Children of the Wolves

by Jessica Starre

  Children of the Wolves

  Jessica Starre

  Avon, Massachusetts

  This edition published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

  www.crimsonromance.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Jessica Starre

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-5478-1

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5478-0

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-5479-X

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5479-7

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art ©123rf.com, ©istockphoto.com/©essenin quijada

  For the real Jessica —

  I’m sorry I had to leave out the dragon. It was an excellent suggestion.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Also Available

  Chapter One

  Sitting alone on the front step of the main hall, staring up at the moon, Jelena inhaled the scent of lilac blossoms nearing the end of their flowering, sweet and heavy in the warm night air. The storyteller claimed that the first born had planted these lilac bushes from shoots they had found and nurtured during the early years. Longing for home, they had been, or so the storyteller said, and no one had any reason to doubt him. For Jelena, the smell of lilac would always remind her of despair.

  The stars winked on their field of dark velvet. Lifting a finger, she traced them: the Scimitar and the Rider; the Wolf and the Wolfhunter; the Protector and the Newlyborn. One could obtain a full education in the ways of the people simply by learning the stories of the constellations. Jelena had them by heart, and knew all she needed to know.

  She dropped her reaching fingers and clenched her hands into fists. No, she did not know all she needed to know. Not according to them, anyway. She would never know it. Never. And then?

  The iron lantern hanging from the post near the door cast shadows across the hard-packed dirt courtyard. A lizard scurried past, kicking up a puff of dust. Jelena heard the horses in the western paddock restlessly stamping their feet in the warmth of the summer night, the frogs splashing in the pond out beyond the workrooms, the occasional burst of laughter from the dining hall in the timber-and-wattle building behind her. Neolithic, the rememberer had remarked after its construction, but when pressed would not say what he meant, just shook his head and drowned the memories in more ale. By now it was a miracle he remembered anything at all. Jelena, wanting to encourage her memories, abstained from the ale. But abstinence solved nothing.

  The sentries, whom she knew had marked her appearance on the front step, stood a few hundred yards away, on the other side of the courtyard, stationed by the gate in the split rail fence. The intermittent torches in their iron brackets along the fence perimeter cast twisting shadows over their figures. One sentry casually leaned his elbows against the top rail; the other stood more alertly but with one ear cocked toward the dining hall as if she didn’t want to miss anything. They both carried the regulation broadswords with their flat, sharp blades sheathed at their waists, shorter daggers strapped to their calves, and no doubt a dagger or two up their sleeves. They carried no firearms. The gunsmiths, if there were any, had not awakened yet.

  Jelena felt, rather than heard, his approach behind her. No: she felt his presence; she hadn’t been aware of his approach. He hadn’t been there; suddenly he was there, as if the shadows by the door had merely thickened and grown substantial. Michael never gave himself away with sound or movement unless he wanted to. In a different tribe, he might have been a tracker. He was focused, disciplined and unrelenting. Even when you thought he was distracted, he kept watch. At first she had believed his watchfulness was his purpose, a skill that he had learned through long periods of training, but after all these years she had come to recognize it was his essence, his nature.

  This evening after they finished their communal meal, she’d seen him deep in conversation with Charmaine and had seized the opportunity to slip out and take a moment to herself. She needed to think and found it hard to do so in his presence. Her unspoken, inarticulate longings must be sorted out, soon. She must make a decision, and she couldn’t do it when he was so big and warm and near. But here he was anyway, her separate shadow, making it desperately impossible to think.

  The crickets cried out for mates in the darkness. The urgent sound reminded her of the summer after she had been newlyborn, when a plague of insects had struck the land. The rememberer said these locusts descended every seventeen years. One of the other elders, Cara, had said, no, they were not locusts, they had another name. But Cara’s brow had furrowed, and grasping, she lost the word she sought. The locusts — or whatever they were named — had frightened the tribe. Thousands of them droning on and on so loudly they drove out all other sound. They devoured the plants in the fields and drowned in thick layers in the pond, fattened the sparrows and the robins, met untimely ends at the hands of the trueborn children. Then they had gone, leaving their translucent shed skins behind, crunching under foot until winter came and swept all signs away.

  “Cicadas,” Jelena said suddenly.

  The man who stood behind her remained motionless. He never interrupted a memory. Though she said the words aloud, she didn’t know if she was speaking to him or to herself. Sometimes she thought it was the same thing.

  “Once, when I was a little girl … I lived near the water. The ocean.” She twisted her hands together, reaching for the memory, willing herself to unlock the secrets. “The ocean and the summer of the cicadas,” she said, her voice rising in excitement. The ocean, pale blue and glittering in the sun, stretching endlessly in the distance — she could see the distant waves and smell the salty tang and feel the warm breeze on her face. She could hear the sound of the cicadas and a soft voice giving her the name. “Those are cicadas.” Had that been her mother? Then the vision shimmered, and faded, and was gone.

