Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  His father nodded and turned back to his maps. “Still have eleven possibles in the northeast. This one’s close. We should hit it as we go north. Then we can spend some time mapping this area through winter, then hit the first six targets by midsummer next year.” The gray-haired man chewed his lip thoughtfully.

  Drovic would be riding alone by midsummer, Talon thought, because he’d be taking his men away and heading east within ninans. Casually, he studied the line that marked the Ariyen boundary. Except for a few recent forays, Drovic had not crossed that line in over thirty years. “There are a dozen targets within striking distance of the main Ariyen pass,” he commented. “You’ve let them accumulate like gelbugs on a wound.”

  “Don’t spur the stickbeast, boy,” his father returned almost absently. “I want those Ariyens to feel safe up there with their nice, smooth roads and their winter-warm homes. When we’re ready, we’ll be like lepa on a hare. They won’t see us coming, and they won’t feel our steel till it sprouts out their backsides like grass. I won’t jeopardize our future with the haste of a worlag just because you’re feeling antsy.”

  And if they waited much longer, Talon wouldn’t remember why they were attacking Ariye at all. He could not help the sharpness of his voice as he said. “So we stay south and west of this line.”

  A shadow flickered in Drovic’s eyes. “I drew that line almost three decades ago, after your mother died. I haven’t crossed it three times since that day—the day I was left for dead, just as your mate left you.”

  A flash of memories blinded Talon. He saw his mate laughing, slipping silently through the forest, dancing on the edge of a cliff, teasing him with stinkweed. He had held her in his arms, watched her life slip away. He had sworn to the moons that he would follow her, but he rode with Drovic instead. And now he heard only the voice of the wolf-woman, gnawing at his skull. He stared at the map without seeing it. His took a shallow breath. “I never knew how you survived,” he said. His voice was almost steady.

  Drovic didn’t notice. “Neither did I at first. Your mother died a meter away from me when the raiders hit. I was hit in the chest by two bolts—enough to stagger me, but not penetrate bone. I must have looked like a pincushion when the rockfall trap was released. My brother died trying to run, and I was knocked around like a gnat in a hurricane before the dust cleared. They cornered me, the raiders, but I challenged them. Killed three and wounded another before they brought me down. They were about to skewer me like a whirren for supper when their leader saw the rage in my eyes. He made me an offer instead.” Drovic ran his hand through his peppered hair. “And here I am: ninety-eight and so soaked in blood that my skin reeks with its odor.” He pointed to the line that had been drawn across the counties. “I drew that line north to mark my path back home. It’s a good line, Son. Deceptive. Raiders never came in from the north before—the terrain is too rugged, too cold. When I first led my own band, I followed that pattern with care.”

  “And now?”

  The older man looked back down at the map and fingered the sword at his side. “And now, my men find their goals in me, and I do not cross that line because when I do, it will be the releasing of the hate in their swords and the bloody lance of my rage.”

  Talon’s voice was soft. “And the fall of Ramaj Ariye.”

  Drovic smiled without humor. “The fall of all nine counties,” he corrected. The older man pointed to the southern area. “The Ariyen Lloroi knows that I won’t cross that line and challenge those alien beasts—not until I have enough resources to win. Think of it, Son. Think of the other worlds we could explore once we make use of our rotting technology and leave this world behind.”

  “And there is no other way to achieve this goal.”

  Drovic shrugged. “When I first went back to Ariye, they gave me only two options: give up the stars and return as a good, obedient, quiet citizen under Lloroi Tyronnen, or give up my home and pursue Ariye like a worlag, worrying at its flanks, hunted by every venge in the county if I ever crossed that line.” The gray-haired man smiled suddenly, and the expression was dangerously grim. “Without my mate, without my children, I found my home less appealing. My anger began the day you were born, but it has only grown since then.”

  “You could control it,” Talon retorted.

  “As you control yours—too much?” The older man gestured sharply at the map. “Anger, like steel, is a weapon. Let it out, let it be directed, and it could change the world.”

  “Then use it now, while it rages inside me. Let us strike here—” Talon stabbed his finger down on the map. “—instead of there. I know this land. I know the roads, the trails, the passes.”

