The river mist was still lingering when the Vaer clinkers nudged up to the dock below the trading post, passing under the arched bridge that connected the eastern roads to two westerly paths.
If the low-riding boats hadn’t been able to slide under that bridge, coming and going, the Vaer raiders would have destroyed it every summer.
Freyja must have sent a message over to her countrymen’s camp, for the clinkers were full of not only the usual trading goods and the two reithar, foremen, who accompanied the load to tick off their provisions lists and attempt the haggle, but also a double-handful of bersverdar.
They swaggered up the beaten path to the river gate, leaving the Siftar traders to port the goods. Emptied, two of the clinkers put out downriver, the third holding at the dock to lade with provisions.
Freyja established the outpost right by the dock when they’d first settled here. It only took the first winter to realise the mistake. The locals could have warned them about the tendency for flood but Feilan couldn’t really blame anyone for not spreading their arms wide to welcome in Vaeringans of any stripe in those days, not even Freyja Anjasdottir of the golden reputation.
There was no more than a tolftar, a dozen, of the bear-warriors, but that was already more than would truly be interested in taking a piddling Riverlands mercenary contract when the summer raiding season lay ahead. Most would merely be taking the opportunity for an innocuous, perfectly reasonable, perfectly explainable excuse to visit the Cursed trading post. More of them might have come along, if they didn’t all know Freyja’s feelings on too many bersverdar inside her palisade, even disarmed.
There weren’t any women in the raiders’ camp. Women couldn’t be true bear-warriors, and barely even warrior-like, not without risking exile from the light of their homeland and the blessings of their gods – in a word, Cursed. Siftar, however, was full of Cursed women; some of them even had women’s bodies. A few of the men had women’s bodies too. Others of the men, like Feilan, had become Cursed for getting caught taking a woman’s part.
Siftar also held a strong contingent of Vaer men and women who had never been Cursed, who could still live within their communities and be traders or warriors or farmers or fisherfolk or artisans, or village wives, and chose not to. Living among their Cursed compatriots was safer than the alternatives, given the generalised distaste for the northern barbarians, and Freyja paid fairly and on time.
It meant the congenial outpost was of perennial interest to the sex-starved men of the seasonal raiding camp. It wasn’t even hypocritical. As long as the warriors could point to the shortage of women, had their perfectly reasonable excuse to visit Siftar, made sure to never do anything so unmanly as kiss, and always took the man’s part, they were not at risk of getting cursed themselves. It was even, to a certain way of thinking, a moral choice: the Cursed couldn’t be cursed again, after all.
It’d be a wild night tonight, after the completion of the trade exchange and the contract negotiations.
Torben was among the visiting bear-warriors, as Feilan had assumed, or hoped, or prayed to deaf gods, that he would be; his old friend had survived another raiding season, another overwinter back home.
His pulse picked up. The nice thing about Torben was that he knew Feilan would keep his mouth sewn shut even under the most extreme threat, and so, in private, he would kiss, though not on the mouth, and he would play more than the man’s part, and he was only a little rougher than Feilan liked men to be.
Feilan knew better than to greet him, however. Given they’d grown up together in the same village, it was probably more of a clue to their periodic liaisons than a coldly formal salutation would have been, but there it was: by the skin of mere moments in a storehouse some twenty-five summers ago, he was a Cursed and Torben was a hero of the bear-god, and so they did not acknowledge each other.
He glimpsed Renart Nivardus fidgeting beside his niece, until the pair were lost in the crowd of residents who’d come out to greet the new arrivals and help unpack the goods. Nivardus wanted the negotiations done with, plainly, the contracts signed, before the mysterious true guardian, Great-Uncle Bertrand, showed up. But he couldn’t divert Siftar’s mercantile purpose. There was business to be conducted.
The bersverdar lounged in the sunshine, as befitted their status, while the reithar and Freyja’s delegates opened up crates and bales and argued over the contents. Feilan wasn’t overly involved in the true meat of Siftar, the fingering of cloth, the weighing of metals, the exaggerated exclaiming over exotic semi-precious stones from the east, the grit of the haggling. Freyja had better people than him for that.
He looked around to check on their uninvited guests. Adeline was peeking over the shoulders of the children around her age – they were grinding seeds, a light job they made a game of, but a job nonetheless, which the young princess, after a moment of careful observation and an exchange of a few words, joined in on.
