An Apprentice to Elves

by Elizabeth Bear

  Fargrimr told himself not to waste strength in fretting, told himself not to borrow trouble, told himself not to be a fool, but when he glanced aside and found Isolfr Viradechtisbrother there, his braids half unraveled and his face behind its mask of scars unhappy, Fargrimr closed his eyes.

  But Isolfr put his hand on Fargrimr’s shoulder and squeezed until Fargrimr looked at him again. “Viradechtis says she can feel Ingrun,” he said, and Fargrimr felt his breath ease.

  “Blarwulf?”

  Isolfr shook his head.

  “I did not think so,” Fargrimr said. “We will grieve later. The Rheans are too canny to let us rest.”

  “We will grieve later,” Isolfr agreed softly.

  They kept searching the night for men and wolves, and if more were found than not, still there were those who stayed lost, and they did not have the time to mourn.

  They did, near the vague lightening of the sky that meant dawn, find Tryggvi.

  He looked as tired as Fargrimr felt, tail dragging, ears dragging. Like the rest of them, he looked like he’d been rolling in blood; some of it was clearly his, from the ugly arc of a wound on his left shoulder. The tip of his tail started whisking back and forth when Skjaldwulf called his name.

  And he was carrying in his mouth, as a toad carries the jewel in its head, a medallion worked with a familiar crow.

  * * *

  The crow banner certainly looked to be keeping up with the others. Perhaps Corvinus had tasted the wine of betrayal and found it bitter. Perhaps he’d expected better things of the Northmen.

  They crouched, Fargrimr and an alf and half a dozen wolfheofodmenn, whom he found he trusted to understand the situation far more than he trusted his fellow jarls, in a clearing well back from the tree line, around a cairn of Tin’s little stone-lights, which, though they sadly did not provide the warmth of a fire, also did not provide the betraying scent or smoke.

  They’d been fighting the Rheans long enough to learn to read their damn battle standards. The crow on one side, the three arrows on the other, and a creature that had to be Iunarius’ device in the center, though none of them could make any sense of it. “This doesn’t look to me,” Tin said, poking the medallion with one long black claw, “like Quintus Verenius Corvus leaving your enemy’s flank open to attack.”

  “No,” Fargrimr agreed. “This looks like Quintus Verenius Corvus pushing forward as hard as he can. I lost track of them on the ice—were the crows…?”

  “If they’d mysteriously held back,” Vethulf said blackly, “it would not have needed the bear-sarkers to cover our retreat.”

  Fargrimr reorganized the battle in his head and cursed. “We did know he was faithless.”

  “It is what we expect of civilized people,” Skjaldwulf said, and Fargrimr was grateful for the irony like a flensing knife, cutting through skin and fat to the muscle underneath.

  “They think us routed,” Vethulf said. “Why keep faith with a defeated enemy?”

  “Are they wrong?” said the wolfjarl of Ketillhill bitterly. “What was that”—with a wave of his hand toward the ice and the dead—“if not a rout?” Fargrimr did not fault him for taking the death of his wolf hard, but it was yet becoming increasingly tempting to split the skin over his cheekbone with nothing but knuckles and strength.

  “Routed, maybe,” Skjaldwulf said, “but not defeated.” He smiled like a wolf. “Not just yet.”

  Something cracked in the darkness nearby. Heads snapped up, but Fargrimr could tell it had been an intentional noise because it was followed by solid footsteps. He was on his feet, rushing to the edge of the circle of stone-light, by the time Randulfr and Ingrun staggered into it, leaning on one another.

  “Surprise,” Randulfr said, with the smirk of someone who has just won a point off a sibling.

  NINETEEN

  Fargrimr turned his head to watch the cold gray light of dawn seep between the trees.

  “Sunreturn,” Isolfr commented, and went back to scraping a whetstone along the edge of his axe until Tin looked at him in fond frustration, took both away, and sharpened it herself.

  “Already? I’d lost track,” Randulfr said.

  “If only the svartalfar were coming,” Fargrimr said, and felt the worse for it immediately. Because Tin raised her head with a grim smirk, and Fargrimr remembered too clearly the bitter cold of that winter campaign, fifteen years before, when they had driven the trolls from Othinnsaesc.

