17

16th Side: The Tower

Gareth stumbled yet again, and picked himself up, and scrambled on, because he dared not rest and be left behind, alone, in bandit country. To himself, silently—because he hadn’t the breath to swear aloud—he swore that if he got out of this and got home to the blessed 21st, he would never leave his couch again. Ever. He would lie there and watch television, eat crisps, and drink Coke, and never, ever again leave the comfort of town. He didn’t think he’d ever been so miserable in his life. And he could get killed or maimed, too. Bloody Andrea. Lucky Andrea. All that squawking about equality, and women were still getting out of stuff like this because they were too girlie to go raiding in the dark. Per, Sweet Milk, and even Patterson had been unanimous. No girls.

It hadn’t been so bad, to start with. He’d felt quite bucked up to be part of the ride as it left the tower. He hadn’t been riding, of course. He’d been walking, with Patterson and the other Elves, along with several Sterkarm footmen—fierce, hairy types, wearing blackened helmets and carrying vicious things that looked like big axes with very long handles. It was a “jeddart axe,” one of them told him, adding, “It’d take thy leg off. Shall I show thee?”

Then, at first, it hadn’t been so bad following the riders across country. True, it had been rough, with scrambles uphill and rocky streams to ford, but the footing had been firm, and it hadn’t really mattered if he trailed behind. They were still in sight of the tower, and it felt safe, though as he panted to keep up, he felt that he should have taken more notice of all those 21st-century admonitions to eat less junk food and go more often to the gym.

The horsemen led them out up the high moors, down into steep, rocky declivities and up steep, wooded sides where riders had to dismount and duck and twist among branches.

The going got harder and harder—and, he supposed, he got more tired. They climbed hillsides calf deep in heather and bilberry where, every time Gareth lifted his foot, he had no idea whether it would come down sooner than he expected on hard, hidden stone—jolting him and throwing him off balance—or whether it would plunge unexpectedly deep into an unseen hollow—making him stumble and stagger—or whether it would sink into a soft, muddy bog, nearly sucking off his sneaker, soaking and miring him to the knee. It was exhausting, this staggering and toppling and wind-milling for balance. It made walking every mile like walking five, and it was completely different from walking on pavement. Gareth realized that he had never before experienced what it was like to walk “rough country.” What he had thought of as rough had been mere parkland.

He fell farther and farther behind. The Sterkarm footmen climbed the hill steadily ahead of him—breathing a little hard and certainly not frisking, but showing no sign of ever tiring, either; and they were wearing heavy tin-pot helmets and carrying long knives and axes. Their legs and lungs, he thought, must be made of steel and leather. Gareth longed fiercely for a rest, even if it meant sitting in the wet grass and heather. Stop, just stop, please. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. What do they expect me to do—kill people? Damn Andrea. Bet she was curled up by a fire, drinking cream.

A halt was called eventually. Gareth sank down among the tough, prickly moorland plants, his feet and legs throbbing with weariness. His back ached. Even his face ached. Give me the 21st, he thought. Cars, planes, escalators, lifts—and if you must exercise, you can do it in a nice, warm, dry, clean gym.

Per sat on the ground, his horse’s reins looped over his arm, and kicked at the turf with one heel. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. Fowl, his horse, nudged him and nibbled at his ear, but when Per pushed his head away, he cropped grass instead. There was little talk among the men. At last Per said, “Sweet Milk?”

Sweet Milk was sitting beside him, his heavy helmet laid on the ground. He looked up. “Aye?”

“Willst lead?”

“Lead?” Sweet Milk was puzzled.

“Be captain.”

Sweet Milk was surprised, and took his time answering. Per was head of the Bedesdale Sterkarms now, and the laird of the Bedesdale Tower. He had always been eager to lead, and no one could challenge his right to lead this ride—not even his uncle, Gobby, had Gobby still been above ground and breathing. Carefully Sweet Milk said, “Th’art captain.”

Per was silent. He could barely think of two or three words to link together, his mind was in such a roil. He could feel the red, banked heat of anger at the back of his eyes, in his belly. Grief gripped him—so much grief that he hardly knew how to feel it. He couldn’t get hold of even a small corner of it—it was so unwieldy and heavy that it threatened to flatten him. How could he mourn his father, his father’s brother, and a cousin all at once?

And always, creeping just below his awareness, was the insidious, sickly memory of what he’d done. He’d been with the Elf-May when his father had been killed; and he had himself killed Joan Grannam, a girl, his wife.

She was a Grannam! A treacherous bitch, bred of a treacherous family. A slit throat and a quick death had been better than she deserved. She should have been strangled slowly. She should have been shut in a cage and starved.

No matter how he tried to shout it down, back the sickly guilt slithered. She had been helpless, defenseless, a woman, a girl child. He could not have killed her father, old man though he was, so easily, with so little risk to himself. Coward, his thoughts whispered. He heard the Elf-May, Entraya, saying that Joan had not killed his father. Joan had not hurt anyone.

But she would have if she’d been able! His banked rage flared up again, fiercely. Kill one Grannam bitch? He would kill the whole kennel of them! Every bitch and every bitch’s get! There would not be a Grannam left breathing. But as his rage rose, tears rose too, as grief bit, as memories of his father, and what he had lost, rushed in. His mind dizzied, his sight blurred, he felt tremors through his whole frame. And a ride needed a clear head to lead it. It needed cool planning. A leader who would turn back, or turn aside, if the risk was too great. One who could, without mistake, choose the best way through the hills for their purpose—not the shortest way, perhaps, nor the easiest, but the best for their purpose. A clear head was needed just to remember all the many unmarked ways, and how the weather would have affected them, and how they connected up with all the other unmarked ways. There were a thousand things to consider, and he could think of nothing except his own anger and grief. Reaching out to grip Sweet Milk’s arm, he said, “Thou art captain. I can no—” He shook his head.

Sweet Milk studied him. For an eye’s blink he thought of refusing. He didn’t grudge Per the tower and flocks he’d inherited; but he did begrudge him the favors of the Elf-May, who had seemed to be willing to dance with Sweet Milk until Per had smiled at her. Let Per lead the ride and make whatever mess he could of it … But Sweet Milk knew that he was the best man there to lead, and that even in better times Per would have looked to him for advice. If he refused, if he sulked, then he endangered every other man. And Per, too. His foster son. Toorkild’s son. And was it Per’s fault that he was young and pretty?

