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PART ONE

DEPARTURE

ONE

The council fire flickered ruddy-yellow, lighting the Neoviking chiefs who sat around it. It was a very large fire, by the standards of a people whose summer fires normally were small: fires for cooking, and smoke fires to drive the mosquitoes from their log houses.
Ted Baver squatted unobtrusively as part of the ring of chiefs, an honor granted him as a representative of the star folk. He had no role in their council, of course. He was there to watch, listen, record, and in the process learn. He held a small audio-video recorder before his face, as if aiming a pistol, and through and around its simple, fold-out viewing frame he watched the proceedings.
He’d grown used to squatting, this past year. Occasionally, absently, he squashed mosquitoes on his face with his left hand. The thump of an insect-hunting nighthawk braking overhead did not catch his attention. He was engrossed in the dispute before the council, aiming his recorder at whoever was speaking, capturing their words and image.
Jäävklo,^* chief of the Glutton Clan, got to his feet. He was wide-framed, with remarkably muscular arms, his muscles more ropy than bulky. His face was creased, but at fifty feet by firelight, his black hair seemed ungrayed, and the skin on his arms, shoulders and neck was still tight. Baver guessed his age at between forty and forty-five.
Jäävklo spoke loudly, that the throng of northmen could hear, the hundreds who squatted unseen on the slope above the council fire. “Here is my answer to Ulf Varjsson of the Wolf Clan,” he said. “In the Homeland, we of the Glutton^** Clan had the poorest territory of all the Svear. It was poorest to start with, and as the world grew colder, it became impossible to feed ourselves adequately. Nor would the Reindeer Clan or the Salmon Clan adjust their boundaries with us. When we brought it up in council, Axel Stornäve refused to require it of them. There was bad blood between the two of us, Axel and me, and so he refused.
“Now the tribes have come to a new land, and possessed it, dividing it, each clan marking its own. The Glutton Clan has built cairns at their corners, and other cairns at needful places, according to the agreement among the tribes. Yet here at the ting, we find the Wolf people complaining that we encroach on them! We encroach on no one! We have done all things according to the agreement!”
He looked around the circle scowling, then squatted down again in the place that was his.
Nils Järnhann got up then, a huge, muscular young man only twenty-two years old, scarred on legs, face, and shoulder. His eyes were sky-blue glass, crafted by a machinist aboard the jump ship Phaeacia. They fitted properly but were conspicuously artificial, and around them the sockets were sunken. He turned his face to Jäävklo as if the glass eyes saw. He was lagman of the People—reciter and interpreter of the Law and arbiter of disputes, who also presided when crimes were brought before the council.
“And the corners are on the tails of two ridges?” he asked. His voice seemed quieter than Jäävklo’s, and mild, but it could be heard clearly by the tribesmen highest on the slope.
Jäävklo answered without rising. “They are.”
“Can the tail of one ridge be seen from the other?”
“Distantly, yes.”
The lagman’s wide mouth pursed briefly before he spoke. “The complaint of Ulf Varjsson, chief of the Wolves, has been heard, and also its denial by Jäävklo, chief of the Gluttons. The corners are not in dispute, but only the line on the plain. Here is how the dispute will be resolved: The Bull Clan of the Jötar and the Seal Clan of the Norskar will each provide four warriors to examine the disputed line. Tomorrow they will go to it, two days ride from here. There they will have a pyre built at each of the two corners. These pyres will be very large, so that in the dark, each fire can be clearly seen from the other. Freemen, as many as the eight warriors think necessary, will help them, providing the necessary wood and doing whatever else is needed. These freemen will be equally of the Glutton and Wolf Clans.
“At nightfall of the second day, four warriors will be at each pyre, two each from the Seals and the Bulls. They will light the pyres. The fires must be kept burning high till dawn. When the men at one fire can see the other, two of the warriors from each fire will ride toward the other, as straight as they can. It is important that they ride straight, because their trails must make a straight line between the fires, between the corner cairns.
“They will continue until they come to the stream, where they will set a tall stake in the bank on their side, tall enough to be seen plainly from fifty doubles [about eighty meters], tying a flag to the top.
“The other warriors, with freemen to help them, will follow the trail of the two through the grass. They will have oxen, and drag sleds with stones and long stakes on them. From time to time they will set a stake in the trail, with rocks set against it. Each stake must be visible from the two stakes nearest behind it. They will also put rocks around the stakes at the stream. Afterward the freemen, supervised by the eight, will drag more rocks to all those places, and build cairns as tall as a man. Each cairn must have a pole three spans tall sticking out the top, and the row of cairns must form a straight line. The Gluttons and Wolves must provide as many freemen for the task as the eight warriors require. The line will henceforth be as marked by the new cairns, and the old cairns will be torn down.”
Nils Järnhann paused, turning his face from side to side around the council circle. Ingenious! thought Baver. That not only takes care of the dispute, it establishes a procedure any clan can use on its own.
But the lagman wasn’t done yet. “This dispute,” he went on, “creates a debt to the warriors who solve it, and to their clans. Therefore, their clans will each receive”—he paused, then repeated “—will each receive a payment of twenty heifer calves and twenty bull or ox calves, to be selected by the eight warriors. In addition, each of the eight warriors will be paid two saddle horses, which he can select from all the horses of the clan responsible. The clan which pays will be the clan that was in error on the line. Therefore, before the old cairns are torn down, the eight warriors will determine on which side of the new line the old cairns stand. If all the old cairns, all of them, stand within ten spans of the new line, or are on the Glutton’s side, the Glutton Clan will be held blameless, and the Wolf Clan will pay. Otherwise the Glutton Clan will pay.”
