A Companion to Wolves (22 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Bear

BOOK: A Companion to Wolves
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She laughed, and the noise made him shiver. “I am no ‘lady,' wolfbrother, if I understand the word correctly. I told you. I am a member of the smith's guild—not yet a master, though even old Fluorite has allowed I may stand my testing at the Midwinter Convocation. I rate no honor in your speech.”
“I beg pardon,” Isolfr said, feeling heat in his face. “I am not … among my people, women don't …”
“Women,” Tin said thoughtfully, as if tasting the word and finding it not entirely to her liking. “Females, yes?”
“Yes.”
“We do not have the word,” she said, gesturing him through a narrow doorway and into a small room which had been painstakingly hollowed out around a fountain, clear water rising from a cleft in the rock, a bench-like shelf around the walls. “
Women
. It is an odd word. Sit down, wolfbrother.”
He sat, propping his axe beside him, and she hopped up nimbly to crouch beside him. “But you are female.”
“Yes?” she said, looking at him sidelong, her eyebrows rising.
“What do you … what do you call yourself?”
“Svartalf,” she said. “Tin of the smith's guild and the Iron Kinship. What else
ought
I to call myself?”
“I beg pardon,” Isolfr said again. “I do not know.”
She bared her teeth at him; he hoped it was meant as a smile. “Take off your shirt, and let me repair the damage I have done.”
He obeyed her, and she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth the same way Ulfgeirr did when faced with spectacular bruises among the tithe-boys. “Well, it does not need stitching, and that is good, for it would be hard to explain to your people, would it not?”
She cocked her head, and he realized she was teasing
him. “It would,” he said. Viradechtis thumped her head down across his lap with a resigned sigh.
“Does she often have to sit with you while you are repaired?” Tin asked.
“It happens … with some frequency. Ours is not a peaceful life.”
“Neither trellwolves nor men are creatures of peace,” Tin said. She took a folded square of linen out of a pouch at her belt, reached a long arm to dip it in the fountain, and then attacked Isolfr's shoulder briskly. He set his teeth and did not yelp at the coldness of the water.
“I am sorry that I injured you,” Tin said. “But I did not want to kill you before I knew what you were, and it seemed safer …” She shrugged, a remarkable gesture on a creature as bony and gnarled as a svartalf.
“I understand,” Isolfr said, and did.
“It does not seem to be a serious wound, at least.” Isolfr tipped his head awkwardly and saw that she was right; it was more than a scratch, but not by a great deal. It was no longer bleeding, and wouldn't even leave a scar when it healed.
Whatever she dressed it with stung. She gave him a little pot of some herb-smelling unguent, and he recognized the texture of beeswax when he dipped a finger into it. “You keep bees underground?”
She laughed like the tinkle of cracked crystal. “No, don't be silly. Within the mountains there's a valley, warmed by the breath of Mimir, where water grows so hot under the earth that it boils and steams in pools and fountains. We of Nidavellir alone know the way. We cannot farm animals in the dark, and neither can we grow fodder.”
“So you do not turn to stone at the first touch of sunlight?” he asked, and then flushed at how like an ignorant savage he must sound.
“Sunlight. Oh, the brighter goddess. Ah, no,” she said, as if she did not find his question peculiar. “We do not. Although we don't like it much better than the trolls do, to tell you true.” She sighed. “Fortunately, we are more cunning
than they, because Mimir's breath is not so hot as it was, and our crops are failing as the ice drips down from Iskryne and into our valley.”
“The glaciers,” Isolfr said, realizing why the svartalfar would be pushing south, making the trolls push south in turn.
“Yes,” she said, and tied the dressing with a jerk at the knot. “Come along, Isolfr Viradechtisbrother, and I will show you a tunnel that does not run so steep.”
