Wolf Hunting (33 page)

“Let me clean your cuts, Firekeeper,” Derian suggested after they had done all they could. “I don’t like the sound of those briars.”

“You not like their feel even more,” Firekeeper said with a lopsided grin. “Actually, they not hurt except at first. This is very bad.”

Derian had to agree. Firekeeper had made a good effort to clean those wounds she could reach, but her back looked like she’d been the centerpiece of a cat fight. The deep cuts on her arm that had been inflicted by the “jaguar” were puffy and inflamed

After her wounds had been cleaned, Firekeeper donned a fresh pair of trousers and a new shirt. Methodically, she tore the old ones to strips and fed them to the flames. While she was doing so, Plik came over and wearily sank down next to the fire.

“We’ve done what we can to help Bitter—at least for tonight,” he said. “One eye is beyond saving. We cleaned out what remained.”

He raised a hand to his throat as if to force back a moment of nausea. “There was infection there and in some of the larger weals. We cleaned it out as well as we could. Harjeedian has some poultices that he says may help.”

Harjeedian came over at that moment, cradling Bitter.

“We’ll make a nest for him from clean fabric—probably from some of the bandaging, since that’s less likely to stick. He’s going to need to be given water regularly—or blood. Liquids in any case. If he makes the night, I’d say he has a chance, but if the fever rises or the infection shows other signs of raging …”

“We’ll all take turns watching,” Plik said, and Derian had the feeling he was translating.

“I start,” Firekeeper said. “You all travel all the day. I just sit here.”

“How much sleep have you had?” Derian asked sternly.

“Much,” she said, tossing her head to indicate the broad limbs of one of the trees bordering the campground. “I go there, with ravens. But first I check very careful to see no briars.”

Since Blind Seer didn’t protest, Derian decided she must be telling the truth. The wolf could probably smell a lie—or at least exhaustion.

“Fine,” Derian said. “You first, but wake Harjeedian if there is any change for the worse.”

“I promise,” the wolf-woman said. “All the night and all the day, I wish for someone to help. I not forget now.”

Not for the first time, Derian thought that the fact that wolves were pack animals really was useful in its way. He wondered if Truth would be so quick to admit need.

As if she had read his thoughts, the jaguar—who had vanished soon after they had camped—returned. She half carried, half dragged the carcass of a medium-sized pig. From the looks of it, it was probably a feral one, gone wild after this area had been abandoned by the humans.

“Dinner!” Firekeeper said with satisfaction, and set about the butchering with practiced efficiency.

The only difference in her routine was how she carefully drained the blood into the largest container they could spare.

“For Bitter,” she said worriedly, as if the rest of them would want to drink warm pig’s blood. “So he get strong.”

BITTER SURVIVED THE NIGHT, but Plik thought that the optimism with which both Firekeeper and Lovable chose to view this development was unwise. Then again, he had not seen the raven at his worst. Maybe there really was some improvement.

In any case, with the group as a whole rejoined and everyone aware of what had happened to the scouts when they had gone ahead alone, there was some protest raised when with dawn Firekeeper insisted that she and Blind Seer should continue the search for the twins.

“Either this
,” the wolf-woman said,
“or we go back. I am not ready to go back knowing so little and fearing so much.”

“I agree,”
Truth said.
“We must find them and learn how they have turned the plants into their defenders.”

“And,” Harjeedian said, when this had been translated for the humans, “what other defenders—or weapons—they might have. But is it wise for only two to go forth, especially when the two of you are now, with Truth, our best at what I suppose we must term forestry?”

“Should we send those who are not good?” Firekeeper retorted. “We are warned. We will not go to sleep. And …”

She turned to Plik. “Will you come with? Maybe briars that drink blood are natural as bugs that do, but the creatures I fight last night—the wolves, jaguar, and bear—if they just growed that way, then I have hair as pale as Elise’s and three times as long.”

Plik had never seen this Elise, but he understood Firekeeper’s point.

“You want me to come and see if I sense some sort of magic at work.”

“Yes. Blind Seer scent the wind, but you can scent this other.”

Truth said,
“I will remain here and guard the humans and ravens. No harm will come to them while I have life.”

