Othin shrugged his things from his shoulder as he entered the high constable’s office. It was large, warm and lavishly decorated with tapestries, furs, pillows and heavy dark furniture. On the walls between intricately stitched battle scenes hung weapons, shields and family crests. One wall contained a large painting of the coat of arms for House Halstaeg: a sword standing over dark hills beneath a rising moon. The image had never seemed as ironic as it did now.
The high constable of the King’s Rangers sat before a long table strewn with maps, lists, scrolls, cups, candles, an inkwell, a sheathed knife, a pair of leather gauntlets and a flagon with an embossed sleeve. He was a forbidding man, with a strong chin, aquiline nose, coarse sandy hair dulled by gray and the pond-brown eyes of his daughter. His expression was haggard and unyielding.
Othin put his fist on his chest and bowed his head. “Othin of Cae Forres reporting from patrol, milord.”
Halstaeg reached over and moved something on the table as if it annoyed him. The set in his jaw could have revealed thoughtfulness, displeasure or both. Othin took the liberty of lowering his saddlebags and weapons to a chair. Halstaeg folded his hands on the table and cleared his throat. “In a fortnight,” he said, “we’ll be at war with Fjorgin for nothing more than a beastly tale I am unable to disprove, though every man in the Dyrregin Guard has sworn on his blade it’s a lie.” He cast his gaze around the room with tired familiarity. “From you I receive a report of Fjorginans and magic.” He said the last word with distaste.
“I reported what I saw,” Othin maintained, recalling the smoking Fjorginan ghoul riding off into the night.
Halstaeg continued, “Then you vanish, and I receive reports from other rangers of murder, spies and Fjorginan operatives who’ve infiltrated our shores and spread terror in several coastal towns.”
“I saw nor heard word of any Fjorginan warrior north of Fell,” Othin assured him. “I went to great pains to find proof; hence my delayed return.”
The commander gazed at his cluttered table, his jaw flexing. “And then there is Ason Tae,” he said in a quieter voice.
Othin became aware of the crow at his throat. The crow flies, and is still. “What happened in Ason Tae?”
Halstaeg unfolded his hands, his mood closing like the door to a vault. “A ranger was killed. An unrelated incident, I believe.”
“Where?”
“That’s of no concern.”
Othin lowered his gaze briefly, his mood hardening with irritation. Why mention Ason Tae and then put him down for asking about it? “I patrolled the Vale for five suns,” Othin reminded him. “I might be of help.”
Halstaeg traced his fingers casually over the edge of a map. “I understand you have a woman there.”
Othin’s heart skipped a beat. If he knew Halstaeg at all, he knew never to assume what the man was thinking and always to assume the things he said belonged to an agenda. He didn’t bother denying the commander’s claim; Halstaeg wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t already know it was true. Othin lifted his chin. “What does that have to do with war?”
“Who is she? Peasant? Whore?” The commander took Othin’s silence as an affirmation. “Girls like that are as common as flowering weeds,” he said in a fatherly tone. “They are pretty in spring, and then they wither, leaving you with naught but a nag. You’re worth more than that. A fine warrior, an example to your peers. I need you in this war, and if you prevail, as I’ve no doubt you will, you’ll be set in comfort for the rest of your days.”
Only Othin’s eyes moved up from his downward stare. A thought came to him, a bleak, bruise-colored, gardenia-scented thought throwing favors at him from a balcony. There were many ways Halstaeg could have found out about Millie. Othin himself had asked Bren to spread the word that he had a woman, though Bren wouldn’t have given particulars unless questioned. The other possibility was that the rangers Halstaeg had sent to the Vale in Othin’s place had spoken of the message Othin gave them. He dared not consider if Millie had had anything to do with one of their deaths. That was not possible—a fear brought on by absence.
“My woman is my business, milord,” he said, swallowing against a dry throat.
“That used to be so,” the commander returned, “before you bedded my daughter.”
