By the Mountain Bound (2 page)

I’d stay and see her home through the twilight, but she would thank me not. I have other business to attend in the morning, and work before. With my scent on her, the maiden will come to no harm in the wood.

The night is used in the hunt; when the sun rises the deer on my shoulder is a buck, three points—young and tender, caught with my own hands. I bring him to the wolves in apology: the next night, I will not run with them across the moon-soaked mountains. I am summoned.

They dine on well-bled meat while I take myself to Strifbjorn’s mead-hall where the einherjar gather. I do not count the days among the wolves, but I attend when my brothers call. I walk the valley road, not the shadowed one, passing under trees in the short cold morn. Patches of frost linger in the shadows, but the mist coils off the land, burned by the sun overhead. I glance upward, some memory I cannot quite reconstruct raised by the tug of the cord about my throat.

Mountain-clutching trees break above a hillocked green meadow, which sweeps down a gentler slope south and east until the flank of the mountain plunges into the sea. Close to the lip stands the mead-hall. It is built as long as two ancient pines grow tall, solid of seasoned logs and shingled bark. The sea lies
at my right hand and before, the mountain at my back; the meadow gives way to birch and poplar to the left.

A pale form arrows across the sky, plunging furled by the turf-roofed mead-hall. A thing like a two-headed stallion stands in the midmorning light, tossing his horns and mantling those giant wings. A slender figure, clad in white, slides down his shoulder; she acknowledges my approach—but barely—with a raised hand, turns and strides into the hall.

My brethren arrive for the feast and the council. For me, it is no homecoming.

Not until I enter the door of the mead-hall, and an elk-shouldered shape steps over the fire trench to meet me. My braid is silver-black where his is like winter butter, but his eyes are gray as mine and as full of starlight.

“Mingan!” Strifbjorn embraces me. His clasp is iron bands, fingers that would break mortal bones clenching on my forearm, his other arm falling around my back.

I return the clasp, looking up to see his smile. A bear-fur cloak broadens him that needs no broadening, the pelt grizzled silver over rich brown. It contrasts with the swan-white shirt and trews. At his hip, Alvitr’s bronze hilt matches Svanvitr’s.

Pine-scent rises from the strewn branches, mingled with the smell of cold fires and hot honeyed ale. Strifbjorn does not flinch from the heat of my hand through the glove.

“Strifbjorn, my brother. You are well?” I smile to see the light in his eyes flash, and
he
does not turn from it.

His voice drops. “Very.” He leads me to a seat near his, at the south end of one of the long tables. On the left, below him along the bench. We will share our trencher. The great gilt chair on the north wall sits empty. Our Cynge is not with us.

He never has been, but I taught them to keep his chair ready, and the Lady’s at the south end of the mead-hall.

The waelcyrge cluster at one end of the hall, around the bride. Menglad, who wears a red far more pure in shade than the muddy carrot-color of the blond girl’s cloak.

One of them leaves her sisters and brings us mead in horns, bowing her head when Strifbjorn’s fingers brush her hand. She is the little one, Muire, with the darkest hair, golden-brown as buckwheat honey. Her eyes also slide from mine, but it is not modesty that drives her to turn away. Strifbjorn is fair and handsome, his prowess unmatched in renown. As long as he remains unmarried, the Daughters of the Light vie for his regard.

Mine they avoid—for I am Mingan the Grey Wolf, who walks alone, who acts alone, who does not hear the voice of the Light in his ear. The children—except Strifbjorn and perhaps Yrenbend—fear me.

It is not their weird to seek understanding of things that shake the pattern of their days. Except perhaps Muire, who is a blacksmith and a poet, which are not such separated things as might seem. She writes history. I would she did not fear me. I would she might ask what I know.

I remember things—some shadowy, some crisp—that took place before the children, einherjar and waelcyrge, were sung out of the starlight on the ocean and in turn sang the mortal creatures from the stones. I know of only three old enough to remember another world, and of those I am the one who walks among the children of the Light.

I drain my nectar-scented mead, and the smell brings remembrance.
A fetter, a sword, a scorching heat, the taste of blood. Pain, inside and without. The scent of a man I trusted as I have trusted none other, save Strifbjorn. The scent of a man who betrayed. I remember these things, but not with a man’s understanding.

