Chapter Eight:
The Truth
Chapter Eight:
The Truth
The night wasn’t over yet for Wulf, although he wished more than anything that it could be. There was still the abatis to crawl under. He and Rainer slunk through the dirt and finally stood up near the castle wall.
Then, of course, there was the charcoal chute to deal with. He was already beginning to feel sore. The last thing he wanted to do was twist his way through that narrow opening. But there wasn’t any other way into the castle apart from walking up to the front gate and banging on it to be let in.
So. Deal with it.
He pulled back the metal flap that covered the opening on the outside. From this side, it was just a bit too high for him to comfortably climb through.
“Give me a leg up, will you?” he asked Rainer.
Rainer laced his fingers together and made a step for Wulf.
He twisted his shoulders to squeeze through the narrow opening. That was usually the hardest part.
Then, bending his way through, Wulf heard a sound.
Great. There was somebody here.
It was a gasp. Somebody was frightened. Or surprised.
Wulf was still for a moment. Had he been seen?
Then he heard it again. A woman.
He quickly pulled himself back out and whispered to Rainer to be as quiet as possible when he came through. Then Wulf twisted his way back in, trying as best he could to follow his own advice and not make a sound.
He heard it again. A gasp and a quick breath. He pulled himself out of the chute and peeked over the charcoal barrel.
In the wan glow of the coals, Wulf saw something horrible.
His sister.
Ulla.
A man in the shadows had his hands around Ulla’s throat!
Wulf jumped forward in a fury. He slammed into the man, pulling him away from his sister. Then he used the weight of his charge to take the man down to the shop floor. Wulf reached for his dagger to put to the man’s throat and end his sorry life.
And found the empty spot at his waist. No dagger.
Blood and bones! Have to choke him instead.
He went for the man’s throat with his hands. To his surprise, the other did not resist. In fact, he gazed serenely up at Wulf as Wulf wrapped his fingers around the other’s throat. Then Wulf’s grip slackened.
“Grer?”
“Hello, m’lord,” the other croaked.
It was Grer. The castle smith. His friend.
“Blood and bones! What are you doing, little brother?” said his sister in a hoarse whisper. “Get off him. Get off now!”
“But, Ulla, I—”
Grer didn’t say anything. He blinked up at Wulf with an expression that seemed like it might be the beginning of a smile.
Is he going to laugh at me while I choke the life out him?
“Get off, curse it,” said Ulla, tugging at Wulf. After a moment, Wulf let her pull him away. He sat on the floor next to Grer, felt something in his eyes. He realized he was crying. He wasn’t sure why. It had been quite a night.
Grer slowly sat up, as if to test out his body to be sure it still operated after the choking session.
“Bones and blood,” said a voice behind them all. Rainer emerged from the charcoal chute. “Imagine finding you two here.” But Rainer did not seem very surprised at all.
“What…what the cold hell is going on?” Wulf asked, fighting down another sob.
“Settle yourself, brother, and I’ll tell you,” Ulla replied.
He had liked Grer, he really had. But for Grer to put his hands on his sister like that . . .
“I’ll have to kill him,” Wulf muttered. “I’m going to.”
“Wulf, shut up,” Ulla said, more loudly this time. “Let me speak.”
Ulla was usually full of happiness and light. When she sounded this stern, she had something important to say. Wulf forced himself to be silent. He waited.
Ulla started to speak, then hesitated. She looked irritated, mad at having to figure out how to put into words something she didn’t want to say at all.
Meanwhile, Rainer came over and helped Wulf to his feet. Wulf felt weak. He was glad of the aid.
Ulla. With a man she isn’t supposed to be with, he thought. Really isn’t. What will Father do? Sturmer knew, what with the state his father’s mind was in these days. He might send Ulla away. No, he can’t send her away! I don’t want that!
Wulf loved his sister. The thought of losing her was too sad to even think about.
Grer, too, rose to his feet.
“I don’t like standing around like this—like we just got caught at something,” Ulla said.
“You did,” mumbled Wulf.
“Can we sit?” Ulla said. She sniffed the air. “What is that horrible smell?”
Wulf was bewildered for a moment, then realized what his sister was talking about.
Me. And Rainer.
“Uh, we might have stumbled into a dead mule in the dark,” he said. “You don’t want to know any more than that.”
“No, I really don’t.” Ulla looked around, then went to the shop anvil. She leaned against it. “Please, just sit, Wulf.”
“No.” Instead, he stalked to the banked coals of the forge and warmed his hands over them, his back partially turned toward his sister.
Grer got up and went to join Ulla by the anvil. He was a tall, rangy man. Wulf noticed Grer’s hand touching his sister’s arm. Even that sight made him mad.
Rainer, meanwhile, found a stump to sit on. He did not look at Ulla and Grer, but gazed at his fingernails.
“I’m sorry to surprise you this way, Wulf,” Ulla began.
