I

The moons were up, sprawling skeletal shadows upon the mountainsides. As Marika wakened, it seemed she could still hear the echoes of shots murmuring off the river valley walls. "What is it?" Barlog had shaken her gently. The huntress wore a grim expression.

"Come. You will have to see. No explanation will do." She offered a helping paw.

Marika looked at Grauel, who shrugged. "I've been here watching over you."

Barlog said, "I moved the prisoners over here, where I thought we could control them better. I did not notice, though, till one of the males asked if they could have their own fire. I spotted him when the flames came up. Before that it was like he was somebody else."

"What are you talking about?" Marika demanded.

"I want you to see. I want to know if I am wrong."

Mairka eased between fallen building stones, paused. "Well?"

Barlog pointed. "There. Look closely."

Marika looked.

The astonishment was more punishing than a physical blow. "Kublin!" she gasped.

The tradermale jerked around, eyes widening for a moment.

Kublin. But that was impossible. Her littermate had died eight years ago, during the nomad raid that destroyed the Degnan packstead.

Grauel rested a paw upon Marika's shoulder, squeezed till it hurt. "It is. Marika, it is. How could that be? Why did I not recognize him earlier?"

"We do not look for ghosts among the living," Marika murmured. She moved a couple of steps closer. All the prisoners watched, their sullenness and despair for a moment forgotten.

The tradermale began shaking, terrified.

"Kublin," Marika murmured. "How? ... Grauel. Barlog. Keep everybody away. Don't say a word to anyone. On your lives." Her tone brooked no argument. The huntresses moved.

Marika stood there staring, remembering, for a long time. Then she moved nearer the fire. The prisoners crept back, away. They knew it was she who had brought them to this despair.

She settled onto a stone vacated by a Serke huntress. "Kublin. Come here. Sit with me."

He came, sat on cold stone, facing away from the other prisoners, who pretended not to watch. Witnesses. Something would have to be done ...

Was she mad?

She studied her littermate. He was small still, and appeared no stronger than he had been, physically or in his will. He would not meet her eye.

Yet there was an odor here. A mystery more than that surrounding his survival. Something odd about him. Perhaps it was something in the way the other males eyed him beneath their lowered brows. Was he in command? That seemed so unlikely she discarded the notion immediately.

"Tell me, Kublin. Why are you alive? I saw you cut down by the nomads. I killed them ... " But when the fighting ended, she recalled, she had been unable to find his body. "Tell me what happened."

He said nothing. He turned slightly, stared into the fire. The other males came somewhat more alert.

"You'd better talk to me, Kublin. I'm the only hope you have here."

He spat something derogatory about silth, using the dialect they had spoken in their packstead. He mumbled, and Marika no longer used the dialect even with Grauel and Barlog. She did not catch it all. But it was not flattering.

She patted his arm. "Very brave, Kublin. But think. Many of my huntresses died here today. Those who survived are not in a good temper. They have designs on you prisoners. Especially you males. You have broken all the codes and covenants. So tell me."

He shrugged. "All right."

He was never strong with her, Marika reflected. Only that time he tried to murder Pohsit.

"I crawled into Gerrien's loghouse after dark. There was still a fire going in the male end. I tried to get to it, but I fell into the cellar. I passed out. I do not remember very much after that. I kept trying to get out again, I think. I hurt a lot. There was a fever. The Laspe found me several days later. I was out of my mind, they said. Fever and hunger."

Marika drew one long, slow, deep breath, exhaled as slowly. Behind closed eyes she slowly played back the nightmare that had haunted her for so long. Being trapped in a dank, dark place, badly hurt, trying to climb a stair that would not permit climbing ...

"The Laspe nursed me back to health, out of obligation. I must have been out of my head a long time. My first clear memories are of the Laspe three or four weeks after the nomads came. They were not pleased to have me around. Next summer, when tradermales came through, I went away with Khronen. He took me to Critza. I lived there till the nomads came and breached the walls. When it became obvious help from Akard would not arrive in time, the master put all the pups aboard the escape vehicles and helped us shoot our way out. We were sent someplace in the south. When I became old enough, I was given a job as a driver. My orders eventually brought me here."

A true story, Marika thought. With all the flesh left off the bones. "That's it? That's all you can tell me about eight years of your life?"

"Can you say much more about yours?"

