Spirit of the Wolves Read online

  “You can’t watch the humans. You have to sleep,” I said. Ravens, like humans, slept during the night.

  “We will wake if anything comes near,” Jlela said, settling her wings and hunching her head down between them.

  “It is very hard to sneak up on a raven,” Tlitoo added, “and neither the Grumpwolf nor the human male are near.” Grumpwolf was one of his many names for the Greatwolves. When I still hesitated, he spat a berry at my head.

  “The fur-brained wolflet

  Thinks it knows more than ravens.

  That will not end well.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. I dipped my head to the ravens.

  “Let’s find some prey,” I said to my packmates.

  Marra yipped in excitement and took the lead. She had an excellent nose, which was especially important in unknown lands. We would have to not only find prey but also stay alert in case we crossed into any wolf territories. In the Wide Valley, we knew where every pack’s domain began and ended. Here we would need to be careful.

  Marra snuffled her nose low to the ground, then lifted it in the air.

  “Prey!” she woofed, her tail wagging. “Nothing I recognize, but definitely prey.”

  She stepped aside, and without thinking about it, I took the lead. I realized I was acting like a leaderwolf, and looked back at the others, embarrassed. Ázzuen crouched low just to my left, his nose twitching, while Pell and Marra stood a little behind me, waiting for me to decide what to do next. My heart filled with the exhilaration of leading a hunt. I gave a deep, low bark like Ruuqo did at the beginning of a chase.

  I took a step down the hill and managed to get my paws tangled in tree roots and slip in the mud. I splayed my legs to catch myself before I tumbled down the hill but landed hard on my chest. I got to my feet, mud sticky on my chest and face.

  Marra raced past me.

  “Wait!” I said. I wanted to make sure there were no other wolves around to claim the prey. But Marra didn’t worry about things like that. By the time Ázzuen and I reached her, she was atop a small hill, looking down at a meadow where a herd of what looked like some kind of elk grazed in the cool, clear night. Pell followed more slowly, checking behind us for threats. It was something I should have thought to do.

  I looked more closely at the prey. They looked something like elk and a bit like snow deer. Their legs were long and gangly and their bodies lighter than most of the prey in the valley.

  My mouth moistened.

  Several of them looked up at us before we had even begun to move toward them; they were wary prey, used to confronting hunters. We had just begun to sneak down the hill on our bellies when Pell whoofed a warning.

  Five wolves ran across the plain, scattering the prey and heading straight toward us. We must have been easy to see, even in the faint moonlight. I had been stupid, standing there so exposed. Even from a distance, I could see the wolves’ teeth bared in snarls.

  We stood to meet them, and I found myself once again slightly ahead of the others. I tried desperately to remember how Ruuqo and Rissa would greet a pack of wolves in hostile territory, but nothing came to me. I tried to decide if I should be threatening or welcoming. Then I realized that the best thing to do would have been to run. I was still deciding how to react to them when they reached us, tails stiff, ears laid back in anger.

  “Are you stealing our prey?” the female in the lead asked. Her proud gait and the way the other wolves deferred to her made it clear that she was the pack’s leaderwolf. I would have expected a wolf in her prime, someone Ruuqo’s age. This wolf was younger than Pell. The rest of her packmates were either wolves in their second year, like her, or our age.

  “We didn’t realize it was your territory,” I found myself saying. My tongue was dry, but my voice came out confident and calm. “We won’t take what isn’t ours, and we’ll leave your lands if you give us permission to pass through.” I’d heard Ruuqo and Rissa speak this way, but it had never occurred to me that I could.

  The five wolves stood growling at us, teeth bared, fur raised along their spines. The leaderwolf didn’t reply. I waited for them to attack. We’d trespassed into their territory and were standing within hunting distance of their prey. It would be within their rights to try to kill us. They were all young and strong, and they outnumbered us. Ázzuen, Marra, and Pell stepped closer to me.

  “Why do you smell like humans?” one of the wolves asked, still growling. He had dark fur and a bare patch behind his left ear where a jagged wound was healing. I prepared to fight. If they tried to follow our scent to TaLi and MikLan, I would stop them.

