“Certainly not,” lied Skarga. “But I don’t want them to pity me either.”
Not knowing when she might have another opportunity, she now wore amethyst silk over a soft creamy wool shift, neat pleated, and an undershift of fleece, cuffs worn long over reinforced driving gloves, high collars to keep the damp from the skin. The tunic seams were bound in wool, the straps held to the shift by the two silver broaches Thoddun had given her. The heavy buckled belt and the knife were her own, and her new bow was safe behind her in the sled. She wore Asved’s wolf skin around her shoulders, across her knees was the patchwork of fox pelts, cosy as a summer sun, and a fur trimmed hood muffled her ears against the whine of the wind. The short daylight, shyly welcoming, grazed her back, but she snuggled close to Thoddun and his bearskin, bringing the greatest comfort of all.
Before the sun sank again, they were beside the sea and it was into the heaving waves beneath the pack ice that the sun set. It had hung low for just a few breaths before diving, but the light glossed the horizon for a while afterwards, part twilight, part dusk.
The sled followed the coastline. Thoddun spoke little. He listened for the sound of the waters, for threatened storms far beyond sight, for the sharp crack signifying ice too thin to support the weight of sled and dogs, for the change in the wind telling of eastern gales, or the sudden silent shrouds of inbound fog bringing blindness for hidden crevices and sudden drops. Squinting against snow glare, he looked for the change in colours showing where ice became pack ice, and where snow turned to slush. He steered the dogs from the grey sleety places and onto the purity of the thicker freeze where the older ice protected its rich blue shadows. He also watched for the tracks where Kjeld’s sled had passed, and where Flokki and the sea army had come up to land for rest and food. It was a north-easterly wind which whined at their backs and as the sun dipped, the wind chilled. Thoddun slowed the dogs and leaned towards Skarga, flinging his bearskin across her, his arm around her shoulders beneath the fur.
“It can freeze suddenly,” he murmured, “when the little sun drops. The light lingers, but when it slides too low to be seen, then spring nights turn bitter.”
Skarga nodded. She was as snuggled as charcoal in the brazier. Thoddun grinned, a mouthful of frost as the sled cut through the softer crust. “So placid? Have I tamed you at last, little cub, or are you hoping a dutiful face will help tame me?”
She shook her head within its cowl. “Anyone would think I was such a cross person, when really I’m always so meek. And you know what I have been thinking of.”
“Indeed.” He laughed again. “We are back to the problem of pissing.” He had slowed the dogs to a patient trot, now pulled sharp on the reins, the trot became a walk and the sled scraped ice and stopped. “Piss, girl, and empty your bowels, I don’t give a shit. Is that an apt thing to say?”
Skarga scowled, flung off the layers of fur and clambered down to the ground. She began to march off into the white drifts, shouting back over her shoulder. “If I’m not back soon, it means I’ve drowned.”
“But I shall never dare come to find you,” he called back, “for fear of invading your human privacy.” He climbed down himself, and wandered over to the flats where the distant horizon was etched like a scratch on bone. He stood and stared out to sea. The wind carried snow, strengthening into low flurries of snow dust. The light had almost faded into a washed wolf grey when Skarga returned. Thoddun did not turn, but remained, hands behind his back, staring into the distant gloaming. “More comfortable now, little sprat?”
She slipped her arms around his waist from behind, and he clasped her hands within his own. “There’s crackles and hisses in the air again,” she said. “And a bubbly smell, like froth popping.”
He pulled her round beside him, one arm encircling her. “It’s the bergs. There, look, far away on the open sea. One’s calving.” She watched the pale heaving mountain split its ice, crashing into tossed waters. One berg became two in a thunderous birth. Each shuddered, adjusting to a smaller life. Skarga squinted into the cold. “They look small, being so far away,” Thoddun said, “but they’d crush you like a frozen flea in straw. Do you smell that?” She nodded. Even against the wind she could smell it. “The bergs were created from the void,” he said. “When they splinter, they release the air trapped from time before time. You’re smelling the laughter of the first gods. Thor’s breath.”
