An Apprentice to Elves (35 page)

That man fell back; another stepped into the gap. Beside Fargrimr, Olfbrit stumbled again. Went down this time, and there was nothing Fargrimr could do to help him. He was under their feet now, and either he was dead or he would stay down until the line of battle trampled over him.

Staring over the shield edge Fargrimr saw the wild blue eyes of a man with crooked teeth and a peeling, sunburned nose.
How in Niflheim do you get sunburned when it's been cold rain and overcast for a week?
Fargrimr thought, though not in words exactly—it was more like a wolf-thought, just a flash of wondering—and then he was back in the fray, sword narrowly diverting a blow aimed at his head. The man grunting across the shield wall had a helm, and Fargrimr resented him for it. He resented that Rhean bastard and his big square shield and his helm that matched uniformly the helms of the men standing on either side of him. He resented the Rhean's breastplate and his vambraces and his greaves and his very existence, his fucking existence on this fucking riverbank, and the fact that it was the reason that Fargrimr himself was standing here in wet, squidgy socks that wanted to pucker up between his toes.

Toes.

It struck him like a glimpse of a hawk on the sky between treetops. The Rheans wore sandals. Greaves, shields, breastplates … but sandals with open toes. Fargrimr ducked down, stomped out, levering his buckler at an angle over his torso. The Rhean slashed at him, then staggered back with a curse as Fargrimr's hobnailed boot crunched onto his inadequately protected toes. The line cracked, those shields like a wall caving inward.

Success so stunned Fargrimr that it was a voice over his shoulder that called the rally. “FORWARD!” Freyvithr, he thought, and the knowledge that Freya still watched them brought energy to his step forward and his next blow.

Someone screamed. Maybe it was the man with blue eyes. He had straightened and sealed the line in the moment of Fargrimr's hesitation. Behind the gilded edges of his helm his complexion had gone red as a beet. Fury or frustration? Hard to tell when they both came with gritted teeth and a swinging sword.

Fargrimr beat the sword down. The men at his back pushed him forward, into the press. They were there to brace the shield wall; a battle such as this often became a game of push-and-rush. Fargrimr darted a lunge over the enemy's shield. It was parried, and then he had to slip aside a blow from his opponent's neighbor when that worthy saw him open.

The momentary rally stalled. There were too many Rheans. Too much weight behind their wall. The press forced Fargrimr back a step. He cursed, saw the straining face of the man across the shield wall. Kissing-close. The thunder of metal on metal all around them.

The Rhean spat something at him. Words, maybe, if those sounds meant something in the Rhean tongue. Fargrimr lost another step. One more, two more, and he knew his band would break, scatter before the Rheans like dead leaves before a storm wind. It would be a rout. It would be their death. Men and wolves would be cut down as they ran, butchered to the beat of that accursed drum.

But suddenly the pressure eased. The Rhean wall fell back a step. Shouts, screams rose over the crashing, heaving clamor of battle. Not in the front lines. And not Northern screams.

Rheans. The line pulling back as the drums changed their beat. Still in lockstep, shields still overlapping like an eagle's feathers. Like a dragon's scales. But dropping back now. Falling away.

Fargrimr should have rallied the band in pursuit, and he knew it. But there he was, standing on the pebbled bank, staring over the rim of his shield while the Rheans withdrew in the most orderly fashion imaginable. They even dragged their wounded and dead. In moments, there was nothing on the winding bank except Fargrimr, Fargrimr's threat, and some puddled blood, drying sticky. Where the Rhean army had trampled, a few scattered arrows stood angled between stones.

It made no sense. Until on the far bank of the tossing river, mere yards and a murderously runoff-drowned ford away, the shapes of wolves formed out of the twilight. Wolves, and among them men.

And among
them,
the lean grizzled figure of Skjaldwulf, his red-haired partner-wolfjarl at his side. Behind them, rank on rank of wolfcarls and wolfless men lowered bows.

“Halloo!” Skjaldwulf called, waving one hand wildly. Fargrimr could barely hear him over the struggling water. “I see we've come just in time!”

