Chief of Many
“One falls loses all!” Sun-Toucher announced as Rayek and Swift mounted the twin poles balanced on the grooved cylinder. Rayek wore his headband down over his eyes, Swift a piece of linen wrapped about hers.
“Ayooah, Swift!” Scouter called.
“Clobber ‘em, Swift!” Skywise shouted.
“She really shouldn’t be doing this,” Moonshade fretted. “She’s with cub, for Tanner’s sake!”
Grayling watched spellbound as his chief-sister found her balance on the two poles. The Trail of Hand was an old test of balance and strength the Sun Folk had practiced for years. When Rayek had made the mistake of mentioning the test to his new lifemate, Swift immediately announced her intention to try it.
“Under no circumstances!” Rayek had shouted. “You’re carrying my child! It’s... it’s less than a month since we Recognized!”
“All the more reason to try it now. Before you know I’ll be too fat to hunt, let alone test my balance.”
“I forbid it!”
“You? Forbid?” Swift had laughed in his face. “Well, if you’re too afraid to face me on the poles...”
Grayling chuckled to think how easily she had manipulated her lifemate. Barely over a month since the Wolfriders arrived at Sorrow’s End, and Swift and Rayek had yet to come to a real accord. But there was real love in their eyes, and Grayling had no doubt they would eventually learn to like each other as well.
“Ayooah!” Pike called, and Grayling’s thoughts returned to the present. Treestump cupped his hands to him mouth and shouted, “Good luck, black-hair!”
“Huh?” Pike turned. “You’re on Rayek’s side?”
“Nope, just sympathetic,” Treestump said. “Swift’ll beat the living bear fat out of ‘im.”
The poles began to tilt in the hands of the two Sun Folk working the contraption. “Give up, lifemate!” Rayek shouted as the two clasped hands and struggled for balance. No one can best me at this game! Save yourself, and your pride!”
“Hah!” Swift laughed. “This is easier than walking a tree-branch in a light breeze – whoops!” she yelped as Rayek yanked her forward.
“You were saying?”
Swift’s free arm pinwheeled to keep her balance. With a grunt she leaned back, and yanked Rayek towards her, upsetting his own center of gravity. “Bead rattler!” she laughed.
“Bone polisher!” Rayek leaned back in turn to regain his own balance.
“Snake!” Swift shoulder-checked him.
“She-dog!” Rayek grunted, shoving back against her. Their strengths were well-matched, Rayek’s taut muscles against Swift’s sinuous frame. Exertion showed in their faces as they bobbled on the poles together, each trying to nudge the other off center. Their clasped hands shook. Suddenly a shift of the poles upset Rayek’s balance just enough for Swift to lean into his weakness and throw him from the center drum.
“Ha hah!” Treestump leapt to his face. “What did I tell you?”
“That’s our chief, sure as birds fly!” Skywise chuckled. “And Rayek’s chewing nettles, sure as snakes crawl."
Rayek rolled over on his side, easing his headband back to his forehead. He glared at his lifemate as Swift untied the blindfold, a guilty smirk on her face.
Whispers ran through the Sun Folk as they saw their only hunter defeated by a barbarian girl. The Wolfriders shook their fists high overhead, cheering for their chief. Suddenly Rayek sprang to his feet and charged Swift. Strongbow and Eyes High stiffened, fearing an attack. But Rayek caught Swift up in his arms, swinging her about.
“Oh, lifemate!” he laughed loudly. “Only out of my love for you did I permit you to best me!”
“Permit?!” Swift exclaimed. “You... you... pompous strutter-cock!” she slapped him about his shoulders until he released her, then hugged him tight. The Sun Folk whispered again in bewilderment to see brooding Rayek laughing with joy. Honour satisfied on both sides now, the two lifemates rejoiced the crowd, though the keen-eyed Wolfriders noticed that Rayek walked with a slight limp.
The crowd slowly dispersed, for it was growing too hot. Grayling saw Rayek swing Swift up in his arms again, and Swift only giggled and let him tote her about as if she were a little cub.
Hansha the metalworker fell into step alongside Grayling as the Wolfrider cast one final glance at his sister. “I haven’t seen Swift so happy since before her mother died,” Grayling whispered.
“You’ve had much pain in your lives,” Hansha said softly.
“Aye,” Grayling nodded. “And it seems the lot of our family to feel sorrow more sharply than others.” He smiled at his new lovemate. “Yet this place is well-named Sorrow’s End. Some of my kin fear the light and hide in the shade. But I... I feel like I’ve come home... to a home I never knew existed. All is warmth and safety... no humans... no trolls... none of the dangers of the forest.”
“I’m glad you’re happy here,” Hansha touched his arm lightly.
Grayling led Hansha down a little lane between two huts. “I am happy here, Hansha. Happier than I can ever remember being. The tribe is safe... my family is safe. My nephew can grow up without fear of human attacks. And my sister is Recognized. Soon we will have a new Wolfrider... a new Blood of Chiefs. And I...”
