Kindred

Chapter 1- The Wayward Inn
Aging oak floorboards creaked beneath my heavy paws as I stepped inside the threshold of the destination I’d so wearily wandered towards for near on a week’s travel now.  They felt good beneath my frozen pads, the well-worn, charming scars of so many other claws embedded deep in the memory of this place.  Much like the many rings of scarred tattoos along my forearms, they marked the years this structure had seen.  A sign I’d glimpsed between puffs of cold air and the ongoing flurries outside proudly declared ‘The Wayward Inn’ in four different languages.  One was Amurescan, the other were three local tribal dialects.  It had immediately put me at ease, because one of them was close enough to my own.  I could read Amurescan too by now, but it was a comfort to know I was welcome.  I’d been recommended this trade post, and indeed this particular Inn, but one never knows.  We Northerners are not always greeted with open arms, not even in border towns like this.  Not since the Otherwolves’ settlements had become more numerous than our own.
But from the moment I stepped inside, I knew that would be no issue here.  I’d caught the cacophony of voices, sounds and scents from outside, the windows were at least an inch thick of glass (necessary with the cold in these regions, if you were going to risk glass at all) but even that hadn’t dampened the noise.  And of course, the chimneys had been venting various enticing odors, grilled meat and bread, probably some kind of stew. . . my mouth was watering already.  Hardly odd for me, but still.  I thought to wipe my jowls before I stepped in.  Big slavering bears made people nervous, even in a place like this.
Much to my delight, I drew nary a glance.  A few wolves and foxes were engaged in a rowdy game of cards at the table immediately to the right of the door, but only the foxes spared me the briefest of nervous looks before flicking their tails and getting right back into the argument they had previously been engaged in.  It looked like a traveling party of some sort, no real animosity there, just a lot of beer and friendly competition.  
My gaze swept the crowded, cluttered dining area, taking in another two dozen or so patrons and at least half a dozen servers, as well as two dogs tending a busy bar.  Proudly displayed along the walls were moose, caribou and great stag antlers, butting up against shelves of glittering canned food and a menagerie of wines and liquor, as varied as the guests staying here.  The proprietors clearly liked to have a broad variety of food and drink for what was certain to be a broad variety of guests, in a trade hub like this.  Anukeetsik, or as it had been recently renamed, ‘Kingsdale’, (don’t ask me to explain Otherwolf names, they’re all strange to me) was just down river from the Long God Lake, one of the greatest bodies of water in the North Country.  It connected via another great river to the ocean, eventually.  Or so I’d heard.  I’d never been so far east.
On the way here I’d seen some of the Otherwolves’ mighty canoes.  They called them ‘barges’, and it was no wonder with such a mastery of the rivers they had come so far inland and settled so much land as fast as they had.  My tribe hailed from much farther north, so we’d never suffered the ill effects of their incursion, only benefited from trade.  And for a fisherman in particular, especially in the winter when I could move frozen fish from far north to the traders here, there was no better time or place to do said trade.  I’d offloaded my entire month’s catch of salmon in a night, the Otherwolves were hungry for any fish that could be salted for their seafarers.  And everyone else in this region had cod.  My catch was exotic here.
It had been a gamble, to be certain.  I’d come down the river many times before, but never towing such a haul on my raft, and never so far as this.  I’d been lucky and only gotten locked in the ice a few days’ time, for the most part the river spirits had led me on safely.  But if worst had come to worst, I could have hunkered down and lived off my catch through the winter and tried again next season.  That’s what I’d told my family, anyway.
	Of course, I was a bear.  I could well understand why my father and siblings, and anyone from my village, would find the journey I’d taken too dangerous.  They were otters.  Not to say I’d be in any doubt of their skills at negotiating the river, or bringing in a good haul during the spawning run.  But as to whether they’d have been able to transport their haul safely. . . that’s less certain. 
	I’d definitely drawn a lot of attention, traveling for weeks down-river, alone as I was with such a large raft.  But although there had been a few times I’d felt less than comfortable with the sorts of people I’d passed, or the attention I’d gotten at the various stops and camps I’d made, no one had apparently felt up to the task of making trouble for me.  And the reason for that was simple.  I’d met very few other men, even in my travels, who could rival me in size.  Even other bears.
	That was thanks primarily to my mixed lineage, split between two of the largest bear tribes from our country.  A turn of fate that had nearly doomed a young cub was now my saving grace.  And a boon for my otter family, if this run continued successfully.  I’d already sold my catch earlier today, the weight of the coins in my satchel were a comforting reminder of my success, and what it would mean for my family.  I’d spend a few days here, rest and eat well, and then I’d re-supply and head back upriver as far as I could before the ice really set.  I already had a halfway point picked out, a town I’d stopped in on the way down where I knew I could hire a guide and a few good mules, and I’d make the rest of my way back home on foot.  My clan was waiting for me.  The season had been good to us, and we were self-sufficient if pressed, but the coin would be a welcome relief.  The influx of the Otherwolves’ goods into our lands had made life easier in many ways, the little ones in particular certainly enjoyed some of the foodstuffs we were able to buy from their traders. 
	But it also meant that, in a way, you had to keep up.  I couldn’t help thinking on that as I walked through this obviously Otherwolf-owned establishment.  The foreign canines from across the sea, not quite like the wolves from our lands, had brought many things that had changed the landscape of our world.  The first of our hunters had bought a rifle last year, primarily for hunting game.  Otters mostly fished, but a little variation in our winter meat had been welcome this past year.  Usually we had to barter with wolves for it, and those trades were never in our favor.  Fish weren’t much in demand in a land so rich with them.  
	The hunting aside though, things changed once we had a gun in our clan.  The wolves began to look at us differently.  At first it had seemed a good thing.  They weren’t exactly fearful, but more respectful in a way they hadn’t been before.  A similar change had come about when I’d come of age, towering over my brothers and sisters, and eventually even my father.  The neighboring tribes had to take stock then of our clan’s ‘big brother’. 
	Weapons change things.  Weapons you’ve never had before can change a lot.  Like a big bear amongst a tribe of otters. . . or a gun.
It’s not that my tribe had ever been at war with anyone, at least not in my lifetime, but otters were often the meat-eaters of ‘smallest regard’, as my father liked to put it.  Even the fox clans, who kept close relations with the wolves, were invited to the tribal gathers, whereas we hadn’t been in nearly a generation.  Otter chiefs like my father used to be the lords of the rivers, but that had changed once the Otherwolves came with their barges.  So I suppose in a way their incursion was having an effect on us, if not a completely devastating one.  It was more about reputation and standing.
But now, with the trappings these foreigners had brought, my father thought our best chance was to adapt to the new changes in our world.  To ride the current forward, he had said.  Not fight it, not paddle hopelessly backwards, like some of the other clans were doing.  He wanted us to adopt as many of the new things coming into our lands as we could.  Some of the other otter clans disagreed with his decisions, and I couldn’t say I personally knew what was best.  But I trusted my father.  So we had been trading as much as possible, we had welcomed many of them into our village, to varying degrees of success.  We had allowed a small town of them to settle along our river, and offered our hand in friendship.  And we had bought a rifle. 
	But then the wolves got guns of their own.
	We weren’t the only ones adapting.  It was inevitable, of course.  I had never fired one of their weapons, traveled on one of their barges or used any of their complicated tools, but I’d eaten some of their food and helped build a structure on our clan’s land using their ‘bricks’, and there was no denying that their strange ways were seductive.  I’d never forget the ‘apple pie’ they’d brought us.  Oh. . . maybe they had that here?
Before the travelers from across the sea had come, this land had been a more varied place, that was for certain.  It was swiftly becoming a country for canines.  One glance around this Inn verified what I’d until now only heard the elders speaking of in hushed tones.  On the surface, the two different groups of canines looked to be the same people, although I’d heard you weren’t supposed to say that to the wolf clans.  Amongst themselves they drew a very serious distinction.  But there was no denying that the wolves from our lands, and the ‘Otherwolves’ who’d come in recent generations to colonize and settle in our territory. . . they were made from the same stock.  They could even intermarry and have pups, I’d heard.
	My father was intent to get ahead while we still could.  And bringing home a good share of their coin was key, if we wanted to do that.  The Otherwolves who lived on our river were willing to trade in goods, but our fish sold for far more here than it ever would up north.  And it was high time I began repaying my father’s, and my clan’s kindness in taking me in as a cub.  So if this is how I could serve my clan, I was happy to do it.
	It also meant I got to travel, which I was finding I greatly enjoyed.  In the last month, I’d seen more people than I’d ever seen in my life.  And that was just between home and a few towns along the way.  This place was the biggest town yet, and I’d only seen it at night so far!  I couldn’t wait to see how lively it would be tomorrow.  
	The Wayward Inn was lively enough on its own.  I had to push aside a few chairs as I made my way towards the bar, as in many dwellings I’d been in before, there just wasn’t always enough room for me to walk about without pushing things over.  A serving girl- a pretty weasel, I couldn’t help but note how she somewhat reminded me of some of the women in my clan – moved past me with a tray of bread held high, the aroma wafting right past my nostrils and setting me to licking my lips again.  She glanced briefly in my direction and I blanched, caught in the act.  I lowered my muzzle and nearly stumbled past her, and I swear I heard her giggling.
	The majority of the patrons here were canine, of course.  Tribal wolves and Otherwolves, the latter mostly recognizable by what they were wearing, their odd fur coloration, and in some cases, their bizarre features.  The more of them I’d seen, the more confusing the variety.  Their pelts were spotted, brindled and even short-furred sometimes, and their muzzles were often pushed in or drooping.  As were their ears.  I tried very hard not to stare, but you get used to seeing wolves looking one way your whole life, and it’s hard not to be shocked when your whole perception of them changes.
	I was hardly one to speak on looking odd, of course.  My own pelt was strange, even amongst the Great Northern bear clan I had likely come from.  My father- my adoptive father- had always told me they’d lived in the peaks near our clan’s land for generations, before the Ice Bears had driven them out.  They’d gone too, in time.  The Bear clans did not get on well with the Otherwolves, and even the Ice Bears, despite their size, had fared poorly in their skirmishes with the armed Otherwolf communities.  Again, rifles made all the difference.
	My adoptive mother believed I was the child of a union between the two tribes of bears, before they’d been driven out.  But if that was the case, something terrible must have befallen my parents, because my father’s clan had found me clinging to a fallen tree in the river when I was a cub.
	For my own part, I could remember none of it.  But I’d seen Great Northern bears and even one Ice Bear, and it was clear I carried the bloodline of both.  My fur was not pure and white like the Ice Bears, my undercoat was brown and cream-colored in places, especially along my spine and flanks, as well as my muzzle and eyes.  And my muzzle was shorter, like the Great Northern bears.  
	I had never known to be conscious of my appearance, because my family had never made me feel as though it were something to be ashamed of.  But since I’d reached adulthood and begun traveling to fish, and now to trade, I’d learned that to many others, I was. . . not normal.  And that it was shameful, at least to them, that I was not normal.
	It seemed strange to me that in a world so full of such a variety of people, something as small as a brown stripe down my back, or a muzzle that wasn’t quite like other bears’, would be something of ridicule.  But I’d gotten a taste of what it was that unnerved them all when I’d seen my first Otherwolf with a pushed-in muzzle.  Just like how I was used to seeing wolves looking one way, the world was used to bears looking a certain way.  And I didn’t fit that.
	It made me mindful even now, not to stare.  And not to think ill.  I wouldn’t want them to feel as I had on many occasions, when I knew someone was staring at me and thinking how strange I appeared to them.  
	So when I at last made it to the bar and the woman who greeted me was a stocky Otherwolf with spots over her eyes and muzzle, a short, wrinkly face and small flopped-over ears, I smiled at her and pushed aside my thoughts on what wolves ‘should’ look like.  It wasn’t even that hard.
	“Ain’t you a big fella!”  She exclaimed with a broad, jowly grin.  She finished wiping a tankard in her paws with her apron and put it on the counter for me, gesturing behind her to the various barrels and bottles.  “What’ll be your pleasure, love?”
	I gave an easy smile, instantly won over by her pleasant tone and round, kind features.  “Mead, if you’ve any,” I asked.  “Please?”
	“ ‘Ow’d I know!”  She barked out a laugh, turning and gripping the tankard to empty the sweet-smelling, frothing drink from one of her barrels.  She filled it to the brim and then some, pouring with care to avoid any spill or frothing over.  “You’re new in town,” she noted as I gripped my drink and brought it to my muzzle, greedy for the brew after so long on the river with nothing but water to drink.
	“Just came in off the river,” I said after I drained the tankard down by half.  “Got in a bit later than I was expecting, I was surprised how busy the market was despite that.”
	“Oh tha’place never shuts down,” she chuckled, wiping her hands on her damp apron.  “But most’a the rush should be comin’ in from there shortly.”
	I glanced around.  “It gets busier than this?”
	She just gave me that broad grin again.  “Oh, sweetha’t.  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
	She wasn’t jesting.  An hour later I’d received my dinner, a welcome break from fish, a whole round loaf of bread, a thick slab of butter and roasted venison, and the place was alive.  I don’t think I’d ever been anywhere so crowded or so loud.  Many of the folks I’d seen earlier in the waning hours must have ended their day at the market and come here for spirits, dinner and company.  Most were drinking, many were enjoying bread, butter and cheese, but far fewer could afford meat, I noticed.  This was a buying season down here, I had to remind myself, not a selling one.  Many of these men would be taking to the river or the roads moving their merchandise tomorrow.  Winter was sweeping down in from the mountains and it was likely that very few people here would be heading further north, like I was planning.
	It just meant I should enjoy my time here while I could.  My Amurescan was decent.  I wasn’t usually one for talking to strangers, but I could watch, take in the sights and have many stories to tell when I got home.
	More card games had erupted throughout the bustling tables, and I’d briefly entertained the idea of entering one, but dismissed it as irresponsible outright.  My father wouldn’t have approved of gambling, especially not with the coin I intended to bring home to my clan.  I mean, I was my own man now, nearing twenty years in fact, so it wasn’t just that I was afraid what he’d think of me if he knew I’d partaken in the Otherwolves’ vices.  I just wasn’t that bold.  Maybe later, I thought, I’d work up the courage to meander over to where a few of the bigger lads were arm wrestling.  That, at least, was a far surer bet.
