The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

  Ahead and leftward a tall pillar of smoke was bending away to the east, faded and tattered but still plain; now and then they could catch a glimpse of blue, the surface of the Bay. That smoke was Círbann Rómenadrim itself, the wharf or the buildings aflame, or both. His mouth tightened, and as it did two horsemen came towards them, riding up out of a fold in the land and swinging wide around a patch of forest to their left. They were Alfwin Jacksson and his younger brother Sexræd. Alfwin had a name as a great hunter and stalker, which helped with such work.

  Alfwin and I were close as brothers when I was young, he thought. Not many would make time for all my fancies then; life was hard in Hraefnbeorg in those days.

  It was odd to come home and see the wild youngster now a solid householder with young children of his own. They were friends still, and the brown-haired man with a coarse cloth jerkin over his byrnie of scale armor—for concealment’s sake—smiled tautly at him before he pulled up and raised a hand in salute to Godric:

  “They’re there, lord. The Princess and the Atheling stand yet, but the wild men are very many and they can’t hold for long. Ten for their one, five when we’ve joined them. It’s just as Deor said.”

  Even weary as they were there was awe in the glances the others gave him. He didn’t feel entirely easy about it himself. Woden sent the mead of poetry to men like a flame in the heart; but He was also master of runecraft and the high magic, of oracles seen in dreams. The one and the other were closely linked, but he’d seldom had a seeing so clear and urgent. He could still feel it like a hand at his back, a whisper in his ear.

  Godric thought for a moment, then signaled a halt and swung down. All the others did as well, some staggering as they gathered around. He shifted his round raven-blazoned shield from over his back to his left arm, pushed back his gilded boar-crested helmet for a moment, and looked from face to dust-caked, sweating face.

  “Hraefnbeorg men,” he said, pitching it to carry but not shouting. “Often have we boasted when the drinking horns passed in our hall at feast and symbel that of all men on Midgard we of the Saxon kind are the truest to our oaths.”

  There were nods and mutters of agreement. Boast, or gylp to use the old word, had a special meaning among heathen folk like his. It placed your word in the well of fate, a solemn thing and one of dreadful potency and power. It bound not you alone, but also your kin, in a web of fate and luck and dooms. Kingdoms and great kindreds had fallen in fire and blood because of such, and the tales of them lived yet.

  “Now is the day we make good our claim. We could not stand with Artos King in his last fight, he who held my oath and through me yours; wyrd wove it so. When he poured out his blood on our land—”

  A thump of his spearbutt to remind them that it was this very soil he meant.

  “—for us no man of Hraefnbeorg stood with him, though I had laid head and hands on his knees and given him my word. Now that blood calls out for vengeance from beneath our feet, and the heirs of his blood battle against harsh odds. Shall we stand by them?”

  A short barking cheer ran through the threescore warriors, and Deor brandished his spear with the rest. It felt oddly comforting to march with his home-folk for once, as well as his blood-sister, to be one part of a single thing grown from the earth that had fed him.

  Father, do you see me now? Are you content?

  “Victory is in the All-Father’s hand, He who sent my brother the seeing that brought us here. If our foes are many and fierce, then courage must be more and heart harder! Look to either side.”

  Startled, the warriors did so.

  “Huscarles, landsmen, yeomen, you fight beside your neighbors, your kin, your sworn brothers, and I your lord will be at your head. We fight for our oaths, our families, and our land that feeds our children and holds the bones of our fathers and mothers.”

  He thumped the steel-shod butt of his eight-foot spear on the ground; the keen edges of the long head glittered in the afternoon sun.

  “The spirits of those who bore us watch us now, to see our honor or our shame. All men die, all things also. The fame of your deeds alone lives as long as the world stands!”

  They cheered again, and the lord of Hraefnbeorg grinned and drew his brother beside him, thumping him on the shoulder with rough affection:

  “And we have a famous scop bred on our own lands to see our deeds and sing of them.”

