The Dog Master (37 page)

There was a commotion as Urs and Valid pushed their way forward. Palloc turned to face them. “We bring weasel meat, Hunt Master,” Palloc greeted respectfully.

Urs never slowed down. He walked right up to Palloc and struck him hard on the side of the head. Palloc spun, gasping with shock and pain, and saw Grat fall to the ground as Valid slapped him in the face.

“You were forbidden to leave!” Urs bellowed.

Palloc stood himself tall, biting back the hatred roiling inside him, resisting the urge to grab a club and beat the hunt master bloody. “We needed food,” he protested.

“You knew you were not to leave the settlement!” Valid shouted at him.

Grat lay where he had fallen, too stunned to be enraged. This should not be happening—the rule against fighting among the hunt was inviolate. It was what kept them unified. But what could one do if the hunt leaders were the ones breaking the taboo?

Palloc folded his arms so that no one would see his trembling hands. “We needed to hunt,” he insisted weakly. He searched for his mother, but Albi was nowhere to be seen.

“Yes, and because of you, the hunt has been delayed two days,” Urs snapped back.

“We thought you had both been taken by the Cohort,” Valid growled. “We did not dare leave until we determined what had happened. Did it not occur to you to tell anyone you were going on an unauthorized hunt?”

“We have wasted two days,” Urs repeated. He looked ready to hit Palloc again and Palloc braced for it. Then the anger went out of Urs's eyes, and he relaxed his fists. “Palloc,” he said sadly, “you just do not think before you act. It is why I could not have you as my spear master.”

Urs turned away from him then, the rest of the hunters following suit, leaving Palloc to stand there with Grat his only ally. Grat stood, dusting himself off, and the two men exchanged looks. Palloc was ashen and looked ready to cry, but Grat's expression was black with hate. “Urs will regret this day,” Grat vowed. “He will regret it.”

 

FORTY-THREE

The mother-wolf, granddaughter to the great wolf who had first accepted tribute from the man, was still the dominant bitch. Her pack's range had grown, leading to challenges from other packs, but the wolves in her pack were larger than most others, and the dominant female was largest of them all.

She still took food directly from the hand of man. None of the wolves from her two litters had the courage to do this, but they did not skittishly flee when they spotted humans out on the plains, either. They all knew by scent the man who provided the mother-wolf food, and the people who traveled with him were familiar, too. Other packs of humans were aggressive to the wolves, as were the larger, darker people who lived in the forest. The mother-wolf had learned how to discern the difference between friendly humans and those who meant harm, how to smell their emotions and predict their behaviors based on their movements and gestures.

Her pack was healthy. Much of their prey this year were sick and frail from the lack of forage—something the mother-wolf did not fully comprehend, of course, but she could smell the weakness coming off the ungulates, spot the ones they would take for their meals.

Still, when the scent of the man was close, she liked to break away and find him and be fed—not just for the easy meal, but because there was something about the man that drew her. She saw him now, and he was standing with his frequent companion, the human female. The mother-wolf approached them boldly, seeing their eyebrows rise and their mouths open—something the mother-wolf knew meant they had brought meat.

She would eat.

*   *   *

A pall lay over the Kindred that summer, even as hunting greatly improved and the gaunt hollows under their eyes receded. Death was not unfamiliar to the tribe, especially when it came to children, but losing Nix and Vent, who were fathers, and the younger Dog and Markus, hit especially hard. This was not due to a disease or accident, this was a tragedy deliberately inflicted by other humans.

Calli craved her son, needed Mal to be with her, but Mal could not seem to bear a single day by the family fire, and was often by himself. When he saw his mother, he thought of Dog. And when he saw Lyra, he thought of Dog. There seemed to be no safe place to rest his eyes, because everywhere he looked he expected to see Dog coming toward him.

“Please Mal,” Calli blurted to him once.

He turned his eyes to her, puzzled. “Please what, Mother?”

Calli could only shake her head helplessly. She did not know what. She wanted them all to stop hurting. She wanted her sons to both be alive and healthy.

