Wolf Captured (41 page)

TO HER SURPRISE Firekeeper discovered that the Wise Wolves were reluctant to let her nursemaid their pups. She found this reluctance very odd, for no one seemed to question either her or Blind Seer’s assertion that she had watched over litter after litter for their own pack. Nor were the pups so young that they should need the constant attendance of a nursing female.

Firekeeper noticed other strange things as well. Whereas the first pack of Wise Wolves with whom she and Blind Seer had joined had practiced puppy care in ways familiar to her from childhood, as packs joined and the puppies were lumped together for greater ease of care, differences became apparent.

As far as Firekeeper knew, it was usual that when puppies were weaned or nearly weaned more and more of their care was given over to a young wolf. This nursemaid wolf was usually considered in some way or another to be less than an ideal hunter. Sometimes youth was the factor, other times ineptitude, temperament, or injury. In a few cases, the nursemaid was an older wolf, but in all cases, the nursemaid was one who was a lesser hunter.

The borderland pack followed this tradition. Young Rascal was temperamentally ill suited for the hunt. He was also smaller than his littermates. Neck Breaker also served as nursemaid, and Firekeeper suspected that Rascal and the younger puppies both benefitted from exposure to the old wolf’s wisdom.

When the nursery was expanded to incorporate the puppies of more than one pack, this pattern began to change. It did not change with the first pack who joined them, but with the second and thereafter the difference was marked. The less suitable hunters were still often given the care of the pups, but now one or more very strong hunters also assumed the duty.

“Do they fear some predator other than ourselves?” Firekeeper asked Blind Seer one afternoon when, bellyful and tired of even Moon Frost’s overtures, the blue-eyed wolf had come to rest in the shade of her favorite apple tree. “Do the jaguars and pumas come to hunt the young wolves as we do the fawns and calves? Are the bears here so mad that they would challenge a wolf pack?”

Blind Seer rolled lazily, exposing his stomach to the wind’s caress.

“I have scented no sign of any large predators other than ourselves, except possibly at tangled edges of the meadow fringes where the tree limbs hang low. Nor are the bears mad. In any case, why would these dine on wolf pups when spring is here, bringing plentiful game along with the warm weather?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Firekeeper agreed, “but neither does robbing the hunt of strong hunters when there are ample others to watch. Have you noticed that these guardians are always drawn from the packs which brought the pups? Outliers like Dark Death are never asked, and my offers have been most coldly rejected.”

“Odd,” Blind Seer agreed drowsily. “I could ask Moon Frost if she knows the reason for this.”

Firekeeper felt ice fist hard around her heart at this suggestion.

“Best not,” she said, hoping Blind Seer would not scent the reason for her evasion. “It is not Moon Frost’s pack which made the rule, and I notice that she also is not asked to take a turn as nursemaid—though both the Ones in her pack have done so.”

Blind Seer rolled over and turned his blue-eyed gaze on her.

“You have been watching very carefully,” he said.

“I have had little else to do,” Firekeeper said bitterly. “There is no need for me to hunt. The Ones will not let me mind the pups. Neck Breaker and Cricket seem to enjoy speaking with me, but to the rest I am as strange as a white doe in a herd of brown—they do not quite reject me, but they shy away lest my odd color bring some danger upon them.”

The blue-eyed wolf rose and pressed his head against her, nearly tilting her backward with his weight.

“Are you lonely then, sweet Firekeeper, though in the heart of this mighty pack?”

The wolf-woman buried her hands in the scruff of his neck and felt a touch of anger when she felt the rough corrugations where Moon Frost had mouthed him. These were not true bites, but a wolf’s jaws are strong and Moon Frost’s teeth were sharp, even in play.

“I am lonely,” Firekeeper said, holding back much more that she would like to say.

“Come and run with me then,” Blind Seer suggested, rising and stretching out his spine in a long bow. “Lately, when running in the forest I have seen things I would have liked to show you, but somehow night comes and I have forgotten—and these are things better seen in daylight.”

Firekeeper embraced the wolf with rough enthusiasm. Then she pushed back, leaping to her feet.

“I will gladly go,” she said, “wherever you will lead. What manner of things are these?”