  This time they cried Deor hail, and he felt himself flushing as he waved. That had not happened often, in an eventful life. Applause for his work, yes, but not this.

  “We leave the horses here—”

  This time there was a cry of joy with an ironic note, and laughs from the youngsters amongst them as a few rubbed their buttocks. The older men, the solid bearded householders and heads of families, were more grave. They had lived long enough to know down in the bone how quickly and easily a man could die.

  “—and we march to fall upon the wild men, cut our way through, and make shield-wall with the athelings and their war band. Form the swine-array! The battle cries are Hraefnbeorg and Woden!”

  A bellow arose, and a thunder of shafts on shields. The raven banner went up to flutter in the warm westerly wind behind the lord, carried by Deor’s younger nephew Wulfric on a long spear; the lad’s freckled teenage face was pale and set with his determination to bear the glory of the post. Two with shield and sword stood to either side of him, and two huscarles with four-foot, broad-bladed battle-axes in their hands.

  The rest of the fyrd fell in behind Godric and the banner in a blunt wedge—the swine-array of battle, Woden’s gift to brave men, where the strength of each was the strength of all. Deor and Thora had a place of honor in the front rank only a little behind Godric’s sword-hand, next to his son and heir Leofric. As honor usually did, it also meant greater peril. The mass behind them added weight, but they were at the point of the spear. Others would step forward to take their place if they fell dead or wounded.

  “Follow me! Hraefnbeorg!” Godric called.

  “Hraefnbeorg!” sixty voices bellowed in reply to his brother, a raw challenge to the world as they stepped off together.

  Boots thudded, mail and scales and gear chinked and clattered, and in the rear of the formation two men raised long ox-horn trumpets to their lips and blew, the sound echoing in bone and skull and speeding out over hill and swale. The grip of Deor’s round shield was tight beneath his gloved hand as he raised it to just below the nose-guard of his helm. They toiled up the long low slope to the southward, swinging a little west to avoid the patch of scattered trees and brush, and as they did the weariness fell away from him, and the weight of the byrnie and helm and shield.

  Over the crest, and a wind was blowing through him, hot and holy, like the birthing of a song but stronger. The tread of the boots was like gray surf pounding the cliffs in a storm out of the Western sea, feeling the rock shake beneath his feet under the ocean’s blows and glimpsing the sae-aelfen in the spray.

  The ground ran upward now, rolling, through the black clot of the Eater host and towards the narrow place where the kite-shields stood embattled. And the silvery warrior with the feathers of the Golden Eagle on her helm stood, the Sword forged by Weyland-smith beyond the world bright and terrible in her hand, just as Láwerce had shown him while his body lay in the hollow oak.

  Save that now the savages were aware of him and his folk.

  They were still three long bowshots away, but somehow he knew how chiefs among the Eaters of Men were grabbing at their followers, shaking them and kicking backsides and slapping faces to make them turn around even in the grip of bestial passion. A spray of them headed towards the swine-array, then more, then gathering clots.

  Behind and above them was the Darkness he had sensed; and threads of it running down towards a man among the savages. He was no savage, though: dark and grim but holding a baton carved with orcas and ravens, a mind sub
tle and strong with hard-won knowledge and bitter angers and long years of hatred. The dark power wove through the forms of Raven and Orca to the man in patterns of ruin and compulsion—it was as if it was a net woven through flesh and mind, holding helpless aspects of Powers themselves inconceivably mighty, twisting Their forms to its purposes and through them Their worshipper. For a moment he glimpsed carved longhouses beside gray seas, and mountains clothed in forests of majesty.

  That knowledge flowed through him, past the blade-edge focus that his very self was becoming more purely with every stride. He strode through knee-high golden grass, but it was as if every pace also took him beyond this world of common day. The vast forces he had seen from afar were here now, so present and so real that their essence made the world translucent as thin-sliced horn or smoked glass. The sun-bright Lady who was the Sun; the terrible Crone with Her scythe and swarming crow-flock . . . and another, behind Deor himself. With him, through him, glimpses, black wings, a horse that was not a horse, a hall whose tables faded into shadow and whose carven pillars towered into the sky, a bridge that shone and glittered, slow steps echoing as he walked down to a well were something waited. Thoughts vast and shadowy and bright, more complex in their endless twine and turn than his soul could grasp save as uncomprehending awe, and a single blue eye. A grief and strength and sadness greater than worlds.

