Promise Of The Wolves (22 page)

BreLan had risen as TaLi spoke and now paced restlessly, using his sharpstick as a third leg. He rammed the blunt end of it into the earth angrily.

“She threatens HuLin’s power,” he said. “My father told me that, after the last tribe council.”

I remembered that BreLan lived with a different tribe than TaLi, one west of our territories. It was a half day’s journey for a human, but he made it whenever he could. He wanted TaLi for his mate. But TaLi had told me that her leader wanted her to be his son’s mate. Which is probably why BreLan paced back and forth so. TaLi reached out as he passed by her and pulled him down to rest beside us. Ázzuen lay at the young human’s folded legs and BreLan stroked his fur. I could feel the young human’s heart slow and calm as he stroked Ázzuen. Now it was Marra’s turn to rise and pace, stalking restlessly, jealous of our contact with the humans.

“It’s no accident he sent her to live across the river, TaLi,” BreLan said. “He doesn’t want you learning what she knows. He doesn’t want you to meet with the krianan wolves as she does.”

“I know that,” TaLi said. “But I don’t know what to do about it. Old KanLin didn’t mind her being in the tribe.”

“She was younger then,” BreLan said, “less powerful. And KanLin was more confident than HuLin.”

“HuLin is our new leader, Silvermoon,” TaLi said. “He hates that my grandmother tells him what to do, especially when she tells him he has to stop killing everything he can catch. She told him he had to respect other creatures and he said she was hurting the tribe and sent her to live across the river. He said if she liked spending so much time with the wolves, she should go live with them.”

TaLi spoke quickly, barely breathing, as if the words were sprinting out of her.

“What will you do when he forbids you to see her, forbids you to take part in the Speaking?” BreLan asked.

I wanted to ask more about the Speaking, and I whined in frustration with my inability to communicate with the humans.

“I don’t know,” TaLi said, anxiety filling her voice. “He wants his son to be krianan instead of me.” BreLan stiffened at the mention of the leader’s son. “I’ve been lying to him. I say I am going out hunting for herbs or small animal skins. Then I go to see grandmother.”

I shifted restlessly, wanting to find a way to ask TaLi questions.

“We are taught that all creatures but humans are either vicious or stupid, Silvermoon,” she said. “Animals like you and the bears and the lions are seen as evil. They used to be thought of with respect and admiration. Those who graze on the plain or eat the plants of the forest are seen almost as if they have no life at all. We are told that humans should have power over all, because no other creature has made fire, or tools, or built grand structures. But it didn’t used to be this way. As krianan, my grandmother remembers the old traditions. It is her role to make sure we follow the ways of nature, the ways of the world. But now the leaders of our people don’t want anyone to tell them not to take what they want.”

“And many of our people no longer wish to travel with the seasons,” BreLan said, absently running his long fingers through Ázzuen’s thickening winter coat. “My uncle asks why they should leave when they have spent so much time building shelters. He says that if the krianans would let them hunt as much as they like, they wouldn’t have to move around so much, but could stay in one place longer and build more shelters and grow stronger than any other tribe. Then all the prey in the valley and beyond would belong to us.”

That troubled me. I still didn’t understand what made humans think they were so different from the rest of us. I wouldn’t say we cared much for the life of prey, and I had to agree with BreLan’s uncle that it belonged to whoever could catch it. But we knew it had life. We needed dens for our young, but who would want to live all the time in a den? That is why one has fur and the strength to journey.

“Perhaps the humans have to compensate for not having fur and for their small teeth,” Marra said, sounding as confused as I felt. She had finally stopped pacing and lay a few paces from us in a relatively dry patch of dirt.

“The more they have the more they want,” Ázzuen said. “But I don’t understand why they would not listen to their krianan. Ruuqo doesn’t always agree with the Greatwolves, but he still obeys them.”

I had no answer for my packmates and no comfort for TaLi, who had buried her face in the fur of my back. I knew that you fight for your position in the pack. I knew that you honor Moon and Sun and the life Earth gives you. I knew that you follow the rules of the hunt and take care of your packmates and defend your territory. But I did not know how to help TaLi. I didn’t know what to do about the challenge her grandmother had spoken of. All I was able to do was lean against her and offer whatever comfort I could.

Marra gave a soft growl as a new human-scent blew in on the breeze, and the three of us lifted our heads, tensing for a possible fight.

“What is it, Silvermoon?” TaLi asked, sitting up as she noticed the stiffness of my body.

The human smelled like BreLan, but a little different. He had to be related to him. But after what BreLan had said about the people of his tribe, that didn’t mean he was a friend. I stood, as did my packmates. We waited.

