Free Outcast by Michelle Paver Page B

Darkfur asked with a glance and a twitch of her tail. Why did you leave the Mountain? Wolf replied.
The others crowded around, and he got as many answers as there were wolves. Thunderer. Great Soft Cold. Cubs. Ancient Den. Big Wet. Wrong Smell. Needed. Sent...
    Suddenly the lead female raised her muzzle and tasted the air. Then she flicked an ear at Wolf. You hunt with us now. 110 Wolf wagged his tail. I bring my pack-brother. A ripple of tension ran through her. You are of this pack. No other. Anxiously Wolf dipped his head. He is my pack-brother. He is--he has no tail. He runs on hind legs.
He is not-wolf! The lead male gave an irritable twitch.
Wolf whined and dropped his ears to show--as politely as he could--that this wasn't so.
A glance passed between the lead pair. Darkfur threw Wolf a puzzled look.
The lead male moved off, then turned his grizzled head. A wolf cannot be of two packs.
Wolf's tail drooped.
The Up darkened, and the Wet began to fall. Wolf stood in the Wet and watched the Mountain pack trotting away into the trees. 111

THIRTEEN
It was raining, and Torak was chilled to the bone, but he was too scared to wake up a fire. The rockfall had crushed his shelter. He'd only just escaped.
    For half a moon he'd survived in the gulley off the Axehandle. At least, he thought it was half a moon, although he was losing track of time, as he was losing his skill at tracking prey. When Wolf was with him, things were better; but then he would start worrying that Wolf was in danger, and send him away again--and things would turn bad.
    Now the rocks had forced him from the gully. Or maybe it was the Hidden People. They were
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everywhere: in tree and rock and stream. Maybe they were watching him right now.
Shouldering his bow, he headed off. "Step by step," he muttered, "that's the way."
He twitched. Fin-Kedinn had told him that. But Fin-Kedinn had cast him out. Thinking of him hurt.
It hurt to think about Renn, too. She had Bale now. He'd seen that. She didn't need him anymore.
At the Axehandle he stooped to drink, and his name-soul stared back. He recoiled. He looked like the Walker. Filthy. Mad. Was that how he was going to end up? He stumbled upriver, talking to himself, fingering the wound on his chest. He'd yanked out the stitches, but it still refused to heal.
He walked for a long time, till he reached the very edge of the Forest. He found himself on a hillside, with the east wind cold on his face, like icy breath. Before him, stretching all the way to the High Mountains, lay a vast inland sea: an endless expanse of misty, shimmering gray. Lake, mist, rain. He couldn't tell where one ended
     
and the other began. The world had turned to water.
    and the other began. The world had turned to water. Lake Axehead, he thought muzzily. This must be Lake Axehead. A strange, shivering cry split the air. Torak gave a start.
The cry fell away. Its echo lingered in his mind.
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"Lake Axehead is--different," Renn had told him once. "So are the Otters." Torak had seen some at last winter's feast, but he didn't know what kind of people they were, except that the Walker had been Otter Clan, and they'd cast him out.
     
Below him, the Axehandle seeped from the Lake through a marshy bed of reeds. To the south, needle-pricks of watery green light glimmered in the haze. That must be the Otters' camp. He remembered hearing that they only camped on the south shore. He didn't know why.
    Better avoid the south shore, then, and keep to the north.
Wolf appeared and gave him a subdued greeting, rubbing his wet flank against Torak's thigh. Together they descended the slope.
The ground turned boggy. They leaped from tussock to tussock, sending up silver darts of water. The reeds--which had appeared knee-high--now loomed taller than the tallest man.
     
Torak hated them. He hated the murky, rotten-smelling water lapping their stems; their menacing, knife-sharp leaves; their bent brown heads that slyly watched him pass.
    He came to a tussock