The Wolf Age

by James Enge

  She shook her head wearily. He would have to do something stupid, something thoughtless, something that reassured her that he was just another thump-footed, fat-nosed, bristle-witted male. Because if he didn't, she might really have to fall in love with him, and that would be a ghost-bitten nuisance.

  She lay looking on his image, basking in the moonlight and his lingering scent, until sleep came to her.

  Her dreams, as usual, were nightmares. Often she dreamed of her dead husbands; this afternoon, she had dreamed of Rokhlenu standing among them. But tonight it was a much older nightmare, her very first recurring nightmare. She was a child again, back in the Khuwuleion, and they were torturing her mother for a reason no one ever explained. She screamed for someone to save them, but she knew no one would ever save them. Even in her dream, she knew that was just an empty dream.

  t was raining the next day-a strangely summery rain, with the warm air so dense with water that it had to sweat some out. Rokhlenu donned a cloak for his walk across the outlier settlement, and before he took too many steps he was overwarm. If the cloak hadn't been a gift from his intended, he would have draped it on a railing and walked away from it.

  When he got to the far side of the settlement, he could see that Morlock was already at work in front of his cave, hammering away at something lying on a flat stone or anvil.

  The wicker boat was resting at the water's edge on the base of the hill. Rokhlenu stared at it, wondering whether to call to Morlock or flounder across the water. The wicker boat, which had a glassy orb on its prow, swung toward him and proceeded across the stretch of swampy, rain-dented water.

  This made the hairs on Rokhlenu's neck and ears rise up. On the other hand, it was rather convenient. He stepped into the boat and, using an oar he found inside the craft, paddled across to the other side. He eyed the up- and downhill stream dubiously, then climbed the slope to Morlock's cave.

  Morlock's anvil was just at the entrance to his cave, and he was working sheltered from the rain. He nodded agreeably at Rokhlenu as he approached and said, "With you in a moment."

  It wasn't long, in fact. Morlock was hammering what appeared to be a spearhead, and presently he tossed it into a vat of water to cool, alongside some others that were already there.

  Rokhlenu's first thought was that Wuinlendhono was right and that Morlock must have been using his talents to make base metals to work with. But then he saw that the anvil was a stone, and that the hammerhead and the spearheads appeared to be made of clear greenish blue glass.

  "There is so much sand and lime about," Morlock said, when he noticed him noticing the glass. "It made more sense to use it than try to find or make metal."

  Rokhlenu started to ask if the glass was strong enough to make a good spearhead, then stopped. If it was strong enough to make a hammer, it was strong enough for weaponry. Although he didn't see how that could be.

  "I had to mess about with it for a while," Morlock said, sensing his inchoate question. "These were just experiments, but I guess we will need weapons to fight with soon."

  Morlock's casual assumption that he would fight alongside Rokhlenu when the time came eased the werewolf's mind. "Probably," Rokhlenu said, shouldering off his cloak and hanging it on the side of the anvil rock.

  Morlock pulled forth a couple of wickerwork chairs, and they sat in the mouth of the cave and watched the misty rain fall on the swamp and the spindly lair-towers of the outlier pack.

  "Odd weather," said Morlock presently, and it wasn't casual conversation.

  "Insane," Rokhlenu agreed. "People say the world is going to end."

  "Eh. Aren't they always saying that?"

  "I guess so. It's not just werewolves, then?"

  Morlock shook his head, and they sat for a while in silence.

  "I hear the Sardhluun came calling last night," Morlock said.

  "Yes." Rokhlenu laughed barkingly as he remembered the hapless emissary trying to lick up the honor-teeth he had lost to Wuinlendhono.

  He told Morlock all about it, since it was essential that he know, and then found himself saying much more. He talked about his feelings for Wuinlendhono and her confusing display of feelings for him. He talked about his dreams and hopes that were now lost, and his uncertainty at the prospects opening up to him. He talked about his anxiety about not hearing from his father and brothers-not once, in prison or afterward.

  Morlock didn't say much, but it wasn't a soliloquy by Rokhlenu: sometimes the never-wolf would ask a question, and he always appeared alert and interested.

  As Rokhlenu wound down he became embarrassed and said, "Sorry to fill your ears with all this quacking."

