The Dog Master Read online

  The Wolfen, mimicking their canine benefactors in all ways possible, also ran in a single-file line, but now Duro—a large, muscular hunter several years older than Silex—increased his speed until the two men were side by side.

  “So you are to marry Ovi,” Duro grunted.

  Silex glanced sideways at him. Duro’s face seemed drawn into a permanent scowl, his dark eyes furrowed under a heavy brow. The ridge of bone at the base of his forehead was almost as thick and prominent as the facial features of Frightened Ones, the massively built but shy near-humans who always fled when they saw the Wolfen. Now, when Duro met his gaze, Silex felt that the other man seemed even more dour than usual.

  “It was my father’s final wish,” Silex reminded the other man neutrally. Several days had passed since they had buried the Wolfen leader, placing spearheads and some bear teeth in the hole with him. Since that time, Duro had been behaving petulantly, so Silex thought he knew where this conversation might be headed.

  “Your father is dead.”

  Silex increased the pace slightly, and the larger man followed suit. Silex prided himself on the light touch of his feet on the ground, so similar to the running wolf. Duro’s footfalls fell more heavily.

  “Ovi is a rounded woman. She has good breasts. She will be a fertile mother,” Duro panted.

  Silex abruptly signaled a halt. The rest of the Wolfen reacted instantly, but Duro had been caught off guard and overran their position, returning sheepishly to rejoin the group.

  “We have lost sight of the wolves,” Silex told his fellow hunters, who circled around him. He directed his men to travel in two groups of two and locate where the wolves had gone. Duro he would keep with him.

  “So,” Silex said, looking up at Duro.

  “Ovi is large boned. Like me. She is tall for a woman.” Duro put his hands on his hips, straining to speak without sounding breathless.

  “This is true.”

  “She has good breasts.”

  “That does seem important to you,” Silex observed mildly. “You have said it before.”

  Duro’s scowl deepened. “You are not large and are not as strong as me.”

  “Yet, my father chose me to lead the Wolfen, and it is I who have given tribute to the wolves.”

  “Your father is dead.”

  “You have said that before, too.”

  “You are a boy. That is what matters,” Duro insisted. “In the wolf pack, the males will challenge to see which one mates with the largest female.”

  Silex sighed. “You are forgetting that my father taught us that there are times when we cannot be exactly the same as our wolf benefactors. Would you vomit up your food to feed our young?”

  “Your father,” Duro sneered.

  “Is dead,” Silex interrupted. “Yes, I know.”

  Simultaneously, both hunting parties returned. Silex could tell by their expressions that neither group had found the wolves, but the two young men on his right had found something else.

  “Kindred,” they reported, pointing over some low hills. “Hunters.”

  Silex considered this. The Kindred usually traveled in large parties, often with many times more men as the Wolfen.

  “Well?” Duro taunted. “Do we run away? Or do we show the Kindred that the Wolfen fight when they trespass on our side of the river?”

  The abrupt dare was so startling that, without context, the rest of the hunters could only gape at Duro. Silex, though, pretended the challenge was not at all obnoxious, giving his face a contemplative expression. “Of course we do neither,” he finally said carefully. “We do as the wolf would do. We observe them unseen while continuing the hunt.”

  Silex did not wait for acknowledgment—he simply turned and ran toward where he hoped they would regain the wolves’ trail.

  “When I am leader,” Duro hissed at Silex, “I will attack the trespassers. I will kill them all!”

  * * *

  The wolves had killed, and the scent of blood sweetened the wind with a wild succulence. What little remained of the two elk calves stained the dirt. The wolves were wagging and playing near the stain, touching noses and tumbling with the pups. The large she-wolf lifted her snout and sniffed. It felt as if a howl was coming, a song of joy.

  The dominant bitch, Smoke, was not nearby; her scent was barely detectable above the blood. Perhaps that was why the wolves were so insouciant—without Smoke making her increasingly hostile moves, the pack was relaxed.

  Three times the large female had been abruptly and viciously challenged by Smoke, and in all three instances the younger she-wolf had opted for the good of the pack, accepting the punishment, submitting to it. Her anodyne behavior calmed the other wolves, but Smoke thus far was unmollified.

