Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Skarga said, “You don’t regret killing her?”

  Thoddun looked down at her and frowned. “Conscience? Is that what you still expect of me?”

  “No. But you’ve just said you care for them all.”

  “Alright, I’ll explain a little more,” he sighed, “but I’ll be brief, and I won’t repeat it. Call it caring, call it responsibility. Long ago when the werewoman came here, she was the only female transanima any of us had seen in a long time. She was a dominant personality as you presumably noticed, so I joined with her physically. A natural progression. We never had what you’d call a relationship. There was coupling but no friendship. Away from the bed and the feasting hall, I barely saw her and I’ve already spoken more to you in the past few days than I said to her in the two years we were mated. But that seemed natural enough to me. I don’t think like a human, my love. The disadvantage of a human conscience is not something I have nor crave. I may try to decipher the way you think, but I’ve no desire to think that way myself.”

  He had lit the candles before she woke, and two flickered small in their little iron bowls on the bench. Skarga could see their light over Thoddun’s shoulder. She concentrated on the flames, trying to shut out the thoughts she knew he’d otherwise read, and inevitably dislike. She said, “I understand. You don’t have to explain.”

  Thoddun grinned. “So stop being so damned human,” he said, “and stop thinking of the damned wolfwoman. She’s gone. I wanted her gone. I would never have allowed her into the castle when she and her damned pack came trailing back, if I hadn’t been taken by surprise. And I should never be taken by surprise. My own fault. I’d been flying with you. Remember? It distracted my hearing and my instincts, and I didn’t know she was coming until she marched through the gates. Had I been better prepared, I might have denied her entry. But her prescribed exile was up, so I kept to the law and allowed her in.”

  Skarga sniffed. “If you’d refused her, I expect she’d have just gone off and caused trouble some other way.”

  Thoddun nodded. “But without access to Orm. Without knowing you. Without pulling your father’s name and territory out of your head. Without the opportunity to aggravate me to damnation.”

  “And without you killing her.”

  “By Fricco’s prick, that’s the one good thing that came out of it,” said Thoddun. “I might have exiled her again yesterday rather than killing her had she given me the choice, though not because of affection, or caring, or conscience. The choice to exile instead of slaughter would only have been diplomatic because of the pack. But I was already Shifted, just out of the fight, with the smell of Orm’s blood very strong, and your call urgent in my ears. Killing was my first impulse, and the quicker solution. The better solution. That simple, my love. So if you expect me to regret anything - ever - you are doomed to disappointment.”

  “You have no conscience? You don’t know how to – regret?”

  He grinned, and came closer. One hand pushed down below the covers Skarga clutched to her chin, caressing over her shoulder and down across her breast. Then he bent suddenly and kissed the furrows of her forehead. His fingertips were firm around her nipple, then abruptly moved away. “I accept your humanity, little one. Do you accept my lack of it?”

  Nodding, gazing earnestly up at him, she wished he would not leave, but he had already moved back, turning, then striding towards the door. “Is it irritating?” she whispered. “Having to make me understand things a transanima would know anyway?”

  “Yes, often.” He looked back, laughing at her. “But I don’t mind. I just have to remember how little you know. And remind myself that you can’t help it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Torches had been lit along the passages, wedged into the iron wall sconces, the flames guttering in some, flaring in others. Brilliant light and deep shade played and chased, telling stories along the rock face. The smells of soot, ash and burning wood were as raucous as the light. Transanima flame – and the ice did not tumble in melt although a steady drip drip of thaw continued like a faint tapping drumbeat in the background. But many of the transanima were outside. There were preparations already advanced, needed before the freeze reclaimed the land.

  The abandoned arena was no longer deserted and where the fight had left behind it a bloodied mess of foot prints, brains and torn flesh, now there was fire. This was not the simple flicker of torch or brazier. A huge blaze spun its myriad of star-like sparks up towards the stars themselves; a crackling furnace of a thousand golds and every shade of dancing scarlet. Cinnabar and ruddy crimson, flashes of ruby and kermes, red turning to violet and gold to copper.

