It was late spring-or had been-yet here the wheat was nearly ripe, the lambs well grown, and the rowans in the manor courtyards hung with swollen red berries. He had the disconcerting sense that perhaps here it was always summer, for none of the manors by which they slipped had the woodpiles that should by this season be readying the dwellers for the sharp bite of winter.
In late August, when all nature seemed to have forgotten colder weather except for the sea-ducks whose mournful calls marked the end of summer, Roric had often thought that it would be good if winter were not fated, had wished idly that each day could continue as warm as the day before. But here he began to think the lash of snow and the killing frost might in themselves be purifying, that without them lushness would blossom into over-ripeness, and then into rot.
They saw a number of housecarls and maids, usually in the distance, but no one who could be the great folk who must live in those well-tended manors. And on the second day of riding, he realized what else was missing: there were no fairs and no market towns. It was as though all these fine manors were self-sufficient, that the folk who owned them spent their days inside tooling the leather or hammering the iron or spinning the wool, so that none need go to market and buy.
Not until they reached this hall had his companion relaxed his vigilance. The manor was built on top of a steep rise, hidden beyond a pine forest. After a short ride among the trees they passed under a wooden gateway, and the trees immediately began to thin out. And once past the pines and up a sharp slope they had found verdant meadows and spacious stone buildings.
Others then had come running to meet them both. The buildings, at least, remained solid when he looked at them. The manor’s fields were bursting with grain; its cows, larger than Goldmane, were heavy with milk; and the ale horn never needed to be refilled.
Everyone had seemed delighted to meet Roric.
At first, he had thought the being who summoned him must be a chieftain, even a king, until he had refused to answer questions. Then he decided this was a warrior like Gizor One-hand, sent to bring him here, and asked nothing further. But when he arrived the band of men who greeted him still included no one who seemed to be the leader.
Roric cut his meat with the knife he had tried to give the Weaver and glanced toward the open doorway. It was late afternoon, motes of dust dancing in horizontal ruddy rays, but it had seemed late afternoon the entire time he was here. The beef was so tender the juices ran down his chin. He wiped them with his sleeve and wondered if this was Hel. If so, it was unlike he had ever imagined; for this kind of Hel he and Karin should have been dead together months ago.
But he had never heard, even in the oldest tales, of a man looking on Hel with living eyes. He would have thought it was the Wanderers’ realm into which he had stumbled, except that they had traveled so furtively. They might instead be somewhere in the far southern lands, even beyond the realms where landless men sought booty. If so, if he got home again, he would take Karin, take a ship and a few good men, and return here to make a kingdom for himself. Karin and he between them would make sure their men did not over-ripen into softness.
In the meantime, these people had not yet told him why they wanted him.
It was not the next morning, because there was no morning here. But he had slept and wakened when one of the slightly indistinct men-he might as well think of them as men-came to find him. As they went outside he hoped, feeling itchy for action, that at last he would be told why he was here. But the other did not speak at once.
Birds chirped blithely as buxom maids finished milking the oversized cows and set them loose in the pasture. Neither maids nor housecarls had yet spoken in his hearing. Roric leaned on the fence and considered the disconcertingly misty person beside him. He thought he was the same one who had brought him here, but it was difficult to be sure. Last night in the hall, he and all the others had seemed so jolly almost to be foolish. If these were the lords of voima, Roric thought with a half smile, it might explain why mortal life was often so disordered and hard to understand. But his smile faded as he added to himself that here he at least was going to do all with his strength that fate allowed him.
“You said you wanted me,” he said. “I have followed you without demur, but now that we are here I must know why.”
“First you must swear yourself to us, Roric No-man’s son.” The other’s voice took on again the deep, vibrating tone it had had when he first rode up to Roric and Valmar. “Swear on iron and the blood-red sap of the rowan tree that you shall obey us and never go against us.”
Roric gave him a quick sideways glance, but he was scarcely more solid viewed from the corner of the eye than directly. “That in honor I cannot do. I am King Hadros’s sworn man and Karin’s sworn lover. To another I cannot swear myself unless I am very sure my new oaths do not counter my old ones.”
“Here your previous oaths have no meaning.”
“Not to you, perhaps, but they do to me.”
The cows had ambled off. Housecarls went out from the loft house toward the fields, scythes over their shoulders. “You came into immortal lands of your own free will,” the other said in a voice that could have come out of the ground. So this was the Wanderers’ home country, then. No use trying to find it again by ship. “Perhaps we can test if your unsworn loyalty will be enough. For I tell you that there are beings here that would destroy us.”
Roric drummed his fingers on the fence. “So far-” he started to say. But suddenly, unbelievably, an enormous bear appeared around the corner. It stood eight feet high, and its fur was black and its eyes yellow. Bitter claws twice as long as a man’s fingers reached toward Roric’s companion.
It opened its mouth in a roar, showing razor-sharp teeth and a hungry gullet. In one motion, Roric seized the man by the shoulder, whirled him away, and snatched up an axe that leaned against the barn.
He had about two seconds while the bear looked at the empty air between its claws. In those two seconds he threw the axe with all his strength, hurtling it end over end, lodging it in the skull between yellow eyes that turned just too late to spot it coming.
Roric grabbed the man and vaulted the fence into the pasture, then looked back. The bear crumbled with a soft moan and lay still.
“They’re especially dangerous when they’re wounded,” said Roric, drawing his sword. The man beside him rose rather shakily to his feet. He was still a little misty around the edges, but at least he had felt solid.
Roric stepped cautiously up on the fence’s lower bar for a closer look. But the bear did not look wounded. It looked dead.
A few hundred yards away, the cows, clanging their bells, looked toward them as though puzzled. Roric found a pole and poked without response, then finally, emboldened, rolled the bear over. It was indeed dead, its skull split open.
“Now do you believe me, Roric No-man’s son, that there are beings here that would destroy us?”
Roric leaned on his sword, looking thoughtfully at the dead beast. “Are any of the men here on the manor good tanners?” he asked casually. “This is a fine bear skin. I would like it as a winter cloak.” But he was thinking, “That was too easy.”
Roric and the shadowy figure went inside, and the latter said offhandedly that a tanner would start preparing the fur at once, but Roric never saw it again.
The men were finishing the breakfast porridge and beer, yet they seemed curiously at loose ends. The housecarls had gone without anyone supervising them, and these warriors-he had to think of them as warriors even with no chieftain or king to command them-were not sharpening their knives, or trying, laughing, to train new puppies, or repairing their harness, or even telling old tales to boys or doing any of the hundred small tasks Hadros’s warriors always did in odd moments at home.