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Black Wolf

Chapter 6 – Life on the Edge

In the monitor room Meili watched in fascination through the camera in the black wolf’s collar as the scene played out. She had noted the approach of wolf twenty-one, the alpha of the druid pack but there was no way that she could warn Black short of flying a drone right between them. Doing so was a breach of protocol, however, and even then he might have missed it; his vital signs as recorded by the collar were extremely elevated, showing that he was so focused on the female wolf that he might not have seen a herd of elephants walk by.

She did not have a drone assigned to him in any event. She was trying to stretch her meagre budget as much as possible by relying mostly on the collar monitors.

She could not see all the gestures Black made when he finally saw the Alpha charging, but from his vocalizations she assumed that he wanted to ask for permission to stay. Her heart sank. She was growing attached to the black wolf but having seen firsthand what Menace did to interlopers it looked like this would be the end of him. It was too bad that she had wasted a helicopter trip to collar him, she thought. Hopefully she would be able to retrieve it intact. Maybe Menace would make it easy for her by throwing it over the fence again.

She was elated when Black ducked at the last second, avoiding the killing blow Menace had aimed at his head and gaining enough time to make his escape. She became a little worried though when he turned back around and headed straight for the road and the electrified fence beyond it. Would he remember what Frost had told him about not touching it, she wondered?

It seemed that he did because he stopped short of leaving the pavement. He was not completely out of trouble yet though. Menace had never come closer than the far edge of the service road that the automated electric trucks used to bring the waste here for processing, but if the road was clear he might overcome his fear. Meili prayed to her gods that Black was not stupid enough to taunt the bigger wolf.

From his collar camera she could see that he was standing still, watching Menace. She saw the Druid Alpha look left and then back to Black with a smile. She saw his daughter behind him frantically waving her arms. Her eyes snapped to the digital map that showed all of her collared wolves as well as the position of each drone and the location of each truck owned by the environmental corporation.

One of the green dots representing a truckload of human waste was closing in on the red dot that represented her favourite wolf.

“Chuck! Shut down all the trucks! Chuck!”

But she was too late. Before Chuck could even sit up and wonder what she was asking him to do the dots converged.

* * * * * *

Black felt the rush of wind, much like the one he felt when a large male mountain sheep charged, but much stronger. The force of it hit him like a solid wall and forced him back a pace onto the dirt verge. It probably saved his life.

After the wind his vision was blocked by something white moving fast past him a finger width from the tip of his nose. It was so big that it blanked out everything else. It was like being in a white-out in the mountains, he thought, except there was no snow to cause it. The sudden absence of air around whatever it was created a vortex of wind behind him, pressing him forward, but Black dug his feet into the dirt and tensed his muscles to keep from being sucked in.

It felt like it took a few hundred breaths but there must have been only time to inhale before it was gone and he could see again.

He still had his hands up behind his ears and his mouth was still open. There was a puddle of urine at his feet that was not there before. Menace still stood on the far side of the black trail, looking somewhat disappointed. Frost was still on the top of the hill behind him, looking relieved.

Black turned his head to the left and saw a white square moving away from him. It looked like a blank hole in the material that made up his universe. When it was halfway along the lightning web it slowed its retreat, and black was afraid that it was coming back to get him, whatever it was.

Then he saw a section of the web open, two pieces that broke apart and rotated inward. A branch of the black trail passed though the web and ran up against the giant edifice the gods had built. The thing that had almost hit him turned towards it and Black could see that the square was just the back end of a chain of blocks that were somehow able to move along the black trail, like a toy snake made of pieces of wood tied together with rawhide. It turned, one box at a time, to follow the branch through the opening in the web.

When it had passed the opening in the web the two sections swung back together. The featureless white blocks continued at a slow pace towards the grey rock. A square hole appeared as a section that was shinier than the rest moved upward, and the beast disappeared through it. One it was inside the hole closed again.

This was too much for Black to process. Silent blank beasts that moved like the wind, giant spider webs that could kill you yet that opened for the beasts to pass. A wall as high as the cliffs that had holes which appeared and disappeared as needed. And all of that happening while right across the road the biggest wolf that he had ever seen was waiting to kill him because his daughter wanted to mate with him.

He wondered if any other wanders had days like this one.

He looked back at the web, keeping an ear cocked backwards to listen for sounds of Menace approaching. There were poles at regular intervals and the web was attached to them with more of the same material. At the top or each pole there was a small branch angled toward the trail and running from branch to branch were three strands of what looked like the same stuff except they had thorns sticking out of them. It would be very difficult to climb over, even if there was no lightning, Black thought. He wondered how the lightning worked, as there was no sign of any on the web at the moment.

There were several strands of some other similar material that ran horizontally through the web. It looked braided and reddish in spots but most of the exposed sections had a greenish tinge. At each pole the horizontal lines were wrapped around nodes that looked like they were made of white glass. Again, Black resisted the urge to go up and poke one to see what they were because centred on the web between each set of poles was a white rectangle covered in red markings. Black could not decipher the marks but on each side of them were prominent red lighting bolt symbols.