  Disappointed that the pack came to the verge of a howl before the mood shifted and the wolves opted to curl up with full bellies and nap instead, the she-wolf trotted off in search of the two young males who, more and more, were her companions each day. The woods here were thick, fallen logs damp underneath from a recent rain. The she-wolf gracefully leaped over the trunk of a downed tree, and that’s when the dominant bitch struck.

  There was no warning, just a blindsiding attack. Smoke must have been lying patiently just on the other side of the log, the wind sweeping her scent away, watching as the younger wolf approached. Now Smoke lunged, growling, her chest slamming into the larger she-wolf, teeth slashing, drawing blood.

  The younger she-wolf rose up on her rear legs and the two wolves engaged in a brief, vicious battle, their voices mingling in a shockingly ugly growl. This was it, a fight for dominance, for fate.

  And then the younger wolf dropped to all fours, turned, and ran. She had felt, in one second, both her superior strength and her inexperience coming to the fore. This was not a fight she could win. She might be larger but she was unskilled, and she was too young to mate. She could not be the dominant female at her age. It would not be good for the pack.

  Yet she knew she was fated to mate, eventually, that her size and strength meant the pack needed her pups. It was why Smoke had attacked, defending her rank, and it was why now, when the larger she-wolf wanted so much to circle back and rejoin her pack, she kept going, slowing but moving steadily. For the good of the pack, she needed to leave the very social order that had sustained and nurtured her for her whole life. It was her destiny.

  She could not calculate risks, but her instincts did a good job of giving her a heightened sense of danger, of urgency. She needed to find food quickly, not because of hunger—she had just fed—but because she was callow and still clumsy and utterly alone.

  After a time, the she-wolf stopped at a stream and drank. The pack was downwind and she could no longer detect its scent, or smell anything worth pursuing for a meal. Instinctively electing to conserve energy, she found a cool spot of shade and circled around in the grass, lying down for an afternoon nap.

  Soon she raised her head, staring alertly. She smelled them long before she saw them.

  Her two young male companions, coming toward her across a field of grass, throwing their fate in with hers.

  EIGHT

  The thin soup of two days ago had done little to ease the hollow hunger in their bellies, and now the Kindred hunt, twenty men in all, pressed a hard pace as they trotted out onto the plains in search of prey. They were breathing raggedly, especially those who fell out of line to squat and ease their cramps and then had to sprint to catch up.

  Hardy, hunt master, was nearly the oldest man among them, having spent a full forty summers hunting game on these steppes. Never could he remember there being so little to eat—just a handful of years ago there was enough game that the hunt would return to the settlement after only a day, dragging reindeer and elk behind them. Now they had been forced to cross the great river into Wolfen territory, though he was hardly worried about a confrontation—the Wolfen were as cowardly as the Frighteneds, and would run from the Kindred spear.

  There was an odd rocking motio
n to Hardy’s gait, as the leg on his left side, the woman’s side, turned awkwardly in its socket with every step. It was a pain that had bothered him his whole life, but he had never mentioned it, never told anyone that it was more than just a hitch in his step—it hurt, and at this pace felt as if he were being repeatedly stabbed, but he would not let up. He was hunt master and the Kindred were starving. His legend told of a man who was always strong and fit for the hunt, acknowledging his stocky build and broad chest—he would die before he would betray that legend.

  Urs ran easily on Hardy’s man’s side, while Vent—Aventus, “He Runs as Fast and Strong as the Wind”—kept pace on the woman’s side. Urs impressed Hardy; he could run for miles and then throw a spear on target without hesitation. Palloc was up front with them, trotting along a few steps back.

  Palloc did not impress Hardy. The spear master’s loud breathing was distracting—did the fool not understand that they all hurt, that they were all tired?

  Hardy signaled he wanted to speak to Urs alone. “What is it, Urs?” Hardy asked softly. “You have sighed like a woman several times today.”

