The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  She looked up. “What am I to do?”

  Damjan began to pace, his long braid swaying on his back. “I knew you weren’t looking for a gift when you asked for that knife. Othin has one as fine as that in his keeping; I sold it to him. Why didn’t you tell me? You know we look out for you up here, living on your own. Those rangers were asking about you at the Sword and Staff this evening. One of my lads was there, and he came and told me about it. Bythe saw them riding near the tower around dusk.”

  “I saw them this morning,” Melisande said. “They came before dawn.” She hesitated, her heartbeat quickening. “Near the quarter moon, by the tower, I saw a Fylking. He was on a horse and clad in black. He came after me and then vanished.” She fumbled with the edges of the cloak Bythe had wrapped around her. “I thought it was nothing. But this morning I saw him again. He led the rangers here. They saw him too—that’s who they were looking for.”

  The two men shifted on their feet, their breaths audible. Damjan said, “You might have seen a Fylking by the tower. But the rangers wouldn’t have, and not here.”

  “It is possible,” Bythe said, moving his fingers over the swatch. “Many suns past, at the Eostre Faire when Petre’s boy was killed near the tower, old Yarrow told me a thing. She once had a warden lover, you know. Think he’s with the gods now. Anyway, he told her the Fylking have the ability to show themselves to mortals if they wish it. Said it’s bad magic to them, uncomfortable, and that most of them won’t do it. But they can.”

  Damjan made a face. “That’s a woods tale,” he growled. He touched Melisande’s gaze and added, “I’m not saying you’re lying. Something spooked you or you wouldn’t have asked me for that blade. That’s why I brought my men up here tonight.”

  She leaned over and put her face in her hands, wincing as a sharp pain shot up her back. “I’m sorry, Damjan. I should’ve told you. I feared you wouldn’t believe me—or that you’d send men here for nothing. A vision.”

  He came to her again, kneeling with a hand on her shoulder. “There are two men of the Dyrregin Guard in the Vale right now. I heard yesterday they’re recruiting in Asfinoc. I’ll send word to them and ask that they escort the ranger and the body back to Merhafr. I’ll accompany them and give my report to the captain of the North Branch. I know him.”

  “And tell him what?”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to send word to the ranger station in Skaut?” Bythe suggested.

  “I think not,” Damjan said over his shoulder. “The rangers will try to take it out of my hands since it concerns one of their own. The Dyrregin Guard will keep it quiet if I ask them to.”

  “How’ll you explain this?” Melisande said. “No one’ll believe the truth.” As she said it, she realized Damjan probably didn’t believe it either. Then she thought of something. “The second ranger left before I—before the other one died. He didn’t see it.”

  Damjan patted her hand and stood up. “Good. Now I can tell them anything.” He glanced at Bythe, and then returned his attention to Melisande. “You said the Fylking led the rangers here. Are you sure it wasn’t a man?”

  “I don’t think so. The rangers said he came here both nights, and I saw only their tracks in the snow.”

  Damjan thought for a moment and then looked up with a breath as if he had come to a decision. “I don’t know what you saw, Millie, but you’re no spy. Unfortunately, if I tell Captain Ageton any of this, and he puts it against the other ranger’s tale, it’ll look like I’m covering something up. The surviving ranger doesn’t know how his partner was killed. I’ll tell them I did it.”

  Melisande blanched. “Oh Damjan, you can’t! They’ll hang you.”

  “Not if I tell them he tried to rape one of our women. I’m known and respected in the King’s Citadel. Against my word, the other ranger’s tale will look like the cover-up.”

  “How will you explain his wounds?” Bythe said, wearing an uncomfortable expression.

  “Don’t worry about that,” the swordsmith replied darkly, reminding Melisande that he was a warrior capable of making the ranger’s death look like something far less arcane than it was.

  The swordsmith strode to the door. “I’ll leave men here tonight to stand watch.”

  Melisande hung her head with a nod. Once she would have refused the offer. But a knife and the warnings of the crow warrior were no protection from wicked men—let alone a Fylking—and pattern sense had just become a far more serious skill than producing warm clothing, a tidy garden, or a well-made tea cozy.

