Talking to another spellcaster was always interesting. In the case of Dura Firebringer that was particularly true, due to the opposite nature of our powers and approach, something that allowed me to compare and contrast her ideas and concepts with my own.

As such, it was late in the night when Sigmir and I finally returned to our camp, long after Adra had finished telling the orcs everything we knew about the centaurs, about their tactics and movements. Sigmir had remained quiet during my talk with the orcish shaman but I could feel a restlessness within her, getting worse as the evening progressed.

When we got back to our part of the camp, Ylva growled, getting my attention.

“There’s something we need to discuss.” she said, her growling voice quiet. It was still interesting to me, how the ability given to me by Lenore worked, allowing me to understand a language so alien to me, designed by minds quite different from my own. In this case, hearing the deep, worried meaning in the growl, gave me pause, making me wonder just what was that about, if it was the reason for the unease I had been feeling from Sigmir.

“Certainly.” I replied, waiting to see if she wanted to talk with just me, or if she wanted to include Adra and Rai as well. I took for granted that Sigmir would join us, their connection just as intimate as the one I shared with Lenore.

In my mind, I felt Lenore stir, leaving her Hallow and appearing on my shoulder when Lenore gave a soft growl, indicating a wish for privacy.

“I will make sure nobody can overhear us.” Lenore said, her magic reaching out and causing the air around us to still, enveloping us in a zone of silence. Now, what had been a slight twinge of worry in my stomach turned into something more, just from the measures they were taking. Thinking fast, I decided to add my own to them.

“I’ll help.” I muttered, reaching out and cloaking us in the shadows of night, making it hard to see and detect us. I was reasonably sure there was also a protection from scrying-magic but it would depend on the method used. But I simply hadn’t time to come up with something better, flying by the seat of my pants, using instinct and intuition to cast my spells.

“Now, what is going on.?” I asked, after giving a glance to Sigmir, noticing that she looked similarly spooked.

“The black wolves, didn’t you notice? At every turn they appear but you seem to think that the Centaurs are the threat.” Ylva growled, anger in her voice. Her words made me realise, she was right. Her pack had been attacked by black-furred wolves, Sigmir’s tribe had black-furred hunting wolves, around Yaksha had been trouble with them and, as I thought about it, even the spellcaster who had attacked Kolyug had a few of them with him, only that they had likely been implanted with Eternal Embers, similarly to the bear we had fought.

And that was only in the far north, the Centaurs that had been pushing into the windswept plains had been accompanied by black wolves, making me wonder if their attacks on the winter wolves had been as coincidental as I had thought they were, simply taking down a threat to their movement.

“You think they are connected?” I asked, my mind not quite ready to accept the conclusion Ylva implied. Her only response was a soft, slightly mocking, growl.

“Don’t you think wolves are capable? Your species-bias is showing, a bias for those looking and thinking similarly to yourself.” Ylva asked, forcing me to re-evaluate my thinking. Had I, even after meeting the winter wolves and their den, after learning from them some new magic and hearing about their history, had I really been so blind that I simply discarded the possibility that the black wolves, working with the centaurs, did so as allies instead of domesticated animals? Simply because they looked like wolves, generally acted like wolves, so unlike anything I was accustomed to seeing as “sapient”?

Apparently I had.

“I didn’t put the pieces together either.” Lenore reassured me, while my mind was struggling to realign itself with the reality I had realised. It was curious, trying to look back and see if there had been other instances of me failing to notice something, just because I thought the creatures in question were simple beasts. It made me wonder, back in Yaksha, had the wolves attacked the city because the Wind Raptors had attacked it first or had wolves and wind-raptors communicated beforehand, making their plans in coordination.

“The question is, what does it mean, especially to us?” I asked, not just Lenore but Ylva and Sigmir.

“The most relevant thing should be that our foes aren’t just the centaurs but quite possibly an alliance of two different species. We’ll have to keep an eye out, and an ear and nose.” Ylva stated, her mind focused on the immediate, practical implications.

“More than two.” I blurted out, the video of the Grandmother and her fight near Kolyug fresh in my mind.

“Did I tell you about what the Grandmother did?” I asked, my mental equilibrium still a little disturbed. Despite getting nods from the others, I continued to recount what had been reported on the Forum, couching it in suitable terms for the natives but stressing that the being had looked Human, or at least humanoid, and been a powerful spellcaster. They had seen the attack against me, in the centaur-village, giving them a vague idea of the power involved. Not that I had a better idea, not from the short clip of the fight, if you could call it that, let alone an idea of the spellcaster’s affiliation.

“That’s worrying.” Lenore cawed, getting nods from Sigmir and Ylva in turn. Fighting a group of centaurs, that had been reasonable, at least as long as we were careful, not trying to fight too many at a time and picking our battles. None of us had thought we would get into open and direct conflict, just because it would be a nigh impossible task to push them back on our own, and that was with the centaurs alone. Now, it looked as if the centaurs were just one piece on the board, maybe not a pawn but most likely not the king. Maybe not even the queen, to stay in the chess-analogy.

“I should tell the orcs about this.” I decided, thinking that the changed strategic reality should be communicated to Dura Firebringer, if only because she might be able to shed more light onto the situation. But just as I was getting ready to dissolve the shroud of shadows around us, when Sigmir’s arms pulled me in, hugging me close.

“Stay here. You can tell her tomorrow.” Sigmir muttered, her mouth near my ear. There was something in her voice, a tension that I couldn’t put my finger on, that made me accept her words. To signal my acceptance, I simply snuggled into her embrace, pulling her arms a little tighter, while nodding my head.

“What do you think we should do about the black wolves?” I quietly asked the others, curious what they thought. Part of me wanted to simply wash my hands off the whole mess, getting my group away from the area, letting the locals deal with it.

“Revenge.” Ylva growled, the idea that the wolves that had originally attacked her pack being part of a larger group obviously raising her hackles.

“You weren’t interested in hunting them down before, what changed?” I asked, curious.

“Before, I thought they were simply migrating, like packs sometimes do. That, I could understand. I wouldn’t like it, but at the end of the day, it is part of life.” she explained, before her tone shifted, the growling deep and a little scary. “ But if they were moving, not driven by hunger and necessity but by greed and ambition, then I want to get even. In some way, whether it is killing some of their allies, whether it is killing some of them, whether it is spoiling their plans, I don’t care how but I want to pay them back somehow.”

Once again, I was reminded that wolves were a highly social species and that Ylva, despite her great loyalty and friendship to Lenore that had made her join us, had been deeply connected to her pack. Leaving it, choosing Lenore, had stung her and I was seeing an echo, a memory of that anger.

“The wolves your tribe kept, when did that start? Was it something you always did or was it a recent development?” I asked Sigmir, curious if there might be a connection. If I wanted to acquire control over land, working together with the locals, maybe by giving them what amounted to trained personnel, sounded like the sensible way to act.

Now, I could feel Sigmir tense up. Before, she had only been determined to set things right for her companion but deep down, she still carried a grudge for what happened to her. Sure, we had killed the ones responsible but it was the traditional way of her people to carry out a vengeance to the end, salting the earth and everything. And if there was a power who had helped those responsible, she would want to get some retribution against them as well, even if I hoped I would be able to convince her that moving on was the sensible thing to do. At the end of the day, without them, we wouldn’t have met, certainly not in the circumstances we had met in.

And who knew what would have happened without that. In a way, I was glad for the events, they meant Sigmir was with me.