	A lanky coyote had sat himself down near the fire awhile back and begun playing some kind of string instrument I’d seen once or twice now in the Otherwolf communities.  It was sharp and plucky, with a hint of melancholy now and again depending on which songs he played.  I liked it after a while, although it took some getting used to.
	The nice woman at the bar had gotten far too busy to continue any kind of conversation with, although she did periodically check on me to ensure I got as much mead as I needed.  I’d drained my fourth tankard and was feeling pleasantly full and fuzzy when a sudden hoot caught my attention.  
	I turned in time to see a coyote woman taking to the floor with some kind of rough-furred big cat, a stocky man in well-worn clothing and thinning suspenders stretched over his broad chest.  He took her by the arm and spun her once, and another few of those hoots went up throughout the crowd, as the coyote playing the instrument cackled and stomped his foot, and the music suddenly picked up to a more excited pace.
	They were dancing, I realized.  Before long a few of the other men joined in on the stomping, and one of the women I’d seen earlier serving bread unstrapped her smock and stepped out with a lean young wolf, who began to move with her like the other couple were.  It was a lot of quick turns and intermittently holding hands before clapping along to the furiously sawing string instrument.  I wished I knew what to call. . . well, all of it.  But regardless, it was engaging.  I couldn’t look away.
	So it happened that, when he entered the room, taking his time down a staircase I’d seen earlier but not taken much note of until now, I was looking in his direction.  Otherwise I might have lost him amongst the crowd.
	On the surface he wasn’t much different than many of the Otherwolves here.  A bit shorter, slighter of frame, with primarily dark fur except in a quasi-mask around his features and a flash of white down his throat.  His paws were lighter as well, and I think I saw a white tail-tip.  But it was more the clothing he wore that caught my eye.  Nearly every man here, Otherwolf or tribal man, had come into this place wearing layers.  Many of them were heaped in furs, or old leather coats or cloaks.  Since it was practically blazing inside with so many furred bodies, the ovens going and a roaring fire in the center of the room, most were stripped down to threadbare, worn cotton shirts, or just the fur on their chests.  This wolf had a long, dark coat and a forest green vest, the white cuffs of a long shirt, and breeches beneath it, and he hadn’t come from outside. 
	But it wasn’t just the fact that he wore dyed, well-fitted clothing that caught my eye.  Clutched in one hand was a head covering. . . a hat. . . of a type I’d never seen before.  I had to assume it was a hat, anyway, based on the ear holes.  It was almost like a small bucket, black and with a rim, which is where he was gripping it by.  
	He seemed as intrigued by the dancing as I was, as he slowly picked his way through the crowd past it.  Well, intrigued might not be the right word.  Maybe more ‘baffled’.  Still, I think I saw him smile a bit.
	By the time it became clear that he was heading for the bar, I had to remember myself and look away.  I was doing the ‘staring’ thing again, and if I didn’t stop now I wouldn’t.  His eyes in particular were striking, and I felt them etched in my eyelids even after I averted my gaze.  I dropped my gaze back to my food and brought the haunch of venison back to my muzzle, trying to look more interested in my food than him.  It mostly worked.
	But then, suddenly, he was beside me.  Not in my personal space, mind you, he’d just found a place to squeeze himself up against the bar that happened to be at my side, and it became even harder than before to ignore him.  Especially when he deposited that hat on the bar right beside me.
	I figured at that point I was permitted to look sideways, at least at the hat.  It was fascinating up-close, although much like its’ owner, more ragged than I’d thought from far away.  The man’s clothing altogether both looked and smelled of the road, his fine garments fraying at the edges and stained in places.  And the musk about him was not much different than most of the other canines here.  Just from a cursory sniff, he smelled tired and a little damp.  For some reason, that set me more at ease.  He was just another traveler.
	The bartender noticed him and padded on over towards us, greeting him with a familiar “Finn!  ‘Aven’t seen you since breakfast.  You been up there all day?”
	“My business can be a cruel mistress, I’m afraid,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice, with an accent I couldn’t quite place.  He was speaking Amurescan, but not like any man I’d heard before.   One of his hand paws was resting on the bar very close to mine, and I chanced a glance at it, something out of the corner of my eye making me take note.  His fingers were stained.  With what I couldn’t say, but it seemed dark.  Like soot.
	“Thas’unfortunate,” the bartender tutted at him.  “Y’ought to get yourself a proper mistress who’ll treat you right.  Keep you up all night’n’day for the right reasons.”
	He laughed at that.  “Perhaps.  Once my work is done, anyway.  I think a proper mistress would prefer a man dedicated to his work above a lazy one, wouldn’t you say?”
	“Aye but you need t’make some time for livin’, love,” she said as she pulled a glass from behind the counter and filled it with something from a pale brown bottle. 
	He took the glass in one paw and downed whatever the spirits had been in a gulp, before setting it back down and giving a sigh.  “Soon,” he promised.  “Soon, I’ll. . . be done. . . .”
	Something about his tone caught my attention and I finally turned to look at him completely.  He’d turned away from me, from the bartender as well at that, and his eyes had gone as distant as his tone.  He was staring off into the crowd near the door, it seemed like.  I would have had to crane my head entirely around, which would’ve necessitated moving my whole body to the side, so I couldn’t see what he was seeing.  But I knew the scent I caught from him just then.
	Fear.
	“D’you need me to get you more ink from town?”  The bartender asked him, clearly oblivious to his sudden change of mood while she poured me more mead.  
	“Yes, please,” the man said quietly, “I’m nearly. . . out. . . .”
	Just like that, he’d risen from his seat and folded himself into the crowd, surprising both me and the bartender.  All I caught was the white tail-tip as he shimmied between a raucous gaggle of badgers and was gone.
	“And he’s off again,” the bartender sighed, leaning down to scritch at something she had beneath the counter.  “Put that’un on his tab too, I guess.”
	My eyes were drawn to my left, specifically down by where his hand had been resting on the counter.  “Do you know where he’s going?”  I asked.
	“What, Finn?”  She snorted out a breath, shaking her head.  “He comes’n goes since he got here.  Spends most o’his time in his room.  Some kind of writer, ah think.  Or he fancies himself one, anyway.”  She glanced back up at me.  “Why?”
	“He forgot his hat,” I said, lifting it in one hand.

Chapter 2 – A Tussle

	Sometimes I do things I can’t well explain after the fact.  Foolish things.  I dare say, even stupid things.  Most of the time I’m a fairly deliberate person, my whole family says so.  ‘Tulimak is a good boy’, they’d say.  ‘Always my most obedient son’, my father often compliment while deliberately glaring at my otter brothers.  The twins are good boys too, of course.  Just not always as willing to listen to our father as I am.
	I wouldn’t say I’m a complicated person, either.  I tend towards being obedient I suppose, trying to do right by my family and most other living souls in the world because. . . well, because I don’t see a reason not to.  I hate fighting, I don’t like arguing and even being the cause of frustration can make me nervous.  And when I get nervous, my stomach hurts.  Sometimes if it lasts too long, I can even get so nervous, I grow sick.  So why would I ever make trouble?  It just doesn’t seem worth it.  I don’t honestly understand why so many other people in the world are so angry all the time.  Even if they’re one of those people who don’t care about others, don’t they realize how bad it is for them?
	The point is, I’m not a troublemaker.  But sometimes, for reasons I can’t explain, I do things that get me in trouble.  This night was to be one of those times.
	If I had to trace my impulse back to one thing, it would probably have been his eyes.  It isn’t just that they were pretty, although I do like pretty things more than a big bear should.  It was more that they seemed so. . . tired.  Drawn.  Aching.  
I fell down a cliffside once when I was a toddling cub, it’s one of my first memories in fact.  My otterfa – my father, couldn’t help me get back up.  Even then, I was too heavy for him to carry, at least while climbing.  I had to claw my way back up that steep, rocky hillside, out of the gorge and back up to where my family was calling to me and encouraging me.  My father helped me as much as he could, and in the end I obviously made it, but I remember being so tired.  The exhaustion, the way my little limbs burned and hurt for days afterwards, that’s what stuck with me the most.  That and the knowledge that while my family would support me as much as they could, there were some times in life I would simply have to, by necessity, pull my own weight.  Both their strength and my own had been essential that day.
	That man, ‘Finn’ the woman behind the bar had called him, had that same sort of exhaustion about him.  I can’t say exactly that it had been something I’d felt through one sense in particular, it was more an overall feeling.  And for some reason it had brought back that memory.  That particular one.
	Maybe I wanted to reach out.  Help him up whatever cliff he was struggling to climb.  I know that sounds overly poetic, but hear me out.  Even in this crowded, busy place, he seemed alone, apart from the rest of the people here.  His dress was different, his affect unlike the people here, even his accent noticeably foreign.  He looked and felt like someone who was out of place, and needed help.
Or maybe it was that whiff of fear I’d caught on him.  It was distinctly that, not apprehension or something else more subtle.  Fear had a very sharp prickle to it that made you scrunch your nose back.  I had no idea what it was he’d been looking at when he’d quietly slipped back into the crowd.  But whatever it was had aroused his fear so quickly, I’d caught scent of it without even trying.  Even after he’d left, I felt some of my fur standing on end.  This was mortal fear, the same as you’d pick up on the wind of prey you’re hunting.
	I turned the rim of his hat over in my big paw-pads, looking over the smooth, velvet-clad curves of the odd object.  A long line of the fabric was torn and blistering near the edges, and there were a few pockmarked stains.  The underside of the rim felt worn and tacky.  It was well-used now to be certain, but it had definitely been expensive once.  By my best guess, anyway.  That only furthered my worries.  He’d left it behind.  He’d been in such a hurry, he’d left this costly, obviously well-loved possession behind.
	Maybe it was for my own sake, the hat after all provided my best excuse to get to know someone in this strange and interesting place.  Or maybe I’d honestly just liked his eyes, and wanted to see him again.  But regardless of the reason, I gripped that hat in my paws, stepped down from my stool back onto the creaking floor, and began looking for him.
	Honestly, I thought it would be harder than it ended up being.  Given the crowded nature of this place, coupled with its age and all the various food and drink I was contending with, he would have been impossible to track by scent.  But I got lucky.  I’d made my way towards the staircase area, thinking perhaps he might have headed back to where I’d seen him descend from, (a silly thought really, if he’d gone back up the stairs I’d have seen him go).  But the staircase happened to be near the main doorway into the place, the threshold I’d crossed an hour earlier.
	His scent had been no more particular than most others here, and the profuse amount of canines didn’t help that any.  But his voice had been.  It was quieter near the door, the din of the establishment and clatter of tin cups and plates fading somewhat as I was drawn towards an unusual sight.  There was a crack of bluish-white, a sliver of cold slipping inside, and if I really cupped my ears forward, the hint of voices muffled by snow and wind.  The door had been left open.  The hostess must not have noticed yet.  
	One of the people talking outside was unmistakably him.  I couldn’t make out words, but he had a certain cadence to his voice.  And there again was that prickling hint of fear.  This time I could hear it.
	I paused at the door, paw on the cold handle.  That familiar feeling welled up inside me, that anxiety of being a nuisance.  Of intruding, causing drama or conflict where there might well be none.  Whatever was happening outside, whatever had caught this stranger’s attention and brought about his sudden flight from the bar- I couldn’t know what it was, but it most certainly was not my business.  And I couldn’t even make sense of my rationale for following him to begin with.
	I felt this way often, usually in less suspect situations, but it was generally why I didn’t speak much in public places, or introduce myself to new people.  When you’re the biggest, most cumbersome thing in your family, in your whole world, you learn to tread lightly.  I hated how much. . . space I took up, everywhere I went.  I didn’t need to be nosy or loud on top of that.
	But something about this night, this situation, just wouldn’t let go.  It’s like that feeling you get sometimes before the weather’s about to shift for the worst, or you feel an illness coming on.  Something wasn’t right.
	Pushing open the door, I stepped out into the night air.  The street was lit by flickering torchlight, covered in a downy coat of soft snow that furrowed up around my paws as I stepped off the stoop.  There were fresh tracks here, and more than just one set.  I hadn’t noticed in my moments of indecision at the bar, but a few of the patrons had clearly stepped outside, not just him.  They looked smaller than most canine pawprints, but not by much.  
	I breathed deeply, immediately catching the unmistakable scent of foxes.  I wasn’t much for tracking, but I hardly bothered taking heed of their numbers, I could hear their voices tucked between the inn and the building wedged up alongside it, a general store long closed for the evening.  There were at least three men speaking, maybe more.  That probably should have worried me more than it did.
	The worn hat clutched in one paw, I strode a bit more purposefully towards the edge of the building.  It was becoming more and more clear the closer I got that there was trouble afoot.  I’m not sure what my plan was when I rounded that corner, but at that point I was committed.  
	A sudden shout and a clamor of activity greeted me almost immediately.  I barely had time to open my mouth before a complete stranger- one of the foxes I vaguely remembered seeing inside earlier- stumbled backwards into my chest.  I barely felt the impact, but was stunned nonetheless and had begun to ask if he was alright, before I noticed the glint of something in his right hand.
	My fur stood on end.  He was holding a knife, and not one used for skinning or de-scaling fish like I had.  It was long and curved, with a barb that could only serve to do unnecessary damage.  I’d only ever seen its like before on warriors or marauders.
	Another two sets of eyes stared out at me from the darkness of the alley, catching the torchlight behind me.  My own eyes were still adjusting, but I could make out silhouettes.  One was canine, one another fox.  The fox stabbed a hand out in my direction, shouting, “Wot’re you now?!”
	I wasn’t sure how to answer that question, but in the time it took me to stammer out nothing, the fox who’d presumably been thrown into me got his footing, and swung his blade out in an arc in my direction.  It didn’t even come close to connecting, but I suspect the point was to frighten me back.  Which it did.
	“He’s boltin’!”  The one ahead of me shouted, and I lifted my muzzle to see the canine, whom I now could see for certain was the man I’d come out here to find, springing low beneath the clawing hands of the man who was yelling.  He managed to his credit to duck away from him, but the second man with the knife was still in his way.  I was, too.  It wasn’t exactly a wide alley.
	With a start, I realized the fox with the knife wasn’t just trying to block him, he had the weapon out with every intent to use it on him.  He swung it again, this time at the near-panicked canine, catching the edge of his coat and tearing off a button with an audible pop.  His hooked knife served its purpose, catching in the fabric.  He twisted his arm and half his lean body, managing to bring the canine lurching backwards, splayed out on the lightly snow-dusted ground.  He hit the dirt hard enough that I felt it in my tail bone.
