A Companion to Wolves

by Elizabeth Bear

  Isolfr did manage to bloody Ulfrikr’s pretty nose on the practice field, however, so he was not entirely without satisfaction.

  Travel times were long, and with the trolls loose in the world far fewer wolves and men could come than otherwise; steadings could not be left undefended merely so the wolfheofodmenn could unify a course. It was a fortnight and a week until the Wolfmaegthing, and Isolfr fretted every instant. In the days before, Nithogsfjoll wolfheall assumed the aspect of a bazaar, and in the roundhall itself they slept packed together like pups in a den.

  Isolfr was fascinated by the wolfjarls who arrived and by the wolfcarls they chose to bring with them. And especially by their wolves. He could see, more easily than he would have thought—if he had thought about it beforehand at all—the bloodlines of the various wolfthreats, and in fact recognized the wolfjarl of Kerlaugstrond by his brother, who was of the same dam as Vigdis though of an earlier litter.

  Although the pack-sense of Nithogsfjoll remained cohesive, comfort like a heavy blanket in the back of Isolfr’s mind, the trellwolves of other packs were quite willing to talk to him. Most of the wolfjarls had brought their young wolves, and Isolfr was appalled and embarrassed to realize that, no matter how crudely he had put it, Ulfrikr had been right. The wolfjarls could talk about trolls, but their threats were interested in the young konigenwolf and the promise of a new wolfheall. There were fights: young wolves, and young men, and for one heart-stopping moment Vigdis and Signy—the konigenwolf of Thorsbaer, who was half-term and snappish in her discomfort—almost lit into each other. They stood nose to nose, lips curled, amber eyes and green unflinching, a low rumble rolling from Signy’s throat and Vigdis’ head down, silent, hackles raised, showing teeth as long as two joints of a woman’s finger.

  Isolfr plunged both hands into Viradechtis’ ruff and made fists hard enough to creak the bones in his hands. If she piled in, in defense of her mother—

  Then Grimolfr, calm as if he did not risk maiming or death, stepped between the konigenwolves, and Signy’s brother Leitholfr had his hands on Signy, and after a moment long enough that Isolfr’s chest hurt with holding his breath, Signy turned her head aside and began washing her brother’s face. And Grimolfr tilted his head and caught Isolfr’s eye, pushed his gray-brindled braid behind his ear, and sighed relief—a gesture that was meant for no one but Isolfr and the Thorsbaer wolfsprechend.

  It was a conspiracy of sorts—the conspiracy of wolfheofodmenn presenting a front to the pack—and Isolfr was startled to find himself on the inside of it.

  In the first raw days of spring, the threat of the last wolfheall arrived. The men and trellwolves of Othinnsaesc were cold and exhausted; their road had brought them all the way from the rough cliffs and fjords of the wild north sea, and they had been fourteen days traveling. Less of their threat had journeyed even than those of the other wolfheallan. There was only the wolfjarl and wolfsprechend and a handful, six, of the strongest and canniest of the wolfthreat. Isolfr lined up with the rest of the wolfheofodmenn of Nithogsfjoll wolfheall to greet them, clasping arms as the wolves whined and licked and sorted out who would defer to whom.

  He was halfway down the line when he found himself looking into Gunnarr Sturluson’s gray-blue eyes. He blinked, and almost stepped back, but the other man’s clasp on his arm and strong hand on his shoulder steadied him long enough to note that it was not his father’s face, just one very much like it, under wheaten braids shot through with ash. And the other man was staring at him with a similarly startled expression. “By Othinn, you have the look of her,” the strange wolfcarl said, and squeezed his arm hard before releasing it. “Isolfr, is it not?”

  The wolf at his side was a massive male, a charcoal-black as tall as Skald and broader at the shoulder, with cool green eyes. He sat politely, his head at the level of the blond wolfcarl’s ribs, and smiled at Viradechtis through grooved yellow teeth.

  “Yes. Isolfr Viradechtisbrother. And you—”

  “Othwulf,” he said, and bumped the big trellwolf’s head with his elbow. “And this is Vikingr. You have the look of your mother Halfrid when she was young.”

  Isolfr stepped out of the line, away, where they would not block the muddy gateway. Othwulf followed, his brother at his side. Vikingr’s muzzle was roaned with gray, but he still moved with the grace of a cat—a cat the size of a child’s pony. Isolfr put his age at perhaps eighteen or nineteen years: a wolf in the mature prime of his life. Isolfr stole a sideways glance at the tawny Othinnsaesc head-wolf, whom Vikingr dwarfed. That wolf must have a will of cast iron. Or perhaps the konigenwolf prefers blonds.

