Page 2 of Blacktail

“Do I think White-Eye is dead? Do I think that the mountain may finally be ours? Yes. I do.”

“Ah,” she said, careful to keep her voice neutral. Hate wasn’t much of a jokester, but he’d been known to brag. It could be hard to tell if he was serious or just flattering himself. “Really?”

Hate looked up the hill, twitched his tail. Really.

Guile followed his gaze, sniffed—blood—then looked back at Hate; the sharp yellow teeth of him, the ragged ear, the faint and fading scars under matted fur. Such a naughty fellow.

After a moment, Guile purred as well.

ii

Hate was not the name he was born with, but it suited him well enough. His bad nature had been honed by a desperate life into something terrible, redeemed only lately by a rough affection for his kittens. When he was young, his home fell before the boiling invasion of the two-legs. First they cut down the trees. When everyone was near starved, men came back to drown the scents and secrets of his grandfathers beneath an ocean of black stone. The snowshoe hares ran away or were buried in their burrows.

Then came gunshots.

Hate knew gunshots well—their sound, their scent, and their feel. One of them had killed his sister when she was no more than a kitten. Another was still lodged in his hip. Hate was a great hunter, but against gunshots he was powerless. So he came north, limping and bloody, to live in the shadow of the wolf White-Eye. The two-legs had taught him of helplessness and grief. From White-Eye he learned subjugation and shame. It was a rabbit who had first named him Hate, shortly after he came here. The name spread quickly among the prey beasts hereabouts. These days even Hate didn’t remember who he used to be.

Still, he had survived.

Caution ran thick in his blood. The echo of gunshots, the whiff of wolf blood—they called to him. But he did not set out immediately. Just before dawn, his patience was rewarded. A scream echoed down the valley—a wolf. Young, he thought. Barely more than a puppy.

“Was that White-Eye?” Guile asked.

“No. Her voice is deeper.”

“One of her litter, then?”

“Very likely.”

Guile’s face fell. “Oh.”

“Don’t give up yet,” Hate said, tail wagging again. “From the sound of the little fellow, his mother isn’t doing so well.” He lay on his side and closed his eyes. A moment later he was asleep.

Guile watched as the sun came up. Hate didn’t stir. When dawn sparkled on the snow-caked branches of their den, Pounce yawned, stretched. Guile buried her nose in Pounce’s shoulders, taking a moment to savor the scent of her. Pounce smelled like love.

After a moment, with regret, she pulled herself away. Your breakfast won’t be killing itself, as her own mother used to say. But by midmorning she had caught nothing. When she returned, it felt as if her stomach were trying to gnaw its way out.

The kittens looked at her, wide-eyed—it wasn’t hard to tell that Mommy was In A Mood—but they had the sense to stay quiet. Anyway, what was there to say?

Guile thought Hate would move against the wolves that night, but he didn’t. Instead he hunted—a rabbit, a hare, a field mouse. Their kittens ate well. Guile, too. Whatever else you might say of him, he was good at killing things.

The next night was the same. But when he returned, his paws smelled of hemlock. Hemlock grew only on the mountain, inside the boundaries of White-Eye’s land. Guile wondered what he was up to, but did not ask. On the third morning, Pounce asked for her.

“Father?”

Hate cracked an eyelid. “Yes, child?”

“Why do you not go to the mountain? White-eye is dead, is she not? I smell blood. Wolf blood, I think.”

“Do you?” A father’s pride warmed his voice. “Yes. I believe you do. Soon you’ll be a fine hunter. Everyone will fear you.”

Pounce, still only half his height, rubbed her shoulder against his legs.

Hate crouched to look her in the eye. “But—and this is important—you must learn caution as well. There is a scent of blood, yes, but does it mean death?”

Pounce looked at her mother. Guile pretended not to notice. Pounce furrowed her brow, thinking. “We don’t know if she’s dead. White-Eye, I mean.”

“Very good,” Hate said. “Tell me, though. Why does it matter?”