(no subject)
Written as I go.
Kargoth ran his country pack of trappers, farmers, hunters, and vagabonds with a canny, shrewd precision that would have served him equally well in a city. He wore his long, white hair tied back in a herringbone braid and white beard well-trimmed against the line of his jaw, and when he was not making the long run up to the chill northern border to hunt mink and snow-foxes for their fur, he kept himself occupied with ensuring the prosperity of every member of his far-flung pack.
Inakka Haapari did not know what to make of this man--this werewolf. He had not become pack alpha through the line of his father; he had not grown to love his pack through the bonds of almost-family that those long together shared. Instead, the ancient white wolf had come quietly from the north, had fought the Deitish pack alpha to the change, and had quietly taken a position of leadership not his by birth . . . and made it his by right.
It was like sailing out into the reflection of moon and stars only to find that she was dipping her paddles in the sky.
But Kargoth brought the Haaparis all the money they needed to repay their debts on their land, and in time, he brought them enough money to buy their farm--Riiri had kissed old Kargoth on both of his withered cheeks and danced his sister around the dirt floor of their croft in a jig when the certificate of ownership came back at last, and Takka had shouted that he was going to market to buy them a wagon. In the giddy celebration of the too-long poor becoming suddenly and gloriously wealthy, Kargoth had stood like a god and blessed the gathering with his eyes and his smile.
Of course, Kargoth's gifts came with a price. When the highwaymen who ran with them on their hunts were caught by the local authorities, old Kargoth had knocked on the Haaparis' door in the dead of night to usher in the newly-escaped thieves; Inakka had stared dumbly at the wolves still pinioned by shreds of prison-clothes and had not even thought of refusing them lodging.
The police had come to the croft in the woods the very next day, their strong horses mouthing their bits and whip-cracking flies with their tails. The police had stood at Inakka's door in their black uniforms and their black helmets and explained to her that a pair of dangerous criminals known to ply the woods in these parts had recently escaped from prison. They meant no disrespect to this house or the people in it, but with all due respect, they would have to search it from top to bottom.
Everything had been scattered across the floor.
Their clay pots and their newly tanned hides had lain with sacks of grain and potatoes on the floor, rye flour spilling out into the dirt because, after all, a thief might even hide in a flour sack. Inakka's good dress had been ground into the earth floor and her brothers' longbows had been flung out of the house; the logs by the fireplace had been scattered across their poor, one-room dwelling. The soup kettle had lain upturned, and even their beloved, hopeful bookshelf with four shelves and as many books on it had been pulled away from the wall and flung on its face.
At last, satisfied with the carnage of crockery, the police had apologized about the mess and remounted their horses, only to move on to some other poor farming family in the woods.
As the Haaparis had put together their broken life again, righting the shelves and replacing the pots and putting Inakka's good dress in the soup kettle to soak out the worst of the stains, Inakka had realized with a surge of fire beneath her ribs that she hated the city men, and with that hatred burning like a lantern through her lean chest, she had whispered up the chimney to her packmates that the police were gone at last.
Kargoth always asked a price for the aid that he gave his pack, and Inakka found that she didn't mind paying at all.
Uri would come to put a few rutabagas aside from every crop for the trapping family that lived to the west of them in the forests; Takka would come to bring the Haaparis' wagon around to the poor farmers at the edge of the wood in the early morning so that they could heave their bushels of potatoes and apples onto the back and ride with him to the market in the city. Riiri would come to watch the slow rise of coins in their jar--the jar that the Haaparis kept on the ledge in the chimney where once the highwaymen had stood--and parsed out as much as they could afford to packmates in debt.
Inakka would come to take in the frightened wolf who didn't understand the change, the vagabond on the run, and the infant whose parents had abandoned it after the first, terrifying full moon night. She would come to bring the recently-evicted werewolf to the Haaparis' farm to work for them until he had earned enough to try his luck again. She would come to check every pack wolf's croft or cabin throughout the month to be sure that no one needed anything that the network of packmates and huntmates had somehow failed to provide.
Inakka would come to be pack alpha as much as Kargoth was pack alpha, and she would come to love her wolves with his fierceness and to hate the wealthy city packs who failed to help their country cousins with a fierceness all her own.
+ + + + +
Inakka and her brothers had been taking in strangers and strays for years upon years when a dEbweme hunter came down from the northwest and settled at the fringes of her territory. He was a wolf, just as they were, and so he must have known that he was treading dangerously close to pack land, but this precarious state of affairs didn't seem to bother him. He set up his snares in the woods just beyond the pack's territory and marked himself a small patch of land that did not in the least infringe upon the lands claimed by Kargoth's pack, and if he camped in his wagon for the first months of summer, he neither starved nor ranged beyond his territory.
