The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  The Fylking were, above all things, warriors. Though they were immortal and possessed the wisdom of ages, Arcmael often chafed at the similarity between their rough ways and those of his father, Lord Detlef Halstaeg, high constable of the King’s Rangers. The post, second only to the master of arms, made him especially proud. A cousin to King Farcas who, nineteen suns past, had died unexpectedly by choking on the bones of a game bird, Lord Halstaeg was a man of the sword. His heart was surrounded by oaken shields, his mind by blades.

  He had no sense of humor.

  Arcmael, with his noble name and all the accoutrements of a first-born heir, had long failed to live up to his father’s steel-clad expectations. As a boy he had more love for woods, rivers and stones than for swords. After a harsh, infuriating mission to impress upon his son the arts of war, Lord Halstaeg finally abandoned the gauntlet. In a strategic maneuver to save face while admitting failure, he stripped Arcmael of his titles and holdings and handed them to his younger brother Straelos. Beneath his pregnant mother’s dutiful gaze, Arcmael was sent by armed escort to the Faersc Conservatory in the Thorgrim Mountains to be trained as a Warden of Dyrregin. All fifteen suns of him.

  Warden was not a post desired by many; it was grueling, lonely, and put one’s lot with the Fylking, which were feared and misunderstood by most of the populace. A position in the order was not easily attained; one had to be naturally sensitive to the Otherworld, and only ten wardens roamed the Gate at any one time. As fate would have it, eighteen suns ago a warden named Edros, who was last seen walking to Tower Sor, had mysteriously disappeared, casting a shadow over Merhafr and inspiring Lord Halstaeg with an idea. Being a man of particular influence, he saw to it that Arcmael was accepted to the Faersc Conservatory, sensitive to the Otherworld or not. To Arcmael’s mind, it was a blatant display of power and an undisguised mockery of his wayward son’s love for the wilds.

  There were worse things the man could have done. But fate proved crueler, as Arcmael learned what the title of Warden of Dyrregin really meant. In the tongue of the Fylking, Dyrregin meant “gateway of the gods.” But not just any gods. For the Gate enabled the Fylking to travel between the world of Math and a nearby star system. They were warriors, Math was an outpost to them and the wardens their servants, albeit willing ones. With nowhere else to go, Arcmael had had no choice but to resign himself to yet another master with a sword. No escaping it.

  Arcmael walked through the forest, trees towering around him like barbicans guarding his peace of mind. Here and there, half buried in ferns or pushed up by roots, lay ancient ruins left by the Gate War twenty-five centuries ago, when the Fylking’s enemy, the Niflsekt, came to Math through the Gate in order to destroy it. The Niflsekt caught the Fylking by surprise, killed them, and instructed mortals in Dyrregin whom they had enlisted to their cause to destroy the towers after the Niflsekt used them to leave. The war left Dyrregin in ruins and its people scattered across three continents. For a thousand suns, the realm was a graveyard, cursed, and no one from Math would venture there.

  The Fylking, no doubt aware of the possibility of such an attack, had hidden their knowledge in a labyrinth beneath Faersc and instructed the Wardens of Dyrregin to pass this knowledge down the generations. Hundreds of suns after the Gate War, when at last the wardens’ descendants dared to venture into Faersc, they kept their oaths to their ancient order, unearthed the secrets of the Gate and began to rebuild the towers as their ancestors had eight thousand suns before under the patient instruction of the Fylking. When the Fylking returned, the Kings of Dyrregin once again took up residence in Merhafr, and with them the wary children of the realm. But the ruins remained, scattered over the realm like bones.

  With a sigh Arcmael opened his mind to his unseen companions. Having earlier made their point, they didn’t take form or intrude upon his mind. After a league, maybe two, the warden sensed something else. Something mortal. While often as unexpected and mysterious as the Fylking, mortal creatures had a different presence, stronger and at the same time more distant. He stopped and turned.

  The red-cap woodsman’s dog trotted warily along the river, slowing in trepidation as it drew near. It had a tangled pelt of dirty white, brown and black. Arcmael knelt and held out his hand. The hound approached in stops and starts, its tail tucked between its legs. It had one brown eye and one pale blue.

