Promise Of The Wolves (16 page)

Ruuqo and Rissa heard Werrna’s question and walked over to us. I groaned to myself. How could I have forgotten to cover the human-scent? I had been too upset by my encounter with the Greatwolves to think of it. What excuse could I possibly give them? My brain was exhausted.

“We slipped in the mud and fell in the river, leaderwolves,” Ázzuen said, smoothly. “By the time we climbed out, we were near the human site. We came back as quickly as we could.”

Impressed with Ázzuen’s quick thinking, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. His face was full of innocence. Ruuqo gave us a long look. I wasn’t sure he believed us.

“Do not stray so far,” he said at last. “And be more careful from now on. The river can be dangerous in the rains.” Ruuqo peered into my eyes suspiciously. I was sure I smelled more strongly of humans than Ázzuen did. Fortunately, the rain and mud must have disguised some of the girl’s distinct scent.

“Nice thinking,” I said to Ázzuen when we were alone.

His ears pricked up at the compliment and he opened his mouth in a happy grin.

“We were lucky,” he said.

“You were smart,” I replied, touching my nose to his cheek.

Marra trotted into the gathering place, and Ázzuen ran to meet her. I stayed where I was, watching as Rissa and Ruuqo spoke quietly. As Ázzuen whispered to Marra, I chewed on a piece of the girl’s fur I had managed to hold in my mouth. It tasted like family.

40,000
YEARS AGO

L
ydda and her pack hunted with the humans. They ate well and grew strong. No other pack brought down more prey, and no other pack had such fat and healthy pups. Even old Olaan, the pack’s elder, his belly stretched tight with meat, had to admit that hunting with the humans had its advantages.

Then, the wolves and humans brought down a mammoth. And everything changed.

It was the most successful hunt yet. Grumbling over the melting snow and disappearing ice, the mammoths were trekking to colder places. One mammoth limped, just a little, and every hunter within scent or hearing range knew it. Lydda’s pack had run all the way from their gathering place when they smelled the injured beast. There were stories of wolf packs that had killed mammoths, though Lydda wasn’t sure she believed them. Even an injured mammoth was clever, dangerous prey, especially because their herdmates often helped them.

This mammoth was alone. Three long-fangs and a pack of dholes already stalked it, while a lone bear watched and waited. Lydda’s pack might have challenged one long-fang or a small pack of dholes, but could not fight off so many rivals without risking injury. Disappointed, Lydda and her pack prepared to leave the plain.

Then Lydda heard a familiar shout and turned to see the tall, lean figure of the human boy.

The humans must have brought their entire pack,
Lydda thought in amazement. She had not seen their pups before, in their many sizes. The small humans threw rocks with ferocity and frightening accuracy, scaring off the rival hunters. Then the larger humans chased the long-fangs and dholes away with their sharpsticks.

Lydda’s boy caught her eye. He raised his arm to her and she dipped her head. She sprinted to the mammoth and her pack followed. The hunt began. The mammoth was already weakened, thanks to the long-fangs and the dholes. Even so, Lydda did not think a pack of wolves could have killed it on their own. They ran with the human pack, trapping the mammoth. Every time it turned to run in another direction, a human with a sharpstick or a wolf with teeth would stop it. It took a long, long time but at last its thick hide was punctured and its haunches bled. It fell with a sound like thunder, and Lydda looked in awe at what they had done. With the help of the humans, she thought, they could hunt anything.

Usually, a wolf will tear into prey as soon as it falls, or even before. But Lydda’s pack stopped, and celebrated with their humans, leaping with joy at the capture of this prey that would feed them so well.

When strong-looking humans bent with sharpened stones to tear open the mammoth, old Olaan moved forward, a little indignantly.

“Wait,” Tachiim commanded.

Grumbling a little, Olaan obeyed the leaderwolf. The humans worked hard, cutting through the mammoth’s thick hide. It seemed to take forever for them to pull out the good organ meat and cut strips of rich belly.

