The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  Some of the people turned and struggled to get back into the control room. Within a minute or so of their going, a humming, whining noise began to come from the Tube. Per started.

  Andrea came close to him, pressed herself against his back. “It’ll make a lot of noise. It will be deafening. But it be all right, all right. It be Elf-Work.”

  The humming rapidly increased to a roar that made Per duck his head and twist it from side to side, trying to avoid the noise. The noise rose to a jagged scream that beat about their heads, and then abruptly stopped as the sound passed beyond hearing. The lights at the side of the Tube changed, flashing from red to green.

  “Gan!” Andrea shouted. “Joe, go! Go!”

  Per gave her a shove that sent her staggering into the Tube. “Gaw!” He thumped Joe and yelled at him. “Gaw!”

  Joe, startled, looked over his shoulder at the guards and the technicians, and then ran into the Tube, not really knowing what he was doing. Andrea, seeing Joe run, ran because he was running.

  Per shoved Windsor hard, pitching him across the platform toward the ramp. Turning, Per took a jump into the Tube and raced for the other end, catching at Andrea’s arm as he overtook her and pulling her along with him.

  They burst through the screening covering the other end of the Tube, running onto the platform and pelting willy-nilly down the ramp. Before them was the trodden, worn grass of the compound, startled guards, the steel fence, smoking fires, and the great wide open bowl of the surrounding hills.

  Joe stumbled to a halt at the foot of the ramp and raised his eyes to the hills’ peaks and then on up, into the deeps of the gray skies above. A wind came and ruffled his hair and beard, traveling from God knew how many miles away. A minute ago he’d been in a city, hearing the ever-present rumble of traffic, with telephone wires overhead, brick buildings and tarmacked roads pressing all around, bringing sight up short. And now silence, acres of silence, echoed and reechoed, and he looked clear across a wide valley to tiny black sheep moving on the farther hill, following silent, drifting cloud shadows. The air he breathed was damp, chill and almost searing in its clarity. It stunned him.

  Per felt the damp wind touch his face and smelled the rich smell of the wet grass and earth, and his eyes filled with tears. He could have wept with thankfulness if he’d had time. Already guards were coming toward them. “Careful!” Andrea said to both him and them. These guards, 16th side, carried pistols in holsters on their hips. One was fumbling to open the flap on his holster. Andrea remembered more than one guard grumbling to her that their pistols were nothing more than ornaments; they hadn’t been trained to use them or issued with more than one bullet each. But, just at that moment, it was hard to be comforted.

  Per scanned the chain-link fence that surrounded the compound and saw what he looked for. The smoke that rose just beyond the fence came from the fires of a Sterkarm encampment. He could see men standing, peering through the mesh of the fence. Seizing Joe’s arm and shaking him, Per filled his lungs and, in something between a bellow and a shriek, yelled, “Sterkarm! Sterkarm!”

  The guards patrolling the compound whipped around in alarm. Outside the fence, more Sterkarms started to their feet, then snatched up bows, quivers, axes. They knew the shout was a call for help, and they answered it.

  With a crash of iron, a man climbed the fence. A guard fumbled at his holster, thought better of it and looked around at his companions to see what they thought he should do. Longbows were drawn and arrows pointed at the guards. Men ran, shouting, toward the office, carrying spears, long knives, axes, swords. Per ran to meet them, and when Sweet Milk suddenly appeared, he threw his arms around him and hugged him as if he were home itself.

  Sweet Milk hardly had time to recover from surprise, hardly had time to recognize Per, before Per had him by the hand and was dragging him across the compound, back toward the ramp. At the bottom of the ramp, looking scared, were a thickset strong-looking man in Elvish clothes—but, unlike an Elf, bearded and shaggy-haired—and Andrea.

  Per leaned around Joe to take Andrea by the arm and pull her forward, shoving her at Sweet Milk. “Take care of her—and him. He be a friend.” He dragged at Joe’s hand. “Away from here!” Andrea opened her mouth and Per said, “Gan—gan o!” He leaned close and gave her a quick kiss before turning and running away toward the Elf-House.

