Read Online The Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price - Free Book Online Page B

before she’d seen it, that horses could be ridden over such country in the dark, but the Sterkarms thought a reiver’s moon light enough. The horses clopped down the steep path descending the little crag and, with waves and cries of “Sterkarm!” went away down the gentler slope into the valley and the dark.
    From the tower came answering calls of “May! May!” They sounded thin and forlorn in the dark.
    Andrea’s throat was tight and her heart felt swollen as she watched the horsemen fade into the darkness. How long had passed since the farmer had come to raise the alarm? She guessed at something like half an hour. In half an hour they were armed, on horseback, and away, riding out to defend their neighbors.
    She had to remind herself that this petty, bickering warfare was anything but noble. People were maimed and killed over a few sheep. And the Sterkarms, often enough, rode out to steal sheep, not to rescue them. FUP was right in wanting to stop it. Per would be safer if FUP somehow managed to do what neither Scotland nor England had ever been able to do, and enforced a peace.
    She walked back to the tower beside Isobel, who held Toorkild by the arm. All three of them were silent; all three of them thinking of Per.
    At the tower, Toorkild stayed in the ground-floor byre to unharness his horse himself. Andrea climbed the stairs behind Isobel, back to the hall on the second floor. Without the men who had left, it seemed empty and achingly quiet—colder, too.
    Together, Andrea and Isobel sat on the settle by the fire. Isobel hadn’t a word to say. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her mouth hard shut.
    The people remaining at the tower—old men and servingmen, and women and children—came and settled about the hearth. They, too, were silent. But slowly, grudgingly, talk was taken up again, though quietly. Someone remembered the story and Yanet was urged to finish it.
    â€œWhere had we got to? Oh, Vaylan being fetched by soldiers … Well, they dragged him away and took him to this little island off shore, and so he shouldn’t get away, they hamstrung him so he could only crawl …” Yanet’s voice trailed away. “I no want to finish it,” she said. “It be too cruel.”
    Her words were received in silence. The people knew how the story went. Vaylan, a crippled prisoner on his island, was visited by the curious young son of the king. Vaylan murdered him and made bright brooches from his eyes, which he sent as gifts to the boy’s mother and sister. From the boy’s head he made a drinking cup and sent it to the king.
    The princess was so pleased with her brooch that she, too, came to see Vaylan, and Vaylan raped her and sent her back to her father in disgrace, carrying Vaylan’s child. On his island, working his smithy while leaning on his crutches, still mourning for his lost Swan-May, Vaylan waited for the king’s vengeance, knowing that he had already taken his own.
    No good ever comes of consorting with Elf-Mays, Andrea thought, and remembered how she’d failed to give Per his lucky kiss.
    Toorkild came back and seated himself between Andrea and Isobel, who began to talk.
    â€œVaylan was hamstrung,” Isobel said. “And he was put on an island and set to work in a smithy, where king wanted him to make rings and brooches and chains. But never another thing of that sort did Vaylan make. Instead he crawled all about the island, dragging his crippled legs and gathering up every feather he could find—gulls’ feathers, swans’ feathers, osprey feathers, hawk feathers. And all feathers he found he made up, with lashing and glue, into a great pair of beautiful wings. He strapped them to his arms, because even if he was crippled, he still had a smith’s strong back and arms. Away he flew, over the heads of king and his soldiers, away from island, over western sea. Away Vaylan flew to land of his Swan-May and