The Dog Master Page 4

  “I already have broken the rules by coming here,” Urs growled at her. But he was grinning, the sort of smile a man cannot help giving to a woman when they are courting all but openly.

  “Not that. Another.” Calli’s eyes were dancing. She took a step forward, closer to Urs.

  “What do you mean?” Urs asked after a moment, his voice hoarse, no longer playful.

  Moving silently, Silex eased himself into a more comfortable crouch. If he broke from these rocks he might have enough surprise on his side to get on the path upstream, but the tall man looked like a hunter and Silex doubted he would get far before a spear pierced his back. He would just have to wait here until they left.

  Unless they found him first. Then the position that had been so defensible against wolves would be wildly vulnerable to a weapon thrust. Silex would be effectively trapped. The fight would be bloody.

  That made him stop and consider. What if he lunged with spear and took down the big man first? The woman might well run rather than fight, and Silex had no intent to pursue her. He looked at the point below Urs’s shoulders where a wound from behind would be fatal.

  “Is there something you wish to say to me that you know you should not?” Calli asked, her voice a whisper.

  Urs was staring at her. His hands twitched as if preparing to take her in his arms.

  “No?” Calli asked lightly. “Then I am mistaken.”

  She danced back and Urs stepped forward.

  “Oh, are you stalking me, great bear?” she mocked.

  “Calli, I…”

  Silex had the feeling that what he was about to hear had been spoken many times inside the cave of Urs’s head, but had never been given the freedom of an utterance.

  “I do, I am intending to say, I love you.”

  Calli clapped her hands together joyously. “Urs! And I love you, why has it taken so long for you to say it?”

  Urs didn’t answer and Calli reached for him and then they were kissing in the sunlight.

  They were not, Silex decided, Cohort. This was not how Cohort were said to act. They must be Kindred, and that was what was meant by “breaking the rules”—they were outside of their territory.

  The Wolfen always ran from the Kindred, avoiding altercation. Should he make his move and stab the tall man now, while the Kindred’s arms were wrapped around the woman?

  A wolf would watch and wait, Silex decided. That was what he would do, too.

  “What will happen to us, Urs?” Calli asked after they had broken off their kiss. She still clutched him.

  Urs shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “No, that is not the answer!” Calli responded sharply.

  “The women’s council…”

  “No!” Calli said again.

  Urs drew in a breath, frustrated. “People cannot decide who they are going to marry without the approval of the women’s council,” he finally declared in a heavy voice.

  “Of course,” Calli agreed impatiently. “But mothers often negotiate between themselves, and bring an arrangement to council. My mother will speak for me. What would you like my mother to say?”

  “My own mother is long dead, so the council speaks for me,” Urs noted. “Who I marry is up to the women.”

  Calli regarded him. “You are brave. You are not afraid of the women,” she said after a bit.

  “Of course I am not afraid,” Urs snapped.

  Calli smiled at this. “Then say we will never be apart. Not ever.”

  Some of the tension went out of Urs’s shoulders, the way men relax after a spear has been thrown and there is nothing more to do but see if it strikes the intended target. “We will never be apart, not ever,” he repeated dutifully.

  “We will marry,” Calli said.

  “Oh Calli.”

  “Urs, I have been waiting my whole life to have this conversation,” Calli pleaded. “Just give me your pledge.”

  “If Albi found out we had made a pledge to each other, she would do everything in her power to stop it.”

  Calli paused. “Albi is the council mother, but that does not imply she gets to decide everything. She is supposed to reflect the will of the council, not the other way around.”

  “That is not what I have observed,” Urs reflected drily.

  Calli clenched her fists. “Why does it matter anyway? If two people wish to marry, that is all that is important!”

  “Now you are just being silly.”

  “I hate how the women interfere in our lives! When I am council mother, women will be able to marry whomever they choose.”

  “Ho!” Urs laughed. “When you are council mother?”

  “I am serious,” Calli fumed.

