By the Mountain Bound (13 page)

Blame not blindness where passion binds

Witching wiles weed-twine the wise

Where fools walk unwaylaid

                   
—Hávámál

The Wolf

A
bove the cliff over my shoulder, the sun sets. I see it not. I move along the foot of the Ulfenfell on the narrow strand, stare at the ocean. From the mountain, my pack is calling.

They sing to me, as my brothers sing, but I cannot go to them. My task lies here with Strifbjorn, with Yrenbend and the rest. Unbidden, my thoughts settle on the quiet historian. When I turn them back, they circle on and fret after Heythe’s offer, the strangling cord at my throat, the heat that burns under my breastbone. I will be on fire until I die, on fire and never burning.

I taste salt on the wind. The moon rises over the sea, not gibbous but larger than a sliver. I walk until it’s high in the sky, casting a fall upon the water. Miles I walk, far from the mead-hall, until I come across the tide-washed causeway and under the lights of the fishing town of Northerholm.

There are still mortal men whoring and dicing about the town’s three dockside taverns. It will do them no harm to be reminded of the nature of the world.

I step to the surf-edge. Waves wet the toe caps of my boots. I pitch my voice low, recite an old spell. “By moonlight, by earth and by ocean, Bearer of Burdens, I summon you.”

Moonlight like mercury puddles on an ocean lain smooth. Faint cries ring from the docks. A pillar of neck rises, shedding glowing water, reeking of salt rot and ocean bottoms. It sways heavily, starlit eyes gleaming in a tendriled head—translucent, wrought of starlight and air, but the wind of its gestures dusts my skin.

The voice of the Dweller Within is soft and sure. L
ITTLE BROTHER.
S
UMMONED
, I
COME.

“It was thee summoned me, my brother.” All I wish to say—of Strifbjorn, of Heythe, of the unicorn and of the pack—is lost in me. I have not words for the things that close my heart like the ribbon closes my throat, that all-but-stop speech and thought. “How may I serve?”

W
ITH THY HEART AND THY BODY, TO THE FULLNESS OF THY ABILITY
. T
HOU ART THE FIST AND THE OPEN HAND, LITTLE BROTHER.

“Heythe?”

O
F HER
I
MAY NOT SPEAK, UNLESS THOU OFFEREST SACRIFICE.
T
HOU MUST THINE OWN WAY FIND, AND THE WAY IS CLOSE.

“Mere speech of her would be an intervention?” A foolish question, already answered.

The Serpent regards me wisely. I breathe myself full of sea-scent, and bow my head.

“I have been indiscreet, Brother. I have failed you.”

Its benediction is a cool wall of mist. T
HE TIME FOR GUIDANCE IS ENDING.
T
HE TIME OF CHOOSING HAS BEGUN.

“I regret . . .”

N
AY.
R
EGRET NOT.
C
HOOSE, AND ACT AND KEEP THY TROTH OVER ALL.
It bowers me. I crane back to regard the whiskered jaw, the softness between the scales. W
HAT
I
MAY NOT REVEAL IS YOUR DANGER.

I can no more than hint at Strifbjorn. If I were a true child of the Light, I would confess, forswear, atone. But I am a wolf in einherjar’s clothing, and my jaws are bloody.

“Even where I have pledged it unwisely?” I ask.

H
AVE YOU?

I swear the great creature winks at me, tilting its long jaw. And then it slides into the looking-glass sea, and the men along the docks make their noises of fear and awe once more.

I turn and draw Svanvitr, saluting the men impulsively. The blade sparks like dry leaves blown into the flame, foxfire running her length, casting my shadow long on the strand behind me. A cheer arises from the dockside: they are too far to see the darkness of my hair, or the detail of the cloak that is gray and not indigo.

They might not cheer so, otherwise.

With that heavy on me, I douse Svanvitr and sheathe her, turning back up the beach. Turning away.

Still, the cheers ring in my ears for a long while.

I
know Heythe’s waiting for me before I see her. Her green herbal scent rides on the sea breeze, all out of season in the biting chill. Her scent alters like another woman’s hair, and yet I always know it for her. I could step into shadows and dodge her. Run to my mountains and my pack. But longing binds me sure as my collar.

I mince closer like a wolf in doubt what den it enters. Heythe rests on the rough-hewn stone steps leading to the top of the bluff, one elbow propped behind her, looking out to sea. The night washes her of color. Her hair is pewter, her clothes all gray, her irises opaque and dark.

She sits up as I approach but remains blocking the stairs.

“Master Wolf.” Her smile crinkles the corners of her eyes pleasantly. “How nice, you happening upon me.”

And I am no longer certain if she was waiting for me, or merely enjoying the ocean and the night. “Evening, Lady.”

She pats the step beside and below the one she sits upon, but I stand fast. She arches an eyebrow and does not repeat the gesture. “A lovely night.”

“It is.” I turn away and stare at the rippling waves.

She holds the silence a few moments. I can all but feel her cup it in her hands. Her breathing slows.

“I almost died out there,” she says, exquisitely soft.

“But how can one such perish?”

“I came a long way, and I was—you have heard—pursued. The journey was not easy.” From the corner of my eye I see her shake out her hair. “My falcon cloak brought me over the sea, but did not last to land. I’m a strong swimmer, but not that strong.”

“I warrant, you are lucky. That Strifbjorn happened by, and that you are, as you say, strong.”

Seeing that I will not come to her, she stands. She comes down the stairs and halts just outside reach. She shivers. “I owe him a great deal.”

Though I turn, now her eyes find the tossing water.

