“We have business, yet,” the stocky one said.
“Good for you.” Aaro kept walking. His leg throbbed, and he was ready to be done with the day, dreading the ride back out to the village, even with the benefit of his saddle, once he got it back.
“Business with you, stranger. Bandits ain’t allowed in this town. You bring that wolf here though, and hand her over, and we’ll let you go.”
Aaro stopped finally and looked down at Red. “Care to go with these donkey-brains? You might have a chance at meeting our esteemed Lesser King.”
She snarled.
Aaro started toward the stable again, talking over his shoulder. “Guess you boys aren’t lucky today. The lady says no.”
“It’s a demmed dog! And since you see fit to insult King Ormand in the face of his royal soldiers…” The lanky one caught up with them as they stepped into the stable. Aaro’s horse, one of only three in there, whickered a greeting.
“We would’ve let the mask go,” said the other man. “But insults to the royal D’Araines name don’t go unpunished.”
Aaro barked a laugh, ringing his bitter merriment against the stable walls. He drew and fired his left-hand gun while he was still laughing.
The stocky man stumbled back a step, looking in shock at the blood soaking through his trousers. He stumbled against the wall, fumbling to hold the wound closed while his companion gaped.
“Get out of my sight,” Aaro snarled, suddenly furious. His own wounds ached, he was tired, and above all, he hated himself. The men were buffoons, and he’d let them goad him, even if they’d done it unwittingly. Also, he didn’t miss Red’s yelp of surprise at the gunshot, and the horrified look she gave him. “What? He’s not dead.” He turned back and picked out his saddle from the lineup of pegs along the wall, and hefted it to his hip, staggering toward his horse’s stall, leaning painfully against the crutch to balance out the weight of the saddle.
It took the lanky man that long to react. He drew his sword—Ormand didn’t allow his men to carry their pistols while off-duty because ammunition was so expensive—and took a shaky step toward Aaro, stammering for him to stop. Red’s low growl set him back for a moment. He gathered his courage and advanced toward them. Aaro swung his crutch up and around, slamming it into the man’s wrist, making him drop his sword with a yelp. He jabbed the end of the crutch into the man’s stomach, sending him staggering back, trying to breathe. Once recovered he opted to go back to his friend and help him limp outside rather than try his luck with another attack.
Red waited for Aaro, silent as ever, as he struggled to saddle his horse. The wound in his hand had closed up, but the nerves were damaged enough to make him hiss his displeasure as he wrestled the saddle into place. Between that and his shoulder, it almost got the better of him. He could feel Red’s disapproval, either for the shooting, or his bullheadedness, or both.
He finished cinching the girth with a final round of oaths, led the horse out, and dragged himself into the saddle. He nudged his stallion over to the hitching rail where he’d left the Shonnowan mare, and went through another round of curses and wrestling as his horse showed his keen interest in the little female. He tugged them in a tight circle, away from the mare and back again, and the stallion showed his annoyance by turning and trying to smash Aaro’s leg into the hitching rail. Aaro kicked his foot out of the stirrup in time, and brought them in another circle. Of course he would have to pick the mare that was in heat, and the stallion had been confined so long that he was half-wild anyway.
Finally, Red came to his rescue, tugging the mare’s reins free from the rail and leading her out onto the street. The stallion was happy to follow.
By that time the gunshot and the soldiers had roused the garrison, and the sound of boots clomping up the boardwalk could be heard above the rising wind.
Red sniffed the air, the mare’s lead still clenched in her jaws, and her hackles rose as a dozen soldiers turned the corner, headed toward them. Nothing could ever be simple. Aaro drew the horse to a stop beside Red and leaned on his saddle horn, waiting for the soldiers.
Robbel, who led the small company of men, stopped in front of Aaro’s horse. “You! So, you’re still alive.” He sneered, and his eyes flicked toward Red. “I take it you found the Shonnowa.” He turned to the lanky soldier, who still gripped his wrist. “You imbecile. This is one of the king’s pet mercenaries. Next time ask the right questions before you corner and threaten a man.” He turned back to Aaro. “And you. If you’re done with your mission, then get out. I don’t want your kind here, no matter who’s paying you.”
