Thump-thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump-thump. Eon ran through the forest, his feet flying in his desperate attempt to escape his home, his family—his past. He did not know where he would go, or even where he could go. Who would accept him, half wolf, half man? Eon could see no reason why they should, considering all that his people had done to deserve their evil reputation. His only desire at this moment was to die away from their wicked ways.
Eon skidded to a stop. Arrayed before him was the majority of the verto-lupine pack.
“Eon,” Arcania greeted her son. “How good to see you. We were hoping you’d be headed this way.” The great black she-wolf paced tauntingly around Eon, sounding almost amiable. “That was quite a stunt you pulled back there,” suddenly her voice turned vicious, “killing one of your own pack-mates. But then it’s not much of a surprise, now is it?” The others were all glaring at the offender, as if they could, with their eyes, burn him to a cinder. “You never fit in with us, boy. You just don’t have the stomach that the rest of us do. You do not belong with us.”
“Then let me go,” Eon finally spoke up. “All I want is to go my separate way.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let that happen; there is a blood-debt that must be paid. You helped the humans killed Stultus and Festinus, and for that your life is forfeit.”
By now Eon was encircled by snarling wolves, every one anxious to taste his blood. He had deprived them of their earlier hunt; they would take his life in its place. But he would not make it easy on them. Crouching down, teeth bared, Eon prepared to fight for his life. It was a battle already lost, but still he would resist. There was Panatra, dark and grinning. She had always hated her white-haired brother. Beside her stood Robur, the youth he had fought against the year before. He saw Altus, the oldest of the verto-lupines; even she was eager to watch him die.
They were closing in, all the familiar wolven faces of Eon’s childhood, not one of them showing the least compassion, guilt, or even hesitance at the crime they were about to commit, for in their reckoning, it was not a crime at all. They were a sea of black and gray and brown surrounding the lone white wolf. Panatra lunged first, usurping what was Arcania’s right as pack leader. Darting in at Eon, she bit at his neck. Eon snarled and easily dodged; this first blow was not meant to strike, only to torment. The blood would come later.
Arcania was next to feint at the unhappy victim. Eon responded by snapping his jaws at her. Their leader having made her first move, the rest of the pack began their assaults. None of them had struck him yet; he ducked, swung his claws, and bit at his attackers, landing an occasional hit on one or two of them. Robur was the first to make contact with Eon. When his target was sufficiently distracted, the strong gray wolf closed his mouth on the younger wolf’s hind leg. Searing pain shot through Eon’s body like a poison, and for a moment, just a moment, he stumbled back upon it. That moment was long enough. The other wolves flew in hard and fast, biting and tearing with tooth and claw. Returning what blows he could, the object of this violence slowly lost ground, forced to draw in tighter and tighter to avoid his antagonists. He caught sight of Panatra just a split second before she plunged toward him, jaws wide apart. This was his chance. Ducking under her onslaught, the white-furred youth sunk his teeth into the soft flesh of his sister’s throat.
With a half-yelp, half-snarl of pain, Panatra tried to extricate herself from Eon’s grip. He did not release her. Arcania, seeing her daughter’s trouble, smirked with self-satisfaction. She deserves this and more for trying to steal my rights as the pack leader, the alpha-female thought. All the same, she would rather not lose the most promising of her followers just now. At last Arcania took advantage of Eon’s distraction. Ramming into him headlong, she knocked him to the forest floor. Eon’s jaws loosed their captive, who staggered back away from the center of the circle. Now the wolves set upon him with all their might, biting, clawing, crushing; all Eon could do was flail in vain at the aggressors.
It’s over, the young wolf-boy thought. I’ll be dead in a minute; just as well, I suppose—one less villain to plague the world.
