The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  Bryce heard his own people sigh and was aware of a shifting among them, a relaxing. This new speaker, with his broken-­nosed grin, was more dangerous than Toorkild. They were all so knocked about and exhausted, they were ready to believe anything he told them.

  “My brother be angry,” Gobby said, “by cause that be his bairn you have there—but I can talk to my brother. And I ken how it be. Many times I’ve felt like blacking that one’s eye myself. He’d try the patience of a stone.”

  Per felt comforted. His bruises had been noted and would be avenged.

  “Come on now,” Gobby said. “Let lad gan, and we’ll let you gan. I give you my word.”

  Andrea translated, and someone among the 21st men muttered, “Only chance we’ve got.”

  Loudly, Bryce said, “Tell him I know he’s lying.”

  Andrea did, and Gobby grinned. “You canna hold him much longer. Three choices you’ve got. Hold him until you tire—then he’ll break free and we’ll kill you. Or break his neck while you still can—and then we’ll kill you.” Gobby glanced over his shoulder. “See his mother over there, with cleaver?” Gobby waited for Andrea to finish translating, smiling gently into Bryce’s face. “Or you can let him gan, and we’ll let you gan. What use be lad to you? Your Gate be closed. Where shall you gan? Come on; let him gan now.”

  Windsor crouched beside Bryce. He said, “Ask them what guarantees they’ll give us.” As if he were in a boardroom. As if there could be any guarantees.

  Bryce opened his mouth to answer—and it stayed open. Behind the Sterkarms, the Time Tube appeared again. There it was, blotting out part of the hillside with its big pipe and the textured rubber ramp that rose up to it.

  There was an outcry from those Sterkarms who could see it, and Gobby, still crouching, swiveled on his heels to look behind him.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Bryce said. “Andrea, tell ’em this. We’re going through there, going home. We’re going to take Pair right to the entrance, and when everybody’s gone through, then I’ll let Pair go. You’ve got my word.”

  “—right up to Gate,” Andrea said, looking from Gobby to Toorkild. “But not through it!”

  Bryce got to his feet, pulling Per up with him. They had to get to the Tube fast. Bryce was tiring. Moving sidelong, Bryce advanced a step, and Per was forced to go with him. Gobby got out of their way. “Keep up close,” Bryce said to his people, “and we’ll get there.” They crowded around, pressing close to each other. “Andrea, tell ’em I can kill him in a second—and I will!”

  Andrea looked at Gobby’s face, glimpsed Isobel’s in the crowd, and was scared to look at Toorkild. Why do I have to tell them? she thought. Why does it have to be me they remember saying it? But she said, “He can kill Per in an eye’s blink. It be an Elf-Power he has!”

  Per wasn’t listening to the exchange of words. He knew that he was being taken toward the Gate, and to another imprisonment in Elf-Land. He tried moving his head a little, and it seemed to him that Bryce’s grip had slackened. If he could turn his head a little more within Bryce’s arm, he might be able to bite, despite the cord in his mouth. He stamped at Bryce’s feet, missed, and stamped on grass.

  Bryce jerked him to a halt and tightened the twist on his head. “I don’t want to have to kill him to prove that I can!”

  Gobby kept pace with them on foot, having thrown the reins of his horse to one of his men. Even while Andrea translated, Gobby spoke sharply, cutting through her words. “Per! Slerssa nigh!”

  “What’s he say?”

  “He told Per not to fight.”

  The kid stopped fighting. Bryce moved on several more paces, and the kid went with him, good as gold. “Tahk,” Bryce called to Gobby. “Appreciate your help.”

  Step by step they made toward the Tube’s ramp. Not one among the Sterkarms tried to stop them, but Gobby kept with them, and at his side hung a big, gray sword that must have weighed a few pounds, its edges sharpened to cut.

  Bryce set his foot on the bottom of the ramp and prayed that the Tube wouldn’t be turned off now. “Go past me,” he said to the nearest man. “Get going. Not you!” he added, to Andrea. “I need you.”

