She freed her hand to punch his shoulder and snorted. " Thanks, Rudi. That makes everything all right… I don't think."
" De nada. I mean, we're anamchara; what are soul friends for? And freeing you of guilt is a lot more fun than giving you funeral rites if you fall in a foreign land."
The snort grew into a real laugh. She opened a bag of dried peach slices and cranberries and walnuts and offered it to him, and they sat in companionable silence for a moment; she leaned against his shoulder, and he spread the plaid around them both.
"I'm feeling a little guilty about my mom, too," he said after a moment.
"Hey! She wanted you to go!"
"No, she knew I had to go; declining an invitation from the Powers is not a good idea. That's not the same thing as wanting me to go at all. She's going to be wor ried every day until she sees me again. So will Dad… my stepfather. And Signe over at Larsdalen will worry about the twins."
Though not much about me, he reflected; his father's widow had never stopped thinking of him as a threat to her own son's inheritance.
"Life's complicated." Mathilda sighed.
"Well, that's an original thought you're having the now."
She poked him in the ribs with a forefinger, hard, then settled back against his shoulder looking across the coals and the ring of light. Outside it, in the darkness be yond the wall of wagons where the piled corpses of the Rovers lay, coyotes snarled and yipped at their feast. A wolf howled somewhere in the distance, scout for a lobo pack; that breed were more wary of men than the song dogs. They and the buzzards would bide their time until the living two-legs left.
Rebecca came over into the circle of firelight. She gave a little start as Edain stepped into it behind her, with his bow in his arms and Garbh at his heels.
"All clear, Chief," he said to Rudi, giving her a studiously absent nod. "Nobody out there but the coyotes."
Rudi grinned at the younger man. "And your hairy brother, a minute ago."
Rebecca sat, curling her feet under her; there were dark circles under her eyes. "His brother?" she said.
"He's a Wolf, so all wolves are his brothers… sort of," Rudi said. "I'm a Raven. It's our septs, the totems."
"Oh," she said, obviously uncomprehending.
"Sort of an initiation thing," Rudi said.
He cocked an eye at Edain where he sat by the fire, pouring himself a cup of the chicory with elaborate un concern; Garbh lay beside him, laying her head on her paws with a long sigh.
"Edain just got told what his sept would be two years ago. Not that anyone ever had much doubt; his dad might as well be Father Wolf himself."
The young woman's eyes lit with real curiosity; a relief from her worries, too. She hugged her knees and looked at the other Mackenzie.
"Told?" she said. "How does that work? Your parents tell you, or something?"
"I got told the usual way," Edain said shortly. "Nothing special. A vision in a dream."
Rudi's voice took on a solemn tone: "Why don't you tell her about it, Edain?" he teased. "It's not polite, getting someone curious and then clamming up."
"Yes, I'd love to hear," Rebecca said.
Edain shot Rudi a look, then sighed and shrugged. Rudi nudged Mathilda as she raised an eyebrow. Sotto voce, he murmured, "This always slays me."
"Well," Edain began. "Well, ah…" He sighed. "It happened like this, pretty well…"
Edain Aylward Mackenzie, as yet of no sept, woke under the tree. He was stiff and chilled despite the cloak wrapped around him, good warm wool from his own family's sheep and his mother's loom.
"Oh, damn all," he said. "I'll have to do this again."
Then he looked up at the tree. It was a Douglas fir, its top a hundred feet above against the gray sky of spring… except that it was a lot taller than that now, a towering column like a living mountain. And so were the rest. And those snow topped peaks over to the east weren't the Cascades. He took a deep breath of air clean and fresh as a Beltane morning, scented with water and rock and familiar fir sap. A jay flitted by, screeching, but farther off in the woods he caught a glimpse of some thing huge and hairy, with legs like pillars and great curled ivory tusks and a trunk raised to trumpet…
"Well, I am dreaming."Though it felt oddly lucid, more real than the usual dream. In fact, it felt more real than waking life. "Now to see what sort of vision I get…"
A wolf came trotting like a gray-brown shadow be tween the great trees, an occasional twig crackling under its pads. Edain accepted that for a moment, until he re alized the great wedge shaped head of the gray beast was on a level with his own, standing. He felt a surge of… not quite alarm, not quite joy… that died before it could do more than tighten the skin over his gut.
The wolf sat down, yawned, and scratched behind one ear with a foot larger than the man's.
"Typical," the huge carnivore said. "Isn't that an Ayl ward all over? Can't imagine important without big. Subtle as a hay fork in the goolies, the lot of you."
The voice sounded normal-deep and a little growly-but the giant wolf wasn't moving its lips; the words just appeared somehow. Edain's mind noticed the detail the way a drowning man's hand flails for a stick. The alternative was gibbering.
"Moving my lips?" it said, though the young man hadn't spoken. "Like this?"
Suddenly the thin black lips did move, peeling back from wet yellow-white teeth that looked to be as long as his fingers, drooling a little… and all of it was inches from his face. The growl beneath the words sounded like it came from the animal's chest, all right. It also sounded like rocks churning when a spring freshet roiled a mountain stream.
The air was cool, but Edain could feel sweat start trickling down his flanks. He kept his face blank, and crossed his arms with a creditable imitation of calm.
Good idea. This way he can't see my hands shaking.
The growling stopped, and a long pink tongue hung out over the fangs. The wolf's ears cocked forward; Edain had an indefinable sense that the amber eyes held approval.
"Moving me lips would be just too bloody stupid, wouldn't it?" the wolf… the Wolf… said. "This isn't being done by fookin' Disney, y' know."
Edain was vaguely aware of what Disney had been-some illustrated books had survived. He hadn't expected Wolf to talk about something pre Change. Come to that, he hadn't expected the Father of Wolves to have an accent like his own father, either. The beast snorted.
"Well, it's your mind and memories we're using, innit? Let's get on with it."
The great black nostrils ran over him, quivering, from head to foot. He felt the warm breath of it on his skin, and the slightly rank doggy odor.
"Right." Wolf pronounced it roit. "There you are, then. You're Wolf sept and I'm your totem."
There was a moment of silence. "Well?" Edain said to fill it. "What now?"
"Now wake up, sod off 'ome, and get back to work. Your dad's got the Three Oak Field to plow and he's not as young as he was once."
"That's it?" Edain said, stung out of wonder to amazed anger as the wolf started to swing away. "I come all this way-"
"You're still under that tree not two miles from Dun Fairfax, you thick little burke-"
"-and it's 'fine, you're a Wolf, now back to the spring plowing'?"