The Tempering of Men (32 page)

“There is?” Vethulf said.

Isolfr coughed, looking a little sheepish. “It seems that our absent wolfjarl has called an AllThing.”

*   *   *

It was impossible to keep Vethulf out of the council, and Brokkolfr was sure Isolfr had known it would be. But it was also impossible for Vethulf to keep himself awake, especially with Kjaran all but draped over him, and so by the time the news was told and the messenger from Arakensberg—a former threatbrother of Vethulf's—had been closely questioned to wring out every last detail, Vethulf was asleep, as quietly and neatly as a cat, and Kjaran was looking smug.

“Is he all right, truly?” the messenger asked.

“He will be,” Sokkolfr said. “He kept pushing himself, even when he knew the wound was inflamed. If he will but rest, he will be well again by the time we can travel.”

“And if that doesn't make him rest, nothing will,” Isolfr said.

The messenger bowed and left, and the three wolfheofodmenn looked at each other.

“Franangford must go,” Sokkolfr said.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Isolfr said at once. “We would go even if it were not our wolfjarl who had called the Thing. But it worries me, how we seem to be bleeding wolfheofodmenn. First Skjaldwulf and Randulfr, and now I do not see any way around the fact that Vethulf and I must go to Arakensberg.”

“Which leaves Brokkolfr and me,” Sokkolfr said. “Do you doubt our ability, wolfsprechend?”

Isolfr smiled at his friend, and at the almost indignant snort from Hroi. “Not a bit. I'm leaving you in charge of Alfgyfa, am I not?”

Brokkolfr felt the warmth of Isolfr's appreciation, unexpectedly, and bit back a smile.

Isolfr continued, “But I do not like placing such a large burden on your shoulders, when it is properly mine.”

Sokkolfr rolled his eyes, and Brokkolfr guessed that this was a discussion they had had before. “
Your
burden is representing Franangford at the AllThing. I assure you, I would not swap if you begged me.”

“Why do you think Skjaldwulf has called an AllThing?” Brokkolfr asked.

“I would guess that the danger facing Siglufjordhur is much greater than the messenger knew to tell us,” Sokkolfr said.

“And jarls are…” Isolfr's mouth twisted. “It is much easier to get many jarls to do what you want than it is to get one jarl even to agree that something ought to be done.”

Brokkolfr suspected he knew who that
one jarl
was, but it would be both unkind and unprudent to say so. Rather, he said, “Sokkolfr is right. I wouldn't swap if you begged me, either.”

He won a crack of laughter from Isolfr loud enough to wake Vethulf—who was most indignant to discover he'd slept through the whole decision.

SIXTEEN

Skjaldwulf was beginning to feel as if his life were an endless round of rushing from place to place, scarcely in advance of bad news. His new boots galled his feet for a day or two before they settled in. By the second week out, though, he was glad of them, because brief summer was coming to its close already, and as they walked northward they went to meet the fall.

It was more than a month's travel to Arakensberg, although the wolves and wolfcarls traveling alone could have done it faster. But they had Otter with them, and the contingent from the monastery—though Erik and Skjaldwulf had decided between them to travel in advance of whatever party the jarl would—or would not—field. If Skjaldwulf was calling the AllThing, it behooved him to be one of the earliest in attendance.

Still, the Arakensberg road was a good one—the town the heall defended was a hub of trade and textile production, its swift, smooth river lined with mills—and if monks couldn't travel like wolves, they kept up well enough. And Otter either had been hardened by life on the march with the Rheans or simply possessed a good deal of native toughness. Skjaldwulf and his party arrived in Arakensberg only three days behind the messengers bearing word of the AllThing.

The town, keep, and heall were in uproar already. The messenger would have given the wolfsprechend of Arakensberg, Aesulf Aegileifsbrother—a green-eyed blond with a pitted, ruddy face as broad across as a barn door—some advance warning of what was about to descend upon them. Also, if Aegileif were deep enough in the pack-sense, she might have told her brother when and where to expect the arrival of the Franangford pack and their companions.

It was possible. Skjaldwulf had heard a bit of Aegileif from Vethulf, and Vethulf thought her a konigenwolf the match of any—including Nithogsfjoll's Vigdis, their own Viradechtis' legendary dam. Aesulf was her third brother, and neither of the other two had died particularly young.

