“I’ll vote for that,” called Karr.
“You’ve all fucking voted for it,” Thoddun informed them. “Now for the next bit of business. I’m telling you now, so there’s no argument afterwards about when or what. Fact is, I don’t intend the human to remain simply as a guest. I intend taking her as my mate. But since she’s not yet taken, no claim can yet be made against her for any shitting reason whatsoever.”
Mandegga looked up suddenly. Wolf shimmer was behind her eyes. “I’ll wait till you admit you’re fucking the bitch. Then I’ll challenge for dominance.”
Thoddun looked down at her. “What a trial you are,” he said. “All this pride and aggression. Are you permanently on heat, to fight over me like a bear over bones? I won’t bed you again, Mandegga, whatever you do or say. And I’ll not let you maul my woman. She already wears a wolf pelt and if you try to Shift now, I’ll have her wear yours. All your squabbling smells more like desperation than strength, and it’s turning my nostrils sour. So do you want to goad me into Shifting too, and see what the ice bear does to a whining she-bitch?”
Mandegga stood taller and straightened her shoulders. The threats awoke her. “You want a simpering human in your bed? One fuck, like sailors anchor off port, that’s fair enough. But to call that dominant. To breed? Will the castle take a leader who creeps between a human’s pallid legs each night?”
Thoddun laughed. “Ask them.”
A fat junior dug Karr in the ribs. “If the she-wolf wants fucking, then I’ll take her,” he said. “But I’ll fuck her senseless and she’ll not crawl alive from my bed.”
Mandegga turned, hissing. “Try and fuck me ragged? I’ll eat your prick raw and your balls roasted.”
Orm silenced her. He had been waiting, more patient than the court. Now he reached out, his hand firm against her snarl. “Quiet,” he said. “You’ve failed, bitch, as I did. Leave well alone, and keep your pride. Now move on to our final plan.”
Thoddun grinned suddenly. “I’ll announce your final putrid little plan for you.” He took a harder grasp on Skarga’s shoulders while she sat as still and quiet as the court, and looked over her head directly at Orm. “You, you blind prick, with your ears pulled and your nose twitching to the she-wolf’s arse, you planned a three-way flat-footed, beaver-paddled waddle towards your only hope of getting rid of me and claiming power for yourself. And each step of the way you so obviously expected to lose, you set up another scent trail, just to make sure.”
Orm kept grinning. Thoddun grinned back. It became a private conversation. Orm said, “My challenge still stands? Good. Your threats won’t change what I do out on the ice arena. I’m the only fucking one of my kind. I’m the giant sea serpent, never one before me, and there’ll be none after. How many bears are there? Three hundred? Four hundred? How many sea-eagles? Twenty perhaps. And the orca? Just an overgrown dolphin, with as much brain as half-down Halfdan. There’s no other bugger like me, and I’ll have my day.”
“It’ll be a short day,” smiled Thoddun.
Skallagrim interrupted and a few cheers followed. “We revered the one great serpent until you turned against us and proved the snake as worthless as any worm.”
Karr shouted, “Even the little boys bettered you at Yula. Two little boys and a raven. So much for the great snake.”
“And brave little boys they was,” said the man who have complained before about their treatment. “Should have got a reward, they should. And what did they get? Sent up to their knobbly little knees in shit.”
“Well, someone had to clear the midden,” Skallagrim pointed out. “Well overdue, it was.”
“Quiet,” ordered Flokki, “and let the lord speak.”
Thoddun looked around. “Just this,” he said. “The serpent and the bitch have been dabbling in treachery. Knowing their claims against the human were unlikely to stand, knowing any claim against me would lead to death, knowing the bitch had no valid claims against anyone, the pair of them decided on wholesale war. It’s already coming. We wait for it here. Or we go out to meet it.”
The hush was audible, a great intake of breath and a confusion of heartbeat.
“Tell them,” smiled Orm.
