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gryphonseggThis is the beginning of an animal soulbonding story that was inspired by the conversation in comments on this earlier post. Warnings for the kind of backstory that fantasy protagonists so often have (dead mothers, abusive older men, bullies and wicked step-brothers of sorts), but the story concerns the aftermath of that. I think the piece is coherent in itself, but the comments on that post are necessary for understanding why I made the specific choices I did (no wolf-women, downtrodden and abused protagonist, a mission led by a female wolf and her partner). Oh, and the fey-wolves and wolf-men in this story, while they're not angels, are certainly not into gang rape.
Prologue
A boy was born in Masrel, near the south bank of the River Kel. His mother was Gessa, who came into the district from Restel while she was pregnant and there was abandoned by the man who had been keeping her. Gessa died in childbed. In those days, that cause of death was becoming more unusual than it had been, because the Gray Sisters were taking the knowledge throughout the lands. But Gessa bled out too fast to save her, and the only thing the Sisters could do was to take her boy to the next town to the south, where a woman named Maegwil had been lying in bed, unable to get up for grief of her baby which had died of a fever. When the new baby was placed beside her, Maegwil hid her face. After some time, she took him to her bosom to stop his crying, and the next day, she got up and walked.
Maegwil’s husband was Blandred, a descendant of Haldraek the Bold and cousin of Halrest of the Bridges. Blandred objected to his wife nursing the child of a woman he called “a halfbreed whore.” Maegwil was a stubborn woman, and she wanted to keep the baby. Many people in that time believed that a boy whose mother died because of his birth would bring bad luck to women all his life. Blandred, who had used to scoff at popular beliefs about good and bad luck, now raised this as an objection. Maegwil kept the baby and named him Kelwain. As long as Maegwil lived, she gave Kelwain the same care and education as her older children, but Blandred never warmed to him. Kelwain was ten years old in the Plague Year, when Maegwil sickened and died. Blandred and his two youngest sons, Sildraek and Haldraek, treated Kelwain like a slave thereafter.
Kelwain was overworked and often beaten at his former home. The situation grew so intolerable that Kelwain began to sleep in the library maintained by the Gray Sisters instead of the house where he had grown up. Away from Blandred’s land, he was a frequent target of bullies, and no women except the few Gray Sisters in the area would deal with him because of the exaggerated tales of ill luck which Blandred and his sons had begun to spread. Any misfortune that befell one of the Gray Sisters was taken by the surrounding community to be Kelwain’s fault, although the Sisters themselves maintained the position that unpleasant accidents did not happen to them any more often than to any group of as many men.
When he was fourteen, Kelwain made up his mind to leave the district. He considered heading upriver to Gluring to see the mountains, but he balked at the possibility of being put to work in the mines or taken up by the wolf-men who had first pick of any wandering boys of dubious provenance in the region around Gluring. He had found great joy in the woods of Masrel and also read that the vast forest of Nal was home to the same kinds of trees but much larger than any in Masrel. So Kelwain left Masrel for Nalbrid, thinking that he wanted to live near that forest and that he might later go east to Marwen or south to Restel and see the ocean.
During that time, the north-south roads through Nalbrid, especially the one that led through the deepest part of the forest to the second-best ford across the Kel, were infested by brigands. Since Kelwain was young and alone, it was not long before a band of brigands took him captive and made him a slave. So Kelwain lived in Nalbrid, which was more beautiful than he had imagined but not the refuge he had sought.
The brigands were a great nuisance to all who depended upon trade routes through Nalbrid. However, Nalbrid lay between the regions protected by Gluring and Marwen, and it was many days’ travel from either regional seat. Furthermore, no one from within or around Nalbrid wanted to confront the brigands for fear not only of the brigands themselves but also of the brigands’ relatives who might seek revenge. At last, after three summers of hesitating and arguing, the regional leaders in Marwen sent some wolf-men out to stop the brigands. Wolf-men were outside the web of kinship and revenge. The Marwen wolf-men made short work of the brigands and found among them several boys who were young enough to be spared. The wolf-men consulted the local leaders in the district and agreed to take the boys as part of their payment for clearing the trade routes.
