Chapter 4 Wolf foreign affairs 1


To understand my diplomatic position with the other tribes, I first needed to deal with understanding the terrain. To that end I had my wolf show me around their hunting grounds. Most I already understood as it was coming on my 6th month on this planet, but I did find out a few new things.

To the North of my position were heavier mountains with glacier-filled valleys, that area was less life-filled than where we made our home. Besides an occasional growl fest with one or two massive wolves that seemed to live that way, I doubted it was a threat to my position.

The particular wolves that lived on those mountains seemed to be more of the loner type, a massive monster compared to the wolves of my tribe, and the couple I had seen gave me the impression they did not see the smaller wolves I lived with as a threat. I got the feeling that if there were not more than 10 with me the greater wolves, as I coined them, would see me and any small wolves I had with me as lunch.

I toyed with the idea of trying to come to some diplomatic understanding with these greater wolves, but they were no threat and I was already having enough trouble feeding my pack as it was. It may be something I would pursue at a later date but for now I would focus on two threats that were present on my frontiers. And since the Yetis had come from their lands I would have to assume they had their own issues and threats to deal with, that I was not interested in taking up. My survival, and thus the survival of my pack, was what mattered.

To the East was a wolf tribe about the same size and strength as my own, they numbered close to 60 and they seemed to have good hunting ground as elks seemed to herd from their homeland into ours before passing on into the west. Why they did that was open to theorizing but I suspected, due to the high latitude of my position on the planet, that there was a possibility that the planet was Pangea-like. With a massive continent centered on the north pole, forcing the animals to naturally follow the sun in a circle around the planet.

How I came to this idea puzzled me a bit, it could just as likely be related to seasonal changes and they may come back my way from the West in 6 months. But I just had a good feeling about it and the same kinda feeling I got when I made the spear my first night.

But anyways the pack in the East was the same size as my own and had been poking at my pack borders, hunting the elk and other game that crossed from their realm into mine, and that needed to be dealt with. How I was going to do it was still up in the air.

With rogues I could negotiate from a position of power, thus showing generosity did not come off as weakness. Doing that with the wolves of the East would be less successful.

And of course, fighting them was not something I wanted to do because the wolves of the West were a bigger issue. Their incursions happened far more often and most likely had been happening before I took power. From the few scouting parties I stalked with Cunning and his band by my side, I had a good feeling there were at least 80 wolves in the western tribe.

More likely than not that number was on the low end, which meant if they really wanted to punch into my territory, they could. They would take hits, of course, but those would likely be acceptable losses by any meaning of the word.

Finally, there was the South and there was no threat there. When it came to the East and West the terrain was similar enough: rocky hills, volcanic lakes, and lots of trees. To the south of this terrain, was valleys full of trees, and beyond that I didn't know. From the way the wolves had returned from that area, I suspected that it was their natural hunting grounds, that this area was where they came to rear the young as I stumbled on one too many times. And to the South is where they got fat on the bounty of the meats and food of the world.

If that was true that also may be where humanity was located. If further up the mountain were yetis, and greater wolves, and who knows what monstrous horrors, then it stood to reason that the further down you got and safer it was for things to exist. Such as small hairless apes. It was the theory but it was one I would need to investigate if I got the chance.

How I would get that chance would depend on if I could navigate the wolf politics of the region. I would need to deploy a strategy to depose my wolf tribe's competitors… Depose?

I had been sitting in front of the cave that made up the home of the wolves, scribbling on the ground with a burnt stick to plot out the information as I understood it, when that thought tapped my head. If tribes worked off alpha wolf theory then, if I could defeat the alpha wolf of one of those tribes in combat, perhaps I could force them to join with my tribe? It was worth considering.

Standing up I stretched my muscles out, as a plan began to form in my head. I had to get recon done and figure out which tribe had a weaker leader that this plan could work on, and if it would even work. Which meant I was going to have to go to the border and watch them like a hawk.

