The intruder did not arrive until the moon had gone and The Shades was roofed by a black star-spattered sky. It was the grey she-wolf tortured by the chiefs. The animal had limped from behind a boulder at the north edge of the clearing and stood just within the glow of the fire sniffing the air. The smoke, riding a low breeze, swirled around the tree and across the clearing to her dilated nostrils.
Head low, the she-wolf dragged forward with a halting limp. Her left foreleg, broken and gashed, was drawn up under her.
Sharn, who had joined Gath earlier and now lay beside him, lifted slightly as curiosity glowed in his yellow eyes.
The she-wolf halted short of the tree and again sniffed the air, her ears moving from side to side. Her last meal appeared to be a long way down her back trail. Her coat was filthy, and clots of fur were gone from her bloody neck. A three-pronged, scabbed trail ran across her back.
The animal started around the tree, saw the sleeping figure, and circled away, then approached the flames from the side opposite the girl’s feet. Settling low, she inched forward, flicking her foamy tongue at a greasy hot stone. The tip sizzled, snapped back inside her mouth. She tried this again with the same result, then a third time and came away with a hot fatty scrap of meat. She savaged the morsel hungrily as thick white foam showed on her gums, and pushed her muzzle forward for a second bite. Suddenly the sleeping girl shifted.
The she-wolf rose abruptly on three legs, snarled. Her mane bristled.
The girl’s eyes popped open, and she rolled up on all fours, her hands grasping for her stick. She jerked it up with its pointed end aimed at the beast, and planted the butt end against the heel of her right foot. The whites of her eyes were large enough to cover a bed.
Gath watched, chin on folded arms. Sharn waited.
Snarling, the she-wolf backed away from the fire. Her efforts made the blood drip from her left foreleg, and a bright red puddle formed on the ground below it.
The girl winced. “Oh nooo!” Her eyes moved from the blood to the she-wolf’s eyes, then over the battered, panting body. A maternal warmth showed in the girl’s eyes. Her voice held the same warmth.
“You poor thing. Let me feed you… please.” She squatted and a smile moved into her rose-tinted cheeks. “You might as well, you haven’t the strength to hurt me, you know.”
The animal drew back her lips, snarled.
The girl gently lowered her eyelids, drew the corners of her mouth into her cheeks. The she-wolf’s snarl slackened, and she lowered the stick.
In the nearby shadows, Gath’s head lifted off his arms.
Moving with a slow fluid motion, murmuring softly and rhythmically, almost chanting, the girl sat down and crossed her legs. From one of her pouches, she removed the breast of the roasted hen, tore off a chunk and held it up for the she-wolf to smell. Then, with maternal sternness, she said, “I’m only going to give you a little bite to start with. So you won’t make yourself sick. Do you understand?”
The wolfs head dipped lower. Her ears laid back, but she did not move.
The girl leaned forward extending the meat, cooing, “Don’t be afraid. It’s all right now. We’re getting to know each other.” She gently wagged the meat at the animal.
The wounded animal snarled, edged back, and blood spouted from her foreleg.
The girl, keeping her arm extended, lowered her shoulder to the ground, rolled over on her back and let the meat drop. She withdrew her arm, then waited, lying perfectly still.
A long time passed. Eventually the animal glanced around and advanced slightly.
Gath rose in place silently raising his spear to strike. Sharn, with his eyes tight and narrow to contain their astonishment, moved silently around to the left side of Gath. From there things appeared no more normal than they had on the right side.
The she-wolf advanced to within two feet, looked suspiciously from the meat to the girl three times, then snapped up the meat.
“Not so fast,” the girl whispered sternly. She tore off another piece. The animal looked at her hand from three sides, sniffed it, then snapped the meat off her palm, chewed and swallowed.
She fed the wolf the rest of the meat in this manner, and lay still as the she-wolf licked her hand clean. The animal sniffed the girl’s arm and hair, then her ear and nose, and the girl returned these courtesies of the wild, sniffed the she-wolf’s muzzle, touched the animal’s nose with her own nose. The animal licked her eye then stepped back, whimpered slightly.
The girl sat up slowly, took more chicken from her pouch and fed the wolf from a sitting position, face-to-face. Intermittently she offered the animal water from her waterskin. Before long, the wolf was chewing and swallowing at a reasonable pace and she was petting it at will.
Gath had watched with the corner of one eye, as if it were unsafe, or unholy, to watch with both. Now he kept one eye averted as he and Sharn crept down to a dark shadow at the base of a boulder not seven strides from the thorn tree.
When the she-wolf finished feeding and lay docilely beside her, the girl drew her knife and held the animal’s broken leg in her left hand. She trimmed the bloody fur away, doused the wounds with water, and gently licked the wounds until they reopened and bled cleanly. She then massaged the bones until they were loose and pliable within the body of the foreleg. As she did all this, she continued to murmur softly.
She tore lengths of cloth from the hem of her tunic, and broke two straight sticks off the tree. They were slightly longer than the broken portion of the leg. She removed a tiny jar from her shoulder pouch, and poured its pastelike contents over the open wounds. Then, with a sudden, precise jerk, she pulled on the foreleg, reset the bones. The she-wolf shrieked and started to bolt upright. The girl, petting her, held her down. She bound the medicated wounds with cloth, then positioned the sticks as splints and tied them to the foreleg. The animal tried to get up, but she gently pressed her down whispering, “Not yet.”
For a long time she leaned over the wolf, kissing the animal repeatedly about her whiskered face and whispering into her ear.
Suddenly the animal bolted upright, and the girl sat back smiling with warm pleasure. The she-wolf tottered off, stopped, sensing something, then trotted haltingly off into the night.
The girl watched the animal until it was gone. Humming to herself, she put her things away and stirred the fire to life. She sat down, drawing her covers around her, then stared dreamily into the fire.
The distant bay of a wolf rode through the night’s silence. It was strange and beautiful as it mixed with the wind’s song in the trees. The girl lay down contentedly. A moment later the savage lullaby had rocked her to sleep.
In the concealment of the nearby rocks, Sharn stared with a profound intensity at the sleeping girl. Beside him, Gath uncorked his waterskin, took a long drink, pouring some over his flushed face, then whispered, “Sorcery.”