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Eight: Minstrel Boy

 

1

Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! . . .

Blood Wave II rushed over the gray sea with a bone in her teeth, lifting her head in time to the strokes, riding the long swell. Banked oars moved as one, brawny rowers moved as one, breathed as one: blades up, heads down; heads up, blades down; stroke, stroke!

The pace was merciless. Gath had never seen Drakkor drive his crew like this. It seemed impossible that those gasping, sweating men could stand the strain a moment longer. Veins bulged in scarlet faces. Almost every oar handle was smeared with fresh blood, yet not a man aboard would even want to quit, because there was a race in progress. They would sooner die than lose, all of them.

It seemed rather silly to Gath. He was only half jotunn—two quarters, to be exact—so perhaps his mixed blood didn't have the right ingredients to let him understand how plowing a beach ten minutes ahead of another crew could be worth all this torture. More important, his prescience made him quite certain that Blood Wave was going to win. That did take the thrill out of things.

The cliff ahead rose sheer from the ocean, its toes standing in a welter of white surf like fleece. Blood Wave would pass that reef to starboard, and very close. To larboard, and even closer, Seadragon matched her pace. He could hear the hoarse intake of breath from their crew over the cold wind, the cold salt wind that must feel so kind to all the overheated, half-naked rowers.

He was on water duty with York, moving down the lines with a water skin, squirting into open mouths as the heads went back at the end of the stroke. Three or four mouthfuls per man, a quick cooling drench on the head, then on to the next. It was infinitely easier work than the actual rowing, but it required every bit as much care. If he stumbled into an oar or even shot the jet into a man's face and threw him off his timing, then all the Gods would not save him from the thane's fury—or the crew's, for that matter. He would be torn apart.

His prescience showed it happening—very faintly, but clear enough to keep him mindful of the danger. The chances that Vork would do it were clearer, quite scarily possible. Still, Gath would not say anything. To mention prescience or sorcery on board this ship brought an automatic whipping, as he'd learned the first day.

The cape was Killer's Head and on the other side of it lay Gark, Blood Wave's home port. Thane Drakkor's thanedom. The island itself was Narp; part of it was Gark and part was Spithfrith, but the division varied from time to time, depending on the respective thanes' skill at denting and perforating neighbors. At the moment almost the whole island was Spithfrith, and Blood Wave's crew had given young Vork a very rough voyage because of that. Gark was the little town that would be coming into view shortly. For the last hour Gath had known what it would look like, and he was not much impressed. He would not say so.

He washed down Grablor and moved to Red, the biggest man aboard, who amply deserved his nickname now. His hair was even redder than York's, and today his face matched it His eyes bulged like onions. Gath wanted to ask why Blood Wave's crew would be so utterly and eternally disgraced if Thane Trakrog's Seadragon reached Drakkor's home port first. It made no sense, because they'd sighted Trakrog hull-down two hours ago and made up all that distance already, but apparently it did matter. It mattered greatly.

He gave Red his third squirt, doused his head as it went forward, and then moved to the next man, Gismak, sneaking a glance at the opposition.

Oh, Gods!

He forgot about Gismak, whose open mouth went by unwetted. Seadragon was drawing ahead, half a length already—Blood Wave was going to be cut off! They were almost under that beetling Killer's Head and the surf was very near. With Seadragon's blades on one side and leaping froth on the other, there was just not going to be room. Positively not. How could this be? Gath had not foreseen this!

For a moment he wanted to shout at the world to correct the mistake. Nothing could happen that he had not foreseen! Nothing must be allowed to. He was accustomed to having life unroll itself in predictable fashion. He depended on it! Now, suddenly, the future was changing itself? His vision of Blood Wave riding up on the shingle had vanished; he could barely recall what Gark itself looked like. Had looked like. Would have . . . had been going to look like. Unless Vork jostled a rower. Blood Wave was going to win—had been going to win—but that was apparently no longer true. What sort of sorcery was going on here? Variable future?

"Awrk!" croaked Gismak as another stroke went by and the waterboy still stood like a dead tree, neglecting his duties. Gath spasmed into action, but between squirts he continued to sneak looks at Seadragon, relentlessly edging ahead to larboard, and the pounding fury on the reef to starboard. If the two ships fouled oars, then Seadragon might escape, but Blood Wave would be out of control long enough for the current to throw her on the rocks. Positively! This was suicide, plain suicide. As he gave Gismak his final douse he glanced back at Drakkor, grim as death, holding the helm.

The thane beckoned him. Gath had not foreseen that, either, but he moved, fast, hurrying along between the two lines of oars, still being careful, stepping warily over bundles, not jostling. The thane did not like to be kept waiting. The thane would like it even less if a dolt waterboy lost the race for him. It seemed lost already to Gath. One thing Drakkor certainly could not do was increase the stroke.

Even as Gath thought that, the thane said something, and the coxswain blew a double pip, indicating a coming increase in stroke. God of Mercy! Their hearts would burst!

A moment later, Seadragon matched the new pace.

Panting, Gath reached coxswain and helmsman.

Drakkor was not especially tall, twenty-three years old, looking about fourteen; but he was thick, with arms and shoulders noteworthy even on a jotunn sailor. He rowed a watch every day to keep them so. His baby face was clean-shaven and he bore no tattoos—reputedly in imitation of his father, Kalkor. His ash-blond hair hung to his shoulders. His eyes were as brilliant a blue as eyes could be, and as cold. He had killed six thanes in Reckonings; how many lesser men he might have slain was never thought worth mention. At the moment he wore only the customary sailor breeches and an expression of implacable fury.

He was studying the opposition. Then he turned that boyish face with its blood-freezing blue gaze on Gath and snapped, "Watch the rocks, lad!"

Gath said, "Aye, sir," automatically and looked at the rocks, close off the starboard bow now. He could see Seadragon at the same time, and she was frighteningly close, closing in so there was less than an oar's length between the two ships' blades. He did not ask why he was supposed to watch the rocks. He had been taught not to ask questions on this ship. If he had to stand there until he died of old age he would not ask. He muttered a prayer. He was sweating like the rowers. Gods, Gods! Images of catastrophe began to grow clearer and clearer.

They were going to hit! His hands started to shake despite all he could do to stop them. Blood Wave was going to hit the rocks! Her oars would foul, the current would spin her around, and then the strakes would buckle in near the bows . . . He could see the surf blasting up pink, see seaweed, see bodies being pounded on shell-coated rocks that would rip them to shreds in seconds. Gods! He knew it! He knew he was about to die. His prescience left no doubt. Terror won over discipline.

"Sir!" he screamed, and looked around.

Drakkor smiled grimly. "Keep watching!"

Oh! Gath watched again. The image of destruction faded suddenly. Then it returned. "Too far!" he yelled, wiping his streaming face.

Again the threat diminished as the thane eased the steering oar back. Bastard! Filthy, barnacled bastard! He was using Gath's prescience! He'd deliberately set course closer and closer until Gath had told him—

"Say when, boy!"