  The first of the enemy were near; he could see two loping towards him. A female with a long knife and a mask made of human facial bones with their teeth replaced by a dog’s, and a male with soot-blackened features swinging a jagged lump of metal on a thong attached to a wooden handle. Deor felt his right hand cock backward.

  The heavy spear he bore was a thrusting weapon, but it flew like a bird arcing up into the sky. Then it descended, in an arc so pure that his soul ached with it, and an Eater collapsed backward as the steel punched through his breast and his flail-weapon flying free to strike one of his comrades. Deor’s sword flared in his hand.

  “Woden!” he screamed.

  His body was light as thistle blowing on the wind, yet vast as mountains, swift as larks swooping beneath the eaves of home on a summer’s eave.

  “Woden! Woden!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CÍRBANN RÓMENADRIM

  (FORMERLY CHINA CAMP)

  CROWN PROVINCE OF WESTRIA

  (FORMERLY CALIFORNIA)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  JULY/FUMIZUKI/CERWETH 14TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/FIFTH AGE 46/SHOHEI 1/2044 AD

  “They’re stirring again!” a voice shouted, interrupting the sound of whetstones filing notches out of well-used blades.

  Órlaith slung the nearly empty canteen back to her waist and accepted the helmet from Heuradys. Her liege knight made sure that it was well seated and the chin-cup firm before she put her own steel gauntlets back on, grimacing a little at the way their leather interiors were sticky with cold blood now. They were both spattered with the stuff, running red in streaks or turning jelly-like and clinging across armor and the upper part of their faces where it sprayed through the vision-slits of their visors. There was no time to do anything but smear it aside to clear your eyes, and spit as it trickled down to your lips diluted with sweat. In some ways it was like working in an abattoir.

  “You OK, Orrey?” Heuradys said.

  “Better than I expected,” Órlaith replied, with was true enough. “And the reinforcements are coming.”

  Heuradys nodded soberly. Órlaith tossed her head a little; the helm seemed to squeeze at her skull worse each time, but the relief of having it off for a moment was worth it. Then she took up her shield and set her hand to the hilt, taking a long deep breath as she did. Drawing the Sword of the Lady . . . when you did it in anger and hot blood and intent to kill, it was like no other thing on Earth. Her father had never gloried in war, but she was beginning to understand why his name had been one of terror to the kingdom’s enemies. One that haunted the shattered sleep of the few who had faced him and survived.

  Ahead of her the stretch of level ground northward was littered with the dead. Carpeted, in some places, lying sprawled across each other. There was an astonishing amount of blood, when scores bled to death. There was a ridge of bodies where the first charge had met the shields of the men-at-arms. The marks glaives and swords made on bodies were terrible gaping things, but she could see the difference where she’d fought herself. A little of that was that the enemy rushed towards her in particular, shouldering each other to get at her, but more of it was the Sword. Every wound it dealt was like the worst from a common weapon, like what a newly-sharpened blade striking with force and great skill and optimum angle made.

  The thick layer of dead extended six long paces back now, to mark where the knights had retreated to keep their feet clear and as the trickle of hurt were dragged back and the line thinned. The ground had been hard and dry with summer beneath the grass. Now it was actually muddy in places, and damp over several dozen square yards.

  Like spilling buckets on the ground. Bucket after bucket . . .

  Flies were buzzing in hordes—she batted away one that seemed intent on getting inside her helmet—and swarming so thickly on the bodies that some of them seemed to move again. Flies and maggots were part of the wheel of things as well and had their rightful place, but that didn’t mean she had to like them. The smell was heavy too, copper and iron and salt like seawater but not quite, with a faint tang of meat going off beneath it in the warm summer air, and the stink of bodies sliced open, like an outhouse badly kept. Overhead the birds circled, everything from condors and kites to ravens and crows. Their cries sounded peevish now and then, as if they were impatient.