  “If they left today,” Tin said, “it would still take them a month to get here. Or more.”

  Randulfr looked up from where he was combing burrs and blood out of Ingrun’s fur. She sighed gustily and rested her head on his knee. He, too, glanced at the dawn. Not enough rest; not enough food. But here they were, and it was time to put their plan into action.

  Tin reached inside her robes, found some jerky, and offered it to Randulfr expressionlessly. He took it and began to shred it between his hands, coaxing Ingrun to eat. She was almost too tired to chew. He kept coaxing her, and slowly her ears began to perk up.

  “One more fight, sweetheart,” he said to her. “Then we can lie down in a featherbed and stay there.”

  She heaved herself up. Fargrimr imitated her, then offered a hand to his brother. Randulfr, usually so light on his feet, rocked and grunted.

  “We’ll do it,” Tin said encouragingly. “We always have.”

  Fargrimr was suddenly savagely glad the alf was with them.

  * * *

  Fargrimr and the others—Tin, Randulfr, Ingrun, and a group of wolfcarls and soldiers—clustered at the forest’s edge, in a heavily thicketed copse that would conceal them from view but give them a good view of the place where the wolfless men—“wolf-widows,” he’d heard Vethulf call them—would take their stand and lay their trap. Already, Fargrimr could see them moving through the forest like blown smoke, gathering just within the verge.

  Ingrun was in contact with Viradechtis, who had fallen back with Isolfr. Together, they served as a liaison between Skjaldwulf, Gunnarr, and the wolves and wolfcarls scattered throughout the forest, along with crofters and herders and artisans far from their fields, flocks, wheels.

  There was the Ketillhill wolfjarl, moving forward among his bereaved warriors. And ringing down the slope before the Hergilswald, Fargrimr could hear the chime of mail and the tramp of feet. His breath hissed from his mouth in great plumes. The daylight would be no more than a dimming of the dark, but it was something.

  A beginning, and an end.

  Then the volunteers were stepping from the trees, forming for a brutal, beautiful charge. Fargrimr could see them clearly, grim in the watery light, and he heard their cries. They were all men who had lost their wolves on the ice. They thundered spears and swords and axes against their bucklers and shouted wildly, then began to charge up the hill in a tumult of running feet exactly as if they had some chance of defeating the Rheans.

  It was a brave lie, but a lie all the same. They were too badly outnumbered and outarmed, and the Rhean commanders had found fresh men somewhere. Even from here, Fargrimr could see their bright, unstained banners, their ungouged shields, and he hated them for it.

  Still, the charge held for longer than Fargrimr had expected, and when it shattered on the Rhean shield wall, it was so clearly with the failure of the last of their strength.

  The gray, indirect sunlight was already fading again when the Northmen began to fall back, brokenly, and the Rheans charged after them screaming bloodlust and bloody murder.

  Fargrimr thought of a bird pretending to drag a broken wing, to lure a cat away from its nest. But these birds really were half dead, and the fresh, strong Rheans were catching up with them.

  “We have to help them,” Randulfr said. Fargrimr knew he was right. The Northmen—the remaining Northmen; half of them were already being hacked down by Rheans—had to survive to the edge of the woods. They couldn’t break and scatter, either, which they were in danger of doing. They needed to be a sweet enough target to
lure the Rheans on.

  Fargrimr saw the Ketillhill wolfjarl fall. Randulfr saw it too, and Ingrun whined low. Now the Northmen were breaking. Now the Rheans surged down the hill—

  “Run,” Randulfr said to Fargrimr. “Run to Isolfr; tell him what’s happening here. He and Skjaldwulf—and Gunnarr—need a detailed intelligence report, and Ingrun can’t give them that.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to buy them more time,” Randulfr said, his voice as calm as if he’d said there was company coming and they needed to bake extra bread. He slipped a salvaged sword from his belt and hefted it experimentally. “They have to make it to the trees, and they won’t if—Go on, Fargrimr! Run!”

  An older brother’s barked order still made Fargrimr take to his heels. He heard the cry of his brother and the small squad of men he led as they charged forward into the fray.

