The Sterkarm Handshake (31 page)

They were silent, staring at her, because they didn't understand. At least they were listening.

“I was thinking about this all last night,” she said. “Toorkild, FUP are no interested in your cattle. Oh, they'll take them. They will take everything you have, believe me. But they were just trading you wee white pills for cattle to soften you up—little white pills are worth
nothing
to them,
nothing
. They were taking your cattle, Toorkild, and paying you in dead leaves and ash.”

That was how the Elves always paid mortals in stories, when they wished to trick them—in trash.

“They want your land, Toorkild. They want to dig up your hills for coal and gold. They want your seas for fish. They'll catch more fish in a month than you could in a year. They'll empty seas. They want to dig up floor of ocean.”

There was a long, long silence. The excitement had gone from the Sterkarms' faces. They were stricken. Per came from behind his father to stand beside him, looking at him as if he hoped that Toorkild knew better how to deal with this than he did.

Isobel came to stand beside her husband and son. “Will they bring sky down on our heads?”

Dig up the hills? Dig up the ocean floor? It would be the End of the World, when the stars fall into the sea, the Giants wake and the earth is devoured in flame.

“Sea will run away,” Ingram said.

“Where will we live?” Isobel asked. “Where will cows graze if they dig up hills?”

Toorkild said, “And tha tells us no to fight?”

“You can no win, Toorkild. You can no win.” Her voice was fading, growing exhausted. “You have to give in.”

The outcry came from all sides, deafening. “Give in!” Gobby and Sweet Milk jumped to their feet. Old men got to theirs. “Give in!”

The noise, the anger, were such that both Joe and Per came to stand at Andrea's side. But even Per, looking at her, said, “Give in?”

“If you don't fight—” She had to shout to be heard. “If you don't make trouble—you might end up better off! Oh, listen! They'll keep peace. There'll be—there'll be—” She saw it all so clearly. If they didn't fight, if they let FUP in, the Sterkarms would be welcome to any land FUP didn't want. They'd have lots of cheap T-shirts and cheap booze, baseball caps and fizzy drinks and hamburgers.

But they'd be healthier, wouldn't they? They wouldn't need to rob and murder each other all the time. That would be better, wouldn't it?

“But if you fight—listen! I've been thinking about it—it'll be like American Indian Wars—” What am I babbling about? she thought. They've never heard of America. How could they know anything about the American Indian Wars, when they haven't happened yet?

If only the Sterkarms had known something—anything—about the elimination of the Sioux, the Nez Percé, the Cheyenne, she could have made the desperation of their position so clear to them. An invading people with superior weapons moving in unstoppably. Making deals and treaties and promises, and breaking them all. Using any resistance as an excuse for all-out war and genocide. It had happened again and again.

“They'll kill you all,” she said. “Like tigers, Per!” She saw his eyes widen. “All of you.”

She'd thought it all through in the night and it had been so clear, so coldly clear. She hadn't been willing to face up to it before, but now it was so close, there was no choice. Even now, though, she still thought: No, FUP won't do that. Windsor won't do that. He wore a smart suit and had polished shoes. He wouldn't commit—genocide.

But …

But wasn't it always the men in smart suits and polished shoes who oversaw the manufacture of the gas ovens and drew up the blueprints for the death camps—and kept their shoes polished all the time?

Because who would know? Who would stand up for the Sterkarms? FUP's twenty-first-century shareholders? They'd know nothing about it. The Time Tube was a secret project. Every employee signed a gagging clause.

And 16th side, who would stand up for the Sterkarms? The Scots king? The English king? The Sterkarms were a nuisance to them both. They'd both wanted the Sterkarms dead for years.

“If you fight, Toorkild, they'll use it as an excuse to wipe you out. That's what always happens. You must not fight.”

“What must I do then, Elf-May?” Toorkild demanded. “Kneel down and kiss their feet? Give them back my son as a hostage?” There was jeering mock agreement, and even laughter.