Chapter 1
Kelwain tried not to make a sound when he woke. It was dark, and he’d been having a nightmare about wolves and battle and corpses. He had little love for the men whose remains he had seen. The experience had been upsetting anyway. Kelwain was sure it must be unmanly to feel sorry for men who had wronged him. His milk-mother’s husband had been right all along. Kelwain even felt tears in his eyes when he woke, and it was hard to keep them from falling when he realized he was hearing the sound of a fey-wolf’s breathing. At least he wasn’t cold. The person with the wolf had given Kelwain extra blankets, as if it were possible for him to be comfortable here.
“Here” was a travelers’ stop in Hirwen, on the west side of the Dragon’s Gold River, which flowed into the Kel from the north. The stop was run by the same family that maintained the bridge. The hunting pack from Marwen had left behind the tall trees and ample shade of Nalbrid (and any realistic hope of fording the Kel) two days ago. The plan was to cross the bridge over the Dragon’s Gold tomorrow and keep following the Kel eastward along its north bank until the great river bent southward into Restel. Most of the men and wolves were in a common room on the ground floor of the travelers’ stop. The other captives, Haegert and Reg, had been put in a smaller room that had only one very narrow window and one door that opened onto the common room, so they couldn’t leave without stepping over the wolves and wolf-men. Despite their reduced circumstances, Haegert and Reg did not consider themselves to have sunk low enough to make them Kelwain’s equals. The wolf-men had decided to separate Kelwain from them whenever that was logistically workable. On this night, it meant he was made to sleep in a private room with the group’s leader and his wolf.
The wolf-men called their pack’s temporary leader Moss. He was a short, compact man little larger than Kelwain and somewhat smaller than Haegert. Going by his face and voice rather than his size, Moss appeared to be in his thirties. They called his wolf Green-Growing. She was a sly-eyed, long-legged bitch with half an ear missing. Kelwain was uneasy around the larger wolf-men and their wolves for all the obvious reasons, but none of them scared him quite like Moss and Green-Growing did. He’d heard them killing men in Nalbrid. Whatever his reasons were, Moss had decided that Kelwain should be protected from Haegert’s and Reg’s bullying. Kelwain didn’t know whether he should be grateful or more terrified than ever. He’d barely managed to stammer an expression of thanks when Moss shoved an armload of bedding onto him and directed him to the smallest of room’s three benches. Green-Growing claimed the largest one as a matter of course.
Kelwain lay awake for a long time, or least for a stretch of time that felt long. By the time his captors began to stir, his eyes were dry. He’d been in worse places and with worse company.
During the morning meal, Kelwain tried his best to match up names and faces. Moss and a one-eyed fellow called Ash were the easiest to remember of all the men. Green-Growing was unmistakable, and an entirely black wolf called Leg-Biter also stood out from the pack. Leg-Biter was partnered with a quiet, unassuming man whose name kept escaping Kelwain’s memory. Ash’s Leaf-Sweet had a very common coat color, but when all the wolves were assembled, it was easy to see that Leaf-Sweet was the biggest. Since these were no ordinary wolves but fey-wolves, which tended to be larger as well as longer-lived, Leaf-Sweet was very big indeed. Standing on all four feet, the two next-biggest wolves in the pack (whom Kelwain had not yet learned to tell apart) were almost tall enough for their ears to reach Kelwain’s chest.
“Sleep well, little girl?” Haegert hissed as he leaned close to Kelwain under pretense of reaching for a slice of cold meat. Kelwain focused on the water in his cup and didn’t respond. He was used to Haegert, and Haegert had nothing on Kelwain’s milk-mother’s son Sildraek. “Must have been cozy with the crazy svartalf,” Haegert added as he went for a second slice and a pinch of salt. If Kelwain retaliated in any way, Haegert would use it as an excuse to escalate to physical violence. Kelwain could admit, at least to himself, that he was a coward, if “coward” were the word for a man who knew when he didn’t stand a chance. Kelwain had fought back against Haegert before and always lost.
Green-Growing’s head went up, nose in the air, as Ash slinked back into the common room. Moss’s attention snapped to Ash just a breath later. “Pour that out,” Moss demanded.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” Reg said plaintively.
