“A night woman at the Pink Rose. She was there that night on the eve of the war, when Vargn’s ghouls murdered Kidge and burned the place. She’s a warrior at heart. Nasty in a fight. She needed a change.”
Halstaeg nodded. “War changes people. You care for her, I take it.”
“She’s a good friend.” He recalled the look on Sefon’s face after Magreda insulted him. “And she knows men in all the worst ways.”
Halstaeg chuckled. “She’ll make a good ranger, then.” He put a hand on Othin’s shoulder. “Fear not. We’ll find her.”
Othin nodded, but the prickle hadn’t left his gut. After his experiences in Ylgr, he didn’t share the man’s confidence.
The Accursed
Layers of shadows whispered around the trees, if trees they were. Limbs writhed in a dense, hissing canopy of leafless boughs, their fingers clawing at a low sky of fetid, cloying mist. Beneath the dripping murk, slippery roots of greenish black wormed into indolence. No high ground offered an escape from the sickening grip of rot. The minions of sorcerers glistened and growled on every surface, including Leofwine’s chest, where one of the fiends had entered him at the command of the Master of Curses.
“There is morning in the night,” Leofwine breathed in Old Fylking. Each incantation helped him cling to his body in the Rangers’ Square. The black demon fed in small convulsions inside him, draining his life force. He had no idea how to banish it.
“The blackbird chirrups in the predawn void.”
He crept amid the ghostly trees, looking for a distant light, a break in the scenery that might give him hope that something about this landscape could change.
“The sword once lived in the earth.”
Red eyes blinked, lighting up and going dark again, everywhere, as far as he could see. When the black creature was finished feeding on him, it would slither off his corpse and slip into a pool of wicked souls to croon with pleasure. He moved through them, thousands of them, doing just that. What had they all fed on before he came?
“Flowers bloom from the cataclysm of seeds.”
He was alive only because of his connection to the Otherworld. Maybe the other victims—humans, animals, gods knew what—never made it this far. They died before they got here.
“Birth is death.”
He had once believed having the power of a sorcerer was a good thing. But that choice had eventually led him here, to this place. So much for a few extra minutes of life.
“Death is birth.”
The forest grew darker. He moved along, barely able to see, as his spirit slipped away. He had a horrible thought that when he died, this would be it. This place, the trees that may or may not have been trees, the mist, the dark, and a multitude of nasty demons with nothing better to do than run errands for assholes like the Master of Curses.
“Life is balanced.”
He stumbled and landed on all fours in the writhing muck of sated demons. The tattoo on his chest, inscribed on him in a solemn, candlelit ceremony presided over by the four Masters of the Elements and a dark-skinned man with a crooked spine, a pot of ink and a reed needle, began to burn. Like flames in the wind, wolf and moon and thorns shifted and turned as if the ink had come alive. Leofwine clutched his chest as the ink spilled out like blood, bleeding and primal, something he needed still, for all his bitter thoughts.
“Hate is the absence of love,” he choked.
A wolf sprang from his chest and shot into the dark like a falling star. Leofwine screamed, his incantations forgotten. He clambered to his feet and ran, his steps heavy and his heart empty. The silvery light flooded the landscape with fleeting glimpses of teeth and shining eyes, claws and the glistening ridges of sinews and limbs.
The light blinked out. Darkness consumed him, all there was, ever had been or would be. He was alone and stripped of his power, the one thing that had validated his existence and given him the strength to vanquish his enemies. Gone. He lowered himself to the void, clutched his arms over his chest and wept.
Not this.
“Darkness, the absence of light.”
Drowning in despair, he found Agda’s charm. It was cold and empty, a dead thing. Heaving with grief, he considered throwing it aside. Instead, he shoved it back into his pocket.
Then he felt a presence. It was familiar. Leofwine, said a voice. It’s me, Othin. Please come back to us.
A figure appeared, spectral and indistinct, but recognizable. Black hair, gray eyes. Soul of a warrior. Grieved and wounded by defeat, with the rough skills of a seer. Othin of Cae Forres. Leofwine’s hope leapt up like a wolf trying to get over a high wall. Othin had trained in Faersc. He might be able to help.