  He could no more keep himself from glancing back than he could keep himself from breathing. He saw Randulfr’s men hitting the Rhean flank with a shock that far outweighed the size of the force applying it. Then he dragged himself away, knowing that Randulfr was right but feeling like a coward all the same—feeling as if his duty to his brother and his duty to the North were at odds and would tear him in two—and forced himself into a lurching jog through the crowding underbrush once more.

  Then the wolfless men were running past him, sweeping him up with them, and he was borne forward in the rout. In the faked rout, because Randulfr had kept it from becoming a real one. The wolf-widows pelted through the black forest pell-mell, clutching svartalf stonestars that both made them visible to the pursuing Rheans and gave them enough light to stay just ahead. The Rhean formations broke among the trees. Fargrimr ducked a thrown spear, and a slashing sword bit into wood just where his head had been. Those short Rhean blades—there was no romance in them, but they were well-adapted to close quarters and cluttered surroundings. He ducked his head between his shoulders and ran, ran, leading the Rheans on.

  Straight into the ambush.

  Wolves and men emerged from behind every tree and fell on the Rheans. At first, the Rheans reacted with fear and awe—shouting, screaming, slashing wildly. It availed them not. But there were so many Rheans. And they kept coming, and the ones behind the first wave were fresh, and not surprised. They stepped over the bodies of their fallen comrades. They advanced precisely in slow lines, making allowances for the gargantuan trees.

  They began to turn the tide of battle. They were driving the Northmen back, in fact, and Fargrimr’s hands ached to the bone from every blow he parried—when a howl such as he had never heard jerked every hair on Fargrimr’s body up.

  * * *

  The clash of arms, the cries of wounded men, carried through the trees for an hour before the wild wolves found the first Rhean.

  Alfgyfa’s intention had been to meet up with some part of the Northmen’s army and find her father before getting anywhere near the Rheans, but it was more difficult than she had anticipated to navigate across unfamiliar country with only two konigenwolves to guide herself by—especially when both kept moving.

  “Someday,” she had said to herself one night, staring up at the stars from beneath a pile of wolves, “you will learn to think before you take the leap. And Master Galfenol will probably faint dead away from the shock.”

  It was only a couple nights later that they encountered the first wild wolf pack. Alfgyfa felt the touch of the strange konigenwolf, felt Greensmoke reach out to her—and then, instead of the polite we-are-both-ignoring-each-other negotiations she expected, Greensmoke said, Danger.

  It got the other konigenwolf’s attention. Stunned, Alfgyfa watched the images of Mar’s death, of Feigr’s death, of the Rheans in their armor, carrying their short broad-bladed swords, and the message was as clear as if Greensmoke had used words: These men kill wolves. These men kill CUBS.

  Murder, answered the other konigenwolf, with an image of her teeth ripping the Rhean apart.

  We seek them, Greensmoke said, and the other konigenwolf (rowan-berries-vivid-against-the-snow) said, We will join you. We will share your warning.

  All are welcome, Greensmoke said, which Alfgyfa couldn’t help finding ominous.

  These men kill cubs, Greensmoke said to her; Alfgyfa understood, and felt cold for reasons that had nothing to do with winter.

  The svartalfar were not the only species that allowed humans to walk across the face of the North. It was a contract, Alfgyfa thought, perhaps a little hysterically, as Wyvern and Ice came and nudged her into the position they wanted. Men didn’t kill trellwolves, and trellwolves didn’t kill men. (The wolfheallan were a separate matter and not important to the wild wolves.) But it was exactly like a svartalf contract, where you could go along from day to day and never mention the contract or think about the contract, but the instant you transgressed one of the provisions, it was like getting caught in a bear trap, because svartalfar never forgot about contracts.

  Or in this case, the instant you transgressed that single provision, you went from fellow predator to prey.

  Greensmoke came over and huffed at her for thinking too loudly, and everybody had to rearrange themselves for the konigenwolf’s comfort.

  Alfgyfa fell asleep that night straining to hear the distant voices of the wolves.

  From that point on, it became clearer and clearer that it was Alfgyfa who was traveling with the wolves, not the other way around. She hadn’t known—and wouldn’t have believed anyone who tried to tell her—that wild trellwolves could form a Wolfmaegth, the greater pack made up by many packs coming together, but she wasn’t fool enough to deny that a Wolfmaegth was what was forming around her. Rough and unstable and certainly of no greater purpose than to tear every Rhean they could reach limb from limb, but a Wolfmaegth all the same.