I recall them as a wolf might. But so my brothers name me.

“You are distant, my brother.” It is not Strifbjorn speaking—he has turned to the side, listening to an einherjar who has come up on his right. It is the waelcyrge Muire, the chooser of the slain, who has returned with more mead.

She meets my eyes for a long, quiet moment before she glances away, still not gazing at Strifbjorn. I witness the longing in how she refuses to look at him, and I see his denial of it in the stiffness of his shoulders as he bends closer to his welcome distraction. He is trapped, my brother, in the expectations of his role—and the mistakes we both have made.

“I sorrow, my sister,” I say to her at last, continuing to examine her clear gray irises at an angle.

She is, I have said, an odd one, not so unlike the other waelcyrge as I am unlike my chosen brothers, but unlike enough. There is a thoughtfulness in her small nose and pointed chin that I am unused to seeing in the children of the Light. She collects herself, and I am reminded that she fears me. But she speaks out around the fear. “Why do you sorrow?”

This softest and most exact among us—a sparrow hawk. “You’re the skald,” I say. “You tell me.”

Her face muddles. She stammers and flees to the cross-bench with her sisters, those who have so far arrived.

The hour is early still.

The Historian

M
englad was married on a day late in fall in the five hundred and seventy-first year of my immortality, the five hundred and seventy-first year of the world. And the Grey Wolf joined us for the wedding. He was not a stranger in our midst, but neither was he a commonplace. Instead, he came like a raven on the storm, to festival, to weddings, to council of war when war came upon us.

I remember it well. I remember the night because I was the one who served him—him, and Strifbjorn, whom I loved. The other waelcyrge did not wish to wait upon the Wolf, so I walked the length of the shield-hung hall, a horn of mead in each hand.

I remember the night very well, for it was the beginning of the end.

Strifbjorn, disdainful as always of his sisters, barely turned when I brought his mead. The Wolf . . . after draining the mead horn, he studied me with that disconcerting gaze, a frown on a face one might more expect to see hewn from a mountainside. I could not make my eyes meet his. A mortal thrall, captive of war, brought me new horns of drink, and Mingan’s gloved hand lingered on mine for a moment more than propriety demanded when I handed him the new one. His flesh burned hot as forged metal through the gray leather. I thought of sunlight on dark fabric.

There were stories, of why he burned. I stammered in answer to his question, the hot blush rising. He released my hand; I fled back to the cross-bench, the trestle table and my sisters at the north end of the hall.

It was a long walk beside the fire trench, under banner-hung roof beams lost in the dark high ceiling. It seemed every eye in the hall watched my flight, although I knew from the murmurs that my brethren were engrossed in their gossip, renewing acquaintances. Nonetheless, I caught my skirts about me like the shreds of my composure and hurried to my place among the women.

Menglad, called the Brightwing, reached from under her crimson wedding veils and caught my mousy-colored braid. “Herfjotur says her steed says the Wolf desires you, Muire.” She giggled, gesturing to the proud-nosed waelcyrge on her left.

They all
were
watching
. I raised an eyebrow at the bride, amber-haired and fairer-skinned than I, her sword slung properly at her hip rather than across the shoulders as mine must be to keep from dragging. Skeold slid down the bench to the right that I might sit beside Menglad. I gathered my wide skirts, lifting them clear of my boots as I ascended from the scented pine branches littering the floor, onto the step where the women’s bench rested. Turning, I allowed the silk to flare, the snow-pale surcote contrasting with the spangled midnight-blue kirtle.

My clothing matched that of my sisters, though they were taller and more golden. Gathered around Menglad in her crimson and gold, we resembled jays mobbing a cardinal.

The groom had not yet arrived, nor had most of the einherjar. Perhaps four hundred of my brethren. Half the number that would fill this, our largest hall. They sat along the benches or walked, chattering. Two extra trestles, running the length of the hall, held the overflow.

I leaned close to Menglad. “The Wolf could have his pick. He has no need of such as I.”

I saw by the gleam in her eye that she was teasing me. “He’s never offered for anyone,” she said. “Perhaps he’s waiting for someone to notice him back.”

I chuckled. “If he fancied me, he would speak to Yrenbend. Or Strifbjorn—they’re close as shield-mates.”

