Canis looked at her in surprise then he looked back at the display, seeing it with her eyes. There was very little metal among the clans. “They are not rich,” he said. “They are slaves.” He liked her mouth. Though smiles and laughter were common, if anyone of the clan were to show their teeth, there would be no doubt as to the meaning.
“What are slaves?” she asked having never heard the term before.
Canis tried to find words she would understand. He had worn chains very like the ones here, though perhaps slightly finer. “They are not free,” he said simply and shuddered at the memory her questions dug into.
Cepheid looked up at his words and saw the haunted look in his eyes before he could hide it. Not free. She could scarcely imagine such a concept. The women of the clan led a life that was the closest to ‘not free’ as it ever got, but in return for their captivity, they were given the right to choose their mates and the right to say it was time to get more meat or more wood. The men did all of the heavy and dangerous work outside of the home.
She looked again at the chains and saw their ungiving strength. She saw the thick circles around the necks of the men. She saw the heavy links of the metal that joined them, one to the next, then to the wagon. She had never seen such large men before, but she could see that even they were not strong enough to break free of those chains. Even she could now see how these large, powerful men no longer had the will to contest those chains.
With a small hiccup, she quickly looked away. Canis’s words echoed in her mind. “Do not let them know you are a woman.” What would they do if they suspected that? Did they put their women in such chains?
Canis heard her small sound and turned to look at her. He saw the single tear leak down her cheek before she quickly dashed it away. He dropped back to walk beside her. “Do not cry,” he whispered. “Not here.”
She nodded and reached for the gray puppy as it was trying to climb out of his pouch.
“Do not let him down, he might run under the wagons,” he said.
She nodded again and clutched the puppy close, much to his dismay. She used the distraction of handling the puppy to take her mind off her dismal train of thought.
It was after dark when they reached a good-sized town with more buildings than could be easily counted, even from a vantage point. Lanterns hanging outside of shops to light their signs also lit its main street. Surrounding cliffs of blue ice marked the very edge of the forever snows.
The drivers pulled their wagons into a large barn where other handlers came out to put the slaves and horses away. Canis noticed that the slave pens were cold and small, but there were warm blankets inside and a steaming bowl of gruel liberally laced with meat waiting for each one. They were well treated for slaves.
One of the drivers helped Canis unload his sled. “If you’ll wait a few, I’ll buy you and the little lady a drink at the inn.”
Canis considered the offer, struggling to hide the alarm he felt at knowing this man was aware of Cepheid being a woman despite his efforts to conceal that fact. He hesitantly accepted; it would be nice to sleep inside for once, and this close to people, he felt safer behind a door. He called the Wulfen in close and admonished them not to explore on their own here. Rranggrr’s greeting when she first saw these men was warning enough for Canis, and there were plenty of men here armed with more than chunks of ice.
Canis and Cepheid accompanied the driver, who introduced himself as Joe, into the small, but spotless inn closely followed by Nnarr and Rrusharr, leaving Ggrrawrr and Rranggrr to guard the sled outside.
The innkeeper greeted Joe well enough, but took one look at the fur-clad strangers and their wolves and said, “Them can’t come in here,” he waved a rag at the Wulfen.
“Very well, we will go elsewhere,” said Canis and turned to leave. He hadn’t really expected anything else, but it had been worth a try.
Joe must have said something to the man because he came outside after them a few moments later. He stopped when he saw two more wolves, but shrugged and asked. “Can you pay in something besides furs?”
Canis looked down at the portly innkeeper in his very white apron. “I can,” said Canis. He had the last of his money and he doubted the currency had changed much since he had crossed the mountains less than eight years ago. “I would like a room for the night as well. Do you have one?”
“I do, but that’s extra.”
Canis looked at his sled. “Do you have a place where I can store my sled or do you advise that I take it to the room?”
The innkeeper looked at the sled and shook his head. “You better take it to your room. I can’t guarantee your things won’t get stolen during the night.”
“Very well then, I have some meat that would thaw if we took it to the room. Could we interest you in that?” He threw back the hide for the innkeeper to see it clearly by the lantern hanging over his door.
The innkeeper looked at the chunks of meat. “You cut out the bones already.” He picked up a chunk and looked it over closely. “Looks clean. What is it?”
“Moose,” said Canis. “I shot it day before yesterday.”
The innkeeper considered the meat displayed before him. With the money he could get for one private room and a meal, he wouldn’t be able to buy a quarter of this amount of meat. “I’ll give you one night for the lot,” he said.
“I want supper for all of us, a room for the night and breakfast in the morning, for all of us,” replied Canis. The meat in the sled would feed them for three more days on the trail; he wasn’t going to part with it cheaply.
“All of you,” said the innkeeper questioningly then he realized, “All of you. Now listen here, I can’t have them inside.”
“Then we will go elsewhere. Good evening, sir,” said Canis and once again prepared to leave. A light snow began to drift down.
“Now just hold on there,” said the innkeeper. He looked at the four huge wolves arrayed before him. They returned his gaze openly waiting for his decision. “Can you guarantee they won’t attack anyone?”
