The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight (61 page)

Conte waved a hand, impatient and troubled. "Will any of them come to the front?" he asked, and then seemed to decide against the question. He backed up. "Never mind. Never mind. A man can die at any time, right? Even years from now." His back hit the tent flap, and his hand opened it. "Forget I came in."

He went.

T
his was the third month, and the bones were drying up. The foreigners searching for them were being evacuated because truces and talks had made no difference, because the rebels had the smell of government blood in their nostrils, and wouldn't be called off the kill. Benine spent more of his days with the army, filling bags with dirt and making them into walls. At night, he read the bones by the camp lantern. The smell of smoke joined the dust in the air, these days, carried from somewhere far off but coming closer.

One night, Alvarez put down one of the rare bins and looked at Benine over it. "They're sending me away," she said. "They won't let me stay.
They
say the front is no place for a woman."

Benine swallowed. Besides Alvarez, the only women he had seen from outside Junuus were wounded walking up the road, their bodies wracked with bullet holes, scored by machetes. And there had been one he had glimpsed across the camp one night, following a soldier into a tent, head down, feet shuffling as though drunk. "It is no place –" he began.

"It's no place for a decent young man like you, either," Alvarez said. "It's no place for any of these men, any thinking, feeling human being." Her eyes were angry, but Benine thought he could see tears, stinging them. "The things Colonel Gabriel is afraid of for me – rape and murder. They've done that to Colonels, too, to humiliate them. And to boys like you. And there's a city here, still."

Benine didn't say that people in Junuus, people in Mortova, knew this was their lot. Foreigners like Alvarez could run from the war.

Alvarez shook her head. "You don't have a choice, either," she said. "They'll keep you here whether or not you want to be."

"I want to be," Benine said.

Alvarez looked hard and sharp like a bayonet. "So do I."

Benine was silent.

"I had something made for you," Alvarez said, and Benine held out his hand by habit. For an instant he felt slapped in the chest, afraid he was becoming ungrateful, but Alvarez slipped the package into his palm and closed his fingers around it so quickly that it seemed she understood. This was a time to say what needed to be said, not to practice politeness. "Wear them," Alvarez said.

Benine pulled his hand back and opened his fingers, and found a pair of dogtags.

"But I hope you never need them," Alvarez said.

* * *

C
olonel gabriel came in, after Alvarez had been put on the truck and sent south toward Port Gold. "Have you ever fired a gun?"

"No, sir," Benine said. His father had raised him to call men
Sir
, but the word had a different taste, these days.

"You should learn," Colonel Gabriel said. He nodded to the bins. "How many bones are left?"

"A few dozen, maybe," Benine said.

"Tomorrow, then."

Benine nodded. "Yes, sir."

Colonel Gabriel left the tent, but as he did, he paused in the entrance to say, "I'm sorry."

B
enine worked on. On.

He didn't want to stop until the bones were done, so the next day would dawn and he could turn his attention to the approaching front. He went through the memories, the good days and grey days and battle days and tags, and put the name and the date of identification on the line by the batch number, the site found, the date of discovery. And then, after not too many pages, he reached into the bin for the next bone and found it empty.

For so long, it had been one bone after another, like a bridge he could walk on from one day to the next. Now that there were no more bones, there was only the front, coming to find him.

His throat closed and he touched the plastic bin, breathing in the memory. After so long handling bones the vision was distant and muted, but the memory was there: Alvarez and a team of strangers, sweating under the hot sun and the hot blue sky, digging side by side with some army men in a dry gully rimmed with trees. Far from assuaging his loneliness it seemed to underscore how large the country was, how far these bones had come, how far the rebels were marching to find them and kill them, how far Alvarez had been sent away. He pulled back his hand.

Night was coming round toward morning, but he didn't want to sleep, for all his fatigue. "Conte!" he called. He was in the mood to accept one of the man's concoctions of coffee and cheap alcohol. Perhaps to talk about when the rebels would arrive. "Conte, are you still awake?"

