Winter Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

her head in assent.
        Ragnar must have mistaken her shyness for reluctance, or his next words would surely never have been so cruel (at least, she thought, not before you got pregnant): "Well, come on girl! Look to it! You should be grateful – it'll give you something to think about, take your mind off that dead bastard of yours."
        She felt tears sting her eyes, and lunged toward the travois.
        But Ragnar must have seen her well up, for she heard him half-groan, and mutter, "Well, you shouldn't have brought shame on my house by opening your legs to the first man who ignored your plainness. My darling Gunnhild would spin in her grave if she could see what you've turned into."
        Bera wanted to shout that, but for the eruption on Surtsey, she would have gone home as soon as she was pregnant, but that was pointless. Her family was dead, and now she just had to get on with living.
        So she didn't answer, but instead wrestled the stranger off the travois. But in so doing, Bera scraped the stranger's back on the stones, and he roused screaming from his near-coma. Ragnar shouted, "Yngi! Thorir! Give her a hand with that!"
        The two men helped ease the stranger back into the travois and unhitch it. Thorir called, "Where do you want it?" He stood far too close to Bera for her liking.
        "Put it in with the animals," Ragnar said.
        Grunting with effort the men picked him up, and staggered toward the stables. Bera shadowed them into the warm, odorous darkness. She gazed at the horses, three of which were hers. But the web of debts incurred had bound her too tight to indulge any fantasies of flight while she was pregnant.
        Ragnar appeared in the doorway. "Mind you take good care of him."
    Bera didn't answer.
        When she was sure that Ragnar had gone, she took Brynja from under her furs. Weeping quietly, she let the puppy nuzzle the other nipple from the one she had suckled the night before. "Like Romulus and Remus," she said, "but in reverse."
        "Let's hope it doesn't end in tears," Ragnar said, making her jump at his unexpected return. Luckily, he was so busy staring at the stranger lying on the hay that he didn't notice the puppy, instead assuming her reference was to the man. He kept staring at the man, barely able to conceal his repugnance. "It's an Icelandic tradition, to fear the stranger, but even so, this hairless stranger bothers me. His presence means trouble… we'll call him Loki. It seems fitting."
        "I'll do my best for you," Bera said, shielding Brynja by turning away slightly.
        Ragnar roused himself. "You will," he said. "We've a critical time coming. Once the crops ripen fully, it's a race to get them in. We'll need every able-bodied hand we can get. He can repay us our hospitality – if he recovers."
        "If he doesn't? Or he recovers, but stays an invalid?"
        "That won't happen," Ragnar said. The feral look on his face chilled Bera. "He'll have an accident before that happens. Clear?"
        Bera nodded, swallowing.

THREE

    Loki

    The world through your eyes is full of pain and wonder, made even stranger by the whirlwind of voices shrieking for your attention:
         "The Mizar Quartet are Sol-type hydrogen-fusing dwarf stars–"
         "Isheimuri lingua confirmed as mix of Standard and Ice landic–"
        Some voices verge on making sense, but most babble gibberish. Each is accompanied by a dizzying sense of vertigo, and little shocks deep inside your body. Occasionally you smell burning. Sometimes you taste colours, can hear, flickering jeering shadows behind your eyelids.
         "Absolute magnitude uses the same convention as visual–"
        You are dimly aware that the nanophytes within you that keep your muscle tone even as you waste away are locked in a desperate fight against the cannibal predations of the remaining lifegel in a near sub-atomic battle of the idiots. Either through accident