After a moment, I set out after them.
Is this wise? I could sense that Nighteyes was not far away and was moving toward me as swiftly as he could, eeling between trees as he came down, a hillside.
I need to understand what they are. Are they like us? I have never spoken to any like us.
A derisive snort from Nighteyes. You were raised by Heart of the Pack. He is more like us than these. I am not certain I wish to come close to a bear, or to the man who thinks with the bear.
I want to know more, I insisted. How did she sense me, how did she reach out to me? Despite my curiosity, I stayed well back from the strange twosome. Man and bear shambled along ahead of me. They wended their way through the willow woods beside the river, avoiding the road. At a place where the forest drew densely down to the opposite side of the road, they crossed hastily. I followed. In the deeper shadow of these larger trees, we soon struck a game trail that cut across the face of a hill. I sensed Nighteyes before he materialized beside me. He was panting from his haste. My heart smote me at how he moved on three legs. Too often he had taken injuries on my behalf. What right did I have to ask that of him?
It is not as bad as all that.
He did not like to walk behind me, but the trail was too narrow for both of us. I ceded him the path and walked alongside, dodging branches and trunks, closely watching our guides. Neither of us were easy about that bear. A single swipe from one of her paws could cripple or kill, and my small experience of bears did not indicate they had even temperaments. Walking in the flow of her scent kept Nighteyes’ hackles erect and my skin a prickle.
In time we came to a small cabin set snug against the side of the hill. It was made of stone and log, chinked with moss and earth. The logs that roofed it were overlaid with turf. Grasses and even small bushes sprouted from the roof of the cabin. The door was unusually wide and gaped open. Both man and bear preceded us inside. After a moment of hesitation, I ventured near to peer inside. Nighteyes hung back, hackles half-raised, ears pricked forward.
Black Rolf stepped back to the door to look out at us. “Come in and be welcome,” he offered. When he saw that I hesitated, he added, “Old Blood does not turn on Old Blood.”
Slowly I entered. There was a low slab table in the center of the room with a bench to either side of it, and a river rock hearth in a corner between two large comfortable chairs. Another door led to a smaller sleeping room. The cabin smelled like a bear’s den, rank and earthy. In one corner was a scattering of bones and the walls there bore the marks of claws.
A woman was just setting aside a broom after sweeping the dirt floor. She was dressed in brown, and her short brown hair was sleeked to her head like an acorn’s cap. She turned her head quickly toward me and fixed me with an unblinking stare from brown eyes. Rolf gestured toward me. “Here are the guests I was telling you about, Holly,” he announced.
“I thank you for your hospitality,” I said.
She looked almost startled. “Old Blood always welcomes Old Blood,” she asserted.
I brought my eyes back to confront the glittering blackness of Rolf’s gaze. “I have never heard of this ‘Old Blood’ before,” I ventured.
“But you know what it is.” He smiled at me, and it seemed a bear’s smile. He had the bear’s posture: his lumbering walk, a way of slowly wagging his head from side to side, of tucking his chin and looking down as if a muzzle divided his eyes. Behind him, his woman slowly nodded. She lifted her eyes and exchanged a glance with someone. I followed her gaze to a small hawk perched on a cross rafter. His eyes bored into me. The beams were streaked white with his droppings.
“You mean the Wit?” I asked.
“No. So it is named by those who have no knowing of it. That is the name it is despised by. Those of us who are of the Old Blood do not name it so.” He turned away to a cupboard set against the stout wall and began to take food from it. Long thick slabs of smoked salmon. A loaf of bread heavy with nuts and fruit baked into it. The bear rose on her hind legs, then dropped again to all fours, snuffing appreciatively. She turned her head sideways to take a side of fish from the table; it looked small in her jaws. She lumbered off to her corner with it and turned her back as she began on it. The woman had silently positioned herself on a chair from which she could watch the whole room. When I glanced at her she smiled and motioned her own invitation to the table. Then she resumed her stillness and her watching.
I found my own mouth watering at the sight of the food. It had been days since I had eaten to repletion and I’d had almost nothing in the last two days. A light whine from outside the cottage reminded me that Nighteyes was in the same condition. “No cheese, no butter,” Black Rolf warned me solemnly. “The City Guard took all the coin I’d traded for before I got around to buying butter and cheese. But we’ve fish and bread in plenty, and honeycomb for the bread. Take what you wish.”
Almost inadvertently, my eyes flickered toward the door.
“Both of you,” he clarified for me. “Among the Old Blood, two are treated as one. Always.”
“Sleet and I welcome you as well,” the woman added softly. “I am Holly.”
I nodded gratefully to her invitation, and reached for my wolf.
Nighteyes? Will you come in?
I will come to the door.
A moment later a gray shadow slunk past the door opening. I sensed him prowling about outside the cabin, taking up the scents of the place, registering bear, over and over. He passed the door again, peered in briefly, then made another circuit of the cabin. He discovered a partially devoured carcass of a deer, with leaves and dirt scuffed over it, not too far from the cabin. It was a typical bear’s cache. I did not need to warn him to leave it alone. Finally he came back to the door and settled before it, sitting alertly, ears pricked.
“Take food to him if he does not wish to come inside,” Rolf urged me. He added, “None of us believes in forcing a fellow against his natural instincts.”
“Thank you,” I said, a bit stiffly, but I did not know what manners were called for here. I took a slab of the salmon from the table. I tossed it to Nighteyes and he caught it deftly. For a moment he sat with it in his jaws. He could not both eat and remain totally wary. Long strings of saliva began to trail from his mouth as he sat there gripping the fish. Eat, I urged him. I do not think they wish us any harm.
He needed no more urging than that. He dropped the fish, pinned it to the ground with his forepaw, and then tore off a large hunk of it. He wolfed it down, scarcely chewing. His eating awoke my hunger with an intensity I had been suppressing. I looked away from him to find that Black Rolf had cut me a thick slab of the bread and slathered it with honey. He was pouring a large mug of mead for himself. Mine was already beside my plate.
“Eat, don’t wait for me,” he invited me, and when I looked askance at the woman, she smiled.
“Be welcome,” she said quietly. She came to the table and took a platter for herself, but put only a small portion of fish and a fragment of bread on it. I sensed she did so to put me at ease rather than for her own hunger. “Eat well,” she bade me, and added, “We can sense your hunger, you know.” She did not join us at table, but carried her food off to her chair by the hearth.