When the hunting was good, the pack was fat and happy, and when the hunting was bad, they were lean and quick to anger. This was the truth, and none argued it. The pack knew that famine always ended and the game returned to the Prairie, bringing with it a period of restfulness and confidence. Then wolf packs would war over territory and individual wolves would war over she-wolves, and life would be easy. In between these golden times were the times of hunger, when there was little game on the Prairie. Then the pack worked as a whole, tracking down what little remained and waiting for the hunting to improve.
Lyxcol knew himself to be a well-respected pack leader. When Kcgeir, the previous pack leader, had aged past his prime, Lyxcol had challenged him and run him out of the pack. He had then taken Nyqia, acknowledged the most beautiful of she-wolves, as his mate, and named Akhlan as his pack-second. He and Akhlan had always worked together well, and the pack had prospered in the past few turns of the seasons. Many litters of pups had been born, including Nyqia's first -- seven in all, large for a wolf litter. Lyxcol had strutted for half a moon-shift, until he had caught Akhlan laughing at him (covertly, of course, but laughing just the same). It was lucky for Akhlan that he was pack-second, for Lyxcol did not like to be laughed at.
Lyxcol's friend and pack-second, Akhlan, knew he was lucky to be who he was and to live when he did. In his lifetime, game had always been plentiful and delightfully easy to catch. He was pack-second of the largest pack on the Prairie. As pack-second, he was second in respect only to Lyxcol and lovely silver-furred, ebony-eyed Nyqia.
Akhlan himself did not yet have a mate. When asked, he said he was too young, although his litter-brothers all had mates already. The truth was that Akhlan had long desired Nyqia, but it was unthinkable that any wolf would challenge his pack leader's choice of mate. This was the only mar on Akhlan's happiness, for otherwise he had everything a wolf could desire: food in plenty, a warm den, and a place of respect in his pack.
Then the famine hit. Seemingly overnight, the game on the Prairie halved. And halved again. Not even the oldest of the pack seniors had ever seen such a famine. Many, many wolves of the pack went hungry; only Lyxcol, Nyqia, and Akhlan, as the highest pack members, could be assured of eating well.
Within a moon-shift, a quarter of the pack was dead of starvation. Normally, a pack would not indulge in relegating the dead to the status of food, likening it to the behavior of their despised cousins, the coyotes, but hunger was a stronger force than tradition, respect, or even kinship.
Both Lyxcol and Akhlan found themselves daily subjected to complaints from the wolves of the pack. Lyxcol heard them all with a stony melancholy, but Akhlan seemed to feel more of the pain his pack was trying to convey. When he could stand it no longer, he decided to bring the matter to Lyxcol himself.
"There is nothing we can do," Lyxcol said shortly when Akhlan had explained the situation as he saw it.
"We could move to another range," the pack-second suggested.
"No. The pack stays where it is," Lyxcol replied curtly, and walked away, ending the conversation. Inside, he was fuming. Akhlan would pick the worst time to force the issue, Lyxcol thought as he stalked back to his den. The pack leader knew his pack was dying -- he didn't need his pack-second to tell him that. And he knew there was no hope for the wolves on the open Prairie. They would never survive if they had to fight with other wolves, out of their own territory. Their only chance for survival was if they remained where they were and waited for the famine to end. They would lose lives, yes, but fewer than they would through any other course of action.
"The pack is dying," Akhlan said a few days later, once more fed up with his leader's inattentiveness to the problem, "daily our numbers grow less. In another range, there will be food to feed us all."
"The famine extends the length and breadth of the Prairie," Lyxcol answered, "and if we left our den, we would have to fight a foreign tribe for a new home."
"It's better than starving," Akhlan asserted, and was answered only by Lyxcol's shoulder as the pack leader refused to speak.
It hurt Lyxcol to see his friend turning against him over this one issue. He in his position because he knew what was right for the pack, and what was right was to stay in one place, not to gamble that they would find a free territory somewhere else -- or that any territory they might find would have more game than their present one.
Lyxcol explained his views time and time again, yet Akhlan persisted in arguing. In the pack-second's mind, the salvation of the pack lay in transferring it to another hunting range, and he tried desperately to convince Lyxcol of this. In his struggle, he found a perhaps unlikely partner: Nyqia. She shared his beliefs, and had also failed in changing Lyxcol's mind.
"He will never give in," she told him once after a fruitless argument, "and the pack will die."
"If only I could convince him," Akhlan said.
