Wolf's Blood (64 page)

XXXI

  WHEN BRUCK LEARNED they were returning to the area held by the Bound, he pleaded to be permitted to go with them. Firekeeper shook her head.

“You too slow,” she said, “and another we must watch if trouble come.”

“When trouble comes.”
Blind Seer said.
“I smell trouble as surely as I smell excitement in that man’s sweat.”

Firekeeper felt no need to translate any of this. but went on addressing Bruck.

“You will stay here. If you give me your word you stay, you will be let go from this cave a little. If no, then you will stay within.”

Bruck didn’t ask how she could assure that. His gaze drifted to the array of boulders and logs Firekeeper had experimented with until she had found a combination that enabled the cave to be firmly sealed while leaving a gap through which light and fresh air could pass.

“What if you don’t come back?” he asked. “I’ll be locked in there for the rest of my life—and that won’t be very long or very pleasant.”

Firekeeper thought about telling him that by his own account he had lived a great deal longer than most humans, and this at the expense of who knew how many other lives. She didn’t though. There was no need to be cruel.

She also contemplated telling Bruck that she had spoken with the local Royal Beasts about freeing Bruck if she. Blind Seer, and Elation did indeed fail, but decided against that as well. Best Bruck did not know how many watched him, nor how closely. Who knew what he might give away once he thought himself alone? Thus far he had been a model prisoner, even docile, but Firekeeper and Blind Seer alike were certain that at least some of the “bad smell” they had detected earlier came from Bruck himself.

“We come back,” Firekeeper said.

She waited for Bruck to promise he wouldn’t attempt to leave the area around the cave. When he did not, she set about sealing him into the cave, building her barrier mostly from stone, but with some thick greenwood as braces here and there.

Bruck himself was also secured with iron. The iron wire was no longer twisted about his wrists and ankles, but a few pieces fastened his clothing to him. Firekeeper also wove a few strands into the barrier, hiding her work beneath the thick, ropy vines she was using to anchor some of the logs. She didn’t think Bruck would fail to realize the wire was there, but she thought the vines might make it harder for him to see it.

Perhaps the iron wire would not inhibit Bruck unless it was directly touching him. Firekeeper gave a mental shrug as she rolled another boulder into place. If Bruck showed no sign of the wire bothering him once they were gone, well, that would be something learned about him.

When the barrier was nearly complete, Firekeeper gave Bruck a supply of meat. She had already brought in a small supply of fuel for the cookfire. A seep at the back of the cave supplied water, although gathering it would be tedious work.

All the time she worked, Firekeeper kept expecting Bruck to speak to her, to try and convince her to change her mind, but the spellcaster said nothing. He simply watched her shifting rocks and moving logs, apparently as fascinated as if he had never seen anyone do physical labor before. Who knew? Perhaps he hadn’t. The stories Firekeeper had heard about the world before the creation of querinalo made that seem possible.

Since Bruck was not speaking to them, Firekeeper felt no requirement to bid him farewell. Without a word, the three departed as twilight was falling.

Like Firekeeper herself, Elation was more accustomed to functioning after dark than was typical for her kind, and if there had been need she could have flown high watch for their group. However, a-brace of Royal Screech Owls had offered to serve that role, and so Elation, better equipped in closegrown forest to ride than fly, had taken her perch on Firekeeper’s shoulder.

The peregrine was not light, nor was the leather pad they had rigged to keep her talons from destroying Firekeeper’s shoulder particularly comfortable. but Firekeeper found Elation a welcome burden. Somehow her presence seemed a promise that this journey—as had the first one they had made together—would turn out for the best.

Or am I thinking too like a human?
Firekeeper thought.
Has that journey ever really ended?

She grinned to herself in the darkness. That last really was human thinking. Beginning or end really didn’t matter to wolves. What mattered was each step along the trail.

Concentrating on those steps, keeping the pace swift and steady, they crossed the intervening distance far more quickly than they had with Bruck. When midday brought heat, they rested, and resumed their journey again with the coolness of twilight. The owls left them when they departed the mountains, but even without those guides they traveled with confidence. The first time they had made this journey there had been need to scout the trail and learn where it might lead. This time they knew their destination.

And their destination knew they were coming.

Sometime in the flat, grey dark time that isn’t yet dawn but is still not quite night, a hurtling form, mostly black-furred, that black touched with white, attacked Blind Seer without howl or growl of warning. Another wolf, this one a few shades greyer than the spreading sky above, launched itself onto Firekeeper. However, although the Bound wolves did not announce themselves or their attack, Firekeeper and Blind Seer were not without warning.

Blind Seer had caught the circling wolves’ scent on the night breeze. When he had done so, he had alerted Firekeeper by pressing gently against her leg. Otherwise, he gave no sign, and even those who knew them well might have missed the message being passed. To those who stalked them, the pair must have seemed as indifferent to their danger as a rabbit overwhelmed by the desire to devour a thick patch of clover.

When the attack came, Firekeeper and Blind Seer were crossing one of a series of small deer meadows that increased in frequency the closer they came to the stronghold. Humans felt safer in open spaces, and Firekeeper did not doubt that they had something to do with these tidy, open patches. A wolf pack appreciated such areas as well, especially when many hoped to get in on the kill of a few.

Blind Seer fell back as the almost black wolf snapped at his apparently unguarded throat, causing his attacker to bite hard upon open air. There was a yelp that told Firekeeper’s ears that Blind Seer had not missed his return strike. However, she was too busy to spare attention for admiring her pack mate’s technique.

