The Wanderers taught Valmar how to fight all over again.
He, along with all the young men in Hadros’s castle, had learned from Gizor One-hand and grown to expect that in a real fight he would do more than hold his own. The one time last year, when Hadros had come himself into the ring with him-it was shortly before the king had broken his leg-and had flattened him with a practice sword in thirty seconds, he attributed to his own unwillingness to attack his father all out.
“But I thought from what you said that I already had awesome powers here,” he objected when one of the enormous white beings explained to him the program for his training.
“You do,” said the Wanderer, turning the face on him that Valmar could not bear to look at for more than a second. “But that does not mean you are indestructible. The body must be made to serve the mind and spirit. Your powers are much greater than in mortal realms, but the forces against which we fight could still overcome you if you were unprepared.”
They gave him a long series of exercises to do and often seemed to be hovering just beyond his vision while he worked, and frequently they asked him how his training was proceeding or gave him additional exercises. He labored, sweating: lifting logs, pulling himself up onto branches by his arms, running for miles to improve his wind, striking again and again with a stick against a tree. The leaves of the tree were streaked with yellow, but they did not fall. The cows watched him, pulling uneasily at the grass as though they did not like the flavor, and lowing querulously.
When he had done these exercises for what might have been weeks, they gave him an opponent, someone who had the appearance of a man but seemed to have no knowledge of anything but fighting. He spoke very little if at all, and when he was not fighting he stood stiff and awkward, staring at nothing, but when he stepped into the practice ring with Valmar he came alive, fighting as though berserk, needing multiple blows to the head to slow him down.
The red sunset sky burned constantly above him, and Valmar quickly lost track of how many cycles of eating and sleeping had passed since he came here. But his arms were finally gaining the prominent muscles he had always admired in Roric, and his beard was coming in full at last.
His father’s castle had begun to seem very far away even though this manor did not yet seem like home. He wondered, running panting through the fields, how he could have assumed for so many years that he would simply grow to manhood and gradually take over the kingdom from his father without ever having gone for adventure.
And he wanted real adventure, not just southern booty, even though he had trouble defining in his own mind what was the difference. He sang the old songs over to himself as he threw a ball against a wall, faster and faster, and tried to knock it with his sword as it flew back toward him. He did hope his real challenges would begin soon. Except for the sunset sky, this manor sometimes threatened to become no more awe-inspiring, no more thrilling of voima, than being back home.
And when he came in tired, and the housecarls took him to the bath house where the stones were already steaming and afterwards served him juicy meat and white bread, he sometimes found himself wishing that he was serving Karin here, rather than the Wanderers. There were no women at the manor at all, and he wondered somewhat uneasily if this was another part of his training.
But when one of the great shining beings came to talk to him his heart always pounded and he looked away, trying unsuccessfully not to blush, both wondering how someone as lowly and unskilled as himself could possibly serve the lords of voima and wildly grateful to fate that he had been given the opportunity.
He tried to express this one evening-except that it was always evening-to one of the Wanderers, the one who had brought him here. As he associated with them more he was beginning to be able to distinguish them, at least a little.
“I am afraid I still do not understand, Lord,” he said, trying not to mumble although it was impossible to meet the other’s eyes. “Why would all-powerful, completely good lords, the creators of sky and earth and sea beneath, need a mortal’s aid?”
“Have we misled you so seriously?” said the Wanderer in the amused tone he took so often. “Did you really imagine that we were all-powerful and completely good? There may be beings like that somewhere, but we are not they, and whoever they may be they do not talk either to mortals or to us.”
“But you created the earth,” Valmar persisted.
“No, Valmar Hadros’s son,” said the other, sounding mildly regretful. “The earth and sky and sea existed before any of us and will persist after any of us. All we shaped was our own realm, for even there we do not create-and we shaped it to match mortal realms. You of the northern kingdoms tell the old tales of us more than do any others, even if you do have a lot of details wrong, so we have taken your realms as our model. And as you can see, the immortals’ immortal realm itself can finally change.”
“But what can I do to stop the change?”
“Help us correct a mistake we made,” said the Wanderer somewhat distantly. “We thought, as you did, that we could create, that even without women men could make their own successors if those men commanded the powers of voima. But it was not fated to be-and now that creation may be hastening the change.”
Valmar thought about this the next day-or what he could not keep from thinking of as the next day: the next period after he had eaten and slept. He practiced alone today, riding a horse from the Wanderers’ stables, turning it in tighter and tighter circles around the courtyard.
In part he gloried in the honor, the selection of him out of all mortals. It would make an excellent song, he thought, whether he lived to return to his father’s kingdom or died heroically-except that if he never went back no one would know to sing it. But also in part he found himself, against his will, wondering if this sunset land could ever be rectified by one mortal man-or even if it was worth that man’s effort.
Valmar suddenly heard a sharp hissing sound from the edge of the courtyard. It sounded like a sibilant whisper.
