The Tempering of Men

by Elizabeth Bear

  Sokkolfr did so, and Vethulf used the time required to struggle into the bloodied garment without tearing open his mauled shoulder to think what to say next. The truth was, he itched to set off southward at a dead run, and not stop running until he had found Skjaldwulf’s traveling band and seen for himself that Mar and his brother were safe. Failing that, Vethulf wanted to go haul Kari and Brokkolfr by the ears out of whatever pit they had fallen down and deliver an extensive and scathing tongue-lashing in the process.

  Anything—anything—but dinner with the jarl. With Vethulf’s rival Eyjolfr on Roghvatr’s left hand, as a special gift.

  “All right,” Vethulf said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Roghvatr’s keep, like all the rest of Franangford, was in the process of being resurrected from the rubble. Houses and workshops, stables and barns could be raised with fair speed—they were but lath and thatch and turf and daub and plaster, after all, and there was no great art in their quick construction beyond the labor of many hands—but a keep, like a wolfheall, had to be defensible, and had to house both men and stores in quantity.

  Roghvatr, having been the youngest half brother of the Franangford jarl killed by trolls, was as new to his role as jarl as was Vethulf. But Roghvatr was a man of mature years and experience, a warrior and an adventurer who had done his time a-viking. He knew how to command, and Vethulf could only hope Roghvatr was learning how to govern.

  If nothing else, he set a good feast.

  As promised, Vethulf and Eyjolfr sat on the jarl’s right hand and left, and all three shared a trencher. It was meant to be a mark of signal honor, but Vethulf was so busy avoiding eye contact with Eyjolfr that much of it was lost on him. Still, the food was good, the meat of the great bear lean and tough but flavorful, the plates piled high with summer’s bounty. The wolves, under the table, did not go hungry, either, as there were trenchers of rare steaming meat for them to dine upon.

  Vethulf ate to keep his mouth full, so that his traitor tongue would not say anything scathing and provoke a break in this fragile accord. Eyjolfr seemed more than content to hold up the conversation on behalf of the wolfheall, judging by his boasting.

  There was a line, Vethulf thought, between any warrior’s healthy blazon of his victories and attributes, and being a blowhard and a bore. At that moment, he was rather glad his mouth was full of trout and lingonberries.

  At last, the feast ended with sweetmeats and savories, and with a winding of horns the skin and skull of the bear were paraded through the hall, tented on sticks borne not by thralls but by several of Roghvatr’s thanes. Those doughty men laid the pelt across the cleared table between Vethulf and Eyjolfr.

  Roghvatr stood, and those in the hall who owed him allegiance stood also. The wolfcarls did not; they did not answer to the jarls of men.

  Roghvatr said, “The pelt of the bear must be yours, wolfjarl, for it was your plan and courage that drove him from his shelter unto death. And the skull must be yours, wolfcarl, for your spirited courage in this same venture. All present, charge your cups!”

  He held out a hand; a thrall placed a horn in it. Someone was there, too, with a horn for Vethulf and one for Eyjolfr. Vethulf managed to get his hands around it without fumbling.

  Roghvatr held up his horn and cried, “To the rebirth of Franangford, town and keep and croft and heall!”

  “Hear!” cried the thanes and wolfcarls, and Vethulf with the rest stood and drained his horn.

  * * *

  In the quiet aftermath of the feast, Roghvatr came himself to find Vethulf as Vethulf was assuming his axe and spear, in order to return as swiftly as possible to the heall. Viradechtis and Kjaran paced impatiently beyond the keep’s great door; they had told Vethulf that Isolfr was returning in the morning, both of the missing wolfcarls safely recovered, and Vethulf was in a hurry to be there to greet them.

  So his patience and interest when Roghvatr stopped before him were feigned. But he was trying.

  Roghvatr extended his right hand. Vethulf, abandoning the ties of his axe for a moment, returned the clasp. The jarl cleared his throat.

  “I have a proposition for you, wolfjarl.”

  Oh, here we go. But Vethulf forced himself to nod.

  “It is said,” Roghvatr began awkwardly, “that the trolls are gone forever.”

  Vethulf shrugged. Save us from the dissembling of wolfless men. “I would say it is too soon to make such a pronouncement.”

  “Still. The heall … If it is true, the heall lacks purpose. What will wolves do, when there are no trolls for the hunting?”

