C. Cherryh: Swift-Spear

"Or would you challenge me?" Swift-Spear put out his hand, watching her, watching her stance, her muscles. Would she dare? "Give me the spear, little one, your time will come." His voice was gentle, but his clenched teeth made his jaw muscles stand out in high relief.

And she handed the weapon to him as she must. This was not the time or place and he could defeat her easily, perhaps then banish.her from the tribe.

He turned his back on her, the spear in his hand, and she moved away, her pride hot. This day she would not forget.

"What-?" Rellah began.

"Enough." Swift-Spear dared meet those blue eyes, dared for the first time to meet the high one's wrath, and he felt it heatless compared to the fire burning in him. "I will speak," he said; and the whole tribe watched as the high one stepped back, her face taut. But she said no words, sent no thoughts.

Graywolf understood all this. He smiled, squatting down to hug Moonfinder, who watched it all. He took it in, learning from this chief, this pack-leader who ruled them all.

"The humans will come, as they have always done." Swift-Spear hefted the spear, not thinking, not questioning the words that rose in him. He trusted them. He trusted his heart and mind to work as one, and to do and say the right thing. "But this time we will not run away. -Rockarm-" He looked suddenly at an older, scarred Wolfrider. "What would you do-if humans caught your pretty Sunflame?"

The elf looked down at his daughter, his mouth hard. "I would go and get her back." Rockarm's dark eyes glittered in the starlight.

"And-" Swift-Spear moved within inches of Rockarm, feeling the elder elf's hot breath on his skin. "-What would you do if, as you were about to free her, the humans thrust her through"-he jabbed with Skyfire's weapon-"with a spear, and killed her?"

Rockarm looked about him, unsure. But his chiefs eyes demanded truth.

"I would kill them," Rockarm said, his voice harsh.

"If they catch her, if we run now and they do catch her, they will kill her, Rockarm, as they will kill us all." Swift- Spear turned away, paced the circle, catching each elf s eyes. "It has ever been the way of humans." He spun about suddenly. "Is that not right, Talen?"

The others moved away from the high one as Talen tried to answer the chief. "Well, they have, I-"

"They have killed, Talen. Did they not kill our people when first we came to this world?"

"Yes, they did, we all know that, I mean…" Talen could not grasp Swift-Spear's mind, could not find his thoughts. The chief was closed to his probing: his mind, if not his emotions, was closed about in metal.

"And have they not killed us ever since; have they not always killed?"

Talen just nodded. Swift-Spear felt the power, the aching power of his words.

"I will tell you something," Swift-Spear spoke quietly, once again pacing the circuit of the crowd. "I thought that we could learn from the men. We had become too much wolf." No one reacted to this. "I thought-this is their world, they were here first, they will know how to live, how to build the right way.'" He stopped and planted the spear in front of him. "Since Timmorn's day, we have learned from our wolf-brothers. They have taught us to survive. But I want more than that, much more!" He pointed at the stars. "We came from there, did we not, Rellah?"

She just shook her head once, slowly, her mind confused and lost. She could not see his path.

"Did any of you-" Swift-Spear gritted his teeth. "Did any of you ever think of going back?"

"Of course. But it's impossible. We don't know the way. The sky-mountain is lost, destroyed," Rellah answered him absently, her mind still trying to decipher the puzzle that was Swift-Spear.

"Destroyed." Swift-Spear shook his head. "What do the humans do if one of their stone tents is destroyed?" He did not wait for an answer. "They rebuild!"

"Swift-Spear," Talen interrupted him. "We cannot rebuild the sky-mountain, boy, it was not something that was built as the humans build with stone."

"Now!" the chief shouted at him, "now, no, we can't rebuild, but we could, if we quit running, if we built instead of hiding."

"That is not the way!" Skyfire could keep quiet no longer. "We hunt, we dance, we love, each day we move, like-"

"-like wolves," Gray wolf added. His yellow eyes gleamed in the moonlight. O Swift-Spear, my cousin, oh, you dream such dreams.

"We are not wolves, we are not men, and-" Swift-Spear withdrew the spear from the earth, gazing at it, rolling the head in his hands. "We are not elves, not, at least, what elves once were. We are more-or less-depending on what choice we make."

"What sort of choice?" someone shouted out.

"Not to run. To build-if we wish. Perhaps we will not build with stones and clay as men do, but perhaps with mind and magic as once the elves did." He looked up. "I, we, we have learned nothing. We have learned to fight, we have learned that we must fight, for food, or warmth-fight other animals, fight the weather, fight the land itself. And now we must finally learn how to fight men!" He crouched over, ignoring his newly-healed wounds, bunching his muscles to feel the thrill of their strength. He walked in a circle, stalking like a hunter.

"I will fight," he chanted in a monotone. "I will fight the men as they choose to fight, not chief to chief, but tribe to tribe. I will wait for them when they come to the forest. I will wait with wolf cunning and wolf strength, and I will trap them with elf mind and elf magic. I will kill them, drive them from the forest. I will burn their stone tents as they would bum our woods!" He stood up and turned to Gray wolf, smiling at his cousin. "I will get a new spear, a man-hunting spear." With that, he cast Skyfire's weapon into the night air. It flew straight and true, seeming to pierce the stars themselves. "Then, one day, I will follow that spear!" He stood, waiting.

"I will fight with you, my chief." Graywolf strode out, and he, too, turned to stare at the high ones.

"And I," said Rockarm.

"And I, and I…" other voices added.

Swift-Spear smiled. It was change, hard change, but life was hard.

He turned to the eager faces. "We must plan," he said, and walked away.

The high ones stood together, undecided, unsure what this meant, or what to do about it. Skyfire watched as one by one her followers walked after Swift-Spear. She turned on her heel. This was not right, this was not the way.

And Willowgreen watched them all, with stinging, silent tears falling on the ground at her feet.

The men came. They moved into the woods as silently as they knew how, their eyes wary and their weapons sharp.

The forest waited for them, cool in the shadows, a breeze making the limbs sway, arms waving them on, deeper, deeper into its waiting grasp, and into the hands of its children.

The men were hunters now, but they could not match the Wolfriders, who had not only intelligence and cunning, but animal senses. And so, unwillingly, their chief led them, along the false trail the elves had laid to show the men their path to death.

Kerthan grasped his spear tighter. It was darker here amongst the trees than he had thought it would be. The forest had long been man's enemy, and he knew that somewhere in it the demons waited. But the fight at the village had proved that, fierce and savage though the devils were, they could be killed; and though he remembered well the strength of the demon chiefs arms, he was sure that his own men, so much larger than the demons, were more than a match for their enemy. Besides, it was daytime. Man's time.

He waved two young hunters to the front. The trail was well hidden, but his men could follow it. The demons were overconfident, trusting in the forest to protect them. Huh, he thought, we will find their camp, we will burn them out, we will slay every one of them, and their werewolves! Then the forest will be ours!