  Per, feeling the ramp under his feet, panicked. Gobby’s sharp order not to fight had been, in a way, soothing; trust in his uncle had made him obey. But Gobby had done nothing and here he was, on the very threshold of Elf-Land. The way his head was held, he could see nothing of his own people or land anymore—only the ugly, unnatural slope leading up to the Gate.

  Bryce’s grip on him faltered, and Per was able to shift his head within the crook of Bryce’s elbow. He managed to get a thin pinch of Bryce’s flesh between his teeth, through the thin shirt, and he bit as hard as he could make his aching jaws close. Bryce’s arm thrashed, the fist clubbing Per’s head, but that was proof it hurt, and Per hung on. At the same time he made the fingers of his tied hands rigid and drove them behind him into Bryce’s belly. It didn’t inflict much pain, but it made Bryce move away from him. Per took his teeth from Bryce’s arm and spun away from him, back toward the bottom of the ramp and the waiting Sterkarms. But Bryce still had hold of him by one arm, and pulled him up short.

  Windsor, behind Per, stooped and gathered his legs together, lifting them up off the ramp, hugging them to smother the kicks. Bryce got a grip on his tied arms and supported his upper body. Between them, they lugged him up the ramp. “Keep going!” Bryce yelled, out of breath, to the men passing him.

  Per kicked his knees against Windsor’s throat and croaked, from a dry throat, “Sterkarm!”

  Bryce, higher on the ramp, looked over Windsor’s shoulder and saw the Sterkarms coming forward, the men on foot in front, their knives and sickles and cleavers ready. There was a zinging, scraping sound of iron as Gobby drew his sword. Bryce strained for breath and pushed himself to move faster, forcing Windsor to keep up.

  They reached the top of the ramp, its platform and its great open tunnel mouth, with that beautiful glimpse of the 21st at the other end. Such relief rose into his brain, he thought he might faint—but he said, “Put him down, put him down!” Windsor had seemed to be continuing on into the tunnel.

  Windsor dropped Per’s feet onto the rubber surface, and Bryce steadied him. There were Sterkarms halfway up the slope, Gobby in the lead, but now they stopped. Bryce glanced around and saw that Andrea was already in the Tube, and that the last couple of his men were passing him. There were only Windsor and himself left. He let go of Per and set his hand in the middle of the kid’s back, ready to push him down the ramp and into his family’s arms.

  Windsor grabbed Per by the shoulders and ran into the Tube, dragging Per with him. Off balance, his hands tied, Per could only stagger with him, though looking wildly back at Bryce.

  Bryce looked down the ramp and saw Gobby coming on again, lifting the sword in his hand, his face viciously angry. There was nothing to do but pile into the Tube after Windsor as fast as he could and even, when he caught up, help to hustle Per along. No point in trying to explain that the treachery had been Windsor’s, not his. He yelled to those running ahead of him, “Turn it off! Tell them to turn it off!”

  Toorkild yelled, “Way!” and set his horse at the ramp. The horse shied, but Toorkild pulled around its head, kicked it and whacked its rump with the butt of his lance. Men on foot jumped from the ramp to clear the way as the horse started up it with a hollow banging of hooves.

  The hooves gripped on the textured surface, and the horse scrambled to the top. Leveling his lance, Toorkild rode into the Elf-Gate. Others set their horses after him, and Gobby jumped from the ramp and ran for his own mount.

  Joe ran up the ramp with a pack of other footmen, his axe raised. He felt angry, exhilarated, wild. Dragging in breath and opening his mouth wide, he yelled, “Sterkarm! Sterkarm!”

  26

  21st Side: Reiving the 21st

&nbs
p; It was quiet and cool in the Tube’s control room; the windows were screened with blinds, and the whirring of fans and humming of computers made a soothing background noise. But the people seated at the computers were less relaxed than usual, as their eyes flicked from one display to another. The supervisor stood, staring at the monitors high on the wall, now at one, now at another.

  From the Tube, beginning abruptly as the dimensional border was crossed, came an echoing yell. Men, shouting, gesturing wildly, staggering, looking behind, broke from the Tube’s mouth. They were wet and filthy, their feet bare, dirty and bleeding. They ran straight down the ramp and across the gravel path separating the control room from the main building. Shoving open a door, they crowded into the Hall.

