"What in Hades happened to you?" roared Hornsbuck all too early the next morning. "And where are Tam and the princess?"
Mika rolled over, and memory came flooding back along with the pain. He groaned. He moaned, feeling sick. Every single bit of his body either throbbed, burned, or just plain hurt. He raised his hand to his aching head and saw that his fingernails were all broken and the tips of his fingers were ripped and torn. He moaned some more. Only the demon fingers were undamaged. He slipped the gauntlet back on, unwilling to look at the awful hand.
Using his other hand, he felt his face gingerly and discovered a long, deep cut across the bridge of his nose. A second slash had ripped across one of his eyebrows and stopped just short of the eye itself. A piece was missing from the the tip of one ear, and the base of his tailbone hurt where Tam had clamped down on his tail… when he still had one.
Mika slowly crawled out of his blanket, groaning constantly, and discovered that the back of his neck was stiff and bruised where Tam had gripped it in his powerful jaws. His entire ribcage was tender to the touch, and it hurt to breathe. Further, his feet were swollen, and the soles were cut and torn from heel to toe.
"What on Oerth!" exclaimed Lotus Blossom. "Hornsbuck, this boy's a mess! Mika, how did you get in this shape?"
As Mika attempted to hobble toward the fire, she scooped him up in her immense arms as though he were a child and deposited him gently in front of the blaze.
"Best fix you up or you'll be dyin', and then that demon would come looking for us," muttered Lotus Blossom. "What've you got in that there pouch?"
Fumbling in Mika's pouch proved too much for Blossom's thick fingers, and in the end she emptied it out on the floor of the cave.
"How about this?" she asked, holding up a vial of clear green fluid.
"No, that's for removing warts," Mika mumbled between cracked and swollen lips. "This'll do," he said, reaching for a stoppered horn filled with a thick, healing salve made from mullein flowers, powdered golden seal, ground gentian root, oil of hemlock spruce, and thick, yellow bear fat.
"Gimme," said Blossom, grabbing the horn out of Mika's stiff fingers. There was no point in arguing with the huge woman, as she could easily ignore his futile protests and have her way with him. Sighing deeply, he gave himself over to her ministrations, determined to suffer through them as a form of added penalty for his stupidity.
Blossom slathered the stuff everywhere, even on places that showed no signs of injury. Surprisingly enough, her immense hands were both deft and gentle, and Mika felt strangely soothed by her touch as well as by her gruff concern. And she only pinched him once.
"Well, now," said Blossom after she was finished. "It seems as though we missed something last night. Care to fill us in? And for starters, where are Tam and the princess?"
"I only wanted to have a little fun," Mike mumbled defensively. "You have Hornsbuck, and the wolves have each other, and all I have is this horrible hand. I thought that maybe if I were a wolf, just for a little while, I could have some fun, too. But it didn't work out like I thought it would. Tam was mad at me tor some reason. The princess liked me, but that only made matters worse. They left, and I followed them. Tam and I fought, and then he and the princess ran off. I don't know where they are now."
"I should have known," rumbled Hornsbuck, more to himself than to Mika. "I should have recognized it. Tried to stop them, did you, lad? Not a wise move. Looks like you fell down the mountain while you were at it."
"It felt like two mountains," Mika said ruefully, trying to find a comfortable position. A thought suddenly came to him. "What did you mean, 'you should have recognized it'? Recognized what?"
"It's her time, Mika. Couldn't you see it com- mg?"
"See what coming?" asked Mika, feeling rather stupid.
"She's in heat, boy," Blossom interrupted, annoyed at Mika's denseness. "In heat. Her and Tam are off together, and unless we can think of a way to find them and separate them, your little miss princess will be having a litter of pups before long."
"Pups! Oh, no! That can't be!" said Mika, sitting up straight on his blanket. "What will we tell her father the king, and what about the demon? How can I possibly explain a litter of wolf pups? Hornsbuck! Lotus! What will they look like? Will they be human or wolves, or-or both?" he asked in a strangled voice.
