The Desert and the Blade Read online

  “Just . . . feeling . . . I’m not sure. A dream last night, but it fades when I try to bring it into focus.”

  The great timber-and-stone feasting hall was much as his father had finished it just a few years before he died; a long rectangle a hundred feet by fifty, with a ceiling of double hammer-beam timbers high above, the interior lit by windows at each end and set into the dormers over the doors at the sides. Wrought-iron holders for candles and lanterns could be lowered from above after dark. It smelled faintly of old woodsmoke and the sun’s heat on the shingles of the roof. More of horse and hay drifting in from the outside, and warm wool on human skin, good food and the drowsy warmth of a long hot summer’s day.

  The chatter of voices as folk came in and sat down to dinner tended to be lost, though the acoustics were quite good for song. Two rows of log pillars ran lengthwise to support the upper part of the roof; the uprights were carved and painted with bands and chevrons of black, red, yellow and green. The long hearth down the center was swept and garnished with dried wildflowers and aromatic herbs in this summer season; cooking was done in a separate building, and in any case winters here were chilly and wet rather than really cold . . .

  And now he knew what really cold meant, since he’d spent a February in a Lakota ger on the high eastern plains, and seen the norðrljós glittering and dancing and crackling in curtains of icy fire across the sky, reflecting on the berg-ice floating in the Trondheimsfjord.

  Frankly, this place is a bit of a barn, though I love it.

  He felt a tug of annoyance in the flow of welcome at the edge of his consciousness and his lips twitched in amusement.

  I didn’t mean to insult you—he sent a thought toward the hearth wight. Your coals kept me warm many a winter’s night, and I saw the world in the colors that licked over them.

  He drew the rune Wynn, for joy, over the cider in the turned oak mug before him, dipped out a drop and flicked it in offering toward the long hearth that ran down the center of the hall.

  Though certainly Mist Hills is less rustic now than it was then.

  The hangings on the wall included tapestries from northern workshops, bright with images of lords and ladies hawking or knights breaking lances at tournaments, a sport he had now seen and thought thunderously dull for the most part. Though there were the shields and spears and mail-coats and the skins of grizzly, cheetah, tiger and lion he remembered. There had been coffee for breakfast, albeit treated as a rare luxury trotted out for the returning prodigal. The floor had been re-laid with smooth tile, which was easier to clean than the original rough flagstones.

  The saffron-robed, shaven-headed monk from the monastery of the Ten Thousand Buddhas near what used to be Ukiah might have been here in the old days, and the Pomo chief with beadwork and an abalone pendant on his butter-soft doeskin shirt. But the elegant dark man with the curled black mustachios was from Rancho Sotoyome, which was the new settlement established by the ex-thralls after the fall of the bandit and self-proclaimed Duke Morgruen, just after the first Montivallans had come to Mist Hills.

  Deor’s lips tightened; his father had died at Morgruen’s hands, while he lay a bound prisoner. But he’d avenged him, in his own way. Morgruen might not have died on his blade, but he’d died still—and would not have, save for what Deor had done.

  And there were two young Rangers with the White Tree and Seven Stars and Crown on their jerkins, whispering to each other in Sindarin, which would have been a mad dream back then . . .

  His gaze sharpened with appreciation of the male of the Dúnedain pair—who was about the age he’d been when he first left home.

  Faramir, that was the name.

  Curly yellow hair like pale gold falling down his neck and framing blue-gray eyes and a snub nose, a spray of freckles across his high cheekbones. A lithely supple build too, and a tragic air that sat oddly on one so young; his companion was outright brooding, and had a nasty and barely-healed scar across her face.

  His cousin, Morfind.

  They’d ridden in with dispatches, and only the fact that it would cause grave offense without a good and stated reason had kept them from riding right out again, he judged.

  Wait . . . I met them long ago, when the Dúnedain first came south to Eryn Muir. They were small children then, of course.

  Thora raised a brow at him with a pursing of the lips and a sideways twist of her head that made her thick red hair toss.