It must be a warning from the gods, he surmised. But why didn’t they put some up on the black trail to warn wanders of the great beasts that followed them? Mysterious ways indeed.

When he turned back Frost was nowhere in sight and Menace had moved back to a spot twenty strides from the trail. Black moved to the east, keeping off the black surface of the trail. Menace moved east also, keeping his distance from the trail. Black moved west. Menace did too.

It became a standoff. Black could move left or right along the grassy strip between the web and the trail but Menace kept pace with him, preventing him from escaping. Black wondered how long the big wolf would keep it up.

It proved to be quite a long time. Menace stayed with him until nightfall. Meanwhile Black explored his narrow strip of safe territory for several runs in each direction.

During that first day several things became evident.

The first was that the warnings on the web were deadly serous. Several times Black came across the carcass of small mammals and even the dried out remains of a mule deer. In each case they were against or right beside the web. Having left his gear and stock of food hidden on the other side of the road where Menace still prowled Black was growing hungry and he was tempted to grab one of the fresher carcasses, but a crow landed on it before he could. It was good thing too, as soom as it touched down the crow’s eyes rolled back in its head and it shook like it had plunged into a frozen lake for a few seconds before smoke began rising from its feathers. It burst into flame and fell off of the ground hog’s corpse, starting a fire in the grass.

Black had to run to escape the flames, but fortunately not too far.

The second lesson he learned was that the white beasts came silently and unexpectedly. They covered the ground faster than a bounding elk but with no warning whatsoever. Black supposed that something so large moving that fast could strike a fatal blow and just as if to prove him right a lone deer, frightened by Menace lumbering around on the other side of the trail, bounded onto the black surface and froze when it saw the black wolf on the other side. Before it could decide which direction was the safest one of the great beasts came along and hit it. The deer was gone in a spray of blood and guts unlike anything Black had ever seen.

He was left here standing there in shock on the grass with bits of flesh and skin and bone sticking to him while Menace laughed like a maniac on the other side.

“They are worse at night.” Menace called gleefully. “You can’t see them coming at night. And even if you make it across alive, I’ll be waiting for you somewhere in the dark.”

The third thing Black learned was that there was no where else to go. The web surrounded the place of the gods, turning inward at the ends. Where there was no web there were cliffs, shear featureless cliffs. The black trail followed their edge just as it followed the web, leaving just ten strides of land between them.

Save for the grass that land was barren. There were no trees and few bushes, and that meant no berries or nuts to be had. To stay on this side meant starvation. To cross over meant death at the hands of Menace.

Black did not know how Menace could read his mood from so far away but just as Black came to his gloomy conclusion he could hear the Alpha’s renewed laughter in the gathering dusk.

* * * * *

Meili had reached a similar conclusion as the last of the light faded. It was a moonless night and she could barely make out the passing trucks in Black’s collar camera feed.

“Chuck! How come those trucks don’t have headlights?”

“I’m not Chuck. I’m Mitch. Chuck went off shift hours ago.”

“Sorry. I’ve been sort of caught up in this.”

“I’ll say. You booked in before dawn and missed all the meal times.”

“Yeah. My stomach is reminding me of that now. So anyway, why aren’t there any lights on the trucks?”

“They navigate by GPS and onboard radar. Their radar keeps them from hitting anything that can damage them, like a full grown bison, but slowing down for anything else is just a waste of energy, and this planet does not have any energy left save for the sun and some wind power.”

“What? What about the Phoenix engines? Can’t they be used to generate power on planet?”

“They could, they do convert mass to energy with almost no waste and no radiation, but they are incredibly expensive and resource intense. Other than the ships used in the exodus none have ever been built on earth. All the advanced power units in existence are all being used to power the interstellar fleet and the main colonies. It would take an act of the FEC to have one reassigned to earth.”

“I suppose with the balance of power with the Colonies-First movement that no one is going to propose sending one.”

“You got it. If we don’t need it for the primary mission, we don’t get it. Besides, the deer and groundhogs aren’t in any danger of dying out.”

“The wolves are.”

“Mary, I hate to break it to you like this, but no one cares about your wolves. No one that counts anyways.”

Meili turned away from the widow that separated her from the technician’s console so he could not see the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Thanks for the reality check, Mitch. I was starting to feel all giddy and hopeful.” Her stomach growled again. There was nothing she could do to help from here, so Meili decided to go see what leftovers might be available in the kitchen.

On her way down she wondered how much trouble she would get in if she stole a ham hock from the freezer and threw it over the fence for the black wolf.

* * * * *

Black slept fitfully on the grass with his head toward the trail and his feet to the web so that he wouldn’t inadvertently roll into either in his sleep. He woke with the birdsong at the first rays of dawn, stiff and sore from sleeping on the bare ground without so much as a hide to pull over him.

