by James Enge
They'd chosen their spot well: hardly three hundred loping paces off lay the squat bulk of the Khuwuleion, a dark shape etched against the western stars.
Rokhlenu was just catching his breath and his beloved on the far side of the Long Wall when a human shape vaulted clear over the wall and landed rolling in the dark field nearby.
“Nicely done,” he whispered harshly.
“Takes practice,” Morlock whispered back.
“How many legs did you break?”
Morlock climbed carefully to his feet. His expression was invisible in the dark, but he was clearly turned toward the wall, waiting. When all the werewolves had climbed down the inner wall he said, “Then,” and leapt into the sky.
Rokhlenu lost sight of him at first, then saw a series of stars being briefly occulted: that was where Morlock must be. A dark shape landed in the fields halfway between the wall and the Khuwuleion and lifted off again.
“What if he misses the roof?” wondered Yaniunulu.
“Then he tries again,” Rokhlenu said.
“What if he breaks his leg?”
“Then we send up Runhuiulanhu with a rope.”
“And what if—?”
“Then we trade you and your gold-toothers to the Sardhluun for the female prisoners,” said Yaarirruuiu, one of the irredeemables. “A bad trade for them, but we'll tell them you clean up nice.”
A few snarling chuckles at this. The irredeemables had no time for the First Wolf's bodyguard at the best of times, and they didn't like frizz-faced Yaniunulu casting aspersions on Khretvarrgliu.
“I think he landed on the roof,” Hrutnefdhu said quietly.
Rokhlenu couldn't tell, himself, but he trusted the pale werewolf.
“Forward, then,” he said. “Run silent. Don't draw a weapon until the First Wolf or I command it.”
They ran from the wall toward the hulking lightless prison.
It was too lightless, Rokhlenu thought as they approached. There seemed to be no lamplight or torchlight shining through the infrequent dark windows of the stone lair. It gave him a bad feeling, but they had set their plans and this was no reason to change them.
By the time they arrived at the Khuwuleion wall, two knotted lines had dropped from the distant roof. Except that they were both one line: they were connected at the low end and up above, where Morlock had installed a pulley. That was how the plan went, anyway.
“I suppose you'll want to be first or last,” Wuinlendhono murmured in his ear.
“Last,” he said. He'd thought about it: the ground was the point of greatest danger, if a patrol of Sardhluun guards happened by.
“Then I'm first,” she said. Stepping over to the lines, she gripped one firmly and gave it a yank, letting Morlock know that a passenger was coming. Then four others took hold of the other line and started hauling it down. As it came down, the First Wolf went up, walking along the rough gray walls of the Khuwuleion.
Twenty-two others followed her up. In the end, there were four others and Rokhlenu.
“Remember,” he whispered to the last four, who included Hrutnefdhu and the ape-fingered Runhuiulanhu, “run rather than fight. If need be, run all the way back to the outliers and have Lekkativengu come rescue us.”
The irredeemables stood silent, but Hrutnefdhu's light voice whispered, “Yes, Gnyrrand.”
Rokhlenu went to the rope, gripped it firmly, and pulled.
The other four started hauling at the ropes. Rokhlenu found himself fly-walking up the side of the building. He found he didn't like it much and, as the ground got farther and farther away, he liked it less and less. But there was a moment when he seemed to be struggling absolutely alone, halfway between the dark ground and the star-filled sky. He didn't like it. But he knew he would never forget it.
He came up the lip of the roof, where the glass pulley was straining under his weight. In fact, Rokhlenu was dismayed to see a network of cracks running all through the pulley's transparent frame: it wouldn't bear his (or anyone's) weight much longer, he guessed.
Hands reached over the edge to pull him up. He grabbed them gratefully, and when they had him firmly, he let the rope go and climbed onto the roof.
He looked at the others and they looked at him. Most of them were grinning, teeth pale and sinister in starlight. There was no need to say anything: whatever he had experienced, they had experienced.
