A Companion to Wolves

by Elizabeth Bear

  The astonishing thing was that it worked as Frithulf had planned it. When he found the time to talk to Sokkolfr, Isolfr did not know, but when they crawled out of their blankets in the morning, Hroi’s presence in the pack-sense was full of thoughts of deer and rabbits and—canny old creature that he was—Viradechtis beautiful in the hunt. By the time she’d finished shaking herself awake, her eyes were bright and her ears high with the thought; she looked toward Isolfr, half asking, half pleading, and he said, “Go on, sister. I’ve other work.”

  Which was truth, perfect literal truth, and he used that like a shield.

  She wanted to hunt. He felt her call to Mar and Kjaran, heard Vethulf’s laugh, and the four wolves raced together out of the heall and toward the dense preserves south and east of Bravoll.

  Kothran licked Frithulf’s face, and Sokkolfr said in an undertone, “I’ve left packs for you in the hollow stump just beyond the north gate. I’ll take care of your sister, Isolfr. Frithulf, you take care of him.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Isolfr protested, but he was laughing as he said it. “Sokkolfr—”

  “Yes?”

  Isolfr hesitated, but there was duty and duty, and he knew his duty in this. “Tell Skjaldwulf and Vethulf that I am sorry. But I must …”

  “You don’t have to explain it to me,” Sokkolfr said, with the same exasperated patience with which he had long ago told Isolfr to stop behaving like a wolfless man. “Now go on with the two of you.”

  They left, moving through the cheerful early morning bustle of the Wolfmaegth. Frithulf said, “You’ve got to figure the Bravoll konigenwolf is looking forward to getting her territory back.”

  Isolfr grinned. “She sighs. She looks at Viradechtis, or she looks at Vigdis, and she just sighs. All the way up from her toenails.”

  “How’s Signy doing?” Frithulf asked. “I know Leitholfr doesn’t look very happy.”

  “He’s not sure she can hold the pack, even if she recovers. Thorsbaer’s second bitch is strong. And eager.”

  “Could she be konigenwolf for Thorsbaer?”

  “That’s why Leitholfr is unhappy. You know. If it was just him and Signy, he’d petition to join Nithogsfjoll or maybe Vestfjorthr. Either Bekkhild or Vigdis could accept Signy as their second bitch and make Signy accept it, too. But he doesn’t think Groa can hold Thorsbaer and …”

  “The Wolfmaegth is precious short on konigenwolves,” Frithulf finished grimly. “We’d better hope your sister decides to throw one this winter. And that the other bitches follow. Either that or—if we survive the winter—we’ll be back to raiding the wild packs like they did in Hrolfmathr Hlokksbrother’s time.”

  The thought was not a pleasant one, and they were silent through the north gate. They found Sokkolfr’s hollow stump without incident and shrugged the packs on. Isolfr looked up and found Frithulf looking at him.

  “You sure?” Frithulf said.

  “As sure as I’ve ever been,” Isolfr answered and started grimly walking north.

  They were only barely out of sight of the gate when a voice said, “Ho, wolfsprechend,” and Kari stepped out of the trees, closely followed by Hrafn.

  “Kari,” Isolfr said and wondered if there was any way the wolfcarl would accept Frithulf’s wood-gathering story.

  “You’re going north,” Kari said.

  Well, never mind lying. “Yes. And if you move quickly, you can rouse Vethulf and Skjaldwulf in time to stop me.”

  “Why should I do that?” Kari leaned back into the underbrush and pulled out a pack of his own. “Hrafn says the konigenwolf has seen svartalfar.”

  Isolfr felt his jaw drop. “Hrafn has seen svartalfar?”

  “No. But his mother had, and she taught her cubs to respect them.” And Isolfr remembered the way the svartalfar had spoken of trellwolves, as creatures known and honored.

  Kari said cautiously, “The konigenwolf did not tell Hrafn of the svartalfar, but—”

  “There are no secrets among wolves,” Frithulf said. “Although apparently there are among men. Svartalfar, Isolfr?”

  “I swore to them I would not tell anyone,” Isolfr said helplessly.

  “And you’ve kept your promise,” Frithulf said and patted his shoulder. “You didn’t tell me or Kari anything.” He cocked a bird-bright eye at Kari. “So, wildling. Clearly you seem to think the wolfsprechend should take you with him.”

