A Wizard in Midgard

12

Alea seized his leg the way Gar had shown her, digging her fingers in and pushing. The man fell, screaming. She let him go and turned to the other man, who charged her full tilt, swinging his staff down to choke her. She fell back, catching the staff and drawing her legs up, then pushed hard with her legs as she pulled with her hands. The man went somersaulting over her head with a howl of surprise, letting go of his staff. Alea used it to push herself to her feet and looked about her, wild-eyed and panting—and saw all five of her assailants on the ground, three curled around pain and moaning, two straggling to their feet.

Run! her panic screamed inside her—but it screamed in Gar’s voice, and one glance showed her that he was still beset, whirling his staff one-handed, half a dozen outlaws on the ground before him—but another half-dozen still confronted him, and two had bows. If either of them gained a shot at his back, he was dead.

She couldn’t leave his back unguarded. She turned to face her attackers, her back to Gar’s, even though every sense of caution within her screamed at her for a fool.

The two who managed to struggle to their feet stalked about her, staves up and ready, bruises purpling on one man’s face, both breathing hard and glaring harder. Her heart went faint; she remembered Gar saying, The second time, they’ll be ready. But she held her ground, on guard and waiting—and waiting, and waiting. Neither man seemed eager to strike. Finally she realized that each was waiting for the other; then he would finish what his partner had begun.

At last they thought to look at one another. Both nodded, and they turned to Alea, sticks swinging back.

They were wide open. She lunged, stick straight out, butt jabbing one in the belly. He doubled over in pain, mouth wide in a shout he had no breath for. She snapped her whole body back to guard, turning to the last attacker. He froze, stick high, then realized he was unguarded and yanked his stick back in front of him.

“Hold!” a voice shouted, and it wasn’t Gar’s.

Her attacker froze, still on guard, but looking relieved. Alea risked a glance behind her, turned back in time to see the bandit raising his stick to strike. He saw her eyes and froze—but she had seen a man with a sword, shield, and iron cap facing Gar and looking indignant. He was almost as tall as Gar. The shortest of them was as tall as Alea.

“We struck you with a dozen, and you’ve beaten down ten of us!” the bandit chief exclaimed in injured tones. “How in Hela’s name have you done that?”

Alea shuddered at his invoking of the Queen of the Dead. “Not by Hela, but by Thor and Dumi,” Gar said, sounding mild. “I’ll be glad to teach you. If you’d like another lesson, swing!”

There was a pause. Panting, Alea locked glares with the bandit—but two of his mates staggered to their feet with the aid of their staves, giving her poisoned looks.

“No, I’ll seek a more peaceable way.” The bandit leader sounded as though he would dearly have loved to beat Gar’s brains out, but was forcing himself to be placating. “No one’s ever proved himself so strong a fighter as you—and I’ve never seen a woman fight at all!” He didn’t sound happy about it. “Except a giant’s woman, that is.”

“Aren’t we giants?” Gar asked, still mildly.

“No, but we’re a far sight better than the Midgarders!” the man said, with such bitterness that it startled even Alea. Then he forced his voice to mildness. “Come home with us and pass the night as a pledge of peace, for we must honor a fighter like you.”

“Why, thank you,” Gar said smoothly. “We’ll be pleased.” Alea stepped back so that her shoulders jarred against his, leaned her head back, and hissed, “Are you mad?”

“Yes,” Gar hissed back. Then to the bandit leader, “I need some guarantee of our safety. What’s your name?”

“Zimu,” the man said warily. “Why?”

“Because I’m a wizard, and once I know your name, I can use it to work magic that will hurt you.”

Alea spun to stare at him, then looked quickly at Zimu—but the man was glaring at Gar with anger and fear. Then she remembered to look back at her opponent, but he was busy staring, too.

“I’ll give you some chance of evening the odds,” Gar told Zimu. “My name is Gar.”

The bandit leader relaxed, still frowning, “Then I can work magic against you.”

“If you’re a wizard, yes.” Suddenly Gar’s voice took on a weird tone and the rhythm of an incantation. “Zimu, Zimu, tell me the names of your men!”

Zimu’s eyes glazed. “There’s Bandi, Cuthorn, Dambri…” He gestured at each as he spoke the name, listing the whole dozen before one of them shouted, appalled, “Chief!”

Zimu shook himself, his eyes clearing, then glared at Gar. “How did you do that?”

