The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  The constant braying of the reived sheep was louder as the first of them rounded the hill spur. Fowl stamped and shifted, lifting Per up and down like a boat on swelling water. Per, hauling at breath, wiped his left palm on the top of his leather boot. He drew his sword half from its scabbard, making sure it drew easily, before taking a fresh grip on his lance and tilting it into position.

  Through the dark he glimpsed the bobbing shapes of the sheep and, behind them, the first dark mass of a horse and rider.

  “Sterkarm!” The yell echoed from the hills. A horse in front of Per sprang forward, and Per felt Fowl’s strength gather and rise under him as Fowl, without waiting for Per’s order, followed. Per leaned forward and swung down his lance to the ready.

  At the noise and onward rush of the Sterkarms, the sheep broke and bounded wildly every way, bleating ever more frantically. The Grannams yelled and swung their horses around, or swung their lances down. There was trampling and horses’ squeals, cries of warning and surprise, smacks and crashes of blows.

  Per, seeing a broad Grannam back turned to him, drove his lance head squarely at its center. The jar knocked him back in his saddle, knocked breath from him, and sent Fowl to his haunches. Per’s feet were braced against the stirrups, the lance shaft and the iron plates of his jakke bruising his arm and side.

  The lance head clanged against the metal plates in the Grannam’s jakke, shoving him forward onto his horse’s neck, but didn’t unseat him. Reeling, he struggled to get upright in his saddle again, trying, at the same time, to turn his horse, to use his own lance against Per.

  Per drew back his lance and took aim, driving the point down at the man’s hip, where the jakke ended, more with the intent of toppling him from his horse than injuring him. The lance head entered the man’s thigh—Per knew it by the resistance and then the yielding of the flesh as the point entered, and by the wild yell torn from the man. Per kicked at Fowl: “On!” Arms waving, the Grannam fell from his saddle.

  Per twisted his lance as the man’s weight dragged it through his gloved hand, and it came free. His own hair moved under his helmet in fear of the unseen blow he felt coming at him from behind, but he reversed his lance and whacked the Grannam’s horse on the rump with the butt end. The horse bounded away, the wounded Grannam yelling and dangling from the saddle.

  Per wrenched Fowl around, pressing himself low against the horse’s neck, but no one was threatening him. As he rose in the saddle again, he gasped for breath and sweat ran down his face from under his helmet. The darkness of the narrow valley was an uproar of bleating and shouting, a stink of sheep and blood, a thumping and panting, a din of iron, all echoing dismally between the hills.

  The fight was already ending, the din dying away, the press of horses slackening. A brightening of the moon showed Grannams surrounded, threatened by lances. They were throwing down their weapons and calling out their ransom prices, hoping to save their lives. Per threw back his head and filled his lungs. He’d come through unscathed. A few bruises, nothing more.

  Reining in Fowl, he rose in his stirrups, peering about for any of his own tower men. And then he thought of how the story would be told back at the tower and realized that he hadn’t done enough. One man toppled from his saddle wasn’t much to set against the burning farm—or the dressing-down Gobby had given him. Would Andrea be impressed with one man downed? Kicking Fowl, he guided him around the knot of horsemen and prisoners, hoping for some unfinished skirmish.

  His eye was caught by movement farther down the valley. Horsemen, flitting through the shifting moonlight, going recklessly fast over the rough ground, two of them. Grannams for sure—escaping! He raised his bloody lance, yelled, “Sterkarm!” and kicked Fowl after them.

  Most Sterkarms were busy with the prisoners. If they heard the call, they left it to others to answer. It was Sweet Milk, riding down from his end of the valley, where his share of the skirmish was finished, who saw the chase of riders. Rising in his stirrups, he recognized the pursuing rider by his movements, by the lance in his left hand.

  Sweet Milk cursed, broke off, yelled, “Tower!” Looking around, and seeing few taking any interest, he changed the shout to “May!” A couple of horses were kicked toward him. He pointed down the valley with his lance, kicking on his horse. After him came Sim, Davy, Ecky and Hob.

  As his body was jarred by the hard ride, Sweet Milk tried to watch the rough and rock-strewn ground ahead of his horse, and watch the chase too. Somewhere at the back of his mind was a grudge that he had to stir himself to this when he’d thought the worst of it was over.

