Wolf Hunting (32 page)

Unlike a real jaguar, the monstrosity did not follow up the strike, nor leap back. Instead it stood there, claws anchored in the flesh of Firekeeper’s arm. The pain was sharp, then Firekeeper hardly felt it at all. She lashed out with her Fang, catching the jaguar along the side of its head and tearing up, trying to cut as many vines as possible. She doubted these monstrosities had brains as such, but even plants died when you cut them from their roots.

She tried hard not to think how long it took some downed trees to wilt.

The Voice spoke again. “Don’t waste your time on that! Get the claw out of your arm. The briars anesthetize you so you don’t feel the pain.”

Firekeeper suddenly understood how Bitter could have sat still while being slowly mutilated. She ripped the jaguar’s paw from her arm. The jaguar dropped to all four paws and moved to clamp her jaws around Firekeeper’s thigh. Firekeeper brought her knee up, pushing the head back.

“I suggest,” the Voice said, “you grab hold and shove it past you into the fire. Otherwise it’s just going to keep coming.”

“Forest fire,” Firekeeper gasped. She had no idea who was talking to her, but right now she wasn’t going to waste breath asking. This close to the stone house, smoke was making breathing difficult enough.

“The wind won’t change or rise. I’ve seen to that.”

Firekeeper decided to trust that odd assertion. She grabbed the jaguar on the head, her fingers catching with peculiar painlessness on the thorns. When she had a solid hold, Firekeeper dragged the thing forward, pulling, then pushing it through the doorway of the stone house. She was helped by the fact that the jaguar never once seemed to realize its danger. It kept tearing at her, but as Firekeeper did her best to keep its head and paws below her waist level, the leather trousers she wore kept most of the thorns from cutting through.

As she did this the Voice spoke again. “Now, I can help with the others. You’ve already done for the bear. It just doesn’t know it. The wolves …”

In the brighter light as the jaguar caught fire, Firekeeper looked at the wolves and saw they looked somehow furrier. Wiping her streaming eyes, she saw why. The briars were writhing, unweaving themselves from the other materials from which the wolves were made.

Pulling her hatchet from her belt, Firekeeper darted forward and started chopping. The image of the snake was vivid in her imagination, and she didn’t like the idea that these briars might work themselves free and create other monsters. Even a few steps gave relief from the raging heat of the stone house, and she set about her task with renewed vigor.

Dead wood and vine soon littered the ground around her, yet the briars did not drop to the ground and lie still as they should have done. Pieces clawed at her lower body, but her feet were tough and the fabric of her trousers protected her from most injury. Usually, after a few moments, the briar fragments too would lie still. Only those that drew blood persisted, and Firekeeper took care to pull these loose and toss them into the fire.

Once, when chopping through a particularly thick section of briar, she glanced over at the “bear.” It had stopped moving and was now clawing at the smouldering mass that was spreading through its interior. The mass wasn’t precisely catching fire, but the bear certainly wasn’t going anywhere, nor did it seem to offer a particular danger to its surroundings.

The Voice did not speak while Firekeeper dismembered the wolves and tossed the pieces into the interior of the stone house. The bear didn’t seem to notice her when she came near it, so she moved behind it and with weary persistence pushed it directly through the doorway.

Firekeeper wanted to collapse and assess her wounds, but even more she needed water to cool her throat and rinse her eyes. She needed to check on the ravens, too. What if there had been another snake?

But she found Bitter and Lovable well and safe where she had left them—or at least as well and safe as could be expected. Lovable was agitated. Bitter had fallen into a shocky stupor, but he was still breathing and there was no rattling to the sound.

Firekeeper applied a wet compress where the jaguar had clawed her arm. The numbness was fading, and the pain that followed was sufficiently severe that Firekeeper almost wished for a piece of fresh briar so she could numb it again.

Almost. Whenever she remembered the thin thread of blood running through the plant’s sap, she shuddered and wished instead that she might never see another such plant again.

The Voice spoke again as the fire within the stone house was burning out and a certain freshness in the air suggested that dawn might be approaching.

“Tell Truth I kept my part of the bargain,” it said.

Firekeeper felt a dreadful certainty who her ally might be, and she wondered if she might have done better to lose this fight. She kept her thoughts to herself, but answered as politely as she would the One of some great pack.