Andrea, looking around, saw that her words had made no impression at all. What had she expected? The Sterkarms held their land by no right of treaty or charter. They held it, in defiance of kings, because they fought for it, tirelessly, against all comers. Ourselves alone.

They knew treaties and charters and promises to be so much trash, never made but to be broken. Their land was all they had, and they knew that if they ever failed to fight for it, they would lose it. Come, who dares meddle with us!

She turned her back toward the family table, and put her hands up to her head, pulling at her hair. Long strands of it slipped from its bun and fell down about her shoulders. She shook her head and wiped tears from her face.

It pained Per to see her so distressed. She was too soft, always worrying about someone getting hurt, as if people could be kept from getting hurt. She needed someone to watch over her and keep her from getting so upset. He slipped his arms around her from behind, and couldn't resist squeezing her to feel how soft and cuddly she was. “Honey-mine, what thinks thou we should do?”

Relief that at least one Sterkarm was prepared to listen to her made her almost sob, and she turned in his arms to face him, but before she could speak, Toorkild broke in.

“We need no woman's thinking! What do women know about fighting? Away with women!”

Isobel and Per turned on him instantly, together.

“We know our sons get killed, our men get killed!”

Per's voice was louder. “She be an Elf. She kens Elven!”

Joe sat up straighter on the bench, looking around nervously. Everyone was shouting again. He wished he could follow what was being said. At least, then, the Sterkarms' sudden shifts from good humor to yelling might not be quite so disorienting.

“I'll no be told how to fight by a woman!” Toorkild swung around on Andrea so threateningly that Joe moved, as if to defend her, and Per stepped into his father's way.

“I'll be told!” Per said. “Let her have her say!”

“Thee! Thou wilt! When tha've more than three hairs on thy chin, tha can tell me what tha will and what tha willna!”

Per opened his mouth to shout and moved closer to his father. The loungers sat up straighter. This looked interesting.

Before anything could begin, Andrea picked up a stool and hammered it on a bench. Between the stone walls, it made a resounding din. Everyone looked in her direction.

She stepped up onto the bench. “I'll tell you what you must do. Instead of fighting, you must
talk
.”

She watched them look at each other. Talk? What a strange may she was. Per said, as if making sure he'd heard right, “Talk?”

“You must gan to them with a white flag and—”

“A white flag?” Sweet Milk said.

Andrea broke off, sighing. “It means ‘peace.' It'll let Elven ken that you want only to talk. So they will no attack you.”

Per, looking up at her as she stood on the bench, said, “Like a green branch.”

“Aye, just like carrying a green branch,” Andrea said. “But Elven will understand a white flag, and they might not a green branch. You have to explain to them that burning down Elf-House was a mistake—”

“It was no,” Per said.

“No, but thou must
say
it was. What be wrong with lying? Thou wast never against it before.”

“But thy Elf-Man, thy Veensa,” Per said. “He kens it was no mistake.”

“Will tha listen? It would be better if Toorkild went down with white flag—”

Toorkild said, “We have no white flag.”

“Oh, anything white will do! Stop making excuses! An apron, a towel, anything! Toorkild should go—or Gobby. Not Per. What you have to say, Toorkild, is that you're sorry Per burned place down. Say he got out of hand and did it without your permission.”

“That's true enough,” Toorkild said seriously, nodding, as if the truth were a matter of importance to him.

“You must say you were very angry when you found out what Per had done, and you're punishing him—”

Toorkild brightened, and clapped his hands together, as if this plan were beginning to appeal to him. Sweet Milk, Gobby, Wat and Ingram all laughed. Per scowled.

“Say you're eager to come to terms with FUP again; that you don't want to lose all trade they promised you. Invite them back to tower—”

Per's face lit up, as if he understood at last. Leaving Andrea's side, he went to his father. “Aye! We get them to come back to tower, all friendly like, and I'm lying in wait!”

Toorkild, grinning through his beard, clapped his hands on Per's shoulders, once more on the most loving terms with his son. Sweet Milk went over to the two of them, saying, “Aye, and if we've Ecky and Gobby in hills—”

Andrea, standing on the bench, shrieked aloud. “No, no, no! That's not what I mean at all!” She stamped on the bench. “No!”

