The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

He watched the party of Sterkarms move along the side of the house and turn the corner that would bring them to its front entrance. Once they were out of sight, he ran down the nearest staircase to the ground floor. Near the foot of the staircase, he knew, there was a side door leading out to the parking lot.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he peered into the corridor—and drew back sharply. The door was standing open, and something lay on the floor nearby.

  He hid on the staircase, his heart thumping, wondering whether to go back up the stairs. But if Sterkarms were roaming about the house, he might meet them anywhere. If he could get to the door and run for it …

  He looked out into the corridor again. The thing lying on the floor was a man in a green uniform. He was lying facedown, clutching at his belly, and blood was pooling on the floor underneath him. Dead, Windsor thought. But he wore a belt and holster.

  Windsor went over to him and, trying to keep his shoes and hands out of the blood, took the man by the hips and rolled him over. His gun was still in its holster. Windsor was reaching for it when the man cried out and raised his head.

  “I’m—going for help.” Windsor took the gun from the holster, and made for the door. On its threshold, he hesitated, afraid to leave the building’s shelter, but knowing that the building was no longer safe.

  He looked at the gun. It was much heavier than he’d expected, much more awkward to handle—and was sticky in his hands, from the blood. The guard on the floor lifted his head and tried to say something.

  “Ssh!” Windsor said. Leaning toward the man, he showed him the gun. “Is it loaded?” But the guard had collapsed again and was silent. Windsor didn’t know how to open the gun. It had always seemed deeply uncool to play with guns, and he’d never taken any interest. But he’d seen plenty of actors use them, and if actors could use them, how hard could it be?

  There was a lever on the side of the gun, which was hard to push aside and didn’t open the gun when he’d managed it. Was it the safety catch? It wasn’t labeled. Well then, he’d just taken the safety catch off, hadn’t he? Unless he’d put it on. He lifted the gun up and peered at it, but there was nothing to indicate “on” or “off”—and he was wasting time.

  Be positive. Just the sight of the gun ought to be frightening. And if he was bold and made decisively for his Mercedes, he’d probably stroll it without seeing any Sterkarms at all. But as he braced himself to step out of the door, he heard a voice calling outside, away to his left. “Vi maun venda tilbacka!”

  Windsor shrank back into the corner behind the door. In front of him, in both hands, he held the gun.

  Toorkild seized Andrea by her shoulder and a handful of her hair and dragged her away from Per, sending her sprawling on the gravel. Then Toorkild dropped to the ground himself, heaved Per into his lap and hugged him to his chest.

  To him Per felt as chicken-boned and fragile, as desperately in need of protection, as when he’d been a day old and had lain between Toorkild and Isobel so they could count his breaths through the night; or when he’d been two, and sick, and had done all his shivering, crying and puking in their arms because they’d feared that in the moment one of them wasn’t holding him, he would die. Toorkild tried to fold himself around Per so that nothing could get at him, not even the wind.

  Andrea, sitting bruised and dazed in the gravel, watched Joe use the edge of his axe to saw through the cord around Per’s wrists. Toorkild gathered the freed arms into his hug. Sterkarms were crowding around Per, on foot and horseback, looking down on him. Ecky slipped the blade of his small, sharp knife under the cord tied around Per’s head and snicked it through.

  Per came alive in Toorkild’s clasp and pushed against his father’s chest with his hands and elbows. Toorkild, his heart and throat too swollen for speech, crushed him in a grateful bear hug and pressed his lips to Per’s hair and brow. He slackened his hold, but only to change his grip and renew the suffocating hug. Thanksthanksthanks! No having to tell Isobel her son was dead. Thanksthanks!

  Per was still fighting Bryce—but as the cramped muscles of his arms and shoulders ached, and the abrasions on his wrists stung, it came to him, dimly, that his hands were no longer tied behind him. Bewildered, he stopped struggling. The arms around him tightened again, and he was rocked.

  The bruises on his face hurt as they were pressed into a jakke. He knew it was a jakke: He could feel the small iron plates flexing under the cloth. Elves didn’t wear jakkes. Elves didn’t smell like this either: like a stable a fox had been kept in.

