by Meg Trotter
Maera took a hesitant step forward. Her gaze went to a large man standing down the beach, grinning at them. He adjusted his stance, propping one hand up on his hip. Maera noticed with a start that the man was missing his right hand up to the wrist. That didn’t seem to hinder him from wielding a large sword in his other hand. He waited with a smirk, his dark eyes on Luka’s back.
“Take her,” Luka repeated.
“But—“
Maera.
His quiet click of her name startled her into holding out her hands to obey his command. Luka shifted the woman into Maera’s arms. When his green eyes met her gray ones, Maera saw a twinge of fear there. It frightened her. She grunted at the weight of the woman in her arms, and Freydis and Valka stepped forward to help.
“Go down to the tree with the others,” Luka instructed.
Maera nodded. She started to tell him to be careful, but he was already turning toward his opponent. Maera turned down the path to the tree. She and the other two women had all only gone a few steps around a curve in the wall before Maera shifted the unconscious captive to Freydis. Valka stepped up to help.
Without a word of explanation, Maera turned and headed back. She swung wide around the two men in the distance. The cloudy night sky was completely black tonight, making visibility low. It made it a simple thing to creep along the shoreline until she reached the docked ships. She ducked into the darker shadows between the two vessels and peered out at Luka where he faced the large stranger. The fear had evaporated from the witch’s face, replaced with the regular easy confidence he usually wore.
“Didn’t expect to see you way out here in the middle of nowhere,” the stranger said.
“Same here,” Luka replied. “What are you doing all the way out here, Tyr? Not enough people left to kill closer to home?”
Tyr grinned and gave his bloodied sword a flourish. “Found these guys itching for a fight. I thought I’d join them and spill some blood down south. See if it’s red here too.”
Luka gestured to his own blood-spattered body. “Clearly it is.”
“Yours isn’t.” Tyr grinned wider.
“Yeah, you know the color of my blood,” Luka said, laying a hand on his dagger in his belt. “And my wife’s blood.”
This dropped the pleasant expression from Tyr’s face. “If you remember, I never laid a hand on your woman.”
“But you didn’t try to stop it either,” Luka snarled.
“And,” Tyr, said, ignoring the interruption, “I never hurt your children, even when one of them did this to me.” He lifted his mutilated arm.
“Well, I’d be most appreciative if you’d be that considerate again, and just stand there while I shove these into your heart.” Luka made a gesture and suddenly his one knife was two. He lunged toward the other man with one in each hand. Tyr barely deflected a blow with his sword and had to jerk away from the second. They clashed, the blades clanking loudly in the dark. Maera couldn’t make out exactly what was happening in the scuffle, but neither side seemed to be winning.
Eventually the two fighters broke apart. The larger man smirked. “Still as volatile a fighter as ever. Haven’t learned your lesson in a thousand years. Odin said you’d never learn.”
Luka paused, panting. “And what, exactly, does the great Odin think I need to learn?”
“To stop getting too attached to things.”
“Is that what he told you when you lost your hand?”
This seemed to annoy Tyr. He dropped his sword. Confused, Luka glanced down at the discarded weapon. Tyr raised his fist with surprising speed and clobbered it into Luka’s temple. Luka stumbled backward. He landed hard on his back. Winded, he didn’t have the chance to recover before the other man kicked at his head. Luka managed to get his arm up to take some of the blow, but Maera still heard the impact from where she stood. She grimaced.
Tyr bent and started battering the witch with his fist. With every strike, Maera felt her own chest constricting. When the man reached down to retrieve his sword, Maera panicked. She yanked her own dagger from her belt and launched herself from her hiding place. She slammed into Tyr and shoved the dagger into his side, under his ribs, will all of her strength. It went in up to the hilt.
