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Black Wolf

Chapter 10 – For the Good of the Pack

“So with all the new cubs crowding the den I decided to become a wanderer."

Bruiser brought Black up to date on the affairs of their mother's pack as they ate in the clearing in the middle of the Druid den. The females of the pack kept their distance but could hear everything. The issue of who was to be the new Alpha had been forgotten for now.

“And you came straight south?" Black asked. “Straight across the plain to the most feared pack of all?"

“Yes, of course. I wanted to challenge the best, the largest, and this Menace was reputed to be that. I didn't want to take over a struggling pack in the mountains with a weak leader and be left wondering if I could have done better the rest of my life. But it looks like I've missed my opportunity." The big wolf shrugged and shoved another mouthful of the meat paste into his maw. “Wonderful stuff this. Tastes like Bison and blueberries at the same time. But what about you, Brother? You must tell me how you came to be the Alpha of the Druid pack." Bruiser looked around at the female only audience. “What did you do? Kill all the males in their sleep?"

“Not quite." Without going into too much detail Black worked his way through the story of his life up to the point where Bruiser had re-appeared in his life.

“So, you see, I've not the Alpha of the Druid pack, not yet."

“Do you want to be?"

“Eh?"

Bruiser rubbed his hands together to get the residual fat off them. It was something Black had seen him do just before a kill when hunting.

“Do you want to be the Alpha? Because from what you said earlier you don't seem too interested. You could have challenged Menace in his last days or this Thrasher fellow the other day and taken the role by right of combat. But you wait for others to make the important decisions, you always have, and that is why you will never be an Alpha."

There were gasps and angry mutters from the assembled females, and knowing nods from Moon Gazer, but Black hushed them with a gesture. Bruiser was right, he didn't want to be Alpha with all the responsibility and the stress. Some wolves, like Menace and Bruiser, relished the role, were comfortable in it. But not Black.

Bruiser took his brother's silence as agreement. He stood up and looked around at the female Druid wolves, resting his eyes on Flame, who gave him a promising look in return, and Trapper, who was grudgingly admiring his muscled frame.

“I'll make you all a proposal." Bruiser began. “Since my brother doesn't like to fight I'll take the position of Alpha without one. I'm the biggest and strongest wolf here, I'll wager, and the best hunter, aren't I, Brother?"

“He is very good." Black had to admit. “And we need all the help we can get to feed the cubs."

“What about mating rights?" Honey said, stepping forward. She had come to cherish her sessions with Black and the tender way he treated her when the were alone. Bruiser did not strike her as the gentle type.

“Oh, the black one can carry on taking care of that part of the pack business." Bruiser answered with a dismissive wave.

“You're not enforcing your exclusive mating right?" Flame asked.

“I'm not enforcing any mating rights." Bruiser replied. “Now if you will excuse me, I've walked a long way and I'll need some rest before we go hunting tomorrow. Where does the Alpha sleep?"

And with that it was done. Bruiser had been accepted as Alpha and Black was free to mate with whichever of the sisters wanted to.

“Has he always been like that?" Fleet asked, perplexed.

“He was not so eloquent when I left the pack, but he hasn't grown more modest either."

* * * * * *

Meili's suspicions about Lijun were renewed but she did not let them show. After all, she told herself, you were wrong about him once, you could be wrong about him again. But who else could know about the arrival of the parts except for someone with access to her room? If not Lijun then Binks' spy must have a way in. There was no cleaning staff, but the maintenance crew had universal pass cards, as did the head of security. This was a privately-owned compound, not a government facility, and there was no right of privacy on company property or while using company facilities. But the government was paying for her portion of the facility and according to the agreement all entries had to be logged on the mainframe.

She decided that she had to be sure before making any accusations. If Lijun proved to be innocent again she could confide in him and enlist his help in tracking down the real culprit. If he was guilty then she would deal with that when the time came.

The first thing she did was to search the web on her personal account for simple counter-espionage techniques. There was a lot available, and some of it so simple that she wondered why she had not thought of them herself. She spent the next few days plucking and placing hairs around her room and applying makeup powder that matched the colour of the surface being treated. Then she stuck to her schedule and resisted the urge to come back and check her room for intruders. When she did return she checked the surfaces and the entry log for her room and computer.