Morlock was standing with his long-leaping boots in his hand, looking at them intently. They had discussed this, too: it would be a mistake to leave them anchored to the roof, where the Sardhluun could find them and make use of them. They were impossible to fight in. But Rokhlenu had some sense of how difficult their making had been, and what an oddly intense feeling Morlock had for the things he made. Still, there was no help for it. Morlock opened his fingers, and the boots flew up into the sky and were lost.
The shadow with Yaarirruuiu's profile gestured toward part of the roof, where there was a hatch permitting entrance to the top floor of the prison—if it would open.
Morlock's crooked shape moved toward it. He gripped the bar atop the hatch with both hands (one gloved, one ungloved) and pulled it open.
It swung open fairly easily. At least there was no lock on it. But it screamed like a ghost hungry for blood, and a cloud of gray murk rose from it that had the tang of iron in Rokhlenu's nostrils: rust.
They waited without moving or speaking. Any guard within hearing would have to come investigate the sound.
No one came. The dark feeling in Rokhlenu grew darker. It was not a feeling of danger. It was worse than that somehow.
Morlock drew the sword strapped over his shoulder: it was a short one with a glass blade, not his own Tyrfing. He stepped through the hatch and dropped down to the floor below.
The werewolves turned to Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono.
“Go down first,” said Rokhlenu. “Then draw.” He didn't want anyone impaling himself on his weapon. Except Yaniunulu, perhaps.
One by one they dropped through the hatch. Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono went last, side by side.
Morlock had a piece of glass in his hand that was shedding a cool bluish light. Rokhlenu would have cautioned him about making a light until they were sure it was safe, except for two things. One was that Morlock seemed not to be in the mood for caution: his eyes were starting to get that staring crazy look again; he was less Morlock and more Khretvarrgliu by the moment. Second, Rokhlenu's ears and eyes and nose were all telling him what perhaps Morlock had already guessed: this place was abandoned. The cell doors lay half open; there was a fur of humid dust on the very bars of the cells.
“If there is a single rat in this entire building,” said one of the irredeemables, “I'll eat it.”
“I thought I was the only one who was hungry,” said Wuinlendhono in a hard, clear, amused tone.
The werewolves snickered. They liked the toughness of their First Wolf. If they noticed, as Rokhlenu noticed, the wet staring look in her eyes—almost as crazy as Morlock's—they gave no sign of it.
Morlock took another piece of glass from a pocket in his sleeve and tapped it against the first. Now both were lit. He tossed the glass toward Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono without looking at them; Rokhlenu snatched it out of the air and tried to look as if he weren't startled.
Morlock plunged down a nearby stairwell. The irredeemables started to follow him. The gold-toothed bodyguards looked toward Wuinlendhono for instructions. Yaarirruuiu noticed this, looked annoyed, and stood in front of the stairwell, blocking the way.
“Gnyrrand?” he said, meeting Rokhlenu's eye. (Translation: I'll be gnawed by ghosts if these semi-cows are going to show more respect to their chief than we show to ours.)
“Follow him,” Rokhlenu said, “but be careful. This place may have traps, even if there is no one in it.”
They followed Morlock down the stairs.
They were careful. There were no traps. There were no people. The building was empty of life, down to the torture chambers on
the underground levels.
Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono investigated those alone while the others stood guard in the central chamber on the first floor.
Rokhlenu walked behind and held the shining fragment of glass high as Wuinlendhono peered carefully into bloodstained room—the holding cells, the torture chambers, the spiked closets, everything large enough to conceal a body. It was as if she was expecting to find someone in particular. But there was no one there, alive or dead.
Finally she gave up and they started to climb the stairs back to the ground floor.
“It hasn't changed that much since I was a girl,” she remarked. “I wonder when they stopped using it.”
He grabbed her by the arm, and she turned to look at him. Her dark eyes were empty as if she didn't see him.
“You were imprisoned here,” he said.
“I was born here.”
“Ghost.” Rokhlenu thought furiously. “That thing. Wurnafenglu. He is your father.”
