Drovic’s blue-gray gaze was sharp. “Yourself?”
“Scraped. Bruised. A little smoked from the fire.”
Drovic turned to the other raiders. “Merek, Slu—start the fire for the discards in the waste pit. Ebi, take care of the spoor.” He didn’t bother to address the second command to Strapel too; the two men always worked together. Drovic gave the rest of the orders to everyone. “We’ll follow East Road to Welin Fork, then cross to the Cades River.” Drovic caught Talon’s frown as he chose one of the contingency routes, rather than the main one. Drovic lowered his voice. “Jervid knows the roads between here and the Cades. If you have doubts, now is the time to speak.”
Talon shook his head shortly. “The route should be sound. I studied the maps as you have. And by nightfall, we’ll be on ground more familiar to me, at least as much as I remember. It is Jervid, not the route, whom I doubt.”
“Jervid grew up in this county.”
“Aye.” Talon’s gray eyes grew icy. “And he may lead the way with Kilaltian or you or by himself if he wishes. He will no longer ride with me.”
Drovic’s gaze sharpened. “He is assigned to you.”
“Not anymore.”
“We ride in teams, Talon, and those teams are our lives. We don’t make changes on whims.”
“This is no whim.”
“No? We’re riding from a raid, with at least one venge on our tail. We have wounded to carry and an unfamiliar county where we have few contacts to help if we screw up. But you want to change the teams now. Why?”
Talon did not mistake the mildness of Drovic’s tone, and his own gray eyes narrowed. “My reasons are my own, and they stand,” he said curtly.
“Not unless I know them,” Drovic returned. And I will take no rebellion from you, he seemed to snarl silently.
For all that they were unspoken, Drovic’s words could have been snapped through the air. Talon felt a muscle jump in his jaw. Drovic’s expression was hard, almost untrusting, and Talon felt it like a blade. All these years, and all the blood and death they had shared, and it still came down to this: the differences between them. He had oathed to Drovic years ago— the day he had turned eleven—yet he could not seem to keep from challenging the older man. He had not acted as a leader for months, not since his injuries, but it felt right, he acknowledged, right to stand firm, to assert his own judgment, and he knew he had done this so often before that it was as expected as the drawing of steel, regardless of his oath. A few ninans to get out from under this constant medicine, a few more to get enough of his memory back to know where he wanted to go, and then they would settle this leadership. A son could not follow his father forever, no matter how much he owed the man. There were other things to hunt. Talon had made his own promises to the moons, and weakness and wounds aside, he would be no man’s shadow.
His words were soft. “If you do not trust my judgment, Father, then do not let me lead.”
Drovic’s gaze did not waver. “Are you challenging me?”
“If you like.”
They were words Talon had spoken long before, when he was just a boy. Back then, Drovic had laughed at his son’s angry face, then had thrown him to the ground. Every year, it had been the same: a contest for Talon to earn the sword that his father held in trust. He had taken up that sword almost three decades ago, but he did not carry it now. Instead, he wore a thinner, lighter, bloodier blade, and the words of challenge leaped to his lips almost instinctively.
Drovic regarded his son in silence while the other raiders worked quickly around them. Talon’s weight was balanced perfectly, with the grace of decades of fighting. His muscles appeared relaxed, but that was deception. It was a perfect calm, the poise of action that waited for breath. It was a balance that Drovic had begun to teach him when he was just a child, but that Talon had developed on his own, and that he now wielded as a weapon. Something bleak flickered in the older man’s eyes, and Talon felt a stab that might have been his injuries, or that might have been his guilt, but he did not back down. Instead, his own steel-gray gaze remained steady, and it was Drovic who finally gave in.
“Your judgment is my own.” The older man’s lips twisted. “I could have hoped for nothing more.”
Something changed between the two men. It was like taking a step, Talon recognized. Like the day his father gave him his first fighting stick, or the first time he faced a worlag. Each event was a shift toward becoming the man his father had raised him to be—or a step toward becoming his father. Other faces—uncles, aunts, siblings, his mate—had softened Drovic’s pattern, but Talon was the mirror cast in the mercury of time.
