The Blood of Ten Chiefs

by Robert Asprin

  The trail continued in almost a straight line through the park to the river, where they could see the trampled brush

  where the pig had gone. They followed, into the denser forest.

  It was dawn by the time they came to the rapids high in the back of the valley. The sun, though still hidden by the forest across the river, was just coming up. The trail led to the rocks of the rapids, and was lost. Two-Wolves looked around. "Here's where Mask turned back," he said.

  They were very tired flow and had to rest a bit while they decided what to do next. They slaked their thirst, and Shadowflash and Grazer went to catch a few fish for breakfast. They came back with several large salmon.

  When they had eaten and caught their breath they searched along the river, then forded the rapids where it was easiest and cast up and down the other side. At last they found wolf-prints in the mud, and followed the trail away from the river, upslope into the forest, and eventually to the uplands.

  They pushed on as hard as they could until, by midmorning, they came to the semiopen glade. Here they could finally see the pig tracks clearly, of the wounded animal and of many others. The smell of pig was strong.

  "Look," Fernhare said, pointing to the tracks. "The pig our deer hunters were after was just a juvenile."

  "Are you sure?" Two-Wolves asked.

  "See for yourself," she said. She pointed out other, much larger hoofprints. "Mountain-swine. I've seen their tracks before, way to the south."

  They scouted cautiously. There could be other swine nearby. The pig smell was everywhere, bushes had been rooted up and small saplings knocked down.

  "At least twenty animals," Suretrail said, "maybe more."

  "Look at the size of those tracks," Grazer said. "Bigger than a deer, and heavier than a bear."

  They didn't see any swine at the moment, but the ground was uneven, there were hollows, rocks, bushes, and the occasional tree where they could be concealed. The rescue

  party moved deeper into the glade. Some of the pig marks had been made recently. One pile of droppings was still warm. The wolves were quiet, slinking along. They didn't like this place at all.

  Then they heard sounds to one side, distant snorting and grunting. They approached cautiously, well spread out and ready to run. And there they were, dozens of swine, of all sizes, the biggest truly huge, loosely gathered and moving around a place where three tall oaks stood, still some way off.

  Two-Wolves looked up at the trees. Maybe…**Crystal-moss!** he sent.

  **Father!** came the answer they all could hear.

  Then the four young hunters yelled, and the swine thrashed around in the rocky-bottomed draw.

  "They're up in the trees," Shadowflash said with obvious relief.

  **Are you all right?** Suretrail sent.

  The four young elves all answered at once, a jumble of thoughts and images. They were fine, but they were tired, cramped, and hungry. The pigs had stayed under their trees since the middle of the afternoon the day before yesterday, even during the night. Their prey had died last night, and they had hoped that, with its death, the other swine would leave, but they hadn't. The nearest other trees were too far away to jump to, and the forest was too far away to run to even if they could have gotten past the herd below them.

  Even worse, Deerstorm's wolf had been killed shortly after they had gotten into the trees. Fog and Dancer had escaped, but Scarface had gotten cornered, tossed, gored, trampled, and later half eaten. Deerstorm was more distraught about that than her own predicament.

  **Hang on,** Grazer sent.**We'll get you down.**

  The elders tried to get closer, but the juvenile pigs and most of the piglets were out at the edge of the herd and could

  easily alert the adults. As they tried to decide what to do next, Dancer and Fog came slinking up from the forest. The other wolves whimpered softly, the elders hushed them up.

  The forest, on the side of the draw from which the wolves had come, was not too far away, and the elders circled around to it.

  "Let's see if we can make them chase us," Grazer suggested to Shadowflash. Shadowflash just grinned.

  They left the others and walked toward the herd of swine. Then they started yelling and shouting and waving their spears. The piglets set up a commotion, some of the juveniles started to chase them, and they ran back to the forest. But most of the swine stayed at the draw, and those in chase gave up quickly.

  The rest of the swine were now more upset than ever. Suretrail and Two-Wolves went around to the side and again taunted them by throwing stones at them. They, too, were chased back, by a sow and three juveniles.

