Robert Asprin: The Blood of Ten Chiefs

It charged. Though it showed the ravages of its starvation, it still bulked greater than an elf or a wolf. It bowled into Valloa, its claws raking her leg as its momentum carried it past. The elf screamed; she did not know what pain was and she scrabbled wildly at the air, at her torn leg, at her spear still buried in the boar. Her mind raged blindly.

In an instant there was panic. The wolves scattered; they could do no different. The elves scattered; unassailable fear took them, for they did not know creatures like this, or death like this. Timmorn started to run, wolflike, but in the same instant he stopped and turned to take in the sight of the longtooth turning to charge again, to finish its grisly work on the wounded elf. Memory pounded upon memory, collided with instinct, fought with feelings only recently stirred. He growled, "Wrong!" and hurled himself.

He hit the longtooth just as the beast reached Valloa. The impact sent the longtooth careening to one side and sent Timmorn thudding to the ground. He knew the creature was heavier than he, and stronger; even as he snarled and shrieked at the longtooth in defiance he glanced about quickly for something to aid him. He spied Valloa's spear and wrenched it free of the boar's carcass; the elf would not need it now.

The longtooth charged again, the fire in its brain driving it. It leaped at Timmorn, at the meat, at the pain, and flew past as Timmorn caught it in the shoulder joint with the spear tip. It hardly felt the new pain, and spun to attack yet again. It screamed, and leapt, and this time took the spear point squarely in its chest, deep into its heart. The body thumped heavily to the ground and lay there.

Slowly the wolves came back, but Timmorn was already bending over Valloa, gingerly touching at the cruel gashes in her thigh, wincing at the moans that escaped her lips. He could smell her blood over that of the boar and the longtooth- there was something… A shock, a tingle, something he'd felt only recently; though not as strongly. Very gently, he touched his tongue to one of the open wounds. Something in the blood.

For just a moment, Valloa seemed to become calmer, despite the pain that beat at her. She opened her eyes. Timmorn bent his shaggy head over her and said gruffly, "In the blood. Who are you?"

For just a moment a look of puzzlement clouded her face. "You know me-I am Valloa. I'm…" Then something deeper passed through and over her, and she said, "But there's another name inside me. I don't know why it is, but I want to say it to you. I am Murrel."

Even more slowly the elves returned to the place where two beasts lay dead and Timmorn cradled the wounded huntress. Seilein, still pale with shock but boldest of the little group, went to touch Timmorn, remembering the earlier day's comfort. He turned to her and snarled, showing his teeth, and she drew back in surprise. "Mine," he said, locking eyes with her again, and in that moment Seilein understood what Timmorn meant. She raised an eyebrow as if to say, "We'll see. This may turn out to be most interesting," but what she did say was, "We'll take her back to camp. There are healers there." Then she walked away.

Timmorn turned back to her whom everyone else called Valloa.

Later, Timmorn ran through the darkest part of the night, through the deep woods. His eyes, yellow as twin moons, saw the world swirl mistily by him in the starlight as he ran, his breath and blood singing, the wolf high within him. Somewhere, behind the trees in the deepest shadows, he knew the wolf-pack was with him, though they still ran their own path, black and fluid in the night. Not true elf, not true wolf, Timmorn was both now, instead of neither. That knowledge lived, secure, in his blood.

Back in the camp, the one who had been Valloa slept, her wounds attended by the healer. Among the others, there was some little confusion, for they did not understand why she went by another name now. No matter. The new name, the Murrel name whispered in his mind with a voice no one else could hear or share, and it called to him. The two had not joined this night as the voice had gently urged, for she was

still weak, but Timmorn knew that matings-and cubs-would come. There was a something, a bond, a feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling both fresh and new, and incredibly ancient. It warmed within him.

(And as he ran and turned the new thing over and over in his mind, tasting it, Timmorn also thought of the other one, Seilein. He grinned, wolflike, lips tight over sharp teeth; there would be joinings there too, if he had sensed her own mind and scent correctly…)

It is life, he realized, slowing to a gentle lope. He went in his mind to the place that had been so troubled, to the empty hole that had been gouged there by the death of the wolf days before. The new thoughts filled the hole and soothed it, and they were the shape and color and smell and feel of life.

Timmorn had seen death before, and he knew he would see it again. The world was full of death. But now he could fight it and not scamper aside from its fangs and claws like a frightened wolf who only knew self, and not others.

He did not yet know if the new feeling meant much or little to the others, the ones who slept and tried and succeeded or failed, but at that moment, in the now that filled him up, it meant all.

The young elf-woman's face showed the effects of an eight-of-days spent eating poorly and sleeping worse. Dark bruises clouded her green-and-gold eyes, and her gestures, as she slid down the tree trunk to sit amid its roots, were weariness personified. Even her hair, normally full of sunlight and curls, fell limp around her face.

**I don't know what to do,** she sent to the elf hidden in the branches above her.**Could it be Recognition?**

The leaves rustled and Longreach leaped to the ground, agile for all that Bearclaw was his fifth chief. "If you have to ask, it isn't Recognition," he said with a sly smile.

"Then what is it? Finding my soulname was nothing compared to this. No matter what I do there's an ache somewhere inside. I wake up from a sound sleep knowing that I've dreamt something awful but not being able to remember it. Sometimes I just go to the tall grasses and run until I collapse. Not even my wolf-friend can help me."

Longreach loosened the laces of his tunic and produced a small, lumpy pouch from which he removed a handful of wrinkled berries. He offered them to Nightfall, then poured them into her hand when she refused to take them.

"A story? I don't see how a story can help me."

"There are many stories you've never heard, little one." The storyteller leaned against the tree as a farseeing look came over his face. Longreach no longer needed the berries

to find the treasure trove of Wolfrider memories. "Some stories, I think, wait for generations until the right pair of ears is born to hear it."

"I don't want to hear how Darkwater quested for two turns of the season before she found the secret of setting the feathers in an arrow's tail," the adolescent warned. "I want my answer now.''

Longreach frowned in feigned offense. "I wasn't even thinking of that one. And anyway, she was looking for something while you've been found by it."

Nightfall relaxed. They all came to the storyteller, sooner or later, when there was no one else who would understand. And his wisdom was already soothing her thoughts; she'd been thinking something was missing instead of noticing something had been added.

"The high ones' blood runs strong in you, child. Your mother's mother had almost no wolf-blood in her. But Timmorn's blood runs strong too; you get that from your father who would have been chief if Mantricker had died before Bearclaw found his name. You mustn't be surprised when the bloods rest uneasily against each other. It's a hand of generations or more for the rest of us, but for you it is as it was near the beginning of the Wolfriders.