The Tempering of Men

  A moment of silence as he paused for breath, and then a voice rang out, “I was there!”

  It was Othwulf—no jarl, but Vethulf supposed the slayer of a trellqueen had a place in any war council. And most of the crowd would not know who had shouted. But Gunnarr Sturluson surely did, and he, too, threw back his head and cried, “I was there!”

  Vethulf felt Isolfr jump in shock, and Kjaran sat up, looking this way and that. A roar followed as every wolfcarl and thane who had fought—and probably a few who hadn’t—raised voice to claim his share of the glory that briefly washed them all. Vethulf was not immune. “I was there!” he cried, and felt Isolfr move behind him but he did not hear his wolfsprechend’s voice. When Vethulf turned to catch Isolfr’s eye, though, the scarred warrior merely frowned and shook his head. Later.

  Skjaldwulf waited, arms still wide, until the furor subsided. Then he spoke in a softer voice—still carrying, but it gave the illusion of intimacy, and Vethulf saw men lean forward to hear better.

  “You know why we have come here,” Skjaldwulf said. “We have come here because our homes are threatened, because an army of the enemy walks the world, putting our land under his feet as he wills. Because this army—this army of Rheans—is only the vanguard of more to come.”

  Someone shouted from the back, “How do you know this?”

  “I have seen it with my own eyes,” Skjaldwulf replied. “And I have spoken with a Rhean conscript who escaped them.”

  “A spy!”

  Beside Vethulf, Mar growled wetly.

  “An escaped prisoner,” Skjaldwulf said, and then raised his voice to the attack: “The wolves will fight for us. The winter will fight for us. But we must also fight for ourselves. We must make ourselves ready for war, warriors, because war has surely come. Who among us would lead us against this enemy? He who would be konungur, who would see his name ring with renown from now so long as songs are sung, let him stand forward and speak that name aloud!”

  He paused. Around him, the quiet hung as heavy as the silence between strokes of a tolling bell.

  Someone stepped forward then, and Vethulf was surprised to see that it was Roghvatr, the jarl of Franangfordtown. He extended his hand for the staff, and Skjaldwulf gave it over. The red rags at the head shivered like fountaining blood in the torchlight as Roghvatr shook it, introducing himself and giving a summary of his deeds.

  “You know,” he said finally, “that I am as great a friend of the wolfcarls as any man. That without their help, your help”—he pointed with the staff to Vethulf—“I would have lost dogs and perhaps thanes this summer, when a bear raided my town. But I must say, who other than a wolfcarl or an outlander has seen these Rheans? We know, do we not, that if the heallan wish to continue to avoid swearing allegiance to their rightful lords, they need to produce a threat against which we can be united!”

  There was a mutter from the crowd, followed by a rumble of outrage, rising as jarls and wolfcarls who happened to be standing near one another began to argue.

  Skjaldwulf held out his hand for the staff. Reluctantly, Roghvatr gave it back. He walked off stiffly, and Vethulf was surprised to find his distaste for the man leavened by a spike of pity. He was, Vethulf thought, reading the world through his own lens.

  In Roghvatr’s wake, a tense silence rippled.

  Then Fargrimr stepped forward, hand extended for the staff, and the silence became a hush.

  The sworn-son, Vethulf thought. Really?

  Skjaldwulf gave him the staff and stepped aside—not retiring to the circle but waiting at Fargrimr’s back.

  Fargrimr cleared his throat and, in a clear tenor that skied from nervousness, began. His speech was not so polished nor so dense with rhetoric as Skjaldwulf’s, and he could not make his voice boom like the sea, but he spoke plainly and sharply of what he had seen in Siglufjordhur, of the rumors of Rhean ships making port in small villages along the coast and leaving them razed and smoking, of Adalbrikt, a young Siglufjordhur thane buried in the woods by his traveling companions after a fight with Rheans. He did not say that that thane’s companions had been wolfcarls—just that he had been very, very young.

  What Fargrimr lacked in rhetoric he made up for in sincerity, and the room listened.

  When he gave the staff back to Skjaldwulf, that same respectful silence followed Fargrimr from the ring.

  “Feargar of Hergilsberg!” someone shouted from the back, and after a moment Vethulf realized it was a nomination for konungur.

