Wolfskin

by Juliet Marillier

  Escape: he knew how he would do that. It was just a matter of resting, of eating this foul lump of moldered bread and drinking this brackish water, and being ready at dawn when they opened the door, tomorrow, or the next day, as soon as he was strong enough. Rest, now. Slow the wild thoughts, calm the thundering heart, make the limbs easy. Sleep safe, my Bright Star. Dream of fair things. My hand in yours.

  Two days later when Somerled’s men came up to the isolated building to relieve the guards on duty, they found one fellow sprawled in the entry to the bolted cell, quite unconscious, with a red lump the size of a goose egg on his head, and a bowl of cold porridge splattered all about on the ground. If the man had borne any weapons, they were gone now. The other guard was face down over the stone dyke that ran from hut to farmhouse; his skull bore a nasty gash, as if struck with some force by an iron rod or bar. Now that they looked closer, it seemed the very bolt that served to keep the prisoner in had been wrenched from its pins and used to render this fellow insensible, for the great length of rusted metal lay there in the field beyond; a flock of ewes with early lambs at foot grazed peacefully around it. When they saw that, the men muttered and threw glances at one another. Perhaps it was true what folk said, that this was no ordinary warrior but a vengeful ghost come back from beyond the grave. Did not such a feat demonstrate a strength beyond the purely mortal? As for war fetter, Somerled must have been wrong. This was no shrinking invalid, but a warrior best avoided unless you had a troop of heavily armed men at your back, and even then you couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t fell you with a neat little tap of the fist. And what about the dog? The dog might be back at any time, creeping up with its bloody fangs ready to rip you to shreds. The man was best left alone, if you asked them; trying to get hold of a fellow like that was a bit like trying to bring a dragon or hill troll to heel, both exceedingly daring and very, very stupid.

  But when they took the news to Somerled, he sent them straight back out again, and two of his Wolfskins with them. They must spare no effort, leave no possibility unexplored. Eyvind had been his friend; Eyvind was to be found and brought back alive. What the man had done could in no way be disregarded. He had stood against his chieftain’s forces at the very moment of their great endeavor and shouted words of basest treachery; lies, poisonous lies. He must be brought to justice and made to see the error of his ways. Eyvind was an oath breaker, and he must pay the price.

  And because no man in his right mind questioned Somerled when he had that particular expression on his face, and used that particular tone of voice, they took their weapons and went out again, one party to Engus’s lands in the west, one north toward Holy Island, and the last southward in the direction of Hafnarvagr. Somerled watched them go, and then he went back into the hall and took out the kidskin bag that held Margaret’s fine set of game pieces, her farewell gift from the Jarl. He hummed to himself a little as he set them up, pale ivory, banded silver, polished board adorned with fair inlay of beasts and twining leaves. A pity there was no worthy opponent here; he must fetch Margaret back. It was time; she’d have learned her lesson by now. She must see that it was unacceptable for Ulf’s widow to speak out openly against the new king’s policies. Margaret had surprised him with that. After all, she had given herself to him, and that, surely, implied a certain level of loyalty. The experience itself had been less than a stunning success; where was the enjoyment when a woman had no fight in her? Unfortunately, her outspoken comments had continued, beginning to awaken doubts in his household. It had become necessary to remove Margaret from court. Still, in due course she would make a satisfactory wife. One could seek one’s physical release outside the marital bed, after all. And Margaret was still the only one who could match him at games. Yes, he would recall her soon. He recognized with surprise that he missed her; her cleverness, her ready wit, her elegance still pleased him as they had from the first. He’d just have to make it completely clear what might happen if she didn’t keep her mouth shut.

  Meanwhile, lacking a suitable adversary, he must pit his skills against himself. His fingers reached with confidence to grasp the carven head of the small white king; smoothly, he made his move.