As the shadows advanced out from the trees earlier each evening, Bellu did not call the women to council, and Calli realized her friend did not want to migrate. Bellu had always despised winter quarters—a common feeling among the Kindred, but more often articulated by Bellu, who had lost a baby to disease and two brothers and a nephew to the Cohort and was comforting herself by taking daily baths.

Calli approached her directly. “Bellu, the night is gaining strength, and air brings chill. It feels past time to migrate to winter quarters.”

Bellu was in the bath. She sighed, putting a hand to her face. “This has just been such a hard summer for me. I am not feeling ready. No one seems to understand that I just lost two brothers and a nephew.”

Calli pursed her lips. “Yes, and I lost a son, Bellu,” she reminded her friend quietly.

“I have had two children die!”

“I know.”

“I just do not want to leave yet.”

“But you know it will be harder still if we stay too long.”

“I do not know that,” Bellu responded petulantly. “Why do we always leave? Because we have always left.”

Exasperated, Calli sought out Urs.

“It is time for us to leave for winter quarters,” Calli declared.

“Is that what the women's council wants?” he replied, looking relieved.

“Yes,” Calli affirmed. “Well … not Bellu. But we all know it is time; the days are growing short.”

Urs nodded. “But we cannot depart if the women are not ready.”

“The women
are
ready,” Calli shot back. “You just need to talk to your wife.”

“Well…” Urs shrugged, grinning condescendingly. “You know, sometimes women are not easy to talk to.”

“No, I do not know,” Calli snapped. “She is your wife. Why are you afraid?”

Urs's eyes grew hard. “I am not afraid,” he corrected icily.

“Then talk to Bellu.”

“Do not tell me what to do, and do not presume to instruct a hunt master in what to say to his wife.”

Calli stared at him. “What happened to the man I used to meet upstream, in a bed of grasses?” she finally asked softly. “He was not afraid of anything.”

To his credit, Urs's fierce glare eventually dropped, and he seemed to honestly contemplate the question. “Everything seemed so easy then,” he finally responded, looking defeated. “I felt that I could conquer all. But now … now it is my job to lead the hunt, and if we find no food, the Kindred starves. Yet we must stay together for protection. I cannot send out the stalkers, not after what happened. You are right. I
am
afraid, now.”

*   *   *

“Would you like to do it?” Silex murmured to Denix as they watched the gigantic mother-wolf come toward them.

“No. You are the one, Silex,” Denix replied in a hushed voice. The mother-wolf was approaching them so casually Denix wanted to laugh. The wolf and Silex were
friends.

He knelt and Denix sucked in her breath. He offered the meat and the wolf took it out of his hand, as if there was nothing unusual about a man feeding an animal, holding the gift in her jaws as she turned and trotted away.

“I will never become accustomed to that,” Denix professed in a shaky voice.

“Yes!” Silex agreed. “I know what you mean.” He stood back up.

“You honor me, Silex, when you bring me along to pay tribute. Why am I the only one you invite, now? You no longer bring Brach.”

They started running together at an easy pace.

Silex thought about it. “Brach does not actually like it. And you are our best hunter. Everyone looks up to you, Denix. And … I just, I just appreciate having you with me,” he finally admitted. He glanced over at her, trotting at his side, and saw she was staring at him. “What is it?”

Denix put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Silex. There is something I need to tell you.”

They stood, breathing easily. The grass around them was all brown and dead looking. It made it easy to spot prey at a distance, but it also made the Wolfen easy to stalk. Twice Silex had seen a lion in the distance. He was anxious to get back to the hunters, as much for his own sake as theirs. The more hunters, the less likely they would be attacked.

“Silex,” Denix said, biting her lip, obviously struggling with something. He glanced at her mouth—there was something about the way that it was shaped, a perfect circle, which always drew his eyes.

Then he noticed that her face was flushed as if they had run much farther than they had, and was jolted with a sudden concern. “We should keep going.”

