The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords

by F. T. McKinstry

  The demon folded his arms over his chest and gazed down at her with smoldering regard, as if to inform her that he had been sending things to flight since the beginning of time. His nostrils flared as he said, You are troubled, Brave One.

  Ingifrith pulled her knees back up to her chest. Wondering how this magnificent being could possibly care about her state of mind, she shrugged.

  The demon began to pace. If anyone was troubled, he was. Casting her a sidelong glance that slid into her heart like a blade, he said, I did not come to you in your cell in the warriors’ keep to pass the time.

  Clearly, the demon was irritated. Whirlwinds of smoke and ash spun at his feet and drifted like hornets over the ground into the woods. Was it because she had ignored his suggestion to travel east? Not looking at him, she stared hard into the flames. “You came to me in the cell because you were trapped, and I could see you.”

  His laughter caused the fire to turn white and flash on the metal of his gear. He continued to pace in a strong, determined stride, his jaw flexing beneath the twining lengths of his hair. Few mortals see me, Brave One. Those who do make sacrifices so great they are twisted and hardened like old trees groaning under the weight of stone. Do you think such masters powerless without the ones they summon?

  “You have power. I don’t. I am nothing.” She looked up. Halogi’s expression could’ve destroyed worlds. He could flay her alive if he wanted. Look right into her soul and see everything. There was no hiding from him.

  He appeared by her side in a flash, causing her to jump. His voice was smooth as a still, blue flame. Your deepest wound holds your power, he said, his pale eyes unwavering. The unseen realms are not protecting you for flowers and milk. Clipping the last word in derision, he withdrew and began to pace again, holding a hand over the fire. The flames threaded up and caressed his fingers like a silken scarf. Tell me, Brave One. Where will you go?

  “Back to my father’s city.”

  That was not your original destination.

  Ingifrith glowered at him. “Why ask if you already know everything?”

  The demon stepped forward into the fire and knelt before her, flames moving around him without touching. I do not know everything. I cannot take what you choose to hide.

  Ingifrith looked away, slapped in the face by irony. The wicked farm hands did, she thought. “I wanted to become a Warden of Dyrregin.” She picked up a stick and stabbed it into the dirt. “But they don’t take just anyone,” she added, hating Leofwine for being right.

  The Warlords of Oeoros will welcome you, the demon countered.

  Ingifrith set her jaw as she recalled the beautiful Fylking sheathing his sword and leaving her on the plain like a scrap. “Tripe, they will. Anyway, I’ve changed my mind.”

  Halogi lifted a finger and pointed, one long nail leveled at her chest. I would advise against abandoning your quest to seek the Fylking. You have made an enemy.

  Ingifrith stared at the demon’s finger hanging in the air like a curse. “You mean Moust? Why, because I couldn’t tell him where Leo was?”

  A smile curled on his lips. The one you call Moust is no trifling man. You did not see him truly. He rose and towered over her. Her throat dry, Ingifrith couldn’t help but notice the bulge in his crotch, laced tightly in black. Heat filled her cheeks as he said:

  The Wolf Lords know you now, Brave One. They will not suffer one with your power outside of their control. You might work against them.

  Ingifrith breathed a laugh. “Doing what, pray?”

  What you have already done, the demon informed her, smoke curling from his nostrils.

  “But you did that. I had no power over Moust. He could’ve stripped me bare.”

  You summoned me from the waste and shadow of the Dark Realms. You saw me, opened your heart and freed me from my prison. The Masters of Ýr could not do such a thing; and yet, in your innocence, you did.

  “All I did was say that Vargn had no control over you because the Niflsekt paid your price, not him. Anyone could’ve seen that.”

  The demon flashed his fangs in a grin that passed quickly. I did not see that. You reached into Elivag like the One-eyed God and fetched me the key to my trap. Moust is no fool. He knew I was free, and he knew I was serving you. He reached the obvious conclusion.

  Elivag. The primeval void, the matrix of creation, the ebb and flow of life force in all things. Ingifrith frowned. She knew nothing of that whatsoever. “All I did was make an observation,” she protested. “How can that possibly satisfy the Rule of Exchange? I’ve made no sacrifices that twisted me like a tree.”

