Per May, seeing her, laughed and bowed. Out of breath, he said, “Lady, it be your tower.” He gestured her forward. All around her, men laughed.
Ignoring him, she moved toward Sweet Milk, but had to pass the wrecked door and glanced into the room. What she saw made her stop short. Her mouth opened, appalled, and she pointed. “My father’s table! Ruined!”
42
16th-Side A:
The Sterkarm Shieling
Toorkild Sterkarm • Gobby Sterkarm • Mistress Crosar
As darkness gathered, the cooking fires before the bothies burned brighter and redder. Mistress Crosar stood near one, with the Sterkarm brothers, Big Toorkild and Per, eke-named Gobby. The flames roasted them on one side and left them chilled on the other, but the smoke at least kept the midges away.
“Be so good, Master Sterkarm,” Mistress Crosar said, and included Gobby with a nod. “Spare my ears talk of this being no business of women. If your good lady, God save her, had lived, you would ask her mind. I ken fine well that Isobel Alyot was a woman of sense, and you are no such fool as to do without her advice.”
“Fine, fine,” Toorkild said, irritably: a sure sign that he was embarrassed and did not wish to listen.
Gobby Sterkarm, his arms folded, said, “And if we listen, what word have you?”
Mistress Crosar glanced around. Close by was the bothy where her brother lay, but no one else was near. Most people had gone to their beds. “I mun speak for my brother,” she said. “For now, there is none else.” She waved a hand to knock aside a small flying creature the smoke had not discouraged. “We mun stand together against Elven. This comes hard to me. Our families have no been friends. But there be no closing Elf-Gate. It aye swings open again. So we mun fight them together.”
“Sense in a Grannam!” Gobby said. “Rarer than teeth in a hen.” He grinned at his brother. “She hears grindstones working at Longknowe.”
Toorkild frowned until he understood Gobby’s meaning: Lesser members of the Grannam family were sharpening their weapons, eager to take over Richie Grannam’s land and power.
Mistress Crosar inclined her head in agreement. “I mun think of my brother and his daughter.” Richie might recover. He had before, though his attacks had never been so public. And Joan—she had ruined her chances for a good first wedding, silly lass, but if her inheritance of Brackenhill could be held, she might do better as a widow.
Toorkild said, “She would marry her brother’s runagate daughter to my Per!”
“I wish our families to be united against Elven,” Mistress Crosar said. Joan’s husband would be Laird Brackenhill. If he was a Sterkarm, with the strong Sterkarm family at his back, Longknowe would not dare move against them. Richie and Joan would keep their home and all that went with it.
“I married where I loved,” Toorkild said.
“Tha hadst luck,” said Gobby.
“I want it for my lad! Best bairns be bred in love.”
“Ach, Per has never been short of love, and Mistress here be a shrewd lady. I doubt she asks more than our lad pays his due once a month.”
“It be for Per to say,” Toorkild said.
“God’s Arse, Toorkild! Thanks to Elven, tha’ve two Pers! Gift one of ’em to lady! And I be sure she’ll gift us with plenty Grannam land and goods.”
“That’s to be talked of, certainly,” she said.
“It’ll be talked of long and hard,” Gobby said, “if you wish us to take a lass who’s run half-naked about hills with a ride of men.”
Mistress Crosar thought a Sterkarm would be lucky to get a Grannam lass who’d worked all the brothels in Carloel, but she inclined her head in polite agreement.
16th-Side A:
The Captured Grannam Tower
Per May • Joan Grannam • Sweet Milk
Through the door of her father’s private room, Joan saw the length of the table stretching away toward the window, its beautiful, polished surface splintered, burned, and covered with filth.
And that vile stink! What had these intruders been doing to make such a stink?
Her gaze fell, and she saw the Elves on the floor.
One lay half under the table, curled on his side. Two more lay on the hearth. All around the room lay more men.
The stink was too much. Joan, her hand clamped over her mouth, turned for the head of the stairs. The men let her by and then tramped into the room.
