The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  For a moment, the ranger didn’t move. Then he moved so fast Ingifrith’s shriek caught in her throat and stuck there. He knelt over her, a knife at her neck, his eyes wild. His bottle lay on the grave, its golden contents trickling into the dirt.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, holding her paralyzed against the stone. His breath smelled of whisky.

  “I’m sorry,” Ingifrith whispered, closing her eyes. “Ursa and the child, Adelheth.” Somehow, she knew their names. “They can’t cross the Veil to their ancestors. You are holding them. She watches—”

  The ranger grasped her by the cloak at her collar, hauled her to her feet and threw her, like a used rag, amid the vines and stones. Briefly marveling at how strong he was, she hit the ground with a cry.

  “You dare follow me here!” he bellowed, his face red with anger. “How do you—” His knife struck the ground near her head. “Get out! Get away from me or I swear by Hel I’ll gut you and throw you into the sea, you fucking witch!”

  Ingifrith got up and ran. She didn’t slow or look back as she heard glass shattering. She ran over graves and rocks and walls, trampling flowers, clutching at trees, gasping with tears. She ran down a hill toward a stone structure with a dark, arched opening. She ran inside, her hands groping at the cold walls until she found the end. Then she sank down and curled into a ball.

  She didn’t know how long she huddled there, crying, clutching her gut as the pain of a thousand ghosts swept through. She never ceased to be stupid. Her eyes never closed and she never shut up and she never paid attention to the fears of men. She wept until the well ran dry and night darkened the graves beyond.

  Unbidden, a shadow as strong as the stone roots of mountains rose up from the ground and stood before her. A chill swept over her. A dark elf. He was clad in the night, with smooth dark grayish skin and onyx eyes. He knelt by her side.

  Little one, he breathed as he surrounded her, hiding her from mortal eyes.

  Warmed by his presence, Ingifrith relaxed and drifted to sleep.

  ~*~

  A twig snapped. As she awoke, she went still as a hind.

  The blond-haired ranger sat at the entrance of her shelter, his blue cloak clutched around him and his head bowed. “Adelheth was my grandmother’s name,” he said quietly. “Ursa and I decided if the child was a girl, to name her that.”

  Ingifrith said nothing. Grief had driven this man mad, and he was capable of anything. She studied the dawn creeping over the graveyard outside and wondered how she would get past him.

  He turned to her. “Did I hurt you?”

  Her body was as stiff and aching as if she’d fallen down a flight of stairs. “How did you find me?”

  He looked at the ground. “I had help. My friend is a seer.”

  Some seer indeed, to see past the cloaking spell of a dark elf. Ingifrith got up, wincing as pain shot through her body. She moved in halting steps toward the light, ignoring the ranger as she passed him. Just outside, another man leaned against an oak tree in a ranger’s habit. He had tousled red hair, one arm in a sling, and a wound on his face that looked like a scythe. He touched between his eyes and tilted his head forward in a gesture of greeting and acknowledgement.

  “Ingifrith,” the blond ranger said behind her. Startled that he knew her name, she stopped.

  The red-haired ranger gazed at her quietly, his expression unreadable. A rift in the Veil surrounded him like a silvery nimbus. He was a seer all right, and a powerful one. Leofwine had never mentioned that the King’s Rangers of Dyrregin possessed such skills.

  The blond ranger came to her, his bearing laden with sorrow and remorse. He clasped his hands in front of him. “You saw the truth, and you offered it to me with a pure heart. I was wrong to attack you. I am sorry.” He lowered his gaze and then looked up again, his expression crumbling. “I need your help. I want”—his breath caught—“to free them. I don’t know how.”

  Ingifrith gestured to his friend. “Get him to help you.”

  “I’m not a warlock,” the other ranger informed her.

  “This is Bren, King’s Ranger of the North Branch,” the blond ranger said. “I am Prederi, of the same. Please. I didn’t mean to hurt you so.”

  Ingifrith closed her arms over her abdomen and released a breath, moved by the warrior’s sincerity. It occurred to her that a dark elf would never have left her with these men if they meant her harm.

  “Very well,” she said.

  “Are you hungry?” Bren asked. Ingifrith wondered if he could read her thoughts, though she knew otherwise. Maybe the same being that had told the ranger her name had also revealed her plight. She nodded.

