The Dog Master (53 page)

“She understands what you are saying?” Lyra asked incredulously.

“She has learned a few words. I do not know how much she understands,” Mal replied, freeing her from the leash. “Dog, you have to do what I say, now.”

“I will do what you say as well,” Lyra proclaimed.

Mal gave her an appraising glance. Two spears might equate to twice the chance of bringing down prey. “What I want Dog to do is chase the reindeer to us. She loves that part, but I can never get her to follow my instruction once they begin to flee. If they do come toward us, let us try to spear the same animal, whichever one is closest. Dog, sit down.”

Dog looked at Mal in disbelief, but did as she was told.
Do you not see the reindeer?
her eyes seemed to be saying.

“We have to do this,” Mal said grimly. “We have to be able to hunt, to put away food, or we will not survive the winter.”

Lyra put a hand on his arm. “We can do it, Mal.”

 

SIXTY-ONE

For Calli, passions once awakened were not easily put back to sleep, and she and Valid mated twice that afternoon, abandoning subterfuge and lying naked in the grass where anyone might come upon them. “I want to do this again,” she whispered into his ear as they lay lazily entwined.

“I am certainly willing but not sure I will be able to manage it,” he replied tentatively.

Calli laughed. “Not now. Again in the days to come. I will follow you on your punishing walks, and convince you to lie still instead.”

“Not entirely still,” Valid noted.

It was only as they approached camp, entering the area where Calli had spied Palloc and Renne, that their insouciance faded. They could not stroll into camp together, not with the secret they shared. Calli want on ahead while Valid, with once last furtive kiss, waited behind to put distance between them.

Nothing could cast shadow on her day, not even when Calli heard someone moving ahead of her and moments later came upon Albi slowly thumping her way up the path. Albi's eyes were sly when they took in Calli.

“So, the girl of mists and shadows,” Albi murmured. “Where have you been?”

Calli reminded herself that Albi could not know anything. “I have been looking for edible roots,” she said.

“Council Mother,” Albi corrected. “I have been looking for roots,
Council Mother
.”

With a sigh Calli made to push past, but Albi's stick came up, blocking the path. “You did everything you could, Calli Umbra, but you were not my equal and now I am council mother and the cripple was sent off into the woods to die. I have everything I wanted and you have nothing, all because you dared fight me.”

Calli looked into those cruel, pale eyes. “Until the next meeting, then,” she spat, losing control.

Albi's eyes narrowed. “What—” she started to ask.

“The curse is lifted, as you say. There is no excuse for you to be council mother anymore. Everyone despises you and now all feel sorry for me, for my loss. I will challenge you at the next meeting and not a single woman will stand with you.” Calli jutted her chin at the older woman.

Albi's movement was so swift Calli barely had time to move before the stout walking stick caught her in the side. With a cry she fell to the ground, eyes tearing at the flash of pain. She looked up and the old woman was raising her stick like a club. Calli gasped and rolled and the stick hit the ground next to her face.

“Stop!”

Calli raised her head. Valid was striding forward, his eyes murderous.

He, too, carried a walking stick.

When Albi turned to face him Valid brought his stick down with savage force on Albi's hand. Screaming, she dropped her stick and stared in disbelief at her broken, bloody fingers.

“Calli, are you well?”

“All is good, Spear Master,” Calli replied after a moment. She shakily stood, gazing at Albi, who had gone completely white.

“No man—” Albi began, her face contorted in fury as she bent to reach for her staff with her uninjured hand.

“If you touch that stick you will not live to pick it up,” Valid warned.

Albi froze, the anger draining from her face, replaced with fear.

“I am recalling a story my dear old friend Nix told me, long ago,” Valid said coldly. “About a promise he made to you one time. About what would happen if you ever struck another with that stick of yours. He is not here now to fulfill his vow to you, but perhaps I may serve in his stead. Perhaps I can do you the favor he promised you.” Valid grinned fiercely. “So, Albi. Would you like to pick the rock?”

*   *   *

Mal opened his fist, pointing off to his woman's side with all of his fingers, the gesture for
ready to run left
. Dog tensed. Mal took a deep breath, then chopped the air with his hand and pointed.
Away
.

