Gary rode at the column's front beside Mike at the distance the road allowed two horses to ride abreast without the saddles touching. The wood line had moved back from the road through the last stretch and the country had opened into a long shallow valley that the road bent through on its slow run north toward the corridor. The morning had warmed enough that the cold of the pre-dawn at Titusville's gate had gone out of the men's coats. Gary had the crossbow across his back in the working carry the saddle ring allowed and the Model 29 at his hip and the green of the venom runes at the inside of his forearms gone latent now that the engagement had closed.
Mike rode beside him with the reins held in the loose grip a man held them in when the horse knew the road and the man knew the horse. The Shattering Hand rune on his forearm was quiet. The Earthen Bastion ran its background read through the ground the horse's hooves were finding and did the reading without Mike needing to attend to it. He had been at the northern berm for the duration of the engagement and the berm work had not cost him at the register the closing fight at Sanctuary had cost him.
Gary rode a stretch before he spoke. He was choosing the words. He chose them and then he said the thing he had been carrying since the picket line at the back of the column.
"Thanks, bud."
Mike turned his head at that. The horse's ears moved at the change in his rider's weight and settled.
"For what."
"For not making me chase you."
Mike did not answer for a stride. The pace of the horses held them where they were in the formation and the country moved past them at the rate the road moved at and Gary did not push him.
When Mike spoke he did not perform the answer.
"I felt the pull at the picket line. When Jesper went out of the wood line. The horses were three steps away. I had the angle." He paused. "The man riding out of that wood line was the man who has been running the attacks on Sanctuary. The one who put the sniper on me at the closing fight. The same architecture that put the sniper on Rick at Geneseo. Rick took the round at Geneseo because someone above the field told someone in the field to put a round in him. I have known that since the day they buried him. I was not there. I have been carrying not being there since the morning the runner brought the word to the Keller House. Then the sniper came for me at Sanctuary and Rick's round was about to land in me at the same angle and from the same kind of distance, and you were where you were next to me, and the angle did not finish."
He paused.
"This morning I had the man who ordered the sniper riding out of the wood line at the picket line in front of me. The horses were three steps away. I had the angle to him. I felt the pull come up the way I have felt it come up since the Rick — the loop, the swing, the part of me that wants the closing more than the part of me that wants the standing — and this time the pull had a name on it. Jesper. The pull was loud. Louder than it has been in a long time."
He paused. The horse adjusted its line at a small dip in the road and corrected without him asking.
"You shouted my word from the southern berm. I heard it. I stopped at the position between the berm and the picket line. I looked at the horse. I looked at the country west. I breathed once. I turned back from the horse. I walked back to the berm."
He did not look at Gary when he said the rest.
"I think I am okay. I am not going to tell you I am cured. The pull is in me. The pull will be in me when the next morning comes that the pull has a reason to reach for me again. But the contract you and I made at the stable held this morning. It held against the loudest version of the pull I have heard since the Rick died. I have not had a morning where it held against the loudest version before. I had one today."
Gary rode a stretch without answering. He let what Mike had said sit in him. The country moved past them. Vigor was somewhere back at Shane's position at the column's middle. The redbones at the perimeter held their pattern.
He answered without performing the answer either.
"No problem."
That was all of it. Mike nodded once at the road ahead of him. Gary nodded once at the road ahead of him. The two of them rode beside each other at the column's front and the country moved under their horses and the morning ran on.
After a stretch Mike spoke again.
"I am going to talk to Brie when we get back."
Gary turned his head at that. He did not say anything. He waited.
"I have not been talking to her about the Rick's death. I have not been talking to her about the sniper. I have been carrying it where she could see I was carrying it and not telling her the shape of what I was carrying. She has been patient. She has not asked me to tell her before I was ready. I am going to tell her now. Not because the pull reached for me this morning. Because the contract with you held against it. I want her to know that. She has been in this with me without me letting her in. I am going to let her in."
Gary nodded.
"She will be glad to hear it."
"She will."
Mike rode a stretch.
"Thanks for shouting my word."
Gary answered without thinking about the answering.
"That is what the contract is for."
