She Wolf

by Dan Smith

‘I can take care of myself.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it – you’re a Dane – but why give yourself the trouble? Why put yourself in danger?’ The man thought for a moment. ‘Here’s what I suggest; you’re a warrior, I can see that, so we’ll let you keep your weapons. Hold an arrow against your bowstring for as long as you like, and keep the axe in your belt so you’re prepared for whatever may come, but join us at the fire, sit for a while, eat some of our kill, drink some warm ale, and then . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Then go on your way if that’s what you want to do. We won’t stop you.’

  Ylva searched his eyes for the lie then glanced over his shoulder at the glow of the fire. Her body was infected with cold. It ran through her veins. Everything was numb and exhausted. The fire called out to her, and now there was a smell of cooked meat drifting in the air, making her stomach rumble. Maybe she should go to the fire and talk to these men.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I know how to use this, and I’ll shoot you sooner than I’d shoot a rat.’

  The man smiled. ‘I’ll lead the way.’

  11

  Three Brothers

  The third man was roasting rabbits on skewers over the fire at the far edge of the glade. Barrel-chested, round-stomached, and wide-faced, he had a moustache to be proud of.

  ‘My brother Varg,’ said the man with the kind face. ‘We call him Varg the Stout, and I’m sure you can see why. You already met my brother Arvid.’ He waved a hand at the half-goat man. ‘And you can call me Halvor.’ He sat down on a fallen tree and held his hands out towards the fire. ‘Sit. Get yourself warm.’

  As the three men took their places, Ylva glanced around their camp. Their sheepskin bedrolls were in an arc on the other side of the fire, and three shields rested against the far end of the tree trunk, their decorated faces turned away from her. There were helmets, spears, and a couple of satchels. A trio of mangy horses was hobbled close by.

  Outside the camp, away from the fire, a young black-haired man knelt at the base of a tree. He wore a pair of dirty breeches and a torn shirt, but nothing else. He looked like a Saxon, and Ylva thought he was praying to his Christian god, until she realized he was tied. His wrists and ankles were bound behind him, forcing him into a permanent hunch, and he was unable to control his shivering.

  When Ylva didn’t sit, Varg the Stout invited her once more. ‘You can relax,’ he said. ‘We won’t hurt you. Drink. Eat.’ He held out a cup of ale in one hand and a cooked rabbit leg in the other.

  Ylva’s mouth watered and she could almost taste the roasted meat, but she stayed where she was.

  ‘Well, all right,’ Varg the Stout said. ‘Sit, stand, hop on one foot, it makes no difference to us. Skol.’ He raised the cup to his lips and drained it.

  Arvid, the goat-man with the pointed teeth, leant over and squirted a big gob of spit at one of the hot rocks that ringed the fire. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and watched it hiss and bubble.

  Once more, Ylva glanced over at the man tied at the base of the tree. ‘Who is he?’ she asked.

  Halvor took a skewered rabbit from the fire and bit into it. ‘He’s a murderer.’ He wiped grease from his beard with the back of his hand.

  ‘A murderer?’ Ylva studied the wretched man. ‘Who did he murder?’

  ‘What does it matter?’ He raised his voice so the wretched man could hear him. ‘We’ve followed him more than five days across Midgard, and now we have him.’

  ‘So, you’re hunters?’ Ylva came closer and perched on a rock opposite the three men. She put the bow across her lap and held her hands towards the fire. ‘Hunters of men?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Halvor’s eyes shone in the glow of the fire.

  ‘Then maybe you can help me.’

  ‘Help you?’ Halvor took another bite. ‘How might we do that?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone. Two people, in fact. A man and a woman. They’re also murderers who need to be brought to justice – they killed my mother. Men like you could help me find them.’

  ‘Why would we do that?’ Arvid grinned, letting Ylva see his pointed teeth. ‘What’s in it for us?’

  On the other side of the small glade, the forest was in shadow. The sun was finally gone from the day and Ylva could see no more than a few paces into the trees. She was huddled in a small cocoon of light in a dark, cold world, and as she watched the shadows, Geri crept into view, head down, and stopped just outside the circle.

  Don’t trust them.

  ‘Well?’ Arvid asked again. ‘What’s in it for us?’

