A Companion to Wolves

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Did you … ?” Isolfr began, remembering that she had said something about testing the last time he had seen her.

  She laughed. “No, it is not an example from personal experience, thanks be to the mothers of my mother. But tell me, Isolfr, why did you come?”

  “I told the elders,” Isolfr said. “The trolls have destroyed two wolfheallan already. If we cannot find some other way to fight them, we are doomed.”

  “And you think we svartalfar have answers for you?”

  “You fight them successfully. And I dreamed …”

  He hesitated, feeling even more like a foolish child, but Tin tipped her head, her eyebrows rising, and flicked her ears in a way he thought was meant to be encouraging. “What dreamed you?”

  “I dreamed of a thing my wolfjarl told me,” he said, and even in the midst of fear and bitterness, even with the guilt and anger he still felt, there was a surprising warmth in claiming Skjaldwulf as his. “He said that in the caves beneath Othinnsaesc, when the men made their strongest push against the trolls, he saw a troll bigger than any he had ever seen—bigger, he said, than any troll had a right to be. And he said the other trolls brought the roof of the cave down rather than letting men or wolves get near it. But in my dream, you were there, standing next to the troll, and you said,” he could feel his cheeks heating but pushed on, “A trellqueen is not a woman, and your words were a spear, a spear made of flame, and on that spear the great troll died. And when it died, all the other trolls howled and fell down dead. Although I do not know what any of it means, I know that in my dream the trolls died because of the words of a svartalf. And we are desperate. If I die here, now, it does not matter, because I would just die before trolls otherwise, and my child and my sister and my pack with me.”

  Frithulf cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you kill them all? Why drive them out to harass us?”

  “Not safe,” Tin said, with a shrug. “It’s one thing to harry their flanks, drive them along, gnaw their toes until they leave. Easy. Far different to hound them to bay and wipe them out. It would cost us dear, in lives and in the smiths those lives will not become, as nipping their heels to chivvy them along does not. Wolves ought to know that.”

  “So you push them down onto us,” Isolfr answered, bitterly.

  “Save your arguments. I agree we owe you a debt. Though we knew not that they’d pushed you back so far.” She frowned, her feathery brows drawing together over her knife-bridged nose.

  “We have nowhere to go,” Kari said, softly. “My whole village—” He stopped, shook his head, his throat working, and turned back to the fire.

  Tin fell silent, or as silent as Isolfr had ever heard a svartalf fall. Her throat swelled only a little under the collar of her cloak, a thrumming sound vibrating behind closed lips as she thought. “This is our doing,” she said, finally. “If the smiths and the mothers see it or not. We have brought this doom on you; on svartalfar shoulders rests it.”

  “But the … the mothers and the smiths. They won’t help us.”

  She smiled. “But I’m a smith now,” she said, her voice ringing on harmonics of earned pride. She patted her belly under the cloak. “And by next winter, now that I have my Master’s rank, I may be a mother too. And I say we will.” Her meandering crook-lipped smile turned into a frown, and she tapped one metal-laced fingernail against her teeth, filigree clinking on inlay. “We must win them over. And we must prove that you are brother of a konigenwolf, and better than meat for trolls.”

  “Tin—”

  “Hush,” she said, and settled under her cloaks and wraps until she looked like a pile of disreputable rags with a beaded wig stuck on top and her nose a bent stick poking out from the front. Her long many-jointed fingers curled around the haft of the trellspear propped before her, and she moved no more than a statue might.

  Isolfr sighed, and turned away to make her tea. When he returned, she looked up in surprise, propped the trellspear against her shoulder, and then took the steaming cup gravely between her palms. “I thank you the hospitality of your fire,” she said, formally, and bowed without standing. Isolfr wondered how tall she would be, if she could ever unkink that knobby spine.

  “It’s our pleasure,” he answered. The jewels in her hair caught the light as she sipped the tea.

  “So,” she said. “Do you think you can kill a trellqueen, Isolfr Viradechtisbrother?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “How do I get to one?”

  The answer, apparently, was follow me. While she explained, the harmonics of her voice whistled like the winds that seared through the pass. She made the wolfcarls hold her cloak so they could stay by her, and it was as well she did, because the snow made them as blind as new-whelped cubs. Hrafn broke trail ahead, Vigdis and Kothran behind him to broaden it, and the svartalf and the wolfcarls staggered in their wake like geese spread out in a wedge.