  “They came from the Wide Valley,” the wolf in the lead said. “They all smell like humans there.” Her pale gray pelt seemed to shimmer in the faint moonlight. Her tail jutted out behind her and she held herself ready to fight.

  “What happened to your leg?” she asked me.

  I hesitated, not wanting to admit weakness.

  “A human cut her,” Pell said, his voice deep and arrogant. It was the tone he used when he was trying to intimidate. He took two steps forward, limping a little. The rain always made his leg hurt. He’d injured it fighting maddened elkryn four moons before. “She fought with him and he sliced her with his sharpstick.”

  “Did you kill it?” the dark-furred male asked.

  “No,” I said, “but I bit him.” It was DavRian who had wounded me, when he tried to kill me, but I didn’t want to tell them any more than I had to.

  The five wolves confronting us seemed to relax a little, and the light-coated leaderwolf lowered her tail.

  “I’m Lallna, of the Sentinel pack,” she said, her mouth softening into a smile, “and this is Sallin,” she said, poking the dark-furred male with her nose. Behind me, Marra snorted. It did seem like a stupid name for a wolf pack. What did the five of them think they were sentinels of?

  “You’re a wandering pack, then?” the young leaderwolf asked. She either didn’t notice Marra’s ridicule or was ignoring it.

  “A what?”

  “A wandering pack. You don’t have your own territory.”

  I thought about that. Swift River was no longer our home.

  “No,” I said. “I mean yes. We don’t have a territory.”

  “Are you trying to find one here, or do you plan to keep journeying?”

  “Who’s your secondwolf?” the male standing next to her—the one she’d called Sallin—asked abruptly.

  My secondwolf? I thought. The Sentinel wolves all looked at me. They thought I was a leaderwolf and that the others followed me. Sallin’s eyes flicked from Marra to Pell and back to me again. If they knew we weren’t a real pack, that I wasn’t a leaderwolf, they might challenge us to a fight. They weren’t as large as Stone Peaks and didn’t look any stronger than we were, but we couldn’t risk any injuries. And we couldn’t let them past us to find our humans.

  “We’re still working that out,” I answered.

  “You’re a new pack, then,” Lallna said, as if that explained a great deal to her. She leaned close to me. “I would choose the willow-smelling male,” she said, “even though he’s lame. I don’t think you should have a female second. If you have a male second, he can also be your mate.” She looked Pell over once more and smirked.

  “So why did you fight a human?” Sallin asked. The wound on his head was bleeding, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

  The more I talked to the Sentinel wolves, the more determined I was to keep them from knowing about our humans.

  Lallna, Sallin, and their packmates stared at me, waiting for me to say more. Marra came to my rescue.

  “You’re called the Sentinel pack?” she asked. Her tone was polite but any wolf who knew her would know she was holding back laughter at their pack name. I glared at her and she lowered her eyes. Not in submission to me, but to keep from laughing.

  “Yes,” Lallna said. “Sentinel holds all the lands from the spruce grove to beyond the Hill Rock.”

  I held back a
grunt of disbelief. I’d never heard of any one pack holding that much land.

  “How many wolves are in Sentinel?” Ázzuen asked. The fur between his eyes wrinkled as it did when he was thinking hard. It hadn’t occurred to me that the pack might be larger than the five wolves before us.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Lallna growled.

  Ázzuen took a step forward. “What are you sentinels of?” he persisted, his nose twitching as if he was on the scent of prey.

  Lallna lifted her lip at him. “You’ll find out soon enough. We’re supposed to bring any wolves that come through the Wide Valley to our gathering place. You can go on your way if our leaderwolves say so.”

  My backfur rose. We couldn’t abandon our humans. Even if the Sentinels’ leaderwolves let us go on our way, I wouldn’t leave TaLi and MikLan protected only by ravens. I looked at Marra. She was the best of us at pack dynamics, and I hoped she would find a way to talk the Sentinel youngwolves into letting us go. But it was Pell who answered, at his most arrogant.

  “Why would we go with you?” Pell looked down his muzzle at Lallna. “We’re not part of your pack and we’ll pass through your lands as we choose. We won’t be ordered about by a bunch of curl-tails.”

