“Is that what he’s asking you to do?” Vethulf said. “I only heard him asking about a dream.”
That got him a glare. “Would you feel the same if it were your dreams he wanted to hear?”
“I never remember my dreams,” Vethulf said cheerfully.
For a moment, he thought Isolfr might smile, but he sighed instead. “I don’t want to talk to him. That’s all.”
In a pig’s eye, Vethulf thought but bit his tongue before saying. He had grown up the ninth of his father’s ten children, with nieces and nephews older than he was, not to mention more cousins than a man could count in a night, all of them brawling in and out of the longhouse his father’s elder brother ruled; he had learned early to fight fierce and fight dirty if he wanted to get anything for himself—if he wanted to be heard. The edge that upbringing had given his tongue and his wits had served him well in Arakensberg Wolfheall, which was much enmeshed in the politics both of the Wolfmaegth and of Arakensberg Keep.
But then he had become wolfjarl to Isolfr Viradechtisbrother, and sharp words no longer served him. Vethulf didn’t have to scramble to be noticed; it was the men of Franangford who scrambled to be noticed by him. Skjaldwulf, whom he had thought his rival, had turned out to be his best ally—and unimpressed with his flyting. And Isolfr, whose notice he most craved, retreated from the kind of fighting Vethulf knew best like a wolf retreating burn-footed from a hot coal.
He knew—had learned the hard way—that it was not cowardice. Isolfr was one of the bravest men he knew. But fighting with words was not Isolfr’s way. And Vethulf, for once in his life wishing not to hurt another with his words, found them clumsy and twisting in his mouth.
* * *
After the meal, Skjaldwulf took Freyvithr outside into the bailey, where they could watch construction of the stables. Freyvithr leaned forward on the hewn log they shared, thick arms, roped with images of cats elongated until they almost seemed like serpents, propped on his knees. He let a horn of mead rest in one hand. There was no need for fire on a sweet spring evening, and Freyvithr seemed unconcerned by black Mar sprawled at his feet. The breeze ruffled the wolf’s fur so the lighter undercoat showed in waves like the silver turning of leaves.
Despite himself—despite his loyalty to Isolfr—Skjaldwulf found he liked the godsman.
Freyvithr said, “You haven’t much use for scholars here in the north, have you?”
Skjaldwulf snorted dismissively, at first hearing only implied condescension. A moment’s reflection on Freyvithr’s tone told him he might have reacted prematurely. “We have skalds,” he said, flipping a braid behind his shoulder. He scratched at his beard. “But you mean more than that, don’t you?”
Freyvithr nodded. “Written records. Men whose duty it is to maintain and expand them. We have books—” He shook his head. “We have books from the days of the High Konungur, Njall Waroak. The actual words and thoughts of men who lived nine hundred years ago. Not what skalds remembered, or the songs people asked for.”
Skjaldwulf rolled his own drinking horn between his hands, feeling the copper piecework of its badges and bangles press into both palms. Songs and sagas were not supposed to change—one was meant to repeat them as one received them. But even the most trained memory failed, and even the most scrupulous skald could tune a story to an audience’s liking.
And what audiences liked changed over the years.
The wolfheall kept records, written records, but they were records of wolf lineages and troll behavior, not the deeds of men. Still, Skjaldwulf could imagine writing down what men did and thought, as well—
He nodded his apology. “And you wish to add my wolfsprechend’s thoughts to this…”
“Archive,” Freyvithr supplied. “Simply put, yes. So that nine hundred years on, others may read the plain words of Isolfr … Isolfr Viradechtisbrother as if in his own voice, rather than what others have written or remembered of him.”
“That doesn’t seem to leave much place for skalds,” Skjaldwulf said. It had been his first apprenticeship, before Mar chose him. He still sometimes wondered what his life would have been had he never come to the wolfheall. He might have starved or died by some wayside, or of drink or some lord’s or rival’s passions. Or he might be wealthy and respected, with (he supposed dubiously) wife and sons and house in a warm southern town.
Such as the one Freyvithr came from.
“You could come and see,” Freyvithr said blandly.
Skjaldwulf sent him a searching look, afraid for a moment that Freyvithr had used some witchcraft to read his thoughts.
