But now, she knew, that would never happen.
* * *
The Wolfen hunters had been jubilant to return to their tribe, camped along the east banks of the river. In theory, they were safe here—the River Fish Clan were well to the north, and the Kindred usually only ventured as far as the western banks—their recent trespass was both unusual, forced by hunger, and confined to a limited area far south of this encampment. The Wolfen did, however, have scouts out on the plains to watch for the Valley Cohort.
The men with mates were eager to spend time with their wives, and everyone wanted to talk about of Silex’s astounding commune with the female wolf. In the retelling, she was the size of a bear, and had understood every word Silex had spoken to her.
Silex watched as the person he most cared about—Fia, a beautiful woman a year younger than Silex—listened to Brach’s version of the tale. When everyone turned astonished stares at their leader, Fia realized he was watching her, and her expression became almost haughty. She deliberately glanced away. “The big female has a mate, but they are far too young to be on their own. They have not yet learned to hunt. I worry they will not survive the winter,” Silex told them, wishing Fia would look at him.
Harvesting had gone well, with many fat berries and pine nuts to supplant the hunt’s take. The Wolfen ate in imitation of the wolves who were their benefactors, so Silex and his betrothed, Ovi, were solemnly presented with a meal first, as befitting their rank.
Alone with Ovi, Silex gazed at her, thinking all that Duro had said was true: she was ample of bosom and nicely hipped, rare attributes in the tribe. The fact that she was allowed to eat while lower-ranked women might be forced to skip a meal from time to time probably had something to do with her fecund figure. Ovi’s face was pleasant, though a subtle, dour pull at the corners of her mouth undid much of what Silex might otherwise find attractive.
Fia’s mouth was usually turned up, flashing her smile, and her skin glowed in the summer, as if it took in the sun’s heat and then emitted it like a stone placed by the fire. She was muscular and thin and nothing like Ovi—yet it was Ovi he was to marry.
“Ovi. It has been very nice to spend time with you. We will go out hunting again tomorrow or the next,” Silex told his sister.
Ovi sighed. “Winter. It will soon be cold again.”
“That is true,” Silex agreed. He watched her eyes, which were not meeting his. “Ovi,” he finally said.
“Yes, Silex.”
“While on the hunt, Duro challenged my leadership. He said he is bigger and that he should be leader.”
“That is not how it is to be,” Ovi replied simply.
“Yes. But with father dead, Duro feels I am open to challenge.”
“He is wrong.”
“He also said he wants you, Ovi. Duro. He wants to marry you.”
Silex did not know what sort of reaction he expected, but Ovi only shrugged.
“How do you feel about that?” he pressed.
“Feel?” Ovi looked away, as if the answer lay out on the horizon somewhere. Her expression was maddeningly apathetic. “I am to marry you, Silex.”
“The thought seems to make you feel sad,” Silex stated pointedly, though in fact the thought seemed to make Ovi feel nothing.
“It is what is to be,” she answered.
“Ovi, what would happen if I were killed on the hunt?” Silex continued, resisting the urge to shout at her. “Who would you marry then?”
For the first time Silex thought he saw a flicker of life in her eyes, but her answer was pure Ovi. “I suppose I would then marry whoever became leader of the Wolfen. It does not really matter.”
“So that is how you see yourself? You would just mate with the next man?”
“It is what is to be,” she sighed. “The dominant wolves mate.”
Silex stood. “We are not wolves, Ovi. We are humans who follow the ways of the wolf, but we are not wolves. You do not have to marry me if you do not want to do so.”
She gave him a bland look. “I never said I would not marry you, Silex. We were both there when our father died. We both heard what he said. I accepted it then and I accept it now.”
* * *
Winter snapped at the Kindred on their migration, icy temperatures blowing in on stiff winds, unusually early. The Kindred pulled out their furs and wrapped themselves as best they could, their heads down as they plodded south. They bound their feet with elk hide for walking in snow, and at night used rabbit pelts, fur side in, to keep their toes warm.
After the fifth day of cold, there was relent, the sun gaining strength. The mood of the Kindred lifted, particularly when the hunt came across a large herd of reindeer and managed to bring down two of them after only half a day’s chase.
Urs was a good hunt master, everyone said so. He accepted their congratulations with real gratitude, though in his stomach he felt a fraud. He had not known that the herd was there, moving slowly south. The hunt just stumbled upon it by accident. Urs had been about to steer everyone off in a different direction, just to have something to say to the men who looked to him for all the answers. If he had, they would be hungry, living on what little was left from a kill eight days ago.
Urs knew what no one else knew: he should not be hunt master. He remembered the passionate declarations he had made to Calli, stating so confidently that if he were in charge of the hunt he would send the stalkers out to find game, even though it meant risking contact with the Cohort, because that was how Kindred had always hunted before Hardy changed the rules. Yet now that he was the leader, Urs was unsure, questioning his own choices on everything, and was doing everything Hardy’s way. But Hardy had always known how to find game. Urs did not.
Seeking advice was out of the question: Urs could not understand anything Hardy said, the former hunt master’s words sliding out of his mouth in a mangled slur.
