A Companion to Wolves

by Elizabeth Bear

  It was ghastly work, butchery, no respite, no peace, and Skjaldwulf had said Isolfr’s name three times before Isolfr realized who he was.

  “Skjaldwulf!” He looked anxiously, first at the man, then for his wolf. Skjaldwulf wore his shield-arm in a sling, and Isolfr could see from the hunched outline of his shoulder that something was still amiss in the joint. Mar had a terrible bite, swollen and clearly festering, on his shoulder. He was whining softly, but from the way he kept bumping anxiously at Skjaldwulf’s unbound hand, Isolfr saw his distress was for his brother, not himself.

  Isolfr met Skjaldwulf’s eyes momentarily, not meaning to, and had to look away. His face was pinched in pain, but traces of a smile lingered at the corners of his mouth. I am not worth it, he wanted to say, but bit back. That was not his decision to make, any more than it had been Viradechtis’ choice whether Isolfr would stay with her. Instead, nervously, he said, as he had been saying to wolfcarls for days now, “I regret that I must cause you further pain.”

  “Aye,” Skjaldwulf said, eyeing Isolfr’s collection of lancets and salves with some dismay. “Before you make me forget though, I was charged most strictly to bring you greetings from your shieldmates.”

  “Are they well?”

  “Better than Mar and me,” Skjaldwulf said, with a lopsided grin that had all his hidden sweetness. “Frithulf says to tell you … .” He frowned in concentration, and when he spoke it was in an imitation of Frithulf so uncannily good that Isolfr almost looked around for his friend: “Ulfrikr snores so loudly we use him to scare off the trolls.”

  Isolfr felt himself smile, small and stiff. “Thank you, Skjaldwulf. Do you wish me tend you first, or your brother?”

  “See to Mar,” said Skjaldwulf. “His hurts are worse than mine.”

  As Isolfr worked, applying hot compresses to bring the poison up before he lanced the wound, he asked Skjaldwulf to tell him how the campaign fared. It was easier, if he did not have to meet the wolfcarl’s eyes, and he knew Skjaldwulf needed something to distract him both from his own pain and from his brother’s.

  At first, he despaired of ever breaching the wall of Skjaldwulf’s reserve. But then he hit on the idea of asking how the two of them had come by their injuries, and then, at last, Skjaldwulf began to talk with some ease. The voice he used was trained, fluid—not his own awkward phrases, disjointed by silence. He sounded like a skald, as he did sometimes, and Isolfr moved himself to wonder again what he might have been if he had not been a wolfcarl.

  “We entered the tunnels with torches,” he said, falling into a rhythm as slow and natural as breathing, while Isolfr drained the stinking pus from Mar’s swollen shoulder, scrubbed the dead flesh away, and packed the wound with boiled moss, and herbs. The fur had already begun to drop out around the edges of the bite, but the fever didn’t run through the wolf’s body; the only heat was in the flesh near the wound. That gave Isolfr hope; the poison was not in the blood. “Through stinking troll-havens sought them, down into darkness, companioned by wolves.”

  “You’re already making a song,” Isolfr accused, and Skjaldwulf laughed, but lightly, hitching as if it pained him.

  “Shall I try a plainer rendering?”

  “No,” Isolfr said, binding his dressing tight over Mar’s dark coat. Mar groaned in appreciation, as if the pressure eased the pain of his wound. “You’ll need the distraction. Now you,” he said, and gestured to Skjaldwulf’s injured arm.

  “The collarbone’s broken,” Skjaldwulf said. “I can’t raise the arm. I think it’s broken too, and the ribs may be as well. You’ll have to help me with my shirt.”

  Isolfr wiped the blood off his hands with a damp rag. “Has it come through the skin?”

  “No,” Skjaldwulf answered. Together, they got his tunic off, and Isolfr could plainly see how the bone in his arm was shifted, the skin bruised fiercely there, down Skjaldwulf’s chest and shoulder and over his ribs.

  “I’ll have to set this,” he said, and sent a village boy for Ulfgeirr. He was not strong enough to hold Skjaldwulf steady as well as straighten the bone.

  Ulfgeirr came, and swore when he saw the injury. “Did a wall fall on you?”

  “No,” Skjaldwulf answered, as Isolfr took hold of his good arm and braced his shoulder against the wall. “A roof. Don’t send it through the skin, werthreatbrother.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ulfgeirr answered. He laid thumb by thumb on Skjaldwulf’s arm, and with a deft wrench of his hands brought them level. Isolfr felt bone grind and click through his palms and did not count it cowardice when Skjaldwulf screamed. Mar growled, hard by his werbrother’s knee, and Skjaldwulf managed to drop his good hand and soothe him.