“If you have twenty years to learn, I can teach you,” Gar said, “if you have the talent. Well, I can be sure we’ll be safe among you now. So thank you for your invitation, Bandi, Cuthorn, Dambri…” He chanted the list of names. Even the men who were only now staggering to their feet looked up in alarm—to find Gar looking straight at them as he spoke their names. They shuddered and looked away.

“…and Zimu,” Gar finished. He gave a slight bow, seeming to lean on his staff. “We’ll be glad to dine with you.”

“Well, then, you’re welcome,” Zimu said with poor grace. “Woman, gather wood as you come! We’ll need a big fire if we’re to celebrate guests.”

Alea stared at him in outrage. No giant would ever have spoken to a woman like that!

“She gathers no wood, and carries only her own pack.” Gar’s hand hovered over her shoulder, and only the two of them knew that he didn’t really touch her. “She is my shieldmaiden.”

“I don’t see any shield,” Zimu growled, eyeing them suspiciously.

“She is herself my shield,” Gar explained.

Alea had to fight the impulse to look up at him in surprise, and scolded herself for the warmth that spread through her at his words.

“You had better treat her kindly,” Gar went on, “for when she dies, she will become a Valkyrie, and if you lie dead on a battlefield, she’ll ignore you if you’ve treated her ill.”

Alea knew he was only making up a story, but still her heart leaped. To become a Valkyrie when she died! But surely all Gar’s teaching couldn’t accomplish that.

The bandits kept their distance as they led the way deeper into the forest. It gave Alea a chance to step closer to Gar and hiss, “This is the height of stupidity! In their own camp, they can beat us senseless and do with us as they will!”

“They won’t dare,” Gar whispered back, “and I have to learn what the outlaws are like, how they live, if I’m to have any hope of bringing peace to this land.”

Alea stared at him for a full minute, then said, “You really mean it, don’t you? You’re actually going to try to free the slaves and make peace!”

“I really do,” Gar said gravely. “A person has to have something to do in this life, after all, some reason to live, and this is mine.”

“What’s the matter with a wife and children?” Alea jibed. “Only that the wife is so obstinate she refuses to be found,” Gar answered. “The children are difficult to manage with but her.”

Looking into his eyes, Alea saw a bleakness and a hunger that made her look away. “Can you really protect us against them?”

“Oh, yes,” Gar assured her, “as long as I stay awake—but what’s more important is that I have them convinced that I can.”

“How can you do it?” Alea demanded.

“It’s a talent,” Gar whispered frankly, “but it takes training too. I think you might have some of the gift. Stay with me long enough, and you might learn how.”

Alea stiffened; if she hadn’t known Gar better, she would have thought it was a proposition rather than an invitation. As a matter of fact, she reminded herself, she didn’t know him well enough—and there might be less danger away from him than with him, after all. She decided to think seriously about leaving him to wander alone.

She had plenty of time to consider it, though.

The bandit camp was only a broad clearing deep in the birch forest, cluttered with debris among the score or so of bark huts that stood about it in no particular order—giant white halfballs, reminding her of puffball toadstools on a damp morning. Looking more closely, she found they were covered with birchbark—over long bent poles, she suspected. She wondered if such dwellings could really keep the rain out and the heat in.

There were women moving about that village, tending near-naked children, hauling water, chopping wood, and mending the huts. The older girls were bringing in baskets of berries. There were a dozen men lounging about the camp, fletching arrows, practicing quarterstaff play or archery, or simply talking to one another. As she watched, one man called a woman over to him and handed her an empty mug. She nodded, took it, and disappeared into one of the huts, then came back and handed it to the man. He broke off talking to another bandit long enough to take a long drink.

Alea felt outrage. After the giants’ village, where everyone shared tasks, it seemed abysmally wrong to see women doing all the drudgery. Perhaps there was some truth in the notion that the men had to hunt and be ready to fight, but it did seem to be very uneven.

Zimu stopped by a dilapidated hut. “This is your dwelling for the night. We wish you joy of it.”

Alea’s sense of outrage heightened, but Gar only said, “It will do. Thank you for your hospitality”

“It’s our pleasure,” Zimu grunted. “We’ll eat when the roast is done—an hour or two. When you’ve settled yourself, you can join us for some beer and talk.”

“Thank you. I would like that.”

