Stormbringer (12 page)

I return her grin, holding up my thumb and foreclaw in the universal gesture of “maybe just a little.” Then I wink, and Þrúðr laughs and goes to stand. As she does, she says, “I…I am sorry about before. What I said about—”

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “Forget about it. It's…It was a long time ago.”

I don't watch her reaction, just listen to her footsteps and the rustle of her skirts as she walks away, and maybe—just maybe, if I'm feeling very, very honest—I may admit to feeling something very similar to a twinge of guilt.

(“she makes her own choices”)

So sayeth the poison that drips from my blackest heart. Still…

Tomorrow we should reach our destination. I guess I have until then to reconsider.

Stomach growling, I curl into a chain-wrapped feather ball, close my eyes, and pretend to sleep.

When Þrúðr Þórsdóttir had been very young, Váli Lokason pushed her into a river.

She'd been sitting on the edge when it'd happened, studying the shine of her hair in the water. The only warning she'd had was the sound of wicked laughter, and a single flash of red across the corner of her eye.

The next thing she knew, she'd been wet, some very startled salmon brushing cold scales against her cheeks. By the time she'd struggled to the surface, Váli had been nowhere to be found.

But she'd known he'd been the culprit.

Váli had always been an odd boy, as perhaps befitting his heritage. Long-limbed and gawky, with a mess of loose copper curls twisting too far below his chin to be seemly. Váli's brother, Nari, had been the luckier of the pair, blessed with his father's handsome looks and his mother's gentle heart. But where Nari was kind and pleasing, even to Þrúðr's eyes, Váli was rough in both personality and in features. A wild and feral thing, more
jötunn
than
áss.

Eventually, Þrúðr had pulled herself from the river and up onto the rocks. Had stripped out of her hangaroc and dried her shift beneath the sun.

There, alone, with only Sól's gaze upon her, she'd cried. Just a little. Cried, and considered telling Father of the prank.

She'd considered it, but she hadn't. Because what would that have made her? Eldest of Thor, unable even to handle the least of Loki's smirking brats? And were it not but for her sex—but for Mother's disapproving gaze—Þrúðr would have pummeled Váli into the ground for daring to put a hand upon her.

She'd dreamed of it, at the time.

Particularly when, next she saw him, Váli had sniffed the air and mentioned fish.

Þrúðr had wanted to kill him. Instead, she'd plotted. An elaborate revenge, or so she'd thought. To extend a hand of friendship to her foe, only to snatch it from him at the cruelest time. It would not take much to have all of Ásgarðr laughing at the folly of one of Loki's house, would take less still to have them side with her against its demise.

Váli had no friends, only a brother. And Þrúðr was Thor's daughter, as radiant and beautiful as her mother. There was no plan of hers that could fail. Not in this.

And so she'd gone into the woods behind Loki's house, to the one place in Ásgarðr where few
æsir
dared to tread. And there, as she rounded one crumbling side of the ugly little cottage, Þrúðr stopped.

For there was Loki's wife, Sigyn, hanging linen out to dry. A young daughter standing by her side.

Even from a distance, even dressed in shift and hangaroc, Þrúðr had not failed to know Váli's plain, unpretty face.

Þrúðr had fled before they'd seen her. Or tried to, rounding back around the house with such shock she'd barreled into her uncle without knowing. Loki had caught her in his thin hands and stared at her with eyes that burned like poison, even then.

“Tell no one,” he'd said, voice a serpent's hiss. “And you will be even.”

Þrúðr had nodded, too stunned to do otherwise, and Loki's dark fingers had unwound from her shoulders. “Go,” he'd said, and she had. Running from the house without so much as a backward glance.

Not a glance, but nor could she fail to hear a delighted scream, voice not quite that of the boy she thought she knew.

“Papa!” it had called.

“Valdís!” had been the response.

Then the sound of three voices, laughing with unselfconscious joy.

True to her word, Þrúðr had never told a soul. True to his father's, Váli had never touched her again.

Not until Myrkviðr.

“Where are our horses?”

The morning of their third day. The forest was an awful place, dark and dank, full of rustling leaves and the vicious stares of scurrying spies, always slightly out of sight.

Þrúðr was sore from sleeping on uneven roots, and from the horses, and hungry from the meal they hadn't had last night, thanks to the pranks of wicked
jötnar.

