For answer she rolled on top of him, her elbows by his ears, and began to kiss him. After only a moment’s hesitation he wrapped his arms around her warm body and held her tight to him again.
It was hard to tell time by a motionless sun. Again they lay stretched out in the long grass, the woman’s head on Valmar’s shoulder, her black curls spread across his chest. How long, he asked himself, had it been since he left the courtyard? An hour, two hours, six hours? And did the Wanderers even keep time themselves, or were their cycles of meals and activity only for his benefit?
“They will wonder where I am, back at the manor,” he said.
She turned her head to nibble delicately on his shoulder. It tickled and made him laugh; he tickled her waist until she laughed too. “If they wanted you back,” she said then, “they would have come for you long since. Clearly they do not care if you stay or go.”
“But I haven’t gone!” he protested. “That is, I haven’t actually left their service.” There were implications to what she said that he did not like.
“What lord would allow the man under his command to desert without even following him?”
Had he deserted the lords of voima? he asked himself in panic. “I am not under their command, as such,” he desperately tried to explain. “They asked for my help, but they do not compel it. I am being trained to help them against their enemies here in this realm, before I descend into Hel for them, to find the lords of death so that they and their sun may be reborn.”
It sounded foolish in his own ears as soon as he said it. She laughed, predictably. “And are you so eager for death yourself,” she said in a teasing tone, “that you yearn for steel to bite your flesh in preference to my embraces? Because if so I could get my sword and help you out!”
“No, no, of course not,” he said, pulling her to him and stroking her hair. The Wanderers had warned him that he was not indestructible here in spite of the powers he was supposed to have, powers he had yet to see. And her sword had been very sharp. “But, but- Are you one of the Wanderers’ enemies?”
Her eyes glittered at him from two inches away. “Of course I have no use for those beings-those men — who claim to be lords of earth and sky. And you will have little use for them either when I explain to you the honor and glory that will come in overthrowing them.”
He tried to draw back, but she was lying across his chest and her arms were much stronger than they seemed.
“Do you not think there is voima in me?” she asked, giving his lip a playful bite. “Have you not considered them and their quiet hall a little more, well, boring than you expected?”
It was as though she had read his mind. “But who then are you?” he said with dry lips.
“Their fated end is coming,” she said, stroking his beard. “In asking you to help them against us- we whom fate has chosen to succeed them! — they are doing nothing but making a last, pathetic effort to change their end. Is it not better to accept one’s fate with dignity?”
“It’s better to fight to the last man in a courageous, desperate battle for what you believe,” said Valmar.
“When you find courage among them,” she said with a laugh, “let me know. The best they can manage is to ask for a mortal’s assistance. If you want adventure, high courage, and glorious battles with the trumpets ringing, you will have to fight against them. And besides,” moving her chest against his and smiling with the corners of her mouth, “if you go back to them you will have to leave me. And you do not wish to do that, do you?”
He most certainly did not. He embraced her and kissed her almost desperately. For him to have found love like this, so unexpectedly, almost better than anything he could have imagined, and then to risk losing her again just as suddenly!
But the hot excitement had burned out of him. The old tales were full of the conflict between honor and love. Roric had left Karin, the woman to whom he was pledged, to seek the Wanderers, and he, Valmar, could do no less.
Very carefully, he drew his arms from around her and disentangled her legs from his. “Think of the glory to be won in fighting heroically against the most powerful beings you have ever imagined,” she tried, but he was not listening now.
“I am sorry,” he said, standing up to find his clothes. “I cannot define heroism by whether it gives me daily adventure.” He took a deep breath and added as firmly as he could, “Honor and courage must be reflected in keeping one’s pledged word.”
She sat on her heels to watch him dress, her hair tousled and eyes bright.
“Do you, uh, want me to see you back to your manor, wherever that is?” he asked, buckling on his sword.
She shook her head without answering, the smile still lurking at the corner of her mouth. He had expected her to be displeased with him. But she appeared instead very satisfied, as though some plan had all gone well.
3
The black and white piebald mare was certainly fleet of foot, Roric had to admit. At first he had frowned when Karin climbed up to the loft room to tell him that she now had a horse of her own to ride. He feared that Goldmane would have been faster, even carrying two. But the mare matched the stallion’s stride easily, even lazily, as they followed the faint track down the long hillside from the gray oak buildings of the manor.
“All right,” he shouted, smiling at Karin. “We don’t need to race any further-and I haven’t pushed Goldmane yet!” They both pulled their horses to a trot. “And it’s good to have food in our packs as well as a horse for you. I was right to trust you to speak for us both at the manor.”
He was faintly aware that he had been very brusque with her several times since escaping from Hadros’s kingdom, and he did not want to be-this was, after all, Karin, the woman whose love meant more to him than all the lords of voima. Her ruined finery was gone, and she wore a brown wool dress they had given her at the manor, against which her russet braids lay bright. Even though he kept being surprised that a woman could make plans for the two of them, he told himself that so far she was doing very well.
A river ran along the bottom of the hill, in a narrow defile dense with willows. A wooden bridge crossed it.
Karin’s mare’s hooves rang on the bridge as she started across before him. Mingled with the sound of those hooves was another sound, moist and squishy. Roric knew what it was and kicked Goldmane wildly forward. A troll eased itself out from under the bridge and directly into her path.
The piebald mare reared, front hooves flashing, teeth bared. Karin clung desperately to the mane as the horse went higher and higher, threatening to go over backwards. Goldmane stopped short of the bridge, front legs stiff, almost catapulting Roric over his head.
Roric kicked his feet from the stirrups and leaped off, his sword out. “Stand back, troll, or taste cold steel!” he shouted.
This was not the nearly-domesticated troll of the stream below King Hadros’s castle. This was a troll of enormous yellow teeth and great muscular arms, now reaching up toward Karin: a troll that did not fear sunlight.
Roric’s sword darted forward. It rang from the troll’s body as though it was made of iron rather than soft flesh. But the troll turned its red eyes from Karin toward Roric, and its mouth opened, showing rows and rows of teeth and a greedy tongue. The mare came back down abruptly, Karin still in the saddle.
Roric danced out of the way of a reaching troll hand and struck again. This time his sword bit, for green blood welled from the wound. He grinned fiercely, though his next strokes bounced again. He had to keep dodging the powerful, flexible arms reaching for him. Fighting this great, wet mass of troll was not like fighting Gizor-the troll at Hadros’s castle had never attacked an armed man.