Talon’s voice was soft. “You see yourself in me.”
“I always have.”
“And Jervid?”
“He will no longer ride with you.”
Talon nodded, satisfied. Only then did he explain. “Jervid split from us, rousing the town at one end as we came in on the other. I had to divide the attack so that the southern route was kept open for our retreat. We lost most of the element of surprise. Morley and Eilryn and Biekin died, and our escape was jeopardized. We were unable to get to two target buildings, and our search of the other two was cut short.” He lifted his war cap absently and ran his hand through his hair. He did not mention the trapdoor he had felt in the villager’s storeroom. “We lost men and opportunity, and neither can be replaced.”
Drovic regarded him for a moment. Absently, Drovic noted the movements of the other raiders around them. The last of the panniers were being lashed onto the dnu. Ebi and Strapel had already swept most of the hardened ground with small brooms. The brooms wouldn’t hide the fact that riders had been there, but they would do much to hide the number of riders who had passed, and that was valuable. Drovic’s gaze flickered as a flock of tree sprits flittered from one side of the caravan space to the other, but they flew without urgency. His voice was deceptively mild. “Was your plan flawed? Did Jervid see a better way in?”
Talon’s voice was hard. “The man, not the plan, was flawed.”
“A leader does not accuse his men.”
“Nor does he accept such stupidity.”
“Stupidity?”
“You prefer ‘arrogance’? He disobeyed an order, thought his own judgment better than mine. He broke the plan, roused the martial end of town early, and gave them minutes to prepare to meet us. When will he do it again? And are you willing to pay with your own life for the next mistake he makes? I cannot trust him to follow me.”
Drovic barked a laugh that drew the eyes of Kilaltian. Drovic lowered his voice. “He’s a raider, Son. You cannot trust him at all.”
“Aye,” Talon agreed softly, and knew he included himself in that statement, and hated himself all the more. “But still, I will not lead him.”
“You are not strong enough to hold the command I gave you?”
It was not quite a question, and Talon regarded his father steadily, but the subtle flicker in his cold, gray eyes did not deceive the older man. There was anger behind that icy gaze, and Drovic filed that note away as Talon answered softly. “You cannot give me their loyalty as you gave me the authority to lead them. You know that as well as I. Leadership is not merely a matter of presence. One earns obedience and respect. One doesn’t just expect it.”
Drovic’s expression hardened. “I can expect it.”
“Then you have blinded yourself, and that blindness sits poorly upon you.” Talon’s tone was sharp.
Drovic stared at his son for a hundred years as the mirror flexed and cracked. The same wind lifted both Drovic’s hair and Talon’s, brushed their chapped skin, left a sense of chill. Silver or steel, Talon thought. Either one could buy the blood that would eventually be spilled. Someone made a joke behind them as the men and women began remounting, and someone else chuckled. Drovic’s voice was hard when he finally spoke again. “You fail your attack, you challenge me, then accuse me of being blind?”
“In this, yes.”
“And
still, you choose to lead?”
“All but Jervid.”
Drovic’s glance flickered to the slim man. “Consider carefully, Talon. Most of our men are new, and they’re still coming up to speed on our goals even as they learn these roads. Jervid has been with me for years, and he knows these trails, even if it was as a child. Fit knows only the northern part of Eilif, and I’ve traveled these Eilian roads myself only three times in the last forty years. Your knowledge starts at the border routes, not the backtrails of the main county.” He stopped Talon’s interruption. “Oh, you’ve ridden through, right enough, but that was years ago and mostly on the borders. The land changes over time. And you’ve been weak in more than your wrist.”
Talon’s eyes narrowed at the reminder that his memory had also failed his father after his injuries. It was no salve to his pride that it was common with so much blood loss. Instead, it was a thorn in his boot, pricking him constantly with the realization that he didn’t even know what sort of things he had forgotten. The physical memories were still in his hands—the way to work a knife, soap a saddle, weave a screen of camo. But he couldn’t even tell if he knew how to do those things until he tried and his body took over. “I’ll remember enough,” he said finally. “You can hire some other man till then.”
