The Wolf Age (31 page)

Morlock nodded. "We did better when we had less," he said.

The remark stuck with Rokhlenu through the rest of that weary, grim day of aftermath. Starting with their bare hands, they had battered their way out of the Vargulleion. Now they had more to lose (he thought anxiously of Wuinlendhono). But they had more to work with, too. There should have been a way to avoid this-and, more important, a way to avoid something like it happening again. Because he doubted the Sardhluun were done with them yet.

His doubts were confirmed late that afternoon when Hrutnefdhu came scampering to tell him that there was an emissary from the Sardhluun Pack at the southern gate.

There was no word from Liudhleeo about Wuinlendhono, and the Second Wolf of the outliers was nowhere to be found-had apparently fled, along with many others, after the Sardhluun attack. So Rokhlenu went to meet the emissary himself.

Standing under the red banner of truce on the boarded way outside Southgate was Wurnafenglu. He had some lesser werewolves, all more or less human in appearance, about him, but he was clearly the emissary with the most bite.

The guards at the gate, none of whom were escapees from the Vargulleion, stood watching the Sardhluun werewolves but saying nothing.

Rokhlenu directed them to open the gate. He put aside his stabbing spear and stepped out onto the boarded way.

"What is your message?" he said. "I will bring it to the First Wolf."

Wurnafenglu smiled a wide predatory smile. "I would enter and deliver it myself. But our emissaries have not always been treated with respect among the huts-on-stilts of the outlier pack-"

"Don't waste my time with lies. Your last emissary treated our First Wolf with disrespect and she took his honor-teeth. He deserved none-a sheep in wolf's clothing."

"The last group was indeed unsatisfactory," Wurnafenglu admitted. "We were displeased. I could show you their bald corpses impaled on poison stakes."

"The price of failure among you Sardhluun sheepdogs?"

"The price of shaming us. Now the outlier pack, too, has taken a first tentative lick of the endless bowl of poison which is the vengeance of the glorious Sardhluun Pack. There is no need for them to drain it all. If you surrender us our prisoners and all the honor-teeth they have earned, no matter how exotic"-Wurnafenglu glanced pointedly at the dragon's tooth on Rokhlenu's cord of honor-teeth-"we will consider that shame has been paid in shame and we will no longer stalk the trail of the outliers. We urge your First Wolf to consider the matter well. War with the Sardhluun Pack will be war with the whole city of Wuruyaaria that overshadows you. You cannot sustain the weight of their anger, or ours."

"Will the Sardhluun Pack go barking for aid to the four treaty packs, then?" asked an amused contralto voice at Rokhlenu's side. Rokhlenu turned to see Wuinlendhono standing beside him, adorned rather than armored in a brazen helmet and a bright shirt of copper rings. Her face was pale and bloodless; her expression was amused and somewhat insolent. "How will the message be phrased?" she continued, adding in a yelping tone, "`Help! Help! We are bad sheepdogs who have lost our bad sheep! Help us! Help us!"'

The guards standing at the gate laughed openly at this. The werewolves in Wurnafenglu's train bristled. Wurnafenglu himself merely broadened his already sinister grin and waited. After a brief silence he asked, "Is that your answer?"

"My answer is this: if you are not out of bowshot one hundred breaths after this gate is shut, I will order my archers to fire upon you, your banner of truce notwithstanding."

"And that is all you have to say?" Wurnafenglu asked, gazing at her searchingly.

"Give my respects to my stepmothers, of course," Wuinlendhono said coolly. "All that they merit." She turned on her heels and walked back into the Southgate. Rokhlenu followed, pondering her last comments.

Hrutnefdhu was cowering in the shadows inside the gate. No doubt he had wanted to avoid being seen by Wurnafenglu. The guards were pointedly ignoring his presence, but Rokhlenu said to him, "We may have unwanted guests here soon, or there may be another attack on the western wall. Round up the fifth-floor gang and send them here. Send the fourth-floor crew to the western wall. Then find as many citizens as you can who are willing to stand watch all around the walls. Tell people you speak with my voice. Where's Morlock, by the way?"