  Urs gave a guilty start. “I was just thinking perhaps we should send the stalkers out ahead to find prey,” he finally responded respectfully.

  “No,” Hardy answered curtly.

  “But if they fanned out, we would be able to search far more ground.”

  “No.”

  Urs bit back his frustration.

  By late afternoon, the men were on the verge of collapse. The hunt master called for frequent stops, and had worked the hunt back to the river so they could drink and cool off. Urs felt light-headed, and his legs trembled whenever they halted. They were not running now; Hardy had taken them out wide and fast, as if casting a net, and was now traveling them more carefully, alert to the slightest movement. They were out of the trees and it kept them on edge—predators could see them. They strayed away from the river, then back to its banks, combing the grasses. They were on the east banks, the Wolfen side.

  When the Kindred startled up a reindeer herd it rose from where it had been lying in the dry grass, creating a cloud of dust. Shouting, breaking discipline, the men dashed forward in a ragged assault, hurling their spears.

  Urs did what he was supposed to, keeping his eyes on Hardy. The hunt master watched the herd, waiting for the mad scramble to sort itself out, spotting a doe who was running to the man’s side. It was behavior that served the ungulates well when their hunters were four-legged: a straight line retreat gave the predators organization, and it was easy to pull down the slowest. When the first frantic milling produced no direction, the lions and wolves could not pick the young or weak out from the rest of the herd, and often wound up facing deadly antlers as a result.

  Not true for humans. They tracked chaos without confusion, and the doe breaking to the man’s side presented a fat target for the hunt master’s spear. Urs’s toss was the better of the two: while Hardy’s weapon nicked the animal’s back, Urs’s spear sank home in the front leg on the reindeer’s right side.

  Another reindeer had taken a hit as well, and most of the hunt broke after this one. Hardy reached a hand out to stay Urs’s impulse to follow. “Wait,” he instructed.

  Urs did as he was told, though he was obviously itching to join the hunger-fueled melee that had broken out among the men. The speared prey was bounding out far ahead of her pursuers. Hardy stood still, studying the terrain.

  Palloc had given chase, but when he glanced back and saw the hunt master and Urs standing still, he halted, confused. Why were they not running?

  The spear master should be by Hardy’s side, Palloc decided. He turned back. He was panting as he approached the two hunters. “What…?” he started to ask.

  Hardy cut him off with a curt chop of his hand. “There,” Hardy declared, pointing to a flat area far distant. “We go there.”

  They stopped to pick up a couple of the spears that the hunt had abandoned in its reckless dash.

  It was half a day’s trot. Palloc exchanged glances with Urs and was mollified to see that the taller, younger man appeared as clueless as he was. Hardy signaled for them to slow as the grasses thinned. They crept silently, mimicking Hardy.

  What they found was a young lion who had opportunistically seized the Kindred’s prey and was feeding, oblivious to the approach of the three humans. The reindeer was lying on its side. Not yet dead, its eyes were dull with shock.

  Hardy gestured them down, speaking in a murmur. “A lion will not allow itself to be encircled. I will charge up the center. You,” he pointed to Urs, “attack from the man’s side. You, Spear Master, you attack from the woman’s side. Make no sound unless I do, and do not release your spears, but impale the lion if he does not flee our attack. If he flees, we stand back-to-back with spears out to guard against his return, and await the rest of the hunt.” Hardy squinted at the sun. “Our fellow hunters may be here at any moment, but we cannot wait, that beast is making short work of our prey.”

  Hardy nodded at them, and Urs and Palloc nodded back. Palloc was glad to see the fear in Urs’s eyes—he himself was terrified. Charge a lion?

  The lion’s jowls were bloody, its immense teeth ripping savagely at the deer’s entrails. Though young, it was still longer from nose to tail than a human stretched to full length. If the predator cat chose to defend its meal, a single swipe of its claw could disembowel a man.

  This was not something they should do. Palloc opened his mouth, wanting to say something. They needed to talk about this!

  “All right.” Hardy turned. “We go.”

  The men stood up out of the sparse shrubbery, and the lion raised its huge head, staring at them.