"I don't know, lad," Hornsbuck said heavily. "Only time will tell us that."
"Could be kinda interesting," Blossom said brightly. "And I don't see what you two are carrying on like this for, anyhow. Why would her father care? Way I understand it, this guy traded his own daughter to a demi-demon. I don't think I'd worry too much about his opinion. And why should the demon care? You told me his business was with the king, not the daughter. Seems like it's her problem now. Stop worrying."
Mika groaned and sank back down on his blanket, suddenly too miserable to think about the dilemma any more. He didn't know how it mattered to the king or to the demon, but with his luck they would probably both be furious.
Blossom started to say something, but Hornsbuck, realizing that there was nothing that they could do or say, rose and took Blossom with him, leaving Mika to his own miserable thoughts.
Tam and the princess were gone for mate tkaa few- days and nights. By then Mika had become mac ar less resigned to the situation, realizing that there was nothing else he could do.
As a matter of fact, the union of Tam and the princess was perhaps preferable to what might have occurred had Mika emerged the victor. The wide variety of physical possibilities of the future offspring simply boggled his mind. The mere thought frightened Mika so much that he broke out in a nervous sweat.
It was possible that their offspring would be born all wolf. Or all human. Or multiple combinations of both. Or werewolves, appearing as human most of the time and turning into wolves periodically. Or wolven most of the time and turning human periodically. Mika found himself sighing a lot.
Tam and the princess were curled around each other, sleeping soundly, when Mika, Hornsbuck, and Blossom wakened on the morning of the fifth day.
The two lovers' paws and legs were muddy, and their pelts were streaked with dirt and leaves, and they slept, deeply exhausted. Neither even twitched a whisker when RedTail inspected them from head to frazzled tail with widespread nostrils and great, snuffling breaths.
The three humans did not need RedTail's heightened sense of smell to know what Tam and the princess had been up to.
When the two wolves finally woke, they ate the last of the antelope and then looked for more. Satisfying their hunger with chunks of mealybread, they curled up and went back to sleep again.
Mika sat by the fire while they slept. Hornsbuck, Lotus Blossom, and RedTail hunted for fresh meat to replenish their dwindling supplies.
Mika sat and watched Tarn's sleeping form. Despite everything, he admitted he was glad that his wolf had returned. Mika had missed him sorely. It was not Tarn's fault that they had clashed over the female-such things were a madness beyond reason.
Abrupdy Tam opened his eyes and looked direcdy at Mika. They stared at each other in silence, and Mika read a reflection of his own thoughts in the warm amber of the wolf s eyes.
Hornsbuck, Blossom, and RedTail returned some time later with a brace of plump rabbits and three fat guinea hens. Mika sat down and helped pluck and gut the catch. Hornsbuck quirked an eyebrow at Mika, knowing that the younger man had something on his mind.
"Hornsbuck, I don't want to go to Exag," Mika said finally, frowning down at the guinea hen in his hands. "I'm afraid that once this demon has me where he wants me, he'll kill me."
"Be you afraid?" Hornsbuck asked in astonishment.
"Wouldn't you be?" countered Mika.
"Never! Wolf Nomads are never afraid! We welcome danger! We wrestle with fate! We laugh in the face of death!" shouted Hornsbuck as he thumped himself on the chest, his eyes growing glazed, overwhelmed by his own propaganda.
"Oh, Hornsbuck, come off it," groaned Lotus Blossom. "That Wolf Nomad mumbo-jumbo is going to rot your brain or get you killed yet. I love a good brawl, same as the next man, but I stop short of dying.
"The boy's got a point," she continued. "He doesn't want to get killed on account of some stupid code of manhood. Isn't there some way he can get rid of the princess and duck out on this demon? What good is honor if you're dead?"
Mika looked at Lotus Blossom with admiration, his heart singing as she expressed his very thoughts with eloquence. He heard a choked noise and looked up to see Hornsbuck, his face suffused with purple, his eyes nearly starting from his head, clutching feebly at his chest.