"Bending.... He said we needed more bows. So he said he was going to bend some wood. He took that crazy red werewolf with him."

"Good. Let him do as he wants-he will anyway. But send the rest of the fifth-floor crew here, to me. Understand? Go, then, my friend."

The pale werewolf smiled wanly at him and fled.

He turned back to Wuinlendhono, who was looking rather pale herself, and said, "How are you, High Huntress? I won't lie: I feared for your life when I saw that wound."

"Liudhleeo gave me something for the poison," the First Wolf replied. "She was going to smear me with some of that magic pond water she used on your old friend Nyorlock, but it smelled too bad and I wouldn't let her. The wound will heal with time and a little moonlight. Poor Olleiulu took the worst of the attack, I'm afraid. I liked him, Rokhlenu."

Rokhlenu nodded grimly. "So did I. He thought we should leave and recoup our fortunes among the barbarous packs. We could still do that."

Wuinlendhono took him by the arm and led him a little away from the guards, who were watching them with an open and natural interest.

"I hate this place," she whispered, when they were fairly out of earshot. "I hate the stinking dirty water and the bugs in summer and the rickety lairtowers and the mud and the wobbly boardwalks. But it is mine. It is mine. They gave it to me, after my last husband died; they made me First Wolf for life. I won't let anyone take it from me. You can go if you want."

"If you go, I go. If you stay, I stay."

"Good. I did say you could go, but I was going to kill you if you did."

"There is something wrong with you; that much is certain. But when you speak like that, low and sweet, I almost don't care what you say."

"That's why you need to get yourself a whore. I need a mate with a level head who can pay proper attention to my words."

"You're wrong."

"Don't ever tell me that. Particularly if it's true."

"You need someone as crazy as you are. That's me. Anyway, I'll be there soon if you keep breathing in my face."

Her black eyes glared at him; her bloodless lips grinned at him. She stepped back from him and he was crestfallen: he hadn't really wanted her to move away, and she knew it. He also saw for the first time that she was a little unsteady on her feet. He wanted to give her his arm to lean on, but he guessed she would brush it away now.

After a moment she said, "Here's our real problem."

"We have a problem?"

"Oh, for ghosts' sake. Shut your meat-hole for a moment."

Rokhlenu repressed several approximately witty replies that occurred to him then because she really did look sick and unhappy and he hated that. Because he could not restrain himself any longer, he reached out his hand to steady her. She drew herself up, raised her hand to knock his away ... then, unexpectedly, leaned into him.

"Thanks," she said.

"It's nothing," he said. "What's the problem?"

"Are you crazy? We must have ten thousand problems. Oh-you mean the one I meant. It's this. Gravy-boat, you don't have any right to do what you're doing around here."

Rokhlenu looked sidelong at her. "What do you mean?"

"Don't bite me. It's true. You're running this place as if you were my Second Wolf. Which you're not. Unless you want to be: the plepnup who had the job apparently ran off with the squeaking herds this morning."

"There's no chance he's among our honored dead, is there?"

"Well, that's the story I've been giving out. I suppose if he ever has the stones to show his hairless face around here again we may have to kill him to make the story stick."

"A pleasure."

"We'll share it, if it comes to that. But I take it from your general lack of eager woofiness that you are not thrilled with the prospect of being my Second Wolf."

"Frankly, no. I'm sorry-"

"No, don't be sorry. Always be frank with me. Always. Unless you're disagreeing with me. Then you can be diplomatic and sorry. But we don't disagree here. How can you keep the leadership of those crazy battle-scarred thugs if you're taking orders from a female? They'd be stupid to object, because I'm tougher than you are, or any of them, but that's not the point. They would object. We have to find a way around that."

