Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (44 page)

“
Wassail!
” ran down the tables in a roaring shout.

When the toast and ceremony was finished, Bjarni Eriksson stood and raised his own horn of wine.

“To our alliance,” he called. “True folk, shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield against our foes—from here to the eastern sea. Drink hail!”

“Wassail!”

Eric’s beard and mane were bright against his dark clothing as he went on after Bjarni sat:

“Brothers and sisters of the A-List; Bearkillers of the Outfit; friends and allies from far away,” he said. “The last time we feasted our dead, we celebrated a fighting retreat.”

He grinned and held up his steel fist; the burnished metal caught the flame-light and sent it back.

“And I left this hand on that battlefield. Now we celebrate a great victory. To victory—
drink hail!
”

“Wassail!”

This time the cheer made the roof shake. Not long after the first of the feasters left; Bjarni noticed that Eric and Signe, and their young sons, were drinking lightly however many times their horns were raised. A few minutes later Halldor was gone, and the one he’d been trading glances with like whetted swords. It was not long until the leaders were nearly alone at the high seat and could talk privately; this was a feast, but held after far faring and hard fighting and wounds for many. That bred a weariness that didn’t go away with a few nights’ rest. Shadows gathered as lamps burned down, as if to keep the talk cloaked, and the banners stirred overhead with a whisper of thick cloth.

“So,” Bjarni said, putting down his horn in the wrought silver rest; the wine buzzed a little in his ears, but only enough to speed wits. “How long do you think this war will go on?”

Eric and Signe exchanged a look. Signe inclined her head to her brother and he answered:

“There will be little bands of horse-bandits raiding stock and calling on the Prophet and the Ascended Masters for a generation in the far interior,” he said, looking down into his wine. “But how long until we take Corwin and burn it to the ground and gut or hang the last of the High Seekers? No more than two years at most.”

Signe signed the Hammer for luck, and Bjarni touched the silver one around his neck; Eric nodded to acknowledge that he was tempting fate a little, but went on:

“One year, if Boise goes as well as looks likely; possibly before the snow falls next year, if the League of Des Moines pushes hard.”

“Good,” Bjarni said. “Then my revenge for the attack on my people will be taken and my oath to Artos Mikesson will be fulfilled, and I have my own kingdom to see to.”

“After the Horse Heaven Hills, no-one in the Nine Worlds could deny you’ve done what you swore,” Signe said. “The enemy dead were piled before your men’s shields; I saw it when we were riding next day all along where the battle line had stood. The ravens and coyotes and lobos feasted well. For its size, your force did as well as anyone on that field.”

“Or better!” Bjarni said with a fierce grin. More slowly: “I’ve done more than fight and feast here. I’ve seen that you in Montival…and the Midwesterners…have arts that we in Norrheim lack. Machines, tools, knowledge. I want them for my folk. A king’s might is the wealth and strength of his people.”

The two Bearkillers looked at each other, then back at him.

“Good fortune to you, Bjarni Ironrede,” Signe said. “That shows a proper spirit in a ruler. But hasn’t the High King promised you aid?”

“Yes, and he’ll fulfill that,” Bjarni said. “He and I swore blood-brotherhood in my own hall, and he’s a man who keeps his oaths. But I would not have Norrheim dependent on one man’s bounty, even a blood-brother who is a mighty king. A king so mighty that he doesn’t need anything I have.”

“Or you could seek more traffic with the Midwesterners, they’re closer,” Signe said.

Bjarni grinned in his red beard. “Too close for comfort and entirely too numerous. I want them to think as little of me and mine as they may. Let them look west, or north, or south, anywhere but towards me and mine. You, on the other hand, are not only friends…you’re distant friends.”

“Easier to
stay
friends when there’s nothing to quarrel over,” Signe observed.

“What do you want of us, then?” Eric added bluntly. “We’re friends, I hope, and battle comrades. But we have our own problems here, our duty is to the Outfit and Montival, and Norrheim is very far away. Until Rudi got back, we hadn’t even heard you existed or that there was anything but bones and Eaters left in Maine.”