  The Exile Sigil

  Afternoon sunlight caught in the falling yellow leaves of aspen trees north of the Taeson River near the Rue Hills. Arcmael lay on the ground in a glade, blinking up at the dark-edged clouds moving slowly between the branches. His ribs on the right throbbed with fire. His guard always was weak on that side. To the day he bore a scar his father had put there with a blunted sword.

  Dog trotted up to him and licked his face. The warden grimaced. “Dog,” he moaned, turning his head away. The move stretched his sore neck where Wolf had decapitated him yesterday. “You’re lucky I like you.”

  The ethereal blue-silver tip of a sword appeared above him. Get up, Wolf said.

  Arcmael heaved a breath and rolled over, grabbing his sword where he had dropped it. He had learned quickly not to ignore the Fylking’s commands. It made things that much worse. He rose, swaying on his feet. His head felt light and his arms ached. The sword he had procured from the draugr was heavier than he liked. Wolf called it a crude blade, but good enough.

  In battle you will not get a chance to rest and contemplate the sky unless your eyes are about to close for the last time, the Fylking said needlessly.

  Arcmael focused on the placement of his feet and the spaces of his guard as he lifted his sword for the next assault. His thoughts were stained by a dream the night before, in which draugr crept and wailed in pieces over the ground, leaving trails of bloodless flesh.

  He had not wanted to return to the plain where he had fought the draugr, even for a sword. The Fylking predators had said nothing as he tromped through the brown and green grass, averting his gaze from the silent carnage as he ripped a strap and scabbard from a torso. He feared seeing a twitch, a moving eye or a missing appendage that had been there the night before. For once the Fylking hadn’t mocked him as he fled with his new sword. He never bothered to look for his staff.

  A blaze of light shot out from beneath Arcmael’s high parry and struck him in the chest like a mailed fist. He stumbled back, tripped on something and fell. Once again, Wolf’s blade appeared at his throat. Arcmael had grown weary of seeing it there.

  Stay one step ahead of your opponent, the Fylking advised. Do not bask in a move; be thinking about the next one.

  Arcmael had not been basking as much as rallying his sore arm and thinking about something else entirely. But there was no point in defending it. Wolf had an answer for everything.

  The Fylking sheathed his blade. Enough. We’ll begin again at sunrise. A wolf slipped into the long shadows of the afternoon, leaving the warden in silence.

  Sprawled on the ground, Arcmael took several moments to contemplate the sky. No battles here besides the one in his heart. Tomorrow there wouldn’t be a muscle in his body that didn’t hurt.

  Something moved noisily over the forest floor. Dog approached through the trees with a rabbit in his jaws. Arcmael smiled. Dog’s transformation at the hands of Spider and Wolf included the ability to hunt, a skill the animal had lacked before. He had only chased things away.

  “Good boy,” Arcmael soothed, sitting up and stroking his friend. Dog dropped the rabbit by his side. “We’ll have it for our supper. Come.” He took up the rabbit and strung it on his pack. Then he gathered himself and began to walk, heading north. Dog bounded off before him.

  Tower Sol was supposed to be the warden’s last stop before returning to Faersc to collect his pay. Instead, Wolf told him to go to Tower Sif in Ason Tae. Arcmael came close
to banishing him for that, his oath notwithstanding. His routes were under Skadi’s jurisdiction, not the Fylking’s. But a Blackthorn warlock with the power to capture the souls of warriors changed the landscape.

  And there was another problem.

  Wardens were vanishing.

  After reminding him of his own encounter with the warlock near Tower Sol, Wolf informed him that Annalis, a tall warden from the verdant eastern grasslands of Olsc Amathin, had disappeared a fortnight past near Tower Sos west of the Vinland. Her Guardian Fylking claimed Annalis had banished them and then separated from her physical body shortly thereafter. Once she died, they had no way to find her. Arcmael had spent each day since receiving this news picturing Annalis, her dark skin, pretty smile and graying hair—cut down by the swords of warlocks and warriors that couldn’t die.

