The men stopped shooting. Moving swiftly, a man lowered the tailgate of one of the pickup trucks while another man pulled a tarp off something that looked like a heavy rifle mounted on three legs. What . . . ?
The hunters, who were at the head of the pack, were the first to fall as the heavy rifle spit bullets that thudded into bodies too fast for the Wolves to change direction. And behind them, the bison thundered closer and closer, driven by other humans.
Now some of the men raised their rifles toward the sky, aiming for the Ravens and Hawks.
<Get away!> Joe yelled at the Ravens and Hawks. <Warn—> He felt the thud, thud, thud. His front legs slipped and he tumbled. Had to get away from the stampeding bison. Had to . . .
He got his hind legs under him and tried to leap, gain some distance between him and those hooves.
More thud, thud, thud that hit a hind leg and his side.
He tumbled again, one of his hind legs now useless. Still struggling to move, he managed to crawl until he was partially hidden by one of the dead bison.
So hard to breathe. So hard to . . .
He didn’t really feel the hooves as bison trampled his back legs. He barely heard the triumphant shouts of the humans or the gunfire that turned the bison away from the trucks.
He didn’t notice the silence.
How had Meg, so far away in Lakeside, known this was a trap? What would she have seen?
Could barely hear. Could barely breathe.
“This one’s still alive.”
“Not for long. Throw the carcass in with the rest.”
Being dragged by his forelegs. Then lifted and tossed.
What had Meg seen? How had she known one Wolf from another?
She had seen me in Lakeside. She would remember my face.
Couldn’t shift all the way to human. He didn’t have the strength for that. But if Simon and Jackson saw him somehow, if Meg saw him now, they would know, would be . . . warned, could . . . escape other traps.
He made strange sounds as he tried to breathe, tried to change from Wolf to human form. He saw his hand, mostly human now at the end of a furry foreleg. He felt his face changing.
He felt a blow to the back of his head.
? ? ?
“Do you want us to pull this one off the pile, boss?” a man asked. “His face is halfway humanlooking.”
Daniel Black glanced at the body of the last Wolf thrown on the heap of carcasses. “Leave him. That’s proof we eliminated the enemy and not just a few dumb animals.” He stepped away from the pile of dead Wolves and held out a hand. “Give me that camera. I’ll take a couple of pictures of you boys standing up for humans everywhere.”
They gathered on either side of the mound, rifles raised in triumph while Black took the pictures. He wouldn’t be the only man making a record of this historic day. Men from dozens of HFL chapters throughout the Midwest and Northwest had participated in the third stage of the land reclamation project.
He wouldn’t be the only man who sent one or two photos to the newspaper. But, by the gods, he and his men would be among those best rewarded for this day’s work.
“Now,” Black said, looking in the direction of the hills and the town called Prairie Gold. “Let’s finish this and claim what should have been ours all along.”
As he and his men headed back to their trucks, he didn’t notice the absence of all birds—and he didn’t notice the silence.
? ? ?
Nothing he could have done against a bison stampede, Tolya thought bitterly as he raced above the grass. He could have slowed one animal, or caught and killed one of the riders driving the animals. But that wouldn’t have saved the Wolves. All he could do now was return to Prairie Gold and do whatever he could to help the Intuits save the town.
Wind stirred the grass. A shimmer of heat appeared just ahead of him. He rose to a column of smoke before shifting to human.
Two of the Elementals who watched over this piece of Thaisia took form in front of him. Air and Fire sat astride two of their steeds—one white, one brown.
Was there something the Elementals could have done to stop this? Pointless to ask. Dangerous even for a Sanguinati to say anything that might sound like an accusation.
And maybe the Elementals were never meant to stop this fight between Others and humans any more than they were meant to interfere with any two predators who were fighting over the same territory. But the Elementals at Lakeside had helped Simon. Elementals in another part of the Midwest had helped destroy the Controller and the terrible place where he had caged some of the sweet blood. Maybe the Elementals here would work with him now. After all, Air had helped Joe when he shipped the bison meat to Simon.
“The humans,” Tolya said. “They’re going to burn down the Intuits’ town. They’re going to try to kill all the young Jesse Walker is taking into the hills for protection.”
“How do you know this?” Fire finally asked.
“Meg Corbyn spoke prophecy and warned Jesse Walker.”
“Broomstick Girl?”
So Charlie Crowgard’s song about Meg defending a Wolf had reached this far west. “Yes. Meg, the Trailblazer. Friend to the terra indigene in Lakeside.”
“Our eastern kin know her,” Air said. “She saved the ponies who live in the Lakeside Courtyard.”
Tolya nodded. Then he waited.
Air looked up as some of the Ravengard flew by. “The humans who killed the Wolves. The Ravens say some are from the town and some . . .” She looked at Fire and smiled. “How many bison died?”
Fire just returned her smile.
Something about those smiles gave Tolya a sudden understanding of why the Elementals shouldn’t be encouraged to become too involved in the lives of beings who were more anchored to flesh than their form of terra indigene.
Air and Fire said nothing as they turned their steeds toward the ranches that lay between the Intuit town of Prairie Gold and the human town of Bennett.
Shifting back to smoke, Tolya continued on to Prairie Gold. As he reached the truck stop at the edge of town, he saw a bolt of lightning strike the ground in the north and judged that it had hit something near the crossroads.
He kept going until he reached Walker’s General Store. Men hurried over to meet him as soon as he shifted to human form.
“They’re dead,” he said. “The Wolves are dead.”
“Ah, damn,” Floyd Tanner said softly, sorrowfully. “Even Joe?”
Tolya nodded. He wouldn’t tell these men how the Wolves died. Not yet.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Kelley Burch said after a moment’s silence. “We all liked Joe.”
“He was a good leader,” Tolya said. And maybe, in the same way that Simon Wolfgard is with Vlad, he could have been a good friend.
He didn’t appreciate how much the loss saddened these humans until he saw the change in their faces and bodies and realized that they were, for now, setting aside grief.
Phil Mailer cleared his throat. “I guess we’d better prepare for the rest of the prophecy. I’ve warned every Intuit village or settlement I could. Got a response from Steve Ferryman at Ferryman’s Landing. He’s sending out the alarm too. He didn’t have the feeling that all Intuit places would be in danger. A lot of our settlements are too deep in the wild country to be reached easily by other humans. But he also felt that the farther the warning could be spread, the less likely one of our villages would be caught unawares.”
Tolya nodded. Then he looked north and pointed. “I don’t think we’re the ones who will have to worry about fire.”
? ? ?
The fire funnel raced over the land, and everything burned in its wake. Wind whipped the flames that consumed fence posts and grass—and cattle—as the funnel headed for the ranch buildings still in the distance.
? ? ?
As they neared the crossroads, Daniel Black saw lightning strike the lead pickup’s cab with a marksman’s accuracy as a sudden gust of wind hit the pickup with enough force to shove it off the road.
The other trucks pulled over and men ran to help their comrades.
Black stepped out of his pickup. “They hurt?” he called to the men.
They backed away from the lead pickup.