 

FIFTEEN

On the eve of the turning day, as the year tipped from summer to winter, there came a bitter wind and an icy rain. Otter's toes chilled through her shoes and socks on the heall's cold flagstones. Mjoll baked fresh bread with saffron and sultanas embedded in it for the holiday; Alfgyfa churned butter golden as the sun before returning to help Thorlot with the forge. Otter and Kathlin made soup of boiled bones and parsnips, into which they threw handfuls of hastily harvested greens. In the morning before the thaw, Otter knew, she and everyone else would be outside salvaging whatever was left of the frozen vegetable garden, which would still be edible if it was used that very day.

Athisla lay in the roofed, open-arched walkway between the kitchen and the great hall, watching her pups and the tithe-boys gambol about outside in the rain with youthful indifference to its vast unpleasantness. Each cub had chosen his brother, and to Otter's great relief, that gangling lad who had been named Canute had kept the affections of the little gray fluffball Brokkolfr had named Feigr. It had settled him, and Otter could find it in herself to pity him. No one understood better than she how hard it could be, moving through life with no path to a future established.

The boy went by Varghoss now, though Otter thought that constituted less of an improvement. In any case, he was still ringleader of the tithe-boys—or the young wolfcarls, as six more of them were now.

She helped Kathlin and Esja and Mjoll bring in soup and bread, and set the serving kettle and the soup bowls on the table. There were only two dozen or so place settings now, counting the children's table. Otter tried very hard not to notice how quickly the work was done, but when she stood back to inspect her progress, the empty hall looked hollow.

A fire flickered at the closest hearth, and the warm smell of stock and vegetables and herbs trickled from the serving vessel. But it was not enough to warm the corners of the great hall.

Otter straightened her back and went to the main entrance, where there hung a brass bell almost as large as her head. She picked up the striker and gave it three sharp raps to summon the heall's remaining residents in to supper.

The peal sounded strangely deadened by the rain.

The first into the hall was Sokkolfr, who—unlike the former tithe-boys—had been clever enough to stay inside out of the rain. He gave Otter a quick squeeze as he passed, just an arm around the shoulders, and she was surprised at how much her skin missed his warmth after he had stepped away. Without volition, her body took a step as if to follow him. She mastered herself, though, and instead went to the tun by the kitchen door, lifted the cover, and dipped up a horn of ale.

She brought the ale to Sokkolfr and sat down beside him. He'd already dipped soup into a bowl for her.

The others filed in while she and Sokkolfr were already eating. Mjoll gave the young wolfcarls what-for when they came in dripping rain, and made them hang up their cloaks and towel off their wolves before they settled in to eat. “If she hadn't said it, I would have,” Sokkolfr said, when some of them seemed disposed to grumble, and that silenced them.

Idocrase, the last remaining alf—or the alf returned, as the case might be—took a place beside Alfgyfa at the women's table. Otter liked him. He was unfailingly polite; he made very little extra work (and did much of it himself); sometimes, when she was stuck with a long task that left her mind too free to wander, he would come sit with her and ask questions in his careful Iskryner. He asked questions about everything—the heall, the preservation of meat, her homeland, the Rheans, the fruits she chose to put up as preserves—and he never minded if she wouldn't answer one, just asked another. It was better than the places her mind wandered to when left to itself.

And he worshipped the ground Alfgyfa walked on. Otter thought maybe Alfgyfa had noticed—as she
hadn't
noticed the crushes being nursed by more than one of the new wolfcarls—and she couldn't help watching, just out of the corner of her eye, just for a moment, as Alfgyfa greeted him, her clear body language:
I saved you a seat.

Otter rebuked herself for being nosy in exactly the way she most hated and turned resolutely to her own table.

Thorlot served out soup to the children while Mjoll guarded her place at the women's table from all comers. The young wolfcarls sat with Brokkolfr and Amma. Otter kept one eye on them, most of her attention on the food—which was worth it—and was paying just enough heed to the conversation to hear Sokkolfr saying, “Mar says Viradechtis and Kjaran have found Signy.”

The spike of relief was so huge that at first Otter forced herself to disbelieve it. “Say that again.”

