Wurnafenglu was saved by moonrise. As his speech thundered to a vigorous but not-altogether-coherent close, a bitter blue light grew in the sky, drowning the feeble lamps and torches: Chariot rising in the west.
All the citizens turned to the west and raised their hands-even the never-wolves and semiwolves who could not hope for a metamorphosis. They did it because others did it, and because they wished they could hope, even though they were hopeless.
Citizen after citizen fell under their own shadow, their day shape lost to the night shape; screaming men and women became howling wolves in the hot blue night. Winter was over. Spring had begun. They rejoiced and they were afraid.
As the howling of the crowd began to die down, everyone heard a band of wolves singing somewhere in the city. It was a song about a battle in the air-a song about the night the new Alliance had tried and failed to destroy the outliers, and lost its boasted airships in the bargain. Everyone in the city remembered that night-how they had watched and wondered at the battle in the air.
It dawned on the assembly that the Goweiteiuun were indeed coming to the assembly, and that they were bringing their outlier allies with them.
The crowd by the stairs parted to admit the newcomers. There were wolves and, shockingly, never-wolves in their company. The never-wolves wore strange glass armor that glittered in the moonlight, and some bore banners on staves: blue and red for the Goweiteiuun and green and gold for the outliers.
At their head was a great gray wolf with blue eyes; he wore cord upon cord of honor-teeth, and among them was the long curving fang of a dragon.
"Rokhlenu!" shouted the crowd. "Rokhlenu!"
Many of them were Aruukaiaduun, and he was born to their pack. They had lost him to the machinations of the old gray-muzzle Rywudhaariu, but they were still proud of him, still ashamed they had let themselves lose him. They chanted his name as if it would let them reclaim him, as if he could still be their hero, their native son.
Wurnafenglu turned to lock eyes with the yellow semiwolf, the coward, the traitor-to-traitors, Rululawianu.
The semiwolf was not cowering. He was laughing. He threw back his head and shouted, "Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion? Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion? Where are the prisoners of the Khuwuleion?"
It was the question the Sardhluun didn't want asked, the question they could not answer. It was the nature of the city's legal system that justice didn't enter into it: only the powerless went to prison. But there had been many of them, and they had left many kin and friends behind them, and perhaps in those numbers was a kind of power. Also, the city had paid the Sardhluun to tend those prisoners, not to sell them or butcher them. The next government would also ask: where were the prisoners of the Khuwuleion?
Now the band of newcomers began to chant the deadly question. The crowd took up the cry. The Sardhluun were baffled, the Neyuwuleiuun embarrassed.
Wurnafenglu was not baffled. He saw just exactly how he had been fooled. He leapt on the laughing semiwolf and tore his furry throat out. Then the gnyrrand swung about and, jaws still dripping with Rululawianu's blood, he charged the outliers, his cantors at his heels.
The watching citizens sang their approval. This was the way to run an election: surprises, bloom smoke, one side turning on itself, and a maximum of fighting with a minimum of talking.
The crowd was barking with excitement by now. They were not aware of it, but their barking fell into the rhythm of War's delighted laughter. He was manifest, though not visible to most of the citizens there, and he was enjoying the rally immensely. It was a good fight, and promised to get better. He visualized that the Alliance would lose, but that many of the never-wolves and semiwolves fighting for the outliers would die, and he was interested to see how well the results accorded with his foresight.
He wished Mercy were there. He would have showed her some events worth seeing.
But Mercy was manifest elsewhere and elsewhere. As a dark bird with no feet, she was hovering over the hills west of the outlier settlement. A pale werewolf was half supporting, half dragging a crook-shouldered man with a gray corpselike face who was stumbling out of a cave.
"Come on, you old fool," the pale werewolf was saying. "You can be drunk in our den as well as in this stupid cave. You may be dying, but you don't have to die alone. Come on, old Khretvarrgliu. Just a little further along here. Careful on the steps."
Half cajoling, half abusing, in the manner of werewolves, the pale werewolf took the crooked man down the steps, across the water, and up the rickety stairway to the den at the top.
The man said nothing. But Mercy saw a little into his heart: how he feared death not at all, but disliked the need for parting with friends like this. The werewolf's heart, too, was full of hopeless, helpless affection he could not express, much of it confused with thoughts of his mate Liudhleeo.
Mercy witnessed them for a while, but demanifested herself before too much time passed. She knew that, whatever they felt now, they would change. She had been a god for long ages now, and she knew that Death was right about mortals: they were filled with one divinity, and then another, and then they changed and changed and changed. She preferred to be absent before they were lost to her entirely.
Part Four
The Dire Wolf's Due
The wolf came in, I got my cards, we sat down for a game.
I cut my deck to the queen of spades but the cards were all the same.
In the backwash of Bennario, the black and bloody mire, the dire wolf collects his due while the boys sing round the fire.
Chapter Twenty-five: Friends and Foes
It was a blisteringly hot morning in early spring. The First Wolf of the outliers and their gnyrrand were looking at a bucket of muddy water that Hlupnafenglu had just drawn from the swamp.
"How does it work?" Wuinlendhono asked.
"Like this," Hlupnafenglu said, and dumped the contents of the bucket into an open tube with a downward slope. The muddy water poured down the slope, through a glassy mirrored gate at the base of the slope, then up another slope on the other side. Except the water ran on alone; the mud remained at the bottom of the slope in a sludgy pool. There was a second mirrored gate atop the second slope, and another downward sloping tube beyond. Beneath this tube was another bucket. The water ran into the bucket, and when it was done, the red werewolf picked up the bucket and drank from it.
He offered the bucket to Rokhlenu.
Rokhlenu took it, tasted it, drank a mouthful, and said, "It smells a little odd."
"You can run it through more than once to get it cleaner," Hlupnafenglu said eagerly, and then his face fell. "Chieftain," he said, and bowed his head.
The others turned and saw Morlock standing near, with pale Hrutnefdhu beside him. The day was cruelly hot, but the crooked man wore his usual dark cloak over his ghostly left hand. He didn't seem to feel the heat: his pale grayish skin was dry as bone. He looked at the wooden tubes, at the suddenly abashed Hlupnafenglu and said, "So that was your project? A water cleaner?"
"Yes, Chieftain. I didn't want to bother you with it."
"Not bad. But I think you need more than one turn to get the water really clean. A coil of three or four might do."
"Yes, Chieftain."
"Sketch a design or two and we'll discuss them later."
"Yes, Chieftain."
"This will be important to us," Rokhlenu said, in case the red wolf was disheartened. "Especially if this dry weather continues."