  After that, Wolf reminded Arcmael of how he had acquired his post as a warden. As a younger man he had not thought much about Edros, the warden who went missing near Tower Sor on the outskirts of Merhafr eighteen suns ago. At the time, he thought it more of a tragedy in his own life, a twist of fate that gave his father an opportunity to disown him with what looked like honorable intentions. But to the Fylking, for whom the passage of time meant little, Edros’s mysterious disappearance was the first in a series. After Edros and Annalis, Arcmael nearly became the third—assuming his encounter was related. He still doubted that, even though the warlock had clearly attacked him because he was a warden. But that could have been anything.

  So he comforted himself. Wolf hadn’t burdened him with the irony that his childhood training on the blade had probably saved his life. Without his Guardians, it wouldn’t have mattered, but the event had marked the beginning of his training whether he liked it or not. Indeed, it looked more like a setup than an unfortunate encounter.

  “Wolf,” Arcmael said, stepping over Gate War ruins covered with fallen leaves. Wolf appeared by his side in his armor and cloak as if he had been waiting. Dog barked once in greeting and leapt at his legs, passing through and landing on the ground. Arcmael took a deep breath before asking the question that had been nagging him. “Why did you let the Blackthorn warlock go? He violated Elivag using dark magic.”

  We need to find out how and why he is using it.

  Arcmael’s scalp prickled as another presence came near, dark and fluid as the night. Elivag is in balance, Spider said in the voice of a shroud. Don’t be so quick to deal death in the name of Elivag, thinking you know the nature of the river’s flow. The landscape of events extends far beyond your fears.

  Arcmael shivered as she withdrew. First the Fylking were chiding him for having no stomach for blood—then when he suggested the very thing, they chided him for being short-sighted. But it didn’t bear an argument. Not with Spider, anyway.

  “Do you think he’s responsible for Annalis’s death?”

  We cannot be certain of that, Wolf said. He gazed afar. We are not gods, Arcmael. We are beings much like you, only older and more advanced in the way we are focused in time and space. We do not see everything—neither do the gods, for that matter. There are rules that govern all things, all consciousness. Elivag has a dark side; the tide’s ebb, the source of all you perceive. It is woven into everything, creating dark patches where the mind cannot see. Those are the places where anything can happen, where things transform, change, are born and die. Without the darkness, nothing would exist. Every warrior must understand this, if he understands anything.

  You use the darkness when you hide your mind from us and block your thoughts from our knowing them. The warlock is doing the same thing.

  “Only wardens know how to synchronize to your energy,” Arcmael pointed out.

  The warlock was once apprenticed to your order. Perhaps you have heard of him. His name is Vargn. He is Fjorginan.

  Arcmael nodded, puzzled that Wolf had not mentioned this before. “He was in Faersc two seasons before I arrived. They say he was gifted. He left the order, and no one knew why. Rumor had it the Gatekeepers refused him.” Better known as the grim High Fylking of Tower Sif, the Gatekeepers were the source of all manner of dark talk among apprentices. When his initiation to the order came, Arcmael had not expected them to accept him either.

  It was not a rumor. He turned as Raven swooped over them and then disappeared. Raven, Fox, Cat, Spider and I were to be his Guardians. Spider warned the Gatekeepers against him.

  “Why?”

  He had darkness in his heart. This should not come as a surprise to you now. We do not know what he learned in the Blackthorn Guild, but he is also using the skills he learned in Faersc. We are only able to see him physically when we know where to look. I saw him because you did. If you had banished me, I would not have. Wolf gave Arcmael a sidelong glance. Had he come upon you again after you did banish us, you would have been at his mercy.

  “As I said before. I would have called you.”

  Perhaps. But Vargn acted as if you would not call us, and we are still puzzled by that. If he was responsible for Annalis’s death, why she did not call her Guardians as you would? There is something happening here we do not understand.

  “He must be killing wardens in revenge for being refused by the Fylking. Creating the draugr would allow him to kill us outside our Guardian Fylkings’ protection.”

  The warrior appeared to consider that, his jaw set and his shining eyes intent. A human cannot create a draugr on his own. He must summon an immortal. Such a being would choose its votary with the same discernment as the High Fylking choose wardens. He would not pattern a spell like that just to kill a small group of mortals because a warden rejected by the Gatekeepers felt slighted. Something bigger would have to be at stake.

