Fargrimr, fair and lean and stubborn just as Randulfr was, fully understood, and knew better than to push when Randulfr was not ready for pushing. Randulfr would come around.
And meanwhile, Fargrimr knew the Rheans inhabiting his keep could hear the trellwolves howling on a cold, clear night. He hoped it kept those usurping bastards up till dawn.
* * *
Fargrimr and Randulfr ran through the woods as they had when they were children and they had shadowed their father’s carls on patrol—except this time, they both had different names than the ones their father had given them. That was not the only change. Now a buff-colored wolf-bitch with a gray nape paced Randulfr, and Fargrimr was a sworn-man rather than a girl with kilted skirts. Also, it was a stomping-in-unison Rhean patrol that they shadowed now, both men silent and light-footed as the ljosalfar of stories in these beloved woods. And the penalty for being caught was not embarrassment and being sent home to their mother.
They might be returned to Siglufjordhur. The Rheans did take prisoners, as the wolfjarl Skjaldwulf, called Snow-Soft, could attest. But it wouldn’t be a homecoming such as either of them would wish. There were still cells there, carved into the rock below the keep, and Fargrimr had no desire to spend the rest of his life rotting in one of them.
The Rhean patrol was ten men, and Fargrimr knew there were twenty more within a shout, ten before and ten behind. The Rheans had learned to their grief how to protect themselves in these woods. They stayed to the stone roads they had hewed and paved—Fargrimr mourned every healthy tree—and marched a neat circuit of the farmsteads they claimed as their own. They expected—and Fargrimr knew, bitterly, that they were right—that Fargrimr would not burn out his own people.
Could not burn out his own people. Could not make them pay for his family’s failing. It was his responsibility to drive the Rheans out again, not theirs.
He was glad that Randulfr and Ingrun ran with him, separated by enough distance that he identified the man only by the occasional rustling footfall, and the wolf only by knowing that she existed. That knowledge became even more comforting when the patrol did something unexpected.
Unexpected things were bad. Especially when it came to Rheans—those most regimented, predictable, and disciplined of soldiers. Their armies came in multiples of ten. Those decades ran in lockstep, and each man in them wore the same tunic, the same armor, even the same sandals—stuffed with the same straw during the bitter Northern winters.
Their patrols always followed the same routes, too. Where one of Fargrimr’s thanes might take his men any which way, and—dependent on treaties—come back with information or plunder or both, the Rheans ran along their roads and kept a schedule. This meant that if one of their patrols went missing, they noticed very quickly, but it did make it easier for Fargrimr and his brother and his brother’s wolf-sister to follow them through the woods undetected, avoiding the notice of any other patrols.
So when the ten men veered south to leave the paved road and run back toward the headlands of the fjord, Fargrimr felt a heavy gnawing worm of worry behind his breastbone. Nothing good ever came of Rhean innovations.
Apparently, Randulfr agreed with Fargrimr, because his occasional shadowy steps grew closer as Fargrimr turned to follow the Rheans. Fargrimr caught a glimpse of Ingrun through the ferns ahead, her laughing amber eyes turned back to him. She ducked into the shadows and was gone again just as the soft pad of Randulfr’s feet drew up behind Fargrimr.
Fargrimr stopped. He reached out one bare arm, swirled with muddy blue-green spirals of tattoos, and quickly clasped Randulfr’s wrist. The brothers shared a wordless glance, then slipped, silent and slightly separated, toward the thinning shade of the edgewood.
The Rheans were moving far more slowly now—their lockstep trot was not well-suited to travel through the Northern forests. They would break out into the clear meadows along the top of the fjord soon, though, and become harder to follow. Fargrimr supposed it was too much to hope that a Rhean or two might stumble on a loose rock at the cliff top and plunge to his death far below.
As he reached the tree line, he crouched into the ferns and brush. There was more undergrowth here, where the light reached. It sheltered him, and the ink under his skin made dappled patterns that helped to hide him in the shade.
