“We do,” Silex conceded.
“How is what I do any different?”
“The rope,” Tok offered from the water.
“The rope.” Mal looked at Dog, who still sat, obeying the command to remain. Mal dropped the rope, smiling slightly as Cragg’s eyes bulged. “There. You see? The rope helps restrain her from her impulses—such as wanting to kill the three of you. But I do not use it to keep her prisoner. Dog,” Mal said. Dog looked around at him. “To me.”
Dog obediently moved closer to Mal’s side and sat, but she was panting, tense. He put a hand down and gave her a reassuring pat on the head.
Mal looked back at the men who had come to murder him. “Now what?” he asked finally, addressing Tok and Silex as they stood in the water. “If I let this one up, will you two in the river come at me with your clubs? One of you will be speared in the gut and all of you will feel my wolf’s fangs rip the flesh from your bones and tear your organs to pieces. Is that what happens next?”
“I think perhaps we did not fully understand the situation,” Silex responded slowly.
Mal nodded. “I agree. Still, I do not see how we can prevent you three dying here today.”
“We could leave,” Tok volunteered shakily.
Mal shook his head. “No, if I allow you to run away you will just return with a better plan. You might bring spears for my wolf and do with your clubs what you originally intended.”
“No,” Cragg said, staring at Dog as if worried she might take offense. “We are Wolfen. We could never hurt a wolf.”
“Oh.” Mal nodded. It made sense. “So you would stalk us and spear me, instead. And then you would run. I have heard it said the Wolfen are faster than any other creed, so you would probably get several steps away before my wolf took each of you in revenge for my death. I imagine she would bring you down by seizing your legs in her jaws and crushing your bones, then she would go after the next man. Not until she had felled all three of you would she return to finish you one by one, the way we Kindred pursue reindeer we have speared and then kill them when we find them bleeding in the dirt.”
Silex nodded at the sense of Mal’s words. “What if we do not try to harm you in any way?”
The two younger Wolfen were nodding furiously.
“Why would you abandon your plans?” Mal challenged.
“It is as we said before,” Silex replied. “We thought you were enslaving the wolf. Our only thought was to free her from that slavery.”
“Please, Kindred,” the youngest Wolfen begged from where he stood in the water.
Mal believed them. “So: if I do not kill you, you will not attempt to kill me,” he summarized. “When my wolf sees that we are not hostile, she will not kill you, either. Are we agreeing?”
Silex gave a tentative smile. “We are agreeing.”
“Good.” Mal sized up the would-be assassins. The Wolfen’s garments were crude—basically hides with head holes and short fox-fur skirts. But otherwise they were men, just like him.
“The way you speak is somewhat odd to my ear,” Cragg observed. “The words are the same but your pronunciation differs.” He struggled to a sitting position but froze as Dog visibly reacted to the movement.
“All is good, Dog,” Mal said. “Yes, I believe it is true for all creeds, that our words sound different as they come from different mouths. You can stand up, Cragg. Dog, remain.”
Cragg cautiously rose to his feet. Mal stroked Dog’s head reassuringly, while Silex and Tok waded back to the bank and climbed onto dry land. Once the three Wolfen were standing together, they seemed at a loss as to what to do next. How does one converse with someone who was supposed to be murdered?
“Would you like to touch my wolf?” Mal inquired politely.
* * *
Silex’s hand shook as he extended it. “All is good, Dog,” Mal repeated softly as the wolf raised her head to sniff the outstretched palm.
Tears blurred Silex’s vision. “I am touching a wolf,” he gasped reverently. “I never imagined such a thing could ever occur.” He stroked Dog’s back, sinking his fingers into the luxurious pelage. “You have the handprint marking, Dog.”
“I did not understand you,” Mal said apologetically.
“This wolf … we have paid tribute to one pack for generations, and of late in particular to the largest females, many of whom share this same white mark above their muzzles. I believe this is the direct descendant of a great wolf who has eaten from my hand.”
