The Sterkarm Handshake (37 page)

A man came to the open door, leaned on the post and grinned at them.

Bryce pushed his man out onto the landing, while he took up a position at the top of the stairs. “Go and check those stairs out.” As his man crossed the landing, Bryce watched the Sterkarm in the doorway.

The Sterkarm watched the man pass him with friendly curiosity and then, when the security man had vanished into the darkness of the farther stair, grinned at Bryce instead.

“Down there,” Bryce called. “Everything okay?”

“Everything's fine,” came the shout from below.

Echoing footsteps on the farther stair, and the 21st man came back down. “Nothing up there,” he said. “Just a locked door at the top. Nobody about.”

“Fine,” Bryce said, gesturing toward the hall door. “Have a look in there.”

The security guard was more relaxed now, but he approached the hall door a little warily, because of the man leaning there. Seeing his nervousness, the Sterkarm grinned again, shouldered himself off the wall and went back inside the hall. The security guard stuck his head around the door.

“Anybody near the door?” Bryce asked. “How many people?”

“No. Five or six. Five. And a woman.”

Mention of a woman made Bryce feel very slightly happier. “Okay. Come back to the stairs.” As his man came back to the top of the stairs, Bryce went forward to look into the hall himself. It was set out as if for a meal, with long trestle tables laid with jugs and platters of bread. A fire was burning in the hearth, and something was boiling in a big pot. But the woman in the hall was Andrea. She was sitting right at the far end, at a table placed across the room. She saw him, she lifted her head and sat straighter, but then she looked at the big man sitting beside her before, again, staring down the length of the hall at Bryce.

When he backed out of the hall, back to the top of the stairs, he still wasn't sure whether she'd been trying to warn him or signal to him that everything was all right. Certainly the hall seemed to be prepared for a meal, just as the Sterkarms had promised.

“Stay here,” Bryce said to his man, and went back down the stairs. Just inside the doorway of the tower, Toorkild and Isobel were waiting, their arms around each other. Windsor was beside them. Unable to talk, they were nodding and smiling at each other. “It all seems okay,” Bryce said, “but I'd still be happier if we stayed outside.”

“Toorkild just wants to be friends,” Joe said. He spoke too quickly for Bryce's liking.

Windsor said, “For God's sake, Bryce!” and laughed. He felt much easier now Bryce had checked the tower out, but he wasn't going to admit to ever having felt nervous. “Here's Mrs. Sterkarm, going in with us. How much reassurance do you need?”

Bryce's mind ranged over possibilities. Now that Windsor had committed them to this, there weren't many options. He stood back and gestured to the stairs.

Toorkild, with a forgiving smile, handed Isobel to the stairs ahead of him, and himself led the way for Windsor, who was followed by Joe. Bryce went next, to keep close to Windsor, but he waved to his men to come on in after him.

So many people were a tight fit on the narrow stairs. Their hands, moving on the wall, touched; they trod on each other's heels and jostled each other with their knees. The musty, sour smell of the Sterkarms was also unpleasantly noticeable in the enclosed space. Windsor was just wishing they could climb faster, when Toorkild stopped at the small window, his large body completely blocking the way. He pointed to the window, smiled at Windsor, and said something.

Windsor smiled back, irritably aware that Isobel was continuing on up the stairs ahead of them. The window was so small that he couldn't look through it until Toorkild leaned aside. When he did, he couldn't see anything except a scrap of sky and some thatched roofs. He turned to Joe, behind him, hoping for a translation.

Joe smiled. He hadn't understood a word Toorkild had said, hadn't really tried. He was too nervous.

“What's the holdup?” Bryce asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” Joe said, and Toorkild murmured something in a comforting tone.

Below them the 21st men were pushing in through the tower's door, pushed in by the Sterkarms jostling behind them. Since the stair was blocked, the men had to spread across the tower's ground floor, forming into a ragged line for the stairs. Farther in and farther they crammed, until some of them reached the cold stone of the far wall. And then the small, cold room darkened. Looking up, the men saw a moving shadow—the patch of light on the upper part of the wall was shifting, shrinking as the tower door closed.

