by R. Lee Smith
One of the young males among them growled something from off to one side.
“Human-speak,” said Nakaroth. She could still feel his eyes itching where they bored into her back.
“Are we ever going to hunt?” the male demanded and the other wolves growled in uniform impatience.
Nakaroth stepped past Nona to stare down the suddenly very docile lycan. “And what,” he asked in a growling voice, “would you have us pursue, pup? What spoor have you seen so fresh as to follow?”
Nona looked around, as they all did. She saw stripped bark, dry pellets, and of course, the ancient savagery of the wyvern. The hoof prints leading in and out of this clearing were obviously many days old and following them would be largely pointless. Other tracks, from very small feet, went straight up the side of a steep, snowy cliff, but Nona thought trying to climb that would be foolish at best and deadly at worst. Branches jutting through the snow at the cliff’s bottom told her this was a good place for mudslides and who knew what was lurking under the innocent snowy surface for a falling lycan to land on?
“The reality of hunting is that not every hunt ends with game.” Nakaroth raked his gaze over the grumblers and they all looked up.
Nona scanned the overhead branches in bewilderment before she realized they were all showing their throats. She brought her own chin down in a hurry, only to see Nakaroth right in front of her, the shine of humor in his eyes.
He said, looking right at her, “But no hunt is wasted, so long as the hunter is wise. What have you seen this day?”
Why was he asking her? Uncertainly, Nona said, “I’ve seen…what old spoor looks like.”
“But no game!” the other lycan burst out. “You’ve brought us all this way to see old spoor! What use is that?”
Nakaroth continued to gaze into Nona’s eyes, serene, intense. “And what have you learned from what you’ve seen?”
“I’ve learned…where the game isn’t going these days,” she replied, mystified.
“Ha.” Nakaroth smiled, flashing his fangs, then turned around and socked the other male in the ear. He did it casually, like he was patting him on the shoulder, and he didn’t look to see how the other wolf took it, even after the guy staggered and dropped to one knee in the snow. “A wise hunter is always watching, always learning from what is and what is not. There are rhythms beyond the song of Endless. Learn to hear them.”
The hunters were silent. The young male got back to his feet and stood there, glaring at the snow. He did not rub his ear.
“We will go back another way,” Nakaroth announced. “Patience. Vigilance. And above all…” He glanced back, his eyes locked on Nona. “Persistence. That is how the hunt is won.”
She thought he smiled at her, but it was quick one, if so. And then he was walking off again, and she, like the others, followed him.
On the way back, they found some of that fresh spoor, and the hunters-in-training immediately went on the ready, bristling and pacing and whining or growling under their breath while Nakaroth patiently had them continue looking around the area. The lycan, showing less and less grace about it, observed closer and closer details about the soft pellets in the snow, and then about older game-sign, and ultimately, about the snow itself, until eventually, Nakaroth came to Nona.
There was a bit of spark in his eyes, too, a gleam of fang behind his lips, when he asked her calmly what she saw. Nona, by now exhausted almost to the point of delirium, looked carefully at the trees and the snow and did her best not to see any of the things that had already been pointed out, because clearly, there was more to see.
Not in the snow, then. Not in the trees. Nona shut her eyes and rubbed them, briefly overwhelmed by her own uselessness on this stupid alien world, and then looked again. And maybe being this tired helped, the way it had sometimes helped her make truly brilliant arguments back on the debate team or write those stellar mid-term essays all those years ago, because when she opened her eyes this time, she saw it.
The melting snow had destroyed whatever tracks it may have left, but there was a tuft of fur caught in the dead winter brambles choking out the game trail. And having been extremely close to fur like that not too long ago, Nona could say unequivocally just what had left it here.
“Fellcat,” she said, and pointed.
Nakaroth smiled. He turned and watched the young hunters undergo various badly-masked moments of surprise, and then he said, “It was a human who named it. One who could not even scent the piss it left behind when it claimed this tree-horn you are so keen to pursue as its own hunt.”
