An Apprentice to Elves (43 page)

He stopped with his toes at the cliff edge and folded his hands into his sleeves. “That's going to be terrifying in a blizzard.”

“The wind is bad enough.” Tin turned to glance at him. His braids slapped behind him, just as her more numerous ones did. “Maybe it won't snow.”

He made a wolfish noise compounded of agreement and doubt. “It hasn't yet. How lucky do you feel?”

She let that lie there. “This is a desperate idea.”

“I know.” Ice rimed his beard at the corners of his mouth and beneath his nostrils. A raw red crack split his lip. “Have you a better one?”

“If I did, I would not be quiet about it, I assure you.”

The ice gleamed wide and sullen. Tin shivered in her robes. She couldn't stay here long. But she didn't want to leave this moment of peace. This moment in the company of her friend.

“Why'd you come?”

Of all the questions in the world he might have asked, she hadn't been expecting that one. There were so many answers: personal loyalty. What she owed to Alfgyfa. What she wanted to prove to the Smiths and Mothers. The real and present danger the Rheans posed to the svartalfar, even if they were too blind and stubborn to see it.

And there was a chance that if she died defending the humans, her own people might rally to avenge her. Even if they thought the errand she had gone on was a foolish one.

She held very still for a moment, considering, and then reached out and flicked the edge of his axe with her nail to make the fine steel ring.

“May your wolf-god continue to heed his priest's prayers, and the ice neither shatter under us nor prove our grave.”

He turned to regard her, and from his frown, she could tell he was amused, but not—perhaps—impressed.

She gave him a crooked smile. It was good to have a friend.

*   *   *

The pads of the wolves left tracks on the ice in blood, so a red road stretched behind them, though no such road led before. There could be no fires. The cold burned into Fargrimr's bones, through his coats and mittens and through the soles of his shoes. There was no warmth in the world, and no silence, for the wind howled over the frozen water like the breath of a frost-dragon on the hunt.

The ice did give its blessings. It gathered what light there was and gave them all something to see by. And the cold killed the pests in their blankets, so if they slept cold, they also slept untroubled by lice and by fleas. The ice was flat and smooth, so a foot that dragged need not stumble. This was fortunate, because many were the feet that dragged. And some of those that did so stumbled despite the smoothness of the ice, and many of those who stumbled did fall. And some of those did not rise again.

The bodies of men who died could not be buried.

With no sun to guide them, the Army of the Iskryne walked until Gunnarr the konungur called a halt, then bivouacked and slept where they had stood. They learned to heap the bulk of their blankets to the windward side and sleep in piles of wolves and wolfcarls and wolfless men all alike to save their warmth. They learned, and they walked in the dark, and they mostly survived.

Fargrimr's clothes, which had been loose already, came to drag from his limbs as if he were no more than a set of sticks. He shivered constantly. His lips and nostrils cracked. Chilblains itched maddeningly between his toes.

They would have lost track of the days, had not the sky stayed clear and the shape of the moon tracked it for them—from waning through full dark and back toward full again. The full moon drew a bright circle in the sky on the night when Hergilsberg first lifted itself above the horizon—a spiraled mirage from this angle, like the castles seen in clouds.

The army drew up with a sigh that floated from each man simultaneously, until it seemed they breathed from one throat.

Fargrimr half stood, half crouched—more dazed and travel-sick than relieved—and stared with his hands braced on his thighs. He stared at the ghostly city hovering in the middle distance and all he could think was that there—there—were hot water, clean blankets, and shelter, and they could be there in less than a day.

Skjaldwulf stopped beside Fargrimr. They stood a moment in quiet camaraderie, just gazing at the island city. Then Skjaldwulf leaned over and punched him on the arm.

“Ow,” Fargrimr said. “What was that for?”

“Good plan,” Skjaldwulf explained.

Then, abruptly, he craned his neck, stretching up. “What's that?”

“What? Where?” The moonlight was full of tricks and shadows. Fargrimr squinted through them, but did not find his answers there.

“There's a black line on the ice … ah, Othinn's bad eye!”

Fargrimr stood on tiptoe, but whatever made Skjaldwulf curse, he could not see it. “What? What is it?”