Her Uncle Remy was twitchier, pacing to the river gate to peer out over the westerly ways, and back again, chewing on a nail and fiddling with the edge of his cowl. Feilan strolled over to the increasingly jittery Riverlander, who glanced up at him, and immediately looked away, a flush staining his cheeks.
It occurred to Feilan that Renart might not remember what had happened the night before. Or perhaps, remembered only Feilan’s teasing touch at the outset, and not the subsequent chaste tucking into the furs.
‘You might as well try to relax,’ he said bluntly. ‘Nothing will happen this morning.’
‘But—’ He waved a hand to where the warriors were at an obvious loose end.
‘Freyja’s busy.’ Even vaguely disliking Renart, he didn’t wish upon him an attempt to make the contract without her severe oversight. ‘It’ll be this until well after highday.’ He added, to Renart’s blank look, ‘Midday,’ in a sop to local cadence.
Renart’s concern had been in a different direction. ‘That long? But aren’t they almost done?’
‘They’ve barely started. And right now, we’re just buying. We’ll be selling next.’
‘Provisioning them for their raiding.’
There was a distinct note of disgust there, dislodging the previous dismay. Feilan shook his head and started to walk away.
‘Can you not hurry them along?’ Renart demanded. ‘Didn’t I perhaps…’ His voice dropped. ‘…earn a small favour from you last night?’
Feilan snorted. ‘No, Rufran, you did not. If you had, I promise you’d know about it today.’
That telltale flush spread over Renart’s pale face. ‘Did I not perform as you wished?’
‘You were drunk.’
This did not appease the Riverlander. He snapped, ‘I know,’ sounding, if anything, even more indignant. ‘That was the only way I was going to get through it.’
‘Yeah, thanks,’ Feilan said, with something of Freyja’s famously dry tones. ‘I enjoy it when men have to drink themselves into oblivion to stomach me.’
‘That’s not—’ Renart swallowed. ‘I meant because I was nervous. I did…want to. Try it.’
Feilan shrugged, hiding that he was charmed by this frank admission. ‘Why are you so desperate to get this contract done before Adeline’s guardian finds you, anyway? If she can’t sign a contract without his say-so, then anything she signs today is void.’
Renart hissed irritably. ‘This guardianship… If she weren’t here, he could sign the contract on her behalf without even asking her opinion. Since he’s not here, she can’t sign it on her own behalf – unless she has the permission of an older male relative instead.’
‘Ah. Uncle Remy.’
‘Indeed.’
Feilan thought about again warning him how expensive hiring a bersverdr as a mercenary would be. The truth was that even if the guardian failed to find them before the contract negotiations began, they were unlikely to be carrying enough silver to tempt two Vaer away from the raiding. They’d have to have a chest of silver ingots for that, which they plainly were not carrying about their dual personages.
But prickly Renart Nivardus wasn’t proving overly receptive to advice, and Feilan’s mother had often told him he pushed too much, too proud of being the smartest one in any given hall. Insisting the supposed monster was a bear last night, cramming his opinion into the teeth of two grieving people, was a case in point.
Feilan tried to sow the seed instead. ‘At least if he does show up, you can still make your own contract. You’ll still have one champion acting in her favour.’
‘I’d rather she win,’ Renart said disarmingly. ‘I want her to rule in her own right, not subject to any regent, even me.’
‘An untrammelled twelve-year-old queen?’ Feilan asked, notwithstanding he had his valid doubts that that would ever happen.
‘With advisers.’ Feilan must have still looked too sceptical. Renart swept him with his black-eyed scowl. ‘If she may marry at twelve, she may rule at twelve.’
Feilan held up his palms placatingly. ‘I don’t doubt your little queen, Uncle Remy.’
Renart folded his arms, turning to watch Adeline as she laughed with the other children, cheerily wielding the pestle and mortar in time to the staccato clap of their hands, accompanied by a singsong rhyme. The set of his shoulders eased, and he smiled, which made him look quite a bit more like his niece, and even prettier than he’d looked in the firelight last night. Feilan wished he wouldn’t wear the cowl; he wanted to see the hair glinting in sunlight.
‘It is good that she can spend some time being a child, however,’ Renart murmured.
