Children of the Wolves (23 page)

“Jelena,” William said again.

“Yes?”

He pointed toward the horizon. Shielding her eyes, Jelena looked in the direction he indicated. A group of horse riders stirring up dust headed in their direction.

Jelena got to her feet, cast a glance around her small group. Derek swung his bow to his shoulder. He had not been a protector in some years, but that did not stop him from slinging the quiver of arrows across his arm.

“Let's keep moving,” he suggested. “We'll keep an eye on them. But let's keep moving.”

“Yes,” Jelena said. She picked up the bow and quiver she used for hunting with the wolves so it would be ready to hand.

Without speaking, she and Derek took up positions on the outside of the group, encouraging the child Caterina and her blind mother Sarah to stay in the center.

It wasn't long before the horse riders drew to within hailing distance. Jelena and Derek faced them, bows at ready. The wolves held back, looking to Jelena for guidance.

A momentary commotion and then a figure staggered toward them on foot. The rider closest to him booted him in the back. He went sprawling and didn't get up.

One of the riders shouted something in a tongue Jelena didn't understand.

“It is the dōm,” Sarah said suddenly. “They have pronounced the dōm upon that man.”

Jelena glanced at Derek. “I'll go,” he said. Before she could protest, he was loping across the prairie toward the place where the fallen figure lay. She watched as Derek rolled the man over on his back, inspecting his wounds. After a moment, he hoisted the man over his broad shoulders. Jelena could see the smith's biceps swell with the strain but he moved easily and she knew that he wouldn't even be out of breath when he returned to the group.

They circled around Derek as he lowered the man gently to the ground. Matilda was already rummaging through the saddlebags for the metal box of medical supplies that Jelena had stolen from the caretaker the day they'd left the protection of the trees.

Matilda sank to her knees by the prone man, undid his tunic, and began probing with gentle fingers.

“He has been badly treated,” she said, “but I don't think it's fatal. He needs food and water and rest.”

Jelena nodded, her mind racing. She would have liked to have been under shelter for the night, in case the horse riders came back to harass them. So far they'd been fortunate, largely left alone by the other denizens of these broad encompassing plains. But their luck wouldn't hold forever. There were 70 tribes of the Irminsul, and not all of them were peacable.

Greco, the artist, rarely spoke but always seemed to anticipate what needed to be done. Scarcely had Jelena realized they would need to stop for the night when he had built a fire and unrolled their thin sleeping blankets and arranged them on the ground. That task completed, he rooted through the packs for the ingredients of their evening meal.

“Soup, I think,” Jelena said. “So we can share with him.”

Greco nodded and pulled the cooking pot from the smith's pack.

“Sarah,” Jelena said. “You understood the language?” Before her sickness, Sarah had sometimes accompanied the trader on his exploits.

“Yes. The Alantrans speak that language.”

“Ay,” said Derek, the only other one of the group who had gone beyond the fence before. “Their ponies looked very like the beasts the Western tribes ride.”

“They are most merciful to their unawakened,” Sarah said and Jelena was surprised to hear the venom in the other woman's voice. She was usually so gentle and calm and self contained.

Jelena remembered that the trader had always obtained her embroidery threads from the spinner of that tribe. The threads were quite beautiful. But it was the same tribe who had left this unawakened man here to die. As he surely would have done if Jelena's group hadn't been there to care for him.

Which gave Jelena pause. Had that been, then, some act of mercy? To bring him to them? But for all the Alantrans knew, her group could just as easily have been like the Umluans, torturing and killing all outsiders. Had the Alantran horse riders found it amusing to believe they were turning an exiled unawakened man over to a vicious tribe of killers? Which had it been — mercy or punishment?

“That's all I can do for him,” Matilda said, settling the injured man on one of the sleeping blankets and covering him with another. That would mean fewer blankets for the rest of them, but they would make do. Jelena would curl up with the wolves, who always kept her warm.

