Wolf's Blood (65 page)

If she did not, she would find little mercy from the Bound.

But then,
Firekeeper thought
, I expected none in any case.

“You flee,” Firekeeper howled after the fleeing mother wolf. “I see your tail trailing low and call that surrender. Turn and fight me, else here and now I claim your place, your mate, your pack, and your pups. Flee me and flee them. Surrender, and I may keep you in my pack.”

The bloodied One Female staggered in midstride, clearly shocked to hear such a challenge coming forth in a wolf’s voice from human lips.

She wheeled, limping still, blood catching and matting in fur above a leg she held a hand’s breadth clear of the grass.

“What perverted notion is this?” was the sense of the half-whine, half-howl she sent to answer Firekeeper’s challenge. “You are no wolf to rule a pack.”

“Tell that to the wolves of Misheemnekuru,” Firekeeper boasted as was the wolf’s way. “Tell that to Dark Death and to Moon Frost. Tell that to those who have run under my leadership. But who are you to say what is perverted and what is not? From the tales I have heard, you are no wolf, but a lapdog, whining servant of human masters.”

“The humans are not our masters!” the One Female growled. “We guard them to honor agreements our ancestors made.”

“So say the dogs who sleep on the doorsteps outside of human houses,” Firekeeper taunted. “They say they could leave any time, but they choose to remain. How does this differ from you?”

Peripherally, she was aware that the battle between Blind Seer and the One Male had faded into a circling, snapping draw, each wolf testing the other’s reach, but neither attacking. Their ears had told them the battle had shifted in emphasis.

Firekeeper gave them little attention. She and Blind Seer had come here as invaders into territory held by the Bound for over a century. But she could feel that she had broken the wolves’ certainty, shown them themselves in a manner they did not like in the least.

“Will you surrender, then,” Firekeeper pressed, “and care for the pups you have borne as a wolf would, or will you fight for these humans and die as a dog?”

“I could fight as a wolf,” the One Female growled, “and slice your naked hide to pulp.”

“Try,” Firekeeper suggested, shifting her Fang so the light glinted off the blade, “one-legged, bloodied, weak old fool. A wolf would know her limits and surrender. Only a dog would continue to fight and leave the pack to suffer.”

The One Female trembled, her senses telling her to surrender, her pride urging her to fight. Tellingly, the members of her pack did not move in on Firekeeper as they might have. Firekeeper’s talk of dogs and wolves had muddied the clarity of the matter to them. Then, too, there was the white wolf who trembled in the grass, licking blood from where Elation’s talons had raked him, and Elation herself, poised to strike at the first wolf who moved.

Blind Seer broke the stalemate, darting forward, breaking his pattern of snap and circle, grabbing the One Male on the loose skin of his ruff and shaking the other hard, so that blood ran through the thick fur. The move was a threat, for Blind Seer had not bitten deeply enough to break vital muscles or bones, but it hurt and the angle of Blind Seer’s hold made it nearly impossible for the One Male to bring his own jaws into play.

The One Female’s trembling increased when she saw her mate grabbed and held. His eyes were narrowed, glazing in pain, and clearly every instinct in him yearned to surrender.

Firekeeper built on Blind Seer’s move. She leapt as she had done once before, in another battle, landing so that she could straddle the injured One Female’s back, and bring her own weight to bear. The position was one that wolves used in dominance fights, the hard play that establishes rank within the pack. But no wolf ever had knees with which to grip, and the familiar combined with the unfamiliar to overload the One Female’s conditioning.

“Dog or wolf?” Firekeeper hissed, bringing her weight to bear, pressing her fingers in the gash left by her knife and reminding the other that she could bring fresh pain if she so wished. “Be a wolf …”

The One Female crumpled beneath the combined weights of confusion and pain.

“I surrender,” she whimpered, “but if you are a wolf, then in the end, perhaps I am a dog.”

Firekeeper rose, not trusting the One Female, but at the same time knowing that to the gathered pack the One Female’s surrender would mean nothing if Firekeeper must continue to hold her down.

The One Female only rolled onto her back, exposing her throat, and as she did so, her mate went limp in Blind Seer’s grip.

