The Blood of Ten Chiefs Read online

  "I'm not a chief!" he replied.

  "You showed how to deal with the allos," she reminded him. "That makes you chief. But it will never work unless you believe it yourself.''

  "But I can't just declare myself chief!" he protested.

  "Why not?"

  "They would laugh!"

  "If you don't, they will die, as the allos overrun our holt."

  He was very much afraid she was right. He had taken on this mission because of the need; he had not thought beyond it. Now he appreciated the greater need: for a continuing leadership that could handle problems as they came, whatever they might be.

  Still, he did not feel competent because he couldn't solve the problem of the numbers of allos. What good was it to slay one, or two, or three, or eight, if more always came?

  He mulled that over as they rode, outdistancing the reptiles. He felt ashamed because so much of his thinking had been done for him by the woman who didn't want to share his life, Wreath. A chief didn't let others do his thinking! For that matter, what chief had a name like Prunepit?

  Then he suffered a major realization.

  **Stop at the next good resting place,** he thought to the wolves. That was the elfin version; the actual message was simply a vision of a nice spot, with wolves relaxing.

  When they stopped, Prunepit called out to them to gather around. "We agreed that whoever solved the problem of the allos would be chief," he said. "I have shown how to solve it, so I am declaring myself chief. I admit that the problem is not over yet, but I will dedicate myself to dealing with it. I am the only one who can unify the minds of the wolves with the mind of the prey, and that is what we need to do this job."

  He paused, but there was no reaction. They were waiting to hear him out before drawing their conclusions.

  "To signify this determination, I am taking a new name," he said. "I enable the wolves to link with the prey, to pace it, moving before it can move. Therefore I will call myself Prey-Pacer, and that will be my name as long as I am chief."

  Still they did not speak. He hoped he was not making himself ludicrous. The key element of his assumption was coming up.

  "But I do not know all the answers to all the problems. I never expected to be chief, before my mother died, and have had no practice in it. I know I will make mistakes if I try to decide everything myself. So my decision is-to make no significant decision without first getting the best advice I can. For example, I don't know how to stop the allos from taking the meat of whichever ones we kill. Does anyone here know?"

  They considered. "Why don't we kill one and butcher it quickly and haul it up into a tree where they can't reach it?" Dampstar asked.

  "That sounds good to me," Prey-Pacer said. "Does anyone have an objection?"

  "Yes," Wreath said. "Those beasts track by the smell of blood as much as anything else. They could collect under that tree and never leave."

  "But then we have a way to stop them!" Softfoot pointed out. "We can hang flesh in several trees, and the whole horde will stop right there."

  The elves pursed their lips, thinking about that.

  "Well, either they'll stay by the tree, or they won't," Prey-Pacer said. "If they stay, they won't bother us elsewhere. If not, we have a cache we can return to. I think it's an excellent suggestion, and I'll do it if a better one doesn't come along. Thank you, Dampstar."

  Dampstar grinned with pride, just as if a real chief had complimented him.

  Wreath nodded, gazing at Prey-Pacer with new appraisal. He was making it work.

  But Softfoot was looking at Wreath. What was passing through her mind? She must be suspicious that Wreath was reconsidering about keeping the secret, and might decide after all to be the lifemate of a chief. Prey-Pacer was suspicious of that too-and knew that as much as he loved Softfoot, he would not be able to deny Wreath if she decided to take him. That single mating with her-already he felt the yearning returning. Perhaps it was only the Recognition, asserting its hunger to generate the baby it had chosen. But perhaps it was his own fickle male nature, vulnerable to beauty no matter what his mind said.

  There was a roar. Another allo had come across them, and was charging in.

  The elves leaped for their wolves. But Wreath reached for an arrow first, dipping it to the firepot. She took aim at the monster bearing down on her.

  Prey-Pacer, astride Halfhowl, looked back, abruptly realizing that Wreath had not mounted. He had never witnessed an act of greater courage! But it was foolish courage, because she had no way to escape the reptile in time. Already the allo's huge head was orienting on her, sweeping down as the

  terrible jaws opened. Curlfur remained close to her, but could not make her mount before she was ready.

