Spirit of the Wolves (25 page)

“Did you understand, wolf?” Tlitoo quorked.

I understood. I understood why the streckwolves were so dangerous. They really would steal the humans from us. When I was just a moon old and Ruuqo had chased my mother from the pack, I was alone and hungry. I had crawled into Rissa's den, hoping she would allow me to feed at her warm belly. Three of her own pups didn't want me there and tried to push me away, biting me and scraping at me with their sharp claws. Fury had overtaken me then, and I had
shoved them away, claiming my place and my chance at life. The same anger overtook me now, but there was nothing I could do, no one I could fight.

I tried to tell Ázzuen what I'd seen, but fatigue forced my head to my paws. Ázzuen lay down next to me. His familiar scent calmed me. Together we could keep the streckwolves from ruining our plans. I tried to tell him so but yawned instead.

“Rest, Kaala,” he said. “I'll watch over you.” The last thing I remember before slipping into sleep was his muzzle against mine.

I
n my dream, angry humans pelted me with rocks. I ran from them, only to be attacked by a flock of ravens that clouted my head over and over again with their wings. When I escaped the ravens, I ran straight into a hive of bees, who stung me over and over between my ears.

Yelping, I opened my eyes just as RalZun thwacked me over the head again with an empty preyskin pouch.

He stared down at me, as wrathful as a thwarted raven.

I was so hungry my stomach burned and so thirsty my tongue seemed to fill my mouth. Ázzuen sat guard beside me, glaring at RalZun. There was a dried gourd filled with water in front of me. I stood and gulped the water down. RalZun threw pieces of firemeat at my paws and I gobbled them. Only then did I look up at him again.

“If I'd thought you were stupid,” he croaked, “I would not have let you near Kaar.”

The sun, shining behind him, hurt my eyes. I had no idea
what he was talking about, and I'd had it with everyone, human and wolf alike, ordering me around. I lay back down, my head on my paws.

RalZun hit me on the head again with his pouch. “I don't care how tired you are,” he snarled at me. “Get up on your paws and follow me.”

“We should go with him,” Ázzuen said. He looked at me as if I might bite him.

I was too weary to argue. RalZun stalked away. Tlitoo walked just beside him, mocking the old krianan by bobbing up and down in time with his steps. When Ázzuen nudged me, I struggled back to my feet and followed.

RalZun walked in quick, jerky strides. Still exhausted from my journey to the Inejalun, I couldn't keep up. Ázzuen trotted back to walk beside me. Huffing in annoyance, RalZun slowed down, too.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded.

At first I didn't know what he was talking about. Then I remembered. Lallna had haunted the humans and they'd been frightened. I didn't know how long ago it had been. I often slept for a day or more after going to the Inejalun.

“It was a joke,” I said to RalZun.

“It was a stupid one,” he hissed. Tlitoo hissed back.

“I know,” I said.

RalZun sighed and his expression softened a little. “They're saying you all turn to ghosts at night. They're saying you're not to be trusted. They look upon all of your pack with suspicion.”

I remembered the streckwolves Tlitoo had shown me in the Inejalun. Their humans weren't suspicious of them. They wouldn't think they were ghosts or child killers.

“How long was I asleep?” I murmured.

“Almost two days, wolf,” Tlitoo quorked. “I am sorry. I did not know you would sleep so long.”

Half a moon since we'd left home. Eleven days left before Even Night. And no wonder I was still so thirsty. I stood and began following the faint scent of water until I found a trickle of a stream nearby and lapped from it. Ázzuen drank next to me. I hadn't heard RalZun follow, but when I looked up, he was perched on a rock, watching me.

“The humans are so stupid!” I said. “They believe anything.”

“It's not stupid for them,” he answered. “The night is dangerous when you have no fangs. The dark is fearsome when your vision fails you.”

He sighed again and hopped down from his rock. “You'll have to try that much harder to gain their trust. TaLi has told the elders how you fished for salmon with her. It's one of HesMi's favorite foods. Your girl leads the salmon hunt tomorrow. Be rested by then.”

He glowered at me once more and then stalked into the woods.

If he hadn't been so busy scolding me, I would have told him about the streckwolf village. I told Ázzuen. He listened to me quietly, the skin between his eyes wrinkling.

“I don't see what Gaanin and his wolves can do, Kaala. It's only eleven days until Even Night. We just have to keep them away until then.” He grinned at me. “And win over the humans. And stop Milsindra from sending more rhinos, and DavRian from making up more stories.”

“Oh, is that all,” I said, a smile tugging at my muzzle.

He stood on his hind legs and placed his forepaws on my back. “We'll bring them so many fish, they won't have to hunt for a moon,” he said. “They'll be as fat as rock bears ready to sleep the winter away.”

Grinning, I reared up to knock him off my back. “That is, if you don't eat all the salmon before we get them back to the village.”

He nipped me lightly on the nose, barked a challenge, and darted into the woods. I took off after him. We were far from success in Kaar, and there were so many things that could go wrong I couldn't hold them all in my thoughts. But Ázzuen thought we could succeed. I chased after him, leaving, at least for a moment, my fatigue and doubts behind.

At high sun the next day, I stood in a wide stretch of shallow water. Ázzuen and Pell were at my flanks. Prannan sat beside JaliMin on the bank while the boy slipped him bits of food. Lallna watched from the woods, gnawing on a piece of horse bone she'd dug up from a human cache. Six humans, including HesMi, TaLi, and BreLan, watched us from the riverbank.

The humans often hunted the salmon, TaLi had told me.
Fishing
they called it. They had their spears with them, but also large bundles of woven vines. At first I thought the bundles were meant to carry fish, like TaLi's basket, but as the humans unrolled them, it was clear that they were too large and unwieldy for that.

