By the Mountain Bound (4 page)

A seat of status, a post at table?

The gods shall never grant you.

     
—Lokasenna

The Wolf

S
omething stirs in my breast. An old hurt, an old heat. The bride and groom walk the hall in parallel, separated by the fire trench. They stink of dread, hope, joy.

They stop before Strifbjorn, who stands where the Cynge would stand. If we had a Cynge. I lean forward on my bench, the better to see, queue falling over my shoulder again. At the foot of the hall, the waelcyrge rise, their swords naked in their hands. Flickers of starlight run the dark edges of their blades. Little Muire fidgets out among them, nervy as if she can feel her own difference. I glance away, back at Strifbjorn.

And the couple he will bind into one.

He is laughing silently, as he does. He flicks a glance toward me, then down before I catch his eye. So be it, but the searing in my chest flares, fades, although it never quite all vanishes.

Strifbjorn speaks quietly and Menglad reaches through the fire and places her hand on Arngeir’s. The flames trace around
them. Fire cannot harm us. Strifbjorn smiles now without guile.

“Arngeir.” A louder voice, one that carries throughout the hall: “What say you to Menglad, sister of my heart?”

“That I will have her to wife,” Arngeir replies, and turns to her through the flames. “Menglad, wilt marry me?”

“I will.”

A cheer rocks the high, smoke-scarred beams of the hall, beams hung with the tattered banners of enemies who trouble us no longer.

“Menglad,” Strifbjorn says, “what say you to Arngeir, brother in the Light?”

“That I will name him husband.” Her voice breaks. “Arngeir, wilt marry me?”

He hesitates a moment, stretching our nervous chuckles. And then, “I will; I will,” he cries, and another cheer greets them.

“Then you must kiss,” Strifbjorn tells them, “and seal the bargain.” He laughs; I know he laughs, though only I can see.

The pyre in my chest flares hotter, more terrible. Strifbjorn’s gaze could be a weight, but I train my eyes on the couple about to be joined. I stand and draw Svanvitr as all around me my brothers rise.

Arngeir and Menglad turn face-to-face. He leans forward, steps into the flames that cannot burn us, draws her into his embrace. Coals glimmer dark at the edges of their boots, doused by the pressure of their feet. I see him whisper something to her, and I see her close her eyes. Tears of silver Light leak down her cheeks, staining her ember-colored gown. Arngeir lifts her veil with hands that can be seen to tremble, even at such a distance.

He takes a breath, drops her veil among the coals—where it sparks and is consumed—and draws her into his arms for the ritual kiss.

Their lips touch, mouths open. We all know by instinct how it is done. She seems to swell as he breathes into her open mouth. I hear him moan, see the white-knuckled grip of his fingers on her shoulders. Her arms link around his neck. I cannot smell them.

I smell only the fire.

The pain beneath my breastbone is impossible, sharp as the thrust of a sword. Light—pure, simple, white as the feathers of a swan—flares in my eyes, shudders the length of my upraised blade. A third cheer rises from hundreds of throats; a Light blazes from eyes and swords and open mouths, filling the mead-hall with starlight until the flames seem like shadows.

I would throw back my head and howl, but instead—blood filling my mouth, the sweet white Light flaring about me, surrounded by the company of those I cannot touch—I cheer with the rest of them as Menglad’s fingers knot in Arngeir’s hair, and a blue flare rises about them, eye-blinding. The Light of the bond taking hold, of two souls forged into one, left hand and right, will and action. The band at my throat is tight, tight, tight.

A marriage.

Forbidden me by fate and my own mistakes, forever.

They fall to their knees amid the embers, flames rising over their heads almost invisible in the starlight that fills up the hall, our blades, our bodies.

At last, they part. Arngeir stands amid the scattered coals, extends a hand to Menglad Brightwing, leads her from the hall
and to his waiting mount—a mortal horse, a dapple gelding—as the cheers renew.

I
walk from the darkened mead-hall. Strifbjorn finds me above the border of the forest. Even here, the wind brings sounds of laughter, and softer sounds occasionally, too.

I turn to him as he comes up, towering over me—a kind, dangerous bulk like a well-mannered stallion. “Herfjotur,” I say. “She would understand. Or the little one, the clever one. Muire. She will shatter into wisdom.”

