People of the Wolf (42 page)

"Wolf Dreamer will be back." .

"You seem so sure."

"I've always believed his Dream . . . even when you didn't."

"I was younger then. Foolish. Broken Branch made me take another look."

"Then you went back to see what was right—whose Dream to believe. You've seen."

"Yes." Singing Wolf lifted a muscular shoulder. "But never in all the memory of the People have so many fled to such a small place. What if there's no way out? What if Raven Hunter doesn't drive the Others away? What if there's no way across the ice?" He turned, looking down at her in the gray light of day. "We could die. I want you and my child to live."

Slick, so slick. Wind Woman tried to tear his fragile grip loose from the ice as he climbed. Around Wolf Dreamer, snow blew in wreaths, chattering softly across the ice. In the perpetual gray of the Long Dark, he proceeded, step-by-step, grip-by-grip.

Heron's soul had been prayed to the Blessed Star People.

Who am I? Where am I going? Heron, why have you left me here all alone? What did your Dream mean? I've tried, but I can't unravel the symbols: man-made mountains? A winding river? Sun Gods? Thunderbirds? A desiccated land and a scaled animal with no legs? What is this tall grass with yellow seeds? What are these rock shelters? Fantasy?

An aching numbness left his thoughts spinning without direction.

"Lonely. I'm so lonely." Around him, hour by hour, the Long Dark spun out its cold fury, ice cracking, the glacier ever active.

"Ghosts," he whispered. "Let them come. Them, and the spirits of the Long Dark." To the cloud-streaked blackness, he raised his hands. "Here I am!
Come and get me! I defy you!"

Silence thundered at him.

His food had dwindled to one small sack of fat-filled pemmican. And around him, canted slabs of ice beckoned death. The wrong step, an inadvertent advance across a cornice, and he'd fall to be trapped forever in the hidden crevasses within the ice. Compressed, fractured, twisted and tortured, the gritty ice jutted and sloped. He'd entered a world of jumbled angles—no surface level, cold, murky shadows inhabited by the chill breath of the ice. Slabs towered above him, snow sifting down from the edges so high overhead. Gaps and holes fell away to shaded depths below—a trap of eternal frigid darkness.

Step-by-step, he probed, using his dart shaft to check the footing, moving with constant hesitation.

"Dancing Fox?" Her face filled his restless sleep.

"Thrown out? Disgraced? Why? Because you would love me? Because you would have followed the Wolf Dream?"

Love killed Heron. She told you . . . told you that day in the pool. A human who Dreams can't have the distraction, can't join his life with another's. If he does, he can't lose himself to the One. Can't forget who he is—and must be.

He gasped, fighting the hollow hurt inside. "Is nothing left for me? Am I to be alone forever? Hear me, Father Sun!
Am I to be alone forever? "

His pain mingled with the gusting sigh of Wind Woman.

"Numb. Life is numb, black, like the Long Dark. That way we live. Step-by-step. Pain by pain." He looked up into the scudding smoke-shaded clouds. "Can't I be like everyone else? Can't I . . . love?"

Wind Woman worried his parka, howling her mad rebuttal across the cornices and spears of ice. She moaned and wailed, a haunting reflection of his misery.

' 7
don't want to be alone!''

Two weeks onto the ice, he could find no route. Only the. wind at his back provided the direction.

From his memory, voices mocked.

"You're crazy to go out there now," One Who Cries had moaned, arms lifted. "Wait. Wait until spring. Then go. You can't go out and kill yourself just because—"

"I'll be back. I've got the Dream. Got the proof. Now I need the way."

They'd gone as far as the ice with him. Two of the dogs that had followed him were gone—lost in hidden crevasses in the ice. But he'd learned from their mistakes. The ice terrified him . . . worse than the reflection of anguish in Heron's dead eyes.

The pemmican lasted two more days.

Stillness. It woke him out of a deep sleep. Wary, cautious, he resettled himself, blinking in the grayness as he snugged his robes around his throat.

"Mad," he whispered. "I've gone mad. Hear the silence?" He laughed at himself. "I finally hear the silence."

He stood, cupping ice-encrusted mittens around his mouth, hollering, "I'm mad! Crazy! Hear me, Father Sun? Hear me,

Star People? See me! Crazy, huh?" Turning to stare at the endless sculpted ice around him, he dropped his voice to a quiet whisper. "Crazy."

Silence. No wind. He chuckled, shaking his head. The growling of his empty belly echoed in the night. Behind him a steep-sloped drift rose. To either side, sheltering slabs of gritty ice thrust toward the sky.

Which way? He yawned, staring over the twisted vastness. A wonderland of—

The call wavered in the crystal clarity of the still air. Distant, it quavered and died, winding through the shattered world of snow-capped ice.

"Wolf . . . ?"

The eerie yips drifted across the waste again, faint, so far away.

There. That way. Noting the landmarks in his mind, he set out. The polished shaft of his dart served as a staff, seeking, ever seeking in the snow. He barely caught himself before he stepped over nothingness, the crevasse bridged by a thin drift of snow.

Backtrack, check the reference points. Pick a potential route around the crevasse, go. Step-by-step, grip by perilous grip.

Everything is lost to me now. I have nothing. Heron, you let love kill you. Dancing Fox? I need you. But can I let myself love you ?

The ice shifted. He froze, barely breathing. A grinding came from beneath. For long moments he stood painfully still, arms outspread, fingers knotting in the side of the slab he traversed. The minute rumblings diminished.

"Ghosts . . ." He sighed. Relief warm in his veins, he extended a careful hand. Took another step, slowly working his way off the tilted block and onto another precarious slab of ice jutting up at an impossible angle.