  “Grettir Gang-arm!” someone else yelled.

  A third voice yelled “Skjaldwulf Snow-soft!” and was met with a general roar.

  “Oh, Othinn, no,” Vethulf said.

  But Skjaldwulf raised the staff. “Nay, not I. My loyalty is to my wolf and the heall, and a konungur’s loyalty must be to all men who fight in his name. Let those who would be made konungur, or those who have an argument for or against the making of one tonight—for now let those men speak!”

  And then he passed the staff to the first man who came forward, and beat a retreat back to Vethulf and Isolfr as if the floor scalded him. Frithulf came over a moment later, bearing four horns of mead, and Vethulf accepted one gratefully. Not as gratefully as Skjaldwulf, though, who knocked his back like cold tisane.

  “You should have been a skald in truth as well as name,” Fargrimr said, under his breath.

  Skjaldwulf laughed.

  “He nearly was,” Isolfr explained.

  Who were they to sound so familiar? Vethulf killed a worm of jealousy.

  “He’s never really given it up,” Vethulf added. “He likes the attention too much.”

  * * *

  The arguments that followed went on for hours. Men came and went before the staff, some in favor, some against, some nominating themselves or others—despite Skjaldwulf’s request—as konungur. It blurred into endless chanting after a while, and Vethulf was glad the dim torchlight let him rest his eyes without being obvious about it.

  He didn’t care who the konungur was, so long as there was one and he was competent. But that was an issue of some complexity, because others did care. A wolfcarl was not acceptable for the reasons Skjaldwulf mentioned, but a wolfcarl might have been the best compromise candidate. Because the northern jarls did not trust soft southerners and the southern jarls did not trust the barbaric north.

  Vethulf was still dozing when the heall doors were flung wide, and on a wash of hubbub from outside someone staggered into the room. He would have fallen, in fact, were he not supported between two wolfless men with the colors of the jarl of Skarth sewn to their sleeves. Wolves, wolfcarls, and wolfless men packed in behind them.

  One of them was Frithulf. He shouldered through the crowd, Kothran breaking trail for him, until he was within shouting distance of Skjaldwulf.

  And then, being Frithulf, he shouted. “Wolfjarl! There is news from Siglufjordhur!”

  “Sweet Freya,” Fargrimr said, pushing forward. “That’s Bjorr.”

  Vethulf heaved himself to his feet, wobbling. If Isolfr hadn’t been there, he would have fallen, and he cursed Isolfr for it even as he leaned on him. Three wolves clustered around them, a protective wall, and if there were any chance it wouldn’t have resulted in him falling and being trampled, Vethulf would have pushed them all away and said he could walk by himself.

  And maybe he could have walked by himself, but this wasn’t walking so much as forcing through a milling crowd as a wedge found a split in a log.

  When they got to the man, he had been lowered to a bench and Fargrimr was kneeling beside him, holding him upright. “What happened?”

  Bjorr shook his head. Vethulf could see that his clothes were torn and filthy, his face drawn with long hunger. His boots were so worn on his feet that they flapped open, and raw toes with black toenails showed through the gaps. He had run himself bloody, and beyond.

  “Foreign soldiers,” he said, between heaving breaths. Someone brought water; Fargrimr held it for him while he drank. Whe
n it was gone, Bjorr seemed to realize whose hands his own scratched ones were covering on the cup, because he shuddered, and grimaced.

  Fargrimr lowered the cup. His voice shook. He steadied it. “Speak … Speak on.”

  “My lord,” Bjorr said, his eyes on the floor until they crept, unwillingly, to Fargrimr’s face. “You are jarl of Siglufjordhur now.”

  Fargrimr closed his eyes and nodded. Someone moved toward him; without opening his eyes he gestured them away. Isolfr leaned down to Vethulf’s ear and said, “Are you all right without me?”

  “Go,” Vethulf said, steadying himself against Kjaran and Mar. At least his shoulder only ached now, rather than screaming protest of every move. He would manage; others needed his wolfsprechend more.

  Isolfr slipped from his side. Not toward Fargrimr and his brother, but back, toward Skjaldwulf. Vethulf turned in surprise and wobbled but stayed upright. He saw Isolfr, quick and stern, pull the staff that Skjaldwulf must have retrieved in the confusion from Skjaldwulf’s hand, and Skjaldwulf open his hand as if the staff had scorched it.

