He could see into the pine forest, where Nix, Vent, and Dog had stopped and were standing around talking. Clearly, once Palloc left them, they became confused as to what they should do next.
A movement caught his eye, something darting from one tree to another. He frowned. It was dark and big and was now invisible. A bear? But no bear would behave like that, hiding behind a tree.
All the way on the other side of the pine forest, he saw two men, their movements not furtive, but out in the open. Palloc swallowed. They were not Kindred. The two strangers were looking at something on the ground, and after a time Palloc realized what it was: a human, lying motionless, its head a bloody mess. Palloc recognized the garments.
Markus.
Palloc turned to look at the other Kindred. “Nix!” he shouted. But he was too far away and the wind pushed his voice aside. He could see men flitting between the trees, eight of them, closing in on the Kindred hunters.
Cohort. They had to be Cohort.
And then they were right there. Palloc gasped as one of them stepped up to Dog and swung a club. Dog instinctively ducked, rolling away. Vent and Nix just stood watching him, transfixed, and did not see the men rushing up behind them. The Cohort hit both brothers with clubs simultaneously, viciously cracking them on their skulls. Vent went down, while Nix staggered and turned to face his attacker. Dog jabbed with his spear and managed to pierce the chest of his opponent, but then two of the Cohort closed on him and savagely beat him. Dog fell to his knees and they hit him in the head again and again. Nix was down now too, and the Cohort pounded at their skulls, which split and bled in the pine needles.
When they were done, the Cohort circled the dead Kindred. Their faces were blackened, which made it possible for Palloc to see their grins. The one Dog had stabbed still had the spear high in his chest, the end of it down on the ground. One of the Cohort reached out and snagged the spear and yanked it from the wounded man’s chest, and he shouted angrily and the rest of them laughed.
Palloc clung to the tree, feeling sick. It had all happened so fast. Four Kindred hunters were dead. Dog, who he had held in his arms as a baby, slaughtered. And why? For what reason?
They were talking to each other, and then, to his horror, one of them said something and to a man they all turned and looked in Palloc’s direction, finding him in the tree and staring at him.
They knew he was there.
Panting, Palloc scrambled down the tree, scraping his skin raw on the bark and not caring. The minute his feet hit the ground he snagged his spear and was stumbling and falling as he fled down the hill, running as fast as he could. Were they behind him, pursuing him? He did not dare look back. He ran, bushes ripping at his skin, heedless, and when he tripped and sprawled a sob broke from his lips. No! He was back up instantly. He was making so much noise he could not tell if his pursuers were close.
Palloc did not stop running until he burst into camp, the hunters leaping to their feet in alarm when they saw him.
He was trembling, coated with sweat, dizzy with lack of oxygen. Valid grabbed him, holding him up, while Palloc bent over and sucked in air. “What is it? What happened?” Valid demanded.
“Cohort,” Palloc panted.
Instantly the hunt was on alert, snatching up their spears and instinctively closing ranks into a tight circle. Urs seized Palloc’s shoulders. “Palloc. Speak now. What are you saying?”
“Cohort. More than ten of them. They … they had Markus. They got Dog and Nix and Vent.”
“Got them?” Urs demanded. “What do you mean, ‘got them’?”
Palloc looked at the hunt master and the answer was in the misery written in his eyes.
“How did you get away?” Urs asked. “Why were you not with them? Why did you run?”
Every member of the hunt was staring. Palloc swallowed.
“If you had stayed with them, perhaps you could have fought off the attackers!” Urs accused.
“No!” Palloc shook his head wildly. “There were too many.”
“So you fled.”
“It was not like that! I had climbed a tree.”
“A tree?” Urs repeated incredulously. “Our hunters were under attack and you climbed a tree?”
“That is not what happened!”
“We should go. Perhaps they are still alive,” Valid urged.
“Right,” Urs decided. He turned away from Palloc in a move that spoke of utter contempt. “Be ready. Grat, you go to the back and watch for attackers from that direction.”
