Jorund Thoraldson, the baron of Markland, stood five inches over six feet and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Not a lot of it was soft fat. His eyes were as blue as melting sea ice, and the hair that hung over his broad shoulders was white blond. Not quite as stark a hue as Jak Lauren's hair, but not far off it. His voice was a hearty rasping bellow that carried the flavor of oak-aged beer and salted herrings. He wore a shaggy woolen coat and leather pants, which were tucked into knee-length suede boots. A long, two-handed sword was sheathed on his left hip, and he carried a .38 Colt on his right.
"Greetings, outlanders!" he called, striding into the main hut of the ville, where Ryan and the others had been taken.
There had seemed no great threat as they hid at the fringe of the forest, watching. Then a skinny mongrel had scented them, its furious yapping bringing a dozen men to investigate.
It was a hair-trigger decision. Five or six of the villagers were carrying blasters, but they looked like old cap and ball pistols with a couple of ancient automatics. If Ryan had given the word, the villagers would have been down and dying in the damp grass.
"Hold it," he'd said.
And that looked like the correct decision.
The men, all of whom had long or plaited blond hair, had surrounded them and asked their business. Ryan had explained they were travelers from the other side of the hill, beyond the tropical jungle. Their wag had broken down and then they'd run into the army of ants that had driven them up the mountain, and down into the ville.
They were greeted with no hostility, nor was there any clear evidence of friendship. Just a calm acceptance of what they said and the suggestion that they should all come to the ville's meeting house to explain themselves in front of the Vikings' karl, Baron Jorund Thoraldson.
The last half mile or so of the friends' trek had been colder, and Mildred Wyeth had pulled the hood up higher, covering her head and shadowing her face. Krysty's red hair was tightly curled and dulled by the mist. Jak's white hair hung limp like curdled milk over his shoulders.
No one had made an attempt to try to take away their blasters as they walked toward the largest of the wood-roofed huts.
Ryan, as ever, had kept his eye skating all around him.
The ville contained forty dwellings, but no sign of any sort of mechanization, which wasn't unusual in isolated villes throughout the Deathlands. There were no wags in sight and the packed, moist earth around the huts didn't bear any tracks of vehicles. The smell of cooking was much stronger, but the drumming had ceased — had ceased at the moment the raw-eyed cur had begun its yapping.
The feature of the ville that had caught the friends' eyes were the boats — or were they ships? Ryan had never been that sure of the difference between the two.
Each craft was forty to fifty feet in length, narrow with high sides and ports for a number of long oars. The elongated prow ended in a carved head of what Ryan recognized was supposed to be a kind of fire-breathing monster or dragon.
Most of the men of the ville wore some kind of dagger or short sword at their sides, and several had axes with hafts two feet long. A number of helmets hung over the entrances to the huts, looking as if they were made from varied combinations of iron and leather. The one common factor of the helmets was that all of them were horned.
But now the baron was speaking.
"Outlanders here in Markland! By Baldur's eyes! This is a strange day. There have not been outlanders here in more than a score of years. Fishermen, cast up on our shores in a violent storm when I was a stripling of a dozen summers."
"What happened to them?" Ryan asked.
"The outlander fishermen?" Jorund gave a great bellow of laughter, echoed by many of the thirty men who had crowded into the hut. Not a single woman, Ryan noticed. "By Freya's dugs, my one-eyed friend, if my memory serves me well, I think they went to sleep with their fish."
"A man swims badly when his knees are broken, outlander!" someone yelled, earning a look of angry reproach from the baron.
"Egil Skallagson! Hold your tongue, or I swear I'll feed it to the midden curs. These men are our guests."
Krysty took a step forward. "And the women, Baron? Are we not welcome in your ville?"
Jorund ignored her and spoke to Ryan. "In this ville the nonmen do not speak out like that. Not without our permission. Will you chastise the firehead thrall for her forwardness?"
"She is not a thrall." Whatever that was, thought Ryan. "Where we come from the women are equals of the men and can speak how and when they wish."
There was some laughter at that, as though he'd said that where he came from it was usual to drink through your arse and piss through your ears — laughter tinged with a profound disbelief. The baron didn't even smile.
"Here in Markland, you follow the old ways of Markland, or it will go hard with all of you. Your women will be as our women — a willing thrall at the cooking and a pliant receptacle when we wish to spend our passion. Is that one also a woman? Beneath the hood?"
Ryan's heart sank. He had only known Mildred for a couple of days, but he already knew enough to guess she wasn't going to sweet-mouth Baron Jorund of Markland.
He was right.
Mildred didn't remove her hood, but her voice was loud. Loud and angry.
"Try to spend your passion in my 'receptacle,' bro, and you'll be picking slices of your cock out of the middle of the lake."
Ryan felt the chill of the butt of his pistol, knowing that J.B., Krysty and Jak would be doing the same.