The first thing he did was to check the far side of the trail. Menace was not in sight but by carefully scanning the horizon from right to left Black discovered that there were several other wolves watching him from the far side of the first hills. He pretended to rush for the trail and was satisfied when they all stood up and ran toward him in response.

None of them were as big as Menace, but they were close. From the pattern of their fur and their size Black guessed that they were his sons, the ones that would normally be out hunting. The old wolf must really have it in for me, he thought.

The younger wolves, none of which had collars, Black noted, stayed farther back from the trail than their father had. But they continued to match his movements left or right, with at least four always watching from the first crest.

Black did not mind skipping food for another day. As a wolf from a small mountain pack it was not the first time that he had gone several days without eating. He body was lean and efficient, able to survive for long periods with little or nothing to eat, while theirs were heavily muscled and needed constant sustenance. He wondered how long they could go without hunting.

Meanwhile he continued to explore the narrow strip of neutral territory he was forced to call home for now. It was another day of discovery, several of which Black thought could be to his advantage.

He saw a number of corpses along the web again, some fresh and some old and inedible. He saw a crow lite on the fresh corpse of a badger and cringed in anticipation of it dying, but the black bird just pecked and tore happily away at its newfound meal. Black squatted down and watched it, trying to figure out why it had not died like the other.

At first he wondered if the lightning had all been used up on the badger, which was three times the size of the ground hog he had seen the day before. Black spent some time throwing things at the web to see if this section might not have any lightning. Small rocks had no effect, and small branches washed over to this side by the melting snow did not do anything either, but a stick large enough to span two of the braided lines made the sparks fly. So that was not the answer.

He noticed that some of the sticks he had thrown were leaning against the web, a few even toughing the horizontal strands, but none of them were sparking. The crow even went as far as to use one such stick as a perch while he tore a large chunk of badger into smaller bits. It avoided touching the web itself though.

Were there things that could not conduct lightning, Black wondered? Sundown had said that when it hit a dead tree it did less damage than when it hit a live one because the lightning ran through the sap inside. All of these branches were old and dry. Even when they hit the fence just right they did not split or catch fire the way a live tree did when struck by lightning.

Black examined the badger again, from as close as he dared come to the web. From his new vantage point he noticed that the body of the badger was not touching the web or any of the greenish strands in it. Black knew that the lightning from the clouds could jump right through the air to find its target, but maybe the lightning in the web was not powerful enough to do that? At least it was not strong enough to cross over and kill the crow that was eating the badger’s guts, he surmised.

Black took one of the sticks he had left and poked the corpse. Nothing happened. He poked it again, harder, but other than upsetting the crow there was still no response. Finally, black gathered his courage and used the stick to flip the body of the badger right up against the fence.

There were some sizzling noises. Like the blood coming out of a bone tossed on the fire, but that was all. Being dead Black didn’t expect much of a response from the badger anyway. What he was waiting for was the crow.

Sure enough, after a minute of squawking and complaining the scavenger decided that it was safe to return to its meal. It immediately went stiff and started smoking like its cousin the day before. Black knocked it off the corpse with his stick before it burst into flame and started another fire.

Touching the web means death, black had learned, and now he knew that touching something that was touching the web also meant death. He could not resist one last experiment though. He poked at the body of the badger one more time with the stick.

Black felt a tingling in his hands, but just a weak one and it only lasted as long as the stick was touching the corpse. He examined it and found that it was damp from having recently been under the snow. He searched around for a drier one and tried it. There was no tingling at all. Being careful to keep away from the web he sed it to drag the body away from the web, but not too far.

Black did not want the wolves watching him to know that he had figured out how to salvage a meal from the deadly web. He would come back at night and retrieve the badger. Hopefully the dead crow beside it would serve as a warning to others and the badger would still be whole when he returned.

He discovered drinking water and a way under the black trail at the same time.

In several places there were tunnels under the trail. Black did not know what kind of creature had made them but they were being held open by a strong material similar in appearance to the one the web and its poles were made of. Where it was exposed to the air it was often reddish and flaky, but where he scraped dirt away it was grey and a bit shiny. It was twisted like the shells of some of the water snails in their small lake back home, although not tapered like them.

They were too small for a grown wolf to squeeze into and while some had water caught in the wavy spirals it was muddy and rancid and smelled like ground hog scat. It could have worms and being sick when you were weak was almost as bad as dying from lack of water. Black would only drink there as a last resort.

He did notice that the tunnels tended to be placed where the ground was higher on the far side, as if to let the meltwater flow without affecting the trail. So maybe the tunnels were dug by the gods, or at their direction, to preserve their trail.

Far to the east, past where the fence turned toward the cliff, Black heard the sound of running water. Running water was generally good for drinking because it lost all the sediment and poisons that standing water held as it rushed along. Black was not sure how, but that was what the grandmothers said. He followed the noise into a gully beside the trail and discovered a creek that was emerging from under some bushes on the steep embankment. He held up a double handful and sniffed it cautiously. It smelled fine, but he thought that he had better check out the source before drinking any.

