James Enge: The Wolf Age

The thing beside them on the cell floor was a long tooth-a wolf's tooth possibly. A narrow hole had been bored in it, and it was strung on a piece of cord.

He looked up at the guards. Each of them had a cord of teeth around his neck or (in one of the men's case) wrapped around his forearm. It was some badge of acceptance or honor-or status. The savage man-wolf he had fought last night had worn no such symbol. But somehow he had earned this by defeating it.

He didn't like the idea of a cord around his neck, particularly if he got into another fight. He wrapped the cord around his wrist and turned his attention to breakfast.

The bowl of food was mush again, this time garnished with a human ear and two fingers, gray and bloodless as the predawn light. He set them aside and ate the mush: he could not afford to be squeamish. The water did not entirely wash away the taste. He took the ear and put it up on the sill of the open window and tossed the two fingers in a corner.

He went and sat in the opposite corner and stayed there, eyeing each one of his guards in turn. The faces of the men were clean shaven; their light armor and weapons well crafted and well kept. Yet they were somehow wolflike, with long narrow faces and somewhat crooked legs. The wolves, in turn, were strangely human, with cool observant eyes and deliberate gestures.

Someone had left this tooth for him, and they had not objected. He didn't understand, and he felt ill equipped to try to understand it. With the glass spike in his head, he was deaf to everything except what he heard with his ears. He was blind to everything except what he could see with his eyes. He grieved for his lost Sight.

Presently the trustee came along the hallway, with two archers following him, and exchanged a few words with the guards. The archers each hocked an arrow and pointed it through the bars at Morlock. A guard unbarred the cell door as the others stood ready to strike if Morlock rushed the door. There was obviously no point in doing this, so Morlock merely watched and waited.

The trustee entered the cell, and the door slammed shut behind him. The trustee wheeled and whined something at the guards through the bars; one of the wolves snarled a response. Reluctantly, the trustee turned back toward Morlock.

The trustee held something out in his pale mottled hands and made noises that were clearly words. The object in his hands was an open jar, and in it a brownish red goo, the color of cold blood. It smelt of bitter herbs: some kind of medicine, Morlock guessed; they would hardly take the trouble to poison him when they could kill him in so many more direct ways. Of course, what was a healing salve for a werewolf might still be poisonous for him, but Morlock was inclined to take the risk. He slowly extended one arm and opened his hand. The trustee darted forward to put the jar in his hand and then skittered away.

The guards in the corridor snickered. Morlock ignored them and the trustee; sitting down on the cell floor, he unbound his wounds (breaking their tenuous scabs, unfortunately) and smeared the salve densely over the ragged tears in his flesh.

The effect was not immediate, but it was quick enough to make him suspect there was magic involved in the salve. Plus, it seemed to have been leeched of phlogiston: it did not bubble or flame on contact with his blood.

A maker of some considerable attainments had crafted this salve, Morlock reflected, and had likely done it for Morlock personally (unless they had more prisoners with fiery Ambrosial blood). That was worth remembering.

Morlock rebound the stiff bandages over the no-longer-bleeding wounds and held the jar of salve out toward the trustee, still cowering at the far side of the cell. The trustee made no move toward Morlock; all his limbs were quivering and his pale eyes were twitching about as if looking for escape. One of the guards prodded the trustee with the blunt end of a pike, but he still made no move toward Morlock.

Finally Morlock tossed the jar toward the trustee. The pale mottled limbs spasmed with terror, and the hands just barely managed to catch the jar. The pale werewolf shrieked at the guards and they laughed. The archers took aim at Morlock again, and the other guards stood ready as one guard went to unbar the door again and let the panicky trustee out.

Morlock covertly watched for any lapse in vigilance. Unfortunately, he saw none. Unlike the trustee, they did not fear him. But they would never trust him. That was good for them, bad for Morlock.

The day outside grew brighter; the stones of the cell stubbornly began to yield up their nighttime chill and grow a little warmer. Morlock didn't move much. He kept an eye on the open window and waited.

Eventually the light in the window was darkened by the presence of a crow, drawn by the attractive smell of decaying flesh. She squawked with disgust when she found only a gristly old ear.

Morlock croaked a greeting.

The crow reacted with surprise and alarm. She wondered if he was one of those crow-eating people she had heard so much of recently.

Morlock said he wasn't hungry and he hoped the crow was enjoying the ear.

The crow wondered if that was supposed to be some kind of joke. She pointed out, as a general comment, that ears hardly have enough meat to fill a chick's belly, and the flavor was never very good, no matter how well rotted the flesh.

Morlock expressed ignorance. He rarely ate human meat, never by preference.

The crow saw his point. Human meat was rarely worth the trouble. Just as soon as it was getting ripe enough to eat, someone was likely to come along and bury it. The practice seemed mean-spirited to the crow, and she had some harsh words to say about that.

Morlock heard her out, and then said he was sorry about the ear and wondered if the crow would be interested in a couple of fingers.

The crow observed that Morlock still seemed to be using his, and she laughed a while at her witticism.

Morlock said that the fingers were lying around the cell somewhere; they had come with his breakfast and he didn't want them. The crow could have them.

The crow wondered if he thought she had been hatched yesterday. On the contrary, she was forty-two thousand years old and a personal friend of Morlock Ambrosius, if he knew who that was. She had more sense than to be trapped in a cell with a ravenous crow-eating werewolf who was just waiting for a chance to eat some more crow, but not this crow, not this clever crow, no. He could forget that. Besides, she could smell the fingers and she didn't think they were ripe yet.

Morlock said that he thought the fingers might have been cooked, like the ear.

The crow squawked in outrage. Had the great feathered gods laid the clutch of eggs that hatched into the universes just so that monkeys with their freakishly long and horribly soft and flexible claws could rip meat apart and stink it up with fire?

Morlock said that he had no opinion on the theological issue, but he thought the fingers were soft enough to eat and that, since the crow was a personal friend of Morlock Ambrosius, he was willing to put the fingers up on the cell so that the crow could get at them safely.

The crow bluntly wondered what the catch was.

Morlock said that he had no use for the meat, but he could do something with the finger bones. He wondered if the crow would leave them behind on the sill.

The crow thought for a moment, and grudgingly agreed.

Morlock gathered up the fingers and reached up to put them on the iron sill. Then he stood well away, to make it clear to the crow he intended no harm.

The crow kept an eye carefully on him. When satisfied he was safely distant, she took up one of the fingers in her claws, then the other, as if judging which was ripest.

An arrow struck her in the chest and she fell from sight with no sound other than a brief scrape of her claws on stone. The fingers fell with her off the far side of the sill.