  Wreath fired into that open mouth. The flaming arrow went right into the throat. The allo choked, but its momentum was such that even as it stumbled, it was coming down to crush the elf-woman. It was far too late for Prey-Pacer to do anything, even if he had been able to act.

  Then a shape shot by, passing almost under the falling monster. It was a wolf and rider, leaping to intercept Wreath. The rider launched from the wolf, pushing off to tackle Wreath and shove her out of the way as the allo's head and neck whomped down at her.

  The monster struck the ground. Wreath stumbled clear, safe by the narrowest margin. But her rescuer had not made it; her legs were pinned under the fallen allo.

  Then Prey-Pacer realized who it was. Softfoot lay there, unconscious.

  Prey-Pacer was the first to reach them. "Why did she do it?" he gasped, horrified.

  Wreath swallowed. She was not so cold as to overlook the narrowness of her escape. ''Because she loves you," she said, awed.

  "But you are her rival!"

  "And she was protecting your child-whoever carried it," Wreath added. "I think I could not have done that."

  Softfoot groaned. "She's alive!" Prey-Pacer exclaimed.

  "But will be lame, I fear," Wreath said. "She never was apt on her feet, and now will be worse. She will need a lot of attention." She gazed down at Softfoot, and a tear rolled down her cheek. It seemed that her cold heart had at last been touched. Then, as the other Wolfriders arrived, she raised her voice. "Get sticks! Lever this monster off the chief's lifemate! She saved my life!"

  Then Prey-Pacer knew that no matter who bore his child, no one would try to separate him from Softfoot. One woman

  had acted with measureless courage and brought down an allo single-handed. The other had acted with similar courage, and with measureless generosity, and won the respect and gratitude of two who would not forget.

  Prey-Pacer was indeed chief, and was known as the most superlative of elfin hunters despite his seeming inadequacies of weapon and of sending. It took time, but he succeeded in abating the menace of the allos, and they retreated to their former obscurity. He sired several children. Among them was Wreath's daughter, to be named Skyfire, inheriting the beauty and nerve of her mother. Another was Softfoot's son, to be named Swift-Spear, trained in his mother's weapon. But for a long time, only Softfoot's cubs were known as Prey-Pacer's offspring, until the secret no longer mattered.

  It had happened again as it had happened so many times before. A hunting human and a hunting Wolfrider had unwittingly crossed paths not a good run's distance from the Father Tree itself. And, of course, the Wolfrider would have to have been Moonshade. Not that the black-haired elf had been harmed; by all the retellings Longreach had heard, elf and human had both panicked and run in opposite directions, but Moonshade was Strongbow's lifemate and Strongbow rarely needed encouragement to inflame his hatred of the five-fingered hunters.

  Bearclaw himself was little better. He'd just come back from one of his hand-of-days wanderings and was in no mood for Strongbow's challenges. Longreach was one of the few who knew where Bearclaw wandered and, though he'd never say it aloud and certainly not at a tense howl like this, he suspected the red-eyed chief of drinking a bit more of his dreamberry wine than was wise.

  **Pi
ss-pot cowards, all of you,** Strongbow's sending roared into all of their minds.**They're coming closer all the time. Will you wait until they burn the Father Tree around us?**

  "Piss-pot yourself. They've been there and we've been here a long time. It's just that we know where 'there' is and they wouldn't know 'here' if they were standing where I'm standing right now."

  **Fog-brained idiot. You'll wait until they are here before you do anything.**

  "I've done something. We're watching; we're being careful-a lot more careful than you'd be, thundering up to their stink-breath caves."

  If it had just been the two males posturing and snarling as they so often did, Longreach would have simply headed back to his own den. But Moonshade's encounter had been closer to the holt than any similar event in recent memory. And if it was one thing the Wolfriders had learned as the seasons turned it was that humankind was the most dangerous, unpredictable hunter in the forest.

  Worse, the other Wolfriders were starting to take sides as bitterness took root in honest fear. There had always been those who wanted to run as far as possible, to live where you never saw the mark of a five-fingered hand; and there were always those who wanted to carry the hunt to humanity as if it were possible to purge the world of two moons of their presence.

