Marked In Flesh

“How many of these can your meat freezers hold?” Joe asked Tobias, waving a hand at the carcasses.

“A few, but not enough,” Tobias said. “Floyd Tanner would know, since he’s the town’s butcher and has the big freezer. The ranch house is supposed to hold supplies for a month for everyone living there, but I don’t know if we’ve picked up this month’s supply of meat yet.”

“We have a springhouse where we cache some meat. That might hold one of the smaller bison if we cut up the carcass. And Floyd Tanner can cut up another carcass and distribute the meat to all the families in the town.” And maybe he could send some of the meat to Simon, trade it for things Simon could acquire more easily in Lakeside than he could here.

Tobias looked grim. “This was a third of the Prairie Gold bison herd. Even after we take what meat we can, most of it is going to rot where the animals fell.”

Joe caught a wild, dangerous scent in the air. So did the rest of the Wolves and Coyotes.

There won’t be as much meat left to rot as you think. The Elders are gathering for a feast. Joe looked at Wyatt. Like the rest of the shifters, the Grizzly was looking at the land beyond the dead bison.

“Let’s make use of what we can and get away from the kills,” Wyatt said in a quiet rumble.

Joe nodded. There were plenty of Ravens, Hawks, and Eagles circling overhead, waiting to descend for their share of the feast. They would keep an eye on what the humans were doing across the road.

“Let’s take the half-grown bison that were killed,” he said. “Easier for us to haul since we’re trying to use as much meat as we can.” Then he looked at Tobias. “Tell Truman to hitch up the horses.”

Tobias glanced over his shoulder, then turned away from the road and said softly, “The man standing a little apart from the others? That’s Daniel Black. He owns that ranch. If he offers you any meat from the cattle, don’t take it.”

Joe cocked his head. “You have a feeling?” Intuits reacted to things around them—weather, animals, humans—and when one of them was uneasy about something, it was best to pay attention.

“Not about the meat, but about us taking some.”

Tobias walked away at the same time Daniel Black crossed the road.

“Bad business,” Black said. “You have any thoughts about who did this?”

“Humans with guns,” Joe replied, although it should have been obvious to everyone that nothing with teeth and claws had killed the bison—or would want to waste so much food.

A change in the human’s scent. A lack of something that had been there a moment before. Fear. A lack of fear now. Which meant the rancher was glad the terra indigene didn’t know who had shot the bison.

“Look, we’ve both got the same problem—too much meat that’s going to rot. There’s no profit in that.” Black removed his hat, scratched his head, then resettled the hat. “You want any of those cattle?”

Something wrong with the man’s eyes. The words sounded friendly enough, but the eyes were hard and watchful. They reminded Joe of a rattlesnake—except a rattler had the courtesy of warning you of its intentions before it tried to bite you.

“Thank you for the offer, but we have plenty of meat.” He gestured to the bison. “I’ve read in your newspaper that some human places don’t have enough food. Maybe you could send the meat to them?”

The hardness sharpened in Black’s eyes. “They don’t have grains or flour. They need bread, not meat.”

“When you’re hungry, food is food.” Apparently that wasn’t as true for humans as it was for the Others, since his reply made Black angry, even if the man tried to hide the desire to bite.

“Suit yourself.” Black walked back to his men. After a few snarled words, he got into one of the trucks. So did the rest of the men.

They drove away, leaving the cattle where they had fallen.

Tobias returned. “We found a few calves that had been killed.”

“Take them; it’s tasty meat,” Joe replied, watching the men drive away.

“Mr. Wolfgard?”

Joe turned to the foreman, who suddenly smelled odd. “You can call me Joe.”

Tobias nodded. “Why is Wyatt . . . ?” He pointed discreetly.

Joe followed the finger to where the Grizzly, who had shifted his hands to accommodate the useful claws, was moving among the carcasses, tearing open the bellies of a few bison. “That’s the second reason why other animals wait for their share of a bison kill. Wolves and Grizzlies can open up the body and get to the meat. Makes it easier for everyone else to grab a bit for themselves and their young.”

They filled the hauler’s bed with as much as the vehicle could carry, then sent the vehicle back to Prairie Gold, where it would be unloaded in order to return as quickly as possible.

The Wolves and Coyotes wandered among the downed bison, searching for the younger meat. Some carcasses were roped for the horses to haul to the road. The smallest meat was hauled by men pulling together—or Wyatt pulling alone.

Then, while they waited for the hauler to return and the men were watering the horses, Truman Skye, one of the ranch hands, blanched and whispered, “Gods above and below, what is that?”

A half-grown bison seemed to float above the grass, its back hooves brushing the ground as it moved away from them. The air shimmered like heat rising, but the shimmer also had the vague shape of something very large.

