"Welcome to Peace Rock," said Malcolm, the powerfully built warrior who'd worn the red-blue-silver armor as he'd watched over Hansen's duel with the late Zieborn. Malcolm had a café au lait complexion and a rich baritone voice that was musical even in its sarcasm.
A mammoth raised its trunk and hooted loudly as it walked through the gate in the outer 'defenses,' merely a wooden palisade. But then, stone and reinforced concrete would be no better protection against the warriors' arc weapons.
"It was Blood Rock under Golsingh's old man," said Shill, who seemed to be one of Malcolm's hangers-on; a crabbed, older warrior one short step up from Villiers, whose corpse and armor had been abandoned on the field. "Golsingh changed it, because he's gonna bring peace to the whole kingdom. He says."
"Don't matter," said Maharg, a hulking young warrior and also under Malcolm's vague protection. "There's plenty work for us while he's bringin' peace."
"This is the capital?" Hansen said. "This is the king's capital?"
Peace Rock was a village of mud streets and houses whose thatched roofs arched over meter-high drystone foundations. It stank of beasts—mammoths, ponies, and huge bison with polled horns, stabled within stone fences—and of excrement, obviously from the population as well as from their livestock. Women and children, their varied status indicated by the quality of their clothing, greeted the returning army.
Peace Rock's only substantial building was in the center of the community: a hall forty meters long and almost half that in breadth. Hansen judged the roof to be ten meters high at the peak, but its thatched expanse swept down to waist height at either side. Smoke from an open hearth boiled out beneath both end gables.
Slaves had begun unloading the mammoths and collecting the ponies for feed and grooming. Many of the freemen were disappearing into squalid huts with women in tow. Nothing like an afternoon of slaughter to bring men to the need for reaffirming life in the most basic fashion possible. . . .
Hansen nodded to the hall. Dozens of male and female servants—and a pair of young women too beautiful and beautifully dressed to be less than nobles—waited at the entrance to greet Golsingh and Taddeusz.
"Is that Golsingh's palace, then?" he asked the trio of warriors whom he'd permitted to take him under their wing.
"That's the hall," said Malcolm. "You'll sleep there, until you find a woman with a hut of her own."
He looked sharply at Hansen. "Why, do you do it differently in Annunciation?"
Hansen shrugged. "Not really," he said noncommittally.
His coveralls had lasted the run and struggle in the battlesuit, but they weren't sufficient garb for a winter evening. Where the skin was chafed, Hansen's limbs burned in the cold. He was going to need additional clothing—furs, like those the freemen and warriors wore—heat, and food, all very quickly, or exposure was going to finish what Zieborn had attempted.
The richly-dressed blond woman put her arms around Golsingh and kissed him. As if that slipped the leashes of the others gathered before the hall, the servant women broke ranks into the returning warriors like a covey of quail lifting.
Malcolm patted Shill and Maharg on the shoulder and said, "Later, gents." He strode forward and lifted a buxom redhead off her feet as she threw herself into his arms. A touch of embroidered hem showed beneath her fur cloak.
"Lucky bastard," Shill muttered, but there was more pride than envy in his voice.
"We'll do all right," Maharg said, looking around the crowd. " 'specially tonight, since there'll be some bunks cold otherwise."
A woman with an infant at her breast and a child of three clinging to her dress suddenly began to wail in heartbreak. Maharg watched her, flat-eyed.
The black-haired noblewoman took Taddeusz' hands in hers and dipped her head. The warchief bowed back to her.
Hansen frowned. "His wife?" he said. "Taddeusz' wife, I mean?"
"Krita," explained Shill. "His daughter. Don't touch her."
"Won't have much choice 'bout touching her at battle practice," said Maharg with a note of gloomy memory. "Fancies herself a real warmaiden. Wouldn't be surprised she goes for one of North's Searchers."
"North?" said Hansen, suddenly shocked by memory of the mission that had sent him here. "There's a man named North here?"
"No, no," said Shill in aged peevishness. "The god North. Where did you say you came from?"
"Look," said Hansen, "if I don't get near a fire, it won't matter where I came from. Can we go inside? Somewhere?"
Maharg shrugged. "Why not?" he said and stamped toward the entrance to the hall.
Golsingh, Taddeusz, and the women who'd greeted them were already going in, talking with animation. The blond paused for a moment in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder at Hansen.
"Unn, the king's wife," said Shill grimly. "And if she don't wear armor much the way Krita does, don't let that fool you. She's a tough one too. And she don't want anybody tryin' t' put one over on Golsingh."
Hansen snorted. "If Golsingh wanted to listen to me," he said, "I just might make him a real king. But I don't guess that'll happen."
The interior of the hall was dimmer than the twilight outside, but it was warm—which was rapidly becoming the only thing in the world that Hansen cared about.
The center of the long room was a hearth. Board cubicles, each with its own door, ran down either sidewall. Between the hearth and the cubicles, a U of trestle tables was arranged with benches on their wall side. Two carved chairs supplied the cross-table at the far end in place of a bench.