  In the control room, startled technicians rose from their terminals and looked at each other, or looked up at the security monitors, one of which showed a beautiful view of the 16th-side sky.

  In a struggling knot, Windsor, Bryce, Andrea and another stumbled from the Tube. All were soaked and muddy and scratched. Windsor’s usually well-groomed hair had collapsed about his head in an oily, muddy mess; Andrea’s hair had come down from its bun and was flying everywhere.

  All of them were shouting and struggling as Bryce and Windsor dragged between them a young man whose hands were fastened behind him. He was kicking, elbowing and trying to get back into the Tube. Windsor cuffed his head with the knuckles of one fist, making a hollow sound that was clearly heard by everyone watching and left no one in any doubt as to how the young man’s face had come to be so bruised. Andrea yelled and hit Windsor, who yelled and shoved her.

  Bryce yelled too, as he hauled the young man toward the ramp. It sounded as if he shouted “Turn it off!” Then he and Windsor bundled their prisoner down the ramp and out of sight, with Andrea following.

  From the Tube an explosion of sound, movement, weight. A dark mass of horse, hooves crashing, drumming, lunged from the opening. People shoved themselves back from their keyboards, jumped to their feet. They glimpsed a rider, leveled lance, helmet on head. The horse vanished down the ramp, thunderous—but others were behind it. One, slewing, crashed into the control room.

  Its bulk, the prow of its head, neck and breastbone, the great working muscles of its shoulders, the huge barrel of its ribs and its great, stamping feet, filled the aisles. Carts and computers tilted, beeped, smashed to the floor. Keyboards and mouses dangled at the ends of their cords. The horse, disturbed by the frantic electronic twittering, lashed out with its hind feet. Its hooves struck the doorjamb behind it, splintering wood, shaking the whole room, panicking people into running and setting many more computers bleeping. The rider’s lance, driven into the ceiling above him and wrenched out, brought down a shower of plasterboard.

  While many fought to get out the door, some went out by the windows.

  Elf-Land was eldritch, infinitely more strange than the Sterkarms ever could have expected. Those who blundered into the control room found themselves between walls of an unnaturally straight, pastel glossiness, and heard their horses’ hooves boom as if they danced on drums. A shrieking, as of many startled birds, was all around, and boxes rattled and blinked.

  Those who rushed down the steep slope were faced with a building, a long, long building, bigger than Toorkild’s tower and Gobby’s bastle house put together, and built all of large red bricks. It had huge, shining windows through which a troop could have climbed, and curtains of a deep, rich red hung at the windows—enough cloth hanging there to dress a Sterkarm wedding.

  In every direction, Elves ran, all of them wearing brightly colored clothes. They ran over wide, smooth green lawns and past—even through—beds of brilliant flowers.

  Even Joe was startled by the glaring white of a notice on a wall, giving directions, and the bright scarlet of its lettering. A woman stood, astounded, at the bottom of the ramp, clutching at the handle of a tea cart, her smock a deep, clear blue. Back in the 16th even the brightest of colors were faded, muted, and mostly things were gray, green or brown. For a giddy moment, Joe was simultaneously homesick for the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries.

  Bryce and Windsor, at the bottom of the ramp, pulled Per this way and that between them. Andrea added to the scuffle, tugging at Windsor’s arms, crying, “You should have let him go!” and staggering back as Windsor shoved her. Per’s kicking and elbowing had prevented them reaching the shelter of Dilsmead Hall, and now there was a horse between them and the nearest door. Their best defense was still to hold on to Per as they tried to edge along the path to another door.

  More horses thundered down the ramp, swinging around on the path, stamping over the lawns. Toorkild was standing in his stirrups, bellowing to call his men’s attention back from plate-glass windows and dragons in the sky.

  Bryce quickly saw that the Sterkarms weren’t keeping their distance as they had on their own ground. The horses came pacing forward, coming between them and the buildings. The lances were coming down, ready to stab. Here, in Elf-Land, they were uneasy, less willing to hold off or bargain.