She was hoping to find smudges indicating a surreptitious entry but no record in the log, because that would mean someone with access to the database was spying on her, and that would rule out Lijun. Another wishful outcome would be to find a record of maintenance having been in and evidence that someone had gone through her things because would clear Lijun too. Of course, if Lijun did come in looking for her the keypad would be smuggled on the numbers matching his code and there would be a record, but nothing else should be disturbed because she had not given back his access to her computer or tablet, and he knew it.

What she found after a few weeks of checking confused her. There was every indication that Lijun had been in her room when he knew she was busy in the lab or the monitor room, and he had used her tablet and her computer when he was there, but how?

After the third incident she disconnected her room computer and took it and her tablet to the lab where she asked Chuck to examine them.

“There are three accounts on each of these." He told her after running his diagnostics.

“Three?"

“Yours, a guest account that has been disabled, and an active administrator's account."

“The guest account would be Wang's. I gave him one a few years ago so he wouldn't have to use my password to get online. I disabled in last year when we had ... an issue."

Chuck nodded. The timing coincided with the disappearance of Mitch. “Anyway, as I said, you also have your administrator account that you set up around the same time as the guest account. Totally unnecessary since you already had local administrative privileges through your main account."

“I don't recall setting that one up, on either device. Is it something I might have done by accident when I created the guest accounts?"

“No way. It's too complicated to do unless you really wanted too. It's made that way so basic users don't accidentally lock themselves and the technicians out of the system. I tried your regular password on it but that doesn't work. Do you have another one?"

“No. I only changed mine for the first time last year."

Chuck shook his head. “Whoever set this up would have to have known that password back then. When you changed yours you only changed the password to get into your account. The administrator can override that and get in whenever they want.

“So, you can't get into it either?"

“I didn't say that." Chucks thick fingers flew over the keyboard and in a minute a ten-digit number appeared on the screen.

“That's the administrative password."

Meili had seen that number before. When Lijun asked her to help him figure out his taxes when he first came to EOS-1 it had been printed on the forms he had to file as a worker on a remote station opting to pay his home planet taxes instead of the isolated post rate.

It was his New Beijing Citizen number.

Meili stepped back from the desk where Chuck was hunched over her computer, waiting for instructions.

“Can you take away the administrative privileges from that account but make it look like it's still working?"

Chuck smiled. “And give it access to a fake copy of your account? Of course I can."

* * * * * *

The arrangement with Bruiser worked out well. Bruiser's strength and brutality combined with Black's speed and finesse with the spear made them a formidable hunting team. With about half of the females able to help on the hunt at any given time Black figured that they would have no problem providing enough meat. And now that he was living in the den he could play hunting games with his cubs in the early evening before spending the night with whoever's turn it was to be with him. He would just have to be very careful about who got pregnant when so that he and Bruiser did not find themselves alone on the hunt save for the two elderly aunts.

Flame and Trapper had both tried to mate with Bruiser, to no avail. The big male was not interested in Flame's seductive ways and he just laughed at Trapper's suggestion that he might prefer tailhole sex. “It's almost like doing it with a male if you do it from behind." She told him, thinking that he might have gone the way of several of her brothers.

The only thing physical that Bruiser enjoyed, other than the kill during the hunt, was ambushing and wrestling his brother to the ground just like he used to when they were cubs.

Black found it humiliating but tolerated it for the sake of peace in the pack. Now that he was out almost every day and eating his fill at night he was gaining more muscle. By the spring he was a match in size for his brother and at least as skilled in wrestling, but he was still faster, with a sixth sense of where things were around him and how to move to counter them. He believed that he could beat Bruiser in a fair fight, but Bruiser did not fight fair. If he defeated Bruiser in public he would have to watch his back for the rest of his life least an errant spear end up between his shoulder blades in the heat of the hunt.

He hated the ritual, but he still needed Bruiser to help him feed all the cubs ... for now. In four more years the oldest would be big enough to hunt with the adults, and then maybe Black would consider challenging his brother, the loser to be exiled.

After all, he thought, this situation cannot go on forever.

* * * * * *

Cheng Meili was thinking just the same thing as spring changed to summer.

After discovering Wang Lijun's deception she had started feeding him disinformation through the false account on her computer, information that she hoped he was sending to Roscoe Binks. In it she painted a picture of a project that was stalled with nowhere to go and nothing new to explore. In fake communications with her friend Doctor Robert Dupuis she complained about having to remain on Earth and expressed hopes of returning to New Beijing to study other species as she was growing tired of the anthropomorphic wolves.

