A Mankind Witch (37 page)

"The admiral is safe this time. King Hjorda, milady. The ruler of Rogaland. Or should I say the ex-ruler. He won't make the mistake of raiding a Vinlander fleet again," said the man grimly. "He thought he'd be safe until springtime when he and his rats would have gone into hiding and laughed at us from the mountaintops, but we stole a march on him."

"He . . . still . . . got . . . away with . . . the gold," panted the admiral.

Francesca raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought you couldn't take it with you, Admiral?" she said archly . . . to no one. The admiral had sat down, grasping a stone bench like a drowning man clinging to a spar.

"He is a little plump for this sort of exercise, milady," said the Vinlander cheerfully. "And I fear that I may have to learn how to cope with having only one arm."

She laughed. "I'll spare it, provided you don't take too many liberties with it. Manfred of Brittany has a habit of removing undesirable arms," she said. "Now tell me about the gold. A fascinating subject, gold." It was indeed. Gold, not steel, won or lost wars, she'd concluded. Steel decided battles; gold, wars.

"There's not much to tell. Two of the vessels had considerable gold aboard. We recovered—in large part—the rest of our cargoes, freed a goodly number of slaves. The gold, alas, appears to have been spent. Old Hjorda had bought himself yet another bride in the desperate hope of an heir. His third try, poor lasses."

"How odd it is that when noblemen sell their daughters' virtue outright, it is an honorable thing, but should a girl venture on temporary rental, it is prostitution," commented Francesca dryly. "Was the woman relieved to be a widow? I had heard that he was a less than pleasant monarch."

"She hadn't even been delivered . . ." He made a face. "Makes her sound like a bale of fleeces doesn't it? Anyway, several of my fellow captains were all set on taking the raid to Telemark to reclaim the money. But the Danes wouldn't budge."

"Wise of them," said Francesca. "Firstly, the Emperor would not have been pleased. Secondly, where would you raid? Their king's seat is far inland, for just that reason."

He looked startled. Plainly he hadn't expected a pragmatic and well-informed reply. But he took it in his stride. "And Vortenbras is a tougher nut to crack, milady."

She nodded. "So tell me, has the map been rearranged? Are the Vinlanders and Danes attempting to hold Stavanger at least?"

"They'd have liked to. But it appears that they're wary about it. The enclaves at Oslofiord and Trondheim appear to have provided a few bloody lessons."

"So Rogaland is now a kingless state? A place without a ruler?"

He shrugged. "It could be described like that."

"And that," she said, detaching her arm from his, "could be even worse for shipping and the region. Now, if you will excuse me," she twinkled at him, "a little more really brisk exercise is called for."

Later she took up the issue of Rogaland with the earl of Fyn, a far more intelligent and able man than the admiral.

"My dear Francesca," he said consideringly, "I must tell you that military adventurism is seldom as well-paying as it might appear. The Norse do have queens ruling, from time to time, but you'd find it even colder and less cultured than Copenhagen."

She rapped him over the knuckles with her fan. "Silly man. I have no intention of being queen—at least, not of some howling wilderness. As for military adventurism:
I
know that, and
you
know that. But do others who might blunder in know it? A power vacuum is a dangerous place."

"Relax, m'dear," he said, cheerfully. "The jarls are still there, even if Hjorda has gone. His own claim to the throne was tenuous, which was another reason he wanted to marry this girl. Her maternal line are among the strongest claimants. And, on the basis of precedent, his betrothed wife-to-be could be enthroned anyway. It won't be the first time a woman has been widowed before she's been wedded."

"I have gathered corpses make for quite complaisant husbands," she said, removing his hand. He was a great source of information, but a terrible old lecher. Fortunately, he could take no for an answer, at least temporarily.

That evening she composed a letter to the Emperor that contained several nuggets of valuable and potentially dangerous knowledge. She'd tried to gather information about the late Hjorda's betrothed. But information on Princess Signy of Telemark was scant. Apparently she was a slight girl, quiet, reserved, and very much under the spell of her powerful step-mother. Old to marry among the Norse. At twenty-four she was nearly on the shelf.