“Before I tell you,” Thoddun said, “let me remind you of what I’ve already said. I intend taking this human woman to my mate as dominant female within the community, and to breed on, in good time. So there’ll be no action taken against her, no hands or teeth against her body, no threats Shifted or otherwise, no damned subterfuge, ambush or malicious murmuring. Anyone wants me out, say so. I’ll take challenges from any bastard willing to face me, but they’ll not challenge my woman. Once she’s pronounced dominant, only another female can do that.”
“I will,” spat Mandegga.
Thoddun sighed. “You won’t. You’ll already be dead,” he told her abruptly. “I’ve flogged your skin from your back once. This time you’re a traitor. What sort of penalty were you expecting?”
“My lord,” said Flokki, “the men are confused. Will you tell them the rest?”
Thoddun nodded, turning back to the court. “The humans are marching against us,” he said. “The she-wolf’s roused the fools with tales of monsters, fired them with promises of heroics and dragon slayings, and all the wealth of Utgard to be won from the golden hoards in our dungeons.”
Skarga jumped. Thoddun’s hands pressed her down. She shivered, remembered the entire court would read her mind, and shook her head. It cleared nothing. The threads of fear clung. Silently and resolutely she began silently reciting to herself the saga of the giant and Audumbla’s udders. Thoddun laughed softly.
Skallagrim stood and strode from his place. He stood directly at Orm’s feet and spat in his face. “And you thought this treachery would inspire the community to take you as leader? In Thoddun’s place?”
“Yes, precisely,” said Thoddun, still laughing. “But you see, they didn’t expect their own treachery to be discovered. And they thought it would eventually be me you’d all distrust, with a human in my bed, and the daughter of your enemy forced on you as queen.”
Skarga thought she might be sick. Orm was chuckling. He’d wiped the phlegm from his face onto his shirt cuff, and looked as happy as ever he had. He caught hold of Mandegga and flung his arm around her, keeping her close.
“It’s this human woman’s family that marches full armed against us?” demanded Skallagrim.
“It is,” smiled Thoddun. “It’s her father Ogot that leads them, who also happens to be some distant cousin of mine through his own mother and mine. It’s a small township, no more than a vik, with an army the size of a spider’s web. But that’s irrelevant. Orm never expected them to succeed. He hoped to lead you all to a suitably rousing victory against them. It was simply the relationship to my woman, bringing distrust and suspicion of my complicity that he wanted, followed by his own heroics.”
Skallagrim frowned and rubbed his beard. “But my lord, you never said she was your woman before. If you understood the plan, why change her status now? She was simply a guest, and couldn’t be challenged. We’d accepted that.”
“Finally,” jeered Karr.
“Accepted, but not much believed, I imagine,” said Thoddun. “Most of you think I’ve secretly had my leg over from the beginning. So I’ll throw it in your faces, and you can do what you like about it. I’m not having suspicions and innuendo, with plotting and planning underground, and the community split between Orm and myself before war’s even declared. And there’s one more thing you need to know.” His hands were so heavy now on Skarga’s shoulders that she felt weighted down, and was exhausted. She had finished her desperate and silent recitation of Ymir and Audumbla’s saga and had started on the tale of Gretel. “This woman’s already been denounced by her father,” Thoddun continued pleasantly. “Abused and condemned as a witch by her whole family. Her father’s twice paid to have her killed. He’s already her enemy and she’ll clearly not encourage him in any aggression against her new home, whe
re she’ll have position and status. Under these circumstances, you can make your own deductions about collusion.”
Any words had to be shouted over the accumulated noise of the court baying for blood. Calls for werewolf entrails and human hearts. “We all know you too well, my lord,” bellowed Karr. “As if we’d ever believe you’d turn against us because of a woman.”
“Since most of this castle’s my own property, it’s hardly likely.” Thoddun grinned. “But there’s not every transanima has the intelligence of the bugger he channels.” Giggles and guffaws, and the court subsided, listening. Mandegga hissed, grabbing Orm’s elbow. He threw her off. “The she-wolf in her ignorance,” Thoddun continued, “has informed this minor chieftain his daughter’s held imprisoned by the monsters. He should come to rescue her, kill the dragons, make his reputation as a hero and claim the hordes of gold and silver.”
“What gold and silver?” said someone hopefully.
Thoddun smiled. “But the man won’t come to rescue his daughter,” he said. “He’ll come for the treasure and to finally rid himself of her. Her affiliation with monsters will reassure him she was cursed all along, prove his suspicions accurate, and her imminent death deserved. He’s coming because the she-wolf has whispered every lie she can think of into his ingenuous human ears.”
Flokki held up both hands. “Then I announce an end to this meeting,” he roared over the renewed surge, with everyone talking at once. “And I announce a new meeting. A war council. Led by Lord Thoddun. And the prisoners taken back to their chains.”
‘To the dungeons with them,” chuckled Skallagrim. “And let them see how much gold and silver they can find down there.”
Thoddun spoke into the tumult. The court quietened, turned, and sat again. “First you’d better decide if you want me as leader,” he said. “Asgard protect you if you choose the serpent, though I trust you’ve more sense than to follow the traitor who set the trap. But if you want me, you’ll take me as I choose to be. That means a human in my bed, and her status as dominant.”
Cheering, stamping, cries of assurance and admiration.
“Never another could take your place, lord,” yelled Karr, having leapt again on his bench. “What, vote a wolf in your place? I’d as soon have a pigeon. Or a herring.”
“You’d have taken the great golden serpent, you fools, if things had been different,” roared Orm.
Derision and jeering. “Different? Yes, if ice boiled and bed bugs talked.”
“You fuck whatever you wants, my lord Thoddun, and good luck to you. If you’ve a mind to it, then fuck every human in the Nor’way. Fuck all the Saxons and all the Sami too.”
“Come off it,” said Karr. “Who’d want to fuck the Sami? They smell of shit.”
“Whale blubber,” corrected his neighbour. “Nothing wrong with a nice snack of blubber when you’re peckish.”
“We don’t care who you takes to your bed, my lord,” said the fat junior. “Take a mangy hedgehog to your pillow, and fuck that if you says so. ‘Tis your choice my lord. Besides, it’s a pretty little human it is too.”
“You’re our leader, sir,” insisted Skallagrim. “Your business is your business. Hel, go bugger Orm if you wish.”
Thoddun grinned. The idea did not seem to appeal to him. “Swiving bastards,” Orm’s voice faded as he was dragged off. It was taking several of them to drag him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Why didn’t you warn me?” whispered Skarga. “You warned me about everything else, and not about the most important of all.”
She was crouched on the bed, staring up at him. Thoddun appeared unrepentant. “So as not to scare the shit out of you,” he said frankly. “I didn’t want you smelling mouse-ragged in front of them all. I wanted you confident. Besides, I didn’t expect all those details to come out just yet. And stop quivering, or I shall eat you.”
“My father,” she repeated. “Of all people.”
“It seems if there’s anything completely idiotic to do, your family will oblige.”
“And you’ve known since you came back – and you still didn’t tell me,” she said, shaking her head. “But you obviously meant to tell the court about claiming me as – well, you know what you said I was. Even before they knew about Orm’s plotting. Because you warned me not to believe whatever you said.”
Thoddun sat abruptly on the bed, facing Skarga and scattering cushions. “Yes. Half of them think you’re secretly mine anyway. Once the threat from the humans became common knowledge – and both Orm and Mandegga would have manipulated the telling of it – it would have created sufficient suspicion regarding me and you to set the whole damned community on its arse. You might have been murdered as a spy. If Orm and the bitch managed to stay alive long enough, they reckoned on destroying castle unity, leaving a place for the werewolves to creep in and take over under Orm, with Mandegga top dog. Very naive.”
“So you wanted it out in the open. Looking innocent.”
“I expected Orm to keep his damned stupid plots quiet until he was more in control,” nodded Thoddun. “I wanted to announce you first. Once they’d all accepted that, I’d have started the war council.”
“Or watched me thrown out in the snow.”
Thoddun smiled. “I doubt that’s what Mandegga had in mind. They’d have thrown you into the mob first. Don’t gulp. It would never have happened.”
