Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  She reached for the tendrils of fear that still echoed in the pack. He was there behind it. She could feel his presence growing, feel it closing in. And he could feel her more clearly now, feel the power she carried. He wanted it like life. She could almost feel his hands reach out for her to assuage his agony. She clenched and unclenched her hands. They still threatened to cramp, and that too was from the hunter. He had courage, that man, to face such pain each day. The Gray Ones shielded him—she had felt the wild ones pull the knowledge of such shielding from her days ago. But even with the wolves, he felt the pain; he simply worked around it. She admitted to admiration. It was a lesson she had learned too well: feel pain, face pain, beat pain.

  The gray din shivered around her in the night. She smiled faintly at it. It was no longer strong—most of the wolves would be gone by morning, and it had no subtlety. But she would give the gray wolves what they wanted. She owed them that and more. They had saved her life and the lives of others too many times to count. So she would find the hunter and face him. Release him from his pain. And then . . . She forced her hands to relax. “It will be time,” she whispered to the night. “To find my heart again.”

  Rhom shook his head at the older man. “It is nothing,” he said finally, his voice hoarse and cracked as Gamon’s. “It wasn’t Dion.”

  “You froze like a rock.”

  “She felt—” Rhom broke off, unable to explain the sensations that were not real sensations. He shrugged.

  Gamon regarded him carefully out of red-rimmed eyes, then nodded. They trudged on in the dark.

  “Report,” Talon said curtly as he rose. “Sojourn.”

  The slender man poked his head warily out of his shredded sleeping bag. Seeing Talon standing, he gripped his right arm to slow the blood and returned, “One wound, right arm. Superficial.”

  “Mal.” Talon stepped over the limbs of one of the dead dnu. There was no need to check for a pulse. The head and throat were missing.

  Mal sat up and shivered as he saw what was left of the dnu. “Hundred percent,” he said unsteadily. “The dnu?”

  “Two missing, three dead, and Oroan’s—over there—is dying,” Talon returned. Three were untouched and alive. One of the moons gave poor light through a thin spot in the clouds, and it was just enough to see by so that he stumbled over, instead of fell on, the head of the decapitated dnu. The skull had been stripped down to bone; there were no tissues left except a jellied mass that had once been the riding beast’s brain. He edged around it and went to the next creature. “Dangyon,” he said.

  “Two wounds, left leg, one deep.”

  “Mal, help him,” Talon ordered. He listened to the list as the raiders gingerly disentangled themselves from their shelters and began gathering the gear. He was barely finished examining the last dead dnu when Gray Faren and Paksh crept back into his mind. He did not have to look into the shadows to see the two females. Their yellow eyes seemed to gleam. The scent of fresh meat had drawn them back—the younger wolf, Faren, was pleased that she had brought the bounty to her elders. Paksh, with her torn ear and ragged coat, seemed to reach out to Talon more clearly.

  The hunt was bloody, fresh.

  Aye. He could feel the hunger in her belly. He crouched as if he were looking for something so that the other raiders would not notice. When he turned his head to meet her gaze, the shock of the meeting made him stiffen. His vision was doubled, but was sharper than before. He could see his own pulse in his throat—and although he knew that was more the image of his heartbeat through the packsong than the actual sight of his pulse in the dark, the drumming made him tense up. The wild wolfsong was a primitive chaos to his senses.

  He tried to focus a single thought on the image of the skates: Are there any more to come?

  The impression the older wolf returned was without fear— of eagerness and hunger instead. He gestured toward the dnu carcass, and the two wolves crept warily forward but did not approach completely. He knew they waited for him to tear his own meal out of the flesh first. Take what you want, he told them flatly. I have already eaten. He backed quietly away.

  They needed no more urging. As soon as he was a few meters back, they were on the riding beast’s carcass.

  “Talon?” Roc called sharply as she heard the unmistakable sound of raw meat tearing. The wild wolves stopped instantly and fled. Roc started through the brush, her bow in her hands, with Harare and Wakje beside her.

  “No,” Talon snapped. “Do not approach. I am fine. There is no danger.”

  Roc froze. Wakje and Harare peered into the dark. They could see him standing meters away from a carcass. All three had heard the sounds of eating, and the other raiders had alerted.

