by R. Lee Smith
“She must learn to use a stone-thrower until her strength returns,” Kruin decided. “Tell her so.”
“I have, but she would not hear it. She says she will hunt.”
“Then I will tell her. And I will hunt for her,” he added with a hard stare.
Nakaroth shook that off like a biting fly. “Perhaps she will accept it from you, my lord, although I think she would sooner taste your teeth than the meat of your hand. That one, ha! She is determined to need nothing.”
Kruin studied his second’s face closely as Nakaroth continued to smile across the clearing at an oblivious and exhausted human. “She still means to leave.”
“In the spring. I have time.”
“Then you still mean to pursue her.”
“I pursue her even now.” Nakaroth glanced at him, still smiling. “You do not approve.”
“Do you seek my approval?” Kruin asked.
“Not in this matter.”
“Then in this matter,” Kruin echoed, irritated, “be silent.”
Nakaroth tipped back his chin, laughing, as commanded, without sound. Kruin could feel genuine humor twitching at his own lips. If there were not so many wolves watching, he would be tempted to throw a playful cuff, lose himself in cub-like grapples which Nakaroth surely would win, if not for the fact that Kruin was chief. And because Kruin was chief, alas, he could not be such a fool.
So he sent Nakaroth back with an imperious claw-flick and took the liver his mates had prepared to Nona. Many eyes were on him as he did so. One young blackneck had not been enough to fill every empty belly and here was a chief’s cut, going to humans. Kruin ignored them. The humans troubled him in many ways, but not in this. One fed the hunters, so that the hunters fed the pack. If Nona was nothing else, Kruin knew she was a hunter.
She took the meat from him with a sour expression, shared it out with Leila and Heather and only then ate her portion—the smallest. He crouched before her, watching, relaxed as he listened to the wolves of High Pack at rest. She was aware of his stare, and annoyed by it, he thought, but she did not challenge him with an answering one. She was learning. That pleased him.
After she had swallowed the last bite and licked the last drop of juice from her fingers, he said, “Nakaroth tells me you have a hunter’s eye.”
She scowled and stared into the trees. “Nakaroth is generous with his praise.”
“No, human,” said Kruin. “He is not. Hear me. You wish to hunt. This pleases me, but wishes do not fill bellies. You are not strong. I say you will hear me,” he said again, sharper.
She grit her teeth, but faced him.
“I will not tell you that you may not hunt,” he told her, beckoning to his mates. “But you cannot hunt as we do. My Madira will teach you to use a stone-thrower.”
Madira, so summoned, brought out her weapon.
Nona’s gaze fell on it and then her mouth dropped open and her snapping eyes went moon-wide. “A slingshot?” she bellowed. “That’s what a stone-thrower is? Are you serious? That’s a toy! What could I possibly take out with that stupid little thing?”
“Such small prey as can be taken by its stones. Birds, mostly.” He flicked an ear. “Enough to feed the hunters, who in turn will feed you when larger prey comes.”
She got a look about her then, a laughing, hot-eyed, disbelieving look. A Taryn look. “Yeah, right. Thanks but no thanks. I’ll make a spear or something.”
A spear. He eyed her arms, which, even hidden in the loose folds of her human clothing, had clearly never wielded a horseman’s runka. Nevertheless, he did not argue the point. He was not merely the chief of his pack, but the lord of this Land; a chief need only be strong; a lord must be tactful.
“When you are stronger, perhaps I shall reconsider,” he said. “Until then, you will train your hunter’s eye while striking from a distance.”
“Or I’ll make a spear and train myself.”
“You are beholden to my rule,” he said, very softly, “and that is the law I give you. Answer.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together until they whitened. She took a breath, released it with shuddering effort, and finally said, “Fine. Teach me the ways of the fucking slingshot. Jesus Christ.”
“And you will hold from lone hunts until you are stronger.”
Her eyes snapped up, spitting fire. “I’m strong enough now!”
