by Susan Price
Per’s eyes flickered away from him, he half turned toward his father and uncle, but then gave Joe his big, bright smile and shrugged. “Kvenna!” Women!
The smile was so bright that Joe was grinning back before he realized that he didn’t understand the answer—except that it was dismissive. He wished he could talk to Andrea. He looked over his shoulder toward the stairs, but the Sterkarms were gathering around the table again, and he was drawn into it.
Trying to follow their talk was a frustrating business, and his face was soon screwed up. Whole phrases would come to him easily but, just as he thought he was about to understand, the next several exchanges would be incomprehensible. Toorkild was to do something with something vit—white—and the Elf-Gate was mentioned often.
Per and the other two young men were singled out by their elders for something; that much was obvious by the way they drew together and grinned at each other and listened, nodding, to Toorkild and Gobby. Joe just couldn’t fathom out what it was they were being told to do, though the Elf-Gate came into it somehow. They were to go—somewhere. They were to take—a lot of things. It was like trying to read a story where half of every page was missing.
The young men left the table, all together, all heading for the tower stairs, obviously intent on going somewhere and doing something. Joe felt a panic. He didn’t know what was going on. He chased the cousins across the hall and caught Per just as he was starting down the stairs.
Per looked at him wildly and with a touch of irritation. This was the second time Joe had grabbed at his arm. “Vah?”
His cousins pushed past him and went down the stairs. Wat said, “Per! Kom!”
Joe didn’t know how to put what he had to ask. He could see that Per was impatient to be gone. So he said, “Hus? Lant?”
For an instant Per was confused, then he smiled brilliantly, hugged Joe and, before Joe could pull away, kissed his beard. As soon as Per released him, Joe backed off fast. His surprise stopped him from catching the first few words of Per’s answer. The next few words he simply didn’t understand, though Per, as he disappeared around the corner of the staircase, pointed toward his uncle and father at the other end of the hall.
Joe turned to look toward them. They were seated, deep in talk. He thought Per had gone but heard his voice again and, spinning around, saw him leaning in from the staircase. “Thu skal har thine hus now olla air forby.” His name was yelled from the staircase below, and he grinned and vanished again.
Toorkild and Gobby were still talking, and no one was looking his way. Joe crept out into the staircase and climbed it. Rounding the curve of the stairs, he came in view of the upper door. A man was leaning against it. He stared down at Joe.
Joe smiled apologetically, turned and went back down.
“Gan then, Per!” Wat said. “But hurry!” As Per made off, he shouted after him, “Leaving us to do work, idle hound! If tha’rt not back quick, we shall come and say farewell ourselves!”
Per ran from the kitchen, where Wat and Ingram were filling a sack with food, back to the tower and up its stone stairs from the bottom to the top, where Ecky sat on the landing, blocking the narrow passage.
“What a hurry to be in,” Ecky said, and made no attempt to move aside. Per clambered over him. Finding the door of his parents’ room locked, Per wrenched at the handle and rattled it while Ecky, sighing, got to his feet. “Now tha daddy’s in hall and tha mammy’s about yard somewhere, so what canst tha want to gan in there for?”
Per saw the key lying on the ledge of the landing’s tiny window, leaped for it and got it before Ecky could. Ecky, deprived of a chance to amuse himself by making Per fight for the key, sank down on the steps again. Per unlocked the door and went in.
Andrea was in Toorkild’s armed chair by the fire, sitting very upright and staring at the door, braced for whoever was to come in. When she saw Per, she turned back to the fire, leaning her chin on her hand.
He could see she wasn’t going to be friendly and stood by the door, wondering whether to leave her alone to wear her bad temper out by herself. If she had been merely a woman, he would have done, confident that he could coax her around later. But she was an Elf, and the Elves had been humbled. It was understandable that her pride was badly hurt, and it would be hard for her to turn to him again without seeming to betray her own people.
