It was, in some ways, a form of Shift. As he had with Grimr, he slowed his heartbeat, caught and held what drifted through the surface of her sleeping mind, and merged it with his. But Grimr had been unconscious of his brother’s dream entrance. Skarga saw him. In her dream she was unsurprised, since she dreamed of him so often. Thoddun eased into the concave nest her body warmed, and holding her, took her dream self and pulled her tight. She murmured into his ear. “I want you. Do you know?”
“I always know,” he whispered back. “But I won’t take you in your sleep. In a little while you’ll wake. Then I shall give what we both want.”
She cuddled close. The bed, even in the dream, was narrow. “In dreams we can do what we like,” she said. “You can take me flying.”
“Not this time.” He grinned, shaking his head. “I’m here because I heard your thoughts and felt you wanting me. I want you more. But there’s something else just as important.” His voice tickled her ear, his fingers playing amongst her curls. “Listen. This is your dream, not mine. You’re asleep, I’m awake, and I need to know if this is a way I can make contact with you in future, from a distance. You can’t hear my thoughts and you can’t hear my voice in your head when you’re awake. But you can while sleeping.”
“I see you and I hear you. Perhaps it isn’t a dream.”
“It is,” he said. “Now I’m going to tell you what you have to remember when you wake. No tricks. Just three messages. Your father’s army’s approaching fast. The recent calm weather’s helped him, and the wolf spies have told him Grimr’s successfully taken my castle, with treasure to share. Your people are rushing here, expecting a great welcome with blazing fires, feasts and rivers of ale. And your father now knows you’re here. He’ll look for you. You must not try to see him. Unless I stand at your side, you must hide from him. Is that clear?”
Even the dream Skarga sniffed. “Hiding? Alright. You think I’m pathetic and perhaps I am. Anyway, I don’t want to see him. But you don’t expect to be beside me? You’ll be inside the walls, while I’ll be outside?”
He kissed her cheek. “Not for long. Now, the second thing for you to remember, and repeat to me when you wake. Your father is my fourth cousin. His mother and mine were related. My mother was the ice bear as you know, and came from a line of strong transanima blood. Do you understand?”
She was restless, wanting him another way. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think it does. Now, the last thing. It concerns the boy Knut, who you’ve met. I should have told you before, but your mind is too open and can be read by too many. Now I can tell you he’s my son.”
She blinked. Surprise began to wake her. Thoddun held her tight as she opened her eyes and stared at him, warm in the waking delight of his unexpected embrace. “I dreamed of you, and now you’re here.” She laid her head on his shoulder. The gleam of smoking ashes shone from beyond the tent’s flap and the intermittent glow crept within.
He spoke very softly. “Come back first. Come back fully to reality and blink away the dream. Now tell me, little cub, what this dream told you.”
“Was it real then?” She put her arm around him, finger tips crawling up the coarse flax of his tunic and across his chest. “You told me my father’s coming and I have to hide from him. Then you told me we’re cousins, your mother to my grandmother. I knew something of that already. And you told me about Knut.”
Thoddun nodded. “Good. If I can enter your dreams at will and ensure your conscious memory holds everything I say, then I can extend that over time. It means I can send you mind messages from a distance, perhaps even when you’re awake.”
“And the boy Knut? Is that true?”
“It is,” he said. “But now we have other pressing matters to attend to.” His eyes glittered in the dark and his impatience was barely controlled; shape-shimmer eyes and the desire of multiple passions. His hands grasped the hems of her skirts, lifting them high, caressing the inside of her thighs. He did not undo his britches, but thrust his fingers immediately inside her. For an instant she thought he meant to hurt, but his thumb rasped along the swell of her groin, making her gasp and her back arch. “If you could read my thoughts now, my love,” he murmured, “you’d need no fires, nor furs for warmth.”
Her body was prickling with sweat, sliding like oil between her breasts and her thighs. “I can’t read your thoughts,” she whispered. “I still know what you’re thinking.”