Pushing the bushes aside he discovered something strange. Instead of a spring or a small tunnel he found a grill made of the same material as the tubes. It was set in a square opening made of the same kind of stone as the place of the gods as far as he could tell. This close up he could see that it contained bits of rock stuck into a grey stone that had somehow been formed into a passageway about a reach high and reach wide. The water was flowing through it from the other side of the trail. Dim sunlight could be seen at the far end. It was tinged with green indicating that it too was overgrown with vegetation.

There did not seem to be anything nasty in the passage so black ventured a drink. The water tasted a little earthy but otherwise it was good.

After drinking his fill Black examined the grill again. It was made of material similar to the web and tunnels, but it was much thicker and more worn down from exposure. Where the reddish sticks crossed they looked like they had been melted together, and Black, who could barely scratch the material with the hardest stone, wondered what could be powerful enough to do such a thing. The gods surely did command the fires and the lights of the heavens if they could form stone and melt … whatever this hard grey stuff was.

At the top of the grill Black found two tubes of the same stuff set in the stone with protrusions from the grill sticking through them. After pondering their function for a while Black realized that the protrusions would turn in the tubes like a deer’s hip joint. He cleared away the brush and grass from the edges of the grill and saw that there was nothing holding it on to the stone except a small tongue of metal over a ring that had a separate piece of grey stuff stuck through it.

The stick of material had a knob on one end to keep it from slipping down through the ring and another one with squared off sides on the other side that kept the toggle from being pulled out. It was very worn down and big flakes of material were coming off it and it had grown thinner where it was tuck trough the ring. Black found a wedge shaped rock in the gully and placed its point behind the knob. Then he hit it hard with a heavier rock.

The toggle bent and after several blows it and the ring broke free. Black grabbed the grill below the water and pulled up as hard as he could. At first it did not move, then with a squeal like a mountain goat that had lost its footing it slowly started to rise. It was heavier than Black expected, mush heavier than the lattices they made from hardwood branches to block the entrance to the den, but Black was stronger that he looked, and eventually he was able to flip it over the tipping point so that it came to rest against the bank of the gully.

Black poked his head inside the passageway. There did not seem to be any threat. He got on all fours and crawled inside.

It became too dark to see as soon as his body was blocking the light so Black waited for one hundred breaths until his eyes adjusted. When he could proceed he saw that the passage was generally free of debris, with only a few small sticks and rocks that could get through the grill littering the bottom. He pushed them to the sides as he went, cleaning the route for his return.

At the far end there was another grill which was also covered in brush and grass, as he had guessed. Some debris had accumulated outside though and made a small pool of standing water. Bushes had taken root around its edges, effectively blocking it from view to anyone who stayed back off the trail the way the Druid wolves did.

Black examined the grill. It was in even worse shape than the one on his side of the trail. The tongue of material had been eaten away by the elements and one of the two tubes at the top had come free from the stone for the same reason. Black gave it a push and it swung a bit to the right and up before the other tube broke free with a snap.

Black froze, wondering if the wolves that were shadowing him had heard the noise. At least it was not the loud squeal the other grill had made. When there was no sign of activity for twice a hundred breaths he ventured to shift the grill far enough to the side to allow him to crawl out.

Using the stalking techniques he learned from his older sister and refined by watching the foxes of the plateau Black crept to the bushes and peered through. There on the hillside fifty strides away was Menace, talking to one of his sons. The younger wolf was gesturing in such a way that Black did not need to hear his words to know what they were talking about – him.

It seemed that Menace was upset that Black had not crossed the trail yet, moreso because he had disappeared out of sight into the gully. Other sons were farther back on the high ground, straining to see which direction Black would move in when he left the low ground. If Black did not reappear soon Menace might take the drastic move of ordering one of his less talented sons to cross the trail and flush him out.

Black scrambled back into the passage and pulled the grill back into place as best as he could. This escape route could come in handy at some point, but for now he had to pretend that he was still stuck on the far side. He closed the grill on the other side again, glad that it did not squeak as much as the when he opened it. He tied it shut with a bit of rawhide cord from his loincloth just in case anything tried to follow him. Then he went back the way he had come, reappearing on the grass verge just as Menace was getting into a heated argument with his son.

Black tried to act dehydrated and disoriented, deliberately wandering close to the web and then staggering back to the edge of the trail several times as he made his way back to the where the web opened onto the place of the gods. As he approached another chain of blocks was just arriving and he watched the web swing open for it. Feeling a little tired from walking so far Black decided to spend the rest of the day watching the beasts go in and out.

The timing of the web’s opening and the arrival of the beasts from either direction was perfect. The gate, Black called it that because it worked like the one Sundown had built from branches and hide to block the narrow path behind their den, was fully open just in time for the beasts to pass through and no sooner was the last block of their jointed bodies through then it swung shut again. Black could not see what was opening and closing it, more of the god’s magic, he assumed, but it left little room for anything else to get through.