  We’ve been wondering the same damned thing. Vethulf did not say it, but his silence was an effort.

  “You could come in service to me,” Roghvatr said. “We have seen today that trolls are not the only peril from which a wolfcarl and his brother may defend us.”

  Vethulf finished with the axe bindings. “No,” he said.

  Roghvatr stepped back. He had not been a jarl long, but perhaps it did not take long for a jarl to forget what it was like to be gainsaid. “No?”

  “No,” Vethulf said. “Wolves do not fight in men’s wars.” He paused, uncertain how to explain himself. “They do not fight for men’s reasons.”

  Roghvatr stroked his forked beard. “Not to win wealth and fame? Not at their brother’s behest?”

  They might, that latter at least. Men fought for wealth and fame, it was certain. But wolves—

  He imagined taking Kjaran a-viking. His jaw firmed. “No,” he said. “Not wolves.”

  * * *

  When Brokkolfr and his companions returned to the heall at midmorning on the day after Kari had broken his ankle, Hroi lay waiting before the gate. When the old wolf saw them, he stood with a welcoming wag of his tail, and moments later Sokkolfr was there, calmly taking charge. Brokkolfr was almost immediately banished to the sauna, and he was glad to go. Amma followed him, and he took care to choose the bench nearest the door, so that although she could not see him, she would know he was there.

  Being properly clean was a tremendous relief. He came out to the discovery that it was dinnertime. He found himself not particularly hungry, and although it was still light, he retreated to his bedding along the wall as soon as he could. He slept restlessly but long, waking and rolling over, only to wake again what felt like mere minutes later. Eventually, he woke in darkness with more men beside him—and finally, at the ragged edge of dawn, he woke and realized Amma wasn’t there.

  He sat up with a jerk, reaching for her in the pack-sense. He found her immediately and was able to breathe again, but she was not in the finished part of the heall. She was— He got up, shoving his feet into his boots, and followed the feel of her out and to the left and down into the newly dug root cellar, where she had made a nest, half bed, half rampart, out of burlap sacks.

  “You couldn’t have picked a less comfortable spot?” Brokkolfr said, knowing that the affection in his voice would keep her from thinking it was a real rebuke.

  Amma thumped her tail, but she was panting, a whine threading in and out. Hurts, she said.

  “It’s your cubs coming,” Brokkolfr said, settling in beside her. “You remember what it’s like.”

  He remembered. The first pup had been breech, and Amma had nearly died, along with her litter, before Othinnsaesc’s wolfjarl had reached up into her body and turned the pup with his fingers. The wolfjarl, of course, because even the most amiable of bitches, which Amma surely was, did not want another she-wolf’s brother near her newborn pups.

  As if the thought had summoned him, Vethulf said from behind Brokkolfr, “Kjaran says Amma is birthing her pups.”

  “Yes,” Brokkolfr said, not turning around. “Her water’s broken—I think that must be what woke me.”

  He heard Vethulf’s boots coming closer. “Hmmph. Sokkolfr will not be pleased with you.”

  “As her pups are all born healthy, and she does not die in the birthing, I will pay Sokkolfr any penalty he wants,” Brokkolfr said
, hearing the tightness in his own voice but unable to ameliorate it. He was scared for Amma, and he was remembering too keenly his last encounter with Vethulf.

  There was a silence; then Vethulf knelt beside him. “I meant no rebuke,” he said, his voice gentler. “Sokkolfr knows as well as I do not to argue with a whelping wolf.”

  “Sorry,” Brokkolfr said.

  Hurts, Amma said again, and he saw the contraction tighten all the muscles of her belly.

  “Comfort your sister, wolfcarl,” Vethulf said, “and I will see what the word is from the front.”

  Brokkolfr couldn’t bite back a lunatic giggle. “You mean the back.” And he looked up to see Vethulf grinning at him.

  “That’s better,” Vethulf said. Moving stiffly—Brokkolfr remembered that Vethulf’s arm was hurt and felt guilty about the confines of the cellar all over again—he shifted to kneel by Amma’s back legs while Brokkolfr moved to her head, stroking her ears, and, when she indicated she wanted to, letting her put her head in his lap.

  Vethulf said, “No sign of pups yet.”

  “That was what went wrong, the … the first time,” Brokkolfr said.

