Quench the Day (Red Wolf Trilogy Book 1)

by Shari Branning

  “Who are you?” Sorrell asked again, oblivious.

  When the man turned back to him, cursing either in irritation or pain, the spell snapped. “I’m a man seeking revenge, and I will do whatever I have to, to get it,” he growled. And with that, her image of Aaro was gone, and in his place lay a stranger. A killer. A man wounded inside and out. “If you have to call me something, I’ll answer to Mask. But tell me. Do your people often shoot each other in the back? Because not even I have ever stooped that low.”

  “They are not our people,” Sorrell replied without acknowledging the stranger’s insult. “Those who use the Gift for their own ends, or wield it against others, we call them Shonno-mara. People of the Curse. Though they are our brothers. And they call us the Omen. Yes, it is the same name my sister called you. Wanderer. But it has also come to mean outcast.”

  The stranger huffed a wry laugh, but didn’t explain what he found amusing.

  After a moment, when he still didn’t speak, Sorrell continued. “For generations they have lived in our ancient cities, while we have wandered the mountains and plains without a permanent home, because we refused to corrupt the Gift, and with it ourselves. They have no walls any more, to separate their hearts from what things should be done, and what things should not.” He fell silent, his eyes drifted away from the wounded man to the fire and then beyond, wistful as he always was when speaking of the Shonnowan cities, his ancestral home. “So, Mask, to answer your question, my people do not shoot others from behind. But the Shonno-mara will do whatever they wish, if it aligns with their plans. What I fear is the day when they turn their plans toward us.”

  * * * * *

  Sorrell’s words lingered with Aaro through the day, when he wasn’t sleeping. The weight of Ormand’s unknown plans, and his magic pendant, now in the hands of the Shonno-mara, gnawed at him like a premonition of disaster. Omen, the healer had called him. He hoped it didn’t prove to be true. But as soon as he had his chance, Ormand would die, and then his plans would be at an end, no matter what they were.

  The next morning, Willow retuned with her husband and checked him over again, changing his bandages and re-applying salve to his wounds, nodding to herself and making her cheeks dimple as she worked. She always seemed to be either singing or laughing, and when she was silent, she smiled.

  “You are feeling better?” She asked without looking up from her work.

  “Some,” he said.

  “I would like to take you back to our village today. We have made a torenna to carry you. I hope the journey will not be too difficult, but it will be cold, even with the furs we brought. There isn’t room for Red to ride with you and keep you warm.”

  “How far?”

  “It will be slower than it would be walking or riding. Three hours.”

  He nodded. “Thank you for all of this.”

  “It is no great burden,” she said, smiling. She finished wrapping his leg and sat back on her heels. “And Red seems to find something in you that has made her protective. For her, I would help, even if I had no other reason.”

  Aaro blinked, his eyebrows going up underneath his mask. He looked for the wolf, but she must have slipped out while Willow tended him. So he asked again, “What is she?”

  The question met with a soft laugh. “Her story is her own to tell.”

  “But she doesn’t speak.”

  “No. Most of the time not. I wish she could! She is the best of friends, but how much better, if our prayers were answered?” The young woman looked wistful for a moment, her dark features drawn together.

  “Are you ready?” her husband asked, speaking in the kings’ language for Aaro’s benefit.

  She nodded, unfolding and standing up in one smooth motion. The two men, Willow’s husband, whose name Aaro hadn’t caught, and Sorrel, stamped out the fire, kicking snow and dirt over it. They brought a stretcher made of saplings with blankets stretched between them, piled with more blankets and furs, and with help Aaro wiggled onto it. The whole thing tilted up at a slight angle when they hitched it to the horse, and the first few steps proved he would be in for a bumpy ride, even with the snow.

  “Where’s Red?” he asked as they packed up the rest of the accumulated supplies and prepared to leave.

  “Do not fear. She will catch us up,” Sorrell replied. “She comes and goes as she wills.”

  Aaro tried to doze as they travelled. His stretcher slid along the snow most of the time, but whenever he was close to falling asleep they would hit a hidden rock or a branch and jar him awake, sometimes swearing with pain, depending how hard he hit. Willow looked back at him several times, her brows puckered with concern. She spoke to her husband in Shonnowan several times, and he slowed the horse.