“May I know what to call you?” she asked.

“Truth thinks of me as the Voice,” he replied, “but you have heard a different name for me. I am the Meddler. Or a Meddler …”

“Where are you?” Lovable croaked, reassuring Firekeeper that this was no hallucination brought on from having her blood drunk and replaced with briar poison.

“I am here,” the Meddler replied. “Look at the stone house.”

Firekeeper did, and drew her breath in so sharply through her smoke ravaged throat that she started coughing. Against the stone backdrop a figure was taking shape. It was tall as a man and shaped roughly so, but her eyes must have been watering for it seemed to her that the head could not decide how it should be shaped. The image shifted between that of a stem-featured man with iron grey hair and that of a handsome, amber-eyed wolf.

DERIAN THOUGHT HE’D BEEN HARDENED to surprise since the day he had ridden west with Earl Kestrel’s expedition, but he never imagined that he’d be riding horseback with a wolf in his lap.

Blind Seer had come running up to intercept them shortly after they had crossed the second ford. That he was close to exhaustion was obvious. His flanks were heaving. Foam frothed around his mouth. When the group reined in their panicked mounts, Blind Seer collapsed in a heap on the ground. Even so, from how Plik reacted, the wolf was clearly giving some sort of report.

“Blind Seer says,” Plik translated after a moment, “that he and Firekeeper found the ravens late yesterday afternoon. Bitter and Lovable were in very bad shape, and Firekeeper remained behind to protect them while Blind Seer came to warn us, lest we fall into similar harm.”

Plik then went on to tell, with admirable concision given the peculiarity of the tale, how the ravens had come to harm. As he concluded, Blind Seer struggled back on to his feet. Derian noticed with nauseated fascination that the wolf’s pads left red stains on the leaves. No wonder, if Blind Seer and Firekeeper had pressed west most of the day before, and then the wolf had retraced their day’s travel and more.

Limping and showing a tendency to favor his right front paw, Blind Seer moved to the lead and began heading back from where he had come.

“Hey!” Derian called. “Stop. You need something to eat, and someone should look at your feet.”

Blind Seer turned his head to look back, and Derian didn’t really need Plik’s translation.

“I have left my Firekeeper alone in forests stranger than we have ever seen. I will not leave her any longer than I must.”

“You’ll do her scant good,” Derian protested, sliding from Prahini’s saddle and striding toward the wolf, “if you collapse from exhaustion. Be reasonable!”

Blind Seer growled, but from the cant of his tail Derian thought the wolf knew he was right.

“Look,” Derian went on, “you don’t handle heat well, and today’s only going to get hotter. You’re already dehydrated.”

Blind Seer’s tail drooped, then, incongruously rose to what Derian thought was an optimistic angle. A moment later, Derian smelled horse and felt a velvet nose nuzzle his neck. He looked up and found Eshinarvash towering over him looking quizzically at the wolf.

The Wise Horse’s ears were slightly back, but when he shook his head and shivered his skin, Derian had the feeling he was indicating distaste rather than anger or fear.

“Plik?” Derian said. “Is Eshinarvash suggesting what I think he is?”

Plik nodded. “He is. If Eshinarvash carries Blind Seer that certainly would solve both of Blind Seer’s problems. Can you rig something so the wolf doesn’t tear up Eshinarvash’s back? As Truth has just so kindly reminded us all, wolves lack the ability to retract their claws.”

“I can try,” Derian said, already mentally sketching out alternatives. “Blind Seer, go lie down in some shade and let Harjeedian look at your feet. This is going to take a minute.”

The wolf agreed and Harjeedian, who had been trying very hard to maintain his usual dignified air of superiority, dismounted and rummaged in his saddlebags for salve.

Shortly thereafter they were back on the trail. Blind Seer had not proven able to stay even on Eshinarvash’s broad back—at least not without using more effort than he would have done when running. Eshinarvash himself had suggested their current arrangement: Derian astride, somewhat farther back from the withers than he would usually ride, Blind Seer draped horizontally partially across the horse, enough in Derian’s lap that Derian could steady him if needed.

