The Wanderers Page 4

  “Run!”

  Something bit into the back of her neck.

  She ran another dozen paces before her legs gave way underneath her.

  “Run!” she cried to Yfan-wyn, and then her tongue was too thick to say it again.

  Her vision darkened as wolves fled past. One stumbled and fell. Otters bounded after. Then the darkness was complete, and she knew no more.

  Yfan-wyn was under the trees before he realised that his mother was no longer with him. In horror, he stopped to look back and was knocked off his feet by a fleeing wolf.

  He scrambled quickly back up. Otters bounded towards him. He couldn’t see his mother. Something whisked past his face. He saw an otter lower a dart tube from its mouth.

  With a sob, Yfan-wyn turned and sprinted after the wolf.

  Even with its canopy bare of leaves, the forest still grew dark before the open plain at the end of day. Yfan-wyn could hear the otters behind him, whistling to each other in the gloom. They seemed to be falling behind. He slowed, listening hard.

  A hand closed around his arm, another clamped down on his muzzle, preventing him from crying out. Yfan-wyn found himself dragged, struggling, towards a tree trunk – hollow, he discovered, when he was pulled through a narrow gap and inside.

  “Be still,” his captor hissed. “They are close.”

  Yfan-wyn stopped fighting. He could smell that his assailant was a fox. She released her grip on his mouth.

  “They will smell us,” he whispered.

  “No,” the word was barely a breath. “Their noses are dull, as are their ears. Only their eyes are sharp. Be still. Their ears are dull, but they are not deaf.”

  Yfan-wyn heard movement outside the tree. A loud whistle, close at hand, made him jump. Others responded, further away.

  The otter’s claws scraped over dirt, just outside. Yfan-wyn could smell its wet fur. He held his breath.

  Then the otter moved off.

  Yfan-wyn listened to the whistling calls move away.

  “They are giving up the chase,” said the other fox. She shifted away from him and he felt her rummage about.

  “My mother fell,” Yfan-wyn said. His lip trembled.

  Flints sparked in the darkness. “Then she is alive,” was the reply. “And that is all that can be said for her.”

  A light flared from the sparks, and the other fox closed the side of a small glass and tin lantern. Yfan-wyn looked at her face. She was old, he saw, with the white on the sides of her snout spread across her cheeks and forehead. The pupil of her left eye was milky pale.

  “Better to forget her,” she said.

  Yfan-wyn could only shake his head in horror.

  “Where is home for you, little one?”

  “The downs.” Tears were coming. He tried to keep them in, but couldn’t. He hung his head, hiding his face behind the sleeve of his parka.

  “Of course. The downs.” There was an odd heaviness in the way she said it. “I will take you through the forest, to the foot of the ridge.”

  Yfan-wyn shook his head, more vigorously this time. “No. I need to go back for my mother.”

  “And do what?” the old woman said harshly. “Be caught yourself?”

  Yfan-wyn glared at her.

  She sighed through her nostrils. “So be it.”

  “My name is Yfan-wyn,” he said. “My mother is Rhy-lee.”

  He thought he saw her start, ever so slightly, on hearing his mother’s name. The reaction was so small that he wondered if he had imagined it. He stared, searching for some resemblance to his mother. Could this really be his grandmother?

  She turned her face aside, so that he could see only her blind, milky eye.

  “I do not need to know your name,” she said. “Rest here tonight, at least. They will not have gone anywhere in the dark.”

  Yfan-wyn stared at her. Are you my grandmother? he wanted to say. But how could she be? How could she hear her child’s name and turn aside? The pressure of the words stuck inside him escaped in a tiny whine. Her ears twitched, but she did not look at him.

  Rhy-lee woke up to find her wrists and ankles bound together with rope. She raised her head. The she-wolf lay less than an arm’s length away, bound as well, staring at Rhy-lee with yellow eyes.

  The she-wolf bared her teeth but said nothing. Then she rolled over so that her back was to Rhy-lee.

