Through Wolf's Eyes (2 page)

Unlike Derian, Ox felt no inordinate awe toward Race
Forester, aware that in his own way he was as valuable as the guide.
How many men could shift a battering ram by themselves or do the work
of three packers?

"Think that wolf wants us for dinner?" Ox asked Race in his deep-voiced, ponderous way.

"Hardly," the guide retorted scornfully. "We're too big a group and wolves, savage as they are, are not stupid."

"Well," Ox replied, laughing at his own joke, "you'd better tell the mules that. I don't think they understand."

Sir Jared Surcliffe, a lesser member of Earl
Kestrel's own family, but prouder of his recently acquired nickname
"Doc" than of any trace of noble blood, crossed to claim the general
provisions bundle. Like the earl he had black hair and clear, grey
eyes, but his height and build lacked the earl's seeming delicacy.
There was strength in his long-fingered hands—as Derian had learned
when Jared stitched a cut in his forearm a couple of weeks back. Derian
recalled that Doc had won honors in battle, so he must have other
strengths as well.

"Valet has the fire started," Jared said, an
upper-class accent giving his simple statement unwonted authority.
"I'll start dinner. Race, shouldn't you see if there might be a fish or
two in yonder brook? Earl Kestrel would enjoy fresh trout with his
dinner."

Had anyone but Jared or the earl himself even hinted
at giving the guide orders, he might have found himself standing a
late-night watch on an anthill. Race Forester, though, for all his
pride in his skills, knew when he could—and could not—push his social
betters.

"Right," he grunted, and departed, whistling for
Queenie, his bird dog. The red-spotted hound reluctantly abandoned the
station near the fire from which she'd been watching Earl Kestrel's man
unpack the delicacies kept for the earl's own consumption.

When the wolf howled again, Derian wondered how much
of Queenie's reluctance was due to leaving the food and how much to the
proximity of the big predator.

"They say that the wolves in the mountains are bigger
than anything found in settled lands," Derian said, talking to distract
himself and feeling freer to speculate now that Race was gone.

"They do," Doc agreed, "but I've always wondered,
just who has seen these giant wolves? Few people have gone beyond the
foothills of the Iron Mountains—those mostly miners and trappers. As
far as I know, the only ones to have crossed the range are Prince
Barden and those who went with him."

Derian finished currying Roanne and moved to the earl's Coal before answering.

"Maybe in the early days," he hazarded, "when the colonies were new. Maybe people saw the wolves then."

"Possibly," Jared said agreeably, shaping a journey cake on its board. "And possibly it's all grandmother's fire stories. Race
is
right. Wolves and other night creatures do sound bigger when you're camping."

Conversation lagged as the members of the expedition
hurried to complete their chores before the last of the late-spring
light faded. Part of the reason Earl Kestrel had planned his journey
for this time of year was that the days would be growing longer, but
after hours spent riding on muddy trails, the evenings seemed brief
enough.

Cool, too
, Derian thought, blowing on his fingers as he measured grain for the mules and horses.
Winter may be gone, but she's not letting us forget her just yet
.

Ox, who had finished putting up the tents and was now effortlessly chopping wood, paused, his axe in the air.

"If you're cold, Derian, you can help me chop this
wood. You know what they say, 'Wood warms you twice: once in the
cutting, once in the burning.' "

Derian grinned at him. "No thanks. I've enough else
to finish. Do you think we'll get snow tonight? The air almost has the
scent of it."

Ox shrugged, measuring his answer out between the blows
of
his axe. "The mountains do get snow, even this late in the season, but
I hope we're not in for any. A blackberry winter's all we need."

Derian frowned thoughtfully. "At home I'd say snow
would be a good thing for business. It's easier to move goods by sled
and people by sleigh, but out here, on horseback . . . I could do
without the snow."

"We won't have snow," announced Race, re-entering the
camp from the forest fringe. Three long, shining river trout dangled
from one hand. "The smoke's rising straight off the fires. Clear but
cold tonight. Derian, you might want to break out your spare blankets."

Derian nodded. He'd slept cold one night out of a
stubborn desire to show himself as tough as the woodsman and had been
stiff and nearly useless the next morning. Earl Kestrel himself had
chided him for foolish pride.

"Our mission is too important to be trifled with,"
Kestrel had continued in his mincing way. "Mind that you listen to Race
Forester's advice from here on."

And Derian had nodded and apologized, but in his heart he wondered. Just how important
was
this mission? King Tedric had seemed content enough these dozen years
not knowing his son's fate. And Prince Barden had shown no desire to
contact the king.

Earl Kestrel had been the one to decide that knowing
what had happened to the disinherited prince was important—Kestrel said
for the realm, but Derian suspected that the information was important
mostly for how it would affect the earl's private ambitions.

T
HE YOUNG WOMAN
was
bathing when a thin, tail-chewed female informed her that the One Male
wanted her at the den. The messenger, a yearling who had barely made
it through her first winter, cringed and groveled as she delivered her message.

"When shall I say you will come before him,
Firekeeper?" the she-wolf concluded, using the name most of the wolves
called the woman—a name indicating a measure of respect, for even the
Royal Wolves feared fire.

Firekeeper tossed a fat chub to the Whiner.
She
certainly wasn't going to have time to eat it, not if she must run all
the way to the den. Ah, well! She could catch more fish later.

"Tell him," she said, considering, "I will be there as fast as two feet can carry me."

"Slow enough," sneered the Whiner, emboldened as she remembered how all but the fattest pups could outrun the two-legged wolf.

