Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  Beyond the village, at the edge of visibility through the rain, lay the woods. Gerin wished he could peer inside them, see into each windfall and cave, under each fallen tree. He feared monsters sheltered in some of them. He did not have the men he would have needed to form a cordon around his entire border, but without such a cordon, how was he supposed to hold off the creatures?

  He was thinking so hard, he did not notice anyone coming up to join him until footfalls jarred the timbers beside him. Van wore a conical hat of woven straw that kept the rain off his face. “Wondering what’s out there, Captain?” the outlander asked.

  “I know what’s out there,” Gerin answered glumly. “I’m wondering how close it is and how soon we’ll have to worry about it right here. But as a matter of fact, when you asked I was wishing bronze were cheaper.”

  “Begging your pardon, Fox, but I have to tell you I don’t follow that one,” Van said.

  “If bronze were cheaper—if we had more copper and especially more tin—we could afford to make more weapons. Then the peasants could have ’em, and that would give them a better chance of killing the monsters instead of getting eaten.”

  “Mm, likely you’re right” Van’s features turned blunter and harder as he frowned in thought. “But even if you are, I’d lay you five to one that a lot of your vassal barons wouldn’t fall in love with the idea of giving their serfs swords and spears and helms and cuirasses.”

  “For fear the arms would get turned on them instead of the monsters, you mean?” Gerin asked. Van nodded. So did the Fox. “Not many of my vassals need to worry overmuch, I think; they know I don’t put up with some of the things that go on in other holdings. But if the idea ever spread through the northlands, I’ll not deny a good many barons would have cause to fear their peasants would revolt. I can think of half a dozen I’d rise against in an instant if someone put a sword in my hand.”

  “Oh, aye, more than that.” Van’s big head bobbed up and down again. “But here’s a question for you, Fox: suppose you put swords and spears in the hands of a lot of your serfs. When the time comes to pay the dues they owe you, aren’t they going to go after your collectors instead of handing over the grain and ale and such? They’ll be protecting themselves, so why should they go on paying you to do it for them?”

  “That’s—a good question,” Gerin said slowly. “They all turn into villagers like the ones who tried to waylay us, is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s just what I’m saying,” Van agreed.

  Gerin thought for a while. “Do you know, it’s very likely they would,” he said at last. “The way of life we have here looks as it does because bronze is so scarce and costly. Peasants can’t afford to get their hands on arms and armor: not enough bronze to go around. Things would be different if there were.”

  “Better? Worse?”

  “Damn me to the five hells if I know,” Gerin answered. “But different they’d surely be. Like those footholders Duin the Bold came up with a few years ago, before he died in the fight against Balamung: what with everything else that’s gone on since, I haven’t had the chance to explore what all they’re good for, but it’s plain they make riding a horse and staying on its back a lot easier than that ever was before. If you can really fight from horseback, what point to chariots?”

  “Maybe you can fight from horseback,” Van said. “You’re a good-sized man, aye, but alongside me you’re a stripling. The horse that could bear my weight, especially in armor” —he slapped his broad, bronze-covered chest— “hasn’t been foaled yet. If it’s not the chariot, I’m a foot soldier.”

  “That’s not the point,” Gerin said. “Chariots are like any of the rest of our weapons; they’re scarce and hard to come by. More men could be warriors if they just had to lay hold of a horse and some arms rather than a team and a car to go with it.”

  “Then you’d best start showing them those footholders and what to do with ’em,” the outlander answered. “We’re going to need as many warriors as we can muster, and that soon, too.”

  “I know—sooner than I can train them into being proper horsemen, the more so as I’m nowhere near a proper horseman myself.” Gerin sighed. “If only that monster of Balamung’s hadn’t killed Duin when he kicked out. Our little pepperpot would have had all of us riding whether we wanted to or not.”

  “He rode ideas even harder than you do, and that’s a fact,” Van said. “You’re better at picking the ones to ride, though; I give you so much.”

