The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  Leofwine opened his hand. It was a pentacle woven from a tiny vine, with dried leaves and a red crystal held between the knots. It emanated something fierce, like a caged animal. Instead of extending his senses into the charm, he looked up. “What is it?”

  “It’ll bring you the favor of the Lady.”

  “Freya?”

  She nodded.

  “Where did you get it?”

  Her gentle mood closed like an iron gate. “It was a gift.”

  Leofwine left that. “Freya’s the one who told you I was trouble?”

  “Since when was trouble a bad thing?” She looked over her shoulder as the door opened and Erland entered, carrying Leofwine’s things.

  “Best hurry,” he said gruffly.

  A short time later, weak and half dazed by pain, Leofwine stepped into the morning sun, dressed in clean clothes—no small thanks to Agda—and his saddlebags and belongings in hand. Moust sat on his horse, gazing down like an angry god. Leofwine had never hated him as much as he did in that moment. The sorcerer held the reins of a second horse, which he had brought with him.

  “I have a horse,” Leofwine said, turning toward the barn.

  Erland fell in step by his side. “Master,” he said hurriedly. “I was told to sell your horse.”

  Leofwine stopped, spun around and leveled a thorny glare at Moust. “Is that what you paid him? My horse?”

  The sorcerer looked off into the distance with a dismissive air.

  Now angry, Leofwine put his fingers to his lips and whistled. A heavy commotion came from the barn as Arvakr tried to respond. Something cracked as if the horse had thrown a kick at the wall. Erland shot Leofwine a dark look and headed that way.

  In the mist hanging over the pasture beyond moved a tall, horned shape. Dark as a bear, it slipped in and out of the gray shadows cast by the rising sun. The phooka entered the barn. After another series of heavy movements, Arvakr emerged, dragging a lead rope frayed on one end as if something had chewed it through. Erland jumped out of the way as the horse nearly ran him down.

  “You can bring me my tack and saddle,” Leofwine called after him. He picked up the lead and stroked his friend on the neck. “There now,” he soothed. “No one’s selling you.”

  Erland got up, brushed himself off and returned without retrieving a saddle or any such thing. Moust, having dropped his cavalier disinterest, rode near, his face livid. He reached down and grabbed Arvakr’s halter.

  “Bad idea...” Leofwine said casually.

  Ignoring him, the sorcerer uttered a harsh word in Fylking meant to subdue an animal’s will. Arvakr stepped back, tossing his head and ripping the halter from Moust’s hand. Predictably, the phooka slipped into sight, towering over the sorcerer, green eyes blazing. Moust’s horse spooked and reared up. The sorcerer shouted as the second horse tore the lead from his other hand and thundered down the path. Moust slipped from the saddle, hit the ground and rolled over, clutching his bleeding fingers to his chest.

  The phooka raised a clawed hand. Snorting and stepping about, Arvakr calmed.

  Erland, not seeing the phooka, looked around in confusion. “What’s happening?”

  No one answered him. Moust got stiffly to his feet. In a voice trembling with shock and wrath, he commanded, “You will banish it at once.”

  For a moment, Leofwine stood there, watching the phooka’s long fingers move over Arvakr’s withers like a lover. Then Leofwine burst into laughter, doubling over his battered gut as the paroxysms wrenched through him. He laughed until tears came to his eyes, unable to tell what ripped him more: that the phooka was still around protecting that damned horse or that Moust actually thought Leofwine had the power to banish the son of a bitch.

  “You banish it,” he said, knowing Moust didn’t have the power either. He wiped a tear from his face.

  “Could someone tell me what’s going on?” Erland demanded.

  “What’s going on,” Leofwine said, straightening his back as his amusement faded, “is that you’re going to fetch my fucking saddle.” He lowered his voice to a sorcerer’s pitch. “Now.”

  Swallowing, Erland turned and strode toward the barn.

  Agda stood by the door with her arms wrapped over her belly. She had watched the whole thing without a word.

  The phooka vanished. Leofwine retrieved Arvakr’s lead and removed it from the halter.

