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Authors: Elizabeth Bear

BOOK: A Companion to Wolves
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I
solfr woke to sunlight pooling on the flagstones and for a moment was aware of nothing except the blissful sensation of finally being warm enough. He blinked around and found Viradechtis nested in the furs beside him, Mar and Kjaran draped across the foot of the bed in a companionable tangle of limbs, and when he turned his head the other way, Skjaldwulf propped up on one elbow, watching him. Beyond him, Vethulf was sitting up, braiding back the long red rivers of his hair.
“This must be the biggest bed in Bravoll,” Isolfr said, awed, and Skjaldwulf laughed.
Vethulf said, “Technically, it's two beds. We lashed them together when it became clear that Viradechtis wouldn't make do with less than both consorts and both wolfjarls when she slept. It's worked out quite well, really.”
“Oh,” Isolfr said and looked away. He already missed his place against the wall, Sokkolfr and Ulfbjorn on one side and Frithulf on the other. His eyes stung again; he bit his lip, and the ropes creaked under the strawtick as he slammed the back of his hand against the head of the bedstead. And Sokkolfr had his widow-woman, and—
And Frithulf and Ulfbjorn would manage, if Ulfbjorn decided to come to Franangford with him. Maybe they'd take Kari as a shieldmate. He needed shieldbrothers, Kari did, and Hrafn needed a pack-within-the-pack.
Think like a wolfsprechend
, Isolfr told himself, to dull the pain of loss. Viradechtis whined, pawing the bedcovers, and Skjaldwulf touched his face gently. “You did what you felt you must, and in truth I think you have saved us all.”
The consequences are what they are,
Isolfr thought, but he turned away.
“Skjaldwulf has been a great comfort these past two months,” Vethulf said drily. “How are you, Isolfr?”
“I am well,” Isolfr said, with a shrug. “My ribs will ache a while longer yet, but …” He glanced at them, looked away. “I am not as pretty as I was.”
“Do you think that matters?” Skjaldwulf said, and this time the gentle touch of his fingers was on the scarred side of Isolfr's face.
“Does it not?”
“Not to me,” Skjaldwulf said.
Vethulf leaned across Skjaldwulf, said, “A man can find a pretty face anywhere, if he cares to look.” And to Isolfr's abiding astonishment, Vethulf kissed him. Then rolled back, stood up, said, “There's a deal of work to be done, Skjaldwulf.”
“Oh, aye,” Skjaldwulf said, winked at Isolfr, and began extracting himself from the bed. Mar and Kjaran hopped off the foot, stretched, shook, and looked at their brothers with the bright eyes of wolves who are quite sure it's time for breakfast.
“You stay here,” Vethulf said to Isolfr. “Rest and mend. I'll send someone with food. And you can figure out how you're going to convince Viradechtis to let you go to Othinnsaesc without her.”
Isolfr looked at the wolf snoring amid the blankets and furs and said, “That will be a trick, won't it?”
 
 
I
t was Ulfbjorn who brought Isolfr breakfast: porridge with honey and the best thing Isolfr had tasted in as long as he could remember. Ulfbjorn sat beside him, too, while he ate, and caught him up on the gossip and small doings of the Franangfordthreat in his absence. And when Isolfr had done, Ulfbjorn said, “Would you like to visit the bathhouse? I can help you, if you need.”
“Did Vethulf assign you as my keeper?” Isolfr said.
“He asked if I would mind helping you,” Ulfbjorn said. “I was pleased to have something worthwhile to do.”
Isolfr winced. “Sorry. I didn't—”
“Broken ribs are enough to make anyone fretful,” Ulfbjorn said placidly. “And Frithulf tells me you took a bad knock to the head, as well.”
“Yes. And, yes, the bathhouse is a wonderful idea.”
“Come, then,” Ulfbjorn said, and gave him a hand to steady him as he stood.
Viradechtis, having licked Isolfr's bowl clean, got off the bed as well, indicating plainly that Isolfr could go where he liked, so long as he didn't think he was going to leave her.
Isolfr luxuriated in the bathhouse while Viradechtis lay outside by the door, out of the heat. Ulfbjorn combed his hair out for him and rebraided it, and Isolfr was astonished to realize he had a wolfcarl's braids now, each as thick as two fingers and reaching nearly to his waist. Not a jarl's son anymore, wolfsprechend.