He went a step or two into the room, looking for an excuse to be there. The fire was burning well, and the hearth was stacked with peat and wood. On the table were a jug and a cup, and a plate of oatcakes. There was nothing she needed, then; nothing that he could do for her, or fetch. “I’ve come to say farewell.”
Without looking around, she said, “Farewell.”
He went right over to her and crouched beside the chair. “Oh, Entraya. Be no angry.”
“I be no angry. Farewell.”
She was angry. He tipped his head sidelong, trying to look up into her face. If he could get her to look at him, he could probably get her to smile. “Dost want to know where I gan?” His mother always wanted to know where he was going.
“You gan to be killed. Farewell.”
The harshness surprised him into silence, until he decided to ignore it. “Better give me a kiss for luck then!”
She turned a hard, angry face to him and looked at him with Elf-Eyes, like stone. “Your luck’s run out. You will be killed.”
Even so close to the fire, a cold struck through him, and he rose, moving away from her. When he looked around, she was staring at the fire again and he couldn’t see her face. Her being angry with him made him physically uncomfortable, as if he needed to work his shoulders and fidget. And for her to say such things—it was ill-starred. “We’re ‘thou’ to each other, Entraya.”
She stared into the fire and said nothing.
“I gan with Wat and Ingram to watch for Elf-Gate opening.”
“You’ll be first killed then.”
He went back to the hearth and knelt in front of her. “Don’t say that, Entraya! Touch wood! Good Old Man’s listening.” He nodded to the fire. A sort of hobgoblin lived in chimneys, so it was said, and took a malicious pleasure in making such carelessly spoken words come true.
Andrea pulled irritably at her skirt. He would go to fight, no matter what she said. She tried not to care, she tried to think, To hell with him! But she didn’t want him to be hurt, and she didn’t want him to leave feeling fated. She struggled to make herself say something comforting, but she was too angry. “You’ve said ‘farewell.’ Now gan your way.”
Per heard the note of doubt in her voice. He tilted his head to look into her face and pouted, big eyed. “Ah, be not angry, be kind, Entraya. Say ‘thou’ to me.”
“Just gan, Per.”
His pout became sadder, his eyes wider. “Ah, Honey, be kind, be sweet, Honey-mine.”
She turned her face so she couldn’t see him, and he leaned farther over. “Ah, Entraya, white flower—”
She was unable to resist looking at him—looked away again instantly—as instantly looked back. His pout began to dimple into a smile, his silver-blue eyes to glint with laughter.
He had brought her out of bad tempers like this before, going on and on until his persistence and shameless insincerity made her laugh. But now she was so far from amusement that she felt like a lump of the Sterkarms’ cold porridge. “May I leave room?”
“Sweet flower—”
“Am I free to gan? If I be no, then gan away yourself. Do you gan to ambush and murder my friends and get yourself killed too? Then stop simpering at me and clear off and do it!”
He jumped to his feet, embarrassed and hurt. He didn’t like the way she used the word “murder.” “Women!”
He sounded just like Toorkild, and even Gobby. “Oh quick—run to Daddy! He’s got something for you to do, I bet.”
The gibe went by him entirely, onl
y puzzling him. He saw nothing shameful in doing as his father told him, so long as he agreed with it, and in this case, what else could he have done but agree with his father?
He went to the door but, with his hand on the jamb, turned back. To leave her on such bad terms was bad luck and made his heart uneasy. He turned back and knelt again, bringing his head on a level with hers as she sat in the chair. “I be …” It was always hard to apologize when it was meant. “I be sad for locking thee in, Entraya. But when all this has gone by, I’ll make it up to thee, my word on it.”
She looked at him, and was even more astonished when she saw that he believed what he said. He’d burned down the Elf-Gate and trapped her here. He’d stood by and let his father lock her up. But when this little matter of ambush and murder was over, he was going to make it up to her. “And how do you plan to do that?”
Challenged, he looked away, blinking faster, then looked at her sidelong. “When we’re wed—”
“When we’re wed?”
