The Sea Peoples

by S. M. Stirling

  “If you’re one of those Thurstons, your uncle Frederick is General-President of Boise,” John said.

  Pip gave him a sharp glance from under her bowler hat; she’d heard the unspoken complications he’d left out. Alan—it was good to have a name for him—grinned.

  “Well—” he began happily.

  “Hsst!” Toa said, his full-featured face probing the area around them.

  John stopped letting the familiar and for once oh-so-welcome weight of the armor distract him and looked around. What he saw was a roadway stretching into the distance, under starlight that was somehow wrong, and a vague reddish background glow that came from everywhere and nowhere. The roadway was pockmarked and gashed by years of untended weather, but also crowded with boxy automobiles and motor-trucks.

  So were the immediate verges, and they’d all been struck by some monstrous blow of fire and blast from the rear; some looked almost melted. Thorny scrub grew over many, and over the bleached, charred skeletons of dead trees about. He thought he could see the roofless snags of a farmhouse and barn in the middle distance.

  The air smelled dry and dusty, with an odor of rust and old, old rot, wind soughed through the scrub, and things skittered through the underbrush. Otherwise there was a profound, tense quiet. No birds, and not even many of the buzzing and chirping insects.

  “This is what happened after the last place we were?” he asked.

  My head hurts trying to figure this out, he thought. Give me the waking world any day! There, all you have to worry about is evil magic and things like the Sword of the Lady and the Grasscutter.

  “Not exactly,” Deor said. “Or I think not wholly. This is part of the dream of the thing we fight—the King in Yellow. His memory of all his victories and triumphs. It feels . . . stronger than the last time we came past, to reach you, my Prince. As if that King wakes, and wakes in anger.”

  John stopped in mid-reply as Toa wheeled about again. There was a creaking metallic sound, rusty metal moving on metal, then squealing as joints long melded together broke free.

  “Move!” Deor said, and led the way, Saxon broadsword naked in his hand and Hraefnbeorg’s raven on his shield.

  And Odhinn’s bird, John thought uneasily. Not a comfortable ally, the Lord of the Gallows whose daughters reap men on the bloody field so that they may fight again at Ragnarok. I’m bound for a different destination . . . hopefully.

  His lips moved in prayer as he trotted along beside the scop:

  “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto præsidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princeps militiæ cælestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.”

  The words were comforting in the language of the liturgy or in common English:

  Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the Adversary . . .

  “Amen,” Pip echoed him.

  He glanced at her, slightly surprised, and she grinned in the dimness and shrugged.

  “I’m Catholic too, sweetie—Anglican Rite. Not overly pious, but there’s no doubt whose help we need now, is there?”

  Behind them Toa gave a yell and lashed out with his great spear, sweeping it in a half-circle that ended in a thudding and a dry crunching sound.

  Just ahead of them John saw movement behind the dusty, cobwebbed darkness of a car’s window.

  “What’s happening?” he yelled; the smell of ancient rot was stronger.

  “Draugur!” Deor said. “Aptrgangr, again-walkers, hungry for the blood and flesh of the living.”

  I had to ask! John’s mind gibbered at him.

  “You’ve dealt with this?” Pip asked.

  “No,” Deor said. “Nor any living man in the world of common day, I think. But I know them from the lore I learned in Norrheim and Iceland.”

  “What do we do about ’em?” Toa said. “Bit past their sell-by date from what I saw, doesn’t seem like stabbing will get the job done.”

  “There are many ways to slay Draugur,” Deor said. “But right now . . . remember they can die again! Smash their bodies or cripple them. And do as the Prince did; call on any guardian or aid you may have.”

  John brought his shield up, and then suddenly noticed that it seemed to be glowing. He bent his head for an instant to look at it, and saw that instead of the usual arms of Montival with a cadet’s baton it bore a plain red surface with a white cross—a Crusader’s cross. And that was lit, slightly but unmistakably. He forced himself to calm, taking one deep breath after another:

  “Haro, Portland!” he shouted.

