It could be taken for granted that all the wild-men were skilled fighters, and tough as old shoes; if they weren’t, they’d have gone into someone’s stew pot over the past generation, or ended up with their heads on a stick if the local tribe had put its Change-era culinary indiscretions behind it. The two Rangers waited patiently, pitting muscle against muscle in motionless exercise to avoid stiffness. When the last of the Bekwa had passed they slipped their hands into their climbing-claws and went down the big white pine cat-fashion. It was as natural as walking, when you’d spent a lot of your life in and out of flets in forests that made these look like brushwood.
The twins landed softly, not far from the body of the Bekwa sentry; Sentry Removal was a Dunedain specialty.
Then six men rose from behind a curtain of blueberry canes, the points of the bolts in the firing grooves of their crossbows glittering and the thick steel prods bent.
“Calisse de Tabernac!” one of them swore, the tassel on the end of his knit cap dangling over a villainous squint. “What we got here, eh? Biggest dam’ raccoons I ever see!”
“Uh-oh,” Mary said, keeping her hands carefully motionless and in view.
“Dulu!” Ritva said. Help!
CHAPTER FIVE
NORRHEIM, LAND OF THE BJORNINGS
NEAR ERIKSGARTH (FORMERLY AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAINE)
MARCH 23, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
One of the six Bjornings who stood by the upright rune-stone was a young man in a mail byrnie, but he moved with a bad limp. The others were women, equipped with spear or bow, swords at their waists. They all exclaimed at the sight of the war-party from Kalksthorpe-about two hundred, plus Abdou el-Naari’s forty-four, and fifty more picked up from lonely steadings along the way. Artos suppressed a smile at the obvious relief the man was trying so hard to hide, and thumped a fist on his own brigandine-armored chest in greeting as one of the women slipped away.
“Ladies. . and. . Erland Johnsson, isn’t it?” he said.
The young man nodded, flushing with pleasure at being remembered from a brief meeting during Rudi’s passage through Eriksgarth.
“Yes, lord; hirdmann to the chief. I was here when you came at Yule, and the seidhkona made prophecy, and you and the chief swore blood-brotherhood.”
“You weren’t limping then,” Artos said.
“That thumb-fingered idiot Halfdan Finnursson dropped a crate of hardtack on my foot while we were loading the supply sleds!” Erland burst out, flushing; the flush grew deeper when one of the young women snickered. “That’s why I was left behind when the fyrd marched.”
“But you can stand and hit. Your chief must value you highly, to have you defend his home and kin while he’s away.”
Out of the corner of his eye Artos noticed two of the Norrheimers he’d sworn to his service, Hrolf Blood-Ax and Ulfhild Swift-Sword, glance at each other and roll their eyes a bit. The young man-he was about seventeen, Artos judged-nodded without noticing; his face was self-consciously warrior-stern, but there was a pleased note in his voice as he said:
“Pardon, but I must signal.”
Then he pulled an ox-horn from its sling at his tooled leather belt and blew: huuu-huuu-hu-hu-hu. The snarling blat of the horn trumpet sounded across the bright snowfield. You could just see the high roof of Bjarni’s mead-hall there over a clump of trees and his father’s grave-mound to the westward. And the glint of his tribe’s stave-hof-it was farther away, but taller and sending bright eyeblinks from its gilding and painting. Post-and-board fences sliced the snowfields into square shapes, curving around an occasional rocky hillock or clump of dark green spruces or leafless birch and maple.
“Lady Harberga will be happy to see you; come with us! It’s her might that holds the garth while the godhi is away.”
Edain led a spray of bowmen out first. Before the main column had joined him, Artos heard a high, ringing neigh. A black mare had been standing hipshot in the turn-out field; you could scarcely call it a pasture, with new snow half a foot deep. Night-colored beauty seventeen hands high tossed her head and trotted in a circle, with the other horses in the crowded paddock giving her room.
He laughed, for a moment as carefree and joyous as a boy, and called out ancient poetry in a bard’s voice he had learned at his mother’s knee:
“One horse is black, broad-thighed, fierce, swift, ferocious, war-leaping, long-tailed, thundering, silk-maned, high-headed, broad-chested; there shine huge clods of earth that she cuts up with her steel-hard hooves, and her victorious stride overtakes the flocks of birds!”
Then he whistled loud and shrill; she took ten quick strides and leapt the six-foot rail fence with contemptuous ease, pacing over to him with her tail lifted like a flag and her mane flying in the breeze of her speed. Matti was on his right; the horse casually shouldered her aside and stood by him, turning her head to butt him in the chest and nip slobberingly at the ends of his hair. He blew into her nostrils, a greeting kiss in the horse-tongue, and gave her a piece of dried apple which she deigned to accept, with an implication of forgiveness for his long absence.
“I could get jealous of Epona,” Mathilda said. “Is she your horse, or your leman?”
“Nonsense. We’re just very good friends.” Artos grinned. “You were at Sutterdown Horse Fair, you should know the true story of Artos and Epona.”
No, he thought. I was just Rudi then. Ten years old, and Matti a kid as well, sure, when I found Epona. Or she found me.
“I wasn’t watching when you jumped in that paddock. My hair went white when I heard. She’d just tried to kill a man. Several men!”
“I’m sure she’s not jealous of you,” he said.
“I know that,” Matti said dryly. “She hasn’t tried to kill me. Yet.”
Artos winced slightly as he ran a hand over Epona’s withers. She was well into middle age for a horse. . or would have been, if she was like most horses. Even her vitality had been worn down by the terrible midwinter trek eastward, the grinding effort and bad food. Now she was glossy-sleek, her neck a smooth arch of power and the long mane shining, her coat as smooth as the winter growth would let it be; he thought he saw a wicked glint in the eye she rolled towards him.
“They’ve been stuffing you,” he said mock accusingly, breathing in her grassy scent. “Maple sugar with the oats, and warm mashes each night, blankets, fresh straw every morning. Some adoring girl currycombing every chance she gets, and teasing out your mane and polishing your hooves as if you were a holy image in a shrine.”
“Which means she’ll savage someone soon,” Matti said. “Poor baby,” she added.
He nodded. Women were relatively-not absolutely-safe around Epona. The horse trader who’d mistreated her as a filly had been a man, and so had his assistants, and had bred a long-lasting feud with humankind in her breast, starting with the male half. All except for him. She followed at heel as he stepped out of his skis, put them over one shoulder and moved on. Every now and then she’d nuzzle him in the back.
Eriksgarth’s heart was an L-shaped combination of a big pre-Change white frame farmhouse sheathed in clapboard and the two-story mead-hall, squared logs on a hip-high foundation wall of mortared fieldstone. The regular whitewashed plank of the one and the flamboyant carved dragonheads and steep roof of the other ought to have clashed, but over a generation they seemed to have grown into each other. The snow-patched shingles on each roof even shared the same spotting of green moss.