Wolf-Speaker

‘Brokefang!’ Daine yelled. ‘Numair, it’s the pack!’ She ran to them and vanished in a crowd of yelping, tail-wagging animals. Delighted to see her, they proceeded to wash her with their long tongues.

Standing at the cave entrance, waiting for the reunion to end, the man saw that the rain was coming down harder. ‘Why don’t we move the celebration inside?’ he called. ‘You’re getting drenched.’

Daine stood. ‘Come on,’ she told the pack, speaking aloud for Numair’s benefit. ‘And no eating my friends. The man is Numair. He’s my pack now.’ Two wolves – Numair was touched to see they were Fleetfoot and Russet, his companions on their journey here – left the others to sit by him, grinning and sprinkling him with drops from their waving tails.

Once out of the rain, the newcomers greeted Cloud, sniffing the gray mare politely. Brokefang gave the mare a few licks, which she delicately returned. The pony, the sole survivor of the bandit raid on Daine’s farm, had stayed with Daine in the weeks the girl had run with the pack. In that time, wolves and pony had come to a truce of sorts.

Next Daine introduced her pack to Spots, the easygoing piebald gelding who was Numair’s mount, and Mangle, a gentle bay cob who carried their packs. The horses quivered, whites showing all the way around their eyes, as the wolves sniffed them. They trusted Daine to keep the wolves from hurting them, but their belief in her couldn’t banish natural fear entirely. Once the greetings were over, they retreated to the rear of the large cave and stayed there.

‘Kitten,’ Daine called, looking for her charge. ‘Come and meet the wolves.’

Knowing she often scared mortal animals, the dragon had kept to the shadows. Now she walked into the light. She was pale blue, almost two feet long from nose to hip, with another twelve inches’ worth of tail, a slender muzzle, and silver claws. The wings that one day would carry her in flight were, at this stage, tiny and useless. Her blue, reptilian eyes followed everything with sharp attention. She was far more intelligent than a mortal animal, but her way of knowing and doing things was a puzzle Daine tried to unravel on a daily basis.

‘This is Skysong,’ Daine told the pack. ‘That’s the name her ma gave her, anyway. Mostly we call her Kitten.’

The dragon eyed their guests. The newcomers stared, ears flicking back and forth in uncertainty, tails half-tucked between their legs. Slowly she rose up onto her hindquarters, a favourite position, and chirped.

Brokefang was the first to walk forwards, stiff-legged, to sniff her. Only when his tail gave the smallest possible wag did the others come near.

Once the animals were done, Daine said, ‘Numair, the grey-and-black male is Brokefang.’ When the wolf came to smell Numair’s hands, the mage saw that his right canine tooth had the point broken off. ‘He’s the first male of the pack, the boss male.’ Numair crouched to allow Brokefang to sniff his face and hair as well. The wolf gave a brief wag of the tail to show he liked Numair’s scent.

‘The brown-and-grey male with the black ring around his nose is Short Snout,’ Daine said. ‘The tawny female is Battle. She fought a mountain lion when she was watching pups in Snowsdale – that’s how she got her name.’ Short Snout lipped Numair’s hand in greeting. Battle sniffed the mage and sneezed. ‘The brown-and-red male is Sharp Nose. The grey-and-tawny female is Frolic.’ The girl sat on the floor, and most of the wolves curled up around her. ‘Frostfur, the boss female, and Longwind stayed in the valley with the pups.’

Greetings done, Numair sat by the fire and added new wood. ‘Has Brokefang said why he needs you?’ he asked. ‘His call for help was somewhat vague.’

Daine nodded. ‘Brokefang, what’s going on? All you told Fleetfoot and Russet was that humans are ruining the valley.’ As the wolf replied, she translated, ‘He says this spring men started cutting trees and digging holes without planting anything. He says they brought monsters and more humans there, and they are killing off the game. Between that and the tree cutting and hole digging, they’re driving the deer and elk from the valley. If it isn’t stopped, the pack will starve when the Big Cold comes.’

‘The Big Cold?’ asked Numair.

‘It’s what the People – animals – call winter.’

The man frowned. ‘I’m not as expert as you in wolf behaviour, but – didn’t you tell me that if wolves find an area is too lively for them, they flee it? Isn’t that why they left Snowsdale, because humans there were hunting them?’

Yes, said Brokefang. They wanted to hurt us, because we helped Daine hunt the humans who killed her dam. They killed Rattail, Longeye, Treelicker, and the pups.

Daine nodded sadly: Fleetfoot and Russet had told her of the pack’s losses. The older wolves had been her friends. The pups she hadn’t met, but every pack valued its young ones. To lose them all was a disaster.

Brokefang went on. We left Snowsdale. It was a hard journey in the hot months, seeking a home. We found places, but there was little game, or other packs lived there, or there were too many humans. Then just before the last Big Cold we found the Long Lake. This valley is so big we could go for days without seeing humans. There is plenty of game, no rival pack to claim it, and caves in the mountains for dens in the snows.