  “Such generosity,” Gerin said in tones far drier than the weather. “Suppose I did teach a good many men, barons and peasants both, to ride and fight from horseback …” His voice trailed away. Actions had inevitable consequences; on that philosophers and historians agreed. The trick was to reason out what they might be before you acted instead of getting caught by surprise later.

  His best guess was that large numbers of warriors on horseback would prove as revolutionary as large numbers of bronze weapons in the hands of the serfs. If one lord in the northlands succeeded in forming a good-sized force of cavalry as opposed to chariotry, the rest would have to imitate him or go under. Since a man wouldn’t need as many resources to maintain a horse as he would for a team and chariot, vassal barons’ holdings could shrink until, after a couple of generations, it might be hard to tell a poor baron from a prosperous peasant.

  Gerin had been teaching bright serfs their letters. Did he really want to arm them, too? Was he ready to unleash more great change on a land that had seen too much too fast of late?

  For the moment, the decision was out of his hands. The monsters were forcing the pace of change, not he. But if they were put down at last—

  Van cleared his throat, bringing the Fox’s thoughts back to the here and now. The outlander said, “Captain, what is it you’ve done to put Fand in such a swivet? Last night she was going on about the sheep’s eyes you were casting at Selatre till I all but had to hit her over the head with an ale jar to make her leave off.”

  “I’ve done nothing of the sort,” Gerin said indignantly. “I’ve spent time with her, aye, but I have to if she’s to learn her letters and be able to go through the books in the library and find out what’s in them. You hit the mark there at the start—having Selatre here hasn’t set right with Fand, and she blames me, not you, that Selatre’s here.”

  “She said you were pawing Selatre when she walked by the library the other day,” Van said, doubt in his voice. “Not that I’d care to believe Fand over you, mind, but she says she saw it with her own eyes.”

  “She didn’t,” Gerin insisted. “You think Selatre would stay here for a moment if I tried pawing her? As a matter of fact, she put her hand on mine, not the other way round.”

  “Selatre touched you?” Van said, giving the Fox a sharp stare. “Honh!” The noise was not a word, but carried a world of meaning nonetheless.

  Gerin wished his friend were not so tall; it made trying to look down his nose at Van likelier to give him a crick in the neck than to overawe the outlander. He said, “Fand’s hardly speaking to me anymore. Are you going to start in and speak for her?”

  “Not a chance,” Van said. “Ever since I got too big for my mother to tell me what to do, I’ve lived just as I pleased and I’m a great believer in letting everyone else do the same thing. But if you think I’ll pretend to be blind to what goes on around me, you can think again on that, too.”

  The Fox rolled his eyes. “Do you know why she touched me? She was glad I’d taught her her letters; they fill up some of the emptiness she feels now that Biton speaks to her no more. That’s all.”

  “That may be why she says she did it, but the fact remains—she did it, she didn’t have to do it, and she hasn’t done it with anybody else,” Van says. “Me, I’d say that means it’s not all, not even close to all.”

  “That’s—” Gerin felt fury rising in him. He seldom lost his temper, but results were memorable when he did. But before he exploded like a tightly stoppered
pot left too long in the fire, he paused to wonder why he was getting so angry so fast. When he did, the anger evaporated. “That’s—possible,” he said in a small voice.

  Van studied him with approval. “You’re honest with yourself, that I will say for you. And suppose it’s not just possible but so? What will you do then?”

  “You ask good questions. That’s a better question than I have an answer for right now.” One corner of Gerin’s mouth quirked up in a wry smile. Suppose Selatre was coming to care for him? Could he come to care for her in return? After falling in love with Elise and then watching that love crumble to ashes, he wondered if he dared let himself become vulnerable to a woman again. In some ways, going into battle against the monsters was easier. There, at least, he knew what he had to do to come through unhurt.

  Van said, “Mind you, Fox, I have nothing against the lass. Too quiet for my taste, but I’m a roisterer born and you’re not But I do want to know you’re doing what you’re doing with your eyes open.”

  “I don’t even know,” Gerin said heavily. “I tell you this much, though: just as you find Selatre too quiet, a couple of years of life with Fand have left my ears ringing, and that’s the truth.”

