A Wizard in Midgard

7

Three dogs leaped at her, one large, dark, and flop-eared; one tan and point-eared; the third smaller and spotted, with long ears and a huge bark. Alea struck in near-panic as hard as she could, the biggest first, then the smallest as it darted at her ankles, making an hourglass pattern with her staff, as Gar had shown her. The middle dog tried to leap in past the staff. She screamed, stepped back, jarred against Gar, and the stick seemed to jump in her hands without her even thinking about it. The tip caught the dog in the belly.

It fell, scrabbling in the dirt, plainly trying in vain to breathe. The other two leaped away and held their distance, barking furiously. She slid both hands to the end of the staff and slashed it in what Gar had called a roundhouse swing, cracking the skull of the big dark dog. It fell, and the little one ran, howling.

But half a dozen more dogs surged around her, snapping and barking. In a panic again, she struck upward and caught one under the chin. Its head snapped back with a nasty noise like a branch popping in the fire; it cartwheeled away and fell.

Instantly the others were on it, biting and savaging. Alea stared a moment, appalled, then realized she had a chance. She stepped forward, swinging roundhouse-style again, and cracked one dog’s head, then another and another. They fell—unconscious or dead, she didn’t know and didn’t care.

Then, suddenly, the three remaining were running, amazingly fast, howling as they went. She stared, unbelieving, then felt a surge of elation such as she had never known. They had tried to kill her, and she had won!

But there might be more of them. She whirled to look past Gar.

He stood, still crouched, sword and dagger still raised, panting and glaring. Alea looked where he did, then turned away, choking down nausea. “What…” was all she managed.

“I killed several and maimed one,” Gar told her. “They ran when they found out I wasn’t going to be easy meat. When the one with the broken leg caught up with them, they turned on him.”

Alea forced herself to stare at the sight.

“Don’t look,” Gar said anxiously. “It will sicken you.”

“I have to face the world as it really is, bad as well as good!” Alea snapped. “If I’d done that all my life, I might not have been so stunned when they cast me into slavery!”

Gar was silent. She sensed a queer mixture of admiration and disapproval in him, but that only made her more determined to watch. She stared for a minute or two before she turned her back, hand pressed to her stomach, bent over and fighting nausea.

“Yes, it’s ugly,” Gar agreed.

She looked up in surprise and saw the concern in his face.

Perhaps it hadn’t been disapproval she had sensed, only fear for her delicate feelings. Well, she was determined that they wouldn’t be delicate any more!

She turned back for another glance, then turned away again. “Poor beast. I know how it felt.”

“I hope you never will,” Gar said, his voice low, “but I know what you mean.”

“Do you really?” Alea looked up at him sharply, but saw the gravity of his gaze and realized that he did. She looked away. “Thank Heaven people aren’t such traitors!”

“Aren’t they?” Gar said with contempt.

Alea’s head snapped up to stare at him, amazed to find that he, too, felt bitterness. She backed away, suddenly wary again, even though something within her told her that if she had cause for bitterness, he might well have it, too—but cause or not, it made him dangerous again.

Gar straightened up. “Quickly, let’s find that tree before they work up enough courage to come back.”

This time he gave her a boost before she could turn it down, catching her by the waist and swinging her high. She cried out in anger but caught the branch and swung herself up, glaring down at him. “Don’t you ever do that again!”

“Only if it’s a matter of life and death,” Gar assured her, “and it well could be now.” He handed his staff up, and she took it automatically. Then he leaped high, caught another branch, and swung himself up on the other side of the trunk from her. Somehow, he had managed to make his sword and dagger disappear again.

“We should go higher,” Alea said.

“If they come back, yes.” But Gar was scowling at the pack, staring at them with a somber intensity. Alea gave him a peculiar glance, wondering what was wrong with him—but the dogs suddenly broke off from what they were doing and ran howling away across the meadow, back the way they had come. When they had disappeared into the dark line of trees on the far side, their howling died away, and Gar said, “I don’t think they’ll return.”

“What scared them?” Alea asked, wide-eyed.

Gar shrugged. “Who can say? If they were someone’s pets, I might be able to read them, but I haven’t had any experience with wild dogs.” He turned to her. “Did any bite you?”

His words triggered awareness of an ache. Alea looked down, amazed to see the blood on her ankle. “I didn’t even notice it!”