He hissed in pain and stepped back from Luka. The witch blinked blood out of his eyes — at least Maera thought it was blood. It looked a strange color in the dark. Fear flickered across his expression again when he could focus enough to see Maera. Tyr closed his fingers around the hilt of the dagger protruding from his side and jerked it out. Golden blood trickled out, though not in the great spurt that Maera had expected to accompany such a wound. He tossed the dagger aside.
Maera was so shocked that she didn’t see him reaching for her. He buried his hand in her hair. She squeaked in surprise and tried to struggle away, but Tyr jerked upward so that she had to stand on her tiptoes to keep from being lifted into the air by the golden strands. He studied her a moment and laughed before turning his attention back to Luka, who was struggling to get upright. “Another one, Loki? Really?” He spit onto the ground, near where Luka had gotten to one knee. “You are a sentimental idiot, aren’t you?”
Unable to free her hair, Maera did the only thing she could think to do. She balanced on tiptoe on one foot and kicked with all her strength at the man’s knife wound. However her aim slipped and her foot slammed into his body a little lower than she’d intended. He hissed and dropped her.
She scrambled for her discarded dagger. As soon as her shaking fingers closed around the handle, she lurched back to her feet and twirled, intending to stab the giant man again. She’d stab him full of holes if she had to. He had to fall eventually.
However, Tyr backhanded her hard across the face. Maera’s vision went bright white for a moment. The dagger fumbled from her grip. She crumpled to the rocky shore. When her head stopped ringing, and she opened her eyes, she saw Tyr sneering down at her. “This one fights a little dirtier than your last one, I’ll give her that.”
Luka lurched between them, panting with exhaustion. “She’s just a village girl,” he wheezed. “Don’t know her.”
“This random village girl is awfully passionate about protecting you,” Tyr said.
“You and your buddies did just attack her home and are killing and kidnapping her family,” Luka replied. “Maybe she’s just not all that fond of you in general.”
Tyr snorted at this, but he dropped his fighting stance. “You need to spend less time with farmers, and more time with fighters,” he growled. “Maybe then you’d be able to protect what is yours, since you’re so damned set on getting attached.”
Without waiting for a reply, Tyr turned and stalked off toward several other of the raiders who were retreating to their last remaining ship.
Luka watched him go, breathing hard. A bit of golden blood dotted his bottom lip. He wiped at it, then glanced at the smear of color on the back of his hand. He frowned, wiped at his face again, and then wiped his knuckles across his pants.
It was the last thing Maera saw before darkness crept in around the edges of her vision and unconsciousness claimed her.
Chapter 15
When Maera woke again, for a moment she thought she had dreamed the whole raid. She was warm and comfortable in a bed with furs around her and the flicker of firelight dancing shadows across the ceiling. However, pain started creeping back into her body. Her head and neck throbbed along with her legs now. She could hear low murmurs around her, but couldn’t identify the speakers. Once she could focus, she saw she wasn’t in her own quarters at all. It was Freydis’ house.
Chief Orm stood near the entrance, talking in low tones with several men. Freydis and Valka huddled together on the opposite side of the longhouse. Freydis’ arm was around the other girl. Neither of them spoke. They just stared blankly at the floor in front of them.
Maera’s gaze drifted to the carved poles that framed the chief’s high seat. Firelight flickered over the images carved there — hammers,
men, giants, and gods.
Maera felt a jolt.
Luka.
The words of the storyteller from the city came flooding back to her. A trickster god marrying a giantess, despised by his kind. The other gods discovering the union and killing the wife and capturing the children. Maera sat up. The room swam around her, but after a moment it settled. She lurched to her feet. The room swung wildly around her, and she fell to her knees, cursing when the impact sent a flare of pain up her legs and neck.
Freydis appeared at her side, helping her to stand. “Easy,” she said. “You’ve had a nasty hit to the head.”
Maera squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the room to stop spinning. “Where is Luka?” she asked, as plainly as she could.
“Who?”
