It was late afternoon when they eventually reached Markland, and the sun had vanished behind fresh banks of swelling fog.
There were more funerals to arrange, and the keening of the women rose above the small ville. Since so many dead were warriors, Ryan wondered whether the Vikings would deplete their shrinking number of slaves still further by butchering thralls to accompany their free-born masters on their last journey.
As the six friends were being escorted ashore, Ryan made another effort to speak to the baron about their discoveries along the coast, and what that horror would inevitably mean to the survivors of the steading. But the big man resolutely turned his face away from him and marched up the beach toward his large hut.
Ryan beckoned to Erik Stonebiter. Glancing around at the other men, the youth moved a few reluctant steps closer. "What?"
"We found something very important."
"You broke faith. Nothing you can say is important to us."
"Wrong. We know what killed the children and the man who made the beer, and what's probably killed many others in the ville."
"We know, too."
Ryan was taken aback. "You know! Then why the dark night don't you do something about it? Why don't you move from this place?"
"No. The gods punish us. That is the sickness. And you... you outlanders are part of it. Sent as messengers of evil. Storm crows, all of you. All but the white-hair."
"Bullshit, you bigoted little asshole!" Mildred exploded.
Erik held his hands before his face, sticking out the index and little fingers at her, like twin forks.
She laughed, throwing her head back. "Think I have the evil eye, do you, you sniveling little wimp? As far as I'm concerned, you and your whole damned Viking theme park can go vanish up its own ass. And I'll stand and blow you kisses as you sink in the west."
"You aren't helping, Mildred," Krysty said, shaking her head with exasperation.
"Listen, lady. This bunch of mock-macho creeps aim to see us all turned into blue cheese dip for their gods. Being all lovey-dovey and kissing ass won't change that!"
Erik Stonebiter had moved back, eyes flickering nervously at her wrath. He stumbled over his feet and nearly fell. He righted himself and ordered Ryan and the others to be taken to their hut and kept under a close, armed guard.
"Time to move on, folks," Ryan said as soon as the door of the hut was slammed shut.
There was a general murmur of consent.
"When should we make our move this time?" Doc asked. He'd sat on a bed and pulled a blanket around his shoulders, shivering with cold from his repeated immersions.
"They'll watch us tight," J.B. said, carefully honing his knife against the sole of his boot.
Krysty was looking at the rear wall of the wattle and daub building. "This opens clear toward the forest, doesn't it? All we have to do is kick it apart and do a runner. Wouldn't need me using the Earth Mother's force on it."
"They'll watch front and back real tight," Ryan replied. "If it hadn't been for that triple hot spot we'd have been away clear over the ridge. Be close to the redoubt by now."
Mildred said nothing. She sat on the packed-earth floor, head on her hands, staring blankly into space.
Krysty asked her if she was all right, and the woman looked up with a faint smile that never got within a mile of her eyes.
"I'm fine, honey, thanks. It's just that I think the cryo-process is sort of catching up on me. My head feels like the inside of a spin dryer and my body's kind of fraying at the edges. I'm real, real tired." And very quietly she began to cry.
Krysty went to her and knelt at her side, laying an arm across Mildred's shoulders. Sobbing, the woman threw her arms around Krysty and pressed her face into the side of her neck. The others looked away, busying themselves with cleaning their knives, allowing Mildred the time to recover control.
Eventually the racking sobs ceased, and she began to weep more softly. She pushed herself away from Krysty and wiped her nose on her sleeve, summoning up a more convincing grin at the rest of the friends. "There, Mildred is herself again. Sorry about that. Won't happen again."
Ryan helped her to her feet and patted her on the shoulder. "If it does, then it does. Nothing to worry about, Mildred."
An hour or so later, food was brought by a wizened old woman, whose iron collar had been worn for so many years that it had become wafer-thin.
"When will the funerals be? Will they do it tonight?" Ryan asked her.
"No, masters, no. Oh, there's too many of the dear ones been taken across the saddle horns of the Valkyries."
Ryan's rough body count said that around a dozen of the Vikings had been chilled, with at least two more likely not to see the next dawn.
"When?"
"On the morrow." She looked around as if she were scared of being overheard. "But the wisewoman's all taken with a fury."
"Why?" Ryan asked.
"Too many dead, masters."
He didn't understand what she was driving at. "Too many?"
"Dead. A free-born warrior will have company as he rides to Valhalla. It has always been the way in Markland."
Krysty understood first. "She means the slaves, lover, the girls who were throttled for the fire ship funeral the other night. So many were chilled this afternoon on the lake that..."
"There aren't enough slaves to go around," Ryan concluded. "With the sickness and all, the ville must be shrinking around its own ears."
"Vanishing up its own..." Mildred began, shutting her mouth as she caught Ryan's glance.
The crone nodded. "That's correct, masters. Not enough thralls. So bad a murrain for the steading these past weeks. So many gone."
"What'll happen," Krysty asked, "if there aren't girls to sacrifice?"