  “They mean me no harm,” he said, when the whiteness of his cheeks gave way to a raw-looking flush. Mar whined, but fell back on his elbows and dropped his head across Skjaldwulf’s foot.

  “Well,” Ulfgeirr said, with a frown. “It’s good you’re not an archer, but it should heal well enough for a shield. If,” he added sternly, “you let it heal. If you break it half-healed—”

  “I know,” Skjaldwulf said. “Wrap it along with the ribs. It’s best if I can’t move anything.”

  But Isolfr traced the dark bruises under his fingertips, on Skjaldwulf’s sword-arm shoulder, ignoring how the other man shivered. “These are wolf teeth.”

  “Mar dragged me free when the tunnel came down. And now you’ve made me tell it out of order, Isolfr.”

  “I’ll hush,” Isolfr said, bending for a roll of linen to wrap Skjaldwulf’s chest and ribs as Ulfgeirr patted his shoulder and moved away. “Tell as you will.”

  “We fought our way down into the warrens,” Skjaldwulf said in more normal tones. “We fortified and traded men off at every opportunity, sending them into the light to rest and be fed. The trolls had warrened from rock and the caves up into the earth under the village, and we fought them bitterly back. Our blood and their blood flowed before us as we descended. We splashed through gore. The way was slick and awful.”

  Isolfr had to lift Skjaldwulf’s arm to wrap the ribs under it. Only the hitch in his breathing showed his pain. “Tell me more,” Isolfr said, as much caught in the spell of the story as hoping to distract his patient.

  “As we descended, we found ourselves fighting sows—as in the Iskryne, you remember?—and we knew we were coming to the heart of the warren. There were kittens, too, and once we got down to the bedrock, they’d started working the stone in those patterns of theirs. They mean to—ow!—to stay, Isolfr.” He paused, breathing slowly through his nose.

  “Do you want ale? Or something stronger?” Idiot, Isolfr thought. He should have offered at the outset.

  “No,” Skjaldwulf said. “When you are done, perhaps. Or perhaps Mar and I will rest a little, and then see what we can do to help.” He frowned at his arm. “This will keep me from fighting for a month or four, but I can still sing.”

  “I think a song would be welcome.” Isolfr reached for another strip of linen, and continued winding. “How did the roof come into it?”

  Skjaldwulf closed his eyes. “We broke through the sows and the trellwitches, and found another rank, bigger warriors than any we’d seen, and with them a troll twice the size any troll has a right to be.” He paused, breathing shallowly, too quickly, and leaned his head back on the wall. Sweat beaded, broke, and ran together on his forehead, and his skin under Isolfr’s fingers was clammy. “The trolls brought it down,” he said. “When they saw we were going to win through to their king. They brought the roof down on their own heads to save their king. Again, as they did in the Iskryne.”

  Queen, Isolfr almost said, thinking of something one of the svartalfar had said—and then remembered that he couldn’t explain how he knew, and finished binding Skjaldwulf’s arm over his tightly-wrapped ribs in silence. “There,” he said, and—steeling himself—brushed the hair off Skjaldwulf’s forehead. “Mar, make him sleep now.”

  The black wolf looked up at Isolfr with pale,
cool eyes and, grinning, promised that he would.

  Skjaldwulf was already a week on his way to Nithogsfjoll along with the rest of those too wounded to fight when Frithulf made the trip from Othinnsaesc, bearing tidings. He told Isolfr that not a troll had been seen on the surface or heard delving since the mines caved in, and the men and wolves remaining were starting to breathe easier. He and Kothran sat with Isolfr and Viradechtis by the fire, drinking mulled ale muddled with ginger and honey. His scars hadn’t faded, but whatever salve Jorveig had given him seemed to be returning flexibility to the skin; his smile was straighter than it had been. And if it had been me, Isolfr thought, would half the wermaegth still be wooing me?

  A useless question. Whatever beauty he might possess was nothing compared to Viradechtis. He snorted into his ale.

  “What are you thinking?” Frithulf asked, leaning against his arm.

  “Just counting my dowry,” Isolfr answered, with a nod to the wolves.

  Frithulf chuckled. “Think of the fun we’ll have come next summer,” he said. “You’ll be wolfsprechend, and I shall be your no-account, troublemaking friend. You’ll be eternally busy rescuing me from the fathers of the maidens who swoon across your path, ripe for the plucking.”

