The Wolf Age

by James Enge

  But tonight there was no question: the citizens were almost uniformly rejecting the Alliance. To be brutal, criminal, and reckless was one thing. To fail was another, and Wuruyaaria's citizens had no mercy on it. The only citizens standing with the Alliance were the candidates' closest relatives, ones who could not vote with the opposition (or stay away) without shaming their blood.

  The sun set.

  All citizens turned eastward. The moonlit tide of transformations swept over them, and they cried out in voices human and lupine, bidding Chariot farewell and summer welcome.

  When the major moon had set, when the citizens had recovered from their transformations, Aaluindhonu gave Rokhlenu a wolvish grin and trotted over to the dais, where the retiring singers of the Innermost Pack were leaping down from the dais.

  He congratulated the retiring First Singer, an old acquaintance of his from the Neyuwuleiuun named Skuiulaalu.

  Skuiulaalu thanked him loudly, then more privately wished him good luck: he would not have chosen to take the high couch at this strange and dreadful time. Citizens said the world was ending, and Skuiulaalu half believed them.

  Aaluindhonu laughed, skipped past the old singers, and leapt up to the dais. He prepared to mount the high couch of the First Singer.

  There was a storm of protests from the crowd. It broke forth without warning, and it was intense, furious. It raged on both sides of the road. Neither the Alliance nor the Union voters would accept Aaluindhonu as First Singer. The Alliance disliked him, and neither side respected him.

  Instead, the voters chanted or howled the name of Rokhlenu.

  This was not as the gnyrrands had arranged it between themselves and their fellow candidates. But the electorate was a fickle master, not under anyone's control. Strictly speaking, they had no say in the matter, but it was a foolish politician or a brave one who defied the unanimous wish of his constituents.

  Rokhlenu met Aaluindhonu's angry eye and tilted his head sideways: an inquiry. Aaluindhonu hesitated, then lowered his gaze: a submission.

  Rokhlenu leapt forward, bounded up to the dais, jumped atop the high couch, and stood there, looking out at the crowd.

  The electors howled their approval. Even the Alliance voters seemed caught up in the moment. It was a triumph to make songs of, a tale that would be told for a thousand years. Half a year ago, Rokhlenu had been a prisoner in the Vargulleion. Tonight he was the First Singer of Wuruyaaria.

  Least moved, of everyone there, was probably Rokhlenu himself. It would have meant more if his father and brothers had been there. Ghost, it would have meant more if Morlock had been there. His beloved was there, proudly waving a green-and-gold banner, and that meant a great deal. It meant more than the rest of the crowd rolled together in a carpet. Meeting her, mating her: that was his true triumph in this half year, the triumph of his life. That was what he would make songs of, when he had time.

  When the crowd's shouting began to subside, Rokhlenu summoned the candidates they had agreed on to the Innermost Pack: two from the Goweiteiuun cantors and his own reeve, Yaarirruuiu. The Goweiteiuun were to have a majority of singers on the Innermost Pack, in return for their welcoming the outliers into the treaty. That seemed to be a settled question when the voters saluted him as First Singer, but he was determined to keep his deal with Aaluindhonu.

  Rokhlenu's first song as First Singer was brief. He promised two things, though. First, there would be a new source of food in the outliers' colony on the Bitter Water; they could not control the weather, but they would not sit idle while it killed them. That was the behavior of a dumb beast, not a werewolf. Second, there would be justice for every citizen. He repeated that: justice for every citizen, no matter what his bite.

  "Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion?" shouted someone-a semiwolf still wearing the day shape. Others took up the cry, in Moonspeech and Sunspeech.

  Rokhlenu silenced them with a commanding howl. The question, he sang, had been asked, and asked again. It would never be forgotten. Soon it would be answered. There would be justice for every citizen.

  Then he dismissed them to their celebrations. The first night of summer had come; the Choosing had ended.

  Wuinlendhono and her mate spent the night going to other citizens' celebrations. They finally got back to her lair-tower just before dawn.

  While they were grooming each other before lying down, she met his eye and whispered a question: Was he unhappy? They had succeeded, against very long odds. He was due a little triumph. Was anything wrong?

