The Tempering of Men

by Sarah Monette

  The head was far more dangerous, and so Vethulf ran straight for it. This was his threat, and Kjaran had made him the leader of it. The greatest risk was his.

  Wolves and men encircled the wyvern as Vethulf lunged toward its head, dancing in and out again. He feinted with his shield—a punch at its throat—and felt the injured shoulder protest. On every side, wolves snarled, men shouted, axes whipped through air with a whistle almost like the clangor of bells.

  The wyvern fought in near-silence, after the manner of its kind. Its head hammered down at him, rows upon rows of fangs ripping the sod where he had stood a moment before.

  Even through the shield, that blow would have broken his arm if it had landed. But it had missed and in missing left the wyvern’s neck for a moment extended. Vethulf stepped in and, with the weight of his body behind it, swung the axe.

  The wyvern hissed as its head snapped back. Vethulf would have missed and that was all, except by ill luck the inexperienced Reykr struck the wyvern at just that moment on the opposite shoulder. The lashing beast staggered; Vethulf heard the grunted cry as its tail struck either Throttolfr or his shield, and though Vethulf threw himself backward and raised his own shield, one of the wings slammed him against the ground, the talons—tiny things compared to its teeth but sharp nevertheless—raking across his chest.

  He hit hard, the fire in his wounded shoulder fresh and raw, the breath whistling out of him until his lungs ached and then whistling some more. Sparks hung in his blackened vision; the edges of the world fell away until only a bright spot remained at the center.

  Through that bright spot he saw a gray blur. Kjaran lunged over his prone body, snarling, and took the wyvern by the throat.

  Vethulf forced his elbows against the ground, his whole chest hollow for want of breath, and managed to push down only with the right one. It levered him up but crookedly, and from where he lay he saw Kjaran, head down, hunched and snarling, with the soft underside of the wyvern’s throatlatch between his crushing jaws.

  The thing wheezed and heaved, tongue flickering, tail and hind parts writhing in coils, its legs scrabbling convulsively through the tattered grass. There was something high on the wyvern’s throat—a thick leather band, a collar grown into the hide that bulged on either side of it—and it was that that Kjaran had a hold of, preventing him from tearing the beast’s throat out.

  Kjaran growled low and continuous, and Vethulf knew he was nevertheless grinding his jaws together, slowly choking out the wyvern’s life.

  One-handed, Vethulf forced himself onto his knees. His raking hand found his axe; the other arm hung numb. He dragged the shield behind him as he stood.

  One step forward. He raised the axe.

  Ulfvaldr appeared beside Kjaran, stepping out of the black margins of Vethulf’s vision, and split the wyvern’s skull between the eyes.

  * * *

  They did not carry Vethulf down the hill on a litter, but that was only because he insisted he could walk.

  “All that’s wrong with me is my arm, gods rot you,” he snarled.

  But the arm was seriously wrong. In the absence of a wolfsprechend, Ulfmundr had struggled the clothes off Vethulf’s body—more pain, Vethulf thought distantly, even than the blow—and peeled back the jerkin. The scabs had broken, competing with the new gashes to make a gory mess, and the lumps and twists under the skin told their own tale. Ulfmundr thought the muscle was torn, or possibly the tendon.

  Still, Vethulf made it down the hill by his own strength. And, having done so, was more than glad to collapse in a chair before the door of Haukr’s father’s cabin while Guthbrandr’s wife, the mother of the girl who had wakened him that morning, examined his shoulder, clucked over it, and bound it up as best she could.

  “The muscle’s torn, all right,” she said. “You see you rest it, or it will never heal. As it is, it’s likely to be trouble to you for a long time.”

  Vethulf sighed. But nodded. And finally accepted that draught of ale while his wolfcarls saw to their wolves and the villagers went out to butcher the wyvern (and admire its size) and drag as much of it home to smoke or salt as possible. One did not eat troll—but there was nothing unwholesome about the meat of a wyvern, and for a village like this, the great snake was an unusual windfall.

