This tale takes us way, way back to the dawning years of the tribe. Anlari, mother of all Wolfriders, is already gone. The twins, Arran and Nimor, are chiefs of the tribe. Times are harsh in this icebound, paleolithic world, and only the strongest survive...

The night was waning, and the first of the birds in the sparse canopy caroled the approaching dawn, undisturbed by the silent flight of a small slender figure far below. A child of the forest it was, fleet and noisless, as it sped through the shadows that still blanketed the frost-wrapped glade.

But not noiseless enough.

Howls coursed through the trees, echoing off the frozen surfaces. The child turned and drew a sharp breath. He'd doubled back on his tracks and laid a complex trail, he knew he had. How had the Wolflings sorted it out so quickly?

His foot caught on a tree root and he cried out sharply as he pitched forward, falling flat with a jar that forced the breath from his slight body. His outstretched hand broke through a layer of rotting ice at the edge of a small pool. Jagged shards of ice cut into his palm and he drew his hand back, then struggled to sit up and draw in a breath again. In the black water he could see his own face: broad across the cheekbones, cheeks pinched and hollow from perpetual hunger, eyes narrow and gray, the whole framed in lank black hair.

A shadowy form rose behind him in the reflection. The child turned sharply.

"Caught you again, cub."

The voice was harsh and overlaid with a wolfish growl. Golden eyes stared down from a weirdly furred face. Tufted ears laid back along the sides of the apparition's head.

The child curled his lip. "Arran..." he snarled.

Arran, son of Anlari and her wolf mate. Arran, the half-wolf. Arran, the leader of the Wolflings.

"Why do you bother? You know you'll always be caught. Pureblood!" He grabbed with a clawed hand and caught the child roughly by the scruff of the neck. More Wolflings, those more recognizably elfish, gathered around and grinned. "Back to the holt with you, brat!" Arran said, shaking his captive hard. That was only a taste of what would soon come.

"You wouldn't survive the day alone out here, you twig," another Wolfling jeered.

Twig. Cub. Pureblood. Brat. Names mattered little to these nameless ones, born not knowing who they were, dubbing themselves for things or deeds. The child had a name but the Wolflings seldom called him by it, not when they could think of something less noble to fling at him. Arran muttered a string of ugly names and growls and curses as he charged along, slamming his captive against every tree he passed. The child bore it in stony silence which only further enraged the Wolf chief.

Hers was the largest and the driest of the caves which honeycombed the small hillside. It was one of the few concessions the Wolf chief would allow her, for even he had to acknowledge her dignified status. On a long stony bench, padded beneath by furs and swathed in more furs, she lay in a fitful slumber, her shallow breathing disturbed from time to time by a weak cough, the nearly transparent skin of her face illuminated by the soft glow of a smoking lamp.

At a slight sound her eyelids fluttered open. "Footsteps! Oh..."

Arran shoved the doorskin aside, a limp form dangling from his fist. He threw his captive to the floor. "You purebloods need to watch your whelps more closely!"

"He's just a child, Arran!" the elf woman cried in a voice that seemed too strong for her delicate form. Her eyes, too brilliant and hectic, glinted in the dim lamplight. "The seasons have barely turned nine times since his birth." She reached out to stroke the head of the child who lay in a ragged heap at the side of her couch.

Arran snarled, revealing sharp canines under his thin lips. "Any wolfling worth his fangs is hunting by his age! This one is worthless!"

"Please, Arran!" The elf woman tenderly touched the child's head again. "Please. He is what he is."

"Soft is what he is!" The Wolf chief turned sharply on his heel and stalked out the door, a swirl of cold air roiling in his wake. "All of you are soft!"

They were left in silence, until another voice sounded softly at the cave door. "Drianah?"

"It's all right, Tilvah," the elf woman said in a tired voice. "Leave us alone for a time."

A face, pureblooded and tenderly sympathetic, looked in. "As you wish," Tilvah said, and withdrew as quietly as she'd come.

"Mother..." the child murmured.

"Allim, my son," Drianah said gently, "why do you do this? Why do you run away?"

The child lifted his face, showing bruises already coloring. "Because I hate this place! I hate the Wolflings! I don't want to be here any more!"

"But where would you go, my child?"

"Anywhere!" he burst out, petulantly. "Any place is better than this!"

Drianah sighed and gently ran a finger over her son's face. "Allim, think. How will you hunt? How will you feed yourself?"

"Roots, berries, anything! I have to get away!"

"And leave me here without you?" Drianah said, stroking his hair away from his face.

Allim looked away with a guilty expression. "I wish I could take you..."