The 21st men shouted, lunged for the door. One, reaching it, was punched in the face and went backward into the tower, with a bleeding nose. The tower door was pulled shut from outside, slammed into its stone setting. Its key was turned from outside.

As the voices from below rose in panic, Toorkild turned and hurried on up the stairs to the landing and the door into the hall. Reaching behind, he grabbed Windsor by the arm, urged him on up the last few steps and shoved him into the hall.

Joe, behind Windsor, was yanked upward by Toorkild's sudden, tight grip on his arm. He was almost lifted from his feet as Toorkild shoved him in front of himself, into the hall, and pressed in after him. Men waiting inside the hall flung the door shut.

The door, heavy and wooden, slammed shut, with an echoing din, in Bryce's face. He had his hand inside his jacket, on the grip of his Browning pistol—but he was left without a target.

The man he'd left on guard at the top of the stairs was sprawled on the stone floor of the landing, looking dazed. “Get up!” Bryce said.

From below came the dismally echoing shouts of the men trapped on the stairs. From farther below, on the ground floor, came the sounds of fists and feet banging on the locked door. The sound boomed and rebounded from the stone walls.

Bryce felt the thick stone of the tower enclose him. Sterkarms above them, and Sterkarms outside. Exactly what he'd feared, what he'd tried to warn Windsor about.

He went to the narrow landing window and tried to see what was going on below the tower, but could see little except the matched roofs of outhouses. A breeze blew in through the unglazed window, carrying a spatter of cold rain. The cold light the slit admitted lit Bryce's face, and little else. Behind him the landing and stair were in deep shadow.

What to do?

He had a pistol, some plastic explosive and some grenades.

They had Windsor, Andrea and the captured security men—supposing that any of those people were still alive.

Things were getting outrageous.

Windsor, dragged into the hall, jerked half from his feet, laughed, thinking it some sort of horseplay. He didn't like it but thought he ought to laugh along with it, to show that he could take a joke.

Laughing, he turned to find the door of the hall shut, and a thick bar of wood dropped across it, and himself alone among many Sterkarm men, who looked big, hairy, grimy and threatening even when there wasn't any special reason to fear them. Toorkild was looking at him with no trace of laughter. Windsor looked around for nice Mrs. Sterkarm.

Long trestle tables ran the length of the room—but men were already moving the jugs and platters from them and putting them on the floor around the hearth. Other men lifted the boards and stacked them against the walls, or folded the trestles. As Windsor watched, alarmed, the center of the floor was cleared, exposing a wooden trapdoor at the center of the stone floor and giving him a clear view of the hearth, where a large pot was suspended over the fire. White steam coiled from the pot, together with smoke.

Trying to turn fright into anger, Windsor demanded, “What's going on?”

Joe was feeling hilarious. It was the way Toorkild had yanked him, flying, into the room, and the audacity of what the Sterkarms had done. “You've been stitched up like a kipper, pal, that's what's going on!” He lifted his feet in a heavy dance. “Makes a change, eh? How's it feel? How's it feel to be the one that's stitched up for once?”

Windsor goggled at him, understanding only that he was in trouble, perhaps even in danger—and before he had time to think any further, he spotted Mrs. Sterkarm. She was at the back of the room, standing with Andrea. He shouted at Andrea, “What's going on?”

All Andrea knew for sure was that, a little while ago, she'd been released from the upper floor and brought down to the hall, where she'd glimpsed Bryce in the doorway. When she'd asked what was going on, Sweet Milk had smiled, pointed to the tables and said, “We're going to have a feast.”

She'd wanted to be reassured, but the cauldron over the fire made her suspicious. She had never known the Sterkarms to prepare food over the hall fire. Before she could think it over any longer, or answer Windsor, Sweet Milk took her arm and pulled her toward the trapdoor in the middle of the stone floor. Men were stooping, noisily unbolting the trap and lifting it up.