  They’d been going for well over an hour before Red caught up with them. She came bounding through the snow, silent, with her pink tongue lolling out in a pant. She fell in beside him, sniffing him, as though checking to make sure he’d been properly cared for.

  He reached out his good hand and touched her shoulder, burying his fingers in her impossibly soft fur. The color, now that he could see it fully in the sunlight, struck him as a bittersweet reminder of Rowan, and how her coppery curls had made a halo around her head. They way they’d fallen like a curtain around her face when she kissed him.

  He pulled his hand back. Heat burned in his chest, and longing worse than the pain of his wounds coiled in his guts. Almighty in heaven, how he missed her! And they’d only been together for a single night.

  If only Ormand’s death could serve to bring her back.

  When they finally arrived at the Shonnowan village, it seemed everyone had turned out to see them. Children followed the horses, some of them running after Red, gripping handfuls of fur in their chubby fingers while men and women looked on curiously. Aaro closed his eyes against the stares, feeling naked even behind his mask, and faked sleep until he felt the stretcher lower and then lift, and they carried him inside.

  His eyes popped open to see the Shonnowan home. Except it was empty. A bed of blankets and furs took up one corner. That was where they put him down. On the opposite side of the tiny room a fireplace constructed from river stones and clay sheltered a blazing fire, and beside it a small stack of wood leaned against the pelt-lined wall. Other than that, there were no furnishings, or even possessions. A smooth, sandy floor stretched from wall to wall.

  Red came in behind the men who’d carried him, followed by Willow, who checked his wounds again and seemed satisfied that he’d survived the trip in fair shape.

  “This is Red’s home,” Willow said. “For now. Perhaps not for always. But it is the least crowded place for you. I am unhappy to say that I use her home at times to bring those I care for so they can rest. In the days when my people lived in our own city, there would have been a house for healing, but now this suffices. It is the most our village has ever known, and we call it the Wolf House.”

  Red swiped a paw across the ground, drawing Aaro’s and Willow’s attention. The red wolf scratched something into the sand. He couldn’t read it without propping himself up on an elbow, which seemed like an enormous effort at the moment.

  Willow read it, her cheeks dimpling again. “She says welcome, and to be at home.”

  “She can write?” Aaro couldn’t quite keep his voice from climbing in surprise.

  “Of course. Her mouth may not form speech, but her mind is perhaps sharper than yours. And she was knowing the ways of your people, at one time.’

  “She’s not a real wolf then?”

  Willow shrugged. “It is her story.” She stood up and rattled off what sounded like a list of instructions to Red in Shonnowan before she left, leaving Red and Aaro alone to stare at one another.

  The wolf sat down facing him, her jaws parting in a quiet pant.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  One furry ear swiveled back, and one eyebrow raised. She lifted a paw and nudged his mask.

  He laughed, surprising himself a
nd setting off a throb in his shoulder and chest. He pressed his good hand over the hole in his shoulder. Almost, he was tempted to take off the mask. But for three years the only ones who had seen his face were those drawing their last breath at his hand.

  “I’ll keep the mask,” he said. “The face I wear is a piece of the past. The mask is the present, and it serves me better.”

  Red dipped her head in a nod, and scratched in the dirt. He rolled enough to read, AT LEAST YOU GET TO CHOOSE.

  “Aye, I’ve chosen. But it was the Lesser King who set me on this path. If it were up to me…” he sighed, weariness descending on him like a predator. “But my hopes for the future have passed into dreams and ashes. I might as well grasp at smoke.”

  The wolf’s eyes gleamed, almost as if she would shed tears. He didn’t know if wolves were even capable of tears. She bent her head to scratch in the sand again. HE IS A MONSTER.

  “And that is why I am going to kill him,” Aaro replied.

  She stared at him, the emotions of her thoughts flickering behind her eyes. Finally, she wrote again. MURDER IS NOT JUSTICE.

  “But only murder will serve, when murder is what he has meted out. If not death, then what? And don’t talk to me of Heymish. The high king sits on his throne and does nothing. No man can be that blind unless he wants to be, or unless he is a fool.”