Zimu nodded and turned away, apparently not feeling it necessary to address a single comment to Alea. As soon as he was out of hearing range, she turned on Gar fiercely, albeit in a whisper. “Have you no pride? Giving us a house like this shows his contempt for you!”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Gar said mildly. “So we’ll turn it back on him, and have it snug and clean in half an hour—together.”

“Can’t you ever argue?” Alea hissed, exasperated. “Do you have to find a way to agree with everything I say?”

“That,” Gar said, “or find a way to make what you say agree with me. Think, my friend—what will they say when they see me working with you?”

Alea started a sharp retort, then caught herself, eyes widening. Slowly, she grinned. “The men will tell themselves you’re not much of a man, but their bruises will tell them otherwise. And the women…” She left the sentence hanging.

“The women will be scandalized,” Gar finished for her, “but they’ll be thinking about it for weeks afterwards. They won’t dare try to talk these brutes into sharing the work, but they’ll cheer for anyone who comes to make these bandits learn to farm.”

“Farm?” Alea stared blankly. “What crops could grow in so short and cold a summer as this land sees?”

“Barley, oats, cabbage, and half a dozen others,” Gar told her, “and wild pigs and oxen can be corralled and bred.”

“How will you talk the men into that?” Alea challenged. “More of your stories?”

“What else would men like this listen to?” Gar asked. “Come, let me show you how to take bark from a birch without killing the tree.”

Working together, they swept out the hut, patched it, brought in beds of bracken, and started a fire in the central pit under the smoke hole. As they worked, Alea was very much aware that first one, then five, then a dozen men were staring at them, muttering indignantly to one another. She smiled to herself and kept on working. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the women taking quick glances at them, trying not to be seen watching—but she knew they were storing away the picture of man and woman working together.

It took a little longer than the half hour Gar had predicted, but the pig on the spit over the village’s central firepit was barely half-cooked by the time they were done.

“I should come with you to talk to the men,” Alea told Gar, but kept her voice low.

“You could,” Gar agreed, “but it might be more important for you to talk to the women. I expect they want to scold you for letting a man help you.”

“Well, that’s one way of showing envy,” Alea said, grinning. She found herself looking forward to the contest.

“You might want to explain it by telling the women the story of Dumi,” Gar said. “I’m sure they haven’t heard it.”

“And then, of course, I would go on to the story of Thummaz?” Alea asked, with irony.

“You might,” Gar said. “I should be telling it to the men about the same time. I wonder how we’ll dream tonight?” Alea stared up at him. “You don’t mean the Wizard is following us!”

“He might have gone before,” Gar said, “but I don’t think these outlaws would have been so quick to attack us if he had. Let’s see if we can prepare the way for him. Good luck with the women.”

“And you with the men.” But Alea couldn’t help an anxious glance after him. He might be only a friend, but he was indeed a friend, and all she had.

Most of the women were as tall as Alea, three or four a little shorter. They had gathered around a stream fed pool ten yards from the cooking fire, watching older children turn the spit and chatting in low voices. The conversation gelled as Alea came up; she walked into silence. She decided to take the bull by the horns and looked down at the pool. Someone had widened the stream into a circular basin and paved it with rocks. “How pretty!” she exclaimed. “How clever of your men to make this for you!”

Some of the women stared at her as though she were insane, but others gave shouts of laughter, quickly smothered. One said, “Whatever possessed you to think the men did this, girl?”

Alea bridled at the term—she was clearly old enough to be an old maid, so calling her “girl” was showing contempt. But she kept her temper in check and said, “Those rocks must have been heavy to haul. Don’t tell me they left you to carry them yourselves!”

Several of the women lost their laughter and glared at her instead, but the one who had spoken only sneered. “Are you so weak you can’t lift a rock, girl?”

“I think I might.” Alea leaned on her staff to call their attention to it, though she doubted the men would have said anything about her using it on them. “But why should I, when I have a great hulk like Gar to haul them for me?”

“Oh, your man,” another woman sneered, “if you can call him that. How much man can he be, if he does a woman’s work?”

The men suddenly broke into angry shouting. The women looked up, eyes wide in fear. Alea felt it too, but forced herself to turn slowly, looking with curiosity only.

Two of the men were on their feet, the rest shaking their fists at Gar, but he only sat, watching them, and when the shouting died, he went on talking calmly. “Why are you so surprised? Dumi was a goddess, after all. Of course she was an excellent archer!”

“Not as good as the men,” Zimu said stubbornly.

Gar shrugged. “If you can hit the bull’s eye, how can you be better?”

