The Sterkarm Handshake (34 page)

The three men made off uphill, looking at least something like soldiers, though two of them were well out of training. Bryce would have liked to go with them, but there was no one he trusted to stay behind with the Land Rovers. Certainly not Windsor.

Bryce took his map from his pocket and spread it on the hood of his Land Rover. It was a rough thing, the first effort drawn up from the geologists' unfinished explorations, but it was all they had. He'd hardly got it opened when Windsor said, “They're coming!”

He pointed down into the valley. Bryce tucked the map behind a windshield wiper, unhitched his binoculars and leveled them, leaning his elbows on the Land Rover. He saw a party of mounted men, about ten of them, riding up the hill toward them. “They've got a white flag,” he said. Something white, at any rate, was fluttering from a spear.

Windsor had his own glasses leveled. “Surrender,” he said. “Without a shot. I told you the Sterkarms weren't going to give us any trouble.”

Per, Wat and Ingram, keeping low so that the bushes and long grass would hide them, took up their bows and quivers and moved back into the wood. They didn't trouble much about the noise they made: The Elves were at a distance and making their own noise. It was movement that would draw the eye and give them away.

Passing through their little camp, they collected their cloaks and pulled down their flimsy shelter, carrying the cut branches away with them. Per's chosen hiding place was a hollow partly filled with the trunk of a thick, fallen birch overgrown with toadstools. Old leaves, bronze and brown, had filled the hollow deeply. Per, with his bow and quiver, burrowed into the leaves, raising a rich scent of earth and decay. Lying on his back, he spread his cloak over himself, its brown, stained, leather side uppermost. He called the hounds under the cloak with him—a wagging tail or twitching ear would be less noticeable under the cloak. The cut branches he dropped on top of the cloak, then he scattered fistfuls of the old, dead leaves over it. The top of his head and his eyes he left uncovered, but he filled his hair with leaves.
“Hold. Stilla”
he said to the hounds, and then drew his dagger and lay still himself.

The brown of the cloak's leather merged, an earth color, with the browns of the dead and dying leaves scattered over and around it, and with the branches lying on it and growing around it. The stains and dirt of long use, and its crumplings, further broke up the outline of the cloak. Where the black fleece of its inner side showed, it blended with the black markings on the birch log and with that part of Swart's black, hairy back that was uncovered. There was nothing about the wrinkled, brown toe of Per's boot to catch the eye, half covered as it was with leaf mold. The shifting, leaf- and branch-broken light danced over the hollow, melting all outlines. Someone searching for him wouldn't see him even if they trod on him.

It was easy for Per to hear the Elves coming. The birds, which had grown used to the cousins' presence, flew up at the approach of the newcomers, alarmed and screeching. The Elves themselves panted, coughed and called out to each other. Their feet thumped, trampled, crushed. They thrashed through the undergrowth, setting branches swinging and rattling.

Per, lying still under the sheepskin cloak with the big, warm bodies of his hounds pressed against him, grew hot. Cuddy lay partly on top of him, and grew heavier every time he blinked. He could feel growls trembling through her, though she was silent as yet. Hardly moving, he pressed his hand against her and breathed,
“Stilla.”
She stopped growling but poked a startling cold nose under his chin and unrolled a hot, wet tongue against his neck. He hoped the noise of slobbering wouldn't carry.

Wat had been right about the hounds: Per should have sent them back. But at the time he'd wanted their company. They wouldn't give him away now by barking. They never barked. But if the Elves came near, they might snarl, or throw off his cover by leaping up to defend him.
“Hold. Stilla.”

The Elves came close by where Per lay. One stood within three feet of him, turning his head and looking about at the height of a man. He never thought to look down. Per sprawled in the leaves and watched them through the intervening branches, his heart beating only a little quicker. He saw them plainly, despite their camouflage gear, because their upright shapes were often dark against the light coming in at the edge of the wood. Cuddy and Swart continued to tremble against him with hatred of the strangers but made only the faintest of sounds, unheard among the sounds of trees shifting in the breeze and the stomping feet of the Elves.

The Elves moved away. Cuddy and Swart, thinking the danger past, stopped growling, and Cuddy licked Per's face while Swart licked his ear. He screwed up his face and endured the licking while he lay still and tried to listen through the slobbering. In other parts of the wood birds were chattering as the Elves moved through the trees. Only when all the birds were silent in all parts of the wood, and had been for many heartbeats, did Per sit up.

Keeping silence, he hugged the hounds, kissed and patted them, to let them know how proud he was of them. Shouldering him over, they pressed him down in the leaves, showing him how proud they were of him by thoroughly licking his face and hands. One of them alone weighed almost as much as he did, and he couldn't even sit up with both of them standing on him. He played dead until they were thoroughly bored and wandered a little away. Then he got to his feet fast.