  Prederi brightened. “Well, then. Let’s get you something to eat.” He headed away from the cave and up a short hill with Bren by his side.

  Ingifrith joined them, her heart lifting at the prospect of a meal. “The first thing you’ll need to do is pull up the hedge bindweed from their grave,” she said. “It’s creating a bridge to the Otherworld that’s keeping Ursa’s spirit here.”

  Prederi glanced at Bren. “That Blackthorn witch down by the river told me bindweed would ease my grief.”

  “Only by binding you to your loss,” Ingifrith said. “That can’t last. You’ve drawn Ursa across the Veil. She’s watching over you because she fears what you’ll do.”

  “She always knew you well,” Bren put in.

  “How can I convince her?” Prederi said.

  Ingifrith shrugged. “Well, you might want to stop acting like a horse’s ass.”

  Bren burst into laughter. “A tall order, that.”

  “Och!” Prederi barked back. “You should talk.”

  Ingifrith smiled as the rangers bantered with each other. Prederi’s grief would go hard on him later, when she brought him back to the grave to release his loved ones. But for now, at least, he had some hope in the light of the rising sun.

  Eyes and Ears

  The immortal commander of Niflsekt Covert Operations gazed over the sea that divided Fjorgin from the Fylking’s domain. The Gate glowed on his mind like a brand, burning along the edges of the unhealed wound on his body. The sun shone warmly on the eastern fangs of Ýr, but the ancient star did little to warm his heart.

  Three moons had passed since Vaethir had stepped back into this world, and still the Norn had not come through the Gate to find her warrior lover—unless the demon watchers Vaethir had stationed in Ason Tae were mistaken. Unlikely. Small, shifty, subtle as sleep, the pale creatures knew every breath and shade that came and went. And they haunted the Norn’s old cottage in the forest like mice.

  Once Vaethir finished here, no one but his men would be using the Gate. He would be left with no other recourse for satisfying his need than to kill the Norn’s lover and that, he vowed, he would do slowly.

  Master.

  Vaethir turned his head slightly at the voice in his mind. One of the first things he had taught the Wolf Lords was how to enter his mind when they needed him. After he had spilled the steaming bowels of an Adept on the floor for trying it casually, the others learned not to abuse the honor.

  Deference did not come easily to the Wolf Lords. An arrogant, unsavory bunch, old, flaccid and steeped in centuries of privilege and comfort, these men wielded a fine array of nasty skills particularly suited to war: detailed knowledge of demon hierarchies; a blithe willingness to use spit, blood, seed and sound to control and manipulate the natural order; and the inclination to summon every manner of freak and fiend from the Otherworld to spy, track, hold or kill anyone the sorcerers took an interest in.

  Useful indeed, as long as they remembered who employed them.

  This time, the call was distinct, emanating the tense yet measured tone of the Archwolf, as they called him. An interesting mortal. Crisp with age, patient as a spider, he had a soul as black as the hollow core of an old yew tree, with as many secrets. Most importantly, he knew of everything that crossed the Veil into this dimension and, being the power-hungry so
rt that he was, disliked competition.

  So did Vaethir. Once he set his plan into motion, powerful entities would seek entry to this dimension either to stop him—or to take advantage of a rare opportunity. The Wolf Lords not only knew every portal and weak spot in the Veil, but also anyone capable of summoning Others across. The sorcerers would be Vaethir’s eyes and ears.

  His cloak whipped in the wind, bent and curled into wings. He lifted into the air on a breath, a large black bird shining in the morning sun. He soared past the rocks, wind and sea falling silent as he passed between. He stepped into the sorcerers’ council hall, the heel of his boot making no sound on the granite floor.

  The Archwolf and another, absurdly titled the Master of Demons, huddled like crows on one end of the chairs placed along the dais. The Archwolf stood, his pale eyes blinking with concealed surprise at the sight of the High Immortal. Vaethir ignored half the calls they dared to make on him, a tactical maneuver that put them off guard when he did appear. Best not let them get too confident.