He had sent the dogs to hunt. Two were back resting, stretched out beside their discarded harness. “If you want to hunt -” she said.
“No need,” he said. “We carry plenty of food. And no, my sweet, I’ve no desire to Shift. Your company’s satisfaction enough.”
Skarga smiled, pleased. “So gallant. I hope it’s true.” Habits of good living brought appetite and she unearthed bread and cheese from the supplies, sitting on the high bench to eat. The wind whistled around them, an old man wheezing through broken teeth. She chewed, silently content.
Then, quite suddenly, Thoddun said, “So I patronise you? I condescend? You said I treat you – with contempt.”
Skarga was startled and dropped her crust. “I was upset yesterday. I didn’t really mean any of it.”
“Yes you did,” Thoddun said. “After seeing your brother off cruising, when you talked yourself into being cross. I’ll admit you worried me. Humans don’t always mean what they say. But you have to mean what you think. I didn’t much like what I was reading in your mind.”
Skarga stopped eating. “It’s just that you’re all sorts of things I don’t understand yet. I’m learning to adjust. But you’re contemptuous about caring and sympathy. Sometimes you make me feel so insignificant.”
“Do I? Shouldn’t I?” She did not reply and he sighed. “Alright,” he continued abruptly. “I shall practise being sympathetic. I may not be very good at it of course. But at least I know how being raped feels. I hated it. You hated it. So tell me about Grimr and I’ll sympathise.”
Skarga sat straight and sniffed. “It’s just not – it doesn’t feel - like the right time - so suddenly, in the middle of nowhere. And I never think about him if I can help it.”
“Well, if it comes to that,” he said, “I’m not in the habit of reliving my past either. But you thought about Grimr yesterday. I reminded you of him. You thought I looked cruel.”
“Oh.” She remembered. “Well, I have moments of blindness. And anyway, you are related. Do I look like Banke?”
Thoddun smiled. “Hardly. But Grimr and I had the same mother as well as the same father. Not a placid inheritance. I know what he’s become. Perhaps I’ve inherited something too.”
She said, “I can imagine.”
He said “I doubt it,” rather curtly. “Though I was intending to offer sympathy, rather than ask for it. Do you need revelations? You can have them if you want them, but that wasn’t what I had in mind and I doubt you’d find them comforting.”
“Grimr,” said Skarga sternly changing direction, “must be more like your father than you are. I was wrong when I thought you looked like him. Only the same cheekbones. Is it a very long time since you saw him?”
“Not long enough,” said Thoddun. But something quite different had slipped into her mind, a thought long since banished, cold echoes returning like an old nightmare. Thoddun shook his head. He smiled, his arm tightening around her. “And what you’re thinking was always impossible, as I knew from the beginning.” She found it deeply disconcerting when he answered the silent thought in her head. “Grimr cannot breed,” he continued. “As an inert transanima, his seed is dormant. Besides, I know exactly when your moon-courses are. Before I ever took you to my bed, I knew. You couldn’t have been in cub.”
The realisation was a shock and Skarga sat suddenly very straight and glared at him. “That’s horribly unnerving. I don’t believe you. And I don’t want to believe you.”
He ignored her glare and kissed the tip of her nose. “A female’s cycle is the first thing a boar-bear smells when he’s attracted
. Inevitable I’m afraid. I apologise.”
“It’s like being a beetle trapped in amber,” she muttered. “Being smelled. As if I was inanimate. Like a sort of contempt.”
He had been looking down at her, holding her at arm’s length, his gaze brushing across her breasts and back up to her face. Now he pulled her tight again, rearranging the furs around her. “Is that contempt? I thought it was admiration.” He was smiling. “And had I considered you inanimate, your condition would hardly have interested me. But we are back to accusations of arrogance and lack of sympathy.”
Skarga lapsed again into his arms. “I grew up as a little girl surrounded by big brothers. They were all such bullies and they treated me like a plaything without feelings. I hated being pushed and prodded and stared at. Intimidated and gloated over.”