"Clear now, sir," Gath said hoarsely. "Larboard—too far! A little more . . ."

Suddenly Blood Wave was within rocks. Foam rushed past, its edges barely beyond the tips of the oars on either hand. The longship swayed uneasily, but her draft was so shallow that the currents hardly moved her. Death reached out, and then withdrew—and reached again.

"Starboard now!" Gath screamed.

Then the danger was past. Blood Wave hurtled through the reefs and came around the headland. Safe! . . . for now.

Gath felt as if he'd been washed and hung out to dry, wet and limp. He was shaking like a cook's flour sieve. The nerve of the man! The first day, the thane had personally taken a rope's end to Gath's hide just for mentioning that he had prescience—and now he'd used that prescience to win a race! Drakkor had cheated in a race with another thane! Well, perhaps that was not too surprising, but why hadn't Gath foreseen that sneaky little piece of deception?

Then he saw the reason for the insanity. Seadragon was still crowding, but Blood Wave had gained ground with that suicidal shortcut. Neck and neck the two longships raced toward a massive seastack, its top leaning over as if to touch the cliff, almost an arch. Side by side they bore down on the channel between. Just maybe it was just barely wide enough for one, but it certainly would not take two abreast. Now it was Blood Wave that was crowding out Seadragon, hurtled straight for that tiny gap. The enemy had the rocks this time. At the last possible moment, Seadragon backed water, her crew's roars of fury quite audible. Drakkor bellowed. His men shipped oars, the swell caught the longship and lifted her. She surged forward like a startled horse, out of the sunlight into cold, windy shadow, rank with the tang of seaweed. Rocky walls rushed past on either hand, with blue sky high above and white birds circling. The sailors howled in simultaneous triumph, raising echoes, cheering their thane for that superlative piece of seamanship—and for almost killing the lot of them.

Gath had not foreseen any of this. He grinned weakly at Vork, who was in the bows, leaping up and down in his excitement, almost as red as Red.

A moment later the tide vomited Blood Wave out into the calm of a wide bay, enclosed by steep green hills. On shore lay the thorp of Gark itself. Seadragon would be delayed by having to detour around the seastack and the rocks beyond, or double back and make another run at the gauntlet . . . she went around, Gath foresaw. She'd take it easy, too, in tribute to the winner, so that Thane Drakkor could be home to welcome his visitors.

Gath's prescience had returned. Obviously there was a shielding on that headland, just like the castle at home in Krasnegar. He couldn't foresee what happened inside shieldings; he hadn't foreseen the seastack or Drakkor's devious ploy. Once inside, he hadn't been able to foresee events outside. Why would a sorcerer put a shielding on a cliff? To discourage visitors coming by night, of course, or in fog. If their pilot had more than mundane vision, he would not be able to use it to find that shortcut.

The rowers ran out their oars again and picked up the stroke, which was fast but not murderous. Gath found the water skin and went back to where he'd finished before. But now he could relax a little and contemplate the immediate future—the thane's tumultuous welcome from his subjects, and his own walk up through the village to . . .

Oops!

There was shielding in Gark, also. The future ended before he reached the end of that walk.

 

 

2

Gark was not much of a place, even compared to Krasnegar. It might be better living than Dwanish, though. The surrounding hills were grass and rock, bereft of trees. The houses had low walls of stone and roofs of sod, so that from the bay the thorp hardly showed up at all, just chimneys growing out of grass. Gath decided that either Nordlanders walked around on their knees indoors or their dwellings lay half underground. For warmth in winter, maybe? There were goats cropping those shaggy roofs, although they weren't visible from the sea, either. The only large building stood on a slight rise, and it was a timbered hall with a roof of copper, a paler green than the sod. That would be the thane's palace.

Considering that the men of Nordland had been raiding everywhere else for thousands of years, Gath wondered what they had done with all their loot, apart from putting that copper sheeting on the palace roof. Furthermore, Gark was supposed to be a very strategic thanedom, controlling the south approaches. Garkians pillaged other jotnar on their way home. What did they do with it all?

Squandered it in the bars and brothels of the Impire, dummy! What else would it be good for?

The beach was coming up fast and the population was streaming down to the strand to meet the returning thane. The cheering was drifting out over the swell already.

Vork jabbed an elbow in Gath's ribs. Gath jerked around and saw that he was wanted astern. Already! He'd been day-dreaming. Again he hurried aft. It was time for the death threats.

Still holding the steering oar, Drakkor had a quizzical look in his inhumanly blue eyes. "Boy?"

"Aye, sir?" Gath said. You'll keep your mouth shut about that.

"You'll keep your mouth shut about that."

"Aye, sir!"

Drakkor nodded, with perhaps a hint of a trace of a suggestion of a smile on his baby face. "Keep it shut ashore, too."

"Aye, sir." Gath wasn't sure what was meant yet, but here came the threat—

"You say the wrong thing, I'll have to kill you. That goes for your copper-haired friend, too."

"Aye, sir. I understand," Gath said.

You're a good lad and I'd rather not, but I will if I must.

"You're a good lad," Drakkor said with a smile, "and I'd rather not, but I will if I must"

Was Vork not a good lad, then? Still, praise from Thane Drakkor was unexpectedly chest-puffing. He was a bloodthirsty killer, but Gath had spent the last month in the company of fifty men who worshipped their thane's toenails and would cut off their ears to hear those words from him. Good lad, huh?

"Aye, sir." Now came: I'll have someone explain.

"I'll have someone explain." The thane turned his attention to the beach.

Twist.

 

Beaching a longship was a ceremony and a celebration and a job that must be left to the crew. The population of the thorp stood back and watched, cheering. Gath and Vork leaped into the water with the rest of the men, although their puny strength would make no difference. Blood Wave went up on the shingle with the rush of the next wave, but she was almost being carried by all those brawny arms.

Thane Drakkor leaped ashore dry shod and glanced around. "Gismak? Grablor?"

The two men waded forward, glowering.

"I'll see you two tomorrow."

"I'm ready to do it now!" Grablor snarled. He stood a head taller than the thane, but the betting on board had been that his careless backtalk was going to cost him dearly.

"So am I," Drakkor said, "but I've got visitors coming. Tomorrow. Unless you want to grovel now?"

"No!" both men said at the same moment.

"Tomorrow around noon, then." Drakkor turned away to look at the sea. It was a captain's duty to discipline his crew, and a jotunn captain must do it with his own fists. The thane's hands were twisted and scarred by a thousand such fights. There was not a mark on his face. His nose and ears were their proper shape, most unusual for a jotunn.

Far out in the bay, Seadragon was approaching at a tactfully gentle pace. Thane Trakrog coming to call in at Gark on his way to the Nintor Moot.