No, just a fool.
He snorted to himself, but he felt better, and when Ulfbjorn asked what he cared to do, he said, “I want to visit Sokkolfr. If you're busy, you needn't …”
But Ulfbjorn grinned. “Ah, Sokkolfr and his widow-woman. No, it isn't a long walk, and yes, he would be glad to see you.”
It was a brilliantly clear day, the sky blue and high and cold. Viradechtis waddled when they walked, and he said to Ulfbjorn, “Perhaps I've lost count of the days, but should she not have borne her pups already?”
Ulfbjorn shrugged. “She is a little late, but Grimolfr said to remind you when you worried that she has always had long pregnancies. And we think she's been waiting for you.”
“Oh.” He felt himself blushing and said to Viradechtis, “Silly wolf.”
She snorted at him, a snort uncannily like her mother's; Ulfbjorn and Isolfr caught each other's eye and both burst out laughing.
As Ulfbjorn had said, Sokkolfr's widow-woman lived not far from the wolfheall. She was stout and apple-cheeked, and Isolfr was at first taken aback by the throng of children who seemed everywhere underfoot. But when the youngest, a bright-eyed little creature, barely toddling, stretched out her arms toward Viradechtis and cried, “Doggie!” with unmistakable delight, Isolfr began to understand why Sokkolfr might be happy here.
Indeed, Sokkolfr, in a bed by the hearth, though pinched a little with pain, looked almost dream-dazed with happiness. And Hroi, tail waving sedately to and fro as his coat was combed by two little girls, seemed to agree.
Sokkolfr's delight at seeing Isolfr was wholehearted, and got him scolded for trying to move his bad leg. The widow shooed her children out, and Isolfr and Ulfbjorn sat down on the hearthstone to talk to Sokkolfr while Viradechtis lay with her head pillowed companionably on Hroi's flank.
Isolfr found that explaining about the svartalfar did not get easier with practice, although it was easier that it was Sokkolfr he was talking to, who never passed judgment. Sokkolfr in his turn described the circumstances of his broken leg, with particular emphasis on how Hroi had stood over him howling until two wolfcarls from Vestfjorthr came to fetch him on a travois.
Then Sokkolfr looked down, fiddling with a bit of loose binding on one of his blankets. “I sent to Hjordis as you asked. She is well, and your daughter is well.”
“But?” said Isolfr, for Sokkolfr's reluctance was plain.
“She says she cannot come to Franangford, though she is glad you wished it of her.”
“
Cannot
?” Isolfr said. “Why?”
“Her duty is to her family,” Sokkolfr said, with a quick, unhappy, sympathetic glance at Isolfr. “To her mother and sister, and they need her. In Nithogsfjoll, not Franangford. And …”
“Say it,” Isolfr said wearily.
“She is being courted. She says she will say yes. But she
says she will send Alfgyfa to be heall-bred if it is what you wish. And she says she is sorry.”
“She has nothing to be sorry for,” Isolfr said, and was pleased at the steadiness of his own voice. “She is not my wife. She swore no oaths.”
“Isolfr …”
“Thank you, Sokkolfr. I am glad to know they are well.” He stood up, looked to Ulfbjorn. “We should be getting back, do you think? I'm sure there is work for willing …
damn
.” He pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, as if he could block the tears by main force.
Hroi whined. Viradechtis raised her head, then pulled herself to her feet and came to nudge demandingly at Isolfr's midsection.
Cub?
she said anxiously, having picked that much out of the pack-sense.
“No, she's fine,” Isolfr said, rubbing Viradechtis' ears. “She is very well. It's all right, sister.” And he did not look at Ulfbjorn or Sokkolfr, so that they would not see his eyes.
 
 
T
he first thing that greeted Isolfr's ears as he stepped through the door of Bravoll wolfheall was the sound of his wolfjarls wrangling. He dropped into the pack-sense without thinking, found Kjaran's dry canniness waiting for him, and even as he was striding across the hall toward them, Kjaran was showing him what the argument sprang from. Not the words, though Kjaran followed men's speech as carefully as Viradechtis, but the fact that both wolfjarls were strained to the breaking point between the war and the displaced state of the Franangfordthreat and the long absence of their wolfsprechend. Isolfr could feel the damage done to the threat by his truancy, just as he had been able to feel the Nithogsfjollthreat slowly unraveling when Hrolleif was gone.
