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woodworking. Logusz’s 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.
     
    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