The Blood of Ten Chiefs

by Robert Asprin

  All those who were strong and fit for fighting he summoned by name, sending, and when Stagrunner stopped, panting, at the crest of the hurst, he heard slight, squirrellike rustlings in the beeches as they came to him. Hesitantly they came down to the ground, exposed to view in the blunt daylight, and stood around him with wary eyes-.

  They and many whom he had not summoned, Fangslayer among them.

  "The humans have captured Stormlight," Tanner told them. "You cubs and nursing mothers, you elders, back to the trees, to hiding." His tone was curt, for only those he had summoned should have come to him; the others should have stayed in safety. "You who will follow me, bring weapons, send for your wolf-friends."

  No one moved except to shift from one foot to the other and to shift eyes, glance at neighbors. None of them summoned their mounts.

  "How did the cub come to be captured?" Fangslayer asked harshly, his voice sounding oddly loud, like the calling of the crow, in the forest hush. "How do you come to know of it?"

  "There is no time now to talk of it!"

  Brook said, softly, too softly, "You were spying on the humans, you and she, were you not? And you ventured too near. Is it not so?"

  "And now the tribe is to pay the price of your folly," said Fangslayer. "Many lives might be lost, to try to save one."

  Tanner felt his hands turn cold where they rested on the thick fur of Stagrunner's neck. He said, "Which of you wishes to challenge me for the chief's lock? Brook? Fangslayer?"

  "I am too old," Fangslayer said stiffly.

  "By the high ones, I think you have gone as mad as Two-Spear," Brook muttered. His hands balled into fists, and he shouted, "Yes! I will challenge you!"

  He strode forward. His fists swung up as if that would help

  him. But he faltered and slowed to a stop as his leaf-brown eyes locked with the wolf-gray ones of his chief in a battle of wills, a sending that only they two could hear. And while Stormlight in the human village down below wielded the thin blade of human fear and used it to hold her enemies off, Tanner wielded the fragile weapons of mind.

  In a few moments Brook's fists fell, his face turned away. Tanner reached out and placed a hand on his sagging shoulder. But his gaze looked fiercely around at the others.

  "I am your chief," he told them. "Does anyone dispute it?"

  No one answered. The glances of some fell to the ground.

  "Then hear me. Some of you have spoken truly. It is my duty as chief to see to the safety of the tribe. I have seen the faces of the humans, and I believe that they will be terrified of us if we strike now, in number, that they will flee, that no lives need be lost. But I have also seen your faces, and I will not require any of you to follow me. For my own part, I must go to the human village. I have no choice. Stormlight and I are Recognized."

  A murmur of astonishment ran around the tribe. Even Brook's eyes snapped up. "When?" he demanded.

  "Lately." Tanner smiled briefly, crookedly at him, then sobered. "I must go to her at once, alone if need be. I name you chief, Brook. I myself will tie the lock on your head, for I have seen your center, and it is good." He reached up to pull the leather thong from his hair.

  "No!" Brook caught hold of his arm to stop his hand. "Keep it! May you keep it for eight hundred turns more. I will come with you to the human camp.".

  "And I," said Joygleam.

  "And I," said Oakstrong.

  And others. And others, and more, and they were all coming close to him, crowding around him with hands outstretched or upraised as if in triumph, and Tanner tilted back

  his head and shouted aloud, with no thought for caution any longer, "Ayooooah! Wolfriders!"

  Before the sun had dipped low in the sky he had ridden Stagrunner to the laurel thickets at the edge of the forest, where he looked out at the human village, a score of strongly armed Wolfriders at his back.

  **Stormlight!**

  **Lhu!**

  Tanner stiffened and swayed on Stagrunner's back, dizzied. It was his soulname,

  **Soulmate,** he asked her,**have they harmed you?**

  **No. The tall ones are quarreling over what to do with me.**

  **Be ready. We are coming.**

  His mind turned to the others, Brook at his one side, Joygleam at the other, the many at his back, and his sending embraced them all at once, and they all answered him. Out of the score of them, some frightened, most uneasy, sending made a unity, strong, steady, fierce.

