I howled again, and a third time. And as I drew breath an answering howl floated across the distance of the night from somewhere far off on the flank of the mountain.
The damsels bleated and fled in great leaps, turning to deer in the midst of their leaping. Willow ware lay scattered. I sat still, my passion for white hind and deer women forgotten—that eerie sound seemed still to drift in the darkened air.
“An echo?” Kor whispered.
I howled again, not so strongly this time—my voice quavered. But the answer came across the night promptly. A chill, thin wail the color of moonlight, a sound that reminded me of the call of the wandering wild geese, that sang of the same yearnings. Longings such as I felt when I told the tales of Sakeema.… But strength was in this voice, and a warning.
Urgency in his touch, Kor began to undo my bonds. “No,” I protested.
“Trust yourself more, Dan.” He drew away the thongs from my legs, started untying those on my wrists. “Something moves in the night. You may need the use of your limbs.”
Something that called to me and frightened me. At the same time I felt a reckless daring, perhaps because I was already disgraced by my own passions, with not much pride left to lose.… At the reaches of the firelight something stirred. Eyes shone green, regarding us, unblinking. Kor’s hands stopped in their movements as he stared.
“Come closer, wild brother,” I softly invited. “We cannot see you.”
A few slow paces nearer the fire … Kingly head lifted to catch our scent on the air. Power, all was power, the great bone of legs and feet, the thick, coarse pelt, the mighty jaws—but beauty too, the smooth brow, short ears, sheen of fur in the firelight, and all that was wild and lonesome in the steady gaze of shadowed eyes.
“A wolf?” Kor breathed, dumbfounded.
I could not believe it either. No wolf had been seen by anyone of my tribe since my grandfather’s time, and few then. Bring back the wolves of wonder.… I felt a surge of surpassing gratitude. I was blessed, even if our visitor should rend me apart in the next moment.
“Perhaps it is the very last one,” murmured Kor.
The wolf whined and shifted its weight from side to side, plainly uncomfortable in the presence of our small fire. The whites showed around its dark eyes, giving it a fearsome look, for a frightened beast is more dangerous than a calm one. Still, it neither attacked nor retreated, but looked from Kor to me in some sort of expectation.
Orange moonlight had touched me—I can explain my boldness no other way. I whimpered at the wolf in greeting, whined aloud, and it lifted its ears, turning its head toward me in eager interest. I wriggled my hands free of their remaining bonds and started toward the wolf, on all fours, soft sounds in my throat.
“Dannoc,” Kor called after me, a low, tense call, “what are you doing?”
“There is a human look about his eyes,” I said, not raising my voice, not looking back at him. “Perhaps he needs but a touch to be one of us.” If the deer had human forms, some of them, why not this visitor?
“How can you tell? Perhaps all wolves have such speaking eyes. We have never seen another.”
The wolf trembled and gathered itself into a crouch as I approached, but held its ground. Nearly on my belly, reaching from a distance, I eased my hand toward the tips of the thick fur on its neck. An instant, a finger’s span more, and I would touch.… But before my fingertips met fur, the wolf flashed away into the darkness. I got up slowly, brushing dirt and wood duff off myself. Kor stood facing the way the wolf had gone, a keen look in his eyes, sickness forgotten.
“He is very old,” he said.
I nodded. I, too, had seen the white hairs about the wolf’s mouth and muzzle. The rest of the wolf’s fur was of a graysheen color, subtle and shimmering. I felt suddenly immensely tired, and sagged back to the ground.
“Are you all right?” asked Kor.
“Yes,” I mumbled, though in fact I was not sure. “Go back to your bed, go to sleep.”
“You go to sleep. I have slept all day.”
“You are feeling better?”
“Feeble yet, but well enough to keep a watch.” He sat down by the fire, his back to a stone. “Go to sleep, Dan.”
“But … you have not eaten.…”
I would have said more, but I was already sleeping, and as I wished to think that he was well, I dreamed that I saw him eat. I slept deeply, but sometime in the mid of night I was roused by the sound of Kor’s voice.