  Rokhlenu had been singing the role of a magnanimous victor all night, and it was a relief to tell what he really felt. But he sang, in the end, he was glad: no one could take the outliers away from her now, not after what she had achieved-

  -what they had achieved, she snapped.

  -what she had achieved. And they would be together now, forever. That was the greatest victory of all.

  She told him to prove it, and their minds turned to other matters.

  The next morning he had not slept much, but his mind was clear as ice (which he wondered if he would ever see again: it was another murky glaring day). He and Yaarirruuiu woke early so that they could climb the long stone stairs up to Iuiunioklendon, where the first meeting of the Innermost Pack traditionally took place. Aaluindhonu had commandeered the audience hall of the Goweiteiuun's Inner Pack for the occasion.

  The first issue they tackled was the admission of the outliers under the name of the Ekhaiasuteiuun ("the border-runners"), as chosen by a majority of the outlier citizens. A copy of the treaty was sent down to the outlier settlement for the First Wolf to sign.

  As the other singers began to rise from their couches, Rokhlenu said, "And now for the main business. I want the Aruukaiaduun gnyrrand and the Werowance of the Sardhluun arrested."

  This quelled anyone's interest in leaving. Three of the singers were standing with their mouths open, but no song or speech came from them.

  Aaluindhonu smiled wisely, as if he had been expecting something like this from the hotheaded young First Singer and said, "Understandable, but quite impossible."

  "Essential," Rokhlenu disagreed.

  "What charges will you prefer?"

  There was a smiling ambiguity in Aaluindhonu's question that Rokhlenu disliked intensely. He said bluntly, "The Werowance, as the representative of the Sardhluun Pack, is guilty of theft from the city. They took money every month for the feeding and housing of prisoners they had sold as slaves or butchered for meat. That's a crime against the city, against every citizen."

  "Subject to a certain interpretation-"

  "That is nonsense, my friend, and you know it. The disbursements were marked in the city accounts `For the maintenance of prisoners.' The dead do not require maintenance."

  "Yurr. I see what you mean. You have actually read the city accounts?"

  "Skuiulaalu sent them to my residence last night, of course. I read the relevant parts as I walked up here this morning. Yaarirruuiu has them, at least a portion of them."

  "You have hit the ground running, I see. It bites me to admit this, but I think our fellow citizens made the right choice. But what is it you have against the gnyrrand of the Aruukaiaduun? What is his name again?"

  It turned out no one there could remember his name. But Yaarirruuiu had some notes from the campaign with him, tucked into the city account books (he had held them while Rokhlenu read them), and after consulting them he could tell his fellow singers that the gnyrrand of the Aruukaiaduun was named Norianduiu.

  "All right," Aaluindhonu continued smilingly, "what have you got against poor Norianduiu?"

  "Murder. The Aruukaiaduun under his leadership secretly murdered my family. Their display of the severed heads as campaign banners at that damned rally was an open admission. My youngest brother had been dead less than an hour. You saw the head, Aaluindhonu: what do you think?"

  The old politician's smile was finally gone. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, you've got something there. But won't
it look like you're using your position for private vengeance?"

  "No. Because if I were, I'd go after Rywudhaariu. Everyone knows that he pulls the strings in the Aruukaiaduun Pack. But Norianduiu was legally responsible for the campaign, so he will be charged. I'm putting this to a vote. I want unanimous support. If I don't get it, I'm going to resign my office and kill those rat-bastards with my own teeth and claws. Because if the secret murder of citizens is not a crime, if theft from the city is not a crime, if treating female citizens like meat for export is not a crime, then nothing is a crime because there is no law. And if there is no law, there is no city. Say your say; do it now."

  They all agreed to the arrests. But Aaluindhonu added hesitantly (no longer smiling, thank ghost), "But, Rokhlenu, a suggestion."

  "Yes?"

  "You should not direct the arrests or prosecution yourself. Let me do it. I can get justice without appearing vindictive. It will be better all around that way."

  Rokhlenu had never found himself able to trust Aaluindhonu; they had been thrown together by circumstance rather than choice. But he did trust Yaarirruuiu, and he saw his former reeve approved the plan, so he nodded. "Good. I'll leave it to you, then."

