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hey came back to Bravoll before the solstice, three wolfcarls and three wolves at the head of a svartalfar army. The svartalfar traveled fast, even over snow and with the winter at their back, blowing hard. They had horsesâponiesâno bigger than the trellwolves, shaggy and seeming accustomed to cold and ice and the dark underground. The ponies ate palmfuls of grain and stamped their feet, shaking ice from their fetlocks, and did not complain.
Isolfr, for himself, rode a sledge more often than he likedâTin and, surprising him, Silver required it of him, and of Kothran as well whenever the white wolf limped. From his privileged seat, Isolfr watched the svartalfar, and healed. Chrysoprase pulled his stitches out after a week, although Isolfr's face still hurt when he frowned orâless oftenâsmiled.
The svartalfar traveled swaddled in cloaks, hunched on the beds of the sledges when they could. It took them only twenty days to come to the pinewoods outside Bravoll, and they were expected when they came. Isolfr could not have kept it from Viradechtis, not with her worry eating at him with every clop of the ponies' hooves.
The whole wolfheall turned out to greet them. The fighting menâwolfcarls and wolflessâof Bravoll came to meet the svartalfar army, and the trellwolves came with them. Isolfr made sure he was standing for it; his injuries were healed as much as they would until spring, and he wasn't about to meet his wolfâand his wolfjarls, he thought, concealing a flinchâwrapped in furs and flat on his back like an infirm old woman.
You came home with an army
, he reminded himself, turning over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of four thousand svartalfar, banners and trellspears glittering in the winter halflight.
It didn't help.
The red-and-black-barred wolf bounding at the head of the pack, her belly bulging with pups, came close enough to Isolfr to catch his scent and then turned her back on him, ears flat, making a display of her wrath. Mar and Kjaran at least sniffed his hand before snubbing him. And his wolfjarlsâ
He forced himself to meet their gaze evenly, aware of Skjaldwulf and Vethulf drawing up short before him, side by side, matched in their gait and matched in their hesitation. Isolfr felt as if his face burned, as if each etched clawmark was on fire once more.
He actually thought he might have bolted, if Frithulf hadn't been beside him, driving his nails into Isolfr's elbow through sweater and shirt alike.
There was no way he could bemoan his scars in front of Frithulf. It shamed him even to remember them.
He leaned into his friend's touch for a moment and then shook loose, pulled forward, Tin appearing at his side.
You've made her respected
, he thought, but that wasn't quite right.
She
had made herself respected. She'd gambled and she'd won.
And Isolfr was happy to name her an ally and a friend. “Skjaldwulf,” he said, forcing his lungs to breathe, to support the words that wanted to fall soundless from his mouth. “Ve ⦠Vethulf. This is Mastersmith Tin, of the smith's
guild and the Iron Kinship, daughter of Molybdenum of the lineage of Copper. She comes in your defense.” Isolfr swallowed, and waved over his shoulder with a broad, sweeping gesture he hoped might be worthy of a ballad. “She's brought her family.”
They stared at him. And Skjaldwulf said, “Your faceâ”
“A trellqueen,” he answered, and bit his lip to keep from apologizing for not being as beautiful as he should have been.
Idiot
, he thought. The scars should have been a secret relief.
“Isolfrâ” Vethulf began, and Isolfr braced himself for the dressing down. But Skjaldwulf knocked Vethulf's arm with an elbow, and then pulled Isolfr into an almost brutal embrace that Vethulf lunged into a moment later, both of them pounding his back and shouting until Frithulf stepped in and grabbed the wolfjarls' arms and said “His ribs were cracked, you foolsâ”
It didn't matter. Even the pain didn't matter, because Viradechtis finally deigned to come and lean against his hip. And as she did so, her mother sat in the snow beside her and began painstakingly washing her face.
They were home.
They had come home in time.
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ven Ulfgeirr couldn't find much to complain about with regard to the sceadhugenga's doctoring, although once they were back at the wolfheall he did make Isolfr sit on a wooden bench and peel off coat and jerkin and sweater and tunic and shirt so he could see how the wounds had healed all down. He grumbled and muttered, especially when he found the still-sore swelling over Isolfr's ribs that Frithulf had wrapped tight for him, but in the end he sat back and patted Isolfr's shoulder and said, “He made a better job of it than I could have.”