A young human male walked across the grass, approaching us. BreLan stood, his hand tense on his sharpstick. Then, while the other human was still far away, he relaxed and raised his hand in a gesture of greeting the humans used.

“It took you long enough to find us,” he called.

“Well if you’re going to lie in the grass like rabbits, what do you expect?” the other human shouted back.

The young human stopped when he saw me and Ázzuen and Marra standing nearby. But he did not raise his sharpstick.

“These are the wolves?” he asked when he reached us. BreLan must have told him of us. “I doubted you, brother, but it is true. They stand with you.” He looked at us in wonder and only a little fear.

“Or we with them,” TaLi said with a smile.

“And you hunt with them?”

“Only small things so far,” BreLan answered. “But now with three of us, perhaps we can hunt the larger animals,” he said eagerly.

I was surprised to hear him echoing my thoughts of hunting large prey. I looked the young human over. He didn’t look big enough to hunt much. TaLi noticed my appraisal.

“MikLan is BreLan’s younger brother,” she told me. “Come meet Silvermoon,” she said to the young human.

But MikLan’s eyes were on Marra, who was moving slowly toward him as if pulled by the scent of prey. She had watched how Ázzuen and I interacted with our humans and she lowered herself into a submissive posture. She was barely breathing, so intent was she on the boy. He was younger than BreLan, younger even than TaLi, a child still, and he was less suspicious than his brother. A smile split his face and he touched the top of Marra’s head. I winced a little, for such a gesture is a sign of dominance among us, but Marra didn’t seem to mind. A moment later the two of them were wrestling in the dirt, Marra growling playfully and MikLan panting with laughter.

They stopped playing and rested together. Marra’s tail slapped the ground as she rested her head on MikLan’s stretched-out legs. She looked at me smugly. Ázzuen curled up with BreLan next to them. Girl twined her fingers in my fur. All of us seemed worn-out—by our encounter with the old woman and the difficult things she had said. But it was comfortable as we sat together, the six of us, as day began to turn to dusk. And yet I was troubled. For how could I feel both that I had found my home and that my world was ending? That I was whole for the first time, but also being pulled apart? And how were we supposed to solve the paradox the old krianan had spoken of when it was all we could do to be with our pack and sneak away to the humans? It was too much to think about, and I tried to put it out of my mind and drew as much warmth and comfort as I could from the flesh of the human girl.

T
he pack slept in the afternoon sun. Ázzuen and Marra lay close beside Trevegg and Rissa, the lightest sleepers, ready to warn me if either awoke. It was late afternoon, and I had promised to meet TaLi and her grandmother that night for the Speaking. At last I was going to find out more about the Greatwolves and their contact with the humans. Usually it would have been easy for me to slip away, but an antelope herd was passing through the territories, and Rissa wanted to teach us how to track them. She had ordered us to stay in the gathering place until it was time for all of us to leave together.

Wandering about as if I were merely looking for a good place to sleep, I approached the sentinel oaks. I took one last look over my shoulder and stepped out of the gathering place.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Unnan blocked my path. He had only pretended to sleep and had managed to sneak into the woods and wait for me.

“Get out of the way,” I growled. I didn’t have time to be polite.

Unnan just gave me a sly, nasty look.

“You know I can make you,” I said. I had easily won our last fight, and knew I could win another.

“You might be able to.” Unnan smirked. “But that would make a lot of noise. You wouldn’t get to see your human
streck.
” A streck is the lowest of prey, one that is so easy to kill you do not have to breathe hard to get it.

I looked at him in shock. I didn’t want to deny anything. I didn’t know how much Unnan knew.

“And Ázzuen and Marra wouldn’t get to see theirs, either. Did you think you were smart? You go to see the humans whenever you get the chance, and then lie to the leaderwolves. You hunt and don’t bring prey back to the pack.”

“If you know so much, why haven’t you told Ruuqo and Rissa?” My stomach clenched, but I tried to sound as if I didn’t much care.

“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” he said. “But you aren’t going anywhere now.”

Before I could stop him, Unnan gave a loud bark. Every wolf in the gathering place woke and glared at us.

“Pups!” Rissa said sharply. “You know you are not to leave the gathering place today. What are you doing?”

“I saw Kaala running off”—Unnan smirked—“and I knew we weren’t supposed to. So I stopped her.”

“Very well.” Rissa seemed more annoyed with Unnan’s groveling tone than with my disobedience. “Kaala, this is not the time to wander off. Go sleep by Trevegg and Ázzuen until it is time for the hunt.”

“Yes, leaderwolf,” I said.

I greeted Trevegg absently, trying to figure out how I could get away. I did not notice how closely the oldwolf was watching me. He started to speak, but when he noticed Rissa watching us, he laid his head down.

“Sleep, youngster,” he said. “We have some matters to discuss later.”

