After a short silence the sled swung back into its rhythm, the dogs gambolled obediently after Kjeld’s great rolling shadow, and Skarga said, “So that was why Thoddun told Ingolf to stay with us. Perhaps he shouldn’t’ve disobeyed Thoddun’s orders.”
“We’re all a bit like that,” Egil grinned. “Independent. Discipline’s not our best quality and no one wants to be cowed. But Lord Thoddun doesn’t mind. He’s not some tyrant ruler like Grimr.”
Where the coast could not be seen, it could be smelled. The scent of brine was masked by cold but it seeped relentlessly through, a kelpy scent of stale salt puddles and dead clams. Then the glimmering haze across the ice pack shifted and moved. It was from some distance that the small group of men appeared, little bobbing shadows, darker than the fading arctic night. Already nearly midday, dawn had sent up its first reflections in a dull primrose. The dogs yapped, bristling, warning off the shadowed figures.
“No worries. ‘Tis our’n,” Kjeld shouted to Skarga. Flokki was leading the full sea army north to re-join Thoddun at the castle, but four had Shifted back and crossed the pack ice to join Kjeld and their human queen. The figures grew, their hair dripping across their shoulders, feet puddling inside their boots, the salt water slowly absorbed by thick stockings. Every man grinned, excited by the change of plans.
Kjeld slowed, then stopped. Egil stopped behind him. “Well,” Egil said, “now someone else can have a go at driving these wretched dogs.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The bear approached the first shadows of the walls. His body blended white on white as he circled the castle’s southern girth. He did not walk directly towards its gates but allowed his camouflage to assure secrecy. Three days of blizzard had rarely slowed and never stopped him. He shook his coat, fur swirling in the wind, freeing the collected snow and the shards of ice crystals. His mind sought the thoughts of those transanima now close, but a huge emptiness echoed back. Then glimpses of pain, of imprisonment, and of exhaustion. He loped closer, disappearing into the stretched green shadows.
A little determined sun was rising in the east behind him. It eased the weariness across his back and struck the high tips of the ice walls with startling clarity, sudden gold on grey. But he chose invisibility and where light striped the ice, he turned away and into the dark shrouded angles. He left paw prints deep in the snow crust, and his own people could tell transanima prints from that of some wandering bear. But there was no one. No wolf wandered the boundaries and the world was quiet. Though he left marks, the bear made no sound. In utter silence he approached the ocean’s brink where it lapped the castle walls and entered into the hollow caves. The great ice sheets were broken into gaping holes wider than any seal’s blowhole, where tidal slops welcomed both entrance and fishing. They were gateways for the sea creatures, and he would use one himself.
He listened, concentrating for both thought and sound, hearing the snorting of a seal far off, the furtive snoring of a wolf within the walls, the slow stumble of a man’s drunken footsteps searching for the midden, the faint rumour of dying flame, and the continuous drip of ooze and melt. The bear’s own thoughts lay beneath a barrier far thicker and colder than the pack ice. He paced a little, sniffing the water’s edge. His nose gave him messages beyond those of eyes and ears. He could smell the last meal they had cooked in the hall, man’s food, meat from his own stores. He could smell the heaps of unwashed bodies behind the walls. Men again. There was magic too. His own transanima were inside, deep below the snows where glacial prisons kept them solitary and wretched, with heavy iron chains and shackles to keep them from Shifting. He could also smell the dead. There was fresh blood in the passages, not dried meat and animals long killed for food, but the slaughter of transanima, bodies massacred and magic spilled.
He found Grimr in his own chamber, and smelled his uneven sleep, the peculiar scent of inert transanima, the wolf dead and rotting within. It was a perfume so rank that it stretched out on the currents, and could be sensed from miles away. The bear knew exactly where his brother lay. The smell of him was denser than before. Either his own sensibilities had strengthened over the years, or the dead wolf had slumped into deeper decay. He thought both probable. The bear hissed, swinging his head away.