 
 
I
t was, at least, not
harder
than Isolfr had feared to convince Grimolfr that the war-strength of the trellmaegth had left the warrens and headed south—because he had feared it would be impossible. But Grimolfr had been wondering—as they all had—and he came around quickly when he understood that Viradechtis' conviction agreed with Isolfr's: the trellboars were not in the warrens because they had gone south, leaving the sows and priests behind. Grimolfr and Skald turned the Wolfmaegth easily enough, and the wolfless men were not about to stay in the mountains alone, not with high solstice over and winter on the horizon. Sooner they would have stayed in the mountains of the moon.
It took a day to get the army moving, and half as long to get out of the pass as it had to get in. Rested men and horses awaited them; they had seen no trolls. A hasty council of war determined that the army would retrace the route of Othinnsaesc, as they had seen and fought more trolls and wyverns than all the other wolfheallan combined.
They had the sun all through the night and the endless drone of mosquitoes. They had mud and tired men and
wounded men and horses staggering from lack of rest, and every man grudged an hour spent sleeping, for all the need.
The charge south was the sort of feat that births epics.
It was Frithulf, his face still raw and pink with healing flesh, and Kothran, ranging wide, who stumbled across the path of the troll army. The Wolfmaegth followed, and Isolfr soon lost track of the days. Sokkolfr watched him, or sometimes he watched Sokkolfr, but it was Ulfbjorn who made sure that the two of them and Frithulf and their wolves had hot food and clean water when they stumbled to the fireside at night. The Great Ulfbjorn seemed tireless. He walked—he was not much of a rider, and argued that he might as well spare a horse his weight—and somehow he and Tindr were always where they were needed, with a foul joke and a swig from a flask, keeping the line moving, keeping a man or a wolf on his feet for one more league.
At least the trell-path was clear, churned mud down to permafrost, and the flat landscape meant there was little chance of an ambush. Isolfr was glad of the rib-sprung carthorse they gave him to ride. It was easier to catch snatches of sleep in the saddle, and at times he could force Frithulf to ride for a space if he led. He worried about his tithe-brother; Frithulf's wounds still pained and exhausted him, and he had neither rest nor good food to buy him healing.
Othwulf rode up beside Isolfr at one point, long legs tight around the barrel of a sorrel gelding whose shaggy neck shed clots of hair into the dry, never-ending wind. Viradechtis was even too tired to flirt with Vikingr; she just leaned her shoulder against the black wolf's and sighed, and they slogged side by side through the mud. Isolfr leaned likewise on the horse's bridle, toiling forward through mud as Othwulf leaned down and lowered his voice so as not to wake Frithulf, who had fallen into a fitful doze. “How do the trolls travel by daylight, Isolfr?”
Isolfr didn't know any better than anyone else, but he knew why Othwulf asked. Othwulf asked because even inane speech was better than silence, when they could not
know if they had any chance of catching the trellthreat before it fell upon heall and keep and steading at Othinnsaesc. Or if Othinnsaesc was even where it was headed.
“The same way we travel by winter, I expect,” Isolfr said. “With little pleasure. They're moving slowly, for trolls; it must be difficult for them.”
“I wonder what drives them to such desperation.”
“Ice in the north,” Isolfr answered, and then bit his lip before he could say too much, but he did glance up into the silence that followed to see Othwulf staring at him with considered respect. It wasn't the covetous look that Eyjolfr or some of the others gave him. Rather, it was the slow, thoughtful nod of a man who's just been shown the trick to a puzzle he himself could not fathom.
“I'll speak with you later,” Othwulf said, and put his heels to his tired steed.
Later, while Isolfr slogged beside the mare that Frithulf slept astride, he smelled blood and flinched sharply. And then looked up, realizing he had been more or less dozing on his feet, and felt a warm hand on his shoulder. Vethulf, the quarrelsome, the fleet-footed, Vethulf-in-the-Fire walked beside him, his gray wolf slogging more like a carthorse than a predator.
Vethulf said nothing at first, just thrust a stake into Isolfr's hand. One quarter of a skinned raw rabbit was threaded on the pointed end; the blood smirched Isolfr's mitten.