  "There's something else we could do to diminish the appearance of a grudge," one of the other Goweiteiuun singers said-a citizen named Naaleiyaleiu. He was unremarkable, except for his overuse of the pungently piney pack-scent of the Goweiteiuun. "The Neyuwuleiuun are fending off some attack on their northern colony-the place that served as a hunting ground and a station for their airships. If you take some fighters and defend the Neyuwuleiuun, it will show this is not about the election."

  Yaarirruuiu was nodding at this, but asked, "What kind of attack? We don't want to lose our First Singer on his first day on the job."

  They all smiled at that. Some laughed.

  "Werebears, I'll bet," the other Goweiteiuun singer said. (Dhuskudheiu was his name.) "There have been lots of them roaming around the fringes of the city."

  The smiles faded. Werebears were nothing to laugh about.

  "I'll go and reconnoiter," Rokhlenu said thoughtfully. "If it looks too risky, we'll get out and come back with a stronger force."

  They all agreed, and on that note the Innermost Pack ended its first meeting. Rokhlenu and Yaarirruuiu left, hauling the city account books, deep in conversation. llhuskudheiu departed on some mission of his ownpossibly lunch. Aaluindhonu started to go, paused by Naaleiyaleiu's couch a moment as if he would speak, twitched his nose, then hurried on.

  Naaleiyaleiu was left alone in the chamber, chittering to himself. Eventually, his jaw swung open like a gate, exposing the long-nosed pink wererat within. Naaleiyaleiu's hand reached into a pocket and grabbed a jar of scented oil. Naaleiyaleiu's hand doused the were-rat in Naaleiyaleiu's head generously with the scent, and then did the same for the were-rats controlling the other parts of the body.

  Naaleiyaleiu had a more difficult job than most of the meat-puppets scattered through the city. But it was nearly over, thank Ulugarriu: so, at least, Naaleiyaleiu's crew chittered hopefully to each other.

  Rokhlenu left later that afternoon. He picked a crew of nine irredeemables to go with him, and Yaarirruuiu was not among them, much to the latter's annoyance.

  "Look," Rokhlenu said, when he had heard his fellow singer's fifteenth reason why he should come along. "I need you around town to keep an eye or two on that slippery Aaluindhonu." And that convinced him.

  But he did take Lekkativengu and eight other survivors from the fifth and fourth floors of the Vargulleion. And, on reflection, he stopped by Morlock's cave before he left and had Morlock's remaining apprentice, a reedy little citizen with a big nose, get him two of those nightmarish glass spears with a silver core in the head.

  He disliked even the feeling of being around them, and when he rejoined his fighters he knew that they felt the same way; their faces fell and they started to twitch. So he explained to them about the spears. His thinking was: werebears don't like wounds from silver any better than werewolves do. His fighters agreed, but they still weren't enthusiastic.

  To placate his fighters, Rokhlenu stopped by Ruiulanhro's poison shop and picked up some spearheads imbued with wolfbane. That cheered them up a little: citizens didn't get to use poison weapons very often, but in their former lives as criminals many irredeemables had been fond of them.

  It was well after dark before they got anywhere near the Neyuwuleiuun's northern colony, and that was intentional on Rokhlenu's part. He wanted half his crew to wear the night shape, the better to sense danger, half of them to retain the day shape, so that they could use weapons. But as it turned out, only Rokhlenu himself and ape-fingered Runhuiulanhu had practiced the discipline of resisting the call of the night shape. Rokhlenu wasn't happy about it, but it was his own fault: he had picked the crew. He and Runhuiulanhu divided the weapons between them, abandoning what they could not carry.

  They ran onward, past the western shoulder of Mount Dhaarnaiarnon. The great moon-clock in its face seemed almost to be watching them, but Rokhlenu dismissed the idea impatiently as it occurred to him.

  It looked almost as if the plains north of Dhaarnaiarnon's foothills were on fire. There was a sullen brooding redness there that shifted and shiftednot quickly enough for fire, not steady enough.

