October's Baby Page 2

  His work, which should have been completed, had just begun. He glanced toward the dawn. So many miles to bear the baby through an aroused countryside. How could he escape the swords of the tall men?

  He had to try.

  Days he slept a little, and traveled when it was safe. Nights he hurried through, moving as fast as his short legs would carry him, only occasionally pausing at a Wesson farm to steal food or milk for the child. He expected the poor tiny thing to die any time, but it was preternaturally tough.

  The tall men failed to catch him. They knew he was about, knew that he had had something to do with the invasion of the Queen’s tower. They did turn the country over and shake out a thousand hidden things. The time came when, high in the mountains, he trudged wearilyinto the cave where the Master had said to meet if they had to split up.

  VII) Their heads nod, and from their mouths issue lies

  An hour after the kidnapping, someone finally thought to see if Her Majesty was all right. They didn’t think much of their Queen, those Nordmen. She was a foreigner, barely of childbearing age, and so unobtrusive that no one spared her a thought. Queen and nurse were found in deep, unnatural sleep. And there was a baby at the woman’s breast.

  Once again Castle Krief churned with confusion. What had been seen, briefly, as a probable Wesson attempt to interrupt the succession, was obviously either a great deal less, or more, sinister. After a few hints from the King himself, it was announced that the Prince was sleeping well, that the excitement had been caused by a guard’s imagination.

  Few believed that. There had been a switch. Parties with special interests sought the physician and midwife who had attended the birth, but neither could be found-till much later. Their corpses were discovered, mutilated against easy recognition, in a slum alley. Royal disclaimers continued to flow.

  The King’s advisers met repeatedly, discussed the possible purpose of the invasion, the stance to be taken, and how to resolve the affair. Time passed. The mystery deepened. It became obvious that there would be no explanations till someone captured the winged man, the dwarf a guard had seen go monkeying down the ivied wall, or one of the strangers who had been camped in the Gudbrandsdal. The dwarf was working his way east toward the mountains. No trace of the others turned up. The army concentrated on the dwarf. So did those for whom possession of the Crown Prince meant leverage.

  The fugitive slipped away. Nothing further came of the strange events. The King made certain the child with his

  Queen, at least in pretense, remained his heir. The barons stopped plaguing odd strangers and resumed their squabbles. Wessons returned to their scheming, mer-chants to their counting houses. Within a year the mystery seemed forgotten, though countless eyes kept tabs on the King’s health.

  TWO: The Hearth and the Heart

  I) Bragi Ragnarson and Elana Michone

  Suffering in silence, brushing her coppery hair, Elana Ragnarson endured the grumbling of her husband.

  “Bills of lading, bills of sale, accounts payable, accounts receivable, torts and taxes! What kind of life is this? I’m a soldier, not a bloody merchant. I wasn’t meant to be a coin counter...”

  “You could hire an accountant.” The woman knew better than to add that a professional would keep better books. His grumbling was of no moment anyway. It came with spring, the annual disease of a man who had forgotten the hardships of the adventurer’s life. A week or so, time enough to remember sword-strokes dangerously close, unshared beds in icy mud, hunger, and the physical grind of forced marches, would settle him down. But he would never completely overcome the habits of a Trolledyngjan boyhood. North of the Kratchnodian Mountains all able males went to war as soon as the ice broke up in the harbors.

  “Where has my youth gone?” he complained as he began dressing. “When I was fresh down from Trolledyngjan, still in my teens, I was leading troops against El

  Murid... Hire? Did you say hire, woman?” A heavy, hard face encompassed by shaggy blond hair and beard momentarily joined hers in her mirror. She touched his cheek. “Bring in some thief who’ll rob me blind with numbers on paper?

  “When me and Mocker and Haroun were stealing the fat off Itaskian merchants, I never dreamed I’d get fat in the arse and pocket myself. Those were the days. I still ain’t too old. What’s thirty-one? My father’s father fought at Ringerike when he was eighty...”

  “And got himself killed.”

  “Yeah, well.” He rambled on about the deeds of other relatives. But each, as Elana pointed out, had died far from home, and not a one of old age.