"He wants to be left alone," Kargoth told her, and Inakka could see no other explanation. When the man saw the dark shapes of wolves moving in the forest, he only smiled a private little smile and curled up beneath his wagon as a wolf himself.
When the weather began to grow colder, the dEbweme stranger at last began to cut timber and carry back clay from the stream that marked the border between their lands. Inakka watched him with a hunter's fascination as he worked into the late hours of the night, slowly and carefully maneuvering enormous logs into a small square and placing them still more slowly and still more carefully atop one another. He knew what he was doing--Inakka saw his slow, methodical progress and the diagrams that he drew for himself in charcoal on the side of his wagon, and she watched him fill in the chinks between his logs with river clay mixed with straw. His house would be strong and warm when he finished it, and it would keep the winter away better even than Inakka's home did.
It would have kept the winter away, if the winter had not attacked at night and covered the ground with an armslength of snow without warning.
And that night, Kargoth had appeared at Inakka's door in his powerful white wolf form, leading the grey-furred dEbweme stranger into the firelight.
Seyah was like Kargoth in that he spoke little and hunted well; his human side and his wolf side were more tightly tied together than those of any werewolf Inakka had ever known, and so Seyah left some nights and returned dragging a mangled deer to the Haapari's croft. He tanned the deer hides with Inakka and her brothers and smoked the meat with them, and he helped to peel the rutabagas, sucking his fingers when his skill with the knife failed him on the hard roots. He woke earlier than even Inakka did, and some mornings, she would climb down from the sleeping loft and find that the cows had already been milked and that Uri had gained an apprentice in the making of proper gruel. She would hear the two men laughing as Seyah dipped his fingers into the kettle and snatched a mouthful, and she would wonder why she never heard the dEbweme man laugh like that around anyone else.
Seyah stayed with the Haaparis throughout the entire winter, and by the time spring came again, he was like a brother to them. When Kargoth returned from the north with his sledge laden with expensive white pelts, ready to be sold to the alpha of one of the city packs, he found Inakka and Seyah making the rounds to the pack wolves together, and he asked her if the dEbweme wolf would join them.
"Yes," she said, tightening her new buckskin jacket lined with rabbits' fur against the nascent spring's stiff breeze. "Seyah is pack."
Three days later, Kargoth was dead. On that day, the rivers and streams flooded, and the icy snowmelt washed the valleys empty.
Kargoth ran his country pack of trappers, farmers, hunters, and vagabonds with a canny, shrewd precision that would have served him equally well in a city. He wore his long, white hair tied back in a herringbone braid and white beard well-trimmed against the line of his jaw, and when he was not making the long run up to the chill northern border to hunt mink and snow-foxes for their fur, he kept himself occupied with ensuring the prosperity of every member of his far-flung pack.
Inakka Haapari did not know what to make of this man--this werewolf. He had not become pack alpha through the line of his father; he had not grown to love his pack through the bonds of almost-family that those long together shared. Instead, the ancient white wolf had come quietly from the north, had fought the Deitish pack alpha to the change, and had quietly taken a position of leadership not his by birth . . . and made it his by right.
It was like sailing out into the reflection of moon and stars only to find that she was dipping her paddles in the sky.
But Kargoth brought the Haaparis all the money they needed to repay their debts on their land, and in time, he brought them enough money to buy their farm--Riiri had kissed old Kargoth on both of his withered cheeks and danced his sister around the dirt floor of their croft in a jig when the certificate of ownership came back at last, and Takka had shouted that he was going to market to buy them a wagon. In the giddy celebration of the too-long poor becoming suddenly and gloriously wealthy, Kargoth had stood like a god and blessed the gathering with his eyes and his smile.
Of course, Kargoth's gifts came with a price. When the highwaymen who ran with them on their hunts were caught by the local authorities, old Kargoth had knocked on the Haaparis' door in the dead of night to usher in the newly-escaped thieves; Inakka had stared dumbly at the wolves still pinioned by shreds of prison-clothes and had not even thought of refusing them lodging.
The police had come to the croft in the woods the very next day, their strong horses mouthing their bits and whip-cracking flies with their tails. The police had stood at Inakka's door in their black uniforms and their black helmets and explained to her that a pair of dangerous criminals known to ply the woods in these parts had recently escaped from prison. They meant no disrespect to this house or the people in it, but with all due respect, they would have to search it from top to bottom.
Everything had been scattered across the floor.
Their clay pots and their newly tanned hides had lain with sacks of grain and potatoes on the floor, rye flour spilling out into the dirt because, after all, a thief might even hide in a flour sack. Inakka's good dress had been ground into the earth floor and her brothers' longbows had been flung out of the house; the logs by the fireplace had been scattered across their poor, one-room dwelling. The soup kettle had lain upturned, and even their beloved, hopeful bookshelf with four shelves and as many books on it had been pulled away from the wall and flung on its face.
