Surprised, she said, “Plans? You mean Asved? Nothing. He’s a long way away and maybe I’ll never see him again. Not seeing him is as close to a plan as I have.”
Thoddun shook his head. “No longer a quick death? Or even a slow one?”
“I wanted that,” said Skarga, looking back into the flames. “I wanted to kill him myself, I’m not sure how, and probably he’d have killed me instead. I’m not a very good assassin. I’ve tried it before, with someone else.”
He laughed. “Myself.”
She had almost forgotten, as if that had been a different man and a different life. “I’ve never apologised for that, have I?” she said, looking up. “I’m sorry, truly. I had everything wrong. I’m glad I did such a bad job. But it wasn’t you I meant.”
“Grimr.”
“A guess? Or simply reading my thoughts?”
Thoddun was still watching her closely until, becoming shy under his intensity, she avoided his eyes. “I don’t read all your mind,” he said at last. “Or I wouldn’t need to ask questions. But those whom Grimr takes prisoner quickly learn to want him dead.”
“You know him well, don’t you?” said Skarga. “Though surely you weren’t ever his prisoner. I can’t imagine you being captured by anyone.”
“But we were talking about Asved,” Thoddun interrupted. “You wanted him dead too. Why not? I doubt the world would grieve his loss.”
The dogs all slept now, the snorts and snores of troubled dreams in unison with the spit and spark of the fire, the dark smell of the damp rock and the hissing ashes as the wind trickled up through the cave’s long entrance. “I hate Asved,” Skarga closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. “He was born about four years after me, to a different mother. He was fat and heavy but they made me carry him in a sling around my neck. I took him everywhere, looking after him, wiping his dribble, feeding him. But he always liked to hurt me, even when he was little, and he’d giggle if I cried.”
Thoddun said, “You should have killed him then. It would have been easier.”
Skarga smiled without opening her eyes. “I’m talking too much. You’re not interested in this.”
“I don’t ask questions if I’m not interested in the answers,” replied Thoddun.
“Well, none of it matters anymore,” she said. “It’s silly talking about childhood. I should have forgotten all that by now. But then, when Grimr threatened me with what would happen after he caught me, he said Asved meant to – said he wanted to – but perhaps Grimr made that up. And it didn’t happen anyway. They didn’t catch me, because of you. But Asved did kill Egil. He didn’t, but he did. That didn’t happen either but he meant it to. And he would have killed me too if father hadn’t stopped him, because of the curse. And of course, there wasn’t a curse, but he thought there was, only I don’t think Asved cared about that anyway, even if there was one, which there wasn’t.”
“Happily I know enough to translate your arguments, or lack of them,” said Thoddun. He kicked out at the smouldering logs and the fire blazed. “But it was the clarity of your intentions, not your motives, which interested me. Most men are easy enough to hate. Your reason for hating one more than another has as much to do with your own character as it has to do with his. So you’re disgusted that your brother wanted to fuck you, after you’d nursed and fed him and dragged the brat around with you as a child. Incest carries its own taboo, but it’s not so rare and doubtless Asved was more interested in humiliating you. Your memories are relevant but not integral. I ask simply what you intend to do about it.”
Skarga gulped. “You read too much of my mind. So don’t you know all the rest anyway? Without me saying it?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I repeat,” he said patiently, “had I not wanted the answer, I would not have asked the question. Presumably I must also repeat something else, being the circumstances within which I hear your thoughts. Many of the animals share an instinct, a silent understanding, being a language of thought instead of words. I have this threefold and so the surface of your mind is as open to me as the runes cut on the stones by a burial site. But your deeper thoughts, your meanings and your long memories, are all shut away. I smell your fear. I also smell your excitement, your misery, hunger and tiredness. But if you have feelings more subtle and complicated, they remain your own. I cannot see or smell them. Now, will you answer my question?”
She thought a moment and then said simply, “Yes, I want to kill Asved.”
