The Tempering of Men

by Sarah Monette

  “Ammy-wuf!” said Alfgyfa, as if that settled everything.

  “Amma-wolf, indeed,” Brokkolfr agreed, lifting the tiny child onto his hip as he stood. “Come on. Let’s go see about some butter and porridge.”

  FIVE

  Try as he might, Vethulf could do nothing against the awareness of Isolfr’s presence that filled him every moment they were in one another’s company. It wasn’t a sharp sensation, not painful, but nagging. Distracting. So that he thought he should wish Isolfr far away, except that never happened. Instead, he sought out excuses to spend time in the wolfsprechend’s company.

  Like now, when he was unwisely grateful to be following Isolfr and the godsman across the rutted yard, through humming clouds of biting flies and into the cool of the wood beyond. They left the wolves behind—Viradechtis instructing her pups on the finer points of murdering mice among the woodpiles and Kjaran dozing in the dappled shade of immature fruit trees planted outside the south-facing fortifications.

  If the godsman meant to decoy two of Franangford’s three wolfheofodmenn into ambush and assassination, he was making a good start of it. But once they were following a narrow track among the pines, the godsman dropped back unobtrusively and let Isolfr lead them. And Isolfr brought them toward Franangford proper, not deeper into the taiga, leading Vethulf to wonder if his mind was wearing similar paths of worry. Vethulf had a tendency to think of Isolfr as naïve, but of course he wasn’t. Isolfr was only a little younger than Vethulf himself—Skjaldwulf had fifteen winters on Vethulf and a few more than that on Isolfr—and he was a jarl’s son and an experienced wolfsprechend, with all that implied.

  He was anything but naïve.

  What he was, was idealistic. And that was a disease without a cure, save time. Still, watching Isolfr walk on ahead, pale gold braids plaited to stiffness bouncing against his shoulders, Vethulf could not help but wish the inevitable delayed.

  The track was well-trodden by boots and pads, though Isolfr rapidly turned them off the sun-baked ruts of the road and into the shade of trees. Here the path rose and dipped over polished roots and the terraced earth trapped between them. Isolfr lengthened his stride so Vethulf broke into a comfortable lope, half-surprised and half-not that the godsman did, too, without apparent struggle to keep up. Well, of course; if he had walked from the southern peninsula, he could hardly avoid being fit. Though no one was as fit as a wolfcarl.

  A quarter hour’s easy trot brought them far enough from the path to ensure privacy of speech. It was cooler under the trees, the damp air collecting in stagnant pools. At last, they came to a tiny clearing, a space where a spruce—as great through as three trees fit for the roofbeam of a heall—had fallen and sun filtered through the spreading branches. Oxeye daisies grew here, thick white petals spreading flat around yellow cores, and ferns furled from every surface, even growing up the mossy trunks of the trees.

  Isolfr leaned back against the trunk of the dead giant, folded his arms, and waited for Ragnarok, as near as Vethulf could tell. Vethulf had assumed that the godsman would ask Isolfr all sorts of leading questions, but Freyvithr seemed content to hop up on the dais made by the intersection of torn-free roots and earth and wait. Eventually, he spoke, but it wasn’t to ask questions.

  “She’s made herself known to me as well, you know.”

  “She?” Isolfr asked, almost unwillingly.

  “Freya,” Freyvithr said. “It’s how I came into her service, who was Othinn’s man when I went viking and fought for a jarl.”

  “You were a man-at-arms?”

  “I killed for my meat and ale,” the godsman said. “Not so differently from you.”

  Vehulf picked at soft moss on the nursery log he’d leaned his butt against, and waited. It was hard.

  Isolfr raised his hands in a placating gesture, pressing his back against the trunk. “I meant no insult, godsman. I was a jarl’s son, once. I was just … surprised, I guess.”

  “That Freya would speak to a warrior?” Freyvithr’s mouth twisted. He kicked one foot, dislodging a shower of moss fragments. “Half the war-dead are hers, when it comes down to it. She has an interest. And you cannot be more surprised than I was, I tell you truth.”

  “Will you tell us?” Vethulf asked softly.

  “There’s little point in bringing it up if I won’t,” Freyvithr said, smiling. “I thought at first—I was far from home, in a land where the trees were wrong and the deer were wrong and the water was wrong, and the women we captured would do nothing but weep and starve themselves to death, and I thought at first it was only that I missed my wife.”