“They are very boring and tedious." She wrote in one false message. “It is all I can do to even pretend to be interested in them anymore."

Her words had the ring of truth because in them she was expressing her feelings for Lijun, who she continued to sleep with occasionally in order to keep up the subterfuge. The only hard part was faking enjoyment while they were so engaged, and it was getting harder to do as the months wore on.

Meanwhile she had Robert use his connections to check into Wang Lijun. It turned out that he was not a liaison officer, as he had claimed, but a political appointee sent to oversee the clean up operations at the various Earth stations. No one was quite sure what it was he was supposed to be doing but his connections were too high up for anyone at the station to question him about it. Those connections, it turned out, were with the Colonies First party, who held a strong position in the current coalition government.

“If things go well for them," Robert reported in one of their private calls, “they may even be able to form a minority government next time around."

“What would it take to stop them?"

“A political scandal of some sort, I imagine."

That gave Meili and idea, but she kept it to herself. She still did not entirely trust the security of their calls and there was no sense giving Doctor Dupuis false hope.

Meanwhile, her project carried on making great progress, as far as she was concerned. Her papers on the habits of wolf 302, now known in the scientific community as the Casanova Wolf, was successful enough for her to coast for a few years. It would give her time to compile a new set of papers on the asexual Alpha that 302 had ceded control of the Druid pack to.

Meili cut back on her sexual liaisons with Wang, claiming depression over the stagnation of her project as the cause. In truth, he did not seem to mind so much, but he continued to come by regularly “Just to chat" he said. “Everyone needs someone to confide in."

And maybe that is why he was sent here, she concluded, to be a familiar ear for her to spill all the secrets of the project to, just as she had done for almost three years. The thought made her face burn.

According to the sites she had been studying counterespionage doctrine on the ploy was called a Honey Trap - seducing an unsuspecting victim into revealing secrets or even cooperating with the spy that professed to love them. It was supposed to work particularly well on lonely female academics, she learned, and that just made her feel more foolish. But maybe she could turn the tables on Lijun and his employers.

She recorded each instance of him coming into her room and accessing the ghost account he had set up when he had known her password. She filled her fake account with drone videos that were blank or blurry, audio records that were labeled as untranslatable and notes speculating that the wolves were regressing back into wild beasts.

It was harder to cover up some of the more obvious activity though.

“The new pilot said that you were out on another wolf collaring expedition yesterday. I thought you said you were out of parts?"

“Chuck found an old collar up in the mountains while he was hunting." She lied. “I thought it just needed new batteries but now its acting really glitchy. Looks like another wasted trip."

“Speaking of collars," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and massaging them, “how come you never were that lace choker with the black pearl I bought you anymore?"

She forced herself to smile as she reached up to squeeze one of his hands. “I want to save it for a special occasion, Baobei, it just that I've been, I don't know, so tired these last few months."

“How's that black wolf of yours doing? Talking about him always cheers you up, and it turns you on."

“Oh, he's doing fine, I guess. I've grown bored with him. How many papers can one write about a wolf that does nothing but fuck, hunt, eat and then fuck some more?"

She could see in the reflection of the screen that he was disappointed, but he shrugged it off and dropped his hands.

“Well, you let me know when something does catch your interest. You are at your most fascinating and sexiest when you are wound up about something new with your wolves."

Meili managed to string him along for another two years. Meanwhile, she monitored the activities of the packs she had collared wolves in, especially the Druid pack, with its unusual leadership and mating arrangement.

The Druids were making amazing progress. The black wolf's 'snow feet' and the meat and berry paste that resembled pemmican gave them a distinct advantage over the other packs when it came to procuring and preserving food. Their carefully managed form of erotic birth control was working well to keep the growth of the pack to an optimal level. But they would need to expand their hunting territory in another few years, when the oldest cubs joined the adults on the hunt. By then there would be fifteen more hunters and as many as twenty more cubs of varying ages. With an expanded territory and a greatly augmented hunting party she speculated that wolf 302 could mate with abandon, doubling the size of the pack every few years.

There was a theory that once a group of intelligent creatures reached a sustainable population they would have the leisure time to invent new things. Meili had already seen one of the cubs using a branch with a cup shaped end to throw rocks and launch small sticks. How long before they developed the throwing stick, which would bring them one step closer to the bow and arrow. Meili wanted to be the one to document it when they did but doing so would ruin the carefully crafted illusion she had created of a project barely floundering along.