Hansha looked up at him. “And you...?”
“I... I don’t yet know all the ways of your tribe. With Wolfriders... we... share with any who ask... unless we are asked not to... by one who would rather not share.”
Hansha smiled. “Are you asking me for permission to look elsewhere? Or would you rather I forbid you?”
Grayling started. He had not expected such bluntness from the soft-spoken metalworker. A slight blush rose in his sunburned cheeks. “Forbid is not a word used much among my people. But... I think I would rather forbid... and be forbidden.”
Hansha took a step closer. “Then I forbid you, Grayling,” he murmured softly.
Grayling felt his throat go rather dry. The shy Sun Villager he thought he had so cautiously hunted since he arrived in Sorrow’s End had suddenly turned and pounced on him.
“I...” Grayling began.
Hansha kissed him soundly on the mouth.
“Hm...” Grayling murmured when they parted. “I never had a lovemate all to myself before.”
“And I’ve never had a lovemate quite like you...” Hansha breathed.
Grayling leaned in for another kiss, but an audible giggle from a passing duo of Sun Folk maidens startled them back to the here-and-now. They both remembered they were standing in an open lane between huts, and they chuckled softly, equally embarrassed.
“Maybe we should go inside,” Hansha said. “It’s high time for the afternoon rest.”
“High time...” Grayling whispered in agreement as they turned down the lane for Hansha’s hut.
Two floods-and-flowers came to Sorrow’s End before Swift’s cubs were born – twins, an unheard-of occurrence. The wolfpack settled into the caves outside the village and a new generation of wolf pups grew up alongside the young cubs. Little Dart claimed his wolf-friend when he was eight, and Grayling knew it was only a matter of time before little Suntop and Venka found their own wolves.
Another five turns of peace saw the babies grow into tough little cubs, as skilful in bounded from rock to rock as a Wolfrider was used to springing from branch to branch. Rainsong and Woodlock’s family became no different from any Sun Folk clan. Grayling seldom ventured into the hills to hunt, preferring to remain in the village at his lovemate’s hut. The blending of two tribes into one seemed inevitable, even as some of the elder Wolfriders fought the changes peace had brought.
Then one night the past caught up with the Wolfriders.
* * *
Grayling stared down at the humans in horror. Four of them - battered and starving but still humans! – stood waiting for the death blows from the elves. One of the wolves now moved to hold the woman back as Woodlock took aim at the human child.
Kill it, kill it... Grayling thought. No humans could be allowed to enter Sorrow’s End, to threaten the elf cubs – Swift’s cubs, Strongbow’s cub! Seven years they had lived in safety. And now... humans had come to destroy everything they had built.
Kill them all. Every single one, from the little child to the old man.
But Woodlock could not, and the arrow only nicked the boy’s hair.
“What’s the use?” Woodlock sobbed as he slumped to the rocks. “I promised Rainsong that we’d never see humans again – that our cubs would grow up without fear.. but now...”
“Dro!” the woman called out. Grayling looked up at the humans again. The older man had fallen off their zwoot-like beast.
“He is dead, Thaya,” the other man said. “And soon we will join him.”
Grayling looked at Swift. He waited for her to raise her bow – Joyleaf’s old bow – and finish the task she had begun.
Why did she hesitate? Why did she grit her teeth and look away?
He thought of little Venka and Suntop, and how easily they could be snapped in two by those starved humans.
Swift contorted her face in a snarl. “GO!” she barked in the guttural human tongue. “Leave this place! Let the dead one lie there as a warning! If you or others like ever come here again, we’ll kill you on sight? Understand? Go quickly, before I think twice!”
The humans needed no further urging. They took their riding beast and fled into the night.
Grayling stared at Swift. How could she have allowed their escape? They would only find more humans and return... finish the work they had begun when they set fire to the Holt.
Swift clenched her bow tight to restrain her own frustration. She knew she would be challenged for her choice. And neither she nor Grayling were surprised by who reacted first.
**You... let... them GO?!**
Swift turned to see Strongbow seething with rage, his eyes locked on hers in the stare of challenge. His sending star burning in Swift’s mind. **We had them helpless at our feet and you let them go! Bearclaw would have cut out their living hearts and fed them to the wolves.**
It was the wrong thing to say.
Swift backhanded Strongbow across the face. The strength in her wiry muscles she had demonstrated seven years ago in the Trial of Hand showed itself again, and she knocked the taller elf to the ground.
**You dare defy me? You dare compare me to him? To HIM?**
Strongbow got to his feet and sprang at her. They locked hands and stared each other down. Grayling felt the static charge in the air. Strongbow had challenged Joyleaf and lost once long before. But Swift was much younger and still unsure of herself. What if Strongbow overwhelmed her in the battle of sending?
But in mere moments it was over, and Strongbow looked away in submission.
