The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  Her mind went blank.

  In the center of the back of the cloak, inside a red rose tinged with pink and shimmering with dew, blared a ragged hole. Blinking, she pulled it up and touched the popped loop of a missing stich. She muttered an ugly word fit for swordsmen over drink. When was the last time she had dropped a stitch?

  She jumped as something clattered in the woods behind her. Hoofbeats. Her arm hit the teacup by her side, knocking it off the bench with a clink and a splash. In the trees beyond the path, a rider in a blue cloak came into view. Torn by a double-edged blade of hope and fear, Melisande thought of Othin’s embrace, the knife in her knitting bag and the patch with the Fylking on it. She wanted to laugh with joy and run away at the same time.

  Leaving her knitting on the bench, she hurried across the yard, stopping with a rush on the path to the door. The rider came out of the trees, ducking as he passed beneath a low-hanging spruce branch. Melisande’s heart turned a triple beat as he checked his horse and dismounted. His broad shoulders were burdened by news. He approached her, moving easily in his leather and mail, his dark leggings and boots splattered with mud. He pushed the hood from his face.

  He had strong features, a prominent chin and sandy brown hair. His eyes were dark and strong as steel. Melisande’s joy drained out of her, soaking into the ground like spilled tea.

  “Are you the one they call Millie?” the ranger inquired, his gloved hand holding the reins of his dark charger. He was all business. Maybe Damjan had failed to make his case, and this ranger was here to question her.

  “I am,” she said, lifting her chin and resisting the urge to fetch her knitting bag by the garden.

  The ranger lowered his gaze briefly as if to gather resolve. “I have news of Othin of Cae Forres.”

  Melisande stepped back again, catching her foot on a stone as the blood left her cheeks. Her heart started to pound. Not good news, if she knew the look of a man at all. “Is he well?”

  Something uncomfortable shot over his face. He paused as if he were unsure how to answer the question. Finally: “He has taken a wife.” He hesitated, then turned with controlled urgency, mounted his steed and rode into the morning mist without looking back.

  Melisande turned around on the path like the first purl row on a long scarf. He came all the way out here just to tell her that? The crow fluttered down and landed beside her with a croak. She ignored it.

  A wife. Was it better to know the fate of a cat gone missing than to be left hoping for and imagining something kinder than the truth? She moved to the garden bench where the maiden’s cloak lay half draped on the ground beside the broken teacup. A chill crept up her spine as she bent to retrieve her work.

  A dropped stitch in the heart of a rose. Surely not.

  A wife.

  The cloak slipped from her fingers. Flooding into the wake of her scorned heart came a ferocious, ice-jammed torrent of what was and what might have been—the swordsman’s touch, his smile, the sound he made in his throat when rolling her into bed, the way he had muscled a ladder to the wall to fix a crack. Dark spots filled her eyes as she walked to the cottage, engulfed by a storm tide of self-conscious alarm; white threads in her hair, thin cracks on the corners of her eyes, a cruel goddess of time gone by and a careless hole in the rose-red heart of her finest work. What did a war god need with marriage? Could she have given him that? And children? Pah! She preferred the animals. A garden with flowers.

  For all that, a swordsman was quite nice to care for.

  She reached the door in a near run as the pain flooded down. She had never asked the war god to be true to her; she preferred him free. What did she expect?

  A wife?

  She entered the cottage and stumbled to her knitting cabinet. She flung open the doors, ripped the drawers from their tracks and rifled through yarn until she found a skein of blood red. Tears spilling from her eyes, she clutched the coils in her fist like a beating heart, snatched up a pair of elegant needles and sank to her knees, pattern sense rising and falling in her fingers like a storm tide. She could change this. End this. Turn of a heart, death of a wife, fall of a trickster. She could—

  With a cry, she dropped her woolen heart and threw the needles skittering across the floor. Then she buried her face in her tingling hands and wept.

  ~ * ~

  Melisande eventually finished the constable’s daughter’s cloak. Quiet as an old grave, she picked up and wove in the dropped stitch with no intention to alter her swordsman’s heart from its cruel course, as she might have done.

