A Companion to Wolves

by Elizabeth Bear

  Isolfr stretched experimentally, and found himself far more well than he had expected. He nodded. “Where’s Skjaldwulf and Mar?”

  Vethulf dragged a long arm out of the blankets and pointed east. “They went to kill breakfast. We’re supposed to make a fire.”

  Isolfr propped himself on his elbows and glanced around. There was blood on the stones, a tuft of fur pinned against a gorse bush by the steady breeze. They were alone. “They’re gone.”

  Viradechtis and Kjaran raised their heads as Mar appeared at the top of the broken wall. He jumped down, his injured shoulder taking his weight well, and Skjaldwulf followed a moment later, an unlikely spidering of limbs. A brace of rabbits and two grouse hung from his hand. “Not all of them,” he said. “I don’t see a fire.”

  “We were getting to it,” Vethulf said, with a bit of an edge, and curled to his feet. “There’s a picket?”

  Skjaldwulf looked at Isolfr, directly enough to make Isolfr glance down, his face hot. “I hope our wolfsprechend is pleased with us,” he said. “Because his shieldmates and another half-dozen of the Wolfmaegth are out in the forest, preserving our privacy.”

  Viradechtis laughed smug delight all through the pack-sense, and showed her belly to the sun.

  “Word must have gotten back to the wolfheall,” Isolfr said into the blankets, guilty over having forgotten to remind the yearlings to send a message. He jumped when Vethulf laughed, and looked up.

  Vethulf shrugged. “It’s no different than the marriage you would have had if you’d stayed in the keep,” he said. “No more privacy and no less, and a good deal more sympathy in the morning.”

  I don’t need sympathy, Isolfr thought. He bit his lip. The last thing he needed was to start off this arrangement was a quarrel. As if we’ll live long enough to—No. He owed Viradechtis more than surrender and death.

  Somebody had thought to bank the fire before nightfall, and there were still coals to be coaxed into flickering life while Isolfr helped Skjaldwulf clean the game. The wolves snapped the innards and heads up happily, and didn’t complain when Skjaldwulf presented them with a share each of raw rabbit and grouse.

  Breakfast was accomplished with remarkable speed. Isolfr drew water from the old uncapped well and heated it with the wild mint and honey-balm that grew through crevices in the flagstones to make a tisane. They dressed and ate in silence. Their escorts stayed out of sight until they were within hailing of Bravoll, and then wolves and men came out to meet them, lining the streets. Isolfr found himself blushing fiercely, cursing his fair skin as he walked the length of the high street between his wolfjarls, their wolfbrothers jaunty and cheerful, tails waving like banners behind them.

  He could not remember the last time he had heard the Wolfmaegth cheering.

  TEN

  Viradechtis was now konigenwolf of Franangford, though Franangford itself was destroyed, and the remnants of the Franangfordthreat were almost embarrassingly grateful to have a konigenwolf, willing and eager to prove their loyalty. Other wolves chose Viradechtis’ pack, in the days after her mating: Hroi and Kothran and two other wolves, followers of Mar’s, from Nithogsfjoll; four wolves from Arakensberg; a wolf from Thorsbaer; one of the yearlings from Bravoll. And Ulfbjorn, wolfless now, but still a man of the Wolfmaegth. Isolfr found himself wolfsprechend in truth and for the first time listening to a pack that was not Nithogsfjoll.

  Much was the same, of course, and that was reassuring, but he had never realized before how much Vigdis and Skald colored the pack-sense of Nithogsfjoll. Viradechtis was at once sharper and lazier than her mother, and where Mar was a sense of strength like bedrock, Kjaran, canny, observing, was as definite in the pack-sense as his scent-name promised.

  It was ironic that of Franangford’s four bitches, the only one who had survived was Viradechtis’ daughter Thraslaug. Sokkolfr—housecarl without a house—spent a day in negotiation with the other threats, and at the end of it Thraslaug went to Othinnsaesc, along with two of Ingrun’s sons (Grimolfr throwing himself willingly into the negotiations on Viradechtis’ behalf), and Amma, the second bitch of Othinnsaesc—though Vestfjorthr-bred herself—came to Franangford.