Sweet Milk nodded. “I’ll lead.” He stared around, at the sky and hillside. “I grieve an’ all.” He’d seen his own father murdered long ago, when he’d been far younger than Per, and no death since had hit him as hard. Even so, it was hard to see Old Toorkild dead. Toorkild had taken him, a loose man, into his own family and, finding him capable and trustworthy, had made him foreman, and even foster father to his son.

There was a song—he couldn’t remember it—The best of friends will turn his back one day, and take for his bed cold cold clay … Something like that. Friends, wives, children, they all died.

Gareth felt something looming over him and looked up, startled, to see Patterson standing by him in his camouflage fatigues. Grasping Gareth by the arm, he hauled him to his feet. “We need to ask some questions.”

Gareth levered his aching body to its feet and limped after Patterson, between horses and men, to Sweet Milk and Per. “Ask them are we near. Do we know where the enemy is?”

Gareth translated. Perhaps he was a little offhand about it because he was so tired. Neither Sweet Milk nor Per answered, but Sweet Milk rose to his feet. The eyes of every man in the party were on him instantly. Leading his horse by the reins, Sweet Milk moved off. Per rose and, leading his own horse, followed him. Every man followed after them.

Oh God, Gareth thought. How much farther? How many more hills? How much longer?

Captain Davy, who called himself a Grannam, sat on the steep hillside, his knees drawn up, and glumly watched the scout who was scrambling sidelong to him along the steep slope. He didn’t need to speak to the man. He simply raised his brows and cocked his head.

“No sign nor whiff,” said the scout.

Davy sighed, a throaty rasp. Like the rest of the Grannam men lying and crouching on that slope, among the boulders and tall bracken, he was wet, hungry, and bored. Clearing his throat, he spat and said, “Where frig are they?”

He started to worry again. He had brought his party here, to Urwin’s Gap, because if he had been a Sterkarm it would have been the way he’d have chosen to come into Grannam country. But it was a guess, and he’d posted men in other places to watch and listen and bring him warning if they came by another way.

But he knew all too well that the Sterkarms were clever, devious animals, and would guess where he was waiting, and where he’d posted watchers, and could find some way to avoid them all—and he hadn’t enough men to watch every hillside and dale. He’d had to leave some ways—those he’d thought most unlikely—unwatched. Were they already past him, and burning and killing in Grannam country? Were they at the tower?

Were they sneaking up on him here? Impossible, he told himself, but still he worried. He’d posted men to watch the approach to his position, and he should hear of the Sterkarms’ coming long before they reached him, but … Sterkarms could hide behind a grass blade, horse and all.

Had he posted his men at the best places? Should he move them? But that would mean reducing his forces by sending other men after them, to give them his orders. Had he laid his ambushes in the best spots? In his head he flew over the hills; bogs, lakes, and woods like a crow, sending his men first by this way, then by that, fretting, worriting—only to decide, yet again, that he could do no better than he had done.

Come on, come on, he begged the Sterkarms. Let’s be done with this.

Mistress Crosar climbed the stone steps within the tower’s wall and came out on the tower’s top. A stone walkway ran around the peaked, tiled roof at the center, and she followed it around to the corner where the small lookout turret rose, almost like a pulpit, with steps leading up to it. Close by, on the roof, was the dark shape of the beacon, an iron basket holding logs and kindling, with a lid to keep all dry.

She pulled her hood closer around her face, to guard herself from the wind that made her eyes water, and peered at the dark shape of the man on lookout, hunched against the sky. The bell was beside him, its rope close by his hand.

Mistress Crosar did not speak to him. There was no need to ask the only question she wanted to ask. If he saw anything to alarm him, he would ring the bell.

It had been pointless, climbing the steps to grow chilled on the roof. If the Sterkarms came, she would know about it soon enough, whether she was in the yard, the kitchens, or her bed. But when she had started climbing the stairs, it had seemed, somehow, that looking out from the roof would bring some ease to her worry. It had not. So down the stairs she went again, to sit, with clenched teeth and tight lips, beside her fire, where she thought of Joan and hoped the girl was not too badly treated and not too scared.

She had always said that no matter how much gold the Elves promised, no matter how much cloth and white pills they gave as presents, they should not marry Joan to a Sterkarm. “Never shake hands with a Sterkarm”—that was old wisdom.

But there. Her brother had thought he’d known better, as men always did. And now he was dead. You fool! she cried at him in her heart, and pounded her fists on her knees. You fool, you fool! But then she wiped away the small tears that had seeped from her eyes. What profit was there in raging at a dead man? Whatever came next, she must deal with it—and test her own wisdom.

Andrea ducked through the kitchen’s low door. It was dark, hot, and smoky inside, and smelled of food cooking and of old food. “Can you tell me,” she asked politely, “where I can find Mistress Sterkarm?”

The women working in the smoke, gutting fish and cleaning pots, looked at one another and called out. Where was the mistress? Anybody ken? “In tower,” one answered. “Poor lady.”

Andrea left the kitchen and crossed the yard to the tower. The wooden door and the iron gate, or yett, behind it were standing open. The bawling of sheep came from inside, and when she entered, she found that several sheep and cows had been penned up in the low, barrel-ceilinged room. It smelled richly of dung and fleece, and Andrea was careful where she put her feet as she crossed to the iron grid that protected the stairs. She climbed to the first floor and the hall.

There were more people than usual gathered in the tower—almost all women and children—because the tower was expecting an attack. They weren’t out in the country round about, as they would normally have been. Andrea stood in the doorway and looked around at the women by the fire and at those crouching on the benches, and she couldn’t see Isobel among them.

“Where be Mistress Sterkarm?” she asked.

One woman pointed to the ceiling, where strings of flatbread and onions and legs of smoked mutton hung. “Up above,” she said. “Poor lady.”

The second floor of the tower was the family’s private room: a bed-sitter it would be called in the 21st. Up there Isobel and Toorkild slept—had slept—and ate, and sat in the evening, if they had wanted to be private. Andrea left the hall and climbed again, to the landing outside the topmost room. The wooden door was shut.

Andrea stood outside. She didn’t want to go in. Isobel—poor lady indeed—had lost her husband, and her only son was away on a ride in which he, too, might be killed. Isobel, she was sure, wouldn’t want to see her.

But who else could help her? She tapped on the door. No response came from within.

