The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  “Fenrir Brotherhood. They are ancient, dating back thousands of suns.”

  “Where does treason come into it? As far as I know, the Fenrir Brotherhood is as harmless as the Blackthorn Guild. Votaries of the Old Gods, nothing more.”

  Diderik shot him a look. “Do rangers know anything besides the locations of cathouses?”

  Othin said nothing as an image of Kidge came to him, lying by the hearth in her dining room, draped in blood, murdered by a ghoul. One more thing he had wanted to attend to snatched away by Halstaeg’s paranoia. Othin doubted he would even be returned to the coastal route now. Halstaeg had hinted at promoting him to a position in the citadel.

  “Fenrir precedes the Blackthorn Guild by centuries,” Diderik continued. “They are sorcerers. King Magnfred modeled the Guild after Fenrir, in answer to their power. But he forgot to include teeth.”

  “Are you telling me Leofwine is a sorcerer?”

  “He denied it, of course. Said he had left all that behind when he came here. That might be true. Halstaeg wouldn’t have cared; he doesn’t believe in magic. But he can’t control the populace. It’s now generally believed that sorcery has come to these shores, and it isn’t Blackthorn. Rumors have every mother and child in this city losing sleep.”

  “So,” Othin concluded, “discovery of Leofwine’s association with Fenrir would act as a torch to a thatch roof and, to disassociate himself, Halstaeg will hang him in the arena for the gulls and ravens.”

  The blademaster grinned. “The seneschal told me everything he knew in return for my silence.”

  “I’ll wager he didn’t suspect you’d tell me. Which begs the question: why? You owe me nothing.”

  They walked along a narrow way parallel to the river. In the dimness lit only by the rising moon and an occasional torch, Othin studied the doors, windows and walls of the houses they passed, searching for a mark. The entrance to the Rat Hole was not obvious, and he had never seen it, though he knew generally where it was. Finally, Diderik spoke.

  “I was there the day they escorted Arcmael from the city. I came to see him off. We were friends, you see, and he had few of those. He would talk to me. I taught him horsemanship. I was a young man then but accomplished enough on the blade to train in the Rangers’ Square. I had aspirations for joining them—but as I watched Halstaeg training with his son, my desire left me. He was cruel and didn’t appreciate Arcmael’s subtle talents. I’ll tell you, that boy had a way with a sword that’s influenced me to this day.”

  “Did you train with him?”

  “His father forbade it. I don’t know where Arcmael learned his way, but it wasn’t anything Halstaeg taught him. He just knew, as if the gods themselves moved his hand. I saw a young man who could have been the best high constable the rangers have ever known. But Halstaeg was more concerned with forcing the boy into his own image. I vowed, as I watched Arcmael ride out with his head hanging in shame, that I would see Halstaeg’s name fall to dust. I made no move toward that end, though I did join the Dyrregin Guard shortly thereafter. For a long time, I didn’t think about it. But I waited. When you asked me for help, I saw an opportunity.”

  Othin spotted something pale smeared on a high stone wall enclosing a graveyard holding the bones of witches who honored the earth. Across the street, a candle lantern hung on a post, lighting nothing but the ground beneath. He walked over, lifted the light from the hook and returned to the wall. Someone had painted a rat on the cemetery wall. He lowered the lamp and turned to Diderik. “Are you using my misfortune to avenge a friend?”

  “No, indeed. Your misfortune simply made it clear that Halstaeg is hiding something. In my search, the gods led me to Leofwine.” He reached into his cloak, pulled out a folded letter and then lifted his chin toward the cemetery. “You’ll find the entrance to the Hole in a tomb with Hel carved above the door. This,” he handed over the letter, “is an execution order for Nestor.”

  Othin breathed a silent laugh. “How by the Trickster’s balls did you get it?”

  “Well, I didn’t believe Leofwine told me everything. I called his bluff and threatened to take what I knew about him to King Angvald as a matter concerning the safety of the realm. Leofwine was to deliver this letter the day I discovered him. He gave it to me instead.”

  “Why did Halstaeg wait this long?”

