overwhelm the other with brute strength.
He saw his chance, and shredded the brown wolf’s left ear. The animal yelped and backed off, feinted to one side, and then moved in again, eyes murderous with rage. Their bodies collided once more, with a force that knocked the breath out of both of them. They grappled wildly, each trying to grip the other’s throat as they battled back and forth across the room, a deadly ballet of teeth and claws.
A brown-haired, muscular shoulder whammed into the right side of his skull, blinding him with fresh agony. He cried out in pain-a high quavering yelp-and fell back into the corner. The breath rumbled in his lungs, and he snorted blood. The brown wolf, almost grinning with the excitement of combat, started to jump at him to finish the job.
A rough series of quick, throaty barks froze the brown wolf on the edge of attack.
The yellow female had entered the house through the door. Right behind her was the one-eyed gray, an old male. The female darted forward, nudging the brown one in the side. She licked his bloody ear, and then shoved him aside with her shoulder.
The black wolf waited, his muscles trembling. Again, the pain in his skull was savage. He wanted to let them know he wasn’t about to give up his life without further struggle; he shouted-the equivalent of “Come on!”-and his guttural bark made the yellow female’s ears twitch. She sat on her haunches and watched him, perhaps a spark of respect in her eyes as the black wolf announced his intention to survive.
She stared at him for a long time. The old gray and the brown male licked her coat. The small, pale brown male entered and yipped nervously until she silenced him with a cuff to the muzzle. Then she turned, a regal motion, and with a flip of her tail she went to the knife-stuck corpse and began to tear at it.
Five wolves, he thought. Five. That number bothered him. It was a dark number, and it smelled of fire. Five. In his mind he saw a beach, and soldiers struggling to shore through the waves. Over them loomed the shadow of a huge crow, flying inexorably toward the west. The crow had glass eyes, and on its beak were arcane scratchings. No, no, he realized. Letters. Something painted there. Iron-
The heady aromas of blood and fresh meat distracted him. The others were feeding. The yellow female lifted her head and grunted at him. The message said there was enough for all.
He ate, and let the mysteries drift away. But when the brown male and the amber female began to rip at the huge orange-haired corpse on the floor, he shuddered and went outside, where he was violently ill.
That night the stars came out. The others began to sing, their bellies swollen. He joined them-tentatively at first, because he didn’t know their rhythms, then full-voiced as they accepted his song and swirled his into their own. He was one of them now, though the brown wolf still growled and sniffed disdainfully at him.
Another day dawned, and passed. Time was a trick of the mind. It had no meaning, here in the womb of Wolftown. He gave the others names: Golda, the yellow leader, older than she appeared; Ratkiller, the dark brown male whose principal pleasure was chasing rodents through the houses; One-eye, a beautiful singer; Yipper, the whelp of the litter and not quite right in the mind; and Amber, a dreamer who sat for hours gazing from the rocks. And, as he soon learned, Amber’s four pups, sired by Ratkiller.
A quick shower of snowflakes fell one night. Amber danced in their midst, and snapped at them as Ratkiller and Yipper ran circles around her. The snowflakes melted as soon as they touched the warm ground. It was a sign of summer on the way.
The following morning he sat up on the rocks while Golda honored him by licking the crusted blood away from his skull wound. It was a language of the tongue, and it said he was welcome to mount her. Desire stirred in him; she had a lovely tail. And as he roused himself to please her, he heard the drone of engines.
He looked up. A huge crow was rising into the air. No, not a crow, he realized. Crows didn’t have engines. An aircraft, with an immense wing span. The rising of the plane in the silver morning air made his flesh crawl. It was a horrible thing, and as it turned southward he made a soft groaning noise deep in his throat. It had to be stopped. In its belly was a cargo of death. It had to be stopped! He looked at Golda and saw she didn’t understand. Why didn’t she? Why was it only he who understood? He propelled himself off the rocks and raced down to the harbor as the transport aircraft began to grow distant. He clambered up onto the seawall, where he stood moaning until the plane was lost to sight.
