When Jason was dropped off at The Vikings, with another bull calf, after the usual friendly greetings, Tanya suggested to Thor, 'Perhaps you would like to visit Newcastle with me today. It might be interesting for you to see what we're doing.'
Thor shook his head. 'I hear bad things of that place, ghosts and terrible whooshing noises in the night, fire in the trees, then with no sign of any burning the next day. No thanks, you are welcome to it. I will stay here among things I know.'
After take off, Tanya thought to herself smiling, 'Thank God for Derain. We're getting Thor into a place where he will no longer be any kind of threat.'
Tanya had told Jason on the journey to The Vikings, 'They will challenge you to all sorts of competitions such as riding, shooting, and hunting; if there is anything left to hunt in that place. Whatever happens, firstly understand what the competition is all about and then totally thrash them, which you will be able to do. There is one exception to that.'
'Hercules?'
'Smart boy! Yes, let him win, but only occasionally. And one other thing ...'
'Decline all the fanny offerings that will come my way?' answered Jason.
'You took the words out of my mouth,' Tanya smiled. 'Remember the prize.'
'Venus,' said Jason firmly.
'For you, yes. For another thousand or more people, peace. Just keep a small part of your mind on that.'
Jason started to install solar power in Thor's palace. Using the well-established discipline taught by Joe, he always checked his earlier work at the start of each day. On the second day he took one look at the uncompleted installation and immediately tracked Thor down.
'I installed this yesterday and some ungifted nincompoop has messed with it in the night. If I hadn't seen what had been done, when the sun comes up in an hour or so it would have set fire to your palace. It would only have taken a few minutes for it all to go up in smoke, including you probably. I don't really care whether or not you want solar power, but if you do please have all this nonsense stopped. If you don't want it, tell me and I will pack everything up and take it to Banksia.'
'Banksia has solar?'
'Yes, they are paying for it. Maybe I should suggest to Tanya that you might appreciate it a bit more if you were asked to pay as well.'
He re-examined all his work each day after that, but had no more trouble.
Most evenings he was obliged to join in heavy drinking sessions with many of the young men. Jason was quite unused to alcohol, especially the home-distilled variety on offer. He managed to pour away most of what he'd been given, but he often still felt somewhat unsteady when he was allowed to leave. On the fourth night, just as he entered his hut, he noticed a fresh, feminine smell. Remembering his discussion with Tanya, he turned on his heel and quickly left, spending the rest of the night sleeping on a couch in the semi-public area in Thor's palace.
Thor found him at dawn the next morning. 'Don't you like your own place,' he asked acidly.
'It's very nice,' answered Jason. 'I was late after all the drinking, and there was another person in the hut I thought was mine, so instead of disturbing anyone I came here. I've slept very well.'
Thor looked furious, but said nothing.
Jason had no difficulty in beating the dozen or so opponents who challenged him in various contests. Although, on one occasion, he allowed Hercules to win a riding competition by a short head.
Earlier he had talked with his two colleagues that had been assigned to train The Vikings.
'The problem is lack of discipline,' he was told. 'None of them attend all the training sessions. They only attend when they feel like it, so sometimes we have a fairly full group, but for tougher things like long runs or cross country riding, only one or two turn up and often none at all. There are no sanctions, nothing like being put on a charge like we have at home and Thor takes very little interest.'
A week into what Jason considered his two-week penance, he was walking briskly to complete one of his solar installation projects. To his horror, he saw a small girl of two or three on the path walking unsteadily, as children of that age do, with hands outstretched, towards an enormous black snake which appeared to be dancing on its tail threatening her. A woman emerged from a nearby hut, took in the scene, and immediately started shrieking, attracting many bystanders.
Jason knew he had to act quickly, and, without a thought for his own safety, he dropped his workbag, picked up a nearby fallen tree branch, broke it in two, and rapidly approached the child and the snake who were now less than a metre apart. The snake sensing the new threat focussed on Jason, rather than the girl.
Derain's first lesson, the thought flashed through Jason's mind. Keeping the stick in his left hand to attract the snake's attention he slowly moved around, snatching the snake up by the tail and in a whip-cracking movement he broke the snake's back. He then stood on its head, killing it.
Jason gently picked up the crying girl, and walked the fifty metres to return her to her hysterical mother.
'It's alright, she wasn't bitten,' said Jason gently. 'No harm was done. Easy.' He put his arm round her shoulder until the sobs had ceased.
'Oh, thank you, thank you!'
A small crowd gathered to comfort the woman. When Jason could extricate himself from the melee, he collected his discarded work bag and picked up the dead snake.
Later, having skinned it and removed its head, he took it to Thor's kitchen and suggested to the woman in charge that it could be eaten for the next meal.
'Thor won't eat snake,' said the woman.
'Tell him its chicken, he won't know the difference'
The woman laughed
'Enjoy the meal?' she asked Thor and several of his lieutenants when the plates had been cleared. The only subject of discussion at the meal was Jason's apparent heroism.
'Yes, it was delicious,' most of them chorused.
'Jason's snake,' she told them, to many disbelieving looks. One of them clutched his throat as if to be sick.
Although horrified to start with, Thor recovered his composure quickly and said, 'Snake? Delicious, seems a bit like chicken. Maybe we could include it as a regular in our diet.' He winked at Jason. All his lieutenants quickly followed suit and made positive remarks.