“That happens in a fight sometimes.” Gar dropped down and swung his pack off. “Tell me if you see them coming back.” He took out a small bottle and a bit of cloth, pulled the stopper, then poured a little of the liquid onto the cloth. He turned to dab it on Alea’s ankle.

She snatched her foot out of the way. “Don’t touch me!”

“I won’t.” Gar sounded exasperated. “Only the cloth will—but I have to put medicine on that bite. It might make you sick otherwise.”

“Only if you put the same stuff on your wrist!”

“Wrist?” Gar looked down at his left hand, amazed. “So they did get me!”

“A wonder we each only had one,” Alea said. “Will you treat it?”

“Yes, after yours.”

“All right,” Alea said, “but only the cloth, mind!”

Gar dabbed the liquid on the bite marks, front and back. Alea cried out; it stung!

“Sorry. I should have warned you,” Gar muttered. He stepped away, dropped the bit of cloth, and took another from his pack. He poured more medicine on it and dabbed at his own wrist. Then he capped the bottle, put it away, and took out a roll of bandage. “Here. Cover the wound with this.”

Alea took it hesitantly and managed to pull her foot up well enough to wrap the bandage. “You seem awfully concerned about these bites. What are you afraid of?”

“Rabies,” Gar said, his voice hard.

Alea froze in fear. Dread crawled through her. She had seen people die of rabies, tied down and howling.

“Not really much chance of it,” Gar told her. “In the late stages, rabies is pretty obvious. But one of them might have been in the early stages.”

“There’s no cure!”

“My people have found one.” Gar took another bottle from his pack. “They used to have to scratch it into you with a needle, but after five hundred years, they learned how to make it into a pill. We’ll have to take one a day for two weeks, but it will protect us against any other bites.”

Overwhelming relief flooded Alea. She took the pill and put it in her mouth, then unslung the skin the giants had given her to squirt a mouthful of wine. Gar looked up in surprise as she handed it down to him. He nodded and took it. “Yes, thanks. Pills go down much more easily that way.” He squirted a stream into his mouth and bit it off just as skillfully as Alea had; she decided his people’s ways couldn’t be all that different from her own.

He handed the skin back to her and said, “I think we’d better try to break our trail before we pitch camp.”

“How can we do that?” Alea asked, frowning.

Gar showed her quickly enough, and it was very unpleasant. Wading through a cold stream made her ankle hurt even more, and swinging from tree branches wasn’t much better.

But she was really surprised when he asked, “What kind of plant here has a really bad smell?”

“That one.” She pointed to a broad-leafed weed.

“Then take some and rub it on your shoes,” Gar said. He yanked off a leaf, rubbed it on the soles of his boots, then pulled the rest of the leaves and set off, rubbing them on his boots every dozen steps or so.

Alea saw what he was doing and broke off some leaves for herself. There were a great number of the plants—they were one of the worst of the weeds—so they made slow and smelly progress.

Finally Gar pronounced himself satisfied and looked for a campsite.

“There.” Alea pointed at a patch of dense underbrush. “I had in mind something a little less thorny,” Gar said. “It’s hollow in the middle,” she told him. “See the big trees? There will be room enough there for your fire. Come on!”

Gar looked doubtful, but he followed her as she pushed her way into the thicket, breasting the thorns away with her staff. Gar followed, using his sword as she used the pole, and sure enough, there was a rough circle ten feet across in the center with two big trees, one of them with low branches.

“For a village girl, you know your woodcraft,” Gar said with approval.

“You learn such things when you want to find places to be alone and safe from other children,” Alea told him. “Someone else has been here before us.” She pointed at the blackened stones of a fire ring.

Gar grinned. “So they have! How nice of them to leave us a site. Well, I’ll find a stream and fill my bucket.”

Alea frowned up at the trees and the patches of sunlight that filtered through. “The sun’s well up,” she said. “Maybe we ought to make do with the waterskin.”

“It’s full enough,” Gar agreed. “We’ll find a stream tonight.”

In a short while, he had boiled water and was brewing tea. They ate their usual dinner—biscuit with some roast wildfowl left over from the morning before. As they ate, Gar said, “It’s a good thing you wanted to learn how to use the staff.”

“I knew it would come in handy,” Alea said drily. “It will, and we’ll keep up the practice.”