Blinking, Othin started to refute the claim. Then he remembered his last night here after Bren and Prederi brought him to his room. He had dreamed of Millie in the loft of her cottage. He tried to recall it from the drunken fog. There was something else. Lust, a touch, a scent of…
“A proper wife would become you, Othin,” Halstaeg added.
…gardenia. It couldn’t be. Had Rosalie followed him or hid somewhere in the Rangers’ Square and then come into his room? Even she wouldn’t be that devious. He dared not accuse her of it; he had no proof and her word would stand over his. Nor could he defend his position by describing what happened at the Full Moon, not without exposing either himself for being too drunk and too incensed to see her home, or Diderik, for doing him a favor. He was trapped in whatever concoction of a tale the woman had devised.
Marriage, however, was another matter. Othin was no royal snot who had to abide a union he didn’t want, just to soothe a political situation. It took as much courage as he possessed to declare, “I do not love your daughter, milord.”
Halstaeg snorted a laugh. “This is not about love, Othin, but duty. She is with child.” His gaze turned steely. “I know you well enough. You wouldn’t bring dishonor on my house or to the ancient brotherhood to which you belong. Given the sensitive nature of my daughter’s condition, we’ve already begun preparations for the wedding. You and Rosalie will stand before the gods in one week’s time, before war razes this land.”
Othin stared at his commander in bloodless shock, his once-fine principles of duty, honor and brotherhood turned on him like swords.
A Dropped Stitch
The village of Odr changed after the wicked ranger died.
To protect Melisande’s honor, Damjan and Bythe told no one what happened in her cottage that night. But it only took one poultry farmer to see Damjan riding out with two guardsmen, a ranger and a corpse wrapped in a sack and strapped to a black horse to send the word running like a river in spring. The men who had accompanied Damjan to the cottage kept their silence as the swordsmith bade them to, until one of them, drunk in the Sword and Staff one night, said the Fylking killed the ranger. Just a careless, drunken remark. But it took root in the mystery in which rumors thrived.
The Hunter’s Moon had come and gone, and Damjan had not returned from Merhafr. There was much speculation as to the delay. Most blamed it on the season, as the gods loved winter and had begun to spar in the mountain passes. Others whispered tales of rangers’ ghosts and trouble on the road. Those who knew the swordsmith didn’t fear for him. But Melisande was not comforted. Othin had once told her that Damjan was better behind a blade than some rangers he knew, but a sword wouldn’t protect him from a trial gone bad. No one in Merhafr would take his word over that of one of their own.
Fortunately, the coming winter didn’t give much quarter to rumors, as the villagers were too busy to stoke them. Wagons of whale oil, dried fish, peat and salt rolled into the Vale from the western coast. Granaries were filled; stacks of hides and furs, bales of wool and casks of whisky and ale were stored away or used for payment for supplies; and the animals were brought into the barns, some of them slaughtered, their meat and skins cured for winter. Herbs dried on racks and rafters, and vegetables were preserved and stored; apples were made into cider; wood was cut from the forests, hauled, split and stacked; and roof thatches were repaired and strengthened.
The winds blew cold. Crows bickered in the barren fields and the great white geese had all flown south.
Melisande prepared for winter as the rest of her people, gathering, drying and putting up seeds, storing food in her war-ruin cellar, caring for her new goats and stacking cartfuls of wood that a woodsman named Hauk brought her fr
om the nearby village of Asfinoc in return for some thick socks for his family. Hauk kept to himself and didn’t let on that he thought anything strange. But he declined her invitation to come in and warm himself by the fire with some venison stew before returning home. A friend of her father’s, Hauk had never declined a visit with her.
Melisande had not been bothered by Hauk’s refusal at the time, mostly because she still felt exposed by the violence done in her home, and visitors made her uncomfortable. Besides, it was evening, the sky was heavy with snow and the woodsman needed to get along. But Hauk’s cold behavior was only the first sign of the villagers’ change of mind.
Whenever she went to Odr for supplies, a sack of oats, a jug of wine, some pickled lamb, anything which she had not already earned by her work, she was not asked for goods in return. No hat, mittens, tea cozy, nothing. Instead, the farmers and shopkeepers gave her their wares with hollow smiles and kindness without roots, much the same way they gave things to wardens for not bringing the Fylking down on them.