Snatching up his cloak, quiver and bow, he made his way toward their watching place, with the hounds bouncing and panting beside him. Wat and Ingram were already there. Per crawled the last couple of yards, to keep his movements out of sight below the screen of bushes and scrub that edged the wood. The leaves in his hair, as he poked up his head, helped to disguise him.

The new Elf-Gate had gone, vanished, though the wreck of the old one remained. The Elf-Carts were still there too, and the Elves with their pistols.

“Daddy's-brother be coming,” Ingram said.

Far, far down in the valley, Per caught a glimpse of the moving black thread that was the troop of horsemen coming from the tower with the white flag.

He wondered what Andrea was thinking at that moment. He wished she might be thinking of him, as he was of her, and that it was something kinder than her last thoughts.

Bryce held his field glasses steady, watching the approach of the mounted party. He wasn't as sure as Windsor that the Sterkarms were surrendering, despite the white flag.

The three men Bryce had sent out came slithering back down the steep hillside. “All clear!”

Bryce lowered his glasses for a moment and looked them over. “Sure?”

“It's just a little dip,” Philips said. “Couple of hundred yards long, half that wide. Trees, bit of scrub. There's nobody in there. We'd have trod on 'em if there had been.”

Bryce stared at him consideringly—but there was no point in delegating a job to a man and then refusing to believe him when he said he'd done it. Bryce nodded and looked through the glasses again.

A white flag. He hoped Windsor was right, and it meant unconditional surrender. So much easier on everybody.

17

16th Side: An Elf Hunt

Joe had left the tower on foot, following the horsemen with a few other curious men. For most of the way they'd trailed behind, but when the horses slowed to climb the hillside, he'd pushed himself to walk faster and had caught up with them. Panting and sweating, he walked beside Toorkild's horse, his hand resting on its warm, rough-haired, flexing rump, ready to speak to the Elves as well as he could.

Ahead and above was the 21st wreckage: fallen chain-link fence, broken concrete, twisted and snapped steel girders. Near the rubble were the Land Rovers, great ugly square shapes. Joe was astonished at how unfamiliar these things already seemed to him: how unsympathetic their shapes, how alien their straight, machined lines.

And the soldiers standing there—posing, their black boots planted on the green turf, the outline of their clothes broken by those big, flat patches of green and brown, the helmets on their heads, the rifles in their arms. My own time, Joe thought, puzzled by his lack of any fellow feeling with them. He felt no affection. But once he'd left childhood behind, the soldiers' time never had been his. Looking at the soldiers, he remembered being turned away from shopping malls by uniformed guards. “Leave, please. Now I've asked you nicely.” He remembered being woken and moved on from station forecourts and shop doorways, grudged even those hard, cold beds. “You can't sleep here. Move along.” He remembered being doused with cold water early one freezing morning, his cardboard box soaked and ruined. “You've been told you can't sleep here.” These soldiers, with their guns, had stood behind the policemen and the security guards …

He saw Windsor's face smirking under a beret. Joe's “own time” had denied him a job, a home and the vote. It had taken his taxes while he worked and refused to help him when he was broke—and it had taken greater sums than Joe's whole life earnings and handed it to men like Windsor as a payoff after some huge blunder.

His “own time.” He'd never been anything but disposable to the 21st—one drop in a great pool of unemployed who were used to keep wages low and force them lower. “If you won't work for that, I know those who will.” His “own time” had never opened its arms and welcomed him in with gratitude, giving him everything—shelter, food, clothing and respect.

I'm a Sterkarm, he thought. In his “own time” his name had been an almost meaningless tag, only convenient for sorting him out from other people—“You're not eligible to claim, Mr. Sterkarm.” Here, it really meant something. The mere fact that you were named Sterkarm meant you had a claim. I'm a Sterkarm, he thought, and felt his back straighten and his head come up.

It wasn't Per sitting above him on the horse, but it was Per's old man. “I'll guard thee and guard thine …” Joe patted the horse again and went forward, to speak to the Elves and serve his family, the Sterkarms. Raising his hands, to show he meant no one any harm, he smiled. “Hello!”

Windsor and Bryce saw, emerging from the knot of shaggy horsemen, a shaggy footman. He was bearded and longhaired, and dressed much like the others, in gray wool and calf-length leather boots, except that over his other clothes he wore a long green waterproof that was definitely twenty-first century in origin. And he seemed to speak English, though of course, anyone might pick up “hello.”

Bryce opened his mouth to speak, but it was Windsor who said, “Who are you?”

“Sterkarm. I'm a Sterkarm.”

“You speak English,” Windsor said.

“Aye. Picked it up.”