  The Grannams were still ahead, but Per was catching them. Both would turn on him. Sweet Milk felt a desperation, a sense of reaching to catch something he knew was going to fall through his fingers and smash. Filling his lungs, he yelled, “Per!” He wasn’t heard.

  The leading Grannam set his horse at the steep hillside; if there was a track there, Sweet Milk couldn’t see it. The second tried to follow, but his horse balked, slipped back, fell and rolled.

  Sweet Milk saw Per set Fowl at the slope, intent on chasing the escaping Grannam whose horse was, with difficulty, scrambling toward the hilltop. One Grannam wasn’t worth the risk. Sweet Milk filled his lungs to call Per back again, but before he had the breath, he glimpsed a man on foot running nimbly up the slope toward Per: the Grannam from the fallen horse, unhurt but with sword upraised.

  A horse passed Sweet Milk, racing. Ecky, with lance leveled. Sweet Milk yelled, “Per!”

  Per heard only the rattle of stones dislodged by the Grannam above him, saw only the frightened backward glances of the man, which urged him on. The unhorsed man he’d forgotten. He kicked Fowl again, who disliked being alone, without other familiar horses around him, and was unwilling to climb the difficult slope. He kept turning his head back to the valley floor, and Per pulled his head around, kicked him, urged him on, whacked his rump with the butt of his lance, set on taking his own prisoner, a man Gobby would have let escape.

  He didn’t hear Sweet Milk yelling, and only saw the swoop of the sword blow from the corner of his eye when it was too late to avoid it. Down the blade came, hard as a cudgel blow but with a cutting edge—and it felt like a cudgel blow, hot and bruising, when it hit his thigh above the top of his boot. He yelled out in sheer surprise, though a sharper cry was pulled from him when the sword blade was dragged free of his flesh.

  Sweet Milk heard the cries, saw the sword dragged back and raised for another blow. Then Ecky’s lance skewered the Grannam low in the back, below his jakke’s edge, and took him to the ground. Shouting approval, coming up hard and turning his horse aside from the slope only at the last moment, Sweet Milk drove his own lance home, the blow jarring through him.

  The dizziness of fright and pain cleared from Per’s head, and he realized that he was still alive and still in the saddle, and so couldn’t be badly hurt, despite the blood. The slightest cuts bled most anyway. Looking up, he saw the Grannam above him, struggling on the slope. He could still be captured. Per’s own heart was racing, pounding, urging him on. He whacked Fowl’s rump and kicked him. The kick hurt his leg, but not much. “On!”

  Sweet Milk left his lance in the Grannam and jumped from his horse to run up the slope toward Per, scrambling with his hands where it was steep. He knew from his own experience that deep wounds often felt like nothing more than a hard blow, especially if taken in hot blood. The lad might hardly know he’d been hurt yet. Reaching the narrow path where Fowl was shaking his head and refusing to move, Sweet Milk caught at the bridle.

  Fowl had seen Sweet Milk coming, and smelled him, and knew him. Of the two, Per was the more startled by Sweet Milk’s sudden springing up, and raised his lance.

  “Sterkarm! Sweet Milk!”

  The lance was lowered. “Out my way!” Per kicked Fowl again, ignoring the pain in his leg. Fowl jumped on the path, rattling his bit. Sweet Milk, buffeted by F
owl’s head, staggered and almost fell down the slope. He clambered onto the path above the horse, shouting, “Thou’rt hurt!”

  Per’s own yells deafened him to Sweet Milk. He knew only that Sweet Milk was in his way. He swung his lance around and threatened Sweet Milk with the butt end.

  From up the valley came an echoing shout of “Sterkarm!” as Gobby called them back. Hearing it, Per gave Fowl another kick. It was Ecky, scrambling up the slope, who got Per’s attention by slapping at his wounded leg and then holding up his hand, black with blood. Per looked down and saw the leg of his breeches, wet and black, and the moonlight catching the lips of the wide wound. He looked up and saw the Grannam disappearing over the slope above, and tried yet again to urge Fowl on, but now he knew the pain in his leg was from something more than a slight cut. Sweet Milk grasped Fowl’s bridle and firmly turned the horse off the path and down the slope. Fowl nimbly and gratefully found his own way down.

