Wolf Hunting

by Jane Lindskold

  Especially, Derian thought, as Blind Seer pushed himself off Eshinarvash's back - incidentally leaving a couple of good scrapes on Derian's thigh - because she sees Blind Seer is alive. Whatever happened to her last night, she's been wondering if something like that happened to him.

  But Firekeeper's first words were not for the wolf, nor about herself. Standing, holding Bitter very carefully so that her motion did not disturb the raven's sleep, she looked at Harjeedian.

  "Please," she said. "Bitter is very bad. I give him blood and he drinks a little, but I think there is fever in him. Don't let him die, not after all of this to save him."

  For the second time that day, Harjeedian dismounted and went directly to his medical kit.

  "I'm not your Doc," he warned Firekeeper, motioning her to a clear space where a boulder would serve as a table. "I don't have his talent. I brought with me every medicine every kidisdu could recommend, but I cannot work miracles."

  Firekeeper nodded understanding, but Lovable, gliding down from her tree limb, and walking stiffly over to Harjeedian, looked up at him with eyes clouded with worry - and possibly illness of her own.

  "Please!" she croaked in a fair facsimile of human speech. "Please!"

  Derian felt his throat tighten, and no shame that tears stung his eyes. He looked over at Harjeedian.

  "Could you use a spare pair of hands?"

  "I could," Harjeedian said shortly, "but if Plik would assist me - his hands are smaller."

  The maimalodalu looked surprised, pleased, then a little frightened, but he got heavily from his pony and without saying a single word about what had to be tremendous stiffness from a long day's ride, went over to Harjeedian.

  Firekeeper spoke, "I remember Doc and I make hot water to wait Do you wish?"

  Harjeedian actually smiled, the expression making his eyes almost vanish between his high cheekbones and brow.

  "Wonderful! How much do you have?"

  Firekeeper measured out a space in the air with her hands.

  "I find an old pot near stone houseIClean very well with sand and cold water first."

  "Wonderful," Harjeedian repeated. "Let's have half of it in one of our cook pots. Plik and I can clean our hands. I'll keep the rest back. Can you put more on?"

  "I have coals," Firekeeper said.

  Derian slid from Eshinarvash's back. Muscles unused to either such a broad back or riding without stirrups screamed at him, but he followed Plik's stoic example.

  "I'll unpack our gear," he said.

  It turned out that Firekeeper had chosen this spot deliberately, both for the boulder and because there was a source of fresh water nearby. She had laid out a small camp, and gathered wood for the fire. She even had some rabbits cleaned and hanging from a tree limb. These went immediately to Blind Seer with the assurance that she had snares set.

  "Better than watching every breath Bitter makes," she confessed to Derian. "The fire not good for him."

  "The fire," Derian said. "You look pretty bad yourself. What happened?"

  She told him while they set up the camp and tended to the horses. Work over Bitter seemed to be going very slowly. As the daylight faded, Harjeedian requested a lantern. Derian brought one, and carried Harjeedian and Plik drinking water. Otherwise the best thing seemed to be to stay out of their way.

  "Let me clean your cuts, Firekeeper," Derian suggested after they had done all they could. "I don't like the sound of those briars."

  "You not like their feel even more," Firekeeper said with a lopsided grin. "Actually, they not hurt except at first This is very bad."

  Derian had to agree. Firekeeper had made a good effort to clean those wounds she could reach, but her back looked like she'd been the centerpiece of a cat fight. The deep cuts on her arm that had been inflicted by the "jaguar" were puffy and inflamed.

  After her wounds had been cleaned, Firekeeper donned a fresh pair of trousers and a new shirt. Methodically, she tore the old ones to strips and fed them to the flames. While she was doing so, Plik came over and wearily sank down next to the fire.

  "We've done what we can to help Bitter - at least for tonight," he said. "One eye is beyond saving. We cleaned out what remained."

  He raised a hand to his throat as if to force back a moment of nausea. "There was infection there and in some of the larger weals. We cleaned it out as well as we could. Harjeedian has some poultices that he says may help."