  Moust limped up to Leofwine in no good mind. Shadows surrounded him, bleak and towering with judgment. He grasped Leofwine by the cloak at his neck and pulled him close. “Do you think this is a joke?” he grated through his teeth. “You underestimate the gravity of your situation. You’ve defied our orders to report, deliberately eluded our summons, you unleashed a—phooka—onto this realm and then summoned the Wolf to cover your careless ways.”

  Leofwine lifted his chin as rage and remorse washed through him. He had not summoned Fenrisúlfr to cover up anything, unless it was having left Ingifrith alone for so long. Moust knew nothing of that, or of Grimar, but in his nasty way he had put a knife in the wound all the same.

  Misreading Leofwine’s reaction, Moust rattled a hard laugh. “Oh yes, Adept Klemet, we know what you’ve done. The Archwolf has declared you a rogue. You’ll be treated accordingly.”

  Moust let him go with a shove and moved away down the path to fetch his horse. Erland returned, huffing with Arvakr’s saddle, blanket and bridle in his arms. “I’ll do it,” Leofwine said. Hesitating as if deciding whether to make an issue of it, Erland dropped the tack to the ground and stomped back to his barn.

  Moust returned on his horse, flexing his jaw as Leofwine finished saddling Arvakr. He fastened his things onto the saddle, his thoughts strangely blank. Gritting his teeth, he put his foot in the stirrup and got up. Leaving Moust to wait, he moved Arvakr around and rode to Agda, who still stood by the door.

  “I am grateful for your kindness, milady,” he said.

  She looked toward the barn, her face set. “We’ve no love for the Brotherhood. Erland would’ve let you die.”

  Leofwine bowed his head. He would have asked for an explanation for the comment, but with Moust breathing on his neck, there wasn’t time. He reached for his purse and shook out two silver coins. Then he leaned down, took her hand, folded it around the coins and kissed it. “You are Freya’s own. Thank you.”

  “Keep it close,” she whispered. She shot a shadowy glance at Moust, who sat on his horse near the path. Then she went inside.

  “One might think you fancied each other,” Moust said as Leofwine joined him. With methodical care, the sorcerer drew the reins over the neck of his horse. “Ah, but you don’t take women to your bed, do you?”

  “You’re safe,” Leofwine retorted.

  Coloring with the insult, Moust gripped his reins and set out down the hill. When they reached the road, he pressed his mount into a rough pace he undoubtedly knew would cause his captive the most pain.

  ~*~

  The two sorcerers rode, through wood, field and town, toward the Wolf’s Den, as Ýr was colloquially—and aptly— named. If anything told Leofwine how much trouble he was in, it was that the Masters of Ýr had sent this man to fetch him.

  Leofwine had been barely into manhood, a second-level apprentice to the Brotherhood. Moust, a moon’s cycle before, had been initiated to Adept. One winter’s day, as the north wind swept down from the Wythe Strait and pummeled the Wolf Lords’ ancient keep, Leofwine caught Moust performing a forbidden rite that bent living things to his will. He had captured a rat, a young, thin little thing, and was using his newfound skills to make it to do something or other, Leofwine never knew. The rite Moust had used on the rat was forbidden, as it defied the natural laws that governed life and imposed fear, driven by a subtle and almost undetectable entity that folded itself into the mind like a spider in a web.

  Instead of reporting Moust to the Masters, as he should have done, Leofwine took it upon himself to hold the discovery over the Adept in return for knowledge of an advan
ced tracking spell. Leofwine had thought to find Grimar to know his whereabouts and activities. For what purpose aside from satisfying the demons of his childhood, he hadn’t bothered to work out.

  Moust taught Leofwine the spell. In retrospect, especially after he had invoked a phooka using the same spell to find Othin during the war, Leofwine surmised the Adept hoped it would backfire on the young apprentice and teach him a lesson. But it never came to that. The Masters got wind of what he and Moust were up to and punished them both. Being an Adept, Moust got the worst of it, for not only working a forbidden spell but also teaching an apprentice something beyond his ability to control.

  What, by Trickster’s Wolves, had made Leofwine think the Masters had no way to catch their students doing such things? They had a legion of eyes and ears.

  Leofwine was no stranger to what a man was capable of when his passions or ambitions got the best of him. But Moust had a heart like the rotten core of an old tree, and he had hated Leofwine ever since. Moust had lost his status and the Masters’ trust, and it took him five suns to reclaim the title of Adept. Leofwine shuddered to imagine what he had endured to that end.