  Drovic’s gaze narrowed.

  Talon’s words were curt as he answered his father’s unspoken doubts. “It is events, not land, that I do not remember.” He pointed to a twisted line on the map. “I know that I’ve hiked this trail in autumn, with a biting wind so cold that I could hear nothing but its whistling in my burning ears. I know that I’ve seen this river dry as a hungover tongue, and that although it’s not marked, there is a spring forty meters off this trail. This meadow is one of the major mating places of the badgerbear in summer. That valley is almost completely swamp except in the driest of summers—I was caught in the mud once for hours. And this height is actually two ridges, with a tiny fold in the middle where you could hide for a decade without anyone the wiser.” Talon met his father’s gaze steadily. “I know this land, Father. I could take us through here as silently as a dozen stickbeasts, and we could make enough trouble in less than ten raids to split this band between us and halve the time to the goal.”

  Drovic let out his breath. Talon had the sudden certainty that his father had been waiting for some other shoe to drop. But Drovic merely studied Talon thoughtfully. “You’re still weak.”

  “Aye,” he agreed flatly. “But I can still sit a dnu, still use a sword, and still find a lab with my eyes.”

  A gleam grew in Drovic’s flinty-blue eyes, and Talon knew he had hooked the older man. “I could work you through winter like I used to do. By spring, you’d be mean as a worlag, ready to be a predator, not one of the weak and ravaged.”

  Drovic was almost eager. Talon’s hands clenched, and he realized that he could not tell if it was because he had finally pleased his father, or because he would break the older man when he took his raiders away.

  Drovic mistook his son’s hooded expression. “We ravage, son, to re-create.”

  “Re-create?” Talon snorted.

  “A win is not in the battle itself, but in the aftermath. It is in changing what you have won to be what you want. You cannot rebuild on the old foundation till you break the existing structure. And so, we must be destroyers before we can turn to building. Destruction itself is not our goal. It never was.”

  Talon’s voice was soft. “And so fear is our weapon.”

  “Fear, blood, violence, death.” Drovic shrugged. “A weapon is a weapon. You can’t become squeamish about the means by which you reach your goal. Partial warfare—that was one of the things that got the Ancients into half the messes that destroyed their world.” Drovic’s finger traced the line along the northern border of Ariye. “An ideal has no value when it cannot be achieved. Set your goal and reach it. There is no other way.”

  Slowly, Talon nodded. “No other way,” he echoed, almost to himself. His eyes sought out the men he had selected: Wakje, Weed, Dangyon, Mal, Oroan, Rakdi, Sojourn. He thought he could sway Harare and Cheyko, possibly even Ki. There were a few others in Darity’s and Kilaltian’s groups: Pen, the woman who had once been a baker; Nortun, who worked with the herbs—he’d be useful. A gray wolf howled deep inside his mind, and the image of the dark-eyed woman blinded him. Set your goal . . . His fists clenched. Ariye with or without his father, but he could not wait for spring. She was heading that way, south and west, and there were only two roads she could take to Ariye. The wolves howled again in his head. He welcomed the sound in the silence.
<
br />   XXI

  Rhom Kheldour neKintar

  Danger comes in many guises:

  Some are obvious, some more hidden;

  Some creep up; some are sudden;

  Some deceive with more than steel;

  Some show threats that seem surreal;

  Some will hide behind denial;

  Some will o fer pleasant smiles;

  Smile back, but keep your knife

  Sharp if you enjoy your life.

  —Kiren children’s training chant

  Sand. Dry sand. Hot sand. Burning sand. Choose your adjective, Rhom thought, and as long as it had something to do with fire, it would be accurate. It was twilight, and they had been on the trail for only an hour, but already he was scratched with dry sweat. The temperature was dropping, but the day’s heat still sapped him.

  His water bag was dry, and his muscles were tight with dehydration. It was a dangerous condition. Too long without water, and the kidneys and liver couldn’t process the normal toxins in the body. But they had had the last of the water yesterday noon when they drank it all at once. There were myths about rationing water, but Rhom knew better even without Gamon telling him. Best to hydrate as much as possible than perpetuate the dryness.