  “Your dream was right,” Tin said. “You must kill the trellqueen at Othinnsaesc. As long as she is alive, the trolls will swarm to her place of warren like bees to their queen. There is one queen left in the Iskryne; we have killed two and driven one south. That must be the one your wolfjarl saw in the new warren. I lead you now to the Iskrynequeen.”

  “And if we kill her?”

  She turned to him, a flash of her teeth around the edge of her hood. The trellspear made a stout prop, and she a strong anchor, but Isolfr wished they could have brought snowshoes or skis from the wolfheall when they fled. Foolishness, of course. There was no way to keep that secret, not before snow lay on the ground. “You will impress the smiths and the mothers, and even the warriors. Perhaps even our sceadhugenga, our old one.

  “Do not mistake me; the trellqueen will not die easy, or we would have killed her by now, even though we do but harry. She is the troll of trolls, and older than any memory of my people. The others are but her daughters. But she is mortal. She can die. Only, the mothers will not risk the lives it would take.” Tin tsk’d between jeweled teeth.

  “And then what?”

  “Perhaps my people will help you then.”

  “I meant the trolls,” Isolfr clarified, and waited while she considered, bobbing her head.

  She hummed, and went on, “The trolls may make another, if they have kittens young enough. But if you kill the kittens and the trellwitches, then there will be no new trellqueens. The warren will die.”

  “We’ll kill all the trolls,” Isolfr said, not certain he could credit it.

  “If you kill this trellqueen and the one in Othinnsaesc. Yes. It is only queens who can breed. All the trolls of the Iskryne will die.”

  Isolfr stumbled. He kept his grip on Tin’s cloak, though, and her momentum pulled him up and steady. Vigdis was abruptly beside him, and he buried his mittened hand in her ruff, just because she was there, and warm under the snow crusted white over her shoulders. Isolfr didn’t speak, and Kari didn’t look at him, but the wildling grunted, and then muttered, “Good.”

  Isolfr’s toes were unfeeling in his boots by the time Tin led them to a tunnel entrance they never would have found without her. It was too small for trolls—barely big enough for wolf or man—and hidden in a thicket.

  “A rabbit hole,” Frithulf said.

  “For a half-cooked rabbit,” she answered, and brushed past him, ducking her head as she bustled underground. “It’s an escape tunnel,” she said. “Come on.”

  The wolfcarls exchanged glances, and it was Isolfr who shrugged and went to his hands and knees to follow. He hadn’t exaggerated when she found them in the snow. They were as good as dead already, and it was warmer underground.

  When they were all inside, Tin produced flint and steel from under her cloak, and fetched a pair of torches from a shadowed niche out of sight of the cave entrance. She gave one to Frithulf, with a caution not to burn himself—and then a snipped-off laugh when he took a half-playful swipe at her.

  “You have got spirit,” she said. It didn’t even sound grudging.


  “Why are you helping us?” Isolfr asked, unable to keep the question behind his teeth any longer. Could it be as simple as guilt over the svartalfar’s responsibility for the exodus of the trolls?

  Tin showed him her snaggle-toothed grin. “A weakness for baby animals,” she answered, but the effect was ruined by her glance down the dark tunnel, over her shoulder. “Hurry,” she said. “We must be careful of alfar as well as the trolls. I do not care to die on a warden’s spear.”

  “No, thank you,” Frithulf said, and Kari leaned into the pack-sense with the need to be quiet. Vigdis snorted—she did not need telling—but Hrafn and Kothran both flattened their ears submissively.

  They moved silently, three men, three wolves and a svartalf, and they moved fast. Isolfr could tell when the tunnels of the svartalfar gave way to trellwarren—and he would have known even if they had not had to climb through a hole like that which had first made him wonder about stone mice in the Iskryne: the stonework changed, the heights and angles changed. Frithulf was walking much closer to him than he had been, and he could see sweat beading on Kari’s face. He remembered that Kari had not been in a trellwarren before. And that Frithulf had.