Maera opened her eyes and pushed away from her friend, wobbling to the door. “Exactly,” she growled,
When Maera burst into the sick-house, Luka was there, sitting on his bed and working at tying a bandage around his upper arm. Beside him was a cloth soaked with golden blood. He looked better than she would have imagined, with the beating he had just been given. Other than his bandaged arm, the only indication that he’d had any trouble at all was the dark circles under his eyes. Maera opened her mouth to snap something at him, but movement in her bed distracted her. The red-headed woman lay there, still unconscious and looking half-dead, piled under several layers of furs.
Instead of the dozens of different things she had intended to say, Maera heard herself snapping, You put her in my bed?
Luka used his teeth to finish tying off his bandage before answering. “I didn’t put her anywhere. Your friends did. If you remember, I gave her to you to deal with. Which you did poorly, by the way.”
She’s still alive, isn’t she?
“You’re lucky you are,” Luka snapped. His green eyes finally met hers, burning with a quiet fire. “I’d like to know what in Hel’s name you thought you were doing out there with that butter knife.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. Saving your ass. You were a couple of punches away from having your head bashed in, in case you didn’t notice.
“I would have been fine,” he snapped. “And who said it was your duty to save my ass?” When she didn’t answer, he sneered. “First it was that shark and your sister. Then the raider and Freydis. The men on the boat and Valka. Now me and Tyr. Not to mention that you only made our bet in order to protect your father. You have this ...” he gestured wildly at the ceiling, “insane savior complex that you need to put in check before—“
I protect my pod!
Luka threw down the bloody cloth. “I am not a gods-damned whale! You keep me out of this!”
Maera glowered at the cloth on the ground, her eyes suddenly feeling damp, much to her annoyance. Her head hurt and her legs throbbed, and she was just so, so tired. She started to turn toward one of the empty platform beds so she could sit down, but a sudden sharp pulse of pain shot up her legs and made her stumble. When her knees hit the dirt floor, it only intensified the pain to the point that Maera thought she might be sick.
After a beat of silence, Luka huffed, but crossed the room and knelt down in front of her. “It is your head?”
No. Legs. She squeezed her eyes tight against the nausea.
“Your legs? When did you hurt your legs?"
They’ve always hurt, Maera snapped. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to shove him away or cry or just curl up and go to sleep on the ground where she was. Each of the options seemed equally appealing at the moment.
“Wait, always?” he asked. She nodded but immediately regretted it when she was hit with more pain in her head and neck. He narrowed his eyes. “Well, why didn’t you ever say something?” he snapped. Before she could form an answer, he scooped her up and deposited her a bit roughly on one of the empty platform beds. She grimaced at the jarring movement as he muttered something about a mistake in the shape-shifting.
He knelt in front of her and put his palms on her knees. Without bothering with an explanation, he closed his eyes and concentrated. A wave of cold radiated out from his palms and down into the muscles and bones of her legs. She hissed when the feeling intensified around the areas where the pain was most pronounced. She grabbed his upper arms in preparation to push him away. He was very close to having the sparse contents of her stomach decorating the front of his shirt. However, a second wave of magic rolled through her, this one warm and gentle. When it reached the pain points, it pushed through them, first sending a sharp spike of pain, followed immediately by its complete erasure.
A quiet sound escaped Maera’s lips, somewhere halfway between pain and relief. She was lightheaded with the absence of pain. Her whole body sagged. She felt herself tipping forward, but caught herself before she could fall into Luka completely. Instead, she rested her forehead on his shoulder and waited for the room to stop spinning. Once she caught her breath, Maera came to herself enough to notice Luka’s posture had gone rigid.
With effort she pulled herself upright and released his arms. A few of the beads around her wrist were flecked with golden blood from his bandage. She frowned at the blood and then let her gaze move up to his face. Were you never going to tell me, she clicked softly, who you really are, . . . Loki?