Feilan cleared his throat, and when Renart looked at him cautiously, said, ‘Thank you, Feilan. I appreciate you not letting us walk into the raider camp, Feilan.’
Renart’s smile was still lingering, but it slipped in the face of Feilan’s pointed teasing. He said nothing, merely glared sullenly. Feilan’s dislike of the man was becoming distinctly less vague. He was still in enough good humour to laugh at the display of ill-temper as he reprised his shake of the head from his first attempt to walk away, and this time did effect a retreat.
He collected the reports from his contacts across the heartland, etched on runesticks and carried to Siftar by the reithar as one of the conditions of trade, and spent the morning sorting through them at his small table in the meeting hall, set in the corner behind Freya’s rosewood chair, out of the way of the usual daytime bustle in and out.
The news was old, gathered during the overwinter, but fresh to their part of the world. Feilan made notes, and he and his two clerks spent some concentration of time connecting the snippets to the wide-flung news brought in by their merchants networked across Enea.
He’d put the work aside and was breaking bread with Gytha and Meik some time after highday when Freyja entered and gave two sharp claps. The effect was instant. The guards about the walls stood to attention. Every unessential person in the hall, including Feilan’s clerks and his dining companions, rose to leave, the clerks abandoning their inkpots and knives, Gytha swallowing her last mouthful of cheese and bread and hastily brushing her hands clean, Meik taking a last dark rye slice with him, dripping honey in his wake.
Freyja was followed in by the Riverlanders, who this time were quicker to strip off their cloaks and head coverings. They’d taken some time to brush and straighten their clothes and tidy their hair. They sat at the table Freyja pointed them to, positioned in the best light, Adeline straight-backed on the hard wooden bench with a youthful grace Feilan envied, her high-strung uncle beside her, narrowly elegant face tense. As when he’d met with Freyja the day before, he sat neatly and unnaturally still, all his restless fidgeting under tight control. The bright sunshine falling from the smoke hole kindled fiery highlights in his hair.
Helpers carrying trays of food came next. Freyja earned her generous reputation: as guests, the men from the camp would all receive bread and cheese and ale at no cost. But inside the hall, platters of cold roast pork and bowls of berries were added to the bounty, tempting in a greater subset of bersverdar prepared to hear out the terms of the Riverlander contract than Feilan had expected.
Torben ducked his head as he came in, unnecessary but only just. Like all bersverdar, he towered, and his shoulders were square and broad. Feilan admired those shoulders, and thought entirely too long about seeing them bare later, and perhaps even from behind.
He was inappropriately amused to see him pause, take in the sight of Renart’s hair gleaming in the beam of light, and then murmur, ‘Rufran,’ in the exact same tone Feilan had said it the day before. Freyja, sitting by Adeline, huffed in annoyance, making Feilan grin as he settled by Torben with the bronze scales. The other warriors filled the benches about the table, scooping slices of meat onto the dark bread.
Freyja had already made the general offer clear to the potential mercenaries. Now she indicated with a nod for Renart to make his opening bid, which he did by untying his purse from his waist and upending the contents, a mix of silver and gold coinage, locally minted, onto the table. Feilan, exchanging a glance with Freyja, wanted to smack his own forehead, especially when Adeline, devotedly copying her uncle, also spilled her entire wealth onto the table from her own little purse.
The warriors, entirely unimpressed by the pitiful hoard, continued picking over the platters. Feilan nudged Torben, who elbowed him back but did turn his attention to the negotiations.
‘This is all you offer?’ he asked in rough Midlands, which wasn’t anybody’s first tongue, but, having arisen in the great Chalcadean ports where the peoples of Enea freely mingled, had spread to become everybody’s second tongue. He flicked a finger across the coins dismissively, scattering the pile. He saw no need to bother with the scales before he pronounced, ‘Too little.’
Feilan was prepared to translate, but Midlands was usefully widespread enough that even the Riverlanders from an isolated little kingdom knew it. Remy touched his niece’s arm, giving her a small nod, encouragement to answer on her own behalf.
‘It’s all we have,’ Adeline said in her piping voice, spreading her hands. ‘This isn’t a negotiation tactic, sir. It’s the very upper edge of what I can offer.’
The honest naivety of a sweet-faced child was, in fact, a fairly decent negotiation tactic in some rare circles, but Torben merely shrugged those broad shoulders. ‘We can each make at least thrice this as our fair share of raiding.’
