A Companion to Wolves (17 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Bear

BOOK: A Companion to Wolves
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“Good,” said Halfrid. “It is little enough a woman can give her sons.”
Isolfr hesitated. “Will Father—”
“I will speak to him. Give him a little time.”
“A little time we have, but not a great deal.”
“I heard.” Her face was grim. “And I believe you. I … I honor the wolfheallan for the choice they are making, though I fear it.”
“We all fear, Mother,” Isolfr said, and in some part of his mind was astonished that he was admitting as much to a woman. “But fear doesn't …” He shook his head helplessly. “It changes nothing.”
“Yes,” said Halfrid. “So it always is. So it has been with your father. I will speak to him.”
“If it will help …” He hesitated again. “Othwulf—my uncle Sturla—came to the Wolfmaegthing. I do not know if Father should be told or not.”
“Not,” Halfrid said calmly, decisively. “You do not want to be raking up old bitternesses, old injuries.” And without the slightest change in tone: “Is he well?”
“Yes,” Isolfr said and immediately banished forever a question he had been wondering whether or not to ask. “He is well. Happy, I think. He has two sons. His wolfbrother is named Vikingr; he's bigger than Viradechtis.”
“Impossible,” said Halfrid, laughing. “And in any event, he cannot be more beautiful.”
Viradechtis liked this one
very
much.
 
 
H
jordis was not alone at her spinning wheel when Isolfr came to her home. Her sister, Angrbotha, stood
up abruptly, though, and went to stir the fire with only a cursory greeting to the visitor. Isolfr and Viradechtis came to Hjordis, padding across the rammed earth floor, and she held out her hand so he could help her rise. Her expression was a little pinched, as if she worried, and she shook her skirts a little more firmly than usual after he claimed his kiss. She still had a scratch and a cuddle for Viradechtis, though, and he noticed that Angrbotha made herself quickly scarce.
“What's wrong, Hjordis?”
She looked up from the wolf and back down as quickly, her hands never stilling. “I'm with child,” she said, plainly, and stole another quick sideways look as if to judge his mood.
The words made no sense to him at first, but then Viradechtis whined and nudged him, encouraging him to join the petting, and he blinked himself out of shock. “My child?” he said stupidly.
Hjordis laughed and straightened. “No, it could be any of a dozen men—yes, your child, Isolfr.” She had her pride. She didn't give ground or drop her chin. “If you want it.”
It hung there quivering in the air between them for a moment. She wrapped her arms around herself, raw-boned, ungraceful, strong—a handsome country woman, unpretentious and merry. “Don't be a fool, wench,” he said, and pulled her roughly into his arms. “Of course I want it.”
It wasn't until she relaxed into his embrace that he realized she was shaking. He kissed her forehead, took a breath, and swallowed hard before he said, “But we go to war at the equinox, and I cannot say when I'll return.”
She didn't step back, just took a vast breath and let it out again. “You'll live to name the babe,” she said against his shoulder. “I demand it.”
“I will,” he promised, and hoped he did not lie.
 
 
G
unnarr Sturluson mustered thirty dozen men by the equinox, and marched them out to meet Grimolfr, Isolfr and the traveling three-fifths of the wolfheall on a day when the sky was slanting fine needles of frozen rain down on the tawny and gray and red and dark heads of warriors and wolves alike. Grimolfr never said a word, but Hrolleif, who had ridden out with them on a stout yellow pony, shot Isolfr a sideways glance. Isolfr kept his face stern, as befit a wolfcarl, but Hrolleif gave his elbow a quick squeeze and Isolfr did not think he had fooled the wolfsprechend.
