A Companion to Wolves

by Sarah Monette

  “Mother,” Njall said awkwardly, and she turned and smiled at him, her eyes as warm and steady as ever.

  “Are you ready, Njall?”

  “I suppose,” he said and then in a low-voiced rush, “Ready for what?”

  “To attend the tithing. To become a man of the werthreat if you should be chosen. To defend Nithogsfjoll, keep and steading, with your life.” She sighed and pushed an escaped tendril of wheat-fair hair behind her ear. “It is not the path to manhood I would have chosen for you, but it is an honorable path.”

  “Father said … .” But he could not speak the word “nithling” to his mother. He blushed, and mumbled at his boots, “Father said it was my choice, but I fear I have chosen wrong.”

  The thralls were almost finished loading the wagon, the wagoner making some joke and swinging onto the wagon-seat. Njall looked up and saw his mother’s face grim and rather sad. “You’ve heard stories, of course. Boys talk.”

  “Yes. But it’s not—you said it was honorable, to go to the werthreat. I could protect you. I could—”

  She kissed his brow swiftly and said, “You must decide what your honor is, Njall, and hold to it. I know men who have gone to the wolfheall and made a warrior’s life there. You can too. Or you can come home, and we will have you.”

  “Father won’t,” Njall said.

  “Your father has his own trolls to hunt,” Halfrid said, and might have continued if the wagoner had not interrupted when she took a breath.

  “Begging pardon, Lady Halfrid, but we haven’t got all day. They like you to be timely at the wolfheall, so they do.”

  “Go on with you, then,” Halfrid said to Njall. “You have your mother’s blessing.”

  “Thank you,” Njall said and climbed up into the wagon.

  All the way down from keep to wolfheall, he pondered his mother’s words. You must decide what your honor is. But honor was honor, wasn’t it? It wasn’t something you could pick and choose about. Yet she would not have wasted her breath with meaningless words.

  But they reached the great barred gate of the wolfheall’s wall before he had puzzled out her meaning.

  Even as the wagoner was drawing his horses to a stop, the gate was opening, and a man came out, his hair iron-black and his face like something carved from flint, a trellwolf beside him that seemed the size of a bear. Even the great carthorses shied and stamped at the sight of that monster, and Njall’s palms grew clammy. This wolf’s eyes were more orange than those of Hrolleif’s bitch and his heavy pelt rippled like water over his muscles. Njall recognized the man, just as he had recognized Hrolleif: Grimolfr, the wolfjarl, who ruled the wolfheall as Njall’s father ruled the keep. Njall swallowed hard.

  “So,” said Grimolfr, while his wolf sat beside him and let his tongue loll. “You are Njall Gunnarson. It seems I owe Hrolleif a forfeit. I wagered you would not appear this morning.”

  Njall slid down from the wagon. “My house honors its duty to the wolfheall,” he said.

  “As well it should. Did you bring anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good. That’s less we have to get rid of. Come along.”

  He turned on his heel and strode into the wolfheall compound, calling for the thralls to come unload the wagon. His wolf moved with him as swiftly and surely as his shadow. Njall followed him, because whatever his honor might be, it certainly didn’t include succumbing to the childish impulse to plant his feet and refuse to budge.

  The wolfheall wasn’t a grand stone keep like his father’s. The walled compound was halfway flagged—and a good thing, too, because the feet of men and trellwolves had churned what wasn’t paved into a springtide mire—but the central building was a roundhall in the old style, wooden, roofed in slates, a thick stream of smoke ascending from its center. The whole bustled with activity: wolves and men and thralls at work all about. Njall saw two men enter at the postern gate, a pole slung over their shoulders with a dead buck dangling from it. Two wolves paced them, one a red so pale he was almost tawny, the other dark as smoke, like Grimolfr’s gigantic male. Will my wolf be gray? Njall wondered. If I am chosen?

  He snuck a glance sideways at Grimolfr’s male, and wondered if it was the father of Hrolleif’s bitch’s pups. And then he thought of the shocking things that were whispered by older boys to younger in the dormitories at night, thought of his father’s brutal words; he looked up at Grimolfr and blanched at his imaginings.

  “Vigdis won’t whelp tonight,” Grimolfr said, without returning the stare. “Tomorrow, perhaps. Have you eaten, pup?”