Drianah smiled. "Others have wanted to leave, also. But I chose to stay."

"Why?" her son demanded.

"Because the tribe needs us as much as we need them. Someday you'll see that. Right now..." She lay back on the furs, the confrontation with Arran and the conversation with her son having drained her few resources.

"Are you tired again, Mother?" His youthful features altered from their perpetual scowl to a look of concern.

"Yes, tired. I need to rest. You rest also, Allim. You've had a hard night."

The child frowned. "You've seemed very tired the past few nights. Is your sickness worse? Do you need more herbs?"

Driahna smiled, but the expression took a decided effort. "I have been...tired. But it's not something that any herb will mend."

"Well... rest, then." Allim pulled the furs up to her neck. "When you're well again, mother, we'll..." He paused. "You will get well again, right? You have to. You're a High One, the very last..."

"Yes," she whispered sorrowfully. "I believe that's so."

Allim stared angrily up at the sky the very next night, glaring at the peak of the mountain that showed over the hill where his home &emdash; such as it was &emdash; lay. Off to one side rose a range of peaks which the Wolflings called the Singing Sisters, for they clustered together as though happy to be with one another. The single mountain stood apart from the rest, tall and aloof, perpetually covered with ice and snow. This one the Wolflings called Frostheart, for it lay in the direction of the Evercold and the piercing winter winds came from its flanks. No one ventured there. Humans hunted at the mountain's feet.

Staring at the mountain gave Allim's eyes something to focus on besides the face of the Wolf chief looming over him and the spear which lay uneasily in his hands. "It's time you earned your place in the tribe, cub," Arran growled. The Wolflings gathered around with their mounts, weapons ready for a hunt.

"He won't do it that way," came another voice, overlaid with a growl as Arran's was, yet softer on the ear. "Everyone knows he can't hunt."

"Keep out of this, Nimor!" Arran snarled. He stormed over to his twin sister and stuck his face in hers. "It's not your affair!"

Nimor remained calm despite her Arran's barely-contained rage. "You're being stupid as usual, brother. He's turning into a treeshaper, not a hunter."

"He'll be a hungry treeshaper if he doesn't hunt!" He turned to Allim and pointed a claw. "You won't share in the tribe's meat until you contribute to it. Do you hear me?"

Allim would not look at him. His stomach was already protesting a whole night and day without food of any sort.

"Arran, don't be a fool!" Nimor cried.

"Nothing foolish about keeping a tribe fed. Anyone who can't hunt is a burden. And I don't need any more burdens! From now on, all cubs born to this tribe will hunt!"

And so, young Allim was forced on the hunt, marching angrily through the forest night after night, making the same clumsy mistakes night after night. The images of his humiliating performance would remain branded in his memory for life:

Arran aiming his spear at a stag; the stag looking up, startled, at the sound of a twig snapping under Allim's foot; the stag bounds away; Arran glares at the youth and cuffs him.

A wild pig, rooting in the forest; Allim aims a spear; misses; startled pig charges off; Arran knocks Allim to the ground.

A wild boar charges; the Wolflings howl and attack; the boar turns suddenly, the wolves wheel with it; Allim is in the way, and gets bowled over; the boar tramples his legs; he can barely walk for the pain, yet Arran will not wait for him; he limps back, arriving well after dawn and exhausted.

Allim sat curled up in a tight ball, alone, while the Wolflings feasted on a downed deer. The remains would go to the rest of the purebloods, though not to him. His head swam with hunger. Arran refused to give him meat, and there was little else to eat in the dead of the long winter. His shaping powers were far from developed; he could not make fruit ripen on the tree while the flowers were still wrapped tightly in their buds. How he would survive until the brief spring and flush of summer he did not know. He refused to eat his mother's share of the meat, though in her lingering illness she was growing too weak to eat it herself. Tilvah sometimes managed to slip him a few bites when Arran wasn't looking, but the small portion of her already meagre share would not keep him long. Arran's plan made no sense to him; how was starving him supposed to teach him to hunt if he was hardly strong enough to lift the spear any more?

A hefty chunk of meat hit the ground beside him. He looked at it, startled, then looked up into Nimor's golden eyes. "Hungry, cub?" she asked.

"Nimor!" Arran roared, and Nimor stepped between the Wolf chief and the young pureblood. "Don't waste food on him! There's little enough at it is!"

Allim snatched at the meat and tore into it hungrily, hoping to swallow as much as he could before Arran could get to it.

Nimor poked a long finger at her brother's chest. "There would be more if you didn't drag him out on every hunt! He's not made for it!" She waved her other hand toward Allim. "This is pointless. He's no good on the hunt!"

