Spirit of the Wolves (31 page)

“The wolves brought me more food,” JaliMin said in perfectly clear speech. He smiled and rested his head against Prannan.

HesMi's expression softened. “They have done so much more than improve our hunt,” she said. “It's almost as if they are family. I can hardly believe they are truly a threat.”

“Our stories tell us the wolves are good for us,” TaLi said. “We're better people when they're with us.”

“Until they kill us in our sleep,” DavRian muttered.

“We will keep it in mind,” HesMi said, nodding to DavRian, but she had turned her attention to her grandson. It was clear she had dismissed DavRian.

I thought DavRian would be frustrated or angry, but he just smiled at HesMi and turned away.

I began to crawl out from the bushes.

“Wait, Kaala,” Ázzuen said. “Look how uneasy some of the humans are.”

I stopped. Small groups of them clustered together. They were whispering to one another, their shoulders tense. I recognized the male who had thrown the chunk of wood at me after we'd seen the crazed wolf. The smell of fear wafted through the village.

“He's going to keep trying to get them to fear us until he succeeds,” Ázzuen said grimly.

“He doesn't have enough time,” I said. “It's almost Even Night and HesMi doesn't believe his lies.”

We waited until the humans had calmed down before walking as quietly as we could into the village. DavRian's friends whispered and pointed at us, but the other humans ignored them. I found TaLi curled up by one of the fires and lay next to her. Ázzuen settled on my other side. DavRian watched me, staring at me in challenge. When no one else was looking, I lifted my lip at him. He turned his eyes away,
ceding dominance to me. Satisfied, I curled against TaLi and basked in the warmth of the humans' fire.

My nose twitched, awaking me from a fitful sleep to the morning bustle of humans preparing for their day. There was meat nearby and the scent of it had set my stomach rumbling. I prodded Ázzuen awake, and we followed the scent to the warmest, smallest clearing that lay at the edge of the village. The humans were wasteful, and they often threw away bones that had good meat on them. Still, I didn't expect to see the good-size pile of cooked elk meat at the clearing's edge. This meat smelled old. I remembered then that when prey had been dead for several days, the humans didn't like to eat it unless they had preserved it. They didn't appreciate the strong taste of older meat, which was probably why they'd left it for us.

I ran to the pile of elk, then stopped. Something about it smelled wrong.

“Don't eat it, Kaala,” Ázzuen warned.

“I know.” I sniffed. The meat reeked of the gallin leaf, a plant so toxic that one bite would make a wolf violently ill. More would be deadly. And there was a lot of it in the elk meat. Another smell was just as strong. DavRian's scent. I remembered what he had told IniMin about trying to get rid of us, and I remembered him kicking the gallin plant at the gorse patch after the salmon hunt.

Ázzuen was growling softly. I thought about leaving dung atop the meat, to let DavRian know exactly what I thought of him and his attempt to kill us, but Trevegg had once told me that gloating over an enemy's failure only strengthened his resolve.
Instead, I kicked dirt onto the pile of meat. Any wolf who found it would know from its smell that it was poisoned and would avoid it.

If I'd had any doubts before, I had none now. DavRian had stopped trying to become krianan by fair means. He intended to defeat us. And he would kill us to do so. I snarled in contempt. If he wanted us dead, he was going to have to do better than that.

TaLi and BreLan were waiting for us by the herb den. TaLi had a huge grin on her face. I wondered how she could be so cheerful when DavRian was so intent on making her fail. I sat next to her, watching her carefully.

“Come on, wolves,” BreLan said. “We're going to teach TaLi how to swim!”

I stood and knocked my shoulder into Ázzuen's. I'd been trying to find some way to convince TaLi to learn to swim for as long as I'd known her. Somehow, BreLan had gotten her to agree, and I wasn't going to wait for her to change her mind. Prannan, Amma, and Lallna were all sleeping in the morning sun. We left them to their naps.

BreLan led us to a shallow, slow-moving part of the river. TaLi had a small pouch at her waist, and I could smell firemeat in it, as well as the leaves of the fat-stem plant, which grew profusely along the streambed near Kaar. Its flowers were temptingly fragrant at night, but its leaves were too bitter to eat. TaLi kept giggling and then stopping herself. She'd been so reluctant to learn how to swim, I couldn't figure out why she was enjoying the prospect so much now.

BreLan stood on the shore while TaLi waded into the river until the water was up to her waist. Tlitoo winged down to stand on a rock in the middle of the river. He looked at me and chortled, then flew to the far side of the river.

“Come out here with me, Kaala,” TaLi called.

I waded to her. BreLan walked at my side while Ázzuen watched from the riverbank.

As soon as I was chest deep in the river, TaLi lost her footing and fell. I bolted to her, but when I reached her, the water was only up to my neck, which meant TaLi could stand easily. Confused, I looked from her to BreLan. TaLi surged to her feet, and she and BreLan tackled me so that everything but my head was submerged. Then, as BreLan held me, TaLi rubbed the fat-stem leaves all over me, covering me in their scent. She and BreLan dunked me under the water again and again until the foam from the fragrant leaves was washed away.