  Per wiped tears from his eyes, pushing up his helmet and smearing blood across his face. The tears weren’t of pain—he felt little—but of anger. He’d been bested, cut, and he’d lost his prisoner. Sweet Milk’s fault! Sweet Milk and Ecky, getting in his way … He knew, though anger wouldn’t yet allow him to admit it, that his own carelessness had been the fault. He’d assumed the unhorsed man was no further danger and hadn’t been enough on guard. The other riders came circling closer and their anxious faces, peering at him, made him wish them all a hundred miles away and himself alone. But he was glad they were there.

  Gobby yelled again. Sweet Milk, down at Fowl’s side, said, “Shut tha gob, Gobby.”

  Per surprised himself by laughing, and Sweet Milk looked up, grinning. “Let’s look at this.” He shoved Fowl around until Per’s wounded leg was in the best of the moonlight. Even so, it was hard to see—and Fowl kept turning his head, nudging at Per’s foot and Sweet Milk’s arms. Fowl knew something was wrong. Ecky came and held the horse’s head, while Sim took Per’s lance.

  Sweet Milk squinted and felt around the wound, making Per gasp and shift in the saddle. “God’s teeth! It no hurt until—”

  “It’ll hurt plenty,” Sweet Milk said. Even in the poor light he could tell it was the worst he’d feared when he’d seen the blow go home. Not a sidelong slash that would have lifted a flap of flesh, but a straight-on, downward cut that, like as not, had gone to the bone. “It be deep,” he said, while thinking: There’ll be no stitching that. It’ll fester. Jesus, it’ll cripple him. The bleeding was slow—that was something to be thankful for. Black blood dripped to the ground and down Fowl’s flank. Sweet Milk thought of all the miles they had to go before reaching home. The leg would be working all the way.

  Sweet Milk unslung his bedroll from his back and crouched beside Fowl to open it. Inside he had some old rags, for bandages.

  Sim and Hob came up on Fowl’s other side, on horseback. “Here, lad,” Hob said. “That’s who tha’ve to thank.” He held up, by the hair, the head of the man who’d made the wound. Sim was wagging the hand that had struck the blow.

  Per looked at the head. He knew its face, and his shoulders flinched in a shudder. “Jem,” he said. If it hadn’t been for Sweet Milk and Ecky, his own head, hacked from his body, could easily have been dangling from someone’s hand.

  “We’ve got sword—for tha mammy,” Hob said.

  Sweet Milk, as he folded cloth into a pad, shook his head. Like many others, Hob believed that if Isobel washed the sword blade that had cut Per’s leg, and rubbed it with ointment, it would heal the wound. But Hob hadn’t seen how deep the slash was. Sweet Milk pressed the pad against the wound and held it in place. Fowl stood like a rock. “Hold it,” he said to Per, and bound the pad in place with a second strip of cloth, slipping it between Per’s leg and Fowl’s side.

  “If tha’d hit me with that butt end,” he said, looking up at Per, “I’d have had thee off there and knocked seven colors out o’ thee. Tha knows that, don’t tha?”

  Per laughed. Laughter came easily; he felt dizzy and lightheaded, as if drunk.

  “Try to keep it still,” Sweet Milk said, and remounted his own horse, which Davy had caught for him. His own bruises were beginning to burn and ache. The metal plates of his jakke had been driven into him in several places. He thought longingly of his safe bed.

  They rode gently back along the valley to rejoin Gobby. Sweet Milk watched Per as they went. There seemed nothing wrong with the boy—except, maybe, he was a bit quiet. Fowl, stepping gently, obediently followed the other horses, so that Per had no need even to kick him on. But the wound was a bad one.

  The other end of the valley was full of the harsh baaing of sheep as Gobby’s men tried to gather them in the dark. Gobby himself came riding to meet them. Before he reached them, Ecky and Sim had called out, angrily, that the May was hurt.

  Per turned his face aside, looking down, as Gobby nudged his horse close to see the bandage on Per’s thigh. The white linen showed, a blur in the dark, but was already blackening. “Badly?” Gobby asked.

  Per said, “Nay.” He wouldn’t have told his uncle of the wound, and wished the others hadn’t.

  Sweet Milk said, “Deep.”

  Gobby said nothing. Per, whose temper had already been rising in expectation of his uncle’s anger, was puzzled by his silence and said to Fowl, “Walk on.” Fowl, on his best behavior, walked forward without a kick.

