“Landbuenda?” Wulfric repeated, missing the larger point in his fretting about the whereabouts of these “colonies.”
“America,” Ælfrida said irritably.
“Omeriga?” Wulfric echoed, still confused.
“Oh, by the Moon, Wessex. Vinland.” Recognition dawned on Wessex’s face, then he laughed, and Ælfrida knew that for Wulfric, Vinland was still nothing but a rumor west of Iceland. “It is real,” she snapped. “I have talked to humans who have been there. It is a great land, a wild land. There are vast forests that we could buy and have legal title to and—”
Before Seolfer had even finished translating we could buy, Wulfric interrupted.
“Why should I travel across the water to buy land, when I have land here. Land that has been ours for centuries.”
“You have lived here for centuries, but it belongs to Worthing, and the humans will have it.”
“And since when does a wolf care what humans think?”
“Since they have become stronger than we are, you sodding ass.” Seolfer glided without comment over the last bit. Ælfrida’d had a long and depressing fortnight, and her patience for Pack obstinacy was nearly exhausted. “Since they have armed themselves with weapons that will kill us from afar. Since they tear down our woods to build their ships and graze their sheep. Since they rip up the very ground to find rocks to melt into those guns and bullets. It is time for you to face the truth and do the hard thing. Do the right thing. Be an Alpha, and bring Wessex to America with us. Let us start something great and new.”
As soon as Seolfer had finished translating. Wulfric signaled impatiently for Ælfrida to follow him toward a stone shed with a sod roof. The tall Alpha of Mercia had to fold herself nearly in half to get inside.
Wulfric looked at her smugly. “You see, Mercia. I have faced the truth.”
It took time for the weak eyes of her human form to adjust to the dim light, to see the neat rows of muskets lining the walls. To make out the shelves below loaded with flint and powder and cartridge.
“But…how did he get these?” she asked, turning to Seolfer. “Tell me you didn’t help him do this.” The girl shook her head firmly. “Then who negotiated with the humans? How—?”
Ælfrida froze as she sensed another presence enter the shed, someone with a new and terrifying stench. She turned to the man who was only slightly taller than Seolfer and then bent down, sniffing him. Just to be sure. Just to be sure she wasn’t mistaken in that lethal combination of steel and carrion. That she wasn’t mistaken in that fugitive but equally deadly hint of wild. The man smiled at her, and Ælfrida knew that Wessex had bet the survival of his Pack on a deal with the devil.
“It was my pleasure to help the Great Wessex Pack,” said the man with the thinning blond hair who was the size of a large human and human in disposition, but was not human.
He was Hwerflic. Changeable and inconstant. A Shifter. More than anything, Packs feared Shifters. Because they could be wolves if they wanted, but they never had to be. Unlike Packs, which were ruled by the Iron Moon. For three days out of thirty, when the moon was pregnant and full and her law was Iron, the Packs must be wild.
Shifters mostly lived as humans, but they had much stronger senses and could sniff out Packs. And because all Shifters believed that Packs, like dragons, sat on vast hoards of treasure, they slaughtered them with terrifying regularity.
“The moon is nearly full,” Ælfrida said to Wulfric. “The Iron Moon is coming. How will you protect yourself when you have no hands to load the powder and ball? When you have no fingers to pull the trigger?”
“If I may, Alpha,” said the Shifter in his polished voice. “I have been able to arrange for a human guard who protect the Pack during those days. Times being what they are, they are glad of the employment and will ask no questions.”
Wulfric smiled smugly at Ælfrida.
“Leave us, Shifter,” she said. The man hesitated until Wessex nodded. As soon as she was sure he was out of earshot, Ælfrida whipped around to Wulfric. “What are you doing, you old fool? Once they know how vulnerable you are during the change, the Shifter and his humans will kill you. Then they can take as much time as they want to find your gold.”
Wulfric didn’t wait for Seolfer to finish translating.
“Wessex does not fear prey!” he snarled, his lips curling back from dark-yellow teeth set in pale gums. He belched loudly and stalked out of the shed, followed by his Pack and his Shifter, leaving only his nidling and a sour fug behind.
“What do you mean by ‘prey,’ Wessex?” Ælfrida yelled from the doorway.
The big male did not stop and did not answer.
“Wulfric, betelle þu. Tell me. What have you done?”
Seolfer plucked hard at Ælfrida’s loose sleeve. She’d been a tough little thing, outspoken and smart, but now she looked haunted. She shook her head, her finger raised to her lips. Peering around until it was clear that the Pack had followed its Alpha, she moved quietly, her bare heel eliding to bare toe, clearly used to gliding noiseless and unnoticed around the Pack.
The two of them climbed an incline alongside a fast-moving stream. Wessex hadn’t offered her anything to eat, a terrible breach of Pack laws of hospitality; still, Ælfrida needed something to drink, at least. But before she could kneel at the water’s edge, Seolfer grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly away. For such a tiny thing, she was remarkably strong. Then the nidling pointed her toward a springhouse a short distance away. She pulled a rag from her waistband. “Cover your mouth, Alpha.”
* * *
Ælfrida ran as fast and hard as she could. She had left her clothes with the young woman, as well as the details of her Pack’s departure from Portsmouth on the day after the Iron Moon. Had she said they’d be sailing on the Assurance? She couldn’t remember anymore, because all she could remember were the partly eaten humans cooling in the springhouse. Everything made sense now: the guns, the fat, the mange, the yellow teeth, and the stench. The smell of carrion and man-eaters.
The wolves of England were already dead. Running at night and through streams and in the cover of whatever trees she could find, Ælfrida headed fast for her own Mercia Pack, praying that they were where she’d left them, hiding in tight dirt dens in Sussex.
When the Iron Moon passed, Ælfrida led her scraggly group to Portsmouth. She could barely stand to look back over the thirty thin adults who were all that remained of the one-time greatness of Mercia. Breeding had always been difficult for Pack, without adding in starvation and ferocious hostility to lone wolves and fresh bloodlines. She had used too much of the treasure her Pack had accumulated over the centuries for a ship that was larger than she needed, hoping and praying that some Alpha had the sense to join her.