  OR HE IS DECEIVED, she wrote in reply, raising her brows. She swiped the words away and wrote again. HE NEEDS TO KNOW THE TRUTH.

  “What good would that do?” Aaro spat the words. “He would never have his brother killed, even though it is the thing he deserves.”

  BUT IS IT THE THING HE FEARS MOST? she wrote.

  Her words rocked him. He settled onto his back, fatigue gripping him as the question hammered at his mind. “I don’t know,” he said to the woven saplings that formed the underside of the roof. “But it is the thing in my power to serve him.”

  She regarded him with what looked like understanding for a moment before she ducked through the double thickness of wool and animal hide that covered the doorway, disappearing and leaving behind a whirl of cold air and loneliness. He let himself fade into sleep.

  The next day he woke, and seeing Red had already gone, propped himself in a sitting position against the wall. He still felt weak, but not helpless. His stomach rumbled, and he wondered what time it was. Then he wondered how far he would have to venture to use the privy, which in turn set him to consider the state of his clothes. If he went out there he’d freeze. His one trouser leg was shredded from the thigh down, and stiff with dried blood. His coat and shirt were in ribbons. His left boot also had a fair amount of blood on it.

  As if in answer to his assessment, Willow breezed in, her arms full of bundles, bringing a swirl of snow with her. Red followed at her heels, stopping to shake snowflakes from her back.

  “Ah good! I though you would feel better today. I brought you clothes, if you are well enough to change. I think you will also be hungry?” The healer raised her eyebrows, smiling as she placed the clean clothes across his knees. She bent and set a pair of fur-lined boots at his feet. Then she put a steaming bowl in his hands.

  Smells of venison and herbs wafted up to him, and his stomach rumbled, even as Willow placed another bundle in his lap. New smells of bread and honey joined the others, and his stomach again protested its emptiness, while his mouth watered.

  “Thank you. I don’t deserve all this.”

  She shook her head. “You must eat well, if you are to get well. The tea helps you to mend and keeps the infection away, but only food can return your strength.”

  As she spoke, a child pushed through the doorway, dressed in furs and boots until only her brown eyes peered from between layers of clothes. She spotted Red and squealed, waddling toward the wolf as fast as her layers of clothing allowed.

  “Ack! Minnoa, il somme du olem.” Willow threw her hands up. “I told her to play with the others. I am sorry.” She scooped the child up, tickling, scolding, and laughing all at once.

  “It’s fine,” Aaro said. But she waved him off.

  “Eat. You will have visitors soon enough.” She buried her face in the child’s neck, making silly nonsense-noises as she carried her outside. Red, free from her small attacker, stretched in front of the fire and yawned.

  “You seem popular with the children,” he said, picking up his spoon awkwardly in his left hand and going to work on the stew.

  Red huffed and shook her head. She scratched in the sand, IT’S THE FUR.

  He smiled into his soup bowl. “I can understand the fascination.”

  Her ears went back, and he laughed. He hadn’t laughed in three years, and here he was, shot up and barely alive, with his plans indefinitely on hold, and he’d laughed twice in as many days. At a wolf. What was wrong with him?

  When he’d finished eating, the wolf got up went out, leaving him alone to change clothes. He struggled into the wool-lined trousers, cursing as he twisted wrong. He couldn’t put weight on his leg at all without agony ripping from his hip to his knee. His right hand wasn’t much better. The merest brush against it had him seeing light bursts behind his eyes.

  At last he stood, unsteady on one leg, wearing strange clothes and suddenly impatient with his weakness. He wanted to be away, to return to Skybreak and, he hoped, finally demand justice from Ormand, whether at the tip of his blade, from the barrel of his gun, or with his bare hands.

  But justice would have to wait, at least until he could walk.

  Willow came back in a few minutes with more water infused with herbs, and also a crutch. He managed a trip to the outhouse, then collapsed back onto his pile of furs and slept. He must have slept most of the day away.