“There is something else you should remember,” Thoddun answered, “if I am to speak to you of myself, and voice the things I’ve never before told to humans.” He looked up at her. “I am predator,” he continued softly. “The sea eagle is the greatest predator of the northern skies. Nothing will conquer the grown sea eagle except starvation, age, or storm. The orca is the greatest predator of the northern seas, and the sea bear the greatest predator of the great northern ice land. It is my nature.”
“You want to kill Asved too?” she whispered. “For Egil?”
“I have no objection,” he said. “His life is wasted on him. I will help you kill him, if that is what you want. But your brother is of less interest to me. It is my own brother that I intend to kill.”
She was startled. She said, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“At the moment, my brother lives together with your brother,” said Thoddun. Through the flames, his eyes had turned deep red, half shaded behind long lashes. “Attacking one would mean an attack on the other. Grimr knew I was close by. When he tracked you, he found me, and realised I had taken you from him. He caused the avalanche which destroyed all the southern tunnels of my underground castle. Before winter is over I will go back there, though not in any way he expects.”
Skarga stared, and drew a deep breath. “Grimr is your brother,” she said.
“We are twins,” said Thoddun.
CHAPTER FOUR
For many miles the wind merely plucked at the snow dunes, much as Skarga felt Thoddun picked into her thoughts, scattering them, lifting up the surface into tiny pennants, leaving anything deeper hidden beneath. The sky was glossed with moon aura, spreading its reflected sheen across the snow like daisies on a distant field. The calm evened the great white pasture. Only the sled’s insistent speed intensified the cold. Without vibration, it sped smooth, unchallenged, a sudden spurt of ice from the tracks, and the soundless running of the dogs. Her body was cocooned in fur, the silken caress of it against her cheeks, the strength of the man solid at her side, his hands steady on the reins, long fingers entwined in the soft leather straps, his face unreadable, his hair swept back by the speed, its golden thread disguised in the depths of night’s shadow. A sparkle, soft as tongues, of light snow from the huge blackness above, a tingle on the cheek, and gone again into the hollow vastness.
Thoddun did not speak for a long while and Skarga did not interrupt his silence. She did not think he was angry. He simply did not wish to speak to her. The easy miles concentrated his attention on the sled, the dogs, and his own inner thoughts. She was glad, this time, that she could not read those thoughts. Then, driving in from the west, the storm broke in ice splinters. The blizzard burst upon their quiet journey. The howling and snarling of the wind was more vicious than a wolf pack and far louder. Whining between the sides of the sled and whistling through the taught straps of the dog’s harness, it rattled the buckles, whipping at their coats and blinding them. The sky was black, the stars had fled into the storm and the shuddering cold was immeasurable. It turned a pearlised serenity into a brutal abuse.
Eventually Skarga yelled, “You must take your cloak back.” She had to shout, snow in her mouth, sound flung back dead into her ears. Thoddun did not answer and she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard her. She feared he might freeze, and now his health seemed more important than her own. She shouted again. “You must be so terribly cold.”
He looked down suddenly at her, grinning, whipping at the reins. The wild excitem
ent in his eyes startled her. “Terribly? No. Never cold. There is certainly nothing – in the slightest – terrible.”
His body partly sheltering her from the storm, yet she thought, until she’d yelled at him, he had completely forgotten she was there. “Isn’t this getting dangerous?” she shouted, grabbing the brief return of his attention. “Should we stop? We could get behind the sled. Or even underneath.”
Then she realised he was laughing, the sound of it merely silenced by the blizzard. “Stop? And avoid this? You want to miss it?”
She tried to answer but her voice sped out on the snow dragons, black wings, white teeth, all the glistening astonishment of shining scales and avid eyes. Thoddun had become a storm dragon himself. No bear, no sea monster, no eagle, he was a fantasy beast from the sagas he told. She cried back, “We’ll be killed. And the dogs too,” and she doubted he could hear her voice, but perhaps would hear the thought.
He couldn’t stop laughing. “How can you be frightened of something so glorious?”