  Shadowy figures were skulking around them, more rising by the moment. At first he thought they were the same grotesquely disfigured survivors he’d seen in the city they’d just left. Then one moved into a patch of dim light, and he saw its face, the fluttering rags of clothes stiff with the liquids of long decay, the tufts of hair on mummified skin and unclean bone, and the eyes . . .

  Even faced with mortal peril he flung the shield up before his face rather than look into those eyes. Toa retched, an astonishing response from a man who seemed to be carved from strength and fury. Alan murmured aloud, awestruck:

  “That is not dead which can eternal lie.

  And with strange aeons even death may die.”

  Deor’s voice belled. “Woden! Ha, Woden, Lord of the Slain, be with us! Keep moving!”

  Thora moved up beside him, shield raised. “Overrun,” she barked. “Strike as if they had torso armor!”

  John knocked his visor down; he could see just enough through the vision-slit, but hopefully no more than that. They braced and then leapt off their back feet in a stamping run, shoulders tucked into the shields. Deor and Alan guarded their flanks, with Pip in the center to deal with anyone . . . or anything . . . that got through, and guard Toa’s back while he held the rear. What skill and courage could do they would do. That left purity of heart. . . .

  But I’m a miserable sinner! John thought as he prepared for impact. I just want to get on a ship with Pip and go introduce her to Mother!

  His shield rammed into a body with his weight behind it, something he’d done a thousand times in practice and a few in real fights these last few months. It felt wrong, and so did the crunch that followed; too dry, too fragile and it stank like an opened grave. He overcame his impulse to stab around the side of his shield. . . .

  Wait a minute, the reasoning part of his mind thought. That . . . thing . . . just collapsed.

  Fingers like twigs clawed at him, not one of them strong . . . but there were so many, half-glimpsed in the darkness. Like a rustling forest of un-death hungry for the living. He hacked into the side of a knee and half-wheeled and cut through a tattered neck. The . . . things that had once been people . . . he’d cut dropped away, and more stepped in.

  John kept moving and smashed his shield into another dry and rotting face. This time there wasn’t any doubt. Suddenly the walking thing was just honestly dead, and fell in a tangle. He hopped over it and smashed again, with the same result.

  And I hope if there are souls involved, they’re set free, he thought.

  “Haro, Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!” he shouted. “Órlaith and Montival!”

  “Thor with me!” Thora barked as her backsword flicked in economical strokes. “Yuk-hai-sa-saaa!”

  “Bugger this!”

  That was Pip; in the same instant her cane’s serrated head went crack into a skull covered in thin rags of hair and skin. That worked too, and she’d hacked through a spine with the kukri in her other hand at the same time, moving as gracefully as a dancer in the dimness. Alan Thurston was working in a crouch, shield up and saber slashing for knees and ankles.

  He caught occasional g
limpses of Toa’s spear flashing in sweeping arcs, and Deor’s shout echoed:

  “Ho, la, Woden!”

  He thought the figures around the Mist Hills man were moving more slowly than the others, and stumbling more. The Saxon broadsword reaped, and John remembered uneasily who . . . Who . . . was also Lord of the Gallows-Tree, and of the Slain.

  “The Power that wards you is strong indeed, Prince,” the scop panted, a flash of teeth beneath the nasal bar of his helmet. “But there is more than one at work for us today.”

  John was glad he was getting help; and very glad he was in full armor. He kept his sword back in the man-at-arms position—hilt-forward and over his head—and used mainly his shield, ramming with the surface and chopping with the edges.

  Something seemed to change. They were still stumbling down a road in the darkness, but it had never been paved—this was more like a country road back home, though more rutted and with less gravel than most places would have tolerated. Perhaps in the CORA lands, where they had trouble agreeing on whether the sun rose in the east or west, much less who should contribute graders and horses and workers to keeping up the roadways.

