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Aethren lay inside one of the animal hide tents that had been erected in the dry grove at Eahalr’s outskirts. Fever still quivered through them, but it was receding now. They almost wished it would come back. At least they hadn’t been able to think inside that mire of heat and pain.
Eahalr was a dismal place: cold where Deothwicc had been imbued with Norðunn’s warmth; gloomy where Deothwicc had felt so distinctly alive. Aethren knew that if they felt these differences so keenly, then Rostfar and the wolves must have been suffering tenfold. It made Aethren’s blood seethe with anger to know this was likely the best any of them could hope for.
Someone knocked on the tent pole. When Aethren bid entry, Rostfar poked her head through the flap.
“I’m heating some of your pa’s stew for breakfast. Do you want to join me?”
Aethren hesitated. “Who else is out there?”
“It’s just me, or I wouldn’t have offered,” Rostfar reassured them. “I know you need space.”
“. . . Okay.” Aethren nodded. They dragged on a shirt and stumbled, blinking, to the firepit and its circle of stone seats. The stones had been sculpted by hrafmaer magic, perfectly smooth and oddly comfortable to sit in, even without a covering of furs.
“Have you spoken to Marken yet?” Rostfar asked as she sat on a seat beside them, gently pushing a bowl into their hands. Aethren’s gut twisted at the mention of their pa.
“No.”
“Okay.” Rostfar nodded and began to eat. She didn’t make the silence awkward, for which Aethren was grateful beyond words. They stared down at the potatoes and cabbage – grown in less than a week by the hrafmaer – and turned the bowl between their palms.
“Can you see it?” Aethren asked without looking up. “Ylla’s weave, I mean. The one she used to bind Pa’s tongue.”
“Sort of.” Rostfar’s voice was slow and ponderous. They heard her spoon clink back into the bowl. “It’s very subtle. I don’t think I’d see if I didn’t know it’s there. Why do you ask?”
Aethren breathed out heavily. “I could undo it, you know? I did that for Thrigg, and it was . . . not easy, but simple. I could undo it, and he could tell me everything he knows about Mam and Ylla and magic.”
“So why haven’t you?” The question wasn’t judgemental. Just curious.
“I,” Aethren said. Choked on the words. They had to swallow a couple of times before they could speak again. “I’m scared what I might learn. And I’m scared to talk to him, because I’m so angry, Rost – angry at myself, and Pa, and Ylla. Everything. But I’m tired, too, and anger just makes that worse.”
“I understand. That’s how I felt when I first went to Deothwicc.”
“But you had a reason!” Aethren finally looked up. “You’d lost your daughter. What have I lost? I don’t have any right to feel this way, and I hate it. I hate what it’s making me into. Ylla is a monster, and I know Mam had a part in what she did and I can’t help thinking – what if I’m like them? What if this anger inside me is just where it starts?”
“Aethren, listen.” Rostfar’s voice was gentle, and from anyone else that would have been unbearable. “The wolves see anger as a deep and inherently human flaw, and they try not to feel it for fear of being like a human. But they were wrong. It’s not a bad thing.”
Aethren stared at Rostfar, half perplexed and half disbelieving. “How can you say that? Ylla is angry and resentful, and look what that made her do. It made Grae unwolf!”
“No.” Rostfar shook her head and turned to face Aethren full-on, setting her bowl to one side. “I’ve been talking with Grae, and I think the wolvenkind had that wrong, too. The wyrdness didn’t abandon them because they were angry. It’s more like . . . pain isolates us if we try to bury it – clouds our vision, distorts our idea of ourselves and cuts us off from others. Illarieth and Grae’s wyrdsight became overshadowed with their agony, and they were too frightened of being like humans to really process their feelings. If someone had just told them it’s okay to grieve . . .” Her breath caught. She cupped her hands around her pouch of telling-stones and quietly cleared her throat. “You’re allowed to be angry and upset about what you’ve been through. It’s what you do with your anger that counts.”
Aethren wanted to believe Rostfar. They wanted to believe they were wounded instead of irrevocably broken. They wanted to believe all the bitterness and rage inside them wouldn’t fester into a corrosive flame; a fire that would burn them out until they became a resentful husk. But it was so hard. And they were so tired.
Aethren looked past Rostfar, beyond Eahalr and into the Wyccmarshes. “You’re talking like it’s all over. It isn’t. Ylla’s still there in Hrafnholm, and the hrafmaer seem to think I’m some sort of leader. And Hrall’s put us in exile here as if everything we’ve done doesn’t matter! How can you accept it? How can you be so calm?”
“I’m not calm,” Rostfar said, and Aethren heard the slight crack in her voice. “And I don’t accept it. I intend to fight back, to find a way to change things – but not yet. I need time. We all need time. If we keep pushing ourselves, we’ll fall to pieces, and we don’t deserve that.” She mustered a soft, rueful smile.
“But what do I do about the hrafmaer? They’re expecting me to be like Mam. To lead them.”
Rostfar leaned back on her hands with a thoughtful expression on her face. At last, the corner of her mouth twitched mischievously. “Screw them.”