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  “Then say it. Say we will be married,” Calli commanded fiercely.

  “Oh Calli.”

  “Please, Urs!”

  He stared at her, warmth filling his eyes, love softening his smile. “Yes, we will be married, Calli. I love you.”

  More kissing. Silex was getting tired of hiding behind the rock.

  “Urs?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know of this thing that a man and a woman do together?”

  Urs froze for a moment, then pushed back so he could look into her mischievous eyes. “Of course I know,” he replied.

  “Oh? Have you perhaps been visiting one of the widows?” she asked, her voice lilting.

  “What? No.”

  “All right then. You just spoke with such authority.”

  “I am not a child, Calli. I am a member of the hunt. Spearman.”

  “Ah. And are you good with that spear?” she whispered.

  Silex had never heard two people talk so much about nothing in his whole life. Compared to having to listen to this, being stabbed behind the rocks did not sound so bad.

  “I am.”

  “I’ll bet you are very good.” Calli was groping for Urs’s front cloth.

  “Calli,” he groaned.

  “This thing that a man does with a woman, spearman. Would not this warm, soft grass be a wonderful place for such a thing?”

  Silex was no longer bored. He watched as Urs and Calli untied their garments and tossed them aside, their breathing coming in short pants. He was soon surprised to see them mating face-to-face, with Calli lying on her back. Wolfen approached each other like wolves, with the man always behind the woman. It seemed perverse, somehow, to see two humans doing something so unfamiliar.

  After staring at them for a long time it occurred to him that this was the perfect moment to get away: Urs was certainly preoccupied. Reluctantly he stood, flexing the stiffness out of his legs. The woman’s face was turned away from him.

  Now.

  Silex broke from the rocks but did not get far before, with a shout, Urs had jumped to his feet. Now it was a pursuit, but Silex was of the Wolf People, fleet and agile, and he bobbed a little as he dashed up the path, his shoulders tense as he waited for the spear.

  FIVE

  Calli pulled her clothing together and waited for Urs, feeling sick at heart. Everything had happened the way she had imagined until, bafflingly, a man burst up out of the very earth, seemingly born of rock and soil, and fled, drawing Urs after him. Urs went from being her lover to something else, to man hunter, in less than one breath.

  When Urs came trudging back down the path, carrying his spear loosely in his hand, she was relieved to see that he was uninjured. She read his disappointment when he saw she was no longer sprawled out in the warm grasses, waiting to receive him, and it made her smile. “Was it one of the Frightened?” Calli called. “I have never seen one before.”

  Urs shook his head. He came up to her, still naked, and a small shiver of pleasure ran through her at the sight of his lean, strong body.

  “No, a human. Frightened Ones are bigger and they look different in ways for which I lack descriptive words.”

  She nodded. “No doubt he was very afraid, when he saw you comi
ng at him with both of your weapons out,” Calli noted, glancing down significantly. Urs blushed and bent to pick up his garments.

  “Though I see you already put one of them away,” she continued.

  Urs simply had no idea what to say to that. He reached out to her, holding her so that he could look into her eyes. “He was very fast, faster than any Kindred. I barely missed him, but I did miss.”

  “So. Just one person fell victim to your magnificent weapon today,” Calli speculated.

  “You are too smart for me, Calli Umbra,” Urs said, laughing.

  A man who thinks I am smart, Calli thought to herself. Imagine such a thing.

  They began making their way on the path back toward the summer settlement. Urs fell silent and Callie hoped it was for the same reason she had run out of words herself: the memory of what they had just done together was too profound for any more banter.

  They walked slowly, their hands entwined, but when the trail became strewn with loose rocks they released each other to better balance through the uneven footing. This fortunately meant there was no obvious intimacy between them when, at a bend in the path, they encountered Palloc, at nineteen summers a full year older than Urs. Where Urs towered and was thin, Palloc was stocky and short—Calli’s height, in fact.

