Chapter Text
The raids of the wolves were too fast, too well organised. The men of the Russ put together their own parties into the wilderness to strike back, every trick and trap they knew, but the wolves were always a step ahead of them. Like a witch were guiding them to see as men saw and think as men thought, some said.
Then the attacks stopped and the men did not know why. They did not know the conflict within the pack.
We’ve eaten well. It’s time to disperse. Your brothers and sisters will soon too.
I’m not ready, Mother, said the blue-eyed half-grown. He spoke no words. He knew no words. He was a wolf. He had never been anything but a wolf, and did not see why he should seek out the two-legged prey.
You could predict what they would do.
I can hunt mammoth too, but that doesn’t give me tusks.
You have two legs and forepaws all the wrong length, don’t be stupid, his sister, scent-of-ice-flowers-on-the-wind, pointed out. One of his brothers laughed until the blue-eyed wolf growled at him until he showed his belly in apology and submission.
His mother knew he would, she could smell his curiosity as well as his naked skin, though perhaps she had higher expectations of his finding a mate when he got old enough to notice pheromones than he ever took interest in. He was a wolf, not food, but, well, she did not think like a human would have, but she was not a fool.
To the men of the Russ, the wild boy was a curiosity. They did not know he was a wolf puppy, because that was impossible. He was a child, not a powerful witch, and a stupid one at that. He did not understand speech or wear clothes or know how to smelt iron or wield an axe or any usual task even a child should know, though he did break the arm of a man who thought to make him his thrall with an effortless grip of one hand.
Common sense said a feral child living any length of time on Fenris was impossible, for that matter, but whatever his past might be, the boy was here so that was that. He was too real and mundane to be a spirit, for all that he was clearly a legend in the making. Thengir, king of the Russ, took a liking to the child and taught him all the things a man needed to know. The child absorbed everything and thought about it behind steady blue eyes. Thengir called the boy Roboute and treated him as his own son.
Roboute lived among the Russ for some time and took to human ways quickly. He could fight better than any other man in the tribe full-grown, he could handle any boat and spear any creature below the surface, he knew all the sagas and the laws of the skjalds.
On a whim he desired to return to his pack and see them again. But when he returned to the wilds he realised he saw them as a human would see them, not as a wolf. He saw with opened eyes that his family were animals and he was human, for he had forgotten how to speak to them and they fled from him.
Despondent over the rejection by the mother who had nursed him, the boy sought the counsel of his human mother. Eir Thengirswif was a very wise woman; all knew this, though some men, insecure fools all, felt the need to add ‘in the way of women.’ She told her son, ‘How did you gain this power to speak to wolves? You always had it. You lost it just as easily. If you want to learn again, you will have to learn it the hard way, then it will be yours for life. It will never be the same, though. You will be a man who speaks to wolves, not a wolf.’
Roboute saw that his mother was correct. He was a man, not a wolf, and he could not go back. His mind worked in man-ways and he could hardly remember what being a wolf had been like, like a dream once woken or barely understood images from infancy.
To speak to animals was a thing of magic, a thing of women’s magic. It was wrong for a boy to study at womanly things.
The boy asked too many questions. He thought too much. He did not sport with knives or ale or wenches. He had had some popularity before from being strong, but he lost much of it as he stopped fitting in and absorbing everything he was told and started to apply what he had learned to how he thought it should be.
Why was this magic for women and this magic for men? Why were women not usually allowed in some parts of the workforce when the blacksmith’s widow was their only smith until her son was old enough to take over his father’s work, and a maiden or widow might become an honorary man if her father or jarl was lacking? Why did the young men say no one would listen to the advice of a woman, but no king sailed without consulting an oracle-priestess? He knew the stories men told when no women were around, cautionary tales of dangerous magics and the power women could have if they weren’t managed properly so they didn’t know it. He listened to the stories women told when they thought no men could hear them, those of how to manage a husband without his ever knowing he was being lead.
Fenris was constantly changing and unpredictable. But Roboute saw patterns. To be able to navigate the tides and the stars, to see when islands would rise and when they would fall before it happened, these were the most honoured of skills in any tribe, for a man or a woman. Roboute was so far beyond any skill seem outside of ancient saga it scared many. Was he a god then? And more important, what had he given up for this power, for they understood how these things worked, even for gods?
He said, we can settle here in Asaheim. We can raise strong walls. We can build. We can defeat the other tribes; I’ve watched battles and understand what leads to winning or losing. Why can’t we set down more in the sacred rune-stones than we do? It would be useful.
When Thengir, king of the Russ, died, an Althing was held to elect the next king of the tribe. Roboute would go on to lead his people to victory and prosperity, the signs were already there that it was going to happen, but there were many who left then and would never look upon him except with scorn and for war.
No proper man was that. He went against too many traditions. He was a sorcerer, an abomination that, and he listened to women too openly and men of any standing. They were the wise men who knew that innovation was dangerous. Life was too marginal already. If you screwed up, or your good idea wasn’t quite as good as you’d hope it would be, everyone would starve, they would freeze. The old knew this and the young rarely survived learning.
He won over his enemies in battle because he was stronger, smarter than them. He won against any tribe who would attack him or stand against him until they were only scraps on distant islands eking out meagre livings while his people grew fat on tribute and new inventions. None could stand against their muskets and the steam-ships, dynamite and their steel.
He learned to speak to wolves again. Yet he was not a wolf, not of the pack, not one of his litter-brothers and -sisters. He could only speak to them as a man to an animal. Those who returned with him to his halls did so only be sitting at his feet and eating scraps from his table.
By the time the Emperor came to Fenris, they had maps and schools, medicine and mills turned by the heat of deep volcanic vents. Their herds were vast and well-managed, their farms careful and plentiful, though few worked at such occupations anymore. The Althing of many once-tribes made the laws and raised the taxes, while Roboute Thengirsson signed off on them, the warrior-statesman, his blond braids simple in the modern fashion and his beard short, his coat woad blue and his red wool cloak already becoming archaic. Roboute embraced the Emperor gladly, and returned rarely to Fenris thereafter, even to the cities he had built, which rapidly advanced to the technological standard of living of the modern Imperium. There were other worlds, worlds he loved better.
Always there was treachery lurking at his back and in his home, but that would only tell later.
They said, this is a man whose home does not love him, and who throws away all that is old and should have been his for the power of these new ways. Quisling, they whispered, though of course you couldn’t say that outright because he had joined the Imperium and the Imperium were the righteous, rightful conquerors everyone should hail and conform to.
They said anyway, This is a man who makes wolves into dogs.