"Then he's no good for anything!" Arran shoved her aside and snatched the remains of the meat from Allim's hands. "Just let him starve!" The Wolf chief stalked away.

Nimor glared after him, then went to cut another chunk of meat from the carcass. She brought it back to Allim. "Eat, cubling. Arran can't really stop me from feeding you."

He'd eaten too fast and his stomach threatened revolt, but Allim swallowed hard and forced the feeling back as he bit into the fresh piece.

"Then," Nimor added, "go see your mother."

Allim stopped chewing.

"She's been asking for you."

Allim went white. He dropped the meat and ran for the cave.

Nimor reached down and picked up the abandoned food. "Poor cubling," she murmured, as she bit into it herself.

"Mother?"

Allim was hesitant on his own doorstep. "Mother? What is it? What's wrong?"

*Allim...* her send echoed hollowly in his head, as though from far away.

He rushed to her side and pressed her hand to his face.

*Allim, you must understand...*

"But I don't! What is it?" She would not raise her hand and could barely open her eyes to look upon him. Allim clutched frantically at her bedfurs.

*Allim, my dear son, in this world all things live their time then go back to the dust they came from.*

*But not us! We can live forever, right?* He looked into her face, hoping against all hope of finding confirmation of what he'd always believed.

*Not always,* Drianah sent, sadly. *For some the Palace beckons. I grieve not for myself, for I know I am only going home. It's you I worry for.*

*If only we had a healer!*

*But we do not, so you must listen to me. There isn't much time.*

*Not much time? Mother...*

Drianah's hand fluttered as she reached out weakly to touch his face. *Allim, tribemates are born, they live, they die, but the tribe goes on. It lives on, dear son, but only if it stays together.*

*Together?* Allim echoed, hardly knowing what he was saying.

*Yes. You must promise me... promise me, Allim!*

*Anything!*

*Promise me you will stop running away. That you will stay with the tribe always.*

*But...* He wanted to add, "with you gone..." but he could not bring himself to say it.

*I know you don't understand now, but someday you will.*

*But mother...*

*Nimor will explain more when you are ready for it. For now, just promise me, Allim.*

Allim bowed his head. *All right... I promise.*

*Good. Very good. You must never forget. This is most important. Your life may depend...* Drianah's hand dropped limply to her side as she broke off. *And now... now I must rest... stay with me...*

*I will!* Allim clutched at her hand. *You'll feel better after you've slept.* He pulled the sleep furs up with the other hand, carefully covering her to keep the chill away. *You'll get better, Mother, I know you will. And when you do... Mother?*

Silence.

**Mother?**

Only empty silence. Allim stared at her, stricken. His head sunk down toward his chest. He would not cry, not with the Wolflings right outside. He would not.

**Oh, Mother!**

They took her away soon after. A body without a soul was an empty husk to the Wolflings, and reverence to it made little sense to them. There was meat there, and it would not go to waste. While the Wolflings howled for the departed soul, and even some of the purebloods joined in the mournful chorus, the wolves bore the body away into the sparse northern forest, moving off toward Frostheart, now half-concealed by the low, dark clouds.

Allim stood shivering in a downpour of sleet and freezing rain. He knew to what purpose the wolves bore his mother's body away, what they would do with her, how their fangs would tear into her lovely face. "I hate wolves!" he shouted at the top of his voice, his futile protest lost in the noise of the howl. "I hate them all!"

He ran back to the cave and collapsed into the furs of his mother's couch, shivering with a cold that no fire or fur would warm.

He still refused to cry.

Another hunt, though the forest was slick with ice from the freezing rain. When the Wolflings were hot on the trail of a deer, Allim stole away and clambered up a tree. He cleared a patch of ice from a limb and lay prone upon it, waiting. The limb overlooked a game trail. If he waited long enough, something would come down the trail, either on its own or with the Wolflings in pursuit.

His patience paid off. He heard the Wolflings howl as they flushed out another deer. He heard the beat of small hooves on the frozen soil. He clutched at his short spear and waited, tense, wondering if his experiment would work. Moments later, the deer bounded down the trail directly beneath the point of his spear.

Luck was with him. The spear fell straight toward the deer's neck and dove into its flesh right between the shoulder blades. The deer stumbled to its knees. The Wolflings tore from the brush and leaped upon the creature, finishing it with a slash to the neck.

Arran looked over the carcass and saw whose weapon had struck the killing blow. He yanked the short spear from the deer's back as Allim slid down from the tree, looking a trifle smug.

"You!" the Wolf chief snarled.

"That's my kill," Allim said, quietly.

"Your what?!?!" Arran roared.