  “Any luck?” Palloc demanded. He was standing with his spear near a den of rabbits that had been completely exploited the summer before. This year, though the Kindred kept returning to the same spot, there were no rabbits.

  “Yes!” Calli replied gaily. “We had much luck!”

  Urs turned and gaped at her audacity.

  “What did you get?” Palloc asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” Urs admitted, giving Calli a stern look to stay quiet.

  Palloc snorted, looking between the two of them. “You two are such children.”

  This bothered Urs. “I am no child. I am spearman,” he challenged softly.

  Palloc was one of the oddest-looking members of the Kindred. While nearly everyone else shared homogeneous dark brown eyes and complexions to match, Palloc’s coloring was fair, his brown eyes so light the facets seemed to glow in the sun. It made the mood in them easy to read, somehow, so that Calli knew he was angry before he spoke. “And I am spear master,” Palloc icily reminded Urs. “Your attitude does not please me, spearman.” He glanced at Calli and his face flushed because he knew she was examining the hairs on his arms, which always turned nearly invisible in the summer. “Someday I will be hunt master and I will remember those who caused me disapproval.”

  Calli did not want to spend any more time with Palloc. “I need to help prepare dinner,” she declared.

  “Then go,” Palloc ordered dismissively. “The hunt master has instructed the men to look for prey close to camp. Urs will help me hunt rabbits.”

  “But I should not be unescorted, not this far up the trail,” Calli smoothly pointed out.

  Impatience flitted across Palloc’s pale features.

  “She is right, Spear Master,” Urs observed.

  “Then both of you go. There is real work to be done; you would be of no help to me anyway.”

  Though the stiff set to Urs’s jaw told Calli how furious this made him, he responded to the slight bump of her body against his and moved off without a word. Soon Palloc was out of hearing range.

  “Thank you,” Calli said softly.

  “You were right, a woman should not be alone, not this far away.”

  “No, I mean thank you for leaving him. Leaving the … discussion.”

  “Discussion,” Urs repeatedly moodily. Then his wonderful smile flickered back on his face. “Yes, it was very much a discussion. With Palloc, he talks, and you listen, and that is the discussion.”

  “Do you think it is true? That he will be hunt master someday?” Calli asked.

  “We do not need a hunt master. Hardy is the best we have ever had.”

  “But someday,” Calli argued. “Is it not a natural progression, from spear master to hunt master?”

  “Well maybe.”

  “You should be hunt master,” Calli declared glowingly.

  Urs allowed himself a small smile, and Calli felt her affections for him soar. A thought he had apparently entertained only in his mind was revealing itself to her in that smile.

  “What would you do, as hunt master?” Calli probed.

  Urs looked at her eagerly. “We need to send the stalkers back out. That is what they are for. They split from the hunt and search for prey and then return to tell the spearmen. It is how the Kindred have always hunted.”

  “I do not understand what you are saying. ‘Back out’?”

  Urs’s expression turned grim. “We know that the stalkers who vanished two summers ago were taken by the Valley Cohort. Hardy is afraid to send anyone out, now. We stay together as a group. When we do manage to spear prey, Hardy releases the stalkers to pursue and club the animal, but only as a full body of men.”

  “That makes sense to me.” Calli nodded. “If the Cohort is out there, we should not risk another encounter.”

  “You are telling me how to hunt?” Urs’s eyebrows were arched.

  Calli regarded him, reading his defensive reaction perfectly. “I am not telling you, Urs. Of course you know better,” she placated. “I am just saying I am afraid of the Cohort.”

  “Hunting is not going well. We need to send the men out to stalk.”

  “Do the men of the hunt agree with you?”

  “Some do. Most do. But Hardy says it is not worth the risk.”

  “The women’s council has its own disagreements,” Calli said after a pause. “Everyone despises Albi as council mother. We all wish we had an excuse to vote her out.”

  “Really?” Urs stopped and stared at her. “Because that would solve everything.”

  “I am not sure I understand,” Calli replied slowly.