“Yes, I can,” said Canis. “That is, up until someone attacks them. If that happens…”
“That won’t happen. All right, all right, I got one big room upstairs, ain’t nobody staying there tonight. I’ll let you have that one and two meals, but I don’t want no dog mess on the floors.”
“That will be fine,” said Canis.
They all trooped into the inn and Canis pointed to a table in the corner, away from the other guests, where Cepheid and the Wulfen went. He helped the innkeeper carry the meat back to the kitchen where a woman and a young girl took charge of it, then the man helped him take his sled to their room. Canis spread out Rrusharr’s fur on the floor and deposited the sleeping puppies in the middle of it still in their pouches, then went back downstairs to the others.
The girl was approaching their table with two plates laden with food when Canis returned to the main floor, and he could see that she was afraid to come too close. He took the plates from her hands and thanked her with an encouraging smile then he set the plates down for Rrusharr and Ggrrawrr to eat first. The next two plates went to Nnarr and Rranggrr and by the time the last two plates arrived, Rrusharr and Ggrrawrr had disappeared upstairs.
Joe joined them from where he had been sitting with other ice miners, discussing plans for the morning as well as the unusual occurrences in Canis’s corner. “What did ye offer him to let ye have them critters in here?” he asked amiably.
Canis smiled. “We came to an agreement that was beneficial to both of us,” he replied.
Joe shrugged and flagged his mug at the girl who swung by and collected it on her way through the sparsely populated inn. He hung on to it for a moment to get the girl’s attention. “Bring one for my friends here.”
The girl nodded and made to leave.
“Make it water for us,” said Canis. When both the girl and Joe looked at him in surprise, he continued. “We have no stomach for your beer, thank you.”
“Ah now,” protested Joe. “Bors makes a fine brew. You should try it before you turn down a free drink.”
Canis merely looked at the girl again. “Water please, thank you.”
“Bors’ll charge me as much for the water as he would for a beer,” he said sulkily.
“Well then, you will have bought us a drink just as you wished,” said Canis.
Canis and Cepheid saw Joe through three more of his drinks and dodged a good deal of his questions before finishing their water, then Canis thanked him and escorted Cepheid up to their room, leaving Nnarr and Rranggrr to follow at their leisure, and leaving Joe even more confused as to where these two strangers had come from. They certainly weren’t trappers, though their furs, what he saw of them, were the best he had ever seen.
Just as the innkeeper was about to protest, Nnarr and Rranggrr also went upstairs, gray and white shadows side by side that unsettled the eyes and nerves of those who still sat in the common room.
Canis waited for them at the door. “Showing them who the boss is, were you?”
The smug attitude he got in reply was enough of an answer.
He turned around to see Cepheid standing in the middle of their furs with nothing on. She had lost weight and her ribs were plain to see, but that was not what he was looking at. In fact, he wasn’t too sure what he was looking at. He wasn’t sure of anything except the fact that she was so far away.
He was at her side without quite knowing how he got there. His laces were being unruly, but her warm hands pushed his away and pulled the laces free before he could tear them out of his way. His coat dropped away and his shirt followed soon after. A chill rippled his flesh as she pulled at the lacings to his pants.
If his coat and shirt vanished with astonishing speed, she pushed his pants down slowly, and he melted after them, and found himself suddenly sprawling on the pile of furs that was the soft nest she had made.
She unlaced his boots and tossed them aside, then pulled the pants free of his feet with languid movements that took many detours back up his legs. With hot hands, she rubbed his feet, each of them, slowly and carefully while Canis struggled not to pant. Satisfied, she began to crawl up his frame all too slowly allowing the full length of her body to caress every inch of her path. By the time she found his mouth with hers, he was putty in her hands. He couldn’t have protested if his life had depended on it. He wasn’t even sure he knew how to breathe.
She had curves in all the right places. She was soft in such a fascinating way. She took his hardness and consumed it with her heat. She molded him to her demand. He was lost in the sensation of touch. Their climax shattered his senses.
Somewhere shortly before he fell into a sated sleep, he had a brief thought of how vulnerable they had been. If someone had tried to attack them, it was entirely possible he would have been utterly unaware until it was far too late.
“I am here, friend,” said Ggrrawrr. “I watch over you as you watch over me.”
With a sigh, Canis lost the all too brief battle to stay on the alert. It had been utterly washed away from him. He slept.
Finding Work
Canis woke early the next morning to the sound of the puppies fighting over one of his boots. He struggled to put his body back in order so he could get dressed. He had to remind himself of the proper order of dressing in order to accomplish the task. Boots did not go on before pants and his shirt needed to go on before he picked up his coat. He was thankful he didn’t possess too many different articles of clothing.
Cepheid woke slowly and stretched languidly, then she sat up behind Canis and began to untangle his braid. He sat straighter at her touch then sighed. “My comb is in the sled,” he said, unwilling to move.
She retrieved the pouch where he kept his personal items and sat back down. He watched her walk across the floor without a stitch on and found himself forgetting his efforts to dress in favor of thinking of his coin and buying another night here at the inn.