The man to the left of Reg gave the boy a light smack on the back of the head. “He wasn’t talking to you.”
“Just let me have a sip or two before we go,” Ash pleaded.
“Out.” Moss pointed at the door through which Ash had just entered. “Get out of here and pour it out.”
The man on Kelwain’s right—a broad-faced blond whose name had something to do with rain—was making an unsuccessful attempt not to laugh. “Ash knows he’s not supposed to drink in the morning,” he whispered conspiratorially. “That don’t stop him, though.”
Kelwain made noncommittal noise as he sipped from his cup. He didn’t want to know, but he might need to—ignoring the drinking habits of large men had never turned out well for him.
“Out.” Moss’s voice chilled Kelwain’s blood—and Haegert’s and the rainy man’s too, if their expressions were anything to go by. Ash scurried away, and Leaf-Sweet lay his massive head on the floor as if trying to avoid notice.
“Fucking crazy svartalf,” Haegert muttered.
Moss was much too tall to be a svartalf. He was somewhat on the short side for a grown man, though, and Haegert had habitually picked out and commented on the most uncommon physical traits of everyone around him for as long as Kelwain had known him. No one was completely safe—it was just a matter of whether or not Haegert thought he could get away with making the comments to someone’s face or had to reserve them for talking behind the person’s back.
To Haegert’s horror and Kelwain’s secret delight, Leg-Biter’s partner leaned over the table and rested his chin on his hand and asked, “You say something about a svartalf?”
“Er . . .” Haegert was at a loss.
“I know about svartalfs.” Leg-Biter’s man had an accent Kelwain had never heard from anyone who passed through Masrel or Nalbrid. “Lived with them up in the mountains for a while.”
“You did not,” scoffed a rangy, dark-haired man seated farther up the table.
“Bet I did,” Leg-Biter’s man replied. It was obvious that he was used to having this argument.
“You’ll want to hear this,” the blond man told Kelwain and Haegert with absolute certainty. “Irontooth tells the best svartalf stories.”
Kelwain nodded as if he couldn’t wait to hear one. He doubted the truth of svartalf stories in general, but listening might help him get on the good side of Irontooth and his blond friend. Kelwain had no intention of being bullied and hated for the rest of his life.
Another day and a half found the hunting pack on the outskirts of Dolarkret, the large town built where the Dola River joined the Kel. The wolf-men owned a smallish hall there because they often needed to go to Dolarkret or its environs on business. There was some interest in starting a wolf-den in Hirwen, Ash explained, but when that happened it would have to be located farther away from the town.
Three wolves and their men were already there, and they welcomed the hunting pack warmly—perhaps too warmly. One of them was the sort of man whose eyes Kelwain could feel on him from across a room. Kelwain tried to gather as much information as he could about this man, while also trying to let the fellow see him as little as possible.
Everyone knew what happened between wolf-men. It was a natural consequence of their relationship with the fey-wolves. Women did not bond fully with fey-wolves because of the conflict between the monthly cycle of the woman and the yearly cycle of the wolf. The possibility of both becoming pregnant at the same time was an even more serious danger. Fey-wolf pregnancies lasted a full three months—longer than those of ordinary wolves but not nearly the nine months of human pregnancy. If the two very different systems tried to stay in synch, that would mean disaster for both wolf and woman. So the people of older times, the woman (especially the midwives) foremost among them, decided it would be better for fey-wolves of both sexes to form the deep bond with men, whose simpler natural changes could be more easily overridden by the fey-wolves. This had its own set of consequences, which the leaders of old had decided was not too high a price for others’ sons to pay.
Kelwain wished to avoid dealing with that as long as he could. When forced to share a private room with Moss, he had carefully blanked his mind and followed the pack-leader with as little thought for the near future as he could manage. Moss hadn’t touched him yet, and Kelwain had accepted the reprieve with relief but also with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to put it off forever if the wolf-men intended to make him one of them. If it wasn’t Moss, it would be one of the others. Still, Kelwain tried to avoid the hard blue eyes of that one overly eager man, out of habit if nothing else, and learned from the general conversation that this man was called Eclipse. Kelwain added Eclipse to the list of men he wanted to avoid going to bed with if at all possible, along with the unceasingly critical Thorn and Ash, who was friendly enough but drank at all hours and might not stay that way when Moss wasn’t around to cut him off.
