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She tried to follow the progress of the messengers and was startled at how
clearly the touch came tonight. She could grasp wisps of their thoughts.
Grauel was far down the river now, traveling by moonlight, and only hours away
from the packfast. She had expected to arrive sooner but had been delayed by
deep drifts in places, and by having to avoid nomads a few times. Barlog was
making better time, gaining on the other huntress. She was thinking of
continuing after sunrise.
Emboldened by her success, Marika strayed farther afield, curious about the
packfast itself. But she could not locate the place, and there was no one
there she knew. There was no familiar resonance she could home in on.
Still curious, she roamed the nearby hills, searching for nomads. Several
times she brushed what might have been minds, but without any face she could
visualize she could not come close enough to capture thoughts. Once, eastward,
she brushed something powerful and hurried away, frightened. It had a vaguely
male flavor. This wehrlen creature the Wise were so fussed about?
Then she gave herself a real nightmare scare. She sent her thoughts drifting
up around Machen Cave, and there she found that dread thing she had sensed
last summer, only now it was awake and in a malevolent mood-and seemingly
aware of her inspection. As she reeled away, ducked, and fled, she had a
mental image of a huge, starving beast charging out of the cave at some small
game unlucky enough to happen by.
Twice in the next few minutes she thought she felt it looking for her,
blundering around like a great, angry, stupid, hungry beast. She huddled into
her furs and shook.
She would have to warn Kublin.
Sleep finally came.
Nothing happened all next day. In tense quiet the pack simply continued to
prepare for trouble, and the hours shuffled away. The huntresses spoke
infrequently, and then only in low voices. The males spoke not at all. Horvat
drove them mercilessly. The Wise sent up appeals to the All, helped a little,
got in the way a lot.
Marika did another turn on watch, and sharpened the captured axe, which her
dam deemed a task suitable for a pup her age.
III
Autumn had come. High spirits were less often seen. Huntresses ranged the deep
woods, ambushing game already migrating southward. Males smoked and salted
with a more grim determination. Pups haunted the woods, gleaning deadwood. The
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Wise read omens in the flights of flyers, the coloration of insects, how much
mast small arboreals stowed away, how deep the gurnen burrowed his place of
hibernation.
If the signs were unfavorable, the Wise would authorize the felling of living
trees and a second or even third gathering of chote root. Huntresses would
begin keeping a more than casual eye on the otec colonies and other bearers of
fur, seeing what preparations they made for winter. It was in deep winter that
those would be taken for their meat and hides.
As winter gathered its legions behind the Zhotak and the meth of the upper
Ponath became ever more mindful of the chance of sudden, deadly storms, time
for play, for romping the woods on casual expeditions, became ever more
scarce. There was always work for any pair of paws capable of contributing.
Among the Degnan even the toddlers did their part.
As many as five days might pass without Marika's getting a chance to run free.
Then, usually, she was on firewood detail. Pups tended to slip away from that.
Their shirking was tolerated.
That autumn the Wise concluded that it would be a hard winter, but they did
not guess half the truth. Even so, the Degnan always put away far more than
they expected to need. A simple matter of sensible precaution.
Marika slipped off to Machen Cave for the last time on a day when the sky was
gray and the wind was out of the north, damp and chill. The Wise were arguing
about whether or not it bore the scent of snow, about who had the most
reliable aches and pains in paws and joints. It was a day when Pohsit was
lamenting her thousand infirmities, so it seemed she would not be able to
rise, much less chase pups over hill and meadow.
Marika went alone. Horvat had Kublin scraping hides, a task he hated-which was
why Horvat had him doing it. To teach him that one must do that which one
hates as well as that which one enjoys.
It was a plain, simple run through the woods for Marika, a few hours on the
slope opposite that where Machen Cave lay, stretching her new sensing in an
effort to find the shadow hidden in the earth. Nothing came of it, and after a
time she began wandering back toward the packstead, pausing occasionally to
pick up a nut overlooked by the tree dwellers. She cracked those with her
teeth, then extracted the sweet nutmeat. She noted the position of a rare,
late-blooming medicinal plant, and collected a few fallen branches just so it
would not seem she had wasted an entire afternoon. It was getting dusky when
she reached the gate.
She found Zamberlin waiting there, almost hiding in a shadow. "Where have you
been?" he demanded. He did not await an answer. "You better get straight to
Dam before anyone sees you."
"What in the world?" She could see he was shaken, that he was frightened, but
not for himself. "What's happened, Zambi?"
"Better see Dam. Pohsit claims you tried to murder her."
"What?" She was not afraid at first, just astonished.
"She says you pushed her off Stapen Rock."
Fear came. But it was not fear for herself. If someone had pushed Pohsit, it
must have been...
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"Where is Dam?"
"By the doorway of Gerrien's loghouse. I think she's waiting for you. Don't
tell her I warned you."
"Don't worry." Marika marched into the packstead, disposed of her burden at
the first woodpile, spied her dam, went straight over. She was frightened now,
but still much more for Kublin than for herself. "Dam?"
"Where have you been, Marika?"
"In the woods."
"Where in the woods?"
"Out by Machen Cave."
That startled Skiljan. "What were you doing out there?"
"I go there sometimes. When I want to think. Nobody else ever goes. I found
some hennal."
Skiljan squinted at her. "You did not pass near Stapen Rock?"
"No, Dam. I have heard what Pohsit claims. Pohsit is mad, you know. She has
been trying-"
"I know what she has been trying, pup. Did you decide you were a huntress and
would get her before she got you?"
"No, Dam."
Skiljan's eyes narrowed. Marika thought her dam believed her, but also
suspected she might know something she would not admit.
"Dam?"
"Yes?"
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