The others broke from their shock in a rush. Stumbling back, their faces ashen, they tripped over roots and brush, clawing at each other, screaming like animals. Fenrisúlfr finished its work, taking each life as payment.
Silence fell. Not even a fly buzzed in the still, damp air.
Leofwine sank to his knees against the tree as Fenrisúlfr approached him, its broad chest and jaws crimson, hackles lowering, nails pressing steaming gashes in the ground. As the wolf sat obediently before him, its eyes, pale as a corpse, bored into the sorcerer’s heart. Had Leofwine commanded it, the beast would have drenched all of Fjorgin in blood.
Tears streaming down his face, he released it back to the Otherworld.
The sky opened up with rain.
Leofwine fell on his hands and knees and retched as the rain pummeled him. The paroxysms tore every wound and bruise, causing his vision to swim. He closed his eyes, his heart sinking into a chasm of grief. Ingifrith. Owing to his own machinations, he now had no idea where she was, and he would never have time to find her, not with hunting parties running him down. His stomach clenched up again. Did she think he knew that Grimar had soiled her?
Then another thought invaded his mind. What if she’d been willing? Or what if Grimar had never touched her and made the whole thing up to taunt him?
Hovering there, wounded, sick and surrounded by the remains of Lord Nosthrod’s men in the pouring rain, the inevitable reached his ears. Horses. Soldiers. Coming his way.
Leofwine pushed himself up, steadying himself on the tree as a dizzy spell swept over him. Swiftly, he snatched up his runes and shoved them into the pouch, glancing around the forest, his senses still acute from the summoning.
No sign of the phooka. The horrid creature wouldn’t have hung around with Fenrisúlfr on the loose. Maybe it would keep its distance now. A magician could hope.
Panting with pain, Leofwine stumbled from tree to tree, avoiding the carnage. Twilight hung in the forest, cloaked in rain. He moved along until he reached a stream. He slipped on a mossy rock and fell into the water. It was icy cold. Throwing back his cloak, he splashed it on his face, neck and shoulders to wash away the blood, then drank deeply. Hunger gnawed at him.
Arvakr. Damnit. If the phooka did anything, it would turn the horse wild.
Shouts echoed in the distance as the guardsmen found the other soldiers. What was left of them.
Leofwine crept away from the water, into the deeper shadows. The rain had eased to a drizzle. He huddled over himself and sucked in breaths past his broken ribs. Once he had calmed a little, he stilled his mind. Then he put his head back and released a whistle. The soldiers would hear it, but it was the only thing Arvakr responded to.
The soldiers grew louder. Gathering himself, Leofwine moved on, staying near the stream in case the guardsmen had dogs. He froze in his tracks as something cracked in the forest above him. His heart pounding, he crouched. Then the snort of a horse sounded in the trees. He rose and clambered up the rocks. A large, dark shape loomed above him. He caught the flash of a white fetlock. Relieved beyond sense, Leofwine reached the horse and put his arms around the animal’s neck, near tears.
“You’re worth every coin and then some, my friend,” he breathed.
It took some effort to get into the saddle. Behind him, a large company of Nosthrod Guard spread out in the woods, their angry voices echoing in the trees. Torchlight glowed in the eaves. Huddled over his guts and ribs, Leofwine urged Arvakr away, clutching the reins in one hand and his wounded shoulder with the other.
He considered his options, such as they were. He was a murderer, in lies and in truth, and he would find no shelter in Ýr. Bringing Fenrisúlfr through the Veil would leave a mighty imprint, a characteristic mark on the Veil that revealed the use of magic. It would only be a matter of time before the Masters connected it to him. Aside from the obvious dangers of summoning the spirit of his order, there were those among the Masters of Ýr who, like Lord Halstaeg, valued their reputation and wouldn’t look kindly on one of their sorcerers darkening it. The phooka and the Nosthrod Guard would be the least of his problems. The Masters would make an example of him.
He had to get out of Fjorgin.
Leaving behind the soldiers, he slipped into the night heading east, for the coast.
A Hedge Witch’s Daughter
A spider web stretched between the branches of a wild apple tree laden with green fruit. The early evening sun glistened on the silken net, the center of which held a black spider with a yellow mark in the shape of a star.
