Page 66 of Blood of Wolves

He reined up, and looked back over his shoulder; and his stomach sank. The group of riders and walkers stretched out behind him was not the phalanx that had ridden proudly down into the valley at Dreki Hörgr, but a sad and fluttering ribbon of the tired, the injured, the beaten-down. He would trade even the most infirm Northern lord or soldier for a whole host from the South, but they rode now toward home, and invasion, expecting to be chased by a host of clansmen.

“We’re moving too slowly,” he said, and tipped a glance up at the midday sun. He wondered where Oliver was, now; if the drakes were cooperating, how quickly they were flying. Wondered if he was cold up there, among the clouds, and if he was dressed warmly enough to prevent frostbite. He had such fragile skin, soft to the touch and dusted with freckles…

“Aye,” Birger said with a sigh, pulling him from his sudden flash of daydream. “But there’s nothing for it. The snow’s deep, and the lads aren’t at their best.” He tossed a glance toward the head of the line, just a few lengths from them; Náli’s Dead Guard riding in tight formation, their faces all differing shades of grim. “Well. Save those five.”

Erik had no doubt that the Guard were skilled, ferocious fighters, and that, under these circumstances, would defer to his command as king. But he knew their true loyalty lay not with the kingdom, but with their young lord. Should anything happen to Náli – and, gods, don’t let it – they would retreat to the secret place where all grieving Dead Guards went upon their master’s death. They would go there hating and blaming Erik, and the Fault Lands, without a lord’s magic to oversee them, would split, and shake, and spew the deadly red magma that Náli’s bloodline had always kept at bay.

As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.

As they rode past, Mattias glanced over, expression cold and closed-off. Erik nodded to him, and Mattias nodded back.

Leif trotted up, gaze lifted toward the sky – and the sun’s progress across it. He frowned when he pulled up at Erik’s side. “We’re not making very good time,” he said, quietly, as a heavily-loaded sleigh glided past, harness bells jangling.

“I know,” Erik agreed. “And we’ll have to make camp soon.” Here, just past midwinter, the nights were long, and the days far too short. “I’m thinking of riding on ahead of the main party.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Birger made a disgusted noise. “You’ll both do no such thing. What will you do? Blunder around in the dark until the wolves set upon you?”

“We can move faster alone,” Erik said, “and make a lighter camp. We’ve dried food, and water enough in our canteens. We won’t even need a fire.”

“Now you just sound a fool.”

Erik shot him a dark look that didn’t deter him in the slightest.

“Let’s say,” Birger said, one balled fist landing on his hip, the other tight on the reins as his horse danced beneath his rising agitation, “that you didn’t in fact get eaten by wolves. Where does that leave everyone else?” He tipped his head toward the passing caravan. “With Askr holding command from his litter, and Ragnar’s men sweeping over us like we’re naught but children?”

The idea splashed over Erik like an upturned bucket of cold water.

Birger steered his horse around with his legs until their mounts stood side-by-side, and they were knee-to-knee, watching men trudge past in bedraggled clusters. In a low voice, expression earnest, he said, “I’m no king, nor even a great lord, but you keep me by your side for a reason, Erik. It’s for times like these: when you need someone to be reasonable.”

“I’m being–”

“You’re worried,” Birger insisted. “About this lot here, no fit army for sure. And about your young lad, off on a dragon’s back and no way to reach him. About home, and Revna, and the enemy that awaits us. It’s enough to make any man reckless.”

Erik bit back a slew of unkind words and settled for an unhappy snort instead.

“Hold the course, Erik. You have to.”

“Fine,” he gritted out, nudged his horse forward with both heels, and set off at a canter back toward the head of the line. Hoofbeats behind him signaled that Leif and Birger had followed.

Once in the lead of the party, Erik slowed his mount to a ground-covering walk, and thus they progressed through the rest of the afternoon.

Though his thoughts were turmoiled, the terrain was relatively flat: a long stretch of plain bordered on one side by evergreen forest, on the other by the distant shadows of the Wolf Mountains, which blazed a twisty, switchback path across the breadth of the kingdom. Would Ragnar have gone straight through the path, and now march directly behind them? Or did he follow a more oblique, but safter route through the low hills, nearly to the sea by now? The sun shone in a cloudless sky, shining brightly on the frozen streams that laced the gentle rise and fall of the land that stretched endless and white before them. There were no human settlements along this stretch; only the trill of birds and the low, booming calls of wild bucks off in the trees.

When the shadows grew long, and the horses’ necks were steaming, Erik lifted a hand, and reluctantly called a halt. Every part of him yearned to keep going – to reach home, to assure himself that the people he loved were alive and fighting – but a glance over his shoulder revealed the exhaustion of the people currently under his care.

They set up camp. Magnus, Lars, and the guards from other houses who’d gone into the forest returned amidst the orange flare of dusk, bearing white-tailed deer on their backs for their supper.

Erik found himself around a fire, sandwiched between Birger and Leif, meat popping and hissing on a spit, the wine flask making its rounds. Across from him, Askr sat wrapped in furs and propped up in a hastily-made sledge, his battle axe laid across his covered knees, clutched tightly in one hand like a talisman – or like a child’s favorite toy.

Chief Oddmarr waved off the flask when it reached him, and instead pulled a stoppered bottle from inside his coat of piled-up bearskins; when he uncorked it with his teeth, Erik could smell the sharpness of the spirit within over the fire and their dinner. “If he took the long way,” he said, after a generous slug, “he’ll be two days behind us. If he took the pass, only one – if he didn’t slide off the mountain and break his neck.”

“One can only hope,” Askr said, darkly, and spat in the snow.

“Now’s the worst time to attempt the pass,” Birger said. “The snow gets ten feet in some places. They’ll have to dig and burn their way through.”

“Where’s a good blizzard when you need one?” Oddmarr asked, which left Askr shouting a laugh.

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