The Blood of Ten Chiefs (24 page)

**No. The tall ones are quarreling over what to do with me.**

**Be ready. We are coming.**

His mind turned to the others, Brook at his one side, Joygleam at the other, the many at his back, and his sending embraced them all at once, and they all answered him. Out of the score of them, some frightened, most uneasy, sending made a unity, strong, steady, fierce.

**No killing, my people, unless it is necessary. But if it is, smite hard.**

**We are ready, our chief.**

"Ayooooah, Wolfriders! Attack!"

The human young relived it all of their brutish lives in nightmare.

Out of the shadows of the forest, the wolves, a storm-gray scud of them, streaming forward at the speed of birdflight, their gaping mouths showing their long, white teeth—and on each one, long hunting knife or sharp lance upraised, a—a creature, a demon, with fierce eyes that seemed to glow, upslanted and wild as the eyes of the wolves. And before there was time to do more than scream, the flood of them swept into the village.

Tanner, in the lead, sped straight to Stormlight, saw her squirming out of her bonds as if they were so much strangleweed. A few quick strokes of his sharp leather-cutting knife to help her, and she was free. **My eyes see with joy,** she greeted him.

He caught her up much as the shrieking human females were snatching up their children; he set her on Stagrunner before him. **My hands touch with joy,** he told her before he turned his eyes and mind back to the others.

The Wolfriders had needed to do no more than rush and threaten. The humans were fleeing, falling like storm-toppled trees in their frenzy to get away. Only a few, doughty Lift-Leg among them, stood their ground, and they all seemed too stunned to raise weapon. No bloodshed yet, Tanner saw.

"I have our sister, my people. Quickly, back to the hurst!"

Like one large, leaping wolf they wheeled to obey him. But a human hunter was in Tanner's way. The man who had captured Stormlight, he was not as frightened as the rest, for his slow mind was intent only on his prize, and he saw it escaping him. With a bellow of anger he raised his club to strike—

Tanner shouted and raised his knife, futile against so large a foe. Nearly helpless, Stormlight pressed against his chest ... too late to send Stagrunner darting off to the side—the wolf snarled, longing to tear out the throat of this enemy, knowing he could not leap so high with the burden that was on his back. The club swept down—then dropped with a soft thud to earth as Brook drove his stone-tipped lance into the human's heart.

Tanner saw the quivering lance haft as the blow struck home, but he only heard the thump of the falling body, for he was forest bound, at speed, holding Stormlight in his arms, Brook riding at his side, and the others close at hand, and the wolves running hard, carrying them all out of danger.

Though never again would they be entirely out of danger. The humans knew their enemy now. A human warrior had been slain.

Brook said, "My chief, I had no choice."

"But you did! You could have let me be killed."

Brook stared uneasily, feeling once again as if his chief were going mad—until he saw the gray glint of mischief in Tanner's eyes. Then he laughed aloud.

"You have outjaped me," he declared, laughing, "after all these years."

"What, my chief, did you never tell him you have the soul of a scamp?" Stormlight twisted her thin body to look up at Tanner. But his face was somber, his fingertips stroking a storm-purple lump on her white-skinned temple.

**You told me they had not hurt you.**

**Not but for that. It is where the tall one stunned me with a rock, capturing me.**

He felt weak, as if starved by many days' hunger, touching her. Her soulname was pulsing in him like a heartbeat. He needed her as a parched forest needs rain.

"Set me down," she said, perhaps sensing some of this in him, perhaps feeling it in herself. "I will go take my passage at once."

"Come to the healer first, and to the howl, so that the tribe may see you are well," Tanner told her. "Then go."

It was a long howl. There was much to be discussed, for there was no telling what the humans might do. A heavy guard was set. More weapons were to be made, and breastplates of thick leather, to be worn even when hunting. Extra roots and forage of all sorts were to be gathered. No one was to leave the hurst alone. Tanner's people agreed to all this, and looked at him with a new light in their eyes. Theirs was again to be the life of legend, the life of the Wolfriders. Safety was perhaps, after all, not the only thing. Perhaps daring and courage were worth as much. Perhaps they might yet find a way to capture Lift-Leg's marvelous tanning agent for their chief.