Step-by-step, he continued, seeing where snow had crumbled and fallen into blue-black cracks in the ice. He slipped, rolled, caught himself at the last moment, and scrambled across a declivity. Below, his darts clattered on hard ice from where he'd dropped them in the mad bid for life.

"Close, ghosts. You hear? Close that time. Come on!
Come get me!"

Panting fear, heart pounding in his chest, he reeled in the gut line he'd tied to the shafts of his darts. One by one, he checked the stone points, assuring himself they hadn't been damaged. Once more, he began the journey, going by feel, seeking that long low cry he'd heard earlier.

Father Sun worked his way across the southern borders of the sky, casting long black shadows across the ice wall. By night, Wind Woman had renewed her fury.

Crouched in a hollow excavated in the lee of a drift, he lulled himself to sleep with, ' 'I heard it. I heard Wolf. He called. I know it."

As he drifted off to sleep, the Dream came again.

He trotted with Wolf along the Big River. Again he passed through the darkness and climbed the glacial walls to stare out over the green valley.

Dancing Fox waited there. Like a seal, she rose from a hot pool, water coursing down her brown body in silver streams. Her wet black hair—shining in the brilliant light—clung to her glistening body. She spread her arms as she walked toward him, drops like dew on her skin. He reached for her, · feeling his desire build. She smiled, sunlight warm on the curve of her breasts, nipples erect in the cool air. Under the water, her legs began to part, ready to enfold his manhood.

As his fingertips traced hers, Heron's voice grated from someplace above. Dancing Fox stiffened, fear glazing her gentle eyes. As he watched, she changed, face wrinkling, shrinking, becoming Heron in death—terror etched forever in her eyes.

He jerked awake, shuddering wildly. "No, no, I . . ."

In the distance, an animal's soft haunting cries called to him. He pushed up, cold stabbing at his flesh, and gripped his darts.

"I'm coming, Wolf."

When morning came, his stomach cramped with hunger. A ground blizzard obscured everything within a hand's length of his face. Travel? When he couldn't see his very feet below him?

He dug another snow shelter and wearily closed his eyes and leaned back, an image of the green valley burning in his

mind. The Wolf Dream lay just beyond his nightmares, beckoning, eternally over the horizon, veiled by blowing white.

Bleary-eyed, he set out after the wind dropped. Foot by foot, hand by hand, he continued, the gale to his back.

"I don't want to die out here." He shook his head dizzily, harshly reprimanding, "You're a coward! A crazy coward. You led the People to their deaths!" Then in a pathetic tone: "Nothing's working anymore. Can't live like a man . . . love. Heron's gone."

He laughed softly, derisively, weaving on his feet. "Dreamer? Me?" He looked up to the graying in the west. "Did you betray me, Wolf? Huh? Father Sun, did you let him betray me
and the People!"

He caught himself teetering on the verge of a crevasse and stumbled backward, gasping, as he stared owlishly down into the darkness.

"I could just step off. Finish it. Become one with the ice. So easy. No more hunger. No more hurt."

The sound barely registered at first. A crunching of snow.

Blinking, he looked around, seeing nothing in the ever-present whiteness.

Again the sound pierced his concentration. This time, he crouched, staring. A shadow moved and hope welled like a tidal wave.

"Wolf?" He stepped forward. "Please, Wolf."

He tensed, heart slamming against his ribs. He licked his lips and swallowed. A black mote moved in the darkness. A mote that could have been a beast's nose.

The huge animal lumbered from behind the drift.

"Grandfather White Bear," he whispered in terror.

Ice Fire stepped over the body of an Enemy. He hesitated, looking down into the young man's face. Barely more than a child, he'd died in the fighting, the side of his head bashed in.

"So young."

"Most Respected Elder?"

Ice Fire turned, looking toward Walrus where he picked his way through the ravaged camp. Mammoth-hide shelters lay smoldering. Smoke darkened the skies, ash swirling like snow. The dead lay in mutilated humps around the perimeter.

"Yes?"

Walrus grinned triumphantly. "We taught them this time, eh?"

Ice Fire filled his lungs, exhaling slowly, watching the condensation of breath before him. "Did we?"

A scream from behind them pierced the crystal air, grating on Ice Fire's nerves. He didn't turn, knowing without seeing what transpired with the woman.

"If we didn't," Walrus confided,, "that will." He jerked a mittened thumb over his shoulder. "Men quickly lose their fire for fighting when they worry about their wives and mothers giving birth to their foe's sons."

He cocked his head grimly. "Don't forget, we've lost nearly as many women as they have."

Walrus waved it off. "We're stronger than they are. Their fighting spirit will die long before ours."

"Maybe."

"Ha! They thought we wouldn't fight back in the depths of the Long Dark. The fools."

Ice Fire's lips twitched. Not even his counsel could hold the warriors back. Too many atrocities had passed. Too many horrible deaths discovered in the wake of the Enemy's retaliation. His own warriors wanted blood—pain for pain.

"They are us," Ice Fire whispered, the wind gusting down from the north batting the long silver braids about his chest where they hung out of his hood. "We are them."

Walrus frowned uneasily. "What did you say?"

Ice Fire looked into the warrior's confused face. "Cousins. At least, that's what the old woman said.'' He lifted a shoulder. "I can believe it, upon reflection. They speak our language. No other Enemy do that. Our beliefs are not so different. Like us, they—"

"Then they've lost something in the past," Walrus asserted arrogantly. "I see no honor in them. I found my sister and her child, the infant's brains mashed out on a rock and crawling with maggots! That's honor? No, Most Respected Elder, these are less than beasts we deal with. I, for one, shall sing praises to the Great Mystery when I finally slay the last of them."