The Wolf Age by James Enge

sense than to be trapped in a cell with a ravenous crow-eating werewolf who was just waiting for a chance to eat some more crow, but not this crow, not this clever crow, no. He could forget that. Besides, she could smell the fingers and she didn't think they were ripe yet.
    Morlock said that he thought the fingers might have been cooked, like the ear.
    The crow squawked in outrage. Had the great feathered gods laid the clutch of eggs that hatched into the universes just so that monkeys with their freakishly long and horribly soft and flexible claws could rip meat apart and stink it up with fire?
    Morlock said that he had no opinion on the theological issue, but he thought the fingers were soft enough to eat and that, since the crow was a personal friend of Morlock Ambrosius, he was willing to put the fingers up on the cell so that the crow could get at them safely.
    The crow bluntly wondered what the catch was.
    Morlock said that he had no use for the meat, but he could do something with the finger bones. He wondered if the crow would leave them behind on the sill.
    The crow thought for a moment, and grudgingly agreed.
    Morlock gathered up the fingers and reached up to put them on the iron sill. Then he stood well away, to make it clear to the crow he intended no harm.
    The crow kept an eye carefully on him. When satisfied he was safely distant, she took up one of the fingers in her claws, then the other, as if judging which was ripest.
    An arrow struck her in the chest and she fell from sight with no sound other than a brief scrape of her claws on stone. The fingers fell with her off the far side of the sill.
    Morlock turned toward the guards. The guard with the bow nocked another arrow and held it ready, watching him. The others watched him, too.
    He realized they probably understood crow speech. No doubt wolves would find it handy. He could speak to them, then: insult them, threaten them, bribe them, plead with them, acknowledge them as people.
    He chose not to. He took the tooth off his wrist and threw it at them: he was not one of them; he would never be one of them; he rejected them. He couldn't tell if they understood. They said or did nothing. But they watched him.
    He sat down in the corner of the room and waited.
    The day passed noon and headed toward evening. The guards were changed several times during the day, but each set proved as vigilant as the last. They spoke to each other very little and to Morlock never.
    In the late afternoon there was a scuffle in the corridor and the tramp of booted feet. Armed guards dragged into Morlock's sight another prisoner: in man form, but clearly a werewolf, from his wedgelike face and crooked legs. His hair was brownish red, and he hadn't shaved for a few days, but he didn't have the full beard of a long-term prisoner.
    He took one look at Morlock, at the bloodstained floor, at the laughing faces of the guards, and he began to shriek. Morlock understood no word, but the whole intent. The prisoner was begging not to be put in the cage with that monster. He was sorry; he was very, very sorry; he would never do it again; just please would they put him somewhere else, anywhere else.
    There was a long conversation between the prisoner and one of the guards in wolf form. The werewolf seemed to be in charge; he had a great tore of honor-teeth that hung over his chest. Eventually they took the prisoner away without even opening the cell door.
    The guards all expressed amusement, and some counters changed hands; apparently they had been betting on how long it would take the prisoner to break.
    When the cell began to cool off, Morlock jumped up and slammed the shutter across the window. Then he wrapped himself into as tight a knot as he could in a corner and waited for sleep to come.
    He was not one of them. He would not be one of them. But they could still use him, the way they had used the bestial wolfman they had unleashed on Morlock. He was their new beast, their new terror to break