way over this trackless waste without so much as a single road sign: Shieling 3.

  “I ken by where sun be,” she said. Joe knew that some people, allegedly, could do that. He couldn’t believe Kaitlin was one of them.
>
  So they squabbled, with Joe grudging every step that might take them further astray, until Kaitlin said, “Ach, away and find thine own road and I’ll gan mine!”

  She led the horse away without a backward look. He trudged meekly after her, because he’d be hopelessly lost without her and was afraid she’d come to harm on her own.

  Kaitlin brought them to land that she knew, and that even Joe soon recognized, and then to the shieling. Joe remained convinced that it was more by luck than judgment, but hugged her and apologized for his lack of faith.

  People poured down the meadow from the bothies; took over their horse; and hugged, kissed, and welcomed them. Wee Peerie, who had felt deserted by both mother and grandmother, jumped into his mother’s arms.

  When Kaitlin asked for her mother, the women at the cooking fires said that Toorkild had taken her stravaiging in search of Per May. “He would make Yanet gan, lest Per May be hurt.”

  Joe, feeling guilty, sought out Sweet Milk and Gobby and explained how he’d left the Changelings. As far as he knew, the gate still stood open for Elves to come and go.

  Gobby had seemed unconcerned. “We’ll ken afore their noses poke through.”

  So Joe shrugged off responsibility and crawled into an empty bothy with Kaitlin and Wee Peerie. They stretched their aching bones on piled ferns, cuddled together, kissed each other, and closed their eyes, intending to sleep the day round.

  They’d hardly dozed before hunting calls and running feet startled them awake. Wee Peerie roused and crawled from the bothy. Kaitlin followed him—and so, Joe, sighing, crawled after her into the chill air.

  The disturbance heralded Toorkild, back from his hunt for Per May. People ran whooping from the bothies to greet and take care of the horses.

  Kaitlin and Wee Peerie, spotting Yanet on foot, ran to hug her. Joe, seeing a stretcher slung between two horses, went to see if he could help with whoever was hurt. Coming up beside one horse, and peering over its back, he saw Andrea lying in the sling. “Hinney, are you hurt?” Hearing English, she opened her eyes. “You’re not looking well, lass.” He looked around for Per and was surprised to see Mistress Crosar walking beside Toorkild.