Oh, he could feel the hunger in his pack, the desire to have this human, to possess her, to play Quiabe every night and sire cubs of fire from her. His wolf’s heart burned with the same base demand, to take the strongest where he saw it, to make her his and so prove he was fit to lead. But he was not, as another human female had once reminded him, not a wolf. His was a mind of reason and it was greater than the beast in him.
“This is the law I give you,” he said again, implacable, unmoved. “Answer.”
For a long time, she only sat and seethed. At last, and with great effort, she said, “While I’m here, I’ll obey your laws.”
If it were a wolf that put such challenge into his words, Kruin would have his blood. If it were a bitch, Kruin would have her for his mate. He scratched thoughtfully at his stomach, feeling a not-unpleasant tightening in his loins, and then glanced suddenly at the sick one, Leila, and clarity came back to him. He beckoned again and when he felt a familiar hand rest on his shoulder in answer, said, “My Madira is well-schooled in the way of the stone-thrower. She has crafted this one. She will teach you to craft one of your own.”
The human showed no throat to his mate, only clenched her jaws tight and nodded.
If Madira was offended, she showed no sign, but only offered her hands in welcome and kept them there until the human, flushing, gave them a token touch. “We hunt at dawn and dusk,” Madira said shyly. “Gef and I. It is when the birds we eat make themselves best seen.”
“We’ll be there.” The human looked at her small pack—at Leila in her fever and Heather, who would not meet her eyes. The angry color in her cheeks darkened. “I’ll be there.”
“There are fellcats in my land,” said Kruin. He rose and turned from her. “Our hunt ends with its life, not before. Hunters!”
Wolves came to his call, but not all of them. Vru, who had been very much in evidence only moments ago, was now nowhere to be seen.
Kruin looked across the clearing to Lura. She would not meet his eyes. He could have asked her where her mate was, but that would accomplish nothing except to let the whole pack hear her when she had to admit she did not know. It was unlikely that he was hunting, not for meat.
His prey was here in High Rock.
Kruin was intensely aware of Nakaroth at his side, awaiting his command to remain and protect the females. He was hesitant to give it, although Nakaroth was perhaps the most likely of all the pack, Kruin himself included, to best Vru in combat. He wasn’t sure just why he hesitated; he only knew that he mistrusted his second’s motives, especially when it came to the human’s chief, Nona. So it was to Burgash that Kruin sent his silent order, and Burgash, although clearly surprised, rose and settled himself again on the raised rock.
Now they were ready. Ignoring Nakaroth’s heavy stare, Kruin howled the Hunt and took his pack away.
13. Vru
Nona fell asleep. She didn’t mean to, although she wasn’t terribly surprised when she realized she had. She knew she was tired, the same way she knew she was hungry and right on the razor’s edge of hypothermia. She felt better when she woke up, that was what mattered. The liver Kruin had given her had been gross and the fatty soup even worse, but she’d kept them down and while she slept, they seemed to have gone directly to her brain, invigorating and renewing her. Even the fur wrap seemed warmer.
A lot warmer. And it was breathing.
Nona opened her eyes and turned her head. She saw slate-grey fur rising over the brown hide Mika had given her. The babysitter Kruin had assigned to them, Burgash, lay next to her, pressing warmth all down her side. And down Leil
a’s, which was considerate of him. He was facing Heather across a gameboard drawn in charcoal on the rock. She was apparently trying to teach him checkers, playing with pebbles against chips of bark. Heather was losing.
When Nona sat up, the lycan glanced at her and shifted, pulling the weight of his body away from her solicitously. She pushed back the blanketing hide, flinching at the sudden chill of winter, and looked toward the firepit. Nothing remained of the deer, not even bones, and the other hunters weren’t back yet.
“Are you hungry?” Burgash asked, jumping two of Heather’s dwindling pebbles.
“No,” she lied and got up, moving away before her stomach could growl. Standing, she could now see Ararro pressed against Leila’s other side, her cub tucked beneath her chin, raised off the ground on a cradle of his mother’s crossed arms. Low on the slope by the mouth of the den she shared with the other unmated females, Mika occupied herself with scraping a hide while Laal and Samatan sleepily watched. Higher up, the chief’s mates sat back-to-back, leaning into one another as Madira wrapped sinews into cord and Sangar ground herbs. Lura lay at the foot of the raised rock, out of the wind. Apart from the baby and Leila, no one was actually asleep, but it was unnervingly quiet and still. Conserving their energy in days of short rations, she guessed, although if that was the reason, she was a little surprised that they weren’t out doing something about it.
