A Mankind Witch (46 page)

"Are you ready?" said Cair calmly, inspecting the rapier, trying its balance.

"You might as well wait for the death," said Vortenbras to the guard commander, but the man had already scurried away.

As Cair raised his blade in salute, the cloud tore open and the light of a full moon spilled down on them. Vortenbras wasted no time in such niceties as a salute. He simply swung. It was the kind of blow that could have severed a spine—if it had hit. It did not.

Cair had moved. And lunged and slashed in.

"First blood to the outlander!" exclaimed a coastal landholder.

"He is not an outlander," said Signy. "He is Jarl Cair of Telemark. He is now of our land. He is mine," she said fiercely, as the two circled. "I will bury him with honor. I will climb onto his pyre with him."

"I hope that's planned for the far future, Princess Signy," said Erik comfortingly, as the fighters whirled and sought advantage. "He's got the edge on Vortenbras, you know, Princess. See, Manfred. That's the Lozza double riposte."

Looking at Signy, Manfred realized that she'd expected Cair to die, and die quickly. He saw how the blood was draining from her cheeks, and she bit her knuckles as she realized that, as much of a legend as Vortenbras might be, there was always someone as deadly. Before, she'd had a grim certainty. Now she knew the terror of hope. Cair's metal bird moved on her shoulder, half-opening its iron wings. She petted it instinctively.

Fear.

Cair realized that something was very wrong. He felt fear. Bowel-melting terror, in fact. His mouth was dry. He prickled with cold sweat.

This was . . . wrong. He'd never been afraid in a fight before. Before it started, yes. That was perfectly normal. But once combat was joined it melted away from him. Now . . . he was terrified, terrified enough to make his sword tip waver.

As he circled, looking for an opening—and wishing he could turn and run—a part of his mind said, If you can make metal birds fly, if Signy can make gardens blossom and trees shrink, this bastard can also use magic against you. He can make you afraid. And with that, he began chanting to himself in Latin. He used the only words that would come to him. And in the background he heard the monks and knights singing, echoing somehow the silent words his lips were forming " . . . I shall fear no evil, thou art with me . . ."

Like the ebbing tide, the fear receded. Vortenbras swung wildly at him again. There was no skill in the big Norseman's stroke. Just brute force. Now, facing him coolly, Cair sidestepped it with ease. A few moments back it might have killed him. But without the fear to aid him, Vortenbras was no swordsman. Now Cair knew with a clear certainty: fear was the key. If Vortenbras was able to turn his foes' bowels to water then he didn't need skill. No wonder the Norse were terrified of him. He made them scared, magically. Somehow he created fear until rationality drained away from his foes and panic set in. And panicked men were easy to kill.

Well, now that Cair had worked it out, it was Vortenbras's turn to feel terror. Cair knew that there was no point in prolonging the agony. Lunging and twisting, he slashed the Norse king across the wrist, severing tendons. Vortenbras dropped the sword.

As Cair came in for the coup de grâce, Vortenbras threw himself sideways and, with a squeal, grabbed the arm-ring. Vortenbras was now back inside the
waerd
line with it, and began to heal.

With a desperate lunge, Cair knocked the arm-ring out of Vortenbras's hand again. It rolled back next to the
waerd
stone again.

"Pick it up, Cair," screamed Signy. "Don't let him take it again . . ." and her voice trailed off.

Cair did so, snatching it up and pushing it onto his arm. Inexorably, he advanced on Vortenbras. "It ends here," he said grimly. "I am not afraid, Vortenbras. You've failed. You are going to die."

But what had shocked Signy into silence was that her half-brother's image had gone hazy, and was shifting, changing. Clothing split and tore and icy mist hissed off the white-furred beast that now stood before Cair. It stood at least fifteen foot high. One paw hung limp, but something this size did not need both. It also had a mouth full of long white teeth—a mouth now open in a roar.

"Grendel!" said a shocked voice in the sudden silence after that roar.

Mouth open, the grendel charged down on Cair.

Cair used to entertain himself on shipboard by throwing knives at a target. He seldom missed.

