The Tempering of Men

by Sarah Monette

  Skjaldwulf had seen a few Brythoni and half-Brythoni thralls; they were a comely people, darker than Iskryne-men and finer-featured. He even knew a little of their mountainous homeland, learned when he was a skald’s apprentice. Before Mar.

  Your wits are wandering, old man. “What do these Rheans want with me?”

  “They want you to tell them how to defeat your witchcraft. And don’t tell them you’re not a witch, Iskryner, because if they don’t need you, they’ll have no reason not to kill you. And they have seven reasons to want you dead, for you killed seven of their soldiers before you were brought down.” She got up, a shadow against the firelight, and stood looking down at Skjaldwulf for a moment. “The Rheans burn witches,” she said softly, and walked away.

  * * *

  Skjaldwulf and Mar huddled together as best they could for the rest of the night. Skjaldwulf slept patchily. At dawn, the Brython returned with two Rhean soldiers. They freed Skjaldwulf’s hands and hauled him to his feet. One said something, jabbing a finger forcefully at Mar, and the Brython said, “Your wolf companion stays here. If you try to escape, they will kill it.”

  Skjaldwulf flexed his hands, wincing at the burn of returning feeling. “If I cooperate, will you loosen the chain? It hurts him.”

  The Brython’s eyebrows shot up, but she turned to the soldiers, and Skjaldwulf could only assume she relayed the request. Certainly, it touched off quite an argument, and Skjaldwulf took the opportunity to observe the Brython and the Rheans without being observed in return.

  The Rheans were tall, strong men, with muscles corded in their bare forearms and calves. They had dark hair, cut very short, and sallow-toned, sun-weathered skin. Both of them had scars on their hands and arms; one of them had a scar slanting across his face and the other had a nose that had been broken too many times.

  The Brython was younger than she sounded—Vethulf’s age, or maybe even as young as Isolfr. She was fair-complexioned—not as pale as the men of the North, but she could pass for Freyvithr’s kinswoman easily enough—with hair the color of an otter’s pelt and hazel-green eyes. She was a full head shorter than either Skjaldwulf or the Rheans and as fine-boned as a bird. She was dressed in obvious Rhean castoffs, a piece of rope serving as a belt, her feet and lower legs wrapped in rags.

  She turned, gesturing toward the prisoners, and Skjaldwulf’s breath caught. The right side of her face was disfigured with a brand: a two-headed bird, narrow-skulled and broad-winged—the same device the Rheans displayed on their banners. The brand was crisp-edged, carefully placed, not, Skjaldwulf judged, very old.

  “It’s no different than cropping the hair of a thrall, Iskryner,” the Brython said sharply. “They agree to see to your wolf’s comfort, but you will stand surety. If he struggles or bites, they will kill you.”

  Skjaldwulf nodded. “I give my parole.”

  The Brython nodded—thoughtfully, as if Skjaldwulf’s response was a clue to a riddle—and spoke to the Rheans. There was another, briefer round of argument, and then, very obviously, the Rheans gave up. Skjaldwulf wondered if this was how the men of the werthreat appeared to the wolves, at once transparent and completely incomprehensible.

  One of the Rheans came around the edge of the clearing and set a sword-edge to Skjaldwulf’s throat, reaching up somewhat to do it. Steady, he told Mar while the other looped a leather harness around Mar’s chest and then ran a second chain before removing the first. Tufts of black fur came with it, and Skjaldwulf could see the wetness in Mar’s coat where the links had worn at flesh enough to make it weep.

  The wolf needed water as badly as Skjaldwulf did—he could go for days without food—but it’d be in Hel’s court that Skjaldwulf would allow Mar to take anything from an enemy’s hand.

  When they were done, the Rheans flanked Skjaldwulf and the Brython said, “The tribune Iunarius wants to talk to you.” Skjaldwulf hesitated, and the Brython said, “I promise, your wolf will not be harmed. Rheans are a methodical and conscientious people. They do what they promise.”

  And if they didn’t, there was precious little Skjaldwulf could do about it. With the best reassurance to Mar he could give, he submitted, following the Brython across the Rhean camp, offering no provocation to the soldiers who stalked beside him.