  The warden smiled.

  “Hail, Dog.”

  The hound stayed just out of reach.

  “You look in need of a friend.” As he shrugged his pack to the ground, the dog started and moved farther away, circling. Arcmael pulled out his food sack, rummaged through it and found too many strings of sausage links. The woodsman’s wife, in a graceful attempt to apologize for her husband’s surly disposition, had given her strange guest far more than he needed. He tore one off with his teeth and held it out. “Here. Bit spicy.”

  The dog crept forward and snatched the sausage from his fingers. After gulping it down, the beast looked up and licked his jaws. Arcmael gave him another. He reached out to stroke the animal’s head, but the dog wouldn’t suffer his touch.

  “Fair enough.” He closed up his pack and rose to his feet. “You’re welcome to come with me, but you might regret it before long.” As might I, he thought, creasing his brow. This could get complicated. But he had no heart to drive the creature away. He knew what that felt like.

  Raven croaked a laugh as the warden adjusted his pack and bow and set off down the path with his new friend trailing him.

  ~ * ~

  The wooded rift of the stream leveled into a sea of ferns blushed with purple and gold. Towering spruce trees hung low over the burbling waters where the path turned north. The morning sun faded to gray as Arcmael left the river behind.

  After hours of tromping over ferns, roots and stones, he spotted the light of a distant break in the trees. He skirted a boggy area, stepping on the large flat stones of ruins. Dog splashed through the muck, scattering birds and sending frogs and snakes fleeing over the water. Arcmael came to a pond overhung by willow trees. A small stream spilled into it, sending ripples across the glassy surface.

  “Well, Dog,” he said with a yawn. “This might do for a rest.” His companion lapped noisily at the water. Arcmael found a dry place at the foot of a large willow and lowered himself in the ferns. As he brought out his pack, Dog came near and sat, tail thumping. Arcmael pulled out the sausage and cut off a nice meal with his hunting knife. Once finished, the dog paced for a few moments and then dropped to his belly and relaxed.

  “Tired?” Arcmael bit into a sausage and took out some bread and a piece of hard cheese. He tore off pieces and tossed them over; Dog snapped them up. “Can you hunt?” he said with his mouth full. “You might need to soon.” I did, he added to himself.

  Not a fortnight after his arrival at the Conservatory, his new mentor, Skadi, gave Arcmael an unstrung bow and an empty quiver. She taught him to find hemp for strings, cut poplar for arrows and fletch them with the feathers of wild geese. She taught him to shoot, and then gave him a hunting knife. He balked those lessons—too much like his past—until she took him into the mountains. Leagues she led him, her long white braid swaying on her back, brightly colored leggings tucked into her boots and the rhythm of her staff striking the ground, until they arrived at nowhere. Then she turned with one crow-black eye and left him there. Not every step you take on the Gate will lead you to a warm house and something to eat, the crone explained.

  On his knees, then and there, Arcmael swore fealty to her wisdom, to learn how to survive in the wilds he loved so much and had dreamed about from the plush, sheltered prison of his father’s house. He learned to take game, make fire, find edible plants and mushrooms, build shelter, climb crags and trees, cross rivers and to leave every place he stepped as pristine as he had found it. You must be as the Fylking, Skadi told him. Silent, indistinct, moving with the softest touch.

  Dog curled up by the warden’s side, eyes and ears alert but droopin
g to fatigue. Birds, frogs and snakes knew there was nothing silent or indistinct about this creature, but Arcmael appreciated the company.

  He leaned his head back on the willow tree and closed his eyes. Emptiness stared from the black water, the space between the stars, an ageless presence. A drop spiraled from the edge of a leaf and vanished into the dark. A moth landed in a glistening web stretched between the low branches of the tree. In a mathematical flurry of movement, a large spider with long black legs and a body the color of dead flowers shot from a hidden line and descended upon her struggling prey.

  You must prepare for the coming storm, she said in a crackling water-cold voice.

  Spider. Swift and mysterious, she had never spoken to him before. “It’s just a storm,” he replied.