There is work to be done,
he said to himself.
And now that we have a chance not to lose this war, perhaps there will be time in which to do it.
He had chosen, he acknowledged, coming up beside Skjaldwulf and Vethulf. He could not unmake his choice or choose differently. And truly, he thought, no matter how badly he had handled it, he had not chosen wrongly.
The raised voices broke off abruptly; Vethulf and Skjaldwulf turned to look at him. “Wolfjarls,” Isolfr said.
“What are you doing up?” Vethulf said.
“Keeping you from each other's throats, apparently,” Isolfr said. He smiled at them and did not let himself wince at the twinge in his cheek. “And you two are … brawling like fishwives in front of the Wolfmaegth?”
They looked at each other sidelong, like sheepish little boys. Then Skjaldwulf nodded. “I'm afraid so. We've fallen into bad habits without our wolfsprechend to tend to us.” There was a wicked glint of mischief in his eyes.
Isolfr sighed.
It was going to be a long winter.
 
 
I
n the end, Isolfr did not march with the armies to Othinnsaesc. Ulfgeirr thought it would be ill-advised, and more than that, when Viradechtis caught his intention, she sat down in the middle of Bravoll wolfheall and howled. Howled and howled, like a new-weaned pup, until Mar and Kjaran, and then Kothran and Hrafn and Hroi, and then the entire Franangfordthreat was howling with her.
So Vethulf looked at Isolfr, and Isolfr shrugged. It was settled; Isolfr and Viradechtis stayed in Bravoll along with Sokkolfr and the other wolfcarls and soldiers too injured to fight—and after a day and a night of chaos, the remaining complements of heall and keep marched on Franangford with the svartalfar army beside them.
By the end of it, Isolfr was so tired that he fell into bed—his old place by the wall in the coldest corner, and not the bed in the alcove that Vethulf and Skjaldwulf had built for Viradechtis—and slept the brief afternoon light away, and much of the night that followed. Viradechtis had taken to snoring as her time grew closer, but even that didn't keep him awake, though she insisted on sleeping in his arms.
He didn't mind. He felt small and alone. And it had occurred to him that with all the wolfheofodmenn and the jarls gone, Bravoll—heall, village and keep—was his responsibility, and he had perhaps a dozen wolfcarls to hold it with, counting Sokkolfr who wouldn't be going anywhere soon.
He arose before dawn in the empty wolfheall, more worried than rested, and distracted himself from Viradechtis' irritable pacing by organizing patrols. The wolfcarls took boys—and girls: Isolfr wasn't above learning from the svartalfar, when it came down to it—from the village; any child who could ski was pressed into service, with strict instructions to flee home as fast as possible if he—or she—saw anything that could be remotely considered a troll.
While Isolfr settled himself to wait, Viradechtis went into labor. She spent hours dragging furs and pillows from her enormous bed to the back corner of the storeroom, behind the barrels of salt-fish, and growling at any wolf or wolfcarl who came too near.
Leitholfr, the only other whole-bodied wolfheofodman remaining in Bravoll, sent one of the boys tithed to the most recent Bravoll litter to find Isolfr, and when Isolfr came, at a dead run, Leitholfr looked up from the death-vigil he was keeping by Signy with a strained smile. “I will come with you if you wish it, but … .” His mobile face fell into stillness, and he touched the dull, matted fur of Signy's head with such distracted, heartbroken love that Isolfr said, against the clamoring panic rising in his chest, “No, it is not necessary. It is her third litter, after all.”
“Aye,” Leitholfr said. “Signy has borne ten.” He shook himself. “It is your wolfjarls who should be with you.”
“And they knowing even less than I do,” Isolfr said and managed from somewhere to find a smile. “If something seems to be going terribly amiss, I shall ask at least for your advice, but otherwise, no. Please. Stay with your sister.”
They separated with a glance that lasted a little too long, and Isolfr caught himself looking over his shoulder at the older wolfsprechend as he bent again over his wolf. She
shifted her head to press it against his knee, and Isolfr quickly looked away. A thought struck him, one that was a little bit stunning. Vigdis had not chosen a new bondmate, but she also showed no signs of leaving Skald and the wolfheall. She couldn't keep Nithogsfjoll without a wolfsprechend for long, especially once the war was over.