  His gaze settled on her like frost. Have you not? As her mind raced with the implications of that question, the demon continued, Adept Moust has returned to his lords. They will hunt you.

  “And do what?” she said in disbelief. But as she said the words, she remembered there were fiendish exceptions to the laws of the land. No justice ever came to the wicked farm hands. And the sorcerers of Fenrir had their own laws.

  “You protected me from Moust before,” she ventured. “Can’t you now?”

  That balance has been paid, the demon said, his mood as hard as a sword. I must leave you. Fear not. Your darkness cloaks you, drives you to the unseen. It is that power you must use now, Brave One. You must journey east to the domain of the Warlords of Oeoros, and learn to serve them. They will protect you.

  Finally, the seriousness of Ingifrith’s situation began to dawn on her. She had crossed an Adept of Fenrir and now the Brotherhood would hunt her down unless she sought the protection of the Fylking—cruel, arrogant warlords in their cold towers. Desperate for another way, she said, “But I have no coin. The King’s Guard took it all. I couldn’t get to Faersc now even if I wanted to.”

  No trap without a spring, he whispered, echoing her mother’s advice. No fortress without a crack. Be so guided, Brave One.

  His presence sighed from her nerves like a dream. He was gone.

  For good, this time.

  As the hedge witch’s daughter huddled by her fire beneath the whispering trees, she felt as exposed as she had on the day her innocence died.

  The Lady’s Own

  The sun rose, bringing the scent of flowers, the songs of birds, and the hum of bees. The light cast moving patterns through a window, warming Leofwine’s face. On the sill was a purple glass vase holding dried flowers draped in cobwebs. A small spider perched there.

  As I wait, she said, so must you.

  In the distance, a dog barked. Leofwine awoke from his doze with a start.

  Across a small cottage kitchen, wood settled in a squat iron stove. Leofwine lay in a child’s bed in the corner, his feet hanging over the end. Someone had removed most of his clothes, tended his wounds and tucked a rough wool blanket around him. A straw pallet prickled on his back. He moved slightly and caught his breath as pain flooded his mind like a murder of crows.

  He had no clear idea how he had gotten here. He dimly recalled seeing the lights of a cottage, twinkling through the trees, late last night. Water, whispering. Arvakr had stopped moving. Then, nothing.

  He lifted his head, wondering where his clothes and belongings were. At best, he’d covered a third of his journey to the coast. And he had lost his focus on protection from roaming eyes. Oddly, the phooka had decided to leave him alone. Not one glimpse or whisper; in fact, he hadn’t sensed the beast at all since summoning Fenrisúlfr. One good thing about the last few days, aside from putting Grimar down.

  A door slammed. Someone entered the kitchen, a woman, not young nor old, with braided brown hair threaded with gray. She wore a plain linen dress and a woad-blue smock with dirt around the hem. She carried a basket. Humming under her breath, she set it on a table amid an assortment of jars, stacks of linens, curled willow branches, a mortar and pestle and a bowl filled with greenery. Herbs hung in bunches from the ceiling.

  She turned in his direction. “Ah!” she said, approaching him. “You’re awake.” She looked him over, her e
yes dark and her mouth set, as if she’d found a wounded animal she wasn’t sure what to do with. While she had obviously taken him in and tended to his hurts, now that he was awake, she appeared in doubt.

  “How did I come here?” he rasped.

  She snapped from her mood. “My man Erland found you down by the stream. Dogs went mad. He saw your horse, first, standing over you. You must’ve fallen off.” She smiled, causing fine lines to crease around her eyes. “I am Agda.” She turned and moved into the kitchen, where she took a cup from a hook. As she took down a jar of dried leaves from a shelf, she glanced at him sidelong. “You got into a scuffle, hmm?”

  Leofwine closed his eyes and said nothing. He shuddered to imagine how he must have looked, bruised and battered, covered in blood and Hel knew what else. He felt like a boy again, curled and trembling on his mother’s hearth, listening to her fret as she tended a new beating Grimar and the other boys had put on him. But he wasn’t a boy anymore. He had crossed a phooka, indirectly caused his lover Sigbjorn’s death, summoned Fenrisúlfr and splattered Grimar and a company of soldiers in a thirty-foot swath over the forest floor.

