Wolf Captured (37 page)

Nolan knew more about rope than any one man should, but then that had been his family trade. He also was fond of part-singing, especially when he carried the melody.

Tedgewinn knew how to carve in wood, ivory, and soft stone. He had been carpenter’s mate aboard the doomed vessel.

Wiatt knew fish: what kinds swam in what waters, which were good to eat, which only showed at certain times of the year. He knew how to cook them, too, and how to make even salt fish taste good. Elwyn said that Wiatt had survived the wreck by being lifted up from drowning on the backs of schools of minnows, but then everyone knew that Elwyn was addled in the head.

Elwyn, a former deckhand, had little going for him but luck. Luck he had by the bushel, so though he was heavyfooted, tactless, and given to gas, he was welcome aboard any ship in the hope that his luck might rub off on the venture.

And,
Wain thought,
I suppose it did in a way—at least some of us survived, though the ship herself went down.

Having resolved that the end of his usefulness as a language instructor would not be the end of his comforts—or even of his existence—Waln began searching after information, any information that he could turn to his use. His initial interest in Misheemnekuru remained with him. In one of the aridisdum who came to him for daily lessons, Wain found someone who could tell him more about those mysterious islands.

Shivadtmon was associated in some way with the Temple of the Sea Beasts. Wain gathered that Shivadtmon preferred seals and otters, but that the temple also kept dolphins, muskrats, and even water rats. Although most of the temples were built in the vicinity of the step pyramid, Shivadtmon’s was located down near the harbor.

Wain didn’t know exactly what Shivadtmon said that made him aware that the other man did not precisely favor the giving over of Misheemnekuru exclusively to the use of the yarimaimalom. Perhaps it was the manner in which he spoke of the noise and bustle of the harbor area or the way he mentioned his fears for the safety of his more adventurous charges. Whatever the reason, in Shivadtmon Wain found someone who was willing to talk about the islands as something more than places both restricted and sanctified.

“I was permitted to do some of my training at the outpost there,” Shivadtmon said proudly. “It is an honor granted to very few.”

“Then humans do reside there?” Wain asked. “Or are my shortcomings in your language misleading me?”

Shivadtmon smiled. “Your command of the language is quite adequate to this understanding. The yarimaimalom permit us to maintain an outpost there for our mutual convenience. Otherwise, all messages would need to be relayed by birds or sea creatures, and my understanding is that this was not satisfactory to either those who would carry the messages or those who must send them.”

“Interesting,” Wain said. “Then the yarimaimalom who live there continue to interact with humanity?”

“Certainly,” Shivadtmon said, a little surprised. “Many of those who now reside in temples came from the islands and will return there when the omens are appropriate.”

“I understand,” Wain said. “So Misheemnekuru is not nearly as isolated as Harjeedian led me to believe.”

“Oh, the majority of the islands are no longer known to us,” Shivadtmon hastened to correct. “We may sail around the outer perimeter, but even the inner waterways are forbidden to us.”

“Inner waterways? Do you mean rivers and streams?”

“Those, yes, and also the inlets where water flows between individual islands. The yarimaimalom are jealous of their privacy—as well they should be,” Shivadtmon added hastily. “They build neither walls nor houses. The elements themselves provide their homes.”

Wain thought fleetingly of wolf dens and rabbit burrows, but there was something more interesting he wished to pursue.

“But I am certain I glimpsed buildings there,” he said. “These are then not in use?”

“Perhaps as aeries for fish eagles or haunts for bats,” Shivadtmon said with what Wain was sure was envy in his tone, “but not as proper residences. I doubt if a human has walked within them since the last of our corrupt rulers fell beneath the Divine Retribution.”

“Until now, of course,” said Wain, not certain why, but trusting the impulse that guided him.

“Now?” Shivadtmon looked genuinely confused.

“Lady Blysse has been permitted to explore Misheemnekuru,” Wain reminded him, “and for all her claims otherwise, surely she is human enough.”

Shivadtmon’s expression went from confusion to understanding and then to anger. He took his leave soon thereafter, and Wain felt well pleased. Time enough to ask more about the islands, time after his new friend had absorbed the injustice that was being done to him and his fellows.