The feeling of being suffocated by a situation she could not escape had gone on long enough, she decided.

Robert had continued to send replacement parts, but now he addressed them to Chuck as metallic figures for fantasy gaming. Chuck and his new partner Alice were supporting Meili's project by repairing equipment as well as making surveillance devices for her counterintelligence effort. Doctor Dupuis was on standby to release a flood of incriminating material through his contacts, but they needed something tying it to Binks, and Meili thought that she knew how to get it.

Lijun had fallen into the habit of visiting her room at regular times when she was at work, and that made it easy for her to set the stage. The next time he opened the door expecting an empty room he was surprised to find Meili laying on her bed, naked except for the lace collar with a single black half-pearl mounted on it.

She would never have claimed to be the most beautiful woman on her world, or even on EOS-1, but she did use the gym and the pool regularly and was always a frugal eater so the figure on the bed was neither too plump or too thin. Her complexion was naturally light, and it set off her dark eyes and black mid-length hair nicely on the white sheets. To emphasize this, she had trimmed and shaved her pubic hair into a little black triangle pointing down to the slit that glistened with the oil she had rubbed on it after shaving. Bright red toe and fingernail polish with matching lipstick completed the picture.

Lijun recovered quickly and was already undressing with a smug grin on his face by the time Meili spread her legs and indicated where she wanted him. She let him crawl up on the bed, kissing her legs and murmuring sweet nothings as he went. When he got to the junction of her thighs he paused to give her mound a few cursory licks before he reared up on his knees. His prick was already hard and bobbing out in front of him. Seeing it reminded her that the gods had not been kind to her people in that department, but no matter, this one wasn't going anywhere today.

Just before he could bend to stick it in her she placed both feet against his flabby stomach and pushed him back gently.

“Tell me that you love me."

“Oh, I love you, I really, really do."

“Tell me that you can't live without me."

He frowned a bit but dutifully confirmed that he would die without her by his side. “anything else?" He asked as he tried to lean forward against the pressure of her feet.

“Yes." She gave him her most seductive smile. “Tell me why you have been spying on me for the last five years."

The look of astonishment on his face, followed quickly by a flash of guilt before he wiped it clean and set it in a neutral expression, was priceless. Even more so was the second shocked look when she pushed as hard as she could and sent him flying out of bed onto the floor.

“What the … have you gone crazy?"

Meili jumped up and stood over the naked Wang. He tried to stand but a foot in his crotch convinced him to stay down. He was not much bigger than her and she was in better shape. Besides, if she touched the panic button beside her bed the station security would be here in seconds and it would not look good for him to be found naked and beating on a woman in her own room.

“I've got it all on file off planet Wang. How you hacked my devices, searched my room when I wasn't around, and how you passed it all to your C-F master."

The last was a bit of a risk; she did not know for certain that he was doing it for the C-F, but who else would want to spy on her?

“You're going down, Wang. And worse, you're going down a failure. We've been on to you for years, feeding you disinformation, leading you on. Yeah, take a good look at it." She cocked her hips to thrust her mound with its little triangle of black hair at him. “You're never going to touch it again. Maybe not any others ever again if your C-F buddies decide to throw you under the magnetic commuter train and claim they had no idea you were breaking the law for them."

“Bre- … breaking the law? What law?"

“The Classified Information Act of 3135 CE."

“Classified information? There's nothing classified about your project."

“I beg to differ. According to the agreement with the company all information about the state of Earth and its environment is to be classified as secret until such time as it is declassified by mutual agreement between the company and the government departments that are engaged in projects on Earth. You took information off my computer before it was declassified, and in case you haven't noticed, we haven't declassified any of it in just over two years. So yeah, no nookie today, sailor, no freedom tomorrow."

She was counting on the insults and the image of her standing over him naked to throw Lijun off his game; sticking him with a honey pot of her own, so to speak. But her objective had never been to seduce him, just to promise something and deny it at the last second. She did so because after five years she knew Lijun better than he knew himself, and one thing she had noticed about him was his tendency to rant when he didn't get wanted. Whether it was a bonus he didn't qualify for or a rebate he didn't get or not finishing a level before her on one of their video games, when Lijun lost or felt slighted he was always ready to tell you just what was wrong with everything about whatever it was that had pissed him off.

And he didn't disappoint her now.