“No, I don't think so. I hope not. He didn't think so. My mother was one of his wives, but she became pregnant by another male. So he insisted, anyway. He had her thrown in prison and tortured her for the name, but she never told. Or maybe she did, and it didn't matter; they kept on torturing her, anyway. I grew up here. When I was a few years short of my first heat, Wurnafenglu bartered me to a rich old pervert of the Goweiteiuun Pack. He was an eminent ghost-sniffer, and smock-sniffer, too. I learned so much from him. My first, extremely late husband.”
Rokhlenu noticed that he was gripping Wuinlendhono's elbow rather tightly. He relaxed his grip and put his hand along her forearm caressingly.
“I cannot stand,” whispered Wuinlendhono, “that you know when to talk, and when not to talk. That you are as beautiful as a moon at new rising. That you are strong as iron, as cunning and lively as a flame. That I can trust you. That I can turn my back on you and know that I am safe, know that you will die defending me, that I would die defending you. Your love will make me weak and I cannot be weak. I can't be weak. Stop making me be weak.”
“I wouldn't want you if you were weak.”
She was in his arms by then, sniffing his hair and nipping at his neck. “Lying son of a never-wolf cow,” she breathed in his ear.
“And don't talk that way about my mother. She was a very respectable rope weaver, may the ghosts leave her alone.”
Wuinlendhono drew in a long sobbing breath and stood away from him.
“I'm sure she was,” said the First Wolf of the outlier pack. “Eminently respectable. How sorry I am that I never got the chance to meet her.”
“You'd be sorrier still if you did have the chance. She never was very kindly to my meathearts.”
“And neither will I ever be, so we have that in common.”
She took his arm and they climbed the dark stair in silence.
When they reached the ground floor, the other werewolves (including the four who had been left outside) were crowded around Morlock and Hrutnefdhu. Morlock was holding a large codex in his right hand and raising high the shining glass in his gloved left hand. Hrutnefdhu, standing beside him, was reading from the book in low tones.
“Interesting story?” Wuinlendhono inquired, when they were close enough not to shout.
“Many stories,” said Morlock. “All grim.”
“It's the prisoner registry,” Hrutnefdhu said. “Names, crimes, dates of admission, dates of—well, departure, I suppose. And notes on their final disposition.”
“They are all dead or sold,” Morlock said. “The ink on the latest entries looks to be five years old at least.”
“Five years.” Rokhlenu shook his head. “This was a fool's errand. They must have decided years ago that selling their prisoners was more profitable than housing and feeding them.”
“Why just female prisoners?” Morlock asked.
The irredeemables looked embarrassed on Morlock's behalf, the gold-toothed bodyguards amused at his lack of sophistication.
“There are more unmated males than females in the wild packs,” Wuinlendhono explained. “Every female knows she can get a mate by leaving the city. Not that many want to.”
“Would all the female prisoners over a stretch of five years or more be salable on those terms?” asked Morlock coolly.
“Depends on how desperate they are out there, Khretvarrgliu,” Runhuiulanhu said philosophically. “You should see some of the stale biscuits, male and female, they have down at the day-lairs off the market. But people pay for their company all the time.”
“Never you, of course,” said a gold-tooth slyly.
“Yes me, you stupid bag of marrow-sucked bones. Me with my monkey hands and feet, even when all three moons are up, and everyone knowing about it on account of they call me Ape-fingers. You think females are lining up to mate with me? If I get it, I have to pay for it.”
“Couldn't you find a female in the same condition?” asked Morlock.
“Mate with an ape-fingered female?” cried ape-fingered Runhuiulanhu. “I can do better than that!”
“Shut up, for ghosts' sake,” Rokhlenu hissed. “We'll have the Sardhluun down on us and there's no point to that, now.”
“Be quiet, by all means,” the First Wolf agreed. “But,” she continued, “this was not a fool's errand. That book will be very useful. Very useful indeed.”
Confused looks on most faces except Morlock's—he may have been still pondering the plight of the ape-fingered werewolf for all Rokhlenu knew. But light began to shine in Rokhlenu's understanding. “Not every female sent here was to serve a life sentence. No female was sent here for a death sentence. People will want to know what happened to them.”
