The Wolf Age (63 page)

They came in every shape: men and women trailed by wolvish shadows, wolves paired with crouching human shadows, and every grade of semiwolf in-between. But they had clearly resisted both transitions, hiding from the sky among the mausoleums, and they came with clear minds, bared teeth, and drawn blades. They wore the red and blue of the Goweiteiuun and the green and gold of the outliers, and they fell on their enemies of the Alliance.

Rokhlenu, wearing the day shape, ran in the vanguard. Beside him, bearing a green-and-gold banner in one hand and a glass sword in the other, was Wuinlendhono.

Morlock charged down the stairs of the scaffold, kicking and stabbing at stray werewolves as he went. Shouted chants were rising on the edge of the crowd toward the funicular station-perhaps a rally of the Alliance. He could do the most good (or the most harm, depending on how one looked at it) if he joined with the outliers.

The green-and-gold wave was sweeping toward him also, Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono at its crest. They met, laughing, by the Well of Shadows.

"You are in good time, my friends," Morlock said.

Rokhlenu stared at him with haunted blue eyes. "We couldn't attack before," he began to explain. "The-"

"I meant what I said," Morlock said firmly. "No banter."

"Ghost no," gasped Wuinlendhono. "No banter. I hate banter."

They turned and led the Union werewolves in a charge straight through the chaotic clusters of the Alliance volunteers. Many died; many fled; the spectators to the rally had long since run off to a safe distance.

Long before they reached the funicular, they heard chanting. It was in neither Moonspeech nor Sunspeech nor any language that they spoke, but Morlock at least recognized it: "Kree-laow! Kree-laow! Kree-laow!" The slaves of the funicular station had risen in rebellion. They were attacking the spectators and Alliance werewolves from behind with their chains as weapons. Many of the slaves had already died, their bodies scattered about the plain of Wuruklendon, but others were still streaming out of their subterranean tower, eager to take up the fight.

"Rokhlenu!" shouted Morlock, when he saw this through the dust and blood of the election rally. "I need to take the funicular slaves out of here. Will that hurt your Union?"

"Take them," Rokhlenu said instantly. "Get as many as you can clear. We'll meet you back in Outlier Town."

"We may meet there," said Morlock. He was thinking about Mount Dhaarnaiarnon, and were-rats, and Ulugarriu.

"Oh?" said Rokhlenu, obviously surprised, but there was no time to talk the matter over. "In any case, good luck to you, my friend."

"And to you, and all of yours," said Morlock, and they parted there in the midst of battle, much as they had met.

Morlock ran straight at the ragged line of slaves and shouted in Sunspeech, "Do you understand me? Do you know me?"

"Kree-laow!" they shouted, saluting him with their bloody chains. "Kreelaow!"

"Do you understand me?"

"We understand you, Khretvarrgliu," said one in Sunspeech. "This is the hour of vengeance and atonement. Where do you wish us to die?"

"This is the hour of escape. We will make our way down the face of the city and free as many of our people as we can. If we die, we die, but if we escape we may live-for a little while," he added, thinking of his own illness.

"That may not be, Khretvarrgliu, for armed werewolves guard the downward ways."

"Let me through!"

They parted and Morlock dashed to the edge of Wuruklendon.

A band of dark-coated City Watchers stood blocking the stairways down to Iuiunioklendon.

"Citizens," said Morlock, "give way or die. I will not tell you twice."

Some of the watchers did in fact flee down the stairs at his approach. But others stayed, led by a white-haired werewolf and one with a scarred face.

Morlock beat the spear blade of the scar-faced guard aside and passed Tyrfing through his heart. The death-shock was grievous, causing Morlock's knees to buckle, and the white-haired guard cried out with rage and made as if to stab him. But then the guard went down before a tide of chain-swinging slaves; his cries of anger changed to fear and then fell silent forever.

Morlock straightened himself and looked about. The guards who had not fled were dead or dying.

"We go down and out," he said, as clearly as he could. "Mesa by mesa, tower by tower. We rescue our people as we go. If we get separated, fight your way out and flee south; all will head that way who can."

"But what of atonement, Khretvarrgliu?" said one.