  Harjeedian came over at that moment, cradling Bitter.

  "We'll make a nest for him from clean fabric - probably from some of the bandaging, since that 's less likely to stick. He's going to need to be given water regularly - or blood. Liquids in any case. If he makes the night, I'd say he has a chance, but if the fever rises or the infection shows other signs of raging ..."

  "We'll all take turns watching," Plik said, and Derian had the feeling he was translating.

  "I start," Firekeeper said. "You all travel all the day. I just sit here."

  "How much sleep have you had?" Derian asked sternly.

  "Much," she said, tossing her head to indicate the broad limbs of one of the trees bordering the campground. "I go there, with ravens. But first I check very careful to see no briars."

  Since Blind Seer didn't protest, Derian decided she must be telling the truth. The wolf could probably smell a lie - or at least exhaustion.

  "Fine," Derian said. "You first, but wake Harjeedian if there is any change for the worse."

  "I promise," the wolf-woman said. "All the night and all the day, I wish for someone-to help. I not forget now."

  Not for the first time, Derian thought that the fact that wolves were pack animals really was useful in its way. He wondered if Truth would be so quick to admit need.

  As if she had read his thoughts, the jaguar - who had vanished soon after they had camped - returned. She half carried, half dragged the carcass of a medium-sized pig. From the looks of it, it was probably a feral one, gone wild after this area had been abandoned by the humans.

  "Dinner!" Firekeeper said with satisfaction, and set about the butchering with practiced efficiency.

  The only difference in her routine was how she carefully drained the blood into the largest container they could spare.

  "For Bitter," she said worriedly, as if the rest of them would want to drink warm pig's blood. "So he get strong."

  BITTER SURVIVED THE NIGHT, but Plik thought that the optimism with which both Firekeeper and Lovable chose to view this development was unwise. Then again, he had not seen the raven at his worst. Maybe there really was some improvement.

  In any case, with the group as a whole rejoined and everyone aware of what had happened to the scouts when they had gone ahead alone, there was some protest raised when with dawn Firekeeper insisted that she and Blind Seer should continue the search for the twins.

  "Either this," the wolf-woman said, "or we go back. I am not ready to go back knowing so little and fearing so much."

  "I agree," Truth said. "We must find them and learn how they have turned the plants into their defenders."

  "And," Harjeedian said, when this had been translated for the humans, "what other defenders - or weapons - they might have. But is it wise for only two to go forth, especially when the two of you are now, with Truth, our best at what I suppose we must term forestry?"

  "Should we send those who are not good?" Firekeeper retorted. "We are warned. We will not go to sleep. And..."

  She turned to Plik. "Will you come with? Maybe briars that drink blood are natural as bugs that do, but the creatures I fight last night - the wolves, jaguar, and bear - if they just growed that way, then I have hair as pale as Elise's and three times as long."

  Plik had never seen this Elise, but he understood Fire-keeper's point.

  "You want me to come and see if I sense some sort of magic at work."

  "Yes. Blind Seer scent the wind, but you can scent this other."

  Truth said, "I will remain here and guard the humans and ravens. No harm w
ill come to them while I have life."

  Firekeeper had told them all of her encounter the night before with the Meddler, and Plik thought he knew why the jaguar was being so cooperative. Even so, after moons passing with nothing but surly silence and haughty stares, the change was unsettling.

  "And I," said Eshinarvash, "will carry Plik as far as is necessary. Perhaps the stone house would be a good place for you to begin your search."

  "Or the meadows beyond," Firekeeper said, speaking in Pellish so the humans would understand. "The woman in Gak, she talk of the twins' father's kin building Setting Sun place in a plain."

  Derian gave a gusty sigh. "Can Harjeedian and I gather that you have settled this without us?"

  Firekeeper shrugged. "What is to settle? Can you hold me if I would go? Can you hold Blind Seer? There is no One here."

  Harjeedian pressed his fingers to his eyes. "There are times I wish there were. Will you at least share your arrangements with us?"