  The wolfjarl’s voice was not unkind, and Njall decided to risk honesty. “I haven’t been hungry, sir. Are …”

  “Speak, whelp. Wolves say what they think when they think it; we have our politics, but they’re not devious ones.”

  “I was going to ask where you were taking me.”

  “To Ulfmaer, the housecarl, and his brother. They have charge of pups, wolf and man, until they’re bonded. Any other questions?”

  Njall had thousands, but he settled for the first one to come to mind. “Is Vigdis the name of Hrolleif’s bitch—I mean, sister?”

  “One of her names,” Grimolfr said, unexpectedly soft and fond, allowing a little smile to curl his lips under his beard. He did glance down then, and Njall found himself pinned on the man’s dark-brown gaze as surely as he’d been pinned on Vigdis’. “My brother is called Skald. His own name—” The wolfjarl gestured, and Skald turned his head, staring into Njall’s eyes with his own sunset-colored ones.

  Njall smelled ice and cold wind, a musk like serpents, the dark metal of old blood. “Like a kill at midwinter,” he said, coughing, and then realized what it meant. “Their names are smells.”

  “Aye,” Grimolfr said, sounding pleased although he did not smile again.

  “And Vigdis? What is her name?”

  It was the scent of a wet dawn in late autumn, bare trees and pale sunrise and the leaf-mold sharp and crisp at the back of Njall’s sinuses. He drew a deep, hard breath, and sighed.

  “You like that, whelp?”

  “Yes. Sir.” No, no point in lying. None at all.

  “Hmh.” A grunt, a dog-sound, almost animal. Njall startled, but Grimolfr didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he jerked his chin at the buck, dripping icicles of blood from a slashed throat as its bearers went past, the wolfcarls who bore it nodding respect to their jarl. “Well, you’d best eat when that game is served, pup. We hunt tonight and you’ll need your strength.”

  They had all but crossed the yard. Njall sighed relief when they entered the wind-shadow of the roundhall. “Hunt, sir? What do we hunt at night?”

  Grimolfr paused with his hand on the great copper-sheathed door. “Foolish puppy,” he said, and showed Njall his teeth. “We hunt trolls.”

  Njall was relieved that the meat he was served for noon meal was cooked—and not, he judged, actually the buck that the wolfcarls had brought home that day. This was seasoned meat, hung until tender and roasted sweet. The wolfheall’s cook knew his—or her—business.

  Njall shared his trencher with a slight blond boy, Brandr, who’d arrived a few days earlier and who was full of gossip and good cheer. There were six boys in all, and Njall was sure that Ulfmaer thought that too few to give Vigdis’ pups good selection. The stout gray-haired housecarl traded doubtful glances with his gray-faced trellwolf throughout the meal, his uncertainty making Njall feel gangly and grimy and much younger than his years—but the hall itself wasn’t unlike his father’s hall, except larger, and wood instead of stone, and the dogs gnawing bones and squabbling over their portions alongside the tables weren’t dogs at all but wolves as big as men.

  Njall did notice that Grimolfr sat at one end of the long table and Hrolleif at the other, just as Njall’s father and mother sat—and that Skald stood guard over Vigdis while she lay by Hrolleif’s chair and ate, and permitted no other wolf or man near her. Nor was it lost on him that the fond looks Grimolfr sent the length of the tab
le included not just wolf and bitch but red-bearded Hrolleif as well.

  Njall found himself pushing the meat on the trencher over to Brandr’s side. Brandr accepted with a glance and a shrug. Njall watched Brandr make short work of the venison, because it allowed him not to look at Hrolleif, until Ulfmaer’s knotted hand descended on his shoulder.

  “Njall. Nerves about the hunt?”

  “Yes,” Njall lied, twisting his head to look up at the housecarl.

  Ulfmaer smiled, a gap-toothed grin, and squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll find you weapons after the meal,” he said. “In the meantime, you must eat, lad.” Lad, and not pup. That one word unknotted the tangle of fear in Njall’s breast a little. “I know something you can think on to distract yourself.”

  “What?” Not meaning to sound so eager, but there it was.

  “If you are chosen—and Vigdis has at least four pups in her, so the odds are good—you’ll need a name.”

  “A—sir, a name?”

