Page 69 of Blacktail

It was only later that she understood that puppies were quickened in her belly.

x

Little One had the dream many times, never knowing whether it was a true thing or a fantasy, or perhaps a bit of both. Blacktail himself knew nothing of this. He never heard whether Little One lived or died. He left before dawn the next day.

But as he walked away, he saw Gray-Ear and Belly-Scar bringing Little One scraps of their kill and heard them call him lord.

Chapter 6

Mercy

i

Blacktail returned to himself slowly. His consciousness floated up into his body like a bloated corpse rising from the bottom of a cold lake. He was moving now. He thought he had been moving for some while, loping out of the stunted foothills and scraps of wilderness. Moving, yes, but he had also dreamed as he moved—dreamed or something like it. He remembered only snatches—the desert at night, a voice crying out, saying, “O lord, receive me…”

Who calls out to the lord? But as he came back into himself, the voice and the memory fell away, as dreams do.

Blacktail stopped. The wind here was thick with poison stinks, foul as any he had ever smelled. Rot. Smoke. Poison. The night on both sides of his trail was dotted with the unnatural lights of men. His eyes narrowed and his ears cocked forward slightly in a look that all the prey beasts of the world would have recognized immediately.

He rose the last little way back into himself—it took an effort—and opened up to the world around him. His paws tingled at their unfamiliar stillness. Deep in the woods to his right he saw a pair of squirrels, bright eyes peering at him from what they likely thought of as sufficient cover. On his left flank stood an ancient oak, poisoned and dead but still standing, bark dangling from its haunch. Bare branches capped with the first buds of spring brushed close at his shanks.

He blinked and shook out his mane, then looked around. Where am I? These lands weren’t the mountains anymore, not even close. They barely qualified as foothills. Too, it was warmer than he remembered. Winter, it seemed, was nearly over. How did that happen?

The question slipped away, unanswered.

This is the dominion of men, Blacktail realized. Any wilds that remain are behind me now. He tried again to recall how he had come to be here. It was a blur. He remembered meeting Lord Fang, remembered the good warmth of sleeping in a pack, but then…what? Did something happen? Did I do something?

He couldn’t remember…but it didn’t seem to matter. He began to move again, bouncing down this scant memory of a hunting trail, gravity doing as much of the work as his legs. This path will carry you to the nexus of the scents, he thought. This path will carry you to the places of men.

The thought stirred an echo of fear in his mind, but it was dim and distant, hardly worth notice. He thought the days of such considerations were very nearly behind him.

He was wrong.

ii

A few breaths later the hill bottomed out. In the distance he saw the glow from a house. Such light was still strange to him. While watching it, he nearly tripped over a dog, squatted on its haunches in the center of the path. Blacktail skidded to a stop a tail’s breadth away.

The dog made no effort to move from his path.

He was some sort of terrier, small and brown, with one drooping ear. A cloud of the deepest dread surrounded him…but he looked up to Blacktail with unblinking brown eyes. “Good evening, Lord Hunter,” he said, his tone scrupulously polite. “Welcome.”

Blacktail responded in kind. “Good evening to you. With whom have I the honor of speaking?”

“I am Milo,” the dog said. He rose up to present himself for scenting. Blacktail gave him a once-over. He wore no collar, but Blacktail smelled the memory of one on his neck. Too, the hands of some two-legs had been on him, and quite recently.

Blacktail’s eyes narrowed, and he did not offer to let himself be scented. “Are you the pack lord?” he asked.

The terrier hesitated. “I suppose so, yes.”

“There is no ‘suppose’ in such matters,” Blacktail said. “Were you pack lord you would know it.”

“In that case I suppose not. Nonetheless, I am to speak for the beasts of these lands.”

“Oh? Which beasts?” Blacktail asked. By the smell, there were quite a few. They were close by, but hidden. Hidden-ish, anyway. Here he saw a tail poking out from behind a tree, there a pair of eyes flashing in a stand of bush. “Show yourselves.”

Even to his own ears, Blacktail’s tone was flat and commanding in ways it had never been before. Even so, they did not come forth immediately. It was only when Milo looked over his shoulder and gave a curt yap that they began to emerge.

Blacktail thought Milo was right not to call himself lord, or perhaps he was just embarrassed. He had never seen such a slothful pack. Here stood a Great Dane—an enormous dog, not much smaller than Blacktail himself—but she was dull-eyed and bound in a collar. Next to her stood a beagle that was perhaps the fattest animal that Blacktail had ever seen. The beagle stared up at Blacktail with open—what? Loathing? Rage? His lip trembled. The fur was high on his neck. For some reason, Blacktail saw, the little dog’s tail was gone. Only a short stump remained.