  A curl-tail was the lowest ranking wolf in the pack and the last to feed. It was an insult, and the Sentinel youngwolves responded to it. Before I could even snarl at Pell, Lallna launched herself at me.

  By the time I tensed my muscles to react, she was on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other four Sentinel wolves leaping at my packmates. Sallin and a tawny-furred male dove for Pell, who grinned as he crouched to respond. The two remaining wolves attacked Ázzuen and Marra. My heart pounded so hard I was certain Lallna could hear my fear. Some wolves enjoyed fighting. I did not. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

  Lallna hit me hard, trying to knock me over with the force of her leap. My first impulse was to resist her, to stand strong and meet power with power. Then I remembered Torell’s fighting lessons. He was Pell’s father and leaderwolf, and he had taught me to use cleverness as well as strength in a fight. I let the momentum of Lallna’s jump knock me over, but continued to roll so that she tumbled past me. Before she could get up, I threw myself on top of her. She snapped her teeth in my face, startling me, and heaved me into the air. I fell onto my side.

  Muscle and sinew moved under her fur as she landed on my chest, pressing down with her full weight. She wasn’t that large a wolf and I hadn’t expected her to be so strong. The hard landing had knocked the wind from my lungs, but I managed to curl away from her and get partway to my feet before she tackled me again. We scrambled on the ground, each of us trying to pin the other. Her legs trembled with what I thought for a moment was fear as strong as my own, but then I realized it was excitement. She grinned and I knew she was enjoying the fight.

  I arched my back, twisted my hips, and snapped my head forward, slamming Lallna to the ground. Before she could get up, I dug my forepaws into her belly and bared my teeth to bite her, hard.

  I saw Pell throw the tawny male halfway down the hill, then flip Sallin onto his back, stand astride him, and take the smaller wolf’s neck very gently in his jaws. He didn’t bite down but just kept his teeth around Sallin’s neck as Sallin averted his gaze and tried to lick Pell’s muzzle. I remembered, then, what Ruuqo had told us about dominance fights when we were pups: they were to determine which wolves would be submissive and which would be dominant. Only a weak, scheming wolf would hurt another wolf more than necessary. It was Pell’s gentle treatment of Sallin that made me gain control of myself. Pell had challenged the Sentinel youngwolves when he refused to go with them. No one had yet drawn blood, and if I did so, I would change a battle for control to a fight to the death. I looked at the others. Both Marra and Ázzuen were struggling but holding their own.

  My inattention allowed Lallna to throw me off her belly, but she didn’t attack again. She narrowed her eyes at me and woofed softly to her packmates. The wolves fighting Ázzuen and Marra got to their feet, and Pell stepped off of Sallin. The fifth wolf scrambled back up the hill.

  Lallna kept watching me. It was only when Ázzuen bumped my hip that I realized that Lallna was waiting for me to speak. They still thought I was a leaderwolf.

  We had won the fight and so gained the right to make the next move, but the Sentinels were strong wolves. They could follow us back to the humans, or attack us again, or bring more wolves to fight us. We couldn’t escape them, but we could gain some time.

  “We’ll come meet your leaderwolves,” I said, “but we have something to do first.”

  “What do you have to do?” Lallna asked.

  “Meet someone,” Ázzuen said before I could answer.

  If I hadn’t been afraid to turn away from Lallna, I would have snarled at him for thinking I was stupid enough to tell the Sentinels that we were looking for humans.

  Lallna regarded us with her cool gaze.

  “We’ll let you escort us to your pack,” Marra offered. Lallna looked at me for confirmation.

  “Yes,” I said, understanding what Marra had figured out already: if Lallna brought trespassing wolves to her pack, she would gain status with her leaderwolves.

  “We could’ve won if it weren’t for the willow-smelling male,” Lallna said, “but you fight well.” She jutted her chin in challenge. “If you let us escort you to our pack, you can go.”

  “You won’t follow us,” Pell ordered. I was grateful to him. I hadn’t thought of that. “And you will give us until two nights from now.” I would never have had the courage to be so aggressive.

  “One night and half a day,” Lallna countered. Pell looked at me and dipped his head slightly.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ll meet you back here.”

