Starkadh shuddered. “Gest,” he mumbled. “I remember now, in my own youth there went tales of a wayfarer who— Nomagest. Are you he? I thought be was but a story.”
“Often have I left the North for hundreds of years. Always it called me home again. My last stay here ended maybe fourscore years ago. Less of an absence than formerly, but—“ Once more Gest sighed. “I feel myself grow ever wearier of roving the earth among the winds. So folk remembered me for a while, did they?”
Starkadh shook his head dazedly. “And to think that I, I was alive then. But I must have been faring about. … Is it true that the Norns told your mother you would die when a candle burned down, and she snuffed it out and you carry it still?”
Gest grinned. “Do you yourself believe you have your lifespan from Odin?”
He turned grave: “I know not what has made us twain what we are. That is a riddle as dark as the death of all other mankind. Norns or gods in truth? The hunger to know drove me to the far ends of the world, that and the hope of finding more tike myself. Oh, seeing a beloved wife wither into the grave, and seeing our children follow her— But nowhere did I come on any else whom time spares, nor did I come on any answer. Rather, I heard too many answers, I met too many gods. Abroad they call on Christ, but if you fare southward long enough it is Muhammad; and eastward it is Gautama Buddha, save where they say the world is a dream of Brahm, or offer to a host of gods and ghosts and elves like ours hi these Northlands, And almost every man I asked told me that His folk know the truth while the rest are benighted. Could I but hear a word I felt even half sure of—”
“Fret not yourself about that,” said Starkadh, boldness rising anew in him. “Things are whatever they are, and no man shuns his doom. His freedom is to leave a high name behind him.”
“I wondered if I was altogether alone, and my deathlessness a curse laid on me for some horrible guilt I have forgotten,” Gest went on. “That seemed wrong, though. Strange births do happen. Oftenest they are weak or crippled, but now and then something springs up that can flourish, like a clover with four leaves. Could we ageless be such? We would be very few. Most could well die of war or mischance before discovering they are different. Others could well be slain by neighbors who come to fear they are witches. Or they may flee, take new names, learn how to hide what they are. I have mostly done this, seldom abiding at length in any single place. Once in a while I have met folk who were willing to take me for what I am—wise men in the East, or raw backwoods dwellers like my Northerners—but in the end there was always too much sorrow, too heavy a freight of memories, and I must leave them also.
“Never did I find my own sort. Many and many a trail did I follow, sometimes for years, but each led to naught. At last hope faded out of me, and I turned my footsteps homeward. At least the Northern springtime is forever young.
“And then I heard about you.”
Gest came around the fire. He reached to lay hands on Starkadh’s shoulders. “Here my quest ends, where it began,” he said. Tears trembled on his lashes. “Now we are two, no more alone. And by this we know there must be more, women among them. Together, helping and heartening each other, we can search till we begin to find. Starkadh, my brother!”
The warrior stood unmoving before he said, “This … comes … suddenly.”
Gest let go. “It does that. I’ve had the whole while to think since the first word I got about you. Well, take your time. We have more time than most men, you and I.”
Starkadh stared off into the dark. “I thought someday I must grow old and strengthless like Harald,” he breathed. “Unless first I fell in battle, and I thought I would see to it that I did … But you tell me I shall always be young. Always.”