By the Mountain Bound (6 page)

She blinked, glanced down at her hand—white-knuckled in Skeold’s hair—and then at Strifbjorn. Meticulously, as if it pained her, she unclenched one finger at a time. She knelt back, stood, offered a hand to Skeold, quite as innocent in her nakedness as any babe. Ulfgar stared, and Strifbjorn did not blame him.

Skeold, after a moment of shock, took the hand and allowed the stranger to pull her to her feet.

“The giants pursue me,” the stranger said, and tossed her hair over her shoulder, her breast rising with the sweep of her arm. “By the all-Father, I pray I’ve come in time.”

Fenrir the Wolf-son of Loki, caged from a cub, grew so fierce that none would approach to feed him save Tyr, bravest of the gods; it was decided that the Wolf must be chained away from the realm of gods and the world of men.

The advice of dwarves, clever craftsman, was claimed. They wrought a binding-cord from the six improbable things: the footfalls of cats; the beards of women; the sinews of bears; the breath of fish; the spittle of birds; and the roots of a mountain. The cord was flat and smooth as a silken ribbon—barely wider than a thread—feather-soft to the touch.

Unbreakable by god or man. Or Wolf.

The Wolf

I
expect the girl in the russet cloak. But it is Herfjotur who finds me a few sunrises later. She leans against an oak and waits for me within the pack’s range. I find her by her scent.

The pack comes, yellow-green eyes unholy in the light of the dawn. I stalk toward her, drawing on my gloves. “Sister.”

She smiles more calmly than most. “Wolf.” She crouches, slim and strong in her white leather, and extends the back of her hand to the boldest wolf, the ghost-gray adolescent. One
gold braid falls over her shoulder as she bends. She shoves it back. My gaze slides down the arch of her neck, the delicate ear. I feel . . .
disloyal
.

She looks up. “Lovely.” And stands. “I bear a message, Master Wolf.”

“Mingan.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Indeed.” At least the smell of concern on her isn’t fear. “Strifbjorn requests your company. And counsel. This afternoon—he cannot get away now.”

It is not love or even lust I feel. It’s melancholy for something I can never be. Yes, I am powerful, and yes, I could win a wife by strength of arm—but I can never be a part of their family.

I should be grateful for what I do have. Strifbjorn, and the pack.

She leaves me with a bow.

I watch her glide down the trail. If Strifbjorn would not court Muire, perhaps I’d pursue her myself. Perhaps—

Whatever she overheard on the mountainside, she has kept it to herself. Or I would have learned of it by now.

W
hen I descend the mountain later that day, Strifbjorn waits for me—unobtrusively, by the trail he knows I favor. He finds me always, in darkness or in daylight. He carries a splinter of my soul lodged in his heart.

From the shard of him I bear, I can read worry in the pretend-calm of his face.

“Trouble,” I say. He nods tightly. Fine lines mark out the
corners of his eyes. He glances around and then reaches out, palm of his hand flat to my face. His flesh lies chill on my burning. “What sort of trouble?”

“A new sort,” he says, and I ease an inch.

His hand is on my face.
Not us.

Nay. But, Mingan, I think the Lady has returned.

“The Lady?”

He nods, letting the arm fall. “I found a woman on the beach three nights ago, all but drowned. She—well, Mingan, come and see for yourself.”

I stare, turn, stalk before him down the trail. We walk without talking. His boots crunch gravel, twigs. The mead-hall smells emptier, even before it comes in sight. Less smoke, fewer brethren.

A great white drake—one of the valraven—slumbers along the length of the cliff overlooking the sea. Many of my brethren will have gone on errantry following the bonding of Menglad to Arngeir, and others have returned to their scattered halls. All told, there are less than a thousand of us.

So few, for a task so great. “You found her the night of the wedding?”

His voice over my shoulder. “She gives her name as Heythe.”

“And yet . . . our brothers and sisters have dispersed?”

“She didn’t wake for two days. And we thought her merely a mortal lass, washed from a ship, perhaps.”

“And then?”