Sokkolfr smiled at her. “Mar says his mates have found the Freyasthreat. They're reunited. Apparently just in time, because a Rhean regiment had the Freyasthreat at bay against a river. At least, I think that's what he's telling me. There's a lot of water smells and blood smells, but no grief. Or not much, anyway.”

“So they didn't suffer losses?”

“Some,” Sokkolfr said. He glanced over at the new wolfcarls, but the young men were distracted by two puppies wrestling. One of them was that little gray Feigr, who was outmassed by a third again by his brother and still somehow kept winding up on top. He must have bitten too hard, because the other pup yelped and suddenly Amma was standing over them, her great nose in between. Athisla was a second behind her, but didn't seem to mind the older bitch's intervention.

“Grandma's on the job,” Sokkolfr said softly, sharing a smile with Otter for a moment before he hid it behind his ale-horn.

Amma wasn't actually the pups' grandmother—well, possibly the grandmother of one or two of them, depending on which of the dog wolves that had covered Athisla had sired which pup—but Otter knew exactly what Sokkolfr meant.

They watched while the new Varghoss got up, setting his bread aside on the rim of his soup bowl. He crossed to his cub and picked the young wolf up—“He won't be able to do that for much longer,” said Sokkolfr—and gave it a gentle shake. Feigr yipped to show surrender, and he hugged it close while Athisla watched intently, her ears pricked and her elbows hovering just above the straw-strewn flags. She didn't rise, though, and when the cub snuggled in and began to lick Varghoss' neck and ear, she relaxed again.

Otter went back to her soup. She surprised herself by finding an appetite.
You can in fact get used to anything, I guess.

It was less than ten minutes later, though, that the cub was at it again. Varghoss seemed to be distracted whispering something in the ear of one of the other new wolfcarls. When that boy pushed Varghoss away—a playful shove, boyish horseplay, and nothing serious—Varghoss dropped a slice of boiled carrot down his tunic. The boy squealed and every wolf in the heall looked up.

In the silence that followed, the squealing tithe-boy stared at his knees under the table edge, and Varghoss attempted to look innocent. The only sound was the play-growling of wrestling cubs.

Brokkolfr, however, was not so easily misled by wolfcarls, especially not wolfcarls who had been tithe-boys before the turning of the moon. He didn't stand. Instead, he glowered. And punctuated his glower by dusting his hands on the front of his doeskin jerkin. And said, “Varghoss. Perhaps you and Feigr should continue your dinner elsewhere until at least one of you learns how to act at table.”

“But—” Varghoss looked to his friends for support, but they were all busy studying their knees under the table edge as well. He looked back at Brokkolfr, who had not budged, and said, “Yes, wolfcarl.”

Then he stood, collected Feigr—he was not rough with the cub, at least, Otter noted approvingly—and headed for the stairs at the back of the hall. His cloak he left hanging on the rack beside the fire, but if he wasn't going out again tonight, it would not be needed.

Yes, Otter thought. He definitely needed something to keep him out of trouble.

The thought kept her occupied through the rest of dinner, and through the sweet—bread baked in custard—and through the cleaning up as well. She left the dishes to several thralls working under Mjoll's supervision, found her cloak, and took herself out for a walk around the darkened yard.

The rain had turned to a freezing mist, and all around the corners of things, rime was starting. She placed her feet carefully on the stones, breathing in air that chilled and soothed her. It was such balm on her eyes and throat that she would have suspected she was crying, had there been evidence of tears.

Out in the distance beyond the wall, Alfgyfa's wild wolves raised their voices in exultation or lament; it was impossible for human ears to tell. Within the heall, Franangford's wolfthreat answered. It was the most peace she had felt in days. So she walked, and thought.

When she finally went inside again, the fire was banked, the heall was asleep, she was chilled to the bone. The ends of her hair dripped water as the ice that had frozen it into a stiff point melted. Her skin was cold to the touch, and her clothes felt clammy.

She turned toward her room over the kitchen and paused with a foot hovering. It would be cold, her room. Without a fire, unless someone had noticed her missing and thought to start one for her, but that rarely happened when they were as understaffed and busy as they were currently. She did, however, know one place where she could get warm.

She turned the other way, and picked her way up a curving stair that led to the wolfheofodmenn's quarters.