  **No killing, my people, unless it is necessary. But if it is, smite hard.**

  **We are ready, our chief.**

  "Ayooooah, Wolfriders! Attack!"

  The human young relived it all of their brutish lives in nightmare.

  Out of the shadows of the forest, the wolves, a storm-gray scud of them, streaming forward at the speed of birdflight, their gaping mouths showing their long, white teeth-and on each one, long hunting knife or sharp lance upraised, a-a creature, a demon, with fierce eyes that seemed to glow, upslanted and wild as the eyes of the wolves. And before there was time to do more than scream, the flood of them swept into the village.

  Tanner, in the lead, sped straight to Stormlight, saw her squirming out of her bonds as if they were so much

  strangleweed. A few quick strokes of his sharp leather-cutting knife to help her, and she was free.**My eyes see with joy,** she greeted him.

  He caught her up much as the shrieking human females were snatching up their children; he set her on Stagrunner before him.**My hands touch with joy,** he told her before he turned his eyes and mind back to the others.

  The Wolfriders had needed to do no more than rush and threaten. The humans were fleeing, falling like storm-toppled trees in their frenzy to get away. Only a few, doughty Lift-Leg among them, stood their ground, and they all seemed too stunned to raise weapon. No bloodshed yet, Tanner saw.

  "I have our sister, my people. Quickly, back to the hurst!"

  Like one large, leaping wolf they wheeled to obey him. But a human hunter was in Tanner's way. The man who had captured Stormlight, he was not as frightened as the rest, for his slow mind was intent only on his prize, and he saw it escaping him. With a bellow of anger he raised his club to strikeTanner shouted and raised his knife, futile against so large a foe. Nearly helpless, Stormlight pressed against his chest… too late to send Stagrunner darting off to the side-the wolf snarled, longing to tear out the throat of this enemy, knowing he could not leap so high with the burden that was on his back. The club swept down-then dropped with a soft thud to earth as Brook drove his stone-tipped lance into the human's heart.

  Tanner saw the quivering lance haft as the blow struck home, but he only heard the thump of the falling body, for he was forest bound, at speed, holding Stormlight in his arms, Brook riding at his side, and the others close at hand, and the wolves running hard, carrying them all out of danger.

  Though never again would they be entirely out of danger. The humans knew their enemy now. A human warrior had been slain.

  Brook said, "My chief, I had no choice."

  "But you did! You could have let me be killed."

  Brook stared uneasily, feeling once again as if his chief were going mad-until he saw the gray glint of mischief in Tanner's eyes. Then he laughed aloud.

  "You have outjaped me," he declared, laughing, "after all these years."

  "What, my chief, did you never tell him you have the soul of a scamp?" Stormlight twisted her thin body to look up at Tanner. But his face was somber, his fingertips stroking a storm-purple lump on her white-skinned temple.

  **You told me they had not hurt you.**

  **Not but for that. It is where the tall one stunned me with a rock, capturing me.**

  He felt weak, as if starved by many days' hunger, touching her. Her soulname was pulsing in him like a heartbeat. He needed her as a parched forest needs rain.

  "Set me down," she said, perhaps sensing some of this in him, perhaps feeling it in herself. "I will go take my passage at once."

  "C
ome to the healer first, and to the howl, so that the tribe may see you are well," Tanner told her. "Then go."

  It was a long howl. There was much to be discussed, for there was no telling what the humans might do. A heavy guard was set. More weapons were to be made, and breastplates of thick leather, to be worn even when hunting. Extra roots and forage of all sorts were to be gathered. No one was to leave the hurst alone. Tanner's people agreed to all this, and looked at him with a new light in their eyes. Theirs was again to be the life of legend, the life of the Wolfriders. Safety was perhaps, after all, not the only thing. Perhaps daring and courage were worth as much. Perhaps they might yet find a way to capture Lift-Leg's marvelous tanning agent for their chief.

  To him, it no longer seemed so important. In time he

  expected he would find something else that worked as well. Meanwhile, there was his Recognized to be thought of.

  He took leave of her afterward, by moonlight, as she stood at the side of her wolf-friend who would bear her away and guard her during her vigil.