  But the other swine just got more upset. The elders could see the branches of the three oak trees shaking as the boars and sows shouldered against the trunks, as if they would knock the trees down.

  "They're digging around the roots," Greentwig called to them.

  "We've got to do something," Fernhare said.

  Suretrail thought about it, then went toward one of the nearest juveniles and threw a javelin, which struck the pig square in the side. The pig screamed, the nearer adults turned and lunged, Suretrail ran.

  Several swine gathered around the wounded pig, but Suretrail's shot had been too good. Even as other adults came to the rescue, the pig died. The swine jostled it, rolled it over, but didn't pay any attention to the elves. Instead they snorted and went back to the three trees.

  "It was a good idea," Fernhare said.

  "But not quite good enough," Shadowflash said. "Make some cord, as much as you can."

  He took one of Suretrail's javelins, took off the bone head, whittled the end of the shaft to a point, then refastened the head backward, as a long barb. The others cut strips from their clothes and plaited a long and thin but strong cord which he tied to the butt of the javelin.

  "I guess throwing it is my job," Grazer said. He was the strongest of the elves. He coiled the cord loosely over one arm and then went boldly out to pick a target.

  The other elves followed at a short distance, to give him help if he needed it. Grazer moved carefully toward the herd of swine and picked out the piglet that was nearest the forest. Holding the end of the cord tightly with one hand, he took careful aim and launched the javelin in a high arc. It struck the piglet through the thick of the thigh, at nearly the full stretch of the cord.

  He didn't pause but turned and ran back as hard as he could. The barb on the javelin held and the weight of the now screaming piglet nearly jerked the cord from his hand. The boars and sows bellowed in rage at the piglet's screams as he dragged it along behind him, and before he was halfway back to the trees the whole herd came running after him.

  Two-Wolves and Shadowflash were waiting by a tree, and as Grazer came up they gave him a boost into the branches. As soon as he had a good hold he pulled in the cord and dragged the screaming piglet up after him. He was barely in time. A boar crashed hard into the trunk of his none-too-large tree, and it was all he could do to hold the tree and the piglet at the same time.

  The swine trampled the undergrowth, snorting and grunting and shouldering the trees. Fernhare, Suretrail, and Shadowflash fanned out through the branches, making as much noise as they could to distract them. Though most of the swine trampled around under Grazer, others dashed back

  and forth following the three elders who squealed in imitation of the hurt piglet as they moved slowly away. It was enough to keep the swine from knocking down Grazer's none-too-large tree. Meanwhile he was holding the piglet, wishing he could put it out of its misery.

  But Two-Wolves moved quietly off through the branches, away from the swine, and went back to the ground. He called all the wolves and hurried with them to where the youths were even now coming down from their refuge.

  The four young elves, tired and cramped, mounted the borrowed wolves and raced with him back to the forest. Some of the swine came to investigate and started in pursuit, but the elves went up into the trees as soon as they could and the wolves scattered.r />
  As soon as they were all safe, Grazer slit the piglet's throat. Now the other elders became quiet and slowly, one by one, moved off through the high branches. Grazer kept the piglet as he left the place. No sense letting good meat go to waste.

  When they were a safe distance away they came down to the forest floor. The wolves rejoined them as they went back toward the river. When they could no longer hear the swine they paused to rest.

  Shadowflash held Brightmist as they sank down to the ground. The other three young elves all sat, very subdued. The elders, too, were quiet. Even the wolves seemed relieved. Suretrail butchered the piglet, and let the kids eat it all.

  "I thought you were going after black-neck," he said.

  "We could have had one, too," Greentwig answered.

  "At least that was something you could have handled," Suretrail told him.

  "Would we have done any better," Fernhare asked, "if we had hunted that pig?"

  "I guess not," Suretrail said reluctantly.

  "Under the circumstances," Fangslayer said, "I think our

  deer hunters are probably wise enough now to take care of themselves."

  "Sure," Grazer said, "they didn't bring back a black-neck, but anybody can get in trouble."

  "It's not the kind of trouble we're likely to have in the future," Brightmist said from Shadowflash's arms. "And besides, it was a good hunt before we got trapped."

