A Wizard In Midgard Read online

  "I'm from farther than that," Magnus told him, but registered the name of the country well, to remember it. Midgard? Well, it did go with the horned helmets....

  Again the man stared at him, but only for a second. Then studying his hoe blade, he muttered, "Didn't know there were people farther away."

  "I'm real," Magnus assured him. "I didn't know what I was getting into."

  And that, he decided, was nothing but the honest truth. At least he had expected to see dwarves, too. He had seen them in the pictures from orbit, after he and Herkimer had explored Midgard's eastern border.

  "Let's see how the western border compares with this one, Herkimer."

  "Initiating acceleration," the computer replied, but the artificial gravity within the ship was so excellent that Magnus felt no change. "Should we examine the northern border on the way?"

  "No point," Magnus said. "Your photographs show it to be a wasteland with only a few small settlements." He looked down at the pictures on the table before him, aerial photos of the planet's one inhabited continent.

  Some were large-scale, some small; some showed the country as a whole, some only single villages, some even closeups of just a few people. "Wattle and daub huts, thatched roofs, wooden wheels on their wagons, clothing limited to tunics and bias-hosen for the men, blouses and skirts for the women, hooded cloaks for both ... yes, it looks very much like the Scandinavian Middle Ages."

  "Too much so?" the computer supplied.

  "Definitely. Someone set about a deliberate imitation, but wasn't a stickler for historical accuracy." Magnus couldn't rid himself of the feeling that he was looking at a gigantic stage set.

  "We have come to the dawn line," Herkimer reported. "Good." Magnus turned back to the viewscreens. "Is there a natural border?"

  "Yes, a river, and the land beyond it is thickly forested."

  "Scan it for signs of battle-there!"

  The view on the screen steadied, showing a bird's-eye view of two straggling lines of dots facing three rings of other dots, smooth with geometric precision. Behind and between the circles were lines of dots, again straight as though drawn with a ruler. The two sets of lines faced one another between the river and the forest.

  "Hold this view on one screen and have the other zoom in," Magnus directed.

  On the right-hand screen, the dots swam closer. The ends of the lines swept out, and the dots resolved themselves into Vikings on one side, charging with waving axes and mouths open to shout. Across from them were three circles of armored warriors with crossbows, marching around and around. The ones in front aimed and discharged their weapons as they paced along the front arc, then wound back their bows and reloaded as they marched along the back arc. Between them stood other warriors with long shields and short swords. Long spears thrust out between sword-wielders from the second line of warriors.

  As the Vikings came closer, the crossbowmen kept up a continuous field of fire. The Vikings charged straight into their storm, horn-helmeted men falling left and right, but the rest running on, shouting. Half their number survived to reach the stariding warriors. They pushed the spears up with their shields so that they could chop at the swordsmenwhose heads were scarcely waist high.

  Magnus stared in amazement. "The spearmen are dwarves!"

  "Relative to the Vikings, yes," Herkimer agreed.

  Looking more closely, Magnus could see that the warriors in the formation had legs and arms that were shorter in proportion to their bodies than those of the. Vikings-but their shoulders were almost as wide, and their heads almost as large, as those of their bigger opponents.

  Magnus gave a long, low whistle. "No wonder they're fighting with such iron discipline! It's the only way they can stand against men twice their size!"

  "And who outnumber them," Herkimer pointed out. There did seem to be twice as many Vikings as dwarvesbut that appearance changed as the taller men tried an outflanking maneuver. On the left-hand screen, the overview of the battle, Magnus saw the ends of the second line of Vikings split and swing out, to try to catch the circles of dwarves from the flanks-but as they did, archers rose from the bushes at the sides and filled the air with arrows. A number of Vikings fell, and the rest retreated back to the battle line. They found themselves racing the center, who were fleeing from the crossbow fire. The dwarves, apparently moved by a chivalrous impulse their larger foes lacked, held their fire. They seemed to feel no need to kill as long as their enemies were retreating.

