Through Wolf's Eyes (8 page)

"I didn't say . . ." Race Forester began to protest,
but a sharp glance from the earl's pale grey eyes silenced him.
Disappointment or perhaps sorrow had set the nobleman's usually short
temper smoldering. Instead, Race swallowed whatever he had planned to
say and occupied himself by taking his flute out and cleaning the stops.

Derian Carter whistled a light air as he fetched the
water that night, his previous fear of ancestral spirits quieted by his
tacit promotion. Tomorrow Race Forester would haul and carry!

F
IREKEEPER WATCHED THE NEXT DAY
as the two-legs turned most of their efforts to excavating the
burned-out ruins. Even a steady drizzle that transformed soot and dirt
to tacky mud didn't stop them.

"They work like a pregnant mother searching for a perfect
den site," commented Blind Seer when he awakened from one of his frequent naps. "Do you think they're whelping?"

"Idiot," she said fondly, tossing a few twigs down at
him. "They're carrying out the bones of the ones who died in the fire.
Heads interest them especially."

" 'One head, one kill,' " quoted Blind Seer. "How
better to tell if they have found all their missing ones? How soon till
they find
your
head, sweet Firekeeper?"

"All in my time," she temporized. "Whenever I think I
understand them, they do something strange. Today Fox Hair is certainly
over Tawny. I heard no sound of fighting. Why then the change?"

"Perhaps they fought while we were out hunting."
Blind Seer dismissed the question for something more immediate. "I'm
hungry, tired of eating rabbit. The wind is ripe with the scent of some
spring-mad buck. Will you hunt with me or must you stay to see each
bone taken from the soil?"

Firekeeper considered. "I'll hunt. Elation, will you tell me if they depart from here?"

"One or all?" the bird asked.

"All or mostly all," the young woman replied. "One or two may go hunt for the rest."

When she and Blind Seer returned, full of the flesh
of a foolish buck who had cracked his foreleg while fighting his
reflection, more skulls and pieces of skulls were laid out in neat
ranks. Many were broken, but the two-legs who was their keeper sat
fitting broken pieces together into an approximation of a whole.

"Strange," said Firekeeper, "many of the bones must have been burnt entirely. Why do they keep at this crazy hunt?"

"Because," Elation said, swiveling her head so that
one golden-ringed eye pinned Firekeeper securely, "from knowing how
many are certainly dead they can estimate how many may be dead. It is
not unlike judging a wolf pack from two of its members."

"They must know by now," Blind Seer said, licking a
trace of deer blood from one paw, "that all or nearly all died here.
Firekeeper, you will need to find courage to speak with them before
they go back across the mountains."

"I will," she promised, "I will."

But that night, as she and Blind Seer sang home the
news of the two-legs and of their own doings, Firekeeper wondered how
she could ever dare to approach the strangers.

D
ERIAN WOKE UP
feeling like the aftermath of a New Beer festival. As he struggled
awake, he felt vaguely surprised that his mouth was not foul, nor his
limbs heavy.

Then he remembered. This hangover was spiritual, not
physical, the result of a day spent grubbing in the burned ruins of
peoples' homes, bringing out their bones and their belongings, ending
any hope that Prince Barden's expedition had survived.

Breakfast that morning was a subdued meal, but at
least Earl Kestrel had joined them. The night before he had attended
the ceremony for the dead that Jared had improvised, then had retired
to his tent. Valet had come over to the main fire a few minutes later
and requested silence for his master.

"His youngest sister, you may recall, was Prince Barden's wife," he said before departing.

"I had forgotten," Derian had whispered, appalled
that he had thought the earl's mood only disappointed ambition, "if I
ever knew."

Ox and Race nodded agreement. Doc sighed.

"Eirene," he had said as if the name itself were a
prayer. "Never beautiful, but gentle and sweet. Brave beneath her quiet
demeanor. King Tedric didn't care who his youngest son married as long
as the bride was from one of the Great Houses."

"So Prince Barden married for love?" Derian had asked softly.

"Yes," Doc had replied, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "He did. I'm for bed."

All had nodded. No one felt much like talking in any case.
They
had performed the evening chores with a minimum of discussion and each
had retired to his own tent. Ox had fallen asleep with the ease of an
old campaigner, but Derian had heard him muttering in his sleep.

Derian himself had lain awake for some hours watching
the shadows against the canvas, trying to imagine what might have
happened to all those people. His mind was so populated with horrors
that the nightly wolf concert had seemed like a familiar, almost
pleasant thing—that is, until he began to imagine wolves dragging
roasted corpses from the burned buildings and feasting on the charred
flesh.

This morning, however, Earl Kestrel did not mention
his sister's death and no one had the courage to offer him sympathy.
Instead they listened alertly when, after putting aside his porridge
bowl, Earl Kestrel began the morning conference.

"Does anyone have a theory about what happened here? I would like to be able to make a full report to the king."

