The Yngling

11.

Lord Miklos looked tired and grim when Nils was ushered into his chamber. The young barbarian didn't need psi to know the reason; Janos II had died unexpectedly during Miklos' absence and Janos III had ascended the throne.

"You traveled far to serve King Janos," Miklos said. "And now he is dead. And while I know little about you, what I do know I like. I will be happy to have you serve me, if you wish to."

"Thank you, my lord," Nils answered. "But I was to serve King Janos, and a Janos sits on the throne. Therefore, I will ask to serve him. If he refuses, and if you still want me, I will be happy to serve you."

Miklos walked to the window and stared out, then turned and spoke carefully in explanation. "Janos III is not the man you sought to serve, nor the same kind of man. If it wasn't for the family resemblance and the nobility of his mother, I could hardly credit the elder with the fathership. Janos II was a noble man, fair, firm, and honorable, a man well fitted to rule. The son, on the other hand, is at best shallow and petty, and it will seldom occur to him that there are considerations beyond his momentary whim. He is devious without the compensation of cleverness, gives no man his confidence and heeds no counsel.

"But the worst that is said of him is only rumor, I hope without grounds-that he will tolerate, if not actually sanction, the vile cult of Baalzebub. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you that, for I've seen nothing that can stand as evidence. But I fear. Not the man, but what he may bring."

"Nonetheless," Nils replied, "I must seek service with King Janos. It was forseen by a seeress whose worth I value highly."

"You believe in seers?"

"I believe in this seeress, for I know her powers. They saved my life once."

"And so she commands you."

"No. But what she said seemed right to me."

"I see. Well, I will not recommend you to the new king. Any recommendation from me he'd take as grounds for suspicion." Miklos looked long and perplexedly at Nils, then rose and held out his hand. "But I give you my best wishes. If you are refused, or enter his service and wish to withdraw, let me know."

The sergeant was explaining to the guard master. "He said he'd come several hundred kilometers to seek service with King Janos. He doesn't even speak Magyar and I had to use Anglic with him. But he's a giant"-the sergeant motioned with his hand somewhat above the height of his own helmet-"and something about him gives me the feeling that he's a real fighter and not just an oaf. And you know how his Majesty likes size in his personal guards."

"All right, Bela, I'll look at him. His Highness is tolerant of foreigners. But he'll have to look very good before I'll ask the men to put up with someone who speaks no Magyar."

The big iron stove was hot, and Nils, after the manner of the neovikings, had hung both jacket and shirt on a peg. Disdaining a bench, he squatted with his back to the wall, paring his nails with a large belt knife. When the two knights entered the guard room he arose, calmly and with a smoothness of movement that made the guard master suspect he might do, at that. After a few questions he sent a guardsman to Janos, asking for an audience. Shrewdly, he had Nils leave his jacket and shirt on the peg and took him to Janos with his torso bare except for harness.

Janos was a man of ordinary size, his face dominated by the pointed nose and red mustache of his father's line. Nils sensed no evil in him, nor anything else remarkable, only a mediocrity of energy and smallness of vision. At the king's command Nils rose from his knees. Janos' blue eyes examined him minutely without his face betraying his judgment, but Nils sensed that this was a man who was readily impressed by physical strength.

"Where are you from?" the king asked at length.

"From Svealann, Your Majesty."

"Svealann. And where might that be?"

"Far to the north, Your Majesty. Beyond the lands of the Germans lies the northern sea. Across the sea the Jotar dwell, and north of them the Svear. Beyond the Svear, no one lives."

"Ah. And is it true that in the north, so far from the sun, the lands are colder and snowier?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Then Svealann must be a terrible land. I don't blame you for leaving it. But why did you come all this way to seek service with the king of the Magyars, when there are other kings and realms, some closer?"

"A seeress told me that I would, Your Majesty, and so I did."

"A seeress!" Nils sensed that this impressed the king strongly. "And what seeress was that?"

"A woman who lives in the forest, Your Majesty, and talks to the wolves. Her name is Ilse."

Janos examined this indigestible bit and dropped it. "And do you fight well?"

"I'm told that I fight very well, Your Majesty."

Janos turned to the guard master. "Ferenc, let me see him tested."

For an instant the guard master was dismayed. Somehow he'd neglected to test the man! Suppose he was an oaf after all! "I will test him myself, if that will be all right, Your Highness."