Here, on this side of the black stone doorway and down the long passage they weren't—strictly speaking—prisoners, or slaves. The captivity in Aurvagar was a little more subtle, if far more effective. They were free to leave at any time. The black dwarf had cheerfully showed them the open doorway to the cave chamber he'd escorted them to. "Feel free to pass through," he'd said with a giggle, pointing at the landscape outside that doorway.

And then he'd left them. By the time they looked around he was gone.

Somewhere of course must be the entryway that the sniggering black dwarf had showed them through, but none of them had been able to find it. You could hear the sounds of industry: hammering and clanking. But the labyrinthine passages never led to it, just back to this solitary cave room. Company—like food and drink—was remarkably scarce. The volcanic landscape outside the door showed no sign that anything had—or ever could have—lived out there.

Perhaps the dwarves liked an endless aspect of ash and glassy black rock. Erik was sure that he didn't. "We shouldn't have let them take the horses," he said.

"How could we have stopped them? And what would we have fed the horses on?" asked Manfred. "They seemed friendly enough."

He was not referring to horses.

"As friendly as someone who is in total control can afford to be," said Cair, sitting cross-legged against the wall. "I suppose they're waiting for us to ask for help. There will be a price, of course."

Erik was sure that the corsair admiral was right. And if childhood stories were to be believed, the price would be high . . . and tricky. "They have a reputation," he said in Frankish, "of playing games. Of deceptions."

"What else can we do but to play along?" said Cair.

"Force," said Manfred, looking around in a fashion which indicated that he thought they were being spied on.

Signy snorted and looked at him scornfully. But she said nothing. Just looked down at her feet again.

"Um. I gather that's really not a good idea," said Manfred, looking chastened. Or, thought Erik, doing his best to.

"I don't think it would be wise," said Erik, carefully reverting to Norse. "We really wouldn't want to fight with them. We'd do better to bargain for our freedom."

"Very much wiser," said the black dwarf, grinning and leaning against the wall—where he definitely hadn't been a moment ago. "Come and talk to the others." He led them out along the same passage that they'd tried at least five times before and through into a smithy. There were two other dwarves at work there. One, thought Erik, looked like the dwarf who had led them into this trap in the first place.

"Still here?" he asked, looking up from his engraving. "I thought you were just passing through. Seems like they've got a bit delayed eh, Sjárr?"

The other dwarf slipped a shimmering sword into an annealing bath with a hiss that almost, but not quite, hid his guffaw.

"We seem to have got a little lost. We could use some assistance," said Manfred evenly.

The dwarves looked at each other and chortled. Erik might have been tempted into something premature and foolish if it hadn't been for the way the dwarf still held that hammer. You do not pick fights with a blacksmith, not even a small one, if he uses a hammer that size, one-handed. "Really? And how would you pay for such assistance? We do not provide anything for nothing. And we do not accept payment in promises," said one of the three.

This
, thought Erik,
is where things get difficult
. He and Manfred had not a brass farthing between them. He doubted that the others did either. Mind you, you never could tell with Cair Aidin. "You seem to have already relieved us of our horses," he said mildly.

"Your horses?" The dwarf grinned. "You can have them back—if you pay for their feed. Food is pricy around here."

"And horses eat such a lot," said one of the others with mock sympathy. "Now, what skills do you have to offer us? Or money or rare gems or precious metals will do."

"All I have are these," said Signy, holding something out. "I offer them for free passage to safety for my man here."

Cair saw how Signy held out the narrow bands of silver. So: he was still "her man," and she was offering her only jewelry to free him. He recognized them as the bracelets she'd always worn. "They are supposed to be protective and magical."

One of the dwarves took the broken silver bracelets into a calloused hand. "Our work," he said professionally. "But it has been broken." He sounded surprised by that. He handed it on to the one who had been engraving. "Here, Fjalarr. What do you think?"

That dwarf held it up to the light. And then placed it into a solution in a glass beaker. Cair noticed the glassware. His eyes had already roamed across most of the equipment in this room. They were master metalworkers; that he could tell. But the glasswork looked of poor quality—greenish and barely translucent. A fine tracery of bubbles formed about the silver. The two dwarves shook their heads in unison. "Not worth much anymore, halfling," said the one called Fjalarr. "The runes are rubbed out, most of the enslavement and the leeching spells are gone. It would cost more to fix again than they're worth."