“The Rheans are camped on the ice,” Skjaldwulf said, settling back. “The siege is under way.”

 

EIGHTEEN

In the songs, they would have waited for the dawn. In the songs, there would have been a dawn to wait for.

But the sun would not rise for weeks. A wall of cloud was piling higher over the ocean to the west, blotting out the aurora and the stars. And it was only a matter of time before the Rheans spotted the Army of the Iskryne—even marching from this unconventional direction—and mounted a defense. Thus Gunnarr whipped the army from march to attack formation without a pause. Fargrimr found himself and his mixed band of Freyasheall wolves, wolfcarls, and wolfless men arrayed on the army's right, center rather than flank.

A sense of unreality attended the army massing in the dark. Ice creaked underfoot, and the harness of fighting men creaked as well, on every side. Fargrimr shivered in his armor, the round shield unslung from across his back and heavy on his arm. He glanced from left to right, saw Blarwulf with his beard stiff with ice, saw the priest Freyvithr in borrowed mail, as ready to fight for his home as any man.

Fargrimr lifted his shield and locked it with those of his comrades. A shudder ran down the line as the shield wall formed. Cries rang across the ice from the Rhean siege: they were noticed. A voice raised on Fargrimr's left, from the center. Gunnarr's voice.

The konungur called the charge.

A howl rose from a thousand throats as the Army of the Iskryne plunged forward. They moved like an avalanche across the ice, and Fargrimr felt a moment of fierce exultation. A moment when he believed, almost, that they could win.

The Rheans were still forming when the army reached them. By rights, the Northmen's shield wall should have plunged through, cracked the line, sent Rheans scurrying this way and that—and then it would have been a slaughter. But Rhean discipline held, and the soldiers scrambled into their formations even as the Northmen burst upon them.

Fargrimr was battered, his shield pounded bruisingly against his arm. Something dripped down his cheek. A moment later, he felt the sting of a cut, and realized that some blow had glanced his helm against his face hard enough to cut him. He thrust and slashed at the bigger Rhean shields, trying to batter them apart.

The wolves snarled between the legs of the men, dodging out under the shield wall to snatch at Rhean hamstrings and calves. The Rheans had donned quilted leggings under their armor skirts, for warmth and protection, but those were ridiculous against the teeth of trellwolves.

They were winning, he thought with some surprise, as he realized that most of his steps were forward. They were driving the Rheans back. He turned to Blarwulf at his shoulder, to shout some encouragement—

A massive hand seemed to come out of the sky, snatch up the Freyasheall wolfjarl, and toss him into the dark. It descended again—a Jotun's paw. Shouting in horror, Fargrimr threw himself to one side.

It broke the shield wall, but the wall was broken already. Sprawled on his back, Fargrimr saw a shaggy shape as big as a barn outlined against the overcasting sky. Ice and clouds gathered light between them, concentrated it, and even without a torch, he could see fairly well, if dimly. The Jotun had a domed, shaggy back, hunched up with a head hanging below it—

Fargrimr shook his head. Not a Jotun. One of the shaggy creatures that had swum ashore. A mammoth, that was what they were called.

The thing swept curved tusks as long as a ship's keel. They whipped over Fargrimr, sending men and wolves tumbling like scythed wheat. Fargrimr rolled frantically to the right as the thing lurched forward. A foot, thick and stubby as a tree trunk, caught the edge of his cloak, choked him until the clasp tore free. He rolled again, pushed off with his hands, lost his sword, kept rolling.

Came to his knees and heard a rallying cry.

“To me! To me, you sons of bitches!” Skjaldwulf bellowed. “It's no worse than fighting a wyvern, boys!”

There was the Franangford wolfjarl, his borrowed wolf at his left hand, a shout on his lips that rose and fell until it was almost a song. Fargrimr grabbed a blade from the ice—not his own; it was short and broad and untapered, in the Rhean way. He lunged up on bruised knees and wrenched back to stand beside Skjaldwulf. And there was the svartalf Tin, suddenly, whipping a halberd that seemed as long as one of the mammoth's tusks above her head. She danced back, leading the war-beast after her, pricking its curling snout with her blade to enrage it. There was a Rhean on its neck, Fargrimr saw, legs tucked in right behind its ears, guiding it with a goad-tipped stick.

