Season of the Wolf

by Maria Vale

  It took time for the weak eyes of her human form to adjust to the dim light, to see the neat rows of muskets lining the walls. To make out the shelves below loaded with flint and powder and cartridge.

  “But…how did he get these?” she asked, turning to Seolfer. “Tell me you didn’t help him do this.” The girl shook her head firmly. “Then who negotiated with the humans? How—?”

  Ælfrida froze as she sensed another presence enter the shed, someone with a new and terrifying stench. She turned to the man who was only slightly taller than Seolfer and then bent down, sniffing him. Just to be sure. Just to be sure she wasn’t mistaken in that lethal combination of steel and carrion. That she wasn’t mistaken in that fugitive but equally deadly hint of wild. The man smiled at her, and Ælfrida knew that Wessex had bet the survival of his Pack on a deal with the devil.

  “It was my pleasure to help the Great Wessex Pack,” said the man with the thinning blond hair who was the size of a large human and human in disposition, but was not human.

  He was Hwerflic. Changeable and inconstant. A Shifter. More than anything, Packs feared Shifters. Because they could be wolves if they wanted, but they never had to be. Unlike Packs, which were ruled by the Iron Moon. For three days out of thirty, when the moon was pregnant and full and her law was Iron, the Packs must be wild.

  Shifters mostly lived as humans, but they had much stronger senses and could sniff out Packs. And because all Shifters believed that Packs, like dragons, sat on vast hoards of treasure, they slaughtered them with terrifying regularity.

  “The moon is nearly full,” Ælfrida said to Wulfric. “The Iron Moon is coming. How will you protect yourself when you have no hands to load the powder and ball? When you have no fingers to pull the trigger?”

  “If I may, Alpha,” said the Shifter in his polished voice. “I have been able to arrange for a human guard who protect the Pack during those days. Times being what they are, they are glad of the employment and will ask no questions.”

  Wulfric smiled smugly at Ælfrida.

  “Leave us, Shifter,” she said. The man hesitated until Wessex nodded. As soon as she was sure he was out of earshot, Ælfrida whipped around to Wulfric. “What are you doing, you old fool? Once they know how vulnerable you are during the change, the Shifter and his humans will kill you. Then they can take as much time as they want to find your gold.”

  Wulfric didn’t wait for Seolfer to finish translating.

  “Wessex does not fear prey!” he snarled, his lips curling back from dark-yellow teeth set in pale gums. He belched loudly and stalked out of the shed, followed by his Pack and his Shifter, leaving only his nidling and a sour fug behind.

  “What do you mean by ‘prey,’ Wessex?” Ælfrida yelled from the doorway.

  The big male did not stop and did not answer.

  “Wulfric, betelle þu. Tell me. What have you done?”

  Seolfer plucked hard at Ælfrida’s loose sleeve. She’d been a tough little thing, outspoken and smart, but now she looked haunted. She shook her head, her finger raised to her lips. Peering around until it was clear that the Pack had followed its Alpha, she moved quietly, her bare heel eliding to bare toe, clearly used to gliding noiseless and unnoticed around the Pack.

  The two of them climbed an incline alongside a fast-moving stream. Wessex hadn’t offered her anything to eat, a terrible breach of Pack laws of hospitality; still, Ælfrida needed something to drink, at least. But before she could kneel at the water’s edge, Seolfer grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly away. For such a tiny thing, she was remarkably strong. Then the nidling pointed her toward a springhouse a short distance away. She pulled a rag from her waistband. “Cover your mouth, Alpha.”

  * * *

  Ælfrida ran as fast and hard as she could. She had left her clothes with the young woman, as well as the details of her Pack’s departure from Portsmouth on the day after the Iron Moon. Had she said they’d be sailing on the Assurance? She couldn’t remember anymore, because all she could remember were the partly eaten humans cooling in the springhouse. Everything made sense now: the guns, the fat, the mange, the yellow teeth, and the stench. The smell of carrion and man-eaters.

  The wolves of England were already dead. Running at night and through streams and in the cover of whatever trees she could find, Ælfrida headed fast for her own Mercia Pack, praying that they were where she’d left them, hiding in tight dirt dens in Sussex.