Dog streaked off, momentarily seeming to forget the reindeer. “Good,” Mal breathed. She was doing what she had been taught, running where he had gestured, at an angle taking her to the left of the herd instead of straight at it.

When Dog turned back to look, Mal's hand was open.
Remain
. Dog stopped, sitting, facing him. Mal nearly broke silence, wanting to laugh with pleasure. This was working!

Some of the reindeer had seen the wolf and were staring intently, but when Dog halted they went back to grazing, though now the larger ones were stopping every few seconds to raise their heads and watch the predator. This is what they did, conserving energy, not reacting until a true threat emerged.

Mal chopped the air and Dog ran, still at an oblique angle. It was as they had practiced, but she had never kept the discipline with prey so near. “Just a little bit farther,” Mal urged in barely audible tones.

Something off to the right alerted the herd and they raised their heads as one, and the coordinated movement caught Dog's eye. She slowed, hesitating, her training at war with her instincts, and then with obvious elation she veered off path and ran straight toward the herd, avoiding antlers and trying without success to jump up on their haunches.

“Oh no,” Mal said sadly.

“What is it?” Lyra asked.

“They are going to flee … Wait!”

When the ungulates bolted they turned and thundered right at Mal and Lyra. He stood, raising his spear, conscious of Lyra next to him doing the same. The herd swerved away but one clumsy juvenile, full grown but still running a bit awkwardly, was very close. Mal threw his spear and, a moment later, Lyra did the same.

Dog was running next to a small female, jumping up and worrying its haunches, smelling her man and enjoying this wonderful time the two of them were having together, when the scent of fresh blood hit her nose. She hesitated only a moment before turning and running after a young female reindeer who was bleeding from her neck and somehow carrying two of her man's sticks. The blood tantalized and thrilled Dog, who did not even look around when her man called her name.

“Dog! To me!” Mal yelled again. He watched in defeat as the herd stampeded off, Dog alongside the one Mal had wounded, worrying the reindeer, lunging at the bloody gash in its neck. One of the spears fell to the dirt.

“That was the most exciting moment of my life!” Lyra exulted.

Mal did not explain to her that they had accomplished very little—in fact, they had lost one of their spears, and there was no way of knowing where Dog was now.

“All is good,” Mal said. He bent and picked up the fallen spear and the two of them followed in the direction of the herd.

*   *   *

When the speared reindeer weakened it fell behind. When it tried to stop Dog instinctively would not let it, lunging and snarling and snapping, keeping it running, keeping its blood pumping. When finally it stumbled, its neck wound came within reach and Dog sank her teeth into the mouthwatering flesh, holding on while the reindeer tried to fling her off. And then it was over, the reindeer down.

Dog fed with savage delight, her whole body intoxicated by the delicious sensation of a new meal on an empty stomach, and then she stopped.

She considered her man. Guiltily, his voice came back to her, the command to return to him echoing in her ears. She had been called and she had ignored that call.

Reluctantly, Dog abandoned her reindeer and turned back the way she had come.

*   *   *

Dog was now back on the restraint. When she and Mal and Lyra came upon the fallen reindeer, a male hyena had claimed it and was plundering the kill. Mal froze, instinctively pulling the rope taut and looking to the trees to see if other members of the hyena clan were emerging. A lone hyena was unheard of, and to be caught out in the open by a pack of hyenas would be fatal.

Dog's reaction was also instinctive, but entirely indifferent to caution and filled with fury. This was their kill, their food. Dog snarled, straining at the end of her leash.

“What is it?” Lyra gasped.

“A hyena. I have never seen one but it is exactly as I have heard them described.”

“It is hideous. What should we do?” Lyra asked.

Dog lunged and the strength of the wolf nearly pulled Mal to the ground. He hung on, feeling filled with Dog's power, his own caution evaporating with the heat of Dog's wrath. He let the rage flow from his wolf to his own heart. “Hyena!” Mal shouted. “Go away!”

He stepped forward, leaning back against Dog's lunges. “Away!” Lyra shouted, waving her arms. “Go!”