  It will raze the land to close your eyes. Another drop fell. And those of your kind.

  The moth stopped struggling.

  “Those of my—what?”

  Seek you a woman with a broken heart.

  Arcmael opened his eyes to trickling water and a restless breeze, his gaze focusing on a spider wrapping its prey in a silken winding sheet. Light raindrops stippled the surface of the pool. Dog had moved next to his leg for warmth. The warden moved his fingers over the creature’s fur, gently, ready to withdraw. The dog awoke but didn’t shrink from his touch.

  “There,” Arcmael soothed. “Rested? We’ve a long journey yet.”

  He rose, filled his water skin and gathered his things. A short time later he emerged from the forest into a field now barren but for upturned clods of earth where the last of the season’s crop was harvested. A horse whinnied somewhere in the distance. Wood smoke curled from the chimneys of a farm and hung low in the damp air. Beyond the farm rose layers of hills limned with evergreen spires and gray boughs shrouded in mist.

  Dog flushed a grouse, bringing Arcmael’s attention to a tall standing stone tucked into the trees on the far edge of the field. The markers had been placed centuries ago to guide wardens between the gatetowers. After ten suns walking the Gate, Arcmael no longer needed the stones, but they did exude a certain comfort. As he approached, Cat’s sleek shape fled around the stone and vanished into the brush.

  Arcmael pushed the hood from the nest of his curling hair. The rune carved into the top of the stone was splattered with bird droppings. As a youth he would have taken this as a sign, but leagues, practicality and the company of warriors had taken his youth. Sometimes birds just shit in places. The warden drew a deep breath, cleared his mind and set out at a brisk pace beneath the drizzling sky.

  Dog finished pissing on the stone and trotted after him.

  The terrain between here and Tower Sol was kind, with low rolling farmland dappled with forests, glades and rivers. The gatetower sat atop a high tor. The wind never ceased in that place; it swept across the Fasos Hills with ruthless persistence.

  You must prepare for the coming storm. A web, a moth and a bottomless pool. The dream had not submerged far. Wolf had once called Spider a wisewoman, a witch of their kind. He told Arcmael that her choice to be one of his Guardians was a great honor. Spider appeared rarely, and when she did, she was not interested in tricks or banter.

  Seek you a woman with a broken heart.

  Arcmael furrowed his brow. In this war-torn realm, what woman didn’t have a broken heart? Too many dreams, too many questions, too many men bred to the sword like raindrops, gathering and flowing to the sea.

  Arcmael made good time for most of that day. The storm kept the same tireless pace, raining lightly, its sky low and gray, wind gusting restlessly, turning north. Arcmael donned a pair of woolen leggings he had acquired in Odr, a village nestled in the shadow of Tower Sif on the northernmost point of the realm, in the Vale of Ason Tae. Whether by a particular stitch or a certain kind of wool, his leggings blocked the wind with the impossible efficacy of boiled leather.

  Her name was Melisande, the woman who knit his leggings, and she was a creature of the north if ever there was one. Fair yet strange even by his standards, she had long tangles of red-blond hair, pale freckled skin and the strength of a horse. The villagers called her Millie. He had first discovered her walking close enough to the gatetower to touch it, displaying that general disregard typical of Odrians who, since the village was established centuries ago, tended to ignore warnings against settling close to the Fylkings’ domain. At first he thought the knitter had banished the Fylking, but as it turned out, she didn’t know how. To his further astonishment, the Fylking were silent as the knitter walked by and made no move to defend their domain from intrusion. She was allowed to pass without so much as a breeze or a remark.

  Many folk throughout Dyrregin offered their work to the wardens as gifts in return for goodwill, particularly near the towers. Millie never let on that this mattered much to her. When he asked her what payment she might take for her leggings, she asked him to bring her to the top of the gatetower.