The other lycan exchanged uncertain glances and crept back, one by one, to scratch at the wood and sniff the ground.
“Know your prey,” Nakaroth said, watching them. “And learn to choose your hunts. A fellcat in the lean of winter is a risk for even a seasoned hunter, but there are many of us.” He eyed his party with a mocking sort of confidence. “Even unblooded as so many of you are, our numbers are enough to prevail should we meet with it…but unblooded as you are, one of you will surely fall. And die, perhaps. We will see. Now tell me…Are you still eager to give chase?”
The males took swift assessment of the females in the party (including, Nona saw with some annoyance, herself) and one of them stepped up. “I am.”
Nakaroth looked at him. Sighed. And slammed his fist into his ear. “It is a good thing for me to know,” he remarked, watching the other wolf sprawl in the mud, “that you are so willing to sacrifice the weak. A good thing for all of us to know, I think. And it would be a good thing for you to know, pup, that a hunter who returns to his pack hungry will mate far more often than a hunter who throws himself at death just to impress a female. If you ever mean to leave the Fringes, you will learn that. Get up.”
The wolf did, keeping his eyes averted.
“One final lesson. Knowing the risk and the reward…how should we proceed?”
Nakaroth made it clear that his question was for the unfortunate Fringe-wolf. He stood and waited, staring at the top of the wolf’s head since he wouldn’t meet Nakaroth’s eyes, and when he finally issued a warning growl, the young wolf ventured, “Hunt elsewhere.”
Nakaroth was silent for a very long time.
“Hunt elsewhere,” he echoed finally. “Give. Surrender the only game we have seen this day and permit the beast who stalks it to remain in howling distance of High Rock. Such is your answer, pup?”
The Fringe-wolf flinched and a second later, Nakaroth’s fist flew. He stayed on the ground this time, thoroughly muddied, with his eyes squeezed shut and his chin pointed at the sky.
“But…” The tall yellow female, Laal, nervously stepped out of striking range and then back again when Nakaroth sent her a sharp glance. “But if it is folly to hunt and cowardly not to hunt…what do you want us to do?”
Again, Nakaroth held a lengthy silence, although his ears kept moving for a while. At last, speaking very distinctly, he said, “I despair of all of you. Nona.” He didn’t look at her. “Answer.”
“Go back and get some fellcat hunters,” she said. She didn’t much care if that was the answer he was looking for or not, as long as she found herself a place to sit in the very near future, but it seemed obvious enough to her. “Take that thing out first, then go after your ‘treehorn’.”
“And that is not only what I want you to do,” Nakaroth said evenly, “it is what I want you to see. But you are as blind as wet whelps. You think because you have teeth and claws, you are a hunter? Ha! A hunter is more than his own body, his own strength. He is all his pack. You will never be wolves of High Pack until you learn this,” he went on, glaring at each of his pupils in turn, coming last to Nona. “And you, you will never be a wolf at all.”
“I’ll never be a duck, a tiger or a dumptruck, either,” she shot back. “What’s your point?”
“You are not a hunter.”
“You know what else I’m not?” Nona heaved herself onto her feet and went nose to muzzle with him. “I’m
not a woman who lets anyone else tell her who and what she is.”
The corners of Nakaroth’s mouth turned up in a dry smile. “Will you hunt the fellcat with us, then?”
“Of course not!” she snapped. “I’m in no condition to do anything but get in the way and everyone knows it. I’m not getting myself killed just to prove a point! I don’t give even half a damn what you think of me, I don’t have to prove anything to any of you!”
Nakaroth’s smile widened enough to show teeth and his tail swept back and forth. “So. You are a hunter after all. Perhaps one day, you will even be a wolf.” His tail stopped wagging as his eye moved across the others. “As, perhaps, so will you all. And if you can learn to be more than one wolf, you will make of yourselves strong hunters to sustain High Pack in the years to come.”
Nona felt her eyes narrowing.
He noticed and smiled. “Or to sustain yourself, wherever you may be.”
