by Susan Price
The new Elf-Gate had gone, vanished, though the wreck of the old one remained. The Elf-Carts were still there too, and the Elves with their pistols.
“Daddy’s-brother be coming,” Ingram said.
Far, far down in the valley, Per caught a glimpse of the moving black thread that was the troop of horsemen coming from the tower with the white flag.
He wondered what Andrea was thinking at that moment. He wished she might be thinking of him, as he was of her, and that it was something kinder than her last thoughts.
Bryce held his field glasses steady, watching the approach of the mounted party. He wasn’t as sure as Windsor that the Sterkarms were surrendering, despite the white flag.
The three men Bryce had sent out came slithering back down the steep hillside. “All clear!”
Bryce lowered his glasses for a moment and looked them over. “Sure?”
“It’s just a little dip,” Philips said. “Couple of hundred yards long, half that wide. Trees, bit of scrub. There’s nobody in there. We’d have trod on ’em if there had been.”
Bryce stared at him consideringly—but there was no point in delegating a job to a man and then refusing to believe him when he said he’d done it. Bryce nodded and looked through the glasses again.
A white flag. He hoped Windsor was right, and it meant unconditional surrender. So much easier on everybody.
17
16th Side: An Elf Hunt
Joe had left the tower on foot, following the horsemen with a few other curious men. For most of the way they’d trailed behind, but when the horses slowed to climb the hillside, he’d pushed himself to walk faster and had caught up with them. Panting and sweating, he walked beside Toorkild’s horse, his hand resting on its warm, rough-haired, flexing rump, ready to speak to the Elves as well as he could.
Ahead and above was the 21st wreckage: fallen chain-link fence, broken concrete, twisted and snapped steel girders. Near the rubble were the Land Rovers, great ugly square shapes. Joe was astonished at how unfamiliar these things already seemed to him: how unsympathetic their shapes, how alien their straight, machined lines.
And the soldiers standing there—posing, their black boots planted on the green turf, the outline of their clothes broken by those big, flat patches of green and brown, the helmets on their heads, the rifles in their arms. My own time, Joe thought, puzzled by his lack of any fellow feeling with them. He felt no affection. But once he’d left childhood behind, the soldiers’ time never had been his. Looking at the soldiers, he remembered being turned away from shopping malls by uniformed guards. “Leave, please. Now I’ve asked you nicely.” He remembered being woken and moved on from station forecourts and shop doorways, grudged even those hard, cold beds. “You can’t sleep here. Move along.” He remembered being doused with cold water early one freezing morning, his cardboard box soaked and ruined. “You’ve been told you can’t sleep here.” These soldiers, with their guns, had stood behind the policemen and the security guards …
He saw Windsor’s face smirking under a beret. Joe’s “own time” had denied him a job, a home and the vote. It had taken his taxes while he worked and refused to help him when he was broke—and it had taken greater sums than Joe’s whole life earnings and handed it to men like Windsor as a payoff after some huge blunder.
His “own time.” He’d never been anything but disposable to the 21st—one drop in a great pool of unemployed who were used to keep wages low and force them lower. “If you won’t work for that, I know those who will.” His “own time” had never opened its arms and welcomed him in with gratitude, giving him everything—shelter, food, clothing and respect.
I’m a Sterkarm, he thought. In his “own time” his name had been an almost meaningless tag, only convenient for sorting him out from other people—“You’re not eligible to claim, Mr. Sterkarm.” Here, it really meant something. The mere fact that you were named Sterkarm meant you had a claim. I’m a Sterkarm, he thought, and felt his back straighten and his head come up.
It wasn’t Per sitting above him on the horse, but it was Per’s old man. “I’ll guard thee and guard thine …” Joe patted the horse again and went forward, to speak to the Elves and serve his family, the Sterkarms. Raising his hands, to show he meant no one any harm, he smiled. “Hello!”
