Quench the Day (Red Wolf Trilogy Book 1)

by Shari Branning

  A narrow path, not much more than a goat trail covered in snow, wound down the hillside, along the edge of a gorge, till it disappeared between boulders. At their feet they saw evidence of what Rowan had smelled—cartloads of horse manure dumped over the side of the cliff, some of it staining the ground at their feet.

  “Did you get any information at all?” Mask asked as they picked their way down the path, reminding Rowan that he hadn’t understood any of Sorrell’s conversation with the Shonno-maran man who’d wanted to buy her. Sorrell related the gist of it, and Mask grunted, which was his general response to everything. “So this means they can communicate over any amount of distance without travel?”

  “So it would seem,” Sorrell sounded bitter, now that he’d dropped his act. “A dangerous tool.”

  “A powerful one,” Mask agreed.

  “Perhaps not as dangerous as your king, if he learns our ways of using the Nawassa. What would he want with such a thing? He already has one of the Shonno-mara to do his bidding.”

  Mask shrugged, though the gesture was lost on Sorrell, who walked in front and wasn’t watching. He’d become preoccupied enough that he’d forgotten to worry about Mask putting a dagger through his ribs.

  After another moment of scrambling down the snowy path, Mask said, “Ormand doesn’t like to rely on other people. Either he sees them as incompetent, or he doesn’t trust them. Usually both. As much power as he can hold in his own two hands, he will.”

  Sorrell swore. “He’s seeking to become a Wielder, then. He is a fool.”

  “A Wielder? What’s that?”

  The Shonnowan man shook his head. “He is a fool. Any man or woman who gives themselves to the Nawassa becomes its slave.”

  “What are you saying?” Mask’s voice had a flat edge.

  “Nothing. Go back and warn your people. But it will do no good. We will not welcome them in our mountains, when they flee. Unless you kill this king of yours before his plans are full, you will be lost.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded. When Sorrell made no reply, he turned to Rowan, even though she couldn’t speak. “What is he saying?”

  The only answer she could give was to look up at him and let the fear shine through her eyes. Almighty help them, if Ormand became a sorcerer.

  “And what of you?” Sorrell asked. “Why did they recognize you?”

  Mask huffed through his nose, but he answered anyway. “The man was one of the ones who attacked me that night. He recognized the mask.”

  Sorrell grumbled softly. Rowan could almost read his thoughts. That Mask had put them in danger by insisting on coming along. Thankfully, though, neither of them said anything more until they were off the mountain and hiking back to where they’d left the horses and supplies.

  “They will search for us, even out here,” Sorrell said as the two men packed their gear. “And they will not be loud when they do it, as your own people so foolishly are, so you will not hear them coming. This is where we part ways.” He tied the last of his supplies to the light Shonnowan saddle before he added, “And if they do find either of us, they will bring more than swords and bows.”

  “More magic weapons?” Mask said.

  Sorrell nodded.

  “Why weren’t there more of those in the city? Only the one with the whip seemed to have any special power. I expected worse.”

  “Do you carry your best enchanted weapons to the market on any given day?” Sorrell asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Uh…” Mask exchanged a look with Rowan.

  “Contrary to what you seem to believe about us, not every Shonnowan or Shonno-maran can craft the Nawassa. It is a fine art, and even those who have a natural talent for it also need the creativity to make it do anything useful, and the time to practice. Enchanted items are costly, even for us. So no, of course most people don’t carry them around every day. Not to worry though, if they catch you, you will get a fine display of what we can do.”

  He knelt down, eye-to-eye with Rowan, and switched to Shonnowan, glancing at Mask, who stood watching them. “Please, be careful. Do not trust this man, even though you travel with him.”

  She nodded, putting a paw on her friend’s shoulder.

  Sorrell surprised her by wrapping his arms around her shoulders, like Willow had done, and squeezing her close for a moment. Her whiskers brushed his ear as she leaned her head into his neck, wishing she could say goodbye, but glad that she didn’t have to find the words. She would have cried, and she hated crying even more than she hated blushing.

