The Blood of Ten Chiefs (33 page)

Bearclaw came slowly back to him. Strongbow didn't move, not even when Bearclaw's eyes, squinting with suspicious concern, peeked into the corner of his vision. The silent question was neither spoken or sent. Bearclaw waited for it to be answered.

Like a brush leaving delicate swipes on a cave wall, the mild sending came—very unlike the usual terse snaps of Strongbow's mind.

**I hope I die before I must see your son become chief.**

He might as well have shot an arrow into Bearclaw's chest. Bearclaw hated new territory, especially inner ground. He shifted his weight and licked his lips. "What kind of talk is that?"

A tinge of sarcasm mellowed the words.

Strongbow's mouth twitched. No other response.

Bearclaw reached out uncomfortably and took hold of the muscular bow arm, welding the bond. "Come on, soul brother. Let's get back to business before I give you my soulname and embarrass us both."

**You know, you could lose your hand.**

"I know."

Bearclaw stood flush against the vine hedge. His arm sank deep into the leaves. True—he expected to feel the keen cut of fangs in his flesh, but he steadied himself to the bond between his mind and the beast's, and endured the chance of dismemberment.

Strongbow stood close beside him now, cooperating. The way of violence hadn't worked. He had seen new facets in. his chief this night. He would deal with them cleanly and head-on, for he knew nothing else. Bearclaw was still chief.

Strongbow flinched when Bearclaw did—something had rustled deep within the leaves.

**Something?**

**Yes ... fur. Moist flesh. He's sniffing me.**

**He?**

**Definitely.**

They waited.

Bearclaw vowed he would allow the hand to be bitten off before he withdrew it from this test. Hot breath puffed against his hand. He closed his eyes, bracing for—

The sending came again. More violence, but this time the violence of the victim. In his mind Bearclaw saw four tiny bundles of fur, torn and bleeding. He had to steady himself against the image of flapping wings and the sickening picture of talons—a predator bird's weapons spread wide and dangled with bits of flesh. He felt the heart-pain once again, as though it was suddenly new. The pictures became clearer and clearer in his mind. The beast had left its den in despair. Now it lurked behind the vine hedge, calling out to what it thought was a kindred spirit.

Teeth closed around his fingers. Knuckle by knuckle, his hand was encased within a huge, wet maw. The jaws closed to press his hand, but never broke the skin. His palm lay against a sopping tongue. The teeth held tightly, testing him. Sweating, he awaited the verdict.

The jaws tightened around his hand, pressing sharp fangs into his skin, separating the tendons between his knuckles. Bearclaw gritted his teeth, determined to tolerate the pain. If this was a challenge he would endure it. Sweat poured down his forehead beneath the shag of bangs and a grunt was forced from his lips as the fangs pressed deeper into his hand.

He waited to feel them pop through the skin and flood the beast's maw with elf-blood. Then—the pressure eased off. Bearclaw panted away the pain as his hand started throbbing, but still refused to retreat. He waited.

It came. A firm tugging. He was being pulled into the thicket. He resisted only slightly before allowing the vines to engulf him.

**Bearclaw ...**

**Don't interfere. I'm all right. Stay there.**

The leaves brushed his face, grew thinner, and opened before him. Though he expected to see a bear or a longtooth, he really wasn't as surprised as he thought he should be.

A wolf.

Not from the home pack. This one must have come from very far away indeed to be so unknown here. The wide head and jaws into which Bearclaw's hand disappeared were black as obsidian. But the wolf's hide did not shine like obsidian. The beast was more like a great hole in the night, cut out of the forest fabric and left empty. Except for its eyes. Bearclaw almost backed away from the yellow slashes through which the wolf peered at him. Like two crescents of torchlight, the eyes looked as though they might be blind. But Bearclaw knew the wolf could see him—quite clearly.

The animal was massive, hunched over until his head snaked along the ground, more like a bear than a wolf. He moved in slow, effective motions, not the quick jolts of a cornered animal.

Not like the twitching of his mate, who Bearclaw saw with some surprise as he was drawn into the thicket's core. A she-wolf lay before him, shivering from nervousness. Evidently she did not trust him as her ghostlike mate did. She coiled her silver body around a lump of fur. But the fur was moving. There was something inside. Bearclaw squinted at it, wishing there was more moonlight.