  “Ah, it’s not so bad,” Van said. “She shouts, you shout back. After the yelling’s done, you futter a couple of times and all’s right till the next go-round.”

  “We’ve done that more than once, she and I,” Gerin said. “Too many times more than once, as a matter of fact. That sort of thing gets wearing in a hurry, at least for me.”

  “Ah, Fox, you pay fancy prices for pepper and cloves and the gods only know what all else to make your food taste interesting, and you want the rest of your life dull as oatmeal porridge without even salt.”

  “My food won’t stick a knife in me if it doesn’t like the way I’ve cooked it,” Gerin retorted. “And I wouldn’t mind the rest of my life turning dull for a while. These past few years, what with one thing and another, it’s been too bloody lively to suit me.”

  Van yawned an enormous, sarcastic yawn.

  Nettled, Gerin said, “For that matter, you great barrelbrained oaf, I’ve never heard you speak Fand so fair. Here’s a warning: if she throws me over, she’ll aim her whole self straight at you. Are you ready for that?”

  “I can handle her,” Van said, confidence throbbing in his voice. Gerin wondered if he was as smart as he thought he was.

  A peasant brought the Fox the news he’d been dreading. The fellow arrived in the back of a chariot along with Notker the Bald and his driver. He looked stunned, not only at traveling that way and faring so far from his home but also, Gerin thought, for deeper reasons: his own face might have borne that expression of disbelieving amazement just after the ground at Ikos stopped shaking.

  “It’s happened?” the Fox asked Notker.

  “Aye, lord Gerin,” his vassal returned. “This fellow here made it to my keep day before yesterday from his village next to the lands of Capuel the Flying Frog. I thought you’d best listen to his story, so I fetched him hither.” His lined face made him look even more worried than he sounded.

  “Monsters?” Gerin asked.

  “Monsters, aye, and worse,” Notker said. Gerin had not imagined there could be worse. Notker pointed to the serf he’d brought to Fox Keep. “This here is Mannor Trout, lord—he’s the best fisherman in his village, which is how he got his ekename and likely why he’s alive today.” He nudged Mannor. “Tell the lord prince the tale you told me.”

  The peasant brushed a lock of dark hair back from where it had flopped down onto his forehead. “Aye, lord Notker,” he said in rustic accents. His voice rang oddly flat, as if he held all emotion back from it to keep from having to remember the terror he’d known. “My village is southwest of here, you know, close to the border of your holding, and—”

  “I know,” Gerin said impatiently. “I rode that way not long ago, in search of my son Duren. I don’t recall seeing you, though.”

  “You didn’t, nor I you, though the talk of you going through lasted for days,” Mannor said. “I was off fishing then, too.” He drew himself up with pride, or at least its memory. “I bring in enough from the streams that they don’t begrudge me staying out of the fields. They didn’t, I mean.” He shivered; that passionless tone he’d been using threatened to flee, leaving him naked against whatever it shielded him from.

  “So you were at the stream the day I passed through your village, and you were at the stream this other day, the one you’re going to tell me about,” Gerin said, wanting to move the tale along without making Mannor face more than he could stand.

  The serf nodded. That lock of hair fell onto his forehead again. This time he let it stay. He said, “I was having a day to beat all days, if you know what I mean, lord prince. Every time I stuck a new worm or a grub on my hook, I’d catch me a big tasty one, I would. Weren’t much past noon when I had me ’bout as much as I felt like hauling back. Reckoned I’d eat some, trade me some to other folk, smoke me some for winter, and salt down the rest: we’ve a good lick close by, we do.”

  “All well and good,” Gerin said. “So you were carrying your fish back to the village—through the woods, is that right?”

  “Just like you say,” Mannor agreed. “I get myself inside maybe two furlongs of the fields and hear the most horrible racket you ever put ear on in all your born days. Wolves howling, longtooths caterwauling—put ’em all together and they ain’t a patch on this. I drop my fish and run up to see what I can see.”

  “Monsters in the village.” Gerin’s voice was as flat as the peasant’s.

