Coco was waiting with her arms crossed for Calli and Bellu as the two young women returned with their arms full of new grass. “Where have you been?” she hissed furiously.
Coco was, in many ways, an older version of her daughter Calli. Both were slightly tall for women. Both had stocky legs and muscular buttocks, drawing men’s eyes when they wore their shorter summer garments. Neither had Bellu’s perfection, but they were still considered beautiful among the Kindred. Their eyes carried laughter more than fury, but not now: Bellu actually held back a few paces, cowed by the inexplicable rage on Coco’s face.
“We…” Calli looked to Bellu for support, then down at the grass in her arms.
“Look!” Coco commanded. She thrust a finger at the flat rock by the fire on which the skinned rabbits lay. Calli stared, then exchanged horrified glances with Bellu. Only one carcass remained.
Bellu scanned the sky for the bird that might have done this, but Calli knew no bird would come in so close to a smoking fire. This had been a human, who had done this. One of the Kindred.
“You can never leave food unguarded during times of great hunger!” Coco scolded.
Bellu made a small whimpering noise. She was unaccustomed to anyone being angry at her. Coco ignored her—she remained focused on Calli, waiting for an explanation.
But Calli was looking over her mother’s shoulder. Albi was approaching, leaning on her heavy stick.
“What is happening here?” Albi demanded.
Coco reluctantly explained that they were short a rabbit. Albi raised a furious finger and stabbed it at Calli. “You should have piled stones on the carcasses,” she raged. “Now we have even less to eat!”
Bellu looked close to tears, but Calli said nothing. She was staring at Albi, whose chin was shiny with a new, slick coat of grease.
* * *
Silex was at the front of a party of five other Wolfen hunters. They ran easily, keeping the wolves to their left, far enough away on the rolling plains that only their fur-covered backs were visible above the grasses, rippling like water flowing over rocks. The Wolfen hunters did not know where the pack was going, but the wolves ran in the single-file lope they usually employed when they were tracking game.
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.