Tailstub tossed aside the spear from his stubby finger-paws and lowered his head, exposing his neck. Onefang, the thick-furred alpha, raised his tail straight up and barked, giving Tailstub permission to address the Pack. Despite himself, a subdued whine filled Tailstub's throat. Did, he wondered, the Nofurs' metal eyes and ears watch or listen? Regardless, he had a job to do. Tailstub trotted forward, careful to not meet the alpha's gaze, toward the rounded rock where Pack pronouncements were made.

"All of us understand bits of Nofur speech," Tailstub said as he climbed atop the stone. He spoke in the Pack's bark and posture and musk language, for the Nofurs' language tripped and fell when it tried to pass his lips. "But what their faces and bodies say is more important, for the Nofurs' words often lie." The other Pack members beat their axes and shields together in agreement. "More than most, I have learned to interpret the Nofurs' ever-fluid faces," Tailstub continued. "And now I bring the Pack a warning."

"A warning?" Stonefoot, a young and angular wolf interrupted. He lifted his spear above his head in an aggressive posture. "What could challenge the Pack?" Silentrun, the Pack's alpha female, turned her long-nosed triangular head to one side. Silentrun growled a bass warning. The chastened Stonefoot let his iron-headed weapon drop. He curled his tail and fell silent.

Tailstub's stomach knotted. His understanding of the Nofurs must be great indeed; he was about to match the Nofurs' ability to tell untruths. "Two sunrises ago," Tailstub barked, "I lay in wait for a deer." The events had happened four sunrises ago, but many of the Pack lost track of numbers greater than two, and confusing them would be unwise. "I hid beneath the brush that grows by the iron bars that bound the world," he continued.

Of course the Pack knew that something existed outside their fenced forest—they could see the sky above, hear and smell the Nofurs beyond. They knew that the Nofurs provided them with iron to make weapons. But the Pack had always considered their territory to be the world. The time for that to change had come, though.

"I heard Soursmell and Loud," Tailstub said, naming the two Nofurs that most often watched the Pack, "come riding in one of their legless carts, heard it long before they arrived." He paused and eyed the Pack. So far, he held their attention. "They stopped close to me, and walked to the bars' very edge. Their dull noses did not tell them that I hid inside, and so they spoke freely." Tailstub's nose twitched. Speaking the words that came next hurt like a thorn in a pad. Tailstub's only option was to continue, though. "We must leave the world," he continued.

The Pack erupted in howls of disbelief and derision. Tailstub sat back on his haunches. How could he explain? Much of what he had heard had been incomprehensible. Soursmell, the tall dark-skinned male, had called the Pack "CLS, Canis Lupus Sapiens." Loud, the round pale female, had referred to it as a "grand genetic experiment." Tailstub had not understood those terms. He had not understood what Soursmell had meant when he said "the experiment is nearing its end," nor had he understood Loud's unfathomable phrase "mass euthanasia." But he could interpret the Nofurs' strange faces well enough to understand that, while Soursmell and Loud might display what he thought was regret, something very bad would happen if the Pack stayed put.

"Leave the world?" Shortmuzzle, a young female, barked. She squirmed nervously. "Why would we want to do a thing like that?"

"Even if we wanted, how could we?" Raggedear, a shaggy male who had once challenged Onefang's position, added. "Knock down a tree so that it leans over the fence and climb out?" Raggedear's mocking posture made clear his opinion that such a thing was impossible.

Tailstub's back-fur rose. How could he have anticipated such a reception? He had to change direction fast. "You all recall the heavy rains," he yipped. The rain had come and gone over more sunrises ago than Tailstub could count. Tailstub raised himself upright, so he stood over the Pack. He eyed the sun, dipping toward the horizon. "The Nofurs think that their metal bars go too deep for us to dig our way out. But the rain-swollen stream has washed away the soil." His short tail wagged slightly, so he might appear non-threatening. "Dig where the stream meets the fence, and we can loosen the bars. We can wriggle through."

