by James Enge
Rokhlenu sang that he accepted the challenge and that he would break the walls of the Khuwuleion and return to mate with her, still stained with the blood of their common enemies.
Wuinlendhono indicated a polite eagerness for that occasion and dismissed the assembly.
When they were alone, in a more private chamber on the floor above, Rokhlenu wondered aloud whether the frozen stone that his beloved used for a heart had been shedding icy splinters that were lodged in her brain, driving her mad.
Wuinlendhono sang that he was a very witty fellow and that she must remember to write some of these things down when her fingers returned on the morrow.
Rokhlenu insisted that he was essentially serious. It was one thing to rebuke emissaries who had insulted a First Wolf in her own lair. It was another to propose an act of war against a treaty pack. That would engage them in war with all four treaty packs: the entire city of Wuruyaaria.
Wuinlendhono said that he had beautiful eyes, lovely white teeth, and magnificent haunches but that he seemed to have no intellectual attainments at all, except making words sing. Did Rokhlenu not realize that he had already committed an act of war against the Sardhluun by leading the escape from the Vargulleion? That he had implicated her and the outliers in it by taking refuge here—and that she had accepted this by accepting him and his? The Sardhluun had generously promised to overlook her offense if she surrendered the fugitives, and those were the only terms on which they would overlook it. They were in a war already, and they could only look for a route to victory. She suggested that he use that space between his alert and expressive ears for a little activity she liked to call thinking.
Rokhlenu's song in reply was one of regret. He had brought this scent of trouble on her, and he would lead the pack hunting it away from her. He would take the other escaped prisoners with him and leave. The Sardhluun would pursue them and leave the outliers alone.
Wuinlendhono barked that if he took one more step toward the doorway she would kill him—kill! kill! kill! Males did not proffer their love to her and then withdraw it. She would rip his belly open. She would kill any female he tried to mate with. She would slander his name before every pack in Wuruyaaria—in every den of flea-bitten stray dogs who roamed the north. He must not leave. Would he not lie down and be reasonable? Why, oh why were beautiful males so reckless and wayward?
Rokhlenu suavely suggested it was because the smells emitted by mate-worthy females in their presence drove them mad.
Wuinlendhono leapt on him then, and they rolled around on the floor for a while, nipping each other on the shoulders and pulling each other's tails.
After some more play of this sort, the First Wolf and her intended were lying face-to-face, breathing rather heavily, but discussing issues of a coldly practical nature.
Wuinlendhono agreed with Rokhlenu that war with the Sardhluun was technically war with all the treaty packs. But she pointed out that no one likes to help a loser. The Sardhluun had already been humiliated by the escape from the Vargulleion; that was why they were barking so loudly, to drown the sound of their shame. Citizens were laughing at them on all the mesas of Wuruyaaria, all the way down to Apetown: that was what all her spies said. If the Sardhluun also lost the prisoners in the Khuwuleion, they lost half the reason for their existence, and no one would lift a paw for them.
Rokhlenu said that she had a kind of point, but that the assault on the Khuwuleion was trickier than she made it sound. With all their disadvantages in breaking out of the Vargulleion, they had at least had the advantage of being there, inside the prison. They didn't first have to cross the plantation walls, alerting every citizen in the Sardhluun, and then break into the prison itself. Nor would it be New Year's Night when they did, with half the guards gone and half the guards who remained smoke-drunk and stupid.
Wuinlendhono suggested that they make the attempt during one of the primary elections the Sardhluun were holding this month. Many guards would be absent to attend the election; the plantation walls would be more thinly guarded. As for the prison defenses…well, they would think of something. Perhaps if that crazy Khretvarrgliu could be driven bear-shirt mad again, the guards would run squeaking away. She supposed half the stories she had heard about that night were lies, but even so…
Rokhlenu whistled thoughtfully, curling his tongue to flute the sound as he mulled this over. She did not know Morlock, he sang at last, or she would not have suggested this. Still, there might be something Morlock could do for them.