  “These woods are Hrafn’s territory,” Kari said. “Jorhus was some five days north of Franangford, when it existed at all. My brother and I know the land, and I would wager I know more than either of you about living in the wild north in winter.”

  “He has a point,” Frithulf said to Isolfr in a mock-aside.

  “It was never that I did not want company,” Isolfr said. “It was merely that I could not tell anyone why I went. If you wish to come, Kari, you are both welcomed and thanked. I admire Frithulf’s willingness to die with me, but I don’t want to put it to the test.”

  Kari smiled his shy smile and said, “Let’s go.”

  They walked all day, steadily, at first wading over rounded stones through ice-cold water for hours, and then walking over moss and through stunted pine, while Kothran and Hrafn raced and bounced and showed every sign of forming a lasting friendship. The wolves also hunted, returning periodically to their brothers with rabbits and grouse, and once Hrafn, with the air of one conferring a tremendous favor, stopped in front of Kari and spat out a duck’s egg, whole and entirely undamaged, onto the ground.

  Frithulf was tremendously impressed and spent much of the afternoon trying to convince Kothran to learn Hrafn’s trick. Kothran, who had his sister’s sense of humor, just laughed at him.

  The reminder of Viradechtis started an ache in Isolfr’s chest, made worse in the late afternoon when he felt Viradechtis realize he had left without her. He knew they were too far from Bravoll, but he heard her howls nonetheless, and felt her casting for him, casting for him and failing to find a scent, along with the entirety of the Franangfordthreat. He clenched his fists and ground his teeth and kept walking, though it was like leaning into a scouring wind. Kothran came and bumped his thigh, and Isolfr felt ridiculously both better and worse. It was good he had Kari and Frithulf with him, because the effort of walking away from his wolf darkened his vision at the edges.

  He put his head down, and pushed on.

  As the shadows began to thicken, Kari said, “We should look for a place to camp,” and repeated something similar to Hrafn. Frithulf and Isolfr traded a look, and Isolfr thought that if they did survive this journey to the Iskryne, and the winter, and the war, he would have to find out what else Kari and Hrafn could communicate to each other that ordinary wolfcarls would never think to try.

  Then he stopped dead in his tracks, his heart slamming up into his mouth, as a dense well of shadow beneath a holly tree blinked great amber-gold eyes and moved out into the path. He and Frithulf were shoulder to shoulder before they even realized what they were doing, and Kari had moved sideways, calling to Hrafn in the pack-sense.

  And then very strongly, they all felt, Silly puppies, and the massive beast resolved into Vigdis.

  “Vigdis,” Isolfr said, his voice barely a croak. “What are you doing here?” Frithulf was leaning on him, muttering breathless obscenities into his shoulder; Kari said, “She must have been tracking us all day. And Hrafn never …”

  Puppies, said Vigdis, both fond and disdainful. Her eyes met Isolfr’s, and she gave him a very clear picture of a svartalf talking to a konigenwolf. There were men in the image, but they were small, their scents weak and unimportant.

  “How did you know?” Isolfr said, and wasn’t sure what question he was asking: how Vigdis had known he was going to talk to the svartalfar, or how she had known that they would speak only to a konigenwolf.

  She just looked at him, ears pricked, tail waving, and far back in her eyes he saw the laughter that had been almost quenched since Hrolleif’s death. “Grimolfr’s going to k
ill me,” Isolfr said, and Vigdis bumped his hip, staggering him.

  “He’ll have to get behind Vethulf,” Frithulf answered, voice shaky. “We’ve become a conspiracy.”

  Kari stepped onto the path, Hrafn at his side, and now they were three wolves and three young men. “We weren’t before?”

  It had a hollow sound, but they all laughed nonetheless.

  ELEVEN

  Of the trip north, at least it could be said that it was better than the mad and futile race to Othinnsaesc. They marched into the teeth of winter, each day’s travel colder and harder than the last. Kari and Hrafn made it possible, and more than once Isolfr blessed his luck that they had kenned his intentions and chosen to come. Luck, or intervention; when Isolfr asked how they had known, Kari shrugged and said he’d dreamed it. So maybe the rainbow had been meant for more than one of them.

