"And what of me?" Doc asked.
The Viking looked at him and shook his head slowly and sorrowfully. "I know not what fire still smolders in your belly, old man, but you have seen too many winters to be a warrior."
Doc was about to bark back, when he caught Ryan's warning glance and closed his mouth again.
The baron walked to Doc and patted him on the shoulder. "But lament not. Old men may sit by the fire and spin tales of their courage and pass on their wisdom to the young men. And the maids will bound to do their bidding at all times."
Doc looked at Mildred's shadowed face. "Then it might not be so bad. I can get our maids to leap about some."
Ryan was next to the black woman, and he was the only one who heard her mutter. "Fuck you, Tanner, you asshole!"
Jorund stared at Ryan, who realized with a sense of some shock that the man's talk of their joining his warriors wasn't just casual, friendly conversation. This was a serious invitation. But like a lot of invitations in isolated villes, it came hedged around with barbs.
"Thanks for the offer, Baron," he replied, trying to pick his words with some care. "You mind if we get a chance to talk this over some?"
The Norseman nodded. "You may have this night. At dawning you will tell us whether you will stay here as our brothers. Or... whether you will choose not."
Once again, Ryan knew the difference between a threat and promise. This one was both.
The fire in the hut blazed up as one of the men kicked some logs into its center. It was very hot, and Mildred reached up a casual hand and pulled down the hood of her sweater, for the first time revealing her face to the Vikings.
The world fell in.
Chapter Nineteen
"The raven of death!" shrieked one of the men at the back of the crowd, his voice ragged with stark terror.
There was pushing and jostling near the door, and at least half of the warriors of Markland fought their way outside. Even the baron took three steps back, half drawing his sword as though he feared that Mildred might physically attack him.
Instantly, magically, guns appeared in the hands of Ryan and his party. The only person in the large hut who seemed unconcerned was Mildred Wyeth.
She looked calmly around at the fearful confusion, shaking her head slowly. "I've made some spectacular entrances in my time, but this has to be the best. What..."
"Her skin..." Jorund Thoraldson hissed, licking his lips nervously. "Her skin is as black as jet. She is the spirit of death, the widow-maker herself, and you have brought her among us!" He pointed accusingly at Ryan.
More and more of the leading men of the ville were sidling out of the hut, stumbling over one another in their eagerness to get away.
"Have none of you ever seen a person with black skin before?" Ryan shouted. "It's not a thing to be frightened of."
"Of course it is, outlander fool! I have lived through more than thirty summers and I've never seen anyone with black skin. Except for those who are bitten by the jungle snakes or those whose corpses rise swollen from the depths of the water." The baron was shaking with nerves.
"No. Have none of you ever left this ville and traveled through the Deathlands?"
Jorund shook his head. "No. Markland has always been here. It was here before the long winters and it is still here. It will always be here. No man leaves, and what happens beyond the water or beyond the hot forest is nothing to us."
"You must trade with other villes along the coast here," J.B. said.
"No. It would be unclean and would damn us. There is a ville, forty sea-miles off to the east. There have been fights over the years, and they get stronger as we grow more weak. One day..." He suddenly recalled the origin of all this. "But the black witch must go. Nay, she must die."
"Be a lot of blood spilled if you try that," Krysty warned.
"We are many." He glanced around and saw that only a handful of his men remained behind. "Stay, you dogs! Come back!"
It was a delicate, balanced moment. Ryan knew they had overwhelming firepower on their side, but it would be a desperate gamble to try to take on an entire ville. It wasn't the initial firefight that was the problem. It was getting safe away afterward without being sniped off.
"Better not try it," Ryan said. "We got blasters that can take out a dozen of you just like that."He snapped his fingers loudly.
One by one, the blond warriors came sheepishly back into the meeting hut, most of them trying hard to avoid looking directly at Mildred Wyeth, who still stood among the friends, arms folded, a faint smile on her lips.
"No man's face is black," Jorund protested, "And no woman's. It is not natural. Notnatural!"
The young man with the hunched back pushed to the front of the others, his slim sword drawn in his right hand. "Waste not breath, Karl Jorund! Empty words from the outlanders! Legends tell of black witches... Valkyries from the pits of darkness. This is why there have been deaths. Sickness. Two-headed babies whose guts spilled from them."
Mildred glanced over to Ryan. "Sounds like radiation malformations. It would be interesting to try to find out why."
"She mutters a curse!" Odo Crookback yelped. "Fork-tongue, red-teeth, blood-eyed, black-skinned cursing. Burn her. Offer her to the gods. What do you say, my brothers?"
There was a roar of angry agreement, with every man waving either a sword or a pistol. Ryan's finger tightened on the trigger of the SIG-Sauer, but he held his fire. "I tell you that a dark skin is normal all over Deathlands. I have met many such men and women. All colors of skin. You will not harm her." He made sure that his gun pointed at the stomach of the baron of Markland.
"Burn them all!" Odo shrieked, brandishing his sword at Ryan. The suggestion brought the threat of slaughter even closer.
Ryan squeezed the trigger once, putting a bullet into the earth precisely between the hunchback's feet, splattering him with earth. He jumped a yard in the air, then nearly fell into the fire.
"Be a lot of death," Ryan said into the seething stillness.
Jorund Thoraldson took a deep, slow breath. "I see you are skilled with your blaster, outlander. But you will not make a change in our laws. There cannot be a nonman with black skin in Markland. It has never been. It will never be."
"I would venture to suggest to you that your statement is not correct, Mr. Thoraldson," Doc said. "I have great knowledge — almost personal, you could say — of the times before the long winters. I assure you that a person with a black skin was as common as a person with blond hair. Probably more common. It just happens that Markland has survived in its own little Aryan way."
"What do you say, old man?"
"I say that — unless my supposition is flawed — there must once have been blacks here in this vicinity. But after the great nuclear war that devastated our land and destroyed the American way of life, there must have been strife. Fights between villes. Between social groups within a particular ville. I believe that here the blond man ruled and the black man has vanished."
"Nothing changes," Mildred said bitterly.
"No. We have always been Norse here in Markland. Through my memory and that of my father and that of his father and..."
Doc held up an imperious hand to quiet the baron. "Crap! He said and he said and he said — All of that's like history written by the winners. We're talking here, my friend, about events from a century gone. None of us, even I, can conceive properly of the horrors of those first few charnel-house years." He shrugged. "But all of this is of scant interest. Your rules will be as entrenched as a redneck sheriff in rural Georgia way back when. I suggest, Ryan, that we simply make our excuses and leave this place."