  "Reserves hidden in ambush." Magnus stared. "Some of them are almost as big as the Vikings!"

  "They would seem to be traitors," Herkimer commented. "They must certainly seem that way to the Vikings! Of course, I suppose they could be fugitives given sanctuary by the dwarves-or even political dissidents." Magnus compared the two screens. "Still, the Vikings outnumber them by half."

  "At least," Herkimer agreed.

  The dwarves held their ground, not taking the bait to chase-but a final flight of crossbow bolts filled the air, hurtling toward the fleeing Vikings. Several more of them fell. Their comrades scooped them up and carried them back to the river. There, they slowed to cross a bridge made up of low boats with decking laid across their centers. The Vikings tramped over those decks, carrying their dead and wounded, and as soon as the last one passed, the sections of bridge broke away and began rowing back to the eastern bank of the river. The water was indeed a border.

  The dwarves held their formation until the last boat was well out from shore, then turned to embrace one another, slap each other's backs, and even break into an impromptu dance here and there.

  Magnus stared at the close-up. "Some of them are beardless. . . ."

  "And their cuirasses are very pronounced about their gender," Herkimer finished. "Many of those warriors are women."

  "No wonder, when they're so badly outnumbered, and so small into the bargain! We're looking at a military society, Herkimer."

  "Ii would seem so," the computer agreed. "Holding so tight a formation under the stress of battle speaks of long training."

  "Yes,. from childhood, probably." Magnus frowned. "And as with the giants, if we could find a battle so quickly, they have to be common-another part of life, like plowing and reaping."

  "A time to sow, a time to reap, and a time for war,"-the computer agreed.

  But the dwarf slaves in these fields hadn't learned to fight, and the only time for them was a time to suffer.

  When the sun neared the horizon, Kawsa and half a dozen other overseers lined them up with shouts and insults, then started them off in a shuffling line back to the farmstead. They went down through rows of barley and hops to a broad farmyard of clean tan gravel. Another file of slaves was driving cows into a milking barn, and three others were pouring swill into the troughs of a huge pigsty. Gar's file shuffled past them all to a long ramshackle shed of unpainted boards, and inside.

  There the silence ended. Half of the slaves dropped down onto pallets of moldy straw with moans of relief. Others only sat down on rude benches, but everyone breathed sighs of relief. Even the older children sat down with groans, their dusty little faces lined with weariness. The younger children had been able to nap in the field, though, and still frolicked and quarrelled. Magnus expected some of the tired adults to snap at the little ones, but they only sighed with philosophic patience-and a surprising number of them watched the children with doting smiles. Even in the midst of such misery, they found pleasure in the innocent squabbles and joys of their children.

  Magnus noticed a great lack of water, and a greater need for it.

  A tall young woman came up to him with a bucket from which she lifted a dripping ladle. "Drink, lad, for you'll need it!"

  "Thank you," Magnus said sincerely, and drank the ladle dry, thinking it was the sweetest drink he had ever had during peacetime-if you could call this peace. He handed it back to the woman with a sigh of relief. "I needed that."

  "I'm sure you did," she said, then reached out to touch his forehead, frow
ning anxiously. Magnus forced himself to hold still, though the touch of her fingers hurt. "You've a right ugly bruise there," she told him, "and a few more I can't see, I don't doubt."

  "I'm sure you're right," Magnus told her. "I've a dozen aches at least. Believe me, I've had hours to count them.", "Don't I know it!" she said. "My name's Greta."

  "I'm honored to meet you, Greta." Magnus inclined his head gravely. "My name is Gar Pike."

  She stared at him in surprise, then gave him a wan smile. "A gar pike, are you? Gar I don't doubt, and you're a poor fish indeed, to let yourself be caught like this. But why take such a name for yourself?"

  The question brought a sudden wave of longing for his nice, safe spaceship lounge, and a memory of Herkimer saying, only hours before, "Why do you insist on using that abominable alias when you go planetside to start a revolution, Magnus?"

