The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  Toorkild banged on the table with his cup and roared for silence. The last chatter died away, the dancers stopped. Joe looked around at faces still hot and wet, but transformed with alarm.

  From outside, dulled by the stone walls, came the shout of the watchman: “Sterkarm! Arm!”

  Joe was knocked sideways, shoved again, spun as all around him men and women burst into movement and outcry. Watching the people scatter, he thought: Oh God, this is what Andrea warned me about! We’re being attacked. They’ll want me to fight.

  His heart picked up speed. His brief army career had not involved him in any real fighting. He thought: I swore an oath and I have that house and land to earn. He ran down the tower steps and out into the yard, looking for Per or Toorkild. If he stuck close by one of them, he figured, he’d be most likely to find out what was going on, and he might be noticed, remembered. Rewarded.

  His heart still thumped heavily, but he told himself, All through history, thousands of men have gone into battle and survived. And I’m a Sterkarm too. If they can face it—if a kid like Per can face it—then I’m sure as hell big enough and ugly enough to cope.

  Andrea scrambled down into the hollow beside the tower’s path, slipping in the dark, scratching her hands, banging her knee on a rock. Bryce was ahead of her somewhere, and she could hear other men crashing through the low scrub beside her and behind her.

  “Got him!” Bryce said, ahead, in the darkness of the hollow; and there was the crunching of feet, scuffling, the sounds of blows. Other men—angry men—went leaping past her.

  She shouted, “Stop it! Don’t hurt him, leave him!” Reaching them, she pulled at their shirts, their arms. An elbow caught her on the cheek and the pain silenced her for a moment, but then she dived forward again. A gap opened in the fence of bodies and she buffeted through it and reached Per. Even in the dark she knew him, by his smell and by his tied arms. She held on to him, trying to shield him from the others. Her chin on his shoulder, she shouted, “They’ll be out after us! You need him unhurt! Toorkild will make you pay ten times over for anything you do to Per!”

  Per was shaking in her arms, laughing breathlessly. How he could be laughing she didn’t know, but he couldn’t have done anything better calculated to get himself beaten up. She could feel the anger growing around her as the other men pressed close, could feel the bunching of their muscles. She shook Per as hard as she could.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Bryce said. He dragged at Per’s arm. “Let go of him, for God’s sake!” As Andrea drew back from Per, others reached past her to grasp at his clothes and drag him along. Bryce used his arm to block a swing aimed at Per’s head. “Haven’t you got ears? Nobody touches him. Move!”

  The clanging of the bell and the yelling of the watchman still sounded from the tower, but there seemed to be no rush of Sterkarms in answer to it. Blundering into briers, squelching in mud, tripping on rock, slithering on the slope, they clambered and hauled themselves out of the hollow. Per, his arms tied, slipped and fell, and Bryce hauled him bodily to the hollow’s lip, where he crouched beside him a moment, to grab a few breaths.

  “I lost the bloody knife,” he said. “Haven’t even got a bloody knife.” Ignoring his own orders, he clouted Per’s head with a dully ringing thump. Per laughed, amused, it seemed, at having caused so much annoyance. Andrea pressed her hands together and hoped Per’s sense of humor didn’t get him beaten insensible.

  Bryce heaved Per to his feet and pushed him on down the side of the crag to the smoother hillside below. “I’ll make you laugh on the other side of your face, friend!”

  From behind them, from the tower, came an outburst of shouting, as if a door had been opened, letting sound flood out. They all turned toward it. Per laughed again, and Windsor smacked him across the mouth.

  “Move!” Bryce said. He started away, dragging Per with him. Per hung back, allowing himself to fall to the ground as his feet slipped on the short, smooth grass. When Bryce tried to lift him, he made himself a dead weight. “Help me with him!” Windsor jumped to help, taking Per’s other arm and wrenching it enough to make Per gasp as they heaved him up between them and set him on his feet.

  Bryce was trying to remember the maps he’d studied. To one side was the gentler slope they’d brought the Land Rovers up, following the path worn by the Sterkarms. If they still had a Land Rover, he’d have gone that way, but on foot it would be fatal. They’d be seen and followed too easily.