	I hadn’t been in a whole lot of real fights in my life, so I can’t say I acted fast.  The reality was, I had no idea what was going on here. . . but I knew an unfair fight when I saw one.  And this wasn’t just some scuffle, the fox with the knife hadn’t just been aiming for his coat, someone could get seriously hurt or killed here.  Whatever this was over, it needed to stop.
	Taking a deep breath and summoning forth a roar I barely ever had cause to use, I bellowed, “Alright, enough!”
	The two foxes, one of whom at this point had the canine pinned down with one foot on his chest, the other of which was still brandishing the knife, froze in place.  I was glad at least that I still could have that effect on people.  I didn’t use my ‘bear voice’ often.
	“I asked who you were, stranger,” the darker-furred one who’d spoken earlier snarled out.  He pulled a knife as well in that moment, smaller and less intimidating than his friend’s, but no less lethal if he was any good with it.
	The other leaned over and yanked his knife out of the canine’s coat, ripping the jacket as he did so.  He stepped as far back from me as he could get in the cramped alley, licking a dripping nose and glancing worriedly past me.  “He was s’posed t’be alone. . .” he muttered, his voice thick with an obvious cold.
	“Look, whatever your disagreement,” I put my broad paws out, “it shouldn’t have to end in blood.”
	“That ain’t your place to determine, now is it?”  The dark-furred fox replied through his teeth.  “Now who’r-“
	“He was s’posed to be alone, Clay!”  The other fox interrupted manically, his back near against the wall now as he clearly made to move past me.  I was fine with that, so I gave him a little breathing room.  I was twice their size, but unarmed, and I didn’t want to fight them if I didn’t have to.
	The other fox cast him an irritated look and visibly pushed down with his foot, stamping the canine more firmly into the ground.  I heard him whimper, and the sound made me wince in sympathetic pain.  He must have hurt himself when he fell.
	“Let’s just talk this out, a’ight?  Don’t nothin’ unfortunate gotta happen,” the dark-furred fox said to me in a far calmer tone than his friend was managing.  He spread a paw out, the one not holding the knife.  “You on the hunt too, friend?  We can split the take.  I don’t like trouble with the Jackwalds.”
	I arched an eyebrow.  “The Jackwalds?”
	His eyes widened at that in surprise, then just as quickly a look of resolve crossed his features and he began reaching down for the canine.  “Free agent, then?  Should’ve lied to me.  Now I know you’re alone.”
	I felt rather than heard his friend behind me as he sprung at my back, and I swung my arm out blindly in what was more a fearful retaliation than anything planned.  Thankfully in such close quarters, I couldn’t help but hit, my big paw clapping into his shoulder and spinning him until he struck the opposite wall with a dull thud.
	My breath left my lungs in a smoky puff of air, the scent of blood hitting my nostrils.  The fox slumped down against the wall, his knife dropping out of his paw, a spatter of dark ichor on the bricks.  I barely had time to register what had happened before I heard an unmistakable metallic click ring out in the dead night air, and I turned back towards the other two men to find. . . .
	The canine had a pistol.  He’d had a pistol this entire time?
	Now the dark-furred fox finally looked scared.  He was lifting his foot slowly from the canine’s chest, stepping back away from him gingerly.  The man had the weapon pointed at him, and he was panting visibly into the cold, his body shivering and his voice wavering when he finally managed to say, “Whatever. . . they’re paying. . . now. . . it can’t be worth your life.”
	The fox glanced briefly between the man on the ground and past me, to his friend.  And he seemed indecisive for longer than I would’ve been.
	“Is it?!”  The canine demanded.
	Without any further last words, save a hateful look directed at the both of us, the fox darted towards me and wove to my left and beyond to the street.  He paused only briefly to take stock of his friend, before abandoning him and making off into the night.
	The canine slumped back, the hand he had holding the pistol falling to his side where he let it rest unceremoniously in the snow.  He sucked in greedy breaths of air, closing his eyes and leaning against the very same brick wall I’d knocked the other assailant into.  A quick glance assured me the fox probably only had a broken nose, he still seemed conscious, just stunned.  I was glad for that, at least.  I still didn’t know what was going on here.  Who were ‘the Jackwalds’?  And why had that man thought I was one?
	“Thank God for you, friend,” the canine huffed out, looking back up at me with those same eyes I’d found striking earlier.  Right now, caught in this strange, dangerous situation I had no grasp of, they scared me.  He held up the pistol, and I briefly bristled, before realizing he was holding it up limply like a dead fish.  
“I haven’t had powder for this thing in months,” he chuckled wryly.  “Good thing these country lads are pinheads, eh?”   

	“Finnegan Ambrose, of Ambrose Park,” the canine told me over his shoulder as he limped up to the doorway of his room.  I was following at a short distance, mostly out of concern at this point that he’d fall.  He was favoring his right leg and his tail was limp, I think he’d mostly fallen on his hip, but I was no healer, so I couldn’t guess at what sort of injury he’d sustained.  I’d followed him upstairs to ensure he’d make it, after he’d insisted up and down he didn’t need a healer and didn’t even want to go to the friendly bartender for some alcohol.  
	But I was giving him a wide berth, because I was spooked.  No, that’s really not a strong enough word.  I was afraid.  I hadn’t a clue what had just gone down in the alley outside, or who those men were, or who they’d assumed I was.  This strange man was armed with a pistol he insisted wasn’t loaded, but I had no reason to believe him.  By all rights, I should have left him in the alley.  Gotten my things.  Left town.  I didn’t know much of the world outside my tribe and my river, but I knew enough to realize this man ‘Finnegan’ was in mortal danger, and every moment longer I spent with him, I likely was as well.  I’d gone outside because I’d sensed something was troubling him, but I hadn’t expected. . . this.
	I’m not sure what I’d expected, or what I’d been hoping for.  Less knives, though.  Less knives would have been good.
	The lock in his door clicked loudly as he leaned into it with his key, stopping briefly to rest against the wood on his elbow and forearm.  His head tipped forward, and without thinking, I found myself crossing the distance between the two of us, putting a paw on his shoulder to steady him.  He swayed for a moment, then turned to look up at me.
	I snuffed back a breath.  His eyes were the color of spring shoots, green and clear like lily pads in a pond.  But he looked even more tired now that I was so close to him.  He wasn’t weak because of the injury. . . he was falling asleep.
	“You’re a good man, aren’t you?”  He asked me, exhaustion tugging at a threadbare smile.  
	I thought he intended to say more, but he didn’t, so after an awkward silence, I stammered, “I-I. . . guess.  I try.”
	He huffed something like a laugh, before pushing the door in and moving from my steadying paw, limping inside.  His voice continued into the room, but I dared not follow.
	“Does the good man have a name?”  He asked, maneuvering his way through the small, cramped space.  The little room looked and smelled stifling, with no window, only an iron pipe through the center of it that must have come from one of the ovens downstairs to heat it, and his possessions scattered about in a manner that suggested he’d been here for some time.  An overturned barrel with a few planks laid across it seemed to be serving as a makeshift table, pulled up alongside a bowed wooden bed frame with an obviously straw mattress.  A travel bag and several worn blankets were bunched in one spot near the barrel, providing a raised area where he obviously sat to work at the table.  His laundry, presumably some he was drying, was strung up by twine across two corners of the room, the rest stacked as neatly as one could manage in a place like this on the bedside table.  And then there were the papers.  Papers. . . everywhere.  I don’t think I’d ever seen so much paper in my life.  Some of it was even tacked up on the walls, for some reason.  I couldn’t read Amurescan, save a few words I’d picked up over the years, so none of it meant anything to me.
	The bed creaked suddenly as he sat down on it, and I realized with a start that he was looking at me.  “Well?”  He asked, tipping his head.
	“O-oh!”  I glanced briefly aside, having trouble keeping his gaze.  “Tulimak.”
	“Just. . . Tulimak?”  He pronounced it fairly well, given that he’d only heard it once.  For an Otherwolf, anyway.  They often had trouble with our names.
	“Yes,” I responded simply.  
	“You tribal peoples aren’t big on surnames, I’d forgotten,” he murmured as he leaned back against the wall the bed was pushed up alongside.  He twisted his body for a moment, clearly testing his hip.  The wince told me all I needed to know.
	“You’re hurt,” I reminded him quietly.  “You should see someo-“
	“Are you coming in?”  He interrupted me, gesturing to where I was still standing in the doorway.  “I’d rather you not leave the door open, all things considered.”
	“Oh,” I paused, at this point realizing I had to commit to some kind of decision.  And that was difficult.  I’d followed him this far because I’d been worried he’d hurt himself on the stairs.  And then he’d had that near-faint at the door.  But at this point I could walk away and comfort myself in knowing I’d gone above and beyond, done all I could to help the man.  Whatever trouble he was in, my conscience was clear.  I didn’t need to-
	He unshouldered his coat, whining softly as he twisted to do so.  Beneath the bulkier coat, he wore a tailored vest over a thin cotton shirt, britches and spats.  The fact that his outfit was tailored to his figure, and still obviously baggy in places only made it more obvious how lean he was.  The scene tugged at a place in me that physically hurt, and I found myself stepping inside and closing the door, if only so I could approach him from behind and help him tug the coat down over his arms.
	He glanced back at me as I did, huffing again, like a laugh that didn’t quite emerge.  “Where do they make big, helpful bears like you?  I could have used one throughout. . .” he paused, “. . . most of my life.”
	“Well, you have one now,” I said as I gingerly removed his frayed coat and hung it over the bedpost.  He gave it a brief, dismayed glance, doubtless seeing what I’d already seen.  It was badly torn.  Perhaps not worth salvaging.  “For the moment, anyway,” I said, forcing a smile and doing my best not to make it a ‘scary’ one.  I’d accidentally terrified many young otters with my smiles over the years.
	“Yes,” he said, suddenly sounding wary.  His gaze flicked briefly between me, and the door.  “Thank you for that.  For everything in the alley.  Who-“ he paused, visibly checking himself.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.  Tulimak,” he again pronounced it correctly.  “But who are you, exactly?  Why did you come to my aid?”
	“I didn’t mean to,” I blurted out before I realized how bad that sounded.  “I mean,” I said quickly, as his brow raised, “I mean it wasn’t my intention in coming out there.  To get in a fight.  I-I didn’t even realize. . .”  I gestured aimlessly, before sighing.  “What did happen out there?  I really don’t mean to pry, it’s just-“
	“Oh god,” he said suddenly, his eyes widening.  “You really aren’t a hunter.”
	“Fisherman, actually,” I cleared my throat.  “It’s a certain kind of ‘hunt’, really.  It has its own challenges, people don’t realize-“
	“No, I mean,” he smoothed a hand over his roughed-up headfur, “a bounty hunter.  You aren’t hunting me.  Are you?”
	“Why would I be hunting you?”  I asked, aghast.  “Why would anyone?”
	“Aha,” he chuckled.  “I’ve been asking myself the same question for quite some time now.”
	“Is that what those men in the alley- the foxes, is that what they were trying to do?”  I asked uncertainly.  “They were hunting you?”
	“Are,” he replied tiredly, stretching his leg out on the bed, clearly still stretching his hip.  “Are hunting me.  And they’ll be back, I’m certain.  Probably not so long as you’re here, but once you leave. . . .  You didn’t kill that one who hit the wall, did you?”
	“No!”  I said emphatically.  “I mean I don’t think. . . he just had a broken nose.  Spirits, do you think it was worse than that?”  My mind reeled at the possibility.  I’d heard him breathing, he’d seemed conscious.  What if I’d really hurt him?  I’d abandoned him to follow Finnegan, was that really any better?  They’d been the aggressors, sure.  But still.
	What would my father think of all of this?  What would my tribe think?  My stomach clenched as my thoughts spun in on themselves.
	“Calm down,” Finnegan urged quietly, his calm voice bringing me back to the present.  I looked down at him, and some of my nervousness must have still shone through, because his gaze turned sympathetic.  “Look, for what it’s worth, you’re not in any danger.  Those two aren’t the first I’ve shaken, and they didn’t seem well-outfitted.  I don’t think they’ll like their luck with you any better the second time around, and it isn’t you they’re after, at any rate.  Honestly men like that, they might give up the chase after a foul-up like that, take their chances elsewhere.  Plenty of other work around here.”
	“You said they’d still be after you,” I countered.
	He let out a breath, closing his eyes and nodding.  “They might wait me out, yes.  If the bounty’s anywhere near as high as it was last I heard, they might even go in with another outfit.  Now that they know where I am.”
	“Then you need to leave,” I insisted, reaching down and grabbing for his coat.  “You need to get out of here.”
	“Not that you’re wrong,” he said wryly, his gaze sliding back towards me again.  “But it would take half a day at least to gather my papers and somehow re-supply for travel, and I’m in no state.  Nor do I have the resources any longer.  I sold my pony two towns back, my coin’s near run out. . . .”  He blinked tiredly, his eyes threatening to stay closed this time before he wearily opened them once more.  “Is there a reliable post in this area, do you know?”  He asked, not bothering to complete his previous statement.
“I don’t, no,” I said, my claws itching at the hem of my travel cloak.  “This is my first time here in this settlement.  And I don’t really know what ‘post’ you mean.”
“Does it not concern you why there might be a bounty out on me?”  He asked, tipping his ears briefly towards the door, while still looking at me.  I’d been doing the same since I’d come inside, albeit by turning my head.
“I-I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.  
He blinked at that, then simply nodded.  “Alright,” he said, adopting a more informative tone.  It wasn’t patronizing exactly, but it was close.  “Those men outside were hunting me for money.  For coin.  A bounty is like a reward.  Like any other hunter being paid for their catch.  Those men were paid to kill me.  Or take me somewhere.  I’m not sure which.”  He paused, “I wish I could explain to you why.”
“I understand war,” I said flatly.  “We ‘tribal peoples’ still kill one another.”
He held his hands up.  “I’m sorry, no offense meant.  Language barrier and all.”
“You’re the only one here with a language barrier,” I pointed out.  “I’m speaking your tongue.  I learned it from a young age, and I’m told I’m very fluent.  My father said it would be all but essential, considering how many Otherwolves have moved into our lands.  He was right.”
“ ‘Otherwolves’,” he repeated, something like a smile toying at the edge of his muzzle.  “That’s right.  That’s what you all call us.  How self-explanatory.  I think I like it, honestly.”