  John stumbled to a halt and leaned on his shield and panted, wheezing and coughing, knocking up the visor of his sallet so that he could see better and, more important, get that extra mouthful of air. The night breeze cooled his sweat a little, and he could see that all five of them were on their feet.

  He could also see behind them, and it didn’t look in the least like the place they’d just been. Instead the white dirt of the road shimmered in the darkness, winding off into an empty countryside of rolling hills and copses of trees. It was ordinary-looking country, if not anything quite like what he’d seen before. Perhaps parts of the Willamette in the far south, or the Chehalis valley if you subtracted the mountains . . .

  It doesn’t stink, either, John thought. He took a deep breath. But there’s something . . . off.

  “Is everyone hale?” Deor said.

  They gathered around. Pip had a bleeding scratch on one forearm; he helped her clean and bandage it. Toa had a mark on one massive calf, and he examined it while leaning on his spear and turning up the leg.

  “Sodding thing bit me,” he said. “And that was after I cut it in half.”

  “Let me look at that,” Deor said, kneeling. “I’ll cleanse it. Best not to let this fester, considering what teeth they were that bit. Worse than a lion.”

  Whatever he used made Toa give a mild grunt, which meant it probably hit like a red-hot cauterizing iron.

  “What’s this?” John asked. “This place, I mean.”

  He had the usual canteen at his belt, and he handed it around and took a welcome swallow of tepid, metallic-tasting water.

  “It’s a bad place,” Toa said, with a frightening grin—the tattoos on his face were supposed to look terrifying, and they did, especially in this reddish un-light. “But I think it’s one we went through on the way in.”

  “We are deeper into the mind of the . . . Power that rules here,” Deor agreed.

  “Deeper in to get out,” Pip agreed, working her fingers. “Dammit, that hurts!”

  “Bad for the flawless complexion, too,” Thora said.

  She said it with a smile . . . more or less. Her own face had a weathered handsomeness, but it also showed every year of an adventurous thirty-five spent knocking around an implausible amount of the Changed world in Deor’s company. None of the great chanson de geste that told of the paladins of Charlemagne had the hero accompanied by his current intended and very-recently-ex-girlfriend.

  Which means either the chanson were heavily edited, or the jongleurs didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, or I’m not the hero of this song, John thought.

  “Oh, on the contrary, dear Thora, a few scars are wonderful icebreakers in some situations.”

  Thora hadn’t been going out of her way to make things more awkward. Or less, for that matter. There seemed to be something they knew that he didn’t, too—it was in the way Pip’s fair brow rose, and the ironic quirk to Thora’s grin.

  I’m getting tired of other people knowing things I don’t.

  “Let’s walk,” Deor said. “The steps are symbolic; but here, symbols have power.”

  They did. John slung his shield on his back and trudged along behind him, with Pip at his side; she was whistling a song she told him was “Advance Australia Fair” when he asked. Sweat started up, though it wasn’t particularly warm or cold; if you moved in armor, you sweated—and the sweat stayed next to your skin. Even if it was very cold, you sweated and then the sweat chilled you the moment you stopped; of course, if it was hot and sunny the armor got too hot to touch, and you grilled like a fish wrapped in damp straw matting and dropped into a pit of hot coals.

  Oh, that was brilliant, John, he thought: now he felt hungry.

  “What is it that you and Thora aren’t telling me?” he said after a while; Toa began to laugh.

  When John stared at him, the big Maori laughed even harder. “Oh, no, mate, not a bleedin’ chance. I know better than to stick my ghoolies in the mangle, you bet your arse I do.”

  Pip just raised a slim blond brow. “Oh, come now, Johnnie. Thora and I have the greatest respect for each other—”

  Thora chuckled and raised a gauntleted thumb; he realized that they actually did. He didn’t think they liked each other much—the thought of what it would be like for him if they were friends was enough to make him blanch—but they certainly respected each other’s abilities. You would have to be stupid or blind not to respect Thora Garwood’s capacities, or Philippa Balwyn-Abercrombie’s . . . and neither of the ladies were stupid in the least.