“Now!” Tachiim barked, and Lydda’s packmates dashed in, seizing the richest meat. It took three of them just to drag away the liver. The humans shouted in anger, but ravens swooped down upon them and the wolves laughed, making off with the best of the meat. Lydda was a little embarrassed by the rudeness of her pack, but she couldn’t help but grin. She looked up to share the joke with her boy. He was not laughing. He hung his head as an older male—the pack leader, Lydda thought—shouted at him, waving his arms and pointing toward Lydda and her pack. For the first time in many moons, Lydda felt cold. This time, though, the chill was not in the air, but in her heart.

“You shouldn’t have taken so much meat!” the young man said, troubled, as they sat at their rock the next day. “My father said that you wolves are more trouble than you’re worth.”

“Without us there would have been no mammoth,” Lydda said angrily. “We could have left you to fight the long-fangs for it.”

The human’s brow wrinkled in confusion. Before, when they first hunted together, she had been able to speak to him as she spoke to a member of her pack. But lately, he had been having trouble understanding her. “It’s all right,” he said at last. “I’ll tell them you won’t do it again.”

Four nights later, Kinnin, one of the pack’s youngwolves, walked into the gathering place, a large welt on his head and a hurt look in his eyes.

“I was taking my share of the deer AraNa and I had killed together,” he said, speaking of the human female he hunted with. “And her mate took it from me. All of it. When I tried to take back my share, he hit me with his stick. I almost bit him, but it would have upset AraNa. I do not know if I will hunt with her again.”

“I think we should no longer hunt with humans,” old Olaan said.

Kinnin nodded. “From now on, a wolf who hunts with humans is a traitor.”

“They provide us with more meat than we have ever had,” Tachiim protested. “We will live well with their help. We just need to teach them we won’t be submissive to them. Next time we share a hunt, we will show them that we are not their curl-tails,” the leaderwolf said.

“They had better not try to take food from me,” Olaan said, “or I will show them what wolves are.”

The next time the humans tried to take a whole prey, the wolves protested. A fat reindeer lay on the ground. Plenty to share. The humans tried to chase the wolves away.

“We will give you some when we are ready,” one of them said.

“It’s our deer,” snarled another, “and you may have what we don’t need.”

“You will do as we say,” said a third, “and if we choose, we will feed you.”

They bent with their sharpened stones to cut away at the reindeer.

It was not Olaan who attacked first, nor Kinnin. It was Nolla, Kinnin’s littermate. What she did was not unusual for a wolf. Every wolf knows that if another pack member tries to push you away from prey, you must assert your place. Otherwise you will always be last to feed. Nolla was young, and still had much to prove. She leapt at one of the humans. She did not bite him, or even push him hard. She just shoved him aside and bent to tear into the reindeer.

The human lifted up his sharpened stick and buried it deep in Nolla’s back. The youngwolf gasped and choked, and then she died.

The wolves and humans stood silently for a moment staring. Then the rest of the humans raised their sharpsticks. Kinnin bared his teeth and leapt at the man who had killed Nolla. He tore out his throat. Then the wolves ran.

For a quarter of the moon’s cycle, it was quiet between the humans and the wolves. Then all three surviving wolves of the Dust Hill pack were found dead, killed by sharpsticks. The next night four humans were killed by wolves while they slept. No wolf admitted to killing them, but Olaan and Kinnin returned home with bloody muzzles and no prey.

And so the war began.

Throughout the valley, humans slew wolves and wolves slew humans. The humans who had been with the wolves had learned much about hunting and killing. They were especially good at killing wolves. Then the war spread like fire as wolf began to battle wolf and human fought human.

“My people fight among themselves,” the boy cried to Lydda when she stole away to meet him at their sunning rock. “Those who wish to destroy wolves and all other hunters are trying to take over my tribe. They kill humans who speak up for the wolves. My father and brother are among them. I fear they will tear my tribe apart.”

“Mine, too,” said Lydda, although she knew the boy no longer understood her. Just that morning, Olaan had challenged Tachiim about whether or not the pack should slaughter a human tribe.

The boy stood holding his sharpstick tightly, banging it against his thigh. For a horrible moment, Lydda feared he might use it against her, and the thought of attacking him darted through her mind. She tossed her head back and forth, to shake away the image. The boy held out his hand.