To him, it no longer seemed so important. In time he expected he would find something else that worked as well. Meanwhile, there was his Recognized to be thought of.

He took leave of her afterward, by moonlight, as she stood at the side of her wolf-friend who would bear her away and guard her during her vigil.

"As soon as I have found my soulname, I will be an adult, we can do the thing to make the cub?"

"Yes," he told her.

"I will come back as quickly as I can. I know you are suffering, you cannot eat. I feel the same."

"Yes."

"But I do not plan to stay with you," she told him bluntly, "after it is done."

"Of course not. I will not try to hold you." His hand lifted to stroke her cloud-wisp hair. "It would be like trying to hold the wind."

**Lhu. I thank you.**

He embraced her, held her pressed against his chest for a moment, then let her go, stood and watched as she rode her giant thunder-dark wolf off into the darkened forest.

When she was gone from sight he turned and went back to the hurst, thinking he would sit alone at the brow of the hill, as he had so many other nights. But he was mistaken. Not only his wolf-friend awaited him, but many of his tribe-mates were there waiting for him as well.

"It seemed to us," Brook explained awkwardly, "that we ought to be more together from now on."

"No more hunting alone?" Tanner teased him.

"No more letting you become a stranger to us. I, for one, was fool enough to think bad things of you, and I am ashamed."

Tanner said, "I let it happen, too. So much that is in me, I have never shared."

He sat at the brow of the hurst, looking up at the stars. They all sat with him.

"Together," Tanner echoed softly. "My people, often I have had a strange dream of a-—a place I do not know, a sort of huge tree of many hollows, where all the Wolfriders could rest in one place."

"Show us," said Fangslayer gruffly.

So he shared with them the image in his mind with a sending that included them all. A generation later, when some of the younger ones of them, grown old, came at last to the holt, they would remember that night when Tanner shared with them that dream, and many others, and when they and their chief howled together of the Way and what the Wolfriders should be.

Longreach didn't join the long hunts anymore—he claimed too much wolf riding made his bones ache—but he joined the ones in easy range of the Father Tree. It was possible that his strength was less than it had once been or that his eyes were just a bit blurred, still what he had lost in sheer ability he had more than gained in cunning. He'd thrust his spear into the heart-flesh of a redbuck and felt the wolf-song within him trill as the warm blood touched his lips.

He was content, then, as they brought the carcass back to the hole to share with the others. His mind moved with the moment, so he was surprised when blond Treestump came up alongside.

"It's Moth, storyteller," the bearded Wolfrider said. "I'm worried for her. She's all set for her quest but there's something off-stride in her heart."

Longreach brought his mind to focus behind his eyes. There was no doubting the affection and concern in the hunter's face though Moth was no blood to him since Tanner's generation. The Wolfrider loved all the cubs—their own and each other's. If Treestump thought Moth needed a story or a shoulder, then Longreach would do his share.

"She's in the mist grove," Treestump said as he took the redbuck onto his own wolfs back.

The old Wolfrider put the gnarled trees with their dangling clumps of silver moss into Starwing's mind. The wolf melted away from the others and carried him rise-ward to the grove. Moth was with her wolf-friend, looking very small and very frightened. Her face showed shock and then relief as Starwing cleared the shadows.

"I didn't hope—" she began, taking his hands before he'd even slid from Starwing's back.

He patted her straw-blond hair and tucked her face against his shoulder; he could feel her heart pounding and trembling. "You didn't need to hope, wolfling. One sent thought and I'd find you, you know that—"

**What if I don't find it?**

**You'll find your soulname, don't fret about it.**

She pulled away, leaving dark splotches on his tunic. "Why me?" she stammered through her sobs. "Why couldn't I find my name right here under the Father Tree like everyone else? Why wasn't I born knowing it like Cutter was?" Shamed by her cub-tears, Moth wiped her face on her sleeve— and left a long smudge across her cheek.

It made her look younger and even more forlorn. Longreach would have made up a name and given it to her right then if that would have made a difference. "You'll be seeking more than a name. Cutter was born knowing who he was and he'll know who he is all his life, I suspect. And the ones who find their names here, it's as if they're truly a part of the holt. But some of the Wolfriders have had to search to find their true selves."