Even as he spoke these words to himself, Eon could feel the life slipping away from his body, replaced by pain. His motions were sluggish and weak. He did not have much time left. The high, beautifully pitched call of a hunting horn split the early morning air, two notes of courage and hope cutting in on the haze filling Eon’s brain. The verto-lupines stopped, suddenly paralyzed with the sheer terror of the revelation this horn implied. To them it was not beautiful, but deadly; an audible threat to their sport.
It came again, along with the sound of hoof-beats and shouts. An arrow slammed into a nearby tree. Now if there was anything that the verto-lupines hated, it was being caught off guard in the daylight by mounted hunters. Such an encounter almost always ended fatally for the night-loving prowlers. A second arrow whistled by, striking Robur in the upper foreleg.
“Run!” Arcania cried. “Back to the den!”
At this decree, panic broke out. Madly, the wolves bolted for safety, forgetting their prisoner. For his part, Eon just lay there, incapable of rising, resigned to whatever fate his rescuer assigned him. But no one came. The sun grew hot upon his thick fur, and quietly he became again a boy. He was bleeding, staining the dirt and dried leaves beneath him a dark red. Several hours passed before Eon again roused himself to do anything, but at length he grew thirsty, and rose, with much difficulty, from the ground.
Braced on a tree, he noticed once more the arrow that had thudded into it. Its shaft was of a black wood; its fletching was dyed a rich purple color—precisely the shade of a ripened plum. Eon had never seen its like; the villagers used light brown shafts, and they never would have wasted precious dye on fletchings. Also, this arrow was much straighter than any of the villagers’.
Shaking his head groggily, the battered boy made his stumbling way in the direction of a stream he could just hear in the distance. Aided by the solid support of the trees, Eon at last reached his destination, the arrow still clasped in his hand. At the stream’s bank, he dropped to his belly in utter exhaustion. A full two minutes passed before he managed to summon enough strength to ease his thirst. This done, he stood back up and cast about for the direction he needed to go. The verto-lupines might be held at bay while the sun was up, but once night fell, they would return to see whether or not the hunter had killed their prey. Eon must put as many miles as possible between himself and his pursuers, he knew. Shakily putting one foot in front of the other, he set off again away from the village.
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Evening had fallen. The verto-lupines were again bold and reckless. They sat in a circle atop the hill, in human form, discussing heatedly whether or not they should investigate as to the matter of Eon. Some argued that the boy had been half-dead when they left him, and by no means capable either of fighting with or of running from any hunter. The others claimed that there was no harm in making certain. At night, they raved, the verto-lupines were unstoppable. Slowly, these voices, led by Panatra, began to drown out the others. Arcania remained silent. When at last she spoke, it was to call the others to order.
“Silence. Do you forget the arrow in Robur’s leg? Or is it that some of you are too young to understand its significance?” Asked Arcania, looking pointedly at Panatra.
“It is obviously that of some foreign hunter,” replied the black-haired girl, “who was probably lost in our woods.” Arcania merely sneered in mockery, inspiring her daughter’s pupil-less black eyes to narrow. “Do enlighten us, Mother.”
“You are correct in your assumption of its foreignness, Panatra, but nothing else.” She turned to the rest of the pack, whose undivided attention she now held. “The use of this certain black wood for arrow shafts is unique to but one race; the Kadelli.” This remark brought forth much muttering and whispering among the older wolves, but the younger ones could merely cast about curious glances.
“The Kadelli,” Arcania continued, “were the cause of our migration from the sea. Their arrows—arrows such as the one in Robur’s leg—shot down hundreds of verto-lupines. What made them so deadly, besides their marksmanship, was their magical craft. They could cast a spell to track their prey without the use of bloodhounds, could make themselves unseen to the eyes of mortals, and could instill sudden, unwarranted fear in the minds of those they chased. Above all, they never gave up. I don’t know a single man among them that ever turned back from a hunt once begun.”
At last true silence reigned. Every pair of eyes rested in awe upon the arrow placed in front of them. Only Panatra showed the least sign of scorn. After a long pause, she finally spoke.