“We have to do something,” he said, tears in his voice.

Lydda pressed up against him. High above her head, she heard the raucous caw of a raven. That’s when she looked up. And that’s when she saw, striding across the grass, two of the largest wolves she’d ever seen.

14,000
YEARS AGO

I
could not stop thinking about the human child. I was so preoccupied with thoughts of her that I did not notice at first when Trevegg walked slowly into the clearing, his eyes creased with concern. Minn followed a few steps behind, looking perplexed, and a little frightened.

“I can’t find her, leaderwolf,” Trevegg said to Rissa, who looked up sleepily from a nap beside the fallen spruce. The rain had stopped at last, and three days of sun had dried out all but the soggiest parts of the gathering place. All of us were looking forward to a rest in the sun before the evening hunt.

The oldwolf shook his head. “I followed her trail to Wood’s Edge and then partway out onto the field, and then her scent just disappeared. I don’t understand it.”

“Perhaps she stopped to rest and has not yet woken?” Rissa said, rising, all signs of sleep gone.

“Borlla’s missing,” Marra said, bounding up to me. She had run to meet Trevegg and Minn as they returned from the Tall Grass plain. Ázzuen trotted over from the watch rock, ears cocked to listen.

“She’s always missing,” I said, feeling a little guilty. I had all but forgotten about Borlla in my fascination with the human child.

“But this time they can’t find her. At all. And Trevegg is upset. Listen.” She nodded toward the oldwolf.

“Her scent just vanishes, Rissa,” Trevegg was saying. I had never seen him frightened or at a loss, but he seemed to be both.

Ruuqo, Werrna, and Yllin hurried over from across the clearing.

“It’s not possible,” Werrna said, almost angrily. “Even if she was taken by a hunter, there would be a smell of it. I’m sorry, Rissa,” she said to the leaderwolf, who growled at the mention of a hunter. “She keeps wandering off on her own, too distracted to be aware of danger and too weak from hunger to run or fight. It was only a matter of time before something got her.”

“I am not so old,” Trevegg snapped, “that I wouldn’t know if something had taken her! She’s just gone.”

“Her scent was there and then it wasn’t,” Minn said, sounding spooked. “Trevegg’s right. There’s no smell of a recent hunter. Her trail just vanishes.”

“It’s not possible,” Werrna repeated stubbornly.

I was shocked to realize that Werrna was afraid, too. I didn’t think she was afraid of anything.

“If the Ancients are angry with us,” Ruuqo interrupted Werrna, with a glare, “we must determine why.”

“We will make sure first,” Rissa said, her voice barely a whisper. “I trust you, elderwolf, but we must be certain.”

“I would feel better if others looked for her, too,” Trevegg admitted.

Rissa touched her nose to his cheek and, without a word, without our usual leaving ceremonies, led the pack out of the gathering place.

“Why are they acting so strangely?” Ázzuen asked Yllin as we ran along the deerpath, gasping a little to keep up. “She’s gone missing lots of times before.”

Yllin paused a moment by a starflower bush to let us catch up. She glanced up the path to make sure the others were not in earshot.

“It is normal,” she said, “for wolves to die—to be carried off by hunters, or to be injured by prey, or to grow ill. All wolves die. But it’s unnatural for a wolf to disappear. It’s bad luck. The worst luck. The legends tell us that the Ancients send such luck when wolves break the rules of the covenant. Two generations ago three Stone Peaks disappeared when their leaderwolf accidentally injured a human.”

Ázzuen and I looked guiltily at each other. Surely, I thought, pulling a human from the river wasn’t as bad as hurting one.

“And I’ve heard,” Yllin said, her eyes resting on the mark on my chest, “that Tree Line once lost a wolf when they allowed a mixed-blood litter to live.”

I blinked at her. Why had no one told me this?

“There’s something else you should know, Kaala,” she said, speaking quickly. “Rissa and Trevegg didn’t tell you pups everything when they told you of the legends. It’s not just that mixed-bloods might be crazy, or that they might act inappropriately around humans. They’re considered bad luck for the pack. And,” she said, lowering her voice, “wolves with moon markings can be either good or bad luck for a pack, and you never know which until they are grown.”