“Well,” Strifbjorn repeats, catching me up, striding past me, “come and see for yourself.”

The Warrior

W
hen Strifbjorn and Mingan returned to the mead-hall, Heythe, the drowned girl, stood within the south end, at the center of a ring of einherjar and waelcyrge. She wore an open-collared white shirt and leggings borrowed from somebody larger. Skeold faced Heythe down, her crystal blade balanced lightly in her right hand. A thin rill of Light ran its edge, as if dark transparent stone caught the reflection of a fire, except the fire trench was cold and the radiance silver.

Skeold’s expression of soft concentration would have warned
Strifbjorn
not to cross her.

Heythe smiled.

She carried no weapons. She turned in her footprints, scuffing the withered pine branches out of the way as she followed the deliberate, wolflike circling of the waelcyrge. Her eyes, open at last, were a bright enough blue that Strifbjorn noticed it from a distance, even in the dimness of the hall, and her necklace sparkled with a light of its own under her open collar.

Mingan tensed beside him, drawing a breath. His hand rose in a gesture that might seem feminine to one who didn’t know about his double collar.

“Watch this,” Strifbjorn whispered in Mingan’s ear, leaning into the animal scent hanging around him.

Skeold lunged for the girl in the borrowed clothing. Sharp feint, perfect recovery, followed by a sweeping sidestroke that, had it been delivered with the edge and not the flat, should have driven into Heythe’s side. Except Heythe stepped back,
stepped in and caught Skeold’s wrist in her right hand. A jerk upward disarmed the waelcyrge and brought her to her knees.

They struggled, thrashed. Heythe laughed, kept laughing as she pushed Skeold down, face-first into the earthen floor. Branches crackled.

Skeold raised her other arm in surrender.

Mingan leaned into Strifbjorn, shoulder brushing shoulder as he spoke into the war-leader’s ear. “No mortal lass, that, brother mine. Shall I challenge her and see?”

“See?”

“If she is the Lady, she may be back just in time.”

Strifbjorn followed the fluid gesture of Mingan’s arm and spat an oath. The swan-white sweep of fringed Banner hung behind the Lady’s chair was stainless no longer. Upon it had appeared the image of its namesake—a Raven displayed, wings spread wide, mouth open and talons grasping, moving or seeming to move in the dimness of the light cast by the torches and trickling in the high, narrow windows. A portent of war. And of victory.

If its wings were folded and its head were bowed, it meant their brethren would fail in the coming battle. They had fought many wars, and Strifbjorn had never seen it so blazoned.

Tall, ice-pale Sigrdrifa ambled toward the waiting einherjar, resplendent in white and silver furs and linen. She nodded to Mingan and smiled warmly as her gaze brushed Strifbjorn’s. Despite the curve of her lips, her hard gray eyes narrowed. So transparent.
No, sister. Not if you were the last angel on earth.

She laid a long-fingered hand on Strifbjorn’s forearm. “War-leader.”

A bare nod was his best politeness.

“Will you challenge the . . . newcomer?” She hesitated before that last word.
Lady?
Some of the brethren had already decided. Mingan stepped on Strifbjorn’s foot.

Strifbjorn’s shrug knocked her hand away, as if incidentally. He looked back at the ring. Heythe was helping Skeold to her feet. “Perhaps later.”

Skeold retrieved her sword and left the bear-pit. Heythe straightened and surveyed them all. “Will any challenge my right to sit in this chair?” she asked, quite mildly.

Ulfgar, the blacksmith and a valraven’s rider, stepped forward. Strifbjorn expected Heythe would deal with him quickly.

Sigrdrifa nodded. “She is . . . impressive. If I were war-leader—which, of course, I am not—and if I did not intend to hand over the reins of power quietly, I would be courting allies.”

Ever-subtle. Her arm brushed Strifbjorn’s.

Ulfgar grunted as Heythe twisted him into a submission hold, and raised his fist. Strifbjorn pretended ignorance and turned toward the Wolf. “What do you think?”