Bjarni stroked his beard. “Good! No weasel words between us, then. Norrheim
is
far away, but we have treasure. Our Vikings scour the dead cities, and those of the east are greater than those of the West, and fewer have plundered them. Artos and I showed that men could cross the continent, and in some numbers and without taking many years about it. After the war, things will travel that way again, things and men.”

“I can’t see much trade. Not for a very long time, centuries, if ever. Too much wilderness and wild-men in the way, too few people at either end,” Signe said.

Bjarni nodded. “Not many merchants, not heavy goods, and not often. But a few things of great price, now and then, yes. We used the rail-lines coming back with Artos; and there are the inland seas, that come almost as far west as the Dominions. We have skillful sailors in Norrheim and light boats that can be portaged. You’d have to trust my promises, of course, and we’d have to settle things in detail before we put our hands to the oath-ring.”

“You’re a hard man, but one to trust when he pledges an oath,” Eric said, and his sister nodded. “Take it as given that we’ll accept your word if we reach an agreement.”

“So what do you want in return for this treasure?” Signe added, sipping from her horn.

“Men,” Bjarni said. “And women, for that matter. Those with knowledge of your arts; metalworking with machines, fighting from horseback, catapults, balloons, spinning-mills, railroads, all of it. Books are good, but not enough. Tools, samples, and…what do you call them,
diagrams
, yes. But above all, folk with the skills to use them and teach others. Perhaps apprenticeships here for Norrheimers.”

Eric smiled. “No insult, friend, but I’ve listened to your tales of Norrheim. Why would anyone leave the Willamette for a place where the growing season is two months shorter? And where there aren’t even any hops for the beer? We’re not crowded. There’s good land untilled not five miles from Larsdalen. It’ll take a long while to fill the Willamette alone. And later, there’s the whole of California and much else besides.”

Bjarni made a gesture of acknowledgment with one spade-shaped, red-furred hand.

“Norrheim is cold and poor compared to your land here; but on my journey with Artos Mikesson I saw much land that wasn’t. Rich land around the inland seas; what they called Quebec and Ontario in the old world, and the south shore is good too. Rich land thinly peopled, and the dwellers ignorant savages who lost all arts in the Change, who live on rabbits and freeze in the winters. Fine farmland, timber, plenty of ruins for salvage and the lakes for fishing and trade.”

“The savages are Eaters,” Eric said, and Signe made a slight moue of disgust.

“Not all of them; some are just poor and backward, like the South Side Freedom Fighters that Artos befriended, Jake Jakesson and the others, who’ve settled in the Mackenzie lands now. And my own folk grow in numbers. We live wide-scattered, but that’s from choice and because good plowland is scattered too, and our farms raise many strong sons and daughters along with the barley and rye. It’s in my mind that Norrheim could take much of that land around the Great Lakes. Settle some of our people there, and by their might and their craft bring the dwellers…or their children…back to the life of real men, with fields and farms and homes. They’re of blood kindred to our own. And we could bring them seemly ways and knowledge of the true Gods, not just the edge of an ax.
And I could make those I favored lords and chiefs there, who have no such prospects here, with broad lands and followers. In time…in time, a realm as great as Montival, or nearly. For my descendants, if I lay the foundations.”

“You’re not afraid to dream grandly,” Signe said, giving him a long look.

Eric laughed. “You and I might disagree on the true Gods,” he said, touching the cross around his neck. “But otherwise, yes, I see what you mean. There might be some here who would find your offer attractive; some Bearkillers, though I warn you any willing to take such a leap would likely have big eyes and be troublesome. Broken men elsewhere who’ve lost everything in the war and need a fresh start anyway. You wouldn’t have the time or knowledge to find them, or not many of them and not the right ones, but…”

“But we Bearkillers would, since we have the contacts,” Signe said thoughtfully. “And
I
wouldn’t mind seeing those true to the Aesir spread their rule, if it didn’t cost my own folk much and we had recompense from that treasure you mention. We’ve won much glory in this war, and we’ll get much more, but not much plunder. More, we—the Outfit, not the High Kingdom—don’t stand to acquire more land, either.”

