Wolfskin

by Juliet Marillier

  “There is a land out in the western sea,” he told them, “a land my father heard tell of from a man he met at the markets in Birka, beyond the eastern mountains in the land of the Svear. This fellow had traveled far, from wild Pictland southward through Britain, by sea to the Frankish realms and north to Saxony. From there he took ship to the Baltic markets with his precious cargo: boards set with jewels and fine enamelwork, which once housed books in a temple of the Christian faith. The books themselves were discarded, but the bindings were indeed things of wonder, and would make this man rich if he were not slaughtered in the darkness first for what he carried. He had made a long journey. Pictland is a bleak territory, inhabited by wild people. But from its northern shores, said this traveler, far out in the trackless ocean, can be reached a place of warm sea currents, of verdant islands and sheltered waterways, a realm of peaceful bays and gentle grazing lands. The crossing is dangerous from those parts in the vessels they use, simple skin curraghs for the most part. It is a longer path from Rogaland, but not so long that it could not be done, if a ship were built strongly enough to withstand the journey. The news of such a place inspired my father. He yearned to travel there. That he was prevented from pursuing it is a lifelong regret for him.”

  “You plan to undertake an expedition to those parts yourself, my lord?” Karl asked politely.

  Ulf gave a rueful smile. “I make it plain enough, I suppose, that I have inherited my father’s obsession. Such a venture would be fraught with risk. But one day I will do it.”

  “You’d need a fine boat,” Eyvind said, hoping he did not speak out of turn. “If it’s a rough crossing from that southern shore, it could be a rougher one from Rogaland, all the way. It’s a brave man who would voyage beyond the skerry-guard, straight out into open seas: into the unknown.”

  The Jarl’s kinsman looked at him with sudden interest. “I’ll build a boat, lad,” he said quietly. “She’ll be a queen among vessels, sleek, graceful, the equal of any of our shore-raiding ships for speed and maneuverability, but strong enough for a long voyage in open water. I’ll gather the best shipwrights in all Norway to work for me, and when the boat is ready, the finest warriors in all Norway will travel with me. I’ll see that land while I’m still young, and if it pleases me, I’ll take a piece of it in my father’s name.”

  The eyes of every man in the hall had kindled with enthusiasm, for when Ulf spoke of this dream there was something in his face, his voice, his bearing that seized the spirit and quickened the heart. It was plain this soft-spoken, reserved man was that rare phenomenon: a true leader.

  “It’d cost you an arm and a leg,” Eirik observed. “Ships, crew, supplies.”

  “You doubt my ability to carry this out?” Ulf’s expression was suddenly grim.

  “Indeed no,” Eirik said calmly. “I do not. But even a Wolfskin likes to know what he’s getting into.”

  Ulf smiled. “Ah,” he said, “I have one taker, then.”

  “Two.” Hakon spoke from his place on the nobleman’s other side. “You are a man of vision, my lord. A new horizon, an unknown land: what warrior could fail to be drawn by that? I will go, if you’ll have me.”

  Ulf nodded. “I hope Magnus may be prepared to support us, and to release you both. It won’t be tomorrow, my friends, or next season. As you say, there must be resources for such an undertaking. I need time. Still, I see the great ship in my mind, her sails full-bellied in the east wind, her prow dragon-crested; I taste the salt air of that place even now.”

  “The expedition is a fine prospect and stirring to the spirit,” Eirik said. “Good farming land is scarce enough here; a man with many sons leaves scant portions. There’s more than one likely lad who would jump at the chance to settle in such a place, if it’s indeed as verdant and sheltered as you say. You’ll find plenty of takers before you go, I think.”

  “As to that,” said Ulf, “I winnow my wheat once, twice, three times before I make my bread, for I am slow to trust. I will not sink all my resources in such a venture to have it end with a knife in the back.”

  “Wisely spoken.” To everyone’s surprise, it was the boy Somerled who spoke. “My brother is a man with a curse on him; he needs to be rather more cautious than most.”

  Ulf was regarding his brother with a look of distaste. “Enough, Somerled,” he said. “We will not speak of that here at this peaceful hearth.”

