Flight to the North

K'ashi's POV

Orocarni, Northern Waste, FA 546

There came a sun-course when Niy'ashi was grown and long since able to change. It was a strange time, because we felt the earth shake, sometimes, and great storms passed over the lands, driven from the west. They brought only thunder and lightning, seldom rain. It was cold, but also dry and lightning set forests ablaze. Many things came east, furred mostly, but unfurred too, slowly. We noticed, but could never find a cause. For a while, we had more prey than before. But the earth continued to shiver, to shake and rumble, and stones fell from the mountains.

It was a bright, warm day in the season of khai'osha, and almost all of Wolf Clan were asleep. The orcs came upon us in a narrow valley, unguarded and at unawares. All we could do was get up and run. They did not even look as if they were coming for us specifically. But once we were sighted, they gave chase. All who could called the change, but there were a few who had cubs already, and they could not fur without abandoning their cubs. The wolves and furred ones gathered around to defend them. Two were wounded by what Kelehan grimly called cross-bow bolts, but we all could flee. For two days we had been unwary, using the narrow valley as protection to do the dance of the swift season. As we fled out of the valley, we found there were orcs everywhere. We ran northwards, along the mountains, but they trailed us. They followed us, or maybe not, I was not sure. They came down out of the mountains wherever we went, and we could seldom rest for more than a day before our guards warned us of pursuit. With the unfurred ones among us we were slow and left visible tracks. Two cubs died in that flight, because the weather turned cold and wet, and it grew ever colder the further we came north. Hin'yan, who had been hit in the hip by one of the bolts, lagged behind. She had fled with us with the thing still stuck in her bone. Onakir tried to heal the wound, but Kelehan said there had been poison on the bolts. They could do little, and we were still fleeing. One day, as we were passing through another narrows gorge, she disappeared. We noticed only after we had all left the gorge, because we had been all strung out into a line. Khaniru her mate came back to us, running as wolf.

"Go on" he said, and we followed him, running. When the night left once more, we halted in a valley, and Khaniru said we would have a time to rest. Hin'yan had remained behind to kill some of the orcs that followed us.

She had called the Other Wind. In silence, we set a few to watch, and spent two nights huddled in that valley, hiding, sleeping. There was no time, no place to do the Hawk Dance yet. We went north again. Snow fell more often. This was the time when cubs were born, a warm season back at our old home. We were forced to stop thrice whenever a birth was near. Like the great oxen against the wolves, we formed a ring of defense, and hoped for the best. One of our clan died when her child would not come and a blizzard caught us in the open plain. Onakir nearly died as well, trying to save her by calling her spirit back. The wolves suffered, too. They would not leave us, and so they abandoned their cubs that were born on the way, hastening on. Those unfurred who still had their own cubs and went two-legged gathered what of the furred ones they could and carried them in their arms.

We were far north and in the nights the sleet turned to snow when we found another valley, more of a gorge, in which we wedged ourselves. We were desperate, half-starved and exhausted. Many females were pregnant and unlike the wolves, we had no measure of postponing or quickening a birth. Any herbs Onakir might have found we had left far behind already – we had to stop. Khai'la too carried a cub. Kelehan was tormented. In times of war, he had quoted to me, his people never fathered children. Children, a term my people did not even have. We distinguished between furred and unfurred ones, but not between wolves' offspring and our's, not between us and the wolves, the always furred ones. He was tormented now, because of that quote. He feared for Khai'la, for their cub, and this time with a reason. I, too, feared.

"This is not a good time for cubs" he said desperately that day as we huddled in the valley. All of us were in a heap, silent, shifting a little sometimes to let those from the edge move to the centre. The outer ring was formed by the wolves, keeping the stiff, icy wind away from us. And still, Khai'la disappeared when the time to give birth came. She returned in the middle of driving snow, a wolf following her. She had gone off furred, a rag of rawhide in her fangs. Now she was unfurred in the storm, her hair whipping with the gusts. We saw her coming, Niy'ashi and I, and Kelehan bowed his head for a moment in relief. Had the cub died, or been born dead, she would have had no reason to return unfurred. We huddled around her, the wolf pushing between us. As we always did, we howled, and the clan joined in. For a moment, the sound carried above the wind. This cub did not smile or twitch, but watched us silently with dark grey eyes.

"What say you?" I asked softly as we fell silent.