He nuzzled her neck, his tongue and teeth across her skin. “I won’t hurt you I promise.” His hands were around her and inside her, gripping her back and buttocks, smooth across her belly and hard inside. “But you know, don’t you my sweet, when it’s bear lust that fills me. Too many days without you in my arms, and smelling you and hearing you wanting me, without being able to have you. I can still stop if I have to. But the bear finds denial hard to understand. He can be rough. Do you mind?”
She reached to the ties around his waist. “You already know my answers.”
His own fingers entwined with hers, quickly undressing himself and then her, wrenching her clothes away and throwing them aside. He swung her round suddenly, entering her from behind, forcing fast and hard and very deep. He pushed her knees up, his own legs tight beneath, and he bit into her neck, forcing her still and tight. His hands bound her across her breasts, his teeth on her neck, legs behind, imprisoning her. At first he moved quick and strong, more challenge than loving, then stopped, thrusting deeper and shuddering with climax.
Neither releasing her nor loosening his hold, his breathing strained momentarily but recovered power. Immediately he began to move again inside her, now gentle, with rhythmic sweetness. Finally he murmured to her ear, buzzing like a suckling bee. “It’s the bear’s way, like this, little human. The first peak hard and the second slow, and you with me each time. But I’ve sufficient control not to hurt you. And I like it, with your arse pressed back against my thighs. I feel the turn of your muscles and how they contract when I push. And you pulse and squeeze inside when I make you come. So again now – lazy and tantalising, just skimming the depths.”
Afterwards, his breathing very fast and hers smothered against his chest, he held her tight for a long time. His hands still wandered, teasing her nipples and smoothing the moist curls at her crotch. “This is when you smell of peace, and rest, and the sweat of pleasure,” he whispered. His voice was gruff, as if the bear’s growl tickled his throat. “I have to go, but I don’t want to leave you. I want to keep the smell of you.”
She whispered, “I probably smell of you. It’s your own smell you like.”
He chuckled. “No, it’s you, little fledgling. And if I used all of my bear’s energy now, I’d take you again.” But he made no move to arouse her further, simply holding her tight and warm against his own nakedness. He did not sleep but eventually she thought perhaps his mind had returned to the problems of his people, and the war, and his discovery of having long ago fathered a son.
“In my dream,” she murmured to his silence, “you reminded me how we’re related. Is that important? Can you make me more transanima?”
“I cannot make you what you’re not,” he replied. “But I can find what you have, and tutor it, and make it grow.”
She shook her head. “I have no talents. You told me so. You’d have known. You’d have smelled it, right at the beginning when you took me away on your ship.”
“Your boy carried the scent of transanima magic,” Thoddun said. “Yours was too small perhaps, disguised, lost in his scent on your clothes.” He laid her back, supporting himself on his elbow, head in his hand, smiling down at her. “But I’m not sure yet. You carry no channel and are utterly singular. There’s no other life inside you. But there’s some link to me which seems beyond human.” He twitched the pale curls from her forehead, and leaned down and kissed her. “But now I have to leave you again. I’m needed at the castle and I’ve promised to take food to the boy. I’ll need to fly, so I can’t take him
much, but the child’s half starving. Do you mind me discovering a son?”
“Of course I don’t mind. But he won’t want me as a mother.”
Thoddun rose and crossed the small space within the tent. He was quite naked and through the deep shadows she watched his retreating back, the elegant glide of his muscles against the stride, the curve of buttocks down to the strength of his thighs and elongated calves, the graceful ferocity of each fluid movement. He brought back the bowl of meat Erik had delivered earlier, still part filled with food. He sat again beside her and ate a little himself. “I won’t ask you to play mother,” he said, still eating. “But in time you’ll grow fond of the boy as you did with Egil, and he’ll learn to respect you first and then perhaps love you later, as I did.”
She said, “I was fond of him when – before – at Grimr’s.”