“Listen, Strongbow,” Swift said. “I know you want revenge on the humans, I do too. But no good can come of it. There are too many of them, scattered everywhere! You heard them. Do you want to spend the rest of your life perched on this rock, just waiting to pick off anyone who comes in sight? They will come, you know. There were only the first we’ve seen.”
Grayling felt his heart sink.
Woodlock spoke next, but he spoke the thoughts of all assembled Wolfriders. “Then there’s no place we call our own... not even Sorrow’s End.”
The Wolfriders parted ways and returned to the village in defeat. Grayling followed on the walk back to her hut.
“You’re a better leader than I would be, little sister. I would have killed those humans and enjoyed it. Fear would have made me a killer, as cruel as any human. And my heart would have paid the price later. It couldn’t have been easy... to stand against Strongbow.”
Swift shrugged it off. “It’s done now.”
“What will we do?”
“I don’t know. I have to talk to Savah. She’s the Mother of Memory. She must know something about the High Ones. What the human said... that we don’t belong here... that we come from somewhere else... maybe Savah knows. The High Ones can’t all be dead. And what if there are other children of the High Ones... scattered tribes of elves like the Wolfriders and the Sun Folk, who even now live in the belief that they are alone? Can you imagine it, Grayling? What if there are other elves out there, waiting to be found? It seems to me... if we have to fight the humans for our place in this world, we’d stand a much better chance if we are united. And I mean to fight the humans, Grayling, if they will not live in peace with us. This is our world too, and I won’t let a bunch of five-fingers tell us otherwise.”
“From fear to a dream, in one night,” Grayling said admiringly. “You are a true chief, Swift.”
“Ah... it may prove to be a foolish dream. For all I know, we eight-eights of elves may be all that remains of the High Ones.”
“Don’t give up, Swift. We have to believe there is a place, somewhere in this world, where we can live free of humans... free of fear.”
They returned to the hut, and Suntop and Venka rushed out to meet them. “Mother! Grayling!” Venka cried. “What happened? Are the... the ‘hoomans’ gone?”
“Yes,” Swift said. “All is well again.”
Rayek appeared in the doorway. By the anxious light in his eyes and the way Swift rushed to embrace him, Grayling knew a locksending had passed between them. What the lifemates would decide to do, Grayling could only imagine.
He took the back lane to his and Hansha’s hut. The metalworker was fast asleep in their pit bed. Grayling smiled softly. “Lazybones,” he murmured softly as he shed his clothes and climbed into bed next to him. Hansha mumbled something unintelligible and snuggled against his lovemate. Grayling stroked Hansha’s black hair as he lay awake, wondering how life in Sorrow’s End would ever be the same again.
It was not long before Swift made up her mind.
“One turn of the seasons – what the Sun Folk call a year – that’s all I’ll give myself. Then Rayek and I will be back to tell you what we’ve found... and didn’t find.”
The Wolfriders protested. It wasn’t the Way to let the chief go and face danger alone. Many of the elders longed to leave the desert and find a new forest and a new Holt. But Swift’s calm words persuaded them to hold their ground until her return. Within another night’s time Swift and Rayek were ready to depart. The tribe shared goodbyes, and Rayek was somewhat surprised to hear his lifemate’s tribe wish him well. Then another, more intimate farewell took place at the village’s edge.
Nightrunner paced sulkily, growling under his breath at the two zwoots Swift and Rayek would ride. Swift and Rayek were dressed for their travels in new leathers made by Moonshade. A few provisions hung from the zwoots’ saddles.
“You’ll never be farther from us that these two,” Skywise said, patting Suntop’s head.
“We’ll take good care of them,” Grayling said.
“My beautiful cubs,” Swift knelt down and took their hands. “Do you understand why your father and I must go?”
“Yes, Mother,” Venka said solemnly. “To find other elves like us.”
“Oh, there are none like you,” Rayek murmured proudly. He ruffled Suntop’s hair, then framed his face in his hands. “Dear Suntop, Savah says that you have gifts worthy of her training. That is a great honour. We magic-users must protect the Sun Folk as surely as the Wolfrider hunters so. It is your duty to study hard... for lives may one day depend on you.”
“I will, Father,” Suntop said bravely. “I won’t let you down, I promise”
“I know you won’t, little one,” he hugged his son tight.
“Learn all you can about archery from Strongbow and Nightfall,” Swift said to Venka. “And heed your uncle Grayling in the uses of the spear, and the ways of taming one’s heart. He’s the best friend and teacher a young chieftess could want, as I can attest. And both of you heed your Uncle Skywise. He’ll report any tricks you play while we’re gone.”
Skywise waggled his eyebrows at the cubs, and they giggled.
Swift hugged them both tightly. “I wonder how you’ll both grow while I’m gone...”
“Go now, sister,” Grayling said gently. “Night has fallen. You’re losing precious traveling time.”
