The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  Andrea pulled at his arm and yelled at him again that someone was dying. Her yelling and dragging at him jangled his nerves. “I’m not a doctor! What do you expect me to do about it?”

  She was waving her clenched fists in the air and yelling, her plaits falling down. “A blood transfusion! We can put him in your car! Take him through to the 21st!”

  “No,” Windsor said. “Absolutely not.”

  Andrea lowered her hands. Her face lost its anger. She stared at him, openmouthed.

  Bryce’s head made a bobbing motion. He said, “What?”

  Windsor was disappointed in him. He would have expected Bryce to see reason. He had thought that Bryce lived in the real world.

  “He’s dying!” Andrea said.

  “You don’t know that. Stop being hysterical. I should think getting him into a warm bed instead of leaving him lying out here in the rain would do him a power of good.”

  Andrea and Bryce looked at each other, then faced Windsor again. Bryce said, “We do know he’s dying.” He took no notice of Andrea’s start. “He’s in shock from blood loss.”

  “They all know he’s going to die!” Andrea said. “That’s why they’re keening!”

  “I don’t know exactly how bad he is,” Bryce said, “but I’m telling you, James, in my opinion, from my knowledge and experience, if he doesn’t get treatment soon, he will die.”

  “I’m sorry,” Windsor said, “but whose fault is that? The very reason we forbade these rides is that people get hurt.” In his mind was another image of himself: cool, detached and smart in his dark suit, the only adult among a rabble of overgrown children. The only one adult enough to see beyond the pathetic, white-faced, dying boy to the larger issues. That was what he was paid the Big Ks for: to put things into clear, cold, adult perspective. “If you play with fire, you get burned. Perhaps a lesson will be learned here.” He became aware that the conversation was attracting the attention of the Sterkarm thugs who stood all around him, and he was sorry he’d come so far from his car. He took a couple of slow, sidelong steps toward it.

  “We’re wasting time!” Andrea yelled. She actually stamped her feet in a kind of dance.

  Several of the Sterkarm men around her, though they couldn’t have understood what she said, stiffened at her shout and looked at Windsor. He turned, to make for his car, and found that a couple of men were in his way. Both were tall and bulky, both bearded. They glowered at him from beneath the shadows of their helmets. One held a lance that had to be something like eight feet long; the other had his hand on his belt, at which hung a long knife. Windsor hesitated. He could, of course, just walk around them, but he wasn’t sure they would let him.

  “Mr. Windsor,” Andrea said. “If you’ll take Per through, I’ll tell Old Toorkild that you tried to save him—and if you do save him, you’ll be able to make any deal you please, anything, Toorkild’ll do anything for you if you save his son. But if you leave him here, leave him here to … if you leave him here, I’ll tell Toorkild what you’ve said—”

  “Andrea!” Bryce said.

  “I’ll tell everyone here, now, what you said!”

  Windsor saw, behind her, the Sterkarm men gathering closer, all armed, all staring at him. These were the men who had hacked through a man’s neck and wrist and brought the parts home with them. Windsor disliked few things more than having to back down, but he wasn’t fool enough to die first. He looked at Andrea. “I hope you’re at home here, because you don’t have a job 21st side.” He felt in his pocket for his keys. “I’ll get the engine started.”

  He started toward his car, and the two big Sterkarm bruisers moved into his way. He saw them glance past him to Andrea, like dogs to their trainer. Behind him, Andrea called out something in Sterkarm, and the thugs stepped aside. His keys in his hand, he made for the car. I’ll start the engine all right, he thought. I’ll get in and drive off. Then he saw one of the Sterkarm thugs lope past him, a long, long lance in his hand, and reach the car first.

  Andrea had run back to the people gathered around the stretcher, crouching to take one of the poles herself. “Carry him to Elf-Cart!”

  Toorkild scrambled from under the robe and took one of the poles nearest his son’s head; and Isobel, Sweet Milk, Gobby and others all made to help lift the stretcher. “Why to Elf-Cart?” Toorkild said.

