by Jack Dann
On the tail of the savage’s song came the full, deep bass of her great-uncle, Bearbait. He was fifteen, a House warden, one of the leading males of Sugar Hill, and acknowledged the best songster. He sang the glory of the evening; he sang the beneficence of the Masters and the strength and wealth of the clan. He sang of the peaceful flocks and the loyalty and resolution of the wardens of duty, whom he enumerated with all their names and styles. He sang death, death to sneaking, thieving savages, death to lions, death to bears and devilish wolverines. At each pause in his song the rest of the clan, wherever they watched, lifted their voices in a chorus of affirmation.
Other voices joined from other clans, and when Bearbait ended his song he was answered from the south, the voice of Snakemagic, cantor of the Rock Hill clan. The singing went on for quite some time, up and down the valley, singing the joys of life, the puissance of different clans, the deeds of heroes and the destruction of enemies. Willow’s mind was filled to ecstasy with the magic of song and moon and night and the subtle chemistry working in her own body. The last notes died out in the distant southwest, and Willow sighed deeply, limp with emotion.
The night was still. Even the crickets were temporarily quelled by the wardens’ song. Then, far to the north, the notes of a strange song rent the silence, bringing every warden to his feet, hackles erect and shivering. It struck Willow like the memory of a dream, incomprehensible, yet on the edge of understanding; unfamiliar, yet like something remembered from long ago. She shivered convulsively as the song rose and fell and finally died down to quivering silence. The silence continued for a moment and then was broken by Quailflusher’s voice, startlingly loud.
“What was that?” A pause. “Grandfather?”
“I never heard the like in all my days.” Grandfather was definite.
“It sounded almost like a warden, but . . .” Willow’s sister trailed off.
“It was a devil!” Grandmother declared fiercely. “A mocking devil! A creature of wind and ice! It’s come to mock and torment us!” Her voice shook with rage and fear. “I knew it was coming! I’ve felt it for weeks! A devil, coming closer!”
“Grandmother, what will we do?” Willow’s cousin whined.
“Purifications!” declared Grandmother. “Exorcisms!” And she began to sing, a song of exorcism against devils. Willow sank down and put her chin on the rock. Her heart beat wildly, fueling strange thoughts and feelings that raced and churned in her brain. When Grandmother finished singing, Willow got up and trotted into the night, headed east, toward the river.
###
Mostly, Jake found the going easier beside the highway. The hard-top, or what had been the hard-top, was broken and tumbled, great chunks of it at crazy angles, weeds and brush growing riotously up and around and over. Enormous chuckholes held pools of dubious water; on the high shoulders washouts had created canyon-like gullies. But along the edge a trail ran, fairly straight, skirting the bad parts, and Jake followed it gratefully, even hopefully. It might be only a game trail. It was probably only a game trail. But the hope remained, and led him onward, as it had since the girl died.
The trail plunged into a dense stand of thistles, and the branches swatted him as the little bay mare pushed her way through. They emerged into an open space, an intersection, he realized after a moment. Another four-laner had crossed here, headed east-west. Traces of ruins marked the corners, almost swallowed by the earth; a red fox sat on a mound and watched him curiously. In the median strip to the west, the remains of an overhead sign framework were piled in a tangled heap. That seemed familiar . . . it had been a long time, but the place jogged his memory. He rode over and dismounted. The sign was made of some heavy plastic; the phosphorescent letters were still legible after God-knew-how-long.
Route 50W, it said. Winchester.
Good. His destination was not much farther, then, just five or ten klicks on south. He did have a destination, for a change. He had come through the Shenandoah Valley some twenty years earlier, and guested for several months at a sizable freehold near here. There had been nearly thirty people, in an ancient walled compound, still keeping the buildings up, growing vegetables and herding cattle and sheep. There had been several such freeholds in the valley then. It was a sheltered area, high enough to be safe from the encroaching ocean, protected from the northern blast by the Alleghenies. The City had never quite engulfed it back in the old days; as the City receded, the bluegrass pastures and tangled woodlots were left comparatively unharmed. When five years of searching found no human life in what had once been New York and Pennsylvania, he had remembered the Blue Ridge, and turned to the south.
