Wolf Hunting

by Jane Lindskold

  "And you set out to teach archery," Truth said, "to Dantarahma, and to this Melina and this Valora of whom the others tell, and to these twins."

  "Well, yes."

  "And me? How do I fit in this?" Truth felt the prickle of her hackles rising, her tail lashing, and wondered if she did this in body as well as spirit "As we know, two of your students were willing to commit murder. We'll never know what Valora would have done - and you've been very cautious about your intention for the twins."

  "Well, they ..."

  "No!" Truth roared. "No evasions. What did you intend for me?"

  "Why the same as for the others, good Truth. I saw the potential in your situation."

  "For sorcery?"

  "Not quite. For untapped potential. I also saw something else."

  "What?"

  "Remember that window I mentioned?"

  "Yes."

  "When your friends opened the door for you, they finished opening the window for me. My range is still limited I have a lot of learning to do, but I am managing much better. How do you think I can talk with you so easily now, with your body and soul together and you so dreadfully saner

  Truth lashed out, why and at what, later she was not sure, but the violence of the motion brought her to full wakefulness. Upon awakening, she noticed immediately that her body no longer lay where she had gone to sleep. She hadn't moved far, but was outside of the camp, and could hear Eshinarvash stamping his awareness that something was new in his surroundings.

  Truth called to the horse, "It's just me. I had a nightmare, and am going to run it off."

  The Wise Horse settled. "Bad things, nightmares. Good hunting, then."

  Truth's paws remained sore, so instead of hunting, she found herself a tree and hung over a branch, trying to make sense of what had happened. The Voice had seemed honest, but the more he told her, the more she feared him. The more she feared him, the more she hated him for making her his tool.

  So unsettled was Truth that the stars had moved visibly in their nightly dance before she realized that whatever it was the Meddler had intended to tell her regarding their missing companions had been forgotten by them both.

  Or had that merely been bait to make her listen to him?

  Truth shook her head so hard that her small round ears rattled like leaves on a gale shaken tree.

  Bait. That's what it had been. Bait. Bait to make her go and do what she didn't wish to do. Bait to make her take up his challenge. She wouldn't take it.

  Truth shook her head again, seeking to dislodge an uncomfortable feeling, as if with mere motion she could assure herself that the secure join of body and spirit would never be threatened again.

  THEY HAD RETREATED norm and east, Firekeeper cradling Bitter in her arms, Lovable riding on Blind Seer's back. Beneath the dense forest foliage, color was giving way to shadow with the coming of evening.

  "We must warn the others about these creeping briars," Blind Seer said.

  "Yes," Firekeeper agreed, "but the ravens cannot be moved quickly. Bitter is gravely wounded."

  "My nose tells me you are not merely trying to save yourself what will be a hard run," Blind Seer said, but the cant of his ears and tail failed to transmit the humor of his words. "Let us find you someplace secure. Then I will run as fast as these four feet can carry me. If the others have kept the trail, with Plik there to translate my message for me (you really should have learned to write, Firekeeper), I should be back to you before the next sunset"

  Firekeeper nodded. She didn't question why Blind Seer wanted to find her some sort of lair. He would not be the only hunter with a nose sharp enough to scent injury and pain. No predator hunted what would fight when that which would not was easily found.

  Lovable might not be able to do more than glide, but her alert memory recalled what she and Bitter had noted during their earlier passage. She directed them toward the ruins of a one-roomed stone structure standing alone in a small clearing that showed ample sign of grazers and browsers both. The stone of the house was thick with honeysuckle vine, but there was no trace of the hook-thomed briar. The few trees were slim saplings that might be eaten by the deer this coming winter.

  The walls are thick and high," Blind Seer said with satisfaction as he sniffed about the structure for sign that any other laired within it. "You can guard the hole where the door once was."

  Firekeeper nodded. "And what there is of a roof looks stable enough not to fall - at least not tonight - and nothing larger than a squirrel would trust itself to that shaky bridge. I can block the window holes with dead wood. They were never large to begin with."

