By the Mountain Bound (27 page)

I gave so much into the woodcutter’s daughter I’m surprised there is still even this.

My skin prickles between my shoulders. Someone watches, but when I turn and stare across to the mead-hall and the practice yard, no one moves there.

It is plain there is no peace for me here, either. I step back from the cliff.

Inside, Heythe sits in her gilded chair, head-bent with
Skeold and Sigrdrifa. The Raven of victory spreads broad wings behind the three who weave as pitiless as any Norns.

Heythe does not glance up as I enter, but the sdada lounging behind her chair tracks me with insane eyes.

I crave solitude, a lonely place, but I will not climb the Ulfenfell again. Instead I retire to Heythe’s alcove, and rest on the bench in the back corner. Sooner or later, she’ll want me. I huddle in anticipation, boots drawn up and knees bent, dreaming with my eyes open.

That is where I still am sitting when the arras is brushed aside and the voice of a girl intrudes.

“Master Wolf,” Rannveig whispers. She lets the tapestry fall behind her. Her voice is pitched low, not to carry.

I leap up, whirling on her, back to the wall. “Go!” But when she starts to obey I interrupt her. “What dost thou here?”

She checks her step, hand on the arras. She’s well-dressed and clean-scrubbed, her dark tunic mended at the elbow but thick and warm, embroidery-decorated around the keyhole collar and the hem. Her russet cloak swathes her shoulders, a contrast to the straw-gold of her braid. It is cold in the hall, by mortal standards.

“Apprenticed,” she says. “Mistress Muire is teaching me a trade.”

Baiting me with my sins, you mean.

We stare. She will not look down. She is smiling.

I force my voice to softness. “Seek me not again,” I warn her, and she nods once, gracefully.

“I only came to see if you were well.” When she leaves, the curtain falls shut behind her.

The Warrior

S
trifbjorn and the others had a few days’ grace before Heythe returned to the mead-hall. He used every second for politics, the whole enriched by an element of comedy. Yrenbend and Muire chose to whom they would speak. Strifbjorn moved through the hall in silence, observing the comings and goings of his brethren like a ghost, eavesdropping on their conversations. It was a slow process, careful, carried out while Herfjotur and Brynhilde spread word to trustworthy siblings whom they could find in the world, going about their tasks. Muire refreshed the spell on Strifbjorn’s circlet every day or so.

Meanwhile, she instructed her new pupil in the spells of music and runes. Yrenbend likewise taught Rannveig something Strifbjorn had had no idea Yrenbend knew—human sorcery, bindings with blood and knots and silver.

Strifbjorn found if he spoke directly to someone, or intended to be seen, he could make himself plain. Otherwise, the eye and the ear skipped off him like a flat stone off still water. Despite the drama of the situation . . . it was fun, after a fashion.

And so did four days pass.

On the fifth, the Lady and Mingan returned. Strifbjorn had been standing in the corner, whispering to Yrenbend while he worked on a wood carving, when the main doors swung wide. A moment and Skeold jumped to her feet, hurrying to fetch mead for the returning travelers. Strifbjorn took a breath and stepped back into the shadows, while Yrenbend further bowed his head to his task.

Swirling shadows cast out from Heythe as she entered,
following spiraling pathways. It was a moment before Strifbjorn’s eye could be made to give them shape. Yellow-eyed beasts with rust-black hides stank of iron like clotted blood as they paced around the hall.

Strifbjorn froze against the wall, but even the one that passed close enough to Yrenbend to touch never glanced at him.

And he in turn nearly forgot the beasts when he saw his lover’s face.
He’s not yours anymore. You wouldn’t take him back if he begged.

But Strifbjorn still felt the wintry darkness of Mingan’s expression like a kick.

Mingan followed Heythe into the room like a hunting dog at heel, and when she turned and spoke in his ear he nodded once and turned to do her bidding. Strifbjorn could bear to watch no longer. He slid through the open postern door.

The kitchen lay cold. Strifbjorn walked around it, toward the sharp thudding of bladework methodically destroying a pell. In the practice yard, Sigrdrifa beat her frustrations against the wooden dummy.

The log wall of the kitchen was rough and cold. Strifbjorn stepped from the pathway and leaned against it, letting the solid logs and bark cladding support his weight.
I swear on my troth I shall never love anyone again. I cannot bear it.