The talk that evening was of the late recruitment from Hirwen and Restel. Hirwen, just west of Marwen and east of Nalbrid, depended on Marwen’s fey-wolves for protection against cross-world threats. Restel, the coastal country to the south of Nalbrid and Hirwen, had its own small wolf-den, an offshoot of the wolf-den in Marwen. Restel’s small wolf-den and its low fey-wolf population were not enough to protect all its port towns. The Restel wolf-men were supposed to send their excess recruits to Marwen for bonding and training, but they were “taking their sweet time about it this spring,” as Moss phrased it while sitting grumpily at the head of the table in the hall at Dolarkret. For its part, Hirwen was supposed to send the Marwen wolf-den a few new recruits each year. This time there was delay due to legal proceedings.
“When the tokens were drawn, one of them belonged to a landowner’s son,” explained Oak, a huge man who had spent the past two days arguing with local authorities.
“I thought a Hirwen landowner could just pay off some other family to send their son in his son’s place,” said Thorn.
“That’s happened before,” said Oak. “Not my business, as long as there’s enough boys in the final count and they’re all strong enough. It didn’t happen this time. The landowner’s boy had conniption fits and challenged his calling-up in court. He thought there must be a law against making a landowner’s son go to the wolves.” Oak shook his mane of shaggy, sandy hair like an old man wondering what strange ideas his grandchildren’s generation would come up with next.
“If he’s an only son, he’s got a case,” said Moss.
“He ain’t,” said Oak. “Wouldn’t inherit much if he stayed, not with a family that size. Still, he’s attached to the idea of being a landowner’s son and having an inheritance.”
“How old is this boy?” asked Ash.
“Seventeen,” Oak replied. “Didn’t bother to learn much law because he thought being a landowner’s son meant he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want.”
Thorn made a disgusted noise. “Reject him, then. Trade him for something better.”
“Can’t,” said Oak. “Nobody to step up and take his place. Getting boys out of Hirwen is harder than knocking out a bear’s teeth.”
“I heard his parents didn’t try all that hard to find a substitute,” Eclipse interjected.
Oak shrugged. “Big family. Somebody’s got to go, just to leave something for the rest.”
“What about those losers in Restel?” asked Moss. “Have they made it up here yet?”
“Their runner has,” said Oak. “They got plenty of new boys this year, mostly thieves and other troublemakers from the port towns.”
Eclipse sneered. “Sun-Eater thinks their runner smells like trash.”
“How many are they giving us?” asked Rainstorm. That was the talkative blond man’s name. His wolf, Rain-Singer, had been with him for sixteen years, or so he said. Fey-wolves who managed not to die in battle had been known to live three times as long as plain wolves, so it wasn’t impossible.
“Four,” said Oak. “Five from Hirwen, ready for pick-up tomorrow.”
“And we’ve got three more from Nalbrid.” Moss sighed tiredly. “Maybe some of this spring’s litters will be small.”
Kelwain caught his breath. It sounded as if he had no chance of not becoming a wolf-man. Moss was clearly worried about not having enough boys to partner up with the new cubs. For a wild moment, Kelwain imagined running away, but he squashed that thought hard. Running away after his milk-mother died only made his situation worse. As bad as her husband was, serving the Nalbrid brigands had been worse. Besides, Kelwain didn’t think he would get that far if he ran tonight. Certainly Moss and Green- Growing would hunt him down.
Despite his desire to avoid thinking about wolves and their mating habits, Kelwain couldn’t tear himself away from the conversation about the wolves who were expecting cubs and how each cub would be matched with the most suitable partner. The mother wolves had such distinct personalities, and every word that was spoken about fey-wolf cubs made Kelwain long to see one. The way the men spoke of the mothers and their human companions was very unlike what the men of Masrel and Nalbrid had to say about female wolves and any men who bonded with them. Of course, it would have to be—Moss’s Green-Growing was female, and so were some of the fiercest fighters and most inescapable trackers in the pack. Kelwain fully expected to be matched with a female wolf cub; the brigands had thought him suited to women’s work, and the wolf-men would probably need to reserve the male cubs for recruits like Haegert, who found the idea of bonding with female anything beyond imagination. An image of the future was beginning to take shape in his mind. It was quite a lot brighter than he would have thought plausible even a month before this night.
