By the Mountain Bound (9 page)

“Ah. Indeed.” Strifbjorn brushed Mingan’s hair back from his face, hiding the gesture with his shoulders. They shared a moment’s regard.

“I’m leaving,” Mingan said quietly. He stood, casting about for his clothes. His blade leaned against the wall by the narrow head of the bench.

He was already pulling on his leathers when Strifbjorn stopped him with a touch. “Leaving?”

“Back to the mountain. I cannot stay. I cannot breathe this air.” He gave Strifbjorn a look of feral desperation. Strifbjorn backed away.

“As you wish, brother of my heart.” The war-leader pitched his voice low, but Mingan reacted to it. He fumbled his shirt off a hook in the turfed log wall.

Lacing the collar, he turned back. “Come and find me,” he whispered. “Soon.”

He caught up his cloak and his blade and was gone out the door. Not running, still he appeared as if he fled.

The Wolf

A
t the edge of the wood, the pack greets me. I have been gone too long, and they are fearful at the strange stinks that
cling. The odor of my own blood that hangs on me. They like not my unbound hair, nor the scent of a woman on my skin.

We run. After, they pace me to our denning-place. No flowers wait this time, and I am sad. The roughly cleaned corpse of the buck begins to stink despite the chill. I plait my hair. Then take the carcass by the antlers and drag it where scavengers cannot get it and it will not foul the den.

When I return, the wolves quiver on tiptoe, hackles raised. Each faces west, inland, across the shoulder of the Ulfenfell and down into the valley, where a village called Dale lies. I swing into the wind and I, too, catch the scent.

Strifbjorn. Already.

I did say “soon.” I leave my not-brothers and go to meet him on the trail, smelling the trouble on him before I come close. The veering wind brings me another scent—the flower-gathering maiden. But distant still. She must wait, if it is me she has come for. I step from shadows, into the presence of my brother. He smiles when he sees me, his eyes tired. “Are you well?”

“Well enough.” I close the distance. He reaches out roughly and pulls me into his arms. The embrace should be suffocating, but it comforts and enfolds. I lean my head on the soft, smoky bear fur around his shoulders and sigh.

“You frightened me,” he says into my ear.

I look up. “The terms of the combat were not death.”

“But you would not yield.”

“No. I will not yield.” It is good to stand in his arms. Rarely may I touch him thus. “You should not be here.”

He steps back, takes my elbow and leads me to the arching
root of a gnarled oak. He straddles the root, leans against the trunk. He pats the bark between his legs. “Where should I be?”

I swing a leg over the root and sit. He pulls me back until my head rests on his shoulder. “Bringing the brethren together. Finding a high point, a place of power that they will serve you even in the face of this Lady. What does the Light say of her?”

“I’m granted no
swanning
,” he admits. “The Light is silent.” His chest shifts against my shoulders. He passes a drinking skin. It sloshes when I take it, and I raise it to my mouth and jet expected wine or mead down my throat.

I cough ferociously on what I get. Eyes streaming, I complain. “Brandywine? You could have warned me.”

He reclaims the skin, drinks. “I thought the occasion demanded hard liquor.”

Another laden silence follows, during which I drink again. More than I should. “Thee,” he says against my ear, changing tone. “I have had enough of leadership, Wolf. There is another to take my place now. Let me come with thee.”

Temptation. I taste it on a tongue numb from the liquor he is taking out of my hands. Could he roam here, with the pack, with me?

No.

“Thou art what thou wert made for, Strifbjorn.”

“If I were not . . . what I am.” He stops, drinks, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. I retrieve the skin and copy him. Liquor sharpness stings my sinuses, thickening my sense of smell.

“If I didn’t need to maintain face. We wouldn’t have to hide this. In the face of thee, I do not care for my fame.”

I drop the wineskin into my lap. He glides sideways and
slips his fingers and then the palms of his hands up the sides of my neck, outlining the edges of my ears. His hands are callused and rough from the hilt of his sword. He tilts my head aside and bends down, bear fur tickling the back of my neck. I shiver at his breath, moreso as his mouth slides down the side of my throat to the high collar of my shirt.

“It’s thee I want,” he whispers.

Thou wouldst tire of my world quickly, my love.