  The heat gathered force and the flames roared. Yet the sounds of the burning were joyful rather than threatening, although the men who stood guard at its perimeter were soulful and silent.

  Thoddun cross the snow and came amongst the men, looking into the heart of the fire. He said, “I am ready. Call the others.”

  “All of them, lord?”

  “No. It’s a choice,” Thoddun said. “But Orm was friend to many and my long-time Second. There’ll be more who choose to come than those who do not care.”

  “And the she-wolf?” It was Lodver who asked.

  The reflections of the fire swirled in a gaudy shadow-dance across the ice. This was no controlled flare within the confines of the halls, and rivulets of blushing snow now began to melt, oozing into channels. Parts of the ice cracked and the waters increased. The puddles soaked the men’s boots but no one moved.

  Thoddun paused before answering. Then he shook his head. “She was no longer dominant and had no status except as criminal. She was both the initial traitor and the final traitor. She attacked my queen. She was an exile.”

  “But she was once your queen,” Lodver said, low voiced.

  “A long time gone. I threw her from my bed and my halls. I’ll not send her, either as wolf nor as woman, to a glory never merited.”

  Lodver stepped back. “I accept your rule, lord as I always shall. I also agree. There’s no argument. But as a man, I respect tradition. Tradition would award a queen a funeral pyre of consequence, even if undeserved. Earned by status if not by behaviour, just as it awards a previous Second-in-command is honoured, although demoted and a traitor. Do we not uphold tradition?”

  “And tradition,” Thoddun smiled without malice, “awards the decision to the lord. As the lord I have decided. The she-wolf does not join the fire.”

  “Then,” called one man, “we throw the scraps to the sledge-dogs? Or leave them out on the snow for the eagles?”

  “The eagles,” Thoddun said. “Carry her out onto the higher ground where the ice cliffs rise. Leave the bloody fur spread there for the true bears and the eagles.”

  From across the arena they brought the bulk of the serpent carcass between them, carrying the weight of it with some care, though their feet slipped in the gathering thaw. Kjeld led, arms outstretched, holding the head, upper arms and dragon shoulders, with the remaining blubber flowing behind, supported by six others.

  Lodver stepped away, leaving space between himself and his lord, and the men brought the decimated body to Thoddun’s feet.

  Orm was no longer recognisable, and there was nothing of man. The head was cracked and the snout was smashed, nostrils clogged with muck from its skull, brain and flesh. The eyes were closed and the double reptile lids were swollen and bruised. The jaw, loose, hung open and to rows of serrated teeth gaped, blood stained. The forked tongue lolled, its once virulent red sagging in slimed sepia.

  As the golden coils lay slumped and motionless, one of the watching bearers hurried away to inform the rest of their people, calling those who wished to come, passing word that Orm’s funeral would commence immediately. Within moments they came, hurrying from the hall and dormitories, the corridors, the midden, the forge and the work barns, saying little but making their way one by one out into the frost-slick darkness, and beyond to the huge brilliance of the waiting py
re. A large crowd formed behind their lord, feet quiet in the slurp of ice water.

  “Will the lady come, lord?” Safn asked, stepping forward from the gathering.

  Thoddun looked up. “She will not,” he said softly.

  “But as dominant – if she is dominant –”

  “She is,” Thoddun said. “But this is the funeral of a friend, no more, since Orm’s treachery cancelled his status. And my queen has been wounded. She does not wish to come. There is no obligation.”

  Thoddun stepped away, three paces back, and stopped, looking down. Kjeld came forwards and four men behind him. They lifted Orm’s sagging dead weight once more, laying it on a large splinted sled. The sled, without fogs or shelter, was already battered from long journeying. The fat coils of the serpent tail and elongated body were squashed hard into the sled’s restrictions, Orm’s head resting high, but the feet overflowing, hanging down, claws scraping into the marshy melt beneath. When the bulk of the body crested the wooden sled, there was a silent pause. Each man travelled inwards to his own thoughts, whether he blocked them from his neighbours or did not care to do so, and openly mourned his friend. Then each present made his own personal peace with the man he once knew, and, if wished, said his own wordless goodbye.

