The guards weren't cowards, but they were taken by surprise and were pinned against the wall. In the end, they were dead, and Rokhlenu and his thugs limped away the victors.
"Sorry about the delay," the one-eyed semiwolf said. "We all left our swords and things behind and had to go back for them."
"Can't think of everything," Rokhlenu gasped.
"Say, Chief," One-Eye said, "you should take the night shape. We won't be mad; you've got a lot of wounds there."
They might have been mad, because they were most likely incapable of the full change themselves. A few had crooked legs, or hairy faces, but no doubt if they could have changed completely they would have done so at nightfall, before their cell doors swung open. But they all seemed to be looking at him with genuine concern and, when he looked down, he did see several wounds gushing black blood in Horseman's blue light.
He almost said, "Wait for me," but that would have implied a chance that they would not, and he didn't want to suggest that to them. He dropped his weapons and his loincloth and stood, naked and bleeding in Horseman's light. He drank the moonlight deep until it slew the sunlit thoughts in his brain.
His wolf's shadow rose up from the ground and wrapped itself around him; his human form fell away and lay, a mere shadow on the ground. His flesh and bones rippled like running water, and that was an agony. But it was also a delight, a tearing free from who he had been, an escape into new being, an ascent into harmony with the night. That was why he sang; that was why he screamed. That, and the pain.
The change took longer the less moonlight was in the air, and still longer because the silver light had to fill up his wounds and make them whole. Appreciable time had passed before he raised his lupine head to properly salute the moon with song.
He dropped his eyes to the ground and saw his ragged band of semiwolves still waiting for him.
He sang that they should bring their flying teeth and the corded branches that hurled them, and they should match their paces to his until they found the great mouth in the prison's ugly face.
The thugs seized their bows and arrows (not forgetting their swords and clubs this time) and followed him to the tunnel entrance of the prison.
Standing in the clear light of the moon, Rokhlenu looked into the swel tering, smoky, torchlit tunnel, and he didn't like what he saw or heard or smelled. Clearly, neither side had won a clear victory yet. He did not see or hear Morlock, but he thought he smelled the crooked man's fiery blood.
With a whispered song or two he deployed his men in two ranks to shoot at the backs of the slowly retreating guards.
"Khai gradara!" came a ragged shout, echoing down the tunnel. "Khai gradara! Khai, khai!"
Other voices joined the cry, and wolfsongs soon drowned the men's words, but Rokhlenu chuckled as he recognized the first voice: Morlock- moon simple to the last, though Rokhlenu began to hope this wasn't the last.
He called on his archers to shoot.
Many of them were trained-it was one way for a werewolf stuck in the day shape to be useful-but the worst of them could not miss. They fired into the densely crowded backs of men and wolves, and soon the wounded began to run. The only way they had to run was toward the bowmen, but it was also toward the moonlight, where the wolves could seek healing. The men could hope for no healing there, but it was the only way of escape.
The more ran, the more did run. Presently the guards' line broke, and roaring, the escapees charged forward, trampling any guard, man or wolf, who did not flee.
Morlock emerged almost last, surrounded by the survivors from the irredeemables, leaned on by the gorilla-like red werewolf and dragging Hrutnefdhu by the scruff of his neck. All three were terribly wounded; Morlock was trailing fire like a burning snail.
Some of Rokhlenu's thugs gently peeled the half-dead red werewolf from Morlock's shoulder. The pale mottled wolf raised his eyes to the moon, drank deep of light and air, and stood on his own feet, his strength renewed.
Morlock absently patted his white head like a dog's and staggered forward, blinking. He saw Rokhlenu standing there, and he remarked, as if they were in the middle of a long conversation back in the cell, "For a while I thought I didn't see the dead wolf anymore, but now I think I see him everywhere. I tried killing him by killing him and I killed and I killed but he kept being dead, so I think …I think I need to kill him by not killing him. If you know what I mean."
Rokhlenu sang that this seemed a very sound plan, and that life was like that sometimes.
Hrutnefdhu agreed, and said they would go now to the outlier pack, a fine place where all the werewolves were completely alive, and dead ones banned by law.
"Eh," said the crooked man, "dead wolves don't always obey the law."
A few more philosophical gleams like these lightened their long moonlit road to the outlier pack. But not too many, as Morlock was very tired, for which Rokhlenu thanked the moons and stars and even the Strange Gods, because he had heard as much as he could stand of crazy talk.
PART TWO
ELECTIONS
SUCH IS THEIR CRY – SOME WATCHWORD FOR THE FIGHT
MUST VINDICATE THE WRONG, AND WARP THE RIGHT;
RELIGION – FREEDOM – VENGEANCE – WHAT YOU WILL,
A WORD'S ENOUGH TO RAISE MANKIND TO KILL;
SOME FACTIOUS PHRASE BY CUNNING CAUGHT AND SPREAD,
THAT GUILT MAY REIGN, AND WOLVES AND WORMS BE FED!
Chapter Twelve: The Outliers
"I understand I have you to thank for this nightmarish cloud of thieves, monsters, and murderers who've descended to suck the last drop of blood from our parched veins?"
Rokhlenu looked up blinking to see a woman standing over him, like a shadow astride the rising sun. He had curled up last night, along with most of his men, on one of the boarded walkways that served as streets among the stork-legged lair-towers of the outlier pack. The night had been warm, and he had slept so deeply that the transition to his sunlit form had not awakened him. He was having trouble waking now, and he blinked his gummy eyes a few times and cleared his throat of goo until he thought of a sufficiently urbane reply.
"You're welcome," he said finally.
"Welcome, hah. You may be, and some of your boys may be, but that filthy, raving, flat-faced, crook-shouldered, fire-hazard of a never-wolf is not."
Rokhlenu didn't need to be fully awake to know who she was talking about.
"We all stay," he said sharply, "or we all go. My boys, as you call them, will back me."
He wasn't at all sure this was true, but a voice (it sounded like One-Eye) called out, "That's written in stone. Are there three moons or not? Does the sun rise in the west or does it not?"
A chorus of voices, in Sunspeech and Moonspeech, agreed that all these truths were self-evident.
Rokhlenu jumped to his feet in a single motion. It wasn't as easy as he hoped he'd made it look, but he didn't want this outlier to think him in any way a weakling.
The way she was eyeing him suggested this was the farthest thing from her mind. "You're Slenkjariu?" she asked. "I've heard of you."
"My name's Rokhlenu now."
"I heard that, too. They didn't strip that from you after you killed that bookie?"
"That's my name, and I didn't kill any bookie."
"The judicants of Nekkuklendon say you did."
"The judicants of Nekkuklendon would tattoo their price on their asses if the price didn't change all the time. Everyone knows that."
She waved her hand, dismissing the issue: it didn't matter in the outlier pack. "I'm Wuinlendhono. I'm running things here, for the time being."
"Oh?" Rokhlenu replied. He had heard that ways were strange in the outliers, but he was surprised to find a female in charge. Still, she seemed to have the bite for it: there was a necklace of long teeth around her neck and ropes of them around her narrow waist.