Wolf's Eyes

by Jane Lindskold

  Derian rose, imposed himself between her and Race, found that cold, dark gaze now studying him impartially. All their tentative friendship seemed to have vanished like snow beneath the sun.

  Blysse's growl deepened, became louder, and she peeled her lips back from teeth. The snarl should have looked funny, for her teeth remained blunt, human teeth, but the menace in her eyes made the expression anything but.

  Queenie, Race's bird dog, had been running to assist her master. Now, under Blysse's snarl, she dropped to the dirt, rolled onto her back, and whimpered submission.

  Something visceral in Derian understood. He could not demean himself to drop and roll, but he lowered his gaze and stepped slightly to one side.

  “Race,” he muttered urgently as he did so. “Don't get up! Don't reach for any weapon! If you stay down there, she won't attack you.”

  “What?” Race continued scrabbling backward in the dirt and leaves of the forest floor, but he didn't get to his feet, nor did Blysse attack. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just am!” Derian replied, resisting an urge to growl himself. “Stay put! Lower your gaze! Don't challenge her or she'll have your head!”

  Race obeyed, at least to the extent of not getting to his feet. After Race had clawed his way back a few more paces, Blysse halted. With one last snarl, she kicked dirt at him. Then she shook like a dog after a rainstorm, her anger vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

  She looked at Derian and grinned, then spoke her first sentences.

  “Race, dog,” she commented conversationally. Then she bent and picked up the rope and shook it. “No rope. No!”

  Earl Kestrel spoke for the first time since Race had advanced on Blysse.

  “That, I think, quite nicely sums up the matter.”

  Then he took the coil of rope from her and tossed it onto the fire. Sparks flew as the flames engulfed the damp coils.

  FIREKEEPER WAS IN A MERRY mood the next morning. Today they would cross the great mountains. Beneath tonight's stars, she and Blind Seer would hunt where none of the Royal Wolves had hunted in uncounted years. Until then, she had the progress of humans and horses up the steep incline to amuse her.

  For once, Derian had abandoned his care of her, his skill with the horses needed to coax them up the slope. She admired his labors with the stupid things, and during a mid-morning halt she offered through gestures to assist.

  Derian grinned and promptly handed her the rope tied to the head of the smallest but least cooperative of the long-eared horses.

  “Mule,” he said, pointing toward the creature.

  Noting differences in ears, tail, and wickedness of temper, Firekeeper was willing to concede that there might be a need for a different word to separate this creature from a horse, never mind that they smelled so much alike.

  “Mule,” she repeated, pointing to the animal, then to the others like it. “Mule.”

  Derian grinned. “Yes. Good.”

  The last word puzzled her, for it seemed to apply to nothing in particular. She gestured toward the mule's head-rope, wondering if “Good” might be yet another of the useless plethora of words for “rope” that Derian kept thrusting at her.

  “Rope,” she said, waiting to see if he corrected her.

  “Rope,” he agreed. Then he made the hand gesture for “wait” and went off to confer with the earl.

  While Firekeeper waited, her gaze flickered toward Race, remembering how the man had tried to bind her as the horses were bound. He was keeping a safe distance from her, his spotted dog close about his feet. Their fear pleased her. She liked having some precedence within this human pack, even if over such minor members.

  When Hawk Nose shouted the command for them to start, Firekeeper's mule stubbornly refused to move. He stood stiff-legged, lazily chewing a mouthful of leaves, defying her to make him take a single step.

  From the corner of her eye, Firekeeper saw Derian approaching, lightly swinging the stick he used to swat the mules across their hindquarters. Determined to move the animal herself, she considered her options.

  To this point, she had not tried talking with the animals the two-legs had brought with them. She rarely had bothered speaking with herbivores in any case, finding it uncomfortable to talk with those she might later eat. Now, however, she stood on her toes, rising just high enough that her lips were close to one of the mule's brown-haired, dark-tipped ears.

  “Move!” she snarled. “Or I'll eat you for supper!”