"That's my kill," Allim repeated. "I struck the killing blow. By rights I take the first share."

"A hunter gets the first share!" Arran cried. "That wasn't hunting! That was... trickery!"

The Wolflings looked on uncertainly. Their Way was just as the young pureblood had said, but the Way also said that the chief's word was law.

"It's mine," Allim said through his teeth. "I want my share and I want it now!"

"Dung's yours!" Arran yelled. He flung the spear at Allim's feet. "There, lick the blood from your little spear. That's all the share you'll get, Trickster!" Arran threw the carcass across the back of a bond-wolf and signalled the hunters to follow him, setting a pace that Allim could not keep up with.

A cold rain had begun and was growing harder as Allim straggled alone into the holt. He thought to seek rest in his own cave, but to his horror he heard raucous voices coming from it. He dashed to the doorskin and flung it aside.

"What are you doing in my cave?" he demanded.

Arran and his strongest Wolflings turned as one to glare at him. "Your cave?" Arran sneered.

"My cave! My deer, my furs!" Allim shouted. "Mine!"

Arran laughed. "I am chief. I take what's best. This cave is best, so I take it for myself."

"You can't do that!"

"And who will challenge me? You, little twig?"

"Someone should," Allim murmured, as his mind worked desperately.

Arran leaped to his furred feet. "What did you say?"

Allim narrowed his eyes. In a bolder voice, he repeated: "I said, someone should."

"You!" Arran stalked toward him. "And who are you?"

Allim held his ground. "I am the firstborn of a High One."

The Wolf chief knocked him away from the cave entrance and sent him sprawling in the icy mud outside. Allim struggled to his feet, but Arran was on him again, knocking him further. "You are a sireless whelp! A useless cub!" Again, Arran flung the youth further into the forest. Allim hit the ground hard, but pushed himself upright again. "You think it's your right to eat food you haven't earned," Arran went on. "Or to live in a cave you can't defend. You are lower than a bottom wolf! You are no wolf at all!"

"Why me?" Allim sizzled between his teeth. "Why do you pick on me and force me to hunt when the other purebloods do not?"

"Some have," Arran countered. "You should follow their way."

"They got killed," Allim pointed out.

"All the more reason," the Wolf chief sneered, and turned on his heel to leave.

"I'll tell you why you single me out," Allim said, slowly pushing himself upright. His hand closed on a rock as he rose. "I know why it is," he yelled at Arran's departing back. "Because I'm still smaller than you. And weaker. Because you know you'll always win. You're a bully and a coward!" He flung the rock with all the might in his thin arm and struck Arran squarely in the back of the head.

Arran turned. His golden eyes narrowed and reddened. With a howl he leaped at the youth, fangs bared and claws outstretched.

Allim knew beatings from the past. But nothing compared with this.

The steady hiss of icy rain falling and freezing was the only sound left in the forest. Allim lay on his side, the rain stinging in the gash on his cheek, but he felt nothing. He knew only numbness. There was a pain somewhere nearby, as though a separate entity, but he did not know to whom it belonged. He vaguely remembered the snap of his ribs breaking under Arran's savage blows, the sharp burn of claws and fangs raking his flesh. His own voice had gone mute with the pain, and the Wolf chief hammered him again and again, demanding that he cry out and yield. He could not. Instead he collapsed, bleeding, onto the frozen earth. If he could have wept then, he would have, but he hadn't the strength to.

And now he waited. It was only a matter of time, short time, before the ice sank into his bones and stole all heat and life from him. He would fly to the Palace, then. He would be with his mother once again. Perhaps his father, if he had one, waited for him there, too. He would be free of Arran, free of the Wolflings, free of pain and hunger. He would, at last, win.

But it was not to be.

A pair of strong arms lifted him gently. "No," he whimpered. "Let me go."

"This is too much," Nimor's sandstone voice rasped. Allim lay limp in her arms as she carried him back to the holt, his head rolling against her furry shoulder. "This is much too much."

She carried him to one of the smaller caves where Tilvah and several other purebloods made their home in the cramped space. Tilvah cried out when she saw the battered, bloody form. "Put him on my furs, Nimor," she said, sweeping the cover from her couch. "What happened to him?"

"Arran, the bold and brave," Nimor sneered. "Arran, strong enough to knock over a cubling! This must change!"

Tilvah stared after her, still holding the cover fur in her hands. "Where are you going? What are you going to do?"

Nimor made no answer as she swept out of the cave, but her purposeful stride in the direction of the cave Arran had confiscated told the whole story.

