Quite Contrary (12 page)

“There’s a way round any fate. Especially for a Midgarder,” Magnus insisted, his fists clenched with sudden passion as he turned back to Nalls. Nalls wasn’t a small man, but Magnus loomed over him like a bear. The old man didn’t look old anymore. He just looked big, and like he was about to hit somebody.

“We can’t cast around blindly for it,” Nall argued, still with the calm that meant he was hiding how he felt, “I’m a village wise man. To untangle this destiny, we need the advice of someone who can read every thread.”

Magnus stared at him. When he answered, it came in a bear-like growl. “I’ll take her to the Sibyl.”

“Eric and Valdis will take her to the Sibyl,” Nall countered, “They’re heroes. You’re not anymore.”

I took a step forward. I wouldn’t be able to reach his crotch, but I bet if I kicked his knee hard enough, Nall wouldn’t care about the difference. Instead, Magnus’s hands closed on my shoulders and I was pulled up off the ground and hugged so tight my ribs burned.

When the pressure let up, I wheezed for breath. “I’m not getting them killed, either. I’m leaving, okay? Nobody’s dying for me. You haven’t seen my Wolf. All I can do is run.”

“Then the Sibyl can tell you how to get away,” Magnus conceded.

Oh, jeez. Now he was doing the same poker face as Nall. This really hurt him. Maybe it was better than telling him I hadn’t wanted to stay anyway.

“Fine. I’ll ask her”

“And Eric and Valdis will guard you,” Nall put in.

I sighed. “If I tried to leave them behind they’d just follow me.”

These people were impossible. Good thing I was leaving.

chewed on a hunk of leftover meat while Valdis and Eric and their folks did the instructions, and the good-byes, and the hugging. I kept myself on the other side of Valdis from her father.

That worked just about not at all. Like they’d sent some kind of telepathic message, Valdis stepped aside and Magnus pounced on me. While my personal space was being violated and my ribs creaked, he whispered, “My daughter and Eric are young, but they’ll get you safely to the Sibyl. I promise she’ll have an answer. We’ll see each other again.”

“No, we won’t,” I warned him when I could breathe. He was smart enough not to argue with me.

Eric and Valdis set out, and I trailed after them. How they could tell one direction from another was beyond me. They lived in the flattest, greenest place I could imagine. I knew there were hills out there, but they weren’t big enough to show up on the horizon. I’d be seeing them soon enough. They were only a stretch of merciless boredom away.

A good night’s sleep had done wonders for my legs, at least. They swung loose and pain free, letting me keep up with the much bigger kids. The scenery was nice, too. Okay, it was lots and lots of grass, but the place had a simple, natural charm rather than being grand and epic. Here and there a rock as big as a man would sit out on the flat meadow for no apparent reason. Gangs of sheep lurked in the distance, and a rabbit stampeded for the other side of creation every thirty seconds.

Looking around kept me entertained for, what, ten minutes? I didn’t have a watch, but the pleasant scenery subsided in the tedium of walking. After a while, I got so desperate I asked, “What’s with the crossbow, anyway? I saw other axes and swords, but nothing like that.”

Eric unslung it while he walked. He held the stupid thing like it was made of feathers. Oh, well. I didn’t want all the muscle that came with that strength anyway.

“It’s not a Northern weapon. Valdis’s father captured it as loot in his youth and it sat in his smithy for years. It’s not worth anything much, but he wanted to remember what a strange weapon it was. It’s easy to fire, and if you hit, the arrow will go through steel, but you only get one shot. It came with a winding machine, and by the time it was ready to fire again the battle would be over. Then, he took it down to show me one day and I cocked it by hand. He gave it to me as a gift.”

“What Eric’s leaving out is that we were getting desperate,” Valdis chimed in gleefully, “You’ve seen how hard he can hit with a hammer. Thor’s strength turned out to be less useful with other weapons. He blunts a regular sword or axe with one swing. If he throws an axe or a spear, it breaks into bits. He snaps regular bowstrings.”

The heated stare he gave her turned her grin into a laugh “Oh, and his aim is terrible. At least with this, he can hit something.”

He kept staring, and she kept grinning, and eventually he grinned, too.

Then, things got boring again.

By the time we stopped for lunch, the landscape had changed. We were leaving the flat grassland and seeing more rocks and moss. It still wasn’t as uneven as the spot where I’d fallen into the middle of Viking nowhere, but I could see steam plumes that suggested two more hot springs.

“Where are we going?” I asked between lengthy attempts to chew tough salted fish.

“We’re not sure. In the hills around here is a gorge. Apparently, you know it when you see it. Follow the gorge, and it leads to the Sibyl,” Valdis answered.

“Who is … ?”

“A legend by herself,” Eric filled in, “A witch. A hag. A giantess, maybe. Even the gods seek out a prophetess before any great quest so that they don’t flail around in ignorance.”

After that, we walked and I was bored again. The changing scenery did help. The land became bewilderingly uneven, mixing huge black rocks with jagged gullies. I don’t think I ever saw the same bush twice, so I derived some entertainment from peering at things like a bright red clump of tall grass with visibly serrated leaves. The sun got low on the horizon, and we ran across the gorge.

