Secrets of the Wolves (23 page)

“What’s he doing?” Ázzuen asked, still half asleep.

Trevegg bolted back into the homesite, moving more quickly than I’d ever seen him move.

“We have to go,” he said. “We have to warn the pack. We have to find Jandru and Frandra.” Trevegg was the calmest wolf I knew, but I couldn’t miss the urgency in his voice. He turned once, and then again, his nose held high.

“Why?” I said. “We can’t just leave. The humans are just starting to trust us. We have to stay with them if we’re going to keep the peace.”

“There will be no peace. If it is as bad as I think it is, it will not be a question of if we go to war with the humans, but of when.”

“Why? What’s going on? Trevegg, you have to tell us.”

Trevegg stopped his anxious circling. “It’s the prey, Kaala. The prey is leaving the valley.”

T
here are scents you never notice until they’re no longer there: the aroma of fresh horse dung carried on the wind, the smell of tree bark mixed with the sweat of an aging elk, a draft of wind that tells you the deer are running three miles away. Only when the scents are gone do you realize how much they were a part of your life.

It was the absence of scent that had awoken me. As soon as Trevegg identified it, it seemed obvious. Once before, some prey had left—when the humans had killed too many of them. This was different. Too much of the prey was leaving, and if the prey left, there would be death in the valley. There would be hunger and there would be war. All the hunters in the valley—humans, wolves, rock lions, long-fangs—would do anything necessary to feed themselves and their young and would fight to the death for whatever prey was left. The peace between wolves and humans would be shattered.

For once, I didn’t worry about disturbing the humans. I lifted my head and howled for Tlitoo. He would be able to find out where the prey was going, and one way or another, I would make him do so. Ravens couldn’t always understand the complexities of our howls, so I just howled as loudly as I could for him to come, while Trevegg and Ázzuen stood by. One of the humans, annoyed at the noise, threw a stone at me. I ducked it and ran into the woods with Trevegg and Ázzuen.

The three of us stopped a few paces outside the humans’ homesite, and I prepared to howl again. Before I had finished taking a good, deep breath, Tlitoo dropped down from the trees. Three feathers fell from his back and wings as he landed in front of me.

“There is no need to yell, wolflet,” he gurgled. “I have been waiting for you to open your furry eyes and come to me. I know already about the prey.” Tlitoo was calm, even more so than he had been at NiaLi’s home.

“Why didn’t you wake us?” I asked, exasperation rising up in me. Why did he choose now to be so composed?

“Because it would have done no good. You wish to know where the prey has gone. I do not know. I looked. I found nothing. Jlela looks still. The aurochs remain. And the elkryn. Others, too. Voles. Rabbits. The smallest of the prey. And the largest.”

“Why have you stopped looking? You can’t have searched the whole valley, even with Jlela helping.”

“Because there is something I must tell you, wolf. It is time now for me to do so.”

“Now?” Ázzuen said. “Why now, when you’ve been avoiding us for most of a moon?” I thought Tlitoo would peck at Ázzuen or at least screech an insult at him, but he just raised his wings a little, and then lowered them again.

“It was not time then,” he said. “It is time now.”

“Whatever it is you wish to tell them will have to wait, raven,” Trevegg said. The oldwolf pawed at the ground. “You two need to find Frandra and Jandru,” he said, jabbing his muzzle in our direction. “Now. They will know more than we do and will know how the Greatwolf council is reacting to the prey flight. I will speak to the pack. Go.” He turned in a tight circle once more, then ran into the woods.

“Wolves,” Tlitoo began.

“Later,” I snapped. I knew that he had his own troubles, but I wasn’t going to be guided by the whims of a raven.

He cocked his head, then clacked his beak twice.

“I know where the Grumpwolves are, wolflet,” he said to me. “Once you have talked to them will you see what I have to show you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Where are they?”

“At the circle of rocks, talking about you. They told me you are to meet them there at late-sun. They will speak to you then and you are not to be late.”

We couldn’t wait until late-sun. Ázzuen and I took off at a run. Tlitoo krawked loudly but didn’t follow us. Curiosity about what he had to tell me prickled at the back of my mind, but it would have to wait. It felt good to run. When we traveled with the humans, we had to move at their pace. I stretched my legs and let the smells of the forest stream past my nose, the scents blending as they did only when we ran.