  At the moment, though, neither Strongbow nor Bearclaw had the least notion of the effect their loud, private quarrel was having. Longreach sighed and, completely unnoticed, got to his feet. It was going to be necessary to sober them both.

  "Enough!" he said in a voice that had carried through more howls than these two had seen between them. "You're thinking with your mouths. The worst that can happen to a Wolfrider isn't meeting a human-it's becoming so lost in his anger, his hatred, and his fear that he loses the Way. Without the Way it doesn't matter what you do, or why you do it-you've already lost yourself.

  "And it can happen to the best of us-"

  Swift-Spear

  by Mark C. Perry amp;C.J. Cherryh

  The wolf Blackmane heard them moving through the woods, but he was not frightened. These new humans were a soft breed; they ran from elf and wolf alike. Besides, he was not done with his meal yet…

  The men moved closer through the undergrowth, their sweat staining the summer air with the scent of their fear. They knew this was one of the werewolves that the forest demons rode. But their fear was overridden by hot anger. The calf the wolf had stolen was the fifth that these dark ones had killed in the two months since the tribe had come here. They could not afford such loss.

  "Are we cowards?" their leader, Kerthan, had cried when the wolf had taken the calf. He had stood in the middle of the village holding his magic spear aloft. "Must we hide in fear whenever the demons' wolves are hungry? How long before they kill full-grown animals? How long before they get a taste for our children's flesh? The gods have promised! The world is ours! We must cast the demons out or lose favor in the gods' eyes forever!"

  Kerthan's head resounded with his speech as he inched closer to the great wolf that fed in the clearing. It was he, Kerthan, who had led the people to this territory, he who had made the first stone hut in the plain below the woods and dared to declare the land his own. He grasped the spear tightly. He must kill the wolf, or the people would turn on him and leave. He must kill the wolf…

  Blackmane sniffed the air and moved from his prey, growling as he saw one of the men creep from the woods' cool

  shadows and stand upright, staring at him. Blackmane growled again, warning off the scrawny man-things-it was his kill, and these were none of the pack-but the man did not retreat or advance; he held a spear-fang and pointed it at him, and the acrid, strange smell of the weapon coming faintly against the wind made Blackmane's short hairs bristle. He had never smelled this cold thing before in his short life; it burned with the scent of anger and fear, seared the air about him… The human pack moved on either side of him, to drive him from his prey in his own hunting-range.

  He snarled, indecisive, measuring the man with the harsh smell; then backed a step away, misliking the situation, almost ready to run and leave his prey. He had hunted alone. He was apart from his pack. They were in theirs. Danger. Danger in this, and they outnumbered him.

  Then the scent wafting on a wind-shift behind him set the hair bristling up again and flattened his ears to his skull… The human pack had closed behind him, surrounding him; and the man-leader held the spear-fang, muscles tensed-that meant-attack!

  With a howl he charged straight at the man…

  Kerthan's spear flashed in the sun, driving deep into the wolf's thick shoulder. The force of the blow spilled the beast to the ground.

  The humans behind him cried with one voice and surrounded the struggling animal. "Kill it," Kerthan cried, and did not cease to jab at the wolf with the keen-edged spear while the hunters with him hit it with clubs and sticks and fell at last to gashing it with knives, wounding each other in their frenzy.

  Swift-Spear raced between the trees, his heart light with the freedom of his strength… freedom for the moment from the demands of the chieftainship his father Prey-Pacer had bequeathed him. He ran beneath the summer leaves, leaped

  up the gray rock outcrop that rose on the margin of the stream, and looked back grinning and panting at the elf-woman who ran behind him, at Willowgreen, whose hair flew and whose bare feet skipped lightly enough over the forest mold-but not the match for his speed, or his long stride. Tall herself, with the high ones' blood in her-she had their languor too; she was fair and pale and breathed now with great gasps while she laughed…" 'Show me a sight,' " she breathed as she climbed after him. " 'Show me a sight,' indeed! What is there to see here?"

  He had the answer ready, his mouth opened.