"I have heard enough," Onefang growled. The alpha's ears went flat against his massive head. Onefang raised a paw and clenched his finger-paws into a fist. The looming alpha cut his eyes toward Raggedear, then turned to pierce Tailstub with his javelin gaze. "You will speak no more," Onefang snarled. His tail went stiff, emphasizing that he expected obedience.

Tailstub resumed his usual four-legged stance. His finger-paws drummed the rock. A tremor ran through him at the notion of opposing Onefang's words. Had he ever imagined himself in the alpha's role, saying what he now must might come more easily. But it had to be said. "Going is our only hope!" he howled. "Remain, and we all perish."

Before he had finished speaking, Onefang stood over him. Onefang growled a throaty bass rumble. He cupped his finger-paws over Tailstub's shoulders. His teeth grasped Tailstub's throat with just enough force to emphasize his authority. Tailstub lowered his head and tucked his short tail.

"Tailstub howls madly at the moon!" Raggedear barked. "To even consider leaving the world!" he scoffed.

"Would you say the same, had Onefang or I told you to leave?" Silentrun, Onefang's mate, growled.

Raggedear's tail became limp. The wolf lowered his head in submission. Raggedear might have once thought that his bulk made him worthy to lead, but Onefang, as adept with planning as with physical combat, had disabused the challenger of his impudence. Silentrun had, without using her teeth, re-emphasized who ruled the Pack.

Stonefoot reared up to a half-erect position. He folded his finger-paws so he pointed at Tailstub in what looked like a parody of a Nofur's posture. "He disobeyed Onefang! Kill him for his presumption!" Stonefoot demanded. Tailstub warily glanced at the young wolf. Anyone demanding such a penalty would do whatever Onefang ordered, regardless of how outlandish the command.

Onefang released Tailstub. "While Tailstub does not deserve to die," the alpha snarled, "it is true that he ignored my decree. There must be a penalty." Onefang's mouth gaped so that his battered fangs shone in a grimace of supremacy. "Go!" Onefang ordered Tailstub. "Think upon your folly!" Onefang's fur stood on end until he seemed even larger than he actually was. His musk cracked with authority's thorn-sharp scent. "Until the next sunrise," Onefang continued, "separate yourself from the Pack."

The Pack recoiled in horror—what value did wolf alone have?

Tailstub paused a moment, studying the postures of the Pack's members. Then Tailstub turned and ran. As he loped away, he did not look back at the Pack. How could he, knowing that he would never see them again?

Tailstub ran deep into the forest, never minding the pine needles that irritated his pads. He circled past the prickle-leaved holly grove, past the familiar flowering chokeberries, overgrown with sweet-smelling honeysuckle. He raced toward the fence at the world's edge, past the towering pines that the rains had threatened to topple. He reached the iron fence. Tailstub ran along it until he reached the stream that provided the Pack's drinking water, that housed the bullfrogs and madtom catfish that the Pack sometimes ate.

Tailstub paused a moment and stared at his reflection. For an instant, his large, round forehead seemed wrong. Something within him said that he should have a narrower, flatter skull. For that same instant, his flexible finger-paws seemed to belong to some other creature. His paw splashed the water, destroying his reflection and driving the strange thoughts from his mind. He knelt and drank deeply, tasting the water's clear flavor for what was probably the last time.

Tailstub hid himself amid the rushes and cattails. He waited until the sun had disappeared, until he heard the first call of the chuck-will's-widow bird. He clutched his paw-fingers into tight fists; the time to act had come. Tailstub darted to the fence. He listened, sniffed the air. Far behind him, he heard the 'chunk-chunk' of the Pack's axes at work. Ahead, he could smell the acrid, stinking metal tubes that the Nofurs sometimes carried. Were the Nofurs about? Maybe, but not close enough to see. Tailstub knelt by the fence and dug, finger-paws tossing clods of wet, sticky clay and humus, ignoring those that stuck in his fur.

