Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “We are coming to the great slopes,” he answered her. “They lead down to the lower ground, which leads then to the floating pack-ice and the solid ocean. We have left the Nor’way and come east to the top of the world. There are caves in the rocks beneath the snows. The dogs need rest. So do you. There is a storm building and we should not be caught in the open. Neither dogs nor mortals are safe when the winter storms rage. I will take you into the caves, and you will sleep. But while you sleep, I will Change. The bear calls me. I cannot resist him here, in his own realm, where he is strong.”

  His arm was very tight around her, controlling whatever movement he expected her to make. She stayed quite still. She said, “I understand. And I’m not to be afraid.”

  “It will help me if you are not,” he said carefully. “I am no danger to you. But if you are afraid, I will smell it, and it will seem utterly tantalising and I will be unable to rest. I shall, in any case, be impelled by my own nature to leave the caves and go out to hunt. But in the storm there is little food. Returning again, with an irresistible hunger, would be, let us say - difficult, if I found you there, wrapped in the sweet scent of fear. I would need to Change again with some urgency, and that would also be – difficult. If your fear does not draw me, then we may both sleep undisturbed.”

  Skarga realised that she was holding her breath, and with great effort, breathed free. “I will try, very hard, not to be frightened,” she said. “I’m sorry if I seem timid and stupid and weak. But I’m very glad not to be a transanima.”

  She thought she heard a smile in his voice. “With all beauty there is always challenge,” he said. “I accept my life as a gift, and it is unutterably beautiful, and I also accept the challenges it brings. I pay the price gladly. Your challenge is not to be afraid while you are under my protection.”

  It was increasingly impossible to speak or hear over the bluster. Skarga sat quiet, part smothered by the bear pelt, and wondered, with more confusion than fright, what would happen and how it would happen and whether she would remain calm, and safe, and alive. For a moment she thought she heard Thoddun laugh but the wind was a wild howling gale and she snuggled, head buried, and let his heart beat steady her. It was just a little later when the sled swept in a great loop, and stopped. Ice flew. The snow was lashed, obscuring sight, but Skarga saw the shadows of the dogs through the blizzard as they halted abruptly and sank down, panting. At once Thoddun jumped from the sled and unharnessed them. Skarga, bereft of the warmth of his body and his cloak, sat and shivered on the high bench. The dogs followed Thoddun, trotting at his heels. He turned to Skarga. “Get down. We leave the sled here. There is no one to touch it.” He held out his hand, still gloved, thick hide with the fur inside against his skin, the high cuff covering his lower arm. As she reached for him, he gripped her and lifted her from the sled, holding her upright until she felt her legs strong and her feet firm. “You’ll be stiff from the long cold,” he said.

  His hand remained beneath her elbow, guiding her, and he led her to a deep triangle of darkness buried in the long white. The blizzard continued to enclose them as Skarga clambered within the shadow of the man. The dogs danced around, shaking the snow from their fur. Then, in an instant, the world altered. They were inside the rocks and the wind was shut out. A sudden calm muted all sound. Numbed and sore, Skarga stretched her back, loosening cramped muscles, feeling the tension unwind. The space was narrow but wound inwards, cutting past an angle that closed off the entrance. Utter blackness swept in, excluding the last draught of wind. “Stay here,” Thoddun’s voice, though she could barely see him, “I’m taking the dogs deeper in.” Within minutes he was back. “Come here,” he said softly.

  His shape was a deeper shadow within shadows and she saw the glint of his eyes. “Should I?” she said into the darkness.

  “Frightened again?” he chided her. “Don’t be a fool, and come here.”

  She went to him. “I’m not afraid. I thought I was being sensible.”

  “Being with me at all is not sensible,” he said, taking her arm. “But now it’s time for you to sleep, and for me to rest in my own way. I’ll leave you my cloak for warmth. You’ll be quite safe.” He sat, pulling her down beside him. She curled on the hard stone ground and he wrapped the white fur across her. The great weight of it was as comforting as the sweetest caress. “Sleep deep,” he said, and she felt him move away.