  She was a rangy, tawny-gray bitch, younger than Viradechtis, and her brother Brokkolfr, who had the dark coloring and intense blue eyes common to the western seafarers, seemed inclined to treat Isolfr as a mentor. Amma had had her first litter in the spring; her first open mating was still before them.

  What am I supposed to tell him? Isolfr thought miserably. Remember to prepare yourself. Don’t fight. I’m told it gets easier with practice. Oh, very helpful.

  Much of the time, he felt he was drowning. Skjaldwulf was a vast fund of knowledge of how a wolfheall was run, and Vethulf, with something of Kjaran’s knack for simply appearing on the spot when trouble was brewing, was better than Isolfr would have expected at keeping young wolves and young men in line. His scathing tongue played no little part in that, and Isolfr spent a great deal of time in placating both his own wolfcarls and the wolfheofodmenn of other threats—and in trying to prevent fights between his wolfjarls, who were not easy with one another. They humored him, as a general rule, but he could not help the image in his own mind of two trellwolves, warriors and hunters, condescending to play with a half-grown pup.

  Or, in even worse moods, a pair of brother viking-jarls cosseting their shared wife.

  He thought of Hrolleif, and determined—silently—that that was not how it would be.

  Surprisingly, Grimolfr was the one who offered him the most guidance, and who was the first to treat him as an equal—whether out of his own loneliness or another motivation, Isolfr wasn’t sure. “They don’t want to hear from me,” Isolfr complained to him one particular afternoon after the killing frost had come. They had labored like thralls or women in the wheatfields, and Isolfr was happy for a morning of rest, walking with the wolfjarl through scythed stubble that glistened like cheap silver-gilt under a layer of ice crystals. In the afternoon, he would haul wood with the rest of the men, but for now they had a little peace. Viradechtis reveled in it, running beside her sire across the rutted ground. Isolfr stepped up his pace, arms swinging. “I’m not fragile. I do not wish to be—”

  “Coddled?”

  “Placated,” he answered, savagely kicking a pine cone that had somehow wandered out into the field. It would all be harrowed under anyway. Soon, maybe tomorrow. Before the earth froze. Isolfr wondered if any of them would live long enough to go hungry before spring. “I wish …” he began, and then remembered, and bit his lip.

  “I wish he were here as well,” Grimolfr said. “There’s no shame in it. He could counsel you better than I.”

  “He never had two wolfjarls wrangling day and night,” Isolfr answered. “They can agree on nothing, and the pack knows it.”

  Grimolfr laughed. He bent without breaking stride and scooped up a clod. It was nearly dry, breaking easily between his fingers. “Vethulf-in-the-Fire and Skjaldwulf Snow-Soft—is it any wonder? You know what Viradechtis has done, don’t you?”

  “Ensured herself endless attention,” Isolfr said. The sunlight brightened his wolf’s barred hide, catching crimson highlights on her fur as she turned her head to laugh at him. She showed nothing, yet, of the cubs growing inside.

  “Made sure your wolfjarls will not take you for granted,” Grimolfr answered. He pitched the remains of the clod away, overhand, and both wolves took off after it, running flat out and low to the ground. Viradechtis slammed into her sire’s shoulder hard when he began to outpace her, tripping him so they both tumbled, a tangle of red and black and gray rolling across the field. “She can refuse either one of them next time, you realize. Or choose another entirely. They won’t be easy with each other, until she either chooses or they become comfortable that she won’t choose. Until then, they’re both very aware where the power lies.”

  Isolfr looked at his wolf in a sort of awe. After a flurry of a wrestling match, her father had permitted her to pin him, and
lay on his back, both forelegs folded neatly in surrender. “The manipulative little—”

  “She’s a regular strumpet,” Grimolfr replied. He jostled Isolfr’s shoulder. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about with regard to your place in the pack.”

  “Vethulf is—”

  “Bite back,” the wolfjarl said. “Your bitch has teeth, and so do you.” When Isolfr looked at him, he grinned, showing his own long yellow teeth. “They need your regard, Isolfr. You can demand their respect.”

  Isolfr didn’t answer. They had reached the woods, and paused there, in the last warm sunlight at the edge of the shade, and looked at one another. Isolfr swallowed, his throat painful, and said, “What will we do when winter comes?”

  Grimolfr sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, and shook his head. “Pray the trolls find other game.”