"This is not a good time for cubs" she said, unknowingly echoing Kelehan's desperate announcement, but she said it darkly, defiantly "But this one is strong. He will have to be" she fixed us with a dark look "I can not afford what I want to. There are too few unhindered hunters here"

It was the only instance she said she regretted being unable to raise her cub this time as she had done the last two times. Like the wolves, she moved on with such things as regret if things could not be changed.

"I am with the cubs anyway" Niy'ashi spoke up the first time today "I will carry him"

Khai'la looked at him, then nodded. Kelehan looked as if he wanted to object, but then remained silent. He, too, was needed, not so much as a hunter but in the front. When we went across the empty plains here, or had them to the side as we skirted mountains, we needed his sharp eyes more than the wolves' noses. The cruel, strong wind killed most scents before they reached us, let alone before we could follow them. Kelehan saw herds far away, led the hunters there.

"How will you name him?" Niy'ashi, whose name in my words meant Laughing Wolf, watched his brother in fascination.

"Kela'shin" Khai'la pulled the wolf closer who crouched beside her and the bundle "She licked him clean" she said "But his luck will be with the wolves"

Rising Storm. A very different name. A very different place to be born. I shivered in the wind-driven snow. Kelehan bit his lip. He was shaking miserably. A wolf had died on the march here, and we had taken the skin as always. The youngest cubs were wrapped already, and without the least objection it had gone to Kelehan, who was most defenseless against the cold. Despite the fur, he was suffering. He had always kept some distance to the wolves, but in the past moons, he had given that up completely. When we rested, he cowered in the middle of our circle, surrounded by the wolf-cubs and those of us who could fur.

We all looked at him, waiting for his name. He shook his head slowly "You have given him the best name I could think of"

"Do you care to unriddle your words for us?" Khai'la asked, smiling.

"I…my name…I only now thought of this….K'ashi-" he glanced at me. Kelehan's name? Then I understood "You never told Khai'la?"

"She never asked. It never was important, either"

Khai'la and Niy'ashi watched us with patient curiosity "Hurondil in our words means…nok-a-shin, I think" I said.

"Paka" Kelehan said dryly.

"Oh" I had to grin. His people distinguished very diligently between friend and lover "Yes. Paka"

After that blizzard we were no longer followed. We were in the ever-snows now, traveling slowly east along a low range of hills. They gave us cover, and gradually our situation became less desperate. We could cope with the cold much better now that we could rest when we needed, could stage greater hunts and make larger prey. But it was only every three or four days that there was prey. We often had to walk to the kill because it was not possible to carry it to the clan. As the wolves did, we carried meat back with us to feed those who had stayed behind with the cubs.

There was no fire here. Grimacing, Kelehan ate the flesh raw and drank the blood of fresh kills as all the rest of us did. The hunters were gone for days on end often. The other half of our clan remained behind to guard those who could not fur. Khai'la returned only to suckle her cub. The rest of the time, Niy'ashi carried his brother. When Khai'la did not come on time, and the cub screamed with hunger, Niy'ashi did as I had done when we had found Hurondil. He cut his wrist, and fed him on his own blood.

Many of the cubs that were born then, in the spring that had become eternal winter, died, furred and unfurred. The furred ones took the meat, and we took the furs of their dead offspring. It was not a good time. One night, as I crouched beside Niy'ashi with the unfurred ones and the cubs, I remembered the old tales. Tales of the Ice. Wolf clan had fled from the old wood in the very beginning once, before we could fur. With the wolves, they had come to the ever-snows. But there were the dark creatures that had driven them from the old wood as well. With the wolves, they fled, were captured, and escaped. Here, somewhere in the ice, they became what we were now.

And here we were and miserable.

Niy'ashi laughed when I said that, as he often did. He was one of the few who still had energy and courage to laugh.

"We'll make it now, then, as we did at that time"

A few days later, it seemed he was right, because the last storms ceased. We followed the valley of half-frozen a river into the hills, and the snows became less. Spring, we thought, had found us at last. And it had. We stayed a few moons in that valley, but we did not know that land. The hunters still had to range very far. We could eat only meat, because there were neither trees nor shrubs here we knew. Only when we went further into the mountains and came into another valley we found trees again. It was deeper cut than the first, and no great river flowed through it, but it felt much closer to our home in the eastern mountains. In that valley we stayed until the snows returned, and through the next snows. There was shelter there, though no caves. Also, great fish migrated before the snows, and we caught uncounted ones of them. Kelehan could make fire here, and we smoked part of them, dried the rest. About the same time, which must have corresponded to osha'sa in our home, there were berries here. Large and red or blue they grew on grass-like brushes and on bushes. Bears were here, but they left us alone and we avoided them. Sometimes, we fought for a catch, and once we even killed a bear. Several cubs could sleep warmly in that skin afterwards. When the next snows came, we were much better off. We had supplies, and the pressure on the hunters was far less. In khai'osha, when it finally came there were no cubs. In a way, I realized, we had done what Kelehan's former people did.