For the last ten days of his stay, Jason was treated as an honoured guest. He had several long discussions with Thor, especially about the military training. Resulting from that a "volunteer" group of twenty trainees was formed with Thor personally administering the discipline. Dawn runs and uniforms were introduced, and any transgressors were severely punished.
'If they really fuck-up, I have the dungeon,' he said to Jason conversationally, as if it was the most commonplace punishment in the world.
The Settlement trainers suddenly had a real job on their hands and said laughingly to Jason, 'Pity we didn't have the snake incident earlier in the piece. Seriously, within a few months, this squad will be up to the standard of The Academy,'
Jason was ready to greet Tanya and gave her a full briefing when she arrived to pick him up. Leaving nothing out he said, 'I really don't think there'll be any problem getting Thor's permission to marry Venus. I thought she might come with you; I'm looking forward to seeing her. And no mention has been made of the bride price issue, by the way.'
'It wouldn't enter Thor's head to discuss that with you. He may mention it to me later. I suggested to Venus that she should come today, but she seemed focussed on making sure you had a warm welcome when you returned.'
Thor was very polite and said to Tanya, 'Exceptional young man, your Jason. He has been very helpful here in the last two weeks. He will have told you about saving that child from the snake? We now have a very good military training program and he has installed solar in many places. He has my permission to court Venus as you describe it.'
'Thank you,' said Tanya quietly, 'as you say he is an exceptional young man.'
'If she agrees, we'll have to discuss the question of a bride price, it is … '
'I understand the concept,' Tanya interrupted. 'Normally, his father would be involved in this discussion, but in this case the possible marriage represents an alliance between your family and the Bower family.'
'Yes,' said Thor excitedly.
'So either David or I will be having those discussions with you.'
Thor nodded. 'If you can finally agree terms, then I am happy to deal with you.'
'I can agree to terms, the matter doesn't have to be signed off by anyone else.'
Thor looked surprised.
On the way home, Tanya said to Jason with a half-smile on her face, 'You have permission to court Venus now, you obviously did well.'
Not taking the bait, Jason responded, 'The snake incident made the difference; before that I had to put up with all sorts of crap.'
'Being a woman, Thor thinks I'm likely to be a soft touch when it comes to negotiating a dowry, so he's agreed to deal with me on the issue.' She paused and smiled. 'Don't worry, I'll have him tied up in a cock lock and ball press like he has never dreamt of, and he'll think it was all his own idea,' she said aggressively.
Jason laughed. He then added, 'There are a couple of other things you should be aware of.' Tanya looked at him curiously. 'There was a man called Harold who gave you a lot of grief in the early days of The Settlement.'
'Yes, I was sure I saw him during our first visit to The Vikings.'
'You did. I found him shackled in the dungeon when I went in there to fix something related to the solar system. He pleaded with me to get him released. Apparently you said something to Thor about him, so one of Thor's lieutenants searched his hut and found all sorts of compromising documents related to his connections with ASIO and so on. Thor apparently was part of a bikie gang in the past and Harold was sent there as a spy.'
'I knew about the bikie gang,' said Tanya. 'What are they going to do with him?'
'They've done it,' answered Jason.
'What?'
'They apparently executed him two days ago; almost nobody knows. He's been in the dungeon since our original visit. Thor just told everyone he'd left one night. I doubt anyone believes him, but if you want to survive in that place you ask no questions. Hercules let it slip one day when I mentioned there was one person less in the dungeon. According to Hercules, two of the lieutenants took him off into the bush one night, shot him, and buried him where he won't be found.'
'Jesus, he was a nasty piece of work, but he didn't deserve that,' said a shaken Tanya.
'I just thought you should know.'
Tanya nodded, 'Perhaps you should keep that story to yourself, don't even tell Venus. Are you quite sure he was actually executed? What you were told might just be a smokescreen. Harold, or whatever his name is now, might easily have been sent off on some secret mission by Thor, as an option down the track to undermine us somehow.'
Jason looked at her and said, 'I certainly believed Hercules at the time, but you may be right. As I understand it, Harold has a grudge against us and may have been willing to undertake an underhand scheme, especially if his life depended on it.' He had no intention of telling anyone else.
'Also, they treat their women like slaves.'
'That's quite obvious from the behaviour we've witnessed.'
'It's worse than you think. While we are there they tend to behave, but the trainers have been there for a while now and periodically the men go on a drinking binge, after which any woman is fair game. Any of them,' repeated Jason. 'And there are no sanctions, but there has always been one exception.'
'Venus.'
'Yes. Maybe that was one reason she was keen to come and stay with us,' said Jason. 'Don't completely trust Thor. My guess is he'll try to do us some damage if he possibly can. He felt he was made a fool of during our first visit and he'll try to get his own back at some stage regardless of any marriage treaties. He wants power, nothing else.'
They landed back at The Settlement a few minutes later. Tanya phoned David to give him a brief report on her visit to The Vikings.
She also told him about Harold, 'I think Thor could be playing a double game here. Either Harold was done away with or, far more likely, Harold has been sent off somewhere to a place that doesn't share our values and will be hostile to us. This is just for your information,' said Tanya, 'nobody else knows, save Jason of course.'
David reflected for a moment and said, 'When we started The Settlement I had no idea of the sort of compromises we would have to make and the sort of company we would eventually be keeping. Oh well, it's done now. The stupid bastard Harold had something coming to him; but as you say, it's all too convenient. Maybe Thor has something more up his sleeve after all.'