“Freedom? What the fuck do you know about freedom?" He spat from the floor. “People like you go around spouting about freedom and equality and tolerance and yet you want to take everyone else's money to pay for your little hobbies. 'I need another hundred grand for wolf chow, I need a million for collars, my boss needs a trillion so we can find aliens and bring them over her to enslave us.' Fuck, but you make me sick."

The level of vitriol nearly threw her off, but she just needed to recall who was fucking who over to regain her resolve.

“Did your boss Binks recruit you personal or does he have a whole team of half-assed spies on retainer?"

“I don't know, I never met him. But I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing this because what you're doing is threat to our existence."

“How do you figure that?"

“You dumb c- ooouch! Don't do that!"

“Watch your tongue."

“Okay, okay, just get those toenails out of my scrotum." He rubbed his sac as he studied her looming above him. “you really don't have a clue what this is all about do you?"

“The spying? Sure. The C-F hates science and thrives on ignorance."

Wang laughed and covered his balls when she went to poke them again.

“Sorry, but it's funny hearing you call us in the C-F ignorant when you're the one with blinders on."

“So, enlighten me."

“What do you think we are doing her, on Earth, I mean?"

“Cleaning up the mess we left behind so we can recolonize."

“Yes, but what kind of mess?"

Meili wondered where he was going with this. “All the garbage and stuff. The bio-waste and the pollutants and the nuclear waste from the old power plants."

“Close. Tell me something, how many ships participated in the Great Exodus?"

Now she was very confused. “I don't know, ten thousand?"

“Try less than a thousand. And how many colonists did each hold?"

“A few million … maybe?"

“About a million, on average. How many people does that make?"

Math was not Meili's strongest subject but the rough answer was easy enough. “A billion, tops."

“Yes, a billion people." His face grew a malicious smile. “And what was the population of earth at the time of the Great Exodus?"

Meili's voice became barely audible. “I don't know."

“Roughly."

“I have no idea."

“Within a billion, come on, you can do it."

“I heard that it was ten billion … at one point."

“There, that wasn't so hard was it? And the point you mention was just before the exodus. You want to know why all the information about the condition of Earth is still secret? Ask yourself what happened to the nine billion or so that were left behind."

Meili looked at her feet.

“Don't look away! They died, Meili, they died. They died because they were weak. The exodus took the best, the brightest, the most talented people, the leaders, the best connected and they left the inferior masses to manage without our … their … leadership. And they failed. They failed and they died."

Like most people in the colonies she had never thought about who had gotten off and who was left behind. It was not something they taught in the schools, for now obvious reasons. But hints and clues leading to the truth were out there. Everyone knew that some had been left behind, and that they died in the wars the plagues that had broken out afterwards, but no one ever mentioned the scale of the disaster. Nine billion people, that was almost as many people as the population of all the colonies at the moment.

But if he was expecting her to remain is shocked silence, he was wrong. With her background in anthropology she knew in an instant why it had happened.

“Our ancestors left them behind on a dying planet that had been striped of resources. They left their cousins and their neighbours. Some probably left their brothers, sisters and parents, maybe even their children behind … and why? So they could escape with the other elite along with all the riches. Don't deny it, you know it's true. 'The ships brought embryos of the best livestock, the best seeds, and all the precious metals they would need to establish industries on their new planets until more could be found.' That's grade-school level history."

She was really getting worked up now. “They brought all the medicines, all the super computers and every available Phoenix Drive to power the new colonies. They brought all the gold that the people left on Earth needed to make new circuit boards, all the lithium they needed to make new batteries for the solar power plants, all the copper, all the rare earths, all the … everything. They brought everything those nine billion people needed to survive. And what did they leave behind, Wang? Trash. Nothing but trash."

“Exactly! Human trash. The stupid and, as you say, ignorant. People hardly more advanced than your precious wolves that thought their opinion should count as much as anyone else's. Who thought their vote should count as well."

“Sounds like the C-F's kind of people."

“Ha! Useful in the short term, perhaps, but a deficit in the long run. Don't you see?" He pleaded. “They let our ancestors build the ships on a promise that we would send them back for the rest of them. But the round trip took over four hundred years back then, and Earth didn't have that much time left. Why waste the time and resources that were needed to establish the colonies when the best they might find on their return was a handful of savages. And what we're finding during the clean up, the archeological evidence, bears that out. Even the most remote elements of society had come to rely on technology for their basic needs. They were too stupid to realize it though. They let the dead and the crap pile up and that started the plagues. They fought over the last of the mines and the farmland and they ruined those too with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Those that weren't killed in the fighting or by disease got cancer from the polluted rain and the acidic, radioactive clouds that circled the earth killed off what was left. It was only in places like this, remote places, and the depths of the oceans that anything survived. But not humans"

“But this place was a bio-dump."