He would be neither seen nor heard until he was ready, but he himself could be smelled by some; certainly by his own people who would tentatively pass on the message. His scent might be caught by the wolves but he thought it unlikely amongst so many, unless he was already expected. But there was something else. It delayed him. There was a magic he recognised, the sweet scent of transanima, but a source strange to him. He loped forwards, curving his passage along the coastal ice floes to the back of the castle where the walls were shored with stone slabs and wooden beams long petrified into the permafrost below. Here the perfume that had disturbed him was stronger. He paused, inhaling. The smell was young and vibrant. It buzzed, tickling his nose.
He stood quite still and listened. Then he caught it. The thought of someone within, someone wide awake and aware, whom he had never met, who carried rich magic but had not learned to disguise his thoughts. But who could listen to another’s. The two streams of thoughts came together and clicked. The bear opened his mind. His mind was answered.
Padding to the very edge of the sea, he found the ice was thin in places, patterned in branching cracks, but his wide paws held him secure, balancing his great weight. His claws scratched at the slippery surface, a friction that stopped him sliding. He stood for a moment, looking down into the water. It was dark and dull, slapping fretfully over the floes. He saw no reflection of himself, only a pale ivory suggestion smeared across the turgid ripples. Then he plunged, submerging immediately. He opened his eyes under water, swimming slowly towards the black opening of the tunnel beyond. He did not feel the cold. The inner layer of his fur against his rich black skin remained quite dry and warm, while the longer outer layer shrugged off both water and chill. The ice closed over his head. His great paws paddled easily, making neither noise nor waves. He felt the current pass either side of him, a melodic rhythm less noticeable than any tide. He rolled, diving deep. Whatever creature it was within which had sensed his arrival, would now have no trace of him. The cold and the depth of his swim would disguise him utterly and he once more locked his thoughts beneath their usual doors.
Climbing ashore well within the castle, he waited a moment, adjusting his breathing. He did not shake his coat but allowed the water to drain, a momentary shiver dislodging it gently from the sheen of his outer fur. Now inside the castle’s shelter, his senses were more vibrantly clear. He had made some small noise hauling himself from the water, and the wet stream that he trailed was a silver echo. But such rumour would be absorbed, for there were other sounds within, louder than his own. Several wolves patrolled the corridors. The patter of their paws clicked on the stone and ice. Deep breathing, snoring, snuffling, the fortress still slept, tired from revelry, celebration and feasting. Dawn had not yet woken the humans, but the transanima were alert. Five hundred of Grimr’s men. A hundred transanima. Most of the werepeople lay in chains in the dungeons below ground. The wolves, almost all in their man skins, had taken the bedchambers above. Amongst them were the wild ones, a rank and heady scent, an uncomfortable reminder of old choices and rejected possibilities.
Grimr’s dreams were turbulent; he had begun to wake. Then there was the other.
Thoddun Shifted. He came back slowly, loosening the stiffness of his legs and shoulders. He had been three days in fur, both swimming and running hard, and it was a discomfort, however joyous in parts, to lose his manhood for so long. His heart beat slowed back into easy rhythm and he breathed deeply. The ice on his face was sharp and pleasant and he filled his lungs with it, enjoying the exhilaration of the return. He pushed his fingers through his hair and shook his head, clearing his eyes and ears. Then he stood again and listened. As a man all his senses remained to him, as alive and awake as in all his channels. He began to stro
ll quietly towards the entrance to his bedchamber, where he knew his brother lay. Thoddun, once Shifted, was armed, but did not expect to fight. He was surprised though, to remain so long unchallenged. He was not stopped until he came to his own doorway.
The boy was waiting. He was young and a little unsure. He held a sword rather too big for him and was guarding the chamber. Tall for his age, and straight, he was golden, and seemed to Thoddun exceptionally beautiful. The child was trying hard to mask his thoughts, but could not quite manage it. “I thought it must be you,” he said.
Thoddun said, “Tell your father I’m here.”
The boy stood without moving, staring back. Thoddun pushed past, flung aside the hanging furs, and strode into the room. Grimr stretched and smiled, leaning up from the bedding silks onto one elbow. He was half naked, his skin polished bronze in the light sparkling through the wall of falling water. He raised an eyebrow, looking up at the figures looming over him; Thoddun’s intense shadow and the boy behind him. “All my family together again,” Grimr said. “How nice.”