  Not bad, I agree! the gesture meant, as she flicked her eyes towards the comely Ranger youth.

  She and Deor had been comrades for a long time, and had a compressed mutual wordless language for some things. A slight waggle of the hand.

  But just a bit too young for either of us. Pity.

  His own smile and movement of the brows said: True, but no harm in looking.

  He’d never had any interest in those younger than full manhood, not since he’d been a gawky youth himself. And even then the ideal of his soul’s desire had been the hard beauty of a warrior; as his mind saw Sigurd facing Fafnir, or Beowulf as he strode into Hrothgar’s hall in the first iron pride of his flowering strength. But now full manhood’s earliest years were getting to be younger than himself by a sometimes uncomfortable margin.

  “Were we ever that young?” he added quietly.

  “Just as young as that handsome lad when we met at Albion Cove, brother,” she replied, and they both laughed softly. “Though we were both drenched with rain and I was expecting to drown, until we saw your signal-fire and Ark’s anchor held.”

  Deor’s brother Godric came in, his hair wet and slicked back from washing off the sweat worked up breaking horses to harness, and wearing a clean blue tunic with gold embroidered hems and neck, and indoor shoes. Everyone rose in respect—the meal didn’t begin until the Baron was seated. He was a stocky broad-shouldered man in his forties now, big-nosed and with a thrusting chin under his neatly trimmed dark-brown beard.

  In fact he was the image of their father as Deor recalled him from his earliest memories. More so than last time. Enough so that it was a little startling, even to the streaks of gray in his beard and the way his forelock looked more pointed at the front as his hair receded on either side.

  That passed. So too will this, he quoted to himself. When you’re my age or Thora’s, the world seems to go on and on and you don’t change, always strong and in command of hard-won powers that you lay up like a chest full of golden arm-rings. But coming back after five years you see that the worm never stops gnawing at the root of the World-Tree. Even more so that my nephew Leofric is a man grown with a wife and a little daughter of his own! I remember him making his first steps. And . . . the High King dead! Killed not a week’s journey from this very spot!

  The shock of that blow was still echoing in his mind and heart, the more so that the others had had months to come to terms with it. He could remember his first meeting with Artos . . . Rudi Mackenzie . . . as if it were yesterday, the aliveness of the man, the chiseled face and steady blue-gray eyes . . .

  After that there would always be something of him in my words when I sang of heroes.

  And the way he’d been patiently kind with Deor’s adolescent awkwardness at Court, arranged that he be unobtrusively protected, and seen potentials in the stranger from the little out-of-the-way settlement that Deor himself had only wistfully dreamed might be his. It had been Artos’ word that won Deor a hearing from his half-sister Fiorbhinn at Dun Juniper, and she the foremost bard of their time; yes, and other lessons from his mother Lady Juniper that set his footsteps on a path deep and shadowy.

  That passed, he thought. And of his grief: So too will this.

  “Wilcuma! Be welcome!” Godric said as he stepped onto the dais and took his seat.

  This was a casual family meal, not a formal feast, but there were guests. His wife Aerlene brought him his horn, this one full of beer with the foam visible over t
he silver-bound rim. Deor had drunk several tall mugs of Hraefnbeorg’s good cool spring water before he asked for cider with his meal; especially in the warm season you didn’t want to sit down still thirsty with the spirit of the grape, or the apple, before you. Beer was different, of course.

  It did a man no harm to get drunk now and then, but only now and then.

  “Hail the hall!” She turned to face her husband. “Hail Godric Eorl! This drink I bear to bless the land-father, wine and wynn for the boar of battle!”

  The Eorl hammer-signed the horn and lifted it before his strong deep voice filled the space; for a moment Deor’s vision blurred, as if he was watching his mother and father make the same familiar well-loved homely rite:

  “Hail to the Gods, hail to the Goddesses, hail to the fathers and mothers of our folk! Hail to the sele-aelf, to mund-aelfen and aecere-aelfen, hail the wights that ward us all!”

