Winter Song (7 page)

    She didn't answer, but kept her head bowed.

    As he left, she called out, "You say we've been abandoned by the Terraformers, my lord. But what if they've come back? And he's one of them? An advance scout, to see whether we've survived?"

    Ragnar stopped. Orn didn't have the wit to see the hole that the stranger's presence blew in Ragnar's longheld beliefs. That the girl had thought through the implications only showed what a waste her disgrace was. "You think that they're throwing them down at us?" Ragnar said. "I'll guarantee you, child, he's no bloody Terraformer. He's an escaped lunatic, or a common vagrant who fell into a geysir or something."

    "You should see his body healing," Bera said. "You can watch the burns fade almost by the second."

    "Good!" Ragnar said, walking back into daylight. "We can put him to work, and he can pay for our generosity in kind."

By the next day Ragnar had mastered his restlessness, and got down to work. Much of it was administrative. The district measured eight hundred kilometres north to south, a thousand from east to west. Many of its people had been to the Summer Fair, but there were a few who hadn't, but had grievances to lodge.

    Egil Samuelsson's neighbour accused him of allowing his sheep to stray into that man's grasslands, and the man was claiming compensation. Thordis-Maria Helgasdottir was accused of lewd behaviour in a public place, Ragnar suspected by someone whose amorous advances she'd rejected, and who now sought revenge. There were a number of disputes over late payment, of money, or much more commonly, of goods or services. Ragnar was asked to adjudicate each, and worked quickly and efficiently to effect a compromise. If he didn't give his petitioners good service, they could swear allegiance to another Gothi. With privilege came responsibility, he liked to tell his people.

    But though his duties ate up much of his time, he was still a farmer, even if sharing with two other farms gave greater efficiency, and he had two sons and a sonin-law and four Thralls out tending the livestock to ease his workload.

    So by midday each day Ragnar walked the fells, checking for signs of troll incursion, and the presence of snolfurs who might attack the flocks, and ensuring that the men were safe, if uncomfortable. With Isheimur's ever-changing weather came wave after wave of short, sharp showers that soaked them to the skin, barely giving their sheepskins time to dry out before the next band of rain swept over.

    Passing Skorravatn, Ragnar would often find Orn the Strong's wife Thorunn keeping Bjarney's wife Salbjerg company. Salbjerg was heavily pregnant, and not only found moving difficult, but Ragnar suspected that she might go into labour at any time.

    "Ladies," Ragnar said the day after Allman's relapse, bowing in an exaggerated way that set Salbjerg giggling. It didn't take much to make Salbjerg giggle. She was an uncomplicated woman who delighted in life, and it made Ragnar sad to see how near-constant pregnancy had worn her out. Cloning was an intensive arrangement and had been one of the first techniques to fail when the Formers had abandoned the colony. Worse, the near-disaster of a collapsing birth-rate for several years had scarred their society, leaving women as little more than baby-factories.

    Ragnar made himself abandon nostalgia. "How goes the egg-gathering?" He pointed to the flocks of eiderducks made flightless by their clipped wings now bobbing out on the waters.

    "Slowly," Thorunn said sourly.

    "I swear the little devils are getting cleverer at hiding their nests," Salli said with a giggle. "Perhaps we're breeding more intelligent eiders by eating the dumber ones."

    "Perhaps we are," Ragnar agreed with a grin. "Maybe we should test them before we wring their necks?"

    "How is the spaceman?" Thorunn asked.

    "Who says he's a spaceman?" Ragnar asked, no longer smiling.

    Thorunn shrugged. "Whatever he is, Bera seems happy, now she has someone to nurse."

    Ragnar didn't answer, but walked away. "Time for dinner," he called over his shoulder, belatedly remembering to say goodbye. Striding back to the courtyard, he saw Brynja again tied to the water-tap in the centre. The puppy yapped at him, but he ignored it, though he noted that it was bulking up, and he wondered what Bera was feeding it on. As long as it came out of her share of the food and she kept it out of his way, he wasn't too bothered.

    He descended into the lobby, and removed his boots.

    "Bera's obviously attracted to him," he heard Thorbjorg say, her voice arch. "Aren't you, Bera? Does he make your heart beat quicker, girl?"

