Wolf Hunting

by Jane Lindskold

  Now Truth saw what seemed to be native rock, untouched by tools. She understood that what seemed to be a cellar was actually a natural ravine. The building had been built over it, and again she wondered why. Surely the labor involved in cutting that staircase eliminated any benefit garnered from not having to excavate the cellar.

  The stairway angled again, then, with a few almost anticlimactic steps, came to a halt. Wolves and jaguars are soft-footed creatures, but Truth thought that the sound of her bream indicated that they were in a large chamber. As she debated the merits of making a sound or not, perhaps a growl or a snarl or extending her claw and scraping the stone, Firekeeper's husky voice, pitched low but not whispering, broke the stillness.

  "So?" she asked. "What do ears and noses tell?"

  "Blood," Blind Seer said instantly. "Not in great quantities, but there."

  "Fresh earth," Truth added, "broken stone. Familiar human scents: Ynamynet, Lachen, Skea, Verul, a few others."

  "Beeswax and lamp oil and the ashes of old fires," Blind Seer said. "Perhaps Firekeeper would care to give us more light."

  "You scent no one here?" Firekeeper asked.

  "No one here in the now," Blind Seer reassured her.

  "As humans work by light, I think we will need light to see what they do here."

  Firekeeper grunted soft agreement and let Blind Seer guide her to where he smelled lamp oil. Taking from the bag she wore about her neck the fire-making tools that - like her knife - never left her, she struck spark to tinder and soon had lit both candle and oil lamp.

  To eyes accustomed to seeing with very little light, these two pale glows revealed a great deal - and for Truth revealed more than she wished to see. Visions assaulted her of vengeful humans, alerted somehow by the light as they had not been by soft conversation, clattering in booted feet down the stair. They rolled from hiding in secret chambers, came brandishing swords and long-hafted spears.

  True, these last images were fainter than the others, for even in the confused state of her thoughts Truth had some sense of balance, but even so she reared on her hind legs and struck at one of the more persistent images.

  "Truth?" said Blind Seer, his question pitched on a rumbling growl.

  "I'm fine," she lied. "A bug or bit of ash."

  She could tell from the cant of the wolf's ears that he did not quite believe her, but neither was he willing to challenge the veracity of her statement.

  To distract herself from probing visions of what would happen if that challenge came, Truth forced herself to study the minute details of the chamber in which they stood.

  She had been right when she had thought it a ravine, for that was precisely what it was - small by the standards of such in the open air, but making for a quite large, if irregularly shaped, room. Glancing up, she saw that the ceiling above was only partly human built.

  "This must have been both cave and ravine," Truth said, "and the building was built above it. I wonder why."

  She regretted the last statement, for Ahmyn's generosity offered her a wealth of possibilities. Firekeeper's blunt practicality broke these as a paw breaks a reflection.

  "I wonder more," the wolf-woman said, "that this place is so uncluttered. I am no human, but I have lived in their dens, and places like this are usually filled with overflow from their lives: vegetables or discarded furniture or some such litter. I have seen this in castles and in common houses. Why is this place so empty?"

  "Not all empty," Blind Seer said, indicating an area deeper in. "My nose tells me that some work is going on over there."

  "Let us look then," Firekeeper said, but she continued to muse as she lifted lamp and candle, then followed the wolf. 'True, this place was unused, the door swollen shut until a few days past, but I cannot believe that humans before querinalo were any less given to hoarding than those who have come after."

  Blind Seer led them (for Truth was too distracted to track anything herself, but could only follow and hope not to stumble) to what his nose had found. At first all Truth's eyes saw was a jumble of rocks broken and moved back from a section of the wall rather smoother than those around. Then she heard Firekeeper hiss something that might have been a curse, and the random detritus fell into a recognizable pattern.

  "There is a gate here," Firekeeper said. "It was buried beneath that rock fall, but it is here. That is what they have been doing. It is as you said, sweet hunter, rabbits and their burrows. No wonder some dared smell of triumph. They thought to leave by this and bring back allies."

  Blind Seer was casting around, nose close to the ground. Here and there he sniffed deeply. Once he sneezed.

