“Perhapsâ” The sweep of her skirt across rushes. She sighed, and there was a rustle of cloth. Njall imagined she drew his father into her embrace. “Perhaps he will not be chosen. Perhaps he will be chosen by a male, and he will lead the werthreat someday himself. Perhaps he will grow to be a powerful ally to you, my lord. Your son, a wolfheofodmanâ”
“Perhaps is a cold word, Halfrid,” Njall's father said, and then there was only silence through the doorway, until Njall slipped away.
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he other older boys had returned to the dormitory, Njall's brother Jonak included, but he found he could not face them and walked out into the cold dusk instead. He crossed the courtyard once more to seek solace in the stable. His old pony Stout had been given to his sister Kathlin when he grew strong enough to handle a man's steed, but the little mare was still a friend, her shaggy wire-harsh gray mane drifting over gentle eyes. He leaned against the bar of the box she shared with two other ponies and let her drape her neck over his shoulder, steaming breath snuffing his cheek.
Kathlin found him there. She was a slip, an alf-seeming thing with the promise of their mother's looks, and all their father's temper. He wasn't surprised when she strode across the packed earth floor, stared at him for a moment, her chin lifted defiantly, and kicked him hard in the shin.
She got her hip into it. “Ow!” he protested, and was about to grab her and pick her up off her feet when she lunged forward, dissolving into sobs with the immediacy
of a child. “Kathlin,” he said, hopelessly. She cried harder, thumping his chest with both hands doubled up around the leather jerkin.
“You're leaving,” she accused between sobs. “Father says you won't come back and I'm not to visit you. And Alfleda said she won't ever come backâ”
“Did he say I was forbidden?” Njall asked, stroking her shoulders. She shook her head, her face pressed into his shirt. The tears soaked the cloth so cold bit through. Stout nickered and nosed Kathlin's hair, which made her laugh, and sniffle, finally, although she didn't step back.
“Don't go.”
He hugged her tight. She was warm, but shivering. Her bones were too big for her fleshâshe was growing, and felt stretched out over them. “I have to.” He brightened, though. “I'll come visit you. When I can. If they let me.”
“Won't they let you?” She stepped back, smoothing her dress, self-conscious enough to give him her shoulder. Younger than he by summers, but suddenly like a woman grown. “They can't keep you locked up, can they? I mean, wolfcarls aren't supposed to have families. You can't marry, you can't ⦠It's in all the songs. You're just going to fight the trolls until you
die
.”
“They may not even take me,” he said, and reached out to grab her shoulders. “Come on, Kathlin,” he said, when he felt that she was shivering still. “Come inside before Nurse finds you missing, or you freeze. They probably won't take me. And if they don't, I'll be home by harvest, and our debt to the wolfheall will be paid.”
She glanced at him under her lashes, her eyes startlingly blue. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he said, and squeezed her tight before he hurried her inside.
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H
e slept little and uneasily, rising well before dawn to wash and dress. His father had not sought him out,
neither to tell him he was being sent to Hergilsbergâand Njall knew, with some surprise, that his mother was right: if his father had proposed that plan, he would have refusedânor to speak with him plainly, as man to man, about the customs of the wolfheall. Njall was not sure if he was glad or sorry, as he was not sure if he was glad or sorry that his father had not come to bid him farewell. The one thing he did know was that he would not have his house's duty to the wolfheall unfulfilled through
his
cowardice. No matter what they did to him, it would be better than knowing himself craven.
The tithe-wagon was in the courtyard, thralls loading it with sacks of turnips, barrels of salted herring. Halfrid stood beside the great, patient horses, stroking their noses while the tired-eyed wagoner swallowed the last of a hasty breakfast.
“Mother,” Njall said awkwardly, and she turned and smiled at him, her eyes as warm and steady as ever.
“Are you ready, Njall?”
“I suppose,” he said and then in a low-voiced rush, “Ready for
what
?”
