Wolfskin Page 9

  The same, but different. A wolf did not think like a man. To defeat him, you must become him. Wolfskin. That was the trick of it. Circle up, softly still, bare feet curling and balancing on the uneven surface, body crouched low, ash-cloak blending gray with a landscape slowly illuminated, chill and bare, under the impassive moon. Slow, so slow. These cold-cramped fingers must be made to obey, to grip and control, or he could never succeed. I am strong. I am a hunter. And I will see him before he knows I am here. Under the trees, stooping yet watchful, using the last cover of shadows, Eyvind moved with stealthy purpose. It was the upper rim of the great forest; before him, a jagged mass of tumbled stones rose to high, bare crags, the eerie light turning their ledges and cracks and fissures into a place of mystery and wonder. It was a landscape of gray on gray, encompassing every hue from the pale sheen of a fine pearl to a profound shadow-darkness. Twenty paces before him, a ledge jutted out from the hillside like the prow of a great ocean-going vessel, and there stood the wolf. Eyvind gazed at him and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and his skin grow clammy with sweat. The creature was huge, surely bigger than any earthly wolf, for he stood three times higher in the shoulder than the farm dog, Grip, and his long, silken pelt lent his form a grandeur that had something kingly in it. Such eyes: golden, shining. They were a savage chieftain’s eyes, deep and knowing, yet wholly animal. Staring up at his adversary, Eyvind understood the message of that gaze. You are come. I sense your presence in the darkness. Who is the hunter here, and who the prey? Come out. If you have the courage, come out and face me, for one of us will die tonight. Then the great wolf raised his muzzle to the sky and howled again, a cry to freeze the blood and still the heart, a call that rang out over the forest and into the very depths of Eyvind’s spirit. It is time.

  If he had had a spear, if he had had a bow, he knew just how he would have done it. But this was to be a combat on equal footing. Equal. Naked flesh against thick pelt, small knife against many-clawed feet, stick against dagger-teeth: the idea was laughable. Still, he must win. His courage must be enough to tip the balance, for that was all he had.

  Eyvind rose to his feet, no longer careful to be silent. The wolf turned its head. Eyvind stepped forward and began to walk up across the rocks toward the vantage point where the creature now stood facing him. There was a deep, low growling, very quiet, a sound that said plainly, Come no farther. This place is mine. When he had reached a spot ten paces from the wolf, Eyvind halted. Naked, ash-smothered, he held his head high and his shoulders strong. With the sharpened stick in his right hand and the little knife in his left, he looked the great beast straight in the eye.

  Now, said a voice that was not a voice: perhaps his robed guide, though Eyvind had believed himself alone on that journey, perhaps another. Maybe it was his own voice he heard. He would not turn. It seemed to him that as long as he held that glowing, amber gaze with his own the wolf would not attack him. The creature stared back unblinking, and for an instant he thought—no, it couldn’t be—it seemed it was a man he saw there, stern-faced, strong-jawed, with eyes as yellow and feral as any forest predator’s. Ware behind you, said the voice, and he heard a breath, sensed the furtive pad of a foot, and there was no choice now but to break that stare and spin around, arms raised. The creature behind him lunged, jaws snapping, breath rancid in his face; a wolf, a masked man, a demon, he did not know, but he slashed high with the knife and stabbed low with the stick and rolled out of the way as the long claws raked down across his shoulder. He smelled blood; he felt the blow, but no pain. Eyes were watching, a circle of eyes in the moonlight. They were all around him. A wolf does not hunt alone.

  Eyvind rose to his feet. He could still hold the knife; that was good. Think like a hunter, not the hunted. This was a challenge, not an ambush. Take the strongest; forget the rest. Oh, for a burning brand, for the weapon of fire. That would buy precious time. Fire, muttered Eyvind. Fire. And the world spun and steadied and spun again, and he felt the fire within him, growing ever fiercer and hotter until his head burned with it, his breast near burst with its power and he opened his mouth and screamed, a cry that made of his whole being a mighty battle trumpet. Perhaps he called Thor’s name, perhaps something far older and darker. He turned in place, once, twice, three times as if to ready himself for a great flight of the war hammer or throwing axe. Tonight, his deadliest weapon was the fire within. Roaring his challenge, Eyvind hurled himself across the open space toward the golden-eyed chieftain of the wolves.