He put Signy's arsenic-laden dagger right into the back of the Vortenbras-grendel's throat. And, as the grendel caught him, he rammed Erik's sword home into its belly, up into its heart. Hard.

The last thing he heard was Signy screaming.

The Norse captain looked at the dogsleds, and the bombards . . . and the woman who was beckoning to him. He decided that reason might be the better part of valor—his troops had largely deserted him, running to watch the fight at the temple.

"Good evening." She smiled dazzlingly at him from her nest of furs. "We've come about this missing arm-ring . . ." she said in passable Norse.

"Oh. It's been found, milady," said the Norseman, relieved.

"Excellent!" Francesca buried her second spare copy deeper into the furs. She gave the Norseman the benefit of her best smile. "Then, if you could be so kind as to direct us to some place where we can get warm, and inform Prince Manfred of Brittany that Francesca is here. Emperor Charles Fredrik has been worried about him."

The smile nearly robbed the warrior of speech, which, in Francesca's opinion, was as it should be. "Uh. Certainly, milady. He's . . . he's at the temple right now. I'll go directly . . ."

She put a gloved hand on his arm. "No. It will wait . . . at least until I am somewhere warmer."

If the thing had been found and Manfred was—apparently—intact, there seemed little point in further intervention. Certainly not tonight, in the cold.

"What's that noise?" she asked, as the air was suddenly filled with a sort of clashing drumming.

"It's a celebration, milady."

When Erik saw Cair go into that death clinch, his heart had fallen to his boots. In Vinland he'd seen a dying grizzly take a man into its embrace once. And this was much bigger than a grizzly bear.

He and several others—Manfred, Szpak, and Signy—and a metal bird rushed forward as the grendel fell, claws still tearing into Cair, who was underneath.

With a wail of despair, Signy flung herself onto her grendel half-brother and hauled. Manfred added his considerable strength, pulling it over. And Erik and Szpak pulled the arms apart.

Cair had made sure and doubly sure that it was dead. It was probably dead before he'd lunged up through the belly and into its heart, and had been trapped in that death hug for his pains. That didn't stop the metal bird from pecking the grendel's eyes out. Cair's ragged cotte was shredded—Erik saw the white of splintered bone in among the blood-streaming rags.

Weeping, Signy pulled her man free. "You can't die! You can't!" she gasped, holding on to him.

She pressed her head to his breast and clung, her golden hair spread across his bloody cotte.

All was still, but for her sobbing. The Norsemen stood respectful, silent.

The silence endured.

And then Cair's arm came up and around her.

And Erik saw that a golden circle surrounded his upper arm, and that the terrible gashes on it were already healing.

The arm-ring made all things whole . . .

The rheumy-eyed priest of Odin muttered, "Sacrilege." But he said it very very quietly.

Signy lifted Cair. You wouldn't have thought such a slight thing would have had the strength, but perhaps she drew it from her will. That was large enough.

She got him to his feet.

And as he stood, swaying, still held upright by her, the watching Norsemen began hammering the pommels of their swords on their shields, cheering wildly.

Cair raised his free arm. It was healed, and the arm-ring gleamed against the dark flesh. The Norsemen stilled.

He cleared his throat. "Do you not kneel before your new queen?" he asked loudly.

There was a stunned silence from the huge crowd. "I will challenge to single combat any man who doesn't," he said coolly.

And throughout the
Vé
, and into the field beyond, warriors knelt.

Fight someone who just killed a grendel, single-handed . . . and lived?

I don't think so, even if he is an outlander with a thrall brand.

"Long live the queen," said Manfred, with a grin to Erik and Szpak. "You wouldn't have a drink about you, Juzef? Even that cabbage liquor would do."

The two knights manhandled Bakrauf toward Kingshall. Behind her she heard the cheering.

He was dead, then. Grendel would not free his mother.

Spittle and blood were all she needed to call her hunt. She would extract such revenge on the stinking little
Alfarblot
 . . . She bit her cheek and spat, calling.

The hunt came. From a tumble of ravens and crows the children of darkness took form. Tonight of all nights they were easy to summon. This was the longest night. The night when even the dead walk.

