He did not want to dream. He sat thinking, delaying the moment when his weary lids must drop over his eyes and the longed-for, the dreaded visions again assail him. The wolfskin was warm beneath him; he welcomed that. Not one of them had dared lay hands on that badge of honor, that garment of power. It was strange. In one way, he did not deserve the skin anymore; in another, it had never been more truly part of him. Thor had let him go. He would never again hear that golden trumpet voice calling him on, would never again know the thrilling flood of rage that threw the warrior forward in blind courage to do the god’s will, the call that made of a man an unthinking weapon of sheer unassailable power. Invulnerable, that was what they said: a Wolfskin could be stopped neither by spear nor axe nor broadsword. The Warfather’s silence had seemed a death blow; without that voice, he had indeed been lost, cast adrift, bereft of strength and robbed of purpose. A Wolfskin vowed lifelong loyalty; to break that vow was a kind of death. But he had been human then, as full of doubts and aspirations, of love and sadness as he was at this moment. Thor’s cry had made him deaf to that, the red haze of battle frenzy had made him blind to it. Now he understood what it was to be a man: that it was to be weak as well as strong, to be foolish sometimes and wise sometimes, to know how to love as well as to kill. And he had learned that there were other paths for him, other gods who called in the deep places of the earth, in the lap of wavelets on the shore, in the breath of the west wind. He had learned that there were other kinds of courage. He knew, with deep certainty, that the islands held a new path for him. He need only move forward to find it.

His fingers moved across the fur of the wolfskin, feeling its softness, its strength, its beauty and power. He thought he saw the wolf’s eyes glowing in the darkness, but now they were not yellow and feral, they were the blue of a spring sky, full of courage and sorrow. They were his own eyes. It was his own skin. So long, so many seasons it had taken him to learn this lesson. He had believed it bravery, to feel no fear. It was only now, when there seemed nothing left but the darkness, that he understood what it was to be the wolf.