"I'm the chieftain of the Wolfriders now. ..."
"Must we always fight with the humans?" Woodlock asked as he braided flower stems together for Rainsong's hair.
"It's fight or run, isn't it? And we've done enough of both since the high ones came here," Rainsong replied sadly.
They were the quietest and gentlest of the Wolfriders. It was fortunate they'd been born near the same time and found each other. It would have been more fortunate, Longreach considered, if they'd been born when Prey-Pacer was chief or Freefoot or one of the other rare times when Wolfriders and humans did not intrude on each other's hunting grounds.
"I wish they'd just tie their bundles on their backs and go someplace else. We were here first." Her voice held both the hopes and the angers of the innocent. "The Father Tree is the Wolfriders' home—why can't they understand that?"
And wasn't that the problem? Never before had the Wolfriders stayed in one place so long, but since Goodtree had worked her magics on this grove it had been home to the tribe and none of them could imagine leaving it. The humans had changed too, put down their own sort of roots and made their own Father Tree, not with living magic but with piles of stone and little bowers where everything grew in straight, unnatural lines.
"Wouldn't they ask the same of us?" Longreach asked softly. "They have been by the caves a long time themselves."
Woodlock shook his head, his eyes growing uncommonly fierce. "It's ours—everything we can see from the highest branches of the Father Tree. It belongs to our wolves and it belongs to us."
Longreach shook his head. Such belligerence, such a sense of possessing—was this truly Goodtree's legacy through the Father Tree?
Rainsong took the finished flower-wreath and placed in on her hair, but the hard look did not fade from her eyes. "Someday," she whispered, forcing the thought deep into her mind where she'd find it no matter how wildly the wolf-song sang. "Someday we'll frighten them away."
The storyteller gathered his legs under him and pushed himself to his feet. There were stories—sad stories—that had an answer for her bitterness. But Bearclaw's Wolfriders could no longer hear them or learn from them. Strange—because they were almost all about Bearclaw's father—
Lessons in Passing by Robert Lynn Asprin
The child was not far from the village center, playing in the sun as his mother worked in front of their hut. Suddenly, a movement as small as a butterfly's wing turning on a flower caught his eye. One of the forest demons was standing at the edge of the woods watching him with a half-bemused smile.
He had heard of them, of course, and even glimpsed one once when the tribe had surprised a few of them at the river. His parents warned him of them when they said they loved him, and threatened him with them when he was bad. Once, when he was still a baby, he had dared to tell his mother he thought they were beautiful and had been thrashed for his honesty: once by his mother, and again by his father after his mother told him of the indiscretion. Now he knew better and kept his thoughts to himself.
Child and forest demon examined each other with open curiosity.
The demon didn't look dangerous. If anything, being closer to the child's size, he seemed less threatening than the adults who ruled his existence. True, his hair was wild and unkempt, but that made him seem even less like an adult and added to his mysterious allure.
The forest demon smiled fully now and beckoned to the child before disappearing into the brush.
The child started to follow reflexively, then hesitated. If he was caught playing with a forest demon ...
He shot a guilty glance at his mother, but she was engrossed in her work, oblivious to her son's temptation.
Maybe just for a little while. She would never know...
The forest demon appeared again; this time his summoning gesture was a bit more impatient. His grin expanded to show mischievous eyes and teeth before he vanished.
The lure was too great. The child headed into the brush after his new playmate, unmindful of the brief stretch of almost-dry mud which lay, as if by accident, across his path.
The mother finished her task of preparing the ingredients for their evening meal and glanced around for her son. As was her practice, she had saved something for him—a small handful of berries this time—as a reward for not bothering her while she worked.
The fact he was not immediately in sight did not alarm her, as he was inclined to wander. When a casual search in and around their hut failed to disclose him, however, her concern grew.
Her husband had a notoriously poor temper, and she was reluctant to call attention to her negligence if, indeed, the child had simply wandered. On the other hand, if their only son was truly endangered ...
Caught in indecision, she wandered closer to the edge of the woods, peering anxiously into the shadows, hoping to find her youngster curled up asleep in the shade. Almost by chance, her eyes fell on the stretch of mud, and her heart faltered in her chest.
A moment later she was running back into the village, shrieking her panic as she went. She had no thoughts for the berries still clenched in her fist, their juice streaking her arm as her tears streaked her face. Also gone were any worries about her husband's temper. Such fears now meant no more to her than the berries.
There were two sets of tracks in the mud: one the barefoot trail of her child, and the other ...
The forest demons had their son—and only swift action from her husband and the other hunters could save him!
The forest demon smiled at the child as he led him deeper into the forest. His name was Mantricker, and he had earned it many times over through his antics with the humans.
Through his early life, he had lived with the rest of the Wolfriders in blissful ignorance of the tall, five-fingered hunters and their ways—save what was recounted by the storytellers. The tribe's move to the holt had removed the humans to the realm of legend; their importance grew or diminished depending on the story.
Then the humans arrived again, drawn to the area by the same plentiful game and water that had first attracted the elves. As soon as their appearance was noted, all the old arguments among the Wolfriders of how to deal with the humans erupted again, as if they had never stopped. With the death of his mother, Goodtree, the chieftainship had fallen to Mantricker, and with it the arguments.
Some of the tribe favored moving again rather than having to deal with the intruders. Others were ready to take arms and drive the humans from the area. The territoriality of their wolf-blood boiled at the idea of surrendering their hunting ground to another group, particularly a group as inept in the woods as the humans. The majority of the elves, however, listened to the arguments in confusion, then turned to their chief for leadership.
Mantricker himself could see no clear path in the matter. On the one hand, he strongly resisted the idea of leaving the holt Goodtree had labored so long to build. It was the tribe's home and to be defended at all costs. Unfortunately, he was equally repelled by the idea of open combat with the humans. Even if the tribe could win, they would lose. That is to say, they would lose their way of life; the idyllic existence that made them different from the humans. He argued hotly with the advocates of war saying that to fight the humans, they would have to become like the humans: killing what was feared or could not be understood.
So the arguments continued. Though they might lie dormant for turns on end, eventually some comment or incident would spark the debates anew. In the meantime, the situation remained unchanged, with humans and elves dwelling in dangerous proximity.
Finally, Mantricker had hit on a solution that was uniquely his own. Since open combat wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, the humans would have to be convinced that this area was not desirable for them. Mantricker, along with the rest of the elves, believed that humans were always at war with their environment. All he would have to do was convince the human tribes that their wars were going badly.