Drakkor spun around and headed landward. That was the signal. Screaming welcome to the returning sailors, the townsfolk came rushing forward through the upturned dories and the lobster pots, between racks of fishnets and heaps of drying whale bones. Wives dashed to husbands, children to fathers, parents to sons. The men wore breeches and some had boots, as well. The women were in simple gowns of bright homespun. Smaller children ran naked. There was not a dark head among them, and the sight of so much fair hair made Gath feel homesick for the docks at Krasnegar. Half the queen's subjects were impish, but the docks were the domain of the jotunn half.

Vork was looking at him with green eyes wide, wanting guidance. He thought he was Gath's buddy, but he was really his follower.

"We stick close," Gath said. Until Twist comes.

Sticking close to Drakkor was not as easy as he had made it sound. Half the population of the thanedom seemed to want to speak to the ruler. He was in a hurry to reach his hall before Trakrog beached, and the result was a mob scene. Only two things were important enough to slow him down. One was a presentation ceremony—every new baby born since he had left was held up by its mother for his approval and blessing. He patted heads and smiled, nodding as he was told the names of his new thralls. The other delay was caused by a limber maiden in a brightly woven gown. She was granted a lingering embrace and a kiss. The noisy onlookers shouted encouragement and lewd predictions.

With an odd sense of unreality, Gath realized that he was actually in Nordland, the home of half of his ancestors. Through his mother he was related to the thane himself, but very distantly. Grandfather Grossnuk had been a humble raider who must have come from some village like this. Even Dad had not known which island he had hailed from, though, nor any more about him, not even the name of his longship. Some of these people might be Gath's first cousins, and that was a very strange notion. He would ask while he was here.

Moving in the midst of clamoring chaos, Drakkor headed up the gentle slope toward his hall. About halfway there, he seemed to remember his two young guests. He stopped and looked around. Before he could speak, Gath elbowed through the mob with Vork at his heels.

Drakkor's blue eyes twinkled briefly as he recognized prescience at work. He scanned the crowd.

"Twist?" he shouted. "Where is that misshapen mongrel?"

People then backed out of the way to make an opening. A strange figure came hurrying forward in a lurching, awkward gait, leaning on a crutch. Children screamed in derision, and not a few adults, also.

He was a hunchback; he dragged a withered leg. He was as jotunn as anyone, but among the horde of healthy golden giants this puny scarecrow was a sorry excuse for a man. His limbs were thin as poles, his hair hung lank, and every bone seemed twisted out of shape. His age was hard to assess because of his thinness, but he was probably not much older than Gath, for his beard was a straggly silver fuzz. He leered up at his thane with teeth that seemed to stick out of his mouth at a dozen different angles.

"There you are, you runt!" Drakkor said, looking down contemptuously. "I thought I told you to grow up while I was gone?"

Everyone laughed.

"You are welcome back, lord!" the cripple said, whining.

"One look at you and I wish I'd stayed away."

More cruel laughter. Twist cringed back, as if expecting a blow.

"See these two?" Drakkor snapped.

The hunchback glanced at Gath and Vork with eyes of a pale gray like sea fog. "I am seeing them."

"Explain things to them. Now!" Drakkor cuffed him across the face. The cripple staggered on his crutch and almost fell. A foot snaked out of the onlookers and caught him behind his good knee. Down he went in the mud, and the crowd hooted with raucous mirth.

Drakkor departed and the mob streamed after him, leaving three youths, one prostrate on the dirt. To mock cripples was perfectly normal. It happened in Krasnegar, too, although Gath's parents disapproved of it. Vork was sniggering, probably to hide his disgust at being assigned to the attention of this runt. Gath stepped forward and helped Twist to his feet.

"I'm Gath, sir, son of Rap. This is Vork, son of Kragthong."

Leaning on his crutch, the cripple beat dust from his clothes with his free hand. He wore a homespun robe of drab brown, a woman's garment. Real men in Nordland never covered their chests until there was ice on the buckets. The gray eyes flickered from one boy to the other.

"Athelings? Krasnegar and Spithfrith?" The grotesque teeth blurred his speech, but there was an odd lilt to it.

"Aye, sir."

"We are not being at sea now."

"No. I mean, yes, sir." Gath realized that the colorless eyes were surprisingly bright and perceptive. He felt they were looking right through him.

"And you are calling me 'sir' you are asking for trouble, Twist being my name. Come, then." He set off at a fair pace, swinging wildly on his crutch so that it was impossible to walk close to him. Soon his breath was wheezing and rattling, but he did not slow down.

Vork sneaked a hand on Gath's arm to hold him back. He looked worried. "What happens?" he whispered.

Gath grinned. "Wait and see!"

Seers had reputations to keep up. He wasn't about to admit that he did not know.

* * *

The streets were narrow and wound higgledy-piggledy between the low cottages. Goats grazed on the sod roofs, bleating at the passersby. Once a gaggle of children spotted Twist and jeered in chorus. He ignored them, hastening along in his painful gait.

Here came the shielding.

Shielding could last a long time, Gath knew. Wirax had told him of age-old buildings that had crumbled away and left their occult defenses guarding nothing but meadowland. That must be the case here, for the blankness he foresaw lay right across a street. Once he was inside, he would be able to see the future again. Perhaps in ancient times the thane's hall had stood here.

It didn't work as he expected. His prescience vanished, and stayed vanished. He walked on after Twist and there was still no future, only awkward present. For a moment he almost panicked, as if he'd gone blind, then he gritted his teeth and reminded himself that other people had to live like this all the time.

Twist's house was one of the smallest, a hovel on the edge of the little town. The sod roof was canted at a bad angle, like its owner, as if about to collapse. The cripple plunged ahead down two steps and in through a doorway that had only a tattered old hide to cover it.

Gath followed, stumbling down into a stuffy, earth-smelling dimness, and there was still no future. Vork came in behind him. The flap dropped over the doorway, creating darkness. Twist was bumping around somewhere.

Gradually Gath's eyes adapted. There was only the one tiny room, and one small window, with a covering of bladder or strips of fish skin sewn together. This was summer, so the hearth was bare. He made out a roll of furs that must be bedding, a small table, an ancient seaman's chest, and one rickety chair. Dishes, pots, and a few books were stacked on a precariously canted shelf. On the floor by the fireplace stood a splendid harp, shining like a full moon at dusk.

"You two had best be sitting there," Twist said, waving at the chest, "and trying not to be too heavy. I am at making a cup of tea for visitors, and you will be telling me how the thane got his hands on the two of you."

Vork rolled his eyes and curled his lip, but he went over to sit on the chest. Gath stayed standing. He did not think he could sit down if he tried. He was sweating like the rowers had. A world without prescience was terrifying!

Twist had laid out a candle on the table and was fumbling with flint and steel, balanced precariously on one foot. "Well?"

Vork was going to leave the talking to Gath.

"We wanted to attend the Nintor Moot. We asked Thane Drakkor to let us ship with him. We're his kinsmen."

Twist's pale eyes seemed all white in the dark, as if he were blind. "Sixth cousin in your case. Atheling Vork is being his third cousin, twice removed."

"How do you know that?"