  Jelena’s shoulders slumped. She slapped the step with her palm, but there was little energy behind the action. She was more tired and drained than angry. So close, always so tantalizingly close, and then nothing came of it. Even her anger despaired. It was dull black, like the logs on the gathering fire long after night had fallen. She would have preferred anger red hot and piercing or ice white and purifying.

  “No one has ever gone seven years, Michael,” she said. She knew he would understand the logic of her thoughts, the unspoken connections she made. He always did. He understood everything but the one secret she kept deep in her hear
t, buried far from the surface, so that no one would ever see or guess it, and it was that secret that made her despair when she thought she would never remember.

  “Would it be so tragic if you never awakened?” he asked in the tone of one long resigned to participating in an argument he could never win. He was resigned; she despaired. What a pair they made.

  “Tragic?” she echoed. “Oh, of course not. The unawakened are so helpful.” Her voice mimicked Elder Cara’s. “I don’t know what we’d do without them. They tend our gardens, look after our trueborn, see to the pigs.”

  “It’s important work,” Michael said, but he said it without conviction and she could hear the fatigue in his voice.

  “Why don’t you go?” she flung at him. She did not want resignation from him. She wanted heat and passion and action.

  “Jelena,” he said. She did not answer. “Jelena,” he said, sharper. “Come here. Look at me.” Her shoulders stiffened in resistance. What would he do if she refused? Nothing, dammit. Damn him. She should refuse and then, and then —

  Reluctantly, she got to her feet. Was there any other choice? Was there ever any other choice? She turned to face him. The light from the lantern played across his face, emphasizing the sharp angles and hooded eyes. Though it was dark, she knew those eyes were blue and glittered like the river in the summer sun. They’d been the first thing she’d seen the day she was newlyborn, and perhaps she had been lost even then.

  She knew everything about his face, had memorized every feature, every scar and shadow and hollow. Tonight, his dark hair was pulled back with a leather thong. Sometimes, not often, he let it fall about his shoulders and she wanted to curl her fingers into it. But she never did. Unlike most of the other men, he kept his beard trimmed short. His hair was untouched with gray but the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes gave away his age; he was no fledgling but a man.

  “Jelena,” Michael said and, touching her face, lifted her chin. “I can’t go away. I won’t.” Of course not. That would be action.

  She tossed her head and he dropped his hand to her shoulder. “The elders will decide that seven years is long enough,” she said, holding back the impulse to shrug his hand away. His touch always soothed and gentled her and she hated that. Sometimes it aroused her — not his intention, she knew, she knew it bitterly, and she hated that, too. But she didn’t shrug his hand away because she craved his touch, wanted more of his caresses, not fewer. Seven years, in this state. She said it aloud: “Seven years, Michael. Seven years.”

  The night sounds had quieted. Now in the breathless darkness the night air did not stir. Michael’s sigh feathered across her cheek. The slick sheen of sweat on his face reflected the flickering lantern light.

  The stillness deepened and Michael tensed, his attention shifting from her to the night beyond.

  “The wolves,” he whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the sentries, who stiffened now at their posts. His hand tightened on her shoulder and the pulse leapt in his throat. She knew he was ready to guide her into the main hall and the comparative safety there. Oh, he could take that action, all right. He could protect her. He could protect her from anything. Damn him.

  She twisted away to see what he was looking at. Squinting into the darkness, she could make out the sinuous shadows pacing just beyond the fence, just beyond the pooling light from the torches. Seized by a sudden impulse she didn’t want to resist, she tilted her head back and howled, a long, heart-rending susurration.

  Michael jerked forward, clamping his hand over her mouth. “By all that’s good,” he grated under his breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  An answering howl rent the air. The sentries stirred uneasily, lifting their lanterns high, unsheathing their broadswords, walking the perimeter fence now, moving in opposite directions as they had been trained.

  “Have you lost your wits?” Michael demanded. “They’ll invade the village if they think — ”

  “They’ve never invaded the village. They’re just going to scrounge in the midden,” she said.

  For the other villagers, the knowledge that wolves lived on the other side of the fence cast a pall of unease over their time spent out of doors. But Jelena empathized with the animals, whose sleek, powerful bodies she sometimes glimpsed slipping among the trees. They were outside, trying to get in. It wasn’t their fault the villagers thought they didn’t belong.

