The Tempering of Men (29 page)

The rout was quick. The bandits, startled and sluggish with sleep, were not warriors, and even those who seemed to have some rudimentary skills were utterly unnerved by the trellwolves. The wolves herded their catch into the middle of the clearing: six men, ranging from a boy barely old enough to start a beard to a paunchy fellow older than Skjaldwulf—this last clearly being the leader and inclined to bluster until Fargrimr stepped out of the trees.

“I know you,” he said coolly, and named all six, ending with the leader, who was also the brother of the heofodman of Botarsmyrr. “And thus,” Fargrimer concluded, “many things are supplied with an explanation.”

He tucked his hands behind his belt and stood in a warrior's wide-legged stance. “Justice demands your execution, but if I execute you here and now—”

The bandits broke out in a clamor, and Fargrimr silenced them with an upraised hand. “Do not think justice will not be done. But if I run you through as you deserve, then I will never have truth from Botarsmyrr, only muttering and discontent and whispered lies. So we will go to Botarsmyrr now, and this will be finished before the sun reaches its height.” His eyes were cold, his voice level and uninterested, and the bandits were silenced.

Fargrimr turned to Skjaldwulf. “I must ask you, Lord Wolfjarl, do not let them escape. And convince those that need convincing that death in a trellwolf's jaws is not preferable to a clean killing stroke.”

Looking at the bandits' ashen faces, Skjaldwulf did not think they would need much convincing.

*   *   *

It was not a pleasant morning. The heofodman of Botarsmyrr died beside his brother. But Fargrimr walked with a lighter stride as they returned to the keep, and Fastarr showed his gratitude with gifts. And that night, Skjaldwulf lay beside Mar's warm bulk and knew that if they did not leave for Hergilsberg soon, they would not leave at all.

*   *   *

“May I join you?”

Brokkolfr looked up, needing his eyes' confirmation. It was Isolfr, standing awkwardly in the doorway of the sauna. Without his daughter, for once: Brokkolfr was used to seeing her chasing her father from place to place on plump toddling legs as a wolf pup chases its mother. But she must be with her nurse now or in the care of the women of the heall.

“Of course,” he said. “I mean, please do.”

Isolfr gave him a flash of a smile and let the hides swing down behind him.

He was not a large man, Isolfr Ice-mad, sighthound lean instead of mastiff broad. Brokkolfr could probably have bested him in a wrestling match, if he'd been daft enough to try. Isolfr sprinkled another dipper of water over the stones and sat down on the bench beside Brokkolfr.

“I've been thinking about what you said,” Isolfr said after a few moments of silent and contented sweating.

“What I said?” Brokkolfr could think of any number of things he'd said, none of which he wanted Isolfr to be thinking about.

“About Hreithulfr.”

“Oh. Isolfr, you don't—”

“No, you were right,” Isolfr said tranquilly. “It
is
my duty as wolfsprechend. I was…” There was a long pause, in which Isolfr reached for a scraper and began cleaning his arms. “When you were taught about mating, how did they go about it? At Othinnsaesc?”

“Um,” said Brokkolfr, uncertain where this was going. But if Isolfr finally wanted to talk, Brokkolff was willing to try almost any topic. “My wolfsprechend told me the way of things among wolfcarls, and he … Oh.”

“Yes,” Isolfr agreed, with a shy, wry smile. “Hrolleif was much older than I am, and he … he was Grimolfr's lover. He understood love between men, and I—I honor it, but I don't … only when Viradechtis…”

He was becoming hopelessly mired, and Brokkolfr said, “I understand.” Because he did. He gathered his courage and asked, “Were you a virgin?”

“No. I had had a lover in my father's keep.”

Of course. A jarl's son would be expected to. “I was a virgin.”

“Oh,” said Isolfr.

“It wasn't bad,” Brokkolfr said hastily. “He taught me a lot of things I'd
never
have learned otherwise. And his lover was the heallbred woman who does all Othinnsaesc's dyeing. I just meant, I understand what it was like. And why you're…”

“Uncomfortable,” Isolfr supplied.

“Yes. Here. If I scrape your back, will you do mine?”

They traded, turn and turnabout, as friends did, or shieldbrothers, and Isolfr said, “It
is
my duty, though.”

“Yes,” Brokkolfr said. “I'm sorry.”