The young cripple smiled bitterly. "I am being his skald. What is a cripple good for, except being a skald? It is skalds' business to be knowing their masters' families. That is their main business! Shall I be reciting the lists for you?"

"No. I believe you."

The tinder caught. The skald lit the candle and then snuffed the tinder with his fingers, so as not to waste it. He sniggered meanly. "So, athelings, thanes' sons, want to go to the moot? Are you worthy, though? You will be fighting to prove it."

"Fighting?" York demanded warily.

"Fighting. Many thanes are coming to visit on their way to the moot and are bringing sons with them. There will be feasting in the hall now until we leave. For entertainment, athelings will fight, much gold being wagered." His odd speech echoed the forms of the old ballads.

Gath should have guessed about the fighting. He wondered if his prescience would work in the hall. If it did, he had little to fear. If not—well, he would have to fight fair. Except that he did not have the arms of a real rower.

"Fists or swords?"

"Fists, heads, teeth, boots."

"Do we have to win?"

"Indeed not," Twist said, with a mean grin. "You had best be fighting a bigger opponent and be getting injured right away. It will be happening sooner or later, so why not sooner? Bleed bravely!"

"What does a cripple know about fighting?" Vork snorted.

"This cripple has been seeing many fights," Twist said. "And knows good losers and bad winners." He lurched over to the shelf and took down a very battered kettle.

"This place stinks," Vork complained. "Tell us whatever it is we're supposed to know, and then we can leave."

"But I am being very honored by having two athelings my visitors! So you were asking a favor of Thane Drakkor? Are you both crazy?"

Gath recalled the thane's words: You're a good lad and I'd rather not kill you, but I will if I must. "Er . . . Why do you think we might be crazy?" What was coming? Oh, how he missed his prescience!

The little cripple dipped the kettle in the bucket and set it on a tripod on the table. He placed the candle underneath. "Your fathers did not negotiate this? This was being your own idea?"

"Yes."

"Ah! Well, let us be considering the instance of Atheling Vork." Twist was very cheerful. Perhaps having visitors was a very rare and welcome experience for such an outcast, but there was an ominous malice behind his amusement.

"What about me?" Vork said grumpily, shooting alarmed glances at Gath.

Twist adjusted himself on the chair and laid down his crutch. "Your father is being thane of Spithfrith and ambassador to Dwanish. As the first he is owner of most of this island, which Thane Drakkor feels belongs to thanedom of Gark. As the second he is being immune to challenge. Am I speaking correctness?"

"Well, er, maybe."

"Is being correct. But my brother is feeling—"

"You're his brother?"

Twist grinned at his guests' surprise. "Indeed. And full brother, not half brother. Our father left us many half brothers." He beamed proudly. "We are all athelings here."

Gath made a mental comparison of the two brothers and shivered. Drakkor was masculine perfection, everything a man might hope to be; Twist was a nightmare. What would it be like to have to live in such a wreck of a body—all day and every day? "But he struck you!"

"Of course. Am being a weakling. Is correct behavior for jotnar to be mocking cripples and full of contempt for cripples. If he were not being a big softie, he would be kicking me, also, killing me perhaps. Our father, if returning from his last voyage, would have been having me drowned. Drakkor has been very kind to his puny brother. He was making me his skald."

The strange youth glanced from one visitor to the next, and seemed to think they disbelieved him. "Look!" he said, and fumbled inside the neck of his robe. He pulled out a string, with a glitter of gold on it. "He is a ring-giver. He was giving me this at Winterfest for my singing." He smiled shyly. "He would not be liking me being seen wearing it, though." He tucked it out of sight again.

Unable to find anything to say, Gath walked over to the chest and sat down, elbowing Vork to give him more room. Why had he not realized that Nordland would not be just another Krasnegar? Was it wrong or just unfamiliar? If his homeland seemed more civilized to him, was that just his personal taste, or could he find an argument that might convince an independent witness? If it was more civilized, was that due to the imps there, or his parents' rule? He had a lot to think about. These were things a man had to decide for himself.

"So Thane Drakkor has feud with Thane Kragthong," Twist said, pale eyes sparkling with amusement. "But diplomats are being immune. Cannot make war against ambassadors or challenge to Reckonings. Now he has the thane's son?"

"I am his kinsman!" Vork shouted, alarmed.

"Third cousin. He has killed three brothers. Lost count of cousins."

"I am his guest!"

"Is true." Twist glanced at the silent kettle and sighed, as if eager for his hot tea. "But if Thane Drakkor is deciding to blind you, or neuter you and sell you as slave to the djinns, then what will Thane Kragthong be doing?"

Vork made a horrible strangled noise. All the color drained out of his fair-skinned face, leaving only red hair and terrified green eyes, and freckles like sand on white china. Twist obviously found that transformation amusing, and Gath was ashamed to realize that he did, too.

"Would that be honorable behavior toward a guest?" he asked warily.

"Honor is decided at Reckonings."

"You're lying!" Vork screamed.

"Oh, surely! I am a runt, and probably being soft in the head, also."

"His father is not coming to the moot," Gath said.

"This year!" Twist smiled his tangle of teeth meanly. "And there are brothers. But Thane Kragthong will have to come next year and challenge for revenge, is not correct? Must be waiving diplomatic immunity then. Or if he is sending up older sons first, then Drakkor is killing them off one by one." He clapped his little hands. "Is no one better with an ax at a Reckoning than my brother, not since Thane Kalkor, our father, many years ago." He smirked proudly.

God of Horrors!

Vork whimpered. "Will he? I mean, blind me? Or cut off . . . do what you said?"

Twist chuckled. "Is depending how much your father is valuing you. Good son or not-much-good son? He is aware you are here?"

"Yes!"

"Then am hoping for your sake Thane Kragthong is now sending message, offering much land and peoples for return of son in good condition."

Vork uttered a long wail. He doubled over and buried his face in his hands. He made muffled sobbing noises.

I did warn him this might be dangerous, Gath thought uneasily. And if Thane Kragthong did ransom his son at some incredible cost, what would he do to that wayward son when he got him back?

"And what about me?" This unforeseen living was very hard on the nerves.

"Ah." Twist eased his crooked body on the chair as if he hurt. "You are thane of Krasnegar!"

Gath's world lurched. "No, I'm not! My mother is thane of Krasnegar!" Thanes got challenged to Reckonings!

With axes. Against Drakkor? Oh, God of Slaughter!

The silver-faced cripple shook his head. "Holindam was. Women cannot be thanes. Whether they are able to pass on titles to sons . . . is being argument usually settled at the moot."

Gath should have thought of this! If Dad were still alive—but he had not reported on the magic scrolls for months, so he couldn't be. And to expect the thanes to accept that a faun could ever be a thane was beyond the limits of Gath's imagination anyway. Suppose Drakkor demanded that he surrender Krasnegar to him? He wondered if he'd turned the same milk color as Vork.

This journey had obviously been the worst error of Gath's life, since he was not likely to have time to make many more.