  It was a large camp, laid out in precise, equal squares, every line straight, every surface spotless. Nothing could be farther from the homey, efficient chaos of a wolfheall. Many soldiers paused to watch as Skjaldwulf was escorted past; he saw a mix of curiosity and hostility with more than a little fear, and he remembered the Brython had said the Rheans considered him a witch.

  He said to the Brython, “May I know your name?”

  “The Rheans call me Lutra. Otter, in your tongue.”

  Skjaldwulf noted the neatness with which she’d evaded revealing her true name. But Otter suited her—Skjaldwulf had made the comparison himself—and Skjaldwulf could understand her desire to protect what little of herself she still had.

  “My name is Skjaldwulf, and my wolf-brother is Mar.”

  “Wolf-brother?” said Otter.

  “Yes,” Skjaldwulf said, meeting her quizzical glance steadily. “He is my brother.”

  Otter said something under her breath in her own language. Skjaldwulf, remembering the one time he’d tried to visit his family after bonding with Mar, did not ask for a translation.

  They came to a tent that Skjaldwulf had no difficulty in identifying as the jarl’s. It was twice the size of the others, and there were soldiers standing guard at the entrance.

  The soldiers all saluted each other, each pressing a fist to his heart, then extending his arm sharply. One of them poked his head in through the tent flap and said something in which Skjaldwulf thought he picked out the word “Lutra.” An answer came too soft for Skjaldwulf to make out any characteristics, and then Skjaldwulf was being pushed into the tent.

  There was a table, and seated behind it was a man with black skin. Not dusty-black as a svartalf, but a rich red-black like a dark bay horse. Skjaldwulf knew he was staring, but he had thought the svartalfar were that color because they lived in darkness. He had never imagined a man could be the color of aged leather.

  The jarl was staring back. He asked a question in a soft, high-pitched voice, incongruous in a warrior. But Skjaldwulf’s first wolfjarl had had just such a voice, and a young and foolish Skjaldwulf had learned the hard way about making assumptions.

  “He asks your name,” Otter said. “And—this is difficult—your place? Your styling? Who you are beyond your name.”

  “Tell him I am Skjaldwulf Marsbrother, wolfjarl of Franangford, and I would have the same knowledge of him.”

  “Iskryner,” Otter muttered warningly.

  “Tell him,” Skjaldwulf said. “I would know whose prisoner I am.”

  Otter hunched her shoulders defensively, but she spoke to the jarl and Skjaldwulf could pick out his own name and the word “Franangford.” The jarl seemed momentarily startled, and then he smiled widely, revealing two teeth made of gold in his upper jaw. He stood and offered Skjaldwulf the Rheans’ salute.

  “His name is Caius Iunarius Aureus, commander of the Northern Expeditionary Force of Rhea Lupina, and he wishes to know, what is a wolfheall? Also, he invites you to sit. Call him Tribune Iunarius, Iskryner.” Her tone did not change, but he knew that last sentence was advice.

  Skjaldwulf took that invitation gratefully and nodded at Otter to show he heard and understood her advice. He was facing Caius Iunarius Aureus across the table. Otter stood beside him and translated for nearly two hours as Skjaldwulf tried to explain the wolfheallan.

  He was, he thought, partially successful. The jarl understood warriors living together, and he understood that trellwolves were formidable fighters. But Skjaldwulf could not make him understand the bond—possibly, he admitted wryly to himself, because he didn’t understand it, either.

  “But you are the leader of these … wolfcarls,” Tribune Iunarius said (through the tra
nslator) at last. “Do you speak for them? Are you their captain or their konungur?”

  “I am their jarl,” Skjaldwulf said. “You could say captain. I am not a konungur, just the leader of a war-band.” One of two, he thought, but that would only lead to more explanations.

  “It is not your men who raid in Brython, is it?”

  “There are men who raid in Brython,” Skjaldwulf said. “They have not come from the wolfheallan. We have little leisure for such pastimes.”

  Otter stammered over what Iunarius said next, but a raised eyebrow from the man settled her. Through a tensed jaw, she translated, “The Brython lands are under our protection now, Iskryner. It would be easiest for your people if you, too, came under our protection.”

  Iunarius smiled while Otter spoke. His face, Skjaldwulf was pleased to note, did not blur overmuch, and the nausea was slowly fading. Not too bad a knock on the head, then. With luck, it would not kill him.