  He took a long swallow. “Wuton wesan wel! Let us be well!” and handed the horn back to his lady.

  Once more she faced the hall. “To all our guests a host of welcomes!”

  Her face shone. “Far have they fared! And none more so than my lord’s brother Deor Godulfson, justly called the Wide-Farer, and his comrade and oath-sister Thora Garwood, called Swiftsword! Welcome among us once more!”

  She signed, and the servers—her own younger children and those of the housecarls—brought out the food before they sat farther down the trestle tables to either side of the dais themselves. The meal was lighter in this season than it would be in cooler weather, though hearty enough for folk who’d been working with their hands all day, which everyone who dwelt here did, rank or no. Fertile soil and hard skilled work meant nobody in Mist Hills had gone hungry in a long time. Not since before he’d been born, not since the first terrible years after the Change when they struggled to get the tools and seed and knowledge they needed, and came to a good understanding with the landwights and the Gods of soil and weather and field.

  So there were steaming platters of the first corn from the garden with its rows of white and yellow kernels to burst sweet on the tongue; big bowls of green salads with sharp white goat-cheese and walnuts crumbled in, plates of sliced tomatoes and onions, steamed peas, fried potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, platters heaped with cold sliced roast pork and venison garnished with pickles, chunks of hard yellow cheese with knives stuck in their tops, round loaves of coarse wholemeal bread and pottery crocks of yellow summer butter cool from the spring-house.

  All good, but the real treat would be the fruits that followed; bowls of blueberries, boysenberries and strawberries and blackberries with thick cream, and baskets—mostly fine-woven Pomo work bought in trade—of peaches and cherries and nectarines, apricots blushing yellow-crimson and the first crisp yellow-green-red apples.

  “Good to see you’re up, brother,” Godric said, a little teasing in his voice. “You were too weary last night for us to get much out of you.”

  “After the way your good lady fed us, it’s a wonder I didn’t sleep for a week!” Deor said politely.

  “We spent some time today sparring with a few of your youngsters, lord,” Thora said cheerfully. “Sweating the ale out, so to say, and earning dinner.”

  That too was needful work, and as hard as any. It had actually been a bit of a relief to face relative beginners, rather than his usual session with Thora’s merciless perfectionism. He’d said more than once that stepping into a practice ring with her was like learning the harp from Lady Fiorbhinn . . . except that he enjoyed playing the harp and was naturally good at it, and he didn’t try to make Thora learn that. Whereupon Thora would retort that the audience for a bad composition with the sword was likely to be far more hostile . . . and you couldn’t choose whether or not to put on a performance.

  Then they would both laugh. . . .

  She broke a loaf from the basket at her elbow and handed part of it to Deor; the interior was still warm, since a big household like this had the need and the labor and equipment to bake nearly every day rather than the more common once or twice a week. Some very thrifty farm-wives didn’t let their households eat bread new-baked lest they gorge on it for the taste alone.

  “Your latest crop of fighters is promising, very promising, but they need seasoning,” she said. “They’re a little . . . academic. I’d drill them more in rough country, if I were you, lord Baron.”

  “We’ve had a peaceful time, since I swore to the High Kingdom,” Godric said. “Nothing more than the odd bandit, or a duel between the white wands now and then; and a Haida raid four years ago, but that was only a skirmish.”

  He looked at the young Dúnedain woman with the axe-mark on her face. “The Rangers guard us well. Even the youngsters we send south to help them now and then rarely see real fighting . . . though that may change. Will change, from what I’m told. The Kingdom will call, and we will answer.”

  Deor could see his elder brother put aside care for the moment as he looked at him.

  “So you still pick up that fine sword you brought home now and then?”

  Deor began to bridle at the teasing tone; his brother had always protected him as a lad, but that time was past. His sister-in-law smiled and leaned forward and touched a short white mark on his chin.

  “That wasn’t taken in a battle of scops,” she said.

  “Oh, that was just a brawl in a harbor tavern.” Deor shrugged.