She smiled, amused that he was careful not to call them lessons, careful to hide the fact that he was teaching and she was learning—but she appreciated the courtesy. Once again, she was amazed that a man could be so considerate of a woman. “It’s a little late for practice, lad.”

“Tonight, then,” Gar said. He scoured the plates and cups with sand, stowed them in his pack, then sat down by the fire. “It will take me a while to relax enough to sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

He always did, and he always had a different reason. Alea smiled as she climbed the tree. She paused on the third limb, thought it over, then said, “I’ll climb high tonight, lad.”

“Please do,” Gar called up. “If those dogs find us, I might be coming up there too, and fast.”

Alea lashed herself in on the sixth limb—it looked to be the last that was thick enough to be secure. Exhaustion hit her like a tidal wave, and sleep claimed her.

They found Alea a new staff and practiced every evening before they began their night’s hike. Finally Gar said, “You’re skilled enough with the weapon now. But what will you do if someone catches you without it?”

A chill went through Alea. “Run and hide!”

“ ‘Catches you,’ I said. What if someone has you by the throat?”

“No!”Alea stepped back, hands coming up to defend. The mere prospect horrified her.

“If they do, you put your hands together, thrust them up between his arms, and push them wide to the sides and down in half-circles—and you do it as quickly as you can.” Gar demonstrated on thin air. “That will knock his hands away. But how do you keep them from coming back?”

Alea stopped backing, staring in amazement. “How?”

“Catch his wrist and his shirtfront as you pivot in to put your feet between his, and your back to his front with your hip out, crouching down.” Again, Gar demonstrated. “Then straighten your knees as you bow and pull on his arm and shirt, and he’ll go sailing over your hip to the ground—if you do it all together in two movements, and do it so fast he can’t stop you.”

Alea frowned, imitating the pantomime. Gar told her how to do it better, then better and better. Finally she said, “I’m fairly sure I’m doing it right—but how can I tell?”

“There’s only one way,” Gar said, his face wooden. “You’ll have to try it on me.”

Alea recoiled. “No!”

“Just as you say.” Gar nodded courteously. “I’m perfectly willing to be your practice dummy—but you don’t have to try it. Still, as you said, it’s the only way to tell if you’re doing it right.”

Alea stood, tense and wary, watching him.

“It would be too bad to try it on a man who won’t let you throw him,” Gar said, “and have it fail.”

Alea shuddered, plucked up her courage, and stepped forward. “No touching, now!”

“None,” Gar promised. “You touch me, but I won’t touch you.”

It was a nice distinction, since her hips rammed into the tops of his thighs as she straightened her legs, bent, and pulled on his arm and tunic front—but she had to admit the contact was only for a second. He sailed over her hip and landed on his side, slapping the earth with his extended arm a fraction of a second before his body hit, then rolled up to his feet and bowed to her. “Well done. If you can take a man by surprise with that, it will put him down long enough for you to run.”

“How can I be sure it will surprise him?” Alea countered. “By doing it very fast, and hoping he hasn’t learned it himself.” Gar spread his arms. “Try it again, even faster.”

Alea eyed him warily, then suddenly spun in, grasping his arm and tunic front, and threw him again—and again, he slapped the earth full-armed and rolled up to his feet, nodding. “Very good, and enough for one night. But you’ll have to learn more than that.”

She did. They practiced every evening. The more she learned, the more bodily contact it required—her bottom against his hips, his arm across her chest—but he was always very impersonal about it, even cold. As the days passed and she gained skill, Alea was amazed that he never made any sexual advances, not even mild overtures. She wondered if there might be something wrong with him, but from the occasional admiring glances she caught when he thought she wasn’t looking, she decided it couldn’t be that. The glances did make her feel good, but when he never even hinted at anything more than companionship, she began to feel insulted. Relieved and safe, but insulted.

So Alea kept her distance, walking ten feet or so behind Gar, though when loneliness seized her, she came up even with him, still six feet away, to talk a little. Every evening, before they started their night’s travel, Gar gave her a lesson in unarmed combat. Then they practiced with the quarterstaff. Every morning, they pitched camp and prepared to sleep for the day. They talked across the campfire—Gar knew how to build them so that they gave almost no smoke, so Alea didn’t worry about them attracting hunters. She stayed across the flames from him, but they could still talk. Gar seemed curious about everything in the world, curious to learn everything about her, but Alea always turned the conversation away from herself and back to the world of men, dwarves, and giants.

