Quite Contrary

by Richard Roberts

  “You let her go?” I asked. What did he even mean by that?

  “As you get older, you learn that love is about more than desire,” Magnus explained. “She never stopped being beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful, and letting her go did break my heart. She loved me more than any other man she’d known, and she loved Valdis, but not enough. She hadn’t seen her own home since she reached womanhood.”

  “She hadn’t?” I asked, hearing my voice peak. My skin crawled, and I wanted to be reassured that I misunderstood.

  “You had to see her,” Magnus told me. He sounded so blithe about it. “Valdis is lovely, but Alfdis was a goddess. Her people were strong, but they squabbled even among themselves for her. Then, Artol from Vanheim saw her while traveling, and came back with an army to take her. He was foolish enough to show her off to the other lords back home, and was attacked by two of them at the same time. Men fought over her for years, so much that she used to joke that one hadn’t even gotten her to his bedroom before the next man broke in. A mere raider like me should never have ended up with such a woman, but the last man who held her expended his forces badly in the taking. His town was defenseless, and I saw a target. Of course, I claimed her with the treasure in a heartbeat. In a way, we were both lucky. I came out of nowhere, and no one knew where she had gone to try and seize her from me.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. How could he be so calm about a story like that? I didn’t feel comfortable here anymore. This wasn’t the place for me.

  “And you’d send Valdis out into that?” I probed, unable to believe it.

  “Anyone can lose a battle, and I can hope I’d get to ransom her back. Of course, she might also want to stay with him.” He shrugged, and as those arms rolled around me, my breathing seized up in a flash of panic. She might want to stay? Seriously? Yes. Yes, he was serious. I didn’t understand these people, and I didn’t want to anymore.

  He just kept talking. “It’s a risk she’s chosen to take, and between her and Eric I can hope it’s unlikely. Everyone who goes a-viking is taking a great risk for the hope of glory and riches, and I can’t talk them out of it.” He sighed. “My comfort is that they won’t keep at it very long. Killing farmers and guardsmen won’t satisfy either of them. Perhaps they’ll decide to settle down instead, but I don’t believe it. They’ll go hunting for monsters and bandit kings.” He grimaced. “It’s what they want. It’s what I wanted when I was their age.”

  Then, he surprised me again. “You’re scared.” His voice was soft. Those huge arms tightened around me, not quite hurting as they squeezed me against his chest. “You don’t come from a warrior people. That’s fine by me. I hope you never need to learn to kill.”

  My eyes stung with tears. What was wrong with this guy? Why wasn’t he selfish and mean? It was this place. I’d really, actually been tempted by his offer, but there was no way I could be one of these people. I didn’t belong here.

  “The child is here. That might be for the best,” a man said from the open doors. Nall. Eric’s father, Nall.

  I rubbed my eyes on Magnus’s sleeve and glared at Nall and snapped, “Mary.”

  “Treat her like family, Nall, and she’ll treat you like family. Down to the kicking.” Magnus knew me already, way too well.

  “I’d like her to try something,” Nall told him, walking up to the bench.

  “Then ask her.” The old guy’s tone was getting a lot more serious. I looked up, and found a frown lurking in that obscuring beard.

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” Nall apologized to me directly. “I’m worried. Can you forgive me, and take three stones from this bag, then lay them on the table?”

  I was willing to cut him a little slack. “I’ll meet you halfway. No, I don’t forgive you, but I’ll do the stone thing if you think it’s important.”

  He did have a bag, an old, battered bag of thick cloth. Faded lines and bits of gold string suggested it had been embroidered once, about a million years ago. I reached into the top of it, and pulled out three flat rock chips and laid them down on the table with the carved symbols upright.

  Magnus scowled. “Eihwaz, Issa, and Uruz, and she laid them all sideways. I don’t know that combination, but it looks bad.”

  The stones really must have bothered him. The old guy’s arms started to tighten around me. I wasn’t having any of it this time. I started to twist and push back, until Nall translated, “It means ‘wolf.’“ Then, I froze.