  Several other men, yelling, running, all armed, were heading for the hut. Joe glimpsed a green-uniformed security guard turning to face them and reaching for the holster at his hip. A Sterkarm, behind him, felled him with a blow to the head from an axe. The guard’s peaked cap was no protection. He went down, and Joe saw the axe raised again.

  He turned back toward Andrea and the big man in the helmet. He didn’t know if Andrea had seen the guard struck down, but judging by her face, he thought she had. The big man had her by the arm and was pulling her away, and she was reaching out for Joe. He grabbed at her hand and was towed after her. From behind came a sound of smashing glass and a wild, panicked yell. Looking back, Joe saw a green-coated man running to the top of the ramp and diving through the door into the office.

  Sweet Milk dragged them across the compound, through the opened gate and onto the open hillside, where small, smoking fires of heather and dung burned bright against the chill gray of the day. Stocky little horses grazed, hobbled or tethered at a distance, while around the fires were saddles and blankets and abandoned food. Lances, eight feet long, stood up from the ground.

  “Stay here,” Sweet Milk said, gesturing with the axe in his hand. The wooden haft was thick, and the axe-head, thick and heavy, narrowed to a sharp edge, its gray surface pitted with black hollows. It seemed less a cutting tool than a bludgeon, especially as it was hefted in the big-knuckled, big-veined hand that held it. “Stay,” Sweet Milk repeated, retreating a few steps. He gave Joe a glower of pure suspicion from under his helmet, turned and ran back through the gate and across the compound toward the shouting, running men about the Elf-House.

  “Can you see Per?” Andrea said. “Where is he?”

  “I wouldn’t look,” Joe said. “Don’t look.”

  “We should stop it,” Andrea said. “We should find Per and—”

  She actually moved toward the gate. Joe yanked her back angrily. “Don’t be a bloody idiot. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “But they’ll—”

  “What’s going on in there”—more yells drifted back to them, sounds of chopping and smashing glass—“you’re well out of. Well out of. There’s nothing you can do, believe me. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  A shout rose, pealing above the other yells, and Joe felt Andrea stiffen as he held her arm. Her head lifted. It was Per’s voice, raised jubilantly, trumpet-shouting to reach across the valley.

  “Brenna day! Brenna day!”

  “Oh, nigh,” she said. “Nigh,” and tugged forward against Joe’s hold.

  “What?”

  “Hura han nigh? Han kaller, brenna day!”

  12

  16th Side: Burning Down the Elf-House

  “Burn it!” Per shouted. “Burn it down!”

  Per’s shout was caught up and passed from one to another, and those nearest the fence came running back to the gate. Joe and Andrea stood back, watching as three men went from fire to fire, hunting for sticks substantial enough to carry a flame. They lifted them up, and Joe and Andrea turned away, shielding their faces as the wind showered them with fountains of red sparks and clouds of eye-stinging smoke. Then the men were running back across the compound, carrying the brands.

  “Joe, they’re going to burn it down!”

  Joe still held her back. “You go in there, you’re going to get hurt.”

  “But we’ll be trapped—we’ve got to try and stop them!”

  “Not me,” Joe said. “Stay here.”

  “They wouldn’t hurt me!” />
  “Don’t you believe it, kid.” He held on to her arm, and looking at the Sterkarms in the compound, all armed, running, shouting, she hadn’t the nerve to go through the gate after them.

  In the compound, Per took one of the flaring brands from its carrier, feeling the heat tighten the skin of his hand and face. He carried it toward the steps leading up to the Elf-House, though he didn’t know if he could climb the steps. They seemed long and steep. His legs were shaking under him, and he was nearly spent—though rather than admit it, he would go on until he dropped where he stood.

  Sweet Milk caught his elbow as he reached the steps and pulled him back. Per tried to shake him off, but Sweet Milk towed him away easily, shouting something about the Elves inside.

  “They’ve ganned their way!” Per said. Why else had they run into the house but to run through the Gate to home?

