She looked at the wolf on the floor before her and grunted. Then she spoke, in a tongue no longer known to any of its original speakers’ modern descendants. “Well, pup? Why have you come? ”
The wolf rolled over, standing on its three good legs, its fourth bent beneath it, and also shifted forms, becoming a middle-aged Native American man, thin and weak, wearing only a loincloth. He spoke in the ancient language of the bear-woman. “Most Ancient of Bears, ” he said, bowing, “I beg you: The Heartsplinter is free. ”
The bear-woman grunted, shaking her large head. “I have had bad dreams. I am not surprised. ” She closed her eyes and seemed to sigh, a deep grumbling sound. “Has the time come? ” She nodded. “I shall use the last of my ten thousand years, and then sleep the Eternal Winter. ”
She leaned forward, gripping the man’s mangled leg in her two large hands. She bent her head over his wound and began to lick it with her coarse tongue. The sight would have been odd had she been in bear form; it was odder still in her human form. As she scraped her tongue across the red slash marks—wounds caused by sharp claws—they began to heal. The scars remained prominent, but the wound was gone. Even the muscles and tendons of the leg grew strong, restored to health.
The Garou watched this with a look of wonder and awe on his face. He had not asked this boon of her; she had given it unasked and with no more bother than a mother tending to a child.
The Most Ancient of Bears rose up, muscles rippling, and walked down the passage through which the wolf had come. The Garou, still limping on his healed but tender leg, followed her. As they came out of the cave, the woman seemed not to feel the biting wind, which cut through the man’s skin like claws. He shivered and watched as the woman sniffed the air with her large nostrils, her sense of smell strong in human form. The Garou saw her fingers moving, as if counting, and knew that she used her spirit gifts.
The bear-woman turned her head to the south, away from the direction the wolf had come. “It has already moved past us. You must rouse your people. What of your packmates? ”
“Gone, " the Garou said, head hung low, a sound of despair in his voice. “All the banetenders of the North Eire slain. ”
The bear-woman nodded, accepting this news with disappointment but no surprise. “I will catch it and hold it as long as I can. You must bring as many of your kind as you can. My kind are scattered and broken. This fight will be yours. ”
She fell forward, her hands outspread, her form growing as she fell. Two huge paws hit the ground, and she shook her entire giant, furred bulk, her snout upraised to the night sky, as if nodding to the stars. A low grumble tumbled from her throat, a prayer to the Powers, becoming a mighty roar as she leapt away from the cave and vaulted across the snow unimaginably faster than a creature her size should have be able to move.
The Garou watched her go. When he could no longer see her, he finally shifted back to wolf form, protected again from the wind by his fur. His leg was greatly improved, but he still could not put his full weight on it. He walked slowly toward the south, following the bear’s trail, testing his legs to regain his rhythm. When he was sure that he could handle it, he broke into a run, heading south to seek his own kind.
A twig snapped in the distance. Evan Heals-the-Past, his bow half drawn, darted his eyes in the sounds direction, looking for any sign of motion. The woods were still. He opened his mouth and made a strange, twittering sound. Far off to his left, a similar twitter answered him. Evan bent down low and moved slowly forward, following the faint tracks through the underbrush. He had taken only three steps when the buck broke and ran from the thick brush, suddenly visible, its body crashing through branches.
Evan stood, drew his bow to full, and aimed at the vanishing deer. He loosed the arrow and heard the beast crash to the forest floor, thrashing. He could no longer see it through the autumn leaves, but its sound was unmistakable. He ran forward, his legs transforming from human feet to wolf paws, his torso dropping and his front hands—now also paws—hitting the ground at a run. His bow vanished into an ephemeral haze, becoming an intangible thing of spirit, ready to reappear when he again shifted forms.
Evan, now a wolf, came upon the dying deer. They locked eyes, the deer’s stare imparting an ineffable, ancient message. Evan leapt forward and tore the deer’s throat out with his jaws. He then reared his head back and howled.
Answering howls broke from the woods to the left and right, growing louder as Evan’s fellow Garou approached. Evan licked at the steaming blood coming from the open throat, and grumbled gestures of thanks to the departing spirit. He bent his whole body before the beast, looking almost as if he prayed beside an altar of sacrificial flesh.
