"Go on," Doc challenged, stopping on the path and bringing the whole group to a halt.

"Micmac, Penobscot, Algonquin, Huron, Ojibway, Mohawk, Yakima, Okanagan, Tlingit, Chinook, Beaver, Tanana, Cree, Bannock, Crow, Shoshone, Cheyenne. How many's that?"

"Around fifteen or so," J.B. said, grinning. "Better'n a dozen."

"If you like I could go on with another fifty, Doc. My minor was North American Indian Sociology, groupings and distribution."

"Humph!" Doc snorted and turned on his heel, setting off again down the trail at a fast lick.

The trees grew thicker, filling the damp air with the scent of balsam, and the mist became thinner.

"Think there's water close by," Krysty said, putting her head back and sniffing.

The steady beat of the drums was very loud. The path was leveling off as they came onto a flat wider trail among the trees.

"Meat cooking," Jak said.

Moments later they all caught the flavor of roasting, overlaid with the tang of smoldering pine logs.

"I'm not sure that noise is Indians," Mildred guessed. "More like African. Or... I don't know. It's not really like anything I ever heard."

There was the sudden sharp barking of a dog, followed by a shout and a blow. The barking stopped.

"Got to be a ville. Sounds less than a coupla hundred yards off," J.B. said, unholstering his Steyr AUG.

The wind gusted, and like a magician's trick, the curtain of fog vanished. They could see that they were close to the edge of the forest, and off in the distance they could make out the glittering expanse of a vast body of water. But between trees and lake was a largish ville: huts and fires, cows and hogs, men, women and children.

For several seconds none of the six friends spoke. It was Mildred Wyeth who broke the silence.

"Well, pardon my French, but you can fuck me sideways if they aren't Vikings!"

Chapter Eighteen

Jorund Thoraldson, the baron of Markland, stood five inches over six feet and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Not a lot of it was soft fat. His eyes were as blue as melting sea ice, and the hair that hung over his broad shoulders was white blond. Not quite as stark a hue as Jak Lauren's hair, but not far off it. His voice was a hearty rasping bellow that carried the flavor of oak-aged beer and salted herrings. He wore a shaggy woolen coat and leather pants, which were tucked into knee-length suede boots. A long, two-handed sword was sheathed on his left hip, and he carried a .38 Colt on his right.

"Greetings, outlanders!" he called, striding into the main hut of the ville, where Ryan and the others had been taken.

There had seemed no great threat as they hid at the fringe of the forest, watching. Then a skinny mongrel had scented them, its furious yapping bringing a dozen men to investigate.

It was a hair-trigger decision. Five or six of the villagers were carrying blasters, but they looked like old cap and ball pistols with a couple of ancient automatics. If Ryan had given the word, the villagers would have been down and dying in the damp grass.

"Hold it," he'd said.

And that looked like the correct decision.

The men, all of whom had long or plaited blond hair, had surrounded them and asked their business. Ryan had explained they were travelers from the other side of the hill, beyond the tropical jungle. Their wag had broken down and then they'd run into the army of ants that had driven them up the mountain, and down into the ville.

They were greeted with no hostility, nor was there any clear evidence of friendship. Just a calm acceptance of what they said and the suggestion that they should all come to the ville's meeting house to explain themselves in front of the Vikings' karl, Baron Jorund Thoraldson.

The last half mile or so of the friends' trek had been colder, and Mildred Wyeth had pulled the hood up higher, covering her head and shadowing her face. Krysty's red hair was tightly curled and dulled by the mist. Jak's white hair hung limp like curdled milk over his shoulders.

No one had made an attempt to try to take away their blasters as they walked toward the largest of the wood-roofed huts.

Ryan, as ever, had kept his eye skating all around him.

The ville contained forty dwellings, but no sign of any sort of mechanization, which wasn't unusual in isolated villes throughout the Deathlands. There were no wags in sight and the packed, moist earth around the huts didn't bear any tracks of vehicles. The smell of cooking was much stronger, but the drumming had ceased — had ceased at the moment the raw-eyed cur had begun its yapping.

The feature of the ville that had caught the friends' eyes were the boats — or were they ships? Ryan had never been that sure of the difference between the two.

Each craft was forty to fifty feet in length, narrow with high sides and ports for a number of long oars. The elongated prow ended in a carved head of what Ryan recognized was supposed to be a kind of fire-breathing monster or dragon.

Most of the men of the ville wore some kind of dagger or short sword at their sides, and several had axes with hafts two feet long. A number of helmets hung over the entrances to the huts, looking as if they were made from varied combinations of iron and leather. The one common factor of the helmets was that all of them were horned.

But now the baron was speaking.

"Outlanders here in Markland! By Baldur's eyes! This is a strange day. There have not been outlanders here in more than a score of years. Fishermen, cast up on our shores in a violent storm when I was a stripling of a dozen summers."

"What happened to them?" Ryan asked.

"The outlander fishermen?" Jorund gave a great bellow of laughter, echoed by many of the thirty men who had crowded into the hut. Not a single woman, Ryan noticed. "By Freya's dugs, my one-eyed friend, if my memory serves me well, I think they went to sleep with their fish."

"A man swims badly when his knees are broken, outlander!" someone yelled, earning a look of angry reproach from the baron.

"Egil Skallagson! Hold your tongue, or I swear I'll feed it to the midden curs. These men are our guests."

Krysty took a step forward. "And the women, Baron? Are we not welcome in your ville?"

Jorund ignored her and spoke to Ryan. "In this ville the nonmen do not speak out like that. Not without our permission. Will you chastise the firehead thrall for her forwardness?"

"She is not a thrall." Whatever that was, thought Ryan. "Where we come from the women are equals of the men and can speak how and when they wish."

There was some laughter at that, as though he'd said that where he came from it was usual to drink through your arse and piss through your ears — laughter tinged with a profound disbelief. The baron didn't even smile.

"Here in Markland, you follow the old ways of Markland, or it will go hard with all of you. Your women will be as our women — a willing thrall at the cooking and a pliant receptacle when we wish to spend our passion. Is that one also a woman? Beneath the hood?"

Ryan's heart sank. He had only known Mildred for a couple of days, but he already knew enough to guess she wasn't going to sweet-mouth Baron Jorund of Markland.

He was right.

Mildred didn't remove her hood, but her voice was loud. Loud and angry.

"Try to spend your passion in my 'receptacle,' bro, and you'll be picking slices of your cock out of the middle of the lake."

Ryan felt the chill of the butt of his pistol, knowing that J.B., Krysty and Jak would be doing the same.

The tall Viking looked at Mildred, wrinkling his blue eyes as though trying to penetrate the darkness beneath her hood. There was a total and quite overwhelming silence in the hut. Outside they heard the laughter of a young woman and a child crying for comfort.