We moved on in the snowless time, looking for caves. The mountains did not end, and we followed them northeast. It was the first time of my life then that I saw white wolves, the white wolves of which our tales told. Not even Kelehan saw them coming towards us across the white space the first time, when we left the valley and found the snow in the open took longer to melt. We were frightened at first, and drew together. If this was their territory we would be in trouble. The wolves that had come with us, grey and black, starkly visible in the snow, we called to us and took them into the middle. But, maybe because this land was so wide and empty, we were not attacked. In fact, they greeted the furred ones of us friendly, and inspected the unfurred ones without fear. We were accepted with mild astonishment. After a while, when we furred, we were allowed to come closer to them. We learned from them to better hunt the great beasts. The white ones had the advantage of their coats in the snow, but when the snows receded, our darker pelts showed us less and them more.

Before the next snows came, we found a valley with caves. Grateful and relieved, we moved in there, and hurried like the bears to gather supplies for the snow-season. Again, it was berries, fish and meat. Now a few nuts and roots as well. We were well off that snow-time, and it was then that many of us finally learned to make a fire like Kelehan did. In the caves, we were safe, and we were happy. When the snows ceased once more, there were cubs again.

Life was not altogether bad, though harder than before. Niy'ashi did not enjoy this land here. His brother, though, three sun-courses old by then, knew only this land and liked it, unquestioning. When we told him of the land from which we had fled, where we wanted to return to once, he shrugged and said "Why?"

"Because it is warm there" Niy'ashi said "And there are nights there that are as warm as the hottest days here"

"Because" I added "There the seasons follow each other as they should, and here it is only ever cold"

To which Kela'shin replied nothing, storing that away, and then turning his attention to the things at hand. Playing with us, eating, hunting fish in the clear, cold river. He was a skinny, silent cub who, as Khai'la had remarked the night of his birth, was with the wolves more often than with the cubs of his own age. He made no distinction between our clan-mates and the larger white ones. The packs changed, too. They mated with each other, and had cubs. Life was not as bad as it had seemed in the beginning. We were alone here with the white wolves, the bears and a few birds, and with signs that other creatures had been here, once. In the caves, there were akhai on the walls. Some showed beings we recognized: unfurred ones, wolves, bears, birds, and the horned ones. Others showed beings we guessed must live far away. We had no names for them. A few, Kelehan named. Whales, he called some, dragons, others. I found him staring at the akhai on the walls sometimes. Dragons, he finally said, had come flying across the mountains his people had sheltered in, and set the stone-shelter build there ablaze.

We stayed in those northern lands. Sometimes we thought we should try and go back, but we never got to it. We were busy living, finding out things about this land, learning to live here, and there were no deaths anymore. The clan had neither grown nor shrunk. Losses had been assuaged by cubs. But they took time to grow, and both Shinosh and Kes had died in hunts, when the great oxen had caught them on their horns. Five cubs had died on our flight here. More had died in the very first hard winters.

Five sun-courses long we spent in the winters in that valley, and many of our hunters ventured into the snow-plains during the short summers. Then we discovered a valley further east along the mountain-range which went back south deep into the mountains. There were caves there, too, and prey-animals that stayed there all year round. We moved there, and went as far south into the long valley as we yet dared. The winter appeared slightly less severe. Kela'shin had survived, all the eight sun-courses near and in the ever-snows, one of the three cubs that had been born during our flight and had lived. While Niy'ashi had his father's hair and temper but amber eyes like Khai'la, Kela'shin had the shiny black hair of his mother but dark grey eyes like his father. He also had Khai'la's temper, sharp and easily roused. He spoke little except with the wolves, and even with his brother and me he preferred wolf- or mind-speech. Niy'ashi was the one he went to for play or comfort in the first place, or he came to me. But unlike his older brother he had much less closeness to his parents, which neither Kelehan nor Khai'la begrudged, knowing that had been inevitable. By now, Kela'shin was old enough to understand what we meant with true names, and clan-names. Niy'ashi, a warm and open nature, had kept his true name as clan-name. So had Khai'la, proud and self-assured. Kela'shin came to me one night, after we had argued about names and their meaning.

"K'ashi, what is your real name?"