“Welcome, wild brother,” he was saying. “Stay, rest yourself, be easy. It is not on your account that I am keeping guard. It’s for the sake of yon half-naked blunder-head and his fondness for deerflesh.”
Insulted, I stirred drowsily, opened my eyes, and blinked them clear. Kor was still sitting at the fire, and on the far side of it, well back in the shadows but facing him, sat the wolf.
In the morning, when Birc came back, the wolf was lying at the roots of the nearest pine.
Birc ran in so swiftly, so silently, deerlike, that we were hardly aware of him before he stood before us. Glistening with sweat all over, as if he had done a long run—and in fact I think he had been running since the day before, for our sakes. Nor had he yet seen the hinds, his companions, or yet heard of the wolf. He stopped short when he scented and saw it, all atremble, so that I expected him to be a hart, and bleat and flee. But he did not. Since I had known him, Birc had always owned a peculiar sort of courage: he quaked, but he stood fast. Even in his human days as Kor’s guardsman he had been that way.
The wolf scarcely looked up at him. I dragged myself out of sleep and sat up groggily. But Kor strode over to Birc with reasonable steadiness and gave him once again the embrace of a king.
“I think it is time we were going,” Kor said, and Birc nodded.
Chapter Five
I gathered the snares, brought back pika aplenty, walked to within a cautious distance of the wolf, and offered it three brace, leaving them on the ground. With dignity the wolf took them, carried them off one by one, then tore them apart and gulped them in a moment’s time.
It took us far more time to find the horses, for they had strayed a goodly distance—or perhaps they had scented wolf and fled. Talu snorted at even the ghost of wolf smell about me, and it required my sternest command to make her stand still and let herself be approached. That, and an offering of cooked meat. We would never have caught her and Sora if the wolf had come with us, but it had melted away into the spruces somewhere. Even so, the sun stood high before we were on our way.
Kor sat straight on Sora as we rode. I glanced at him from time to time, for he had eaten nothing, and the shell-tan skin of his face had gone a shade paler. But water, at least, he had taken, and if he did not speak, his was a strong silence. His eyes, when he caught me looking at him, dared me to pity him.
The pass took us above the tree line, over the highmountain meadow. All the plants grow small and low there, but very thick, delightful in the ways they nestle together. In summertime that place would have been aflutter with tiny blue and yellow flowers and butterflies of the same hues. But in the mountaintop’s early autumn every small leaf had turned red or purple or yellow, achingly bright in the strong mountain sunlight. And the sky a deeper, purer blue than any flower, and the eversnow blazing white—even the gray crags of the alps shone. There was nowhere I could look without a sweet pain. Not even at Kor. He caught my glance, answered it with a slow smile—he felt it, too.
A flash of living white in the distance. The fair white hind, Birc’s mate, leaped off toward the eversnow. I saluted her.
But I saw no black eagles, nor any antelope. Great catamounts once lived in the crags, I had been told, but they had been many years gone, since before my grandfather’s time.
We kept the horses to the walk, sparing them in the thin air, and after halfday we ourselves got down and walked beside them for a while. We camped early for Kor’s sake, and ate what the deer folk had given us, and Kor ate cold pika meat. There was no
t even a stone for shelter. We kept watch by turns—for what, we were not sure, but we felt very exposed on that open, windy place.
Sheep roamed the crags. They are wary, keeping to the open rock where they can see whatever comes. I could never have gotten near one in daylight, but in the darkness before dawn I crept to the place where they huddled in the chill mountain night. And when the first one stood up at daybreak, I killed it cleanly. So there was meat for Kor and me, and offal for the horses, and we left a portion behind us, lying on the ground, in case a newfound friend should travel that way.
Walking, panting in the thin air, resting often, we crossed the top of the pass to Kor’s side of the great mountains, and he lifted his head, looking homeward.
Our path lay downward now. We reached the tree line the next day and breathed more easily. Kor seemed well and strong by then. We slept amid stunted spruces, some of them bent to the ground and crawling along the slope from the blast of winter wind.
The next morning the horses were missing.
“Ungrateful mares,” Kor grumbled.
“Perhaps the wolf is somewhere about,” I said, scanning the mountainside, more wistful than believing.