The godsman obviously misread the stare. “Isolfr. Or if a wolfsprechend cannot travel alone—I am sorry, wolfheofodman, I do not know your customs—you and Isolfr, or Vethulf Kjaransbrother and Isolfr. As suited you. People do come, you know. To Hergilsberg. There is a tree there said to have been planted by the goddess herself. The archive grew up around it.”
Skjaldwulf turned his head one way and then another. He could have swept half-built Franangford up with a gesture of his arm, but that might have been a touch too sarcastic.
Of course, in Skjaldwulf’s place, Vethulf probably would have bitten the man’s head off.
“We have a half-built wolfheall here, and a half-mended pack. I should send you my wolfsprechend and his konigenwolf, the very core of our success? Would you take the queen from a shattered hive, godsman? There will be no hive in that place come springtime.”
If any of them went—and it was madness to think it, even as the thought enticed him—it would have to be Skjaldwulf. Who could read the runes.
He was old for such travel. But then, he was old for a wolfcarl, too.
“What need have you of stout walls if the trolls are truly gone?” Freyvithr seemed to take no offense. He sipped his mead, rolling the spiced-honey wine across his tongue until Skjaldwulf could almost taste it for him. “If the Lady has given you an answer to the very problem that forced your existence, what then?”
“Wolves are Othinn’s answer to the trolls,” Skjaldwulf said. “He will have an answer to the wolves, if there are truly trolls no longer.” Something will come up.
“Will you become farmers, then? Wolves like ponies, tamely pulling plows? Will you become brigands, or turn to viking? What will you do when the winters grow colder, and you are driven south like the trolls and the svartalfar?”
Skjaldwulf shrugged. “I have heard that you in Hergilsberg have your own problems. Raiders from the southlands burned the town ten years since, did they not?”
“The town,” Freyvithr admitted. “A portion of it. But not the archive.”
“And have they vanished like the trolls?” Skjaldwulf knew very well that the seacoast was still harried by raiders. Not so far north as Othinnsaesc. But then, there was little so far north to raid for except pine trees and trellwolves, and neither of those things were particularly transportable.
“Perhaps the Wolfmaegth’s future lies with the temple guardians.”
Skjaldwulf rocked back on the log bench, his long legs straightening as if to kick the suggestion away. Even if Skjaldwulf could stomach selling himself into the service of someone like Gunnarr Sturluson—or even someone like Freyvithr—how could he bring Mar with him? You could not take the wolf from the pack, nor the wolfcarl from the wolf. And warriors might be hired to hunt men, but that was not the purpose of trellwolves. A wolfheall could not be a weapon of conquest.
How would a konigenwolf and her wolfthreat deal with the demands of a human lord? What human lord who was not a wolfcarl himself would understand the delicacies of working with a wolf pack? And what of the inevitable spoiled sons who wanted a trellwolf of their very own?
Better to let the pups run wild.
Skjaldwulf looked at the men working, at the heaps of felled timber and the mounds of quarried clay that filled the air with their smooth, distinctive scent. Would those half-built fortifications ever be needed? Was it possible—an all but incredible thought—that Skjald
wulf himself would live to see another ten summers? Wolfcarls, beloved of Othinn, did not die in bed.
Perhaps we will have to learn how.
“We would make poor mercenaries,” Skjaldwulf said mildly, and left it at that.
* * *
In the morning the wolfsprechend’s daughter—long awaited and much delayed—arrived for fostering. Vethulf wondered if it was the wolfheall’s current state of chaos—half-constructed, wolfcarls and stonemasons underfoot, sledges laden with bluestone rumbling along rutted tracks far into the lingering evenings—that served as a beacon to attract still more pandemonium.
Alfgyfa was not the only child in the wolfheall—wolfcarls bred sons and daughters, after all, and something must be done with them. But she was the only one who was Isolfr’s daughter, and his wolf was nearly beside herself with the preparations, the clamor of her arrival, and the upheaval and excitement of her presence. Vethulf could feel cub all through the pack-sense the whole day long. Things calmed finally, and that night found all three wolfheofodmenn in the room the wolfjarls had claimed for their own use—and sometimes that of the wolfsprechend. Isolfr propped himself on a four-legged stool in a corner with his toddling daughter sleeping on his knee, awaiting a nurse hired from the town who would take charge of her.