He ignores me, pulling my shirt collar open, letting me feel his teeth lightly just below the circumference of the ribbon around my neck, right where my shoulder begins. The wolf in me shivers from the submission implied by accepting the caress. Something else exults. I turn away, press my cheek into his shoulder, baring my throat to him.

“Yes?” he murmurs against my skin, his mouth cool and gentling. I nod, unwilling to break the moment with speech, breath catching in my throat. His hand grazes my neck. He unfastens my cloak and lets it slither between us. Then he’s standing, a hand on my shoulder to steady me, leaning down to nuzzle my ear while he fumbles his bearskin loose with the other hand. It falls.

Among tangled roots, bare branches spread high, the earth almost frozen, I recall a hollow beneath another Tree entirely.

The Warrior

S
trifbjorn kissed Mingan, and at first his mouth was stubbornly tight. But he knew how to coax until it softened—Strifbjorn made a sharp noise and stroked Mingan’s hair—and
he relented and kissed back. He nibbled Strifbjorn’s mouth open and probed with his tongue, cupped his cheeks in knobby hands and pushed thick, broken nails into his hair. His own was but crudely plaited, three uneven strands and not the four or five Strifbjorn used to take up the length when he did it for him. He found the end and worried the bit of rawhide from it, wishing he could pick the knot in his collar apart as easily.

“Do you have a comb?” Mingan asked.

Words against Strifbjorn’s mouth. He inhaled them and licked his lips, the air chill after his heat. The creases at the corners of his eyes folded together, eyelashes meshing at the corners of his squint.

Strifbjorn pulled a wooden comb from his pouch and gave it to him. He ran a ragged thumbnail along the teeth and cocked his head at the sound. Mingan made Strifbjorn kneel on the bearskin, back against his knees. Laid alongside, Alvitr was unhooked from his belt; Mingan ran his hand along Strifbjorn’s queue. The leather tie was swollen. He unknotted it with his teeth. Then, with deft motions, he broke the plait, smoothed kinked sections over Strifbjorn’s shoulders and began to comb each one bottom to top with short strokes. He held the comb in his left hand and supported Strifbjorn’s head with his right, and Strifbjorn eased at his touch, feeling as if breath filled his lungs completely for the first time in days.

Even when Strifbjorn’s hair fell smooth, rippled from the queue over his shoulders and down to the small of his back, Mingan ran the comb through it again and again, like a mortal lover combing out the lice that never troubled einherjar.

No, it wasn’t fair.

Strifbjorn reached up and took the comb from Mingan’s
hand. Mingan parted the mane over Strifbjorn’s nape and pressed lips and teeth to his spine. Strifbjorn shuddered. Strifbjorn covered Mingan’s hand with his own and made him change places.

Mingan’s hair was vital, wiry, the silver coarser than the black, so it sprang out among the dark strands like spray leaping from a hard-running river. It was longer than Strifbjorn’s, and thicker. Strifbjorn had to make him stand again and kneel behind him to comb the ends, which brushed the tops of his boots when unbound.

When Strifbjorn had it all combed to his satisfaction, the bits of twig and leaf picked out, the strands covered Mingan like his discarded cloak. Strifbjorn tossed the comb to one side and put his hands on his hips, the gray leather trousers as warm as living hide. Strifbjorn turned him. He tucked straying locks behind Strifbjorn’s ears.

It’s harder to work someone else’s belt, but Strifbjorn fumbled Mingan’s open, pushed his trousers down and held him steady while he balanced against his shoulder to toe out of his boots. “Shirt,” Strifbjorn said, and Mingan stripped it off. His hair showered over Strifbjorn in disorder, mingling, brushing shoulders and arms. His scent enfolded Strifbjorn with it, pungent as musk.

Mingan threaded his fingers through his gray locks and Strifbjorn’s light ones, knotted his hands, holding his head between his fists. Mingan tried to hurry Strifbjorn, to make it rough and sharp and quickly over. That was always his trick, his way of keeping his distance and keeping control. But sometimes Strifbjorn could coax him into being softer, and he needed more just then.

Strifbjorn didn’t let Mingan control him this time. He tasted of salt and sex, and after a moment he stopped trying to manage Strifbjorn and let him do his will, though the grip of his hands didn’t ease. He shuddered and grunted through his teeth and Strifbjorn sucked him, though he gulped slippery bitterness. He kept at it while Mingan rocked against him, still hard, until he finally hauled Strifbjorn’s hair and his savagely enough that Strifbjorn let him pull away. “Lie down for me,” he whispered, harshly. Strifbjorn rubbed his face against his belly behind the coarse rasping veil of hair.

