Achikh had a knack for language—he’d learned more Turkic than any other man in his band—and rapidly grew conversant in Anglic, the language of the Orcs and command. For that reason he became “the speaker”—the interpreter and liaison for his century, which was part of a cohort of horse barbarians, the rest of which were Turkic.
He’d been in the crowd in the arena when the captive
73
Nils had been sent in to fight first a lion, and then, unarmed, an Orc swordsman.
“I still don’t understand what happened,” Achikh said. “You killed the Orc, and the next thing I knew, I woke up with a headache. All around me, men lay unconscious or stunned, or like myself, newly wakened and confused. And you were gone.’
He paused as if giving Nils a chance to explain, but the Northman only nodded. Achikh continued. Then, he said, Kazi had sent his army to conquer Europe. In a northern country with forest, marsh, and prairie intermixed, they’d met the Neovikings. His centurion had been killed, and he himself had taken command. Then the Orcs had turned back; the rumor was that Kazi was no longer the Undying, that he’d been killed.
“Killed by you,” Achikh added, his eyes fixed on Nils. “That’s what was said.”
Though the Orcs withdrew then, the horse barbarians didn’t. Most of them rampaged westward into a country of forests, cultivated land, walled towns and stone castles, a country where the people spoke an unfamiliar tongue, though most could speak Anglic, more or less.
Baver listened, enthralled. The man was a marvelous storyteller, the better for his accent. His cohort had left that country behind, entering one with a different-sounding tongue, and been part of a great and terrible battle by a river. When it was over, the horse barbarians had been defeated, scattered.
He’d led his own century, what was left of it, still westward, no longer an army but a plague of raiders, living off the land, living for the fights they found and the women they captured. At length, in a country of low mountains and heavy forests, his century, numbering less than thirty warriors by then, had been ambushed on a forest road by a force of knights and bowmen. They’d been backed against a mountain river, and Achikh had jumped in, to strip off harness and hauberk while the current had swept him along the bottom. When at last he’d surfaced, gasping, a score of arrows had flown at
74
him. Quickly he’d dived, still desperate for air, and every time he’d surfaced to gulp a breath, there’d been arrows. It was, he said, the most difficult thing he’d ever done, diving back under three times, four, while his lungs shrieked for air. He still dreamed of it now and then. Finally, half blacked out, he’d reached swifter water and been carried away out of sight.
That was as far as Achikh told it, that night, for he realized the moon was rising. For a moment he looked at it, sitting yellow on the rim of a rise to eastward. “I will sleep now,” he said, and trotted off to his tent.
Baver didn’t often initiate a conversation with Nils anymore, while to Hans he spoke mainly in the context of Anglic lessons. He rarely had anything to say once he crawled into his sleeping bag. Often, as he waited for sleep, he’d lie staring at the stars or moon, scarcely thinking, until he drifted off. Or at the dying coals, if it was cloudy. And on those nights, it seemed he slept the best, commonly with dreams that, while usually unremembered, left an impression of having been pleasant or at least innocuous. Since he’d become aware of this, he’d made a practice of watching the stars or coals. Occasionally, though, he’d fantasize rescue or women till sleep came.
Sometimes he listened in on short conversations between Nils and Hans, invariably started by Hans. Some of these, now, were partly in Anglic, as Hans learned more of it.
On the evening of Achikh’s arrival though, after the newcomer had gone to his tent, and Nils and Hans had lain down in their sleeping robes, Baver turned his face toward Nils.