Isolfr smiledâit hurt less every dayâand bent down to show that he could, and, incidentally, to rub his hands
in Viradechtis' coat. She lay on her side, belly like a snow-smoothed hill; he ran his hands down her to feel the puppies squirming under her skin. Five or six, he thought; a big litter, for spring. Maybe there would be a konigenwolf.
He tipped his head toward the jarls, wolfjarls, housecarls, svartalf Masters and wolfsprechends milling around the far side of the fire, and said, “How bad has it been?”
Ulfgeirr sighed and handed him a clean shirt. Isolfr pulled it on over gooseflesh. His hands were chapped and mottled with chilblains; the journey had been fast, but it hadn't been easy. Nevertheless, he managed the laces, and pulled his jerkin on over it, wincing as he raised his arm. After two months outdoors, even the drafty chill of the heall felt like luxurious warmth.
“That bad?”
The housecarl shrugged, and absently reached down to tug Nagli's ears. The red wolf sighed and pushed against his knee, and Isolfr felt sudden panic. “Ulfgeirr, where's Sokkolfr and Hroi? And Ulfbjorn?”
“Relax,” Ulfgeirr said. “Sokkolfr broke a leg in the last raid. He'll be fine, but he's ⦠convalescing in the home of a Bravoll widow-woman who finds him charming for some reason. I don't think he'd complain about a visit when our council's done. And Ulfbjorn's around here somewhere. He's probably shy of all the fuss and waiting to say hello in his own fashion. That's the good news. Signy, though”âhe shook his headâ“won't last the winter. She's taken a bone fever. And we lost the last patrol we sent toward Franangford, but otherwise the trolls have been quiet. Ulfsvith thinks they may be sapping, but that seems a great distance to dig.”
“They have magic,” Isolfr said. He stood up, rocking his foot under Viradechtis' head to awaken her. She protested, but heaved herself to her feet. “Ask Tin about it. They can ⦠make the stone crawl to their whim. They are shepherds of stone.”
Ulfgeirr looked at him, and then bundled his doctoring
things into a scrap of leather and stuffed them under his furs. “Come on,” he said. “They're waiting on us.”
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he council proceeded more smoothly than Isolfr could have hoped. The svartalfar were inclined to listen to the wolfheofodmenn, and the wolfheofodmenn and wolfless men both were in awe of the svartalfar and their army. In awe, andâIsolfr thoughtâa little in fear. The svartalfar forces seemed vast, the forest of gaily decorated and bemedallioned hide tents they had erected on the snow-covered fields outside Bravoll housing twice over the remaining forces of assembled heall and keep. It made the men uneasyâeven more uneasy, when they learned that half the warriors were women, as, in fact, was the leader of the expedition.
A few hours with Tin, however, and they seemed to forget she was anything but a brother warrior, no matter how strange her small hunched shape or what her clothes concealed. She drank ale and ate bread and cheese with as much gusto as any wolfcarl, and seemed to appreciate their raw humorâor, at the very least, could feign it.
Frithulf and Kari were not present. Apparently, the wolfheofodmenn had extracted their story while Ulfgeirr was fussing over Isolfr's injuries, and sent them off to rest. As for the council meeting, Isolfr mostly contented himself to watch, and tried not to blush so hot that it couldn't be mistaken for the red cast of the firelight on his skin every time Skjaldwulf or Vethulf cast a glance or a smile at him. He was, he found, tremendously tired, and the horns of ale were not helping. He barely managed not to glance at his father; they had not spoken since Gunnarr saved his life in Franangford, but he knew Gunnarr knew that Viradechtis was konigenwolf in her own right now. He didn't want to see how his father would look at him, or his wolfjarls.
And really, he had nothing to say. He was not a tactician like Grimolfr and Ulfsvith Iron-Tongue and Gunnarrâand
even Othwulf, who was
not
a wolfheofodman, but who was among the wolfcarls and soldiers summoned once it was determined that they
would
attack the trolls, and the discussion turned to howâand the trip north had proven that. He had not planned. He had not thought.