  "The blood I have scented seems mostly to have come from this work," he reported. "Where rock cut or crushed, not shed for spellcasting."

  "That is something," Firekeeper said. "Then this thing is not yet alive."

  "I don't think so," Blind Seer said. "In a day or so, though ... Truth has advised us well."

  Truth lashed her tail back and forth, then seized on one image among the many.

  "We should check," she said, "to make sure that this gate is the only such thing here. Above they built many gates close together."

  "Good," Firekeeper said. "I will leave the lamp here, but take the candle."

  She did so, moving quickly as if hot on some trail. Blind Seer cast his search in another direction, and Truth paused to inspect the gate they had found before joining in the search. This gate was different from the one at the stronghold, for no effort had been made to hide it. Here the markings were carved deeply into the surrounding rock, the channel that would carry blood to fuel the spell cut broad and wide.

  Truth sniffed, but no blood scent remained, though much must have been spilled here. Even as she realized the ludicrousness of this gesture, she also realized that she was tense and alert, every part of her straining for something that had not yet happened, but that she was certain must come.

  It was with something almost like relief that Truth heard a scrape of leather against stone, a footfall from somewhere, though not the stair down which they had come. It did not belong to either of her companions. Both of them were unshod.

  Truth did not need to alert Firekeeper and Blind Seer. Both had heard, and upon hearing, Firekeeper had snuffed the flame of her candle. Truth considered knocking over the lamp, but seeing the ramifications of this choice decided to leave it. The light had to have been seen, and humans were easily distracted by a bit of light. Instead, Truth took step after perfect step and melted soundlessly into the surrounding darkness.

  XXXVI

  FIREKEEPER RUBBED the still warm candle wick between thumb and forefinger to damp the last smouldering scent. Then she stood frozen and listened.

  Footsteps, shod feet on stone stairs, more than one set. Three sets, perhaps, or five. Interestingly, they were not coming from the direction of the stair by which she and her companions had descended, but from another off in the darkness where her candlelight had not carried, in the direction in which Blind Seer had gone.

  We might have guessed there would be another way into this place, she thought, with all our talk of rabbits and their burrows.

  Firekeeper wasn't worried about Blind Seer. The wolf would have heard the footsteps even before she had. Doubtless he was somewhere in the shadowed chamber, listening as she was.

  Firekeeper was more concerned about Truth. The jaguar had been acting very oddly - although Truth had always been hard to figure out. However, as the wolf-woman heard nothing, she trusted that the jaguar, too, was waiting to see what this intrusion might bring.

  The first paces were regular and business-like; then there was hesitation.

  "Who left a lamp burning?" Lachen's voice, the inflections accusatory, the language his odd version of Liglimosh.

  Firekeeper felt fortunate he was speaking something she could understand, but then these mixed peoples must have a few languages that they chose to speak among themselves.

  "The chamber was dark when we lef
t." Skea, confident. "I blew out the lamps myself."

  "Who's there?" Lachen called out. Then in a lower tone, "We told everyone to stay away from here lest those creatures become suspicious about comings and goings. Why won't they obey?"

  The footsteps had resumed during this rant, and Firekeeper felt Blind Seer's nose cold against her arm.

  "Five," he said. "The four who came to the stronghold and one male I do not know"

  Firekeeper touched his head in acknowledgment. There was no need to say that the best thing they could do was to wait, listen, and learn what they could. She hoped Truth thought the same.

  The footsteps had reached the room, their sound widening as they struck the stone floor. A silhouetted figure intercepted the lamplight. Ynamynet spoke.

  "It's turned pretty low. It's possible that there was a spark in the wick that slowly kindled in the oil. I'll take a look around."

  She had turned up the wick now, and Firekeeper took care not to look directly at the bright center of the new halo of light.

  Ynamynet moved around the immediate area, lighting a series of lamps hung from hooks set into walls or support beams. Firekeeper studied what had been revealed.