**And some of them never come back.** Sent, not spoken, because the fear lay tight around the thought.

"Some," the storyteller honestly agreed, "but I can see by their eyes when they won't find a soulname, and I can see when they will. And what I see in your eyes, I've seen before—''

In the moist darkness of the soil, a point of life waited for its slow transition into form. Goodtree stilled, focusing her awareness upon it, trying to understand its essence, wondering if she could touch the power that would make it grow.

**Goodtree—**

Questing for the magic at the heart of things, consciousness registered the call, but noted no meaning. It was only sound-symbols, not a true name.

"Goodtree, where are you?"

Audible this time, the calling stirred memory, and awareness detached itself unwillingly from the essence of the flower. One pointed ear cupped instinctively to catch the whisper of skin-booted feet on grass.

**Lionleaper?**

Goodtree straightened, grimacing as stiffened muscles in slender limbs sent their own pained messages, and with a sigh remembered why she had wanted to be a tree. Her father, Tanner, chief of the Wolfriders, was gone.

The stiff foliage of the bearberry bushes that edged the clearing shivered, and a lithe figure, smooth-muscled and tawny as the beast from which he'd got his name, slipped past.

"Oh—this is pretty!" Lionleaper hunkered down beside her, patting the vivid moss beneath the trees.

Scent stimulated Goodtree's awareness of his physical nearness—the mixed smells of wolf on his tawny leggings, mint from the banks of the stream on his brown boots, and from the lightly tanned skin of his bare torso, the scent of his own pungent maleness. Instinctively she reached out to touch him, and he pulled her close and rubbed his cheek against hers.

"Nobody knew where you'd gone," Lionleaper said then, "but I thought I might find you here."

Abruptly Goodtree was separate again, green eyes widening in suspicion. "Did the others send you after me?"

"I don't take orders from anybody." His gaze went determinedly back to the moss. "But they're worried, Goodtree— they don't understand why you won't let them call you chieftain. I wish your mother was still alive—maybe she could talk sense into you!"

Goodtree shook her head, grinning crookedly. "You can't remember her very well if you think so! Considering how she fought against being chieftess to my father I don't think she would have dared to press the responsibility on me!"

"Are you trying to be like her?" asked Lionleaper. "Or are you still grieving for Tanner? We all loved him, but he's gone now—that's the Way—and it's no dishonor to his memory to tie up your hair in a chief's lock and carry on."

Defensively, Goodtree smoothed back her curls, golden as the sunlight that bathed the moss. The strand of ivy with which she had bound her hair came loose and she cast it angrily away.

"Is that what you want, Lionleaper?"

"You know what I want, my golden one!" he turned to her suddenly and she shrank from the glow in his amber eyes. Lovemates they had been, lifemates they might be, but she could not afford the closeness, could not take the chance that one night he might offer her his soulname and find out that she had none to give him in return.

"I say what I have said only for the good of the tribe," he added then. "Come back with me now. We have howled for your father; it's time to let him go."

For the good of the tribe! Goodtree thought as she followed Lionleaper back through the forest. How can I lead the Wolfriders without knowing my true name? I wish it were not my father we were mourning, but me!

It was the beginning of the green, growing time, and on the sandy slopes of the hurst the beech trees were already in delicate leaf against the somber dark green of the conifers. Soon the grass would be high on the plains that stretched between the forest and the southern mountains, and the great herds would move northward again. Time then for the elves to leave the protection of the Everwood for the good hunting of the grasslands, but for now it was enough to set the heavy furs of winter aside, and rejoice in the rebirth of the world.

When Goodtree and Lionleaper came into the clearing on the crest of the hill, those who had slept the day away were beginning to waken, wolves and elves emerging together from hollows beneath the great roots of the beech trees, or thickets where they had fashioned rough shelters. Goodtree staggered as a warm weight struck her from behind, and with a quick twist of her slender body, turned her fall into a grab for the brindled pelt of the great she-wolf who was pressing against her.

"Leafchaser! If you're too sleepy to walk straight, go back to your den!" Her words were harsh, but her arms were around the wolf's neck, her face buried in thick fur. From the wolf came a wordless amusement, and Goodtree had a momentary impression of herself as a cub to be knocked over in play until it had the wit to avoid or the strength to withstand it.