“The mother of this wolf was attacked by a lion and killed.”
“Ah,” Silex replied sadly.
All three men were touching Dog, who was relaxed now. They kept glancing at each other and grinning in delight.
“How long has the Kindred provided care for a wolf? She is still young,” Cragg asked.
“I must correct your misconception,” Mal replied. “Though I am from that creed, I no longer live with the Kindred, and they certainly do not have wolves of their own.”
They gaped at him. “You mean you live by yourself?” Tok blurted.
“Well. Not by myself. I live with Dog. We have a cave upstream from here.”
Silex shook his head slightly. “I cannot imagine surviving the winter alone.” For the first time, he looked openly at Mal’s leg. “How do you hunt?”
“My hunting has not gone well thus far,” Mal admitted. “But a day’s walk from here I found a place of ice, and buried in it are some young animals I was able to chip out and eat.” He shrugged. “We have also done well with worms—it was very wet, this summer.”
Silex regarded him solemnly. “That does not sound good.”
“It is a challenge.”
“Well then.” Silex looked at his sons, then back at Mal. “Would you and your wolf like to come live with us?”
FIFTY-NINE
Fifteen Kindred hunters against four savages from the Cohort Valley in a surprise attack, and yet in numbers, the Kindred had suffered far worse from the battle. The Cohort had proved the better fighters. Pex, Bellu’s father, was dead, as were four others. Five Kindred dead! It seemed impossible.
Urs could walk, but barely, and after a time Mors, his mouth a flowing wound, went over to support him as they limped along. Grat and Palloc had to help Valid, who could put no weight at all on his man’s side leg and who bellowed with pain as they made their way over rough ground.
There was no time to bury their fallen. They left them there in the grass near the Cohort, knowing that scavengers would come and shred the flesh and gnaw the bones. Urs decreed they needed to abandon their kinsmen in case there were other Cohort in the area. They needed to get to winter quarters, where the Cohort had never been seen.
They fled, bleeding and hobbled. Mors kept touching his shattered jaw, probing for the teeth he believed would somehow be there, finding only the soft, torn tissue where the Cohort club had hit him. Mors, so named because he bit other children. He would be able to bite nothing now, nothing ever again.
“I killed two,” Palloc announced one day as they marched. “The one I impaled, and the other one with a club.”
Valid squinted sideways at him. “I truly remember nothing,” he admitted.
Grat was on the other side of Valid. “I do not recall it that way,” he argued. “Perhaps you wounded two; I cannot speak to that. But I delivered the death blow to all four of the savages from the Cohort Valley.”
Palloc narrowed his eyes at Grat. “You do not earn admiration for hitting a Cohort who is already dead.”
“Stop!” Urs hissed, grimacing with the pain in his side. “We would not be in this state if Grat had not urged us to attack. And Palloc, you, too, were eager to rush into danger. I listened to both of you and now we are of such a reduced number we cannot successfully hunt!”
Grat and Palloc stared at him in shock. “That is unfair,” Palloc whined.
Valid was walking with his arm around Palloc’s shoulder and thus was well positioned to smack the other man on the
back of the head with a contemptuous hand. “Do not argue with the hunt master!” he barked.
Grat stayed silent, but he kept glaring resentfully at the hunt master, who had exhausted himself with this slander and was now back to shuffling along, bent over, holding his ribs. Grat thought of the Cohort, the satisfying impact of his club as it crushed their skulls, and how sweetly rewarding it would be to do the same thing to Urs.
* * *
Everyone in the Kindred did what they could for the wounded men, but the fight with the Cohort had been devastating. Urs could barely roll over without help, the crushing pain in his ribs keeping him breathless and in constant agony. Valid could not walk; something was broken in his leg, not a bone, but something that made him wince whenever he tried to put weight on it.
