Wolf Age, The

by James Enge

  No wonder Rokhlenu was distressed: the Aruukaiaduun had been boasting openly that they had killed his family, and he had been compelled to flee from the rally. Morlock knew his old cellmate fairly well, and guessed that shame and grief would be eating away at him now.

  Rokhlenu stopped scanning the crowd; he was now looking directly at Morlock.

  Morlock met his eye, across the surging tide of citizens. He pointed deliberately at Rokhlenu, then at himself. He pointed at himself, then Rokhlenu. What he meant was, You and me against them. Although he didn't think his friend knew it, he added the Dwarvish signal blood-for-blood: his hand clenched twice in front of his chest.

  Rokhlenu grinned a long wolvish grin. He threw back his head and laughed. Either he had understood what Morlock had signalled, or understood something else that put his mind at ease.

  “You don't say much,” Liudhleeo said wryly at his side, “but you sure seem to make it count.”

  “Eh.”

  “Except when you say that.”

  Rokhlenu's laugh had surprised most of the audience, and they fell quiet, watching him. Into the semi-silence he sang a clear, concise song. It was true they had been defeated, and the taste of defeat was bitter. But one rally was not the election, and they would force that bitterness down their enemies' throats until they learned to love it. They would pay blood for blood. He thanked the citizens for coming and suggested, in brief, that they go home and begin working for the defeat of the criminal Alliance.

  The crowd roared. The word criminal struck at the heart of their anger. Were they dogs or cattle, for the rope-twisting Aruukaiaduun to kill for their entertainment? They were citizens of Wuruyaaria, and there would be a reckoning. So they said to each other. Rokhlenu and his cantors were gone from the rostra, and the meeting was breaking up.

  Morlock and Liudhleeo were at the edge of the market and found it easy to slip away on a side street. They were soon away from any crowd, but Liudhleeo kept her arm around him and he did not push her away. They walked home in silence and climbed the dark narrow stairs to the den.

  She didn't say anything, so neither did he. He planned a long day tomorrow, making copper and gold so that they could flood the bookies with bets on a Union victory. The night was hot, as the nights always were these days, so he stripped to his shirt and lay in the shadows against the wall under an open window.

  He had almost fallen asleep when he felt her press up against his back.

  He turned to face her, holding himself up from the floor by his right hand.

  Her red eyes were black in the blue moonlight. She whispered to him, “I don't need you to say anything. I don't need you to feel anything for me. I don't even want that. I know you don't care. I don't care that you don't care. But please. Please. Please.”

  He did care, but he didn't tell her that. He felt death in him and near him all the time, and she was alive, was life. Her lean naked body was strangely beautiful. Her mouth was hot and wet and smelled of cloves. She pressed it against his as she frantically tore the buttons from his shirt and they at last met, skin to conscious skin.

  He worked for two straight days making copper and gold. He invested a third day in helping his old apprentice to teach his new apprentice the making of copper and gold. He thought of his new apprentice as the apprentice of his old apprentice, Hlupnafenglu, but no one else seemed to. His new apprentice was the clumsy thief who had tried to pick his pocket in the Shadow Market, a young citizen who was named Lakkasulakku.

  Now that he had two apprentices, he never taught the same thing to both. His idea was that they could pool the skills he taught them after his death. They both looked disturbed when he told them this, but he could not understand why: he could feel the dead area preceding dissolution creeping up his neck and through his chest. His shoulder was beginning to fade. They could cherish illusions if it suited them; he didn't have the time.

  In the evening and the night, there was Liudhleeo. He learned more about her in a few days than he had in the previous six months. She was intent on sharing everything with him: the details of her day, healing the semiwolves and never-wolves of the city; her brutal childhood in a foster-den on Iuiunioklendon; how she had escaped to live in the necropolis of Wuruyaaria, the long eastern slope of the mountain that bristled with the tombs of the city's eminent dead; how she had met Wuinlendhono there and how they had come together to the outlier pack; how Wuinlendhono had risen and risen while Liudhleeo fell further and further until…well…

  She poured her words into him as if they were coins and he was a strongbox to protect them. Sometimes he wanted to tell her to stop, to save her secrets for someone who would be alive to share them with. But, of course, it was the imminence of his death that made him safe to talk to. He was like one of the eminent dead she knew so well from the necropolis, a grave and mostly silent counsellor.

