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suffice. We cannot
just seal the gate and wait them out. Hundreds are too
many.”
    “Question the male first,” Dorlaque demanded.
“Let us not be made fools. Perhaps what the Greve huntresses
heard was a lie by rogue males.”
    Several others joined her in arguing for that much restraint.
Skiljan and Gerrien exchanged glances, Gerrien nodding slightly.
Skiljan gave Dorlaque what she wanted. “We will send no
messenger until we have questioned the captive.”
    Dorlaque carried on like she had won a major battle. Marika,
though, watched Pohsit, who was plotting with her cronies among the
Wise.
    Skiljan said, “Two courses could be followed. We could
scatter messengers to all the packsteads of the upper Ponath and
gather the packs in one holdfast, after the fashion of those days
when our foredams were moving into the territory. Or we can bring
in outside help to turn away outside danger. Any fool will realize
we cannot gather the packs at this time of year. The Wise and the
pups would perish during the journey. Whole packs might be lost if
a blizzard came down during the time of travel. Not to mention that
there is no place to rally. The old packfast at Morvain Rocks has
been a ruin since my granddam’s granddam’s time. It
would be impossible to rebuild it in this weather, with Zhotak
huntresses nipping around our heels. The reconstruction is a task
that would take years anyway, as it did in the long ago. So the
only possible choice is to petition the silth.”
    Now Pohsit came forward, speaking for her faction among the
Wise. She denounced the silth bitterly, and castigated Skiljan and
Gerrien for even suggesting having unnecessary contact with them.
Her opposition weakened Skiljan in the eyes of her neighbors.
    But the sagan did not speak for a unanimous body of the Wise.
Saettle, the teacher of Skiljan’s loghouse, represented
another faction arguing against Pohsit. She and the sagan squared
off. They were no friends anyway. Marika was afraid fur would fly,
and it might have had the prisoner not been there to remind
everyone of a very real external threat. Fear of the nomads kept
emotions from running wild.
    Who were these silth creatures? The meth of the packfast down at
the joining of rivers. But what was so terrible about them? Why did
some of the Wise hate them so? Pohsit seemed as irrational about
them as she was about Marika herself.
    Was it because they feared the silth would displace them? There
seemed an undercurrent of that.
    Unexpectedly, old Zertan shrieked, “Trapped between
grauken and the All! I warned you. I warned you all. Do not stint
the rituals, I said. But you would not listen.”
    After the first instant of surprise, Granddam was talking to
air. Even her contemporaries ignored her. For a moment Marika
pitied her. To this end an entire life. To become old and ignored
in the loghouse one once ruled.
    Marika firmed her emotions. Zertan had had her day. Her mind and
strength were gone. It was best she stepped aside. Only, among the
meth, one never stepped. One was pushed. All life long, one pushed
and was pushed, and the strong survived.
    And where did that leave the Kublins, brilliant but physically
weak? Kublin, Marika knew, would not be alive now had he not been
blessed with a mind that overshadowed those of the other pups. He
was able to think his way around many of his weaknesses and talk
his way out of much of the trouble that found him.
    Below, the policy discussion raged on, but the real decisions
had been made. The prisoner would be questioned, then a runner
would be sent to the packfast. Everyone would remain inside the
stockade till she returned. Food and firewood rationing would begin
immediately, though there was plenty of both in storage. The
loghouses would bring out their hidden stores of iron weapons and
prepare them. The pack would outwait the nomads if possible, hoping
that either hunger would move them toward easier prey or the
packfast would send help. Hard decisions would