"If only ..." Nyqia agreed.
"I am pack-second, and I can do nothing to stop the starvation of my pack!" Akhlan exclaimed, "it is not right."
"Lyxcol recognizes no authority but his own."
"And because he is pack leader, we must listen to him. Because he is pack leader, there will not be a pack much longer."
"But -- but if he was not pack leader?" Nyqia asked, an implication wavering in her voice.
"If he was not --" Akhlan was struck by the audacity of her words. Lyxcol was in his prime, young and vigorous. He would have quite a few turns of the seasons as pack leader before he was old enough to be deposed.
"It was a foolish idea," Nyqia said quickly, seeing that Akhlan was too shocked to take the mental step of considering rebellion. "I know it's not possible." Akhlan nodded, and they parted, for it was time to hunt, and Nyqia always hunted with her mate.
Akhlan caught nothing that night, but ate well nonetheless, being pack-second. Yet if his stomach was content, his mind was not. He kept turning Nyqia's words over and over in his mind. If he was not pack leader ...
Was there any other solution? Lyxcol's stubbornness was the problem; if he was gone, the pack would be saved. And by the next night, Akhlan was resolved. He would deliver his pack from starvation. He would bring down the leader who by his perversity would likely kill them all. And -- although he would have denied this motive -- he would leave Nyqia free to be mate to another.
"I will challenge him," he told her determinedly before the hunt, "when we return."
"Lyxcol will kill you!" Nyqia answered.
"You suggested it," Akhlan reminded her.
"But I did not mean for you to challenge him!"
"Is there any other way?" And Nyqia was silent, for a challenge was the only way to change the pack leader.
They had all eaten, and most of the pack was settling into their dens for the night when Akhlan declared his challenge. Settling back on the spot of bare earth outside the dens, the traditional meeting-place and fighting-place of the pack, he threw back his head and howled, long and full and spine-tingling. There could be no mistaking his intent. Lyxcol, already in the den he shared with Nyqia, heard and stalked out, fur bristling.
"Traitor," he growled in a low tone when he saw the howler, "I appointed you pack-second. Is this how you seek to repay me?"
"I seek only to deliver our pack from starvation," Akhlan replied in the same voice, "by bringing them to a new hunting range, one which will feed us."
A crowd was gathering. The challenge was a surprise, but most wolves seemed to look expectantly at Akhlan, as though willing him to win. He had their support, he knew. The majority of the pack agreed that the only way to find game was to go in search of it.
"You seek to lead us into the territory of a stronger, well-fed pack," Lyxcol said, his yellow eyes glowing. Across the circle, Akhlan could see Nyqia. If he won, he would claim her as mate and treat her better than Lyxcol ever had. If? When he won ...
Lyxcol sprang. Akhlan ducked to one side, but Lyxcol was fast and pulled him to the ground. For the first time, Akhlan was truly afraid. He had not considered the consequences of losing. Wolf packs did not look favorably on losers. He would be run out of the pack and never allowed to return. With that realization now firmly, if unbiddenly, in his mind, he forced his hind legs into Lyxcol's stomach and thrashed them violently.
Lyxcol fell on his back, but he was too good a fighter to stay down for long. He wouldn't have been pack leader without that skill. He twisted and jumped to his feet, pressing Akhlan back. Why, why did it have to come to this? The opponents returned to circling, as they had at the beginning, shouting insults and threats across the circle at each other.
Was he far enough away? The lone wolf had passed the large eagle-shaped boulder which he knew marked the territory of his former pack some time ago. His throat was rasping from the frantic run for his life, and there was little water to be found during the famine. Around him lay only the dry plains, devoid of food, of shelter, of life.
How could he have lost? He stopped and listened for a moment. The baying of his pursuers had stopped; they had turned back. All had run after him, chasing him forever from his pack. All but Nyqia. He remembered her eyes, black as midnight, watching him leave. Blood had soaked his shoulder, his fur was sweat-filled, and she had looked at him, affection and pity in her eyes, and had not joined the pack to run him off.
She would surely starve, mate to that .... the wolf tried to lose the train of thought, but could not. The realization of what had happened slowly draped itself about him until he could bear it no longer.
In despair, he threw back his head and howled his anguish, his wretchedness, his desolation and hopelessness. Even those who were not wolves shivered as they heard his cry, and any wolf who heard it wondered at the soul-rending misery. An hour's run and yet a lifetime away, a silver-furred she-wolf with midnight eyes lowered her head. What was done was done.