  “It’s Haroun’s fault. Where’s he been the last three years? If he turned up, we could get a good adventure started.”

  Elana dropped her brush. Cold-footed mice of fear danced along her spine. This was bad. When he began missing that ruffian bin Yousif the fever had reached a critical pitch. If by whim of fate the man turned up, Bragi could be lured into another insane, Byzantine scheme.

  “Forget that cutthroat. What’s he ever done for you? Just gotten you in trouble since the day you met.” She turned. Bragi stood with one leg in a pair of baggy work trousers, the other partially raised from the floor. She had said the wrong thing. Damn Haroun! How had he gotten a hold on a man as bull-headedly independent as Bragi?

  She suspected it was because bin Yousif had a cause, a decades-deep vendetta with El Murid which infected his every thought and action. His dedication to vengeance awed a man like Bragi.

  Finally, grunting, Ragnarson finished dressing. “Think I’ll ride over to Mocker’s today. Visit a spell.”

  She sighed. The worst was past. A day in the forest would take the edge off his wanderlust. Maybe she should stay home next time he went to Itaskia. A night on his own, in Wharf Street South, might be the specific for his disease.

  “Papa? Are you ready?” their eldest son, Ragnar, called through the bedroom door.

  “Yeah. What you want?”

  “There’s a man here.”

  “This early? Tramp, huh, looking for a handout? Tell him there’s a soft touch next house north.” He chuckled. The next place north was that of his friend Mocker, twenty miles on.

  “Bragi!” A look was enough. The last man he had sent north had been a timber buyer with a fat navy contract.

  “Yes, dear. Ragnar? Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.” He kissed his wife, left her in troubled thought.

  Adventures. She had enjoyed them herself. But no more. She had traded the mercenary days for a home and children. Only a fool would dump what they had to cross swords with young men and warlocks. Then she smiled. She missed the old days a little, too.

  II) A curious visitor

  Ragnarson clumped downstairs into the dining hall and peered into its gloomy corners. It was vast. This place was both home and fortress. It housed nearly a hundred people in troubled times. He shivered. No one had kindled the morning fires. “Ragnar! Where’s he at?”

  His son popped from the narrow, easily defended hallway to the front door. “Outside. He won’t come in.”

  “Eh? Why?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Well, if he won’t, he won’t.” As he strode to the door, Ragnarson snatched an iron-capped club from a weapons rack.

  Outside, in the pale misty light of a morning hardly begun, an old, old man waited. He leaned on a staff, stared at the ground thoughtfully. His bearing was not that of a beggar. Ragnarson looked for a horse, saw none.

  The ancient had neither pack nor pack animal, either. “Well, what can I do for you?”

  A smile flashed across a face that seemed as old as the world. “Listen.”

  “Eh?” Bragi grew uneasy. There was something about this fellow, a presence...

  “Listen. Hear, and act accordingly. Fear the child with the ways of a woman. Beware the bells of a woman’s fingers. All magicks aren’t in the hands of sorcerers.” Ragnarson started to interrupt, found that he could not. “Covet not the gemless crown. It rides the head precariously. It leads
to the place where swords are of no avail.” Having said his cryptic piece, the old man turned to the track leading toward the North Road, the highway linking Itaskia and Iwa Skolovda.

  Ragnarson frowned. He was not a slow-witted man. But he was unaccustomed to dealing with mystery-mouthed old men in the sluggish hours of the morning. “Who the hell are you?” he thundered.

  Faintly, from the woods:

  “Old as a mountain,

  Lives on a star,

  Deep as the ocean flows.”

  Ragnarson pursued fleas through his beard. A riddle. Well. A madman, that’s what. He shrugged it off. There was breakfast to eat and the ride to Mocker’s to be made. No time for crazies.

  III) Things she loves and fears

  Elana, who had overheard, could not shrug it off. She feared its portent, that Bragi was about to tie off on some hare-brained venture.

  From a high window she stared at the land and forest they had conquered together. She remembered. They had come late in the year to a land-grant so remote that they had had to cut a path in. That first winter had been cold and hard. The winds and snows pouring over the

  Kratchnodians had seemed bent on revenge for the disasters wrought there the winter previous, in Bragi’s last campaign. The blood of children and wolves had christened the new land.