Do be careful here, whispered a soft, patient voice in her mind. She watched the spider as it moved slightly, suspecting it was the source. Ingifrith moved around the web without disturbing it and lowered herself by the tree. She had learned not to trust every whisper she heard on the Veil. The mists were tricky.
Below, a short walk past the trees and over a small plain, stood Tower Sie, one of two gatetowers outside the realm of Dyrregin. The other, Tower Sef, stood on a rocky shoal nearly forty leagues off Dyrregin’s west coast. One day, when she was a Warden of Dyrregin, Ingifrith would visit that one, too.
Aside from the spider, the Otherworld, a vast sea of flowing impressions murmuring like dreams on the edges of her mind, had fallen eerily silent. Only a sylph, a male with pale blue eyes and hair the color of clouds, moved around her, folding her in airy impressions of distracted thought.
Her heart thumped and her feet hurt. She fingered the gaping sole of her right boot. It had worn off five leagues back, forcing her to use vines, leaves and hide to cover the hole. But she was no cobbler, and fixing or replacing her boots would be costly. A gift from her father many suns past, they had once been fine.
She reached into her pack and pulled out her water skin, and then a small silver flute. Nearly a sun past, not long after she had moved into a mill loft near her father’s home, she had awakened one morning to a strange, discordant cry in the waters that flowed and dropped over the mill wheel slats into the pond below. No one but her would have heard it, nor seen the lithe, limp form of a pale naiad caught in the rocks of the stream in the woods beyond the pond. The beautiful creature clutched a silver flute in her hand. As the naiad vanished, the flute was left behind, shining in the water.
Ingifrith never guessed why a naiad would have died there, or how she would have a mortal flute in her hand. But the instrument gave Ingifrith strange comfort whenever she was nervous. She moved her fingers over the thin shaft. Inscribed on one end was a tiny rune, the letter L.
Clutching the flute to her heart, Ingifrith leaned around the tree and scanned the countryside around the great battlefields of the Sie War. The weed-choked roads were empty. Soldiers, merchants, messengers, tradesmen and thieves tended to avoid traveling near the gatetower when they could.
The tower, tall and built on a knoll of neatly-laid stones, had narrow clefts for windows cut in asymmetrical patterns in the walls, and its heights were crowned with carvings of winged beasts. No standard blew on the wind; no soldier guarded the door; and no sheep grazed upon the surrounding grass. It stood quiet in the lengthening shadows, untouched by time or the strife that had once surrounded it.
Her throat dry, Ingifrith took a sip from her water skin. Her brother Leofwine had laughed like a raven when she confided to him that she wanted to enter apprenticeship in the Wardens’ Order. She wanted to leave Fjorgin, go to the Faersc Conservatory in northern Dyrregin, and serve the Fylking. She would be left alone. Maybe even honored. She was already familiar with the Otherworld.
But Leofwine laughed, with that all-knowing, sorcerer’s glint in his eye. Do you think the servants of the Fylking lead romantic lives, wandering around the wilderness looking at the stars? Their lives are cruel. They are alone, cast apart from the rest of us; they have no families, no companions but warriors who care nothing for this world besides using it to their own ends. Besides, the Masters of Faersc don’t take just anyone.
Ingifrith smarted under the memory. As
s, she thought. What did he know? Safe behind his cloak and his runes, he didn’t want for anything, sword or staff. Fine for him, to sail for Merhafr and leave her here listening to spiders. Her brother, the sorcerer. No messages, no gifts, he hadn’t even sought her out when he returned after the war. She wouldn’t have known he was back at all if their father hadn’t mentioned it.
The day Leofwine decided to take part in her life would be the day he had any business telling her what to do. Today, she would test the waters with the Fylking of Tower Sie. If she proved worthy, surely the wardens would accept her.