“No, why should you be? I wanted to thank you for making me see that before it was too late. You said you wanted to be my second, and I thought I should tell you I would be honored.”

He was smiling, and Brokkolfr, his heart lighter than it had been in months, perhaps even since the fall of Othinnsaesc, felt himself starting to smile back.

*   *   *

When they went—five wolfcarls, five wolves, a Brython girl, two ponies, and a godsman—Fargrimr went with them. “To assure the monks of our good faith,” he said, and Skjaldwulf wasn't sure whether Fargrimr intended the pun or not. Judging by the spark in his eyes, probably. But the sworn-son was a dry wit, and it was hard to be sure.

Skjaldwulf thought he also wanted a chance to spend some time with his elder brother. It was a pleasure to see them together, their manners so unlike the stiffly polite meetings that were the best Skjaldwulf had managed with his own kin once he bonded Mar. Fargrimr also treated the wolves with respect, not blinking at the wolfcarl habit of including them in conversation. He was a good traveling companion, fast and tireless and with a knowledge of the land as deep as blood.

Once he was comfortable with them, he proved an excellent storyteller—not trained as Skjaldwulf was but with a knack for mimicry and an instinct for timing. And he was not too proud to tell stories with himself as the butt, which Skjaldwulf appreciated in any man, and especially one destined to be a jarl.

Freyvithr and Fargrimr agreed it would take three to five days to reach the coastal town of Hergilsbay, where they would hire a boat for the voyage to Hergilsberg itself. They proved right: the journey was four days, and in that time the small group of wolves and men dealt summarily with one group of bandits and dodged a large Rhean patrol. They also dispatched a smaller group of Rheans, and Skjaldwulf made sure to claim a sword and a helm to bring along as evidence.

The ponies would be left at the stable the monks maintained on the mainland. There was no point in shipping them to the island city of Hergilsberg, which had as many horses as it needed, and of the monastery itself Freyvithr said: “Our chapel is on a smaller island, and that island is rocky. The settlement is quite small. We got a trio of goats out there some years ago, and that was enough to convince us that larger animals belonged on the mainland.”

“What of the wolves?” Skjaldwulf asked. “Are you asking us to leave them behind?”

“I'm not such a fool as that.” Freyvithr looked at the wolves and wolfcarls assessingly. “We may have to hire more than one boat.”

Skjaldwulf was relieved by Freyvithr's immediate understanding that men and wolves were not to be separated. It occurred to him that by traveling with Freyvithr, he had secured the wolfheallan a sympathetic ear among the godsmen, which seemed unpleasantly likely to be necessary.

Would have been a marvelously clever notion. Had I thought of it.

*   *   *

Skjaldwulf wasn't seacoast bred, but he'd been in a good-sized town and on a boat before. As they wended through the bustle of Hergilsbay, Skjaldwulf was acutely aware of the eyes of the townsfolk on him, his men, and his wolves. And he was just as acutely aware that some of those men and wolves were made crowningly uncomfortable by the attention. Dyrver and Ulfhoss, in particular, were young and needed seasoning, and Skjaldwulf noticed that they kept to the center of the group.

Frithulf, predictably, enjoyed the bustle—and chattered about it ceaselessly. And Randulfr and Fargrimr were entirely at home—they had both obviously spent a good deal of time here.

Not so much time as Freyvithr, though, to whom Skjaldwulf had just cause to be grateful. Because Freyvithr strode through the crowds, his kilted coat swinging against his heavy calves, his staff swinging, too, in time to his stride. And the godsman greeted a face on every street with a wave and a name, which soon made the tired little group's passage seem more like a stroll and less like a procession.

At the third street-crossing, Skjaldwulf leaned across to Randulfr and ducked to speak in the other wolfcarl's ear. “How big is this town?”

“Some thousands,” Randulfr said, grinning at Skjaldwulf's bogglement. “Wait until you see Hergilsberg.”

They found no trouble in boarding the horses, though the press of people all around made Skjaldwulf feel, more and more, that he was at the heart of a great army. That was the only time he'd seen so many people in one place before, and this group was men and women, racing children and tottering grandmothers. Otter, though, did not seem distressed in the least by it and looked about herself with great delight.