Randulfr dropped down beside him, silent as a fawn in its bower. “What are they doing all the way out here?” he asked, beard whisking Fargrimr’s ear.
“Going down the old sea-road, it looks like,” Fargrimr said.
“What would they want there that they can’t get at Siglufjordhur?”
And that was an excellent question. The sea-road Fargrimr had noted ran along the cliff top of Sigluf’s Fjord, the fjord for which the surrounding country was named. A half mile farther on, it dipped down through a convenient break in the palisade and descended the precipitous wall at an angle impossible for carts, treacherous for horses, nerve-racking for men, and well within the capabilities of most well-trained asses. Fargrimr knew from childhood experience that at the bottom of the trail was a fine sandy strand a quarter mile long. He also knew from childhood experience that it was forbidden to the children of the keep for good reason: it sloped appealingly under the green glass of the fjord’s salt waters, but on the seaward edge, where the ocean currents wore at it, there was a precipitous drop-off to water so deep even the oyster divers didn’t brave it to the bottom. It would be easy for a child to wander or be washed the wrong way and be drowned—and in truth, more than one had so died.
“Maybe their commander sent them for a bath,” Fargrimr muttered. “They probably need one.”
The Rheans had assembled themselves in the clear now. Trotting more slowly—but still in lockstep—they began their two-by-two descent of the sea road. Speaking personally, Fargrimr would have gone down single file. At a walk. Without trying to match paces with his neighbors. But then, he wasn’t a Rhean, either—thank all the gods for the small mercies they offered.
Still in a crouch, he scuttled forward, using his fingertips to steady himself against the ground. Randulfr followed. Ingrun held back, crouched, another shadow in the tree-shade.
Careful not to silhouette himself, Fargrimr inched close enough to the cliff edge that he could hear the leather-creak and footsteps of the Rheans below, descending. The smell of salt and the combing of the waves rose on the warm air. He lay down on his belly, hid his face in the straggle of long grass, and peered cautiously over the edge.
He saw—a ship. Three ships, bobbing with the waves, anchored in the deep water south of the beach. They were not like the familiar Northern boats of Siglufjordhur. They were larger—wider, deeper—and each had three rows of oars rather than the familiar one. Where a proper boat should have a dragon prow and a broad striped sail square-rigged, these had eagles carved into the forecastle and triangular sails, with a slanting yard running from its lowest point at the front, lifting to aft far above the top of the mast.
Fargrimr had seen smaller ships like these busy in and out of the harbor at Siglufjordhur for ten long years. These, he realized, would draw much deeper than any Northern ship, which was probably why they were out here, rather than up at the keep and the port. They seemed able to carry a great deal of cargo, but their drafts would be too deep for a channel built for dragon-boats, which even fully loaded would draw only a few inches of water.
Randulfr touched Fargrimr on the shoulder, calling his attention to one of the ships. The crew—from this height, like so many beetles scurrying on the deck—were lowering some long, broad, wooden device that had been pivoted over the side and dropped through a gap in the railing. The device looked like a boarding plank, but much broader—or perhaps like an odd outrigger, since it floated on the tossing surface of the sea.
Then Randulfr’s touch grew rough. He squeezed Fargrimr’s arm until Fargrimr winced and tugged away. He might have snapped, if there had not been enemies within earshot, if sound had not carried so well over water.
/> Rather than simply opening a hatchway, someone had ripped up a third of the planking on the ship’s deck and stuck a ramp up out of the hold. Fargrimr thought with a warming sense of superiority, Now, there’s a very good reason not to bother with decking in the first place.
It didn’t occur to him that it might be nice to sleep out of the rain onboard ship. And before he got around to that thought—which happened two days later—he was entirely distracted by what came out of the hole thus inflicted on the Rhean ship.
It might have been a furry, ambulatory hillock. A hay pile with walrus tusks poked into the front. A great northern bear, three times bigger than such a bear should be, with a pile of shaggy cattle hides heaped on it. Anything at all, in fact, as long as Fargrimr wasn’t expected to have a name for it.