  Any doubts she had held that the mule would understand her vanished as he threw back his head and brayed in naked terror. It took all her strength, heels dug into the ground, to stop the animal from bolting. With the loose end of the rope, she hit it across the soft part of its nose.

  “Walk quietly now!” she ordered. “Follow!”

  To attempt any command more detailed would be folly, for the stupid animal had suddenly remembered that she was a wolf, not a two-legs. It rolled its near eye at her, uncertain whether to obey or to bolt.

  “Follow the others!” she commanded and, after the fashion of its kind it fell into line, comforted in doing what the others were already doing.

  Firekeeper whistled comment to Elation, who had been watching the exchange from the trees nearby.

  The falcon shrieked laughter. “Mistress of mice and mules! To what lows the proud wolves have come!”

  Firekeeper snorted, not deigning to comment further. She was pleased enough to have made the mule obey her. See if the falcon could do as well!

  That night and for the nights that followed, she and Blind Seer ranged the far slope of the mountains. This side was not, she discovered with some disappointment, greatly different from the side she had known since her puppyhood.

  In one way, however, this region was greatly different. Except for one goshawk, kin to Elation's peregrines, they met none of the Royal kind. The only wolves she and Blind Seer encountered were Cousins. These knew of the Royal Wolves, having ranged west when the hunting was poor in their own territories, and groveled before Blind Seer as a pup before an adult.

  Firekeeper found their deference right and natural. What troubled her, having had little contact with Cousins in the past, was how restricted the Cousins’ interests were.

  They could report in great detail about sources of fresh water, about rival packs, about good hunting, about the danger offered by awakening bears. Beyond that, they seemed to see nothing, to know less. She was shocked to realize that they reminded her more of Queenie, Race's spotted dog, than they did of wolves.

  “Are they stupid?” she asked Blind Seer.

  “No,” he said, lifting his head from the haunch of elk he had been shredding. “They are Cousins. Didn't the Ones teach you about them?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “Mostly, they told me to avoid them, that the Cousins would not protect me as did my own pack. I thought nothing of this. Packs often have rivalries.”

  “That is so,” Blind Seer agreed. “However, there is more to our parents’ warning than that. Cousins are lesser than Royal-kind in more ways than size. We are wiser, more clever, and possess gifts that the Cousins never have.”

  He sat up, forgetting his meat in his pride. Firekeeper snatched it from between his paws, winning an appreciative snarl from him.

  “Tell me more,” she said, tossing him back his food. Her own meal was long finished.

  Blind Seer chewed at the knob end for a moment, considering before he continued, “Well, Royal-kind is forbidden to breed with Cousins, even if the urge is great.”

  “You are?” she asked, surprised. “But they are so like you. They even smell like you.”

  “Maybe to a human's nose,” he replied haughtily. “I tell you, the scent is different, even as the scent of pale roses and dark roses is different.”

  “If you say so,” she said resignedly. “My nose is dead.” “I know,” he laughed. “Forget the Cousins, Sister. We can intimidate them if need arises. Moreover, it is spring. Like our ow
n pack, they have pups to hunt for. They will be too busy to bother us.”

  Firekeeper nodded and for a time all was silent but for the cracking of the elk haunch between Blind Seer's jaws.

  “These mules and horses the humans have,” she said at last, thinking aloud. ‘They are certainly Cousin-kind, not Royal-kind.”

  “I certainly hope so.” Blind Seer grinned. “If their Royal-kind are this stupid and docile, there is no hope for the creatures.”

  “What if the only non-humans the two-legs know,” she mused, “are the Cousin-kind? How stupid they would believe all others who walk the earth to be!”

  “Does that matter?” the great wolf asked lazily.

  “It might,” Firekeeper replied thoughtfully. “It might matter very much.”

  FOGGY AND GHOSTLIKE in the drizzle that fell from the purpling heavens, West Keep loomed before them at twilight, eight days after they had crossed the gap from the west side of the Iron Mountains. Had they been in the lowlands, they would have covered the distance more quickly, but here they were on rough roads, their travel complicated by spring rains.