And they were the lucky ones. Mors died first, the dreadful mess in his mouth turning black—he could not eat, but he could scream, and his cries lasted two days. Eventually two other men who had been wounded in the attack on the Cohort went on to die from their injuries. The only uninjured members of the hunt were Vinco, Palloc, Grat, and Brum, who was Bellu’s last surviving brother.
Upon arrival at winter quarters, Brum was named stalk master to succeed his brother Mors, and Urs seemed to take an odd satisfaction at how much this seemed to offend Grat, who felt the honor should fall to him.
Bellu was so distraught over the tragedy she could not bring herself to administer aid to her husband, but instead lay weeping on her sleeping mat, clutching her pregnant belly as if in deep pain.
Albi swooped in. With an odd apathy, Calli watched the old woman speaking forcefully to Bellu, knowing full well what was occurring. When Albi immediately summoned a council meeting, Calli did not object, and was silent when Albi seized control.
“We are in crisis,” Albi informed them. “We need experience. We need strength. I must be made council mother until the crisis has passed.”
No one else spoke. It felt as if the Kindred were dying. Everyone just wanted to get past their grief.
Because of Bellu’s collapse, it was up to Calli to bathe Urs, and to take him food so that he did not have to try to stand up.
Calli was there when Urs summoned Valid. “How is your leg, Spear Master?” Urs asked from a prone position.
With a gasp, Valid collapsed awkwardly onto the ground next to Urs. “I do not know if I will ever walk properly again.” He glanced up at Calli and she silently communicated her sympathy with her expression, and he gave her a grateful smile.
The three of them sat silently for a long moment. “I was wrong, not to let you go after your daughter,” Urs finally confessed in a rush. Calli’s eyes widened surprise, but Valid was shaking his head.
“No, you were right,” Valid replied. “By the time I caught up to her, a great distance would have separated us from the Kindred. Had we encountered Cohort, we would not have survived it.”
“That is true. But what I have to tell you now may cause you to despise me.”
“Nothing you could say could do that, Urs.”
Urs sighed. “Why do we migrate north in the summer?”
“It is as we have always done,” Valid replied simply.
“Yes, but why? There is hunting here in winter. Perhaps it is abundant all summer long. We have no way of knowing. But what we do know is that the migration is an arduous journey. Why undertake such a thing? Why not live here, follow the herds, hunt, harvest, and remain safe from the Cohort? Why risk crossing their lands, twice every year, when another encounter may well wind up killing all of us?”
Calli could scarcely breathe. If they did not return to summer quarters, she might never see Mal again, would never learn of his fate. But if the Kindred did return, he was slated to die when Valid and Grat went in search of Lyra. Valid might be persuaded that Lyra running away was not Mal’s fault, but Grat, she knew, would show no mercy or restraint.
“You are saying that we will not migrate this summer,” Valid concluded.
“We will not,” Urs confirmed. “We will return to the ancient ways, following the herds, and will not attempt a summer encampment.”
Calli turned her face, weeping quietly.
“You are the first to know,” Urs said softly. “I wanted to tell you, because of your daughter.”
“My daughter?” Valid gave Urs a sad, candid look. “Oh Urs, I think we both know my daughter is already dead.”
* * *
Denix spotted the Cohort first—three of them. They were far enough away, and running at such an angle, that she knew she was in no danger, but even so, the sight chilled her skin, raising the hairs on her arm.
And then she saw the girl. She was younger than Denix, perhaps sixteen, and the way she ran, heedless and fearful, clearly moving as quickly as she could, told Denix all she needed to know.
Her eyes drew a connection between the hunters and their human prey. Denix could clearly see the point where they would catch her, though the girl was moving well. She had some time left to live.
“Do not give up. Do not stop,” Denix urged in a quiet whisper.
Something occurred to her. She reached down to stroke her belly, where the swell from her child was just barely palpable. She had a responsibility now; she was going to be a mother. This was not her concern; she could not endanger her unborn.