Ruuqo’s angry bark interrupted her. “Don’t fall behind, wolves!” he shouted. “We will not wait for you!”

“We aren’t supposed to talk about it,” she whispered. “But it’s not fair for you not to know.”

“We won’t tell anyone you told us,” I promised.

She dipped her head and sprinted off to join the others. We pelted after her. My mind worked furiously. “What am I supposed to do if the pack thinks I’m unlucky?” I gasped to Ázzuen, but he was running too hard to answer.

Borlla’s scent was clear at first. She’d followed the path we had taken the first time we went to the horse plain, and had been back and forth along it every time she went in search of Reel. The most recent scent was from early morning, before the dew had dried, which meant she had probably passed this way shortly before sunrise. We followed her scent through Wood’s Edge Gathering Place to the place where the trees ended and the plain began, and about eight wolflengths onto the plain. Then, just as Trevegg said, her scent disappeared. To my relief the horses were also gone.

“Stay out of the way, pups,” Rissa ordered.

Werrna was the best tracker among us, and so she led the search. She lowered her scar-covered nose all the way to the ground and walked in a tight circle, starting where Borlla’s scent vanished. When she was satisfied that she had sniffed every stone, every bit of earth and blade of grass, she turned her back on the first circle and paced out another one in the opposite direction. Ruuqo and Rissa followed her, tracing out circles that overlapped with hers. Yllin and Minn carried out a similar search close to the place where Reel’s body had lain.

“They want to make sure they don’t miss the slightest drop of scent,” Trevegg said wearily, always teaching us, even in the midst of his anxiety and fatigue. “Werrna sets the first circles, Rissa walks within them, and Ruuqo walks within hers. The rest of us will stay away so as not to confuse the scent.”

It took them all of the hot afternoon and part of the cooler night to look. Trevegg and the others joined the search, which expanded to encompass the entire plain. They wouldn’t let us near the searching place. We were only allowed to search a patch of dry grass far from where the horses had been. I think they mostly sent us there to keep us out of the way, but it was good to have something to do. Marra, Ázzuen, and I did our best to pick up some scent, some clue to where Borlla might have gone, but it seemed hopeless. Unnan stood apart, staring across the plain as Werrna searched the spot where Borlla had last been.

“I’m going to talk to Unnan,” I said to Ázzuen and Marra.

“Are you crazy?” Ázzuen asked. “He’ll just try to fight you.”

“He’s alone,” I said. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be.”

I walked cautiously over to him. He must have heard me but did not turn around.

“You can search with us,” I said. “It’s better than doing nothing.”

Unnan turned then and pulled his lips back in a tight snarl.

“Why should I? So you can kill me, too? Is that what you’re good at? Causing other pups to die? They should have killed you when you were born. You’re nothing but bad luck.” He leaned in close to me. “If she is dead, I will find a way to kill you, I promise.”

My goodwill deserted me.

“Maybe if you were smarter, your friends wouldn’t die,” I snapped. I knew as the words left my mouth that I should shut up. “Maybe there’s a reason your friends are the ones who die and disappear. I didn’t notice you helping anyone during the stampede.”

Unnan yowled and leapt at me. Unlike Borlla, he had not stopped eating after Reel’s death and was large and strong. Bigger than I was. But I was mad and my anger made up for my lack of size. I easily threw Unnan from me and pinned him to the ground. Anger clouded my vision, and I bent over his throat.

“Kaala!” Ázzuen shouted to be heard over my growls. He and Marra had rushed over to help me when Unnan attacked, and then to stop me when it looked like I might really hurt him. I came back to myself and stepped off Unnan. I was ashamed. I had meant to comfort him and had only made things worse. And I had let my temper get the better of me again.

“
Ilshik!
” Unnan hissed at me. I cringed at the word. It meant wolf-killer. An ilshik was not fit to be in the company of other wolves and was destined to forever walk alone. I did not turn to face him, but returned to Ázzuen and Marra as we continued to search. Soon we all grew weary and sank tiredly into the grass.