"Hornsbuck! What's the matter!" cried Mika, leaping to his feet to grab Hornsbuck by the shoulders, supporting him as the huge man's knees threatened to buckle.
Hornsbuck's breath rasped in his throat and the big man slowly sank to the floor, his hand still pressed to his chest.
"Woman, you know not of what you speak," he said in a gravelly voice, giving Lotus Blossom a cold stare.
"Wolf Nomads would sooner die than live without honor. We be different than other folk, our code means more to us than life. I would sooner die than live without the code, and I would kill any Wolf Nomad who diminished the honor of the clan by cowardice. You must wipe out cowardice as you would blight on a tree. All Wolf Nomads think as I do, even Mika. Be it not so, lad?" Hornsbuck said in a voice that was thick with tension. His green eyes drilled into Mika, waiting for his answer.
"Of course," Mika said with barely a pause, even as his heart plummeted within his breast. "I welcome danger! I wresde with fate! I laugh in the face of death! On to Exag!" he cried, his voice ringing hollow in his ears. "Let the demon beware!"
Hornsbuck looked at him with pride and Lotus Blossom gazed at him with a bemused expression, but Mika saw none of it. His heart hung frozen, impaled on the quivering dilemma of his fear and the inflexible Wolf Nomad code of courage.
They set off early the next morning, before the fog had left the ground, their horses anxious to travel after being hobbled for six long days.
They swung south, paralleling the River Fler on the narrow strip of land that separated it from the Yatil Mountains. Traveling was good. The land was flat, with ample grazing for the horses. The mountains held back the winds from the east and created a massive barrier that deflected the worst of the winter storms.
Game was plentiful and even though Hornsbuck distrusted water, they spent a pleasant afternoon fishing on the shores of Lake Quag before turning east toward the Mounds of Dawn.
"I do not know much about Exag," said Mika as they left the fertile lakelands behind them, the land growing drier and stonier as they advanced. The mountains bordered them on the north and rose before them to the east.
"No one knows too much," said Hornsbuck. "They be an unfriendly and uncivilized bunch of barbarians. Pah!" he exclaimed, spitting to the side to show his dislike of the Exagians.
"I hear that they don't even gamble," Lotus Blossom said in disbelief.
"Pah!" spat Hornsbuck. "Religious dogbodies, that's what they are. Spend all their days looking up at the sun and all their nights gazing at the stars and the moon.
"They say that everyone has a destiny that's foretold in the stars. Your entire life be planned out for you by the priests depending on when you were born.
"They even make human sacrifices. If you be born under a particular star, you live knowing that you must die, sacrificed to the Goddess of Dawn."
"Why?" asked Mika, his flesh crawling at the thought.
"Because they are uncivilized barbarians, not cultured folk like ourselves," Hornsbuck explained patiently. "When you've traveled as long as I have, you'll learn that we Wolf Nomads be far superior to everyone else."
"Hornsbuck, why would the demon want me to come here?" Mika asked nervously, not at all reassured by what he had heard of the citizens of Exag.
"Not afraid, are you?" Hornsbuck asked suspiciously, tilting one shaggy eyebrow.
"Me? Afraid of a bunch of uncivilized barbarians who sacrifice their own? Hah!" exclaimed Mika, who was very much afraid.
"Good! Nomads never run from danger! Nomads love a challenge!" roared Hornsbuck. "What is life without danger?" He stood up in his stirrups and howled. "Come on lad, you don't want to grow old and die in your bed, do you? A nomad lives only to die!" Roaring out the last words, Hornsbuck kicked his horse into a gallop and rode off across the harsh land, howling and brandishing his spear above his head.
Mika and Lotus Blossom watched him ride away.
"Die in my bed… I don't think that's likely," Mika muttered. Feeling as though his own life was as preordained as the unlucky Exagians, he howled his own cry and galloped after Hornsbuck, the wolves trailing at his heels.