by R. Lee Smith
And that surprised him, because there was greater cause to run a Full Hunt now than merely to win Kruin’s respect. Over the course of the terrible summer and dying-time of autumn, many young lycan had been sent to High Pack, ostensibly as tribute to their lord, to renew oath-bonds and strengthen the blood of High Pack, while easing the burden of their chiefs by removing inexperienced hunters before the winter grew too harsh. Kruin welcomed them, whatever the reason. More mouths were a hardship now, but they would all be hunters in time, and more than that, among the tributes had been five young females, sorely needed in a pack still scarred by the Upheaval.
Alorak had already taken one for his mate: Acala, daughter of the chief of Thousand Falls, a proud and promising huntress. Henkel, a low wolf risen to considerable rank in recognition of his courage in the war against Mab and her Men of Earth, had wooed and won another: Kiyu of Sliver Moon, quick-witted and sure-footed, a fine bitch. The rest remained unjoined, exercising their new right of choice. And trying, Kruin suspected, to catch his unmated second’s eye. And perhaps the other males in his pack were waiting also, to see if Nakaroth really was as indifferent as he seemed before courting them more aggressively.
Kruin hoped this curious unspoken staredown would end soon. Winter was a good time to make mate-matches. Long cold nights curled together for warmth, hunting together, starving together, sharing meat and sharing speech…it was not an easy time, but ice made a far better bond than the unexpected fires of Heat. Although even that would be a good thing, bringing much needed new life to High Pack.
But before there were cubs, Kruin must feed their mothers. While skinny birds struck down with stone-throwers and sleeping tumblers scratched out of their winter dens might keep life in a lycan’s body, a tusker would fill the bellies of the entire pack. It was a risk to take so many untried hunters against such aggressive prey, but the reward proved too tempting on an empty stomach. Kruin stood, raised a hand to signal his hunters, and as if he had summoned it with the gesture, the howl pierced the air.
Kruin’s first reaction was none at all. He had sent Sakros and Burgash out before him, each with a small number of low wolves to heel them. Sakros had given the blood-howl some time ago, so there would be meat of a kind waiting back at High Rock, but he’d heard nothing from Burgash. Until now.
No greeting call, this. No lone wolf entering High Pack’s hunting grounds or traveling chieftain bringing kin as tribute. And no cry of victory over a fallen tusker. Kruin listened, sifting through the subtle nuance in the cry as humans sift through sand for gold, and heard threads of threat. Burgash was apt to see danger in shadows of late. His cub had survived half a year and grown fat and strong at Ararro’s breast, yet winter had been the unmaking of many a strong cub. Kruin had lost many cubs. Burgash’s caution could be forgiven.
So he thought, but as the howl rose and fell, its song spelled out a most particular threat, one that dashed thoughts of winter, tuskers and cubs from Kruin’s mind.
There were humans in the Wyvern’s Wood.
Of course, there were several settlements scattered throughout his Land, but none of them were so near to the Valley. High Pack seldom saw humans at all, and those that did share his territory did so in uneasy truce. They did not interfere with the lycan, and the lycan did not interfere with them. The few unwise skirmishes between them had always ended badly enough for the humans as to keep them in their walled dens. They should not be here.
“Taryn?” Alorak murmured, his ears pricking with interest. At his side, Acala’s own ears went flat. She had not been in High Pack in Taryn’s time, but she had surely heard of Alorak’s challenge to win her and did not relish confronting such a rival with her own mate-bond so young.
Kruin did not answer his son, did not show the foolish leap of emotion this possibility first provoked in him. He knew better. It would not be a threat-howl Burgash sent up if Taryn MacTavish, his once-mate, were visiting.
But the war had brought many of Taryn’s kind to Arcadia. Some may indeed have escaped judgment in the Valley of Hoof and Horn to come here. Seeking refuge, perhaps. Or seeking vengeance. And if those humans had survived, so might their weapons of gun.
“Quietly,” Kruin growled and went as if to war.