I was almost asleep when Ázzuen’s sharp whisper startled me to wakefulness.

“Greatwolves!” he hissed.

Frandra and Jandru strode onto the field. The adults of the pack had moved the search for Borlla to the edge of the field nearest to the humans’ territory and were huddled together, speaking in agitated whispers. I wondered what they had found. Ruuqo and Rissa went to greet Frandra and Jandru. I was surprised to see the Greatwolves after they’d said they would not be around, and even more surprised at the anger in Ruuqo’s gait as he approached them. I was too far away to hear what he said to the Greatwolves, but Jandru leapt upon him, pinning him to the ground. The Greatwolf spoke a few words and let Ruuqo up. They argued fiercely for several moments. Then Frandra and Jandru stalked away from the plain. I was afraid they had returned to berate me for my contact with the human girl again, but they did not even look in my direction. Ruuqo did, though. He gave me a furious look from across the plain. I stepped back. He gave his command bark and led the pack from the fields.

Ruuqo took us back to Fallen Tree. He would not let any of us discuss Borlla or her disappearance. Nor would Rissa. They would not let Minn travel the territories to look for her. And they wouldn’t tell us what they’d found at the far side of the field.

“The hunt continues” is all they would say. “We will discuss this no more.”

I waited until the pack was asleep and then quietly started toward the Tall Grass plain. If the pack believed that bad luck had come, and if they thought I had caused it, I had to find out as much as I could. And I wanted to know why they wouldn’t let us pups near the spot where they’d found something. I did not object when Ázzuen followed me.

It had been a long day and night, and I was exhausted by the time we reached the spot where the pack had last searched. Ruuqo had led us away so quickly after the Greatwolves’ arrival that I had not had a chance to investigate it. I lowered my nose to the ground.

The scent of our pack was there, of course, as well as those of Frandra and Jandru. And then, fainter than the others, the smell of Borlla. But what stopped me, and made my heart race in my chest, was a scent so faint I almost didn’t find it. I checked again to make sure I was not mistaken. It was acrid and meaty. A scent of salt and sweat. The scent of humans. Ázzuen had picked it up, too.

“The Greatwolves told us to stay away from the humans,” I said to Ázzuen, “but their scent is here, with the scent of humans. What are they doing?”

“I don’t know, Kaala,” Ázzuen said, “but I don’t think you should try to find out.”

“I need to find out, Ázzuen. The Greatwolves saved my life and then disappeared for four moons. Then they come to us twice in a few days. Ruuqo is angry with me again, and Yllin says the pack might think I’m bad luck. Everything seems to come back to the humans. I have to find out why. I have to find out why I am different.”

He listened to me, his eyes worried. “Then find the Greatwolves and ask them. But don’t go to the humans. I know you are thinking of it.” I was a little annoyed that he could read me so easily. He stepped closer to me, his breath warm. “You heard what Yllin said. You can’t risk it.”

“I know,” I said softly, taking some of the pack-Borlla-Greatwolf-human-scented grass in my mouth. “I won’t go back. I promise.”

I didn’t want to lie to Ázzuen, but I had to know what was really going on. I had to know what the Greatwolves were doing and what it had to do with Borlla’s disappearance and my place in the pack. And it all had to do with the humans. Besides, I wanted to see the human girl again.

The name her people gave her was TaLi, though I still thought of her as Girl. I heard one of the females of her pack call her by her name more than once during the time I spent watching them. Their grown females were called “women,” and their males “men.” In addition to calling their front paws “hands” they called their rear paws “feet,” and their fur “hair.” Their pack was called a “tribe.” They were more active in the daytime than at night, and as the weather cooled they wore the skins of hunters as well as prey. I had not yet seen them wear the skin of a wolf and wondered if they did. The thought made me shudder.

A breeze blew across my ears and through my thickening undercoat. The hot summer days had turned cooler, making my long vigils by the human gathering place more comfortable. I settled more deeply into the soft dirt of the watching hill. Next to me, Tlitoo rustled his wings impatiently.

“How much longer are you just going to watch, wolf?” he demanded. “You have been coming here for a moon and done nothing but watch. Cowardwolf.”