No answer. Benine leaned back and stretched his arms behind his head. Under his shirt, the unfamiliar weight of the tags shifted on his chest.

His hand went to them.

He hesitated a moment, eyes on the indistinct darkness on the other side of the lantern. He wanted to stay there, suspended in the moment between impulse and action. Neither thinking of them, nor not. Then he pulled the tags free of his shirt and turned them to the light.

The tags Alvarez had given him were such small things, the shine of their metal not yet dulled. His name was stamped there, in one sense indelibly: because here it was, if anyone chose that moment to look for them. Stamped in his sight, in his memories, his bones, the raised letters catching shadows, surrendering his name to the eyes.

KORMAK THE LUCKY

Eleanor Arnason

Eleanor Arnason (
eleanorarnason.blogspot.com
) published her first story in 1973. Since then she has published six novels, two chapbooks and more than thirty short stories. Her novel
A Woman of the Iron People
won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Mythopoeic Society Award. Novel
Ring of Swords
won a Minnesota Book Award. Her short story "Dapple" won the Spectrum Award. Other short stories have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Sidewise and World Fantasy Awards. Eleanor would really like to win one of these. Eleanor's most recent book is collection
Big Mama Stories
. Her favorite spoon is a sterling silver spoon given to her mother on her mother's first Christmas and dated December 25, 1909.

T
here was a man named Kormak. He was a native of Ireland, but when he was ten or twelve, Norwegians came to his part of the country and captured him, along with many other people. They were packed into a ship and carried north, along with all the silver the Norwegians could find, most of it from churches: reliquaries and crosses, which they broke into bits so it could be traded or spent.

The Norwegians planned to take their cargo to one of the great market towns, Kaupang in Norway or Hedeby in Denmark. There the Irish folk would be sold as slaves.

The ship left Ireland late and got caught in an autumn storm that blew it off course. Instead of reaching Norway, it made land in Iceland, sailing into the harbor at Reykjavik in bad condition. The Norwegians decided it would be too dangerous to continue the journey through the stormy weather. Instead, they found Icelanders who were willing to host them for the winter. The Irish were sold. They brought less than they would have in Kaupang or Hedeby, but the Norwegians did not have to house and feed them through the winter.

In this manner, Kormak came to Iceland and became a slave. He was a sturdy boy, sharp-witted and clever with his hands. But he was also lazy and curious and easily distracted. This did not make him a good worker. As a result, he was sold and traded from one farmstead to another, going first east, then north and west, finally back south to Borgarfjord. It took eight years for Kormak to make this journey around Iceland. In this time, he became a tall young man with broad shoulders and rust-red hair. His eyes were green. He had a beard, though it was thin and patchy, and he kept it short when possible. A long scar ran down the side of his face, the result of a beating. It pulled at the corner of his mouth, so it appeared that he always had a one-sided, mocking smile.

The next-to-last man who owned him was a farmer named Helgi, who did not like his work habits better than any of Kormak's previous owners. "It's past my ability to get a good day's work out of you," Helgi said, "so I am selling you to the Marsh Men at Borg, and I can tell you for certain you'll be sorry."

"Why?" asked Kormak.

"The master of the house at Borg is named Egil. He's an old man now, but he used to be a famous Viking. He's larger than most human people, ugly as a troll, and still strong, though his sight is mostly gone. The people at Borg are all afraid of him and so are the neighbors, including me."

"Why?" asked Kormak a second time.

"Egil is bad-tempered, avaricious, self-willed, and knows at least some magic, though mostly he has used brute force to get his way. He's also the finest poet in Iceland."

This didn't sound good to Kormak. "You said he's old and mostly blind. How can he rule the household?"

"His son Thorstein does most of the managing. He's an even-tempered man and a good neighbor. He will cross his father if it's a serious matter, but most of the time he leaves the old man alone. If you make Egil angry, he will kill you, in spite of his blindness and age."

Several days later, Thorstein Egilsson came down the fjord to claim Kormak. He was middle-aged, fair-haired, and handsome with keen blue eyes. He rode a dun horse with black mane and tail and carried a silvermounted riding whip. A second horse, a worn-out mare, followed the first.
My mount,
Kormak thought.

