“If you touch that stick you will not live to pick it up,” Valid warned.
Albi froze, the anger draining from her face, replaced with fear.
“I am recalling a story my dear old friend Nix told me, long ago,” Valid said coldly. “About a promise he made to you one time. About what would happen if you ever struck another with that stick of yours. He is not here now to fulfill his vow to you, but perhaps I may serve in his stead. Perhaps I can do you the favor he promised you.” Valid grinned fiercely. “So, Albi. Would you like to pick the rock?”
* * *
Mal opened his fist, pointing off to his woman’s side with all of his fingers, the gesture for ready to run left. Dog tensed. Mal took a deep breath, then chopped the air with his hand and pointed. Away.
Dog streaked off, momentarily seeming to forget the reindeer. “Good,” Mal breathed. She was doing what she had been taught, running where he had gestured, at an angle taking her to the left of the herd instead of straight at it.
When Dog turned back to look, Mal’s hand was open. Remain. Dog stopped, sitting, facing him. Mal nearly broke silence, wanting to laugh with pleasure. This was working!
Some of the reindeer had seen the wolf and were staring intently, but when Dog halted they went back to grazing, though now the larger ones were stopping every few seconds to raise their heads and watch the predator. This is what they did, conserving energy, not reacting until a true threat emerged.
Mal chopped the air and Dog ran, still at an oblique angle. It was as they had practiced, but she had never kept the discipline with prey so near. “Just a little bit farther,” Mal urged in barely audible tones.
Something off to the right alerted the herd and they raised their heads as one, and the coordinated movement caught Dog’s eye. She slowed, hesitating, her training at war with her instincts, and then with obvious elation she veered off path and ran straight toward the herd, avoiding antlers and trying without success to jump up on their haunches.
“Oh no,” Mal said sadly.
“What is it?” Lyra asked.
“They are going to flee … Wait!”
When the ungulates bolted they turned and thundered right at Mal and Lyra. He stood, raising his spear, conscious of Lyra next to him doing the same. The herd swerved away but one clumsy juvenile, full grown but still running a bit awkwardly, was very close. Mal threw his spear and, a moment later, Lyra did the same.
Dog was running next to a small female, jumping up and worrying its haunches, smelling her man and enjoying this wonderful time the two of them were having together, when the scent of fresh blood hit her nose. She hesitated only a moment before turning and running after a young female reindeer who was bleeding from her neck and somehow carrying two of her man’s sticks. The blood tantalized and thrilled Dog, who did not even look around when her man called her name.
“Dog! To me!” Mal yelled again. He watched in defeat as the herd stampeded off, Dog alongside the one Mal had wounded, worrying the reindeer, lunging at the bloody gash in its neck. One of the spears fell to the dirt.
“That was the most exciting moment of my life!” Lyra exulted.
Mal did not explain to her that they had accomplished very little—in fact, they had lost one of their spears, and there was no way of knowing where Dog was now.
“All is good,” Mal said. He bent and picked up the fallen spear and the two of them followed in the direction of the herd.
* * *
When the speared reindeer weakened it fell behind. When it tried to stop Dog instinctively would not let it, lunging and snarling and snapping, keeping it running, keeping its blood pumping. When finally it stumbled, its neck wound came within reach and Dog sank her teeth into the mouthwatering flesh, holding on while the reindeer tried to fling her off. And then it was over, the reindeer down.
Dog fed with savage delight, her whole body intoxicated by the delicious sensation of a new meal on an empty stomach, and then she stopped.
She considered her man. Guiltily, his voice came back to her, the command to return to him echoing in her ears. She had been called and she had ignored that call.
Reluctantly, Dog abandoned her reindeer and turned back the way she had come.
* * *
Dog was now back on the restraint. When she and Mal and Lyra came upon the fallen reindeer, a male hyena had claimed it and was plundering the kill. Mal froze, instinctively pulling the rope taut and looking to the trees to see if other members of the hyena clan were emerging. A lone hyena was unheard of, and to be caught out in the open by a pack of hyenas would be fatal.