  The fear: the shock of it. A man does not attack thus, as if he cares nothing for his own safety. A man does not challenge thus, without cold iron. These eyes are wrong; they seem to welcome death. Why is the man unafraid? Does he think to take my place? Mine? I am not old yet, I am still strong…. I will kill him, stinking in his nakedness, I will rend him…. And yet, the fear. This is not a man, but another like myself, and he comes to take what is mine….

  Knife slashed, fingers gripped long hair, the stick, he had dropped the stick, quickly now, dodge beneath, roll, spring, grab the stick and lunge before those teeth close again, perhaps on the neck or the exposed groin. Quick now. Screaming defiance, Eyvind thrust upward with all his strength. The stake drove true, and hot blood gushed over his face. The wolf thrashed and twisted, its gut impaled on the shaft of wood. The claws scrabbled for purchase on the rock and there was an eldritch whine of agony. The others, silent in their circle, watched narrow-eyed, shivering. The owl called again, remote and sorrowful. The wolf twisted its head back, snapping at Eyvind’s arm, its eyes fierce with outrage. It was valiant; it fought to wrench the stake from his grasp, and finish him with its dying strength.

  Brave…yes brave…but you will not have what is mine. Pierce me with your long tooth, would you? I fight on; I fight you until the moment…until the moment when all turns to shadow….

  The wolf bucked and pulled; the stick slid from Eyvind’s grasp, leaving a palm full of splinters. The creature turned, dragging the stake under its belly. Its mouth dripped blood, its bared teeth shone red in the moonlight. Out on the rocks, the others waited: wolves, or men, or something which was in between, some manifestation of moonlight and blood and darkness. Eyvind’s hands were cold, so cold now he could hardly feel his fingers where they still clutched the little knife that had once carved a token for a girl. One chance. There was still enough strength in the beast to finish him. Those eyes did not speak surrender; but Eyvind would win. He must.

  You are nothing. You have no tribe, no place, you have no weapon but those you borrow. Your body is as naked and weak as a cub new-whelped. You are nothing. Do not think to take my place, for you can never be what I am.

  The wolf growled deep and flattened its ears. Even so had Grip the dog once looked as the boy, Somerled, walked by him.

  Eyvind opened his hand and let the knife fall to the rocks. The little sound of it echoed away across the hillside into the night. It seemed all drew breath; and then there was silence. The wolf gathered its last strength to spring.

  “Naked I come and naked I overcome,” whispered Eyvind, raising his hands before him. “Against you, I use no weapon that you cannot use; equal we do battle, equal under the gaze of Thor. And if I cannot defeat you thus, I am myself defeated.” Then he sprang forward, and the wolf leaped, and the two of them rolled together, this way and that, a frenzy of tooth and claw, of straining limb and screaming, growling, bloody combat. Eyvind could not tell where his own body ended and the creature’s began, so close-locked were they. It was pain and blood and darkness; it was a pair of strong hands, holding and squeezing and never letting go as the enemy scratched and gouged and snapped, as the blood flowed and the desperate sounds rang in his ears, and the night became a chaotic jumble of moon and stars and shadow, of rock and treetop and sky, of silent, waiting forms that were not man and were not beast, but Other.

  At the end, at the very end, they lay panting, spent, almost like lovers worn out by a night of passion, and Eyvind looked into the
wolf’s eyes one last time. The creature was still now; the golden gaze grew dim as Eyvind’s hands maintained their merciless grip about the neck. The wolf bled from mouth and belly; Eyvind knew his own blood flowed from countless wounds on his body, on his chest, his shoulder, his face, his hands, somewhere in another world. He stared into his adversary’s eyes and the truth looked back at him. This was the moment: the moment of changing. There were no words, simply the recognition of place, of tribe, of kingship: the knowledge of being, wild, free, strong. Then the shadow, and the darkness. The wolf shuddered and grew limp. The shining eyes clouded and were blank. Time to draw a single breath, and to begin to sense a weariness bone-deep, a pain in every corner of the body, a cold sudden and fierce that numbed his heart and froze his very blood. An instant only; and then with a rustling and a stirring, the waiting circle of beings rose and moved and closed in around him. The world reeled; the stars began to shift in crazy patterns. Beyond them, he thought he saw a man, a great, tall man like a giant with the mask of a wolf and eyes of brightest gold, and the man said, Son, well done. Then for Eyvind, too, came the darkness.