  Then Thoddun began to chant. His voice was deep, more growl than melody, but the rhythm was compelling and merged with the star flicker and the spring of frost, flying flames and the slow breathing of a hundred waiting men.

  Thoddun chanted alone for some moments. Then he nodded and looked up. At once every other man joined him and the chanting rose from sombre to joyous. One man howled. Another bayed. But the chanting continued. Gradually a few dropped to their elbows and knees, hands in the slush and snow, and began to Shift.

  As the need to Shift insinuated and increased, and those left still chanting became fewer, so Thoddun’s voice reverberated, gaining power. The great beasts moved around him, bowing their heads and gazing at the mounting furnace. Some, almost as though they chanted with him, hissed low, or growled, making the quiet sounds of their kind. A great stag lowered its antlers, brown eyes hooded and tear filled. A shaggy brown bear rose on its hind legs, paws to its chest.

  Kjeld and Lodver, who had not Changed, came behind and stood beside Thoddun, and the three men stretched their hands to the front bar of the sled, and pushing its wooden slats through the snow, brought it closer to the fire. Then with one last heave, they stepped hard away, and the sled travelled on, bearing its burden into the flames. Sled met pyre with a raging flash and rumble, and was swallowed whole.

  The burning body was seen to melt as the snow did, turning to dripping lard instead of puddled mush, and the head toppled, disappearing into the fire’s licking golden tongues. Other flames were fingers, crawling, exploring and gathering, as the mass of Orm’s other self was reduced to the song of memory.

  Thoddun continued to chant but the music had altered once more. His voice was lighter now and the undecipherable words raced faster.

  And then he too began to Shift.

  He did not become to the bear. Other bears, huge white pacing fur, or the two shaggy browns who waited further away, watched, expecting their lord to join them.

  But Thoddun stood very tall and straight, stretching out his arms and lifting his face to the bite of the wind. His breathing quickened, his heartbeat raced. He widened the fingers of both hands and opened his eyes sharp and bright. The vivid blue eyes flickered, and turned golden like the fire. Then it seemed his feet lifted from the ground, almost hovering, as his legs condensed downwards, his clothes became shadows, and the great gloom around his body turned to a fluttering spread of feathers and the wedged white tail of the Northern Sea Eagled. He dipped his wings, looked up, took two steps aside from the crackle and spit of flame, and rose immediately into the sky.

  For one moment the black diamond silhouette swept visible against the luminescence of rising flame and gilded star, and then he was gone into the night’s darkness, another star among the stars, finally then unseen and unheard.

  The other animals began to wander, finding their own paths either back into the halls or out into the freezing wilderness.

  The pyre remained alone in its melt of puddled dais. Orm’s remains were no longer even a memory. The leaking juices had burned, the scales shrivelled and turned to ash. The fats had joined the melt and were puddled themselves, and the innards, first charred and blackened, then burst into more flame amongst the savage leaping heat.

  On into the endless night the bonfire burned until at least, attacked by freeze and the gusting wind, then by the shrinking fuel, it began to die and fade. Yet it would be a long time before it collapsed into little more than blowing soot and the charred remains of flying ashes.

  Thoddun flew on. He did not head inland, nor to the cliffs where Mandegga’s remains had been spread, flesh open and torn, for the scavengers and the hungry. He circled the coast line where the nearby shore was a faint shade beneath the ice and where sea and land were combined beneath the freeze. The sea ice stretched out many miles in thick white sheets across the ocean, building into the rich hunting grounds of the winter bears and giving invisibility and protection to the seals, already prepared to pup. Thoddun continued to fly with the exhilaration of the ice wind in his lungs and his primaries, and the wind in his eyes. Relishing the power of his flight, dipping into the warmer currents of the lower air streams just above the open ocean, then swinging back and soaring on the higher currents as frost cold as the thick ice itself, Thoddun headed out then where the waves flung their spray higher than any pyre, and thundered louder than any flame. Here the orca played, feeding in the deep, deep weed beds, or breeching amongst the rolling tides.

