James Enge: The Wolf Age

He threw a set of cards in a spiral pattern, crossed each card with another drawn from the pack, and then sat back to contemplate them. He again saw the drowned sailor, crossed by the Death card, the Lady of the Rocks. There were some variations: the one-eyed merchant bore the blank card of Mystery, the Wheel was crossed by the man with three wands looking out to sea. This was the third time he had thrown the cards, and each time they had prophesied the same fate: death by water.

He had invented the cards as a way to gather signs from the future without using his Sight. That was dangerous for him now: he knew that Merlin had broken loose from his earthy prison and might be exerting his own powers of Sight to track or trap Morlock. He had left his horse with a friend and let his choir of flames run wild in an open seam of coal. He had walked away from everyone and everything he knew so that when the final battle came between him and Merlin, as few people as possible would be destroyed. (In fact, he didn't much care if he himself survived the battle, but he hated the thought of losing to his old embittered ruthen father.) And now, instead of telling him anything about the conflict he knew was coming, the cards kept predicting his death by drowning.

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and gathered up the cards. It was the nature of any type of mantia to reveal things that were useless until one met them in the context of a living Now. He slipped a band on the deck and tucked the cards into a pocket in his sleeve. Then he stood and walked northward up the road to the next town.

Morlock Ambrosius knew the town would be empty before he got there. He had seen enough of them on the northern plains to read the clues by now: the lack of smoke, even from the local smithy, was the clearest sign. What he didn't know was why the town was dead. It had not been for long. There was meat fresh enough to eat in the pantry of the town's sole cookhouse. Morlock cooked and ate it, along with some slightly stale bread and withered mushrooms he had also found there. He left the deck of cards on the counter in payment, even though he had a feeling the owners of the place would never return to claim it.

The place bothered him, so he didn't sleep there. He hopped a wall and walked due north across the brown stubbly fields, averting his eyes from the sun setting in the east. That was how he saw the raiding party approaching from the west.

Morlock was so old he didn't bother to keep count of the years anymore and had seen things like this before. The mystery of the empty towns stood explained: they had fled the raiders who were now returning toward the northern road after having caught at least some of the townspeople. The only question now was how Morlock could avoid being swept up by the raiders.

He knew a few invisibility spells, but they would all make his presence felt to a seer, if they had any in their party. Mundane concealment would be better than any spell, but there were no buildings near enough to be of any use. He settled for sitting down with his back to a wall facing east and waiting for them to pass.

It almost worked. The raiders had some trouble with their prisoners at the wall, which they were crossing somewhat north of Morlock. A few children made a break, running away northward, and a few raiders had to round them up while the others supervised the prisoners' crossing of the wall. They had much to trouble them without looking about for stray travelers.

Morlock, on the other hand, had a chance to observe the raiders and their prisoners quite closely. The raiders were rather odd looking, with long hatchet-narrow faces and necklaces strung with varying numbers of long sharp teeth. They had with them several doglike creatures who were not, in fact, dogs. Some of them took orders and obeyed them with more-thancanine shrewdness. Others seemed to be barking orders that the men (or manlike raiders) would obey.

Morlock watched their shadows to confirm his guess. They were long, distorted by the low angle of the setting sun. But where they fell upon the wall it was clear: the dogs or wolves cast shadows like a man crouching on all fours, while the men cast shadows like wolves standing on their hind feet.

It was a raiding party from the werewolf city somewhere to the north. Morlock forgot the name, if he had ever known it. His sisters could have told him, if she were here.

The prisoners were mostly older folk and children. The healthy adults had obviously been able to escape from the raiding party. A rational choice, Morlock supposed: one must bury one's parents eventually, and one can always have more children. He eyed the few mature adults among the prisoners with some interest. Merely slow-footed?

Morlock felt a twinge of pity for the children. There was nothing in store for them but life as slaves at best, or death as prey at worst. Or maybe it was the other way round: Morlock had never been a slave and he wasn't eager to make the experiment. He kept quiet and still and waited for the raiders to pass.

It almost worked. The prisoners had all crossed the wall; the runaways had been rounded up. The rearguard of the raiding party crossed the wall and began to follow the main group eastward. Perhaps Morlock released an incautiously energetic breath of relief. Perhaps his luck was just out. In any case, one of the wolves in the rearguard lifted his nose and then turned to look directly at Morlock, slumped against the wall. He barked a quiet word to his manlike comrades.

Two of the raiders armed with pikes looked over at Morlock and moved toward him, shouting in a language Morlock did not understand. Since all hope of concealment was over, Morlock stood and drew his sword Tyrfing, holding it at an angle meant to warn rather than threaten.

The two pikemen stopped moving toward him and stared at the dark crystal of the blade, woven with veins of paler crystal, glittering in the red light of the eastering sun.

The wolf who had spotted him first yowled a warning to the whole raiding group. All the raiders stopped and looked at him. Things were going from bad to worse.

Morlock backed away one deliberate step, paused, then took another step back. He growled slightly. From what he knew of wolves, he thought this might show that he was not prepared to attack, but would fight if he must.

The two pikemen and the wolf who commanded them took two steps forward, the pikemen shouting something and the wolf barking furiously. Oddly, he understood the wolf better than the pikemen. The wolf seemed to be saying that Morlock should hide his teeth or he would be bacon by morning.

Morlock suggested, in the same snarling language, the werewolf perform an act made possible by lupine agility. It was one of the few insults he knew for a wolf, and it was gratifyingly effective. The two wolf-shadowed pikemen were rocked back on their heels; the man-shadowed wolf charged forth with fiery eyes, silent now, eager to kill.

Morlock waited. When the wolf poised himself to leap, Morlock dodged forward and brought Tyrfing down on the werewolf's shoulder, shattering the bone.

Tyrfing was a focus of power as well as a weapon; to kill with it was an act of grim consequence, tantamount to enduring death itself. But the werewolf, of course, was not dead, merely wounded, and Morlock found he could shake off the shock of its suffering relatively quickly. He hoped the wolf would not heal soon; he had other trouble at hand.

The two pikemen were bearing down on him. Their weapons were excellent for keeping a party of unarmed prisoners in line, less effective against a skilled swordsman. Morlock ran to meet them and was past the range of their pikeheads before they could stab at him. He wounded the nearer pikeman on the arm with Tyrfing, and reached past him with his free hand to break the neck of the one beyond. The dying one fell like a stone, gasping his last breaths out uselessly; the other staggered backward, yammering, and strove to stab at Morlock with his pike.