  TEN

  The little boat had carried her safely to the shingly beach near Rona’s cottage. But she could not leave it on the shore; that would be as good as leaving directions for finding her. Nessa scrambled over the side into hip-deep water. She scarcely felt the cold; there seemed nothing left but the weight of her grief, like a hard stone lodged where once her heart had been. She holed the boat’s hull, ripping her knife through the tarred skins that stretched across its light frame of wattles. Kinart would have been outraged. From this small craft, he had drawn in many a harvest of fine cod and sweet mackerel; he had made the curragh himself over the nights of a long, dark winter, and its neat form, already slipping down beneath the sea as Nessa waded ashore, bore his love for the ocean and its bounty in every tightly fashioned seam, in every finely curved rib. Kinart could not see his boat destroyed. Kinart was dead. They were all dead: all but Nessa. Her uncle had held her to a promise, and she had lived.

  She wished she had not promised. She wished they had planned better, or not so well. They had not been unprepared for attack. If it came, Nessa was to take a small bundle and run straight to the hidden cove, below the Whaleback’s southern flank. If things went badly for them, she would take the boat and make her escape. Engus had refused to listen to her protests. He had put it quite bluntly. If anyone were to survive, it must be Nessa. She knew why. So he made her swear, and when the worst came to pass, she had kept her promise. There had been other parts to the plan: men designated to defend the causeway, to guard the hall, to protect the women. Women to watch over children, hide treasures, herd away stock. None of them had trusted Somerled’s talk of sending messengers and waiting for answers. But to choose today, the very dawn after her mother’s passing, to attack in time of deepest mourning, this betrayal had caught them quite unaware. Nessa had woken abruptly, heart pounding, not knowing what had startled her; all seemed quiet outside, yet it was as if someone had screamed her name, as if some power outside her body compelled her to run to a place of hiding now, quick, before it was too late. Yet nothing stirred. She could hear gulls passing, crying, and the soft song of the sea. She rose, thrust feet in boots, grabbed a cloak, woke the other women in the hut. She ran toward the hall, where the men still lay sleeping on the benches, worn out by the long night’s solemn ceremony, senses dulled by exhaustion and strong ale.

  “Uncle!” she cried. “Kinart! Wake up!” For now, as she ran, she looked toward the mainland in the wakening light, and what she saw turned her chill with terror. Armed men were swarming on the point, more men than she had ever seen gathering in one place before. And now there were cries, she heard them, and one warrior was standing there on the causeway, a tall, broad man with a beautiful helm fringed by a curtain of fine metal rings, and a big axe in his hand, and he was facing his own comrades, yelling, brandishing the weapon before him…He was trying to stop them… Around her, Engus’s men began to emerge bleary-eyed from their beds, slow to wake fully, slow to grasp what lay before them. She watched a moment longer, saw Eyvind kick and duck and turn amidst his attackers, saw him felled with a single massive blow. No man could survive such a blow…she felt it like a great wound to her heart. Now Somerled’s warriors began to stream across the causeway, swift-paced for all the forest of spears they bore, the axes, the hammers, the flashing swords. Somewhere beneath that pounding stampede of booted feet lay Eyvind’s body. She heard herself make a strangled sound, half sob, half scream, and then her uncle was there before her, buckling his sword belt, gray-faced, with a look in his eyes she had never seen before.

  “Farewell, Nessa,” Engus said. “Go now, quickly. You must not be seen. Our hope rests in you. The future is in your keeping. Go now.” From his finger, he drew the heavy silver ring ornamented with the symbol of twin shields, and placed it in her hand. This was no royal tok
en, but his own personal ring of lineage. It should have gone to his son.

  Nessa was wordless, knowing it was the last time she would ever see him: the last time for them all. So quick, so sudden, it snatched the breath from the lips and clutched at the very core of the heart. Down beyond the hall, Kinart was running, spear in hand, desperate to be there when the first of the invaders tried to step onto the Whaleback. His young face was radiant with courage. Nessa stood motionless, her whole body aching with grief.

  “Go now,” Engus said again, and bent to kiss her on the brow.

  She reached up and gave her uncle a fierce hug, and then, blinking back blinding tears, she ran. This was a promise that must be kept. The dog followed her; she hoped he would remain silent, for she could not row away until the tide came up again.

