A Sterkarm Kiss (18 page)

Andrea quickly translated this for Windsor, and then said, “Grannams have broken faith with Elven, as well as with Sterkarms. Elven want peace. We thought to get it by making a peace between Grannams and Sterkarms. But if Grannams will no keep their word, then we must get peace by breaking Grannams.” She didn't feel happy about saying this, though somehow it had seemed more reasonable when Windsor had explained it in the tower. Now the words she spoke seemed to bounce about inside her head, as if she was a hollow pottery figure through which the words were being broadcast. How were the Grannams to be broken? In the tower it had seemed to mean something to do with hard bargaining and diplomatic pressure. Now she wasn't sure.

“Mammy?” Per said, and then made his way around the bed to her. People shuffled out of his way. Reaching his mother, he knelt and bowed his head toward her lap. “I mun gan and see what Elven will show me. Forgive me.”

She bent down and kissed his head. “There be nowt to forgive. Tha mun gan. I'll watch thy daddy. Bring me back ten Grannam heads.”

He looked up at her. “I will.” He rose and made for the door, looking and beckoning for Sweet Milk. “Come one, come all. Let's see what Elven can show us.”

14

16th Side: So Braw a Man

Per and Sweet Milk crouched to examine the hole at the base of the dry-stone wall. The shell, or bomb, or missile, or whatever it was called—Andrea really didn't know—had struck at the wall's base, digging into the earth and partially undermining it. Some stones had been smashed, some cracked and chipped, some displaced. Others were falling into the hole. The wall was still standing, but toppling.

The Sterkarms looked at each other, awe on their faces. To achieve a similar result they would have needed heavy, cumbersome cannon, with teams of horses to drag them into position, and more horse teams and carts to bring up the barrels of gunpowder and the heavy iron balls. In the Sterkarms' hilly, broken, almost trackless country, where everything was carried on the backs of pack ponies, this wasn't possible. Indeed, if the kings of England and Scotland had been able to drag cannon over the hills to ding down their towers, their homes would have been rubble long before.

But they had just watched one Elf-Man hold something like a tube on his shoulder and, with a shocking, cracking boom, fire from it a small object that had dug a hole in the earth and all but brought down a wall.

The man who had fired the missile was named Patterson: a thick-set man with a red face that seemed made of slabs of meat. His dark hair was shaved close to his skull, its dark shadow matching the shadow around his jaws. With a smile he said to Andrea, “Another shot and I'd have that wall down.” His manner was affable. How could he, she thought, be affable and yet be willing to do what he was doing?

She told the Sterkarms what he'd said. Per sprang upright, his face alight with enthusiasm. Her heart ached to see his eagerness.

Patterson swung around and pointed up the hill to the tower. “That'd take longer. It's solid stone, well built. But a couple of us—give us an hour—we could take that gatehouse out.”

Andrea, feeling like a machine, listlessly translated what he'd said while asking herself how she could have been so stupid. Accurate maps and walkie-talkies! What other help would Windsor offer against the Grannams except weaponry? Now, surrounded by excited Sterkarms, she could hardly refuse to translate.

Per was grinning, his eyes shining. With the Elves' help revenge for his father was a sure thing. Sweet Milk's expression, as ever, was harder to read. He stood by, his arms folded. Windsor had his hands in his pockets, watching them all like an indulgent father who was giving everyone a treat.

“Show us grenates!” Per said, and they walked off together, the Sterkarms and the Elf-Men, walking along the side of Bedes Water.

A small sheepfold had been built, of dry-stone walls, at a distance from the river. In one corner of the fold, withy hurdles had penned a sheep. It wasn't the fat, white, woolly thing that the 21st siders would have called a sheep but a small, skinny creature, about the size of a middling dog, covered in long, straight strands of something more like hair than wool, and blackish brown in color. On its head was a starburst of four curving horns, but it might have been a ram or a ewe. Both sexes had horns. Being a far wilder and even more nervous animal than its 21st-century counterpart, it was already turning, twitching, and bawling inside its tight pen.

“Olla rigti,
“Patterson said. “Stand back a bit. Bit more.” Stooping, he took a grenade from a box at his feet. Twisting out the pin, he lobbed it toward the sheep.

Andrea, sick and almost in tears, turned her back and looked up at the tower on its crag. She knew they would listen to nothing she said, so there was little point in wasting her breath.

There was an explosion—not as loud as she'd expected, though she still jumped—and the sheep screamed. The Sterkarms—Per too—cheered. The sheep bawled on and on, a horrible sound that Andrea would never have guessed could go on so long.

