by George R. R.
The Jomsviking, kneeling there, his hands bound, his head stretched out for the killing stroke, said, “I don’t care. My father did it. Tonight I’ll drink Odin’s ale, Thorkel, but you will be despised for this forever. Slash away.”
Thorkel raised the sword and struck off his head. The slave took the head by the hair and carried it off to the heap by the shore.
Conn said, “You know, I don’t like how this is going.”
Raef thought the Jomsvikings were too ready for dying. He was not; he rubbed his bound wrists frantically back and forth, and up and down, trying to get some play in the rope. The sun was hot on his shoulders. Another man went up before Thorkel Leira.
“I don’t mind dying, but I will do it the way I have lived, facing everything. So I ask you to kill me straight ahead, and not bent over, and not from behind.”
“So be it,” said Thorkel, and stepping forward raised his sword over his shoulder and struck the man straight down the face, cleaving through the top of his skull. The Jomsviking never flinched, his eyes open until his body slumped.
Thorkel was getting tired, Raef thought; the big Tronder had trouble getting his sword out of the body. He called for the drinking horn again and drained it. Now another was kneeling down in front of Hakon and Eirik and the others, and Thorkel again asked him if he was afraid to die.
“I’m a Jomsviking,” the kneeling man said. “I don’t care one way or the other. But we have often spoken among us about whether a man remains conscious at all after his head is cut off, and here is a chance to prove it. Cut off my head, and if I am still conscious, I will raise my hand.”
Beside Raef, Conn gave a choked incredulous laugh. Thorkel stepped forward and slashed off the head; it took him two strokes to get it entirely off. The two jarls and their men crowded around the body and looked. Then they stepped back, and solemnly Eirik the Jarl turned to the Jomsvikings and announced, “His hand did not move.”
Conn said, “That was pretty stupid. In a few minutes, we’ll all know for ourselves.” Along the rope line, the Jomsvikings laughed as if they were at table hearing jokes.
Thorkel turned and glared at him, and then the next man knelt before him, and when he turned to this one, he missed the first stroke. He hit the back of the man’s head, knocking him down, and then his shoulders, and didn’t cut off his head until the third try.
“I hope you have better aim with your prick, Thorkel!” Conn shouted.
The Jomsvikings let up a yell of derision, and even Eirik the Jarl smiled, his hands on his hips. Someone called, “That’s why his wife’s always so glad to see me coming, I guess!”
Half a dozen men shouted, “You mean Ingebjorg? Is that why, do you think?”
Thorkel’s face twisted. He wheeled around and pointed at Conn.
“Bring him. Bring him next!”
The guard came and untied Conn’s feet. Raef suddenly saw some chance here; he licked his lips, afraid of croaking, a weakling voice, and called out, “Wait.”
The Jomsvikings were yelling taunts at Thorkel, who stood there with his mouth snarling, his long sword tilted down, but Eirik heard Raef and looked toward him. “What do you want?”
“Kill me first,” Raef said. “I love my brother too much, I don’t want to see him die. If you kill me first, I won’t have to.”
Eirik scowled at him, and Hakon made a snort. “Why should we do what you want?” But Thorkel strode forward, the sword in both hands, shouting.
“Bring him! Bring him! I’ll kill them both at once!”
The slave untied Raef’s feet and pulled him up. Conn was already standing, and his feet were already untied. Raef gave him a swift look, walking past, and went down before the jarls on the shore.
His ribs hurt where he had taken blows in the battle, he was walking a little crooked, and he was tired and hungry, but he summoned himself together. Thorkel’s slaves came up beside him and pushed him on the shoulder to make him kneel down; one had the stick to twist in his hair.
He stepped back from the hands on him. “I am a free man. No slave shall put his dirty hands in my hair.”
The Norse all laughed, except Eirik the Jarl, who snapped, “He’s just stalling. He’s afraid to die. Somebody hold his hair for him, and we’ll see how he does it.”
One of his hirdmen stepped forward. “My privilege.” He came up before Raef. “Kneel by yourself, then, if you’re free.”
Raef knelt down, and the Tronder took hold of his long pale hair and stepped back again, and so stretched Raef’s head forward like a chicken on the block. Raef’s heart was hammering in his chest, and he was sick to his stomach. His neck felt ten feet long and thin as a whisker; he watched Thorkel approaching in the corner of his eye.
He said, “Try to do this right, will you?” Up on the beach there was a chorus of jeers.
Thorkel snarled. He swung up his sword, the long sun glinting off the blade, and brought it down hard.
With all his strength, Raef lunged back and out from under that falling blade, yanking after him the man holding his hair, so that the Tronder’s hands passed under the falling sword and Thorkel slashed them both off at the wrist. The Tronder howled, his arms spurting blood. Still on his knees, Raef staggered his chest up straight. The Tronder’s hands had clenched in his hair, and he had to toss his head to get them out.
Thorkel wheeled around, hauling the sword back for a fresh blow. His hands still tied behind his back, Raef rolled sideways against the big man’s ankles and brought him crashing down, so that the sword flew out of his hands.
