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"What about the nomads?" someone asked. Despite tension, the gathering
continued subdued, without snarling or jostling. "How heavy a price did they
pay?"
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"Not a price dear enough. The Laspe survivors claimed there were ten tens of
tens of attackers."
A disbelieving murmur ran through the gathering.
"It does sound impossible. But they left their dead behind. We examined dozens
of bodies. Most were armed males." This assertion caused another stir, heavy
with distress. "They wore fetishes identifiable as belonging to more than
twenty different packs. We questioned a young male left for dead, that the
Laspe had not yet tortured. His will was less strong than that of our recent
guest. He had much to say before he died."
Another stir. Then everyone waited expectantly.
Skiljan said, "He claimed the spring saw the rise of a powerful wehrlen among
the nomads. A rogue male of no apparent pack, who came out of nowhere and who
made his presence felt throughout the north in a very short time."
A further and greater stir, and now some mutters of fear.
A wehrlen? Marika thought. What was that? It was a word she did not know.
There was so much she did not know.
At the far end of the loghouse, the males had ceased working and were paying
close attention. They were startled and frightened. Their fur bristled. They
knew, whatever a wehrlen was.
Murmurs of "rogue" and "male silth" fluttered through the gathering. It seemed
Marika was not alone in not recognizing the word.
"He began by overwhelming the females of an especially strong and famous pack.
Instead of gathering supplies for the winter, he marched that pack into the
territory of a neighbor. He used the awe of his fighters and his powers to
overcome its huntresses. He added it to the force he had already, and so on,
expanding till he controlled scores of packs. The prisoner said the news of
him began to run before him. He fired the north with a vision of conquest. He
has entered the upper Ponath, not just because it is winter and the game has
migrated out of the north, but to recapture the Ponath from us, whose foredams
took the land from the ancestors of the nomads. The prisoner even suggested
that the wehrlen one day wants to unite all the packs of the world. Under his
paw."
The Wise muttered among themselves. Those who had opposed the sending of
Grauel to the packfast put their heads together. After a time one rose to
announce, "We withdraw our former objections to petitioning the silth. This is
an abomination of the filthiest sort. There is no option but to respond with
the power of the older abomination."
Only crazy old Zertan remained adamantly against having any intercourse with
the packfast.
Skiljan said, "Gerrien and I talked while returning from the Laspe packstead.
It is our feeling that another message must be sent. The silth must know what
we have learned today. It might encourage them to send help. If not that, they
must know for their own sakes."
The motion carried. One of Gerrien's huntresses, Barlog, was selected for the
task and sent out immediately. Meth did not enjoy traveling by night, but that
was the safer time. By dawn Barlog should be miles ahead of any nomad who
might cross her trail.
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What could be done had been done. There was nothing more to discuss. The
outsiders went away.
Saettle called the pups to lessons.
Marika took the opportunity to ask about the wehrlen. Saettle would not answer
in front of the younger pups. She seemed embarrassed. She said, "Such
monsters, like grauken, are better not discussed while they are howling
outside the stockade."
It was plain enough there were no circumstances under which Saettle would
explain. Baffled, Marika retreated to her furs.
Kublin wanted to talk about it. "Zambi says-"
"Zambi is a fool," she snapped without hearing what her other littermate had
to say. Then, aware that she was behaving foolishly herself, she called,
"Zambi? Where are you? Come here."
Grumbling surlily, her other littermate came out of the far shadows, where he
had been clustered with his cronies. He was big for his age. He looked old
enough to leave the packstead already. He had gotten the size and strength and
endurance that Kublin had been shorted. "What do you want?" he demanded.
"I want to know what you know about this wehrlen thing."
Zamberlin rolled his eyes. "The All forfend. You waste my time... " He
stopped. Marika's lips were back, her eyes hot. "All right. All right. Don't
get all bothered. All I know is Poogie said Wart said he heard Horvat say a
wehrlen is like a Wise meth, only a lot more so. Like a male sagan, I guess,
only he don't have to be old. Like a male silth, Horvat said. Only I don't
know what that is."
"Thank you, Zambi."
"Don't call me that, Marika. My name is Zamberlin."
"Oh. Listen to the big guy. Go on back to your friends."
Kublin wanted to talk. Marika did not. She said, "Let me go to sleep, Kub." He
let her be, but for a long time she lay curled in her furs thinking.
Someone wakened her in the night for a brief stint in the watchtower. She
bundled herself and went, and spent her time studying the sky. The clouds had
cleared away. The stars were bright, though few and though only the two
biggest moons were up, Biter and Chaser playing their eternal game of tag. The
light they shed was not enough to mask the fainter stars.
Still, only a few score were visible.
Something strange, that sea of darkness above. Stars were other suns, the
books said. So far away that one could not reach them if one walked a thousand
lifetimes-if there was a road. According to Saettle's new book, though, the
meth of the south knew ways through the great dark. They wandered among the
stars quite regularly...
Silth. That name occurred in the new book, though in no way that explained
what silth were, or why the Wise should fear them so. It was silth sisters,
the book said, who ventured across the ocean of night.
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Nothing happened during Marika's watch, as she had expected. Meth did not move
by night if they could avoid it. The dark was a time of fear...
How, then, did these silth creatures manage the gulf between the stars? How
did they breathe? Saettle's book said there was no air out there.
Marika's relief startled her. She felt the tower creak and sway, came back to
reality with a guilty start. The nomads could have slipped to and over the
palisade without her noticing.
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