I’ve failed, he thought. But exactly what it was that he had failed at made his head hurt, and he had to let it go.
But his nightmares seized him, and those he could not escape.
He was human, in the nightmares. A young human, with no sense of the world. He was running across a field where yellow flowers budded, and in his hand was a taut string. At the end of that string, floating up into the blue, was a white kite that danced and spun in the high currents. A human female called him, a name he couldn’t exactly understand. And as he was watching the kite sail higher and higher the shadow of the glass-eyed crow fell over him, and one of its whirling propellers chewed the kite into a thousand fragments that blew away like dust. The airplane was olive green, and riddled with bullet holes. As the severed string fell to earth, so did a mist. It swirled around him, and he breathed it. His flesh began to melt, to fall in bloody tatters, and he pitched to his knees as holes opened in his hands and arms. The woman, once beautiful, staggered across the field toward him, and as she reached him, her arms outstretched, he saw a bleeding cavity where her face had been.
In the stark daylight of reality he sat on the dock and stared at the burned hulk of a boat. Five, he thought. What was it about the number that terrified him so?
The days passed, a ritual of eating, sleeping, and basking in the waning sun. The corpses, hollowed-out and bony, gave up their last meal. He reclined on his haunches and regarded the knife, stuck there in a cage of bones. It had a hooked blade. He had seen that knife, in another place. Being driven down between a pair of human fingers. Kitty’s game, he thought. Yes. But who was Kitty?
An airplane, its green metal pocked with painted holes. The face of a man with silver teeth: a devil’s face. A city with a huge clock tower, and a wide river meandering to the sea. A beautiful woman, with blond hair and tawny eyes. Five of six. Five of six. All shadows. His head hurt. He was a wolf; what did he know, or care, of such things?
The knife beckoned him. He reached for it as Golda watched with lazy interest. His paw touched the handle. Of course he couldn’t pull the knife out. What had made him believe he could?
He began to pay attention to the rising and falling of the sun and the passage of days. He noted the days were lengthening. The five of six. Whatever that was, it was fast approaching, and that thought made him shiver and moan. He ceased singing with the others, because there was no song in him. The five of six dominated his mind and would not let him rest. Hollow-eyed, he faced another dawn, and he went to stare at the knife in the stripped skeleton as if it were a relic from a lost world.
The five of six was almost upon him. He could sense it, ticking nearer. There was no way to stop its approach, and that realization chewed his insides. But why did it not bother any of the others? Why was he the only one who suffered?
Because he was different, he realized. Where had he come from? At whose nipples had he suckled? How had he gotten here, in Wolftown, as the five of six neared with every breath he drew?
He was with Golda, basking in the warming breeze near the seawall as the stars blazed in the heavens, when they heard Yipper give a long, quavering note from up in the rocks. Neither of them liked that sound; there was alarm in it. Then Yipper began a series of fast, harsh barks, relaying a warning to Wolftown. At once the black wolf and Golda were up off their bellies, hearing the noise that made Yipper shriek with pain.
Gunfire. Golda only knew it meant death. The black wolf knew it was the noise of a Schmeisser submachine gun.
Yipper’s shrieking stopped abruptly as another burst rattled. Ratkiller took up the alarm, and Amber spread it. The black wolf and Golda ran deeper into Wolftown, and soon they smelled the hated scent of men. There were four of them, coming down the rocks into the village and sweeping their lights before them. They fired at everything that moved, or that they thought might have moved. The black wolf caught another odor, and recognized it: schnapps. At least one of the men, perhaps the others, too, was drunk.
In another moment he heard their slurred voices: “I’ll make you a wolfskin coat, Hans! Yes, I will! I’ll make you the most beautiful damned coat you’ve ever seen!”
“No, you won’t! You’ll make it for yourself, you son of a bitch!”
There was rough laughter. A burst of bullets whacked into the side of a house. “Come on out, you hairy shits! Come out, and let’s play!”
