Chapter 4 - A Problem
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A Problem
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"You know, I'm thought to be quite handsome in my village," Sten said as he hopped across one of the little rivulets that crisscrossed this part of the slope. "At least, judging by the number of women who kept trying to push their daughters at me during the Ságastine Festival this spring."
"Congratulations," the bergsr? replied flatly. "Rask wishes Sten many fat, squalling babies."
Sten's face darkened.
"I don't want to marry their daughters."
"Then marry their sons, Rask not care."
"Much more my type!" Sten laughed. "If only it were so easy."
Rask snorted. "Humans cause many problems, especially for themselves."
Sten laughed again. It…was a good sound.
"We really do, don't we?" Sten said, flashing Rask a grin. "It must be very different for bergsr?r."
"Yes," Rask agreed. "Bergsr?r much smarter. Why keep secret? If want mate, give gifts. Give lots of gifts. If other bergsr? agrees, get lots of gifts too. Everyone happy."
Sten hummed softly.
"Everyone happy, except Sten," Rask guessed. "Why?"
"I…Are bergsr?r ever attracted to others of your own kind, Rask?" Sten asked in words so low Rask almost didn't catch them.
Rask grunted. "Rask's mate was bergsr?."
Sten rolled his eyes. "No, another man — male, I mean."
"Hjarta was that too." Rask shrugged. He'd heard this about humans, but he'd never been curious enough to inquire about their crude and backward ways.
He couldn't say why he was permitting the human all these questions. It wasn't that he was striking — he wasn't — or that Sten was interesting — only a little — or that he commanded attention in any way.
Boredom, Rask supposed.
"So, you do know what it's like," Sten said, relieved.
Rask looked away, but… He would feel guilty, he knew, if he let Sten believe the lie.
"No," he said, his attention back on the human just in time to see his shoulders slump once again. "Rask might guess…but Rask not know. Man, woman, both, neither; for bergsr?r, no difference."
"…Sounds nice," Sten said mournfully. "Wish my village was like that."
And Rask…
Bane and blight; guilt ate at Rask now, as if he'd said something wrong. He grunted, wishing the obstinate human would leave him be. Rubbing his fist hard against the small, discordant note of protest humming away in Rask's chest, he shoved it down.
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Frustration chased Rask's heels the whole way to the human village, his guilt growing in weight with each footfall as Sten's silence stretched out longer.
Twice, Rask almost gave in, only biting back his words at the last moment for fear they wouldn't be welcome.
An odd compulsion gripped him; the need to point out a particular view or specific rock formation reared its head often with a startling strength.
The urge to earn himself another of Sten's lopsided grins, or at least break the unruly quiet hanging in the air between them.
Perhaps it'd been too long since Rask'd had anyone other than his goats to talk to.
Finally, the steep grade of the mountain leveled out, and by nightfall they'd passed the boundary stones that marked the outer edge of the quarry.
Here, the Song was almost painfully weak; thready in some places, a soured cacophony in others.
It grated across Rask's senses like a foul note, compounding his guilt all the more.
It was a bergsr?'s duty to ensure the health of the Song within their domains. A duty it was clear Rask had sorely neglected.
"Lars was up on that scaffolding when it happened," Sten said, pointing at a series of freshly cut planks glowing golden in the moonlight against the age-weathered boards to either side. "He was on his way to the northern face, so I suppose we should start there."
But Rask shook his head, the beads in his hair chiming against each other with the motion as he headed for the human's temporary platform Sten had pointed out. "Vaettir not care for maybes, only what is. Where Sten's friend going not important. Better Rask look where friend fell."
Kneeling in the gravel directly below the repaired patch of scaffolding came with all the bracing force of wading into an early spring's stream running high with snowmelt. The vaettir below Rask's feet churned in agitation, riled up; their melody set to a frantic pace.
"Rask?" came Sten's voice, thick with worry. But it was distant, from somewhere outside the space Rask currently existed, trying to find the moment to join in with his own piece of the Song.
When he found it, he did not hesitate; Rask's magic rumbling out in a deep bass, reverberating where it met stone and seeping into the cracks.
Weaving his melody with that of the vaettir, it became a multi-layered duet; he would ask, and they would answer.
And when they had questions of their own, Rask did his best to reply in turn.
