Hammered [3] (22 page)

Rannveig was enduring a similar transformation. Her cries and snarls of pain were even louder than mine, and I wasn’t holding back. Our clothes eventually tore and the shifting stopped. The pain faded as we lay still under the tree, whimpering. I turned my head and saw much better than I ever had before. Where Rannveig had been, there was a light-gray wolf with white socks surrounded by shreds of Rannveig’s clothes.

I got to my feet—all four of them—and took a deep breath. Smells I’d never known or perceived before flooded my mind. There was a burrow of wood mice somewhere nearby; their droppings littered the small stand of timber in which we stood. I could smell the lingering traces of my horse’s fear on the trail back to Hnappavellir. Thinking of the horse made me realize how hungry I was. I needed to hunt.

Rannveig was up now, and she looked hungry too. She smelled the horse, and we set off after it together. I do not know how we communicated; there must have been something happening on an instinctive level, because as of yet we had no pack link.

Running felt good. It wasn’t an all-out run but rather an easy lope. Rannveig ran beside me, and she seemed to be enjoying herself as well. I could tell we were getting closer to the horse. It was either slowing down or had stopped altogether with nightfall, unsure of the path. But as we grew nearer, we smelled and heard other horses and another smell on top of them: humans. I began to drool, and what was left of my own human thought drifted away as the wolf took over not only my body but the remainder of my mind. The next thing I remember is
coming back to awareness with someone else’s voice in my head.

I asked. I looked around and saw Rannveig nearby, her muzzle bloody. I could feel the blood on my own muzzle and smell the coppery scent of it. Another wolf sat calmly a short distance away. It was a wolf I recognized: Úlfur.

Rannveig came back to herself and processed what was going on. I didn’t recognize the body we’d torn apart, but she did. She leapt back from it and yipped in alarm. Through the pack link, she screamed. ate
my brother!>

He must have come looking for her. I turned to survey the scene; there was another body back along the trail. I didn’t know who it was, because I’d never seen anyone at the farm besides Rannveig, but I suspected she would recognize him.

I asked. She wasn’t paying attention. She was hung up on eating her brother and trying to vomit. I felt sorry for the men but didn’t hate myself; I saw already that I had done nothing. These men were literally killed by wolves, not murdered.

Úlfur said, clearly able to hear my thoughts. I expected she would ignore him as she’d ignored me, but she calmed down right away. His influence as alpha was strong, and she tucked her tail between her legs and confined herself to soft whimpers.

Úlfur said, north, to the other side of Iceland, and settle there. We will grow the Pack slowly and create a territory for ourselves, and we will prosper. When you turn back into humans in the morning, you will feel better. Stronger. You will never be sick again. And I will teach you to control the wolf so that, if you wish, he can be free only one night a month, instead of the three he wants, and you will never lose yourself in the wolf so completely again as long as we have the pack link.>

Rannveig said.

I conceded. I wasn’t sure I’d spend much effort looking for that path. I could tell already I would like being a wolf, and I wasn’t feeling any of the horror she felt. I asked again, now that she’d settled down a bit.

She padded over and looked at what was left of the face. She threw her head back and howled.

I said.

Úlfur added. Rannveig whined and lay down, covering her eyes with her paws in a very human gesture. Her ears were flattened and her tail tucked underneath her.

I said, my mind grasping the possibilities before us.

Úlfur said. you can work in whatever way you wish. And when the moon comes, we will leave town and hunt the seals or the puffins or whatever suits us. In the summers we can go to the lake at Mývatn and enjoy the ducks.> There was little else to hunt in Iceland at the time. The reindeer herds from Norway didn’t establish themselves until the mid-nineteenth century.

By the same token, there were no large land predators in Iceland. The most ferocious was the Arctic fox. No one would believe these men were taken down and savaged by Arctic foxes. When they were found, people would start hunting for whatever had killed them.

Úlfur said. Úlfur was far better prepared for the change to wolf. He had a cache of clothes waiting for him, along with a pack of valuables.

I was incredulous. The reason I was able to travel alone as a courier and trader across the island was precisely because brigands couldn’t make a living on the anemic commerce between settlements.

Looking miserable wasn’t difficult, since the transformation back to human was every bit as painful as it had been to wolf. The good people of Kirkjubæjarklaustur gave us clothes and food, and Úlfur bought us packs to carry supplies in for our long trek. We hiked cross-country between two glaciers to the north side of the island, sleeping in the open at night and fearing nothing. Rannveig spoke little to either of us and often wept at night. She did not want to be comforted.

We broke our journey for a time at Mývatn before continuing on to Húsavík. There we secured jobs on the
coast; we could not join the fishermen or whalers for fear of being at sea when the full moon came around, so we found work elsewhere. We slowly became accustomed to being werewolves and added two more to our pack in Húsavík, another male and another female.

The plague hit Iceland two years later, in 1707. A quarter of the population died. I suggested to Úlfur that we grow the Pack a little bit more quickly than he intended, for every wolf would be safe from the plague and we would be saving lives as well as changing them. This was the first time I became aware of his deep-seated racism and outright bigotry. Úlfur agreed that saving lives while expanding the Pack was a good idea, but only for those of Scandinavian descent. Celts weren’t allowed, nor was any other ethnic stock, and he’d prefer they be pagan as well. I did not understand the preference or the decree that consigned all other ethnic groups in Húsavík to a gruesome death.

When I tried to question him about it, Úlfur bristled and asked if I was questioning his leadership. I was second in the hierarchy, but the three other wolves in the Pack would often talk to me rather than to him. Rannveig, in particular, didn’t talk to Úlfur unless she absolutely had to.

