The Blood of Ten Chiefs Read Online Free PDF Page B

was worse for the stag. She heard it crash into the underbrush and found the strength to sprint the last distance. Knife drawn, the huntress threw herself across the fallen, gasping beast and ended its agony. It had begun to cool before her breath came easily again and she levered herself up to her elbows.
    And into her father's yellow-blazing stare.
    **Who are you?** he asked with mind alone.
    Not that he didn't know, in a general way, that she was one of his. All the hunt was his; what wasn't other, elfin, was his one way or another. The hunt was his children, his grandchildren and beyond—down to those who neither spoke nor sent but were long and sharp of tooth.
    "She-wolf," she replied, daring to sit on her haunches as the fire in his eyes ebbed back.
    She was not the highest among his children—and the hunt reminded her of it. Names were for the ones who mattered; the ones who had earned them. And of late there had been very few of Timmorn's first-born like herself with names.
    The hunt had mated within itself and back to their yellow-eyed ancestors. They'd become peerless killers and regarded the first-born as failures. Strength and success were what counted within the hunt, and it did not matter that their offspring were often misborn and did not survive their milk-days.
    The crossbred hunters lived longer than the true-wolves and scorned the others with whom they shared space and food. And the others, the elves, had grown wary, seeming content to take only what the hunt wished to give. But she was first-born; her mother was one of the others. It showed in her eyes, in her hands and in her teeth, but mostly it showed in her loneliness: neither hunt nor other.
    **How are you known to your mother?**
    The silver hair shook and fell over her face, hiding her shame. "Murrel?" she whispered her mother's name and dared to meet those topaz eyes. "I am she-wolf to her as well. They do not love us, father," his she-wolf daughter told him, challenging him as no one in the hunt or elsewhere did. "They need us, but they do not love us. They would rather have the true-wolves for pets than listen to our songs.''
    Timmorn squatted down beside her, as close as he'd ever been to this particular child of his. She noticed the white hairs of age mingled through the coarse, tawny fur that covered far more than his scalp. So, he felt it too—the pull of the wolf-blood that made the hunt forever from the others who, though they were mortal and often died, did not need to die.
    **It has gone wrong.** His hand closed over hers, making the mind images stronger and filled with sadness. **Timmain's sacrifice—my mother's sacrifice—is being lost.**
    Timmain. That was a name that could draw the hunt and the others closer together in the moonlight. Or it had, once— not in her short lifetime. There were too many of the hunt now whose thoughts were closed to memory and several of the others who did not care to be reminded. The others said, or more exactly thought, among themselves that there was a bit of Timmain in her. Not that she'd know. She'd seen herself reflected off still water, but Timmain, the legend who had saved the others by going to the true-wolves, had never returned to her elfin shape.
    **She's spoken to me,** came her father's thoughts—as if. he'd known hers. **I've done what I could do. It's time for me to leave—**
    Her eyes widened and she tried to pull away. Timmorn Yellow-Eyes was all that bound the hunt and the others together and secured a small, uncomfortable world for the first-born who did not fit with either group.
    **—And time for you to find your real name.**
    He let her pull away and turned his attention to the stag which they would have to haul back to the common camp. She helped him, using her metal knife to make swift, straight cuts through hide and muscle, but kept her frantic thoughts carefully to herself.
    Names were important to the hunters; given more often than found, they were what separated the