Wolf's Blood (48 page)

“I thought it was lost, a prize of war in someone’s armory. Where did you find it?”

Amelo looked pleased.

“I thought it had been lost as well,” he admitted. “So did we all. We found it when we were going through a store of special weapons shoved in a back room, weapons made to be carried by those of us who use magic and so cannot bear iron or steel. In the very back, we found this chest.”

Bryessidan was holding the helmet now, almost able to imagine his father’s eyes staring out from beneath the closed visor.

“The armor was made,” Amelo said, “so that your father could walk among the Once Dead and not disrupt their spells. It should enable you the same freedom. The copper in the brass was melded with special alloys so that it would gain in strength without becoming brittle. The shield is in the chest as well.”

Bryessidan turned the helmet in his hands. The padding within had perished, victim to the Mires’ omnipresent humidity, but the rest seemed sound. He tapped his fingertip against the dome and the metal rang like a muted bell.

“I wonder if the armor would fit me,” he mused aloud.

“You are built much like your father.” Amelo said. “1 think the armor should fit. Perhaps the greaves and gauntlets will need alternation, but since the straps need to be replaced in any case …”

He let his words trail off. Bryessidan nodded.

“We have been looking for omens.” he said. “Surely this discovery is an omen that the Ancestors favor our venture and arm us for it.”

The three Once Dead looked very pleased. One knelt by the chest and rummaged toward the bottom.

“Your father’s mace does not seem to be here,” he said, “but we will check among the weapons in the armory.”

Bryessidan nodded approval. He could carry a sword, but the blade would need to be made from a metal less reliable than steel. Better to do as King Veztressidan had done and carry a weapon that did not rely upon an edge.

“You have been good and faithful servants.” he said to the Once Dead. “I am deeply grateful. Know that whoever goes through the gate into the Nexus Islands, I will stand with him, wearing this armor, and assuring his safety with my strong arm and shield.”

“Whichever of us makes that journey.” Amelo said, “none of us could ask more of our good and faithful lord.”

“Leave the armor here,” Bryessidan said, “and leave word with my secretary that I wish the best armor maker in the city brought here at once. Then go with my thanks,”

The three Once Dead took their leave, and when they were gone, Bryessidan took his father’s helmet and placed it upon his own head. When he looked in the polished surface of one of the shields that hung upon the chamber’s wall, it seemed to him that his father’s eyes did indeed look back at him.

“WHEN BLIND SEER and I first came looking for this Virim,” Firekeeper said to Elation and Blind Seer, “what we think we need is very different from what we now know we need.”

On the morning following her strange dream journey with the Meddler, Firekeeper had been very tired, but she had insisted on taking the falcon and wolf with her to an open meadow some distance from Virim’s keep. This meadow was alongside a river still swollen with snowmelt. The location offered a clear line of sight in all directions, but in addition Firekeeper felt fairly certain that anyone attempting to listen from hiding would be unable to understand what was being said over the noise of the water.

True, the language of the Beasts was not exclusively limited to sound as were human languages. Therefore, someone might be able to spy upon them using other senses. Having considered this, Firekeeper had chosen to give her report in Pellish, feeling that the handicaps her limited vocabulary offered were more than compensated for by the assurance of privacy.

Blind Seer had been amused, and Elation impressed, by her caution. As Firekeeper told of what the Meddler had shown her, the blue-eyed wolf’s amusement had vanished, and he had moved to where he could keep his restless gaze upon the meadow as he listened.

Firekeeper told them almost everything, omitting only the final vision, the one of Blind Seer searching among that strange library. She trusted the Meddler more than did Blind Seer, but she was not so trusting that she had forgotten the weird rivalry between the two males. The Meddler had seemed impressed by. Blind Seer’s vast talent, but Firekeeper did not think that even such compliments would make Blind Seer comfortable with being spied upon.

And would the blue-eyed wolf accept what the Meddler had said as a compliment? Like Firekeeper, Blind Seer had been reared in a culture that abhorred magic. The Meddler had said that Blind Seer was seeking to learn how to use his ability, but until Firekeeper heard this from the wolf himself, she would always remember to take care before accepting the Meddler’s interpretation of anything at all.