  Andrea was opening her mouth to answer when Per gave a small cry. Up flew one side of the fur robe that covered him, and Cuddy, snarling, quivering, planted herself astride him. Her black, trembling lips were drawn back from inches of teeth, her neck ruff bristled, her ears were laid flat and white showed all around her eyes. People moved back so fast that the stretcher was all but dropped, and as it hit the ground, Per cried out again. Cuddy’s growl grew louder. She whipped around, facing them all off. Cuddy wasn’t a dog to take chances with. She weighed almost as much as a man, and was more powerful.

  “You stupid hound, we have no time!” Andrea made a grab for Cuddy’s collar from behind—and leaped back as the dog spun with frightening speed. The big white teeth clacked, actually scraping her arm and leaving it wet.

  Both Sweet Milk and Gobby moved in, trying to catch the hound, but she leaped at them, coming up on her hind legs as tall as a man, then thumping down to stand over Per again. She growled even at Toorkild, who stubbornly kept his grip on the stretcher pole and bared his own teeth at the hound.

  Andrea was pulling at her own hair. “Hurry!”

  A couple of Gobby’s men succeeded in catching Cuddy by the collar while Sweet Milk held her attention. She snarled and snapped and struggled as the two of them, with difficulty, dragged her away.

  People had pounced for the poles of the stretcher, and lifted it up as soon as the hound was clear of it. “Elf-Cart!” Andrea said again, and they obeyed her— because she was an Elf-Woman, she supposed, and only the Elves could save Per now.

  “What power be in Elf-Cart?” Toorkild asked breathlessly. Andrea just nodded her head to tell them to go on.

  When they reached the car, it hadn’t been started “They won’t let me in!” Windsor said when Andrea looked at him. Several of the Sterkarm men, all armed, from both Toorkild’s and Gobby’s bands, had ranged themselves around the car. Andrea couldn’t blame Windsor for being afraid to try and push past them.

  “Stand aside!” she said. She pushed Sterkarms out of the way and yanked open the back door. “Inside! Put him inside!”

  Bryce was one of the stretcher bearers, and he climbed into the car. He tried to pull the stretcher in, but Toorkild held it back—halfheartedly, but he was still hindering.

  “We’re taking him through Gate to Elf-Land,” Andrea said. “We’ll make him well—we’ll do our best—I promise—”

  Windsor had got into the driver’s seat and triggered the ignition. The car throbbed and growled. Several of the Sterkarms sprang back from it, and Toorkild moved as if he were going to grab Per up and carry him away bodily.

  Andrea hugged Toorkild’s wide back, trying to contain his fear. “It’s all right, Elf-Cart does that, tha knows it does. And we can heal, tha knows it—we’ve got magic. Be so kind, Toorkild, let us take him!”

  Isobel gave her husband a hefty punch on the arm. “Let her take him!”

  Toorkild stopped resisting and helped shove the stretcher into the car, where, being narrow, it fitted on the wide floor. Between them, Bryce and Toorkild lifted Per onto the backseat. Toorkild settled himself on the car’s floor, his arm resting across Per. Isobel, unable to climb past her husband’s bulk, ran around the car to the other door.

  Andrea ran after her. “No—tha can no come.” Isobel yanked at the unfamiliar handle on the door. “Toorkild, get out, tha must get out—we can no take you all.”

  Windsor had been watching through his mirror, his teeth gritted. While Andrea and Bryce scrambled half in and half out of his backseat, he couldn’t dr
ive off, and now the meat was loaded into his car, he supposed he was committed, but he was damned if he was going to take half the Sterkarm tribe through the Tube. He turned off the ignition, and the car stilled, startling the Sterkarms all over again. “Tell them to get out,” Windsor said. “Out, or the Elf-Magic doesn’t work.”

  “Isobel!” Andrea said. “Magic’s stopped working! We can only take Per, or magic will no work and he’ll have to stay here.” Oh, for God’s sake! she thought as Isobel gawped at her. We haven’t time for this. She had an impulse to slap Isobel hard. “Get out of Elf-Cart, Toorkild, be so good. Let us take him and heal him, so kind. I promise I’ll look after him, I swear it, I vow it. Tha no thinks I’d let owt happen to him, dost?” She shook both clenched fists. “Oh, God’s teeth, Toorkild, get out of Cart or we can no take him!”