  And stumbled to the ground, grabbing his head. There were men and there was the smell of metal. He saw the hunters. He heard a cry inside, first of anger, then of terror and of pain. He felt the tear of flesh.

  "Blackmane!" he shouted aloud, even as his mind sought his friend. He felt a brief flicker reach to him, then gray emptiness. Swift-Spear fell to his knees.

  "Ayooooo!" he cried in agony. He knew that Blackmane was dead.

  In moments the wolf lay battered and chopped beyond recognition. The men laughed and danced, spotted with the wolf's blood, and Kerthan cut off the still warm ears as a trophy.

  "They can be killed!" Kerthan said, his voice loud and strong in victory. "No longer must we fear them." He shook his spear, hot drops of blood from it spattering them all. "Kerthan will protect you with his spear! This is our land and no one will take it from us!"

  "Swift-Spear!" Willowgreen cried, and shook him with both her hands as he sat crouched atop the rocks. There was no response. The elf sat with his hands clasped between his knees, his brown eyes wide and shocked. She took his face

  between her hands and peered into those eyes in search of sense, but there was no reaction at all, not in the eyes, not in the mouth, which remained slack; his skin was chilled and he did not shiver; and there was no contact with his mind, none that she dared seek. Blood, she got. And, metal. And after that she leapt up and went flying down from the rocks, panting as she ran the winding forest trails-past the marks the elves knew, past the familiar rocks, and over the fallen log, and through and through the trees with constantly a shriek in her mind:**Help, help-**

  Wolves cried out in the forest. None were hers. She was too tall, too fair, too strange for them, and they always distrusted her.**Help,** she called out to them, and did not know whether they heard her or understood. The pain was sharp in her side, and branches raked her hair. She stumbled and caught herself on the old ash, and ran and ran, all but mindless with the pain and the terror as she skidded down a hillside and through the thicket.

  And crashed full into the arms of a presence she had not felt, hands that seized her by her arms, and eyes yellow and terrible as any wolf's, a face narrow and hard and familiar to her.

  **Willowgreen,** the mindtouch came to her, and the g
rip held her and shook at her till the thoughts came spilling out, the things she had seen, the fact that Swift-Spear was left helpless because she knew nothing of weapons and nothing of what had brought Swift-Spear down, and only ran, ran, ran, for help.

  The elf's hands released her, pushing her away. He was less than her height; he was small and slight and his hair was not elf-it was black-tipped and strange, strange as the mind which could stalk so silently and insinuate itself unfelt. "Fool," Graywolf said. "Helpless fool!"

  Which stung worse than the thorns, for he was SwiftSpear's cousin, and had never loved her, never thought her of any worth.

  "Go tell the tribe," he said; and said with his mind as he left:**Quickly!** with such force and anger that she stopped in her tracks and did not follow him.**Quickly!**

  She fled, in motion before she had decided; she flung up her arms to shield her from the branches, and ran, breathless and aching.

  There was still that quiet, that most profound quiet that had held Swift-Spear motionless. No one could hear that silence and move. And yet, he thought in that dim, remote center where he was, yet if he could move, and break that quiet, then none of it would be true, and that silence would not exist, and the world would be whole again.

  He tried, desperately. He felt with his mind wider and wider after that essence which eluded him.

  He felt a presence finally, and sought after it. It was wolfish and familiar. For a moment he hoped he had found what he sought… but it grew and grew until he knew it was something else; it filled the space about him, driving other things away. In that presence were yellow eyes, and a voice in his mind that was like a wolf's, which had the essence of a wolf but an elvish mind all the same.

  **No,** he said with his thoughts, forcing it away. But it was too late, the presence he had wanted was gone, and this one had made it impossible to recover it. "No!" he howled aloud and struggled in a hard-handed grip that closed upon his arms. He flung himself up and struck at the intruder, knowing as he struck who it was, and seeing with the return of his vision the wolf-mane of hair, the narrow, elvish face, and yellow eyes. He raged and shoved away, but Graywolf was as quick on the rocks, and prevented him with a grip on his arms and a touch at his mind:**Blackmane?**