The Dog Master

by W. Bruce Cameron

  The lesson of Dog running heedlessly into the middle of the herd of reindeer and causing them to bolt in panic toward Mal was not lost on him. If she could cause such a reaction as a pup, what would happen now, when she ran with the smooth speed of an adult?

  She was not yet full grown, but Dog was already larger than many wolves Mal had seen.

  A small herd of nine reindeer, probably split off from a larger group nearby, grazed comfortably fifty paces from Mal and Dog. All summer Mal had been training Dog for this moment, teaching her hand signals to replace the verbal commands he used first.

  His plan was to send Dog to the woman’s side until the wolf was roughly parallel to the herd. Then he would have Dog charge the herd and then, as they had practiced, Mal would wave a hand sign and Dog would come to him in a coursing, back-and-forth manner that had taken many days to master. The reindeer would run full at Mal, and he would take one square in the chest with a spear, hopefully bringing the animal down with that one shot, though he had fashioned himself another spear he could use if the opportunity presented itself.

  Dog was on alert for Mal’s command, unaware of the prey. Mal raised his woman’s hand and Dog tensed, her mouth open slightly, eyes widening. Mal pointed. Away.

  Dog bounded away, turning to glance back repeatedly until Mal held up his hand. Remain.

  Dog stopped and sat, staring at Mal. Then a scent found her and she whipped her head around, noticing the herd of reindeer for the first time.

  “No, Dog,” Mal whispered.

  Dog seemed to have forgotten Mal was there. She focused intently on the ungulates.

  “Dog, remain!” Mal shouted harshly.

  The reindeer raised their heads as one at this, and the action was too much for Dog, who broke training and streaked toward the animals with undisguised glee.

  Mal watched in disgust as the herd swung their antlers and fled, headed in exactly the opposite direction. All the hours of lessons, tedious and repetitive, and Dog had forgotten everything.

  “Dog, come to me!” Mal called. “To me!”

  After an alarming amount of time, Dog finally came racing back to him, her tongue out and her mouth open, looking joyous. When she was a few feet from Mal, though, she stopped, her ears drooping and her tail down.

  “That is right. I am angry at you,” Mal scolded.

  They went back to the cave and dined on some of the meat from the ice wall. Dog sensed something and came and rested her head in Mal’s lap until he gave up and stroked her soft fur, but he remained pensive, thinking of the day’s failure. They would train again tomorrow in the same spot, and perhaps the memory of reindeer would help Dog understand what was required of her.

  It was very important she learn, because Dog ate so much, and long before winter’s end Mal would run out of food.

  * * *

  Denix squatted next to Brach at the fire. “It has been three days since we found her clothing by the stream. I am afraid Ovi must have drowned.”

  Brach’s mouth formed a sad line. “I grew up with her, she was like an older sister to me.”

  Denix nodded respectfully. “I have fond memories as well, though I never believed she should be wife to Silex.”

  “No, what you say is true.”

  “Silex described to me where they have gone—north of Kindred territory, along the stream. I plan to cross the river at first light and tell him, and tell Cragg and Tok about their mother.”

  “Be careful of that river.”

  “I will go to the shallows.”

  “I do not understand why Ovi would bathe there, where the water is so deep and the current so malevolent,” Brach said finally. “This seems less an accident than a deliberate act.”

  “There will always be things about Ovi we will not understand,” Denix ventured.

  “Yes,” Brach said, looking into the fire. “I do agree.”

  * * *

  Other than having Lyra run off, the winter migration went as well as any within Kindred memory. They were well past the river junction and therefore out of Cohort territory, so Urs took the hunt out for fresh game, allowing the stalkers to range out ahead. Soon a small noise among the spearmen told Urs, without even looking, that one of the stalkers had returned. They would have fresh meat.

  It was Grat. He looked as if he had been running some distance, and he appeared agitated, his eyes wide. The scars on his face from where Mal’s horn had seared him made his beard odd, the black thick hair missing in the spots where the flesh was pink. Urs always found himself staring at the burn marks, but something about Grat’s expression focused Urs’s attention, and he waited for Grat to catch his breath, oddly tense. This was not going to be about reindeer.