Swift hugged her brother tightly, then turned to embrace Skywise. He pummelled her on the back soundly. “Go find us elves, rockskull. And you take care of her, Rayek. We all know she can’t find her way around a tree without getting lost.” He slipped the lodestone over her neck. “To find your way. And for luck.”
A final round of hugs, and the two travellers mounted their zwoots. They rode off into the night without a backward glance. Grayling knew well that they didn’t dare look back at the faces of their cubs.
The Wolfriders howled in the hills, a plaintive farewell. Grayling, Skywise and the cubs joined the song.
Four months passed since Swift’s departure when Savah fell into her deep sleep. Only Suntop was able to reach her in the darkness, and then only barely. Savah’s trapped mind gave a message. A warning for Swift.
“Mother...” Suntop wept. “I have to see Mother. Skywise, please take me to Mother. Please! I’ve got to tell her what Savah sees – I mean feels! I’ve got to warn her.”
“Can’t you tell us?” Skywise asked.
“No! Only Mother. It’s all my head and it won’t come out ‘til I’m with her.”
“But... we don’t know where she and Father are,” Venka protested.
“Savah knows where she will be! And it’s not good. Oh, it’s not good at all. But we still have time to get there. I can show you the way. Oh, Skywise, please.”
The Wolfriders were leaving Sorrow’s End. Within days of Suntop’s frantic urging Moonshade and Moonsbreath had hauled out the half-finished winter leathers she had been working on and added sleeves and cloaks. No one asked her how the tanners had known that one day soon the Wolfriders would be heading into cold climates. Everyone was too delighted to be heading for green growing places again.
“This was a long time in coming,” Moonsbreath said as she donned her long skirt, slit up the side to reveal deerskin leggings.
**Look at those brown-skinned ravvits,** Strongbow hissed as he regarded the frantic Sun Folk. **Yap yap yap, always talking. No one ever does anything around here.**
“Have a little pity, Strongbow,” Treestump said. “With Savah beyond their reach and we hunters leaving them, the Sun Folk have a reason to be stirred up.”
Grayling leaned against the outside of the sandstone cave, his eyes on the Sun Folk milling outside Savah’s hut. Sun-Toucher was trying to calm his people, telling of Suntop’s urgent need to find his mother and give her Savah’s warning.
Grayling held a pair of red leather trousers and a leather jacket in his arms. While the rest of the tribe was changing into their travelling clothes, he remained in the cool cottons he had grown accustomed to wearing the last seven years. It was as if he had not yet committed himself to the journey.
“Lovemate?” Hansha drew up alongside him. Under the shadow cast by his hood, his green eyes seemed to glow.
“I can’t just leave here,” Grayling whispered, for he had no wish to be overheard. But like many Sun Folk, Hansha had never learned to send, and now was not the time to try another half-successful lesson.
“Sorrow’s End is my home – more my home than Father Tree ever was. I belong here... with you. But... I have to help my sister when she’s in need. And I promised to look after her cubs.”
“You have to do what you have to do,” Hansha said. “And... part of me has always been prepared for the idea of your leaving.”
“You’re being too understanding,” Grayling touched his cheek. “It worries me.”
“I know you’ll be back.” Then his calm demeanour failed him. “You will be back, won’t you?”
Grayling cupped Hansha’s face in his hands. “Of course I will. I couldn’t imagine leaving you forever.”
“Grayling...” Hansha leaned into the tender embrace. “You mean so much to me...”
**Are you ready, Grayling?** Strongbow’s sending interrupted their farewell.
**Give me a moment!** Grayling shot back angrily.
**It’s time to be off. We leave before sunset – your nephew won’t let us wait any longer! Don’t delay the entire tribe because you couldn’t say goodbye to your–**
**To my what?** Grayling cut him off before Strongbow could slip another jab at Hansha into the conversation. His brother was a practiced hand at dropping insults about the “ravvits” of Sorrow’s End.
“Come with me!” Grayling whispered suddenly to his lovemate. But when Hansha drew back, his eyes filled with terror, Grayling knew he could not ask that. “No... no, lovemate, I shouldn’t have asked,” he added quickly. “Your place is here.”
“Just come back to me,” Hansha embraced him tightly. “I can wait.”
The Wolfriders slowly walked across the width of the village, bound for the zwoot saddled by Woodlock and Rainsong, and the waiting wolfpack. The Sun Folk made it a long, painful walk.
“No!” one farmer called out. “Please, do not leave us!”
Grayling winced at the pleading tone.
“We haven’t the right to hinder them, Shushen.” Hansha said, fighting the catch in his voice as he continued to hold Grayling hand tight.
“Yes,” Leetah the Healer said coolly. “If they choose to abandon the safety of the village, it is their right.”
“Please!” Shushen begged. “What if those human creatures come again? What if mountain lions descend to attack us? Rayek used to guard the village before the Wolfriders took his place. Who will protect us now?”
“Well, Woodlock and Rainsong are staying here with their cubs,” Skywise offered as cheerfully as he could. But he knew the Sun Folk had already figured out that Woodlock was no great hunter.