A couple of klicks south of Route 50, a side road branched off through the tree-shrouded ruins of a small village. All traces of hard-top had vanished from what had never been more than a minor local road, but the dense growth of shade trees kept the undergrowth down. Presently the trail emerged into the meadowland again. Jake eyed the occasional tumbledown farmhouse they passed, but saw no signs of life. Once a small herd of ponies threw up their heads in astonishment and then galloped away with their tails in the air. Once he heard a bull bellowing in the near distance. The country was peaceful, even friendly; there were few of the unsightly bare patches where nothing would grow, which in some areas covered hectares on end. Here the thistle and burdock ruled over man’s remains.
The road had disappeared entirely, but a faint trail remained, skirting the patches of woods and winding among the rock breaks. Once he heard a dog howl, or perhaps a coyote. At the crest of the next hill he reined in, for there it was, less than a kilometer away: a grove of trees on top of a hill, strongly walled around, with a red roof showing through the branches. A thin column of smoke rose from one of the chimneys.
People! For a moment he could only sit. To hear human voices again, to sit beneath a sound roof, by a warm hearthside . . . Again he heard a howl, closer, and glancing down the hill, he saw an excessively large dog coming toward him at a rapid trot, with two others coming behind. He looked round. Three more were converging from the surrounding fields. Wardens, he thought, shortening the reins; he had forgotten they kept wardens. The mare stamped and tossed her head. Jake quieted her and waited as the wardens closed to about five meters. The one before him advanced a few steps and barked a sharp query.
“Sorry,” Jake said. The sound of his voice startled him. These days he seldom had reason to speak. “I don’t understand warden talk too well. I’ve come from up north.” He pointed behind him. The warden seemed to be following well enough. “Ah, I guested here, a long time ago. Maybe your masters will take me in again.” He gestured toward the opposite hill. The warden came forward slowly, sniffed warily at his boot, starting back as the mare stamped nervously, then at a proffered hand. He looked up and met Jake’s calm stare. Jake sighed and looked off at the beckoning rooftops, then back to the warden. The warden turned in that direction and bayed, then sat back expectantly.
Jake detected motion at the top of the compound wall. A moment later an answering howl echoed across the hollow. The warden seemed satisfied, dismissed his fellows with a growl, and gestured for Jake to follow him. They trotted down the hill, through the run at the bottom, and up toward the gate.
A big man of roughly Jake’s own years stood by it cradling a crossbow. They regarded each other slowly.
“Big John Hawkins,” Jake said presently.
The big man nodded slowly. “Jake Evans. Long time no see.” He let the crossbow droop, glanced at Jake’s escort. “O.K., Bearbait. We know him.”
The warden headed back down the hill to whatever duties awaited him. Jake dismounted and shook Hawkins’ hand.
“Well, John Hawkins, I ain’t seen a human face in five years, and it’s a real pleasure to see yourn now.” His voice sounded hollow to him, almost forced.
Hawkins chuckled. “Well, Jake, I never expected to see yourn again, for sure. Come on in.” Jake followed him, leading his mare.
And yet a few minutes, and J
ake sat at a table in the big house kitchen, with meat and drink before him and dozens of his kind around him. He applied himself to his food, less from hunger than to escape speech. The Hawkinses sat quietly, drinking him in, their ages from about fourteen to indeterminately old. A thirtyish woman replenished his cup and plate until he gestured, no more. He sat back and regarded them, and they him, a moment longer before old Mr. Hawkins spoke.
“Well, Mr. Evans, what did you find up north?”
“Fewer people and more moose . . . and lately ain’t no people at all. I was living with a gal up there and her pa, hunting, mostly.” He paused, looked out the window. “She died, though, ’bout five year ago, and the old man followed her pretty soon. I been travelin’ ever since.” He looked around at the Hawkinses. “Plenty of game now. I lived by hunting a long time.” He glanced about again, still strange to the sight and sound of people. They looked at him with equal wonder.
