A cold poke in the armpit brought Goodtree suddenly awake when the mists of morning still hung heavy in the trees. Pulse pounding, she struggled to unwind herself from the furry folds of the lion pelt and sit up, sending a frantic query to Leafchaser.
**No danger,** came the silent reply. **Deer in meadow ... hungry!**
Goodtree grimaced, realizing, now that she was upright, that she ached in every limb. All her senses counseled a return to sleep's oblivion, but Leafchaser's steady amber stare would not release her.
**Oh all right, I'll try,** she agreed finally, **but if you think I'm going to hit anything you're in worse shape than I feel!**
**Hungry ...** repeated Leafchaser, and Goodtree realized that she was hungry too. The wolf was right. They were only going to feel worse if they went much longer without food.
The deer were in the meadow, dappled as the forest floor with legs so slender they almost seemed to float above the grass. The wolf scent made them uneasy, so Goodtree sent Leafchaser to circle around upwind. But even when a shift in the breeze carried her own scent directly toward them they did no more than lift their delicate heads, long ears swiveling in curiosity. They had never encountered elf before, she decided, and had no way of knowing that this new scent they were ignoring heralded a predator more dangerous than the wolves they rightly feared.
For several minutes she watched them, forgetting her sore muscles as she identified two does with their new fawns, and the guardian stag. Then another deer moved out onto the meadowa split-horn buck, his red hide ragged where his winter coat was coming away. She lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, holding it half-drawn, waiting. The young buck moved this way and that, as if he was trying to hide behind the other deer.
**Move downwind for just an instant, then away,** she sent to Leafchaser. In a few moments she saw all four dainty heads lift questioningly and caught a hint of wolf-scent on the breeze. The does nudged their fawns nervously toward the edge of the wood as the stag started forward. But the young buck stood with one foreleg half-lifted, poised on the edge of flight.
And in his moment of indecision, Goodtree's own choice was made. With a single smooth motion she drew the bowstring back and released it, and the arrow flew flawlessly toward the paler fur behind the buck's elbow; flew, and struck, boring between the fragile ribs to penetrate the pumping heart behind them.
The buck gave one convulsive leap and fell, dead before he hit the grass. The other deer, finally realizing their danger, disappeared into the trees in a few frantic bounds. Now that the hunt was over, Goodtree felt her aching muscles once more. Stiffly she moved toward her kill, leaving a wavering trail across the dew-pearled grass.
The deer's eyes were already dulling as she knelt beside it, but she could sense the startled spirit near.
"Thy spirit for my spirit, thy blood for my body, brotheras mine shall feed others, a circle of life without end!" she said softly, and stretching the neck taut, drew her knife carefully across the buck's throat to release its blood into the soil.
She felt Leafchaser's familiar presence at her shoulder. Her nostrils flared at the sharp tang of blood and her stomach grumbled sharply. Cutting carefully down from the gash in the throat, she tugged slippery hide away from the red flesh it had protected, and together, elf and wolf began to feed.
Sustained by that nourishment, the pair made good time during the morning's climbing, and just as the sun reached the summit of the sky, Goodtree found herself suddenly looking downward. Rocky slopes fell away before her, less steeply but otherwise much the same as the ones she had climbed. But beyond them stretched a green plain to which spring had come sooner than her own, and at the edge of sight the misty blur of a forest.
With an odd throb almost like Recognition she identified it, seeing in her mind's eye green, leafy spaces friendlier than the woods of home. She took a deep breath, scenting the sweetness of sun-warmed grasses mingled with the crisp mountain wind.
I will go theresomeday I will go see, she promised herself, but memory of the Wolfriders tethered her. Whether she had been running toward something, or only running away, she understood now that she could not leave them behind. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder what the tribe was doing now.
With a sigh Goodtree turned away from the tantalizing vista ahead and looked around her. She was standing in a cleft in the hills. To one side gray stone sheered upward to a jagged crown barely softened by a straggle of stunted pines. In the other direction, two ridges met and plunged downward in a jumble of rock and trees cut by the silver ribbon of a mountain stream. As it neared the pass, the canyon opened out into a small meadow, but the stream turned southward, toward the distant forest she had seen.
It was an omen, thought Goodtree as she considered the canyon once more. Getting up that would be difficult, but not much harder than parts of the climb she had already made. And she felt a growing curiosity about the source of that little stream.
Carefully Goodtree began to climb, but as the summit grew nearer, she scrambled more quickly, caution fading so gradually she never knew when it disappeared.
Acorn clapped his hands to his head with a cry.
Fang stopped short as Lionleaper turned. Another stride brought the songshaper's wolf up to them and Lionleaper slid from Fang's back to catch the other elf as he fell.
"What is it? Did something hit you?" The warrior looked wildly about. Behind him he saw the rest of the tribe, stretched out in an irregular line across the rolling plain. The plain! What could drop on Acorn here? Swiftly he scanned the shivering grasses, searching for any sign of an enemy. But he saw nothing, and the sensitive noses of the wolves found no trace of any foe.
Joygleam jogged up beside them, her lean features creasing in concern. "Is he ill?"
"No" said Lionleaper. "I don't know, but I'm afraid" He could not voice the words. Acorn moaned and stirred against him, then relaxed once more.
"Afraid, warrior, because sickness can't be faced with a sword?"
"No!" Lionleaper glared at her over the singer's head. "Acorn thinks he's been sensing Goodtree. He said she was all right, traveling straight across the plain ahead of us, except when she stopped to look at the longtooth kill, and your trackers say the same. I'm afraid something's happened to her, and he is picking it up somehow."
The hunter sobered abruptly. "Dead?"
"I don't think so." Lionleaper swallowed, not liking to think about what might happen to Acorn if Goodtree died while they were mentally connected this way.
He looked down at the limp form he held. Once he had despised the song maker, frustrated because he and Goodtree shared something which the warrior could not understand. It would have been easy to hate Acorn now, linked to her in a way that none of them understood. He had thought at first that this bond somehow meant Recognition, that he had lost any hope of Goodtree's lovebut he had never heard of such a connection even between the most devoted of mates. And now his anxiety for Goodtree had swallowed up all lesser emotions; as he felt the other elf shudder in his arms his heart was wrenched by an odd mixture of pity and envy for his pain.
"He can't ridewhat do you want us to do?" Joygleam asked practically.
Lionleaper stared at her. He knew that she had had to perform the final mercy for comrades more than once when they were wounded beyond bearing on hunting expeditions far from home. They had had no healer in the tribe since Willow had died.