She wears a surcote over a kirtle, the whole rope-belted. It is a modest costume, one not suited to the winter’s chill. And
unlike myself, she feels the edge in the air. I draw my cloak from my shoulders and drape it around hers.

She protests. I will not hear her.

“I need it not. The cold does not touch me.”

Strange that a goddess should shiver, but what know I of goddesses? She smiles again, and draws it closer, fingers tightening on thick fabric. The silver chain of the clasp dangles free, swaying between her breasts.

I look away.

“Have you thought on my offer?”

Cold air cools the fire in my belly. “I have thought.”

“And?” She slides a gray-sleeved arm from under my cloak, closes the distance to rest it on my upper arm. She leans in to me, nostrils flaring. Does she test my scent?

“Aye,” I say. “I will do this thing. But I will not betray my war-leader.”

She smiles. “He’s more than your war-leader, Wolf.”

I pull away, pulse racing against my collar. “What mean you?”

“He’s your friend as well.”

“Aye,” I say. There is no heart in me, to make my voice sound alive. “As well.”

She might be toying with me. She laughs; she might also be sincere. “Mingan. You look quite wild. You’re not selling your soul, wolfchild, only aiding your master.”

“My master. Yes.” And I say I hate their fear of me, the mortals, the other einherjar. But now I face a fearless woman, one who I know can defeat me. And I am angry that she will not be cowed. I begin to turn, to brush past her, and halt. “By your leave, my Lady?”

“Of course. Your cloak?”

“Keep it until you come inside.”

She dimples prettily, clutches it closer. “Thank you.” And turns back to the sea as I hurry up the steps, feeling I go with tail curled tight between my legs.

The Historian

A
lthough Dale was not far down the mountain, I had already all but walked the brief winter day out when I got there. It was a market day or some human holiday, which explained why those men had been wandering the Ulfenfell. Some stalls were still open to the slanting light of a westering sun.

Chill came with evening, and my measured paces carried me along a frozen, rutted street fronted by rows of thatched or bark-roofed cottages, each with a narrow window or two. Single doors, elevated to provide for snowfall, led out directly to the thoroughfare. I hadn’t come to Dale in many years, and with the exception of a house torn down here and a new one built there, it didn’t seem much changed.

There wasn’t usually much here among the humans to intrigue me, and I couldn’t say what twinge of the spirit made today different. It didn’t come on a
swanning
, nor the summons of a perceived death. Rather, a nagging like something left undone and unremembered picked at the back of my mind.

The creeping sensation was reinforced as the villagers thawed away before me like snow in spring sunshine. I was not accustomed to the doubtful glances and the quietly withdrawn children, or the way the street cleared out before me. Furtive
watchers tracked me through unshuttered front-room windows; a prosperous-seeming woman in a blue surcote hurried across the high road to escape me.

Something had happened here which should not have.

In the square, I stopped before a greengrocer’s stall that was not yet shuttered and made a show of examining his apples: a half-dozen varieties, streaked or speckled, red and green or gold.

“A dozen of these, Master Grocer, if you please.” I showed him the ones I wanted. The strains changed so often, over the centuries, that I never could remember the names.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes when he gave me the apples in a sack. When my fingers brushed his in passing a coin, he flinched and dropped it. Then he apologized profusely while I ducked down and recovered it from the frozen ground. “Your pardon, Bright one.”

“No apology required,” I said, and slipped the coin into his apron, for his hands shook as if palsied. “Master Grocer, look at me.”

He did, after two cringing attempts, trembling. “Bright one?”

“Be not afraid. My name is Muire. Tell me what endangers you, candle-flicker, and I will set that danger aside. I vow it on my sword, Nathr.”

He took a breath and looked deeply into my eyes. “I’m afraid of you, Bright one.”

I . . . recoiled.

I would not have welcomed it, but I might have expected minor rebellion or unease, although he did not seem the type. We who defend the world must always live in it. But
fear
?

Of me?

“Afraid?”

He nodded, eyes closed. I rolled my shoulders against the weight of my baldric and chewed on my words before I spat them out. “Pray tell, Master Grocer,
why
?”

“Another waelcyrge was here.” He stopped speaking, and I waited him out, quietly eating an apple until he started again. It was crisp and sweet with the frost, juice like wine running down my chin. I sighed and offered him another coin. He stared, as if it glowed with heat, and glanced around.

“Carter hits his woman a little. Hit.”

“My sister intervened?”

He shrugged with big, expressive hands. “She could have thrown him out and married again, see? Pretty enough, one little girl. Good cook and a hard worker, but she stays. You know?”

I spat out a seed. “Her choice?”

“These things are . . . , what they are.” The shrug widened into helplessness. “The Bright one—she came through yestereve. Heard some shouting and went into the house. Dragged Carter out in the square, not fifteen feet from where you stand, Bright one.”

“What did she do?” I dropped the core in the gutter.

“She . . . ate him.”

I stared, stricken, but he seemed to take it for a demand to talk on. He blanched, and stammered. “And when Carter’s wife ran out to defend him, she struck the Bright one and . . . she ate the woman, too.”

It took me a long time to find my voice. “What do you mean, Master Grocer, when you say ‘
ate
’?”

His hands pinwheeled about each other and he stepped back, from my expression or the intensity of my gaze. Reflected starlight paled his face; my eyes must be afire.

How dare they?

“The Bright one—begging your pardon—put her mouth over Carter’s mouth. Kissed him, sort of. I don’t know her name, Bright one—I’m sorry.”

How dare they?

Mortals had difficulties telling my brethren apart. “And then?”