“But now what I told you about your father is more important,” Thoddun said. “If you’re still here when his army marches in, you must keep out of sight. Lodver and Kjeld have my orders and everyone is ready to protect their queen if I’m elsewhere. I’ve enough people here to annihilate every one of them, but I know how your mind works, little one, and trembles in your family’s presence. You must not approach him, or allow him to approach you.”
Skarga smiled and stretched. Her body tingled and she felt the courage of bears. “And I know you too, and what you feel about vulnerability.”
She meant him to laugh, but he frowned and stopped eating. “Will you ever forgive my people for what we are, child?” he said. “One day, remembering all of this, will you regret my destruction of your family?”
She sat up again, struggling to face him. “It’s me that regrets my own stupidity. Long ago you killed Gunulf when he tried to drown Egil, and I never regretted that. Now Egil says you’ve killed Asved. He was the worst of all and I’m glad. I hope he suffered.”
Thoddun smiled carefully. “A little – perhaps.”
“And Banke,” Skarga said. “That wasn’t you, it was Kjeld and in my own defence. And Kjeld was magnificent. I never knew he could be so grand.”
“I told him to put on a show,” he laughed, “to frighten the men I dragged onto the battlements.”
Thoddun stood again and began to dress. Skarga wriggled into the warm shape he’d left amongst the furs. She watched him tug on his britches, shrug back into his shirt and tunic and buckle his belt. She liked watching him. She said, “I’ve nothing to forgive. I think your people are wonderful. I love the way you are. You know I do. Flying, swimming. It’s exciting. It’s beautiful.”
He turned to her, frowning, pushing the bright tangles of his hair from his face, reaching for his boots and shoving his feet into the thick leather. “Of course there’s the joy and the beauty,” he sighed. “I’m teaching you the beauty. But wild beasts aren’t kind, my love, and they live without pity. I’ve warned you I have no conscience. I can weave tapestries from terror too. The orca will chase a mother whale and her new born calf across half an ocean. He’ll eventually drag the calf from her side, and still living, bite out its tongue and eat it. Then he’ll leave the corpse for the fish to scavenge and the mother to mourn, crying her sea songs back to the deeps.”
Skarga lowered her eyes. “Only for the tongue?”
Thoddun shrugged. “It’s a favourite, a delicacy.” He sat again, took the rest of the meat left on the platter, bundled it into the hem of his tunic and tucked it up into his belt. “And there’s the thrill of the hunt.” His tunic seeped meat stains. “Sailors love the dolphins,” he continued. “Sometimes a dolphin saves a shipwrecked man, and keeps him safe from sharks. Dolphins are the brightest children amongst transanima. But young male dolphins form large groups when rejected from a matriarchal pod. The gang plays together and hunts together, but they also hunt for females of their own kind, to abduct and rape, sharing her between them.”
He looked down, then bent and suddenly kissed her. He tasted of roast meat and the recent love-making. She put her arms around his neck. “But that isn’t you. You think like a man and not like an animal, you’ve told me so often. You talk about bear lust, and that is different, like you said. But animals don’t really make love, do they? Not like we do? It’s different – as them.”
He sighed and let her pull him back down onto the bed. He caressed her neck where his teeth had bitten, leaving tiny bruises. “This isn’t the best time for explanations,” he murmured. “But I must learn to answer what you ask, and teach you those things which every one of us here has known for most of our lives, but you do not.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Our channels can’t breed, can’t procreate in the animal state. But there’s the urge of every creature to mate. I’m no different. Before knowing you, I have, my love. While Shifted, as the bear, as the sea wolf, not love, but copulation. All of us do. But not as the eagle. He only mates for life. Until knowing you, that’s something I never chose to do.”
She clung to him. “But – you still -?”
He said, “Not anymore, little cub. Only you. But now I must go. I’ve no idea when I can come again. Soon I hope. In the meantime stay close, take Lodver’s advice about everything, and look to see me in your dreams.”
Skarga sighed, let him go, and sat in the dark for a very long time.