  Her physical hunger for him was as intense: a dark longing in which pleasure had very little place. He understood the horror and repulsion that drew her to him, and he pitied her for them. But he never said this to her, because he felt it would drive her away. And he wanted her at least as much as she wanted him.

  She was alive. She was life. And he was dying.

  He had not forgotten his debt to avenge Hrutnefdhu, her mate whom he could follow but never replace. He went several times into Dogtown to place long-shot bets for the outliers, and the bookies grew to know and trust him well. He became quite adept at reading the notes on betting slips, a mishmash of Sunspeech and Moonspeech. And he believed that some of the bookies, at least, would pass the word to him if they saw Yaniunulu again. No one seemed to esteem him much: an odd-smelling mutt with a habit of sneering at people; more bark than he had bite.

  One day he was in the cave, teaching Lakkasulakku how to fold molten glass, when Hlupnafenglu came in, a small strip of wood in his big red hands.

  “A runner from the city brought this, Khretvarrgliu,” he said. “It's from that bookie in Dogtown, Orlioiulu.”

  Morlock looked at it. It was scraped on the same sort of wax-covered wood that they used for betting tickets. The ideograms told him that Yaniunulu (“the dog-faced betrayer”) had been seen, and that Morlock (“Khretvarrgliu”) should come see Orlioiulu (“friendly purveyor of chance and mystery”) soonest.

  Morlock's reading had progressed fairly well, but it was as a maker that the note interested him.

  “Elegantly carved ideograms, wouldn't you say?” he asked, showing the note to the werewolves.

  “Yes, Khretvarrgliu.”

  “Sure,” said Lakkasulakku. “What's it say?”

  “A lie,” Morlock said. “Have you ever seen Orlioiulu?”

  Hlupnafenglu nodded, and then gave a slow smile. “He has paws for hands. He could not have drawn these figures.”

  “Not with these angles of incision,” Morlock said, who had examined the note very closely indeed.

  A shadow fell across Hlupnafenglu's face. Looking up, they saw that Liudhleeo had entered the cave.

  It turned out she, too, had received a note. Written by the same hand, but not signed Orlioiulu, it said that if she wanted news of her mate's murder, she should consult her new mate.

  “This looks very much like a trap,” said the red werewolf with great satisfaction. “Let me go, Khretvarrgliu. I missed him once; let me bring him home this time.”

  “No,” Morlock said. “I'll go. From you they would merely hide. Also, you may be recognized—not as yourself, but as who you were.”

  “Morlock,” Liudhleeo said evenly, “I am frightened.”

  “I'll be careful.”

  “For myself, you selfish pig. They meant this note to divide me from you. I'm worried they may be coming for me.”

  “Hm. Not impossibly. Another reason for you to stay, Hlupnafenglu. You can defend her with the resources of the cave. I'll leave Tyrfing, also. Kill with it only if you must, but in that case kill without mercy.”

  Hlupnafenglu, who had been the Red Shadow,
bowed his golden head. “Khretvarrgliu, I will. I will spend my life for hers, if need be.”

  “You can't do this,” whispered Liudhleeo. “You cannot do this. You stupid ape-faced—you've only got one hand!”

  “I'll have three,” Morlock said. “Lakkasulakku will come with me.”

  “Right, Chief!”

  Now Liudhleeo was weeping silently as Morlock armed himself and his apprentice from the gear in the cave. He turned to her at last. “I'll see you tonight,” he said.

  “Tonight you'll be dead. I'll never see you again.”

  “If not tonight, then soon. Good-bye, Liudhleeo,” he said, and kissed her shocked weeping face. He turned away and walked down the hill in the bitterly bright sunshine. Lakkasulakku followed him, whistling noisily as he rattled down the wooden steps.

