It was only a matter of time before the Others took more direct measures, once they discovered he was unarmed against them. Wild and unpredictable, they tended to respond to those who saw them, and not always kindly. Arcmael never had negative experiences with the Others, but some wardens had. The kingdoms of the Otherworld were vast, and not all beings respected the Fylking. For this reason, his studies in Faersc had included methods of protection: metals, flora, rituals and features in the natural landscape used to deter Others from causing harm across the Veil. Being young and arrogant at the time, Arcmael had considered such studies to be the inferior province of the Blackthorn Guild and not something that would concern him. His predator Guardians were far more powerful. He certainly had not put the kind of effort into it that would help after exiling himself from the Otherworld.
Skadi had not mentioned this, of course; she liked to leave her students to make such connections for themselves. But that method failed to account for the attitude of a bitter youth, and now Arcmael stumbled along, rummaging through his memories. The Others hated iron, though it didn’t work on all of them. Broom? Goat weed? Something about casting a circle and calling the Four Winds? He couldn’t remember their names.
One well-known deterrent was the company of other people—bustling towns, farmers working in shops or fields, or playing children. Arcmael had to admit an occasional craving for human contact, not only to soothe the emptiness but also to get news. Despite the silence left behind by the Exile sigil, however, his basic nature—his desire for solitude—had not changed. He would be better off sticking to plants and invocations.
Just then, an image of a rowan tree came to mind. Yes, he remembered that now. There was a little rhyme that went with it: If a phasm you should see, seek you then the fair rowan tree. It was worth a try. He had no iron, broom didn’t grow in the damp soil of the woodlands and goat weed had to be picked in midsummer to be effective. Besides, the Others would obscure any plants that could be used to ward them off.
It would be harder to hide a rowan tree; Arcmael had seen as many rowan trees in his travels as he had stars. But not that day. Or the day after that.
He slept little, assailed by nightmares of elven assassins and a near-fatal encounter with a yellow-eyed boar. In a village called Laes, he gave his last brass bead to a woman with a weird scar on her face, in exchange for a stale loaf of bread. As he walked away, he heard her spit to avert evil. The path out of Laes followed a ravine. Something laughed above him, causing rocks to let loose and tumble onto the path before he could jump out of the way. The rolling stones toppled him, covered him in bruises and soiled his bread. He brushed it off and ate it anyway.
That evening, he finally found a rowan tree growing on the edge of a field picked over by geese and crows. He thanked the tree with genuine sincerity as he cut a branch with a few curling leaves still clinging. He pulled around his quiver and stuffed the branch in alongside his two remaining arrows. He had broken one arrow in half while pulling it from a tree after shooting at a ghostly hare; another he had let fly into a river thinking it was the flowing movement of a small deer. He had no idea what happened to the others. Probably lost in the rockslide.
Thus armed, he continued, weary and hungry. He heard no laughter, no curses. Nothing fell from or shit upon him from the trees. He stopped and made camp early, sinking into a deep sleep. He awoke before dawn from a dream of a tall, blue-cloaked figure gazing at him from the shadows, his long white hair covered by a drawn hood. There was something familiar about him, but Arcmael could no more place the memory than he could recall the particulars of casting protective circles or consecrating a ritual knife.
That morning he decided to carve himself a new staff. He had no more coin, and the staff might provide him with some regalia by which he might get a warm bed or a meal. It would be risky to carve and to use. But Arcmael had long since abandoned sense.
He walked until he reached a glade chittering with greenfinches and carpeted with birch, sweet briar and thistle. There, a heavy bough from a crack willow had fallen on a blackthorn tree, splintering it in half. Arcmael wrested a section from the trunk, sat on a rock and began to shape the wood with his knife. He left a cluster of thorny branches growing from the top.
King Magnfred, the creator of the Blackthorn Guild, had chosen this tree, a keeper of secrets and the herald of long winters, to name his order of witches and warlocks. To those in the know, a blackthorn staff might mark Arcmael as a warlock, which in the realms around Thorgrim could prove useful, providing someone didn’t ask him to lift a curse or brew a potion for a bellyache. Even if he knew how to concoct such things, the spirits of herbs, water, healing or mercy would be working against him.