  Instead, she knit pattern sense into tears and let them fall.

  The warm spell that had cloaked Ason Tae might have been interesting to those with nothing better to talk about. But the winds that rose with the dark moon would be etched on the Vale for generations.

  It started as rain, a heavy, incessant rain that soaked the thatches, streets and fields, turned barren gardens and livestock pens to mud and drove rivers and streams over their banks. Dirt and root cellars flooded, souring winter stores. Trees with shallow roots groaned and toppled, leaving huge patches of root-bound earth standing on end. Wildlife sought higher ground.

  Then the winds turned as cold as winter gods in their pale shining armor swinging their swords. The rain continued to roar down, freezing to everything it struck, casting the Vale into a desolation of treacherous passage. Ice covered every street, stone, weed, fencepost, trunk and twig; ponds, troughs, puddles and mud froze solid; and the edges of the rivers closed over the running depths. Groves, berry patches and evergreens bent to the ground under the weight, their spines broken. The villagers axed the ground and dug soil and small stones to cast over thresholds and paths for those who dared to venture out.

  The rain turned to ice that bounced and hissed on the frozen realm before turning to snow. For three days the wind drove curtains of ghostly crystals over the land, sealing it like a tomb. The blowing snow blinded the eyes, stole the breath, burned flesh and hide, and drove all living things to shelter. Snow piled and drifted into towering ranges, crushing roofs, blocking windows, paths and doors and burying anything living or inanimate left in its path.

  The villagers prayed to the gods for mercy.

  Melisande prayed to pain. Othin was just a man, she told herself while knitting row after row of dark gray strands thick with black and white threads. Around her feet lay piles of undyed wool, spun roughly and full of grass and twigs, sloppily wound skeins she had gathered from young spinsters learning the craft.

  Just a man.

  Her needles clicked and spiraled around her stitches to the rhythm of the earth’s breath. What did she need from him that she couldn’t get from any passing guardsman, ranger or drunk in the corner of the Sword and Staff? Still, she knitted, stopping only to care for her animals and to a lesser extent, herself. She knitted day and night until her cheeks grew hollow, her eyes burned, her fingers cracked and her back hurt. She knitted as the ice and snow cloaked the woods outside. She knitted to stop the pain.

  Just a man. A trickster, at that. She kept knitting.

  A gust of wind moaned in the chimney and shook the window frames. Melisande hesitated as the hum wavered in her hands. She lifted her head and glanced around, and then returned to her work…

  She snapped her head up toward a corner window half covered by snow. Someone was coming through the woods, not on the path but from the west, on the other side of the garden. Melisande moved from under the voluminous folds of her knitting and ran to the sill. Two men heavily clad in skins and cloaks trudged through the drifts, their snowshoes throwing up clouds around their thighs.

  “Millie!” one of them cried, his voice lost on the wind.

  She went to the door and opened it. Snow tumbled over the threshold and blew in on a gale, nearly taking her breath. The path she had earlier made to the barn with her snowshoes and a cracked wooden shovel had filled in to become shallow indentations.

  “Millie!” Bythe repeated as they approached. Their
breath labored as if they had run here all the way from the village. The second man, his face red beneath the fur on his hood, was Damjan’s oldest son Anselm. He had come with the swordsmith the night the ranger attacked her, and helped carry the body out.

  Disoriented and lightheaded, Millie stepped aside. Bythe huffed to the door, causing more snow to tumble in. Anselm continued toward the barn as Bythe leaned down and unstrapped his shoes.

  “What’s happening?” Millie said. She leaned out the door. “What’s he doing?”

  “The villagers are coming,” the goatherd panted, sticking his snowshoes on end in the drift. He came inside and pulled the door closed, kicking aside the snow that had fallen in from outside. “Gather your things. You have to leave.”

  Melisande’s breath caught. “Leave where? Why?”