  Desperately tired, the sleep that came, came instantly. Exhaustion removed her puzzled concern, replaced with one dizzying drift into slumber. For a moment she felt hot breath steady across her face, and the ultimate warmth of complete safety.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Skarga woke three times during the long dark.

  The first time she was immediately aware of the giant at her back, the sense of it filling all her consciousness, the breathing immensity of fur against her, the rise and fall of its gentle dreaming and the smooth soft delight of its massive presence. She could see nothing, it was too dark, but she could hear, and in the silent night each little sound vibrated and seemed louder. She could hear the pounding heartbeat drumming below her ears; echoing a little within the rock chill. She could hear the steady breathing, deep and heavy and strong; a whole breathing world of it. She could smell the creature’s muskiness and its heat. Skarga knew exactly what was there. Unafraid, she moved close into the white fur of the cloak and the greater white fur of the beast.

  The second time she woke, she was quite alone.

  The third time, there was the man. Thoddun was sitting watching her, leaning back against the rock wall, one leg stretched out, the other bent, the knee supporting his forearm. He was holding a small torch, fire and shadows flickering in the dance of draughts, bat shapes scampering golden and scarlet along the rough stone walls.

  Skarga sat up with a jerk. The flame gave little heat but the red light was welcoming. “You’ve been waiting for me?” she said. “Is it late?”

  He continued to watch her with something like curiosity. His eyes reflected a glittering intensity, but his voice was lazy. He was somehow different. “It is never late in my world.” His voice grated, as though his throat found pronunciation unnatural. The consonants slurred. “Time has no meaning,” he said. “There is urgency, or there is no urgency. Now there is no urgency. Your sense of time is irrelevant.”

  Skarga said, “Don’t you ever get impatient?”

  “If I am impatient,” he said, “I move. I act.”

  “Were you impatient last night? I woke up and you were gone.” She did not mention the other time she’d woken, when he had not gone.

  “The answers to your questions, if I decide to give you any, will depend on where I am and who I am.” The torchlight lit his frown. “The man will speak of time. But here in the great northern darkness, the man in me is not so strong, and you will do better neither to pry nor to insist.”

  Skarga immediately relinquished her next question. She nodded. “I understand.”

  “Your frequent claims to understanding,” said Thoddun, “are inflated.” He stood, slowly unbending, and abruptly reached down his hand to her. “However, as you would say, it is time to leave.”

  She took his hand. Ungloved, she was aware of the heat of his palm and the threatening strength of his fingers. She imagined the massive paw of the bear, and then shut her mind, because she knew he would read it. The frown smoothed and Thoddun laughed, sounding more like himself again. “The dogs are already outside,” he said. “And they share your sense of time and are impatient.”

  She pulled her wolf pelt around her shoulders and handed the bearskin back. Thoddun smiled, and encouraged, she risked another question. “Are they only dogs then?” she said. “Not – anything else?”

  His frown reasserted. “Transanima? I would not harness and drive my own people. You take your own kind as slaves, but even you do not rope and ride them.” He paused a moment, and shrugged. “When we wish, we can inspire and lead the animals. We share intuition. I can en
ter the shallows of their minds, as I do with you.” He regarded her as she stood in the pool of light from his torch. “With little previous curiosity regarding humanity,” he continued, “I never explored the possibilities of human intuition until I used it to lead you into my ocean. Your reaction was not entirely dishonourable.”

  “I’ve offended you.” Skarga stared down at her toes. “Sometimes you answer my questions and sometimes you don’t, and you say I’m stupid and can’t be expected to know anything at all and then you get annoyed because I don’t know something, which I couldn’t know, because you refused to tell me.”

  He paused, then said, “Amongst the transanima but also amongst the animals of many kinds, wordless understanding and the reading of intention directly from the mind, is utterly normal. Does that answer you?”

  Skarga shivered. “No. Although I hesitate to admit it. You’ll say I’m too stupid.”