His eyes, which had gone a bit hazy and were focused somewhere around the curve of her neck, suddenly sharpened and snapped to her face. He jerked his hands away from her knees and stood, taking a step back. “It was too much to explain. You didn’t know enough about this world for any of it to make sense to you.” He rubbed his hands absently on his thighs, as if trying to wipe something unpleasant off his palms. “It doesn’t make any difference anyway.”
Doesn’t make any difference? Maera gripped the furs underneath her. You’re a god!
“It doesn’t make a difference,” he repeated. He pointed a finger at her. “And don’t you even think about batting your stupid grey eyes at me. There’s nothing I can do for your father. I couldn’t even protect my own family. There’s not a chance that I can do anything about yours.”
Maera’s nostrils flared. Don’t flatter yourself. I wasn’t even considering… She growled and shook her head. You’ve told me all these lies! I don’t even know what’s true anymore! This isn’t another world, it’s just another part of mine. Erik and the others aren’t gods, they’re humans. You aren’t ... you aren’t you.
“Don’t be so dramatic. Just because I wasn’t using my true name, Sigyn,” he over-enunciated her human name with a sneer, “doesn’t mean that I—“
She cut him off before he could finish. Is any of this real? she snapped. Am I even really here, or am I still back in the cave and you’re just giving me some crazy hallucination?
“Oh, you’re really here, but you won’t be for long if you keep doing things like kicking gods in the balls to satisfy your death wish.” He turned and stalked to the door.
Where are you’re going?
Loki yanked the door open with more force than necessary. The breeze from outside ruffled his hair and sliced through the comfortable warmth of the room. “Home. That god that you assaulted is not going to just forget that I’m here. When he goes back to Valhalla, he’s going to tell the others, and if Odin thinks-” He bit off the last of his sentence, then shook his head. “The last thing this village needs is more gods in it. Besides,” he sneered, “you’ve got your prince. It’s almost the full moon. I’ll come take you home when this is all over. Then you can continue to sacrifice yourself for your father to your heart’s content.”
Just because you couldn’t protect your loved ones doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to protect mine, Maera snarled.
Loki left, slamming the door behind him. The walls of the little house shook. Maera blinked back angry tears, determined not to shed a single one. She glanced over at the red-headed woman in her bed, still sleeping soundly, despite all the shouting and clicking.
Once composed, Maera left the small hut and returned to Freydis
’ home. More people were coming and going now. Daylight was fast approaching, revealing wisps of smoke rising from here and there and the shadows of bodies lying prone in the grass.
“How many dead?” Chief Orm was asking another man as Maera slipped back inside.
The man shook his head. “Not too many of ours, we don’t think. It’s hard to tell in the dark who is who, especially with some of the wounds.”
“The fires?”
“Out now. One home is a total loss. The others can be repaired, I think.”
A low moan in one of the beds drew Maera’s attention. Valka knelt at the side of Skarde, who was wrapped with bandages around his torso. Her brow was knit with worry as she dabbed at his forehead with a cloth. His breathing was quick and labored. Maera eyed him as she approached, wondering if he’d been attacked again after she and Freydis had left him to go after Valka. He certainly hadn’t appeared injured enough to be causing such a fuss then.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” he murmured in low tones to Valka. He threw a shaky arm over his eyes. “I’m so ashamed. I couldn’t protect you. When those three big men came after me, I tried. I did, but-” he broke off and gave a little choked sob.
Valka looked confused for a moment. “There were three? I only saw the one.”
“Yes,” he sniffed. “You probably don’t remember because of the head wound.” Maera glanced over at her friend, who still looked uncertain, but definitely wasn’t sporting any head wound that she could see. Skarde shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter. Three or three hundred, I should have been able to ... to protect .... I’m not worthy of you.”
Valka shushed him gently while Maera and Freydis exchanged looks over her head. “Don’t talk like that,” Valka said. “I’m fine.”
He shook his head again. “I was ... was going to officially ask you to be mine at the Winter Nights festival. But now I see. Now I see that I don’t deserve-”