  Now, the tables had turned. Moust had used the infamous tracking spell to find him, of course, an irony that wasn’t lost on Leofwine. And if Moust was correct in saying that the Archwolf himself had decided Leofwine unworthy, his punishment would surpass that given to foolish youths.

  ~*~

  A single track stretched over the plain at the foot of Ýr. For a league it cut through the osier, heather, wild roses and wych elm, a sea of windblown brush where no trees grew save one: the Hanging Tree, a centuries-old yew with a hollow center. It was said in the villages that the Brotherhood used the tree to perform sacrifices to their gods, and that on the quarters of the sun’s wheel, bodies hung from the boughs, swaying in the wind. This was nonsense, rumors kept alive by generations of young apprentices looking to impress would-be lovers or unbelievers. There was a time, the old manuscripts said, when the sorcerers of millennia past had performed sacrifices, a time before mankind understood the deeper meanings of such things. Either that, or the forefathers of Ýr had etched fear into history to shelter themselves from a realm driven by war.

  The Hanging Tree crouched on the dim horizon like an old woman. Leofwine found himself wondering if the tree had ever been used to execute wayward sorcerers who did things like summon Fenrisúlfr to avenge a taunt.

  The air smelled of brine. Heavy clouds hung overhead, driven by persistent wind. Ahead, Moust made for the dark hollow of the gate at the base of the keep. His horse opened up into a gallop, his black cloak billowing in the air like the wings of a bat. Leofwine followed on Arvakr as fast as his hurts allowed. He didn’t try to keep up; it wasn’t as if he could turn and flee with a soulcleaver on him, all breath, fog and bones, just waiting for a desperate move. Moust didn’t even bother to look back.

  Ýr commanded the plain. Standing on a lone crag that had weathered the ravages of wind and sea for thousands of suns under the patient spells of the Brotherhood, the keep was built of rock the color of old gravestones, rising into an array of towers that resembled the sharp teeth of a beast. Deep within the roots, nestled in a chamber carved into the base of the crag, was a rift in the Veil that stared into the Otherworld. From the swirling, whispering mists, the Masters summoned all manner of beings to suit their purposes—including, no doubt, the soulcleaver that followed Leofwine.

  The rift was called Othin’s Eye, in reference to a Fylking tale about a well deep beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, the mighty ash tree of the cosmos by which Othin, the Hooded One, moved between worlds. A dark being named Mimir lived by the well, and by taking the water was said to possess knowledge of all things. Othin, lusting as always for knowledge by which he might serve his own mysterious ends, went to the well and agreed to sacrifice an eye to Mimir for a drink.

  It was said that the Archwolf of Ýr had gazed into the Eye for so long that he was blind, being no longer focused on the mortal world. Leofwine had never seen the Archwolf, and as with many things whispered in the sorcerers’ keep, he wondered if the tale was true or just a romantic metaphor for the nature of inner sight.

  Like the gods it served, Ýr was built on tales, deceptions, lust and war. Built over three thousand suns ago, it withstood the First Gate War that annihilated Dyrregin and much of the surrounding realms. Some say it was held together by sorcery, protected by beings summoned from the Otherworld. Many claimed it fell and was rebuilt, much like the Gate across the sea. But the history of that time lay shrouded in curses.

  In the beginning, before those who told the stories had died in the tides of war and time, Fjorgin was part of an empire ruled by the warrior class, an engine breeding armies bent on conquest. Spanning hundreds of leagues from its center in the west like the rays of a sun, it was ruled by Queen Regnhild, a bloodthirsty shield maiden who had risen to power through a line of rulers known as the Northern Spire. Her lust for war was matched only by her lust for men. She conquered realms, took their commanders to her bed, and put to the sword any who refused.

  Over time she began to long for greater prey. She captured a warden, a seer who served the Fylking and knew their ways, and questioned him. Queen Regnhild learned that the Fylking were mighty warlords, strong, proud and beautiful to behold. And so she turned her eye to Dyrregin, seeking to capture the Gate. She started with Tower Sie, which stood in her own realm, not far from the sea.

