Esther M. Friesner - A Big Hand For The Little Lady.pdf - Esther Friesner - margozap

It was just another night in Hrothgar's hall, high Heorot, and the bloodstains

on the plank floors hardly showed at all. Men sat at the long boards, drinking

and swapping lies. Mead, beer, and wine flowed freely, most of it down the

gullets of those warriors who'd stayed in noble Hrothgar's service long enough

to have seen too many of their comrades die at the hands--if they were

hands--of the fen-dwelling fiend the scops named Grendel. (How the scops ever

got close enough to the hellspawned monster to learn his name without being

themselves devoured remained a mystery.)

While the doughty Danish warriors sopped up enough liquor to float a longship,

serving wenches passed between the feasting boards, refilling cups and

drinking horns while at the same time slapping down or encouraging the

attentions of the men, as they pleased. Among this lot there was one young

woman who stood out from the rest, though not even the most nimble-tongued

harper could ever say that she stood above them.

"Well, woodja looka that, Hengest," said one of Hrothgar's men, staring across

the hall through booze-bleared eyes. "They got kids serving in here now?"

His seatmate gave him a comradely thwack in the head. "Thass no kid, Wulfstan,

you beetle-brain. Thass m' sister, Maethild."

"Uh." Wulfstan squinted at the doll-like woman threading her way through the

maze of tables. The other wenches towered over her, as did some of Hrothgar's

boarhounds. It wasn't that she was a dwarf, although Hengest could have told

Wulfstan that the girl had borne more than a few crude gibes from would-be

wits who wanted to know where she kept her hammer or asked to see her treasure

hoard. (In the latter cases, Maethild generally contrived to lay hold of a

something heavy and hammer home a few free lessons in manners.) She was as

sweetly formed a woman as the Lady Frey had ever blessed: hair of gold, eyes

like a windswept summer sea, trim waist, and thighs that could crush a full

keg of autumn ale between them. She was simply… short. She balanced a heavy

jug of beer on her shoulder as effortlessly as if it were made of cloud

instead of clay, sometimes using it to beat aside too-familiar hands.

"You washed 'er wrong," Wulfstan said at last. "She shrunk."

Hengest bellowed with laughter and thumped Wulfstan on the back. "I like you,

Woofspam," he slurred. "I don' got a lotta friends here yet 'cos I jus' come

south to get into Hrothgar's service. See, I'm hopin' I'll be the one to killa

monster that's been makin' all you Ring-Danes slink outa this fine hall ev'ry

night so's he won' eatcha. Ol' Hrothgar, he'll pile a ton o' treasure on the

man does that, and that man's gonna be me. But I like you. I like you a lot.

Tell ya what: If you don' get eat up an' I killa monster, you marry Maethild.

Deal?"

Wulfstan gave the diminutive maiden another long stare. "Well, she looks cheap

to feed. 'Kay. Deal." The two men shook on it, and both of them fell off the

bench backwards in the process. Hengest was the first back on his feet. He

bawled out his sister's name.

One of the serving women reached down to tap Maethild on the shoulder. "You're

wanted."

"I know." Maethild gave her brother a look of disgust which the other wench

misinterpreted.

"Look, if you don't want him bothering you, drop that jug where it matters.

I've been watching you; you don't have any trouble handling these trolls."

"That's no troll; that's my brother."

"He is?" The wench looked from tiny Maethild to titanic Hengest, mystified.

"Are you sure?"

"Different fathers," Maethild replied. "Mine was a swordsman, his was a scop."

"A swordsman? Your father was the swordsman?" The wench was even more baffled

by this sliver of family history.

"A short swordsman," Maethild replied tersely, and stomped across the hall,

thumped the jug down on the board, gave her brother a killing look and

snapped, "What?"

"Now, Maethild, be nice," Hengest soothed. "We don' wan' 'nother thing like

wha' happen' in Healfdan's hall."

"Huh?" Wulfstan blinked. "Wuzza hoppen Healfdan's hall, hey?"

"Nuthin'." Hengest was suddenly embarrassed.

"I'll tell you what happened in Healfdan's hall," Maethild replied pertly.

"Healfdan was my brother's former lord, a windbellied braggart. His way of

telling a woman to hold her tongue was to give her a couple of healthy slaps.

He heard me speaking my mind to my brother and he didn't care for my tone of

voice, so he tried teaching me my place." She showed her teeth. "Once. They

call him Healfdan of the Seven Fingers now."

