The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (48 page)

The great beast's growl silenced him.  Its ears were still up, still interested, but he knew how quickly such things could turn.  A moment of confusion or a small miscommunication were all it had ever taken to set a pack on him—to leave him limping, torn, lost and alone again, a starving adolescent begging for shelter at a cabin door.

It shamed him how often he had turned to humans for help, but his swift attachment to the Guardian vessel was worse.  Ninke Raunagi was right; any rational wolf would have recognized the wrongness in the prey-spirit hunting the predator.  He should have been warier, more distant, and not let Cob treat him like a dog.  Not have behaved like one.

But it was fun!

He knew he couldn't make that argument.  The Wolf would kill him—or worse, cast him out to truly become a dog.  All of them had been wolves once.  Yet he had to say something if he ever wanted to rejoin the Guardian...

And I do.  I do.

He mustered his will and opened his mouth, only to cringe as Lark spoke first.

“Great Hunter, if I may?” she started, and his hackles eased marginally; he had thought she'd launch into a tirade like she did with Cob, but instead her voice was respectful and her stance cautious.  The goblin clung to her back as if hiding.

The Great Wolf swung its gaze to her and emerged almost fully, looming over them like a cliff.  Arik heard her throat click as she swallowed, then into the silence she said, “I simply wish to support my comrade.  My pack-mate.  I know I can't understand what a pack means to a wolf, but we who follow the Guardian are trying to...to emulate one.  The Guardian takes advice from the wolf inside him, and has his alpha-female, and the rest of us follow and support them in their hunt for the enemy vessel.  Like a real wolf-pack, right?  Cooperating to bring down dangerous prey?  Arik is integral to our pack, and even though the rest of us aren't wolves, we—“

Ninke Raunagi snorted heavily, and the girl shut her mouth.  “Yes, none of you are wolves,” it said, the hot meaty gust of its breath blowing their hair back and making Arik's eyes water.  “You may weave your robes of wolf-fur, you may bear wolf-blood, but you are not my children.  And thus you are dinner.”

Lark took a step back, stricken, and Arik tensed.  If she ran, he did not know if he could keep himself from chasing.  The nightmare from the manor house replayed itself behind his eyes: his friends and comrades strewn about the yard where he had torn apart his former masters, their flesh in his gullet, their blood on his claws.

Do it
, whispered his hunger. 
Prove yourself to the Wolf.  Slay this impertinent cat, crack her bones, suck the marrow.  Turn away from the weakness and corruption of the prey-spirit.

His teeth ached with the urge.  The scent of her fear hung heavy, enticing, and some part of him acknowledged that he'd never much liked her.  Brassy, strident, always fighting with Cob.

But she knew how to laugh, unlike some of the others.  She was generous; she was bold.  And she was alone too, like all of them.  Cob's pack of solitaires.

He knew his choice.  Fearful, bristling with quills, he skittered between her and the Great Wolf and lifted his chin defiantly.  “You may swallow me, but I will be a painful morsel.”

The huge eyes blinked.  “You think to challenge me, little dog-wolf?”

He hadn't, but now he realized it was the only answer.  “Yes, Great One.  And win or lose, you will release my friends.  My foolishness brought them here; they should not suffer for it.”

The Great Wolf gave a snort.  “Best my shadow-pack and I will consider your demand.”  As it eased back into the darkness of its den, the shades that populated the sandy scrub forest began to drift forward, utterly silent.  Their eyes gleamed in ghostly faces, their lips twitching over long white teeth.

Arik retreated slowly, keeping Lark behind him.  There was no safe place to put her, but he dared not leave her by the Wolf's den, lest it lean out and snap her up on a whim.  Perhaps the ghost-wolves would ignore her as they tore him apart; perhaps once he died, she and the goblin would fall safely back into the Grey, no longer held here by his connection to Raun.

It was a foolish hope.  The crossing was done, the passage closed—no way out from the Wolf's realm, not even for him.  But he clung to it.  He could not bear the shame of having gotten them killed.

Cob, my friend, I'm sorry.

