Wolf Age, The

by James Enge

  The watching citizens sang their approval. This was the way to run an election: surprises, bloom smoke, one side turning on itself, and a maximum of fighting with a minimum of talking.

  The crowd was barking with excitement by now. They were not aware of it, but their barking fell into the rhythm of War's delighted laughter. He was manifest, though not visible to most of the citizens there, and he was enjoying the rally immensely. It was a good fight, and promised to get better. He visualized that the Alliance would lose, but that many of the never-wolves and semiwolves fighting for the outliers would die, and he was interested to see how well the results accorded with his foresight.

  He wished Mercy were there. He would have showed her some events worth seeing.

  But Mercy was manifest elsewhere and elsewhen. As a dark bird with no feet, she was hovering over the hills west of the outlier settlement. A pale werewolf was half supporting, half dragging a crook-shouldered man with a gray corpselike face who was stumbling out of a cave.

  “Come on, you old fool,” the pale werewolf was saying. “You can be drunk in our den as well as in this stupid cave. You may be dying, but you don't have to die alone. Come on, old Khretvarrgliu. Just a little further along here. Careful on the steps.”

  Half cajoling, half abusing, in the manner of werewolves, the pale werewolf took the crooked man down the steps, across the water, and up the rickety stairway to the den at the top.

  The man said nothing. But Mercy saw a little into his heart: how he feared death not at all, but disliked the need for parting with friends like this. The werewolf's heart, too, was full of hopeless, helpless affection he could not express, much of it confused with thoughts of his mate Liudhleeo.

  Mercy witnessed them for a while, but demanifested herself before too much time passed. She knew that, whatever they felt now, they would change. She had been a god for long ages now, and she knew that Death was right about mortals: they were filled with one divinity, and then another, and then they changed and changed and changed. She preferred to be absent before they were lost to her entirely.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FRIENDS AND FOES

  It was a blisteringly hot morning in early spring. The First Wolf of the outliers and their gnyrrand were looking at a bucket of muddy water that Hlupnafenglu had just drawn from the swamp.

  “How does it work?” Wuinlendhono asked.

  “Like this,” Hlupnafenglu said, and dumped the contents of the bucket into an open tube with a downward slope. The muddy water poured down the slope, through a glassy mirrored gate at the base of the slope, then up another slope on the other side. Except the water ran on alone; the mud remained at the bottom of the slope in a sludgy pool. There was a second mirrored gate atop the second slope, and another downward sloping tube beyond. Beneath this tube was another bucket. The water ran into the bucket, and when it was done, the red werewolf picked up the bucket and drank from it.

  He offered the bucket to Rokhlenu.

  Rokhlenu took it, tasted it, drank a mouthful, and said, “It smells a little odd.”

  “You can run it through more than once to get it cleaner,” Hlupnafenglu said eagerly, and then his face fell. “Chieftain,” he said, and bowed his head.

  The others turned and saw Morlock standing near, with pale Hrutnefdhu beside him. The day was cruelly hot, but the crooked man wore his usual dark cloak over his ghostly left hand. He didn't seem to feel the heat: his pale grayish skin was dry as bone. He looked at the wooden tubes, at the suddenly abashed Hlupnafenglu and said, “So that was your project? A water cleaner?”

  “Yes, Chieftain. I didn't want to bother you with it.”

  “Not bad. But I think you need more than one turn to get the water really clean. A coil of three or four might do.”

  “Yes, Chieftain.”

  “Sketch a design or two and we'll discuss them later.”

  “Yes, Chieftain.”

  “This will be important to us,” Rokhlenu said, in case the red wolf was disheartened. “Especially if this dry weather continues.”

  Hlupnafenglu bowed his head, but did not call Rokhlenu chieftain.

  “Let's step out of this sun,” Wuinlendhono said. “Ghost! It's not even noon yet.”

  They went back into the First Wolf's lair-tower. The red werewolf remained behind to take apart his apparatus.

  “Warm weather for spring,” Morlock remarked.

  “It's like hell,” Wuinlendhono said. “Do your people believe in hell? I never did, but now I think I’m going to live through it.”