  "Eh," Morlock. "Everyone has to talk to someone. You should have heard me rant to my favorite bartender. Poor old Leen."

  "What's a bartender?"

  "Someone who serves you drinks."

  "Like water? I don't get it."

  Morlock explained about intoxicants in liquid form, and bars and bartenders.

  "So it's like smoking bloom?" Rokhlenu asked.

  "So I gather."

  "And you like this ... this ... stuff?"

  "I gave it up. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

  "Well, why not? There's no one here but you, me, and the anvil."

  "There is also Hlupnafenglu. But I think our secrets are safe with him."

  Turning around in his chair, Rokhlenu looked back into the cave and saw the big red werewolf deeper in the cave, crouching down by a brightly lit sort of wickerwork sphere. He was gazing into it, entranced, firelight gleaming in his red eyes. There was a murmur that sounded like speech, but Rokhlenu wasn't sure whether it was coming from Hlupnafenglu or the flames or something else.

  Rokhlenu turned around again and whistled meditatively. "He seems crazier than you were."

  "Same cause I think," Morlock said, tapping the side of his head. "He has a scar on his temple like mine. I wonder what he was, that they felt the need to do this to him."

  Rokhlenu thought about this for a moment. It smelled to him that Morlock was also referring, by extension, to what the Sardhluun had done to him. He also seemed to be implying that what had been done had not wholly been undone.

  "How are you feeling?" he asked, and tapped the side of his own head to indicate what he was asking about.

  "My Sight is better," Morlock said, "though by no means wholly returned. However ... I seem to be dropping things with my left hand."

  Years ago, when Rokhlenu was learning how to sing, one of the cantors of the Aruukaiaduun Pack had said in his hearing, "I am beginning to go deaf." A month later he was dead, and some said he had eaten wolfbane. Morlock's tone sounded a little like that long-dead cantor's; Rokhlenu knew it was no passing observation.

  " Liudhleeo," Rokhlenu hissed. "That toe-fingered cow-leech. Did she butcher you? I'll-"

  "No, I don't think so," Morlock said. "Whatever she did saved my life. I suspect the damage was done by then."

  "Maybe it will get better. Give it time."

  "Eh."

  "Open your maw and tell me what that means."

  Morlock shrugged, then said hesitantly, "Actually, it seems to be getting worse. So if we are going to do something about this other prison-"

  "The Khuwuleion."

  11 -the Khuwuleion, perhaps we had better do it soon."

  They turned, with some mutual relief, away from personal matters to tactics of approaching the Khuwuleion. Morlock was in the middle of a rather bizarre proposal that was making Rokhlenu question his sanity again when a damp and somewhat irritated crow fluttered down and landed on the ground by Morlock's feet.

  The crow croaked that he had something for Morlock, if Morlock could make it worth his while.

  Morlock croaked that he had a little bread, if the crow was interested.

  The crow was always interested in new comestibles, but was sure this bread stuff would be a poor trade for ripe juicy information like what the crow had to offer.

  Morlock, ignoring this, g
ot up from the chair and went into the cave and rummaged around. "Sorry about this," he said to Rokhlenu. "Crows have a sense of politeness, but it doesn't seem to apply to non-crows. And we might want to know what he knows."

  Morlock came back with half a loaf of brown bread and offered some crumbs to the crow. He ate some, complained about the color, flavor, lack of texture, and unfamiliarity of the foodstuff, then asked for more.

  Morlock waved the loaf in the air and waited.

  The crow said that there were soldiers from the Sardhluun Pack attacking the other side of the outlier settlement. He thought it was funny because-

  Morlock and Rokhlenu leapt to their feet. Morlock dropped the loaf on the ground next to the startled crow.

  "No weapon," Rokhlenu said ruefully. It hadn't seemed necessary for a walk across town.

  "I can get you a stabbing spear or two," Morlock said. "We should drag Hlupnafenglu away from the flames, also."

  "He is pretty good in a fight. Enjoys killing Sardhluun werewolves, anyway."

  "Eh. Who doesn't?"

  They raised the alarm as they went, sending any outlier who responded to defend the fenceless east side of their settlement. They themselves ran on in long loping strides to the western fence.