  Isolfr prayed. He didn’t think Othinn would hear him, not a prayer for mercy. A womanish prayer, but then, he stood as a woman’s—a konigenwolf’s—voice, didn’t he? So he prayed on Viradechtis’ behalf, and he prayed to golden Freya, who might have mercy on a mother, and on a father of a daughter.

  That night he dreamed of the Iskryne and the svartal named Tin. He dreamed words in her mouth, and blazing weapons in her hands, and he dreamed a troll lying dead before her and a konigenwolf standing astride it, teeth gleaming, eyes shining with a rainbow light. He awoke in his blankets before dawn, hearing Ulfbjorn’s familiar snoring on his left-hand side, and slid from between men and wolves, barefoot. Even Viradechtis never stirred as he padded over cold earth and rushes, between his packmates, and nodded to the sentry outside the door as he left. It was Yngvulf the Black, Arngrimr sprawled on the flags across his toes, keeping his boots warm. They were both wide awake, breath steaming in the morning, and Yngvulf nodded to Isolfr as he passed. “No shoes?” he asked softly, once the door had shut.

  “I won’t be long,” he said, and paused there, arms folded across his chest against the chill. The sky grayed behind tumbled clouds. Before a bright edge of the sun peeked over the trees, it was heralded by the brilliant arch of a double rainbow, so bright and defined it seemed as solid as a ribbon in the hair of a girl.

  “Freya’s necklace,” Yngvulf said, casually. He cleaned his ragged fingernails with his knife. “I’ve never seen it so bright.”

  “Maybe she has not forgotten us,” Isolfr said, and knew his dream for the message it must be.

  Later, Isolfr told himself bitterly that he should have known. He should have known there was no way in the world that his wolfjarls would listen to him when he said he needed to go north.

  It did not help that when Skjaldwulf said reasonably, “Why?” Isolfr could not give him an answer.

  And Vethulf was not inclined to be reasonable at all. He reminded Isolfr first that they were fighting a war, if he hadn’t noticed, secondly that the Franangfordthreat needed its wolfsprechend, thirdly that Viradechtis was pregnant—“or did you not notice that part, either?”—fourthly that winter was coming, and he didn’t know how they did things in Nithogsfjoll, but around here people generally tried to avoid traveling in the winter, and fifthly, “do you want to be killed and eaten by trolls, you idiot?”

  And Isolfr, without a word he could honorably say in his defense, stood and listened and felt his face burning redder and redder. He was not, perversely, comforted when Skjaldwulf said, “Vethulf—perhaps not in front of every wolf in the Wolfmaegth?”

  “Then we will discuss this in private,” Vethulf said through his teeth, and although there was nothing Isolfr wanted less, he followed him into the storeroom which Viradechtis seemed inclined to favor for her pups, and which thus had become unofficially the Franangfordthreat’s equivalent of the records-room in Nithogsfjoll.

  Skjaldwulf closed the door behind him—making the room rather crowded with three men and three wolves, but the wolves would not allow themselves to be shut on the other side of the door.

  “Isolfr,” Skjaldwulf said, “you’re not a yearling boy anymore. You can’t just walk off into the wild when it suits you.”

  “It isn’t—” Isolfr began, and bit his tongue. He had not meant to mention the matter at all, at least until he had some arguments mustered—something that would explain without breaking his oath—but Viradechtis had seen his intention to leave her behind and had protested so strenuously that Mar and Kjaran both heard her, and the inevitable next step had been Vethulf appearing, bristling like an affronted cat, to demand, “What nonsense is this?”

  Isolfr said now, as much to Viradechtis as to his wolfjarls, “It is something that I must do.”

  “But why?” Skjaldwulf said, and Vethulf said, “Have you run utterly mad?”

  “I cannot answer. Please.” He looked from one to the other, from Vethulf’s exasperation to Skjaldwulf’s unyielding silence. “Can’t you just trust me?”

  “Not when what you’re proposing is suicide,” Vethulf said. “Isolfr, do you not see? You cannot do this. You are needed here.”

  “I know that, but …” He turned to Skjaldwulf. “You know I do not shirk my duty.”

  Skjaldwulf frowned, but before he could speak, Vethulf said bitterly, “Yes, of course. Set Skjaldwulf against me, as you have been doing these two months. Will you not fight your own battles, wolfsprechend?”