“There's hundreds of razors inside,” Patterson said to her in his affable way. “You want to make strawberry Jell-O? Chuck one into a crowd.” He laughed at her face.

Per came to her, his face bright and alive.
“Vah sayer han
?”—What says he?

As best she could, with the sheep screaming, she told him. They would have no idea of what Jell-O was, so she said, “It will cut them into ribbons.”

Sweet Milk, who had been watching her, left her side suddenly. A moment later the sheep was silent. She turned to see Sweet Milk stepping over the fold's wall, holding a bloodied knife that he wiped on the grass. While the others enthused over the sheep's injuries, he had cut its throat, to spare it further suffering. In a grim sort of way, Sweet Milk was a kind man. As she watched, he straightened and beckoned to some men—16th siders—who came forward eagerly, clambering into the fold. It seemed they'd been promised what was left of the sheep. If it was any use to them, full of shrapnel.

Patterson, so affable and jolly, was still standing behind her, laughing and saying, “You ain't seen nothing yet! Nowt!”

Turning to him, tears in her eyes, Andrea snapped, “It'll be people next, not sheep! Children!”

He stared at her, still smiling, but raising his brows in surprise.

“How can you bear to do what you're doing?” Andrea said.

There were a few sniggers from the other 21st men—possibly nervous sniggers, possibly not. Then Windsor said, “Oh, never mind our Andrea. She's a vegetarian.”

That made the 21st siders laugh outright. Andrea turned away, furious.

The show was over and everyone, Elves and Sterkarms together, wandered back toward the tower. Andrea didn't follow but stood looking toward the moorland hills. Sweet Milk was still talking to the men butchering the sheep. She'd walk back with Sweet Milk, she thought. He was a big, calm man. There was nothing, he made you feel, that he couldn't cope with. And no one would dare to lightly accuse
him
of vegetarianism.

Per wanted to run, jump walls, punch things. He had been fearful that he couldn't fill his father's place, fearful that he would not prove to be quick enough, cunning enough, bold enough, to take revenge from the Grannams for his father's murder. But with these Elf-Weapons! His success was certain. The Grannams would go in fear of him. They would hang their heads and humbly apologize for his father's death—and they would mean it, because the revenge it had brought on them would be so terrible.

He thought of the Elf-May and looked around for her. He no longer felt the sick pang of guilt stirred by the thought that he'd been with her when his father had been killed. The certainty and totality of his revenge made him full of energy, almost gleeful. Seeing Andrea still standing near the sheepfold, he turned and ran back toward her. As he came nearer, he saw that she seemed miserable and might even be crying. Running up to her, he hugged her boisterously, almost knocking her over, pressing her head into his shoulder and rubbing her back. “Ah, be no feared, wee fowl! Grannams shall no hurt thee—they'll no come nigh thee! I shall fetch thee ten Grannam heads of thine own!”

He was dismayed when she started to cry in earnest, pushing him away, spluttering, screwing up her face. “Killed!” was the only word he could understand.

“Tha shalt no be killed! My word on it!”

“Not me! Not me! People will be killed! Lots of people! Children!”

Sweet Milk had come over to them, and Per looked at him to see if he could make sense of it, but Sweet Milk only shrugged. “Daftie!” Per said to Andrea. “Tha canst no fight a battle without killing folk.”

Andrea looked up at him. “Why fight? Why kill anyone?”

He frowned. “They killed my daddy.” He admired her pretty face: the big, clear gray eyes; the brown hair stuck to her tears. “Come on now.” Offering her his hand, he led her over the rough meadow toward the tower on its hill. She went with him, and after a few paces, he let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulders. She didn't pull away. She was too busy talking.

“Killing will gan on and on,” she said. “It will solve nothing. It never ends. There be no point to it!”

“Dost say so?” Per said. His tone made Sweet Milk, who was walking beside them, glance sideways at him. The expression on Per's face as he looked down at the Elf-May made Sweet Milk smile, and then lengthen his stride so that he outpaced them and left them behind. He felt something of a pang as he realized that the Elf-May was not going to be his, but unless he was prepared to fall out with his foster son and adopted family, there was nothing to be done about that.

“Revenge has never worked—” Andrea was saying as Per saw that Sweet Milk had put a good distance between them and him and wasn't looking back. The rest of the party was far ahead, climbing the path to the tower—and if there were shepherds and herd girls about, he didn't care about them.

“They kill one of thine, and thou kills one of theirs, and it just goes on and—”

Per pulled her backward, jerking her to a halt, and kissed her.