A last howl split the air as Kruin and his hunters ran. More than mere threat now. Burgash was under attack.
But when Kruin reached Burgash and looked upon the enemy, all the fire for battle turned at once to confusion.
The first thing he saw was that there were three of them, an unlikely number for a war party, and they had neither bows nor spears, which made them equally unlikely hunters. On closer inspection, he took note of their human coverings—too thin for winter, too loose for their small frames, unarmored, unwashed, torn. A cautious sniff confirmed what his eyes further suggested—all three were female. Kruin did not know all there was to know of humans, but he knew those in his Land rarely let their females pass beyond their unnatural wooden caves. These had wandered far from their own settlement and their leaving could not have gone unnoticed, but were they lost or fled?
“Careful,” Burgash growled when Kruin moved forward. “Their chief is armed.”
Armed. The foremost of them indeed held the stump of a metal knife raised high in one hand, but the edge was not even as long as the claw on his littlest finger.
There again, Taryn had once killed a wyvern with only a dried branch and she, well-gone with cub at the time. Remembering that, Kruin looked again at this human and saw she did not jab her pitiful weapon out as a panicked human might do, but held it raised and close, ready to slash. Weakness put a tremble in her arm, but her grip was sound and her eyes held a killing look. He saw no hatred, no fear, only an exhausted determination. She had to know she and her broken blade could not defeat him, but she held her ground and stood between him and the other humans, making it known without words that she would attack him if he came nearer and she would kill him if she could.
She couldn’t…but she might give him a good scar if he gave her the chance. And he might be proud to wear it. Her eyes were the eyes of a lycan, not in their color, which was human-dull, but in the life that lit them. He was suddenly and unreasoningly convinced that if she spoke her name, he would know it, that he had heard it already in the song of Endless.
Behind her, one of the others found a tree trunk and sagged down its rough hide to sit. Her breath was shallow, her arm clutched close and wrapped in bloody cloth. A small human, young and pretty, despite the mud and the strain of travel. Fever and pain had put color in her cheek and a gleam in her dark eyes, but she was scarcely conscious.
That he had come to think of humans as pretty briefly distracted him. He thought of Taryn, of secret touches face to face in the heady summer night, and then he shut those memories away.
The third human huddled behind her chief, looking at the lycan in terror. She would be weeping if she had more strength. As it was, she only shook, breathing too hard and too fast. She was the smallest of the group; her trembling made him think of spiderwebs fluttering in the breeze, fragile strands bound mostly to one another, so that even a wayward leaf could tear the whole thing away. She hardly seemed more than a child, even were it not for the terrible gauntness of her little body.
They were all so young to be so thin.
Kruin returned his gaze to their chief, considering his options. Her shivering became more apparent as they stared each other down, although she kept her broken blade raised and ready. No, they were no threat to him or to any lycan, but he found himself strangely reluctant to leave them as they were.
“Just kill us if you’re going to kill us,” the sick one said suddenly. “I’m tired.”
Their chief’s eyes fluttered, her expression turning briefly anguished. Her arm shook. She raised it higher, showing her teeth with fierce resolve even as her strength visibly waned.
“I kill nothing without cause,” Kruin said.
“Yeah? Tell your people to back off, then,”
their chief said.
Kruin flicked his claws and his pack retreated slightly. Very slightly. Kruin took note of the equally slight lowering of the human’s little blade, but his thoughts were not on her weapon, only her words.
They were human words, but strangely uttered, not in the way of the Men who dwelled in his land, not even in the coarse way of the Men who sometimes invaded from the mountains. Yet he had heard their like before. She was Earth-born.
“Were you sent?” Kruin asked cautiously and listened for Taryn’s name.
He saw only confusion and a furious amusement in their chief.
“Sent?” she echoed. “Would we come here looking like this on purpose?”
Defiance, even in her incredulity. Starving, outnumbered, half-gone with cold, she defied him.
“What is it you want?” Kruin asked.