  It was almost eerie, how few trolls they saw. Either the trolls were confident that they had driven the men out and men would not be returning, or they were traveling less openly than they had been. Isolfr didn’t complain, especially as the nights grew in length and they walked by the light of the aurora or the moon more often than not.

  They slept—when they slept—in a pile of men and wolves, and every morning Isolfr woke to find himself flat on his back, pinned with Vigdis’ massive head across his ribs—a position he’d seen Hrolleif in so many times that first it hurt, and then it was funny, and then it came to feel almost like a blessing. There was no wavering of his bond with Viradechtis—and indeed, he had never heard that a bond could shift when both bondmates were alive unless wolf or man left the wolfheall for good—and he knew, sometimes, when the pack-sense was particularly clear to him, that Vigdis didn’t really think of him as a member of the werthreat at all. She thought of him as an ice-white puppy. She thought of them all as puppies, of course, Hrafn and Kothran as much as their brothers, but Isolfr was her puppy—hers more strongly even than Kothran was—and he remembered with odd clarity that moment in his father’s hall when she had turned her head and seen him for the first time. He remembered the way her gaze had felt like a troll-spear, a mortal blow. And he thought, a little light-headed with the cold and the short rations, that if he had been born to the world as his mother’s child, then surely he had been born to the Wolfmaegth as Vigdis’ .

  He could feel Viradechtis sulking at him, and he didn’t blame her. She would have tracked him, he knew, if it hadn’t been for Frithulf’s trick with the river. As it was, she was bewildered and hurt—no, devastated. And there was nothing he could do to comfort her except give her his reassurance and love.

  The pack-sense didn’t limit itself to Viradechtis, unfortunately. He could feel quite plainly that Skjaldwulf and Vethulf were furious with him, and that a good deal of that fury was being brought to bear on Sokkolfr and Ulfbjorn. The greatest surprise, however, was that Grimolfr was absorbing more than his share of the wrath, which didn’t endear him to the Franangford wolfjarls. But Grimolfr could not be made to back down. Isolfr couldn’t know what he said to Skjaldwulf and Vethulf, but over the course of a fortnight he felt Grimolfr’s obduracy temper their anger into resignation, concern, and outright worry.

  He only wished he could believe they were wrong.

  Most of what the travelers had in their packs was clothing. There wasn’t anywhere north of Bravoll where they could have traded for fur coats or woolen clothing unless they detoured east to Nithogsfjoll, and they would never survive the Iskryne without them, even with fire and the wolves. Isolfr huddled in the wonderful warmth of a greasy sweater that Hjordis had nalbound from yarn spun of musk oxen, sheep, and goat’s wool, and blessed his woman’s name. The mittens were excellent too. Two pairs, packed with the shed undercoat of trellwolves, and he thought he might keep all his fingers, even the nails.

  At least this time they didn’t have to fight their way into the mountains. Traveling without an army, they moved faster, and light-footed through the pass without drawing the attention of trolls or the wild trellwolves.

  Whether the goddess was truly watching over them or not, they made it into the pass before the storms came down. Isolfr wished Viradechtis were with them, or even that he dared permit her to perceive where he was. If she’d known, he wouldn’t have been able to keep her from following—alone if necessary, over the hundreds of miles that had spread between them. He didn’t want to think what she would do to Kjaran or Mar if they got between her and her goal, if she ever came to know it.

  Five cold weeks in, frost on the fur ringing their hoods, their lips bleeding despite anointings with bear-grease and butter, they came to the broken gates of the trellwarren where Isolfr and Viradechtis had met Tin.

  The svartalfar were waiting at the gates. They stood just inside the mouth of the tunnel, where the weak winter sunlight could not reach them, the torches in their hands catching sparks off the jewels in their hair and ears and off the wicked blades of the weapons they carried.

  “Isolfr,” Frithulf said very quietly, “they don’t look friendly.”

  “They, um, aren’t.”

  “You could have mentioned that before.”

  One of the svartalfar thumped the butt of its spear on the smooth stone of the tunnel floor. “Isolfr Viradechtisbrother, you have broken your vow.”