  Toorkild’s big face, seen through the car windows, was set. Andrea stared at him for an age. The Sterkarms believed that the Elves could heal and that they sometimes did kindnesses for mortals, but they also believed Elves to be unpredictable and untrustworthy, as likely to blight as to heal. It was well known that Elves liked to steal handsome young men, who were carried into Elf-Land and never returned or were kept until a hundred years had passed.

  Isobel let go of the car door, ran around the car again, set her foot against the body and hauled Toorkild from the car. Toorkild allowed himself to be dragged, stumbling, out onto the grass, but as Bryce reached over and pulled the door shut in his face, he said, “Bring him back alive or no come back!”

  Andrea opened the door Isobel had been struggling with and climbed in beside Bryce. Windsor started the engine before she had the door shut. Bryce was tucking the robe closer around Per and propping up his feet. As the car slowly started rolling forward, Andrea settled herself on the floor and slipped her arm beneath Per’s head. The car lurched, and she braced her feet against the front seats, braced her back against the backseat, struggling to hold Per still on the seat and cushion his head against the jolting and swaying.

  She could hardly bear to look at him, he was so unlike himself. His face was so pale and damp, it had the ghastly, greasy quality of candle tallow. He was working hard to breathe, straining and gulping. They heard every breath he took. His left arm was bundled in the robe and trapped against Andrea, but his right hand pawed and clutched at her. She caught hold of it, and it was icy. “All be right, all be braw. Thou’rt safe, all be well, I be here.”

  “You’re all right, son,” Bryce said. Copying Andrea, he said, “Brow, brow.”

  Andrea was thankful that they were moving at last, until her eye was caught by something outside the car, and she was shocked to see it was Toorkild, Isobel and many others, keeping pace with the car. Her heart squeezed with fright—why had they been so quick to assume the car would be faster when, on this ground, a horse might be? But then, the car might make up for its slowness on the hillside when they reached the valley. She bit back the urge to yell at Windsor to hurry. He had enough to do managing the car on this slope.

  Windsor’s teeth were clenched tight, and he breathed hard through his nose. He was concentrating on getting his car back down the hillside in one piece, and tried to put aside the anger he felt at the way he’d been railroaded into this piece of stupidity. He could have done without the heavy breathing from the back; he could have done without the memory of the severed hand dangling from the saddlebow. His hands felt weaker than they should on the wheel, and the muscles of his legs trembled. His eyes were beginning to ache from their fixed stare.

  Keep your foot off the clutch, right off. Second gear is all that’s needed, acceleration low. A sudden level bit of ground and ease up the acceleration, ease it up, keep the engine revs level—and then another steep bit. Christ, nearly bloody vertical! A vertiginous view through the windshield into the valley below, but keep your foot off the brake. Don’t lock the wheels on this surface, for God’s sake! Ease up on the acceleration—but then it would get so steep that gravity began tugging the car downward, pulling the engine over faster and faster—then he had to risk a touch of the brake, but not slamming them on. God’s sake, don’t panic and slam them on! A light touch, ease off, ease on again, keep the wheels free.

  It began to seem that time was being rewound, and played over and over again, to prevent them ever reaching the bottom of the mountain, but each slow revolution of the wheels dragged them closer and closer to more level ground …

  Windsor changed into third gear, and the car bounded forward, jolting, lurching, jouncing, despite its superb suspension, leaving the walkers behind. Per bounced on the backseat, and his hard-caught breath was knocked out of him. His head slumped, open-mouthed, against Andrea.

  “Christ!” Bryce said. “Give us some warning!”

  “Do you want to get there fast or not?”

  Andrea searched for the pulse in the hollow of Per’s throat, and held back tears and panic as she failed to find it. Then it jumped against her fingertips, so fast that each tiny beat crowded on the next in a light butterfly flutter. “Per? Per?” Her only comfort was that the harsh, noisy breaths had started again. His eyes weren’t fully closed, but he wasn’t conscious. “Don’t argue! Just hurry, please!”

  Bryce put his hand on her arm. “You do realize … even if we get him to a hospital, it might not be any use.”