"Fine. That will be abundantly demanding."

The guard master spoke to one of the throne guards, who went to Nils and handed him a sword and shield. Nils handled the sword lightly, its weight and balance registering on his neuro-muscular system. Then they faced each other with swords at the ready. The guard master began the sword play slowly, examining Nils's moves. Nils was content to parry and counter. The guard master's speed increased, and Nils sensed his growing approval. A sudden vigorous and sustained attack failed to make an opening, and the guard master stepped back, sweating in the heated throne room.

"He is very good, Your Highness," he said, turning to the king. "He's surprisingly quick and knows all the moves. His teacher must have known his business. If we'd been fighting instead of sparring, I would have been hard pressed, for then his great strength would have begun to count."

Later, in his chamber, the king ran for his privy counselor, a man whose role no others in the palace knew. And if any suspected, they kept careful silence. The man came at the king's call.

"Did you read the man that Ferenc brought to me for the guard?" Janos asked.

"Yes."

"What did you see in him? And was he telling the truth about a seeress?"

"He was truthful at all times, m'lord. I was limited in reading him because his native tongue is unfamiliar to me, but I assure you he was truthful. I believe he is unable to lie."

"You're joking!"

The counselor bowed slightly. "I never joke, Your Highness. There is that about him which makes me believe he is unable to lie."

"Amazing. That must truly be a handicap."

Sometimes you are almost discerning, the counselor thought to himself. And ordinarily I would agree with that reaction. I wish the swine held discourse with himself. I've never known anyone before who could stand fully conscious for several minutes and not talk to himself within his mind. And it isn't a screen. I will watch him carefully.

The guard soon accepted Nils as one of them, despite their normal animosity toward foreigners. In sparring he was never bested, but even so, the men sensed that he held himself in, and they interpreted that correctly as a desire to avoid making anyone look bad. His disposition was mild and harmonious. And he learned quickly, so that in a few weeks he could converse slowly on a fair assortment of subjects.

One day of his first week Nils was being instructed in Magyar by Sergeant Bela, when a boy in his early teens entered the guard room; he was dressed as a squire and spoke to the sergeant. Bela turned back to Nils.

"This is Imre Rakosi, Nils, a squire to the king. He wants to talk to you through me, as he doesn't have much confidence in the little Anglic he speaks. First he wants to know if it's true that you are a great swordsman."

"It is true," Nils said. He sensed an openness and honesty in the boy.

"And is it true that you come from a barbaric land far from the sun and have traveled in many lands?"

"That's true, too," Nils admitted. "Except that I have traveled only in several lands."

Bela repeated in Magyar, then turned back to Nils. "Imre would like to become fluent in Anglic. And he believes it would be better to learn it from you than from some other tutor. You cannot lapse into Magyar, and in the learning he hopes to hear about lands and customs that we know little of in our land. Will you teach him?"

"I'll be glad to."

The boy addressed Nils directly now, in Anglic.

"Thank you," he said carefully, holding out his hand. Nils shook it.

"He would like to begin after supper this evening," Bela said, "in the outer hall, for it's always open and the benches there are comfortable. If he can't be there, he'll get word to you. Is that all right?"

"Certainly," said Nils, and Imre Rakosi left.

"Are squires here the sons of knights only?" Nils asked.

"Usually. This one is the son of Lord Istvan Rakosi of the eastern marches."

"And was he sponsored earlier by the older king, Janos II?"

"No, he's been with Janos III for almost eight years, since the boy was seven and old enough to serve as a page. The king is a widower, and childless," the sergeant went on. "This boy is like a son to him. And he's a good lad, as Janos is a good master."

Nils had the third and fourth watches-from 0800 to 1600-and his duties were primarily two. When Janos held court, Nils was one of his personal guards, standing behind his throne to its right. At other hours, when Janos was in the throne room, Nils's post was outside the thick door.

And in a chamber behind the throne room, a lean, dark-brown man sat in a black robe reading the mind of the king's visitors. But always, whether Nils stood by the throne or outside the heavy door, the secret counselor monitored the big warrior's mind with one small part of his superbly sensitive psychic awareness. He received almost nothing in the way of either thoughts or emotions there, however, for mostly Nils simply received, sorting and filing data of almost every kind without discussing it with himself.

But the evidence was increasingly unmistakable.

