Quite Contrary (11 page)

It looked like everyone was still asleep. The fire burned listlessly, throwing orange light everywhere, and the open doors showed a starry sky outside. I plodded across the room, running my fingers over coarse, splintery logs making up the wall. The furniture had all been built out of heavy wood. Everything in the room was brown, even three huge tapestries that hung on the walls. I couldn’t make sense of the endless rows of stylized armed men, but they broke up the monotony. Instead of bare, the lodge felt simple and rugged. Comfortable. It itched at the back of my neck, but no one could see me, so I smiled and fingered the crude, worn cloth of a tapestry, following it down to try to figure out where this chaotic army was going.

Tink. Tink.
At the end of the row I heard it, faint metallic sounds. Rhythmic, but not even. A little hall branched off this end of the main room, and at the end, more firelight shone around a hide curtain. I crept down to the curtain and peeked through it.

This room took up the end of the building, and I knew that because doors stood open on the other side, spilling firelight out onto the gray nighttime grass. Wow. That big fire pit, the block of metal in front of it, the iron tools all over the walls—this was a real old-fashioned smithy. A shelf full of fat, crude iron nails caught my eye. Pretty cool.

A big guy like Magnus fit the role of blacksmith perfectly. He looked right at home in a room full of big hammers and twisted metal braces. He just wasn’t doing anything blacksmithy. Bent over a broad table, the massive old man instead held a tiny little hammer and chisel, chipping away at something that gleamed. He moved delicately, and the contrast was also pretty cool.

I didn’t want to relax like this, but oh well. I edged up to him and peered over the tabletop at what he was working on. It turned out to be a gold disk, like a large coin. On it, a beast man like the thing we killed today twisted backwards with two arrows and a sword sticking out of it. As I watched, the old man set the chisel against the disk and smacked it, then did the same thing a fraction of an inch away, then did it a third time. He left three little lines like a tuft of rough hair on the monster’s tail.

“It’s a present. When Eric brings me his bow tomorrow, while I check it for damage, I’ll fit this onto the side,” he explained, his voice hushed and rumbling.

Of course he’d seen me. He’d just played it so cool I hadn’t been able to tell. “I like it,” I admitted, “You do this as well as the blacksmithing?”

“No. I work with iron as well as doing this. It’s not a task of joy like making something beautiful, but the village needs iron. When traders come to Peaceful Meadow, the wealth I bring us with rings and brooches buys us much of what we need. Outside our village, men have forgotten the mighty deeds of Magnus Liefsson, but they know his craftsmanship.” It should have been a speech, but he old guy spoke with a dry, lazy irony.

If he’d engraved the monster, then he’d engraved the interlocking lines around the edge of the badge. Now that had taken skill. “You don’t look like you’ve got this light a touch,” I said.

That should have been too blunt, but he replied easily, “My first wife taught me that I have to be gentle as well as strong.”

The subtle innuendo hit me by surprise, and my cheeks burned. While I tried to cool off, Magnus leaned down and took hold of me by the waist. I should have kicked him, but even I couldn’t think it was threatening. Lifting me up, he set me down on a stool next to him. He passed me a rough-edged, paper-thin circle of copper and a wooden box full of funny-shaped chisels. “Small hands do have an advantage. Try it yourself,” he urged.

What the heck. The hammer was pretty heavy, but a good tap on the butt of a chisel would leave a line printed in the copper. Another tap extended that line, and I realized I’d better know what I was drawing before I went any further. I’d circle it around, then make another circle, and engrave a spiked collar. Might as well be myself, right?

I tapped my way around the curve of the collar, and at the sharper end I switched to some chisels that were already rounded. I tried carving in a spike at one end. I was no artist, and the spike was too big, but I was pretty pleased.

“You have talent. More importantly, you enjoy the work,” Magnus said. His voice rumbled when he was happy.

Wha—?! I nearly fell off the stool. How long had I been fiddling? I’d forgotten … everything else. Everything.

“If I had talent, I’d have known the lower edge of the band’s going to mess up anything I try to engrave over it,” I groused.

“No one becomes an expert on their first try, but you’d be worth teaching.”.

Uh.

When I didn’t answer, he continued, “Like any man, I wanted to teach my skills to my children and have them continue my work after I’m gone. Like her mother, Nilda is happier as a wife, and Valdis wants to take after me as a warrior, not a craftsman.”