  Thoddun led her in silence out from the cave’s shelter into the sudden sharp freeze. He held the torch high within its own aura, almost extinguished in the sudden openness. She was wondering how dangerous his anger might be, when he said suddenly, “It seems you consider yourself insulted. And you believe your stupidity to be my fault? An interesting hypothesis. Yet I told you I found your behaviour honourable. Is that an insult?”

  “The way you said it, it was,” said Skarga crossly. “You’re contemptuous and patronising, as if I was a beetle you just noticed under your foot and decided not to squash until later.”

  They had come out into the vast white and it was still snowing. The drift of falling mist floated unhurried, the darkness spangled by snow flutter. The little torch was extinguished with a damp hiss and Thoddun threw the scorched faggots away. “I rarely notice beetles at all,” he said, “though I’ve eaten them sometimes. I can’t ever remember conversing with one. Now, climb up.”

  The five dogs were stretched on the ground, already harnessed to the sled. Carved with a high bar at the front, low sides and a well worn bench, the sled looked very old. The treads were fine metal bladed. Skarga had never seen one like it. Thoddun sat beside her, taking the reins. The dogs were barking, straining against their harness, and the sled sprang forwards. The previous day’s storm had dissipated but the gentle snow turned to gust, cut by speed. Thoddun was silent for some time. When he finally spoke, his words were muffled by the cold. “Although you feel belittled,” he said, gazing thoughtfully into the endless whipped white ahead, “perhaps you should be aware that I am here entirely for your protection. If I did not consider myself responsible for your safety, I would not even have remembered you when the tunnels collapsed. I had other more important concerns, which I abandoned, because of you. But I cannot always be singular in my intentions, and am not always as – human – as you might find comfortable.”

  Skarga sniffed. “You’re telling me I’m a nuisance.”

  He shrugged. “Of course you are. As the sea eagle, I’d see you as a shadow and a passing irrelevance. I would ignore you utterly. The sea-wolf might notice you, but only if very hungry, with no other more appetising creature on the horizon. The sea bear would track you and feed on you. You would be a small but acceptable meal, easily hunted and therefore convenient.” Thoddun loosened the reins, cracking them like a sudden snap of wind. The dogs quickened. “But as a man,” he continued, “even though you are not my woman, I hold myself bound to you. Because I saved your life and took you as my guest, and because the boy cares for you, I accept responsibility for your safety. That is all. Do not expect more of me. You are indeed the beetle beneath my foot, but I’ll not bring down the boot nor squash you. Be thankful.”

  Skarga sat very still and tried not to sniff. At least he could not accuse her of being afraid for she would, at that moment, have liked to hit him very hard.

  “Unwise,” Thoddun interrupted her thoughts. “I might feel less hospitable and certainly less duty bound to a female who behaves like a capricious brat.”

  The cold and the tension and the strange drifting magic were bitter partners and escape from one danger seemed inevitably to throw her into the clutches of another. Skarga lost her temper. “If I’m such a horribly unwelcome and insignificant burden,” she said, “then you might as well stop being so damn dutiful. Your sense of responsibility isn’t my fault and I never asked you to save my life. You admitted you only did it for Egil, not for me, and I was doing alright before you made me fall into your horrible tunnels.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Thoddun. “You were utterly lost and would have been dead of starvation and exposure within one turn of the sun. Grimr was tracking you closely and would have taken you easily, had you managed to survive the following night. I daresay he gave some indication of what he had planned after your recapture. Your death would probably have seemed preferable. I therefore saved you both from the elements and from the unpleasant refinements of your enemy. The fact that you didn’t ask me to do so, is due simply to the fact that you had no idea I was nearby. Your self-justification is not only absurd but untruthful. I might also remind you not to be childish. Besides, my tunnels aren’t horrible at all. They’re singularly beautiful.”

  Skarga stiffened and the sled trembled. “Since I’m stupid and a liar, and my life is so thoroughly valueless, I wish you’d stop saving it,” she said. “In fact, you might as well eat me after all, and I just hope I make you sick.”

  This time he laughed. “I imagine you’d cause a deal of indigestion. I think I’ll keep you for some other more mundane purpose.”