  The next year there had been a flare-up of the ancient boundary dispute between Prost Kamenets and Itaskia. Bandits, briefly legitimatized by letters of marquee from Prost Kamenets, had come over the Silverbind. Many hadn’t gone home, but the land had also drunk the blood of its own.

  The third had been the halcyon year. Their friends Nepanthe and Mocker had been able to break loose and take a grant of their own.

  Things had turned bad again late in the fourth year, when drought east of the Silverbind had driven men from Prost Kamenets into a brigandry their government ignored as long as its thrust lay across the river. Near the rear of the house, the granary stood in charred ruins. A half-mile away the men were rebuilding the sawmill. There were contracts for timber to be delivered to the naval yards at Itaskia. Those had to be met first.

  Counting wives and children, there had been twenty-two pioneers. Most were dead now, buried in places of honor beside the great house. She and Bragi had been lucky, their only loss a daughter born dead.

  Too many graves in the graveyard. Fifty-one in all. Over the years old followers of Bragi’s and friends of hers had drifted in, some to stay a day or two out of a journey in search of a war, some to settle and die.

  The grain was sprouting, the children were growing, the cattle were getting fat. There was an orchard that might produce in her lifetime. She had a home almost as large and comfortable as the one Bragi had promised her during all those years under arms. And it was all endangered. She knew it in her bones. Something was afoot, something grim.

  Her gaze went to the graveyard. Old Tor Jack lay in the corner, beside Randy Will who had gotten his skull crushed pulling Ragnar from between a stallion and a mare in heat. What would they think if Bragi threw it up now?

  Jorgen Miklassen, killed by a wild boar. Gudrun Ormsdatter, died in childbirth. Red Lars, brought down by wolves. Jan and Mihr Krushka. Rafnir Shagboots, Walleyed Marjo, Tandy the Gimp.

  Blood and tears, blood and tears. Nothing would bring them back. Why so morbidly thoughtful? Break yourself out, woman. Time goes on, work has to be done. What man hath wrought, woman must maintain.

  Maxims did nothing to cheer her. She spent the day working hard, seeking an exhaustion that would extin-guish her apprehensions.

  In the evening, as twilight’s pastels were fading into indigo, a huge owl came out of the east, flew thrice round the house widdershins, dipping and dancing with owls from beneath the greathouse eaves. It soon fled toward Mocker’s.

  “Another omen.” She sighed.

  IV) Mocker and Nepanthe of Ravenkrak

  Mocker’s holding lay hip by thigh with Ragnarson’s. Both were held under Itaskian Crown Charter. On his own territory each had the power and responsibility of a baron-without the privileges. Though neighbors, both found distance between homes a convenience. They had been friends since the tail-end years of the El Murid wars, but each found the other’s extended company insuffer-able. The disparity in their values kept them constantly on the simmering edge. A day’s visit, a night’s drinking and remembering when, that was their limit. Neither was known for patience, nor for an open mind.

  Ragnarson covered the distance before dinner, pre-tending that once again he was racing El Murid from Hellin Daimiel to Libiannin.

  Mocker wasn’t surprised to see him. Little astonished that fat old reprobate.

  Ragnarson reined in beside a short, swarthy fellow on his knees in mud. Laugh lines permanently marked hismoon-round brown face. “Hai!” he cried. “Great man-bears! Help!” Tenants came running, grabbing weapons. The fat man rose and whirled madly, dark eyes dancing.

  A boy the age of Bragi’s Ragnar ran from a nearby smokehouse, toy bow ready. “Oh. It’s only Uncle Bear.”

  “Only?” Bragi growled as he dismounted. “Only? Maybe, Ethrian, but mean enough to box the ears of a cub.” He seized the boy, threw him squealing into the air.

  Wiping her hands on her apron, a woman came from the nearby house. Nepanthe always seemed to be wiping her hands. Mocker left a mountain of woman’s work wherever he passed. “Bragi. Just in time for dinner. You came alone? I haven’t seen Elana since...” Her smile faded. Since the bandit passage last fall, when Mocker’s dependents had holed up in Ragnarson’s stronger greathouse.