A single wolf broke from the contracting circle to approach with ears laid back, teeth bared.  It stood as high as Arik's hip; in life it might have been a quillwolf like him, but in death it was a moving figure of smoked glass and ivory, coming in for the kill.

He dropped into a crouch, head lowered, clawed hands raised.  The shade darted toward his belly and he swiped for it, missing as it dodged back, then turned for another slash as it swung for his flank.  Again it retreated, and he planted his hands and lunged on all fours, aiming his teeth at its neck.  The shade jackknifed in response and crossed his fangs with its own; they were cold, its breath like winter.  As he recoiled, it ducked its head and went for his throat.

He sat back hard in the dust and brought his hands up for its neck just as it bit into his quills.  Its back paws rose to rake at his chest, belly, groin, and he flung himself to the side and took it with him, trying to overbear—to get an arm around its neck, his own hindpaws on its sides, his furred hands clamping around its muzzle.  Sand and salt flew as the struggle rolled them wildly, until he felt something snap within the writhing ball of rage.

The shade dissipated into cold smoke, and another fell upon him.

He fought hard, quills at full extension, his northern bulk and humanoid form giving him a sliver of advantage as the wolves came one-by-one.  That, he knew, was his only saving grace; he had challenged the Great Wolf and been acknowledged as a wolf himself—a contender for rank—and not a prey-animal to be torn apart by the full pack.  Low wolf all his life, he knew these fights well, and as they progressed from vicious shots toward the gut, the genitals, the vulnerable places into something more ritualized, more bravado and bluff than violence, he understood that he was making headway.  Wolves might disembowel prey and kill rogue wolves, but they only bullied and jockeyed with each other.  Exile was the greatest punishment, not death.

And so the first few shades turned to smoke in his teeth or grip, but the next wisped away once he bowled them over, or sent them running, or puffed himself to his greatest size and growled them down.  They got their bites in—on his limbs, his haunches, his cheeks and ears, not to mention all the torn-out quills—but he had spent almost two decades like this.  Hunting solo, fighting boars and wildcats, escaping traps.  Shifting on the fly, or refraining from it—too stressful sometimes, or too close to the spirit and its rage.

For a while, he fought a never-ending shade—a wolf or perhaps a series of wolves that would not die, would not be caught, that harried him from every angle, small and swift like Garnet Mountain wolves and too clever to bite his quills, too sleek to catch with his paws.  He went on the offensive but the shade just led him on a chase, never completely turning tail but luring him into the trees where his greater bulk was a disadvantage, snapping at his legs then slinking back, harrying him in and out of the brush like a fox with a bear.  Any time he thought he hit it, the tumble of smoke and shadow came at him from a new angle, until his tongue hung like an anchor from his mouth, too heavy to reel back in.

He nearly lost track of the den and his comrades and the watchful Great Wolf.  The shade fled, lunged, fled again, erratic, impossible, and when his jaws finally closed solid on its ruff, he felt it discorporate like the breath of winter down his throat.  For a long moment he just stood there, shivering, disoriented by the forest and the feel of victory.

When he emerged from the trees, all was as he had left it, though Lark looked greyer than before.  He paid her only a moment's attention, his gaze fixing anxiously on the den.  All the boldness he had garnered in his tussles withered away as Ninke Raunagi stepped free.

It was like staring up at a portcullis made of fangs.  Paws the size of his chest, claws the length of his forearm—a tail he could have climbed like a ladder.  His ears set back tight as the great beast approached, and like before, he could barely keep from pissing himself.  There was no chance.

Of
course
there was no chance.

Realization laid him on the ground in an instant, tail tucked tight across his groin and legs spread, arms flat beside his head.  He felt the chuff of the Great Wolf's laughter as it bent low to sniff him.  Of course he could not fight his patron spirit.  Wolf conflicts were not human conflicts, done for dominance; wolf packs were families.  They bickered about breeding, food, personality, age and rank, and while every parent eventually fell, it was for the health of the pack.  But Ninke Raunagi was not a king, not a parent.  It was Wolf—all wolves united in one.