  He bit his lip on the grin. “You knew my mother.”

  “I was betrothed to your mother,” Othwulf said, his thin lips twitching into a smile. “I’m your father’s brother, Isolfr. I was Sturla Sturluson before I was a wolfcarl.”

  “Oh,” Isolfr said. Viradechtis leaned heavily against his hip, making coy eyes at Vikingr. He was grateful for the warmth; he didn’t think he was shivering because of the biting wind—despite the break of the stockade—or the crunch of mud freezing under his boots.

  “Oh?” Mildly, an expression that Isolfr could never remember having seen on Gunnarr’s face arching Othwulf’s brows and pursing his lips.

  Isolfr swallowed. “It—explains a great deal.” Othwulf didn’t answer immediately, and Isolfr shook himself, trying to break the terrible quiet that had settled over him. The motion startled Othwulf into laughter. “Come inside,” Isolfr said, when he could think what to say next. “You’ve journeyed far, and you’ll want hot ale and meat and the bathhouse.”

  Othwulf grinned and clasped his shoulder, and gave him a squeeze. “In just that order, too.”

  Twelve wolfjarls sat to the Wolfmaegthing, and ten wolfsprechends—the konigenwolf of Bravoll would litter at the equinox and did not travel, and the wolfheall of Franangford, hard-hit that winter and still reeling, could not spare both wolfjarl and wolfsprechend. But, as the wolfjarl of Bravoll said a shade ruefully, it was not as if they did not already know and agree with what the absent wolfsprechends would say. Meanwhile, the Wolfmaegth of the North sprawled across the Nithogsfjoll wolfheall’s compound, a vast, noisy, squabbling family, and waited their wolfjarls’ decision.

  They were not idle while they waited. Ulfgeirr and wolfcarls of similar authority from the other wolfheallan were dickering like farmers’ wives at market, using the opportunity of the Wolfmaegthing to shake up their threats, get new blood. Thraslaug went to Franangford with two of Kolgrimna’s pups, Harekr to Bravoll, Olmoth and Eitri to Kerlaugstrond, two of Asny’s pups to Ketillhill. In return, wolves from Vestfjorthr, Kerlaugstrond and Thorsbaer joined the Nithogsfjollthreat. They did not trade with Othinnsaesc, Ulfgeirr said when Isolfr asked, because both Vigdis and Skald came from Othinnsaesc lines.

  “And Arakensberg?”

  Ulfgeirr snorted. “Ulfsvith, the wolfjarl of Arakensberg, is cross-grained—although if you tell anyone I said so, you’re a dead man. He and Grimolfr have been scuffling for power like Mar and Glaedir these five years past. And Ulfsvith Iron-Tongue does not like it that Grimolfr called the Wolfmaegthing rather than leaving it to the discretion of Arakensberg. We would get nothing but troublemakers and weak wolves from Arakensberg this season, were I fool enough to ask, which I am not.”

  Isolfr nodded, and paid closer attention to the Arakensberg wolves courting Viradechtis. Two were older wolves, one Skald’s age, one probably fifteen or so; the third was a pup younger than Viradechtis herself. “Puppy-love,” his brother said resignedly, and he and Isolfr laughed.

  Viradechtis was indulgent toward the pup, as she was indulgent toward her own children; she was polite but unenthused about the oldest wolf. Isolfr only wished she would show the same restraint with the third wolf, Kjaran—or the scent of snow carried on a bitter wind. He was an odd-eyed gray, not as heavy-built as Viradechtis or her sire, but agile and fast and very, very smart. He and his brother were the indomitable runners from Arakensb
urg who had brought the news of the destruction of Jorhus what seemed a lifetime ago.

  The problem was not the wolf. The problem was Kjaran’s brother Vethulf, a tall, arrogant blue-eyed redhead of about Eyjolfr’s age. Vethulf-in-the-Fire his werthreatbrothers called him, apparently for his temper as much as his hair—and for his love, demonstrated many times over the days of the Wolfmaegthing, of a fight. Isolfr had vivid memories of the young man struggling across the frozen fields, of the sharp and concise manner in which he’d spoken of the devastation of Jorhus. He seemed far more like a wolfheofodman than Isolfr could ever hope to be.

  He tried to stay away from Vethulf, but that merely put him in the thick of things with the wolfcarls of the other wolfheallan, and Viradechtis made trouble wherever she went.