Windsor and Bryce saw, emerging from the knot of shaggy horsemen, a shaggy footman. He was bearded and longhaired, and dressed much like the others, in gray wool and calf-length leather boots, except that over his other clothes he wore a long green waterproof that was definitely twenty-first century in origin. And he seemed to speak English, though of course, anyone might pick up “hello.”
Bryce opened his mouth to speak, but it was Windsor who said, “Who are you?”
“Sterkarm. I’m a Sterkarm.”
“You speak English,” Windsor said.
“Aye. Picked it up.”
“Where did you get that coat? From one of our survey teams?”
You smug, arrogant sod, Joe thought. Don’t remember me at all, do you? He hadn’t been worth Windsor’s notice. “I paid for it,” Joe said, “with me own money. I’m here to tell you what he’s got to say.” He gestured toward Toorkild, still sitting his horse behind him. “Do you want to hear?”
Windsor’s eyes moved to Toorkild, who nodded and, after passing his lance to a horseman beside him, dismounted, coming forward to Joe’s elbow.
Bryce said, “You can tell us where our personnel are. A young lady, Andrea Mitchell, and four men: Allmark, Bailey, Colucci and Shepherd.”
Joe hesitated, and then remembered that he was a Sterkarm. “They’re okay; they’re at the tower.” Well, Andrea was, anyway. The four men weren’t very far from where they stood, as it happened. “Look, Toorkild’s come here to say he’s sorry. For the fire. It was a mistake. He’s really cut up about it, and he wants to make it up to you.”
Windsor was frowning. “You speak English very well. You’re not from one of our teams, are you?” Some of the geologists were pretty shaggy.
“I’m a Sterkarm,” Joe repeated. “Toorkild wants you to know that the fire didn’t have anything to do with him. He didn’t order it. It was his son, y’know, getting a bit out of order. If Toorkild had knowed, he’d have stopped it. He wants it to go on like before. How can he make it up to you? That’s what he wants to know. He’s really sorry about all this.” Joe waved his hand toward the burned grass.
A horse stamped its foot, shaking its head with a flourish of long mane and a rattle of bit. “Steady,” Bryce said to the armed men behind him.
Windsor was thinking. It was true that, from the moment they’d loaded the boy into the back of the Range Rover to the moment Per had ordered the firing of the FUP office, it was impossible for him to have planned anything with his father. And old Toorkild had been keen to trade.
“How is young Per?” Windsor asked.
Toorkild, catching his son’s name, shook his head sadly, saying, “Per, Per,” like a sorely tried father.
Joe, with inspiration, said, “He’s locked up in the tower. Toorkild was mad—hell, wicked as a wasp. He never said he could light any fires, see. So Per’s locked up. On bread and water.”
Windsor put his swagger stick behind him, gripped it with both hands and smiled. “Parental discipline, eh? Very good. I approve.”
“Toorkild wants to talk things over—he wants to invite you back to the tower—til tur,” he added, to Toorkild.
“Ya,” Toorkild agreed, nodding and smiling. As a courtesy, he attempted English. “Too-wah. Pleese.”
“He’s inviting you to eat and talk and—” Joe had another inspiration. “He wants Per to apologize to you personally.”
Windsor’s brows rose, and he smiled. Joe could see that Windsor was going to agree and felt a flash of triumph, but Bryce spoke first. “There have got to be safeguards. And how do we know that
our people are at the tower?”
Toorkild hadn’t been able to understand what was said, but he’d been watching closely. He turned to his men, waved his hand and said, “Kaster dem neath.”
Every horseman, with a creaking of leather and a chinking of metal, threw his lance down on the turf. The horses sidestepped. More movement, more thumps followed, as the horsemen threw down bows, swords, axes.
“Steady!” Bryce said, as some of his own men, startled, began to lift their rifles.
“This is to show he trusts you,” Joe said. Joe hadn’t known they were going to throw down their weapons, but his brain felt fresh and alert, and he was quick to go along with anything. “To show how much he wants to make things up.”
Windsor put his hands on his hips, his swagger stick in one fist. He looked around at the scattered weapons and smiled at Bryce. “Surety enough?”