‘There is less risk of death with this contract,’ Renart said, just as disarmingly frank in Midlands as in his native Riverlander.
The men muttered at that. Most were already rising, piling pork high on the chunks of bread and grabbing handfuls of berries on their way out of the hall, eager to move on to their real reason for visiting the Cursed.
Torben was easy-going, ready to relax and be argued with. He chewed a piece of pork crackle and watched Renart with half-lidded eyes. Renart turned from the sight of the great proportion of his potential pot of warrior-stock strolling out the door and ran straight into Torben’s best smile, looking briefly flummoxed to be subjected to it.
Torben leaned in and said confidentially, ‘We like the risk of death, Rufran.’ He said the byname like he meant Foxy, too. ‘Can you offer anything else?’
Feilan couldn’t tell if Renart understood he was being propositioned. Tone remaining cool and even, he said, ‘The hunt is at the dark of the moon. The coming new moon, and perhaps the next. You won’t miss the whole raiding season.’
‘My party will have already sailed south. I won’t catch them in time to claim full share.’
‘If you’re competent enough, you’ll get the job done the first moon. You’d only be a half-month behind them.’
‘If I’m competent enough?’ Torben repeated, amused but with a hint that he was prepared to not continue so.
‘Do you fear to travel alone to catch up with your party?’ Renart asked, which may well have been an innocent question or may well have been as barbed as the comment about competence. Renart might not have realised quite how barbed such an accusation was, to a Vaer man.
Torben’s eyes narrowed. ‘I fear nothing.’
Feilan didn’t need Freyja’s quick glance to know to press a hand down on Torben’s right hand. A bersverdr did not tolerate accusations of cowardice.
‘Add on two good cloaks,’ he said. ‘Top-quality wool, silver clasps. And the little girl’s silver hair-clasp, too.’
Adeline blanched and her hand flew to the ornamentation at the nape of her neck. Renart said, ‘That was a gift from her mother.’
‘Worthy of a queen, then,’ Feilan said, merciless. ‘Enough for one contract?’ When Renart opened his mouth again, he knocked his knuckles lightly on the table. ‘Is its sentimental value worth a crown, Adeline?’
Renart, finally remembering his own determination to let his niece rule, subsided, not without snapping a resentful look Feilan’s way, which Feilan merely smiled at. Adeline bowed her head. She loosened the silver clasp from the dark plaits nested at her nape, and laid it on the table amid the coins. The well-polished silver gleamed in the stream of light from overhead, swirls and curls of flowery scrolls trellised across its surface, studded with filigree rosettes. She gave one of the rosette studs a last lingering stroke before raising her gaze to look earnestly at Torben.
Torben and the last few of his companions conferred in low voices. The others shook their heads and made their way out. Torben dropped the hair-clasp on one of the pans of the scale. The pan sank substantially; without bothering to put the matching polyhedral lead weights on the other pan, and certainly keeping the cloak-clasps in mind as well, Torben gave a satisfied nod.
‘But I can’t take a token of the little girl’s mother,’ he said then, which deep-buried softness was exactly why Feilan had referred to Adeline like that. ‘Let’s hack it in half.’
Feilan winced. He’d been a trader too long; he’d added value in his rote appraisal of the hair-clasp for its function and beauty. Vaer raiders cared solely about purity and weight. But Torben was trying, in his crude way, to be kind: he’d hack half for the silver, and she’d keep a portion as her token. That it would be forever ruined didn’t cross his mind.
Renart abruptly stood. His niece was almost in tears, trying very hard to not let them fall, and he had no way to recognise the kind intent. He could therefore only take it as an insult to his liege; even a less ill-tempered man might have.
Bristling with offence, he snatched the clasp from the pan. ‘And that is the end of the contract negotiations.’
He swept the clasp into Adeline’s hands, and swept the coins back into his purse, and swept himself and his niece out of the hall, without taking their cloaks or remembering to thank the boss. Freyja, looking sour, departed after them.
‘Foxy has a temper, does he?’ Torben said in Vaer, rising smoothly. He’d gaped at the display of spleen, but had already shrugged it off, smiling down at Feilan, wide enough to crinkle his eyes at the edges.