Aethren snorted. Then, surprised by their own mirth, they laughed. “I can’t tell them that.”
“Yes, you can.” Rostfar patted Aethren’s hand and stood. “It’s not at all fair of the hrafmaer to make you into a leader because it’s what they want. Speaking as someone who spent a decade as Dannaskeld, nothing makes that sort of pressure worth it.”
Aethren remained seated as Rostfar tidied up from the meal, staring into the fire. Rostfar knew what it was to be an unwilling leader; she knew the weight of duty and guilt, and how they chafed at your willpower. They didn’t believe her ideas about pain and anger, but they could listen to her on this, at least. Maybe.
They were broken from their reverie by the sound of hoofbeats from the trees. A moment later, Marken appeared, leading Pony and Rostfar’s pony, Sylfr.
“What is it?” Aethren rose, heart in their mouth. Marken’s face was too grim, too still, and they didn’t think they cope if anything else had gone wrong—
“The trialmoot?” It was Rostfar who spoke. She seemed calm, but her grip on the bowl she was rinsing had tightened. Marken nodded. Rostfar closed her eyes and let out a shaky exhale. When she opened them, her expression was fierce. “Let’s go.”
⁂
Mati, Kristan, Isha, Nat and Grae accompanied Rostfar and Marken on the ride back to Erdansten. Only Marken spoke; his voice was a gentle companion to Whiterift’s rushing waters as he explained what he, Laethen and Hrall had discussed. Rostfar remained quiet and poured all her energy into fighting the urge to turn Sylfr around and ride away, past Eahalr and into the wilds beyond.
There was nobody watching at the walls when they approached. Mati kissed Rostfar’s forehead, Isha squeezed her hand, and Kristan gave both her and Nat a quick hug. Grae remained a few strides away with his tail between his legs.
“Are you ready?” Marken asked her.
“No,” Rostfar said, and strode through the archway.
The mootplace was packed full by the time Nat and Rostfar reached it. Rostfar stood at the north entrance, beside the Dannhren’s house, and felt her legs seize. Behind her, Nat tsked in impatience.
“Wait—” Rostfar started, but Nat had already put her fingers to her lips and uttered a sharp whistle.
Heads turned. People instantly began to move aside, but it wasn’t the smooth, respectful parting of a crowd making way for their Dannaskeld. Their steps were frantic, hands reaching for those nearest as uncertainty spread, and nobody seemed to know where to look.
Beyond the crowd, the dais was set up in readiness. Two stools were set facing one another at either end of the highest level. Rostfar’s mouth went dry.
“Walk,” Nat whispered in her ear. Rostfar walked. She tried not to think about how visibly her legs were shaking as she mounted the steps and sat on one of the stools. Nat stood in the crowd’s front row and gave Rostfar a tiny, almost hidden, smile.
The doors of the moothall opened. Faren walked out, flanked by Ornhild and Hrall. Laethen and Marken brought up the rear. To Rostfar’s surprise, people seemed just as wary of Faren as they were of her. Nobody greeted him or called encouragement as she had expected. Ornhild was not gentle when she pushed Faren down onto the opposite stool.
The silence stretched out, tense and sinuous.
“You know why we are here,” Laethen said at last. “We all saw the same vision – the same account of what happened to the wolves of Ysaïn. Now what remains is to determine whether we should consider that a crime—”
“It was,” Rostfar burst out.
“No, it wasn’t,” Faren said.
They stared at one another, both bristling with their own sort of anger.
Laethen, to Rostfar’s surprise, seemed pleased at this interruption. “So you don’t deny that you did it, Faren?”
Faren opened his mouth, the colour bleeding from his cheeks. Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
“But what did we see?” someone demanded. “All I got was a blasted jumble of images. It was awful.”
“Rostfar?” Laethen asked. Her voice was so gentle. Rostfar wanted to shout at her – to say that Laethen shouldn’t treat her with such respect anymore, not when she’d failed Urdven and failed the wolves – but gratitude clogged her throat.
“I took that memory from a wolf as she died,” Rostfar said, rising to her feet. She wanted to crawl out of her own skin; it was so hard to avoid eye contact in front of a crowd like this. Her voice shook, but she stared at the stone beneath her feet and made herself keep talking. “Her name was Illarieth and she – she was a mother who only wanted the best for her family. Something had happened on Ysaïn so’s to make their hunting grounds dangerous, and they roamed nearer and nearer to Myrardaen.”
Movement out of the corner of her eye made her look up. Faren tried to get to his feet, but Ornhild pushed him back down.
“Ysaïn isn’t like here,” Faren spat. “We don’t get to hide behind walls. Our towns and villages are strung out, stretched thin. Myrardaen was under attack from wreathers, and we didn’t have enough land left to hunt.”
“And you thought you’d kill some wolves to make more space?” Rostfar asked, fighting the urge to snarl. “Because that’s what he did.” She turned back to the crowd at large, more confident now. “He pretended to make a deal with them – they’d get land to hunt in, and humans wouldn’t go there. But there was something wrong with that land, and when the wolves started hunting further afield to find more food, he—” her voice shook. She had to stop and lick her dry lips before she could finish speaking. “He drew Illarieth away, then slaughtered her pups.”
