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The wolf-bitch picked her way down to the riverbank to drink; freezing, but better than eating snow. Perhaps today there would be a fish fallen from the great cliff of water upstream, a winter-stupefied trout or salmon swept over the edge and killed on the rocks below, a meal untouched by the bears that now slept winter away.
She did not normally eat fish, but everything was fair game in winter. There was little else now but mice and voles, dug out from their dens deep beneath the snow and stupid with sleep, one little mouthful of food at a time.
She stopped stock-still, ears up, nose alert, aware of what lay on the bank before she saw the bodies.
Human. Two of them. One dead, broken like a salmon. One alive, smelling of blood and emitting wounded sounds.
She crouched in the undergrowth just out of reach as the wounded human sat up, groaning. It stared at the dead human and then looked around.
Then the human stared straight at her. It had the eyes of a wolf, intelligent and ruthless. They’d been in a fight and had fallen down the water cliff, and one had died and one lived.
The human stood. “He’s all yours, madame.” It staggered into the woods.
Meat was meat. She fell upon the body.