Raef struggled to get to his feet. Thorkel sprawled on the ground. Even the jarls were laughing at him. But Conn had leapt forward even as the sword fell. He knelt astride it, ran his bound hands down the edge, and leapt up again, freed, the sword in his fists.
Thorkel staggered up. Conn took a long stride toward him, the sword swinging around level, and sliced Thorkel’s head off while the big man was still rising.
A roar went up from the Jomsvikings. Conn wheeled toward Hakon.
“Hakon, I challenge you, face-to-face!”
Eirik the Jarl had drawn his sword, was shouting, waving his arms, calling his hirdmen to him. Raef lurched to his feet, close to Conn. Conn’s hands were dripping blood; in his fury to get free, he had cut himself all over. Quickly he turned and sliced through Raef’s bonds. Eirik and his men were closing in on them.
Then Hakon called out again. “Hold. Hold your hands. Who are you, there, Jomsviking? I’ve seen you two before.”
The Tronders stood where they were. Conn lowered the sword. “I’m not a Jomsviking. I’m Conn Corbansson.”
“I thought so,” Hakon said. “These are the sons of that Irish wizard who helped Sweyn Tjugas overcome Bluetooth. I told you Sweyn was behind this.”
Eirik said, “So.” He lowered the long sword in his hand. “Still, we’ve won. Good enough. That just now was cleverly done, and to go on is a waste of men. Thorkel’s dead, he needs no more revenge. Let me have these two.”
Hakon said, “Well, I remember the wizard, who once gave me good advice. I will not say his name. Do what you like with them all.”
Eirik said, “You, Corbanssons, if I let you live, will you come into my service?”
Conn said, “You are a generous man, Jarl Eirik. But you should know I swore at Helsingor never to go back to Denmark until I was King of Norway, which I don’t think will sit well with either Sweyn or you Tronders. But those men—” He swung his arm at the hillside, at the twenty men still roped together on the grass. “Those men will serve you, better than any other. Those are the true Jomsvikings!”
At that, there was a yell that went on for a while. Raef saw that Eirik started to smile, his hands on his hips, and Hakon shrugged and walked away toward the ships. Eirik gave a word, and the Jomsvikings were set free.
Then Hakon the Jarl came up to Conn. He was as Raef remembered him—not tall, with a crisp black beard, and the coldest eyes he had ever seen.
; He said, “King of Norway, was it? I think anyone you do choose to serve will find you more trouble than help. But tell me what you will do now that you are free again.”
Conn glanced at Raef beside him. “We won’t go back to Sweyn, that’s certain. We promise to go somewhere else and not bother you.”
Aslak came up to them and shook their hands and clapped them both on the back. Even Havard grinned at them, over Hakon’s shoulder.
Hakon said, “Then go. But if I catch you again in Norway you’re done.”
“Agreed,” Conn said, and went on down the beach, Raef beside him. After a while, he said, “I think we hammered that vow.”
“We, it is now,” Raef said. “Don’t get so drunk next time. We should both be dead. Like everybody else.”
“But we’re not,” Conn said. He had lost his sword, his ship, his crew, but he felt light, fresh, as if he had just come new alive again. “I don’t know what to make of that, but I will make something. I swear it. Let’s go.”
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* * * *
Joe Haldeman
Here’s a fascinating look at the high-tech future of warfare—which, in its essentials, and particularly in its costs, turns out to be not all that different from the way that war has always been....
Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Joe Haldeman took a B.S. degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Maryland, and did postgraduate work in mathematics and computer science. But his plans for a career in science were cut short by the U.S. Army, which sent him to Vietnam in 1968 as a combat engineer. Seriously wounded in action, Haldeman returned home in 1969 and began to write. He sold his first story toGalaxy in 1969, and by 1976 had garnered both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award for his famous novel The Forever War, one of the landmark books of the ‘70s. He took another Hugo Award in 1977 for his story “Tricentennial,” won the Rhysling Award in 1983 for the best science fiction poem of the year (although usually thought of primarily as a “hard-science” writer, Haldeman is, in fact, also an accomplished poet and has sold poetry to most of the major professional markets in the genre), and won both the Nebula and the Hugo Award in 1991 for the novella version of “The Hemingway Hoax.” His story “None So Blind” won the Hugo Award in 1995. His other books include a mainstream novel,War Year, the SF novels Mindbridge, All My Sins Remembered, There Is No Darkness (written with his brother, SF writer Jack C. Haldeman II),Worlds, Worlds Apart, Worlds Enough and Time, Buying Time, The Hemingway Hoax, Tools of the Trade, The Coming, the mainstream novel 1968, Camouflage, which won the prestigious James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and Old Twentieth. His short work has been gathered in the collections Infinite Dreams, Dealing in Futures, Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, None So Blind, A Separate War and Other Stories, and an omnibus of fiction and nonfiction, War Stories. As editor, he has produced the anthologies Study War No More, Cosmic Laughter, Nebula Award Stories 17, and, with Martin H. Greenberg, Future Weapons of War. His most recent books are two new science fiction novels,The Accidental Time Machine and Marsbound. Haldeman lives part of the year in Boston, where he teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the rest of the year in Florida, where he and his wife, Gay, make their home.