  Talon held his hand up to stop them from approaching. He called out to the wolves in his mind. Come back. We will not harm you. I will keep the other humans away.

  The words went nowhere. He had no bond to make himself heard. He tried again, making his thoughts more simple—a single focused image of prey down and hot and bloody.

  Leader . . . The sense of the response was faint—more an image of accepting him than the word of his leadership.

  He reached out with all his mental will, and his voice seemed to echo on. Wolfwalkerwolfwalkerwolfwalker . . . The need, over and over, for the wolves, for the gray, for the eyes in the dark . . . The wolves howled at his stretching out, as if they could match it with their own needs. East, run, hunt, the prey, danger, cold, cold . . . The sequence pierced his thoughts until he lost his focus and retreated to his own mind.

  He was shaken. His body was taut like his mind, and he could not afford the convulsions. He took a deep breath to steady himself, then turned to the other raiders.

  “Leave this area alone,” he directed. “The only dnu that survived are over there. Roc, help me with that one.” He pointed.

  Two saddles were torn, but not so badly they could not still be used. Three saddlebags were shredded, their contents strewn. Ki ran his fingers around the teeth marks left in his metal mug. “Moons-damned skates,” he muttered. He kicked at an open pack, then stooped to deal with what was left of his clothes.

  Roc moved up beside Talon to study the beast in the dark. It was still hobbled into its sleeping position, but its eyes were wild, and the creature snorted unevenly with half grunts and chirps. The woman began humming, her voice a soothing four-note croon that simply played over and over again. Lilting technique, perfect tone, a beautifully slow vibrato— she could have been a ringsinger in any city she chose, but instead, she used her voice as a weapon. Beautiful face, lithe body, and that lilting, lovely voice . . . Even knowing what she had done in the past to her victims, Talon was beginning to be lulled by the sounds. He crouched beside the dnu and ran his hands over its body, checking for wounds and soothing it with his touch. “There’s a small bite here, but nothing that will slow it down.”

  Roc added words to her croon so that they could speak while she calmed the riding beast. “I found no wounds on this side.”

  He stroked the dnu’s head, letting it get used to the motion before he began running his hands toward the hobble ring. The dnu snorted as his hand came near its nose, but it began to calm again as he simply repeated the motion to Roc’s gentle croon.

  “It’s been a long time since you touched me like that.”

  “I’ve had other things on my mind.”

  She let her hands run along the dnu’s legs until she could reach the hobble. “I was on your mind before,” she crooned.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve seen what you do to men who have you on their mind.”

  “Men, yes. But you’re not some weak county rider. You’re strong, hard—like Drovic. One of us.” She smiled, and in the dark, the expression was not nice. “Besides, I’ve never done those things to you.”

  He glanced at her face and felt nothing inside. “Not yet,” he agreed.

  She nodded at him to warn him that she was slipping the hobble knot. “You know, Talon, you shou
ld think about our future—”

  It was all she got out before the taut dnu, realizing it was free, grunted, jerked its head up, and struggled to its feet. Talon was thrown back; Roc was dragged up. He barely grabbed the halter again before he was dragged forward with Roc through the brush. The dnu thrashed against the small trees, crushing Talon for a moment between its ribs and the saplings. His breath went out with an oomph.

  “Moonwormed masa bait,” Roc cursed from the other side. “Dung-ridden piece of a poolah’s ass—”

  Talon didn’t blame her language. He would have cursed, too, but he was still gasping for air as the dnu lunged, bucked, and pulled them through the growth like empty botas on a string. They were both cursing by the time they brought the beast under control.

  To their left, Wakje and Weed were having the same trouble with the second dnu, and the third was not even un-hobbled. Talon dodged a kick from the dnu’s middle leg, rapped the beast on its neck hump, and caught his breath only to find Roc grinning at him. He grinned back automatically.

  She reached for his hand under the dnu’s neck. Her flesh was hot and sticky with dnu sweat and grime. Her voice was soft. “Talon, we should talk about our future.” She paused to judge his reaction. When he didn’t respond, she added, “I am not unattractive, and you found pleasure with me before. We could have kum-kala, not just kum-jan.” Even in the dark, she saw his face become expressionless as she mentioned sex as if they were Promised instead of sex between friends. Her voice flattened. “Drovic would not disapprove.”