She tapped again and waited, screwing up her face and biting her lip. Even if she was invited in, she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be awkward in the extreme. Perhaps she should just go away?

No. She seized the iron ring handle, twisted it, and pushed the heavy door inward.

There was a large table in the center of the room and two armed chairs. Chests stood against the wall. She couldn’t see Isobel anywhere.

“Mistress Sterkarm? Be you here?”

No answer. Nervously Andrea took a step or two into the room. The far side was taken up with a large curtained bed, and the curtains were partly drawn. Feeling guilty, Andrea crept over to the bed and peered through the gap in the curtains. Isobel lay on the bed, on her side, hugging a pillow.

“Mistress? May I speak with you?”

Isobel was silent as she struggled with herself. For twenty years she had risen at first light every day and set about the management of the tower. She had made it her business to see that everything was ordered in the kitchen, that the eggs were collected, the chickens and the pigs fed. She had overseen the milking of the cows, and the making of butter, cream, and cheese. She had seen to the storing and rationing of all food, ensuring, as best she could, that it neither went bad and was wasted nor ran out. She had brewed beer, had baked bread. She had seen that clothes and bed linen were laundered, made, repaired, and stored so that the moths did not eat them. She had seen that herbs were gathered and dried, for medicines, and for strewing the floors and scenting stored clothes. She had kilted up her skirts and helped with the driving of cattle to the summer sheilings, and with the harvesting—and had made sure that there were plenty of groats simmering in the kitchens for the harvesters to eat when they returned home tired and hungry. She had kept the tower and outbuildings clean and had kept an eye on the thatch and the walls, so she could nag Toorkild into repairing them.

All this work she had kept up while pregnant, calling her maids to her bed to report to her when she could not rise to do it herself. She had travailed and given Toorkild a son—only one—and she had nursed that son through childhood illnesses while ill herself with the most bitter anxiety. She had bitten her tongue when Toorkild had set the tiny, fragile child on the back of a horse, because she knew that the boy must learn to ride. She had choked back her fears when Sweet Milk had given him a little axe, and a little sword, and had taught him to use them, because she had known he must learn to fight. And after all this, all this, she had thought she might, today, with Toorkild dead and that still dear, still fragile child gone away to avenge him, she had thought that, this once, she might hide in her bed and, by stillness and quietness, attempt to smother all that she felt. She had thought that, this one day, for a little while, the household might go on its own way—the way that she had long established—and leave her in peace. But no. Here was someone come right into her private room, calling, “Mistress Sterkarm?” If it had been one of her maids, she would have made her ear sore, but she had not even so much luck. It was the Elf-May. So Isobel fetched up a deep, groaning sigh and said, in a tight, small voice, “What be it, Mistress Elf?”

Andrea’s words stuck in her throat. What could she say? I want to talk about your husband’s murder? I want to talk about the bullet wound in his head? And what could Isobel do, anyway? But she had to tell someone, she had to feel that she was doing something, however insignificant, to halt the killing. And Isobel was a resourceful woman. Perhaps she would instantly see something that could be done, while Andrea was bewildered. “I be so sad for your husband, Mistress Sterkarm.”

Isobel said nothing. Andrea’s eyes, growing used to the darkness within the curtains, saw that the pillow Isobel hugged had been dressed in a man’s shirt. Unable to look any more, Andrea withdrew and sat on the edge of the bed, facing the rest of the room. “Mistress Sterkarm. Elven—have pistols that shoot things they—we—call bullets. Not balls. Bullets.”

These words meant hardly anything to Isobel—they were mere ramblings. Why should she care?

“Bullets be no round,” Andrea lectured on, wondering if Isobel was even listening. “They be long and narrow. End be pointed and quite small, like end of my finger. They be very hard, and they shoot from pistol very, very fast, with great force. So when they hit something hard—well, they do flatten, but not nearly so much as a pistol ball made of soft lead. They make quite a small hole. Quite small.”

From within the bed came Isobel’s voice, soft and gruff. “Mistress Elf, what can I do for you?”

“I be sad,” Andrea said, “I be so sad to speak this to you, but Mistress Sterkarm, hole in Master Sterkarm’s head … it was very small.”

There was a stirring within the bed: a creaking of the wooden frame, a straining of heather ropes. A whiff of old hay and old sweat gusted out from the between the curtains. Isobel had raised herself on one elbow. “Hole in my man’s head was big enough, Mistress Elf, big enough.”

Andrea made herself go on. “But small. It was no made by a pistol ball. It was made by an Elf-Bullet.”

The curtains parted with another gust of old hay. Isobel’s face looked out. Her large blue eyes were red and sore, and she looked paler and older than usual. “What?”

“Mistress Sterkarm—what I be trying to say is that your husband was no shot by Grannams. He was shot by—I am sad for it!—he was shot by Elven. And so were his brother and his brother’s son.”

Isobel stared at her. Andrea’s words had no meaning for her at all. The Elves had shot Toorkild? There was no sense in it. She had always expected and feared that Toorkild would be killed by his great enemies, the Grannams. Now he had been. That made sense. She had no peace, no strength, no time, to consider anything else. “They were shot by Grannams,” she said.

“But wounds were no made by pistol balls,” Andrea repeated. “They were too small. They were shot by Elf-Pistols, loaded with Elf-Bullets. They were shot by Elven.”

“Then Grannams have Elf-Pistols,” Isobel said wearily. “They be thieves. Traitors and liars and thieves. I told Toorkild. I told him.”

“But Mistress Sterk—”

“No, no—all he could see was gold! So much gold. But not enough. Not enough.”

“Elf-Gold,” Andrea said.

“He kenned Grannams are never to be trusted. But all he could see was gold!” She punched and pounded the pillow beside her. “Thou fool! Fool! Thou wouldst no listen and now art killed! Fool!”

“Be so kind, listen,” Andrea said.

“Such a fool! And now Per’s away, and if he’s killed too, I shall lie down and die. What is there for me? They should have buried me an’ all—och, but I shall no lie easy until I have a hundred Grannam heads and hearts for my Toorkild!”

Andrea felt sick. Weren’t women meant to ban the bomb and march for peace? Even in her own 21st, when they were free to choose whom they married, and to have sex with whomever they chose; when they were educated, and politically informed, and could vote; when they could drink, and smoke, and swear, they were still supposed to teach men how to be gentle, caring, and nurturing. Their fierceness was supposed to be directed toward peace. Isobel’s hatred of the Grannams, and her thirst for blood and vengeance, made Andrea profoundly uneasy.