Thoddun smiled. “How optimistic of you, Grimr.”
Grimr sat, swinging his legs from the bed, tugged at one of the sealskins and slung it around his shoulders. “Well, my dear, mindful of our family experience of domestic bliss, this should prove comparatively mild. Less bloody, perhaps.”
“But bloody enough?” Thoddun sat on the bed where Grimr had left it dipped, stretching out his legs, boots still snow stained.
“That depends,” smiled Grimr, “on how much blood you would like.”
“Since I am armed, and you are not?” suggested Thoddun.
The boy had waited. Now the point of his sword hovered by Thoddun’s ear, the steel flashing as the sun escaped its clouds beyond the waterfall. “But I am,” he said.
Grimr shook his head. “Put your blade away, Knut. My brother could disarm you in a blink. Come here beside me, and meet your uncle.”
The boy reluctantly sheathed his sword and walked over to Grimr’s side. Grimr put his arm around his adopted son. He said, “Did the girl tell you that you have a nephew?” The smaller golden head came a little below Grimr’s shoulder, but the resemblance was strong. The child’s deep set eyes, heavy lidded as Grimr’s were, shone brighter blue; Grimr’s blue-grey. His nose was still a child’s, but was already narrow, straight and forceful like his father’s. His mouth was different. Softer, fuller, and pale; a youthful pout curved the lower lip.
Thoddun said, “She did. I have seen his face already clear in her mind.”
The boy stared. “How intriguing,” said Grimr. “The transanima powers you always loved to explain to me in such excruciating detail. So nothing has changed.”
“I cannot simply relinquish power,” Thoddun said quietly. “I am who I am.”
“And I see you’ve taken my slave girl to your bed,” Grimr murmured. “I can smell her here, all over your silks. Does she please you as she pleased me?”
The boy interrupted. “Who? The one you taught to fight?”
Grimr ignored his son, turning again to Thoddun. “I can smell her on you too.”
Thoddun leaned back against his own pillows. He said, “How many of my people have you killed?”
Grimr readjusted his thoughts. “I have no idea. A few, who got in my way. But a sad crew, and the leader you left little more than an eel. I took him mid-Shift. A dreary mess he left, a man’s skull rolling in bear’s blood.”
Thoddun smiled. “You’re unlikely to shock me, little brother. Don’t waste your breath trying. And remember I can read all your thoughts, as open as a whore’s legs. The boy’s thoughts too. Since you cannot disguise your own mind, naturally you’ve been unable to teach him. Why do you tell him he’s your son?”
Grimr flinched. “He is,” he said curtly. A white shadow formed around his mouth and the corners of his lips tucked down. “You may read my thoughts but you know nothing of the boy. Leave him alone.”
Thoddun grinned. “And you about to introduce me to my nephew? I thought you welcomed familial unity.”
Knut kept his silence. Grimr said abruptly, “Less of the games. You’ll give me your sword and knives now big brother, and we’ll talk policy. What bargain will you make in exchange for your life?”
“I don’t hold my life so high.” Thoddun shook his head. “It’s you, little brother, who must barter in exchange for your life, and for that of your whelp.”
The light was spun silver, and a sudden rainbow arched through the dazzle of water. The boy sighed, and turned on his heel, walking quickly away towards the far end of the chamber. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the falls. Thoddun read his mind and smiled. Grimr glared from one to the other. “Fool,” he said to Thoddun. “After all this time, you still think to intimidate me. I’ve five hundred trained warriors under my command and others coming overland from the south. There are sixty wolves, both channelled and true, including many of the wild ones. Your own feeble clutter are all held prisoner, or dead already. You are utterly outnumbered.”
The boy interrupted, swinging around to face his father. “He has his own army coming,” he said.
“Your child reads well.” Thoddun smiled again. “He’s right. In fact, I have three armies. At the moment I’m alone and outnumbered. I will not be tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Grimr sneered. “Then I won’t wait until tomorrow. I’ll kill you today.”
Thoddun leaned deeper into the pillows. He could smell her too, the perfume of Skarga’s body, her breath, sweat, and love making. It was pleasant to be back in his own bed and he eased the tension from his shoulders, breathing slow. His neck and back were sore from three days running. The bed was deliciously soft, though he knew he would not enjoy it for long. “You don’t believe me,” he smiled. “Ask your son.”
