The Wolf Age (28 page)

To the reviving werewolf she sang sweetly that he should be sure to tell the Werowance, be sure to tell Wurnafenglu, be sure to tell his mate and cubs how he had lost his honor-teeth-that he had lost them to a female.

Desperately, the disgraced wolf tried to grab at a few of the lost teeth with his mouth, but she headed him off, snarling, and he retreated back beside his peers, his head still hanging at an odd angle.

The other two emissaries sang despondently that this was a sad way to treat them and that the Werowance would be angry.

Shoulder to shoulder now, Wuinlendhono and Rokhlenu faced the three emissaries down, forcing them backward, barking that they should go! go! go! while they had one honor-tooth or testicle among them.

Olleiulu appeared at the entrance of the chamber with an unruly pack of irredeemables at his heels, mostly in their night shapes. They parted to let the emissaries through, and barked derisively, from human and lupine throats alike, as the three Sardhluun werewolves suddenly turned tail and fled into the night.

Wuinlendhono held her aggressive stance until the emissaries had vanished and the volley of insults pursuing them had died down. Then she turned and touched noses with Rokhlenu. Her breath was hot on his face, and he inhaled it like perfume.

She whispered her thanks, sang gently that five was a very lucky number indeed, and asked if he was willing to follow her lead on something.

Every nerve in Rokhlenu's body was ringing like a bronze bell, and he breathed back that he was willing to follow her anywhere. What he really meant was that he was willing to follow her into a nearby room and couple like weasels, and her sinister grin suggested that she understood this.

Nonetheless, she took his answer and bounded back up to First Wolf's couch and lay there.

She sang a song of honor to Rokhlenu and his irredeemables, who had stood forth to defend her and the honor of the outlier pack from the insolence of the flea-bitten Sardhluun guard dogs. A lucky ghost had guided her choice of intended, as he had proven this night. Then she pointedly directed Yaniunulu, the chief of her bodyguard, to sweep up the defeated emissary's honorteeth and present them as a love-gift to her intended, Rokhlenu, glorious singer and hero.

His tail hanging a little low, the reddish wolf moved to obey.

Olleiulu stood forth and said, "If you'll excuse me, Wuinlendhono, high and fierce, I can do that. I'm just a semiwolf, it's no problem for me."

Wuinlendhono crooned that Olleiulu was generous and brave, a warrior whatever shape he happened to wear, and that the work was beneath him; she would let Yaniunulu do it, and perhaps some other humble services around the lair. Meanwhile, Olleiulu had more important work to perform, the labor of a citizen and a fighter.

Stoically, Yaniunulu set about sweeping up the scattered honor-teeth with his tail.

Wuinlendhono asked Olleiulu if her intended had gathered together the agreed-upon settlement in gold.

Olleiulu's eyes crossed a little at this, and he looked anxiously at Rokhlenu for a sign. Rokhlenu nodded, and Olleiulu turned back toward First Wolf and said, "Yes, High Huntress and leader, he has."

Wuinlendhono sang that he could keep it, that she had changed her mind.

Stunned silence greeted this remark, followed by whispers and whistles of wonder. And there was an undercurrent of snarling anger from the irredeemable.. They had not come here to see their chief dishonored.

Not about the marriage, Wuinlendhono sang, when the surprise had begun to subside. On that she was more settled than ever. No, for a marriage settlement, she desired no gold, not she, who was rich enough that her very household servants and maids wore gold teeth. No, she needed no gold. It was blood that she wanted, blood and vengeance on the mangy sheepdogs of the Sardhluun Pack.

Dizzy with the sense that he was bounding along the edge of a crumbling cliff, Rokhlenu cried that the gift was too easy, that they had torn the Sardhluun Pack when they had little to fight with but the chains and stones of the hated Vargulleion.

Wuinlendhono sang back that she knew how brave he and his relentless heroes were, and that any deed requiring no more than bravery and cunning would be a trivial favor to ask of them, but that nonetheless she did want this one thing. The Sardhluun kept another prison for Wuruyaaria: the Khuwuleion, the Stone Lair, where females lay in vile durance. If Rokhlenu and his irredeemables would break the gates of the Khuwuleion and free the prisoners therein, she would life-mate with Rokhlenu the same night, may the ghosts bind her to it.

Rokhlenu sang that he accepted the challenge and that he would break the walls of the Khuwuleion and return to mate with her, still stained with the blood of their common enemies.

Wuinlendhono indicated a polite eagerness for that occasion and dismissed the assembly.

When they were alone, in a more private chamber on the floor above, Rokhlenu wondered aloud whether the frozen stone that his beloved used for a heart had been shedding icy splinters that were lodged in her brain, driving her mad.

Wuinlendhono sang that he was a very witty fellow and that she must remember to write some of these things down when her fingers returned on the morrow.

Rokhlenu insisted that he was essentially serious. It was one thing to rebuke emissaries who had insulted a First Wolf in her own lair. It was another to propose an act of war against a treaty pack. That would engage them in war with all four treaty packs: the entire city of Wuruyaaria.

Wuinlendhono said that he had beautiful eyes, lovely white teeth, and magnificent haunches but that he seemed to have no intellectual attainments at all, except making words sing. Did Rokhlenu not realize that he had already committed an act of war against the Sardhluun by leading the escape from the Vargulleion? That he had implicated her and the outliers in it by taking refuge here-and that she had accepted this by accepting him and his? The Sardhluun had generously promised to overlook her offense if she surren dered the fugitives, and those were the only terms on which they would overlook it. They were in a war already, and they could only look for a route to victory. She suggested that he use that space between his alert and expressive ears for a little activity she liked to call thinking.