“Mistress Sterkarm, how could Grannams use Elf-­Weapons?” She was thinking of night sights and silencers. “I be certain that your husband was shot by an Elf, on orders of—of an Elf.” Windsor, she thought, but was somehow shy of saying it aloud.

Isobel frowned. Two fine lines appeared between her large, silvery blue eyes. She was silent and seemed to be thinking long and hard. “Elven want peace,” she said. “They always have. They want no feuding, no riding. That be why they piled up gold, piled it high, until Richie Grannam and my Toorkild agreed to what they never should have done!”

“I ken,” Andrea said, “but—”

“So why would Elven shoot my Toorkild? How would that bring them peace? How? They ken fine we would kill every last Elf—”

“That,” Andrea interrupted, “that is why they wanted you to think Grannams had done it.”

“The Grannams did do it! They’ve always wanted Toorkild dead! And my Per—and all of us! Why would Elven bring down all their own plans—why?”

It was a good question, and Andrea felt her heart sinking. “But hole—”

“Hole! Some pistols be big and some be small. Some balls be big and some be small. Does that mean Elven shot my Toorkild? No! Why would they? But a Grannam—och, a Grannam would have shot him in the back, in dark.”

Andrea found herself doubting, and felt foolish. Since when had she been a forensics expert, specializing in ballistics? But she remembered the sound she’d heard on the hillside in the dark … and Toorkild, Gobby, and Ingram, all with the same neat hole in the front of their heads. Sniper fire, picking off marked men with night-vision rifle sights. It was too neat, too accurate to be the work of Grannams, even if they had somehow got hold of Elf-Weapons. “It was Elven,” she said.

“But you be an Elf.” Isobel had sat up, and her stare was hard. “Why would you, an Elf, betray your own to me?”

Andrea had no answer she could easily put into words. Because what Windsor had done was wicked and sneaky and wrong—simply wrong. Because she hated Windsor. Because she was afraid of what would happen next. She said nothing.

Isobel spoke slowly, as if voicing something she had just realized. “You be an Elf, but you be in pay of Grannams.”

Andrea, in that other dimension, had liked Isobel—probably because Isobel had liked her—but she had always known that Isobel hated her enemies with intensity, and that she had been capable of spite and malice. Now that hatred was directed at her, and it was frightening.

“If they be waiting for us,” Sweet Milk said as Per stood beside him, “they be up there.” He pointed ahead and upward, toward the cleft that was just becoming apparent between two peaks. Gray and purple cloud gathered around the peaks. “And they ken we come.”

Per, stroking the nose of his horse, nodded agreement.

Gareth, weary to his bones, sighed, heaved up his voice from somewhere deep inside him, and translated these words for Patterson and his Elves, though he suspected that they pretty much understood what Sweet Milk had said.

“I’ll lead,” Per said, and Sweet Milk glanced at him. “Up there.” Per nodded toward the pass. “It’ll gladden them to see me.” There were grunts of amusement from those Sterkarms close enough to hear, though none from Sweet Milk. The Grannams might well recognize Per May, and they would indeed be glad of a chance to kill him.

“No need,” Patterson said when Gareth translated. “We’ll go in. They won’t give us any trouble.”

“I’ll lead,” Per said. It was one thing to give leadership to Sweet Milk where clarity of thought was needed. Here all that was needed was courage: the kind of blind, stupid courage that springs from anger and a need for revenge. “They’ll be the more surprised.”

“Ask ’em what weapons the Grannams’ll have,” Patterson said.

Gareth did. Per stared at the heather and scrub, making no attempt to answer. When he saw that answering was left to him, Sweet Milk said, “Axes. Swords. Bows. Clubs. Lances—but it’s no a place to use lances. Pikes. Maybe a pistol or two.”

Patterson squatted down, his hands clasped in front of him, to think. The pistols could be more or less dismissed. There was no guarantee—there were never any guarantees—that some Grannam with a pistol wouldn’t succeed in shooting Per dead, but the 16th-side pistols were accurate only over a short range, often misfired, and were slow to reload. The axes, swords, and clubs would have to be used hand-to-hand, so the Grannams would have to come out of hiding and run down to meet Per and whoever was with him—and in doing that, they would expose themselves to Elf-Fire. The longbows were another matter. They were really dangerous—or would be, for a short time.

“It’s not worth the risk,” Patterson said. “Tell him. He could be killed by an arrow before we could come in.”

Gareth passed the words on, and Per said something. Patterson raised his brows questioningly. “He says there is no risk. That—er— the road of his death—er, that is—how can I say it?—the way he dies—but it’s the same, the ‘way,’ the ‘road’ … they were—ah, fore-told—no, fated—long ago. Let’s say, ‘The road he’ll travel to death was fated long ago.’”

“Bloody hell,” Patterson said, impressed by this impromptu poetry, not realizing that Per was quoting from a ballad. “Well, it’s his funeral. But tell him to leave his horse here. It’ll only get in the way. And tell him to fall flat when I yell, or he’ll get caught in our fire.”

Gareth translated, and Per nodded. He turned and gave his lance and the reins of his horse to Ecky and then walked forward, climbing the horse trail toward the hilltops. Sweet Milk watched him go, feeling that familiar ache under the heart—but it made no sense for both leaders of the Sterkarms to be killed. Sim and Allie left their horses and followed Per, so that he shouldn’t be alone. Patterson gestured his Elves to follow close behind them.

Davy Grannam watched the little straggle of men approach on foot. He felt the man nearest to him tense, like a cat watching a creeping mouse. He felt the same tension himself, and relief and excitement, too. At last, after all the boredom and discomfort of waiting, after all the uncertainty and worry, here were the Sterkarms—and approaching so confidently, so innocently. No need to be scared. It was going to be so easy.

But Davy’s suspicions were tickled, and his face twisted into a thoughtful grimace. The Sterkarms, innocent? Trotting so trustingly into an ambush. Something was not right …

“That be May,” said the man near him. “Per May!”

Other voices breathed the name, and Davy knew him too—by his height, his figure, and his walk more than anything, since he had on a helmet. But Per May, Big Toorkild’s son, was a man the Grannams looked for, and noted. They would know him on a dark, moonless night. And if they were going to kill Sterkarms in revenge, then Per May’s head was worth ten heads of lesser fry.