Urs stared out at the rolling grasslands, making a decision. “Mors,” he called, gesturing.
The stalk master, Mors (Morsus, whose legend told of his unfortunate habit of biting his siblings) hustled to Urs’s side. Mors, like all stalkers, carried a club instead of spear, and was known to be fast on his feet. Since Hardy had pulled the stalking men out of the role of scouting for prey, Mors and his men fulfilled one role, which was to chase down wounded animals. And even in that they were hardly special; the whole hunt joined the pursuit now, so that they would all be safe together. Yet Mors had never once complained, unlike Palloc, who as spear master was petulant about everything.
“We are far from the Cohort Valley. Safe from their raiding parties,” Urs declared to the stalk master.
Mors nodded agreement, pulling thoughtfully on his beard, which was black and full. Like his sister Bellu, his four brothers, and his mother Ador, Mors had unusually thick hair, though it was scraggly as any man’s; not at all as attractive as his sister’s.
“So from this point forward, the stalkers will go out and search for game and report back to the hunt, as it used to be done,” Urs told him.
Mors’s face broke into a delighted grin.
“You have been wanting this, but have said nothing to me,” Urs guessed.
Mors nodded happily.
Their conversation was interrupted by a cry from Palloc: “Go!” the spear master yelled.
Urs turned and watched, astounded, as nearly his entire contingent of spearmen took off running, weapons raised. Only Valid, Urs’s good friend from childhood, remained behind. “What is happening?” Urs demanded as Valid trotted to where Mors and Urs were standing.
“Wolves,” Valid said.
“What?” Urs snapped. “What do you mean, ‘wolves’?”
Valid spread his hands. “There were a couple of young wolves out there, pretty close. Palloc gathered his spearmen and went after them. He said he was going to keep one pelt and give the other to the man with the truest aim.”
“We are not here to chase after fur,” Urs grated. “We have no time for thi
s.” He turned to Mors. “Take two of your fastest men and go after them and tell them I want them to return now.”
Mors nodded and left instantly.
“We need food. We do not lack for garments,” Urs seethed.
Valid shrugged. “They probably have already killed the wolves and will be back soon.”
“Then I will make Palloc and the spearmen eat the wolves,” Urs vowed. “That will teach them.” Urs turned and scanned the low hills around him, waiting for the spearmen to return with the wolf carcasses.
FOURTEEN
The large she-wolf and Mate were shadowing a herd of reindeer, watching, hoping to find an opening, when they smelled the humans and then the blood. It was all so similar to the encounters she’d had before; she felt drawn forward toward the men and their meat, though once again it broke the male’s nerve and he hung back, afraid.
This time none of the scents was familiar. They were strangers, which was why the she-wolf was so wary even as she deliberately approached the humans. She stood rigid, waiting to see what would happen.
The humans gathered, much like reindeer coming together in a defensive bunch, but then with a loud noise they ran directly at her. For a brief moment she froze, staring at the face of the man at the front of the pack of charging humans, and then she bolted, running for the trees, Mate streaking out of the grasses to take to her side.
She registered the spears hitting the ground around them without understanding what they were. The wolves could hear the pursuit behind them and so they unquestioningly fled from it, easily getting away once the first volley of weapons missed their targets.
The face. She had sensed the humans’ aggression, sensed it the way she and the pack could feel the pain in an aging elk or the weakness of a new, undernourished calf. Even before the chase began she knew something was radically different about these men, and it had something to do with their faces. The memory of the human who gave her meat now came strongly to her mind, and the contrast between the expressions, the set of the eyes and the brows and the tightening of the mouths, was real and significant.
Not all humans would feed them. Some would hunt them.
* * *
Though they referred to their winter habitat as a “settlement,” in truth the Kindred were fairly peripatetic throughout the cold season, moving from one familiar area to another in search of food. None of these campsites was as comfortable as their summer quarters: fire pits lined with rocks licked black by generations of smoke, crude depressions where the earth had been scooped out to allow a family to sleep, thin branches and curved mammoth bones supporting animal hides arrayed over these hollows to protect from the worst of elements. Still, the Kindred always divided their camps into the men’s side on the right, the women’s side on the left, and the communal area in between.
By tradition, the winter camp was where the Kindred held their weddings, just as the summer settlement was where they named their children, and in the same ceremony performed the rite of passage, declaring boys of fourteen summers to be men, and girls who had started their cyclical bleeding to be women.
“Who else will be involved in the marriage celebration this winter?” Bellu pressed Calli eagerly. Calli deflected such obvious gambits by pointing out that the women’s council had not yet met to discuss weddings. No one yet knew what Albi might say of Bellu and Urs’s nuptials. It represented one last, dim hope for Calli—that Albi would challenge the wedding, slamming her stick down and thundering that the informal tradition of mothers discussing their children’s fates had grown into a vulgar political power swap that the council must reverse.
“Urs told me that he spoke harshly to Palloc for chasing some wolves,” Bellu confided to Calli in tones to indicate she was sharing a great secret.
“Everyone knows of that,” Calli replied with a snap to her tone that Bellu blithely missed.
“Yes,” she agreed cheerfully, “but Urs told me.”
