An Apprentice to Elves (42 page)

While she prepared her dinner, the wolves tore into the carcass again. There was just about enough to a yearling deer to make one good meal and a light breakfast for the pack, and except for gnawing long bones for the marrow, they were finished before Alfgyfa.

When they had all eaten their fill—or at least as much as they were going to get—wolves and girl relieved themselves, after their nature. Alfgyfa rolled the remainder of the venison up in a patch of flensed deer hide and stowed it in her pack. She shouldered the thing, settled it, whistled a jaunty little tune to alert the wolves that she was moving, and set out at a comfortable, sustainable run.

A belly full of fresh meat made the miles seem easy. She ran the daylight away—occasionally stopping to walk, drink from an icy rivulet, chew some pemmican—and found herself making very good progress. The wolves flickered through the forest around her. She could sense them, always—but she saw them only rarely and heard them only when they chose to howl. As evening drew in, they came and fetched her to let her know they had treed a fat porcupine. She felled it with an arrow and skinned it with her knife, to their very great entertainment, and shared it out among them, reserving for herself the meaty tail. They were appreciative; she got more than one memory-picture of a nose full of quills.

She roasted the porcupine tail on a green twig over coals, since the presence of the pack made her feel secure enough to build a tiny fire without worrying that it would draw every Rhean in the Northlands down upon her. The fresh birch wood gave the fatty meat a tangy flavor.

That night, she slept well-fed and warm. The wolves had a tendency to wrestle and yip at one another as they settled in, but they more than made up for it by piling themselves on top of her fur cloak and blankets and sharing their warmth.

She thought about Idocrase as she drifted off to sleep, dreaming up at the stars strewn thickly on a sky quite visible between bare branches. He would be two days north now, traveling alone as well except for his pony. She wondered when she would see him again.

She might be burrowed into a pile of snoring, farting wolves and a heap of dead leaves like winter in the bottom of a man's heart, but the thought that she would—fate willing—see him again left her as warm inside as did the food and fire.

*   *   *

They burned Mar and Feigr together.

Otter wiped the tears away as they ran down her face, but she did not try to tell herself it was only a wolf. Sokkolfr stood on one side of her, his face as stone as ever it had been; Kathlin stood on the other side, and Otter was surprised to see, when she glanced sidelong, that her face was wet as well.

Kathlin caught her glance and said, unashamed and clear-voiced, “I may not understand, but that doesn't mean I don't
see.
I see the bonds between wolves and men that make what you call the Franangfordthreat, and I curse the Rheans for breaking them.”

“Thank you,” Sokkolfr said.

Varghoss stood at the edge of the gathered crowd (though they had barely enough people to call it that), still sullen, still glaring hatred at Sokkolfr.

“He is wrong,” Otter whispered to Sokkolfr. “We all know it.”

“I know,” Sokkolfr whispered back, but there was no lightening of the stone in his eyes.

She would tell Skjaldwulf about the pyre, she thought. She would tell him that they gave Mar a true warrior's funeral, even with so little of the Franangfordthreat there. She pressed her hands against her face and bit down hard on her lower lip. They were foolish, useless words, but there was nothing else.

Sokkolfr put his arm around her, and she let herself take comfort from his warmth, even though she did not deserve it.

*   *   *

Many hands made for light work, and in the absence of those hands, the work of harvest and storage in Franangford was brutally hard. Otter and the others worked from before the first light of the sun until well after it set, sleeping only when they fell asleep slumped over the dashers in their butter churns. There were beef and mutton to be salted, pork to be smoked, venison to be jerked, and squirrels and rabbits to be potted in duck fat—along with the ducks. There were apples and pears to be binned in the cool cellars, turnips and carrots and parsnips and beets to be layered in sand, cider to be pressed, and beer to be brewed.

There was grain to be threshed and ground, hay to be stacked, and wood to be hauled by the sled-load in to season under roofs—not for this winter, but the next. There were cabbages and rutabagas to stack in carefully balanced pyramids, so the cold air could dry the spaces between them. There was lye to be brewed from wood-ash, which burned her hands if she was not careful when she poured it over cod to make lutefisk or mixed it with fat to make soap.