The mocking Light was still flickering behind the storm-blue of her eyes. “Are you insinuating that all those waelcyrge who sigh over Strifbjorn must compete with the Wolf for his passions?”

“Strifbjorn is waiting for something. And the Wolf—either he prefers to be alone, or the one he wants is bound to another.” I grew uncomfortable, shifting in my seat. “And strong as they are, they can do as they like. Who would dare censure them?” I wanted the subject changed. It was too close to mockery.

But Menglad always was rash, sharp and bright as a chipped glass blade. She shivered, her eyes on the Wolf, and kept talking. “Aye. But his prowess and courage aside, who could be truly glad to go to that wild bed, and share him with his mistress, Darkness?”

There was no answer to that. I watched the one black-brindled head among the golden as it bent close to Strifbjorn’s. We dined only for pleasure; we slept only when hurt. We came together, my brothers and sisters and I, in the face of war or the cause of celebration: not as we used to, for the sheer joy of singing the world into being. Back before men were made, and creation was complete.

But that night was a wedding, and there would be a feast in the hall. And after the feast, there would be fighting.

Oh, it would be fine.

“Are you nervous?”

Menglad gave me a sidelong look behind her veils. “Nervous?”

“About the wedding night.” Her eyes behind the veil were more blue than gray. The starlight that suddenly filled them was tinted silver.

She leaned aside and dropped her voice. “Shall I tell you a secret, Muire? Of all of us, I believe you can keep one.”

“I am a historian, after all. The only secrets I whisper are those of the dead.”

She pursed her lips; it smoothed her brow. “You are not like the rest of us, Muire. I do not envy you. But I do not know what we would be without your voice.”

I brushed her strangeness away with my left hand. “You were about to give me a secret.”

She took a breath, licking her lips moist. “I’ve been to Arngeir’s bench,” she whispered, leaning so her veil hid the shape of her words against my hair.

“In the mead-hall?” I couldn’t imagine how she kept that secret. Despite the dark of night and the averted eyes of politeness, one notices such things as a shared niche. Especially when the benches are not often used for sleeping.

Tonight they would be, however. Used for sleeping, and for other things. I might spend the night in the field, or on the mountainside.

She shook her head. “We’ve met in secret. I’m sure Strifbjorn knows, but as Arngeir offered for me, there has been no scandal. He can be kinder than he seems—Strifbjorn, I mean.”

I leaned closer, speaking so softly she must have strained to
hear. “What’s it like? And have you . . . have you shared the kiss yet?”

“We decided to wait. It seemed safer: what if something happened? Before we were wedded, I mean. We’d both be . . .”

. . . unmarriageable.
Yes. It was one thing to marry a widow, knowing you would be taking on a bit of another as well. Different entirely to join with someone, expecting to find oneself half of a whole, and discover the taint of a third already woven into the bonding.

She picked up her thread after a moment of silence. “As for the other . . . Well, it hurts. At first. But it’s a . . . good sort of hurt. Not to be feared. Much less than a sword-cut.”

I shook my head. “I am content with your reports.” Over her shoulder, I caught a sneering glance from tall, fair Sigrdrifa, who I knew also coveted Strifbjorn’s hand.

I stood and excused myself with fortuitous timing, for as I took horns of mead from the thralls, more of the einherjar began to arrive—Arngeir’s party, but not yet the groom himself. We seated them across the fire trench from Strifbjorn.

My sisters scurried to assist me, leaving Menglad stranded on the cross-bench in her trappings of crimson and gold, with a wide divided skirt. She seemed small and alone when I glanced back; I wondered at her courage in the face of the great unknown—her marriage, her bonding, her future as half of a larger thing than herself.

I shook my head, and turned my attention to the task of carrying the honey wine.

Some time later, when the drinking and the revelry were underway, Arngeir arrived. I was still on my feet, distracting myself from the Wolf’s stare and Menglad’s attempts at merriment
before the crude jests of our brothers. I met Arngeir with a horn of mead before he was well into the room.

My sister’s husband-to-be was tall as any of my brothers, and more handsome than most. Clad in red like the bride, he strode in as if claiming the hall, his golden braid bobbing down his back. As I raised the horn, I heard the scrape of a bench. On the far side of the fire trench Strifbjorn stood.