John Dalmas - The Yngling

"My people are more able than you think," Nils responded calmly, "and you overrate my importance to them. As for myself, I know the woman I want to live with and have children by. She is one of the kinfolk. I'm going to Bavaria to find her."

Kuusta interrupted. "Are you going alone, Nils? The country'll be dangerous with horse barbarians. I'd like to stay with my people, but if you need a companion… "

"I don't expect to go alone," Nils replied with a grin. "When I mention it around, some of my people will offer to go with me."

The next morning the northmen started west with their new horse herd.

The four neoviking warriors walked their horses easily along the dirt wagon road through the woods. Although their eyes moved alertly, they seemed neither tense nor worried.

The leaves had fallen from the beeches and rowans, but firs were master in these low Bavarian mountains, shading the road from the haze-thinned October sun of Old Wives' Summer. A shower had fallen the day before, and tracks of a single wagon showed plainly in the dirt, but around and sometimes on them were the marks of unshod hooves. It was the hoof prints that had sharpened the riders' eyes and stilled their voices. Independently they judged that nine men had followed the wagon, and none of the four felt any need to state the obvious.

Topping a rise, they saw the hoof tracks stretch out, where the riders ahead had begun to run their horses, and in a short distance the wagon tracks began to swerve, where the animal that pulled it had been whipped to a gallop. The northmen quickened their own horses' pace and, rounding a curve, saw the overturned wagon ahead.

Its driver lay beside it, blood crusted on his split skull. His horse was gone. The northmen circled without dismounting, looking down and around. Two cloaks lay beside the wagon, one large and one smaller. The tracks of the raiders' horses left the road.

The four conversed briefly in their strongly tonal language. "Less than an hour," Nils said. "Maybe as little as half an hour. With any luck they'll stop to enjoy the woman, and we'll catch them off their horses with their weapons laid aside." He rode into the woods then, eyes on the layer of fresh leaf-fall ahead, and the others followed, grinning.

The tracks led them into a deep ravine, dense with fir and hornbeam, a trickling rivulet almost lost among the stones and dead leaves in the bottom. After drinking, they slanted up the other side and followed a ridge top where pines and birch clumps formed an open stand. They continued along the crest for about five kilometers, and the tracks showed that the raiders had not stopped except, like themselves, to drink.

"Look!" Leif Trollsverd spoke quietly but clearly, without stopping his horse, pointing down the slope on the east side of the ridge. Angling toward the top was another line of tracks, of leaves scuffed and indented by hooves. The northmen quickened their mounts again until the second set of tracks joined those they'd been following. Sten Vannaren, who was in the lead now, slid from his saddle and walked back down the second set, half-bent.

"At least five," he said. "Maybe eight or nine. Hard to tell in the leaves." He came back and swung his big frame into the saddle again. "Looks as if they came along after the others had passed." He urged his horse ahead, leaning forward and looking past its neck. "And look. Here they trotted their horses as if to catch up." He stopped and looked back. "What now, Nils?" The blond giant stared ahead thoughtfully for a moment. "They are more of the same, and enough to let be."

Sten, somewhat the oldest of the four, nodded and swung his horse off the trail. Without further words they urged their horses at an angle, southeastward down the ridge side.

They had ridden several kilometers through cleared farmland, the road now rutted by wagons, when they saw the village ahead, the bulk of a small castle standing a short distance past it. The huts were typical-of logs, with thatched roofs. As the road entered it, they saw that here the peasants were bolder. They didn't scurry away as had those at the smaller clusters of huts between there and the forest, although they still drew back from the road. Beside the inn the stable boy gawked at them until a brusque word jerked him to duty, and looking back over his shoulder, he led their horses into the stable.

The rim of the sun was an intense liquid bead on the forested ridge top to the west when they pushed open a door and entered the subdued light and complex smells of the small inn. The babble of conversation thinned to one beery voice, and then that face too turned toward the large barbaric-looking foreigners. The place fell still except for the slight, soft sound of their bare feet and the sounds from the kitchen. They steered toward one of the unoccupied tables, Nils's eyes scanning the room looking for the psi. He spotted him, a solitary young man sitting near the wall, the hood of his homespun Brethren cloak, faded dark-green, thrown back from a lean, strong-boned face. His eyes, like everyone else's, were on them. His mind was on Nils, recognizing his psi, and suddenly started in recognition. He knew of this barbarian, had been given a mental image of him by someone with whom he shared special affinity.

"You are Ilse's next oldest brother," Nils thought.

"Yes, I am Hannes. And you're Nils, the northman who came to her hut after the Great Storm, the one she had foreseen in a premonition."

Nils's mild, calm mind validated his knowing.

"Stories have passed among the kinfolk about the things you've done since then, you and your people. Incredible stories. Is it true that you yourself killed Baalzebub?"

The innkeeper was standing beside the table. Nils ordered for himself, scarcely pausing in his silent conversation. Sten ordered for the other two, who spoke no Anglic.

"Yes, I killed Kazi, or Baalzebub, if you prefer. Now I've come to find Ilse."

"She's had your child."

The northman's mind did not react. It was a datum.

"And she's still at her hut."

"That's not good," Nils responded calmly. "There are horse barbarians in the hills."

Now that the alarming-looking strangers were sitting quietly, the peasants had returned to their conversations and beer. Suddenly Nils began to speak aloud, in Anglic, so that they could hear, while Sten interpreted in an undertone for the other two warriors. "Brother Hannes! The horse barbarians have come to the district-a strong force of them, we believe. They are scouting the countryside from the hills. What defenses are there here?"

Across the room the sun-browned psi stood up slowly, surprised by this unexpected speech. Conversations had died abruptly as worried faces turned toward the neovikings. Hannes spoke carefully so that the peasant with the most uncertain knowledge of Anglic could follow his words. "The baron here is Martin Gutknekt. He is a mild and honest lord, but well known for his skill at arms. He keeps a dozen knights, and since the battle on the Elbe he's kept a few dozen other armed men at the castle as well."

"And who will protect the peasants if the horse barbarians come suddenly, like rabid wolves with curved swords for teeth, to attack the villages? Maybe a hundred or more of them?" Nils's mind caught the shock of fear from the peasants.

Irritation flashed through Hannes. "Why did you say that? It was vicious," his mind accused. But as he thought it, he realized there had been no tinge of viciousness or sadism in the northman's mind. And the character pattern he read would not support that interpretation. But he neither corrected himself nor apologized. Either would be redundant to another psi. Instead, he stood there, gazing with his mind at Nils's. "Ilse described what you are like," he said at last. "Now I see more clearly what she meant."