“Surprise me?” Wulf said with a snort. “Amaze me is more like it. You know what the alliance with Sandhaven means.”
“Yes,” Ulla said. “Other things matter, too.”
“Other things? Sandhaven has been demanding insane toll taxes. They’re threatening to cut us off. They control our access to the sea, Ulla. What other things?”
Ulla’s forlorn look returned. “Little brother, you are apparently the last to know,” she continued, “except for Father, of course. Mother—well, I think she suspects.”
“Suspects what?”
“Grer and I. We’re in love.”
“Love? Love!” Wulf turned imploringly toward his sister. “But Ulla, he’s…he’s the smith.”
Ulla sighed. “You have a firm grasp of the obvious, Wulf.”
“You can’t be in love with him. That’s not what we do. Marriage isn’t like that for people like us.”
Grer snorted. “People like us? Listen at the young lord. And haven’t I seen you mooning after a certain elf more than a little?”
“You leave her out of it,” Wulf said. “She’s older than you.”
“Be that as it may, m’lord Wulf, I’m as much of a person as you are,” said Grer. “I think you know that. I hope you do, or I’ve fully mistook you.” The tension went out of the smith, and Grer shook his head sadly. “Anyhow, if you doubt I’m a person, rip me open and see for yourself. At this point, I might even welcome it.”
“What do you think we were doing when you poked out of…wherever it was you came from?” said Ulla.
“Aye, the charcoal chute,” Grer put in. “I should’ve known there would be trouble when I left it unlatched at curfew. But I thought your brother’d be gallivanting about the town. He’s done that before and not been back till dawn. We’d be gone.”
Grer stepped over to the chute and moved a large hook through an iron ring to latch the charcoal chute shut. The hook was so large and heavy that it would have been difficult for both Wulf and Rainer together to lift it, but Grer did it one-handed. He turned back to find an annoyed Ulla staring him down.
“You gave him a way to sneak out of the castle!” she said. “Grer, I’m surprised at you.”
“If I didn’t, he’d find another way to do it,” Grer replied evenly, and returned to her side. “And it might be a shade more dangerous way, at that. The sewer below the floor might work, for instance. You want to see Lord Wulf crawling through that?”
“He smells like that’s exactly what he did.”
Grer smiled. “Aw, I could see the pining mood was upon the boy and there was no fighting it for him. Way I figure, he’s found some speakeasy pub in town that’ll let him drown his sorrows over the Lady Saeunn.”
“Shut up,” Wulf mumbled.
“Still, what if something had happened?”
“Something did happen,” Wulf said. “I came back here and found him groping you.”
Ulla laughed. “It was more like me groping him, little brother. And him trying his best to fend me off.”
“I’ve told you before, Ulla, we mustn’t go further if we’re to have even a thin reed’s worth of a chance together,” Grer said earnestly.
“But you don’t,” said Wulf. He turned from the forge coals to face them head-on. “You’ll never be together.”
Grer shook his head. “Never’s a long time, lad. I’ll bet the iron thinks it will never come out of the ore, but one day it does and I beat it into a sword.”
Wulf turned to his sister.
“What about Prince Gunnar?” he asked. “The man came from Krehennest to propose to you, Ulla. They’ll drop the tolls if you two get married. Plus, they have to help us hold the balance with the Romans or they’ll try to take the north again.”
“Listen to you, a politician already,” said Ulla. “Even more than Otto, and that’s saying something.”
“Just like you when you’re thinking straight,” Wulf put in. “You’re a von Dunstig.”
“So I believed,” Ulla said, and gazed up at Grer with a smile. “But things happen.”
“Things? Like losing half the mark’s trade?”
Ulla sighed, turned her gaze back to Wulf. “Gunnar is a problem,” Ulla said. “I don’t think anyone ever said no to him before.”
“So you’re planning to be the first?”
“What do you expect, Wulf?” said his sister. “He’s a brute. Those indentureds in Krehennest—I can’t bear it. And you know what they did to the Tier. Massacres, Wulf. Extermination.”
“The Tier and otherfolk are welcome in Shenandoah. What else can we do? We need Sandhaven as an ally.”
Ulla shook her head. “Yes. But the truth is that the thought of Gunnar’s hands on me makes me shudder.”
It was too much to take in at once. His sister did not just have no feelings for Prince Gunnar, she totally hated him.
And she was in love with a tradesman.
A baker or a brewer? Nope. A soot-covered smith.
The smith and the duchess. It sounded like one of Ravenelle’s romance stories.
Wulf held out his arms to Ulla, begging, hoping, for an answer. “Ulla! What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She crossed her arms.
“That’s why Grani was out,” he said. “You let her out when you came here.”
“The little vixen slipped between my legs when I was…making my way out the maid’s door.”
“The maid’s door? Do you mean to tell me the servants are in on this, too?”
“No. I can’t tell you any more without betraying someone,” Ulla replied unhappily. “But I have to see Grer somehow.”