  There was a ragged edge to her voice, and Rokhlenu wanted to comfort her somehow, but he didn't know what to say. The weather was odd, very odd, frighteningly odd.

  “I don't suppose you have a magic trick that will make food for us, Khretvarrgliu,” the First Wolf said wryly. “We've been living on stores for almost a year, and by next fall they'll all be empty, I guess.”

  “No,” said Morlock, “but if I were you, I would set up a colony on the coast of the Bitter Water. Even the swamp will not last forever, if there are no streams to run into it, and the mirror gates will rinse water clean of salt. Plus the drought will not affect sea creatures much.”

  There was a silence, and Wuinlendhono said with amusement, “Are you proposing that we eat fish?”

  “Citizens will be eating worse by winter,” Morlock replied. “At least if you are correct about the stores running out.”

  Wuinlendhono nodded, still not convinced.

  “Besides,” Morlock continued, “there are red-blooded animals in the sea and around it. Whales, wave-horses, merkine, seabirds.”

  “Really? I had no idea! What do they taste like?”

  “Seabirds are just birds. I can't say about the rest.”

  “Yurr. Interesting. Of course, it's a few days’ run to the coast. They'd have to smoke the meat on the coast to transport it back here.”

  The males were silent as the First Wolf thought it through. “And if the drought goes on, we can all just move there,” she said at last. “Wuruyaaria will be done, anyway.” She put a hand on Rokhlenu's arm. “Beloved, I’m going to do something about this. Do you want me with you when you meet the band from the Aruukaiaduun wolves?”

  He did, but he stroked her hand and said, “Want, yes. Need, no. Go save our lives, why don't you?”

  She gave a long carnivore's grin to them all and hurried away, her gold-toothed guardians scurrying in her wake.

  “Morlock,” said Rokhlenu to his old friend, “you don't look well.”

  “I’m dying,” the crooked man said matter-of-factly. The pale werewolf looked at him with alarm.

  “You look like you're already dead,” Rokhlenu said. “Isn't there anything we can do?”

  “Not unless you know where to find a unicorn,” Morlock replied.

  He used the Latin word, not knowing the term in Sunspeech, and when he explained what he meant, Rokhlenu said dubiously, “There are stories about things like that. Children's stories. What's told of them makes them sound like pets. Imaginary pets.”

  “I don't know anything about your local kinds,” Morlock said. “They lived in the mountains where I was raised. I suppose they still live there.”

  “Then we'll take you there. Or we'll send there for a horn.”

  Morlock shook his head. “No. I’ll be dead soon. The ghost illness will reach my heart and I’ll be done.” Again, Hrutnefdhu was looking at him with a stricken expression, but Morlock didn't seem to notice. “I’ll teach Hlupnafenglu what I can before I die. I’ll do what I can for you before I die. It's not what I would have chosen, but it will have to be enough.”

  “What about Ulugarriu?” broke in Hrutnefdhu. “Maybe—maybe he could do something.”

  Morlock opened his right hand, closed it. That seemed to be a dismissal of the subject. He turned to Rokhlenu and said, “I tore down the mirror corridor.”

  “Yes, I saw that.”

  “The moonstone failed after I healed Lekkative
ngu. I can't recharge it with moonlight; it's designed differently than my sunstone. In fact, I don't think it was made at all; it may be a piece of a moon.”

  “How did they get it?”

  Morlock shrugged. He continued, “When I was breaking up the silvered glass I had an idea.”

  He drew a short stabbing spear from a sheath under his cloak. The spear head was glass, woven through with threadlike cracks. And in the center was a silvery wedge.

  “In the haft, there's a rune-slate bonded in state to the glass spearhead,” Morlock explained coolly. “You stab someone with the spear, break the rune-slate, the glass shatters, and the silver point remains in the wound.”

  Rokhlenu finally understood the feeling of dread gripping him since Morlock had appeared. “Put it away, please,” he said, as mildly as possible.

  “I think they'll work,” said Morlock, “though I haven't tested one yet. I have enough silver and glass from the mirror corridor to make many of these.”

  “I’m sure they'll work; everything you make works. But we can't use them.”