  “You were married?” Isolfr said, and then blushed scarlet. Vethulf glanced away, pretending distraction as a dull brown bird darted between summer-green boughs.

  “I am married,” Freyvithr corrected. “My wife entered Freya’s service with me, and prays in Hergilsberg now for my safe return.” When Vethulf glanced back, Freyvithr was still grinning at Isolfr’s mortification. “I renounced bloodlust, not the other kind. For indeed, Freya is not a goddess to be pleased by celibacy. But you distract me from my point. I was dreaming of a woman, at whose throat glittered a necklace more beautiful than anything I had ever seen, and who held apples in her hands. I never saw her face clearly, only the necklace and her hands and her breasts. She stood on a green hill beneath a great green tree, and the air was right and the tree was right, and I knew that I was home. And then the captive women began dying, and each night in my dream I would see the woman who had died that day kneeling at the feet of the woman with the necklace. And the dead woman would look at me and say, ‘I cannot come to her, because of you.’ And then another woman would appear—I could never tell where she came from, though after the third or fourth time I had the dream I watched for her—a woman who I could not see at all, all shadows and flint, and she would take the dead woman away. And the woman with the necklace would weep and drop one of the apples she was holding so that it rolled to me. But when I picked it up, it turned to ashes in my hand.”

  He took a deep breath, running one hand over the lower part of his face. “And then, one day, we burned a village on our jarl’s command. We left no one alive, on our jarl’s command. And that night, the woman with the necklace had no apples in her hands. The tree was dead above her, the grass was dead beneath her, and the burned bodies of the villagers were all around her, stacked like firewood. And she wept until I wanted to gouge her eyes from their sockets so that they could not weep, and keened until I wanted to rip her tongue from her mouth. But I could not reach her, no more than I had ever been able to, and finally I said, ‘Lady, tell me what I can do for you.’ And she said, ‘These are not warriors you slaughter. There is no glory for you in these deeds. Go home and kill no more.’ And I woke in a cold horrible sweat and I saw—I swear to you I saw—the cold woman, the woman of shadow and flint, standing over me. She was one side white as chalk, and one side black as the blood that settles in a rotting body, and I saw the starlight glitter among her teeth, and I saw the blood running black from her mouth. I knew her then, and I knew the woman in my dreams, and I knew I was being shown a choice.”

  “Shown,” Isolfr said, not quite a question.

  “Oh yes,” said Freyvithr. “Not offered, for that is not the gods’ way. But I was shown, and I chose. Just as you were shown, were you not?”

  It was an invitation, and Vethulf watched Isolfr respond to it, chewing his lip and looking aside. Vethulf never would have thought to do what Freyvithr had, to give something of himself in order to encourage another to give something in return. He leaned forward to interject a comment, to deflect Freyvithr’s attention from Isolfr, and remembered himself just in time. The Wolfmaegth needed the godsman’s help, and it didn’t rankle Vethulf to admit it. The Wolfmaegth had always existed on trade, not on charity. Their skills and ferocity, the wisdom of their wolves, the meat they hunted, in return for rye and barley, skyr and butter, cabbages and turnips and apples. All things the Wolfmaegth found too litt
le time to farm.

  But perhaps they could learn. And perhaps they could learn to trade other things, because Vethulf did not see the wolfcarls learning to exist meekly on charity now.

  Isolfr hunkered down into a squat, leather trews stretching across the knees he laid his elbows on. He pushed his fingers together and let the latticework support his forehead, as if he could not bear either the weight of his head upon his shoulders or the eyes of Vethulf or Freyvithr upon him.

  “I prayed for mercy,” Isolfr said. “I prayed for something to save us from the trolls. It was a womanish prayer, and a woman answered it.”

  Vethulf saw his shoulders rise and fall on the breath. If Kjaran were there, he would have whined at the wolfsprechend’s distress.

  Vethulf felt the wolf notice his awareness, and soothed him. We’re all fine. I was just thinking of you. Kjaran understood the emotion, not the words, but it was enough. All the way back in the heall, he laid his jaw on his forepaws again.