  He startled awake at a noise, sitting up to find four Shonnowan men, plus Willow and Red, crowded into the tiny room and staring at him. He started up, but stopped, wincing, when he twisted his shoulder and chest. Slowly he sat the rest of the way up, leaning against the wall.

  “We’ve come to hear your story,” Sorrell said.

  Chapter 14

  Rowan regretted not waking the stranger—he’d said to call him Mask—beforehand, when he startled awake and twisted his wounds. A hiss of pain escaped him, and his good hand balled into a fist as he eased back against the wall. He returned the Shonnowans’ stare, his blue eyes shadowed by the eyeholes of his mask, but made no move to speak.

  It was Dinarrel, sitting cross-legged with his back to the fire, who broke the silence. “Willow calls you Omen, Wanderer. Will you not give us your right name?”

  Mask gave a short shake of his head.

  “And you won’t remove your mask?” Sorrell asked, his voice harsh in the small room. He wore an uncharacteristic scowl, his hands running up and down the worn leather of his boots, never still.

  Dinarrel shot Sorrell a frown, gray eyebrows lowered over shrewd brown eyes. Rowan could feel the animosity coming from Sorrell, and wondered if the chieftain noticed, and what he made of it.

  Mask shifted, looking at each of them in turn, waiting for the next question. His gaze remained a moment longer on Sorrell, his eyes behind the mask just as shrewd as the chieftain’s, taking the measure of the other man. Besides Dinarrel and Sorrell, Dinarrel’s son, Rorren, and Willow and her husband, Jannen, had joined them. Of all of them, only Sorrell seemed on edge. The others merely looked curious.

  The small room forced them to sit elbow to elbow in a semi-circle facing the stranger. Rowan, who had been watching from behind the others, padded over and sat to the side, closest to Mask, where she could see both him and the others as they spoke.

  “Please,” Dinarrel invited, “Tell us your story. The actions of our brothers, the Shonno-mara, concern us.”

  The man shifted, his mask turning a fraction to look at her before he spoke. “I am no friend of King Ormand,” he started, “but I had my own reasons for taking his mission.” He went on to tell of the medallion set made by the Shonnowan magician, and his journey north to Silver R
ock, then of his indecision about what to do, and how he had planned on seeking their counsel before he contacted the Shonno-mara. Then he was ambushed and left for dead, and the medallion taken.

  He told his story briefly, his good hand finding the bandages across his chest as he spoke, smoothing his shirt over the sword gash, his mask turned slightly to include Rowan in the conversation. Again, she couldn’t help for a moment seeing Aaro behind the mask, as the cadence of his story smoothed out the bitter, clipped edges of his voice, allowing a hint of a drawl to creep in. She shook the impression away.

  Her next thought was of Rigall, the little Shonnowan magician Ormand had enslaved. She wondered if he was the medallion’s creator, and if Ormand had been good to his word and released him. Somehow, she doubted it.

  “And you have no idea what this thing, this medallion, is capable of?” Dinarrel asked, his brows once again drawn together in worry.

  Mask lifted his good shoulder in a shrug.

  The ensuing pause stretched into a thick silence, until Sorrell swore in Shonnowan. “What is it you have done, stranger? Just what have you done?”

  “I don’t know,” Mask said, the edge in his voice unmistakable.

  “What kind of power might it be that you have just given to a people with no conscience? Or to your wicked king? And only because you wanted revenge above everything else! But it is always the innocent who pay for the crimes of the guilty.” Sorrell’s heavy breathing sounded loud and angry in the small room. His eyes darted toward Rowan, accusing, as if her rescuing the stranger had somehow been the cause of their uncertainty.

  “Sorrell,” Dinarrel said softly, warning. He turned back to Mask. “You don’t know at all what these things could do? Not even a—ah. I don’t know the word. Not even a small amount of knowing?”

  Again, Mask shook his head. He dropped his left hand from the bandage around his chest, staring down at where it rested in his lap, flexing his fingers. Slowly, he moved the fingers of his wounded right hand.

  “You do not know this thing, this medallion, or the smaller pieces that went with it, but do you know your King Ormand?” Jannen asked. He struggled over the words, forming them with care. Of the group gathered, he had the least knowledge of the Talvan language.