  Nessa had no need to see, to know her people’s terror in those last moments, and their courage. She sat with eyes tight shut, and somewhere deep inside her, as she heard the screams, the clash of weapons, the roar of fire, was the small image of a lone warrior making a terrible, heroic stand, one man against fifty: a vision of Eyvind fighting and falling, just as an ancient voice had told her he would. As the sounds of slaughter came to her ears, as her home was laid waste not a hundred paces from where she hid, shivering, in this stark crevice above the tide-bared rock shelves, she bore within her the knowledge that she had sent her warrior before her to die in vain. How brave are you, Nessa? Do you have the courage to lose all that you have, and still go on?

  After a while, not so very long, it grew quiet again. For a little, there still came sounds of men’s voices, not shouting now but speaking more levelly as if establishing order and issuing commands. She was glad she could not hear what they said. The dog, Guard was his name now, sat close by her, his dark eyes anxious. From time to time he licked her hand, and she laid her fingers on his head, drawing some slight comfort from his warmth. She had bid Guard be silent, and he was obedient, though the sounds from above made him lower his head and flatten his ears, trembling.

  Nessa had learned long ago to read the subtleties of the tide. It was turning now. The voices were gone, the crackling had died down; a pall of smoke turned the morning light to sickly yellow. The water washed in gently over the rocks below her. It would not be easy to launch the curragh on her own, light as it was. In a little while, she would leave here. Her uncle had said she must go as soon as she might. “Don’t look back, Nessa,” Engus had said. “If we are attacked, we will fight to the end, as befits true warriors of the Folk. But the odds are not in our favor here. If we fight and fail, turn away and leave this place. Find Brother Tadhg; seek safe refuge on the outer islands, then passage to the land of the Caitt. Our kinsmen there will shelter you. You must not look back.”

  He had forgotten, maybe, that she was a priestess. Whatever lay unseen above her on the fair sloping grassland of the Whaleback, she could not leave without ensuring certain things were done, certain words spoken. So, when it seemed to her all was quiet above, and the tide was rising apace, so that Somerled’s men had surely passed back across to the mainland to celebrate their great victory, Nessa crept out of her hiding place. She approached the settlement cautiously; there might be guards, set here by Somerled to watch over the field of his triumph, lest there be one enemy they had missed, one youth unslaughtered, one old wife cowering in the blackened ruins. But there was nobody there: nobody but the dead. She walked down across the trampled sward.

  This was the stuff of dark dreams. It was a sight to wring the stoutest heart, to pale the rosiest cheek. She was prepared to see death; she had stiffened her will for that. But these pitiful corpses, not even afforded the dignity of resting whole on their home soil, these bodies cruelly mutilated, so that not one of the men lay as he had died—this was a scene of deep unrest, a heart wound never to be healed. This place would never be a safe haven again. A blight of wrongness lay over it; the drifting smoke from the ruined hall was heavy with the memory of shame. Nessa did not weep. Her eyes were dry, her breathing calm. She felt only the cold, hard thing in her chest, a shriveled kernel of grief, a tight knot of suffering and loss. There was no sign of activity over on the point now. No sentries watched her; only the dead eyes of her kinsmen looked on across the swirl of the incoming tide, each blanched face gazing westward atop its savage spike as their priestess knelt by each headless corpse, crossed each warrior’s limp hands on his chest, and spoke the ritual words of farewell. Rest, brave spirit; may the earth hold you gently in her hand. Great Mother, receive your warrior, Ferach…your warrior, Brude…your dear warrior, Kinart… She knew them like brothers, one by his long, ringed fingers, one by the way he bit his nails down to the quick, one by the many freckles the sun drew on his fair skin.