  “Maybe we should arm the villagers. They must be some nasty wolves if they show up on the rune stones for this girl.” Magnus’s voice had gotten grim and businesslike, but it still didn’t match Nall’s bleak expression.

  Instead of agreeing or arguing, Nall scooped the stones back into the bag, stirred it with his fingers, and then held out the bag. “Again, please, Mary.”

  That shocked Magnus. “You don’t ask the stones a second time, Nall.”

  I shoved my hand into the bag, mixed them up some more, and pulled out three.

  I opened my hand. The same three stones.

  “The runes repeated themselves.” Magnus was stating the obvious, but he seemed stunned by it. Then, his arms did tighten, lifting me out of the chair and cradling me to his chest. The arms curled around under my knees and behind my shoulders, and I felt even smaller than usual as they closed over me tightly. “We owe her hospitality, Nall. We’ll guard Mary as if she were family.”

  “I want to guard her, Magnus. It’s not that simple,” Nall answered. He beckoned with one hand as he walked out the door. Magnus followed, with me bouncing in his arms. I tried to twist out of his grip, but I couldn’t move at all.

  “Look up at the stars,” Nall instructed.

  “I’m not trained in the lore,” Magnus argued impatiently as he tilted his head back and scanned the sky. “I don’t know what I’m—there’s a new star in Fenris. How can that happen?”

  “I threw the bones over our guest out of curiosity,” Nall recounted, his voice flat and calm, all emotion hidden. “An old wolf skull fell off a shelf into the middle of them. Then, I tried the runes. Then, on the way here I saw the sky.”

  Magnus loosened his grip so that he could look down into my face. “Do you know what this means, Mary? Whatever it is, we’ll protect you from it.”

  “You can’t. All right? You can’t.” I hadn’t wanted to stay here anyway. I needed to remember that. I squirmed in his arms until he let me drop back onto my feet. Bitterness gnawed at my stomach, but I told them the truth. “The Wolf is coming for me. You can’t stop him. He’s not like a normal wolf. He tears other monsters apart, and he’s tricky, and he promised he’d never give up.”

  “I’m tricky, too,” Magnus insisted, cold as ice now.

  Nall cut him off before he could say more. “This is destiny, Magnus. This wolf isn’t at our doorstep, but he fills her future. This is fated. We can’t stop it from getting to her.”

  “Then we’ll die trying,” Magnus answered.

  I took a quick step sideways out of his reach as he tried to lay his hand on my shoulder.

  “No, you won’t.” I felt even more tired than I sounded saying this. “I’ll run away first.”

  “There’s a way round any fate. Especially for a Midgarder,” Magnus insisted, his fists clenched with sudden passion as he turned back to Nalls. Nalls wasn’t a small man, but Magnus loomed over him like a bear. The old man didn’t look old anymore. He just looked big, and like he was about to hit somebody.

  “We can’t cast around blindly for it,” Nall argued, still with the calm that meant he was hiding how he felt, “I’m a village wise man. To untangle this destiny, we need the advice of someone who can read every thread.”

  Magnus stared at him. When he answered, it came in a bear-like growl. “I’ll take her to the Sibyl.”

  “Eric and Valdis will take her to the Sibyl,” Nall countered, “They’re heroes. You’re not anymore.”

  I took a step forward. I wouldn’t be able to reach his crotch, but
I bet if I kicked his knee hard enough, Nall wouldn’t care about the difference. Instead, Magnus’s hands closed on my shoulders and I was pulled up off the ground and hugged so tight my ribs burned.

  When the pressure let up, I wheezed for breath. “I’m not getting them killed, either. I’m leaving, okay? Nobody’s dying for me. You haven’t seen my Wolf. All I can do is run.”

  “Then the Sibyl can tell you how to get away,” Magnus conceded.

  Oh, jeez. Now he was doing the same poker face as Nall. This really hurt him. Maybe it was better than telling him I hadn’t wanted to stay anyway.

  “Fine. I’ll ask her”

  “And Eric and Valdis will guard you,” Nall put in.

  I sighed. “If I tried to leave them behind they’d just follow me.”