“Then are we to cower in our caves for the rest of our lives, never daring to venture forth to hunt again?” A few of the younger pack members began stir once more, but the majority still showed signs of timidity. “I see one arrow. In my way of thinking, that means one hunter, and I, personally, do not intend to back down from a single adversary, be he a human, a Kadelli, or a walking tree. You pups can stay here if you like, but as for me, I’m going to make sure that our traitor is really dead.”
This little speech worked wonders on the courage of the verto-lupines, none of whom liked to be insulted. Even Altus rose indignantly. Arcania snarled soundlessly. She did not like the power her daughter seemed to possess to inspire her followers into action. She attempted to restore her own authority by commanding a compromise.
“A hunting party will go forth. If the betrayer still lives, five should be more than enough to finish him. If he is dead, which is more likely, they will leave his corpse to rot. If the Kadelli has taken him, the traitor’s fate will be worse than any we could have devised.”
Volunteers for the hunting party were not in short supply. If Eon was alive, he would not be for long.
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Eon had been walking now for hours. His back ached, his head ached, his feet ached; his whole body ached. For all the time he had been traveling he had progressed probably only about a mile or so. He wanted to turn back into a wolf, but had not the energy to do so. The mere task of walking took all the strength he had. The sun was beginning to set, and the outcast knew that the upcoming hours would be some of the most dangerous, and possibly the last, of his short life. The normal forest noises were subdued; the birds and beasts that normally made such a ruckus seemed to understand the impending peril of the lone fugitive. He had been walking toward the sunset, in a westerly direction. Now, however, with the sun about to vanish completely from the sky, the battle-weary verto-lupus began to worry how he would keep his direction, not that that direction led to anything important. He just wanted to keep moving away from his point of origin. With the last light of the fading sun, Eon caught sight of an odd pine tree. Its mighty trunk stretched a good hundred feet above the point when all the others stopped. To encircle its base would have taken seven tall men with their arms spread wide. Yet it was not the gigantic size of the tree that attracted Eon’s attention. It was, rather, the brilliant purple arrow protruding from its bark. It was the very twin of the arrow he still clutched in his blood-soaked hand.
Eon paused uncertainly beneath the gargantuan pine. It was stuck in the tree in such a way that it signaled him to turn sharply to his left. He could not quite understand it, but somehow he was certain it had been left as a kind of a signpost for him to follow. Yet if he did go in the direction it pointed, he might walk right into a trap. Then again, if the archer had wanted him dead, all he would have needed to do was shoot a third arrow. But in the end, whether or not the man meant Eon harm, this new course could be no worse than the one he was currently on. So, with a fresh burst of energy, he ripped the arrow from the tree trunk and shifted to become a wolf. The keener senses of smell and hearing that accompanied this transformation would prove useful in the dark.
After about half an hour of traveling in this new direction (with the arrows clutched doggedly in his mouth), Eon began to hear the sounds of a waterfall. Sure enough, there she stood, a perfect fifty-foot-tall lady clothed in a cascade of liquid diamonds. The plunging water reflected the moonlight like so many shards of a broken mirror. Never before had Eon visited this particular part of the forest; he would have remembered the beautiful wall of water that now stood before him. Eon slid into the cool water in the pool at its base. The hunter must have directed him here so he could bathe and thus become less easily detected by his fellow verto-lupines.
Dog-paddling across to the other side, Eon climbed out with the intent of continuing on his way. However, upon extricating himself from the water, the young wolf found himself face to face with yet another purple-fletched arrow. It pointed back in the direction of the waterfall. Eon could not help his curiosity. Back in he plunged, striking out towards the fall itself, now with three arrows held in his mouth. It was hard to tell, what with the roar of the crashing water deafening him, but he thought he could hear a slight echo, as if there was a hollow behind the waterfall. With a little difficulty, for the pounding water fell with quite a force and he was still weak from the beating he had taken, the wolf entered the hidden cave, for such it was.