He stood and gripped his staff, liking the feel of it. He wondered if his old staff had withered on the plain where he lost it in his fight with Vargn. An omen, in retrospect.
The sun wheeled overhead as Arcmael walked. His new staff felt curiously naked without a warden’s pentacle. He grimaced at the thought. Claiming to be a warden might be safer than claiming to be a warlock, especially since the Fylking wouldn’t see him doing it. But it had to look authentic. And when the Others got wind of it, they would harry him without mercy, rowan branch and all.
He reached a burbling stream. Running water was protective. He paced along the shore until he spotted a boulder in the center of the course, gleaming in the sun and flat enough to sit on. The Veil remained quiet as he splashed into the icy water, clambered up the rock and got comfortable. Then he took out his knife and began to carve a pentacle near the top of his staff.
A blast of wind announced the arrival of a hostile air elemental. Arcmael glanced up at the deep-throated curse coming from the toothy spirit of an alder tree. A company of brightly clad warriors in service to the Elf King rasped, threatened, growled and glared from the edge of the stream they couldn’t cross. Traitor! they cried. Deceiver! Trickster! Pale hounds with red eyes snapped at him from the shore.
Arcmael kept carving.
Once he put away his knife and brushed the wood chips into the stream, he rose and leapt to the far side, brandishing his rowan branch. But though the water had protected him as he worked, there were no rules beyond it. An icy gale nearly carried him off, and frost coated his hair in an instant. He stumbled and fell as his ankle turned on a rock that appeared in his path from nowhere. He dropped his branch. Before he could grab it, something leapt from the air, black and growling like a wolf. It was not any kind of animal Arcmael knew. It landed with a snarl. A sharp pain tore into his calf, just above the edge of his boot.
“Othin!” Arcmael cried, more as an exclamation of fear than an invocation. He kicked at the otherworldly beast as it came in for another attack.
Silence fell, like a sword.
The next thing Arcmael saw was movement in the trees, a glint of white, a face beneath the rim of a hood, a cloak of blue. An old ash tree stood in the sun. A hooded crow lifted from a low branch and flew off toward the mountains. The specter had vanished.
Arcmael sat there, bleeding, his turned ankle throbbing and his heart racing. Every hair on his body stood on end. The sun shone warmly through the trees and a soft wind blew, drawing fallen leaves into whirlwinds. Far above, a hawk loosed a shrill cry.
The Others had fled, leaving the forest as empty as it would have appeared to any mortal. Arcmael shrugged off his pack, staring hard at the ash tree. He had dreamed the night before of a figure cloaked in blue. It was not Fylking; he knew that much. No Fylking would slip past an Exile sigil drawn from Elivag in the dawn of their world. Besides, the blue-cloaked specter bore a different mark, one of loftiness and vision, a constellation gazing from one eye upon a meadow of light.
Othin.
Not a little unnerved, Arcmael opened his pack and pulled out his supplies for tending wounds. He removed his boot, rolled up his leggings and grimaced at the ragged bite on his leg. Blood oozed from curved rows left by teeth.
He had called to O
thin in a moment of panic. Why would the Wanderer heed his plea? Othin was, among many things, a god of war. Grim, fickle and fell, he suffered no weakness. One did not make an offering to Othin of flowers or milk, but of strong creatures with cut throats. When Arcmael found Dog bleeding on the plain, he had refused to offer him as a sacrifice to anything and had thereafter broken his vow to the sword. If Othin did walk this world, he would cast Arcmael to his wolves and ravens before helping him.
Even so, something had called the Others off, and it was not a rowan branch.
Arcmael treated and wrapped his wound and then inspected his ankle. It was unbroken and not swelling too much, but it would hurt later. He would have to find something to put into a poultice. In this season, that would be a challenge. He could use his new staff to appeal to someone for help, perhaps, but he had a long way to go before coming to any villages. He put his things away and got to his feet. His ankle complained, but it bore his weight.