  As for Vethulf, the pain made him tired, so after he made sure Kjaran’s injuries were insignificant, he thumped back to that chair and drowsed in it until Haukr roused him to come out in the square and accept a share of the wyvern-meat that had been roasted by segments over the village’s shallow cooking pit. It was more like frog than fowl but unobjectionable either way, and the wolves seemed to enjoy it.

  Vethulf sat on the ground, eating one-handed while Kjaran gnawed fibers of meat from a segment of the dead wyrm’s spine. Despite Vethulf’s aches, he basked in the moment of peace.

  Someone sat down laboriously beside him. It was the old ruin, Haukr’s great-grandfather, levering himself into place with the aid of a staff polished black from age and use. “Greetings, wolfjarl,” he wheezed.

  “Greetings, grandfather,” Vethulf said. “Did you get enough to eat?”

  The old man smiled toothlessly. “I have no means to chew it, or appetite to drive me. It’s just as well. Let it go to those as still have need. No, I came to offer a word of advice to a young man, if he will hear it.”

  The old man smelled rank and Vethulf almost spoke sharply, but pity moved him. What was it like to be such a man, doomed to die in bed? To endure the pity and scorn of other men?

  “I will hear it,” Vethulf said, surprised at himself.

  The old man reached inside his jerkin and drew forth a leather string, knotted here and there, strung with beads of amber the quality of which Vethulf had never seen.

  “I had these from the neck of a prince of the Brythoni,” he said. “When I was your age. I have kept them since. They will go to my grandson.”

  “You went viking.”

  It was hard to credit—that those gnarled hands could have held a sword, that those stooped shoulders could have filled a shirt of chain.

  “I was a jarl of the sea!” the old man boasted. His back struggled to straighten against its perpetual bow. His rheumy eyes flashed. “I took a princess from a keep, and gold from a monastery. There were songs of me. Perhaps they sing them still, in other lands. And then with my riches I returned to this place, and built a house for the woman I had raided. And in time she gave me seven sons. Two went raiding in their own right. One went to the monks. Three live here still.”

  “And the seventh?”

  “The seventh,” the old man said, “went for a wolfcarl. He is dead now.”

  “I am sorry.”

  The old man shrugged. “It was a brave death. He drains a horn at Othinn’s right hand now, I have no doubt. Whereas I will dine with Hel. But that is not my advice, wolfjarl.”

  Vethulf smiled. He wondered what it would be like, to walk away from war. To live as long as this man had, with the memory of one’s great deeds dimming behind one. To watch one’s sons live so long that they, too, must call on other men for help against a fell beast of the North.

  “What is your advice, grandfather?”

  “Your arm,” the old man said. “I will show you some practices that will help it come back to strength, if you perform them every night and morn without fail. It would be a shame if such a doughty warrior could not lift his shield.”

  The words went straight to the knot in the pit of Vethulf’s stomach, the one he hadn’t even really let himself feel. And the knowledge—if the practices did indeed work—would be something he could take back to the wolfheall and share with his brothers. And that was worth the sting to his pride.

  “Thank you, grandfather,” he said, and in the old man’s smile Vethulf saw, for a moment, the sea-jarl, the warrior and leader of men, he claimed he had been.

  * * *

  In the dark before dawn, Vethulf awoke to the awareness that someone crouched beside his palle
t. Even knowing that Kjaran would never have allowed an enemy to approach so closely, Vethulf came to alertness instantly, catching a stick-thin wrist before the hand could touch his shoulder.

  “Lord Wolfjarl!” A gasp, the unbroken treble of a boy-child.

  Vethulf sat up, squinting in the gloom. One of Haukr’s brothers, he thought, or one of the other children who tumbled among the crofts like wolf pups. “What’s toward?” he said.

  “Haukr said to fetch you, Lord Wolfjarl, or Guthbrandr and Leikfrothr will be at feud in truth.”

  Guthbrandr was the headman, but Vethulf had no idea who the other was, why the two might be at feud, or what Haukr thought he might do about it. But the wolfheall had to be seen to care. He got to his feet, gritting his teeth against the grinding pain in his shoulder. Kjaran was there, butting anxiously against his hand, and Vethulf let himself ruffle his brother’s ears for comfort before he said to the boy, “Tell them I will come forth presently and not to do anything rash betweentimes.”