Baver’s eyes found the two chieftains. Ulf Varjsson showed grim satisfaction. Jäävklo, on the other hand, had darkened with anger and chagrin. Meanwhile Nils Järnhann spoke on. “As to the request for feud rights growing out of the fight at the old stream cairns, they are refused both to clans and septs. Tomorrow at high noon, the two septs will each have ten warriors at the fighting ground, ready for a fight with hands and feet.
“And if any of those chosen enter the fight with a weapon, he will be declared outlaw and fair game, with only a single day of grace, regardless of whether he uses that weapon. Furthermore, his household will be held responsible for any blood payment incurred from the use of that weapon.”
Baver could hear a soft murmuring from the hundreds of northmen listening unseen behind him.
“As to blood payment for men and horses from the fight at the stream,” the young giant went on, “that will be the standard payment, made by the sept in error, the error to be determined by the new line. However, if all the old cairns are within ten spans of the new line, there will be no blood payment.”
Again Nils Järnhann turned his face toward the two opposing clan chieftains. “There will be no appeal to these rulings, nor to the line laid out by the eight warriors of the Seal and Bull Clans.”
He paused, then looked at Jäävklo. “Jäävklo, I have another matter to talk with you about, before the council, and before the People assembled here. You have told us that Axel Stornäve refused to require the Reindeer and Salmon Clans to give part of their territories to the Glutton Clan. Because, you said, there was bad blood between you and Axel. You have also said this before our present meeting, though never in council.
“What your words mean is that Axel Stornäve did not treat honestly with the Glutton Clan, that he withheld fairness because of an old grudge. I have talked with other chiefs about this. They told me the question of adjusting boundaries never came up in Council. When did you talk with Axel about it?”
“Just before the First Council of All Chiefs, held to discuss leaving the Homeland. He refused me then.”
“Who else was there when you discussed it with him?”
“Arvid Smitsson, who now is dead, killed in battle with the horse barbarians.”
“No other?”
Jäävklo shook his head.
“You shake your head; your answer then is no. Axel Stornäve called the First Council of All Chiefs to propose his plan to leave the Homeland, and to get the agreement of as many clans as possible. And he succeeded. Did this solve the land problem of the Gluttons?”
“Yes. But now we have another problem, and with Stornäve’s own clan, the Wolves! Your clan! He has poisoned your minds against me!”
“We’ve solved that new dispute tonight. Now I’m looking at your complaint about Axel Stornäve and his honesty. So you told Axel of your problem on one day and he solved it that same day, is that right? Or the day after?”
A sullen nod.
“I am also told that you became chief only the winter previous. When had you had dealings with Axel Stornäve before that day?”
The Glutton chieftain didn’t answer at once, and when he did, his voice was shrill. “You’re trying to trick me! You’re of the Wolf Clan too! You’re trying to make me look like a troublemaker, you and Stornäve and Varjsson! You’ve talked with the chiefs of the Seal and Bull Clans, so they will give you warriors who will mark a new boundary that will steal our land from us!”
“I see. And you have witnesses to this?”
Jäävklo stood staring wildly at the lagman, who repeated his unanswered question. “When did you have dealings with Axel Stornäve before you first asked for a boundary adjustment?”
Jäävklo had no answer; to Ted Baver it seemed that the man’s eyes bulged.
“You do not answer. Therefore unless corrected, I will assume that you’d never had dealings with him before. From what then did this bad blood develop?”
Again there was no answer.
“Each tribe has a law against slander, and the council a law against lies in its meetings. Men are seldom charged under them unless the lie is harmful, and I will not charge you now. But . . . ”
His words were cut short by a keening noise from Jäävklo’s throat, a keening that quickly grew to a howl of rage. Fumbling, wrenching, the chief tore off his sleeveless leather shirt. The howl had broken into hoarse, grunting cries, wordless shouts, and when his torso was bare, he drew his sword and charged the lagman.
Nils Järnhann’s sword was out too, and blind-eyed he met the man’s berserk assault. The violent energy and quickness of Jäävklo’s attack was shocking to Baver, who’d never before witnessed an attack to kill. But the lagman beat off the berserker’s strokes, seemingly without any effort to strike back; either he was too hard pressed or he exercised an unexplainable restraint.
Then Jäävklo’s sword broke against the lagman’s, almost at the hilt. With a howl, he flung the rest of it at his adversary, then turned and threw himself on the council fire, where he lay roaring as if in rage, without trying to get up. Staring wide-eyed past his recorder, Baver shook, twitched, almost spouted sweat, and got half up as if to run and rescue the man. But didn’t. Instead he continued to record. It seemed impossible that the Glutton chief had done what he had, and having done it, that pain did not drive him off.
And that no one pulled him off!
The raucous roaring stopped. Then Baver doubled over and emptied his stomach onto the ground. When he was done retching, he settled down onto his knees, staring as the lagman, who’d gone to the dead Jäävklo, grasped the corpse’s feet and pulled it from the fire. Baver heard no one else be sick, though surely this horrible, this shocking event must have traumatized some of them, at least.
Then he remembered the departure of the Orcs^* from the City of Kazi, and what the Northmen found there the next day. And wondered if after all they might handle this with similar dispassion, might treat it simply as an unfortunate display of aberration.

