The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  “I wanted to find out how dangerous it is. Very, as it turns out. Could come in useful.” He stopped at one of the doors and opened it. “After you.”

  The room was well furnished with warm rugs, two narrow beds, a chair and racks for hanging clothes and gear. Fire crackled in a small hearth. Platefuls of food were laid out on a table and there, his long legs sprawled beneath, sat Othin. His cloak and weapons had been hung on the wall.

  The ranger smiled. “Here you are. The guardsman who brought me here said you were below. I was starting to worry.” He set down a glass of wine, rose to his feet and addressed the sorcerer with a fading smile. “And you are?”

  Disinterested in pleasantries, Arcmael shed his cloak and sidled around the table, his gaze caressing roast venison, baked apples, some kind of soup and bread with a thick crust. A flagon of ruby wine sparkled in the firelight. He grabbed a knife, cut a piece of meat and shoved it into his mouth.

  “The only reason you’re still alive,” the sorcerer replied, pushing back his hood. He had a narrow face, a long nose and a high forehead draped with wavy black hair. His expression was decidedly anxious, for a Fenrir sorcerer.

  Othin released a chilling laugh. “Leofwine,” he said, growling the word.

  The man raised his hand. “Othin—”

  The ranger crossed the space in three steps, grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him against the wall, just missing the weapons rack. “You smarmy son of a bitch. What are you doing here?”

  Chewing on a mouthful of bread, Arcmael poured himself a glass of wine. They knew each other. Fascinating. He lifted the lid of the soup crock. Potato and mushrooms. He pulled it closer and grabbed a spoon.

  “Othin!” the sorcerer squeaked, clutching the ranger’s hand at his throat. “Please—”

  Arcmael dipped his spoon into the crock. “I’d like to hear what he has to say.”

  The man fell to the floor with a choke as Othin released him. The ranger turned on Arcmael, his eyes wild. “Oh, I doubt that,” he laughed. “But your father sure does, in the privacy of his—”

  “That’s finished!” Leofwine said. He got to his feet, smoothing his oily hair.

  “Did his wife finally catch you at it?” Othin retorted.

  Arcmael leaned back in his seat, swallowing. So many things about this bothered him that he couldn’t find a thread end. He cleared his throat. “Did you know who I was all along?” he asked Othin. He might have thought the sorcerer told him, but clearly they had not talked for a long time.

  The ranger came to the table, snatched up his wine and drained it. As he lowered the glass, his mood softened. “No. Shortly before leaving Merhafr I learned that Halstaeg had an elder son. When you told me your name, I had a suspicion. It grew stronger when I saw you put on a sword.”

  “I know nothing of swords.” Damn you, Wolf.

  “Diderik told me otherwise. He said you fought by the hands of gods.”

  Arcmael’s anger died in his chest. Diderik. His only friend as a youth, the swordsman had taken him under his wing and shown him kindness. But he couldn’t protect Arcmael from the engines of House Halstaeg. “Is he here?”

  “He’s in Merhafr,” Leofwine rasped. He moved to a bed, sat down and rubbed his throat. “He’s a captain in the Dyrregin Guard.”

  Throwing Leofwine a look, Othin continued, “I was sure about your identity when I realized it was Leofwine who fished you out of the dungeon. He works for your father.”

  “Halstaeg knows nothing about him,” Leofwine said. He settled a dark sorcerer’s gaze on Arcmael. “The Otherworld does, however.”

  Arcmael took a deep breath and wondered if there was anything left in his life the Exile sigil had not touched with its tainted breath. “What do you mean?”

  “A warden both cursed and blessed,” Leofwine said. “That’s the word. Invisible to your gods, the last of your kind.”

  “Whose word?”

  “I invoked a spirit to track Othin. To my surprise, it found you.”

  “The phooka,” Arcmael said as understanding settled over him. “That was you?”

  “The what?” Othin said.

  “It’s a creature of the Otherworld,” Arcmael explained. “Powerful and very nasty. It dragged me out of the woods and dropped me in your path.”

  “It serves me,” Leofwine said. “I didn’t know what I would get when I cast the invocation. I was in a hurry. When it appeared, I thought the gods must have sent it.”