  “He was questioning Nestor. Leofwine swore he wasn’t privy to that. He hoped giving me the letter would prove his good intent.” He drew his cloak around him. “I don’t really care what happened in Ason Tae. You’ll follow your path regardless. But I wouldn’t see yet another man trod upon by one less worthy. Besides,” his smile flashed in the dark, “I plan on being there to comfort young Rosalie when you break her heart.”

  The blademaster turned and melted into the shadows like a cat, leaving Othin standing by the graves of witches with an inexorable choice in his hand.

  ~ * ~

  Othin awoke in the gray predawn of his wedding day. Light rain tapped on the windowsill, and fog hung in the barren trees in the orchard outside. The air smelled of rotting leaves and brine. Somewhere in the distance, a fox barked. He listened intently to the sharp, rough sound that awakened him. He had thought it was a dream.

  A dream of a fox, a hooded crow that flew and yet was still, the heavy stench of catacombs, a rider in black and the screams of the woman he loved. He closed his eyes.

  In an hour, maybe two, servants would come and dress him in finery for his wedding breakfast. With a breath, he rolled from his bed and reached for the plain leather gear hanging on a chair. He dressed, donned his longknife, but left his sword and bow on their hooks in case anyone got an idea he was trying to escape.

  Not that he would get far. While Halstaeg had not insulted him by having him trailed—something any ranger worth his pay would be aware of—that would change if Othin let on what he now knew.

  He left his room and strode down the hall. At the top of the stairs he met an older man with graying temples, dressed in black. “Sefen,” Othin greeted him.

  The manservant regarded him kindly. “Going somewhere?”

  “I need to walk,” Othin said, making eye contact.

  Sefen smiled and nodded, squeezing his face into an expression of understanding. “Breakfast will be served after sunrise, milord.”

  Othin nodded and kept going. Sefen was the earliest riser in House Halstaeg. Othin made it down the stairs, through the halls and out the door without encountering anyone else. He drew his hood against the rain as he stepped out into the dark and strode in the direction of the city. An armed guard stirred near a courtyard wall. Othin muttered a greeting as he walked by.

  He moved through the quiet passages of the Royal District, taking the short way out to the King’s Citadel. He moved quickly, hood down. He finally reached the wide street that led to the city gates, hesitating with a scream in his mind before going that way.

  He hugged the high walls until he reached the gate towering in the mist. He stopped and pulled his cloak around him. Millie. If he went through as himself, he would be recognized and Halstaeg would be informed. If he went through cloaked and hidden, he would be stopped and questioned.

  He ground his teeth. If he had known a week ago what he knew now, this marriage would not be happening. He envisioned Bren tossing the fox card in front of him. Shapeshifting, guile, escaping tricky situations. The Northman was never wrong when he pulled wildcards. But Othin saw only a cage.

  He crossed the street and found a path that wound through grounds manicured with shrubs and ornamental trees. Fully armed soldiers paced over the grass and the dim forms of archers filled the towers built in intervals along the city wall. The path eventually went through a stone passage with a narrow portcullis at the end. For the first time in his memory, it was closed. He yanked back his hood and called out his name and rank to the gatekeeper. The iron bars rattled up before him. As he passed through, he wondered how long it would be before word got back to Halstaeg.

&nb
sp; The passage spilled out onto the street directly across from the Rangers’ Square. On the corner, connected to the garrison, stood an old forge closed up for the night. After spending the better part of yesterday hunting the city for an armorer who would outfit him in time for the wedding, Othin finally came here, his last resort. It was run by a surly fellow named Ufe who had a bird’s nest of white hair and a limp he picked up in a bar fight. Ufe cared little for Othin’s situation. He would take all Othin’s coin and then some to work on such short notice. Any man to marry a lady, the smith lectured as he shuffled about, picking up and tossing about scraps of metal plates lightweight and suitable for ornamental wear, should be better prepared. Othin didn’t bother to argue the point.

  The rain stopped as Othin walked through the city using lesser-known paths he had learned in Prederi’s company. He crossed the bridge over the river and climbed up to the plain beneath the gatetower. Envisioning Prederi’s suggestion of shooting an arrow at it, he stopped a good distance short and moved down to the edge of the sea. Below, the shadowy water swirled and hissed in rhythmic swells against the rocks. He sat down, pulling his cloak around him.

