Embla woke to the wolves. Her dogs stirred; Tambre growled softly, the hair beneath Embla’s half-asleep hand prickling. “Shh.” She stroked the rough fur back into place, lifting to an elbow. The room was luminously dark, clean blue moonlight against the wide, frosted windows. As the blankets slid off her shoulder, she shivered.
Silence. The wolves did not call again, but sleep was already slipping away, retreating before the vanguard of worries that would accompany sunrise. Embla sighed.
She extricated herself from the bed, a chore that took twice as long as it should. As the cold deepened, so did the number of dogs curling against her at night – all except Knives, who would not leave his post by the door when she slept. Tambre made a disgruntled sound when Embla shoved her sideways, but she managed to get her feet into fur boots, throwing on her heavy robe and pacing to the wall of windows.
Knives was beside her in a silent instant, not even his nails scraping the ground. His pricked ears twitched through a frame of coarse, woolly fur as she gave him a reassuring stroke. “With me.” She whispered, trying not to rouse the rest of them. The last thing she needed was her menargie of furred bodyguards calling down her human ones when all she wanted was a little fresh air.
The room filled with crystal, and a dagger of icy wind cut through as the door opened. Knives went out first. His upright tail led the way, nose and night-eyes sweeping for threats.
The night-cold gave her a shock. She pulled the edge of her robe up over her mouth so that her breath might take the dry edge off the air. Thoughtlessly, she took a turn around the garden, circling the empty fountain planted over in winter seed, a remnant of the thaw ages not two generations past. By the second circle, she’d cleared the sleep from her eyes and drifted toward the lip of the pavilion.
The palace in which she stood was carved from the white cliffs of Lebion, and below, the castle town pressed quaintly against it in ribbons of woodsmoke. The southern forests were a dense fringe along snow-softened farmland, curling toward the wide, frostbitten bay. Her lands as she knew them. Beauty the thaw-kings before her had never seen, marred only by a deep rut of burned, blackened earth carved from the lip of the bay up through the farthest farmland. Stark against it lay the camps of her enemies.
The sea-shoals.
They came first in her father’s reign, when she was a child that could only remember the panic of the people and the smell of the salt-dead. They came again, five years ago, when she was nineteen and barely crowned, and this time, they did not leave. Five years clawing their way savagely along the coastline. Five years glutting themselves on crop and plunder, torching land her father had so meticulously groomed for the ice-ages. They would not even hear of peace.
Then her northern generals cut off their supply lines from the sea.
Barbarous fools.
They were a wild people, but even a wild people needed to eat. This was how she’d leveraged them into truce-talks. Two envoys killed, but the third accepted. They would come tomorrow, and speak of peace. Or they would starve.
In the distance, the wolves sounded again. Knives huffed into the night air. Embla relaxed a clenched fist and stroked his neck. “Leave it,” she said softly, watching the greenwood firelight of enemies’ camps. “They are only hungry.”
***
The keen of the wolves drew his lip off his teeth.
Edutch looked toward the dense wall of trees, saw nothing moving against it but the smoke of their own fires. Since the sea-shoals set camp north of those godforsaken forests, wolves had crept out of the wood to spoil their herds and pick off lone folk too near the edge of firelight. It made for unhappy warriors, unaccustomed as they were to being prey.
On Borea, his ancestors had killed all the wolves. The only predators there were the shoals themselves, and sometimes the ice bears in their deep caves. Here, they hunted, and their call drove something primal through him. “Aren, go and circle the north edge of camp. Make sure the watchguards do not sleep.” His shadow was up in an instant.
“And the south?”
“I will go.” Edutch pulled a frost cloak over his furs and together, they split from the firelight.
Camp was uneasy. None of the warchiefs’ tents were silent. It was not just the wolves, nor even the hunger. Shoal-folk were used to hunger. Their continent was ice and death, and even as infants, their mothers never had enough milk in the breast. But news had come that the Queen Embla’s forces had routed their supply lines – a mass of seal meat, salted shark, fermented rookroot, and drink that would have seen them through five more years of raiding.
It was enough to keep them all awake in the night.
“Can’t sleep, lord?” It was Titulus, a warchief himself. He was among his fighting men, drinking at his fire.
Edutch slowed, curving into Titulus’s firelight. “Can anyone?” He asked, and a flicker of a smile came and went from the clever man’s mouth with the moving flame.
“Is it tomorrow you’re worried about?”
“All of it.” He scowled, gestured toward the treeline, and those at Titulus’s fire grunted their agreement. “We stay still for too long.”
Titulus laughed and folded his hands across his belly to watch the flames. It was a sign of confidence, looking into the fire like that. Blinding himself to the outer dark. “This truce-queen.” He said thoughtfully. “She says she wants peace.”
Edutch leaned against the framing of Titulus’s great tent, keeping his eyes on the night. Listening for the wolves. “Mirosha thinks it’s a trap.”
“Mirosha wishes it to be a trap. She and Cole both.” Titulus shook his head. “They would burn it all down and claim they could eat the ashes if they had their way.”
“Ashes do not fill a belly.” Edutch answered absently, eyes drifting to the bone-white palace high on its impregnable cliffside. “Do you think she means it, this want of peace?”
The other lord let out a long breath, looking deeply into the flames. “Why not? Perhaps she’s got no ice in her veins. These thaw-blooded,” he waved a dismissive hand, “they have no stomach for war.”
Edutch snorted. “I don’ t know if I agree. It’s ice-blooded enough to call again for truce-talks after Haret returned her two heads.”
Bloodless laughter from the older man. “Spoken true.”
“Have you seen her?” One of his warriors dared greatly, interrupting two lords. “They say the thaw in her blood gives her strange beauty.”
“Supersition.” Titulus batted a hand again. “Not that it matters. She could be hag-ugly, and she’d still a war-wife make.”
Edutch didn’t answer. The wolves howled again, ringing closer. “They’re near.” He said softly, turning fully toward the darkness.
“They are only hungry.” Titulus shrugged a shoulder. “We are just not used to being prey.”
Those around the fire grumbled. Edutch bid his goodbyes and moved into the dark, aiming for the southern edge of camp. The moonlight was bright against the snow, and against the bone-pale walls of the thaw-palace. As he prowled, he snatched glances at it, and wondered if the wolves of this world were as pretty as that high place.