  Don’t trust them.

  Ylva ignored the voice in her head. ‘Silver,’ she said.

  The three men sat up a little straighter.

  ‘Silver?’ Halvor swallowed and held the skewered rabbit poised in front of his mouth. ‘You have silver with you? How much?’

  ‘I’m not stupid; I don’t have it with me. My father has it in Dunholm. He’s a jarl. As brave as a berserker, and as strong as ten men.’

  ‘A jarl in Dunholm?’ Halvor said.

  ‘Yes.’ Ylva picked at the skin around her fingernail. ‘That’s where we were headed when those people I told you about killed Mother. My father will pay you.’

  ‘You’re a long way from Dunholm,’ Arvid said.

  ‘Wait,’ Halvor stopped him. ‘Let me make sure I understand.’ He lowered the rabbit and stroked his beard. ‘You’re saying that if we help you find the people who killed your mother, you’ll pay us. Once we get to Dunholm, that is, where your strong, brave father will be waiting for us with his hands full of silver.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ylva glanced across at Geri standing in the shadows.

  ‘She thinks we’re idiots.’ Varg the Stout tore a leg off his own rabbit. ‘There’s no jarl in Dunholm. Her father’s probably some useless farmer who couldn’t even lift an axe.’ He put the whole thing into his mouth, sucked off the meat, and threw the bones over his shoulder.

  ‘He is a jarl,’ Ylva said. ‘He’s Thorin Andersen. Thorin the Fearless. He’s brave and strong, and made his riches raiding Christian abbeys and killing Saxons.’

  ‘And I suppose he has a great army of Vikings,’ said Varg the Stout.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Even bigger than the Great Army.’

  ‘No,’ Ylva said. ‘Not that big, but—’

  ‘Dunholm is a Saxon town, there’s no jarl there.’ Arvid snorted and spat again.

  ‘He’s not in Dunholm,’ Ylva said. ‘He’s near Dunholm. He’s going to attack it.’

  Arvid laughed at that. ‘Well, wherever he is, if this Thorin the Fearless was so rich and strong, we’d have heard of him. And why would he pay us to help you, when he has an army of warriors to send after these murderers?’

  ‘I want to make him proud of me,’ Ylva said. ‘It’s what the gods expect of me.’

  ‘The gods,’ Arvid scoffed. ‘What do you know about the gods? And if you’re a jarl’s daughter, then I’m Balder the Beautiful.’

  ‘Wait.’ Halvor stopped him again. ‘Let’s say for the sake of argument that you really do have a rich father in Dunholm, and that we agree to help you.’ He looked at his brothers. ‘How exactly will we know when we find the people who killed your mother?’

  ‘I’ll recognize them.’

  ‘But what if we found these people and you weren’t there for some reason? How would we know them? So we could catch them for you, you understand.’

  Ylva held up her hand and hesitated. Once again, she looked across at Geri standing on the edge of the circle of light.

  Don’t trust them.

  ‘You see something?’ Varg the Stout glanced over his shoulder and scanned the trees before turning back to Ylva. ‘You keep looking back there. What are you looking at?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sure she was alone?’ Varg asked his brother.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Arvid told him.

  ‘You searched properly?’

  ‘Of course. You think I’m an idiot?
’

  Halvor hushed them and spoke to Ylva. ‘You were going to tell us what they look like. The people who killed your mother.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ylva ignored Geri and slowly folded down her two smallest fingers. ‘The man only has three fingers on his right hand.’

  ‘A three-fingered man?’

  ‘Yes. And both he and the woman wore scarves over their mouths, with half-skulls painted on them. Wolf skulls.’

  ‘Wolf skulls?’ Halvor put down his food and leant forwards.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ylva said.

  Halvor frowned. ‘And you’re sure this man and this woman murdered your mother?’

  By the trees, Geri curled back his lips to show his teeth. His ears flattened against his head, and the fur on his back bristled.

  ‘Do you know them?’ Ylva asked.

  ‘Yes we do.’ Halvor put his greasy fingers into his collar and pulled up his scarf. ‘They’re friends of ours.’