“Get back to the part where your people want you dead,” I pushed.  “I’ve never heard of a ‘bounty’, but I know what reasons men usually have for wanting other men dead.  Grudges.  Land.  Food.”  I arched an eyebrow, remembering something I’d heard about some of the Otherwolves in the west.  “Gold?”
“You left out ‘information’,” he said, gesturing loosely to the room around him.  “I’m not certain who placed the bounty on my head, but all I have of value in the world is what you see before you.”
I stared blankly at the many papers scattered across his ‘desk’ and around the room.  He must have seen the confusion in my features, because he clucked his tongue and said, “I see.  You speak it, but you can’t read it.”
“I-“
“For the best, honestly,” he muttered.  “This blasted box of papers sealed my death warrant.  First the poisoning on the Aranthine, then the hunters. . . God, what a miserable end,” he slowly ran a palm down over his muzzle, dryly chuckling.  At what, I couldn’t understand.
“Wait, hold up now,” I stammered.  “You aren’t- this isn’t an ‘end’.  No need to be so melodramatic.”
“If I can at least find a reliable post, I’ve gathered the most critical manifests, made the most important connections,” he continued, speaking primarily to himself. 
“You aren’t going to die!”  I raised my voice.  Just a little, but even a little is usually enough, for me.    
He turned towards me slowly, looking at me like I’d said something outlandish, rather than what I considered to be quite sensible.  “Well, not tonight, no,” he replied at length.  
“Not. . . at all,” I insisted quietly.  “Please.  Please just explain to me what’s happening to you.  I-“ I stomped back on my fears for the moment.  Letting someone be hunted down like an animal and stabbed in an alley could not be the right thing to do, no matter what was happening here.  It just couldn’t.  “I want to help,” I finally said.
The canine was silent for a long time.  For the first time since we’d met, he seemed uncertain.  I could see it in his posture, the stiffness with which he regarded me.  I’d been frozen like that more times than I could remember, always thinking and re-thinking over the paths that lay before me.  It looked strange on him, though.  I’m not sure why.
“Do you know,” he finally began speaking again, and as he did so he turned his entire body towards me, wincing, “of the land across the sea?”
“The land the Otherwolves come from,” I nodded.  “The land you come from.”
“Very good,” he nodded with a smile.  “Not all tribesmen can tell Amurescans and Carvecians apart.”
“Those are your tribes, right?”  I said, trying to follow along.
“Well, there are a lot of. . . I guess you’d call them tribes within tribes,” he gestured with a hand, waving the explanation aside.  “A lot of divisions within my people.  And not just the big one between those of us who settled here, and those of us who remain living in Amuresca, our motherland.  Since the war though, we’re certainly two very different peoples.  I suppose none of that really matters out here on the frontier, but what’s important is, yes, I am from across the pond.  The ocean.  Sorry, turn of phrase.”
I just nodded.  “I noticed you speak differently than the rest of the Otherwolves here.”
“Good ear,” he seemed to approve.  “Same language, but yes, Carvecians have their own. . . flavor of dialect.  Hard for even me to make out sometimes.”
“You came from across the world,” I said softly, the realization hitting me like a solid blow to the chest.  This man wasn’t just an outsider like the traders that came down the river.  He was as foreign a person as I had ever met.
“I suppose I did,” he said, not seeming to realize the significance of that.  “Unpleasant journey, but luckily or unluckily for my sake, I had the benefit of spending much of it in such poor health, I hardly remember the months at sea.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, resisting the urge to pat his head like he were a child.  It was an urge I often had for some reason around folks who were smaller than me, which was of course, most people.  “That sounds awful,” I knitted my paws in front of me instead.  My impulse to touch others was very normal back home with my otterfa and my tribe, but they’d told me to resist doing so out here in the world.  
“Yes well, poison will do that,” he muttered bitterly.  
“You’re certain you were poisoned?” I asked, dubiously.  If there’s one thing I knew about poison from speaking to our village healer about it, it’s that it was the first thing many people tended to assume, when the usual culprit was generally spoiled food.
“I’m certain,” he said in a tone so dark, I dared not question it further.  “And in any case, the two gentlemen we just encountered in the alleyway should be all the proof I need that someone is out to kill me, yes?”
“I guess so,” I conceded.  “But why?  You said you had some idea, but not entirely?”  The man’s statement was among many he’d made tonight that had confused me. 
“I dug into a very important man’s affairs, back in Amuresca,” he said, all mirth gone from his voice now.  He was staring out the window, irises blown wide in the dim candlelight, his gaze distant.  “The trail brought me this far.”
“Trail?”  I echoed.
“I’m hunting something too,” he snarled.
“Information?”  I guessed.
He looked back at me, and all I saw was a wolf.  The softness was gone.
“The truth,” he growled out.

Chapter 3 – Off We Go

I blinked blearily against the cruel white light of morning, so much infinitely brighter thanks to the fresh coat of snow.  My bed groaned beneath me as I shifted, rolling to my side to face the window.
	Around me were the sounds of others sleeping, five other single men and a family of weasels, the last being the ones who’d ultimately woken me up.  They were trying to be considerate while getting dressed and gathering their things, but the children were chattering amongst themselves as children do, in conspiratorial not-quite-whispers.  
	My head was pounding, but that also wasn’t their fault.  I’d stayed up far too late last night in Finn’s company, discussing what our plans for today would be.  I was usually an early riser, but I also usually went to sleep early, and I was not one of those kinds who did well on little sleep.
	The weasels were packing up from the rooming house and moving on early, likely to avoid having to do so while all of the other larger, single men were changing and relieving themselves and. . . all the other necessary and unnecessary things men did in the morning.  I couldn’t really blame them, the mother and at least two of the children were clearly women.  Usually rooming houses like this one had separate areas for families, but most of the town’s lodging was full up, and this family must have just taken what was available.  
	Still, I was awake, and their plan was a good one.  I’d chosen the accommodations here for the same reason they had – everything else was occupied.  But I actually had a lot of coin on me, even if I didn’t look it, and it was probably best to pack up and move out before the loose assortment of strangers here started rousing.  I preferred to trust people, but after last night, I’d take no chances.
	I’d mostly slept in my clothing save my cloak, so after washing my paws and face, giving my fur a quick brush with my claws and tucking my few possessions away into my travel bag, I made my way out into the commons area.  It smelled of oatmeal and eggs, and most mornings I would have relished the simple fare, but there was a knot in my stomach that had yet to uncurl from the goings-on of the night before.  My life had changed overnight.
	Now when I stepped out into the bustling, bright town and took in all the various sights, sounds and smells of the community waking up, it was less giddy excitement I was feeling, and more apprehension.  I found myself checking every alley, glancing at every fox I passed to make sure it wasn’t one of the two that had attacked the night before.  And worse yet, it had been dark, so it was hard to remember their faces.
	Finnegan had said he was being hunted.  Which means it might not just be the two foxes.  He’d also mentioned poisoning, he’d said those two men weren’t the first. . . and then there were these ‘Jackwalds’ the fox hunters had thought I was a part of.  I still wasn’t sure what or who they’d been referring to.
	By the time I made it back to the Wayward Inn, I was a balled-up knot of worries and fears.  And while that wasn’t entirely a new feeling for me, that didn’t make it any easier to handle in the moment.  Why had I agreed to help this man again?  I could leave.  I could go back home right now-
	“Tulimak!”  His voice carried somehow across the noisy din of the morning crowd emerging from their rooms and gathering for breakfast.  I lifted my muzzle abruptly from where I’d been sullenly tucking it against my own neck fur, shocked to hear him down here.  I saw a distant white and black paw waving at me from the bar, and quickly hustled my way across the room, being less careful than I normally would have.  At some point along the way I bumped a chair with a small cat of some sort in it and got an irritated ‘hey!’ for my trouble.  I apologized profusely, then continued on my way.
	And there he was, sitting at the bar, one lean leg draped over the other, his threadbare old suit still somehow managing to make him look far more elegant than anyone in this place should.  He wasn’t wearing his coat or his hat, but had a gold chain hanging out of one pocket I hadn’t seen there the night before, and he looked. . . better.  The way he was leaning his thin frame against the bar suggested he was still favoring his hip, but he looked much more rested, his fur was groomed, and he smelled of someone who’d bathed recently.  The soap was clearly inexpensive, but pleasant, likely whatever they provided here.  It reminded me I could use a bath, myself.
	He greeted me with a long canine smile as I approached, and I couldn’t help but gawk at him for a moment before gathering my senses.  The sheer nerve of him to look so composed when I was so. . . not.  
“We agreed you wouldn’t leave your room until I came to get you this morning,” I blurted out, trying to cover the quiet panic in my voice as I glanced around the room.
	“I had to pay my tab,” he explained in an easygoing tone, looking sidelong at the bartender, the same woman from last night.  She wasn’t paying much attention to us, focusing on getting a tray of drinks and steaming bowls ready for one of the servers.
	“Besides,” he waved a paw, “this place is safe enough.  I highly doubt those two would start trouble in a crowded establishment.  The owner here’s a mastiff. . . something something. . . mongrel mix.  He’s big, got a bunch of big boys, too.  They keep the place pretty peaceful.”
	“Those two,” I paused when one of the servers passed nearby us, and dropped my voice to a whisper as I moved to stand beside him, “those two men from last night found you here.  And they got you outside somehow.”  I paused.  “Why did you go outside?  You saw something and then wandered off.  If you’d stayed by the bar, by your own logic-“
	“I was heading for my room,” he explained, leaning his cheek ruff against a palm.  “The staircase happens to be by the door. They cornered me and forced me out.  My fault for panicking and trying to head upstairs.  You’re right, I should have stayed right here,” he tapped the bar at that with his knuckles.  “But I was more worried about my, ah. . . .”
	Realization dawned.  “Your papers,” I supplied.
	He shrugged haplessly.  “The truth dies with those documents up there, not with me.  I mean ideally, it would be best if we both survived, but I had to prioritize.”
	“What could be so important that you’d risk your life over it?”  I asked, settling my weight on the stool beside him.  This was a point we’d discussed last night, but all he’d given me were roundabout answers that really answered nothing.
	He looked up at me with his forest green eyes, giving me an even stare.  “Aren’t there things you’d be willing to die for?”
	“People, maybe,” I countered.  “I don’t know about ‘things’.”
	“I have my reasons,” he assured me.  “And in any case, I wasn’t counting on dying.  I only had a suspicion those two were hunters, because I thought I’d seen them tailing me while I was out in town a few days prior.  I didn’t know it was going to go south that fast.”
	“ ‘South’?”  I quoted back uncertainly.
	“Uh. . . it’s like saying ‘poorly’,” he explained.  “Or ‘going wrong’.  I don’t entirely know the expression’s provenance.  Maybe referring to Hell?  Because it’s so far down.  Ha. . . .”  He cleared his throat, seeming to realize I wasn’t following.  “Never mind.  In any case, this whole trip has been a road to Hell for me with all the trouble I’ve had, but as I was saying, I have my reasons to be taking such risks.  They’re rather personal, is the thing.”
	“I,” I paused, “I want to honor that.  I do.  But I also want to help you-“
	“A fact which I greatly appreciate,” he said, putting a paw over mine while still maintaining eye contact with me.  The combination was almost overwhelming, and set my mouth immediately dry.  How did a starving little wolf manage something so easily with a stranger I couldn’t even do with my family most days?  I had to admire his boldness.  
	“R-right,” I stammered out, embarrassed at myself and finding I immediately had to avert my gaze.  I allowed my paw to remain beneath his.  The heat was comforting.  “But,” I pressed on, “it’s going to be hard to help you if I don’t. . . understand things.”
	I heard rather than saw him consider that, and after a quiet ‘hmmm’ of a hum, he patted my paw and replied, “Fair point.  And I’d hate to leave you in the lurch.  I assure you, it’s primarily for your own protection.  I don’t intend to ask for your help for long, and I’d rather not get you involved any more than necessary in this whole sordid affair.  But you did say you’d help me make my way to the village of Broen. . . .”
	“It’s not so far out of my way,” I nodded.  “Broen is up-river twenty miles or so to the northwest, then another ten on foot.  I was always planning to discard my raft up-river once the ice set.  Also it’s exhausting and not really worth it to row up-river for long periods of time.  The waters near here are mild, but they can get tumultuous the further up north you go.”
	“I have to admit, I don’t much like the idea of my documents traveling via river,” the wolf said with a slight grimace.  “But they made it across the ocean, and I’ve got a beaver skin bag.”
	“If we get dumped for whatever reason, you won’t care about the documents,” I promised him.  “You’ll be too busy re-learning how to breathe in ice-cold water.”
	“Spoken like a man who’s experienced it,” he said, arching an eyebrow.  “You any good with that raft?”
	“I’ve only used it for a season,” I admitted.  “But I’ve never lost control of it.  I was very careful on the way down here, and the current moved me along much faster then.  It’s just that ice can get tricky.  Hopefully we won’t encounter any.”
	Finnegan looked towards the stark white windows, and presumably the fresh snowfall outside.
	“It’s not cold enough yet,” I assured him.  “The water, when it moves like it does in a river?  It doesn’t freeze as easily.  It has to get very, very cold before it will begin to ice over.”
	“Well, you can pray to your spirits, and I’ll pray to my God that that doesn’t happen,” he muttered.
	“I will,” I nodded.  “But the spirits of the river will not protect us from what is inevitable.  If we are not clever enough to know when it is wise to take to the water, and when it isn’t, that’s our own failing.”
	“Harsh,” he chuckled.  “Your spirits don’t sound much different than our ‘God’, honestly.  What with the cruel ambivalence.”
	I knitted my brow.  “It’s not cruel.  It’s just that some things must be our own responsibility.”
	“Alright, I don’t want to get pulled into a discussion on theology,” he sighed, rubbing his brow and smoothing back his ears.  “Got enough of that back home.  And I’ve never been much of a Godly man to begin with.  He and I disagree on a few sticking points.”  
	He hopped off the stool at that, and immediately went weak in one knee and buckled, catching himself on the bar.  His jaunty mood suddenly gone, I put a paw on his shoulder to steady him while he winced through the obvious pain he was in.
	“You really need to see a healer,” I reiterated my words from the night before, concerned.
	“I’ve had worse, I assure you,” he shook his head, hissing through his teeth for a few moments as he steadied himself.  “Just a bit of a fall.”
	“Onto a cobbled street,” I pointed out.  “Hardly soft earth.  And you don’t strike me as much of a warrior.”