“Heaps of stone,” Blind Seer said, “ruins, so I am told, of places where humans once lived. You and I have seen their like in the Gildcrest lands and again in New Kelvin, but the forms of the buildings seem different again here. I have been wondering whether the ruins might have been lairs to yet another pack of humans than those of which we have already heard. None of these Wise Wolves …” Blind Seer’s inflection held a trace of arrogant dismissal … . “know anything of lands other than their own.”

Firekeeper’s heart surged full with the warmth of renewed happiness. She might not be able to spar with Blind Seer as the other wolves could, nor could she keep up with a running wolf in the course of the hunt, but there were things she and Blind Seer had seen and done together that none of these island-isolated, so-called Wise Wolves could begin to dream of.

There was no rule that Firekeeper and Blind Seer—outliers as they were not only from any pack, but from these lands—must report their comings and goings, but Firekeeper’s bow and arrows were near to where Neck Breaker slept. The old wolf roused at her approach.

“Hunting, Firekeeper?”

“Not for game,” she said, bending to slide her bow from the dry shelter of the rock where she had cached it, “but Blind Seer wishes to show me some things he has found in his wanderings.”

“Be wary,” the old wolf replied, beating his tail slightly at the pleasure in her voice. “Many of those who would hunt in the meadow but for fear of our packs circle on the fringes. Wise respects Wise, but many of the lesser beasts will only see you as warm meat.”

“I am warned, grandfather,” she said, slinging her quiver over her shoulder and adjusting its balance.

As Firekeeper ran to meet Blind Seer, quiver bouncing lightly against her shoulder, knife at hip, unstrung bow in hand, she fought down the fear that Moon Frost would be waiting beside the blue-eyed wolf. She imagined the two wolves standing shoulder-to-shoulder, Moon Frost perhaps biting playfully at one of Blind Seer’s ears or grabbing at his ruff. The image was so vivid that Firekeeper’s feet started to slow, reluctant to bring her face-to-face with what it seemed she must find.

But Blind Seer waited alone for her, the dappling of light falling through the leaves making him almost invisible. He started for the deeper forest before Firekeeper had caught up with him.

“We go inland, first,” Blind Seer said when she was trotting beside him in the easy mile-eating jog both could effortlessly maintain for hours. “There is a place where the stone comes above the soil, and the humans built on that rise. I would never have found it, but for ravens calling. I never learned what had them so agitated, but I did find something worth the climb.”

In the heart of the forest where they now traveled, summer was well established. The leaves had darkened and lost the tenderness of springtime. Oaks, maples, hazels, and gum spread their leaves to catch the sunlight. Somewhat lower down, scrubby pine and holly mingled with fruiting shrubs. Briar, blackberry, raspberry, and honeysuckle laced tightly in the interstitial areas. Moss carpeted the damp clay where the duff had not settled. Lichen grew on fallen tree limbs, and mushrooms paraded in the shadows.

This was a damper, younger forest than the ones Firekeeper knew best, a forest that had filled in after the trees had been cut away by human hands or leveled by the violence of storms. This forest’s understory was thicker, its odors headily enhanced by the carrying wetness, every evocative scent underscored with the bite of salt.

Here and there were the signs that once humans had claimed this territory for their own. It might be shrubs growing in too straight a line or a cluster of mature fruit trees struggling to maintain their rights against the crowding of exuberant sapling oaks. There were no open fields, but crowds of younger trees—some now growing to dominate kin sprouted the same year—told the skilled eye where once a clearing might have been.

Noticing more and more of such signs, Firekeeper was not surprised when Blind Seer slowed and began to cast around as after an elusive scent.

“Near here, I think,” said his ears and tail. “Yes!”

Ears perking, the blue-eyed wolf slightly changed his course. Soon they had intersected a wide path and began to climb. Initially, Firekeeper thought this must be a well-used game trail and wondered at its width. Two deer could walk side by side on this trail and their shoulders would hardly brush.

Could it be a trail cut by Wise Deer? Firekeeper knew there must be such, but she thought that yarimaimalom would not mark their ways so clearly. The Royal Deer she had known before did not. What purpose did this wide way serve?

