“Don’t know! They knew. I gave him up to avoid trouble.”
The roof of the inn collapsed. Sparks and smoke billowed into the air. Bothilde leaned over as if to weep.
Othin knelt, clutched her hair and yanked back her head to face him. A thin line of blood marked her throat where he had held his knife. “Why were you holding him in the first place?”
“I wasn’t! He was here, at the bar, having a drink.”
“Horseshit.” He released her.
Just then, Heige strode around the burning building, leading the horses. He held a small leather pack with straps and buckles hanging from the sides. “Found this in the cellar.” He tossed it through the air.
Prederi caught Bren’s pack in one hand. He turned it over, his jaw flexing. Clutching it to his chest, he leveled a gaze on Bothilde that could have frozen the Westfork.
She stared at the pack in horror. “I—took it down there to hide it! I wasn’t holding him, I swear.” She scrambled back over the dirt as Prederi stepped toward her. Still holding the pack, he spun his blade with a swift turn of his wrist.
“Leave her,” Othin said tiredly. He turned and headed for the horses.
“Alive?” Prederi said behind him. Heige blurted a laugh.
Othin reached his horse as Prederi joined him. He took the pack gently from the ranger’s hand and tucked it into a saddle bag. In a low voice he said, “She has fewer teeth, now. We’ll keep an eye on her, see where she goes to ground.”
“That’s a bad idea, War God.”
“Maybe.” Othin glanced over his shoulder and then mounted. “Let’s put some distance between us and this place.”
As they moved out, Bothilde clutched her shirts and leaned forward in a rage, her hair in a wild tangle around her. “Whoreson!” she swore. “You were lousy anyway! You couldn’t—”
Her insult was lost as something in the kitchen exploded, sending a blast of heat and wind that spooked the horses. The rangers shielded their faces and Bothilde screamed. Othin glanced over his shoulder to see her scampering away from the blaze on all fours.
He turned to Heige. “There was a girl.”
“I saw her,” Heige said. “Fled into the woods like a rabbit.” He lifted his chin toward the east. “That way.”
“Let’s see if we can find her,” Othin said. They headed out, leaving the tavern mistress shrieking curses after them.
The woods had been coppiced, and trampled by horses. The child had a good start on them. Othin turned to Prederi. “Was there anyone else in the back rooms?”
“A farmer who lived upriver and his wife. Bothilde took their farm to use in her operation and made them pay rent to stay there as a front. They refused. No one saw or heard Bren. I let them go.”
“Good. They’ll tell the tale.”
“I think Bothilde will tell a tale.”
Ignoring the comment, Othin gestured to a sack Prederi had brought out of the inn and strapped onto the saddle behind him. “What’s that?”
“Provisions.” He reached back, rustled around and pulled out a bottle.
“Och! Nice work,” Heige said.
“No sense letting it go to waste. Got food, too, if you want it.” He pulled the cork out with his teeth and handed the bottle to Othin. He took it, lifted it to his lips and let the dark golden draught burn down his throat and into his chest. Whisky. Good whisky. Nodding, he gave it to Heige.
“Ah...” the blond ranger sighed as he lowered the bottle and handed it back. “That’s fine. I wonder where that rat woman got it from?”
Othin took the whisky and handed it back to Prederi. “No telling. I doubt she paid for it.”
Prederi took a long, seasoned swig. He lowered the bottle and put the cork back in. “What was she on about, you being lousy?” He scanned the trees around them.
Othin shifted in his saddle. Bothilde’s parting shot. “Remember that good bit of intelligence I got on old Shinter?”
Heige said, “Aye, you still haven’t told us how you knew where his operation was.”
And fine intelligence it was. Someone had been raiding northbound supply wagons and running the loot all over Ylgr. Othin had discovered the operation in the coastal town of Brekon, in a fishery there. He wouldn’t have thought to turn his attention to the coast if not for the tavern mistress’s blithe revelation. “Bothilde told me Brekon was Shinter’s home town. The rest was easy to figure out.”
His companions rode along, absorbing that. They turned and looked at him as if waiting for him to continue. But they were men, and it didn’t take them long to put it together.
Prederi cleared his throat. “You didn’t—”
Heige reined his mount with a breathy laugh that sounded like he was choking on something foul.