  He woke, and for an instant thought he was home in his bed. Then he remembered, and disappointment hit him like a hard fist. A dream; imagination, the whole thing, and all he had done was sleep here by the fire like some lad too young and weak to hold his ale. They had not even let him attempt the trial. He moved, rolling to sit up, and felt pain lance through every part of his body. He rubbed his eyes against the daylight, and when he lowered his hands he saw the crust of dried blood on them. He was naked under the blanket, and on his chest, scored deep in flesh still coated with powdery ash, were four angry red stripes. A drum pounded inside his head; his mouth was dry and foul-tasting.

  “Here,” said Eirik, appearing at his side with a skin water bottle in his hand, and a big grin on his bearded face. The others were behind him: the toothless one, the earless one, the sharp-featured Hakon, the whole band of Wolfskins, and now they were laughing and congratulating him, and he winced in pain as someone thumped him on the back, and someone else was saying now there were twelve again, and Thor would be glad indeed.

  “I–I passed, then?” Eyvind croaked, clutching the water bottle and wondering greatly about a number of things. “That was…real?”

  Eirik’s smile was fierce and proud. “For each of us, it is different,” he said. “For each of us, it is real. You passed, yes, and more than passed, I think.”

  “But I saw—” Eyvind broke off. How could he find the words to tell of such wonders, the strangeness of those figures in the darkness, the way the wolf seemed a part of himself, so he knew its thoughts, and yet how it seemed at the same time to be the embodiment of the god? How he had seen death, and for a moment had understood it? And if he had truly slain a wolf, where was it now?

  “You’ll be hungry,” Hakon said, “and thirsty. Get some clothes on, and fill your belly, for we’ve a long ride today.”

  And when he was sitting, water bottle in one hand and strip of roast meat in the other, he looked across the fire and saw the skin. They had scraped it more or less clean; it hung over one of the extinguished torches, a great, shaggy pelt, the silver-gray hair faintly gleaming in the morning sun. The breeze stirred it; there was a movement in it, a ripple of life, as if the spirit of the forest chieftain still lingered in the mantle he had passed to his conqueror.

  “There’s a man at Magnus’s court does a good job of curing and tanning,” said the warrior with the scarred face. “He’ll make it into a fine cloak for you. A good size of skin, that one, big enough even for a little ox of a fellow like yourself. Fit for a king.”

  Eyvind nodded, saying nothing. His heart and his mind were too full to allow words. No need to ask; no need to tell. Each of them had passed his own trial; each of them was bound to Thor. That made them a band, a team; yet, in the end, each moved forward alone, for the pacts the god made were as personal as they were unbreakable.

  So, in his fifteenth year, Eyvind became a Wolfskin. As one of the twelve, he rode south to Jarl Magnus’s court. He left the forest, and yet he did not truly leave, for he was one with the wolf now, and he carried the fire within him, burning bright and steady. While that flame lived, he would serve the god, strong in arm and will, eager for battle, stalwart against all enemies and true to his oath. His life henceforth would follow Thor’s path, the viking seasons devoted to voyaging, raiding, battle and plunder, the times between spent at the Jarl’s side, guarding his person, escorting him safely on his visits throughout his territories, entertaining him with feats of strength and skill. Visits home to the farm would be few, and at his patron’s convenience, not his own. The familiar faces—his mother’s, Karl’s, those of the household in which he had grown up surrounded by love—would become strange to him. That did not seem to matter. He was made new: a man. He would serve three years, five years, more if he was lucky; then, if the gods willed it, there would be a swift death and a place at Thor’s right hand. It was a glorious future.

