Unicorn Point

“ ‘Cause the Adverse Adepts be wrong. Grandpa Stile and Granddam Neysa told me that, and showed me how it be so, and I believe it. So needs must I change sides—but we knew the Adepts would let me not. It be the same for Nepe in ‘Proton. So we had to plan, and practice, and hide before the Adepts and Citizens started using us. An they knew that Nepe and I can think to each other, and do it better than our sires can, they would ne’er let us go.”

“So you join the Pack with us?” Si asked.  “Aye. Only it must be known not, ‘cause the Pack can stand not against the Adepts. There would be awful trouble, Grandpa says, an they found any Pack or Herd or Flock shel tering me.”

Si pondered. “I wish we had known this before we swore oath-friendship with thee.”

“Why?” he asked. “Would ye three have made not the oath?”

She concentrated for a time before answering. “Mark thee, we be but young pups, and ill grasp adult concepts. But we feel the truth o’ them, howe’er poorly we say them. So I say to thee we made the oath thinking thou wast only an odd were-creature. We would have made it knowing we be truly helping the cause o’ all the good creatures o’ Phaze. Does that make sense to thee?”

“You would have made it anyway?” he asked, surprised.

“Aye,” Si said, and the others growled assent. “All wolves be ready to fight and die for their Pack and their friends and their way of life, but it means more an they know when they be doing it.”

Flach was abruptly overwhelmed. “Do wolves cry?” he asked.

“Aye, when they be in human form.”

“Good. ‘Cause I be going to cry.”

“Why?” she asked, dismayed. “Did I say it wrong?”

“Nay, thou didst say it perfectly.”

“Have we treated thee not kindly?”

“It be ‘cause ye three have treated me more kindly than I feared,” he said, the tears starting. “I bring great danger to you, yet you support me.”

“It be the way o’ the Pack,” she said. “We three be trav eling to join a new Pack, and we know the way o’ it, but we know also how hard it be to do. We welcome thee as we would have our new Pack welcome us.”

“I will try to make you glad o’ that,” Flach said, as the tears flowed more copiously.

Si did not speak again. She put her hands to his face, and turned it toward her, and kissed him passionately. He realized that her face was wet too, with her own tears. She was kissing him for the three of them, for they had accepted him as they knew him to be. He was profoundly grateful, and somewhat in love, as of that moment.

After a suitable interval, they returned to wolf form and slept, the four of them comfortably nestled together against the chill of the night. Their noses pointed outward in four directions, so that any warning carried by the wind would receive prompt attention.

In the period before dawn, Duzyfilan returned with her kill: a giant rabbit. They woke at her summoning growl, and scrambled out to join her. The light of two moons shone down, showing the delicious carcass. In a moment each was hauling and chewing at a leg, while the bitch maintained guard.

Flach had never had a meal of this type before, and was at first alarmed. But he emulated his companions, and discov ered that cooling raw flesh was delicious as well as being a challenge. As long as he was in wolf form! By the time dawn came, he was stuffed on rabbit, and felt wonderful.  They slept again, for it was not good to run on a full belly.  It was almost noon before they resumed travel. But the bitch knew what she was doing, for she had, it turned out, spied an Adept in the vicinity, and elected to lay low until the Adept was gone.

At dusk they reached Kurrelgyre’s Pack. Duzyfilan sniffed noses with the leader, and brought up the four pups, saying nothing. Kurrelgyre sniffed each in turn, growled his ap proval, and summoned his own chief bitch. She took the four to her den. They were cowed and quiet, but knew the worst was over: they had been accepted. They never saw Duzyfilan go; she had been no more than a courier, and for reasons of her own she did not stay to socialize.

They were given two days to acclimatize to the new Pack.  Then Kurrelgyre brought them up before the assembled wolves and gave them each their second syllable, in the man ner of the wolven kind. This was their formal mark of accep tance; henceforth they would be members of the Pack in all the ways of pups of their generation, except that they would be free to make permanent liaisons with other Pack members when they matured. They and the other pups from other Packs represented this year’s New Blood: a place of custom rather than honor. Honor they would have to achieve for themselves, in due course.