  He released her, swinging onto his horse. “Ride fast and be silent,” he warned Mask. “Ride through the night. They will track us both, but they have to find our tracks first. We are ahead of them for now, and they cannot follow our trails during the night.”

  “How far will they go?” Mask asked.

  Sorrell shrugged. “It depends on how dangerous they think you are to them.” With that he clicked his tongue, turning his horse.

  Rowan watched him go, her heart sinking. Almost, she ran after him. But Mask mounted up as well, drawing her attention. He looked down at her from his perch in the saddle.

  “You should not have stayed with me,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Aaro sat on his horse and stared down at the wolf for a full minute, expecting her to take off after Sorrell. But she didn’t. Finally, with a growl, he turned the horse and urged it south, down the slope and away from the Shonno-maran city. Red loped along beside him, her ears swiveling constantly, lifting her nose at times to sniff the wind.

  She should not be here.

  They fled south, the only sound the rushing of wind past his mask, and the steady, slushy footfalls of the horse as he alternated walking and trotting, landscape permitting.

  There were no roads in this wilderness—at least none that he’d dare to follow now. Red corrected their path at times, either giving one of her short barks, or speeding off in a different direction. The part that bothered him about it was that he trusted her, implicitly.

  They rested several times during the day, though never for long. Darkness came on, and still he kept going, even though the land in front of him dimmed to black shapes against the blackness, making it dangerous to ride. Finally he got off the horse and walked, leading it.

  “Of all the nights not to have a moon,” he grumbled. He could just hear the faint crunch of Red’s paws in the icy snow up ahead, but could see little more than a shadow as she guided him.

  She huffed and snorted at his words, though it was hard to tell the difference sometimes, between when she snorted and when she sneezed. Either way, he got the distinct impression that she disapproved, though he couldn’t fathom why. If there had been even a partial moon visible, he’d be able to ride, putting that much more distance between them and the Shonno-mara. But the sky remained overcast.

  “You should have gone with your friend,” he said after a while, to break up the monotony of crunching snow and creaking trees.

  Naturally, she didn’t reply.

  “What did your friend tell you before he left? Did he say not to trust me?” He saw a faint gleam from her eyes as she turned her head to regard him for a moment as they walked. “You should listen to him. You can’t trust me. Go back to your people, Red.”

  She sighed, but the soft sound of her footsteps went on. At some point, the overcast sky cleared enough to reveal stars through the canopy of trees. By their faint light he could see the wolf’s silhouette in front of him, and could make out more clearly the bushes and branches he’d been stumbling over and brushing against for so many hours.

  “You know Ormand has a bounty on your head,” he told her when he needed another distraction from his weariness. She glanced back at him again, and he thought he saw the starlight gleam on her fangs. “I don’t care about the money, but I’m going back to Ormand. I’m going to kill him, one way or another, and if turning you over to him gives me a chance to do it, I will.”

  His boot struc
k another rock, and he stumbled to his knees, still clinging to his horse’s reins as it halted beside him. He stayed there for a moment, weary enough not to want to get up. Red crunched back to him, extending her cold, wet nose to snuff at his face. He put a gloved hand on her head, stroking back one of her ears. Her eyes gleamed. Probably she could see him much better than he could see her. The thought, along with the cold that worked its way through his clothes, chilling his sweat, made him shiver.

  Eye-to-eye in the starlight, he said, “I don’t want to betray you, but if you’re with me, I will. Go home, Red.”

  Red’s head beneath his hand gave a small, decisive shake no.

  “Fool.”

  He stood and tugged his bedroll from behind the saddle. If he needed rest, then so did Red and the horse. Dawn was only an hour away, and then he’d be back riding. He opened the small sack of grain he’d brought for the horse and let him finish off what was left, then settled down on a cleared-off patch of ground with his blankets wrapped around his shoulders to wait for dawn.

  Red curled up beside him, lending her warmth, as she always did.

