He needed no more urging than that. He dropped the fish, pinned it to the ground with his forepaw and then tore off a large hunk of it. He wolfed it down, scarcely chewing. His eating awoke my hunger with an intensity I had been suppressing. I looked away from him to find that Black Rolf had cut me a thick slab of the bread and slathered it with honey. He was pouring a large mug of mead for himself. Mine was already beside my plate.
‘Eat, don’t wait on me,’ he invited me, and when I looked askance at the woman, she smiled.
‘Be welcome,’ she said quietly. She came to the table and took a platter for herself, but put only a small portion of fish and a fragment of bread on it. I sensed she did so to put me at ease rather than for her own hunger. ‘Eat well,’ she bade me, and added, ‘we can sense your hunger, you know.’ She did not join us at table, but carried her food off to her chair by the hearth.
I was only too glad to obey her. I ate with much the same manners as Nighteyes. He was on his third slab of salmon, and I had finished as many pieces of bread and was eating a second piece of salmon before I recalled myself to my host. Rolf refilled my mug with mead and observed, ‘I once tried to keep a goat. For milk and cheese and such. But she never could become accustomed to Hilda. Poor thing was always too nervous to let down her milk. So. We have mead. With Hilda’s nose for honey, that’s a drink we can supply ourselves with.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ I sighed. I set down my mug, a quarter drained already, and breathed out. I hadn’t finished eating, but the urgent edge of my hunger was gone now. Black Rolf picked up another slab of fish from the table and tossed it casually to Hilda. She caught it, paws and jaws, then turned aside from us to resume eating. He sent another slab winging to Nighteyes, who had lost all wariness. He leaped for it, then lay down, the salmon between his front paws, and turned his head to scissor off chunks and gulp them down. Holly picked at her food, tearing off small strips of dried fish and ducking her head as she ate them. Every time I glanced her way, I found her looking at me with her sharp black eyes. I looked back at Hilda.
‘How did you ever come to bond with a she-bear?’ I asked, and then added, ‘if it isn’t a rude question. I’ve never spoken to anyone else who was bonded to an animal, at least, no one who admitted it openly.’
He leaned back in his chair and rested his hands upon his belly. ‘I don’t “admit it openly” to just anyone. I supposed that you knew of me, right away, as Hilda and I are always aware when there are others of the Old Blood near by. But, as to your question … my mother was Old Blood, and two of her children inherited it. She sensed it in us, of course, and raised us in the ways. And when I was of an age, as a man, I made my quest.’
I looked at him blankly. He shook his head, a pitying smile touching his lips.
‘I went alone, out into the world, seeking my companion beast. Some look in the towns, some look in the forest, a few, I have heard tell, even go out to sea. But I was drawn to the woods. So I went out alone, senses wide, fasting save for cold water and the herbs that quicken the Old Blood. I found a place, here, and I sat down among the roots of an old tree and I waited. And in time, Hilda came to me, seeking just as I had been seeking. We tested one another and found the trust and, well, here we are, seven years later.’ He glanced at Hilda as fondly as if he spoke of a wife and children.
‘A deliberate search for one to bond with,’ I mused.
I believe that you sought me that day, and that I called out for you. Though neither of us knew at the time what we were seeking, Nighteyes mused, putting my rescuing him from the animal trader in a new light.
I do not think so, I told him regretfully. I had bonded twice before, with dogs, and had learned too well the pain of losing such a companion. I had resolved never to bond again.
Rolf was looking at me with disbelief. Almost horror. ‘You had bonded twice before the wolf? And lost both companions?’ He shook his head, denying it could be so. ‘You are very young even for a first bonding.’
I shrugged at him. ‘I was just a child when Nosy and I joined. He was taken away from me, by one who knew something of bonding and did not think it was good for either of us. Later, I did encounter him again, but it was at the end of his days. And the other pup I bonded to …’
Rolf was regarding me with a distaste as fervent as Burrich’s was for the Wit while Holly silently shook her head. ‘You bonded as a child? Forgive me, but that is perversion. As well allow a little girl to be wed off to a grown man. A child is not ready to share the full life of a beast; all Old Blood parents I know most carefully shelter their children from such contacts.’ Sympathy touched his face. ‘Still, it must have been excruciating for your bond-friend to be taken from you. But whoever did it, did the right thing, whatever his reason.’ He looked at me more closely. ‘I am surprised you survived, knowing nothing of the Old Blood ways.’
‘Where I come from, it is seldom spoken of. And when it is, it is called the Wit, and is deemed a shameful thing to do.’
‘Even your parents told you this? For while I well know how the Old Blood is regarded and all the lies that are told about it, one usually does not hear them from one’s own parents. Our parents cherish our lines, and help us to find proper mates when the time comes, so that our blood may not be thinned.’
I glanced from his frank gaze to Holly’s open stare. ‘I did not know my parents.’ Even anonymously, the words did not come easily to me. ‘My mother gave me over to my father’s family when I was six years old. And my father chose not to … be near me. Still, I suspect the Old Blood came from my mother’s side. I recall nothing of her or her family.’
‘Six years old? And you recall nothing? Surely she taught you something before she let you go, gave you some knowledge to protect yourself … ?’
I sighed. ‘I recall nothing of her.’ I had long ago grown weary of folk telling me that I must remember something of her, that most people have memories that go back to when they were three or even younger.
Black Rolf made a low noise in his throat, between a growl and a sigh. ‘Well, someone taught you something.’
‘No.’ I said it flatly, tired of the argument. I wished an end to it, and so resorted to the oldest tactic I knew for diverting people when they asked too many questions about me. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ I urged him. ‘What did your mother teach you, and how?’
He smiled, his cheeks wrinkling fatly about his black eyes and making them smaller. ‘It took her twenty years to teach it to me. Have you that long to hear about it?’ At my look he added, ‘No, I know you asked but to make conversation. But I offer what I see you needing. Stay with us a bit. We’ll teach you what you both need to know. But you won’t learn it in an hour or a day. It’s going to take months. Perhaps years.’
Holly spoke suddenly from the corner in a quiet voice. ‘We could find him a mate as well. He might do for Ollie’s girl. She’s older, but she might steady him down.’
Rolf grinned widely. ‘Isn’t that like a woman! Knows you for five minutes, and already matching you up for marriage.’
Holly spoke directly to me. Her smile was small but warm. ‘Vita is bonded to a crow. All of you would hunt well together. Stay with us. You will meet her, and like her. Old Blood should join to Old Blood.’
Refuse politely, Nighteyes suggested immediately. Bad enough to den among men. If you start sleeping near bears, you shall stink so that we can never hunt well again. Nor do I desire to share our kills with a