‘Do stay for our hospitality tonight, naturally,’ Feilan said, in thrall to that smile, as he had been the moment Torben had first strolled in through Siftar’s gates seven summers ago; as he had been twenty-five summers ago, for that matter.
‘I am ever fond of your hospitality,’ Torben murmured, which was actually quite a clever quip from a man who was normally nothing but straightforwardly blunt.
Feilan was too wise to broach the subject again until much later, when Torben was loose and magnanimous with rich food and plentiful drink – though the feast tonight was somewhat the opposite of the previous night’s, less merry, less ale, more food – and pressing his fingers to the inside of Feilan’s wrist with a meaningful look. He evidently wanted to move the evening onwards to its inevitable conclusion.
Feilan glanced around. Both Riverlanders had joined the feast to eat but were absent from the hall now, or perhaps already wrapped in their cloaks in one of the curtained niches, trying to sleep amid the noise of the crowded tables, the shouts and flirts of the bersverdar. That was good. There were things going on not suitable for a child’s eyes.
Careful to maintain distance from his friend, he said, ‘You won’t consider the contract at their best price? It’s a monster hunt, after all.’ He added enticingly, ‘It could be the making of your saga-song.’
‘It’s a bear,’ Torben said. ‘You know it’s a bear, Little Wolf.’
‘A big, old, canny bear. That must hold some interest, surely.’
Torben grunted. He wasn’t being careful to maintain distance. He was practically leaning on Feilan, hand about his hip. But then, he’d come on this expedition with a tolftar of hungry men who’d all tacitly decided to turn a blind eye to what they each did tonight.
By the time Feilan rose to circumspectly slip out first, most of the other warriors had already vanished with their accommodating partners for the night, except one who was sitting on the rug by Freyja’s knee wearing a blissful expression while she petted his hair.
Feilan wrinkled his nose at her – the man was more than half her age – she scowled at him – she was none too fond of Torben – and they silently but mutually agreed to ignore each other’s lack of good sense.
He went out of the hall. Torben didn’t bother to make his own exit anything other than right on his heels.
Outside, the air was crisp, the stars and moon brilliant overhead, and the yard was quiet, though laughter and voices raised in song could be heard from the far side where the most cheerful revellers had spilled out to enjoy the soft night air. Beneath the open revelry were the sounds of sex, whispers and moans, grunts and sharp imprecations.
‘You could…’ Feilan faltered as Torben pressed harder into him from behind, his mouth hovering over his bare neck. He didn’t let his lips touch Feilan’s skin, but Feilan could feel the ghost of them and it raised goosebumps. ‘…demand a gratuity if you win the contest for her.’
‘What kind of gratuity?’ He’d got both hands around Feilan now, holding him tight, pulling him in close, letting him feel his muscular breadth, his want. ‘Take me somewhere private.’
‘I was,’ Feilan said acerbically. Squirming loose, he reached for Torben’s hand, but quickly desisted, jerking his chin towards his hut instead. ‘She’ll be a queen,’ he said. ‘She could throw open her brand-new treasure house.’
Feilan didn’t know why he was insisting on this. But Renart had been desperate enough to offer up his body last night in exchange for merely putting in a word towards the contract. He’d likely be off seething at himself for not controlling his mouth. Feilan would have to find him, tell him it had been the price, not the mouthiness, and now he’d be able to say he tried and he wasn’t even expecting Renart to make good.
On that thought, he added, ‘They’re desperate enough to offer you anything, if you win.’
‘I’m desperate enough to put you on your knees right here if you don’t hurry it up,’ Torben said, hand on the nape of his neck.
‘Yes, yes, all right,’ Feilan said with a mock show of irritation, swatting his hand off and zagging abruptly into his hut, Torben right there with him. ‘As if you would.’
That was said with less mock irritation and more actual annoyance than he’d intended. It wasn’t Torben’s fault their entire culture reviled the Cursed. A man in Torben’s position could follow a Cursed with the transparent intention of a fuck, but he would never do anything in the open that couldn’t be denied, if only facetiously.
Especially not when he’d come within a heartbeat of getting caught in his youth, gleefully fucking the mouth of his childhood friend.
Stark-naked, he’d bolted from the old storehouse when a watchman flung the main door open and raised his lamp, shining unwelcome light on unwholesome activity. He’d gone out the rear door into the chill night without looking back, leaving Feilan on his knees to face the elders’ wrath.
