Rokhlenu's song in reply was one of regret. He had brought this scent of trouble on her, and he would lead the pack hunting it away from her. He would take the other escaped prisoners with him and leave. The Sardhluun would pursue them and leave the outliers alone.
Wuinlendhono barked that if he took one more step toward the doorway she would kill him-kill! kill! kill! Males did not proffer their love to her and then withdraw it. She would rip his belly open. She would kill any female he tried to mate with. She would slander his name before every pack in Wuruyaaria-in every den of flea-bitten stray dogs who roamed the north. He must not leave. Would he not lie down and be reasonable? Why, oh why were beautiful males so reckless and wayward?
Rokhlenu suavely suggested it was because the smells emitted by mateworthy females in their presence drove them mad.
Wuinlendhono leapt on him then, and they rolled around on the floor for a while, nipping each other on the shoulders and pulling each other's tails.
After some more play of this sort, the First Wolf and her intended were lying face-to-face, breathing rather heavily, but discussing issues of a coldly practical nature.
Wuinlendhono agreed with Rokhlenu that war with the Sardhluun was technically war with all the treaty packs. But she pointed out that no one likes to help a loser. The Sardhluun had already been humiliated by the escape from the Vargulleion; that was why they were barking so loudly, to drown the sound of their shame. Citizens were laughing at them on all the mesas of Wuruyaaria, all the way down to Apetown: that was what all her spies said. If the Sardhluun also lost the prisoners in the Khuwuleion, they lost half the reason for their existence, and no one would lift a paw for them.
Rokhlenu said that she had a kind of point, but that the assault on the Khuwuleion was trickier than she made it sound. With all their disadvantages in breaking out of the Vargulleion, they had at least had the advantage of being there, inside the prison. They didn't first have to cross the plantation walls, alerting every citizen in the Sardhluun, and then break into the prison itself. Nor would it be New Year's Night when they did, with half the guards gone and half the guards who remained smoke-drunk and stupid.
Wuinlendhono suggested that they make the attempt during one of the primary elections the Sardhluun were holding this month. Many guards would be absent to attend the election; the plantation walls would be more thinly guarded. As for the prison defenses …well, they would think of something. Perhaps if that crazy Khretvarrgliu could be driven bear-shirt mad again, the guards would run squeaking away. She supposed half the stories she had heard about that night were lies, but even so …
Rokhlenu whistled thoughtfully, curling his tongue to flute the sound as he mulled this over. She did not know Morlock, he sang at last, or she would not have suggested this. Still, there might be something Morlock could do for them.
She sang that if Orlock-
Morlock, he corrected her.
-if Yorlock-
Morlock, he corrected her.
-if Nyorlock-and that was close enough, an evil ghost take the neverwolf's unpronounceable name-that if Nyorlock could make gold out of mud, he could perhaps make more warlike and useful metals.
Rokhlenu sang concordantly and looked deep into her dark eyes agleam with moonlight.
She got to her feet irritably and asked if he had gotten laid yet.
He sang sadly that he would wait until they mated, that he didn't mind waiting.
She snapped that she did mind. The musk he emitted was making females wet in their nether parts for miles around. This nuisance must cease. She needed him to act with a cold clear head; she needed him to understand what he was doing when he bonded with her for life; she needed him to not have any regrets about last lost chances. Because he was not chasing other tails once they were together; she would not be shamed that way. If he needed the name of a good whore, she could find one for him.
In a bitter angular song not far removed from barking, he replied that he would never shame her that way, and he wondered why she was shaming him so. He didn't want his first coupling with her tainted with the stink of another female. His love for her was a sacred fire; it pained him, but he did not fear the pain.
His song was becoming more lyrical, and she interrupted him with a bitter barking laugh. She knew males better than that! she barked. He must be up to something.
He got to his feet, looked at her, and left without a word.
She repressed the impulse to run after him barking (get a whore! get a whore! get a whore!). That would do no good to anyone. She wondered what would.
This was the room where she usually slept in her night shape. Before she curled up in the moonlight, she went to a corner of the room where there was a tapestry on a frame against the wall. She dragged the frame aside. Behind the tapestry, mounted on a wooden frame, was Morlock's drawing of Rokhlenu standing in triumph over the dragon he had killed. One of her agents had bought it for her in the city, and she was very pleased with it. She had looked on it many times during the day, but this was the first time she had seen it with the eyes of her night shape. It looked different, more abstract, starker, not less beautiful.
She shook her head wearily. He would have to do something stupid, something thoughtless, something that reassured her that he was just another thump-footed, fat-nosed, bristle-witted male. Because if he didn't, she might really have to fall in love with him, and that would be a ghost-bitten nuisance.
She lay looking on his image, basking in the moonlight and his lingering scent, until sleep came to her.
Her dreams, as usual, were nightmares. Often she dreamed of her dead husbands; this afternoon, she had dreamed of Rokhlenu standing among them. But tonight it was a much older nightmare, her very first recurring nightmare. She was a child again, back in the Khuwuleion, and they were torturing her mother for a reason no one ever explained. She screamed for someone to save them, but she knew no one would ever save them. Even in her dream, she knew that was just an empty dream.
Chapter Seventeen: Fight and Bite
It was raining the next day-a strangely summery rain, with the warm air so dense with water that it had to sweat some out. Rokhlenu donned a cloak for his walk across the outlier settlement, and before he took too many steps he was overwarm. If the cloak hadn't been a gift from his intended, he would have draped it on a railing and walked away from it.
When he got to the far side of the settlement, he could see that Morlock was already at work in front of his cave, hammering away at something lying on a flat stone or anvil.
The wicker boat was resting at the water's edge on the base of the hill. Rokhlenu stared at it, wondering whether to call to Morlock or flounder across the water. The wicker boat, which had a glassy orb on its prow, swung toward him and proceeded across the stretch of swampy, rain-dented water.
This made the hairs on Rokhlenu's neck and ears rise up. On the other hand, it was rather convenient. He stepped into the boat and, using an oar he found inside the craft, paddled across to the other side. He eyed the up- and downhill stream dubiously, then climbed the slope to Morlock's cave.
Morlock's anvil was just at the entrance to his cave, and he was working sheltered from the rain. He nodded agreeably at Rokhlenu as he approached and said, "With you in a moment."
It wasn't long, in fact. Morlock was hammering what appeared to be a spearhead, and presently he tossed it into a vat of water to cool, alongside some others that were already there.
Rokhlenu's first thought was that Wuinlendhono was right and that Morlock must have been using his talents to make base metals to work with. But then he saw that the anvil was a stone, and that the hammerhead and the spearheads appeared to be made of clear greenish blue glass.
"There is so much sand and lime about," Morlock said, when he noticed him noticing the glass. "It made more sense to use it than try to find or make metal."