  Sweet Milk still dragged at him. Bowstrings plucked close by, and glass shattered as arrows went through the windows. Other arrows thudded into the woodwork. Another man carrying a firebrand started up the ramp and Per, seeing himself being beaten, swore and wrenched himself away from Sweet Milk.

  The eaves of the Elf-House wouldn’t take the fire, nor would the wooden rails at the stairs, or the steps themselves. They charred and smouldered, but wouldn’t burn. Per’s legs faltered under him, but he made it to the top of the steps, and was the first into the Elf-House.

  Broken glass lay on the floor, and arrows stuck out from the wall. A panel of the wall was decorated with papers hung in fluttering bunches. Per tried to pull out one of the arrows, but it was wedged too tight for him, and he hadn’t time to struggle with it, or dig it out with a knife. Instead, he held his brand to the papers. The fire caught in a rush and roared up the wall to the ceiling, where it caught the ceiling tiles with a soft explosion. The Sterkarms cheered, and Per raised his arms above his head, scorching the ceiling with the brand in his left hand.

  A second man kicked over a basket, spilling crumpled paper on the floor, and set his torch to that, before firing the papers on the desk. Over their heads, the ceiling was burning, and pieces were falling. A thick black smoke oozed from the burning tiles.

  Sweet Milk, looking in from the door to the platform, shouted, “Out! Out!” The two other men threw their brands into corners, but Per stayed to set light to the cushioned seat of an easy chair. He retreated toward the platform door, where Sweet Milk was yelling, but stopped to raise his brand to light the ceiling just inside the door. The black smoke, falling down from above, was filling the room now, making it impossible to see anything, making their breath catch and their eyes sting. Sweet Milk pulled the brand from Per’s hand and threw it into the smoke, and then dragged Per through the door by the scruff of his neck, giving him a shove down the ramp that pitched him to his hands and knees in the grass at the bottom. Two passing Sterkarms, one shouldering a longbow, stopped to take Per under the armpits and boost him to his feet.

  As the fire took hold, the Sterkarms retreated toward the compound fence, and Per was carried along with them. More windows smashed in the heat, and flames lapped through the holes and seared the outer walls. The roar of the fire grew louder, and the Sterkarms sent up shouts of “Who dares meddle with me!”

  Most of them had reached the fence when from behind came a din such as they’d never heard: an eldritch cacophony of screaming, grinding, snapping. The steel girders and scaffolding supporting the great round Elf-Gate twisted, groaning and screeching, and snapped. There was a cracking and roaring of breaking stone and then a crash that shook the earth under their feet as pieces of the Elf-Gate fell to the ground.

  The Sterkarms were silenced by the din, shocked and awed by their own success. Then they cheered, a small, ragged sound on the open hillside. “Who dares meddle with me!” Something inside the Elf-House went up with a bang and part of the roof fell. Laughing, the Sterkarms poured out through the compound gate, or climbed the chain-link fences, and came crowding back to their fires. Sweet Milk took the time to go over to the Elf-Men and cut their throats, to make sure they were dead. He gained nothing by it—the Elves had already been stripped to the skin—but he wouldn’t have left a dog or a deer to suffer.

  Andrea and Joe, standing together outside the fence, looked at each other. Andrea had always known that the Sterkarms were killers, but somehow she’d kept the knowledge hazy and not quite real. Their killings had always, before, taken place at a distance from her, and she’d only heard talk of them. She’d been able to argue to herself that they killed enemies, people who would as eagerly kill them, given the chance; or they’d killed in defense of their livelihood, or in order to survive … Her favorite excuse had always been that she couldn’t judge their behavior according to her own beliefs. To them, to kill in revenge was a duty; to forgive the killing of a kinsman a sin.

  But she’d just watched Sterkarms—men she knew and liked—club down and hack with axes men whom she also knew and liked, men she’d chatted with as she’d passed through the Tube. She could see the guards lying in the compound. She’d never seen a throat cut before, but Sweet Milk’s movements, though at a distance, were unmistakable. Sweet Milk, her friend. Sweet Milk—good-natured, funny Sweet Milk.