She was amazed to find how much Gar didn’t know. She asked about himself and his past, and he answered readily and at length, turning answers into stories and filling the stories with humor. He seemed to take it as a personal triumph when she laughed. But somehow, when she tied herself to a trunk for the night and thought back over what he had said, she found he had really told her very little.

“You spoke of runaway slaves among the outlaws to the north,” Gar said one morning. “How many slaves are there who haven’t run away?”

Alea was again amazed at his ignorance, but told him, “I’d guess there are half as many slaves as there are free people, between the ones who were born of Midgarders, and the dwarves they bring back when they fight off a border raid.”

“Or commit one,” Gar said thoughtfully.

“The Midgarders, do the raiding?” Alea asked, shocked.

“What would the dwarves have that we—I mean, the Midgarders—would want?”

“Dwarves,” Gar replied. “More slaves.” He raised a hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to insult your people—but human nature doesn’t change much.”

“They’re not my people! Not any more.” But Alea was surprised to find that she still felt the urge to defend the Midgarders. They didn’t deserve such loyalty, of course. No doubt Gar was right—it was they who started the raids, not the dwarves. “Do you think they’re the ones who start the raids on the giants?”

“Sometimes,” Gar said, “on the excuse that they’re keeping the giants from raiding them. Do they bring back giant slaves?”

“Of course not!” Alea said. “Who could keep a giant? That would be far too dangerous.”

Gar nodded. “Bullies, then. Do many slaves escape?”

“Not in my village.” Alea was fighting the urge to defend her people from the charge of bullying, so she answered absently. “Maybe three or four in a year. But we hear that a great number of slaves do try to run away, all across the country. Every week, the crier calls out the news the messenger brings him from the baron, and there’s always at least one tale of a slave who tried to run away but was caught and brought back. Usually two or three such.”

“Each one a separate tale?”

“Yes.” Alea frowned, wondering what significance he saw in that.

“Told in full and gory detail, no doubt,” Gar mused. “What happens to slaves who are caught?”

Alea shuddered, remembering scenes she had watched and thought were right. “They’re beaten at least, then usually maimed in such a way as to keep them from running off again.” She remembered how Noll had hobbled afterward. He’d been a child with her, but had stopped growing early. She wished she could apologize to him now, for all the taunts and insults she’d hurled at him. Of course, all the children had…

“You were enslaved, too.” Gar made it a statement, not a question.

“You know I’ve said it,” Alea said, her voice harsh. “I was sentenced to slavery a week after my father died. The headman confiscated everything we’d owned, house and lands and cattle, all Mama’s jewels, even their clothes.” Tears stung her eyes. “The ruby brooch she loved so—I pinned it on her dress when she lay in her coffin, but the headman made the sexton take it off and hand it back to Papa. I didn’t understand why, then. I’d never seen anyone do that before…

“You were probably the first one who ever tried to send a treasured object with the dead,” Gar said gently.

“Perhaps I was. I never paid that much attention at anyone else’s funeral, only went through the motions like everyone else, cried a bit if they’d been close friends—not that I had many of those, after I turned fifteen and grew so much.” Alea’s voice hardened. “At least their friends came to their funerals. Papa lived almost a year after Mama died, but he never really seemed to notice much of what went on around him. I don’t think he wanted to live without her.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away angrily; she would not show weakness in front of this man! Or any man. Any woman, either, not now; she couldn’t trust anyone now, they all smiled like friends, then turned on you. The funeral came rushing back into her mind, the coffin propped on trestles in the big keeping room of their farmhouse, drawn curtains making the room gloomy in daytime, candles burning to either side of Papa, herself wearing her black dress, the same one she had worn not a year earlier, for Mama. The neighbors came up in a steady stream, gazing gravely down into the coffin, some with lips shaping silent prayers to speed his spirit to the gods and keep it from walking, some muttering a few words of farewell to an old friend, then turning to murmur a few words of sympathy and condolence to her before they moved past to take a cup from the sideboard and drink to the dead. Alea, thanked each one in turn, very mechanically, barely thinking about the words, so amazed, so daunted by the sense of loss, of aloneness, that she felt scarcely alive herself, and knew she couldn’t believe any of the offers of help.