The hunt now acted as if Palloc were not standing there in their midst. Though he had barely escaped with his life, they had no feeling of relief, and had completely misconstrued events.
Yet only Palloc knew where to go, so Urs motioned for him to be up front with him. They started at a run, difficult for Palloc after his crazed dash all the way from the hill, but he kept up.
“They came from all sides,” Palloc panted.
“Just focus on where to go,” Urs snapped back.
Palloc saw the hill to his left. “This way,” he said, pointing, his eyes so full of bitterness they burned.
A trail of blood led off into the woods, but it was getting dark and Urs eventually called off their pursuit. They needed to get back to camp, much more easily defended than the strange territory they were on.
As they turned back, several of the Kindred raised their heads and stared off into the distance. They had heard something, something far, far away. Something strange.
Some sort of whistling.
* * *
Calli was combing the bushes for berries, hating harvesting the tiny, immature fruits before they were sweet and swollen with a full summer’s ripening, but having no choice—sour and small as they were, they were food. The Kindred needed food.
When she heard the sound she was not sure, at first, what it was, but it came from the direction of camp and instantly alarmed her. Heart pounding, she abandoned her collection of berries and ran toward the noise.
Screaming.
She rushed into camp and saw that the hunt had returned. The screaming was coming from the women who, as usual, had gone to greet the men as they came back: women wailing in pain, falling to their knees, clutching their husbands. Several women were bent over Renne, who thrashed in the dirt.
“What is it?” Calli asked, joining the group. “What happened?” She saw her mother, and Coco shook her head, not knowing.
“Cohort,” someone said.
“Nix!” Renne screamed.
Calli understood, then, and the horror made her legs buckle. Bellu and her mother, Ador, were sagging against each other, sobbing. Urs stood nearby, grim.
Calli scanned the men. She saw Palloc, who appeared oddly wooden faced, watching the Kindred grieve with a curious lack of emotion on his face. Calli saw Mal approaching, looking bewildered and frightened, then swung back to find Dog.
Dog.
“Valid,” Calli gasped, her voice so weak with dread she could barely speak. “Where is Dog?”
Valid looked her in the eye, and she knew.
* * *
It fell to Mal to tell Lyra. She was coming up the path to the camp a few hours after the hunt had returned. Still in shock, Mal noticed she was gone, and he waited for her on the downstream path, where he had often seen her go.
“Lyra,” he called.
Things had not been left well between them when they last spoke, but her uneasiness fell from her face when she saw his expression, changing into something more like fear. “Mal, what is it?”
He tried to tell her, but his breathing became labored, and his lips trembled. “Dog,” he finally whispered.
Her eyes went wide. “What? Tell me!” she pleaded, clutching at him in panic.
“They were attacked by Cohort.”
And that was all that he needed to say.
They clung to each other, crying, her head on his shoulder. He wanted to be a man but the thought of losing Dog made him feel like running to hi
s mother. Dog dead. It was impossible to understand it, to cope with it.
They did not see that they were being watched: Grat had come down the trail and spotted them, his mouth drawing a bitter line as he observed their embrace. From where he stood, despite the circumstances, it was not difficult to mistake their movements for passion. His face held a black rage to suppose that Mal, the crippled fire boy, had won the affections of Lyra.
He turned and walked away before either of them noticed him standing there.
* * *
One word repeated itself in Palloc’s head: leadership. Very well, he would show his mother leadership. He went to Grat and suggested the two of them go hunting. Yes, the Kindred were convulsed in grief, and the hunt master had issued a strict edict against straying from camp lest the Cohort take more hunters, but they would draw great admiration if they showed courage, risking themselves for the good of all. Grat had eaten so many bugs his throat ached; he was not difficult to persuade.
Palloc and Grat did find prey, a den of weasels. The creatures were small and the meat was tough, but at least the Kindred would eat something. Palloc grinned fiercely. They would be heroes.
“Food!” Palloc shouted as they returned. People streamed into the communal area, the two hunters holding their kills aloft, beaming with pride. “Food!”