  Now she shrugged free of Michael’s restraining hands and ran down the porch steps toward the gate, wanting to swing it open and let the animals in. Or maybe she meant to let herself out; she couldn’t be sure. She heard Michael swear under his breath, then the sound of his boots as he descended the wooden steps to follow her. In a moment, she reached the gate but knew she was too late. The wolves were gone. Vanished, the way they seemed to do; ghosts in the uncertain light. Her excitement ebbed and her body sagged. What had frightened the wolves off? The sentries hadn’t done anything.

  “A rider approaches,” the closest sentry said, pointing into the distance. Her companion lifted his lantern to illuminate the darkness.

  Michael turned to stare into the shadows in the direction the sentry indicated. Jelena narrowed her eyes and made out a darker shadow moving down the path that had been hacked through the trees. A clearing had been made in the area before the gate so that anyone approaching could be seen before he or she reached the fence. But in the darkness it was difficult to recognize the shapeless shadows.

  “Something’s wrong,” the sentry said.

  “Yes.” Michael turned to Jelena. “Quietly. Alert five or six of the riders. Have them bring weapons.”

  Jelena nodded her acknowledgment, then set off across the courtyard for the main hall. The stairs creaked beneath her boots as she darted up them. When she pushed open the door, raucous sounds of laughter and merriment greeted her, an almost physical assault after the tense quiet of the outdoors. She stopped for a moment to get her bearings.

  The storyteller held forth to a small group in the corner of the common room. At benches scattered throughout satisfied partners sat entwined. A few trueborn children raced around the room chasing the old calico cat and each other, every now and then tripping up a tipsy adult to the uproarious laughter of the group.

  For a sharp-edged, disorienting moment, Jelena looked upon the scene as a stranger might, as if she had never been here before, as if she did not know these people.

  A quick shake of her head cleared it. She crossed the threshold. Now she moved swiftly through the crowded room, picking Berquist the Carter — a dour man who never drank — Derek the Smith, Viktor the Musician, Emma the Herder, and Old Jack, the Mechanic, who could still shoot an arrow straight and true despite his age and who had the redeeming quality of being able to hold his liquor under all circumstances.

  Quickly, Jelena explained what was happening and they wasted no time, racing off for equipment, lighting torches, then spreading out to stand guard over their posts scattered about the perimeter of the compound. They would give up the outer buildings but they would protect the main hall against all enemies. The other members of the tribe watched them but despite their obvious curiosity did not ask questions. That kind of discipline was bred in the bone of all who lived here.

  She rejoined Michael at the main gate, handing him the lantern she’d grabbed from the post outside of the main hall. They watched tensely as the horse and its strange rider drew nearer the gate.

  “Umluan?” one of the sentries guessed.

  “It’s one of ours,” Michael said, as the horse picked its way forward. No one doubted his word. He knew the horses as if they were his own children, though Jelena had never understood his connection with them.

  She heard the quick stifling of breath as the riders and sentries waited, the snick of arrows notched, the hum of bows pulled taut. Even without looking for him, she knew a helper stood b
y the bell mounted at the side of the main hall, ready to raise the alarm at the first indication of trouble.

  The horse and rider moved within arrow range, the rider failing to follow the protocol and hail the sentries. The sentries stood at guard but held still. The riders kept the target in range but waited for the command. The air thrummed with tension as the horse approached.

  “It’s the trader,” the sentry said in relief, reaching forward to pull the gate open.

  Michael stilled her movement with a hand on her forearm. “Wait.”

  The horse and rider came closer. In the light that spilled from Michael’s lantern, Jelena could see the rider swaying unsteadily in the saddle. She bit back her fear, setting her jaw against it.

  “In the name of all that’s good,” the sentry nearest her said, turning away from the sight as the horse stopped at the gate and blew out an impatient breath.

  “Wolves,” the other sentry said, his hands shaking as he opened the gate to let the horse and its grisly burden through.

  Jelena caught a glimpse of the man slumped over the horse’s neck, his torn flesh gaping open, blood still dripping from the wounds. She wheeled and ran to the main hall. He must have help. That terrible mauling — it was the trader, he was her friend — she must find the physician. Her thoughts tumbled together and she forced herself to focus on one thought to the exclusion of all others. She must find the physician.

  Her boots skidded in the hard-packed dirt as she flung open the door to the infirmary that abutted the main hall. He was there, where she had expected to find him. Peter, a little trueborn boy, was suffering slowly and painfully of lockjaw fever and it tormented the physician that he didn’t have the medicines to give the child ease, so he sat by the boy’s bedside, hour after hour, more vigilant than the child’s own parents.

  She grabbed the physician’s hand, her own hands shaking, and she must have communicated her horror because he clasped her shoulder, then headed toward the courtyard to see what he could do. Heart pounding, she raced after him, arriving in the courtyard steps behind him. Michael and the sentry gently lifted the trader from his saddle, placing him on the ground and stepping back to let the physician do his work.