The road moved under them. The country opened into the corridor's edge at a low rise that gave them the first sight of the road bending toward Sanctuary. Hill was at the point a hundred yards ahead of them with the tracking read running its quiet survey of the country between the column and the next bend. The wagons at the column's middle held their pace. The prisoners walked in the tied line they had been walking in since the cleanup at the cleared ground. The morning held its quiet around them.
Gary and Mike rode beside each other at the column's front.
Neither of them said anything else for the next stretch of road. Neither of them needed to.
Johnny rode at the rear of the column beside Kelly at the distance the road allowed. The wagons were in front of them with the prisoners walking in the tied line at the middle and Big Ed and Rachel a few horses ahead of them at the rear of the wagon train. The road had moved through the long shallow valley and was bending now toward the higher country south of the corridor. The morning ran across them at the rate the wind set, southerly, warm at the face, the smell of the spring earth coming up from the wagon wheels.
Kelly rode beside him with the shoulder dressing visible at the open collar of her coat. The blunderbuss had caught her at the upper chest and the shoulder at the partial hit she had taken at the column's center. The dressing was clean. Rachel had worked the wound at the back of the field after the engagement closed with the small efficient care Rachel brought to everything, and the bleeding had stopped before the column formed up for the move. Kelly was moving normally in the saddle. The shoulder would be stiff for a stretch. The Valkyrie's recovery would close the rest.
Johnny rode a stride before he spoke.
"You okay."
Kelly turned her head. The smile she gave him was the smile she gave him when she was telling him the truth and was also a little bit amused that he had asked.
"A blunderbuss cannot end a Valkyrie."
Johnny let that sit a moment. The horse moved under him. He shifted his weight.
"Good."
"Good?"
"Because you're stuck with me."
Kelly's smile changed. The amused part of it stayed. The other part of it came up underneath it — the part of her that was not Göll, the part of her that had been Kelly at the firehouse before any of the rest of it, the part of her that took what Johnny had just said and held it the way a woman held a thing a man had said to her that she had been waiting to hear him say without knowing she had been waiting to hear him say it.
She did not answer right away. She rode a stretch. Then she said it.
"I'm good with that."
Johnny did not answer either. He rode beside her at the column's rear with the road moving under them and the morning warm at his face and the woman beside him alive and moving normally in the saddle.
Big Ed turned his head at the wagon ahead of them. He had heard the exchange at the distance the column's noise allowed it to carry. He did not say anything to Johnny or Kelly. He looked at Rachel beside him.
Rachel was riding with the reins in the loose grip she rode with on a known road. She turned her head and met his eyes at the same moment he turned to meet hers. Neither of them said anything for a stride.
Then Rachel said it.
"Ditto."
She was holding his eyes when she said it.
Big Ed held her eyes back. He did not answer with words. He nodded once. The nod was the full answer. Rachel turned back to the road. Big Ed turned back to the road. The two of them rode beside each other at the column's rear of the wagon train and did not need to say more.
The column moved north. The road bent toward the corridor. The morning ran on at the unhurried pace the move set.
The column made the bend at the corridor's edge and came up the long rise that gave the road its first sight of Sanctuary's walls. The sun had moved past the high point of the day and was working its slow descent toward the western timber. The wind out of the south had held steady through the ride and had brought the smell of the lake up the road ahead of them — Onondaga water, the wet stone of the southern shore, the small steady scent of the brine moat at the wall's outer face. Vigor at Shane's left lifted his head at the smell of home and his pace picked up a half-step without Shane having to ask him.
The wall came into full view at the rise's crest. The three sections held the geometry the build had set — the eastern wall along the lake's edge, the southern wall at the road's approach, the western wall closing the third side at the brine moat's run between the inner and outer pickets. The Keller House sat at its position inside the southern wall with the sign visible above the firehouse doors at the angle the road came in at. The watchtowers held the standard rotation. The brine moat caught the afternoon light at the moat's western run. Smoke rose from the cookhouse at the inner compound at the unhurried rate the kitchen ran at when the supper preparation had already begun.