  “Master,” the sorcerer said, bowing his head. The stiffness in his manner showed he hadn’t bowed his head to anyone or anything in a very long time. His respect might have come from the death of his Adept; or because Vaethir had struck the Master of Sound and knocked him across the floor with a bloody lip, silent for a change; or perhaps it was Vaethir’s having summoned a soldier of the Third Sun and crushed the spiked and shining demon in cold blood at their feet. These men had not gained their positions by respecting the darker powers of the world. The sorcerers’ arrogance put even the Fylking to shame.

  But Vaethir had made progress. The Archwolf remained in place, his eyes down, still waiting for the High Immortal to respond.

  “Speak,” the Niflsekt said.

  “There is an issue we would like to bring to your attention,” the sorcerer said in his icicle voice. He exchanged a conspiratorial look with his companion. “It has come to our attention that Isarvalos is no longer warding the Order of the Hooded One.”

  The Order of the Hooded One. That was what they called the priestesses who had summoned Vaethir. Votaries of Othin. Twenty-two women in thrall to the Otherworld like first-defense warriors guarding a fortress gate. Vaethir might not have concerned himself with this arrangement before being cast through the Veil by a peasant woman with a knife and a patch of knitting. But women had a natural way with Chaos. Once he learned the priestesses were being guarded by the Demon Prince of the Severed Kingdoms, it took little or no imagination for Vaethir to put together whom the women had summoned him here to destroy.

  Isarvalos. No mortal would have the ability to summon him, not even these wicked sorcerers or their hidden priestesses. The demon warlord would not be wooed by blood sacrifices in Midwinter or at any other time. He witnessed thousands of those on battlefields over any given moon. Something else kept Isarvalos focused on this place.

  “How do you know this?” Vaethir asked, studying them as he might a nest of snakes.

  “A young priestess summoned Fenrisúlfr, without Othin’s Eye, for no other reason than to practice”—a pause—“or so she claimed.” His tone was overly stern. He was lying.

  “Practice for what?” Vaethir stepped forward, lifting his chin as his body glittered in focus. “Destroying you?”

  The Archwolf gazed up at the Niflsekt with surprising calm. “Isarvalos is charged with guarding against such acts. He is in violation of the Rule of Exchange.”

  “That is between him and whoever summoned him, do you not think?” A smile touched his lips as the old sorcerer squirmed under the reminder that neither Isarvalos nor the Order of the Hooded One was under his control.

  “This could compromise your mission,” the Archwolf returned flatly.

  As Vaethir gazed down, torture began to appeal to him. Something involving the souls of warlocks. A rusty sword. Leopard moths. The entrails of horses. Something that would lay this man bare and dissolve the layers of his presumptions.

  The High Immortal reached out and closed his hand over one side of the sorcerer’s face, his fingers pressing into the back of his skull. His hair was greasy. “I am not a demon at your command, to use when you have a problem.” As the sorcerer started to speak, Vaethir tightened his grip, silencing him. “How do you dare to tell me of my mission?”

  “It is the mission that concerns us,” the Master of Demons put in, clutching his cloak around his body. “If the Order of the Hooded One—”

  Vaethir turned to the sorcerer and spat a word through his teeth that cracked the Veil like an egg. Something silvery and streaked with blood darted through, landed on the man’s face and began to feed. “I was not talking to you,” Vaethir said over the man’s muffled scream. Vaethir left him there for a few moments, and then moved his head. The demon released the sorcerer and returned through the rift as if summoned. The sorcerer collapsed, heaving breath into his lungs and clutching his face with both hands, his fingers dripping with blood.

  The Niflsekt returned his attention to the Archwolf, now as pale as he ought to be.

  The old sorcerer lowered his gaze. “Forgive me, Master. I meant no disrespect.” On the floor, the Master of Demons straightened his back as if to speak. His face was covered with long, ragged cuts, oozing blood. His bottom lip was torn to the chin and one of his nostrils had been ripped halfway up his nose. Breathing heavily, he said nothing.

  “Your ancestors put those women down there with no thought as to the consequences,” Vaethir said. “How long did you think it would be before they found a way to rise against you?”

  “Isarvalos—”

  “Isarvalos cares nothing for you,” Vaethir informed them. “Or your women. He’s using you.” He studied their faces, twitching with questions they dared not ask. “Put the priestesses to the sword.”