“You are right, Firekeeper.” Blind Seer growled. “We know a great deal more now than we did before we left the Nexus Islands. What I want to know is if the Meddler knew the immediacy of the danger the Nexus Islands faced back when he was prompting us to go on this journey. If so, why didn’t he tell us then?”

Firekeeper shrugged. “I not think to ask when Meddler learn what he show me. I not see why it matter now. What matter is that the information we seek is not needed in some vague someday, but probably as soon as this very summer.”

“If,” Elation said, “reinforcements are going to be needed to hold the Nexus Islands against invasion, and if what the Meddler showed you was a true vision.”

Of course, neither of the Beasts Could speak Pellish, though they could understand it. but they kept their responses contained, the equivalent of lowered voices. Firekeeper hoped it would be enough.

“When first we come here, we come to scout.” Firekeeper said. “Take if we find, but mostly to scout, then go and bring back others who can read and write. Now this is not something we can take time to do. Also, when we leave Nexus Islands, even though Meddler warn us some sorcerers live long times. I think we still expect to find an empty lair. Now we know this lair is not only full, but is well defended. How do we get what we want from that lair, and swiftly?”

Elation shifted restlessly from foot to foot.

“Falcons and wolves both take what they want,” she said, “yet I do not see how we three can take—especially when we do not know what it is we wish to seize.”

Blind Seer huffed agreement. “The strong take what they desire. The weak surrender what they would rather keep. Before we crossed the Iron Mountains, I would have said that was the way of the world, and the only way. Now, though, perhaps there is another alternative.”

“Trade,” Firekeeper said softly in Pellish. “We must steal something of theirs, then tell them that to have it back they must give us what we want.”

“But what could we have that they want?” Elation asked. “They must have sources for all the usual items I have seen humans trade: food, clothing, and such.”

“True,” Firekeeper said, “and I be very interested in knowing how they have gotten them. Maybe they stored things a long time ago. But I wonder … Maybe they sometimes walk in humans’ cities, saying they are from another pack. I wonder how humans would feel?”

“So trade may be a useless option as well,” Elation said, wilting a bit on her perch.

Firekeeper shook her head, stilling the motion as soon as she remembered possible watchers.

“There is taking,” she continued, “and there is trade, but there is another way we might get what we want. Is a way I like very little, but maybe it is fastest way to find cure for Plague. We could stalk them and hunt them, and when one of them strays—like the one Meddler showed me in vision—then we pounce and take. We give back only when they give us what we want … and maybe not until we have proved they gived fair.”

Blind Seer’s hackles rose. “I have never liked being a hostage. I am not sure I would care to take one. Also, that trick only works when the one taken is of sufficient value.”

Firekeeper shrugged. “I not like either, but I like less thinking how we go back to Nexus Islands and find Derian and others dead and rotting, and strangers in their lairs. I think maybe I not feel so bad about taking one of this Virim’s pack. Remember. This Virim and his pack are spiders who wove the web that begins this in the days when they make the Plague.”

“And so saved our ancestors from conquest and destruction,” Elation said. “Spiders, wolves, or wooly snakes, this is no simple web, and untangling it will be no simple task.”

Firekeeper slouched back on the grass, leaning on her hands and looking up to the cloud-flecked skies. When she replied, she reverted to Beast talk, tired of trying to explain complex matters in Pellish.

“I have told you what I have seen,” she said. “Short of going to the door of the keep and knocking, asking plainly for what we desire, this is all I can think of—that, or doing as we planned from the start, scouting and then returning. Certainly, we have learned a great deal that Derian and the others would like to know.”

“Take, trade, ask, or leave,” Blind Seer said. “I am loath to leave without more. Could we just ask? I wish I believed that we would walk away from that keep as freely as we might walk toward it. Take or trade are left, but could we take?”

Firekeeper looked at him levelly. “We would need strength to take. Can you think of any strengths we might have that others might not anticipate?”