Then Hrolleif returned to the wolfheall, because while Vigdis' pups were old enough for her to travel, the tithe-boys were not of an age to be left without a wolfheofodman to instruct them, and in any case—
At least a few konigenwolves would have to survive, if things went poorly for the Wolfmaegth, and Vigdis and Hrolleif would be a greater loss to the Wolfmaegth than Viradechtis and Isolfr. Vigdis had fifteen years of litters left in her, and both she and Hrolleif were experienced leaders. Isolfr was painfully aware that his wolf was still little more
than a great, gangling pup, and while he was a man, he was a young one and he had not Hrolleif's canniness.
Besides, Sokkolfr and Frithulf were traveling with the war party. Gunnarr or not, Grimolfr would have had to chain Isolfr to the wall of the roundhall to keep him in Nithogsfjoll, and everybody knew it.
Werthreat and wolfless men alike pressed north despite ill weather and cold. They made a wet camp in the lee of a rose-and-gray granite cliff below Ulfenfjoll. Sokkolfr thought the name auspicious, and Frithulf laughed about it, but Isolfr did not miss the way he tucked his bronze medallion inside his shirt. It was a Thorshammer and hung on a knotted rawhide thong around his neck. He'd had it as long as Isolfr could recall.
It was not easy to make fire under those conditions. Ulfgeirr and Sokkolfr finally made shift to keep the rain off with a hide stretched on peeled poles while Skjaldwulf managed flint and tinder. Once one fire was lit, the others were easier; wood could be dried in the heat of the flames to make it burn more adequately.
Isolfr paced the camp, speaking to no one at first. He nodded to Eyjolfr and Grimolfr, didn't even attempt to enter the part of the camp claimed by his father's men, and finally fetched up against the rocks near where the Great Ulfbjorn crouched, checking little Tindr's paws as if there could possibly be something wrong that his wolf wouldn't tell him about.
“And how fare you this night, tithe-brother?”
Ulfbjorn stood, his teeth flashing through rainy dark. “Wet,” he said, succinctly. “Tindr is asking to hunt. He wants meat with blood in it. Will you join us?”
Isolfr had to crane his neck back to look Ulfbjorn in the eye. “I'd be honored.”
They fell into step side by side, the wolves ranging ahead. “I'm glad Tindr chose you,” Isolfr said, after a little while.
“I'm glad we're brothers too,” Ulfbjorn replied, which wasn't what Isolfr had said. But maybe was what he had intended. “How are you—”
“Oh, Gunnarr?” Isolfr couldn't quite bring himself to say,
my father
. He shrugged. “The real entertainment will begin when we reinforce the Wolfmaegth at the base of the mountains and he meets Othwulf. We'll want a skald along to tell
that
tale.”
Ulfbjorn's laugh was a bass rumble low in his throat, almost a wolf's mutter. He seemed about to say something further, but just then Tindr howled on the scent of a stag, and they were off through the mud and leaves and the half-melted earth.
 
 
T
he character of the land changed as they toiled north, and they caught and passed the spring. Despite the cold, Isolfr was grateful; travel was easier over frozen ground, and it kept men huddled close to their fires at night, limiting the opportunity for mischief between wolfcarls and wolfless men. Gunnarr seemed content to ignore his existence, and as Grimolfr looked to Viradechtis to head the pack in her mother's absence Isolfr was kept almost too busy to worry. They proved more than a match for the few trolls they met, dispatching them with axes and the cross-barred troll-spears wielded by the wolfless men.
The paucity of enemies worried Isolfr more than if they had been nigh overrun. Possibly the trolls were smart enough to warren away from the easiest routes of travel, but Isolfr feared that the few they ran across were scouts, and a trellish army was massing elsewhere, as it had not in the hundred hard-fought years of relative peace since the days of Freyulf and Hrolljotr. So he was wary, and the wolves were unsettled and snappish, especially when they came out of the cold taiga forests and into the tundra where the earth froze too deep and too hard for trees to root. The biting flies were a misery, but there were reindeer to keep their ragged army fed, and they were able to save their dried provisions and pemmican against want. Morale was not high, but they were grim with determination, and quarrels among the men
were fewer as the cold nipped their flanks like a hunting wolf and the days grew toward endlessness. On the horizon rose the mountains called Iskryne—the ice-lashed glittering crown at the top of the world, borne on the shoulders of the giant Mimir, so old he himself had become part of the stones he carried.