Smiling I looked down at the scribbles i made in the snow, noting several younger wolves looking at them with interest and giving me thought to see if they could learn them before I tossed that out, as they were unlikely to be able to find a way for them to make them in way that would be very readable… then I noticed something I hadn't before. Scribbles were not in Japanese, taking a knee I looked over the runic-looking script in confusion. On one hand, I had never seen this script in my life, on the other, I could read it perfectly…

My suspicions about my lost memories grew a bit heavy as I looked it over. There was no way I could just know this and use it instead of Japanese, I would have had to have learned and used it for years, perhaps decades. It had to be a long time for me to be this comfortable using it. This left me with one conclusion, whatever memories I lost between my death and this life were far more numerous than I knew or even suspected. What had been stolen from me?.


Hunting the alpha of another tribe was a difficult affair, for one, wolves tended to look very similar. I generally had to go by personality ticks and general color for wolves in my own tribe. Doing the same for wolves who would aggressively try to assert their dominance, well they tended to have the same personality of growling at you. There was no tool or clothes to use as a guide to figure out who was who and, after a few days of watching them, I nearly came to the conclusion that this was an unsuccessful prospect.

However I eventually spotted something that clued me into who was the leader of my enemy, and it was an interesting development. One of the wolves had a friend… a large raven-like bird. It was not the greatest point to use as proof that it was the leader but once I noted that future I watched how the other wolves treated this pair and quickly came to the conclusion that they showed the pair a certain level of deference , one that I saw my own wolves show me.

Believing I had found the leader of the enemy pack, I now felt that I had a working plan. The wolves did not do full deployments, there were 60 of them but they only sent 20 into our territory. Why they did this was simple, no doubt there were issues on their other borders, but also risking losing out to 2/6th of their number in those raiders meant they still had a large number of wolves to protect their home.

Well, that was a good plan if your enemy didn't know about defeat in detail and who was their leader. As it was all I needed to do was wait for an opportunity to present itself. Until that Opportunity presented itself I went about training wolves in basic mathematics, teaching them something complex like writing seemed foolhardy but giving them a lesson on how to tell me what numbers they spotted crossing the border was not as hard. I simply used the runic-like math I remembered that included such wonderful simple figures as X meaning 10… and an X shape was something my wolves could make easily enough with their paws. Teaching them that X meant groups of 10 was not hard at all. Teaching them 0-9 was a bit harder but some of them came to get the basics of those numbers and could even add and subtract. What mattered was that they understood that 10 meant X.

Because I didn't have to wait long. About 10 months after my arrival on this world a wolf scout returned ahead of time and rushed to where I was attempting to teach some of the younger pups mathematics. It immediately stamped a pair of X into the snow, Signing that there was a crossing of 20 of the eastern tribe. Now that did not justify full mobilization, there had been crossings before and I wanted them to make a move. If I countered every incursion they would stop crossing and since my plan required them to be on my territory that was detrimental. No, what immediately had me swear was the inclusion of a right-angle triangle with a mark inside. Those were the runic symbols I remembered that meant A, and what better way to explain the concept of Alpha than adding it to my shoulder pad of my dou leather armor. My plan would seem to work as not only did they now identify me as the leader by that symbol they could tell that their leader was among that tribe. At least I hoped they did. There was a distinct possibility that they didn't know that but were just trying to get my attention, or that they knew who the leader was and it was not the wolf with the raven friend.

Either way I needed to move to the border and find out what the citation was, so I called out to the wolves, rallying them. I would have liked to take the whole 60 but at the moment, 20 were on the border of the west keeping eye on incursions there, so I had to take 35 wolves with me. Five remained here to keep watch on the young pups, fewer numbers than I would like but it didn't matter. Forces quickly gathered together, I led a charge of my wolves through the woods toward the border; I needed to hit them fast and hard. The more shock I instilled with initial appearances the more likely things would work out in my favor. I only stopped to grab a saddlebag of smoked meat from my attempts to create more long-lasting foods with some flavoring that I didn't need fire to eat.

I wonder what the wolf leader thought as one moment they most likely were hunting elk, expecting us to not appear, the next a blond girl and pack of nearly 40 wolves came rushing out, the wolves enveloping their formations. If he had any thoughts about it, he seemed to quickly take control of his pack and rally them to form their 20 wolves into a close square. Claws and fangs bared, they barked and howled readying for the expected attack, one I was not willing to give them.

Stepping forward, I shoved my spear into the ground between our two groups. And took a seat across from the wolves. Catching their leader away from the main unit was the goal, now came the difficult part of getting the wolf to submit to me. There were two ways to do this, negotiation of food like I had with the rogue's leader or murder like I had with the original leader of this tribe.