Dog’s reaction was also instinctive, but entirely indifferent to caution and filled with fury. This was their kill, their food. Dog snarled, straining at the end of her leash.
“What is it?” Lyra gasped.
“A hyena. I have never seen one but it is exactly as I have heard them described.”
“It is hideous. What should we do?” Lyra asked.
Dog lunged and the strength of the wolf nearly pulled Mal to the ground. He hung on, feeling filled with Dog’s power, his own caution evaporating with the heat of Dog’s wrath. He let the rage flow from his wolf to his own heart. “Hyena!” Mal shouted. “Go away!”
He stepped forward, leaning back against Dog’s lunges. “Away!” Lyra shouted, waving her arms. “Go!”
The hyena stopped feeding and regarded their slow approach with cold eyes, lips pulled back from its fangs, head lowered, its ugly mouth open and repulsive. There was something wrong with it, Mal saw. Its man’s side leg, in front, curled off the ground, so that the hyena’s limp was even worse than Mal’s. That was why it hunted alone—the hyena, like the Kindred, drove its cripples out to die.
Mal smiled grimly. There might be comparisons, but there was no kinship between him and this scavenger.
Dog was in a frenzy. Mal kept a firm grip and raised his spear. Dog was already larger than most wolves out on the plains. Her enraged growls and lunges at the end of the leash meant that she was standing on two legs as she bared her teeth—something the hyena had never seen—and the scavenger’s high-pitched warning snarls betrayed its fear. What were these fierce-looking creatures advancing so aggressively?
Mal let fly with the spear and when it struck the hyena it glanced off, but the shock of the impact drew a cry from the canid, and it darted away on three legs, sniveling and crying. Dog wanted to pursue, but Mal sternly pulled her back. They proceeded to the carcass, Mal keeping his eyes on the retreating scavenger in case it decided to circle back. “All is good, Dog,” he reassured her. “Please calm yourself.” He looked up at Lyra, and her eyes were glowing.
“It is as you said, Mal. Dog makes you a great hunter,” Lyra breathed.
“Well … it did not go as I had intended. And having you there, Lyra, that was a help I have not had before.”
She shook her head at him in wonder. “You are so unlike all the others, who would brag about this kill and steal credit from one another. Dog is your weapon, the way the spear is my father’s. And just as he is the spear master, you are the dog master, Mal.”
“Dog master,” Mal repeated, delighted.
They smiled into each other’s eyes, until a whine from Dog reminded them they had a carcass to butcher.
* * *
Lyra caught Mal staring at her as she ate cooked reindeer by the fire at the base of the natural chimney in the cave. She gave him a shy smile. “What is it? Why do you look at me like that?”
Mal shook his head. “There were just so many times I imagined this exact thing, you sitting by the fire with me. And now you are here.”
“And what else did you imagine?” she teased. She loved the way he blushed and then looked away—they were both thinking the same thing.
“This is a wonderful cave,” she said after a moment. She hugged herself. “Mal, there were times, when I was alone, when I saw the Cohort, I imagined the worst, and my only thought was that if I could find you, I would be safe.�
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“My first night here, I was very lonely for my mother, and for the fires of the Kindred,” he admitted.
She nodded. “I cried for my father every night. But he is gone and I am here, with you.” She gestured around the den.
“Perhaps we should have some animals drawn upon the walls,” Mal suggested.
Lyra smiled. “Yes! And the first thing I will paint is you and Dog.”
Dog lifted her head at her name, then lay back down on the wolf pelt with a sigh.
“This is my family now. You, and Dog,” Lyra declared.
“But what do we do,” Mal asked slowly, “next summer, when the Kindred returns? I imagine your father will be very angry with me.”
“With us,” Lyra corrected gently. Then she shook her head. “I do not wish to think anymore about my father, or the Kindred. I do not know what we do then. I only know that if we are family, it is as if we are husband and wife. I only know what I want to do now.” Smiling knowingly, Lyra lay back on the lion skin, her arms open to Mal, who crawled across the cave floor to join her.