  To the other side was a steep, narrow cleft in the hillside. He remembered seeing it by daylight, strewn with rocks. Hard travel, but harder for their pursuers too. More places to hide. To Andrea, nodding toward the decline, he said, “This comes out in the valley? There’s a way down?”

  “Yes.” She went down that way sometimes. By daylight.

  “Then come on.”

  Joe found Toorkild standing under the tower, yelling up at the watchman, who leaned over the parapet and pointed. Against the luminous dark blue of the night sky, the black shape of his arm could be seen. “By gate,” he shouted. Joe understood that. He didn’t catch the rest.

  Somebody trying to break in at the gate? Oh God! Joe thought, can I fight like this, with weapons—with axes for chopping and spears for stabbing? Things could get hairy on the streets, and he’d threatened to punch, and had punched, a couple of people. But looking thick-set and rough had always helped him to avoid trouble, and he’d never got into anything serious. This would be different. No talking your way out of this. Please don’t let me piss meself or run away!

  Toorkild shouted for lights and made for the gate. Joe kept close by him. People came crowding behind them, and many others could be heard shouting and trampling their way along other lanes.

  Someone with a lantern got there before them, and was shining the light on the gate’s bar lying in the mud—but the gate itself was closed. “Erpent fra i hayer,” someone said, which Joe’s ear caught easily: Opened from in here.

  Joe, taking a step backward, caught his heel on something and staggered. He had to lean on a wall to stop himself falling. Crouching, he felt for what had tripped him and touched hairy, solid flesh. An animal. “Hayer!” he said, beckoning to the lantern holder.

  The light shone on gray fur. A big, lean hound. Black blood, open wounds. Toorkild looked and said, “Where be Per?” When people only crowded around to stare at the dead hound, and no one answered, he raised his voice. “Where be my son?”

  “Grannams!” Gobby said. “They climbed over wall and opened gate! Why’d tha no set a better watch?”

  Toorkild swung toward him and opened his mouth—but then turned away and, cupping his hands round his mouth, bellowed, “Per! Per!” The yells struck some wall and echoed faintly, dully.

  Sweet Milk came out of an alley, carrying a lantern. “Prisoners have gone. They was let out.”

  “I’ll hang guards,” Toorkild said. He swung back to Gobby. “They’ve got him, they’ve taken him.” He pulled open the gate and went out onto the path. Joe pushed forward and got through the gate close behind him.

  Sweet Milk went down the path ahead of everyone, shining his lantern at his feet. He stooped, straightened and held up a dagger with a broken tip. Toorkild snatched it from him and showed it to Gobby, pointing to the broken blade and the blood drying on it.

  Joe watched both their faces become strained. He looked around and saw, on faces shadowed and distorted by shifting lantern light, the same expressions of anxiety and anger. And something came through the air to him, soaking into him, hardening his muscles, sending blood to his head: an Us-against-Them anger. It was as if the hairs on his head were picking it up as it was being broadcast through the air. Per’s a nice kid, he found himself thinking. Helped me, brought me here. I swore an oath to him.

  Toorkild seized a man by a handful of his jerkin and shook him, putting the dagger to his face. “Tha left thy guard!”
r />   “May—she said—”

  “What?”

  “Said you’d sent her to tell us to come in—honest!”

  “Entraya?” Toorkild said. “Elf-May? And tha believed her?”

  “She said you’d sent her!”

  Toorkild shoved him away hard. “Fetch horses! I’ll kill her too.” He ran down the path from the crag to the gentler slope below, never putting a foot wrong even in the dark. At the bottom he filled his lungs and bellowed,

  “Sterkarm!” The yell rang away into the dark.

  Andrea and Per were wearing boots, which protected them from a lot. One of hers was unlaced and slipped about on her foot in an irritating way that she suspected would soon give her blisters, but the other men were all barefoot, and she could hear them groaning and hissing in the darkness as their toes and ankles were bashed on rocks, as the harsh, strong growth of bilberries scratched them, as the tough bracken stems cut like razors.