It was taller than a wyvern, though not as long, and it looked considerably more massive. It was colored a kind of reddish-brown with streaks of gray and straw in the topcoat. It had small ears like cabbage leaves on the side of its high domed head, and it walked on legs as big as mature tree trunks. At the front were those tusks—walrus tusks, but far bigger than any walrus ever wore. Longer than two human beings, Fargrimr thought, lying feet to feet upon the ground, and thicker than his thigh. Also at the front end, something protruded like a long tentacle or a prehensile penis—fleshy and firm-soft looking. As the monster climbed onto the deck, it twisted and stretched the appendage, first to one side, then to the other, as if looking to the men around it for reassurance.
It did not like walking out on the boarding bridge at all.
At the first step, the creature hesitated. The boat pitched and the bridge pitched, and neither one pitched exactly the same. And as far as the creature could tell (Fargrimr imagined), it was being led down a wooden trail into the sea, for sudden death and drowning.
It raised the appendage on its face, turning it this way and that as a hare turns its ears to locate a sound. Fargrimr realized with a start that he was looking at the thing’s nose, and that it was scenting its surroundings. It did not wish to proceed.
One of the men stepped forward—the handler, Fargrimr assumed, because the beast dipped a knee as if making a bow. The handler stepped up onto the knee, grabbed a handful of the long red fur, and slung a leg over the thing’s neck so he was riding astride, just behind the ears. These flapped, but apparently this was what the creature had needed for reassurance, because with only a little more fussing, it walked down the bridge into the sea.
It floated and swam surprisingly well. The whole beast submerged beneath the waves except the prehensile appendage, so Fargrimr could see its back only when the troughs between the swells revealed it. The handler floated off his position on its neck and swam along beside, guiding it gently through the waves. He seemed to be suffering more than the monster, because the waves kept ducking him.
There were longboats already in the fjord. They stayed well clear of the gigantic monster—Fargrimr would probably have stayed even farther back, honestly—but seemed to guide it and its handler toward the sandy shoal. A few moments, and the creature’s domed head broke the waves, streaming seawater like a kelp-shagged boulder. It moved forward, walking up the beach, looking even bigger with the waves breaking against its implacable belly and legs.
On the ship, another monster emerged up the ramp from the hold. The sea wind lifted its rusty pelt. It peered about myopically, as if looking for its stablemate.
On the shore, the first beast stamped sand. Its handler took cover behind his arms as it shook like an enormous dog. Fargrimr could hear the laughter from the boats all the way up the cliffside—in fact, he had to bite back his own.
Then the first beast raised its nose and made a sound like Heimdallr winding his horn to mark the world’s end. It rang and resounded, up and between the cliffs of the fjord, rattling small pebbles from the walls. Fargrimr ducked instinctively, flattening himself in the grass, as if the sound could find him out and reveal him to the enemies below. He felt Randulfr flatten beside him.
When they peered at each other through the long grass, Randulfr jerked his head back the way they’d come. Fargrimr nodded.
They crept back to the tree line, where Ingrun crouched, awaiting. Her ears were pricked, her eyes sharp. She’d been guarding their backs.
Conscious of the fact that their voices might carry on the wind, Fargrimr leaned close to his brother’s ear and spoke low. “What are those things?”
Randulfr shrugged. “Some Rhean monster. Does it matter what they’re called?” He took a breath and held it in as if savoring or considering it, let it out, took another.
“Do you think they’re beasts of war?”
Randulfr deflated. “Hard to imagine what else they’d be using them for, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “Somebody needs to tell Franangford about this. That’s one thing for sure.”
* * *
Her name had once been Aebbe, though they called her Otter here. She had been born Brythoni and made a Rhean slave, but almost fifteen years past, she had come to save the life of a Northman and he had come to save hers. So she had been made the daughter by oath of Skjaldwulf Marsbrother.
Becoming the daughter of a wolfheofodman of the North, it turned out, was not the easiest thing in the world. “Daughter” meant many things, and it came with complicated gifts.