Arcmael fetched his branch from the ground and stuffed it back into his quiver. As he grasped his staff and limped over the forest floor, he cast one last glance at the ash tree. If Othin had helped him, it wouldn’t likely be for any good reason.
“Thank you, Allfather,” he said anyway. One could never be too careful.
~ * ~
Two days passed as Arcmael made his way north. In defiance of Wolf’s agenda, he had originally resisted going to the Vale of Ason Tae, but now it presented a good place to lie low and mind his own business. He could find a farmer or a blacksmith willing to take on an extra hand. He wouldn’t be able to summon the Fylking or work magic, but he had learned enough in the wilds to be useful. Once the snows filled the mountain pass, he would be safe for a while.
Now all he had to do was get there.
Since the incident by the stream, the Others had not bothered him, aside from making their presence known with an occasional whisper on the wind, a bad dream or a falling branch in his path. He found a patch of wild carrots and even managed to take a grouse with his bow, staving off hunger for the time being. Despite frequent rests, however, his ankle had swelled, and he had become more and more dependent on his staff. He hadn’t been able to find flowering plants or those with roots he could use to treat his hurt. His present course wouldn’t take him near any settlements, and he considered changing his route to seek help. But though the Others were not harming him outright, they could influence people by causing them to hate or fear him in some way, as they had with the scarred woman who took his last brass bead.
Thus decided, he made for Mimir, a sprawling wooded swamp that no one besides a warden, ranger or outlaw would attempt without a guide. It was a bleak and treacherous place ruled by undines and dryads who had no love for mortals, let alone one exiled from the Otherworld. But many medicinal plants grew there.
One afternoon, a full league into the swamp and exhausted by tottering along and doubling back in search of solid ground, Arcmael discovered that eluding the Others and finding meals, beds and plants were the least of his problems.
A water spirit with the energy of a maelstrom and a mouth like a lower city prostitute had been following him since he entered the swamp. She didn’t keep him from finding and gathering nightshade and alder bark for his ankle, nor did she prevent him from netting a trout hovering in a pool beneath a burbling fall, but she harassed him with the infuriating persistence of a deerfly. She quieted a little when he came across some dropberry, which would not only help his hurts but also ward off hostile spirits, but she began berating him again as soon as he had tucked the leaves in his pack. Arcmael had grown so desensitized by her buzzing curses that he almost missed a familiar chill that touched his spine, followed by the sounds of horses.
The water spirit fled.
Arcmael slogged through the sodden grass and hunkered behind a winterberry thicket. Without thinking, he pressed his staff into the grass to hide it.
From the wavering shadows of a willow copse rode a company of six, clad in black, void of presence and reeking of graves. Guided by some arcane sense, the warriors splashed into a shallow pool, guiding their steeds through the patchy earth hidden by reeds, brush, dead trees and running water. Arcmael held his breath and called up all the things Wolf had told him about the draugr. Controlled by a warlock’s spell, a violation of Elivag. Dead and not dead. Trapped. Without the Fylking, Arcmael was completely at their mercy.
Vargn was not among them. They passed by; either they didn’t perceive him or their business didn’t include harrying a lone traveler.
Arcmael huddled there, water soaking into his boots. He half wished the water spirit would return so he would know the riders had gone, but she didn’t. He pulled his staff from the muck, rose stiffly and moved on, following the riders’ messy tracks to see where they were headed. He moved quietly and kept his senses open for birds, chittering squirrels, or the lack thereof, in case one of the riders had spotted him and circled around. But he doubted they had come here to hunt wardens. Finding a warden in a place like this would be like finding a cat in a hayfield.
That afternoon, Arcmael emerged onto a stony rise that rolled off into the distance, solid and void of trees. The riders’ tracks scarred the grasses between the outcroppings, heading north. They were not worried about being tracked.
