Chicks - Did You Say Chicks Part 20

"The women will." Wulfstan's face thinned with misery. "I don't know what got into me, promising to marry anyone, let alone you. I've been in Hrothgar's service for years and I've managed to avoid getting shackled to a wife. Any one of those wenches who heard me give my word to your brother will run tattling to Hrothgar if I break it. Hrothgar's big on honor. He'll force your brother to fight me if I back out of the bargain, no matter what any ofuswant."

Maethild considered this information, head bent, chin in hand. After due deliberation she looked up at Wulfstan, and if her earlier smiles had been disquieting things, the grin now bunching her cheeks would have sent a lesser man screaming straight down Grendel's gorge as the lesser of two evils. "I know how we can fix everything. Come with me." She led him away from Heorot's moonshadow, far from any of the buildings comprising Hrothgar's hold, almost to the edge of the wild lands whence Grendel roved and rampaged.

At last, in a place of utmost privacy and desolation she said, "Now we'll settle things between us once and for all." And she took off her dress.

Wulfstan whistled long and low. "Loki's left nut, I swear I've never seen a sweeter little piece of-"

"This old thing? I've had it forever." Maethild dimpled as she fingered the cuff of the fine mail s.h.i.+rt that until this moment had remained hidden beneath her dress. "It was Daddy's, and it fits me slick as an eel's skin. Now if you can get me a sword, we'll have this whole ugly mess settled by morning."

"Er?" Wulfstan s.h.i.+fted Hengest's body to a more comfortable perch on his shoulders. "Howzat?" Maethild clucked her tongue, impatient with the big warrior's failure to grasp the beauty of her scheme immediately. It seemed perfectly obvious toher. "You promised to marry me after my brother killed the monster. If my brother doesn't kill Grendel, the deal's off."

Wulfstan goggled at her in horror. "You're going to give poor Hengest to the monster! Hel's t.i.ts, woman, if that's your plan, you can do it without me!" He emphasized his refusal to partic.i.p.ate in fratricide by dropping Hengest headfirst to the ground. Maethild's brother groaned but didn't wake.

Maethild folded her arms across her chest. She'd lied about the fit of her father's mail: It was more than a trifle tight at the bosom, forcing her b.r.e.a.s.t.supand perilously close tooutat the neckline. "You're a fine, strapping, handsome man, Wulfstan. I might not mind marrying you, if it came to that, but you'restupid. If I wanted Hengest dead, I've had more than my share of chances. He's my brother, you big twit, and I love him, even if he's more of a chunkskull than you."

"Thank you?" Wulfstan replied doubtfully.

"If anything's getting killed tonight, it's Grendel. Now give me that sword."

"Give 'er that sword an'die," Hengest announced from the ground. He clambered to his feet, but only made it as far as hands and knees. "I said no woman of my blood uses a sword an' Imennit. 'S a marrera honor. Sothere." He underscored the last word by flopping facedown on the earth.

The look that Maethild and Wulfstan exchanged was the first thing the two of them had ever had in common. "Don't tell me," the little woman said, her voice dull. "He said the H-word so now you'd rather die than go against his wishes."

"Well, I wouldn't ratherdie," Wulfstan admitted. "But I will if I must. A warrior's honor is a matter beyond question, more precious than many gold arm-rings, brighter than the hunting hawk's eye, all that marks his place in the world when Hel's dark doorway closes on his spirit and forth he fares upon the wide whale-road, flames setting sharp teeth to timbers of the swan-winged s.h.i.+p that bears him-"

"Yatta, yatta, yatta," Maethild concluded. "In other words, I don't get any help from you about that sword."

"Er... no." Wulfstan gave his own blade a nervous sideways glance. Though the mail s.h.i.+rt was all the armory Maethild seemed to possess, he vividly remembered the wench's iron grip. If she took it into her head to wrest his sword from him, he dreaded the outcome.

"Oh, relax." Maethild waved away his troubling thoughts as if he'd laid them out like milestones for her to read. "I won't even try taking yours. If I failed, I'd be dead, and if I succeeded, you would. That was never part of my plan. I'm a woman, so I haven't got any of your precious honor to uphold by racking up a corpse-tally. You take care of Hengest; I'll look after the rest." She turned on her heel and strode off into the dark.

"Wait!" Wulfstan cried after her. "What do you mean? Where are you going? What're you gonna do?"

