"Archers!" he thundered with what was nearly his last breath. "Sardhluun boat outside the fence! Kill all but the steersman. He's one of ours."
It was sheer bluff; he doubted that there were any archers within reach of his voice. In fact, he hoped there weren't: they'd be needed far more at the western or eastern edges of town. But it was gratifying to see the speed with which the Sardhluun saboteurs rowed away. He hoped idly that they would knife their steersman also, or at least grow to distrust him.
Rokhlenu rested for a moment in the water and then clambered up a support column to the surface of the boardwalk. He loped through the chaotic settlement-some running home to their lair-towers; others hustling away with property in their hands, obviously intent on flight; others rushing about with no clear goal in mind. The settlement had never been attacked, had never been important enough to attack, and many were panicking.
He started collecting these frantic types. "You!" he'd say. "Come with me!" And sometimes they'd run away, and sometimes they'd fall in behind him. Eventually he was leading a large number of citizens (male and female, in the night shape, the day shape, and every gradation between), and others fell in without being asked.
He had no idea what he was going to do with all these followers; it just seemed like a good idea to calm the panic on the boarded ways however he could.
By the time he reached the western wall, he had a pretty good idea what he was going to do with them, though. From some distance away he could see that someone had threaded the First Wolf's lair-tower with support cables. It was leaning precipitously to the west, but the cables were slowly dragging it back into an upright position.
He was not surprised to see a bedraggled and filthy Morlock directing the work. He did feel a little surprise, but perhaps not so much, to see that Hlupnafenglu was operating as his assistant. But they needed more hands to do the work, and he sent all the citizens in more or less human form over to help. Then he took the citizens in night shape toward the western wall. There had obviously been an attack in force while he was chasing saboteurs, and there seemed to have been some casualties.
He felt foreboding as he approached, and in truth the news was very bad. A band of his irredeemables was milling about in confusion; they parted like a curtain before him and he saw the bodies laid out on the boardwalk, dead and dying. There were too many there, too many, and none of them Sardhluun.
Apparently, when the tower-lair did not breach the wall, the Sardhluun archers had switched tactics and started aiming their shots beyond the wall, from boats rowed close enough so that they could do real harm within the settlement. Fire had chewed holes in the wall at several points, and other sections had been pierced by blunt force at the water leveclass="underline" rams mounted on boats had done that, he guessed. Many werewolves had been killed when the Sardhluun attacked in earnest …and Olleiulu, Rokhlenu saw with dismay, was one of them. He lay pierced by many poison-tipped arrows, his one eye staring lifeless at the rainy sky.
Even worse, Wuinlendhono lay among the wounded, and the wound was a serious one in the neck. Kneeling down over the First Wolf's unconscious form, Rokhlenu guessed that the arrow had been poisoned: the blood seeping through the bandages reeked of wolfbane.
"Thank ghost you're here," said a voice behind him, and he looked up to see Lekkativengu, Olleiulu's claw-fingered, wolf-footed sidekick. "We didn't know what to do," Lekkativengu added. "You were gone, the First Wolf is out, and we can't find her Second."
Rokhlenu didn't like the sound of this. A decent sidekick would have risen to the occasion and taken charge until his principal (or his principal's principaclass="underline" Rokhlenu) returned. Maybe Lekkativengu had done that, but it didn't seem like it.
"Well, I'm here now," he said. "Gather a crew and get the wounded at least a bowshot away from the walls."
"The Sardhluun have retreated," Lekkativengu pointed out.
"They. Might. Come. Back."
"Oh. Oh, yes."
"Take the First Wolf to our-" barn "-lair right away. See that her bodyguard and some of our fifth-floor crew watch over her. That's how I want it, Lekkativengu; don't second-guess me." With Olleiulu the caution would have been unnecessary, but he wanted to let Lekkativengu know he was not ready to trust him yet.
"Yes, Chieftain. I won't, Chieftain."
"Afterward we can burn the bodies of our dead."
"Yes, Chieftain. What should we do-what should we do about these?"
Lekkativengu pointed with a claw-twisted finger toward a heap of dark objects in the shadow of the western wall. At first he thought they were stones or something laid by to be thrown as missiles toward attackers. Then he saw they were severed heads, human and lupine.
"The Sardhluun threw them over before they retreated," Lekkativengu said, unsteadily. "With slings and things, I guess. It was raining heads for a while. So weird."
"No doubt. May ghosts chew their canine innards, the flea-eating Sardhluun sheepdogs."
"Yes, Chief."
"We'll recognize some of those faces, Lekkativengu."
"Yes, Chieftain. One-I think it was-I haven't seen her in a few years. She might have been dead anyway. But I think it's my mother."
The claw-fingered werewolf's dismal confusion now stood explained, anyway. "We'll burn them with our own dead," Rokhlenu decided, after a moment. "Whoever they were, they're in our pack now."
"Yes, Chief."
"See to the First Wolf and return to me here," Rokhlenu said, gripping him briefly on the forearm.
The grief-stricken werewolf went about his work, and Rokhlenu turned to his own. He stationed their archers (pitifully few and rather ineffectivelooking) with lookouts at the breaches in the western wall. He sent messengers to the eastern side of the settlement, to find out how the day had gone there, and others to look for Liudhleeo: she might be no ghost-sniffer or wonder-worker, but she was the best healer they had, and he wanted her at Wuinlendhono's side.
When the chaos began to assume a pleasingly deceptive appearance of order, Rokhlenu ventured over to where Morlock stood, saturninely directing the securing of the support cables on the First Wolf's lair-tower.
"What a moon-barking, ghost-bitten, knuckle-sucking, blood-spattered disaster," he said in an undertone to Morlock, who nodded moodily.
"And it could have been even worse," Rokhlenu added. "If the Sardhluun had wanted to spend the warriors, they could have levelled the settlement down to the marsh."
Morlock nodded. "We did better when we had less," he said.
The remark stuck with Rokhlenu through the rest of that weary, grim day of aftermath. Starting with their bare hands, they had battered their way out of the Vargulleion. Now they had more to lose (he thought anxiously of Wuinlendhono). But they had more to work with, too. There should have been a way to avoid this-and, more important, a way to avoid something like it happening again. Because he doubted the Sardhluun were done with them yet.
His doubts were confirmed late that afternoon when Hrutnefdhu came scampering to tell him that there was an emissary from the Sardhluun Pack at the southern gate.
There was no word from Liudhleeo about Wuinlendhono, and the Second Wolf of the outliers was nowhere to be found-had apparently fled, along with many others, after the Sardhluun attack. So Rokhlenu went to meet the emissary himself.
Standing under the red banner of truce on the boarded way outside Southgate was Wurnafenglu. He had some lesser werewolves, all more or less human in appearance, about him, but he was clearly the emissary with the most bite.
The guards at the gate, none of whom were escapees from the Vargulleion, stood watching the Sardhluun werewolves but saying nothing.
Rokhlenu directed them to open the gate. He put aside his stabbing spear and stepped out onto the boarded way.
"What is your message?" he said. "I will bring it to the First Wolf."
Wurnafenglu smiled a wide predatory smile. "I would enter and deliver it myself. But our emissaries have not always been treated with respect among the huts-on-stilts of the outlier pack-"