Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 17

"But true wolves will fight, to the last breath, to defend their very right to fight."

The air was still, waiting.

Then a heavy wolf snarl rolled from the Aster Warlord's throat: Mortefio, the challenge for single combat, to the death.

Eyelids flickered among the Alphas flanking the Chinese Warlord. Tzo responded with a swift, angry stride forward.

"Do not so honour yourself, whelp," he barked harshly. "You fight merely to protect the wereem pet with whom you're besotted, and her people." Mac's fighters drew a hissing breath, although the Alpha remained impassive.

"You, defend wolves?" Tzo said scathingly.

"You stand by while humans pollute our rivers," he accused. "You fight for legislation to protect them while they pass legislation that will destroy us."

Tzo's voice was thundering with equal passion: "Patio, Montanore, nanoparticles: do you feel no shame at their steady poisoning of our people? You stand back and allow that. Now stand back and allow me to defend wolves," he ordered, power resounding in his voice.

A murmur of unease ran along the walls, the defending wolves shifting uneasily.

Mac waited in silence while his allies quieted, staring down at his enemy. The remaining defenders had volunteered, and they knew what they were getting into. Both what they were standing against, and standing for.

He had also known that the Tzo would not accept the mortefio. The Chinese Warlord had the longer claw, and would be a fool to hazard his advantage in a one-to-one fight. Yet Mac had so hoped to keep his wolves out of this.

"What is in those barrels, Tzo?" he asked, his quiet voice easily audible in the waiting silence. "Over three thousand years have passed since Xerclides, when the Four gathered on the wasted battleground with the remnants of our people, and vowed never again."

More than eyelids flickered among the Alphas surrounding Tzo this time, one of them so far lost his impassivity as to glance sharply at his Warlord, seeking reassurance.

"Move aside," growled the Tzo. "I have no wish to do so, but if you force me to, I will fight with all I have," he vowed. "To defend the freedom of all wolves. Do not seek to deny me, Mackeld. I will fight for the right to defend them to my last breath."

Mac hissed out a frosted cloud in the chilled air. "As will I," he said coldly. "You would enslave their minds, to protect their bodies."

"You would destroy them all, with your love of humans," the Tzo replied. He turned and stalked back beyond the line of loaded catapults, his entourage trotting uneasily in his wake.

The line of defenders settled with a sigh, casting wordless glances between themselves. Some were shivering, but all stood firm.

Twin? Mac's conveyance was simply an affirmation. The arguments had been shaken to death and smothered hours since, well before Ulf had left through the hidden tunnel, leading his small scent-masked force. Mac absorbed the pulse of raw feeling that was punched back at him from his natal. Words were superfluous, they had shared sense and emotion long before they had known how to describe them.

Natasha tentatively laid her nose across Ulf's bristling neck. He didn't shake her off, and Mac let out a quiet breath. Twin.

The rope creaked as the bucket of the last trebuchet was secured, and quietly Jorgen intoned, "Nine," when the casket was carefully lowered into the sling.

Silence frosted along the wall.

Gemma? Mac's voice was calm in her head. He was so calm. So adamant. Tears were rolling down her cold cheeks as one last time he sank into her awareness, sharing the crispy chill of the snow den in which she lay curled, feeling the flakes melt on her nose. The dread within her was colder than the snow, unbearable, but this was who he was.

This was who she loved.

Wood splintered. Mac's full focus wrenched back instantly to the walls he was defending as silvery liquid scattered across the nearby defenders from the casket shattering on the Eastern gate turret above him. His arm was drenched and he jerked backwards with a mangled yell, the limb hanging useless, fur smoking and skin turning black. Jorgen caught the full douche and dropped with a scream, rattling a hoarse breath before lying unmoving on the parapet. More barrels were breaking on all sides, the howls of the allies deafening, wolves screaming as they fell to the ground, fur smoking, skin blackening.

Mac struggled to clear his head, to hold the few still standing together and broadcast the images for all: Fealden, his packs, his allies. This was the Tzo. He ran back toward the stair, shouting orders. Relief seared through him as Walter and Andrea dropped into shelter behind the far turret, fur sizzling on them both, but only small patches. Then a second casket shattered at the feet of the Aster Warlord, showering him with its icy contents. Mac crumpled with a howl of pain, rolled to the edge of the rampart and fell like a stone to land motionless on the gravel driveway behind the gate.

