Wolf Hunting (37 page)

Firekeeper placed her hand on Blind Seer’s shoulder.

“Wake, dear heart. Something stalks us.”

The wolf was alert in a moment. He did not leap to his feet, but slowly rolled to rest on his breastbone, his ears pricked, his nose raised to catch changes in the wind.

Firekeeper knew this because she knew him. She was no longer at his side, but had slipped to waken Plik, then Eshinarvash. Only when these who lived more as Beasts than humans were awake did she move to where Harjeedian and Derian slept, their bedrolls framing Bitter’s sick-nest.

“Hush,” she said, placing her hand on Derian’s arm where it jutted from the wrapped blankets. “Something is out there. Wake.”

Derian, trained by now in her manner, did not fill the night with questions as he once might have done. Instead he slowly unwrapped himself, reaching for his sword. F
ⁱ
rekeeper moved on to Harjeedian. Harjeedian had not slept a night through since he had taken over Bitter’s care, but he woke readily and with little prompting reached for the curved blade that served him as a weapon.

Firekeeper’s motions woke Lovable and Bitter. The ravens knew better than to croak. Lovable was clearly curious, but although she could fly a little now, she did not take to the safety of the trees. Instead, she settled herself near Bitter. The male raven had become more alert over the last day or so, but his pain was so intense that there was no way he could fly, much less defend himself. He waited, his one remaining eye moving abruptly in its socket as he sought to identify the source of their danger.

“What is there?” Lovable asked with fluffed head feathers.

Firekeeper shrugged, tossed her head back as if catching a scent, touched her ear, then moved on.

The eerie silence had spread. Even the cricket had fallen still. It was the silence of the forest when every living thing seeks to hide from prowling hunters, but from the fashion in which Blind Seer and Eshinarvash continued scenting the wind, they had not identified who these hunters might be.

Firekeeper bent her bow stave, and while she was stringing it, Plik came over to her.

“Is Truth back?”

Firekeeper shook her head. The jaguar had gone out into the forest to do whatever it was she did at night instead of resting.

Plik made a soft chuffing noise. He was not armed except for a sturdy club. Before this journey, there had been little reason for him to fight. He had hunted much as a raccoon did, fishing in streams, stealing eggs, but he had also had the farms of the maimalodalum, their poultry and goats to sustain him. Still, looking at Plik as he stood there with his fur puffed and his face set stem, Firekeeper remembered that old boar raccoons were formidable opponents indeed.

Eshinarvash caught the stray scent first.

“The air smells of broken branches and crushed leaves mingled with green sap. At first I thought something had been broken by those who stalk us, but the scent grows more intense.”

Firekeeper remembered the creatures made from vines and branches. From their sudden watchfulness, from how Derian and Plik moved as one to stir up the coals in the hearth, she could tell the others did as well.

Blind Seer backed from the camp’s edge, his hackles raised, a faint growl rumbling in his throat. Wolf-like, he was not challenged that another had caught the scent before him. He accepted the horse’s expertise in telling one plant from another. Indeed, if they survived this, he would probably compliment Eshinarvash.

If they survived.

Firekeeper moved to the fire.

“Take care!” she warned. “I could use fire because I could keep it contained. Here, if it is carried into the trees, we may well all burn to death.”

Derian shuddered. “But how can we defend ourselves without fire?”

Firekeeper considered. “Cut at the vines, not the branches. I think these are sinew and tendon to them. But there is better way than cut. If these things have animal form, break the carrying limbs. No matter what foul life they have, if they cannot move …”

Derian gripped his sword more tightly and nodded stiffly, his head moving back and forth as he scanned the tree line for whatever might emerge. Knowing the vines could be turned into enemies, they had cleared the area surrounding their camp both of shrub and vine, but they could do nothing about the trees.

These and the darkness provided ample cover for whatever was stalking them.