She looked down through the trap into the darkness of the tower's ground floor. The gray daylight coming in through the hall's narrow windows, and the hall's firelight, filtered down through the trap, and the scared, upraised faces of the 21st men could be seen, blinking and shading their eyes. A moment before, they had all been shouting and gabbling, the noise rising into the hall. The moment the trap opened, they were instantly silent. The sudden, abject quiet grated on Andrea's nerves. The Sterkarms around her were stringing longbows or setting arrows on strings. She thought: Terrible things are going to happen, and I'm going to have to see them.

Someone nudged her. She looked up and saw Toorkild. He said, “Tell them to give in. They be our prisoners now.”

Andrea looked at the other faces standing around the trapdoor. Per wasn't there, and she wished he were, even though he would almost certainly side with his father.

Joe was there, but he was standing among the Sterkarms as if he were one of them. She bent over the trapdoor and translated Toorkild's words for the men below. She added, “Do as he says. They've got a big pot of boiling water up here. I don't know what it's for if not to pour on you.”

The fear on the upturned faces intensified; and then the men began to shove each other, their feet scuttering on the floor, all trying to get as close to the walls as they could, thinking they could avoid the arrows, avoid being scalded.

Bryce leaned forward a little, peering up. “Andrea. Are you all right?”

Tears came into her eyes. “I'm fine, but—”

“And my men?”

“The men who got trapped with me are all dead.”

“How?” he said.

Her tears came faster. She didn't want to say that the Sterkarms, her friends, who had spared her, had killed them. “Give up,” she said. “Please.”

“Are they going to kill us?” Bryce asked. If it seemed they were, then he had grenades and might as well take a few Sterkarms with him.

Andrea turned to Toorkild and began to talk with him. Bryce at first tried to follow what they were saying, but it was too quick. He looked around at the men with him in the half darkness. They were pressing against the walls, each calculating how likely he was to be missed by the arrows. Few of them knew each other. They wouldn't fight for each other.

One of the men said, “They've only got bows and arrows.”

“Think an arrow can't kill you?” Bryce said.

“'Tain't a bullet, is it?”

“Chuck a grenade up there,” someone else said. “That'll give 'em something to think about.”

“Windsor and Miss Mitchell are up there,” Bryce said. He didn't see the movement of the man who, without waiting for orders, reached for a grenade at his belt.

A three-foot arrow stuck out from just under his rib cage. It passed clean through him, struck the wall behind him, and, quivering, splintered inside him. Another hit him in the thigh; a third shattered against the stone floor. The man's knees sagged with shock, and he went down to the dirty floor. The other men, staring, were rigidly still.

When they looked up, it was impossible to tell which of the longbowmen had loosed the arrows. All of them had arrows on the string again.

“Brawly done, brawly,” Toorkild said, nodding at his archers. He had warned his men of the magic the Elves might be armed with, and he was proud of the way they obeyed him. “Braw shooting.” To be quick-eyed enough to spot the movement down there in the shadows had been worth praise; but to shoot down at such close range and hit the mark so well—that was worthy of reward. “I'll remember thee, my lad.”

“I'm sorry,” Andrea said, to the men on the ground floor. Her hands were to her face and her face was white. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Joe, just behind her, felt he'd been turned to stone. What showed of his face, through his beard, was white. He swallowed and looked about at his new family.

Bryce held up his hands and said, “Okay, okay.” He had his pistol, with its thirteen shots. But those bowmen were fast. He would be gambling that he could get his pistol out and cock it before one or more of them nailed him. Even if he succeeded, how many could he shoot and how many could they shoot? And there was the danger of hitting Windsor or Andrea, with a ricochet if not a direct shot. Maybe he was making the wrong decision again, but he didn't have much time to think before more arrows came down.

“I told you to give up, I told you,” Andrea said. “Oh God, is he all right?”

Bryce wanted to say, Of course he isn't, you stupid— Instead, he said, “We give up! What's going to happen to us?”

“They're going to ransom you,” Andrea said. “It's what they usually do with prisoners.” She looked at Windsor, who stood on the other side of the open trap, his arms held by Sterkarms, his face pale and sick. “Toorkild wants aspirins. Boxes and boxes of them, enough to last him for years. And whiskey. But aspirins more than anything. If FUP gives him them, he'll let you all go back through the Elf-Gate—but then the Elf-Gate must be closed and never opened again.”