The Sterkarm Handshake Read Online Free Page B

want to see some money back. If we can demonstrate that the thing can actually come up with a few barrels of oil, a few ingots of gold, we might be able to generate some more investment.”
    â€œSo we’re stuck with the Sterkarms,” Bryce said.
    â€œUntil we can make the accountants’ eyes shine. Maybe then we can push the Tube through to a time or dimension where the Sterkarms don’t exist. Please God.”
    Bryce pulled a wry face, nodding. He looked over at a big framed photograph that hung on the office wall. It showed, against a stormy, indigo sky, the Sterkarms’ tower, standing high on its hill. “We can try embarrassing Old Toorkild. Tell him we know it was his son and nephews who robbed us—but he’s embarrassment-proof, I think. There’s only one real way to stop them.”
    â€œAnd that is?” Windsor said.
    â€œGive them the things they want.”
    â€œWhat, waterproofs and plastic lunch boxes? We’re supposed to be preserving their way of life. Punters aren’t going to pay good money to travel back five hundred years to see the Sterkarms wearing baseball caps and drinking Coke. No, I’ll tell him: One more step out of line, and no more aspirin. See if I care if your rheumatics play up.”
    â€œYou can try that.” Bryce let the pause go on awhile. “If we can’t keep the Sterkarms quiet, we’re going to have Scotland and England on our backs as well.”
    â€œI don’t need reminding of that,” Windsor said.
    Long before FUP had come along, the Scotland and England of the sixteenth century had been perpetually annoyed by the Sterkarms and the other families of feuding raiders who lived along the border.
    The Scottish-English border had never been clearly drawn, and the result had been a long strip of “debatable land” over which neither country could enforce law. The wardens, officers of the English and Scottish crowns, had struggled, with too little money and too few men, to capture raiders, retrieve stolen goods, keep up with constantly changing feuds and alliances, and bring to trial offenders who laughed at them. Being granted the post of warden was a punishment. The best prospect a warden had was to come to terms with the most powerful family in his district, accept their bribes and place himself under their protection. An honest warden died young, of exhaustion or violence.
    Both Scotland and England would have been glad to have the borders settled and quiet, but neither could agree on the exact line of the border. Scotland claimed Northumberland and Cumberland as rightfully belonging to the Scottish crown, while England insisted that the border should be set even farther north than it already was. FUP offered a solution.
    It had taken a great deal of expensive consultation with experts on sixteenth-century life, language and costume, and the forging, in the twenty-first century, of a great many gold coins that would be acceptable to the English and Scottish courts, 16th side. And then FUP had sent representatives to the two kings, to propose, in Latin, that the governance of the difficult border lands be privatized. Let the Elves take it on, at their own expense. No longer would England or Scotland have to find the money to keep castles garrisoned and in repair, or to compensate citizens deprived of their goods, or to imprison, try and execute captured raiders. The Elves would undertake all that. The Elves also pledged to keep the debatable lands quiet, preventing the former evil predations and disturbances. There would be peace on the borders.
    What would the Elves get out of it? Well, if the two great sovereignties would grant them the right to raise taxes, and the right to the produce of the borders … They were also willing to pay tribute to the two crowns and, in token of this, please accept this gold …
    It took long and complex negotiations, and payment of a great deal more gold, before