The pass-unseen proved comforting again; he closed his eyes, bit his tongue and let the tears come.
Were we punished for our passion, then?
The cruelty took his breath away.

Strifbjorn held his breath in shock when he heard Mingan’s low, rough voice behind him.

It wasn’t Strifbjorn he spoke to. The sound of bladework paused, and Strifbjorn looked up in time to see Sigrdrifa
sheathe her sword and turn inside, in obedience to the summons. Mingan gave her no more notice, walking instead toward the sea-cliff with the dreamy, lost expression of one who intends to jump.

Strifbjorn stood and watched. His hands clenched.

The wind smeared Mingan’s cloak sideways, snagging it on the hilt of his sword. More than the world, Strifbjorn wanted the freedom to walk up behind him and straighten the hang of its folds.

Strifbjorn’s lips shaped the Wolf’s name, and at that moment he turned suddenly and cast a searching glance over his shoulder. His ragged profile silhouetted against the tossing blue and silver of a cloud-streaming sky, the ocean writhing white and gray in the distance. For a second he stood poised, a wild thing from a snow-wrapped wilderness, and Strifbjorn’s heart beat hard in his throat. The pain on Mingan’s face cut so hard Strifbjorn took a slow step toward him, heedless of his footprints in the snow.
And if I asked him to come back, am I fool enough to suppose he might?

Mingan continued turning, then, and his eyes swept over Strifbjorn without a skip. Blinded, too. And though he passed within an arm’s length Strifbjorn did not catch his sleeve.

That night under cover of darkness, Herfjotur took Strifbjorn away.

A
rngeir met Strifbjorn and Herfjotur in the paved court of his mead-hall at morning, Menglad beside him with her hand laid on his arm. They were not smiling, although Menglad stepped forward and threw her arms around Strifbjorn’s shoulders once
his feet were firmly on the ground. He held her for a moment, hearing the sound of the sea from where he stood. The sky overhead was painstakingly blue.

“News?” Strifbjorn asked.

She shook her head. “A few more have come. Arngeir has been on errantry, and . . .”

“It’ll be ugly,” Strifbjorn agreed.

Herfjotur patted her steed on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Strifbjorn met her eyes. She nodded.

He looked at the three of them, all gold and silver.
Not a one of us will see the springtime.

“Come on,” he said into the lengthy silence. “I’m of a mind to get good and drunk today.”

Arngeir clapped him on the shoulder and led both newcomers into his hall.
His
hall was roofed in tile, built of stone, flagged under the rushes, and the high windows ran floor to ceiling and glittered with leaded bits of glass. Strifbjorn saw the ocean through the one over his shoulder, and a white-sand, frost-rimed beach beside a long pier stretching out into the sea.

“What do we know?” he asked when they were seated on benches on either side of the long table.

Strifbjorn sipped brandywine, the flavor a sharp reminder, and rolled his head from side to side to crack the tension out. “Too much, or not enough.” The liquor loosened his tongue, and Strifbjorn drank more. “I can get three hundred of us. Perhaps four. Less than half, and Mingan . . .”

Menglad lifted the clay bottle and refilled Strifbjorn’s bowl and her own. “The Imogen,” she said, her jaw working.

Strifbjorn nodded. She let her red tongue slide across her lips. She held the bowl in her right hand, inhaling the fumes,
and brushed Arngeir’s arm. His fond glance left Strifbjorn unable to breathe.

Strifbjorn stared down at the floor. Gray slates, set in mortar: a much more modern mead-hall. Why hadn’t it ever occurred to him to change things? They were good enough; the children of the Light did not require much comfort—

“What do we do?” Arngeir asked.

“We fight like hell,” Strifbjorn answered. “Or we give in.”

“No.” Menglad set her bowl down. She breathed out between her teeth. “A clean death is better.”

Strifbjorn nodded. “For me as well.”

“But a clean life is better still.” Arngeir laid a hand over his wife’s. “What can we do about the Imogen?”

Strifbjorn touched the circlet threaded on his belt. He finished his brandy with the other hand. “If I kill Mingan, we won’t have to worry about the demoness.”

The Wolf

M
idwinter passes with small celebrations, the grip of the ice ever tightening. Rannveig avoids me, but her rust-brown cloak reminds me of clotted blood anyway. Spring seems more distant than ever on the day when Ulfgar, who had left on errantry, braves the journey through a howling blizzard to bring us word from the southern town of Freimarc.