Which method really sat with the wolf leader, they were out of options, and… the raven-like bird took off and started flying away. Considering how close it was to their leader I didn't have to be a genius to figure out it was going for help. In a flash I was back on my feet and drew the spear from the ground, taking aim to let my spear fly, catching the raven's wing and causing it to fall from the sky just as it got over my line of wolves.

What happened next I should have expected, attacking someone's pet of course would not go well for negotiations no matter if it is used in a military capacity. If I had not relied on my instinct perhaps I could have thought of a better option than chucking a spear at it, but I hadn't and thus the near chaos that threatened to break out because I didn't was my fault. In a flash of movement the leader of the enemy pack was charging me, moving before my wolves could react.

I, on the other hand, was able to. As the beast closed range, leaping at my neck, my right fist clocked it in the face. The wolf tumbled off to the left crashing into the snow covered ground. If it was stunned by the hit it didn't show it, instead of getting up off the ground quickly and turning to growl at me.

Some of my wolves growed back and moved closer but I raised a hand to tell them to stay back. There were still chances to salvage negotiations, and letting the chaos that threatened take the field would not improve the chances of salvaging them.

The wolf howled something and charged me again with its tribe staying in circles, I took that as a sign that option 2 of deposit was not on the field. Well, then there was really only one option then. As the wolf jumped at me again, attempting to use its bulk to overcome my right fist, I ducked low and smashed my left shoulder into its chest. I didn't have much time as its head was over my shoulder and it could try something, its front claws were not something to play with either. I grabbed onto the front legs as far up as I could then lifted.

I had been testing how much my biology differed from what humans should be able to do, and so far I hadn't found an upward limit of weight I could lift. This was good for this situation as I was able to lift the entire wolf up into the air from there. I let gravity do the work as I fell backward, crashing the wolf in the solid earth behind me. This time the wolf was stunned and before it had a chance to recoup I wrapped my arm around its neck. I was more careful this time about how much pressure I put on the windpipe and, when it stopped moving, I let up the wolf leader. Still somewhat awake, I held it there and signaled Fierce to bring me the bird. Fierce nodded, walked over to the downed bird and carefully carried it over.

As I suspected the bird was still alive, so I had Fierce put it on the wolf's chest then carefully I took a free hand and reached into the pack on Fierce's side and pulled out some smoked meat. Holding the strip of meat in front of the Wolf's face I applied a little bit of pressure, and let the wolf choose. Take the meat and submit, or die. Signaling the right choice by lessening the pressure when moving its head toward the food. The wolf quickly came to the right conclusion, though not as fast as the raven as it stood upon the chest of the wolf and grabbed the meat from my hand first, eating it without care. By the time I had the second slice of meat out, it reached forward and snapped up the bit of dried meat.

Carefully I let go of the wolf. Letting it roll over and take a moment to get a breath, I reached into the bag and pulled out more of the meat, offering it to the wolf before pulling out bandages. Looking over the raven I saw my spear had left a large cut on its side, and it was best to get that treated as quickly as possible. The wolf watching me like a hawk I carefully wrapped the raven's wounds so it could still fly if needed. I was not pecked by the bird which I took was a good sign.

Sitting there I waited for them to take action, my wolves waited behind me and their wolves waited behind them. Neither group made a noise, adding to the air of expectancy. The ball was now in their court, if the wolf and raven sprung to attack me… Well I'd fight like hell and hope the wolves of the other tribe would just mostly accept me as their new alpha. But if they took the other option that would be preferable to me.

After a bit of waiting the raven took a seat across from me and the wolf made an annoyed sound as it did the same before ultimately laying down on the ground, looking up at me.

I smiled and pulled out more of the smoked meat. I most likely would be out by the end of the day, but things looked like I was going to come out of this with a larger force of wolves.


Forcible integration of another wolf tribe seemed a lot easier than I expected, the wolves for their part seemed to just accept a new alpha without issues, and as long as I provided meat for them they were happy to stay loyal. Granted I could tell they were more loyal to their original alpha, which could be a problem, but Fierce seemed to have had me covered there.