Alea turned back to the women, looking as smug as a cream-fed cat. “He’s man enough to fight all your men to a standstill—and you know he did, or they wouldn’t have invited him to stay the night.”

They did know; their gazes were angry, but they slid away from hers.

For her part, Alea was surprised to realize she felt proud of Gar. “I’m as big as any of you, and bigger than any Midgarder.”

“Midgarders!” the oldest woman said with disgust. “Puling little things! The men are right—we’re much better than they are.”

The other women chorused agreement, and the oldest, a woman in her forties, said, “You’re right in that, Elsa—and as the men say, we’re even better than the giants, those great lumbering hulks!”

Anger kindled in Alea, partly at the thought of these semislaves ranking themselves better than Riara and Orla, partly at women being so ready to be cowed. “Oh, is that what the men say?”

Elsa frowned at the edge to her tone. “Aye, it is, and true! What Sigurd says is right—we’re a new breed come into being, better than any of the other three, and you should be glad of it, girl, for you’re one of us, too!”

Alea shuddered at the thought of being such a slave. “So you know what your men think. Do you know what you think?”

“We agree with the men.” Elsa glowered, then asked the older woman, “Don’t we, Helga?”

“Why not, if they’re right?” Helga answered, but her glare was on Alea. “We’re bigger than the Midgarders and stronger, and smarter and more nimble than the giants!”

“I’ve met the giants,” Alea told them, “and stayed the night with them. Believe me, they’re just as smart as we are, and gentle to boot!”

The women stared, scandalized. “The giants? Gentle?”

“To us, and to their women,” Alea replied. “The giant women do all that the men do, and the men do all the tasks that the women do. I didn’t hear any fighting—they talk things out until they agree. I never once heard a giant man give orders to a giant woman.”

“Well, of course, when you’re that big and strong…” Helga grumbled.

“The giant men are bigger and stronger,” Alea reminded them, “but women are precious to them. They need to win their favor—and keep winning it.”

Helga looked surprised, then calculating, but Sigurd said, “What if a man did give one of them an order, and she refused it? What then?”

“Aye!” said Elsa. “If the giant men are so much bigger than the women, how could she save herself?”

“None of their men would ever lift his hand against a woman,” Alea said positively, “but if he did, the other men would knock him flat—and if they didn’t, the other women would.”

All the women looked surprised, then excited—then crestfallen. “If the women banded together to defend one of their own,” Sigurd said, “wouldn’t the men come in a gang to thrash them all?”

“Here, perhaps,” Alea told them. “In Jotunheim, no.”

“But their women know how to fight!”

“A woman can learn.” Suddenly, Alea was aware of the pain from her bruises all over again, even the muted throbbing in her head—but with them, the fierce sense of exhilaration that came with knowing she had fought back and not lost, even if she hadn’t exactly won, either. “Believe me, a woman can learn.”

The men broke into another burst of shouting, half of them on their feet and shaking their fists. Gar only smiled up at them, interested, not amused, and gradually they quieted.

“The giants aren’t stupid,” Gar said. “I tested one of them, wrestling, and used some movements he didn’t know. By the end of the match, he used them on me. Oh, be sure, they’re intelligent enough.”

Dambri stared. “You wrestled with a giant?”

“Nothing could teach our men to honor us,” Helga said, with total assurance.

“Perhaps you should take your children and all go away long enough for them to learn how much they need you.”

“Perhaps they would come after us with sticks,” Elsa growled.

Alea sighed and searched her mind for a rebuttal—but when she didn’t find one, she remembered that she was supposed to be trying to bring these women peace, not war and possible death. “Tell them it’s religious, and make it so. Tell them you need time to meditate the new myth I’ve brought you.”

“What, that the giants are gentle toward their women?” Helga asked, with full sarcasm.

“That’s no myth—it’s news. The story I’ve brought you is the tale of Thummaz,” Alea said. “It isn’t told in Midgard, but I learned it from with the giants here in the North Country. It’s about a southern god who came to the gates of Valhalla, to visit…”

They listened at first with suspicion, but it evaporated under the spell of the tale. They listened intently, and when she was done, they relaxed with a sigh of pleasure.

“But what good does this tale do us?” Helga asked.

“It shows you that humanity can only become great if all its parts join together,” Alea answered.

Shouting erupted again, all of the men on their feet this time, and Zimu strode up to Gar, planting his fists on his hips, demanding, “How could you possibly put outcasts like us back with the Midgarders? Without our being slaves?”