Heythe has provided me a chair behind her own, on the dais where her black hounds laze. When she holds court, I sprawl indecorously across it. Perhaps she could force me to feign decorum, but I think my insolence amuses her.

The knowledge is not quite enough to stop me.

Today, she sleeps, but I maintain my chair. Even from the dais I see how ice cakes the wings of Ulfgar’s valraven, an eagle-beaked creature with the limbs and lashing tail of some great cat. He leads the steed inside to a spot beside the fire trench, where the sdadown rise to grant it pride of place.

Little Muire, wintering at the mead-hall with her troubling student, brings him a welcoming-cup. I study her; the sdada at my feet lifts its head and whines. Muire will not go near the beasts, nor will her student—but she has not left the hall. I wonder if she is loyal to the Lady, despite her misgivings, or if I shall kill her soon.

Her judgment of me is apparent. And matters not.

She is small and courageous as a terrier, and would stand as long against me as that terrier would stand against the undead wolf who rests his chin on my boot. I imagine her blood splashed on the bough-strewn earth. Saliva curdles on my tongue.

I turn and spit it out and rise. The sdada whines and does not follow.

When Ulfgar has drained his cup and placed it back in Muire’s hand, I come forward to clasp his wrist. The waelcyrge withdraws to the table where she sat teaching the woodcutter’s daughter the runes and the craft of writing.

“Tidings?” Ulfgar flinches from the heat of my breath. I smile privately. There are things to enjoy about being feared.

“Bring me to the Lady?”

“She is resting. I shall awaken her.” He stands beside the fire, melting caked ice dripping from his cloak and intricately knotted queue, until I return with Heythe, who is clad in a dressing robe. I bring a bench close to the fire for her while
Ulfgar claims another, and then I wait behind her while they speak. My hand falls on her shoulder as if that is natural, and I find myself staring at it, the broad outline of my knuckles against the white silk of her robe.

When the pleasantries are dispensed with, Ulfgar drops his voice and begins to speak in earnest. “Strifbjorn is rallying the traitors.”

She leans forward. Her scent sharpens. A shift of tension runs across her shoulders; my hand brushes the skin below her necklace and above her collar. I sense expectancy—not misgiving. Her excitement is not what I expected her to feel. I draw my hand back slowly, trying to hide my surprise. My fingers caress her hair—safer than touching her skin, reading her thoughts.

I would rather not know about her lies.

“Where?” She brushes my hand aside, lays the power of her stare on Ulfgar. He swallows hard. I turn aside, relieved to be dismissed. I fetch my cloak and step into the storm.

The wind is bitter, blowing to the northeast, and what sheets from the low-hanging clouds is an icy mixture of snow and rain that freezes in my hair, stiffens my cloak across my shoulders. Ulfgar was hurried indeed to fly in this.

I should stay and eavesdrop. But there is some peace to be found in the storm, and none to be had in the hall.

I have only walked a little across the crusted snow when the shadow of dark wings falls over me. My sister glides from the sleet, sheltering me beneath her pinions as she settles.

I have not summoned her.

She leans in, claws stroking my cheeks. “Hungry,” she whispers. “My brother, you are in pain.”

“No,” I answer. I feel no pain. Only emptiness and dull sorrow, a sensation like a missing limb.

Nevertheless, her lips brush my throat. “Please?” Hissed between teeth like needles. Behind my eyes, a memory burns—the Imogen, ankle-deep in blood-wet snow.

“I will be what you need. This one?” She transforms. Blurring, growing—into the shape of a tall, broad man with platinum hair and a crooked, assessing smile.

Gasping, I backhand her across the face. All my strength cannot even turn her head. “Brother?” she whispers, in Strifbjorn’s injured tone.

“Go!” I shriek over the howl of the wind. “I have nothing for you! Go, and don’t come back until I call you!”

“As you wish it—” She turns and melts like running wax, drifting back to her own black-furred, black-feathered form, and vanishes into the storm. I wheel back to the mead-hall, glancing over my shoulder once to be sure the Imogen has gone.

I do not notice the brown-clad servant who steps into my path until I bowl her over.

I stoop and reach out to lift her to her feet, surprised at first when she grasps my hand unhesitatingly. But her smell comes through the frozen rain at the same moment I glimpse her eyes under her hood. They are not the eyes of a thrall.