  Will you always hide behind your wolf?

  And he surprised no one more than himself when he shouted at Vethulf, “I cannot fight you! Call me cowardly or womanish or whatever you like, but I cannot fight as you do. You must know as well as I do that I will never win.”

  In the silence, a wolf whined, but he did not know who.

  “Isolfr,” Vethulf began, but Isolfr cut him off.

  “No. You have made your opinion clear, both of you, and there is nothing more to say.” And he said with flat anger to Skjaldwulf, “Let me out.”

  Skjaldwulf, eyes troubled, stepped aside, and Isolfr shouldered the door open and left, Viradechtis trailing him anxiously through the heall and out into the cold gloaming.

  Where he all but fell over Frithulf, who opened his mouth to say something, then, uncharacteristically, closed it again. There was silence between them a moment, as Isolfr clenched and unclenched his hands and blinked angrily against the tears standing in his eyes, and then Frithulf stood up, shoving Kothran unceremoniously aside, and laid his hand on Isolfr’s shoulder.

  “What can I do to help?” said Frithulf.

  And Isolfr, feeling as if someone else moved his tongue and shaped his words, murmured, very softly, “Pack me a satchel, Frithulf. And tell no one.”

  Viradechtis could not go. Vethulf, for all his unkindness, was right about that. She was pregnant, and it would start to slow her down before too much longer. Not to mention the risk to the pups, and the risk to a precious konigenwolf. Isolfr was nothing. Viradechtis was the world.

  He couldn’t bring her.

  Which meant that Isolfr would have to do something that he had never heard of. That he was not sure could be done.

  He would have to lie to his wolf.

  The problem was that he wasn’t sure the svartalfar would even speak to him without his konigenwolf. Silver and Tin had made it very plain who in the partnership they considered the leader—just like everybody else, he thought savagely, ignoring Viradechtis’ whine when she could not understand his fury—but he had to try.

  He had a sign from the goddess Freya. Goddess of whores, how singularly appropriate—no. He forced himself to kill that thought, like killing a troll kitten so it did not grow into a troll. He knew, no matter how angry he was, that Skjaldwulf and Vethulf did not think of him as a whore, any more than anyone had thought of Hrolleif that way. Wishing to protect him was not the same as considering him a child or a woman … and truly, if they saw you as a whore, they would not care to protect you.

  As if he didn’t already feel badly enough, Vethulf came to him that night to apologize. It was not something he did gracefully, or well, but he did it, his
face nearly as red as his hair. Isolfr, knowing what it cost him, wished with all his heart that he could explain. But he could not, and so he said only, quietly, “Thank you.”

  And Vethulf gave him an abrupt nod and stalked away.

  Send a message to Hjordis for me?” he said to Frithulf later, in their furs, before their wolves or Sokkolfr and Ulfbjorn joined them.

  “What would you have me say?”

  Isolfr hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I—damn. My regards, and concern for her health and Alfgyfa’s. Tell her when the war ends, I’d like her to come to Franangford. I don’t know. Lie to her, tell her everything’s well.”

  “Do you think the war is going to end, Isolfr?” He’d never heard Frithulf sound so small. “I mean—”

  Yes. Not just end, but end with any of them living. “That’s the reason I have to go north,” he said. “But I promised not to tell anyone why.” He sighed. “You’ll have to watch over Viradechtis for me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Frithulf said. “Get Hroi and Sokkolfr to do it.”

  “Frithulf?”

  Frithulf snorted, rolled over, and buried his face under his arm. “If you think I’m leaving you to die alone in the snow, you need to think again.”

  “You’d rather die with me?” Isolfr muttered.

  His shieldmate’s shoulders rose in a shrug. “We’ll leave in the morning,” he said. “It will take them longer to miss us if we leave by daylight, and after Franangford, no one will remark if we take our axes. I’ll see if I can’t get Sokkolfr to do something about packs, and I’ll get Hroi to take Viradechtis hunting. We’ll wade the river north. The water will break up our scent.”

  Isolfr, frankly, hadn’t thought it through half so well. He cursed softly, under his breath.

  “See?” Frithulf said, jauntily. “You’d never survive without me.” And feigned sleep before Isolfr could think what to say in reply.