I put my head in my paws. I was so tense I was sure that I’d remain wide awake, but I must have been more tired than I thought. As soon as I closed my eyes I was asleep.

A hand on my back awoke me. My eyes flew open and I looked into TaLi’s face. I blinked a few times. And froze in horror. We were only wolflengths away from other members of the pack, and they would be waking soon for the hunt.

I hadn’t thought that TaLi would venture into our homesite. I should have anticipated it. And now she had come. I feared what my pack would do if they found her. I wanted to tell her to run, but even the slightest whine could alert the others to her presence. She opened her mouth to speak, and I pressed my nose urgently into her cheek and stood. I saw Trevegg’s ear twitch in his sleep. Across the clearing, Minn groaned and turned over. I nudged TaLi with my head, and she gripped my fur tightly. I allowed her to take me in the direction she wanted to go—just so long as it was away. I expected any moment to hear the sounds of my pack behind me. The humans’ scent is so strong and so unique that any wolf can pick it up from far away. I couldn’t believe no one had found her scent.

Then I realized that even I could not smell the girl, even though she stood right beside me. I sniffed, and sniffed again. She smelled of forest, of a powerful sweet-sap scent in particular, and of many of the plants I recognized from the structure where I’d first greeted her. I wanted to ask TaLi what disguised her scent so well, but we were still too close to Fallen Tree. She pulled softly on my fur, and I let her lead me through the woods. After we were well away from the pack, I stopped, waiting for an explanation. In the meantime, I sniffed at her skin again.

It’s
uijin,
Silvermoon,” she whispered. “My grandmother makes it from the sap of the highbranch tree, using chokeberries and about twelve different herbs. She hasn’t taught me to make it yet—it takes a long time to learn—but she said it would make it so wolves would not smell me.” TaLi rubbed her arms and wrinkled her nose. “It’s sticky.”

I licked her arm, tasting the uijin. I wanted to know more about it. If it could disguise her scent from even me, it could be useful to us in hunting prey. We could sneak up on them and they wouldn’t smell us until we were upon them. But there were so many plants in the mixture, and dirt, too. Even, I realized, crushed insects. I didn’t think I could duplicate it by rolling in different things. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from tasting more of it.

“Stop that, Wolf,” TaLi said, a little crossly, pushing my face away. “I still need to cover my scent. It is the night of the Speaking, and grandmother sent me to fetch you. She said it’s important.”

I realized I had licked part of TaLi’s arm almost clean, and nosed her in apology. I looked at the girl in admiration. She had twice the courage I had. I couldn’t even sneak away from my pack to meet her, yet she had found her way into our gathering place and dared to walk in the middle of a wolf pack to get me.

“I don’t know much about the Speaking, Silvermoon,” TaLi said, walking again. “I’m not really old enough to go, since I’m not yet a woman, but grandmother said we should both be there. I was glad when she told me to bring you.”

She sounded lonely. I gently touched the back of her hand with my nose.

TaLi’s legs had grown longer in the two moons since I had pulled her from the river, and she moved with an easy lope. Not as swiftly as a wolf, of course, but still, I was surprised at how quickly we were able to move through the forest. We walked in silence until the sky darkened, and then TaLi began to slow. The pack would be waking now, wondering where I was, but I couldn’t help that. My human had asked for my help and I would give it to her.

“Wait,” TaLi said, and then stopped in her tracks. “I almost forgot.”

She took a small gourd from the sack she carried and removed its top. The smell of uijin rose from the gourd. TaLi scooped some of the saplike substance out in her hand and rubbed the sticky stuff into my fur. When she was done, I realized that she had not put any on my feet. She probably didn’t know that the scent glands on our feet leave an especially strong trail. I rubbed my forefeet on my muzzle where she had left a lump of uijin and scraped my rear feet on some that had fallen on the ground. I sneezed twice and looked at TaLi. She whuffed a laugh and placed the top back on the gourd, then slid it back into her sack. We began walking again.

After a little less than an hour, TaLi stopped in an undistinguished-looking patch of grass, dirt, and many large boulders. A gap in the trees showed the tall eastern mountains, glowing in the moonlight. It would have made a good gathering place, I thought. TaLi sat and waited, so I sat and waited, too.

Then I smelled them. In spite of what the old woman had told me, I could barely believe my nose. Greatwolves, a lot of them, coming our way. Frandra and Jandru were among them, and many others I didn’t recognize. I hadn’t realized there were that many Greatwolves in the valley. I whined to TaLi and started to walk away. When she did not follow, I took her wrist in my teeth and pulled gently.

“Are they coming, Silvermoon?” she asked. “We’re supposed to hide before they get here.”