The watchman had seen only blond hair and the muscular physique of a big man’s backside. Ironically enough, Torben’s back side was well enough known among the girls that they might have been able to point to the scar on his thigh or the constellation of freckles under his left shoulder blade to identify him. But to the watchman standing over Feilan, he could have been anyone.
It was the one and only time Tryggvi Jansson, byname Magni Torben, had ever run from anything.
Feilan had steadfastly refused to salvage his honour by accusing his fellow transgressor, let alone hint that if the watchman had opened the door even a thumb’s width of time earlier, it would have been Torben caught taking cock, and not in the mouth, either. Only his stubborn silence had saved Torben and left him free to be the great warrior he indubitably was – not many devotees of the bear-god made it to his age, after all – to the glorification of his name and all that saga draf.
Feilan didn’t begrudge his friend. Permanent exile eventually lost its sting, and he stopped missing the mountains. He’d never missed the bitter cold. Comfortable, safe Siftar made for neither a hard life, nor a lonely one. And it was by far the better alternative, for he’d been facing execution for his silence until Freyja had precipitously intervened.
The room was in pitch blackness. The rush wick of the little light-pot Feilan had left lit must have guttered. The moment the doorway curtain fell behind them, Torben was pushing him down onto the furs, pulling at his clothes.
‘Been too long,’ he said against Feilan’s collarbone, letting his mouth taste his skin in a kiss now they were off the thoroughfare, in the dark.
He still wouldn’t kiss Feilan’s mouth. He never had, not even before his close brush with dishonour and exile.
‘The summer’s barely started,’ Feilan protested. ‘I know it’s a long crossing but surely you can manage yourself for longer than—’
‘Too long since I’ve had you.’
Torben’s fingers scrambled urgently over the knots of Feilan’s shirt ties, couldn’t decipher them by touch alone, and shoved his shirt up and over his head with scant regard for ears or hair, all while Feilan was still thinking about that.
Torben was not affectionate. They fucked during the summers, for the brief interludes when Torben was at the nearby camp between raiding forays. Feilan never knew if he’d come back from those, or if he would come back from the overwinter in the heartland. Even if Torben could read and write like Feilan could, he wouldn’t be sending missives between these rare visits. He’d never before intimated that he might miss Feilan, or at least his cock, in the between-times. He’d more a you’ll-do sort of attitude.
Having successfully bared both himself and Feilan to the waist, Torben pushed Feilan back down and knelt over him, kissing and nipping along his clavicle and down his chest. He found a nipple, grazing his teeth along it. Feilan clutched both hands into Torben’s thick locks, biting back a whimper.
‘Serth, I’m going to make you squeal loud tonight,’ Torben muttered in between tonguing his other nipple intently, hand heavy on his stomach.
His fingers traced the thick scar seaming Feilan’s side, earned in his first and only summer of raiding. Torben always touched that ridge during these seasonal trysts, running fingertips along it like he was reading a map that led him into the past. He never said anything about it, and didn’t this time either, too intent on sucking and licking both Feilan’s nipples into hard nubs that he could close his teeth on and tug at, making Feilan yelp appreciatively.
‘There you are.’ Torben’s hand trailed lower. ‘Let’s get louder.’
Feilan jerked his hips in anticipation of the touch, wondering if he had oil to hand. From Torben’s intensity, he thought he’d be playing the woman’s part tonight and it would be a teeth-rattler. He had linseed oil, he remembered, tucked in his trunk.
He hissed as Torben palmed his painfully hard cock through his trousers. Even as close as they were, he couldn’t see Torben’s face or his muscular, scarred body, but he could hear the self-satisfied smirk in his voice as he said, ‘You like that? Beg for more.’
‘I’m,’ Feilan said, gasping as Torben rolled his hand over him again, and again. ‘I’m not the one deprived of sex.’
Over him, Torben chuckled complacently; Feilan had sounded far too desperate to be convincing, even though it was true enough; he was surrounded by men who liked to fuck men in Siftar, one of the various reasons his exile had not been such an irrevocable blow.
But none of those men was Torben.
Torben’s hand slipped through the loosened ties of his trousers and under his braes, and his fingers, calloused and firm, took hold. ‘Yes? And who do you fuck when I’m not around, Little Wolf?’
This was when Renart chose to sit up and uncover the light-pot.