The shortest path to the Stone Circle took us through the center of Stone Peak territory. We usually crossed the river at the Flat Bank Crossing, which was in the lands that the Greatwolves had set aside for safe passage to and from the human homesite, but if we wanted to get to the Stone Circle quickly we would need to cross farther upstream. Without needing to discuss it, Ázzuen and I pelted toward a place at which a huge alder had fallen across the river, making for a quick crossing not far from the Stone Circle.

We reached the well-trodden path that led to the crossing. That was when we heard the crashing in the bushes behind us and smelled the unmistakable willow scent of the Stone Peak wolves. We were only three minutes from the river. We might, I thought, still have time to get to our own territory before the Stone Peaks caught up with us.

“We won’t make it,” Ázzuen said. “The path widens up ahead. They’ll catch us there.”

“We’ll go around it, back into the woods.” I gasped, leaping over a fallen branch. Since the Stone Peaks are bigger and heavier than we, we could best outrun them in thick undergrowth and dense woods. In open spaces, their long legs gave them the advantage.

“They’ll circle around and catch us,” Ázzuen responded. “We have to fight them. It’s only Torell and Ceela. We can knock them off balance and then run.”

It was better than waiting to be caught. It had been generations since a fight between Stone Peak and Swift River had resulted in the death of a wolf, but the animosity between the two packs had grown in the past years. Every year we fought over the contested territories to the north, and Torell hated that Swift River was strong enough to do so. More than that, Torell despised the humans. He considered them worse than hyenas and said that they were the reason there was not enough land for every pack in the valley to have all the territory it wanted. When he had led his pack, along with the Tree Line wolves, to try to kill the humans at autumn’s end, it was the culmination of a long campaign against them. He knew Ázzuen and I helped stop him that day, and that we were the ones who brought humans and wolves together in the first place. I didn’t think he would kill us if he did catch us. He wouldn’t want to risk Ruuqo and Rissa taking revenge. But he could injure us, and he would certainly delay us. If we couldn’t escape, we would have to fight.

I let Ázzuen take the lead. He was better than I at finding strategic hiding spots.

“Here!” he said. We had reached the widening of the path.

A willow stump stood on one side of it, at a bend in the path. I scrambled up onto the stump while Ázzuen crouched in the bushes across from it. I had time to take two quick breaths before Torell and Ceela, the Stone Peak leaderwolves, came barreling down the path.

The instant I saw Ázzuen bolt from his hiding place, I leapt. Torell whuffed in surprise as I landed atop him, but even so, he barely moved. I didn’t expect that I’d be able to knock him over, but at least I thought he’d stagger. Instead, he just bent his legs a little, shifted his weight, and let me slide off his back. I landed on my side and rolled over to see Ázzuen entwined in Ceela’s legs. He had been smarter than I, going for the legs. At least he had a chance to topple her that way. Ceela jumped, disentangling herself from Ázzuen, and landing just beside him. I didn’t have time to see what Ázzuen did next. I lunged for Torell again, this time going for the soft part of his belly. I tried to bite at it, but he moved just the slightest bit so that my teeth came together in the air and my nose jabbed into his hard ribs. I didn’t see him angle his hip until it was hitting me in the face, knocking me back to the ground. I leapt up, thinking fast. I’d won every fight I’d had with Unnan and most of the challenge fights I’d had with Ázzuen and Marra, but nothing I did to Torell seemed to work. I lunged, trying to bite at his flank, but then his flank wasn’t there. Finally, in desperation, I dove for one of his rear legs and grabbed it in my teeth.

He grunted. “Oh, for the love of Indru,” he growled. He twisted around and grabbed the back of my neck in his jaws, biting down with his teeth until I yelped and released his leg. Then he slammed me down onto my back and stood over me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ceela pin Ázzuen on his side, pressing her forelegs into his ribs.

I looked up into Torell’s scarred face, felt his warm, panting breath on my muzzle. “I am trying to avoid hurting you, pup,” he said, glaring down at me. He lifted the leg I had bitten, shook it a little, and then set it back down. “Do you want to find out what is happening to the prey or not?”

I tried to keep my face from showing my confusion. I pressed my paws into Torell’s chest, trying to free myself. He growled, then took my neck in his teeth again.

“Why don’t you let her up, Torell?” Pell’s voice was mild, but there was a challenge in it. I hadn’t heard the youngwolf come upon us.