“No, would you please just listen to me?” she pleaded.

Silex raised his eyebrows. He thought he
was
listening.

“Do you mean that? You appreciate me being with you?” she asked.

He was not sure why, but looking into her plaintive brown eyes, he suddenly remembered her bathing, the water trickling down her beautiful naked body. It was an inconvenient moment for such an image to burst into his mind, because she obviously had something portentous to tell him about the hunt—but, if he allowed himself the truth, the fact was that he thought about what he had seen that day with a repetition bordering on obsession. Often it was the last vision he took with him into sleep at night.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Denix asked him in a whisper.

Silex shook himself out of it. “I am sorry.”

“Do not be
sorry,
Silex. Tell me,” she urged.

Silex had the apprehensive sense that she knew exactly what he had been remembering. “I am not sure what you want me to tell you, Denix.”

“What you are feeling, Silex. How you feel about
me.
”

Something was loosed in Silex then. It was as if a herd of animals were startled within him and now was stampeding through his blood. Denix's chest, rising and falling, made him remember Fia's breasts, and there was no mistaking the hot hunger growing in her eyes when she registered where he was looking. “We cannot do this, Denix,” he whispered in despair. He turned, shaking off her hand when she tried to stop him.

“Silex!”

When Silex ran as fast as he could, there was only one person in the Wolfen who could catch him: Denix.

But she did not try.

*   *   *

Lyra knew she was supposed to view the blush coming to the tree leaves as a sad thing. The trees were joining a battle to hold back the dark and the cold, shedding blood in the effort, some leaves already curled in death. But in truth she loved the time of year before migrations, and did not mind that Bellu was keeping them at summer quarters so late into the year.

Her grief was supposed to be a secret, just as her love for Dog was kept hidden away from the prying eyes of the council and Sidee, her mother. So she spent most days off alone, and had created work for herself, a labor requiring such industry she could forget about Dog's death until she crawled exhausted into bed—and this, too, was a secret.

She tracked Mal, saw him working up the nerve to speak to her, and knew why it was so difficult. Several times he seemed to approach, and then he would break away, his eyes haunted.

Finally, the separation was too much for the both of them. “Where do you go, most days?” Mal asked Lyra softly.

Lyra gave him an oddly pensive look. “I have a special place.”

Mal nodded, as if the answer was as complete as anyone could ask for. “It is cold,” he observed, pulling his thick furs around his shoulders and glancing up at the grey skies.

“I miss him so much,” Lyra replied. Her face twisted and she began weeping. Mal held her and let his own tears flow. With Mal, she felt safe revealing her full feelings. He understood her in a way no one else did. He was, she realized, her dearest friend.

*   *   *

“I saw you talking to Felka yesterday,” Lyra told Mal several days later. There was something teasing in the way she said it, an implication in her voice.

Mal blushed, but his heart fell. How could she kid him about another girl? He must mean nothing to her. “I have no interest in Mors's daughter,” he said tersely.

“Oh, I see,” she responded lightly. It was the first time Mal had seen her smile so unreservedly since Dog died.

“I am promised to someone else,” he informed her. He wanted this revelation to hurt, but Lyra exhibited nothing but surprise.

“You are?”

“It is all arranged,” he affirmed.

“With who?”

Not a bit of jealousy or disappointment, Mal noted sourly. “With a girl named Ema, from the Blanc Tribe. Their way is for the father to speak for a woman, so he approached my mother. I do not believe that the women's council has been informed, but I will live with the Blanc People so it does not matter.”

“But … you mean you would leave the Kindred?”

“Yes. Well, perhaps just in winter. We will have to see. No one in the Blanc Tribe thinks I am cursed.”

“And how do you feel about this Ema?”

Mal thought about kissing her at the ice cave. “She is in love with me. She kissed me. I liked it.”

Lyra laughed.

Mal blushed. “I am happy to have her as my wife. I think of nothing but the day I will see her again.” This last part was not true, but Mal felt some strange need to exaggerate his affections.