  Magnus shrugged. "You never can tell when there are going to be secret agents around, from SCENT or some other Terran government agency. I'd just as soon they didn't recognize me by name."

  "Surely the name of Gar Pike must be almost as famous as that of d'Armand, by now."

  "Not to SCENT, fortunately-unless they've had agents on every planet I've visited." Magnus's mouth tightened at the thought of his own brief stint as a SCENT agent, and his disillusionment with their methods. His father, Rod Gallowglass, whose real name was Rodney d'Armand, was one of the most famous agents of the Society for the Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms--famous because he had discovered Magnus's home planet of Gramarye with its potentially explosive population of espers. For three decades now, he had been holding the planet secure against the schemes and plots of two futurian organizations, one trying to subvert Gramarye to some form of totalitarian government so that its telepaths would be at the service ofits interstellar dictatorship, the other trying to subvert the planet to anarchy so that the telepaths would help spread its unrealistically idealistic form of chaos throughout the human-colonized planets. Rod Gallowglass had short-circuited all their schemes with the help of his native-born wife Gwendylon and their four children-three, since Magnus had taken to the stars, unable to accept his father's imposing of democracy on a people who might not want it. He had joined SCENT under an assumed name, become even more disenchanted with its methods than with his father's, and gone off on his own to bring about social change in a way about which he could feel rightwhich meant that he sought out planets where the majority were really miserably oppressed, and the only solution was revolution.

  So here he was, talking to another miserable one, and trying to explain, "The name was given me as much as I chose it." He realized he had better think of himself as "Gar Pike" for the rest of his time on this planet.

  Greta's wan smile warmed a little. "Don't you ever talk like a proud lord, though!"

  "Is he all right?" asked another woman anxiously, coming up to them. Gar looked down and saw she wasn't even five feet tall.

  "He seems well enough," Greta answered her. "He walks fairly straight, and his limp's almost gone."

  "I'm past the worst of it," Gar confirmed. .

  "This is Rega." Greta gestured to the smaller woman. "Honored to meet you, Rega."

  Rega smiled up at him. "No wonder the overseers set about you so hard, with your courtly ways. Where did you esape from, lad? I know Groi says you're from far away, but that can't be, can it?"

  Groi, Gar decided, must be the small man who had talked to him out in the field. "It's quite true. I wanted to see something of the world before I settled down."

  "Seen enough yet?" Greta asked with a sardonic smile. They were very surprised when Gar said, "Too much--but not enough."

  2

  Gar was certainly seeing the world of Seigfried, and was regretting every minute of it-but he and Herkime had tried to reason out the social conditions on the plane from the evidence of what they had seen, until Herkimer had finally said, "There simply is not enough information to justify any conclusions about this culture, Magnus."

  "Other than that we need more information," Magnu said with a wry smile. "Still, we've seen two battles producign dead bodies in a very short space of time. I think constant warfare is reason enough to help these people make a change in their form of government, don't you?"

  "Help, or incite?" The computer was capable of recognizing irony, if not actual humor. "Provisionally, I would have to agree. After all, you have engineered one peaceful revolution already-why not start a revolution to bring peace? But if the tallest and shortest of the Midlanders are really locked in to slavery and the misery that almost always accompanies it, would say that was an even stronger reason."

  "War and slavery," Magnus said grimly. "I've helped people who were worse off, but this is surely bad enough. Yes, I think it's time for Gar Pike to conduct a fact-finding mission."

  And the first fact he had to find was whether or not the people of Siegfried were really as miserable as he thoughtor if he was reading his own desire for purpose into their situation.

  "Where do you wish to land, Magnus?"

  "Near the border of the land of the medium-sized people," Gar said. "Since they seem to be fighting both of the other nations, they should give me the best chance of understanding the whole situation at one experience."

  "You might not fit in," Herkimer warned him, "and might not be accepted. In fact, they might take you for an enemy. After all, you are a giant among your own kind, or have been on every planet you have visited."

  Magnus was broad in proportion to his seven feet of height, constant exercise and martial arts practice having made him very muscular.

