Ulfsdotter: Chapter One

Eiric sat in the dark of her room, sectioned off from the rest of the house with a curtain of hand sewn fabrics. A single candle burned on the small table in front of her, its golden light reflecting in the surface of the polished silver mirror set in a foot made of stag horn. She sat naked and freshly bathed, wrapped in a great black wolf pelt,while she combed her hair. Her gray eyes were locked on the reflection of the flame. Her wet, black tresses dampened the fur draped around her neck and shoulders, a perfume of honey and juniper wafting warm and sweet from the pelt. She sang quietly as she combed out her hair, the words drifting from her memory with ease.

Her mother had taught her those words when she was just a child, barely able to speak on her own. They were important, her mother always said. Those words held power. They were vital and expensive. Learning those words had taken years from her father's life. He had made a long journey up the Giant's Steppes with her strapped to his back, and sought out an old Vandheks woman deep in the wild forest. Great bears and wolves had hounded him there, spilling his blood and putting in him a fear of losing his child. He had taken the Skaine witch a bag of silver coins, all that he had in the world, and humbled himself, exhausted and bloodied in the open doorway of her crooked house. She had welcomed him with a nearly toothless grin, telling him that she had been expecting him.

She had taken his silver and in return she gave him the words to teach his child. For so long, Eiric hadn't understood why she needed to know those words. They were a game when she was little. When she was old enough to wonder what they meant, she asked her mother why she had to say them. Her mother had told her that it was an ancient woman's magic, and that it had to be done to protect her. And when she had grown into a woman, her mother told her that she must always prepare her tresses in this way, because she had been cursed by the creature whose pelt had been her blanket every day of her life.

The pelt draped around her was huge, the fur of the great black Azgarulf named Ánleifr. Her father had slain the monstrous wolf the night she was born. The beast had come out of the forest while her mother cried out with the pain of her labor, lifting its ruinous howl over the whole mountain. It was the blood, her mother told her. The blood had drawn the beast, and her father had slain the thing with a spear, sparing his family from death in its jaws. But Ánleifr was Azgarulf, a god among wolves. He could think and reason and speak as a man. With his dying breath, he uttered a curse, laying a mark on the child of his enemy. Eiric said those words each night, gazing into a mirror of steal as she combed and braided her hair, her body wrapped in the pelt of the god-wolf whose power lingered in her life long after he was gone.

“Never gone, always near, I bind thee close, and never fear. What walks the night is mine to sway, I am sun at dark and moon in day.”

She said the words over and over as she wove braids into her hair. When she tied the last braid into place, she smoothed her hands over Ánleifr's pelt and shrugged out of its warmth. She dressed herself in a man's breeches and tunic and a wide belt. Her father was ill, and she had no brothers to tend the mules. There was work to be done. More than that, there were the wolves to contend with.

She turned to look toward the front of the house as a mournful howl rose up over the farm. She knew that voice. It belonged to the great wolf that the people called Garm. He was a white beast with silver tipped fur and eyes the color of liquid gold. He was a strange beast, one she could not make herself hate. Garm was always nearby, following her in the forest when she hunted, and never offering to stalk her. Garm was her guardian, she sometimes thought. It was strange that a wolf would be dear to her when wolves had only ever meant fear and pain. But Garm was Azgarulf, and she guessed that he, like Ánleifr, was able to reason. When he lifted his voice on the wind a second time, she knew that he was warning her, as he so often did, that Morg was coming.

Morg was the black Azgarulf that the people in the village feared. He was a man-killer, that monstrous wolf whose name was Night. He was the son of the great she-wolf named Bethoc, a white Azgarulf who stalked the forests quiet as a ghost. She never took men or their children, only the beasts of the field. That was why they had come to the farm tonight and the winter nights in the years before. There was a storm on the mountain that dumped heavy snow on the earth. Bethoc and her son came for the warm mule flesh in the barn out across the farm.

“Eiric?” her mother called to her from her place at her husband's bed.

“I hear him, mother.” she called back, pausing to blow out the candle and to wrap her mirror in deerskin. “I will go out and see to it.”