Fierce seemed to be spending a lot of time with the other alpha, running off with the alpha to go hunting and to be alone. At first, I wasn't sure why that was, but then I realized why and I felt rather foolish. The alpha was female, Fierce was a male, a simple equation. I don't know if he did this to help me or if his beastial instinct had simply rolled well in my favor, a marriage alliance would last longer and cement the creation of a larger tribe.

Once I realized what was up I snuck a little bonus meat into Fierce's rations, a good worker deserves a bonus and he had been a very good employee with that maneuver.

But that was only half of the domestic situation. Now that I had another tribe under me, I had more wolf power to work with, and more issues. The area the new tribe held was not really different from my old tribe, their border though ran up in mountains in the far East.

This was good, as the more rocky area there meant less food, which meant there were no wolf tribes to worry about. Oh sure there most likely were monsters on that mountainside that could be issues, but monsters tended to not come steal territory meaning my only real issue was the pack to the West. On a theory, I climbed to the highest point on the mountainside that was safe from said monsters and looked as far West as I could.

There was another mountain ridge in that direction, which meant there were at most one more wolf tribes to deal with my current western problem.

That gave me something to work with as it meant I had a freer hand to deal with the situation. At this moment I had 120 wolves under my command while the western wolves had 90, not a great advantage in numbers but one nonetheless. If I could I would like to settle things without a fight, every one of those I engaged in was one that could go wrong and end with my life over.

But that was out of my hands. It would depend on what the wolves of the West would do. Till they made a move though I had time to shore up my defenses. With the new tribe, the initial camp area was no longer of a suitable size, so I went about finding a bigger area for my tribe to live. This was not hard as there were a lot of caves in the area that benefited from the heating of the mountain. On the border of my tribe which used to be the eastern tribe territory I found what I was looking for, a series of caves that could house… Well, probably more than 300 wolves, not only enough room for my current tribe but room to grow.

With the help of several of the bigger wolves, I was able to effectively cut trees using the scrap metal ax I made when I first arrived and had the wolves pull the logs back to this new base camp. From there I worked with the wolves to stock them up creating a walled area around the camp, my goal was not to completely seal out the outside, though I would like that it would not work with how the wolves came and went whenever they felt like it. Not to mention that they could jump walls up to seven feet high. Simply, I used the wall to limit the way someone could enter the camp, while also creating a dead zone outside our camp. An area with limited trees so nothing would be able to spy on us too easily.

Over the course of the week, with help of wolf muscles to push and pull things into place, I was able to get to a 4-foot high wall. I would have stopped there, but I figured out how to make leather straps that wolves could wear without getting in their way. That allowed me to tie several wolves to a log, combine that with a team of wolves piling up snow on one side of the log wall so the log didn't need to be lifted vertically, and well, I was able to push that height up to 7 feet over the next week.

With that successful wall creation, I began to consider what other things I could build with a little elbow grease and wolf power. It would be nice to have some kinda cabin over living in a cave, but I ultimately decided against that idea as, at the moment, that would require a lot more refinement of the wood than what I could do with my scrap ax. However, the building of a meat processing building was in the cards.

There were two ways I was preserving meat at the moment, keeping cold before cooking it, and overcooking till it became jerky. Cold preservation was an easy affair but not exactly the safest: dig a hole in the snow and hope nothing came along and snacked on it while you were away. If I could build a hut to keep the meat in that would secure the meat better. Not to mention I could better ration the cooked meat for my tribe.

That would have to be the next project I decided on as I worked designing the building in the snow. Really I should be using paper or something to draw blueprints like this but I noticed one other change since I arrived on the planet. Perfect recall of things I saw. Not only had scored a stronger body but the brain seemed to work at peak efficiency as well. If I ever met the person responsible for my design I would have thanked them for that, then maybe ask them why I had been reincarnated as I had?

Whatever thought I was about to get into would have to wait, as howling went up around me.

I was at the old camp cleaning up the last of the gear for transferring to the new camp. Cunning and his dozen followers were with me, helping by providing a strong back to carry a saddle bag of gear. So the amount of howling that should be going on in my area was near zero but there the sound was, and going by the way my wolves seemed to go on the defensive I knew something was wrong. Quickly I rushed to Cunning's side and loaded the last couple of spare knives and furs into his saddle bag. I didn't know what was going on but I had this feeling that it was time to go. Said feeling was quickly proven right as, before I could start running, a group of wolves larger than my own rushed out from the nearby wood to the west and headed directly for me.