Black found that it did not bother the beasts for him to move closer to the gate; they approached and entered at the same speed regardless. Whether they came from the west or the east they always turned into the gate and when they turned they always slowed down enough for Black to get a better look at them.

The first block in each chain was smaller than the rest, and no matter how many other blocks there were a small one always led. Black compared it to the head of a centipede, always there no matter how large or small the centipede behind it was. But they were featureless compared to the centipedes, who had mouths and whiskers and sharp fangs to poison their prey with. And the centipedes had eyes, big dark eyes with a hundred facets. These beasts had just a few dark spots on their curved front and a single stubby antenna at the top of their head. They didn’t even wave it around like the ants and the butterflies did with their more elaborate appendages. Black could understand why Frost referred to them as the eyeless beasts.

They may be blind, but they never strayed from the path, and when they passed him Black could sense the power of them, like from bull bison or a big grizzly, but much more intense.

From his vantagepoint near the gate Black could see that the blocks that made up the body of the beasts were connected to each other by a narrow black waist, like a wasp’s, but there could be as many as five blocks to a beast and there was never a stinger on the end, not that Black could see, although they could be retracted like a bee’s, he supposed.

The blocks themselves were not as featureless as he had first made them out to be. They were mostly blank on the front and sides but they did have small black markings, similar to those on the web’s warnings. The back ends had more of the markings, and there was a line where they were not solid running from top to bottom at the mid-point. Branches of the material similar to that of the grill Black had found ran beside the joint, and tubes like the one that the grill swung on along the edges gave Black the impression that the two halves of the back could swing open also, like the opening in the web but solid, like swinging walls.

Nothing living that Black knew of could do that, except maybe the beetles that hid their wings under their shells. But if they could fly the wings would be on the top, wouldn’t they? He couldn’t decide if they were giant insects or something that the gods had built and brought to life. Since they did not have legs like insects, just great round black feet that they seemed to roll along on, he was leaning toward something built.

In any event, beast or built, they always slowed down when they neared the gate, and thanks to the tiny fires inside what looked like clear glass balls on the top of the web there, he could see them coming day or night. That made the gate area the safest place to cross the trail as far as he was concerned.

No so for Menace and his sons he saw. Even the big Alpha stayed well away from the place where the beasts entered the place of the gods and his sons were practically peeing themselves just to be within sight of it.

That night Black lay down to sleep just outside the glow cast by the fires that did not flicker, but he did not sleep right away. As soon as it was fully dark and before the moon rose he crawled a dash away and them stood up and loped for a couple of runs distance to get away from where he could feel the eyes of the wolves watching. They would spread out and find him soon enough the next morning he was sure, but he did not want to make it too easy for them.

The next day he rose stiff and sore again and hungrier than he had been since leaving the high mountains. Dawn was still a while away but the moon was bright enough to navigate by. Black made his way carefully, keeping low to avoid prying eyes, to the place where he had left the badger. It was still there, an it looked like no other scavengers save for a few insects had sampled it since the day before. Black tore it open with his claws and gobbled it down, choking back the urge to vomit. When he was done he headed for the creek in the gully and drank his fill.

After that he had to lie down and sleep some more. When he woke again the sun was already a quarter of its way across the sky and it was warm on the southern exposed hillside. He took another drink, felling better than he had for days, and went up to the trail wondering if the Druid pack was still looking for him.

A howl in the distance told him that the pursuit was not over yet. It was answered by one even farther away, and them by one very close by. Black decided to show himself lest they become bold enough to send someone looking for him.

He saw the Druid lookout before it saw him. Again he made a show of staggering and reeling like a starved coyote. When he reached the edge of the web he lay down again, seemingly from exhaustion but actually because he was still very full and a nap in the sun would do him good.

The rest of the day he lounged about, studying the flowers, birds and insects that lived so close to the place of the gods. There were ones here that he saw only rarely in the mountains, if at all. He didn’t suppose that any of the alphas in waiting in the Druid pack ever spent a day just laying around looking at the bugs and flowers. To them it must seem that he was too weak to move. That was fine by Black. The sooner they were convinced that he was not a threat the sooner he could get out of here.

The only thing was, where would he go?

* * * * * *

”You look in a better mood than yesterday.”

Meili looked up to see Mitch hovering over her. He was as tall as Chuck but much thinner, and his skin was much darker, but not as dark as Doctor Dupuis’ had been. Like most of the staff here at EOS-1 he was from the North American colonies, and likely had a fair amount of European DNA mixed in with his dominant African genes.

Not like the Chinese colonies, she thought, where people still prided themselves over being of the “Lao Bi Xing”, the old hundred names, as those of pure heritage revered to themselves. Meili thought that it was all rather silly. As a biologist who had studied abroad she knew the value of a diverse population. That was why the Druid pack was in decline, she reminded herself, because there was no genetic diversity.