  Brandr elbowed him. “Idiot. You don’t think they’re all born named ‘Wolf.’ Ow!”—as Ulfmaer cuffed the back of his head.

  “Respect for your packmates, whelp,” he said, and stomped off.

  Brandr waited until he was out of earshot and then slid Njall a sly look, and grinned. “Old bastard. You know Hroi’s his second wolf?”

  “You can have more than one?” Njall blinked, surprised.

  “Even wolves get killed by trolls,” Brandr said. He made a long arm that would have gotten Njall or his brother clouted, and ripped a wing off the goose three places down the table. “I hear his first wolf was a bitch, and he misses it. Makes him cranky.”

  “Oh,” said Njall, and blushed. “What will you … I mean, have you thought of a name yet?”

  Brandr made an expressive face. “My uncle’s a wolfcarl—not here, in the wolfheall at Arakensberg. He made me promise I’d call myself Frithulf, after a friend of his who died.”

  “And will you?”

  “I promised,” Brandr said with a shrug, and Njall was relieved to realize that meant yes. Maybe honor would not be so difficult to hold here after all.

  He was still thinking about that, chin on his fist and brow furrowed, when Brandr nudged him. There was—not a commotion, but a disturbance—at the head of the table, and Brandr bounced on the bench. Njall looked up; a tall spidery dark man was rising from his seat. “Skjaldwulf,” Brandr hissed, leaned so close to Njall’s ear that Njall could feel him jitter. “Skjaldwulf Snow-Soft, they call him. We’re in luck.”

  “Soft! That’s a name for a wolfcarl?”

  Brandr snorted. “Soft as a knife in the ribs. He nearly never talks,” he explained. “But he can sing.”

  The tall man pushed black braids behind his shoulders and picked his way over snoring wolves on the rush-and-fur-strewn floor. When he had found a clear place to stand by the fire, he scuffed his feet wide and settled comfortably, eyelids lowered. One of the older tithe-boys brought him a horn of ale. He quaffed it and handed it back, and took a deep breath, running his gaze across the wolfcarls and tithe-boys and thralls spread around the hall.

  The room went silent, as Njall was accustomed when someone was about to declaim. And Skjaldwulf Snow-Soft spoke in a resonant, carrying baritone that sounded as if it rose from the depths of the earth, carrying smoke and rain.

  “Winter is long, and the nights are cold. There was a time when men maintained mere dogs to guard their cattle, when there were no wolfheallan and no wolfcarls, when trellwolves were troth-enemies of true-men. When fell trolls, terrible tyrants, walked in winter as they willed it, and our forefathers shuddered in shallow scrapes. This was the time of Thorsbaer Thorvaldson, who first knew a konigenwolf and swore to serve her for salvation.

  “I took this tale from Red Sturla in his age, and as he told it me I tell it you. This was the time—”

  Njall listened, enraptured. There had been better skalds at his father’s hall, now and again, but not many—and there had been worse, as well. Skjaldwulf’s voice rang like a brazen bell when he raised it, and the alliteration tolled from his tongue with heavy power. And Njall had not heard this tale before.

  Skjaldwulf—Snow-Soft, and now Njall saw another reason for the kenning-name, for he was subtle and chill in his wit, as well—told it with precision and deftness. How Thorsbaer Thorvaldson had been cast out for sorcery, for playing at women’s magic, and how he had found—alone—a daytime encampment of trolls.

  It would have been worth his life to attack them. And he could not return to his jarl’s keep, even with a message of grave urgency—he’d die on the point of a spear before he spoke three words.

  But perhaps he could send a message somehow, or raise a warning. Perhaps he could spoil their ambush, when night came.

  He waited.

  And with sunset—not that the sun ever rose but briefly, so deep in winter—the wolves came. When he saw that they had come to hunt the trolls, Thorsbaer Thorvaldson fell in with the pack.

  And the pack, to his shock, permitted it. He’d half-expected to be pulled down with the trolls, treated as prey. Instead, he found himself moving with the wolves, dreaming—so said Skjaldwulf—with the wolves.

  Until all the trolls were dead.

  Thorsbaer’s jarl would not take him back on the strength of that. Most certainly not with a snarling she-wolf by his side, when he was already suspected of sorcery. He had lived with the wild packs until he died, and fought the trolls on behalf of men who would not have him.