“There’s few enough here,” Old Man Hawkins observed. “Not so many’s when you were here last. Not so many left in the valley now. Them Dakerses live down in Fort Valley, down on Massanutten, but we don’t see them but once or twice a year. Old Max Wilder still has a place over in the pine hills. He’s right old now, ain’t got no family left. Some folks down around Luray, I guess, but we don’t hardly ever see them. You’re the first we seen in quite a spell.”
“Looks like there were more of you-all when I came through here twenty year ago. Hope there ain’t been no sickness.” Jake filled a pipe from a canister on the table. Big John’s wife poked a splinter in the stove to light it for him.
There had been sickness, and hard winters, and other forms of attrition, and the telling of it went on into the evening. There were too few births and too many deaths. A few youths, adventurous or angry, had departed for the south. The rest stayed, each year a little fewer. In the north Jake had found occasional traces of men, but none living. He suspected that some lived in the great eastern marshes, but he had seen none. A few solitary hunters, outlaws, or ascetics might still wander the northern forest. If other men lived, it was to the south.
“At least we ain’t gone hungry.” Big John Hawkins occupied his hands with carving the figure of a bullock from a block of wood. “We got more critters than we know what to do with.”
“Them wardens are right smart,” Jake said.
“Hell, yeah,” old Mr. Hawkins said. “They’re most as smart as you or I.”
“They raise more sheep than we can shear,” Big John said, with the pleasure all farmers take in talking dogs. “Even in bad winters we don’t lose much stock. They keep the lion and bear out of this piece of country, too.”
“Sugar Hill wardens are the best in the valley,” said a younger Hawkins. “Listen at them sing.” Through the fall darkness they heard the voices of the wardens lifting and falling up and down the valley.
“How many you-all have?” Jake asked in wonder.
“I don’t rightly know,” John Hawkins said.
The younger Hawkins muttered to himself for a moment, then said, “I reckon there’s about twenty-three couple watching sheep, and maybe fifteen couple or so on cattle. And must be ten or a dozen hang around the house here. That’s not counting young and such. Good many, I reckon. Made a rough count at shearing, but I reckon I missed some.”
“We always had wardens at Sugar Hill. Had some of the first they ever was.” John spoke reflectively. “Guess we didn’t need them so much in the old days. Sure do need them now.” The pipe passed, its glow a feeble echo of the candle guttering on the table, For a moment they sat quietly, listening to the voices of the wardens. The moon was well up now, and presently a shaft of moonlight struck through the kitchen window.
“Ain’t that fine,” said the younger Hawkins.
Outside, the singing slowly tapered off. There was a long silence, broken by a new and different song. The Hawkinses stirred and exclaimed. Jake listened a minute, then smiled.
“Two nights now,” Big John said, shaking his head. “Coming closer.”
Jake chuckled. The Hawkinses stared at him. “Looks like I ain’t the only lone wolf to come up the valley these two days,” he said.
###
In fact, the wolf had been in the valley four nights. He had hunted the previous winter with a large pack in western New York, the pack he was born to. Hunting was good these days, and wolves ranged where for centuries there had been none. The range was crowded. The winter band at some points numbered over twenty, and interwolf tensions increased. The young wolf found no mate in the season, and when spring came and the pack split up to its various dens, he headed south and spent the summer exploring the Poconos. He had never met a man, and the ruins and wastes that dotted the fields and forest he regarded as irrelevant anomalies. Game was plentiful, and the wolf lived fat. When autumn came he was still moving south, and thus all unwittingly paralleled Jake’s course into the valley.
He heard the songs at great distance the first night, and listened in puzzlement. The second night he gave tongue to answer the strangers, singing of the north and his summer roving. He could not understand the reply, but he detected a note of hostility. The fourth night found him within the Sugar Hill warden’s range, and he sniffed their markers with fascination. He inferred a diet consisting largely of sheep, and in an outlying pasture found sign of astonishing numbers of that animal, less than a day old. Again that night he answered the strange songs. This time the hostility in the reply was unmistakable, and the wolf thought it well to withdraw outside the warden’s range marks, which he anointed to establish his presence in the neighborhood.