As the two knights yelled and dropped her, Bakrauf realized that the hags and sylphs and creatures of darkness had come for her.

Not to carry her away to safety, to her own place, but to extract their awful revenge for her entrapment.

It was not quite
Joulu
midnight yet.

Her own shrieks were lost in the roar of adulation for the new queen.

And the knights' attempt to come to her rescue was thwarted by a
draug
, blundering toward them out of the darkness. They turned to defend themselves as the thing that had been King Olaf lurched toward them, dripping. It was somehow managing to laugh with that ruined face.

On this the longest night, when
draugar
and
disir
walk . . . He was only dripping his way to his ship mound, where he wished to rest, when her spells were broken. He felt them fall and tear from the very fabric of the earth that he was part of. When the hunt came . . . he was ready.

As he retreated from bright swords and cold iron—that could not hurt him anymore—he knew what passes for satisfaction among the dead. His daughter would rule now, which was as it should be. Frightening a couple of heathen knights from rescuing the troll-wife who had murdered him and usurped his throne for her monster son was a pleasant way to ensure his little Signy's rule. And Odin himself would have appreciated the irony of it all.

He could rest now, with honor, in his ship mound. The hunt would shred her into gobbets and scatter them across the nine worlds.

The golden circle lay on the altar stone as if it had never been removed. The old high priest picked it up, muttering. But oaths must be sworn. And
Joulu
waited for no man or new queen. He slipped the arm-ring over his bony elbow. "Let Odin bear witness," he said, solemnly. "To oaths sworn on this, his symbol, the oath-ring of Odin and Telemark." He scowled. She'd insisted that he put that last word in. She claimed the ring
was
Telemark. "The oaths will absolutely bind you and yours. Step forward those of you would swear on the holy symbol."

The new queen did. She still wore ragged and blood-stained clothes. Men's breeches! But neither the priest nor the Norse nobility would have dreamed of letting any sign of disapproval show. That new jarl—best never to think of him as a thrall again—had already made it painfully clear that he would personally deal with even the faintest sign of disrespect.

But the oddest thing was that, despite her clothes and having her hair wild and undressed, like some great golden-blond halo from one of these heathen Christian ikons, she looked like a queen. She did not need that watchful-eyed grendel killer of hers standing watchfully behind her to get respect. Already some of the Norse ladies were surreptitiously unpinning their hair. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And suddenly a lot of women who had followed the false Queen Albruna's lead in their comments and manner to her stepdaughter wanted to do a bit of flattery really, really badly.

It didn't seem that she'd even noticed. But then, the true ruler need not. Toad-eaters are what those of lesser legitimacy need.

Her imperial counterpart's gear was equally shabby. But he walked like a prince, too, even if he was not wearing the armor of his fellows. He wore honor instead, and it shone brighter.

The oath was sworn.

And at the end of it, the queen turned to her outlander ex-thrall jarl . . . and laughed.

He looked as if he'd bitten one of those foreign spices. A peppercorn.

Many other oaths were sworn.

But there was no blood-eagle sacrifice at the end of it.

The old priest thought rulers should stay out of religion.

The crowds were dissipating, heading toward the warmth of the feasting hall. Groups of Norsemen, still stunned with the knowledge that they had been there, walked, talking in low voices. They had actually seen what the skalds would sing of across the Norse kingdoms. And they had really been there to see it . . . Already the stories were beginning to grow, by the snatches that Erik overheard.

Manfred took a deep pull of the flask Szpak had sent someone to procure, as they joined the drift back to Kingshall. "That's vile," he said cheerfully to the Polish Ritter. "Well, we're done. Sweden sorted out. Arm-ring found, treaty ratified. Now I can get back to Francesca in Copenhagen. I know she'll have a good hundred young Danish second sons ready to become confrere knights. You can trust Francesca to have it all wrapped up."

"She's here," said Juzef. "She arrived while all the excitement was going on, along with a load of Danes and Vinlanders. I heard about it from one of my men who got the news from one of the Norsemen."