Firekeeper did not give the other wolves a chance to consider how they might turn this new situation to their own advantage. Every pack had at least one member who thought he or she should be One instead. The matter must be more complicated for these Bound, who must remain within a limited territory.

She had spoken of dogs and of wolves, but now as she considered this cage with its walls of promise, she wondered if she were not closer to the truth than she had imagined. The Bound Wolves had chained themselves, brought themselves to heel with the snapped command of an old promise—or was there something more? Was there some other hold Virim and his allies had over the Bound than an old pact, fulfilled in spirit if not in fact long before?

A high, shrill scream from Elation brought Firekeeper’s attention away from the wolves.

“Trapped!” the peregrine shrieked. “We have been trapped.”

Into the edges of the meadow, filling every gap, large or small, came members of the Bound. They showed themselves beneath shrubs or in the branches or trees. Winged folk laced the air with the intertwining net of their flight so that even Elation had no escape open to her.

An enormous bear, honey gold of coat, reared onto his hind legs. He was taller by a head and more than Derian, and seemed at least twice as wide, a living wall of fur, but fur that snarled to show solid white fangs, and spread paws to make clear the reach of the strong arms that terminated in long, curving black claws.

“Trapped,” the bear growled complacently. “The wolves did their part in baiting that trap. I must say, you did better with them than any expected, but then they are only wolves and have odd thoughts about the value of surrender.”

Firekeeper read the bear’s contempt for those who would surrender in the bristling of his fur and the wrinkling of his wide black nose. She thought the One Female cringed a little under that contempt, and found herself angry on behalf of one who would have gladly slain her only moments before.

The wolf-woman watched the One Female carefully, all too aware that the arrival of the other Bound made the wounded wolf strong where she had been weak—that is, if she could count on the non-wolfish Bound to support her if she were to attack.

For his part, Blind Seer sat back on his haunches and scratched with a hind foot at one ear as if the actions of an errant summer flea were more interesting to him than the hostile attentions of the gathered Bound.

The bear did not like this at all, nor did the others. A puma hissed and lashed its long tail. Other creatures bristled or hunched or showed teeth after the manner of their kind. Blind Seer was unperturbed, and Firekeeper had never admired him more than for this foolish courage.

Almost imperceptibly, the Bound wolves drew back from the meadow’s center, leaving the three intruders vulnerable in the center. Elation glided down from the tree limb on which she had been perched, taking a seat on Firekeeper’s padded shoulder.

“Might as well see this through from here,” she said. “The air above is full of shit, lice, and molting feathers.”

Angry screeches and caws from above said that Elation’s insult had been taken, but none of the many winged hunters dove to punish the peregrine as they might have easily done.

Firekeeper took her lead from her companions. Wiping onto the thick grass the worst of the One Female’s blood from her Fang’s blade, she made as if polishing off the remainder was the most important thing she could do. She would have liked to feel confident enough to sheath the weapon entirely, but there was a difference between a display of confidence and pure stupidity. Elation and Blind Seer could not be disarmed short of death, but without her tools Firekeeper knew she would be even more defeated than she felt already.

Blind Seer sniffed the air, as if scenting their many visitors for the first time.

“So, we have returned, and you have come as you have promised. Very nice. Very neat. Now, who dies first?”

The bear rumbled in admiring astonishment.

“I think you will die, wolf, you and the human wolf and the peregrine all. We will not die.”

“Do you think we will simply lie down and let you have our throats?” Blind Seer asked. “I think not.”

“I think,” the bear said, “I could take you one and all, myself alone.”

Firekeeper slid her Fang into its Mouth, and in the same motion pulled her bow from where it rested against her back. She leaned against the supple wood, stringing it and setting arrow to string.

“Still,” she said, “my quills might sting a little even after I am gone. Will you have your masters pull them out for you?”

“I have no master but the promise I keep as it has been kept for over a hundred years,” the bear growled, but his small eyes hardened as he studied the bow. Unfamiliar with humans these Bound might be, but apparently he knew enough about bows to take one seriously.