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^*For those who are interested, a brief pronunciation guide for Neoviking names and words is included in the appendix. Back
^**Also known as the wolverine. Back
^*Orcs—Name applied to the soldiers of Kazi the Undying, a Middle-Eastern emperor. Back

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PART ONE

DEPARTURE

ONE

The council fire flickered ruddy-yellow, lighting the Neoviking chiefs who sat around it. It was a very large fire, by the standards of a people whose summer fires normally were small: fires for cooking, and smoke fires to drive the mosquitoes from their log houses.
Ted Baver squatted unobtrusively as part of the ring of chiefs, an honor granted him as a representative of the star folk. He had no role in their council, of course. He was there to watch, listen, record, and in the process learn. He held a small audio-video recorder before his face, as if aiming a pistol, and through and around its simple, fold-out viewing frame he watched the proceedings.
He’d grown used to squatting, this past year. Occasionally, absently, he squashed mosquitoes on his face with his left hand. The thump of an insect-hunting nighthawk braking overhead did not catch his attention. He was engrossed in the dispute before the council, aiming his recorder at whoever was speaking, capturing their words and image.
Jäävklo,^* chief of the Glutton Clan, got to his feet. He was wide-framed, with remarkably muscular arms, his muscles more ropy than bulky. His face was creased, but at fifty feet by firelight, his black hair seemed ungrayed, and the skin on his arms, shoulders and neck was still tight. Baver guessed his age at between forty and forty-five.
Jäävklo spoke loudly, that the throng of northmen could hear, the hundreds who squatted unseen on the slope above the council fire. “Here is my answer to Ulf Varjsson of the Wolf Clan,” he said. “In the Homeland, we of the Glutton^** Clan had the poorest territory of all the Svear. It was poorest to start with, and as the world grew colder, it became impossible to feed ourselves adequately. Nor would the Reindeer Clan or the Salmon Clan adjust their boundaries with us. When we brought it up in council, Axel Stornäve refused to require it of them. There was bad blood between the two of us, Axel and me, and so he refused.
“Now the tribes have come to a new land, and possessed it, dividing it, each clan marking its own. The Glutton Clan has built cairns at their corners, and other cairns at needful places, according to the agreement among the tribes. Yet here at the ting, we find the Wolf people complaining that we encroach on them! We encroach on no one! We have done all things according to the agreement!”
He looked around the circle scowling, then squatted down again in the place that was his.
Nils Järnhann got up then, a huge, muscular young man only twenty-two years old, scarred on legs, face, and shoulder. His eyes were sky-blue glass, crafted by a machinist aboard the jump ship Phaeacia. They fitted properly but were conspicuously artificial, and around them the sockets were sunken. He turned his face to Jäävklo as if the glass eyes saw. He was lagman of the People—reciter and interpreter of the Law and arbiter of disputes, who also presided when crimes were brought before the council.
“And the corners are on the tails of two ridges?” he asked. His voice seemed quieter than Jäävklo’s, and mild, but it could be heard clearly by the tribesmen highest on the slope.
Jäävklo answered without rising. “They are.”
“Can the tail of one ridge be seen from the other?”
“Distantly, yes.”
The lagman’s wide mouth pursed briefly before he spoke. “The complaint of Ulf Varjsson, chief of the Wolves, has been heard, and also its denial by Jäävklo, chief of the Gluttons. The corners are not in dispute, but only the line on the plain. Here is how the dispute will be resolved: The Bull Clan of the Jötar and the Seal Clan of the Norskar will each provide four warriors to examine the disputed line. Tomorrow they will go to it, two days ride from here. There they will have a pyre built at each of the two corners. These pyres will be very large, so that in the dark, each fire can be clearly seen from the other. Freemen, as many as the eight warriors think necessary, will help them, providing the necessary wood and doing whatever else is needed. These freemen will be equally of the Glutton and Wolf Clans.