  "I shall prepare the appropriate garments, Magnus," the computer told him. "You will find them in the wardrobe of your sleeping chamber."

  "Thank you, Herkimer." Magnus rose and went to his suite, to enjoy what might well be his last civilized shower for a very long time.

  Dinner was served by two women from the farmhouse kitchen, from huge buckets carried by two of the oversized men. Gar expected the slaves to race clamoring to the doorway and fight one another to be first, but they only pulled wooden bowls from their pallets and lined up. Their eyes bulged and their mouths watered, but no one pushed his way past anyone else. Gar was especially surprised that none of the semi-giants kicked any of the small people out of line, and the few who tried it were shoved back into place and scolded soundly by the nearest of their fellow huge ones. Gar took his place at the end of the queue, even though his stomach growled and his mouth fairly ached with hunger-but he knew he had eaten better than any of them, and probably just as recently."

  He studied the line, trying to figure out how they decided who had what place. He would have expected the smaller people to either have to accept last place, or to be allowed to go first, but they were sprinkled throughout the line. It wasn't even big person/small person in alternation, but one here, two there, even three in one place. Finally he cracked the system--the ones in front were the oldest, with the youngest next; the middle-aged came last, forcing themselves to wait, presumably because the others needed their food more.

  Finally Gar came up, and the server scraped the bottom of the bucket to come up with half a ladleful for him. She started to hold it out, then stared. "You have no bowl!"

  "I'm new today," Gar told her.

  "Are you indeed!" She peered up at him, squinting-she was one of the small ones. "What's your name, lad?"

  "Gar," he answered.

  "Well, I'm Lalle." The little woman turned to her partner, a woman two feet taller than herself. "Vonna, have we an extra bowl?"

  "Always." The big woman set down her ladle and fished an empty wooden bowl out of a huge pocket in her apron. She handed it to Gar. "Scrub it with sand when you've done, and keep it under your pillow! Here, now." She scraped around the bucket with her ladle and plopped a half-dipper of porridge into his bowl. Lalle added her half dipper, and Gar thanked them numbly, then turned away, staring into his bowl and wondering how he was supposed
to survive to do heavy work on a bowl of thickened pea soup.

  He also wondered how he was supposed to eat it, but one look at his fellow slaves told him the answer. He sat down by the door and dipped two fingers into the mess, then stuck them in his mouth and sucked off the food. It was crude, but it worked. The porridge was, at least, reasonably tasteless. He reminded himself that it could have been worse. In fact, he was so hungry that it actually tasted good-or felt that way.

  When he was done, he followed the others outside to a sand heap where he scoured his bowl, then went back indoors. He was amazed to hear the slaves beginning to sing. It was a slow, mournful ballad, even as he would have expected, but it was full of the promise of the joys of tending the gardens of the gods amid the fragrance of fruits that made people always young, and where all work seemed play.

  Gar listened, feeling his stomach sink. Were their lives so miserable that this was the golden afterlife that made the burden of existence bearable-an eternity of work for a kind master, in a garden where perfume induced euphoria? He shuddered inside at the thought.

  Then a rough voice tore through the song. "Greta!"

  The slaves fell silent on the instant, and the girl who had brought Gar his drink stood up, paling and backing away, hands out to defend. "Not me! It was only three nights ago!"

  "So I find your body pleasing." Kawsa strode into the slave barracks, two other overseers behind him, grinning eyes gleaming with lust. "Out, girl, and into the barn!"

  "No!" Greta cried. "It's not fairl Not so soon! Choose someone else!" She turned to her fellow slaves in appeal. "Someone who hasn't been in a while, please!"

  Stone-faced, Rega started to rise, but Kawsa just pushed her back down. "It's you tonight, Greta lass, and none other! Come now!"

  "No! I won't!" Greta backed away, then suddenly bolted for the window.

  Kawsa caught her in two strides, wrestling her down to the floor, then catching her wrists. She screamed and kicked, then managed to lever herself up enough to bite at his hands.