And because it was all so terrifyingly impossible, she laughed too, shouting, “Because I’m human.”
He bent his head and shouted directly into her ear. “And because I’m not, I won’t let it destroy you.” Huge blanched spirals, flung up from the ground, rained down again in torrents. The dogs had slowed, heads down, eyes squeezed against the massive white barrier of the storm, battling on into the dark, snow to their haunches, their fur whipped taut back behind them. Rolling and shuddering, gale flung, the snow hurtled into eyes and mouths and noses. Skarga could not breathe and the cold cut her lungs. She clutched her furs around her neck and shoulders, afraid they’d be swept from her. Like the dogs, she tucked her head down and squeezed shut her eyes but her face felt raw and stretched, her feet quite numb, the shivering turning to paralysis.
Thoddun led them directly into the cave, guiding the dogs through the high stone arch as the sled slowed, the dogs exhausted and nervous. Into the vast blackness they stumbled until Thoddun pulled on the reins and they stopped abruptly, hanging their heads and panting. The steam of their breath clouded into thin vapour around their heads. Thoddun jumped from the sled and unharnessed them. They stood shivering, shaking the snow and ice from their coats. He moved amongst them, showered with the flying snow drops, pulling them into a tight circle, heads to tails, and then one sharp order. At once they slumped down. He moved back to Skarga. “One moment,” he said, and leaned over, looking down and around. He kicked at the ground where she could see only black shadow, and then pulled up a handful of something discarded and smelling wet and mustily stale. He cupped the mulch between his palms and breathed on it. Little blue flames peeped timid. Thoddun quickly built a good fire and the sudden light sprang. He came back to her and held out his arms. “Come on,” he laughed. “Bed time.”
She crawled into his embrace and he lifted her from the sled to the ground. The firelight was sprouting and the cave burst huge. They stood on the banks of a lake, wholly iced, pure gleaming silver under the rock. She whispered, “It is beautiful,” but she stuttered, lips numb.
“Poor little human,” he grinned and took her down, bringing her onto his lap as he lounged back against the high stone wall. He tugged off her gloves and began rubbing her, first her hands between the warmth of his palms, then her arms and shoulders. His movements were brisk and invigorating and she began to tingle. He pulled away the parcel of furs from around her, holding her tighter, still rubbing her chest and back. His hands pressed across her breasts but he neither paused nor avoided, neither embarrassed nor provocative. “Alive again?” he enquired.
Teeth still chattering, she nodded. He pulled off her boots and slung them, then tousled her hair with the smooth inner lining of the bearskin and flung up her skirts to rub down her legs, one stockinged, the other bare. He remembered and was careful of her bandaged ankle but showed no equal sensitivity towards the privacy of her body. He continued to dry and massage her, hands busy and hard from thighs to feet, thumbs probing into the stiffened bones of her knees, fingers finding each of her toes and drying the damp chill between. Where one foot was naked beneath the binding of her ankle, he examined carefully. “No black frost spots,” he said, momentarily thoughtful. “Seems safe enough. And you should be warmer now.”
Cocooned on his lap, she wriggled, relaxing each newly loosened muscle. Briskly warm, she felt the blood course like sparkles where Thoddun had worked, and her body throbbed, newly alive. Her breasts, unfamiliar with such spontaneous vigour, felt slightly bruised. He moved one hand to the back of her neck and pressed her head down against his shoulder, his arm hugging tight around her waist. She murmured, “Thank you,” hoping the unexpected arousal of his touch would stay silent in her mind.
His voice was soft in her hair and tickled her ear. “We’ll stay here until the storm passes,” he said. “You are quite safe. Sleep now.”
She woke to the smell of cooking fish and sat up at once. She was no longer tucked in his arms, but curled beside the fire while he cooked. He had been hunting again, and the Change had once more brought the deep satisfaction that she recognized as he moved easily, cheerful, looking up at her and smiling.