A wave of revulsion from the ranks of watching Tzo wafted over the battlements, but the Chinese Warlord barked several orders and his Alphas held their warriors firm.

The deluge was over. The screams died. A deafening quiet followed, even the birds in the forest seeming shocked into silence.

Eventually, the Tzo called a gruff order and several sets of feet paced forward heavily. After several hard blows with a ram, the gates gave and were pulled open, framing a scene of smoking devastation. Impassive, the Chinese Warlord stepped up into the gap and surveyed the sparse smattering of blackened, twisted wolf bodies littered behind and atop the walls. His eye lighted on the charred heap of tawny fur lying face down in the gravel away to his right.

Carefully the Tzo stepped beyond the high wall, his eyes cold. Despite the heavy rubber boots encasing his human-form feet, he could not prevent a quick glance down, to ensure protection from the damp earth as he walked seemingly at ease toward the still-smoking body of his enemy.

Behind him, in their own protective footwear, half of his warriors began to march, stepping their way across the soaked ground just as cautiously, heading straight toward the vast lawn that stretched between the hospital, the lagoon, the beech grove and the wall, beyond the fall of the death rain. Carefully, none of the warriors looked left or right, although many scents were mangled with guilt. Reaching the grass, they kicked off the heavy boots and strode swiftly on to escape the scent of burned fur and flesh behind them.

One quiet order from the stocky warlord looking down at the blackened fur of the Mackeld, and his own pack detached and reluctantly fanned out to search for survivors among the fallen, those in the healing coma who had not yet died of the poison. Reluctant to touch the drenched bodies, they nudged them over onto their backs, bending to listen to the rattling breathing of those slowly dying in merciful shiatz, rounding up three heavily wounded, dazed survivors.

Zaban pack had been ordered to remain outside the walls to defend the trebuchets, together with almost half of Tzo's forces. The excuse was a fabrication: with the scouts in the woods, Fealden Wolflord would not be able to approach without warning being given. Besides, with only one or two aircraft, he would not arrive in any numbers for days.

Unbidden, Zaban stepped under the tall stone archway. The Mongol Alpha choked a shallow breath, bitter anger burning in the polluted air. He halted, and closed his eyes in revulsion.

The Tzo was standing over the remains of the Mackeld, his fingers flickering in the salute of honour.

I have never felt shame to be Tzo before, the Zaban broadcast, his mind heavy with the vile scene his eyes had witnessed. Resolutely, he reopened them. He was here to bear witness. How can you be a party to this? What can justify this? he addressed all within his range, savagely.

Unease rippled through the wolves marching in ordered ranks onto the clean grass, and Zaban saw the Su Alpha lift his head, his shoulders pulling back against a blow.

Tzo's head lifted sharply from his contemplation of Mac.

Zaban pulled free of the Tzo alliance, saying fiercely, I cannot. There is no justification which will wipe clean this smear. I would not wish to be wolf, with this smear. His eyes met his former Warlord's across the wasteland, anger boring into cold resolution, yet making no impression.

Tzo nodded. I do not rejoice, he said stiffly, and turned to follow the last of his warriors now marching barefoot across the clean grass toward the hospital complex. The front ranks had nearly reached the car park surrounding the white buildings. Make your way as you will.

A faint, mechanical click echoed under the steady footfalls of the advancing army.

Encircling the perimeter of the lawn, a line of hundreds of delicate jets hissed into the air, sprinkling a delicate barrier around the advancing ranks.

The Chinese Warlord halted, a command to his Alphas stopping the half of his force, those within the wall encircled by the sprinklers, while the Tzo frowned at the clear liquid tracing the air between himself and his warriors.

Silhouetted against the silvery waters of the lagoon, four indistinct figures unfolded shakily among the bushes edging the lawn, from where the quiet whirr of a pump now emanated. Two were in human form. Two were wolf, their fur blackened and smoking like their fallen comrades, with patches of burned skin shining bare and stark among the sizzled hair. Four sets of eyes flared in angry disbelief, one pair highlighted by the white-and-black mottled, mangled skin disfiguring his face.