  “Fool,” he murmured again as he dozed. His head fell against her flank, her soft fur tickling his lips. But he was too far asleep to care.

  He woke up, he found himself curled on his side in a cocoon of blankets, his head still pillowed on Red’s shoulder. She’d partially rolled over, and he faced toward her head, where he could see one ear and half her whiskers twitching as she slept. For a moment, before he woke fully, he wondered what she had looked like as a woman.

  They had stopped, as it turned out, at the edge of a small clearing in a valley. A brook, overflowing with melting snow, rushed nearby, and the horse, who had wandered a little way off, had found a patch of last year’s tall, brown grass to eat.

  He shifted to sit up, and Red tensed, instantly awake. Her nose quivered, while her ears swiveled in every direction. She must not have sensed any danger, because she relaxed after a few seconds, stretching and yawning.

  He watched her, angry at the pang of fondness he felt when she looked up at him with her copper-amber eyes. “Go home, Red.”

  She gave him one of her sneeze/snorts and stretched again. When she had settled, she reached out and wrote in the muddy snow, ORMAND TOOK MY HOME.

  Aaro sat back on his heels, startled. After his months with her and the Shonnowa, it was the most information she’d ever given him.

  She swiped out the words, muddying her paw, and wrote again, I HOPED THE SHONNOWA COULD HELP ME. Swipe. THEY COULD NOT. Swipe. I MUST SEEK ELSEWHERE. She regarded him, her expression unreadable.

  Before they left, Willow had spoken to him about guarding Red and being her voice. Her words had seemed cryptic, and made him uncomfortable, and he’d done his best to be angry and show her just what a bad idea that was, but she had been unmoved. As though she could see past his façade of brooding anger and silence, down to the place where he knew that in order to go on being a monster, he had to push them all away. But she couldn’t see beyond that, deeper still, where he kept the rage of his burned home and murdered wife. That rage would drive him to commit any treachery, any atrocity he had to, to make sure Ormand died.

  Now Willow’s words made more sense. Red wanted him to help her search. But for what? To a cure to turn her back into a woman? He shook his head.

  “You’re better off being a wolf,” he said. “You know that? Whatever, or whoever, you were before, you should just let it go. Go back to your friends. Coming with me will only get you killed or caged.”

  She rumbled a low growl.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, as if replying to his conscience, rather than to her. “You saved my life, but my life’s only good for one more thing. I’ll give my last breath to make sure Ormand gives up his, if I have to. No obligation or loyalty is going to stop me.”

  Red rolled her eyes, scratching in the mud, KILL ORMAND, THEN JOIN THE THEATRE. YOU HAVE A GIFT FOR DRAMA.

  He stared at her for a minute, then broke out in a laugh that took him completely by surprise. “I hate the theatre.” He sobered, meeting her eyes again. “Red, I’m going to warn you for the last time. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. If you’re with me, I’ll use you.”

  She nodded and wrote, I UNDERSTAND, then took off into the trees. For a moment, Aaro thought she’d actually decided to go back to the Shonnowa, and was surprised by the sudden hollow feeling that opened up in his chest.

  But then she reappeared, nose to the ground, and circled the clearing. When she came back and sat down next to him, head cocked to one side he asked, “Smell anything interesting?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Let’s go then.” He tossed her a strip of jerky, which she caught with a snap and a dirty look in his direction, then stood, checking his horse over quickly before he swung into the saddle. He would owe the animal a decent meal and a rest once they got back to civilization. Though if he succeeded in killing Ormand, they probably wouldn’t get to rest until they were dead. For now, he wanted to put more distance between them and the Shonno-maran city. He had no desire to repeat his last encounter with them in the wilderness, when he’d never heard them coming. Though he hadn’t had Red with him then.

  * * * * *

  Three more days without any signs of pursuit brought them out of the mountains and endless, dripping pine forests, and onto the plains, where spring was getting underway in earnest. Aaro slowed their pace, letting his horse crop at the new grass as he rode. He lifted his hat and let the wind ruffle his hair and tease the edges of his mask. The temptation to take it off as well nagged at him, as it usually did, when the wind was in his face as he rode, and for a moment he imagined throwing it away, forgetting his mission, and riding just for the love of it. He squashed the thought. Another four days would bring them to Skybreak. After Ormand was dead, if Aaro wasn’t as well, then he would think about what came next.