The tall Viking looked at Mildred, wrinkling his blue eyes as though trying to penetrate the darkness beneath her hood. There was a total and quite overwhelming silence in the hut. Outside they heard the laughter of a young woman and a child crying for comfort.
"The ways of an outlander..." he spoke with a measured slowness "...are not our ways. But we have our own rules, and any outlander while he is with us in Markland shall observe them. Or the price will be high."
In his life Ryan had heard a lot of threats and more than a few promises, and he'd learned to tell the difference. This was a promise.
Mildred turned slowly to look toward Ryan, holding his gaze for twenty beats of the heart. Then, even more slowly, she turned back to face the baron and dropped a deep curtsy. "I apologize for my forward tongue. I shall endeavor to keep it guarded while I am in the presence of... of men."
A strong, white-toothed smile split the face of Baron Jorund Thoraldson, and he slapped his thigh. "Well said, woman. Well and wisely said."
"Will we feed the outlanders?"
The voice came from a slightly built young man who stood at the front of the crowd, his hand ostentatiously on the silver hilt of his sword. His right shoulder was noticeably higher than the left.
"Feed them, Odo Crookback? Why should we not? Do we forget all hospitality because an outlander is such a scarce sight?"
"Forgive me, Karl Thoraldson, but can we know a little more of them? Their names?"
"True ale from a cracked vessel, Odo. We shall know their names. Speak, One-Eye."
"My name is Ryan Cawdor, and I am the uncle of the baron of Front Royal ville in the Shens. This is Krysty Wroth and Mildred Wyeth. J. B. Dix here, Doc Tanner and..."
He was suddenly conscious that this was what everyone was waiting for. There was a breath of tension that hadn't been present before.
"And this is Jak Lauren."
Thoraldson nodded slowly. "Jak Lauren. It doesn't sound like the name of one of the people here."
"Come swamps south," the teenager muttered, shaking his head, the long mane of snowy hair whipping around his narrow shoulders.
"Not a Norseman?"
"Don't know. What's horseman?"
The blooming smile on the face of the Viking leader began to wither and fade. "Norseman. A man from the north."
"Said south," Jak repeated.
"Yes, yes. But your hair... Every man here in this ville has yellow hair. But no man has hair as pure and white as yours. It's a miracle to behold."
"You talked of a wag breaking down." The insistent voice was that of the local called Odo Crookback. "We do not have any such vehicle, but we know of them from old times. Tell us more."
"Surely. We were traders. The wag had a failure of the engine. We got stranded. None of us had ever been up this way before. Found a hot, stinking jungle, then these ants came and we got kind of driven up the mountain. Over the top into the fog and down again. And here we are."
Jorund looked at Ryan, then turned his eyes to each member of the party. He lingered longest on Krysty, whose sentient hair was beginning to relax and uncurl, revealing its full flaming beauty.
"Ants? Big killers? We hardly ever go up and over the crest of the mountain. On the other side lies many-faced, sharp-toothed, swift and silent, long-sleeping death."
"The ants sure killed a dog on the far side," J.B. said.
"Odin!" shouted a young man at the front of the crowd.
The Armorer looked at him. "That was the name on a kind of medal around its neck. Your dog, was it, son?"
"What color was he?"
"Mostly white."
"Odin wasn't white, so it cannot have been him you saw, outlander."
"Bones, son. Ants left nothing but bones, and they were sure white. Few bits of fur left were brindled."
"Oh, no..." the lad cried, falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands. "Then that's why he didn't come back last night. He was..." His weeping swallowed up his words.
Baron Thoraldson banged a fist on the long oak table in front of him. "By the runes of Baelthorn! Is this your son, Sigurd Harefoot?"
The boy looked up, his face wet with tears. "I'm sorry, Father. Sorry, Karl Thoraldson. Forgive me for my weakness."
"Weakness! Milksop wench! You whining bitch! Your dog dies and you howl as if your honor was lost. You were warned not to take the name of Father Odin for a cur. Look what ill fortune you've brought on yourself."
The boy stood straight, wiping away the signs of his weeping. "Forgive me."
"Nay. You behave in such a feeble, womanish way in front of outlanders. And even in front of their own women! What must they think of the warriors of Markland? Until you can learn the true ways of manhood, you had best spend some time with the maids, doing their work until the end of the Cuckoo month. And you will not ride or sail or walk with men until that time is spent. Go."
"He keeps up this antiwomen shit, lover, and I'm going to help Mildred on her suggestion about some thin-slicing." Krysty's whisper only reached Ryan's ears.
When the totally dejected boy had left the hut, the baron brought their first meeting toward its ending.
"I will tell you this, outlanders. In the history of this ville, strangers have often had a short shrift. We keep to our own. But in the past year or more there has been much visiting with the gray-haired widow-maker. The waters have not always been clean. Men have wasted to the bone, and we are falling short of numbers who can hold a blaster or a sword. You and the one with the eyeglasses and the snow-headed boy could join us if you pass the testings."
"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.