People of the Wolf (9 page)

Gray Rock smiled weakly. "I told Jumping Hare to go with Runs In Light."

"You what? That's not right!" she gasped. "Your son should stay with you. Singing Wolf and that 'yes-no' One

Who Cries are going with Light. Crow Caller's band won't have enough hunters. If you're thinking that going south is really right, why don't—"

"Raven Hunter will be enough."

"Bah! He'll get you in trouble with those Others. Young idiot! All he wants is war. Something bad in his blood. I remember when he was born. Blood . . . bad blood."

Gray Rock looked through the crack in the hide door to see how much time remained. Dawn light grayed the sky. "They're getting ready to go. I hear them." Almost as an afterthought, she asked, "Do you really think Heron went that way?"

"I know she did. I saw her leave."

"Most people think she's a myth, that she never really—"

' 'Only the old ones still remember.''

Gray Rock frowned uneasily. "The stories tell how wicked she was, how she consorted with the Powers of the Long Dark. Why'd she go? Did the clan drive her off?"

Broken Branch shook her head awkwardly. "No. She left on her own. Needed to be alone, she said." Guilt tinged the. old woman's voice, guilt and remorse.

Gray Rock eyed her downcast face seriously. "What'd you do? Kill Heron's mother? That look on your—"

"Quit asking things that are none of your—"

"All right," Gray Rock said wearily. "I was just making talk."

Broken Branch rose slowly to her feet, offering a hand to her crippled friend, who struggled vainly to rise. "You're walking to find another clan of the People? You can't even stand up!"

"Oh, shut up, you old bear bait," Gray Rock spat. But she took the hand, bones crackling and straining as she fought to stand. "Once I'm up, I do fine. Get me started and I don't stop. It's what all them oversized kids did to my hips that keeps me down!"

In an uncharacteristically gentle voice Broken Branch added, "Well, don't sit down, then. I won't be there to pick you up."

Gray Rock nodded, hobbling to the flap and ducking under it. In the faint light, she looked back toward Crow Caller where he gathered the People going with him. "See you

among the stars," she whispered, wrinkling her antique face in one last wink before she tottered off toward the old shaman.

Broken Branch watched her go, a familiar pain of loss smoldering around her heart.

"Wolf Dreamer?"

Runs In Light turned, seeing Jumping Hare walking up behind him. They called him that now—at least the ones who accepted the Dream did. The others, well . . . Raven Hunter called him child. Nothing new in that. They'd been at each other's throats since they were boys—for reasons he'd never understood. Still, it hurt.

"I think everything's packed," Jumping Hare said. "People are ready. We don't have much time. The light is so short."

"I know." Runs In Light's eyes wouldn't stay away from" where Crow Caller assembled his group. So many friends stood there including Dancing Fox. Pain constricted in a tight band around his heart. "I'm ready."

Following his gaze, Jumping Hare frowned. "You can't do anything. She's his. Her father gave her away to pay for healings. She owes him. It's just the way."

"I know. Only I feel this is my last chance. That if I don't go and take her from him—"

"It always seems that way. Me, I lived through it when my first love married another. Now, I've made a name. I'll find a wife at the next Renewal. You'll see. Wait until Renewal." Jumping Hare clapped him on the shoulder and turned away, walking back to duck into a shelter.

Runs In Light felt a growing urge to be alone. He trudged over the drift, out of sight of the camp. Fear tormented his gut, setting it to writhing like the tangle of bott-fly maggots

he'd once cut from a dead caribou's throat. All his life, unfamiliar faces and voices had haunted his sleep, calling to him from some echoing cavern in his mind. One voice in particular rang out above the others, a woman's. He felt oddly as if he were going in search of her now. It frightened him.
Fantasy or reality ? Am I taking my people on a Dream Walk
... or
leading them to their deaths?
Wolf
had
come to him; he knew that. Yet some unspoken doubt lurked, whispers of trickery or magic barely audible beneath his faith. Had that Dream-walking man of the Others cursed him? Sent him this manner of destruction?

Pulling the sinew strings of his hood tight, he gazed wearily out over the vast wilderness. Snow crawled like fog close to the ground, stirred by the glacial breeze. Ravens soared in the white glaring sky, sunlight flashing silver from their midnight wings.

"Wolf?" he called softly. The fur of his robe ruffled in the breeze. "Don't leave me alone out there. Help me—" "Runs In Light?" a sweet voice said from behind him.

His stomach muscles went rigid. He knew her voice-would recognize it a thousand Long Darks from now in his Dreams among the Star People. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed, muttering, "You came to say good-bye?"

She stepped around to stand before him. He felt her presence, strong and warm, and opened his eyes. Despite the cadaverous thinness of her face, she looked beautiful, her waist-length black hair dancing around the edges of her hood.

He met her gaze. Her gentle expression remained unchanged, but something in her eyes seemed to grow still, as if balanced on a knife's edge, awaiting death's final heartbeat.

"You could come," he murmured lamely.

He thought she was going to respond, but after a sharp inhale, she halted. Grief and fear mixed in her eyes before she lowered them to stare uncomfortably at the creeping snow. "He'd kill me. He has . . . parts of my body. Things that give him my soul. Being with you, I could destroy you all. He could send a bad spirit out of the Long Dark."

"I'll take that chance. Come with me now, Dancing Fox. I can protect you. Wolf won't—"

"I ate some of wolf," she breathed.

"You-"

' 'Even if I can't come, I wanted to be part of your Dream. And I want you to know ..." She looked up and he felt his heart rise into his throat.