  “Cohort,” Grat panted.

  A shock of alarm went through Urs, and he involuntarily gripped his spear. “Where?”

  “Ahead in a clearing. Many hundreds of paces.”

  “How many Cohort?” Valid pressed, his face pale with fear.

  “Four,” Grat replied, holding up that many fingers.

  “‘Four,’” Urs repeated. “Four? Just four?”

  Grat nodded. “Four. They did not see me.”

  Urs and Valid stared at each other. “There are many more of us,” Valid observed carefully, opening and closing his hand three times to illustrate. “There are only four of them.”

  “They are fearsome,” Urs responded.

  Grat was looking back and forth between them, scowling at Urs’s hesitation.

  As if sensing Grat’s disapproval, Urs turned to the younger man. “You think we should attack,” Urs stated.

  “Yes!” Grat exulted. “We should kill them. I almost did so myself.”

  “They are only four,” Valid reminded Urs.

  “You agree then, Spear Master? We should kill them, stab them with spears and beat them with clubs?”

  “They killed our men,” Valid replied.

  Urs fell silent, thinking. The two men watched him, Valid respectfully, Grat impatiently.

  “All is good,” Urs finally said decisively. “Call the hunt together. We will attack these four Cohort. Attack them and kill them.”

  * * *

  Dog growled softly. “What is it, Dog?” Mal asked. He followed his wolf’s intense stare, but did not see anything in the bushes on the other side of the Kindred Stream. Nonetheless, Dog growled again.

  A lion? Mal’s grip on his spear tightened. He regretted he had left his club back home.

  As if on signal, three men stood from the brush. They carried clubs. Mal gasped, startled but not afraid. They were not Cohort—their faces were not painted, and they looked unsure of themselves as they stepped forward.

  “Good summer,” Mal greeted evenly. “I am Kindred.”

  The men glanced at each other. This would be the time for them to set their weapons on the ground, but perhaps they did not know this, for they approached until they were standing on the opposite stream bank, some twenty-five paces away.

  “Wolfen,” the oldest of the men stated, sounding almost reluctant. They were gazing rapturously at the wolf at his side.

  Dog had not moved—she was sitting, rigidly staring at the strangers. When the first of the three men took a tenuous step into the water to cross, Dog stood, and when the other two joined the first in the water, she growled, deep and menacing, which appeared to unnerve the men.

  “She will not hurt you,” Mal assured them. “Dog. Remain!”

  Dog sat, her eyes still focused on the strangers.

  Again the Wolfen glanced at each other. Seeming to reach a decision, they waded the rest of the way across, stopping when they climbed up the bank, now just ten paces away from where Mal stood. Their expressions were full of an odd intensity, and they were all three pale and sweating.

  Suddenly, Mal knew why they were there.

  They were staring at Mal and he was staring back. Dog was growling so softly only Mal could hear her. They had clubs. He had a spear. His was a distance weapon, a
nd once loosed it was gone.

  But he would do whatever he had to do to protect Dog.

  For several moments no one spoke, and then Mal cleared his throat. “I have been in a situation such as this before,” he advised, his voice remarkably steady. “A man named Grat, and his accomplice Vinco, came to kill me. In Grat I saw a determination lacking in humanity, but for Vinco I could see how difficult it was to summon the will to murder. You three are, in your bearing, more as was Vinco. This will not be easy for you to do, yet it is your purpose, this day.”

  His words seemed to have shaken the three men, who stood mutely.

  “Why do you do this, Wolfen?”

  “Do not speak to him,” the older man whispered. “He is hyena.” The younger men nodded and, grimly, the three of them advanced.

  They have courage, Mal thought to himself irrelevantly. He had a spear in plain view—one of them was going to take a grievous wound.

  He lifted his spear, and that was when Dog lost control—though commanded to remain, this threat was simply too real. With a lunge that caught Mal by surprise, she was at the end of her leash, snarling and snapping with such fury that all three men stumbled backward. One of them fell and, inspired, Mal stepped forward and allowed Dog to move a little closer to the man who had tripped.