She was thinking of the magical ability to which Blind Seer had confessed, but she would not speak of it more plainly, not in front of Elation, perhaps not ever. She looked at the blue-eyed wolf, however, hoping he might have some hidden strength to which he might confess.

He remained silent, and although Firekeeper longed to confront him with what she had seen in that last vision, she did not. Instead she leapt to her feet.

“I am hungry,” she said. “Will any hunt with me or must I settle for cold fish?”

Blind Seer rose to join her, then froze in midmotion. Firekeeper thought he might have been stung by a bee, but after a brief pause the wolf shook himself.

“Hunt,” he said softly. “That we might do. Elation, when did the golden eagle come after you?”

“Shortly before I encountered the two of you,” the falcon replied. “I suspect I crossed into lands from which Virim’s pets normally keep any but those who share their long-ago trust.”

“We are in those lands now,” Blind Seer said, “and we know we are watched. So far we have left the watchers be, but what if we hunted them? Firekeeper is skilled at making traps. If we trapped one or two of those who watch us, we might be able to learn something from them, something more about those in the keep, something that might help us to take or trade or even to know what questions to ask.”

“I like that,” Firekeeper said. “Very much. I think I can construct the traps-in such a fashion that those watching will not know what I do. They might even inspect them so as to report to those who hold the other ends of their leashes.”

She wanted to howl her delight, to run in joyful circles, but she settled instead for leaping on Blind Seer and pummeling him in a puppyish rush of enthusiasm.

“I am hungry,” she said, “but the night’s tiredness has left me. Food, fire, camp, and then a bit of misdirection.”

She grabbed Blind Seer and hugged him again. He nipped her arm affectionately.

“I smell piglets,” he said, “milk-fed and fat.”

Firekeeper had a fleeting thought that there were Royal Swine, but dismissed the trepidation that her arrows might find the heart of one of “her” people. If they were that careless, then they deserved to die. That was the way it had always been, and she was very hungry indeed.

FIREKEEPER CONSTRUCTED HER traps in the area she and Blind Seer had chosen for their campsite. Of course, they had no need to make a camp such as humans typically made. The weather was somewhat wet, but both of them were accustomed to either finding shelter from the rain or accepting its caress.

However, although Firekeeper was very good at kindling fires, she preferred not to need to do so from scratch every time. Also there were things that tasted very good if given time to roast among the coals of a buried hearth.

While out hunting, Firekeeper had dug up various edible tubers. Wrapped in wet leaves, these would cook slowly, without burning. She had also shot a duck on the wing. She had packed this in wet mud dug from a stream bank streaked with red clay. Then she had buried the unappetizing-seeming package where the heat from the coals would bake it.

Although the coals were buried, but for a few openings to give the fire the air it needed to survive, errant gusts of wind brought Firekeeper tantalizing hints of her cooking meal. She was well filled from their earlier hunting, but knowing her future needs were provided for was a comforting feeling.

Firekeeper was in a cheerful mood as she prepared a variety of snares. Even before she had met with those in Earl Kestrel’s party, she had known a little about making traps. Most of these had been pit traps, or simple snares, mostly made by turning some natural feature of the landscape to her advantage.

In Earl Kestrel’s group there had been a man named Race Forester who was a skilled woodsman. He had taught Firekeeper a variety of elegantly simple snares that could be constructed with little more than a knife and materials at hand. He had also taught Firekeeper how to shoot a bow, and these days Firekeeper rarely settled to a meal without thinking fondly of Race.

While Firekeeper constructed snares and bent young saplings to her service, she put Blind Seer to work digging a nice hole that could serve as a pit trap—or a cage. The wolf dug with enthusiasm, the damp soil flying up from under his paws. He would need a good bath when he was done.

“You don’t think those who watch us will notice all that dirt flying around?” Elation asked from where she was keeping watch on the surrounding area.

Firekeeper grinned. “Let them. If they do notice what we are doing, perhaps they will think we intend to protect ourselves. Perhaps they will think I need some sheltered place to rest. What of it?”