Her knife lowered a little more. “Nothing,” she said. “Just let us pass through.”
Through the Wyvern’s Wood with one broken knife between them? Kruin sensed glances and heard growls. He saw black at his side as Nakaroth stepped closer.
Her knife came back up. “Back off, I said!”
“Or?” Nakaroth invited.
The human’s chin raised, but not in submission. “Try me and see.”
Nakaroth eyed that bare span of throat with an attentiveness Kruin decided he didn’t like. At his growl, Nakaroth stepped away, but left behind a whurf of amusement that made the human chief’s eyes narrow and her lip curl to show the blunt tips of her teeth again.
It was a look of challenge, there on a face hollow with hunger and smudge-eyed with strain.
“Do you know where you are?” Kruin asked at last.
The human laughed, an angry sound. “I know where I’m not. Nothing else matters.”
“It matters, human. You are in the Wyvern’s Wood and the wyverns do not den for winter. You will surely meet with one if you travel many days. You will meet one sooner if you stop to rest.”
Uncertainty touched her. She shifted on her feet and did not answer.
“I will allow you to pass,” he continued, commanding her stare as he would another chief. “But where will you go? To the Southwilds? Will you make the crossing through the pass of the Broken Sun when snow is so deep upon it? Will you turn west to the Dragon’s Mountains to seek the sea that lies beyond? There are no passes through the Aerie Domain for the children of Men to travel. East, then, into the Serpent’s Marsh? Human, you will not see sunrise.”
She lowered her arm in stages, frowning. Her flat human face, so difficult to read, showed whole howls of anxious thought.
“Turn back,” he told her. “I shall see you safely to the Valley and the holdings of its lord.”
“No!”
Her vehemence surprised him, but at least she did not raise her knife again.
There were darker tales here than should be told in waning light. Kruin conquered the urge to bear his fangs and said instead, “To mine, then. To see you rested. High Pack has one with healing arts.”
She broke his gaze for the first time, glancing behind her to the weak one and her blood-wrapped hand. Her shoulders stayed stiff, her eyes flashed with anger, but there was thought in her nonetheless. Her females said nothing, only watched in exhausted silence for her decision.
“All right,” she said and slipped her knife into a fold of her human clothing. “For a little while. Thank you,” she added, and now she slumped, showing defeat for the first time…in gratitude.
Kruin accepted her submission as he would any chief of his land, with respectful silence, then offered his open hand for a human clasp of alliance. “I am called Kruin, chief of High Pack, whose wolves are highest, lord of the Land of Tooth and Claw. How are you called?”
“Nona,” she said and gave her hand, with reluctance but without fear. Her skin was marked with fresh cuts, deep but healing. There would be scars. “And this is Leila and Heather.”
Kruin held her in his grip, listening to the song of Endless. Her name was there and had always been there. Heather and Leila were not, but they were her pack. The Endless would bend around them or bring them in, given time. Tonight, his concerns were those of flesh. And blood.
Kruin caught Nakaroth’s eye and gave the human’s backtrail a pointed glance. As Nakaroth slipped away, Kruin offered his arm to the weakest of the humans and led them all to High Pack.
6. The Humans
The day’s hunt, though crippled by this unexpected event, was not wasted. There were two shrillits roasting over the firepit—proof of Madira’s increasing promise with her stone-thrower—and a young treehorn from the hunt Sakros had led. Sakros himself was not in evidence, though his hunters occupied the clearing. Gone again on a lone hunt, perhaps, or catching a mid-day sleep in his den beside his young mate. There had been little enough of that in the past nights for either of them. Gef had come into her first Heat recently. She was young for it and her prideful exhilaration when she realized what it was had been swiftly overtaken by the agonies for which she was utterly unprepared. But it was done now and she had spent this day resting after five locked in Heat’s fires. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would begin to think of summer and the new life she would be bringing forth.