And there were very few free men to do any of it, so even the heaviest labor rested on the shoulders of women and the heall's few thralls. Otter learned to choose the animals too weak to survive the winter—it was Brokkolfr who taught her, as Sokkolfr had taught him—and she learned to slaughter them humanely, with a quick slash of a blade stropped to razor fineness.

If she worked hard enough, she slept too heavily to be haunted with nightmares in which her wolfcarls lined up for butchery in the place of the sheep and pigs she dispatched down with fair regularity.

Otter welcomed the work, with its backbreaking nature that left her hands and shoulders aching and her legs trembling with tiredness by the end of the day. She moved from task to task in a kind of haze, blued out around the edges of her vision with exhaustion, and she blessed it. She blessed the constant busyness that kept her from thinking of Skjaldwulf and Isolfr and Vethulf and all the rest out there in the cold.

Other women might have felt possessive over usurped authority, but Otter blessed Kathlin for her skill at huswifery and her endless calm ability to know what needed doing next—or to invent a sureness of manner that suggested she had that knowledge, when asked. She blessed Thorlot, too, for her strength and boundless energy. Otter would be staggering with tiredness, trying to recollect what step came next in brewing an ale or possibly just where she had laid down the sack of hops but a few moments ago—and Thorlot would come through the kitchen with an armload of wood, a basket of cabbage to be salted into the massive tubs of sauerkraut pressed under weights in the cellars, walking with light feet and a cheer that almost seemed unforced, and Otter would feel her own heavy spirits lift and her confused thinking clear.

Otter herself tried to project Kathlin's certainty and Thorlot's strength for the other women and the children. Whether she managed it was anybody's guess. Given how plainly she felt the lines drawing deep in her face, she couldn't imagine that anyone else could miss seeing them.

Sokkolfr worked as hard as she—harder, she thought. When she remembered to go to his bed—their bed now—as often as not they missed each other. He made a point, though, of coming to find her every day, once or twice, and holding her close, even if only for a moment, before going back to his own suite of chores.

Thorlot watched this for five days before she nudged Otter and said, “You need to go to him, too.”

Otter blinked at her. She'd been skimming the solids from simmering butter, so that the clarified fat remaining could be used to preserve, and her mind had been pleasantly devoid of worry or even thoughts. She was still gathering her strayed wits when Thorlot said, “Sokkolfr. Men need comfort, too.”

Otter might have been ready with a tart response about the sort of comfort men needed, but a closer inspection of Thorlot's expression told her this was not a ribald jest.

Otter thought for a moment, and nodded. When the butter was skimmed and decanted, then, she wiped the grease from her hands onto a rag and went to find him.

She asked Brokkolfr and three others—who had not seen him—before it occurred to her that perhaps—just perhaps—she might seek him in their room. It was midafternoon, but she knew he had not been to bed the night before.

It was, indeed, where she found him. She slid out of her overdress, round brooches clinking when she cast it over the stool beside the bed, and climbed in beside him. He shifted, so she knew he was not asleep, and she curled herself against his back, snaked an arm around him, and basked in the quieting warmth.

“I'm glad you're here,” he said, when she had almost started to drift toward sleep.

“Thorlot reminded me that wolfheofodmenn are human, also, like the rest of us.” She roused herself enough to kiss the nape of his neck where the hair parted over it.

He laughed, and if she hadn't known him so well she would have thought it easy. “I was trying to think of what to do with Varghoss.”

“Trade him away,” she said heartlessly. Then felt bad and added, “I don't really mean it.”

“It's the ruthless solution,” Sokkolfr said, as if she had not qualified. “Rip the scab off and let the abscess drain. He'll heal or bleed to death.”

“But you want something kinder.”

“His friends are here.”

“His friends are wolfcarls.” She stroked his hair. “Do you think that doesn't prickle at him every time their cubs nip his ankles?”