  “On the road I felt a shade, a presence,” Othin said. He lowered his head briefly as if something had occurred to him. “I think it scattered my bounty hunters.”

  “It likes your horse,” Arcmael put in casually. He cut a baked apple in half with his spoon and put it into his mouth. It was stuffed with sausage.

  Leofwine blurted a laugh. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw it talking to him.” He scooped up the other half of the apple.

  Othin grabbed a chair and sat down, rubbing his eyes. “Why are you tracking me, Leofwine?”

  Leofwine got up and approached the table. He lifted the flagon and filled Othin’s glass, and then poured one for himself. “Halstaeg found out from the executioner in the Rat Hole that you killed Nestor for what he did in Ason Tae. He blamed me because no one else was supposed to know about it. By Loki, I’ve never seen him so livid. He fears you learned everything.”

  “I did,” Othin assured him.

  “Yes, well, he had me arrested for treason, and I had to use my arts to escape. I decided to find you before he did.”

  Othin snorted. “Is that how you plan to get back into his bed? Information of my whereabouts?”

  Arcmael shuddered as he felt something dark move around Leofwine’s body, like a shadow that wasn’t his. Othin sat there, glowering in challenge. A careless thrust, his insult. No love lost between these two.

  His voice deadly quiet, Leofwine said, “So self-absorbed with your drunken mistakes, your persecution and lost honor. As if this is—”

  “If I may,” Arcmael broke in patiently, cutting another piece of venison. He glanced at Othin. “I get why my father put a price on his head,” he waved the knife in the sorcerer’s direction, “but why does he want you? What did you learn?”

  Leofwine gazed into his glass with a raised brow. “He learned to keep his cock in his breeches, that’s what.” He snickered like a guttersnipe.

  The black-haired warrior started to rise from his chair. “You little—”

  “Othin,” Arcmael said with his mouth full. “Why has my father put a price on your head?”

  Othin sat down. Grabbing his wine, he slouched in his chair with a long exhale. “I got Rosalie with child. So she says.”

  “Who?”

  “Your sister,” Leofwine said. “I believe your mother was pregnant with her when your father sent you away.”

  “A sister,” Arcmael mused, and then added dryly, “That must have been a relief to Straelos.” He leaned back in his chair and watched Othin sip his wine. “So you fucked my sister.” He reached for the bread and tore off a piece. “And I was just beginning to respect you.”

  “It gets worse…” Leofwine put in.

  “Shut up,” Othin snapped. “I was so drunk I don’t know what happened. Halstaeg took her side, of course. Decided we were to be married. A matter of honor, he called it.”

  “Buggered off on his wedding day,” Leofwine said, clearly enjoying this.

  “He put a price on your head for that?” Arcmael said in disbelief.

  Othin set down his glass. “No. It was a diversion, a ploy to keep me out of Ason Tae.”

  Arcmael lifted his brow. Ason Tae. Somehow, things always ended up there. “Why?”

  “I have a woman there. Something happened to her.” He flexed his jaw, his gaze going distant. Then he told a tale that darkened Arcmael’s heart with black and red. Spies posing as rangers, hunting witches. Deception, rape and murder. Halstaeg covering it up with a cloak of honor, tat
tered by lies. His father had not changed much in eighteen suns.

  Arcmael pushed the food away, no longer hungry. Energy prickled along his spine and down his legs as he recalled something he had heard in Odr last time he was there. “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Millie,” Othin said, saying the name like a caress. “She lives in Graebrok.”

  “Near the tower,” Arcmael added for him. “I know her. She knit me these.” He plucked at his leggings, now torn and filthy from the road. The chill had not left him. It gathered around his heart like a whirlwind, a hand of fate clutching his throat like an angry warrior and slamming him against the wall. Millie had a lover, the villagers said. A ranger who came each full moon and hid away in her cottage in the forest.

  Arcmael left his chair, went to the hearth and leaned heavily on the mantle. This couldn’t be how it seemed. Millie. That half-wild, oblivious girl, never knew a sigil, never cared—because she didn’t have to. The High Fylking of Tower Sif watched her pass with love in their eyes. But they weren’t in the business of protecting mortals other than wardens.