Not particularly young as wolfcarls go, anyway,
Skjaldwulf thought, ironically, and did his best to keep the thought from Mar and the rest of the wolves. The Rheans had done him no favors holding up the specter of an easier life.

As the old konigenwolf came out to greet the travelers, Skjaldwulf could see in her the source of Vethulf's awe. Where Viradechtis was still a young bitch, as playful and irreverent in peace as she was terrible in war, Aegileif was the very countenance of a queen.

Big as a boar, she dwarfed even Mar. Her coat was the gray of smoke, the black-tipped gray that showed in ripples when she moved. Skjaldwulf knew from experience that it would make her even more invisible than a black wolf in the darkness, because she'd show no solid outline against bare earth or snow. She was silver to the ears, her muzzle laced with the pink and white lines of many battles, and as she lifted her head and raised her tail to show her dominance over the small pack arriving, both Mar and Ingrun unhesitatingly showed her their throats.

It was a triumph of intelligence over instinct. In the wild, a wolf pack would not suffer mature wolves of another lineage in its territory, and a konigenwolf's pack would consist of her mates, her daughters, and her male pups, until those pups grew old enough to seek out their own packs. Theirs was a society of great queens, and Skjaldwulf had no doubt that the konigenwolf who now regarded him with old green eyes was a very great queen indeed.

Her brother, younger and more brash, nevertheless seemed perfectly at home arranging food, baths, and housing for wolves and men. Otter was found a place with the heallbred women, though not a private chamber—Arakensberg was one of the older healls, and like Nithoggsfjoll, its compound was a log longhouse and outbuildings, not a stone keep as they were building in Franangford. Freyvithr and Erik and their party were housed here and there about the town. Arakensberg, it turned out, even boasted a pair of small inns and one larger one.

In addition to being more southerly, more cosmopolitan, and less isolated than Nithoggsfjoll or Franangford, Arakensbergheall seemed to have a good relationship with the keep and town. The local jarl joined them for dinner at the heall, greeting Skjaldwulf with barely concealed excitement and apprehension. The jarl, too, was young, and embarrassingly overawed by the march of history around him—“An AllThing! Can you credit it?”—and Skjaldwulf was glad enough to change the topic to telling Vethulf's former threatbrothers whatever old news Skjaldwulf could muster about Vethulf's deeds.

Somewhere in the process, he was slightly confounded to realize that he missed Vethulf and that he was speaking fondly of him to men who also seemed to regard him fondly, although it was obvious that all the Arakensberg werthreat (and some of the wolves) retained a sympathetic sense of humor about Vethulf's temper.

Well, maybe Skjaldwulf did not miss Vethulf's scathing tongue—but his forthrightness and indomitable spirit were a different matter. And the Arakensbergthreat were hungry enough for news that they kept Skjaldwulf—and Freyvithr, and Fargrimr, and Erik, and Otter, and the other godsmen and wolfcarls—talking long into the night.

*   *   *

Vethulf had been unshakably determined that Isolfr should not leave him behind, and he paid for it, mile after grueling mile from Franangford to Arakensberg. He started out walking, glaring down anyone who tried to argue, but by the end of the first day he was nearly reeling, his pulse throbbing in every half-healed inch of his shoulder.

Isolfr, mustering a fearful glare of his own, sat Vethulf down on his bedroll and made him strip off his shirt. He then cursed Vethulf roundly, using several phrases Vethulf hadn't thought Isolfr knew. “This can still kill you, you know,” he said. “A wound gone bad is not something to take lightly.”

“I don't,” Vethulf said through gritted teeth as Isolfr began cleaning the inflamed gashes. “Take it lightly, that is.”

“No, you just thought you'd walk to Arakensberg.”

“Couldn't let you go alone,” Vethulf said, and immediately wished himself dead. No way to explain that he hadn't meant it the way it sounded, that it wasn't because he didn't think Isolfr could take care of himself. It was just because he
couldn't,
and there was no way to explain that at all.

But after a moment, Isolfr said, “And you call me a daft creature,” and he didn't even sound annoyed.