Drovic snorted. “And trust a stranger on the spur? Not unless you want to end up with your head on an Ariyen chopping block.”
Talon’s voice was flat and uncompromising. “Then let this one go. He is killing us in the raids.”
Drovic studied him for a long moment. When he spoke, his face was expressionless, and his eyes distant. “So be it.”
His father turned away, and Talon breathed but did not feel his gut relax. There was a violence in Drovic that turned his blood cold, colder than the chill that seemed part of his very bones. Talon’s own violence echoed his father’s. It was a drive they shared, a drive so focused it could negate any others who rode with them, and he knew he had used his own family the same way that Drovic had used him in the past.
Drovic strode toward Jervid. The other raider was finishing with his saddlebag, and he half turned as Drovic approached. Drovic gestured with his left hand. Jervid’s gaze followed the motion instinctively, and Drovic’s right hand slid his long knife neatly out of its sheath and up under Jervid’s ribs. Jervid, with clothes in one hand and straps in the other, was trapped between Drovic and the dnu. He caught only a glimpse of steel before the point slipped up through his gut. He stared at Drovic in disbelief as he hung on the end of Drovic’s blade. His mouth worked soundlessly.
Talon felt his breath choke off. Felt the violence freeze in his blood. Felt a hand grip his arm and realized only then that Sojourn was beside him. As if that contact called the wolves to his mind, a howling rose in a din. In the sudden, dead calm of the caravan clearing, Sojourn’s words were like slate. “Do not interfere.”
Jervid, like Talon—like the others—did not move. The raider simply hung, sagging against the dnu, his hands instinctively grasping Drovic’s, so that it looked as though he had helped stab himself. Then Drovic’s knife twisted, and Jervid gasped and made a choked and wretched sound. The dnu stamped their feet and shifted uneasily. Then the raider folded over and followed his blood to the ground. Summer dust soaked up both the drumming and the blood, and the rest of the riders watched.
Talon barely noticed Sojourn’s hand still gripping his arm. In his own mind, he saw again and again Drovic’s blade sliding out and in. Some part of him noted the casual strike that spoke as much of instinct as it did of martial-learned patterns. Drovic’s movements were smooth, with more decades of skill than Talon had lived, and he noted the steady hand of his father, the flat expression in Drovic’s eyes, the curious streaks of blood on steel, and knew in his gut that he could not yet take his father.
The howling gathered. Cold steel seemed to slide into his own side, and even though he knew it was memory, not real, it shocked him. He heard Drovic shouting, heard himself cry out in those echoes. He did not know that he tried to leap forward as Drovic stepped back, until Sojourn’s voice cut through the images. “Stay out of it,” the other man hissed. Sojourn’s hand was a vise.
Wolfwalker! The voice was in his head. Wolfwalkerwolfwalkerwolfwalker . . . But it was he who cried out, as if he could draw strength from the wolves. His nostrils flared with the scent of blood and bile.
Drovic knelt and wiped his steel on Jervid’s clothes. When he rose, the others went about their tasks, readying for the ride.
Drovic walked back to Talon. For a moment, the older man studied his son. His voice was calm as he said, “You will not lead him; he will not be led. He has no place in our goals.”
Talon did not trust himself to speak.
Drovic’s voice was almost gentle. “This, too, was your decision.”
V
Ember Dione maMarin
Are there ghosts in your head?
If there are, then they are part of you.
—From Wrestling the Moons
In the snow, Dion gasped.
Wolfwalkerwolfwalkerwolfwalker . . .
The gray echo was a lance into her mind. Blindly, she half raised her hand toward her temple. It was a mistake. The glacier worm swayed toward the movement. Dion froze, perched on her showshoes like lunch on display. Around her, the snow glittered brilliantly, and the sun glistened on the back of the worm. It should have been beautiful. It had been, until she had moved. She had been safe until she had shifted; the worm would have snaked on. Now it knew she was close, and all it had to do was stretch a little to the left . . .
Dion’s knuckles were white on the alpine vellace. The fresh sap was already hardening on the cuts, and the yellow liquid glinted dully. Her belt knife was in her other hand— sharp, lethal, and useless. Silently, she cursed the echo that had broken her stance, and she tried to breathe without moving.