  It wasn’t just Gamon and Rhom, either. The dnu—there was only one now, as they’d lost the other to a broken leg when a rock stretch collapsed beneath it—was gaunt and caked with dust. Its head seemed overlarge on its bone-thin neck, and it plodded slowly behind Gamon as Rhom took his turn riding. The older man had been following a faint trail for an hour, heading for a small seep that might give them enough water to last through the next day. If it was as low as Gamon suspected, they would have to leave even this dry track for the tenor trees that glowed in webbed lines through the desert. There was always water beneath a tenor tree—the question was how far down.

  Rhom stared out at the moonlit desert. A hundred kays across the desert as the crow flies, but for them, it was more than two hundred. There were few bridges to relieve the road that wound down in and back out of canyons. With the side trips to water-holes, they were making barely twelve kays a night, not the sixteen Rhom had planned on.

  They paused at the edge of another ravine while Gamon judged the best way down. Rhom’s dnu took the opportunity to drag desultorily at the dead grass that clung to the cracks in the basalt, and Rhom didn’t begrudge the animal its thin meal. If the next tinaja didn’t have more water, they would lose this dnu too.

  The rocks erupted. “Moons!” Fear jerked the word from his mouth. His dnu reared at the very edge of the precipice. He hauled back violently, yanking the beast up by sheer strength. Its forelegs scrabbled in air. Something with teeth launched itself upward along the line of the dnu’s neck. Ringed teeth, round maw. Gamon shouted for him to kick clear. Instinctively, he obeyed. Hooves kicked out beside his head. He hit hard, half rolled across bone-stabbing rocks, and scrambled up, his knife in his right hand. A fury of mottled brown fur launched itself at the dnu. Rhom felt the adrenaline engulf him. He lunged and caught the reins, struck wildly, blindly at the spray of sand kicked up. There were teeth in that yellow cloud. The dnu screamed and jerked back, but there was no purchase under its feet. It started to fall. The predator’s flowing claws raked Rhom. The hand holding the reins shocked open. Half blinded, he lunged forward. The beast closed around him like a cloak. Teeth ground down on his forearm. He stabbed, thrust, hammered the blade home again and again as the claws plowed his sides and back. Their legs were a tangle of boots and fur, kicking at each other. Teeth chewed down convulsively, and this time, he screamed. Then his blade cracked the casing that housed the creature’s brain.

  Gamon’s iron grip dragged the beast back. Rhom crawled away in the sand.

  “Rhom! By the moons, man, are you all right?”

  Instinctively, still blinded by violence, he thrust the other man away, then staggered to his feet, leaned for a moment against a black boulder, and gasped back his breath. His arm was a mass of agony, and his sides and back burned. “Moonworms.” His voice was ragged. “Moonworms. Badger?”

  “Desert poolah.” Gamon lifted an edge of the creature with his boot to make sure its brain casing was well cracked. “They grow smaller and flatter here, but this one is thin even for the desert. Probably been waiting for dinner for days.” He glanced up. “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s not bleeding much. The dnu?”

  “Gone.” Gamon looked over the edge of the cliff to make sure, keeping well back from the thin edge. He turned back to examine Rhom’s wound. “It’s the heat,” he said with a hint of worry about the lack of blood. “You’re getting badly dehydrated. You’d be bleeding like a stuck pig if we were in the mountains.”

  Rhom stoically bore the examination while Gamon pressed and poked at the ragged wounds. Stoically, that is, until the older man jabbed his finger into one of the gashes. “Worlag piss, Gamon, are you trying to hold it together or pull it apart?”

  “Hold still,” Gamon said absently. He took out his knife, squinted at the wound in the brilliant moonlight, and before Rhom realized what he meant to do, dug the point down into the gash.

  The Randonnen jerked, but Gamon had his arm like a vise. “By the chin of a lepa’s uncle,” Rhom swore as Gamon released him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The older man turned the point of the knife to examine the strand of tissue. Silently, he held it up. Rhom, gripping his arm where the blood now flowed freely, narrowed his violet eyes. The thread writhed subtly, and it was as long as his finger. “Is that—?” he swallowed.