"Oh all right!" she answered, sitting back on her heels to stare into the wolf's yellow eyes. "I suppose it's my own fault for not sensing you were there." Leafchaser's eyes slanted as her jaws opened in an answering grin, then two pairs of pointed ears pricked at a long-drawn, distant howl.

**Good hunt, much meat,** came the wolf's images.

**Hunters coming back.** All around them wolves were answering in sweet harmony, and several of the elves had leaped to their friends' backs and sped down the slope to help the hunters bring home their kill. Goodtree could just remember a time when, for fear of the humans who roamed the plain, the elves had hunted only during the hours of darkness. But when the humans were not fighting elves, they fought each other, and for many seasons now their numbers had been too few for them to threaten the Wolfriders.

Goodtree stood up, tugging her close-fitting doeskin tunic back down over her leggings. She had eaten nothing since early that morning, and her belly was already rumbling in anticipation. Her anguish of the afternoon was forgotten. Joyously she cut a length of the clingsilver that twined up the trunk of the great beech tree and twisted it into a new wreath for her hair so that the little bell-shaped blossoms hung trembling over her cheeks and brow.

Soon new sounds heralded the hunters' arrival—Joygleam first, as befitted the senior huntress of the tribe, sitting her wolf-friend proudly despite her evident weariness, and then Brightlance and the others, each bearing a portion of what must have been a mighty beast indeed.

"The branch-horns are coming!" cried Brightlance. "Their forerunners are moving into the grasslands, and the main herd will be here soon. This bull was the first of them, but we were too clever for him. How I wish we could have brought his head too—his horns were like the limbs of this tree!" He gestured broadly, and the haunch he was carrying slipped to the grass.

Elves seized it eagerly and carried it into the clearing in the center of the hurst, and soon knives of flint and bone were stripping skin from flesh and carving the dripping muscle-meat into pieces so that everyone could share. They sat in a circle on the grass, and for a time the only sounds were of those strong jaws moving and an occasional growl as a wolf worried at a particularly resistant piece of flesh, followed by sighs of repletion as one by one, both wolves and elves were filled. Goodtree leaned back against a friendly trunk, at peace with the world. The sun had sought its den and the first stars were pricking holes in the mantle that evening had drawn across the sky. Elfin eyes grew larger and more luminous as the darkness deepened. Then the child moon lifted above the trees, and one of the wolves lifted his pointed muzzle and sang out in greeting. One by one the others echoed him, and the elves joined them, their howling shifting imperceptibly into song.

"Two moons in the sky— High the way they go ... To their hidden hall. Well the way they know ..."

The final vowel sounds were drawn out and held, providing a soft background as Acorn Songshaper continued. Goodtree could just glimpse his soft brown hair against the darker tree trunk, his thin body no broader than it was. He was gentle, as her father had been, and as she knew well, lying with him on the grass in the moonlight was like being part of a song.

"Wander ers are we, Free, we find our way Through forest, over hill, Still we cannot stay ..."

Goodtree felt her spirit shaken by a longing for something she could not name, and, opened to the emotions of the others by the sweetness of the music, knew that they felt it too.

"Forever must we roam, Homeless here below? Oh, are we all alone? Only the high ones know!''

The Wolfriders had hunted through Everwood since before her birth, and yet, singing this song, Goodtree felt as if she had lost a place and a people that she had never known. For a moment she could almost see it, then the last echoes faded, and the image glimmered like a rainbow in the morning mist and was gone.

"Mold and mushrooms, Acorn, you'll dissolve us into puddles if you keep this on!" exclaimed Lionleaper, blinking rapidly. "Can't you find anything livelier to sing?"

"Oh, Lionleaper is a hero—" the Songshaper responded immediately. "With him around what shall we fear-oh? Oh, oh, oh, aoow!" Everyone began to laugh as the wolves provided the chorus, and as Acorn continued with verses describing Joygleam's success as a hunter, Chipper's expertise in working stone, and Freshet's ability to find dreamberries, someone began clicking out a rhythm on clapper stones. By the time they had surveyed the peculiarities of most of the tribe, someone else had added the twittering of a reed flute to the music, and Acorn was thrumming an accompaniment on the eight-stringed bow-harp he had made.

