Free The Wolf Age by James Enge Page B

The more bite you have, the more important you are. That's why Hrutnefdhu keeps trying to give the tooth back to you."
    Hrutnefdhu, the pale trustee, had brought the tooth back to Morlock several times. But Morlock would not accept status from the beasts who had stolen his freedom, a point he did not have the abstract vocabulary to make to Hrutnefdhu, so he just kept refusing it.
    "It is theirs," Morlock said now to Rokhlenu. "If it is theirs, it is not mine."
    "Most people would have taken the tooth. If you acquired enough bite, they might let you out of here."
    "Just let me go?"
    "No. They'd probably send you to work in the fields. The Sardhluun have many fields and pastures, most of them slave-worked." Rokhlenu seemed about to go on, but he didn't.
    Morlock could guess what he had been going to say. It would be easier to escape from there than from here. No doubt that was true. Morlock doubted he could bend himself to the performance, though. And it was clear that the only way he could earn a second tooth, more "bite" in the eyes of his captors, would be to kill Rokhlenu. Even if he could do that, he would not.
    "Eh," Morlock said.
    "Right," Rokhlenu agreed. "So, anyway, my people had bite. My father was a master rope maker on the funicular in Wuruyaaria-"
    "Wuruyaaria is the city of werewolves?"
    "Yes. For someone who doesn't talk much, you're interrupting me a lot."
    "What's a funicular?"
    "It's just a bunch of big ropes, really. One end is at the city walls (by Twinegate, naturally) and the other is on the city's highest mesa, Wuruklendon. Baskets can ride the ropes up and down."
    "Baskets?"
    "Yes." Rokhlenu explained what a basket was. "Of course, it's really the people and things in the baskets that are important."
    "Of course," Morlock agreed, but he didn't mean it. It was the rope system itself that impressed him. "An impressive feat of making."
    "The funicular? I guess so. People say Ulugarriu made it, like the moonclock in the volcano's side and everything else that impresses people."
    "Ulugarriu." The name meant Ghosts-in-the-eyes, unless Morlock misunderstood it. "I would like to meet him." (The name's -u ending meant that it was masculine gender.) "He must be a great maker."
    "Eh. Oh, maggots, now you've got me doing it. Forget about meeting Ulugarriu, Morlock. He walks unseen. Nobody ever meets him."
    "Then how do you know he exists?"
    "I never said he did. Anyway, I exist and I was born, not-so-poor-and slightly-dishonest in the shadow of the great Fang Tower of Nekkuk- lendon-which, before you ask, is the third of the great mesas of Wuruyaaria. Shall I tell you about my childhood, my youth, my musical education, my many battles, my steady-yet-rapid accumulation of bite, my first sexual adventures?"
    "God Avenger, no.,,
    "Well, it's your loss, but I'll skip on a bit, then. My problem was that, like most young werewolves of spirit, I wanted political office."
    "Eh."
    "I did say werewolves. I don't pretend to know what life is like for you people, but we are pack animals. We're not ashamed of it."
    "It's not much different for us, I guess. Except for the shame, maybe. Go on."
    "My father ranked high in the Aruukaiaduun pack, but I wanted to rank still higher. I could have, too: I was favored to win nomination to the Innermost Pack."
    "How many packs are there?"
    "Four, of course-and the outliers, who don't count yet. Each pack has an Inner Pack, who have the most bite in the pack, and millennia ago, when the city was founded, they set up an Innermost Pack with members drawn from all three of the treaty packs."
    "Three? You said there were four."
    "There were three, then. The Sardhluun weren't part of the treaty until later. They bought their way in, essentially. They had slaves, and prison houses, and meat, and as these are three things that no civilized society can do without-"
    "Eh."
    11 -that our society can't do without, the Sardhluun were given places on the Innermost Pack and accepted into the treaty. What