**This isn’t right...** Grayling sent openly to the Wolfriders. **We’ve made them dependent on us the last seven turns. We can’t just... leave them.**
**They’re no concern of ours,** Strongbow dismissed.
**Our duty lies first with our chief,** Treestump agreed.
“Without you we will be defenseless!” Shushen exclaimed.
The Wolfriders calmly stepped around them as they continued their march for the outskirts of the village.
Hansha slowly disengaged his hand from Grayling’s, anticipating the departure to come.
And suddenly Grayling understood where his duty lay.
“No, you won’t!” he turned to Shushen. “Because I’m going to stay here and teach you to fight for yourselves!”
**What?** Strongbow rounded on him.
“So will I!” little Dart announced.
“Dart!” Moonshade gasped.
The thirteen-year-old turned to his scowling father. “Father... I want to do this – I have to. I grew up here in Sorrow’s End. Grayling and I can teach the Sun Folk to hunt and to fight.”
“You?” someone laughed. “A spindly half-grown youth will teach us–”
Now Strongbow’s rage transcended sending. “That ‘spindly youth’ is my son!” he exclaimed in a rasping growl. “And Grayling is my brother! And our chief’s brother! And they’re both worth the lot of you put together! They’ll teach you how to be your own protectors – but it’s your own hides if you’re too fancy to learn!”
Dart grinned ear-to-ear. “Mother! Father! Thank you! I was sure you’d disapprove.”
**I do!** Strongbow. **Of both of you. You’re wasting your time on these shivering fawns. But it’s your decision. Just remember, you’re Wolfriders! Don’t even forget where you came from.**
Dart rushed to his parents for a tender farewell, while Grayling bent down to embrace his niece and nephew. “I’m sorry I can’t come with you. Tell your mother I’ll howl for her. Tell her I would join her in a moment...”
“But you have family here now too,” Venka said calmly. “Hansha.”
Grayling blushed a little, unnerved how easily a cub could read him. “Yes. But more... I have a duty to the Sun Folk. They’ve given me a home... peace... they–” he smiled even as tears welled in his eyes. “They gave me you. And you and your mother mean everything to me. Find her in time, cublings. Give her Savah’s message. And tell her that her brother is watching over Sorrow’s End.”
He hugged him goodbye, and wiped the tears from his eyes. He turned to Skywise. “Um... here.” He handed over his new leathers. “Moonshade should put these to good use.”
“Uh-huh,” Skywise looked them over. “Maybe Rayek can use these, when we catch up with him. He’s about your height, after all.”
“It’s all on your shoulders, now, stargazer. And your head if anything goes wrong.”
“Coward,” Skywise said affectionately as he hugged Grayling farewell. “They’re too much for any one elf to handle and you know it.”
**Make Swift understand, please,** Grayling said.
**I won’t have to. She will. I don’t think she’ll be surprised at all.**
Grayling and Hansha watched as the Wolfriders left the village, Suntop and Venka sitting proudly atop the pack-zwoot’s saddle. “Are you sure?” Hansha asked. “There’s still time join them.”
Grayling clasped his hand tight again. “I’m sure. I’m here to stay, green-eyes.”
Hansha smiled. “I’m glad.”
Savah’s condition did not improve even as a full turn of Mother Moon signalled a month since the Wolfriders’ departure. But Dart and Grayling were having great progress teaching the first volunteers of the Sorrow’s End hunters. Dart had made several copies of his arrow-whip, the training tool all Wolfrider cubs learned on before moving to longbows.
But one problem remained. Grayling could teach them the uses of the spear, but not of the arrow.
He covered up for his weakness well, and had Dart lead the archery lessons. So far only three males had volunteered – a farmer named Tanah, a loom-worker named Dahn and a boy named Halek, only a few years older than Dart – and none of them suspected that their “teacher” could not shot a bow to save his life.
But Hansha had noticed, for he came to watch every training session. “Why can’t you use a bow?” he asked one night as they lay in bed together. “If I may ask.”
“You can ask me anything, my Hansha-of-the-Green-Eyes,” Grayling murmured sleepily, kissing the top of his head. He rolled away and held out his left arm. “It’s this arm. There’s a weakness in it – been there since birth. I can never seem to steady it long enough to line up a shot. When I hold a bow, it rattles in my hand. Same with the arrow-whips.”
“But you come from a family of archers. That must have been hard.”
“Very. I tried so hard to make my mother and my brother proud. I know they were always disappointed. Strongbow’s cubs, first dear Crescent, and now Dart – they have the blood of archers in them. Dart especially.”
“Dart misses sometimes,” Hansha offered as consolation. “And he puts on too much airs for the height of his head, if you ask me.”
Grayling chuckled softly. “I can throw a spear well enough, but I’m better with short jabs. I was the best fisher we had at the old Holt. But jabs are no good out here in the desert... not unless you have several wolves to bring a quarry down first.”