  Derian, who was tired of living in the saddle and sleeping in a tent, welcomed the sight of the keep as if he were already out of the wind, enjoying fresh bread and butter in front of a roaring fire for which someone else had fetched the wood.

  Blysse, sitting perched atop a once stubborn mule, gasped aloud when she saw the towering heap of dressed stone. For the first time since Derian had met her she looked completely astonished.

  “Hold up for a moment,” he called to the others. “Blysse needs a minute to adjust. I think the keep scares her.

  “I guess it would be something of a surprise,” Derian continued, turning to the young woman. He had learned that she appreciated being talked to, even if she couldn't understand the words. “The bend in the road hid it from view until it was right on top of us.”

  “Deliberately, I would guess,” Earl Kestrel added, twisting slightly in Coal's saddle to face them. “A good strategic move. West Keep has a clear view of the road from its upper towers, but from the road those same towers blend into the surrounding terrain until this last mile.”

  “Even in daylight?” Ox asked.

  “Even in daylight,” Earl Kestrel said, as smugly as if he had built the place himself.

  Blysse turned to Derian. He hadn't been able to teach her the word “what” and he bet that was exactly the word she wanted now. Instead she raised her hands and gestured wildly.

  “Rock?” she asked. Then paused, frowning, “Rock-tent?” Derian nodded, considering what word to give her. He had tried hard to avoid homonyms, wanting to reserve the confusion of words that sounded alike but meant different things until they shared a larger vocabulary. For that reason, he avoided the word “keep” and chose another.

  “Castle,” he said, pointing, using the slow, careful cadence he had begun to reserve for new words. “Castle.”

  Blysse pointed. “Castle. Rock tent. Castle.”

  She shook her head in amazement. Then, to Derian's surprise, she pursed her lips and gave a low whistle, identical to the one Race used whenever he encountered something he hadn't been ready for: a fallen tree or swollen stream blocking the trail; his fish trap plundered by a raccoon; ants in his boots.

  Hearing her, Race laughed, a friendly laugh this time.

  “I guess I've taught her something, too,” he chuckled.

  Derian nodded, an inkling of how he might manage Race brightening the prospect of being left at the keep with Race without the earl's mitigating presence.

  Beside him, Blysse was still gaping at the keep. Her brow wrinkled in consideration as she tried to make her limited vocabulary express her awe.

  “Castle,” she said, gesturing up to indicate its height, then out to sketch the extent of the girdling wall. “Castle ox.”

  Derian was puzzled for a moment. Then he grinned.

  “Castle big” he said, stressing the second word. “Ox big.”

  Blysse nodded vigorously.

  “Big,” she repeated. Then, after a moment, she added, “Ox big. Valet no big.”

  Derian's grin broadened as he wondered if it was tact that had led Blysse to pick Valet as her example of small, rather than Earl Kestrel, who was at least an inch shorter and some-what slighter of build. One thing Blysse seemed to have had no difficulty interpreting were the relative degrees of importance within the little company.

  “Ox big,” he said, urging Roanne into a walk once more and hearing the rest of the company follow suit, “Valet no big. Valet small.”

  He decided to leave the minor refinement of “not” versus “no” for another time. Abstract concepts were a hurdle he hadn't been certain how to cross. Now that Blysse had provided him with a starting point, he wasn't going to waste it.

  They continued their language lesson as the pack train crossed the last mile. At Earl Kestrel's signal, Race rode ahead, blowing his horn to alert the residents of West Keep that their master came unexpected. Derian spared a moment of pity for the garrison if they hadn't kept the place in perfect order. Earl Kestrel was not the most forgiving of masters.

  That thought made him redouble his efforts with Blysse, suddenly aware of the earl's grey eyes watching him and the cool, calculating mind assessing his student's progress.