“I’ll—I’ll get—I’ll buy you some writings, and—”
She had to laugh. She leaned back in her chair and laughed while Per watched her uncertainly. He started to smile, hoping that her laughter meant she was in a good mood again. Catching sight of him, she said, “Oh, go away!”
His smile disappeared. “Entraya—”
She got up. “Go away go away go away!”
He started getting to his feet, talking, so she used the worst insults she’d learned among the Sterkarms. “Cod’s head, sheep’s head, gan! Sheep’s son! Dog’s bone! Run away to your daddy-sheep!”
Per’s fists clenched and his face flushed scarlet. There were tears in his eyes, he breathed in gasps, his mouth worked and his face was so childishly angry, she almost laughed again. He snorted. “Yi gaw!” I go! He crossed the little room in a couple of strides, snatched open the door and caught at the doorpost with one hand as he swung out and on down the stairs. Ecky was left to shut the door again and lock it.
Andrea went back to the chair by the fire and did laugh, but the tears she wiped away weren’t tears of laughter. Poor Per! He was so used to getting his own way, by charm if not by force, that he was bewildered when he failed. Poor Per! Poor Wat! Poor Ingram! They were all going to be killed.
She bent over her knees. Her chest, her throat, her head, all ached. How, she wondered, has Isobel lived with this all these years?
Wat was singing.
“Oh, as I came down by Bedesdale,
All down, down among scrubs,
Prettiest lad that e’er I saw
Lay sleeping with his dogs.”
Per, wrapped in his sheepskin cloak, struggled to sit up against the weight of Cuddy’s head, which rested on his chest. Swart lay close against his other side.
Cuddy, rousing, let him sit up but licked his face with a tongue that felt scalding in contrast to the chill damp of the morning. He pushed her away, because where she licked, the heat soon turned cold.
Ingram, breaking fast on bread and beer, took up his brother’s song:
“All buttons on his sleeves
Were of gold, gold so good:
And good gazehounds he slept among,
Their mouths were red with—”
Per got to his feet, the hounds rising with him. He spat at his cousins and made the horn sign with his fingers, to avert bad luck. The song, “Yanny o’ Bedesdale,” told how Yanny, resting from the hunt, was betrayed to the king’s officers and murdered. Wrapping his cloak around him, Per stalked off into the trees, the hounds following. All the people he loved best seemed to be conspiring to curse him.
Ingram and Wat jeered him as he went. They had thought to enjoy this time, camping in the little wood above the place where the Elf-House had been burned down. But Per hadn’t been good company.
He’d gone to say good-bye to his Elf-May but had come running down from the tower so plainly out of temper that they’d laughed. He hadn’t thanked them for catching, bridling and saddling Fowl for him, or for fetching his bow, quiver and other gear from his bower, but had mounted and ridden off in an angry silence.
They’d followed on their horses, and Cuddy and Swart had followed too, loping along on either side of Fowl. Wat told Per to send the hounds back. They weren’t hunting and didn’t need hounds. They might prove a nuisance.
Per hadn’t been in a mood to respond to orders from a cousin only a few months older than himself, and ignored him. Wat tried to send the hounds back himself, but though they might sit or come to heel at his order, they would only put their tails between their legs when told, “Home!” They wouldn’t have gone back readily even at Per’s order, and Per refused to speak, either to his cousins or his hounds.
On the hillside above the Elf-Gate, in a hollow where the soil was deeper, grew a small, thick wood of birch and hazel. That was where they were to lie in wait. They crossed Bedes Water at the ford and rode up the valley and over the hillsides, passing close by the burned place, where the wreckage of the Elf-Gate still lay in the grass. Long sections of the chain-link fence had already been pulled down, and some had even been carried off.
On reaching the wood, they untacked the horses, rubbed them down and turned them loose. Ingram and Wat set about making camp, weaving together living and cut branches to make a frame to support a cloak, to shelter them from the worst of the breeze and drizzle. They wouldn’t be making a fire.