  Hlupnafenglu had been grumpy about leaving his beloved flames, but once he realized that fighting would be involved he was happy enough. Morlock gave him the heavy glass hammer from the anvil, and he was delighted with its weight and, apparently, its translucency: he kept peering at the sky through the heavy glass and hooting inarticulately.

  The red werewolf kept with them almost all the way across town, but was finally decoyed away at the last moment by, of all things, the lair-tower of First Wolf. He kept staring at it and mouthing things that might or might not have been words. He wouldn't leave it, so they had to leave him.

  Approaching the western verge of the settlement, Rokhlenu felt a sense of foreboding. The palisade surrounding the outlier settlement was not really a fortification. It was mostly useful for preventing flightless birds from walking straight from the marsh into town. The fence was thin; there were many gaps. He could hear arrows striking the far side of the wall as they shouldered their way through a milling crowd to where the First Wolf was standing. A circle of her gold-toothed bodyguards surrounded her, and by each honor guard was one of Rokhlenu's irredeemables, his neck bristling with honor-teeth.

  She looked rather dashing, Rokhlenu thought, in a brazen helmet and short coat of coppery rings. But she didn't look happy, and Rokhlenu thought he could guess why.

  Morlock stepped up to the west wall and reached out with his left hand to test the strength of the barrier. The soft wood came apart between his fingers like overripe cheese.

  "Hurl krakna," Morlock whispered and, whatever that meant, Rokhlenu was pretty sure he agreed with it. The settlement had never really been defended by the fence, Rokhlenu reflected. It had been defended from its potential enemies by the same thing that defended a poor man from robbers: indifference. They had changed all that last night, and now they were paying for it.

  "-I don't understand it," Wuinlendhono was saying, "and maybe these two heroes can explain it."

  "I beg forgiveness, High Huntress," Rokhlenu said, somewhat out of breath. "Explain what?"

  "Why they"-she jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the Sardhluun attackers-"are not firing higher, into the town. Most of their arrows are sticking into our fence. It's a feeble protection as Nyor-as Nor-as Khretvarrgliu is discovering there, but they can't hope to batter through with arrows."

  "It is odd," Rokhlenu agreed.

  "Oh. Thanks for that," First Wolf replied, white-lipped, furious.

  "It may be a distraction from another more serious attack," Rokhlenu continued. "The east side of town is unfenced, but we left some citizens there to stand guard. Maybe some of my men should go put a spine in them."

  "A good thought," Wuinlendhono said, and looked her apology at him. He nodded patiently in acceptance, and started calling off irredeemables to go west.

  "You can have your red ape-dog go back with them," Wuinlendhono added. "Look at the damage he's doing to the boardwalk by my lair!"

  They looked at Hlupnafenglu, who was pulling up a board and muttering to himself.

  Morlock said tensely, "How deep does the fence go? Is it anchored in the mud?"

  Wuinlendhono looked annoyed at being addressed in this cavalier way, then thoughtful. "It is anchored there, but the palings don't go far below the surface."

  Morlock measured the height of First Wolf's lair-tower with his eyes, and then the distance to the western fence.

  "They are coming at us from below," he said, and ran past Rokhlenu and the astonished First Wolf.

  It took Rokhlenu only a moment to reconstruct Morlock's thought. Archers had attacked the fence to distract the defenders, while werewolf divers had crept below the surface of the boardwalks to the base of First Wolf's tower. If they broke its anchors and it fell, it would breach the western fence....

  And the demented Hlupnafenglu had been the only one to notice it! Rokhlenu wondered briefly who was really crazy around there.

  "Go!" Rokhlenu shouted at the werewolves he sorted out to defend the east. An attack could still come there; the Sardhluun had enough armed bands for it. "The rest of you, with me."

  "My guards, stay here," the First Wolf clarified. "Lucky ghosts guide you, Rokhlenu," she added, but he was already following Morlock away with a riot of irredeemables at his heels.