  The boy darted out, and Vethulf let himself groan. Throttolfr sat up, not even pretending he had not been listening. The courtesy of wolves. “Do you need a hand, wolfjarl?”

  “I doubt it,” Vethulf said, regarding his jerkin with dislike. “Not against crofters.”

  “I meant in dressing,” Throttolfr said, and maintained a straight face when Vethulf glared at him.

  “All right, yes, damn your eyes. You can help me be presentable as Franangford’s wolfjarl this cursed morning.”

  Vethulf had to give Throttolfr credit: he did not tease anymore, and he was not at all rough, even when Vethulf’s impatience made him snap. And Vethulf went out into the first weak light of dawn with at least the assurance that he did not look like a madman.

  Most of the village seemed to be waiting for him, women and men in a circle around three persons: Guthbrandr, another man who must be Leikfrothr, and the girl who had been sent to fetch Vethulf yesterday for the wyvern-hunt. Guthbrandr’s daughter, whose name Vethulf had forgotten. He saw Haukr in the anxious circle of witnesses, with his little brother clinging to his hand, and when Vethulf said, “What is the problem?” it was at least as much toward Haukr as it was addressed to the croft in general.

  There was a babble of answers, including outbursts from both Guthbrandr and Leikfrothr, though not from the girl, whose expression Vethulf could not read, and Vethulf had to raise his good hand to quiet them. “One voice, if you please. Haukr?”

  Haukr gulped but took a half step forward. “Leikfrothr says Jorhildr is promised to him, and Guthbrandr says she is not.”

  Vethulf looked around to see if anyone dissented from Haukr’s version, and no one did. “Thank you, Haukr,” he said, and Haukr bobbed a nod and stepped back.

  God of wolves, Vethulf thought, neither, quite, a prayer nor a curse. What would Skjaldwulf say here? What question would he ask? He knew that disputes like this were always a morass of claims and counterclaims, and these people had neither skald nor godsman to speak oaths before and thus have them remembered. Kjaran leaned gently against his thigh, and Vethulf knew abruptly, if not what Skjaldwulf would ask, then certainly what Isolfr would ask.

  “And what,” he said, “does Jorhildr say?”

  Everyone looked startled, Jorhildr as much or more than anyone else. Vethulf’s shoulder hurt from his hip to the top of his head, and he had neither strength nor patience to ask another question. He stood and waited, and finally Jorhildr said, “I do not wish to marry Leikfrothr, Lord Wolfjarl. And if he should marry me, I will divorce him.”

  There was another round of shouting, most of it at Jorhildr; Vethulf gathered that she had not been nearly so forthright before and had possibly even been encouraging.

  And when the voices died away, Leikfrothr said, “She is promised.”

  “She is not promised,” Guthbrandr retorted. “I said I would be pleased to have you as a son, and that is true, but it is not the same as a promise.”

  “Then what were the negotiations for?” Leikfrothr demanded. “Why were we discussing her bride-price if she was not promised to me?”

  Vethulf resisted the urge either to behead the lot of them or just to go back to bed. Or possibly to behead them and then go back to bed. Skjaldwulf and Isolfr would both be very disappointed in him.

  “If Jorhildr does not wish to marry you,” he said to Leikfrothr, “you would be well advised to look elsewhere for a wife.”

  “She is promised,” Leikfrothr said, his jaw jutting, and Vethulf thought sourly that he could see Jorhildr’s point of view.

  “Lord Wolfjarl,” Guthbrandr said, trying to pull himself together and behave as a headman instead of an angry father. “This is no concern of yours, and we should not trouble you with it.”

  No, you shouldn’t, Vethulf thought. But he saw why Haukr had wanted him. If the headman was supposed to settle disputes in the village, what were they to do when the headman was himself involved?

  They ask the nearest wolfjarl. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to convince his eyeballs that they did not need to throb out of their sockets. “Has the bride-price been given?”

  “No,” Guthbrandr said, and after a long grudging pause Leikfrothr agreed.

  “Then the matter is not one of actual gain or loss, but merely whether a promise was or was not given?”