Vethulf leaned over to Skjaldwulf and whispered in his ear, “I think Viradechtis would nurse the bantling herself, if she still had milk in.”
“Raised on wolf’s-milk!” Skjaldwulf whispered back. “What a start to a hero’s saga. Pity it’s a girl.”
Isolfr lifted his head, pale braids draped across the sleeping child’s blankets. His rocking must have been the right sort—it looked like what Vethulf’s mother and older sisters had done to quiet the youngers—because Alfgyfa made no more protest than might a poppet.
The wolfsprechend gazed benevolently upon the two wolfjarls, an expression that made Vethulf want to bite him for his damned condescension. Instead, Vethulf sat on his hands. Temper.
The old wolfcarl beside Vethulf elbowed him, but when he glanced at Skjaldwulf, Skjaldwulf was smiling, and Vethulf had a sudden, vivid memory of the taste of his mouth.
Cursing his complexion, Vethulf looked down quickly.
“Yes?” Isolfr said. “You two are plotting. I can smell it from here.”
“The godsman,” Skjaldwulf said reluctantly. Isolfr recoiled and might have leaped to his feet except that it could have awakened the baby. That wouldn’t have stopped Vethulf, but he read the wolfsprechend’s guilty glance at his child and understood it.
Skjaldwulf, however, pressed on, though Vethulf could sense the tension in him. “He said to me that they have records almost a thousand years old. Written records, books. What if we could get access to those?”
Isolfr shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“What if they have books old enough that they talk about the last time the ice came south? What if they remember where it stopped?”
“The svartalfar might remember,” Isolfr said. His eyes went to his axe, the axe the svartalfar had given him.
“They might,” Skjaldwulf agreed while Vethulf drew his arms close around himself. “But not just anyone can go ask them. And have you thought about what will happen between men and the svartalfar when you are gone, Isolfr? They can push us out as easily as they pushed out the trolls. It is only your deed and their debt to you that stays them. What if there is something in the monks’ archive that can help us plan ahead?”
Isolfr spread his unburdened hand. The babe made a thready awakening sound until he jiggled her quiet again. “I can’t leave the wolfthreat now. Viradechtis has pups, and the dogs—too many dogs, from too many packs. Amma is too sweet-natured to keep them from killing each other, and Ingrun … And then there’s this.” He pointed with his chin to Alfgyfa.
“Talk to the godsman,” Skjaldwulf said. “Buy us his goodwill. I will go south with him and see what his books of memories can tell us.”
Isolfr looked down. One thing Vethulf could never imagine him doing was shirking anything he saw as his duty. But he frowned deeply before he said, “Vethulf, I want you there when I do the telling.”
Why me? Vethulf thought. Why not Skjaldwulf? Although Isolfr did not play favorites with his wolfjarls the way Vethulf’s sisters had with their suitors, it was not a secret that he was more comfortable with Skjaldwulf than with Vethulf. They had known each other—been part of the same threat—for years, and Skjaldwulf, who (Frithulf said) had been known to go days at a time without saying a word, was far more restful company.
Perhaps he hopes I will yell at the godsman and save him from this duty he does not want. The thought was grossly unfair—to Isolfr if not necessarily to Vethulf—and he did his best to push it away. But it would not, quite, go.
* * *
Cub, Amma said with great firmness.
They had been busy all the day before, clearing a deadfall and three of the most massive tree stumps Brokkolfr had ever seen—a horrible job, exhausting and filthy, and he’d wished for Amma’s pelt to protect him from the tangled briars—and then hunting in the long evening, with Kari and Hrafn and two other bond-pairs who had helped sire the pups Amma was carrying.
Ulfmundr had walked beside Brokkolfr for a while, as Amma and Hlothor ranged ahead, talking about temperament and bone, what they could expect from the pups Amma was carrying, and why Ulfmundr thought Hlothor would sire better wolves on her than he would have on Ingrun. Brokkolfr was very grateful, not only for Ulfmundr’s teaching, but for the fact that the senior wolfcarl—as old as Skjaldwulf, nearly fifteen years older than Brokkolfr himself—was bothering to talk to him at all. Brokkolfr asked him if he thought the whelping would be as difficult as Amma’s first, but at that Ulfmundr had laughed and disclaimed. “That’s wolfsprechend’s knowledge. If Isolfr isn’t worried, you need not be, either.”