“I hope it has eaten horseflesh, then. Pigheaded animals. Can you track them, Dan?”
I tried. The terrain was rocky, the going rough. After an hour in which my mood soured to match Kor’s, we sighted Sora’s yellow hide near a slide of scree. She was pawing for vipers and rockchucks. But we could not see Talu with her, and the trail seemed to lead the other way. Kor went to get Sora, picking his way over boulders, and I followed Talu’s traces around a shoulder of the mountain.
I went silently—it is the custom of the Red Hart to go silently always. Even bisonhide boots need not make noise. So when I heard the clatter of pebble on rock, heavy footfalls on a ledge above me where no horse could have climbed, I froze in the shadow of the crags, sure I had not been heard, and watched as a file of Cragsmen trudged down past me. Two, three, twice three, the hulking, bare stone-colored backs and shoulders loomed over me and passed on, heads stooped and riding those shoulders like mossy rounds of stone. They carried, as always, their massive clubs, and they were taking a twisting way downmountain, a way that might take them to the Blackstone Path, to—
Kor!
Standing exposed as he was near a slope of talus, waiting for me, and they would see him at once if they came anywhere near him. In no way could I reach him in time to warn him—I knew that even as I ran. And certainly I could not shout, for the Cragsmen might not yet be aware of either of us. But I was terrified for his sake, as frightened as a stripling once was with his mother gone, no one knew how or where, and his father good as gone, and I too old to weep, or so I thought.… I was shouting in my mind. Kor! There was nothing in me but panic and his name. Kor! Kor! Danger!
Dan! he answered me.
I heard it as plainly as if he had called aloud. So taken aback was I that I staggered and nearly fell, nearly went sliding down a snow gully into the arms of air.
Dan! What is it? Are you all right?
Too stunned to answer him in like wise, to tell him anything of peril or Cragsmen, I made no reply. But I could tell direction and distance by his soundless speaking, just as I could have by a shout. He was not where I had left him, but out of danger, off to one side and beyond a spine of rock. I turned toward him. In a few moments we met. Leading both our horses, he stood staring at me—by the looks of him, confounded. His mouth was moving without words, his eyes wide.
“You hailed me,” he managed to say. “Inside my mind.”
I nodded. I did not want to speak of what had happened—it harrowed me, thinking back on it, as much as the Cragsmen had. Kor was brave. He had my fear to bear as well as his own. Knowing that, I swallowed the terror that blocked my throat.
“You answered me,” I said hoarsely.
“For a certainty! How could I help it? You took hold of me like a flood tide.” A wry smile. “Why not? You always have.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Don’t be! Try it again.”
Violently I shook my head. I could not venture it ever again, or so I thought. It had been a happening too eerie, too—inward. Kor felt my fear and did not press me.
“What prompted you?” he asked instead.
“Cragsmen.” I gestured vaguely, not yet capable of explaining much further. “I thought certainly they would see you on that scree.”
“Talu was hunting in the spruces beyond Sora. After I had caught the worthless pair of them I went after you.”
We led our wayward mares back to the faint track that traversed the pass, found our campsite, and loaded the gear. It was quarterday before we mounted and set off westward again.
Downward through twisted spruce and blue pine, winding around crags and rocky ribs, all in silence, for we had much on our minds. But when we came to a point that overlooked the spires of the trees, Kor stopped to gaze, his eyes sparkling. “We are coming near my country,” he said.
In fact we had much farther to go, but the land had changed so that he felt near to home. Truly he was on his own side of the mountains again: cascades, cataracts, torrents everywhere, rushing like wind and singing and chiming like voices and clay bells, the many mountain waters, some of them mighty, some as fine as spiderweb, rippling down in shining strands from the high icefields, down over rocks and through forest to feed the Otter River far below and flow with the river to the sea. No arid plains in the distance here, no yellow pines and grassy parks. Instead there stood below us great forests of fir, dense, dripping with moss—the cataracts turned even the gray rock green with fern and moss. Farther down, near the rocky headland where Kor had his Holding, salt mists did the same. I saw him lift his head as he gazed, and his nostrils flared as if to scent the sea air, many days journey away—
Cragsmen struck at us from behind.
