Spirit of the Wolves Read online

  “No,” I answered. “We’re equals.”

  “And did that cause trouble?” Yildra asked. “Did the humans react badly to you when you were not docile?”

  I thought of DavRian thrusting his spear into my haunch, of NiaLi lying dead in her shelter. I looked at Milsindra out of the corner of my eye. She would contradict me, but my packmates would support me, and it would be our word against hers.

  “No,” I lied, “they didn’t.” Instead of challenging me, Milsindra whuffled a laugh and lay down, her face resting in her paws. I wondered what she was up to.

  “You must not submit to them here, youngwolf. If you are their curl-tails, you will have failed. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I did. No one had been able to explain to me why it was so bad to be submissive to the humans, other than that it made us less than wolf. I looked up into Navdru’s tawny eyes. “What happens if we fail?”

  “You know what happens,” he answered. “You and those of your blood must be killed.”

  Milsindra rumbled in agreement. Pell growled, and Ázzuen and Marra echoed him. I looked away. It was no different from the threat Milsindra had made.

  “I am not the sort of wolf to kill those weaker than I,” Navdru said, sounding ashamed, “but we have no choice.” To my astonishment, he seemed to be asking me for forgiveness.

  “It is to protect wolfkind that we must be so harsh,” he said. “If you cannot find a way to control the humans, we will leave these lands and go somewhere the humans cannot find us. Thus we will keep wolfkind safe, along with the wildness that is our legacy. That may be enough to stop the humans. There are those among us who believe that without our help, the humans will breed too quickly and starve themselves to death, or fall victim to other creatures of the wild, who despise them. Others among us believe it is too late and that the humans are already too strong. That is why we are giving you a chance to try one last time to change them. If you succeed, we will find a way to reward you.”

  “What about the wolves back in the Wide Valley?” Marra asked. I could feel her trembling next to me. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was fury, not fear, that made her shake.

  “If you succeed, we will not harm them. What happens between them and the humans is up to them.”

  I was getting angry, too. I was tired of being manipulated by wolf and human krianan alike. But I kept my face still. Navdru seemed to approve of what he saw in me, for he gave me a small smile. Then his face grew serious again.

  “You have until Even Night, youngwolf.” He looked over his shoulder to RalZun, who had leapt up on a tall rock.

  “Take them to Kaar,” he said. He whuffed to the wolves around him and loped into the woods.

  One by one, the other Sentinels began to follow. My mother started toward me. Yildra nipped her on the shoulder. “You’ll stay with us, Neesa,” she said. “This is the pup’s task, not yours.”

  My mother’s legs stiffened with defiance. Then she dipped her head to the Greatwolf. “Find me if you need me, Kaala,” she said. “I am not permitted near the humans, but the Sentinels cannot stop me from giving you advice.” She ran forward, licked the top of my head, and darted after the other wolves.

  Milsindra was the last to leave. “I’ll be waiting for you when you fail, Kaala.” She lifted her lip in a snarl, then bounded away.

  RalZun clouted me on the head. He ignored Pell and Ázzuen, who growled at him.

  “I have told the humans you are here. They are curious and wish to hunt with you. If you prove yourselves in the hunt, they might allow you into the village. Just a few of you at first. They will meet us for the hunt tomorrow at dawn. If you run away again, I will feed you to the first rock bear I find.”

  With that, he stalked into the woods. Weary from fear, anger, and the enormity of my task, I could think of nothing else to do but follow.

  8

  Some hunts fail and some succeed. Every wolf knows that. This hunt, however, could not fail. We had twenty days to influence the humans of Kaar, twenty days and nights to get TaLi, whom they did not know, accepted as their krianan. We could make no mistakes.

  On a grassy, dawn-lit plain replete with elk and rich with their musky scent, a gathering of at least twenty humans stood watching us. RalZun led TaLi, BreLan, and MikLan across the plain to join them. We four wolves flopped down on our bellies where the trees met the plain to assess the humans as well as the elk we were to hunt. The humans clutched their spears and the antler-bone sticks they used so that they could throw the spears long distances. They smelled of anticipation and the eagerness of the hunt, but not of the fear or suspicion I was accustomed to in humans who didn’t know us well. The elk shifted their gaze nervously from the humans to us and then back again.