Could she be waiting for Leitholfr? Was a trellwolf—a konigenwolf—wise enough to plan
that
far in advance? It left him with a shiver up his spine when he thought about it too hard, and instead, he went to Viradechtis' side to keep her from shredding the furs she was arranging into a nest.
The new Bravoll wolfheall was a stone building, more a keep than a roundhall like Nithogsfjoll, with rooms and corridors and three levels—four at the corner towers. All that fastness would benefit nothing if the trolls undermined it, of course, and right now all it meant was that he had corridors and stairs to hurry.
Viradechtis looked up as he came into her chosen den, teeth bared, and then relaxed, hackles dropping, shoulders slumping, when she caught his scent.
“You have been busy, I see,” Isolfr said, and she laughed back at him, even through her discomfort. He rumpled her ears and she leaned into him, and he knew that things were right between them again. She wanted him here, trusted him to be here, and for the first time in days—months?—he wanted to be exactly where he was, doing exactly what he was doing.
All at once, everything seemed easier.
She made a low whuffing sound, neither a sigh nor a moan but a demand, and nosed at her pile of bedding. “I know,” he said, and crouched beside her, helping her arrange the furs. “No soft dirt floors here. I'm sorry.”
She gave him a canny look, and if wolves could frown he would have sworn it was one. He caught her irritation, a brief flash of warmth and familiar smells, cold-iron and cold-ice. He stroked her ears as she sank down onto the furs and the blankets, panting.
He was homesick, too.
Yearling brothers came to the door periodically during the afternoon and evening, their eyes as wide as war-shields, to ask if he needed anything or wanted anything or if the konigenwolf wanted anything. He smiled at their awe and asked several times for fresh water for Viradechtis and once for supper for himself. And Viradechtis paced and grumbled and told him how bored she was, as well as uncomfortable and aching.
Cubs,
he reminded her, and
Cubs
, she agreed with a long-suffering sigh that nearly made him cough ale out his nose.
Perhaps Freya was still looking down on them; it could have been much worse. There were six pups, the largest dog a brindle, and the second-largest and third-to-last born a gray bitch who—blind, grubbing, rowing with undeveloped legs—promptly began shoving her brothers away from Viradechtis' teats. “Konigenwolf,” Isolfr said, and sat back among the bloody furs. There was no mistaking it, even so soon; now he understood how Grimolfr and Hrolleif had known from the moment of Viradechtis' birth what she would be.
“You have done well,” he said, as his wolf flinched from another contraction and then turned to nose her pups. Viradechtis looked at him quizzically, angled eyes bright, panting. He touched her nose, and she grinned, as if to say, not done yet.
The fifth pup was stillborn, the cord wrapped around its neck, and nothing Isolfr could do would rouse it.
Grimolfr could have saved it
, he thought, as he swaddled the small body in scraps of the furs Viradechtis had mauled and laid it outside the storeroom door. But Grimolfr wasn't there and perhaps even he couldn't have cheated Hel for that pup.
The sixth—small, perfectly formed, the pale color of spring butter—was a second bitch. Isolfr shook his head and said, “If the whole pack is of your line, little girl, where shall we go for breeding stock?”
Viradechtis laughed at him, and settled herself for a long, smug adoration of her five living pups: the gray bitch,
the tawny bitch, two dog-pups as black as Mar and the big brindle.
In a coincidence, as beloved of poets, Signy died before the sunset, but not before Isolfr gave the gray pup her name.
 
 
T
hey burned Signy and the dead pup together. Isolfr stood at Leitholfr's elbow, ready to support him, but the former wolfsprechend seemed almost relieved that the vigil was done. It had been a long, cruel winter for him, and Isolfr knew how much of his wolf's pain he had felt. And he needed to be strong, now—there would be time for grieving in the spring, when the army returned. When they knew that they would live.
Messengers came with some regularity, and it was to Leitholfr and Isolfr that the seemingly endless, fiddly task of arranging the logistics fell. In the wake of two years of war, provisions were scarce, and travel in winter a nightmarish near-impossibility. They managed, somehow—sledges drawn by unhappy, exhausted horses, men on skis with tump lines dragging sleds across the worsening snow, the women of heall and village and keep sending whatever they could to the men who had left them behind to fight for their lives. Even Viradechtis' pups grew thin, though Isolfr saw to it that she got half his rations as well as her own, and Leitholfr and Hroi took to hunting when they could, while Sokkolfr stumped about the great hall on crutches, cursing his still-unsteady leg.
