For months Heriwulf had been talking about the resettling of the wolf-pack of southwest Chetwood, near the Combe labor camp, as if it this were a routine thing. To himself though, he kept wondering if he was in too deep. It all seemed like it should work, in theory, but the fact is, he'd never done anything like it, nor had he heard of anyone else doing so. Just a natural extension of, or repurposing of, some of the techniques used for other things -- taming, for instance. Like using the tools you already knew how to use to build a house, only instead, using them to build a barn, or a corral for livestock.
He'd imagined it as something that most of the clan might end up involved with. To him it felt like an ideal use for their talents, at least while they waited to see if Radagast would need them. They could fight off spiders or orcs -- indeed, they had fought off orcs not long before -- but so could others. But who else but the Woodmen would either want to, or know how to, resettle a pack of wolves, for the good of the wolves, the people who lived nearby, and the whole forest?
(Though the ally of the clan, Beastmother, that Hildegund had befriended, might have as much or more claim on such things as the Woodmen, he now realized. Her ability to help Byrge with his 'dogling' exceeding his own had been a moment of revelation, and not a comfortable one.)
But when it came down to it, the whole thing neither interested nor required most of the clan. It had mostly come down to Hildegund's scouting, especially the previous autumn, identifying what the problem was; Em finding a good spot; and him and Eathwaru, who had taken up the role of informal apprentice in hound-tending, actually carrying out the resettlement. With some help from Jessandra and Marnewyn's daughter Adriellyn in one particularly tricky step, but only that one.
And it all worked. Anti-climactically, in fact. Well, mostly. Probably the pack would ultimately split into two, as packs did when they got to a certain size, or had alphas that would not cede to one another. This would probably happen fairly soon, in fact, if only because a temptingly appropriate den was waiting nearby -- their old dens, which Heriwulf couldn't keep them out of forever with scent-markers. But even when that happened, the new occupants of the old dens would be a much smaller pack, probably one that could be sustained by the hunting available, without having to conflict with the Combe loggers.
They'd built dens -- some made from stone Jessandra and Eydia had dug up from the crop-land, some made by Aelfrida from branches and thatch, some that Heriwulf had simply dug up under roots. They'd seeded those dens with pleasantly wolfish scents. They'd carried out a daring, but ultimately pretty routine, raid on the old dens -- Adriellyn being small, nimble, and stealthy had made it an easy matter for Jessandra to lower her into the dens while Heriwulf and Eathwaru used scent-trails to lure and distract the wolves away, resulting in piles of leaves, thatch, and less savory things covered with the scents of the pack, the smell of home. These were placed in the new dens, and scent trails built to lead the way to them, along with more trails, emergency retreat circles, scent baffles, and rally points. Then there was him, Eathwaru, and their hounds (especially Cwoen, their former alpha) baiting the wolves, running along the scent trails, then losing them when they were near the new dens, and letting the trails lead to scent of home. This took many tries; wolves sometimes ran back to their old homes, even after finding the new dens, and had to be lured again, and they could only bring so many at a time. In the end it became tedious, not terrifying -- what, yet another headlong sprint across the Chetwood? By the time Eathwaru and Heriwulf were sitting on an overlook watching the bulk of the pack (and most importantly the alphas) settle into their new home, even Eathwaru looked exhausted, and Heriwulf felt like he would be sore for a week.
But as repetitive and tiring as it had been, it had simply happened. It had turned out not to be the stuff of legend, a matter for bards to sing of, a struggle to bring the whole clan together behind a common purpose. It had been just a thing they'd done, like feeding the sheep.
"Well, that's done," he said to Eathwaru as they trudged back to the stockade. "What next?"