  A gentle pressure on the crown of his head felt like a kiss. Only one Elf had ever kissed him, and she wasn’t this strong and didn’t wear a jakke. He braced his hand against the iron-filled leather but couldn’t find the strength to break the hold around him. A voice grumbled close to his ear, vibrating through him. “Lilla ladda min, min wey barn.” My little lad, my wee bairn. This could only be his father.

  He pushed hard, the muscles of his arms creaking, and pushed himself far enough back to see his father’s face. From beneath the shadowing helmet, Toorkild’s pale-blue eyes stared at him, while tears and snot ran down into his thick, gray-flecked beard. His hand came up and touched the bruises and scratches on Per’s face with thick, hot fingers. “Look at this,” he said. “Look at this.”

  “He be alive!” someone shouted close by Per’s ear. He turned his head so sharply, he went dizzy. Ecky was crouched beside him. Beyond Ecky were horses—and grass, and the legs and boots of other men. Above was a blue sky, and his cousin Wat’s face, looking down.

  He looked up, astonished and disbelieving. He had been trying to get away from the Elves. What Elf-Work had dumped him down, untied, among his own people and made the Elves vanish? Trying to sit up, he said, to his father, “Entraya?”

  People stooped over him, laughing at his confusion. They laughed the more when he scowled, and someone rubbed up his hair.

  Gobby’s voice said, “Toorkild, up! This be no place for us to stay. Back through Gate—move, now!”

  Per was lifted to his feet without his having to make any effort to get up. Toorkild’s arm was around his waist, and Wat gripped his other elbow, as if he needed help to stand. “Daddy! Entraya, where be she?”

  “Ssh!” Toorkild said, pulling him along. “Ssh!”

  Per was distracted from protesting by the sight of a little metal wagon on wheels. It had shelves, loaded with cups and plates and cans that rattled and clunked as the wagon was dragged over the gravel and up the ramp to the Elf-Gate. A man followed it, his body wrapped around with thick folds of cloth—a curtain, torn down from the nearest windows. A third man was carrying a big framed painting and a fourth clutched an armful of brightly colored cushions. And then he saw Andrea, her brown hair falling down her back, and a man on either side of her, gripping her arms, hustling her along.

  “Hey!” He lunged out of Toorkild’s hold and grabbed at the shoulder of the nearest man. “Take your hands off her!” Both men turned in surprise, and Per pulled Andrea away from them. “Did they hurt thee? Did they?”

  Andrea wrapped her arms around Per’s ribs and held on to him tight. She wasn’t hurt, but she was scared. She shook her head against his shoulder and was glad to feel his arms move protectively around her back and head.

  The men were saying that she was an Elf and had helped the Elves, and couldn’t be trusted. Others came pressing up behind Per.

  “Guthrun!”

  “Hounds’d choke on her.”

  “Any man—” Andrea felt Per’s chest move as he sucked in air to shout. “Any man looks at her wrong answers to me! Hear?”

  They stared back at him, surprised, even annoyed—but if he said so … Especially as Toorkild stood behind him, with his hand on his shoulder.

  “Veensa,” Per said, looking around. “Where be Veensa—Elf-Veensa?” Their blank faces made Per angry. “You let him go? My small fowl you can cat
ch, but not—”

  At the back of the crowd, Sweet Milk lifted his arm above his head. From his hand, by the hair, hung Bryce’s head.

  Per was swayed slightly as Andrea turned her face into his shoulder, to hide from the sight. He cupped the back of her head in his hand but called out, “Nay! T’other one! Hast thee Veensa’s head?”

  Sweet Milk pointed down the length of the gravel path toward the distant end of the redbrick and glass building. “He ran.”

  “He lives?” Per said. Andrea’s mouth was cut where Windsor had hit her. Windsor had killed Cuddy.

  Gobby beat the butt of his lance on the ground and said, “Toorkild! Call ’em in. Let’s be gone.”

  Per swung Andrea around and shoved her into his father’s arms. “Look after her!”

  Toorkild staggered but clutched at Andrea. “What—?” He had to turn his head to see where Per had gone.