Calli announced she needed find moss, and Bellu nodded with a sunny smile as Calli left. “Find moss” was a woman’s way of saying she was beginning her regular menstruation—a roll of moss served to absorb the blood, though a small wad of rabbit fur was a fairly close substitute. Women who left to find moss were given their privacy, though younger males were usually mystified by the expression.
Her path took her near her mother’s fire, where she saw Albi and Coco in deep discussion. The sight gave her pause—there was an odd intensity to the conversation. Calli wondered what the two of them could possibly be talking about.
* * *
That evening, the only food for the Kindred was a soup made from the meat clinging to the bones of the last reindeer they had taken, plus some roots Coco had carried from their summer quarters. There had not yet been any rain; it was the driest winter anyone could remember.
Palloc found his mother squatting by their home fire. Somehow, she had managed to procure a large handful of reindeer fat for herself, and was sucking it off a clean stick.
Palloc took a breath. “I need to speak to you, Mother,” he said.
She fixed him with a baleful look. “Why do you say it like that? What foolish thing are you about to demand of me?”
Palloc glanced away. He despised that she always seemed to be ahead of him. “I need to speak to you about Renne.”
“Her? I will not waste my words on her.”
Palloc squatted next to his mother. He reached for some fat, cooking slowly on a rock by the fire, but she slapped his hand away. “As council mother, you can help me with my choice of who to marry,” Palloc began.
“Yes. That is my choice to make,” Albi responded.
He hesitated. That had not been what he meant. “I am saying that if I, your son, came to you and told you I favored a woman, you would be able to tell the council that she and I are to marry. Especially if she has no mother alive, so that the council negotiates her marriage for her.”
Albi stared at the fire for a moment, as if she had not even heard him. Palloc fidgeted uncomfortably. “Mother…”
“I know what you have been doing with her,” Albi said. “You think you are clever, the way you sneak off together. You have been fornicating with her outside of marriage. That is what I could tell the council.”
Palloc swallowed. “Well, not outside of marriage if she becomes my wife.”
“Your wife is to be Calli Umbra.”
“What?”
“That is what has been decided. I told you I was working on a plan. Calli is smart, and the women have been thinking she would be a good council mother. I have promised her mother I will support such a move, but in five years. That neutralizes her as a threat for now. But it also keeps the power in our family.”
“That is your plan? That, that is not any sort of plan! The plan was to make me hunt master,” Palloc sputtered.
“You are a fool who copulates with a low-status girl, when you could have been married to Bellu and been hunt master. I need to protect myself. If you do not see how this also is good for you, you are as blind as old Hardy.”
“I will not marry Calli,” Palloc snapped back. “She of all women treats me with the least respect. I hate her.”
“Would you please not say so many stupid words? You make my ears ache. Once she is your wife, she will be forced to treat you with respect. You will force her—do you think you can manage to do at least that, Spear Master? If you cannot, your mother will come into your marriage and do it for you.”
“I am in love with Renne.”
“Then keep fornicating with her, I do not care!” Albi roared back. “That is where you just were, is it not?”
Palloc could not meet her eyes and looked down.
“No one else will have her, she is an orphan who cannot even make a decent rope. So do what you want. But you will marry Calli. It is the only way I will stay council mother.”
Palloc shook his head. “For five years,” he pointed out scornfully. “And then you will depend on me for food and wi
sh you had found a way to make me hunt master.”
“I have no intention of stepping down in five years, you stupid hyena,” Albi snarled. “But this assures I will not be challenged in that time. Now do you understand?”
Palloc sneered. “So this is a plan to benefit you, then. You marry me off for your good, not mine.” He stood. “I was but one step behind Urs when he killed that lion. If not for that, he would never have been made hunt master. Even now, he is hesitant and unsure—everyone, not just me, can see that.”
“Now is not the time for a direct challenge,” Albi informed him. “The hunt hates change, and Bellu’s family, as a voting bloc, is simply too powerful. How a woman as stupid as Ador can manage to be the only mother in the Kindred to have all of her boys survive to adulthood is a mystery, but there it is.”
Later that night, lying under his elk hide and trying to stay warm as the cold winds shrieked and threatened to blow out the fires, Palloc reflected on his mother’s words, black fury in his heart. Maybe he had his own plan. Maybe he did not need her help. It would be easy, as spear master, to find times out on the hunt to be alone with the hunt master. Palloc would watch for such an opportunity, and when it came, he would strike.
He would kill Urs the hunt master.
FIFTEEN
Renne was bent over her rope when she saw the stick.
To anyone watching casually, she was spending the final hours before nightfall practicing her craft, clearly intent, seriously focused, and not easily interrupted. No one bothered to examine her closely or long enough to see that she was less bowed over her materials than folded in a cramp, her eyes closed, her fingers moving on her strip of hide without accomplishing anything other than appearances.
Palloc had come to her, had mated with her, and then had stood up and abruptly told her it was to be the last time they could be together. When, in her shock, she begged him to explain, he became cross and turned away without a word.
She sat cross-legged and her legs were wet from her tears. She was still bent over when the thick end of a walking stick thumped the ground in front of her.
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