"I didn't know you could sing," Sten said quietly after the last of Rask's notes finally faded, blinking unfocused eyes open to look up at him.
Sten was staring down at the bergsr?, wearing an expression almost as strange as his words. From this angle, Rask mused, the human did not seem quite so small.
"All can Sing," Rask ground out harshly, his throat rough after so much magic. "Some just better, or louder, or more pleasant to listen to."
"Shows you've never heard me butchering the hymns in temple every morning and twice on ninthday," Sten replied, his mouth slanted into a wry sort of smile. "Even my tone-deaf granny wouldn't call that singing."
Rask frowned. "Sten singing right now," Rask corrected him, forgetting himself enough to reach up, touching the tip of his forefinger to Sten's chest, just over the steady rhythm of the little human's heart.
Forgetting himself a great deal, it seemed, between the drink and magic and…
and being so far from his cave perhaps, but —
Without thought, Rask reached further up, flattening his entire palm against the warmth emanating through the thin material of Sten's tunic; all of Rask's attention focused now on the life pulsing within the man.
The bergsr? hummed softly, teasing out Sten's melody. Not to entangle, no — though the desire to harmonize was strong, Rask was not so far gone as to risk it. He merely drew out the tune instead; sending it soaring and swirling inside the bold little human who'd dared to ask a bergsr? for help.
"There," Rask whispered. "Sten hear it?"
Sten's eyes were wide, locked on Rask's face. "What is that?" he murmured, holding very, very still.
The bergsr? chuckled. "Sten's melody. As Rask said: all Sing, all part of Song."
"Oh." Sten swallowed harshly. "And…what do I sound like? To you, I mean."
"Sten good melody," Rask decided. "Very pleasant. Strong and sweet, like marble."
A deep breath filled Sten's chest, rising under Rask's palm and setting off warning bells in his mind. Quickly Rask dropped his hand, hastily severing the connection that'd been forming between them and chiding himself for his carelessness.
Sten's brow furrowed, the brightness of his expression dropping away as well. Looking around them, he shifted his weight awkwardly and coughed.
Was he sick? Was it too chilly for humans? Rask was vaguely aware Sten’s kind got ill and died all the time, sometimes from the smallest things. Rask had not brought a blanket or coat he could now offer, but they were not far from Sten's village. Surely he would have supplies there?
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"Halt!" called a woman's stern voice, breaking into the bergsr?'s worries. "This is Thane Uffark's quarry. Who — Triggy?"
"Yeah," Sten answered the woman standing atop a ridge a third of the way up the cut-stone wall of the quarry, running along until it met the doomed scaffolding above their heads. "It's just me. And, uh… a friend, I guess."
"What in Baldor's name are you doing down there?" Sten's mother called down. Under the faint light of the moonwolves, she was little more than a dark silhouette as she took a step towards them, bringing her closer to the edge.
Beneath Rask's feet, the vaettir grumbled like thunder moving in from the horizon; a low, percussive churning that buzzed up through the quarry floor and into Rask's bones.
"It's alright, Ma." A curiously bashful note had crept into Sten's voice. "I, uh… I brought help."
He gestured to the bergsr?, but Rask barely registered it. His attention was focused on the quarry face below the ridge, and the now steady rumbling of the vaettir as —
"Back!" Rask yelled up to Sten's mother, and the other humans he could sense watching from behind her. "Get back!"
"What?" Sten sputtered. "Rask, you can't — "
"Make humans get back," Rask told him urgently; palm pressed flat to the ground and his senses opened wide as he strained to pick out a particular melody within the Song. "Vaettir say ridge not stable. Sten's mother not safe."
"Ma, do as he says," Sten called up to her immediately with no further arguing, twisting to wave away the humans as if they were errant minnows. "Get off that ridge, all of you."
"Now, you just wait, Tryggvisten Bjornstenson!" blustered a man in the back. "Whatever it is you think you're doing, we — "
There was a slight cracking sound, then the plink of small gravel rolling down stone. The blustery man gave a yelp as one of his companions yanked him by the collar, dragging him along to follow the other retreating villagers.
A roughly built timber ladder lay hardly a hundred arm spans away, and Rask was surprised to see Sten's mother was the first one to scramble down it. He supposed he shouldn't have been. Not given how stubborn her son had proven himself to be.
