People of the Wolf Read Online Free PDF

Enemy who never fought—but abandoned their possessions and fled ever south. He sniffed. Where did a warrior find honor in such as them? How would the White Tusk Clan ever gain the distinction of cherishing and protecting the Sacred White Hide, his tribe's power totem, while war raged among the other clans in the far west?
    "We must force these cowards to fight us."
    Ice Fire rubbed an ice-encrusted mitten across his nose, leaning his head back to look up at the snow-misted stars. The Hide was the most valued sacred object of the Mammoth People. It had been taken long ago: the skin of a white mammoth calf, carefully tanned. The history of the clans, the symbolism of the directions, and the ways of earth and air and water and light had been delicately drawn around the Hide's symbolic heart area. The picture had been drawn with blood ritually poured from the heart of a freshly killed mammoth. Without the Hide, the people would starve; Mammoth would no longer hear them. They would die, blown away like so much down from a snow goose's breast.
    Weary, Ice Fire let himself relax, warm in his robes, comfortable but for the cramp in his aging knees and the rock gouging his back.
    As always on lonely nights such as this, the memory of the woman on the beach returned to haunt him. Such a beauty.
    He'd been so sure she'd called him to that lonely place—part of the vision, of the Dream of pain left by the death of his wife. Perhaps she had. In the vision, she'd given herself to him, led him to love her, to Jose himself in the embrace of her soul. Then the Watcher had interfered, changed it all. The vision had been jerked away—leaving him to stare in horror at what he'd done. Power had been misused. Future and past sundered. What might have been good had changed into something terrible. The Watcher had been there, her presence as tangible as hunger or thirst ... or pain.
    He'd run then, appalled at what he'd done to the woman he'd sought to love. In vain, he'd climbed the high places, seeking the Great Mystery's explanation, calling angrily into the night to confront the Watcher—all to no end.
    "I am only your tool!" he hissed to the sky. "Why have you used me so, Great Mystery above? What am I to you, when I would only be a man? Why have you cursed me? Left me childless when all I wanted were sons?"
    He closed his eyes, shaking his head. The wind lulled him, the snow settling in the crevices of his parka, lining the, breath-frosted fur of his hood.
    The pull of the new land strengthened, and in his exhaustion, he allowed himself to be drawn, southward, ever southward. Like smoke from a green dung fire, he drifted over the land, seeing, feeling, hearing the spirit and soul breathed up from the rock, dirt, and tundra steppe below. For a time he exalted in a total freedom, a light airy joy of broken bonds and unrestricted bliss.
    Then a young man stood before him, blocking him. He rose from the rocky hills, feet braced, dressed in the manner of the Enemy, wearing a White Bear's hide, glowing eyes of a Dreamer.
    "Move, man!" Ice Fire ordered. "You're in the way of the White Tusk Clan. In the way of my people."
    "What do you seek?"
    ' 'What I was destined to find. The way for my people. The sons I would have borne."
    The young man cocked his head. "You already have sons. Your destiny awaits—if you'll take it. Your sons are your destiny. Which will you choose? Light or Dark?" He lifted his hand.
    The vision of a beautiful woman molded in the clouds, her hair blowing in the wind.
    The tall youth spoke. "She is Light. Choose her and you and yours will pass this way." He lifted his hand, blowing across his open palm, and from it sprang a rainbow, arching across the sky, dimming even the colorful bands of Light that the Great Mystery played over the northern heavens. The young man pointed to a dark cloud. "Choose Darkness, and you will all die."
    "I said, move! We'll crush you beneath us, despite your magic," Ice Fire gasped to hide his