Isolfr wondered that he had lived so long, to walk cold and frost-kissed into the embrace of legend.
The men and wolves of Nithogsfjoll, having the shortest distance to travel, were first to the moot and made camp there among the gnarled toes of the mountains, around stinking fires fed with desiccated reindeer and musk-ox dung. At night, Isolfr huddled with Sokkolfr and Frithulf among their wolves, and none of them demurred when Ulfbjorn asked if he could join them.
Isolfr wondered, though, since Ulfbjorn had seemed content with Ulfrikr and Aurulfr and Skirnulf. Diffidently, he asked, and Ulfbjorn said, “I grow tired of Ulfrikr's prating tongue. It's as endless as the world snake,” and would say no more.
It did not assuage Isolfr's worries. While Aurulfr and Skirnulf had no harm in them, Ulfrikr was another matter. Ulfrikr Un-Wise like Frithulf Quick-Tongue was a gossip, but where Frithulf's malice did not discriminate between targets—and any rumor he passed on was sure to be bolstered or undercut by his own observations—Ulfrikr was cunning and did nothing without reason. With the Iskryne looming bleakly over them, Isolfr did not like the idea that Ulfrikr had managed to rile the phlegmatic Ulfbjorn to the point of causing a break between them.
The way of wolves is to say what they mean. Ulfbjorn had clearly said all he intended to say on the subject, and Isolfr did not plague him further. He found himself unwilling to face Ulfrikr directly without more than his own uneasy instincts to tell him that there was something amiss, and this was not a matter in which the wolfthreat could be of any great assistance. Not all wolves cared to listen to human speech as carefully as Viradechtis did, and
since Tindr still hunted and played happily with the enormous gray brothers Skefill and Griss, the problem was not—Isolfr thought and smiled at his own phrasing—a wolfish one.
He sought out Aurulfr the Brown in the weak sunlight of a high overcast afternoon and found him and Griss, along with several other members of the threat, constructing a windbreak along the camp's most exposed side.
It was a good idea, and Isolfr went to work himself, letting the rhythm of shared labor color the pack-sense between himself and Aurulfr—who was no longer the weedy boy Isolfr had first known, but tall and broad in the shoulders, his brown-blond braids thick as ropes. He'd had his nose broken in the fighting the previous winter, and the lump across the bridge made him look older, harder. His green-hazel eyes were the same, though, shy and rather wary, warming noticeably when he looked at Griss and Viradechtis, who had sniffed each other, exchanged wide yawns, and curled up in a pile of gray and red and black to sleep.
“Sensible creatures,” Isolfr said, and Aurulfr smiled and said, “Yes. More sensible than men.”
“Yes,” Isolfr agreed, glancing at the Iskryne, as he found himself doing at random moments throughout the day, as if he thought he might catch Mimir stirring in his sleep. He said, “I'm concerned about Ulfbjorn's falling-out with Ulfrikr.”
And watched Aurulfr color to the roots of his hair, knowing, not happily, that his instincts had been right.
He gave Aurulfr time to collect his thoughts; he was not a bully, and he did not want this conversation to be a fight, either openly or covertly. Aurulfr, who had been Hlothvinr, was his tithe-brother.
So is Ulfrikr,
said a snide little voice in the back of his mind, but Isolfr pushed it away.
Aurulfr said, “He means no harm, Isolfr. It's just … we're all frightened, you know, and the waiting gets hard.”
“Yes,” Isolfr agreed, but refused to be placated or put off. “What is it, exactly, that Ulfrikr is saying?”
“He doesn't think it's right that you've taken Hrolleif's place,” Aurulfr said, miserable but not shirking the issue. “He says that's Randulfr's place by right. Or Hringolfr's. Not yours.”