Prederi pulled the whisky from his hauberk where he had stuffed it and took another drink. “You are a sad piece of shit, War God,” he said, lowering the bottle.
“Captain War God,” Othin corrected him.
Heige leaned forward in his saddle. “Give me that.” Prederi handed him the bottle past Othin. Gods knew, he would never hear the end of this.
He said, “I threatened to spread a rumor that she sang on old Shinter while she was in bed with a ranger. She got a little more cooperative. Though I still think she lied like a goat.”
“The Dark Lords would like to know that,” Prederi agreed with a cold smile. “Shinter was one of their favorites.” He cast Othin a glance. “Are you going to do it?”
“First chance I get. Thorn is involved with the Dark Lords. If they take down Bothilde after hearing a rumor, it’ll send a message to the sheriff of how far we’re willing to go.”
Heige wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So was she good?”
“Well, I was,” Othin said. As they laughed, he grew still. A prickle climbed over his skull, a sensation that they weren’t alone. He held out his arms to get their attention. “Quiet. Someone’s here.”
They fell as silent as the wind in the trees, leaving only the sounds of horses and moving tack. Heige pulled around his bow and snatched an arrow from his quiver. Sensing a line of sight, Othin tilted his face up slowly. Above, in an old hemlock tree dense with needles and twining boughs, something pale moved.
“There,” he said, urging his mount closer to get a better look. He did not sense danger. “Don’t shoot,” he said to Heige.
Prederi drew his sword and pressed his horse into motion, circling the tree. Heige took up a position on the far side. As Othin approached, the branches rustled. He caught sight of a small, pale foot.
“Hold,” he said to his men. “Prederi.” He swung his arm around to indicate the surroundings. “Keep watch.” Othin dismounted and walked to the foot of the tree, looking up. The girl from the kitchen clung there like a treed cat. “We won’t harm you,” he called up. “You don’t have to come down, just talk to me. Aye?”
She stared down at him as if he were a hungry wolf, but there was something desperate, almost hopeful in her face.
Once Othin talked her down, he put her on his saddle in front of him and rode to the village of Silverleaf. The child had been taken by Bothilde’s henchmen after they killed her father. They made her sleep on the trap door to the cellar, to hide it and keep anyone from being curious. As Othin had hoped, she saw the men who took Bren away. Amazingly enough, her description of them matched Bothilde’s, including the man with the scythe-shaped scar. But the child had added two more facts that Bothilde had strategically omitted. One was the presence of the sheriff, whom someone had addressed as such. And the other was a symbol on the leader’s cloak, at the base of the hood. The girl drew it in the dirt, rough and hard to discern, yet clear enough to recognize: a wolf surrounded by leaves, moons and thorns.
The Fenrir Brotherhood. Othin now had to assume that he was dealing with the Dark Lords of Ylgr, that they had employed a sorcerer and that the sheriff was in league with them.
The rangers rode like the wind, east, out of sight of th
e Westfork. In the foothills of the mountains, cradled in a ravine from which the river sprang, Othin’s men had built a bridge that would take them into the high foothills of the mountains, where the Dark Lords had their lair.
With all luck he’d get a chance to pay a visit to his old friend Sheriff Thorn.
An Adept of Fenrir
A true magician loves the twilight. That’s what she said, his mother, a fortnight before he found her body in the mud at the foot of a willow tree.
Now older, Leofwine Klemet of House Earticael thought his mother’s wisdom simplistic, the words of a hedge witch. Twilight hid things, too many things, unromantic, hungry things that devoured innocence. Twilight was the abode of the phooka, a prince of the shadows, a consummate shapeshifter and one of the most powerful and fickle creatures that inhabited the Otherworld.
No magician in his right mind would make a promise to a phooka he couldn’t keep. But in an act of desperation, Leofwine had done just that.
Leofwine drew a deep, measured breath as he stood at the tall window of his chambers and looked out over the forest surrounding Nosthrod Hall. The late afternoon sun had quietly withdrawn behind a gray haze, casting the trunks, boughs, stones and pools of the surrounding forest in vague shadow. Though nothing moved, Leofwine imagined long horns, dark dirty fur, hooves, claws, eyes and the elegant jaws of wild things, waiting.
