C. Brittain - Voima

Roric whirled around to see who was coming up behind him and saw King Kardan. No time to worry why he was here. “Help me get him out of the river,” shouted Roric, already scrambling down the way they had climbed up. “He may still be alive, and no one will say I stood and watched him drown.”

“No one will say that, of a certainty,” said Kardan darkly. Full sunlight came over the eastern cliffs as they reached the base of the island. There was blood on a jumble of sharp stones just above the water line, and the water itself was running red-no difficulty in finding the body. As Roric reached under the surface and took hold of a handful of tunic, he agreed silently with Kardan-it was quite clear that Gizor had not drowned.

And now he had the blood-guilt of three of Hadros’s men on him and no way to pay it.

They carried Gizor’s body back to camp between them. “One more for the burial mound,” Roric commented grimly. “And the best songs will be sung of him. ”

Gizor might not have been his father, but he was the man who had taught him most of the warfare he knew. He had been bound by honor to kill him, but what honor could there be in killing a man, even a ferocious and ruthless man, who was his own king’s-and maybe father’s-sworn man?

Roric kept expecting King Kardan to say something, to accuse him of being responsible for his daughter’s capture, of challenging him to immediate single combat himself without even giving him a chance to recover his breath. But all the king said was, “Now that it’s light, those bandits can’t hide from us.”

When they reached the camp site, the warriors had donned their armor and Hadros, face purple, was giving orders to those who would stay behind to guard the ship. Kardan stepped up to the other king at once, even before he had a chance to react to the sight of Gizor’s battered body. “Gizor gave the challenge,” he said, “and they reached the outcome in single combat. I was witness, and I will swear on steel and rowan that Roric killed him honorably and indeed gave him the opportunity to yield.”

So he must have been watching the whole time, thought Roric. He lowered Gizor to the ground beside the other dead warriors-the worst of the wounded had also died in the night. Everyone else stepped back to leave a broad empty space around him. No one would want to associate with a man carrying that much blood-guilt.

And then, completely unexpectedly, a young woman stepped up beside him. Roric looked at her wildly, his first thought that she must be a wight or creature of voima, for no elegantly-dressed woman, wearing golden bracelets and a jeweled pendant on her forehead, should be here among the warriors.

But the others glanced at her as though they too could see her and her presence was perfectly explicable. Had she been here last night? His memories of last night, once Karin had been seized and Gizor struck him, were at best confused.

She stood for a moment considering him, head cocked, as though she found him fascinating. No one else was near. “It’s hard to see for certain,” she said almost under her breath, “through the grime and blood, but yes, there are certain indications there…” She smiled then at his expression. “You don’t know who I am.” He saw now that she was not nearly as young as he had first supposed, in spite of her curling chestnut hair and slim figure. “I am Queen Arane.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, trying to be polite. Since he could not think how to put his question diplomatically, to demand what in the name of the Wanderers she was doing here, he did not ask. “Karin has mentioned you to me.”

“But I know who you are. You are Roric, called No-man’s son. And the Princess Karin loves you.”

“Not No-man’s son,” he said between stiff lips. If it was true, he should start claiming his real name now. “I think- I think I am King Hadros’s son.”

For a second she looked very distressed. “He said this to you?”

“No,” shaking his head. “He does not know-not yet-that I have guessed.”

The queen laughed, a small laugh that was almost sad. “I am very sorry to have to disappoint you. But do not say anything to the king of this. For I know him, and I can tell you quite decidedly that you are not his son.”

Roric closed and opened his eyes. It would not have made much difference anyway. “But I am still Karin’s lover.” He looked up toward the mountains, the sharp stones and cliffs bathed in morning light. Hadros’s warriors were ready to start, the hounds leashed now and sniffing excitedly at the ground. “If she is still alive.”

Mist lay over the midnight mountainside. The moon had already set, and burning torches on either side only made the landscape darker. Karin tried to pick out landmarks or at least determine which way was south, back toward the river and her father, but it was impossible.

The door through which they had emerged was at the end of a long tunnel cut into the rock, and the transition out into the cold night air-Eirik peering around carefully before motioning to the torchbearers behind him to follow-had come like a slap after the smoky hall. They seemed now to be near the bottom of a deep dish-shaped depression. A pool lay before them, steaming and reeking with sulfur.

“Some say that Hel lies at the bottom of this pool,” said Eirik, holding her arm more firmly than ever. She could picture rather than see the mocking sneer of his scarred lip. “Do you believe it, Princess?”

Behind them, the rest of the warriors emerged from the tunnel, some supported by their comrades as they reeled from ale, followed by the women, and last of all six men carrying the naked bodies of the slain.

They arranged the bodies, feet together, on a relatively level surface of stone near the steaming pool. Eirik released Karin then, but the tall green-eyed woman immediately took hold of her arm, and her grip was even stronger.

The outlaw king took first a basket of barley from one of the other women and sprinkled it liberally on the bodies. Next he took an ale horn and slopped some ale on each of their faces. There had been total silence at first among the warriors, but at this several of them chuckled, and one said, “That’s right, he always did like his drink.”

But when someone handed Eirik his lyre everyone again fell silent. I have as long to live as it takes to sing the warriors’ praises, thought Karin. Her heart was pounding so hard that the woman must surely feel it through her arm.

He plucked the strings for a moment, a dark shape under a clouded midnight sky, then began to sing. His voice resonated over the mountains until it seemed the stones themselves vibrated.

“In fearsome fighting six have fallen,

“Overcoming foes when dread death found them.

“Brave in battle, honored by brothers,

“Enemies in Hel will grovel before them.

“Ferocious their war cries, swift their swords,

“Yet fate ended their stories as it ends all men’s.

“Welcome them, Death! Welcome our brothers,

“Make room for them in Hel’s dusty hall.

“Gone from the sunlands, yet not from our songs,

“Remembered wherever the fighting is fiercest.”

When he ended his song, there was a moment of stillness in which a few low voices could have been the sound of the wind. Then, at a gesture from the king, the men holding the torches took them to the steaming pool and plunged them beneath the surface. There was a great hissing, a cascade of sparks, and then the mountainside was almost completely dark.

The woman beside Karin spoke into the silence, so unexpectedly that she jumped involuntarily. “We call on the lords of death,” the woman said in a deep voice. “We call on those who take whomever fate strikes down. Come, powers beyond voima! Come, nameless ones of the night!”