Book 1 - Doomstalker Read Free

loghouse always smelled worst. Her meth
were mainly tanners and leather workers.
    Marika stood before the windskins, waiting to be recognized. It
was but a moment before Gerrien sent a pup to investigate. This was
a loghouse more relaxed than that ruled by Skiljan. There was more
merriment here, always, and more happiness. Gerriaen was not
intimidated by the hard life of the upper Ponath. She took what
came and refused to battle the future before it arrived. Marika
sometimes wished she had been whelped by cheerful Gerrien instead
of brooding Skiljan.
    “What?” demanded Solfrank, a male two years her
elder, almost ready for the rites of adulthood, which would compel
him to depart the packstead and wander the upper Ponath in search
of a pack that would take him in. His chances were excellent.
Degnan males took with them envied education and skills.
    Marika did not like Solfrank. The dislike was mutual. It
extended back years, to a time when the male had thought his age
advantage more than overbalanced his sexual handicap. He had
bullied; Marika had refused to yield; young teeth had been bared;
the older pup had been forced to submit. Solfrank never would
forgive her the humiliation.
The grudge was well-known. It was a stain he would bear with him
in his search for a new pack.
    “Dam sends me with two score and ten arrowheads ready for
the shaft.” Marika bared teeth slightly. A hint of mockery, a
hint of I-dare-you. “Granddam wants the needles Borget
promised.”
    Marika reflected that Kublin
liked
Solfrank. When he
was not tagging after her, he trotted around after Gerrien’s
whelp—and brought back all the corrupt ideas Solfrank
whispered in his ear. At least Zamberlin knew him for what he was
and viewed him with due contempt.
    Solfrank bared his teeth, pleasured by further evidence that
those who dwelt in Skiljan’s loghouse were mad.
“I’ll tell Dam.”
    In minutes Marika clutched a bundle of ready arrows. Gerrien
herself brought a small piece of fine skin in which she had wrapped
several bone needles. “These were Borget’s. Tell
Skiljan we will want them back.”
    Not the iron needles. The iron were too precious.
But . . . Marika did not understand till she
was outside again.
    Gerrien did not expect Zertan to live much longer. These few
needles, which had belonged to her sometime friend—and as
often in council, enemy—might pleasure her in her failing
days. Though she did not like her granddam, a tear formed in the
corner of Marika’s eye. It froze quickly and stung, and she
brushed at it irritably with a heavily gloved paw.
    She was just three steps from home when she heard the cry on the
wind, faint and far and almost indiscernible. She had not heard
such a cry before, but she knew it instantly. That was the cry of a
meth in sudden pain.
    Degnan huntresses were out, as they were every day when time
were hard. Males were out seeking deadwood. There might be trouble.
She hurried inside and did not wait to be recognized before she
started babbling. “It came from the direction of Machen
Cave,” she concluded, shuddering. She was afraid of Machen
Cave.
    Skiljan exchanged looks with her lieutenants. “Up the
ladder now, pup,” she said. “Up the ladder.”
    “But Dam . . . ” Marika wilted
before a fierce look. She scurried up the ladder. The other pups
greeted her with questions. She ignored them, huddled with Kublin.
“It came from the direction of Machen Cave.”
    “That’s miles away,” Kublin reminded.
    “I know.” Maybe she had imagined the cry. Dreamed
it. “But it came from that direction. That’s all I
said. I didn’t claim it came from the cave.”
    Kublin shivered. He said nothing more. Neither did Marika.
    They were very afraid of Machen Cave, those pups. They believed
they had been given reason.
     
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III
    It had been high summer, a time when danger was all of
one’s own making. Pups were allowed free run of forest and
hill, that they might come to know their