Firekeeper had told them all of her encounter the night before with the Meddler, and Plik thought he knew why the jaguar was being so cooperative. Even so, after moons passing with nothing but surly silence and haughty stares, the change was unsettling.

“And I
,” said Eshinarvash,
“will carry Plik as far as is necessary. Perhaps the stone house would be a good place for you to begin your search.”

“Or the meadows beyond,” Firekeeper said, speaking in Pellish so the humans would understand. “The woman in Gak, she talk of the twins’ father’s kin building Setting Sun place in a plain.”

Derian gave a gusty sigh. “Can Harjeedian and I gather that you have settled this without us?”

Firekeeper shrugged. “What is to settle? Can you hold me if I would go? Can you hold Blind Seer? There is no One here.”

Harjeedian pressed his fingers to his eyes. “There are times I wish there were. Will you at least share your arrangements with us?”

Plik noticed Firekeeper had the grace to look at least a little ashamed at this reminder that the humans had not understood all the discussion.

“We go, Blind Seer and I. We take Plik with us. This way we scout very, very carefully. Plik can sense magic for us. We not go to sleep, not without guard. Maybe we even come back by tonight. Eshinarvash say he carry Plik ahead then come back to help Truth guard you humans and ravens.”

“All very neatly arranged,” Harjeedian said. “And if you vanish?”

“Then three vanish,” Firekeeper said somberly. “And six escape. Better than nine all vanish.”

“She has a point,” Derian said. “I’ll accept the plan with one addition.”

Firekeeper looked as if she was about to ask the redhead how he would stop her, but waited politely.

“You’re leaving at dawn today,” Derian said. “At least one of you must come back to report by midday tomorrow. As you tell it, this stone house and the field aren’t that far away. Fair?”

“Fair,” Firekeeper agreed after glancing at Blind Seer and Plik to see if they had any protest to offer. “If not one of three reports by midday tomorrow, you may worry.”

She grinned, “But not before. Before rest and make Bitter well.”

“And find forage for all these horses,” Derian said, his apparent grumpiness an obvious cover for deep concern. “They won’t thrive on leaves.”

AT THE STONE HOUSE, Eshinarvash left them. The remaining three spent some time inspecting the area, looking for traces of where the briar creatures that had attacked them might have come from, but even Blind Seer’s nose could find nothing.

“Smoke,” he said. “Who can smell anything through all this smoke?”

Plik might have made something from the remnants of the creatures, but Firekeeper had thrown them all in the fire.

“They not move then,” she said, “but later? I did not wish them come for us again. Once was almost too much.”

From the stone house, they moved on to the edge of the open meadows. Plik carefully inspected the briars clustering around the foot of the oak tree where Bitter and Lovable had been attacked while Firekeeper watched with such tense anxiety that he thought she would burn the mass as a preventative.

“There’s magic there,” Plik reported, “but almost nothing. I sense more from Derian, and he hardly controls his talent so his aura’s about as nonmagical as a talented human’s can be.”

Plik noticed Firekeeper was fingering the bag about her throat where she kept her fire making equipment. “Will you bum them?”

“I wish to,” she said, “but last night I was lucky the forest not catch. I cannot risk setting such a fire, not now, not ever.”

Plik, who knew that Firekeeper’s human family had been killed in a fire, understood the tremor that touched her voice as she spoke.

“Then I suppose,” he said, seeking to distract her, “we move on. The question is, where?”

“Lovable,” Blind Seer said, “told us she and Bitter flew over the immediate area and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But they felt something.”

“A restlessness,” Firekeeper recalled. “Lovable told me about it the night we were attacked, reassuring me that I wasn’t wrong in what I sensed.”

“Ravens scout mostly by vision,” Blind Seer continued. “In this they are very like humans.”

Firekeeper nodded. “So if humans hid something, ravens might not see it because the humans would hide just what the ravens would seek. I remember now that Bitter and Lovable were going to try again after dark because they thought they might see lights.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Blind Seer said, “although I can’t say I really like the idea of being out here after dark. It’s very exposed.”

“We might be safer than under the trees,” Firekeeper said. “Harder to sneak up on us.”