  "I guess it was at that," Suretrail said. "You did all the right things up until then."

  "And then, too," Crystalmoss said. "We could have tried to run away."

  Then Suretrail reached out and hugged her. "I'm so glad you're safe," he said.

  Fernhare looked fondly at Greentwig, who still felt unappreciated. "Nobody can argue about your hunting alone now," she said. "You four seem to make a good team."

  "And as long as we have to go back through Tall-Trees anyway," Greentwig said, "let's get us a black-neck."

  "That's a good idea," Suretrail said.

  It was lopsided; one edge was so much higher than the other that the whole thing looked like it would slide right off the boulder Brownberry had set it on. Still, the little pottery bowl, with its wolf-print decorations, had survived an eight-of-day's bath in the brook without collapsing back to the mud from which it had been made.

  "I think you're on to something," Longreach assured the scowling craftswoman.

  "It doesn't look like the one in my mind."

  She snatched it up and made to throw it far across the brook when the storyteller's fingers closed over hers.

  "No need to be angry with it. See it for itself. As a bowl- well, perhaps it has a flaw or two; but as a tallow-lamp-see, the high edge will protect the light from the wind…"

  "It was supposed to be a bowl," Brownberry insisted, though she relaxed her grip and let her friend take the pottery into his own care. "They never come out the way my mind's eye sees them."

  Longreach set the bowl, now a lamp, in the grass beside him. "At first they didn't come out at all. You'll get the knack of it yet. What's a few more tries?"

  The chestnut-haired Wolfrider sat down with a sigh. "They laugh at me," she said without meeting his eyes. "Briar, Foxfur-even Skywise-they don't even try to hide it. Pike even asked if I was growing another finger."

  There was no more potent insult in the Wolfrider's tongue than a five-fingered elf, yet the storyteller wasn't entirely surprised. Brownberry had pursued her notion of working with clay for many turns of the seasons now. The need to shape the red muds ate at her in ways she herself did not seem to understand. Perhaps it was some dormant aspect of her elfin heritage-a different shade of the magic that flowed through Rain and Goodtree-perhaps not. Either way, the need to shape something was not a need which erupted frequently in the Wolfriders.

  His own thoughts found their ending, but Brownberry was still slump-shouldered. "What did you tell him?"

  "I didn't tell him; I hit him one with my spear."

  "That certainly got your point across-but there have been other ways, you know-"

  Tanner's Dream

  by Nancy Springer

  Toad turds!" Tanner exclaimed softly to himself. He had lived for over seven hundred years and been the chieftain of his tribe, the Wolfriders, for some four hundred of those, but the seasons had been quiet, spent mostly in wolf-time, the Always Now. Seldom had Tanner produced such an outburst or felt the need to. At this point, however, mere toad crap seemed inadequately disgusting. "Ripe, rotten toad turds!" he expanded in his soft, chirring, birdlike elfin tongue, staring downward through dense leaves. The man, the human, was standing directly under the oak tree, his crude fur skirt upraised, urinating.

  **Told you,** came an amused sending from Tanner's side. On the broad oak branch beside him knelt Brook, his hunt leader. Though the human, and humans in general, took elfin speech for birdsong, Brook had a hunter's instinct for silence and preferred to send.**Every day, just like a dog wolf marking. It's a wonder he doesn't get down and sniff around.**

  **Timmorn's blood, the flood of it!** Tanner exclaimed, sending also, lest in his dismay he should speak too loudly.**And the smell!**

  **Potent,** Brook wryly agreed.

  The human finished, shook the final drops off his member, let the stiff, smoke-cured leather of his skirt fall, and lumbered away toward a stand of hemlocks, leaving a yellow puddle slowly soaking into the loam at the roots of the oak. The man disappeared into dense forest. Stretched out full length along his supporting bough, Tanner let his head fall to the rough bark.