"Tryggvisten, you tell us this instant what's going on," his mother warned. "Where under Baldor's blessed light have you been the past few days? And who's — "
Faltering abruptly as her gaze landed squarely on the bergsr?, Sten's mother took a quick step back.
" — what is that?"
She was smaller than her son. They all were; Rask was surprised to realize at seeing the handful of villagers who'd accompanied her. All of them swiftly fanned out behind Sten's mother, as if to form a shield between their homes and the interloper they'd discovered in their quarry.
Rask briefly debated getting to his feet, but decided that was only likely to make the situation worse. Not that he was in any danger — not from this small of a crowd. Yet some little voice inside his head urged that he should attempt to make a good impression on… on Sten's mother, of all things.
Still, he supposed it was a reasonable enough plan.
Obviously, she held some position of power within the village, given how the other humans deferred to her leadership.
And yet, there had to be more to it than that.
Another reason to gain this woman's favor; some secret thing the voice refused to reveal, balanced even so precariously just on the tip of the bergsr?'s tongue.
It was unbelievably frustrating.
"Ma, this is Rask," Sten said, coming to stand at the kneeling bergsr?'s side and reaching up to rest his hand on Rask's shoulder. "And he — we, I mean — came to find out what's going on with the vaettir. Rask, this is my mother, Arndra."
Arndra's lips pursed as she studied the bergsr?, her gaze lingering on where her son's hand still lay on Rask's shoulder.
"Well?" she finally said, chin tipped up in challenge as she interrogated the bergsr?. "Did you discover anything?"
Rask grinned, finding he liked this human. She had her son's spirit.
"Vaettir tell of weak spot where humans dig," Rask answered her. "Village must stop, or many die."
Arndra sucked in a sharp breath. "They plan to kill us?"
"Who, vaettir?" Rask asked, confused. "Why? Vaettir not create stone. Not tell humans dig where it weakest, either."
"And that's why they've been breaking our tools and causing injuries?" Sten chimed in. "The vaettir couldn't have just… I don't know, given us a warning or something instead?
Rask looked up at him in surprise. "What Sten think vaettir doing? Not vaettir's fault humans no listen."
"Six wounded, Lars needing a crutch the rest of his life, and the thaneskassor breathing down our necks over how many orens the village is losing each day the quarry is shut down over stolen hammers or to fix a broken crane?" scoffed the blustery man from earlier. "I'd hardly call that a warning."
Rask blinked at the stranger slowly, a slew of thoughts all tumbling down the slopes of his mind too fast for him to keep up. These humans bleated much as goats did, but had none of the charm.
Well, maybe one or two, Rask allowed; Sten's palm a warm, companionable weight on Rask's shoulder.
"Any in village dead?" Rask asked finally, once the dust had settled in his mind.
"Uh, no," the blustery man admitted. "Not yet."
"Good." Rask nodded at him as the bergsr? rose to his feet, knees sparking like a lightning storm in complaint. "Maybe humans listen to vaettir. Then it stay that way."
Arndra scowled. "How can we 'listen' to the vaettir? Nobody in the village has any magic, not even our priests. Certainly there's no…person like — " And here she gestured vaguely at Rask. " — like yourself."
"Listening to vaettir not need magic," Rask corrected her. And he didn't know what made him offer but… "Rask promise to teach Sten, if Sten wish."
"Um." Sten's eyes widened again when Rask turned his attention to the man, catching the moonlight like twin pools. It was a terribly dangerous expression, Rask realized, for he was swiftly becoming fond of seeing it. "Yes, I… yes. What must we — I — do?"
Crossing his arms over his chest, Rask cocked his head, studying the human and wondering again if all his kind were as mannerless as this one. Judging by the small group around him, Rask feared it might be a trait rife within the whole species.
"Thanks maybe good start," he supplied.
"Oh! Right, of course. Thank you for your help, Rask," Sten said, pressing his hand directly over his heart and bowing low.
Rask rolled his eyes. Hopeless. This human was utterly and completely —
"And…I suppose I must thank the vaettir too, for their warning," Sten continued, glancing around them uncertainly. "Er…How do I do that?"
Alright, Rask decided as he uncrossed his arms. So maybe not so hopeless.