  “Arcmael?” Othin said behind him.

  “Are you sure about this?” Arcmael said, staring into the flames.

  “I intend to find out.” An audible exhale. “Leofwine, what is it you want from me?”

  Arcmael returned to his chair. He leaned on the table, scratched at his beard and wished for a bath.

  Leofwine sipped his wine, his expression drawn. “Fjorgin has declared war on this realm for the barest of reasons, an attack on a royal, an unfortunate event for which there’s no proof of Dyrregin’s involvement. The Lords of Earticael are launching their ships on nothing but rumors, shadows and lies. In their wisdom, the Lords of Merhafr believe the sorcery running rampant in this land is the work of the Fenrir Brotherhood. And yet, though the Sie War two centuries ago was bloody and devastating—that cold tower standing there, cursed, a symbol of our fallen—no sorcery was ever used by the Fenrir Brotherhood to defend lives. Do you know why?”

  Othin shook his head. Arcmael didn’t know, either. It had never occurred to him.

  Leofwine continued, “Three thousand suns ago, the Elders of Fenrir made a pact with the Fylking. They swore on the Old Gods never to interfere with the Gate. Our gods were the same, back then.”

  “They still are,” Arcmael put in, envisioning the shining form of Othin standing in his cell in the goblin’s palace. Wolf used to tell him stories about Othin, his blue eyes shining with devotion.

  “Tell that to a king lusting for blood and conquest,” the sorcerer returned.

  “What does this have to do with me?” Othin pressed tiredly.

  “When your report came from the coast about what happened in the Pink Rose, Halstaeg dismissed it as some kind of Fjorginan trickery designed to strike terror into the populace. But then he received more reports of the same, with rumors that the Fenrir Brotherhood was behind it. He asked me directly if they were. I denied it, of course, but it troubled me. You had experience with this magic, and I wanted to talk to you about it to make sure. I never got the chance before you fled the city.”

  “What happened in the Pink Rose?” Arcmael asked.

  “It was attacked by ghouls,” Othin said. “Fjorginan warriors that won’t die and are—not quite there.” He made a movement with his hand. “Solid, yet not. And they don’t bleed.”

  Arcmael nodded. “The Fylking call them draugr. They were created by a warlock named Vargn.” He glanced at Leofwine. “He is Fjorginan. He was apprenticed to Faersc before I arrived. He was refused by the Gatekeepers, the High Fylking of Tower Sif. He left Faersc in shame and now, I believe, he’s getting his revenge. He’s using what he learned there to hide his activities from the Fylking.

  “The way I understand it, Vargn has invoked an entity, maybe a god, to give form to the souls of dead warriors. They are captured, killed, and then given life by a greater mind. They cannot die. Vargn controls them by their desire to be released, which only he can do.”

  Leofwine’s gaze was dark as the night. “That is not Fenrir magic.”

  “Nor Blackthorn, as he pretends to be,” Arcmael said. “It’s Fylking magic, I’m told, and forbidden, a violation of Elivag, the balance of life and death in the universe. Only a Fylking or something equally as powerful could grant it to him.”

  “Who told you this?” Othin asked.

  “One of my Guardians. At the time he didn’t know who was helping Vargn or why. But he was disturbed. No immortal would give Vargn this power just to appease a personal vendetta. They couldn’t care less about his shame.” Or mine, he added privately.

  “Why would an immortal get involved in a mortal war?” Leofwine asked.

  “It wouldn’t,” Arcmael said. “There’s something else going on.”

  “I saw Vargn,” Othin said. “Near Vota. He was clad in the branches of the Blackthorn Guild. There were Fjorginan ghouls with him—but also Dyrregin Guard. Had I not intervened, Ageton would have been next.”

  “I came upon a guardsman’s camp in Wyrvith before the phooka got me,” Arcmael said. “Those men saw draugr from their ranks as well. I’d come to believe Vargn was working for Fjorgin, but now it appears he’s turning guardsmen too, and based on what I heard, it sounds like he doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”

  Leofwine folded his arms over his chest, his wine glass dangling from his hand. “Lord Coldevin recently received a report that some of his men had taken things into their own hands and gone to Fjorgin to get revenge for the things happening here.”