Poor fellow
, Derian thought with surprised sympathy.
Not
only does he share our common horror and the loss of his little sister,
but also he has to face telling King Tedric his son is surely dead
.

Race Forester offered tentatively, "A fire in the
night, I'd say. I'd swear that two of those I uncovered were lying
down, peaceful-seeming."

"No one bore weapons," Ox agreed quietly. Soot he
hadn't washed away the night before blended in with his scruffy beard,
making his face unusually dark. "But how could such a fire start if
everyone was asleep?"

"Coals poorly banked, a spark in a chimney, a candle
guttering out on a bedside table, a pipe left smoldering," Doc
shrugged. "These things and their like have happened before."

"But how did they sleep through it all!" Derian
protested, his own voice as shrill as that of the hawk whose cries they
had heard periodically over these past days.

"Smoke," said Ox. "Smoke is more dangerous than fire
and it rises. Families asleep in the lofts and attics of their cottages
might breathe in their deaths without knowing."

"If they trusted themselves to the protection of
their palisade," Race said, his voice hoarse, "the fire could have
gotten out of control before anyone knew. My lord!" he appealed to the
earl, his eyes wide. "Pray tell me that we are not going to spend today
as we did yesterday!"

"We are," Earl Kestrel replied, his gaze stern. "I owe the king a full report. You, as yesterday, will tend the camp."

Race sulked, mutiny in his eyes. "It isn't right to so disturb the dead!"

"It is not right," the earl said in measured tones, "to leave them without their rituals."

So passed another day of soot, of painful discovery,
of sweaty, back-breaking labor. The only relief was that it was no
longer raining.

At the end of the day, Derian was so heartsick he
didn't protest when Race shoved a pail at him and demanded that he
fetch water from the stream.

Instead he staggered down the newly broken footpath,
hardly seeing the ground beneath his feet for the more vivid reality in
his memory: a wedding bowl, the names of husband and wife still
readable despite the cracking; a tin horse, twisted, but twin to one he
had bought his little brother for Summer Festival; buttons lined in a
row, though the shirt they closed was ash; a stone inkwell.

And, of course, the bones of the dead.

The stream water was icy cold, fed with runoff from
the not too distant mountains. On impulse, Derian thrust his head
beneath a little waterfall that interrupted the stream's course.
Shedding his clothing as if he could shed the visions with it, he waded
into the water, dunking his head again and again, scrubbing the soot
from his skin with handfuls of sand.

He could feel his lips turning blue as he pulled
himself onto the bank, but his mind was his own again. He could even
grin, imagining the expressions on the others' faces when he came into
camp stark naked, buckets of water slung from the yoke over his
shoulders and his damp clothing in his hands.

Derian was adjusting the yoke on his bare neck when he saw the impossible thing. Across the water, a few yards upstream
from the waterfall, was a broad patch of sand, deposited, no doubt, when the waters ran higher.

In the sand, as clear as daylight, was the solid
imprint of a small human foot. Next to it, as if the two had walked
side by side, were the equally real prints of an improbably large wolf.

F
IREKEEPER SLIPPED AWAY
in the confusion following Fox Hair's discovery of her footprint in the
sand. Blind Seer ran with her, but Elation remained faithfully watching
the two-legs.

"I have been as stupid as an unweaned pup!"
Firekeeper admonished herself aloud. "I knew that they read trails with
their eyes, if not with their noses."

"One footprint will not lead them to you," Blind Seer
said calmly. "Your trail went from sandbank into the stream, onto a
rock, across a pebbled shore, and then up into the tree branches. They
may find where the evergreen bled upon you, but its boughs sweep low
enough that they may not even look."

Firekeeper scowled, slowed her run to a trot, then stopped completely, leaning her back against a smooth birch trunk.

"As I have planned how I will meet them," she said
thoughtfully, "all my dreams have held them ignorant of my existence.
This is an adjustment."

" 'When the calf bolts right,' " Blind Seer quoted, " 'it is foolish to run left.' "

"I know," she said, her scowl lightening only some. "Don't you realize that I'm scared?"

"Scared?" The wolf cocked his head to one side, perking his ears inquiringly. "Of the two-legs?"

"Not of them, of what meeting with them will mean." Firekeeper slid down against the tree until she sat on the leaf
mold
beneath. "All my life, but for shadows I recall only in dreams, I have
been a wolf. I knew I was different from my brothers and sisters, but
living day-to-day filled my head. I could ignore the differences if I
choose."

"And you so chose," Blind Seer said, understanding.

"Yes. Now these," she gestured wildly back to where
the two-legs have their camp, "come and my life will never be the same.
If I speak with them or if I do not, if I travel with them or if I do
not: any choice reshapes the world I have known. Never, never again
will I be only a wolf."

Blind Seer scratched vigorously behind one ear. "Then
speak with them. What does it matter that they have seen one footprint?
I call it a good thing, for your coming when they have believed all
their people dead will be a relief."

"I hope so," she breathed softly. "By the blood that runs through my body, I hope so."