  But something strange had happened.

  As the pack settled close, and Thorsbaer spoke for them, and it became noticed that trolls did not travel unmolested through their territory to attack the human steadings—other men joined him. Disaffected men, younger sons, disgraced men. Men who practiced unmasculine arts—weaving, seithr—or some who were lovers of men. They came among the wolf-pack, and to Thorsbaer’s rude cottage they attached a timber hall.

  And the wolves chose from among them.

  And together they hunted the trolls.

  Ulfmaer and Hroi took the six tithe-boys out to the practice-field that afternoon, accompanied by four young men only a year or so older and three amiable half-grown wolves. They’d be bonding soon, Brandr told Njall in an undertone, and then the odd boy out would have to decide what to do.

  “Won’t he go home?” Njall said.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Brandr said with another of his expressive shrugs. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?” And then he caught himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right. I’m no jarl’s son, Njall Gunnarson, and I can do a good sight better for myself in a wolfheall than I ever could on my father’s steading.”

  “They’ll let you stay? Even if you don’t bond?”

  “Who says I won’t bond?” Brandr said, grinning, and Njall couldn’t help grinning back.

  He found he knew rather more about the use of the quarterstaff than most of the boys, and remembered the way Brandr had said, I’m no jarl’s son, not resentfully but with resignation. “You’ve been trained with the axe, lad?” Ulfmaer asked him.

  “Yes, sir,” Njall said.

  “Well, that’s a mercy. I’m always afraid these clumsy young idiots will lop their own ears off.” And he glowered at the older boys, who grinned back affectionately. “For today, though, will you help the other lads? I hate to lose boys before a tithing.”

  “Does it happen often?” Njall asked, pleased that his voice didn’t squeak.

  Ulfmaer exchanged a look with Hroi—Njall had noticed how frequently that happened, even though Hroi, unlike Vigdis the day before, did not watch Ulfmaer constantly. He had his own work with the half-grown pups. But trellwolf and man always knew where the other was, and they were never out of each other’s line of sight. Ulfmaer sighed. “’Tis no tourney you go to tonight, youngling. The trolls do not care if you be unpracticed. But Grimolfr says we can’t protect those who must learn to protect others, and
I fear he’s right.”

  “I’ll help,” Njall promised, wanting suddenly to make Ulfmaer look less tired, less worried.

  “That’s a good lad,” Ulfmaer said, and wheeled, bellowing, “Fastvaldr, an axe is not a flyswatter!”

  Njall went to help the other tithe-boys.

  They were inclined to be uncomfortable at first, almost resentful, but he deliberately let the smallest of them, Hlothvinr, catch him a glancing blow alongside his skull, and grinned and said, “Perfect. But you’ll have to hit me harder than that.” And the other boys laughed and listened more willingly.

  They were all limping and favoring bruises by the time the lengthening shadows prompted Ulfmaer to call a halt. He and Hroi herded them back to the roundhall and, unyielding to blandishments and protests, into the bathhouse. “The first lesson to be learned, boys. The wolves can smell you. It’s only polite of you to try to smell good.”

  “Who says they don’t like the smell of honest sweat?” Brandr said, and Hroi shook himself with such vigor that all of them laughed.

  “They do, Brandr Quick-Tongue” said Ulfmaer, “so scrub up.”

  The wolfheall’s bathhouse was bigger than that of the manor; Njall guessed that maybe half the werthreat could bathe at once, if they crowded on the benches. The ten boys were able to spread out more than that, but Njall still found himself grateful that Ulfmaer did not leave, but stripped to his breechclout and stumped up and down the aisle scattering water on the rocks to make steam, grumbling at them to scrub behind their ears, and passing pitchers with snide comments: “Yes, you do have to get your hair wet, Svanrikr. Otherwise you can’t get it clean.”

  Njall shared with Brandr and one of the older boys, Sigmundr: the Stone Sigmundr, a good byname for a lad as self-contained as a keep’s high walls. Sigmundr was silent except for politely answering when Brandr asked him questions. Njall concentrated on washing, and stealing sideways glances at the scars that marked Ulfmaer’s torso, forearms, and thighs. Scars that looked like the marks of teeth and claws.