  Plik noticed Firekeeper had the grace to look at least a little ashamed at this reminder that the humans had not understood all the discussion.

  "We go, Blind Seer and I. We take Plik with us. This way we scout very, very carefully. Plik can sense magic for us. We not go to sleep, not without guard. Maybe we even come back by tonight. Eshinarvash say he carry Plik ahead then come back to help Truth guard you humans and ravens."

  "All very neatly arranged," Harjeedian said. "And if you vanish?"

  "Then three vanish," Firekeeper said somberly. "And six escape. Better than nine all vanish."

  "She has a point," Derian said. "I'll accept the plan with one addition."

  Firekeeper looked as if she was about to ask the redhead how he would stop her, but waited politely.

  "You're leaving at dawn today," Derian said. "At least one of you must come back to report by midday tomorrow. As you tell it, this stone house and the field aren't that far away. Fair?"

  "Fair," Firekeeper agreed after glancing at Blind Seer and Plik to see if they had any protest to offer. "If not one of three reports by midday tomorrow, you may worry."

  She grinned, "But not before. Before rest and make Bitter well."

  "And find forage for all these horses," Derian said, his apparent grumpiness an obvious cover for deep concern. "They won't thrive on leaves."

  AT THE STONE HOUSE, Eshinarvash left them. The remaining three spent some time inspecting the area, looking for traces of where the briar creatures that had attacked them might have come from, but even Blind Seer's nose could find nothing.

  "Smoke," he said. "Who can smell anything through all this smoke?"

  Plik might have made something from the remnants of the creatures, but Firekeeper had thrown them all in the fire.

  "They not move then," she said, "but later? I did not wish them come for us again. Once was almost too much."

  From the stone house, they moved on to the edge of the open meadows. Plik carefully inspected the briars clustering around the foot of the oak tree where Bitter and Lovable had been attacked while Firekeeper watched with such tense anxiety that he thought she would burn the mass as a preventative.

  'There's magic there," Plik reported, "but almost nothing. I sense more from Derian, and he hardly controls his talent so his aura's about as nonmagical as a talented human's can be."

  Plik noticed Firekeeper was fingering the bag about her throat where she kept her fire making equipment. "Will you bum them?"

  "I wish to," she said, "but last night I was lucky the forest not catch. I cannot risk setting such a fire, not now, not ever."

  Plik, who knew that Firekeeper's human family had been killed in a fire, understood the tremor that touched her voice as she spoke.

  "Then I suppose," he said, seeking to distract her, "we move on. The question is, where?"

  "Lovable," Blind Seer said, "told us she and Bitter flew over the immediate area and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But they felt something."

  "A restlessness," Firekeeper recalled. "Lovable told me about it the night we were attacked, reassuring me that I wasn't wrong in what I sensed."

  "Ravens scout mostly by vision," Blind Seer continued. "In this they are very like humans."

  Firekeeper nodded. "So if humans hid something, ravens might not see it because the humans would hide just what the ravens would seek. I remember now that Bitter and Lovable were going to try again after dark because they thought they might see lights."

  That's not a bad idea," Blind Seer said, "although I can't say I really like the idea of being out here after dark. It's very exposed."

  "We might be safer than under the trees," Firekeeper said. "Harder to sneak up on us."

  Plik interjected himself into what was beginning to sound too much like one mind reflecting its own thoughts back and forth and refining on them.

  "I'm interested in this feeling of restlessness," he said. "Do you feel it now?"

  Firekeeper considered. "No. I don't think so, at least not much more than I have ..."

  "Since we crossed that second ford!" Blind Seer completed. "I remember. The cairn that smelled of blood. I started feeling uneasy then. I could sense that you did as well."

  "A cairn that smelled of blood?" Plik asked.

  Blind Seer explained, concluding, "I didn't think to mention it before because it seemed like an isolated incident and there were many reasons it might have smelled that way, but now that this feeling of restlessness may indicate something..."

