Through Wolf's Eyes (14 page)

"Come, Firekeeper! I'm lonely!"

Firekeeper smiled and started to walk toward the
forest. Derian, to her surprise, for he had never before laid even a
finger on her without permission, put his hand on her arm.

She stopped, stared at him, and, seeing concern
evident on his features, did not strike him. Perhaps two-legs, like
wolves, touched for other reasons than to attack.

Fox Hair gestured in the direction of Blind Seer's cry.

"Wolf," he said.

Blind Seer howled again.

"Wolf," Derian repeated anxiously.

Firekeeper gently pushed his hand from her arm and
moved swiftly away. Before she stepped into the darkness of the trees,
she turned to Fox Hair and nodded.

"Wolf," she agreed, and slipped into the night.

"B
UT THIS CAN'T GO ON
!"
exclaimed Race Forester, eyes ablaze. "Tomorrow we cross the gap; a day
or two thereafter we're in populated lands. What happens then when Lady
Blysse slips off into the night and runs about in the darkness?"

There was a sneer in his voice when he said "Lady," a
sneer just this side of unforgivable cheek, but Earl Kestrel chose to
overlook that insolence. No matter how rudely phrased, Race's point was
reasonable.

Each night since they had broken camp at the ruins of
Bardenville, Blysse had left her tent and vanished into the night. What
she did then, no one knew, but she returned each day shortly before
dawn.

They had made slower progress on their return east to
civilization than they had on the way out. The first day Earl Kestrel
had called halt after a half-day's travel, worried that the young woman
would not have the stamina to pace the horses any longer. He might also
have been prompted by the steady drizzle that had begun with first
light and had never ceased—unless turning into intermittent sleet could
be considered ceasing.

The second day their start had been late, for the
camp had remained on alert for many hours after Blysse had left
Derian's side, in answer, it almost seemed, to a howl of a wolf in the
darkness beyond. Only on her return had Earl Kestrel fallen into a
restful sleep. The third day had been something
of
a repetition of the second, though Earl Kestrel had permitted Valet to
convince him that wakeful watchfulness would do nothing to bring the
girl back, that indeed it might do the opposite.

The end of this fourth day of travel found them at
the lower reaches of the gap. Tomorrow they would attempt the crossing,
a long, hard day's work even for rested men. Although the earl had
decreed an extra half-day for rest and preparation, no one was
relaxing. Even calm Ox and unflappable Valet kept turning their gazes
to the tree line, wondering what strange force might draw Blysse out
into the unfriendly darkness night after night.

Derian was the least happy of the lot. Looking at his
charge clad in leather vest and rough knee breeches she had made by
chopping off a pair of the earl's riding trousers just below her knees,
she was a winsome figure, hardly female, impossible to place in any of
the categories he had encountered traveling between Hawk Haven and
Bright Bay on business with his father.

To some eyes, as she sat busily untangling her brown
locks with the comb he had shown her how to use three days before,
Blysse could be any girl, albeit a somewhat boyishly dressed one. To
Derian, however, she had become more of an enigma for their several
days of acquaintance rather than less.

Upon their first meeting she had seemed a wild
creature that had taken human shape. By their second, assured of her
humanity, Derian had felt proprietary, even protective toward her. By
the third meeting, the very one that had ended with Earl Kestrel giving
Derian charge of her, Derian had felt certain of Blysse's intelligence
and of her peculiar sense of humor.

This day she was a stranger, calm and composed,
apparently immune to the human storm that raged around her— as she
should be. Although her vocabulary was growing at an amazing rate, what
words she had were mostly nouns with a few simple additions such as Yes
and No, Come and Go.

"What do you suggest we do?" Earl Kestrel asked Race.

"We should tie her," the scout said firmly. "It's for her
own safety, my lord. I don't want her arrow-shot by the first gamekeeper who takes her for a poacher."

"You don't?" the earl's inflection was ironic, but
Derian doubted that the scout noticed. Race still believed that his
envy of the woman's woodcraft was his own secret.

"No, sir, I don't," Race said earnestly. "Think of
the man's shock when he finds a bit of a girl dead with his shaft in
her breast and him facing your wrath for doing naught but his duty."

"Indeed," said Earl Kestrel dryly, "not to mention
the pitiable situation that Blysse should have survived ten years of
privation to die so sordidly."

"That," Race replied, suddenly aware of his tactlessness, "so goes without saying that I didn't bother mentioning it."

"Of course." Earl Kestrel relented. "It has not
escaped my notice that you have scouted in the vicinity of the camp
following Blysse's return each dawn. Have you found any sign of where
she goes or if she is meeting someone?"

"None," Race said, superstitious dread deepening his voice. "She leaves no more track than a spirit would. I've wondered . . ."

Jared Surcliffe broke in, impatient with the earl's game of cat and mouse with the uneducated man.

"If she's a restless spirit? Nonsense! I've examined
her more closely now and no spirit would have so many scars— not to
mention the cuts and bruises she gains each day. She has clean healing
flesh, thank the ancestors of our house, or she would have died from
some injury long since."

"If I thought she was a spirit," Race countered
defiantly, "would I have suggested putting a rope on her? My lord, it
would be no more unkind than the jesses on a hawk or the leash on a
dog. It's to keep her from harm in my way of thinking, not to do her
some."

"And can you explain that to her?" Earl Kestrel said skeptically. "Derian, could Blysse understand such an idea?"

Derian shrugged. "She's smart, my lord, but we don't have enough words."

"Mime it!" Race insisted.

"When she's never seen—or at least has no memory of—
the farmers or gamekeepers you would protect her from?" Derian scoffed. "How?"

In answer, Race lifted a coil of rope and strode over to where Blysse was now interestedly watching.

"I'll show you!" the scout retorted defiantly.