Bythe and Vinso insisted that none of Damjan’s men had mentioned her name. Rubbing his jaw, Bythe assured her that the villagers were simply shocked by the death of a ranger in their midst and would eventually get over it. But the goatherd’s reassurances lacked conviction, and he never rubbed the stubble on his jaw unless he was distressed. Everyone knew the rangers had come looking for Melisande, and she could only guess that some of the villagers, like the carpenter’s ignorant wife or that horrid woman Gunda who accused Pisskin of trying to suck the breath from her baby, had taken the opportunity to cast suspicion on her. A King’s Ranger meeting his death in the Vale was a strange and terrifying thing, and folk would talk, especially after someone blamed the Fylking. And Melisande had become connected, causing her to wonder what else Damjan’s loyal men had left sprouting in a tavern somewhere.
Constable Fagel, not only pragmatic but also a close family friend of the Jarnstroms, had not distanced himself from Melisande as the others had. He didn’t believe in magic; perhaps he had seen too many rotten deeds men tried to pass off as that. To keep peace, he asked her to knit his daughter a fine cloak. He assured Melisande, with a genuine smile, that she would have her pick of wolfhound pups that his oldest son, who was known throughout the Vale for breeding the strongest and most loyal beasts, was expecting soon. Fagel had not actually said the hound would serve to protect Melisande in the forest from ruffians and crooked rangers, but his manner implied it.
Aside from the challenge of feeding a wolfhound, Melisande had to admit liking the idea of having such a guardian by her door. A hound would make a more reliable companion than a man, she decided, especially a ranger. She had not entertained thoughts like this when Othin patrolled here, as many people knew she was his interest, and no one in their right mind would interfere with a ranger’s woman.
Why another ranger would do that, even if she were a spy, was still lost on her. Before the dragon warrior had brought the wicked rangers to her door, she had felt strong and able with pattern sense as her guide. Now she felt vulnerable. Having tasted her own mortality, she tried to distance herself from pattern sense the same way the villagers had distanced themselves from her. But the earth’s breath did not cease.
Nor did her thoughts of Othin, despite her sensibilities. Perhaps the ranger had found another sweetheart. A younger woman unstained by time and controversy. Why would he cast his loyalties with a votary of needles and wool? Men such as he didn’t take wives or stay with lovers. They roamed like tomcats.
Still, she waited. Near the full moon, scantly comforted by Pisskin, her goats, her yarn cabinet, her messy garden and a staunch woodpile, she made too much food, washed herself and her bedding in the icy stream, kept horse grain in the barn loft and plucked and snipped the white woolen threads of a blanket’s edge to keep the ice from the path. Accompanied by her old gray knitting bag, she wandered the villages, woodlands and foothills listening for rumors, but she heard none. She told herself all kinds of hopeful stories about tomcats, wayward ravens, bad orders and inclement weather. But her swordsman did not return, as he had each moon for two suns past.
One afternoon, with a restless sky breathing fleeting sunbeams and snow flurries into the air, Melisande headed home along a path west of the nearby village of Birch, known for its tree sap and all the sweet things made from it. Her knitting bag was full of soft, fine yarn in the colors of rose bushes. She didn’t usually get yarn from the spinster here, but the woman had always treated Melisande kindly. She had a gap in the front of her teeth and the laugh of a grackle. As payment for her work Melisande had given her a large bundle of plants used for dyeing: madder, woad, weld and clubmoss, which she gathered each summer on her treks between the villages. That and a bottle of homemade whisky her father had stocked in the cellar shortly before his death pleased the woman to no end. The pleasant exchange had been worth the extra walk.