Through the night he lay up in a rock break somewhat to the northeast, listening to the watch signals. They continued tantalizingly just beyond the edge of meaning. The wolf knew the cry of coyote and feral dog; he had met and dealt with both in the past, and considered himself their superior. The discovery of a strange canid of unprecedented size and unknown capabilities astonished him, and piqued his curiosity.
The night waned, and presently becoming hungry, the wolf set off to explore the new range. In the pallor of approaching dawn, he started a weanling fawn. In ten paces he pulled it down, and as three or four other deer fled crashing through the brush, he feasted on soft meat. He lay up for some hours near the kill; in the late afternoon he set off once more, and toured the wardens’ boundaries for several kilometers toward the river, marking them himself as he went. Once he concealed himself downwind of a trail, and observed in silent wonder as a trio of wardens escorted a small drove of cattle down to water in a run, and then away again. Their size was impressive, and their watchfulness and smooth interaction more so. The wolf was thoughtful as he went his way.
The markers tended south again after a distance, and the wolf veered off to follow a run downstream. Once he started a rabbit, and chased it a few dozen meters for the sake of the exercise before it vanished into a thicket of rose. Well away from the wardens’ boundary, he found himself in almost a playful mood, agreeably stimulated by the experience. He splashed in the run, pounced after fluttering leaves, dashed across a meadow and back to the run. In a few minutes he was panting; the musty odors of fall exhilarated him. A fresh scent impinged: a marker! His nose sought it out in a rock break. Yes, fresh . . . less than three hours old. He sniffed incredulously. The scent was not so alien as to conceal its message. A young bitch warden. And, no matter that it was still fall, no matter that the first snows were yet a moon or more away, unmistakably in season. With a new sense of purpose, the wolf started on, following her trail.
###
Jake spent the morning riding with John Hawkins and his two sons, escorted by three couple of big wardens. They made a round of the flocks and sections, prepared to assist the wardens with any problems that might have arisen. None had. As they visited each section, the warden on watch would come up and accompany them, conversing with the house wardens, then usually addressing itself to Hawkins’ younger son, Delbert, for a moment. Jake felt a growi
ng sense of superfluity.
“Looks like them wardens would get on pretty well without no people around at all,” he remarked.
Big John laughed. His elder son, Ace, smiled and said, “Some of them do.”
“Yeah?”
“Some clans,” Delbert said. “They graze farther to south. Some clans we don’t see from one year to the next.”
“Be wardens raising stock all up and down the valley in another few years.” Ace filled his pipe as they rode along. “Naw, they don’t need us. They stick by us, though. Even them out clans come by once a year at least. Bring us a few head from their herd. Sort of like a gift or something.”
“The Masters’ share,” Delbert said. The others glanced at him. “Like in them old stories,” he elaborated. “They think we’re like gods or something, you know, they bring us the best from their herds.”
“Well, they git stuff from us, too. Blankets and tanned sheepskins and such.” John Hawkins evinced skepticism. “And we doctor them when they need it.”
“Shit,” said Delbert. “They don’t need no blankets. They know we done made them to work for us, and they still remember it even if they ain’t enough people to go around now. You heard old Moonsong, she knows all them old warden stories. Listen to her sometime, you’ll learn something.”
“Well, I’m just glad they stick by us, whyever.”
Jake pulled up to ride abreast of Delbert. “How do you talk to them so easy?” he asked. “I cain’t hardly understand anything they say.”
“Why, I just listen to them.” Delbert looked startled. “They mouths ain’t shaped like ourn, so ’course they cain’t talk like we do. I guess I just always been around them, so I know what they say in’.”
“But they tell stories and all?”
“Shit, yeah.” Delbert spat to the off side. “Them old wardens know more stories—and they know magic, and hexes—shoot, they know a lot. Get old Moonsong to talk sometime. She’s the oldest warden around, and she can tell you plenty.”