  Rokhlenu almost turned back, then. There was something odd about this. The air around them was furnace hot. No one would have reported this as an attack of werebears. It was beginning to look like a trap. Certainly he wanted to go back and have a long conversation with his fellow member of the Innermost Pack, the scent-addicted Naaleiyaleiu.

  In the end he decided to go onward. This, whatever it was, might have something to do with the freakish weather bedeviling the city. It might be a cause of the weather; it might be an effect. But this near to the city, it certainly represented a danger. He was now the First Singer of Wuruyaaria. He led his fighters on.

  Rather than head straight onto the plain where the red shifting mystery lay, he climbed the last foothill to the north to reconnoiter. His fighters followed him up.

  From the ridge at the top of the hill he looked down on the plain and the monstrous thing it contained.

  It was like a bug, he decided-a helgrammite or many-legger, grown to incredible length. It sprawled from east to west without any obvious ending. It was coal black in color, but around the edges of its carapace it glowed with sullen red light.

  Perhaps it was more like a plant than an insect. It seemed to be sinking roots deep into the ground, all along its length that he could see. And it had more than one branch.

  "Chieftain," said Runhuiulanhu urgently, gesturing behind them. "Look!"

  Rokhlenu looked and disliked what he saw. Two branches of the thing, whatever it was, were closing around the hill they stood on.

  "Who's fastest?" he snapped. "Lekkativengu and who else?"

  "Taakhyteiu," said Runhuiulanhu, and there was general agreement.

  "Lekkativengu. Taakhyteiu. As soon as I'm done talking, you get out of here. Get back and tell Wuinlendhono and Yaarirruuiu what you saw hereand no one else. Go."

  The two werewolves fled down the southern slope toward the closing gap.

  "You three: go with Runhuiulanhu. You three: come with me. Runhuiulanhu: each of us will take one branch. If it's a beast, we can fight it. If we can't kill it, we can at least keep it from killing our messengers. If we survive, so much the better. Get me?"

  "Got you, Chief." Runhuiulanhu and his crew ran down to attack the branch curling around the hill from the west. Rokhlenu and his crew took the eastern branch.

  Two of Rokhlenu's werewolves jumped straight at the nearest point of the eastern branch with reckless courage, one at a rootlike leg, the other at a lateral plate. They didn't seem to slow its progress at all, but they hung on for a moment or two, screaming. Then Trumpeter's dim moonlight could not heal them anymore and they burst into flame and died.

  "God bite this damned thing!"
Rokhlenu swore. He could hardly bear to close with it, the heat was so fierce; the boiling glass in Morlock's cave was nothing compared to it. He seized a poison-tipped spear and darted in close, slashing at one of the rootlike legs. A blue glowing mist emerged: what the beast used for blood, he supposed. Immediately rootlike tendrils reached out toward the blue glowing scar: to heal it, he guessed. He darted back in to widen the wound. The spear shattered in his hands, scattering red shards of molten metal. He jumped back, burned and cut by the hot metal, poisoned by its venom. He could feel it spreading in his veins from the wound.

  He glanced over to see his last remaining comrade had been pierced through the eye by a metal fragment. He was as dead as if he had been stabbed with silver.

  Silver. Rokhlenu remembered the dreadful weapon he carried. He drew it from the shoulder sling and stabbed the beast with it in the side, stabbing fiercely but without hope. He hated the thing, and he hated silver, and he wanted to use one hate to hurt the other.

  And it did. The silver-cored glass spear shattered from the heat of the beast, but his slashing desperate cut opened up a long blue wound in the beast's side.

  Nor was that all. Again, rootlike tendrils reached toward the wound. But so did several legs. They sank deep into the beast's own side. It was not trying to heal itself. Somehow, it was feeding on itself-struggling to consume the blue glowing fog that lay within itself. And he had slowed its progress, as it turned on itself.

  Turned on itself. That was it. He could not defeat the thing, but it could and would defeat itself, if it could be wounded deeply enough.

  He wondered if the messengers had gotten away. He looked up to see Lekkativengu standing alone and indecisive in the red-tinged moonlightbut beyond the closing ring of the beast's branches.