  And the Elf-Gate, her only way home from this place, was burning down. Destroyed. You’re trapped here, she told herself, but didn’t seem, by her own reckoning, to be as frightened as she should be. Scared, worried, yes, but not terrified. She thought “killed” and “destroyed,” and the words didn’t seem to mean enough. “Killed” might as well have meant “decorated with ribbons” for all she could feel about it.

  Joe was standing close beside her, pressed against her, as he uneasily watched the Sterkarms returning to their fires. One or two had knives and axes stained with blood, which they set about cleaning. Coming here, he thought, really had been the worst decision of his life. And now he was stuck.

  Andrea saw Per looking for her, and his face lit up when he saw her. He tried to reach her but was hindered by the men he passed grabbing hold of him, hugging him, kissing him and then, as often as not, shoving him into the arms of another man. She saw Joe watching dubiously and said, “That’s just the way here.” Then she felt faintly bemused that she could still think such unimportant things worth saying. “Come on.” Patting Joe’s arm, she led the way toward Per. She felt strongly, all of a sudden, that if she had to be here, then she wanted to be as close to Per as possible. Per, at least, was no threat.

  Her way was blocked by men who wanted to welcome her back with a touch to her breast and kiss to her cheek. She didn’t want them to come close, let alone touch her—any one of them might have killed those guards. But she didn’t know how to refuse their greetings without being rude. No, it wasn’t that she didn’t wish to be rude—she was afraid of them.

  She reached Per, and he squirmed out of Ecky’s arms to embrace her. As she put her arms around him, feeling the iron plates in his jakke, she realized that he was shaking, and crying too. She immediately cried herself, and they put their heads together and wept on each other’s shoulders. They patted and kissed each other, trying to give comfort, each with a vague idea that the other was crying for the same reason.

  Andrea was dimly aware of others standing close by them, who laughed, and pushed and pulled at them. She and Per clung together as they stumbled a few steps sidelong. She felt the heat of a fire, and raised her head from Per’s shoulder, afraid of her skirt catching in the flames. The men around them—Sweet Milk was one—pushed them down by the fire and then wrapped a blanket around them. A dirty, damp and sour-smelling blanket, but it still made them feel much warmer.

  How can they be so kind? Andrea thought. How can they kill men, and laugh, and then be so kind? She felt utterly confused and insubstantial, as if she dreamed.

  Per was wiping at his eyes with the heels of his hands. She had her arms round him and could feel that he was still trembling. It cam
e to her—a relief from her own thoughts and fears—that he had eaten hardly anything since he’d gone through to the 21st and that, after all the excitement and exertion of the past few hours, he must be close to exhaustion. No wonder he trembled. She turned to Sweet Milk as she hugged Per closer and said, “He needs food!”

  The crowd around them immediately thinned, but only for the length of time it took for the men to go to their own campfires and fetch back whatever food they had. Soon there was a press around them, with arms reaching over shoulders and pushing through between other bodies, offering horns and leather bottles of small beer, lumps of crumbling hairy cheese, shriveled dried fish, lumps of cold porridge, greasy sausage, rounds of flatbread, a sheepskin cap full of mushrooms.

  “This be good.”

  “Take it all, I got plenty.”

  “Get that down thee, it’ll put thee right.”

  “Eat up now.”

  When Per accepted a lump of sausage, bit a lump from it and held it for Andrea to bite, there was a general “Aaah!” of sentimental approval, and some ribald laughter. Andrea thought: These are dangerous men, killers? Instead of biting the sausage, she said, “Where be Joe?” She’d lost him in the crowd.

  Per looked up at Sweet Milk and, his mouth full of sausage, said, “Where be my new man, where be Chyo?”

  Joe hadn’t managed to follow Andrea very far into the crowd before he was stopped by Sterkarm men, who spoke to him in their throaty snarls. He didn’t catch what they said, but he guessed that they were asking who he was and what he was doing there. They didn’t look the types you wanted to argue with. One had a raised white scar from under his eye to his jaw, parting his beard because hair didn’t grow on it, and he had his hand on the hilt of a long knife at his belt. The other held a staff taller than himself, topped with a truly frightening blade and spike.