Spawn of the Wolf, the phooka whispered into his mind, like a nervous twitch. One of Leofwine’s more flattering titles.
It had all seemed so bright, when Leofwine was young, to be a servant of the Old Gods, an Adept of the Fenrir Brotherhood. His mother had warned him, of course, as mothers do. A creature of the earth, she had known more than he dared to believe, for all his desperate ideas.
My dear Leo, she had once said, while gently touching a fragrant rosemary salve onto his bruised cheekbone. You’d do better to take up the sword than tangle with Fenrir. They serve the Father of Hel. She spat after saying that. A disgusting habit. He hadn’t bothered to tell her that the boys who beat him were all good with swords and bigger than he was, besides.
A sword won’t protect me, he’d said, but sorcery will.
There are worse things to fear than fools, she countered. And spat again.
The shadows deepened. Upon his return to Fjorgin, after the end of Second Gate War in Dyrregin over a sun’s cycle past, Leofwine had hesitated to take up employment in forests, where the Veil was thin. But the Lord of Nosthrod was persuasive—and his son and heir Sigbjorn, more so. Their realm, Alfr Forest, lay between Valdros and the Wythe Strait. Rich with hardwood trees and caves limned with silver deposits, Alfr was susceptible to invaders. Like many lords in Fjorgin, the land that gave birth to the Order of Fenrir, Lord Nosthrod employed a sorcerer to protect his realm and paid him very well to do so. But inevitably, Leofwine’s transgression had followed him and begun terrorizing the people of Alfr, first in subtle ways, and then with more insistence, setting fear alight like brushfires until the whole wood shuddered at every dream and shade.
The village girl who went missing and was found on the last dark moon, floating in her uncle’s millpond, was said to have been fey and prone to accidents. A comforting tale. Leofwine saw the poor creature’s death in the runes: drowning by twilight, the pale green eyes of the phooka glinting on the surface of the pond.
Leofwine clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. He hadn’t told Lord Nosthrod that he had more to fear from his own Adept than he had any invader. The night before, in the comfort of his bed, Leofwine came close to telling Sigbjorn the truth. Touch, warmth, pleasure—these made a dangerous potion. But he withstood the temptation. Thought had power. It attracted things, and for Leofwine to infect Sigbjorn with knowledge of what he had done would sentence his lover to death. Somehow, by some dark twist of fate—a deadly rune, a freak squall, the misstep of a skittish horse—the truth would betray him.
The Father of Hel. It was believed that the Fenrir Brotherhood served Loki, the Prince of Wiles and, according to the old tales, a thorn in the side of the Old Gods. Leofwine opened his eyes to the falling gray as a spell took shape in his mind. Today, Loki’s brand of trickery would help him leave his lover and his lord in safety. He pulled his hood over his face and stepped away from the window. A pack and a heavy saddlebag lay on the floor by the door. The rest of his things, packed neatly into two trunks he had placed in the corner of the loft where he worked, he would leave until he either managed to extricate himself from the dark deal he had made with the phooka or died trying. He hoped Sigbjorn had enough sense to leave things as they were and hope for his return.
A small leather pouch lay on the table by the hearth. Leofwine stopped, held his hand over the snarling wolf embossed on the pouch, and then flicked aside the ties and shook out a rune. The small pale bone of a hare he had killed during his apprenticeship contained a single mark with a hook on top, ridged as a knife, darkened by the blood he had spilled into the rift from his hand. Laguz. Always laguz, the power of the Otherworld, vast, fickle and implacable as the sea. The waters hid secrets, poisons and teeth.
He put the rune back with the others and tied the pouch onto his belt. Then he fetched his things, slipped from the room and crossed a landing to descend a flight of narrow steps. Lightly touching the wall, he focused on the cold, on the cracks and shadows hidden from the sun, the places no one saw or cared to look; he wooed them, slipped into them, a shade amid the torchlight flickering in the hall below. As he stepped down and padded along a corridor to a weedy courtyard that led to the stables, the unfathomable presence of laguz surrounded him with whispery laughter.
