Ravenous

Iceland – December, 1783

Jon Du Loc wiped sweat from his brown and cursed softly, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke billowing through the village. How long had the fires from Laki burned now? A year? Longer? He could scarce remember.

“Six months,” Katrín murmured the answer to his silent question from across the room.

Jon looked up from the map and into the weary brown eyes of his wife. Her cheeks were flushed, her auburn hair a wild tangle around her face, and soot streaked her face and dress alike, but she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. “Aye,” he answered softly, the siege maps spread across the tabletop forgotten as he started toward her. “Six months.”

And two and twenty days since we wed.

Jon’s lips curled upward at her soft reminder. Her awe was evident in her eyes. So was his own, he knew. Two and twenty days since he’d made her his wife. Despite the chaos that swirled around them, and the fires burning the countryside alive, they’d been the best two and twenty days of his life.

Maybe our only two and twenty, Katrín whispered on the private link that had bound their minds firmly one to another in every lifetime they had ever lived.

“Nei,” he said aloud as Geri rumbled angrily in the back of his mind. Flickers of images skittered across the surface of his mind in a soft rush as his wolf half pushed soothing thoughts at Katrín. As always when she was afraid, the great wolf that shared his soul curled his essence around her and her weakened wolf, Freki, protectively.

Jon did much the same, wrapping his arms tightly around Katrín and holding her to his heart.

Fear hung in the air almost as thick as the smoke and ash boiling ceaselessly from Laki. The villagers fear. The wolves. Katrín’s. Aside from his wife’s, he scarce knew what came from whom any longer. It radiated from all of them like the ash raining down upon them until even Geri and his sharp wolf senses were unable to pinpoint which of their brethren it came from.

Jon was no longer sure it really mattered. Wolf and man alike had plenty of reason to fear. Laki had burned for six months now, covering the countryside in a palpable film of ash and mist. The livestock was dying. The rivers and streams were polluted. Farmlands, once bountiful, produced little more than rotted, rancid shoots now.

Katrín’s people, and their wolf brethren, were starving.

Worse yet, somewhere out there, hidden by the ash and lava spilling through the countryside like a thing alive, Skoll and Hati roamed free. Jon had centuries of memory stored away in his mind, but not once in all of those centuries could he remember Fenrir’s brood ever coming so close as this to fulfilling their destiny.

Iceland was dying, and soon, the world would follow.