Page 18 of Blood of Wolves

As if sensing he was the topic of conversation, the drake whipped around to pant into Náli’s face like a dog.

He sighed. “I don’t suppose ‘Moron’ would be appreciated.”

The drake licked his face.

“Ugh.” Náli wiped at his cheek with the back of his glove. “What are you so fucking friendly for? I don’t even like you.”

The drake’s cold tongue lolled, undeterred.

Klemens was watching them, but his gaze had never felt like a physical weight, not the way Mattias’s did – a weight that Náli could feel now, a low buzz in the back of his neck like the charge in the air before a lightning storm. Náli sought his gaze, now, while he fended off another lick with an open hand; the drake’s cold tongue slithered between his fingers instead, and it was disgusting…but Mattias’s gaze waspained. He looked like a man with a stomach ache; like a man who was…

Náli refused to thinklovesick.Pining. No, that couldn’t…he was the one who longed, and no way did Mattias…

It was only kindness. And duty. Obligation. (No, it’s not, you know it’s not, a traitorous inner voice whispered.) Mattias didn’t love him – not like that, not the way Náli wanted him to. Who could love him? Lord Náli, the Corpse Lord, the necromancer whose name meantdemon of the dead.

He’d never had much of a way with the living. Only the dead, always the dead.

His throat ached.

“Valgrind,” he said, voice strained. “His name is Valgrind.”

The fence around the fallen ones. The fence that encircled hell.

Klemens nodded his approval, and went back toward the tent.

Mattias’s expression was too much to look at, so Náli stroked the horns of the drake he’d named, and prayed for a quick departure.

~*~

The night of the betrayal, Ragnar’s men had opened up the stable pens and loosed their animals. Most of the reindeer and horses had been recovered, but not all. There weren’t as many men to worry about providing mounts for, though, so it evened out. There were enough reindeer to draw the sleighs, a few of which would be dedicated to carrying the wounded, rather than supplies.

Birger commandeered parchment and quill from someone, and started putting together a list: what they could afford to leave behind, and what they couldn’t. The number of wounded, and of dead, and of mostly-healthy. A map was produced, and many heads bent together over it as they discussed the route home, everyone talking over each other, trying to predict the path that Ragnar would take. Would he go by the usual roads? Would he risk assaulting Long Reach? Or swing wide and avoid it altogether?

It took a few minutes, in the clamor of overlapping voices, for Erik to realize he’d been standing dumb and still, his arms folded, and hadn’t contributed a single edict or idea so far. He stood over Birger, where he’d drawn up to a table, and was just…existing. Breathing, head buzzing with a low hum that hadn’t plagued him since his very first day on a battlefield, back when he was still young and green. His head had felt full of bees the day he’d treated with William Drake right after he’d taken on his father’s crown; the day he’d let the harshness of his face cover for the too-fast thumping of his heart; the day he’d glimpsed a flash of red from the corner of his eye, a tiny, freckle-faced boy spying on the grown-ups.

That tiny boy was a man now, slender and slight, but whip-smart, and clear-headed – healthy, now, in a way he hadn’t been, thanks to his mythic connection to the drakes, a magic Erik couldn’t begin to understand. He stood across from Birger, and leaned forward to point confidently at the map, voice raised so everyone could hear. The words washed over Erik unrecognized, but the tone was unmistakeable: one of sureness, and of authority. An unraveling braid swung forward, and he tucked it absently back behind his ear, fingertips sliding over the lover’s beads woven at the ends.

There was a boulder lodged in Erik’s chest. He stepped back from the table, turned, and walked out of the longhouse. Magnus made a motion toward him, as if to follow, but Erik waved him off, and ducked out through the door.

The dragons – the mated pair – had settled down to lie in the sun, coiled up together, eyes closed. They trusted Oliver enough to therefore trust those that Oliver was easy around, and that included all the lords and clansmen here, apparently. A breeze gusted across the clearing, stirring Erik’s cloak, but it was cold, rather than frigid, and the beasts didn’t stir – save Percy cracking one eye open, and closing it again – as he passed them and started up the tiered stairs set into the hillside. They switched back and forth, climbing, and spilled out, finally, on the plateau of the gaming fields.

Hosting pyres, now, rather than games.

A pall of lingering smoke hung over the ground, a smudge that softened the glare of the sun. The pyres themselves had all burned down to black bundles, the once-hulking timbers reduced to jagged twigs bearing greasy heaps of ash. Which one was Ingvar? he wondered. Which one was the captain Askr had lost? Whose tumble of blackened bones belonged to which lord? Marked a wound that would scar and be carried forward forever?

Leif stood with his arms folded, staring at the rows of still-smoking pyres, face an expressionless mask, save the faint crease between his brows. It was a face Erik had seen far too often in the mirror – but which, in this moment, he was glad of. He didn’t particularly want to be around anyone else right this moment – but Leif, his heir, with all this weight on his shoulders…that he could handle.

Erik drew up beside him, and Leif acknowledged his presence with a slight nod. Erik grunted in response.

It was quiet, up here. Voices floated along on the breeze, distant, indistinct conversations from those clansmen that hadn’t joined up with Ragnar’s cause. Beserkirs, mostly, but the Refr clan, too. TheJotunns, shockingly. Gods knew that bunch was bloodthirsty – but they had principles in regards to whose blood they were spilling. The idea of any Northerners killing Northerners for the sake of an alliance with theSels…Unthinkable.

Erik couldn’t decide if it stung more or less that it was Ragnar who’d set everything into motion. He’d never trusted him, wasn’t even sure he liked him – but he was blood, and so it felt like a knife between his ribs.

He remembered a little boy with a nasty smirk and a spark in his eyes; tussling in the snow and laughing until his stomach hurt. Scraping their fingertips and knuckles when they tried to climb up a sheer cliff face and ended up with a lecture and a wealth of bruises instead. Ragnar had slapped their bleeding palms together, and said,“Look, it’s the same.We’rethe same. It’s just like Papa says: the blood of wolves runs in our veins.”He’d looked proud. He’d looked, Erik now thought, in retrospect, more than a little desperate, his smile manic, his eyes too bright.

We’re the same.

But no. No, they weren’t at all.

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