Leofwine got up and approached Othin’s life force, taking his hand. “Othin.” The specter did not respond. Desperate, Leofwine repeated, “Othin! Talk to me.” The light wavered, flickering, the ranger’s eyes full of terror. Leofwine’s hope fled to concern. Othin was new at this. If he was held here, his mind could break.
Leofwine released his hand. Othin departed, and darkness fell, devouring hope.
“Evil is not the darkness. Evil is darkness without light.”
Darkness and a demon burrowed in his chest, feeding on his soul. He huddled in the void, alone and waiting to die. For all he knew, he was dead already. This could be Hel, some part of it reserved for the accursed. For sorcerers.
“There is morning in the night.”
The wolf. His power. It was gone. He would be exposed to his enemies, a sorcerer no more. What was left after that? A boy, thin, weak and sensitive, fodder to fools, boys all good with swords and bigger than he was, besides. And Ingifrith—
“Flowers die in the birth of power.”
Inga. The massive wolf had come through the Veil, its eyes pale, snarling and rending the earth as it splattered soldiers all over the forest with the force and agility of vengeance.
Adept Leofwine Klemet, the Archwolf whined. You are here to answer for misdeeds which you have done in the name of Fenrir, by the power of the Brotherhood.
Gone. His power was gone.
You have brought shame upon the Order. Explain yourself.
“I was tired of being beat up,” Leofwine growled into the dark. “I should have listened to my mother. And I love my sister so much I abandoned her.” He coughed on a laugh, half sobbing. “And you lot are a bunch of soulless, sexless cowards with too much time on your hands.”
She was soft and sweet as a little flower, Grimar sang.
Leofwine rocked forward, clutching his gut. I abandoned her—
“Ah,” grated a voice. A familiar voice, and far less friendly. “Here you are, humbled at last.”
Weak, sick and heartbroken, Leofwine looked up through the tangles of his hair, dread prickling over his flesh as he realized who had just spoken. Moust. They had sent Moust. Of course they had. “You miserable fuck,” he breathed.
His welcoming party from the docks stood before him, gazing down with varying expressions of condescension and hatred. Their life force shimmered on the void. They were real and focused in their bodies some place nearby. As if to verify the fact, the red-eyed demons withdrew from the sorcerers’ presence, leaving a pale, greenish smear of poison on the ground.
Huddled in agony at the feet of his enemies, it occurred to Adept Klemet that it wasn’t his power that had fled with the ink in his flesh, but his connection to the Fenrir Brotherhood.
There was a difference.
“You have failed,” said the Master of Curses, his pockmarked chin hanging from the shadow of his cowl. “We have your sister.”
“She is not as powerful as you think,” said the third in a deep voice cracked by elation. Adept Pawel. A sycophantic acolyte of the Master of Demons, he was undoubtedly the hand that tamed the creatures ruling this dimension. His hair, red and curling, stuck to his face.
“Not powerful at all,” echoed Moust, “without her demon lover.”
“Or her unseen friends,” Pawel added.
No. With the last thread of his strength, Leofwine got up, cowering over his gut, his heart thumping like a limp. “You lie.”
“Nothing protects her,” the Master of Curses said matter-of-factly. “She will die like the others.”
“What...others?”
“Your priestess friends, of course,” the Master replied, his mushroom fingers twitching by his side. “They outlived their usefulness, I’m afraid.”
Leofwine coughed on a laugh. “You lot wouldn’t have the guts, let alone the authority, to harm them. They’ve served Ýr for millennia.” He coughed again, his throat as raw as a bleeding wound. “If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t have the ability to pass a stool.”
Leofwine’s head exploded with shock as Moust lunged forward and struck him. He fell back and rolled over, still laughing. Moust always was easy to rile up.
But his heart was cold. The Masters of Ýr or, more likely, Isarvalos, might have destroyed the priestesses for attempting to free themselves from their prison—or for helping Leofwine escape. It could be the reason Nith’s cloaking spell had fallen. Or, it could be a bluff. That these monsters were here with him meant Ingifrith was still at large. They wanted something, and thought to terrorize it out of him.