Allim drifted in and out of conciousness for two hands of nights as fever raged though his young body. Tilvah nursed him through it, fearing that each sunset she might awaken to find he'd fled to the Palace while she'd slept. If she knew he wished for that with all his heart, she kept it to herself.

Even after the fever had left him, he was still a long time recovering. Tilvah brought him herbal potions to help his ribs knit and to ease some of the pain, but nothing short of a true healer would erase the scar running down one side of his face, and several others streaked across his chest. He would not look at them. He did not want to acknowledge the marks Arran had left on him.

"Nimor was in to see about you when you were still feverish," Tilvah said, when she brought another dose of boneset.

Allim shrugged.

"Do you know what she did for you, Allim?"

"What?" he asked flatly. He didn't particularly care what any of the Wolflings did, even Nimor.

"She challenged Arran for your sake. Because of what he did to you."

Allim looked up from his drink with a hopeful expression. "Did she win?"

Tilvah shook her head. "Not this time, I'm afraid." Allim looked down and glared. "But someday," Tilvah went on, "I think she might. And I think that would do us all a great deal of good."

He made good use of the time spent lying still in Tilvah's furs. He turned the question of food over and over in his mind, then, hitting upon a solution, went to work. He'd knew that some purebloods had been catching small game in snares since long before Anlari went to the wolves and brought back her twin half-wolf offspring. Tilvah knew how some were made, and Allim labored at mastering the art, making what he hoped were improvements in the design. His efforts attracted the attentions of Yharren, who, at a mere seven hundred or so turns, was one of the younger purebloods. They entered into a sort of a friendly competition, each trying to outdo the other at more and more clever snares. There remained only to test their efficacy on live game.

"Arran doesn't approve of snares and such," Yharren said, one dawn as they finished yet another design. "He doesn't consider it 'real' hunting."

"I don't give a rat's hind end for what Arran thinks," Allim growled.

"I should think you would, considering..." Yharren eyed the youth's scarred cheek.

Allim unconciously brushed his hand against the mark. "If he kills me for it, so much the better. I don't care. I don't have anything left to lose, so I'm going to do what I want."

Yharren nodded slowly. "Then you and I, my young friend, are going to stand up to those Wolflings at last. It's high time someone did."

"You could have," Allim said, glaring.

Yharren thought about it. "Alone? Not likely. But with someone bold enough to make a change, I might yet accomplish something."

"If you don't like it here," Allim said, slowly, "why do you stay?"

Yharred shrugged. "Where would I go? Are you thinking of bolting again?"

Allim shook his head. "I promised my mother as she lay dying that I wouldn't. I just wondered what she had in mind when she made me promise that." He said it casually, but her death was too recent not to make his heart sting every time he thought of it.

"It's hard to say. The High Ones all had minds that were difficult to fathom. You mother, especially. She had secrets even I couldn't ferret out of her."

"Like what?"

"I just told you, youngling," Yharren said with a laugh. "I couldn't reach them. She was inscrutable, that mother of yours."

Allim frowned. "There's only one secret of hers I should like to know. I don't know why I didn't ask it before. Too hungry to think of it, I guess."

"And what is that?"

"Who my father is." He looked up at Yharren. "Do you know?"

"That was one of the mysteries I could never get out of her. Nor the reason she kept it so well guarded. Supposedly she told Nimor and no one else, though I don't know why. Nimor never sat still long enough for me to penetrate her fuzzy head, so you'll have to question her yourself. If she still remembers."

"Maybe," Allim muttered. Nimor may have been the kindest of the Wolflings, but she was still a Wolfling.

The snares worked, better than any snare used before. Hardly a night went by when the pair didn't come back quietly from the woods with some kind of small game. It wasn't much, but it was a welcome supplement to the scraps the Wolflings left for the Purebloods. Arran snarled about it and for a time tried to take their catch away as he had Allim's deer, but Nimor intervened once again. "They're feeding their own," she reasoned. "They're earning their meat. What of it? Besides, the cubling isn't mussing up the hunts any more. You're bringing down more game without him."

Hardly complementary, but at least it got Arran off their backs for the time. He chose to completely ignore the pair and they took up snaring with a passion. In time, the Wolf chief seemed to forget their very existence, living in the Now of wolf thought as much as he did.

And with at least a small corner of his ever-present hunger relieved, Allim pondered Yharren's information that Nimor might know something about the missing half of his parentage. He took his time with it, allowing the seasons to turn several times more before he determined that he truly needed to know. There was much to keep him occupied in the meantime, trying to keep his people fed at something better than starvation rations.

One spring evening, he finally confronted her.

"Nimor!"