“There's that,” Wuinlendhono agreed. “Then there's the money. The Sardhluun have been taking money every year for tending to the city's prisoners. The citizens of Wuruyaaria will be curious to know how that money was spent.”
Nods all around, fierce grins. Morale had been falling ever since they found the prison was an empty stone box; now the warriors were standing straighter. His intended was good at chieftainship, Rokhlenu thought (not for the first time). It was one thing to realize what she had said; it was another thing to know that her fighters needed to hear it.
“Then we can declare victory and get out,” he said aloud.
“I'd better get that pulley,” Morlock said. “It'll look bad when they see we broke into an empty prison.”
“Not worth the time—” Rokhlenu began, thinking of Morlock shuffling up and down all the stairs above them, but Morlock was already headed out the front gate.
The werewolves followed him out. Morlock walked over to the lines hanging down the wall, found one of the knots in the rope, and pulled it apart.
“Stand clear,” he said belatedly, standing clear himself.
The long cord began to fall, piling up on the dark ground. A few moments later, the glass pulley landed in a shower of bright fragments. Morlock quickly stowed the fragments in a bag he had been carrying on his back, coiled up the rope, and did likewise. He looked up to see the werewolves staring at him.
“I don't like strangers handling my stuff,” he said.
This was a universal instinct among werewolves, and they all nodded sagely in agreement. But what Rokhlenu had really been wondering was how Morlock had gotten the pulley to fall into pieces. He must have shattered it somehow beforehand, but kept the fragments from separating with some spell. Now the spell had been broken and the pulley followed suit obligingly.
“Morlock, you're the best of makers!” Rokhlenu said. “Ulugarriu can yodel up his own tail, if any.”
“Like to see them fight it out,” Yaarirruuiu said. “Morlock against Ulugarriu in a maker's challenge.”
“Yes!” cried Hrutnefdhu, his eyes shining with admiration. “What a game it would be! Skill against skill, with life and bite on the line.”
The gold-toothed guards looked sidelong with disdain at the pale castrato's enthusiasm, but the irredeemables chuckled and Yaar
irruuiu clapped him on the shoulder. They liked the ex-trustee, and even respected him a little, though he would not wear (or could not keep) honor-teeth.
“Shut your noisy word-holes, my champions,” Wuinlendhono said cheerily. “Let's get clear of this place so that the Sardhluun can start paying for our fun soonest.”
This strongly appealed to all of them, and Rokhlenu had no trouble ordering them for a quick run back to the ropes they had left hanging from the Long Wall. He put Morlock and Hrutnefdhu at the end, where they would wind up anyway, ape-fingered Runhuiulanhu at the front, in case the ropes were gone and they had to rescale the walls, and Wuinlendhono carrying the book in the center of the company, where it was safest.
The ropes were still there and apparently had not been discovered. No one was lying in wait for them, anyway. Rokhlenu was standing on the top of the wall, preparing to climb down the other side, when he noticed light and noise coming from the north and east, along the straight road to Wuruyaaria from the Long Wall. He signalled that the others should keep crossing over while he kept his eyes and ears on this interesting if indistinct disturbance.
Wuinlendhono clambered up the rope. The prisoner book from the Khuwuleion was dangling from one shoulder bound in neatly knotted rope. “Thanks for the help,” she said pointedly after (in his absorption) he failed to help her.
“Look!” he said.
“Election,” she said briefly. “That's why we're here tonight, remember?”
“It's outside the walls! A primary election would be held on Sardhluun ground.”
“Yurr. Yes, you're right about that.”
“It's a general election rally.”
“Must be. Yes, I agree. And it must be against a pack who has no hope of beating them, so they're risking a rally now, and hoping to live down the defeat before election season is over.”
“Only they're going to get some help.”
“Not tonight, cutlet. We're not ready.”
“They're not ready.”
“Can't talk you out of it, can I? Oh, well. You're the gnyrrand.”
Yaniunulu was just passing over the wall between them, and Wuinlendhono said, “Yaniunulu. Give it to him.”