Per had taken himself off, with his hounds, to the other end of the wood. Wat felt bad about the way they’d teased him, and it was up to him, as the eldest of the three, to take the lead and make amends. So, at dusk, he’d searched through the trees until he found Per, and told him that they were sad for what they’d said. Per had sulked for a moment longer, but then gave it up and said that he was sad for the way he’d behaved. They’d gone back together, hand in hand, to join Ingram.
But just as they were all friends again, it had unfortunately struck Wat as a good idea to tell the story of Vaylan and his Swan-May. He’d meant it as a sort of rough comfort for Per: See what ill luck Elf-Mays always brought to the mortals who loved them? A man was better off without them. But before he was very far into the story, Per’s face had made him realize that telling it had been a bad idea. He would have broken the tale off short, but that would have made his tactlessness even more glaring. Besides, Ingram was enjoying it.
As the murders and cruelties of the story mounted, Per had pulled the hood of his cloak over his head, wrapped himself in it, and lain down to sleep between Cuddy and Swart. Wat had gone on with the story for a little while, but then had said, “Ah, it be a stupid tale, I’m no telling more.” So he and Ingram had also lain down to sleep in a bad temper.
So it had gone, for the three days they’d been camped in the wood. Wat had several times set Ingram to talk to Per, either to tease him by insulting his hounds or his riding, or to ask his advice about making bowstrings, training a pup or anything else that might serve. Per, not being plagued with younger brothers himself, would come out of his bad mood to tussle with Ingram, or lecture him, and then would play five-stones or talk, as cheerful as usual. But then, as if his very cheerfulness reminded him of his grievances, he’d suddenly turn moody again, and go off by himself to another part of the wood, or lie down with his head on Cuddy’s side and pretend to sleep.
The Elf-May was a handsome lass, Wat thought, but she wasn’t worth it.
Now, in the early chill of the fourth morning, Per came back out of the trees and accepted a square of cold porridge from Wat. Cuddy and Swart sat on either side of him and raised big paws to nudge him, asking for a share. Their breakfast eaten, the cousins settled at the edge of the wood for another long day of watching cattle grazing in the valley and hawks hovering over the hills. Per lay on his belly, his chin resting on his arms in front of him, not speaking.
He looked down on his valley, on its fast, r
ocky river and the many streams that threw themselves down its hillsides. His valley, that the Elves were coming to turn from pasture to broken holes, quarries and mines. What could he do but fight them? But every Elf he hurt or killed his Elf-May would hold against him.
Lovers divided by family and feud made good stories, but in life it was nothing but misery.
Wat dropped down beside him in the grass, and Cuddy reared up to lick him. “Come, Elven,” Wat said, yawning. “Come and meddle with us.”
16
21st Side: Land Rovers and Kalashnikovs
Two Land Rovers were parked on the gravel at the bottom of the ramp leading up into the Time Tube. Men dressed in camouflage sat inside the vehicles, or leaned against their sides. In their arms, or slung from their shoulders on webbing straps, were AK-47s—Kalashnikovs.
Bryce, also in camouflage, a rifle on his shoulder, stood at a distance, smoking a cigarette. He was listening to the men behind him.
“This is going to be an effing good riot!”
“Walk in the country.”
One man—his name was Bates—said, “I’m going to take effing scalps!” He raised his voice, so everyone could hear him. “Scalps I’m going to take! Effing scalps! For souvenirs—effing scalps!” Again and again, the braggart guffawed. “This is going to be an effing good laugh, this! Paid for an’ all! A right effing holiday, this!”
His companions laughed, and the more they laughed, the more he brayed.
“What are the girls like?” someone asked.
“They stink.”
“What, smelly-bellies?”
More laughter.
Bryce’s opinion of them wasn’t lowered. It couldn’t have been lowered. He thought they were dog’s meat. Technology was on their side, and was going to allow them to make dog’s meat of the Sterkarms—but it wasn’t what they deserved.
They weren’t the professionals Bryce had wanted. They were security guards dressed in fatigues and armed with assault rifles. The time limits and budget Windsor had imposed had made anything else impossible.