Thorstein paid for Kormak, then told him to mount the mare, which had a bridle but no saddle. Kormak obeyed.

They rode north. The season was spring, and the fields around them were green.

Wild swans nested among the grazing sheep.

After a while, Thorstein said, "Helgi says you are strong, which looks true to me, and intelligent, but also lazy. You have been a slave for many years. You should have learned better habits. I warn you that I expect work from you."

"Yes," replied Kormak.

"I know you can't help your smile," Thorstein added, "but I want no sarcasm from you. There are enough difficult people at my homestead already."

They continued riding up the valley. After a while, Thorstein said, "I have one more thing to tell you: stay away from my father."

"Why?" asked Kormak, though he was almost certain he knew the answer to this question.

"He used to be a great Viking. Now he's old and blind, and it makes him angry. I plan to use you in the outbuildings away from the hall. It isn't likely you'll meet him. If you do and he asks you to do anything, obey and then get away from him as quickly as you can."

"Very well," said Kormak.

They came over a rise, and he saw the farm at Borg. There was a large long hall, numerous outbuildings, and a home field fenced with stone and wood. Horses and cattle grazed there. Farther out were open fields that spread across the valley's floor, dotted with sheep. A river edged with marshy ground ran past the farm buildings. Everything looked prosperous and well made. It was a better place than any farm he'd known before.

They rode down together, and Thorstein led the way to an outbuilding. A large man stood in front of it. He was middle-aged with ragged black hair and a thick black beard.

"This is Svart," Thorstein said. "You'll work for him, and he will make sure you do your work."

Svart grunted.

That must be agreement,
Kormak thought.

Thorstein and Kormak dismounted, and Svart took the reins of Thorstein's horse. "Come," he said to Kormak.

They unsaddled Thorstein's mount and rubbed the two animals down, then led them to the marshy river to drink. Kormak's feet sank deep into the mucky ground.

Svart said, "Thorstein is a good farmer and a good householder, but he's firm. Do exactly as he tells you. No back talk and no hiding from work."

"Yes," said Kormak, thinking this might be a difficult place.

They let the horses free in the home field to graze, and Svart began to tell Kormak about the labor he would do.

So began Kormak's stay among the Marsh Men. The family got its nickname from their land, which was marshy in many places. Channels had been cut in the turf to draw water out and carry it to the river. This helped the fields. Nothing could make the riverbanks anything but mucky.

Svart was a slave, but he was good with animals and knew ironsmithing. This made him valuable. He was left alone to do his work, which was caring for the farm's horses. Kormak's job was to help him and obey his commands. If he was slow, Svart hit him, either with his hand or a riding whip. Nonetheless, at day's end they would rest together. Svart would talk about the family at Borg, as well as his travels with Thorstein to other farmsteads and to the great assembly, the Althing, at Thingvellir. The Marsh Men were a strong and respected family. When Thorstein traveled, he wore an embroidered shirt and a cloak fastened with a gold brooch. His horse was always handsome. Retainers traveled with him, and Svart came along to care for the animals.

"Everything in his life is well regulated, except for his father," Svart said.

Kormak said nothing, but he thought that the old man could hardly cause much harm. Eighty years old and blind!

He had no reason to visit the long hall, but he'd seen the members of the family at a distance. For the most part, they were handsome people who wore fine clothing even when they were home. The old man was unlike the rest: tall and gaunt and ugly, his head bald and his beard streaked white and gray. Thick eyebrows hid his sightless eyes. He felt his way around the farmstead with a staff or guided by one of his daughters.

Svart went on talking. He had spent most of his life at Borg and remembered Egil's father Skallagrim, another big, dark, ugly man with an uncertain temper. Strange as it appeared to Kormak, Svart was proud of the family and interested in what they did. The servants who worked in the long hall told him stories about Thorstein and the rest of the Marsh Men. He repeated these to Kormak.