Blood-sniffer led them up the crest of a sparsely treed slope, then northward along it, pausing often to sniff the wind. Again they heard howls, but there was no answer this time. The wolf stopped, nose turning back and forth, then it spun and stared at Joe.
Joe gestured sharply, and following his example, Ryan and J.B. crouched in the high shrubbery. Both of them drew their handblasters. Blood-sniffer bounded again, and peering through the screen of foliage, Ryan saw the beast stop between two trees and utter a low bark. He leveled his weapon toward it.
Instantly another bark answered, and a big, shaggy wolf padded out of the gloom. It was equal in size and weight to Blood-sniffer, but it seemed older.
The two animals sniffed each other’s anus, both growling theatrically. Then the older wolf fell on its back, exposing its belly. Blood-sniffer obligingly closed its jaws around the submissive wolfs throat for the briefest of seconds.
The older wolf got to its feet, and the two animals exchanged whines and half-barking grunts for a few seconds. The newcomer slunk away into the night, heading southward down the wooded slope.
Ryan lowered the SIG-Sauer as their wolf guide loped back to them. Its eyes shone brilliantly, and the one-eyed man realized the animal had sent its brother off on the wrong trail. Blood-sniffer had obviously lied so it could keep its promise to the humans.
They rose and followed the beast nearly a mile along the crest of the ridge. Blood-sniffer led them down the face of the slope to a fire-scarred break in the trees and stopped, muzzle pointing downward. Below the slope was a curve in the river, and beside the waterway on the opposite side of it glimmered the lights of the Wolf Soldier encampment. A massive log, embedded deeply in the soft banks of the river, stretched across the water course. The bark had long been worn away by human and animal feet.
Bonfires burned brightly between the conical tepees. The camp sprawled before and below them like rows upon rows of hide-covered church steeples. The tepees were arranged in two loose concentric circles, one surrounding the other. The smell of cooking meat was carried to them by the breeze. To one side of the village Ryan saw a herd of hobbled horses, and on the other were racks that bore stretching hides.
Figures came and went past the fires, into the shelters and out of them. Not all the figures were human. Men, women, children and wolves walked together across the encampment, mingling, jostling, trotting. At a quick count Ryan estimated there were an equal number of animals and people.
Surveying the terrain, he saw a slight incline that rose about an eighth of a mile beyond the outer circle of tepees. The incline butted up against the base of a rocky mountain rampart. Tumbles of stones, some bigger than the tepees, reared out of the earth. Torchlight flared at the outer border of the outcropping, and men in wolf skins patrolled the perimeter.
Between the gargantuan boulders, Ryan glimpsed an opening. He could see it easily because light shimmered from ita vague, unreal, quivering glow.
The glow throbbed, a ghostly light, pulsing with an eerie phosphorescence. Ryan discovered that if he focused his vision directly on it, the light seemed to fade, becoming like a faintly luminous mist. He could see it clearly only if he cast his eye away from it slightly.
Joe followed his gaze, put the sender to his head and indicated that Ryan should do the same.
Yes, that is the entrance to the cavern. The light is only the feeble outer glow from the cavern core, deep within. It was never guarded until recently. Sisoka’s doing.
Ryan felt a sharp wonder. The pulsing light indicated a powerful energy, maybe exactly of the type Mildred had theorized. And even if it wasn’t, it was still powerful enough to have inspired awe and fear for countless generations. He was reminded of an old predark metaphor “lightning in a bottle.” If Joe’s tale was only partially true, then he was actually looking at “creation in a bottle.”
Joe’s thoughts intruded. “I see Sisoka’s lodge, but we cannot enter the camp openly.