They pulled her hand from the other's throat, twisting her; she felt the arrowhead tearing her inside. But there was still one thing she could do: Johanna push off with her feet, butting her head against the base of the other's jaw, smashing the top of its head into the hull. The bodies around her convulsed, and she was flipped onto her back. Pain was the only thing she could feel now. Neither rage nor fear could move her.

Yet part of her was still aware of the four. She had hurt them. She had hurt them all. Three wandered drunkenly, making whistling sounds that for once seemed to come from their mouths. The one with the scarred butt lay on its side, twitching. She had punched a star-shaped wound in the top of its head. Blood dripped down past its eyes. Red tears.

Minutes passed and the whistling stopped. The four creatures huddled together and the familiar hissing resumed. The bleeding from her chest had started again.

They stared at each other for a while. She smiled at her enemies. They could be hurt. She could hurt them. She felt better than she had since the landing.

— =*=

Before the Flenser Movement, Woodcarvers had been the most famous city-state west of the Icefangs. Its founder went back six centuries. In those days, things had been harder in the north; snow covered even the lowlands through most of the year. The Woodcarver had started alone, a single pack in a little cabin on an inland bay. The pack was a hunter and a thinker as much as an artist. There had been no settlements for a hundred miles around. Only a dozen of the carver's early statues ever left his cabin, yet those statues had been his first fame. Three were still in existence. There was a city by the Long Lakes named for the one in its museum.

With fame had come apprentices. One cabin became ten, scattered across Woodcarver's fjord. A century or two passed, and of course the Woodcarver slowly changed. He feared the change, the feeling that his soul was slipping away. He tried to keep hold of himself; almost everyone does to one extent or another. In the worst case, the pack falls into perversion, perhaps becomes soul-hollow. For Woodcarver, the quest was itself the change. He studied how each member fits within the soul. He studied pups and their raising, and how you might guess the contributions of a new one. He learned to shape the soul by training the members.

Of course little of this was new. It was the base of most religions, and every town had romance advisors and brood kenners. Such knowledge, whether valid or not, is important to any culture. What Woodcarver did was to look at it all again, without traditional bias. He gently experimented on himself and on the other artists in his little colony. He watched the results, using them to design new experiments. He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

By the various standards of his age, what he did was heresy or perversion or simple insanity. In the early years, King Woodcarver was hated almost as much as Flenser was three centuries later. But the far north was still going through its time of heavy winters. The nations of the south could not easily send armies as far as Woodcarvers. Once when they did, they were thoroughly defeated. And wisely, Woodcarver never attempted to subvert the south. Not directly. But his settlement grew and grew, and its fame for art and furniture was small beside its other reputations. Old of heart traveled to the town, and came back not just younger, but smarter and happier. Ideas radiated from the town: weaving machines, gearboxes and windmills, factory postures. Something new had happened in this place. It wasn't the inventions. It was the people that Woodcarver had midwifed, and the outlook he had created.

Wickwrackscar and Jaqueramaphan arrived at Woodcarvers late in the afternoon. It had rained most of the day, but now the clouds had blown away and the sky was that bright cloudless blue that was all the more beautiful after a stretch of cloudy days.

Woodcarver's Domain was paradise to Peregrine's eyes. He was tired of the packless wilderness. He was tired of worrying about the alien.

Twinhulls paced them suspiciously for the last few miles. The boats were armed, and Peregrine and Scriber were coming from very much the wrong direction. But they were all alone, clearly harmless. Long callers hooted, relaying their story ahead. By the time they reached the harbor they were heroes, two packs who had stolen (unspecified) treasure from the villains of the north. They sailed around a breakwater that hadn't existed on Peregrine's last trip, and tied in at the moorage.

The pier was crowded with soldiers and wagons. Townspeople were all over the road leading up to the city walls. This was as close to a mob scene as you could get and still have room for sober thought. Scriber bounced out of the boat and pranced about in obvious delight at the cheers from the hillside. "Quickly! We must speak with the Woodcarver."

Wickwrackscar picked up the canvas bag that held the alien's picture box, and climbed carefully out of the boat. He was dizzy from the beating the alien had given him. Scar's fore-tympanum had been cut in the attack. For a moment he lost track of himself. The pier was very strange — stone at first glance, but walled with a spongy black material he hadn't seen since the Southseas; it should be brittle here… Where am I? I should be happy about something, some victory. He paused to regroup. After a moment both the pain and his thoughts sharpened; he would be like this for days yet, at least. Get help for the alien. Get it ashore.

King Woodcarver's Lord Chamberlain was a mostly overweight dandy; Peregrine had not expected to see such at Woodcarvers. But the fellow became instantly cooperative when he saw the alien. He brought a doctor down to look at the Two-Legs (and incidentally, at Peregrine). The alien had gained strength in the last two days, but there had been no more violence. They got it ashore without much trouble. It stared at Peregrine out of its flat face, a look he knew was impotent rage. He touched Scar's head thoughtfully… the Two-Legs was just waiting for the best opportunity to do more damage.

Minutes later, the travelers were in kherhog-drawn carriages, rolling up the cobblestone street toward the city walls. Soldiers cleared the way through the crowd. Scriber Jaqueramaphan waved this way and that, the handsome hero. By now Peregrine knew the shy insecurity that lurked within Scriber. This might be the high point of his whole life till now.

Even if he wanted it, Wickwrackscar could not be so expansive. With one of Scar's tympana hurt, wild gestures made him lose track of his thoughts. He hunkered down on the carriage seats and looked out in all directions:

But for the shape of the outer harbor, the place was not at all what he remembered from fifty years ago. In most parts of the world, not much changed in fifty years. A pilgrim returning after such an interval might even be bored by the sameness. But this… it was almost scary.

The huge breakwater was new. There were twice as many piers, and multiboats with flags he had never seen on this side of the world. The road had been here before, but narrow, with only a third as many turnoffs. Before, the town walls had been more to keep the kherhogs and froghens in than any invaders out. Now they were ten feet high, the black stone extending as far as Peregrine could see… And there had been scarcely any soldiers last time; now they were everywhere. That was not a good change. He felt a sinking in the pit of Scar's stomach; soldiers and fighting were not good.