  “You’re as bad a flirt as Kolgrimna,” he told her, and she ignored him. And he understood that where Kolgrimna merely flirted out of boredom or malice or whatever it was that went on in her thick little skull, Viradechtis was thinking like a konigenwolf, encouraging competition among the dog-wolves so that she could judge their skill and speed and craftiness, so that she could choose her consort.

  But it was disruptive, annoying to other konigenwolves, and inappropriate to the business of the Wolfmaegthing—and Isolfr himself was unnerved at the way she seemed to favor Vikingr. He tried not to imagine himself lying down for his uncle, tried especially not to imagine what his father would say when he heard of it, but he could not help knowing that there was nothing to stop Othwulf putting himself forward as a candidate for wolfjarl when the time came—it was not as if Vikingr and Viradechtis shared unhealthily close blood and not as if the bloodlines of wolfjarl and wolfsprechend mattered at all.

  In desperation, he went to Ulfgeirr and begged to be put to work. And Ulfgeirr smiled, not unsympathetically, and set him to stirring glue for the tents that needed mending. Hot foul-smelling work, but Isolfr was comforted by the thought that no one was likely to try to court him over it.

  He reckoned, however, without the persistence of a stubborn wolf. Or two wolves. For Viradechtis followed him, and Kjaran followed Viradechtis, and inevitably Vethulf-in-the-Fire followed Kjaran—and found Isolfr. Who—red-faced, his hair lank with sweat, his hands spotted with burns—had never felt less capable of dealing with someone like Vethulf in his life.

  Vethulf took in the scene, his eyebrows going up. And then, instead of doing the charitable thing and going away again, he came and stood beside Isolfr while Kjaran tried to lure Viradechtis into a game of tug-o-war with a scrap of waterproofed bullhide.

  “So, I hear you are Othwulf Vikingrsbrother’s brotherson,” Vethulf said, with a sidelong glance. “It must have been very different, growing up in the keep of a jarl.”

  His tone was amiable, but the blue eyes were coolly mocking. Isolfr wondered with a sudden, horrible pang, if Vethulf had been talking to Ulfrikr. “Different from?”

  Vethulf’s gesture took in the yard of the roundhall, the packed men and beasts, the fire Isolfr sweated over, shirtless and smoke-smudged. “It can’t be what you expected your life would be like.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Isolfr said, wiping sweat off his face.

  “Well, you’re willing to turn your hand to any work.”

  He has been talking to Ulfrikr. “And why should I not be? Am I not a wolfcarl?”

  A few feet away, near where Ulfgeirr crouched on a stool, draped in leather, Nagli raised his head and whined.

  The wolf might show concern, but there was no law of pack or man that said Isolfr must stand and be insulted by a wolfcarl, even if Viradechtis favored his brother. He leaned his weight on the paddle, stirring the stinking mess in the cauldron harder.

  Vethulf said, “I only meant—”

  “I don’t care what you meant,” Isolfr said untruthfully. “I have work to do, so if you’ll—”

  Vethulf made an exasperated noise and pulled the paddle from Isolfr’s hands, leaving Isolfr staring at him, bewildered. “Aye,” Vethulf said, beginning to stir the glue savagely, “and I see they’re right that say you’ve prickles like a porcupine. Go find a stream to dunk your head in, Isolfr, and perhaps you’ll be better company.”

  Dismissed like a child, and Isolfr did go to the forest for most of the afternoon, though he and Viradechtis came back with little enough to show for it. The game was picked thin, wolves hunting anything, down to deer mice. It kept him away from the wolfheall, though, and so he did it more often—even, cravenly, fleeing altogether and hunting for several nights out. The scarcity of local game was a good enough excuse. He had not realized before how strongly he needed time to himself.

  So he hunted; it was useful work, and it allowed him to roam as far as he pleased. He returned with game and went out again. Frithulf came with him. Kothran and Viradechtis made a formidable team. Sokkolfr looked wistful, but he and Ulfgeirr had their hands more than full with the Wolfmaegthing; Frithulf teased him that that was what he got for making himself invaluable.

  The fourteenth day of the Wolfmaegthing—and all of them hoping it would be the last, before Signy and Vigdis caused a riot—Isolfr and Frithulf were kneeling together, companionably butchering a deer while Viradechtis and Kothran fought grand mock-battles over the entrails, when Frithulf said, abruptly, “When you go to start a new wolfheall …”

  “Yes?” said Isolfr.

  He looked up when Frithulf did not answer immediately, and was surprised to see his friend blushing hotly. “Will you take me and Kothran with you?”

