Chapter Text
The sounds of construction echoed across the encampment as Sif sat bent over her desk, eyeing the maps laid out before her. She shook her head. “No. I won’t do it.”
Gray eyes, set deep under a heavy brow, widened in disbelief even as the hard press of his lips displayed his anger.
Leaning back in her chair, Sif regarded him with boredom. “Numbers do not make a successful strategy, Gridr. I will not give you any of men, for any price, to be arrow fodder in this,” she waved her hand at the papers, “disaster of a plan. You have no idea what it takes to bring down a stronghold.”
He stood, a mass of solid muscle, covered in thick gray skin, flushed to a sickly greenish color in his anger. “What would you know of strategy? Being Thor’s pet har—“
Sif sprang over the desk as he stumbled back away from her, tripping over the chair in the process, and sprawling backward onto the floor. His hand reached for his weapon, but was unable to draw it as Sif’s boot landed hard on his arm, pinning it against the floor, and her blade pressed, unforgiving, to his throat. Green blood welled where the edge opened his skin, and she bared her teeth at him.
“I am no one’s pet!” How many times had she been called as much? And how many more times had it been thought? She swore to herself, upon the Norns’ weavings, that the next person to call her pet would lose his tongue. “You will find no reinforcements here, get out of my sight, and should you ever think to shadow my door again, I will kill you.”
The scuffle had drawn the attention of Sif’s lieutenant who pulled the tent flap aside to peer at them. Light spilled across Gridr’s prone form as he held it open and stepped inside, looking amused.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, Einarr, and escort him out of here.” She wiped sticky blood from her sword on his leathers and stepped back as Einarr stepped forward.
Long, white-blond hair fell over his shoulders, a stark contrast to his dark skin, as he bent, but it stayed out of his face, the top part pulled back in intricate braids. Gridr growled something as he was helped to his feet, though Sif paid no attention, turning back to her desk as both men left the tent. The maps and diagrams, that had earlier covered her desk, had been spread across the dirt floor of the tent, and Sif moved to pick them up, dumping them back onto the desk in disgust before returning to her chair.
They had needed this job. A regular income was essential to their existence, but, while the money was desperately needed, it was also Sif’s responsibility to keep her men’s best interests in mind. Granted, she had lost her temper, and perhaps if she had approached the situation a bit more diplomatically….
Sif groaned, leaning back in her chair and covering her face with an armor-clad arm. She must have drifted off to sleep then, as she was startled awake a little later by Einarr coming back from his task of getting rid of Gridr.
He was a tall man as most Ljósálfar were, lithe and fine featured, his mixed heritage seen only in the sepia tone of his skin. The proof of his violent profession in the scar that crossed the bridge of his nose and sliced across his left cheek, mangling his ear. It marred his features, but detracted nothing from his formidable presence. He never spoke of how he’d received it, and Sif didn’t ask. She was familiar enough with injury to know that some were trumpeted in victory, and others were held close, a lesson learned, but scars very often wrote themselves upon the mind as deeply as the flesh.
“You do no one any good this exhausted, my Lady.”
A lazy hand gesture as she straightened in her chair. “I will get more rest after the delegation has ended and a decision has been made over our presence here.” Alfar politics were a twisted and slippery thing. Where the owner of the land, Erudessa, a highborn lady of the court, had long hosted a mercenary army upon her family properties, it had been decided by a nearby lord that the army had grown too large to be considered personal protection.
This, of course, was Sif’s fault, as she had begun inflating their numbers almost immediately after she’d taken over a year ago. When she had, it had been done with the assurance that the property could and would continue to house them.
Einarr looked unconvinced, but let that particular subject go. For now. “We gain candidates daily, but even if we’re being particular in who we accept, two thirds of them are untried, unblooded. They need experience before they can be expected to fill ranks appropriately.”
“I am aware.” She said dryly. “But I will not sacrifice most so that a lucky few can gain experience. No matter how badly we need the revenue.” Her hand swept over the mess of papers on the desk, a plan doomed to fail. “They are people, thus not disposable.”
He nodded, and moved to right the chair Gridr had knocked over, sitting in it himself. He clasped his fingers together, pursing his lips. “You are a good General, a caring commander, Lady Sif, but it’s been eight months since you killed Freki. You need to choose a new second, you cannot keep doing everything on your own.”
“I offered the position to you, and you turned it down.” Sif pointed out, lip curling as she recalled her anger at the previous commander of her—much smaller at the time—army.
“I am not nearly diplomatic enough for such a position.” He smiled wryly. “Besides, I would rather not end up with your dagger stuck between my ribs.”
Sif shrugged. “Don’t try and arrange my death from within my own ranks, and you will not face Freki’s fate.”
“I make a far better weapons master than I ever would a commander, and you know it.”
“Unfortunately, no one else is suited to the role either, thus I have no choice but to continue doing everything on my own.”
Sif knew Einarr did not agree, but wasn’t in the mood to argue, so ignored the expression that crossed his face. To his credit, he kept his disagreement to himself as well.
“We’re testing a new group this afternoon. Will you be present?”
“Unless Erudessa returns before then, I will be.”
He rose gracefully to his feet, saluting with a quick fist to his chest, and Sif dismissed him with a nod. Waiting until the tent flap closed with a heavy slap behind him to rake her fingers into her hair. She’d begun this venture with no illusion that it would be easy, but even expecting it to be difficult hadn’t prepared her for the constant problems that plagued the effort.