  In this greater range of light, the place looked less like the natural ravine it had begun as and more like a human structure fashioned after a ravine. Firekeeper was reminded of the caverns beneath Dragon's Breath in New Kelvin. There, too, the sorcerers had liked to work their incantations beneath the earth. Firekeeper wondered if they had reason for this other than the obvious security such places offered.

  We know too little about magic, Firekeeper thought fleetingly, and too much of what we know is wrong.

  Lachen had accepted Ynamynet's suggestions, perhaps because with the coming of light he no longer felt so afraid. Humans put far too much trust in light. Lachen had moved to the gate, holding one of the lamps close so he could inspect the markings on the wall.

  "We should have the significant parts cleared in another few hours," he announced, "if we put our backs to it."

  This appeared to be a command of sorts, for Skea, Verul, and the last person now moved forward and resumed clearing away the rocks. This last was a very large man who reminded Firekeeper a little of her friend Ox, for all this man was colored like the Winter Grass people of Stonehold, with their golden brown skin and shining black hair. Lachen helped, though he talked as much as he worked.

  "Found anything, Ynamynet?"

  Ynamynet had moved in the direction Blind Seer had gone, and Firekeeper felt a trace of apprehension. What if the wolf had left a paw print to mark his presence? She asked him, and the wolf replied confidently.

  "If she can read sign on stone, then perhaps, but I smelled many trails there. The dust and grit have long been muddled by these humans' own passage. I ran clean-foot, so left nothing behind."

  However, Blind Seer might have carried mud between each toe for all Ynamynet would have noticed. Firekeeper saw that Ynamynet's investigation was not for the floor, but for the various nooks and crannies about the edges of the room. Ynamynet stopped in one place, and Fire-keeper's heart began to pound uncomfortably hard, certain that Ynamynet had found some sign of their passage, but the woman was only studying with idle speculation another heap of fallen rock.

  "I wonder where this gate goes?"

  "Elsewhere," Lachen grunted. He was helping Skea move a large slab. "When we are free of these intruders, perhaps we will look."

  "Hmmm..." Ynamynet said.

  She left her perusal of the wall and continued her search. There was no urgency about Ynamynet's progress, and Firekeeper suspected Ynamynet was searching mostly to humor Lachen and to avoid taking her own turn at moving rock.

  Eventually, Ynamynet turned in the direction of the place from which Firekeeper and Blind Seer had been watching, but they had long since melted away, moving to where they could see both what Ynamynet had found and the men working over the stone heap behind them. Firekeeper had even remembered to take the candle with her so there would be no question of how it came to be there.

  The wolf-woman had almost forgotten Truth, for the jaguar had been silent until now. Firekeeper had guessed that like them the great cat was watching and waiting, moving a few steps to avoid the traveling light.

  Forgetting Truth proved to be a mistake.

  Eventually, Ynamynet's path brought her into the vicinity of the stair by which the trio had descended. She raised her lamp to look up the stair, and there on the lowest landing crouched the jaguar.

  Truth was frozen in midmotion, one paw raised as if she would climb further up the stairs, her head turned as if she would descend the few stairs that separated her from the room below. Even her tail was held stiffly in mid-lash. Her blue-white eyes were the only things that moved, darting back and forth, watching something that none of the others could see.

  "She's gone mad again," Blind Seer breathed in resignation.

  Ynamynet's response to finding the jaguar, so very strange with her charcoal coat and burning spots, was completely sensible as human reactions went. She screamed, her voice so shrill that in it Firekeeper heard the long-ago days when humans were still wild creatures, and such screams were meant to summon a distant pack. The men responded as those long-ago men must have done, dropping their burdens and racing to the woman's side. All but Lachen bore makeshift clubs, crafted from the furniture left in the administration building. They ran with these raised, but swift as they were, Firekeeper and Blind Seer were the swifter.

  They did not run to put themselves between Truth and those who now lunged toward her, but leapt from behind. Blind Seer bore the ox-built man over, and Firekeeper heard the man hit with a solid, sickening crack. She did not think he would trouble them soon - if ever.