  I should have been worried, but as I watched the humans preparing for their hunt and inhaled the enticing scent of uneasy prey, I was hopeful. We had hunted with our humans many times. It was something I knew we could do well.

  The humans were murmuring to one another, and I was struck, not for the first time, by their odd appearance. No other creatures stood always on their hind legs, and when I’d first seen the humans, I’d wondered that they could balance without tipping over. I’d come to understand that their two-legged stance allowed them to use their tools with their clever hands, but it still disturbed me. Bears reared up on their hind legs to threaten, as did some prey. When I first met the humans I’d thought they were always challenging us.

  They also had much less fur than we did. It grew on their heads, on the adult males’ faces, and in patches on their bodies. I found myself staring at one male in particular who had absolutely no fur at all on his head. He caught me watching him and glared at me with a sudden, fierce hatred. Then his features smoothed out and he looked as mild as a sleeping oldwolf.

  The wind carried a strong gust of elk scent to us. Blood rushed so quickly to my head that I grew dizzy and my haunches began to twitch. My body warmed. As the call to hunt pounded in my blood, I wished I could leave the humans behind and hunt with my packmates, to chase the prey until it could run no more and bring it down with sharp teeth and strong jaws. I could almost taste the elk flesh on my tongue. I shook myself hard. This was not just any hunt; it was our chance to begin winning over the humans. If we succeeded, they would give us the chance to prove our worth—and TaLi’s. If we did not, we would have failed before we’d begun and the Sentinels would kill us. Suddenly I was as nervous as a pup chasing her very first prey.

  I heard a familiar whoosh of wings. Tlitoo alighted above us on a low spruce branch. The ravens were excellent hunting partners, distracting prey and keeping watch for danger as we ran the ground below.

  “You’ll help us?” I asked before I saw that he wasn’t alone. Jlela was perched next to him, preening Tlitoo’s wing feathers.

  He ran his beak through her head feathers before answering.

  “I will not,” he said. “The humans are interested in what wolves can do for them, not ravens.”

  I glared up to tell Tlitoo that the humans would never notice a raven or two helping us, but he avoided my gaze. He twined his neck around Jlela’s, and they were warbling softly to each other. Jlela ran her beak from Tlitoo’s head down to his tail feathers.

  “I don’t think they’ll be much help right now,” Pell said, a laugh in his voice. But when I looked at him there was a strange intensity in his gaze. “It’s spring, after all.”

  Marra snorted. Both ravens glared down at us.

  “Babywolves,” Jlela grumbled. She disentangled her neck from Tlitoo’s and took off for a higher branch.

  Tlitoo puffed up the feathers around his neck and croaked irritably. I thought he might spit a twig at us, but he just spread his wings, wide and strong, and flew up to rejoin Jlela.

  A human voice sounded across the plain.

  “Begin the hunt!”

  The call came from a tall female. The furless-headed male
stood on one side of her, RalZun on the other. TaLi gestured to us. We walked slowly across the plain, keeping our bodies relaxed until we reached the humans. We all lowered our ears politely and sat.

  “They’re smaller than I remember,” the tall female said without returning our greeting. I ignored her rudeness. She probably didn’t know any better.

  “That’s HesMi,” TaLi whispered to us in a voice too soft for humans to hear. “She leads Kaar’s council of elders this season.” The female looked strong and smelled of power. “And the bald one is IniMin.” She nodded toward the furless-headed male who had glared at me. “He’s the one who doesn’t want wolves around.”

  I was relieved to see that Kaar didn’t believe the nonsense that females couldn’t lead, or hunt, as some of the humans in the Wide Valley did. The dominant human called HesMi watched us curiously. The furless IniMin wore a pleasant expression, but if he’d been a wolf, his backfur would have been raised. Humans didn’t seem to understand that their scents revealed as much about them as their words, and this human smelled of malice.

  I leaned against TaLi as Marra huffed in anticipation. Ázzuen yipped softly and licked the top of my head. I turned to share the excitement of the hunt with Pell, but he was watching me and Ázzuen with narrowed eyes.