  At the alarm call half a dozen of her crossbowmen came running back with bundles of bloody bolts in multiple quivers slung around their necks, ammunition salvaged from their targets, and handed them out to their comrades. A few of the Protector’s Guard men still had their swords or daggers in their hands as well, having taken a risk to put the Eater wounded out of their pain. Rumor had said the wild men ate their own dead; they now had visual proof of the fact, and that they weren’t too fussy about exactly how dead. It was a relief not to hear whimpering or see broken shapes trying to crawl away.

  And we will have to do the same mercy-stroke for our own hurt, if we can, at the last, she thought grimly. I can feel that the others are coming, I can hear it on the air, feel it through the ground . . . but I don’t know precisely when. And arra, time is very short indeed!

  The cannibals weren’t necessarily stupid, and they knew the effective range of a standard crossbow to an inch. A little more than three hundred yards away they were grouped in clots and clumps, some down on the ground resting, some doing their chaotic war-dances even now. As she watched more and more took that up, the shrieks and shrill squeals and drumbeat rending the air. She sensed something behind them, something ordered and severe as they were wild, something full of a cold wisdom—

  “Here they come,” Heuradys said.

  Órlaith looked over her shoulder. The Japanese were resting too, grouped around the now more numerous wounded. More than half of those were Japanese themselves; rushing parties of Eaters back from the edges of the hill had proved more dangerous than holding the narrow saddle. One of the samurai had gone tumbling down the hillside when he missed his stroke with the long spear in his desperate haste, and the screams had lasted for some time.

  Egawa was down on one knee, a hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword and leaning on it slightly as he panted. Reiko was beside him, kneeling and sitting back on the heels of feet overlapping at the toes. She met Órlaith’s eyes and smiled, inclining her head very slightly, and Órlaith returned the gesture.

  How to spend an afternoon with your friends, she thought. For those times when hunting or hawking or singing and dancing just won’t do . . .

 
Her head came back around as the Eaters began to move forward; they sent fewer arrows now, since they didn’t have any reserve beyond what they’d carried, and few had many to start with. She knocked down her visor, bared her teeth behind the metal and . . .

  . . . laid her hand on the hilt that felt like silver and staghorn and . . .

  Drew.

  A shock ran through the world, immaterial but entirely real, a flexing like a beaten drum. The Sword of the Lady glittered, looking more like diamond than polished steel in the hot sunlight, a shine like a silent roaring in her ears. The weight in her hand felt as if it was a bit less than two pounds, light for a hand-and-a-half longsword . . . though it had been heavier for her father. Within her—

  The heat, the weariness and the fear were still there, the ache of bruises and the sting of sweat in a pressure-cut on one cheek. So was the taste of blood from where the inside of her mouth had been driven back against the teeth within. That had happened when two of them hit her in flying leaps and knocked her backward; Heuradys and John had hacked them apart while they scrambled to stab her and she thrashed beneath the weight. But none of them mattered anymore. A wind blew through her, like the beating of a million raven wings, bearing her up and making her weightless.

  She was the land, and hers was its wrath at the blood spilled upon it, full of a keening sorrow and fury at the pain of its defenders, a hot pride at their courage and steadfastness in the face of certain death. Her father was there somehow, part of something infinitely greater but still exactly himself.

  “Morrigú!” she shrieked. “Morrigú!”

  The line of the knights stiffened and braced, with a deep shout of Haro! that was a snarling croak as much as a battle-cry. The Eaters came on beneath a shower of black-fletched arrows, then a rattle of javelins, and the crossbows replied—slowly and deliberately, each shot carefully aimed, to make the dwindling ammunition stretch. The loping mass was closer now, and the knights crouched a little behind their shields so that they were covered by the battered facings from nose to foot. The swords came up overhead, held hilt-forward.