  "And don't forget fire," Blind Seer said. "Fire will do you more good than all the rest together."

  1 won't forget," Firekeeper promised. "I could as soon forget my name."

  Lovable hopped from Blind Seer's back and walked

  stiffly to where Firekeeper had set Bitter on the duff-covered floor of the stone house. Blind Seer looked at Firekeeper.

  "Would you have me stay until your fire is kindled?"

  Firekeeper knelt so she might embrace him around his neck. Holding him tightly, she spoke into the thickness of his fur.

  **I kindled fires before you were born, Blue-Eyes. Go. I'll be fine, but hurry back. Harjeedian may be able to send something to help Bitter - and I will miss you."

  Blind Seer licked the side of her face, then he shook himself free from her hold. He stood for a moment, staring at her. Then he turned away. Swift and silent as the approaching night, he was gone.

  FIREKEEPER PREPARED THE FIRE FIRST, building it within the shelter of the stone house. She considered building another outside, but the light would ruin her night vision, so she decided to do without.

  As the fire was catching, Firekeeper alternated between feeding the growing flame and dripping water into Bitter's beak. The raven swallowed, which she took as a good sign. His wounds no longer bled freely, and though she longed to wash them she did not Doc had taught her a clean wound healed best but Firekeeper feared that even gentle tending would start fresh bleeding.

  Lovable watched these tendings with anxious alertness. In the firelight, Firekeeper could see anew how battered Lovable was. She had thought to ask the raven to sit watch above the lintel, but now she knew the raven needed sleep as desperately as did her mate.

  "I will make Bitter a sort of nest" Firekeeper said, "close enough to the fire for the warmth, but not too close. Will you sit with him? I think even in his sleep your scent would be a comfort to him."

  Lovable agreed, hopping to the assigned place and settling in as if she were brooding her eggs. Firekeeper left long enough to fetch fresh water from a spring to the rear of the house. The area surrounding the spring showed some signs of human adaptation. Firekeeper suspected that the spring was why the house was here, and why the forest denizens still frequented the area. Otherwise, the stone house would likely have been covered by vines and growing things, visible only in winter when the leaves died back, and then only as a shapeless mass suggesting something large beneath.

  She scrubbed blood and sap from her skin, and set snares in the surrounding tangle. Bitter had swallowed water. He would probably get even more benefit from blood. For that matter, Lovable could probably use a solid meal - and so could Firekeeper herself.

  Firekeeper ranged just a little farther in case the scent of fire drove away the small game that certainly lived in this area. She set a few more snares, silently thanking Race Forester for his teaching. Her childhood would have been much easier if she had known more about such things.

  Then she hurried back to the stone house. Lovable was alert and watchful. Once again Firekeeper found herself amazed at the tenacious spirit housed within one she had liked, but had always thought rather frivolous. Most who knew the ravens thought that Bitter had been drawn to Lovable as an antidote to his own somber personality. Now Firekeeper was suspecting Bitter had known of his mate's inner strengths as well.

  Never going too far fr
om the stone house, Firekeeper built up a supply of wood for the fire, both green to feed it slowly and dry for light without smoke. She blocked the window apertures. In her wood gathering, she uncovered any manner of bugs and grubs. Some of the fatter ones she ate, for hers would be a long night's watch. Most she gave to Lovable. They both agreed that Bitter was not ready to eat anything so solid.

  Before Firekeeper had completed her self-assigned tasks, evening had given way to night. She checked her snares and found a rabbit in one. Bitter swallowed the still warm blood. Lovable and Firekeeper split the rest, the raven eating the viscera, the wolf-woman the flesh.

  Yet although food, fire, and some promise that her patients were not losing ground should have been a comfort, as the night drew on, Firekeeper felt increasingly tense and apprehensive. She sat outside the doorway where her shadowed form would blend into the stone and listened, her bow against her knees, her quiver close to hand.