Cuddy, excited by the shouting, started to bound around them again, her big paws thudding on the floor. Her tail whacked, with a crack, against Joe's hip as she passed him.

“I never meant that I wanted you to lay an ambush,” Andrea said.

They stared at her. She was a strange, strange may.

“I want you to
talk
to them! Work out an agreement. Sit down and talk out your differences. Explain that you were disappointed that FUP had kept so much back from you. Ask if you can have far-sees and far-speaks. They won't give them to you, but ask anyway—they might give you something worth having. It's your only chance!”

Per looked at his father. Toorkild looked at Gobby and Sweet Milk. Then Toorkild put his arm around Per and said, “Where wouldst lay up?”

Andrea listened as they talked on, suggesting various places for an ambush and discussing the cover they offered. They gathered around the table again, leaning on it, as they talked over what the Elves might do, and how they might be lured this way and that …

“Entraya's plan be best,” Per said. “Gan to them with white flag. Say tha'rt sad for what I did. Ask 'em back to tower.”

The others began to laugh as they saw the way his mind was working.

Andrea tried to hold steady in her mind that these nice people, whom she liked, were planning the ambushing and murder of whoever came through the Elf-Gate when it opened again.

The men coming through from the 21st—men with wives and children, who were just trying to make a living—wouldn't know the rules, the way the Grannams did. If scientists could analyze a sample of Grannam blood, they would find that the DNA spelled out, “Never shake hands with a Sterkarm.” The 21st men might have heard the phrase, but it hadn't been bred into them by years of blood feud. They'd believe the white flag. They'd believe the smiles and extended hands. And the Sterkarms would cut them into pieces small—and that was no mere turn of speech.

Andrea realized with a clarity that she had never achieved before that the Sterkarms were murderous, ungrateful and treacherous. They confused her by being, within their own walls, hospitable and generous, kindly and warm. When they smiled, embraced and kissed you, when they pressed gifts on you, it was hard to remember that, not so long before, they had burned down houses, run off the cattle that were some poor soul's livelihood and skewered the animals' owner with a lance because he objected. They would ride home from the murder, good-humored in success, wash off the blood and become charming once more.

She was through making excuses for them. They were killers, plain and simple. And ungrateful. And treacherous.

She stood again, angry and feeling the shame of having been a fool. Loudly she said, “There will no be any lying in wait or any fighting. I shall no let it happen.”

They stopped talking and looked at her with curiosity. How was she going to stop it?

She glared at them, hating them, hating Per the most because he had disappointed her most sharply. “I shall warn them. I shall tell them what you do, and you what they do. So there will be no more fighting.”

She saw the amazement on Toorkild's face and realized that she should have kept those last words to herself.

“By my God's arse!” he said. “A woman laying me down the law in my own hall! Per, Dearling, I'll give thee a cudgel for tha wedding gift. Madam, tha'll talk to nobody unless tha canst talk to 'em from the lockup!”

For a moment or two, the words meant nothing to her. And then she thought, No! Toorkild wouldn't do that to her!

The lockup was just one of the outbuildings near the tower, no different from the others. But its lower, stone-built story was often used as a jail. Members of the household caught stealing, or brawling, or otherwise making a nuisance of themselves, would be locked in there with some bread and water and a candle if they were lucky, and left for a couple of days. It wasn't an experience she would enjoy.

She was still openmouthed, wondering whether to try laughing off Toorkild's threat, when Per said,
“Nay !”
She felt quite warm and weak-legged with relief. If you had a quarrel with Toorkild, there wasn't a better person to have on your side than Per.

“No woman,” Toorkild said, “shall—”

“Daddy, nay!” Per went close to his father, who scowled, already wavering. “Not lockup. It be cold and dark.”

Gobby started, “She deserves—” but was silenced by Per's shout of “Nay!” He pointed to the ceiling. “Lock her above stairs.”