	“Hnh, duly noted,” he grinned, winking one eye open at me.  “Although I fail to see how that would have helped me.”
	“That’s because you’re not a warrior,” I repeated.  “Most tribal warriors learn how to fall without hurting themselves.  As much.”
	“Not a skill I ever thought I’d need,” he said defensively.  Then with a slump, “You’re right, though.  I’m in over my head on this particular caper, and the sooner I can admit that, the better.”
	“ ‘Caper’?”  I repeated, as I helped him slowly back to his feet.
	“Uhh. . . quest?”  He offered.  “Job?  Mission?  I don’t know, it’s really none of those.  I’m not sure what,” he stretched out his lower back with a grunt, his tail bristling as he did so, “to call this.  ‘Disaster’ is probably the best word that comes to mind.  I’ve had a few scrapes in my unfortunate life, but this one certainly takes the crown.”
	“So, the papers. . .”  I said again, pointedly.
	“Right,” he started towards the stairs.  “Follow me.”
	We made our way back up to his room, and when he unlocked the door, I was taken aback by the state of things inside.  
	“When did you pack everything away?”  I asked as I stepped inside, noting the bare walls and stripped bed.  Somehow the mess from the evening prior had all but disappeared, save a few ink stains on the makeshift table, some mangled quill pens and a few crumpled and torn sheets of discarded paper left crammed in an empty chamber pot.  At least I hope it was empty under all that paper.
	“One thing I’ve gotten rather good at over the last few months is leaving no traces,” he said as he approached the bed, where one large, worn beaver skin bag was stuffed to bursting.  “I suppose for you tribesmen it would be like-“ he began to struggle to close the bag, “covering your-nngh. . . tracks.”
	I approached him from behind, unable to watch him fight with the bag any longer.  I leaned down over him and with one paw, pulled the straps closed.  
	“Seriously,” he sighed, grabbing for the handle while looking back over his shoulder at me.  “Big, handy bear.  Where have you been all my life?”
	I flushed, which I was thankful he wouldn’t see from where he was standing.  “Here,” I murmured, reaching down and grabbing the bag before he could.  “You shouldn’t carry that.”
	“Careful, it’s heav-“ he turned and cut himself off as I lifted it over my shoulder with ease.  “Oh.”  He blinked.  “Right.”
	“My size is more a hindrance than anything, most of the time,” I said.  “But it’s helpful at least for tasks like this.  And pulling up nets for fishing.  And rowing.”  I looked around the room.  “Is this it?”
	“As it turns out, documents are rather easy to pack down,” he said as he donned his torn coat.  No other choice, really.  “And I haven’t much clothing left that’s serviceable.  I had more when I left Amuresca, but that was months ago, and the journey’s taken its toll.”  He glanced down at his state of affairs, blowing out a breath through his nose.  “I look a fright.  Most highwaymen could muster more class.”
	“Your clothing is still finer than most anyone else in this town,” I insisted.  “You look fine.  Honestly, it might do you well to stand out less, given the state of things.”
	“’Fine’ is not ‘refined’,” he bemoaned.  “But I suppose you’re right about that last part.”
	“Finnegan,” I caught his attention by using his name.  He stared up at me, ears perked.  “Before we leave this room, I want to know what I’m carrying in this bag.”  I watched as his gaze fell, then sighed.  “Please.”
	“If you wish,” he shuffled a bit on his feet, then slowly sat on the edge of the bed.  After a moment, I did the same, setting our bags down.
	“Not all of this will make sense to you, since it concerns foreign affairs,” he began, looking up at me.
	There was that eye contact again.  How was that so easy for him?
	I nodded.  “I will try my best to follow along.”
	“There’s a man in Amuresca – a loathsome man,” he said, with bile on his tongue.  “A Pedigree Lord.  That’s a man of great importance in my country, a man with a title and land, a lot of resources.”  He looked to me to make sure I wasn’t confused, then continued.  “This man. . .” he went silent for a few moments, gathering his thoughts.  “This man betrayed someone very important to me.”  Silence again, then, “My mother.”
	I watched as his frame went tense, his ears tucked back against the scruff of his neck.  His eyes in contrast were sharp, like they were last night when he was talking about finding ‘the truth’.  I believed him.
	“Do you understand the importance of marriage?”  He asked.
	“I’ve never been married,” I said.  “But yes, I understand why it’s important to pledge yourself to someone, to forge bonds between tribes.  There are many reasons it’s important.”
	“I’d wager to guess they’re different here than they are in Amuresca,” he said dryly.  “But suffice to say, bloodlines and bonds are very important where I come from.  Especially the Church-sanctioned kind.  And if you break them or worse yet – never have them, the consequences can be dire.”  He began to count off on his fingers.  “Opportunities, money, shame.”  He really emphasized the last word through his teeth.  “Shame over there is like an art form.  Everyone delights in wielding it, on every rung of society.  Even the Priests.”
	“That’s awful,” I stated simply, because I didn’t know what else to say.
	“It’s also not the point,” he snuffed.  “The point is, this man made promises to my mother.  He used her.  And then he refused to marry her.  He left her saddled with a pup and a sullied reputation, which for some reason she’s had to bear alone, even though he’s the one who lied to and deceived her.  That sound right to you?”
	“No,” I said softly.  I hesitated for a few moments, before murmuring, “So he’s your fath-“
	“Please,” he said emphatically, turning his sharp gaze on me.  “Don’t use that title.  He doesn’t deserve it.”
	“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.  I brought a paw up to my forearm, suddenly uncomfortable I’d literally forced this all out of him.  It’s no wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.
	“She died last year,” he said, his tone cold.  He fished the gold chain out of his pocket, tugging free an expensive-looking pocket watch.  I only even knew what it was because I’d seen one at a trade post, once.  “This was all he gave her when they parted ways, twenty-one years ago.  She passed it on to me, and after she died I decided I’d throw it back in the man’s face in Highvolle.  That’s when I found out how the old man makes his gold.  He owns a Mercantile Fleet that’s registered with the Crown itself, and runs goods between my country and yours.”
	He paused, “But here’s the thing.”  He looked down to his bag, then back up to me.  “I have connections in Highvolle, and while I was digging into the man to find out how I could confront him somewhere that’d be the most public, the most humiliating place I could find. . . I stumbled on some pretty damning information about what his ships really move.”
	“What do you mean?”  I asked, my stomach knotting.  The intensity of his gaze was beginning to unnerve me.  His eyes were beautiful in the right light, but not when he was angry.
	“People,” he said, licking his teeth.  “He’s a slaver.  And I can think of no greater punishment for that demon than airing his true colors for all the world to see.”

	Finnegan’s words hung over my head like a storm cloud for the remainder of the day, their implications beyond what I could imagine.  My knowledge of ‘slavery’ was limited to a tribal custom known as ‘Fanruk Wela’, which was fundamentally different in many ways than what he’d had to explain to me.  I hadn’t even known the Amurescan word at first, let alone its equivalent.
	Fanruk Wela was a practice whereby one tribe took female prisoners, usually from war or other skirmishes, and forcibly married them to their men.  It was often used as a means to make alliances, ironically, and to spread blood between tribes.  Especially rival tribes who might have little other reason to meet peaceably.  Once their women were married into the opposing tribe, it was generally agreed-upon that there was little choice but to begin negotiations for a peace, or to forge bonds for future communication and trade.  
	While I understood the reason for the practice, at least in theory, I felt fortunate that my own tribal leader, my otterfa, found the idea outdated and abhorrent.  Even among some of the most old-world tribes, traditions like Fanruk Wela were beginning to fade away.  
	And these days in the few places in the North Country where it still took place, it was usually more done out of adherence to tradition, and had often been negotiated in advance.  Some couples used it as an excuse to find romance across tribal boundaries.  Even boundaries of species, in some cases.
	Even in the worst cases though, in whatever far corners of the North where the practice was still in full swing, still completely non-consensual, once the woman was taken and forced to marry, she became a part of the tribe.  I couldn’t speak to the conditions those women lived under, but they were supposed to be treated as family.  The whole idea still made my skin crawl, though.  To think of it happening to one of my sisters. . . it was no wonder our tribe had outlawed it.
	What Finnegan had described was something else entirely.  People treated like beasts of burden, like work animals.  Not for the purpose of expanding your family or your tribe, but to be bred and bartered for, worked until their bodies broke down, until they were no longer of ‘value’.  No rights to any kind of life outside of the purpose they’d been bought and sold for.  If there was a similar tradition amongst the tribal peoples of the North Country, I had never heard its like. 
	I suppose that didn’t mean it didn’t exist, though.  People could be terrible the world over, as much as I hated reflecting on the fact.  I’d been fortunate enough not to glimpse the darker side of life, growing up in my little tribe.  But this trip was proving a fast lesson, and one that was perhaps overdue.
	This ‘slavery’ sounded hideous.  Unthinkable.  And apparently, according to Finn. . . very commonplace, in the world beyond our lands.
	“Our people fought a war to end the practice, generations ago,” he said as we moved through the bustling open air market that Main Street had become.  He paused near a vendor with a cart full of late season root vegetables, mainly carrots, and began looking over some of the thickest ones, turning them over in his paws and presumably looking for blemishes.
	“A war?”  I asked, peering over his shoulder.  He’d donned his hat again, which made it hard to see his face from above.  “With another tribe?”
	“Another country,” he corrected me.  “Mataa.  Enormous Nation to the south of Amuresca, and our biggest economic rivals.  Wasn’t the first war, either.  Our countries have been nipping at each others’ heels throughout most of known history.  Usually over religion, land, resources. . . same things your people fight over, I’d imagine.”
	I nodded at that, picking up one of the carrots and giving it a sniff.  They smelled fresh, and they looked good to me, but I’d thought wolves primarily ate meat.
	“But the last big one was specifically over slavery,” he continued.  “Two centuries ago?  I think?  Something like that.  Two centuries ago, the Church passed an edict banning the sale or ownership of ‘high-minded creatures’.  Which basically covers any person who can make their own decisions and speak.  You know, discounting the mentally infirm and whatnot.”
	“What happens to them?”  I asked, not liking the sound of that.
	“Wards of the Church, or their families,” he said, shrugging.  “Whoever will take care of them.  But if you’re wondering if they get taken advantage of, the short answer is ‘yes’.  The Church has work-camps and workhouses everywhere, where they warehouse the ‘infirm’ and ‘heretics’, and they have some broad interpretations of those words, let me tell you.  I’ve known a few blokes unlucky enough to do time in one of those places, it’s as good as slavery.”
	“So what is the point?”  I asked, uncertainly.  “Of outlawing it if it happens anyway?”
	“Moral superiority?”  He chuckled, for some reason.  “No, no. . . I mean, that’s the reason given.  The Faith is built on this ladder structure of death and rebirth.  The thought is, if you’re a good lad and you follow the doctrines, tithe generously, and pray to the big dog in the sky, you get to slooooowly but surely clamber your way up the ladders in each successive life.  Until eventually you’re born as one of the Chosen People, the Pedigrees.  And they can ‘ascend’ when they die.  To be with God.”
	I blinked, trying to follow all of that.  “Didn’t you say your father-“
	“Yeah, he’s one of the ruling elite,” he said bitterly, looking up at me.  “Which is just proof it’s all bullshit, as far as I’m concerned.  These are supposed to be the least sinful, the most perfect people.  One step on the great celestial ladder away from true salvation.  All they gotta do is live pious, make pups with the right people so other Chosen People’s souls can have vessels to be born into, and then die a righteous death.  You screw anything up along the way and you get kicked back down the ladder.  But my father’s still right up on top.  What does that tell you?”
	I tried to process that.  I wanted to be respectful of someone else’s beliefs, but it was confusing.
	“By the logic of The Faith, my father did the right thing by turning his back on my mother, and marrying some Pedigree woman instead.  The ‘righteous’ and ‘holy’ thing,” he said, snuffing.  “Pedigrees breed for purity, of body and soul.  You don’t want a tainted pup, or you’re delivering a soul to an unworthy vessel.”
	His tail, which was usually rather lively, had gone uncharacteristically still while he spoke of his faith.  I took that to be a bad sign.  I wanted to say something comforting, but found my tongue stuck in my throat.  I still didn’t want to offend.
	“Anyway,” he said, shaking his head and moving on just like that.  “Moral superiority might be the excuse, but it’s not really why they banned the sale of people.  The real reason was rats.”
	“I-okay,” I said uncertainly.
	“Rats are the most prolific peoples in most countries.  Maybe not here, but give it time.  Trust me,” he said with a chuckle.  “They tend to be numerous wherever they are, but they’re also some of the smallest, and the most overlooked people.  They also tend to get blamed for a lot of diseases, fairly or unfairly.  I’m no Physician, so I can’t attest to the truth of that either way.  Seems to me like it’s more that it’s easier to get sick, what with the. . . poverty, and all.  But for all the aforementioned reasons, they’re at the bottom of the damnable ladder.  And not just in Amuresca.  In Mataa they call them ‘untouchables’.  In our country they’re the farthest away from God, if you believe the Priests.  They don’t get a fair shake.  Anywhere.  So they’re poor, not well-regarded, have trouble finding good employment or good relations with other species.  They mostly stick to family groups, caravans and slum cities, they aren’t even allowed to own land in most places.  And they get enslaved a lot.  Or at least, they used to.
	“There was a Revolution,” he said.  “Again, this was centuries ago, and my history’s better than most, but I only know it in vague terms.  There was a rat who rose to prominence in the Kadrush, our ‘North Country’ basically, and returned to Amuresca with a taste for rebellion.  She inspired rats across Amuresca to take on the Pedigrees- can you imagine?  And they were really making a dent, apparently, because that’s when the Church passed the edict.  They claimed it was about giving all peoples a fair chance to better themselves in freedom than they’d have in shackles, and climb that celestial ladder.  But really, it was because of the rats.  At the time most of their population were slaves, and that was their chief demand.”
	“And then your country,” I paused for a moment, “fought another country?”
	“It was a case of ‘if we have to play by these rules, so do you,” he explained.  “Once Amuresca abolished slavery, we started falling behind Mataa economically.  Things balanced out eventually, they tend to when suddenly a huge portion of your population is generating industry and spending money they didn’t have before.  But there were growing pains in the beginning, since so much of our economy depended on slave labor before that.  Mataa’s industries still do.  They still haven’t really abolished slavery.  We fought this whole holy war with them over it, which was really over money, mind you,” he added that last part around a hand like it was some great conspiracy, “and we made them sign this worthless treaty to bring the fighting to an end, but it basically only abolished slavery there in name.  Slavery is very much still alive in Mataa, they just call it something else now, and use legal loopholes to insist it’s something other than what it is.”