She realized that she had been staring at the technician without answering for over a minute and the fellow was starting to look concerned.

“Yes, sorry, I was thinking of something. Yes, I am in a better mood.”

“Things working our with your wolf then?”

Meili remembered Robert’s warning about the Colonies-First party having spies everywhere.

“Much better than yesterday. I think that he’s going to be okay.”

“Good. We have some drones returning from a survey project up in the mountains. Let me know if you want to use them as they fly by your wolf. I’ll keep it off the books.”

“Thanks, Mitch. That’s sweet of you.”

“Forget about it. The cameras need to calibrated against a known background periodically and there is no more familiar territory than the good old EOS-1, oldest station on the home planet.”

“Is it, the oldest station I mean?”

“Sure. When the probes first reported on the contaminated areas this one of the few areas that was relatively free of radiation and cancerogens. The first live survey crews were based at the old Bio-processing facility and explored the region from here. Dangerous work even then. Many of the scouts never returned. Some people think that they ran into your intelligent wolves and other humanized animals and were killed and eaten.”

“Mitch, its not like the wolves are like the cannibals that used to hunt and eat explorers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century on earth.”

“That pack that lives outside the gate don’t exactly strike me as the warm and friendly kind.”

Meili suddenly realized that the technicians could see everything that she did on the monitors, and form their own conclusions. What if one of them was spying on her for the C-F? The actions necessary for the pack’s survival could be taken as random brutality by the uninformed, and that pretty much summed up the whole of the C-Fs supporters as far as she was concerned. And how could one interpret the black wolf’s latest actions, his subterfuge to fool the Druids into complacency?

If someone was watching, her displays of joy or sorrow at each new development were certainly not making interpreting how her research was going any harder. She would have to take a lesson from the black wolf and watch how she presented herself to the rest of the EOS-1 team.

Meili stitched a grateful but serious look on her face. “Thanks for the offer of the drone time, Mitch.. The black wolf will probably die of exposure and starvation but it would be nice to know exactly where he is so we can’t retrieve the collar when he does.”

“Really? Gee, that’s too bad. Chuck and I were kind of rooting for him. Anyway, I’ll let you know when they’re in range.” And with then Mitch left the monitor room for his control booth next door.

Meili looked back at her monitor where she could see the black wolf examining a daisy through his collar camera. “All warfare is based on deception.” She whispered in Mandarin, quoting Sun Tzu’s Art of War. “Even if you are just fighting for survival.”

* * * * * *

The next day, the third since Black’s encounter with Frost, dawned bright and clear. Black opened his eyes, and remebering that he was supposed to be near death, surveyed the horizon and the land between it and the black trail without raising his head for a hundred breaths. He did not see any sign of the watchers that had been tracking him for the last two days.

He stood up and ran to the east, a move that should have bought any watchers out of hiding to keep pace with him, but there was no reaction from the Druid side of the trail. Returning to the gate Black watched for the beasts and when it was safe he ran across the black surface. he stopped on the other side, poised to turn and run back, but still there was no movement. Flexing his legs he dashed to the first crest, looked around quickly and then ran back to the road. Nothing. Not even the birds were disturbed.

Keeping a wary eye out Black located the bush that he had hid his pack under and retrieved his goods. He immediately rushed back to the trail and crossed when he was sure no beasts were approaching. He took his pack to the gully where he had found the passage and hid it again amongst the tall grass and brush, but not before taking the last of his provisions from it. Then, clutching the spear he had taken from the coyote he made his way back to the spot where he had first escaped Menace.

From there he could see the pile of boulders that Frost had hidden in when her father had interrupted them. There was a strip of hide on a pole waving in the light breeze at the top of the pile.

Black crossed the road right after a beast had passed, using it to shield his approach to the trail. Then he moved with all the skill and caution he could muster. When he was ten strides from the pile of rocks he stopped, crouched and tossed a small pebble at the gap between two of the larger boulders.

He was relived when Frost appeared, but still wary. He stood up to show himself, looking around for signs of her father or brothers. Frost saw what he was doing and rushed to reassure him.

“I’m alone, black wolf.” She said, spreading her arms to show that she was also unarmed.

“Why did you want me to come back?”

“Because you are different from the other wanderers that have come here. You did not want to challenge my father, and you managed to get away from him despite lingering too long with the mistaken belief that you could talk yourself into the pack. And to escape to the place of the gods! You had all of my brothers wondering if the balls below your parts had swollen with overconfidence. They thought that you were all but dead, that you would be crushed by one of the beasts if you didn’t wander into the web in your delirium, but you survived. And look at you, you hardly look like you have missed a meal.”

Black kept the story of the badger to himself, just in case Menace beat the story out of her when he discovered her missing. He just grinned in response, aware of the attraction she felt for him from the odour coming off of her, and the scent of her intent.

“There is a dry chamber here among the rocks.” She said, gesturing behind her.