One winter evening the counselor took from a small chest a gray plastic box, closed a switch, and patiently waited. He didn't wait long. As a hair-like needle twitched on the dial, a voice in his mind commanded him.

His mind reviewed the event of Nils's arrival and what he had observed, the little he had been able to learn from Nils's mind, and what he had learned from the minds of others when they had thought about Nils. "And there is no question," he thought, "the barbarian is a psi, and I feel he is not here accidentally. I don't know any details, for I can read nothing specific myself. But you could force him, Master."

His thoughts paused, as if hesitating, and there was a sharp painful tug at the counselor's mind that made him wince and continue.

"And today, as I watched, I became aware that he knows I am here, and that he let me know purposely, realizing I would know it was on purpose. Of course, he could easily know of me from the king's mind. But he knows more about me than the king does; it may be he knows all that I am.

"And he as an undisturbed as a stone."

That winter at Pest was the coldest of memory, Nils was told. Old people, and even the middle-aged, complained that winters were longer and colder than when they were young. But even recent winters had had frequent days when temperatures rose above freezing, weather when the surface of the ground thawed to mud. This winter it remained like stone. The snow from the great October storm had never been much deeper at Pest than a man's knees, and little new snow had been added. Yet until late March the ground remained covered, except on strong south slopes and near the south sides of buildings.

The River Danube, which the Magyars called Duna, froze deeply, and boys and youths fastened skates to their feet for sport, while people of every age cut holes through the ice and fished for pike and sturgeon. Not until April did the ice soften enough that several fishermen fell through to be carried away beneath it by the current.

By that time Nils had taken opportunities to examine maps, but had made no plans. When the time came, he would have a plan. Meanwhile, he worked, ate, slept, and learned, finding life quite agreeable. Imre Rakosi had learned to speak the simple Anglic tongue quite creditably, while Nils, living with the Magyar tongue, had substantially mastered its agglutinative complexities. The two youths had become close friends.

At the beginning of April they had the first days of true spring that promise summer. On one such day both were free from duty, and they rode together along a muddy, rutted road above the Duna, watching the fishermen standing in the shallow water that flowed across the gray and spongy ice. But on a shirt-sleeve day in April they found little inspiration in the sight of a river still ice-bound. So they left the bank and turned their horses up the rubble-paved road to Old Pest.

Old Pest had been immensely larger than the present town. Around Old Pest lay the open plain, grazed in summer or planted with wheat. But Old Pest itself was an extensive forest, mainly of oak but with other broad-leaved trees, its openings overgrown with hazel brush. The rubble and broken pavement prevented cultivation, at the same time concentrating rainwater in the breaks so that trees could sprout and grow. Here and there parts of a building still stood above the trees. The rest had fallen to storms and the gradual deterioration of material. Over the centuries many building stones had been hauled away to be used in the growth of New Pest, and concrete had been crushed for remanufacturing. Even steel construction rods had been broken and hauled away, to be stacked in smithies for cleaning and reuse. And the paving stones of New Pest came from the rubble of the Old.

The present town had grown up several kilometers from the edge of the old city. Neither merchants, nobles, nor commoners cared to house near its ancient ghosts, nor to the cover it provided to bandits and other predators.

Imre had never been in Old Pest before. Bears, wolves and wild dogs actually were few there in these times, for herdsmen organized hunts, with hounds and scores of armed and mounted men, to hold down depredations. And bandits usually were only transient there, for soldiers of the king hunted them. But explorers occasionally disappeared and were not seen again or were found dead and sometimes mutilated.

Imre and Nils poked cautiously about in one building whose lower levels still stood, and wondered whether it could ever have housed men.

There were no stoves or fireplaces, or anything to take away smoke, or anything to see except debris. "I like it better outside than in here," Nils commented.

"You're right. Let's go back out. Anyway, there's only one building I really want to see. I've looked at it from a distance through the palace windows and the whole immense thing seems still to be standing. It may be farther than we have time to go, though, and maybe we wouldn't be able to find it in this wilderness anyway."

They mounted and went farther on among the trees. "Do you mean the building with the huge dome?" Nils asked.

"That's the one. It is said to be a church."

"And what is, or was, a church?" Nils wanted to know.

"Well," explained Imre, "in the olden times men believed in imaginary beings who were thought to be very powerful and therefore had to be given gifts and sung to, and in general the people had to debase themselves before them. Even the nobility; even kings. And great palaces called churches were built and dedicated to the chief of those beings, who was called Christianity."