Hill brought the column to the gate at the pace the wagons set. The watchtower called the recognition down to the gatehouse and the gatehouse opened the gate at the speed the column required, and the wagons moved through the gate in the order the column had held since the cleared ground at Titusville — Hill at the point, the captured wagons at the middle with the gas wagon under Big Ed's chains at the wagon train's center, the prisoners walking in the tied line, the gear wagon at the rear with Rustam and Magomed and the Miller Mountain man who had ridden the rear with them.
The compound's inner ground opened in front of them as the column cleared the gate. The people who had been waiting at the inner ground were waiting in the loose arrangement Sanctuary's people made when a column was coming home — not a parade, not a formal line, the unhurried gathering of a community that had been listening to the radio reports through the morning and that had moved to the inner ground when the watchtower's recognition call had gone up.
Jade stood at the front of the gathering. Her eyes found Dave at the eastern flank where the redbones were already coming up to her in their pattern, King at the front, the working dogs at the angles around him, Brick at the back with the younger pup's tongue out and his tail going at the full rate a redbone's tail went at when his person was thirty feet away. Camille's eyes found Clint at the western flank with the same movement that finds the person who matters in a gathered space. Amanda stood with Gary's hand at the small of her back where her center of gravity had shifted and her body was learning to accommodate the shift. Her eyes found Shane at the column's middle and held him there a stride before she found Gary and Gary found her and the small acknowledgment passed between them without words.
Brie stood at the edge of the gathering. Her eyes found Mike at the column's front beside Gary and held there. Mike turned his head at the gate and saw her at the second turn of his head and the small adjustment his face made was the adjustment a man's face made when the woman he was going to talk to that evening had walked out to meet him at the gate.
The significant others moved through the rest of the gathering at the small unhurried pace the welcoming allowed. Big Ed's people from the bike club at the wall's southern run. Johnny's people from the firehouse at the gate's near angle. The Miller Mountain men's people at the inner edge of the gathering, the country wives who had ridden up with the men's reserve element three days back and had stayed at Sanctuary's guest quarters through the engagement and who were now collecting their men from the column's rear with the small efficient warmth country wives brought to collections.
Thor stood at the inner ground's western edge with Sif beside him. Thor's eyes found Thrud at the column's middle beside Shane. Sif's eyes found her at the same moment. The two of them did not move toward her yet. They held the position they had taken when the watchtower's call had come up. They waited for the column to clear the gate and for Thrud to come to them at the pace she chose to come to them at.
Tyr stood beside Thor and Sif. He was leaning on the staff he carried at his right hand with the dwarven bracelet at his left wrist holding the missing hand under its concealment. His eyes found Shane at the column's middle. The eyes did not shift from Shane through the time it took the column to clear the gate. Vidar was not at the inner ground. Verdandi was not at the inner ground. The two of them were where the two of them were and Tyr was here for Shane and that was the arrangement Tyr's family ran on when a column came home.
Shane brought his horse to a stop at the inner ground's center. Vigor moved with him. He stepped down from the saddle. He handed the reins to the stable boy who had come up to meet him. The boy moved the horse away at the pace the inner ground allowed.
Shane crossed the ground to Tyr.
Tyr did not say anything as Shane came up to him. Tyr's eyes ran the read a father ran on a son when the son had come back from a thing the father had been listening to the radio for through the morning. The read found Shane intact. The read found the thermos at Shane's hand empty. The read found the small tightness at Shane's jaw that the morning had put there. Tyr's free hand came up and rested on Shane's shoulder at the brief contact a father made when the contact was the full conversation.
Tyr said, quietly, "Welcome home."
Shane said, "Father."
That was the exchange. Tyr's hand stayed on Shane's shoulder a moment longer and dropped. He stepped back. He let Shane move past him.
Freya came through the gate behind Shane at the pace the column's middle allowed. She had ridden at the center with Shane and Thrud and the small acoustic space the Þögn had held around them through the ride home. She found Shane at Tyr's position and the acknowledgment between the two of them was the acknowledgment of two people who had ridden the same road and had arrived at the same place at the same time and did not need more than that.
