Secrets of the Wolves (25 page)

Ceela barked a laugh, just barely raising her head from her paws. “Well, for one thing, we can teach you how to fight. I don’t know what Ruuqo and Rissa were thinking, letting you run alone with no fighting skills.”

I glared at her and began to back out of their gathering place. I didn’t need to be insulted, and I didn’t need any information the Stone Peaks might see fit to share with me. I felt Ázzuen at my side.

Pell darted forward. “It’s important, Kaala,” he said, glowering at Ceela. “Whatever the Greatwolves are hiding affects you and your task. We can help you find out what you need to do to succeed. Even if the prey leaves.” He rested his head on my neck, leaving it there longer than was really necessary to apologize for Ceela’s rudeness. “We’ll help you find ways to hunt with the humans even with so much of the prey gone.”

“Thanks,” Ázzuen said, “but we’ll find out what we need to know on our own. And we don’t need your help with the humans.”

I wavered. I could feel Torell’s gaze upon me. Against my better judgment, I met his eyes.

“What will you do if you do succeed, Kaala,” he asked, “if you get your humans to accept you for a year?”

I was going to leave the valley to find my mother, but there was no way I was going to tell Torell that. I didn’t answer. He tried again.

“Is it true that the only way you’ve managed to get the humans to accept you so far is to abase yourself, to make yourself submissive to them?”

“So?” I said. “It worked.”

“What is the reason that wolves and humans must be together?” he asked. “Do you know?”

“Of course I know. Wolves have to be with humans so that the humans don’t lose touch with nature.”

“If the humans don’t understand that they are part of the natural world,” Ázzuen added, “they’ll just destroy it. It’s the promise of the Wide Valley wolves.”

“And if you are curl-tails to the humans, how will you do that?” Torell asked. “You will become part of their unnatural world; they will not be part of ours.”

I said nothing. This was the heart of the paradox. We had to be with the humans, and yet whenever wolves and humans were together, the humans tried to enslave the wolves, and the wolves fought back. It was why Milsindra was so certain we would fail. I hadn’t let myself think of it. I would gain the humans’ trust and then worry about it.

Torell waited for me to answer. When I didn’t, he spoke again. “Tell me, then, why do you abide by the will of the Greatwolves?”

I laughed at that. “Because they’ll kill us if we don’t.”

“I can kill you, yet you defy me,” Torell said. “There are twenty-one Greatwolves in the valley. If every wolf rose up against them, they would rule over us no longer.”

Ázzuen exhaled a long breath as the three Stone Peaks watched us.

“You accept their rule,” Torell said, “because you fear them, because they are bigger and stronger and have always ruled over you.” He held my gaze. “And you believe that the Greatwolves are the emissaries of the Ancients. I, however, believe none of that. I believe that the sun and the moon are just great fires in the sky and that the sky is nothing but the air that wolves and other creatures breathe. I believe that if the wolves of the Wide Valley were to come together, we could overpower the Greatwolves—rule the valley, our lives, and ourselves. And I believe that to do that, we must find out what it is the Greatwolves are hiding. I can tell that Ruuqo and Rissa have told you none of this, though I have discussed it with them. Once they almost joined me in defying Greatwolf rule, but in the end they did not. They are interested only in protecting their pack for one more season—one more generation. I think that protecting oneself at the cost of one’s freedom is a fool’s choice.”

I could hardly breathe. I had never heard a wolf speak in such a way. I’d always thought that Torell fought for the sake of fighting, that he made trouble because he enjoyed hurting others. Ruuqo always said it was because Torell wanted attention and power, and I had always assumed it to be true. Now I didn’t know what to think. I turned to Ázzuen, expecting to see the usual skepticism on his face, but he was watching Torell with an intensity that made me look away.

Pell was watching me, his eyes alight. “There are places, Kaala, where the lives of wolves are their own to live, where wolves are not governed by the whims of a few erratic Greatwolves. Places where you can choose to have pups when you like and can move freely across the land.”

The way he looked at me when he mentioned having pups made the fur around my ears twitch.

“That won’t do us any good if we starve to death,” Ázzuen said practically. “If the prey is gone, everyone will be too busy surviving to fight the Greatwolves, and we’ll be too busy trying to keep the humans from fighting us to do anything else.”