She wanted to say something cutting to wipe that smirk out of his eyes for good, but was too worn out to think of anything. She glared instead, which only seemed to amuse him more.
He didn’t drag the moment out. In seconds, he’d turned away, gesturing for them to follow as he led them back to High Pack.
12. Hunters and Prey
Kruin’s party was the first to return to High Pack and they brought in a blackneck stag, half-starved and past its prime, but meat. He gave the liver to his mates to share between them, then gave the heart to a newly-risen Gef. She took it, but her thanks were distracted and her gaze fixed on the humans.
He watched her watch them for a time, seeing the pricking of her ears and the flutters of her tail whenever one of them glanced her way. She was too young to have ever known a human raiding party and Taryn had been a friend to her when she’d had greatest need of one. She was only excited to see these among them.
“Have you spoken with them?” he asked, stroking a hand down her back to show her he would not disapprove.
She ducked her head anyway, gentle as he was. “My mate was not here. My chief and his second were not here. I was not sure of my place.”
“They are human,” he said with a chuckle. “They do not care about place. Certainly their chief does not. Go and greet them.”
Gef shifted as if to rise, only to sink back upon her haunches. “What do I say? They did not choose to come here. Would not a welcome be…”
Inappropriate, thought Kruin when Gef only trailed off, unsure. And he thought perhaps it was. Humans had their own ideas of place after all, for words if not for people.
After a moment’s thought, he nodded at the meat he had given her. “A full belly is always welcome.”
Gef rose, but hesitated.
He knew her question, the one she did not quite dare to speak. “The winter is not yet so bitter,” he said. “There is enough to share.”
With guests, was the surface meaning. With the injured and the weak, was the meaning below. In winter, when food was scarce, a chief must be hard as frozen stone. Old wolves sometimes walked out into the wood and did not return. Hungry cubs died before their time so that their mothers could live and bear new life in a gentler season. The lame, the sick, the weak—whoever could not give to the pack was taken from it.
But the winter was only just begun and that time was not now. Nearing, perhaps, but not now.
“Feed them both,” he told Gef. “Injuries need good meat, heavy and dark with blood. Heart’s blood is best.”
Gef went down to them, tail wagging, hopeful. Kruin watched her shy approach and was not surprised to see her made welcome. Soon the heart was cut in strips to make for quicker cooking and the three of them were close together around the fire, talking and even laughing as they ate. Leila did not take as much as he would have liked, saying the meat was too tough to chew, so Gef brought her the blackneck’s blood in a wooden bowl. Leila did not drink that either. Concerning.
But she was not dead yet. Kruin had seen many wolves come out of the shadow of Anu and humans were nothing if not unpredictable.
And if she did survive, what to do with her? What to do with any of them? For certain, there were several males who would have Heather, even if she was not as great a prize as her chief. There were males, he knew, who would take Leila, even if her death were certain (as Kruin believed in his heart that it was certain). These were not realities he liked to think about, but reality was not for liking). Nona insisted she would take herself and her small pack away with her in the spring. Kruin hoped her conviction would carry her through the winter. He knew three (or two) humans wandering packless in the Land of Tooth and Claw would end with blood on the snow, but if she stayed, there would be blood on High Rock. If it was going to end in blood either way, better it be human than lycan.
Nakaroth’s return interrupted the flow of these dark thoughts. He watched the young hunters disperse, looking sullen and yet unblooded. It seemed a very long, tense time before the human who had gone out with them came into the clearing. Trying not to stagger, by the looks of her. She was as grey as the skies overhead, shiny with the sweat of exertion, and still fierce. When she dropped herself on the fur that had been her blanket, Gef withdrew, giving ground as she would for a chief’s mate. Or a chief. Nona asked no questions (perhaps she had no breath for questions), although she seemed more confused by Gef’s abrupt departure than by her presence.