“And a leaky one at that. But Yellowstone is one of those quirks of geography, a place that creates its own weather. The mountains protected it from the radioactive gasses and scrubbed the acid out of the rain clouds. With all the carbon being released from rotting corpses and dying forests the planet warmed up enough that the upper slopes became lush. The animals that survived up in the mountains came down when the planet cooled again a thousand years later and started to repopulate. Now there are patches of earth that are like how it must have been before man, pristine, perfect places where deer graze and wolves hunt … on all fours mostly."

“So why are we cleaning it up if it's happening naturally?"

“Because this planet is our birthright. Our home planet. It's symbolic. It's God-given if you believe that god crap. We in the C-F are in favour of the cleanup because our supporters favour the cleanup, and because it is the origin of our species, the only intelligent species in the galaxy, perhaps in the entire universe."

“Not anymore. Thanks to our ancestors lack of foresight their genes have invaded the top predators around here and now there is some competition for top dog, or ape, on the planet."

Wang sat up suddenly. “Exactly! Intelligent wolves and such are a threat to the C-F's position that humans are the only intelligent form of life in the universe. They are an affront to the conservative scientific wing of our party and an abomination to our religious supporters. Mark my words, Meili, when the C-F wins a majority, and it will one day, they will expand the mandate of the cleanup operation to include any and all species that show any signs of having corrupted human DNA in their genes. Because if they develop any further they may presume to be our equals, and then some of your bleeding heart friends will give them rights, and once they have rights they will arm themselves and then … then it will be all out war for our survival."

Wang's last few sentences had the ring of one who was only repeating the talking points he had been given.

“You think people will fall for that?"

“They fell for the promise of the ships returning for them. People are basically stupid, Meili. That's how any party gets into power in the first place, and how they keep it afterward."

“People hate to be called stupid though." She said, fingering the glossy black half-sphere mounted on her choker. “Even when they are too stupid to notice the difference between a pearl and the lens from a collar camera."

“You bit- oooouch!"

* * * * * *

It did not take long for Robert's people to get the best parts of the video of Wang's tirade out to the media. They followed up with the record from EOS-1's database, which confirmed his criminal activity and the breach of classified information. Careful editing kept out Meili's role in the confession, especially the first bit where Wang was feeling his way up her legs with his tongue.

The C-F and Binks in particular denied any knowledge of Wang's activities but while they had tried to insulate themselves with several intermediaries and go-betweens Wang was a member of the party and was known to be in contact with several people in the C-F's strategic planning division. Heads rolled, but not Binks'. The worst fall out from the affair was that the C-F won fewer seats in the elections, mostly due to the embarrassment of having been exposed. But the affair opened a new line of debate, one which a surprising number of people supported the C-F's hard line on cross-species contamination.

“It's bought us five years of peace, but the fight is out in the open now, Mary." Doctor Dupuis told her after the hullaballoo died down. He had not been able to get reinstated as the Co-Chair of the Science council, or to get Binks kicked out, but they had forced the government to name a real scientist as the head of the council. “The interplanetary probes are back on." He told her. “But I'm afraid that other than being able to ship you spare parts openly for the next few years nothing else has changed as far as the wolf project is concerned."

“So I won't be able to expand the study to the coyotes, bears and cougars?"

“No. Not with the current political climate. Best to keep your head down and hope for a change in the future. There is quite a significant youth movement in the colonies that have been inspired by your personal sessions with the students. Given enough time the tide can wash away even calcified fecal matter like Binks."

Meili laughed. “I'll keep that in mind."

“Meanwhile, tell me, how is your study of the unusual arrangements in the Druid pack coming along?"

She bit her lip. “I'm afraid that we may never see it to it's conclusion. You see, there are disturbing things happening in the neighbouring packs."

* * * * * * *

Black stood on a low hill that overlooked the Druid den. The sky was grey and the winds were blowing cold and strong off the mountains, promising the first real snow of the year. He shifted his ax-club and leaned on his spear as he looked around.