She sang that if Orlock—
Morlock, he corrected her.
—if Yorlock—
Morlock, he corrected her.
—if Nyorlock—and that was close enough, an evil ghost take the never-wolf's unpronounceable name—that if Nyorlock could make gold out of mud, he could perhaps make more warlike and useful metals.
Rokhlenu sang concordantly and looked deep into her dark eyes agleam with moonlight.
She got to her feet irritably and asked if he had gotten laid yet.
He sang sadly that he would wait until they mated, that he didn't mind waiting.
She snapped that she did mind. The musk he emitted was making females wet in their nether parts for miles around. This nuisance must cease. She needed him to act with a cold clear head; she needed him to understand what he was doing when he bonded with her for life; she needed him to not have any regrets about last lost chances. Because he was not chasing other tails once they were together; she would not be shamed that way. If he needed the name of a good whore, she could find one for him.
In a bitter angular song not far removed from barking, he replied that he would never shame her that way, and he wondered why she was shaming him so. He didn't want his first coupling with her tainted with the stink of another female. His love for her was a sacred fire; it pained him, but he did not fear the pain.
His song was becoming more lyrical, and she interrupted him with a bitter barking laugh. She knew males better than that! she barked. He must be up to something.
He got to his feet, looked at her, and left without a word.
She repressed the impulse to run after him barking (get a whore! get a whore! get a whore!). That would do no good to anyone. She wondered what would.
This was the room where she usually slept in her night shape. Before she curled up in the moonlight, she went to a corner of the room where there was a tapestry on a frame against the wall. She dragged the frame aside. Behind the tapestry, mounted on a wooden frame, was Morlock's drawing of Rokhlenu standing in triumph over the dragon he had killed. One of her agents had bought it for her in the city, and she was very pleased with it. She had looked on it many times during the day, but this was the first time she had seen it with the eyes of her night shape. It looked different, more abstract, starker, not less beautiful.
She shook her head wearily. He would have to do something stupid, something thoughtless, something that reassured her that he was just another thump-footed, fat-nosed, bristle-witted male. Because if he didn't, she might really have to fall in love with him, and that would be a ghost-bitten nuisance.
She lay looking on his image, basking in the moonlight and his lingering scent, until sleep came to her.
Her dreams, as usual, were nightmares. Often she dreamed of her dead husbands; this afternoon, she had dreamed of Rokhlenu standing among them. But tonight it was a much older nightmare, her very first recurring nightmare. She was a child again, back in the Khuwuleion, and they were torturing her mother for a reason no one ever explained. She screamed for someone to save them, but she knew no one would ever save them. Even in her dream, she knew that was just an empty dream.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FIGHT AND BITE
It was raining the next day—a strangely summery rain, with the warm air so dense with water that it had to sweat some out. Rokhlenu donned a cloak for his walk across the outlier settlement, and before he took too many steps he was over-warm. If the cloak hadn't been a gift from his inten
ded, he would have draped it on a railing and walked away from it.
When he got to the far side of the settlement, he could see that Morlock was already at work in front of his cave, hammering away at something lying on a flat stone or anvil.
The wicker boat was resting at the water's edge on the base of the hill. Rokhlenu stared at it, wondering whether to call to Morlock or flounder across the water. The wicker boat, which had a glassy orb on its prow, swung toward him and proceeded across the stretch of swampy, rain-dented water.
This made the hairs on Rokhlenu's neck and ears rise up. On the other hand, it was rather convenient. He stepped into the boat and, using an oar he found inside the craft, paddled across to the other side. He eyed the up-and downhill stream dubiously, then climbed the slope to Morlock's cave.
Morlock's anvil was just at the entrance to his cave, and he was working sheltered from the rain. He nodded agreeably at Rokhlenu as he approached and said, “With you in a moment.”
It wasn't long, in fact. Morlock was hammering what appeared to be a spearhead, and presently he tossed it into a vat of water to cool, alongside some others that were already there.