  “Do you know who Vargn summoned?”

  Not yet.

  “It must have been a Niflsekt. Or could it have been one of your own?” At first Wolf didn’t respond. Then Arcmael perceived sadness, the kind of weight that warriors bear when reminded of a grievous battle scar. He saw enough of that in Merhafr as a boy. He looked at his airy companion. “Wolf?”

  No warrior is infallible. Oaths can be broken.

  Arcmael moved along, his body aching everywhere. “You speak as if you know.”

  Everyone has a price.

  Arcmael watched Dog as the creature bounded through the ferns.

  The land grew steeper as the warden went north. The realm of Patanin between the Taeson River and the foothills of the Thorgrim Mountains was thick with towns and settlements. Crafted roads of interlocking stone excavated from the Gate War ruins offered wide, smooth passage for horsemen, farm animals and merchants with carts laden with grain, apples, salted fish, barrels of whisky, ale and wine, animal hides, wood, salt and textiles.

  Unlike the wilds around the towers, Patanin was not the kind of place one expected to see warlocks and henchmen. But Arcmael didn’t think a warlock capable of eluding the Fylking and snatching the spirits of warriors from their graves would stop at the creation of only two draugr. There had to be more, and they could be anywhere, though for what purpose, aside from killing wardens, he couldn’t imagine. Wolf hadn’t tricked him into taking up a sword for nothing. The Fylking knew more than he let on.

  Avoiding roads where possible in favor of paths, stone walls or streambeds, Arcmael passed through villages, farms, fields and woods, staying close enough to human activity to catch trouble on the wind. He passed a woman gathering sticks around a fallen tree, a blacksmith taking the evening air outside his forge, a shepherd herding a flock of sheep in a field behind a woolen mill and a pair of boys leading a cow to a barn. No one paid him any mind.

  He reached the outskirts of Seorna as evening fell. A pale sky glowed through the dark edges of swift-moving clouds. Birdsong filled the air. He walked briskly along the edge of a rocky field where horses grazed, until he came to a gorge with a forest towering on the north side. A stream burbled at the bottom. He found a way down and drank deeply, and then refilled his water skin. Dog lapped noisily at a sw
irling pool edged by clumps of marsh marigold.

  Once refreshed, Arcmael moved downstream until he reached a crude bridge that vanished into the crags on the far side. He crossed it carefully, as it had been there a long time with no evident maintenance. Once across he found a path and began to climb. Dog scrabbled up behind him.

  In the woods he found a comfortable place near the roots of an old beech tree. The land sloped off steeply on one side and offered him a view of the distant town. He dropped his things and went about building a fire.

  Later, engulfed by the night, he pulled a spit from the flames holding the rabbit Dog had brought him. He carved it up and gave half to his companion. When he had eaten his fill, Arcmael stored the remainder away in his pack and strung it up into the tree to keep it safe from wildlife. Then he sat down and drew his cloak against the chill. A soft breeze rattled the browned beech leaves. An owl hooted nearby.

  Arcmael gazed down at the twinkling lights of Seorna. There was an inn there called the Hound and Hare that employed night women. What he wouldn’t do for a bath and some pleasant attention. He lifted the purse on his belt. Frowning, he opened the ties and emptied the scant contents into his palm, tilting it to catch the firelight. Two small copper coins with pentacles on one side, a tiny damaged pearl and three bronze beads.

  He looked up as a half-visible, silvery fox trotted just beyond the nimbus of the fire. Dog perked his ears and thumped his tail. I would not advise a side trip, Fox said, glowing in the shadows.

  “You were all for it in Larfen,” Arcmael shot back. “The weaver’s daughter?”

  That was then. The Fylking vanished.

  “Bastards,” Arcmael growled, dumping his coins back into his purse. Two copper stars wouldn’t cover a bath and a woman anyway. And bartering as a warden only worked near the towers. With a sword and no staff, he would find himself bloodied in a ditch by the Night Guild, likely as not.