  Unless you count being involved with me, he thought mordantly. Which got them here, wherever here really is. If it really is.

  Unexpectedly, Toa spoke again: “You should tell the lad. Wouldn’t be fair if it all went tits-up and he’d never got the word, like.”

  “He’d get all protective,” Thora said.

  “Nah,” Toa said. “Lady, he’s no fool. We’re here . . . but we’re really not, you know?”

  Pip and Thora exchanged one of those disturbing looks, and Thora shrugged in a clatter of armor. Pip cleared her throat.

  “You’re going to be a daddy, sweetie,” she said.

  Thora was fighting down a grin as he nearly tripped, and looked wildly between them.

  “Who . . . who . . . who . . .”

  “I wouldn’t have thought your totem was an owl,” Thora said, letting the grin out. It was remarkably evil.

  “He’s a Raven,” Deor cast over his shoulder. “You can see the shadow of the wings on him. Well, think who his father was, and Who his father met and knew. The Crow Goddess . . . and others.”

  He seemed to be enjoying the conversation far too much, and to find the whole complicated business of men and women rather amusing.

  “Put the poor bastard out of his misery,” Toa urged.

  The silent communion between the two women ended with Thora nodding and making a sweeping gesture that said: Go ahead.

  Pip bowed and pointed at her, and Thora made the same gesture.

  “It’s her,” they said in chorus.

  Distantly, John heard a clatter. Then he realized it was the clatter of his own plates as he fell. Two faces looked down at him in concern, then cleared. The grin on Pip’s face was, if possible—

  “Our prepotent sire has fainted,” she said. “All those Victorian novels they made me read at Rockhampton Girls Grammar School finally come in useful, or would if I had any smelling salts . . . I wonder what smelling salts were?”

  “And remember,” Thora said. “Toa was right. Our real bodies aren’t here.”

  They each gave him a hand and heaved him upright; getting up in sixty pounds of armor wasn’t all that difficult when it was
well-distributed all over your body, but he felt as if he’d been hit behind the ear with the proverbial sock full of wet sand.

  “How . . . how . . .”

  This time both women laughed instead of grinning. “Oh, Johnnie, do you really need to ask that question?” Thora asked.

  Pip sighed. “The oldsters say rubber products just aren’t as reliable as they were before the Blackout . . . the Change.”

  Thora’s tone grew pawky. “Don’t worry, Johnnie. I’ll look after it—literally.”

  He felt an ignoble rush of relief, because if she’d appealed for his aid and acknowledgement he wouldn’t in honor have been able to deny it to her . . . and his child . . . and . . .

  Oh, God pity me and forgive my weakness, the complications!

  Fortunately Bearkillers, even the Catholic ones, didn’t look on such matters the same way Associates did. He hadn’t a clue how Deor’s folk did, but the scop didn’t seem too disturbed.

  “And so will I for the babe,” Deor said, and paused to look him in the eye. “On that you have my word as a Godulfson. My oath-sister’s child shall be as mine.”

  A wry grin. “It’s the closest I’ll come to being a father—closer than I expected, in fact. My brother the lord of Mist Hills has offered us land. If—it’s an if the size of mountains—we make it safely back to Montival, we’re going to take it of him, put an end to our wanderings save for visits in the neighborhood and raise horses and grapes. And it’s out of the way, and likely will be even when you’ve a fine son or strapping daughter twenty years from now. Eventually the child will have to know her heritage. But what I can do until then, I will do.”

  John managed to wheeze: “Thank you,” as they took up the trudge again. “You’re a man I would trust with that.”

  It could have been much worse; if the women had both been Mackenzies, they might have expected him to move in with the pair of them, a thought which evoked feelings of horror and horrified attraction at the same time.

  “And don’t worry. I won’t tell your mother if you don’t want me to,” Thora said.