Homecoming

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Stor tidragen han t’ flikkor, ofta kjikt i ham pa solstig blikkor folte ham pa midda, nog drod nar en mo i sjymning, viskte bjaali t’ va ellen.

[Fascinating he to women, often glanced at him by morning, followed him their eyes at midday, lingered near sometimes at twilight, whispered to him in the firelight.]

From THE JARNHANN SAGA, Kumalo translation

Each low hovel of small unsquared logs had two doors through which one passed crouching, and sod roofs with a central smoke hole. Inside they reeked of wood smoke.

Women moved about the camp carrying wood or water or simply going somewhere, often accompanied by small children or older girls. Other children followed Nils and Nikko, and she tested her Swedish on them, turning to Nils for help when she failed to understand or be understood. Already she was beginning to see patterns in the language changes; as she learned them she’d communicate more effectively.

Her pocket video camera was often in her hands.

She looked up at Nils. “Why did you make a temporary camp if you expect to drive the orcs out of the country?”

“Because the orcs will probably come and destroy it. It wouldn’t be realistic to defend it. And when they leave the country we’ll spread out by clans, perhaps one clan to a valley. We’re too many to live so close very long, but for now we stay together so we can gather forces quickly when we want to. Would you like to see some of our men training?”

She said she would, and they left the proximity of the huts for an open grassy field where sweating boys and men with wooden swords and leather shields thrust and parried. They ranged from early adolescence to middle age. Drill masters moved among them, stopping individuals, talking to them, demonstrating, occasionally berating. Nearby were irregular groups of little boys with sticks and small shields, frequently watching, often sparring or shadow-sparring, and sometimes racing or wrestling. She realized now why these people were so strong.

“Why are some of the instructors younger than so many of the men they’re training?” Nikko asked.

“The instructors are warriors, some as young as nineteen. The older men in training are freeholders-farmers not trained before to fight. Warriors learn their skills from boyhood by training long days, until every act, every move and response, comes quickly and correctly without thought. These farmers will never equal warriors, but they are strong and proud, and the best will be as good as most orcs. Until they are thirteen or fourteen, most of them spent a lot of time practicing with sticks, like those little fellows out there, earning lots of sore spots. And as bowmen they’re already very good. All their lives they’ve shot at marks, and hunted game to help feed themselves and their families.

“In the past the bans protected them from war, but the bans mean nothing to orcs. And while the warriors will protect them as much as they can, the freeholders must be ready to protect themselves if they need to.”

“Freeholders,” Nikko said. “Do you have slaves then?”

“We used to-warriors taken prisoner from other clans in raids. But after we united, the thralls returned to their own clans. Now all men are freeholders.”

“Don’t you mean all men are either freeholders or warriors?”

“In a sense. Warriors are freeholders too, but a warrior is special. In the homeland he worked his own land, but had the help of slaves to give him time to practice with weapons.”

“And I suppose warriors consider themselves better than other freeholders.”

Nils nodded. “To be chosen by the clan as a sword apprentice, to become a warrior, was a great honor. And a warrior is proud of being a warrior. But a warrior’s father often is simply a farmer, yet the son honors him. Also, a warrior’s sons often will not be chosen, will simply be farmers, yet they are his sons and he will love and respect them. And a warrior will have been simply a farmer in past lives, and perhaps a slave in one to come.”

That startled Nikko Kumalo. “Do your people believe in rebirth then?”

“Of course.”

“And do you remember, uh, past lives?”

“No. To die is to forget. Sometimes a little child remembers, and occasionally an old person, but it is usually a little glimpse, unclear and often uncertain.”

So, she thought, they may not be afraid to die. “How do you decide who will be a warrior?”

“In their thirteenth or fourteenth summer, boys were selected for size and strength, and skill in war-play, to become sword apprentices. In their nineteenth summer they became warriors. But that is changing now.”

“Why haven’t your people killed each other off over the years?”

“The bans set limits and rules for fighting between clans and tribes. Few but warriors were killed.”

“But then, warriors must be more likely to die young. If you select the strongest and quickest to become warriors, in the course of time your people will become weaker.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Warriors can have several wives, other men but one. And it isn’t unusual for women to seek the attention of a warrior. Among our women, warriors are considered desirable lovers.”

“And what do their husbands do if they find out?”

“Beat them.”

“Beat the wife, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But why the wife?”

“The wife has insulted him by turning to another man, so he beats her.”

“And nothing is done to the warrior?”

“No. He has honored the woman’s husband by finding his wife desirable.”

“But… ” Nikko started to protest, then realized the futility ot it and asked instead, “What if an unmarried girl gets pregnant by a warrior?”

“Unless the warrior marries her, the child is taken from her and grows up in the warrior’s family as his child. Then, because she was desirable to a warrior, other men will want to marry her.”

“How many wives do you have, Nils?”

“One.”

“Only one?”

“There mav be others later. Ilse will remain the principal wife.”