"What were you doing here, Kublin?"

"Driving. That is my job."

A truth that was at least partly a lie, Marika suspected. He was hiding something. And he persisted in using the formal mode with her. Her. When they had been pups, they had used only the informal mode with one another.

"Driving. But driving Serke making an illegal incursion into Reugge territory, Kublin. You and your brethren knowingly violated age-old conventions by becoming directly involved in a silth dispute. Why did you do that?"

"I was told to drive. Those were my orders."

"They were very stupid orders. Weren't they?"

He would not answer.

"This mess could destroy the brethren, Kublin."

He showed a little spirit in answering, "I doubt that. I doubt it very seriously."

"How do you expect the Communities to respond when they hear what brethren have done?"

Kublin shrugged.

"What's so important about the Ponath, that so many must die and so much be risked, Kublin?"

He shrugged again. "I don't know."

That had the ring of truth. And he had given in just enough to have lapsed into the informal mode momentarily.

"Maybe you don't." She was growing a little angry. "I'll tell you this. I'm going to find out."

He shrugged a third time, as though he did not care.

"You put me in a quandary, Kublin. I'm going to go away for a little while. I have to think. Will you be a witness for me? Before the Reugge council?"

"No. I will do nothing for you, silth. Nothing but die."

Marika went away, amazed to find that much spirit in him. And that much hatred of silth. So much that he would not accept her as the littermate he had shared so much with.

Marika squatted beside Grauel. She nodded toward the prisoners. "I don't want anyone else getting near them," she whispered. "Understand?"

"Yes."

Marika found herself a place beside the main fire, crowding in among her surviving novices. She did not pay them any heed.

Kublin! What was she to do? All they had shared as pups ...

She fell asleep squatting there. Despite the emotional storm, she was too exhausted to remain awake.

Marika wakened to the sting of cold-blown snow upon her muzzle and the crackle of small-arms fire. She staggered up, her whole body aching. "What now?"

Snow was falling, a powder driven by the wind. A vague bit of light said it was near sunrise. She could see just well and far enough to discover that yesterday's bodies and wreckage already wore a coat of white. "Dorteka! What is happening?"

"Nomads. There was a band following the Serke force. They stumbled onto the voctors I had going through the vehicles on the far slope."

"How many are there?"

"I do not yet know. Quite a few from the sound of it."

Marika moved out into the open to look across the valley. She was surprised at the effort it took to make her muscles carry out her will. She could see nothing through the falling snow. "I am still worn out. I used up far more of me than I thought yesterday."

"I can handle this, Marika. I have been unable to detect any silth accompanying them."

Marika's head had begun to throb. "Go ahead. I must eat something. I will be with you when I can."

The firing was moving closer. Dorteka hurried off into the falling snow. Marika turned, stiffly returned to the fire where she had slept, snatched at scraps of food. She found a half-finished cup of soup that had gone cold, downed it. That helped some almost immediately.

Stiffly then, she moved on to the prisoners.

Grauel sat watching them, her eyes red with weariness. "What is all the racket, Marika?"

Marika glared at the prisoners. "Nomads. Our friends here had a band trailing them, probably to take the blame." They must have known. "I wondered why the reports mentioned sighting nomads but not vehicles." She paused for half a minute. "What do you think, Grauel? What should I do?"

"I can't make a decision for you, Marika. I recall that you and Kublin were close. Closer than was healthy, some thought. But that was eight years ago. Nearly half your life. You've gone different paths. You're strangers now."

"Yes. There is no precedent. Whatever I do will be wrong, by Degnan law or by Reugge. Get some rest, Grauel. I'll watch them while I'm thinking."

"Rest? While there is fighting going on?"

"Yes. Dorteka says she can handle it."

"If you say so."

"Give me your weapons. In case they get ideas. I don't know if my talents would respond right now."

"Where are your weapons?"

"I left them where I fell asleep last night. Beside the big fire. Go on now."

Grauel surrendered rifle and revolver, tottered away.

Marika stared at the prisoners for a few minutes. They were all alert now, listening to the firing as it moved closer. Marika suspected they would be very careful to give no provocation. They nurtured hopes of rescue, feeble as those hopes might be.

"Kublin. Come here."

He came. There seemed to be no defiance left in him. But that could be for show. He was always a crafty pup.