  Per seemed hardly able to keep his feet. Every few steps he slipped and fell. Bryce and Windsor wrenched at his arms, trying to keep him on his feet, but he would become a limp dead weight. He persisted in it, even though Windsor cuffed his head every time. Andrea winced when she heard another dull thump to Per’s skull, or the softer thump as Per succeeded in dragging them down again, often with them both landing on him. Andrea didn’t understand how he could go on inviting such punishment. She wanted to plead with him to stop, to behave, but doubted he would listen.

  And then came Toorkild’s yell. Per twisted his head around and yelled, “Sterkarm! Hayer! Sterk!”

  “Jesus Christ!” Bryce forced Per down, flat on his back on the slope, pressing his hand over his mouth. “Fill this in! A gag!”

  “A little late,” Windsor said.

  “Yes, a little late! Now how about finding something to— Andrea! Give us one of your socks and your other bootlace!”

  Andrea came scrambling back up the slope. “You can’t gag him with a sock! Let me talk—”

  “Shouldn’t we be moving?” Windsor was peering into the darkness above them.

  “No discussions!” Bryce said. “Give me the sock and bootlace!”

  Andrea took her foot out of her unlaced boot and pulled off the sock, and knelt to unfasten the other lace as fast as she could. Great! Both of her boots would be loose and flapping.

  Bryce took the sock—a thick, long, knee-length walker’s sock, which Andrea had worn for several days—and tried to push it into Per’s mouth. Per turned his head aside and clenched his teeth, and kicked, until Bryce sat on his legs. Windsor pressed on the sides of Per’s jaw but couldn’t make him open his mouth. “They’re going to catch us!”

  “They’re going to anyway!” Bryce said. “When they do, I want to be the one talking, not him!” He pinched Per’s nose shut.

  Per resisted as long as he could, and even then tried to open his mouth only for long enough to snatch a breath. But Bryce was ready, and stuffed folds of the sock between his teeth, though much of it was left hanging from his mouth. Per twisted his head, and retched, and tried to push the sock out with his tongue, but Bryce held his jaw. He passed the bootlace to Windsor. “Tie that around.”

  Windsor obeyed with alacrity, wrapping the long lace twice around Per’s head, before tying it. Per retched again, and his nostrils flared as he tried to suck in air. “You’re going to kill him!” Andrea said. She imagined that hairy wool stuffed into her own mouth, and felt like retching herself.

  “Good,” Windsor said. He and Bryce lifted Per to his feet again, and Windsor gave his head another cuff.

  “Leave him alone!” Andrea said, and pushed Windsor, as one angry child in a playground might push another.

  She sat down on the hard earth with a thump that jarred all her bones and put her hand to her smarting mouth. Her eyes filling with tears, she realized that Windsor had backhanded her hard enough to make her lose her footing on the steep slope. His knuckles had cut her lip against her teeth.

  Per, stumbling as Bryce dragged him backward down the slope, and retching convulsively over the gag in his mouth, never took his eyes from Windsor.

  Joe was standing behind Toorkild and Gobby when they heard Per’s answering shout come back from the narrow valley below them. The second shout was stifled.

  “He lives!” Toorkild said. He turned back to the tower but found Isobel behind him, with his jakke, his boots and his helmet in her arms. His sword, in its scabbard, was slung over her shoulder, and his lance was carried, awkwardly, by a maid.

  Horses, saddled and bridled, were being led down from the tower. Men were putting on their jakkes and helmets, or slinging quivers of arrows from saddlebows.

  I can’t ride, Joe thought. I don’t have a sword or a lance. Couldn’t use it if I had. He was surprised to find himself disappointed at not being part of what was going on around him. He was a Sterkarm. Per was one of his; he had a right to be included. He didn’t want to be left out, even if it would mean being safe.

  Toorkild had struggled into his jakke, and Isobel was bending down so he could lean on her while he stepped into his long boots, which she held for him. She helped him pull them up.

  “If they hurt Per,” Ingram said. “If they hurt him …”

  “We can no take horses down there,” Wat said.

  “Shut up and listen,” Gobby said. “An eye’s blink of thought be worth a day’s march. Think: Why have they lumbered themselves with Per?”