“Pity you can’t make a bow to fire with one hand,” Hansha said, snuggling up against his lovemate. “I’d love to see my wolf teach that ‘spindly youth’ a thing or two.”
“A one-handed bow...” Grayling mused. “I seem to remember my mother used to speak of something like that in the old days... something the Wolfriders used... long, long ago... before Father Tree. She always knew so much about weapons... all the weapons an elf needed. In Freefoot’s time... a spear-thrower....” He shrugged. It was too late to try to remember more. “Ah well. Goodnight...” he yawned.
**Goodnight... lifemate...**
Grayling opened his eyes anew. “Did you just send to me?”
Hansha hesitated too long. “No. Why... did you hear something?”
“Must have been my imagination,” Grayling mumbled. He nestled back against Hansha, his lips against his ear.
“Lifemate,” he whispered.
In time hope returned to Sorrow’s End. Savah awoke late one afternoon. She was weakened by a month without food, and it was many days before she found the strength to leave her bed and emerge into the sun once more. But the Sun Village was alive with laughter again, and the would-be hunters threw themselves into their lessons with joyful abandon. Now a maiden, Dodia, joined them, along with Shushen, the same youth whose fearful begging had led Grayling to his choice.
Grayling had not forgotten what Hansha had said about a one-handed bow, and he spent days studying the arrow-whip, wondering how to adapt the general idea to a one-handed dart-launcher, wondering how the old Wolfriders had made the mythical “spear-throwers.”
If the whip was not a supple leather thong, but a rigid wooden shaft...
If a notch could be made to prop a wooden dart...
If the right amount of weight at the end could create momentum...
Wood was rare in the Sun Village, but Redlance’s shaped trees provided enough for several attempts. Grayling practiced with many lengths of wood late at night when no one would see. But somehow little Rainsong and Wing found out about his attempts and came to watch.
It took another two months to find the right proportions. One afternoon he came to archery practice and shooed the Sun Folk to the sidelines. He fitted a handmade wooden dart – longer than the ones Dart himself used – and took aim at the distant cactus-tree. Raising the launcher like a spear, he took aim.
A downward crack of the arm, and the dart flew for the tree. It missed, but continued to fly, until it finally hit the ground a good forty paces beyond.
The Sun Folk gasped. So did Dart.
“Aim was off,” Grayling muttered.
“So what?” Dart exclaimed. “Aim can be fixed. But power – how did you get that power out of it. I always thought you needed a longbow to reach that distance!”
“What is it?” Shushen asked.
“It’s... it’s a dart-thrower,” Grayling stammered at length. “The Wolfriders once used it long ago.” He looked up and saw Savah standing in the doorway of her hut.
“I know that weapon,” she breathed. “I remember... the hunters of my youth... when we first came to Sorrow’s End... used one very much like it. Why... even I used it to bring down bristle-boars.”
“You, Savah?” her ever-present handmaiden gasped.
“I was not always Mother of Memory, dear Ahdri.”
Grayling walked up to her and handed her the weapon. Savah turned it over in her hands. “Yes... you built it a little differently, but the basic form is the same. The Rootless Ones called it an atlatl.”
“Atlatl?”
“A strange word, I know. Perhaps from the old language of the High Ones... or perhaps from the human tongue.” She handed the weapon back to him. “A fine weapon, Grayling. May you teach our kind to wield it as well as you do.”
Grayling smiled, weighing the launcher in his hands.
“Grayling! Grayling, you have to come see this!” Dart exclaimed, leading Grayling up the rocks to the wolf dens outside the village.
Grayling’s Darkburr was pregnant, and from the scents around the den, Grayling imagined she had just now given birth. Strange for Dart to be so excited over simple wolf pups, but then again he remembered that the boy was still young.
He had to admit he was curious about his wolf’s pregnancy. Rainsong’s Silvergrace had only dropped her litter six months previously, and five little pups padded about the caves happily. Only the chieftess wolf ever mated – had Darkburr overthrown Silvergrace? And who was Darkburr’s mate? Starjumper had left with the rest of the wolfpack and now there was no chief wolf – only Woodlock’s Tailchaser, Dart’s gangly Loper, and Silvergrace and her cubs.
Grayling followed Dart through the narrow little tunnel into the birthing den. Darkburr was nursing a litter of six little pups, all a soft dun colour, none gray like their mother. Dart held one up for Grayling to inspect. “Look at them, Grayling!”
At first he saw nothing but a wolf cub, eyes closed, ears turned down, tiny body covered in a soft damp fur. But then he looked more closely in the darkness. The head seemed a little too large for the body... and the legs seemed a little too long for a newborn.
**They’re all like this,** Dart sent. **Have you ever seen a wolf pup like this**
**No... never. ** He gently laid the baby back down at his mother’s teat. **Come on, let’s leave them be.**
They climbed back out into the moonlight. “Who’s the father?” Dart asked. “That colouring... looks a little like my Loper, but Loper’s too young to catch Darkburr’s eye. Did Hotburr or... Redcoat–”
“No. The wolfpack left too long ago. Not unless Darkburr decided to carry a litter for three and a half months.”