“All we’re likely to get in Corwin is hard knocks and some scrawny cattle,” Eric said as he stretched his thick-muscled arms. “It needs doing but that’s all you can say.”

Signe nodded. “Revenge is good, but you can’t eat it or make shoes for your children out of it. Yes, Bjarni King, we should talk further about this. There will be time, over the year to come.”

Eric abandoned his restraint and drained his horn, then turned it over to show that there was nothing left inside.

“It’s wonderful how victory opens possibilities,” he said. “It enlarges men’s minds, like good wine. And sometimes makes them drunk, too.”

“The end of one saga is the beginning of the next.” Bjarni nodded. “And the hanger-on of one can be the hero of another.”

“And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wife waiting,” the big man said.

“So do I,” Bjarni mused when he’d left. “But unfortunately, she’s a
continent away. She has our children and our household to occupy her, too; only memories and hopes for me.”

“Your wife will have you back, and you’ll dwell with her all your days,” Signe said thoughtfully, and raised her horn. “I toast her luck.”

Then she raised it again to the vacant chair at the center of the high table, with the Bear Helm laid on it and a great sword across the rests.

“I’m a lonely widow, and my man is dead these fifteen years. There will be no homecoming for me, not in this life.”

Bjarni toasted it as well. “But life goes on, and we make the best of it.”

“W
ell, ’ave it out heare, then, son,” Sam Aylward said, in his slow drawl. “Bit on the cold soid tu go fur a walk.”

It was cozy enough in the workroom, by the standards of Edain’s generation; the little airtight stove made it so, and the inner walls of thick boards and battens that had been added in the years after the Change. He wore only his kilt and a light green-dyed linen shirt with wide sleeves, fastened at the neck and wrists with drawstrings. His father had on a wool shirt and a baggy knit sweater in its natural off-white as well, and his sock-hose and brogans.

“Don’t rightly know what I want to say, you might say,” his son said.

Edain sat on a stool and braced one foot against the wall. The space had been what the old world called a
two-car garage
attached to the farmhouse that had formed the original core of Dun Fairfax. That meant it was large enough to hold his mother’s big loom and his father’s woodworking bench and tools. The windows at the south end overlooking the herb garden had been added later, to give her more light for the delicate task, and the original sliding doors at the front had been replaced by a more conventional arrangement. The big chamber had a clean smell of
glue and shavings and varnish and linseed oil, as well as the skeins of wool and linen yarn that shared the rafters above with billets of yew and cedarwood, plus hunks of rock-hard root-wood from curly maple or black walnut.

“’appen you ’aven’t settled since you came home from the fight,” Sam said. “The war isn’t over yet either, of course.”

His voice didn’t have the usual Mackenzie burble and lilt; he’d been past forty at the Change and had never lost the deep slow burr he’d grown up with in rural Hampshire.

“All well with you and Asgerd?” he continued.

Garbh heaved her massive grey form up from beside Edain and padded over to his father’s side, politely nosing at one of his hands and thumping her tail. The two younger hounds stayed by Edain’s feet, great shaggy barrel-shaped heads questing after burrs and tangles in their fur. They were a mongrel breed but mainly mastiff and Great Dane with a tinge of wolf, a new strain coming together since the Change. One that Mackenzies took on the hunt for dangerous game—bear, say, or tiger—and sometimes to war as scouts and guards.

“Never a problem, save that we’ve less privacy than is convenient,” Edain said with a quick grin. “Less here than in the field with the host, to tell the absolute and unpleasant truth.”

The old man grinned himself, his teeth still strong but slightly yellowed.

“And it’s not the season for hay-lofts and swimming in ponds and ducking into the woods,” he said. “You and she being wed only a year, Oi call that an ’ardship.”

“Well, I’m just back for the Yule feast,” Edain said awkwardly; he’d never been a fluent man. “Fair crowded it is!”