Or so he thought, until Moust held up his hand, gripping a small, pale rune bone hanging from a leather cord.
Algiz. The rune of protection, communication with the Otherworld, the light of the gods. The other side of the bone, Leofwine knew, was carved with a wolf paw. Ingifrith’s necklace. For the first time, Leofwine realized why his mother had given it to her.
She was soft and sweet as a little flower.
With the desperate strength of a dying animal, Leofwine got to his feet and charged.
He went for Moust, fully intending to rip the necklace from his hand. Moust stepped aside and put a fist into his gut. Stumbling with his breath cut short, Leofwine grappled for the sorcerer as he fell. They tumbled down together. Leofwine locked his hands around Moust’s throat and squeezed.
A heavy kick to the ribs knocked him over. He rolled into a fetal position, gasping for breath, his wrath still burning. Pawel helped Moust to his feet. Rolling, clawing up like an animal, Leofwine caught hold of the sorcerer’s cloak, and then his knees, causing them to buckle. He pulled Moust down and pummeled him with his fists. Moust scratched his face. The Master shouted something.
Baring his teeth, Leofwine pried open Moust’s hand, bending it hard enough to crack. Moust cried out as Leofwine snatched the rune from his broken fingers.
The Master, towering over them like an angry god, was finished with violence and words—all but one. From his pocket, he pulled something that looked like a human liver, and spat a command. He dropped it onto Leofwine. Then he vanished.
So did Moust and Pawel. Not good. Leofwine had no sooner flung the dark red organ away when the black, writhing demons returned from the shadows of the slimy forest in an undulating wave, climbing over each other, biting and scrabbling at the tissue as if they’d been starved for moons.
Leofwine rolled out of the way, but not before three of the demons latched onto his body and began to feed. He screamed, his vision going dark. As the tiny teeth took hold and pain ripped through his flesh, he cried out the names of every god he could think of. He cried out for his mother, and Sigbjorn, even the phooka. He cried for Ingifrith, his voice echoing away across the dense expanse of bodies like a brick.
Algiz. A wolf paw. Fenrisúlfr. He hadn’t summoned the wolf in the forest of Nosthrod that day for glory, war or punishment. He had summoned it for love.
You have brought shame upon the Order.
The Rule of Exchange. One wolf for another.
With his last breath, he uttered a string of words, the essence of crunching bone, rending sinew, blood and hate. Only this time, it wasn’t the life of his lover Sigbjorn he offered up for exchange.
It was his own.
No portal opened; no mist or rain or wind heralded the beast’s arrival. The ground shook in great, shuddering swells as the wolf loped through the trees, its breath steaming on the roots, its claws rending the flesh of darkness. As it approached, a great chorus of shrieks rose up from the demons. They fled like rats—including the ones on and in Leofwine’s body. He screamed again as they left him, damaged and broken as a husk.
Breath heaving, arms wrapped over his chest, Leofwine awaited the end. His mind was clear. “C’mon,” he grated through his teeth. In one hand, he gripped the algiz rune.
He didn’t pray. He didn’t fear.
The great wolf slammed down in a whirlwind of wrath, the tips of its black fur glinting with frost. Its breath was icy. It bared its teeth, slavering, pale eyes opaque, seeing only shadow. Mist swirled as it gathered its haunches for the kill.
“My life in exchange for death,” Leofwine said. “Kill them. Black as crows, all three, wicked as the lies of gods. They are unworthy of your kind.” His voice trembled as a lump grew in his throat. “My life for death.” He clutched the rune so hard his nails cut into the palm of his hand. “My life—”
Fenrisúlfr waited.
Leofwine hung his head. A tear broke from his eye and crept down his cheek like fire. “My life to protect her.”
Because I didn’t.
Light filled the forest like a sun. Leofwine hit the ground as the radiance blinded him. A chorus of shrieking demons rose up, rending the mist.
Silence fell.