  BreLan bent down to whisper in TaLi’s ear.

  “Tell the wolves which elk to hunt,” BreLan said. “Show HesMi that the wolves will do what you tell them to do.”

  I couldn’t let her do that. Not if we were to prove to the Sentinels that we were the humans’ equals. Navdru had probably sent someone to watch us.

  I sat down, then looked away from TaLi, as I had when I’d once refused to swim across the river without her back in the Wide Valley.

  And she understood me. As clearly as if I had spoken to her. Watching me carefully, she whispered to BreLan.

  “No. We want HesMi to see what the wolves can do on their own.” I stood and panted a smile at her and then licked her hand. She smiled back at me and spoke to HesMi and IniMin.

  “The wolves can pick out the best animals to hunt. It’s one of the ways they help us.” She stood tall, more like a grown human than I’d ever seen her.

  “Fine,” HesMi said, and several humans whispered to one another. I looked behind me to see if any of them were going to argue, but they just watched us, intrigued. RalZun had said that many of them had lived in Kaar when wolves still hunted with the villagers there.

  A strong smell of spruce wafted across the plain, even though there were no spruce trees nearby. I sneezed.

  “Find a good one, Kaala,” TaLi said. I licked her hand and set out onto the plain. My packmates followed.

  I took a deep breath. I needed to find prey we could catch quickly. We would need to work with the humans to bring down the prey, without submitting to them, getting them injured, or making them uncomfortable. It would take all of our skill and strength to do so.

  “What first, Kaala?” Pell said. He had led almost as many hunts as a leaderwolf and didn’t seem at all concerned about this one. I smiled back, opening my mouth to taste the rich scent of elk.

  “Find the easiest prey you can,” I said. If I had been trying to impress a wolf pack, I might have hunted the most challenging beast I could find. For the humans, I would bring down prey as quickly as I could. I heard my voice grow strong. “Marra and Pell, you start chasing them. See if any tire quickly. Ázzuen, you run among them and see if you can smell any weak ones.”

  All three dipped their heads to me and darted to the elk.

  I waited, resisting the urge to run to the hunt like an eager pup, and watched as Marra and Pell bolted a group of elk. All of them were healthy and fast. Pell put on an extra burst of speed, outrunning Marra for a moment, splitting the elk into the faster and the slower. It was a beautiful move, done so smoothly that the elk didn’t notice that my packmates had divided their herd. Marra swerved to join him and they split the slower group of elk once more. Pell’s long legs followed one upon the other, the muscles in his haunches stretching and contracting.

  Ázzuen barked.

  He had been running low to the ground next to the group of elk that had run off when Pell and Marra had first split the herd. The elk he’d found looked healthy and ran well, but he stuck to her side.

  “This one has bloodflies!” he yipped to me. Ruuqo and Rissa had taught us about the parasites that invaded prey’s lungs, and had shown us how to recognize their scent in the carcass of a dead horse. A prey infested with bloodflies could still eat and could sprint short distances, but tired quickly and had slower reactions.

  I stood, torn. Pell and Marra would find a slower elk, and it would be weary by the time they did so. But the elk they chased all seemed alert and strong. Ázzuen’s might not be so. And it was fatter than the others—prey the humans would appreciate more.

  I woofed to Marra and Pell, alerting them to Ázzuen’s choice. They barely broke stride to look at me, follow my gaze to Ázzuen, and then turn to run toward him and his elk. I caught TaLi’s eye and stared at Ázzuen and his prey. She understood me.

  “That one!” she said to HesMi. “With the black forehead and the white patch on its back!” I hadn’t seen anything different about the elk’s back but I’d noticed that the humans relied on visual clues to tell each other things. Ázzuen thought that they saw more colors than we did. They certainly needed something to compensate for their weak noses and ears.