  He glanced down at Red, who was looking over her shoulder to the line of trees they’d left some time ago, her ears perked.

  “What’s back there?” he asked.

  She shook her head, though a line of fur along her spine lifted into a ridge.

  “Animal or human?” He asked.

  She looked up at him, then back at the distant forest. Her ridge of fur settled, and she started walking again, only casting occasional glances over her shoulder. Aaro followed her, looking back often now himself. Call him coward, but the back of his neck crawled, and the healed wound in his leg gave him a twinge.

  “Wind is from the south,” he muttered.

  Red looked up at him and nodded. With the wind in their faces, she would never be able to scent someone following them.

  That night they took turns keeping watch, though Aaro did most of the sleeping, and Red did most of the watching. Whatever she might have been before, she seemed to have a canine ability to run on naps, and listen while she slept. After three months together, he was just now beginning to realize how valuable a friend he’d found.

  Another day passed, then a third, still without incident, and Aaro began to relax again. I would be difficult, even for the Shonno-mara, to sneak up on them on the open prairie. Not that there weren’t hidden gullies and folds in the land, but it would be much more difficult now than when they’d travelled through the mountains. And tomorrow they should reach Skybreak.

  They made camp that third day as darkness eased across the plains, the light leaking out of the sky and leaving endless stars in its absence, reminding Aaro that he’d missed the open places. The wind, the endless sky. Again, he pushed aside thoughts of riding free.

  He had gathered a meager bundle of firewood that day as they travelled past little hidden valleys with trees and low bushes. As soon as they stopped, he set about building the first fire they’d had since before they entered the mountain city.

  Red gave him a dubious look as he struck flint.

  “Now what’s your problem? Can’t a man want a hot cup of c
offee while he’s on the trail?”

  The fire didn’t light, so he sent another shower of sparks onto the handful of dead grass he’d been hauling around all day so it would dry out.

  Of course she didn’t say anything, just looked at him blandly then looked around at the deepening dusk. He followed her glance, and saw nothing out of place. The horse, its reins dangling, nipped at the grass a few yards away, while in the distance he could hear the rush of a river, swollen with melted snow.

  After another scant meal that he shared with the wolf, he unrolled his bed and crawled in, trusting Red to watch and listen, and wake him if needed. She curled up at his back with her nose in her tail, her ears perked as she watched the night beyond the flames of the campfire. He drifted toward sleep, and at first her low growl wove itself into his dream, where he stood on the edge of a cliff, and the rocks shifted and rolled under him as he tried to scramble back from the edge. In the dream, he slid out over the cliff’s edge and fell into darkness.

  He startled awake.

  Chapter 19

  The campfire had burned down, the last of the flames flickering bright orange, and at his back, Red rumbled her low growl. He twisted enough to see her in the flickering firelight, her hackles up, looking out to the side, into the darkness.

  Aaro eased his hand toward his gun belt without otherwise moving, and Red rose to her feet with such slow grace she didn’t appear to move either. Again, he cursed the useless sliver of moon that did nothing to light their camp. The smooth wood of his pistol grip filled his hand, and he drew it towards himself, bringing the belt with it. He eased the belt around his waist and sat waiting, his eyes going back and forth between Red and the place beyond the fire that held her attention.

  He felt rather than saw Red crouch. The second seemed to drag out for an hour as she watched what his eyes couldn’t see, and then she pounced on the fire, scattering embers and snuffing the dying flames. At almost the same second he heard the rushing whistle of an arrow, and felt a tug on his sleeve. He threw himself to the side and both felt and heard another arrow pass so close to his head that the fletching stung his ear. He kept rolling, putting distance between himself and the place he’d lain, where they had no doubt been able to see him by the dying firelight.