Prologue
A boy was born in Masrel, near the south bank of the River Kel. His mother was Gessa, who came into the district from Restel while she was pregnant and there was abandoned by the man who had been keeping her. Gessa died in childbed. In those days, that cause of death was becoming more unusual than it had been, because the Gray Sisters were taking the knowledge throughout the lands. But Gessa bled out too fast to save her, and the only thing the Sisters could do was to take her boy to the next town to the south, where a woman named Maegwil had been lying in bed, unable to get up for grief of her baby which had died of a fever. When the new baby was placed beside her, Maegwil hid her face. After some time, she took him to her bosom to stop his crying, and the next day, she got up and walked.
Maegwil’s husband was Blandred, a descendant of Haldraek the Bold and cousin of Halrest of the Bridges. Blandred objected to his wife nursing the child of a woman he called “a halfbreed whore.” Maegwil was a stubborn woman, and she wanted to keep the baby. Many people in that time believed that a boy whose mother died because of his birth would bring bad luck to women all his life. Blandred, who had used to scoff at popular beliefs about good and bad luck, now raised this as an objection. Maegwil kept the baby and named him Kelwain. As long as Maegwil lived, she gave Kelwain the same care and education as her older children, but Blandred never warmed to him. Kelwain was ten years old in the Plague Year, when Maegwil sickened and died. Blandred and his two youngest sons, Sildraek and Haldraek, treated Kelwain like a slave thereafter.
Kelwain was overworked and often beaten at his former home. The situation grew so intolerable that Kelwain began to sleep in the library maintained by the Gray Sisters instead of the house where he had grown up. Away from Blandred’s land, he was a frequent target of bullies, and no women except the few Gray Sisters in the area would deal with him because of the exaggerated tales of ill luck which Blandred and his sons had begun to spread. Any misfortune that befell one of the Gray Sisters was taken by the surrounding community to be Kelwain’s fault, although the Sisters themselves maintained the position that unpleasant accidents did not happen to them any more often than to any group of as many men.
When he was fourteen, Kelwain made up his mind to leave the district. He considered heading upriver to Gluring to see the mountains, but he balked at the possibility of being put to work in the mines or taken up by the wolf-men who had first pick of any wandering boys of dubious provenance in the region around Gluring. He had found great joy in the woods of Masrel and also read that the vast forest of Nal was home to the same kinds of trees but much larger than any in Masrel. So Kelwain left Masrel for Nalbrid, thinking that he wanted to live near that forest and that he might later go east to Marwen or south to Restel and see the ocean.
During that time, the north-south roads through Nalbrid, especially the one that led through the deepest part of the forest to the second-best ford across the Kel, were infested by brigands. Since Kelwain was young and alone, it was not long before a band of brigands took him captive and made him a slave. So Kelwain lived in Nalbrid, which was more beautiful than he had imagined but not the refuge he had sought.
The brigands were a great nuisance to all who depended upon trade routes through Nalbrid. However, Nalbrid lay between the regions protected by Gluring and Marwen, and it was many days’ travel from either regional seat. Furthermore, no one from within or around Nalbrid wanted to confront the brigands for fear not only of the brigands themselves but also of the brigands’ relatives who might seek revenge. At last, after three summers of hesitating and arguing, the regional leaders in Marwen sent some wolf-men out to stop the brigands. Wolf-men were outside the web of kinship and revenge. The Marwen wolf-men made short work of the brigands and found among them several boys who were young enough to be spared. The wolf-men consulted the local leaders in the district and agreed to take the boys as part of their payment for clearing the trade routes.
Chapter 1
Kelwain tried not to make a sound when he woke. It was dark, and he’d been having a nightmare about wolves and battle and corpses. He had little love for the men whose remains he had seen. The experience had been upsetting anyway. Kelwain was sure it must be unmanly to feel sorry for men who had wronged him. His milk-mother’s husband had been right all along. Kelwain even felt tears in his eyes when he woke, and it was hard to keep them from falling when he realized he was hearing the sound of a fey-wolf’s breathing. At least he wasn’t cold. The person with the wolf had given Kelwain extra blankets, as if it were possible for him to be comfortable here.