  12

  Be Careful Who You Trust

  Ylva stared at the half-skull design on Halvor’s scarf while thoughts tumbled in her head like snowflakes in a storm. She had been stupid, just as Cathryn said. She had come into the wilderness alone, and she had trusted when she shouldn’t have trusted. Geri’s instincts were right. These Vikings were friends with the three-fingered man, the person who had murdered Mother, and now they would kill her.

  As soon as that thought was clear in her head, her hand was moving. Ylva raised the bow from her lap, drawing the string as quickly as she could. She turned it towards the three men, releasing the arrow before it was level.

  Fired in haste, the iron-tipped arrow went wide of its target . . . but only just. It clipped Arvid’s neck with enough impact and surprise to knock him backwards from his perch on the fallen tree.

  With the pinch of the string still humming on her fingers, Ylva jumped to her feet and reached for the quiver on her back. She fumbled to pull a second arrow free, but Halvor was too quick. Before she put the arrow to the string, he was across the fire, stepping through the flames to grab the bow and rip it from her hands.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he growled through his teeth as he threw it aside.

  Ylva didn’t stop. She raised the arrow in her fist, thrusting the sharp point at Halvor’s eyes.

  ‘No.’ Halvor sidestepped and gripped her wrist. He twisted, forcing Ylva to drop the arrow, and pinned her arm to her side. ‘Stop.’ For a second, it worked. The strength of his hand, the force of his voice, and the hardness of his stare were enough to make her stop.

  Ylva looked over at Geri who stood with his head low, his paws spread apart, his legs rigid. His teeth flashed in the firelight, and Ylva wished more than anything that he could help her, but there was nothing he could do. She had to fight alone. So she renewed her struggle against Halvor, moving her free hand up to grab for the knife on her belt.

  ‘No!’ he shouted again as he snatched her other arm, almost lifting her off the ground. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Behind him, Varg the Stout helped Arvid to his feet. The goat-man’s expression hung between surprise and anger as he touched his neck and looked at his fingers, dark with blood. When he glared across the fire at Ylva, though, the anger took over. He pushed Varg away from him and came at her, drawing a large dirty knife from his belt.

  He yanked Ylva from Halvor’s grip and threw her down into the snow. Dropping his weight on top of her, he put one knee either side to pin her. ‘Right now you’re thinking you shouldn’t have come to sit by our fire,’ he hissed. ‘Talking about killing our friend.’

  ‘Hold on, Arvid,’ Halvor said. ‘Just wait. Calm down.’ But neither Arvid nor Ylva were listening. Their full focus was on each other. Nothing else mattered.

  Ylva struggled and kicked but Arvid kept her pinned to the ground. And as she fought against him, her cloak opened and the scarf loosened from around her neck.

  ‘I knew it,’ he sneered when he saw what Ylva was hiding. ‘You’re exactly what I thought you were. Now stop squirming like an eel and let me tell you something I’ve learnt about killing.’ Arvid put the knife against Ylva’s throat, just above her collar, and bared his teeth at her like a wild animal.

  She stopped.

  ‘It’s much more satisfying when you’re up close like we are now. Looking right into someone’s eyes when they get snuffed out like a—’ Arvid blew stale breath in Ylva’s face. He frowned, puzzled, and all his meanness disappeared in an instant. The knife fell from his hand.

  ‘Arvid?’ Halvor asked. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Arvid’s eyes widened and he looked down at his chest.

  Released from his hypnotic stare, Ylva followed his gaze and saw the blackened iron arrowhead protruding from his furs. It took a second for her to understand what she was seeing, and in that short time, Varg the Stout stiffened beside her and took a quick breath just as Arvid had done. Ylva snapped her head round to see that he too had an arrowhead sticking through the front of his cloak.

  Halvor didn’t waste time worrying about his Viking brothers; he spun on the spot, drawing his sword. ‘Come out where I can see you! Come out here and—’

  A third arrow hummed across the clearing and slammed into him. Halvor grunted and staggered backwards, but remained standing. He steadied himself and raised his sword. Fury was raging in his eyes as he opened his mouth and let out a terrifying battle cry. But the sound was cut short when the fourth arrow struck him in the heart. His hands dropped to his sides, the sword slipped from his grip, and he fell to his knees in the snow. He wavered for a moment then collapsed forward on to his face.