“At nightfall of the second day, four warriors will be at each pyre, two each from the Seals and the Bulls. They will light the pyres. The fires must be kept burning high till dawn. When the men at one fire can see the other, two of the warriors from each fire will ride toward the other, as straight as they can. It is important that they ride straight, because their trails must make a straight line between the fires, between the corner cairns.
“They will continue until they come to the stream, where they will set a tall stake in the bank on their side, tall enough to be seen plainly from fifty doubles [about eighty meters], tying a flag to the top.
“The other warriors, with freemen to help them, will follow the trail of the two through the grass. They will have oxen, and drag sleds with stones and long stakes on them. From time to time they will set a stake in the trail, with rocks set against it. Each stake must be visible from the two stakes nearest behind it. They will also put rocks around the stakes at the stream. Afterward the freemen, supervised by the eight, will drag more rocks to all those places, and build cairns as tall as a man. Each cairn must have a pole three spans tall sticking out the top, and the row of cairns must form a straight line. The Gluttons and Wolves must provide as many freemen for the task as the eight warriors require. The line will henceforth be as marked by the new cairns, and the old cairns will be torn down.”
Nils Järnhann paused, turning his face from side to side around the council circle. Ingenious! thought Baver. That not only takes care of the dispute, it establishes a procedure any clan can use on its own.
But the lagman wasn’t done yet. “This dispute,” he went on, “creates a debt to the warriors who solve it, and to their clans. Therefore, their clans will each receive”—he paused, then repeated “—will each receive a payment of twenty heifer calves and twenty bull or ox calves, to be selected by the eight warriors. In addition, each of the eight warriors will be paid two saddle horses, which he can select from all the horses of the clan responsible. The clan which pays will be the clan that was in error on the line. Therefore, before the old cairns are torn down, the eight warriors will determine on which side of the new line the old cairns stand. If all the old cairns, all of them, stand within ten spans of the new line, or are on the Glutton’s side, the Glutton Clan will be held blameless, and the Wolf Clan will pay. Otherwise the Glutton Clan will pay.”
Baver’s eyes found the two chieftains. Ulf Varjsson showed grim satisfaction. Jäävklo, on the other hand, had darkened with anger and chagrin. Meanwhile Nils Järnhann spoke on. “As to the request for feud rights growing out of the fight at the old stream cairns, they are refused both to clans and septs. Tomorrow at high noon, the two septs will each have ten warriors at the fighting ground, ready for a fight with hands and feet.
“And if any of those chosen enter the fight with a weapon, he will be declared outlaw and fair game, with only a single day of grace, regardless of whether he uses that weapon. Furthermore, his household will be held responsible for any blood payment incurred from the use of that weapon.”
Baver could hear a soft murmuring from the hundreds of northmen listening unseen behind him.
“As to blood payment for men and horses from the fight at the stream,” the young giant went on, “that will be the standard payment, made by the sept in error, the error to be determined by the new line. However, if all the old cairns are within ten spans of the new line, there will be no blood payment.”
Again Nils Järnhann turned his face toward the two opposing clan chieftains. “There will be no appeal to these rulings, nor to the line laid out by the eight warriors of the Seal and Bull Clans.”
He paused, then looked at Jäävklo. “Jäävklo, I have another matter to talk with you about, before the council, and before the People assembled here. You have told us that Axel Stornäve refused to require the Reindeer and Salmon Clans to give part of their territories to the Glutton Clan. Because, you said, there was bad blood between you and Axel. You have also said this before our present meeting, though never in council.