    Bera muttered something which Ragnar couldn't make out.

    "Oh, really?" Asgerd said, sounding as if she were trying not to laugh.

    "What's amusing my daughters-in-law?" Ragnar said, as he entered the communal kitchen. Greeted by silence and a mix of sheepish looks, he sniffed at the aromas and tilted his head quizzically. "Horse? What's the occasion?"

    "Berti died last night," Hilda said. "We're pickling and freezing as much as we can, but there's enough left over for a few meals." She gave him a little smile. "It won't spoil, after all, in this weather."

    "True." He picked at a piece and dodged the knife's flat that Hilda aimed at his hand. Chewing, he said around the meat. "Are you including our guest in the meal?"

    Hilda's smile faded, and he could feel the tension in the room. He could almost read their minds: do we say yes or no? What sort of mood is he in? Good. It wouldn't hurt to keep them on their toes.

    Bera said, "I was, um, I was going to take a few pieces out after we'd eaten." She didn't look up once. "I wasn't sure whether to or not after the last time he had horse."

    Ragnar remembered the vomit-eating and winced. It probably hadn't thawed properly. Nonetheless… "Take him some," Ragnar said, and felt the mood in the room lighten. "I'll come with you, shall I?"

    Bera said, head still down, "As you wish, Gothi." She hadn't called him Pappi since he'd accused her of overfamiliarity. She'd refused to name the father, and worse, been cheeky. He'd hit her so hard, the slap had left her nose bleeding.

    He sat and tucked into the meat, using bread freshly baked from their precious harvest to mop it up with.

Afterward he let Bera carry the meat down, and stayed sitting while the others cleared the table of leftovers and dirty dishes. He waited until they were alone, and asked Asgerd, "Should I be worried about leaving her alone with the stranger?"

    Hilda would be pissed off that he'd asked his elder daughter-in-law instead of his daughter, but he would get a more honest answer from Asgerd, who, as wife to his heir had less reason to tell him what he wanted to hear, would instead tell him what he
needed
to hear.

    "I don't think so," Asgerd said. "I think she's learned her lesson."

    "To keep her legs together? Or not to get knocked up if she does lie with him?"

    "I think that he's a long way from lying with anyone," Asgerd said. She fell silent as Hilda returned to the room from the scullery, and shot them a questioning look.

    "I think I'll visit our guest," Ragnar said.

    Out in the barn, the stranger was already finishing the pile of meat that Bera had taken out at Ragnar's insistence. "Surely he'll be ill if he eats that much?" Hilda had protested, falling silent at his look.

    Clearly the stranger was slightly better again, although only physically. Mentally… he gazed into space as he ate with almost unbelievably pale blue eyes, ignoring Bera's idle chit-chat, her recounting of the latest gossip. But when he saw Ragnar a cunning look crossed his features.

    "What's your name, fellow?" Ragnar said.

    The fellow gazed away, his eyes following a wagtail as it flitted through the rafters, his head and body swaying slightly to some internal rhythm.

    "Hey, I'm talking to you!" Ragnar seized the man's arm. For all that Allman looked wasted, his arm was corded muscle. Ragnar felt a twitch deep in the arm, as if the man had suffered a spasm. Was he disabled? A lunatic who'd escaped his confines? But there were no dwellings between here and Althfjord, which was the nearest farmhouse in the general direction that Ragnar's people had found him, so how had he got there?

    Ragnar resented asking himself such questions too often – he didn't like the answers he kept coming up with. He had no problem with being proven wrong, if the Formers were to return. If they came properly that is, not represented by a drooling half-wit.

    Before he could speak further, though, Allman had lurched to his feet and stood swaying in a non-existent breeze, a look of agony etched into his face. Then he started babbling. It took Ragnar a few seconds to identify the words.

    "That's not Isheimuri," Bera cried, as Allman fell again, trying to catch him.

    "It's High Isheimuri," Ragnar said. "Common Tongue we speak is corrupted English with a little Icelandic, as it was spoken when the settlers left Nytt Ragnarok. That wasn't much different from how it was spoken before the Diaspora. This is proper Old Norse from Earth's Middle Ages – he's reciting
Egil's Saga
."