  He grabbed her arm and drew her inside. “Get into warm clothes. You’ll need your pack, some food…” He paused, his wide blue gaze settling on the mounds of knitting on the floor around her chair. He paled. “Ah, Millie.” He tore his attention from the stitches and started moving around the kitchen, throwing things in a pile. He snatched up the lamp, shoved the table out of the way with one arm and opened the cellar hatch. “Get dressed!” he said over his shoulder as he went down, his boots slamming on the steps.

  Shaken, Melisande looked at the things he had left on the table. Candles, a tinderbox, a cup, a water skin and the stale half loaf of bread she had been living on, wrapped in cloth. Where was he sending her? She had never seen Bythe so upset. Barely able to think, she went upstairs. She kicked off her shoes, rustled her warmest leggings from the drawers beneath her bed and began to put them on. Pisskin was curled up on the pillow. Melisande pulled on some heavy socks and a thick wool tunic with leather knit into the shoulders. She grabbed a scarf and swung her feet onto the ladder.

  She dropped to the floor and then fetched a basket by the door. She pulled out a hat and some mittens and set her things next to her pack. Then she went for her knitting bag. As she put it with the other things, she reached for her knife, now protected by a nondescript sheath Vinso had given her shortly after Damjan left. She shoved it safely beneath the surface.

  Just then, Anselm shoved the door open and came in. Ice crusted his brows and beard. “Do you have any rope?” He stopped and stared at the knitting pile just as Bythe had. Then his dark gaze shot to hers like an arrow. “What is that?” He pointed.

  Melisande’s heart started to pound. “Nothing.”

  He put his hand to his forehead and stared in horror at the folds of rough yarn she had knit into a storm. “By the gods, tell me you didn’t—”

  “I’ve done nothing!” she flared. But they both knew she had.

  Anselm glanced around for a moment and then stomped over the floor with his snowy boots and began wrestling the huge pile of knitting into his arms. Melisande was too frightened to stop him as he took up the stitches, needles, skeins and all and hauled them to the cellar hatch. “Bythe!” he barked. The goatherd muttered something unintelligible. Anselm said, “Deal with this. And find some rope.” He threw the knitting into the hole.

  “Anselm,” Melisande said. “What’s happening?”

  Bythe emerged from the cellar with an armful of food and a coil of rope, which he handed to Anselm. He tumbled the food on the table and closed the hatch and began shoving the items into her pack. “What’s happening is you’ve been knitting and Gunda’s little girl is dead. On the dark moon, they say the child went out in the rain thinking someone was calling her. Her mother brought her in, and that night, she fell ill. In two days she was gone. No one could help her. Gunda swears on the gods you did it.”

  “What?” Melisande choked, feeling sick. Gunda had never liked her; the woman imagined every manner of evil plotting after her baby. After rescuing Pisskin from her clutches, Melisande became one of those evils. She blurted, “Pattern sense doesn’t work like that.”

  The men’s expressions flickered with doubt. “‘Tis your own business,” Bythe said carefully, “but if I didn’t know better, I’d say your heart’s been broke.” He gestured outside. “A storm without end. You’ve not eaten or cared for yourself and this place is a mess.”

  “Is it because Othin didn’t return?” Anselm asked with gentle trepidation. “Patrols aren’t always up to them, you know.”

  Marriage is, Melisande thought, staring at the floor. She lifted her chin. “The villagers know nothing of my business. The gods storm Ason Tae all winter. I’ve never harmed anyone. How can they think I would harm a child?”

  “This is no natural storm,” Bythe said. “Pain sings on the wind. They’re afraid.”

  “Been so since the ranger died,” Anselm added, glancing up with nervous brevity.

  And there was the crux of it. Everything changed on that day. Somehow the villagers found out that Melisande killed a man and their fragile faith in her good power snapped like a twig. Fear always lurked, wringing fact from suspicion. She couldn’t blame them. Now that she knew what she was capable of, she no longer trusted herself.

  “I’ll see to the goats,” Anselm said, and ducked out the door.

  Bythe grabbed Melisande’s pack and began to inspect its contents.

  “Pisskin,” Melisande said, her voice trembling. She moved into the kitchen and snatched up her basket she used to bring food and supplies from the village. She carried it up into the loft, where she gingerly set it on the bed. “Come little one,” she soothed, scooping up the cat and placing him in the basket. She fastened the clasp.

