Chapter 3 - A Perplexity
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A Perplexity
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Rask couldn't explain it.
There was no reason at all for him to have woken up earlier than usual that morning. Just as there was no reason that he'd quickened his pace setting out for the nearby stream, or checked the weirs and eel pots with an uncharacteristic efficiency, before heading swiftly back home.
And there was no cause — no cause at all — for the low boil of disappointment simmering away inside his chest. Nor for the small pang as Rask returned to find the little clearing around the mouth of his cave just as empty as it ever was.
He scooped up Broken-Horn one-handed from where the errant goat was chewing enthusiastically on a pine bough that'd somehow managed to survive this long at goat-height, returning him to his pen with the others.
Absolutely not glancing over his shoulder the whole while, Rask strung up the three eels he'd collected from the weir in the smokehouse. He didn’t glance down the mountain when putting his creel away either, nor when going to check on the elk hides stretched on their frames.
Then there were the goats to milk, the still to see to, the hives to harvest, the garden to weed, and all the other hundred things that kept him so very busy.
Only when all the chores that filled the bergsr?'s day were completed did Rask allow himself a single glance down the mountain.
The valley lying below was, as ever, irritatingly peaceful and green.
Rask huffed at himself, heading inside to make his breakfast.
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"Rask?" came Sten’s voice loudly from the other side of the clearing.
Rask looked up from his spinning, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the brighter light beyond the shade of the pine he'd been leaning against as he worked.
"Hello?" Sten tried again, this time just outside the mouth of Rask's cave as the foolish human called into the darkness within. "Are you in there?"
"Man's son returns?" Rask asked incredulously, dropping his spindle into the basket filled with roving and standing to greet his unexpected caller.
Sten spun around, clearly startled as Rask drew near.
"Well, yes," Sten replied. "I'd said I would, didn't I? And, it's Sten — remember?"
"Humans say lots of things," Rask told him absently. "Not always do."
The little human had recovered his rucksack at some point since their last encounter, though he'd ripped the knee of his pant leg in return.
Otherwise he looked no worse for wear, despite last night's storm.
But it was his hands that commanded Rask's attention, intrigued by what Sten could be holding so carefully within them.
"Rask glad Sten here," Rask decided, uncomfortably aware of a weight on his chest.
The corner of Sten's mouth tipped up into a quiet smile. "You are?"
"Yes," Rask nodded. He reached for the little leather bag he wore on a thong around his neck, lifting it off his chest to fish out a carved wooden button. "Bad thing to leave outside of fae’s home. Cause big trouble. Now Rask not have to hike down mountain to return it."
Rask held the button out, unsure why Sten's face fell at the sight of the trinket.
"Oh, uh…thanks. I-I must've dropped it yesterday," Sten mumbled as he shifted his hold to one hand, taking the button with the other. "I brought the stuff you asked for."
"What?" Rask looked down at the little human's hands sharply just as Sten opened them, revealing a crumpled plant and a tiny speckled egg.
"The baby's breath was easy," Sten said as Rask plucked the thin green stem bearing the delicate pale blossoms from his palm.
"I saw so many patches of this stuff growing all over the hillsides on my way here.
The cardinal's gold kept me up all night trying to figure that one out.
Got halfway to my village actually, before realizing there had to be an easier answer than getting myself killed turning highwayman on some unsuspecting priest. That's what you said fae like you do, right?
Twist words around, play with meanings. Like a puzzle, or… maybe a dance?"
Rask grunted as Sten handed him the egg, impressed despite his misgivings. He was bergsr?; the Song had provided the riddle, and even Rask himself hadn't known the answer it would supply.
He held it up to his ear, listening carefully for that faintest of notes…
Nothing. The parents would have disposed of the unfertilized egg soon enough, making the golden yolk inside an easy prize for the Song’s purposes.
"And the third thing?" Rask asked.
For there was always a third thing, even in his thus-far limited experience. Nor could he deny his curiosity to see what Sten's answer to a 'fire that not burn out' might be…
"Oh," Sten flashed Rask a smile as he started digging in his rucksack. "That one I got right away."