  But when she sent a legion to the tower, desolate and seemingly unmanned, Queen Regnhild discovered that the might of the Fylking wasn’t just a story fabricated to keep invaders at bay. The immortal warlords protected their Gate by sword and sorcery so terrible as to close the lands around the towers to all but their wardens. Five thousand of Regnhild’s finest men fell on the plains surrounding Tower Sie, flattened by a mysterious force that swept down from the sky and took their lives without warning or mercy.

  For all she knew of war, the Queen of the Northern Spire was no match for a race of warlords who had lived as many suns as the world of Math. Already tipped to imbalance by decades of ruthless ambition, this defeat broke her. She withdrew into her palace, left her wars to trusted commanders and turned to the Otherworld, the source of her defeat. There, it is told, she dreamed of a god as fair as the sun and as cold as the winter sky. He called himself Loki.

  Under the Sly One’s influence, Regnhild established the Order of Fenrir in service to her god and his dark progeny—a wolf, a serpent, and the queen of the Underworld—fitting company for a warlord broken by defeat. She commissioned the finest architects and builders of the realm to begin work on Ýr, which was to stand on the sea, on the eastern reaches.

  As a tenet of their Order, the Fenrir Brotherhood vowed never to attack the Gate.

  No one really knew what Regnhild saw in her dream. It might have been Loki, an Old God with questionable origins and a penchant for malice and trickery. Some believed the Fylking had brought her the dream under Loki’s guise to coerce her not to make war on them again. Others, including Leofwine, believed it was all just a dream.

  Whatever it was, Regnhild’s proclamations swept over the realm like fire. The warlords of Fjorgin were in those days a superstitious lot; they studied beasts, birds, entrails, leaves, weather and the stars for portents of victory or woe. Some, who were either sensitive to such things or just clever and opportunistic, rose up into positions of power by way of their mysterious knowledge. Many of these magicians, as they called themselves, claimed to belong to the Order of Fenrir. Over time their numbers grew. It was a lucrative occupation.

  Eventually, the Wolf Lords changed from a ragtag collection of warmongering, gold-seeking hedge warlocks to a powerful order of sorcerers. Queen Regnhild never gave orders to build Othin’s Eye—but someone in the Order of Fenrir did, someone who had the ability to move between the worlds and teach those who would learn the Magician’s ways. Again, as with so many facets of Fenrir’s history, this mystery was sur
rounded by a mist of tales and theories cloaked like the Hooded One’s face.

  When Queen Regnhild died, Ýr remained a stronghold ruled by Fenrir, Loki’s wolf, a fearsome guardian of its true rulers, who quietly trained sorcerers in the depths of stone and the winds from the sea. And when at last the empire of the Northern Spire fell into treachery and dissolution, as all empires eventually do, Ýr still stood. For by then it was the mightiest icon of the realm, and no one dared to approach it.

  Leofwine approached the hall of his Masters, following behind Moust in his stormy wake. Eyes seem to gaze down on him from every window. An iron portcullis shaped like bristles barred an oak door as tall as five men standing, an architectural menace from days long past and shadowed by war. To Leofwine, the snarly entrance had never seemed more apt.

  To the left of the gate, beneath a barbican built into the wall, stood a smaller entrance where the sorcerers of Fenrir came and went. On either side of the entrance stood two men, clad in wolfish shades of back and gray, and fully armed. The golden light of burning cressets flickered on the pommels of their blades and the details of straps, sheaths and bows. It smelled of pitch and the hay strewn beneath their feet.

  Leofwine didn’t recall ever seeing warriors put on guard here. There was hardly a need, with all the nasty, shadowy creatures the Masters had summoned from the Otherworld to ward the place.

  Leofwine dismounted by the door, his legs nearly buckling under him as his boots touched the ground, pain shooting through him in a spray of new places. He drew the reins over Arvakr’s head, pulled his hood over his face and entered the wide, torchlit corridor.

  Ahead, Moust handed the reins of his horse to a pale-faced stablehand and turned to Leofwine, his expression cold. As he fell in step behind the Adept, the soulcleaver’s presence throttling the light in his heart, he reached into a deep pocket of his tunic and closed his hand over Agda’s charm. Since when was trouble a bad thing? she had said.