From this vantage point he could see most of the den. It was a veritable hive of activity today as the oldest cubs, now young adults, prepared to join their father and uncle on their first hunt. Most of the adult females would accompany them, leaving just the old aunties and Moon Gazer behind to watch over the nineteen cubs still too young to hunt.

He felt a warm glow of satisfaction as he watched them prepare. One winter of hunting should toughen them up enough that they could do without Bruiser, he thought. Come spring he would challenge his brother and exile him when he lost, which he surely would. The big wolf had gotten lazy and complacent in the five bountiful years that he had been acting as Alpha for the Druid pack. Black, on the other hand, had filled out and maintained his peak fitness by continuing to train the cubs after the hunt. The fact that he was still as flexible and agile as he had been as a cub he credited to his nocturnal activities with their mothers.

The females of the pack would stand by him when he challenged Bruiser, of that he was sure. Those that enjoyed the act of mating more than the outcome were disturbed by Bruiser's lack of interest. Those that bloomed in motherhood could not understand why he had no desire to procreate. And the kind-hearted ones could not stand the way he continued to bully Black, and they often asked why the black wolf allowed it to continue.

“For the sake of peace in the pack." He always replied.

Only Moon gazer seemed to know what was really going on in his head. “Let me know when the peace is about to end." She told him. “I want to be well out of the way on that day."

On this day Bruiser was late rising, as had become his habit. When he saw his brother on the hill he waved and started to make his way through the mass of cubs toward him.

Yes, Black thought, just one more winter and …

A noise from east of the den interrupted his thoughts. He raised his spear as the hackles on his back stood up instinctively. He did not know why but the sound meant danger.

As he watched a dozen large wolves appeared from the low ground and began running towards the den. They howled and cried out as they ran. In the den all the adult females, save Moon Gazer, grabbed for whatever weapons they could find and placed themselves between the cubs and the attackers.

Black was about to run down and join them when he sensed movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a larger group of wolves moving slowly in the shadows cast by the rising sun north of the den. They were making for the rear of the den where the cubs had been sent.

Black howled out a warning but doing so caused a panic. The new group stood up and charged, howling and wailing to add to the confusion. Some of the Druid females stood against the original dozen while others rushed in the opposite direction to face the superior number of invaders there. A few ran for their cubs, either to protect them or hide them, Black could not tell. He also could not tell if he should join the forward group or reinforce the rear or stay up on the hill to give directions to the females and young adults defending the den below.

Bruiser had heard the howls and had stopped halfway up the hill. From there he could not see the attackers as well as Black, and he called up to ask what was going on.

Among the attackers Black recognized two that were wearing god collars. They had been the ones that had attacked his grandparents, Storm and Snow, when they had taken over Mist Valley. He had watched them tear Snow apart as Dawn hustled them up the mountain for their escape.

Now the same two and four others had broken off from the larger group and were headed straight for Black.

“It's the southerners!" Black called to Bruiser. “The ones that took Mist Valley."

“Southerners? Then why are they coming from the North?"

Black did not have time to explain. There was a battle raging in the den and more wolves were joining the group coming after him and Bruiser. He recognized Thrasher as one of them.

Menace's son must have joined the invaders after wandering up into Mist Valley, Black thought. He must have told them about how he and his brothers had left the Druid pack with only one male and a dozen females. Things had been so quiet on the borders these last five years, they must have been watching and verifying Thrasher's story. They would have seen Bruiser and Black returning from many a successful hunt, and the equally large Trapper. Had the sight of them given the southerners pause? Or was it the reputation of the Druid pack itself that made them so cautious?

It did not matter, he thought. Thrasher would have known about the cubs that were born that first year and know that they would be entering adulthood soon. In another year the Druid pack would have been invincible, but at the moment the youngsters were more of a deficit. And the tactics of the Southerners certainly had not changed, the fact that almost half of them were ignoring the den and going after the leaders attested to that.

All this flashed through Black's head in an instant, along with the memory of how his grandparents had fared trying to fight so many attackers at once. He was left with only two choices, fight and die like Storm and Snow had, or run for his life and hope to live to gather any of the pack that had also managed to escape later.

He lifted one leg, about to turn and run when he remembered Bruiser. It would be a great opportunity to get rid of him, but he would need him if there was to be any hope of rebuilding the pack.

“Run! Run for the old den, Bruiser, the one I showed you last year when we brought down the big bison. Bring any of the pack you find with you!"