Rokhlenu's first thought was that Wuinlendhono was right and that Morlock must have been using his talents to make base metals to work with. But then he saw that the anvil was a stone, and that the hammerhead and the spearheads appeared to be made of clear greenish blue glass.
“There is so much sand and lime about,” Morlock said, when he noticed him noticing the glass. “It made more sense to use it than try to find or make metal.”
Rokhlenu started to ask if the glass was strong enough to make a good spearhead, then stopped. If it was strong enough to make a hammer, it was strong enough for weaponry. Although he didn't see how that could be.
“I had to mess about with it for a while,” Morlock said, sensing his inchoate question. “These were just experiments, but I guess we will need weapons to fight with soon.”
Morlock's casual assumption that he would fight alongside Rokhlenu when the time came eased the werewolf's mind. “Probably,” Rokhlenu said, shouldering off his cloak and hanging it on the side of the anvil rock.
Morlock pulled forth a couple of wickerwork chairs, and they sat in the mouth of the cave and watched the misty rain fall on the swamp and the spindly lair-towers of the outlier pack.
“Odd weather,” said Morlock presently, and it wasn't casual conversation.
“Insane,” Rokhlenu agreed. “People say the world is going to end.”
“Eh. Aren't they always saying that?”
“I guess so. It's not just werewolves, then?”
Morlock shook his head, and they sat for a while in silence.
“I hear the Sardhluun came calling last night,” Morlock said.
“Yes.” Rokhlenu laughed barkingly as he remembered the hapless emissary trying to lick up the honor-teeth he had lost to Wuinlendhono.
He told Morlock all about it, since it was essential that he know, and then found himself saying much more. He talked about his feelings for Wuinlendhono and her confusing display of feelings for him. He talked about his dreams and hopes that were now lost, and his uncertainty at the prospects opening up to him. He talked about his anxiety about not hearing from his father and brothers—not once, in prison or afterward.
Morlock didn't say much, but it wasn't a soliloquy by Rokhlenu: sometimes the never-wolf would ask a question, and he always appeared alert and interested.
As Rokhlenu wound down he became embarrassed and said, “Sorry to fill your ears with all this quacking.”
“Eh,” Morlock. “Everyone has to talk to someone. You should have heard me rant to my favorite bartender. Poor old Leen.”
“What's a bartender?”
“Someone who serves you drinks.”
“Like water? I don't get it.”
Morlock explained about intoxicants in liquid form, and bars and bartenders.
“So it's like smoking bloom?” Rokhlenu asked.
“So I gather.”
“And you like this…this…stuff?”
“I gave it up. I shouldn't have mentioned it.”
“Well, why not? There's no one here but you, me, and the anvil.”
“There is also Hlupnafenglu. But I think our secrets are safe with him.”
Turning around in his chair, Rokhlenu looked back into the cave and saw the big red werewolf deeper in the cave, crouching down by a brightly lit sort of wickerwork sphere. He was gazing into it, entranced, firelight gleaming in his red eyes. There was a murmur that sounded like speech, but Rokhlenu wasn't sure whether it was coming from Hlupnafenglu or the flames or something else.
Rokhlenu turned around again and whistled meditatively. “He seems crazier than you were.”
“Same cause I think,” Morlock said, tapping the side of his head. “He has a scar on his temple like mine. I wonder what he was, that they felt the need to do this to him.”
Rokhlenu thought about this for a moment. It smelled to him that Morlock was also referring, by extension, to what the Sardhluun had done to him. He also seemed to be implying that what had been done had not wholly been undone.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, and tapped the side of his own head to indicate what he was asking about.
“My Sight is better,” Morlock said, “though by no means wholly returned. However…I seem to be dropping things with my left hand.”
Years ago, when Rokhlenu was learning how to sing, one of the cantors of the Aruukaiaduun Pack had said in his hearing, “I am beginning to go deaf.” A month later he was dead, and some said he had eaten wolfbane. Morlock's tone sounded a little like that long-dead cantor's; Rokhlenu knew it was no passing observation.
