But now the baron was speaking.
"Outlanders here in Markland! By Baldur's eyes! This is a strange day. There have not been outlanders here in more than a score of years. Fishermen, cast up on our shores in a violent storm when I was a stripling of a dozen summers."
"What happened to them?" Ryan asked.
"The outlander fishermen?" Jorund gave a great bellow of laughter, echoed by many of the thirty men who had crowded into the hut. Not a single woman, Ryan noticed. "By Freya's dugs, my one-eyed friend, if my memory serves me well, I think they went to sleep with their fish."
"A man swims badly when his knees are broken, outlander!" someone yelled, earning a look of angry reproach from the baron.
"Egil Skallagson! Hold your tongue, or I swear I'll feed it to the midden curs. These men are our guests."
Krysty took a step forward. "And the women, Baron? Are we not welcome in your ville?"
Jorund ignored her and spoke to Ryan. "In this ville the nonmen do not speak out like that. Not without our permission. Will you chastise the firehead thrall for her forwardness?"
"She is not a thrall." Whatever that was, thought Ryan. "Where we come from the women are equals of the men and can speak how and when they wish."
There was some laughter at that, as though he'd said that where he came from it was usual to drink through your arse and piss through your ears — laughter tinged with a profound disbelief. The baron didn't even smile.
"Here in Markland, you follow the old ways of Markland, or it will go hard with all of you. Your women will be as our women — a willing thrall at the cooking and a pliant receptacle when we wish to spend our passion. Is that one also a woman? Beneath the hood?"
Ryan's heart sank. He had only known Mildred for a couple of days, but he already knew enough to guess she wasn't going to sweet-mouth Baron Jorund of Markland.
He was right.
Mildred didn't remove her hood, but her voice was loud. Loud and angry.
"Try to spend your passion in my 'receptacle,' bro, and you'll be picking slices of your cock out of the middle of the lake."
Ryan felt the chill of the butt of his pistol, knowing that J.B., Krysty and Jak would be doing the same.
The tall Viking looked at Mildred, wrinkling his blue eyes as though trying to penetrate the darkness beneath her hood. There was a total and quite overwhelming silence in the hut. Outside they heard the laughter of a young woman and a child crying for comfort.
"The ways of an outlander..." he spoke with a measured slowness "...are not our ways. But we have our own rules, and any outlander while he is with us in Markland shall observe them. Or the price will be high."
In his life Ryan had heard a lot of threats and more than a few promises, and he'd learned to tell the difference. This was a promise.
Mildred turned slowly to look toward Ryan, holding his gaze for twenty beats of the heart. Then, even more slowly, she turned back to face the baron and dropped a deep curtsy. "I apologize for my forward tongue. I shall endeavor to keep it guarded while I am in the presence of... of men."
A strong, white-toothed smile split the face of Baron Jorund Thoraldson, and he slapped his thigh. "Well said, woman. Well and wisely said."
"Will we feed the outlanders?"
The voice came from a slightly built young man who stood at the front of the crowd, his hand ostentatiously on the silver hilt of his sword. His right shoulder was noticeably higher than the left.
"Feed them, Odo Crookback? Why should we not? Do we forget all hospitality because an outlander is such a scarce sight?"
"Forgive me, Karl Thoraldson, but can we know a little more of them? Their names?"
"True ale from a cracked vessel, Odo. We shall know their names. Speak, One-Eye."
"My name is Ryan Cawdor, and I am the uncle of the baron of Front Royal ville in the Shens. This is Krysty Wroth and Mildred Wyeth. J. B. Dix here, Doc Tanner and..."
He was suddenly conscious that this was what everyone was waiting for. There was a breath of tension that hadn't been present before.
"And this is Jak Lauren."
Thoraldson nodded slowly. "Jak Lauren. It doesn't sound like the name of one of the people here."
"Come swamps south," the teenager muttered, shaking his head, the long mane of snowy hair whipping around his narrow shoulders.
"Not a Norseman?"
"Don't know. What's horseman?"
The blooming smile on the face of the Viking leader began to wither and fade. "Norseman. A man from the north."
"Said south," Jak repeated.
"Yes, yes. But your hair... Every man here in this ville has yellow hair. But no man has hair as pure and white as yours. It's a miracle to behold."
"You talked of a wag breaking down." The insistent voice was that of the local called Odo Crookback. "We do not have any such vehicle, but we know of them from old times. Tell us more."
"Surely. We were traders. The wag had a failure of the engine. We got stranded. None of us had ever been up this way before. Found a hot, stinking jungle, then these ants came and we got kind of driven up the mountain. Over the top into the fog and down again. And here we are."
Jorund looked at Ryan, then turned his eyes to each member of the party. He lingered longest on Krysty, whose sentient hair was beginning to relax and uncurl, revealing its full flaming beauty.
"Ants? Big killers? We hardly ever go up and over the crest of the mountain. On the other side lies many-faced, sharp-toothed, swift and silent, long-sleeping death."
"The ants sure killed a dog on the far side," J.B. said.
"Odin!" shouted a young man at the front of the crowd.
The Armorer looked at him. "That was the name on a kind of medal around its neck. Your dog, was it, son?"
"What color was he?"
"Mostly white."
"Odin wasn't white, so it cannot have been him you saw, outlander."
"Bones, son. Ants left nothing but bones, and they were sure white. Few bits of fur left were brindled."
"Oh, no..." the lad cried, falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands. "Then that's why he didn't come back last night. He was..." His weeping swallowed up his words.
Baron Thoraldson banged a fist on the long oak table in front of him. "By the runes of Baelthorn! Is this your son, Sigurd Harefoot?"
The boy looked up, his face wet with tears. "I'm sorry, Father. Sorry, Karl Thoraldson. Forgive me for my weakness."
"Weakness! Milksop wench! You whining bitch! Your dog dies and you howl as if your honor was lost. You were warned not to take the name of Father Odin for a cur. Look what ill fortune you've brought on yourself."
The boy stood straight, wiping away the signs of his weeping. "Forgive me."
"Nay. You behave in such a feeble, womanish way in front of outlanders. And even in front of their own women! What must they think of the warriors of Markland? Until you can learn the true ways of manhood, you had best spend some time with the maids, doing their work until the end of the Cuckoo month. And you will not ride or sail or walk with men until that time is spent. Go."
"He keeps up this antiwomen shit, lover, and I'm going to help Mildred on her suggestion about some thin-slicing." Krysty's whisper only reached Ryan's ears.
When the totally dejected boy had left the hut, the baron brought their first meeting toward its ending.
"I will tell you this, outlanders. In the history of this ville, strangers have often had a short shrift. We keep to our own. But in the past year or more there has been much visiting with the gray-haired widow-maker. The waters have not always been clean. Men have wasted to the bone, and we are falling short of numbers who can hold a blaster or a sword. You and the one with the eyeglasses and the snow-headed boy could join us if you pass the testings."