  "As soon as I have found my soulname, I will be an adult, we can do the thing to make the cub?"

  "Yes," he told her.

  "I will come back as quickly as I can. I know you are suffering, you cannot eat. I feel the same."

  "Yes."

  "But I do not plan to stay with you," she told him bluntly, "after it is done."

  "Of course not. I will not try to hold you." His hand lifted to stroke her cloud-wisp hair. "It would be like trying to hold the wind."

  **Lhu. I thank you.**

  He embraced her, held her pressed against his chest for a moment, then let her go, stood and watched as she rode her giant thunder-dark wolf off into the darkened forest.

  When she was gone from sight he turned and went back to the hurst, thinking he would sit alone at the brow of the hill, as he had so many other nights. But he was mistaken. Not only his wolf-friend awaited him, but many of his tribe-mates were there waiting for him as well.

  "It seemed to us," Brook explained awkwardly, "that we ought to be more together from now on."

  "No more hunting alone?" Tanner teased him.

  "No more letting you become a stranger to us. I, for one, was fool enough to think bad things of you, and I am ashamed."

  Tanner said, "I let it happen, too. So much that is in me, I have never shared."

  He sat at the brow of the hurst, looking up at the stars. They all sat with him.

  "Together," Tanner echoed softly. "My people, often I have had a strange dream of a-a place I do not know, a sort of huge tree of many hollows, where all the Wolfriders could rest in one place."

  "Show us," said Fangslayer gruffly.

  So he shared with them the image in his mind with a sending that included them all. A generation later, when some of the younger ones of them, grown old, came at last to the holt, they would remember that night when Tanner shared with them that dream, and many others, and when they and their chief howled together of the Way and what the Wolfriders should be.

  Longreach didn't join the long hunts anymore-he claimed too much wolf riding made his bones ache-but he joined the ones in easy range of the Father Tree. It was possible that his strength was less than it had once been or that his eyes were just a bit blurred, still what he had lost in sheer ability he had more than gained in cunning. He'd thrust his spear into the heart-flesh of a redbuck and felt the wolf-song within him trill as the warm blood touched his lips.

  He was content, then, as they brought the carcass back to the hole to share with the others. His mind moved with the moment, so he was surprised when blond Treestump came up alongside.

  "It's Moth, storyteller," the bearded Wolfrider said. "I'm worried for her. She's all set for her quest but there's something off-stride in her heart."

  Longreach brought his mind to focus behind his eyes. There was no doubting the affection and concern in the hunter's face though Moth was no blood to him since Tanner's generation. The Wolfrider loved all the cubs-their own and each other's. If Treestump thought Moth needed a story or a shoulder, then Longreach would do his share.

  "She's in the mist grove," Treestump said as he took the redbuck onto his own wolfs back.

  The old Wolfrider put the gnarled trees with their dangling clumps of silver moss into Starwing's mind. The wolf melted

  away from the others and carried him rise-ward to the grove. Moth was with her wolf-friend, looking very small and very frightened. Her face showed shock and then relief as Starwing cleared the shadows.

  "I didn't hope-" she began, taking his hands before he'd even slid from Starwing's back.

  He patted her straw-blond hair and tucked her face against his shoulder; he could feel her heart pounding and trembling. "You didn't need to hope, wolfling. One sent thought and I'd find you, you know that-"

  **What if I don't find it?**

  **You'll find your soulname, don't fret about it.**

  She pulled away, leaving dark splotches on his tunic. "Why me?" she stammered through her sobs. "Why couldn't I find my name right here under the Father Tree like everyone else? Why wasn't I born knowing it like Cutter was?" Shamed by her cub-tears, Moth wiped her face on her sleeve- and left a long smudge across her cheek.

  It made her look younger and even more forlorn. Longreach would have made up a name and given it to her right then if that would have made a difference. "You'll be seeking more than a name. Cutter was born knowing who he was and he'll know who he is all his life, I suspect. And the ones who find their names here, it's as if they're truly a part of the holt. But some of the Wolfriders have had to search to find their true selves."