At last, satisfied with the carnage of crockery, the police had apologized about the mess and remounted their horses, only to move on to some other poor farming family in the woods.
As the Haaparis had put together their broken life again, righting the shelves and replacing the pots and putting Inakka's good dress in the soup kettle to soak out the worst of the stains, Inakka had realized with a surge of fire beneath her ribs that she hated the city men, and with that hatred burning like a lantern through her lean chest, she had whispered up the chimney to her packmates that the police were gone at last.
Kargoth always asked a price for the aid that he gave his pack, and Inakka found that she didn't mind paying at all.
Uri would come to put a few rutabagas aside from every crop for the trapping family that lived to the west of them in the forests; Takka would come to bring the Haaparis' wagon around to the poor farmers at the edge of the wood in the early morning so that they could heave their bushels of potatoes and apples onto the back and ride with him to the market in the city. Riiri would come to watch the slow rise of coins in their jar--the jar that the Haaparis kept on the ledge in the chimney where once the highwaymen had stood--and parsed out as much as they could afford to packmates in debt.
Inakka would come to take in the frightened wolf who didn't understand the change, the vagabond on the run, and the infant whose parents had abandoned it after the first, terrifying full moon night. She would come to bring the recently-evicted werewolf to the Haaparis' farm to work for them until he had earned enough to try his luck again. She would come to check every pack wolf's croft or cabin throughout the month to be sure that no one needed anything that the network of packmates and huntmates had somehow failed to provide.
Inakka would come to be pack alpha as much as Kargoth was pack alpha, and she would come to love her wolves with his fierceness and to hate the wealthy city packs who failed to help their country cousins with a fierceness all her own.
+ + + + +
Inakka and her brothers had been taking in strangers and strays for years upon years when a dEbweme hunter came down from the northwest and settled at the fringes of her territory. He was a wolf, just as they were, and so he must have known that he was treading dangerously close to pack land, but this precarious state of affairs didn't seem to bother him. He set up his snares in the woods just beyond the pack's territory and marked himself a small patch of land that did not in the least infringe upon the lands claimed by Kargoth's pack, and if he camped in his wagon for the first months of summer, he neither starved nor ranged beyond his territory.
"He wants to be left alone," Kargoth told her, and Inakka could see no other explanation. When the man saw the dark shapes of wolves moving in the forest, he only smiled a private little smile and curled up beneath his wagon as a wolf himself.
When the weather began to grow colder, the dEbweme stranger at last began to cut timber and carry back clay from the stream that marked the border between their lands. Inakka watched him with a hunter's fascination as he worked into the late hours of the night, slowly and carefully maneuvering enormous logs into a small square and placing them still more slowly and still more carefully atop one another. He knew what he was doing--Inakka saw his slow, methodical progress and the diagrams that he drew for himself in charcoal on the side of his wagon, and she watched him fill in the chinks between his logs with river clay mixed with straw. His house would be strong and warm when he finished it, and it would keep the winter away better even than Inakka's home did.
It would have kept the winter away, if the winter had not attacked at night and covered the ground with an armslength of snow without warning.
And that night, Kargoth had appeared at Inakka's door in his powerful white wolf form, leading the grey-furred dEbweme stranger into the firelight.
Seyah was like Kargoth in that he spoke little and hunted well; his human side and his wolf side were more tightly tied together than those of any werewolf Inakka had ever known, and so Seyah left some nights and returned dragging a mangled deer to the Haapari's croft. He tanned the deer hides with Inakka and her brothers and smoked the meat with them, and he helped to peel the rutabagas, sucking his fingers when his skill with the knife failed him on the hard roots. He woke earlier than even Inakka did, and some mornings, she would climb down from the sleeping loft and find that the cows had already been milked and that Uri had gained an apprentice in the making of proper gruel. She would hear the two men laughing as Seyah dipped his fingers into the kettle and snatched a mouthful, and she would wonder why she never heard the dEbweme man laugh like that around anyone else.
Seyah stayed with the Haaparis throughout the entire winter, and by the time spring came again, he was like a brother to them. When Kargoth returned from the north with his sledge laden with expensive white pelts, ready to be sold to the alpha of one of the city packs, he found Inakka and Seyah making the rounds to the pack wolves together, and he asked her if the dEbweme wolf would join them.
"Yes," she said, tightening her new buckskin jacket lined with rabbits' fur against the nascent spring's stiff breeze. "Seyah is pack."
Three days later, Kargoth was dead. On that day, the rivers and streams flooded, and the icy snowmelt washed the valleys empty.