  “It’s a good curse.” The boy went on as if Ulf had not spoken. “A kind of riddle. I like riddles. It goes like this:

  “Pinioned in flowers of straw

  Cloaked in a mackerel’s shroud

  His dirge a seabird’s cry

  Neither on land or water does he perish

  Ulf, far-seeker, dreamer of dreams

  Yet tastes the salt sea, watches the wild sky

  By neither friend nor foe

  Slain with his hope before his eyes.”

  There was silence. It was plain to all that Ulf had not wanted this spoken aloud.

  “A strange verse indeed,” Karl said after a little. “What does it mean?”

  “As to that,” Ulf said soberly, rising to his feet, “it seems nonsense. If a man is neither on land nor water, where can he be? Flying like an albatross? An old woman spoke such a verse over me when I was in the cradle, that is all. Folk make much of it, but it seems to me a man must live his life without always looking over his shoulder. If some strange fate overtakes me and proves these words true, so be it. I will not live in fear of them. Indeed, I would prefer to forget them.” He frowned at Somerled.

  After that, the talk turned to safer matters, and soon enough it was bedtime. Because Somerled was a nobleman’s brother, and a visitor, the two lads who shared Eyvind’s small sleeping area had to move, and Somerled was given their space. It meant there was more room, which Eyvind appreciated. He was growing taller; his toes were making holes in his boots and his wrists stuck out of his shirtsleeves. Somerled was small, and slept neatly, rolled tight in a blanket, still as if dead. On the other hand, he had a gift for banishing other people’s sleep. That first night, just as Eyvind, comfortably tired from the long day’s work and warmed by the strong ale, hovered on the verge of slumber, Somerled asked another question.

  “Do you think she screamed?” he inquired.

  Eyvind’s eyes snapped open. “What? Who?” he asked testily.

  “You know. That girl, Thora. Do you think she screamed, when she started to burn?”

  “Leave it, will you?” growled Eyvind, too annoyed to think of good manners. He had almost managed to forget the story of Niall and Brynjolf in the warmth and fellowship of the longhouse. Now it came back to him in all its painful and confusing detail.

  “I should think she did,” Somerled said tranquilly, answering his own question. “I wonder what Niall felt when he heard the singing change. I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows.”

  Eyvind pulled his blanket over his head and stuck his fingers in his ears. But Somerled was finished; before you could count to fifty he was snoring peacefully. It was Eyvind who tossed and turned, his mind flooded with dark images.

  Eirik did offer his brother a kind of apology before he left, and an explanation. Ulf had been concerned about Somerled, Eirik said. The boy had never been quite the same since he witnessed his own mother’s death. His father was old and bitter and had not been kind to this young son, and the household had taken its lead from the master. Ulf had been away a long time, and had returned to a home on the brink of self-destruction. Powerful chieftains gathered close, hovering as scavengers do, awaiting the moment of death. There was a need to take control quickly, to undo the ill his father’s mismanagement had created before lands and status were quite lost. But Ulf wanted his half-brother—Somerled was the child of a second marriage—out of the place first. The boy had seen too much already, and was behaving very strangely. He spent all his time alone, he didn’t seem to trust anyone, and he never wanted to play games, or ride
, or wrestle, as a boy should. Indeed, Ulf scarcely knew what to do with him, and Somerled had made it no easier by refusing to talk. The boy was as tightly closed as a limpet.

  So Ulf had brought Somerled back to the south, and sought out his friend, Eirik the Wolfskin, a man known to have a great deal of common sense. Eirik heard Ulf’s tale and made an offer. He had a brother of about Somerled’s age. He thought his mother would not object to another lad around the house. Why didn’t Ulf leave the boy with them, at least until the summer?

  “I must confess,” Eirik told Eyvind with a half-smile, “I welcomed the chance this gave me to return here for a little. And Ulf thought it an excellent idea. Somerled has not had the company of other children, and it shows in his demeanor. He seems unnaturally shy; I’ve hardly heard him utter a word.”

  Eyvind grimaced. “He talks to me,” he said.

  “Good,” said Eirik. “That’s a start. I’ve a great deal of respect for Ulf; he’s a man of vision and balance. I was glad to be able to help him.”