He held his breath for a long time before he sighed. There was no easy answer, she knew—and he was the housecarl. It was his place to make these decisions with the wolfsprechend gone.

She did not envy him.

She did not envy any of them. All this work, all this worry, and it might be for naught. She never said, and not one of the other women ever said to another, if the men don't come home, we'll have no use for all this food we're stocking. She never said, and not one of the other women ever said to another, if the Rheans come instead, then lest they claim this all, we shall have to burn or foul every bite.

The space by the fire in the kitchen would be empty, still, when she went down again to take up whatever task, whatever tool was handed her. She would not look at it. She would pretend not to notice so many things.

She soldiered on.

*   *   *

Ravens followed the Army of the Iskryne, as ravens so often do. Their wings were tipped with long black reaching feathers. Their eyes glittered on either side of beaks that put Fargrimr in mind of the heads of axes. Erik Godheofodman swore they were the blessing and the eyes of Othinn All-Father. Randulfr said they were after the offal and carrion the army left in its wake.

Fargrimr suspected it was possible for both things at once to be true.

Whether the All-Father was watching over them in answer to Erik's prayers or not, whether it was the kindness of Othinn or the whim of the weather, the cold did not lift once it had settled. Winter came early and it came fierce.

Othinn's kindness was the kindness of ravens. As the cold crept into their boots and the ice crept into their hearts, the Army of the Iskryne bent north into the teeth of the wind. There was little snow, by the gods' charity. So at least the walking was easier than it might have been—as easy as walking into a frozen headwind could ever be. But as it meant there were no snowbanks for wolves or men to burrow into for warmth, Fargrimr wasn't certain the trade was worth the cost.

They traveled, and the year wore on and on.

As they struggled north and west toward the coast, daylight waned until it seemed the sun pulled itself above the edge of the world only long enough to roll along the horizon for an hour or so, then dipped again. Still it was not the darkest depth of the year. The svartalf Tin proved invaluable in the shadowy march of the calendar toward solstice, for she could not only find her way and see in the dark—she could kindle light in stone. And once it was kindled, any man could hold the stone in his hand and use it like a lantern.

Wolfcarls and their brothers were detached from the column and sent south to reconnoiter the location and strength of the Rhean forces. It was a blessing from some god, Othinn or Freya, that they did not need to catch up with the army to deliver their messages. Viradechtis would see what they saw, and she would tell Isolfr anything the army needed to know. Half joking, Fargrimr made a note to himself to make sure every army he commanded from now on had a konigenwolf in residence, and a few pairs of wolfcarl and wolf-brother companions for use as scouts.

Then he paused, and fervently hoped that the gods were experiencing a bout of transient deafness, and that this might instead be the last army he ever commanded. Or stood within a tier or two of being in command of, anyway.

Somebody might have called him”General” once. And he might have laughed. He thought he would not be laughing if they called him so now.

Their scouts sent home the information that the Rheans were bivouacked not far from Hergilsberg, having occupied some villages on the mainland. The scouts speculated—as near as Isolfr could reconstruct it from Viradechtis—that the Rheans, too, were waiting for a freeze.

The walk grew harder, colder, and darker every day. The resupply wagons were fewer and farther between. Draft animals began to die of privation and exhaustion. Fargrimr knew—though he and the other jarls spoke of it only softly and in private—that it wouldn't be long now before men began to die as well.

The sun ceased to rise at all on the day before they reached the sea.

*   *   *

Tin stood in darkness on the cliff overlooking the ocean and felt the icy wind whip her braids back from her head. Her ornaments jangled wildly on her breast, though she barely heard them over the whistle of the gale. Below her, a lonely level plain of stark translucent ice laced with thick white flaws stretched to a flat line against the night, gleaming in the light of the moon and the stars. The reflected light was bright enough that she suspected even a human could have seen to the horizon.

She had seen the sea before. It had been frozen then, as well.

A familiar footstep crunching through the brittle grass told her Isolfr was coming up beside her. She didn't turn, but she did angle her shoulders to indicate that the space beside her was not taken.