many times. He even leered at Lotus Blossom as she shrugged out of her heavy- leather tunic before dinner and walked around camp, scratching her ample belly and heavy breasts before she changed into a loose shift that thankfully covered her from neck to knees.
He leered, but in truth the sight of all that pink flesh made him quite ill, and he worried more than ever over the fact that it did nothing to excite him. This stirred him to greater eccentricities, capped by his pinching Lotus Blossom's enormous backside, earning him nothing but angry glowers from Hornsbuck.
Even this did not curb his activities, and Hornsbuck and Lotus Blossom were both staring at him openly before the evening was out. Unable to stand the strain any longer, Mika went to sleep early… without unbraiding his hair.
'Don't know why you bother, you haven't enough of a beard to matter,' Hornsbuck commented casually the next morning as Mika prepared to shave as he did every day, scraping his face with the edge of his knife.
'Yes, I do! Why I… I could shave twice a day and still have bristles!' Mika exclaimed as he leaped to his feet and faced Hornsbuck, his face dripping with lather, the blade trembling between his fingers.
'Well, all right. If you say so!' said an astonished Hornsbuck. 'It's no matter to me. I just don't see why you bother. Growing a beard's much easier than cutting your face to ribbons every day. Never could see the sense of it myself.'
Mika blinked and backed away. Got to get a grip on myself, he thought, his hand rising to his lathered chin. This is getting out of control. He saw the princess grinning at him, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Suddenly enraged, he flicked a gob of foam at her.
His aim was good, but she was faster; she scampered away, her upturned tail spattered with foam and her eyes crinkled into slits of wolvish laughter as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
They went on like that for the next ten days. Mika stopped shaving and grew a beard which he was forever stroking and pulling and examining in pools of water to check its growth.
He spoke in deeper and deeper tones, causing Hornsbuck to ask him whether or not he was ill. Lotus Blossom stopped pinching him, even when he grew worried enough to make it easy for her. He strode and hawked and spat and gestured with masculine vigor and took to going about with the top half of his tunic unlaced, baring his chest to the coldest of breezes. 'Ah! Invigorating!' he would roar with appreciation and inhale deeply, while trying to hide the fact that he was covered with goose bumps, splotched and trembling from the cold.
Hornsbuck began to look at him strangely, eyeing him from beneath his shaggy eyebrows and studying him when he thought Mika would not notice. But of course he did, and immediately thought that Hornsbuck was seeing through his charade and so increased his virile mannerisms even further, until he became a ludicrous caricature of himself.
One night, as they sat in front of the fire after the evening meal, Mika began relating a fanciful tale that involved himself and seven nubile beauties performing a variety of incredible and totally unbelievable sexual acts. Hornsbuck interrupted the story and took the mug of ale from Mika's tightly clenched fist.
'Mika, are you going strange on me?' he asked. 'I know you be worried about this demon business, but you be acting exceptional strange lately. You even look different. Now we be friends, and I owe you my life, but if you be going crazy, tell me now. I don't want to get into a tight spot in Exag and find myself with a loon on my hands.'
Mika stopped cold, wondering what it was that had given him away. Some small gesture? An accidental high note in his voice, perhaps?
He stared at Hornsbuck, wondering how the old nomad would react if he told him the truth. He who was so particular and so offended if a man even left his hair unbraided! No, it would never do. He could not tell.
'I don't know what you mean,' he said in his deepest baritone and then looked away, unable to meet Hornsbuck's steady gaze.
There was a moment's silence, and then Hornsbuck lowered his eyes and turned away.
'Well, lad, tell me if you ever feel yourself slipping over the edge. I have a stake in this, too, you know.' And then they sat in awkward silence until Mika hawked and spat and took up the thread of the lapsed conversation once more.
It went on like that for the remainder of the journey, Mika acting more and more strangely and watching Hornsbuck and Lotus Blossom covertly to gauge the success of his performance.
Hornsbuck in turn, tried to act normal, laughing and joking, but secredy he watched Mika to try and discover what was causing his friend's strange behavior.
CHAPTER 14
They rode into the nomad camp on the morning of the twelfth day of Patchwall. The forest was a fiery, autumnal kaleidoscope of brilliant oranges, flame reds, and golden browns as alder and oak, balsam and birch, sablewood, yarpick, and the majestic roanwood burst into their final transcendent displays of color.
The cold breath of winter would soon be upon them, and Mika rejoiced in the beauty of the forest as they entered the clanlands. Throwing back their heads, Mika and Hornsbuck each howled out their own individual wolf cry, announcing their arrival to all within hearing, as was demanded and expected by proper Wolf Nomad etiquette.
There was a moment's silence, and then the air was shattered by a cacaphony of wolf cries that rose and fell and shivered along the nerves. Each nomad developed his own cry, his own special voice that was as distinctive and as easily identifiable to his clansmen as was his face.
Soon, there was the first glimpse of movement and then the woods were full of them, wolves and nomads as they raced to meet the newcomers.
The wolves appeared first. All sizes and colors. They leaped and bounded and sniffed the new wolves from head to tail, each in turn going through the ancient ritual.
Tam and RedTail were both dominant males. Normally there could only be one dominant male in each pack who ruled completely and bred with the dominant female. It was extremely unusual for two such males to occupy the same territory. Never would such a thing occur in the wild, where they would have been required to fight for dominance, leaving only one of them the clear victor.
But Tam and RedTail were both dominant males who had been brought together by the association of their humans, and they adjusted their behavior to fit the needs of the situation, respecting each other, living in harmony, and fighting shoulder to shoulder when the situation demanded it.
But they were still interlopers in foreign territory. They found themselves confronted by a tall, rangy, white wolf whose tattered ears and scarred neck and shoulders told of many batdes. His mere presence told of his victories. He sniffed them carefully, and only when he stepped aside and urinated on a nearby tree, slating his ownership of the territory, did they know that they had been accepted without challenge.
The princess faced a gauntlet of a different sort. Although posing no threat to the males, she was of great interest to them sexually, and she was sniffed from head to tail, over and over and over. One inexperienced young male, whose enthusiasm was larger than his propriety, tried to mount her. But her patience was frayed beyond its limits, and she turned and snapped at the youngster, nipping him painfully on the ear. He leaped away, bright dots of blood beading on his velvety, gray ear, and slunk off into the brush, tail tucked between his legs amid a chorus of yips that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Then the females crowded in, sizing the princess up with hot eyes, sniffing, prodding, poking, shoving her with their noses, searching for a sign of weakness. But while she had endured the inspection of the males-had almost seemed to enjoy it, even-she had no patience with the females. Baring her teeth, she growled at them. They drew back and averted their eyes, yet they did not leave her side. She felt a sudden flash of fear and looked to Mika for some small guidance, some hint of assistance.
Mika rode into the throng, nudging the wolves aside with the big roan, scattering them like dried leaves. The princess trotted alongside the horse, grateful in spite of herself for his intercession as they approached the clansmen.
The youngsters were first, as usual. Boys only, as was seemly, ran forward on hard, calloused feet, yip- ping and hooting out their juvenile cries, throwing up their arms and cavorting with the exuberance of youth. They wore