  When the Iron Moon passed, Ælfrida led her scraggly group to Portsmouth. She could barely stand to look back over the thirty thin adults who were all that remained of the one-time greatness of Mercia. Breeding had always been difficult for Pack, without adding in starvation and ferocious hostility to lone wolves and fresh bloodlines. She had used too much of the treasure her Pack had accumulated over the centuries for a ship that was larger than she needed, hoping and praying that some Alpha had the sense to join her.

  What a waste.

  A murmur roiled the Pack, alerting Ælfrida to the faint scent of wolf. Even with her poor human nose, she recognized it instantly, running it down until she came to the end of the dock where the Assurance’s captain stood yelling at a small woman seated with her legs over the side of the dock, her arms clenched around the harness of a dog cart, piled with three large chests.

  Seolfer was weaving slightly, staring at the blood falling from her leg into the water in rapidly dissipating gusts. The little nidling looked up with difficulty, her eyes barely focused in her pale face. “The guards shot them during the change. Clubbed them. Cut off their heads and stove them onto the branches of our trees. Bleeding into our earth. They are right now tearing up our land, looking for money. But I have them all, Alpha. I have them all.”

  Ælfrida breathed in deep and said a silent prayer of thanks to the pale remnants of the daylit waning moon. She yelled for her Delta, the one she’d sent to Glasgow to study medicine.

  “This is Seolfer,” she said. “Heal her.”

  Untying the rag around the woman’s calf, the doctor frowned. “Alpha, the ball is lodged in her tibia, and she has lost a great deal of blood. It is doubtful she will survive and sure that she will lose her leg.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Do not wag your head at me.” Ælfrida bent down, one strong hand clenched around his jaw. “You will do what I tell you, and she will live.”

  “Then what?” Ælfrida’s Beta yelled from the back where he’d been serving as rear guard. “Are we to embark on this foolishness saddled by a crippled runt who is not even of Mercia?”

  It is not in the nature of a Pack to accept change quietly. Mercia’s wolves had not seen what she had. While she had visited the Packs, they had dug holes in the dirt and eaten rats, which had done little to improve their disposition.

  Ælfrida bolted through the Pack, straight for the enormous male. She hadn’t eaten enough for months, but there was a reason she was Alpha, and every muscle tightened in explosive anticipation. Her lungs expanded as she plowed her struggling Beta to the edge of the dock and then threw him into the disgusting murky water lapping against the quay.

  She glared at the rest of her Pack, every tendon and bone wanting to shift. Her shoulders curved high behind her lowered head. Her teeth needed to tear into muzzles; her fingers ached to claw at flanks.

  “Your Alpha,” she growled, her body heaving, “says that this woman and these chests are Mercia now.”

  She might have been weakened by the long, slow hunger, but one by one, her Pack dropped their eyes and submitted.

  “You,” she barked at the goggle-eyed captain of the Assurance, who was staring at her huge Beta flailing in the water. “Fish him out.”

  She left two wolves to help the captain and two more to help the doctor. Then she commanded the rest of the Pack to carry the chests to the hold. “Gently, gently. Don’t jostle them.” She sent Halwende, the Pack’s single juvenile, for as muc
h water as he could carry.

  “Hurry,” she whispered as soon as they were in the hold, away from the humans. She couldn’t keep the anticipation and dread from her voice. Fastened only with sticks, the chests opened easily, and her heart clenched in her throat. The Pack gathered around the boxes smelling of piss and terror, and one by one they picked up the silent, cringing pups, cradling them against the warmth of their bodies. They gave them water from their cupped hands and stroked their fur and rubbed faces against muzzles to mark them.

  And for the first time in many years, Ælfrida, the last Alpha of the Great Pack of Mercia, allowed herself to feel hope.

  “Be sure to wash them well,” she said, more softly now. She would not have the pups coming to the New World smelling of the corruption and death of the old.

  Unfortunately, Ælfrida had one last thing to do to make sure her Pack could leave safely. It was a shitty job, but that’s what it meant to be Alpha.