“Two-legged wolf, you have fewer quills than a porcupine,” a lynx taunted from a tree branch, “and are soft all over, not merely underneath. Take care.”

“Why?” Firekeeper asked, affecting innocence. “It is as my companion says, ‘Who dies first?,’ for we will not sit quietly and wait for you to take our lives.”

There was an uncomfortable ripple through the gathered Bound, and Firekeeper was fairly certain that at least a few of those who had so confidently blocked the paths from the meadow had drawn back a pace or so. Even the aerial guard took their circles a little higher.

“It is true,” Blind Seer said, pausing to lick beneath his tail. “No one goes into a hunt expecting death rather than hot meat at the trail’s end. Here, though, this hunt will end in someone’s death—and certainly many will limp or crawl before we die. But what is an eye or a limb to a promise, especially a promise that is empty and hollow?”

“Our promise is not empty!” bugled a stag with a stomp of one hoof for emphasis. “We have remained faithful to our promise for over a hundred years.”

“But now you defend the very thing you thought to defeat,” Blind Seer said. “I find that odd indeed.”

“Defend what we thought to defeat?” croaked a raven. “What nonsense is that?”

Blind Seer replied. “My understanding was that you sought to defeat the magic that would invade the New World and destroy the Beasts who made it their home. To do this, you allied yourself with this Virim, promising him that you would keep him safe if he used his art to defend the New World. Do I have the tale true?”

There was no one answer, but a moving of ears, lashing of tails gave answer that Blind Seer was correct, but that his listeners were suspicious of his approach.

“Now, when first we met you Bound,” Blind Seer continued, “you told us that you were aware that the very humans you guarded had been faithless. By this we understood you to mean that you knew that magic—even spellcasting magic—had reemerged into the world, that querinalo no longer bit with a killing bite. Is this so?”

Again the Bound gave their wordless agreement, but the tension in their muscles warned that they were growing uneasy enough to forget the danger that Firekeeper’s arrows offered.

She decided a reminder was in order. Dropping the arrows she had held ready to the turf, she pulled a headless shaft from her quiver and set it to string in one quick motion. Even without a head or fletching, the smooth stick flew true enough, burying half its length in the turf near a raccoon’s tail.

Firekeeper grinned and reset a complete arrow to the string and pulled it back, ready to fire if any chose to answer her challenge.

None did. The tension among the Bound did not ebb, but none rushed forth, and Blind Seer again began his rambling discourse.

“Now, you know you have been betrayed,” Blind Seer said, “but choose to redeem your foolishness with fidelity. Noble, I suppose, but what I want to know is how can you maintain this fidelity when the very reason for which you first sealed yourself to Virim’s service is once again threatening.”

“What?” a jay cried. “Threatening?”

“Old World humans are poised to invade the Nexus Islands, a place where there are gates that lead throughout the Old World and into the New,” Blind Seer explained. “The invaders will surely win, for those who hold the Nexus Islands are few, weak, and noble. They might bring in reinforcements from the New World, but they will not. Why? Because they do not wish to risk any of these to he subjected to querinalo. Strangely, querinalo remains a curse of the Old World. not the New. I wonder why? Ah, hut that little detail hardly matters. What matters is that by your stubborn defense you are making possible the very invasion that you originally sought to forestall.”

The Bound remained motionless and silent, so Blind Seer glanced over at Firekeeper. “Interesting, yes?”

“Interesting,” Firekeeper agreed, “that a hundred years and more of fidelity should be rewarded with the same invasion that these Bound tried to forestall. I think the New World will fall faster and harder, now. Before there would have been spellcasters who would have fought against invasion—if for no other reason than that they held land here. Now those are gone, and those who rule in their stead are without magic—indeed, they abhor it.”

Elation keened. “The New World humans will be like fledglings when a weasel climbs to the nest. The Beasts? Naked, blind chicks. You taunted Blind Seer for the talent dormant within him. Odd to think that had someone been about who might have trained him—as I have heard a puma on the Nexus Islands has been trained—he might have been a spellcaster for the Beasts. Too late … Too late … And soon this meadow will be watered in blood.”