	“It still sounds like a good thing,” I stated, thinking carefully about all this new history I’d been given.  I believed him, he really had no reason to be inventing all of this, and what chances would I ever get again to learn about the world so far from my home?  “This war,” I clarified.  “Even if it was done for the wrong reasons.”
	“War’s never a good thing,” he said solemnly.  “But I see what you mean.  It probably would have been, if it’d stuck in any meaningful way.  But the Huudari Clans- that’s what the people in power in Mataa call themselves- figured out that if they just called slavery ‘indentured labor’ and attached contracts to the work, they could essentially keep the practice going.  And they have.  And Eamon is taking advantage of that.”
	“Your fath-“ I stopped myself.  “The man who sired you?”
	“Yes.”  He placed two carrots he’d at this point meticulously picked out back in the wooden box he’d found them in, fixing the frayed edges of his coat sleeves.  I watched him, perplexed.
	“Just a nervous habit?”  I guessed.  I had a few of my own.
	“Huh?”  He looked up at me, seeming surprised.  “Wh-no.  I just, ah, can’t afford produce.”
	I looked at the scrawled prices on the cart, arching an eyebrow.  Sure, they were a little expensive, but that was hardly surprising considering they were some of the last fresh vegetables pulled from the ground, probably stored in a root cellar somewhere.  
	“I haven’t been able to afford anything fresh in a while,” he sighed.  “I’ve sold just about everything I can.  I had no idea what a trip across the New World was going to cost me when I set out, but I’ve gone through just about all of my savings at this point.”
	“Well once we’re on the river I can fish,” I offered, which immediately set his ears shooting up.  I had to laugh when his head whipped around to stare at me, his eyes gone wide.  “You,” I huffed, “looked like a young otter there for a moment.  I’ve never seen a wolf so excited for fish.”
	“Oh, we Amurescans love our fish,” he assured me.  “And it’s ‘dog’, by the way.  We prefer there be a distinction.”
	“Oh,” I cleared my throat, my eyes roving his very. . . very wolfish face.  And ears.  And fur.  Although I suppose he was small for a wolf.  “I’m sorry, I-it can be hard to tell sometimes.”
	“You’re forgiven for being confused,” he replied.  “My mother was a wolf.  And I do carry her features more strongly than I’d like- what has gotten into you?”  He balked as he took in my sudden smile, which I can only imagine from his expression, was showing off more teeth than I intended.
	“I’m sorry,” I put up my paws.  No, no good either.  Huge claws.  I put them down, hiding them behind my back.  But then there was the rest of me, which was no less intimidating.  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.  “I’ve just never met someone else with, with mixed lineage.  I’m also, well, my parents were two different kinds of bears.”
	He looked me over, seeming perplexed for only a moment before just snuffing.  “Huh.  Didn’t know that could happen.  In any case, it’s pretty common amongst dogs.  So you absolutely have, you just don’t realize it.  A lot of dogs have wolf blood, and vice versa.”
	“I’ve heard you were the same people, once.”  As good a time as any to get the truth of that straightened out.
	“A long time ago,” he said.  “It’s a pretty important distinction now.”  He stressed that part, in a very no-nonsense way that I took to meant I might have offended him and he was getting frustrated having to repeat himself.  So I just nodded.  Whatever the difference was, other than strictly appearance, between the wolves and these ‘dogs’, I would try to respect it.
	But he’d said his mother was the wolf, so. . . that was confusing.  He preferred to identify with his father’s lineage?  Why?  He certainly didn’t seem fond of the man.  He didn’t even seem fond of the society he came from.
	I reached down and started grabbing up an armful of carrots.  It wasn’t my place to wonder such things about something so personal to another.  As it was, I’d pushed him to talk to me about the matter of why he was being hunted, which had proven to be very personal.  He’d even warned me it was personal, and I’d overstepped and insisted anyway.
	I mean, I suppose I was putting my life on the line for him.  So had it really been overstepping?
	Oh. . . I hated thinking this way.  I kept gathering carrots, while my mind spun with self-doubt.  Had I made the right choice?  Had I made any right choices since I’d met Finnegan?  How many more choices would I make wrong in the future?
	“Tulimak,” his voice snapped me out of my reverie, and I paused and looked down at him.  He was looking at my arms, which were now laden with carrots.  “Are you, ah,” he looked between the vegetables and me, “getting all of those?”
	I looked down at the armful, then to the vendor, an older boar woman who was hustling over to us with a broad grin on her snout.  “You like them, right?”  I asked Finnegan.  “We can make stews while we travel, to keep our fare varied.  I hadn’t known wolv- dogs liked vegetables like this, but you seemed to want some.”
	“I love carrots,” he admitted, his ears splaying for some reason, like he was ashamed to admit it.  “But I haven’t the coin.”
	There was something about his demeanor that seemed false.  His stance was more subdued, tail almost between his legs, ears splayed as they were. . . it was cute, I couldn’t deny that.  But he didn’t smell subdued, if that makes sense.  He felt as sharp and acute as he had been a few moments earlier, but he was adopting a more submissive posture.  The two didn’t fit together.  It almost reminded me of my otter siblings when they were begging me for a fish.  Except this was a full-grown man.
 	I couldn’t deny it was effective, though.  And for now, I didn’t see a reason not to let him win me over.  I would have bought the carrots anyway.
	I patted him on the head between his ears, and to his credit he only looked moderately irritated.  I chuckled down at him, “I’ll get us the rations we’ll need for the trip.  Feeding you won’t cost me much more than feeding myself.  I probably eat four servings to your one.”
	“I wouldn’t doubt that,” he muttered as I moved past him and deposited the stack of carrots down on one of the boar’s empty carts, and began asking her about her potatoes.  Another import the Otherwolves had brought here, and one that I very much enjoyed.
	As the sun rose further in the sky, we gathered what I imagined we’d need for the trip.  I’d always been planning to use today to re-supply anyway, I was just purchasing a little more food now than I’d originally intended to.  And really, in the end it wouldn’t have much effect on the coin I would bring home to my tribe.  I’d done well on my fish, better than my father and I had expected when I’d set out.  And with Finnegan along, I might even make better time going upriver, if he was at all able to help with rowing.
	I tried to focus on those thoughts, and not lingering fears about hunters around every corner, while we perused the market.  We- or well, I- purchased fresh, fluffy griddle cakes drizzled with butter, and if you’ll pardon the expression, Finnegan wolfed his down with a relish that made me smile.  There weren’t many better feelings in the world, I’d wager, than feeding someone and watching them enjoy it.  Especially if they’d been long denied.  I found myself looking forward to cooking for him, wondering what recipes I could make with our limited ingredients and one small iron pot.  I hadn’t thought I was going to have any kind of company on the trip home, and while solitude suited me fine, I discovered I was looking forward to it.
	After a few hours of gathering supplies, sharing a meal in the town square and watching the oblivious hustle and bustle of the frontier town, and not a single man attacking us, I was finding my calm again.  Finn seemed to be right.  If anyone else in this town was hunting him the way those two men had been, they weren’t showing themselves with me around.
	I’d long known, of course, that being so big had its advantages.  It was no mystery to me that bears were often feared, and almost always given a wide berth, wherever they went.  And that wasn’t just because of our size.  The bear tribes had fearsome reputations as unflinching, stalwart bastions of the tribal alliance, wherever they lived.  It’s part of why we were becoming so rare at the tribal gathers.  And. . . in general, most likely.  The bear tribes had resisted the incursion of the Otherwolves more than any others, the way I’d heard it.  It’s likely why I’d been found abandoned, and what had ultimately become of my parents.
	Of course, I’d never know for sure.
	But living a relatively peaceful life as I had up until this point, I hadn’t ever really had a use for a fearsome reputation or even for my size and strength.  It had come up occasionally doing physical labor back home with my tribe, but more often than not, it was a hindrance.  Now, for the first time, I was able to put my lineage to use for something.  Even if it was just to scare people off.  The fact is, I’d gotten lucky with the fox the night before.  I wasn’t trained to be a warrior.  I barely had the stomach for dressing a hare, let alone hurting and potentially killing people.  
	Hopefully, the intimidation factor alone would be enough.  That was probably what Finnegan was counting on, and it was comforting to think we’d gotten through the worst of it.  
	I found myself looking at him again while we walked down towards River Street, my satchel resting heavily over my shoulder.  I tried to obscure my glances and make them look natural, but I must not have been as subtle as I thought I was being, because he caught my eye on one particularly long look and crooked an eyebrow.
	“Crumbs?”  He guessed, pawing at his muzzle a bit and shivering his whiskers.
	“Oh, no,” I assured him quickly, as he brushed his hands up over his fine-featured snout and removed his hat to sweep back his ears and the ruff of fur between them.  
	How to put this?
	“I was just thinking, ahh,” the words embarrassingly came out in a sort of croak, and I was left wondering why.  “You said you favor your mother’s looks more strongly than you’d like.  I. . . take it you mean you look more like a wolf than you’d like?”
	He sighed through his nose, with the air of someone who didn’t like being reminded of something.  “Yes.  That is what I meant.”
	“I know, somewhat at least, how it feels to look different than everyone else around you,” I explained softly.  That got his attention, and he turned his green gaze on mine.  “I just wanted to say, regardless how the wolves, or the Otherwolves see you. . . I think your features are very striking.  I-in a good way,” I added quickly.  
	He gave me a long, searching look, tilting his head just slightly.  I felt like something had shifted in his gaze, like he was seeing something differently than before.  Whatever it was, he said nothing for a long moment, then simply gave a ‘hmm’ of consideration.
	My stomach did that thing it does sometimes where it felt like it had lifted inside me, but it wasn’t quite discomfort.  I’m not sure what it was.  Apprehension, certainly.  Why?  It had just been a simple compliment.
	Maybe because he was a stranger.  A man outside my tribe.  A foreigner?  But that didn’t mean I shouldn’t show kindness towards him.  Or indeed, in this case, honesty.
	Had I needed to say that to show kindness, though?
	Probably not, I decided.  But I’d wanted to.  And for some reason I hadn’t hesitated, like I normally would have.  I’d really wanted to compliment him.  So I had.  It was done, and it had felt right.  Maybe I just wanted to comfort someone else with mixed blood, who knew the sting of looking different.  Nothing could be wrong there.
	What I didn’t expect was for him to answer me the way he did.
	“You’re a rather striking fellow yourself, Tulimak,” he said after a considerable silence had passed between the two of us.  There was a quiet, careful hesitance to his voice, which he kept rather low.  But when I turned to look down at him, he was staring back at me, smiling coolly.
	I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just muttered a quiet ‘thank you’, and we made our way to the river.
	
	Chapter 4 – Unfamiliar Waters

	For the rest of the afternoon, I could feel the canine’s eyes on my back, whenever I wasn’t looking at him.  You get a sensation for that sort of thing even as a predatory species, an awareness that you’re being sized up.  Any time I turned to regard Finnegan, he’d just smile wanly at me, apparently neither ashamed of being caught, nor too awkward to lock eyes with me.  The man was never awkward, which for someone like me, would have been miraculous character growth.  For him, it seemed effortless.  Even while we took the mile-long hike down the riverbed towards where I’d stowed my raft, with nothing but precarious deer trails and ice-slicked stone and mud, he moved with a confidence that belied his size, (and if I’m being honest, his physical abilities).  That’s not to say his footing was always stable, he just never seemed deterred.
	But then, I was fast learning that Finnegan was the sort of man whose every step had purpose, or at least, that was certainly the impression he wanted to make.  I wasn’t well versed with the world, but I’d always thought myself to be a good judge of character.  Since I’d met him, he’d wasted no time in deducing who I was, how I might be able to help him, and he’d told me just enough about himself and his task to ensnare me, but little more.  I didn’t begrudge him any of that, nor did I doubt his sincerity.  The men hunting him had been proof enough that he truly needed help, and he spoke so passionately about his cause, I had to believe it was genuine.  But I’d be a fool to be led around by a man I’d met a day ago without at least taking stock of what he’d permitted me to know, and what else might remain unsaid.
One thing was very clear.  This was a wolf. . . dog?  Wolfdog?  With a clear direction in life.  My otterfa would have called him ‘driven’.  That intense gaze of his was a permanent fixture, and it suited his equally intense personality.  Even while injured and so clearly far from the society he called home across the sea, he managed to keep that confident air about him.  And no matter how hard I squinted, I honestly couldn’t tell if it was an act, or if he was truly possessing of the certainty he put off.
	Despite this, he wasn’t lacking for charm, either.  Helping my otterfa at the trade posts over the years, I’d met plenty of independent, confident lone men.  And while I respected the sort of assuredness it took to venture off into the wilds and trap for months at a time, alone, they didn’t tend to be much for conversation, and their demeanor was usually what I’d call ‘gruff’ at best.  Finnegan was generally pretty merry and pleasant to talk to, when you weren’t discussing his much-loathed kindred across the seas.  As we walked, he talked to me about a great many things, none of any real importance, just light conversation.  Fish, for one.  Because I’m boring, and we were near the water, so of course I talked about fish. . . but it didn’t matter that I was boring, or that I earnestly took a delight in explaining the spawning habits of salmon, because he listened to me enrapt all the same.  I suppose to him, my very mundane life here might have been exotic.
	I wasn’t usually much of a talker.  Even with my family, I’d always favored listening.  But in the short afternoon we spent together readying for our trip, I found I couldn’t bear the silence that would occasionally pass between us.  I’m not sure if it was an anxious need to fill the space with words because I was traveling with a stranger, or if it had more to do with the fact that he seemed to want to listen to me as much as I usually gave way to listen to others.  Finn was not lacking in questions for me to field, or anecdotes of his own, (yes, even about fish) but when I’d say something, whether it was about food, the trip or whatever else came to mind, his big black ears would snap up and he’d look at me and listen.  It was oddly thrilling to have the foreigner’s attention.  I’d barely ever spoken this much to anyone outside my tribe, let alone someone from another land.  And if he was merely feigning interest, he was doing a convincing job.  
