People of the Wolf(17)

"No, you didn't. You've told me a hundred times—"

"Well, forget what I've told you before. I changed my mind."

Gray Rock smiled, chewing more of the fat. "Such a pity. You've finally come to your senses, and I won't have a chance to enjoy it."

"Come with us. Ha-heee, there's Power in the south! I feel it deep in my heart." Broken Branch used a bone sliver to pick at the spongy joint area, heedless of the sharp flakes in the whitish pink paste she spooned into her mouth. "One advantage of not having teeth," she mumbled with a grin. "There's nothing for the bone to stick in."

"Uh-huh," Gray Rock growled. "It'll just scour your old butt good and raw when it comes out the other end."

"At least it'll come out. Your problem is you plug up. Affects your disposition. Makes you cranky like you ain't had a man in a year or so."

Gray Rock waved her away with a desultory hand. "Who needs a man? All they do is moan and groan and you spend nine months packing their get—and that's the easy part."

"Come south with us," Broken Branch pleaded, looking up from beneath stubby gray lashes. "I need you. I'll be stuck with these kids. No one sane to talk to. Come. It'll be—"

"The farther south you go, the rougher the country gets. More piles of rock to climb over—and I'm not as nimble as I used to be." She bowed her head in thought, throwing

tender glances at her friend. "Besides, I owe Crow Caller. He saved my life that time I got fevered."

"That was then. His Power's all gone now. Been gone for years."

"I don't know." Gray Rock pulled her legs under her, wincing at the pain in her swollen joints. "Remember when my last tooth rotted? Whole side of my face swelled up from the poison."

Broken Branch cackled, bobbing her head at the memory. "Your face looked like a blowed-up walrus bladder ... all pooched out and skintight! Ha-heeee!"

"Yes, and you remember what Crow Caller did?"

"Don't glower at me like that, you old hag. Of course I do. How could I forget you howling like a wolf with his nose caught in a clamshell?" Broken Branch slapped her leg, chuckling dryly. ' 'It took how many hunters to hold you down while old One Eye worked his healing? Five? Ten?"

"That's not the point!" Gray Rock bristled, wrinkles pulling tight as she hissed, "The point is, he saved my life."

"Bah!" Broken Branch smacked her lips. "He drilled a hole through your cheek with a big bone awl. I could've done that. And just as good!"

Gray Rock pouted before adding sullenly, "Still, he saved my life." She paused. "I'm going north."

Broken Branch carefully scooped the last of the marrow from the bone. She licked the shine of the fatty material from her fingers and the fractured bone before pocketing the fragments to boil later for whatever grease she could render.

"Well . . . go." She shook her finger at Gray Rock. "See what his Power brings you. You'll turn south soon enough— if one of them Others don't stick your guts with a dart."

Gray Rock worked her tongue over empty gums as she studied her friend. "Darts may be better than the ghosts of the Big Ice."

"What would they want with an old hag like you anyway? You'd be nothing but trouble for them—get in their way. Foul up their ghosting or something."

Gray Rock smiled weakly. "I told Jumping Hare to go with Runs In Light."

"You what? That's not right!" she gasped. "Your son should stay with you. Singing Wolf and that 'yes-no' One

Who Cries are going with Light. Crow Caller's band won't have enough hunters. If you're thinking that going south is really right, why don't—"

"Raven Hunter will be enough."

"Bah! He'll get you in trouble with those Others. Young idiot! All he wants is war. Something bad in his blood. I remember when he was born. Blood . . . bad blood."

Gray Rock looked through the crack in the hide door to see how much time remained. Dawn light grayed the sky. "They're getting ready to go. I hear them." Almost as an afterthought, she asked, "Do you really think Heron went that way?"

"I know she did. I saw her leave."

"Most people think she's a myth, that she never really—"

' 'Only the old ones still remember.''

Gray Rock frowned uneasily. "The stories tell how wicked she was, how she consorted with the Powers of the Long Dark. Why'd she go? Did the clan drive her off?"

Broken Branch shook her head awkwardly. "No. She left on her own. Needed to be alone, she said." Guilt tinged the. old woman's voice, guilt and remorse.

Gray Rock eyed her downcast face seriously. "What'd you do? Kill Heron's mother? That look on your—"