  It was a bold request he was not at liberty to fulfil. The Sif Fylking were a nasty lot: wolves among hounds, owls among sparrows, panthers among housecats. Sif was the Apex of the Gate where the world of Math merged with an array of other worlds on which the Fylking waged their war. The Apex was the first line of defense against the Niflsekt, who not only sought to destroy the Gate but also had a history of using mortals to aid them, by promising things no immortal of right mind would deliver, for fear of violating the basic laws of their kind. Given this, the High Fylking were grim and took no chances. Arcmael knew more than one tale of someone meeting an ugly end in Odr.

  However, moved by Millie’s pluck, he guided her to the steps and told her some history in hopes of satisfying her request. Holding his hand ready in case of trouble, he related the Arrival of the Fylking—and then he learned that Millie’s seeming disregard was not simply a maddening characteristic of being Odrian. It was all he could do to continue his tale as the High Fylking of Tower Sif appeared and stood before her, respectfully, their eyes shining with unheard-of curiosity.

  It was not history that interested them.

  Arcmael had later asked his Guardian Fylking what had interested them, for in all his knowledge he couldn’t guess. Silent as the moon, his predators told him nothing.

  Dog stayed near and bore the weather with animal fortitude, but before long Arcmael noticed him flagging. He walked until he reached a thicket of spruce trees, beards drooping to the ground. Once sheltered there, he fed Dog and parted his cloak for company. They rested in each other’s warmth for a time. Tomorrow he would close the hound in the tower and go hunting. Well-meaning as she was, the woodsman’s wife had not packed for two. And her sausage gave him indigestion.

  As he dozed, Arcmael thought again of his vision by the pool. It will raze the land to close your eyes. He didn’t think Spider was talking about rain and wind. Who knew, with her? It wouldn’t be the first time the Fylking had told him something weird that led him nowhere.

  The storm merged with the evening, bringing darkness by the time the warden emerged from his shelter. He kept to the woods when possible to avoid the lashing wind. His sense of direction became harder to trust. When at last he reached a plain, he didn’t recognize it. The weather had a Fylking-like quality of deception, altering the landscape and dissolving the veils of the Otherworld.

  Look with your gut, Wolf said, startling him. The tall warrior stood by his side, gazing over the field. He wore silver armor as supple as snakeskin and covered with intricate patterns of geometric symbols and beasts woven in knots. His helmet was in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head, and he wore a fine black cloak that partially obscured a longsword with an obsidian pommel. Long strands of pale hair twined on his shoulders.

  The Fylking did enjoy startling him.

  His throat dry, Arcmael tore his attention from Wolf and returned it to the plain. His physical senses told him nothing; his invisible senses told him something was wrong. Just as he started to ask Wolf what was happening, lightning illuminated the landscape and the ga
tetower beyond, just visible above the rolling horizon.

  Wolf vanished.

  On top of an outcropping not a bowshot away stood three mounted warriors clad in black so pitch they looked like holes in the stone. A glint of steel fled like sparks as the darkness returned, one moment after the closest rider turned his head and fixed a gaze on Arcmael that hit his chest like a knife. No prickle, no chill, only darkness. They were not Fylking.

  They were not mortal either.

  Arcmael, said Wolf. The calmness in the entity’s voice was almost as scary as his use of the warden’s name. The Fylking rarely used his name unless they wanted his full attention.

  “What?”

  Run.

  With a growl, Dog shot out and bounded across the plain toward the riders, barking wildly.

  The Knitter

  Melisande lay in bed in the loft of her cottage in Graebrok Forest north of Odr. Wide awake and blinking in the dark, she listened to the mice above her head. Nearly a moon past, her swordsman had repaired a crack in the eaves before returning to the towers and yards of Merhafr, the great port on the Njorth Sea, where he served as a King’s Ranger. His name was Othin, taken from a god of wisdom, trickery and war. What such a one knew of carpentry, well, that was open to question. But he knew other things. Nice things.

  The thin moon wheeled over the night as the mice worked, their tiny feet pattering in the rafters, claws scraping, teeth gnawing. How such small creatures could make such a racket eluded Melisande almost as much as her lover’s carpentry skills. She reached for a boot and slammed it into the ceiling, causing dust to drift onto her face. Silence fell…then the chewing started again.

  “Pisskin!” she hissed. Where was that cat? Not here, if the mice knew anything.