The half-wolf was busy digging in a bank, chasing after a gopher she'd seen pop up from a hole. A fat, tasty snack, those gophers. "You want something?"

"Yes," Allim said. "They say you know who my father is."

"Got away," Nimor muttered, and Allim realized a startled moment later that she was talking about the gopher, not his father, as she whacked a pile of loose dirt and sent it flying.

"My father," he reminded her. "Who was he?"

Nimor looked up at him and her bristling eyebrows rose in surprise. "You've grown, cub. You're taller than me now!"

"Yes, I noticed. Now will you tell me?"

"Your father..." Nimor scratched at the back of her head in thought. "Let me think... and your mother was...?"

He should have known. Wolflings lived in the Now and gave little thought to the past or the future. And the two half-wolfs were most adept at the skill.

"Drianah," he reminded her. "The last of the High Ones."

"Oh, yes, you're the sireless cub. Except there was a sire. There had to be."

"Go on," Allim said, eagerly.

"No one was to know, though." Nimor's eyes looked far away as she reached for the memory. "He came from... someplace. A mountain, I think." She waved one hand toward Frostheart. "Maybe that one."

"No one lives there except humans." Allim sighed in frustration and anger. "You don't remember, do you?"

"Never met him," Nimor said, sniffing around for another gopher. "Didn't Recognize him myself. But what of it?" She sat up and looked at him with those strange golden eyes. "Who is my sire? I don't know. A wolf, long dead. What does it matter? You have youth and health. Be glad of it."

"So like a Wolfling," Allim muttered. "Go back to your digging. There's nothing you can help me with."

"Put it from your mind," Nimor said as he stalked away. "You'll be happier for it."

He did put it from his mind, realizing that further pursuit of the subject was futile. But he was no happier for it, for it was one more thing the Wolflings had taken from him. There was nothing now to look forward to, nothing to lift his mind beyond the toil of surviving day by day. No hope even of a life beyond this, for if he had a living father he'd been abandoned by that person and felt that anyone who would do that to a child deserved no further consideration from him.

Yharren found distraction enough in one of the more attractive Wolfling females. Allim didn't see how he could stand it, but Yharren only smirked and told him he'd find out one day. And then he'd suggested the day might be soon, for he'd seen how swiftly his young friend was growing. Allim had cursed at him and stormed off to his own corner of the cave to sulk. The worst of it was that he knew full well Yharren was right. Strange new urgings were prodding him in a direction he didn't like, and he had no idea what to do with the feelings.

It was Tilvah who sensed his growing frustration and one night took him off into a quiet part of the forest. "Your shaping powers are strong enough now to make a shelter from a tree, are they not?"

"Of course," Allim said, feeling rather proud of the new surges of magic in his hands. "But why?"

"Because, young friend," Tilvah said, softly, "it's time someone introduced you to the more pleasant aspects of maturity."

"Oh." Nerves chilled in the pit of his stomach. "That."

Tilvah smiled. "Yes, that."

"Now?"

"What better time? But first, a shelter to guard us from prying eyes."

He thought he loved her after that, and often fashioned excuses to be alone with her, but Tilvah lent her favors to others among the purebloods when she pleased. He could not have her to himself. And her now-and-again habits weren't enough to fill the vast hollowness in his heart. Nothing would, he feared.

"Take one of the Wolflings for a lovemate," Yharren suggested one evening, several turns later. "Their loyalty can be astonishing sometimes."

"That kind of loyalty I don't need," Allim said with a grimace.

"But you're alone so much."

"I like it that way."

"Liar. I've seen the way you look at Tilvah."

"It's no business of yours."

Yharren leaned toward him. "Then you admit it!"

"I admit nothing." Allim leaned back against a tree. Maturity and years of hardship had erased any childlike softness in his visage, leaving only the harshest of lines, accentuated by the thin scar running down his face. "Except that I'm cold and hungry." He shoved his long black hair back from his forehead. "And the Wolflings are feasting while we watch with hollow bellies."

"So they are," Yharren muttered, darkly.

Winter had come again, earlier and colder than ever. Winters seemed to be harder every year, and Allim had grown harder with them. He and Yharren continued with their snaring, but even small game had become scarce as the land froze over and the snows fell thick. Their snares had been empty for the past three nights, but the Wolflings had brought down several of the click-hooves from a roaming herd that wandered by. The Purebloods watched hungrily as the Wolflings gorged themselves on the warm, bloody meat they'd dragged back. Yharren's brows drew together in anger, and Allim saw he was glaring at the little Wolfrider who often shared his furs. She had been one of the hunt, and she feasted now without thought of the haunted eyes of the hungry purebloods who watched.