  All for love and a woman’s honor. Ingifrith. What he now knew flooded into him. He had abandoned his little sister to the mercy of brutes. His apprenticeship to the Order of Fenrir had made him distant. His employment as a spy, more so. And agreeing to the phooka’s demand had destroyed his relationship with Ingifrith altogether. Now, once again, in the name of protection and vengeance, a chasm of fate stretched between them. He was on the run from not only men but also sorcerers. Once, he had fled to the Lords of Ýr for protection, but they would not protect him now, not for honor, not when he had cast a stain on the Brotherhood.

  Agda returned carrying a cup and a bucket. She set the cup on the windowsill, causing steam to creep over the glass. The spider vanished into its web. She grabbed a chair sitting near the edge of the bed and pulled it around. “Let’s have a look at you,” she said, setting the bucket beside her.

  Leofwine tried to sit up, but his stomach and ribs wouldn’t bear it. Agda put her shoulder and arm behind him and helped him into position. She smelled of mint. Sweat broke out on his brow as she brushed the tangled lengths of his hair aside, gently lifted his undershirt and removed the poultices on his abdomen, tossing them into the bucket. He flinched as she poked around. Then she moved to the dressings on his shoulder. After inspecting them, she covered him again and fetched his tea. “Drink this.” She closed her hands around his to make sure he had it. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

  “Thank you.” He sniffed his tea. Rosemary and sage. He took a sip, sighing as the heat warmed him.

  Agda returned to the kitchen. She moved around like a butterfly and returned holding a bowl with a piece of dark bread balanced on the edge. Leofwine set his tea aside, took the bowl and put it in his lap. Porridge, with bits of dried apples, seeds and honey mixed in. He took a bite of bread. It was warm.

  Agda sat in the chair. “The gods tell me you’re trouble.”

  Leofwine dipped his spoon into the bowl and took a bite. He had finished half of it before looking up to find her studying him with the same dark expression as before. “What gods?” he asked, swallowing.

  She breathed an airy laugh. “Not yours.” Watching him as if to gauge his reaction, she added. “You wear a cloak of the Wolf Lords.”

  Leofwine set aside the bowl and took up his tea. A cloak covered in the blood of men. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to travel in plain gear instead of his sorcerer’s mantle with the standard of his order on the hood. Arrogant fool. He never thought he’d be at the mercy of kind folk.

  “My name is Leofwine,” he informed her. He owed her that, at least. Despite his fear of endangering these people with the truth, he added, “My business is dark.”

  He looked into her eyes until she turned away. The way she moved, graceful and elusive, gave the sorcerer an impression of the witch goddess Freya, an Old God who, it was told, had taught the Allfather himself the arts of magic. People often claimed the gods talked to them, but Leofwine hadn’t experienced that, not even on the threshold of the Veil, nor in the throes of his grueling initiation into Fenrir.

  She leaned back in her chair. “Leofwine. I’ve not heard it said that the Fenrir Brotherhood deals in the business of warriors.” She cast a sweeping glance over his battered body to make the point. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’ve been in battle.”

  Leofwine stared into his cup. The details of his business were none of hers, and yet it had been such a long time since he’d been able to open his heart to anyone without risking repercussions that he threw caution to the wind. She could’ve been a cat, sitting there, for all he knew of her.

  “I only ever wanted to protect her,” he said, just above a whisper. “My little sister. And yet, right under my nose, that brute—” He looked up. Unless I was wrong about it. The compassion in Agda’s face put a lump in his throat. “During the war, I did a terrible thing that put her in danger. And in my absence, she was violated by my enemy. When I found out, I did another, even more terrible thing to avenge her. I’ve cast a blot on the Brotherhood.”

  “The Hooded One was outcast by the gods for his wizardries,” Agda offered.

  Leofwine snorted softly at her innocence. She didn’t understand what he had unleashed. And Othin, the Hooded One, wouldn’t care. “Othin has no love for my kind.” As an Adept of Fenrir, Leofwine was presumed to serve Loki, friend to no one but the cosmos’s darker beings. He had never heard the voice of Loki in his heart; for all he knew, the malicious god had been chained up by the other gods and left to rot on a crag somewhere. But to claim identity with Othin was ludicrous.