“By cherishing your children who only grow as big as Midgarders,” Gar told him, “cherishing even the ones who grow no bigger than a dwarf, and the ones who grow as big as a giant!”

“None of our children will grow like that,” Zimu growled, but he sounded uncertain.

The women’s eyes all turned haunted at that.

“They can only say that because they don’t know the pain and suffering that go into making and birthing a child,” Alea reminded them. Her heart ached at the thought of the experience she would never have. “The greatness is in the life, not the size.”

The women all turned to her, staring in surprise and relief, but Sigurd frowned. “The men say we are the ones who are becoming great—that there’s something new in each generation, better than the last, and that we are the best that’s ever been!”

Alea frowned. “What of the giants?”

“A mistake,” Elsa said promptly. “The gods tried to make a better people, but made them slow in mind and body—and don’t even think to ask about the dwarves, those piddling little monstrosities! They’re mistakes if ever there was one!”

Helga said, as though that proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt, “So say the men.”

“What do you say?” Alea asked.

The women stared at her blankly. Finally Sigurd managed to say, “We’ll leave that kind of thinking to the men. How to raise the children, what to cook for dinner, that’s what women should think about.”

“Is it? And who told you that?” Alea challenged.

“Our mothers!” Helga snapped. “They also told us that women who meddle in men’s affairs will lose their husbands, and die trying to fend for themselves!”

“A giant woman would live, fending for herself,” Alea returned. “Didn’t the men say you were better?”

Helga scowled and repeated stubbornly, “The giants are mistakes, and so is your notion of them!”

“The mistakes are in the minds of your men,” Alea said tartly. “Humanity is like Thummaz, torn into four parts—giants, dwarves, men, and women. We’re sending ourselves to death if we stay apart—but we can be stronger and better than ever if we can pull all four parts of ourselves back together.”

“As Dumi did to Thummaz?” Sigurd guessed. “Even so,” Alea confirmed.

Helga leaned forward, hands clasped, her frown one of interest now, not anger. “Tell us more of this Dumi. We haven’t heard of her before.”

When the girls came to tell them the roast was done, Helga nodded her thanks and stood up. “We’ll test it, but I’m sure you’re right, Thala. You’ve been turning spits long enough now.”

NEW though the praise was, the twelve-year-old dimpled with pleasure. The women went slowly toward the spit, listening to the men argue.

“But the giants and the Midgarders aren’t anywhere nearly as good as we are!” a brawny man almost as tall as Gar was saying. “And the dwarves are so little and weak it’s laughable! How could we lower ourselves to join with any of them?”

The other men chorused agreement, with cries of “That’s right, right, Lafo!”

“Right as you’re big, Lafo!”

“Then the giants must be more right than any,” Gar said reasonably, “since they’re the biggest.”

“Don’t play with my words, stranger!” The speaker shook a fist. “You know what I mean!”

“You only think the giants are slow and stupid because you don’t know them,” Gar told him. “As to the dwarves, they must be smart, or they wouldn’t still be alive.”

“Prove it!”

“There’s only one way,” Gar told him. “Visit them.” For the first time, fear showed in the men’s eyes. “Wouldn’t we be the fools, though?” another man snorted. “Stupid they may be, but those giants are monsters, too! They’d eat us for dinner!”

Alea almost said the giants wouldn’t be able to stand the smell, but caught herself in time.

“Giants eat oxen, Kargi, not people,” Gar said. “If they did, Alea and I would be dead now, probably bone meal in a loaf of bread. You’ve been listening to too many children’s tales.”

“We’ve only your word they guested you,” Zimu grunted. “And a huge aleskin,” Gar reminded him.

“All right, so you’re a clever thief!”

“If we go back to them,” Gar said, “will you watch from a distance and see how they treat us?”

“Aha! So that’s it!” Kargi cried. “You’re the bait, come to lead us into their traps! All this noise about this Thummaz you’ve told us, is only a ruse to lower our suspicions!”

“A safe distance, I said,” Gar reminded him. “You watch from a ridge-top a quarter of a mile away.”

“Yes, while your giant friends creep up behind to catch us all and gut us for dinner!” Kargi turned to his mates. “Are we going to let them get away with that?”

“No! Never!” Came from two dozen throats, and the bandits were all on their feat, striding toward Gar, shaking staves and battle-axes.