  THREE

  Eyvind counted them at first, with little notches on his shield: not around the rim, but inside, near the place where the boss was fastened with iron pins. The wood was crosshatched now, covered with small marks, hundreds of them. None was new; Eyvind had stopped counting long ago. Thor called; he answered. That was all that really mattered.

  The voyages in spring and in autumn were the best part. Before he was eighteen, Eyvind had traveled far: north to the realms of ice and back through Hordaland, where there was a powerful ruler with an eye on Magnus’s own territory—they bore him gifts to help maintain their uneasy truce—then south around the coast and across to Jutland, where one might expect savage resistance from the Danes. And farther south yet, skirting the land, slipping into the inland waterways that fringed the fair lands of the Frisians and the Franks. There had been rich booty there, some of which Eyvind got to keep for his own, having soon become one of Jarl Magnus’s favorites.

  Magnus had three longships, light, shallow-drafted vessels, well suited to the tricks of shore raiding. Two bore fifteen benches, the other twelve; all went swift and nimble under both oar and sail. The Battlesnake, on which Eyvind usually traveled, could go far upriver. She was easy to beach and easy to launch, and her crew could carry her some distance across a neck of land to reach a new waterway. The Sea Princess and the Longtooth were fine vessels too, making up a fleet that demonstrated Magnus’s strength and built his reputation. Still, the long times at sea were hardly comfortable. One was usually wet, and the rations did not travel well. Camping on shore overnight had hazards of its own. They learned to sleep sword in hand and wake in an instant.

  He’d fought his first sea battle at just fifteen; he remembered that one well. Out in the open waters west of the sheltered Limfjord, they were in risky territory. The longships approached the northwestern shores of Jutland where the major waterway threaded through toward the rich trading centers of the Svear. Mist had settled close about their vessels like a soft shroud. It was late afternoon; they had become aware of another ship nearby, just before this blinding curtain of gray had descended around them. Ulf had command of the Battlesnake; he bade the men still their oars, and they sat in silence. In such a mist, ears must become eyes. They waited.

  Eyvind, the hunter, heard it first: a tiny creaking, as of the timbers of a longship eased through the water with painful slowness. He gestured to Ulf, that way, and Ulf gave the sign. The Wolfskins edged forward past the oarsmen, hands moving to grip weapons: the hewing axe, the short sword, the stabbing spear, the war hammer.

  The crew held the Battlesnake still; once in position they would ship their oars, for all were warriors and each must be ready to play his part. They could be facing a single Danish longship, or two, or a whole fleet; there could be attack from all sides. Such sea combat was risky indeed, yet it could reap rich rewards, for an enemy ship, once boarded and its crew subdued, might be taken all the way home to form a fine addition to the
Jarl’s own fleet, or a significant gift to somebody one needed to impress, such as that dangerous fellow in Hordaland. Today, Magnus himself was in command of the Sea Princess, out there in the mist somewhere, and one of his nobles captained the Longtooth. But it was the Battlesnake that bore the Wolfskins, and so the Battlesnake must be first to attack.

  They crouched on the small deck in the bow; the mist hung so close, even the gilded serpent’s head that thrust up fierce and proud from the ship’s prow was veiled in it, the faint gleam of gold on savage eye and forked tongue shadowed by soft, clinging tendrils of damp. Now the creaking could be heard by all, closer and closer still, and with it a little rippling of water, as of the movement of many oars plied subtly by skilled hands. Hakon reached into his pocket and brought out a lump of grayish, pungent matter, which he divided among the twelve of them; their jaws moved in unison. Today there was no singing, no drumming. Thor’s voice was a whisper in the limp sail, a murmur in the moving water. Burn bright for me, my sons…Smite hard, kill clean…. The very timbers of the ship shivered with it, and Eyvind felt his heart quicken, its thumping a strong drumbeat, in time with the others, in tune with the voice of the god. They waited, every sinew stretched taut, every breath screaming, Now! Now! Yet they held still.