From already a long way away, Maethild called back over one shoulder, "I don't have to marry you if Hengest doesn't slay Grendel, and Hengest can't slay a monster that's already dead. Bye!" The night devoured her, a slip of silvery mail that vanished like a dream.

Wulfstan heard what she said, but it took him awhile to believe his ears. He started after her, a cry ofprotest on his lips, then looked back at Hengest's sprawled body. He couldn't just leave a comrade lying out here, so near the dark borders where monsters dwelled. This, too, was a matter of honor. Reluctantly he hoisted the snoring man back onto his shoulders and bore him to safety, but his heart had run off into the night with Maethild.

When Hengest woke from his stupor next morning, he was less than grateful to Wulfstan. "You gristle-head!" He drove the heel of his hand into his comrade's chest. "What'd you let her do that for? Go off unarmed, a helpless woman-"

Breathless, Wulfstan was beginning to wonder whether there was any such thing as a "helpless" woman, but his personal doubts took second place to defending his actions in the teeth of Hengest's accusations.

"Hey!You'rethe one wouldn't let her have a sword," he pointed out.

"Well-well, you should've donesomething!" Hengest bellowed with the force of anyone, man or woman, caught in the wrong but desperate to shout down the truth. He gave Wulfstan another wallop.

The two men had been sleeping in a corner of one of Hrothgar's lesser houses until dawnlight roused them both. Though Hengest had been dead-drunk for most of the last nights doings, when he woke he recalled enough to rile him and he pummelled the rest of the details out of Wulfstan's hide. Wulfstan did little to stop him, feeling a little responsible for Maethild's fate. However, enough was enough. When Hengest next raised his fist, Wulfstan intercepted it and clamped his own beefy hand around it.

"If you wantsomethingdone, let's do it now," he gritted. "Lets follow her trail. Maybe we're not too late to save her."

"Too late?" Hengest's snort was almost as derisive as his sister's. "She set forth after dark and it's now past dawn. What do you hope to save? Grendel's leftovers? But all right. She was my sister: Least I can do is pick up the pieces."

The two men set out as silently as possible, treading on tip-toe and speaking in whispers. They needn't have bothered: The rest of Hrothgar's men slept the deep sleep of the totally sozzled. Outside the hall, daylight hit them between the eyes like Thor's hammer. They stumbled out of the Ring-Dane settlement, moaning and squinting, headed in the fenward direction Maethild had taken the previous night.

"Poor li'l Maethild," Hengest sniveled, wiping his nose on the back of one hairy hand. "Soon as we find her body-what there is of it-I'm gonna give her the best funeral Hrothgar's money can buy. And I'll make up a fine death-song for her, too. I've got me some talent in that line," he said proudly. "My dad was a scop."

"I know. Maethild told me." Wulfstan's feet dragged. He missed the girl. He was scared s.p.u.n.kless of her, but he missed her all the same. The thought that he'd never see her again-that the fair, proud, headstrong wench was now just another lump of meat in Grendel's gut-pierced him to the marrow. He wished he were back in the hall letting Hengest pound the carp out of him. Physical pain might help to dull the pangs of regret ripping him apart inside.

"It'll be a good death-song, you'll see," Hengest vowed, marching onward. "I thought I'd start it something like: 'Beauty and boldness both dwell in the damsel's doings. Manliest of maidens, Maethild, swordless sought the mangier of men, grim Grendel, gruesome in gore.' Well? How do you like it so far?"

"Mnyeh." Wulfstan really wasn't in any mood to play the appreciative audience, although his friends fine grasp of the scop's art of alliteration left nothing to be desired. Eyes on the ground, he trudged behindHengest indifferent to everything. The only way he knew that they'd entered the fen country which was Grendel's haunt was when his shoes stopped stamping on earth and started squelching through mud.

Hengest didn't like having his versifying brushed aside like that. He renewed his a.s.sault on literature, determined to gain Wulfstan's admiration. "That's not all there is," he insisted. "I haven't even given it a good start yet." He turned around and walked backwards, the better to simultaneously cover ground and make sure Wulfstan was giving his poetry the attention it merited. " 'Small in stature, sizeable in spirit, sibling of scop's-son Hengest, took she to task the tall warrior Wulfstan, wight unwilling to ward her well, worthless, witless-'waaaugh!"

Hengest tumbled heels over head, putting an abrupt end to his volley of verbal barbs against Wulfstan.

