“Stop,” Ram murmured, and crouched on the upper step. The air was sweet here, with a fragrance like pink lularea. He kept his eyes directed at the Northman to guide him, and could see the darkness of sunken sockets. A chill passed through him. The man moved deliberately to the ladder, reached for the hand rails, and pulled himself onto it with startlingly muscular arms. Ram reached out to him, their hands met, and he backed into the cabin with Ilse’s husband following. Gooseflesh crawled on the captain’s skin.
The door slid shut and Ram stood in the darkness smelling the barbarian’s stale sweat. There was something different in it, a taint that some long-buried memory in Ram’s mind identified. It told of terrible injury and pain. The body seemed strong now but the odor lingered.
“You’re a father,” Ram said quietly. “It’s a healthy girl. Willi, let’s get our tails out of here before someone spots us.”
XXIV
Kniven lag i slappa sommen, sov pa sidan a sin stridshass, sov iblann sin dromna kjamper slumranne pa stilla sletten i d’ lagren trygg a sikker, slutan om a vakna posser
a a smylla hasspatryller.
I knivens panna pette viske, snydde va a blaste dromen bort, da satt han upp a starde.
Ingen vaken sag de onar.
Plyssli i d’ morka natten, nagon vita, jenomsynli, vista sej t’ Knivens springor.
Sag han makti Jarnhanns spoke, kjennte Ynglingen i annen viskanne i sjaanli stillen.
[Listi lay relaxed and sleeping, lay beside his horse in slumber, lay among his dreaming warriors sleeping on the silent prairie in their war camp strong, protected, guarded round by watchful sentries and by stealthy scouts on horseback.
In his mind there came a whisper, touched and broke his fragile dreaming, sat up then and looked about him.
Nothing waking caught his vision.
Then within the darkness flickered something thinly white, transparent.
As he stared with eyes thin-slitted, saw the ghost of mighty Ironhand, saw the spirit of the Youngling whispering in the starlit stillness.]
From THE JARNHANN SAGA, Kumalo translation.
“Nils! Have you seen her?”
“Yes, through Ram’s eyes before I slept. She’s beautiful. Not all red like many newborns.”
Ilse held out her hands and he took them, smiling down at her. “Darling,” he said, “you are as remarkable at growing a baby as at every other thing.”
Celia left them, closing the door behind her while the two conversed silently in a rich and subtle mixture of images, feelings, and unspoken words. After a bit Ilse showed him how to leave his body. He lay down on the deck of the small sick-room and after a minute she could not detect him; only his body was there. Then he returned.
“Was he aware of you at all?” she asked.
“Not consciously.”
“His mind is tense and inward,” she said, “and easily threatened. Mostly he allows his psi to function only with verbalized thoughts, and that only guardedly.
“And your sight-could you see when you were out of the body?”
“Better than with eyes. More finely, and in every direction at once.”
She nodded. “And now?”
“I’m going to the two star men, Matthew and Mikhail, and see how things are with them-what the situation is.”
Concentrating but without effort he edged into thereness until he could see Matthew. He sensed at once the familiar feel of Draco’s dungeon, which he had not expected. He’d assumed they were Ahmed’s prisoners, and it had been clear earlier that Draco and Ahmed were enemies. Scanning, he sensed Mikhail nearby, the still catatonic Chandra, and a female with Chandra, desolate and in pain, that had to be the one called Anne Marie. The hostages had been brought together.
A dungeon captain, ill-at-ease, psi intent, was moving sword in hand down the alleyway between the rows of cells, and Nils withdrew. For only a minute he stayed in his body, sensing Ilse’s awareness, then left again.
Nephthys was alone at her loom, looking critically at a half-completed tapestry. She was conscious of him almost at once. Carefully she looked around, saw nothing meaningful, and took her lip thoughtfully between her teeth.
“I’m not asleep,” she thought. “Is it you? Can the dead return?”
He acknowledged that it was him. “Is the one called Ahmed still alive?” he asked.
“No. Draco had him killed and rules the entire army now.” She hesitated. “Do you know about your people?”
“What about them?”
“Ahmed made an alliance with them. Oh Nils, I heard they’d blinded you but I didn’t know you’d been killed.”
“They blinded me.” His mind was gentle but persistent. “What about my people?”
“They sent out an army to help Ahmed overthrow Draco. Ahmed had promised to protect them with his sky chariot if Draco tried to attack them in the open. They believed if Ahmed won he’d take us all to Egypt and leave this country to them. But now… ”
She paused and he finished for her. “And now Draco has the sky chariot and the whole orc army and plans to destroy us.”
Mentally she nodded.
“When?”
“I don’t know. As soon as his army reaches them. It left this morning.”
She looked around her again.
“I can see you now, barely, as if you were made of pale light. Can you let me see you better?”
He made a stronger facsimile of his body until it appeared almost like flesh. Nephthys reached toward him and touched… nothing. “Can’t you take me in your arms then?”
Gentle negative.
“You have sons. Two of them.” She walked to a slender silvered cord and somewhere a bell rang. Nils withdrew to near absence, and in a moment a servant entered.
“Bring the babies,” Nephthys ordered.
The slave girl curtsied and left. In three minutes she was back, pushing a large-wheeled crib of simple elegance, and left it. Somewhat, Nils reappeared.
“They are not light-skinned like you,” Nephthys said, “but they have hair.”
Nils smiled softly in her mind.
“I wish they could have known you.” She was suddenly forlorn. The response she read in him had nothing of regret or unhappiness, only a soft awareness akin to love. He began to fade.
“When Draco comes back from killing your people, he will die,” Nephthys thought alter him. “I promise you.”
He was gone.
Nils conveyed to Ilse what he had learned, then got up from the deck. “I need your help to bathe,” he said. “I smell of injury and old sweat.”
Ilse sat up and put her feet on the floor. “I’ll take you to a bathing place; they call it a ‘shower.’ It is very pleasant; you can have the water as warm or cold as you want. Come, I’ll help you.”
For lack of clothes to fit him, someone had cut and hemmed a sort of toga from a bed sheet until something better could be sewn. The man looked, Ram thought, like an artist’s conception of Alaric, the Visigoth chief, after his barbarians had sacked Rome. Alaric with his skull shaved and grown to disreputable stubble. Alaric with empty sockets ugly in his face. He’d have to have eye patches made.
“It’s time we talked about getting Nikko Kumalo back from your people,” the captain said brusquely.
“It’s time to get all your people back.”
Easily said, Ram thought cynically, then reminded himself that this was a man who had escaped a dungeon while naked, unarmed, and blind.
“Get them back? How?”
“Land your pinnace on the root where you picked me up, close to the air chimney so it will be inside your shield. Then send men down on a rope and bring the prisoners up.”
“Aren’t there armed guards down below? I can’t risk sending men into that!”
“Let some of my people go down. It’s their nature and pleasure to fight.”
“It’s no one’s nature to fight-not in mortal combat!”
“It’s some people’s nature.”
“And what if the orcs come in the Alpha and attack us while we’re sitting on the roof? We wouldn’t have a chance. All we could do would be to sit there inside the shield. And the orcs would think of things, like attacking the commast to make us pull it in, and then sending smoke up the ventilator. Then we’d have to deactivate, and they’d hit us with grenades from the Alpha before we could get away.”