  “Eirik?”

  “What?”

  “When can I do the trial? How much longer? I’m nearly twelve now, and I’ve been practicing hard. I can take a hare neatly at two hundred paces, and swim across the Serpent’s Neck underwater without coming up for air. How long must I wait?”

  “A while yet,” said Eirik. “Four more summers at least, I think.”

  Eyvind’s heart plummeted. He would not speak his disappointment, for Thor did not look favorably on such signs of weakness.

  “But maybe not so long,” his brother added, smiling. “You are almost a man. What boy has such great hands and feet? And you’re nearly as tall as I am, for all I have six years’ advantage. Perhaps only three summers.”

  That was good news and bad news. Eirik thought him nearly grown up; that made his cheeks flush with pride. But three years, three whole years before he got the chance to prove himself? How could he bear to wait so long? How could he endure such an endless time and not go crazy with frustration?

  The weather had eased long enough for Ulf and his companions to be away, and both Eirik and Hakon went with them. As if only waiting for their departure, the snow set in again, and Eyvind found his days full of digging, clearing paths to wood store and barn, endlessly shovelling the thick blanket from the thatch. Somerled followed him out, watching gravely as he swung up onto a barrel and clambered to the rooftop. From up there, the boy looked like a little shadow in the white.

  “Go back inside!” Eyvind called down to him. “This is not a job for you!”

  But Somerled began to climb up, slipped, cursed, climbed again; on tiptoes, balanced precariously on the barrel, he could just reach the eaves with his upstretched arms.

  “You can’t—” Eyvind began, looking over, and then stopped at the look in Somerled’s eyes. He reached down and hauled the other boy up bodily by the arms. “Didn’t bring a shovel, did you?” he observed mildly. “Watch me first, then you can take a turn. Next time bring your own; they’re in the back near the stock pens. You need to keep moving or you’ll freeze up and be no use to anyone.”

  He didn’t expect Somerled to last long. It was bitterly cold, the shovel was large and heavy and the task backbreaking, even when you were as strong as Eyvind was. He worked a while, and then Somerled tried it, sliding about, losing his balance, teetering, and recovering. He managed to clear a small patch. His face grew white with cold, his eyes narrow and fierce.

  “All right, my turn,” Eyvind told him, finding it hard to stand idle when he knew he could do the job in half the time.

  “I haven’t d–done my share. I c–can go on.”

  “Rest first, then have another try,” said Eyvind, taking the shovel out of Somerled’s hands. “You’ll get blisters. If I’m supposed to be teaching you, then you’d better learn to listen.”

  They did the job in turns. It took a while. He glanced at Somerled from time to time. The lad looked fit to drop, but something in his face suggested it would not be a good idea to tell him to go indoors and let Eyvind finish. So he endured Somerled’s assistance, and at length the roof was cleared. When they went back inside, Ingi exclaimed over Somerled’s chattering teeth, and his poor hands where lines of livid blisters were forming across the palms, and she chided Eyvind for pushing the boy so. Didn’t he know Somerled was not used to such hard work? He should be easier on the lad. Eyvind muttered an apology, glancing sideways at his companion. Somerled shivered, and drank his broth, and said not a word. Maybe both of them were learning.

  Several boys lived at Hammarsby. Some were the sons of housecarls, folk who had worked for Ingi so long they were almost family. Somerled did not exactly go out of his way to make friends, and in the confines of the snowbound longhouse it did not take long for others to notice this, and to set him small trials as befitted any newcomer. Someone slipped a dead rat between his blankets, to be discovered suddenly when he went weary to bed in the darkness. The next day, Eyvind spoke to the lads of the household, saying Somerled was not used to such pranks, having grown up without brothers or sisters, and that it was not to happen again. Nobody actually confessed. The morning after that, Ingi inquired what was wrong with the porridge, to make all the boys look so green in the face? Good food should never be wasted, especially in the cold season. But the only two eating were Eyvind and Somerled, and Somerled wore a little smile.