“Perhaps they are only scouting,” Harjeedian said, and Firekeeper was surprised to hear hope tight in his voice. She was so accustomed to the aridisdu’s acting as if he knew everything that it had never occurred to her that Harjeedian might be afraid. “Perhaps they are returning our visit of the day.”

Firekeeper said nothing, knowing the human talked to keep his spirits up. The Beasts had positioned themselves around the perimeter, close to the fire, but not too close. Plik stood with the humans within this first circle. The ravens simply waited.

Eshinarvash shifted uneasily. Like the wolves, he was accustomed to being with a larger group of his own when predators must be fought. Still, like the wolves, the horse knew that it was the place of those without young to defend the weaker members. He would stand.

But we could use Truth,
Firekeeper thought.
I would even settle for that Meddler right now.

They waited until the end of patience and beyond. They waited until each one doubted that there was anything out there in the darkness, but each doubt was stilled by the continuing silence of the insect world. Imagination might be tempted, patience tried, but nothing fooled those small watchers.

Something was there. Moreover, whatever was there was doing something other than waiting, else the insects would resume their songs. Firekeeper watched her section of the forest, keeping herself alert through faith in a cricket.

When the creatures showed themselves, it was not as they had done before. This time there was no slow, steady creeping forward, no attempt to fool the eye into believing it saw just, another tree or shrub. Later, Firekeeper would think that the bracken beasts must have crept until they reached the edge of the grove in which the camp was made. At the time, all she knew was the moment that silence ended and the forest itself seemed to rush forward in a snarling mass of fangs and claws.

She found herself confronted by three: a pair of wolves and a lumbering two-legged bear. The two wolves were racing forward, one centered on her, the other on Plik.

Firekeeper crouched, hands spread, ready to meet her opponent. When it rushed her, she got beneath its body, scooping it up and heaving it toward the other wolf. She had angled herself so that the first wolf’s momentum would aid her throw, and she was pleased when a crash of branch and bracken announced her success. Her Fang would do little good here, but she had made note of a piece of firewood that would serve as an ideal club. With this she bashed at the long pieces of wood that served the “wolves” as legs and necks until she had reduced two opponents to a seething mass of timber and vine.

When she looked, she saw that Eshinarvash and Blind Seer were working as a team, the wolf biting and snapping, worrying at their opponents, while the horse reared and trampled. It was a fight in which the wolf’s natural strengths meant little, for the throat tear or gut rip by which a wolf downs his prey could do nothing to a creature with neither guts nor throat. However, when the blood briar wriggled free of its frame and sought to cripple the Wise Horse by hooking in his legs, then did the wolf come into his own—and then did the trust between the two show itself at its finest.

The humans were actually doing better in this fight than Firekeeper might have imagined. Both Derian and Harjeedian had taken up clubs. Plik was feeding the fire, letting it flare just enough to give the humans light without risking blinding those who saw well in shadows. Someone had moved the ravens into that protective ring and none of the bracken creatures seemed interested in attacking them. Lovable hopped about, plucking at small things on the ground, probably scattered bits of briar, though Firekeeper was too pressed to investigate.

That was all Firekeeper saw, for her attention was claimed by a creature with a vague resemblance to a lynx, though no lynx could boast of so many claws so long and so horridly hooked. In them, Firekeeper recognized the blood briar, and kept a careful distance when she could. Despite this, she must close and when she did, the thorn claws bit, and where they drew blood her skin went numb.

But despite the company’s good and valorous defense, they might have lost the battle had not Truth returned. The bracken beasts kept coming and coming, as if the dark forest itself was birthing them, then urging them forth to fight.

Firekeeper was battering at the midsection of a serpent that was straining toward Blind Seer, all too aware that yet another bear was lumbering toward her and that her strength was failing her. The next moment there was a scream of feline rage and Truth was there by the campfire, rushing forward, leaping on the bear so that it went crashing to the ground beneath the jaguar’s weight. There was a sharp crack as jaws powerful enough to break a snapping turtle’s shell snapped the heavy branch that gave the “bear” a spine. The entire construct went tumbling down, and Truth’s paws ripped apart the tangled mass before it could re-form in some practical fashion.