They had left the training field, wandering along the river to a high cutbank where children were swimming.

“The orcs looked very tough and disciplined, and there are a lot of them. Do you really expect to beat them?”

Nils nodded. “We beat them badly in every fight. Partly it was weapons skills and partly endurance; fighting is very hard work and to become too tired can be fatal. But without cunning we’d have been destroyed. It’s important to fight at an advantage. In the Ukraine we were careful always to fight them in the forest; we were no match for them on horseback. Now we are correcting that. Would you like to see warriors train on horseback?”

“Oh, yes!” Nikko answered. “I love horses and riding.”

“I’ll have someone take you tomorrow morning then. But now I’ll show you your tent. It should be built by now, and I have things to do before the sun sets.”

The tent frame had been set up-long saplings cut, bent, and lashed into the form of a tortoise. Several women and girls were covering it with hides. Temporary-looking and small, she thought, for someone who was temporary and alone.

“You will take your meals at the hut of Ulf Vargson,” Nils told her. “Ulf is chief of the Wolf Clan. He has two daughters still at home, helping his wives, and they will be pleased to ask questions and answer yours.”

She looked up at his strong well-balanced face. He couldn’t be older than his mid-twenties, she decided, much younger than her own thirty-four years, yet somehow she reacted to him as her senior. There was something compelling about him, some inner difference beyond the telepathy and the sometimes disconcertingly direct intelligence.

“When will I talk to you again?” she asked. “There are so many things I’d like to know: about your travels, and the Psi Alliance, and Kazi.”

Nils grinned at her, taking her by surprise, and in that moment he seemed like any large good-looking athletic youth. “I’ll be back before dark. Ilse and I have a tent too, the cone-shaped one by the birch grove.” He pointed. “I copied its form from the horse-barbarians. Come. I’ll introduce you to Ulf’s family.”

Horse barbarians. That’s another I’ll have to ask about, she thought.

She felt impatient for the evening.

The broiled meat required strong chewing, and Nikko stopped eating not because she was full but because her jaws and cheeks could chew no more. No wonder these people have such strong faces, she thought; they develop a bite like a dire bear’s. A congealed reddish pudding had also been served, which she decided not to ask about; if it was made with blood she preferred not to know yet. Her palate insisted it was partly curdled milk.

Conversation had gone haltingly. The girls, especially, kept forgetting to speak slowly and often had to repeat themselves. None of the family spoke any Anglic at all and there was no one to clarify words for either side. But an hour of this improved Nikko’s ability noticeably.

Then Ulf raised his thick-shouldered form and stretched. “I have to sleep early tonight. I’ll be training all day tomorrow, learning to fight in the saddle like a horse barbarian, and I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Ho! Listen to him,” his principal wife said fondly. “I’ve seen him spar with a man half his age and make the young one dizzy with his sword play.”

The chieftain laughed. “But the young ones can fight all day and make love half the night.” He poked the woman playfully with an elbow. “I could too, when I was twenty. Now I need my sleep.”

Nikko thanked them and left for her own tent a few dozen meters away. It was still daylight, but the sun had set. Inside the entrance dry wood had been stacked, along with birch bark for kindling. There was also a heap of leafy green twigs, its purpose unknown to her. Dry grass lay piled as a bed against one side, and she unrolled her light sleeping bag on it. Next she opened the small field chest and re-inventoried, then switched on the little radio and checked in with the Phaeacia, giving Matthew a resume.

That done, she left. She found Nils sitting cross-legged on the ground outside his door, his expression one of relaxed serenity, a young pagan god, blond and tan. It was dusk now, and mosquitoes were foraging in numbers but he did not seem to notice. Her hand snapped upward as she approached, smashing one on her forehead.

Nils stood and gestured her into his tent.

“Sorry,” she said. “We have biting insects a lot like these on my world, but I’m not used to so many of them.”

“I’ll light a fire,” he said. “They don’t like smoke.” He smiled. “You’ll get used to them though, and they take very small bites. On warm still nights they were worse than this in the homeland.” With flint and steel he quickly had a small wad of tinder glowing, blew it into a tiny fire and built it up with birchbark and branchwood.

“Will your people learn to like this land as much as the old?” Nikko asked.

“Most already like it better. It’s a richer land, easier to live in, and very beautiful. We call the old land ‘homeland’ because of the memories and-” he groped momentarily-“traditions, but we are glad to be here.”

The fire flamed briskly and Nils piled leafy twigs on it. The burning slowed and smoke billowed. He took two bundles of furs from the grassy bed opposite the entrance and set them near one another for seats.

“What would you like to hear about first?” he asked.

“One thing we’d especially like to know is what happened long ago that cut off travel from this world to ours, and why there are so few people on Earth today.”

“Ah, the Plague. The tribes have only the word for it, and a few vague stories, but the Kinfolk- the Alliance-speak of it in detail and certainty.”

