Peace Rock’s only substantial building was in the center of the community: a hall forty meters long and almost half that in breadth. Hansen judged the roof to be ten meters high at the peak, but its thatched expanse swept down to waist height at either side. Smoke from an open hearth boiled out beneath both end gables.
Slaves had begun unloading the mammoths and collecting the ponies for feed and grooming. Many of the freemen were disappearing into squalid huts with women in tow. Nothing like an afternoon of slaughter to bring men to the need for reaffirming life in the most basic fashion possible. . . .
Hansen nodded to the hall. Dozens of male and female servants—and a pair of young women too beautiful and beautifully dressed to be less than nobles—waited at the entrance to greet Golsingh and Taddeusz.
“Is that Golsingh’s palace, then?” he asked the trio of warriors whom he’d permitted to take him under their wing.
“That’s the hall,” said Malcolm. “You’ll sleep there, until you find a woman with a hut of her own.”
He looked sharply at Hansen. “Why, do you do it differently in Annunciation?”
Hansen shrugged. “Not really,” he said noncommittally.
His coveralls had lasted the run and struggle in the battlesuit, but they weren’t sufficient garb for a winter evening. Where the skin was chafed, Hansen’s limbs burned in the cold. He was going to need additional clothing—furs, like those the freemen and warriors wore—heat, and food, all very quickly, or exposure was going to finish what Zieborn had attempted.
The richly-dressed blond woman put her arms around Golsingh and kissed him. As if that slipped the leashes of the others gathered before the hall, the servant women broke ranks into the returning warriors like a covey of quail lifting.
Malcolm patted Shill and Maharg on the shoulder and said, “Later, gents.” He strode forward and lifted a buxom redhead off her feet as she threw herself into his arms. A touch of embroidered hem showed beneath her fur cloak.
“Lucky bastard,” Shill muttered, but there was more pride than envy in his voice.
“We’ll do all right,” Maharg said, looking around the crowd. ” ‘specially tonight, since there’ll be some bunks cold otherwise.”
A woman with an infant at her breast and a child of three clinging to her dress suddenly began to wail in heartbreak. Maharg watched her, flat-eyed.
The black-haired noblewoman took Taddeusz’ hands in hers and dipped her head. The warchief bowed back to her.
Hansen frowned. “His wife?” he said. “Taddeusz’ wife, I mean?”
“Krita,” explained Shill. “His daughter. Don’t touch her.”
“Won’t have much choice ’bout touching her at battle practice,” said Maharg with a note of gloomy memory. “Fancies herself a real warmaiden. Wouldn’t be surprised she goes for one of North’s Searchers.”
“North?” said Hansen, suddenly shocked by memory of the mission that had sent him here. “There’s a man named North here?”
“No, no,” said Shill in aged peevishness. “The god North. Where did you say you came from?”
“Look,” said Hansen, “if I don’t get near a fire, it won’t matter where I came from. Can we go inside? Somewhere?”
Maharg shrugged. “Why not?” he said and stamped toward the entrance to the hall.
Golsingh, Taddeusz, and the women who’d greeted them were already going in, talking with animation. The blond paused for a moment in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder at Hansen.
“Unn, the king’s wife,” said Shill grimly. “And if she don’t wear armor much the way Krita does, don’t let that fool you. She’s a tough one too. And she don’t want anybody tryin’ t’ put one over on Golsingh.”
Hansen snorted. “If Golsingh wanted to listen to me,” he said, “I just might make him a real king. But I don’t guess that’ll happen.”
The interior of the hall was dimmer than the twilight outside, but it was warm—which was rapidly becoming the only thing in the world that Hansen cared about.
The center of the long room was a hearth. Board cubicles, each with its own door, ran down either sidewall. Between the hearth and the cubicles, a U of trestle tables was arranged with benches on their wall side. Two carved chairs supplied the cross-table at the far end in place of a bench.