Dart looked back at the three wolves who guarded the den – not Tailchaser, nor Loper, and certainly not one of Silvergrace’s cubs.
They heard a strange sound – like a howl, but not... a yip-yowling wail coming over the rocks.
“Jackals,” Dart hissed.
But the wolves did not seem anxious. In fact they raised their tails high and yipped back in friendship. A few moments later Dart and Grayling had their answer, as a large brown jackal, flanked by two smaller comrades, joined the wolves.
Two months later Darkburr’s six cubs played with Silvergrace’s five outside the wolf dens. Already they were developing the distinctive spots along their hindquarters. They had the long legs of jackals. But their heads were those of wolves.
“Jackwolves,” Dart murmured. “And the pack accepts them just as it accepts the jackals. I didn’t think it was possible.”
Grayling picked up one pup who had begun to nibble at his sandal.
“What do we do with them?” Dart asked.
Grayling laughed. “We ride them!”
Three years passed, and the eleven pups grew to adulthood. Silvergrace’s pups grew lanky and without heavy coats, and save for the spots it was hard to tell wolf from jackwolf. Darkburr and the chief jackal Speckleback had produced two more litters, and while the desert had claimed several of their young, five new jackwolf pups were thriving in the new pack.
The jackals could not be ridden, for Speckleback and his two kinmates did not trust the elves. But the crossbreeds, while incapable of showing the imprint-bonding between elf and wolf, were easily trained for riding.
The Wolfriders never returned to Sorrow’s End, but Savah’s frequent communions with Suntop reassured Grayling that all was well with his tribe, now living far to the north in the Palace of the High Ones.
Three years since the Wolfrider hunters left Sorrow’s End, and a new tribe of hunters had taken their place: the Jackwolf Riders, now at twelve strong.
“What would Strongbow think of his brother and boy-cub now?” Woodlock chuckled as he watched the riders perform a race for the cheering Sun Folk.
“You have turned meek gardeners into Wolfriders,” Savah commended them. “We are all most impressed.”
“I too,” fifteen-year-old Newstar gave Dart a little pinch to his backside. “I’m almost impressed. He could stand a bath, though.”
“We’ve cubs in need of riders, if you’d like to join us, Newstar,” Grayling said.
But Rainsong’s eldest was a Sun Folk through-and-through now, and she only laughed lightly. “I think not. The wolves lost my scent long ago.”
Newstar abandoned her teasing of Dart soon enough. Recognition struck the Sun Village again, and the barely-grown cub was with child herself. The joy that filled Sorrow’s End was short-lived, however, as a new communion with Suntop left Savah chilled to the core. “Once again the loveless one threatens the Wolfriders... and I fear her sickness will bring grief to many. Swift leads the Wolfriders against her now, hoping to cure her once and for all.”
Grayling wished there was something he could do for his kin. But he could only wait, and continue the training of the Jackwolf Riders.
“The Wolfriders will be all right,” Rainsong said. “With your sister leading them I’ve no doubt of their safety.”
Grayling usually awoke early each morning to make his rounds of the village and check in on the wolfpack. It was a habit he had developed during the uncertain time when Speckleback and the other two jackals first joined the wolfpack – when he was convinced one morning he would find signs of a massacre among the rocks. But this morning he was slow to rise from the pit-bed. Dark dreams had plagued him of late.
Strange, it seemed far too bright outside. Had he overslept?
He heard shouts outside his hut. “Someone get Savah and Sun-Toucher!” “Great Sun, can it be?” “It is! It must be!” “Hurry!” “Oh, High Ones! It is!”
“Mmphh...” Hansha rolled over on his back. “What are they squealing about out there?”
Grayling staggered to the window and stuck his head out. A blinding silver light overwhelmed him at first. It took several frantic heartbeats before he could make out the spires and turrets against the early morning sky.
“Hansha, come here!” he gasped.
He tugged on his panelled loincloth and raced for the door, forgetting his sandals. He was late; most of the Sun Folk were already out on the sandy plain, gaping at the giant crystal structure that had appeared on the outskirts of the village.
“Rayek!” someone cried.
“It is Rayek! He’s come back!”
Swift now came out to stand by him, and Rayek slipped his arm about her protectively. “You should not cheer for me alone.”
Swift... now clad in red-and-brown leathers, wearing hawk feathers in her long hair. The three years since he last saw had left a certain sadness in her eyes.
And now Venka and Suntop joined their parents. How they had grown!
Skywise strode out of the Palace with a white wolf in tow. Swift flanked the wolf, and they escorted it over to Savah as if with great reverence.
“She is Timmain, the High One, with us again,” Swift explained.
Timmain... the founder of the Wolfriders...
But Grayling hardly noticed her. He only saw his family.
