"Great buboes grew in their armpits and between their legs. Blisters sprang up around their cracked lips. The nails dropped from their finger ends, and their teeth fell from their bleeding gums."
Mildred glanced across at Ryan, as though she were about to say something. But she chose to keep her own counsel.
"I've been in Markland all my life..." The girl laughed. "Stupid. Everyone in the steading has been here all their lives. Nobody ever leaves, and hardly anyone ever comes."
As she spoke she was fingering the neck of her dress, scratching at a small red spot at the side of her throat.
When she pulled down the woven material, the girl revealed the top of an iron collar, locked in place.
"What's that?" J.B. asked, pointing. "Some kinda punishment?"
The young woman looked puzzled. "My thrall ring? Is that what you mean, outlander?"
"Yeah. The iron collar."
"All thralls wear it."
"What's thrall?" Jak asked.
She turned to the boy, then glanced hastily away, making a strange sign with her fingers, almost as if she were averting some sort of evil.
"Thrall, my dear young man," Doc replied, "is simply an old word for slave. The Vikings built their social order upon thralls."
"You're a slave?" Krysty probed, unable to hide her shock at the idea. "There aren't slaves anymore."
"Tell that to barons like Teague," Ryan said, "and plenty more. Plenty of frontier plague pits have folks no better'n slaves."
"How many of you are thralls, child?" Mildred asked.
The girl repeated the same sign with her fingers, averting her eyes again. "Some."
"Who decides?" Ryan asked.
"What?"
"Who's a slave... thrall, and who isn't? Who makes the rules?"
She laughed, shaking her head. "Outlanders are double-stupes! A thrall is thrall-born. A freeman is free-born. How could it be any different way?"
Ryan nodded. "Yeah. I see that was sort of stupid. Thanks. And thanks for bringing us the meal. Looks good."
"Eat in fine heart and may Freya bless your dining," the girl replied. She curtsied and left the hut, taking care not to look at either Jak or Mildred.
"These people are scared shitless by you, Mildred," J.B said.
"White folks in Montgomery used to feel the same about my parents."
"She looked triple-stupe me," Jak said, sitting himself at the dusty table and pulling a wooden bowl in front of him.
Ryan joined the boy. "You're right, Jak. But it's different to the way they look at Mildred here. She terrifies them, because I guess they've never seen anyone black before. But it's almost like the opposite with you. Your hair's pure white, and that sort of impresses them."
The food was excellent.
Ryan thought the meat was rabbit, but Krysty assured him it was hare, roasted over a fire with sprigs of thyme pushed beneath the skin to give it a marvelous tangy flavor. It was served with a sauce of sugared cranberries. There was also a shoulder of mutton cooked with leeks, mushrooms and sweet potatoes.
A dark caldron of iron held a simmering stew of herrings and some other, unidentifiable fish in a vegetable stock; a wooden platter was piled high with sun-ripened apples, sweet and delicious and crisp to the teeth; there was a tankard of foaming ale and beakers made from horns, and some bubbling, fresh milk. Two loaves of flatbread with salted butter completed the repast.
"That ale smells wonderful," Doc said, breathing in its odor with a beatific smile.
"Run a radiation counter over it before you touch it," Mildred suggested,
"How's that?" J.B. said, his hand hovering over the earthenware jug.
"You heard that slave girl."
Ryan punched his right fist into his left palm, angry at himself for having missed it. "Yeah! Course. The guy who lived in this hut and all his family died. He was the brewer."
"And the symptoms sounded a lot like radiation poisoning of some kind," Mildred added. "If I had to make a guess I'd say that something's happened up the coast."
"Hot spot?" Jak asked, helping himself to a generous ladling of the fish stew, slopping some on the table in his eagerness.
"You mean somewhere that there's a higher than usual leakage count? Yeah. Could be. But it has to be something kind of recent or the whole of this village would have been snuffed by now."
"How about the rest of the food?" Krysty asked. "If it's in the water, then mebbe the fish could have absorbed some of it."
Mildred nodded. "But it's hardly likely a few small meals can hurt. You'd need repeated low dosages over months for any significant health risk."
"If you'll forgive me," Doc said, "I don't think I'll sample that beer, even so. But the hare can surely tempt me."
After some hesitation, they all sat around the table and tucked into the meal. Within twenty minutes almost everything was gone.
No one touched the ale.
Jorund Thoraldson, with a half a dozen of the senior men of the ville, appeared shortly after the companions had finished eating.
"You are relishing the food that?.." He noticed the empty dishes. "I see that you have. Yet our best ale is not to your liking?"
Ryan stood and faced the baron. "We come from a ville where alcohol is forbidden by our religion. But the milk was good and the food was marvelous. Thanks for it."
"Now we should talk of the future, Ryan Cawdor. Of you and your friends. And the women."
"Talk away, Baron."
"The women can leave."
"How's that?" Krysty asked. Her temper often flared close to the surface. She stood and turned to stare at the huge figure of the Viking leader, her green eyes flashing with anger.
"Now, now. Markland has its rules, its laws that go back to the beginning of history. You are all here, and outlanders must pay our price of living here. We have agreed to let the black live, have we not?"
Ryan rubbed his chin and sighed. "One way of looking at it, Baron. Course, another way would be to say that our man beat your man. Left him chilled, facedown in the water. That's a different way of looking at it."
One of the other Norsemen whispered something to his karl, and Jorund nodded. "Sooth. We should not fall to bickering over this. The women must leave this hut to live with the other unmarried women in their longhouse at the center of Markland. There they can help the other women at their duties."
"Like sewing and cooking? That kind of stuff, Baron?" Krysty asked with a venomous sweetness.
"If you don't guard your tongue, you flame-haired slut, then you'll find yourself at the stone, paying the blood price for..."
"Jorund!" one of his men said with an urgent, alarmed snap to his voice. "Take care of what you say to them."
The huge Viking turned his head slowly, like some great wounded beast, seeking the speaker. Jorund's pale eyes were veiled with his own anger, and Ryan noticed specks of white froth at the corners of his lips.
The eruption of blinding anger was an impressive and frightening sight.
"Egil?" The word was drawn out and splintered, like corn between two massive stones.
"Yes, Karl?"
"The words I heard through a berserker's mist came from you."
"Yes. You were..."
Thoraldson nodded. "I know, friend. My ears heard the words I was uttering, but my mouth could do naught to check them."
Ryan was, as ever, at Krysty's elbow. He leaned toward her, lips scarcely moving, his breath not stirring a tendril of her long scarlet hair. "Better do it."