The Tangle If you must die, remember your life

Nothing, he said, almost in the manner of a boy caught red-handed up to his elbow in the cookie jar. For maybe the first time, she blinked at Astraeus and saw him for what he was: not a miscreant sent to hound her children and make them sullen, but a child whose mother had left him to die, with no family to call his own. She would never consider him hers—unlike Mahler, family was still an unmoving concept in her mind, forged in blood and nothing more—but she looked on his imperfect eye when he asked his question, equally like a boy, and felt just a little guilty for her dismissal of him all his life.

We will do whatever we must to ensure Sagtannet's safety and survival, replied Wylla with a resigned sigh. Mahler decided that we would hold the cliffs unoccupied when he attacked the bitch who showed up to claim them. It is writ in blood. I stand by him, always. She considered telling him a little of the history of the cliffs, what little she knew, but they both froze at the same time as the scent of salt and wolf fur perfumed the air.

Standing tall and arching her tail over her back, Wylla barked out for their watcher, I would suggest you get out of here, now. Despite what everyone believed of her, she wasn't a warmonger. She hoped to rally the troops and approach Rusalka with a number of Sagtannet wolves at her back in a show of strength that would discourage a fight by showing the stakes. She hoped doing so would convince Rusalka to back down and go elsewhere, sparing all of them. Mental warfare was how wolves operated, the entire basis of their behaviour with other wolves, and that was all she was after, truly.

Grímnismál was not close to Sagtannet, so she did not intend to attack unless provoked, but she wasn't keen on having some spy lingering, either. She didn't issue empty threats.