*   *   *

In the morning, and each morning after, Skjaldwulf found, there was work to do. Pavilions to raise, latrines to dig, plans to contribute to. And already wolfcarls and wolves and wolfless men were filtering in. Some—many, blessedly—brought their own tents and provisions, which were after all necessary for travel for those who did not care to sleep rough and live off the land. The wolfcarls and wolfless men and some of the thanes arranged hunting parties and shared the meat out among the slowly swelling body of the AllThing.…

It would be a year or more before the local wildlife recovered.

Despite the serious business they had come here to do, a festival atmosphere prevailed. Kinsmen and friends long-parted reacquainted themselves; feasts and footraces and fights broke out across the landscape. Everywhere he went, Skjaldwulf heard snatches of his tune hummed or sung, and—ridiculously, for the war was not yet won—he felt the burdens that had weighed his shoulders lessening.

Perhaps, he thought, it was not so much that they were lightened as that there were more hands to bear them now. In any case, he spent a good deal of his time moving from fire to fire, listening to wolfcarls and wolfless men, taking a tenor of the times. There was skepticism, and there was a good deal of rancor—some, summoned from the harvest or sent as proxy for others who remained behind to do the work the world set before their hand, were skeptical. Some disbelieved in any Rhean threat at all and saw in the calling of the AllThing only wolfcarls greedy for political power. Some were young men, eager for war and the making of their names. Some were hardened vikings, who wished to take the war to the Rheans over a sea of Brythoni corpses.

Skjaldwulf thought that last a mistake near as bad as ignoring the threat of the Rheans, but he also saw that here, gathered around the keep of Arakensberg, was the nucleus of an army, if he could sway them. Some of the men present had fought in the trellwar, and so he knew them or knew of them. Some were men whose legend preceded them, borne by songs and tales.

Some were men who had come not to his summoning, but to that of Erik Godsman, and Skjaldwulf thought they, too, might be of use.

The question that remained before him—if he could bring them together now, here, in advance of the danger—was, if a konungur they must have, who best should it be?

Although it was early days and the AllThing not even convened yet to decide if a konungur
should
be chosen, some obvious contenders were being put forth. One was the jarl of Hergilsberg, despite his absence from the scene. One, to Skjaldwulf's amusement, was one-eyed Erik Godheofodman. (“Can you be a godsman and a king?” Skjaldwulf had murmured to Erik behind his hand. “Not and be worth a damn as either,” Erik had replied.) One was Grettir Gang-arm, a southern jarl Skjaldwulf knew only by reputation until he made a point of cultivating the man's acquaintance, which led him to believe that there couldn't be a better choice for leading a party going viking or a worse one for konungur.

Because of the way the news of the AllThing had traveled—north, from Hergilsberg, a few days in front of Skjaldwulf and his party—the southern jarls began arriving first, even before the wolfcarls of the closest heallan to Arakensberg. It wasn't until the very first heall—Bravoll—arrived that Skjaldwulf realized that some of his agitation was from the tension of holding his breath over whom the Franangfordthreat would send. And then Nithoggsfjoll arrived—both wolfjarl and wolfsprechend—and even his busyness could not stop Skjaldwulf from meeting Grimolfr and Ulfbjorn and the three wolves-and-men who had come with them, along with Gunnarr Sturluson and his wife, Halfrid, and their selected retainers and their mounts and pack animals, and two stout mastertradesmen—bondi—of the village, to make up the Nithoggsfjollthreat's delegation to the AllThing. They dismounted as Skjaldwulf came up on them, and cries of greeting sounded all around.

“Well met,” Skjaldwulf said to Grimolfr, full of emotion as Grimolfr clasped his arm with a hard squeeze.

“Well met,” Grimolfr said in return while Mar and Skald and Vigdis and the other wolves sniffed about one another in a companionable sort of way.

The first thing from Ulfbjorn's mouth, before even a greeting, was, “Have Isolfr and Sokkolfr come?”

Skjaldwulf hugged the big man warmly and clapped his back. To his credit, Gunnarr did not flinch from the question but only put a hand comfortingly on Halfrid's back as she leaned forward, alight with all eagerness.

“Franangford is not yet arrived,” Skjaldwulf said, hastening to explain as Grimolfr's brows began to rise. “I came from the south, with the godsmen from Hergilsberg. It's a long story. But Frithulf is here, and I'm sure he won't wish to wait to see you. And Randulfr is with me also.”