  She’d seen the Shifter lingering near the dock and walked until she found his scent and tracked him to a nearby tavern. He seemed no more surprised to see Ælfrida than she was to see him. He was, he said, devastated that the human guards had betrayed Wulfric. Humans, he said, had no sense of honor, of a promise made and kept. But he could not bear life as a lone wolf, he said, and would serve her in whatever way she needed in return for a place in the Pack.

  He never mentioned Seolfer or the three great chests that he had tracked to Portsmouth. Nor did he mention the pistol he carried, though the scent of gunpowder was tart in Ælfrida’s nose.

  Ælfrida watched a young human woman, barely out of girlhood, smile at a customer and saw the customer’s body relax. When the girl touched his arm, he leaned forward, his scent becoming suddenly receptive. Ælfrida turned to the Shifter and gave him the same barmaid smile and the same barmaid touch, and his scent became musky. The blandishments that Ælfrida presumed he had used on poor Wulfric he now used on her, along with his fingers and palm. Finally, they went to one of the back rooms. “To formalize things,” he said archly.

  * * *

  “If you’re going to puke, puke leeward,” the captain of the Assurance had said, muttering something impertinent.

  Ælfrida was beyond caring about impertinence. She leaned over the rail he had pointed to, and as she started to vomit once more, she called upon the moon to witness that as long as she lived, she would never eat Shifter again.

  Chapter 1

  Upstate New York, 2018

  Wolves who drink smell like Baileys and kibble.

  It doesn’t matter that Ronan’s poison is a 7 and 7 and chimichangas at the casino over at Hogansburg, there’s something about our livers that still makes him smell like Baileys and kibble.

  He lies slumped partly on his stomach, partly on his side at the edge of the Clearing, the broad expanse of spongy grass and drowned trees that is what remains of an old beaver pond that fell into disrepair when the Pack ate the beavers one lean year. New beavers have established a new pond nearby. Eventually we will eat those too.

  And so it goes.

  The Clearing is used for ceremonies and rituals because it is open and accommodates larger numbers. Usually the Pack prefers the cool, muffled, fragrant darkness of the forest, treating the Clearing like an anxious Catholic treats the church. We shuffle in on major celebrations and otherwise give it a wide berth.

  The Dæling, which I suppose translates most conveniently as “Dealing,” is one of those celebrations. It marks the transition of our age group, our echelon, from juvenile to adult. Here, we are paired off, not as mates yet, but in practice couplings. We will also have our own Alpha who answers only to the Pack Alpha and is responsible for keeping our echelon in line. The whole hierarchy will be set up. Not that it’s permanent or anything, more like the start times assigned before the lengthy competition that is Pack life.

  Basically, the Dæling is one enormous squabble. There are challenges for the right to pair with a stronger wolf and challenges for a more elevated place in the hierarchy. Our whole youth has been taken up with tussling and posturing, but now it really counts. A wolf who is pinned to the ground in front of the Pack Alpha is the loser. Period. This sorting out of rankings and couples takes a long time, and the others watch it with endless fascination.

  Me? Not so much. Born crippled and a runt, I’ve had to struggle long and hard for my position at the dead bottom of the hierarchy. I’ve never fought anyone, because there is no honor in making me submit, no rank to be won by beating the runt.

  Ronan, on the other hand, is big and was once strong enough to be the presumptive Alpha. But he is, as they say, weak of marrow. With no determination or perseverance, he has become filled with fat and drink and resentful dreams of life as it is lived on Netflix. His nose is cold and wet when he’s human and hot and dry when he’s not.

  “He’s not much, our Ronan.” That’s what Gran Drava said to me. “But he’s a male and…”

  She gave me one more sniff before leaning back on the sofa in the Meeting House, where the 14th Echelon was gathered for her inspection. Her eyes and back are failing, but her sense of smell and her knowledge of Pack bloodlines are not. “And he isn’t within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity.”

  So because he is weak of marrow and I am weak of body, we find ourselves together at the bottom of the 14th.