Black approached, sniffing the air for sign of other males but detected none. Her scent was almost overwhelming, but he kept his spear in his hand while she led him to a small sandy patch between the boulders. Once inside they were cut off from the view of the outside world and protected from the elements by a slight overhang in the rock.

Frost stood with her hands behind her back, head down, biting her lip and looking up at him through her tick lashes. She was dressed as she had been three days before, with just a loin cloth, and Black could see that her nipples were sticking out of the sparse fur on her breasts as if waiting to be suckled. He leaned his spear against the rock near the exit and stepped up in front of her.

“Frost, I ... I’ve watched the mating rituals of my mother and sisters but I don’t think that we have the luxury of time.”

“No. I can only stay away so long before Father returns with the hunting party and discovers my absence.”

“I wanted to be accepted by him, and by you. I wanted to prove my worth as a mate.”

“Black, can call you Black?” He nodded. “Life is not like it is up in the mountains here. Father will never let you into the pack no matter how worthy you are, or anyone else. That puts us females in a bad position. We need to mate, we want to mate, but we cannot mate, not in the proper sense of the word. The best we can hope for is to find a wanderer, such as yourself, and ... and find whatever we can in the short time we have with them.” She looked boldly up at him then. “I want you Black. I want you now.”

“I want you too, but ...”

Frost put a finger to his lips. “Shush.” She dropped her hands to her waist and a moment later her loin cloth dropped to the ground. The smell that came from her was intoxicating, and Black’s body reacted in ways that were strange and new to him.

She lifted his loin cloth off of the stiff shaft that had sprung up there and stoked it slowly. “There has been no one to instruct us on the art of mating since my mother died, but I think that I know the basics.”

The first mating left them both breathless and surprised. They had both used their hands on themselves before this but neither was prepared for the sensation of living flesh inside living flesh, or the way that the heat and moisture of one could enhance that of the other.

When they were done, all too soon in both of their opinions, they found themselves laying on the sand with Black behind Frost, his swollen parts still inside her. He made to pull away but she reached back and pushed him back toward her.

“Don’t. The grandmothers say that in the old days, when we went on all fours, mates would be locked together for a hundred breaths or more before they could disengage. They say that it that way to ensure that the male would plant many cubs deep in the female so they would grow strong inside her. Let’s pretend that it is still that way and stay together for a time.”

Black did not object. He buried his snout in her ruff and caressed her breast as he relished in the warmth generated by the closeness of their bodies.

“Frost!”

Frost jumped up, disengaging from Black rather suddenly. “Oh, scat”

Black jumped up beside her, pulling his loin cloth back around to the front. “Scat? Why scat?”

“The gods like to keep things clean. The grandmothers say that once one of those beasts hit a bull bison and broke open. It was full of the kind of scat that they say used to fill the land around here before the Gods returned.”

“They returned?”

“FROST!” The call came from closer than the last one.

“Later. You have to go.” Frost began climbing the rocks of their shelter until she could peek over the top. “He’s got his back to us. Run!”

Black ran. Two breaths later he heard the roar of the big Alpha and knew that he had been spotted. He headed straight for the section of the trail by the gate where the beasts ran slow. When he got there he was shocked to see that the beasts were backed up for several dashes as they slowly swung through the gate. But they were still moving, and they were so close together that there was not enough room for him to run between them. Black skidded to a halt ten strides short of the edge of the trail.

He looked left, there were more beasts joining the line. He looked right, there was an equally long line in that direction. He looked over his shoulder, Menace was getting closer, and with his target in sight was showing no sign of slowing down.

Black looked left and right again. He looked up to see how high the beasts’ backs were, then he looked down at their round black feet. They rolled, and in rolling could crush a wolf in an instant, but he thought that he could see some light between them. Dropping to all fours he put his head on the ground and peered under them. There was a gap between the bottom of the beasts and the trail. It was a little less than a reach high. He timed the gap between the feet of a section as they crossed over a crack in the trail. It was barely the span of a breath. He looked behind him once more. Menace was only ten strides away and closing in fast.

“Agghh!” Black launched himself at the trail. Keeping an eye on the next section of the beast directly in front of him he calculated the speed and distance of the lead feet and the width of the gap behind them. Using the agility learned hunting mountain sheep in the high altitudes he ran, reaching full speed by the time he reached the black trail. Then he launched himself at the beast, aiming for the smooth hard surface just behind the big, round, black foot.

Everything seemed to slow down as he slid onto his back. He saw his feet pass behind the beasts’ feet. He saw the edge of the underside of the beast and how his shoulder just missed it as he twisted onto his back. He watched the black foot roll upward as his nose passed behind it, and had an instant to wonder why it had a pattern like the one Shaper carved into the grips of his clubs on it.

He heard the crunch of grit under the beast’s feet. He heard Menace’s cry of frustration seeing his prize disappearing under the beast. He smelled the fur burning off his back as the friction of his passage on the black material burned it away.