“No time to cook,” Vethulf said. “But I didn't see any signs of worms when I butchered it.”
The meat was still warm, steaming slightly. Frithulf woke at the voices and looked around blearily. “Are we attacked?”
“You're fed,” Vethulf said. He gave Isolfr another bony fragment of meat on a stick—“for your shieldbrother”—and a whole unskinned coney for Kothran and Viradechtis to share.
He fell away into the column before Isolfr could blink the thought of thanking him into his bleary mind, and Isolfr looked up at Frithulf in supplication. “What was that about?”
“Stay pretty,” Frithulf advised, through a mouthful of meat.
Isolfr would have kicked him if he hadn't been out of reach on the horse.
 
 
T
hey pushed hard, frantically, and Grimolfr sent Skirnulf and Authun, who were young and light on their feet and had had no serious injuries between them, to try to give warning to Othinnsaesc village. “Tell the fishermen not to fight, if there's any fishermen left to tell,” he said, and Skirnulf nodded.
But when they were half a week from Othinnsaesc, they felt the tear in the pack-sense, and then two days later they saw the smudge of smoke against the sky, and Grimolfr swore exhaustedly, while the konigenwolf of Othinnsaesc made a terrible groaning noise deep in her throat, like a woman's cry of pain, and then threw back her head and howled.
And the Wolfmaegth of the North howled with her.
A few miles further on, they found Skirnulf and Authun—or what was left of them—and from there the day slipped farther and farther into nightmare, between grief, and the stench of death and trolls, and the ambushes, first from one side, then from another. By the time they came upon the ruins of Othinnsaesc wolfheall and the ruins of Othinnsaesc village, both still smoldering fitfully, there was no surprise left, no shock, only the weary horror of confirmation. Othinnsaesc had fallen into the hands of Othinn Battle-crow, and Isolfr prayed desperately, numbly, that the dead had been gathered up.
Later, Isolfr was never sure how long it lasted, how long they fought among the ruins, and the only glimmer of light in that nightmare was the last remnant of the wolfheall finding them. Brokkolfr, brother of Othinnsaesc's second bitch, had kept his head even as the wolfheall was burning around him. He and his sister had
fought their way out, taking with them the wolfheall's third bitch and her four three-week old puppies, and the few wolves and wolfcarls who could rally to them in the chaos. And he had kept them alive, he and Amma, for the better part of a week, hiding in the woods amid trolls and hunting wyverns.
When Brokkolfr saw the wolfsprechend of Othinnsaesc he went down on his knees before him and wept with shame that that had been all he had been able to do.
The Wolfmaegth and wolfless men fought their way into Othinnsaesc, but it was apparent from the beginning that they were outnumbered. When, two days after they reached the ruins of the wolfheall, a scout came back to report, white-faced and grim, that the trolls had already found their way into the seacaves along the coast, beneath where the village had been, Grimolfr rested his head against his hands and said, “We must fall back.”
Ulfsvith, the wolfjarl of Arakensberg, protested, but Grimolfr cut him off. “We have neither the strength nor the numbers to finish them completely, and we must look ahead to the winter.”
The silence in their rough camp grew even thicker.
A man could choke on it,
Isolfr thought.
“We are too late for the people of Othinnsaesc. We must not allow ourselves to forget the people of Nithogsfjoll and Franangford and Arakensberg”—this last said pointedly—“who will now more than ever before need the wolfheallan to stand between them and the trolls. We must fall back.”
“And leave Othinnsaesc a trellwarren?” said Gunnarr, and Isolfr's hands clenched painfully as he tried to decide if he should step between Gunnarr and Grimolfr before blood was spilled.
But Grimolfr looked at the jarl and smiled a bleak, uncompromising smile. “Only until summer.”