  **And some of them never come back.** Sent, not spoken, because the fear lay tight around the thought.

  "Some," the storyteller honestly agreed, "but I can see by their eyes when they won't find a soulname, and I can see when they will. And what I see in your eyes, I've seen before-''

  The Spirit Quest

  by Diana L. Paxson

  In the moist darkness of the soil, a point of life waited for its slow transition into form. Goodtree stilled, focusing her awareness upon it, trying to understand its essence, wondering if she could touch the power that would make it grow.

  **Goodtree-**

  Questing for the magic at the heart of things, consciousness registered the call, but noted no meaning. It was only sound-symbols, not a true name.

  "Goodtree, where are you?"

  Audible this time, the calling stirred memory, and awareness detached itself unwillingly from the essence of the flower. One pointed ear cupped instinctively to catch the whisper of skin-booted feet on grass.

  **Lionleaper?**

  Goodtree straightened, grimacing as stiffened muscles in slender limbs sent their own pained messages, and with a sigh remembered why she had wanted to be a tree. Her father, Tanner, chief of the Wolfriders, was gone.

  The stiff foliage of the bearberry bushes that edged the clearing shivered, and a lithe figure, smooth-muscled and tawny as the beast from which he'd got his name, slipped past.

  "Oh-this is pretty!" Lionleaper hunkered down beside her, patting the vivid moss beneath the trees.

  Scent stimulated Goodtree's awareness of his physical nearness-the mixed smells of wolf on his tawny leggings, mint from the banks of the stream on his brown boots, and from the lightly tanned skin of his bare torso, the scent of his

  own pungent maleness. Instinctively she reached out to touch him, and he pulled her close and rubbed his cheek against hers.

  "Nobody knew where you'd gone," Lionleaper said then, "but I thought I might find you here."

  Abruptly Goodtree was separate again, green eyes widening in suspicion. "Did the others send you after me?"

  "I don't take orders from anybody." His gaze went determinedly back to the moss. "But they're worried, Goodtree- they don't understand why you won't let them call you chieftain. I wish your mother was still alive-maybe she could talk sense into you!"

  Goodtree s
hook her head, grinning crookedly. "You can't remember her very well if you think so! Considering how she fought against being chieftess to my father I don't think she would have dared to press the responsibility on me!"

  "Are you trying to be like her?" asked Lionleaper. "Or are you still grieving for Tanner? We all loved him, but he's gone now-that's the Way-and it's no dishonor to his memory to tie up your hair in a chief's lock and carry on."

  Defensively, Goodtree smoothed back her curls, golden as the sunlight that bathed the moss. The strand of ivy with which she had bound her hair came loose and she cast it angrily away.

  "Is that what you want, Lionleaper?"

  "You know what I want, my golden one!" he turned to her suddenly and she shrank from the glow in his amber eyes. Lovemates they had been, lifemates they might be, but she could not afford the closeness, could not take the chance that one night he might offer her his soulname and find out that she had none to give him in return.

  "I say what I have said only for the good of the tribe," he added then. "Come back with me now. We have howled for your father; it's time to let him go."

  For the good of the tribe! Goodtree thought as she followed Lionleaper back through the forest. How can I lead the Wolfriders without knowing my true name? I wish it were not my father we were mourning, but me!

  It was the beginning of the green, growing time, and on the sandy slopes of the hurst the beech trees were already in delicate leaf against the somber dark green of the conifers. Soon the grass would be high on the plains that stretched between the forest and the southern mountains, and the great herds would move northward again. Time then for the elves to leave the protection of the Everwood for the good hunting of the grasslands, but for now it was enough to set the heavy furs of winter aside, and rejoice in the rebirth of the world.

  When Goodtree and Lionleaper came into the clearing on the crest of the hill, those who had slept the day away were beginning to waken, wolves and elves emerging together from hollows beneath the great roots of the beech trees, or thickets where they had fashioned rough shelters. Goodtree staggered as a warm weight struck her from behind, and with a quick twist of her slender body, turned her fall into a grab for the brindled pelt of the great she-wolf who was pressing against her.