  Later, Eyvind discovered the lads’ gift had been returned to them in kind. Since there was no knowing who had planted the rat, Somerled had been scrupulously fair, and shared it among them in precisely cut portions. An ear and an eye. A nose with whiskers. A length of gut. He had, it seemed, his very own way of solving problems.

  Eyvind did not ask Somerled about his past. He did wonder, sometimes. There were so many things the boy did not know about, or just could not do. He had surely never looked after animals, for he seemed quite ignorant of how to treat them. He did not understand, until Eyvind explained it to him, that when a dog lowered its head and growled at you with flattened ears, you did not growl back or give it a kick. You must speak to it kindly, Eyvind told Somerled. You should not look it in the eye, just stay close and move slowly. You had to let the dog get used to you, and learn you could be trusted. Somerled had thought about this for a little, and then he had asked, “Why?” So, shaggy-coated Grip continued to growl and snap every time the boy went past, though the old dog let little children climb over his back and tug his rough coat with never a bark from him.

  Somerled did not like snow games. Sometimes, when all their tasks were done to Ingi’s satisfaction, the boys and girls of the household would venture out onto the hillside to hurtle down the slopes on wooden sleds or pieces of birch bark. There were clear, bright days when the world seemed made anew in winter shades of twig gray and snowdrift white under a sky as blue as a duck egg. Eyvind longed for the freedom of summer, but he loved this time as well. There was no feeling like speeding across the ice with the bone skates strapped to his boots, the sheer thrill of the air whipping by, the pounding of the heart, the fierce joy of pushing himself to the limit and knowing he was invincible. This was what it would be like when he became a Wolfskin and rode the prow of the longship: the same feeling, but a hundred times stronger.

  He could not understand why Somerled would not join in these games. The other boys jeered at the newcomer and exchanged theories behind his back. Eyvind had tried to stop this, but he would not report it to Ingi; one did not tattle-tale. Besides, the boys were right. Somerled was a very odd child. What if he did fall off the sled, or land on his bottom on the ice? That had happened to all of them. People might laugh, but it would be a laughter of understanding, not of scorn. Yet Somerled would not even try. He stood in the darkness under the trees and watched them, stone-faced, and if anyone asked him why he did not join in, he would either ignore the question completely, or say he did not see any point in it.

  Part of Eyvind wanted to forget that fierce-eyed small presence under the trees.
Somerled made his own difficulties; let him deal with the consequences. Part of Eyvind wanted to skate away over the dark mirror of the frozen river, to join the others in wild races down the hillside, to build forts of snow or to venture out into the woods alone, spear in hand, seeking fresh meat for his mother’s pot. But he’d promised Eirik. So, with decidedly mixed feelings, Eyvind devoted several lamplit evenings to fashioning a pair of skates from a piece of well-dried oak wood, iron-strong, with thongs of deerhide to fasten them to the boot soles. Somerled watched without comment.

  Acting on an instinct he could not have explained, Eyvind got up very early, shrugging on his shirt and trousers, his tunic, his sheepskin coat and hat of felted wool as quickly as he could, for the cold seemed to seep into every corner of the longhouse. The place was quiet, the household still sleeping. He took his own skates and the new pair, and turned to wake Somerled. But, quiet as a shadow, the boy had risen from the wooden shelf where they slept, and was putting on his own clothes, as if he did not need to be told. It seemed Eyvind’s instinct had served him well.

  Ancient as he was, the dog Grip was ever keen to accompany the children on any expedition out of doors, as companion and protector. But today he seemed wary, growling softly as the two of them tiptoed into the hallway and out to the back door. Eyvind gave him a pat and pointed him back inside. Such an old dog was best resting by the embers of last night’s fire, for the cold was enough to freeze the bollocks off you. He must be mad, taking Somerled out so early. Still, the boy followed willingly enough, asking not a single question.

  Down by the frozen river, in a morning darkness where the snow seemed blue and the sky red, where bushes and trees stretched out twigs like skinny fingers, frost-silvered, into the strange winter light, Somerled strapped on the new skates with no hesitation at all, stood up, slipped on the ice, fell flat on his back, got up again and, arms gripped firmly by Eyvind’s powerful hands, began to move forward step by sliding step. That was how simple it was. All that was needed was that nobody else should be there.