Strifbjorn let go of Mingan’s hips and unlaced his own cuffs, shook Mingan’s hands from his head and pulled off the shirt. He stood and tossed boots and trousers atop Mingan’s, then kicked the bearskin cloak out flat for a bed. And as he had asked, Strifbjorn lay down and helped Mingan fuck him, naked under the cold mountain sky, the light from his eyes and the light dripping from his collar beading on their skin like a dew of sweat.

The Wolf

S
ome time later, Strifbjorn lifts his head from my shoulder, grins at me. “Thou’rt the one who insisted we keep her chair on the dais.”

My lip curls slightly. “It’s thee they’ll follow.”

“I know.” Anger creeps into his voice. “This hiding demeans us.”

“And they need thee.”

Slowly, he nods. “When this is settled. When the Lady has her hands on the reins and we see that she’s fit to rule . . . I’m done. Six hundred years is enough to play war-leader.”

“If thou dost admit to me, thou wilt be outcast.”

“I don’t care.”

I do.

He reaches for the comb. “Come here. I’ll do a better job on your hair.”

H
e does, a ladder plait in five strands that hangs only to the small of my back. My heart is troubled, but my step is lighter when I return to the pack, at dusk. I know before I reach the clearing under the boughs of the copper beech that something’s wrong.

The scent of the girl in the russet cloak hangs on still air. I skip a stride, stumbling into a run, but halt amid the big tree’s curtain of autumn-crisped leaves before I venture into the clearing. Cautious of ambush.

She is backed up to the bole, the pale cub crouched laughing at her feet. The rest of the pack—farther away—sit, lie or pace about her. The red bitch sidles up to me and thrusts her cold nose against the palm of my hand. Strifbjorn’s scent does not make her snarl. She is accustomed to it.

I tousle her ears and focus on the girl.

She stands on the tips of her toes although the pale cub is not close. His plume wavers in amusement. Her eyes are shut. Except when she steals a glance at the cub, then closes them again.

I walk into the clearing. The adolescent cub stands as I come up, laughs once more and strolls away. He vanishes into the darkening wood. The girl’s eyes are closed.

“Thou art safe now, lass,” I say.

She jumps, clutching her small bundle to her chest, and opens her eyes. “M-Master Wolf!” she stammers, glancing around as if seeking the cub. Then her eyes come back to me and widen.

I chuckle, wander a step closer. “Fear not. Thank thee for the flowers and the cake, but thou shouldst not be here. Darkness comes.”

“Oh, aye,” she says. “I came . . . to thank you in person. And to ask, are you . . . a woods-spirit? Must we honor you some way?”

I crouch amid the leaves. She comes a step away from the tree, feeling safer as I make myself smaller. It works with most animals, and humans are no different. “I need not be propitiated.”

“Hagrim the Baker has told my father that you are an evil spirit, and that he saved me from you.”

“Thy father has not heard of the children of the Light?”

It takes her a long while to decide what she will say. “My father is . . . he is a good man, Master Wolf. But he is angry.”

“Angry thou wert saved?”

Her eyes tell me that there is more, but she will not say it. At last, she shakes her head. “He wishes me to marry Hagrim, who is a widower. And Father says the einherjar do nothing to earn what they take from us.”

Interesting.
“And what does thy mother say, lass?”

Her pale face grows whiter. “My mother died when I was but little.”

“Should I be concerned by thy father’s anger? Does he threaten thee, lass?”

She lifts her chin. Young, just barely old enough to be thinking of marriage and babies. She still has the pride of youth on her. Hard work and birthing will strip that quickly enough. The human fate—and no matter how we strive to better it, they are at the core doomed to suffering and a quick death.

Better to be a beast in the wood.

“I thought to tell you that he might threaten you, Master Wolf. And my name is Rannveig, if you do not mind. The woodcutter’s daughter.”

“Rannveig,” I say softly. She steps toward me. “Return to thy village; look to thy safety. I thank thee for the warning.”

She seems to want to say more, but it takes her time to shape the words. “And there is nothing more I can do to thank you, Master Wolf?”

I stand and mince a step toward her. She startles back against the tree with a gasp.
Braver than many, even to make the offer, to come here alone.