She dumped the pouch out between her legs to find several coins, a necklace of teeth and claws that were longer than her hand, and his comb. She admired the necklace and tied it around his neck. She shortened the tiger necklace so the tips of the tiger claws just brushed the cord of the bear necklace, then she started to comb his hair.
She felt him stiffen when she put the necklace on him, but he quickly relaxed again as she fussed with them. He relaxed even more under the comb, despite the tangles. When she was satisfied, she tried to braid it back the way it was. “I can’t do it back. How did you get it like that?”
He reached back and showed her. He had been braiding his hair ever since it was too long to simply tie back. It had become second nature to him.
Dressed finally, with the wriggling puppies safely stowed, they made their way back downstairs, sled and all. The racket of their descent roused the innkeeper who groggily agreed to fix them something for breakfast as he’d promised. While he worked on the kitchen fire, Canis built up the fire in the main room then took the Wulfen outside.
While he waited for them to return, he looked up and down the street. He had missed much in the darkness of the evening before, but the early morning light did little to improve the view. Despite the new snow, the streets were muddy and rutted. The shops that he could see were unpainted and splattered with mud. The place gave him a bad feeling. He would be glad to be quit of it.
Back inside, he stood at the door to the kitchen and asked the innkeeper, “Are there any horses for sale here?”
“Horses? For riding? Eh…nay, I can’t think of any. Don’t use ‘em here much. Might be able to scrounge you up a buggy, though, if you’re interested.”
“No, thank you. I have little understanding of horses anyway. We will walk.”
“Where’re ye headin’, if ye don’t mind me askin’.”
“I have no real plans. I guess we will start out by heading east. There is not much of any place else to go, is there?”
“Ye got a point there, sir,” said the innkeeper.
“Since you don’t have many horses, I do not suppose you have a blacksmith who makes more than horseshoes and wagon wheels?” asked Canis.
“Na, he can put an edge on your sword, if that’s what ye need, but other than that, he makes a solid chain and good traps.”
Canis had no use for chains or traps and he kept a fine edge on his sword himself. He thanked the innkeeper and helped to carry their breakfast into the main room where the rest of his family waited for him. Cepheid waited at the table playing with the puppies who were so happy to be somewhere that wasn’t covered with snow and ice that they were resisting falling asleep and riding in their pouches.
The innkeeper saw them. “I didn’t know you had a couple puppies too.” He set his tray down and scooped up the chubby balls of black fuzz. Canis felt Rrusharr go tense and he saw Ggrrawrr sit up and take notice. The innkeeper rolled the puppy on her back in his arm and rubbed her tummy causing her feet to kick and her tongue to loll out the side of her little mouth.
Canis stepped forward and returned the puppy to the floor close to its mother. “I know you meant no harm, but I think you forget your company.”
The innkeeper started and looked at the many sharp eyes that were watching him. “Oh, yes, I’m very sorry. I always liked puppies. I had a dog when I was a kid.”
“You should get yourself another dog, but let me warn you, playing with wolf puppies might not be a healthy pastime.”
“Yes, yes. You’re right. I wasn’t thinkin’.” He turned to Rrusharr. It was obvious which wolf was the mother. “I’m sorry to disturb your family.”
Canis frowned at the man’s back. Could he know about the connection between the Wulfen and the people of the clan? Did he know how intelligent they were?
The man came back in to collect their bowls. “I was thinkin’, sir. I don’t do much of that ‘til after I’m awake for a bit, but since you’re already headin’ east, you might be able to get on as a guard, if you know how
to use that sword of yers. Wagons will be leavin’ here today, loaded with ice for the city.”
Canis was thrilled at the prospect. To find work already was better than he had hoped. “Who do I need to speak with about this?”
“Just hang out here a bit longer, all the drivers come in here before they leave, to have a bite and get their marchin’ orders. I’ll introduce ye to the foreman when he comes in.”
“Thank you,” said Canis. “I will wait.”
The foreman took one look at the rangy youth in all his furs and asked, “Let’s see your blade.”
Canis drew his sword and offered it for the man to see without offering it for him to take. He wasn’t sure he would have allowed him to take the sword if he had tried, but he didn’t.
The foreman seemed to scrutinize the blade as if it mattered. A man could learn a lot about a fighter by looking at his sword. He could also learn some by watching him draw it. “Sword’s a bit short for ya, but you’ll do. I’ll pay you one silver if my wagons reach Lincoln unmolested.”
Canis raised his chin with indignation. “I do not know how far Lincoln is from here, nor do I know what is so valuable about ice that requires a guard, but I would think the safety of your load might be worth more than one silver coin if you are willing to hire a guard at all.”
“What; you think you know the value of my load, do you?” said the foreman.
Canis took the now sleeping puppies from Cepheid and started to step around the man heading toward the door.
“Now hold on there,” said the foreman. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll pay you one gold if my load is unmolested, but it’ll be a silver if it is, provided I get my wagons and horses back.”
Canis waved Cepheid past him, and the Wulfen filed around the man coming much closer than he liked.
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