"Vork," he said—and his voice sounded painfully hoarse, "how well can you swim?"

Twist laughed shrilly and passed into a painful fit of raspy coughing. There could not be much room in that shrunken chest for lungs. What a nasty specimen he was! "You are also," he said when he caught his breath—"you are also son of Rap Thaneslayer."

"What do you mean?"

"You are not knowing? Your father killed our father at a Reckoning, in Hub."

Vork raised his head and stole a horrified look at Gath, who wondered why the little hovel had suddenly become so cold. His feet felt as if the floor was deep in ice-water.

"That was a formal Reckoning! Your father claimed to be rightwise-born ruler of my mother's realm. My father was her champion, and he won!" Somehow that argument did not sound as convincing as he had expected it to.

Twist rubbed his hands in glee. "But Reckonings do not set precedents! My brother can repeat my father's claim anytime—only now it will be against you!"

Gath met the spiteful smirk as steadily as he could. "Then obviously he will kill me. I hope it gives him great satisfaction and wins him great honor."

Twist pouted, as if disappointed by the reaction. "He does not need a Reckoning. The matter is being a blood feud. Your father is sorcerer and was using sorcery to kill ours!"

Gath straightened up. "Oh, no! If my dad killed yours, then he did not cheat!"

"You were there?" Mockery gleamed in the ice-pale eyes.

"No. But the wardens would have condemned him for using sorcery against a jotunn raider. Warlock Raspnex told me that your father was a sorcerer, also, and it was he who tried to cheat with sorcery and the Gods struck him down!"

"Oh, you talk with warlocks?"

"Yes I do. Besides," Gath shouted, "I knew my dad! He never cheated!"

Twist smiled. "Even to save his life?"

Hateful, warped little runt! "No. Never! He never cheated!"

"You speak in past tenses?"

Something took hold of Gath's heart and wrenched.

"I fear my father is dead!" he whispered.

The skald's head moved. His neck was so bent that a nod was hard to distinguish from a shake. It seemed to be a shake.

Hope? Could this agony be hope? "You're a sorcerer!" Gath shouted.

Twist's youthful face contorted in horror and he threw up his hands. "If you are saying outside this house that Thane Drakkor keeps a tame sorcerer, then he will be required to kill you! Or kill you if you are saying our father was, even."

Unbearable hope! Gath could barely spit out the words.

"That's not shielding, you're blocking my prescience! You sing with a harp when you can hardly breathe because your chest is so twisted—you are a sorcerer and you are saying my dad is still alive?" Gath leaped across the little room and fell on his knees before the cripple's chair. "Dad's alive? Really? You are telling me this truly?"

Vork shrieked in alarm. "Gath, you're crazy! If he was a sorcerer he wouldn't go round looking like that!"

"Yes, he is!" Gath said. "Aren't you. Twist? You're a real sorcerer and you know about my dad? Please, Twist, please!" He was almost crawling into the skald's lap.

Twist reached out a hand no larger than a child's and playfully ruffled Gath's unruly hair. "King Rap is alive, Thane Gath. He is leading the war against the evil usurper."

The candle winked out of its own accord and the kettle began to boil furiously.

 

 

3

Gath had come to Nordland to ask the Thanes to hunt down sorcerers, and he had found an actual sorcerer already. Truly the Gods were with him!

And Dad was alive! Gath never seriously considered that the skald might be lying when he told of Warlock Olybino and dragons. Sorcerers had no need to lie. Two or three days later, Twist commented on that.

The pair of them were back in his hovel and Twist himself was kneeling by his water bucket, washing. Undressed, he looked as if he had been stamped on by a giant in his childhood and ground underfoot. Gath sprawled on the roll of bedding, nursing a very unbalanced stomach and the worst hammering headache of his life. Skuas had been nesting in his mouth.

"You, Atheling," the skald said, "are a most unusual mundane."

Gath groaned, detecting a lecture coming. "Because I'm dead and can't stop suffering?" The backs of his eyes hurt the worst.

"Because you are probably the world's greatest expert on sorcerers! No, I am being serious! You saw Atheling Vork. His teeth were chattering when he learned about me, and yet his own sister is a sorceress. Mundanes are never knowing what you know." Twist grinned, drooling and showing his awful bird's nest of teeth.

"What do I know?"

"How sorcery works. How the sorcerous think. I have been watching. I drop a hint on the water and you yank out a trout every time."

"But I traveled for months in a wagon train with five sorcerers. There were six on board Gurx."

The skald chuckled. "And how many mundanes have ever done that? You are without guile, yet keep your own counsel, which is being a most unusual combination! You are having a slight talent of your own. You invite confidences. I say you are the greatest mundane authority on sorcery the world has ever seen!"

Phooey! "When are you going to restore my prescience?" Gath asked grumpily.

"I am sorcerer here," Twist said shrewishly. "I do not like competition. Besides, you are not wanting it back at the moment, Son of Rap. You are much happier not knowing how long you're going to feel like you are feeling now."

* * *

Time seemed to stop moving while Gath was in Gark. The sun rolled around the sky without ever setting. Longships came and longships went; the feasting in the mead hall never stopped. Men ate when they felt hungry, drank all the time, and slept when they did not mean to.

By the time Gath and Vork reached the hall, that first day, greasy carcasses sparked and smoked on creaking spits, Thane Trakrog and the crew of Seadragon were already two-thirds drunk, and the great sunlit chamber rocked with mirth and boasting. Gulls soared through, riding the wind. Swallows jabbered angrily but unheard from the high rafters. A few goats wandered unnoticed within the crowd, but there were no dogs. Jotnar hated dogs.

With pale face and clenched fists, Vork did as the skald had told him. Head high, arms stiff, he marched the length of the hall, through the lesser folk sprawling on the floor in the sunlight, all the way to the tables where the thanes and warriors sat, until he stood before Thane Drakkor himself. There he proclaimed that he was Atheling Vork, son of Thane Kragthong of Spithfrith, son of as many successive forebears as he remembered, and he came in peace to this hall. In conclusion, he issued formal notice that Gark's enemies would henceforth have him to look out for, also, at which a widespread titter was barely suppressed. With his red hair flaming bright above his skinny pale neck, he looked absurdly young to be playing the role he had assumed, and his voice remained relentlessly treble.

"If he pours you a horn of mead, of course, you're safe," Twist had promised. "If he throws it in your face, you're a dead man. If he tells you to go and eat . . . well, there's still hope."

Drakkor glowered at Vork as if he had never seen him before, and then pointed with his dagger at the hearths and told him to go eat with the churls.

As for Gath . . . "You want to announce yourself as thane of Krasnegar, lad? That's suicide—his father died denying that claim. As son of Thane Rap, a faun half-man? As son of Thane Inosolan, a woman?"

Gath bristled. He thought son of Rap Thaneslayer, and discarded that idea quickly. "As his kinsman, then? As the imperor's messenger?"

Twist shrugged his hump. "It would be safer that you not reveal yourself at all."