  Isolfr strode to the center of the room and turned.

  He was not a tall man, nor a broad one. His hair hung in ice-pale braids on either side of his face, and the scars that crossed his cheek left sparse lines through his beard. The axe he wore at his belt caught light all along the filigree of its hilt. His wolf, her red and black brindles shifting like a tabby cat’s stripes in the firelight, sat by his side like any dog, except her head came to his chest when she stretched it back to yawn.

  “I know, sister,” Isolfr said softly.

  And then he struck the board floor with the butt of the staff, and half the room jumped and turned at the noise. Skjaldwulf spotted Vethulf standing alone and made haste to his side, offering an arm in support.

  Swearing under his breath, Vethulf took it.

  “I am Isolfr,” he said, speaking too softly. “Isolfr brother of Viradechtis, wolfsprechend of Franangford. Called…” He gathered himself, and Vethulf saw his distaste for the byname twist his mouth. “Called Ice-heart, called Alf-friend. You know who I am.”

  With a flip of his hand, he let the ritual of boasting his renown pass by like water through the piles of a bridge. A stir passed through the room.

  Yes, they knew him.

  “I have come to praise a man,” he said.

  Another stir, followed by a waiting silence. He had them. They all waited to see upon whom Isolfr Ice-mad would call.

  Isolfr straightened his shoulders and said, “I come to praise a man who is a great and doughty warrior, who taught me what I know of sword and shield, of valor and of honor. I come to praise a man who has fought trolls and brigands—and raised a daughter and two sons!”

  A laugh followed, nervous at first but then rolling all around them.

  Isolfr smiled, a rare shy flash. Vethulf wondered how many others saw him swallow. “I come to praise a man who, in the dark trellwarrens under Othinnsaesc, fought a trellqueen and destroyed her. A man who can lead us into great renown as we defend our much-loved land from these Rheans. I come to praise Gunnarr Sturluson, jarl of Nithoggsfjoll. Gunnarr Trollsbane, my father, should be our konungur.”

  He lowered the staff.

  Something swept through the crowd. Vethulf couldn’t name it, but he could see it. A silence, and then a muttering. And then someone shouted, “Gunnarr!” From the voice Vethulf thought it was Othwulf. Across the room, he saw that godsman—Erik—catch Skjaldwulf’s eye, and Skjaldwulf nodded. “Gunnarr!!” the godsman shouted, and he had a voice like iron hammers ringing on a forge.

  At that point, it was inevitable. Roghvatr, who had apparently thought better of his earlier advice—or who saw which way the wind was blowing and would vote for a northern lord while he had the chance—shouted the name. Then Grimolfr bellowed it in his battlefield command voice, and the wolfcarls took up the chant until the whole room was stomping and shouting, arms upraised in the torchlight. “Gunnarr! Gunnarr! Gunnarr Konungur!”

  Silently Isolfr slipped from the center of the room and handed Skjaldwulf the staff once more. “Well,” Isolfr said, sweat soaking his collar, “that was easy.”

  A woman Skjaldwulf’s age or older came from the crowd to tug Isolfr’s sleeve. He turned, and she threw her arms around him before Vethulf could move to intervene. But Isolfr hugged her hard and then set her back at arm’s length. “I am sorry, mother.”

  She grimaced. “He’ll hate it.”

  Isolfr smiled. “He’ll be good at it.”

  She dipped her head, then reached up and squeezed her son’s arm. “I know.”

  * * *

  In the next few days, it seemed as if Skjaldwulf was needed everywhere at once. He found time—by brute force—to introduce Otter properly to Isolfr and Vethulf, and he began to learn the art of handing tasks on to other men. He did not want to be indispensable to all of the northland, only to Franangfordheall.

  He was not surprised that Gunnarr showed every indication of being an excellent konungur; he was surprised, although he made every effort to conceal his bemusement, that Gunnarr and Erik Godsman took to each other immediately and enthusiastically. The jarl of Hergilsberg would be outmaneuvered on every flank, and Skjaldwulf was unworthily pleased.

