"A Big Hand for the Little Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

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?"

"UhЕ" 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 many 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. "YouЕ 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.