  “Breech-birth.” At Brokkolfr’s startled look, Vethulf said, “I asked every wolfjarl I could for wisdom about birthing wolf pups, and your wolfjarl told me what he had to do.”

  Brokkolfr blinked, hit with a sudden suspicion. “Is this the first time you’ve assisted at a birth, wolfjarl?”

  “Well,” Vethulf said, and with a tight, teeth-baring grin added, “yes. I wasn’t expecting Skjaldwulf to go haring off south.”

  Brokkolfr knew he could have become angry—was even tempted, because it would be easier than the fear cramping his guts. But instead, he said, “It’s my second one. And I was only watching the first time.”

  Vethulf’s snarl of a grin eased into something more like a smile. “So of the three of us, Amma’s the only one who knows what she’s doing.”

  Brokkolfr was surprised by his own laughter. “I find that’s usually the way of it,” he said, and surprised Vethulf into laughing, too.

  * * *

  They got lucky, and Brokkolfr was going to make an offering to Freya as soon as he could find something that would please her. This time, none of Amma’s pups had turned the wrong way in her womb; although her labor was long and painful—longer and more painful than Isolfr described Viradechtis’, Vethulf said, and Brokkolfr knew the other she-wolves of Othinnsaesc had never had as much trouble as Amma did—she bore four healthy dog pups over the course of that long day. Vethulf only left once, and that was to fetch water for Amma, and food and small beer for Brokkolfr and himself. Brokkolfr hadn’t thought he could eat, but when Vethulf set down the platter of rye bread and cheese he discovered he was ravenous. Amma lapped the water thankfully, then laid her head back in Brokkolfr’s lap. He fed her bits of cheese when she would take them, but mostly he rubbed her ears and talked to her in the bond while she labored to bring her sons into the world. Vethulf did the bloody part of the work, catching the pups to help Amma push them out, clearing their noses and mouths with his one good hand, then giving them to their mother. Brokkolfr offered once to trade, but Vethulf said, “No. All that’s required at this end are steady hands and a strong stomach, and that any warrior can provide. But Amma needs her brother.”

  And Brokkolfr felt the winter apples of Amma’s agreement.

  * * *

  Once the four pups were born, and the afterbirths counted and given to Amma to eat, and once it was clear there was not a fifth, Vethulf dragged Brokkolfr back to the heall for a proper meal and another visit to the sauna. “I know you’ll stay out there with her until you can persuade her to bring them in,” Vethulf said, “but in the meantime, eat and be clean, and I’ll have a thrall gather up some extra bedding for you.”

  “Thank you,” Brokkolfr said, then stopped, tongue-tied and uncertain of what he was trying to say. Finally, he said, “Thank you,” again, although it was inadequate.

  Vethulf seemed to understand. “I’ve a vile temper and a viler tongue. Does not mean I am not your wolfjarl, Brokkolfr Ammasbrother.”

  “Yes,” Brokkolfr said, meeting Vethulf’s eyes. “You are my wolfjarl.”

  Then Vethulf clouted him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t fall asleep in there, or I’ll have to send someone in to drag you out,” and strode off.

  Brokkolfr felt as if the ugly lead-sealed knots in his gut had all been broken at once. He reached for Amma in the pack-sense, giving her his love for her and her pups, and got winter apples sleepily in return.

  THIRTEEN

  Skjaldwulf and his companions staggered into Siglufjordhur on the evening of the third day, in better order than Skjaldwulf thought they had any right to expect. There was no sign of Rhean pursuit. Determining that was what had caused the delay—the last thing Skjaldwulf wanted to do was lead an army down on a friendly settlement.

  An army by his standards, anyway. Because when he had said to Otter, “But it’s not that big, the Rhean army. Surely we can—” she had replied, infinitely tired, “Oh, wolfjarl. That is not the Rhean army. That is not even a legion of the Rhean army. That is a mere expeditionary force.”

  “You mean…”

  “I saw the Ninth Legion,” Otter said, “when they came to Brython, marching across our wheatfields with the sun dazzling off their helmets. Counting them would have been like trying to count the waves of the sea. Or”—her mouth twisted—“the ants of a hill. You can’t imagine the Rhean army. Nor can I. I only know that I never want to see it.”

  It was an idea at once dizzying and horrible, and Skjaldwulf tried neither to dwell on it nor to forget it. Put out the fire burning your boots first, he said to himself, and thus took care to be sure they came unencumbered to Siglufjordhur.