One Wolf for Another
Leofwine awoke in a bed. It was soft and warm, and the air smelled of burning herbs. Somewhere near, water flowed. His vision blurred with light. He tried to move, but his chest felt like a horse had kicked it, and the wounds on his body burned like fire. His belly was hollow with hunger. How could he be alive? Where was Fenrisúlfr? The sorcerers? Demons? Where was—
“Ingifrith,” he whispered, his throat as dry as ash. He still gripped the rune in his hand.
A woman gasped. “Mistress Selene! He’s awake!”
Selene. Mistress of the Healing Hall. He was in the Rangers’ Square. The room was awash in sunlight. His vision focused as a familiar face loomed over him, kind, with brown eyes and ruddy cheeks. Graying hair floated free of its bounds. “Well now, Master Klemet. You’ve given us quite a fright, you have.”
“How long?” he whispered.
“Three days, good Master. And a long three days it was.”
The other healer, a young woman, approached the bed. Selene turned to her quickly. “Ana, go to the kitchen and fetch some mending tea and something to eat.” Nodding hesitantly, her eyes wide, Ana moved away.
Selene’s expression turned strange as she picked up a handful of Leofwine’s hair. She took his arm and ran her hand over the inside. Then she drew back the covers and opened the linen gown he was in. His blood turned icy as he saw how thin he had grown. Amid a mass of dark bruises covering his chest, the Fenrir tattoo was gone.
“Roll a bit.”
He did as she asked, and she studied his side, near his waist. There was a nasty bite mark there, the source of one of the burning wounds. A shade paler, she covered him again. Then she tapped on his hand. Realizing he was still clutching Ingifrith’s rune, he opened his fingers. Dried blood cracked on his palm where he had dug in his nails.
Selene picked up the rune. Her fingers shook. “You didn’t have this before, or I’ve gone right mad.”
He shook his head.
She wrapped the cord in a loop and set the rune over his heart. “Sorcery,” she muttered. “Beyond my ken.” She managed a smile. “Now just you let me clean you up.” She moved toward the far side of the room.
Taking the rune in his other hand, Leofwine picked up a thick length of his hair, and then another, and another. It appeared he now had a strip of white on either side, pure as milk.
He pulled up the blankets as Selene returned with a tray holding a pitcher of water and a linen soaked in something green. She cleaned the blood from his hand, and the scratch on h
is face, then poured him a glass. Gently, she lifted his head and helped him to drink. “There now,” she soothed.
“Ingifrith,” he said more clearly. “Is she here?”
“Your sister?”
He closed his eyes. “How do you know that?”
“Lord Halstaeg, he knew. Sat here all these days pining over you, he did.”
Leofwine let that sink in. He wouldn’t have thought Detlef cared if he lived or died, after what had gone between them.
“Your sister is here,” Selene continued. “They brought her to me later the same morning you arrived, and in such a state!”
Leofwine’s stomach flipped over. “What do you mean?”
“Ah, now don’t you fret. She’s fine. Got into a scuffle, though the good rangers wouldn’t tell me what or how, not to save their skins. She slept for two days. But she’s been to see you.” She looked him over with a furrowed brow. “We thought it best not to upset her further while she’s on the mend. Ranger Prederi took her out for some fresh air. He looks after her, him and the others—and I know nothing more than that.” She patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll just go tell High Constable Lisefin you’ve come around.”
Selene left, closing the door softly behind her. Leofwine closed his eyes and settled back on the pillow, his mind racing. Prederi of Merhafr. Smart assed, quick tempered, nasty in hand-to-hand combat. Why would Ingifrith be in his company?
He held the rune to his heart. Fenrisúlfr didn’t take him. Why? The beast must have thought him unworthy. Or maybe the Master of Curses and his cohorts had bluffed about capturing Ingifrith.
If the Wolf Lords were still at large, Ingifrith wouldn’t be safe for long. The rangers wouldn’t stand a chance, protecting her.
Leofwine flung aside the covers and rolled toward the edge of the bed, his body shrieking with pain. He touched his feet to the floor and stood—then collapsed.
Just then, Ana returned to the room, carrying a tray. “Gods!” she squeaked. “What’re you about?” She set the tray aside and ran to him. “You’re in no state!” As she put her hands under his armpits to lift him up, her fingers dug into another demon bite, causing him to bark with pain.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 64