“Here” was a travelers’ stop in Hirwen, on the west side of the Dragon’s Gold River, which flowed into the Kel from the north. The stop was run by the same family that maintained the bridge. The hunting pack from Marwen had left behind the tall trees and ample shade of Nalbrid (and any realistic hope of fording the Kel) two days ago. The plan was to cross the bridge over the Dragon’s Gold tomorrow and keep following the Kel eastward along its north bank until the great river bent southward into Restel. Most of the men and wolves were in a common room on the ground floor of the travelers’ stop. The other captives, Haegert and Reg, had been put in a smaller room that had only one very narrow window and one door that opened onto the common room, so they couldn’t leave without stepping over the wolves and wolf-men. Despite their reduced circumstances, Haegert and Reg did not consider themselves to have sunk low enough to make them Kelwain’s equals. The wolf-men had decided to separate Kelwain from them whenever that was logistically workable. On this night, it meant he was made to sleep in a private room with the group’s leader and his wolf.
The wolf-men called their pack’s temporary leader Moss. He was a short, compact man little larger than Kelwain and somewhat smaller than Haegert. Going by his face and voice rather than his size, Moss appeared to be in his thirties. They called his wolf Green-Growing. She was a sly-eyed, long-legged bitch with half an ear missing. Kelwain was uneasy around the larger wolf-men and their wolves for all the obvious reasons, but none of them scared him quite like Moss and Green-Growing did. He’d heard them killing men in Nalbrid. Whatever his reasons were, Moss had decided that Kelwain should be protected from Haegert’s and Reg’s bullying. Kelwain didn’t know whether he should be grateful or more terrified than ever. He’d barely managed to stammer an expression of thanks when Moss shoved an armload of bedding onto him and directed him to the smallest of room’s three benches. Green-Growing claimed the largest one as a matter of course.
Kelwain lay awake for a long time, or least for a stretch of time that felt long. By the time his captors began to stir, his eyes were dry. He’d been in worse places and with worse company.
During the morning meal, Kelwain tried his best to match up names and faces. Moss and a one-eyed fellow called Ash were the easiest to remember of all the men. Green-Growing was unmistakable, and an entirely black wolf called Leg-Biter also stood out from the pack. Leg-Biter was partnered with a quiet, unassuming man whose name kept escaping Kelwain’s memory. Ash’s Leaf-Sweet had a very common coat color, but when all the wolves were assembled, it was easy to see that Leaf-Sweet was the biggest. Since these were no ordinary wolves but fey-wolves, which tended to be larger as well as longer-lived, Leaf-Sweet was very big indeed. Standing on all four feet, the two next-biggest wolves in the pack (whom Kelwain had not yet learned to tell apart) were almost tall enough for their ears to reach Kelwain’s chest.
“Sleep well, little girl?” Haegert hissed as he leaned close to Kelwain under pretense of reaching for a slice of cold meat. Kelwain focused on the water in his cup and didn’t respond. He was used to Haegert, and Haegert had nothing on Kelwain’s milk-mother’s son Sildraek. “Must have been cozy with the crazy svartalf,” Haegert added as he went for a second slice and a pinch of salt. If Kelwain retaliated in any way, Haegert would use it as an excuse to escalate to physical violence. Kelwain could admit, at least to himself, that he was a coward, if “coward” were the word for a man who knew when he didn’t stand a chance. Kelwain had fought back against Haegert before and always lost.
Green-Growing’s head went up, nose in the air, as Ash slinked back into the common room. Moss’s attention snapped to Ash just a breath later. “Pour that out,” Moss demanded.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” Reg said plaintively.
The man to the left of Reg gave the boy a light smack on the back of the head. “He wasn’t talking to you.”
“Just let me have a sip or two before we go,” Ash pleaded.
“Out.” Moss pointed at the door through which Ash had just entered. “Get out of here and pour it out.”