He pulled a thick glass bottle from the depths of his bag, brown as a riverbed's clay, before freezing as an odd expression twisted up his face.
"Do, uh… do bergsr?r drink?" Sten asked.
Rask just grinned at him, plucking the jug from the little human's hands and pulling free the stopper to take a slug.
‘Fire that not burn out’, indeed.
"Guess that answers that," Sten laughed as Rask took another swig, before holding the bottle out for the human to take back.
It was good stuff. Rask had enjoyed the br?nnvin’s scorching warmth as it seared its way down his throat. Almost as much as he enjoyed the way Sten’s throat bobbed when he too took a hearty sip.
Soon enough they found themselves both enjoying the shade of the pine tree, its knobbly bark sturdy where it pressed into Rask's back as he leaned against it.
He handed the significantly-lighter bottle once more to the bold little human where Sten sprawled across the bed of pine needles near the bergsr?'s side.
"So… I passed, right? This means you'll help us now?" Sten asked, slurring only slightly as he turned the bottle upside down over his tongue. He stared mournfully up at the slender droplet of br?nnvin stubbornly clinging to its empty mouth, before that gaze slid expectantly to Rask.
Rask looked away quickly, telling himself the burn in his chest was just the drink.
"Yes," Rask answered the human unhappily. "If that really Sten's wish."
"Of course it is!" Sten's eyes were comically wide as he gestured wildly around them. "Why wouldn't it be? It's why I've been going through all this effort!"
"Because Sten not know vaettir like Rask," Rask tried to explain, a feat made that much more difficult with most of a bottle of high-proof br?nnvin sloshing around in his belly.
He didn't think he was as far gone as the little human, but it was still enough to leave his skin pleasantly buzzing and his fingers aching to brush away the strand of hair that'd strayed between Sten's stone-grey eyes…
Rask coughed, forcing his thoughts back into position. "Sten not know what vaettir want. Maybe good for humans. Maybe very bad. Humans not tied to land like bergsr?r. Can go wherever, far from angry vaettir. Maybe like somewhere else better."
"Yeah. It's all just that easy, huh?" Sten asked softly, a bitter twist to his lips.
"Look — if we can't stop the vaettir, then the foreman has to shut down the quarry.
If the quarry shuts down, the merchants will leave, and then there's no need for all the jarlsguard.
No need for the quarrymen either, which means most of the town would be out of work. "
"So leave," Rask said as he stood, needing to secure his goats if they were to do this. "Find other work."
"Some will," Sten agreed, rising to follow Rask through the mouth of his cave.
"Most can't. And those who are left… Too many empty hands and hungry mouths, no purpose and no one left to keep an eye on things? That's usually a recipe for bandits, one way or another. Bandits who’ll have heard the stories same as I or any other child in the valley; tales of the King Under the Mountain, who guards his great treasure alone. Once they've ransacked my village, how long do you think it’ll be before they try their luck up here?”
"Rask has no treasure here," Rask told him, hefting up a bale of hay in each hand and carrying it to the excited goats in their paddock. "Not anymore."
"Won't keep people from coming up to look, will it?" the aggravating man mused as he watched Rask break up the hay and spread it around the pen. "I got up here easily enough."
"So do Rask's goats," Rask countered, turning to the little human. "Should Rask milk Sten, too?"
The human got a funny expression on his face at that. But then he shook himself, as if flinging away whatever thought Rask's words had prompted, and followed Rask without further question as they set off down the mountain.
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Rask scowled at the game trail they followed, the temptation to turn back and leave the little man to his own fate warring with the knowledge of what would happen if Rask tried.
There were too many reasons he shouldn't involve himself on the human's behalf, though.
Not least of which was the possibility that the vaettirs' wrath could prove to be justified.
Humans were always causing trouble in the valleys below his mountain; shouting and fighting with each other, drowning out the Song with their mining. It was not his problem.
Still, Sten had shown spirit coming here, tracking down and arguing with a bergsr?, fulfilling his side of their Deal.
There was a fire to him Rask found amusing.
He was surprised to realize he would be sad to see this one leave when it was all over.