*I'm going to take our share,* Allim said, abruptly.

Yharren turned to him. *What?*

*Just watch.* A broken branch extended from the tree. Allim shaped it into a heavy cudgel, taking advantage of the dense knot where it met the trunk as he shaped the weighty head. He snapped it from the tree and started forward.

*Are you mad?* Yharren cried, following after him.

*Maybe.*

*This is suicide!*

*So what?*

*But Allim...*

*Maybe there's something I know about the Wolflings you don't. Now watch.* He held the cudgel a little behind him as he strode up to the gathered hunters.

"Hey, Pureblood," Yharren's lovemate called in a friendly way. "Tired of eating rats?"

"They'll get their share when it's time," Arran snarled. The Wolfling female shrugged, not caring one way or the other.

Allim stepped quietly up behind a younger hunter with his back to him. "I'll take my share now!" He swung the cudgel up from behind his leg and delivered a savage blow to the side of the hunter's head. The young Wolfling went sprawling and lay dazed on the snow. Allim snatched up the haunch of meat the hunter had cut for himself and walked away back to the cave.

The Wolflings stared in amazement. Then, one broke out into laughter. Soon they were all chortling while the dazed hunter struggled up to a sitting position.

*Why aren't they chasing after you?* Yharren demanded.

*I knew they wouldn't,* Allim explained. *They never interfere with each other's individual challenges. I challenged the hunter and won. The meat is mine.*

*You will share, of course?* Yharren said, eyeing Allim with a guarded expression. *I don't have to club you to get a portion?*

Allim gave him a sour look. *Do I look like a Wolfling? Now call everyone to our cave and we'll eat.*

The incident gave new heart to the Purebloods. Allim led Yharren and a handful of others to demand their share every time the hunt returned. Though Arran took to eating much of the kill where he brought it down, there were always Wolflings back in the holt who needed fed. And always a gang of hard-eyed Purebloods ready to bully the hunters out of a good share of their meat when they returned.

"Do you know what the Wolflings have been calling you?" Yharren said with a sardonic smile. Indeed, Yharren could smile no other way, even stretched out comfortably as he was.

"I can only imagine," Allim said, staring moodily up at the ceiling of the dingy cave.

"They've given you a Wolfrider name."

"I don't want a Wolfrider name."

"They've begun calling you Frostheart."

"Well, I won't answer to it."

Yharren smirked. "I think it's rather fitting."

Allim grimaced at the layered meanings. "I don't care to be called by it."

"Is there anything you care for?" Tilvah's voice was soft, as it always was when she was sad.

You, he wanted to say, but Tilvah still would not pick a favorite, and Yharren would only mock him. It wasn't safe to let Yharren find any point of weakness. Instead he touched his face where the scar had once been. There was a healer in the holt once again, and though she was of wolfish blood, she'd had enough power to clean away the marks Arran had left on him over a hundred turns before.

"Very little," he replied at last. "Life hasn't given me much to care about. Not while Arran remains the chief."

"We all live the same hard life," Tilvah reminded him. "Look at the Wolflings. Their lives are so much shorter than ours, and just as hard, yet they sing, they dance..."

"The Wolflings have full bellies tonight," Allim growled. The hunt had eaten well in the forest and had brought nothing back.

"Especially Softflight?"

Allim winced. First Recognition had been an embarrassment to him.

"She's hurt, Allim. She doesn't understand."

"She's a Wolfling. I want nothing to do with her. That seems simple enough."

Tilvah sighed. "She doesn't want to have to raise the child alone. Your child. She needs help. You owe her that, at least."

Allim made a disparaging sound. "The child I claim as mine will be of pure blood, and I shall know its soul name from the moment it is formed. The Wolfling maiden can have her nameless whelp all to herself. I didn't ask for Recognition."

"No one does," Tilvah said. "Recognition chooses us, and always for a reason. Now you have a responsibility."

"Come now, my friend," Yharren said. "It might be interesting to keep her. She would make a most amusing pet."

Allim glared. "You find them amusing."

"Amusing... and accomodating." Yharren smirked again. "I've made quite a study of them lately. I've learned things that may prove useful..."

"How enchanting." Allim rose abruptly from the bedframe where he'd been lying and snatched up the top fur. He threw it about his shoulders and stalked out of the cave.

Frostheart the mountain stood cold and white against the stark winter sky. Allim gazed up at its pristine heights. Nimor had suggested his father might have come from there. She was wrong. The Wolfriders had named him for the mountain. Fitting, but hardly flattering.