  The Wolfen lay sprawled in the dirt, staring in mortal terror at the enormous wolf poised to rip out his throat. She was so close that a fleck of saliva from her white jaws flew at him, and he trembled, feeling her hot breath.

  Mal kept a firm grip on the leash, letting the fallen man see how close he was to death. Dog snarled and snapped, enraged. The other two Wolfen had retreated and were standing up to their knees in the stream, their expressions desperate.

  “Dog, remain,” Mal commanded. “Dog! Remain!”

  “Please,” Silex called. “Do not hurt my son.”

  Dog brought herself under control. She sat, but the fur was still raised on the back of her neck, and her lips were pulled back from her sharp fangs. Mal regarded her wonderingly. He had been thinking of her the wrong way, as his charge—almost as if she were a helpless child. He thought to protect her, but Dog, with her fangs and claws, could also protect him.

  “I ask again why you do this,” Mal said in a strong voice after a moment. “If you do not tell me, I will spear this one where he lies, and my wolf will pursue and kill you two as you try to run for the woods.”

  * * *

  Tripping over unseen obstacles, Lyra had run through the night, more afraid of the Cohort than any nocturnal predator. When the sun roused itself to do battle with the day, though, it was in the wrong place in the sky. She did not understand how that could be, nor did she comprehend where she was. To her woman’s side should be rocks, trees and the stream, but instead all she saw were open grasses.

  She tentatively struck out for where she knew the stream would be. When she found it, the waters would lead her to the Kindred summer quarters.

  Here the unfamiliar terrain was rolling, low hills covered with sparse grass. She ate the last of her food as she walked, anxiously watching the sun climb higher. What might under other circumstances be a welcome stretch of warm weather seemed fraught with terrible threat, as dangerous as the night.

  When Lyra topped a rise, she stopped, jolted with fear.

  Across a wide, grassy field were the three men of the Cohort.

  They were much, much closer.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Grat scouted ahead and came back nodding: the Cohort were still there. Once again, he held up four fingers.

  Valid and Urs exchanged grim looks. This was like nothing they had ever attempted before. They were hunting men, now, not the lone Frightened. Armed humans.

  The Kindred hunters clustered around their leader. Palloc regarded Grat with cold eyes. He knew that at the end of this day, somehow Grat would be heralded, though as stalker all he did was run around ahead of the Kindred looking for game. Palloc was a spearman—it would be up to him to kill one of the Cohort, which he would do without mercy, but he knew with a bitterness born of life experience that no one would notice his bravery.

  They would attack as they would conduct any hunt: the spears would fly and then they would charge with clubs. Urs swallowed, wiping the sweat from his eyes. To do this, he had to picture his people being murdered by this same tribe. The rage helped; it kept hesitation at bay.

  The men were waiting. Urs noticed how their eyes seemed larger than normal, how their skin shined with perspiration.

  “Just over the rise,” Grat whispered, gesturing to the small hill in front of them. “They feed, no fire. Clubs, no spears.”

  “Only four,” Valid pressed.

  “Just four.” Grat nodded.

  There were four Cohort, compared to a hunt of three hands’ worth of men. “All is good,” Urs murmured.

  They crawled to a place just before the lip of the small rise. Urs closed his eyes briefly, thinking of Bellu, heavy with his child. And then, as often happened, he thought of Calli. The girl of mists and shadows. The woman he should have married.

  Valid’s hand closed on his arm. Urs opened his eyes and nodded.

  Now.

  The men of the hunt boiled over the top of the hill and there were the four Cohort, sitting on their haunches less than forty paces away. They sprang up, staring with eyes white in their fiercely blackened faces.

  It was too soon to loose spears, but they flew anyway, arcing through the air, thrown hard and true. “Not yet!” Urs hissed, but only Valid heard.

  Palloc did not throw, either: he was at the very back of the hunt, trailing, and did not yet have a clear shot.

  The spears fell toward the Cohort, who astounded the Kindred by watching the weapons arc through the air, flinging themselves to the side just as it seemed the spears would land. Most of the spears fell short, but the rest the Cohort managed to evade simply by dodging out of the way.

  The Cohort turned and, lifting their clubs, faced the charging Kindred.