The whole thing was barbaric and pre-technological; whereas the warriors' armor was extremely sophisticated—though idiosyncratic.
And there was a god named North somewhere, for a man-hunter named Hansen to find and to deal with.
Golsingh and Taddeusz seated themselves on the two chairs. To Hansen's surprise, Krita and Unn took cups of jeweled metal from servants and offered them to the leaders instead of joining them at the table.
The face of Golsingh's blond wife was as cool as the surface of a forest pond which hides all the life beneath its reflection. Taddeusz' dark daughter Krita had high cheekbones and eyes like fire glinting from a hatchet blade. She wore a sleeveless tunic of blue brocade, cinched with a belt of gold. Her sinewy arms had calluses at the wrists and elbows, places where Hansen's armor had rubbed him raw.
Hansen had been busy enough taking stock of his new surroundings that he hadn't paid attention to the way his companions hesitated beside him while other warriors seated themselves at the benches. Servants stood on the inner side of the U—where the hearth must've been damned uncomfortable against their calves. They were slicing joints and ladling stewed vegetables onto plates.
Shill muttered something and scuttled toward a bench about halfway between the chairs and the door. Hansen followed, hungry enough not to realize that something beyond open seating was involved.
Maharg hung back. "Malcolm's not here," he said.
The benches were filling. Shill glanced over his shoulder, hesitated—but carried out his original intent. Maharg grimaced as he seated himself to the older man's right—throne—side; and Hansen squeezed in beside Maharg.
"How do I get proper clothi—" Hansen began as a female servant set a plate covered with broiled meat—half-burned, half-raw—and stewed vegetables before him.
The man to Hansen's right turned and gripped him by the ear. "What do you think you're doing here, you slave's whelp?" the man demanded.
The corner of Hansen's eye placed the carving knife—too far—and the serving fork—just right, as the servant froze in surprise. The warrior who held him was big, young, and very angry. Hansen didn't know the etiquette at Peace Rock, but he did know that in a fraction of a second, Nils Hansen would be discussing the matter with the survivors, over the body of the man beside him.
"I think," said Malcolm, taking the other man by both ears from behind, "that he's the guy who took your brother one-on-one, Letzing. Which you—" Letzing's fingers relaxed as Malcolm twisted "—couldn't've managed in a million years. So what're you doing up-bench of him?"
Malcolm lifted Letzing deliberately from his seat. Everyone in the hall was watching, but no one attempted to interfere.
Letzing stumbled as Malcolm walked him backward off the bench. "You wouldn't do this to me if my brother were here!" he cried out unexpectedly.
Malcolm let him go and said brutally, "Zieborn's not here. He's dead. Want to try me tomorrow and join him? Want to try me tonight?"
Letzing was broader than Malcolm and almost as tall, but you didn't need Hansen's experience to realize that it would be the contest of the axe and the firelog if Letzing accepted the challenge.
Letzing knew that too. He turned away and stamped across to a seat on the other side of the hall—and well down the bench. Malcolm took his place, looked at Hansen, and said, "Well, we're the bold lad, aren't we? But if Maharg doesn't mind, I certainly don't."
Maharg forked a slice of meat into his mouth and said mushily, "Aw, it don't matter. I figured I'd let him sit beside you this once, is all."
The meat was unseasoned, tough, and cut into larger chunks than Hansen was used to putting in his mouth. He chewed and stared at Maharg until the powerfully built young man met his eyes.
Hansen swallowed. "And then again," he said deliberately, "maybe this is how it's going to stay."
Maharg flushed and took a spoonful of turnips and potatoes. He didn't reply.
Malcolm guffawed and accepted the cup handed him by the redheaded woman he'd embraced on returning. "Quite the lad," he repeated.
The food was not so much bad as boring, and the beer that was the only available drink had a musty undertaste. Still, Hansen was hungry enough to have chopped a piece of one of the draft mammoths if nothing else were available. He concentrated happily on his meal.
While the warriors ate, slaves carried suits of armor into the hall and placed each in one of the cubicles along the sidewalls. Malcolm nudged Hansen and said, "That's yours," pointing to the quartet of slaves who had just entered with a russet and black suit.
"The arm's cut off," Hansen said, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.
"Don't worry," Malcolm explained. "It's a good suit. We'll carry it to Vasque the Smith tomorrow and get it repaired."
"It's a damned good suit," muttered Shill.
Maharg turned on the old warrior and snarled, "So why didn't you ever challenge Zieborn and get a suit just as good, ha?"
"Maharg," said Malcolm quietly.
"Yeah, well," said the younger man as he went back to his food.
Taddeusz' daughter took a silver pitcher of beer from a servant and walked down the runway between the fire and table. Her soft shoes made no sound on the hall's puncheon floor. Golsingh, Unn and—with dawning fury—Taddeusz watched her progress.
She stopped in front of Hansen. He looked up in surprise.