  She had chosen for her target Verul, the big, fairskinned Twice Dead. Keeping in mind her promise to Derian that there would be as little killing as need be, Firekeeper did not leap upon Verul's back and put her Fang into his throat, but instead grabbed at his leg, tripping him so he stumbled and fell. In catching himself on his hands, Verul let his club drop and the solid bit of wood skittered off into the shadows.

  But Verul was luckier than the other man, and caught himself successfully, rolling over onto his back and bounding to his feet with admirable ease. Firekeeper, joints and muscles still aching from fever, envied him and even hated him a little. That hate made what she must do next a little easier.

  Verul was still casting about for who had hit him, for Ynamynet's one lamp, held in her shaking hand, cast as much dancing shadow as it did light. In the cover of those shadows, Firekeeper came low and fast. Her Fang was sharp, and Verul's light leather boots offered the blade little challenge. In one hard cut, Firekeeper sliced the tendon at the back of his ankle.

  Verul bellowed in rage and pain, but for all his noise, his leg buckled beneath him nonetheless. He crashed to the floor, and this time he stayed down.

  Blind Seer had now targeted Skea, but the dark-skinned man was proving more of a challenge than his fellows, and not only because he had some warning. Skea seemed able to root himself to the floor on which he stood, and also to understand that if Blind Seer leapt, the wolf would be for that moment vulnerable. Even so, there was no way that Skea would have attention for any other than Blind Seer for a good time to come.

  Firekeeper glanced behind her. Lachen had fallen on his knees beside the big man Blind Seer had first attacked. His motions as he checked the man for signs of life were stiff and jerky. Clearly, he could hardly believe what had happened, that his plans had come to ruin so quickly. Ynamynet, however, remained on her feet, alert, standing between Firekeeper and Truth. It was to her the wolf-woman turned her attention.

  The women locked eyes and Ynamynet tilted her chin up in defiance. Firekeeper shifted her grip on her blade, but she had been with humans too long. She could not bring herself to strike this unarmed opponent, especially with Derian's anguish fresh in her mind. She was struggling to remember the human forms
for demanding surrender - for surely the wolf's way would only frighten this woman, if not kill her - when Ynamynet said something very strange.

  "I have a daughter," she said, her tone so carefully conversational that Firekeeper could hear the fear vibrating beneath every note. "Do you have any children?"

  "No," Firekeeper said, completely confused. "Then perhaps you will not understand when I tell you I could not trust my daughter to the mercies of you and your allies - especially of you, given how I had betrayed our agreement there at the Setting Sun stronghold. Zebel attempted to assure me that you were a creature of honor, but I could not even trust him. I must do what I could to escape."

  "I do not want your daughter," Firekeeper said. "I do not want you or this place or anything else, but having them I must deal with them."

  "If I order Skea to surrender, will the wolf kill him?" Ynamynet asked in that same too conversational voice.

  "If the surrender is real," Firekeeper said, "Blind Seer will not harm him."

  Ynamynet raised her voice. "Skea. Surrender." Firekeeper did not turn, did not trust this woman, but she heard the dull thud of wood as Skea dropped his club. She heard the crack as Blind Seer broke the piece of wood in his jaws, and hid a smile. Wolves had a sense of humor she understood perfectly.

  "Are you surrender?" Firekeeper asked. Ynamynet shrugged. "I am unarmed - unless I could turn this lamp into a weapon, which I cannot. There is a jaguar at my back, and you to the front. If you will accept my surrender I will give it."

  "I accept," Firekeeper said. "Sit and ..."

  She stopped speaking, competing sounds claiming her attention. One was a rumbling growl from Truth, echoing from stone walls to reverberate like thunder. The other was an anguished shout from the almost forgotten Lachen.

  "No! No! No! No!" Screaming on a rising note. "NO!"

  Firekeeper wheeled and saw Lachen rolling on the floor. He was deliberately soaking himself in the blood that had flowed from Verul's cut leg before that man had stanched the flow. Verul, seated on the floor, both hands gripping the makeshift bandage he had bound around his wound, was staring at Lachen in horror, a horror that grew to terror as Lachen began to claw at Verul's hands, trying to force them from the wound.