Mango Chiefton's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

By the next dusk, Mango had five runes and fresh cuts weeping under the wraps. The beast smelled them. It came at nightfall, a lean gray wolf with six eyes glowing red and green through the fog. It circled the parlor, snout low, drinking the scent of his blood. Every time Mango crouched to smear paste and start a line, the wolf slammed the wall and forced him back. He couldn't hold still under the teeth. He couldn't carve while it hunted him. "We move it, or you die on the floor," Riko said. The boy pressed his back to the door. "It wants your blood. Give it another." Mango thought of the boar he'd found stiff in the reeds that morning, split open and heavy with old blood. "The dead boar. It reeks worse than me." He nodded to the far shallows. "Drag it downwind. Pull the wolf off my scent." But neither of them could drag it far with the wolf between them and the door. Then the door shoved open. A young hunter stepped through, half wolf himself, black ears pinned back, claws out. Mango had seen him track boar through the marsh, always alone, always too fast for sense. Fenrir Kane. He grinned at the six-eyed wolf like he'd been waiting all his life for it. "That thing's been eating your troop?" Fenrir said. "Good. I've wanted a real fight." "Don't," Mango said. "It's faster than you." "Everything's faster than everything until it isn't." Fenrir snatched a length of bone from the shelf and bolted outside. He whistled sharp and slapped the beast's flank. The wolf spun. Fenrir led it away from the wall in a wild loop, ducking snaps, howling to keep its six eyes on him. "Now," Riko hissed. Mango and Riko heaved the boar carcass out the back and hauled it through the mud. Blood smeared their arms. They dumped it in the reeds downwind and ran back. The wolf's head snapped up. It caught the thick reek of dead boar, dropped Fenrir, and bounded toward the reeds to feed. Fenrir stumbled through the door, panting, one arm raked and bleeding. "See? Slow enough." The wall stopped shaking. Outside, the wolf tore into the carcass, far from Mango's scent now. He didn't waste the gap. He crouched, smeared the paste along his ribs, and waded to the shallows where the piranhas waited. Riko chewed poppy and burned the incense low. Mango gave his skin to the teeth. This time no wall shook, no snout hunted him. He carved through the dark. By dawn he had eleven runes. But the boar was bone by morning, and the wolf would come back for the only fresh blood left. The bait had bought one night. It would not buy another.