So situated, they made good progress. They paused as infrequently as possible, even going to the extent of having the humans and Plik eat their meals in the saddle. Blind Seer went without eating rather than delaying to hunt and Derian, aware that the wolf had probably not eaten since the previous afternoon, amended his earlier thought: he was riding with an enormous,
hungry
,
worried
wolf in his lap. And he was riding the most beautiful horse he had ever seen.

Despite their haste, evening was drawing on before they reached Firekeeper. Before they found her, they smelled smoke. Truth, who had been unusually cooperative, reassuring Blind Seer (else the wolf would not have agreed to be carried for more than an hour or so) that according to her visions Firekeeper was alive, now informed them that although the fire scent had something to do with Firekeeper’s night, that Firekeeper herself was fine.

“Fine” was not what Derian would have called the wolf-woman when they came upon her a short time later. She sat on a fallen tree trunk near the side of the trail, Bitter in her lap, Lovable perched beside her. Firekeeper was all over scratches and scrapes. Her shirt was in tatters and looked somewhat singed. Her leather trousers showed signs of similar abuse, the fine surface gouged in countless places, torn right through in others. Even the tops of her feet were red and bloody, but her dark eyes seemed to light from within when she saw them coming.

Especially,
Derian thought, as Blind Seer pushed himself off Eshinarvash’s back—incidentally leaving a couple of good scrapes on Derian’s thigh—
because she sees Blind Seer is alive. Whatever happened to her last night, she’s been wondering if something like that happened to him.

But Firekeeper’s first words were not for the wolf, nor about herself. Standing, holding Bitter very carefully so that her motion did not disturb the raven’s sleep, she looked at Harjeedian.

“Please,” she said. “Bitter is very bad. I give him blood and he drinks a little, but I think there is fever in him. Don’t let him die, not after all of this to save him.”

For the second time that day, Harjeedian dismounted and went directly to his medical kit.

“I’m not your Doc,” he warned Firekeeper, motioning her to a clear space where a boulder would serve as a table. “I don’t have his talent. I brought with me every medicine every kidisdu could recommend, but I cannot work miracles.”

Firekeeper nodded understanding, but Lovable, gliding down from her tree limb, and walking stiffly over to Harjeedian, looked up at him with eyes clouded with worry—and possibly illness of her own.

“Please!” she croaked in a fair facsimile of human speech. “Please!”

Derian felt his throat tighten, and no shame that tears stung his eyes. He looked over at Harjeedian.

“Could you use a spare pair of hands?”

“I could,” Harjeedian said shortly, “but if Plik would assist me—his hands are smaller.”

The maimalodalu looked surprised, pleased, then a little frightened, but he got heavily from his pony and without saying a single word about what had to be tremendous stiffness from a long day’s ride, went over to Harjeedian.

Firekeeper spoke, “I remember Doc and I make hot water to wait. Do you wish?”

Harjeedian. actually smiled, the expression making his eyes almost vanish between his high cheekbones and brow.

“Wonderful! How much do you have?”

Firekeeper measured out a space in the air with her hands.

“I find an old pot near stone house. Clean very well with sand and cold water first.”

“Wonderful,” Harjeedian repeated. “Let’s have half of it in one of our cook pots. Plik and I can clean our hands. I’ll keep the rest back. Can you put more on?”

“I have coals,” Firekeeper said.

Derian slid from Eshinarvash’s back. Muscles unused to either such a broad back or riding without stirrups screamed at him, but he followed Plik’s stoic example.

“I’ll unpack our gear,” he said.

It turned out that Firekeeper had chosen this spot deliberately, both for the boulder and because there was a source of fresh water nearby. She had laid out a small camp, and gathered wood for the fire. She even had some rabbits cleaned and hanging from a tree limb. These went immediately to Blind Seer with the assurance that she had snares set.

“Better than watching every breath Bitter makes,” she confessed to Derian. “The fire not good for him.”

“The fire,” Derian said. “You look pretty bad yourself. What happened?”

She told him while they set up the camp and tended to the horses. Work over Bitter seemed to be going very slowly. As the daylight faded, Harjeedian requested a lantern. Derian brought one, and carried Harjeedian and Plik drinking water. Otherwise the best thing seemed to be to stay out of their way.