He pulled up his horse. Now he heard nothing. But he had an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades as though he was being watched. He sat quite still in the saddle for a moment, then turned his head suddenly.
Sure enough, there was an eye peeking around the gatepost. It drew back abruptly, but then the whispered hiss came again. He dismounted, loosened the peace straps on his sword, and stepped slowly forward.
There were words in the whisper now. “Outside. Come outside. And do not fear me.”
Valmar stopped a few paces short of the gate, just long enough to throw the other off if he was planning to attack him as soon as he stepped through, then went through the gateway with a bound. Jumping back, startled, was a much smaller opponent than he had expected, armed and wearing a horned helmet but showing no immediate inclination to fight. In fact, he realized after a surprised second, in spite of the breast plate and shield it was a woman.
“Come with me, Valmar Hadros’s son,” she whispered with a fleeting smile. “No, don’t look back. Come quickly, and come now.”
He came a few more paces toward her, hand still ready on his sword. But with another smile over her shoulder she began to walk quickly away from him, and he found himself following.
She must be, he thought, a few years older than he-Karin’s age. But she did not look at all like Karin, having tight black curls that escaped from under her helmet and, in the moment that he had seen them, glinting black eyes on either side of her helmet’s nose guard. He glanced back toward the courtyard in spite of what she had said. No one seemed to have seen him go.
In a few minutes he had left the Wanderers’ manor well behind. She darted in and out of shadow, running on the grass between the towering trees that stretched their branches over the hillside below the manor. He followed twenty yards behind, picking up speed as she went faster, but never quite catching up. Once she looked back, black eyes flashing like mirrors in the horizontal sunlight, and grinned at him.
Valmar laughed in return, beginning to enjoy this, and ran even faster. His blood grew hot from the pursuit and the sight of her sweetly-rounded form running before him. “Sprite or faey,” he called, “you cannot escape me forever!”
“Do you think you are man enough to catch me?” she called back. “And man enough to make me yours when you do?”
He still did not gain on her, as her own strides came faster and faster. But when she had run over two miles she suddenly stopped and whirled around, her sword drawn and shield up. She laughed at him, her back to a tree, and when he hesitated sprang at him.
She held no practice sword but the real thing, a boy’s sword such as he had had when he was twelve, sharpened to a razor point. He dodged quickly behind a tree, still rational enough in spite of his excitement to want to avoid being skewered. He drew his sword quietly, counted to three, and leaped out the other side of the tree. She was waiting for him coolly, but she did not stand a chance against a young man who had done little but exercise his muscles and practice his sword play for many weeks.
In two strokes he had his sword wedged solidly against hers and pushed it up and back. She tried to kick him, but he stayed just out of range. His left hand snaked in and grabbed her wrist. She dropped the sword with a cry, and he kicked it away at the same time as he threw his own sword from him.
With one arm he crushed her mailed body to his chest while he pried the shield from her grip, then loosed her helmet. She was laughing again, showing a row of sharp little white teeth. Her hair, dense and curling, cascaded out from under her helmet and down her back, and he buried his fingers in it.
Her black eyes danced at him, tiny points of light at the center, and her mouth smiled widely just before her hot lips closed on his.
They lay afterwards in the long grass, their heads pillowed on Valmar’s rolled-up tunic, the sunset sky tinting her skin pink. Her armor and shield glistened a short distance away.
He felt comfortable, relaxed, and joyous, but he also felt vaguely ashamed now of the overpowering force of his passion, even though he told himself it had all been her idea. That she had surreptitiously called him away from the Wanderers’ courtyard suggested that this would not be something of which they approved. But he put these thoughts aside as she kissed him on the ear.
“Are you then a sprite or faey,” he inquired with a smile, “come to test if a mortal man can match the immortals?” He traced the smooth line of her cheek with his forefinger and kissed her red lips.
“No sprite or faey,” she answered, “as you would know perfectly well if you had ever met the faeys.” She chuckled. “But I am indeed interested in mortal men, Valmar Hadros’s son-or at least one mortal man. And so far I like very much what I have found!”
“You know who I am,” he said, caressing her perfectly formed shoulders and breasts. This was nothing like the furtive interludes with the maids of his father’s castle-some almost twice his age, and with breath tasting of onions. He had been thinking he would give up the maids soon anyway. This was more as he had imagined it would be to lie in Karin’s arms. He pushed thoughts of Karin resolutely from him. “Tell me at least your name.”
But she laughed instead of answering and turned around, propped up on her elbows, to look at his face.
“You came here to find heroic deeds and glorious battles,” she said briskly, in a tone which for a moment reminded him, quite incongruously, of a merchant in a booth trying to persuade him of the rational advantages of buying his products rather than anyone else’s. “I am offering them to you.”
“Are you a Wanderer?” Valmar asked in amazement and almost horror. He had never imagined that he might lie with a lord of voima-or, apparently, a lady.