Huge arms wrapped around my shoulders, his hands covering mine where I held the tools.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He hit the chisel with perfectly even force as he engraved the next spike for me. My lines had been jagged, but his were perfectly smooth. As creepy as it felt to be held like that, I was fascinated by his skill.

“You’re okay with that? We … back home in Midgard, we like to think we’re pretty unusual because we let women be warriors,” I probed. Seriously, these people were supposed to be primitive.

“It’s not common, but if a woman has the skill and the courage, she is welcome to try. My objection is, as a father, knowing his child wants a life of danger. I wanted to let my children follow their own path when they grew up, and now I have to accept that it’s not the path I wanted.” While he explained all this wistfully, he kept plinking away at the copper disk. He didn’t even need his full concentration to produce lines like this. I felt jealousy niggling at me, and I wasn’t sure if it was for him or Valdis.

“I think she’s crazy, but it’s what she wants,” I hazarded. Staying neutral wasn’t something I was good at. “Goldsmithing sounds a lot better than killing people.”

I must have said the right thing, because he kept going. “Destiny calls most Midgarders to heroism, but not all. At your age, I’m sure you just want to go home. Eric and Valdis would love to try and help you get there, but if you decide to stay instead, you’ll be welcome. Valdis will go off a-viking soon, and it’s been lonely since her mother left. I have room in my life now for a daughter and a student.”

Oh god. He sounded so detached and casual. He didn’t want me to hear how much he really wanted me to stay. “I’m not going home,” I blurted out.
Stupid, that sounded like you were agreeing, Mary
. I’d known this old man six hours, tops. Those dumb tree trunk arms around me made me feel weirdly safe, that’s all. “How long ago did Valdis’s mother die?” There. That would lead the conversation in less friendly directions.

“I hope she’s still alive. I let her go back to her family. There came a day when I wanted her to be happy more than I wanted her to be mine, and she wanted to return home more than she wanted to stay with Valdis and I.” He sounded wistful. The arms around me stopped tapping at the copper.

“You let her go?” I asked. What did he even mean by that?

“As you get older, you learn that love is about more than desire,” Magnus explained. “She never stopped being beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful, and letting her go did break my heart. She loved me more than any other man she’d known, and she loved Valdis, but not enough. She hadn’t seen her own home since she reached womanhood.”

“She hadn’t?” I asked, hearing my voice peak. My skin crawled, and I wanted to be reassured that I misunderstood.

“You had to see her,” Magnus told me. He sounded so blithe about it. “Valdis is lovely, but Alfdis was a goddess. Her people were strong, but they squabbled even among themselves for her. Then, Artol from Vanheim saw her while traveling, and came back with an army to take her. He was foolish enough to show her off to the other lords back home, and was attacked by two of them at the same time. Men fought over her for years, so much that she used to joke that one hadn’t even gotten her to his bedroom before the next man broke in. A mere raider like me should never have ended up with such a woman, but the last man who held her expended his forces badly in the taking. His town was defenseless, and I saw a target. Of course, I claimed her with the treasure in a heartbeat. In a way, we were both lucky. I came out of nowhere, and no one knew where she had gone to try and seize her from me.”

My heart pounded in my chest. How could he be so calm about a story like that? I didn’t feel comfortable here anymore. This wasn’t the place for me.

“And you’d send Valdis out into that?” I probed, unable to believe it.

“Anyone can lose a battle, and I can hope I’d get to ransom her back. Of course, she might also want to stay with him.” He shrugged, and as those arms rolled around me, my breathing seized up in a flash of panic. She might want to stay? Seriously? Yes. Yes, he was serious. I didn’t understand these people, and I didn’t want to anymore.

He just kept talking. “It’s a risk she’s chosen to take, and between her and Eric I can hope it’s unlikely. Everyone who goes a-viking is taking a great risk for the hope of glory and riches, and I can’t talk them out of it.” He sighed. “My comfort is that they won’t keep at it very long. Killing farmers and guardsmen won’t satisfy either of them. Perhaps they’ll decide to settle down instead, but I don’t believe it. They’ll go hunting for monsters and bandit kings.” He grimaced. “It’s what they want. It’s what I wanted when I was their age.”