  “They, too, have Masters, you know,” Tin said, and somehow the harmonics of her voice shifted so that the sound was no more than the words, not an echo, not a buzz, not even the hiss that the men would have been unable to flatten out entirely. “Later, if you are alive to hear it and I to sing it, I will tell you the edda of the Mastersmiths, and how Jasper of the Gold Kinship stood against the trellsmith Guth.”

  “Trolls have names?” Isolfr said stupidly, and even though he spoke as softly as he could, they all winced at the noise. Tin gave him a beady-eyed glare, and he put his hand across his mouth to signify that he would not speak again.

  She nodded, mollified, and answered his question: “They do not have names as we understand them, no. Nor as you understand them, I think. We must name them in our eddas for otherwise we cannot sing of them, but they are small names and have no power.”

  Which raised, Isolfr thought, as many questions as it answered. If, as she had said, they were alive later, he would have to remember to ask.

  They descended lower and lower, the wolves slinking now as if they were as oppressed by the weight of stone and earth above them as the men were, and he could feel their growls in the pack-sense, although none of them made a sound. Tin said, “The trolls have not quite this shared mind that the wolves gift you with, but it is also a saying among my people that what one troll knows, all trolls know. Eventually, we will not be able to proceed unnoticed no matter what we do, but in the meantime, when we encounter trolls, the more quickly they can be killed, the better.”

  Never follow a running troll.

  They encountered two solitary trolls. The first Vigdis took down almost before any of the rest of them had seen it, and Tin bowed and said, “Thank you, konigenwolf.” The second turned to flee, but was pursued and died on the point of Tin’s spear. Frithulf and Isolfr shared a glance; it would not do to forget how horribly strong the svartalf’s ropy, gnarled limbs were, no matter that Tin’s head did not come up even to Kari’s shoulder.

  “Come,” Tin said. “Our luck cannot run clean much longer.”

  Indeed, two cramped, steep switchbacks later, they came upon what was clearly a picket. Four trolls, and while three stood their ground, the fourth ran, making a high-pitched ghastly ululation as it went.

  “That’s the alarm, then,” Tin said. “It is war.” And she disemboweled the largest of the trolls, while Vigdis and Kothran took down the second, and Isolfr buried his axe halfway through the throat of the third.

  Past the wide spot of the sentry box, they ducked into a side corridor and followed Tin through a crevice barely broad enough to admit the trellwolves’ skulls. They found themselves in a series of globular chambers, each widening from one entrance and narrowing to the next, though even at their most spacious they could not fit three men abreast. It was awkward going; the wolves could get through only by wriggling, and Isolfr thought he and Kari and Frithulf would soon be as cramped and twisted as Tin. But it prevented the trolls from massing against them, and Tin could spider through a hole and check for trolls on the other side before the wolfcarls joined her. “These aren’t troll caves,” Frithulf whispered, when they paused for breath. “They could not fit through here.”

  “’Tis a new warren,” Tin answered, with a glance of surprise and respect. “They were driven from their old steadings by yours and mine. The trellwitches are still working down these rocks, and it is why their defenses are weak. It is fortunate I am new to my Mastery and not yet broadened with smithing and bearing, and you are not so broad as svartalfar smiths.”

  “Magic?” Isolfr asked, remembering to keep his voice low.

  “Of course,” she answered. “You don’t think trolls delve like honest stonemasons, do you?”

  Isolfr thought of the pulse and cling of their shaped stone walls, and shuddered. No.

  “I played here as a kindling, and knew the way, but I was not certain it was open still.”

  “What would you have done if it hadn’t been?” Kari, his voice strange and thin. Isolfr could feel in the pack-sense how much he did not like the close walls and the dark.

  She shifted her grip on her spear. “Died.”

  Slow, bloody going: they were all bleeding and painted with the dark vileness of trellblood by the time they dragged themselves through the last hole of the series into a tunnel more like those they were used to. Harsh shrieking resonated from the other end of the tunnel. “That is the trellqueen,” Tin said, “calling her sisters to defend her. We must hurry.”

  His limbs were rubbery, but Isolfr ran at Vigdis’ heels down the tunnel. He felt the others beside him, even though the tunnel seemed to slip and mutter around him as he ran, the thud of his feet jarring spine and skull.