Swift sensed his gaze on her. She turned and a smile lit up her solemn expression. She broke from her lifemate and dashed across the sand. The force of her embrace almost knocked Grayling off his feet.
“Brother,” Swift whispered. “Oh... so much has happened...”
She smelled different: her distinctive scent... faded somewhat.
He held her tight. “I’ve missed you so much – you and the cubs.”
“Chieftess!” Newstar’s voice rang out. Swift stepped back from her brother a moment before the giddy teenager tackled her. “Chieftess! Remember me?”
“Newstar,” Swift laughed. “How could you have grown so in just three years?”
Grayling modestly stepped back as other old friends and kin rushed forward to greet Swift. She caught his eyes as she was nearly swept away by well-wishers.
**We’ll talk more later... just us,** Grayling sent.
Swift smiled even as Newstar and Teru threatened to drag her off.
The Palace was not staying. They would leave the next morning. In the rocks by the wolf dens, Swift told Grayling everything – Winnowill, the war for the Palace, the three years of peace followed by a new threat from Blue Mountain... her capture... her torture...
“I should have been there,” Grayling murmured when Swift finished her tale. “The tribe needed me.”
“So did the Sun Folk. And you’ve cared for them well. A whole new tribe of Wolfriders...” Swift shook her head. “Rayek still can’t believe it. Neither can Strongbow.”
“I know,” Grayling chuckled. “He actually clapped me on the shoulder earlier. ‘Ravvits to Wolfriders! You have some magic in you, little brother.’”
“I wish we could stay longer... watch a demonstration of your new hunters.”
“But you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“We have to find the source of the cry in Suntop’s head, the sooner the better.”
“And then? Will you come back to Sorrow’s End?”
Swift shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not to stay. The others... they’re weary of sand. They’re weary of snow too. They want a new forest... a new Holt. Perhaps... once we find the source of this cry... and we help the elves in distress... we’ll find a forest home... a new Father Tree.”
“I can’t leave Sorrow’s End.”
“I know.” Swift got to her feet. She smiled bittersweetly. “I’d love to steal you away with me... I have missed my brother these last three years. But you are a chief of many now, Grayling. And they always come first.”
“Chief...” Grayling shook his head ruefully. “How many years did I spend insisting I never wanted to lead – not the hunters, not the tribe?”
“And now you are Chief of the Jackwolf Riders.” Swift cocked her head to one side. “But you do not yet look the part.”
Grayling didn’t understand what she intended to do until she plucked one of the feathers from her hair and teased it free of its little leather thong. “No... I – it’s not right,” Grayling began. But before he could say more, Swift calmly caught up a hank of his hair and tied the thong at the crown of his head.
“Two chiefs, two chief’s locks,” she said softly, stepping back to regard him. “And tied in much happier circumstance than the last one.”
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“Not sad... just... remembering... what was... what’s happened since.” Her smile brightened. “Thinking what ol’ Bearclaw would say... if he could see us now.”
“Nothing good, I’m certain.”
Swift grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. Even he would have to think this is just how it should have turned out.”
Timmain the wolf – for Grayling still could not imagine her as a High One – chose several of the Sun Village to join the Wolfriders on their quest across the sea. Newstar and Teru, Zhantee and Shenshen, and Dart, were nudged into the Palace by the white wolf. But Scouter, it seemed, had chosen to stay behind.
“So we part here,” Dart extended a hand to his uncle.
“You know I’ll be protecting the Sun Village,” Grayling nodded. “But you need to be with your parents now, and our birth tribe. Hansha and I will howl for you, Dart. And you’ll hear us.”
Dart embraced his uncle, then turned back to the Palace. Suntop and Venka rushed to hug Grayling farewell – Venka’s embrace warm and tender, Suntop’s distant and pained. “Come back and visit me soon,” Grayling said. “Maybe we’ll find you a wolf-friend from the next litter of jackwolves, Suntop.”
The boy summoned a brave smile.
Swift hustled them into the Palace, then embraced her brother one last time.
“We’ll be back soon,” she insisted. “With the Palace now flying, no distance can separate the Wolfriders.”
“The world is changing faster than I ever could have imagined.” He touched her cheek fondly. “And you’re not the little sister I remember from Father Tree. You’ve grown up... become a true chief.”
“And so have you.” Swift hugged him once more.
The Palace disappeared into the late morning light, and the silver glow became no more than a spot of sunlight bouncing off the cliffs. The villagers slowly retreated back to their farms and huts. Grayling and Hansha remained on the rocks, listening to the wind drift over the hills.
“I like your top-knot,” Hansha said at length.
Grayling blushed.
“What now?” Hansha asked.
Grayling glanced at his lifemate. “Now? Now I get back to work. Shushen still can’t keep from falling off his jackwolf, and Scouter needs to know the rules of our pack.”
“And that’s it?”
Grayling considered it. “And that’s it,” he finally said. He took Hansha’s hand in his and they walked back to the village together.
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts