Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Almost at Skarga’s feet, Mandegga stopped, and smelled the air around her. There was no scent of fear or vulnerability but she breathed deep, crouched small, and began to Shift. She was already on all fours as the wolf face took shape over the human. The joy of it infused her but she remained avid and concentrated and careful. Her Shift was contained. It did not equally involve her different parts, but divided her, wolf and woman. Focused experience, utterly intense, controlled her. A matured transanima can do many things with her own personal climax.

  Her feet shrank into paws and her legs bristled in thickening grey fur, but her arms remained. Her woman’s hands, carefully preserved, did not Shift. More than half wolf, less than half woman, she held onto the strengths of both.

  Between stamping legs, soundless, she came at last to the chair where Skarga clung. Still Mandegga was neither heard nor felt. All around the celebration and the raucous delight swamped over her tiny scuffles and the tenuous movement of her thoughts. Still unnoticed, she paused briefly, confident, then leapt.

  Kjeld saw the sudden movement and grabbed. He grasped air, and Mandegga spat at him, woman’s tongue, wolf mouth. “If you touch me, I’ll kill her.” Her hands were already on Skarga’s neck.

  Kjeld stumbled, walrus panic swelled like a blind belly ache. He could no longer think as his mind swirled in hot red waves. He lowered his great head, neckless, ready to charge. Mandegga’s ignored him. She concentrated on only one goal. Her woman’s hands pinched around Skarga’s neck, finger tips and sharp nails piercing. But Skarga, although silenced by the choke-hold, was struggling violently. Mandegga had not expected such a vehement defence. She squeezed into the soft hollows of the human neck, her own long female thumbs powered by strength. Reaching forwards, her gums rolled back from wolf canines.

  Taken not only by surprise but while utterly absorbed in the scene beyond and below, Skarga and sensed nothing. Losing breath fast, she was unable to scream.

  The brutality of Thoddun’s fight had terrified her. Afraid to show fear, Skarga had concentrated on each detail, applauding Thoddun’s mastery, watching intently the curve of shoulder to upper arm, the fluidity of each movement, the hard erection of nipple and the flat muscled sheen of belly above the low ties of his britches. She had permitted herself to see only beauty, and skill, and the rhythm of movement. She had not been thinking of anything else, not the pain of frozen toes nor the gripping ache in her side as she clenched and twisted, following the fight. The wolf woman had leapt from beside her own crossed ankles, and surprise had overpowered her as surely as had the wolf. Now strangulation weakened her. The wolf stench disgusted her. The gaping jaws at her mouth growled low. She felt its saliva on her cheek. Then the creature was across her, pushing down on her chest.

  Skarga kicked, both feet hard to the wolf’s haunches, and grabbed at her belt where her knife hilt protruded. Shaking her head did not budge the hands around her neck, but she managed to wrench the knife free and thrust at wolf stubble and wolf belly. She kicked again and again, but the weight of the creature crushed her and felt her kick strike wide. She stabbed again. As Mandegga lurched to avoid the blade, the sudden release of her weight enabled Skarga to bend her knees high and kick up harder. Her leather toes pounded into the wolf’s body.

  Others crowded close, looking down, confused and unsure. “Bitch, the lord will flay you. Get out now.”

  Her jaws were dripping wolf saliva, but the tongue was still a woman’s and able to speak. The voice was slurred and strange, but the words were clear enough. “Come near, touch me or draw your knives, and I rip the throat from the human bitch.” Then Skarga kicked again and Mandegga retched, closed her teeth on Skarga’s neck and, completing the Shift, released both hands into wolf’s paws.

  The woman’s fingers shrank into claws. Skarga twisted, found strength and burst away from the great yellowed canine teeth. The wolf’s bite followed her. Its front paws crushed against her lungs. Skarga was dizzy. Her sight dulled. The wolf growled. Skarga recoiled and grabbed Mandegga’s hair, first in a fistful of soft female curls, then stiff wolf stubble. She tried to gouge its eyes and tore at the long ears. Its tongue was wet around her throat and the beast’s breath was the stench of rotting shit. As her consciousness waned, Skarga’s call continued silent and strong.

  Far away across the crowd, with the dying serpent writhing below its paws, the ice bear lifted its head, ears alert. Then it snarled, span around and started to run. It leapt and the crowd divided, like waves on a beach.

  Mandegga heard and turned at once, shivering, releasing Skarga. Now fully Shifted, she lowered her wolf muzzle, raising wolf haunches. Wolf fur sprang up in bristles along the curve of the spine.

  Skarga, not understanding, was thrown back, rubbing at her neck. The smears of blood felt very hot inside her collar. She was dimly conscious of people around her, the shouting and the urgency, Kjeld’s huge heaving shadow and someone trying to pull her away. She reached painfully up and began to massage the numbness back into sensation. She was wheezing but once again able to breathe, although her throat hurt and each breath was a throbbing, painful struggle. Kjeld, eyes moist with tears, crouched down beside her, knees crunching deep in the snow. His shadow encircled her and for a moment she did not know what had happened or why she was suddenly free. Not even why she was alive.

  The bear leapt on the she-wolf. Six times the size, the bear towered over it, hissing between its teeth. Then it growled, a low rumble in the back of its throat that vibrated deep through its body. The crowd struggled back, keeping its distance. The wolf cringed and yelped, then whined, immediately rolling in submission, belly up, legs curled in, tail thin, one desperate wag, then clamped, tight tucked between its hind legs. The bear snarled and held the wolf to the ice with one massive paw. The wolf whimpered, rolling the whites of its eyes. The bear snarled again, shook its head, reached down, and ripped the throat from the wolf in one great crimson strip of flying fur. The blood steamed in thin spiral sprays. The ice beneath melted into a neat dark puddle the size of an ice bear paw.

  The bear shook its head as though clearing brain and thoughts and eyes, pushed the dying carcass away with its muzzle, and, almost fastidious, stepped across. The dying canine twitched, gasping for one last inhale, but was dead at the moment it breathed out. The ravaged hole of its throat lay open, still bleeding.

  Taking no further interest in the thing it had killed, the bear bent towards the woman, now trying to rise from her chair, where she had collapsed. Nudging against her, lowering its head to hers, wide fur cheek to small human cheek, blood wet nose nuzzling her bruised neck, the bear leaned down and licked her face. Its tongue was hard and dark and very warm. Skarga clung to all the thick cold blood stained glory of its fur, both her arms flung adoring around its massive neck, and kissed its eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Half rising from her chair, Skarga clung to the bear’s great shimmering bulk. Although her breathing hurt and swallowing hurt more, she was crying desperately and that hurt most of all. The tears of relief, of subsiding shock, and of utter adoration for the magnificence of her saviour swamped her and she could not stop. The bear licked them from her cheeks and as she embraced its neck, it stretched upwards, pulling her to her feet. She buried her hands in its long silken fur and held tight as it gently lifted her again.

  She understood, paused, then climbed very carefully to the bear’s back. The dense whiteness bathed her. Her fingers disappeared into warmth. Beneath the strong outer fur, she found the heat of downiness within, the soft inner coat which was thicker and sweeter than duckling down. She laid her head against it, and breathed it.

  The bear took her across the snow slopes to the churned and bloody arena, and across towards the ice castle. Its pace was elegant and loping, neither slow nor fast, and Skarga felt herself cocooned in ambling beauty. The protection was total. Everyone moved aside for them. She heard Kjeld’s voice, “I can take her, my lord.” But the bear ignored the voice, neither slowing
nor turning aside, and simply continued on towards the castle gates.

  There the shadows reclaimed them. The ice walls, without torches, reflected nothing. The sudden darkness enclosed a seeping damp shelter away from frost and wind. The ice dry clarity of outside switched to the quick pad, pad of invisible footsteps. Skarga held tight. Beneath her thighs she felt the determination of vast inherent strength and muscles tamed but ready. The bear’s breath was deeper than a man’s, her clutching hands felt the boom of its cavernous chest, the rhythmic ripple of its walk, the power of the body beneath the dense fur. It took her directly to their room.

  Pushing inwards, past the swinging door and the looped curtains, it carried Skarga to the bedside, stopped there and bent low. She tumbled off onto the massed wool and silks, and curled there, panting, staring up at the bright black gaze regarding her intently. The bear bowed to her and lowered its bloodied muzzle. Then the man took back his shape.

  It was the mind behind the eyes first. As Thoddun shut the bear’s eyes, so his own brilliant blue awareness blinked in. The bear’s huge face faded into immediate mystery, the darkness swirled and all the vast white majesty of the body revolved into a breeze of shadows. In two breaths he was almost man again, with blood smeared across his mouth and face, thick in a crusted black line across his naked shoulder, bright blood in his shaggy golden hair. As he climbed, hands and knees onto the bed, straddling her, looming over her, she shivered, one sensation of his forearms so huge in white fur and the reaching danger of one great paw, then it was his human hand that reached for her and grasped her shoulder, every sinew of his forearm in high relief and the steel thrust of his fingers forcing her back. He leaned over her. Stripped to the waist as he had been during the fight, he smelled of sweat and blood and something else. When his mouth took her, she expected him to bite. He kissed her so intensely she felt his teeth against her lips and was pushed relentlessly downwards. His breath seemed too hot and too forceful for a man. When he released her at last, she was gasping for breath.

  It was his own vivid eyes that gazed down at her but there was something strange in them, still unshifted, and at first he seemed unable to speak. Part bear-brain holding back the man. He lifted his head and waited, allowing her to breathe just once, then bent to her again. His grasp ground into her shoulders and his strength was so overpowering that she felt almost cruelly constrained, his mouth forced hard against hers, his weight inimitable. His tongue in her mouth was fire and almost burned her throat.

  He swung her back and down but this time she flung her arms around him. Her fingers were sticky in his blood. One of his hands still held her crushed to the pillows. She imagined herself pinned by the great bear paw. His other hand began to roam, following beneath her up flung arm to the neck of her shift. He pulled, wrenching the collar open, and forced his hand inside against her skin. The worn material ripped. His fingers wrenched at the frayed edges with the impatience of impelling purposeful.

  Thoddun’s hand on her breast was hard and rough and hot. It burned her as his tongue and his breath had burned her sore throat. As if he could not remember how to be gentle, or even how to be fully man, he gripped her so tightly to him she could barely inhale and his wandering hand was steel. Fingers pulled around the swell of her breast, finding the nipple. His mouth was in her hair and across her cheek and his breath scorched her ear. His voice was slurred and for a moment she could not understand him. Then, very gruffly, he murmured, “If you’re frightened, tell me.”

  She discovered her own voice as strained as his. “Only a very little.”

  At first he held his breath. The hand that forced her down then abruptly released her. His other palm moved up, grazing over her breast, then his long fingers holding her face towards him, examining her thoughts. He looked into her eyes and seemed to sigh. “Not like this. I’d hurt you.” His grasp on her body loosened entirely and then reluctantly pulled away. Skarga felt suddenly cold. He shook his head, clearing his mind, and his hair flew into his eyes. It reminded her of the bear, shaking the bloody snow from its fur.

  “Can’t you read my thoughts anymore?” she whispered. “Can’t you tell what I want?”

  “No.” He frowned. His voice was still slurred. “It was too quick. I’m still divided. What I smell from you is confusion.”

  She floundered with a language she didn’t understand. She said, “Who’s confused? You or me?”

  He laughed, which sounded more human. “Don’t you know if you’re confused? Or are you too confused to know your own confusion? I am confused perhaps, on one sense, but it’s certainly not for the same reasons.” He paused, frowning though the smile was still deep in his eyes. Then he said, “I’m not even sure if you want me. I’ll not take you if you don’t.”

  “If wanting,” she murmured, “means what I think it means, then I want you.”