    Hearing Old Norse spoken with such fluency dispelled any thoughts that the man was an offworlder. Nytt Ragnarok had been reduced to a smouldering ruin a year before the funds ran out, in one of the first raids of what had soon escalated into all-out war.

    The man's eyes focused on Ragnar.

    "I wonder," Ragnar said. "Are you some wandering seer, traveller? If you are, I can hardly put you to work for me, except asking you to labour enough to pay for your food and lodging." As a seer, the man was legally outside of the law, rather than a criminal. Ragnar couldn't hold him as a Thrall, an indentured servant – or slave, as some namby-pamby reformers dubbed them.

    The man fainted.

    Ragnar shook his head in disbelief.

    Allman's eyes snapped open; he said, "You? Dislike sunset?"

    Ragnar felt a chill beyond the weather. All his life he'd known what to do, and when he didn't he'd bluffed. But this was like nothing he'd ever known. The man was either mad or acting the part. Ragnar stood up, and dealt with fear – rarely though he felt it – as he usually did, by getting angry and shouting. "Pull yourself together!"

    The man's eyes suddenly focused and he recoiled with an exclamation. "Who the bloody hell are you?" 

FIVE

Karl gazed down at the other man, thinking, Ooops, maybe I shouldn't have said that. The man, Ragnar – how did I know his name? – was formidably ugly. Black hair streaked with grey sprouted from his head, nose and even his ears, which appeared to have been broken or torn at some point. Beneath bushy eyebrows a bulbous nose separated raisin-like eyes. The eyes were shrewd, though, missing nothing.

    Ragnar released his grip on Karl's smock. He drew himself up to his full one-metre eighty height and puffed out his chest. Karl was braced for an onslaught of selfimportance, but Ragnar visibly gathered himself in. "I'm the man who could have left you to die in the snow."

    Karl made himself look contrite. "Of course. I'm sorry."

    "Ragnar Helgrimsson." He thrust out his hand.

    "Karl Allman." Karl gazed at the hand, at the flush rising Ragnar's face, and realised that in his confusion he was insulting Ragnar again. On instinct, Karl offered his hand, and the man seized the inside of his elbow in a grip strong enough to crush walnuts, before releasing him.

    Ragnar said, "You'll come to my chamber," and stalked out of the barn.

    Karl realised that Bera was staring at him, openmouthed. He noted absently that she slouched, but apart from a slight squint she could have been pretty, beneath the tangle of hair, cold sore and the dirt. "Have I grown another head?"

    He smiled to show that he was joking, but the silence and her stare were making him uncomfortable.

    She fled.

    "Ah… OK." He rubbed his head then scratched where the rough sheepskin smock that they'd dressed him in chafed.

    His companion – the micro version of Ship's Aye – must have assimilated data while he recovered, so that nothing was wholly familiar nor completely strange, but somewhere in-between.

    He was clearly in an empty area for animals: a barn, about forty metres long by fifteen wide. Lurching across to a ladder, he looked up at second story; both floors were together six, maybe seven metres high.

    Staggering across to the doorway on still-wobbly legs, he looked up the slope to a low grass-roofed building that crouched half-buried in the side of a rock-strewn hill. Beyond another house at a right angle to the first, people were crawling among the heather. Bera loped toward them. He thought it the bleakest landscape he'd ever seen, bar none, and almost wished he'd passed Isheimur by and died in space.
No, that's foolish.

    Gazing up at a cloudy grey sky tinged with pink, Karl felt a sudden vertiginous wave. "Been cooped up for too long." His environment shouldn't have so affected him but his companion's information-gathering while he convalesced had complicated his mental state. He shivered in the intense cold; in a couple of days, the

nanophytes would adjust his reactions.

    He ambled across the square, taking deep breaths of the scrawny, tasteless air. His companion indicated that it was about as thick as Earth's atmosphere in Tibet, but that meant nothing to him. He'd long complained to Ship that all its systems were calibrated against Earthnorms, but it had done no good.

    A couple of women who looked deep in conversation fell silent. One of them was a voluptuous strawberryblonde who shot him a dazzling smile. "Up and about, I see."

    "Yes." Karl struggled not to gasp out the answer.