Wulfstan himself hardly noticed Hengest's impromptu somersault any more than he'd heeded the man's reproachful poesy. What did grab his attention was the small, shrill voice that came from under the big man's body, filling the air with a stream of curses that lacked alliteration but packed plenty of vim.

"Frey's frickin' cat-cart, can't a girl sit down to catch her breath without one of you lunks falling on top of her?" Maethild railed. "Why in Hel's name don't you look where you're going?"

Shortly later, Hengest stood staring down at his sister-blood-smeared and bruised, but very much alive-and the little souvenir she'd been dragging cross country. "Shaft me with a holly bough, we're b.u.g.g.e.red," he declared.

"Nowwhat's wrong?" Maethild snarled. "Wulfstan and I didn't want to be forced into marriage by some stupid promise you two made while you were boiled as a pair of owls, so I found the way to get us out of it without besmirching anyone's precious honor. And when you insisted that it wasanothermatter of honor that I couldn't have a sword, I worked around it."

"Obviously," Wulfstan said, eying the item she sat on. It was the size of a goodly log, but there were no trees of that girth in the area. This was another sort of limb altogether.

Black-clawed at one end, b.l.o.o.d.y and raw at the other, Grendel's arm now served Maethild for perch and pulpit as she declaimed, "The monster is dead, I didn't use a sword to kill it, Hrothgar's going to p.i.s.s treasure all over us, sowhyare we b.u.g.g.e.red, brother dear?"

"Because, my darling, dimwitted sister,you'rethe one who killed the monster!" Hengest yelled. "With your bare hands, no less. Oh, Hrothgar's going tolovethis. He'll p.i.s.s, all right, but it won't be treasure."

"He wanted the monster dead," Maethild said sulkily. "It couldn't be much deader. It bled like a stuck pig when I tore its arm off, and when the fiend fell I beat its head in with the shoulder end-it's meatier-just to make sure. I don't see the problem."

Hengest struck a scop's dramatic hark-and-attend pose and launched into spontaneous song: "Hear ye of Hrothgar, holder of high Heorot, besieged by the bothersome beast, gruesome Grendel, fen-walking fiend, he whose nightly nourishment was the doughty Danes. And yet when Hrothgar's highest heroes fell as fiend-fodder, the marsh monster's loathsome limb was lopped, his death devised by a damsel, dainty, delicate, and demure. Gone, gone is Grendel, girl-slain! Saved are the skins of warriors by a wee woman! Say now, ye scops, were there ever in Middle Earth as Hrothgar's henchmen such sappy sissies?" He finished with a scowl and said, "Nowdo you get it, stupid?"

Maethild said nothing, matching Hengest scowl for scowl, but Wulfstan spoke up: "He's right, Maethild,"

he said reluctantly. "Hrothgar would rather throw himself down Grendel's gullet than have his menrescued by a woman. He'll kill you for this."

"Let him try." Maethild was hunkering down for a battle.

Her brother rolled his eyes.

"This is.e.xactlywhat happened in Healfdan's hall. d.a.m.n. I guess this means we've for the swan-road again. And I liked it here." He sighed heavily.

Maethild's face softened to see her brother's sorrow. "I'm sorry, Hengest. This is all my fault; I'm too impetuous. I've got my father's temper, his armor, and his strength, but I keep forgetting that I don't have his-"

"Nah, nah, don't fret yourself." Hengest put his arm around his sister fondly. "When it all comes down to the bone, I'm that proud to have you for my kin. Remember those bandits we met on theJutland road?

The ones you... surprised?"

Maethild grinned; she remembered. "Never thought a man's jaw could drop so wide."

"Never thought a man's jaw could shatter into so many pieces, either." Hengest patted her on the back with only a little less force than he used on his male companions. "The trouble is, sister, the world's just not ready for women like you, and that's the worlds loss, if you ask me. I say that if lords like Hrothgar find any shame in taking help at your hands, then we oughta let the pride-blind b.u.g.g.e.rs fight their own fen-fiends."

"Does this mean you're going to get me a sword?" the maiden asked eagerly.

"Let's not get carried away. Tearing monsters limb from limb's handwork, sort of like embroidery and tapestry weaving and such, but using a sword-! That's not ladylike." He shook his head. "No woman of my blood is gonna-"

"All right, all right," Maethild said. "Never mind that now. First you'd better help me dump this into the nearest bog before word gets back to Hrothgar and he sends all his men after us." She bent to grab Grendel's severed arm.