They kissed and it was so much nicer than sitting awkwardly on the rocks. She longed to feel him pressed against her and he responded to the way she was pulling him, climbing gently on top. The feel of his body stirred a heat inside her. He was panting and moving his hips and she responded with small thrusts of her own, swooning.
“Mal,” she whispered. “I want us to.”
He moved his lips to her ear and she shivered. “I am sorry to say I have no experience in this.”
“We will learn together.”
Lyra pulled off her tunic and unwrapped her skirt. Shadows from the fire leaped across Mal’s face as he stared at her. Lyra reached for him, untying his own skirt. He shivered when she gripped him, and groaned aloud when she guided him into her. A quick, sharp pain made her gasp, but after a moment he began rocking, slowly and carefully, and she felt a glorious sensation build within her.
“You are my husband,” she murmured into his ear.
* * *
The next morning Mal led Lyra and Dog to the base of a tall rock wall, pointing toward a flock of grey owls circling just off the face, dizzyingly high. “See? There are nests there. I imagine now the birds are hatched; I will climb up and see if I can hunt them.”
“You plan to climb up there?” Lyra replied in disbelief.
“All is good. I have done it before,” Mal replied with bravado. He wanted Lyra to watch him scale the cliff, to have her see how brave he was. Up there, his leg did not matter.
“I do not want you to do this,” Lyra stated gravely. But Mal was already hauling himself up by the first handhold. “Mal! Please.”
“Tell Dog all is good!” he replied.
And for a time, all was good. He felt fully a man, now, a man who had held a woman as a wife in his bed—Lyra, the woman he had always loved. Twice this morning she had called him “Dog Master,” and it was as if he had been named to the hunt by Urs.
Looking up, he felt as if he were soaring with the birds overhead. But looking down to assure himself Lyra was still watching served to remind him just how high he was. The last time he had made this ascent, starvation was the motivator—he had felt without choice. Now, though, they had a fresh reindeer kill. What was he doing?
The owls were circling closer, their wings fluttering near his cheeks—soon their talons would claw at his eyes. Mal rested against the wall, feeling certain he was at the point where any further progress would be murderously punished by the birds. I do not want you to do this, Lyra’s voice said in his head. And truthfully, he no longer wanted to do this, either.
He was high enough to see into a single nest, and it was empty. He decided that was evidence that all the owls were adults and that this quest was without merit. Time to descend.
“All is good,” Mal muttered, probing for a foothold. He risked a glance down at Lyra and gulped. Then he looked into the distance—he could see the thin tendril of smoke from their chimney, he could see the thick trees, and to the south, he could see the yellow grasses.
Three men were walking in his direction. They carried clubs and spears.
Clearly, they, too, could see the smoke, and were intent on investigating its origin.
The Cohort had found them.
SIXTY-TWO
Cragg went to get his brother, leaving Silex with Denix. Alone together, there was no awkwardness in their embrace, and she held her man and did her best to comfort him in his grief.
By the time the two younger men had returned, darkness was falling and Silex had built a fire. Tok would not meet his father’s eyes when they sat down. Denix sat a discreet distance away from Silex, who gave Cragg a questioning look. Cragg grimly shook his head—Tok was not ready to forgive.
“I have things to say,” Silex announced, his voice formal. He nodded at Denix. “I told Denix about our misconceptions. About Mal. How we touched a live wolf.” Silex’s eyes briefly glowed at the memory. “And then she told me there are Cohort nearby.”
His sons stiffened.
“Three of them,” Denix affirmed.
“How nearby?” Cragg demanded. “Close?”
Denix shook her head. “I led them far downriver before I came here. They are at least a day away. They are slow.”
“Here is what I want to say, and I want these words taken back to the gathering site.”
Tok and Cragg frowned in noncomprehension.
“The young wolf is clearly descended from the pack to which we have always paid tribute. The marking on her head proves this to be true—her mother is most likely the one that Denix and I have fed by hand.”
“Dog. The wolf’s name is Dog,” Tok interjected.
