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She said: “The future.”
~*~
The hay sheds were built of stone and placed far away from the barns, mews, and barracks in case of fire. With their sloped sod roofs, close walls, and great stacks of hay, they kept plenty warm, even in the last, cold grip of winter.
The pack preferred to sleep in wolf shape, alert to the slightest disturbance or threat in the night. They lay massed together, curled up and snuggled down in the hay, breaths regular and deep.
Leif sat apart from them, human-shaped, gazing out through the half-open door as the stars slowly winked out, and the sky began its watercolor shift toward daybreak.
Behind him, seated atop a round bale, unable to shift even if he wanted to, Ragnar sat cleaning from beneath his fingernails with the knife Leif had stupidly allowed him. “You’re just like Erik, you know,” he said. “You think too loud.”
Leif wondered at himself that he no longer bristled or growled in response to statements like those – statements made with increasing frequency, as if Ragnar was trying to get a rise out of him. Where once he’d fought to keep calm, now he simply was calm, without effort.
“What am I thinking, then?” he asked, easily.
“Hm?”
“If I’m so loud.” He tapped the side of his head. “What am I saying?”
No sound followed save the soft clicking of the knife edge working under Ragnar’s nails. Just as Leif had expected. He’d baited him, really, because he had no doubt that Ragnar’s thoughts had run the same track as his own; that he’d spent most of his hours since peering into that bowl of black water thinking about – or trying to avoid thinking about – the snatches of vision it had shown them. His initial horror and panic had given way, in the days since, to something like resignation. His life, it seemed, had swerved, and was going to keep swerving, no matter his efforts.
Ragnar, though, had been uncharacteristically silent. Until tonight.
“Well?” Leif pressed, glancing back over his shoulder.
Ragnar studied his task with far too much concentration, a groove pressed between his brows.
“What am I thinking?”
Ragnar looked up, finally, a flash in the dimness, and smiled nastily. “How much you’d like to slit my throat.”
“No.” Leif turned back to face the stars. “I don’t think about you at all, really.” A lie, but one that came easily and didn’t leave the back of his neck prickling. He’d reached that frightening stage, he’d realized, of acceptance. He didn’t hate Ragnar, never had, never could. He was a part of his pack, and even if he wanted to beat him bloody half the time, he’d take off the arm of any man who tried to do the same. It was wolf instinct, ingrained deep, irreversible.
Ragnar gave a quiet huff that a human wouldn’t have heard.
“I’m thinking,” Leif continued, “that my uncle is dragging his feet. And I think he needs to send an advance party South. Fierce fighters. Shock troops.”
The knife stilled, and then rasped against leather as it was sheathed. He could hear Ragnar sit up straighter, hay crinkling beneath him. “He sent the Beserkirs and the Jotunns.”
“Sent them west. And to do what? Take teeth for trophies? Pillage border towns?” He sneered to himself, and heard the expression echoing in his voice; didn’t try to smooth it. “The clans are only useful for sending back reports. What happens when they run into a mage? The only reason,” he said, now edging into bitterness, “we weren’t all slaughtered here at Aeres is because of the drakes.”
It was a truth that everyone surely must know, but hadn’t given voice to yet. Man to man, weapon to weapon, the Sels had been vastly more powerful. If not for the drakes, everyone in Aeres would be dead or captured.
“How cynical of you,” Ragnar said, tone careful.
“More like accurate.” He glanced back again, and found Ragnar’s head cocked to an alert angle; he smelled of tension. “Every magic-user in the North needs to march south and meet the enemy in open battle in Aquitainia – otherwise, the Sels will kill the Southerners and then come back for us. Only this time, they’ll know to come armed against dragons.”
Ragnar took a shallow breath through parted lips. “It sounds,” he said, deceptively casual, “like you mean for us to march as well.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. And someone needs to send a summons to the Fault Lands. We’ll need our Corpse Lord as well.”