“So all the neighbors came to see him off to Heaven.” Gar’s gentle voice intruded, made the darkened walls seem thinner, let her see through them to sunlight and leaves, perhaps even the hope that she hated now. “That meant the whole village, didn’t it?”

“Yes.” Alea wondered why Gar had said “heaven” instead of “Valhalla”—though everyone knew Valhalla was in the heavens, of course. “Even one or two enemies he’d made, the ones who hated him for having built more and earned more and having a few lovely things, even they came. I was touched—for a week. Then at the trial, I saw the gleam of triumph in their eyes, and I knew they’d only come to crow over the ones they’d envied.”

“I’m sure most of them meant it when they gave you their sympathy,” Gar said softly.

“If they did, they changed their meaning quickly enough! I should have realized they were lying!” Again memory seemed more real than the present, again Alea saw all the old familiar faces filing past, faces arranged in lines of sympathy, but all so formal, so distant, that they made her feel like a stranger. She expected it in the Wentods, was surprised to even see them there—they’d been her parents’ worst enemies, and their children the most poisonous in their insults once she started to grow too tall. But come they did, and even made grave, polite comments as they filed by, Vigan Wentod and his flint faced wife, and all six of their brood, only the youngest two still unmarried and at home. Polite, yes, but as distant as though a wall stood between them.

The other neighbors weren’t quite so far removed, but enough, enough, as though they were talking to a stranger. Alea had been numb inside, though, so dismayed and disbelieving that she never stopped to think what it meant. She sat there mouthing automatic thanks, her lips shaping the words by themselves without her mind’s help, and all the while tears stung her eyes, barely held back, as they did now…

“We all need to weep now and then,” Gar said, his eyes on the flames. “It does no harm, as long as it’s not in battle. One must let the tears fall to relieve the overflowing of the heart.”

He turned away from her, and she let herself weep, grateful to him for leaving her a share of privacy. When the worst of it had passed, she rubbed her cheeks with a sleeve and went on. “I was used to being treated as something of a monster, after all, so their reserve didn’t seem all that odd—but Alf!” Her voice hardened again. “He’s more than a head shorter than me now, but he wasn’t when I was fourteen and he sixteen, when he…” She caught herself. “Well, he made noises of sympathy as he ushered his wife past, but he looked back to give me a leer that made my blood ran cold, as though he were claiming me for his own again the way he did the. night before his wedding, whether I wanted it or not. I didn’t understand it at the funeral, I only turned away and tried to hide my shivering, tried to put him out of my mind—but a week later, when I stood before the village council in the meeting hall, and saw him standing there with his hot eyes, drying his palms with a square of linen, I realized what that look had meant. He intended to have me again, and for longer than a week or two this time! I had just been an amusement to him fourteen years before, another conquest, and one that he knew he’d never have to marry, for I was already too tall, and too plainly still growing! Now, though, he meant to claim me as a servant for his po-faced little wife, as a nurse for their horde of brats, then in secret make me do by force what he had persuaded me to do willingly fourteen years before. I made up my mind then that I would sooner kill myself than be his whore. Any one else’s I thought I could bear to be, for that was the life the Norns had plainly spun for me—but not his!”

Some remote part of her was appalled, was demanding that she stop, be silent, not pour out her heart to this stranger whom she had known for a scant three weeks—but he was the only one she was sure would really listen now that her parents were gone, and the words came almost of their own accord, words that shaped another memory, the village hall’s brightness drenching the funereal keeping room and washing it away, leaving only the sight of the headman sitting gravely at his table with the gavel in his hand to remind everyone that the law smote with the force of Thor’s hammer. The baron’s steward sat beside him to make sure they didn’t deal too lightly with a woman who was halfway to being a giant, and would probably birth only real giants. Neighbor or no, childhood friend or not, she was an abomination in the eyes of the gods and must be spurned with contempt.

Behind the hardness of their eyes, though, Alea saw the fear and, looking out at the villagers gathered on benches facing the headman, she saw that same fear reflected in all those faces, fear hardened and sharpened into hate. How could she have failed to see it all these years? Surely they had hidden it behind false smiles for her father’s sake, but how could she have failed to see it?

Alf’s glance was not only whetted with fear and hatred, though, but also hot with lust and avarice. A quick look told her that; she turned away, shaken, hoping against hope that the headman wouldn’t award her to him.