Mathilda muttered: “What are you up to, Rudi?”
“What needs doing,” he said quietly.
What Artos knows is necessary. For once, that’s something Rudi agrees with all his heart does need to be done.
The majority stood or sat or wandered aimless, eyes empty for the moment, or tracking back and forth as if in disbelief over the field of war they’d survived. Some searched for kin or friends; he saw an older man sitting with a youth’s head in his lap, thick blunt fingers inexpertly brushing a lock of hair back from the dead face. More and more gathered as Artos and his party came cantering by. Almost all looked up when he reined in and Epona caracoled; he stood in the stirrups and thrust the Sword skyward.
Nobody ignored that. It didn’t seem possible. Even the grave chiefs of the tribes-Hrossings, Wulfings, Kalkings, Verdfolings, Hundings-fell silent.
Artos met Bjarni’s eyes, saw a question there, and smiled, then filled his lungs:
“Hail, victory!” he shouted.
Silence echoed. He could feel the pressure of eyes on him, thousands of them; somehow the Sword seemed to reflect them all, glittering itself-with the evening light, and with the fires of their hearts.
“Hail to the victor! Hail, Bjarni-hail Bjarni, King in Norrheim! Hail Bjarni King!”
Silence crashed, until another voice took it up. Then another, and another, hoarse from throats raw with the day’s shouting. A spear boomed against a shield, and the flat of a sword, then more and more. The leaden exhaustion left Bjarni’s face, first giving way to alarm, then stiffening as the wave of sound roared across the battlefield:
“Hail Bjarni King! Hail Bjarni King!”
After a moment the chiefs took it up as well; last the one under the white horse of the Hrossings, his mouth quirking.
“Hail Bjarni King!”
NORRHEIM, LAND OF THE BJORNINGS
ERIKSGARTH (FORMERLY AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAINE)
MARCH 27, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Artos looked at Fred Thurston. “You think it’ll work?” he said.
“Sir, I know so. Dad. . the President. . came up with the tactic and we did test runs. One of them was my Junior ROTC class, and we were just kids, not one of us over fifteen, and we managed it fine in the field. Yeah, the rail lines will be more screwed here than even in the Idaho backcountry, but not that much more screwed. It really is a way to move a medium-sized-up to battalion-sized-unit cross-country fast without being able to forage locally. I can’t guarantee that it’ll work, but it’s a very high probability.”
“And we’ve scarcely a battalion’s worth of warriors to move,” Artos said thoughtfully. “Less than twoscore.”
“Well, that may be a problem. You need a certain number to do the work.”
Artos stripped the flesh off the roast duck drumstick with his teeth and chewed the rich dark meat with relish. The long cavern of Bjarni’s mead-hall was bright tonight, with the circles of lanterns drawn up on the tall white-pine pillars carved with gods and heroes that ran in a double row down the center. Light glinted off curled gripping beasts wrought into the wainscoting, off the painted shields and honed weapons racked against the walls, on tapestries that hung from the railings of the second-story gallery and stirred in the draughts. Blazing logs boomed on the firedogs of the great twin hearths, casting warmth and a scent of pine beneath the smells of roast pork, steaks, blood sausage, mounded heaps of loaves, French-fried potatoes, ripe cheese, dried-fruit pies and ice cream. Barrels stood on X-frames, ready to refill mugs and horns as the appointed valkyries went about.
Part of it was the ongoing victory feast, part grave-ale for the fallen. . and to be sure, part was the politicking that Artos himself had started, though he’d kept strictly in the background since. These Norrheimers had a straightforward approach to such things; the battlefield had been a lawful moot like their annual Althing because it held a quorum of their adults. . and because it would be silly to pretend that a King’s throne didn’t rest on the spearpoints of his people. He’d come to know these folk a little, and they prided themselves on common sense as much as they did on courage or stubbornness.
So Bjarni Eriksson would be King in Norrheim; Bjarni Ironrede, they were calling him now, Bjarni of the Iron Counsel. Then they’d started the real haggling. He recalled what one of the chiefs had said to Bjarni. It had been Inglief of the Hundings, he thought:
You’re a man of honor and you’ll be a good King. We have to settle what the King can and cannot do now because someday there may be a King who doesn’t respect our rights of his own will. Then we’ll need a chain of laws to hold him back, as Fenris was chained.
Right now small groups were huddled together on the benches, chiefs and prominent men and women talking quietly as they ate, a serious thread beneath the boisterous celebration around them. Bjarni had made it plain that after the third day the cost of the roast meat and bread and pastries would come out of their storehouses, not his, which gave an added incentive for haste.
Whoever had built this hall had understood acoustics; the folk on the dais could hear each other. Bjarni turned towards Artos after Fred spoke, his gold-bound horn in his hand. The fair skin of his face was flushed, but the hard cider had only put a bit of a glitter in his eye.
They may be solemn in their every-day, these Norrheimers, but by Brigid who makes the grain to grow and by Gobniu who first brewed it into beer, they can drink, and no mistake!
“Not a battalion? I have something to say to that,” the new-made King said. “Yes, and a few other things.”
He rose from the High Seat with its curly maple pillars carved in the images of hammer-wielding Thor and Sif of the golden locks, and silence gradually fell through the hall; in one or two cases when heads were rapped sharply against the tables by neighbors more sober. Harberga sat at his side, her long headdress bound with gold as yellow as her hair, love and pride and fear in her gaze on him behind an impassive public face.
“Abdou al-Naari!” Bjarni called. “Come before me, you and your son.”
The wiry corsair captain came and bowed slightly before the high seat, his hawk-featured brown face impassive, slimly elegant in the best outfit he’d had aboard his ship, sweeping over-robes of pale blue trimmed with pearls, cut at the neck and chest to show a snowy white beneath, and a turban colored indigo wound around a spiked steel helm. There was no sword at his waist, but a curved dagger in a sheath of chased silver was thrust through the silken sash. He shook back the broad sleeves of his garment and bowed again, touching brow and lips and heart with the fingers of his right hand. It was extravagantly polite and proud as an osprey’s flight, as if he were the one who sat in power dispensing favor, rather than a prisoner on probation.
“Za’ima-t,” he said in his own tongue, and translated: “Lord.”