  The sorcerers stared as if he had spoken in another language. “Master,” the Archwolf said finally. “That may not be easy—and it could have unintended consequences.”

  The Niflsekt tilted his head slightly. “You have gone soft under their hands. Or have I overestimated your capabilities?”

  The Archwolf lifted his chin. “No, Master.”

  Vaethir stepped into the air, swirling like a vortex. “You have your orders.”

  “Aye, Master.” The Archwolf dropped to one knee beside his bloody companion, bowing low.

  The High Vardlokk of Chaos slipped through the Veil, focusing on the Vale of Ason Tae.

  It was time.

  Witches and Wreckage

  Leofwine emerged from the cover of the forest into the midday sun, inhaling the pungent scent of the sea. Foamy waves rolled along the sparkling strand. Farther ashore, above an outcropping, several shanties leaned together, surrounded by rocks and shrubs. Gulls clamored, and cormorants stretched their wings to the wind blowing over the rocks.

  Early that morning, before the sun beamed over the eastern horizon, he had found a secluded place on the beach just north of Poes and cleaned Grimar’s blood from his runes. The wind, the stones and the deep waters were silent, as if watching in judgment. But the sun rose and cast a warm ray upon the bones, clearing them.

  After that, Leofwine rode into Poes and sought an old friend of his father’s. He not only helped him to secure passage on a ship to Dyrregin, but also gave him a name that wasn’t his, in case someone came questioning. Leofwine had purchased different clothes and a cloak from an old woman whose husband had died in a fishing accident and had no more need of it. It was drab gray, well-worn and would render him unassuming.

  Knots turned in his stomach. Nith’s protection spell had weakened over the leagues into a subtle sense of twilight, leaving him in a shadow of foreboding with no source. Something had drawn him here, some five leagues south, a long side-trip to take with his ship to set sail soon, but he had time, and the less time he spent in Poes the better. The port was a haunt for sorcerers and their apprentices, and Leofwine had to assume the word was out on him by now.

  He urged Ar
vakr down into the rhododendron brush rippling in the breeze. A narrow, sandy path threaded through the outcroppings away from the shanties. As he came in view of the shore, he checked the horse, his heart thumping with darkness.

  Two men stood below, on the water’s edge, leaning over something embedded in the sand. It looked like part of a mast with the shreds of a sail tangled around it.

  A black sail.

  Leofwine’s heartbeat quickened as one of the men pointed to the mast. His companion, standing a safe distance back, shook his head, then turned and looked over his shoulder as if he wanted to get away.

  It wasn’t that rare to see black sails; ships from Catskoll often had them. So Leofwine told himself. The ships belonging to the Fenrir Brotherhood all flew black sails. He gazed down at the scene, his chill deepening. Even in the bright sun, the wreckage had an unearthly pall around it.

  He moved Arvakr onto the beach, dismounted and approached. “Gentlemen,” he said, tilting his forehead onto his fingers.

  The man closest to the wreckage turned and looked the sorcerer over. His companion departed, hurrying over the rocks as if to escape a crime scene. The first stared after him for a moment before stepping away from the mast. “Who’re you?” His brown eyes narrowed beneath a mop of graying hair. “I’ve no’ seen you ’round here.”

  “I’m a traveler from the west,” Leofwine replied, smiling. “I was a boy last time I saw the sea.” He lifted his chin toward the wreckage. The mast was carved with runes, ending all doubt that it was a Fenrir ship. “Was there a storm?”

  The man sniffled, shook his head. “Na, no’ recently.” He stepped away, rubbing his jaw with a weathered hand as if he might say something more but decided against it. “G’day, sir.” With that, he lumbered off.

  “G’day,” Leofwine said after him. He stood there and feigned casual interest in the sea as the man cast a glance over his shoulder before vanishing over a rise. When he was gone, Leofwine circled the wreckage, a prickle in his gut. He didn’t need anyone to tell him there hadn’t been a storm. Even if there had been, the runes inscribed on the mast would have seen the ship safely to harbor and protected her from pirates, warships, leviathans and sorcery along the way. Furthermore, the spells in those runes were still active, which meant if he tried to penetrate them to find out what had happened, the Brotherhood might detect it and discover where he was.