"Krita!" the warchief shouted.
Krita bent and filled Hansen's cup.
"I want to meet the new hero," she said in a clear voice that rang in the sudden silence. "The wolf in Villiers' clothing."
"Some would say," Unn called with equal clarity down the length of the table, "that it's a coward's part to slay a man with a bolt."
Hansen went cold. He looked in Unn's direction, but he saw nothing except a blur of blond hair and his own cold fury. "Zieborn wouldn't say that, milady," he said loudly.
A warrior across the hall snorted. "That's tellin' her, buddy!" he shouted. The whole room rocked with laughter as heavy fists pounded the tables in amusement.
Krita raised an eyebrow and walked back to the other end of the room.
Taddeusz stood up. The hall quieted.
"I served my king this day as no other man has done," the warchief boomed in what Hansen realized after a moment was a set speech. "Alone I strode among my king's enemies—" nearly true, and nothing for a sensible man to boast about "—and smote them down by the scores. Cerausi, the warchief of Count Lopez, a mighty hero, dared stand against me. His armor was silver and blue. He struck at me—"
Hansen began to nod. He was exhausted; the fire warmed him, and much of his blood supply was in his belly, converting the heavy meal into strength for the morrow.
He looked around covertly to see how the other warriors were reacting to Taddeusz' speech. They were just as tired as Hansen, and most of them had been much less sparing with the beer. Several had already collapsed in place. Servants worried the plates and remains of food out from under them.
Hansen heard dogs yelping outside, but at least they weren't being allowed in the hall during the meal as he'd rather expected would be the case. Reassured that the worst he was likely to do would be within the bounds of propriety here, Hansen slid his dish out of the way and concentrated on keeping awake.
After Taddeusz finished his speech, the warrior at the head of the bench to the king's left rose and rambled off on a boast of his own. No one seemed to listen to him—or, for that matter, to any of the warriors who followed him with equally boring harangues. As soon as one warrior sat down, the next—across the hall—got up, even if they'd been snoring on the table a moment before.
It was noticeable that the farther down the benches the speakers were, the shorter and less circumstantial their boasts tended to be.
The man across from Hansen stopped in the middle of a sentence that hadn't seemed to be going anywhere. He didn't so much sit down as flop when his legs gave way. A servant handed him a refilled cup.
Maharg elbowed Hansen. "Well, go on!" he said.
"But—" Hansen said. He stood, shaking his head to clear it. All right, he hadn't been in the battle, and he wasn't going to brag about killing Zieborn . . . or anybody else. Zieborn hadn't been the first, or the twenty-first; but that had been the job of Special Units.
"I won't tell you what I've done," Hansen said, raising his voice over the sound of snores and servants clearing dishes. "That's little enough so far, here in your country. And I won't boast about what I'm going to do in the next battle or the next hundred battles. But—"
Hansen turned to the cross-table. Taddeusz was—no, the warchief wasn't asleep, for his eyes snapped firmly shut when Hansen stared at him. Golsingh was watching; and Krita, and Unn. . . .
"But Lord Golsingh, if it's your true desire to bring peace to all your kingdom—peace that stands, not a battle here and a feud there, always and forever, for you to stamp out and go on to the next—"
The king was nodding. The women's faces didn't change.
"Then I can show you how to do it."
"That isn't a warrior's part!" Taddeusz shouted, raising his head from his crossed arms. Golsingh looked at him with a frown.
"I'll do a warrior's job when there's fighting," Hansen snapped. "But I'll let you do a king's job, Lord Golsingh—if you really want that!"
He sat down abruptly, before he said too much—if he hadn't already. The beer's unpleasant taste covered a surprising kick.
Another warrior rose and maundered unintelligibly.
Hansen fell asleep while the last warriors spoke.
Clashing metal—a dropped cup—awakened him. The hearth had burned to coals, but there was still enough light to see forms hunched at the tables. Half the room was empty, but many of the warriors were continuing to drink and mumble to one another.
"Malcolm, where do I bunk?" Hansen asked, hoping he'd correctly identified the man to his right.
A servant stepped between the coals and Hansen. "More beer, hero?" she asked.
Not a servant. Krita.
"No," Hansen said curtly. "And you can call me a hero when you believe it yourself. Not now."
The black-haired woman laughed. "How good are you, Hansen?" she asked.
"Good enough," he said. "As good as I—"
He paused. "I'll tell you this, lady," he said in sudden decision. "I'm the best there is. That's how good I am."
He turned his back on her throaty chuckle. He was pretty sure he remembered which cubicle he'd seen them carry the russet and black armor into.
Malcolm put a hand on Hansen's shoulder. "That one," he said, pointing to a doorway.
"Thanks."
"Quite the lad," Malcolm said. "You know, boy—"
Hansen paused at the doorway and looked back.
"—I'm not sure I'm going to want to know you," Malcolm finished.
And he chuckled as he sat down on his bench again, but Hansen was pretty sure the comment had been more than a joke.