  "My leathers," he groaned aloud. For under the tree, at the very spot the human had chosen to flood, Tanner had hidden a pit full of the finest hides Brook could bring him, layered with an exacting, laboriously gathered mixture of barks, acorn cups, leaves and berries, all bestowed with utmost care to undergo the silent, unseen process by which crude, flinty-hard, sun-dried hides would become-Tanner hoped-fine, supple leathers for his tribespeople to wear.

  Brook reached over and gave his chief a light slap on the shoulder.**Lift-Leg we call him, even though he doesn't,** Brook teased, and then he went off, padding and leaping noiselessly through the treetops, bound for the hollow where he would drowse away the rest of the day while the human hunters blundered about below.

  Tanner remained where he was, to brood.

  "Humans," he muttered. "A stinking, muck-eating human."

  This was rather strong language for him. Tanner was not

  much in the habit of brooding or hating, but the matter of the urinating human had upset him deeply-the more so because no one in his tribe but him would care about it as he did.

  He was a throwback, though he could not himself have explained it in that way. A throwback, not to the wild half-wolf urgings of Timmorn, but even beyond, to the gentle, beauty-loving nature of the high ones. Their blood stirring in him had taken a bent form, skewed his thoughts away from the thoughts of the other Wolfriders. He made a clumsy hunter, with no passion for the kill. He seldom rode on his wolf-friend, and there was no wanderlust in him. He had taken no lifemate, or lovemate either, in all his many sea-, sons. But he had a dream, an artist's vision, of what leather could be.

  Or rather, the dream had hold of him, as relentless as disease or infestation. Fine, supple, many-colored leathers, if he could just find the right mix of tanbarks and oddments… And now the human hunter had pissed on his pit. A year's labor, buried there, and another full four turnings of the seasons for it to steep, and Lift-Leg had taken it into his head to use that very place in all the vast Everwood as his customary spot to pee.

  "Humans," Tanner moaned aloud again. Timmorn would have driven the man away. Two-Spear would have killed the human before looking at him twice. But Tanner had stayed in hiding.

  Through the long summer afternoon he lay on the oak bough, his gray eyes thoughtful, restlessly stroking the hair of his short brown beard, until the fireflies came out at dusk. Then, as lithely as Brook (though the hunter was less than half hi
s age) the Wolfrider chief made his way through the twilight treetops to the hurst, where his people were gathering for the nightly howl.

  It was a hilltop, a bluff rather, overlooking the clear river that flowed northward into Muchcold Water. At its crest

  stood a grove of beeches, their bark nearly as smooth and pale as a Wolfrider's skin, gray of sheen, like Tanner's wolf-friend, Stagrunner. Spreading beech branches kept the forest floor beneath them nearly free of undergrowth. Around and between the gray gleaming trunks cubs were playing tag, they and some of their elders as well. As Tanner swung down to the ground he was met by smiles and a thump-a laughing, heedless Wolfrider, running into him, then darting past without a word, her long hair looking pale as moonlight in the night, tossing behind her. One of the cubs, Tanner recalled. A skinny youngster, half grown. Stormlight.

  "Tanner!" It was Joygleam, one of the young hunters, smiling merrily along with Brightlance and Brook and others, her comrades. "I hear that luck is against you yet again!"

  Without anger Tanner gave her his quiet half-smile. It was true that he had tried tanning leather again and again, seasons stretching back long before she was born, and there were always setbacks, and the stench sometimes was enough to drive a wild boar out of the woods-though never the lumpish humans-and never had he been wholly satisfied. But it did not matter. There was always the chance to try again. It was the reason why the tribe had stayed so long in one place, his tanning, his pits always being filled or waiting to be opened.

  "Are you not glad you need not always wear stinking, rotting hides such as the humans do, Joygleam?" he asked her.

  "Puckernuts!" cut in one of the elders before Joygleam could answer. It was old Fangslayer, one of the few Wolfriders who was older than the chieftain. Fangslayer had been grown when Tanner was yet a cub, and Fangslayer did not hesitate to speak his mind. "It's a waste, say I. Waste of time better spent, waste of shaper's labors setting the trees to rights after you're done taking the bark from them, Tanner, and now a waste of good skins, sitting in a hole in the ground for the humans to pass water on!"