“Be careful.” her mother said, fixing her frightened stare on her as she emerged from behind the curtain and into the rest of the house. “Come back to me.”

“It's only Garm, mother.” Eiric said with a smile. “He is only telling me that Bethoc is Coming.”

Her mother stared at her, swallowing a lump in her throat. “The queen.” she said quietly.

Eiric nodded, reaching for her bow over the door. “And the Night comes with her.”

“Don't go.” her mother begged.

“Someone must watch the mules.” Eiric said, slinging her quiver over her shoulder.

“You know these wolves are not simple.” her mother persisted.

Eiric chuckled and slipped a knife into her boot. “A lesson I have heard every day of my life. Don't worry, mother. Garm won't hurt me. Bethoc has no interest in human meat. The only worry I have is Morg, and he is flesh and blood.”

She left the house before her mother could protest any more. She stepped out into the snow and pulled the door shut behind her. She listened to the sound of wet snowfall. She listened to the forest straining under the weight of snow and the quiet sound of movement in the trees as owls watched the house and barn for mice.

It was dark already, but that mattered little. She heaved a deep breath of cold air and waded through knee deep snow to the pit between the house and the barn. She put her foot on the lip of the metal dome and pushed it to one side. It scraped as it slid from the metal ring and sloshed into the snow. Eiric watched the treeline while she kindled a fire in the pit. It was the best way to keep the wolves at bay. Even the Azgarulf disliked flame.

That fire had burned every night since she was born, a flame that signaled night on the Ulfsmödare Mountain. It meant that her father still lived, that the wolves would be kept from the precious bloodline of mules that had so long carried the king's elite soldiers, and that there was careful watch kept for the great Azgarulf under the night sky.

She doubted that the wolves would come close that night. They seldom came after the fire was lit. Bethoc had no interest in hunting that place and Garm had never taken a life on that land. It was Morg that she worried about. He did not behave as an animal. That did not surprise her, given his lineage. He was difficult to predict at times. He had succeeded in taking a colt once two years before. Eiric wanted to make sure that never happened again.

Her family had bred and raised the king's mules for generations. Her great grandfather had delivered the first mules to Gundherrin long ago, before her grandfather was even born. His father had brought large wild donkeys back from his journeys in other lands far across the seas. He had favored the largest animals, calling them Kiang Jacks. He kept those jacks with good temperament, breeding them to Dølehest draft mares. The Dølehest fared well on the mountain, tolerating snow and winter. The cross seemed to produce a large, sure footed, intelligent mule that the king had prized for his elite soldiers.

Eiric's father had quite the collection of Dølehest horses and Kiang Jacks to keep his bloodlines true and strong. The large barn housed the animals during the winter, and in the warm months, they were set free to roam the mountain again. Each fall, after the harvest came in, she rode out with her father to drive them all home again. Every three years, she and her father would drive the new stock down the mountain, across the flooded ruins of Lindtvek, through the long stretch of the Garsthal forest, and into Gundherrin for the king's men. Every life in that barn contributed to their livelihood.

Eiric shifted her gray eyes, searching the starless dark for the beasts slinking just beyond the fire's glow. She caught flashes of light on silver tipped fur at both flanking edges of the fire light. Morg had come in spite of the fire, and Bethoc came with him. In the house, her mother nursed her ailing father, treating his fever with liniment and a sweat wrap. He was old and dying and when he left this world, the heartache of losing him would kill her mother. Until that day, Eiric would protect them, and the bloodline of mules her family had bred for generations. All were in peril now, from Bethoc, the she-wolf named Queen and one of her sons, Morg, who was named Night. The animals were circling, trying to decide if they wanted to risk taking down a full grown heavy mule, or a human.

For Morg, the choice was easy, and he fixed his eyes on the human searching the shadows for them. But Bethoc knew humankind better than her son. Morg had taken them for prey before, but never one like this. She knew that this human was different and deceptively dangerous.

'Let me take her, mother.' he pleaded to the she-wolf's mind. 'She is soft and tender and her flesh will be sweet.'

'She is not soft!' she snapped at her son. 'Look at her eyes, Morg. See more than her flesh.'

'Human females are weak, mother.' he reasoned. 'She may have courage, but courage does not make her strong.'

'No.' Bethoc thought to him. 'Not tonight. She is too willing to fight. We are weak with hunger, and we risk too much with one so unpredictable. I have told you many times that there is nothing for us here. We will not hunt this place.'

Bethoc turned away, content to take prey elsewhere. Perhaps the farmstead just over the ridge. Sheep grazed there, and it was an old human who watched over them. They could regain their strength on lambs and be satisfied with that.

'I want her, mother.' Morg growled. 'I want her flesh. I want the old, sick ones in the den she guards, and the mules she keeps locked in the barn.'

'That is hate, Morg.' she told him. '...and something more. You must be careful, or your hide will warm her den floor beside your father's.'

Morg snarled in the dark, his cold stare locked on the human female who tracked his sound and met his gaze across the night.

'Keep your fangs in your mouth!' Bethoc growled. 'It was her father who took yours. He is old and sick now, and will die soon. When he is gone, she will know what you felt. Do not waste your strength on hating her.'

'But, if I took her sire.' Morg growled, eyes still locked on the human. 'If he died in my jaws...'

'She would pierce your lungs with a spear and the skins of twice my kin would be stretched in her den. Put it out of your mind.'

'Call Garm to us, mother, and I swear that the three of us can end every life here and fill our bellies before the dawn.'

'Your brother walks among us when he chooses.' Bethoc thought to him. 'A true Azgarulf, he does not come when called. And you know that he does not hunt humans.'

'Neither did our father.' Morg growled. 'And it earned him honorless death.'

Bethoc whirled on her son, her jaws snapping shut on his throat with a crushing grip and a snarl. She downed him, watching with mild contempt as he tucked his tail and rolled his belly up to her.

'Honor is never showing your belly.' she seethed. 'Your father never did, even as he died. And Garm never showed me his belly, nor your sister, Lovis, even as I suckled you as pups. The only belly I have seen, is yours.'

Morg didn't dare growl his anger. Bethoc was twice the fighter he was, and to test her would be a quick death. He kept his eyes low and he licked his muzzle, playing at subservience and pretending to beg mercy. Disgusted with him, Bethoc let him go and turned away. The she-wolf passed a glance to the human, but left without a sound or display of distaste. Personally, she had no hatred for the female. The fate of her mate had come at the hands of that female's father and had nothing to do with her. The blame was to be laid at her father's feet. And that infirm old human wasn't long for this world. Hating either of them was a waste of strength. Winter was almost over and food was scarce. Bethoc was too hungry and too tired to worry with revenge.

Morg followed behind her, head and tail low as he eyed the human. He didn't understand his mother's reservations about taking the female. Humans could be dangerous, certainly. But this female weighed far less than he did. Most humans did. He was the son of Bethoc and was sired by Ánleifr, and could boast being Azgarulf. He was a god among wolves, himself the size of a heavy horse, capable of thought and reasoning comparable to a human, and able to communicate with all his kin by mere thought. There was magic in his blood, and though his mother warned him not to toy with it, he often did so when he was alone.

He had mastered many magic crafts without his mother’s knowledge, and had even found within himself the lurking shape of a man. Like his father, he had learned to walk among humans, disguised as one of them. And when he had found that shape within himself, he had discovered a very different reaction to this female; the descendant of his father’s murderer. As a wolf, he had craved her blood, to feel her bones splinter in his jaws and taste the warmth of her life flowing over his tongue. But, when he found the man-shape lurking within himself, and stood in the shadows of the forest to watch her pick a silent path through the trees, he found himself feeling something very different, something he had come to understand only too quickly.

One bite from his jaws could crush a war horse’s spine. One swipe of his paw could break its neck. He could take life so easily, so quickly. And yet, Bethoc, the queen of wolves, the mother of the Azgarulf, feared to try this human female. It angered him, and he looked forward to the time when the Queen fell injured and he could finish her off. Then he would take himself a mate and sire his own line. It grieved him that there were no Azgarulf females left to continue a pure line. None the less, his children would be the scourge of all mankind, as Bethoc had once been before she mated to Ánleifr.

And when she was gone, and he had sons of his own, he would lead his pack in a hunt for his brother, Garm. They would tear the life from him and Morg would be the last of the Azgarulf to sire his own line. The snows would be red and mankind would abandon the North. That was his goal. To finish Bethoc. To sire his own line. To kill Garm. To drive humans out of the white wilderness and make it his own. He would not rest until he saw it done. But, for the moment, in the winter hardships, he needed his mother's strength and skill in the hunt. He needed her warmth in the den. So, he followed quietly to bide his time. He cast one last look to the female that had lured his man’s-shape from within, and a dark flicker of joy made him shudder. Where once he had thought to devour her, his inner man had other designs for her. She was special somehow, and would make a fine mother for his future sons.

Bethoc took them through the cold forest, through deep snow and tightly packed trees, over the hard stone of the ridge. It was a long jaunt, more than an hour's journey through the unforgiving winter night. Bethoc didn't complain. She never did. She only did what she had always done. She did anything she had to to keep herself and her children alive. She had given birth to three pups, sired by Ánleifr. Garm was the first born, the chosen son of the Azgarulf. Morg had been born last, after his sister. Her name had been Lovis. She was a strong wolf, and would have mothered he own line of the Azgarulf. But, she had been killed when she was young, wounded by a great bear. Lovis and Garm had been inseparable, two truly great wolves destined to walk into the legends of mankind. But Lovis' life was cut short by the bear, a beast that Garm had killed in desperate attempt to save her. She had lived long enough to tell him a secret that he had never shared; one that broke his heart and made him sever himself from his blood kin and wander alone with grief. Bethoc had never known that secret, and she wasn't sure that she ever would.

She grieved for her daughter, and knew what humans must have felt when their kin died. She understood the pitiful sounds of torment that they made as they lay their dear ones down to burn them. Her heart made that sound when Lovis was slain. She felt that hurt deep inside each time she caught a glimpse of Garm in the forest. Each time she called to him. Each time he answered, but never came to her. All she had now was Morg, and he was not right. Morg had a human's heart and a human's mind. The things of anger and hate grew inside of him. He wanted blood when he wasn't hungry. He wanted things that he did not need. He wanted what no wolf wanted. He wanted to kill every man he found and lick their blood from the ice until neither humans nor blood remained. Tonight, however, she felt something new hiding within him. She sensed his longing for the female human, caught the scent of human desires on his essence. She knew that he had done as his father once had, and found within himself the shape of a man. She knew that in so doing, he had stirred the lusts of a man for women. It pained her that he longed for the daughter of the man who had killed his own father. That desire was cursed, and she felt the weight of it press heavily down on her. Her doom was in Morg’s human shape, of that she was certain.

But he was her son, and though she could not trust him, she still loved him. She would hunt with him and warm his den and help him to live. That was a mother’s purpose, after all. Tonight, her son would have to settle for the blood and meat of sheep. It would fill their bellies and warm their bodies. It would give them strength. For Bethoc, it would offer some small comfort. To be warm and fed was all she needed anymore. Love for all else was gone from her. When Ánleifr was slain, and when her dear Lovis fell to the great bear, love ran out of her, and Bethoc could not find it in herself again. She knew that her days were numbered. She knew that Garm would never return to her and that someday when she was wounded or sleeping, Morg would succeed in killing her.

She missed her daughter and the bond she once had with Garm. Deep in her heart, Bethoc yearned for more. She wanted the daughter that had been severed from her. She wanted to make peace with the secret that Ánleifr had left behind. That was why she tried so hard to keep Morg from the humans and their mules. It was not because she cared for humans. It was because Ánleifr had left something behind in that place that still had meaning. It was a secret that Bethoc kept hidden in her heart. One that she hoped Morg never learned. And yet, his man’s-shape was drawing him perilously near to it.