As if in answer, Mingan unclasped his soot-gray cloak and passed it to the war-leader. Strifbjorn draped it over his arm and accepted Svanvitr, too. “Is this wise?”

His grin was wolfish. He unlaced the cuffs of his shirt.

His silent motions attracted attention—Heythe’s, and that of the brethren. Yrenbend left his place in the circle, next to Brynhilde, his wife, and crossed to them. “No sword?” Low and concerned.

“Hands will suffice,” said the Wolf, strongest and strangest among the children of the Light, tugging his fingers free of his gloves one at a time. Strifbjorn’s lover. The keeper of half of
his soul. And a wild thing he barely understood, even when he could look within and see him blinking back. “If they do not, then she is as she says. Another survivor of the world before.”

Like the Grey Wolf, Strifbjorn’s brother. And the demoness bound to his will.

It wasn’t a battle Strifbjorn could fight for him. It was one he had to fight for Strifbjorn.

Mingan tugged his shirt open. Beads of light from his collar spilled across his chest. Yrenbend jerked his head, drawing Strifbjorn’s eye to Heythe. She stood at the foot of the dais; her eyes widened at that glimmer, and she took a half step back.

“She fears you.” Yrenbend, murmuring.

Mingan stripped his shirt over his head and gave it to their brother. Yrenbend folded the charcoal cloth, ducked his chin and hid a smile.

“They always do.”

His body was hard and white as stone—lean with running, the muscles laced beneath his skin in tight relief like twisted yarn. Strifbjorn slapped Mingan’s back, his heartbeat slow, passionless under the palm of his hand; the skin hot, familiar. “Light with you.”

He didn’t acknowledge the war-leader. He took one step up.

“I will challenge you, Heythe.” His voice, however soft, always carried.

Chin lifted, she examined him. “Your name?”

“Mingan.” He scuffed his boot among the boughs. “Some call me the Wolf.”

“Ah,” she said. “Yes. I accept.”

He went forward, and the ring widened to enfold him and then closed to hem him in.

The Wolf

H
eythe draws up as I sidle forward. Strewn dry boughs crackle under her steps, but I move silently. Her eyebrow rises; the edge of her lip curls in a smile.

She is lovely. Her hair is of a color with the mellow, age-worn brass of Svanvitr’s hilt, and her angled cheekbones tilt the corners of eyes blue as the winter-bright sky above. Her gaze drifts to my boots and then back. To my collar, spilling light. She pitches her voice low, raising a shiver along my neck. “I remember you. You were not prophesied to live.”

I do not understand her. I do not know her.

I will not tell her that. “Things happen as they are intended. Until they do not.”

She steps closer. I smell ale and mint on her breath. “If I defeat you, will you take service?”

“My blade is sworn. But if you are the one we wait to serve, we will serve you indeed. For the Bearer of Burdens, and the future of the world.”

“Your form was not so fair when last we met.” She lays a bare hand on my shoulder, and my skin contracts as if she stroked my fur against the grain. She does not draw away from the heat, but lets the coolness of her palm soak into me.

“I do not recall,” I tell her.

And then I know her, for half an instant, through the contact
of flesh on flesh: the drive, the power of her will. Ruthlessness and strength and a fine-edged humor:
What would it be like to kiss him?

Her face shows nothing of the thought. I step back, startled, and lick my lips. She smiles, and I know I just proved something to her. “Shall we begin?”

She steps away and drops a curtsey, which should seem clumsy in leggings. She manages with grace. I bow, and then she is swaying to the side like a serpent.

I do not strike. Rather I watch, waiting, turning on my heel so that she cannot flank me as she circles, stately and fluid at once. I widen my awareness, my ears bringing the rustle of her boots through the boughs, my nostrils the scent of her sweat, of pine, of ale. I watch her eyes and her center and I am ready when she moves.

It helps me not at all. Fast, fast as an adder, she comes under my guard and slides around behind me before I can finish my turn. Her boot strikes the small of my back, and the breath leaves my body. I turn the stumble into a roll. My brethren dodge away, and I rise, pine needles clinging to my skin.