  Per shoved through the crowd to its edge, where one of Gobby’s men held two horses by the reins. Taking the reins of one from him, Per swung up onto the horse. The stirrups were too short, but that he could cope with. What he couldn’t bear was the injustice of Windsor being alive. Windsor had slapped his face with a hand covered in Cuddy’s blood. Windsor had knocked Andrea down. Insufferable that he should live to laugh at them—insufferable that, when they were home, when it was too late, he would be jeered for letting Windsor live.

  A man gawped up at him from the ground, a lance on his shoulder. Per leaned over and took the lance. As Toorkild yelled somewhere behind him, Per kicked his horse, and men scattered out of their way.

  “Per!” Gobby’s voice.

  Per kicked his horse again. “On!” The horse bounded from a walk to a canter, pounding for the far end of the building, kicking up dust and gravel.

  “Per! Get back here!” In exasperation at having wasted so much breath, Gobby hammered the butt of his lance on the wooden wall of the smaller Elf-House.

  Toorkild let go of Andrea and ran for his own horse. Ingram looked from his father to Per, galloping away, and swung up onto his horse. And then other men, of both Gobby’s and Toorkild’s households, were mounting up. Sweet Milk dropped Bryce’s head on the grass, so he could ride.

  Seeing both Per and Toorkild ride away left Andrea feeling lonely and scared, and when she saw Joe running after the horses on foot, waving an axe, she felt that she hadn’t a friend anywhere near. She was looking warily around, wondering if there were somewhere she could run, when she felt a big, strong hand close on her arm and tug her backward. It was Gobby. As he watched his second son, Wat, ride after Per, followed by a run of men on foot, he ran through every obscene and blasphemous word he knew. “If I’d had rearing of him …” He called the men remaining near him to order. They were to stay where they were, and guard the Elf-Gate, so it would still be open if the madheads ever came back. “Some bugger has to think!”

  A sudden howling came from the Elf-Gate and made Gobby and every man turn sharply toward it. Only Andrea knew what the noise was, and she felt her heart ache with strain and fear. The Tube was closing down, was bringing its other half home. As the noise dropped from a howl to a roar and then diminished to a whirring, she watched the lights near the Tube’s entrance.

  Silence fell with a thump. Then Sterkarms came running to tell Gobby that a new length of pipe had appeared. Gobby’s grip on Andrea’s arm tightened, and he glowered down at her. “What be happening?”

  She’d never been on as good terms with Gobby as with Toorkild, and she was too afraid of him to try and lie or make anything up. “Gate’s closed. You can no go back.”

  He nodded, looking out over the lawns around them, as if he could see the other Sterkarms. “I promise thee,” he said, “I promise, if my sons and I die here, thou’lt die too. Thou too.”

  27

  21st Side: The Battle of Dilsmead Hall

  Windsor crouched behind the door leading to the parking lot in an agony of indecision, afraid to go forward, afraid to go back, afraid to stay put. He knew his best chance of escape was to dash for his Mercedes. Once locked inside that steel box, he could drive away faster than any horse could run. But he was afraid to set foot on the long stretch of open ground between him and the car.

  The shouting band of Sterkarms had passed by his hiding place without seeing him, but they’d shaken his nerve. What if they were still close by, but keeping quiet? They’d spot him as soon as he stepped through the door. But he wasn’t safe inside either, because other Sterkarms were in the building and would soon turn the corner of the corridor, and see him, and come running at him, yelling …

  A shout, distant and half muffled by the walls, decided him. It was from somewhere behind him, from some spot lost among turns of corridors and walls of rooms. It was enough to push him out the door and across the path that separated the building from the nearest corner of the parking lot.

  He’d reached the first cars when he heard the shouting again. Not words, but long whooping cries. They were clear now, and he could tell they came, not from inside the building, but from its other side. With the voices was another, deeper sound that hadn’t carried to him inside the building—the sound of horses’ hooves, coming closer.

  He stopped and looked back at the door he’d left. It was so much closer than the car. But once cut off from the car, he was trapped. He swayed on his feet, undecided which way to run.

  A black horse appeared at the corner of the hall, on the farther side of the parking lot from him. It went back on its haunches as it was reined in and then curvetted in a circle, its rider turning in the saddle to look toward Windsor. Raising his long lance above his head, the rider cried out, with a sergeant major’s scream: “Sterkarm!”