"Notallhis men." Wulfstan laid one hand on Maethild's shoulder. "You're not going anywhere." Seeing her glare at him, he swiftly added, "Not unless you decide that's what youreallywant, Maethild."

The roar of rejoicing rocked the rafters of high Heorot, Hrothgar's hall. Men muddled in their mead called out their incredulity, but doubt itself was dimmed and done for when Hengest Scop's-son sang his song again, to the approving thunder of thanes' drinking vessels banging on the long boards.

"Beo-who?" asked one man, a trifle less sunk in wine than his table-mates. "Never heard o' him."

"Sureyou did," his friend a.s.sured him. "We all did. Can'tcha hear what Hengest's singing? How Beowulf the Great showed up here an' killed Grendel and then he went' back an' he killed Grendel's mama too, jus't' make sure there'd be no more o' that kinda goin's-on in Hrothgar's holdings?"

"Uh?" The warrior blinked in bewilderment. "But-but-but if there was this Beo-thingie come here witha whole buncha men li' Hengest says, how come I don' remember any o' 'em? An'-an' Grendel'smama?

I don' 'member the beast havin' no mama."

"Ever'body'sgot a mama, dung-for-brains. Stan's to reason. An' Tiu's t.i.tties, half the time you're so drunk you don' even 'member-'member-" The second Ring-Dane paused, his face the blank wide-open s.p.a.ce of freshly made parchment. "Well, I forget what it is that you don' 'member, but anyway, you don'.

'Sides, if Beoleopard the Geat didn' show up here with alia his men li' Hengest's singin', then how'n Hel you 'splain we gotthathangin' up there onna wall?Elves?" And he pointed triumphantly at the grisly trophy nailed to the wall. Grendels severed arm added its unique aesthetic note to the interior decor of Heorot, to say nothing of its unique aroma.

"Oh." The first man studied the monstrous relic awhile, then said, "Well, seein's believin', even if it's not rememberin'... I think."

"Right," his friend confirmed. "There's the arm, there's Hengest singin' all about it, what more d'you want? If you can't trust a scop, who can you trust? To Beowoof!"

"To Beowhoos.h.!.+" The two men clanked tankards and their toast was soon taken up by every male throat under Heorot's broad roofbeams. Their continuing tribute to the mysterious hero of the hour soon drained every liquor-bearing vessel in the hall. A roar went up for the serving wenches to fetch more drink.

As they awaited their turn at the mead casks, one woman turned to another and said, "Beowulf this and Beowulf that; I think the men have finally gone loony as a pack of lemmings. I don't remember anyone named Beowulf the Geat coming to visit, do you?"

"Why, of course I do, Gytha dear," Maethild purred. "Hrothgar himself sent me to warm the hero's bed after he slew Grendel."

"You?" Gytha's eyebrows rose.

"If you don't believe me, you can come see the lovely mail s.h.i.+rt he gave me as a morning gift before he and all his men went back home again," Maethild said sweetly.

Gytha's skepticism went up a notch. "What on earth couldyoudo with a mail s.h.i.+rt?"

"Oh... give it to a hero's son." Maethild set her jug aside, folded her hands coyly over her belly, and looked modest. "If my brother's song and the monsters arm aren't enough to make you remember the mighty Beowulf, maybe when I bear the hero's babe it'll jog your memory."

"Bear a hero's babe?You?" Gytha scrutinized Maethild closely.

"Mmmm." Maethild smiled and cast her eyes sidelong to where Wulfstan sat drinking with his fellows.

She was well aware that she and Hengest both owed the young warrior a deep debt for having showed them the way to remain under Hrothgar's roof despite her rash behavior in the matter of Grendel's dismemberment. Grat.i.tude was a more stimulating emotion than Maethild had ever suspected. Now that she didn'thaveto marry the man, he looked very attractive indeed. If, as her brother said, the world wasn't yet ready for a woman like her, perhaps it would be ready in her daughter's day, or her daughters'

daughters'.

First things first. "A hero," Gytha muttered. "A hero that not one single, solitary, sober person in all Hrothgar's holdings remembers. And you sayyou'llbear this once-upon-a-maybe hero's babe? Hmph! I'll believethatwhen I see it."