Plenty of time.

Wain rubbed his hands together as he might have after finalizing some deal of a more routine type, then returned to his studies. It would not do for him to be unable to communicate with the Liglimom—not when so much was coming to depend on at least some of them coming to learn to see the world as he did, rather than through the veils of superstition that had held them back.

It wouldn’t do at all.

ONCE THE PACKS HAD MOVED to the meadows where the elk herds had gathered, Firekeeper had to struggle to keep her spirits up. Even the praise old Neck Breaker gave her when her straight-shot arrows brought down a panicked elk cow and so spared young High Howler from a nasty kick did little to lighten her mood.

From a silent watch post high in the boughs of a newleafed apple tree, Firekeeper had seen Blind Seer and Moon Frost running side by side, singing to drive an elk, moving at speeds her human legs could never reach, much less sustain. She had seen them dive almost as a pair into the carcass after the elk had fallen, snapping back at the Ones—who usually took the first and best parts of any kill as their right.

The Ones’ own growls and snaps had been perfunctory at best. Indeed, they had permitted themselves to be driven back. This was hardly a great sacrifice on their part. Between the elk brought down by the Ones themselves and the elk Firekeeper had finished with her arrows, there was plenty of meat for everyone without the Ones invading Blind Seer’s kill. Even High Howler, Rascal, and Nipper came in for chunks of liver—a delicacy usually claimed by the Ones alone.

Yet, Firekeeper could not help but feel that the Ones had not growled Moon Frost and Blind Seer away for a reason other than the quantities of good meat available. She thought Tangler and Hard Biter were pleased at the accord growing between these two strong hunters. Well they should be. Mating season would not come until late winter, and until the snappish tempers of that time arrived, Moon Frost and Blind Seer would use their skills to support the existing pack. With two such fine hunters working as a pair, the pack would claim a high number of kills without paying in blood and broken bones.

What would it matter if by late winter Moon Frost and Blind Seer were splitting off? By then Nipper, High Howler, and even Rascal would have had time to grow into another two seasons’ strength. Even with the loss of Moon Frost, the pack would be more powerful than it had been the previous spring.

Firekeeper tried not to brood over the pattern she saw developing, but she didn’t feel any more friendly to Moon Frost when the female sneered at her for cooking her share of the meat or needing her knife to remove the hide. The fact that Moon Frost’s pack mates—all but Neck Breaker, who was perhaps wiser, perhaps merely more prudent—joined the game caused anger and resentment to blend in Firekeeper’s belly.

The wolf-woman wanted to leap at Moon Frost, to make the other wolf take back the gibe by force, but memories of Moon Frost’s lean, graceful silver-grey form ripping in through the grass-swollen roundness of the elk’s flank stayed her. Firekeeper knew herself beaten without battle ever being joined, and the elk flesh, just beginning to be marbled with grazing fat after the thin days of winter and early spring, tasted flat and stringy in her mouth.

Yet for all of this, there were things to distract Firekeeper from her unhappiness. At the meeting meadows, she and Blind Seer met their second pack of Wise Wolves, these from lands slightly to the west of the meeting meadows.

The west pack was slightly larger than the borderland. pack that had taken Firekeeper and Blind Seer with them to the meeting meadows. In addition to Grey Thunder, the pack’s One Male, and, Half-Snarl, its One Female, the west pack boasted three hunters roughly equivalent to Moon Frost. Only two younger cubs from previous litters remained with the pack—a male a year old and a female two years old. They also had an older wolf among their numbers, a female called Cricket, and a small litter of this spring’s puppies.

Soon after the west pack’s arrival there came another pack, this one from hunting grounds some distance inland. By now Firekeeper was having trouble keeping track of which wolf was with which pack. She had no idea how many wolves there were now gathered around the meadows, making any prey animal nervous, and the nights ring with their boastful songs.