  “Monsters, aye, but that’s not all,” Mannor said. “There was monsters, but there was Trokmoi, too, and they was workin’ together to wreck and kill, Dyaus drop me into the hottest hell if I lie.”

  Notker nodded, his face now even grimmer: he’d already heard the tale. Gerin stared in horrified dismay. He’d imagined a great many catastrophes; he was good at it. But never in his blackest nightmares had he dreamt the creatures from the caves under Biton’s temple would—or could—make common cause with his human foes.

  “How do you mean, working together?” he demanded of Mannor. “Were the Trokmoi using the monsters for hunting dogs, to drive people out for destruction?” Adiatunnus was clever, no way around that Perhaps he or one of his men had figured out a way to tame the monsters.

  But the serf shook his head. “Some of the things, they was just goin’ around bitin’ whatever they could get their teeth into, like they was wolves or summat like that. But some, they was carryin’ swords and spears and even talkin’ some kind of growly talk with the red mustaches. They were uglier than the woodsrunners, but otherwise I didn’t see much to choose between ’em.”

  “Can you confirm this?” Gerin asked Notker. It wasn’t so much that he disbelieved Mannor as that he so much wanted to disbelieve him.

  His vassal said, “No, lord prince. As soon as I heard the story, I figured you had to give ear, too. But do you think it’s one he’d make up?” The Fox didn’t, but he wished Notker hadn’t made him realize he didn’t.

  Almost unnoticed by both of them, Mannor went on, “Two o’ the things, they caught my little boy. They was squabbling over him like dogs over a bone till a Trokmê, he seen what was happening and he takes his axe and chops the body in half.” Quietly, hopelessly, he began to weep.

  “Here,” Gerin said, tasting the uselessness of words. “Here.” He put an arm around the serf’s shoulder. Mannor’s tears soaked hot through his tunic. He held the man, and held his own face even harder, to keep from breaking down and blubbering along with him. Hearing what had happened to the serf’s son reminded him all too vividly of all the things that might have happened to Duren. That he did not know which—if any—had befallen the boy only let him exercise his ability to envision disasters.

  “What do we do with him, lord Gerin?” Notker asked.

  The Fox waited until Mannor had cried himself out, then said, “Fir
st thing to do is get him good and drunk.” He pointed the serf toward the entrance to the long hall of the keep. “Go on in there, Mannor; tell them I said to give you all the ale you can drink.” He shoved Mannor in the direction of the doorway; the man went as if he had no will of his own left Gerin turned back to Notker. “We have to see if he can live with this now. He has to see for himself, too. It won’t be easy; he’ll carry scars no less than if he’d been wounded in war, poor fellow.”

  “You know about that, lord prince,” Notker said. The Fox nodded. These days, he had no family left: his father and brother slain, his wife run off, and his son stolen.

  As he’d grown used to doing, he resolutely shoved that grief and worry to the back of his mind. More immediately urgent worries took precedence. He said to Notker, “The Trokmoi and monsters didn’t assail your keep?”

  “No, lord,” Notker answered. “First I heard of them coming over the border from Capuel’s—Dyaus knows why we still call it that, with nobody in charge there these past years—was when Mannor brought word. The gods only know what’s happened since, mind you, but you’d reckon raiders and yon creatures could move faster than a grief-crazy serf if they had a mind to.”

  “That you would.” Gerin rubbed his chin in perplexity.

  Notker shared that perplexity. “Not like what you’d look for from the woodsrunners, neither. The Trokmoi, when they hit you, they mostly hit you like a man going into a woman: they want to get in as deep as they can as fast as they can.”

  “True enough.” Gerin made an abstracted clucking noise, then suddenly held up one finger. “I have it, I think. Adiatunnus is a sneaky beggar, and smart, too—though not half so smart as he thinks he is. He’s cobbled up some kind of deal with these creatures, but he doesn’t know how well its going to work. So he thinks he’ll try it out small at first, and if it does what he hopes, why then he’ll strike harder the next time. How does that sound to you?”

  “Don’t know if it’s true,” Notker said after some thought of his own. “Makes decent sense, though.”