Tanner shouted and raised his knife, futile against so large a foe. Nearly helpless, Stormlight pressed against his chest ... too late to send Stagrunner darting off to the sidethe wolf snarled, longing to tear out the throat of this enemy, knowing he could not leap so high with the burden that was on his back. The club swept downthen dropped with a soft thud to earth as Brook drove his stone-tipped lance into the human's heart.
Tanner saw the quivering lance haft as the blow struck home, but he only heard the thump of the falling body, for he was forest bound, at speed, holding Stormlight in his arms, Brook riding at his side, and the others close at hand, and the wolves running hard, carrying them all out of danger.
Though never again would they be entirely out of danger. The humans knew their enemy now. A human warrior had been slain.
Brook said, "My chief, I had no choice."
"But you did! You could have let me be killed."
Brook stared uneasily, feeling once again as if his chief were going maduntil he saw the gray glint of mischief in Tanner's eyes. Then he laughed aloud.
"You have outjaped me," he declared, laughing, "after all these years."
"What, my chief, did you never tell him you have the soul of a scamp?" Stormlight twisted her thin body to look up at Tanner. But his face was somber, his fingertips stroking a storm-purple lump on her white-skinned temple.
**You told me they had not hurt you.**
**Not but for that. It is where the tall one stunned me with a rock, capturing me.**
He felt weak, as if starved by many days' hunger, touching her. Her soulname was pulsing in him like a heartbeat. He needed her as a parched forest needs rain.
"Set me down," she said, perhaps sensing some of this in him, perhaps feeling it in herself. "I will go take my passage at once."
"Come to the healer first, and to the howl, so that the tribe may see you are well," Tanner told her. "Then go."
It was a long howl. There was much to be discussed, for there was no telling what the humans might do. A heavy guard was set. More weapons were to be made, and breastplates of thick leather, to be worn even when hunting. Extra roots and forage of all sorts were to be gathered. No one was to leave the hurst alone. Tanner's people agreed to all this, and looked at him with a new light in their eyes. Theirs was again to be the life of legend, the life of the Wolfriders. Safety was perhaps, after all, not the only thing. Perhaps daring and courage were worth as much. Perhaps they might yet find a way to capture Lift-Leg's marvelous tanning agent for their chief.
To him, it no longer seemed so important. In time he expected he would find something else that worked as well. Meanwhile, there was his Recognized to be thought of.
He took leave of her afterward, by moonlight, as she stood at the side of her wolf-friend who would bear her away and guard her during her vigil.
"As soon as I have found my soulname, I will be an adult, we can do the thing to make the cub?"
"Yes," he told her.
"I will come back as quickly as I can. I know you are suffering, you cannot eat. I feel the same."
"Yes."
"But I do not plan to stay with you," she told him bluntly, "after it is done."
"Of course not. I will not try to hold you." His hand lifted to stroke her cloud-wisp hair. "It would be like trying to hold the wind."
**Lhu. I thank you.**
He embraced her, held her pressed against his chest for a moment, then let her go, stood and watched as she rode her giant thunder-dark wolf off into the darkened forest.
When she was gone from sight he turned and went back to the hurst, thinking he would sit alone at the brow of the hill, as he had so many other nights. But he was mistaken. Not only his wolf-friend awaited him, but many of his tribe-mates were there waiting for him as well.
"It seemed to us," Brook explained awkwardly, "that we ought to be more together from now on."
"No more hunting alone?" Tanner teased him.
"No more letting you become a stranger to us. I, for one, was fool enough to think bad things of you, and I am ashamed."
Tanner said, "I let it happen, too. So much that is in me, I have never shared."
He sat at the brow of the hurst, looking up at the stars. They all sat with him.
"Together," Tanner echoed softly. "My people, often I have had a strange dream of a-a place I do not know, a sort of huge tree of many hollows, where all the Wolfriders could rest in one place."
"Show us," said Fangslayer gruffly.
So he shared with them the image in his mind with a sending that included them all. A generation later, when some of the younger ones of them, grown old, came at last to the holt, they would remember that night when Tanner shared with them that dream, and many others, and when they and their chief howled together of the Way and what the Wolfriders should be.
Longreach didn't join the long hunts anymorehe claimed too much wolf riding made his bones achebut he joined the ones in easy range of the Father Tree. It was possible that his strength was less than it had once been or that his eyes were just a bit blurred, still what he had lost in sheer ability he had more than gained in cunning. He'd thrust his spear into the heart-flesh of a redbuck and felt the wolf-song within him trill as the warm blood touched his lips.
He was content, then, as they brought the carcass back to the hole to share with the others. His mind moved with the moment, so he was surprised when blond Treestump came up alongside.
"It's Moth, storyteller," the bearded Wolfrider said. "I'm worried for her. She's all set for her quest but there's something off-stride in her heart."
Longreach brought his mind to focus behind his eyes. There was no doubting the affection and concern in the hunter's face though Moth was no blood to him since Tanner's generation. The Wolfrider loved all the cubstheir own and each other's. If Treestump thought Moth needed a story or a shoulder, then Longreach would do his share.
"She's in the mist grove," Treestump said as he took the redbuck onto his own wolfs back.
The old Wolfrider put the gnarled trees with their dangling clumps of silver moss into Starwing's mind. The wolf melted away from the others and carried him rise-ward to the grove. Moth was with her wolf-friend, looking very small and very frightened. Her face showed shock and then relief as Starwing cleared the shadows.
"I didn't hope" she began, taking his hands before he'd even slid from Starwing's back.
He patted her straw-blond hair and tucked her face against his shoulder; he could feel her heart pounding and trembling. "You didn't need to hope, wolfling. One sent thought and I'd find you, you know that"
**What if I don't find it?**
**You'll find your soulname, don't fret about it.**
She pulled away, leaving dark splotches on his tunic. "Why me?" she stammered through her sobs. "Why couldn't I find my name right here under the Father Tree like everyone else? Why wasn't I born knowing it like Cutter was?" Shamed by her cub-tears, Moth wiped her face on her sleeve and left a long smudge across her cheek.
It made her look younger and even more forlorn. Longreach would have made up a name and given it to her right then if that would have made a difference. "You'll be seeking more than a name. Cutter was born knowing who he was and he'll know who he is all his life, I suspect. And the ones who find their names here, it's as if they're truly a part of the holt. But some of the Wolfriders have had to search to find their true selves."
**And some of them never come back.** Sent, not spoken, because the fear lay tight around the thought.
"Some," the storyteller honestly agreed, "but I can see by their eyes when they won't find a soulname, and I can see when they will. And what I see in your eyes, I've seen before''