Bryce was silent but very slightly shook his head. He knew that it paid to be suspicious.
“Toorkild’s not asking you to put your weapons down,” Joe said. “He really wants to be friends again. He didn’t know what Per was going to do, and he’s really sorry for it.”
“You speak English too well,” Bryce said. “Who exactly are you?”
“I learned from Andrea,” Joe said. “She’s a good friend of mine. We all want to be friends again.” He felt the intensity of his own anxiety for them to believe him, and he realized that the 21st men weren’t being asked to the tower to talk friendship and trade. He admitted to himself that when he’d lied about the whereabouts of the dead security men, he’d known that. “Andrea’ll be glad to see you,” he said. “And the others.” What was he going to do, tell the truth and see those automatic rifles turned on his friends?
“Tell him we accept,” Windsor said.
“Mr. Windsor—” That was Bryce.
Joe said to Toorkild, “Dey kommer.” Toorkild opened his arms wide, went over to Windsor, embraced him and kissed him on the cheek.
Windsor endured the hug and the stink, patted Toorkild’s back and, breaking from the embrace, said to Bryce, “I’m in charge here. We’re going.”
Bryce bit his tongue. He wanted to snap back that, on the contrary, he was the leader—but this wasn’t a military operation, and he wasn’t in charge of real soldiers. Windsor could put them all out of work.
Turning his back on Windsor, he looked over the men. He wasn’t going anywhere without first posting guards on the place where the Tube would reopen their way home. He saw the smirking face of Bates, one of the thickest of the football hooligans. A good excuse to leave him behind. “You! And you!” One of the ex-soldiers, Millington, to provide a little backbone. “And you!” Another no-brain, Saunders. All they had to do was stand there and look frightening enough to keep the Sterkarms away, and God knew, they frightened him. “You stay here, you guard our way home. Understand? Millington, understand?”
“Sir!”
“The rest of you, into the wagons! Move!”
Windsor slapped Toorkild’s arm and said, “Lead on, Macduff.” Walking past Bryce, he climbed into a Land Rover. Toorkild mounted his horse.
The men rapidly and noisily swung into the Land Rovers, with a crashing of boots on metal floors and much laughter. Slowly the two Land Rovers set off downhill, leaving behind a litter of lances, swords and bows, the third Land Rover and three men hugging Kalashnikovs.
The horses were frightened by the Land Rovers. Toorkild had so much trouble with his horse, he had to dismount. He pulled the scarf out of the neck of his jakke and tied it around the animal’s eyes. He was well behind when he led the horse on.
But he was pleased with himself. Throughout the meeting with Windsor, he had never once raised his eyes to the little wood of birch and hazel that grew higher up the slope, and he didn’t give in to the temptation to look that way now.
Per lay on his belly at the edge of the wood, propped on his elbows, intently watching the men, Land Rovers and horses below. On either side of him lay Cuddy and Swart, their noses on their paws. Often they rolled their eyes to look at him, showing white around the edges, and sighed. They were bored, but hunting always involved long periods of boredom, and Per had told them to lie still. They did, but for the second or third time, Cuddy lifted her head and licked Per’s cheek. “Cuddy. Hold.”
Ingram and Wat were close by. Wat was sitting, leaning against a tree, Ingram lay on his side as if asleep. Their clothes of brown and gray merged into the leaves around them, and they were dappled with shifting light. From a few feet away, they were invisible.
They could hear nothing of what was being said around the Elf-Carts, but they watched the figures closely, their advancing and retreating, the raised arms, the pointing.
Per picked out his father and Joe and followed them with his eyes. Not once did his father even glance toward the wood, and since Toorkild knew they were there, that must have been hard; but he knew his father would do far harder things for him.
When the Elves climbed back into the Elf-Carts and moved away down the hill, Per clenched his fists and grinned. Slowly—quick movements catch the eye—Per turned his head to look at his cousins. They were grinning too.