Aaro straightened in the saddle. “I’m not quite done, actually. But don’t concern yourself. You won’t be seeing much of me.” He twitched the reins, moving around the men and heading on up the street.
“Wait,” Robbel called. When Aaro turned in the saddle he waved toward Red. “Better watch your back. King Ormand’s just put a hefty bounty on your new friend there. I can’t promise my men won’t get to feeling greedy and lucky at the same time.”
Aaro looked at Red, who was growling around the reins in her mouth. “Red does as she pleases. She’s not bound to me. But anyone that wants to try to kidnap her is an idiot.” He turned away and nudged his horse on up the street, glancing down at the wolf, who wore an expression he couldn’t read.
“What would you have told them, then?” he said as they followed their own set of tracks leading away from town.
Her ears flicked backward briefly, and she shook her head.
* * * * *
“You going to follow me forever now?” Mask said to her as they plodded back toward the Shonnowan village through thickening snowfall.
She flicked her ears at him and kept walking, the muffled crunch of the horses’ hooves trailing her. His voice held a rasp that she’d come to recognize meant he was in pain. Not that she could do anything for him besides make sure he didn’t get lost again.
“You didn’t like my work back there in the barn, and I didn’t even kill anyone. I guarantee you won’t want to be around me once I leave your village. Almighty knows, even my best friend left me,” he continued. “You want to know the real reason I wear this mask, Red? It’s ‘cause if I took it off, then it wouldn’t be some faceless monster that’s covered in people’s blood. It’d be me.”
Rowan didn’t look back, glad, for once, that she couldn’t speak. Her stranger was even more broken than she’d imagined, and she didn’t have a thing to say to him.
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the journey, each navigating their own thoughts. Hers kept wandering back to her conversation with Willow the last time she’d been human, and her friend’s suggestion that she wouldn’t find a remedy for her curse by staying with the Shonnowa. She’d exhausted their knowledge without gaining anything useful. She could go on living with them, falling further into her new sense of normalcy, or she could go seeking again. See what knowledge she could find beyond the village. Perhaps other Shonnowa, in other villages, would know something. Perhaps she could find Rigall again, if he wasn’t still enslaved to Ormand, and see what more he could tell her. Perhaps he would have a good idea how to break the curse, since he was the one who had given it to her.
But how would she ever find him? It wasn’t as though she could go around asking. No one was going to sit around long enough for a wolf to spell out a question in the dirt or the snow. No. They’d shoot her. Unless she travelled with someone who could ask for her. A wolf seen in the company of a man might draw surprise, but it would be unlikely anyone would shoot her on sight if it appeared she belonged to someone.
She glanced back at Mask. He was not her Aaro, but perhaps he could be of some use to her.
Chapter 16
It was a little over a week later that Rowan almost put her foot in a trap.
The wind had shifted, bringing yet another gust of snow, and with it the scent of men. Not the men from the village, but her own countrymen. Judging from the amount of sweat, h
orse, and steel mingled in, they were probably soldiers, and they had been in the area recently. The area to the north and east of the village, just beyond the bonfire clearing, was saturated with their scent, so they must have spent some time wandering, though they hadn’t bothered to come into the village.
Rowan had gone sniffing around, trying to fathom what their intentions might have been, when she paused mid-stride, her paw hovering over an irregularity in the expanse of snowy ground. Something else had caught her eye at the same time. A length of black chain looped around a nearby tree. The Shonnowa didn’t use chain for anything. Most of them despised it as being artless. So why was there chain here, outside the village?