Something nudged the back of his thigh. The huge male.

Cautiously Bearclaw approached the female and slowly knelt beside her, keeping an eye on those tense jaws. He reached for the lump of fur—

And tumbled backward when the she-wolf snapped at him.

Instantly the big male corralled his mate in a jaw-lock around her throat. He held her down, growling a clear threat if she interfered again. She rolled onto her back in the subservient position, and no longer challenged Bearclaw's right to look at her bundle.

He folded back the layers of ravvit fur.

**Bearclaw?**

"Strongbow, come here."

The archer pushed his way through the vines, took in the odd sight with a shocked expression and his typical silence, then moved around the edge of the thicket toward Bearclaw. He gave the nearly invisible black wolf an especially wide berth.

Bearclaw was crouching down, looking at something. Strongbow leaned over his shoulder, and inhaled sharply.

**What in eight storms is that?**

Bearclaw looked up at him. "What do you think it is? She stole it from the humans. Her own cubs were killed by eagles in the mountains. She just wanted to suckle it like Timmain did."

**What are we going to do? Will she give it up?**

"Would you? She took it. She thinks it's hers." He looked up rather cagily at his archer and added, "It's the Way, you know."

Strongbow inclined his head slightly to his chief. **All right, I know.**

Bearclaw's wily smile twisted his lips. "Get out of the thicket. I'm going to try something. Maybe I can make the shadow-wolf understand."

He stood up, waiting until Strongbow was out of the thicket entirely. Then he moved to stand before the great black beast and concentrated upon a sending star of now-thought.

Minutes passed. The scent of fire drifted ominously back upon them, a constant reminder. Outside the thicket, Strongbow peered through the blood-dark trees to the yellow flashes of firelight moving across the forestland. **Bearclaw, they're getting closer.**

"I know that. Come back in."

Exasperated, Strongbow shoved through the vines again. **Now what?**

He stopped, rocked by what he saw—the shadow-wolf lay across his mate's shivering form. The she-wolf lay complacently beneath him, helpless, almost despondent.

"Get your bow," Bearclaw said. He was standing over the tiny fur bundle which had caused such trouble. He gathered the ravvit fur up carefully and collected the squirming newborn baby into his arms. So much bigger than an elf cub— but still helpless. Bearclaw offhandedly wondered if he would have felt this much for the infant before his own cub was born. Probably not. His cubling's birth had changed him, he grudgingly admitted. He didn't like to have Strongbow see him act so protective of the human whelp, and stood up quickly. "She's giving it back. Let's put it where it belongs before the humans get to the holt. From the direction of the fire-smell, they're almost there."

**We're going to the humans' camp?**

"One of us is. You do whatever you want."

Bearclaw wrestled the five-fingered baby into a better position against his chest. The infant gurgled and yawned, but its belly was full of warm milk from the she-wolf's aching and swollen teats and it made no complaints as he carried it out of the thicket.

Strongbow—very, very cautiously—retrieved his bow from where it had landed jammed between two branches of the fallen tree, and followed his chief through the forest.

The human camp was desolate. Only a single fire burned in a pit at the camp's center, the fire they had used to light the torches. Bearclaw and Strongbow would ordinarily never venture to such a place, but tonight was far from ordinary. Several times Bearclaw stopped short and listened. Strongbow had no idea what he was listening for until the halting sound of sobbing filtered out of one of the caves.

**Stay here,** Bearclaw sent firmly.

Strongbow didn't have any arguments this time. He dipped into a shadow, watching nervously as Bearclaw took a deep breath, clutched the human infant to his chest, and disappeared into the cave's wide mouth.

Agonizing minutes slogged by. Strongbow dared not even twitch. Bearclaw would have his hide if he interfered. The sobbing inside the cave stopped, then changed pitch—a different message altogether.

Bearclaw slipped out the corner of the cave mouth. Strongbow started breathing again. Bearclaw joined him in his shadow.

**She was hardly old enough to be a child, much less have one,** the chief sent.

**Humans multiply like flies,** Strongbow responded.

Bearclaw gripped the archer's wrist and turned him toward the woods. **Move along, reckless one.**

The elves were barely within the comforting cloak of trees before a clanging signal rang out through the forest. It was the ringing song of stone against stone, a song the elves heard sometimes in their sleep, when they knew the humans were calling each other, and the Wolfriders would curl up against each other and be glad they roamed at night rather than in the daylight.