  Without another word, the five Sentinel wolves turned tail and dashed down the hill, kicking up mud behind them.

  5

  The humans were awake and waiting for us when we returned to them near dawn. They took down their shelter and tied up their packs, then set out some firemeat and tartberries for their morning meal. Again, I couldn’t help staring at them as they ate. We still hadn’t been able to hunt. Again, they fed us from their supplies. There were wolves who said that the humans were so different from us that we could never fully trust them, but TaLi and MikLan fed us just as packmates would, with no hesitation. I knew wolves who were not so generous. Ázzuen, Marra, and I devoured what they gave us. Pell stood off to the side, refusing the humans’ food. He smelled of voles he must have caught on our way back to the humans, but a few voles weren’t enough to keep a wolf healthy. If he was anything like the wolves of Swift River, he’d be irritable and difficult to deal with if he didn’t eat.

  “Would you just take some?” I said, annoyed. “If I’d wanted a pup along I would have brought one.”

  He snarled at me. “I hunt my own prey.”

  “We need every wolf strong,” Marra said, “and you’re our best fighter.”

  He looked at her and then at the humans. He licked Marra on the top of her head and stared at MikLan. Again, the boy seemed to understand us better than other humans did. He dug into his pack and held out some firemeat on the flat of his hand. Pell kept staring at him until the boy dropped the meat on the ground and stepped away. Pell gobbled it.

  “Thank you for sharing your prey,” Pell said formally. MikLan swallowed a few times and then lifted his pack onto his shoulders. TaLi hefted her own pack. It was more important than ever to hurry them along. I was certain that Milsindra was close by, and even if the Sentinel wolves honored their word and gave us a night and a day to come to them, we had no time to waste. To my relief, the humans set off at a brisk pace across the plain.

  Getting them to follow us to the Crossed Pines was not so easy. Humans could be as stubborn as ravens, and they kept looking at their map, then at their surroundings, and then walking away from the quickest route to the woods where Tlitoo had told us the pines
were. Ordinarily, I would have let them go the long way, but if Milsindra was stalking us, I needed to get TaLi to safety as soon as possible. And the sooner the humans reached the human village, the sooner I could find my mother. When TaLi stopped at a tree with a strangely bent branch and frowned at the hide again, I grabbed it from her hand.

  “Silvermoon!” In her annoyance, TaLi used her old name for me. “Bring it back!” She stopped, planted her feet, and put her hands to her hips.

  I trotted over to her, just close enough so it looked like she might be able to grab the hide. Both she and MikLan lunged for it. I dodged away. They lunged again and I dodged again. Marra and Ázzuen ran between their legs and bumped their hips, making them stumble. I let them chase me and almost catch me several times. Then I began to run, slowly enough that they could keep up, in the direction of Crossed Pines. They followed.

  NiaLi was wrong. We communicated just fine when we needed to.

  The humans were angry and tired by the time we reached the stream two hours later. I waited for them to stop gasping, then walked up one of the two fallen pines that crossed over one another. I set down the hide and panted at TaLi. She had clambered halfway up one of the fallen trees when she stopped and really looked at where I was sitting.

  “Two pines crossed over one another at a stream,” she said to herself. I looked around, expecting to see humans at any moment.

  “This next part isn’t on the map,” TaLi said to MikLan. She went about two hundred wolflengths into the woods, turned to the left, and walked for five minutes. Then she stopped near a trickle of a stream.

  “This should be it,” she whispered.

  Pell knocked me in the shoulder. “I’ll explore the territory around here,” he said. I was going to protest, then smelled his unease. He had put up with our humans to help us, and I liked him all the more for it. I wouldn’t insist he stay to meet a packful of strange humans.

  At first I couldn’t figure out where the humans would be, although I could smell them close by. I looked for the large mud-and-rock structures and burning fires that made up TaLi’s village back in the Wide Valley. Then I remembered NiaLi’s shelter, how it had seemed to grow from the forest, so much so that other humans often walked by it without noticing it. When I looked more carefully, I saw signs of humans: a flat place where they would build their fires, and mounds of stone and dirt that seemed to grow naturally from the earth but that had to be shelters.