"I never thought that you would really do it," said the female wolf. She didn't raise her voice, but a lilt of shame wafted from the sea of wolves between herself and the Warlord, a sea shifting uncertainly as though stirred by a violent gust.

The Chinese Alpha standing on the lawn nearest to the four grunted to an order in his head, and strode quickly toward the scentless survivors.

"The lagoon water contains silver," the young, silver-maimed male wolf warned, his voice deadened as one hand indicated the line of sprinkler jets. "Be careful."

The Alpha stopped perforce, hearing a hiss run through the army behind him.

"I do not rejoice," repeated the Tzo, answering the sjeste as he stepped back carefully from the tinkling line. "Had the Mackeld backed down, we could have -."

The young male cut in, his raised voice damning, " -enslaved you all without the need to first commit this atrocity? Here you show your true colours, Dingo."

"I never thought any wolf could do it," said the female, her voice uncertain, quavering. Her eyes had dropped to stare at the shiny, stretched scars already formed on the back of her hand, some seeping at the edges where they had cracked when she had stood up.

Abruptly, as one, almost a fifth of the encircled wolves dropped to sit cross-legged on the grass. The short, wiry Alpha beside them cast one expressionless glance across their bowed heads to the Tzo, then folded gracefully to sit in silence with his pack.

For the first time, a spark crossed the Chinese warlord's face, but all he said was, "Turn off that pump."

"No," answered the human-form male. His eyes mocked, anger lifting one corner of his mouth.

The Tzo pack who had been checking the bodies reformed around their Alpha. Co-ordinated, they dropped into loup with their leader, and began to run swiftly around the perimeter of jets. They had almost reached the trees when a deluge of images plunged into the Warlord's head, and he skidded to a halt.

Far out in the forest, Tzo's hidden, scentless scouts were under attack. Synchronised ambushes dotted around the wooded hills where pairs of other scentless wolves leaped out from the undergrowth. Xingchau caught glimpses and scent of a dog, holding back in the bushes behind the pair of wolves attacking him. Then the Tzo's attention was wrenched sideways by the last image Sha-Po sent, of the Mackeld, enraged, diving upon her. Impossible.

Tzo spun.

His eyes lighted, incredulous, on the empty patch of gravel to the left of the gate, where he had left the smouldering body of his enemy. His gaze lifted and swept across the battlements: also empty. All but the two bodies huddled by the west tower were gone.

The heavy gate underneath the tower clapped shut. Hunched figures of the blackened, dishevelled defender wolves were piling boulders from the nearby rockery against the feet of the broken panels to hold them closed, while at their back the tall, powerful figure of their leader turned with slow menace to meet the eyes of his enemy.

A murmur of disbelief swayed through the ranks of wolves on the entrapped grass.

Mac was trembling: anger, fatigue, grief. Emotions tumbled through his mind of unanchored, weightless recoil. He no longer carried the knot of a single wolf, having released them all to their Alphas or seconds, in case one of the barrels that hit him had been live. At the last moment, he had shunted the Gems-and-Faulk meld to his mate. He was floating on anger. All that held him down on the gravel was the touch of Twin, and Gemma.

Yet the power still itched, beating against him. He brushed frazzled fur from his arm, glancing down at his blackened skin peeling off in tiny flakes where the new growth was coming in. He had released them all, but they hovered: loyalty proffered, ready, power shrouding around him despite his disinclination to grasp it. This was what the Fealden wore, a cloak of powerful, shimmering loyalty. Mac shook his head as though irritated by gnats, and flicked more dead skin from his face.

Jason Allison, released last night from the deepest cells, had had the knowledge to enable this trap for the Tzo. Long ago the old Faulk, Louise's father, had had his enslaved chemists reinvent the silver rain. The old Faulk Alpha had only employed it once, to subdue a riot in the canteen, after which no prisoner had dared to push their overseers that far again, for decades, until the memories had faded.

Yet that riot had been smoke and mirrors, staged. Jason had been compelled to devise the decoy rain, and a selection of Grey wolves, who none at Faulk would recognise, had impersonated new inmates for some weeks before putting on their show of rebellion. The decoy that had been used to 'subdue' them was poison to a wolf, frazzling hair, and blackening and scalding skin in a reaction similar to silver. Yet although the conflagration was agony, a wolf would heal.

So much of the Faulk centre had been built on lies.