But why, Davy asked himself, would Per May walk—not ride, but walk—into a place where, being no fool, he might well expect an ambush. Something wrong, something wrong … Davy had half a mind to call off the ambush and let the Sterkarms through, because something was very wrong. He turned to the man nearest him and was raising his hand to signal to another a yard away—but his men weren’t looking to him, and they waited for no orders. It was impossible to tell which had been the first to move, but someone had strung his bow at the first sight of the Sterkarms, and now stood and loosed an arrow. And there was another, standing, raising his bow, and another. Davy heard the soft throb of the string only from the nearest man, and the arrows were too slender and fast to be seen, but he knew that many were flying, silently, well aimed, toward the men below.

Per felt the blood pulsing along the center of his bones. He knew that if the Elves were slow, or the Grannams lucky, in the next breath an arrow could drive through his throat, or a pistol ball punch through his jaw. The fear of pain and the fear of death tightened his back as he took one step after another. He saw the men come to their feet among the rocks and knew they were archers. He didn’t see the arrows loose, but he felt the air shift against his face as one went by. The archer had his range; the next would hit.

“Nether!” Patterson yelled. “Nether!”

Per threw himself down.

On the hillside above, Davy Grannam saw the Sterkarms throw themselves down on the ground—and hadn’t begun to wonder why when a sound he’d never heard before took all thought away. It was loud—it deafened. He couldn’t have said what made it, or even what direction it came from. He saw his men rise in the air and fly backward. They fell from the air, crashing down on the hard hillside. His body turned cold and heavy with fear.

Other men rose from their hiding places—maybe to attack, maybe to run. Some Sterkarms threw things. Head-cracking bangs, flashes, men screaming—bawling out in fear, shrieking in pain. Their jakkes, their helmets, weren’t saving them.

Davy didn’t see what landed near him; he hardly heard the cracking bang or saw the flash. But the pain filled him, intense, sudden pain. He fell.

The surviving Grannams broke cover and ran. They ran up the steep slopes. They ran down. The Elves followed; their pistols banged and crackled. The Grannams fell, with smashed legs or bodies ripped open.

The din stopped. There was no one else to run. The Elves waited warily, then relaxed slightly, though they still scanned the hillsides around them. Patterson said, “All yours, lads.”

The Sterkarms couldn’t have understood what he said, but they knew what he meant. They rose from the ground and went to work. Gareth watched in helpless dismay. Scrambling up the hillsides and among the rocks and bushes, they found the wounded and dying Grannams and finished them. Removing their valuable helmets, they pounded in their heads with clubs. They cut their throats. They hacked off hands and they hacked off heads. They turned what had been living, thinking men into carrion, and they did it in minutes.

Gareth couldn’t speak. He sat on a boulder and watched the men coming back together. The Elves were a little muddied; the Sterkarms were bloodied. All about the hillside lay bodies and parts of bodies and pieces of flesh and flesh jellied by close explosions. Just lying there. It would rot. It shouldn’t be like that.

Per took little part in the killing. He came loping down the hillside, stopped near Gareth, and cleaned his dagger in the grass and moss. Then he sat down on the rock beside Gareth, who wanted to cringe away from him. Per said nothing and looked furious. Gareth would have been scared to speak to him even if he’d had anything to say.

Patterson, cradling the great Elf-Pistol in his arms, nodded at Gareth but spoke to Per. “How’d you like them apples?”

Gareth couldn’t speak. Per, even if he could have understood Patterson’s words, wouldn’t have understood their sense, but he spoke anyway, angrily.

“What’s he say?” Patterson asked.

Gareth shook his head.

Patterson gave his leg a nudge with his boot. “Wake up! What’s he say?”

Gareth made an effort. It was like mouthing clay and ashes. “He says. It’s like the autumn killing.”

“Eh?”

“They kill most of the animals in the autumn so there’s fewer to keep through the winter.” It was quite easy to talk about history. “He says it’s a job for a butcher.”

Patterson stared at Per for a moment, then shrugged. “He wanted ’em dead, they’re dead.”

Per jumped up and walked a few paces away, turned, walked back, turned again, too furious to keep still. He had thought that killing so many Grannams would bring some relief; but his rage was still there, like a smothered fire: red, sullen, choked. The Elves had done the killing, and left the Sterkarms the butcher’s job. How was that revenge?

“Now then,” Patterson said. “What next? Do we find the other ambush party, or do we go for the tower? My vote’s for the ambushers, because if we leave them, they’ll get behind us, and we don’t want any bother, do we?” He looked at Gareth and wagged his head toward Per. “Gareth? Do the honors?”

Gareth found himself hearing Patterson’s words belatedly, and fear made him hurry to translate them. He didn’t want angry Grannams coming up behind him. Especially when they had such reason to be angry.

Per listened to the translation and then said, “Vi gaw til tur.” We go to the tower.

Patterson didn’t need a translation. “Tell him! About ’em getting behind us. Finish the job first, then go to the tower.”

Gareth started to translate, but Per cut him short. “Vi gaw til tur.” The more difficult it was, the more revenge was earned.

Mistress Crosar drearily swept up old rushes. The noise of the stiff broom twigs hushed, hushed against the stone flags, and the rushes whispered. She told Joan to keep her eyes and her thoughts on her stitching. Joan sat in a chair, stitching, and the blood poured from her pricked fingers all over the chemise she worked on. Mistress Crosar swept on and the insistent sound of the brush on the stone became the hard clang, clang of a bell—

She started up. Sweeping rushes, she thought. How ridiculous. How long is it since I swept rushes? I would set a maid to do it.

The bell. Her heart tightened, and she rose from her bed where she’d been dozing, fully dressed. Her maid shoved open the door. “Riders, mistress!”

“Theirs or ours?”

The maid grabbed the cloak from the bed and swung it around Mistress Crosar’s shoulders. “We can no tell. But riders—riders!”

Mistress Crosar needed no candle on the dark, close stairs, she knew them so well. She stepped from the door at the top into the chill, strong, damp wind and made her way around the roof to the lookout turret, where the man on watch still clanged the bell. He made room for her to join him and, for a moment, stopped his ringing. “There, mistress.” He pointed. “D’you see? There?”

Clots of darkness, moving in darkness. When she squinted at them, they formed themselves into something like horses moving, with blobs on their backs that might have been men.

“Who be they?”