“Where did you get that coat? From one of our survey teams?”

You smug, arrogant sod, Joe thought. Don't remember me at all, do you? He hadn't been worth Windsor's notice. “I paid for it,” Joe said, “with me own money. I'm here to tell you what he's got to say.” He gestured toward Toorkild, still sitting his horse behind him. “Do you want to hear?”

Windsor's eyes moved to Toorkild, who nodded and, after passing his lance to a horseman beside him, dismounted, coming forward to Joe's elbow.

Bryce said, “You can tell us where our personnel are. A young lady, Andrea Mitchell, and four men: Allmark, Bailey, Colucci and Shepherd.”

Joe hesitated, and then remembered that he was a Sterkarm. “They're okay; they're at the tower.” Well, Andrea was, anyway. The four men weren't very far from where they stood, as it happened. “Look, Toorkild's come here to say he's sorry. For the fire. It was a mistake. He's really cut up about it, and he wants to make it up to you.”

Windsor was frowning. “You speak English
very
well. You're not
from
one of our teams, are you?” Some of the geologists were pretty shaggy.

“I'm a Sterkarm,” Joe repeated. “Toorkild wants you to know that the fire didn't have anything to do with him. He didn't order it. It was his son, y'know, getting a bit out of order. If Toorkild had knowed, he'd have stopped it. He wants it to go on like before. How can he make it up to you? That's what he wants to know. He's really sorry about all this.” Joe waved his hand toward the burned grass.

A horse stamped its foot, shaking its head with a flourish of long mane and a rattle of bit. “Steady,” Bryce said to the armed men behind him.

Windsor was thinking. It was true that, from the moment they'd loaded the boy into the back of the Range Rover to the moment Per had ordered the firing of the FUP office, it was impossible for him to have planned anything with his father. And old Toorkild had been keen to trade.

“How is young Per?” Windsor asked.

Toorkild, catching his son's name, shook his head sadly, saying, “Per, Per,” like a sorely tried father.

Joe, with inspiration, said, “He's locked up in the tower. Toorkild was mad—hell, wicked as a wasp. He never said he could light any fires, see. So Per's locked up. On bread and water.”

Windsor put his swagger stick behind him, gripped it with both hands and smiled. “Parental discipline, eh? Very good. I approve.”

“Toorkild wants to talk things over—he wants to invite you back to the tower—
til tur
,” he added, to Toorkild.

“Ya,”
Toorkild agreed, nodding and smiling. As a courtesy, he attempted English. “Too-wah. Pleese.”

“He's inviting you to eat and talk and—” Joe had another inspiration. “He wants Per to apologize to you personally.”

Windsor's brows rose, and he smiled. Joe could see that Windsor was going to agree and felt a flash of triumph, but Bryce spoke first. “There have got to be safeguards. And how do we know that our people are at the tower?”

Toorkild hadn't been able to understand what was said, but he'd been watching closely. He turned to his men, waved his hand and said, “
Kaster dem neath
.”

Every horseman, with a creaking of leather and a chinking of metal, threw his lance down on the turf. The horses sidestepped. More movement, more thumps followed, as the horsemen threw down bows, swords, axes.

“Steady!” Bryce said, as some of his own men, startled, began to lift their rifles.

“This is to show he trusts you,” Joe said. Joe hadn't known they were going to throw down their weapons, but his brain felt fresh and alert, and he was quick to go along with anything. “To show how much he wants to make things up.”

Windsor put his hands on his hips, his swagger stick in one fist. He looked around at the scattered weapons and smiled at Bryce. “Surety enough?”

Bryce was silent but very slightly shook his head. He knew that it paid to be suspicious.

“Toorkild's not asking you to put your weapons down,” Joe said. “He really wants to be friends again. He didn't know what Per was going to do, and he's really sorry for it.”

“You speak English too well,” Bryce said. “Who exactly are you?”

“I learned from Andrea,” Joe said. “She's a good friend of mine. We all want to be friends again.” He felt the intensity of his own anxiety for them to believe him, and he realized that the 21st men weren't being asked to the tower to talk friendship and trade. He admitted to himself that when he'd lied about the whereabouts of the dead security men, he'd known that. “Andrea'll be glad to see you,” he said. “And the others.” What was he going to do, tell the truth and see those automatic rifles turned on his friends?

“Tell him we accept,” Windsor said.

“Mr. Windsor—” That was Bryce.

Joe said to Toorkild,
“Dey kommer.”
Toorkild opened his arms wide, went over to Windsor, embraced him and kissed him on the cheek.

Windsor endured the hug and the stink, patted Toorkild's back and, breaking from the embrace, said to Bryce, “I'm in charge here. We're going.”