  “No bloody riddles!” Toorkild said. Isobel was helping him on with his other boot. “Say tha piece!”

  “They’ll no hurt him while they think they’re getting away,” Gobby said. “Only if we press ’em too close will he be in danger.”

  Toorkild stamped his feet into his boots. “I want my son back!”

  “I want my brother’s-son back. And I ken how to get him back whole.”

  Isobel, out of breath from her struggles with the boots and from supporting Toorkild’s weight, said, “Harken to him, Toorkild.”

  Gobby said, “We ken which way they gan, and we ken where they gan. Have tha weapon’s stores been broken into?”

  “Nay,” Sweet Milk said.

  “Then they’ve no weapons. No boots to their feet. It’ll take them all night. We can be at ford long before them.” Gobby watched his audience looking at each other and nodding. They all knew there was only one place within miles to cross Bedes Water. “If we no get Per back at ford, well, we’ll have men sitting at their Gate. We’ll let them gan right to it.”

  Toorkild hissed through his teeth. “Let my little lad stay in their hands that long!”

  “Tell me, Toorkild,” Gobby said, “when we get Per back, what wilt do to Elven?”

  “Cut ’em into gobbets no bigger than peas.”

  “Aye. If thou wert them, wouldst give him up? For owt? As long as they think they can get away, he be safe. He be only thing they have to bargain with. It be when they’re cornered we must worry.”

  “And that’ll be at Gate!” Toorkild said. “What’s to stop ’em killing him then?” Isobel moaned and clutched at his arm.

  “Nowt,” Gobby admitted. “But they’ll have Gate in sight. They’ll think they’re all but home. It’ll be easier to talk them into giving him up then.”

  Isobel struck her husband on the chest. “That be sense! Harken to him!”

  Toorkild put his arms round her, hugging her to stop her hitting him. To Gobby, he said, “I shall no let them go.”

  Gobby laughed. “Think I will? Gobbets no bigger than grain!”

  Toorkild nodded, and a short time after that all the men with horses were mounted. Carrying their long lances upright, they rode slowly away down the tower’s path, fading and melting into the darkness. Only faint sounds of hoof tread and harness came drifting back.

  Joe watched them disappear, feeling as if he’d bee
n left out of a party. You’re better off, he told himself. You’ll live a bit longer. But his heart beat and his thoughts ran with its beat. What was it like, to fight with the Sterkarms? He was a Sterkarm, but was he brave enough?

  Isobel ran back into the tower and opened up storerooms. She armed everyone—women and old men, young lads and menservants—with sickles and scythes, with axes, long knives, staves: anything heavy or sharp that might serve as a weapon. Joe got an axe.

  Isobel kilted her skirts to her knees and led her army out of the tower gate and down the hill, following after the horsemen. She stood to one side of the path, watching them go past her in the dark. As Joe went by, Isobel was saying, “And Entraya, that Elf!” She raised the cleaver in her hand. “I’ll make dog’s meat of her.”

  23

  16th Side: Making Up

  “Per, be so kind, listen. Per …”

  Andrea felt wretched. She shivered with cold, but her hands and knees glowed with the heat of grazed skin. Her hips and bum and thighs ached from falls on hard ground or rock. Her boots had protected her from toe stubbings but, unlaced, had moved on her feet and rubbed them into hot sores. Trying to climb down the steep stream bed in the dark had been disastrous.

  Worse than her own stumblings and bruises had been listening to Per retching and coughing and gasping for breath through the sock that she’d handed over to gag him. Occasionally moonlight had filtered down into the dark, narrow valley and, in shades of gray and gray-blue, had shown her Per twisting and tossing his head like a fly-bothered horse, uselessly trying to rid himself of the tormenting gag. The cord tying his elbows and pulling them so awkwardly behind his back had to hurt too. All the time they’d struggled over and between the stones and boulders, she’d ached with misery for him and had longed to help, but hadn’t even been able to keep up as Bryce tugged Per along by the belt, often pulling him off his feet. Every time Per had fallen, she’d known exactly how much it hurt, from falling herself.