Her eyes glinted at him. “What do you think?” she asked teasingly, then shook her head. “No, I am certainly not one of those beings you mortals call Wanderers. As you may have noticed, they are all men! That is why I had to get you away from them.”
She referred, he noticed, to “you” mortals, suggesting that whoever she was, she was not an ordinary person who had somehow, like him, reached this realm. He ran a hand down her back to reassure himself that she did, indeed, have one.
“I shall have to get home soon,” he said, beginning again to feel guilty. Whoever she was, it was difficult to see her as connected with the high deeds and heroism to which he had promised his life and manhood. But it would be hard to explain that to those dark eyes. “The housecarls will be heating the bath house and preparing dinner for me,” he added lamely.
“And that is reason enough to return?” she asked with another laugh.
“Well, I serve them, the lords of voima, you see. And if you are not a Wanderer yourself, I need to return to them. Would you perhaps like to come back to the manor with me?” he added hopefully. “I am sure they would be pleased to meet a friend of mine.” The thought shot through his mind that it would be difficult to introduce her as his friend when he did not even know her name.
For answer she rolled on top of him, her elbows by his ears, and began to kiss him. After only a moment’s hesitation he wrapped his arms around her warm body and held her tight to him again.
It was hard to tell time by a motionless sun. Again they lay stretched out in the long grass, the woman’s head on Valmar’s shoulder, her black curls spread across his chest. How long, he asked himself, had it been since he left the courtyard? An hour, two hours, six hours? And did the Wanderers even keep time themselves, or were their cycles of meals and activity only for his benefit?
“They will wonder where I am, back at the manor,” he said.
She turned her head to nibble delicately on his shoulder. It tickled and made him laugh; he tickled her waist until she laughed too. “If they wanted you back,” she said then, “they would have come for you long since. Clearly they do not care if you stay or go.”
“But I haven’t gone!” he protested. “That is, I haven’t actually left their service.” There were implications to what she said that he did not like.
“What lord would allow the man under his command to desert without even following him?”
Had he deserted the lords of voima? he asked himself in panic. “I am not under their command, as such,” he desperately tried to explain. “They asked for my help, but they do not compel it. I am being trained to help them against their enemies here in this realm, before I descend into Hel for them, to find the lords of death so that they and their sun may be reborn.”
It sounded foolish in his own ears as soon as he said it. She laughed, predictably. “And are you so eager for death yourself,” she said in a teasing tone, “that you yearn for steel to bite your flesh in preference to my embraces? Because if so I could get my sword and help you out!”
“No, no, of course not,” he said, pulling her to him and stroking her hair. The Wanderers had warned him that he was not indestructible here in spite of the powers he was supposed to have, powers he had yet to see. And her sword had been very sharp. “But, but- Are you one of the Wanderers’ enemies?”
Her eyes glittered at him from two inches away. “Of course I have no use for those beings-those men — who claim to be lords of earth and sky. And you will have little use for them either when I explain to you the honor and glory that will come in overthrowing them.”
He tried to draw back, but she was lying across his chest and her arms were much stronger than they seemed.
“Do you not think there is voima in me?” she asked, giving his lip a playful bite. “Have you not considered them and their quiet hall a little more, well, boring than you expected?”
It was as though she had read his mind. “But who then are you?” he said with dry lips.
“Their fated end is coming,” she said, stroking his beard. “In asking you to help them against us- we whom fate has chosen to succeed them! — they are doing nothing but making a last, pathetic effort to change their end. Is it not better to accept one’s fate with dignity?”
“It’s better to fight to the last man in a courageous, desperate battle for what you believe,” said Valmar.
“When you find courage among them,” she said with a laugh, “let me know. The best they can manage is to ask for a mortal’s assistance. If you want adventure, high courage, and glorious battles with the trumpets ringing, you will have to fight against them. And besides,” moving her chest against his and smiling with the corners of her mouth, “if you go back to them you will have to leave me. And you do not wish to do that, do you?”
He most certainly did not. He embraced her and kissed her almost desperately. For him to have found love like this, so unexpectedly, almost better than anything he could have imagined, and then to risk losing her again just as suddenly!
But the hot excitement had burned out of him. The old tales were full of the conflict between honor and love. Roric had left Karin, the woman to whom he was pledged, to seek the Wanderers, and he, Valmar, could do no less.
Very carefully, he drew his arms from around her and disentangled her legs from his. “Think of the glory to be won in fighting heroically against the most powerful beings you have ever imagined,” she tried, but he was not listening now.
“I am sorry,” he said, standing up to find his clothes. “I cannot define heroism by whether it gives me daily adventure.” He took a deep breath and added as firmly as he could, “Honor and courage must be reflected in keeping one’s pledged word.”
She sat on her heels to watch him dress, her hair tousled and eyes bright.
“Do you, uh, want me to see you back to your manor, wherever that is?” he asked, buckling on his sword.
She shook her head without answering, the smile still lurking at the corner of her mouth. He had expected her to be displeased with him. But she appeared instead very satisfied, as though some plan had all gone well.