As he expected, the bars soon rattled beneath his frantic digging. He grasped the bars in his finger-paws, cold and hard against his pads. He pulled. Nothing happened. A growl rose in Tailstub's throat. With both forepaws, he pulled a hand-sized grainy stone from the hole. He tossed it aside with a satisfied growl, thinking that the bars would surrender without the stone to brace them. He pulled. This time the bars moved, creaking with a muffled groan. Tailstub glanced up at the starry sky. He turned for another look at the world. This was really his last glimpse of it, and that filled him with sour-belly churning. He made a yipping sound that would carry far in the still night. Then, lying flat, he wriggled through the gap in the bars.

Tailstub momentarily froze in wonder. The strange smells of the Nofurs' territory washed over him, nettling his nostrils with unnatural acrid scents. The whine and whirr of their distant legless carts clawed at his ears. Tailstub shook his head, bringing his whipping thoughts back in line.

Tailstub's finger-paws ached. Not only had he worn them out digging, but this was the first time in more days than he could count that he had been without a spear or axe. He stared at the fence and uprooted a single iron bar. An iron bar was duller than a spear, less crushing than an axe. Still, it would be a sort of armament. He hefted the bar, feeling its weight. He growled to himself. His appointed task required only his own teeth. Tailstub discarded the bar and trotted away from the world.

He was still within sight of the fence when the Nofurs appeared—Soursmell, Loud, and three others that Tailstub did not recognize. The unfamiliar Nofurs, wrapped in identical swaths of cloth, each carried a bad-smelling metal tube, reeking of oil and sulfur.

"Just like you said," Soursmell barked. His fingers darted over a box that he wore about his waist. He glanced down at it as though he spoke to someone so far away that Tailstub could neither hear nor smell them. "Dangle a false threat in front of them and see if any are smart enough to escape. Listen in and see where the break-out is coming, and then be waiting."

Loud stepped aside, putting the three unfamiliar Nofurs between Tailstub and herself. "The Army wants its CLS soldiers smart, but not too smart," she said. "Let them get too smart, and they'll question why they're off fighting in Uzbekistan instead of staying home to chase deer."

"Don't want them doing that," Soursmell replied. "Especially not after we teach them to carry guns instead of spears and axes."

Loud grunted her agreement. She nodded to the three unfamiliar Nofurs. "Time to cull," she said. Her tone of command was as clear as anything that Onefang had ever barked.

Tailstub did not understand the words "Army" or "Uzbekistan." He did not understand "soldiers" or "cull." But he understood that the Nofurs viewed the Pack as a tool, of no value beyond its ability to serve the Nofurs. Well, the Pack was no spear or axe. The Pack was the Pack!

Tailstub sat back on his haunches and emitted a long, low howl. An answer came from the world. Tailstub grunted in pleasure. Onefang, the master planner, had succeeded again. Tailstub swelled with pride, knowing that, besides the alpha female Silentrun, Onefang had trusted only him with the plan. He was sure that, despite any fears that hearing of the plan might have caused in the Pack, the alpha's word would be obeyed. Tailstub had seen enough during his carefully staged presentation to know that.

Tailstub strained to listen. The sound of a pine tree falling atop the fence, pried from the wet ground by the Pack's axes, echoed in his ears. The image of what had happened back in the world played itself in his mind, as though he had witnessed it. Without realizing it, Raggedear had been right: while Tailstub distracted the Nofurs, the Pack climbed the fallen tree. Once they reached the tree's top, they leapt down on the other side of the fence. With the world left behind, the Pack would carve a new home from the Nofurs' territory.

Tailstub was unsure what would happen to the Pack next. But he trusted that, whatever obstacles the Nofurs threw in the Pack's path, the clever Onefang would manage.

The three unfamiliar Nofurs raised their reeking metal tubes. Tailstub stopped thinking. His instincts took over. He growled, back-fur raising. He howled in fury and charged.

Tailstub barely felt the pain when blue-white thunder erupted from the Nofurs' stinking metal tubes.

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