“Liudhleeo,” Rokhlenu hissed. “That toe-fingered cow-leech. Did she butcher you? I'll—”
“No, I don't think so,” Morlock said. “Whatever she did saved my life. I suspect the damage was done by then.”
“Maybe it will get better. Give it time.”
“Eh.”
“Open your maw and tell me what that means.”
Morlock shrugged, then said hesitantly, “Actually, it seems to be getting worse. So if we are going to do something about this other prison—”
“The Khuwuleion.”
“—the Khuwuleion, perhaps we had better do it soon.”
They turned, with some mutual relief, away from personal matters to tactics of approaching the Khuwuleion. Morlock was in the middle of a rather bizarre proposal that was making Rokhlenu question his sanity again when a damp and somewhat irritated crow fluttered down and landed on the ground by Morlock's feet.
The crow croaked that he had something for Morlock, if Morlock could make it worth his while.
Morlock croaked that he had a little bread, if the crow was interested.
The crow was always interested in new comestibles, but was sure this bread stuff would be a poor trade for ripe juicy information like what the crow had to offer.
Morlock, ignoring this, got up from the chair and went into the cave and rummaged around. “Sorry about this,” he said to Rokhlenu. “Crows have a sense of politeness, but it doesn't seem to apply to non-crows. And we might want to know what he knows.”
Morlock came back with half a loaf of brown bread and offered some crumbs to the crow. He ate some, complained about the color, flavor, lack of texture, and unfamiliarity of the foodstuff, then asked for more.
Morlock waved the loaf in the air and waited.
The crow said that there were soldiers from the Sardhluun Pack attacking the other side of the outlier settlement. He thought it was funny because—
Morlock and Rokhlenu leapt to their feet. Morlock dropped the loaf on the ground next to the startled crow.
“No weapon,” Rokhlenu said ruefully. It hadn't seemed necessary for a walk across town.
“I can get you a stabbing spear or two,” Morlock said. “We should drag Hlupnafenglu away from the flames, also.”
> “He is pretty good in a fight. Enjoys killing Sardhluun werewolves, anyway.”
“Eh. Who doesn't?”
They raised the alarm as they went, sending any outlier who responded to defend the fenceless east side of their settlement. They themselves ran on in long loping strides to the western fence.
Hlupnafenglu had been grumpy about leaving his beloved flames, but once he realized that fighting would be involved he was happy enough. Morlock gave him the heavy glass hammer from the anvil, and he was delighted with its weight and, apparently, its translucency: he kept peering at the sky through the heavy glass and hooting inarticulately.
The red werewolf kept with them almost all the way across town, but was finally decoyed away at the last moment by, of all things, the lair-tower of First Wolf. He kept staring at it and mouthing things that might or might not have been words. He wouldn't leave it, so they had to leave him.
Approaching the western verge of the settlement, Rokhlenu felt a sense of foreboding. The palisade surrounding the outlier settlement was not really a fortification. It was mostly useful for preventing flightless birds from walking straight from the marsh into town. The fence was thin; there were many gaps. He could hear arrows striking the far side of the wall as they shouldered their way through a milling crowd to where the First Wolf was standing. A circle of her gold-toothed bodyguards surrounded her, and by each honor guard was one of Rokhlenu's irredeemables, his neck bristling with honor-teeth.
She looked rather dashing, Rokhlenu thought, in a brazen helmet and short coat of coppery rings. But she didn't look happy, and Rokhlenu thought he could guess why.
Morlock stepped up to the west wall and reached out with his left hand to test the strength of the barrier. The soft wood came apart between his fingers like overripe cheese.
“Hurs krakna,” Morlock whispered and, whatever that meant, Rokhlenu was pretty sure he agreed with it. The settlement had never really been defended by the fence, Rokhlenu reflected. It had been defended from its potential enemies by the same thing that defended a poor man from robbers: indifference. They had changed all that last night, and now they were paying for it.