Scratching a flea, Brokefang continued. The Long Lake was good – now humans make it bad. They drove us from the valley where I was born, and my sire, and his sire before him. Before, it was our way to run from two-leggers. Yet I do not run if another pack challenges mine – I fight, and the pack fights with me. Are humans better than another pack? I do not believe they are.

Will you help us? Will you tell the humans to stop their tree cutting and noisemaking? If they do not stop, the Long Lake Pack will stop it for them, but I prefer that they agree to stop. I know very well that if the pack has to interfere, there will be bloodshed.

Daine looked at the other wolves of the pack. They nodded, like humans, in agreement. They would support Brokefang in the most unwolflike plan she had ever heard in her life. Where had they got such ideas?

Will you help us? asked Brokefang again.

Daine took a deep breath. ‘You’re my pack, aren’t you? I’ll do my best. I can’t promise they’ll listen to me, but I’ll try.’

Good, Brokefang replied. He padded to the cave’s mouth and gave the air a sniff. The breeze smelled of grazing deer just over the hill. Looking at Daine, he said, Now we must hunt. We will come back when we have fed.

They left as Daine was translating his words. She followed them to the cave mouth, to watch as they vanished into the rain. It was getting dark. Behind her was a clatter as Numair unpacked the cooking things. Thinking about the pack and about her time with them, she was caught up in a surge of memory.

The bandit guard was upwind of a wolf once called Daine. The night air carried his reek to her: unwashed man, old blood, sour wine. Her nose flared at the stench. She covered it with her free hand. The other clutched a dagger, the last human item she remembered how to use.

He did something with his hands as he stood with his back towards her. She slunk closer, ignoring the snow under her bare feet and the freezing air on her bare arms. Forest sounds covered the little noise she made, though he would not have heard if she’d shouted. He was drunk. They all were, too drunk to remember the first two shifts of guards had not returned.

She tensed to jump. Something made him turn. Now she saw what he’d been doing: there was a wheel of cheese in one hand, a dagger in the other, and a wedge of cheese in his mouth. She also saw his necklace, the amber beads her mother had worn every day of her life. She leaped, and felt a white-hot line of pain along her ribs. He’d stabbed her with his knife.

Brokefang found her. She had dragged herself under a bush and was trying to lick the cut in her side. The wolf performed this office for her.

It is dawn, he said. What must be done now?

We finish them, she told him, fists clenched tight. We finish them all.

‘I think I know why Brokefang changed so much,’ she said. ‘I mean, animals learn things from me, and probably that’s how most of the pack got so smart, but Brokefang’s even smarter. I got hurt, when we were after those bandits, and he licked the cut clean.’

‘It’s a valid assumption,’ agreed Numair. ‘There are cases of magically gifted humans who were able to impart their abilities to non-human companions. For example, there is Boazan the Sun Dancer, whose eagle Thati could speak ten languages after she drank his tears. And—’

‘Numair,’ she said warningly. Experience had taught her that if she let him begin to list examples, he would not return to the real world for hours.

He grinned, for all the world like one of her stableboy or Rider friends instead of the greatest wizard in Tortall. He had begun to cook supper: a pot of cut-up roots already simmered on the fire. Daine sat next to him and began to slice chunks from a ham they had brought in their packs. Kitten waddled over to help, or at least to eat the rind that Daine cut from the meat.

—This is very nice,— a rough voice said in their minds. —Cozy, especially on a rainy afternoon.—

They twisted to look at the cave entrance. It shone with a silvery light that appeared to come from the animal standing there. The badger waddled in, the light fading around his body. He stopped at a polite distance from their fire and shook himself, water flying everywhere from his long, heavy coat.

Daine fingered the silver claw he had once given her. She liked badgers, and her mysterious adviser was a very handsome one. Big for his kind, he was over a yard in length, with a tail a foot long. He weighed at least fifty pounds, and it appeared he could stow a tremendous amount of water in his fur.

When he finished shaking, he trundled over to the fire, standing between Daine and Numair. Seated as Daine was, she and the badger were nearly eye to eye. She was so close that she couldn’t escape his thick, musky odour.

‘Daine, is this—?’ Numair sounded nervous.

The badger looked at him, eyes coldly intelligent. —I told her father I would keep an eye on her. So you are her teacher. She tells me a great deal about you, when I visit her.—

‘May I ask you something?’ the mage enquired.

—I am an immortal, the first male creature of my kind. The male badger god, if you like. That is what you wished to ask, is it not?—

‘Yes, and I thank you,’ Numair said hesitantly. ‘I – thought I had shielded my mind from any kind of magical reading or probe—’

—Perhaps that works with mortal wizards,— the badger replied. —Perhaps it works with lesser immortals, such as Stormwings. I am neither.—

Numair blushed deeply, and Daine hid a grin behind one hand. She doubted that anyone had spoken that way to Numair in a long time. She was used to it. The badger had first appeared in a dream to give her advice sixteen months ago, on her journey to Tortall, and she had dreamed of him often since.

‘Another question, then,’ the mage said doggedly. ‘Since I have the opportunity to ask. You can resolve a number of academic debates, actually.’

—Ask.— There was a studied patience in the badger’s voice.