Thoddun entered his chamber directly through the falls and flew to the bedside. Knut slept. There Thoddun Shifted back to man, left the food he’d brought for the boy, bundled up some of the furs from the bed and stretched out on the ground beside the remains of the fire. The small flames were still vibrant. He closed his eyes. He wondered if he had been wise to tell Skarga so much. Whatever else he thought of her, she was still human. Then he yawned, rolled over and entered a dreamless sleep.
When he woke the fire had scattered to little more than warm ashes and he found Knut already curled in his arms. He had smelled the closeness, but had chosen not to wake. Now he smiled into the soft child’s hair, rolled the small body away, and stood. Knut blinked and sat up at once. Thoddun said, “It seems I must no longer sleep alone. I wake always with some other creature in my arms.”
Knut sniffed and rubbed the stickiness from his eyes. “You went to visit that woman?”
“And there’s always someone sniffing disapprovingly at my uncivilised behaviour.” He laughed. “Now I’m going to visit your – adopted father. He will be even more disapproving, since he considers himself the only civilised member of my family. Do you want to come?”
“You’ve got big stains on the bottom of your tunic,” noticed Knut.
“You wanted to be fed,” Thoddun pointed out pleasantly. “I flew. The eagle has no hands. But what I carry on my person returns to me intact when I Shift back to man.”
“And the food was wonderful. Now tell me something else.”
“I’ll tell you this,” said Thoddun. “If you inform your father that I come and go freely through the waterfall, he still holds sufficient power to have me ejected from this chamber. I don’t want that. Don’t tell him.”
Knut jumped up angrily. “I wouldn’t. As if I would!”
Thoddun smiled. “So don’t mention I brought you a cooked dinner last night, and wipe the meat juices from your mouth. And don’t tell him, not yet, that you’re my son.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Thoddun said, “Yet another in my arms. So rest, my dear, while I see what might be done.”
Grimr sighed, lying still and watching the shadows weave across the ceiling. “I’ve put myself in your hands. Literally, big brother. So tell me, since I cannot hear your thoughts, do you plot against me? You croon and sing. But do you also plan my death?”
They were alone in Grimr’s chamber, lying entwined like lovers on the wide fur covered bed. “Oh, I plan, I calculate, I plot,” murmured Thoddun. “But it’s you who’ll decide your own death, little brother. And now you have one day, but no more, for your men to surrender to mine. I’ll not wait for Ogot’s rabble to arrive before losing my patience.”
&nb
sp; Grimr smiled, still lying peacefully at his brother’s side with his cheek to Thoddun’s stained tunic. “Surrender? What amusing company you are, my dear.” His own clothes were embroidered in silver on eastern silk. His tunic was trimmed in beaver and held with a golden broach, his shirt collar was fastened with an ornamental gold pin, and the shirt was such fine linen that its pleatings could have been pulled through one of the amber circlets Grimr wore on his thumbs. His boots, snug over soft woollen stockings dyed green as leaf, were goatskin and turned at the ankle, their seams reinforced with the same silver thread that decorated his tunic. In his belt within sheaths of carved wood, he carried two knives, with hilts of walrus ivory. He had not removed his weapons before trusting himself to Thoddun’s arms. He seemed a complacent prince but his polished cheek lay on the old blood that stained Thoddun’s clothes, and his shoulder brushed the meat stains where Thoddun had brought food back to the boy.
Thoddun’s fingers caressed his brother’s belt, the square silver buckles that held it, and the two narrow carved scabbards thrust between. “And do you understand, little brother,” he said slowly, “how much you will change, if I bring life back to your wolf?” He closed his eyes and moved his hands to Grimr’s head, clasping either side, enclosing the brow, his fingers meeting above. He felt at once the dark sickly flavour of death and decay. “Are you prepared for the changes? Do you know how different it will be?”
“Give me the Shift,” Grimr said at once, hoarse and urgent. “I don’t care about anything else.”
Thoddun shook his head. “The wolf is still very young, far younger than you are. It has never grown. Bring it back and your needs will combine. Its youth and innocence will impinge and your nature will soften. The ugliness will fade. Do you want to become someone else?”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 78