She combed her fingers through her hair, tugging at the tangles impatiently until it was relatively tamed, then went to work twisting the ebony strands into a braid. Bending over the desk, she gathered the plans that Gridr had left behind and stuffed them into an over-packed drawer of other such failed proposals. Sif leaned back against the chair again, kicking her feet up onto the desktop.
When first the desk had been delivered to her tent, she had admired the workmanship. It was, as most Alfar wares were, of talented craftsmanship. Built of blonde wood, it had been delicately carved, the inlays stained a darker color. Every surface was perfectly smooth, the edges carefully beveled, and the finished product was both functional, with its large drawers and large workspace, and beautiful. Too much time sitting at it, however, had made her hate it. Everything about it from the stark incongruity between the desk and the weathered tent that housed it, to the sound of the drawers when opened or shut, and the way it always felt cool against her arms despite the heat of the day.
There was no question that it wasn’t really the desk that stoked her ire, but Sif had no wish to look too closely at the reasons an inanimate object could bring out such a feeling in her. It wasn’t just the desk, but a restlessness, the rush of adrenaline that neither dissipated completely nor had a way to be expended. Everything was wrong, Yggdrasil herself no longer felt right, and it had all started with Thor’s coronation, failed coronation. The world turned upside down, and in this topsy-turvy world Sif was taught her second real lesson in change:
People didn’t have to die for you to lose them. Thor never returned from Midgard. Not really. Nor would he ever. The Thor she’d known so well, the one she’d loved, was gone.
She shifted, leaning over to allow enough room to draw her sword while sitting in the broad wooden chair, it scraped against the scabbard as she pulled it free and set it across her lap. Then leaned the other way to open another drawer and withdrew a polishing cloth to wipe away the remnants of Gridr’s blood.
The etched runes in the blade were smooth under the cloth, posing only the slightest of indentions, and barely visible without any magic running through them. It had been odd at first, switching weapons, but her glaive could no longer serve her as well as this sword, and it now sat amongst a few other weapons next to her bed.
Banebryter, her father had named it, a suitable name as the sword actually was a pathfinder, capable up cutting portals between realms, but after her father had died in battle against the Jötnar the sword was presented to her mother who stored it away. Sif had once asked for the sword, but it had been denied not long before her mother turned her back on Sif for choosing a warrior’s life over that of a courtesan. Sif felt no guilt in stealing it, boxed away and forgotten as it had been, until she dug it out of the storage room of her childhood home. It was hers by right, or would have been had she been born male.
It took only a few moments for her to rub the blade clean, and she leaned her head back against the high-backed chair, eyes feeling heavy again, but instead of giving in to the pull of sleep, she dropped her feet to the floor and returned the cloth to its place. There was too much to be done to allow for such idleness.
Her leathers, supple as they were, did not creak as she moved to stand, and sheathing her weapon back at her hip, Sif left the dark and relatively cool interior of her tent for the too bright, too warm summer day. Having always loved the heat, she barely noticed the way her leathers—dyed a deep chestnet even before regular care and cleaning had darkened them further—soaked up the rays of the yellow sun as it hung high above the encampment.
When she was young even the coldest of Asgard’s winters barely bothered her, wrapped up in layers and running out into the snow as children were wont to do. The enchantment she’d once felt, looking out over glittering powder, had faded over time, however, as the combination of events littering her history made her hate the cold as much as she did the desk in her tent. Despite the heat of the day, Sif knew it was temporary, often feeling as if that she’d never be truly warm again. Knowing that, as the sun fell, the heat in her bones would leech away in the waning light.
Perhaps her funeral pyre would banish the stubborn remnants of winters past.
Norns below, her mind was stewing in morbidity. Sif chastised herself and stomped hard on the self-pity she always tried so hard to avoid, focusing instead on the duties at hand. The new longhouse was coming along nicely, the walls nearly finished. Completed it would be large enough to house the men in the worst weather, providing better shelter than the tents and a larger kitchen then that which they were using. Their numbers had grown considerably larger than the small band of mercenary soldiers that had lived here in employ of Erudessa’s estate.
The men at work were too busy to notice her there, and she did not disturb them, satisfied with their progress, and moved on. The carefully tilled fields, dotted with near perfect rows of vegetables in various stages of growth were next, completely empty of workers, their duties had been completed in the morning with nothing ready to harvest. More than likely they were in the training yard now, honing their skills. At least that’s where they should be. Sif demanded a lot of them, but also provided work, a safe place to sleep, and a little bit of revenue paid while under contract to other armies.
It wasn’t much, but to those displaced while the Bifrost was broken, their homes destroyed and families killed by marauders, it gave them a place to go and a purpose. A pretty good percentage of her ranks had arrived for those or similar reasons. She tried not to turn too many away, but there was a desperate need for experienced soldiers, and as much as Sif would like to help everyone who needed it, she simply could not.
War was coming, it could be felt thrumming in her veins. Not the far off thumping of Midgard’s never ending conflicts, or the skirmishes between Nidavellir’s clans. This was big and ugly, and, as unsettling as it was, Sif had no idea which side she was going to fall on. In a world that was wrong, she had no idea if there could be a choice that would be right.