She's made her choice.
His guts fell, like intestines out of a belly-slit mammoth.

"Don't say it," he whispered harshly. "It won't do either one of us any good."

She took three quick steps forward, tears in her eyes, and before he knew it, wrapped her arms around his waist, pillowing her face against his chest. "Will you mark a trail for me? Maybe if I can—"

"I'll mark a trail." Futility swept him; Crow Caller would never let her get away. He crushed her frail body against him. Through the heavy layers of hide, he felt her uneven breathing.

Gently, she pushed back, staring feverishly past him to the top of the drift. "I must go. He'll be looking for me."

Reluctantly, he released her. She stepped backward, eyes going over him as if for the last time. She worked her fingers nervously in the tattered greasy mittens.

"If you can get away . . . come."

"I will." She nodded hurriedly, throwing him a final look as she raced over the drift.

He stared at her footprints for a long moment, before muttering to himself, "Stop being a fool. You know she can't." Shaking his head, he whispered, "And I'm not sure I really want her to. What if my Dream isn't ..." He couldn't finish it.

He sucked in a deep breath and looked out over the waves of frozen snow. Streaks of dark brown reared where Wind Woman had scoured the ridge tops clear. Those rocky ridges would be his trail to the south, ever higher along the wind-worried—

"Touching."

Runs In Light whirled, seeing Raven Hunter rising to his feet. "Why, I thought for a moment she'd break, take a chance that Crow Caller's vengeance was weaker than her love for you."

"What do you want?" Runs In Light demanded.

"Why . . ."Raven Hunter spread his arms. "I'm saying

farewell, idiot brother. That's a family right, isn't it? To make a final act of charity and goodwill toward a brother.''

"Why?"

"I don't know myself," Raven Hunter said, cocking his head. "You were always the strange one. I never understood why Seal Paw and Seagull fawned over you when I did so much better, learned tracking, could repeat the stories. But they always admired you."

Runs In Light swallowed, an unease taking him. He staggered as if dizzy. Involuntary words choked his throat as the world hazed shimmery before his eyes.

"You . . . you and me, brother. We're the future. Don't do what you're planning. Or in the end, one of us will have to destroy the other.''

Raven Hunter's hard laugh broke the spell, shattering it like a sheet of ice dropped on jagged rock. "Are you threatening me?"

"The fight will tear the world in two."

"You'd best hope it never comes to that, brother." Raven Hunter smirked, leaning forward so his hard hot eyes bored into Runs In Light's. "I'm stronger, meaner, and don't suffer your flaws of mercy and compassion. Threaten me? You're crazier than I thought you were!"

"I—I'm not crazy," he whispered uncertainly. "It's in my head, the visions—"

"I won't forget your little warning, brother. Someday, you'll wish you hadn't threatened. Indeed, you will. I'll take something of yours for that and maybe even toss you a bone when I leave you behind. Hmm?"

He turned, laughing again as he climbed the drift, tramping over Dancing Fox's footprints, leaving them nothing more than gouged holes in the snow.

Drowning his fear in the Wolf Dream, Runs In Light closed his eyes and heard again the spirit's words,
"This is the way, man of the People. I show you.
..."

A prickle ran up his spine. He squinted at the circling ravens, then out across the undulating whiteness, eyes searching. "I hear you, Wolf."

Turning, he climbed over the top to where his own group gathered. Broken Branch waved to him, grinning.

From across camp, Crow Caller shouted, "Come on!" to his small band.

Runs In Light's eyes drifted over his own group. "So many?"

"Ha-heee! Wolf Dream!" Broken Branch chortled, waddling to the south, pack hanging down her back from a tump line that dented her ancient forehead. Her rickety legs pumped ferociously as she took the lead.

A bittersweet smile touched his lips.
They believe I can save them. Can I?
His eyes sought Dancing Fox where she gathered things together for her journey northward. Emptiness filled him.

A hard fist landed against his shoulder, making him stumble backward. "Quit that," Green Water reprimanded.

"What?"

"Looking like she's lost," she whispered. "Unless Grandfather White Bear gets her, you'll see her again."

He opened his mouth to ask how she knew but stopped himself. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and asked, "Are you having Dreams, too?"

"Yes, you young fool. You've got competition. Remember that." She winked at him, then grabbed his sleeve and flung him forward into a shambling trot.

Rising smoke from dung fires caught the first tints of morning as it twisted upward in the bare breeze. Cold blue shadows crept back, clinging against the drifts. Crow Caller's band hustled through camp, chattering about the trek north, watching Runs In Light lead his people southward.

Dancing Fox laced her parka tighter and secured the pack on her back, the tump line from which the pack hung biting into her forehead. She secretly followed Light with her eyes. When he reached the top of the ridge, he turned, looking

back, sunlight gleaming from the wolf hide over his shoulders. He bent and placed a rock atop another.

The trail.

She straightened, stomach tingling in fear. Did she have the courage to defy—

"Take your eyes off him," Crow Caller demanded from behind her. "If you want your eyes to stay in your head."

She whirled to face him. "I didn't do anything!"

"And you'd better not." He grinned without humor and reached in his pocket to retrieve a small tan sack. She recognized it: his collection of hair and personal articles through which he controlled her soul. He swung it ominously before her wide eyes, glancing to Runs In Light, then back, withered face hardening. "Keep your thoughts on me, woman!"

Jerking away, she said shakily, "I'll think whatever thoughts I want, husband. You may control my soul but not my mind."

He gripped her arm tightly, shaking her so hard she thought her neck would snap. "You like punishment, eh?"