“You have to stop thinking like a curl-tail!” Pell said impatiently. “If you find out what the Greatwolves are hiding, you can find their weakness. If we know their weakness, we have a chance to defeat them, with or without the other packs.”

That was assuming a lot. The Stone Peaks were strong, but the Greatwolves were so much stronger.

“And why should you starve,” Torell asked, “with the aurochs and elkryn still plentiful?”

The elkryn were cousins of ordinary elk, but they were huge—well more than twice as tall as a wolf—and extremely strong. They also had giant antlers that they could use to crush any hunter who challenged them. And ever since we had fought them at the battle of Tall Grass, they had hated the Swift River wolves.

“The elkryn are difficult prey,” I said, “and we don’t hunt the aurochs.”

“We do,” Ceela said. “We always have.”

I yawned. Every wolf said the Stone Peaks were crazy for hunting aurochs. The great beasts killed wolves easily and were much harder to bring down than the elkryn.

“I can teach you,” Torell said. “I can teach you to hunt the aurochs, and to hunt the elkryn more successfully,” he said. “I can show you how to hunt them with your humans.”

“The leaving of the prey does not have to be a bad thing, Kaala,” Pell said. “Your humans will be the best-fed humans in the valley. Because of you.”

It was what I needed most, to have the humans value us so much that I could let other wolves take my place and leave the valley with TaLi. It was too much for me to take in. I couldn’t dismiss Torell’s words, or Pell’s—I found myself wanting to trust Pell in particular—but I couldn’t just reject everything I’d ever known about the Stone Peaks.

“What do you want us to do?” I asked. “How are we supposed to discover this cache?”

Torell seemed to accept my return to the practical. I tried to ignore Ázzuen, who was quivering with curiosity beside me.

“We have been studying the Greatwolves for many years,” Torell said. “We believe we know their hiding place, but we can’t go to it ourselves. The Greatwolves know we don’t easily accept their rule, and they watch us closely. That’s why we need you. The Greatwolves believe you’ll do as they say, and they expect you to cross territories as you try to complete your task. You might be able to find out what they hide.”

“So tell us where it is,” Ázzuen said, still suspicious in spite of his fascination with Torell’s words.

The Stone Peak leader grimaced. “I trust you no more than you trust me, youngwolf. If you were to tell your Greatwolf friends what I’ve told you today, I would be dead in a quarter moon’s time, as would my pack. You could tell them what I have already told you, I know that, and I have trusted you not to do so. But before I tell you more, I need to know that you’re not just a curl-tail who will tell everything you know the first time you are pressed. I need to know you can stand up for yourself.”

It seemed everyone had a test for us. I wanted to be annoyed, but I was excited. More than ever, I wanted to thwart Milsindra. If I could hunt aurochs and elkryn with the humans, I would prove that humans and wolves made good packmates. I would teach other wolves how to hunt the large prey. If we could show that even with most of the prey leaving the valley we still succeeded with our humans, and if the council knew that we did so in spite of the fact that Milsindra had driven away the prey, she would lose and Zorindru would win. It was worth a risk.

I sighed. “We have to find Frandra and Jandru before late-sun,” I said, “or they’ll come looking for us.”

“There’s no reason you should not be able to prove your courage to me and still return to your territory by then,” he said. “And you may tell them of the prey drive. As you said, you would have found that out for yourselves.”

Torell was being suspiciously accommodating. Stone Peak had been our rivals too long for me to trust him. I thought about what Marra would do, how she would figure out if he was trustworthy.

“If we succeed in your challenge, do we have to join you?” Ázzuen demanded before I could think of anything to say. “If we decide we don’t want to help you find what the Greatwolves are hiding, will you let us leave unharmed?”

Torell and Pell just blinked at him, but Ceela laughed. “Smart little wolf,” she said. “No, until you accept our help hunting the giant prey, you owe us nothing except your word that you will not reveal our plan to overthrow the Greatwolves.”

“As for joining us,” Torell said, “if you would like to do so, you would be welcome as Stone Peak wolves, as would your fleet-footed littermate and the oldwolf who counsels you.”

I whuffed in surprise. He had certainly been watching us carefully if he knew enough to know we would want to bring Marra and Trevegg with us.

“You may as well come out,” he said to one of the sage bushes that surrounded the gathering place.