“Sterkarms, mistress.”

The answer shocked her, even though she’d been expecting it. “How dost ken?”

“They’d be whooping and cheering if they was ourn.”

Mistress Crosar stared at the moving blobs, thinking that they might still be Grannam men who didn’t feel like whooping and cheering. There might be no reason to fear. She said, “Fire beacon.”

She went back down to the roof and stood aside in a corner, to let the man take the lid from the beacon and fire it with the fire canister he had by him. It took a while to catch but then flared up, casting showers of red sparks and tongues of red and yellow light over the roof. The shadows deepened. Mistress Crosar felt the skin of her face tighten in its heat. She looked out over the dark countryside, imagining the beacon carrying its message. Every Grannam tower and bastle house that saw it would fire its own beacon and pass the message on. Help would come.

Per felt a fierce, gleeful eagerness to see the Elves fire on the Brackenhill Tower. Even now, even as they peered from the walls, the Grannams believed that as long as they stayed locked inside, with the beacon blazing on the roof and the bell clanging, no great harm could come to them. But the laugh was on them, now that the Elves had seen sense. Make peace with the Grannams? The only way to make peace with the Grannams was to kill them all. The Elves had been slow to learn that, but they had learned it at last.

The Sterkarms and Elves had reached the tower as quickly as they could, but even so, the farms they’d passed had been deserted. News had flown over the hills. The people knew that the Grannams and Sterkarms were killing each other again, and they were on watch. At the merest suspicion that the riders in the distance were armed with lances, the people had left everything and run. It was Sweet Milk who left their farms standing. Per would have burned them. Sweet Milk said that would waste time.

They left men in the hills to watch for the approach of any party coming to the tower’s rescue and then rode to within a good bowshot of the red-gray walls of the tower. There they dismounted and settled to watch the Elves assembling their cannon, which, though small enough for a man to raise to his shoulder, was yet more destructive and powerful than anything men had. Other Elves stood ready to meet any Grannams with their many-shooting pistol, and their grenates that ripped folk to ribbons.

Elf-Patterson and Elf-Burnett put the cannon together and then knelt, took aim at the tower’s gate, and fired. The first two shots fell short, with ear-tearing bangs and blinding flashes, but then they had the range. The third exploded against the stonework, sending chips flying. The fourth squarely hit the wooden gate and, crashing, booming, reduced it to flinders. The Sterkarms cheered, though their yells seemed faint among the wide hills.

The explosion, muffled as it was by the thickness of the stone walls, was the loudest anyone in the tower had ever heard. The tower shook with its impact, carrying the tremor through its stones far from the gate and the people felt the blow reverberate through their bones. Mistress Crosar, on the roof, was shaken by it. “What was that?”

The watchman leaned from his turret but shook his head.

Something fell in the courtyard of the tower. There was a flash and a deep k-rump! of sound, cuffing their heads. After the noise came a moment of dead silence: then the cries broke through—cries of terror, alarm, and pain.

“Fire!” came a woman’s shout from below, and that jolted Mistress Crosar back on her heels. The tower’s yard was full of thatched buildings, and most of the upper stories were built of wood. If fire took hold, they would be trapped in a furnace. She made for the stairs.

The Elves sent their rockets again and again against the tower door, splitting and crumbling the stone, reducing the iron yett to a glowing twist. They sent firebombs arcing into the castle. Per had given up cheering with every explosion, but he watched, grinning, jumping with glee. Soon, he saw, it would be time for someone to lead the way through the tower gate. He looked around and then went to one of his footmen.

“Andy—give me thine axe.”

Andy frowned, reluctant.

Per put his hand on the axe’s shaft. “Give it to me. I’ll pay thee. I want to lead us in.”

Andy handed over the long-shafted axe then, feeling proud that the May was going to use his axe and lead them, the footmen. Whatever chaos was in the tower, however weakened were the Grannams by the Elf-Shot, everyone knew that the first man through the tower’s low gate into its yard was likely to be the first Sterkarm killed. “And it was my axe,” Andy would be able to say, in the future. “It was my axe in May’s hand when he led us into Brackenhill Tower.”

“Milk—bring milk!” Mistress Crosar shouted. Her hair was down, her cloak lost. Sparks and ash were flew around her and smoldered in her skirts. Smoke from the burning thatch was thick and harsh and filled the narrow alleys, and so was heat. Mistress Crosar could feel sweat on her hot face, beneath her arms and breasts.

Women, silent, determined, ducked into the dairy to fetch pans of milk to throw on the fires. Mistress Crosar watched one large pan of milk thrown at a patch of burning thatch. Most of it missed. The liquid that landed spat and sizzled in the flames, sending up more smoke and a stink of burning milk. It quenched one patch of fire, but sparks and tongues of flame jumped free and caught at other thatch and at the wood of the shutters and walls. Seeing it, Mistress Crosar knew that it was hopeless—but she turned and took a bucket of water another woman had lugged from the well. One hand on the handle, the other beneath the pail, she heaved the heavy bucket up with a wrench of her back and threw the water onto a thatch.

Other women were pulling down burning thatch and stamping on it. “Good, good!” Mistress Crosar cried, and took a pitchfork from a woman and herself heaved down a great lump of burning thatch that filled the narrow alleyway. The heat grew fiercer and she was enveloped in smoke. There was a sizzling, and the smoke thickened as another woman emptied a bucket on the thatch before it could set light to the walls.

But then there was no one nearby with water or milk, and the flames crackled again on the thatch overhead, and the shutters and a ladder were burning. Through their feet they felt the tremor of another explosion, and a heavy despair settled at Mistress Crosar’s heart.

A crack, and a wicked, hissing shearing of metal. Hot, sharp fragments bit deep into the wall nearby, making Mistress Crosar flinch. A woman hurrying up with another bucket gave a great gasp, wailed, and fell. Mistress Crosar dropped her bucket, trampled over the remains of smoldering thatch, and bent over the woman, who squealed and sobbed in pain and fright. Above them flames leaped up onto the thatch. Mistress Crosar stooped and heaved the woman into her arms, ignoring her struggles and cries of pain, and with another heave dragged her toward the end of the alley. Through the smoke came another woman, who bundled up the injured woman’s legs and skirts. Another explosion, more cries of alarm.