The music grew wilder, and elves sprang into the center of the ring to dance. The Mother moon trailed her offspring across the skyfields, and her leaf-filtered light dappled the soft grass. In that deceptive radiance the leaping figures of the dancers flickered in and out of vision. Goodtree rose to join them, then blinked, wondering if she had eaten too many dreamberries. But the music was headier than they. Forgetting everything, she danced, linked once more to the deep magic of the night.

Goodtree did not know how long it had been when she realized that the wordless song of the united tribe and pack had become a deep chanting—affirming their identity—

"From the frozen mountains to the pathless forest!"

"We are the Wolfriders, and the pack runs free!" came the full-throated reply.

"From the Muchcold Water to the Sea of Grass!" the chant went on, and the response was repeated. "Blood of the high ones, Timmorn's children!" "Led by chieftains' might and wisdom!" Unwilled, Goodtree was caught up in the litany.

"Rahnee the She-Wolf, Prey-Pacer, Two-Spear—" "Huntress Skyfire, Freefoot, Tanner!" Goodtree jolted to a halt like a fleeing doe who senses the cliff-edge before her, but the tribe's response vibrated through her.

"We are the Wolfriders, and the pack runs free!" "Goodtree, Goodtree, chiefs' blood, lead us!" They roared, and she stood trembling, mouthing denials that no one could hear. Exultant faces glimmered mockingly in the moonlight; her head was pounding and the meat she had eaten lay in her belly like a stone.

**No!** she sent finally, with a violence that flared like lightning through their ecstasy. **The tribe is safe here— what do you need a chief for? Choose someone else if you have to—but not me, not me!** Sobbing, Goodtree found the power of motion finally and dashed from the circle into the sheltering shadows of the trees.

Instinct urged her to run like a stampeded branch-horn. But the log that tripped her brought Goodtree partway to her senses—she sought escape, not death, and she must not go weaponless. Hastily she ducked into her shelter and slung bow and quiver across her back, wrapped the longtooth pelt that Lionleaper had given her around her shoulders, and picked up her bone-tipped lance. Then she was out again, a shadow among shadows, slipping silently through the trees.

She was halfway down the hill when the snap of a twig behind her startled her. She missed a step and her nostrils caught a familiar scent just as a gust of warm breath tickled her ear.

**Leafchaser!** Her sending held mingled relief and annoyance, but she knew that she could never have evaded her wolf-friend for long. But where Leafchaser could follow, others could trace her as well. What if the rest of the Wolfriders refused to let her leave?

**Old friend, I don't know where I'm going. Are you sure you want to come along?**

Whether or not the she-wolf had properly understood the sending, her determination to stay with Goodtree was clear, and the elf felt her heart imperceptibly lightened. It was not natural for either wolf or Wolfrider to hunt alone. She let the wolf find a way through the thick trees, but when they came to the river she forced the complaining animal to follow her upstream through the water. Even wolves would be thrown off the scent by that, at least for a little while.

But both the wolves and the Wolfriders had gorged to satiation, and bellies shrunken by winter's scarcities needed time to digest the considerable quantities of meat on which they had feasted. It was not until midmorning that they realized that Goodtree and Leafchaser were gone and began to search for them.

For two days Goodtree pressed onward, pausing only to hunt. Behind her was the deep forest and the ever deepening river that flowed downhill toward the Muchcold Water to the north. Before her the trees grew thinner, and at the end of the second day, she saw through the last outlying pines wind-ruffled grasses furring the long slope of plain that rose toward a blue etching of mountains, sharp against the sky.

They camped that night at the edge of the forest, listening to the incessant whispering of grasses in the wind. -When morning came, Goodtree and Leafchaser shared the last of the meat. Then she sprang onto the wolf's narrow back, clutching at the thick neck fur and laughing joyously as Leafchaser leaped forward across the plain.

In the forest behind her, Lionleaper stilled as his wolf-friend Fang barked out the short call that told him that the animal had found the scent they were looking for. He tipped back his own head then and gave tongue, and heard the nearest elf echoing. From one to another the call carried back to the hurst where the fighting strength of the Wolfriders was waiting. They had been getting ready for the spring hunt in any case, and needed little preparation. Before another hour had passed, everyone who was fit for a long ride—a good two-thirds of the tribe—was mounted and ready to follow Goodtree's trail.