We should have been watching for them, listening for them, but there had been too much to think of, the day had thrown us off balance. And I, for one, thought we had outdistanced them, we with our horses. I had forgotten how long of leg Cragsmen can be, and tireless.… Only a scrape of stone, very close, warned me, and I swung around just in time to duck the blackwood club. And Alar was out of her scabbard as if of her own will, up and meeting the downcrushing arm before I had time even to shout.
“Kor!” Greenish blood splattered down on me. Club and giant hand fell with a thud by Talu’s hooves.
Korridun was already embattled, wielding his sword faster than I could follow.
“By Sedna’s bones, Dan, it is Ytan!”
With the Cragsmen, a yellow-braided, bare-chested Red Hart warrior, taller than most men, yet looking small amidst the giants. Still quite powerful enough to strike fear: Ytan, my brother demon-possessed. Blue eyes met mine, and he grinned, a warmthless grimace like that of a skull. He raised his bow, the bolt already nocked to the string.
“Aaa!” I shouted, a wordless cry. I knew Ytan’s skill. In a moment I would be wearing his arrow—
From somewhere close at hand a snarling sounded, a roar that rose above the roar of cataracts, and I saw a graysheen flash. The wolf flung itself down from the yet higher rocks, landing like a cat on Ytan’s back and shoulders, tearing at his neck with deadly jaws. Ytan’s arrow and bow dropped from his hands as he reached up to fend off teeth and claws.
“Get to him, Kor, and slit him open! I—can’t.…”
Ytan was yet my brother, for all that a devourer held him in thrall. I could not kill him. Kor would have to do it.
“There is a—large lout—in my way, Dan.”
He was panting. I risked a glance and saw the enormous granite-gray foe who faced him. The hulks kept coming at us in spite of sword wounds and lopped hands, and there were a number of them, more than the six I had seen, all the stone colors. I faced one of dull red. He was old, his hair like so much frost on his boulder of a head, and he was a wily fighter. There was no thought in me, any longer, of Y
tan. It was all I could do, even with the sword, to keep the Cragsmen from forcing me back. Our enemies had the advantage of height, their own great height plus a stance on the rocks. And behind us lay nothing but a sheer drop onto fir spires.
I saw Kor take a whistling blow that glanced off the side of his face. “Alar!” I cried crazily. “Zaneb!”
The swords were already doing all they could. But like an echo of my words there came an uncouth sound, a blast as of a bison horn strongly blown, and a great stag leaped over the rocks and rammed his antlers into a slate-blue chest. At his heels came two more nearly as mighty. The Cragsmen saw them and shrank from them, unnerved by the strangeness of it, I think, for Cragsmen are no cowards when it comes to blows. But that the deer of the forest should take battle against them, and in company with a wolf …
Ytan had torn the wolf off his shoulders at last, hurled it onto the rocks. Clubs struck—but it was quick, a shining flash, they had not yet hit it—
“Forward!” I bellowed, and Talu took me straight up the rocks with a surge. She could not wait to sink her fangs into the nearest Cragsman’s throat. The fellow toppled before her like a downed tree. I made for another, sword upraised and the green-tinged blood dripping off it and rattling on the stones.
“Dan, you hotheaded fool!” I heard Kor cursing behind me. Then he was beside me, Sora bearing down on every foe before her, their blood streaking her yellow hide before it fell away in shards. Zaneb darted, a deadly raptor to meet—Ytan, the one who stood before him was Ytan.…
Battle fire burning in me, I shouted, “Take him, Kor!”
But the sword hovered by Kor’s head. A moment of hesitation, and Ytan scrambled away, slipped into forest and vanished, leaving his bow behind him. The Cragsmen were unmanned, and fled in like wise. Three they left behind them, dead or groaning. Stags bounded after them, harrying their backs. Battle clamor echoed away into silence.
I sat, my sword dangling from my lowered hand, staring at Kor.
“You could have had him,” I said, for I sensed even then that killing Ytan would have saved a stoup’s worth of trouble and peril later on. “Why did you let him go?”
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