Morlock had no idea what they were talking about, but he didn't want to admit it, lest he lose authority in their eyes. "Dying is easy," he said. "It is over in a moment. Atone by living. Live as well as you can, for all who have died. It is all you can do."

This seemed to satisfy them. They armed themselves from the fallen guards and began to move down the winding stone stairways, the first stones of an avalanche that would sweep the city clear of slaves.

Morlock went with them. But first he paused to cover the hands of two dead guards: one with white hair, the other with a scarred face. If it was important to atone, and if death was an atonement, they had atoned.

okhlenu watched Morlock go, then turned back to the rally, where the fighting had broken up into a chaos of separate combats, clouds of dust dimming the colors and scents of the factions.

"We'll never find the Alliance leaders in this mess," Rokhlenu remarked to Wuinlendhono.

"You want my advice?"

"Yes."

"Don't bother with the leaders. Better that they survive today, hated and toothless. Who'll vote for them now?"

"Right. I'd rather kill the volunteers, anyway."

His wife looked at him in some surprise.

"I want them to know," Rokhlenu said grimly, "that if they march to an election as if it were a war, a war is exactly what they'll get. The Aruukaiaduun would never have put my family's heads on poles if they hadn't known a private army was marching with them. It won't be so easy for them to recruit one, next time."

"Yurr. Well, if nothing else, it thins out the voters committed to the other side."

In fact, there was not much more fighting and no more killing. The Alliance leaders had quietly absconded down the necropolis slope once the Union charge had passed by, and when the Alliance werewolves realized this they began fleeing themselves, or tearing off their colors and surrendering themselves.

They let the Alliance citizens keep their weapons and collect their dead. They sent the Union dead and wounded back to the outlier settlement by the necropolis road: Rokhlenu didn't want to make a display of their losses, which were not nothing.

But he did want to make a display of their victory. Both packs of Union werewolves raised their banners high and ran together in good order down the winding stairs to Iuiunioklendon market square.

There the Goweiteiuun citizens parted company: most of them had dens on Iuiunioklendon. "And it would be a long walk back up, thanks to your friend," said Aaluindhonu, the Goweiteiuun gnyrrand, as they parted company. He gestured up at the motionless funicular and laughed.

"We should call for an election soonest," Wuinlendhono said. "I think we have the bite for it."

"Tomorrow after sunset, I suggest," Aaluindhonu replied, looking at both Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono to see if they approved. When they nodded, he said, "I'll send a message to the First Singer when I get back to my den. He'll have plenty of time to send heralds to sing the news tonight, and shout it tomorrow."

They said good-bye, and the outliers continued onward and downward.

Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono didn't talk much as they walked; they were both tired, and the head of a crowd was no place for a conversation of consequence. But once he asked her, as they passed the abandoned funicular tower on Iuiunioklendon, "Do you think I was wrong to tell Morlock to take the slaves out?"

"No," said Wuinlendhono. "For one thing, he'd have done it anyway. But I think the political harm will go to the Aruukaiaduun. They played a rough game and lost. Everyone knows it. They will have to hire workmen to open the funicular ways again, but no one will thank them for it; everyone knows they would rather have slaves."

But it was clear, long before they reached Twinegate, that at least one of the ways would not be reopening soon. The anchor-gate in Twinegate Plaza was bright with flames and dark with smoke in the afternoon shadows. Someone had set the wooden mechanisms inside the tower on fire.

They stood on the verge of Runaiaklendon mesa and watched the tower burn for a while.

"Morlock has written `I was here' on the face of the city in letters of fire," Rokhlenu said. "People will be reading it there for a long time."

"No doubt," said Wuinlendhono. "That tower isn't going to stand much longer. Let's go home through the Dogtown Gate. We don't want to be punctuated by falling periods."

Hours later, Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono were alone at last, settling down for a brief nap before sunset, when she asked, "You don't think you'll see him again, do you?"

"I wouldn't bet either way," said Rokhlenu. "Not on him. But I don't think he expects it. He's old; he's sick. If he can get the never-wolves to safety, it may be the last thing he can do. His future is closed in, and he's out of tomorrows. I'd loan him some of ours, if I could."

"Over my day-barking body you would," Wuinlendhono replied, and bit him somewhere he'd notice.