  When the Pack Alpha eventually turns our way, I nudge Ronan, who doesn’t stand until I bite him. Finally, he hobbles up, looking at me mournfully with his greasy eyes. Nobody much pays attention as we approach the Alpha. They’re all too busy debriding each other’s wounds and sniffing new companions’ bodies.

  John’s paw hangs lazily over the edge of a granite outcropping shot through with mica that shimmers slightly in the moonlight. It seems like a nervous eternity, waiting for John’s pro forma nod of approval.

  It doesn’t come. Instead, he pulls himself up, one leg at a time, until he reaches his full height. The paler fur of his belly shimmers as he shakes himself and jumps down to the damp sod.

  His nose flares as he approaches us. Anxiously, I push myself closer to Ronan’s flank. John presses his muzzle between us, shoving me away. He sniffs the air around Ronan and starts to slap at Ronan, each hit of his head getting harder until Ronan stumbles backward.

  John bares his teeth, snarling.

  Ronan blinks a few times as though he is just waking. He wavers unsteadily, trying to comprehend the simple gesture that was all it took to exile him from the protection of our law, our land, our Pack. The sentence that forces him into a life wandering from Pack to Pack searching for a place until he dies in a puddle of blood and/or vomit, like most exiles do.

  I scuttle to John, my head and stomach scraping the grass, my tail tucked between my legs, submitting into the earth not because I care about Ronan, but because if he leaves, then I am a lone wolf. There’s an old saying that lone wolves are the only ones who always breed, their children being Frustration and Dissent. That’s why they are given over to their echelon’s Alphas to be their servants, their nidlings. A nidling has nothing, is nothing. Even at the bottom rank, you’re paired with someone who is just as shit a wolf as you are, so at least at home, you don’t have to submit. But the nidling’s life is one of endless submission.

  John snaps at me, then at Ronan. I roll on my back, my eyes averted, whimpering. But since he’s made up his mind, no amount of groveling is going to make any difference. John wants Ronan gone. He stands erect, leaning over Ronan’s now-shivering body, and a low growl emerges from deep in his chest. Any second now, he will attack.

  Ronan backs away, shell-shocked. He stops for a moment, still looking hopefully at John, until the Alpha lunges forward. The exile trips over his own feet as he turns to go.

  He doesn’t even bother to look at me.

  John stays alert, watching until Ronan lurches into the dark forest. He listens a
moment more to be sure the exile is truly gone before he howls and signals an end to the Dæling. The newly reordered 14th finds their pairs and their places behind John. I’m all the way at the end, where I’m used to being, until our Alpha, Solveig, runs back and, with a growl, reminds me that I am to follow her and her companion, Eudemos, the pairing who now control my life. I take up my place behind them, my tail dragging between my legs.

  Stopping suddenly with one paw raised, John focuses on a sharp bark in the night. It is a warning from a perimeter wolf. Probably signaling that a hunter has trespassed on our land. Wolves will be gathering around the interloper now, following the hunter at a silent distance. As there’s nothing like an honor guard of seething wolves to scare off prey, hunters usually give up pretty quickly.

  John lifts his head, his nose working hard as he looks toward the north woods. I can smell it too. Over the fragrance of fecund grass and swollen water and bog and sphagnum come the subtle scent of a half-dozen Pack and the overwhelming stench of salt and steel and blood and decay.

  With a quick snap of his jaws, our Alpha sends our echelon’s fastest wolf back to Home Pond for older reinforcements. John runs around to the north flank, closely followed by Solveig and Eudemos and the other newly minted leaders of the 14th. His forefeet are light on the damp grass, his hind legs ready to jump. Hunters don’t come this far in. This is past the high gates and barbed fences and threatening signs and the trackless tangle of ancient, upended spruce and their young that are the reminders of a violent blowdown ten years ago.

  The footsteps are soft and definitely human. Heel, the controlled curve along the outer rim of the foot. The toe barely grazing the grass. It is the footfall of someone used to stealth. I wouldn’t have heard it at all, except for the occasional stumble.

  Solveig’s haunches tighten in front of me.

  Finally, a man appears. He blends in with the night, so it is only when he walks into the moonlit clearing that we can see him. Sometimes we say someone has a heart or an ego or an appetite “as big as night.”