She saw to Horse, making sure the bay had food and water, then checked on the wolves. Topaz contentedly chewed on a deer hoof and the others sprawled in various poses of relaxation but they got to their feet to bump their heads against her as she walked among them, turning their muzzles up for her to stroke them.

She threw down handfuls of deer meat from a kill she'd made a few days previously. The group she led ate no meat, living off the gleanings of the prairie — which were there, if you knew where to look. But the wolves must have their meat.

The next morning, the Alantran man was awake and alert but had difficulty moving. He watched them warily, not trying to speak, accepting a cup of cold stew for his morning meal, but having trouble bringing the spoon to his lips. Matilda helped him and though he was polite, the wary look remained in his eyes.

“I don't believe his difficulty moving is a permanent condition,” Matilda said. “Just stiff and soreness from his ill-treatment.”

Jelena didn't immediately respond. She didn't want to stay in this exposed territory any longer than they must. But she couldn't leave the man to his fate, either.

“Can he ride?” she asked finally.

“Probably,” Matilda said. “If he must.”

Jelena nodded and walked over to where Derek stood deep in conversation with Sarah.

“I seek your advice,” Jelena said after greeting them.

Derek grinned, his bushy whiskers broadening as he gazed at her. “When have I ever stinted in that department?” he asked.

Jelena answered his smile with one of her own but it didn't last long. The weight of responsibility wasn't light and though she tried to share it, she still felt the load. Michael had known the burden of responsibility and yet he'd never complained. She supposed she hadn't either. An unwelcome thought intruded: if she had one less responsibility would it make a difference in the load? If, for example, Greco hadn't come along. If he left. Would that lighten her burden?

She would still have the others, and she would still be the leader and nothing would change that.

Had Michael known that, too? Had he known that it wouldn't ease his burden even if she was no longer under his protection? She clenched her hands into fists. Had her sacrifice been for nothing? Meaningless? It hadn't helped him at all and it certainly hadn't helped her.

Her eyes stung but she refused to give into the emotion. She hadn't understood leadership before but she did now. She'd done the best she could at the time.

She turned her attention back to Derek. “Winter will be coming in,” she said. “Already the days grow shorter and the nights colder. We can't be caught unprepared on the plains when the snows come. We need to find a place of shelter.”

“Yes,” Derek said. He picked out a chisel from his pack, then squatted and used it to draw on a patch of dirt at their feet. “Look. This is where we came from.” He drew a group of circles with lines for trunks, representing trees. “Wudu-faesten tribe,” he said. Then he drew a light line north. “Here's the way we originally headed, directly north.”

He drew a thick curving line near the trees. “Here's the river that runs through Wudu-faesten land.” It lay to the east. “It starts far to the north. We could find it if we wanted to,” he said.

He touched the line that showed the route they had taken. “This is us, remember.” He put some hatch marks on the dirt. “The prairie.” Then he pointed out the west. “We know, because we can barely see them, that there are mountains there.” He sketched some curves to represent the mountains.

“The question is, do we travel to the east from here, where we can find the river? We'll need water. Where there's water there will be food. But I don't know if we'll find shelter. Or do we travel to the west from here to the mountains where we will be more likely to find shelter? Yet we may not find food and water.”

Jelena stared transfixed at the dirt. “What do you call this?” she whispered. It reminded her of the etching she'd seen on the cabinet door in the cave of the saved the day they'd left the tribe.

“This? It's a map. It just shows where you've been. And once you've been there, you can go back, and then if you set out again, why, you'll know where you're going. Now, if only I could fold this up and put it in my pocket, we would never be lost again,” he claimed extravagantly.

“Which is it to be?” Sarah prompted after Jelena had been quiet for a while.

“I want to stay near the prairie,” Jelena said. “The river gives life; maybe it will protect us.”

Derek gave a nod and said, “East it is.”

The rain came down in sheets, obscuring their vision, reducing their world to the makeshift shelter they crouched under to avoid the brunt of the storm. Michael could barely see his hand in front of his face.