  “I never saw her, unless she came to me as a konigenwolf with rainbow eyes. She sent me a dream of where to go. Some of my friends—wolves and men—would not let me leave them behind. And when I went where Freya sent me, the svartalf Tin—who was a friend, of sorts—had a plan to convince her people to help us. So we did it. I’m pretty sure that part is in the songs.”

  “You prayed for mercy,” Freyvithr said softly. Vethulf couldn’t hear condemnation in it, but he imagined Isolfr could provide his own, and even delivered kindly the words themselves were harsh. “And were you merciful in your own turn?”

  Vethulf had winced at the first statement. With the second, he wasn’t sure what Freyvithr was driving at. Vethulf started forward anyway, because Isolfr flinched as if flystung. But Vethulf’s intervention proved unneeded.

  Because he was Isolfr Ice-heart, he lifted his head up off his hands and stood, arms at his sides, rocking forward on his toes.

  “We were dying,” he said. “Call me a nithling if you will, but that prayer bought life for all the northlands. There would have been trolls in Hergilsberg next winter, fighting it out with the raiders, else.”

  “Oh, aye,” Freyvithr said, catching Vethulf’s eye like a conspirator. “Because what you did to earn that mercy was so a nithling’s deed.”

  Vethulf burst out laughing, unable to stop himself. Isolfr’s head went back, offended as a wet cat, and then, reluctantly, he must have seen the humor, for he smiled.

  Freyvithr said, “Do you think me a nithling, wolfsprechend?”

  Isolfr went a beautiful scarlet. Daft creature, Vethulf thought fondly. Why do you persist in wrong-footing yourself like this?

  “’Tis not what he meant,” Vethulf said, hoping that it would be acceptable for him to defend Isolfr on this point. “He judges himself only, no one else.”

  “And judges himself harshly,” Freyvithr said, frowning. “No god asks this punishment from you, wolfsprechend.”

  Isolfr shook his head. “I know what my choices make me, godsman.”

  “A nithling?” Freyvithr said. “If that is what you think, you know nothing, either of choices or of yourself.”

  And Vethulf wondered—although he knew he would not ask—whether it was chance that brought Viradechtis’ pups charging into the clearing at just that moment, swarming from Isolfr to Vethulf and back again and making conversation an impossibility. Their mother followed them, coming to rest her massive head on her brother’s shoulder. She was watching the godsman, Vethulf saw, not with hostility but with a kind of cool assessment that reminded him of Kjaran in the days leading up to the mating that had made the Franangfordthreat. Each wolf they encountered had been scrutinized with that same dispassionate thoroughness. Kjaran had known all his potential competitors, all the wolves that might stand between him and what he wanted, long before Viradechtis went into heat.

  And Viradechtis was far more protective of Isolfr than she was even of her pups. She turned her head for a moment, meeting Vethulf’s eyes, and he got a clear, wordless impression: she had had, and would have, many puppies. She had only one Isolfr.

  And she was going to keep him.

  * * *

  After dinner, as Brokkolfr was wondering whether he ought to go hunting—whether he wanted to go hunting—or whether he should use the last of the light to mend his spare shirt, Kari approached him. He did it carefully, after the manner of a wolf approaching a stranger, stopping where Brokkolfr could see him and waiting until Brokkolfr raised his head to come closer. Hrafn didn’t bother; he bounced up to Amma and playbowed as if they were littermates. And Amma, not yet so gravid to disdain tag-and-wrestle, took him up on it. Kari and Brokkolfr both watched them a moment; when Brokkolfr looked back at Kari, the wildling was smiling.

  Then he dropped his head, the tips of his ears going pink, and said, “I wondered if you wanted to go for a walk?”

  “A walk?” Brokkolfr said. “To hunt, you mean?”

  Kari shrugged. “If Hrafn and Amma want to. But no. Just a walk.” He looked up, and he was still smiling, although clearly embarrassed. “There’s something I think you’d like to see.”

  Brokkolfr remembered Amma’s mating; Kari had been last of the five men who had covered Brokkolfr as their brothers covered Amma. By then, Brokkolfr had climaxed three times, and although he wanted, needed, a fourth, he wasn’t sure he was physically capable of it. He and the blanket he knelt on were sodden with sweat, every part of his body ached, and the long muscles in his thighs were starting to quiver. Kari had slid into him easily and then stopped, hands on Brokkolfr’s hips, body poised and tense. Brokkolfr had been on the verge of cursing at him to move when he said, “Here. Let’s—,” and wrapping both arms around Brokkolfr, much as Hrafn at that moment had his forelegs around Amma’s barrel, he rolled them both down onto their sides.