  “Where art ganning now?” Gobby demanded.

  “To help with sheep.”

  “To help with—!” Gobby said. “Stay there and no move! I wish tha’d half as much sense as a bloody sheep.”

  Per reined in, feeling mutinous and comforted. The cut to his leg couldn’t be that bad, if Gobby was still yelling at him. He would be able to ride back to the tower, and have something to boast about. Something to worry Andrea with.

  Gobby was silent, drawing his thumb along his lower lip again and again as he stared at Per. Sweet Milk, guessing his thoughts, said, “Davy Gibb’s place.” It was a small farm, little more than a hut, but it was within an hour’s ride. Per could be left there while his blood settled. A litter could be rigged at the tower and sent out to fetch him the next day.

  Gobby’s eyes flicked to Sweet Milk’s, showing that he’d been thinking the same thing. He went on stroking his lower lip.

  “I can ride,” Per said. The cut muscles were smarting, but he could stand it. He wanted to ride through the tower’s gate, not be carried through it.

  Gobby ignored him but shook his head at Sweet Milk, who nodded in agreement. It was autumn. Reivers were riding every night. Huts and shepherds offered no protection against them. Any Grannam ride would know Big Toorkild’s Per May. They’d probably take him for ransom, but there was always the chance they’d kill him, in revenge for the Grannams killed on this ride. Or sell him to the citizens of Carloel, who’d hang him.

  Sweet Milk thought of offering to escort Per ahead of the sheep, at a faster pace—but it would be no use. A fast pace, over the rough, broken ground that would take them directly to the tower, would put an even greater strain on the wounded leg. And there was no knowing whether other Grannam rides were out. Two men, one wounded, would be easily taken.

  Gobby dragged his thumb along his lip again. He had three sons of his own—two to spare, he joked—but he wouldn’t have given up any one of them. He could not, and would not, take the smallest risk with his brother’s one tup lamb. The ride, with its armed men and its slow-moving sheep, was the safest place for Per to be.

  Sighing, Gobby looked at Sweet Milk, and gave the slightest of nods toward Per. Sweet Milk needed no such order.

  Gobby turned his horse, said to his nephew, “Stay!” and rode away to check on the gathering of the sheep.

  Per sat his horse. The helmet on his head felt heavy. His thoughts kept circling around the man he’d stuck in the thigh, and the head that had been held up to him, with
Jem Grannam’s face. He neither thought nor felt anything very clearly, except a fuddled desire to laugh.

  Sweet Milk, sitting his horse a little behind Per, watched him while, in his head, he rode every stride of the long ride home.

  6

  16th Side: Lunch with the Sterkarms

  Windsor drove his scarlet Range Rover up the ramp and onto the platform before the Tube. Bryce, who had been waiting for him, opened the passenger door and got in. “All set?” Windsor said. “Let’s give ’em hell!”

  The green light beside the Tube lit up, and Windsor drove forward into the hanging screen of plastic strips, which rattled against the car and slithered over its windshield. Then they were into the Tube, its white tiling vaguely reminding Bryce of a urinal. In addition to the light filtering through the screens at either end, there were cat’s-eyes in the road and lights set into the roof overhead.

  Going through the Tube was bizarrely mundane, Bryce always found. Your brain told you that you were doing something impossible, exciting, strange, wonderful—but your eyes and ears told you that you were only driving through an old road tunnel. There was a fixed, tarmacked road under the wheels, and the curved walls were covered with tiles, pierced with maintenance panels. There was no sensation of it spinning. Crossing from one dimension to another, and going back five hundred years in time, took roughly a minute or less. Though he supposed that minute actually lasted five hundred years.

  The Dow-Jones Index was being read on the radio, and Windsor was humming some unrecognizable tune to show how unimpressed he was. Bryce made a guess at where the center of the Tube was, the point at which they would vanish from the twenty-first century, and gripped the edges of his seat, bracing himself in case something went wrong and his atoms were disassembled. In fact, they left the 21st a little later than he guessed—the transition was marked by the buzzing of static as the radio cut out. There were no other strange noises, no bump, no eerie sensation. The roadway and the tunnel simply continued smoothly on, until the car brushed through the hanging strips on the other side.