Page 19 of Blood of Wolves

Hehopedthey weren’t.

Leif took a deep, less-than-steady breath, and said, “It’s peaceful up here.” Erik wanted to look at him, but the low, uncertain quality of Leif’s voice kept him facing forward, not wanting to push him. “I didn’t expect it to be, but…it is. In its own way.”

“The dead don’t demand anything of you,” Erik said. “The crisis is in the moment of failing them – in the dying itself. But. After. There’s nothing else you can do.”

Leif made a small, surprised sound, and Erik did turn to him, then. Found his nephew studying him with wide blue eyes so very like his own. Rune had his dark hair, and the impetuous temperament of his youth, but it was Leif who had the sometimes-haunted gaze that Revna had always tried to soothe with gentle fingers through his hair, and a kiss on the top of his head. Leif fretted in the same way that Erik fretted: alone, quiet, withdrawn. Already so much more of a king than Erik had been at his age.

His gaze tracked back and forth over Erik’s face. “Failing?” he asked, but his frown said he already knew exactly what Erik meant.

“That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it?” He tilted his head toward the rows of pyres. “Like you’ve failed them. You weren’t here, and you couldn’t fight, and some of your people are dead now because of it.”

Leif’s throat jerked as he swallowed.

“What?” Erik asked, turning to face him fully. “Did you think that I would assure you none of this is your fault, or mine, and that we did all that we could? That sometimes terrible things happen, and we have to pick ourselves up and move forward?”

“Well…” Leif sighed, shoulders slumping a fraction. “No, I don’t suppose I thought that.” One corner of his mouth hitched upward in a brief, wry smile. “It wouldn’t be like you to pass up a good burden ripe for the shouldering.”

Erik snorted. “You could say the same for yourself. I can’t decide if you inherited that habit, or you’ve picked it up watching me.”

“A little of both, I suppose.”

The buzzing in the back of Erik’s mind had eased. The smell of smoke helped, oddly, as did the presence of the only other person whose thoughts followed along the same track as his own. “Leif,” he said, growing serious. “There’s never anything I want more than to make you feel better – you and your brother both.” And he had done some of that, in the boys’ youth: reassuring hands holding small, trembling heads, and rubbing soothing circles into heaving backs when nightmares were too frightening, or play too rough. He thought Leif might have been remembering that, the way he nodded. “But that has to be your mother’s role. Or your wife’s, one day. A king can seek succor when he feels like we do now, but he has to acknowledge the truth: when something ugly befalls any part of his kingdom, it is, in some way, always his fault. And it’s his duty to set things to rights.”

Leif’s expression twisted. He sighed, nostrils flaring, gaze shifting out across the field again. “I know,” he said, softly.

Erik finally gave in to the impulse to grip Leif’s shoulder, and squeeze it tight, relieved to feel Leif lean into the touch. It eased the buzzing in Erik’s skull; helped to center him. “I don’t mean to be harsh–”

“But you just can’t help it?” Leif guessed, grin plucking at one corner of his mouth.

Erik resisted the urge to smile back – at first, but then let his lips twitch, and was rewarded by the softening of Leif’s worried gaze. He didn’t know if he’d ever get it right: the balance between loving uncle and king handing down his crown. It was a push and pull, and he often worried that he pushed far too much, in an effort to do the best he could.

“It helps, sometimes,” he said, turning back to the field, its dark smudges of ash – of death. “Taking a step back. It gets – noisy, being king.”

“Hm,” Leif hummed.

“We have people in our lives who support us, who hold us together. But they won’t ever truly understand what it’s like.”

“That isn’t very reassuring.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is.” But Erik felt lighter, inside, and when he glanced at his nephew found that the line of Leif’s shoulders had softened. “I think things are about to get very ugly,” he said, with regret. “I wish I could spare you that – you and everyone else. But. We’re at war, now.”

Leif nodded. “I always assumed I would be, at some point.”

Erik didn’t say,I’d always hoped to bring about a true, lasting peace before it was your turn to rule. Because peace had never been, and would never be anything but a temporary state. There was always a fresh storm waiting to roll in; like the tide, like the moon, like the seasons, peace came and went; was driven out, and held shakily aloft in bloodied hands.

They lingered another moment, and when Erik turned to start back down the hill, his heir fell into step beside him.

5

For a few hours, Oliver was consumed with departure preparations. He tried to pick up a crate, only to have it plucked easily from his hands by a burly, bearded young lordling who called him “Your Lordship” and refused to let him do any of the sleigh loading. Before he could insist that he wasn’t so terribly weak – especially not with his fever nowhere in sight – Birger was tugging him into a strategy meeting, and, really, Oliver knew that the best campaigns were those that took advantage of each member’s strengths. He could pack supplies – but he was better with his mind than his hands, so he settled on the stool he was offered beside the pallet that had been dragged up for Askr, and did his best to predict Ragnar’s path toward Aeres.

Others would crowd in occasionally, looking over their shoulders, suggesting this or that. Each time the hide flap at the door lifted, sunlight slanted across the floor at a new angle. Oliver’s stomach rumbled, but he was too tense to think of eating. Someone set tea down at his elbow, and he forgot about it until it had gone cold.

He’d spent most of his life poring over maps, drawing invisible lines with his fingertips – always soft and too-delicate from time spent indoors; always a planner, and never a fighter. He’d thought long and hard about a strategy for a Drakewell bolstered by Aeretollean forces; a plan to march against the Sels, or, at least to dig in and hold their ground in the east. He’d never expectedthisscenario. Had come here hoping to sweep Erik up into a war for the South, never anticipating that war would arrive in the North, first.

When Birger said, “Lad,” Oliver lifted his head and realized that it was throbbing, faintly. Worry gripped him, briefly, before he blinked and realized it was only a normal headache, brought on by tension and squinting at the map, and not the fuzzy throb of an oncoming fever.

“What?”

---