  Rhy-lee twisted her neck to look around. She wriggled onto her belly, then awkwardly pushed herself up onto her knees. Also lying bound on the riverbank were four more adult wolves and the three wolf cubs. There was no sign of Yfan-wyn. Otters armed with clubs and dart tubes stood guard around them. Beyond them, on the river, was a sight that caused Rhy-lee’s jaw to drop open in amazement.

  It was built of timber and floated on the water like a raft, but was larger than any house Rhy-lee had ever seen. Its sides curved upwards, higher than a bear’s head. Rows of oars stuck out from holes set near the tops and wooden ribs arched overhead. At the vessel’s front and back its sides came together and rose to carved peaks. The front peak was fashioned into the shape of an eagle’s head, the rear carved to resemble a feathered tail. A high pole rose from the centre of the vessel, a long crossbeam near its peak wrapped around with the loosely tied, pale canvas of its sail. Similarly bundled canvas joined the wooden ribs at their peaks – a roof for inclement weather, Rhy-lee realised.

  “A ship,” she exclaimed aloud. She had only heard them described in traveller’s tales. The sea, the first otter had said he was from.

  The sea. Rhy-lee’s stomach tightened.

  She called out to the nearest guard. “What will you do with us?”

  The otter lifted its club and snarled something in a language Rhy-lee didn’t understand. Another barked, “Silence! Property does not speak unless it is told to.”

  Property? Rhy-lee stared at him blankly for a moment, wondering if he had misspoken. Then understanding hit: the otters were slavers and they would take her away across the sea.

  Sometimes, among the villages of the downs, if a person committed a crime, their punishment might include a period of bonded service, but slavery – the owning of one person by another – was something she had only heard told of as a distant myth of barbaric lands, far away. Panic rose up inside. She clenched her fists, digging her claws into her palms until she was sure they would bleed.

  Yfan-wyn had escaped, she told herself. Yfan-wyn was safe. They were near enough to the downs now for him to find his way home.

  Further along the bank lay the bodies of the two old wolf grandmothers. Too old for slaves, Rhy-lee thought, tightening her fists even more, holding her terror inside

  Yfan-wyn had escaped, she repeated. He was safe.

  Yfan-wyn watched from the branches at the edge of the forest while the prisoners were loaded aboard the otters’ gigantic, high-sided raft. He saw the flash of his mother’s red fur among the grey bodies of the wolves. He clutched helplessly at the hunting spear the old woman had given him.

  Not his grandmother. He could not believe that she would let his mother be taken away if she were.

  The oars along the side of the giant vessel were rising and falling, turning it to point the carved eagle head downriver. They were leaving!

  Yfan-wyn slithered down from his perch, barking his shins and falling the last little way. He sprinted through the trees, keeping the vessel in sight but staying under cover. For a while he kept up, as the river meandered away from the forest and back again in a lazy loop, but then his strength began to falter and the river began to veer away from the trees in a long, steady curve. Yfan-wyn’s lungs and legs burned but he was left further and further behind.

  Almost, he let himself stop and collapse to his knees and give up. But his mother would not have given up on him. Whimpering, despairing, he left the trees and kept on going in a ragged jog.

  They would stop for the night, he told himself. The ship would stop, and he would catch up.

  And then what?


  He squashed the hopeless thought. She would not give up on him.

  He ran on, as best he could. Now and then, the snow drift deeper and he would stumble and lie, panting and exhausted, with his pulse pounding in his ears and his vision turning black, wondering if he would rise again. Then the freezing cold of the snow would begin to soak through his fur, waking him from his stupor, and he would struggle up and get his feet back under him and moving again.

  Sometimes he would get a stitch in his side, or a cramp in his legs, and he would lean on his spear and hobble on until it passed and he could run once more. And always, the ship faded further and further into the distance, until he wondered if he was only imagining that it was still in sight at all.

  The blue of the sky began to deepen ahead. Yfan-wyn’s shadow began to stretch further ahead of him, as if it, too, would leave him behind. The sunset painted the snow golden, then crimson, then mauve. Then the sun was gone, and only the stars lit the way. Still, Yfan-wyn ran on.

  At last, long after dark, he caught up.

  The otters’ vessel was stopped again by the far bank, held against the current. From within its high-walled sides, Yfan-wyn could hear the frightened, confused cries of bison. A dull red glow rose from within the sides of the vessel. The smell of cooking meat wafted across the water.