Silence. It was as if the people in the crowd had stopped breathing.
“Did the Myrardaen council agree to this?” Hrall asked Faren. His tone suggested he knew the answer already. “I know Ast-Hrenna – he’s a fair man, and I can’t see him agreeing to trickery.”
“I had a choice between human lives, or wolven ones. There wasn’t enough food for everyone, and it was magic causing our problems – magic, like the wolves.” Faren directed his words to Rostfar, not Hrall or the crowd. His clenched fists trembled. “I made the hard choice as a Dannaskeld should. It was the right thing to do!”
Laethen looked narrowly at Faren. “If it was right, why did you flee?”
Rostfar heard the question echo through the crowd. Faren tried to shrink into his stool, but he couldn’t hide the guilty flush on his cheeks.
“Things – things started to go wrong.” His voice dropped towards a whisper, but the crowd was so quiet it didn’t matter. “They needed someone to blame, was all. And the wolves had become – not wolves. Something worse. Something we couldn’t fight. And the council said it was me who’d done it.”
Ornhild had been quiet until then, but she burst out, “You told me you’d come here because you needed to recover from a hunting incident and wanted to see your brother while you did.”
“That’s what I heard, too.” Someone else shouted, backed up by angry agreements.
Another voice rose above the rest, “He abandoned his post as Dannaskeld!”
“He lied to all of us!”
“He nearly got us killed.”
The anger mounted until Rostfar could taste it, but it was wrong. She cut a frantic glance towards Nat, who remained stoic and motionless in the front row. They were missing the point, all of them. Faren had slaughtered children, decimated a family, bereaved a mother who had wanted nothing more than safety for her people. Didn’t anyone care about that?
At a nod from Laethen, Marken struck the great drum beside the moothall. The crowd quieted.
“You’ve all heard Faren’s crimes,” Laethen said, her voice clear and strong. “There’ll be a Casting to decide if he remains here as an exile – or if we send him back to face judgement from the people he betrayed. It starts at dawn tomorrow. Is this agreed on?”
Murmurs of assent.
“Good,” Laethen said evenly. “The council—” Here her voice wavered. The council was an inadequate word for her and Hrall. “The council will now take Rostfar’s statement. The trialmoot is closed.”
Marken sounded the drum again, and the crowd began to disperse. Ornhild took Faren away, no doubt to wherever he was being kept. Rostfar couldn’t move. This couldn’t be it.
“What about the wolves?” Rostfar demanded. People faltered, turned back. She read uncertainty and confusion on their faces. “You all felt Illarieth’s agony, her grief. Faren’s massacre did something to the pack – let something in, maybe the wraiths – and that destroyed them. They were a Kind like us, with their own language and culture and ways, and that’s all gone now. You’ve destroyed the Deothwicc pack’s home! Don’t any of you care? How can you talk about what’s right or fair when you haven’t even mentioned the wreck you’ve made of dozens of lives?”
“Rostfar—” Hrall began, but Rostfar wouldn’t let him quiet her. She had practised this speech with Isha and Mati countless times over the last two days, and by the stars she would make them listen.
“When Norðunn, Erdan and Hrafnir drove back the wyrdaetha and their wreathers, they didn’t just do it for humankind. It was for humans, wolves, bees, and other beings we never had the chance to know. It was for the animals, the plants, the sea creatures – for all life.
“They weren’t gods. They were wyrdaetha, but ones who knew the world had to change. Norðunn took her heart and she planted it deep in the forest so’s to grow a tree; its roots reach into the earth and its branches spread up through the wyrdness, into the eðir. She did it to bind the realms closer and make them stable – so we could use the wyrdness to learn about one another, and share our memories and beliefs. That tree is everything that’s left of Norðunn, and you nearly burnt it down.
The wolvenkind have guarded the Speaking Tree for hundreds of years, and all they’ve ever gotten in return in hatred. I knew you’d hate me if you found out what I was, but I worked to keep you all safe anyway. I’ve lived every day of my life in fear that the people I love would turn on me – maybe stone me, like you did that wolf pup last year.” The stone of the dais bruised Rostfar’s knees as she collapsed. She blinked through her tears at the sea of stunned faces before her. Disbelief, shame, horror, confusion, embarrassment – they bloomed through the wyrdness, making the current thrum like a plucked thread. Rostfar pressed her knuckles against the cold stone and kept talking, even as the careful words she had planned unravelled. “He was called Nessen, and he was young and curious and he didn’t know he should’ve been afraid. He should never have had to be afraid. When Almr Wyrdsaer said we didn’t have to fear, she meant we didn’t have to fear each other – but we made ourselves forget that, and it’s ruined us.”
Hands took Rostfar’s shoulders. “You’ve said your piece, Rost,” Hrall murmured in her ear. She wanted to resist him, but she was so tired. He got her on her feet and guided her into the moothall.
