He sang that the outliers and their Goweiteiuun partners had founded a colony on the shores of the Bitter Water. He said that even if the harvest of the land failed and all the cattle died, the harvest of the sea would go on forever, fresh with life in the cool blue water. This, in essence, was the contrast between the Sardhluun-Neyuwuleiuun Alliance and the Goweiteiuun-outlier Union. The Alliance were dishonest jailors and failed sky-pirates. The Union dared to think in new ways to save the lives of citizens in these troubled times. Did citizens want the vicious past of the Alliance or the shining future of the Union? The choice was theirs.
His song was brief, convincing, eloquent, and had several direct references to food. The audience howled their approval at the two-eyed starspangled sky.
Suddenly there were new bands charging into the fighting ground of the amphitheater. The gnyrrands of the Sardhluun and the Neyuwuleiuun, grimly silent, running side by side with their bands of cantors and a stunningly large crowd of volunteers in their wake. The Alliance werewolves ran silent circles around the werewolves of the Union, and the crowd fell silent too. The Alliance was waiting for something, and the crowd waited also.
It happened. Five standard-bearers appeared at the amphitheater gates. But instead of flags, on the standards were the heads of citizens. Most were rotting, almost skeletal. But one was freshly killed: his blood was still dripping, his eyes still shining with tears in the moonlight.
Between the standard-bearers came the Aruukaiaduun band and their volunteers, teeth bared, snarling, ready to fight and kill. They charged straight at the Union werewolves, and as they did so the Alliance werewolves broke their circle formation and charged inward.
Few in the amphitheater recognized the heads on the standards, but Rokhlenu thought that he knew them. They were the heads of his father and brothers. The shock of seeing them was great, so great that he didn't even feel it as grief. He had long mourned them as dead. It maddened him a little to think that his youngest brother, one of the two who had disappeared around the time the others were murdered, had been alive until moments ago. It was his head that was still dripping on its pole. They had killed him just now to torment Rokhlenu, make him lose control.
He would not give them that.
He snarled a directive at his reeve, Yaarirruuiu, and at Aaluindhonu. They'd suspected they would be outnumbered, although not this badly, and had planned a retreat. He sang they should execute that plan now-but added they should kill the standard-bearers if they could.
The Union wolves struck as a body against the Aruukaiaduun band rushing down on them and sent the newcomers into confusion. Soon the Aruukaiaduun were entangled in the advancing lines of the Alliance werewolves.
The Union werewolves made their escape in the confusion, killing several of the standard-bearers as they went.
Rokhlenu sang one last line to the audience as he stood in the amphitheater gate, the last to leave as his enemies bore down on him. He sang that this was the meat and drink the Alliance would serve Wuruyaaria: their own flesh and blood.
Then he turned and vanished into the night.
Now, at last, the Alliance gnyrrands sang their songs. They welcomed the Aruukaiaduun werewolves to their band, and the Aruukaiaduun gnyrrand acknowledged his pack's worth and the new Alliance's glory. They talked a good deal about sternness, lonely strength, the need for order, and they boasted time and time over of their victory.
The crowd, apart from the Alliance claques, was mostly silent. It was true the Alliance had won the rally, but they had won in the ugliest possible way. It was not against the rules to overwhelm your opponents with the number of your volunteers, as the Alliance had done, because very little was against the rules in the Year of Choosing. But it was a very low-status way to earn a victory. Many remembered and repeated Rokhlenu's last words. And everyone noted that the Alliance werewolves said nothing at all about food or famine.
Morlock spent part of the afternoon teaching Hlupnafenglu a new set of multidimensional polytopes, and the red werewolf reciprocated by teaching Morlock how to read. Written Sunspeech he could understand, after a bit of effort, but he was deeply ignorant of the ideograms used in Moonspeech. He did not think he would live long enough to make much of this knowledge, but he had to have something to do at night besides drink, and he thought reading might be worth a try.
The last part of the afternoon they spent playing cards. Hlupnafenglu was unlike most werewolves in his disinterest in gambling, but he loved the deck of paper images and often used them in the mantic spells Morlock had taught him.
Before sunset, the red werewolf returned to the old refectory of the irredeemables to eat. It was thought the Sardhluun might try some sort of night attack after the rally, however it went-and, anyway, Hlupnafenglu wanted to wait for the rally results with his fellow irredeemables.
Morlock returned to the den he shared with Liudhleeo and spent some time reading a scroll that Hlupnafenglu had given him, written in Sunspeech ideograms. The exercise of recognizing ideograms was fairly interesting, the story less so. It was some minor epic about two immature werewolves in the night shape and their human slave, Spilloiu. It was possible that the lines had some sort of poetic force that Morlock was not sophisticated enough to recognize. They seemed mostly to be exhortations that one child shouted at the other to look at Spilloiu as he ran or did not run. Morlock finished the scroll and, irritated by the inefficient format, sliced the pages apart with a razor and sewed the pages together to a cloth binding to make a passable codex book. He was wondering what to use for a cover when Liudhleeo came home, her hands full of covered dishes.
"I brought dinner," she said.
"Not supper?" he said. He had just learned the ideogram for that word. (See Spilloiu! See Spilloiu fetch supper!)
"Don't be more ridiculous than you can help. Supper is a meal eaten by sophisticated citizens after a night howling about the town. Dinner is eaten by working-class citizens around sundown."
"Dinner, then."
"That's what I said."
She set the dishes down on the floor next to him and gracefully sat down across from him. "You'll never guess what it is."
"Not meat, I hope."
"Not for you." She uncovered one dish, plucked out a steaming fragment, and popped it in his mouth before he could protest.
"Hm." He chewed the oily, leathery stuff for a moment. "Smoked fish of some kind."
"Yes!" She was absurdly delighted. "The First Wolf gave it to me. It's from the new colony on the Bitter Water. I had my friend Ruiulanhro cook it up. She runs a hot-pot as well as a smoking lair and a poison shop, you know."
Morlock hadn't known. In fact, he wasn't sure what a hot-pot was: some sort of restaurant or refectory, it seemed. "It's good," he said.
"Do you really like it?"
He did. He was never hungry or thirsty, but his illness seemed to be intensifying all his sensations. He didn't feel the need to eat, but the act of eating was intensely pleasing.
"I have red meat, of a sort, for myself," Liudhleeo added. "You may partake if you like. It's guaranteed not to come from a never-wolf. In fact, it looks to be some kind of bird."
A seagull, Morlock guessed, looking in the dish. This had not been smoked, and was somewhat gamy by his never-wolvish standards. Also, it had not really been cooked so much as warmed, and the innards did not seem to have been removed at all. "No thanks," he said. "I'll stick to the fish."
"Knew you would. Coward."
Morlock shrugged, picked up a piece of fish, and ate it.
"Have you been practicing your ideograms? Oh my ghost, what have you done to Hlupnafenglu's little reader?"