* * * *
Forever Bound
I’d thought that being a graduate student in physics would keep me from being drafted. But I was sitting safely boxed in my library carrel, reading a journal article, when the screen went blank and then blinked paper document incoming, which had never happened before—who would bother to track you down at the library?—and I had a premonition that was instantly confirmed.
One sheet of paper slid out with the sigil of the National Service Commission. I turned it right side up and pressed my thumb onto the thumbprint circle, and the words appeared: “You have been chosen to represent your country as a member of the Ninth Infantry Division, Twelfth Remote Combat Infantry Brigade,” Soldierboys. “You will report to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, to begin RCIU training at 1200, 3 September 2054.”
Just before class registration, how considerate. I wouldn’t be pulled out of school. I even had two weeks to pack and say my good-byes.
Various options came to mind as I sat staring at the page. I could run to Sweden or Finland, where I’d also face national service, but it wouldn’t have to be military. I could take the Commission itself to court, pleading pacifism, asking to be reassigned to Road Service or Forestry. But I didn’t belong to any pacifist groups and couldn’t claim any religion.
I could do like Bruce Cramer last year. Stoke up on painkillers and vodka and shoot off a toe. But his draft notice had been for the regular infantry, pretty dangerous.
People who ran soldierboys never got shot at directly—they sat in an underground bunker hundreds of miles from the battlefield and operated remote robots that were invincible and armed to the teeth. Sort of like a sim, but the people you kill actually are people, and they actually do die.
Most soldierboys didn’t do that, I knew. There were about twenty thousand of them dispersed throughout Ngumi territory, and most of them just stood guard, huge and impregnable, unkillable, symbols of Alliance might. Which is to say, American might, though about 12 percent came from elsewhere.
My adviser, Blaze Harding, was in her office a couple of buildings away, and said to bring the document over.
She studied the letter for much longer than it would take to read it. “Let me explain to you ... in how many dimensions you are fucked.
“You could run. Finland, Sweden, Formosa. Forget Canada. It’s a combat assignment, and you’d be extradited. In any case, you’d lose your grant, and it would be the end of your academic career. Likewise with going to jail.
“If you obey the law and go in, you’ll be like Sira Tolliver over in Mac Roman’s office. You have to report ‘only’ ten days a month. But she seems to spend half her time recovering from those ten days.”
“Just sitting in a little room?”
“A cage, she calls it. Evidently it’s a little more strenuous than sitting.
“The plus side is that the department wouldn’t dare drop you. If you just show up for work, your position with the Jupiter Project is as safe as tenure. As long as the grant holds out, which should be approximately forever.” The Jupiter Project was building a huge supercollider in orbit around Jupiter, millions of electromagnetic doughnuts circling out by the orbit of Io.
“Once they turn it on,” I said, “our worries will be over anyhow. Instantly sucked into a huge black hole.”
“No, I favor the ‘explode and be scattered to the edge of the universe’ theory. I always wanted to travel.” We shared a laugh. The Project would simulate conditions 10-3S seconds after the Big Bang, and the tabloids loved it.
“Well, at least I’ll lose a few pounds in basic training. I’ve been putting on two or three pounds a year since I graduated and left the soccer team.”
“Some of us like them a little plump,” she said, pinching the skin on my forearm. It was a funny situation. We’d been attracted to each other since the day we met, three years ago, but it had never gone beyond banter. She was fifteen years older than me, and white. Which was not a problem on campus, but outside, Texas is Texas.
“I goo-wikied something you ought to see. Running a soldierboy isn’t really just sitting around.” She turned her clipboard around so I could read the screen.
DISABILITY AND DEATH
BY
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY
PER 100,000 ANNUALLY
COMBAT INJURY/DEATH NONCOMBAT INJURY/DEATH
INFANTRY 949.2/207.4 630.8/123.5
RCI 248.9/201.7 223.9/125.6
“Not really so safe, then.”
“And the injuries in the RCI, combat or not, would all be brain injuries. You’d be out of a job here.”
“You’re just saying that to cheer me up.”
“No, but I’m thinking you ought to try switching to the infantry, as crazy as that sounds. With your ed
ucation and age, they’d put you behind a desk, for sure.”
“Well, I’ve got two weeks to nose around. See how much latitude I’ll have. But what about my job here?”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “You can do it in twenty days a month. Actually, I was going to take you off the physics lab babysitting anyhow; just grade papers for 60 and help me with the 299 special projects.” She looked at her calendar. “I guess Basic Training will be full-time.”
“I don’t know. Sounds like it, from what I’ve heard.”
“Find out for me. If I have to kidnap somebody for October and November, I’d better start looking around.” She reached across the desk and patted my hand. “It’s an inconvenience, Julian, but not a disaster. You’ll come out on top.”