Two Garou broke through the foliage from different directions at nearly the same moment, a raven-haired Native American man and woman, both wearing jeans and brown leather jackets decorated with medicine wheels. They watched Evan, waiting for a sign. He let out a snuffling sound and raised his head, stepping away from the kill. The two Garou stepped forward. The man bent down while the woman lifted the carcass onto his broad shoulders. Once the weight was well distributed, the man nodded and began walking east. The woman playfully rubbed the fur on Evan’s shoulders.
“Good job, ” she said. “Maybe you aren’t so white after all. ”
Evan shifted into human form, a young, dark-haired Caucasian man, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and hiking boots. He smiled as he moved to follow behind his departing kill. “It’s not about skin, Quiet Storm. It’s about spirit. ”
Quiet Storm said nothing, but nodded skeptically, smiling. She followed behind him.
The colors of fall foliage burned brightly in the orange light of the setting sun. Already, many leaves had fallen, coating the forest floor in places, making it very hard to move silently through the woods. That had been part of the challenge. Modem humans had little idea of how to walk silently through the dried leaves littering the forest floor. A true hunter—a true Wendigo Garou— could move unheard and hunt unseen in such an environment. Evan had done so with ease. He had proven himself to his new friends among the Winter Wolf Sept.
Evan was not a typical Wendigo; his Native American blood was thin, diluted many generations ago. As far as he could tell, he was what they would call one-thirty-second Indian. By United States government rules, you had to be one-eighth to be considered full blood. Anything more than one-sixteenth and even most Native Americans thought you were a pretender. But it wasn’t his Native credentials that truly mattered—it was his Garou blood, and that had bred true.
The Garou “gene” was considered recessive, so far as any Garou bothered to think in terms of modern DNA and genealogy. It could skip many generations before breeding a true Garou. Evan’s family hadn’t been considered Kinfolk—close breeding stock—for generations; he was one of the many lost bloodlines of Garou. Common among European tribes, especially after the immigrant diaspora to America, but not so common among the Wendigo, whose diehard tribal ways meant that most breeding was kept well within known families of human Native tribes or wolf packs.
It wasn’t easy for those who discovered their heritage without the support of a Garou community. When Evan underwent his First Change, the Wendigo weren’t there to aid him. Instead, the Black Spiral Dancers showed up, following a prophecy about him. By happenstance—or fate—Evan literally bumped into King Albrecht (then “Lord” Albrecht), and the resulting quest not only revealed a piece of Evan’s identity but helped Albrecht redeem himself from the depression of his exile. Since then, they’d been packmates, along with Mari Cabrah, who had also been drawn into Evan’s Legacy Rite.
“So, Snow Skin, ” Quiet Storm said with a smirk as she caught up with Evan and walked beside him. Her nickname for him wasn’t exactly fair, considering that Evan’s complexion was actually slightly darker than the average white’s. “When’s King Albrecht going to come up here? Isn’t he interested in the Wendigo? ”
“You know he is, ” Evan said. “But he’s g
ot tribal business in Russia. He’ll be back by the end of the month. ”
“Uh, huh. So, Russia takes precedence over Canada r’
“C’mon, ” Evan said as he shook his head, still smiling, “you know as well as I do that Aurak Moondancer’s invitation didn’t come until after Albrecht had already accepted Queen Tvarivich’s. ”
“So why’s your other packmate not here? Mari? ” “Doesn't anybody tell anybody anything around here? I explained all this when I arrived. But you were out staring at your reflection in a still pond somewhere, I suppose. ” Quiet Storm’s smile grew wider, but she didn’t look at Evan, keeping her gaze on the path ahead of them. “She’s back in New York, doing a favor for the Silver River Pack. Something to do with a factory in Jersey, someplace pumping out toxins. ”
“Silver River Pack? Isn’t John North Wind’s Son one of them? He should be here, too! It’s not everyday you get a Wendigo moot with septs from all over the East. And it’s not every tribal get-together where we invite non-Wendigo like your packmates. ”