"I'm surprised I never heard of him before," Nils said.

"It is said that belief in him died out before the Great Death. Perhaps in your land even the memory was lost, or perhaps it never existed there."

They were passing the base of a great hill of rubble upon which stood only scattered shrubs and scrubby trees, but numerous stalks of forbs lay broken, suggesting that in season it would be alive with wild flowers. Turning their horses, they rode toward its top, hoping to get a better directional fix from its elevation.

"I've heard," Nils remarked, "that some Magyars now believe in a supernatural being called Baalzebub. Have any churches been built to him?"

"There can't be churches to Baalzebub. It's against the law to follow that cult."

"But wasn't it the elder king who decreed that? There is a rumor that Janos III tolerates it."

"It's a lie," Imre said decisively. "For my lord has told me that the cult of Baalzebub is vile and that if I ever have anything to do with it, I will be exiled." He paused and looked upward. "I guess our sunshine is gone, and this rising wind is cold. Do you want to go on or shall we go back to Pest?"

"Let's go back," Nils answered, and they rode briskly down the slope into the trees.

"Nils, why did you ask about Baalzebub?"

"Not through any wish to offend you, I promise you that."

"I believe you," Imre said. "But let me explain something that may make things clearer to you. There are those who dislike our lord because he is not the strong and open man his father was, and they pass evil rumors about him. But I've known him since I was a little boy, almost as long as I can remember, and he has been a second father to me. I know his faults, but I also know he is a good man."

"Did he take you with him on his trip to the lower Duna?"

"No. He took none of his household except for five guards. I was only ten then. And he went only as far as the Serbland, not the lower Duna."

"Was it from there he brought his dark-skinned counselor?"

"Dark-skinned counselor?"

"The one named Ahmed."

Imre looked strangely at Nils for a moment, before his frown dissolved into a smile. "Oh, I see. Ahmed is not a counselor, Nils; he is only a personal servant."

"Ah. He is so secretive and his appearance so sinister, I thought he might be a servant of Baalzebub, given to the king to influence him without the king knowing it."

Imre laughed. "Civilization must seem strange to someone from the wild north. No, Nils, Ahmed is not secretive, only shy. And as for sinister, others feel the same about that as you do. But it is only his blackness, for which he can thank a scorching eastern sun."

A strong gust of wind rattled the bare branches above them. "Look, snowflakes!" Nils said. In a few moments the air was swirling with them, and Nils and Imre spurred their horses to a trot, where trails permitted, until they came out of the forest. Then, faces glowing from exhilaration and wet snow, they galloped down the road to Pest.

And from that time Nils was prepared for a trip down the Duna, possibly in chains, unless of course, he was murdered. For Ahmed would certainly read Imre, and Kazi would either want to examine this barbarian psi himself or have him dead.

Within weeks the message came to Janos by a courier in livery richer than the people of Pest had even seen, along with a troop of tall, swarthy horsemen on animals that awed even the great Magyar horse breeders. Kazi sent it this way instead of through Ahmed in order to keep the psi tuner secret from Janos.

"Ahmed," Janos said, "I won't stand for it. Why does he want me to send the boy to him?"

Ahmed looked thoughtfully at the soft bleached parchment as if he hadn't already known what would be written there or why. "Perhaps he doesn't trust you."

"But that's nonsense. Why shouldn't he trust me? I've done nothing to earn his distrust."

"I don't know that he distrusts you, but that would explain his request. Remember, you are hundreds of kilometers away from him, and so he has no way of looking into your mind. He is used to knowing the minds of everyone around him, and is impatient when he doesn't."

"So he wants the boy as a hostage, then," Janos snapped. "He can't have him."

"Why not?" Ahmed asked. "You know he'll treat him like a prince, for he depends on you, and youth enjoys the adventure of strange lands. You could send the giant barbarian with him as bodyguard and companion, for they are close friends."

Janos sat quietly for a few minutes, his face still angry at first, then gradually grim, and finally thoughtful. "All right," he said at last. "I'll do it. Imre and the barbarian on my royal barge, and a detail from my guard. I will also provide a barge for the courier troop and they can leave their horses with me as a gift." He looked at Ahmed, thin-lipped. "But I do not like this hostage business, for I gave him my word and I am not used to being treated like this."