Coco and Calli accepted the small corpses listlessly and without thanks. Palloc frowned at his wife. Did she not understand what this meant to the tribe? She and her mother immediately set about skinning the animals, and Palloc was gratified to see that some children gathered to watch in greedy anticipation.
There was a commotion as Urs and Valid pushed their way forward. Palloc turned to face them. “We bring weasel meat, Hunt Master,” Palloc greeted respectfully.
Urs never slowed down. He walked right up to Palloc and struck him hard on the side of the head. Palloc spun, gasping with shock and pain, and saw Grat fall to the ground as Valid slapped him in the face.
“You were forbidden to leave!” Urs bellowed.
Palloc stood himself tall, biting back the hatred roiling inside him, resisting the urge to grab a club and beat the hunt master bloody. “We needed food,” he protested.
“You knew you were not to leave the settlement!” Valid shouted at him.
Grat lay where he had fallen, too stunned to be enraged. This should not be happening—the rule against fighting among the hunt was inviolate. It was what kept them unified. But what could one do if the hunt leaders were the ones breaking the taboo?
Palloc folded his arms so that no one would see his trembling hands. “We needed to hunt,” he insisted weakly. He searched for his mother, but Albi was nowhere to be seen.
“Yes, and because of you, the hunt has been delayed two days,” Urs snapped back.
“We thought you had both been taken by the Cohort,” Valid growled. “We did not dare leave until we determined what had happened. Did it not occur to you to tell anyone you were going on an unauthorized hunt?”
“We have wasted two days,” Urs repeated. He looked ready to hit Palloc again and Palloc braced for it. Then the anger went out of Urs’s eyes, and he relaxed his fists. “Palloc,” he said sadly, “you just do not think before you act. It is why I could not have you as my spear master.”
Urs turned away from him then, the rest of the hunters following suit, leaving Palloc to stand there with Grat his only ally. Grat stood, dusting himself off, and the two men exchanged looks. Palloc was ashen and looked ready to cry, but Grat’s expression was black with hate. “Urs will regret this day,” Grat vowed. “He will regret it.”
FORTY-THREE
The mother-wolf, granddaughter to the great wolf who had first accepted tribute from the man, was still the dominant bitch. Her pack’s range had grown, leading to challenges from other packs, but the wolves in her pack were larger than most others, and the dominant female was largest of them all.
She still took food directly from the hand of man. None of the wolves from her two litters had the courage to do this, but they did not skittishly flee when they spotted humans out on the plains, either. They all knew by scent the man who provided the mother-wolf food, and the people who traveled with him were familiar, too. Other packs of humans were aggressive to the wolves, as were the larger, darker people who lived in the forest. The mother-wolf had learned how to discern the difference between friendly humans and those who meant harm, how to smell their emotions and predict their behaviors based on their movements and gestures.
Her pack was healthy. Much of their prey this year were sick and frail from the lack of forage—something the mother-wolf did not fully comprehend, of course, but she could smell the weakness coming off the ungulates, spot the ones they would take for their meals.
Still, when the scent of the man was close, she liked to break away and find him and be fed—not just for the easy meal, but because there was something about the man that drew her. She saw him now, and he was standing with his frequent companion, the human female. The mother-wolf approached them boldly, seeing their eyebrows rise and their mouths open—something the mother-wolf knew meant they had brought meat.
She would eat.
* * *
A pall lay over the Kindred that summer, even as hunting greatly improved and the gaunt hollows under their eyes receded. Death was not unfamiliar to the tribe, especially when it came to children, but losing Nix and Vent, who were fathers, and the younger Dog and Markus, hit especially hard. This was not due to a disease or accident, this was a tragedy deliberately inflicted by other humans.
Calli craved her son, needed Mal to be with her, but Mal could not seem to bear a single day by the family fire, and was often by himself. When he saw his mother, he thought of Dog. And when he saw Lyra, he thought of Dog. There seemed to be no safe place to rest his eyes, because everywhere he looked he expected to see Dog coming toward him.