“You didn’t see that,” Joe said, his voice dangerously quiet.

Tobias swallowed hard. “What could lift several hundred pounds like it was nothing more than a deer fawn?”

Joe glanced at the Wolves and Coyotes. Half of them were paying attention to the Intuits. The rest were keeping careful watch over what now moved among the carcasses, selecting a meal.

Grabbing Truman’s and Tobias’s arms, he turned them toward the road and growled, “If you want the people in your town to remain safe, you didn’t see that.”

Tobias met Joe’s eyes—almost, but not quite, a challenge for dominance. “We tend the ranch’s livestock; we camp out away from the ranch when we need to. A lot of times, one of us is riding out alone. If the Intuits and the terra indigene are going to work together now, we should be allowed to know some of the things you know. Like what’s out there.”

The man had a point. One of the reasons Intuits and Others began these agreements generations ago was because they recognized a common enemy: the other kind of human.

“What’s out there has been out there long before your people asked to settle around these hills,” Joe said. “This is wild country with little pockets of land that have been . . . altered . . . by human presence. The ones who come down from the hills to hunt bison . . . Their kind of terra indigene have been around a long time.”

“But what are they?” Tobias asked in a hushed voice.

“They are Namid’s teeth and claws.” Joe tapped his chest. “The terra indigene like me call them the Elders. They seldom shift out of their true form, and when they do . . .” He shrugged, uncomfortable about saying more.

“So now they’re aware of us.”

“They’ve always been aware of you. Today they allowed you a glimpse of what watches”—and judges—“humans when you step beyond your towns and cities. In a way, those hills are the Elders’ city in this part of Thaisia. We located our settlement closest to your town in order to act as a buffer between them and you. It allows you to have some access, through us, to the timber, to the water, and to the prey that also lives in the hills.”

“So you pretend they aren’t out there,” Tobias said.

Joe shook his head. “My form of terra indigene is small compared to them. Even a large pack of Wolves couldn’t survive an attack by one of the Elders. You are a small predator compared to us, so being respectful is your best chance of surviving an encounter with one of them.”

Wyatt joined them, carefully licking blood off his claws.

Joe said, glancing at Tobias and Truman.

The Grizzly gave Joe a long look, then lowered his paw. “The hauler is back. Once we load what it can carry, we’ll have enough meat.”

“We’ll want the meat of one more bison to trade,” Joe said.

Wyatt growled, making Tobias and Truman flinch. “With the humans? They’ve left good meat to spoil in the heat; they aren’t going to want any of ours.”

“Not with the humans. I want to find out if we can ship some of this meat to the Lakeside Courtyard.”

Wyatt finally nodded. “We’ll come back for one more.”

After they’d dragged one more half-grown bison close enough that the men would be able to winch it onto the hauler when it returned again, the horses were loaded into the trailer and returned to the ranch. The hauler slowly drove off with its cargo. The Wolves and Coyotes, having eaten enough, jumped into the pickup beds, happy to nap on the way back to the terra indigene settlement.

Tobias started the truck, then looked at Joe. “You want me to drop you off close to your place?”

Joe shook his head. “I need to talk to Jesse Walker and use the telephone.” He waited for Tobias to put the truck in gear. “Something else?”

“The Elders. Do they mean us harm, Joe? I guess humans have done plenty to piss them off lately, so I have to ask.”

He considered his words carefully. “If you honor the agreements you made with the terra indigene, there is no reason for the Elders to do more than watch you as they go about their own lives. But, Tobias? If they had wanted to do you and your community any harm, you wouldn’t have survived long enough to ask the question.”

Tobias put the truck in gear and headed back to Prairie Gold.

Their footsteps filled the land with a terrible silence. They moved among the carcasses, breathing in the mingled scents of Wolves, Coyotes, horses, and the two-legged beasts called humans.

They moved up to the road, where the scents were not mingled. A different smell here, a sourness in the air that displeased them—and reminded them of the human beasts who had entered their hills without their consent. Those beasts had snuck in, as if that would keep them hidden from the terra indigene, and scurried to one of the creeks to collect some of the yellow pebbles. Wondering if the new Wolf had given permission, they had allowed the beasts to take the pebbles and leave. But the new Wolf had not given permission, so the next time the beasts came for the yellow pebbles, they became meat, and the pebbles were returned to the creek where the smaller terra indigene would find them.

Humans were still new to this part of Thaisia, still something to watch. The new Wolf was also something to watch, something interesting—something connected to the Wolf who lived near Etu, the Wolf who was being watched by many while the Elders in the east considered if the little predators called humans were needed by the world.

They tore open the bodies of the prairie thunder and ate their fill. Then they tore off large pieces of the meat and returned to the hills to feed their young, to rest—and to keep watch.