	The mile hike up the river took a few hours, primarily due to the fresh snow and ice, and the occasional breaks we had to take for Finnegan to rest.  I was carrying all of our possessions by then.  He obviously didn’t have the endurance for travel that I had, but it was more than that.  His injury was bothering him.  He clearly didn’t want me to notice, but I could tell.
	We came to a stop near the upturned, gnarled roots of a fallen spruce that had grown too close to the banks of the widening river.  Nearby was a clutch of birch, a trio of the young, peeling white trees.  My marker.  I began sniffing about.
	Finnegan gave a heavy sigh as he lowered himself to sit on a curled root that absolutely would not have supported my weight.  He brushed off the fresh snow first, apparently not so exhausted that he was willing to have a cold, wet rear.  I heard him wince even though I wasn’t looking his way at that moment, a low, almost imperceptible whine through his teeth.
	I turned to regard him sympathetically.  “I hope it’s not a broken tailbone,” I murmured.
	“Not hardly,” he assured me.  “I didn’t fall that hard.  It’s more in my hip, in any case.  Sort of twinges down my leg, and I can feel it in my back whenever I have to stretch or bend,” he sighed, looking frustrated.  His green gaze flicked up to mine.  “You must think me quite the fragile lad.  Can’t even take a slight spill in an alley.”
	“You fell on cobblestones,” I felt my brow crease, and immediately tried to unfurrow it.  It always made me self-conscious for some reason when I could feel the folds of fur on my face.  So unlike my sleek-furred family members.  I plodded over towards him and sunk down to one knee, putting a hand on his shoulder gingerly as I took stock of the way he was sitting.  As if I’d glean some way to help.  I was hardly a healer. 
	He glanced at my paw on him, and I realized how big my hand looked against his lean, small shoulder.  I withdrew it, immediately.
	“Why do you do that?”  He asked suddenly.
	To say I was caught off-guard was an understatement.  I hadn’t expected him to. . . to call me out for the transgression.  I’d removed my hand-
	“I-I’m sorry,” I said, humiliated, looking anywhere but him.  “I shouldn’t have touched you without your permiss-“
	He snorted.  Actually snorted.  It was a laugh, I realized after a moment.  And a pretty undignified one.  When I looked up at him, he wasn’t bothering to cover it, either.
	“Not that,” he guffawed.  “I’d say we’re pretty well past impropriety at this point.  You scraped me off the ground while I was getting the shite kicked out of me by two blokes in a back alley.  You’ve been helping me carry my overstuffed satchel all day, and soon we’ll be sharing what I suspect will be tight confines on a. . . is it like a canoe?”  He guessed.
	“It’s a timber raft,” I said, my long claws itching at my palms where they were curled.  
	“Lovely,” he said, unconvincingly.  “Well look, regardless of my accommodations while traveling with you, they’re a fine sight better than dead.  Which is what I’d be without your intervention.  So you have absolutely earned the right for an occasional companionable pat on the shoulder.”  He chuckled.  “Really, more, if you want.”
	I arched an eyebrow at him.  Sometimes his comments didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  Cultural differences, I suppose.  “So. . . I haven’t offended you. . . .”  I ventured.
	He rolled his eyes, and stiffly got to his feet.  “No, Tulimak, you haven’t offended me.”  He sighed after a brief pause following that statement, like something I’d said, or not said, was exhausting him.  “Damned if you’re not a hard bloke to read.”  He muttered the last part as he headed towards the bank of the river, flexing his unclad toes in the rocky, wet soil near the edge of the water.  I couldn’t help but notice the way the shallow tendrils of water trapped in crevices along the banks were beginning to freeze.
	“We should try to make some progress with what’s left of the day,” I said, abruptly fixing my mind on the task ahead.  Travel, I could do.  I knew how to travel.  I knew this river.  Navigating this new friendship would have to wait.
	I heard his footsteps crunching through loose stone and ice as I moved off towards the clutch of birch trees.  “How much more of a walk, then?”  He asked, his voice fading a bit into the wind as I put some distance between us.  It was going to snow again tonight.  I could smell it.
	I felt around in the fresh snow with my foot, until I found what I was looking for.  A forked stick, half-buried in the frozen soil.  I reached down and wrapped both paws around it, and began to pull upwards.
	“What in God’s name are you-“ he began, then gasped audibly as the snow spread before me in a wide patch began to shiver and lift upwards, sliding down off the buried, half-frozen expanse of stretched hide I’d laid out days ago over my possessions.  It was actually the watertight, cured skin of two bull moose, sewn together with beaver skin cording.  It was a simple tent, really, or at least it made up the roof of the lean-to I used when I slept.  It would come in handy tonight, if my guess on the weather panned out.  It was simple, just a large hide really, but it served to keep the elements out and went up quickly.  It also made for a good cover to hide my things under.
	I shook the cumbersome hide out as well as I could, unknotting it from where I’d tied it to the unique stick.  Good thing I’d anticipated the snow, without the marker it might have been hard to find.  I heard Finn approaching from behind me, padding carefully through the snow-covered underbrush.  “Is that-“ he began.
	“My cache,” I said with a grin, looking down proudly on my hidden treasure.  My raft had weathered the cold well, it didn’t look like any of the lashings had snapped, and nothing had gotten at the frozen canvas sacks I’d buried in the snow alongside it, which I happened to know were full of salmon I’d saved for my own enjoyment on the trip home.
	Finnegan seemed less impressed, his ears drooping a fraction.  
	“What’s wrong?”  I asked, looking down at him.
	“I-I just, I don’t mean to offend,” he gestured helplessly at the lashed timbers.  “But it’s. . . it’s just timbers tied together.  There are holes, even.  Spaces.”
	“Here and there,” I shrugged.  “I’m sorry it’s not a canoe, but my father can’t spare those.  And anyway, they’re too small for me.”
	“Will it even float?”  He asked dejectedly.
	I chuckled.  “How do you think I got here?  I’ll show you, but I’m going to need your help launching it, and we need to be ready to get onboard once we’ve got it to the bank, alright?  Help me find the oars, they’re buried around here somewhere. . . .”
	I began digging about, as he asked almost disbelievingly, “ ‘Oars’?”
	“Well, yes,” I said.  “We’re traveling up-river.  It’s not a fast-moving river, but we’ll still need to row.”
	“And you were going to do this alone?!”  
	“To be honest, this is my first time making this trip alone,” I admitted.  His expression following that was so aghast as to be almost comical.  I tried not to laugh, and only half succeeded.  “Don’t worry,” I tried to assure him, patting his slumped shoulder again, this time with more confidence.  “I promise you, it won’t be as hard as it sounds.”

	“So if I-nnhh. . . said. . . at any point. . . that this is harder than you made it sound,” the wolfdog grunted again as he sunk his oar into the cold, churning river, “would that be trite?”
	“Sorry, I never learned that word,” I called back over my shoulder at him.  “Is it another way to say ‘whining’?”
	There was a marked pause from my companion, followed by a quieter, “Touche.”
	“That one I definitely don’t know,” I informed him chipperly.  I couldn’t help my sudden good mood.  It was just so great to get out on the water again.  There was such familiarity in it, such comfort.  The river wasn’t exactly ‘home’, but it had been a constant companion throughout my life.  Indeed, it had brought me to my eventual adoptive family.  In a way, it had delivered me to my parents, like a healer bringing forth life into the world.
	Finnegan seemed less enamored.
	From the moment he’d set foot on my raft, unstable and panic-stricken by the time I settled my bulk aboard, he’d found more and more reasons to be dissatisfied.  His clothing wasn’t suited for long periods of sitting and crouching, and looked to be made of cotton and wool, so it would soak up the cold water.  And there was simply no way to avoid getting a little wet now and then on the raft.  I wore a water-resistant breech cloth and a cloak I could tie back when I was on the river, and that was about it.  Just like my otter family.  To be fair though, our fur was made for the water and the cold.  Mine somewhat less-so than my otter brethren, but still far better suited than Finn’s seemed to be.  Even now, as I glanced back briefly at him, he looked miserable and shrunken in on himself.  Coupled with the fact that he was underweight for any man, woman or child living in the north in the winter, he’d suffer from the cold on this trip.  We’d have to make frequent stops so he could warm himself by a fire.  And once the snow started falling, we’d have a whole new problem.
	As unfortunate as it had seemed at the time, our meeting in the alley might have been fate.  I don’t think he would have made this trip on his own.  A lot of foreigners tended to underestimate the winters in this part of the country.  
	Well, that confident air about him had lasted all of the walk here, at least.  The realities of traveling by river looked to be dampening his spirits.
	“That wasn’t even Amurescan,” he assured me with a sigh.  “I don’t know why I expected you’d know it.”
	“What language is it?”  I asked, hoping that perhaps conversation might cheer him up some.  Luckily or unluckily for us, some of the fastest-flowing waters were actually here, closer to this part of the river.  We had a few hours navigating through the worst of it, (which wasn’t even that bad this time of year, really, not like in the spring during the melt).  It was unfortunate that it would be over the first leg of the trip, but at least we wouldn’t have to be rowing so hard through a winter storm.
	“A dead one,” he said, and I heard him dipping his oar back in.  I’d had to slow to match his pace, which was fine.  The water was choppy, but we weren’t moving against a particularly fast current, and I was enjoying watching the scenery go by.  This close to Otherwolf land, we were passing a lot of game trails, homesteaders and even a few other canoes and rafts.  None of the famed Otherwolf barges yet, though.  I’d been hoping to see one.
	I nodded.  “There are a lot of words, phrases and paoken- that’s hand-signs- we use in our tribe that are from tribes that no longer exist.  Lost to time, to disease or famine, or. . . .”
	“. . . to us?”  He guessed accurately.
	“Well not you, specifically,” I reasoned.
	“Look, I know this isn’t worth much,” he raised his voice to speak up just enough that I could hear him clearly over the sound of the oars and the water, “but you don’t need to do that, alright?  Excuse it all.  Just let me apologize, whether it changes anything or not.  We both know what’s been happening to your people at the hands of mine,” he said it matter-of-factly, his voice dipping to a regretful tone.  “I’d rather not pretend otherwise.  Even if I haven’t personally had a hand in it, it seems. . . I don’t know. . . disingenuous to tiptoe around it like you’re worried about offending me.”
	I was silent for a while, uncertain what to say.  My impulse was to again assure him he bore no guilt, but the truth was, that wasn’t entirely what I felt in my heart.  The Otherwolves were all benefiting from their incursions into our land, whether they intended to or not.  And just because I liked some of the things they’d introduced us to, and my father had decided to adopt many of them, didn’t mean my otter tribe wouldn’t still be better off if they didn’t have to worry constantly about losing their land.
	“Well then,” I cleared my throat,”for whatever it’s worth coming from a tribal orphan, because I can’t speak for my adopted family. . . I’d rather none of that get in the way of our friendship.”
	“Fair enough,” he replied, and I felt him shifting his weight around, likely to avoid the water splashing up between two particularly gnarled and ill-fitted logs that ran the length of the raft.  The water always found its way up between those two. . . I’d have to seal them better when I got home.
	“You know,” Finn said, breaking me out of my thoughts, “you said your lineage was mixed, but you never mentioned being adopted.  Makes me feel a bit foolish for complaining about my family.”  He paused.  “I mean, not really.  I meant everything I said about the man who sired me.  But still.  I was at least raised by my mother.”
	“As was I,” I said with the briefest of smiles.  I couldn’t help it.  Thoughts of her always brought with them a certain warmth, like sunlight in the morning.  “I lost my blood mother very young.  My adoptive mother was all I ever could have asked for, though.  I don’t feel I’ve been denied anything.”
	“How old were you when you lost her, if you don’t mind me asking?”  He asked gingerly.  
	“We returned her to the earth two springs ago,” I replied.
	He didn’t ask me how she died.  I was glad for that.
	“. . . it was more like three years, for me,” he said after a time.  “Feels so much more recent.”
	I had no reply for that.  I felt exactly the same, some days more acutely than others.
	“But, so,” he paused, “that must have been your adopted mother, then.  If it was only a few years ago.”
	He seemed confused, so I clarified, “She’s the only mother I’ve ever known.  She’ll always be my mother.  Just as the man who took me in will always be my father.”
	“Oh,” he was silent a beat.  “Do you ever think about them?  Your real parents?”
	“My real parents were-“
	“Alright, I get it,” he sighed.  “Your blood parents, then.”
	“Of course I do,” I said softly.  “What they might have looked like, how they might have raised me, what it would have been like to grow up in their clan. . . but. . . it just wasn’t to be.  Whatever befell them, the river spirits saw to it that I was guided safely into another life.  I try to be grateful for that, and not think about what might have been.”
	He didn’t reply for a time, and then he coughed, a smile in his voice.  “You’ll forgive me for not entirely buying that horse shit.  You’re an overthinker.  I’ve known you half a day and I’ve yet to watch you make a single decision without some degree of agony.”
	I rolled my eyes.  “Alright, yes, fine.  I think about it all the time.  I don’t know that I’ll ever. . . not wonder at what might have been.”
	“Understandable,” he said knowingly.  “A life denied is a hard thing to come to terms with.”
	“I was being earnest about being grateful, though,” I insisted.  “It’s not that I feel I should have had more, I just. . . it’s more wondering about what could have been different.”
	“Nothing wrong with wanting more,” he said, shaking his oar out as it caught in something below the water’s surface.  I turned when I heard him grunt, and watched him struggle with it for a few moments.  “Snagged,” he got out between grit teeth as he struggled with it.
	“Could be a sunken tree, or fishing nets,” I said, turning my bulk carefully so I could lean closer to him without tipping the raft too badly.  I put my oar down, then reached over him and moved my arms alongside his, taking hold near his hands so I could test how thoroughly it was stuck.
	“Definitely a fallen tree or something of the like,” I confirmed as I shifted my grip to knock the oar beneath the water’s surface against whatever it was snagged on.  I looked down at the canine’s black muzzle from above, and saw his green-eyed gaze drift upwards towards me for a moment.  I moved in closer against his back and gripped one of his hands with my own, guiding it so he could move the oar as I had.  “See?”  I directed.  “See how it moves cleanly to the side then stops abruptly?  If it were snagged on a net, it wouldn’t ‘knock’ like that.  It’s caught against something.  Probably roots or interlocked branches.  Snags feel more like you’re pulling something.  See?”
	“Hmm,” he hummed, testing the oar again.  His back pressed against my cloaked chest, and at first I thought he meant to lean into me as leverage to pull the oar out, so I braced my arms against his to help.