“Yes, of course. Dog. So now the Wolfen must pay tribute to this wolf, Dog, but also to the man she has chosen to live with. He is a cripple and cannot hunt. He will surely starve this winter if we do not assist. When we take prey, we must make the journey, no matter how far, to give tribute to Mal and Dog. Everything we have ever done as a tribe leads me to believe we must celebrate and protect both the wolf and the man she has chosen as a companion.”
“This seems a wise thing, but why do you pronounce it as a message we are to give to the others?” Cragg asked.
“Yes, why not assemble the Wolfen on our return and tell them yourself?” Tok agreed.
“Because some of us are going back to the cave where the cripple lives with his wolf, to warn him of the Cohort’s presence and to defend him from any threat.”
“And you think you might not survive this, Father?” Cragg demanded. Denix stared at Silex, her eyes round.
“Well, when man hunts man, the outcome is never certain until the spears have been thrown,” Silex replied.
His sons exchanged grim looks. “When you return, Denix, there is a message I would like you to give my wife,” Cragg whispered.
“Oh no. It will be Tok who returns to the Wolfen,” Silex corrected.
Tok gasped.
“Denix is the swiftest among us, and the best with the spear.” And she would never allow me to go without her, Silex did not add.
“I do not want to go back,” Tok objected.
“This is my decision, my resolve as leader of the Wolfen.”
“Father, are you telling me that I am now to lose both of my parents?” Tok asked, anguished.
Denix put her hand on Tok’s arm. “No, Tok. All is good. There are three of them, and three of us. And we are Wolfen.”
Denix was smiling reassuringly, but when her dark eyes met Silex’s, they were both remembering the same thing.
Duro had confronted the Cohort with every male of their tribe, and no one returned from that battle. And they, too, were Wolfen.
* * *
“I do not understand why we do not just run away!” Lyra wailed as Mal cleared the ground-level entrance to their cave. “Mal!”
“I do not run well, Lyra. Please climb inside.”
Dog responded to the rou
tine of having the rocks moved by crawling forward into the familiar den.
“But you said there are three of them!”
“Yes. But you will be safe inside with the wolf.”
Lyra shook her head wildly. “No, Mal.”
Mal set two spears and a club on the ground and frowned at them thoughtfully. Then he turned and put his hands on her shoulders. “It is the same as with the lion, Lyra. Once they know where we live, they will not leave until they have taken you. But as with the lion, I will set a trap.”
“I want to be with you.”
“They do not know you are here. When they see me, they will be emboldened because of my leg, and give chase. We must have them think it is just me, a lone man, like a Frightened. Even if … If I am unsuccessful, I know Dog will warn them if they try to get into the cave. They will not willingly climb into a wolf den.”
“We have been together but a day, Mal. It cannot end like this,” Lyra pleaded.
“Yes, it cannot end like this. It will not. But…” Mal’s lips trembled for just a moment. “Last night was all I have ever wanted and dreamed of, Lyra. Remember that always.”
Lyra was weeping, clutching him. “No, Mal.”
“Keep Dog with you. Protect her, and if I do not return, hunt with her as we hunted, get her to run the prey at you and then pull it down. It is how you will survive the winter.”
Lyra just stared at him. He gently pulled her hands away from him. “Get inside,” he whispered, kissing her wet cheeks. “We are out of time.”
* * *
Mal positioned himself behind some trees, gauging his moment. The three men were ferocious looking, garbed in simple furs haphazardly held together with small lengths of leather thong. Their faces were coal black, and all three carried clubs and two had spears as well. They were close, fifty paces. Their stride was unhurried.
That changed when Mal stepped out into the open. The men instantly halted, staring. Mal was deliberately weaponless, and when he turned to flee, he exaggerated his limp so they would see his leg.
He expected a shout, but heard nothing, so after a moment Mal glanced behind him to see if he had drawn their pursuit. Yes, and they were running fast, so fast that Mal abandoned any attempt at a ruse and increased his own speed, covering ground as quickly as he could. When he arrived at the base of the rocky wall, he could hear their footsteps: he had allowed them to get too close!
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