She had to make it to Faersc, the wardens’ mountain conservatory, by autumn. Back when Leofwine had worked in the King’s Archive, he had shown her a map of Dyrregin. As she recalled it, the Faersc Conservatory was tucked into the Thorgrim Mountains in Dyrregin’s northern reaches. It would feel winter’s bite long before the rest of the realm. With a bow and quiver that had belonged to Leofwine, back when he cared more for roaming the forests with her than he did brooding in the cold dark halls of Ýr, she hunted small game. She also found edible plants and roots in the wooded countryside. But that was easy here, in summer, where she knew the land. Dyrregin would be different. Her father had left her some coin when he died, but he’d had little to spare after the moneylenders claimed their share, and Ingifrith kept it close. She would need it to buy passage over the sea, and boots, warmer clothes, food and shelter as she traveled north.
She put away her things and donned her pack, bow and quiver and set out for the tower.
“We’ll see who’s just anyone,” she muttered.
Her legs stiff and her belly empty, she moved over the grass, brush and stones between the tall hardwood trees. The air elemental soon left her, and the sudden stillness across the Veil was unnerving; she felt naked under the sky. Birds chirruped, unconcerned; a red squirrel scolded her from a nearby bough. It sounded like a warning.
Ingifrith had no idea what she was going to do besides see what happened, and maybe see a Fylking. She had heard stories; everyone had. Grim and exaggerated, some tales had been passed down through the generations after the Sie War; others were fabricated by the soldiery to keep fools from going near the tower. The King had decreed it forbidden. But such things rarely kept the curious at bay, let alone fools.
The sun descended into the trees, casting long, warm beams between the trunks. Ingifrith kept a sturdy pace. If she caught a glimpse of a Fylking, or even talked to one, she might have a claim to make at the gates of the wardens’ conservatory.
The trees thinned and opened to the plain. As she drew nearer to the tower, her hope turned to desperation, like a wound she hadn’t realized was bleeding. She had nothing to go back to. Leo had abandoned her. Their parents were with the gods. Cevin, the barman at the Witch’s Tree, ironically named, had a wife and children and no use for Ingifrith beyond the fragrant herbs she brought him to add to his brews, and occasional pleasure on the pallet in the tavern cellar. She had nothing but the trappings of a hedge witch: roots, twigs, thorns and the voices of the Otherworld. That was enough for her mother. It was not enough for Ingifrith.
And she was tired of hiding.
A chill crept over her scalp and down her spine like a cat claw, weakening her knees. A gust of wind, cold as the north, swept down from the direction of the tower. The stone beasts crowning the parapet seemed to move. Ingifrith stopped, her heart racing as a weird sense of unreality enveloped her. On the edge of her sight, just between her mind and the air, flashed a tall figure, a warrior clad in shining mail, leather and patterns woven into trees and beasts. On his chest, embossed in a silver hauberk, was a tree. His hair, bright as the sun, moved on an invisible wind. His pale eyes flashed as he drew a sword.
Stunned by his beauty and awash in fear and excitement, Ingifrith said, “Wait!” She stumbled back, her hands raised. “I just want to—”
He moved with the power and speed of a lightning bolt. Something cracked against her body with enough force to throw her ten feet over the ground. She hit the rocks, knocking the breath from her lungs. Gasping for air, her body buzzing with fire and her mind scattered, she looked up.
Through the dreamlike haze, she saw the warlord clearly. Sheathing his blade, he threw her a disdainful glance as if she were no more than a violet he’d crushed in his path. Then he vanished on the wind.
Do be careful here, came the spider’s warning. Not a trick, evidently. Her heart thumped. Her chest hurt. Failure was nothing new. Neither was despair. And the Fylking’s scorn, his arrogance, she knew that too, for she had properly buried it a long time ago, a weak and shameful act, like shoving something into the ground that wasn’t quite dead in hopes that it would die anyway.
Shame hit her in the gut like a fist, cold and without pity. Her eyes blurred with tears under the weight of it. Her voice cracked as she cried, “I hate you!” Not that it mattered. The Fylking’s silence was the same as his scorn: she wasn’t worth a word. She fought it, then choked on a sob as the memory came, a memory she had managed to keep at bay for fourteen suns, even in Cevin’s arms, for he was kind, albeit distracted.