  These people were impossible. Good thing I was leaving.

  chewed on a hunk of leftover meat while Valdis and Eric and their folks did the instructions, and the good-byes, and the hugging. I kept myself on the other side of Valdis from her father.

  That worked just about not at all. Like they’d sent some kind of telepathic message, Valdis stepped aside and Magnus pounced on me. While my personal space was being violated and my ribs creaked, he whispered, “My daughter and Eric are young, but they’ll get you safely to the Sibyl. I promise she’ll have an answer. We’ll see each other again.”

  “No, we won’t,” I warned him when I could breathe. He was smart enough not to argue with me.

  Eric and Valdis set out, and I trailed after them. How they could tell one direction from another was beyond me. They lived in the flattest, greenest place I could imagine. I knew there were hills out there, but they weren’t big enough to show up on the horizon. I’d be seeing them soon enough. They were only a stretch of merciless boredom away.

  A good night’s sleep had done wonders for my legs, at least. They swung loose and pain free, letting me keep up with the much bigger kids. The scenery was nice, too. Okay, it was lots and lots of grass, but the place had a simple, natural charm rather than being grand and epic. Here and there a rock as big as a man would sit out on the flat meadow for no apparent reason. Gangs of sheep lurked in the distance, and a rabbit stampeded for the other side of creation every thirty seconds.

  Looking around kept me entertained for, what, ten minutes? I didn’t have a watch, but the pleasant scenery subsided in the tedium of walking. After a while, I got so desperate I asked, “What’s with the crossbow, anyway? I saw other axes and swords, but nothing like that.”

  Eric unslung it while he walked. He held the stupid thing like it was made of feathers. Oh, well. I didn’t want all the muscle that came with that strength anyway.

  “It’s not a Northern weapon. Valdis’s father captured it as loot in his youth and it sat in his smithy for years. It’s not worth anything much, but he wanted to remember what a strange weapon it was. It’s easy to fire, and if you hit, the arrow will go through steel, but you only get one shot. It came with a winding machine, and by the time it was ready to fire again the battle would be over. Then, he took it down to show me one day and I cocked it by hand. He gave it to me as a gift.”

  “What Eric’s leaving out is that we were getting desperate,” Valdis chimed in gleefully, “You’ve seen how hard he can hit with a hammer. Thor’s strength turned out to be less useful with other weapons. He blunts a regular sword or axe with one swing. If he throws an axe or a spear, it breaks into bits. He snaps regular bowstrings.”

  The heated stare he gave her turned her grin into a laugh “Oh, and his aim is terrible. At least with this, he can hit something.”

  He kept staring, and she kept grinning, and eventually he grinned, too.

  Then, things got boring again.

  By the time we stopped for lunch, the landscape had changed. We were leaving the flat grassland and seeing more rocks and moss. It still wasn’t as uneven as the spot where I’d fallen into the middle of Viking nowhere, but I could see steam plumes that suggested two more hot springs.

  “Where are we going?” I asked between lengthy attempts to chew tough salted fish.

  “We’re not sure. In the hills around here is a gorge. Apparently, you know it when you see it. Follow the gorge, and it leads to the Sibyl,” Valdis answered.

  “Who is … ?”

  “A legend by herself,” Eric filled in, “A witch. A hag. A giantess, maybe. Even the gods seek out a prophetess before any great quest so that they don’t flail around in ignorance.”

  After that, we walked and I was bored again. The changing scenery did help. The land became bewilderingly uneven, mixing huge black rocks with jagged gullies. I don’t think I ever saw the same bush twice, so I derived some entertainment from peering at things like a bright red clump of tall grass with visibly serrated leaves. The sun got low on the horizon, and we ran across the gorge.

  “This has to be it,” Valdis said for all of us.

  In the middle of this already uneven terrain, a furrow dipped into the earth, with the walls on either side going up ten or twenty feet at the tallest. The furrow ran straight and smooth, like a tunnel dug not quite below the surface.

  We followed the slope down into it, and kept walking. I was thinking the sun would go down soon and making camp would be a break from the tedium when I spotted something different ahead. A crude stone gate had been built over the middle of the tunnel. Incredibly crude. It was just three huge rectangular stones like a doorway with nothing to block it.Eric held out a hand to block me as I tried to step up and peek around him. “Stay behind me, Mary.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked. I knew I sounded a little too eager not to be bored.