The man on Kelwain’s right—a broad-faced blond whose name had something to do with rain—was making an unsuccessful attempt not to laugh. “Ash knows he’s not supposed to drink in the morning,” he whispered conspiratorially. “That don’t stop him, though.”
Kelwain made noncommittal noise as he sipped from his cup. He didn’t want to know, but he might need to—ignoring the drinking habits of large men had never turned out well for him.
“Out.” Moss’s voice chilled Kelwain’s blood—and Haegert’s and the rainy man’s too, if their expressions were anything to go by. Ash scurried away, and Leaf-Sweet lay his massive head on the floor as if trying to avoid notice.
“Fucking crazy svartalf,” Haegert muttered.
Moss was much too tall to be a svartalf. He was somewhat on the short side for a grown man, though, and Haegert had habitually picked out and commented on the most uncommon physical traits of everyone around him for as long as Kelwain had known him. No one was completely safe—it was just a matter of whether or not Haegert thought he could get away with making the comments to someone’s face or had to reserve them for talking behind the person’s back.
To Haegert’s horror and Kelwain’s secret delight, Leg-Biter’s partner leaned over the table and rested his chin on his hand and asked, “You say something about a svartalf?”
“Er . . .” Haegert was at a loss.
“I know about svartalfs.” Leg-Biter’s man had an accent Kelwain had never heard from anyone who passed through Masrel or Nalbrid. “Lived with them up in the mountains for a while.”
“You did not,” scoffed a rangy, dark-haired man seated farther up the table.
“Bet I did,” Leg-Biter’s man replied. It was obvious that he was used to having this argument.
“You’ll want to hear this,” the blond man told Kelwain and Haegert with absolute certainty. “Irontooth tells the best svartalf stories.”
Kelwain nodded as if he couldn’t wait to hear one. He doubted the truth of svartalf stories in general, but listening might help him get on the good side of Irontooth and his blond friend. Kelwain had no intention of being bullied and hated for the rest of his life.
Another day and a half found the hunting pack on the outskirts of Dolarkret, the large town built where the Dola River joined the Kel. The wolf-men owned a smallish hall there because they often needed to go to Dolarkret or its environs on business. There was some interest in starting a wolf-den in Hirwen, Ash explained, but when that happened it would have to be located farther away from the town.
Three wolves and their men were already there, and they welcomed the hunting pack warmly—perhaps too warmly. One of them was the sort of man whose eyes Kelwain could feel on him from across a room. Kelwain tried to gather as much information as he could about this man, while also trying to let the fellow see him as little as possible.
Everyone knew what happened between wolf-men. It was a natural consequence of their relationship with the fey-wolves. Women did not bond fully with fey-wolves because of the conflict between the monthly cycle of the woman and the yearly cycle of the wolf. The possibility of both becoming pregnant at the same time was an even more serious danger. Fey-wolf pregnancies lasted a full three months—longer than those of ordinary wolves but not nearly the nine months of human pregnancy. If the two very different systems tried to stay in synch, that would mean disaster for both wolf and woman. So the people of older times, the woman (especially the midwives) foremost among them, decided it would be better for fey-wolves of both sexes to form the deep bond with men, whose simpler natural changes could be more easily overridden by the fey-wolves. This had its own set of consequences, which the leaders of old had decided was not too high a price for others’ sons to pay.
Kelwain wished to avoid dealing with that as long as he could. When forced to share a private room with Moss, he had carefully blanked his mind and followed the pack-leader with as little thought for the near future as he could manage. Moss hadn’t touched him yet, and Kelwain had accepted the reprieve with relief but also with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to put it off forever if the wolf-men intended to make him one of them. If it wasn’t Moss, it would be one of the others. Still, Kelwain tried to avoid the hard blue eyes of that one overly eager man, out of habit if nothing else, and learned from the general conversation that this man was called Eclipse. Kelwain added Eclipse to the list of men he wanted to avoid going to bed with if at all possible, along with the unceasingly critical Thorn and Ash, who was friendly enough but drank at all hours and might not stay that way when Moss wasn’t around to cut him off.