Looking up at it, he felt a certain kinship with the mountain. It was tall and aloof and cold as he was, inside and out. Perhaps like him it had a hollow place inside which keened to be filled. No, romantic fancies would never do. The mountain was unfeeling rock. And unfeeling as rock he must remain if he were to survive.

"If there's a point to survival," he muttered.

"There is always a point to survival." Tilvah came gliding quietly up behind him.

"Is there?" Allim's gaze remained fixed on the mountain. "What do I have &emdash; really have, of my own, to myself &emdash; that I should live for?"

"I don't know," Tilvah said, softly. "What is it that keeps you from refusing all nourishment and sitting in the snow until you freeze solid?"

Allim was silent for a time. He didn't have an answer to that.

"Something, surely," Tilvah prodded. "Or you would have done so already."

He sighed. "I feel as though I don't really belong here. That there's something else out there for me. What, I have no idea." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm just fooling myself with childish fancies."

Tilvah came closer and laid a hand on his shoulder. "If there is something, I believe you will find it, my stubborn friend, because you will neither rest nor be content until you do. But until then you have us and the tribe. You want something all to yourself? Softflight is willing."

"She's a Wolfling. She will die. The cub will die. They all die, and where does that leave me?" His hand rose in an angry gesture.

"We both know who you really speak of, my friend." Tilvah touched his face. "You or I might die, too, you know. Accidents happen, and the predators are hungry this winter. Live while you can, Allim. It hurts me to see you carry out this living death you've condemned yourself to. Give yourself something to smile about. I haven't seen you smile in turns &emdash; even in the furs!"

Allim looked away with a pained expression. "I have little to smile about, so long as Arran reigns and the Wolflings are what they are."

"Then perhaps," Tilvah said, slowly, "you could have some influence over the cub you've created. It has your blood in its veins, you know. Perhaps you could teach the child to think beyond the Now, to see more in life than just hunting and howling. And if the child should grow up strong and have influence in the tribe..."

Allim drew his brows together in thought. It was a concept worth considering. Yharren would mock him, but then Yharren could always find something to mock him about.

Softflight was every bit as willing as Tilvah had said. Even he had to admit &emdash; to himself, of course, not out loud &emdash; that her loyalty was somewhat touching. He found himself looking forward to her softness and warmth in the furs at dawn after she returned from a long night's hunting. And though he found an excuse to be away at the cub's birth, when he did finally look into the eyes that were so much like his own he was strangely moved.

He'd never wanted to admit his own weakness for cubs and his sympathy for the hard lives the innocents had to endure. Their childhoods were so short, as they were called into service as hunters as soon as they had strength enough in their slender arms to throw a spear or a rock, or to draw a bow. Yet to shield one child from this was to expose it to the taunts of the others: "You can't hunt yet?" "I can throw a spear farther than you!" "What's the matter with you, never fired an arrow before?"

And so he watched his own child wriggle, then crawl, then stagger about, with growing trepidation that one day little Oakleaf would be taken from him to join the hunt.

But neither he nor Tilvah could have predicted just how soon he and the child and Softflight would be parted.

Wolves and Wolflings alike howled in the snow, but there were no bodies to carry off into the forest. A longtooth had taken care of that. Though he'd been safely lounging in his own cave, Allim had felt it all: the ripping of fang and claw into flesh, the parting of life from both mate and child in one sudden blow.

Well, if that was what Recognition with Wolflings was all about, he wanted no further part of it. He lay back on his furs with a skin wrapped tightly around himself. He knew what the tribe would be saying about him if he refused to come out for this particular howl, but he did not care.

"Allim?" Tilvah stood in the cave entrance.

"Leave me in peace," he growled.

She stepped closer and knelt at his bedside. "Come out and join the others. You don't have to be alone in your grief."

"Who says I grieve?"

Tilvah frowned. "You cared about them. I know you did. You cared for Oakleaf, I could see that. He adored you, poor little cub."

Allim shook his head in denial. "It does not do to care about things, I have found. What you care about most will invariably be taken from you. At least, that is how it is for me."

"Allim..." She laid a hand on his arm. "You did care for them."

He would not answer.

"Don't keep this inside of yourself. Let it out, that you may heal."

"There is nothing to heal," he insisted, flatly.

"So you will simply let it ice over? Oh, Allim." Tilvah shook her head slowly. She rose to leave, but paused at the cave mouth. Turning back, she gave him one last sad look. "The Wolflings named you well... Frostheart."

He listened to her footsteps crunching in the snow as she departed, the sound echoing the progressive rending of his heart as she walked away, as though his last chance at redemption had just slipped through his fingers. He could call to her. Just a word would bring her back, at his call she would bring him comfort.

But it would not do to care. No, it would not do at all.