The gatetower came into view beyond the withered hedge on one side of the path to the spinster’s house. Melisande quickened her pace. Since the night she had killed a man by unraveling stitches, she had not seen or dreamed of the dragon warrior. Eventually, emboldened by the silence, she had abandoned her father’s safe route and resumed passing by the tower. Perhaps the dark Fylking had done his mischief and gone. Or perhaps he somehow knew of the swatch she had knitted for him, a patch the size of a potholder showing the black-clad warrior on his horse with his dragon helmet and weapons. Her hands had ached for two days after knitting it, and she kept it with her always, checking it occasionally to ensure the slipknot on one end of the last row was intact but ready to pull. She doubted pattern sense would have any effect on an immortal. But it was worth a try.
By the time Melisande reached the gatetower, the sun had broken through the clouds and cast long shadows in the frost-browned grasses and brush. In the distance, crows clamored in the trees. The air felt warmer than it had in weeks.
Not wishing to tempt the Fylking today, Melisande skirted around the rocky tor and entered the woods behind the warden’s cot. The crows grew louder. As she moved through the sun-streaked shadows, one of the birds swooped down and alit on a branch above her head with a caw. The hairs on her head lifted as she recalled her dream. In another dream, just before the rangers came to her door, the crow had transformed into a warrior with a black feathery cloak and a shining beak. “Hail you,” Melisande called up at the ash-gray crow. It wasn’t hard to imagine the creature floating down and changing into a man. The bird cocked its head and peered down from a beady eye. “Have you something to show me today?” Her tone was dry.
The hooded crow lifted up and flew north without a sound. As Melisande moved along, the bird appeared and disappeared in the boughs above. She had not seen it since her dream—if indeed the bird and the crow warrior were the same—or if the bird itself was even the same one she saw the time before. No telling. As her father once said, the Otherworld’s boundaries were protected by convenient assumptions.
That aside, if this were another warning, the bird wouldn’t be leading her home. It accompanied her all the way to the cottage, where it landed on the roof and began to preen. The goats shoved their bearded faces through the gate of their new shelter. Melisande made her usual scan of the thin, crunchy snow around the house. No hoof prints, no boot prints. Just Pisskin.
The crow released a mournful cry as the knitter stepped inside the door with the cat on her heels.
~ * ~
Three days passed. The weather stayed warm, a haunting warmth that felt unnatural on the eve of a dark moon near the onset of winter. The snow on the roads and paths melted into the mud, and the rivers ran full. A damp, restless wind stirred bare branches and the ghostly stalks, pods and rot of vegetation in fields and gardens.
Melisande rose early one morning, put on water for tea, fed the cat and went outside into the fog that cloaked the forest. Her goats bleated in the mist. She had not named them yet, but called each of them a different name—silly ones, Bythe
laughingly claimed—each time she greeted them. Lately she called them Punch and Digger. With tingling hands, she had knit them each a white collar with cross-cross patterns to protect them from wolves, or so she hoped.
Bythe had not laughed at that.
She went to the barn, fetched a chip of fresh hay from the loft and put it down. Punch, the buck, had a tan coat, white legs and head, and pale gold eyes; Digger, the doe, had a white coat with brown spots and pale blue eyes. Melisande left the door open so they could roam. Later she would gather up and spread their droppings in the garden.
“Stay away from the nightshade behind the stream,” she advised over her shoulder.
The hooded crow swooped down and landed on a fencepost. He had not left her since accompanying her home through the forest. She talked to him sometimes, and he seemed to listen. Crows were like that.
Taking a deep breath of the strange air, Melisande fetched her tea and her knitting bag and walked to the bench on the edge of her garden. The wood had begun to rot, making it precarious to sit on. The last time he was here, Othin had reinforced the bench with sturdy green ash branches, making it slightly more reliable. She leaned over and inspected the seat edge, which one of the goats had thoroughly investigated with its teeth. She shook her head. Trouble. In the spring she would bring them out to the plain by the gatetower and let them browse there. Let the Fylking deal with that.
The crow flew into the woods, releasing a series of short, aggressive barks. Melisande drew forth the folds of the cloak she had started for Fagel’s daughter. Green as woodland ferns, it had an intricate symmetrical pattern of wine-red climbing roses with pale and dark green, almost indigo leaves. Melisande drew a deep breath as she gathered up her needles and spread the soft, fine wool across her lap…
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 14