I don’t know if Isolfr is worried or not, Brokkolfr had thought, but he hadn’t said it, afraid that it would sound as if he thought the wolfsprechend wasn’t attending to his duties. He knew Isolfr was watching Amma carefully; he just didn’t know what Isolfr thought about what he observed.
They had come back to the wolfheall late, tired; Brokkolfr found food for himself and his wolf and fell gratefully into his bedding with Amma, as always, an immovable weight across his feet. He had slept deeply, dreamlessly, and now, in the bright morning sunshine, Amma was not to be gainsaid. Cub, she said again, and Brokkolfr trailed helplessly after her as she tracked an unerring graceful arc across the courtyard to where the wolfsprechend was sitting with his daughter.
The child was clearly Isolfr’s; she had his pale hair and eyes. If she was lucky, Brokkolfr thought—considering his own sisters—under her puppy-fat roundness her father’s bones were lurking. She sat beside Isolfr on a rough bench, bright eyes taking in everything.
“Wuf!” she said clearly, pointing at Amma, and slid off the bench.
“Good morning, Brokkolfr,” Isolfr said with one of his rare, quirked smiles.
“Good morning, wolfsprechend,” Brokkolfr said and added sheepishly, “Amma insisted.”
“Of course she did,” Isolfr said, smile widening into a grin as he watched Amma and Alfgyfa meet each other. Amma’s tail was waving wildly, and Alfgyfa’s delighted giggles turned more than one head among the wolfcarls crossing the courtyard to and from the sauna and kitchen.
“All babies are Amma’s babies,” Brokkolfr said, and Isolfr laughed.
Amma ignored them. She and Alfgyfa were playing a game that involved the wolf pushing the toddler down on her well-padded bottom with her nose, and then standing patiently while Alfgyfa used her ruff to haul herself back to her feet again.
“She’s got enough mothering instinct for ten bitches,” Isolfr said. “I know her first whelping wasn’t easy?”
It was an invitation to talk about it, exactly the invitation Brokkolfr had been hoping for. But he found himself saying, “She’s fine. I’m fine.” And then, the truth
breaking free like a chick from a shell: “I’m more worried about you.”
The confession lay between them for a moment, Isolfr’s face contorting around the troll-scars as if he sought to ignore it. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to say, There’s nothing to worry about. Finally he said, although he clearly knew it was a weak effort, “It’s my job to worry about you, not the other way around.”
“I know I’m not a wolfsprechend,” Brokkolfr said doggedly, “but if I were, I would not be here. And I know a little—surely it is not wrong for Randulfr and me to be your seconds?” He hadn’t meant to sound quite so plaintive, hadn’t meant to reveal his own desire for a place in the Franangfordthreat that was more than simply brother to the third bitch, and he knew from the sudden sharpness in Isolfr’s gaze that his self-betrayal had not gone unnoticed.
But before Isolfr could speak—on that head or on any other—Freyvithr the godsman came into the courtyard, closely followed by Vethulf.
“Good morning, wolfsprechend,” Freyvithr said, smiling, and then his canny eyes seemed to size up the two of them. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” Isolfr said, although he didn’t sound sure, and Brokkolfr said hastily, “Nothing important, godsman.” He had fallen foul of Vethulf once and had sworn he would never do so again.
“Then—do we have business this morning, wolfsprechend?” Freyvithr said.
“My daughter,” Isolfr began, but Vethulf interrupted with a snort.
“I think Brokkolfr and Amma can be trusted to mind the child for an hour or two.”
“Yes, all right.” Isolfr stood, and then turned anxiously to Brokkolfr. “Do you mind? It shouldn’t be too long.”
“Are you joking, wolfsprechend?” Brokkolfr said, finding a smile somewhere to reassure both Isolfr and himself. “Surely you see that getting Amma not to mind the child would be far harder?”
Isolfr smiled back, and Vethulf tugged him away. “Come on, Isolfr. Let’s get this done.”
Brokkolfr watched them go, uneasy, but his attention was claimed by a sharp tug on one braid; the baby’s hand might be tiny and plump, but her grip was relentless.
The Tempering of Men Page 5