Mild though the night was, Baver had been cold and miserable, and as soon as it was light, he got up and spread his bag on some bushes to dry a bit.
When the sun was well up and they’d eaten, he rode out with Leif Trollsverd to see what Jäävklo’s kin were doing. They didn’t ride down to them, only as close as the top of the rise which overlooked their camp. The Gluttons were preparing to leave, moving sluggishly. They’d been up much of the night, he supposed, reeding the fire, ashing the bodies. And talking to burning corpses. Smoke still rose from what Baver assumed was the site of the funeral pyre.
I should have been there, he thought, recording it. But I’d hardly have been accepted; they’d probably have killed me.
The Northmen had consistently been at least neutral toward him, often friendly, but they were barbarians, and dangerous, and Jäävklo’s family had been heavily stressed. Even though none of the survivors were warriors, any of the freemen could have been dangerous to him. None of the Northmen that he knew—men, women, or children—seemed to fear injury much, or even death. And growing up as they did, in the strenuous life, they were invariably strong. Even Mager Hans was strong, for all his thinness.
Back at camp, Baver found Sten stripped to the waist, with Nils reexamining his wounds. His rib cage on the left side was dark with bruise, and scabbed. Sten twitched as Nils prodded, and Baver twitched with him. Undoubtedly some ribs were cracked, and if not for the man’s mail, Baver told himself, the blow Sten had taken would surely have killed him. It was hard to understand how such a blow had failed to cut through the hauberk; perhaps the blade had been turned somewhat before it landed.
Afterward, moving stiffly, Sten pulled his loose leather shirt back on, while his sword apprentice packed his gear on his pack horse. Then he and Leif left with their apprentices and pack string, steering toward the other camp. To make sure, Baver guessed, that the members of Jäävklo’s family had departed for the ting grounds or their clan territory. The two friends wouldn’t leave their Yngling with the offended Gluttons still around; wearing warrior braids made no one proof against arrows, not even Nils Järnhann. And Neoviking hunter-herdsmen, Baver knew, shot very well indeed, perhaps as well as their warriors.
Meanwhile Hans had cut a large forked sapling and tied Baver’s damp sleeping bag on it like some kind of fat and drooping banner. “Put the end in your stirrup,” he said curtly, handing him the sapling, “and carry it upright. It will dry then.”
Baver resented it more than he appreciated it; Hans treated him like a fool. But he took the advice.
With Leif and Sten on their way, Nils loaded his own pack horse, and mounting, led Hans and Baver down the bank of the Danube and into the broad river. They swam their mounts across, a long swim that tired the powerful Orc warhorses. Though smooth, the current was strong, and wet Baver to the buttock. It had wetted his saddle-bags too, and red-faced he realized that Nils and Hans had slung theirs across their shoulders.
They continued north, on foot for a bit to rest the animals. After a few hours they turned east, parallel to the river, leaving the beaten trail for untracked territory. At the midday break, Baver opened his wet saddle bag and took out his radio. He was glad it was waterproof. Again he tried to reach Matthew and Nikko, and again to no avail. Anxiety touched his guts: Surely he should have caught them on board by now, or at least made contact with the Alpha, the pinnace itself.
He chided himself then. It was perfectly possible that the shield had been on and the commast retracted each time he’d called. He simply needed to be patient. It was one thing to tell himself that, though, and quite another to dispel the unease he felt.
Meanwhile Nils led on through kilometers of grass that ranged from crotch-deep atop some of the rises to higher than the horses’ backs along some of the creeks they splashed through.
When they made camp that evening, Baver tried the radio once more, with no more success than before, and once again before he went to sleep. The failure kept him awake. If something had happened to Matt and Nikko, or to the Alpha, he was in serious trouble, on a hostile and dangerous world without a flying craft or modern weapons, aside from his pistol and a spare magazine. And there’d hardly be a second expedition from New Home within the year; perhaps not even next year.
After another two days they turned northeastward. To avoid the marshes, Nils said; these were extensive along the Danube after it turned north at the big bend. Meanwhile they’d seen no further tracks of horsemen, but now and then saw tracks and beds that Nils said were made by Orc cattle, abandoned when their owners withdrew by ship for Asia Minor.
Once, ahead of them, they saw carrion birds circling low, and rode to the spot to see what was there. They found the half-eaten remains of a calf. Nils said the wolves who’d killed it were close by, waiting for them to move on. Baver was horrified at the thought, and as they rode away, imagined wolves leaping on him from the tall grass, to pull him from his horse.
Periodically they crossed streams flowing eastward to join their waters with the Danube. Mostly these were bordered with sinuous bands of woodland. Away from the streams, an occasional thicket of dark scrubby oaks, or clump of poplars, had sprouted since fire had last swept the prairie. Less often, Baver saw single larger oaks, or groups of several, broad-crowned and fire-scarred, that had survived such fires.
He no longer got his gear wet when crossing the deeper streams.