Thrud had handed her reins to a stable boy at the wagon train's edge and was crossing the ground to Thor and Sif at the inner ground's western edge. Thor watched her come. The Jafna-Gaddr was across her back in the working carry. The morning's mud was still on her boots at the lower edge where the road had not worked it off. She came up to her father and her mother at the unhurried pace a daughter came up to her parents at when she had been away for a stretch and had come back with something to tell them. Thor's hand came up and rested at the side of her face for a moment and dropped. Sif's arms came around her in the close hold a mother gave a daughter when the daughter was back. Thrud held the hold a moment and stepped back.
She would tell them what had happened at the gate later. Not at the inner ground. Later, at the firehouse table, where the family talked about the things the family talked about. The reunion at the inner ground was the reunion. The conversation was for after.
Big Ed brought the wagon train to its stop at the inner ground's eastern edge. He stepped down from his horse and walked back to the gas wagon. Saul had been reached through the network during the ride and Kvasir had been moving from the forge to the inner ground from the moment the column had crossed the corridor's outer edge. Kvasir came across the inner ground at the unhurried pace a smith came across a yard at when a smith was coming to take possession of something he had been told was coming. He stopped at the gas wagon. He looked at the chains. He looked at Big Ed. He nodded.
Big Ed worked the chains off the cargo bed and stepped back. The lead-lined canisters sat in the cargo bed in the stacks they had been loaded in at the cleared ground. The fuses were in the canvas pouch at the wagon's side. Kvasir read the cargo at the brief survey a smith ran on materials he was taking responsibility for. He nodded again.
He said, "I will handle it."
Big Ed said, "It's yours."
Kvasir gestured to two of his apprentices who had come up behind him with a handcart. The apprentices began moving the canisters from the wagon to the cart with the careful pace dangerous cargo was moved at. Kvasir oversaw the work without speaking. The gas wagon would be his within the hour and the canisters would be at the forge under the disposal arrangement he had been working through with Saul since the radio report.
Shane crossed back to the wagon train. Zabit was at the formation's middle position with the system slot quiet at his awareness now that the engagement had closed. Rustam and Magomed were at the rear with the gear wagon. The three of them had been standing down from the working register through the ride home and were standing in the inner ground now at the unhurried release a man came down to when a man had come back from a hard morning.
Shane came up to Zabit.
"I'll step you and the two of them back to Elmira later this evening. After the briefing. The community at Elmira needs you back today and the step makes more sense than the ride at this hour. Stay through the briefing. Eat at the Keller House. Then we go."
Zabit nodded.
"Understood."
"Tell your brother and your cousin."
Zabit nodded again and turned and walked back toward Rustam and Magomed at the rear of the wagon train. Shane watched him go and turned back toward the inner ground.
The compound moved through the unhurried work of a column coming home around him. The stable boys took the horses to the stables. The supply crews moved the gear to the storerooms. The kitchen had supper running and the smell of the supper was coming up across the inner ground at the rate the wind allowed it. The redbones moved to their water and their food at the eastern run of the wall. The prisoners were taken in hand by Saul's people for the holding cells the brig at Roberts's installation would take them from later in the week.
Shane stood at the inner ground's center for a moment.
Vigor sat at his left and waited.
The sun moved through its slow descent toward the western timber.
The column had come home.
The Keller House sat at its position inside the southern wall with the firehouse doors open at the side and the bar room running its early-evening rhythm at the front. Johnny Rotten had come back from the column ahead of the rest of the team — the bar had needed opening, the supper crowd had needed serving, and Johnny had moved from saddle to apron with the unhurried efficiency a firehouse captain brought to the work of running two rooms at once. The bar was about half full. The tables at the back were holding the families who had come in for the supper hour. The fire in the corner stove burned at the working register the evening required. The smell of the cookhouse next door came through the open side door at the rate the wind allowed.
Thrud came in through the front. She had handed the Jafna-Gaddr to one of Sif's people at the inner ground and the polearm was now in the family's quarters at the back of the compound under the careful storage Sif kept the weapons in when the weapons were at rest. Thrud was in the clean shirt and trousers she had changed into at the family's quarters and her hair was wet at the ends where she had washed the road off her face. She stopped just inside the door.