  Earl Kestrel had uses for this woman who might or might not be his niece and the best claimant to the throne of Hawk Haven. He would not be forgiving if a mere horse carter impeded his advance. Certainly there would be rewards for success, but Derian was sure that the penalties for failure would be far greater in both degree and kind.

  STONE. STONE on the floor. Stone surrounding. Caves made by human hands.

  Firekeeper felt some relief when the chamber into which Fox Hair brought her had a ceiling made of wood and two great arched openings in the sides. She rushed to one of these and leaned out, reassuring herself by the sensation of the fresh, wet air on her face that the wide world outside had not vanished.

  When her first panic had abated, she noticed that she could see for a great distance from this height. Directly below, several stranger two-legs were leading the horses and mules into a shelter. Beyond the narrow heap-of-stones-piled-ontop-of-stones that Derian had called a wall, there was a cleared area, but then the forest began again.

  Even in the gathering darkness she could locate Blind Seer sitting on his haunches in the shadow of a tall tree near the road. The blue-eyed wolf was looking up at the castle, studying its shape. From the tilt of his head, she knew he was quizzical, but not afraid, and his lack of fear for himself or for her gave the young woman courage.

  Drawing inside, Firekeeper shook the water droplets from her hair and turned to Derian. He was standing with his back to a fire built in the side of the chamber, watching her with an expression that, had she known it, was twin to Blind Seer's.

  “Castle big,” she commented with what coolness she could muster.

  Derian nodded. A knocking from the side of the chamber where they had entered interrupted whatever he had been about to say. Derian said something Firekeeper didn't understand. Then, apparently in response, a frightening thing happened.

  A piece of the wall moved, revealing an opening behind it.

  Firekeeper sprang to the opening she had been looking out of a moment before and perched on the broad ledge beside it, ready to dive out and take her chances falling.

  Fox Hair seemed amused, not nervous, so she held her pose, watching guardedly. The scent of food drifted in from the opening. That of meat cooked with herbs was immediately familiar. There were other scents that were almost familiar. These teased an awakening part of her, bringing with them a mingled sense of comfort and of longing that made Firekeeper strangely indecisive.

  The food was carried by a two-legs nearly as stout as Ox but barely half his height, a person built from rounding shapes that included astonishing, swelling protrusions in the vicinity of her chest. When this person saw Firekeeper
she spoke, her voice twittering like birdsong, high but sweet.

  Derian made introductions, pointing first to Firekeeper, then to the stranger and back again.

  “Blysse, Steward Daisy. Steward Daisy, Blysse.”

  Obediently, Firekeeper repeated the lesson, wondering why so small a person should have so long a name. Her words released another spate of birdsong from the little person, sounds that held a distinctly cooing note along with the word “Blysse.”

  Being called Blysse always made Firekeeper feel vaguely uncomfortable, though she had no idea why it should. The words by which the two-legs named themselves meant nothing to her. It was quite reasonable that they employed an equally meaningless sound to name her. But the name Blysse did make Firekeeper uncomfortable, so much so that she longed for the day when she would speak enough human tongue to teach them her wolf-given name.

  Steward Daisy departed after making more cooing sounds, and Firekeeper and Derian shared the food on the tray. One of the almost familiar smells proved to belong to something called “bread,” a soft, warm substance like nothing else that Firekeeper had ever eaten. She liked it best spread with the salty fat called “butter.” Jam, with its taste of overripe berries, was good, but almost too rich.

  Satiated, Firekeeper removed a blanket from one of the packs and spread it in front of the fire. A few hours’ sleep, and then she would decide how to get out to Blind Seer.

  SHE AWAKENED to find the fire burned down to red and white coals and Fox Hair gone, doubtless to his own chamber.

  Stretching, she located an oddly shaped container full of water, its neck so tight that she could barely get her hand inside to cup out water with which to appease her thirst.

  As soon as Steward Daisy had departed, Derian had shown Firekeeper how the door into the room worked. Now the wolf tested her memory and was pleased to discover that she could open it without help. When she scouted outside, she found a two-legs drowsing on a stool at the end of the hall.