Page 10 of Blacktail

“If you make me come for you, I’ll kill Guile,” the wolf said. Hate still could not see its eyes. “The kittens, too.”

Hate looked up at the moon. A flat certainty fell over him, a kind of calm. The wound in his forepaw throbbed, but pain held little power over him now. His vision was clouding, though. He furrowed his brow, straining to see. And after a moment, the moon came into focus. Hate turned back to the wolf. He sank back on his haunches, raised his shoulders high.

With a yowl and a bark, they launched at each other.

They collided in midair. The force knocked the breath from them both. They hit the ground hard, tumbling. Hate dug his claws into the wolf’s torso, pulled himself in close. The wolf snapped at his neck. Hate scrabbled at his belly with his hind legs once, then again, again. His hind claws found purchase. “Ha!” Hate screamed. “I will open you now, you little shit! Pounce will feast on your—”

The wolf’s jaws closed around his neck. Desperate, Hate shook his head from side to side. The beast clamped down. He could not bite deep—but the strength of him was terrible, relentless. Hate squirmed and scrabbled. With his hind leg he pulled away a scrap of skin from the wolf’s belly. The wolf shrieked, the sound muffled by Hate’s fur. Warm breath puffed against his spine.

“I’ve got you!” Hate yowled. “I’ve got—”

Something cracked. Hate’s legs fell away.

The wolf opened his jaws. Hate dropped to the earth, mostly limp. One of his forepaws twitched, then went still. The wolf was close, panting. Hate smelled his blood, his warm puppy breath. He tried to look, but couldn’t.

Instead, he stared into the middle distance. He thought he saw his mother there. The little bunny was with her—surprisingly spry for being dead, jumping about and nibbling at the grass. He thought Mother was speaking to him, but Hate’s senses were clouded. Try as he might, he could not focus. The world was growing dim.

The wolf padded forward and stood over him. When he stopped, he stood close enough that Hate might at long last have looked into his eyes. But he did not.

Instead Hate cocked his ears, straining to hear what his mother was saying. Eventually he heard—just a single word; but he remembered it well. His mother taught it to him in the hills of his childhood, long before the two-legs, before Guile, before White-Eye—before he was Hate. It was a word that only cats use. The literal translation varies depending on who you talk to. If you ask a fluffy white kitten with bows in her hair, she might say something like “intoxicated by blood.” An old tom eating rats in a dumpster would probably come up with “horny for death,” and that may be closer to the truth. Either way, the word carries a spiritual connotation as well. It refers to a state of being, a ferocity that is unique to hunters. It refers to an understanding of the world to which many aspire but few achieve.

Here, in the shadow of the wolf, Hate repeated the forgotten word with his last breath. It was a soft purring that the prey beasts could not hear and the wolf did not know.

It was the last word he ever spoke.

v

The next morning, Hate’s wife awoke to the sound of footsteps coming down the mountain. When she heard the walker limping, a great weight lifted from her shoulders. “Hate?” she yowled. “It’s me, Guile. Is that you?”

No answer.

The footsteps sounded raw, irregular. She listened for a long moment. It’s not that bad, though.

“Listen, kittens. I’m going to check on your father. Stay close to the sleeping rock and”—here she glared at Pounce—“don’t try to follow me. Do you understand? All of you?” This last was directed mostly at Pounce.

The kittens swished their tails in agreement. Guile set out up the hill. She had gone perhaps halfway to the border when her eyes confirmed what her heart already knew. The wolf pup stood atop a bare boulder. Hate was nowhere to be seen. The wolf was wounded. This gave her a moment’s hope. When she looked closer, that faded. The wolf’s wounds were not fatal. Worse, not all the blood she smelled was wolf.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, Hate.”

She and the wolf locked eyes. Her fur rose. Fury pounded in her veins. Without really meaning to, she made the low yowl that meant murder. The wolf did not answer, only watched her with flat eyes and the blood of the greatest hunter she had ever known drying on his muzzle. Guile met his gaze. She had courage and what comes after courage. She knew what waited in the middle distance.

Death would come for her one day. She would be remembered for a time. Then she would be forgotten. The only thing that really mattered were the tracks she left in the snow. The breeze gusted then, bringing her the distant whiff of her kittens. Guile’s blood pounded in her veins. Her claws clenched in the snow. The wolf studied her. Her kittens cried out for their mother.

Guile looked away.

The young wolf, now a mountain king, lifted his leg and wrote something on the rock. Then he turned and disappeared back into his hills. When she was sure he was gone, Guile climbed to the boulder and read what was there.

I am Blacktail

who is the death of Hate.

This is wolf land.

None other may hunt here.

That was the beginning of it.

Chapter 1