Per May
Yain, tain, tethera, methera … In the stinking room, Per counted, screwing up his face at the smell. Hovera, dovera, dik … The Elves lay without their helmets and without their pistols.
A cauldron stood on Richie Grannam’s big polished table. It had scorched the wood. Per looked into it, and a rich smell of meat and gravy rose into his face. He backed off. Mixed with the stink of shit and vomit, it was sickening.
Dropped bowls and spilled food lay among the rushes and mess on the floor. The Elves had died in pain, purging. Their leader, Elf-Patterson, lay nearest the door, on his face, his clothes soaked, his body surrounded by vomit. Like all of them, he was dead.
If Changeling Per had done this, it was justice and a proper revenge. Yet it made Per May’s heart as sick as his belly. Perhaps because he hadn’t seen his father killed.
Anders ran down the stairs from above with word that two more dead Elves lay up there. Anders said, “He made ’em hazelnut stew!”
This set all the Changelings laughing. “Come who dares and meddle with us!” someone shouted.
Under cover of the noise, Joan went to Sweet Milk. “Goodman, that Per Sterkarm who was hurt asks for you.”
Sweet Milk dipped his head in what might have been a nod of agreement and left the room. The Sterkarms followed him, leaving Joan and a few Grannam men.
“Clear this room,” Joan said. “My father, when he returns, will no want to see this. Or smell it!”
The men were not happy. “Do we bury them?” one asked.
“Bury them?” Joan said. “When they threw ours over wall and left them for crows and foxes? Throw them down hillside!”
As she left the room, the men looked at one another and grinned, despite the unpleasant task before them. That was the way a lady of the Grannams should speak.
43
16th Side:
The Captured Grannam Tower
Changeling Per
The fever brought shaking that jangled him against the tower’s hard floor, clashing his teeth. Pain saturated him until thought and memory were shredded.
He had only to endure until it passed. He knew that he slid nearer a darkness deeper than sleep, in which there would be no more pain and from which he would never wake. He’d seen it in Sweet Milk’s face. As sure as apples grew on an apple tree, wounds like his always killed.
He looked down a track, leading away across a moor into darkness … and then things shifted and he saw that the track was a runnel in the packed earth of the tower’s floor, leading through low hills of dung and thickets of straw into a dark corner. The waking was, for a moment, without pain. It came to him how many times he’d faced death before, thinking: The day of my death and the manner of my dying were fated long ago. Secretly, he had never believed that it was his fated day.
Pain rose again, making him twist and turn. Arching his head back, teeth clenched, he said, “Sweet Milk.” Feet tramped overheard. He was unheard.
Sweet Milk led the way down the dark, narrow stairs, the small space full of the clattering and scuffling of boots on stone. A cold draft of air from the tower’s open door told them they neared the bottom.
As they left the staircase, the men moved to stand against the walls, keeping well away from the man who twisted on the palliasse by the wall.
Sweet Milk alone crossed the small space and stood above Changeling Per. Per May seemed about to join
him, but he stopped in the middle of the floor, where the door’s shadow fell across him.
Joan went to Sweet Milk’s side, her head not reaching his shoulder. She said, “He asked for you.”
At the sound of Joan’s voice, Changeling Per opened his eyes and took a long, shuddering breath. The tall, shadowed figure of Sweet Milk rose above him. When Sweet Milk crouched, the sudden movement was dizzying.
Pain made Per bring up his knees. The effort took a little more of his strength and worsened the pain. “Little Daddy?” It was a gasp. “I ken.”
Sweet Milk drew his long knife, the blade screeching on the scabbard’s metal edge. The sound sent ice through Changeling Per. Light from the door caught the blade, and his eyes fixed on it. He tried to say, No, wait, but couldn’t speak. He didn’t need to speak. Sweet Milk would make the end as quick as it could be.