  By now the red werewolf had pulled apart a fair stretch of the boards by the tower's base and was striking at the murky water thus exposed with his glittering hammer. Morlock drew his odd crystalline sword, the blade woven of black and white strands, and crouched down by the ragged hole in the wood and started stabbing deliberately ... not quite at the water, Rokhlenu saw, but at the gap between the water and the wood. He had to dodge and weave to avoid getting clipped by Hlupnafenglu's hammer. As Rokhlenu came up, he saw that they were both aiming at: shapes in the murky water, human and lupine, some deeper in the water and others splashing out of reach on the surface. Ominous sounds came from the water: a chunking or chopping, like wood being cut.

  Rokhlenu looked around desperately for another opening in the boards, found none, and then saw Morlock was doing the same.

  "There's no other way, is there?" he said.

  Morlock swore, "God Sustainer." The blasphemy shocked ghost-fearing Rokhlenu a bit, but he remembered how much Morlock hated the water.

  Morlock shouted at Hlupnafenglu, "Wait!" He held out his hand. "Wait!"

  Hlupnafenglu paused in his water-hammering, obviously confused.

  Morlock took a deep breath and jumped into the water, feet first, and vanished from sight.

  Hlupnafenglu gasped. A huge smile slowly broke out on his face as the idea pushed through whatever barrier blocked his thinking. People can jump in water! Brilliant! He raised the hammer over his head and jumped in after Morlock.

  Rokhlenu gestured with the business end of his spear at the four irredeemables who seemed least terrified by the opening in the boards. "All right. You-you-you-and you: follow me in. Watch out you don't kill each other with your weapons." Rokhlenu turned to Olleiulu, who was standing nearby, his one eye as round as any moon. "Send someone into the lair-tower to clear the people out. Then you take the rest of these guys and go stand by Wuinlendhono. If she doesn't live through this, don't let me find you afterward."

  He dropped into the dark water, stabbing spear in hand.

  The water was dark; he expected that. Werewolves aren't generally afraid of the dark. But he did somehow expect his eyes to grow used to the darkness, and when they didn't-when he realized much of it came from the mud in the water enclosing him like a fist-he did feel a little panic rise within him.

  He dimly saw a support timber for the boardwalk near at hand, and he grabbed it, swinging out of the path his followers would have to take ... if they followed him.

&
nbsp; They did: he heard a sound like distant thunder and sheaths of white bubbles spearing past him toward the darkness below.

  Impinging on one of the sheaths he saw a kind of shadow. He didn't think it was Morlock or Hlupnafenglu, or any of his fighters. It was holding some thing in its hand-not like a sword or a dagger-more like a chisel. It was one of them, one of the Sardhluun werewolves. He stabbed at it with his spear: the shadow writhed and became even less distinct in a dark cloud of blood.

  It wasn't a death-stroke; the shadow fled. Rokhlenu followed grimly. He could only hope the others were doing something like this, and that there were more of them than of the Sardhluun attackers; there was no chance for communication in the dark water.

  His quarry seemed to have dropped what he was carrying and was swimming upward. Rokhlenu stuck his spear (blunt end first) through his belt and climbed up the support timber. It slowed him down, but he didn't want to throw away his weapon at the very beginning of this battle.

  He broke the surface, gasping for air, and cast his gaze about. The light was dim indeed under the boards of the settlement, but in comparison to the darkness of the muddy water it was like the noonday sun.

  He heard splashing and looked about to see a bedraggled semiwolf paddling away from him. His quarry. There were others in the water beyond, all heading in the same direction. Rokhlenu didn't see Morlock or Hlupnafenglu or any of his people.

  He set off in pursuit. He did not so much swim as launch himself from support column to support column. He soon caught up with the werewolf nearest him, the one he had wounded. The wounded werewolf heard his approach and turned at last to fight, but Rokhlenu drew his spear and stabbed it, under the water, into his enemy's belly, twisting the blade after it struck home. Soon the half-wolf stopped struggling and the life left his bestial eyes. Rokhlenu left him drifting half submerged in the filthy water stained with his own blood ... and some of Rokhlenu's, as his enemy's claws had riven his flesh in a few places.

  The other Sardhluun attackers were farther off by then, but Rokhlenu continued to chase them. Like a nightmare where his feet were caught in a watery trap, time ceased to have any meaning. He made no progress in closing the gap with the others. Only gradually did he notice the light growing brighter: they were approached the end of the settlement's boards.