She backed up a step, and after a few moments of careful sniffing and digging, unearthed a huge, rusted trap, nearly big enough to cripple a bear. She stared at it in horror. Soldiers had been here. They’d set traps. That could only mean they were hunting her, like Robbel had warned. And it hadn’t taken them long, either. Curse Ormand and his meddling! It wasn’t enough to turn her into a wolf? Now he had to have his men hunting her like a common beast? She dug around till she found a fallen stick, and used it to set the trap off. The stick shattered. Then she went, carefully, in search of other traps.
She found four more scattered throughout the area, and set them all off so that they were harmless, but she was even more bothered by the hunks of venison that they’d used to bait some of them. It would draw real wolves into the area, and that was the last thing the Shonnowa needed.
* * * * *
That night the skies finally cleared, revealing enough moon for her to shift back to a woman. Willow met her in the clearing, bringing extra blankets and steaming cups of spicy tea sweetened with honey. Rowan wrapped her cold fingers around the mug and buried her face in the steam.
“You spoil me,” she told her friend. “It’s a good thing I’m not human most of the time.”
“I don’t get nearly enough opportunities, though, and you look as if you need comforting this evening,” Willow said, settling down, cross-legged, on the bench next to the snowed-over fire pit. “What bothers you?”
“Everything.”
She allowed herself a sigh before she launched into an explanation about her discovery earlier that day. Then she had to back up and explain about her and Mask’s trip into Silver Rock, and everything that had happened that she hadn’t had a chance to share before, thanks to the constant cloud cover that had hidden the moon.
Willow nodded slowly once she finished, her expression in the moonlight caught between twinkle-eyed mischief and bittersweet sadness. “I will speak with the masked man for you. But now that it comes to a decision, I do not think I can bear to let you go.”
“I will come back, I promise,” Rowan said. “I’ll always come back. Even if everything were restored to me, I’d still come to visit.” She paused, staring up at the gibbous moon, thinking suddenly how strange it would be if she had the opportunity to go back to her old life. If given the chance to go back, would she find she’d outgrown it? Would she miss her freedom? She hadn’t thought about it in those terms before.
She shook free of the notion and turned back to her friend. “Find out, if you can, how long he thinks it will be before he goes.”
“Of course. But winter is here now, in its fullness, and traveling through the mountains will be treacherous until spring. I hope he doesn’t plan to leave before then.”
“I doubt it.” Rowan let a rueful smile stretch her face. “I think perhaps his trip to town taught him something about prudence.”
“And did it teach you anything about him?” Willow asked.
Rowan set aside her empty cup of tea and drew her feet up onto the crude bench where they sat, hugging her knees. Her breath left a fog in front of her face as she sighed. “No. Only that he’s dangerous, and that I still don’t trust him.”
“You won’t reveal your identity then?”
She shook her head. “I don’t dare. I don’t know who he is, and I’ve never seen even a hint of loyalty in him, toward anything. And, now that Ormand has a bounty out on me, how do I know he won’t just turn me over to him for the money?”
“He wants to kill your king.”
“That’s a common sentiment. It doesn’t mean I can trust him.”
“But you love him?”
“No!” Rowan stared at her friend, taken aback. “I don’t love him.” She shifted and looked away for a moment. “He’s compelling, surely, and mysterious, and dangerous, and all sorts of interesting things, but I don’t love him. He drives me mad. Being near him is like having an itch I can’t scratch. He reminds me of Aaro, but I couldn’t even say exactly what he says or does that is so similar. If I think about it too long it makes me wild. For all those reasons—for Aaro’s sake—I have an interest in him. But I don’t love him. Or trust him.”
Willow didn’t respond, and as if her silence had the power to compel the truth, after a moment Rowan went on, but more thoughtfully. “I don’t love him,” she repeated. “But he makes me feel. I mean, something other than frustration or anger or loss. It’s like—I remember that I’m a human, and a woman, when I’m with him. You would think that being a wolf would feel wild and fierce and alive, and sometimes I feel that way. But Aaro—I mean Mask—makes me truly feel.” She shook her head. “And that’s totally ridiculous. My feeling something has no bearing on the truth of it. The truth is, he’s dangerous, and I don’t trust him.”