The wolf who had attacked her was probably the One Female, for Firekeeper could see that her teats had not fully shrunk back after nursing that spring’s litter of pups. Her attack on Firekeeper came only a beat behind her mate’s attack on Blind Seer.

Firekeeper’s Fang was in her hand. She braced herself when the One Female came snapping at her face. With one hand, she blocked back the snarling, snapping fangs, with the other she brought up her blade. She knew she should go for a killing strike, but those teats and the pups to which they testified made Firekeeper bring the blade in a wide slash that carried across the wolf’s narrow breastbone, then up and over the shoulder blade.

The One Female fell back, yelping in pain, and, quite probably, in astonishment. Firekeeper took advantage of the momentary pause to position herself so that Blind Seer was to her back. She longed to run for the apparent safety of the trees, but remembered all too well that the Bound were not only wolves, but counted pumas and bears and raccoons in their number. Wolves might find a stand of trees some slight hindrance; a raccoon or even a puma—if the trees were large enough—would find the same a gift.

Firekeeper didn’t have time to shudder over the error her impulse had nearly led her into. Elation had launched into the open sky as soon as the wolves attacked, but as soon as she had height enough, had stooped and dove in the manner for which peregrines were revered—even by humans, who only knew their Cousin-kind.

In the same way that Blind Seer had made a point of learning the best way to fight humans when he realized that his traveling with Firekeeper would make this a useful skill, so Elation had educated herself in the best ways she might contribute to battles where the prey was larger than the creatures she usually hunted. Peregrines were mighty hunters for their size, taking even fat ducks with ease, but once they left the air and struck, they were vulnerable until they could take wing again.

Elation had practiced striking not only with the weight of her body, but in long sweeps that enabled her to scrape her talons along exposed flesh or fur without giving up all her momentum. This is what she had done now, causing the white wolf that would have joined the One fighting Blind Seer to rear back in astonishment, wondering when the wind had grown sharp enough to draw blood.

But blood there was, dark blotches against the white of the wolf’s coat. The white wolf hesitated, and her hesitation conveyed itself as a sign for the remaining members of the pack to hesitate, for none rushed forward to attack either Blind Seer or Firekeeper alongside their Ones.

Firekeeper was grateful for the breathing space. She was not at all certain she had her first opponent beaten. Confused, certainly, but perhaps not yet beaten.

Poised to bring her Fang into play if the One Female was to attack again, Firekeeper tried to see the fight as that One Female might and in this way understand how her opponent might react—and more importantly, how she herself might act.

Wolves usually aim for throat or flank when hunting, a tactic that allows them to strike at vulnerable areas while keeping their own hides clear of the horns and antlers of their more usual prey. When fighting wolf-to-wolf, their targets were similar, but as wolf-to-wolf battles—ferocious as they can be—have as their primary goal proving which contender is the better fighter, neither internal battles nor more standard hunts prepared the Bound for Firekeeper.

The Bound were Royal Wolves, larger and far more intelligent than the Cousins that humans knew and feared, but unlike Blind Seer and some of the yarimaimalom these Bound had not trained to fight humans. They were completely unprepared for an opponent who could move her Fang to wherever she needed it—and who knew their vulnerable spots all too well.

Perhaps their ancestors, those who bound them to their strange pact, knew something of how humans fight,
Firekeeper thought as the One Female shrank back, yelping as much in astonishment as in pain.
These have viewed humans as weak things they must protect, and whatever moon songs they have heard sung of me, still they were not prepared.

Firekeeper did not let her initial success go to her head. Some part of her still felt that she was doing something wrong in fighting Royal Wolves, especially when they were so confused as to where their loyalties should be. Moreover, she had promised Blind Seer that she would not hold back her blade’s edge.

“I cannot defend you from a wolf pack and who knows what other creatures besides,” Blind Seer had told her when they were making their plans. “That only means your death and mine as well. If we fight together, though, I think we can do far better than they believe.”

Wolf’s choice
, she thought.
Blind Seer and I thought to offer such to those within Virim’s fort, but what about these here? They will understand what a wolf’s choice means far better than any human would.

Howling a challenge cry, Firekeeper ran toward the injured One Female. Startled, the dawn-grey wolf began limping away, less in flight than in reflex. She had been attacking what must have seemed to her a naked, nearly defenseless creature. Now that creature was running at her, howling the cry that said, “You are weak. I am strong. I will rule in your place.”

It was a situation any wolf pack would have witnessed time and again, for even in the packs of the Royal Wolves strength usually dominated wisdom and cunning in the selection of the Ones. The Ones were first to feast, first to fight, first in the hunt. Should antler or horn or even uneven ground make them unable to lead, they must show themselves capable of defending their privileges or lose them on the instant.

Nor was this wrong to Firekeeper’s way of thinking. Were the Ones not strong enough to bring down the game, not powerful enough to break trail through the snow, then the pack would waste its blood and energy on futile ventures, and find itself too weak to survive a winter intact—or at all.

Challengers most often came from within the pack itself, for the pack members were the ones who were present when the Ones faltered. However, a powerful stranger, dispersed from his or her own pack, might decide that taking over an established pack was a better move than courting a mate and beginning the laborious task of winning territory and building a new pack.

So Firekeeper’s howl of challenge was recognized by all the wolves, and changed not only the character of her own battle, but that of Blind Seer’s as well. As her opponent had been the Bound’s One Female, so his was the One Male. The males were well matched but Firekeeper had no doubt who would win. The question was, could she make good her own boast, and force the One Female to surrender.