"Oh, the wisewoman has a plan for that. Young godling there..." she grinned gap-toothed at Jak, "...he'll provide what... Oh, Freya's tits! I wasn't to speak of that. I'll be given a good beating if they find out I spoke what I shouldn't."
"We won't tell anyone. But what did you mean about Jak?" Ryan asked.
But the slave woman had terrified herself by her indiscretion. Nothing could persuade her to open her mouth again, and she darted from the hut in a flurry of torn skirts and ragged shawl. The door was closed firmly behind her by one of the young sentries outside.
It was almost midnight. Ryan and J.B. sat close together, one on each side of the single candle they kept burning. They talked about old times, half-remembered, part-forgotten: good times and bad; friends dead and lost; women they'd known in a hundred frontier gaudies; men they'd fought and chilled; men they'd fought who'd then become friends. Sometimes the silences crept in from the corners of the hut, bearing fragments of memory.
They kept their voices quiet, to avoid disturbing their sleeping companions. Eventually the talk came reluctantly back to the present.
"Not good, Ryan."
"No."
"I figure they'll chill us all. Except, mebbe, the kid." J.B. looked around from habit, knowing how much Jak hated being called "kid". But the boy was still locked deeply in sleep.
"Wish now I'd never gotten us into this crock of shit."
J.B. waved a dismissive hand. "Black dust! Not like you to worry about what you might have done." He pushed the fedora back from his temples, the candlelight playing on his narrow, sallow face. His eyes were invisible behind the polished lenses of his spectacles. "No jack in that, Ryan."
"Sure." He sighed. "But there's been chances, times I could've pulled the trigger and I didn't. Odds weren't really good enough. But now..."
"Now we'll have to move with the odds stacked against us. Rad-blast it, Ryan! You think you and me haven't done that before? A whole load of times before. Sure."
"Yeah. Late. Reckon to get some sleep now, and then we..." He was interrupted by the sound of the bolts of the hut door being slid quietly across.
Without a word, both men drew their knives. J.B. padded silently to the side of the room near the door. Ryan blew out the candle and crept to flatten himself against the opposite wall.
The door opened, admitting a rectangle of watery moonlight.
"Ryan Cawdor? Outlander One-Eye? Are you awake in there?"
It was the voice of Jorund Thoraldson. Ryan, staying where he was, whispered his reply. "What d'you want?"
"To speak with you."
"Me? Or all of us?"
"You. You're the leader of the outlanders. Just you."
"Now?"
"Yes. Out here. Just the two of us. You have my word you will not be harmed while we speak."
In the darkness, Ryan could just make out the pale blur of J.B.'s face. Since the Armorer wasn't shaking his head, Ryan figured he must think it would be okay to go out.
"Coming," he said.
Tall though he was, Ryan felt dwarfed by the giant figure of the baron. The two sentries closed the door when he left the hut and slid the bolts across. The baron beckoned to Ryan and the two men walked together through the sleeping ville, toward the beach and the calm, mirrored expanse of the lake.
Neither spoke until they stopped a couple of yards from the tiny, breaking waves.
"This is a hard talk, outlander," Thoraldson began, "yet I must speak it."
"Go ahead."
"The first fight against the evil ones. You aided us. And on the water, you all fought bravely. And in the tests, you did much to shame the finest warriors of this steading."
"But?" Ryan could still smell blood and sweat on the massive Norseman at his side and almost taste an odd kind of nervousness.
"But... the wisewoman has been warning for weeks that there was a plague coming toward us. When the first child became sick of the bloody flux she said it would be worse. Now she swears the omens blame you and your friends, particularly the black-skinned woman."
"You believe her?"
Jorund's shaggy head swung slowly toward him. "No. I think you and your brothers are true fighting men of courage. But since you came, there have been so many deaths. I cannot stand against the wise-woman and all the steading."
"She wants us all dead?"
"Truly. All but the white-haired one. She says we must adopt him into our family, and he will lead us from the darkness."
"The darkness is what I've been trying to tell you about. Along the coast we found undeniable evidence of a dreadful rad leak, and that's what's chilling your folks. The rashes and the sickness and..."
"No, no! I must not listen to this. She made me swear to speak only as she had told me."
"She runs this? She's the fucking baron is she?" Ryan felt his anger misting his mind, and he tried to control it. "You're the baron, aren't you?"
"Aye. I am. Yet the wisewoman has the minds and souls of my people. But I have spoken against her. I have tried. And she has agreed that I shall make you this offer."
"Go ahead."
Ryan felt the faintest tremor from the restless earth beneath his boots. But Jorund said nothing, and Ryan wondered whether he'd even noticed it.
"The outlander you call Jak Lauren?"
"Sure. With the white hair. What about him?"
"If you will agree to this, then he must stay with us."
"And the rest of us go free?" Ryan had enough confidence in Jak's cunning to be certain that the teenager would find a way of escaping within a day or so.
"No. All but one of you."
"Mildred?"
"This is the only hope I can give. You refuse this, and you will all pay the price."
"Jak stays. Mildred dies. The rest of us walk?"
"Aye. And Jak will sacrifice the black woman to our gods before you go free."