The strips of heart-meat had all been cooked by this time, leaving only the empty sticks on which they had roasted. Once Nona had noticed them, her eyes went to the final stick with a last strip of meat, half-eaten, in Heather’s hand. Heather offered it. Nona shook her head and tried to pass it on to Leila, who also shook her head. Words were said, too low for Kruin to make out at this distance.
Nona listened, looked at the bowl of blood, and frowned.
Kruin rose and went down to the fire to sit beside her. He picked up the bowl and wordlessly drank, then offered it to Nona.
She eyed it for a short time, then slowly shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I think that would make us sick. Not, you know, not because it’s gross or anything, but just because our stomachs can’t take it. I mean, I don’t know that for a fact,” she added with a scowl, “but I think I remember hearing that or reading it or something. I’m not sure, it’s just…If I’m wrong, then we skip another meal for no good reason, but if I’m right, we spend the night puking and…sorry, but I think we’ve hit the point where that could kill us.”
Kruin nodded and drank the rest of the blood, then set the empty bowl aside. “We will boil the bones and fat to make a broth. Will she have that?”
Nona nodded, although Leila looked somewhat queasy at the prospect. “Meat would be better, though. Okay, so we’ll soften it up first,” she added in an irritable aside to a whisper from Leila. “I don’t know…we’ll pound it with a rock or something. We’ll figure something out, but you need to eat!”
“Yes.” Kruin cocked his head. “So do you.”
She bristled for a moment, then slumped, averting her eyes. “Sure. Two bowls of broth. Yum.”
Kruin left them and went to Sangar. He told her to collect the bones of the blackneck before they fell to the Fringe-wolves. The long leg bones, rich with marrow, had already been taken, but from this night on, they were for the humans.
“They should have the liver also,” Sangar told him and produced it, cooked but uneaten. Beside her, Madira nodded.
Both his mates gone hungry to see the humans fed. Not at his order, but out of their own compassion.
Kruin put a hand on each one’s shoulder, setting neither higher, the three of them together in one embrace. He could hear claws scraping at the rock behind him—Nakaroth, come to tell him how the hunting lesson had gone—but for here and now, there were only three in all the world.
The moment could not last. He left his mates to gather bones and beckoned his second to him. First came news of tree-horn and fellcats, then a predominantly positive appraisal of the young hunters, and t
hat, it seemed, was all that Nakaroth was disposed to say. Annoyed at being forced to ask, Kruin said, “And Nona?”
“Has the eye for it.” Nakaroth yawned, running his gaze appreciatively over the human’s chief. “But not the legs, not yet. And never the claws. I must advise you not to let her hunt.”
Oh, now he advised him so.
Living so close to humans had changed the wolves of Dark Water and not in all ways to the better. Humans were not strong, but they were dangerously cunning. The wolves of Dark Water had grown cunning alongside them and, like humans, amused themselves with their own deviousness. Kruin rarely felt his second’s hand upon him when he was in a mood to play his mannish games, but now that they were done, he could clearly see how he had been moved. Nakaroth’s ‘advice’ was as good as a confession and a promise not to repeat the transgression. He must have gotten what he wanted from it, which was to say, gotten what he wanted from Nona.
And yet, she sat with her packmates now, ignoring Nakaroth entirely. This on its own was not so strange to Kruin. A proud bitch, confident of her desirability, often scorned those who pursued her…at least for a while…but Nona did not show herself to be particularly proud at the moment. She slumped over her folded legs, warming herself at the fire, plainly worn by her exertions and not caring who saw it. Kruin did not know the word for the shadow-like expression that crossed her face whenever her wandering gaze happened to travel over Nakaroth, but he knew coy invitation, scorn and passion and it was certainly none of these.
Strange that Nakaroth still seemed so pleased…
“I hear your words,” said Kruin, since Nakaroth was waiting for some response to his counsel, “but Nona is a chief and her people are in desperate need. I will not forbid her to provide for them.” And even if he did, she would do as she wished anyway, and he must either punish her for disobedience or let all his pack see him openly defied by a human female.
Nakaroth nodded, agreeing to his words and the things he left unsaid. “What is your will?”