Resisting an urge to follow them and wishing, not for the first time, that he had a horse, Arcmael retreated back into the swamp and found a sheltered place to camp. He risked building a fire to cook his fish and prepare a poultice to put on his ankle. When he went to a nearby stream to fetch water, he found a tall and remarkably green mugwort plant. Whispering his gratitude, he gathered the healthiest leaves. Later, he used his axe to carve a deep bowl from the trunk of a fallen pine and soaked his tired, aching feet in the wash.
He stayed there for another day and night until his ankle strengthened. He made arrows from birch saplings and fletched them with goose feathers he had gathered moons ago and carefully preserved in his pack. As he worked, he thought long and hard as to why Vargn’s riders would be traveling up here, in the wilds, heading north. It could have been an isolated incident, but his heart told him otherwise. He decided to start using roads and common paths where the riders would be less likely to risk being seen.
Two evenings later beneath a cold drizzle, Arcmael moved along a well-known woodland road west of Vota. He was startled from his thoughts by the rumble of hoofbeats behind him. Taking no chances, he slid down over the bank and crouched behind a jumble of boulders carpeted with moss and ferns. A chill climbed over his scalp. He counted twenty draugr this time, their black cloaks leaving the scent of death in the heavy air. Again, their master was not with them.
Once his heart had calmed, Arcmael pondered why the large company would be taking the road, even at night. Although the road eventually headed north to the mountains, the draugr would have to pass farms, a tannery and a timber mill. Scattered with dwellings, the area didn’t offer much in the way of sheltering wilds. Perhaps the fiends were able to elude people as they did deep water or bogs.
They might be headed to Tower Sif in Ason Tae thinking to find a warden there. But why would they need so many men to do that? Most wardens wouldn’t be able to fight even one of them. Without his Guardian Fylking, Arcmael wouldn’t have prevailed against two, even given his patchy training on the blade. Against twenty? No chance, even with the Fylking helping him.
For the first time he wondered if he should make one last visit to Faersc. Surely Skadi knew about the missing wardens, Vargn and his draugr henchmen. But what if Wolf and his lot had not told her? It was possible. The Fylking were as bound by politics and infighting as were any hierarchical company of warriors. Information was power, and war took precedence over secondary casualties. Arcmael’s childhood in the halls of House Halstaeg had taught him that.
He scowled at his own arrogance. What made him think the Mistress of the Faersc Conservatory depended on him for information? Ridiculous.
Shadowed by f
oreboding, he mustered his strength and returned to the road, his thoughts haunted by grave speculations.
~ * ~
The bright afternoon sun shone in brief intervals through swiftly moving clouds as Arcmael approached the towering eaves of Wyrvith Forest, an ancient wood cradled in the foothills of Thorgrim south of the Wolftooth Pass.
A great stone arch stood over the path. The entrance had stood there centuries before the Gate War, and no one, not even Skadi, knew who had built it. Tall as two warriors standing, the arch was covered in carvings of the Old Gods in battle, or so it was said, for the pictures were now faint under moss and time. Arcmael made out a warrior on a horse, a spear and the head of a dragon. Intricate lines wove through the images, binding them. The stones fit so neatly together that a thin fishing knife couldn’t be inserted between. Somehow, the centuries’ rise and fall of trees around the gate had not touched it, nor had roots or frost displaced its foundations.
On the apex of the arch perched a raven, its wings partly spread and its stone eyes empty. The raven was a messenger of the Otherworld, and its half-lifted wings represented the creature’s presence on both sides of the Veil. But Arcmael didn’t need history or stories to tell him these woods were thick with Others.
They were waiting for him.
He glanced behind him at the rocky hills northwest of Vota. Sunlight bathed the land in warmth. He had come this way to avoid the draugr. They would not enter Wyrvith this far west, as this side of the sprawling wood between here and the mountains was steep and impassible to horses. To the east, lined with a sparsely populated swath of villages, ran the North Mountain Road which snaked up into Thorgrim to the Wolftooth Pass. If the riders were heading north, they would go that way.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 16