Wulfstan's lower jaw dropped. Hengest writhed with the shame of having so

unsuitable a sister. " 'S why we come here," he mumbled into his beard. "After

what she did to Healfdan, we hadda run. I couldn't fight all of his men

myself."

"Who asked you to?" Maethild demanded. "If you'd only have given me a sword--"

Hengest slammed his knuckles onto the table and rose from his place in a rage.

"No woman of my blood is gonna use a sword, an' spesh'ly not one that's

dangerous 'nuff 'thout one!" he hollered, and then slumped across the board,

dead to the world.

"Beautiful," Maethild sneered over her brother's snores. She shot Wulfstan a

hard look. "Well? Are you just going to sit there gaping like a lutefisk or

are you going to leave the big lumpbrain here for Grendel to eat tonight?"

"Uh…" Wulfstan rubbed his temples as if his hangover had arrived ahead of

schedule. "I guess I could haul 'im outa here. Leas' I c'n do for fam'ly." He

was young and brawny, like Hengest, whom he soon had draped over his shoulders

like a lamb's carcase. He started for the great door of Heorot, but a small

hand clamped itself to the back of his belt and held him firmly.

"'Family'?" Maethild inquired. Her smile was too sweet. A sober man wouldn't

have believed it for an instant.

"Uh-huh. I'm gonna marry you after your brother kills the monster." Drunk as

he was, Wulfstan caught the warning light in Maethild's eyes, swallowed hard,

and added, "Your brother said. An' we shook on it." He hauled Hengest out of

Heorot's high hall hastily.

He tried. He just managed to clear the doorway and make it out into the chill

night air when Maethild laid hold of his belt again. For the first time, a

glimmer of realization sparked feebly inside Wulfstans brainbin: This wee

wench was holding him immobile. Not only that, a backward glance revealed she

was doing it one-handed. What was even more frightening, she was smiling at

him that way again. "You… want something?" he asked nervously.

"The question is, what do you want, noble warrior?" Maethild asked, dainty and

demure. "Do you really want to marry me or was it just the mead talking?"

Wulfstan didn't answer. Right then, what he most wanted was to escape this

strange young maiden and live to see another dawn. He had the feeling that

these two distinct desires were intimately connected.

"Don't be shy," Maethild coaxed. "I swear to you, I won't be offended if you

say that you'd rather not be my husband."

"You won't?" Wulfstan cheered up visibly. This lasted all of two breaths. His

smile crumbled along with his hopes. "We shook on it," he repeated. "It's

sealed in honor. If I try to back out, your brother'll kill me." He was

speaking as distinctly as though he'd drunk nothing but goat's milk all

evening. The cold night air and Maethild combined to have a radically sobering

effect on him.

"I can handle Hengest," the little woman assured him.

Wulfstan had no doubts on that score. He had the feeling that Maethild could

handle Grendel itself, if she had a mind to. Unfortunately, it wasn't that

simple. "No good," he said gloomily. "It'd be all right if we'd done it in

private, but we struck our bargain under Hrothgar's roof, with plenty of folk

there to witness the terms."

"Huh!" Maethild snorted, then spat dead center between Wulfstan's feet. "Any

who saw you two at your stupid games were just as mead-muddled as you! They

won't remember a thing."

"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 of us

want."

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 shirt 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 shifted 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 to her. "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 tits, woman, if that's your plan, you can do it without me!" He

emphasized his refusal to participate 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

breasts up and perilously close to out at the neckline. "You're a fine,

strapping, handsome man, Wulfstan. I might not mind marrying you, if it came

to that, but you're stupid. 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' I mennit. 'S a marrera honor. So there." 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 rather die," 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

ship 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 shirt 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 of protest 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're the one

wouldn't let her have a sword," he pointed out.

"Well-well, you should've done something!" 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 night's 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 want something done, 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 spunkless 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 friend's fine grasp of the scop's art of alliteration left

nothing to be desired. Eyes on the ground, he trudged behind Hengest

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 assault 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 buggered," he declared.

"Now what'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 was another matter 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, bloody 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 piss treasure all over us, so why

are we buggered, brother dear?"

"Because, my darling, dimwitted sister, you're the one who killed the

monster!" Hengest yelled. "With your bare hands, no less. Oh, Hrothgar's going

to love this. He'll piss, 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, "Now do 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 men rescued by a woman. He'll kill

you for this."

Esther M. Friesner - A Big Hand For The Little Lady.pdf

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