Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

Gath turned around and headed back to the hall.

At some point in that endless feast, he found himself sitting on the sun-warm grass outside the mead hall, talking with Twist.

“Skalds?” he said. “Or women?”

“Or priests.”

“But never warriors, never sailors?” Gath peered carefully at the minstrel’s shining harp. He had no headache and he could only see one thing at a time, which meant he was drunk again. Idiot! Trouble was, when he wouldn’t drink up like a man, the sailors held his arms and poured the muck down his throat. Or turned him upside down and put his head in the bucket, which was worse. ”Real men aren’t sorcerers?”

“Never. Or rarely. You may be right in saying our father cheated that way. Don’t be saying it to anyone else, though.”

“Is that why the Protocol . . .” The thought wandered away into the beery fog.

Bodies snored in the grass all around.

Twist chuckled. “So goes the legend. Because the jotnar would never use sorcery in battle, Emine agreed that no one else might use it against them, and the warden of the north was assigned to defend them from it.”

Gath followed that idea around in his head, one word at a time, then nodded. The world rocked sickeningly. “But way back here in Nordland, who could tell who might be cheating?”

“And no thane ever trusts another.”

“So the skalds stay home and guard the thorps against sorcery?”

“Purely defensive,” Twist agreed, amused by something. Gath lay back on the warm turf and closed his eyes. He put an arm across them to cut out the pink glare of the sun. That was better. “Who else knows this?” he muttered.

“The thanes and the skalds. Nobody else at all. Not even the warlock of the north nowadays, I suspect”

“And your brother won your words for you by being champion for Thane Thermond?”

“That was the price. I was thirteen. I was dying—the taller I grew, the worse my back curved. Sorcery saved me.” Without any hard evidence at all, Gath had come to know that this human ruin was his brother’s counsellor, the brains of the family partnership. Drakkor was only the muscle.

“You will be going to Nintor, Twist?”

“Of course. Every year the thanes meet at the Moot Stow on Nintor. The reckonings are held at the Place of Ravens. But there is always another moot, every year, a secret moot.”

“The skalds?”

“The sorcerers. They go to see fair play. They also hold a moot, a moot of their own, at the Commonplace.”

“I have to come.”

“It is too dangerous for you.”

“Stuff that harp,” Gath muttered sleepily, and heard a chuckle. ”I am coming.”

There was another thought, something he must tell . . . Oh, yes. “This is going to be a war moot?”

“The imperor has pulled back his legions from Guwush.”

“The fake imperor.” Gath yawned mightily. “It’s a trap, of course.” The sun was pleasantly warm on his chest and limbs. “Perhaps it is, but no one knows about the fake imperor or the usurper. No one but sorcerers know that the Covin has overthrown the Four.”

“Drakkor knows?”

“I have told him. Doubtless most of the other thanes know also. But their followers do not.” Twist’s fingers stroked the strings and the harp sighed. Then it proclaimed a martial chord. Several apparently unconscious drunks sat up quickly and looked around.

“After three thousand years,” he continued, “who will believe that the Protocol no longer operates? Drakkor has been preaching war for two moots now. How can he stop when the Impire is being so vulnerable? You cannot be arguing with a hungry bear!”

Gath sighed as the wind sighed in the grass. “It is a trap!”

“Perhaps it is. What sort of a trap, though? Have you worked that out, Little Atheling?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me!”

“I will tell the secret moot,” Gath said sleepily. Silence.

The longships had stopped coming. Only one spit held a goat and the hall was almost deserted. The villagers had returned to their wives and their labor. Down on the shore, Blood Wave’s crew readied her for departure.

Gath was close to panic. He was going to be left behind! Twist was avoiding him apparently, and who could ever catch a sorcerer who did not want to be caught? Drakkor was unavailable to a lowly water boy. He haunted the thorp and the hall in misery. Once in a while a gang of sailors would catch him and fill him full of disgusting beer again, or match him up in a fight. He was sick of the drunkenness and foolery and juvenile games. There was a war on, and he was being excluded.

Then he saw Twist lurching along the hall in an unusual hurry. Heedless of danger, Gath followed, right through into the private quarters, dark and mysterious and out of bounds. He caught up with the cripple just as he hurtled in through a door.

“Raven Feast has rounded the head and Thane Kragthong is on board!” the skald cried.

The little room was dim and stuffy. It was larger than Twist’s cottage, but stark and simple as befitted a jotunn’s chamber. The bed was made of plain boards covered by a worn fur. On it lay Drakkor, unshaven and haggard from days of unending feasting, and the blue of his eyes was circled by red. He had probably been asleep. In a fast reaction, he threw his goat’s-wool blanket over his companion and blinked up blearily at his brother. “I will be there.”

Twist turned to go, and discovered Gath.

Gath could tell that this was not the most appropriate setting for discussing business. The girl on the bed was invisible now, but she was certainly not Drakkor’s wife, who was out in the hall. She had also been much younger.

“Thane?” Gath shouted

Twist rolled his eyes and stepped aside.

The look he received almost melted Gath’s bones, but he stood his ground.

Drakkor growled. “What the Evil do you want?”

“To go to Nintor with you.”

“It is too dangerous.” The thane rolled over on his side and put a thick arm over the shrouded girl.

Twist tugged urgently at Gath’s wrist. “Since when has that mattered to a jotunn?”

Drakkor tightened his embrace on the blanket, not turning to look at his visitors. “Jotunn? You? Go away, half-man!”

If he was sober he would not be able to do this, Gath thought, trickling sweat. “Sir, I bear a message from the warlock of the north—and from my father the Thaneslayer.”

The muscles in Drakkor’s back tensed like cables. “Brother . . . Turn him into something horrid!”

“Then I ask Thane Kragthong?” Gath asked shrilly.

“Go away!” Drakkor roared. The blanket jerked nervously. The grip on Gath’s arm tightened with superhuman power, digging into the muscle. He yelled in fury as he found himself being dragged away bodily by that flimsy runt.

“Stop!” the thane said. He rolled over on his back and glared. ”We carry no passengers to Nintor. You would row?” There were only four days left until the moot. If the wind was not favorable, that meant three days of hard rowing. God of Horrors! Gath hesitated, thought about Dad, and said stubbornly, “Aye, sir! I’ll row double watch if I have to.”

Drakkor groaned. “Take him away, Skald. I’ll thump him later.”

The mead hall was packed as Raven Feast’s crew marched in. Gath sat on the floor amid the massed groundlings. Beside him, Vork hugged his knees and watched with wide green eyes. His red hair seemed to be standing on end, and all his freckles showed.

The leader was a hulking thane of middle years, scarred and battered. A pace behind him walked the passenger he had brought from Urgaxox, Vork’s father. In this land of giants, Kragthong no longer towered so tall, but there was not a belly in Gark to match his. It overhung his breeches like a thatched roof. His face was older and more careworn than Gath remembered, but his forked silver beard jutted forth arrogantly in the sunlight streaming through the great .windows.

Vork seemed to shrink down and down until only his eyes showed above his knees, like green pebbles.

Smoke swirled from the fires. The visitors paraded along the hall. They came to a halt before Thane Drakkor at the high table. He was freshly shaven and clear-eyed, as if the feasting had never happened, young and jubilant. Even the wind seemed to hush expectantly.

Thane Afgirk of Clarn recited his honors and his ancestors. “Your foes are mine,” he concluded.

“Safe haven and good sport, brother of Clam! You are welcome to this hall.” Drakkor tipped mead into a drinking horn and passed it across joyously. He filled another for himself. The two thanes drained them simultaneously. Drakkor waved his guest to a stool and sat down, ignoring the other visitor.