“Why don’t your women hunt?” she asked.
Samatan and Laal raised their heads to look at her. Mika sneezed in her direction and went back to scraping her hide.
“Most do,” Burgash replied evenly, still studying the gameboard. “Acala left with Alorak’s party at sun-up. Kiyu is in Henkel’s party now. Gef and Madira hunt with their stone-throwers, but this is not the time for it. My Ararro—” He paused to send a smile toward the mother and her cub, nuzzling at his own arm since Leila separated them, and the mother thumped her tail twice, nuzzling back at her cub. “She is a fierce hunter, the finest, but now she has my cub to care for. Some are not yet skilled enough to run the hunt. And some have mates hunt for them,” he concluded, and the white wolf turned around and curled up small. “All serve the pack in different ways.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean…it just seemed like there weren’t many with the hunters.”
“Because there aren’t many,” Burgash said, frowning at Heather’s next tentative move. “At all.”
Nona started and looked around again, counting. Seven lycan females here, plus the two he’d named out hunting, made only nine in a pack of nearly forty, or sixty if you counted the Fringes. From the moment she’d first come to High Rock, she had always felt painfully human; now, for the first time, she felt painfully female as well.
Leila moaned abruptly, groping at the air for a few seconds before catching her fur blanket and throwing it off. Ararro immediately tucked it back in place, and again, when Leila pushed it back once more. Leila uttered a plaintive mewling sound, sobbed once, and fell into a heavier sleep. Her face had been made ashen by the effort; watching it succumb slowly to the fevered flush of before was like watching a white towel soak up a puddle of blood. The glimpse Nona had of her right arm when she’d moved the fur had been bruisy-black nearly to the elbow. Last night, it had only been that bad up to the wrist.
Someone touched her arm. Sangar, holding a clay bowl of sour-smelling brown paste. The lycan’s eyes were deep and dark as fine chocolate, warm with understanding and compassion. “May I tend to you?”
“To me?” Momentarily thrown, Nona looked back down at Leila, thinking she had to have misunderstood. It was not until Sangar touched her again that she remembered the fellcat’s bites and scratches. She offered her hands mutely, still keeping her eyes on Leila, watching each ragged breath form as steam and disperse. She felt Sangar dabbing at her. The paste was wet, which made the chill in the air bite even deeper. And Leila was trying yet again to shove away her cover.
“Why is she doing that?” Nona asked and heard a tremble in the question.
“Anu is calling. She wants to go with him.”
Nona rolled her eyes sharply upward and shook her head, clamping her jaws tightly together.
“It is the fever,” Sangar said then, softly. “If you like that better.”
It made her feel ashamed. It did amount to the same thing, really, and she wasn’t making friends by spitting on these people’s beliefs. Even if she wasn’t staying…she still ought to make friends.
She’d never been any good at that.
“Is there anything you can give her?” she asked. “To…to help her sleep?”
Sangar wiped slowly at the scratches on Nona’s arm. “There is…something,” she said finally.
It was clear by Sangar’s tone that the sleep she had in mind was more permanent than Nona had been thinking. And Nona was not upset. She supposed that meant she was considering it on some level and realizing that did not immediately fill her with horror at her own callousness. She felt only a dull heat and numbness, like a dying coal, surrounded by ash.
“Something for the pain,” she said, “and that’s all.”
Sangar raised her head briefly and walked away, leaving Nona to tug her sleeve down over her scratches. Her healing scratches. She’d been attacked by an animal and had her hand down its filthy mouth and she was healing up fine. Leila had cut her hand on a nice, clean rock and she was…sick. Funny, the way things worked out. It made her think about tornados, how they could rip a house apart, but leave the barn right next to it completely untouched. It could have been any one of them lying there.