  Orlioiulu's betting booth was closed, much to the annoyance of some semiwolvish patrons who wanted to lay bets on the weather. A prominent citizen was claiming the sunlight would soon be hot enough to boil water at noon, and the locals wanted to get some action going on it. Orlioiulu would give odds on anything, but he wasn't here to give odds on anything and his loyal customers were upset.

  “Poor old Orlioiulu,” Morlock remarked to young Lakkasulakku.

  “Think he's dead?”

  “Yes. Our correspondent will have killed him.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Yes. They will show us some bait, soon. I'll follow it. You wait a hundred breaths or so and follow me from a distance. Get me?”

  “I get you, Chief.”

  Before long, they saw their bait: fuzz-faced Yaniunulu lurking at the mouth of an alleyway, craning his neck to peer toward Orlioiulu's betting booth. He was even wearing the gold tooth he had earned as a member of Wuinlendhono's guard, just so that no one could miss who he was.

  “Pretty raw,” whispered Lakkasulakku. “He must be desperate.”

  Morlock was also. He nodded, turned away, and sauntered openly toward the alleyway.

  Yaniunulu affected not to see him until he had crossed half the distance to the alley. Then the fuzz-faced semiwolf started, and turned back to run up the alley.

  Morlock loped after him, not too swiftly. He was fairly sure Yaniunulu wasn't really trying to escape him, and he wanted to have a look at whatever trap he was headed into before it closed on him.

  By the time Morlock reached the alley, Yaniunulu was at an open doorway, looking over his shoulder. When his eyes met Morlock's, he fled through the doorway.

  “Too obvious,” said Morlock aloud, and drew one of the stabbing spears sheathed over his shoulder. He followed Yaniunulu through the open door out of the cruel sunlight.

  He waited for his eyes to accustom themselves to the shadows before he moved.

  What he saw, presently, was a dim corridor with Yaniunulu standing (somewhat twitchily) at the far end. The corridor floor had a dark seam down the middle, and it looked like the edges did not fully meet the walls on either side.

  “Eh,” Morlock said. The trap was so obvious he had to be concerned it was simply the mask for another more subtle one. But before him was one of the citizens involved in his friend's murder. If he could not get him to talk, he would not let him get away.

  He threw the spear in his hand.

  He was ten paces away from Yaniunulu, and he was ill and feeling weak. But he was still Morlock Beast Slayer: the spear passed through the werewolf and pinned him to the wall behind. Yaniunulu screamed and struggled to free himself.

  Morlock crouched down and pounded on the corridor floor with his fist. The two sides of the floor folded apart as he had expected. They were set on axles, it seemed, about a handsbreadth away from the walls; the space between the wall base and the floor had been left to allow the floorboards to swing freely when the trap was sprung. Below was a filthy stretch of water that looked like a sewer—and smelled like one, too.

  Morlock tested the strength of the axle holding one of the swinging floorboards; it seemed strong enough to hold his weight. Balancing with his right hand against the wall, he stepped onto the upright edge of the floorboard and walked across to where Yaniunulu was still vainly struggling against the spear that pinned him to the wall.

  The wound was grave, straight through the middle of the werewolf's body. But it hardly bled at all.

  “What are you, citizen?” Morlock asked. Yaniunulu's dark eyes, void of expression, met his, but there was no other answer.

  “Not what you appear, at any rate,” Morlock observed. He drew his other spear and, striking vertically, slashed Yaniunulu from the base of his neck to his belly.

  The werewolf's loose brown garment fell away, and great folds of his furred skin parted like curtains. Through the gaps Morlock saw several small creatures, hardly larger than his fists. They had pink-and-brown mottled skins, void of hair, and long gray tails. Their faces were strangely human, but for the long ratlike snouts. He had wounded one of the rat-things, and evidently killed another, but the rest chittered angrily. One issued a high screeching sound like a command, and the ratlike beasts began to abandon the Yaniunulu simulacrum they had been operating.

  They held long glittering razors liked swords in their hands, and they moved toward him menacingly.