  Isolfr’s jaw dropped. He said stupidly, “Kothran will never be top wolf with Viradechtis.”

  Frithulf snorted and glanced fondly at his brother, currently playing keep-away with some unsavory portion of the deer’s innards. “Kothran’s never going to be top wolf, no matter what wolfheall we’re in. And that suits me fine.” He grinned. “You may find this hard to believe, but I don’t want to be a wolfjarl. You know Sokkolfr’s planning to follow you, and Ulfbjorn, and several others?”

  “I …”

  “And I want to be where you and Sokkolfr are.” For once, the expression in Frithulf’s bright blue eyes was perfectly serious. “You’re my pack.”

  Isolfr nodded, his heart too full for speaking, and bent his head again to his work.

  When they returned to the wolfheall, lugging the deer and a brace of rabbits, they found the doors of the roundhall still barred and the werthreat looking tired and grim. No decision had been reached. No solution had been found. And Isolfr didn’t need to see Hrolleif to know what the issue was.

  The issue hadn’t changed.

  There simply were not enough wolves, and there were not enough men, and they did not know what—if it were more than some dim, trellish instinct to expansion awakened after hundreds of years of border wars—was pushing the trellmaegth southward into the lands of men.

  Isolfr and Frithulf delivered the meat to the kitchens, where a delighted and harried Jorveig greeted them with warmed ale and coarse rye bread smeared with bear fat, and then Isolfr scratched his light beard, made his excuses to his werthreatbrother, and went in search of somebody whom he had been taking pains to avoid.

  Othwulf was making himself useful by the byre, doctoring the fevered hoof of a spotted cow while another man held her head. Their wolves were not in evidence, for which Isolfr was deeply grateful, and he sent Viradechtis away as well before he approached the unhappy animal. Wise to the ways of skittish cattle, Isolfr made sure she could see him plainly as he walked up. He did not think Othwulf would thank him for a kick in the ear if the cow spooked, and it was already agitated enough about what the wolfcarl was doing to it with a heated knife.

  The cow lowed and jerked hard. Othwulf must have gotten the angle he wanted, because he was rewarded—if that was the proper term—by a spurt of bloody, putrid pus across his hands and the smack of a befouled cow-tail across his skull. He swore and set the cow’s hoof down, grinning as she lowed again, irritably, and put her full weight on the hoof a
pparently without noticing that it didn’t hurt. “Ungrateful woman,” Othwulf said, and, holding his knife’s pommel as if it were the tail of a dead rat, looked around for something on which to wipe his stinking fingers. For an instant, Isolfr could see his father’s face in Othwulf’s satisfaction at another problem seen to.

  Mutely, Isolfr led him to the wellhead in the courtyard, hauled up a bucket, and sluiced the rot off Othwulf’s hands and knife.

  “Thank you, Isolfr.”

  “You can thank me with answers, uncle.”

  Othwulf laughed. “I’m not your uncle here.”

  Which was, of course, its own small part of the problem. “I need you to be, for a moment.” He noted with gratitude that Othwulf’s sardonic smile deserted him, and that the wolfcarl waited silent for what Isolfr would say. Isolfr gulped air and forged forward. “My father hates the Wolfmaegth.”

  Othwulf nodded, drying his knife carefully on his jerkin before putting it away. “I suspected as much. And knew it, when I saw you here. He didn’t want to marry Halfrid, you know. Didn’t want to be jarl and raid and quarrel and raise cattle and worry about there being enough hurdles woven to keep the sheep in pasture—” The wolfcarl sighed. “Those were to be my duties. Gunnarr talked of going viking, bringing home a king’s ransom and a princess from across the sea.”

  “He’s jarl. He could go if he wanted—”

  Othwulf’s eyebrow rose. “And leave Nithogsfjoll, of all places, without a lord all summer? He might as well carve runes on the door inviting the trellmaegth for dinner and maybe a circle dance.” And Othwulf looked up, over Isolfr’s shoulder, a squint that Isolfr knew by Othwulf’s smile had the big wolf Vikingr pinned on its other end. “He was not happy to lose you.”

  “He was not happy,” Isolfr agreed, falling into step beside him as Othwulf began walking toward the pack of wolves among whom Vikingr dozed. “And when Grimolfr went to ask for men-at-arms—”

  “I understand.”

  Isolfr laughed, although it scoured his throat. “Not the half of it. He told the wolfjarl that he had given enough to the wolfheall already, and asked how Grimolfr liked bedding me.”