  * * *

  The men of the Kindred often said Hardy’s face was made of stone. A gouge under his left eye did appear as if it had been chipped out with hard flint, and his impassive demeanor steadied the hunt when conditions were less than ideal. But that did not mean the hunt master was incapable of fear.

  He was afraid now, watching the enormous lion devour the reindeer they had speared. With only Palloc and Urs aiding him, he might very well die, this day. But the fear lent him a focus like none he had ever had; it made his legs strong, filled his lungs, firmed his grip so tightly on his spear the wood might snap. The Kindred needed food, needed that reindeer.

  Hardy ran straight at the lion.

  And Urs was afraid. He actually hesitated, hoping for more time, feeling sure that if they were going to do this thing, run straight at this killer, they needed to discuss it more. Wait! he almost shouted. Then he realized the hunt master was heedless and that Urs was being left behind. Urs began twenty paces back and veered to his right, his man’s side, not sure how far out he should go before he curved back to close the circle on the lion, who was not even looking at Urs—just at Hardy, its animal gaze malevolent and intent.

  They were more than a hundred paces out. Urs was the faster runner and began catching up, but when he turned to look for Palloc on his woman’s side, it caused a stumble: Palloc was not where he should be. He was far behind the two men, moving, but at the speed of their dust, barely more than drifting.

  The cat began lowering its head, raising its shoulders. Its lips drew back from its teeth. When Hardy could see its eyes, the irises were completely black. It was not retreating from the three-pronged attack. This would be a fight.

  Hardy raised his spear and yelled, hating this beast, his heart filling with rage.

  The cat sprang, coming up on its rear legs and clawing the hunt master across the chest just as his spear flew and went wide, burying itself in the felled reindeer. Hardy staggered. Urs was still twenty paces away, sprinting hard. He gasped as the lion took the hunt master’s head in its mouth. Still running, Urs was close enough to hear the skin on Hardy’s skull pop.

  Urs yelled, too, gritting his teeth, and lowered his spear and drove it with all his weight behind it straight into the lion’s neck. The impact nearly threw Urs to the g
round. A thick spray of blood painted the air. The lion dropped Hardy and roared, twisting, yanking the spear from Urs’s hands. Snarling, the cat bit at its wound, trying to dislodge the weapon, and Urs reached down and yanked Hardy’s spear from the reindeer’s flesh and when the lion pounced he hurled the spear and it went true, a solid hit that split the cat’s ribs as the stone point rammed into its heart. The lion fell forward, dying at Urs’s feet.

  For a moment there was nothing but silence—Urs could only hear his own panting—and then a strange sound made him look up in surprise. There, at the top of the rise, were the members of the Kindred hunt, and the sound was them cheering. They came down the slope at a run, shouting, while Urs, awash in what felt like sickness, sank to his knees.

  Palloc and the hunters of the Kindred reached the kill site simultaneously. They all wanted to grab Urs, to rap their knuckles on his back in congratulations, and none seemed to even want to talk to Palloc, the spear master. Palloc stood there as if invisible, panting, his mouth taut in a resentful grimace.

  Two of Bellu’s brothers were kneeling by Hardy, whose head wound bled bright red in the sunlight. Hardy was moaning, and his eyes were closed.

  * * *

  The she-wolf and her two male companions had gone for seven days without a meal. Their hunger had led them farther out onto the grassy plains than they had ever ventured, where they felt exposed and vulnerable, but they ultimately had found nothing.

  Their snouts were dirty as they touched noses for reassurance, because the wolves had spent a fruitless day digging among a warren of holes perforating the earth and emitting the tantalizing scent of warm-blooded mammals. There was prey, down in those holes, but never visible, never audible. The wolves dug until their feet were raw, all for nothing. It was a worthless expense of energy while the strength in their muscles palpably ebbed. The large female could smell the weakness on the breath of her two male companions, taste it in their exhalations like an illness.

  When the sun was directly overhead and the air dry and still, the large female went rigid, her nose twitching wildly. The two males bounded over to her, wagging, and they spent several moments sniffing each other. Elk. There were elk ahead.