The boy glowered. “He has armies, but they won’t get here so quickly. I don’t know when. He doesn’t know when.”
Grimr shrugged. “Fool. He’s disguising his thoughts. You read only what he wants you to.”
Knut stared at Thoddun’s placid geniality. “How do you do that?” he demanded. Thoddun gazed at the boy in silence. Then the boy nodded, and in equal silence, looked eagerly back.
Grimr snarled. “Speak in minds, try and exclude me, and I’ll kill you both.”
“The boy is a Threefold,” Thoddun answered. “Did you know?”
“He’s my son,” Grimr turned away immediately. “Of course I know.”
Knut stood very still, watching avidly. “Threefold? How three?”
Thoddun spoke to Grimr. “You weren’t sure. You recognised him as transanima, but you were frightened he was inert, like yourself. Or maybe you were more frightened of him being active? He’s too young to Shift yet of course, but he’s fully alive. Doubly active.”
Knut ran forward, leaned over the bed and tugged at Thoddun’s arm. “Please, I have to know. No one’s ever told me these things. My father’s explained about the transanima, but I thought, I mean – because I can’t – Change – that I was like him. I try when I’m alone. Father stops me, when he can. I know so little. What do you mean active? Three what? Why am I too young to Shift?”
Thoddun smiled up at the boy, removing his arm from the clutching fingers. “You are a Threefold,” he said. “Bear and eagle perhaps, or eagle and wolf. I can’t yet see all your dreams. So a Threefold. The third part is obviously man, but you cannot actively achieve the Shift until you become active as a man, which means capable of fertile ejaculation. And my brother is not your father. Inert transanima cannot procreate.”
Grimr pushed the child away. He glared down at Thoddun. “By Fricco’s prick, you’ll not give my son your filth. I’ll have you locked deep and dark, and you’ll not Shift nor eat. Say goodbye to your own prick, for I’ll castrate you myself before I kill you.”
“Well,” Thoddun sighed, “the dungeon awaits. I can hear your gaoler coming now. One of the wild ones, I think. He’ll make an interesti
ng guard. But think again, little brother, about castration and torture, and think again about killing. And you’ll not slaughter one more of my people, if you value your own future. Remember this. Kill me, and you’ll lose your last chance of opening the Shift. Bargain with me, give me everything I want, which’ll be little enough for I don’t want my inheritance with the insipid human town you’ve so long feared I’d come to claim. And then, if I’m convinced of your word, remembering that I hear your thoughts just as loud, I shall teach you to resurrect your wolf.” Grimr’s hand seemed frozen, upraised and still. Thoddun turned to the boy. “Come to me later, in the dungeons,” he said, “and I’ll begin to tell you something of yourself.”
Knut looked from one man to the other. “I don’t need help. You’re my father’s enemy.” he mumbled. “I won’t come.”
Thoddun roused himself reluctantly, standing slowly, stretching. “You will,” he said. “And I am no one’s enemy. Not yet. Someone should be made accountable for Skallagrim’s slaughter, and for the others. But I returned here to reclaim my own lands and protect my people, not to make war on my brother.”
Knut shook yellow curls. “That’s the same thing.”
Thoddun smiled. “Must it be? Are you as hungry for cruelty as he is?”
Grimr had opened the door and the tall man had entered, striding towards Thoddun. Grimr said, “Take him.” The man stretched out, sword unsheathed.
Thoddun stepped back and for the first time swept out his own sword. “I will go with you,” he said quietly, “and I know the way to my own dungeons. But you will not touch me. Lay one hand on me and I will kill you.”
The guard’s face was so thickly bearded, wolf grey, that his mouth was hidden and only his eyes sparked from the coarse hair. He looked to Grimr for confirmation. “Do as he says,” Grimr nodded. “If he gives his word, he’ll keep it.”
Thoddun turned on his heel and left the room. At the doorway he looked back abruptly. “What you are thinking is not the truth,” he said directly to the boy. “Your father believes it, but it is untrue. Come to me later, and I will explain.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 65