  A wolf howled. It sounded close. Yfan-wyn wondered if the wolves were following, too.

  He eyed the otters on guard at the front and rear of the vessel and wondered, doubtfully, if he could sneak aboard. There was a large hummock in the snow closer to the riverbank. Yfan-wyn thought he might have a better vantage – and be better hidden there, too.

  It was only when he neared it and the hummock suddenly moved that he realised his mistake. Only then, as an enormous hand lashed out to close around his body, crushing the breath out of him, did he smell the bear.

  The bear’s narrow head came up from where it had rested, chin on the snow, and turned to look at him. The jaws opened, displaying fangs longer than his hand. Yfan-wyn would have screamed, but he had no breath to do so.

  “Stop!”

  The bear paused. Yfan-wyn twisted to see. It was the old fox woman who had saved him in the forest. She held up the half-jawbone of a wolf for the bear to see the letters etched into its surface.

  “It is the Word of Inanakurekuri,” she said.

  The bison packed into the bottom of the ship lowed incessantly, confused and distressed by the smell of one of their number being barbequed by the otters on the forward deck. Rhy-lee hunched in the shadows beneath the ship’s rear deck, manacled alongside the captured wolves and a half-grown bear who hiccupped softly as he tried not to cry. The chains that joined their cuffs passed through thick iron rings bolted to the keel of the ship.

  The bison were all juveniles, too, Rhy-lee had noted when they were winched, unconscious, into the ship. They ranged from newly weaned calves to pubescents. Young, scared, easy to train, she thought. What did it mean for her and the adult wolves?

  She spoke to the she-wolf. “Will those of your pack who escaped come for you?”

  The she-wolf stared at her in silence for a long moment. Rhy-lee wondered if she would reply at all. Then she stretched her jaws in a wide yawn and said, “The pack will choose a new leader. We are dead to them.”

  Dead, thought Rhy-lee, and wolves did not attend to their dead. She leaned across to the bear, catching his eye. “What is your name, young one?”

  The bear sniffled, his dark eyes flitting from Rhy-lee to the wolves. “I am Babuk, born of Nuganaksaramun,” he said.

  “I am Rhy-lee, born of…” Rhy-lee hesitated over her mother’s name, “Tiere-lene.” It felt strange to say it, so long unspoken. She asked, “Did your mother escape the slavers?”

  The bear cub nodded. “I was not with her and Megi, my sister, when they caught me.”

  “Then she will come for you,” Rhy-lee said, because it was certainly true.

  Babuk glanced up at a pair of otters walking along the central gangway, overhead. The ship’s hold was largely open for most of its length, the areas of solid decking at the front and rear connected by the central gangway and narrower platforms along the high side walls. The gangways were joined by broad-topped ribs that held the rowing benches, above the backs of the frightened bison.

  “But they are so many,” said Babuk.

  “Too many, even for a bear,” said the she-wolf.

  Rhy-lee wondered if that were true. Could the darts of the otters pierce the thick fur of an adult bear?

  “Then we will need to help ourselves, as well,” she said. But both the she-wolf and Babuk had turned away from her.

  Rhy-lee looked down at her manacled hands.

  She wondered what had become of Yfan-wyn. He would have kept going, she told herself. He would find his way home. She had to push the thoughts back down, in case the fear undid her – that she would never see him again, nor Aoin-rhys or her father.

  She watched the sparks from the otters’ cooking rise up into the night, past the ribs of the ship’s open roof, quickly fading. She would never know if that other fox, the other who bore the Word of Inanakurekuri, was her mother.

  No, she told herself. She was not beaten yet.

  She began to work her hands around in the manacles, trying to find a way to pull them free.

  The otters’ vessel was a small red glow across the blue-white snow. There was a bank of cloud to the south, deep shadowed underneath and silver-lit on top, but directly above the skies were clear. With the moon not yet risen to outshine them, the stars formed a sky-spanning river of brighter and fainter sparks.

  Yfan-wyn trudged after the bear, his ears twitching at the soft rattle of her bone apron. His perhaps-grandmother walked beside him, a barrier of unasked questions in between.