He'd done nothing but gamble his life, and the lives of three wolves and two friends. And it was only the grace of the goddessâand Tin's unexpected friendshipâthat had brought them home alive and with an army at their backs. So he sat silently, blessing his good fortune, and bit his thumbnail to keep from scratching at his scars. He missed Hrolleif with a great numb weight he had almost forgotten. Vigdis slept by the firepit, Skald draped across her back, and the sight made his eyes burn like a woman's, like a child's. He closed his eyes and pretended to half-doze to hide it; the warm weight of Viradechtis compressed his feet.
He almost jumped off the bench when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up, expecting Vethulf or Grimolfr, and was startled to see his father's beard and cheek. Gunnarr didn't look down, but his fingers flexed tight, denting the leather of Isolfr's jerkin.
“Wolfjarl!” Gunnarr ordered, as Isolfr stiffened against his grip. Vethulf was already coming to his feet, his hair catching gold and orange highlights off the fire, one hand dropping to rest on Kjaran's withers as the gray wolf rose beside him like a shadow. Skjaldwulf was turning too, and Grimolfrâand every wolfjarl in the place, franklyâbut Vethulf was closest, and it was he that Gunnarr stared at.
In the tension taut between the men, Isolfr heard the rattle of Tin's beads as she reached for her spear.
“Yes, Lord Gunnarr?” Vethulf asked. He didn't look at Isolfr either, but Isolfr put his foot lightly on Viradechtis' shoulder to keep her down anyway. If there was going to be a fight, he didn't want his pregnant wolf engaged.
“This man's injured,” Gunnarr said. His hand fell off Isolfr's shoulder. “He's had a march and a fight and a march, and you've fed him nothing but cold ale and bread. Is this
the way you see to your wolfsprechends at Franangford? Because at Nithogsfjoll, we'd call it shameful.”
Vethulf stepped back, fish-faced with astonishment, and Kjaran, beside him, dropped to a sit and flipped his tail around his toes. The silence lasted heartbeats, and then was shattered when Grimolfr began to laugh. “Would we?” the Nithogsfjoll wolfjarl asked, and shook his head. “Aye, I suppose we would, at that. Go on, Vethulf, Skjaldwulf,” he said, as Gunnarr stepped away, back into the circle of men. “Put your wolfsprechend to bed. We're as good as done here anyway, if we're all agreed that we march in two mornings.”
Skjaldwulf was grinning, too, as he came over to brace Isolfr to his feet. Vethulf, scowling, was close behind, and Viradechtis, Mar and Kjaran all crowded so close that Isolfr was nearly knocked down again. Around them, men and wolves rose, stretched, began to separate again toward their beds.
Isolfr met Skjaldwulf's eyes for a moment, swallowed hard. “I am sorry.”
“For what, wolfsprechend?” Skjaldwulf said. “Mar, move your bones.”
“For ⦔ He stumbled a little, and Vethulf was there on his other side, holding him up. “I swore an oath that I would not speak of the svartalfar. And I couldn't ⦔
The words weren't there.
“You behaved with honor, if not necessarily with wisdom,” Vethulf said tartly. “And you did bring an army. And gutted a queen troll, Kari says. You're the hero of the day, Isolfr. They'll sing you in Valhealla.”
“I'm no hero,” Isolfr said. The world was blurring and swimming, and he had to shut his eyes, letting wolves and wolfjarls guide him. “Please don't be mad at me.”
“We're not mad at you, you daft creature,” Vethulf said. Even in his leaden exhaustion, Isolfr couldn't mistake the fondness in his voice. “Skjaldwulf, tell Isolfr we're not mad at him.”
“'Course we're not mad at you,” Skjaldwulf said. “Worried only.”
I'm sorry,
Isolfr tried to say again, but they lowered him onto a bed, a straw tick and pillows and quilts and furs, and it was as if a knot unraveled. The last thing he knew was Viradechtis grumbling as she hoisted herself onto the bed with Skjaldwulf's assistance.