“Neither Ingrun nor Kolgrimna is a konigenwolf. They couldn't hold the wolfthreat.” He smiled, and saw Aurulfr's eyes light in return. “I've nothing to do with it, you know. Any …
place
I have is as her brother. Besides, Randulfr's quite happy
not
to have to deal with the wolfsprechend's job.” He did not mention Hringolfr, and Aurulfr did not call him on it.
He said, “It's not that, exactly. Ulfrikr … Some men have to have something to complain about, you know.”
“Yes,” said Isolfr, who did. And did not ask, because it was not Aurulfr's fault,
But why does it have to be me?
That night, as they ate the spoils of Hroi and Kothran's hunting, Isolfr said to Ulfbjorn, “Do you think Ulfrikr truly feels there is injustice being done?”
Ulfbjorn gave him a long considering look. “You talked to Aurulfr.”
“Yes.”
“If I'd thought Ulfrikr were serious in his complaints,” Ulfbjorn said, “I would have told you. I wanted to spare you worrying about something that isn't worth your attention.”
Frithulf snorted. “Spend some more time with Isolfr and you'll realize just what a lost cause
that
is. You can't spare him worry, Ulfbjorn. All it does is make him worry about why you're sparing him.”
The thread of the conversation was lost in shouting and laughter for a while as Isolfr wreaked vengeance for that calumny, with the enthusiastic help of Kothran, who liked nothing better than to be allowed to stand on his brother's chest and lick his face. But eventually, peace restored and Frithulf muttering direly about ingratitude and treachery while Kothran shoved his head in Frithulf's lap, demanding—and getting—his ears rubbed, Isolfr said, “Probably you're right, Ulfbjorn, and I oughtn't to concern
myself. I know what Ulfrikr's like. I just …” He shrugged helplessly. “We're so far from home and walking into such trouble, I hate to have things be ugly that don't need to be.”
“Peacemaker,” Sokkolfr said fondly. Isolfr grinned at him. He couldn't imagine anybody who was less like his byname, when you got to know him, than the Stone. “You can't make Ulfrikr happy, Isolfr, and I think I speak for all of us when I beg you not to try.”
“Hear, hear,” said Frithulf, and Ulfbjorn said, “Let him complain about something foolish. He will get it out of his belly, and we will be friends again.”
“Yes,” Isolfr said and added only to himself,
I hope.
 
 
T
he other threats arrived slowly over the next two weeks, Thorsbaer first and Othinnsaesc again last. Each wolfjarl brought a complement of wolfless men, and the two uneasy communities of the camp grew.
Everyone was being very careful. Isolfr had had Viradechtis watching the wolfthreat from the start, and each konigenwolf who arrived added her own watchfulness to the spreading pack-sense, as wolfthreat joined wolfthreat and they became Wolfmaegth in truth. But the waiting, as Aurulfr had remarked, bore heavily on all of them, and tempers were fraying, those of men and wolves alike.
The relief Isolfr felt at not having to negotiate the wolfthreat with Signy in the mix—Signy, like Vigdis, was holding household at her wolfheall—was immediately cancelled out by the enmity which sprang up between Viradechtis and Bekkhild, the konigenwolf of Vestfjorthr. Bekkhild had not been concerned with Viradechtis at the Wolfmaegthing, but now recognized her as a rival. Her wolfsprechend, a slender man with red-gold braids and merry blue eyes, was apologetic, but acknowledged with Isolfr that there was nothing they could do except try to keep Viradechtis and Bekkhild apart. “It will be easier when we are moving,” he said, and Isolfr agreed. Easier
when they were moving, easier when there were trolls to fight. By the time the Othinnsaescthreat arrived, Isolfr no longer even blamed Ulfrikr for turning to petty malice to pass the time. Anything was better than this endless, helpless waiting.

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