  The bear slowed and growled a low inquiry. A snowdrift shifted off to their right. A young bear stood up, only half-grown but already several times larger than the two foxes. She carried a heavy iron spear and bow and arrows like her mother, but wore a girdle of tanned hide rather than an adult’s apron. Her mother held out a paw and the young bear ran to her, tucking herself against the larger bear’s side.

  The mother bear faced Yfan-wyn and the old fox, her face in shadow as she peered down. “I am Nuganaksaramun,” she said. “The name of Inanakurekuri is known to me, as it is known to all bears.” She paused a moment, then added, “My son, Babuk, is aboard the slaver ship.”

  Yfan-wyn’s tongue was sticky inside his mouth. “Yfan-wyn, is my name,” he said. “My mother, Rhy-lee, is aboard the,” he hesitated over the unfamiliar word, “ship.”

  The old fox cleared her throat. Her voice was taught when she said, “I am Tiere-lene.” Yfan-wyn’s heart jumped. It was his grandmother’s name. She met his gaze as he stared at her. “My daughter is on that ship.”

  “Can we get Babuk, Mama?” asked the young bear.

  Yfan-wyn watched Nuganaksaramun’s head sink lower and his hope fell with it. Nuganaksaramun pulled her daughter tighter to her side. “I do not think we can, Megi.”

  A whimper escaped between Yfan-wyn’s teeth, a wail bursting to follow. “What will happen to them?” he said.

  “In the morning they will go,” said Nuganaksaramun. “They hunted the bison herd this afternoon and their ship is filled.”

  “They will be taken to the south, to the cities of swine and dogs and fowl, where lions rule,” said Tiere-lene. “They will be sold.”

  They were silent for a moment, their eyes all fixed on that distant glow.

  Nuganaksaramun said, “In the tale of Inanakurekuri, he was taken by slavers as a cub, and he escaped and returned. But his is the only such tale.”

  “Is there nothing to be done?” said Megi.

  Her mother shook her head.

  A wolf howled, sounding near.

  Yfan-wyn’s grandmother said, “If we can distract the slavers, then Yfan-wyn and I are small enough to sneak aboard the ship and cut the prisoners loose.”


  “How will they be distracted?” asked Nuganaksaramun.

  “With an attack,” Tiere-lene replied.

  The bear thought about that a moment, then said, “Megi and I will not be able to do that alone.”

  “You will not be alone,” said Tiere-lene.

  They smelled the smoke of the wolves’ campfire long before they spied its glow. The wolves had dug out a hollow in the snow, piling it around them. Their huddled bodies further shielded the fire’s light.

  Yfan-wyn stared at his grandmother’s back as she walked ahead of him, the pressure of questions crowded up inside his chest almost unbearable. She had offered nothing, though, and he did not know how to begin.

  Every so often, one of the wolf pack would lift their head and howl to the night. The sound made Yfan-wyn’s skin crawl.

  Nuganaksaramun led them towards the camp from upwind. The wolves remained unaware of their approach until the great bear loomed up close beside them. Then there was a flurry of growls and startled activity as the wolves lunged for weapons and peered wildly into the darkness for other threats.

  Nuganaksaramun raised a broad hand. “I have not come to fight.”

  The wolves crouched behind their hide shields, weapons ready.

  “There is a slaver ship on the river,” said Nuganaksaramun.

  “We have seen it,” said a wolf. “It has not troubled this pack.”

  “It has troubled other packs,” said Tiere-lene, stepping into view at the bear’s side. “There are captured wolves aboard.”

  “That is of no matter to us,” said the wolf.

  “The slavers have weapons and tools of iron,” said Nuganaksaramun. “We wish to attack the slaver ship and rescue our kin, but we have no interest in the slavers’ wealth.”

  Yfan-wyn peered past his grandmother’s shoulder. The wolves cast sideways glances at their leader. Several licked their muzzles as the thought of iron riches took hold.

  The leader straightened, lowering his weapons. “Even together, we would struggle to overcome them,” he said. “Slaver darts will pierce our skins and then we too will be as the dead.”