  And blinked as the rank-sweet smells of the hot alien night came back, and himself showing his teeth in a smile that hid a cold anticipation of sudden shocking unexpected death a world away from home.

  “The knives came out. That was in . . . Zanzibar, I think . . . yes, Zanzibar.”

  Thora laughed, finished her mouthful of salad, picked a handful of olives out of a bowl, and spoke:

  “Knives a foot long, curved, and shaving-sharp,” she said. “And there were three of them, and two with swords, while the rest of the room hid under the tables or leapt out the windows screaming for the Sultan’s men. It isn’t easy to hide under a table there, they sit on the floor and the little stands holding the brass tops are only two feet high. There were more than a few white-robed backsides on display, and no time to kick them.”

  “It was a misunderstanding,” Deor said into the laughter.

  “No, I understood that churl perfectly when he grabbed at my ass uninvited,” she said. “That’s why I broke his arm—”

  She smiled reminiscently, and Deor winced. She’d grabbed the man’s wrist, twisted to lock the joint and then jerked the limb down over her rising knee, all as quick and fluid as an otter slipping into the water. The sound of bone and tendon and cartilage ripping was one he’d remember until his dying day; far from the worst thing he’d ever heard, but unpleasantly . . . primal. Not that the outlander hadn’t deserved it, but if he lived it would be a long time before he got much use out of the limb.

  “—and kicked his balls up around his ears.”

  Which was no joke either, no matter that everyone was laughing. With Thora’s leg behind even a hasty snap kick . . . there were other things the man wouldn’t be doing anytime soon, if ever.

  “His friends misunderstood how a free woman of the Bearkillers expects to be treated,” she finished. “Misunderstood very badly.”

  She turned to Godric and Aerlene; folk leaned forward from the benches to either side to hear.

  “One of them hit me from behind with a teapot while I was dealing with the first, and next I knew I was lying on the floor blinking with blood and hot tea running over my face. While Deor stood over me with sword in his right hand and seax in the left screaming Hraefnbeorg and Woden!”

  Deor shrugged at the looks he got. “Needs must, when men won’t listen to reason,” he said, and drank more cider. “I think it was a long time since anyone called on Victory-Father in Zanzibar. And perhaps the first time ever for Hraefnbeorg.”
r />   “One to four is long odds, with none standing to cover your back,” Godric said respectfully.

  “They couldn’t all get at me at the same time, and it was half-dark,” Deor said. “There was a lot of jostling and staggering. And they were hesitant at first. I think it had all gotten more serious than they expected very quickly.”

  Not to mention how one was curled in a ball and screaming like a rabbit in a trap.

  “And the ones who could get close weren’t glad of it,” Thora said cheerfully. “He cut two, one badly, before I wobbled back to my feet and got my own blade out. We gave them a little more trouble to rock them back on their heels, put ourselves back-to-back, with them snapping around us, and ran for the ship as soon as we got outside. Twisty streets there! And we crossed steel with them again at the foot of the gangplank, backing up side-by-side, until the deck-watch showed the business end of their crossbows . . . and started shouting for the Sultan’s men too.”

  “We’d have been in real trouble if the brawlers had been Zanzibaris themselves,” Deor explained. “But they were foreigners there too, and not popular ones—Omani, their tribe is called, from a desert land north of there across the monsoon seas. Handsome brown men, good sailors and fine craftsmen and far-ranging traders, but they have some odd customs. I wish I had enough of their language to understand their poetry and songs, but . . . well, that’s one of the curses of traveling. You drink of many springs, but none very deeply. The world is too wide for any man to learn.”

  He nodded to his brother’s wife. Aerlene was a deep-bosomed woman with barley-colored hair and kind green eyes.

  “Zanzibar is off the east coast of Africa; it’s where those cloves I gave you came from. They grow them as we do apples, in orchards. Vast stretches of them, too; ships come from all over the world to buy them nowadays, so it’s a good port to find a berth to wherever you want.”