  “Maybe Vargn is using the ghouls to stir up trouble overseas,” Othin said. “As you said, this war was started without much evidence. Could Vargn have set it up? The royal woman in Earticael might have been murdered by one of his draugr, clad as a guardsman.”

  Arcmael’s mind spun with the implications of that. “War would make a good distraction.”

  “From what?” Leofwine said.

  “Killing wardens, perhaps,” Othin offered.

  Leofwine let out a breath of irritation. “An awful lot of trouble to go through!”

  As the two men turned to him, Arcmael once again felt the weight of what he had done. Most likely, by now, Wolf would know the answers to these questions. But the Fylking were out of his reach. All he had was his vow to the Wanderer, a vow he couldn’t break even if he had betrayed everyone else. He said, “I must return to Faersc. They will know.”

  Leofwine approached the table and set down his glass with methodical care. His features were grave. “A scout came here two days ago. He was sent with a company of hand-picked men by the king to find out what happened to the wardens. He’s been on the road for weeks and escaped Faersc with his skin. He told Captain Edon that it’s been claimed by ghouls. They gutted it and put everyone to the sword.”

  “Impossible,” Othin said. “The Fylking protect Faersc.”

  “The Fylking can only see the draugr through the eyes of their wardens,” Arcmael said, his heart pounding and his thoughts scattered. “They can’t fight them. It would be like one of us taking a sword to a shadow.” He cleared his throat as it closed up with grief. “Wardens are not warriors. The only defense the people of Faersc had was the Fylking, and they couldn’t help them.”

  “Vargn must have created the draugr for that reason,” Othin said. “So the Fylking couldn’t stop him.”

  The last of your kind.

  Arcmael bowed his head, crushed by fate. He had abandoned his kind, mortal and immortal alike. Faersc, fallen. Why had the Wanderer told him to return there? To punish him? Suddenly, he remembered what Spider had told him by the willow tree the day Dog had joined him.

  You must prepare for the coming storm.

  A storm he later saw in a dream, a dream that had awakened him to death and left him with a rotting smell in his mind.

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

  Wardens. The only link between the Fylking and the draugr. Wh
ile Arcmael had languished in the goblins’ palace feeling sorry for himself, Vargn had killed the wardens.

  Seek you a woman with a broken heart.

  And that? Spider wouldn’t have told him to look for just any woman. It would have to be someone he knew. He lifted his gaze to Othin, his chill returning in force. Millie had mentioned him once, the ranger she knew. Her whole body changed as the light of love filled it. And then her lover left her, not saying why, no news but rape and lies. Now she was alone beneath the unseen shine in the High Fylkings’ eyes with nothing but her knitting needles.

  Arcmael turned to Leofwine. “You said Halstaeg was looking for spies posing as witches or warlocks, and that Nestor accused Millie of being a spy. Did he think she was a witch?”

  Leofwine’s eyes narrowed. “He never said that. And Halstaeg knew nothing about her before this happened. He never counted on those men taking such liberties, let alone with a woman known to one of his rangers.” He regarded Othin thoughtfully. “Something happened up there that drew those men’s attention to her.”

  “That’s my fault,” Othin said. “I asked them to deliver a message from me, telling her I’d had my patrol changed. I doubt they’d have known she existed, otherwise.”

  Leofwine shook his head. “I’m not sure about that. Nestor kept babbling something about a dark rider, a rogue. Said the man taunted them, and led them to her cottage. They thought he and Millie were in league somehow. The swordsmith who brought Nestor from Odr claimed to know nothing about it, so we thought Nestor was making it up to cover his tracks.”

  “Damjan wouldn’t lie about that,” Othin said firmly.

  “No, but he clearly cared for Millie, and I had an impression he was hiding something. He might have been covering for her.”

  A telling chill lifted the hairs on Arcmael’s head. A dark rider. That could be many things, none of them good.

  “Is Millie a witch?” Leofwine asked him.