  “They're safe enough for the user. The—”

  “Politically impossible. You need to take my word for this, Morlock. I cannot use silver weapons against other werewolves. Every citizen in Wuruyaaria would march against us.”

  Morlock shrugged, nodded, and sheathed the spear. “Well, maybe I can use the stuff for something else. This really bothers you, does it?” he added, tapping the sheath.

  “Yes. It really does.”

  “I’ll get rid of it. You'd better stay here,” he said to Hrutnefdhu. “Some silver might be lying around the cavern yet.”

  The pale werewolf nodded and said, “Either Liudhleeo or I will bring you lunch. You'll eat it or find another den.”

  Morlock smiled, gripped him by the forearm, punched Rokhlenu lightly in farewell, and left.

  “Is he drunk?” Rokhlenu asked Hrutnefdhu. “He smelled like that stuff he drinks. The wine.”

  “He never drinks during the day,” the pale werewolf replied. “But he is drunk every night.”

  “I wish I’d never given him the stuff. I thought he'd like it.”

  “I can't tell if he does. It seems to be hurting him somehow. But what does it matter, if he's dying anyway?” The pale castrato's voice was shrill with despair.

  They entered the great audience chamber of the First Wolf. She wasn't there. In fact, no one was there. They sat down on couches and talked in low voices about one thing and another: the election, and Morlock, and Ulugarriu, and the deadly weather. They reached no conclusions, but that, Rokhlenu thought to himself, isn't what talking was usually for.

  Wuinlendhono appeared presently. She dismissed her guards and began to talk about her plans for the seacoast colony. They were getting more people in the outlier settlement because of their successes in the elections—more than they could really feed, as it was turning out. This was a chance to give some of the newcomers a chance to earn some bite, if nothing else.

  Hrutnefdhu left them during this conversation. Rokhlenu waved him an offhanded farewell, involved in discussing the new plans and their political impact with his beloved.

  Presently he looked up to see that the red werewolf Hlupnafenglu was standing nearby, patiently waiting for them to notice him.

  “What is it, Hlupnafenglu?” he asked.

  “Do you know who I am?” the red werewolf asked in turn.

  “Yurr.” Was the big red werewolf going crazy again? “Aren't you Hlupnafenglu?”

  “I am now. Do you know who I was?”

  “Oh. Before the Vargulleion? No. Is it important?”

  “I don't know if it is.” The red werewolf looked keenly at the First Wolf. “Do you know who I was, High Huntress?”

  She seemed reluctant to reply. Finally she said, “Well. I thought you might be the Red Shadow. I saw him a few times in Apetown. From a distance, mind you. But he didn't look like anyone else I’ve ever seen, except you.”

  “I was the Red Shadow.”

  “All right,” Rokhlenu said. “Someone has to explain this to me.”

  Wuinlendhono turned to him and said, “The Red Shadow was an assassin. You wouldn't have heard about him; you were a respectable person before they framed you. But for five or six years, if you wanted someone killed in Apetown or Dogtown, and you didn't care how much it cost you, you hired the Red Shadow. He never failed. A few years ago, he disappeared. Some people said he was killed by one of his targets, and some people said he had retired to live among the wild packs. But apparently he was in the Vargulleion. Eh, ‘Hlupnafenglu’?”

  “Yes. I don't know how I got there or what they did to me. I don't remember a lot. But I do remember the murders. Many, many murders.”

  “Oh,” said Rokhlenu. Killing in fights was an accepted part of life in the werewolf city, but secret murder was another thing entirely. “Maybe that does make a difference.”

  The red werewolf bowed his head. “I’m done with all that. Can't I be Khretvarrgliu's apprentice, Hlupnafenglu? Does it matter that I was the Red Shadow?”

  “Not to me,” said Rokhlenu. “We were in the Vargulleion together, and we fought our way out together. That matters more to me than the crimes of someone I never heard of until just now.”

  “But this is a Year of Choosing,” Wuinlendhono said gently. “It might matter to the citizens of Wuruyaaria.”

  The red werewolf nodded, not looking at either of them. “If you say, I will go.”

  Rokhlenu would have liked to turn him down then and there. No; stay; you're one of us now. But it wasn't that easy.