“To attend the tithing. To become a man of the werthreat if you should be chosen. To defend Nithogsfjoll, keep and steading, with your life.” She sighed and pushed an escaped tendril of wheat-fair hair behind her ear. “It is not the path to manhood I would have chosen for you, but it is an honorable path.”
“Father said ⦠.” But he could not speak the word “nithling” to his mother. He blushed, and mumbled at his boots, “Father said it was my choice, but I fear I have chosen wrong.”
The thralls were almost finished loading the wagon, the wagoner making some joke and swinging onto the wagon-seat. Njall looked up and saw his mother's face grim and rather sad. “You've heard stories, of course. Boys talk.”
“Yes. But it's notâyou said it was honorable, to go to the werthreat. I could protect you. I couldâ”
She kissed his brow swiftly and said, “You must decide what your honor is, Njall, and hold to it. I know men who have gone to the wolfheall and made a warrior's life there. You can too. Or you can come home, and we will have you.”
“Father won't,” Njall said.
“Your father has his own trolls to hunt,” Halfrid said, and might have continued if the wagoner had not interrupted when she took a breath.
“Begging pardon, Lady Halfrid, but we haven't got all day. They like you to be timely at the wolfheall, so they do.”
“Go on with you, then,” Halfrid said to Njall. “You have your mother's blessing.”
“Thank you,” Njall said and climbed up into the wagon.
All the way down from keep to wolfheall, he pondered his mother's words.
You must decide what your honor is.
But honor was honor, wasn't it? It wasn't something you could pick and choose about. Yet she would not have wasted her breath with meaningless words.
But they reached the great barred gate of the wolfheall's wall before he had puzzled out her meaning.
Even as the wagoner was drawing his horses to a stop, the gate was opening, and a man came out, his hair iron-black and his face like something carved from flint, a trellwolf beside him that seemed the size of a bear. Even the great carthorses shied and stamped at the sight of that monster, and Njall's palms grew clammy. This wolf's eyes were more orange than those of Hrolleif's bitch and his heavy pelt rippled like water over his muscles. Njall recognized the man, just as he had recognized Hrolleif: Grimolfr, the wolfjarl, who ruled the wolfheall as Njall's father ruled the keep. Njall swallowed hard.
“So,” said Grimolfr, while his wolf sat beside him and let his tongue loll. “You are Njall Gunnarson. It seems I owe Hrolleif a forfeit. I wagered you would not appear this morning.”
Njall slid down from the wagon. “My house honors its duty to the wolfheall,” he said.
“As well it should. Did you bring anything?”
“No.”
“Good. That's less we have to get rid of. Come along.”
He turned on his heel and strode into the wolfheall compound, calling for the thralls to come unload the wagon. His wolf moved with him as swiftly and surely as his shadow. Njall followed him, because whatever his honor might be, it certainly didn't include succumbing to the childish impulse to plant his feet and refuse to budge.
The wolfheall wasn't a grand stone keep like his father's. The walled compound was halfway flaggedâand a good thing, too, because the feet of men and trellwolves had churned what wasn't paved into a springtide mireâbut the central building was a roundhall in the old style, wooden, roofed in slates, a thick stream of smoke ascending from its center. The whole bustled with activity: wolves and men and thralls at work all about. Njall saw two men enter at the postern gate, a pole slung over their shoulders with a dead buck dangling from it. Two wolves paced them, one a red so pale he was almost tawny, the other dark as smoke, like Grimolfr's gigantic male.
Will my wolf be gray?
Njall wondered.
If I am chosen?
He snuck a glance sideways at Grimolfr's male, and wondered if it was the father of Hrolleif's bitch's pups. And then he thought of the shocking things that were whispered by older boys to younger in the dormitories at night, thought of his father's brutal words; he looked up at Grimolfr and blanched at his imaginings.
“Vigdis won't whelp tonight,” Grimolfr said, without returning the stare. “Tomorrow, perhaps. Have you eaten, pup?”