With private shame, Firekeeper felt how her refusal to bother to learn how to commit larger numbers to memory was a handicap. She knew that Derian would have had no difficulty assessing and categorizing the swirling mass of lean, grey-furred bodies. Nor, she realized, did the wolves. Their keener noses permitted them to “see” differences between individuals that Firekeeper could not. Only Firekeeper, who had refused to learn the human way of accounting and who lacked the ability to learn the wolfish way, was limited.

However, she had no trouble telling the next arrival from the rest. He was a magnificent male who belonged to none of the three packs already arrived, but was an outlier, dispersed from his birth pack but not yet bonded to another.

The newcomer shared the silver-grey coloration so common among the wolves of Misheemnekuru. He was as large as any of the One Males present, with big feet that seemed to promise further growth, though from other signs he had achieved at least four or five winters. Yet neither size nor any other physical trait was what set him apart from the others in Firekeeper’s eyes, but a commanding presence that as much as declared him One Male, although his pack had yet to be formed.

“My divined name is Dark Death,” the outlier introduced himself after proving his worth by flinging himself into a hunt in progress and bringing down the twisting, leaping buck that had eluded the others thus far. “I was born to the Center Island pack. By swimming and running I have made my way here, drawn by songs old and new heard rising from this place.”

It was a good boast. By now Firekeeper had gathered something of the relationship of the different islands to each other, and Dark Death must have heard those songs in relay from a long way off. She understood his claim as the wolves did—proof of Dark Death’s prowess as a solitary hunter.

Firekeeper watched as the wolves went about their usual rounds of tail-sniffing, fascinated by how the dynamics of the packs were adjusting in response to this outlier. Two of the young hunters in the west pack were females: Beachcomber and Freckles. They sniffed tails repeatedly with Dark Death; then Beachcomber snapped at Freckles when she came too close. Young as she was, Nipper also showed interest in the handsome male, as did the females from the latest-come pack. Indeed, only Moon Frost acted indifferent, almost as if she already had a mate.

The dynamic among the males changed as well. The unmated males grew definitely defensive. Blind Seer put up his hackles and growled softly. Another male, Smoke Jumper, snapped at the tip of Dark Death’s tail. Dark Death ignored him—a greater insult than if he had snapped in return. There would definitely be fighting before the males established who outranked whom—and as the females competed to show off their better qualities.

Perched up in her apple tree, Firekeeper found herself fascinated by Dark Death. The outlier wolf walked with an arrogant swagger as if he were a One of Ones, not a packless, isolated male. Indeed, Dark Death’s arrogance put the One Males, each of whom had claimed mate and territory, on edge before long.

Firekeeper wondered if Dark Death was wise to behave in this manner, then realized the outlier was wise indeed. He was declaring himself competition for any and all mated males—or males who might hope to find a mate—and this meant that any battles would be between him and his opponent. The packs would not take part as they would against an invader into their territory.

After introductions were completed, Dark Death pretended to notice Firekeeper for the first time.

Firekeeper knew this noticing was pretense because she knew how easily a wolf scented anything unfamiliar. Doubtless Dark Death had been aware of her presence even before he had walked from the forest fringe into the meadows. However, as the other wolves had paid Firekeeper no heed, manners and prudence had dictated that Dark Death must account himself to them before commenting on the anomalous human in their midst.

Now the outlier wolf trotted over to the apple tree in which Firekeeper had taken her perch. He stood on his hind legs and stretched up toward her. Dark Death was tall enough that he easily reached within touching distance—but then Firekeeper hadn’t been trying to get out of range. It was simply her habit when in unfamiliar places to claim a place from which she could see her surroundings. Otherwise, especially within a swarming, jostling mass of wolves, she was likely to become overwhelmed.

If she had chosen this perch because she knew that Blind Seer could easily join her if he so chose, Firekeeper didn’t admit this, even to herself.

Now she looked down at the rudely sniffing nose and resisted an urge to bring her heel solidly down onto the damp, black leather.

“I thought we had a treaty that forbade humans from coming into Misheemnekuru,” Dark Death growled, “but perhaps that does not apply on this island.”

The outlier’s attitude was faintly insulting, implying that the wolves he knew would never have permitted such a thing.

Blind Seer responded.