Thor and Sif were at the family's table at the back of the room. The table was the one the family had taken when the Keller House had opened and the family had kept it since — the corner against the inside wall, the angle that let Thor sit with his back to the wall and his line of sight to the door, the small private space the Keller House's geometry produced at that corner for the family that occupied it. Sif had a cup of tea in front of her. Thor had a glass of beer in front of him that was about half down. The supper had not yet been brought out for them. They were waiting.
Thrud crossed the room. The people at the bar nodded to her as she passed. Big Ed at his end of the bar lifted his glass at her in the brief acknowledgment that did not require returning. Johnny Rotten behind the bar caught her eye and the small smile passed between them that said the family table was ready and the supper would come when she was ready for it.
She came up to the table. Thor stood at her arrival the way Thor stood when his daughter came up to the family's table after a thing he had been waiting for her to come back from. He did not embrace her — they had done that at the inner ground. He held her shoulders at the brief contact a father made at a second meeting and let her sit down across from him at the table. Sif moved her tea aside to make room for the plate Johnny Rotten would bring.
Thrud sat. She breathed out once. She put her hands flat on the table.
She did not start with what had happened at the gate. She started where she was going to start, which was where the road had begun for her in the morning. Thor and Sif listened. They were not the kind of parents who pulled the conversation out of the child. They were the kind of parents who waited for the child to bring it.
Thrud said, "The column was where Shane said it would be. The cleared ground at Titusville was the engagement lane. Big Ed had the position the formation needed at the wood line and the berms were where they needed to be when the column came in. Hill ran the point read. Dave ran the dogs. Gary ran the southern angle. Mike ran the northern. The Miller Mountain men held the cover the country gave them. The engagement opened the way Shane had read it would open."
Thor nodded. He had heard the morning's outline from the radio reports through the day. He did not need the operational summary. He waited for her to come to what she had come to tell him.
She came to it.
"The column had mortar tubes. They had canisters. The canisters were the gas. Shane read them at the moment the mortar element loaded the tubes. He told me to follow his lead. He went to his hands at the dirt and built the trap — a twenty-foot patch of the cleared ground at the gate, dense, viscous, the depth running down twenty feet, the composition holding hermetic at the surface. He told me to take the canisters in flight."
She paused. The fire in the corner stove popped once. Johnny Rotten brought the plates without speaking and set them down and went away.
"I drove the spike of the Jafna-Gaddr into the earth at the mud's outer edge. I funneled the current down through the haft. The Heart-Wood took the current at the inward register. The Root-Iron grounded what the wood held. The density of what the spike found in the ground produced what I had not produced before — a gravity well above the trap. An invisible heavy hand reaching into the air above the pit. The canisters slowed in flight at the rate the well pulled them down. They did not stop. They did not detonate. They came down into Shane's trap at the velocity the well had pulled them down to. The mud took them. The lead held. The fuses went out in the absence of the air they needed to keep burning."
She looked at her hands on the table.
"I did not put the current into a man. I did not put the current into a wagon or a horse or a stand of timber. The current went down through the haft and into the earth and the earth produced what the engagement required. I closed distance. I just closed it differently than I have closed it before."
She breathed.
"It felt right."
Thor sat across the table from his daughter and did not speak for a stretch. He had a beer in front of him and he did not pick it up. His eyes did not leave her face. The room moved around the corner table at the unhurried rate the Keller House moved at in the evening. The fire in the corner stove kept its working rhythm. Sif sat at Thor's side and held her tea and did not say anything yet. She knew this conversation was Thor's first.
When Thor spoke he did not raise his voice. He spoke at the register he kept the family's conversation at when the family was at the table and the conversation was the family's own.
He said, "Tell me what it felt like."
Thrud looked up at him. She read what he was asking. He was not asking for the operational version. He had the operational version. He was asking for the part of it that lived between his daughter and the current the two of them had been carrying together since she had been old enough to carry it.
She told him.
"It felt like the storm was waiting for me to ask it the question I had not asked. The storm has been a swing my whole life. You taught me the swing because the swing was what you had been taught. The swing is in the storm. The swing is in me. The swing was in me this morning when the canisters left the tubes — the part of me that wanted to take the canisters down the way I have taken everything else down. The current came up to that pull when I called it. The current wanted to swing."