He waited, drawing the invaders toward him while Bruiser made his escape. Black knew that he had waited almost too long so he ran straight to the place of the gods where he had always found shelter before. The invaders, perhaps unfamiliar with the local taboo, followed close behind.

They were fast, almost as fast as Black, but they did not know the territory as well as he, so the black wolf was able to open a lead on them. It was not enough of a lead to get him through the tunnel under the Black trail unseen though, so he made for the gate where the eyeless beasts were more predictable.

When he could see the trail he breathed a sigh of relief, a short line of the beasts were there and the ones arriving were spread out enough for him to duck between them. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the attackers were still following and saw Thrasher tugging on the arm of one of the leaders, obviously urging him not to enter the forbidden territory. Most of the rest of his pursuers were too far ahead to heed his warning though, and they came on at full speed after Black.

Once at the trail Black used his knowledge of the beasts' movements and the timing he learned in his days as a fugitive to slip between the beasts. Then, to confuse the enemy, he ran east, toward the creek and the tunnel. He was gratified when he heard a howl of pain behind him. Someone had tried to cross the trail but had miscalculated the speed of the beasts. That should deter the others, he thought.

He dropped to the ground in a patch of tall dry grass and watched. The trail was emptying, and no new beasts were coming from his direction. He could see the mangled body on the side of the trail and was disappointed to see that it was not one of the two leaders he remembered from the Mist Valley attack. He was even more dismayed when the two with the god collars crossed the trail and started sniffing at the ground on his side.

Black carefully backed away, trying not to rustle the tall grass that hid him from view. Once he was far enough back he got into a low crouch and ran as fast as he could in that position until the ground dropped away and he could run upright. When he neared the creek he crept up to the edge and peered over. Thrasher was on the other side, fifty strides back from the trail as usual, but he was directing a group of newcomers as to where they used to spot the black wolf when they chased him in the old days.

Looking back towards the gates Black could see a small group of wolves moving slowly toward him on this side of the trail. He was trapped. His only option seemed to be to run east until the trail turned south and then keep running, as there was no shelter in that direction. The only place he knew to hide in within a journey's distance was the nearby tunnel.

Making up his mind Black crawled down the slope and splashed about in the creek, disturbing the bottom and muddying the waters. Then he ran down stream for a dash before returning to the bushes that had grown back over the entrance to the tunnel in his absence.

Care not to disturb them Black slipped underneath and checked the grill. It was just as he had left it. He raised it up slowly so it would not squeal like it did the first time and slipped underneath. Once inside he took the cord that was holding his loincloth in place and tied it around the lowest bar of the grill, which was just under the surface of the running water. Then he wound it around a piece of the hard, reddish material that was sticking out from a broken patch of the artificial stone.

He could not remember if he had closed the grill on the other end of the tunnel the last time he had used it some five years before. Crawling along half immersed in the cold water to keep from making any noise he was nearing the other end when a strange wolf broke through the bushes that had grown around the small pond there.

Black froze. He was well back in the dark tunnel and the other wolf was standing in the light that managed to penetrate the clouds. He could see better because the darkness had triggered his night vision while the other wolf could only squint to try make out if there was anything inside. He pried at the grill near the remaining hinge and scraped it with his spear but only got a broken spearhead for his trouble

Behind him Black heard splashing as wolves explored that end of the tunnel. He heard them muttering and the rattle of the grill against its frame. The noise stopped. Evidently his cord had not been discovered. Then a voice called down the tunnel.

“Fang! Fang! Are you there?"

The wolf ahead of Black called back. “I'm here. There's a tunnel but it's blocked by some sort of grill made from a hard material. I can't cut it and it doesn't move."

Black was glad that the wolf lacked enough curiosity to try moving it in another direction, like sideways, but he held his breath. Maybe the ones on the other end would go check it out and discover how to open it.

Time seemed to stretch on forever as the leaders behind him muttered among themselves and Black almost peed himself with relief when he heard them call back to Fang “Looks like he headed down the creek to cover his tracks. We're going to follow him on the banks to see where he gets out. If he stops or turns back we'll get him. If he keeps running we'll chase him until a span before sunset then return to the Druid den to deal with the captives."

“You think he'll run?" another voice asked.

“If it's true what Thrasher said about him being one of the ones that escaped us in Mist Valley he'll probably keep running to the end of the world." The leader said, and then he spat into the water. “The coward."

Based on The rise of Black Wolf

Produced by National Geographic Television, © 2010 NGHT LL