Firekeeper snatched a stone from the bank and, swifter than even the Whiner's paranoia, threw it at the wolf's snout.

"Ai-eee!"

"That might have been your skull," the woman reminded
her. "Go, bone-chewer. My feet may be slow, but my belly is full with
the meat of my own hunting!"

A lip-curling snarl before the Whiner vanished into
the brush showed that the insult had gone home. Faintly, Fire-keeper
could hear the retreat of her running paws.

Her own departure would be less swift. Bending at the
waist, she shook the water from her close-cropped hair, then smoothed
the locks down, pressing out more water as she did so.

Even before her hair had stopped dripping down her
back, Firekeeper had retrieved her most valuable possession from where
she had set it on a flat rock near the water. It was a fang made of
some hard, bright stone. With it, she could kill almost as neatly as a
young wolf, skin her prey, sharpen the ends of sticks, and perform many
other useful tasks. The One Male of her youngest memories had given it
to her when he knew he was going into his last winter.

"These are used by those such as yourself, Little
Two-legs," he had said fondly, "since they lack teeth or claws useful
for hunting. I remember how they are used and can
tutor you some, but you will need to discover much for yourself."

She had accepted the Fang and the leather Mouth in
which it slept. At first she had hung them from a thong about her neck,
but later, when she had learned more about their uses, she had
contrived a way to hang them from a belt around her waist. Only when
she was bathing, for the Fang hated water, did she take it off.

Now she held the tool in her teeth while she reached
for the cured hide she had hung in a tree lest those like the Whiner
chew it to shreds. Most hides she couldn't care less about but this
one, taken from an elk killed for the purpose, was special.

Out of the center she had cut a hole for her head,
wide enough not to chafe her neck. The rest of the skin hung front and
back, protecting her most vulnerable parts. A belt made from strips of
hide kept the garment in place and she had trimmed away the parts that
interfered with free movement of her arms.

Some of the young wolves had laughed when she had
contrived her first hide, but she had disregarded their taunts. The
wolves had fur to protect themselves from brambles and sticks. She must
borrow from the more fortunate or be constantly bleeding from some
scrape. An extra skin was welcome, too, against the chill.

In the winter, she tied rabbit skins along her legs
and arms with the fur next to her flesh. The skins were awkward, often
slipping or falling off, but were still far better than frostbite.

Later in the year, when the days grew hotter and the
hide stifling, Firekeeper would wear only a shorter bit of leather
around her waist, relinquishing some protection for comfort.

Lastly, Firekeeper hung around her neck a small bag
containing the special stones with which she could strike fire. She
valued these less than the Fang, but without their power she could not
have survived this winter or others before it.

Faintly, Firekeeper remembered when she did not live
this way, when she wore something softer and more yielding than hides,
when winters were warmer. Almost, she thought, those memories were a
dream, but it was a dream that seemed
strangely close as she ran to where the One Male awaited her.

T
HE ONE MALE
was a
big silver-grey wolf with a dark streak running along his spine to the
tip of his tail and a broad white ruff. He was the third of that title
Firekeeper could remember and had held the post for only two years. His
predecessor would have dominated the pack longer except for a chance
stumble in front of an elk during a hunt in midwinter along an icy
lakeshore.

The current One Male had been accepted by the One
Female, who had led the pack alone through the remainder of that winter
until the mating season early the following spring. Competition for her
had been fierce and one contender had been killed. A second chose exile
rather than live beneath his pack mate's rule.

Yet the diminished pack had fared well, perhaps
because of, rather than despite, the losses. Fewer wolves meant fewer
ways to split the food. New pups had since grown to fill the gaps and
the Ones reigned over a fine pack eight adults strong—with a single
strange, two-legged, not-quite-wolf to round out the group.

Although she remembered when both had been fat,
blue-eyed, round-bellied puppies, Firekeeper thought of both the One
Male and the One Female as older than herself. However, though the
human had more years than the wolves, the reality was that they
were
adults while she, when judged by her abilities rather than her years, was a pup. Indeed, she might always
be
a pup—a thing she regarded with some dissatisfaction during rare, idle moments.

When she loped into the flat, bone-strewn area
outside of the den, the One Male was waiting for her. None of the rest
of the pack was visible.

The One Female was within the cave nearby, occupied
with her newborn pups. The day for them to be introduced to the rest of
their family was close and Firekeeper warmed in pleasant anticipation.
Already she knew that there were six pups, all apparently healthy, but
everything else about
them was kept a guarded secret until the great event of Emergence.

Seeing Firekeeper—though doubtless he had heard her
arrive—the One Male rose to his feet. She ran to within a few paces,
then dropped onto all fours. When he permitted her to approach, she
stroked her fingers along his jaw, mimicking a puppy's begging.

Tail wagging gently, the One Male drew his lips back
from his teeth as if regurgitating—though he did not actually do so.
All spare food these days went to the One Female and the pups.
Firekeeper, who had been made hungry by her swim followed by a swift
run, was rather sorry. Many times during the past winter meat had been
carried to her from a kill too distant for her to reach before the
scavengers would have stripped it.

"You summoned me, Father?" she asked, sitting back on her haunches now that the greeting ritual had been completed.

The One Male wagged his tail, then sat beside her, tacitly inviting her to throw an arm around him and scratch between his ears.

"Yes, Little Two-legs, I did. Did you hear the message howl some while ago?"

"Stranger! Stranger! Stranger! Strange!" she repeated softly by way of answer. "From the east, I thought."