He knew without Rufus telling him that the heavy rains would make it harder to track Jelena and the others. Rufus was a good tracker as well as a fine horseman but he wasn't that good — he couldn't find traces that no longer existed. The rain would wash away the hoof prints and the footprints and — knowing Jelena — the paw prints.

“If they came this way, they could have run into the Sithans,” Michael remarked, his mood exactly matching the gloomy day.

“Thought the Sithans were our friends,” Rufus commented sourly. “Besides, more likely to have encountered the Trinitarians this far south.”

“Suppose they ran into a hostile tribe,” Michael said. “What would happen to them?”

“You know what would happen to them, old friend,” Rufus said. “Better to fall among the wolves.”

Michael grunted. Indeed it would be, for Jelena's wolves posed little threat to her.

“If I find that woman,” Michael began and then stopped, shoulders slumping. If only he had spoken, if only he had known, if only he had acted.

“When, old friend,” Rufus said kindly. “When you find her.”

Michael stared into the rain as it obliterated all traces of Jelena's passing.

“When I find her,” he said softly.

“Ay,” Rufus said. “Ay.”

• • •

“I can find no signs anywhere,” Rufus said. “It's as if she vanished once she set foot beyond the fence.”

Their horses picked their way through ankle deep mud. The rain had stopped but the sky was still overcast and Michael knew the rain would come again soon.

“We're a day's ride from Tenoch Itzlan,” Michael said, naming the major city of the Trinitarians.

Rufus shuddered. “I hate going there,” he said. The riders occasionally trained with the Trinitarian guard as a gesture of friendship but no one doubted the ferocious Trinitarians could wipe out the Wudu-faesten if they so chose.

So far they had chosen not to.

“I could be back in the dining hall, drinking ale,” Rufus sighed. “And trying to convince Charmaine to let me show her a special rider drill.”

Michael grinned at his old friend. He envied Rufus's easy relationship with Charmaine and his enjoyment of all the simple pleasures — a warm fire, a mug of ale, a willing woman. Why did it always have to be so much more complicated for Michael?

• • •

The following afternoon brought them to the gates of Tenoch Itzlan. The mud brick wall that surrounded the city towered far above their heads and the heavy wooden gates must have weighed more than ten horses apiece. Rufus sighed again.

The guardsman on duty at the gate recognized them but stopped and questioned them anyway. They were forced to remain outside the gates until a young messenger could be sent to tell the captain of the guard the story that Michael had brought.

The afternoon had mellowed into evening by the time the messenger returned, panting, with the message that Michael and his companion could enter the city as long as they promised to be gone by sunrise. Neither Michael nor Rufus had any difficulty accepting this condition.

They urged their reluctant mounts down the packed dirt streets, passing dozens of small mud brick huts. Curious eyes followed them, but no one spoke. The smell of countless evening meals simmering over cooking fires made Michael's stomach growl. He had eaten too much hardtack and gleaned fruit in the last week but his mind rebelled at the thought of taking a meal here.

They turned their horses in the direction of the guard barracks. They'd both been in the city before, had both visited the barracks before. They knew what they had to go by to reach it, but still the knowledge didn't help prepare them.

Neither spoke as they passed the abattoir, the charnel house for what Michael could only think of as victims of the Trinitarians' peculiar religion. The three deities they worshiped demanded blood sacrifices. The blood was mixed with the dust to make the bricks with which they built their city. To Michael the entire place smelled of blood and pain and death. He couldn't imagine living willingly in this place.

The bodies were flung carelessly into deep pits gouged out of the earth and they were passing these now, the vultures tearing at fresh flesh, the bones that had already been picked clean glittering whitely in the setting sun.

“I hate this place,” Rufus muttered. “It makes me feel I will never laugh again, or hold a warm woman again, never — ”

“Rufus,” Michael said. The place affected him as badly but he didn't want to discuss it.