Even still, Denix started to trot. She saw a place where she could cut in front of the Cohort. She had done this sort of thing before, with the Kindred. She would startle the hunters, who would then change their direction to give chase to her, because she would be so much closer and would appear, at first, to be much slower.
Once she had drawn them off, she would gradually increase her speed, leading them on until they were far, far from this girl.
Because no one could run as fast as a Wolfen.
* * *
When Lyra saw the trees she ran toward them, intending to hide. She could flee no more; she was exhausted. She turned to see how much more ground her pursuers had gained, and was shocked to see they had vanished. Why? Where had they gone?
The woods were at first unfamiliar to her, but then she came to the Kindred Stream and recognized where she was. Somehow, she had wound up far downstream from summer quarters. She went weak with relief: home.
Darkness was closing in when she came to her cave. The familiar drawings danced in her torchlight, and she found herself sobbing at the sight. She did not build a fire, though she left the torch smoldering at the entrance. She slept before the sun died in the sky, slept deeply and dreamlessly.
The next morning she made her way to the Kindred settlement. It was staggeringly strange to see her family’s abandoned fire site, to peer at the empty communal area. Her mind told her there should be people, conversations, laughter. Cooking. There should be cooking as well.
Lyra built a fire and poked at it listlessly, too exhausted to think of what to do next. She could not remember ever being this fatigued. Her plan was to find Mal, who was upstream somewhere. She needed to tell him the Cohort had come north. He was in danger and she had to warn him.
Though in the end, all she managed to do was fall back asleep.
* * *
Mal grinned at his wolf. Dog loved doing this, loved prancing out in the morning to look for food.
Mal carried both of his spears. Would you like to live with us? The Wolfen leader, Silex, had asked him. His own tribe had banished him, naming him a curse, and now this stranger was offering him sanctuary. Mal found it a struggle to control his emotions. When he could speak, Mal had replied that he had heard that the Wolfen roamed, following wolf tracks, and ran everywhere they went. They admitted this was true, so he pointed ruefully to his leg, and said, “Then I cannot live with you.”
Mal picked up the odor of smoke as he moved downstream. It was so oddly normal—he was wandering south along the stream and it would be around this area where the smell of the Kindred’s fires would usually be drifting on the wind—that he did not register, at first, what
it might mean.
Somebody was at the Kindred summer quarters.
Could the Kindred have returned? No, that was ridiculous. Some Frighteneds? A hostile creed? Cohort? Mal unconsciously tightened his grip on the spear in his woman’s hand, his throwing hand.
When they were very close, Mal slowed. He whispered for Dog to sit, and then made the hand signal: remain. Dog tensed, unsure, but this was a game they had played often. Sometimes, her man would leave her for a long, long time, his scent growing so faint she whimpered, but she did what she was told.
Mal crept forward, moving over familiar ground. His whole childhood he had played in these woods; he knew how to sneak up on camp unseen.
The communal fire was burning. He caught his breath when he saw the woman sleeping next to it.
She awoke as he approached, blinking and then smiling at him. “Mal,” she greeted, her voice a croak. “I knew you would come.”
* * *
Valid had fashioned himself a walking stick much like Albi’s and used it to support his weight, but even still his face twitched with pain whenever he advanced his wounded leg. Calli watched him limping determinedly out of camp one morning and felt compelled to follow him. His gait was, of course, reminiscent of Mal’s, but that was not what made her heart feel as if it were moving strangely in her chest—it was his bravery, his steadfast refusal to allow his injury to become his new legend.
He unknowingly led her into an area of thin growth, sticking to a well-trod path through head-high shrubs that had lost their leaves and long grasses lying flat. She was about to call out when she heard voices to her woman’s side. She stopped and, moments later, Renne and Palloc walked into view.
There was no mistaking the intimacy between them, the affection in Renne’s light hand on his shoulder. They halted when they spotted Calli, staring at her in shock and alarm.
The Dog Master Page 39