Then, he surprised me again. “You’re scared.” His voice was soft. Those huge arms tightened around me, not quite hurting as they squeezed me against his chest. “You don’t come from a warrior people. That’s fine by me. I hope you never need to learn to kill.”

My eyes stung with tears. What was wrong with this guy? Why wasn’t he selfish and mean? It was this place. I’d really, actually been tempted by his offer, but there was no way I could be one of these people. I didn’t belong here.

“The child is here. That might be for the best,” a man said from the open doors. Nall. Eric’s father, Nall.

I rubbed my eyes on Magnus’s sleeve and glared at Nall and snapped, “Mary.”

“Treat her like family, Nall, and she’ll treat you like family. Down to the kicking.” Magnus knew me already, way too well.

“I’d like her to try something,” Nall told him, walking up to the bench.

“Then ask her.” The old guy’s tone was getting a lot more serious. I looked up, and found a frown lurking in that obscuring beard.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” Nall apologized to me directly. “I’m worried. Can you forgive me, and take three stones from this bag, then lay them on the table?”

I was willing to cut him a little slack. “I’ll meet you halfway. No, I don’t forgive you, but I’ll do the stone thing if you think it’s important.”

He did have a bag, an old, battered bag of thick cloth. Faded lines and bits of gold string suggested it had been embroidered once, about a million years ago. I reached into the top of it, and pulled out three flat rock chips and laid them down on the table with the carved symbols upright.

Magnus scowled. “Eihwaz, Issa, and Uruz, and she laid them all sideways. I don’t know that combination, but it looks bad.”

The stones really must have bothered him. The old guy’s arms started to tighten around me. I wasn’t having any of it this time. I started to twist and push back, until Nall translated, “It means ‘wolf.’“ Then, I froze.

“Maybe we should arm the villagers. They must be some nasty wolves if they show up on the rune stones for this girl.” Magnus’s voice had gotten grim and businesslike, but it still didn’t match Nall’s bleak expression.

Instead of agreeing or arguing, Nall scooped the stones back into the bag, stirred it with his fingers, and then held out the bag. “Again, please, Mary.”

That shocked Magnus. “You don’t ask the stones a second time, Nall.”

I shoved my hand into the bag, mixed them up some more, and pulled out three.

I opened my hand. The same three stones.

“The runes repeated themselves.” Magnus was stating the obvious, but he seemed stunned by it. Then, his arms did tighten, lifting me out of the chair and cradling me to his chest. The arms curled around under my knees and behind my shoulders, and I felt even smaller than usual as they closed over me tightly. “We owe her hospitality, Nall. We’ll guard Mary as if she were family.”

“I want to guard her, Magnus. It’s not that simple,” Nall answered. He beckoned with one hand as he walked out the door. Magnus followed, with me bouncing in his arms. I tried to twist out of his grip, but I couldn’t move at all.

“Look up at the stars,” Nall instructed.

“I’m not trained in the lore,” Magnus argued impatiently as he tilted his head back and scanned the sky. “I don’t know what I’m—there’s a new star in Fenris. How can that happen?”

“I threw the bones over our guest out of curiosity,” Nall recounted, his voice flat and calm, all emotion hidden. “An old wolf skull fell off a shelf into the middle of them. Then, I tried the runes. Then, on the way here I saw the sky.”

Magnus loosened his grip so that he could look down into my face. “Do you know what this means, Mary? Whatever it is, we’ll protect you from it.”

“You can’t. All right? You can’t.” I hadn’t wanted to stay here anyway. I needed to remember that. I squirmed in his arms until he let me drop back onto my feet. Bitterness gnawed at my stomach, but I told them the truth. “The Wolf is coming for me. You can’t stop him. He’s not like a normal wolf. He tears other monsters apart, and he’s tricky, and he promised he’d never give up.”

“I’m tricky, too,” Magnus insisted, cold as ice now.

Nall cut him off before he could say more. “This is destiny, Magnus. This wolf isn’t at our doorstep, but he fills her future. This is fated. We can’t stop it from getting to her.”

“Then we’ll die trying,” Magnus answered.

I took a quick step sideways out of his reach as he tried to lay his hand on my shoulder.

“No, you won’t.” I felt even more tired than I sounded saying this. “I’ll run away first.”