  “Oh,” Brokkolfr said in surprise and relief, and then, “Oh!” as Kari’s hand slid from his belly to his sex. And he’d gotten that fourth climax after all.

  And since then, like the other men whose brothers had covered Amma, Kari had been … “kind” was the best word Brokkolfr knew, even though it was a calumny to suggest that anyone in Franangford had been unkind. For they had not. But they were all strangers to him, for he and Amma were the only pair who had come to Franangford from Othinnsaesc, and Brokkolfr had been keenly aware from the start of the little packs within the pack, like Isolfr and his shieldbrothers; the remnant of the original Franangfordthreat; the men from Nithogsfjoll; the men from Arakensberg. There were closed circles everywhere, and Brokkolfr, his own shieldbrothers’ deaths still vivid in his dreams, had not had the strength to try to find his way in.

  But maybe a new circle was opening.

  “All right,” he said, and got up.

  Kari took him north and then east of Franangford, following something that might once have been a path, although it was now little more than a thinner patch in the forest. They had to go single file, and there wasn’t a lot of breath to spare for talking, but Kari offered bits and pieces over his shoulder. “This isn’t a secret,” he said. “The wolves know about it … but they don’t like it.… You’ll see why.” Then, a little later: “I found out about it before the war.” Before Franangford Heall was destroyed and our konigenwolf killed, he meant. “One of my threatbrothers showed me. Aldulfr. He was a little like Skjaldwulf—didn’t like talking. He said sometimes he needed a place the pack wouldn’t follow him. And he thought maybe I did, too.” He glanced back and made a rueful face. “I do, sometimes. Not for the same reasons. But…”

  “It’s different for you,” Brokkolfr said, not wanting to make him finish that sentence.

  “Once a wildling, always a wildling,” Kari said, and then yelped as he walked into a spiderweb. He ducked and spluttered and, when Brokkolfr came up beside him, grinned. “That’ll teach me not to watch where I’m going. We’re almost there.”

  “You think I need a place away from the pack?” Brokkolfr said, direct in the manner of wolves.

/>   “I don’t know,” Kari said. He straightened. Brokkolfr was taller, but Kari was standing on a slight rise, so that they were eye to eye. “I think you’ll like it, whether you need it or not. And sometimes … sometimes you look hunted, you know.”

  “I do?”

  “I don’t know if it’s the living or the dead who hunt you,” Kari said, “but sometimes I do think you need a place where this pack won’t follow you.”

  “Oh,” Brokkolfr said, feeling gut-punched.

  “Anyway—” Kari clapped him on the shoulder and turned to continue. “I’ll wager you’ve never seen anything like it before, and that’s worth something.”

  As Brokkolfr followed him, Amma appeared out of nowhere, the way trellwolves did, and bumped his left hip gently. “I’m all right, sister,” he said. Trellwolves did not grieve as men did, but they understood absence-in-the-pack and loneliness very well. Amma gave him a very brief memory of sea salt and new grass, which was how the wolves had named Brokkolfr’s shieldbrother Ulfhethinn, but she followed it emphatically with winter apples, her way of saying, I’m still here.

  “I know,” Brokkolfr said. “I do.”

  She surprised him then with the scent of wood smoke and pine sap—Kari—and the slick, acrid scent-taste of spurting wyvern blood, which was … Hrafn emerged from the woods, ears pricked inquiringly, and Kari gave Brokkolfr a startled glance over his shoulder.

  “Amma’s trying to tell me something,” Brokkolfr said, feeling his face heat.

  “You should always listen to your wolf,” Kari said mock sententiously, and Amma bumped Brokkolfr again, harder this time.

  “Two against one isn’t fair!” Brokkolfr protested, laughing.

  “Never mind,” Kari said. “We’re here.”

  “Here” didn’t seem to be much of anywhere: a massive boulder—no, not a boulder, Brokkolfr realized as he looked more closely, but an upthrust shelf of rock like a petrified wave.