  “I told no one,” Isolfr said. “My companion, Frithulf Kothransbrother, accompanied me without knowledge of my intent, and Kari Hrafnsbrother,” laying stress as strongly as he could that all three of them were wolfcarls, “was told in a dream to seek the svartalfar. I would not have brought them into the tunnels with me.” He stepped heavily on Frithulf’s foot to forstall protest. “I have told them nothing of what lies beneath Trellheim.”

  “It is true,” Kari said. “He has not. And we will likewise swear not to speak of you, if you wish it.”

  “What good is that?” said the svartalf. “We already have proof that men do not honor their oaths.”

  “I told no one,” Isolfr said. “And I have come back only out of desperation, for the trolls are destroying us, and if we do not have help, neither wolfthreats nor wolfless men will survive to see the spring.”

  The svartalf flicked its ears and said, “You say this as if you imagine we would grieve.”

  It was the one thing he had not expected. He had been prepared to bargain, to plead; he had been prepared to sell himself to work in the svartalfar mines if that was what it took. But simple obdurate hostility … The svartalfar had stayed only long enough to inform them that if they entered the tunnels of the trellwarren, they would be killed, and then disappeared. It did not seem to matter to the svartalfar that they had a konigenwolf with them, nor that the trolls were a common enemy to both races. They perceived no need of men to balance the threat.

  In silence, Kari led them away from the trellwarren to a spot suitable for camping. “Not that it will matter,” Frithulf said when they had windbreaks staked up and a fire laid with the last of their rationed wood. “From the looks of the sky, we’re going to be buried under two feet of snow and dead as salt fish by morning.”

  “And Grimolfr will come to Hel’s palace to kill me himself,” Isolfr said gloomily. “I am sorry. I did not think … .”

  “You expected them to behave as men would behave,” Kari said. “As the wolfless men have behaved.”

  “I suppose I did. I should have known better.”

  “It wasn’t a bad idea,” Frithulf said. “If they know how to use weapons as well as they make them, they must be terrors in a fight. And it stands to reason they’d know more about trellwarrens than we do.”

  “Yes, a good idea, except that it was doomed to failure before I set foot outside Bravoll. I am an idiot, and I’ve condemned you, too.”

  “We chose,” Frithulf said. “There’s no point in torturing yourself. You rolled the bones and lost. That’s all.”

  The first flakes of snow were falling, and Isolfr was wondering if he could apologize through the pack-sense to Viradechtis and Skj
aldwulf and Vethulf and Mar and Kjaran and Grimolfr and the entire Franangfordthreat and everyone else he had betrayed in his folly, when Vigdis’ ears pricked, and Kothran and Hrafn both came to their feet, tails wagging.

  “Eh?” said Frithulf and turned to get up, then froze, absolutely still as stone, as the point of a svartalfar spear caught him under the chin.

  “Isolfr,” said Frithulf, with commendable calm, “your friends seem to have decided not to wait for the snow to kill us.”

  “Tch,” said the bush behind the spear, and a svartalf stepped forward into their rude shelter. “You have a different konigenwolf with you this time, Isolfr. I trust your sister is not ill?”

  “Tin?” Isolfr said. The svartalf smiled, and he recognized the copper and silver tracery that inlaid Tin’s teeth. “Have they changed their minds?”

  “The smiths and mothers do not change their minds,” Tin said and rolled her eyes. “But come, introduce me to your companions.”

  “Please do,” Frithulf said faintly. Tin gave him a small nod and shifted her spearpoint away from his throat.

  Isolfr gave Tin their names, finishing with Vigdis, “ … who is my sister’s mother. My sister does not come because she is heavy with pups.”

  “Ah,” said Tin, and bowed to Vigdis, as she had not bowed to any of the others. “A konigenwolf and mother of a konigenwolf. This is a mighty queen indeed, Isolfr Viradechtisbrother, and the elders will—” she used a word Isolfr did not know, and one that was heavily overlaid with the harmonics of the svartalfar voices “—when they learn of that.”

  “Will what?” Frithulf said.

  “Lose pride?” Tin said experimentally. “It is what you feel when you come before the Masters with your Master-piece, and they strike it a single blow in a certain place, and it breaks as if it were a child’s toy made of sticks and slag ore. You are revealed not to know as much as you ought, and not to know as much as you thought you did.”