There was pain. The pain of flesh being worn off. The pain as the far edge of the beast clipped his head, and as the rear feet on the far side crushed the corner of his ear. But the last pain was the best pain he had ever felt, the pain of the stones on the far side of the trail cutting into his butt, because it meant that he was still alive.

Black sat up and watched the caravan of beasts roll past him. From his vantage point on the verge he could see Menace’s feet and lower legs appearing and disappearing between the feet of the beasts. He was able to catch his breath and pick some of the gravel out of his flesh before the line of beasts disappeared. When they were gone Menace was still there on the other side of the trail, standing ten strides away from the black edge and looking like the coyotes had had stolen his cubs.

But when Menace saw that Black was still alive his stance relaxed a bit. A smile flited about his lips.

“Stay away, black wolf.” He warned, though his tone was only half challenging, and a bit playful. “I won’t let you get away again.”

Black stood up, raised a hand to his eye in acknowledgement, and turned east to go wash his wounds and drink from his secret creek.

Menace shadowed him on and off over the next few weeks, but it not constantly and Black was able to met Frost every few days, sometimes in the pile of boulders near the gate, at others in an abandoned den he had found near the artificial passage under the black trail. He was careful not to tell her how he was getting back and forth across the trail though, because she told him that Menace had beaten her trying to get her to tell him where they were meeting. He had even threatened to expel his daughter from the pack and she was worried about where she and Black would live if that happened, because the fear of the trail and the place of the gods was so ingrained in her that she would not consider joining him on the other side.

On the days when Menace was nowhere near they were able to mate two and even three times before Frost had to go back to her den. On these occasions they had time to talk between mating and Black pressed Frost for details about her pack and their knowledge of the gods.

“back when wolves ran on all fours like the elk and bison they hunted this land was a paradise, ruled by the gods,.” She informed him. “In their arrogance and greed they poisoned the land and themselves. But being gods they were able to create tonics out of their own essence to cure their ills. They were still wasteful though, and they made much more of the potions then they needed and they dumped the rest here, where the wolves now live.”

“Eventually they did so much damage to their home that they had to abandon this place. They went to the stars, leaving their essence in the very ground that we are lying on now. Small things ate of their essence, and larger things ate them and so on until it reached us, the wolves. Nothing eats wolves so it stopped here, and we became more like the gods because of it.”

“What about the bears and the coyotes and the mountain cats.”

Frost had to think about that a bit; no one had ever questioned the lore before. “I suppose they are somewhat like the gods because they too eat anything smaller than them and nothing eats them, but they are obviously not the god’s favorites because they are much less developed than we are.”

“Bears and coyotes, yes, but I don’t know about the cats, I have never seen one, just their tracks.”

“They are only a rumor for us here on the plain, but one story the grandmothers used to tell says that they guard the mountain tops, where only the most powerful of the gods go. Worthy wolves must climb the mountain when they are wise enough and powerful enough to get past the mountain cats to join the gods, they say. There they will live together forever, exploring the boundless knowledge the gods have accumulated.” She shrugged. “My father says that story is false and should not be repeated, but he still uses the expression ‘to go up the mountain’ when he talks about death, so who knows?”

“When did they come back, the gods, that is.”

“After we learned to walk on two feet but not so long ago, I suspect. My Grandmother told me that her grandmother’s mother saw them arrive. The place of the gods was terrible and dangerous but open for any foolhardy wolf to explore before then, but doing so would give one the wasting disease. When the gods came back they made the grey wall and the black trail and put the web up between them to keep us out, for our safety.”

“The web and trail can both kill. How is that for our safety?”

Frost’s eyes rolled back like she was repeating a hunting lesson. “The web and the trail serve to remove the disobedient, stupid and rebellious. When we achieve a high enough level of development to even begin to understand the ways of the gods we will be invited to join them on the other side.” She looked back down at him again. “At least the faithful servants of the gods will, according to my father.”

“Your father also thinks that you are disobedient for sneaking away and that I’m rebellious for sneaking into his territory. I suppose he thinks that I’m stupid too for crossing the trail, yet I’m still alive. How does he explain that?”

Now she looked worried and confused. This newcomer was shattering all of her beliefs at once. “He doesn’t. He says that either he will catch you and kill you or you will trip up and die on the web or the trail. He used to say that you would starve to death but now some of us whisper that the gods must be feeding you, for you to have lived so long where there is no game.” She looked at him expectedly, as if the last statement had been a question.

“You could say that is true.” Black said, not wanting to reveal how the web and the trail were providing most of his food.

Frost hugged him tightly. “It scares me to think of you living over there on the edge of death. I could never do it. Not now, and especially not with cubs.”

“Yes it would be especially dangerous for cubs.” Black agreed somberly, but inside he was a little glad. If Frost did join him she would be his mate for life, and he was not ready to settle down and raise cubs just yet.

This adventure, he thought, was far from over.

Based on The rise of Black Wolf

Produced by National Geographic Television, © 2010 NGHT LLC