The Wolfskin Cloak

The guards go completely rigid.

Styr turns around so fast his boots skid on the wet floor.

Vargun steps out of the gloom of the corridor.

He walks alone. He does not carry his broadsword in his hand; it hangs sheathed at his hip, the iron scabbard clinking against his thigh armor. His wolfskin cloak is back on his shoulders, pinned with a heavy iron ring that bears the fresh gouge of an axe blade.

His dark eyes sweep over the four guards, lingering on the boy recovering on the floor, then rise to meet mine through the iron grille.

The air in the corridor drops ten degrees.

"Captain Styr," Vargun says.

His voice is smooth. Quiet. Deadlier than a drawn blade.

"My lord," Styr stammers, dropping to one knee on the wet stones. The other three guards collapse beside him, pressing their foreheads against the filthy floor. "We... the lower wards were breaking the locks. We came to secure the draught for the watch."

Vargun stops two feet from Styr.

He looks down at the back of the captain's neck.

"Did I give the order to distribute the stores?" Vargun asks.

"No, my lord. But the men—"

"Did I give the order?"

"No, my lord."

Vargun reaches down, takes Styr by the hair, and hauls him onto his feet with one arm. He does not strike him. He simply holds the veteran suspended on his tiptoes, his dark eyes boring into the man's terrified face.

"If you ever touch this hatch without my command," Vargun murmurs, his voice barely a whisper, "I will have the skin flayed from your shoulders and hung from the east gatehouse as a warning to the rest of the garrison."

He releases Styr.

The captain stumbles back, catching himself against the wall.

"Drag the boy out," Vargun orders. "Return to the lower gate. If a single inmate crosses the perimeter line, I hold you personally responsible."

"Yes, my lord," Styr gasps.

The guards haul the young soldier to his feet and scramble up the corridor, their boots echoing into the distance until the heavy iron door at the end of the hall slams shut.

Silence returns to the brewhouse.

Vargun turns to face the hatch.

He steps up to the iron grille. The scent of rain, fresh horse sweat, and cold iron washes through the bars, overwhelming the bittersweet smell of the Maltar.

He looks at the graduated copper measure on the ledge, then down at the four-pound spanner tucked into my belt.

"A neat demonstration," Vargun says.

"A necessary one," I answer. "Your men are panic-stricken idiots who cannot count to ten. If they had seized those casks, half your garrison would be corpses by nightfall."

"They are soldiers," he says, resting his forearms against the iron bars. "They know how to kill. They do not know how to measure."

"Then keep them away from my kettles."

Vargun watches me. His dark eyes track the movement of my hands, the steady line of my shoulders, the iron keys hanging from my leather belt.

"You stood your ground against five armed men," he notes.

"They needed my draught. That made them beggars, not conquerors."

A faint, sharp breath escapes his nostrils—not a laugh, but the barest acknowledgment of a hit.

"You enjoy this," he says softly.

"I enjoy staying alive."

"No," Vargun murmurs, leaning closer until his face is three inches from the iron bars. "You enjoy holding their lives in that little copper cup. You like knowing that without your permission, every man in this fortress turns into a screaming animal."

My pulse leaps, but I keep my expression locked in stone.

"Do you want the distribution handled properly, or do you want a riot?" I ask.

"I want order," he answers.

"Then the rationing stays under my command. No guard touches a cask. Every soldier and every inmate receives two ounces of titrated Maltar twice a day, measured by my hand or Skirn's. If anyone demands more, they answer to you."

Vargun stares at me through the iron bars for five slow heartbeats.

He reaches through the grate.

His large, callused fingers close around my right wrist. He does not squeeze hard enough to bruise, but the grip is absolute—an unyielding band of iron that anchors me to the bars.

He pulls my hand forward until my knuckles rest against the cold iron crossbar.

"You have your terms, Thjora," he says, his thumb pressing firmly into the tendon on the inside of my wrist, feeling the rapid, steady rhythm of my blood. "You control the dosing. You control the distribution schedule."

"Good."