“They’ll come when they can, Quiet Storm. And John’s first duty is to his pack, as you well know. "
“Well, I suppose. You're here, at least. ”
“Thanks for the glowing endorsement. ”
Quiet Storm looked at Evan, examining him before speaking again. “Is it true what they say about you? ” “I don’t know, ” Evan said, looking at Quiet Storm with raised eyebrows. “What are they saying about me? ” “That you’re favored by the ancestors. They say the ancestors revealed the past to you during your Rite of Passage and marked you for a future quest. ”
Evan shook his head in exasperation. “They sure say a lot of things. I don’t know about that kind of stuff. Yes, the ancestors did show me a vision of the past during my first rite, and clued me in about healing the rift between Garou tribes, the debt of blood between our kinds. But I don’t know anything about a future quest. ” “Don’t the ancestors speak to you, and tell you what is to come? ”
“No. I haven’t seen or heard from them since that rite. I know lots of Wendigo and half-moons who have council with the ancestors, but I don’t. They don’t seem to listen to me. Maybe it’s my white skin. ”
“Well, for someone they don’t talk to, they sure talk about you. Every elder knows who you are. They all think you’re destined for something. Otherwise, why would you, just a kid when you had your rite, have become packmates with the king of the Silver Fangs? I think that’s why your skin’s white—to show the spirits your link to the pure-bred Fangs. ”
“That’s quite a theory there. But my fur’s not white. It’s gray. ”
“Aw, you’re getting literal. The spirits don’t think that way. ”
They came into a large meadow through which a small stream meandered in the deepening twilight. The Native man who carried the deer bent down to drink, cupping water in his palm and bringing it to his mouth.
Evan joined him. “Thanks for offering to carry my kill, Flint Knife, but I can take the load the rest of the way. ”
“No, ” Flint Knife said. “I keep my word. I said that if you could actually get a kill out here, I’d carry it all the way back in human form. I keep my end of the bargain. "
“I’m not saying otherwise. I just want you to know that I don’t hold you to it. You’ve proved your honor. ”
“I’ll prove it when I walk into the village carrying the deer. ” He stood up, grunting. It was an awfully long way to walk with a heavy deer carcass on your shoulders. If he was in the stronger “cave man” form, it wouldn’t be such a hardship, but human form was a true challenge, even for someone as muscled and hardened as Flint Knife.
As Flint Knife adjusted the carcass for the next leg of the journey, he froze, surprised, and squinted downstream. “There’s somebody there, ” he said.
Evan followed his gaze and saw a shape, lying half in, half out of the stream. “It’s a wolf! ”
Evan ran over to the wolf and could see its thin ribs rising and falling slowly. Its eyes were closed, its snout almost submerged in the stream, only the tip of its nostrils above water. The wolf’s hindquarters bore a strange glyph, burned into the fur. This was no mere wolf, but a Garou.
Quiet Storm appeared by Evan’s side, and bent down—still in human form—to sniff the strange wolf.
"I don’t know him, ” she said. “But he’s got old blood dried in his fur. Not all of it his. ”
"I don’t see any open wounds, ” Evan said. “A few scars, but nothing that would knock him out. He must have dropped from exhaustion. ”
He helped Quiet Storm to pull the wolf from the water, dragging him fully onto the shore. The wolf’s eyes fluttered open and he blinked at them, confused. He weakly tried to stand, but collapsed, whimpering.
“We should get him back to the village, to a healer, ” Quiet Storm said, looking at the wolf with pity.
“All right, ” Evan said. “I’ll carry him. ” His form shifted, growing larger, uglier, muscles rippling on his now-broad, brutish frame. He picked up the wolf and settled him on his shoulders, similar to the way Flint Knife carried the deer, and then stood up, looking to Flint Knife. “Look, this guy’s hurt. We shouldn’t waste time. Why don't you switch to a stronger form, so we can move faster? ”
“No, ” Flint Knife said, his face a mask of expressionless stoicism. “If I fail to keep up, just leave me behind. I’ll stick to my promise. ”
“But maybe this guy was attacked by something, ” Quiet Storm said. “It could still be near. We can’t risk splitting up. ”
“If he was attacked, we’d know it, ” Flint Knife said. “Just go. I’ll be behind you. ”
Evan shrugged and began jogging. Quiet Storm ran ahead of him, leading the way back to the village.