Or worse, learn the frail human had fallen to some vaettir trick. Maybe…
No. It didn’t matter how Rask might feel about Sten, did it? There were ancient patterns that must be observed, and Rask had been reckless to offer the human a Deal the way he had. The bergsr? had no choice but to see it through, little though Sten may thank him for it later.
However impossible the terms Rask laid out had seemed at the time, Sten had somehow managed to meet them.
Technically.
Easily.
Cleverly.
Which, for a fae, was already bad enough. But for Rask specifically? The intolerable human’s cheeky answer to the bergsr?'s riddle meant he might — might— be interesting after all.
It was absolutely unacceptable.
Glancing over — again — as they walked, Sten was studying Rask now with a different sort of expression from any Rask had seen him wear before.
"What wrong with Sten's face?"
"What?" Sten squawked, before laughing. "Oh, sorry — I was just, um, wondering…"
Rask considered him warily, disconcerted by the way Sten was gnawing at his own lip. Was the human hungry? Did they need to stop for another break? Sten had already called a halt twice to water the trees, and he was having to take three steps for every one of Rask's to keep up.
Sten took a deep breath. "Can bergsr?r and human males couple then?"
"What?" Rask's foot came down hard as his gait faltered, nearly choking at the unexpected question.
"Yesterday, when, um…" Sten coughed. "I mean, surely you would not have mentioned it if — if such a thing weren’t possible?"
Rask snorted, amused beyond all measure now. "Rask teasing small human. Sten's face almost as funny as Rask's goats."
The man's head tilted like a bird's as he reconsidered. "So, it's not possible then?"
"Rask not say that," Rask admitted. "Not easy, between our kind. Needs great care. Bad to rush. But Rask told bedding humans very…enjoyable. If bergsr? patient."
"Patient? Why…?" Sten trailed off, attention drifting to the heavily embroidered apron of the bergsr?'s loincloth.
Rask could almost hear the potter's wheel as it turned, slowly shaping the lump of clues into something like understanding. He chuckled as Sten's eyes grew comically large, barely resisting the urge to adjust himself, if only to see how the little man would react.
"You mean, if I — if a human, that is — were to try taking your cock, don't you?" Sten asked in a stunned voice. There came a flash of that pink tongue again, like a kitten licking milk off its nose. "Just…how big a difference are we talking about here?"
"How would Rask know?" Rask said with a shrug, the alcohol warming his belly and loosening his tongue. "But Sten very small and fragile, even clothed. Easy to break."
Sten laughed. "Easy? Perhaps. But not so fragile as you might think, Rask. And none in my village would recognize me by your description. If anything, I am too large, and I've collected quite the assortment of bruises thanks to the low ceiling beams of my cottage as proof."
"Small," Rask repeated, grinning in high humor as he reached out to pat the top of Sten's head patronizingly. "Fragile. But if Sten so curious, bring Rask more br?nnvin. Then see how humans and bergsr?r measure up."
Humming brightly, Sten eyed Rask's loincloth anew. "Maybe I'll take you up on that."
Startled from his drink-softened thoughts, Rask glanced down at his travel companion. Here he'd been joking, but…hrm.
Sten might not be much to look at, but he was proving interesting enough, Rask supposed. There hadn't been a great deal in the world that Rask had found interesting in some time. It made the bergsr? want to poke him, to see if the little man would squawk again.
There was a pleasing warmth to the tone of his skin, too. Like river clay baked by the heat of a summer's day. Rask half wanted to reach out and touch the small human, to watch his slate-blue skin slide against Sten's own.
Dangerous, such thoughts were exceedingly dangerous.
Foolish, too. Sten had only sought out the bergsr? for help with his quest, and he'd be gone as soon as it was over.
Rask was old enough to know better by now.
He certainly shouldn't be thinking about how soft that skin would be to touch, how pleasing Sten's voice was in his ears; how Rask would like to hear more of it, would like to —
"So then, you've never — " Sten coughed. "I mean, with a human…?"
Rask frowned. "Why Rask want ugly and weak human in Rask's bed?" he snapped, as much at himself as at the human's question.
"Why indeed?" Sten muttered softly, the line of his shoulders sagging like an old nanny goat's back.