The Sardhluun band retreated to re-form their line, but the others charged with them and the melee continued. Werewolves lay dead or dying on the moonless ground. Others, only wounded, were crawling out of the torchlight to hide in the shadows. The Sardhluun retreated again, and suddenly they were not retreating but running, a rout of werewolves in black and green fleeing for their lives down the road to the Long Wall.
The Goweiteiuun did not pursue them but stood cheering on the rally ground. The crowd, too, was cheering: the fight was excellent and unexpected; the stunt with the arrows had been a good one; in all, it was a much better rally than anyone had hoped for. The outliers did follow the Sardhluun until the defeated werewolves began to enter the Low Road Gate through the Long Wall. Then the leader of the outliers turned his fighters back and went to have words with the sad-eyed gnyrrand of the Goweiteiuun band.
"A good fight indeed," signified War. "Yes, I think this will be a fine election year." He demanifested himself with no further symbolism. It was uncivil, but he and Mercy had never been on the best of terms.
Mercy turned to find Death manifest beside her in the form of a spiderlimbed woman.
"How your weakness repels me," Death remarked. "I struck here tonight, and you could do nothing to stop it."
"In the shadows," Mercy replied, "are five she-wolves of the Goweiteiuun. They came to tend the wounded from their pack after tonight's rally. As it happens, all the seriously wounded are Sardhluun. The she-wolves will tend them as their own and no more of them will die."
Death rose to all eight of her legs and looked down on the small mouthless woman with the lotus in her hand. "They will all die," Death signified. "Each one will die, and none will save them."
"On another day. On another night. Tonight," signified Mercy with great satisfaction, "I have struck, and you could do nothing to stop it."
Death indicated amusement, indifference, and patience. Then she ceased to manifest herself.
Mercy stayed to watch the acts that fell within her sphere, and to watch the increasingly intent conversation between the gnyrrands of the Goweiteiuun and the outliers. More deaths would come of that; more fighting; more need for mercy.
Chapter Twenty-one: Night Shapes
Wuinlendhono and Rokhlenu's mating was settled for the fourth day of the year's third month-the month the werewolves called Uyaarwuionien ("third half-lunation of the second moon") but Morlock called Brenting. So he explained to Rokhlenu after Rokhlenu bespoke him as a guest and he accepted. They stood talking outside the irredeemables' lair-now considerably less barnlike thanks to their relative wealth, bite, and a good deal of hard work.
"What difference does it make what the month's called?" Rokhlenu asked Morlock.
"Nothing, except I find Brenting easier to pronounce."
"Are you joking? With that lippy growling bibbly sound at the beginning of the word?"
"You can say it."
"Of course I can say it, but why should I have to? I'm not an ape hanging by my feet from a tree branch. What's so hard to say about Uyaarwuionien? It practically sings its way out of your mouth."
"Not my mouth. I still haven't mastered the vowels of Sunspeech, let alone Moonspeech. Yesterday I asked a citizen selling grain in the marketplace whether she would sell me a pound of wheat flour and she started to take her clothes off."
"Oh. Oh, I see." In Sunspeech, the word luiunhiendhi meant "flour ground from wheat" whereas luunhendhe was an abrupt and rather intimate invitation involving another type of seed entirely. "Still, it's promising that she was so eager to go along. Did you get anywhere with her?"
"I got my flour eventually, if that's what you mean."
It was not what Rokhlenu meant at all. Like many males about to mate for life, he was eager to see his friends married off also, or at least happily settled. Morlock was an awkward prospect in this line.
"Well-pronounce it any way you want, as long as you're there. The act needs witnesses, and I want you to be mine."
"I'm honored, old friend," Morlock said formally, then added, "What should I bring?"
"Just yourself."
"Hm." Morlock looked unhappy. After a moment he said, "Rokhlenu."
"Morlock."
"I think our friendship has passed the point where we waste time being polite to each other?"
"Sometime on day two, I'd say. Why?"
"I remind you that I have never been to a mating of werewolves. If a gift is customary, I would prefer to bring a gift, polite protestations notwithstanding."
"Yes, I see. But I mean what I say, Morlock. When a First Wolf mates, or anyone with a lot of bite, really, it's the custom to not give gifts to the happy couple. They are supposed to be too ghost-bitingly wealthy to need the guests' assistance. We really only want you to be there."
"I will be." Morlock looked closely at him, a faint smile on his face. "You say `happy couple' as if you mean it."
Rokhlenu shrugged and threw a chair at his old friend. Morlock caught it neatly-with his right hand, Rokhlenu noticed with a pang; he hardly ever moved the left hand anymore unless he had to. "I do mean it, I guess," Rokhlenu admitted. "Sad, isn't it?"
"Sad? No. Tragic perhaps."
"Tragic?"
"Happiness is usually tragic."
"It is?"
Morlock twirled the chair nervously in his fingers. He was no longer smiling. "I may be using the wrong words. The word I am thinking of in my native language implies no criticism."
"Now who's being polite? Get out and don't come back until you want to."
Morlock smiled, nodded, threw the chair back at him, and left.
"Your friend has been life-mated," Wuinlendhono said sagely, when Rokhlenu told her about the conversation later.
"Morlock? Married? Impossible."
"I'm sure his wife came to the same conclusion, at some point."
"Don't put the snarl on my old friend."
"He knows stuff about marriage that you don't, is what I'm saying, really. He has a sense of what you're getting into."
"I'm not getting into a what. I'm getting into a who."
"There's a what and a who. The who is your mate; the what is the marriage itself. There's usually trouble with one or the other."
"You worry too much about trouble. What happens can be dealt with. What never happens, you never have to deal with."
"Very philosophical. But I've got enough trouble to worry me. If these parfumiers don't come up with a decent wedding scent I may have to be mated wearing garlic instead of honor-teeth."
"Suits me. That or your natural scents: what could be more intoxicating?"
"It's not for you, clod. If you think I'm going to appear before what passes for the gentry in this bug-bitten swampy suburb without a decent wedding scent you …you can …"
"Think again? Bite you? Whistle up my tail?"
"You may not finish my sentences for me until we're mated and old."
"I can't wait to get started."
The waiting was hard, and became harder as the day got closer.
The day before the mating, grim news came from the city. Rokhlenu's father and two of his brothers had been killed in a night-theft while they were working as rope winders. His other brothers were missing; no one knew where they were-or, at least, if they knew, they would not say.
The messenger came to him just before sunset, and he went immediately to Wuinlendhono. He found her lying in her sleep chamber, just waking up from her afternoon sleep. Sitting down beside her sleeping cloak, he told her all he had heard.
"They can say night-thieves," he said. "And maybe they were nightthieves. But Rywudhaariu, that god-licking old gray-muzzle, he sent them. This is his work."