  He set aside his tea. “If any god guides me now, it’s Hel.”

  Agda laughed like a girl, startling him. “Nonsense. Because you love your sister?”

  “I—only assumed my enemy soiled her. He taunted me. And she—” Hiding, always hiding. “Perhaps I was only serving myself.”

  Agda leaned forward, placing a hand on his thigh. But as she started to speak, a door opened and a man’s voice cut into the morning silence.

  “I understand,” he said to someone else. Scowling, Agda got up and left the room.

  In the wake of her presence, the air changed. A chill crept over Leofwine’s flesh like a frost as he sensed the Otherworld. He had been so caught up in his personal torment that he hadn’t noticed the shift, like smoke on the wind, now intensifying. His nostrils flared.

  Was this Agda’s doing? Not likely. This was not Freya’s magic; it felt like the Dark Realms. An impression filled his mind, pale, spectral and deadly, swift as a serpent, strong as a mountain cat. His heart started to pound with terrible comprehension.

  Soulcleaver. One of the most fearsome beings of the Otherworld, soulcleavers were summoned by sorcerers to track and hold other magicians, like putting a vicious hound on a prisoner—specifically, one capable of using magic to escape. But there was no escaping a soulcleaver. The exchange for its services came at great cost, and summoning one required the skill of an Adept, as there was a risk the demon would return and attack the summoner if for any reason it decided its target was unworthy.

  There was only one place that had those kinds of resources. The Masters of Ýr had found him. Leofwine’s chill deepened. A soulcleaver was hard to handle and would only be summoned to hold someone the Masters considered equally as threatening. That meant they knew about Fenrisúlfr.

  That act had made Leofwine quite worthy of a soulcleaver’s attention, unfortunately.

  Agda returned with a man at her side whom Leofwine assumed was Erland. Bright blue eyes looked out of a face reddened by the sun, and his tousled iron-gray hair lay on his shoulders. He didn’t introduce himself, and his manner was cagey, as if he were hiding something. Leofwine resisted looking up at the ceiling as the soulcleaver, visible to him alone, scrabbled over the rafters, its spidery limbs clacking like ice and leaving Leofwi
ne crushingly conscious of his solitary predicament.

  The demon whispered something unintelligible. As if to answer it, a second man entered the kitchen, cloaked in black, wearing fine boots, road-weathered attire, and a tunic emblazoned with a snarling wolf’s head framed by two moons and a pattern of thorny vines. This man knew Leofwine well.

  Knew him and hated him.

  “Adept Klemet,” the man said, a faint smile touching the corner of his mouth as he glanced at the ceiling shimmering with malice.

  “Adept Moust,” Leofwine returned, his breakfast souring in his stomach.

  Moust pursed his lips, glanced at Erland, and stepped toward Leofwine. “You will come with me.”

  “Perhaps you can give him the dignity of getting dressed first,” Agda said.

  “This man is wanted by the Masters of Ýr,” Moust said. “He is dangerous. I suggest—”

  “He’s not as dangerous as I’ll be if you don’t respect my wishes and let him prepare,” she snapped, bristling like a badger. “Now get out.” She pointed to the door.

  Leofwine lifted his brow. This woman feared nothing.

  Moust leveled his steely gaze on Leofwine. “Do not try to escape me.” He turned on a heel and strode for the door.

  Leofwine rolled his eyes at the pompous comment. They both knew if he so much as thought of escape he’d be struck down like a dormouse.

  When the sorcerer had gone, Erland grabbed Agda’s arm and brought her into the kitchen, away from Leofwine. “I told you taking him in would bring trouble,” he said in a low, rough voice. “The Brotherhood doesn’t go after just anyone.”

  “Don’t they, now?” she shot back, shaking his hand from her arm. “I’ll not abandon a wounded man. Go and fetch his clothes from the line.”

  Erland muttered something under his breath. The door opened and slammed.

  Agda stomped to the cabinet, knelt and flung open a drawer in the bottom. She rifled through it. After a moment, she came to the bed, clutching something in her hand.

  “Take this,” she breathed, kneeling, taking Leofwine’s hand and closing his fingers over what she had brought. “Keep it close.”