  “Others have not found the Rhean yoke so onerous. We bring safety, protection. The benefits of trade and travel. My own people have served the empire for less than fifty years, and yet here you find me, a thousand leagues from the place of my father’s birth, a tribune”—Otter stammered over the next word and in the end left it untranslated, but the context was clear enough—“in command of two cohorts of Brutus Augustus’ legion. Someday I shall be a senator, if I am not made the governor of some province.”

  The sweep of Iunarius’ hand left no doubt what province he might intend.

  Skjaldwulf felt his lips thin. But here he was on familiar ground. Iunarius was boasting of his accomplishments like any viking, and Skjaldwulf was, well, skald enough to meet him on those terms.

  “Do you fight trolls?” he asked.

  Another word Otter had no translation for, and a word that drew a raised eyebrow from the tribune. “Trolls?”

  “Earth-hollowers hight horrible,” Skjaldwulf said, speaking slowly so Otter could keep up. “Knot-barked and root-clawed, wyvern-friend and foe of farmers. From the north they came, frenzied and frost-fell, tree-tall and broad as boulders, and long we battled.”

  Slowly, he reached down, and with the arm that still pulled his knotted collarbone when he raised it, he stripped his tunic up, over his head, and let it fall to the floor unimpeded. He stood, aware of all the eyes resting on him—those of the near-forgotten guards by the entrance as well as Iunarius’ and Otter’s—and spread his arms, turning slowly so there would be no mistake regarding his intentions.

  It was a grand dramatic gesture, and Skjaldwulf, schooled in performance before he was ever schooled in war, could not have missed Iunarius’ intake of breath. He, Skjaldwulf, did not need to look down to know what Iunarius saw. White scars ran bald and stark among the graying hair of Skjaldwulf’s whip-lean chest and back. The harrowed valley of a troll-axe graze that had gone unstitched too long to heal prettily marked him from rib to hip; an inch more and it would have gutted him. The worst, though, were the bulging knots of knitted bone that showed lumpy at his collar and made the muscles of the left arm strange.

  “We are not strangers to war,” Skjaldwulf said softly. “We wolves and we men. Do not think that a few shields and banners will daunt us.”

  Skjaldwulf looked steadily at the Brython thrall as he spoke those last words. Otter’s cheeks colored and she looked down, but she translated—as near as Skjaldwulf could tell from the words he was learning to pick out of the stream of liquid syllables—without flinching. When she was done, Iunarius nodded and steepled his fingers, considering.

  “You are a young man,” Iunarius said, shocking Skjaldwulf to startled laughter when Otter translated.

  “I have thirty-six summers, Tribune.”

  “You are,” Iunarius repeated, “a young man. How many years would you give me?”

  Skjaldwulf studied the other man’s face. The cast of the features was different from any to which he was accustomed—rounder, the lips and nostrils fleshier, the nose broad and flat. But the only lines on the tribune’s face were at eye- and lip-corner, and if his skin did not reflect the dewiness of youth, it had also not yet weathered into leathery folds. There was some gray at the temples of the man’s tight-spiraled, close-cropped hair, but the majority of it was black as Mar.

  “Thirty summers,” Skjaldwulf hazarded.

  Iunarius smiled, and there was that flash of gold again. “I have twenty years on you, wolfjarl. You use your men up young in this country.” He paused, eyeing Skjaldwulf thoughtfully. “We honor poets in the empire.”

  “Poets?” Skjaldwulf said.

  “I may not understand your language, but I know poetry when I hear it. The protection of the empire need not mean merely an end to warfare—and do not judge the empire by the unlettered and superstitious men who serve in her armies. We have traditions of scholarship that stretch back thousands of years, to the first breaking of the world. A man could travel, speak to scholars of other lands, teach his poetry to other poets, and learn theirs. There is honor to be found in peace as well as in war.”

  In its way, it was not so different from the appeal Freyvithr had made, and Iunarius, like Freyvithr, was shrewd enough to see that Skjaldwulf could be tempted that way. Not all men could. But Freyvithr sought merely knowledge; Iunarius sought betrayal. And there was nothing he could offer that could stand against Isolfr and Vethulf—and Mar, waiting patiently and (for Skjaldwulf could feel him when he tried) panting through the ugly muzzle as the sun grew stronger.