  “I don’t know,” Eric answered.

  He might not know, but his other hand slid his hammer out of his belt. Valdis unbuckled her own sword, although she held it loosely at her side.

  “It means we’re going to be challenged. You can’t just visit the Sibyl whenever you want,” Valdis murmured to us.

  “Foot,” I whispered, pointing past Eric at a boot sticking out from behind a bush.

  Maybe because I’d blown his cover, the owner pushed himself up and staggered out from behind the bush. Standing right in front of the gate, the scruffy little man couldn’t block it. He was almost as skinny as me, with ragged clothing, red hair, and a beard that went everywhere. What I could see of his neck, wrists, and ankles was hairy, too. There was no way this wasn’t deliberate. He wanted to look like a scarecrow.

  He brushed stray grass off his pants and greeted us. “Hello, travelers. Let’s not pretend we don’t know why we’re here. I’ve been asked to guard this gate, and I won’t let you pass until you can beat me in three tests. If you don’t beat me, I don’t suggest trying to pass. Even for a son of Thor, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “What kind of tests?” asked Eric, sounding a lot more calm than I felt.

  This guy screamed ‘up to no good.’ So much so, that he didn’t care if we knew it.

  “The usual.” The ragged shrugged. “First the test of Strength. I take it you’ll be facing that one?”

  “A chance to test my strength against an Aesir? I’d be honored,” Eric announced.

  Geez, he was as eager as a puppy, shucking off his carrying bag and his bow, and laying down his hammer. He stepped up to the scrawny redhead and they clasped hands.

  “Ready?” asked the ragged man. Eric nodded, and before he’d finished the ragged man ballooned into a bear and fell on him.

  I’d never been this close to an angry bear. I thought Eric was big. I’d thought Magnus was huge. The bear was a bear, a giant mass of flesh and hair, bigger than both of them together. It roared, and I had trouble breathing seeing those fangs bared so close to Eric’s face. It didn’t use them. They held each other, hand in paw. I couldn’t imagine how strong that hulking thing must be, but even if his shoulders shook and his body strained to do it, Eric forced those paws up. He pushed the bear a step back, then another, and then with a lunge, threw it o
nto its back and kneeled on top of it.

  No matter how strong Eric was, he couldn’t really have pinned something that big. I guess he didn’t have to. It shrank so fast that Eric was left with hands empty, kneeling on the ground as the ragged man rolled out from under him.

  “Not bad,” the ragged man conceded, wiping bear drool from his mouth. He didn’t sound surprised. “Test of Wits to one of you girls, I take it?” Yellow-grimed eyes looked back and forth between me and Valdis.

  “Me, as you already know,” Valdis answered.

  Eric had taken his test lightly. Valdis’s eyes and voice had gone flat and suspicious.

  “Young people can be clever,” the vagabond countered. Shuffling behind his bush, he pulled out a flat, square stone and laid it out in front of Valdis. Then, he laid those stones marked with symbols on top of it. One, then a row of two, then a row of three, then a row of four. “This is a foreign game I’m fond of. It’s very simple. We take turns removing one, two, or three runes from the board. Whoever takes the last rune loses. Have you ever played before?”

  “I’ve never heard of it. That’s why you picked it.” Valdis’s voice remained stiff and wary.

  “It’s so simple that practice doesn’t help, so fair’s fair,” the ragged man replied, dismissing her suspicion with easy confidence. “I’ll start by taking one-”

  “No, you won’t,” Valdis broke in, reaching out to place her hand between his reaching fingers and the board while looking him in the eye. “You issued the challenge. I get to choose who goes first. That is a law even Odin obeys.” And with that, she took a single stone off the bottom layer.

  That shut the ragged man up. They both glared at the board. He took two pieces. She stared for a long time, and then took two more, leaving five pieces. The ragged man’s mouth twisted in disgust, but he took one and Valdis took three, and he flicked the last piece away with a finger.