The girl looked around and found a large rock and tried to guide me behind it. But it was upwind of the direction the Greatwolves were coming from. I didn’t want to take the chance that they could smell us in spite of the uijin. I towed TaLi to the downwind side of the field of rocks to find a better hiding place. I spotted two large rocks, side by side. One was broken halfway up, creating a small, flat ledge. In the place where the rocks met was a crack that would fit both of us. I led TaLi to it and leapt upon the ledge. She followed me, clambering up with her strong hands. We squeezed into the crevice between the rocks. I was a little uncomfortable, wedged between the two rocks, with TaLi pressed against me, but I stayed put, breathing slowly to get enough air into my lungs.

The Greatwolves strode into the rock field, not even trying to be quiet. Six pair, including Frandra and Jandru, and one lone, ancient male, gathered in the moonlit patch of grass. They spoke to one another too softly for me to hear, and then each pair walked to a boulder. Jandru and Frandra paused by their boulder and TaLi clutched my fur tightly.

“I notice them watching me sometimes,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Those two krianan wolves. I recognize them. They’re the ones who spend time with my grandmother.”

I didn’t have time to wonder about what the girl had said before I picked up the scent of humans. They walked solemnly into the patch of grass in ones and twos. I had to struggle not to gasp in outrage. How could Greatwolves and humans be meeting together? I couldn’t believe it, even though the old human had said that it was so. The Greatwolves were the ones who were supposed to enforce the rules about staying away from the humans. Frandra and Jandru had threatened me when they found I had rescued TaLi! I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes.

The humans greeted the Greatwolves as one wolf greets another. TaLi’s grandmother was the oldest human there, though all of the humans had the same bearing, the same smell of strength and wisdom as the old woman. Padding silently beside the humans was the young spiritwolf.

Each human then walked to stand next to a Greatwolf pair, and TaLi’s grandmother paused beside Frandra and Jandru. I realized then that the boulders were not scattered randomly in the grass as I had thought, but were arranged in a large circle, so that the Greatwolves and humans formed a ring facing the center of the rock circle.

The young spiritwolf touched the old woman’s hand with her nose and trotted through the center of the circle. Neither the wolves nor humans seemed to see her. She walked purposefully to our rock and leapt upon it. After licking me quickly on the top of the head, she settled above us atop the broken rock. I dared not speak to her lest I be overheard. I twisted my head around to look at the spiritwolf and she grinned at me.

Watch and be quiet, Kaala Smallteeth,
she said. I still dared not answer her, and turned back to the rock-rimmed patch of grass.

All eyes, wolf and human, were focused on the old krianan. She wore the skin of some creature I did not know, a thick and well-furred pelt. From its folds she drew a blade made not of stone, like the tip of TaLi’s sharpstick, but of something lighter and curved. I stifled a gasp. It was the tooth of a long-fang. I shivered. I would not want to get close enough to a long-fang to win its tooth. The fang was attached to the end of a piece of wood from an alder tree. The old krianan raised it high and walked to the center of the rock circle and faced to the east. She seemed to glow in the moonlight, and the long-fang tooth seemed to send a stream of light into the sky.

The old woman’s voice was pure and clear as a wolf in its prime calling the pack to hunt. She spoke in a flowing rhythm I had never heard the humans use, and the pitch of her voice rose and fell almost like our howls when we gather for a hunt or ceremony. It sounded a little like the humming noise TaLi sometimes made as we walked, but stronger, more powerful.

I call to Sun,

I invoke your life-giving warmth,

The spirit of flame

Fire and firmness

Light and heat

That give plants and creatures

Strength to reach

To Sky.

It took me a few moments to be able to understand the woman. She spoke in Oldspeak, the most ancient and basic of the languages of the Earth. All of our languages are based on it, and Ruuqo and Rissa had insisted that we learn some of it so we could understand as many creatures as possible. I didn’t know the humans knew it, though. I wondered if I could use it to talk to TaLi.

The ancient Greatwolf stepped forward and met the old woman in the center of the circle. He moved slowly as if it hurt him to do so, and faced toward the west. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like dried-out twigs breaking underfoot.

I call to Moon,

Friend of the night

Companion to stars,

Softness hiding true might

Yielding to gain strength

Cool light, guiding vision

To Sky.

“This is what the Speaking is for, Silvermoon,” TaLi said, settling herself against me. “I can’t understand much of it yet,” she said wistfully, “but I will soon.”

The old woman spoke again. She spoke of Earth, calling to it as the giver of shelter and of life. I began to understand. The Speaking was a ritual, like our pup-welcoming or hunt ceremonies. It surprised me that they were as important to the humans as they were to us. TaLi leaned over me, resting her weight on my back as the old woman swung her blade to the north.