And now this.

“Oh, right. I traded them to the
þursar.
In the night. While you slept.”

Loki—
Lain
—was leaning against the trunk of his tree, corpse-bloat smile bright against the gloom and smeared with fat and blood from the haunch of meat grasped in his claw. Raw and bloodied, and definitely not horse.

Magni turned, blinking. “What?” he snarled. Þrúðr could feel the rage in him, rising like the storm.

“Traded the horses,” Lain repeated. “For food.” He held up the meat-stripped bone in his hand before putting one end between his too-sharp teeth and biting down to get the marrow.

“Liar!” Magni stepped forward, hands clenching at his sides. “Tell me the truth,
jötunn.
”

Half risen from her bedroll, Þrúðr shared a questioning glance with Móði. He shook his head in response, catching her meaning; he had taken first watch, and the horses had been present when he'd handed over to his brother.

Lain was testing them. Testing Magni. Þrúðr felt the realization strike her like the lightning of her birthright, like the breaking of the storm that had been brewing since the thing bearing Loki's name had stepped onto the Bifröst. They'd known he would do this. Þrúðr had known, had tried to warn her brothers, back in Ásgarðr. Tried to prepare them. She'd tried, and she'd failed.

Just as Magni would now fail.

“You beast!” he was roaring, one hand grasped around Lain's collar as he hauled the
jötunn
to his feet. “They were ours! Why would you do this?”

Lain grinned his blood-sick grin. “I was hungry,” he said. “Some local kids came down and offered me food in the night. I gave them your horse in return. Yours and Móði's.”

Magni roared, slamming Lain back against the gnarled wood of the tree. From the other side of the camp, Þrúðr heard the remaining two horses shift and stamp.

Lain had kept her horse, as well as his own.

“Thief!” Magni shook Lain by the collar, the
jötunn
limp and unresisting in his hands, feathers flickering like wildfire. “They were not yours to ‘trade'! You have stolen from us, I will—”

“You will
what
?” There was something in Lain's voice. A kind of jagged edge, similar to the one he'd had the night before, when Þrúðr had accused him of dishonor on his wife. “What will you do, Magni, son of Thor?” Lain was saying. “What
did
you do, when thieves crept into your camp at night? When their breath ghosted across the pale skin of your siblings, and their sharp blades danced against your neck?”

“Enough!” Magni's fingers uncurled from Lain's collar, and he took a half step backward. But the
jötunn
wasn't done.

“The whole forest heard you, Magni. The way the very ground shook with your snores. You were supposed to be on watch. You failed. You failed, and it was only my blind eyes that saw the
þursar
drop down from the trees. Saw them dare each other to cut the curls from off your head while you slept. They have trophies, Magni. And not just of you.” Lain's milk-blank gaze flicked to Þrúðr, and she couldn't help the gasp that escaped her lips, nor the way her hands flew up to run across her hair. Over the braid and—

And—

And there. Right at the end. A single missing lock.

“Hnnuuurggh!”

Þrúðr's eyes had squeezed shut, but she heard her brother's roar. And the sound his fist made when it slammed into their monster's jaw.

When she next dared look, Lain was on the ground, shoulders shaking.

“When I am done with you,” Magni said, stalking forward, “you will laugh no longer. You
will
know your place.”

“Broken and bloodied,” Lain said, voice cracked with madness and wet from blood. “Quivering at the feet of a Þórsson. Yes, I know my place. But tell me, Magni. Do you? Hurt me all you would, torture me. You have such
rage
in you, like your father did. Do you think it would please him to see the brute you have become? Do you think it pleases your brother, pleases your sister, while they cower behind you, wondering how long it will be before you have Mjölnir in your hand and you turn that rage unto—”

“Silence!” Magni spat the word, literally, onto his palm, and when Lain howled from the pain of the tattoo, Þrúðr felt the earth beneath her shake.

“Enough! Brother, enough!” And then she was on her feet. Striding forward, heart racing in time to Lain's wet and ragged breath. “This has gone far enough. I will not allow you to—”

Magni spun, a retort bristling on his tongue.

In the next instant, Þrúðr heard a growl—a
twang!
—and saw a great dark shape leap forth from the forest, slamming into Magni and sending him rolling across the dirt.