Near evening, as they entered a fringe of poplars along a creek, they saw a band of cattle on the far bank, drinking. Murmuring brief instructions, Nils strung his saddle bow, then began to ease upstream while Hans moved down, to cross away from the cattle and flank them. Baver stayed behind as Nils had ordered. Shortly the cattle spooked, turned and galloped off, little more than their heads in sight above the high grass. The two Northmen galloped in pursuit, arrows nocked. Within a minute they were out of Baver’s view, a wrinkle in the prairie intervening.
The band had separated, and a few minutes later a young bull came trotting back, surging brisket-deep across the stream. Seeing Baver it stopped, about forty meters off as it topped the bank. It eyed him, snorted, pawed the ground. The ethnologist took his pistol from its pocket holster. The animal would weigh, he thought, two-thirds of a ton—bone and muscle, gristle and horn; the gun seemed inadequate, trivial. The animal started toward him again. His horse jittered, shied, starting one way, then another, and he nearly lost his seat. In a moment of near panic, Baver realized that from its back he’d have a hard time hitting the bull, let alone disabling it.
It charged. Baver pointed the weapon and fired. His horse bucked once, perhaps from the gunshot, and he felt himself leaving the saddle, arms flailing in an effort to land on his feet. He did, heavily, but couldn’t keep them, staggering forward into a poplar trunk and falling. Hooves thudded past him two or three meters off. Then he was on his feet again, knees flexed, heart banging, ready to run or dodge. The bull slowed as it reached the prairie’s edge, swinging wide as if to return to the stream at a little distance. Baver wondered if he’d hit it when he’d shot.
He watched it through the trees and the thin screen of undergrowth, heard it snorting as it trotted. After a minute it disappeared over the stream bank to reenter the water, and he neither saw nor heard it again.
Meanwhile his mount was gone, fled. He was alone: no horse, no saddlebag, no food. And no gun! He’d let go of it when the horse had thrown him! The realization nearly buckled his knees. Beneath the trees, the grass was thinner and shorter than in the open prairie, and on hands and knees he began to look for his weapon. While he searched, it occurred to him that his radio was in the saddlebag too, gone with the horse.
What if Nils and Mager Hans didn’t come back? Surely they would?
But even after most of a year among them, he didn’t really know the Northmen. He’d collected hundreds of hours of AV recordings of them, but to him they remained barbarians, another species, beyond prediction.
After ten despairing minutes that seemed like thirty, he found the gun and nearly kissed it. A fair breeze kept the mosquitoes down somewhat, and lying on his back, Baver closed his eyes, listening to the rustling of poplar leaves. And awoke to the sound of chopping. Nils and Mager Hans were back and making camp; his own horse stood near, grazing. Nils or Hans had taken the bit from its mouth, removed its saddle, and fastened hobbles on its forelegs. He felt mortified. The two Neovikings must think him a fool for falling asleep with his horse unhobbled. And an inconsiderate one for leaving the bit in its mouth. Meanwhile dusk was edging in, the breeze had died, and the mosquitoes were gathering.
He got up and helped Hans gather firewood, more of it than usual, while Nils built a lean-to. Then Nils built a rack of saplings, and hung bloody strips of veal on it to smoke and dry. Finally a fire was lit beneath the rack. Supper was calf liver, tongue, and flank, seared in the flames on sharpened sticks. And raw calf brain brought in the head, its natural receptable. Baver had grown used to Neoviking food, if seldom happy with it. He realized that eating the various organs was nutritionally important when so few vegetables were available; something the Northmen seemed well aware of. Nils apologized for not bringing him blood—a valued food—but he’d had nothing suitable to carry it in. It would foul a waterskin, he said; ordinarily one drank it at the site of the kill.
The cattle had run well, and their own horses had been tired. Thus they’d chased a calf for perhaps a tusen,* Nils said, before they’d ridden it down and shot it. Afterward, riding back, they’d seen the tracks of other horses on the other side of the river, shod horses. Some refugee Orcs had passed there perhaps two days earlier.
Baver’s hair crawled. Orcs! He recalled what Orcs had done to Chandra and Anne-Marie, when they’d held the two prisoner. “How many?” he asked.
“Nine, seven of them shod. Three orcs, three slaves, and three pack horses.”
“You could tell all that from the tracks?”
“Not entirely from the tracks.”
Baver sat chewing calf liver while he digested the information. The enigmatic “explanation” he let be. Suppose the Orcs had come along while he’d slept, and seen him. Would they have killed him? Tortured him? Or simply ridden off with a fourth slave? Would Nils have tried to rescue him? He couldn’t picture it. Even Nils Järnhann was unlikely to attack three Orcs to save a foreigner.
This was definitely not a place he wanted to be. Taking the radio from his saddle bag, he tried again to reach the pinnace and call in a pickup, but got nothing.
*The tusen is a Neoviking measure of distance: a thousand doubles—double strides—roughly, 1,700 meters, about 5,600 feet in the old system. Back