She paused.
"I did not let it. I funneled it down through the haft instead. I asked the storm to be the gravity instead of the strike. The storm went where I directed it. It did not resist. It did not protest the redirection. It went where I asked it to go and produced the well above the pit and did the work the engagement required and did not break anything that the engagement did not require breaking. I have spent centuries thinking the storm was one shape. The storm let me give it another shape this morning. It was waiting for me to ask."
She looked at her father.
"You taught me what you knew. I am not bringing this back to the table as a thing against what you taught me. You taught me the swing because the swing was what the storm had been for you. I think the swing was what the storm had been for the storm itself, across the cycles, because no one had asked it the question. I asked it this morning. It answered. The answer is the kind of answer I am going to spend the rest of my life learning the shape of."
She paused.
"I wanted to tell you because I do not want to learn the shape of it without you knowing I am learning it. I do not want this to be a thing I do that you find out about. I want it to be a thing I do that you have heard from me at the table."
Thor sat at the corner table with his daughter across from him and the room moving around them at the evening's pace. He did not speak for a long stretch. Sif's hand moved under the table and rested at his knee at the brief contact a wife made when she was telling her husband to take the time he needed to take. Thor took the time.
When he spoke his voice was low and was holding what it was holding without performing it.
He said, "I have been Thor a long time."
Thrud waited.
"The storm has been what I have been since before there was a name for what I was. The storm broke. The storm burned. The storm closed the distance between me and the thing I was about to take down. I learned the storm the way Odin's son learned what he had been given. I taught what I had been taught. I taught you the swing because the swing was what I knew."
He paused.
"When the awakening took in me at the wall, the conglomerate of memories that came up through me was layered with the boy who had been Harry. Harry was ten when the awakening took. Eleven by the end. Mani and Sol had raised him with the patience of two people who had been Mani and Sol across the cycles and who had remembered how to be a mother and a father to a child who did not yet know what he was. Erin had been his sister. The three of them had built Harry into a boy who was a good boy. The conglomerate came up through that boy. The good of the boy went into Thor. The patience went into Thor. The capacity to put the hammer down went into Thor because Harry had not been a child who needed to swing at everything. The version of me that came back from the awakening was a version of me that could ask the storm the question you asked it this morning."
He breathed out once.
"I have not asked it. I have been asking other questions. The vow Shane put on me at the wall — the not going at AN and Loki without his permission or Odin's — has been one question. The trust he asked me for when he asked me to ride at the recovery of you from the bayou — that has been another. The agreement I gave you for the recon mission — that was a third. Each of those questions has been a question about what Thor could be that Thor had not been before. I have answered each of them by holding what they asked me to hold. The not-going. The trust. The letting-go."
He paused.
"I have not asked the storm itself the question."
He looked at his daughter.
"You asked the storm the question this morning. The storm answered you. I am proud of you. I am proud of you because you asked the storm a question I have not asked it. I am proud of you because the storm answered. I am proud of you because the answer is the kind of answer that changes what the storm has been for our line."
He paused.
"You are not bringing this against me. I do not feel it as a thing against me. I feel it as a thing my daughter has done that I did not do, and the doing of it is the work of the storm becoming what the storm could not become when the only one holding it was the one who had been taught the swing. You are reforming what I taught you. I am glad of it. I am proud of it. I am going to learn from you the way you learned from me."
Thrud sat across the table from her father and did not speak for a stretch. Her hands were still flat on the table. Her eyes were on her father's face. The fire in the corner stove kept its working rhythm.
Sif said, quietly, "Eat your supper. Both of you."
Thor picked up his beer. He drank from it. He set it down. He picked up his fork.
Thrud picked up her fork.
The three of them ate at the corner table of the Keller House at the unhurried pace the family ate at when the family had said what needed saying and the rest of the evening was the rest of the evening.
The fire in the corner stove kept its working rhythm.
The room moved around them at the evening's pace.
The supper held its quiet around the family table.