Sweet Milk rose from his crouch, shaking his head. He moved to stand behind the palliasse and crouched again, reaching for Changeling Per just as the dying man turned his eyes to him.
Sweet Milk stood again and the watching men glanced at one another. It was unlike Sweet Milk to be so nervous.
Holding the knife at his side, Sweet Milk raised his other arm and wiped his face on his sleeve. At his feet, Changeling Per jerked in another attack of fever. It seemed he tried to say Sweet Milk’s name, but his voice was so broken it was hard to tell.
Once more, Sweet Milk crouched. He found himself trying to hide the knife from Changeling Per’s view. He had never cared before if the owner of the throat he cut saw the knife.
He reached out to grasp and steady Changeling Per’s head, and a flash of memory showed him his former self: a hungry, gangling, homeless boy. Toorkild Sterkarm had given him a home in the Bedesdale Tower, and he’d worked desperately hard to make himself a place there. He’d become a sort of male nursemaid to the small Per, fishing him from ponds, rescuing him from pigsties, teaching him wrestling moves, helping him steal food from the kitchen …
All the more reason to save Per from a slow, agonizing death now. Sweet Milk swopped his knife to the other hand and wiped his palm dry, readying himself again. Per’s fever had abated, but he still shivered. To hold him still, Sweet Milk set a hand on his shoulder—and then stood, shaking his head. Sheathing his knife, he turned away.
In touching Changeling Per, he’d felt the stubborn thump of a strong heart, thudding on despite blood loss and fever. He could not be the one to still it.
Faces stared at him: his men, the other Per, the Grannam girl. They all looked to him, as they always did, to do the hard and dirty job. He shook his head.
The men stopped leaning on the walls and looked at the floor, not one another. The many tiny sounds made by the shifting of their feet and clothing stopped. A great stillness came to the small space within the tower’s stones.
The fever left Changeling Per. He slumped, limp, on the dirt floor among the tangles of straw. He drew in a long breath. “End it.”
No one moved. Joan looked around her, at all these men who were such hard, tough warriors. “Do something!” she said. “Help him!” No one answered, or even looked at her. “Are we to wait here, days, until it be over for him?”
One man punched the door and tramped out into the yard. Once he had given the lead, several others followed. The rest stayed but with folded arms and lowered heads.
Changeling Per hissed through gritted teeth, and his restless shifting and stirring began again as he tried to ease the pain. He sobbed when he made it worse.
Watching and listening to his double-ganner’s pain hurt Per May like cat scratches, like burns. He turned to the tower’s door, stopped, turned back. He grimaced, his teeth set edge to edge as the moaning and scrabbling of the dying man went on. All present found it hard, but for Per May, this was witnessing his own death.
It was no heroic death either, quick and glorious, sung in a ballad. This scrabbling and moaning in dirty straw in a dark corner, this ceaseless, pain-filled struggle for a moment of ease, this choking while lying in a puddle of shit and blood … This was his death made real.
Per May moved to stand at Changeling Per’s head and looked down at the face that others said was his own. It was white and sunken, blood-streaked, its pale-blue eyes straining back to meet his own. His Fetch, staring him down. Left handed, he drew his dagger from its scabbard at his back with a ringing sound of steel.
Changeling Per heard the sound. Terror and relief flooded through him like cold meltwater. He stared up at an image of himself still vivid and strong.
Per May knelt and grasped Changeling Per’s face in his right hand, hiding it. He had to act quickly, before his will failed. He pulled the Changeling’s face back, straining his neck tight.
Changeling Per’s hand rose up, weak, but instinctively trying to fend off the blade, even against his will.
Joan darted forward, fell to her knees, and held the Changeling’s hands down.
Per May hacked with the dagger, opening the veins on both sides of Changeling Per’s neck. The little blood left in the Changeling welled from him, gurgling in his throat, spilling onto the dirt and straw of the floor. Per Changeling’s feet kicked.
Joan threw herself back on her haunches as the blood ran through the dirt toward her. Scrambling to her feet, she ran through the tower’s door in the yard, where she stopped and looked at the blood on her hands and sleeves.