“I’ll not marry,” he says—the old argument.

And I am supposed to answer,
But thou must
.

Not tonight. Tonight I cannot bear it. Tonight there was the girl flinching from my voice, and the waelcyrge’s hand retreating from my touch, her longing for the einherjar beside me so powerful I felt it clean as a blade. Despite the gloves.

Tonight there is the Light, and the shadowed darkness, and the stricture of my collar, and the sting beneath my breastbone of a gulped sun.

I take Strifbjorn by the sleeve, draw him into the shadows of the ancient trees.

He does not struggle. The need in him tingles my fingertips as I lure him on. Soon we reach the bower of a scholar-tree old as the mountain we stand on, old as this young world we made. His body is a bow: strung tight, yet it twists to my touch. I take his face between my hands and, drawing him down in the shadow of the tree, I kiss his mouth.

This is wrong
.

The wrong is done
, I answer.

He pulls me close. At first he teases. We kiss like mortals, tongues and lips and groping hands. His cool mouth, wet, tastes of hops and honey. I press him to the trunk, hauling on his plait like a rein. No decent rider would manage a horse so. He goes willing, opens the smoke-smelling bearskin to enfold me. I cast my cloak over our heads. My hands on his back, broad with knotting muscle. His hands are gentle where mine pinch and maul.

I bring him to the earth, tangled in cloaks, pull him over me like a shelter. He rests his elbows on the ground and cups my shoulders on his palms. I scratch his neck, his shoulders, bite his mouth when he kisses me softly again.

We take each other always in my domain, under the cold staring sky, never under roofs, in beds. Another night, I might shed my garb, strip his. We might take our pleasure skin to skin, lingering over moans and murmurs. The overture, only, for the kiss.

Tonight, I bloody him. His hands pin mine, but I still clutch his braid. It hauls his head down, twists his neck, holds his mouth where I can reach. I strain up, elbows planted, and lick red from his lips. His weight on my wrists creaks the bone.

We move in rut. He presses between my thighs; I hook my heels and thrust against him. Sharp things in the hard earth stab. He binds me. I trap him. Rocking, sliding, hard prick against hardness, separated by cloth and leather. He is cold to my touch.

Naught but fire and sunlight feel warm to me.

He bites my mouth this time. Hard, on a diagonal, tenderness fled. I take his mark, reply with a tongue sharped between his teeth. He welcomes.

I release his plait, break his grip, leave shreds of skin under his nails. And then
my
nails drive hard behind his ears, down his nape. I lift my shoulders from the earth, hang from his sweating strength. He says my name into my mouth. My name. A breath. An offering.

I take it. Hard and fast. Arched to his stone strength, not the slow sharing he thought to offer but driving, sucking, taking, rough and deep and without reserve. Alvitr jabs my ribs, and I pull the sword from his harness, push it blindly aside, unbuckle my own belt so he can slither it and my blade out of the way.

He breathes out and I pull him in. His substance, his core. Light flares, dazzling, muffled by our cloaks, showing his bones through the flesh. Sharp. Sweet. Perfect agony, except it is savor. My name becomes a moan; the moan becomes a growl. He sucks, bites, panting, and every breath I breathe in and give back. His hands on my waist. His weight is an anchor. He fumbles my trousers open and jams his hand inside.

My own breath tangled in his, saying his name into his mouth as his hand works between us. He nurses my tongue, stopping my breath when I would push it into his lungs again. I’d cry out, but his mouth seals mine, tongue and palate pulsing, cruel deferral until he breathes me in again and all starlight blossoms. Him. Me.

Us. Elbows and knees and rough palms in the shattered darkness, mouths locked as I arch against him, a tiny irritating pleasure lost in the sea of the kiss. Blinding. It hurts. It’s splendid. He wrenches my mouth to his, fingers sticky in my hair, still kneeling between my feet. I squirm and kick my trousers down until they catch on my boots. The cloaks suffocate, trap
the blazing against our skin. I pull them tighter, pin the edge under my shoulder. They cannot slip.