From the stable they made their way to the ferry docks, and there Skjaldwulf was glad to let Freyvithr and Fargrimr handle the haggling once more. The party was in fact divided into two boats, and though Freyvithr assured them all it was perfectly safe, it took all of Skjaldwulf's coaxing to lure Mar aboard.

The black wolf huddled in the bilges, miserable, and he was not the only one distrustful of this seemingly rickety device in the face of the great sea that stretched before them. Skjaldwulf thought Ulfhoss was going to have to actually pick Dyrver up by main strength and set him in the other boat where it floated, gently bobbing beside the dock. But Kothran leaped lightly over the gunnels and then poked his head back over, giving a short, sharp yip as if to say,
Shake your tail, there,
and so Dyrver was shamed into courage.

And so it is with all of us,
Skjaldwulf thought. Freyvithr piled into that boat as well, and Afi and Geirulfr—leaving Skjaldwulf with Randulfr, Ingrun, Fargrimr, and Otter. As Skjaldwulf turned back to mind his own half of the threat, he caught Otter smiling.

Randulfr assured him that this was calm seas and no chop worthy of the name. But as the blue-armed ferryman and his two strong tattooed sons pulled away from the dock with oars until they were well in the wind, Skjaldwulf still found himself white-knuckled on the edge of his bench. He comforted himself that the ferryman was probably as scared of the wolves as the wolfcarls were of the sea.

“Look, wolfjarl!” Fargrimr gestured as they rounded a long point of land that defined the bay. “There is Hergilsberg the island. The city is farther along; we will pass right under it.”

As the big island came into sight, Skjaldwulf understood what Fargrimr had been trying to describe. Hergilsberg stood athwart the mouth of Hergilsbay like a stalwart defender (and hadn't there been a song about Hergil? Skjaldwulf half-remembered it, from the days before his old songs had been buried under nigh on twenty years of wolfcarl lore). The stark cliffs rose up like escarpments, and a walled city with a great keep surmounted the highest point, commanding the strait in both directions.

They did, indeed, pass directly under it. Skjaldwulf felt the hairs on his nape lift as he considered how easy it would be for some defender to simply drop rocks down and hole the boat between his feet. Would the water geyser up or simply roll in—quickly, softly?

He shuddered and looked away.

The tide was running out, sucking them along at a great pace. Good fortune, that—or perhaps Freyvithr had timed it so. As they passed the strait, Skjaldwulf realized that what he had taken as a breakwater or jetty at the base of the cliffs was actually the tail of another island, protruding around the curve of the first. This one was lower but just as rocky, and he could see the white shapes of goats hopping from stone to stone above the sea. They were eating dulse, dancing as sure-footedly on the sea-slick stones as if they moved along a broad promenade. There were too many of them, and much too active, to count.

Above the hissing surf, shining whitely, stood the ragged lime-washed walls of the monastery.

“Three goats?” he said dryly, wishing Freyvithr weren't a hundred yards behind and so out of range of his sarcasm.

Fargrimr shrugged. “Maybe one was a billy.”

*   *   *

There were more godsmen and godswomen than Skjaldwulf had expected. So many people, here, and all of them so intent on what they were doing. The bustle alone, men and woman clustering at the piers as the ferries docked, was daunting.

The wolfless men disembarked first; as the wolfcarl's and wolves began to follow, someone in a shift of onion-dyed homespun, barefoot and her hair caught up in an untidy knot as if she'd just run from her washing, hurled herself into Freyvithr's arms with shameless delight. The godsman picked her up and whirled her before putting her down once more.

“My wife, Brunnhilde, the chatelaine of our little outpost,” was what Freyvithr said to Skjaldwulf, when Skjaldwulf, having seen Mar safely onto dry land, made his way to them and she doubled over laughing. “This is Skjaldwulf, wolfjarl of Franangford, who has come to answer our questions about his wolfsprechend.”

Skjaldwulf extended his hand as she recovered. “I had gathered the relationship.”

She gave him her wrist, and he bowed over it as prettily as he remembered how. He might seem out of fashion, but he was determined not to be taken for a country fool.

If he'd failed in his courtesies, she seemed forgiving. “Lunch will be ready in a span or so,” she said. “I imagine you all want more than anything to pull your boots off.”

“That's true,” Skjaldwulf said. “But we come bearing grave news, as well, and we rely on you to bring it before the jarl of Hergilsberg.”