Grer unfolded Ulla’s crossed arms and took her hand. The gesture upset Wulf more than any of the words that had passed between the two.
It was tender. It was caring.
It was totally wrong for a smith to lay his hands on a high-born lady.
“It’s just…I . . .”
Ulla shushed him. “And where did you go, anyway?” she asked.
Wulf looked at Rainer, miserable.
“It’s my fault, Lady Ulla,” Rainer said, looking up. “Some boys from town were pushing us around today. They said they could beat us anytime anywhere, and we went out to meet them.”
“That right?” said Grer. He had a skeptical look on his face. “And is that where Lord Wulf and you have gone on your nights out for the last few weeks, Mr. Stope?”
Rainer gulped, caught out in the lie. “All I can say is that we got into a scuffle in Allfather Square. Wulf kind of, well, rammed his dagger into the old tree there, too. It got stuck tight.”
“Oh dear. Are daggers really so easy to tell apart?” Ulla said, striking at the most immediate part of the problem, as she always did. “They all look alike to me.”
“That was one of mine, if it’s the blade I’m thinking of,” Grer said.
“It is,” said Wulf.
“People will know it belongs to a rich man,” Grer mused. “Maybe it’s beat up too much to see my maker’s mark . . .”
Rainer shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Oh,” Ulla replied. “That’s not good.”
“There weren’t any other boys,” Wulf suddenly said. He hated that he’d caused Rainer to lie. He also hated the actual truth, but he had to tell it—at least part of it—if for no other reason than Grer had already guessed something was wrong with their story. “It was just me and Rainer. No one else. I was answering a dragon-call. Ulla knows what that is, even if you don’t, Grer.”
“That’s not possible,” Ulla said.
“Like it’s not possible you are in love with a smith?”
Ulla’s surprised expression became thoughtful.
“This is good news, really. Otto and I have worried…We thought the dragon-call might have passed out of the family. He has been waiting for it to happen, and it just hasn’t.”
“It will,” Wulf said. “I know it will. This thing happening to me has got to be some kind of…mistake.”
“All right, Wulf,” Ulla said with a calmer voice. “Tell me the rest.”
“The Olden Oak is a gateway,” Wulf continued. “I was in the dragon-dream, Ulla. You know that’s not supposed to happen. I saw…was shown the Dragon Hammer. And then we had a fight with a draugar and it’s all messed up and I don’t know what to do . . .”
His voice trailed off. Everybody was quiet for a moment.
Ulla finally broke the silence. “I don’t understand the rest, but I do know about the dragon-bond. That is going to be a problem,” she said. “More than any lost dagger.” She touched her hand to her chin, considering.
“No, it’s not,” said Wulf. “I’m not going to let it. There is no reason anybody needs to know.”
His sister smiled. It was a sad and knowing expression. “Yes, of course you won’t,” she said. She reached out and put both hands on Grer’s now. “So—we each have our secret. You will keep mine and I will keep yours, little brother.”
“Who would I tell?” said Wulf. “Seems like everybody but Father and Prince Gunnar knows about you and Grer anyway.”
“A draugar?” Grer said, rubbing his chin. “Are you sure?”
“Wulf is sure,” Rainer replied. “He read about them in…what was it?”
“Henli’s Saga,” Wulf muttered.
“And you came back alive?”
“Rainer killed it,” Wulf said.
“Rainer killed a draugar?” Grer asked.
“I didn’t,” Rainer said. “It just kind of disappeared.”
“After you stabbed it with its own arrows and sword,” Wulf put in.
Grer looked at Rainer, who nodded and shrugged, as if he did that kind of thing all the time.
“This is very interesting.” Grer shook his head. “I want to hear a lot more about this, boys. Tomorrow.”
Rainer stirred. “Lady Ulla, I should get your brother and myself to bed now,” he said.
“Yes. How will you get into the castle?”
“Wulf’s got a secret way,” Rainer answered with the slightest grin. “And I’ve got climbing to do.”
“I know you think you can climb anything, Rainer, but you must be very careful,” Ulla said.
“I promise.”
“And both of you take a bath,” Ulla said.
Rainer rose and made a small bow toward her. “M’lady.”
Suddenly, the charcoal chute clattered as if someone were shaking it. The great hook rattled in its latching ring, but did not come out.
“What the cold hell was that?” Grer said. “I must’ve pulled it shut unevenly or something.”
“Maybe,” Wulf murmured. He stared at the chute, dreading to see it rattle again. But nothing happened.
Rainer touched his shoulder and broke him out of his trance. “Come on, it was the wind,” he said. “You need sleep. So do I.”
Wulf allowed himself to be turned away from the charcoal chute. But as he left the smith’s shop, he could swear he heard the faintest whisper from nowhere, from everywhere.
“Thou know’st,” said the whisper.
No one else seemed to notice but him. So maybe it was his imagination.
Maybe.