  “You must come up with a way to get the council to get rid of Albi as council mother. Elect someone reasonable, someone who will endorse our marriage.”

  Urs’s expression was so optimistic that Calli wanted to hug him. “Oh Urs, for men it is all so simple: if it is hunt business, any member of the hunt can raise an issue.”

  “Well, the hunt master is the decider,” Urs corrected.

  “Yes, but anyone can pronounce their opinion without fear of retribution. The women’s council, though, is … hushed. Albi’s job is to put to voice our consensus, but often she suppresses discussion. You think that if a majority of women want Albi out, she would be out. I understand that is how it might work for the hunt, but for us that is so, so far from the case. You just do not understand about Albi,” Calli said sadly.

  “Understand what?” came a loud voice from behind them. They turned, startled, and there, of course, her hands on her hips and a suspicious scowl on her face, was Albi.

  Year Nineteen

  The big mother-wolf opened her eyes and suspiciously regarded the man who had been feeding her. He was approaching her at a crawl. There was fear on his breath and an earthen smell, wet and pungent, coming from his hands. The animal skin he carried, into which he often reached for food to give her, lent a delicious aroma of freshly killed meat to the mixture.

  He halted near to her, so near that with a single lunge she could close her jaws on his throat. And, for a moment, her instincts told her to do this, to protect her pups from this human’s encroachment. She drew her lips back from her teeth and the man inhaled audibly, frozen in place.

  After a time, though, the mother-wolf’s alarm receded. When he resumed his motion, she did not react, but just regarded him drowsily as he made his sounds.

  “This is the mud mixture we use to prevent fester in our wounds. If we put it on the cuts from the lion, you will heal. So I must touch you to apply it. It will not hurt you. It is for your good and the good of your young.”

  The mother-wolf put her head down with a sigh. The battle within her, instincts warring with her willingness
to trust this human who brought her food, wearied her. She was conscious of him moving slowly behind her, approaching her tail end.

  She came alert when he lifted the flap of animal skin and the scent of food flooded the air. “All is good. I am doing this now.” A piece of meat landed by her head and she greedily snatched it up.

  When she felt his hands touch her, a low growl rumbled in her chest. Her pups stirred nervously. A wet and cool sensation caressed her wounds, and another piece of meat landed nearby.

  She growled again, putting more warning into it, staring at the man in the gloom.

  “Just a little bit more.”

  She snarled, snapping at the air, twisting toward him. He scrambled back. “All is good, all is good.”

  She regarded him for a moment, her pups squalling for their mother, the smell of meat dancing on the air. Her muscles tensed, she could feel her attack building, ready to be released.

  When he threw another piece of meat to her, she connected the feeding to the man and his presence in the den and it altered her reaction. She turned from him and ate the offering.

  Year One

  The Wolfen were a nomadic people, living like the wandering wolves who led them to prey. But just as the wolves had a gathering site where they went to howl and play, the Wolfen returned from hunting to the same spot along the riverbanks, a defensible space where their young were safe.

  Silex ran most of the way home, his back muscles knotted in tension, as if the Kindred spearman were still taking aim at him. Only when he smelled his tribe’s fires did he manage to relax.

  The mood was gloomy when he arrived in camp, people nodding solemnly in greeting—it was a somber time for the Wolfen. “Your father wishes to speak to you,” his childhood friend, Brach, informed Silex in quiet tones.

  “Any better?”

  Brach shook his head grimly. As was true of all the northern creeds, the eyes of the People of the Wolf were dark, their hair black and kept shiny with the tree sap they used to keep it out of their way. But the Wolfen were differentiated by their slight builds and sinewy legs—because they ran everywhere, they tended toward lithe bodies.

  Silex’s father lay by the fire. He was stripped of all but a single fox fur tossed across his lap. His right leg was black at the ankle where he had snapped it in the rocks, and scarlet streaks tracked up the leg toward his groin. He was panting, his face dotted with perspiration.