  “What purpose?” Skarga glared up at him. “You sound as bad as Grimr. You’re rude and insufferable. If my company’s that bad, then drop me off. I’ll walk.”

  “If you continue raising your voice and disturbing the dogs, you’ll unbalance the sled, and I shall do just that,” said Thoddun. “As for being as bad as Grimr, no doubt I am. Your opinion, however, doesn’t interest me in the least. But the persistent irritation of your presence is of some interest, and since I’m expected to tolerate it, I shall now impose a general silence. I’ll be able to read the undercurrent of mutterings and complaints which your mind will now drag from its sullen depths, so you can be satisfied that I’ve no misconceptions as to your feelings. But we will say nothing more while I concentrate on remaining suitably human.”

  Skarga opened her mouth, and shut it again. Ordered to silence, she wanted to speak. But she thought it inadvisable. She also felt slightly ashamed of herself. She sat very still and perfectly quiet and wondered whether the immediate future held imminent danger or only embarrassed discomfort. The snow deepened and became thicker and heavier until once again the blackness of the long night was muffled into a confusion of swirling ice crystals. The vast horizon had been a hint of pale sliced through the black, but now disappeared within the shrouding whispers. The snow swallowed perspective and speed and distance. There were no contrasts, just the whirling, enwrapping freeze. Skarga pulled her wolf pelt tight, gripped between her fingers, numb even within her gloves. The snow settled on her nose and eyelashes and tingled against her lips. The felted goat hair cloak she’d worn when leaving Grimr’s hall was left behind in the ice tunnels, and her wolfskin cloak had no hood.

  Abruptly, as he had the day before, Thoddun reached out and flung the width of his own bearskin around her shoulders, pulling her closer. He said nothing, but she accepted the hugely glorious warmth with a sigh and snuggled gratefully against him, tight to the strength of moving muscle and the flex of his arms bracing her as he guided the dogs and controlled their speed. She laid her cheek against his heartbeat and closed her eyes.

  Through the long changeless monotony of the miles, Skarga finally slept. The world became small within the dark embrace of the bearskin, and the motion soothed her. Peeping out, the world was hardly larger, enclosed by the snow billowing towards her out of the black. It was not until they stopped that she jerked awake and sat up, confused. The sled stood, banked by snow, the dogs knee deep and panting. Thoddun leapt down and
unharnessed them, releasing them into the night with a word. He returned then to stand looking up at Skarga, and she saw his smile. “Perhaps you aren’t such a bad cub,” he said. “At least you’re trying to be less annoying. Perhaps I won’t eat you after all.”

  Skarga rubbed her eyes. “Have we arrived?”

  He shook his head, all golden snow spun tangles. “Not in the sense of being at any one place in particular.”

  His dismount chilled her, depriving her of both his bearskin and his body. “I think I was asleep. I woke up in your lap. I’m sorry. Did I snore? Did I make you uncomfortable?”

  He laughed. “From provocation to meek forbearance! How unexpected.” He held up both arms, hands thick gloved, inviting her. “We must stop for a while, the dogs are hungry. You’ll do better to shelter down here instead of sitting up there in the open. Are you hungry?”

  She was starving. “A little,” she said.

  He gazed at her a moment. “Do you think you can eat raw meat?” he said.

  She remembered thinking of that once. He had read her thoughts then, and been angry. “I’ve never tried,” she said.

  He lifted her from the sled and put her down in the snow against its side, protected from the wind. Then he wrapped her in his cloak. He seemed quite unaffected by the increasing cold. “Keep your skirts away from the damp or you’ll be frozen to the ground,” he said, “and stamp your feet if they feel numb. I can make fire under some circumstances but not without fuel, so even if I catch food, I won’t be able to cook it.”

  Skarga swallowed. “You’re going to hunt?”

  “I’ve already sent the dogs to look for seals on the ice floes,” he answered. “They can’t run forever with empty bellies. Stay here and don’t move for any reason. Three steps from the sled and you’d be lost. I’m unlikely to return soon.”