He fed her, breaking the white flesh into pieces for her, removing the bones with his fingertips, then bringing her water to drink. Then, while his palms were wet, he leaned over and wiped the stripes of snow tears from beneath her eyes. Finally he came beside her again, arm around her shoulders, and held her close as she ate. It was a comfort she had not expected. He did not wait for her to speak, answering her question before she voiced it. His words were slow and measured, but not reluctant.
“These are matters I have never spoken of,” he said, “not even to the transanima. But it is time perhaps, and it seems you are the person I choose, though I have not yet discovered why.”
She thought she knew, but at once he dismissed it. “You are certainly unthreatening to me, except as a burden, but so is the rest of humanity. Men are of no consequence unless they school in gangs. Women are usually irrelevant, or temporarily – useful. Food of one kind, or another.”
Skarga stiffened. The pirates of the Nor’way raided in many foreign lands. Men killed men and then took what they wanted of the women. It was the way of expansion and the tradition of battle. Even the slave markets sold fresh female flesh at a higher price than a hard working youth. But what Thoddun had once said, had mattered to her. “You told me you never raped a woman.”
“A sailor anchors in many bays and there are always women, bored and usually willing. Nor, in spite of what I said, have I ever eaten one, at least, not to my knowledge. But I will try and speak honestly, not because it will matter much to you, but because it will matter to me. If I am to tell you something of my story, it should be the truth.”
It had been a large fish but the flesh was gone and now the silky white curve of its spine and the mouth gaping gulp of its blind head lay burning on the fire. The shadows sprang huge. The dogs slept facing the far arch of the cave’s entrance, each furred body overlapping, breathing each other’s warmth. Beyond the stark outline of the sled, a silvered expanse of ice gleamed flat and vast, disappearing into the haze beyond the firelight’s reach. There was, she thought, no truth in any of it. It was all myth.
Thoddun was smiling. “You were accustomed to a smaller world but this is a better truth. Banality is always an illusion.” His fingers had cupped the side of her face, as if reminding himself of her. “My story is not banal. My mother was the she-bear of the race transanima, and she hibernated the long winter in the ice tunnels which her mate had built for her beneath his halls. There she gave birth to twins, as the ice bear does. Their mother suckled them sometimes as bear and sometimes as woman, which strengthened their spirits, and the bear milk nourished their infancy, being thicker and richer against the cold. For the children were born in human shape, as the werepeople always are.
“The male of the species is rarely a loving father and may sometimes kill his own of
fspring, but this man was many things. Principally he was the wolf, but also carried a weaker strain of the sea eagle. The eagle shrieked inside him, but was maimed, so could not fly. Its wings were crippled and when he Shifted to it, it hated its own impotence and blamed the man. As a man he was therefore unfulfilled and became cruel. He was the chieftain of his human tribe and a powerful leader but never extended his province, not daring to advertise his inhumanity. Enclosed within his own little territory, he believed his secrets secure. Only his closest jarls knew what he was. His people knew only his reputation. He was strong but my mother was the stronger. A bear may easily kill a wolf, and my father never forgot it.
“My own desire to Change was something I felt almost from birth, but my ability remained unproven until I matured. The same was true of my brother, as it is for all of us. The transanima cannot complete the Shift until first manhood. Only in dreams can they recognise their spirit guides.”
He paused and Skarga whispered, “But you told me Grimr was singular. And he told me once that he had a brother but he told me his brother was dead.”
Thoddun’s voice was so low it seemed only a breath in her hair. “He told you that? He lied, though he wishes me dead. How much did Grimr tell you of his parents?”
There was no threat in his voice, but she sensed his wariness, and his careful expectation. Skarga sighed. “That he killed them both. And why he’d killed them. That they’d loved him. But they’d loved him as no parent should – and – hurt him.”
Thoddun paused again, and the silence seemed huge until he also sighed. He continued speaking very softly. “I doubt that charming detail is something Grimr has admitted to many. It seems all my family finds you a soothing confidant.”
Skarga said, “I don’t think Grimr found me soothing. I don’t know why he told me things. And he thought I’d soon take his secrets to my grave.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 34