“Please Mal,” Calli blurted to him once.
He turned his eyes to her, puzzled. “Please what, Mother?”
Calli could only shake her head helplessly. She did not know what. She wanted them all to stop hurting. She wanted her sons to both be alive and healthy.
As the shadows advanced out from the trees earlier each evening, Bellu did not call the women to council, and Calli realized her friend did not want to migrate. Bellu had always despised winter quarters—a common feeling among the Kindred, but more often articulated by Bellu, who had lost a baby to disease and two brothers and a nephew to the Cohort and was comforting herself by taking daily baths.
Calli approached her directly. “Bellu, the night is gaining strength, and air brings chill. It feels past time to migrate to winter quarters.”
Bellu was in the bath. She sighed, putting a hand to her face. “This has just been such a hard summer for me. I am not feeling ready. No one seems to understand that I just lost two brothers and a nephew.”
Calli pursed her lips. “Yes, and I lost a son, Bellu,” she reminded her friend quietly.
“I have had two children die!”
“I know.”
“I just do not want to leave yet.”
“But you know it will be harder still if we stay too long.”
“I do not know that,” Bellu responded petulantly. “Why do we always leave? Because we have always left.”
Exasperated, Calli sought out Urs.
“It is time for us to leave for winter quarters,” Calli declared.
“Is that what the women’s council wants?” he replied, looking relieved.
“Yes,” Calli affirmed. “Well … not Bellu. But we all know it is time; the days are growing short.”
Urs nodded. “But we cannot depart if the women are not ready.”
“The women are ready,” Calli shot back. “You just need to talk to your wife.”
“Well…” Urs shrugged, grinning condescendingly. “You know, sometimes women are not easy to talk to.”
“No, I do not know,” Calli snapped. “She is your
wife. Why are you afraid?”
Urs’s eyes grew hard. “I am not afraid,” he corrected icily.
“Then talk to Bellu.”
“Do not tell me what to do, and do not presume to instruct a hunt master in what to say to his wife.”
Calli stared at him. “What happened to the man I used to meet upstream, in a bed of grasses?” she finally asked softly. “He was not afraid of anything.”
To his credit, Urs’s fierce glare eventually dropped, and he seemed to honestly contemplate the question. “Everything seemed so easy then,” he finally responded, looking defeated. “I felt that I could conquer all. But now … now it is my job to lead the hunt, and if we find no food, the Kindred starves. Yet we must stay together for protection. I cannot send out the stalkers, not after what happened. You are right. I am afraid, now.”
* * *
“Would you like to do it?” Silex murmured to Denix as they watched the gigantic mother-wolf come toward them.
“No. You are the one, Silex,” Denix replied in a hushed voice. The mother-wolf was approaching them so casually Denix wanted to laugh. The wolf and Silex were friends.
He knelt and Denix sucked in her breath. He offered the meat and the wolf took it out of his hand, as if there was nothing unusual about a man feeding an animal, holding the gift in her jaws as she turned and trotted away.
“I will never become accustomed to that,” Denix professed in a shaky voice.
“Yes!” Silex agreed. “I know what you mean.” He stood back up.
“You honor me, Silex, when you bring me along to pay tribute. Why am I the only one you invite, now? You no longer bring Brach.”
They started running together at an easy pace.
Silex thought about it. “Brach does not actually like it. And you are our best hunter. Everyone looks up to you, Denix. And … I just, I just appreciate having you with me,” he finally admitted. He glanced over at her, trotting at his side, and saw she was staring at him. “What is it?”
Denix put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Silex. There is something I need to tell you.”
They stood, breathing easily. The grass around them was all brown and dead looking. It made it easy to spot prey at a distance, but it also made the Wolfen easy to stalk. Twice Silex had seen a lion in the distance. He was anxious to get back to the hunters, as much for his own sake as theirs. The more hunters, the less likely they would be attacked.