The wolfjarl's voice was not unkind, and Njall decided to risk honesty. “I haven't been hungry, sir. Are ⦔
“Speak, whelp. Wolves say what they think when they think it; we have our politics, but they're not devious ones.”
“I was going to ask where you were taking me.”
“To Ulfmaer, the housecarl, and his brother. They have charge of pups, wolf and man, until they're bonded. Any other questions?”
Njall had thousands, but he settled for the first one to come to mind. “Is Vigdis the name of Hrolleif's bitchâI mean, sister?”
“One of her names,” Grimolfr said, unexpectedly soft and fond, allowing a little smile to curl his lips under his beard. He did glance down then, and Njall found himself pinned on the man's dark-brown gaze as surely as he'd been pinned on Vigdis'. “My brother is called Skald. His own nameâ” The wolfjarl gestured, and Skald turned his head, staring into Njall's eyes with his own sunset-colored ones.
Njall smelled ice and cold wind, a musk like serpents, the dark metal of old blood. “Like a kill at midwinter,” he said, coughing, and then realized what it meant. “Their names are smells.”
“Aye,” Grimolfr said, sounding pleased although he did not smile again.
“And Vigdis? What is her name?”
It was the scent of a wet dawn in late autumn, bare trees and pale sunrise and the leaf-mold sharp and crisp at the back of Njall's sinuses. He drew a deep, hard breath, and sighed.
“You like that, whelp?”
“Yes. Sir.” No, no point in lying. None at all.
“Hmh.” A grunt, a dog-sound, almost animal. Njall startled, but Grimolfr didn't seem to notice. Instead, he jerked his chin at the buck, dripping icicles of blood from a slashed throat as its bearers went past, the wolfcarls who bore it nodding respect to their jarl. “Well, you'd best eat when that game is served, pup. We hunt tonight and you'll need your strength.”
They had all but crossed the yard. Njall sighed relief when they entered the wind-shadow of the roundhall. “Hunt, sir? What do we hunt at night?”
Grimolfr paused with his hand on the great copper-sheathed door. “Foolish puppy,” he said, and showed Njall his teeth. “We hunt trolls.”
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N
jall was relieved that the meat he was served for noon meal was cookedâand not, he judged, actually the buck that the wolfcarls had brought home that day. This was seasoned meat, hung until tender and roasted sweet. The wolfheall's cook knew hisâor herâbusiness.
Njall shared his trencher with a slight blond boy, Brandr, who'd arrived a few days earlier and who was full of gossip and good cheer. There were six boys in all, and Njall was sure that Ulfmaer thought that too few to give Vigdis' pups good selection. The stout gray-haired housecarl traded doubtful glances with his gray-faced trellwolf throughout the meal, his uncertainty making Njall feel gangly and grimy and much younger than his yearsâbut the hall itself wasn't unlike his father's hall, except larger, and wood instead of stone, and the dogs gnawing bones and squabbling over their portions alongside the tables weren't dogs at all but wolves as big as men.
Njall did notice that Grimolfr sat at one end of the long table and Hrolleif at the other, just as Njall's father and mother satâand that Skald stood guard over Vigdis while she lay by Hrolleif's chair and ate, and permitted no other wolf or man near her. Nor was it lost on him that the fond looks Grimolfr sent the length of the table included not just wolf and bitch but red-bearded Hrolleif as well.
Njall found himself pushing the meat on the trencher over to Brandr's side. Brandr accepted with a glance and a shrug. Njall watched Brandr make short work of the venison, because it allowed him not to look at Hrolleif, until Ulfmaer's knotted hand descended on his shoulder.
“Njall. Nerves about the hunt?”
“Yes,” Njall lied, twisting his head to look up at the housecarl.
Ulfmaer smiled, a gap-toothed grin, and squeezed his shoulder. “We'll find you weapons after the meal,” he said. “In the meantime, you must eat, lad.”
Lad
, and not
pup
. That one word unknotted the tangle of fear in Njall's breast a little. “I know something you can think on to distract yourself.”