  “More than a promise passed between us,” Leikfrothr said with a spiteful glance at Jorhildr, and Vethulf decided he definitely agreed with the girl. He wouldn’t want to marry this one, either.

  “Do you carry his child?” Vethulf said to Jorhildr.

  “No,” she said, and her chin was up. “That can be proved, Lord Wolfjarl,” and Kjaran, sitting beside Vethulf and attending with great interest, agreed that she smelled of blood as human females did when they did not breed. Vethulf wasn’t sure whether Kjaran was attending to the words spoken or to the images he could read in Vethulf’s head, but he was grateful for the support.

  “Then you have lost no goods,” Vethulf said to Leikfrothr, “and there is no child to claim for your house. What is the injury you claim you have suffered?”

  “It is an injury to my honor!”

  The girl’s eyes caught light as her chin lifted. For a moment, Vethulf thought it likely that she would pick up a stick of firewood and come after the man. Her hands clenched to fists, and the tendons in her forearms showed plain. A strong wench, Vethulf thought admiringly.

  But she controlled herself and only marched three steps forward to confront the man. “And what of my honor?” she spat. “What of these things you say of me before the entire village, and my family? When you claim me oathbroken, what then?”

  It was a good question, Vethulf thought. But the man would not hear that any more gladly from a wolfcarl than from the wench.

  Vethulf strode into the center of the circle, putting on an appearance—he hoped—of decisiveness. The girl didn’t recoil; she wasn’t afraid of him. The young man jumped a little when Vethulf took his elbow.

  He was taller than Vethulf and broader across the shoulders, but Vethulf knew from living among wolves that confidence and authority were more important than size. He never let the boy realize that he had a physical advantage, or that Vethulf was injured. And the boy didn’t have the experience to see through him.

  Let’s try this again.

  “Look,” Vethulf said, lowering his voice so that the boy had to lean toward him to hear. “Do you really want to marry somebody who hates you? It’s not a receipt for domestic peace, my lad. Better you find a girl who wants you. She’ll be less likely to wash your shirts in nettles, don’t you think?”

  As he said it, he tried to imagine how Skjaldwulf would deliver the advice. Softly, he thought, but with certainty, and he tried to make his voice go that way.

  It surprised him when he found the boy nodding. “You have some wisdom, wolfjarl,” he said. “I did not think of it that way.”

  Vethulf caught himself just short of rolling his eyes at the gir
l. “And it does you no harm,” he added, “to be seen an openhanded and forgiving man. No one likes a man who polishes his grudges.”

  Heed your own advice, he thought wryly, but the boy looked astonished. “Would they say that of me?”

  “Yes,” Jorhildr said, with relish, and for a moment Vethulf thought he’d lost control of the thing again, but Leikfrothr made a great show of ignoring her and said, “Thank you, Lord Wolfjarl. Your counsel is sage.” He bowed and turned away, shouldering a path through the gathered villagers. It clearly didn’t occur to him that he might owe his erstwhile betrothed, or her father, an apology.

  “He is young yet,” Guthbrandr said, and Vethulf was glad to see he was making an effort to recover his temper. “He will gain wisdom with the years.”

  Vethulf snorted. “Unless he first gets eaten by a bear.”

  FOURTEEN

  Skjaldwulf didn’t mind being excluded from Randulfr’s first conference with his brother and father. He knew as well as if he had been instructed that there would be another council after supper and his chance to speak would come then. He used the time seeing that his men and wolves were fed and watered and bedded down warmly. He would have seen to the same for himself, but by the time he came back to Mar, the big wolf was sprawled snoring on Skjaldwulf’s open bedroll, a scoured-clean plate and a half-empty water bucket beside him.

  Otter had apparently made herself useful in Skjaldwulf’s absence.

  Skjaldwulf suspected she had gone to get clean, and in that assumption he made his own way to the bathhouse before dinner. It was not as luxurious as the one they were building at Franangford, but some thrall or member of the household had kept the coals stoked, and there was water and fresh green branches.

  The heat of the steam was harder to bear in summer than in winter, when it was one of the few things that could take the chill out of a man’s bones after a long night patrol. But Skjaldwulf still scrubbed thoroughly, letting the heat soothe knotted muscles.