Willow laughed softly, standing up and rubbing her arms against the cold. I shall tell you what I feel. I feel that the temperature must be dropping. The moon is getting low, and there is someone else who wishes to speak with you tonight.”
“What?” Rowan dropped her feet to the ground and half stood, looking around for someone who might have been listening to her spilling out all the tangles of her heart.
“It is only Sorrell,” Willow said with another laugh. “I will fetch him.”
She left, and in a moment Rowan spotted Sorrell working his way toward her, his form black against the snow under the trees. He stepped out into the clearing carrying a blanket, which he offered to her.
“You’ve been out here a long time. I thought you might be cold.” He took Willow’s spot on the bench beside her, and she could feel his stare, even as she avoided it, gazing up once again at the moon. She nodded toward it.
“It’s become quite like a friend,” she said, keeping her tone glib. “I never considered that one could feel any sort of attachment to a celestial body, but I am quite fond of the moon. It’s been a good friend to me for the past three years.”
“And I am grateful for it as well,” Sorrell replied, his eyes still on her, “for revealing your true beauty.”
Impatience stirred in her, and she turned, suddenly wanting to have things settled and done, rather than dance around the obvious yet again. She met Sorrell’s gaze. “I wish I could return your feelings, but I don’t. You know that, don’t you? You and Willow have been the best of friends to me, but I’m going to leave, come spring.”
He regarded her for several seconds in silence. Then, “Will you come back?”
“To visit, yes. Always. To live?” She shrugged. “I suppose that will depend on the success of my journeys.”
“You would return to your own people, then, if you can break your curse?”
“Yes. For a while, at least. I have to. You can see that, can’t you?”
He nodded slowly, and a sad smile dimpled his cheeks, making him resemble Willow. “I cannot help but cling to my fondest hopes, yet I see the way you act around our guest, this Mask. I do not know what draw a stranger in a mask could have for you, but I see that you feel more for him than you ever have for me, so I must let you go.”
“Sorrell, that’s not true!” Impulsively, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tight. “I do love you. Just not the way you want. Which has made things awkward, but even still, you are the best of friends. You and Willow have replaced the
family I lost.” She withdrew, searching his expression in the white moonlight to see what he might be thinking, or if she’d gotten through to him. The Shonnowa were aggravatingly hard to read most of the time. He still wore the same sad smile, though now it reached his eyes.
“Your friendship is a treasure, and we never know what the future may bring.” His smile turned teasing. “For now, though, I still cannot find any thoughts of friendship toward Mask, for revealing this disappointment.”
Rowan laughed. “No, no, I don’t love him either. It’s just… surely Willow must have told you…?”
“Yes. He puts you into thoughts of your man. I am sorry that his loss still burdens you so greatly. I only hope one day someone can feel the same about me.” He shifted on the bench, and Rowan sensed the change of topic coming before he spoke again. “I have in mind to go to the Shonno-mara and find out what this gift that Mask delivered to them does.”
“I see.”
He watched her for a moment. “That is all you would say? ‘I see?’ You don’t object then? I thought you might, since you were so adamant that I not go to the Shonno-mara to search for a cure for you.”
“That was completely different.”
“How?” Sorrell looked aggravated and puzzled.
“Either way, it’s dangerous, but going in order to answer a question that could involve the safety of both of our people is completely different than risking everything to break my curse. Certainly we both wanted my curse broken, but for entirely different reasons. It would have been a debt of love, and I had no way to repay it.”
Sorrell shook his head. “You would not have had to. But I don’t plan to risk a great deal. I am Shonnowan, after all. They do not need to know I’m not one of their own.”
“I see.”
“And I hoped you might come with me.”
“What.”
“I have long wished to show you our ancestral home. As a friend to the Shonnowa people. And your—ah—wolf’s body has unique and useful traits. We might even learn about breaking curses while we are there. But not if there was extra danger involved.” He winked.
Quench the Day (Red Wolf Trilogy Book 1) Page 19