Jason Allison's chemical knowledge had been too valuable to destroy, yet the Faulk had had to prevent knowledge of the fake rain from spreading. All the long years since that riot, the chemist had been isolated from the other prisoners, both with walls and Argen, hidden in a suite of cells in the high security block, until his release the previous night. He had spent one whole day with his grandson, Rupert.

Mac cast a stricken glance at the two bodies fallen at the base of the west tower. Rupert.

The Little Gem lab rats had worked feverishly all day to produce enough of the decoy barrels. But the Tzo was cunning. His own pack had been the bearers of the ammunition through the forest, sets of eight warrior carrying four caskets spaced at random distances throughout the army - never all of the poison in one place. Pairs of warriors had ported the barrels, lashed securely to two poles carried across both shoulders.

There had been one vulnerable position on their route, where they had had to manhandle the poles over a boulder field and up a short rockface, overhung with trees. Crossing that field, the bearers had been preoccupied with placing their feet securely and keeping their burden from hitting the rocks, passing the load from one to the other or resting it on ledges as they had manoeuvred around and over obstacles. There had been several places where the barrels had been out of sight of both bearers and guards among the branches and rocks.

Tor and Ulf Mackeld had both been trained in tree-diving by Senshal N'Gula. Throughout the long day, they had both found satisfaction using the skills their mentor had taught them to confound his killer, taking turns away from defending the wall to race through the forest to the boulder field and substitute the silver rain with the fake. Setting this trap.

Between them, they had substituted all but four barrels. Four. The defenders who had volunteered to stay on the wall had known the odds: four of the twenty-four barrels had been live. Nine of those twenty-four had been loaded in the trebuchets. They had all accepted the risk.

One of those deployed had been real. Mac glared across at the Chinese Warlord who had violated a three thousand year old treaty with the silver rain. Rupert and Tate. Walter and Andrea would heal, if they survived this conflict.

The Tzo inhaled a sharp breath, calling his wolves still outside to renew the attack. His fulminating eye now landed on the Zaban pack, uncoiling from where they had crept to lie on the ramparts inside, now standing to line the parapet, facing down at their former allies. They must have entered while he had been leading his pack around to the pumps. The Chinese Warlord exhaled slowly, raging at the memory of his own words to the Mongol Alpha: Make your way as you will.

Tzo drew himself up, black eyes burning across at the Mackeld. "A wolf should know when he is dead," he said, chill darkening his voice.

"You will," growled Mac.

Gemma sighed in relief as Mac reached to melt his mind back through hers. She was lying curled in her snow den, eyes blind with the excruciating headache grinding at the inside of her skull. Softly, link by careful link, he eased the mesh of the Faulk and Gem battle meld up off her. She had kept them calm, he murmured in pride. The Tzo wolves hadn't suspected - her koiru had played their parts perfectly, soothed by their Alfamme.

Mac had explained why he had had to shunter their pack, why they couldn't just disband the battle meld and regroup after the attack. When a pack disengaged from the meld, each wolf began to heal immediately. His analogy had been a human taking a shoe off a swelling ankle. A good Alpha will carefully unpick the laces holding his wolves, ease his hold off as gently as possible, but once the minds had ballooned with healing it would still be nearly impossible, and intensely painful, to force the meld back on again until they were healed. The Faulk wolves had only just healed enough since breaking out of their meld with the Louse to be able to meld with the Mackeld. Had he crashed the Louse, yanked that meld off, there was no way they would have been able to.

Gemma was drifting among her thoughts, watching what her mate was doing through a fog of pain. It was like he was trying to ease gauze off a wound without tearing open the scab, or breaking the fragile mesh. She was trying to let go her grip, heed his gentle instructions, but it was hard, she didn't know how. It hurt.

Abruptly, they were gone. Her mind creased in a new sharp pain as it soared free, dizzyingly unencumbered, sliced bare but clear.

A thought brushed over her cartwheeling mind like a kiss as her mate withdrew with the meld back to the battle. Gemma lay aching, her heart pounding in steady dread. The pain was too great, she couldn't reach out to kiss him back, couldn't extend her thoughts, and so curled in on herself and prayed, faintly comforted by the scents of her sleeping brother and fellow hunters curled asleep behind her in their snow den.