  But Thoddun Changed neither to sea-wolf nor to sea-bear. He continued to fly into the night, spinning as an eagle does when he fights claw to claw for a mate, or rolls the airwaves with the mate herself. But he was alone, with all the wander-lust of the transanima. Fulfilling the powers of his own being, before that very yearning must be controlled and restricted once more, when it is time to return to the physical limitations and the mental responsibilities of man.

  Swooping low, Thoddun returned at last to the halls of his people. But still as the eagle, he perched a moment on a high stony pinnacle just beyond the crystal spanning falls of the water that formed the fourth wall of his own bedchamber. And he stayed there, listening, while the cascading spray caught in his fathers like shards of ice to a rock.

  But it was not the music of the falling water which Thoddun heard. It was the soft murmuring thoughts of his woman within, curled upon his bed. So he stayed, head to one side, braced against the wind, and savoured the warmth of thought that cradled him, softer than the charm of early sunshine in a springtime dawn.

  Skarga was thinking of Thoddun, as Thoddun thought of her.

  She was awake, but dreaming. Remembering his touch, reliving his love-making, and although she spoke no words, she was singing. Skarga imagined the rasp of Thoddun’s fingertips across her breasts, the pinch around her nipples which made her gasp, and the slow tantalising crawl of his hands towards her groin. She hugged herself, thinking of his kisses. He had kissed her eyelids shut, then down in a ribbon which traced her cheek to her jaw, across to her ear, where his warm breath tickled, then to her neck before sweeping moist to the valley between her breasts. Then to her stomach, down and down to her navel where he kissed deep, and long, then to the thick curls at the secret division of her thighs.

  Thoddun sighed. His own thoughts were all of her, which is why he had come. He had thought briefly to surprise her, and parting the waters, to enter and lie with her. But he restrained himself. He had other duties and would neither delay them, nor rush his coupling. There was no need, he smiled, to hide his thoughts from the woman, yet he was accustomed always to keeping such sweet dreams locked, checking all such personal insight, for he had controlled his thoughts since a child, learning not to share his privacy with those of his kind. He w
ould not share his own delight in the woman he had so joyously discovered, nor permit others into his thoughts of the bedchamber.

  Braced against the wind, Thoddun bowed his eagle’s head, then once again stretched out his wings and flew down from the crags to the gates of his halls below. The huge wooden doors were flung open, wedged wide in the snow.

  He stood there for only a heartbeat, and then began to Shift back to man. But he took his time. As each feather hardened, solidifying into flesh, taking back its clothes, and reshaping into human form, so he smiled and stretched himself back into himself, still thinking of Skarga. He grew tall, springing upwards. His shouldered sprang apart, his legs long and firm. His hair blew golden and his eyes blinked, turning blue. The Shift both ways was always a delight if achieved without threat or pressure.

  There were other pleasantries. The horizon had grown more complicated, and more interesting. There was the yearning of love, which he had never experienced before, and which was larger than any ocean calling for the deep dive of exploration.

  There was also battle coming, and he welcomed it. But the woman who now slept curled safe in his thoughts would need far more protection than a woman of his own kind who might fight alongside him.

  Yet this was also a pleasure. To protect and nurture his mate would entirely fulfil his nature and his desires.

  But he shook his head. Fully man, he ran his fingers through his hair, pushing yellow hair from his eyes, smiled wider, and strode though the gates to re-join his waiting people.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  It was together that the wolf jarls and Ragnar, the deposed Althing elder, were brought into the great hall. The jarls clustered, one woebegone group of misery expecting their punishment; the natural path of the vanquished and leaderless. Ragnar walked first and stood apart. The jarls searched out the shadows. The criminal, once guilt was determined, could reconcile himself to the inevitable. Simple verdicts, simple resolutions. Ragnar faced Thoddun in the firelight.