Plik interjected himself into what was beginning to sound too much like one mind reflecting its own thoughts back and forth and refining on them.

“I’m interested in this feeling of restlessness,” he said. “Do you feel it now?”

Firekeeper considered. “No. I don’t think so, at least not much more than I have …”

“Since we crossed that second ford!” Blind Seer completed. “I remember. The cairn that smelled of blood. I started feeling uneasy then. I could sense that you did as well.”

“A cairn that smelled of blood?” Plik asked.

Blind Seer explained, concluding, “I didn’t think to mention it before because it seemed like an isolated incident and there were many reasons it might have smelled that way, but now that this feeling of restlessness may indicate something …”

Plik nodded. He had left his hat and the rest of his human disguise at the camp, and he was still enjoying having his vision and movements unrestricted.

“I didn’t notice the cairn,” he said, “nor any particular restlessness, but by then my companions and I were all getting very worried. Why don’t we try this? Let’s pick a direction and move that way. We’ll scout just as usual, but if anyone feels that ‘restlessness’ intensify, speak up.”

The other two indicated agreement.

“Let’s start to the west,” Blind Seer said. “The maps Harjeedian copied weren’t very specific about the location of the residence proper, but it seems to me it was to the west.”

Firekeeper agreed by turning and beginning to walk west. Plik hurried after. He wondered if all wolf packs behaved like this, or if it was just these two.

The meadows were thick with summer grass, too thick, Plik thought after slogging along for a while. They should have shown some signs of being grazed upon, of animal tracks, but signs of anything larger than a rabbit were scarce. What hunted here that had so scared the game so that nothing larger than a rabbit remained?

He asked Blind Seer and the wolf replied, “I smell nothing—no one. This land would be fine territory for any wolf. It is broad enough to support a pack or two, and hangers-on as well, but there are no wolves. Once I thought I scented a puma, but the odor was old and fleeting. Rabbits there are aplenty, small game of all types, but both the larger grazers and the larger hunters have gone away.”

“But they were here,” Firekeeper said, indicating a heap of deer droppings. The oval pellets were faded and losing shape from exposure to the weather. “A year ago, I would say, they were here.”

“A year ago,” Blind Seer echoed. “The twins came here a year ago or so. Coincidence?”

“Perhaps,” Firekeeper said, but her entire body said she did not believe it

They continued on through the deep grasses. Plik was sufficiently tall that he could see over the greenery, but even so he felt claustrophobic. When they spotted a copse of trees in the near distance, they angled toward it by unspoken agreement. As they drew closer, Plik found himself feeling tense. He longed to get away from that looming forest, to stay here in the open, or better, to return to lands he knew. He thought of Misheemnekuru with longing, wishing for his familiar hollow tree, for the leisurely evening discussions of past history and philosophy.

“Wait,” he said. Firekeeper and Blind Seer immediately did so, the woman moving to string her bow, the wolf’s head tilting back as he scented the wind. “No, no, I haven’t seen anything,” Plik said, “but … Have either of you been feeling a strange desire to avoid that copse of trees?”

They looked at him, and from their expressions, Plik could tell that they had shared his odd feeling.

“Don’t you think that peculiar?” he asked. “I mean, we’re all forest creatures of one sort or another. Your pack lived in wooded lands—you weren’t creatures of the plains. I certainly am not, neither by heritage or habit. Why should we feel driven to avoid those trees? The more I think about it, the more I
think
I should be welcoming the approach, but what I
feel
is completely different.”

Firekeeper looked at him, her dark eyes thoughtful. “I had thought I dreaded the briars. They are not here, but they will be under the trees. I also had thoughts of fire, and of how bad the fire could have been.”

“And what,” Blind Seer went on, “might happen if creatures such as you fought last night reappeared and we need resort to fire again? I kept recalling the Burnt Place from which our pack took you when you were a child. Even years later, after I had been born, the signs of damage were terribly visible.”

“Not restlessness this time,” Plik said. “Apprehension instead. Interesting. Restlessness might make a raven fly farther afield, not stop to take a closer look. Apprehension might make us inspect the copse quickly and then move on.”