We were upstream from where Ázzuen and I had caught salmon in the fast-running water. The water was calmer here, but I watched TaLi with concern as she waded over to me.

“I told them you'd help us chase the fish into the nets,” TaLi said, pointing to the stretches of woven vines. “Usually it takes at least twelve of us to catch an entire run of fish here, but there were four herds of elk nearby and HesMi didn't want to spare so many hunters. Now we can hunt all four herds and the salmon.” Her voice rose with excitement. It was a way we could show that we were valuable to them.

She smiled and turned back to the humans. The water came up to just above her knees. “I'll herd the fish to you with the wolves,” she called out to the four humans at the net.

She must not have been looking where she was going. She slipped on something, a rock or a slick bit of mud, and fell into the water. It was slower-moving than the place where we'd hunted salmon before, but the current was still strong enough to take her. The other humans might not know that she couldn't swim.

I bounded toward her, Ázzuen splashing behind me. BreLan dropped his end of the net to wade over to her. All three of us got to her at the same time. She had already regained her feet and glared at us.

“I'm fine,” she said.

“You have to learn how to swim, TaLi,” BreLan said, pulling her into his arms. I pawed her thigh in agreement.

“I have to lead the hunt,” she said, gently tugging away from him.

He didn't let her go right away.

He took her chin in his hand and looked down at her. I heard her breathing quicken. BreLan's expression softened.

She smiled. “Later.”

He pressed his lips to hers. They stood like that for long
moments. Impatient for the hunt, I shoved in between them, pushing them apart. BreLan glared down at me, then made his way back to the other humans.

Hard bodies hit my legs, making me stumble. I looked down to see the river transformed. So many fish swam by my legs that it looked like a river of salmon rather than of water.

“Now!” TaLi called.

Ázzuen, Pell, and I splashed through the water. Prannan bolted from the riverbank, and Lallna took a running leap to land in the river. I was afraid she would try to steal some of the fish, but she followed my lead as we herded the salmon into the waiting nets of the humans.

The humans worked together as smoothly and elegantly as any pack of wolves. They closed in on the salmon, gathering them up in their nets. Then they dragged the nets onto the shore and into the woods, dumping out the writhing fish.

Lallna stopped next to me, panting.

“Why are you helping?” I demanded, certain she was up to something.

“It's fun!” she said. “You're too serious.”

Pell laughed and my ears flattened in embarrassment. He snatched a salmon out of the water and bounded into the woods with it. The humans waded back into the river with their nets, and the hunt began again. Twice more they filled their nets, until the cloud of fish thinned.

We waded out of the water. As we neared the riverbank, I spotted a lone salmon and grabbed it from the river. It writhed and flapped in my mouth. I dropped it when I reached the shore and bit into it.

A human male ran over to me.

“Give it here, wolf,” he said.

I looked at him, annoyed. They had netfuls of salmon. They didn't need this one and I was hungry. I was also aware that Lallna would be watching me. Then I caught the scent of bitter spruce. Milsindra was skulking somewhere nearby, too. A smile pulled at my muzzle. I could show both of them I wasn't submissive to the humans.

I didn't growl or even snarl at the male. I just turned away, the salmon in my mouth. He tried to grab it again, and I ducked under his hand. He grabbed at the fish once more, his face dark with exertion and frustration, and I ducked out of his way again and carried the fish into the woods. I turned when I heard a loud thump. The human had picked up a rock and hurled it onto the ground in fury. He looked at the place where I'd entered the forest, anger and shame contorting his face. I didn't worry too much about it. There were always battles over prey.

“He doesn't seem very happy with you,” Milsindra said. She yawned as she stepped out from behind a willow. My heart started beating hard as it did whenever I met her. I thought quickly about the rest of the fish hunt. We had not been subservient to the humans in any way.

I set the salmon down. “He'll get over it,” I said, grateful that Milsindra was forbidden to show herself to humans other than krianans. If she weren't, she would have waded out into the river itself.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But then again, they are not the most reasonable of creatures. They scare easily.”

“That's why you herded the rhino to them?” I demanded.
It was stupid to confront her, but I was tired of her bullying. “You can send as many rhinos as you like. We'll still win.”

I thought I saw a flicker of fear in her eyes. Then it was gone and I wondered if I'd imagined it. She whuffed a laugh and poked her nose hard enough into my ribs to make me fall. Then she took my salmon in her huge jaws and loped away.

When I got to my feet, I was shaking. When I'd been face-to-face with Milsindra, I'd been able to defy her. Now anxiety made my neck ache and my skin itch so much I wanted to scrape it off. I rubbed against a willow tree, but it didn't help. Then I smelled rotting prey. I followed the scent a few wolflengths deeper into the woods, where I found a badger that had been dead at least three days.

I dipped one shoulder into the soft flesh of the dead prey and rolled onto my back, turning back and forth in it until my itching eased and the tension in my neck lessened. I rolled once more in the yielding flesh of the badger. Feeling much better, I set off after the humans.

They had already started back toward Kaar, but it was easy to catch up to them, weighed down as they were by their burden of freshly caught fish. The sun was halfway down the sky and warmed the earth beneath my paws. HesMi, walking at the front of the line of humans, raised her voice in what sounded like a howl moving up and down in pitch. It was just as complex as our howls, with repetitions and rhythms similar to those the humans used when they made what they called
music
by hitting dried gourds or blowing into hollow deer bones. Her voice was beautiful. It sounded like the wind
moving through the holes in a cliff. First one human, then another joined her. I stopped where I stood and added my voice to theirs in a song of celebration of a successful hunt. Ázzuen and Prannan joined me, and our voices blended with the humans'. Tlitoo landed next to me and swiveled his head from side to side.