  Down by the hall, there were three women dead. They lay huddled in a pitiful heap, speared through chest and stomach and throat, still clutching one another close in their terror. All were older women, who had served faithfully in Engus’s household. One had nursed Nessa’s mother. There were no young wives among the dead, no girls, no children. The plan had been for these to shelter in the outer hut, where stock were housed in rough weather; two of the bigger boys, who were to guard them, lay in their blood there by the wall. Mother, receive your fine sons, Gartnait and Drust, who never came to manhood, yet who died as men…Mother, receive your daughters, who have served you loyally. They cannot be laid in earth, but see, I prepare them as well as I can, and tonight I will keep vigil and say full prayers for their passing. Take them to their rest, and forgive the stain of heedless killing that has darkened this fair place…Receive your son, Erip…receive your son, Conal…receive your son…

  She could not enter the hall, for the smoldering rubble was still full of heat, but she could see at a glance that if anything remained, it was no more than bones and ash. Nessa bowed her head. Mother of us all, here perished the last good king of the Folk in the Light Isles. Receive your son, Engus.

  Guard was keeping very close by her side, tail between his legs, body shivering with unease. From time to time he gave a little whine, and she bade him be silent, but kindly, for his deep unquiet mirrored what was in her own heart. Here was the cairn where her two sisters slept their long sleep. Her mother would never rest now beside these two lost daughters, for her shrouded body had not yet been laid in earth before the fire had ripped through the hall, taking dead sister and living brother together in its frenzy. When all was lost, a king must die honorably in his hall; that was a true sign of strength, and Engus was one of the strongest men she had ever known.

  There was yet one thing to be done before she might leave this place of shadow. Nessa walked up the slow rise of the Whaleback, and Guard followed her. The sheep ambled away and dropped their heads to graze again. Guard kept perfect pace as she came up the hill to a place from which the Kin Stone might be seen on the western clifftop, standing proud and strong between land and sea. There she would promise her uncle loyalty and truth; there she would swear by the stone to be worthy of the trust he had placed in her. She climbed higher, gazing westward. She blinked and looked again.

  The Kin Stone was gone. How could that be? Her eyes must be deceiving her; it had marked this ancient domain since a time of story, since the first man and woman of the Folk settled on the Whaleback. It could not be gone; the ancestors would not allow such sacrilege.

  “Guard,” Nessa whispered as a terrible cold began to creep through her, “I don’t think I can go on. Guard?”

  But Guard went forward, and she followed. There was no choice. What carried her was fiercer than pride, darker than fury, more powerful than love. It was something old and deep, something that had no name.

  The Kin Stone was broken: shattered. It lay in pieces on the sward, the crescent split apart, the carven king sundered from his sons, who gazed blindly up into the empty sky. Here was the eagle, its flight cut short, here the sea-beast, fractured and crumbling. Somerled had not been content with his slaughter of the Folk, it seemed, but must o
bliterate the very core of their identity. Nessa knelt by the broken pieces, reaching to touch the ancient king’s curling hair with her finger. Such blind hatred was surely born of fear; there could be no other reason for it. And Somerled was right to fear. What spoke in her blood now was powerful and dangerous. It was the same pulse that beat in every fold of this land, that sounded in every surge of waves on the shore, that rang in the heart of the standing stones and cried in the wind from the west. The islands live. The islands endure. The islands do not forget.

  Nessa could not gather up the broken pieces of the Kin Stone; they were too heavy. This work of healing must come later. She took up a tiny fragment, perhaps part of the sea-beast’s strange tangle of limbs and tail, perhaps not, and put it in the little pouch that held her moon charms. She found she could not chant the solemn vow she had intended. Somewhere inside her there was an anguished wailing, a wild lament that refused to be set free. The cold calm that had come over her as she settled the lost men of the Folk for their long sleep had banished tears and muted her voice. That mattered little. The ancestors hear even a whisper, and an oath can be stone-sworn even when the sacred stone itself is shattered, for the truth can never be destroyed. Nessa looked to the east, down over the ruins of the settlement, and knelt to lay her hand on the head of the brave carven king. Receive our poor broken ones, gentle earth; cradle their spirits sweetly; give them rest. She stood, turning to face the west, and the sun laid her shadow long and straight across the earth to touch the farthest margin of the isles. Great ocean, bear their song of courage west and east and north and south, to all the corners of the world. Let it not be forgotten, what the Folk were.