“This has to be it,” Valdis said for all of us.

In the middle of this already uneven terrain, a furrow dipped into the earth, with the walls on either side going up ten or twenty feet at the tallest. The furrow ran straight and smooth, like a tunnel dug not quite below the surface.

We followed the slope down into it, and kept walking. I was thinking the sun would go down soon and making camp would be a break from the tedium when I spotted something different ahead. A crude stone gate had been built over the middle of the tunnel. Incredibly crude. It was just three huge rectangular stones like a doorway with nothing to block it.Eric held out a hand to block me as I tried to step up and peek around him. “Stay behind me, Mary.”

“What does it mean?” I asked. I knew I sounded a little too eager not to be bored.

“I don’t know,” Eric answered.

He might not know, but his other hand slid his hammer out of his belt. Valdis unbuckled her own sword, although she held it loosely at her side.

“It means we’re going to be challenged. You can’t just visit the Sibyl whenever you want,” Valdis murmured to us.

“Foot,” I whispered, pointing past Eric at a boot sticking out from behind a bush.

Maybe because I’d blown his cover, the owner pushed himself up and staggered out from behind the bush. Standing right in front of the gate, the scruffy little man couldn’t block it. He was almost as skinny as me, with ragged clothing, red hair, and a beard that went everywhere. What I could see of his neck, wrists, and ankles was hairy, too. There was no way this wasn’t deliberate. He wanted to look like a scarecrow.

He brushed stray grass off his pants and greeted us. “Hello, travelers. Let’s not pretend we don’t know why we’re here. I’ve been asked to guard this gate, and I won’t let you pass until you can beat me in three tests. If you don’t beat me, I don’t suggest trying to pass. Even for a son of Thor, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“What kind of tests?” asked Eric, sounding a lot more calm than I felt.

This guy screamed ‘up to no good.’ So much so, that he didn’t care if we knew it.

“The usual.” The ragged shrugged. “First the test of Strength. I take it you’ll be facing that one?”

“A chance to test my strength against an Aesir? I’d be honored,” Eric announced.

Geez, he was as eager as a puppy, shucking off his carrying bag and his bow, and laying down his hammer. He stepped up to the scrawny redhead and they clasped hands.

“Ready?” asked the ragged man. Eric nodded, and before he’d finished the ragged man ballooned into a bear and fell on him.

I’d never been this close to an angry bear. I thought Eric was big. I’d thought Magnus was huge. The bear was a
bear
, a giant mass of flesh and hair, bigger than both of them together. It roared, and I had trouble breathing seeing those fangs bared so close to Eric’s face. It didn’t use them. They held each other, hand in paw. I couldn’t imagine how strong that hulking thing must be, but even if his shoulders shook and his body strained to do it, Eric forced those paws up. He pushed the bear a step back, then another, and then with a lunge, threw it onto its back and kneeled on top of it.

No matter how strong Eric was, he couldn’t really have pinned something that big. I guess he didn’t have to. It shrank so fast that Eric was left with hands empty, kneeling on the ground as the ragged man rolled out from under him.

“Not bad,” the ragged man conceded, wiping bear drool from his mouth. He didn’t sound surprised. “Test of Wits to one of you girls, I take it?” Yellow-grimed eyes looked back and forth between me and Valdis.

“Me, as you already know,” Valdis answered.

Eric had taken his test lightly. Valdis’s eyes and voice had gone flat and suspicious.

“Young people can be clever,” the vagabond countered. Shuffling behind his bush, he pulled out a flat, square stone and laid it out in front of Valdis. Then, he laid those stones marked with symbols on top of it. One, then a row of two, then a row of three, then a row of four. “This is a foreign game I’m fond of. It’s very simple. We take turns removing one, two, or three runes from the board. Whoever takes the last rune loses. Have you ever played before?”

“I’ve never heard of it. That’s why you picked it.” Valdis’s voice remained stiff and wary.

“It’s so simple that practice doesn’t help, so fair’s fair,” the ragged man replied, dismissing her suspicion with easy confidence. “I’ll start by taking one-”

“No, you won’t,” Valdis broke in, reaching out to place her hand between his reaching fingers and the board while looking him in the eye. “You issued the challenge. I get to choose who goes first. That is a law even Odin obeys.” And with that, she took a single stone off the bottom layer.

That shut the ragged man up. They both glared at the board. He took two pieces. She stared for a long time, and then took two more, leaving five pieces. The ragged man’s mouth twisted in disgust, but he took one and Valdis took three, and he flicked the last piece away with a finger.

“Fine, fine. You win,” he muttered. He didn’t seem nearly mad enough as he pushed his way back to his feet. “One test left, and one traveler left to test. No, close your mouth, Helasdottir. I know the old law, too. You’ve picked your battles. Now the duckling will have to suffer the test of Will.”

And that was the trap. Valdis looked horrified, and Eric’s fists strained at his sides, but his eyes were lost. They were helpless. They thought they were helpless. God, I was sick of this jerk with the red hair already.

“No, I won’t,” I snapped at him.

“Yes, you will. It’s the law. The true, old law,” he replied smugly.