Then everything was chaos, a dozen beasts pouring into the camp from among the trees, trailing howls and the sound of loosing arrows in their wake. One of the latter buried itself at Þrúðr's feet. Yet another had driven right through Móði's shoulder as he struggled to drag himself from his bed.

Þrúðr lunged sideways, back to where her own belongings sat, pulling her sword from the ground and rising with it held before her. The tip of it shook in time to Þrúðr's thunderous heart, her hands damp and clammy on the hilt, and she tried to still her breath and remember the forms trainer Hlín had taught her as a girl.

From her left, Þrúðr heard a growl, and she spun. A great wolf crouched there, dappled gray fur bristling as it bared its wicked teeth. Behind it, Magni grappled with another, this one huge and rusty red. Two more circled Móði, and from above came both strange birdcalls and the hail of piercing arrows.

“Please,” Þrúðr called. “We mean you no harm. We are travelers, only. Passing th—”

The wolf before her lunged. Þrúðr tried to sidestep, but her foot caught against a root, and next she knew she was on the ground, beast's claws pressing into her chest and the fetid stink of its meat-rot breath upon her face.

She shrieked, bringing her arm up beneath the wolf's neck to keep its fangs from her throat. She'd dropped her sword as she fell and her free hand scrabbled for it now, feeling worms and insects scurry between her fingers as she pushed them through the loam.

Above her, the wolf snapped, pressing forward, and Þrúðr yelped as its teeth grazed against her cheek. Then, finally, she found steel and leather, and with a cry she brought the sword up, grip backhanded and awkward, but enough to
twist
and drive the blade into a heaving flank.

Now it was the wolf's turn to yelp, ears flattened as Þrúðr heaved with all her might, with the strength of her father and the will of her mother, sending the beast backward across the dirt.

She got no time to savor victory. Not when another wolf shape went hurtling past, thrown by Magni with a roar. Behind that, Þrúðr could see Móði working runes that had frozen a third wolf in place, while another prepared to leap on him from the side. And behind
that,
Þrúðr saw a girl.

A girl. An
ásynja
girl, with olive skin smeared by dark blood, and feathers woven in her flame-red hair. No more than a child, and Lain had said there were children in the forest, but he'd called them
þursar,
and this girl was not.

She also held a bow, and was aiming it at Móði.

“Móði! Behind you!” Þrúðr cried.

“Alu!”
At Móði's word, a shimmering barrier coiled around him. From the forest, the girl let loose her arrow, which flew straight and true and shattered harmlessly against the magic.
“Ýr-kaun!”
Móði added, even as the strange girl prepared to nock another shaft.

When she drew the bow, however, the wood snapped in two.

She hissed, then was gone. Back into the trees, even as Þrúðr lunged forward with a “Wait!”

A girl. In the forest.

“Sister!”

Magni's voice, and Þrúðr turned, bringing her sword up just in time to meet the fangs of the red wolf.

Or…not a wolf, perhaps. Because it was too big, with too-large forelimbs and claws that almost looked like hands.

Claws like hands and ears like horns. Red fur that clumped and shifted and looked so very much like feathers. And above a jagged grin stained dark with Magni's blood, a pair of too-familiar eyes.

“Blood for blood,” the not-wolf snarled. “A brother for a brother. Which one shall we take?”

“Please,” Þrúðr begged. “We've done nothing to you!”

“Liar!”

The voice was loud enough to shake the trees, broken by pain and fury. Whatever this attack was, it wasn't about the forest. Not something so impersonal as territory or land. This was something else, some other treasure from the heart of this strange beast and the girl who flew among the trees, shooting arrows from the boughs.

A brother for a brother,
the beast had said, and these were
þurs
lands.

And Þrúðr, born from a legacy stained dark purple with each of her mighty father's kills.

“Please,” she said. “Whatever has been done to you, I am truly sorry. But killing us will not bring your brother back, it will not undo the pain that has been done.”

The beast bared its teeth. Behind it, Magni and Móði fought back-to-back against the others.

“No,” it said. “But it will stop you from doing more.”

Then it lunged.

“Valdís, no!”

Sword pressed against a red-feathered throat, one huge claw inches from her skull, and in that moment, time froze.

“Vala, enough.”

So close, Þrúðr saw the beast's eyes draw wide, rings of white around the color.

And, behind it, she saw Lain. Standing, free from his chain and a single shackle, blood running from a deep claw gash in his arm.