  When the sun began its descent into the sea, Othin would stand in the ancient stone temple above the waves and pledge his heart to a woman he didn’t love, a child conceived in drunken deception and the gods who had abandoned him. He hung his head in self-reproach. Now his wild woman of the north was alone after having been raped, so Nestor said when Othin produced the execution order and promised to hold it to a torch if the ranger told him the truth.

  Othin doubted everything the man said, at least he wanted to, but Nestor wouldn’t have confessed to rape knowing the effect that would have on Othin after he had asked them to deliver word to Millie of his change in patrol. Either Nestor believed Othin’s honor sacrosanct to the point of idiocy, or he knew he would die anyway. Just to make sure, he claimed he was outside keeping watch and had nothing to do with it.

  Nestor’s next error was to claim that Damjan killed his companion. A man of steadfast honor and enough experience to understand consequences, Damjan wouldn’t have killed a man unless he had to, and he would have been even more cautious with a ranger. Perhaps Othin was expected to believe Nestor spared Millie his attentions because Damjan had not killed him too. But Othin didn’t believe that. Damjan could have had many reasons for escorting Nestor back here alive. To answer for the crime, if nothing else.

  To deepen the blow to Othin’s heart, Nestor also said that Millie had taken another lover. That would be fair; the winters were long and lonely in Graebrok Forest, and Othin had seemingly abandoned her. However, Nestor’s calling her lover a spy was absurd, the mark of amateurs who would say anything to justify what they had done.

  Or so Othin had thought. Nestor made his final error when Othin asked him to explain his justification for dishonoring the brotherhood. Othin didn’t get the response he expected. Sneering, Nestor said, Fool. I am no ranger. With that, Othin finally learned why Halstaeg had caged him for nothing but a drunken fuck which, gods knew, was common enough—even if it did involve his daughter and a child.

  I am no ranger. Indeed not—for the rangers who had replaced Othin were spies, hired by Halstaeg to seek intelligence of Fjorgin presence here. Halstaeg had informed them that Thorgrim attracted outlanders posing as witches, warlocks and such, and instructed them to look into and send word of anything suspicious. And why had he done that? Othin knew the answer to that question without Nestor’s help. He recalled the day he had returned from patrol and sat across Halstaeg’s desk, starving and listening to his commander’s cryptic lectures. Halstaeg did not believe in magic, and had brushed off Othin’s report from the Pink Rose as simply an attack by Fjorginans in revenge for their own. But when Halstaeg started getting reports from up and down the coast of marauders who couldn’t die, he realized he’d made a mistake.

  The rest of the picture, Diderik filled in. Late last night, beneath the damp shadow of a stable thatch, the captain had told Othin that, according to Leofwine, Halstaeg didn’t trust Lord Coldevin’s informants and wanted control over the situation himself. Ever the authority, Lord Halstaeg. On hearing Othin’s news, Diderik had smiled like a mountain cat closing in on a trapped and wounded stag. If it got back to King Angvald that Halstaeg stepped out of protocol and hired his own spies—a misjudgment that had resulted in not only more ghoul attacks but also the violation of an innocent woman—he would be stripped of rank.

  Othin kept his promise to Nestor. In a display of false satisfaction, he held a torch to the execution order and asked the spy, as the linen smoked away, what had made him think Othin would let him live after violating his woman. Nestor had shouted in alarm. But Halstaeg, seeing to every detail, had put his spy far away from attentive ears. Othin opened the door with the key he had obtained from the dozing gaoler and carried out the execution himself.

  Now he gazed at the gray sea, feeling as empty as Hel’s shit-stained grin. Death changed nothing. Death didn’t care. Only the living suffered.

  If he had not given the Halstaeg’s henchmen a message for Millie, none of this would have happened.

  He considered sending Millie another message using a proper messenger well paid from his armor coin. But what would he say now? I’m sorry? I can’t abandon my unborn child? Give your new lover my regards?

  The high constable of the King’s Rangers is a devious snake?