Truth’s arrival gave them all heart. Derian managed a cheer, Blind Seer echoed with a howl. Truth did not acknowledge except by fighting even more furiously. The jaguar seemed to be everywhere, crushing a support limb of this creature, knocking another creature backward, then rearing on her back legs and slashing out with both paws. Never before had Firekeeper been aware of the power in that compact body, and never before had she had so much reason to be grateful for it.

At long last they realized the darkness had no more monsters to send, and they limped back to the brightness of the fire to assess their wounds. It was then that they realized Plik was missing.

Before much energy could be wasted on either speculation or fruitless search, Bitter the raven stirred himself and made the loudest sound he had yet managed.

Harjeedian, his cotton shirt ripped in dozens of places and bits of briar still hanging from the ruin, moved rapidly and crouched near his patient.

“What is it?” he asked, then glanced at Firekeeper. “Well?”

Firekeeper realized with a start that she alone remained to serve as translator. She crossed the camp in a few quick strides, kneeling near the raven so that he would not need to exert himself too greatly.

“He say …” She tilted her head to one side, indicating that Bitter should continue.

Lovable was the one who spoke.
“I saw
it, too.
No need to
talk.”

Bitter subsided, though the ruffling of his feathers said more clearly than words, “Then tell them, fluff head!”

Lovable went on as if Bitter had not spoken,
“During the fighting, I stayed here. The briars at first had no thought for us—if they have thought at all—but as the rest of you shredded the first creatures, the briars that remained undamaged began questing for easier prey. I cut many of these with my beak, but there were too many for me to battle alone. Plik saw this quickly. Being so much smaller, he could not fight the monsters as you larger ones did, but he had managed to take out a carrying limb or so. Now he left this, and joined me in trampling and
breaking the
small
briars. It was his thought that we toss them in the fire,
and
this served double purpose, ending their motion
and
lighting
our fight.

“Even so, our task became not easier but more difficult as the battle progressed, for every great creature that fell gave forth many, many of the wrigglers. Both Plik and I were snagged many times by the thorns—he more often than I, for I at least could flutter a little above the ground.

“Do you recall that last rush of attacks, right before Truth arrived? There was one other attacker, one those of you concentrating on those who came from outside the firelight never saw. Remember how I told you that me and Plik were trying to destroy the loose briars?”

Firekeeper wanted to growl that she couldn’t possibly forget, but she made herself be calm.

“I remember,” she said, speaking Pellish, for she had been translating as Lovable spoke.

“Here we saw something horrible happening. The briars stopped acting as individuals, but began twisting onto each other, forming a sort of snake. It wasn’t as big as the snake that attacked us at the stone house, but it was big enough. It twisted around Plik and began dragging him into the forest. He ripped at it—tore it nearly in half at one point—but it just re-formed. You all were providing plenty of material for it from your own fights.”

“Why didn’t you call us?” Blind Seer said. “I certainly could have been some help.
”

Lovable collapsed on herself.
“I thought it wanted Bitter! I put myself between him and the snake, and bit at it as ferociously as I could. It was only after it had a coil or two around Plik that I realized that it was doing other than subduing a formidable opponent.
”

“And Plik,” Harjeedian said when Firekeeper finished translating this, “doubtless didn’t cry out because he had taken a large dose of the briar poison. Bitter’s experience makes me believe that in small doses it numbs surface area, but that in larger doses it may cause a state similar to a coma.”

Firekeeper didn’t understand most of Harjeedian’s words, but she gathered the sense. An odd prickling of hope raced along her nerves.

“Plik may be alive, then,” she said. “Those who come here did not try and carry us off. They tried to hurt, to kill.”

She held up her own lacerated arm, though no one present really needed that testimony.

Derian nodded. “Plik they didn’t try to kill—at least at the end there. It’s possible the briars needed a source of blood to get out of here, maybe to shape other creatures …”