Voices echoed in another part of the hall. Someone laughed; another grumbled something in return. Leofwine’s focus wavered as he thought of Sigbjorn, left here with no explanation, no goodbye, no embrace but for the one they had shared the night before. Leofwine had become the thing he hated: laguz, an ocean of secrets, impenetrable.
Leofwine entered the stable, walked past a stablehand without being noticed, and muttered a distraction spell. The lad hesitated, tossed a brush onto the hay and strode out, remembering some forgotten task or other. Leofwine moved into a stall situated beneath his chambers, high above. No accident, this placement. A heavy black gelding stirred and regarded him with a dark, shining eye. The horse whickered softly.
Leofwine placed a hand on the beast’s withers. “Hail, Arvakr.” The fine warhorse had belonged to the late Captain Ageton of the North Branch of the King’s Rangers, the elite warriors who defended the wilds of Dyrregin over the sea. Before losing his life in the war, Ageton had given the horse to one of his rangers, Othin of Cae Forres, a seasoned warrior who took over the North Branch after the war. Though Othin and Leofwine had become friends, Leofwine could still hear the ranger’s Hel no laugh when he had asked to buy the horse. Leofwine didn’t use sorcery to convince him, just old-fashioned coin, five times the worth of his own miserable hide, at that. Nor had he lied to Othin about what the horse meant to him and why—though he had neglected to mention being on the bad side of a phooka.
For some reason, the phooka loved Arvakr. The wily fiend would bring down a branch of the Allfather’s Tree to protect the horse, and as Othin had discovered during the war, having Arvakr close at hand was a good way to elude getting killed.
While Leofwine found comfort knowing the phooka wouldn’t do anything that might bring harm to Arvakr, the sorcerer wasn’t naive enough to think having the horse would keep the phooka from collecting its debt. For that reason he employed a tangled web of binding spells of iron, bone, water and blood that made it extremely irritating for the phooka to do much else but whisper obscenities into his mind. But the warhorse had little fear of this world or the Otherworld. He was a steadfast companion.
Leofwine put down his things and went for Arvakr’s tack hanging neatly on an adjoining wall. As he had recently discovered, the phooka had other wiles and was growing more inclined to use them. Chafing under futility, the sorcerer saddled A
rvakr, cinched down his things, and led the warhorse into the damp evening air. Glancing about, he steeled himself by briefly grasping the protection rune at his throat. Then he mounted and rode into the whispering mist cloaking the wood. He did not look back.
~*~
The Second Gate War, that’s when Leofwine’s troubles began. He had been employed as seneschal to Lord Detlef Halstaeg, High Constable of the King’s Rangers, a hard, unforgiving man who didn’t believe in magic and held his personal and familial reputation above all things. His wife was kind and yet distant as a locked iron door, no doubt because her husband had disowned their firstborn son nineteen suns past for nothing more than disliking war. The silence between the couple became Leofwine’s hunting ground. By his arts, and with no regrets, he began sharing Lord Halstaeg’s bed, where he learned many things indeed.
Until the war started.
The Lords of Earticael had never actually used to term spy when they arranged Leofwine’s position with Halstaeg. They hadn’t needed to. Ironically, he had done little to earn the charge of high treason laid on him by Halstaeg in an attempt to cover a series of tactical mishaps. The Fenrir Brotherhood was smeared along with him, and blamed for creating an army of undead warriors to tear down the fragile peace between Fjorgin and Dyrregin. On the run and desperate to find the truth, Leofwine had turned to the Otherworld for help.
The phooka answered the call.
As an Adept, Leofwine knew not to take an Otherworld summons lightly. He knew how to prepare and avoid mishaps, and he knew to adhere to the Rule of Exchange. There was balance between the worlds; to ask a favor from the Otherworld required payment of some kind, to keep the balance intact. But Leofwine had been too distraught to attend to details.
The first rule he broke was not matching the summons to the task. A sprite or a nature spirit could easily have tracked a King’s Ranger. Leofwine could have paid such a being with a silver bead, a smooth sea shell or an oiled lock of his own hair, black as a crow. A phooka, on the other hand, was a master among Others, a powerful creature capable of anything, a malicious force with a tangled, self-serving agenda, and its price for even a minor task would be high. Leofwine should have banished the creature at the outset.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 42