He lifted the rope, uncoiled a section and held it out to the young woman.

"Rope," she said calmly.

Much to Derian's despair, all items for binding, from
the thinnest thread to horse hobbles to fish line, had, for the nonce,
become rope. Doubtless Blysse thought Race's approach with rope in hand
was another attempt to force her to discriminate. Mentally, he kicked
himself for not teaching her the word "pavilion" for Earl Kestrel's
larger tent that first night. The lack of discrimination seemed to have
shaped her attitude toward the refinements of spoken language.

With the ease of long practice, Race made a noose.
Then, as Blysse watched in unguarded curiosity, he dropped it over her
shoulders and pulled it fast, binding her arms tightly to her sides.

Blysse looked startled, pushing out with her
shoulders against the restraint. Her expression when she realized that
she could not get free became furious: dark eyes narrowed, lips paling,
brows pulled together.

"See, my lord," Race said triumphantly, turning
slightly toward Earl Kestrel, leaning back on his heels so that his
weight would keep the noose tight. "We can hold her this way and she
can walk along or we can set her up on one of the mules. They've grown
accustomed to her by now and . . ."

He didn't finish for Blysse screamed, high, shrill,
and angry. Her second such cry was echoed by one from the tops of the
tallest trees; then a blue-grey streak plummeted toward the gathered
men.

Derian didn't think. Balling himself tight, he
launched forward, knocking Race to the ground, rolling the other man
with the force of his tackle so that the falcon's strike hit the ground
inches from where the scout would have been standing.

Race lost his grip on the rope and, as the falcon was taking wing again, Blysse clawed her way out of the loosened noose.

Free, she stood poised lightly on the balls of her
feet, Prince Barden's knife in her hand. Her dark gaze darted from Race
to Derian to Kestrel then back again to Race.

A low growl rumbling in her throat, she advanced one stiff-legged pace toward the prone man, then another.

Derian rose, imposed himself between her and Race,
found that cold, dark gaze now studying him impartially. All their
tentative friendship seemed to have vanished like snow beneath the sun.

Blysse's growl deepened, became louder, and she
peeled her lips back from teeth. The snarl should have looked funny,
for her teeth remained blunt, human teeth, but the menace in her eyes
made the expression anything but.

Queenie, Race's bird dog, had been running to assist
her master. Now, under Blysse's snarl, she dropped to the dirt, rolled
onto her back, and whimpered submission.

Something visceral in Derian understood. He could not
demean himself to drop and roll, but he lowered his gaze and stepped
slightly to one side.

"Race," he muttered urgently as he did so. "Don't get
up! Don't reach for any weapon! If you stay down there, she won't
attack you."

"What?" Race continued scrabbling backward in the
dirt and leaves of the forest floor, but he didn't get to his feet, nor
did Blysse attack. "How can you be so sure?"

"I just am!" Derian replied, resisting an urge to
growl himself. "Stay put! Lower your gaze! Don't challenge her or
she'll have your head!"

Race obeyed, at least to the extent of not getting to
his feet. After Race had clawed his way back a few more paces, Blysse
halted. With one last snarl, she kicked dirt at him. Then she shook
like a dog after a rainstorm, her anger vanishing as quickly as it had
appeared.

She looked at Derian and grinned, then spoke her first sentences.

"Race, dog," she commented conversationally. Then she
bent and picked up the rope and shook it. "No rope. No!"

Earl Kestrel spoke for the first time since Race had advanced on Blysse.

"That, I think, quite nicely sums up the matter."

Then he took the coil of rope from her and tossed it onto the fire. Sparks flew as the flames engulfed the damp coils.

F
IREKEEPER WAS IN A MERRY
mood the next morning. Today they would cross the great mountains.
Beneath tonight's stars, she and Blind Seer would hunt where none of
the Royal Wolves had hunted in uncounted years. Until then, she had the
progress of humans and horses up the steep incline to amuse her.

For once, Derian had abandoned his care of her, his
skill with the horses needed to coax them up the slope. She admired his
labors with the stupid things, and during a mid-morning halt she
offered through gestures to assist.

Derian grinned and promptly handed her the rope tied to the head of the smallest but least cooperative of the long-eared horses.

"Mule," he said, pointing toward the creature.

Noting differences in ears, tail, and wickedness of
temper, Firekeeper was willing to concede that there might be a need
for a different word to separate this creature from a horse, never mind
that they smelled so much alike.

"Mule," she repeated, pointing to the animal, then to the others like it. "Mule."

Derian grinned. "Yes. Good."

The last word puzzled her, for it seemed to apply to
nothing in particular. She gestured toward the mule's head-rope,
wondering if "Good" might be yet another of the useless plethora of
words for "rope" that Derian kept thrusting at her.

"Rope," she said, waiting to see if he corrected her.

"Rope," he agreed. Then he made the hand gesture for "wait" and went off to confer with the earl.

While Firekeeper waited, her gaze flickered toward
Race, remembering how the man had tried to bind her as the horses were
bound. He was keeping a safe distance from her, his spotted dog close
about his feet. Their fear pleased her. She liked having some
precedence within this human pack, even if over such minor members.

When Hawk Nose shouted the command for them to start,
Firekeeper's mule stubbornly refused to move. He stood stiff-legged,
lazily chewing a mouthful of leaves, defying her to make him take a
single step.

From the corner of her eye, Firekeeper saw Derian
approaching, lightly swinging the stick he used to swat the mules
across their hindquarters. Determined to move the animal herself, she
considered her options.

To this point, she had not tried talking with the
animals the two-legs had brought with them. She rarely had bothered
speaking with herbivores in any case, finding it uncomfortable to talk
with those she might later eat. Now, however, she stood on her toes,
rising just high enough that her lips were close to one of the mule's
brown-haired, dark-tipped ears.