“Not your leadership,” I replied, “only the reasoning behind your decision to exclude Celts from joining the Pack. I know of two sturdy men we could save from the plague at the next full moon.” It was only three days hence.

“Celts would disturb the harmony of the Pack and sow dissension among us,” he said, though I wasn’t quite sure of what harmony he spoke. There was plenty of unrest and dissension as it was, even though our numbers were still in single digits at the time.

When we returned from our run under the full moon, those Celtic men were either dead or dying of the
plague. It was a waste and a poor decision in my view, and it was the beginning of my discord with Úlfur.

“We could have saved those men,” I said, and he snarled and cuffed me, sending me sprawling and turning my eyes yellow.

“The purity of species is pack law,” he growled. “Never suggest again that we alter it.” I thought he had a poor understanding of the difference between races and species, but I quelled the response in my throat and broke eye contact.

“As you wish, alpha,” I said.

The next week I met a werewolf from another pack. His name was Hallbjörn Hauk. “I am the second in Reykjavík,” he said, “under the leadership of Ketill Grímsson. You are the second for Úlfur Dalsgaard, are you not?”

“I am.”

“I wonder if we may speak privately for a time?” he asked.

“There are few places we could go without the Pack knowing about it,” I said. We were a small pack, but Húsavík was also a very small town.

Hallbjörn smiled. “I understand. I will be brief, then. Were you aware that Úlfur Dalsgaard used to be a part of the Reykjavík Pack and was cast out a little more than two years ago?”

“No, I was not. Why was he cast out?”

“He had ideas about racial purity that Ketill and others found distasteful. He would constantly denigrate or taunt pack members of differing backgrounds, including myself. I’m Anglo–Saxon on my father’s side. Ketill told him to take his racial crusade elsewhere and banished him from Reykjavík.”

“Why are you here?”

“To let you and the rest of your wolves know there is another pack in Iceland if you ever feel like moving
elsewhere. You’re welcome so long as you leave Úlfur’s ideas behind. We are a motley crew.”

“That’s it? You came all the way here for that?”

“No. I’m also curious what you know about pack law.”

“Úlfur makes it. The alpha’s word is law.”

“Of course. But what mechanism exists for a change of leadership?”

“I … what?”

“Say that someone in your pack disagrees with the alpha’s word. It may be someone lower in the Pack, or it might be you. There might even be a majority of the Pack that agrees there should be a new alpha. What happens next?”

“I don’t know.”

Hauk snorted and shook his head, as if he’d expected such an answer. “Anyone may challenge the alpha for leadership at anytime. There’s a fight. The winner is the alpha.”

“What kind of fight?”

“The bloody kind. One wolf either yields or is wounded past the ability to heal.”

“Interesting. Úlfur neglected to mention this particular pack dynamic to me.”

“Guard your thoughts,” Hauk warned. “If he hears what you’re thinking through the pack link, you’ll have a fight before you’re ready.”

“He can hear it now,” I said. I called everyone except Úlfur to my house immediately for a meeting. He’d figure it out sooner rather than later, and either he’d show up to accept my challenge or he wouldn’t. There were still people in Húsavík who could be saved from the plague.

Though it was the dark of the moon and our wolves were at their weakest, I announced my challenge to Úlfur through the pack link, then made the painful transformation of my own will and waited for Úlfur to arrive.

I will not dwell on the duel; it was short and brutal and I killed him in less than a minute. I did not realize my own strength until circumstances made it necessary for me to reach for it. But as he died, there was a small chill in the air that I did not remember or have an explanation for until many years later. I became alpha of the Húsavík Pack and then, later, alpha of all Iceland, after a dispute with Ketill Grímsson that has no bearing on this tale. My first act as alpha was to change pack law.

“When we recruit, ethnic heritage will not be a criterion determining a candidate’s worthiness,” I said. “Does anyone wish to question that decision or challenge my leadership?” No one did. They had supported Úlfur’s replacement from the start.

My pack was twenty wolves strong when I moved us out of Iceland after the eruption of the Laki volcano in 1783. We came to the New World, and slowly we added to our numbers with wolves from many different backgrounds. Some of these left my pack and joined others, but many remained. Our largest jump in population occurred during the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918. Until that time, I had not had many occasions to save lives through the gift of lycanthropy—which, as I was well aware, thanks to Rannveig, not everyone considered a gift. But during that time of terrible disease, I was reminded of the plague in Iceland and of our failure to save lives when we could. I was determined not to repeat that mistake this time. And so on the days immediately prior to the full moon that year, I instructed the Pack to keep their ears open for word of possible recruits. I wanted people who were without dependents to care for and who were on the verge of death. They also had to be dying at home in a rural area rather than in a hospital. We could not afford to give our existence away.

Few people matched my criteria, but wolves saved
eight people that year who otherwise would have died of influenza. None of them was Scandinavian.

There was a Native American man and a Mexican one, two Chinese women, a German teenager, a thin boy from India, a girl from England, and an immigrant from the Philippines who’d already lost the rest of his family to the virus. They were all lovely people and fantastic wolves. They enriched the lives of my entire pack, but especially Rannveig’s.

She and I turned out to be very different wolves, you see. I was very dominant and she was quite submissive, despite her occasional flirtations with adventure. I could not take her for a mate, because she was incapable of behaving as an alpha, and the Pack would never accept such a submissive wolf in a leadership position. In fact, while everyone liked her, no one in the Pack wished to be her mate. So I was very glad for her sake when she fell in love with the man from the Philippines.