She was not obliged, Skjaldwulf had said awkwardly when he described the work of the heall that was usually done by wolfcarls’ lovers and kinswomen, but Otter much preferred work to idleness, and there was work in plenty to be done. She had been content at first merely guiding herself—finding a task that needed doing and seeing it through, then finding another task—but there was a gap where the housecarl Sokkolfr was simply spread too thin to cover, and Otter was too good a housewife to bear that sense of the household unraveling at one corner.
She had been surprised almost speechless to find that the wolfcarls would let her tell them what to do.
Because Thorlot—who was what Otter in her childhood would have called the headwoman, being as she was the lover of the Franangford wolfsprechend—was busy with smithing and tinkering—weapons, buckles, pots, pans, hinges, bits, chains, mail, nails (endless nails!), tongs, axes, gates, latches, scissors, pails, candlesticks, pins, needles, chisels, pruning hooks—most of the work of managing and running the household of the heall came to fall to Otter. There was bread to be baked and stalls to be raked and goats to be milked, roofs to be thatched, sick to be nursed (a task Otter particularly loathed), the pantry to be managed and kept in inventory, cloth to be traded for, candles to be dipped, saddles to be mended, meat to be smoked and salted, fodder and wood and food to be stockpiled against winter and against the threat of war. Of course she did not need to do all these tasks with her own hands; there were thralls and hirelings and women and heallbred children and wolfcarls aplenty. But those persons needed managing, too.
It was worth taking up the responsibilities for what the heall provided in return. Otter never would have believed it until she experienced it, that this was a place where, surrounded by trellwolves who could rip her throat out as soon as look at her, she could live in safety and security, with enough to eat, with work for which she was respected, with no one to care that the double-headed eagle branded on her cheek was a Rhean slaver’s mark.
At least until the Rheans gathered their forces in Siglufjordhur and marched north. Otter did not believe that when that happened, the Northmen could stand against them, wolves or no wolves.
She had seen the Rheans roll over Brython.
They had sent their expeditionary forces north once already—the sortie that had started her toward Franangford. Encountering more resistance than they had expected, they retreated to the coast and retrenched. They settled in, building their fortifications and roads, turning their toehold into a foothold, the captured keep of Siglufjordhur into a Rhean outpost. They were waiting, but it was nonsense to think that they were satisfied. Otter lived in constant fear of the d
ay they decided they were ready. She knew that when the Rheans at long last came to pluck the Iskryne, this time of safety would be nothing but a pleasant dream. They were patient, and they were not inclined to miss a single berry in the bramble, once they made up their minds that the harvest had come due.
But there was nothing she could do about that truth, nothing she could do about the Rheans. She set them aside and, as best she could, did not think about them.
Instead, she enjoyed what she had while she had it. She enjoyed the food, the work, the warmth. She enjoyed the fact that no one raised a hand to her. She enjoyed that wolfcarls flirted rather than forced, and that when she chose not to lie down for them, they backed away and apologized. It was a while before she believed she had this privilege: there were not so many women in the heall that any went unclaimed for long, except by choice.
And she came to enjoy the wolfheofodmenn, as well. Skjaldwulf was a storyteller, a skald in their tongue, a scop in hers, and she trusted him as she had trusted no man in all her life. She noticed, too, that when she came to sit by the long fire, as often as not his stories had some element of the heroism of women in them—he told tales of Knowing Freydis, of Lagertha Battle-oak, of Ragnvæig Householder, who managed the defense of the keep at Jomsa after the deaths of her husband and her father. He gave her women being brave, when she badly needed soil for her own bravery to take root in and grow. Perhaps, being a true skald, he knew how much it meant to her.
Sokkolfr, the housecarl, treated her as a partner from the beginning, so polite, as he was polite to every woman of the heall, that it was some time before she realized that it was genuine respect he showed her, and even longer before she dared to offer him friendship in return. She was surprised by her grief when his wolf-brother Hroi died—an ancient of a wolf, truly, for he had been old when he had taken Sokkolfr as his brother. And he died softly, in his sleep, in the cold of late winter when the old so often failed.