The svartalfar and the men liberated Franangford—if liberated was the right term for a village that had been burned to the root-cellars—and Vethulf sent Kari and Hrafn back and forth with bulletins at every opportunity. Kari didn't seem to mind; he was comfortable traveling in the cold and, as he reported with an elaborate shudder that hid a very real discomfort, “They're fighting in the tunnels now.”
Isolfr agreed. If he never saw a trellwarren from the inside again, it would be far, far too soon.
Their solstice celebration was a slender group—Kari and Hrafn, Sokkolfr and Hroi (who had moved back into the wolfheall as soon as Sokkolfr's leg healed enough for him to get around on it), Isolfr, Viradechtis and five squeaking, staggering pups arranged in a basket by the hearth in the great hall, Leitholfr, and the three yearlings who were not on patrol, as well as the noncombatants remaining in Bravoll, village and keep, from the blacksmith's five-year-old son all the way up to Inge, the venerable and terrifying mother of the jarl, who held the keep in his absence.
The keep's crippled fiddler, old Thorsbjorn, played over the meager feast, and on the swept floor of the wolfheall women danced with little boys and half-grown girls. Isolfr danced once or twice as well, but mostly sat with Sokkolfr and their wolves by the fire.
“I don't know what we'll do for tithe-boys, either,” Isolfr said, gesturing at the pups. The boys should have been there already, sneaking glances at the basket, sniping and teasing each other over the possibilities of who would bond one of the bitches. Instead, all the boys of an age were already in Franangford or marching on Othinnsaesc. Old enough for the wolves was more than old enough for war.
Sokkolfr followed his motion and said, quietly enough that Leitholfr—who was tending the winter-skinny boar turning on the spit over the fire—would not hear it, “We'll have whatever's left when they get home. There will be wolfcarls who have lost their wolves, as well.”
Isolfr shook his head and looked down under the weight of Sokkolfr's earnest stare. “They seem so much younger than we—”
Sokkolfr grinned, and reached down to stroke Hroi's ears. “We managed,” he said. Which Isolfr could not argue.
Isolfr patted his friend on the shoulder and pushed himself to his feet. “Rest your leg,” he said. “I'm going to check the solstice fires.”
Sokkolfr nodded, but Isolfr felt him watching as he left.
It was all right; he'd be back shortly. He just felt the need to make sure the fires would last through a night when the sun did not rise.
He made the rounds of the fires, shivering: north, east, south, west, exchanging formal blessings with the fire-watchers as he went. A broken-armed wolfcarl to the north with a pair of eager town-boys; two widow-women to the east; two more wolfcarls to the south, one of whom had lost his sight and the other his right leg below the knee; Thorlot, the Bravoll wolfjarl's lover, to the west, with her eldest son. She was the daughter and sister and widow of blacksmiths and knew a good deal of practical smithing herself; Isolfr had had cause to be grateful to her more than once already, and the winter only half over. She was a big woman, her forearms and shoulders muscled like a man's, her face unexpectedly beautiful. It occurred to him, seeing her lit by the solstice-fire, that this was what the waelcyrge must be like, and he shivered a little at the thought.
They exchanged the blessings, the boy blushing mortified scarlet when his voice cracked halfway through, and Thorlot said, “How goes the night, wolfsprechend?”
“Well, I thank you. And you?”
“Cold.” She grinned. “Will you share a cup?”
“Gladly,” he said, ridiculously pleased at the invitation.
She had mulled wine and a stack of wooden cups. “'Tis for the patrol when they come in,” she said, “but I always take care to make more than enough.” She and Isolfr saluted each other and drank, while her son checked the solstice-fire with earnest concentration.
“How do your sister's cubs?” Thorlot asked.
“Very well,” he said, and could not stop the smile that spread across his face. “They'll be opening their eyes soon, and then matters will become truly exciting. I remember what Viradechtis was like—”
He broke off. He had been, purely out of reflex, watching the forest over Thorlot's shoulder as they talked, and he saw a small figure on skis break from amid the trees and
make for the palisade, going at a tremendous clip. “That child's going to break her neck.”
Thorlot turned, her son coming up beside her, and thus they were all watching when the girl pulled up, waved her arms frantically, and shouted, “Trolls! Two miles west! They're coming up out of the ground!”

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