  Ylva secured her scarf, struggled out from beneath Arvid’s body, and pushed up on her elbows to see Geri sitting calmly at the edge of the forest on the other side of the glade. As she watched, a lean figure appeared, spirit-like, from the trees and slipped past Geri without pausing. Driven by her instinct to survive, Ylva turned on to her front and scrambled to where her own bow had landed when Halvor threw it away. She ran her hands through the snow until she grasped hold of it. With cold fingers, she pulled an arrow from the quiver and put it to the string as she turned around, drawing the bow ready to shoot at the figure that was now running across the glade towards her.

  And when he came into the light cast by the fire, Ylva saw him clearly.

  Bron.

  The boy moved around the fire without making a sound. He stopped where Halvor lay and nudged him with the toe of his boot, then looked up as Cathryn emerged from the trees and came across the clearing, sword in hand. She went straight to Arvid and Varg, jabbing the tip of her sword into them to make sure they were dead.

  ‘Good job,’ Cathryn said to Bron. ‘Now go cut that poor boy free.’ As she spoke, Geri stood and trotted over to where Ylva lay. He sniffed at her face, nuzzling his nose against her ear, but she kept her arrow pointed at Cathryn.

  ‘I thought they were going to kill me.’ Ylva’s hands were shaking. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

  Bron retrieved his arrows and went to the prisoner. He took out his knife, ready to cut him loose, but when he crouched beside the prone figure, he stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Cathryn asked.

  Bron looked back and shook his head.

  ‘Dead?’

  The boy hugged himself and pretended to shiver.

  ‘The cold?’

  Bron nodded.

  ‘Does it ever end?’ Cathryn hung her head for a moment. She rubbed her face with one hand then sheathed her sword and turned to Ylva. ‘You can stop pointing that thing at me; I’m not going to hurt you. I told you that already.’

  Ylva didn’t lower the bow – she couldn’t. It was as if she were frozen in place. So Cathryn came to her and encouraged her to relax the string. She took the bow from Ylva’s hands before grabbing her arm and hauling her to her feet.

  ‘They’re dead,’ Ylva said. ‘All dead.’

  ‘And you’re lucky not to be dead too. I warned you not to go o
ff on your own, getting yourself into trouble. Didn’t I tell you revenge is a dangerous serpent? That it’s likely to turn around and bite you? Look what happened.’

  ‘What does it feel like?’ Ylva couldn’t turn away. It was as if she had to see.

  ‘Being dead?’

  ‘Killing someone.’

  ‘For you?’ Cathryn shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but maybe it’s a good thing you just wounded this one.’ She poked Arvid with the toe of her boot. ‘Otherwise you’d know for sure.’

  Ylva stepped closer to Arvid’s body, but Cathryn grabbed the back of her cloak to hold her back. ‘We need to get away from here, child. There’ll be others around here somewhere and the shouting is sure to have brought them running.’

  Ylva tried to pull away. ‘Don’t touch me.’ She glared up at the bear-like woman. ‘I don’t like to be touched.’

  ‘I’m not touching you, I’m touching your furs, and I’m not letting go because I see what you’re thinking.’ Cathryn struggled to hold on to her. ‘It’s the same as you were thinking last time – revenge – but it was a bad idea then and it’s a bad idea now. Look around you, child. It’s better if you stick with us. There’s more out here to be afraid of than just men.’

  13

  Flames and Screams

  ‘Let go of me.’ Ylva fought against Cathryn as she dragged her away from the camp and back into the trees. ‘Let go of me! Get off!’

  By the time they reached the place where Cathryn and Bron had left their horses, Bron had already removed the hobble from one and was working on the other.

  Cathryn finally released her grip, and Ylva tumbled away from her, jamming her hands into her own tangled hair and tugging until it hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut and tipped her head back, opening her mouth wide in a silent scream. Her whole body was tense, every muscle tightening.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Cathryn asked.

  ‘I told you I don’t like to be touched.’ Ylva spoke through gritted teeth. She kept her eyes on Geri and tried not to shout; tried to stay calm. She tightened her hands into fists. ‘I don’t like it. I can feel you breathing, and smell your stink. Just hearing you swallow your own spit makes me want to—’ She crouched and pulled Geri towards her, rocking him gently, searching for his calm comfort.