“What your words mean is that Axel Stornäve did not treat honestly with the Glutton Clan, that he withheld fairness because of an old grudge. I have talked with other chiefs about this. They told me the question of adjusting boundaries never came up in Council. When did you talk with Axel about it?”
“Just before the First Council of All Chiefs, held to discuss leaving the Homeland. He refused me then.”
“Who else was there when you discussed it with him?”
“Arvid Smitsson, who now is dead, killed in battle with the horse barbarians.”
“No other?”
Jäävklo shook his head.
“You shake your head; your answer then is no. Axel Stornäve called the First Council of All Chiefs to propose his plan to leave the Homeland, and to get the agreement of as many clans as possible. And he succeeded. Did this solve the land problem of the Gluttons?”
“Yes. But now we have another problem, and with Stornäve’s own clan, the Wolves! Your clan! He has poisoned your minds against me!”
“We’ve solved that new dispute tonight. Now I’m looking at your complaint about Axel Stornäve and his honesty. So you told Axel of your problem on one day and he solved it that same day, is that right? Or the day after?”
A sullen nod.
“I am also told that you became chief only the winter previous. When had you had dealings with Axel Stornäve before that day?”
The Glutton chieftain didn’t answer at once, and when he did, his voice was shrill. “You’re trying to trick me! You’re of the Wolf Clan too! You’re trying to make me look like a troublemaker, you and Stornäve and Varjsson! You’ve talked with the chiefs of the Seal and Bull Clans, so they will give you warriors who will mark a new boundary that will steal our land from us!”
“I see. And you have witnesses to this?”
Jäävklo stood staring wildly at the lagman, who repeated his unanswered question. “When did you have dealings with Axel Stornäve before you first asked for a boundary adjustment?”
Jäävklo had no answer; to Ted Baver it seemed that the man’s eyes bulged.
“You do not answer. Therefore unless corrected, I will assume that you’d never had dealings with him before. From what then did this bad blood develop?”
Again there was no answer.
“Each tribe has a law against slander, and the council a law against lies in its meetings. Men are seldom charged under them unless the lie is harmful, and I will not charge you now. But . . . ”
His words were cut short by a keening noise from Jäävklo’s throat, a keening that quickly grew to a howl of rage. Fumbling, wrenching, the chief tore off his sleeveless leather shirt. The howl had broken into hoarse, grunting cries, wordless shouts, and when his torso was bare, he drew his sword and charged the lagman.
Nils Järnhann’s sword was out too, and blind-eyed he met the man’s berserk assault. The violent energy and quickness of Jäävklo’s attack was shocking to Baver, who’d never before witnessed an attack to kill. But the lagman beat off the berserker’s strokes, seemingly without any effort to strike back; either he was too hard pressed or he exercised an unexplainable restraint.
Then Jäävklo’s sword broke against the lagman’s, almost at the hilt. With a howl, he flung the rest of it at his adversary, then turned and threw himself on the council fire, where he lay roaring as if in rage, without trying to get up. Staring wide-eyed past his recorder, Baver shook, twitched, almost spouted sweat, and got half up as if to run and rescue the man. But didn’t. Instead he continued to record. It seemed impossible that the Glutton chief had done what he had, and having done it, that pain did not drive him off.
And that no one pulled him off!
The raucous roaring stopped. Then Baver doubled over and emptied his stomach onto the ground. When he was done retching, he settled down onto his knees, staring as the lagman, who’d gone to the dead Jäävklo, grasped the corpse’s feet and pulled it from the fire. Baver heard no one else be sick, though surely this horrible, this shocking event must have traumatized some of them, at least.
Then he remembered the departure of the Orcs^* from the City of Kazi, and what the Northmen found there the next day. And wondered if after all they might handle this with similar dispassion, might treat it simply as an unfortunate display of aberration.

---

^*For those who are interested, a brief pronunciation guide for Neoviking names and words is included in the appendix. Back
^**Also known as the wolverine. Back
^*Orcs—Name applied to the soldiers of Kazi the Undying, a Middle-Eastern emperor. Back

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