  She looked at him, tears running from her eyes, Per’s head under her chin.

  Bryce’s remark struck Windsor too as he rocked and jolted the car over the rough ground beside the river, heading for the ford. His brain was working fast, keyed up by the effort of guiding the car. It jumped backward and forward between the ground and boulders ahead, the mechanics of the car, and what had been said earlier. Save his son, and Old Sterkarm will do anything you want.

  He should have seen—would have seen if it hadn’t been for the all the confusion—what a great idea it actually was to bring young Sterkarm through to the 21st. It would give him all the leverage he needed with Old Sterkarm. He didn’t trust the old savage’s gratitude, but what was Old Sterkarm going to do while his son was with the Elves? Sit up and beg, roll over, play dead and anything else he was told to do, that was what.

  It didn’t really matter if Young Sterkarm lived or died. Not in the short term, anyway, though obviously, in the long term it would be better if he lived. He called over his shoulder, “How is he?”

  It was Bryce who answered. “Alive.”

  Windsor drove the car along the riverbank as fast as he could, which was still little more than ten miles an hour except for short, jolting bursts. He slowed right down again to negotiate the slope down to Bedes Water, and bounced the car slowly over the rocks in the bottom of the river, before grinding up the opposite bank in bottom gear. Then there was more slow maneuvering around the boulders beside the river before the big steel fence of the FUP compound could be seen through the windshield. As the car crawled up the slope, Windsor pounded on the horn. The blaring noise made Per gasp and move his head on Andrea’s arm.

  The guards opened the gates of the compound and waved them through. Windsor drove across the compound and up the ramp onto the platform. He leaned across the car and wound down the window as a guard opened the door from the office. “I want to go through now! Now! Is that okay?”

  The guard leaned back into the office, shouted at someone, and then nodded. The green light came on beside the Tube at the same time. Windsor drove forward, and the plastic strips slithered and scratched over the car. They were in the Tube, with its white tiles and gray lighting, and the plastic strips at the other end screening the twenty-first century.

  Andrea felt none of the awe she usually felt for the Tube. She just wanted to be out of the other side while Per was still alive.

  Seconds, and five hundred years later, when the plastic strips were rustling over the car again, and its nose was tipping down the ramp toward the gravel drive of Dilsmead Hall, she could
still feel the fast, light, fluttering pulse under her fingers.

  At the bottom of the ramp, Windsor changed gear, put his foot down, and the car sped away along the smooth, flat drive. “Now we’ll make up time! Still alive? Here.” From the dashboard he took a mobile phone and passed it back over his shoulder. Bryce took it. “Phone the hospital. Let ’em know we’re coming.”

  Crouched in the space between the seats, Bryce dialed the operator and asked to be put through to the hospital. Andrea barely listened. She was mindlessly counting Per’s breaths, losing count constantly, but starting again. Her legs were cramped, her arm and shoulder ached from Per’s weight, their flesh bruised against her bones, but she would stay in that position for the rest of the day and night if she had to.

  Windsor broke the speed limit in the suburban streets surrounding the Hall, until he reached the ring road that encircled the city. The hospital was built on the ring road, a little out of the city center, and Windsor drove so fast that they pulled in through the hospital gates scarcely more than ten minutes after arriving at Dilsmead Hall.

  Windsor drew up outside the entrance to emergency. Orderlies, nurses and a doctor were already waiting, with a wheeled stretcher. An orderly opened the car’s back door.

  Andrea found people pressing against her as they leaned into the car. She was still trying to support the weight of Per’s head and shoulders, but another man was trying to take him from her. Bryce was lifting his legs and saying, “Let me take him. Andrea, let me—”

  There didn’t seem to be anywhere she could squeeze to get out of the way. “Oh careful, careful—don’t drop him!”

  She didn’t quite understand how Per was taken from the car, but obviously the nurses and doctors knew what they were doing. When there was space for her to stumble out onto the concrete, Per was on a gurney, and she was in time to see a breathing mask clapped over his face. The gurney was pushed away, fast, into the hospital. As if she were tied to it, Andrea ran after. Even if the thought had entered her head, she couldn’t have stayed behind.