The Yngling

4.

The northmen spent the night at the forest's edge on the eastern side of the valley, partway to Doppeltanne. At dawn they rode on, gnawing cheese and hard bread as they rode through frost-rimed grass. The timber's edge was grazed and open, alternating between heavy-limbed oaks and groves of gray beeches as hollow as chimneys, their fire-scarred bases doors to squirrels and polecats. After some hours they could see the castle of Martin Gutknekt, and then Doppeltanne. Cattle foraged in the stubble fields tended by boys with long sticks, so the neovikings rode out openly and came to the castle before noon.

The sun was warm now, and outside the walls sweating peasant youths swung swords in a clumsy parody of drill, rasped by the cutting tongue of a knight. Rapt children and glum old men stood watching. In the courtyard were dozens of peasant women squatting around small fires, preparing the noon meal. Shelters of poles, hides and woven mats were being built.

The northmen found the baron in the armory, sparring with his marshal with shields and blunt swords. He stepped back and turned a sweating face to them. "Too damned crowded to practice in the courtyard." He wiped his face with a rag. "I thought you'd be far gone by now. Do you have any news? I sent men out yesterday, good hunters, and they found tracks."

"If they'd been with us, they'd have seen more than tracks," Nils answered. "We found their camp a few hours west of here. There are more than a hundred of them, judging by their tents. Probably closer to two hundred. We took the news to the graf, and frankly we thought we might find the village taken by now. Do you know where we might find Brother Hannes?"

"He may be in the village. We talked two days ago, and then we both talked to the peasants. Since then he's been riding around the district encouraging them, and he chose the men we issued swords to. He says they're the likeliest to fight."

"The Brethren know the people's minds as if they could see into them," Nils commented. "I'll go look for him. With your leave I'd like to talk to both of you together."

As soon as Nils rode out the gate, he sensed Hannes; he had come to watch the peasants drill. Hannes was clearly depressed; he knew that soon many of these people would die. Turning at the approach of the warriors, he sensed at once that Nils brought bad news, and guessed.

"She's dead?"

"No. Prisoner."

"Gentle Father Jakob."

After seven centuries the memory of Jakob Tashi Norbu, the Tibetan-Swiss psionicist, still was revered by the kinfolk. The lean telepath breathed his name now partly in gratitude, partly in pain.

"But I intend to get her back," Nils said. "Now let's go talk to the baron. We have plans to make."

Hannes looked at him with sudden appreciation. There seemed no emotional content to anything he had heard Nils say or think-his emotions had to be a lot different than other people's, just as his mind was. But he knew that if it wasn't for Ilse, Nils would have left his warning and been two days gone from the district by now. Hannes held up his hand to Nils and, half-jumping, half-hoisted, mounted behind the warrior.

Nils stepped back from the rough map he had drawn. "And that's where their camp is from here, as best I can show you. But they won't stay there much longer. I've never seen or heard of horse barbarians starting anything at night, although that doesn't mean they won't. There are different tribes with different tongues, and this bunch may be different from those we've had experience with. Or they may have changed their tactics since last summer. But it's my guess they'll attack by daylight. And after they take the village they'll probably get drunk. If Hannes and Sten took your armed peasants into the forest east of the valley after dark tonight and camped there… "

Nils, Leif and Erik ate and replenished their saddlebags, saluted Sten in casual farewell, and left. They rode several kilometers south down the road to where a finger of forest approached it on a low spur ridge from the west. Beyond it they angled southwesterly and entered the forest. This route, they hoped, would bypass possible enemy scouts. Gradually their course curved until, near sundown, they were following the upper west slope of the fourth major ridge and heading north.

The horse barbarians were raiders from the deserts, steppes and arid mountains of the Middle East, whose tradition was open-mounted attack or simple ambush. The neovikings, on the other hand, were raiders of the Scandinavian forests, whose style was cunning and stealth. And at home they'd made an important part of their living hunting on foot with bows. Thus their senses missed little and their minds remembered and correlated what they saw and heard and smelled, like the Iroquois of twelve hundred years earlier. So this stretch of ridge was familiar to them, though they'd seen it only once before and from a different approach. After a bit they rode into the bottom of the heavily wooded valley west of the ridge and tied their horses in a stand of young fir that was littered and almost fenced by the blown-down bones of ancestors. It was not the kind of place a rider was likely to wander into.

Then, on foot and with their sleeping robes in bundles on their backs, they climbed back up the long slope as dusk began to settle, and slipped toward the enemy camp. Nils sensed no sentry. When he decided they were approaching the range of normal telepathy, he left Leif and Erik in a tangle of blowdown and moved quietly on until he was receiving the casual, though to him unintelligible, thoughts of the Turkic tribesmen nearby. After determining his line of withdrawal, he lay beside the slightly raised disk of roots and soil of a pole-sized fir that had partly uprooted and lodged in the top of a beech. Come morning, the gap beneath the roots would give nearly perfect concealment if needed.

His mind stilled as no other human mind could, as indiscernible to a watchful psi as possible. Soon it was dark, and yellow campfires danced nearby. His body relaxed within his robe as his mind received, correlated and stored.

After a time he permitted himself to sleep. A unit of awareness monitored the environment to awaken him if necessary.

At dawn he awoke without moving and let his eyes sweep the gray-lit woods within their range, his ears and psi sense alert, his subconscious carefully sorting sensations. He was aware that the two psi minds in the camp were awake too, along with many others. Ilse and the other psi were together, but far enough from Nils that he couldn't receive passive optical impressions from either of them. From the male. Nils recognized the patterns of a strong but undisciplined mind.