  When he was not avoiding the responsibilites other men wished to heap on him, Skjaldwulf was endeavoring to live up to the responsibilities he already had. He managed, with no small difficulty, to convene an actual Wolfmaegthing, and after listening to several wolfjarls echo his own fears—and after Vethulf had told them about his conversation with Roghvatr—Skjaldwulf put forward Fargrimr’s suggestion.

  There was silence when Skjaldwulf had finished, out of which Vethulf said, sounding puzzled, “But we’re already doing that.”

  “Yes,” said the wolfsprechend of Thorsbaer. “Which is all the more reason that the jarls should honor us for it.”

  “And tithe,” put in the wolfjarl of Kerlaugstrond.

  “And if they all tithe,” said the wolfsprechend of Arakensberg, “then no jarl can complain that another jarl buys our service away from him.” Wolfsprechend and wolfjarl exchanged a dour look; Skjaldwulf wondered which of Arakensberg’s neighbors they had run afoul of.

  “And it gives us a reason to continue the patrols,” said the wolfjarl of Othinnsaesc, a light in his eye that suggested he had been having trouble with wolfcarls underfoot.

  “And,” Isolfr said, “it means that wolfless men will become accustomed to wolves, and will continue to be so. Which raises another point: if we are to do this, we must make at least one wolfheall in the south, where I understand”—with a dry look at Skjaldwulf—“the bandits are particularly troublesome. Franangford has a konigenwolf pup, and we would gladly stand her to a new heall.”

  A mutter ran round the room; Grimolfr and Ulfbjorn both looked as proud as if they’d birthed Signy themselves. Isolfr coughed, looking a little embarrassed, and said, “I would ask only that we name the heall not for the keep it will stand near, but for Freya, as she seems still to protect us.”

  Another murmur, this one even more approving. Skjaldwulf said, “I will put the question to the new jarl of Siglufjordhur, for I think he may be willing to grant us land.”

  * * *

  Later that night, Skjaldwulf came into the section of the wide-flung camp around Arakensberg that was Franangford’s. He passed two small campfires, one surrounded by sleeping wolfcarls and wolves, the other providing warmth and light for a lazy half-drunken dice game between Frithulf and Otter. Otter was winning. They saluted him with their cups as he went by, and he waved back. At the main tent, pitched for wolfsprechend and wolfjarls, he found Isolfr and Ulfbjorn talking while Vigdis and Viradechtis, united in a temporary truce, angled for bits of the smoked ham and cheese laid out on the table, boards over trestles, the men had set up beside the stone-ringed campfire.

  “It is not finished,” Skjaldwulf said, “but it is begun. As I expected, Fargrimr was not at all averse to t
he idea.”

  Ulfbjorn saluted him with his mead-horn.

  “So,” Isolfr said, “what happens next?”

  Skjaldwulf sighed and stretched his spine, listening to the series of small pops as it settled back into alignment. “Everybody dies, and the people who don’t get married.”

  Isolfr smiled crookedly. “Like any other story, then.”

  Skjaldwulf smiled back. “We all think we are greater than the story, but we aren’t, really, and that is no bad thing.”

  “No,” said Isolfr. He looked across the table. “Ulfbjorn and I are talking about konigenwolves, but I think you will find that Vethulf is still awake in our tent. His stamina is improving.”

  Skjaldwulf stood a moment, arrested by the thought that his wolfsprechend was matchmaking for him—and the delicate pink rising along Isolfr’s ears suggested that he was not wrong. But Isolfr met his gaze and said, “You don’t want to listen to us, Skjaldwulf. Truly.”

  Viradechtis snorted in unkind agreement, and Isolfr said to her, “Who keeps the ham, madam?”

  “Good night, then,” Skjaldwulf said and ducked into the tent, where Vethulf was indeed awake, lying propped among the furs like a viking prince, with Kjaran and Mar, one to each side.

  Skjaldwulf sat down and began to undo his boots. “Isolfr says you are improving.”

  Vethulf made a grumbling noise uncannily like a wolf’s.

  “Was it a lie, then?”

  “No, damn you. I am better. But I do not like being nursemaided.”

  “I know that,” Skjaldwulf said, grinning at him over one shoulder before bending again to his boots.

  “So if you were thinking of starting—”

  “I wasn’t, I assure you.”

  “Good,” said Vethulf.