 
 
W
hatever his father might believe of him, Isolfr was childishly grateful that the carnage at Othinnsaesc meant that Othwulf and his threatbrothers would be needed at Franangford, which was both closest to Othinnsaesc and most sorely depleted by the long, dragging war. And it
was
a war, and one that everyone knew without discussion would enact a hideous cost over the winter.
The remaining wolfheallan reinforced Franangford with every man and wolf they could spare, made plans for long patrols, and retired in haste to heall and steading while there was still a chance to lay in some of the harvest against the winter. Wolfcarls and wolfless men worked side by side at Nithogsfjoll; Isolfr, who had not scythed grain since he had gone to the wolfheall, found the work a welcome distraction, especially as Hjordis' girth and discomfort increased each time he stole a visit. Her feet pained her, and her back, and her sister Angrbotha, a hale and childless married woman five years older, was as busy in the fields as any man.
“It isn't so, with wolves,” he said, as he knelt by her feet to massage her swollen calves.
She laughed, kicks rippling her belly. “I wish I were a wolf, then,” she said, and he kissed her hands and said, “I don't.”
He needed the distraction as well because Frithulf and Sokkolfr and their brothers were among those sent to guard besieged Franangford through the winter, and Ulfrikr was determined to make the unsettling wait for Viradechtis' season as much of a horror as possible. At least Ulfbjorn and Tindr were still there to share blankets. The big wolfcarl's steadying presence and agile, unexpected humor made the waiting nearly bearable, although Frithulf's savage tongue or the Stone Sokkolfr's unflappability would have been better. No, not
better
, exactly—but he remembered Frithulf saying
You're my pack,
and knew that he felt the same.
Almost, Isolfr wished Viradechtis would just hurry up and get it over with.
When he wasn't wishing she'd be magically converted overnight into a dog-wolf.
“The first time's the worst,” Hrolleif told him, in one of the rare moments when Vigdis would let him near, and Isolfr gritted his teeth and reminded himself that anything Hringolfr Left-Hand could get through, he, Isolfr, could get through as well.
And at least he wouldn't have to worry about Ulfrikr doing
that
to him. “To think I would ever be glad he bonded one of your brothers,” he said to Viradechtis, and she pushed her head against his stomach and demanded to be petted. She knew he was upset, and it worried her, although he could tell she did not understand what he was upset about. She, in fact, seemed almost gleeful at the prospect of mating with more than one dog, and he tried not to watch her flirting, assessing, tried not to wonder whom she would choose, whom he would have to …
He remembered Grimolfr shoving Hringolfr to his knees and could not quite keep from shuddering.
His mood was not helped when the gossip reached the wolfheall, circulating down as it did through the village, that Kathlin Gunnarsdottir had been betrothed to the jarl of Vigrithlund, a man nearer their father's age than Kathlin's own and one whom Isolfr remembered disliking. Kathlin had not even chosen her fate, as Isolfr had chosen his in agreeing to be tithed, in agreeing to stay—in falling in love with Viradechtis. At least, Isolfr thought, Viradechtis would not choose for reasons as cold as Gunnarr's.
But it was no comfort; it only made him feel sorrow for his blood-sister as well as anxiety for himself.
The day that Ulfrikr suggested, slyly and so loudly that Isolfr knew he was meant to hear, that Isolfr ought to practice beforehand—and that Eyjolfr would no doubt be happy to help—Isolfr's temper simply snapped. He was on Ulfrikr before either of them quite realized what he meant to do, and was making quite satisfying progress towards beating the wyvern-tongued malice right out of him when hands dragged him away; he struggled against them and swore,
and Grimolfr's voice said sharply in his ear, “Isolfr, look to your sister.”
He looked and saw that Viradechtis had Skefill down, that the big gray male wasn't fighting her, and yet she was still snarling, her fearsome teeth a fraction from her litterbrother's throat. Then he became aware of the circle of clear space, the silence surrounding him, Ulfrikr flat on his back on the floor, gasping for breath against a freshly-broken nose.

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