Summer. It had been summer when Taryn came to his Land seeking her unimaginable peace. The leaves that had shaded her from that sun’s punishing heat now softened the ground where she had slept. So little time had passed and already so much had changed. Burgash’s cub had grown. He would be walking by the time Gef’s cub came into the world. And Sangar walked.
Kruin’s gaze wandered, like his thoughts, until his eye came to rest on his gentle mate, tending now to the humans. In summertime, she had been all but lost to him, lamed and least among his mates. Taryn had healed her. Now she healed others and in the eyes of his pack, she was highest of his two mates, although she had never demonstrated dominance over her young co-mate. There were some among his pack who did not approve of what they perceived as her ambivalence, her weakness, but Kruin knew it for a strength and he loved her for it. He loved them both.
Changes. Not all were so easily embraced.
Vru had been called from the Fringes to join the pack in recent days, a decision Kruin was already coming to regret. Vru was born of Thousand Falls Pack, whose wolves grew tall and strong, and in those hunts where strength alone was necessary, he had provided much meat. He could snap the neck of a treehorn with one swing of his arm, break a tusker’s charge at a blow, and did not hesitate to face even a fellcat in battle, but he had no patience and no great wit. He fought the Fringes, he fought the other low wolves, and although he had not fought those above him yet, Kruin knew he would. Challenge was a stink about him, hot and sour as the infection in the weak human’s hand. It had been a mistake to take him in and now Kruin must live with it, or risk a challenge he did not think he could win. Kruin did not fear death. He feared Vru made chief of High Pack and lord over this hard land.
But the thing that gnawed at Kruin’s peace most was not the threat of what was to come, but what had already passed. Vru had taken Lura, daughter of the chief of Snow Peak and once Kruin’s own mate before falling to the Fringes herself, to be his. Although Kruin had no feelings of love for her, the thought of Vru upon Lura’s back was a bitter one. He would have given her to a better wolf, if the choice were still his.
It was not. The laws had changed. Lura had given no sign that she loved Vru, but she had chosen him, if only as a strong wolf to hunt for her and give her a place beside him in the pack. She could have risen from the Fringes on her own merits if she had been willing to work for it, to learn to hunt and slowly earn the respect and forgiveness of those she had once delighted in tormenting. She chose Vru instead and him only after he had been called to High Pack. Her eyes were often wandering to wolves of greater rank, but none would have her; Vru’s eyes also wandered, to the unmated females and to mated ones and now to the humans as well. They had no love greater than their own self-interest,
either of them. Perhaps they were well-matched after all.
No, new lives did not always make things better. Hunger and Heat and old frustrations…and now humans. Female humans, so soon after Taryn’s stay in High Pack. Kruin did what he could to stand between them and the staring eyes that sought them out, but it was a largely futile effort.
The humans were not immune to the stares, but they were easily occupied by meat and warm furs to wrap their feet in. Only their chief could not sit and rest. Nona paced, watching Sangar tend to her small pack. They were not so badly off as they might have been. Thin, yes, and tired, but mostly whole. So Kruin thought, until the bloody cloth wrapping the sick one’s hand was carefully removed.
“I know it looks terrible,” Leila said, trying to smile. “But I do think it’s getting better.”
Sangar did not answer, only looked back at Kruin. He did not answer either. There was nothing to say.
The hand had a hole in it. What size that hole had been at its making was not clear, but it had been stretched by infection into a gaping crater. Beneath a crust of dried pus, muscle and tendon were exposed. The skin was discolored, swollen shiny from fingertips to wrist. The meat stank.
“It stopped hurting,” Leila said, smiling even wider beneath eyes bright with fear. “That’s a good sign, right?”
“A very good sign,” said Nona. She glanced at Kruin and paced away.
Sangar cleaned the wound, gave the human a poultice and healer’s tea, and wrapped the arm in clean padding. She carried her healer’s herbs back up the slope to the den they shared and Kruin followed. So did Nona, seeking a council he had not called, just as though it were her right. The eyes of many males followed her.