They emerged into the small yard area before the tower. Someone running past barged into Mistress Crosar and almost knocked her from her feet. From all around came screams, cries, shouts, and the sounds and stinks of burning. Mistress Crosar was aware, too, of small, smarting, bleeding cuts on her hands and face. A whumf!—a sound both loud and soft—made them look up, into a glare of heat and firelight, as a whole thatch went up. Still holding the injured woman in her arms, Mistress Crosar shouted, “Fill more buckets! Fill more—” She realized that, though people were running past, dodging in and out of the smoke, no one was listening to her or noticing her at all. Oh God, she thought, looking at the flames and shifting shadows through clouds of smoke: I may not live through this. Oh God: Receive my soul. Oh God: Have a care for my niece, Joan. She’s but a lassie, after all, and not the worst of them.

Per watched the Elf-Shot arcing through the air and falling behind the tower walls. His heart rose with it and beat faster. Smoke rose from the burning, and between the dull blows of explosions shrill cries could be heard. That was fear he was hearing. His body recognized it and responded with its own fear and excitement.

He shifted his hands on the long shaft of the axe; shifted them again and again as they sweated, thinking of his father in his grave, his father’s brother and his cousin Ingram bundled in beside him. Deliberately he loosed his rage, and it burned up and burned hot. Opening his mouth, he pulled in deep breaths to fuel it. Soon, he knew, he was going to fight desperate, trapped men.

The Elves ran forward, knelt, and sent one of their shots right through the tower’s gate, like a visitor coming to call. Smoke, dust, and noise came pouring out from the opening. “Gaw noo!” Patterson yelled. “Gaw noo!” Go now!

Per looked around. Everyone was looking at every other man and hanging back. They all knew that, when they went into that narrow space, into the smoke darkness, there would be men waiting with axes, with clubs, with spears. The first man through would be killed, if he was lucky. Maimed if he was not.

Per ran at the gatehouse. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t do it. Behind him, men yelled, “Sterkarm!” and followed him.

The broken stones of the gatehouse and the twisted remains of the yett gave out heat as Per ducked into the low opening. His nose was filled with an Elvish reek, his lungs with choking smoke that made him feel he’d been punched in the chest. His hair moved beneath his helmet and his skin prickled with the expectation of an axe in the face. Then he was through the gatehouse’s tunnel and into the courtyard, where there was more air, though much smoke, and here was a man, swinging at him.

He sprang sideways, collided with a hard, solid body, which fell. Per fell on top of the man, a yell in his ears. He struggled to rise, bruising himself on the iron plates in his own jakke and the hard bones of the fighting man beneath him. Desperate because he couldn’t see what was behind and above him, or to the side, Per hammered at the fallen man with the blunt end of his axe shaft and, when the man stilled, lurched to his feet, turning to glimpse, in the smoke, the dark shape of a man behind him.

“Sterkarm!” it said, in Sweet Milk’s voice, and Per fell in with him, both of them peering into the smoke ahead of them. Something moved, and Per lunged at it, feeling a rush in his ears as he sensed his opponent’s sharp-edged blow coming at him. His axe blade connected, jarring up the bones of his arms and into his shoulders. He was tugged sideways by the trapped axe as the man he’d hit fell. Per tugged, but the axe didn’t come free—it wasn’t a weapon he was used to. Behind and around him was a tin-pot clattering, a babble of yells, screams, heavy footfalls, bashes as bodies fell against walls, gasps, coughs, barking of dogs, and screaming of alarmed sheep and pigs.

Per tugged frantically at the axe—while it was trapped, he was weaponless. He staggered as it came free but managed to kick aside the axe blade that was feebly raised against him from the ground. He swung around, but no one was near him. In that few eye blinks he realized that he was in the tower and, as yet, without a scratch. He raised an exultant yell of “Sterkarm!”

The smoke was clearing and he could see Grannam men, their dirty faces set in grins under their helmets, holding axes at the ready. One lay on the ground, screaming in short gasps, but there was no time to give him any attention. The defenders were battered, confused, and scared; they took short steps backward, but still they were there to stop the Sterkarms crossing the paved yard and entering the maze of little alleys and closes where the women and children were fighting fires.

Per sprang forward, swinging his axe in an arc, and the Grannams, unnerved by the Elf-Shot, stumbled back. But they had axes too, and Per halted. Fighting on foot, with an axe, was not what he was trained for, but he knew the long axe was a terrible weapon. If he swung at their legs, they could aim a blow that would take off his head. If he swung at their heads, they could cut him off at the knees.

He swung the axe in a figure eight, going forward, yelling, “Sterkarm!” The Grannams hastily fell back, but then they were at the entrances to the alleys. Their women and children were behind them, and they stopped.

Per stopped. Other men were coming up behind him, footmen who knew how to use the axe. He could send them forward, but—then it wouldn’t be his leadership that gained his revenge.

“Mind your backs.” Patterson shouldered through, the other Elves shoving behind him. They raised Elf-Pistols. The noise sent the Sterkarms spinning away: a harsh, deafening chatter. The Grannams went down, yelling out, pouring blood. The Elf-Balls punched through jakkes, shattered legs, ripped out chunks of flesh, exploded heads. The Sterkarms fell back and gaped.

The pistols stopped, and the sounds were moans, women’s cries, the crackling and roaring of fire, a pig screaming in panic.

Per felt anger at being robbed, then relief at still being alive and unhurt—especially looking at the butcher’s shambles before him. Then he felt joy: of being alive, of winning, of revenge. He yelled, “Sterkarm!” and ran into the nearest alley, jumping over, jumping on, the bodies that lay in the way. Behind him he heard running feet and his own cry repeated.

Here, in the alleys, was more smoke and the thick stink of damp, burning thatch. Flames roared, and the air jumped. It was hot. A shadow moved in the smoke, and Per swung his axe at it, chopping it down. Its cry of appalled surprise and pain was a woman’s. Per stamped his foot against the fallen body, jerked the axe free, and ran on.

The clothes of the woman at her feet were rapidly soaking with blood, the thatches above were burning, and from nearer the tower’s gate came yells and a clattering, then screams and cries of “Sterkarms! Sterkarms!”

It was a warning, shouted in panic. The women stopped trying to help those hurt. They stopped trying to put out the fire—instead they ran through the narrow alleys for the tower, jumping or tripping over the wounded, flinching from flames, bumping into one another. Once behind the tower’s thick door and iron yett, inside its stone walls, they would be safe.