“There!” he shouted.

Skjaldwulf saw. “Bowmen!”

There were three or four close enough to hear. They followed the line of his pointing arm, and arrows flew. The beast-rider slumped, but did not fall. Two wolves snarled and snapped by the animal's hind leg, evading its ponderous efforts to stomp on them. Tin stabbed hard with her polearm, and the creature shrieked as red blood welled where its eye had been a moment previously. It wheeled and stampeded, scattering Northmen and Rheans alike.

In this small corner of the battle, there rose a ragged cheer.

Despite it, the Iskryner line was breaking. The Rheans had brought more of their war-beasts up, and the Northmen's assault was crumbling all around Fargrimr.

“Can we rally?” Skjaldwulf asked, as a ragged group of soldiers clumped around him. The line had sealed between them and the Rheans. The mammoth's trail of confused destruction stretched toward the embattled city rather than back to shore. They stood in a momentary eddy of calm.

It was too dark to see the Rhean standards, too dark to tell if Verenius Corvus' men were part of the Rhean fist preparing to come down on the luckless men of the North. Certainly too dark to tell whether they would be faithless or true.

“We'll be lucky if it doesn't turn into a rout,” Fargrimr answered. “What if we retreat to shore?”

Skjaldwulf reached out for Tryggvi, rested a mailed hand behind the wolf's blood-soaked ears. Fargrimr didn't think any of that blood was the wolf's. A moment of silent communication passed between them, uncanny as everything to do with wolfcarls. Then Skjaldwulf said, “Vethulf is with Gunnarr. Gunnarr agrees that we must retreat, but the disengagement is a problem.”

“Tell him to let us handle that,” someone said.

Fargrimr looked up to see Erik Godheofodman an arm's length away, leaning on the haft of a bloody axe. He was soaked in red from beard to britches, the fur on his bearskin cloak spiked with it. Behind him were ten or twelve other men, bear-cloaked as well.

“With your help, we'll cover his retreat. If he gets up to that headland,” Erik said with a broad gesture, “he stands a chance.”

Skjaldwulf hesitated. No one was dense enough not to understand what Erik was offering. What they risked to stand beside him.

Fargrimr caught the wolfjarl's eye and nodded. Skjaldwulf nodded back.

“All right,” Fargrimr said. “Let us get the konungur to shore.”

*   *   *

The Iskryner line fell back in the wake of the mammoth's blind, harried flight, and Tin was swept back with it. She made it a fighting retreat, and though some of the men around her wept and prayed, they stayed with her.

And she knew who it was whose courage bought her the chance to retreat. Human eyes could not have discerned it, but as she fought with the rearguard to the edge of the ice—and then cracked through thin ice at the verge of the land and splashed through freezing salt water to the beach and up it, Tin saw who defended her. She saw Erik Godheofodman and his bear-sark-threat charge forward into the Rhean ranks, a sweeping crescent. Behind them, she recognized Fargrimr Fastarrson and Skjaldwulf Marsbrother, and a rank of men and wolves from Freyasheall and from Franangford. She saw Stothi, the enormous mate to the Freyasheall konigenwolf, move among the Rheans like a scythe.

She did not see his human brother beside him.

Alfar did not weep. No water ran from their eyes, as from the eyes of men. And Tin knew that some men thought that this portended a lack of sentiment among her people.

Dry-eyed, she knew also that this intimation was flawed. Whatever else you might say of men, their gallantry was not in question. And if alfar engaged in such a crude, human conceit as weeping, then Tin would have wept for the men—and the wolves—who were covering her retreat right now.

The ice was a mercy. It was thinner closer to shore, where the action of the waves wore at it. The mammoths—for there
were
more of them, only in stories would there be only the one—refused to tread on it past a certain point, however goaded, and without them … Tin thought that under other circumstances, the Northmen might even have rallied.

As it was, it was enough that they didn't dissolve like water-washed salt. That they held the line, and the fighting retreat, was a credit to Gunnarr Konungur. He was in the front of the fray, broad and savage, wielding a sword in each hand as if shields had meantime grown unfashionable. Each sword dripped, and when he bellowed, men answered.