Nils told her of an epidemic that had hit suddenly, that the ancient healers could do nothing about and which spared only a scattered few. When someone sickened with it he was taken with a terrible urge to make fire, to burn things, and soon died. The cities reeked with smoke and rotting flesh, and before many days it was over. The few who survived could search for a day or more before finding someone else alive. Soon the little moons that circled above the sky died because there was no one to take care of them, and when the little moons died, the machines died that had made life easy for men.

As he talked, her eyes searched his face, and whether he told of death and burning or of the gradual gathering and regrowth of mankind, his expression and voice remained casual. Yet he didn’t seem uncaring, and his calm was due to more than remoteness of the events in time. It reflected something in him that she had never known before.

“Are others of your people like you?” she asked. “Or other telepaths? Who think like you and look at things the way you do?”

“No,” he said. “I do not know of any other who sees as I do, although Ilse is coming to.”

“When did you become like you are?”

“Somewhat, I have always been. Then I killed the troll and was almost killed by it. When I woke up afterward, I knew.”

“When you killed the troll?”

He nodded, and for a moment she was shaken, wondering if, after all, the difference in him was that he was insane. He laughed, she blushed, and he began to tell a story. It began with a boy, a sword apprentice in his eighteenth summer, who killed a man with a fist blow, was dubbed Ironhand, and exiled. A boy-man, naive, ignorant, but almost unmatched with the sword. At first things happened to him. Before long he happened to them. And there were trolls, which the chief of the Psi Alliance believed had been brought in ancient times from the stars.

She stared as he talked, her eyes growing full of him, exploring him, his smooth skin molded over muscles that were tiger-like in their power and grace, relaxed but explosive and possessed of more than human strength, ruddied by the settling fire. He turned his eyes to her, and suddenly her desire for him flashed into intense consciousness. She had shifted closer to him, unaware, and found herself leaning toward him. The realization jerked her upright, confused and frightened. Scrambling to her feet she scurried crouching through the low entrance into the night. She actually ran for a few meters, fought back the edge of panic and slowed to a walk, then stopped and looked around. It was dark and she could see no one. Her tent was over there, and she walked toward it, heart hammering. Had he hypnotized her? No. It had come from inside her, from within herself, an expression and surfacing of some deep inner response to him. She was still shaky, her pulse rapid from the shock and unexpectedness of it. She’d never imagined anything like that.

Inside her tent she opened the field chest. Humming mosquitoes were finding her in vicious numbers. She located the little battery lamp by feel, and with its soft white civilized light found the small cylindrical fire-lighter. She needed only to twist the top off, thumb the slide, and… She gripped it harder but still the top wouldn’t turn; she gripped it as hard as she could, futilely. Using her handkerchief made no difference, and there were no pliers in the kit. “Damn damn damn,” she gritted, then almost cried, and finally sat on her bed of grass, listening to the humming, feeling the stings.

After a minute’s despondency she crawled outside again, walked slowly to Nils’s tent, and ducked into its ember-lit interior. He still sat as he had, as if waiting.

“I can’t light my fire,” she said in a low voice.

He nodded silently, got up, and left with her. Side by side they walked through the darkness and entered her tent. She lit the small lamp again and he did not comment on it.

“If you could open this… ”

He held the small cylinder in his palm, looking at it, and it occurred to Nikko that he had never seen a screw cap before. But he knew. Gripping the top, he turned it easily, handed it back, and watched silently while she made a small rough pile of birch bark and twigs. In a moment she had a fire burning. At that he left, and she knelt for a few minutes, feeding the rising flames, then piled on leafy twigs as she’d seen Nils do.

She felt a sense of relief as the smoke diffused through the tent, and lay down in her jump suit atop the sleeping bag. Dark humor sparked briefly in her mind: I wonder if he’d have jumped and run if I’d reached for him. But the humor died. I’m no different than I was yesterday, she told herself. I just know something about myself I didn’t know before. Now that I know, I won’t be taken by surprise again.

Had he known before it surfaced? Then why had he gone on talking? But what else should he have done? Told her to get out before she made a fool of herself?

How many naked souls had he seen? What understanding must he have?

With that she felt better, but her mind would not be still. What would have happened if he’d reached out, put his hands on her, drawn her down onto the bed of grass? The thought requickened her pulse, tightening her throat; that was her answer. But he hadn’t, and the sag of disappointment reinforced that answer. He could have but hadn’t. Maybe the fact that she was older… but she was still quite pretty. She liked to look at her face in the mirror, and at her small neat figure.

Or perhaps he’d sensed the guilt she’d feel if she had had sex with him.

Were his reasons either of those or was she simply talking to herself? What mattered was that nothing physical had happened. She pictured Matthew’s face then, and somehow the feeling that followed was of sober relief. Tension drained from her, and for a few minutes her thoughts were deliberately of years and dreams and tenderness shared, until she fell asleep with pungent smoke in her nostrils.