  “Sandworm,” Gamon confirmed.

  “From the poolah?”

  Gamon nodded. “The adult worms coil under the claws. You’re lucky it was at the top of the wound. I think I got it all. Let me see your sides.”

  Rhom stripped off what was left of his shirt. The gashes were ragged, but already oozing instead of flowing with blood. The older man pursed his lips. “Don’t see any,” he said shortly. “You were lucky. A few more seconds, and it would have been tearing your gut, not your ribs.”

  Rhom didn’t answer. Lucky? Give him the mountains any day. A worlag or poolah here and there—that was nothing. Sandworms and rockdoves and gritbugs? He caught Gamon’s expression and cursed again under his breath. Then he gave a short bark of a laugh. Gamon raised his gray eyebrows, and Rhom shrugged. “If Dion didn’t know I was coming before, she surely knows it now.”

  “She could feel this—you—at this distance?”

  He nodded and dug out the bandages from Gamon’s pack while Gamon got out the wound powder. “Moments of intensity,” he explained. “We know when we’re in danger or pain.”

  The gray-haired man sprinkled the powder on his gashes, then efficiently wrapped his arm. “So she feels the pain?”

  Rhom’s violet eyes glinted. “The danger, Gamon. Just the danger.”

  The older man grinned. “Right,” he agreed insincerely.

  Rhom grinned back. But he lost his humor as he regarded the drop into the next ravine. His heart still pounded a bit too fast. His muscles were still tense with the action. Dion had felt him—he was sure of it. But he had also felt her, and he could not help the instinctive grasp for the sword he had lost with his saddle. His voice was soft, and to himself. “There is someone hunting her through the wolves. And he is closing in.”

  XXII

  Ember Dione maMarin

  Let go the moons,

  So that they may bring the night;

  Let go your sons,

  So that they may learn what is right;

  Let go your fathers,

  So that they may find life’s end;

  Let go the moons,

  So that they may rise again.

  —From “Circles,” by Wile neRaya, Kiren Songster

  Dion’s hand clenched on her knife. Tehena and Kiyun caught her motion and instantly thumbed off the securing straps and drew their swords. Dion backed her dnu almost blindly away for two st
eps before she caught herself and held up her hand to the others. “Wait,” she said sharply.

  The wolf pack ahead on the road paused and looked back. They caught her sudden sense of fear, the distance of the urgency, and poised as if to race back. She scanned the icy ridge to the right, the sheer drop-off on the other side. She stared at the snowy stone road. A minute passed, then another. Ahead of them, the snow stretched in a shattered expanse where a dozen wagons had left their icy ruts. There were scrubby trees in a semiprotected patch on the slope, and up ahead, where the road dipped back down and widened out, the snow lay only in patches. Nothing moved. Nothing waited. There was nothing there.

  Dion stretched into the gray, tried to feel the danger. The cold wind bit at her cheeks. Finally she shook herself. The danger was not hers, she realized. It was not her threat.

  “Dion?” Kiyun asked softly.

  “It is nothing,” she said firmly.

  “Didn’t look like nothing from here.”

  She hesitated, then explained. “It’s Rhom.”

  Kiyun looked startled, but Tehena merely nodded to herself. The thin woman had suspected this of the wolfwalker, but it was the first time Dion had said it out loud. Kiyun did not sheath his sword. “What do you mean, it is Rhom?”

  Dion shrugged, but she too was unwilling to move forward yet. The sharp edge of danger had been faint, like a hunch that struck suddenly and then disappeared, leaving one second-guessing oneself. “My brother,” she said slowly. “He was in danger, in pain. I felt it clearly enough.”

  “Through the wolves?”

  She smiled faintly. “Rhom and I don’t need the wolves to know about each other. No, this was our natural bond, the bond of twins.”

  “But he’s safe now?”

  She nodded at the man. “There’s still an edge to the link between us, but it’s fading.”

  The thickset man shook his head. “I don’t see how you can feel anyone as far away as Randonnen.”