The kiss broken, rejoined as we fumble his fly. He tries to make it easy and I won’t wait. Teeth, nails, blunt striving as he presses my legs up and then together and I drag his mouth open with my hands and breathe into him, hard, matching his rhythm, giving back everything I get as he bucks. Making him feel it, take it. Owning him owning me.

I
dress and don my cloak and gloves again. I mean to leave directly after, back to the wolves and the mountain, but there’s a voice. A woman’s voice, and weeping. So softly, and I know her grief is private, but I am drawn. Perhaps the flayed ache under my heart cries for proof that it is not the only pain in the world.

It is Muire. I pause, ferns about my knees, and watch: she is lost in her grief. She must have taken her hair down to brush it, for it falls about her shoulders in ripples from the braids. Darker and smaller than her sisters—as if distilled. She’s stuffed her fist into her mouth to smother sound, leaned her forehead against the rough bark of an ash. Moonlight reveals the marks of teeth on the knuckles.

She still wears white, though she has left her cloak behind. She is barefoot. Something sent her running from the mead-hall half-undone. I watch, voyeur as always, consider going to her. Her grief is private, though, and I suspect her rivals as the source. And she flinched from me.

But then I step back into the darkness and scent her back trail. She came from the direction of the scholar-tree.

The Warrior

T
his is a story that begins and ends with a kiss
, Strifbjorn thought, watching Mingan vanish through shadows cast by tree boughs in a waning moon. He sighed, tasting the Wolf on the outflow. Strifbjorn felt rawness inside. A fragment of what had been lost to their embrace, or given to it. The unbearable, forbidden kiss.

Mingan’d returned a splinter of his own soul, paid the debt in the secrets of his heart. His fierceness and craft fluttered in Strifbjorn like a banked flame, spreading warmth and will. All his wild old strength was there, and all the love he bore. Shadows of his temptations and truths and the choking sorrow he rarely spoke. Strifbjorn would not share him.

Strifbjorn would not be shared.

They’d find a way. Strifbjorn had half a plan, though it all strung on Yrenbend. He could stand in Strifbjorn’s place.

If he would.

But for now, Mingan had evaporated in that way of his. And Strifbjorn? Strifbjorn turned and walked away. Not to the mead-hall. He must wash off the Wolf’s scent, rinse his taste from his mouth before he went back, and he wanted those a little longer. So he picked his way down the cliff path overlooking the sea.

Mingan had wrapped Strifbjorn in his cloak to hide the Light that flared around them, cocooned them in thick woolen folds. The Wolf was in Strifbjorn still. He held that trace like an ember in cupped hands, blew across it, studied the resultant glow.

Strifbjorn thought Mingan didn’t know himself if he only
argued Strifbjorn toward marriage to save face, when he knew that it was futile, or if he really thought he intended to protect Strifbjorn. Or if Mingan’s own longings—Strifbjorn knew; he knew he wasn’t enough for Mingan; he knew the Wolf
wondered
about others—drove what he said about Herfjotur, about Muire, all the women he pressed on Strifbjorn. If you want something you think you can’t have, the next best thing is to talk a friend into it.

In truth, to stay war-leader Strifbjorn needed to marry. In truth also, he couldn’t, for the kiss would reveal their tryst to a wife. And what waelcyrge, even if she didn’t repudiate Strifbjorn in the wake of such a betrayal, would care to be linked to the Grey Wolf? It’d be . . . basest treachery, unworthy . . . to so deceive someone.

They feared him. Strifbjorn knew what that fear cost him.

Better to risk his own place in the Light than inflict that on two he cared for.

The greensward lay wet with dew under his boots; the moonlight turned each drop to cold pewter. Below, the ocean rolled in, stately. He scrubbed his fingers on his thighs, his bruised mouth swollen. He couldn’t bear to heal it yet.

Strifbjorn was sore everywhere Mingan touched him, and glorying in it. He savored the thought for a minute, then ruined the mood laughing at his own melodrama.

It was foolishness. He knew the price the first time he kissed the Wolf, and had decided even then that no one would ever make him regret it. The assignations could be forgiven: A small enough transgression. Something that would not be spoken of. No one would insult two warriors, so long as they showed no other weakness. Even if their brethren suspected.