because they sometimes concentrate so hard on action that women can outthink them.”
The woman turned her disconcerting eyes suddenly toward her. “That is not enough,” she said, almost fiercely. “We need to outfight them on their own terms, not just ours.” She slowly began to smile again. “And our time may come, may come sooner than any man has looked for it.”
2
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.