“I will gladly do so, Pell,” Torell answered, “if she will promise to stop nipping at my ankles.” He lowered his head so that we were muzzle to muzzle. “Are you two done showing us how poorly Ruuqo and Rissa have trained you to fight?”

I tried to think of something clever to say, some way to show him I wasn’t intimidated. He waited.

“Yes,” I said at last. He stepped off me and nodded to Ceela, who growled at Ázzuen once more, then released him.

Ázzuen coughed, then stood and shook himself. Pell stepped between me and Torell, glaring at his leaderwolf. He licked my neck where Torell had bitten it, then sniffed at my back where Torell had slammed it against the hard-packed dirt. Then he turned to face Torell, standing between me and the Stone Peak leaderwolf. Wolves communicate as much with body language as with words. Pell was making it clear to Torell that he would protect me.

Flustered, I stepped away from Pell. I couldn’t say I minded either his touch or his defense of me, but I wasn’t going to let him think I needed his help to face Torell. Still, I was disconcerted enough by his behavior to find it difficult to get my thoughts together.

Ázzuen had no such trouble.

“How do you know where the prey is?” he demanded of Torell. “How do we know this isn’t a trap and that you won’t take us farther into your territory, and then claim we trespassed on your lands?”

It was a good question. If we were deeper in Stone Peak territory, instead of at its border, they would be within their rights to kill us.

“Because we could have already killed you if we wanted to,” Ceela muttered.

Pell growled at her, but it was Torell’s lifted lip that made her lower her eyes.

“You don’t have to believe us,” Torell said. “Just follow us for a little while. We will walk through the thicker part of the forest so that you can escape us if you wish.”

“What did you mean about the prey?” I asked, finding my voice.

“You won’t believe me if I tell you,” he said, looking pointedly at Ázzuen. “So I will show you. You have my word that you will be in no danger.”

“I won’t let anything happen to either of you,” Pell said.

I thought about it. If the Stone Peaks wanted to hurt us they could. They didn’t need to take us somewhere else to do it, and I wanted to see what Torell had to show us. I also didn’t want them following us when we went to look for Jandru and Frandra. I looked at Ázzuen. He dipped his head slightly.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll go with you.” I glared at Torell and kept my ears high, to show him that, although we agreed to go with him, we were not under his command.

A small smile tightened his scarred muzzle. He turned back down the path, the way he had come, and began to run, away from the river, and deep into the heart of Stone Peak territory. In spite of my anxiety over the prey leaving and my concern about being with the Stone Peaks, I took in every scent and sound that I could. Our territory was made up mostly of pine, spruce, and oaks, with some alders and poplars. The Stone Peak lands had the same dream-sage, berry bushes, and spruce as ours did, but were also thick with willow, birch, and poplar, which had lost their leaves for the winter. It made the forest brighter as the sun filtered in through the bare branches. We passed a patch of wind-sage bushes. It was the scent I most associated with Pell.

Torell set a fast, long-legged pace, and I had to sprint to keep up with him. We didn’t run one by one, as wolves often do to disguise our numbers. I figured Torell was showing off again, making it clear that he didn’t care who knew where he was. He and Ceela were in the lead, and Pell, Ázzuen, and I ran after them. As we moved farther away from familiar lands and from the safety offered by our pack, I grew more uneasy. Pell noticed.

“Torell won’t hurt you, Kaala,” he said. “He likes you. That’s why he came for you. He has no use for most of the other wolves in the valley.”

Ázzuen whuffed skeptically, and I didn’t know what to say, so I asked Pell something that I’d been wondering about for a long time.

“Why are there only four Stone Peak wolves?” I asked him. “How can your pack survive?”

We’d reached the bottom of a steep hill. Torell and Ceela bounded up it easily in spite of their bulk, and took off along a narrow pathway that ran along the edge of the hillside. Pell followed just as agilely but waited at the top for me and then Ázzuen to scramble after him. I noticed Ázzuen staring at Pell’s injured leg and glowered at him. He ignored me and followed Pell as the youngwolf bounded along the path. Now we did have to run one behind another along the narrow ledge, which at some places dropped off into steep, dangerous cliffs and in others sloped gently down. Torell and Ceela loped ahead of us, but Pell hung back to answer me.