  Hoots and shouts filled the air as long, lanky young humans led the charge. Marra and Ázzuen drove the elk to them. In a flurry of thrown spears, the elk went down. It screamed and kicked as more humans converged on it, spears raised. Before the dying beast’s legs stopped moving, Marra pelted toward several of the elk she and Pell had been chasing earlier. MikLan took off after her, and several humans followed the boy. The humans couldn’t keep pace with Marra, but when she drove two elk toward them, their sharpsticks flew once more. Humans and wolves moved with the ease of a pack that had hunted together for years. One of the elk fell, three spears in its flesh. The other shied away. Right into Pell’s jaws. He leapt on it, with a swift graceful jump, biting into its haunch. My heart caught when it kicked out at him, and I ran to his aid just as TaLi pulled back her arm and let her spear fly from the throwing stick. The tool made it possible for even a relatively small human like TaLi to throw a spear far and fast.

  The beast staggered and fell just as I reached it. I dodged hooves and rolled away from the wounded prey. It kicked twice more and then was still. When I got to my paws, I saw humans surrounding the fallen elk.

  TaLi ran to me, whooping. She stumbled and landed on her rump. I stood over her and licked her all over, aware of the humans celebrating all around us. The scent of joy and triumph arose from wolf and human alike. We had killed three elk with the humans before the sun had climbed halfway up the sky.

  I scanned the plain as the elk fled, and a flash of movement drew my attention to the trees bordering the plain. Milsindra stood watching us. That was why I had smelled spruce before. I didn’t know whether the Sentinels had sent her or she had come on her own, but I had no problem with her seeing our success. She bared her teeth in her unpleasant smile and stalked off into the woods. I waited until she was gone, then snarled at the place where she had been.

  The scent of fresh meat taunted me from across the plain. I restrained myself from running to one of the elk to tear into its rich flesh, and was pleased to see Pell, Ázzuen, and Marra doing the same. Most of the humans, including their leader, HesMi, were celebrating our successful hunt. TaLi and RalZun made their way across the plain to stand next to the human leader, and the old man beamed at me. Then I caught the sour smell of anger. IniMin was not celebrating. He stood apart from HesMi and the others. When he turned his head to meet my gaze, I saw the small shift in his face, a tightening of the muscles around his mouth and eyes, a slight thinning of his lips. His forehead stretched so that his ears moved a little farther back on his furless head.
He was furious, and none of the humans seemed to realize it. There was no way I could warn TaLi with our clumsy way of communicating. RalZun whispered something to the girl. She glanced at IniMin and narrowed her eyes.

  “The wolves get their share.” I almost didn’t recognize the strong, authoritative voice as TaLi’s. There was nothing of the uncertain human child I’d known in the Wide Valley. She was looking toward one of the dead elk, her hands clenched into tight fists.

  That was when I saw that Pell and Marra had stopped waiting and had torn into the beast. A few of the humans were moving forward in protest, but stopped when TaLi spoke. HesMi nodded to them, and they backed off. Ázzuen bolted to join the others at the prey and, after one last anxious look at HesMi, I did, too. Soon I was lying next to the beast and biting into its belly. For a few moments I knew nothing but rich meat, warm flesh, and the glorious feeling of food in my stomach. Ázzuen was on one side of me, Pell on the other, as we fed. It was Marra who pulled away first.

  “We should stop,” she said thickly. “Leave good greslin for the humans.” Greslin was the best, richest part of a prey. Marra had eaten so fast she was gasping.

  I managed to drag myself away from the elk. Ázzuen and Pell did the same. Most of the humans were bent over the other carcasses. But six of them, including IniMin, were making their way toward us, determined expressions on their faces.

  “Let them have it,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Pell asked, flicking a glance to where Milsindra had stood. He’d seen her, too.

  “I’m sure.” It was one thing to avoid being submissive, but there was no reason to purposely challenge the humans. A wolf who fought every time she saw another wolf wasn’t strong. She was foolish. I had learned that in the Wide Valley. The balance of a pack was kept by standing up for oneself, but also by thinking of the good of packmates. I wanted the humans to see us as packmates, not rivals.

  We stepped away from the carcass. TaLi scrambled after the six approaching humans. HesMi followed behind, keeping pace easily with her long legs. The humans swarmed around the carcass. As they cut into what was left of the elk, I watched TaLi. She crinkled her eyes at me.