“Are your plans spoiled, then?” she said, studying her lap.
He shook his head. “Not in the slightest. Let the bastards try so much as wagging their tails without me leading them. I’ll get Orm’s challenge out of the way first, and sort out the best way of finishing the bitch and her jarls. Then we’re off.”
Skarga stared. “Off?”
“I’ve a meeting planned with your loving family,” Thoddun laughed. “And I’m choosing the battlefield. Not here. Out there.”
“But they’ll get here first,” whispered Skarga. “It only took us five or six days.”
He shook his head. “Six days with the dogs I trained and the best sled in the north. Six days with my lead, to my directions, and at my pace. First your father has to raise his army, and convince them against all appearances to the contrary, that fighting monsters is their best way of staying alive. Then he has to arm them, feed them – damn near impossible at the end of a particularly harsh winter - stop them changing their minds and running away, and then actually set off. With your father’s organisational skills, I doubt he’ll be even close to leaving home yet. Then he’ll have to march whatever number of reluctant buggers he’s roused, all the way into the northern snows. There’s a couple of the wolf jarls stayed with him to show him the way, but Mandegga’s retinue is fairly new here too and wolves aren’t natural arctic travellers. None of them know where the pack ice is still solid or how to travel through a slow melt. Ogot has no idea how to counteract sudden storms, nor the creatures he’s likely to meet along the way. At the same time, he has to keep his men fed and confident. In fact, poor bugger will be lucky to meet up with me before next autumn. I may need to go down there and lead him myself, making sure he meets us on my choice of battlefield.”
“You keep saying us,” Skarga pointed out.
“Naturally.” Thoddun grinned. “I intend taking you with me. You’re looking forward to seeing your father and brothers again, aren’t you?”
Skarga sat quite still. She wondered if he could read her mind now, because she could not read it herself. “Am I?”
“I’ll tell you what you think,” said Thoddun without hesitation. “You’re pleased. You’re pleased because you don’t want to sit here all alone for weeks on end, wondering what’s happening, what your options are and who might be creeping up on you while I’m away. And you’re pleased because you want to see me whack the Hel out of your brothers.” He paused. “Or would you prefer me to hold them upright for you, while you indulge your own revenge?”
Skarga pulled a face. “I used to think that, especially about Asved
, though I suppose he won’t be there. He’s probably still south with Grimr. But although I’ve tried to kill someone – a couple of times – it was only in defence. And I never actually succeeded. I’ve never killed anyone at all. I’ve never even seen someone die a violent death – not close up.”
“Well, you’re about to get the first taste,” said Thoddun. “You’re expected to be present at Orm’s challenge. I’ll put you under Kjeld’s escort. You’ll have to sit ringside. It’s - expedient.”
Skarga thought about it. “I don’t want to,” she said.
“No choice in the matter,” said Thoddun, getting up but continuing to watch her reactions. “I’ve proclaimed you dominant female, or as near as damn it. You have to be there. Frankly, I’d sooner you weren’t, and for several reasons. But if you don’t watch, you’ll put the lie to being my consort. So you’re coming.”
“If I get frightened, if Orm starts winning, if he hurts you, if things go wrong.” Skarga wiped her nose on her cuff. “Everyone will smell I’m scared. It will put you off.”
“As long as you don’t start reciting all those damned dreary sagas again,” grinned Thoddun. “Especially since you get them wrong. And me a reputed skald!”
“But what if -”.
Thoddun laughed again. “What faith. He won’t, little cub. It might mean some small discomfort, but I won’t fail.”
Skarga sighed. “Even I know a little about Orm. What if he changes shape?”
Thoddun shrugged, and sat again beside her, taking her hand and absently rubbing her knuckles with his thumb. “It’s against the law. No Shifting.”
“He cheated before, against me,” said Skarga. “Couldn’t the serpent kill the bear? It’s – it’s not as if he’s a real serpent. I stamped on a snake once when I was a child, and killed it. No one could stamp on Orm.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 46