A quick count of the numbers showed that it was three to 1 odds against my little group. Without much time to think, I came to my best option. Grabbing onto Cunning's side I pulled myself up onto his back. Tapping his shoulder hard I pointed in the direction of the new camp, cunning got it right away. Holding on tight to my impromptu stead I looked back watching the 30 some wolves give chase as we fled.

Not the greatest look, considering I was refusing the fight I forced every other alpha I met into, but the only thing that mattered was my life and those that mattered to the continuation of my life. Besides any possible loss in my status among the tribe would be made up soon, that I was sure of. In any case they didn't want an alpha fight as the way they had been coming at me didn't feel like they were going to force me to submit. There was blood lust in their eyes, I had seen it plenty of times before… How I saw it before was up there, I just had a brief flash of a girl in a blue uniform with the same dark look in her eyes. If I ever found out who screwed with my memories I was going to lodge a complaint with their boss because this was silly. However the point was quite clear, they were not coming to challenge me to anything. They were coming to kill me and assassinate the leader of another tribe before they could become an issue for their own. That is probably how this tribe of wolves had maintained power in the region of this valley.

Opening the saddlebags I dumped food, lightening the an added bonus some of the wolves chasing us stopped to eat what I dropped. Unprofessional mob of meat-eaters, my tribe would stick to the plan harder than this unorganized horde. I have to make a note about this, as it would most likely be useful in dealing with the western wolves.

By the time we were halfway to the new camp, I could feel Cunning getting tired. All the wolves were slowing down but our little run had done three things in our favor. First, we tired out our assassins, making them easier to fight. Second, the number of wolf assassins behind me had dropped from the 30s to half that. And third... Well, the third involved me taking the horn I had gotten from the yetis and giving it a blow.

I didn't know who had made this horn, didn't know how it was made, but damn was it loud. I could almost feel the sound in my bones. And that was a good thing because after that horn was blown I heard howling from in front and to the sides of me. Looking back I saw more wolves stop and look around before turning tail and running. Those must be the smart ones, as the 7 remaining wolves that chased us would not be coming home.

I hopped off the back of Cunning, letting him continue to run and pulling a spear from my backpack. The other wolves that ran with me turned back and came up to my sides. There were now more of us than the 7 coming to kill us, better odds. Of course, the 7 in front of us didn't care as they came charging, not caring about odds. A mistake as more wolves came out of the bushes to their right, then some from the left as wolves of my tribe streamed in from all sides. A full muster would take time but this fight was already over, all that was left was to clean up the mess.

Really I should have given them a chance to surrender, but the west wolves had put me in a bad situation for that. Sparing assassins would just invite further attempts and would likely make me look weak in front of my own tribe. That was a threat to my survival, and well I was not going to let this threat stand. Hefting my javelin I took aim and threw it toward the charging wolves, the spear embedding deeply in a beast's skull and causing it to fall forward and tumble over itself. I would be happy with that throw if the damn wolf's death throes hadn't caused my spear to snap in half.

I could only sigh and shake my head, I would have to make another one. The wolves, on the other hand, took this as a sign that they could do as they wanted. So they charged the 6 remaining wolves and tore them apart.

They were too tired and outnumbered to do much more than minor injuries, which I could heal with no problem when we got back to the camp. But now I knew something about the western wolves:There would be no friendly negotiation with them.


And here we have another chapter of tanya continued conquasts of wolf valley, hope it all gose well for her! Let me know what you folks thing.


Edited by:Pierre


reviews
Madara95: thanks! as for space marines that ways off some folk pushing for mix but I ain't doing all-female that for sure.
skrapsynneh: here more!
Cat Eyes In The Night: she young she grow.
Grocamol: well considering living with wolves was a paragraph on the wiki, I'm adding bunch of shit.
Guest: thank you
StoneTheLoner: yee pic was useful in coming up with ideas, no worries about being too unfamiliar will get there as we get there. as for the directed questions, 30k has all the primarks all 20 to be exact when Big E shows up he explain most of your question in canon.
Strong-bot: wolf wolf wolf!
Muminpappan; thank you! have some more!