“A particularly female problem, I suppose,” he said. “And I admit to bruising your arms yesterday, though I hope I don’t push or prod you. I expect that’s why you have this peculiarity about going off on your own just to piss, which is singularly dangerous out here. And you’ve some damned inconvenient objections to doing other things in company too.”
“Well – of course animals do,” Skarga blushed. “But you aren’t. Like you tell me, even when you’re a bear, you’re not a bear.”
He chuckled, pulling her tight again. “Quite right, little cub, though I’m more accustomed to walking naked than you. The bear may wear thick fur, but he doesn’t feel ashamed of his genitals.”
The dogs had all returned, kicking at the snows, eager to run. Skarga frowned, suddenly realising something. “You’re teasing me – on purpose.”
“Indeed.” He released her and jumped down, reharnessing the dogs, turning the sled directly south. “So much for attempts at sympathy.” He was back beside her again. “Perhaps it’s an even more elusive skill than I’d imagined.”
“It’s supposed to come naturally.”
Thoddun snorted. “Well it doesn’t. But perhaps I pity Grimr. A childhood shared, difficulties shared, brings understanding. Not sympathy perhaps, but I know what he misses and can never have.”
The wind carried veins of ice, whipping like gravel against the sled. But Skarga’s mind had returned to memories she hated to remember. Her thoughts had been long clear of Grimr. He re-entered her thoughts only when fear or doubt for the future crept in, reminding her of the past. She had thought his inescapable cruelty and his power over her utterly banished and no longer dreaded the shadow coming to her bed or the hands that would strip off her coverings. She had, with Thoddun’s gifts of love and laughter, forgotten a great deal. Now moments trickled invasively back, again inhabiting her reluctant thoughts. She remembered the pain, and the terror, and the endless intrusive, intimidating insult. She re-lived, most unwillingly, the rapes and the lashings and the torture. She tried to hide her thoughts knowing they could be read, but was, therefore, remarkably surprised when Thoddun abruptly laughed out loud. It sounded unexpectedly bizarre, like sudden thunder though a hushed night’s snow fall.
He said, “You – bit him?”
She was disappointed knowing he’d been in her head, listening to her thoughts, seeing the things which she so wanted to forget. “Just that once. I wish I’d bitten it off. I wasn’t – courageous enough. But I wanted to hurt him, very, very much.”
“It seems you did,” Thoddun grinned.
“He nearly killed me afterwards. I suppose that’s one thing you wouldn’t blame him for.”
Thoddun stopped laughing and stared down at her in bleak amazement. “By Odin’s primary flight feathers and all Fafnir’s bloody claws,” he said, “does mind-blindness really produce such abysmal ignorance? I suppose I have to explain what I think, since you can’t see it, but in Fricco’s sweet name, why would you expect me to agree with bloody rape and blatant cruelty? Have I ever purposefully hurt you?”
Disappointed by his sudden change of mood, Skarga stared straight ahead. “When you bruised my arms yesterday. When you tried to kill me on the Sheep Islands.”
“Oh, well,” smiled Thoddun reluctantly. “Apart from that. And anyway, I told you I didn’t try to kill you. If I had, you’d have died.”
“And making me think about Grimr again, when I’ve tried so hard to forget him.” She wiped her nose on the back of her glove, and Grimr’s snarl leapt forcibly at her from the darkness of her own thoughts.
Thoddun flung down the reins with a sigh. The dogs slowed, turning their heads for guidance. The lead dog trotted back. They were all small ghosts in the quickening dark. Then Thoddun took Skarga into his arms, bearskin around them both, leaned down and kissed her. His lips were cold and crusted with snow crystals, like little melting jewels transferred from his mouth to her tongue. “Silly little cub,” he said. “It seems my efforts at sympathy have brought you no comfort at all. Now there’s a damned squall coming, and we’ll be holed up somewhere until night or longer. I’ll get us to the nearest cave, and make you a fire.” He smiled. “Then I’ll tell you stories of Loki, or Freya, or the Saxon pagani. Or shall I take you flying? Or out hunting seals with me? Or perhaps, if you wish it, I’ll confess all those miserable childhood memories of my own, to help keep yours at bay.” Releasing her, he took up the reins again and began to turn the dogs. The ice swept up beneath the sled and the change of direction flung the slap of the wind into their faces. The dogs barked.