  From time to time she rose and patrolled the vicinity, telling herself that she must not fall asleep, that she must not let her muscles grow stiff from immobility, knowing that she was searching for something, though she knew not what Blind Seer would not return this night She couldn't be listening for his return, so for what was she watching?

  During one of her turns inside to feed the fire, Firekeeper arranged the wood so that embers, not flames would result. She went to check on the ravens while her eyes adjusted again to darkness. Bitter seemed to be resting easily - or more easily than before. Lovable was awake, alert, and glad for the water Firekeeper poured for her. Bitter accepted more water, but did not appear to fully waken.

  "You're restless," Lovable said as Firekeeper was making Bitter comfortable in his makeshift nest "The feeling belongs to this land. Restless. We felt it in the warm air that lifted us over the fields, but we saw nothing. We thought that full night would show something. Humans make fights, you know."

  Firekeeper thought of her redly glowing fire. "I know."

  "We went to rest in a tree. You know what happened."

  "So you saw nothing."

  "Nothing but grass, scattered deers, insects, birds. All the something that is nothing when you are looking for more."

  Firekeeper placed a bent finger against her lips and bit down gently, as if the mild pain would clear her thoughts.

  "But there is something," she said.

  "We thought so. You think so."

  Firekeeper reached and gently sleeked down the raven's feathers. "Thank you. I was wondering if I was overtired, imagining enemies as a puppy stalks his own tail."

  "I don't think you are," Lovable said, stroking Fire-keeper's hand with her heavy beak. "I know we weren't."

  "Good."

  Firekeeper went back to her post alongside the door. She settled in, leaning back against the solid wall, allowing her gaze to unfocus into watchfulness, comparing almost unconsciously features seen before with what she saw now. She stiffened. Something had changed.

  The moon was nearly gone, a thin sliver that gave no light. In contrast, the stars were brilliant against the pure blackness of the sky. It was in the patterns of shadow and shape against this star-filled backdrop that Firekeeper detected change.

  The stone house stood in a small clearing. Early in her vigil Firekeeper had memorized the shapes that the surrounding trees made against the sky. None of these had changed, yet there was something, something new: new shapes in the foreground, things approaching with such infinite slowness that had she not looked carefully, had she not had eyes trained to see dark against darkness, they would have been invisible to her.

  Moving very slowly, Firekeeper strung her bow, fit arrow to string, and aimed at the nearest of these shapes. She longed for a proper wolf's sense of smell. Try as she could, all she scented were the blended scents of late summer vegetation dominated by the sweet perfume of honeysuckle. There was no rank scent as of the great cats, none of the sweet mustiness of bear, none of the clean, bright smell of wolf.

  Yet the shapes that moved in the darkness were of that size. That one seemed almost a bear raised on hind legs, shuffling slowly forward. That one seemed a great cat, a jaguar, perhaps, its head too heavy, body too stocky to be a puma. Surely those three on the far left were wolves, the lean, beloved lines heart-twistingly familiar.

  Firekeeper wanted to scream out loud, to howl her fear and frustration to the skies, but she ground her teeth together and swallowed the sound. The only fit reason for howling was when a pack mate might hear. Here she was alone but for two birds, neither of whom would be any help against opponents of such size.

  Her own best choice would be to slay one or more of these opponents without warning. Like most wolves, Firekeeper was without false modesty. She knew she was very good with a bow. Even in this light, she could probably take out at least two before the others moved.

  Practicality suggested that the wolves would be her best targets. Bear were notoriously hard to kill. She had never hunted great cats. She had never hunted wolves either, but she had grown up among them, wrestled with them, slept beside them, tended them as puppies, and nursed them as injured adults. She knew their vulnerabilities better than those of any other creature - except, possibly, for humans.

  Firekeeper stood frozen, bowstring digging into her fingers, the dull ache a reminder that she must either loose or relax the pull. She raised the bow, aimed at the foremost of the three wolf-like shapes, and knew that she could not fire without warning into those so like her kin.