  Their laughter drew no sideways glances in the half-empty wolfheall; the mood had grown lighter over the course of a week without wounded. The summer nights were still no more than a dimming of the light and men’s hearts turned toward hope. Frithulf and Isolfr slept side by side, as in the old days, bracketed by wolves, and Isolfr allowed himself to believe that they might soon be going home.

  They were not privileged to sleep long. Dawn was no more than a suggestion in high summer, a hesitation of the pale sun in its endless circuit of the sky. Isolfr was roused in that hour by shouting voices and the clash of metal, startling to his feet before he realized he’d dragged Frithulf with him. The voices were strained, angry, fearful. In firelight, he dragged his trews on and jammed his feet into his boots. Frithulf handed him his axe before his head was even clear of the neck of his jerkin, and Viradechtis and Kothran flanked them as they ran for the door amid a dozen other men and wolves.

  They emerged to chaos. Trolls were everywhere, in among the outbuildings of the wolfheall, and Isolfr ducked an axe-blow and riposted unsuccessfully before he won free of the roundhall door. Frithulf was at his left hand still. They charged, making way for those behind them: the gravest danger was to be trapped inside, vulnerable to fire.

  And the trolls had fire. Smoke rose beyond the walls, telling Isolfr that Franangford was already burning. He cursed and stumbled on a not-well-seated boot, managing to keep his head on his shoulders only because Viradechtis hamstrung the troll who struck at him. It went down with a crash, and he half-severed the lumpy greenish arm with which it wielded its enormous club, and then gutted it as he climbed over it, looking for the next. As he did, he saw how it fought in light; a hooded cloak and slit-eyed goggles like those men wore against snowblindness shielded its piggy eyes.

  “Bet they can’t see their flanks very well,” Frithulf yelled, regaining his side.

  “Like a man in a helm,” Isolfr agreed. They advanced into the courtyard, cobblestones slick with blood, fighting as they went. They saw no wyverns, blessedly, but there were trolls enough for everyone, and Isolfr could see more pressing through the broken gate, overrunning the defenders there. “Damn. Damn!”

  “It’s all the fucking trolls in Othinnsaesc!” Frithulf started for the gate. Isolfr followed, running, axe raised as he shouted something wordless and white with rage. Other defenders ran to join them, wolfcarls and wolves forming an impromptu charge, and somehow Hrolleif was with them as they hit the wall of trolls, Vigdis snarling at his side.

  They had no shields and there was no shield-wall to strike. The thunder of charging men, the impact that could lift you off your feet, was replaced by whistling axe blades and the thud of clubs on wolfcarl bodies. Something struck Isolfr across the face, teeth and brains, a blow that stroked his hair and killed the man before him. Then he was among the trolls, ankle-deep in gore, just as Skjaldwulf had described. He screamed, and the trolls were screaming, and the force of blows struck and blows parried made his arm ache and rocked him from side to side. He looked up once to see a trellsow looming over him, and saw her fall when Hrolleif took her head with a stroke that confounded understanding. Other than that, there was the blood, and he fought now beside Frithulf, now beside Ulfgeirr, and then beside wolves and men whose names he barely knew, men of Thorsbaer and Bravoll and he knew not where.

  They won out of the compound, away from the wolfheall, but it was already in flames behind them, and then they were fighting in the village, men-at-arms and village boys and women beside them, or screaming and being dragged, being burned, being killed. He saw Grimolfr, great Skald with him, the length of the high street away, and then shouting men, shouting wolves, a great black shape he recognized as Vikingr. More trolls, from the other direction, from Othinnsaesc, and wolves and men in pursuit of them, among them, shouting and slaying.

  Isolfr knew what must have happened, then. Trolls from the north—fresh trolls, come to relieve besieged Othinnsaesc—and the Othinnsaesc trolls themselves had burrowed out beneath the encamped men and flanked them, to come down on Franangford from two directions at once. They must have devastated the sentries and destroyed the patrols. There had been no warning, though the men at Othinnsaesc had pursued.