Skarga whispered, “It’s getting worse. Are the caves nearby?”
Thoddun nodded, but turned his head from her, pulling again on the reins, and listening carefully. The dogs began to bark again. Thoddun held up one hand. “Hush, little cub. Something’s coming.”
Skarga stared, following the direction of his own gaze. He was looking up. Then through the swirling sleet she saw the dark descending shadow and heard the struggling beat of wings. Battered by blizzard and its own small force failing under the pitiless freeze, the bird collapsed, barely visible beneath the blown snow, falling more than landing upon the sled. Thoddun took it almost from the air, and embraced it, giving it at once his strength and warmth, so the streaming white weight began to melt from its soaked and bedraggled feathers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The eagle shuddered onto the sled, its claws gripping desperately at the high wooden bar. Thoddun held it gently, combing the weight of ice and snow from its feathers, one finger scratching between its eyes towards the flared and frightened nostrils. Soaking wet, exhausted and fearful, its breast quivered, its wings slumped and trailed beneath Thoddun’s hands.
“Calm, little fledgling,” murmured Thoddun. “Breathe. Take time, fill your lungs, slow your heart. I hear your message; there’s no need to strain for the Shift.”
Skarga leaned back, giving the bird space. She thought it was one of the spies Thoddun had sent out. It was lucky, she imagined, not to have been swept away.
Then the eagle began to Change. Beneath Thoddun’s careful hands, the small male body took back its shape, blending shadow with feather, the great hunched wings turning to narrow shoulders, wing tips to flexed, fidgeting fingers. The snow dripped from the dark breast as it grew, emerging through the threadbare blanket of white over the golden brown. Thoddun continued to caress the bird, talking it through its panic and into the Shift. And she saw, gradually, that it was not one of the spies at all.
It was Egil. The child reappeared in spurts, quivering hopelessly within Thoddun’s careful comfort. “Hush,” he continued to speak, his face lowered to the boy’s. “I’ve already heard from your mind everything that you need to say. Calm yourself, or your Shift will destroy you.”
Egil clung to Thoddun’s shoulders, his body forming, then fading, the feathers reappearing, then flesh merging with quills. His sharp little nose, as frozen as an icicle, twitched back to beak, then sniffed, and was a nose once more. He was crying, his eyes watering, from more than simply the cold. “They came through the tunnels,” he stuttered.
“I will deal with it,” said Thoddun calmly. “First, y
ou must slow your heart rate, or you’ll come back to the terrible emptiness.”
Now Egil was fully in his arms. “It’s going to feel terrible anyway,” he mumbled. “I almost didn’t get away. They have Erik prisoner. They have everyone prisoner. They killed Skallagrim and two of the foxes. They almost killed me.”
Thoddun brushed the soaked hair back from the boy’s forehead, and smiled into his eyes. “It will be alright now,” he said. “What you have achieved is incalculable, child. It has saved us all. Now I shall take over.”
He passed the small body to Skarga, who was reaching for him. Egil curled in close to her, and she wrapped him around with her furs. “Will you tell me?” she whispered to Thoddun, her voice snatched by the wind.
“The castle has been attacked from below,” he said briefly. “And taken. I left it under the care of a few I trusted, but brought the strongest with me. Skallagrim was weak, and so were the others, old or small and timid, and those of us who return to the wild each spring had already left. With only a scattering of wolves and human spies against us, any attack seemed unlikely, but while my armies are travelling south, already beyond the reach of my call, an attack came which I had not expected.”
“I don’t understand,” said Skarga. She was rubbing Egil’s shivering body, drying him and comforting him, pulling Thoddun’s bearskin tight around his wet shoulders. “How could my father know about the tunnels? Did the wolves lead him? And how can he have travelled so far north, when your spies saw him just two days ago, still in the vik trying the rouse the villagers?”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 63