Marra emerged from the bush. I had caught her scent as soon as she arrived, a few minutes before, but had hoped the Stone Peaks would not. She greeted the Stone Peak wolves, then sat calmly, her front paws together, her tail wrapped around her rump. I was glad to have her there.

I should have been afraid. I should have been worried about making it back to Jandru and Frandra by late-sun and at making any sort of pact with the Stone Peaks. Instead, I was exhilarated. Milsindra expected me to be afraid, to hide and to wait to see what she would do. Torell was offering me another way. I looked at Ázzuen out of the corner of my eye. He dipped his head. I caught Marra’s eyes, and saw them alight with excitement at the challenge.

“All right,” I said. “What do you want us to do?”

Torell smiled. “Come with me,” he said.

I
lay in the dirt, looking up at Torell’s broad chest.

“Why do you hurl yourself at me like a berry-drunk badger?” he demanded. He stood over me, his paws planted on my chest. I had leapt at him, as I had on the path to the river, trying to knock him over. It was like trying to topple an oak tree.

Torell had decided to test us by teaching us how to fight. He’d led us deep into the woods to a small clearing hidden by thick pines and dense juniper bushes. He said that he wanted to make sure no passing Greatwolf would find us.

As soon as we arrived, he, Ceela, and Pell had huddled, whispering together. I quickly grew impatient. It was already past midday. We would have to leave soon to find the Greatwolves, and so far we had learned nothing of value. When Pell walked over to tell us that Torell wanted us to prove we could learn to fight well, I had grunted in annoyance. It seemed silly to me that a leaderwolf would want to challenge half-grown youngwolves in such a way. It seemed to verify everything Ruuqo and Rissa had said about Torell and his need to always prove his strength. I said as much to Pell.

“It may seem that way, Kaala, but it isn’t,” he had said. “He needs to know that you’re strong enough and skilled enough to hunt aurochs without injuring yourselves or those who hunt with you. But it’s more than that. Most wolves grow up learning to follow orders. If you’re to challenge the Greatwolves, he needs to know you’re willing to take risks. That you won’t back down if it gets hard.”

“I’ve done plenty of risky things,” I said, thinking of pulling TaLi from the river, of refusing to follow Jandru and Frandra outside the valley. “It seems stupid to me. Why don’t we just try hunting the aurochs with your pack?”

Pell was silent for a few moments. “Do you know how Torell got those scars on his face?”

“In some fight?”

“Stealing someone else’s territory?” Ázzuen said
.

“No,” Pell had said, looking down his snout at Ázzuen. “He wouldn’t have been so injured by an ordinary wolf.”

I wanted to laugh at his arrogance, but the intensity of his gaze stopped me.

“He got them three years ago. He didn’t lower his ears quickly enough to a Greatwolf, and the Greatwolf took offense. The next day, three Greatwolves came to kill Torell’s pups—his first litter. Torell fought them off. Your secondwolf, Werrna, was part of Stone Peak then, and she helped him. Werrna’s mate, Lann, was killed in the fighting, and she swore never to take another. The three of them stood against the Greatwolves until Zorindru came and stopped the fight. Torell vowed that he would someday live free of the rule of the Greatwolves. That’s why he’s so careful. The vow means everything to him. More than his own life, more even than the life of his pack. He’s trusting you with that.”

Now, as I lay pinned under Torell’s paws and looked up at his ravaged face, I imagined what it must have been like. I’d been helpless before Milsindra, and she was only one wolf. What would it have been like to fight three Greatwolves at once? I had always assumed Torell’s scars proved he was too aggressive and foolhardy to be trusted. But he was a hero.

He frowned and stepped off me, allowing me to get up.

“I weigh much more than you do,” he said. “You will not overpower me. You’re not strong enough.”

“I’ll get stronger,” I said, panting as I scrabbled to my feet. My pride was hurt. A weak wolf was a useless wolf.

Tlitoo quorked from a nearby rock, watching. He had found us shortly after we arrived at the clearing, but had refused to help us fight the Stone Peaks. “I know already how to fight, wolflet,” he had said.

“You’ll never be stronger than an auroch,” Torell said to me. I started to argue. He butted his head against me. “But that doesn’t have to be a disadvantage. What does a hill dancer do when it fights?” he asked.