  Plik nodded. He had left his hat and the rest of his human disguise at the camp, and he was still enjoying having his vision and movements unrestricted.

  "I didn't notice the cairn," he said, "nor any particular restlessness, but by then my companions and I were all getting very worried. Why don't we try this? Let's pick a direction and move that way. We'll scout just as usual, but if anyone feels that 'restlessness' intensify, speak up."

  The other two indicated agreement.

  "Let's start to the west," Blind Seer said. "The maps Harjeedian copied weren't very specific about the location of the residence proper, but it seems to me it was to the west."

  Firekeeper agreed by turning and beginning to walk west Plik hurried after. He wondered if all wolf packs behaved like this, or if it was just these two.

  The meadows were duck with summer grass, too thick, Plik thought after slogging along for a while. They should have shown some signs of being grazed upon, of animal tracks, but signs of anything larger than a rabbit were scarce. What hunted here that had so scared the game so that nothing larger than a rabbit remained?

  He asked Blind Seer and the wolf replied, "I smell nothing - no one. This land would be fine territory for any wolf. It is broad enough to support a pack or two, and hangers-on as well, but there are no wolves. Once I thought I scented a puma, but the odor was old and fleeting. Rabbits there are aplenty, small game of all types, but both the larger grazers and the larger hunters have gone away."

  "But they were here," Firekeeper said, indicating a heap of deer droppings. The oval pellets were faded and losing shape from exposure to the weather. "A year ago, I would say, they were here."

  "A year ago," Blind Seer echoed. "The twins came here a year ago or so. Coincidence?"

  "Perhaps," Firekeeper said, but her entire body said she did not believe it

  They continued on through the deep grasses. Plik was sufficiently tall that he could see over the greenery, but even so he felt claustrophobic. When they spotted a copse of trees in the near distance, they angled toward it by unspoken agreement. As they drew closer, Plik found himself feeling tense. He longed to get away from that looming forest, to stay here in the open, or better, to return to lands he knew. He thought of Misheemnekuru with longing, wishing for his familiar hollow tree, for the leisurely evening discussions of past history and philosophy.

  "Wait," he said. Firekeeper and Blind Seer immediately did so, the woman moving to string her bow, the wolf's head tilting back as he scented the wind. "No, no, I haven't se
en anything," Plik said, "but... Have either of you been feeling a strange desire to avoid that copse of trees?"

  They looked at him, and from their expressions, Plik could tell that they had shared his odd feeling.

  "Don't you think that peculiar?" he asked. "I mean, we're all forest creatures of one sort or another. Your pack lived in wooded lands - you weren't creatures of the plains. I certainly am not, neither by heritage or habit. Why should we feel driven to avoid those trees? The more I drink about it, the more I think I should be welcoming the approach, but what I feel is completely different"

  Firekeeper looked at him, her dark eyes thoughtful. "I had drought I dreaded the briars. They are not here, but they will be under the trees. I also had droughts of fire, and of how bad the fire could have been."

  "And what," Blind Seer went on, "might happen if creatures such as you fought last night reappeared and we need resort to fire again? I kept recalling the Burnt Place from which our pack took you when you were a child. Even years later, after I had been born, the signs of damage were terribly visible."

  "Not restlessness this time," Plik said. "Apprehension instead. Interesting. Restlessness might make a raven fly farmer afield, not stop to take a closer look. Apprehension might make us inspect the copse quickly and then move on."

  "So," Firekeeper said, "we will not move on. We go there and we look very closely, checking for every detail."

  "But with care," Blind Seer said, his hackles rising. "With tremendous care."

  XVI

  FIREKEEPER RUBBED HER HANDS across her eyes as if in doing so she could clear her mind of whatever it was that intruded upon her drinking. It didn't work. Images of fire and of clawing briar invaded her thoughts until they became almost more real than the grass that prickled the soles of her bare feet and the sun upon her face and hands.

  She straightened. Very well. Fire she knew and respected. The briars she had defeated. She would continue on and find what was in that copse - find and either learn why she should respect it, or defeat it