Gath assumed he meant the athelings' exhibition matches. "I'm not afraid of a fight!"

Twist smiled so wide that he drooled. "With the Covin? It will be sending watchers to the moot, you know. May even have one on Seadragon—I haven't looked them over yet."

"You mean I've come all this way—"

"And you want to go all that way back, don't you? So you'll stay just a water boy, and you won't be going to the moot! Which would you rather be: Vork-son-of-Kragthong in Drakkor's clutches, or Gath-son-of-Rap in Zinixo's?" He cackled.

The Covin was the danger. The Covin was the enemy, and for all Gath knew he might have already muddled up some plans of Dad's with his meddling. The Covin might be the real reason why Mom and the imperor had decided not to come. And yet, although royal honors had never meant anything to Gath before, now that he was being denied them, they suddenly felt important for the first time in his life. Growling, he agreed that he would sit among the groundlings, for the moment.

He slunk into the hall to watch York's entrance and subsequent humiliation. He felt somewhat better after that, and went to join him at the spits for a slab of roast goat and some cheering up. A couple of Blood Wave's crew spotted their two tyros and decided to fill them both with peasant beer. They were prepared to use force if necessary, but Gath was not in a mood to argue—he needed to assert his manhood, even if it was only by getting drunk. Events blurred very quickly after that. There was much roast goat and fresh black bread, and some singing, and buckets and buckets of green beer. There was a sort of a fight between Gath and a lanky youth from the thorp, but they were both far too blurred to do any damage. There was falling down and throwing up. There was helping to drag out the drunks to make room in the hall.

There was waking up much later in the grass and going back inside again for more goat, and more green beer, and seeing different visiting thanes at the high table, and more useless windmilling fighting, over and over and over. The sun never set.

* * *

And in among all this insanity, there were moments of serious business.

After Thane Trakrog departed, and before Thanes Jorvir and Griktor arrived, Drakkor went back down to the beach and hammered Gismak and Grablor into insensibility, one after the other. A captain must discipline his crew.

* * *

There were also moments of rapture, when the thane's skald sang for the guests. In the hall Twist wore breeches like everybody else and his deformities were cruelly exposed. He was jeered at, had things thrown at him and tipped over him, but when he sat down and touched his harp and began to sing, then even the snoring stopped.

It was impossible for that crumpled body to produce such sound or those tangled teeth to hurl such words, and yet the skald filled the hall with pearls and rubies of song.

He sang of death and sorrowing. He sang of legendary heroes and great disasters. Most often he sang of Kalkor, Thane Drakkor's father, former owner of this hall, sacker of cities. Gath thought the endless recitals of loot sounded very much like his own father's shopping lists for the spring fleet, but fortunately he was never quite drunk enough to say so.

* * *

There were moments of muddled worrying. Twist's news about the goblins was horrifying—Kadie, Kadie! Gath tried not to think about that, but there were hundreds of other things he should be worrying about, and most of the time he couldn't keep a thought in his head for more than a few seconds before it drowned.

Yes, he had accomplished more or less what he had set out to do, in that he had made contact with a Nordland sorcerer—and apparently Warlock Olybino's proclamation had made his trip unnecessary anyway. The moot itself would not be crucial, if Twist would organize the other sorcerers. There must be others, many others. But was Twist going to cooperate? That was something Gath could not establish. The skald was rarely available for talk, and when he was. Gath's teeth and tongue refused to cooperate with his brain.

Probably a wise decision.

* * *

About the second or third time Gath heard him, Twist sang a different song. He sang of Thane Thermond, venerable, vulnerable, being challenged at the Nintor Moot. His sons had been delayed by a storm; who would save the noble thane from the challenge of virile Atheling Koddor?

Then stepped forward Atheling Drakkor, exiled by a brother's spite, landless sailor in another's ship; eight and ten years only and untried with the ritual ax. He would be champion for the hard-pressed thane.

The tale could not hold much drama after that, Gath thought. When two men entered the Place of Ravens for a Reckoning, one left his bones on the grass for ever. Had the loser been Thermond's champion, then the old man would have had to go forward also and bow his neck for the victor's stroke. In this case the outcome was fairly predictable, with Drakkor himself sitting there in full view. The story unfolded as Gath expected. Axes clashed, gore spurted, and the overambitious Koddor fell headless. Thus venerable Thermond was saved—end of tale.

So that had been Future-Thane Drakkor's first Reckoning? He had risked his life for a stranger? Interesting!

* * *

"I do not understand," Vork complained, "how a man can be a sorcerer and look like that monster."

The boys were dragging their feet down to the shore. They had been persuaded that the best remedy for a hangover was to dip oneself totally in the Winter Ocean and then run all the way back up to the hall. Gath would have more faith in the proposed remedy if he could see anyone older than himself applying it. On the other hand, he was desperate enough to try anything. He felt as if he was walking on his eyeballs.

"He's a jotunn."

"So?"

Gath didn't want to talk at all. "How do they feel about sorcery? We feel, I mean." When in Nordland be a jotunn.

Vork sniffed. "Sailors are so frightened of bad luck that they won't even talk about it. Warriors think it's cowardice and cheating."

Exactly!

They stopped simultaneously, toes at the water line. Very cold ripples ran up on the shingle.

"So?" Gath said. "If Twist turns himself into a muscle-boy raider like his brother, he's cheating. His friends would spurn him and flee in panic."

"Friends?" Vork shouted in his piercing treble. "They knock him down in the mud and spit on him!"

Why could he not see it as Gath saw it? "But they are still his people. He could live as a king in the Impire, but that isn't what he wants. This is his home. This is his life. And he is his brother's skald."

"What can that mean to a sorcerer?"

"You haven't been paying attention," Gath said smugly.

"Oh, no? See that piece of driftwood out there? I'll race you to it."

"Right! Go!"

Vork plunged into the icy water.

Gath turned around and headed back to the hall.

* * *

At some point in that endless feast, he found himself sitting on the sun-warm grass outside the mead hall, talking with Twist.

"Skalds?" he said. "Or women?"

"Or priests."

"But never warriors, never sailors?" Gath peered carefully at the minstrel's shining harp. He had no headache and he could only see one thing at a time, which meant he was drunk again. Idiot! Trouble was, when he wouldn't drink up like a man, the sailors held his arms and poured the muck down his throat. Or turned him upside down and put his head in the bucket, which was worse. "Real men aren't sorcerers?"

"Never. Or rarely. You may be right in saying our father cheated that way. Don't be saying it to anyone else, though."

"Is that why the Protocol . . ." The thought wandered away into the beery fog.

Bodies snored in the grass all around.

Twist chuckled. "So goes the legend. Because the jotnar would never use sorcery in battle, Emine agreed that no one else might use it against them, and the warden of the north was assigned to defend them from it."

Gath followed that idea around in his head, one word at a time, then nodded. The world rocked sickeningly. "But way back here in Nordland, who could tell who might be cheating?"

"And no thane ever trusts another."

