“Pass this neeeeeews! Pass this neeeeeews!” echoed wolves from hilltop to hilltop.
“There has not been Thing in my lifetime. I’ve seen only two summers,” Blackhard said as they crossed the smallest of the three-rivers well above the roaring falls. On the other side of the river, a pack climbed out of the wet and shook their coats, flushing sparrows from gorse bushes and devil’s club with their spray.
“Will we see the falls?” Auron asked. He wondered what could make such a noise; it sounded like all the dragons in the world arguing farther down the river.
“Why? There’s nothing to eat there,” Blackhard puffed as he swam. “Oh, I imagine it can’t do any harm. It might be just as well to keep you out of sight until Thing. A gathering of two packs-of-packs-of-packs of wolves can be trouble.”
Auron worked the numbers in his head, wolves using pack to mean eight to twelve. Usually. Over a thousand wolves! They climbed up onto the far bank. Auron slithered to the top of a rock to let the sun dry him, keeping one eye cocked to the fast-running river for fish.
“Hungry wolves, who can only catch, and cache, so much game. There may be many more packs—this news has been howled from the mountains to the seacoast. There will be fights. There won’t be so much as a mouse to eat until we can disperse. To the falls it is.”
The unlikely pair stayed along the riverbank; Blackhard had to stop and scratch while waiting for Auron to catch up.
“No wonder your kind grew wings,” the long-legged wolf said as Auron climbed over yet another fallen tree. “You’re slow on the ground. When will you be able to fly?”
“That’s years off. Perhaps a pack and a half-pack of summers.”
“I wish I could live to see it,” Blackhard said, loudly for the sound of falling water now grew with each step. “It must be something. To be able to terrify men, even. I’ve heard stories of flying dragons. One of our pack saw one against the moon, before I was born. Here we are. Be careful—the rocks are slippery.”
A mist rose from the roar. They stood at the brink of a great cauldron steaming in the summer sun. Auron looked across from their cliff. Another river poured into the turmoil from the high plateau. Trees clung precariously to the edges of the cliffs, some even on little shelves jutting out from the rock face. A third river joined the others below, to tumble over a much smaller fall farther downstream. Auron saw a long house of men below the lesser falls. Birds whirled above, floating on the updraft.
“Eagles hunt here, not wolves,” Blackhard said. “The man-place is new. Is there nowhere they don’t go?”
“What will happen at Thing?” Auron could feel the impact of the water, transmitted through the stones up to his cliff. He imagined the wolves deciding he had committed a crime against their kind—and tearing him to pieces.
“We need a Thing now and then. Young females leave packs, sometimes new packs are formed by thwarted males who could not rise in their own. It is good for wolves to mix now and then; a pack that stays only within its territory weakens its blood. Your coming was taken as a signal to gather. There’s also curiosity to it. I suppose only a handful of wolves even know what a dragon smells like nowadays.”
“Why is that?”
“The same reason we no longer roam to the coast. Men. The other hominids make war on you, as well, I’m sure; men go on great journeys to kill your kind. They hunt for dragon eggs. Their dogs like to brag to us.”
“Men. First it’ll be dragons, then it’ll be your kind, Blackhard.”
“Our kind,” Blackhard corrected with a gentle nip at Auron’s crest. “Let a starving wolf pack take even one sick sheep in the dead of winter . . . Good thing they kill each other off, else the world would be covered with them like moss on a fallen tree.”
The rock-tree looked to Auron more like a rock-mushroom. It was made of a dun-colored stone, narrow layer topped with layer, some slightly darker, some lighter. At the top it widened into an overhang; the overhang narrowed gradually to the crown, which had a tree sprouting out of it like a feather in the hat of an elf.
Long ago, a piece had cracked off the mushroom crown and fallen to the base, and as the moon rose, a black wolf with snow-white ears and muzzle jumped atop the pedestal. It took in the gathered wolves, sitting or lying in the darkness, even unto the cliffs surrounding the rock-tree. Auron waited, in between the fallen piece and the rock-tree in deep shadows. The other wolves avoided him.
“Bitter-Bite Coat-White heeeeeeere!” it howled; the other wolves took up the call of heeeeeeeeeeeere!
“Some of you know me, for this is my second Thing,” the white-tipped wolf began. “One or two of you even knew my father, Low-Ear Moon-Breath, leader of the Wind Song Pack.”
A few gaunt, elderly wolves in the front ranks thumped their tails against the dry bedrock of the empty river in acknowledgment.
“We’ve had fights today, matings, divisions, and aggregations. Such is the nature of Thing. Even Wind Song has lost daughters to other packs, and we gained a new son. Broad-Back Short-Whiskers challenged me for my place on Speaking Rock of Thing, and I emerged victorious. Being a good wolf, he returned to his place.”
Snufflings of appreciation rose from the assembly.
“Our first concern is the news that Hard-Legs Black-Bristle, last of the Dawn Roarers, has taken into the pack he now leads an Outsider. Such an event is not unknown to us. All of you know stories of we-people in our mercy raising orphaned elves, or humans even, teaching them to be wolves so that they might carry back to their kind wisdom and understanding. But Hard-Legs Black-Bristle has taken not a baby to be raised, but a mature entity into his pack. A young dragon, no less.”
“Hear! Heeeeeeeaaaaaaar!” the audience howled together. “Let us hear how this came about.”
“Will the leader of the Dawn Roarers tell this tale?” the white-tipped wolf asked of Blackhard.
“I will.”
“Then join me on Speaking Rock.”