Alea looked up in alarm. “Then surely the short ones would be slaves!”
“Maybe not,” Gar said softly. “People are sometimes more valuable to each other when there are fewer of them. Besides, I don’t think there would be very many bands of outcasts.”
“They’d probably as soon rob us as welcome us,” Alea said sourly.
“That’s possible, too,” Gar sighed. “It might well be every man for himself there, with all hands turned against their neighbors. No, if we want a home, we’ll have to make one.”
“In a frozen wasteland?”
Gar shrugged. “I suppose I could live on sauerkraut and reindeer meat if I had to.”
“What is a rain dear?”
Gar gave her a searching glance, then said, “Just a dream creature from a child’s story. But I suspect oxen escaped and bred there, so there should be some kind of game to hunt. After all, the wild dogs have to live on something.”
Alea shuddered at the thought of the dog packs, though she had never seen one.
“Still, I’m not planning to stay in the North Country,” Gar told her. “It would be much better to persuade the three human breeds here to learn to tolerate one another and stop fighting. Then, maybe, they wouldn’t feel obliged to cast out those such as us.”
“Even the Midgarders don’t cast us out,” Alea said bitterly. “They enslave us, and if we’re lucky, we escape, though I’ve never heard of anyone who wasn’t brought back—except the outlaws to the north.” Then she frowned. “What kind of man are you if you don’t know this?”
“One from far away,” Gar answered, “very far, and sometimes I think I should never have left home.” A shadow crossed his face, but he shook off the melancholy before it could take hold of him. “I did leave, though, since there wasn’t much for me there, and I have to make a life for myself. How can I do that if all three kinds of people are fighting so hard that none of them will accept me?”
“You don’t think you could persuade them to let you live among them even if you could get them to make peace, do you?”
“It’s worth a try.” Gar flashed her a grin. “And it’s better than spending all my days running and hiding without any hope of being able to settle down to a real life.”
“Yes; it is!” The audacity of the idea dizzied Alea, the sheer nerve of daring to try to achieve something so immense as peace between the Jotuns, Nibels, and Midgarders. She wondered for a moment where women might fit into Gar’s new world, then scolded herself for silliness—women were part of men, everyone knew that. Still, the giants had seemed to treat her with greater respect than the men of her own land…
Hope flowered within her with such an intensity that it almost frightened her—she had begun to accept despair, almost to clasp it to her, and she found that hope hurt. But she summoned her courage and gazed into Gar’s eyes, daring the pain, embracing the hope, discovering that no matter the risk, she couldn’t turn away from the idea of winning back her life. “I’ll go along and try for that peace with you, lad. We’re probably a pair of fools who will die trying for a dream that can’t come true, but Freya knows it’s better than dying in despair grubbing roots and berries!”
“Brave woman!” Gar flashed her his grin again. “That same Freya knows I’ll be glad of your company—but it will be dangerous, you know.”
“There’s no way my life can’t be, now,” she told him. “In fact, there’s no hope of life at all, except as a slave and whore. No, I’ll face danger beside you.”
“Then let’s go conquer the world!” Gar shoveled dirt on the fire, put away the mugs, then rose and turned to start down the road. “Or shake some sense into it and make it see it has to be a peaceful world, at least.”
Alea fell into step beside Gar, amazed at herself, but just as much amazed at him. How many men would invite a woman along if they knew they were marching into danger? He was a rare one, all right, and must be very sure of his ability to protect them both.
The thought chilled her. If he was that strong, that good a fighter, how easily might he beat her or wrestle her down? Anger surged, and her hand tightened on her staff. He would pay dearly for that victory, Alea vowed—then realized that if he’d wanted to do it, he would have already. She glanced up at his face with its slight, serene smile, eyes bright with eagerness to face the future and the struggle for peace. Strangely, she felt safe with him—or safer with than without him, at least. She wondered why, and scolded herself—she must keep on being careful, after all.
Still, she was amazed to discover that she could trust a man again, even as little as this.
She was amazed, too, to realize that she had come to accept the idea that dwarves and giants were people just as surely as the folk of her former village. How quickly that had happened, how suddenly! Might it be because it meant that she and Gar were people, too? Still, it was a wonder.
So was he.
They wandered northward through a wild land for three nights, keeping the evening sun on their left and the morning sun on their right. Woodlands alternated with meadows, the grass filled with weeds and the trees filled with underbrush. Twice they had to hide from patrols of human hunters setting out in the first light of dawn, once from a squadron of giants on their way home in the dusk. They saw no farmers. No one dared cultivate the rich land of this border region, when armies might clash in any field on any day.
Since the only predators they needed to fear hunted by sunlight, they kept to the pattern Alea had established, traveling by night and sleeping by day, Gar always by the campfire, Alea always in a tree twenty or thirty feet away, one of them always awake. The tree limbs were uncomfortable, and Alea began to find herself tempted more and more to sleep on the ground while Gar kept watch for danger, but she snapped herself out of the notion whenever she realized it had crept up on her. She reminded herself that no matter how gentle he seemed, he still couldn’t be trusted. After all, he was a man. The fourth night, the wild dogs found them.
False dawn had come, the sky pale and the world filled with the ghostly light that comes before the sun, all the more ghostly because mist was rising from the meadow they were crossing. They were just coming to the trees at its edge when they heard the baying and barking, approaching fast.
“Into a tree!” Gar told Alea, and turned to face the barking, pulling a sword from under his cloak.
Alea stared; she hadn’t realized he had the weapon. Then she shook off her surprise and retorted, “Will you climb, too?”
“Yes, if you do! Then we can throw sticks at them, at least.”
“All right, if you promise.” Alea scanned the trees quickly, picked one with a low limb, and was about to jump up when the barking burst much louder. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the pack charging straight at them.
Gar wouldn’t have time to climb. Fear clamored within her, but she spun and set her back against his, holding her staff up as he had taught her. “You’re lost by yourself!”
Gar spat the first curse she had heard him utter, then snapped, “Take a decent staff, then!” His own quarterstaff swung back; she dropped her stick and snatched his. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him draw a dagger; then the pack was on them.
7
Three dogs leaped at her, one large, dark, and flop-eared; one tan and point-eared; the third smaller and spotted, with long ears and a huge bark. Alea struck in near-panic as hard as she could, the biggest first, then the smallest as it darted at her ankles, making an hourglass pattern with her staff, as Gar had shown her. The middle dog tried to leap in past the staff. She screamed, stepped back, jarred against Gar, and the stick seemed to jump in her hands without her even thinking about it. The tip caught the dog in the belly.