She pushed him away, though she couldn't get out of his hold, and their mouths parted with some difficulty. “What be this?”

He made no answer but kissed her again. Why talk? She hadn't made any fuss about meeting him when he'd come straight from his wife's bed.

Andrea grappled with him again, pulling her head back, though he still held her. She twisted her head, trying to see if the men were still by the sheepfold. “I was
talking
.”

“There be gey better things than talking.”

“But thy father—the wake—”

“Oh, Entraya—let's frig.” He could remember his father's face all too clearly, peering through its shroud, shrunken and yellowish, as if carved from old tallow. The staring coins on his eyes, and the flies landing on his lips. One day he, too, would be like that—but perhaps there would be no one to wake him, and his body would lie on a hillside, torn by crows and foxes. “Let's frig while we be living.”

Looking into his face, she remembered Toorkild, and the smell in the room where the body lay. “In thy bower, then.”

Per's bower was in the upper, wooden story of one of the tower's outbuildings. He had pulled the ladder up after them, locked the door, and closed the shutters.

In the middle of the planking floor was a trapdoor giving access to the store below; above were low beams—low enough to crack your head painfully if you were used to the height of 21st rooms—and a thick heather thatch.

There was almost no furniture. A wooden bed, with a thick straw mattress and a feather-filled quilt. A couple of wooden storage chests, and some wooden pegs on the wall, and that was all. Per's longbow and fishing rod lay in one corner. From the pegs hung his quiver, filled with arrows and some snares. His clothes were on the floor.

The quilt was on the floor now, too, flung off because they were too hot. They had slapped and scratched each other, laughed, pounded, and almost shaken the joints of the old bed apart. They lay quiet, Per on top of Andrea, his head resting on her shoulder. She thought he was sleeping. Though unable to move for his weight, she was happy to lie there, listening to the stealthy movement of some small creature—a bird or a mouse—in the thatch above, and breathing in the strong, sharp smell of his sweat and the summery, musty smell of old hay from the mattress beneath them. She was, for the moment, content. This was what she'd come back to the 16th for.

With a groan Per raised himself and cast himself down beside her. She raised herself on her elbow and looked him over admiringly, from his suntanned neck and brown, muscled arms, down from his wide shoulders to his white, flat belly. His dark cock and balls nestled among wiry brown hair at the intersection of his long legs. He punched the bed, and it creaked, and a great gust of hay scent rose around them. Andrea pushed her hand through his hair and kissed him. He grimaced, his fists clenched, and he drew a long, hissing breath. “Dead and gone!” he said.

Andrea hugged him tightly, with arms and legs. “I be sad for it, sad for it.” She held him while he cried, sobbed, groaned, punched the bed and the headboard.

“Gone—and they killed him! Murdered him! And they are nothing—nothing!”

After a long time he was quieter. She leaned from the bed and dragged the quilt from the floor to cover them. “Per, sweetheart—when tha kills a Grannam, they feel as thou feels now.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, frowning.

“I ken tha no wants to hear that,” she said. “But it be true. They hate Sterkarms, because Sterkarms have hurt them. The Sterkarms hate Grannams because Grannams have hurt
them.
That be all that ‘taking revenge' does. It makes grief, and hatred, and anger. You kill them, they kill you. Everybody suffers, everybody loses—even bairns not born yet. Tha canst see that, no?”

He turned on his back and looked up at her—at her lovely, full face and clear gray eyes, at the brown hair falling over her plump, sleek shoulders, at the white and pink curves of her full, hanging breasts. “Aye,” he said. Did she think he was a fool?

“Nobody can ever win a feud.”

“Kill them all, tha canst.”

“But—even if that were a good thing—tha canst no kill 'em all, ever.”

“With Elf-Weapons tha canst.”

“Per, harken to me.” Andrea leaned over him, her warm breasts on his chest, her hair falling over him. “Be so kind, be so good, harken to me. I can no bear it—all killing, all grief—thy mammy and all women who'll mourn like her. All sons like thee. All bairns left helpless with nobody to care for 'em—poor lonely bairns like Sweet Milk was.” He was startled that she knew so much about Sweet Milk. “I ken,” she said. “I be an Elf. Be so kind, Per—stop it. Stop it here and now. Be man more braw than all rest—be man braw enough to say, ‘I'll no take revenge. I'll make peace.'”

“Make peace with Grannams?” Per said, shoving her aside as he sat. “We made peace with Grannams, honey. My daddy be dead because we made peace with Grannams.”