  Temptation was one thing, and everything Skjaldwulf had ever learned, as a skald’s apprentice, as a wolfcarl, and as a wolfjarl, had shown him that all men faced it at one time or another. What Iunarius was trying to do was something else, and Skjaldwulf wanted no part of it.

  “A man may find honor in many different ways,” he said mildly.

  Iunarius frowned, seeing that his arrow had missed its mark, though perhaps not seeing how. Then he smiled again, conceding defeat, and turned the conversation back to trellwolves and the bond.

  But at the end, when he gestured to the guards to take Skjaldwulf out again, it was not without the sting of a parting shot.

  “Truly, wolfjarl, you should consider my offer. You might live longer.”

  * * *

  This time, when they led Skjaldwulf back to Mar, they fixed his hands before him with iron manacles. The sun had risen while Skjaldwulf consulted with Iunarius, and Mar lay in what little shade the tree still provided, his tongue lolling behind the bars of the muzzle, a guard with a spear just out of his reach. Skjaldwulf frowned. He was going to have to make a decision.

  He turned to Otter. “Would you ask for water for my wolf?” And for me. But Mar came first. Otter had said the Rheans were honorable, and Skjaldwulf thought that if a female slave said so in a language her masters did not speak, it might indeed be true. Beside which, dying of thirst did not make one any less dead than dying of poison, and if the Rheans were honorable, then Mar need not die of either.

  “You must need water as well,” said Otter.

  Skjaldwulf was trying not to think of the dryness of his mouth or the foul taste on his tongue. “If I do not ask for him, no one will,” he said.

  She spoke to the soldier on guard—a man with a square, dished face not unlike a shovel—who scowled and shook his head. Skjaldwulf was surprised when one of his escorts, the broken-nosed fellow, entered into the argument against his threatbrother. Finally, the first soldier snapped something, jabbing a finger at Otter.

  Otter bowed her head and said to Skjaldwulf, “I will fetch water for you and your wolf.”

  The silence after she left was awkward, the Rhean soldiers eyeing Skjaldwulf sidelong. He wondered what they would have asked if they had been able to. He had a list of questions himself, worthy of a skald. But he was also aware that there was fear in the way they watched him. He had grown very tired of the word veneficium, witchcraft; it seemed to be the word the Rheans used for anything they didn’t understand.

  Otter re
turned, a bucket in one hand and a shallow pan in the other. She stopped in front of Skjaldwulf, looking doubtfully from him to Mar. “Is it safe to approach him?”

  “He will not harm you,” Skjaldwulf said, at the same time asking Mar to treat Otter as a … a werthreatsister? The thrall-women of the heallan had little to do with the wolves, and Skjaldwulf had never chosen a female lover; he’d never had to wonder about how Mar would react to a woman before.

  Cub, said Mar, an odd echo of Viradechtis and also a promise.

  Skjaldwulf had to admire Otter’s courage. She did not hesitate any longer, but stepped forward to set the pan down where Mar could reach it, chained as he was. She poured water from the bucket into the pan, the muscles standing out on her thin arms, and then stepped back and offered the bucket to Skjaldwulf. Skjaldwulf raised it to his mouth even as Mar dipped his head toward the pan, drinking through the metal bars that caged his jaws; if they were to be poisoned, at least they would be poisoned together.

  The water was cold and tasted fresh. Skjaldwulf drank deeply, aware of Mar’s splashy lapping. The relief was almost painful to the parched meat and bone of Skjaldwulf’s body, and he had to be careful lowering the bucket so that he did not drop it on his feet. He handed it back to Otter, who gave him a strange, very firm, little nod, as if they had sealed some sort of bargain.

  The first guard snapped out another string of syllables, jabbing his finger first at Skjaldwulf, then at the tree Mar was chained to. It was clear he was giving orders and clear he expected them to be obeyed.

  “Does he hold high rank among the Rheans?” Skjaldwulf asked Otter.

  She almost laughed. “No. But if you don’t want to be run through, you’d better sit down. And keep your hands where he can see them.”

  Skjaldwulf looked at his manacles, then at the leather and chain restraining Mar. “They did a better job than that,” he said, sitting down with his back to the tree. Mar leaned over to rest his wet face on Skjaldwulf’s thigh, the metal of the muzzle denting flesh. Skjaldwulf cared not.