  Pulling Per’s head back by the hair, Bryce twisted him to his knees and dragged him backward through the gravel. It was time, Bryce thought, to give the Sterkarms something to think about, while he and Windsor and Andrea ran for it. It was time to finish with Per.

  Toorkild saw Per on his knees in the gravel, his hands tied behind him, yelling. He saw the man standing above and behind him raise both hands, to strike a blow down on Per’s bare head.

  In wrenching at his horse’s reins to keep clear of the horse beside him, Toorkild glanced aside. When he jerked his head back, the blow had landed. He saw Per’s head roll back of its own weight, and his whole body slacken as it sank and fell in a heap.

  Toorkild’s sight turned white. A blizzard cold closed about him. Kicking his feet from his stirrups, he dropped from his horse, still blind. His own breathing roared in his ears. All his thought was: Killed! Killed! Killed!

  “R-u-u-n!” Bryce yelled and, turning to run, collided with Andrea, who shouted, “What have you done? What have you done?” He shook her and tried to take her with him. “Run!” He could see Windsor sprinting away—but there were people standing on the lawns and the path, staring. He yelled at them, “Get inside! Under cover! Run!”

  Andrea, pulling away from Bryce toward Per, broke free of his hold. He looked over his shoulder at her and then ran for shelter himself. She’d made her decision, and good luck to her! Now he had to save himself.

  Looking back again, he saw Andrea stooping over Per; saw horses milling in place and lances stabbing the air; saw one horse lunging forward, coming at him. He felt the ground shake under his feet.

  Sweet Milk leveled his lance, with his weight and his horse’s weight behind it. Bryce was struck, skewered, smashed to the gravel.

  Sweet Milk let go of the lance, swung his horse right over Bryce and jumped down. Keeping his reins looped over his arm, he drew his long knife, dropped on Bryce’s back, and cut the throat of the worthless carrion dirt who’d killed Per May.

  He got to his feet with blood on his hands and shook blood from his knife, bringing shrieks from the Elves pressing into a doorway nearby. Sweet Milk looked at them, and then turned toward Toorkild, and saw him gathering up his son’s body.

  Sweet Milk wiped his eyes and nose with a bloody hand and led his horse back toward his friends. There was nothing he could do to ease Toorkild’s pain, but he could, at least, give him the head of his son’s killer.

  Windsor ran hard, without looking around, making for the far end of the long building. He ran straight past the door where others were crowding, trying to get inside. Idiots! Let them jostle together there until the Sterkarms picked them off. He’d run on and find another door.

  His mind was on his Mercedes, waiting for him in the parking lot. The quickest way to reach it would have been to run in the other direction, but the Sterkarms were
blocking the way, so he was going to have to run all the way around Dilsmead Hall to reach his car.

  He rounded the corner of the building, and there was another door. A young man and woman—brighter than most—were just disappearing inside. Windsor followed them. It made more sense to take a shortcut through the building, where horses couldn’t follow, than to try running around it in the open.

  The young couple were running down the corridor and were almost out of sight as Windsor entered. Instead of running after them, he took long enough to slam the bar down and lock it. That was one door the Sterkarms couldn’t enter by.

  He couldn’t be sure that the Sterkarms hadn’t gotten into the building one way or another, and from somewhere came the sound of smashing glass. It must have come from some room nearby, but the sound was muffled by the walls and he couldn’t be sure from where. A narrow staircase—what had once been a hidden, servants’ stair—opened to his right, and he ducked into it.

  The staircase brought him into an upper-floor corridor that ran the length of the house. He was able to look down from the windows and see the cluster of horsemen below. He heard more glass smash, and saw Sterkarms dragging curtains down.

  Running along the corridor, he turned the corner at the end. From the windows there he could look down into the parking lot. His Mercedes was on the side farthest from the building, but even so, it was only a matter of a few yards.

  Below him, a party of Sterkarms, on foot, appeared around the corner of the building, armed with pikes and axes. He heard glass smash below him as some of them broke a window. Another ran to the nearest car and wrenched off its side mirrors. The distance between the building and his Mercedes suddenly seemed far greater, the space he would have to cross more dangerously open.