Shaking the water droplets from his thick white fur, Eon looked around. The shallow indentation reached about three feet into the rocky cliff and stretched about eight feet from left to right. The ceiling was maybe six feet from the floor, though it tapered downward toward the back. In one rear corner lay a thin burlap pallet. Directly at its foot was a small sack of the same material, bulging slightly with its contents. On the center of the floor sat a thin sheet of paper on which were drawn several small sketches. Stooping to examine this item, Eon transformed back into a boy. However, even with the sharper eyesight of a human, the light was too dim to allow a proper interpretation of the drawings.
Thus put off, Eon turned instead to the things contained in the burlap sack. He laid each article separately on the stone floor. First were a few small pieces of dry bread, succeeded by three linen tunics, two pairs of cotton breeches, and a loincloth. Then came a hooded black cloak of a material foreign to Eon; it was light-weight but seemed durable. A length of rope followed, coarse and reassuring in its complete normality, along with four small candle stubs, a water skin, and a tinderbox. The last item in the sack was a leather belt, complete with a full money-pouch and a long dagger.
The thoughts did not race through his mind, but came slowly stumbling in. The hunter had left money and clothes, so he probably intended Eon to enter some kind of town. The problem was that the boy had never heard of a town that lay to the north. But who was he to question the person who had delivered him thus far safely from his enemies? Yawning drowsily, Eon lay down on the pallet and pulled his new cloak over himself.
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While Eon was making himself at home in this haven, his pack brothers and sisters were examining the site where the Kadelli archer had come upon them. The arrow that had hit the tree had been removed, Panatra observed, but either the stranger or her brother could have taken it. She was inclined to believe the latter of these, seeing as there were no horse prints near the scene. A trail of blood led away to the west.
So my brother got away, Panatra mused. No matter. We will soon find him. Even Panatra herself could not explain why she hated Eon so much. As long as she could remember, he had driven her crazy. Perhaps it was jealousy of her brother’s firm resolution that drove the she-wolf to hate him so. For Panatra, too, had once felt as Eon felt, that killing the humans was wrong, but her family had taught her otherwise. As a pup, she had taken up the practice of pretending to be even more bloodthirsty than her playmates. After all these years, she no longer needed to pretend.
“He’s not here,” one of Panatra’s followers announced after thoroughly inspecting the whole site. Panatra’s eyes snapped up at him.
“Just now figuring that out, are we?” The other verto-lupines laughed harshly at this mockery of their fellow. Panatra cut them off with a growl. “Follow the blood trail. You,” she turned toward the blunderer, “see if you can make yourself useful; keep your nose down and try to pick up the scent—if you can.”
Howling with arcane laughter, the wolven hunting party set off on the trail of their prey. They ran with an eerily graceful speed, much faster than the injured Eon had been traveling. The thought of catching the fugitive gave them a wild excitement, enough to sustain them at high speed without stopping for rest. Past the shallow stream they raced, and continued to race, and would have kept on racing had not one of them suddenly veered to the left. It was he was to have been tracking Eon’s scent. Once their mistake had been thus pointed out, the others were quick to take up the new path.
After a very brief amount of running, they too arrived at the large waterfall. Panatra caught herself noting the beauty of its crystalline glimmer and mentally clawed herself. Such thoughts would not do for the future leader of the verto-lupines. What would be beautiful would be to see the life leaving Eon’s body before her eyes. The various members of the hunting party circled slowly round the pool, applying their noses to the ground carefully so as not to miss a single clue. There was not a one to be found. Even their powerful senses could not detect the scent of their prey. Panatra was the first to dive in. The rest followed her lead. Around and around she swam, checking the edge of the water for footprints. Again she was disappointed.
At last the she-wolf decided to move on. With a piercing howl she leapt from the water and bounded off in a direction that would have continued Eon’s earlier course. They would catch him yet.