  The lack of pursuit did not, in particular, reassure him. He understood it to mean that the tribune and his men had some more pressing business elsewhere, and whatever that business was, it boded not well for the Northmen.

  But at least they had come to a place of defense.

  Fargrimr came striding from the keep to meet them, his dirty-blond braids streaming behind him. The keep of Siglufjordhur was built on a rocky promontory, jutting out of the low hills like a tooth, and the wind scythed across its forecourt as if it had a personal grudge against the stones. Randulfr and Fargrimr met, embraced, and Randulfr made the introductions. Skjaldwulf remembered Fargrimr from the war, remembered seeing him at his father’s shoulder on the battlefield, stone-faced and slim and wearing gauntlets of troll blood past his elbows. He nodded respectfully, wolfjarl to jarl’s heir, and Fargrimr nodded back. The other wolfcarls at least knew what a functional son was, and Freyvithr greeted Fargrimr as a respected acquaintance, if not quite ally or friend. Otter’s eyes were huge, but she held her tongue while Fargrimr led them in, handed the ponies over to a stableboy, and showed them the training arena where they would be housed.

  “It rains in Siglufjordhur nine months of the year,” Randulfr said, grinning, “and while there are important lessons to be learned about mud, there are equally important lessons to be learned without it. My grandfather had this built when he expanded the stables.”

  “But there is no need for practice when the real thing is encamped a league from our gates,” said Fargrimr, “and I thought the trellwolves might prefer this to the other options.”

  “And you don’t have to worry about your armsmen screaming that they’re being eaten in the middle of the night,” Randulfr said.

  Fargrimr punched him in the arm without even looking in his direction. “If you would prefer other arrangements, wolfjarl…?”

  “No, thank you. This is excellent. But two of our party are not wolfcarls.”

  “No,” Fargrimr said. “The godsman knows he will be welcome wherever he chooses to sleep.”

  “Thank you,” Freyvithr said, bowing.

  “And this is Otter,” Skjaldwulf said. Fargrimr’s eyebrows went up as he got a good look
at her brand. “She was the Rheans’ translator.”

  “It is no small feat to have taken her from them, then,” said Fargrimr.

  “Boot’s on the other leg,” Skjaldwulf said. “They captured me, and she helped me escape.”

  “Ah,” said Fargrimr, and bowed to Otter. “Since my mother’s death, we have few women about the keep, but I imagine we can—”

  “I would rather stay here,” Otter said, and then looked anxiously at Skjaldwulf. “Is that all right?”

  “Surely you’d be more comfortable—” Skjaldwulf started, but Otter laughed.

  “This is more comfort than I’ve seen in a while, wolfjarl,” she said. “It isn’t a tent.”

  Skjaldwulf nodded in understanding. “She is my oath-daughter,” he said to Fargrimr, meeting his eyes steadily.

  “Then her choice does honor to you both,” said Fargrimr. “You will find that the men of Siglufjordhur do not slander women, and if one of them does, I ask you to bring the matter to me. For he will not do so twice.” He nodded to the company, said more softly to Randulfr, “Father would speak with you, when you are settled, and yes, you may bring your sister.” Then Fargrimr turned and strode away, back to the entrance to the arena, where an armsman was waiting for him.

  “Your people’s ways are very strange, Iskryner,” Otter said to Skjaldwulf, and Skjaldwulf raised an eyebrow. Compared to the Rheans, what was so strange about any of this?

  * * *

  As if troubles indeed traveled in the flocks that proverb predicted, the next morning brought word to Franangford of a wyvern nest near the village of Othstathr. The boy who had spotted the molted skin at a cave entrance—also the boy sent with the message, and Vethulf appreciated the village headman’s economy—had been smart enough not to go any closer, and he said he could lead the wolfcarls to it.

  Vethulf wanted, rather badly, to tell somebody else to go. His shoulder had stiffened, swollen and hard, and he knew he was fevered—though Sokkolfr had cleaned the wound with stale urine and stitched it, so Vethulf did not think it would take poison. He was tired with the fight and tired with diplomacy—or what he passed off as diplomacy, in Skjaldwulf’s absence—and furthermore, the village was far enough away that it would mean spending at least three nights away from the wolfheall. But he was aware of the thing Roghvatr had not quite said: If there are no trolls, why should we support the wolfheallan?