Firekeeper had her first clue as to the true nature of this trail when she and Blind Seer came to a place where runoff from one of the frequent rainshowers had cut away the duff. Her bare foot encountered not the sticky coldness of clay, but rock. Moreover, this rock was smoothed and polished, as one would expect to find in a streambed but not on the side of a hill.

“Blind Seer,” she called softly, “hold up a moment.”

The wolf waited, then came to watch as Firekeeper scraped away the surface vegetation. His tail wagged slowly when he saw what she had found.

“This was once a roadway,” Firekeeper said, “one paved with stones such as we have seen in cities. Was there a city here once?”

“Not a city,” Blind Seer said. “At least, I do not think so. Come along and see.”

Firekeeper motioned for him to wait while she checked the extent of the road more carefully.

“Maybe not a city,” she agreed, “but this road was no small one. Even with the paving broken and pushed apart by young growing things I can guess that carriage or cart could have used this trail with ease. Lead on. I would see who these were who were grand enough to need such a road.”

Blind Seer bumped his head into her arm.

“I thought you would be interested. I don’t know why I took so long to bring you here.”

Moon Frost’s doing
, Firekeeper thought sourly, but she said nothing—not even to tease as she would once have done so easily. She wanted to do nothing to remind Blind Seer of the she-wolf they had left behind.

They mounted the trail swiftly, for the incline was easy, curving to go around the occasional large rock that interrupted the hillside like an island in a sea of green. As they walked, Firekeeper was reminded of the Norwood Grant, where she and Blind Seer had spent some time. There, too, the rocks had claimed their part of the woodlands, and she had often sought them out as comfortable places from which to watch the stars. The memory made her feel friendly toward these otherwise strange forests.

At last they emerged onto a less thickly wooded hilltop. The reason there were fewer trees was immediately obvious.

“Here the winds do not like those who thrust themselves up too tall,” Firekeeper said, looking to where the shattered length of more than one such woodland giant was giving itself back to the forest in mold and loam.

“But their children do not learn,” Blind Seer agreed. “They rise, free now from the shade of their parents, to defy the power of the wind.”

“Until the next storm comes,” Firekeeper said. “Then those who have forgotten how to bend will fall. Still, it is nice to be out in the sunlight again, no matter how it comes to touch the ground.”

She began to seat herself on an upthrust bit of rock, but stopped in midmotion. Her automatic inspection for anything that might be dangerous—whether as large as a sunning rattlesnake or a small as a biting ant—had shown her that this rock was no more placed by natural forces than the trail had been.

“What is this?” she said, kneeling to better inspect her find. “A bit of wall, and I do not think it was just set here to border a garden patch. Look at how wide it is at the base. It was meant to hold weight.”

Blind Seer scratched vigorously behind one ear.

“If you say so, dear heart,” he replied. “Humans pile rock on rock to make their lairs as no other creatures do. However, I have not made a study of how they manage to keep them from tumbling over.”

“I have, a little,” Firekeeper admitted. “When last spring brought us to New Bardenville there was much talk of the best ways to build both in rock and in wood. I listened because I thought such lore might someday be useful for making some small lair of my own.”

“Females and nest-building,” Blind Seer laughed. “Why not just dig into the earth as our mothers do?”

“Perhaps because I lack strong front claws,” Firekeeper retorted, feeling very strange at the turn the talk was taking. “In any case, my fires cannot breathe well beneath the earth. I thought more to build a house for them than for myself.”

Blind Seer rose and shook, scattering bits of leaf and dirt to all sides.

“Clever,” he acknowledged. “Come, let me show you some of the places where these humans built lairs to house their fires. The weather has done much to wear them away, but interesting scraps remain.”

“Lead,” Firekeeper replied. “This has been a good hunt so far.”

She followed the tip of Blind Seer’s tail as he moved with silent sinuosity over the broken ground, slipping between heaps of rock that were now clearly identifiable as broken building material. Most was the local rock, broken to size and often showing remnants of the mortar that had held it in place. Occasionally, however, there were scraps of enameled brick such as that which was common on the mainland. There were also remnants of stone carved into elaborate borders, often found with polished—if mostly broken—tiles.