She was speaking Anglic to him.

The light was growing stronger. Slowly Nils slid into the dark opening under the tipped-up roots. Breakfast fires were being lit. Soon early-morning taciturnity disappeared among the enemy tribesmen as fires and movement warmed them. Their eating took some time, and Nils could hear them talking and laughing, the sounds mixed with the patterns of telepathic emissions that were their natural accompaniment.

He continued to lie there, his mind focused on the two psis, other minds relegated to background. He knew which tent was theirs. Then a man came from it and the bearings of the two minds separated as he walked through the camp. Soon men and captive women began to strike tents, rolling them into bundles. Others trailed down the gentle toe slope toward a long meadow that bordered the creek in the valley bottom and returned leading strings of horses.

Nils saw Ilse then, pulling down the tent, folding and rolling it. The man returned when she was done and helped load it on a horse. Within an hour all gear had been loaded. The horse barbarians mounted, their voices lively and boisterous at the prospect of action. The psi led them in a loose column through the trees, eastward toward Doppeltanne. Pack animals, spare mounts and colts followed. A score of women sat the nags of the string bareback, waiting while the pack train moved out. Behind them were mounted guards.

By the time the women started moving, the chief of the band was perhaps a kilometer ahead. Nils called to Ilse telepathically. She did not turn; only her mind responded.

"Nils!"

"Are they going to attack Doppeltanne?"

She wrenched her mind to the question. "Yes. And be careful. He's a psi you know, and he understands a fair amount of Anglic; he's been learning it since Poland." She began to ride more slowly, letting most of the women pass, until one of the rearguard shouted at her and gestured with his lance.

"I'll try to get you free tonight," Nils thought after her.

"Don't take chances. Perhaps I know how to kill him."

"Tonight," his thought followed her. "We'll make our move tonight." He watched her out of sight. The information should be safe with her, if she'd been able to submerge and screen well enough to work out a murder scheme without her captor reading it. One of Kazi's psi officers must have discovered the man's potential and had him trained, as Raadgiver had done with him. Operational telepaths very rarely just happened.

Several tents remained. Two women worked around them, and two guards sat beside a fire, talking and laughing. A man came from one of the tents, helping himself with a crutch. Very carefully Nils moved from his post toward the hiding place of his companions. Softly though he moved, his approach awakened Erik, whose hand moved quickly to his sword as he sat up. Leif grinned. "I let the growing boy sleep late," he said softly in his lilting Norwegian.

"They've broken camp," Nils said, "and they're riding toward Doppeltanne. They left some wounded behind, with a pair of women to look after them, and a couple of guards. We'll get our horses and then ride in and take them."

The northmen hiked over the ridge top and down to their horses, saddled them and fastened the bits in their mouths, all without hurry. Then they rode back and walked their horses toward the camp.

When one of the guards heard their approach and looked their way, they kicked their mounts into a gallop and cut the men down while they scrambled for their bows. One of the women half-choked a scream and then both stood by, frightened. These savage foreigners in deerskin breeches and black mail, with bare-fanged totems on their helmets, seemed just a different variety of horse barbarian. While Erik sat with arrow on bowstring, covering, Nils and Leif rode around cutting the lodgepoles with their heavy swords and knocking down tents. As the occupants ducked or crawled out or lay humped beneath the hides, they were killed.

One stared as Nils charged at him, a shock of recognition on his dark, scarred face, and Nils reined hard left to avoid trampling the man. A picture had flashed through the horse barbarian's mind, of this same giant warrior with straw-colored braids standing naked and weaponless in an arena, stalked by a grinning orc officer with sword in hand. It was this man. Nils realized, who had thrown his own curved sword down onto the sand.

"Let that one be!" Nils shouted, and left the man on hands and knees beside his crutch while they finished their killing.

The women stared in shock and fear as Nils turned his horse and looked at them. "Can you ride?" he asked in Anglic.

They nodded dumbly.

"Then get on those horses. Ride to the top of that ridge and go in that direction." He pointed. "Do you understand?" They nodded again. "Stay on top of the ridge until you come to a road. It will take two or three hours or maybe more. When you come to the road, ride down the road with the sun on your right shoulder. Your right shoulder. When you come out of the forest, you'll soon arrive at a crossroads. From there you can see a castle. Go to the castle. Tell them that the enemy is in Doppeltanne. Doppeltanne! Now tell me what I said."

Hesitantly and with help they repeated his instructions, then walked to the horses and rode away, glancing back repeatedly until they were out of sight.

"Think they'll get lost?" Leif asked.

"I don't think so," Nils answered. "They had the directions well enough." Then he turned and looked at the man he'd spared.

The stocky barbarian stood now, staring at them, not knowing what to expect. He didn't imagine that Nils knew who he was. He'd been one among tens of thousands shouting in the stands, and when he'd thrown the sword, the giant had been looking the other way.

Nils dismounted and walked over to him. "You gave me a chance to live," he said. "Now we are even." The Swedish words meant nothing to the man, but the tone was not threatening. The other northmen looked at each other. Nils jabbed the man lightly on the shoulder with a thick, sword-callused forefinger, then pointed to the man's side where his sword would have hung. Next he moved as if drawing a sword and made a throwing movement. Pointing to himself, he bent as if to take something from the ground, then held out his hand as if armed. The man stared with awed understanding.

Nils remounted then and they rode leisurely to the meadow where the horse barbarians had kept their horse herd. There the northmen hobbled their mounts and let them graze until after noon, while they napped in the autumn sun.