Deep within the woodlands, within a few trees of the holt itself, the torchbearers turned suddenly, stared for a moment in disbelief, then ran with their crackling fires back through the forest to their own camp.

The newborn elf cub suckled greedily at the nipple in his tiny mouth, his tongue pressed up around the source of nourishment. It was a peculiar kind of ecstasy, but every infant born to every kind of fur-bearer understood it.

Bearclaw put his arm around Joyleaf's shoulders and together they watched their precious chief-son suckle to his heart's content.

"Are you sure about this?" Bearclaw asked her. "It's you I'm worried about."

Joyleaf's lashes dropped and rose again over her sky-blue eyes and she gazed placidly at her newborn cub. "I learned to share you," she said. "I can learn to share him."

She reached down and scratched the short, pricked-up ears of the she-wolf. The animal lay on her side in the middle of their hollow, nearly entranced with the joy of the tiny mouth at her teat. The warmth within her flowed easily from her heart to the heart of the elfin female.

Bearclaw sensed the invasion of his presence in this feminine art. He touched Joyleaf's face, unable to word his feelings, and slipped out of the hollow, and out of the holt altogether.

It was nearly dawn. The sky glowed with shades of pink from the horizon. A new day. The forest was still dark, and an eternity had passed since sun-goes-down, when the humans first lit their torches. Now the forest snoozed peacefully. The torches had been guttered hours ago.

Bearclaw wandered into the forest. He told himself he was just wandering. But when he stopped wandering, he was at the fallen tree. He moved through the vines, but the thicket was empty. Only the blackness of pre-dawn fell here now.

Immediately he left, and wandered—perhaps foolishly—near the human camp. Something drove him to seal in his own mind the end of the terror. He had to be sure the humans had forgotten their rage.

He watched for a while as gossamer shapes moved about in the pre-dawn haze, gathering kindling for a new campfire, preparing the day's fruits and meats, stretching after the little bit of sleep they'd managed to get last night. Humans ... just acting like humans instead of avengers.

Bearclaw stiffened when he saw something vaguely familiar—the same woman-shape he'd perceived in the darkness: the girl with the baby. She emerged from the cave, holding and hugging her newborn child, kissing the rosebud face and playing with the tiny fingers that gripped her thumb. After a moment, she handed her child to another woman, who seemed to love it almost as much.

Bearclaw drew his shoulders in. The girl had held her baby as Joyleaf held their own cub—a special holding. By the dawn light, these tall ones were no longer his nightmare, and with that came a touch of regret.

His eyes narrowed suddenly, acute to movement. His thoughts dissolved into wolf-time, and he sank back into the leafy brush.

The girl was walking toward him, toward the woods, her safe cave-porch left behind. With a piece of soft leather she was buffing something cradled in one hand.

He drifted deeper into the bushes, and became still.

The leaves and branches around him rustled gently. Her leather skirt brushed by, near enough to touch. She paused, less than an arm's length away. Seen through the leaves in the dimness of new-dawn, she was only a faint outline as she tugged at young branches and placed something in them. There was a faint clink of stones, but no other clue. Satisfied, the girl paused for a moment to gaze thoughtfully at what she had done, almost as though a decision was not yet completely made. But then she turned and, without a backward glance, returned to her encampment.

Bearclaw waited until his heart stopped pounding.

The smell of humans clung to the tree. For the first time in his long life, Bearclaw was drawn to it.

There, hanging on a stubby branch, was a bit of dawn. Red-gold amber and green water-polished pebbles reflected his wry smile. "Toad turds," he muttered. Too bad—he had always enjoyed hating the humans.

His whiskered face twisted into a grin as he tossed a glance toward the retreating human girl. He slipped the necklace over his head. The amber was warm against his skin, the pebbles cool. He would give it to Joyleaf. It would gleam against her neck like the glow of her hair and the shine in her eyes. Yes, Joyleaf should have this gift. Sometimes it is harder to share than to give, and Joyleaf had given the greatest sharing, after all.