"You will, Gytha," Maethild said softly, taking up her jug and sashaying over to Wulfstan's table. "You will."

Blade Runner

K. D. Wentworth

I, Hallah Iron-Thighs, eldest daughter of Manilla Big-Fist, hereby proclaim I will take no more contracts with professional blades. Everything about the breed sets my teeth on edge, the way they're always mooning around the One-Handed Virgin, posturing and making calf's eyes at the serving lad just to keep in practice, running their best lines with one another, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. In my opinion, they ought to be driven out of the kingdom altogether, but the eight unmarried princesses currently in residence are fond of the breed, and so they hang about, hoping to one day get past the portcullis and ply their trade. Even their designation,blade, is an offense, sounding as though they have trained, as have I and my sisters-in-arms, to sell the services of their swords, a time-honored profession, when nothing is further from the truth.

My partner, Gerta, and I had just made it back from a tough run across the mountains to theKingdomofDamery , which lies adjacent to our own Alowey, fair land of really exceptional milk goats and beautifully tooled salt cellars. We'd had a profitable, though difficult trip, delivering a choice brace of priests to a rundown monastery just beyond Damery's princ.i.p.al castle. They have a chronic shortage of priests there, something to do with the king blaming G.o.d when the crops fail and, of course, the weather is always just dreadful in Damery.

As usual, Gerta and I had been attacked by bandits when we crossed the pa.s.s. Bandits, being such awful sods, are always worried about the state of their immortal souls and simply desperate to unburden themselves with a priest. Gerta, who hails from across the channel, is inclined to cut a truly repentant bandit a bit of slack and give him a word with one of our boys, gratis. Me, I say if the little bleeders want a priest so bad, they should buy oneoftheir own just like everyone else. This go-round my sword, Esmeralda, left three of them lying gutted at the bottom of the nearest chasm whilst the other two scampered up the nearest granite cliff and headed for the peaks.

I'd broken three nails defending our profits and the priests' integrity, and lost one of my best greaves into the bargain, the one with the magical inscription that protects me from crow's-feet, so by the time we reached the One-Handed Virgin, I was in a really foul mood. The serving lad, Barth, had enough sense to bring me a foaming tankard without being asked and then top it off at regular intervals. I like that in a boy.

I was just sizing him up-those limpid eyes, blue as a mountain lake, that abundance of crinkly black hair, and all the other fine ways in which the little rascal had really filled out in the last year, thinking hemight be capable of warming a girl's pillow now-when someone plunked down several more br.i.m.m.i.n.g tankards in front of Gerta and me, then slid into the opposite chair.

He was slim, but well built, dark in the way the princesses favored, but reeked of crushed violets, a cheap scent and therefore not a promising sign. Also he was a bit long in the tooth for our discriminating young ladies, but several of them are just kinky enough to want to get it on with a bloke old enough to be their father, so I supposed he might still have a chance at wooing them. Gerta took in the fancy clothes, then grinned broadly, the ale blurring her already not very discriminating palate. I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, propping one mud-encrusted boot up on the table. My mail clinked merrily.

"Yeah?"

The blade cleared his throat and tugged an elaborately embroidered red and green sleeve just a fraction straighter. His mouth was wide and generous, the sort our girls down at the castle might even call voluptuous. "I've been asking a few questions of the other patrons of this fine establishment, and everyone says you two ladies really know your way around."

"You bet your little pink toes we do!" Gerta slapped the table and cackled heartily.

He gave her a pained smile, then met my gaze with guileless brown eyes. "I need to get into the castle."

"You and every other blade for a hundred miles, sonny boy," I said.

He blushed, which was a nice trick. Even seasoned philanderers can rarely manage that. "No, no, you have it all wrong," he said and leaned closer across the table, his face sincere. "This is a truly n.o.ble cause, one well worth fighting for."

I laced my fingers across my sword belt. "Yeah, that's what they all say."

"Show us the color of your gold!" Gerta said too loudly. The noise level in the One-Handed Virgin dropped precipitously as everyone turned to stare.

"Shut-up!" I said to her under my breath, then shot out my hand to stop the blade from untying his purse. I gripped his wrist with my sword hand hard enough to hurt. "Not here, you idiot!"

His skin was warm beneath my fingers, the black body hairs nice and springy, and for a moment I forgot to let go. He looked away, blus.h.i.+ng again, and I found myself charmed. I released his wrist. "Sorry."