  Talon’s eyes narrowed. No, his father would not disapprove of her—not as a raider. She was hard and effective, beautiful, pleasure-skilled, and intelligent enough to know when to push a man forward instead of holding him back. She might turn on others like a lepa in a swarm, but she would respect Talon because, like his father, the strength of his will could subdue her. Talon studied her without speaking. Some part of his brain analyzed her words, noting the emphasis on his father. Some other part wondered at the way she proposed the Promising between them, as if it was need, not greed, that prompted her. But this was the woman who had cut the tongue out of a singing instructor for telling her that her diction was poor, who had slaughtered her cousin’s mate in front of the man after severing the man’s spinal cord. Who had caught a ringsinger once and torn out his throat with her bare hands, then laughed and licked his flavor from her fingers. Talon removed his hand from under hers. Those soulful brown eyes, that creamy skin, and the voice that could drown a man—they were the crystallized shell of a woman. There was only a worlag inside.

  To the side, Gray Faren began to growl low in her throat, almost inaudibly, as she echoed his rejection of Roc. Unbidden, his hand rose to his chest to press against his sternum. Like Gray Ursh and Paksh, he had once been mated. He didn’t need his memories for that: he had never had the two gems removed that studded his sternum. He touched them possessively. They were his: his memory, his mate. He fought for the images. Others rose instead. A girl, a boy, a dozen others who died from blood-blackened steel. He had lost his sons, his family, his county, his mate. In the gray, with the strength of the wolf-woman’s needs, with the relentless gray, with the power she seemed to control, the woman in the packsong was a taunt of what he had lost.

  Like humans, few Gray Ones mated for life. Those wolves who did seemed to become one creature instead of a simple pairing that would last ten or fifteen years. In the packsong, the permanent bond would blend their voices so that they could not be separated. That was the kum-tai, the eternal bond. It was what he and his mate had achieved. Kum-jan between friends, kum-kala between Promised, kum-vani between mates; but the forever bond, that was different. It was not love—love was emotion and need and passion entwined like poison masa. Love devoured and strengthened itself, but in the end, it was not enough. The forever bond was utter trust. It balanced one love with another, one need with another, until each person was perfect and whole. He had had that once, that blend in which even anger could be perfect.

  His hands clenched on the bridle so that the dnu stamped its feet. He looked across at the other woman. He felt nothing for her, and his reply to her was cold. “I am kum-tai.” He turned the dnu away.

  Roc stared at him for a moment, then hurried to catch up in the dark. “Kum-tai?” she scoffed. “Kum-tai is forever.”

  He did not answer.

  She pressed. “In this world, as a raider, you think you can love someone like that? Your hands are bloodied as a sandbear’s. Your heart is cold. You don’t even know who you are.”

  He shrugged and urged the dnu between the saplings.

  Roc pushed after them through the brush. “You don’t have a home, a mate, a county. You have nothing and no one, Talon—except me.” But he barely glanced over his shoulder at her, and the woman’s voice grew hard. “Does Drovic know—about this kum-tai?”

  He paused. “No.” He didn’t know why he was so sure, but that gray-soothed clarity in his mind answered that even though he could not remember his mate, he remembered the depth of their bond. He regarded Roc, studying her body, the way she stood. She was a lepa, waiting to strike, violent in her love, desperate for a mate that she would as likely kill. He realized that he understood her even more than he did the shadow wolfwalker, and that he could use that—his understanding— as a weapon, just as Roc used her voice. It was a cold thought, and he felt his mind slip into old patterns of reaching a goal. This time, the goal was not Drovic’s.

  Roc held out her hand. “Talon . . .”

  There was uncertainty in her plea, and her soulful eyes looked tragic, but he knew she was untouched by both. “We will speak about this later,” he said quietly. He handed her the reins and moved away to help Sojourn with the last dnu.

  Roc stayed where she was, staring after him. She was trembling. She had almost spoken the word that she had sworn never to use. What had begun as a game—to catch and use Drovic’s son—had become something else to her. There was the same strength in Talon that she saw in Drovic, and it drew her like a skate to a flame. Drovic had seen that in her—her need to be around strength. The older man had used her himself. But the game had become real, and now she . . . needed Talon. She felt her guts twist hard. Drovic had been right. Talon was still too Ariyen, and she hated Drovic for that— and hated herself, for needing Talon.