“
Now
you smell better,” TaLi said with a huge grin. BreLan thumped me on the side. Tlitoo flew above us, cackling.

I slogged out of the water, glowering at all of them. I shook as hard as I could, trying to shake off the indignity as much as the water. Ázzuen was laughing at me and trying to hide it. I ignored him and found a sunny spot where I could dry off.

BreLan did try to teach TaLi how to swim, towing her back and forth in the deeper part of the river while Ázzuen and I lay in the sun. But every time BreLan let her go, TaLi sank. She got angrier and angrier. Forgiving her for dunking me, I went back out, Ázzuen beside me. Even with all of us encouraging her, she kept sinking. Frustrated, she tramped to shore. She and BreLan lay down together and fell asleep in the sun. Ázzuen and I settled beside them. Soon his even breathing
told me he slept. I closed my eyes, but before I could fall asleep, I smelled sweat and dream-sage. I snapped my eyes open. A shadow crossed over me, and I twisted my neck to see DavRian watching us from the trees. I didn't know how long he'd been there, or how much of TaLi's failed lesson he'd seen. I was uneasy for a moment, but didn't see how TaLi's swimming ability would affect the way HesMi saw her, and DavRian couldn't hurt the girl with both BreLan and me at her side. He slipped back into the woods and I placed my head protectively on TaLi's belly.

“You're wet, Kaala,” she complained. Then she smiled. “But at least you don't smell like rancid meat anymore.” We lay in the sun, enjoying the warmth of the day. I thought of days to come, when we could relax with our humans without worrying about DavRian or Even Night, or the Sentinel wolves.

At late-sun, TaLi and BreLan rose and started back. When we ran, they followed us, racing us back to the village.

The wail of grief reached us when we were twenty wolflengths from the village, and it stopped us short. The last time I'd heard a sound like that was when one of Rissa and Ruuqo's pups had been trampled to death and the pack had sung his death song.

We walked forward slowly. Humans were lined up along a path that led to the warm side of the village, where the smallest clearing lay. One by one, humans looked up at us, their faces bleak. Tears dampened the face of a woman, and I put my nose to the back of her hand. She stroked my head.

A smaller group of humans clustered around something. TaLi gasped and my throat constricted with dread. The cry of
grief rose again. It was HesMi's voice. I pushed between the legs of two humans.

JaliMin lay perfectly still, his chest not moving, his eyes wide open, his face stiff in death. There were no wounds on his body, and even from where I stood I could smell the elk meat on him and the scent of the poisonous gallin leaf. He lay not five wolflengths from where the poisoned meat had been. I crept toward him, forcing myself to look at his face. He stared at me in reproach.

Ázzuen slunk up next to me, his tail so low it dragged in the dirt.

“We should have buried it, Kaala. We should have marked it better.”

We should have. I could imagine what had happened. JaliMin had grown accustomed to our feeding him. He had found food by our paw prints, so he ate it.

None of the humans seemed angry with us. None of them seemed to understand our part in JaliMin's death. But none of them knew that DavRian had poisoned the meat, either. I staggered back to where the tainted meat had lain. It was gone. I paced around the spot several times. There was just damp ground, the scent of gallin, the scent of wolf, and the scent of JaliMin.

The humans would never be able to figure out what had happened. They wouldn't know DavRian had set out tainted meat. I watched them as they grieved. Some were bent over JaliMin. Some were weeping and some were still and silent. All were mourning.

Except for DavRian.

I thought he might look remorseful. I expected, perhaps,
that he would be horrified by how, in his attempt to poison us, he had killed a beloved child instead. But though his expression was sorrowful, his body and his scent belied his show of sadness. He smelled of anticipation and his muscles were taut as if he were ready to run after prey.

The murmuring started with IniMin. “DavRian warned us that all of the wolves have poison in their teeth.” His whisper carried on the wind. “JaliMin played with them all the time. It was only a matter of time before their poison killed him.”

I slunk to Ázzuen. “He can't have planned it,” I said. “There's no way he could've known it would kill JaliMin. He'll have to be more careful now.”

“Not if being careless gets him what he wants,” Ázzuen answered.

DavRian walked up to a weeping HesMi and spoke to her, head bowed.

HesMi shook her head. “The boy was always getting into things,” she said, tears in her voice. But she looked at us long and hard. DavRian gripped her arm and spoke more urgently. HesMi shook him off. “I will make no decisions tonight,” she said. “My grandson is dead and I will mourn him.”

Prannan slipped up to HesMi and butted the human leader's hand. HesMi stroked his head absently. When she ducked into a shelter, she allowed Prannan to follow.

I felt someone watching me. I lifted my head to see DavRian looking down at us, a smug smile spreading across his face. He turned and walked away with a swagger. When he shoved aside the preyskin opening of the shelter he had been given, he smelled of triumph.

T
hey buried JaliMin, as was their way, in a small field not far from the village. I could smell the bones of other humans under the earth, and I found myself glad that JaliMin would not be alone.