Bryce bit his tongue. He wanted to snap back that, on the contrary,
he
was the leader—but this wasn't a military operation, and he wasn't in charge of real soldiers. Windsor could put them all out of work.

Turning his back on Windsor, he looked over the men. He wasn't going anywhere without first posting guards on the place where the Tube would reopen their way home. He saw the smirking face of Bates, one of the thickest of the football hooligans. A good excuse to leave him behind. “You! And you!” One of the ex-soldiers, Millington, to provide a little backbone. “And you!” Another no-brain, Saunders. All they had to do was stand there and look frightening enough to keep the Sterkarms away, and God knew, they frightened him. “You stay here, you guard our way home. Understand? Millington, understand?”

“Sir!”

“The rest of you, into the wagons! Move!”

Windsor slapped Toorkild's arm and said, “Lead on, Macduff.” Walking past Bryce, he climbed into a Land Rover. Toorkild mounted his horse.

The men rapidly and noisily swung into the Land Rovers, with a crashing of boots on metal floors and much laughter. Slowly the two Land Rovers set off downhill, leaving behind a litter of lances, swords and bows, the third Land Rover and three men hugging Kalashnikovs.

The horses were frightened by the Land Rovers. Toorkild had so much trouble with his horse, he had to dismount. He pulled the scarf out of the neck of his jakke and tied it around the animal's eyes. He was well behind when he led the horse on.

But he was pleased with himself. Throughout the meeting with Windsor, he had never once raised his eyes to the little wood of birch and hazel that grew higher up the slope, and he didn't give in to the temptation to look that way now.

Per lay on his belly at the edge of the wood, propped on his elbows, intently watching the men, Land Rovers and horses below. On either side of him lay Cuddy and Swart, their noses on their paws. Often they rolled their eyes to look at him, showing white around the edges, and sighed. They were bored, but hunting always involved long periods of boredom, and Per had told them to lie still. They did, but for the second or third time, Cuddy lifted her head and licked Per's cheek.
“Cuddy. Hold.”

Ingram and Wat were close by. Wat was sitting, leaning against a tree, Ingram lay on his side as if asleep. Their clothes of brown and gray merged into the leaves around them, and they were dappled with shifting light. From a few feet away, they were invisible.

They could hear nothing of what was being said around the Elf-Carts, but they watched the figures closely, their advancing and retreating, the raised arms, the pointing.

Per picked out his father and Joe and followed them with his eyes. Not once did his father even glance toward the wood, and since Toorkild knew they were there, that must have been hard; but he knew his father would do far harder things for him.

When the Elves climbed back into the Elf-Carts and moved away down the hill, Per clenched his fists and grinned. Slowly—quick movements catch the eye—Per turned his head to look at his cousins. They were grinning too.

The three left on guard watched the Land Rovers jolt away down the hillside, followed by the men leading frightened horses. It was lonely being left there, not knowing what was going to happen. They looked about, at the empty hills and the gray, damp sky above. Nothing in sight was homely or comforting: no roads, no pylons, no shops.

Bates felt in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and offered them to the other two. When they each accepted one, he felt better, a little more at ease. “I'm Bates.” His rifle was slung on his shoulder while he lit a match.

The others stooped to his hand for lights. “Millington.”

“Saunders.”

“Godforsaken shit hole,” Bates said. Taking his rifle from his shoulder, he pointed it down the valley. “Be a laugh, wouldn't it? Shot-up sheep!”

Millington turned away. Saunders laughed, and Bates laughed harder himself, feeling he'd made a friend.

The three Elves kept putting their hands to their mouths and taking them away again. Rolling onto his back, Ingram said, “Wherefore do they do this?” He waved his hand to and from his mouth. Per shook his head.

Away down in the valley, the Land Rovers were on the other side of the river's white-and-gray thread, with horses ahead of them and behind.

Soon horses and Land Rovers would be out of sight, lost in the valleys' turnings. Per had seen no sign of far-sees or far-speaks, so those Elves down there would have no idea what was happening to these Elves up here.

On his belly, Per wriggled back from the edge of the wood, drawing his bow and quiver after him.
“Hold.”
The hounds lay still, trembling with impatience, watching him.

When he was far enough back from the wood's edge to be screened by the trees, Per rose slowly to his feet. In the shifting leaf shadows away to his right, Ingram and Wat were doing the same.

“Cuddy, Swart, kom.”
The hounds uncoiled from the ground and slunk to him, their shoulder bones and hipbones rising above their spines. When he led them off along a narrow path, they frisked and wagged their tails, and he tapped their sides with his bow, to remind them that this was serious. They calmed, and followed him with tails and ears up, alert and happy. He was carrying his bow in one hand, his quiver in the other. That meant hunting. Work for them soon. A deer to run down.