  The Wolfmaegth of the wild wolves traveled swift and silent; Alfgyfa had no idea how many wolves were part of it, but she was fairly sure that every time they stopped, there were more of them. They continued to aim for Viradechtis, since none of them knew any better way of finding Rheans. The wild wolves seemed generally a little scornful of the heall wolves, as the men of the true north tended to look down on the “soft” southerners, but respect for a konigenmother did not change. The wild wolves had no konigenmother among them, and Alfgyfa came to realize that many of their packs were not led by konigenwolves at all, but merely by the strongest bitch. Greensmoke had been looking for a konigenwolf, for of course, Alfgyfa thought, as if she’d known it all along, it took the konigenwolves to make the Wolfmaegth.

  She stayed away from keeps and crofts and villages—easy enough, with wolves in every direction to steer her—and she kept pushing south, kept aiming toward Viradechtis as the forest changed around her, as the bits and pieces she picked up from Viradechtis, of war and starvation and death, grew worse and worse, and she tried to move faster, to push herself faster, to make this happen faster.

  And now it seemed that she had finally brought the two ends of the rope together. The image of a soldier in a leather skirt was so strong in the pack-sense that for a moment Alfgyfa thought he was standing in front of her. A howl went up, and the wild Wolfmaegth, like a swarm of wasps when their nest is disturbed, boiled out from its relative containment around the central point of Alfgyfa and green-wood-burning and rowan-berries-against-snow and the third konigenwolf, trout-scales-in-deep-water (who had been, as far as Alfgyfa could tell, the tipping point that turned a collection of wolf packs into a Wolfmaegth) and spread through the deep forest, seeking Rheans.

  And finding them.

  Alfgyfa kept walking, because it was the only thing she knew to do, because Viradechtis was still somewhere ahead of her, and she did not want to stop out here alone among the wild wolves and the blood. Every so often, a Rhean would crash through the trees in front of her, wild-eyed, one babbling what she guessed was a prayer in his own language. She had the war axe she’d borrowed from Franangford—she could call it borrowed as long as So
kkolfr didn’t notice it was missing before she put it back—and she found herself muttering, “They kill wolves, they kill cubs,” as she moved to attack.

  Grimly, she fought and killed and fought again, and in the pack-sense around her, the wild wolves ripped men apart.

  She was making her way cautiously down a fold of land too steep to be a valley, but not steep enough to be a ravine, when a man’s voice called from behind her, up on the crest, “Ona puella!”

  Alfgyfa turned; a handful of Rhean soldiers were starting to make their way down the slope. They had kept their heads better than the other men she had encountered—either cause or effect of the fact they’d managed to stay together—and more of them were coming over the rise: ten altogether, coming now two by two.

  Alfgyfa moved quickly up the opposite slope, digging in with her boot heels as hard as she could. She threw a call for help out into the pack-sense; she wasn’t sure where any of Greensmoke’s pack was, and she didn’t know if any of the other wild wolves would even acknowledge her—but on the other hand, ten Rheans to kill would surely be a lure.

  The Rheans were smiling, which frightened her. It would be all too easy for them to encircle her, and at that point, she could only try to kill and injure as many of them as she could before they disarmed her.

  As plans went, it left something to be desired.

  The first Rhean tried to rush her, presumably on the assumption she didn’t know how to use the bloodstained axe she was holding. She’d never won a bout against a svartalf, but she was very well trained and she’d had enough practice now not to be squeamish; the man was dead before he realized the severity of his mistake.

  The other Rheans were no longer smiling.

  Alfgyfa braced herself, aware that if they really decided on it, she would die here, when the pack-sense opened a great refusal, and her knees nearly gave out on her from relief.

  Viradechtis, found at long and blessed last, came down on the Rheans like a storm out of the north—a killing wind with teeth like daggers of hail, shedding blood like freezing rain. Isolfr was an ice-demon behind her, pale braids flying, almost concealed in the whirl of his axe. And from the other side, Greensmoke and Apple and their pack, a terrible leaping fury. One of the Rheans screamed.