"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.
**Piss-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 &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?"