Rokhlenu came into the audience chamber, a great gray werewolf with eyes as blue as Trumpeter at first rising. He gazed about in astonishment at the insolence of the emissaries, the timidity of the outliers. He dashed across the open floor and leapt onto the dais steps, wheeling about to snarl in the face of the leading emissary.
The emissary knew him, though the reverse was not true. The emissary barked that he would kill-kill-kill Rokhlenu and drag his disembowelled corpse back to the Werowance and Wurnafenglu for the prize. He reared up on his back feet and howled his anger.
Wuinlendhono shot past Rokhlenu's shoulder like a black lightning bolt. She struck the lead emissary in the chest and he tumbled backward on the dais. While he was disoriented by his fall, her shining teeth fastened on his throat.
The other emissaries started forward to aid their leader, but Rokhlenu charged, snarling, to warn them off. They backed slowly away. He wore only one honor-tooth, but it was a dragon's tooth. They had not been present in the Vargulleion on the dreadful New Year's Night, but they had heard about it …from the survivors.
There was a silence in which they all heard the lead emissary's neck break.
Wuinlendhono dragged the corpse over to the nearest patch of moonlight and waited for the werewolf to revive. When he began to move his head feebly, she tore with her jaws at the cords around his neck and sent the honorteeth skittering across the floor of the audience chamber.
To the reviving werewolf she sang sweetly that he should be sure to tell the Werowance, be sure to tell Wurnafenglu, be sure to tell his mate and cubs how he had lost his honor-teeth-that he had lost them to a female.
Desperately, the disgraced wolf tried to grab at a few of the lost teeth with his mouth, but she headed him off, snarling, and he retreated back beside his peers, his head still hanging at an odd angle.
The other two emissaries sang despondently that this was a sad way to treat them and that the Werowance would be angry.
Shoulder to shoulder now, Wuinlendhono and Rokhlenu faced the three emissaries down, forcing them backward, barking that they should go! go! go! while they had one honor-tooth or testicle among them.
Olleiulu appeared at the entrance of the chamber with an unruly pack of irredeemables at his heels, mostly in their night shapes. They parted to let the emissaries through, and barked derisively, from human and lupine throats alike, as the three Sardhluun werewolves suddenly turned tail and fled into the night.
Wuinlendhono held her aggressive stance until the emissaries had vanished and the volley of insults pursuing them had died down. Then she turned and touched noses with Rokhlenu. Her breath was hot on his face, and he inhaled it like perfume.
She whispered her thanks, sang gently that five was a very lucky number indeed, and asked if he was willing to follow her lead on something.
Every nerve in Rokhlenu's body was ringing like a bronze bell, and he breathed back that he was willing to follow her anywhere. What he really meant was that he was willing to follow her into a nearby room and couple like weasels, and her sinister grin suggested that she understood this.
Nonetheless, she took his answer and bounded back up to First Wolf's couch and lay there.
She sang a song of honor to Rokhlenu and his irredeemables, who had stood forth to defend her and the honor of the outlier pack from the insolence of the flea-bitten Sardhluun guard dogs. A lucky ghost had guided her choice of intended, as he had proven this night. Then she pointedly directed Yaniunulu, the chief of her bodyguard, to sweep up the defeated emissary's honorteeth and present them as a love-gift to her intended, Rokhlenu, glorious singer and hero.
His tail hanging a little low, the reddish wolf moved to obey.
Olleiulu stood forth and said, "If you'll excuse me, Wuinlendhono, high and fierce, I can do that. I'm just a semiwolf, it's no problem for me."
Wuinlendhono crooned that Olleiulu was generous and brave, a warrior whatever shape he happened to wear, and that the work was beneath him; she would let Yaniunulu do it, and perhaps some other humble services around the lair. Meanwhile, Olleiulu had more important work to perform, the labor of a citizen and a fighter.
Stoically, Yaniunulu set about sweeping up the scattered honor-teeth with his tail.
Wuinlendhono asked Olleiulu if her intended had gathered together the agreed-upon settlement in gold.
Olleiulu's eyes crossed a little at this, and he looked anxiously at Rokhlenu for a sign. Rokhlenu nodded, and Olleiulu turned back toward First Wolf and said, "Yes, High Huntress and leader, he has."
Wuinlendhono sang that he could keep it, that she had changed her mind.
Stunned silence greeted this remark, followed by whispers and whistles of wonder. And there was an undercurrent of snarling anger from the irredeemable.. They had not come here to see their chief dishonored.
Not about the marriage, Wuinlendhono sang, when the surprise had begun to subside. On that she was more settled than ever. No, for a marriage settlement, she desired no gold, not she, who was rich enough that her very household servants and maids wore gold teeth. No, she needed no gold. It was blood that she wanted, blood and vengeance on the mangy sheepdogs of the Sardhluun Pack.
Dizzy with the sense that he was bounding along the edge of a crumbling cliff, Rokhlenu cried that the gift was too easy, that they had torn the Sardhluun Pack when they had little to fight with but the chains and stones of the hated Vargulleion.
Wuinlendhono sang back that she knew how brave he and his relentless heroes were, and that any deed requiring no more than bravery and cunning would be a trivial favor to ask of them, but that nonetheless she did want this one thing. The Sardhluun kept another prison for Wuruyaaria: the Khuwuleion, the Stone Lair, where females lay in vile durance. If Rokhlenu and his irredeemables would break the gates of the Khuwuleion and free the prisoners therein, she would life-mate with Rokhlenu the same night, may the ghosts bind her to it.
Rokhlenu sang that he accepted the challenge and that he would break the walls of the Khuwuleion and return to mate with her, still stained with the blood of their common enemies.
Wuinlendhono indicated a polite eagerness for that occasion and dismissed the assembly.
When they were alone, in a more private chamber on the floor above, Rokhlenu wondered aloud whether the frozen stone that his beloved used for a heart had been shedding icy splinters that were lodged in her brain, driving her mad.
Wuinlendhono sang that he was a very witty fellow and that she must remember to write some of these things down when her fingers returned on the morrow.
Rokhlenu insisted that he was essentially serious. It was one thing to rebuke emissaries who had insulted a First Wolf in her own lair. It was another to propose an act of war against a treaty pack. That would engage them in war with all four treaty packs: the entire city of Wuruyaaria.
Wuinlendhono said that he had beautiful eyes, lovely white teeth, and magnificent haunches but that he seemed to have no intellectual attainments at all, except making words sing. Did Rokhlenu not realize that he had already committed an act of war against the Sardhluun by leading the escape from the Vargulleion? That he had implicated her and the outliers in it by taking refuge here-and that she had accepted this by accepting him and his? The Sardhluun had generously promised to overlook her offense if she surren dered the fugitives, and those were the only terms on which they would overlook it. They were in a war already, and they could only look for a route to victory. She suggested that he use that space between his alert and expressive ears for a little activity she liked to call thinking.