Inside, Per May dropped his dagger and pushed himself away from the dying man, ending with his back against the wall and his head and bloodied hands resting on his raised knees. His heart hammered as if he’d run fast and hurt as if bowstrings tightened around it. He’d struck a blow of grace, a mercy killing, but he felt only terror.
Someone settled heavily against his side and he started, half-expecting attack. He looked up into Changeling Sweet Milk’s blue eyes under their heavy, scowling brows.
Sweet Milk took Per May’s left hand in his own right one and clasped it tightly, blood and all.
16th-Side B:
The Sterkarm Tower at Bedesdale
Isobel
Isobel woke in the bed where she’d slept so often with Toorkild and never would again. From outside came the many sounds of the tower: her people’s chatter, doors banging, chickens cackling, dogs barking …
She sat up, rubbing her face. She’d fallen asleep, exhausted from weeping, and had dreamed. Those dreams were already fading, and she was glad to let go of their knives and blood. And, as they faded, they loosed something that had been strained tight, leaving her a sense of sweet relief.
She sat on the edge of her bed and thought, as she always did: What is there to do now?
16th-Side A:
Wild Country
Joan Grannam • Per May• The Changelings
The Grannam men did not want to leave Brackenhill. The Elves were dead, and if Sterkarms could be believed, the Elf-Gate was closed. There was much work to be done at Brackenhill after the fire, and they wanted to begin it.
“As you please,” Joan Grannam said. “I gan with my husband.”
Both Grannams and Sterkarms had been startled. Husband? That she meant Per Sterkarm, they had little doubt—but which one, the living or the dead? No one argued. It did no good to argue with the mad. Aidan sighed and chose men to ride with Joan as her guard.
Sweet Milk led the party as they rode from the gate of the Brackenhill Tower. Behind him was Per May with the Changeling Sterkarms. Anders held the leading rein of the horse that carried Changeling Per’s body. Joan Grannam rode beside it, and her Grannam men made a reluctant rearguard.
Joan wept as she rode. They all watched her, she knew, and whispered about her. She didn’t care. Her memory showed her, again and again, a beautiful young man shining like an angel in the sunlight slanting through a narrow window. The dead carcass slung over the horse beside her was that sa
me young ma … though his close likeness rode ahead of her.
The hounds were troubled and confused by the corpse. They ran beside the horse that carried it, whining, their tails between their legs. Per May called them to him, kicked up his horse, and led them to the front of the ride.
He could not keep his mind from returning to what he’d done. It had been mercy, but it stained him like blood. And then his memory showed him his mother’s shattered face and Andrea’s blue-lipped face … Death had never seemed so close. It rode pillion with him, clutched at him.
The day of my death and the manner of my dying were fated long ago. And, always, he’d told himself that the fated day was far in the future, far enough away for him to live to his father’s age and have a son who would inherit Bedesdale. When Andrea had come back to him, he’d planned that she would be that son’s mother. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been pale and gray as ash. Dying. The arms of that pillion rider tightened around his chest.
He wanted, in the next eyeblink, to ride into the shieling and be greeted by a rosy-faced and smiling Andrea, and he wanted to ride the other way and never go near anyone, ever, who might tell him that Andrea was dead.
44
16th-Side A:
The Sterkarm Shieling
Andrea • Mistress Crosar • Toorkild Sterkarm
The cooking fires burned outside the bothies all day. At night, they were banked, to smolder through the darkness until stirred alive the next morning. They needed fuel continually, and the women and children spent much of every day searching for anything that would burn.
Andrea joined a fuel party. With the other women, she crossed the stream that ran close by the shieling and followed the path that led through the few birches to the moorland above. They hadn’t gone far when, behind them, the cry went up: “Sterk-arm!”
They turned and ran back to the shieling, where people were downing tools and hurrying toward the meadow. Andrea and her companions joined them.
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 38