  She stared after the tall man with narrowed eyes until a soft rustle marked the brush. Quickly, she led the dnu away. She did not see the gold-rimmed, yellow, lupine eyes that watched her from the dark.

  Talon joined Sojourn to unhobble the last surviving dnu. The two murmured in a half-humming tone to calm the spooked beast. Even so, when the dnu’s nose was free of its feet, it kicked out at Sojourn and almost trampled Talon as it tried to bolt. Talon barely kept his grip on the reins. “Easy,” he said sharply. “Down, boy.”

  The other man grabbed at the bridle. “This thing’s skittish . . . as a tree sprit. Sure there’s . . . not more danger?” he managed as he was dragged three meters through the vines.

  “None that I can sense.” Talon didn’t bother to hedge his words.

  “Damn riding beast has the brain of a gelbug,” Sojourn cursed.

  “Better than being gelbug dinners.” He dodged a middle hoof and kicked the joint of the leg from behind. The dnu curled the leg up automatically against its segmented belly. With the leg up, it was unable to buck, and Talon forced it to stand fairly still. They finally soothed it enough to tether it to a tree. The dnu’s eyes were still half wild, but at least it didn’t tear the bridle apart to get free.

  Sojourn brushed off his trousers. “Roc seems to have things on her mind.”

  Talon sniffed the air but caught nothing other than the marking smells from the swarming skates and the kill-scent from the dnu. He glanced at the other man. “She has her ideas,” he said noncommittally.

  Sojourn raised his eyebrows.

  Talon shrugged. “Would you sleep with a lepa?”

  The other
man grinned. “Were I also a lepa and my mate looked like that? Yes.” In the faint light, his even teeth seemed to gleam.

  Talon chuckled low. But his voice was quiet when he answered, “But I am not a lepa, and I am kum-tai.”

  The other man paused, then finished brushing off his trousers. “You ride with Drovic, Talon. Your mate is no longer part of your life.”

  “But I am still kum-tai,” Talon returned flatly. He reached over to untether the dnu. Sojourn’s hand stopped him. He looked up sharply.

  “Does Drovic know?”

  “It is not Drovic’s business.”

  “And Drovic’s goal?” the other man asked softly.

  “There is more than one way to reach a goal.”

  Sojourn looked into his gray eyes for a long moment. He started to say something, then stopped.

  Talon nodded toward the clearing.

  In silence, they finished untethering the beast and led it out of the saplings. It did not stop kicking, and for his trouble, Sojourn received a bone bruise on his thigh the size of Dangyon’s fist.

  The last dnu had been calmed by Wakje and Weed, so Talon and Sojourn helped gather what was left of the gear. Oroan lit a small lantern to help Dangyon search the edge of the clearing for other items that could be salvaged. The two raiders made their way around the perimeter of the brush, shaking the ferns and saplings to dislodge night spiders, while they picked up the shredded gear.

  At ten minutes, Talon called a halt to the search. They repacked, distributing survival gear to their pockets and thigh bags and packing the rest on the remaining dnu. Talon tightened the straps on his own small pack and glanced around the clearing. His gray eyes were thoughtful.

  Sojourn followed his gaze. “Do we wait for Kilaltian’s group or move forward? It’s a damn long hike to Darity.”

  “We can’t stay here. There will be other hunters in the wake of the swarm, and these carcasses will draw everything from badgerbears to largons. On foot, our group is swarm bait.” He did not mention the wounded men whose blood scent was in his nostrils. Mal’s head wound had left the dour man weakened enough that he wasn’t sure the man would make such a hike. Ki’s left arm was still sore. Dangyon’s legs would make the man grouchy as a badgerbear. Talon rubbed futilely at his own temple. His own arm was now bound with the last of the clean rags, but it throbbed as if his headache had relocated. He did not want to think of what would have happened had the convulsions hit with the swarm. Instead, he rubbed the stubble that had grown on his jaw. “Two or three kays,” he said finally. “That ought to put enough distance between us and the clearing. If Darity was warned in time, they should ride back this way to find us when we don’t show up in an hour.”