  Valid heaved his spear with such force that even though they dodged, a Cohort was clipped on the leg. The Kindred roared, raising their own clubs. Palloc stopped to throw but dared not because the hunt was nearly upon the Cohort savages.

  The Cohort had spread themselves an arm’s length apart and were waiting with their clubs ready. The Kindred jostled with one another as they closed the final few paces, literally falling over amongst themselves.

  Urs, out front, swung his club, and the Cohort savage unexpectedly held up his own club with two hands, crossways and high before his chest so that it took Urs’s mighty blow. The shock of the impact traveled down Urs’s arm and his momentum carried him forward and the man from the Cohort Valley pivoted and slammed Urs viciously in the side.

  Urs went down.

  Valid had the same experience: the Cohort fighters somehow knew to block the club’s descent and then to turn and strike, turn and strike. Valid took a blow to the hip and stumbled. A sharp pain bit his other leg and he rolled, staring at the spear splitting his calf.

  Pex fell to the ground next to Valid, his head bouncing as it struck the earth. His eyes were glassy. “Pex!” Valid shouted, but the man was dead.

  Valid looked up. One of the Cohort lay still, another was on his hands and knees. The other two fought on, but they were outnumbered and Mors hit one from behind and Palloc picked up a spear and ran it into the stomach of the other, and then it was over.

  Men were groaning, including one of the Cohort. Valid looked over to Urs, who was writhing in the dirt. Mors turned and tried to grin at Valid, but there was blood running from where his teeth used to be.

  Panting, Grat approached the Cohort who was on his hands and knees. With an intent look on his face, he lined up his shot and struck the man with sickening impact at the base of the skull.

  The one Palloc had stabbed was lying on his back, and Grat dispatched him with so many blows to the face that Valid had to turn away.

  The other two Co
hort appeared dead, but Grat used his club on them, too, and then stood breathing through his mouth, his face flecked with Cohort blood.

  Of the fifteen Kindred who had come over the hill, half were badly hurt, and five were dead. The Valley Cohort were warriors. Valid did not understand how so few of them could have inflicted such damage.

  “Palloc,” Valid croaked. “Good work.”

  Palloc blinked at him. It was obvious that Valid did not realize that the spear in his leg had been Palloc’s, thrown recklessly into the battle at precisely the wrong moment. Instead, Valid only knew Palloc had picked up a spear and killed a Cohort.

  “Grat,” Valid grunted, wanting to acknowledge Grat’s efforts as well, but then the image of the club coming down into the face of the warrior on the ground stopped him. Valid did not know what to say to Grat.

  “I am afraid Urs may be fatally wounded,” Grat replied after a moment.

  They all looked to their leader, who lay writhing on the ground, clutching his rib cage.

  * * *

  The impasse with the Wolfen was, Mal reflected, as when two men met on a narrow path and neither would yield way to the other. He could not very well turn his back on the three men who had come to kill him, nor would it be prudent to allow the one lying at his feet to get up. The other two were still standing in the stream and still had their clubs. Yet they had no viable course of action, either.

  Mal gave the one on the ground a look, raising his eyebrows. His question still hung in the air as if returned in an echo. Why do you do this?

  The Wolfen, sprawled in the dirt and utterly helpless, looked away from Dog’s snarl and up into Mal’s implacable face and swallowed hard. “We come because you have enslaved the wolf,” he ventured, his tremulous voice not at all matching Mal’s composed demeanor.

  “And you are Wolfen.” Mal nodded, putting it together. “So you feel you must set the wolf free.”

  The two men in the water looked wordlessly at each other.

  “What are your names?”

  “I am Silex,” said the older one. “My son Cragg is before you, and this is my son Tok.”

  “Well, Silex, this is Dog. If I let her free now, she might kill all of you,” Mal observed. Especially if I spear one of you. “But otherwise, she can leave at any time. I often untie her and let her run. She returns to me because I saved her and her mother from a lion, and so we are bonded. We share our meals and hunt together. Do you, the People of the Wolf, not give food to the wolf? Do you not follow the wolf on the hunt? That is what everyone says.”