Still, it terrified him when that fetid breath rolled over his fur, when the massive teeth grazed his ribs as if mouth-testing a new toy.  He tried to lay as still as possible, tried to keep the whimpers bottled up.  He was not a man, not a dog; he was worthy of a pack.  He was—

“Sufficient,” rumbled the Great Wolf.

It took an effort not to wag his tail.

The huge nose nudged him, and he cautiously scrambled to his feet, keeping low and deferent but daring to perk his ears.  The Great Wolf chuckled again, then licked him from eyebrows to tail with a tongue like an entry rug.  Arik's quills settled flat to his skin and he almost fell over again, overwhelmed by a feeling of homecoming.

The Great Wolf settled down casually, forepaws crossed, still dwarfing him but no longer imposing.  “Well now,” it said in its mountainous voice, “why have you come, little cub?”

“We have lost our makeshift pack,” said Arik, straightening cautiously.  “Wraiths and mages attacked us, and we were flung into the Grey.  Our pack-mates may still wander there.  We must find them, and the Guardian.  We did not wish to impose upon you, Great One, but...”

The spirit huffed, then raised its muzzle and took a deep draught of the air.  “You come to me from the faded sea, where my children's children run dry-mouthed and poisoned, salt-mad.  What business had you there?”

“None, Great One, only a wish to avoid conflict with the local clans and the eagle-kin nests.  We sought the Ravager.”

“Not within the salt, hm?  Else I would know of it.  My children still watch it for me when they can.  The wraiths, the treacherous metals, and the Eater below—so many enemies just out of reach.  It distresses me.”

Arik blinked.  He'd never heard of an Eater before.  Another thing he'd missed while alone.  “If the Guardian is still there, we must return, Great One.  As the cat-blood says, we hunt the Ravager as a pack—though the Guardian is not very good at pack tactics.”

The Great Wolf snorted.  “Perhaps I should not blame her for borrowing one of my children.  It troubles me to see her as the hunter, though.  When I drew first blood, it was to divide us from them—the hunters and the hunted.  I do not like the changes that have been wrought since.  Wraiths, hybrids, magic.”

As much as he wanted to defend humans, Arik knew better.  Some had been kind to him but others had pursued him with skinning knives, and he remembered Cob's face at the Garnet Mountain gathering, when some of the participants asked him when he would take their land back from the humans.  The unease there—conqueror's guilt warring with prey's fear—told him nothing would be done, because fear always won.  The Great Wolf had done its job too well.

Instead, he said meekly, “Can you find her?  The Guardian?”

A rumble welled up from the Great Wolf's chest.  “I have her scent, but I do not wish to speak with her.  When she crosses into the physical realm, I will take you there.  Until then, you may stay here.  Drink, rest.  You will need it.”

Arik traded a look with Lark—the first in a while—and found her no longer wan, the goblin curled up in her arms and her jaw firm with determination.  She nodded to him, and so he bowed his head to the spirit.  “Thank you for your hospitality, Great One,” he said, and saw the massive wolf's eyes crinkle in what might have been pleasure.  Then it settled its head on its paws as if to rest, and Arik moved to sit by Lark before his legs could turn into soggy noodles.

“Nice rescue,” she whispered, and his urge to turn her into turf subsided.  She was a mouthy human, but she'd tried.

“Stay still, be quiet and return no stares,” he advised as he nodded toward the woods, which had filled up once more with spectral wolves—perhaps the same ones he had 'slain' in his challenge.  It was said that all wolves came here when they died, to rejoin with Ninke Raunagi or serve as his pack.  Perhaps among the ghostly faces were those of Arik's long-lost parents.

It was not worth thinking about.  He would find out when he died; right now he needed to stay alive.

The girl made a face and raised her arm.  She'd wrapped it, he saw, in a strip torn from her leggings; the cloth was stained but already the blood smelled old.  “You bit me, you jerk.  You better not've been licking your butt recently.”

His ears cocked back in distress.  “I apologize.  It was necessary.  While we are in this realm, it should not fester.”

“Better not,” she mumbled, then sighed.  “At least it's nicer here.”