"So the skalds stay home and guard the thorps against sorcery?"

"Purely defensive," Twist agreed, amused by something.

Gath lay back on the warm turf and closed his eyes. He put an arm across them to cut out the pink glare of the sun. That was better. "Who else knows this?" he muttered.

"The thanes and the skalds. Nobody else at all. Not even the warlock of the north nowadays, I suspect."

"And your brother won your words for you by being champion for Thane Thermond?"

"That was the price. I was thirteen. I was dying—the taller I grew, the worse my back curved. Sorcery saved me."

Without any hard evidence at all, Gath had come to know that this human ruin was his brother's counsellor, the brains of the family partnership. Drakkor was only the muscle.

"You will be going to Nintor, Twist?"

"Of course. Every year the thanes meet at the Moot Stow on Nintor. The Reckonings are held at the Place of Ravens. But there is always another moot, every year, a secret moot"

"The skalds?"

"The sorcerers. They go to see fair play. They also hold a moot, a moot of their own, at the Commonplace."

"I have to come."

"It is too dangerous for you."

"Stuff that harp," Gath muttered sleepily, and heard a chuckle. "I am coming."

There was another thought, something he must tell . . . Oh, yes. "This is going to be a war moot?"

"The imperor has pulled back his legions from Guwush."

"The fake imperor." Gath yawned mightily. "It's a trap, of course." The sun was pleasantly warm on his chest and limbs.

"Perhaps it is, but no one knows about the fake imperor or the usurper. No one but sorcerers know that the Covin has overthrown the Four."

"Drakkor knows?"

"I have told him. Doubtless most of the other thanes know also. But their followers do not." Twist's fingers stroked the strings and the harp sighed. Then it proclaimed a martial chord. Several apparently unconscious drunks sat up quickly and looked around.

"After three thousand years," he continued, "who will believe that the Protocol no longer operates? Drakkor has been preaching war for two moots now. How can he stop when the Impire is being so vulnerable? You cannot be arguing with a hungry bear!"

Gath sighed as the wind sighed in the grass. "It is a trap!"

"Perhaps it is. What sort of a trap, though? Have you worked that out. Little Atheling?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me!"

"I will tell the secret moot," Gath said sleepily. Silence.

 

 

4

The longships had stopped coming. Only one spit held a goat and the hall was almost deserted. The villagers had returned to their wives and their labor. Down on the shore, Blood Wave's crew readied her for departure.

Gath was close to panic. He was going to be left behind! Twist was avoiding him apparently, and who could ever catch a sorcerer who did not want to be caught? Drakkor was unavailable to a lowly water boy. He haunted the thorp and the hall in misery. Once in a while a gang of sailors would catch him and fill him full of disgusting beer again, or match him up in a fight. He was sick of the drunkenness and foolery and juvenile games. There was a war on, and he was being excluded.

Then he saw Twist lurching along the hall in an unusual hurry. Heedless of danger, Gath followed, right through into the private quarters, dark and mysterious and out of bounds. He caught up with the cripple just as he hurtled in through a door.

"Raven Feast has rounded the head and Thane Kragthong is on board!" the skald cried.

The little room was dim and stuffy. It was larger than Twist's cottage, but stark and simple as befitted a jotunn's chamber. The bed was made of plain boards covered by a worn fur. On it lay Drakkor, unshaven and haggard from days of unending feasting, and the blue of his eyes was circled by red. He had probably been asleep. In a fast reaction, he threw his goat's-wool blanket over his companion and blinked up blearily at his brother. "I will be there."

Twist turned to go, and discovered Gath.

Gath could tell that this was not the most appropriate setting for discussing business. The girl on the bed was invisible now, but she was certainly not Drakkor's wife, who was out in the hall. She had also been much younger.

"Thane?" Gath shouted.

Twist rolled his eyes and stepped aside.

The look he received almost melted Gath's bones, but he stood his ground.

Drakkor growled. "What the Evil do you want?"

"To go to Nintor with you."

"It is too dangerous." The thane rolled over on his side and put a thick arm over the shrouded girl.

Twist tugged urgently at Gath's wrist.

"Since when has that mattered to a jotunn?"

Drakkor tightened his embrace on the blanket, not turning to look at his visitors. "Jotunn? You? Go away, half-man!"

If he was sober he would not be able to do this, Gath thought, trickling sweat. "Sir, I bear a message from the warlock of the north—and from my father the Thaneslayer."

The muscles in Drakkor's back tensed like cables. "Brother . . . Turn him into something horrid!"

"Then I ask Thane Kragthong?" Gath asked shrilly.

"Go away!" Drakkor roared. The blanket jerked nervously.

The grip on Gath's arm tightened with superhuman power, digging into the muscle. He yelled in fury as he found himself being dragged away bodily by that flimsy runt.

"Stop!" the thane said. He rolled over on his back and glared. "We carry no passengers to Nintor. You would row?"

There were only four days left until the moot. If the wind was not favorable, that meant three days of hard rowing. God of Horrors! Gath hesitated, thought about Dad, and said stubbornly, "Aye, sir! I'll row double watch if I have to."

Drakkor groaned. "Take him away, Skald. I'll thump him later."

* * *

The mead hall was packed as Raven Feast's crew marched in. Gath sat on the floor amid the massed groundlings. Beside him, Vork hugged his knees and watched with wide green eyes. His red hair seemed to be standing on end, and all his freckles showed.

The leader was a hulking thane of middle years, scarred and battered. A pace behind him walked the passenger he had brought from Urgaxox, Vork's father. In this land of giants, Kragthong no longer towered so tall, but there was not a belly in Gark to match his. It overhung his breeches like a thatched roof. His face was older and more careworn than Gath remembered, but his forked silver beard jutted forth arrogantly in the sunlight streaming through the great windows.

Vork seemed to shrink down and down until only his eyes showed above his knees, like green pebbles.

Smoke swirled from the fires. The visitors paraded along the hall. They came to a halt before Thane Drakkor at the high table. He was freshly shaven and clear-eyed, as if the feasting had never happened, young and jubilant. Even the wind seemed to hush expectantly.

Thane Afgirk of Clam recited his honors and his ancestors. "Your foes are mine," he concluded.

"Safe haven and good sport, brother of Clam! You are welcome to this hall." Drakkor tipped mead into a drinking horn and passed it across joyously. He filled another for himself. The two thanes drained them simultaneously. Drakkor waved his guest to a stool and sat down, ignoring the other visitor.

Kragthong tugged his beard with two hands. Then he straightened and his great harsh voice boomed out. "I am Kragthong, Nordland ambassador to Dwanish, and I come in peace to this hall. Your enemies are mine. Thane."

"By law, all ambassadors are admitted." Without looking up, Drakkor carved a slab of meat and handed it to Afgirk.

Kragthong glanced around and then spoke out again, louder than ever. "I travel to Nintor on business, Thane."

Now Drakkor did look up, and he cocked a silver eyebrow. "What business?"