“How old is your baby?” Heather asked behind her. Her voice was too cheerful. Her thoughts must have been running along similar lines.
Burgash glanced with fatherly pride at the furry little mass under Ararro’s chin. “Half a year now,” he said. “My first. My Basharo.”
“He’s cute,” Heather said, which was a weird word to describe a baby werewolf, but sure, it did have a kind of puppyish appeal.
Beaming, Ararro picked the cub up by the scruff of its neck and held it out to Heather. The cub drew up its legs and arms for transit, uttering a few little whines, but that was all. Heather uncertainly took it and pulled it against her own chest. The cub uncurled, turning into the warmth of Heather’s body. Its hands groped, catching and pulling at her sweater until it had a solid grip, and then it curled for sleep again.
Heather watched all this with an expression of mingled trepidation and awe. “He’s so strong,” she marveled.
And boy, was that the right thing to say. Burgash sat up, his chest puffing out with pride, and Ararro nuzzled at Heather’s shoulder, her wagging tail belying her demure manner.
But Heather’s voice roused the cub. It pushed its small muzzle against Heather’s breast, seeking milk and sucking loudly through Heather’s sweater as she stiffly held it and visibly tried not to squirm while all the lycan were watching. “Sorry, little guy,” she mumbled, blushing brightly. “You’re not getting lunch out of me. Do you, um, want him back?”
“Let me see.” The words were a croak, unrecognizable as a Leila’s voice, barely recognizable as human. She lifted her good hand, beckoning weakly, trying to smile. Heather looked at Ararro, unsure, but Burgash leaned over to take the cub and, without hesitation, placed it on Leila’s chest.
Leila sighed a little, her eyes dropping shut. Her arm curled around the cub, petting it while it squirmed and wagged and licked everything it saw. Before long, it discovered that it could wedge its head in under her shirt, and at once, it burrowed in and was gone. Nona could hear it grumbling as it explored, and then it stopped and began to make noisy sucking sounds.
“Never…never forget what that feels like,” Leila murmured. Her eyes stayed shut, but she tried to smile. “Of course, I don’t remember the…whiskers. Details. Who cares? This is nice.”
Heather looked at Nona, her brows creased with worry.
Fevered ramblings? Nona thought the words through carefully, then said, �
��You have kids?”
“One. My daughter. Maria. She’s…six now.” A tear gathered at the corner of one closed eye, but only one, and Leila’s smile never faded. “She was with my parents when….well, that day. So she’s fine. It’ll be…be hard for her, but she’ll grow up fine. Her daddy isn’t in the picture so much anymore, but…but he’s always been good about support. He’ll do right by her.”
The words chilled her. It wasn’t just was Leila said (the idea of a child losing her mother was a terrible one, of course, but Nona’s relationship with her own mother stained what should have been sympathetic horror into something that was almost envious), it was how she said it. Leila was talking like she was never going back. No, worse, like she already knew she was never going back and had made her peace with it a long time ago.
“What’s she like?” Heather asked in that too-cheerful tone that she thought hid her unhappiness so well.
“She’s beautiful.” Leila’s hand stroked down over the bulge where the cub was nestled. “She loves to dance. She has…gophers.”
“Gophers?” Nona echoed, baffled.
Leila’s face puckered. She opened her eyes and laughed, sounding suddenly very clear and a little embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that. I meant…I don’t know. There were gophers under Mama’s porch when I was little. My mind just went there. Isn’t that funny?”
Burgash and Ararro exchanged a glance. His was stony. She dropped her eyes. Both moved a little closer to Leila and Burgash lay back down again, pressing fully against her limp body.
“Yeah.” Nona forced a smile and took the tea from Sangar. “I want you to drink this, okay? You need to get something in you. And so does that little guy, I’ll bet.”
“Sure.” Leila patted the cub once more and then opened her arms so that its mother could take it back. She kept looking after Ararro, though, as the lycan settled at a short distance to nurse her by-now very frustrated young son, and her expression was wistful. “I wouldn’t mind doing that, though. I don’t think I’ve got any hunting days ahead of me.”