Six meters hung between her and the glacier worm. That distance now seemed like a hand’s width. Back, forth, with wickedly sharp teeth, the glacier worm sought her breath. Its round maw opened in an iris pattern and sphinctered shut again as it worked its sensory organs. Inside, exposed by the movement, the curved, opalescent teeth were seated in neat, concentric rows like soldiers surrounding a tomb.
It wasn’t a large worm, she told herself. It was only a few years old, only a few meters long—four, maybe five. Only a baby worm. But the shortest teeth were as long as her little finger, and all of the teeth were like razors.
The wind cut her face, and she let her breath out in its wake and sucked in air for her starved lungs. The worm stiffened, undulated, and edged a little closer. Baby worm, Dion repeated, forcing her arms to remain where they were instead of protecting her belly.
Wolfwalker! This time, the lance of gray was pure wolf, without the taint of that distant human voice.
Unconsciously she sucked at their strength. Her hand clenched her knife more tightly, her legs tensed to leap away. The wolves were kays behind her group, hunting snowhare, but as they read her sudden fear, they broke off and sprinted toward her. Kiyun was five worms’ lengths to the right. Tehena had been setting their noon camp a hundred meters away. The shallow snow that covered the rocks and the long-stalked vellace had been a dangerous lie. There was a deep cut in the mountainside, and the worm had been waiting within it.
The worm writhed, and its body seemed to suck back into the snowbank. Then it surged out again and hung in the air, its head shifting back and forth. Fear settled in Dion’s belly, snugged down with her unborn child. Adrenaline took the place of her blood. Left, and its tiny eyes pinholed with the light. Right, and it hesitated. Close, closer . . .
Some hint of breath caught its attention, and Dion, frozen, stiffened more. The snow almost creaked beneath her woven shoes. Her knife became her claw. Her mind filled with a chaotic burst of gray as she reached for the speed she would need. Abruptly, hooves smashed through snow to the right.
“Here!” Tehena shouted.
The worm whipped its head around.
Dion forced the wolves out of her mind and tensed to throw herself back.
“Here!” Tehena screamed at the worm.
Graysong howled.
The skinny woman charged bareback across the drift. The dnu’s hooves flung back powdered divits till it plunged into deeper drifts. Its sudden halt left it floundering in fear. Tehena kicked its barrel belly viciously and almost unseated herself, but the dnu bucked out of the drift. The worm instantly sucked its length back into its hole with palpable eagerness.
Dion poised on the snowshoes. She couldn’t move fast, she was still too close, and her baby—
Tehena forced the dnu closer. Kiyun grabbed the hilt of his sword as she closed, and the worm snapped its head back around. The dnu hit a deeper pocket in the snow and reared up, knee-deep in the drifts. The worm tensed like a spring. Its tiny, piggy eyes flicked to the dnu, but returned to the closer meal of the man. Kiyun braced himself to leap sideways, as if that would somehow save him. Then Tehena passed like a tornado as the dnu scrambled onto shallow snow. Too close—the woman was too close to the worm. But Dion was still in the glacier worm’s range. The worm’s eyes sharpened. It shot out like light. Teeth closed. Tehena screamed and flung herself from the dnu as teeth bit down on flesh where her leg had been.
The dnu shrieked. Its gut burst in the mouth of the worm like an overripe melon. Dion cried out as a foreleg caught her shoulder. She dodged back desperately in a wide-legged scramble. Without snowshoes, Tehena floundered in the drifts. The worm shook the dnu until it gurgled and went limp with one hind leg sticking up like a flagpole. It began dragging the creature back. The dnu was too large for the baby worm, and the worm writhed as it wrenched the weight along. Kiyun stepped carefully back, but light flashed from his blade, and the worm paused.
Dion and Tehena and Kiyun froze again. The worm undulated in place, uncertain. Then it clamped down harder on the slipping dnu. It finally withdrew into its now overlarge hole with a long writhing motion, leaving a red-stained ditch in the snow.
Silver Moons, Black Steel Page 7