  Millie would move on. After being abandoned and then raped by rangers, she would be glad to see Othin go. What good were his claims now? He couldn’t promise her anything. The ones who had hurt her were dead and the only ones left to blame were Rosalie and her father—a man who had disowned his firstborn son because he didn’t understand him. Othin could do nothing with the information he now had. He had no proof, and would only be accused of shirking honor. Shapeshifting, guile, escaping tricky situations. A fox trapped by hunters and hounds.

  Yesterday, Bren had made the practical suggestion that Othin carry through with the wedding, keep his honor and wait for Rosalie to dishonor herself. The plan had more holes than a fishing net. What if she hadn’t lied? Then Othin would be caged by his honor unless he wanted to become yet one more wandering cock in the world.

  Prederi continued to maintain that she had lied about the child, and Othin mostly agreed with him; it was too much the sort of thing she would do. Ever the champion of extreme plans, Prederi held to Bren’s original suggestion of slipping the trap. He had already gathered a small company of rangers friendly to Othin’s cause. But Othin couldn’t see the value of tangling his brothers in some kind of civil war when all he had to do was wait.

  Rosalie’s condition would be apparent soon enough. If she didn’t grow with child, then Othin might have a chance to free himself by claiming the wedding had been forced on a lie—and if the true reason for that emerged, Halstaeg would be scrubbing at a worse stain on his name than having a soiled daughter. Othin could leave the marriage with a clear conscience. He would leave the brotherhood too, most likely. Once Fjorgin declared war, he would find plenty of work as a mercenary.

  He sat there, watching the sea amid the ashes of a happier time, until the clouds parted and the sun warmed his back. Time to go.

  The sun had climbed above the city roofs when Othin arrived at Ufe’s forge, his working excuse for missing his wedding breakfast. Not easy to find an armorer on such short notice on the eve of war, he would explain. Halstaeg had given him only a week to prepare.

  A familiar gelding stood tethered to a post outside the forge. Bred for the mountains, the beast was soot black with one white fetlock. It bore a ranger’s brand. Othin drew a deep breath to prepare himself as he ducked inside the door.

  Ageton, captain of the North Branch, stood with his back turned, talking to Ufe. The captain wore his dress uniform, his long blond hair unbound and lying in wavy lengths on his back. Halstaeg had probably sent him to track his ranger down.

  Ufe cleared his throat, his wir
e-nest hair glowing in the light of the forge.

  Ageton turned around. “Othin of Cae Forres. We missed you at breakfast.” His tone was dry, his expression veiled.

  Othin put his fist on his heart and lowered his head. “Milord. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “Been here for three days. Bren told me you might be here this morning.”

  “Aye,” Ufe put in. “Wasting time. Some bridegroom you are.”

  “I’m not paying for your opinion,” Othin shot back.

  “You’ve not paid me for anything yet,” Ufe reminded him. The smith turned to his forge, picked up a pair of tongs and lifted a glowing piece of metal from the coals. He set the plate on an anvil and started hammering it.

  Ageton moved a few paces away and leaned close to Othin’s ear. “What are you doing?”

  Without thinking, Othin reached up and took Millie’s crow between his fingers. “Checking on my armor, milord.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  Ufe stopped hammering. The slack tub hissed.

  In the silence Othin said, “I’m taking what time I can.”

  Othin didn’t realize someone had entered the smithy until Ageton looked past him. The scent of gardenia touched the air. “Lady Halstaeg,” the captain said, tilting his head.

  Dropping the crow, Othin turned, his mouth dry. “Milady.” He still couldn’t bring himself to call his betrothed by name, let alone by any other endearment.

  Halstaeg’s daughter wore a plain blue dress stitched with tiny flowers. Her blond hair, sparkling with fine strands of silver, curled around her shoulders. Her narrow trout-pond gaze settled on the stitchery at his throat. “Did you forget the time?” The deadpan inquiry reminded Othin of her father.

  Othin mustered civility. “Forgive me, milady. I had to make sure my armor would be done to my satisfaction.”

  Ufe coughed. Othin noted that Ageton was not excusing himself, as any man of honor would do in an uncomfortable situation. That meant he wasn’t done talking.