Read Online A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear - Free Book Online

against the sting of tears, swallowed hard.
    â€œLord Gunnarr does not mince words,” Grimolfr said, and Isolfr was grateful for the detachment in his voice, grateful that he was not offering sympathy or concern.
    â€œNo,” he said, and they both ignored the wobble in his voice. “He never has.”

THREE
    Â 
    Â 
    A t the solstice, there was feasting. Two days later, after Jorveig the cook had dispensed heroic quantities of her herbal tisane to counteract the heroic quantities of ale the werthreat had consumed and the hangovers were mostly memory, a man and a wolf Isolfr did not know staggered weary and footsore to the heall, the man tall and red-haired, the wolf angle-shouldered, odd-eyed, and leaving red-splotched prints on the snow.
    By a trick of fate, Isolfr was the first to see them. He and Viradechtis had been departing on one of their restless rambles, and he had seen the dark shape against the drifts as he crossed the meadow, the man breaking trail for the limping wolf. Isolfr had bolted back into the wolfheall, uncertain if the strangers were friend or foe, and dragged Hrolleif and Ulfgeirr from table to attend it.
    Man and wolf—Vethulf and Kjaran were their names—had come without stopping from the wolfheall at Arakensburg, with news that would not wait. The village of Jorhus had been overrun by trolls.
    Grimolfr gathered the werthreat together in the roundhall
to tell them; Isolfr sat next to the Stone Sokkolfr, the dense heat of trellwolf bodies pressing against them, and listened as Vethulf described, grimly, the complete annihilation of a village of two hundred souls.
    No survivors.
    It answered the question of why the long patrols during Asny’s heat had found so few trolls, and Grimolfr said frankly, bitterly, “We are stretched too thin. There are too few wolfheallan, and no way to remedy that except by the passing of time.” Isolfr gulped and told himself it was coincidence that Grimolfr’s eyes met his just then. But he couldn’t believe it.
    â€œThen what shall we do?” said Randulfr. “We must do something .”
    â€œLong patrols,” Grimolfr said, and nodded to the red-haired man sitting on the hearth with his odd-eyed wolf, cupping a horn of ale in his hands now that he had finished speaking. “Vethulf Kjaransbrother brings, along with news, the counsel of the Arakensbergthreat. The wolfjarl of Arakensberg says, and I agree with him, that we must cover more ground as best we can. You will all be going out, two weeks at a time. A week out and a week back.”
    There was uneasy muttering among the wolfcarls. A week was farther than most of them had ever been from the wolfheall, certainly since their bonding. Hrolfmarr, Kolli’s brother, asked, “How many to a patrol?”
    â€œTen wolves and their brothers. Two patrols out at a time, two remaining here. We cannot leave the wolfheall unguarded, either.” The muttering darkened as the wolves thought vividly of Asny’s unborn pups; the hair on the back of Isolfr’s neck rose as Nagli and Arngrimr and the other possible fathers of those pups began to growl.
    â€œPeace, brothers,” Grimolfr said, and Skald seconded strongly. “We will draw up the rosters today; the first two patrols will leave tomorrow morning.”
    Dismay colored the pack-sense.

    â€œThe jarls are frightened, and rightly so. We have sworn to protect them, we of the Wolfmaegth, and that is what we must do.”
    Â 
    Â 
    G rimolfr and Hrolleif were very careful about balancing the patrols between older wolves and younger. Isolfr noticed that Sokkolfr and Hroi counted as “older” for these purposes, and supposed with rather wry amusement that Hroi could be depended on to keep more boys than just his own out of trouble. He himself was not on the first two rosters, and although he knew he would feel foolish and childish for it, he could not keep from going to Grimolfr to