  "Hie!" she said, normal speaking tones like a shout against the routine noises of the night. The insects and night birds that to this point had not ceased their chittering fell silent

  "Hie!" Firekeeper said, the sound sharper now, between yap and howl. "Who are you?"

  Her only response came from within the stone house.

  Lovable squawked, "What is it?" Then she screamed, "Snake!"

  Firekeeper's held arrow loosed as of its own choice, mudding into the throat of the foremost wolf. The creature made no sound, no cry of pain, nor did it fall.

  Firekeeper stared a moment longer. Then she fell back. There was confused motion from the right side of the house where she had made the ravens their nest. Lovable was flapping her wings and squalling something about. Firekeeper now trusted the raven's good sense far too much to think she was hallucinating, living out in dreams some portion of the previous night's captivity on the tree limb.

  Light would be an asset now, light and fire. Firekeeper stumbled back. Dropping her bow, she grabbed one of the many sticks she had set at the edge of the coals, knots of pine that would serve as torches. Her motion dropped loose wood into the coals and they flared. In the brilliant orange-yellow light, Firekeeper saw the face of their enemy.

  Except the enemy had no face, nor eyes, only shape.

  With the first flare of light, Firekeeper wheeled to see what Lovable was screaming about. The raven was half-aloft, beating with her wings, tearing with her beak at a shape that did indeed resemble a snake. This snake, however, was made of twisted vines, the blood-drinking briar snaking through ropes of honeysuckle.

  Where the head should be was a dense mass of vines, twisted thickly enough to be solid. This swung at Lovable like a club, moving slowly enough that the raven could easily have dodged it, but that she was determined not to leave Bitter's side.

  Bitter remained in the nest Firekeeper had built for him. His one eye was open, but clearly he was too weak to do any more than watch the horror attacking his mate. He could not even move away from the tendrils of briar that were sliding from the greater mass, sliding wormlike to fasten in his flesh once more.

  Unlike a human, Firekeeper did not think about the impossibility of something happening in front of her eyes. Instead she leapt forward, swinging the torch in her hand, smoke stinging her eyes, tears blurring her vision. She contacted hard with the body of the snake. Sparks flew, singeing her skin, landing in her hair.

  She did not pause to beat them out, knowing they sh
ould gutter on their own, but swung again and again with her torch. The twisted mass of vines turned its questing head from Lovable to Firekeeper, and then Firekeeper gripped it firmly with her free hand.

  The thing was more honeysuckle than briar or she might not have been able to grab hold. Even so, the thorns cut into her flesh, and Firekeeper imagined she could feel the vine gaining strength from her blood.

  "Eat while you can!" she howled, hauling the mass toward the fire. She thrust it head first into the bed of coals and had the satisfaction of seeing it begin to smoke, then catch fire. She placed a foot upon its back lest it pull out, forcing more and more of its length into the fire.

  The stone house was becoming uncomfortably smokey now, and Firekeeper tensed, some buried memory reminding her that smoke could be as dangerous as fire. Moreover, she had not cleared away many years of accumulated leaf litter within the ruined hut. Quite likely the fire would spread to fill the interior. When it did, the remaining roof would not last long.

  "Lovable, can you move?"

  "Not without Bitter!"

  "I'll carry him," Firekeeper promised. Bending quickly, she retrieved her bow and threw it over the wall. It she lived, she would find it later. For now she needed the torch more - and a free hand to carry Bitter.

  The raven's one eye held stoic understanding as she scooped him up. Lovable flapped and landed on Fire-keeper's shoulder.

  "I cannot fly," she said, "nor walk fast enough."

  Firekeeper replied by moving, adjusting her balance to her dual burden. Now she thought she understood the lack of scent from those who had stalked the stone house. Like the snake, they must be made from plants. Would the fire and the fate of their comrade have frightened them away?

  Wolves do not count on dreams to catch their dinner, so Firekeeper was not dismayed when she saw the shapes remained. As the fire within the stone house consumed the snake, it spread to the gathered wood. Consequently, Firekeeper hardly needed the torch - at least not to see.