Sun on the grass. Wildflowers, trembling in the wind. The Otherworld had fallen as silent as the gatetower glade when Grimar and his friend had forced her onto the grass and had their way. Farm hands, strong young men with bright eyes and nothing better to do with their idle time but roam the countryside looking for amusements. Grimar had a mop of hair the color of corn silk; his companion’s was as black as Hel’s eye. They had descended on her like a cruel sun and a dark moon filling her days and nights, inexorable and ever present, forcing her to flee between the realms where twilight reined.
No charms, sylphs, elves, not even the phooka had come to her aid. The Others didn’t do that kind of work for nothing.
Her mother, as always, took a pragmatic approach. Taking someone by force was not allowed, no more than murder or stealing a horse, she claimed. She had donned her finest shawl, grabbed a fistful of vengeful herbs and, muttering to Hel, gone over the hill to have a word with the constable. Then came another blow to Ingifrith’s innocence, for the constable and Grimar’s father, a wealthy sheep farmer, were old friends. It was easy enough, for a coin, to brush aside the violation of a hedge witch’s daughter.
It will come around, her mother had later grumbled into the hearth, drawing on a pipe. You’ll see. This won’t go unheard. She removed the leather cord around her neck holding a rune that looked like a tree branch, and tied it around Ingifrith’s throat. This is algiz. It is your nature. So you don’t forget.
Sour comfort, it all was. Worthless, in fact. And yet, as if to acknowledge the rune or perhaps to accept Ingifrith’s lost innocence as payment, the Others had begun to cloak her in airs and spells for nothing more than offerings of mugwort, foxglove, lily of the valley, or any other pretty thing she would find and place upon a stone or a mossy trunk. Grimar and his friend never laid eyes on her again—nor had anyone else she had chosen to elude.
Ingifrith had given her love to men eventually, though sparingly, men like Cevin who understood she needed to ease her body but not her heart. That, she held closed to all but Others.
Until now. She was cast aside by an immortal warlord for daring to be alive. Why would she want to serve them? She was just another fool on the battlefield defying the king’s orders. She lay there amid the ruins of her plans, the Otherworld quiet and her body bared to the indifferent eyes of the gatetower. She was no longer a threat. She was nothing.
She reached up and touched the rune at her throat. Algiz. She still recalled the odd look on Leo’s face the first time he saw it on her. As if he didn’t understand what made her worthy of the powers of the cosmos, the forces of protection, the voices of gods. Lying here now, bruised and thrown out by an immortal, Ingifrith no longer wondered at her brother’s confusion.
A raven, wheeling high in the dusk sky, released a harsh cry. Ingifrith blinked up at it. The bird glowed with weird light.
&
nbsp; Her heart leapt into her throat as the raven appeared several feet above her head. Swooping, it landed next to her, then rose on two powerful legs, a fully armed warrior glimmering with immortality, clad in leather and mail, closely fit and finely wrought. Another Fylking, a different one. He stared down at her, his dark eyes holding faint surprise, his black hair woven into the plaits of a heavy braid. What have we here? he asked, his voice caressing her mind. A tale, surely.
He vanished with a laugh.
Still shivering with a sense of unreality, Ingifrith rolled up and scrambled back, catching her breath as pain shot through her body in a dozen places. “Hel,” she swore, feeling sick.
As she moved to get up, she spotted another figure in the distance. Cloaked and hooded, he carried a staff.
Ingifrith rose, steadied herself on trembling legs and started walking toward the trees, away from the tower, away from the cruel warlord’s scorn, away from the raven warrior and this cloaked man in the distance, whom she could only assume was a warden.
The warden hailed her. His voice was deep, resonant and commanding. Ingifrith ignored him as she limped along, pebbles and stalks digging into her heel through the hole in her boot.
The raven circled above with a chiding squawk. Ingifrith ignored it, too. On her right, the silvery shape of an animal moved through the grass without disturbing it. It looked like big wolf, and shone with the same weird light. The warden’s Guardian Fylking, she surmised.
She was not as far from the tower as she had been before the sylph deserted her, but she opened her mind nonetheless, pleading with the Veil for shelter. She had no pretty herbs or roots to offer, no milk or raspberries. Only her desperation, now bleeding freely.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 44