	“Turn the oar,” I suggested.  “Whatever you’ve gotten it lodged in, it must have found a way in to begin with.  You just need to find the angle it’ll come loose at.”
	He didn’t bother with the oar, though.  If anything, his grip on it relaxed.  
	“You’re warm,” he murmured.
	I sucked in a breath.  “Wh-“
	The churning water a foot from our raft exploded, a sound cracking out across the river and the surrounding countryside.  At first, my instincts screamed that it must be cracking ice.  But it was louder, more like thunder.  And of course, the river wasn’t frozen over.  It took me longer than it should have to register what it was I’d heard, and what had happened.  By then, Finn was at rapt attention, and was grabbing me by the cloak, pulling me.
	“Get down!”  He snapped, and I struggled to comply, flattening myself as much to the surface of the raft as he was.  Which wasn’t accomplishing much.  I was too big to take cover behind our lashed-down bags like he was.  
	“Finn, I can’t-“ I felt panic freezing up my body.  “Who’s shooting at us?!”
	“Someone must have followed us from town,” he deduced rather obviously, his eyes scanning the nearby riverbanks.  Of course, he was right.  I just wasn’t thinking rationally.  “Make your silhouette smaller,” he commanded me fiercely.  “As flat as you bloody well can!”
	“I’m trying,” I whispered, not sure why I couldn’t get my voice out full-throated.  It’s not like keeping my voice low would help us.  The reality of our situation was settling in fast, and fear was seizing my body.  We were almost in the very center of the river, the only object in what was essentially a clear line of sight from every shore.  And the shores here were thick with pine and spruce, debris from the river and brush, all with a fresh coat of snow.  Finn at least must have thought the shot came from the right bank, but that still left a lot of ground our attacker could be firing from.  And if they were camouflaged well enough we’d never see them.
	What’s worse, even if we did, we’d have to slowly make our way to shore while getting shot at before we could do anything to defend ourselves.  And our oar was stuck!
	“They probably followed us from town and waited until the right moment to jump us,” he spat.  “We gave them a perfect chance, going out on the water. . . damn.  Tulimak, grab my-“
	Another shot crackled across the cold landscape, this one gone far wider than the first, puncturing the water ahead of us.  Finnegan and I both flattened ourselves to the raft regardless.
	I glanced past his prone form to where I was still gripping the oar in one hand, and considered releasing it.  I’d lose an oar, but. . . .
	“I’m going to let go,” I told him.  “At least if we let the current take us, we’ll be a moving target.”
	“No, keep us steady,” he said between grit teeth, and turned to his stomach, crawling a foot or so past me and reaching out for where his satchel was leaning against our supply bags.
	“Why?”  I asked, uncertainly.  The bulk of our bags, mostly full of carrots, potatoes and frozen fish, were all the cover we had out here.  He couldn’t reach past them for his satchel, so I inched my arm out to do so for him, pulling the strap to his hand
	“Hang on, I’m counting,” he said distractedly, pulling his satchel clumsily towards himself, the strap snagging a few times on the uneven surface of the raft.
	Ten seconds later, something struck one of our bags and blew off chunks of canvas, potato and I swear, some of the fur along my back.  Through the shock of it, I barely felt the pain.
	“A little under thirty seconds,” he gave a ‘tch’ noise between his teeth, as he dug into his deep beaverskin bag.  “Fucking cocker. . . got to be a percussion musket.  That or he’s a better loader than he is a shot.”
	“What?!”  Was all I could say.
	He finally yanked something out of his bag. . . the pistol I’d seen him with that night, I realized.  He was either masterfully falsifying confidence again, or he knew what he was doing with it, too, because not a moment after he’d gotten it free, he began frantically tinkering with it.  It looked like he was opening it up?  For all the little I knew about fighting, I knew even less about guns.
	“It means it’s a nice weapon,” he clarified.  “An expensive one.  Someone other than the foxes is hunting me.  If they’d had a gun like that, they’d have used it.”
	“I thought you said you had no ammunition!”  I exclaimed.  “Why bother with yours?”
	He took a moment to inspect the weapon once more before closing it up, seeming content.  “Good, still dry.  What do you think I spent the last of my coin on?”
	He risked lifting his head after that, peering over one of the sacks of frozen fish.  I began to beg him to get down, when another shot skipped across the water, this one coming close like the first, but not managing to peg our raft as the last had.  My back felt wet.
	“Got him,” he growled out, and stood.
	Before I could do anything- as if there was anything I could do in this situation, a thunderously loud noise broke from his outstretched hand, far louder than I’d ever imagined up close.  He held the weapon out still and straight in front of him, like he was a stone statue pointing towards some distant horizon.  I had never actually seen a gun fired so close to me before.  It looked and felt like a pronouncement.  That’s the best way I can honestly think to describe it.
	There was a very distant noise I could only barely hear over the sound of the river and the pounding of blood in my ears.  It might have been a voice.  If it was, they were none too happy by the sound of it.
	“Nicked him at best,” he snarled, letting his pistol fall at his side.  “Tulimak, can you get us moving?  I don’t know if that’s put him off entirely.”
	I nodded numbly and re-focused my attention on the oar, turning it in my palm like a key, until I found the right angle to free it.  As it came away, I pushed myself to my knees and grabbed the other oar, spinning them both up into the air then digging back into the water for the most powerful stroke I could manage.  
	We were getting out of here as fast as my arms would take us.
	The hunter took no further shots at us as we began moving upriver again, this time at a much less leisurely pace.  We traveled in silence for a time, Finnegan facing down-river all the while, his ears pivoting from place to place, gaze firmly fixed on the banks we’d left behind.
	“He shot at us four or five times,” I said at length.  “You got him in one.”
	I’d meant it as a compliment, but he only shook his head.  “No, I didn’t,” he said regretfully.  “I took too long to aim.  He was taking cover when I got my shot off.  I might have grazed his shoulder, but that’s all.  I’ll take it, though.  Looks like he’s thought the better of it.  You can probably slow down.”
	“This is the least I can do,” I shook my head.  “I was no help, and I was supposed to be the one protecting you.”
	“Yeah, well I’m sure the only reason they waited to take me out was because I had a big bear with me on land,” he tried to assure me.  “Besides, I essentially used you as a blind.  Oh, hell. . . Tulimak,” he kneeled down suddenly, and I felt his paw on my back.  I winced when it found its way to where that burning wet feeling was.  His paw came away bloody.
	“My winter coat and skin are thick there,” I insisted at his look of worry.  “I hardly feel it.”
	“You’re bleeding everywhere,” he said, looking down at his bloody palm, ears tipped back.  “Please don’t lie to me.  I-I don’t have any medical. . . shite, are you going to make it?”
	I actually laughed, only wincing a little.  “I know this is hard for you to imagine,” I insisted, “but I really am fine.  It’s going to bleed, but I can feel it didn’t penetrate deep.  My body is different than yours.  I have more I can afford to lose.”
	“I’d heard bear and some big predators were a bit more durable,” he said uncertainly, his paw gingerly stroking my shoulder near, but not over, where I’d been grazed.  “Are you sure?”
	“I wouldn’t play hero,” I said soothingly.  “Look, if you want to help, tear off some clean cloth from my bag, I have a spare breech cloth there.  Press it to the wound for awhile and it ought to help stop the bleeding.”
	He started looking through my bag diligently, murmuring as he did.  “Hurt yourself often?  You sound experienced.”
	“Like I said, my skin is thicker than yours,” I said, pausing and stabilizing the oars long enough to unclasp and remove my cloak.  “I scratch and tear it up sometimes without realizing it.  Especially in the winter, when I’ve fattened up some and my winter coat comes in.”
	“We truly live in different worlds,” he chuckled nervously, the conversation lightening the moment for both of us despite the fear we both clearly still felt.  “In Amuresca no one would intentionally fatten themselves up for a season.  It’s the land of. . . corsets and girdles. . . .” I heard him tearing cloth, and soon he was pressing a small bundle to my back.
	Silence passed between us for a time.  “This is a first, though,” I said.  “I’ve hurt myself plenty over the years, being as big and cumbersome as I am, it happens, you know?  But I’ve never been shot.”
	“The musket ball itself didn’t do this,” he said.  “You’re lucky.  It probably grazed our bags and caught you with debris of some kind.  Trust me, if you’d actually been shot, a little fat and thick skin wouldn’t have made much of a difference.  We’d be dealing with a whole different problem, now.”
	“I’ve seen a bad gunshot injury before,” I said quietly.
	He was still pressing the cloth to my wound, but his free hand was gingerly stroking my opposite shoulder.  It was unnecessary, but I found I quite liked it, so I didn’t ask him to stop.
	“I’m sorry this is happening,” he said at length, voice laced with honest regret.  “I-I didn’t mean to get anyone else involved.”
	“I’m glad I did,” I replied emphatically.  “I’m no warrior. . . obviously. . . but whatever good I might be to you on this leg of your trip, I’m glad to give.”
	“How can you say that?”  He asked incredulously.
	“If what you said was true, I know I’ll have done something important with my life,” I explained.  “Even if just for a few days.  These people you’re trying to help, I’ll have played some small part in that.  I’m so used to receiving good will, it’s high time I paid some of it back.”
	“It’s all true,” he said solidly, squeezing my good shoulder.  “You can be assured of that.”
	“I believe you,” I nodded.  I glanced back at him, managing to smile a bit through the discomfort.  “You talk about your. . . quest. . . like a hero of song.  No one could doubt your passion.”
	“Ha,” he huffed, his ears tipping back, muzzle lowering somewhat.  “I don’t know about all that.  I’m. . . this whole thing was borne from self-interest.”
	“It clearly isn’t in your self-interest to keep pursuing it now,” I pointed out.
	“I don’t know,” he said vaguely.  “Sometimes I just don’t know my own mind well.  Maybe it’s. . . anger. . . that’s kept me going?  Lord, that sounds awful.  I know I’m not nearly as charitable as your sweet words make it sound, though.”
	I leaned back to look at him over my now bare shoulder.  His hand was still resting on it.  “I think,” I said carefully, “that it’s probably natural to have doubts, given what’s happened?  I have doubts all the time, over everything, really.  But, this is extraordinary.  What you’re doing.”
	“What we’re doing,” he corrected me.
	“I’m a glorified ferryman,” I reasoned.  
	“You got hurt helping me,” he said, again with that woeful tone.  He looked up at me, eyes wide.  “It’s a small list, the people who’ve bothered that much on my account.”
	It seemed a dramatic statement, but much like his many other dramatic statements, it sounded sincere.  And that thought made my chest twinge, not unlike it did when I saw one of my younger siblings get hurt.  I wanted to make it not so.
	This was why I wanted to help him, I realized.  Why I’d continued to help him since we met, despite my better judgment.
	Why I was well and truly in trouble.
	I forced myself to look away, down the expanse of river ahead of us.  “Did you see who he was?”  I asked, partially filling silence, partially because I was honestly curious. 
	“The hunter who shot at us?”  He asked.  “Not well.  He wasn’t a fox, the tail was wrong.  He was wearing a pale cloak of some sort, which doesn’t bode well.”
	“Why?”  I asked, confused.
	“Means he was prepared enough to camouflage himself against the snow,” he said.  “Means he’s a professional.  At least, more so than the lads in town.  He looked tan, what little of his face and tail I caught.  Other than that, it was hard to tell.”
	“How did you know he’d be on the right bank?”  I asked, remembering.
	“I guessed,” he shrugged.  “Accurately, as it turns out.  Town was on the right side, and we hadn’t passed any bridges.”
	His answer was simple, but impressed me all the same.  I wasn’t always capable of such insight.  Not without more time to think it over.
	“How was his tail shaped?”  I asked suddenly, something occurring to me.
	“Long,” he paused.  “Longer than a canine’s, anyway.”
	“And tan?”  I snuffed out a puff of warm air into the chill.  Cold was slowly gripping my body, but not because of the temperature.
	“. . . you have a thought,” he surmised.
	“It sounds like a lion hunter,” I said, not able to hide the edge in my voice.  
	“There are lions here?”  He honestly sounded as though he hadn’t known.
	I nodded.  “They haven’t kept to tribes for years.  Tend to be solitary, stick to family hunting parties, or take up residence with a different species’ tribe.  There aren’t many of them left in these parts, but I know a few who come to trade with us from time to time.”
	“. . . and?”  He pressed after a few moments.
	“You should hope it’s the young lion who traps game in the mountains,” I told him.  “And not a lioness.”
	“I certainly couldn’t distinguish their gender,” he sighed.  “I just. . . assumed it was a man.  Why?”
	“If it’s a well-armed mountain lioness in these parts, it’s probably Odina,” I said solemnly.  “She is not a woman you want hunting you.”
	“Ideally I don’t want anyone hunting me,” he chuckled, then cleared his throat, his tone sobering.  “But you look worried.  I’m guessing I should be worried.”
	I nodded sagely, still not turning to face him.  I could feel him grow tense though, through his hand.
	We passed the longest time in silence following that since we’d met.  Despite the palpable air of fear we were sharing, which had been bound to catch up with us eventually after our brief bravado following the near-death incident, Finn stayed close at my side.  Eventually he was shoulder-to-shoulder with me, close enough that I could feel him shivering.  I couldn’t reach out to him as he had to me though.  Not if I wanted to keep rowing.
	My shoulder was beginning to ache, and the first drifts of snow were touching down and disappearing on the water’s surface, when he finally spoke up again.  I’m not sure how long it had been.  Hours.
	“If I am to die in the coming days,” he said softly, “at least it will be in good company.”
	“I’m not as prepared for death as you seem to be,” I admitted, letting the vulnerability I felt slip into my tone.  “So let’s try to avoid it, if we can.  Maybe you injured her.  Maybe she’s given up.  Maybe it’s not even her.”
	“Maybe,” he conceded.  But I could tell he was only saying it for my sake.
	That prompted me to look down at him where he was hunkered against my side.  He’d drawn most of his body into his coat, feet pressed together, ears limp.  The shivering when it came was sporadic, but pronounced.
	Taking only a moment longer to decide, I pulled one of the oars up, and began to twist the other.  “We’re going to make camp,” I declared.
	“Have we put enough distance between us and her?”  He asked, glancing behind us.
	“I honestly don’t know,” I confessed.  “But I need to rest my shoulder.”
	It was true, but it wasn’t why I wanted to make camp, and I think he knew that.  Still, he didn’t question me.  He just moved closer against me, took up the other oar, and nodded.