The three left on guard watched the Land Rovers jolt away down the hillside, followed by the men leading frightened horses. It was lonely being left there, not knowing what was going to happen. They looked about, at the empty hills and the gray, damp sky above. Nothing in sight was homely or comforting: no roads, no pylons, no shops.
Bates felt in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and offered them to the other two. When they each accepted one, he felt better, a little more at ease. “I’m Bates.” His rifle was slung on his shoulder while he lit a match.
The others stooped to his hand for lights. “Millington.”
“Saunders.”
“Godforsaken shit hole,” Bates said. Taking his rifle from his shoulder, he pointed it down the valley. “Be a laugh, wouldn’t it? Shot-up sheep!”
Millington turned away. Saunders laughed, and Bates laughed harder himself, feeling he’d made a friend.
The three Elves kept putting their hands to their mouths and taking them away again. Rolling onto his back, Ingram said, “Wherefore do they do this?” He waved his hand to and from his mouth. Per shook his head.
Away down in the valley, the Land Rovers were on the other side of the river’s white-and-gray thread, with horses ahead of them and behind.
Soon horses and Land Rovers would be out of sight, lost in the valleys’ turnings. Per had seen no sign of far-sees or far-speaks, so those Elves down there would have no idea what was happening to these Elves up here.
On his belly, Per wriggled back from the edge of the wood, drawing his bow and quiver after him. “Hold.” The hounds lay still, trembling with impatience, watching him.
When he was far enough back from the wood’s edge to be screened by the trees, Per rose slowly to his feet. In the shifting leaf shadows away to his right, Ingram and Wat were doing the same.
“Cuddy, Swart, kom.” The hounds uncoiled from the ground and slunk to him, their shoulder bones and hipbones rising above their spines. When he led them off along a narrow path, they frisked and wagged their tails, and he tapped their sides with his bow, to remind them that this was serious. They calmed, and followed him with tails and ears up, alert and happy. He was carrying his bow in one hand, his quiver in the other. That meant hunting. Work for them soon. A deer to run down.
Per chose his spot by a big birch that gave him shadow but had no low-hanging branches to block his view or his aim. He set his quiver on the ground and, leaning his back against the tree, hidden from the Elves, pointed at his hounds. Obediently, they lay flat at his feet. Swart put his nose on his paws, resigned to more boredom, but Cuddy’s tail stirred, and she looked up at him with a loving expectancy that made him want to pet her. He knew that, if he did,
she would jump up to return his affection, so instead, he set the end of his bow against his instep and strung it. Cuddy’s tail wagged a little faster in the grass. A strung bow meant shooting. Shooting meant a deer to run down. Running down a deer meant a feed of deer’s guts, and much praise and fuss from Per. She stirred her haunches. “Hold!”
Leaning against the tree, Per turned and scanned the hillside below. The Elves could easily have seen him, if they’d known where to look, but with the speckled light and shade of the trees falling over the soft, dull colors of his clothes, he was invisible as long as he kept still.
Without moving his head, he moved his eyes, searching for his father’s troop below in the valley. There was no sign of them, or of the Elf-Carts.
The Elf-Cart just below him took an eye’s blink to find, so much did its patchy colors disguise it. But the three Elves on guard he saw easily, because they moved unguardedly, walking about, lifting their hands to their mouths, dropping them sharply to their sides again. He considered his aim, not so much calculating it as feeling with his muscles the position they would take as he tilted the bow and arrow to the right angle.
He rolled his shoulder against the tree, swinging back behind it, out of sight. There he took an arrow from his quiver, a broad-headed, barbed hunting arrow, and fitted it to his bowstring. Both hounds watched, tails twitching. Their interest made him smile. “No deer this day, Dearlings.”
Per turned from behind the tree and, in one movement, took up the shooting stance, his body turned sidelong to his target, his bow arm outstretched, the shoulder and elbow of his string arm raised high. Once in that position, if he had not been seen, he need only make the slightest of movements to shoot.
He had not been seen. The soldiers were still standing together, their hands going again and again to their mouths, occasionally glancing about, but ignorant of where to look or what to look for.