"Hm."

"Well, yes, exactly. It's a problem. You're their leader, the only one they'll accept. Unless your old friend N-Ny-Khretvarrgliu wants the job."

"He doesn't."

"Then it's yours. But I have to have them in my corner if they're going to stay."

"I'll give it some thought."

"That's wonderful, beef dumpling, but I already have and I have a kind of solution. You know that fuzz-faced farting evil old grinning gray-muzzle we just bounced out of here?"

"Wurnafenglu."

"Yes, that. He's not their Werowance. He's just on their pack council. And he's one of their candidates for election to the city's Innermost Pack."

"Huh. He'll have a tough election this year. We cost the Sardhluun a lot of bite with our escape."

"And we'll cost them more, but that's not the point right now. He carries authority in the pack because he was elected to represent them to the city."

"That's how it worked in the Aruukaiaduun, also." Rokhlenu scowled involuntarily. That was the life he had aimed at, and would have achieved, but for that brach's bastard Rywudhaariu. "But the outliers have never had singers on the Innermost Pack of Wuruyaaria."

"But it's stupid that we don't. We're here. We're part of the life of the city. Many of the citizens who vote in Apetown or Dogtown actually live here. Why shouldn't we be part of the treaty?"

"The thing is that we're not, though."

"The thing is, dear leg-of-lamb, that we need some sort of official status for you that doesn't threaten me. Candidate for the Innermost Pack is perfect for that. Your first task will be to obtain treaty rights for the outliers."

"Hm." Rokhlenu grinned. "By crushing the Sardhluun sheepdogs."

"Right! People in the city hate their guts. Who wouldn't? Maybe we can cut them out of the treaty-side with their enemies in the treaty packs. Maybe we can pound them until the Sardhluun themselves help us get into the treaty. Maybe we'll never get into the treaty. But in the meantime it gives you status to do what we want you to be able to do here and now."

"All right. I accept the nomination, but we'll have to have an election-"

"The election will be tonight after dark in the marketplace. Your irredeemables and as many of the outliers as I can trust will be there. Others will be unaccountably stationed on the walls for guard duty."

"I see. I see. You're pretty good at this."

"Somebody has to be. We can't all sidle through on good looks and charm and daring and good looks and a beautiful way with words and courageous feats and a beautiful singing voice and good looks and money. Actually, anyone could sidle through with all of that going for him, so don't think you're anything special."

"As long as you do, that's enough."

The outlier settlement had lost a lot of citizens on this difficult day. That night, after sunset, when the werewolves began to arrive for the election, the market at the center of the settlement was hardly crowded and the windows of the lair-towers all over town were dark and lifeless. In contrast, Wuruyaaria to the north was a misty waterfall of light rushing down the steps of the great mountain.

The great moon-clock on the face of Dhaarnaiarnon showed that Horseman should be aloft, but no moon could be seen through the dense cloud cover. Few of the citizens were in the night shape, and those were werewolves of low bite-likely they never transformed into the day shape.

It was a rather grim assembly that gathered in the torchlit market, but Wuinlendhono showed no awareness of this as she leapt up on a hastily made rostrum and addressed the crowd.

She spoke at some length about the dangers and the choices in front of them. She relayed to them the Sardhluun's offer of amnesty if they surrendered the prisoners, and she let them know she had rejected it. She said that the most she would permit the outlier pack to do would be to cast out the escapees. But she said that, in that case, she would lay down the chieftainship and go with her intended into exile.

That was the first matter she submitted to a vote: if they wished the escapees to leave the outlier settlement, they were to move to her left; if they were against ejecting the escapees, they should move to her right.

More than half of those present were refugees from the Sardhluun, but (unlike Wuinlendhono) Rokhlenu did not consider their votes certain. He suspected many of them would rather flee to the obscurity and safety of the barbaric packs of the outlands. He was sure of this when he saw them milling about in the middle of the market.