"In view of my advancing years, I have decided to resign my ambassadorship."

The assembled Garkians murmured excitedly. Drakkor rose slowly to his feet, eyes gleaming.

Kragthong's shoulders slumped. "And my thanedom, also!"

The flash of triumph on Drakkor's boyish face seemed to light up the hall. "Your successor as thane of Spithfrith?"

"My oldest son having declined the honor, I am minded to offer it to yourself, kinsman."

Whatever was said next was drowned out in the roar. Vork moaned and rose uncertainly to his knees.

"Good luck!" Gath whispered, glad he was not in York's breeches. Vork himself would be lucky if he managed to stay in them in the immediate future or sit in them afterward.

Then Gath thought that he would be more than happy to pay that price if he could be reunited with his dad.

Beaming, Drakkor filled a horn, passed it across to the ambassador, and filled another. He seemed about to offer a toast, and the excited tumult faded away. But the visitor had not raised the horn to his lips.

"I believe I have a younger son around here somewhere?"

"That is not impossible." Drakkor's eyes raked the hall, seeking that red hair.

Vork tottered to his feet and stumbled forward through the seated groundlings until he reached his father. He hung his head and waited. Kragthong looked him up and down, checking for damage.

Then he turned to his host. "A favor. Thane?"

"Name it!"

"I need borrow a whip for a couple of hours."

The onlookers bellowed with laughter as the two thanes drank. Then Drakkor vaulted over the table to embrace his former foe and the Garkians sprang to their feet to cheer in deafening clamor. The future of the world hung in the balance, Gath mused, and these ruffians were interested only in who ruled the middle of a barren little island.

As he was about to rise, someone tapped his shoulder. He looked around and discovered the contorted figure of Twist sitting in an awkward heap behind him, showing all his angled teeth. Everyone else was standing now, so that the two of them were alone in a forest of legs.

"There is a sorcerer in Raven Feast's crew," came the whisper.

"With a votary spell on him?"

The skald nodded, fog-gray eyes agleam. "Come." He accepted help to stand, and he leaned heavily on his crutch as he hobbled toward the door. At times he could move faster than a cat, but he would give himself away if he used power in the presence of the Covin.

In Dwanish Gath had been a giant. In Nordland he was a youth with promise. Unseen amid all the blond heads, he followed the cripple out. He had been feeling a little hurt that Kragthong had not inquired after his health as well as Vork's, but that might be a good thing under the circumstances, and perhaps a deliberate precaution, for the fat man was much shrewder than he liked to pretend.

Twist hurried toward his house with his wildly rocking gait, showing no desire to talk on the way. When he reached the cool dimness of the hovel, he flopped on his chair, panting. Gath went and sat on the chest wearily. Red-hot hammers thundered inside his head.

"You are being a reckless, suicidal idiot!" the cripple gasped.

"It's the jotunn in me."

"My brother was right—no one normally takes passengers to the moot. Skalds, or priests, but not boys."

"There's a law?"

"No, but you don't want to be attracting attention."

"I can row," Gath said grimly. Three days to Nintor—it would kill him if the wind failed.

"Fill the kettle." The wood-ash eyes followed Gath as he rose and moved to obey. "For what you did today, he may maim you for life. Pray he uses his belt, not his fists. If I tell him to, though, he will take you to the moot. He may even leave you wearing half your hide. But I need a reason. What use are you, stripling, tell me?"

Gath dropped the kettle and clutched his head to calm its echoes. "The stronger a sorcerer, the better his spells, right?" he said hoarsely.

"Is correct." The skald frowned suspiciously.

"And the Covin is enormously powerful."

"Is also correct."

"Much stronger than just you alone, Atheling Twist." Gath looked around blearily. "But you tell me there is a sorcerer spy among Raven Feast's crew. How are you able to see the votary spell on him?"

The skald's fog-pale eyes glittered. He drew in breath with a hiss. "I am being meant to see this?"

Gath felt a little better. "Maybe. Maybe there are decoy votaries—and also real votaries. Or else the Covin is strong enough to watch you from Hub and does not even need spies. Before you and your friends hold your secret moot, you will deal with the decoys? Then you will feel safe?"

Twist fingered his tangle of teeth. "This is not honest thinking like a jotunn's!" he said angrily. "This is sneaking!"

"I'm not all jotunn. You said yourself I know a lot about sorcery. I know dwarves, too. They think they're straightforward, but they're canny—a dwarf's first offer is never the final price."

That remark made the sorcerer look almost as nauseated as Gath felt. "I am sorry, Atheling. You just may be useful. But I want to know what you plan to do. I want to know what the Almighty's trap is. And don't try to lie to me."

Gath stooped to dip the kettle. His brain seemed to swell inside his head and he straightened up again. If he told everything he might be left behind anyway. But that did not really matter—his own feelings were not important. The snappish little sorcerer was being surprisingly scrupulous in not just pulling the thoughts out of his head regardless. All that really mattered was Dad's war.

"The trap is simple. Zinixo's pulled back legions everywhere on the excuse of fighting the goblins. It won't just be Urgaxox. Jotnar, gnomes, djinns—everyone's going to attack. War everywhere. He'll let the Impire bleed and let the wardens take the blame for not stopping it—ordinary people don't know there aren't any wardens anymore. You said yourself that only sorcerers know what's been really happening."

"Ah! And then?"

"Then he'll step forward as the Almighty, smash the invaders, and declare the wardens overthrown."

Twist tutted angrily. "Of course! If I wasn't a simpleminded jotunn I'd have seen that, too! But what do you think you can do about it? There is no way to stop the moot from launching a war, Atheling Gath! None! You must have heard the thanes who came here—they're spitting blood already. The only argument left now is who shall be leader."

"The rules have changed, Twist. The Protocol is ended. No warden of the north protects the raiders now. They may win to start with, but then they'll be massacred like the goblins."

The cripple thumped his crutch on the floor. "But I just told you! Nobody will listen to you or believe you. If they did believe you, they'd go anyway. They smell blood!"

Gath saw his victory and grinned in glee, headache forgotten. "I don't expect them to listen. Only the other moot, the secret moot. Forget the old songs, minstrel! They've trapped your mind in the old ways, and no matter who wins, those ways are gone forever! How many sorcerers will be there?"

Twist made the clumsy movement that seemed as if his hump was shrugging. "Fifty, perhaps."

"A longship crew exactly."

"What?" The fog-pale eyes widened. "But we stay home and guard the thorps! Always!"

"Not anymore! The rules have changed! This time the skalds go to battle—and we'd better get them there before the main army arrives!"

Twist's mouth hung open. Then he gulped. "Skalds? Priests? Women?"

"The lot!" Gath yelled. "All the sorcerers in Nordland. As many as we can get, anyway. The enemy is the Covin, remember? You want the jotnar to suffer what happened to the goblins? You're going to go to war, sonny. To help my dad."

 
Minstrel boy:
The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him,
His father's sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.

Thomas Moore, The Minstrel Boy

 

 

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