The talk that evening was of the late recruitment from Hirwen and Restel. Hirwen, just west of Marwen and east of Nalbrid, depended on Marwen’s fey-wolves for protection against cross-world threats. Restel, the coastal country to the south of Nalbrid and Hirwen, had its own small wolf-den, an offshoot of the wolf-den in Marwen. Restel’s small wolf-den and its low fey-wolf population were not enough to protect all its port towns. The Restel wolf-men were supposed to send their excess recruits to Marwen for bonding and training, but they were “taking their sweet time about it this spring,” as Moss phrased it while sitting grumpily at the head of the table in the hall at Dolarkret. For its part, Hirwen was supposed to send the Marwen wolf-den a few new recruits each year. This time there was delay due to legal proceedings.
“When the tokens were drawn, one of them belonged to a landowner’s son,” explained Oak, a huge man who had spent the past two days arguing with local authorities.
“I thought a Hirwen landowner could just pay off some other family to send their son in his son’s place,” said Thorn.
“That’s happened before,” said Oak. “Not my business, as long as there’s enough boys in the final count and they’re all strong enough. It didn’t happen this time. The landowner’s boy had conniption fits and challenged his calling-up in court. He thought there must be a law against making a landowner’s son go to the wolves.” Oak shook his mane of shaggy, sandy hair like an old man wondering what strange ideas his grandchildren’s generation would come up with next.
“If he’s an only son, he’s got a case,” said Moss.
“He ain’t,” said Oak. “Wouldn’t inherit much if he stayed, not with a family that size. Still, he’s attached to the idea of being a landowner’s son and having an inheritance.”
“How old is this boy?” asked Ash.
“Seventeen,” Oak replied. “Didn’t bother to learn much law because he thought being a landowner’s son meant he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want.”
Thorn made a disgusted noise. “Reject him, then. Trade him for something better.”
“Can’t,” said Oak. “Nobody to step up and take his place. Getting boys out of Hirwen is harder than knocking out a bear’s teeth.”
“I heard his parents didn’t try all that hard to find a substitute,” Eclipse interjected.
Oak shrugged. “Big family. Somebody’s got to go, just to leave something for the rest.”
“What about those losers in Restel?” asked Moss. “Have they made it up here yet?”
“Their runner has,” said Oak. “They got plenty of new boys this year, mostly thieves and other troublemakers from the port towns.”
Eclipse sneered. “Sun-Eater thinks their runner smells like trash.”
“How many are they giving us?” asked Rainstorm. That was the talkative blond man’s name. His wolf, Rain-Singer, had been with him for sixteen years, or so he said. Fey-wolves who managed not to die in battle had been known to live three times as long as plain wolves, so it wasn’t impossible.
“Four,” said Oak. “Five from Hirwen, ready for pick-up tomorrow.”
“And we’ve got three more from Nalbrid.” Moss sighed tiredly. “Maybe some of this spring’s litters will be small.”
Kelwain caught his breath. It sounded as if he had no chance of not becoming a wolf-man. Moss was clearly worried about not having enough boys to partner up with the new cubs. For a wild moment, Kelwain imagined running away, but he squashed that thought hard. Running away after his milk-mother died only made his situation worse. As bad as her husband was, serving the Nalbrid brigands had been worse. Besides, Kelwain didn’t think he would get that far if he ran tonight. Certainly Moss and Green- Growing would hunt him down.
Despite his desire to avoid thinking about wolves and their mating habits, Kelwain couldn’t tear himself away from the conversation about the wolves who were expecting cubs and how each cub would be matched with the most suitable partner. The mother wolves had such distinct personalities, and every word that was spoken about fey-wolf cubs made Kelwain long to see one. The way the men spoke of the mothers and their human companions was very unlike what the men of Masrel and Nalbrid had to say about female wolves and any men who bonded with them. Of course, it would have to be—Moss’s Green-Growing was female, and so were some of the fiercest fighters and most inescapable trackers in the pack. Kelwain fully expected to be matched with a female wolf cub; the brigands had thought him suited to women’s work, and the wolf-men would probably need to reserve the male cubs for recruits like Haegert, who found the idea of bonding with female anything beyond imagination. An image of the future was beginning to take shape in his mind. It was quite a lot brighter than he would have thought plausible even a month before this night.