  He decapitated one with his spear when it approached him incautiously and kicked another into the slime of the open trap. He made a great sweeping feint with the spear, and the rough line of ratlike beasts broke. They fled, a dozen or so, across the edge of the floor trap and away into the harsh sunlight at the corridor mouth.

  Morlock examined the now-motionless simulacrum of Yaniunulu. It was a fascinating piece of work. The skin and fur and bone seemed to be real and alive, but it was all just a shell, with levers and pulleys to be operated by the tiny crew of rats. It was marked nowhere MADE BY ULUGARRIU, but it hardly needed to be.

  The corridor was a dead end that gave no clear entrance into the rest of the building. Morlock turned and followed the rats across the trap and into the cruel sunlight outside.

  The rats had long since fled, but he saw a familiar figure lying on the ground at the head of the alley: Lakkasulakku. Several citizens were bending over him, not obviously with kind intent. Morlock ran over, brandishing the spear still in his hand, and they retreated.

  Lakkasulakku was bleeding copiously from wounds in his foot and thigh. A swelling bulged on his forehead; he had been struck there. Morlock thought bitterly of the razorlike blades of the ratlike beasts. Had he followed them straight out, they might not have had the opportunity to do this.

  He sewed up the greater wounds with thread and needle he had with him in a stray pocket and bound up the wounds with strips torn from his clothing. Then he tossed the young citizen over his shoulder and loped off down the street.

  Lakkasulakku's face was pale, and oily with sweat; his breathing was irregular; he had been unconscious since Morlock had found him. But Morlock thought he could be saved by a healer as skillful as Liudhleeo. He made his way back to the outliers as swiftly as he could.

  The sunlight was growing gray for Morlock by the time he reached the southern gate. He was glad to see one of the old irredeemables on duty at the gate, although he could not remember the werewolf's name. He was about to ask that the guard help him haul Lakkasulakku to Liudhleeo's when the guard said to him, “The gnyrrand wants to see you, Khretvarrgliu.”

  “Later,” Morlock said. “I have to get this young citizen to a healer.”

  “She—” the irredeemable began, then paused. “There was a thing that happened at your cave. That's what I heard.”

  The day got grayer still for Morlock, though the sun was as fierce as ever. “Can you take care of my friend?”

  The irredeemable bowed his grizzled head. “An honor, Khretvarrgliu. The gnyrrand and—and—and the others are at the First Wolf's lair.”

  Morlock, relieved of the burden of Lakkasulakku, ran as fast as his weary legs would carry him to the First Wolf's tower. The goldtooth on duty at the entrance saw
him coming and simply stepped aside.

  The bodies were laid out on biers in the main audience hall on the ground floor. Hlupnafenglu was staring at the ceiling with what Morlock would have called an expression of mild interest, were it not for the raw red hole in his unmoving chest. The other body was headless and already wrapped in linen, but Morlock recognized it as Liudhleeo's from its outline.

  Wuinlendhono was bent over Liudhleeo's body, sobbing. She had one of the dead linen-wrapped hands gripped in both of hers. Rokhlenu stood beside her, his hands on her shoulders, his face clenched with grief and worry.

  Wuinlendhono looked up with red eyes as Morlock approached. She dropped the dead hand, shook off Rokhlenu, and stood between Morlock and the corpse as if to protect it from him.

  “If she,” she said. “If this. If you. If. If this. If this was because of you. If this happened because of you. I'll kill you myself. You sheep-stinking, ape-faced, never-wolf, plepnup bastard. I will kill you.”

  Morlock stepped around her. The neck was severed in the same way as Hrutnefdhu's had been. Hlupnafenglu's neck was untouched. Of course, it was possible that the killer had planned to remove Hlupnafenglu's head in the same way, but had been interrupted. He would ask about how the bodies had been discovered, if he had a chance, and if he could get someone to talk to him instead of screaming at him. But, even if that were the case, the killer (or killers) must have killed them both and then proceeded to decapitate Liudhleeo's corpse first. This had been done for a reason.

  The linen wrappings were falling loose from the hand Wuinlendhono had been weeping over. Morlock looked at the hand, then picked it up and further unwrapped the linen to get a better look at it.