  “Let's think about it,” he said. “I have a meeting to go to now”—ghosts, that sounded like something a politician would say, but he was a politician these days—“so let's talk it over later on, perhaps tomorrow. If you can stay, we want you to stay: not as the Red Shadow, but as yourself, as Hlupnafenglu.”

  “Chieftain, my real name is—”

  “Your real name is Hlupnafenglu, unless you choose otherwise. Think on it.”

  The red werewolf looked at him with his golden eyes, turned, and walked away.

  “I handled that badly,” he said to his spouse, after Hlupnafenglu had gone.

  “No,” she said. “Not if you weren't lying to him. If you really want to keep him around. Because now he probably won't leave unless we send him away.”

  “I wasn't lying.”

  “Then go meet with the Aruukaiaduun band. Them you can lie to. They'll be disappointed if you don't.”

  “Them I live to disappoint.”

  The Aruukaiaduun band were awaiting him in the old barracks of the irredeemables. Lekkativengu, claw-fingered no longer and wearing perhaps the first pair of shoes he had ever owned, was entertaining them with polite conversation. The subject at hand was the last rally fought between the Sardhluun-Neyuwuleiuun Alliance and the Goweiteiuun with their outlier partisans.

  The Aruukaiaduun gnyrrand was a smooth-faced, brown-eyed, shiny-toothed emptiness named Norianduiu; Rokhlenu knew a little bit about him from the old days (as he thought of his life before the Vargulleion), and had not expected much trouble with him. He knew the Aruukaiaduun cantors, as well; they were just inferior versions of Norianduiu.

  No, the only person who counted in this embassy was the oldest and ugliest member, a werewolf with no official position in the Aruukaiaduun Pack, the old gray-muzzle Rywudhaariu.

  He was nearly a semiwolf. He could assume the night shape, but in the day shape his nose and lower jaw were strangely prominent, almost meeting, and the end of his nose had a strange spongy look, almost like a wolf's nose. His arms were somewhat crooked and leglike, too; he always wore clothes with long sleeves to disguise this.

  He was too impaired to run for office; no one liked him enough to vote for him without pressure. But his neck was almost hidden by ropes of honor-teeth he had acquired or extorted over the years. He had been running things on Nekkuklendon, with claws into business on every other mesa, f
or generations. And he controlled the representatives of the Aruukaiaduun to the Innermost Pack of the city, always through some face-without-a-personality like Norianduiu.

  It had kept members of the Aruukaiaduun on the Innermost Pack for as long as anyone could remember. Citizens were more than willing to enlist the famous cunning of Rywudhaariu in the service of the city. But no Aruukaiaduun werewolf had ever been First Singer of the Innermost Pack. That was a job for a puppet master, not a puppet.

  This was why Rokhlenu had decided to meet the Aruukaiaduun werewolves alone. The risk was that he would look like a gnyrrand with no followers. The message, though, was that there was only one citizen in the Aruukaiaduun embassy worth talking to. He saw the chagrined looks among the Aruukaiaduun cantors as he approached, and decided that the message had been received. They had been hoping at least to meet his notorious mate, the First Wolf of the outliers. Instead, they would be shuffled off to an underling while the grown-ups talked—as usual.

  “Lekkativengu, show the gnyrrand and the cantors around town a bit,” Rokhlenu said as he approached. “Citizens, I leave you in good hands”—he winked slightly at Lekkativengu, who grinned and proudly flexed his fingers—“and perhaps we'll talk later. But I must consult with your leader now.”

  The gnyrrand and the cantors looked at Rywudhaariu, who nodded, and they glumly rose from their couches and shuffled after Lekkativengu into the searingly hot spring sunlight.

  Rokhlenu sat down on a couch opposite and tried to look his old enemy in the eye. It was difficult, as old Rywudhaariu was somewhat wall-eyed and he enjoyed making interlocutors uncomfortable by turning his face toward them and his eyes away.

  “That was rather high-handed,” said the old werewolf, not as if he disapproved. His voice was reedy, not good for singing or speaking.

  “Not so high-handed as when your clowns sent me to the Vargulleion.”

  “That was the biggest mistake I ever made. But you wouldn't be led, old sport, and I’m not ready to lie down and be barked at yet.”