"Do not look so pleased with yourself," Vargun adds, his voice dropping into a dark, gravelly register that sends a sharp shiver down my spine. "Every privilege in my house carries a tax."

His eyes shift past my shoulder.

He looks into the shadow beside the mash tun.

Skirn is standing there, frozen like a cornered rabbit, the birch broom clutched in her white-knuckled grip.

My stomach drops.

"What are you doing, Vargun?" I ask, trying to pull my wrist back from his grip.

He does not let go.

"A master brewer needs absolute focus to produce three hundred gallons in thirty-six hours," Vargun says, his tone completely flat.

"She is my apprentice. I need her to haul the water buckets and stoke the cooling coils."

"She is a distraction."

Vargun releases my wrist, reaches to his belt, and unhooks a heavy iron key from his personal ring. He inserts it into the primary lock of the distribution gate and turns it.

The heavy iron bolt clicks back with a loud, oily clank.

He pushes the gate open and steps into the brewhouse.

His towering frame fills the room, blocking out the light from the corridor torches. He does not look at the copper kettles. He does not look at the sealed casks.

He strides directly toward the malt bins.

"Run, Skirn!" I shout, reaching for the spanner at my belt.

Skirn drops the broom and scrambles toward the rear grain chute, but she is too slow.

Vargun moves like a striking viper. He covers the eight paces in two massive strides, his left hand shooting out and catching the back of Skirn's wool tunic.

He lifts her off the flagstones by her collar with one arm.

Skirn screams, kicking wildly in the empty air, her hands clawing at his iron-clad wrist.

"Put her down!" I yell, lunging forward with the copper spanner raised in both hands.

I swing for his shoulder.

Vargun does not even look at the tool. He pivots his torso, catches the heavy copper head of the spanner in the palm of his bare right hand, and halts the four-pound strike dead in midair.

The impact sends a sharp shockwave through my wrists and elbows.

He does not flinch. His fingers close over the copper head, twisting the tool out of my grip with effortless, bone-crushing strength.

He tosses the spanner across the room.

It clatters uselessly against the granite base of vat two.

Vargun looks down at me, holding Skirn suspended in his left grip like a sack of grain.

"Do not test me twice in one day, Thjora," he says quietly.

"She has done nothing!" I say, stepping between him and the doorway. "She knows the cooling cycles! If you take her, the boil takes twice as long!"

"Then you will work twice as hard," Vargun answers.

He shoves past me, his shoulder catching mine and knocking me two steps back against the mash tun. He carries the weeping girl toward the open distribution gate.

"Mistress Thjora!" Skirn wails, her voice echoing off the stone vaults. "Please!"

"Where are you taking her?" I demand, following him to the threshold.

"To the upper kitchens," Vargun says, stepping through the gate into the corridor. "She will peel root vegetables under the cook's watch. She will sleep in the attic under lock and key."

He turns around in the arched doorway.

He drops Skirn onto the corridor stones behind him. "Stay there," he tells her.

The girl curls into a ball against the wall, sobbing into her sleeves.

Vargun looks at me through the open portal. His face is illuminated by the orange flicker of the wall torch, casting deep, jagged shadows across his scarred jaw and cold black eyes.

"You wanted sole command of this brewhouse, Thjora," he murmurs. "Now you have it."

He reaches for the heavy oak door.

"Three hundred gallons," he says. "Midnight tomorrow."

"Vargun—"

He slams the massive oak door shut in my face.

The iron drop-bar crashes into its exterior brackets with the heavy, deafening finality of a tombstone sliding into place.

The lock turns twice from the outside.

"Three hundred gallons, Thjora," Vargun's muffled voice rasps through the iron grille. "Or the cells open at midnight."

His boots echo up the corridor, dragging Skirn away into the dark.

I do not look at the empty vats.

I step to the workbench, grip the four-pound spanner off the flagstones, and slam the iron lever of the high-pressure manifold down to maximum feed.

"You took my apprentice, Vargun," I whisper against the wood. "Now drink what I brew."