  The scent of char and the scorched metal of blood scratched his throat. He saw it all, saw Grimolfr and Ulfsvith Iron-Tongue among wolfless men and wolfcarls fighting side by side, holding the street. Holding a route for their escape, his own little band of villagers and wolfcarls and wolves. Signy leapt forward as silent as plague, brought a troll to the ground, tore its throat and kept moving into the band of enemies between them and the men from Othinnsaesc. Viradechtis, a moment later, covered her flank, and Isolfr followed, the center of the leading part of a wedge. He shouted. He slew. He never felt the blow that left his shield-arm hanging numb and useless by his side, but he had no shield, so it did not distress him. He saw Vigdis come up to fight at Signy’s side, Kothran running beside her. He saw Hroi emerge from among the trolls so black with blood that he looked like Mar, grinning through blood, shaking blood from his ruff and jaws, ready to lead them home. He saw trolls die, pebbled hides split open, gaping black like rotted fruit. He saw Grimolfr’s torn lip and bruised cheek as the wolfjarl grabbed his arm and almost threw him into his father’s embrace, saw Gunnarr put himself between Isolfr and Ulfgeirr—who limped on a leg gashed so badly that Isolfr could have put his fist in the wound—and the trolls.

  He did not see Hrolleif fall.

  They came to Bravoll in tatters and shreds, a wolfcarl carrying his wolf across his shoulders, two wolfless men leaning on each other, Vigdis and Skald, one on each side of Grimolfr, keeping him upright.

  Hrolleif was dead. There was no need to ask; Isolfr felt it all through the pack-sense, saw the memories of the wolves who had borne witness. Vigdis was keening, back in her throat; Grimolfr kept rubbing his eyes, as if he had not realized they were blurring because of the tears running down his cheeks.

  Isolfr and Frithulf, Viradechtis and Kothran, formed the center of a loose knot of survivors: Ulfgeirr leaning on Nagli, Hroi limping on three paws and Sokkolfr, his hair matted to his back with blood, patiently encouraging him, refusing to let him fall behind. Kari and Hrafn were with them, too, and two young Ketillhill wolfcarls whose names Isolfr could not remember. One of them had lost his wolf, and they were both blank-faced with grief and shock. Littermates, Isolfr picked out of the pack-sense, like Viradechtis and Kothran, and did not wonder at the shield-mates’ shared grief.

  Tindr was dead, his spine broken and his body half-severed by the blow of a trellish axe. Ulfbjorn walked beside Sokkolfr and Hroi, his face blank behind soot and blood, and those of the Nithogsfjoll wolves who could make the effort would come up to him, nudging gently at t
high or hand, and Isolfr felt their love, their concern. Ulfbjorn was part of their pack, and they wished him to know it.

  Sometime in that terrible march, Eyjolfr—who with Leitholfr carried the rough sling in which Signy lay, both her left legs broken—sent Glaedir to stay by Ulfbjorn, and Glaedir faithfully herded Ulfbjorn the rest of the way to Bravoll, so like a sheepdog that it would have been funny if it had not made Isolfr’s eyes burn with tears.

  The defenders of Bravoll were at least ready for them, the konigenwolf coming gravely to greet them, despite the protesting squeaks of her new litter. She and Vigdis and Viradechtis touched noses, and the strong thought of mother in the pack-sense allowed Isolfr to let go, just slightly. Vigdis and Viradechtis would give way; dominance at Bravoll belonged to its queen.

  They had to take it in turns to doctor each other, Frithulf assessing Isolfr’s arm—not broken, he could move his fingers again, but horrendously bruised, black and purple and blood red, and it was a fortnight before he could raise it—as Isolfr stitched shut Ulfgeirr’s thigh. Isolfr and Leitholfr setting Signy’s legs while Ulfgeirr coaxed Hroi to let him tend his wounds. It was heavy between the wolfsprechends that Signy’s chances were poor; if she had not been konigenwolf, she would already be dead. But Aslaug had died at Franangford, troll blood dripping from her muzzle, and they did not have enough konigenwolves that they could give up on Signy.

  “I’ve always said she’s the most stubborn bitch in the Wolfmaegth,” Leitholfr said, touching her ears gently. “Perhaps that may work in our favor this time.”

  And Grimolfr grieved, although he never spoke of it, and he worked with Ulfsvith Iron-Tongue, Gunnarr and the other jarls and wolfjarls on Bravoll’s defense. Vigdis and Skald did not leave his side, and all the Nithogsfjollthreat grieved with him, but Isolfr knew none of them except perhaps the wolves truly understood the depth of Grimolfr’s hurt. Hrolleif had been shieldmate, werthreatbrother, lover, wolfsprechend: there were not words, he thought, for what Grimolfr and Hrolleif had meant to each other, and he found himself wishing that Skjaldwulf were there, for if anyone could find a way to speak Grimolfr’s grief, it would be he.