  Windsor ran a couple of steps back toward the building—and saw other Sterkarms, on foot, coming toward him, running, carrying pikes and axes. He stopped, his heart a center of pain inside him, his feet stammering in the gravel as he made to run now this way, now that. He lifted his gun, its weight awkward in his hand, and pointed it at the men on foot. It made him happy to see that they stopped. He spun around and ran from them with all the strength and speed he could force from himself, cursing his own slow heaviness, making for his Mercedes at the other end of the parking lot.

  Joe, axe in hand, ran his hardest but soon found himself overtaken by Sterkarms who’d never smoked and had spent their lives bounding up and down sodden hills. And not even they could keep up with the ride.

  Ahead of him, horses with riders standing in the saddle were turning the corner of the house; and by the time he’d panted around the same corner, the horses were out of sight, at the front of the house.

  His run slowed to a tired jog, Joe reached the front of the house, with its broad gravel drive, its marble pillars and the lawns and flower beds sweeping down toward the gates. The horsemen were gathered in a knot in front of the hall’s marble steps, reined in for some kind of conference.

  It was easy to spot Per among them—he was the one without helmet or jakke, the one who, at the cry of “Sterkarm!” turned his horse and kicked it to a trot, pounding over the lawn toward the parking lot on the hall’s farther side. As he went, he rose and fell in the saddle, bringing the heavy, eight-foot lance he carried down to the horizontal, managing it with as little thought as he’d need to move his arm. Through a flower bed the horse went, scattering petals. In seconds, the other horses were following, with a great drumming that made the ground thrum under Joe’s feet. Despite his fear of what might follow, it was an exhilarating sight, and Joe picked up heavy feet and ran after them.

  As Per reached the corner of the hall and saw the great gray square where the Elf-Carts stood in row after row, all flashing and gleaming in the sun, he reined his horse to a walk. A movement on the farther side of this pound for Elf-Carts caught his eye, and squinting against the glare, he saw an Elf-Man—Windsor!

  He kicked his horse to
a fast walk, scanning the long line of Elf-Carts, looking for a gap between them wide enough to let his horse through. Windsor was running. Doubtless he meant to climb inside one of these Elf-Carts and ride it away.

  Per kicked his horse to a canter, standing in his stirrups and leaning over his mount’s withers. “On! On!” He felt the horse stretch to a gallop beneath him, hardly seeming to touch the ground. He balanced above the power, riding it.

  The horse carried Per to the end of the line of Elf-Carts before Windsor could cover half the distance—but at the end of the line, Per had to turn the horse. He reined in to a walk while watching what Windsor did, but the horse still wanted to run, and then it shied at the other horses coming up—and Per had to tussle with his mount and turn it in a circle.

  Windsor, midway along the parking lot’s side, looked back and saw mounted men guiding their horses along the path between the cars and the building, toward the clear aisle that ran the parking lot’s length. Ahead of him, a knot of horsemen was gathering, though there was still the width of the parking lot between him and them.

  Windsor hesitated, gasping for breath. He could feel sweat running between his skin and his shirt. He lifted the heavy gun in one hand and held it out at arm’s length. His arm shook with strain and fear, but he hoped the threat of the gun would keep the Sterkarms off.

  As the first horse, with a clash of hooves on concrete, turned into the aisle between the cars, Windsor heard the door-locks of his car spring, as they picked up the signal from the key in his pocket. Thank God for power locks! He started running again. The passenger door was nearest. He’d get in there, lock all the doors, and crawl over to the wheel.

  Per kicked his horse to a fast trot and, rising and falling in the saddle, rode it along the second side of the parking lot, and turned it onto the third side. Windsor was running toward him. Per kicked his horse to a canter and lowered his lance to take Windsor in the chest.

  Windsor saw the horse’s broad chest bearing down on him, heard its hooves, felt the tremor in the ground, and slipped between two of the cars parked beside him. The angle of the lance changed to follow him, and Windsor ducked desperately, not knowing if crouching would save him. The lance swept over his head, and then horse and rider were past him, and the rider was reining in, and turning the horse.