“He died like a man!”
Gest nodded and spoke no further, but busied himself with the food. They ate wordlessly. Afterward they slaked their thirst anew at the spring and went aside, left and right, to piss. When Starkadh came back to the fire he found Gest already there, squatting on his haunches. The night was wholly upon them. Thor’s Wain gleamed enormous, barely over treetops, the North Star higher like a spearpoint.
Starkadh loomed above the fire, legs astraddle, fists on hips, and nearly snarled, “Too long have you slyly fended me off, you. What do you want? Out with it, or I’ll hew you down.”
Gest looked up. The light slipped to and fro along the shadows in his face. “A last question,” he said. “Then you shall know. When were you born, Starkadh?”
The giant coughed forth a curse. “You ask and ask and ask, and naught do you give! What kind of being are you? You sit on your hams like a Finnish warlock.”
Gest shook his head. “I learned this much farther east,” he replied mildly, “and many things else, but none of them are wizardry.”
“You learned womanishness, you who took care to arrive late at the battlefield and stood by while I fought six men!”
Gest rose, straightened his back, stared across the flames, and said in a voice like steel sliding from sheath: “That was no war of mine, nor would I have hunted men who boded me no further harm.” In the dim and restless light, under the stars and Winter Road, suddenly he seemed of a tallness with the warrior, or in some way taller still. “A thing I heard said about you is that though you be foremost in battle, you are doomed to do ill deeds, nithing’s work, over and over and over. They say Thor laid this on you because he hates you. They say the god who bears you good will is Odin, father of witchcraft. Could this be true?”
The giant gasped. It was as if he shrank back. He raised hands and thrust at air. “Empty talk,” he groaned. “Naught more.”
Gest’s words tramped against him. “But you have done treacheries. How many, in those lifetimes that have been yours?”
“Hold your jaw!” Starkadh bellowed. “What know you of being ageless? Be still, ere I smite you like the dayfly you are!”
“That might not be so easy,” Gest purred. “I too have lived a long rime. Far longer than you, my friend.”
The breath rattled in Starkadh’s throat. He could merely gape.
Gest’s tone went dry. “Well, nobody in these parts would keep count of years, as they do in the South or the East. What I heard was that you have lived three men’s lifetimes. That must mean simply that folk remember their grandfathers telling of you. A hundred years is a good enough guess.”
“I—have thought—it was more.”
Again Gest’s eyes caught Starkadh’s and held them. His voice softened but bleakened, trembled the least bit, like a night breeze. “I know not myself how old I am. But when I was a boy, they did not yet ken metal in these lands. Of stone did we make our knives, our axheads and spearheads and arrowheads, our burial chambers. It was not Jotuns who raised those dolmens that brood over the land. It was us, your own forebears, laying our dead to rest and offering to our gods. Though ‘we’ are no more. I have outlived them, I alone, as I have outlived all the generations of men after— until today, Starkadh.”
“You have grayed,” said the warrior in a kind of sob, as if that could be a denial.
“I went gray in my young manhood. Some do, you know. Otherwise I have not changed. I have never been sick, and wounds heal swiftly, without scars. When my teeth wear out, new ones grow. Is it the same for you?”
Starkadh gulped and nodded.
“Belike you’ve taken more hurts than me, such a life as you’ve led,” said Gest thoughtfully. “Myself, I’ve been as peaceful as men let me be, and as careful as a roamer may. When the charioteers rolled into what these days we call Denmark—“ He scowled. “That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.”