"If I wanted people to know it" I said "I would have kept it as my clan-name"

"You could tell me" he said.

"So?" I returned curiously "Why?"

"Because you know my name. You know I am Kela'shin. And I did not even tell you"

That was definitely a good point "Well, I know your name because I was there when your mother gave it to you"

"Still you know it" Kela'shin frowned "I would not tell anyone"

"Want me to believe that?"

I was teasing him, and he got a dark look "Who should I tell it to? The wolves don't care about names at all"

Another point "You talk to Shand'rel and Malan'toh as well. You could tell them"

"Ha" he made. Then added "We do not tell secrets. To each other…I do not tell secrets"

"Are you challenging me?" I asked.

He thought that over "Yes"

"On what grounds?"

Another long silence "You know my name. But it should have been secret"

Another good point "Very well. Kela'shin, my name is Sakesh. That is what my mother called me when I was born. But for the clan, I am K'ashi"

He stored that away. Then nodded and plopped down beside me "Do you know a story, K'ashi? Onakir said, the world was made by a black wolf. But here it is all white"

I was thinking of that one day when I climbed into the mountains looking for Onakir. I wanted to talk to him. But I had found no answer to Kela'shin's question. At least, not a very final one. One might have been, because this is not our home, here. But that was the answer one like me would give. This was not the place I wanted to be home. I wanted the forests I knew, the mountains. But Kela'shin knew only this. He was comfortable in the cold, more than we who had come here running from the green valley after oka'sanok.

It wasn't the right answer, either. With the coming of the great brightnesses, the black wolf had only the night in which his world looked like it had in the beginning. Here, the bound light of the Nighteater lay on the earth for more than half a sun-course, shimmering, and not even the nights were dark. With the brightnesses, all had become turned around and mixed. In the time when Nighteater defeated akh'khair'lar for the longest time, the nights were properly dark. But when akh'khair'lar reigned, and bound Nighteater's light so it fell to the earth, there still it was and made the nights bright.

Yet, the wolf's eye shone above us here, too. All this whiteness was part of his world as well.

Onakir was in a bad mood. That is, he seldom was in any mood. Khai'noch, I thought. Sometimes it amused me, sometimes only puzzled me. He was always calm. But not today. He looked wan when I found him, on a high ledge that looked out over the wide valley in which we lived now. It was hard walking up here, on two legs. But I carried meat for him, so I came unfurred. Onakir had been looking for herbs the past days, and he had indeed a few small bundles with him now. I looked at them.

"That is all you have found?"

He nodded glumly "All that grows here. Nothing of what I think we would need. I do not know how to use what is here. There is no time to find out. Those green things, they are all east, beyond the snows"

"Cannot we go back?" I said after a while "We have been here long, now. Maybe the lands we left are changed, but maybe we could still live better there than in the snows…" I hesitated "Does the Hawk tell you nothing?"

He made a small gesture, encompassing all the lands "There are no hawks here"

"If you can't call him, can't you…dream him?"

Onakir sniffed "In my dreams, he flies me over lands I know. The lands we left. Changed, as you said, but still there. I…wish to go back there, too"

"What if we sent a few further on? Maybe we can follow this valley south and so come into snow-less lands again? We would go furred, to see what it is like. If the white ones come with us a little, we will hunt well on the way"

Onakir was silent, munching his meat hungrily. Obviously, there had been no prey for him while digging herbs "Are there some who are willing? Good hunters on their own? We cannot lose any of those who currently provide for us. There are cubs"

"I can find enough" I said "If you think it is wise. I will talk to them"

"You will go, too?"

"I would" I said carefully "Khai'la, too, would go. Saka and Thoka'osha spoke of it. But Saka has a young cub now. Maybe I would take it for her, though. If she wishes"

He watched me, but I did not want to react to his question as concerning me. Currently, my wish to stay with Niy'ashi and Kela'shin was stronger than my wish to go with the scouts. If my staying left Saka and Thoka'osha free to go, that was just as well.

"We will speak to the clan tonight then" Onakir said at length.

Chapter Notes:

Paka-a-shin: "storm-friend"

Nok-a-shin: "storm-lover"

Saka: "River"

Sakesh: "Joy"

Shand'rel: "Snow-song"

Thoka'osha: "Lonely Wind"

Malan'toh: Sleeper ("Sleeping One")

Khaniru: "keeper"

Hinyan: "hoot owl"

Kela'shin: "rising storm"

Niy'ashi: "laughing wolf"

Shinosh: "storm-bird"

Kes: "rain"

Khai'noch: "hawk-caller"

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