Mistress Crosar didn’t run. She caught at the arms of those passing. “Help—” None wanted to help her carry the wounded woman. There wasn’t time. “Wait—”

“Sterkarms!” a woman screamed in her face, and shoved her away.

Mistress Crosar heard a male yell, a roar of wordless anger. She saw figures move in the smoke. She ran for the tower herself. An axe chopped into her back, knocking her flat in the mud and smoldering, fallen thatch. The axe chopped at her head. Then the man trod on her as he ran on to the tower.

The yard of the tower was crowded with storehouses, stables, kennels, smithies, dairies—all of them thatched and most of them with wooden upper stories. Many of them were now well ablaze, and most were somewhere on fire. The glaring, shifting light reflected off the thick smoke, which filled the alleys, stinking and clogging the lungs. Burning thatch fell and whole walls threatened to come down. The heat was intense.

“Out!” Patterson yelled, and made shooing signals at his men.

The Sterkarms were still hunting through the alleys, yelling and whooping hunting calls, mad to kill and utterly blind to danger.

The Elves made their way back to the gatehouse and ruined gate. Fire made them turn back twice, seeking another way through the alleys. The roar of burning and the heat was constant, and Patterson was sure that he’d left it too late and trapped his men as well as himself. But they found the gatehouse and emerged thankfully on the hillside, where it was relatively free of smoke, and cool, and open. The men he’d left on watch were waiting, with Gareth.

Patterson laid down his gun, and while removing his helmet and wiping his dirty, sweating face, he stood in front of Gareth, looking at the kid’s anxious face. He said, “Fuck me. Wind ’em up and let ’em go.”

“What?” Gareth said. He kept glancing from Patterson to the smoke and flames rising above the tower walls. He was trying to keep himself from asking if that should be happening.

“Your pals. They’re still in there.”

“Mad buggers,” Atwood said without admiration.

“Place is burning down around their ears,” Patterson said, “but they don’t want to miss anybody out.”

“Women and bloody kids,” another man said.

Burnett laughed. “Equal fucking opportunities.”

Yes, but they’re not real people, Gareth found himself thinking. They’re history-book people, not real people. It’s only like turning a page in a history book—“Brackenhill Tower was taken by assault.”

A woman’s yell rose above the noise of the fire—not the operatic scream of a film’s soundtrack but the choked, astonished yell of a woman whose voice only reached that pitch and volume because of a terror and desperation that Gareth had never felt in his life—but an impression of it thrilled along his nerves at the sound. All the men looked around and froze at that yell—then realized that there was nothing they could do, and relaxed.

“Happy days,” Patterson said.

The Sterkarms came ducking out of the gatehouse, coughing, gasping, spitting, and ran over to them. Not all of them were there, and as they came nearer, the faces under the helmets were so streaked with blood, sweat, and dirt that they were impossible to recognize. And they were carrying heads. Human heads were dangling from their hands by the hair. They slowed to a walk near the Elves, and they were laughing. They threw the heads down on the hard ground. Thump, they went.

Gareth looked away as soon as he realized what the things were, but then he looked back again, fascinated. He’d never seen a head, cut off, before. He had to know the worst. They looked surprisingly normal. Just heads, but ending at the neck. He felt himself turning cold, shudders running through his flesh. These had been people, alive, full of their own concerns … If this could be done to them, it could be done to him.

Someone slapped his shoulder and made him jerk with shock. It was Patterson, yelling at him. “What?”

“What’s he saying?”

The man beside Patterson was Per Sterkarm—Gareth could see that, now he’d wrenched off his helmet. His fair hair stuck up in sweat-fixed spikes. Per pointed back toward the tower and said something urgently. Gareth tried to concentrate, with his eyes straying again toward the heads lying on the ground. One was a woman’s head. A woman …

“What’s he bloody say?”

“Ahh … he wants you to put a shell—or a rocket, or whatever they are—through the roof of the tower,” Gareth said.

“There’s only women and kids in there,” Burnett said. “We ain’t doing that, Skip. Are we?”

Per pointed to the burning tower. “That be a beacon fire. Every Grannam who sees it will light beacons, and they’ll come here with as many men as they can raise. And more will come after. Can you kill them all? Even with your Elf-Cannon, can you kill them all?” He paused, to let Gareth translate, but paced up and down and didn’t let Gareth finish before adding, “If we leave tower, they’ll use it again—use it against us. Put a bomb through its roof. Do it now!”

Gareth stumbled over the words. He found them turning to dry, clogging earth in his mouth, almost impossible to form or spit out. Never before had his words been directly responsible for killing. But by the time his voice dried altogether, he’d translated enough.

In silence Patterson stooped, took a rocket from the box at his feet, and loaded it into his launcher.

“Skipper—” Burnett said.

“See that?” Patterson nodded toward the heads lying on the ground. “You think we’ve got nothing to do with that?” He knelt, raising the launcher to his shoulder.

“We’re just doing their dirty work,” Burnett said.

Another man, Ledbury, took out a rocket and loaded it. “We’re being paid to do their dirty work.” He loaded and knelt.

Everyone stuck their fingers in their ears and watched as first one rocket, then a second, went arcing up. Mouths agape, they watched the trails of smoke, watched them curve down. The first hit the tower’s tiled roof near one corner, at the edge—the second struck an eye blink later, more centrally. The explosions came to them as one blast, blowing high dust, tiles, splintered wood. They watched the dust cloud expand, lose its shape, drift. The Sterkarms cheered. They linked arms, danced, and cheered.

The tower itself was burning now. Gareth looked at it, feeling half stunned as he thought of how those rockets, having pierced the tiled roof, would have blown through the wooden floor beneath and fallen into the hall, probably crowded with women and children. He didn’t want to think any further than that, but his mind ran on anyway, showing him pictures of metal shards slicing flesh open, of wooden splinters shot through soft bodies, of bones shattering, veins spilling blood, arms and legs parting company with bodies … Was anyone in the tower still alive?

“Away! Away!” The Sterkarms had gathered up the heads, and they were running away from the tower, back to the moor where they’d left the rest of the horses, and they were whooping and laughing. Gareth hurried after them, afraid of being left behind, but he was thinking, with misery, of all the way they had to travel back—all those hills, and all those streams and bogs. He could feel all his muscles aching and twanging as he ran. And this is what I think of, he thought, when I’ve just seen people butchered—I think of my own aches and pains. But then, he was amazed that he could still think at all.