  “Pretty as ever, I see,” said Ragnarson. He handed his reins to Ethrian, who scowled, knowing he was being gotten rid of. Nepanthe blushed. She was indeed attractive, but hardly pretty as ever. The forest years had devoured her aristocratic delicacy. Still, she looked younger than thirty-four. “No, couldn’t bring the family.”

  “Business?” She did most of Mocker’s talking. Mocker had never mastered the Itaskian tongue. His vanity was such that he avoided speaking whenever he could. Ragnarson was not sure that inability was genuine. It varied according to some formula known only to Mocker himself.

  “No. Just riding. Spring fever.” Shifting to Necrem-nen, an eastern language in which Mocker was more at home, he continued, “Strange thing happened this morning. Old man appeared out of nowhere, mumbled some nonsense about girls who act like women. Wouldn’t answer a question straight out, only in riddles. Weirdest thing is, I couldn’t find a trace of him on the road. You’d think there’d be fresh droppings, coming or going.”

  Nepanthe frowned. She didn’t understand the lan-guage. “Are you going to eat?” Pettishly, she brushed long raven hair out of her eyes. A warm breeze had begun blowing from the south.

  “Of course. That’s why I came.” He tried charming her with a smile.

  “Same man,” Mocker replied, proving he could mangle even a language learned in childhood, “beriddled self. Portly pursuer of pre-dawn pissery, self, rising early to dispose of excess beer drunk night before, found same on doorstep before sunrise.”

  “Impossible. It was barely sunup when he turned up at my place...”

  “For him, is possible. Self, having encountered same before, know. Can do anything.”

  “The Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “No.”

  “Varthlokkur?”

  They were at Mocker’s door. When Ragnarson said the latter, Nepanthe gave him a hard stare. “You’re not mixed up with him again, are you? Mocker...”

  “Doe’s Breast. Diamond Eyes. Light of life of noted sluggard renown for pusillanimity, would same, being contender for title World’s Laziest Man, being famous from south beyond edge of farthest map to north in Trolledyngja, from west in Freyland east to Matayanga, for permanent state of cowardice and lassitude...”

  “Yes, you would. How’d you get known in all those places?”

  Mocker continued, in Necremnen, “Was famous Star Rider.”

  “Why?” R
agnarson asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Oh, never mind. That’s why you weren’t surprised to see me?”

  The fat man shrugged. “When Star Riders come calling on fat old fool sequestered in boundless forest, am surprised by nothings. Next, Haroun will appear out of south with new world-conquering scheme in hand, madder than ever.” This he said sourly, as if he believed it a distinct possibility.

  “If you two can quit chicken-clucking for a minute, we can eat,” said Nepanthe.

  “Sorry, Nepanthe,” Ragnarson apologized. “Some things...”

  She sighed. “As long as it’s not another woman.” “No, not that. Just a minor mystery.”

  V) Another strange visitor

  The mystery soon deepened. Ethrian returned from the stables and, after having been scolded for being as slow as small boys will, said, “There’s a man coming. A funny man on a little horse. I don’t think I like him.” Having so declaimed, he set about devouring his dinner.

  Mocker rose, went to a front window, came back wearing a puzzled frown. “Marco.”

  It took Ragnarson a moment to recall anyone by that name. “Visigodred’s apprentice?” Visigodred was a wizard, an old acquaintance.

  “Same.” Mocker looked worried. Ragnarson was disturbed himself.

  A clatter and rattle at the front door. “He’s here.”

  “Uhn.” Both men looked at Nepanthe. For a moment she stared back, a little pale, then went.

  “About goddamn time,” came from the other room, then, “Oh, beg your pardon, my dear lovely lady. Husband home? I hope not. Seems a shame to let a beautiful chance meeting go to waste.”

  “Back here.”

  Marco, a dwarf with the ego of a giant, came strutting into the kitchen, not a bit abashed about having been overheard. “Timing was right, I see.” He pulled up a chair, snagged a huge hunk of bread, smeared it with butter. He ignored inquiring looks till he had gorged himself. “Suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here. Besides stuffing my face. So am I. Well same as always, doing the old man’s legwork. Got a message for you.”