  They rounded a tight, boxy corner, and ran directly into the presence of trolls. A dozen of them, barring the base of a dais heaped with hides, and a great brazen throne.

  Trolls, and a wyvern as well.

  At least where the winged snake was there was room to maneuver, and light. Twisted bronze torches lined the wall, burning stinking fuel on twisted wicks. Isolfr thought it was tallow, badly rendered.

  He was not sure it came from cattle, and from the snarl baring Tin’s glittering teeth and drawing her leathery face into lines, she wasn’t either. Vigdis’ growl mounted in her throat to a scream such as he’d never heard a trellwolf make before, and she launched herself at the warriors between them and the Iskrynequeen.

  Skjaldwulf was right, Isolfr thought as Hrafn and Kothran gathered themselves and sprang, and he heard Frithulf cursing behind him. No troll should be that big.

  She was so large that he could not imagine her moving through the tunnels above. If he had not heard Tin say this was a new warren, he would have imagined it had been centuries since she had moved from this room, imagined that she must have hollowed it around herself to accommodate her size. She made Vigdis look the size of a dog, and even Ulfbjorn would have seemed a child beside her.

  Of course, he thought, looking at her great knobbed, taloned hands. The trellwitches twisted the stone so she could come here, and then closed it up behind her to keep her safe.

  Isolfr moved forward because it was the only thing he could do, although his mind was yammering, We cannot kill this thing, nothing can kill this thing, at Ragnarok she will still be here, gnawing her holes in the bones of the earth. She did not rise or gesture. Her howl ended; her head lowered on its thick neck. She stared at them through eyes that caught the torchlight and splintered it red and gold and green.

  Her warriors and her wyrm moved forward, and Isolfr lifted his axe and ran behind his brothers to the battle.

  He remembered the fight in images, brutally sharp and queerly senseless. Vigdis with her teeth sunk in the wyvern’s thick neck, dragging it down so Tin could bring her trellspear into pla
y. The jolt of his axe in his hands when it came down on bone, on meat, on bronze. Kari fought like a thing possessed—berserk, senseless with war-rage. So he survived Jorhus. So we may yet survive this war. Isolfr knew the gush of blood across his hands, the stench of trellmeat, the agony of a torn shoulder, of a taloned claw across his forehead and cheek, the sting and blindness of blood washing his eyes. You won’t be so pretty now, Isolfr, he thought, and looked around to find that there were only two trellwarriors left, and Tin, Kothran, and Frithulf had them in hand.

  Isolfr tasted blood when he grinned, and surged forward in Kari’s wake as he, his wolf, and Vigdis charged up the steps of the dais. Isolfr shouted, and Vigdis yowled, and as they came upon her, the trellqueen deigned to rise from her chair. She lurched forward, the wolves upon her, and the mountain itself seemed to shift under her tread. She was surefooted in the pile of hides and ingots around her throne; Isolfr and Kari tripped and skidded. She swung one massive arm, Hrafn dangling from it with all his teeth buried in her forearm, and Isolfr saw her bulging belly, the grotesque and leaking swollenness of her teats.

  The Iskrynequeen was pregnant, and he remembered what Tin had said, that only the queens could breed, but if the trolls had young kittens, they could make queens. For a moment, sickened, he thought of Viradechtis and the pups growing in her belly, back in Bravoll, but the pack-sense threw Franangford at him, Hrolleif dying, Aslaug dying. Pregnant bitches had died at Franangford, and at Othinnsaesc, and the trolls had not hesitated, not—as the svartalfar had said in contemplating the destruction of men—grieved.

  He heard his own rising shriek, a noise as terrible as Vigdis’, and as the trellqueen turned her head, bellowing, Hrafn still dangling from one arm, Vigdis snarling and snapping and aiming for the hamstrings, Isolfr darted in, braced his feet, and swung with all his strength at the crest of the Iskrynequeen’s belly.

  He saw the axe hit, saw the gout of black blood, and then he saw the trellqueen’s arm begin a swing, a fist like a morningstar aimed at his head. He started back out of the way, but his feet fouled among the furs, and as he scrabbled for balance, his still-entangled foot tipped him backwards over the edge of the dais. He had just sense enough to cast his axe aside before the stone collided with his skull.