The hyena stopped feeding and regarded their slow approach with cold eyes, lips pulled back from its fangs, head lowered, its ugly mouth open and repulsive. There was something wrong with it, Mal saw. Its man's side leg, in front, curled off the ground, so that the hyena's limp was even worse than Mal's. That was why it hunted alone—the hyena, like the Kindred, drove its cripples out to die.

Mal smiled grimly. There might be comparisons, but there was no kinship between him and this scavenger.

Dog was in a frenzy. Mal kept a firm grip and raised his spear. Dog was already larger than most wolves out on the plains. Her enraged growls and lunges at the end of the leash meant that she was standing on two legs as she bared her teeth—something the hyena had never seen—and the scavenger's high-pitched warning snarls betrayed its fear. What were these fierce-looking creatures advancing so aggressively?

Mal let fly with the spear and when it struck the hyena it glanced off, but the shock of the impact drew a cry from the canid, and it darted away on three legs, sniveling and crying. Dog wanted to pursue, but Mal sternly pulled her back. They proceeded to the carcass, Mal keeping his eyes on the retreating scavenger in case it decided to circle back. “All is good, Dog,” he reassured her. “Please calm yourself.” He looked up at Lyra, and her eyes were glowing.

“It is as you said, Mal. Dog makes you a great hunter,” Lyra breathed.

“Well … it did not go as I had intended. And having you there, Lyra, that was a help I have not had before.”

She shook her head at him in wonder. “You are so unlike all the others, who would brag about this kill and steal credit from one another. Dog is your weapon, the way the spear is my father's. And just as he is the spear master, you are the dog master, Mal.”

“Dog master,” Mal repeated, delighted.

They smiled into each other's eyes, until a whine from Dog reminded them they had a carcass to butcher.

*   *   *

Lyra caught Mal staring at her as she ate cooked reindeer by the fire at the base of the natural chimney in the cave. She gave him a shy smile. “What is it? Why do you look at me like that?”

Mal shook his head. “There were just so many times I imagined this exact thing, you sitting by the fire with me. And now you are here.”

“And what else did you imagine?” she teased. She loved the way he blushed and then looked away—they were both thinking the same thing.

“This is a wonderful cave,” she said after a moment. She hugged herself. “Mal, there were times, when I was alone, when I saw the Cohort, I imagined the worst, and my only thought was that if I could find you, I would be safe.”

“My first night here, I was very lonely for my mother, and for the fires of the Kindred,” he admitted.

She nodded. “I cried for my father every night. But he is gone and I am here, with you.” She gestured around the den.

“Perhaps we should have some animals drawn upon the walls,” Mal suggested.

Lyra smiled. “Yes! And the first thing I will paint is you and Dog.”

Dog lifted her head at her name, then lay back down on the wolf pelt with a sigh.

“This is my family now. You, and Dog,” Lyra declared.

“But what do we do,” Mal asked slowly, “next summer, when the Kindred returns? I imagine your father will be very angry with me.”

“With
us,
” Lyra corrected gently. Then she shook her head. “I do not wish to think anymore about my father, or the Kindred. I do not know what we do then. I only know that if we are family, it is as if we are husband and wife. I only know what I want to do
now.
” Smiling knowingly, Lyra lay back on the lion skin, her arms open to Mal, who crawled across the cave floor to join her.

They kissed and it was so much nicer than sitting awkwardly on the rocks. She longed to feel him pressed against her and he responded to the way she was pulling him, climbing gently on top. The feel of his body stirred a heat inside her. He was panting and moving his hips and she responded with small thrusts of her own, swooning.

“Mal,” she whispered. “I want us to.”

He moved his lips to her ear and she shivered. “I am sorry to say I have no experience in this.”

“We will learn together.”

Lyra pulled off her tunic and unwrapped her skirt. Shadows from the fire leaped across Mal's face as he stared at her. Lyra reached for him, untying his own skirt. He shivered when she gripped him, and groaned aloud when she guided him into her. A quick, sharp pain made her gasp, but after a moment he began rocking, slowly and carefully, and she felt a glorious sensation build within her.