  “At the moment, it would mean hurting you.” His voice was stronger. “I can’t take you like this. I’m still – half him.” He leaned down, his face by her cheek, smelling her hair. When he spoke again, his breath tickled her ear. “This – the first time I take you – must be at least – gentle. I need to accept – a longer waiting. I won’t risk anything else until I’m entirely myself again.”

  She felt him moving away. She put her arms around him, wanting to keep him close. “I don’t understand about the Switch,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to hurt me. I just want you to stay close.”

  As he felt her hands clasping him, his own hands moved immediately, one to the back of her neck, the other to the collar of her shift. “I’m going nowhere my sweet. But I need a moment. More than a moment.” His smile was the echo of an apology. “It seems I’ve torn your clothes.” So he lay beside her, legs stretched, as close as she had wants him, with the musky smell of him and the heat of his touch and the depth of his breath cocooning her

  She tested the courage of her fingers across his naked back, exploring the taut ridges of his spine, the hollows beneath his shoulder blades and the width of his ribs, all sleek under hard muscle. She could touch the thin lines where old scars interrupted the smooth planes of his skin. One scar was a circle of raised scab, and she quickly pulled her fingertip away.

  He laughed at her. “There,” he said. “That’s where your werechild stuck his knife and tried to kill me.” He rolled over and faced her, eyes bright through the shadows. “Those,” he felt her wandering fingers, “are the marks of my father’s beatings when I was young. And here, little one,” and he captured her hand and placed it to the left side of his chest, pointing her finger into the dip between two ribs. “This is where you tried very hard to kill me yourself.”

  She wanted to smile but found arousal made her face disobedient. The steady beat of his heart was surprisingly strong beneath her palm. “I had little chance, now I’ve seen you fight. If a serpent couldn’t -”

  He blinked, frowning, as if he had forgotten. “Yes, of course.” He shook his head again. “That’s why I can’t read you properly. It’s Orm’s blood on you I’m smelling, and it’s all over me, and the bitch’s too I imagine.” He laughed. “And that I can do something about.” Pulling away from her, he sat up. The room was still dark but the ice glowed in a white translucence, catching the tumbled reflections of cascading water. Everything merged in the lightless gloom. She saw glitter only in his eyes. When he moved, it was within a suggestion of shadows. She wondered if his night vision was better than hers.

  Thoddun answered her at once, just as though she had spoken aloud. “A little. But only the orca sees well in the dark.” He paused a moment, looking searchingly at her. “You’re a brave little cub, my sweet.”

  She tried to judge his expression through the dark. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you allow me anywhere near you.”

  His voice was a murmur, though each word was clearer now, more himself. Yet before she could answer, though in fact she had no answer to offer, he stood and moved across the room. He took a bowl from th
e bench and held it out into the far wall’s splash of spray. Coming back, he put the bowl on the floor beside the bed, and returned again to the falls. There he unbuckled and dropped his belt and kicked off his boots. Leaning far out into the cascading water, he bent, lowering and rubbing his head, his arms and chest. The icy falls hurtled over and around him. Its continuous music changed a little as it danced across his back and into his eyes, as if he had altered the tune but become part of the melody himself. Finally he turned and stood a moment, looking back at her. He was dripping wet, hair hanging soaked to his shoulders, water sluicing over his body. In the sudden cold, his nipples stood hard and black. The fine dusting of blonde hair across his breast was darkened into a slick maze of trickles. His britches, the waist sodden, had slipped a little without the confining belt, and water seeped down them to his bare feet. He shook his head again, bear-like, spraying water. The stains of blood had been washed clean, but he did not bother to dry himself. Coming back to the bed, he sat, looking down at her. His britches, from the tied waist bands now low on his hips to the cords around his stockings, were still soaked and where he sat, the silks and furs turned damp and dark.

  “Less blood now. Less serpent brains.” He was grinning, dripping water from his hair and shoulders onto her knees. He shrugged. “But you know now what I am.”

  She nodded. She said, “I like what you are.”

  “You like some of what you think I am.” He was still smiling. “Originally I didn’t expect you to see the fighting. I didn’t want you present. But you were. You had to be. So you know a little more. Brutality. Violence. You’d call it cruel.”