• • •
A howl of pain escaped from the old weather-beaten, aluminum trailer. Evan grimaced, sitting outside the mobile home on a folding deck chair, waiting for word of his patient’s condition. Quiet Storm paced nearby, nervous. She looked up at the sounds of people greeting someone down the road, and saw Flint Knife finally enter the ramshackle village, huffing and puffing. He dropped to his knees and let go of the deer carcass, holding a fist up in triumph. Evan smiled.
Fellow Wendigo and Kinfolk gathered around him, slapping him on the shoulders or punching his arms, congratulating him. A small group took the deer carcass away to be gutted and prepared for dinner. The Wendigo turned toward Evan and nodded at him, a stoic but heartfelt expression of praise for his catch. Evan couldn’t help grinning wider.
The trailer door opened with a rattling creak and Aurak Moondancer motioned Evan inside. He got up and Quiet Storm followed quickly behind him, even though she hadn’t been directly invited.
Inside the dark, incense-fogged room, an old woman leaned over a bed where the wolf lay on his side, eyes open and head rolling in delirium. The woman waved an eagle feather over him, creating eddies of incense, and mumbled in a Native tongue.
“He is from the North, ” Aurak said. The old man sat down on a wooden chair, watching the wolf. Aurak’s long white hair descended almost to his waist, spread out over his buckskin shirt. Only his shoes were modem, some brand of Nike rip-offs. “An Uktena. His wounds are Wyrm tainted. The worst of them on his leg was healed by spirit gifts, but his soul rots from an unseen poison. The thing that did this is unknown to me. ”
“Will he be okay? ” Evan asked, standing near Aurak. Quiet Storm moved past him to get a closer look at the wolf.
“I cannot say, " the old woman said. “He is tired. I do not know if he has the strength to live. I do what I can. "
The wolf suddenly harked and shifted forms into human shape. He was a Native man, middle-aged, his black hair streaked with white. He wore nothing but a loin cloth. His hand shot out and grabbed Quiet Storm’s wrist. He looked at her with intensity, his saliva frothing as he spoke.
“Banetenders! ” he said in English. “Cries-at-Sun-down, banetender. ” He gestured
to himself. “I am the last. ”
Aurak stood up. “What wounded you? How did you travel here? ”
“It escaped. We guarded it. That was our duty, from ancient days. In secret, to watch the cage. ” Cries-at-Sun-down closed his eyes tightly, as if trying to shut out the light of a memory. “It killed them all. The Red Star, low in the sky. The bane broke its bonds. It is free! ”
“What is it? ” Aurak said. “What is free? ”
Cries-at-Sundown moaned in anguish, as if the enormity of events were too much for him to bear. “The Talon! The Fifth Talon! ” His eyes rolled manically, as if seeking something that was not there. “I am the last. It killed them all. None can bind it again. ”
Aurak frowned, greatly disturbed. He sat back down, letting out a tired breath.
“She goes to fight it. She gives us time, time to gather. Little Brother must not fight alone.... ”
“She? ” Evan said. “Who is she? ” Cries-at-Sundown stared at Evan, puzzled. “Who...? ”
“He is Evan Heals-the-Past, a Wendigo, ” Aurak said. Cries-at-Sundown’s eyes opened wide. “The Heartsplinter! It comes for you! It... ’’He began to cough, rolling on the bed in pain. The old woman chanted loudly, waving her hands in the air. The coughing subsided, but Cries-at-Sundown was too exhausted to continue speaking, and passed quickly back into deep sleep.
Aurak stood up and left the small trailer, motioning to Evan and Quiet Storm to follow him. He picked up his walking stick from where he had leaned it against the side of the trailer and began to draw circles in the dust, thinking to himself. Evan and Quiet Storm stood quietly, waiting for him to speak. Finally, he raised his head and looked at them.
World of Darkness - [Time of Judgment 02] - The Last Battle Page 7