  Then she heard something outside. A shout? She clambered over the bed to the small window on the far side. For a moment she saw nothing. Then she spotted yellow light flickering deep in the snowy woods beyond the edge of the barn roof.

  Pisskin started to yowl.

  “Bythe!” Melisande yelled. “They’re coming!” She got off the bed and grabbed the basket. It wobbled as the cat moved around inside. As she started down the ladder, Bythe reached up from below.

  “I’ll take him.”

  Melisande jumped to the floor and ran around the table, which Bythe had moved back into place over the cellar hatch. She grabbed her bag and pack and tossed them by the door. Then she put on her boots and began to don her woolens. “What’re they going to do?”

  He set the basket by the door and then took her cloak from the wall and handed it to her. “I don’t know. Gunda talked them into driving you out. Some said just until the storm stops, but they’ve gone mad and they’re capable of anything. There’s an entrance to the ruins three leagues southwest of here. Do you know it?”

  “By Billows Pond,” Melisande said, fastening the cloak at her throat.

  “That’s the one. Go there and wait out the night, if you can. Then make for Yarrow’s place. She’ll take you in.”

  Melisande jumped as the door burst open. “Time to go,” Anselm panted. He had tied up the goats; Punch was slung over his shoulders and Digger struggled under his arm.

  Bythe grabbed the basket with the cat in it and held it out. “Take this. We’re coming.” The creatures bleated and cried as the smith moved away from the door and into the yard, where he gazed into the woods. Shouts resounded through the distant trees.

  Melisande took her wide latticed snowshoes from the wall and tossed them onto the snow, stepping onto them. As she fumbled at the straps she said, “Why are you helping me?” She finished securing the shoes to her boots and stood up.

  The goatherd’s expression told her what she already knew. He had been looking after her since she was a child and wouldn’t abandon her now. He held out her mittens, helped her into her pack and handed her the knitting bag. “You’re touched by the gods, Millie. They won’t look kindly on this, mark my words.”

  “The villagers will accuse you when they find you here,” she said.

  “I’ll tell them we came for the goats. Follow our tracks west. We’ll say you already left.” He moved close, took her face in his hands and kissed her on the f
orehead. “We’ll find you soon, when this blows over.”

  Melisande nodded with a determined breath, heaving herself up onto the choppy snow. While she could only move so fast, she made it into the trees without anyone shouting an alarm. She didn’t pause to see what came of Bythe’s and Anselm’s vociferous distractions. She slogged through the snow until her thighs burned and her breath raged. The smell of smoke touched the air as she broke away from the tracks and sank into fresh snow, heading south.

  After a time she reached a rise in the forest that overlooked the tops of the trees and the valley beyond. She halted, her breath heaving. Silence blanketed the woods. The snow had stopped and a sighing breeze drew flurries through the air. Ragged clouds parted to the setting sun.

  To the northeast where her grandfather’s cottage stood rose a great plume of smoke. As Melisande watched her innocence billow into the pale evening sky, she understood. The gods cared nothing for those they touched. Especially war gods.

  Silence Beyond Boundaries

  The moon waned as Arcmael traveled north. Skadi’s description of the consequences of casting an Exile sigil had been grim, but he didn’t feel much had changed. There was a new silence in his mind and an occasional foul-tempered expression in a pattern of fallen leaves or a tangle of branches, but that could just be his imagination—or so he consoled himself. Skadi had a maddening habit of being right.

  As Arcmael neared the foothills of the Thorgrim Mountains, it became clear that the Otherworld had discovered him. One night, a shout awakened him from sleep in an otherwise silent, empty hollow. The evening before, while walking in a stretch of woods a good league from any human habitation, he caught the scent of roasting meat, turning his persistent hunger into a ravening beast. Wild greens, berries and apples had either withered to the season, been eaten by animals or hidden like shapeshifters from his eyes. He had not been able to find game, but he didn’t think he would be able to take it with his bow even if he had. His hunting skills had deserted him.