He hauled it out of the liquid with a pair of forceps, shook it off, dipped it in what Cair decided was probably water, and tossed it back to her. She fumbled the catch. The dwarves laughed, setting Cair's teeth on edge. Now that he understood the problem of her long-sightedness . . .

"We'll give you their value in silver," said Sjárr. "The work is worthless now. We'll pay to know how you got free of them, though. They were supposed to never come off."

"And what did you do to the runes?" said the third dwarf, the one with the long nose.

Signy had the honor of a long line of Norse jarls and kings, and, regrettably, the business sense of a rabbit, decided Cair, as she answered: "I broke them on the rowan-wood cage. And I tried to cut through the wood with them."

The dwarves nodded. "Ah. That stuff is poison to your kind. We never thought that you'd go near it."

It might be superstition, thought Cair, but at least she could have sold it! What else was superstition for?

"And you?" said the dwarves to Manfred. "Going to offer us an ox, are you? Like yourself, hee, hee, hee."

Cair could not help but appreciate the irony of it. Manfred of Brittany was trapped in the same way that he had been. If he were to give them any indication of his true worth, they'd keep him very securely indeed. Or . . . sell him to a worse enemy. "I have my sword. I'm a good armsman," said Manfred. "So is Erik."

"We've no use for those. Who would fight with us?" said the fourth dwarf, dismissing this out of hand.

"I am a maker of glassware," said Cair. He had blown glass before out of curiosity, when visiting a glassworks. It hadn't been that successful, but he could do at least as well as whoever made that lopsided bowl. It also had their interest.

"A valuable trade," said the engraver, Fjalarr, approvingly. That was good. "We'll have to make your challenge harder." That sounded bad.

"Challenge?" asked Cair cautiously.

"It's tradition," explained Fjalarr. "We agree to cancel your debts and let you go, if you succeed at a task we appoint you to. An interesting task. Draining a lake or something."

"Perhaps with a thimble?" enquired Cair, who felt he was getting to understand the dwarves. He'd also picked up on the fact that they were prisoners.

"Yes," said Sjárr "That's one we've had before."

"I'll take it," said Cair eagerly.

"Ah. No, we'll think of something else this time," said the engraver, thoughtfully. "We'll show you to your jobs in the meanwhile. And you, halfling, what can you do for us? You Alfar do fine work, if you can be brought to it, although we don't like to admit that anyone does anything as good as us. Weaving perhaps? You like living materials, usually. Not good with metals."

She stamped her foot. "No. I am tired of being called 'Alfar' and I don't weave, spin, embroider, or anything like that."

This amused the dwarves even more. "But you are Alfar, or at least a half-blood," said Fjalarr. "Now, come with us." It was distinctly an order.

Cair was led to a small cave that had a furnace and various tools. "The last glassworker we had was a kobold. He wasn't very good. He was also too ambitious in his challenge. Out-eating Eldr . . . He burst." The two dwarves who had accompanied him roared with laughter.

Cair looked at the tools, the furnace, the materials. He was hard-pressed not to giggle himself. The one thing he wasn't seeing was a blowpipe.

"To make good glassware I will need certain other things," he said calmly. "A short iron pipe for starters."

"Make yourself one. The ironworks are through there." Vitr, the long-nosed dwarf, pointed.

Cair looked shocked. "I'm a glassworker. I can't work with iron." He'd probably be more comfortable with the stuff than glass, the truth be told. But he had a feeling that the truth might just serve him badly.

"We have something suited to your talents, half-blood." The shortest, and plainly oldest of the dwarves was mocking, but there was just a trace of wariness in his voice, in the way he looked at her, as he led her down the passages. He'd said least in their foundry room, but þekkr was plainly the senior dwarf, along with Fjalarr—the dwarf who had brought them through the serpent wall. (She recognized it. Perhaps the Icelander also had. To her thrall and Manfred it had just been rock, not a monster.)