Rokhlenu's song in reply was one of regret. He had brought this scent of trouble on her, and he would lead the pack hunting it away from her. He would take the other escaped prisoners with him and leave. The Sardhluun would pursue them and leave the outliers alone.

Wuinlendhono barked that if he took one more step toward the doorway she would kill him-kill! kill! kill! Males did not proffer their love to her and then withdraw it. She would rip his belly open. She would kill any female he tried to mate with. She would slander his name before every pack in Wuruyaaria-in every den of flea-bitten stray dogs who roamed the north. He must not leave. Would he not lie down and be reasonable? Why, oh why were beautiful males so reckless and wayward?

Rokhlenu suavely suggested it was because the smells emitted by mateworthy females in their presence drove them mad.

Wuinlendhono leapt on him then, and they rolled around on the floor for a while, nipping each other on the shoulders and pulling each other's tails.

After some more play of this sort, the First Wolf and her intended were lying face-to-face, breathing rather heavily, but discussing issues of a coldly practical nature.

Wuinlendhono agreed with Rokhlenu that war with the Sardhluun was technically war with all the treaty packs. But she pointed out that no one likes to help a loser. The Sardhluun had already been humiliated by the escape from the Vargulleion; that was why they were barking so loudly, to drown the sound of their shame. Citizens were laughing at them on all the mesas of Wuruyaaria, all the way down to Apetown: that was what all her spies said. If the Sardhluun also lost the prisoners in the Khuwuleion, they lost half the reason for their existence, and no one would lift a paw for them.

Rokhlenu said that she had a kind of point, but that the assault on the Khuwuleion was trickier than she made it sound. With all their disadvantages in breaking out of the Vargulleion, they had at least had the advantage of being there, inside the prison. They didn't first have to cross the plantation walls, alerting every citizen in the Sardhluun, and then break into the prison itself. Nor would it be New Year's Night when they did, with half the guards gone and half the guards who remained smoke-drunk and stupid.

Wuinlendhono suggested that they make the attempt during one of the primary elections the Sardhluun were holding this month. Many guards would be absent to attend the election; the plantation walls would be more thinly guarded. As for the prison defenses ... well, they would think of something. Perhaps if that crazy Khretvarrgliu could be driven bear-shirt mad again, the guards would run squeaking away. She supposed half the stories she had heard about that night were lies, but even so ...

Rokhlenu whistled thoughtfully, curling his tongue to flute the sound as he mulled this over. She did not know Morlock, he sang at last, or she would not have suggested this. Still, there might be something Morlock could do for them.

She sang that if Orlock-

Morlock, he corrected her.

-if Yorlock-

Morlock, he corrected her.

-if Nyorlock-and that was close enough, an evil ghost take the neverwolf's unpronounceable name-that if Nyorlock could make gold out of mud, he could perhaps make more warlike and useful metals.

Rokhlenu sang concordantly and looked deep into her dark eyes agleam with moonlight.

She got to her feet irritably and asked if he had gotten laid yet.

He sang sadly that he would wait until they mated, that he didn't mind waiting.

She snapped that she did mind. The musk he emitted was making females wet in their nether parts for miles around. This nuisance must cease. She needed him to act with a cold clear head; she needed him to understand what he was doing when he bonded with her for life; she needed him to not have any regrets about last lost chances. Because he was not chasing other tails once they were together; she would not be shamed that way. If he needed the name of a good whore, she could find one for him.

In a bitter angular song not far removed from barking, he replied that he would never shame her that way, and he wondered why she was shaming him so. He didn't want his first coupling with her tainted with the stink of another female. His love for her was a sacred fire; it pained him, but he did not fear the pain.

His song was becoming more lyrical, and she interrupted him with a bitter barking laugh. She knew males better than that! she barked. He must be up to something.

He got to his feet, looked at her, and left without a word.

She repressed the impulse to run after him barking (get a whore! get a whore! get a whore!). That would do no good to anyone. She wondered what would.

This was the room where she usually slept in her night shape. Before she curled up in the moonlight, she went to a corner of the room where there was a tapestry on a frame against the wall. She dragged the frame aside. Behind the tapestry, mounted on a wooden frame, was Morlock's drawing of Rokhlenu standing in triumph over the dragon he had killed. One of her agents had bought it for her in the city, and she was very pleased with it. She had looked on it many times during the day, but this was the first time she had seen it with the eyes of her night shape. It looked different, more abstract, starker, not less beautiful.

She shook her head wearily. He would have to do something stupid, something thoughtless, something that reassured her that he was just another thump-footed, fat-nosed, bristle-witted male. Because if he didn't, she might really have to fall in love with him, and that would be a ghost-bitten nuisance.

She lay looking on his image, basking in the moonlight and his lingering scent, until sleep came to her.

Her dreams, as usual, were nightmares. Often she dreamed of her dead husbands; this afternoon, she had dreamed of Rokhlenu standing among them. But tonight it was a much older nightmare, her very first recurring nightmare. She was a child again, back in the Khuwuleion, and they were torturing her mother for a reason no one ever explained. She screamed for someone to save them, but she knew no one would ever save them. Even in her dream, she knew that was just an empty dream.