Wakje exchanged a look with the other man. Nori had been “uneasy” for a while in Ramaj Tume, too, a couple of years ago.
“She knows this area like a mountain goat,” Ki murmured to Wakje.
“Aye,” Wakje returned. But she’d been away for years, and the Ariyen hills were webbed with game tracks like a well-veined leaf. A summer here and there couldn’t make up for a long absence. Landmarks shifted, the earth could change, and there were always raiders. He should know. He’d been one.
Payne thought of Nori’s scout book. “A lot of chovas joined us in Sidisport.”
Instinctively, Kettre looked back along the line. Neither Wakje nor Ki turned his head, but Wakje said softly, “The girl was feeling itchy?”
“Lots of mishaps,” Ki pointed out in a low voice.
Wakje flicked his gaze meaningfully at Payne. “Think on it,” he told the other man.
Ki nodded. A drum of hooves grew loud over the rumbling wagons, and they looked to the other half of the road. It was yet another ring-runner, laid low on his dnu as he passed, heading south, with a stained bandage around his arm.
Wakje rubbed at a deep scar on his cheek. Nori’s instincts were among the best he’d seen in the forest, but still undeveloped when it came to humanity. If she bonded with the wolves, she might be able to sense that kind of danger better, like Dione did. Nori’s mother had often been able to sense the intent in men before they struck. It was the predator sense of violence that the wolves could pick up from human minds. It was a thought that Wakje shied from. He dreaded the day Nori reached through the grey and felt the killer that lurked inside him. As old as she was now, it wouldn’t be long before she started drawing the wolves to her instead of chasing after the grey. Until then, he thought more easily, if she was wary, it had to be something she’d seen or heard herself, something within the caravan.
As Wakje watched with his hard, flat eyes, extra riders all along the caravan peeled away from the wagons and rode toward The Brother. Half the riders didn’t even know Payne or Nori except through gossip or as they’d met in this train, but they split off anyway. Cozar custom, Wakje thought. Lose one, lose all. As loyal as family.
Payne tried not to snap at the two outrider youths who grinned at him as they reported in for the search. He caught Kettre’s frown, took a breath, let it out, and muttered, “It’s Test time.”
Aye, and that was half the problem, Kettre agreed silently. Payne had been chafing to Test for years, but his parents had held him back. Now—and probably only because Nori was at the end of her own Test age—he was being allowed to go for the rank he wanted. Two ninans, and he’d have his rank and be away on Journey, larking through the counties like the other youths he’d envied for the last three years. Kettre had already heard rumors that the elders had him up for an assignment thought “worthy” of the son of Aranur.
As for Nori, gossip said the elders would take this chance to try to convince her one more time to Test and Journey away from Payne. So far, the elders had had little luck in separating the brother and sister, and they wanted two legends, not just one. But Nori had been careful to stay on the trade lists, not the council duty lists. Trade duty, backwoods scouting, vet work, crafts—they weren’t the skills the council could justify coercing. What irritated the elders was that they also weren’t the talents that usually made a legend. For all Nori’s skills in scouting and defense, in six years, the elders had rarely gotten her in front of the council, let alone convinced her to take on a council project or work for a specific elder. What jobs Nori did accept were for relatives, and no one mistook those as anything but favors to family. Kettre suspected the elders would have had better luck trying to hire the Wolven Guard.
Payne raised his hand, but it was Wakje scanning the riders with a cold look that brought them quickly to silence. Payne tried not to notice. But when he explained the search plan, more than one of the chovas spoke out. “She is a fully qualified scout, neBentar,” said Murton. “Three ranks higher than you. And Ironjaw Trail is well traveled. Aren’t you jumping the gun?”
Payne squashed his irritation. It was only fair to question a search that started out at night, but it was typical of Murton to point out that Nori’s scout rank was already among the highest in the county. He kept his voice steady. “Eight hours is six hours too long to be gone without a word.”
Another Sidisport outrider frowned. “But Ironjaw Trail runs halfway to Deepening Road. Why would she go all the way out there?”
Payne shook his head. “Nori collects plants, herbs, even soil samples. She could wander almost anywhere. And she knows Ironjaw Trail. If she’s cut off from us, from Willow Road, she’d try to take that trail all the way across so she could send word back to reassure us.”
He caught a flicker of what he’d swear was satisfaction in Murton’s face. His violet eyes narrowed at the chovas, but another Sidisport rider broke in. “I can’t see Black Wolf running all night,” the burly man put in, “even if she is on that trail. She’s probably setting out right now in some scout camp with a brace of pelan on the coals.”
Even the cozar were nodding now, and Payne took a breath and held it for an instant before answering calmly, “If she is safe in a camp for the night, we’ll laugh about this tomorrow, and I’ll stand all of you up for an ale at the next wayside tavern. But I don’t feel like laughing just yet. She’s gone without a word, and that just isn’t like her.”
Wakje pulled out a piece of jerky and chewed it thoughtfully. Nori and Payne had been dependent on each other since they were children. Too dependent, according to some. Although—and Wakje hid a flash of dark humor—it was a deceptive partnership. Payne was the obvious troublemaker, the one more visible, the one who covered for Nori, but it was often Nori who planned the way. She was the more elusive half, but the one with the sharper knife. As much like her mother as a mirror, he acknowledged, though she would hate the comparison. Still, some of the best raiders he’d ever known had gone down in the wilderness.
Beside him, Gallo Cantaway Soon caught the ex-raider’s expression. The cozar tried to hide the fear that settled into his own gut. For a cozar, there could be no greater moment of tension than when the wagons rolled out of sight. The wagons were a cozar’s home, his family, his safety. Away from them, Gallo was just another soft-fleshed piece of prey, waiting to be someone’s dinner. He couldn’t help saying, “She’s Journey age, twenty-three in a few months, and every scout takes time alone to run the forest. With the wolves . . .” The older man shrugged.
Payne shook his head. “She’s not bonded with the wolves yet. She can’t hear them any better than you can.” Nor could she count on the Grey Ones to protect her, but that wasn’t something he could tell them. The wolf pack dogged Nori, like ghosts tangled at the edge of her mind, but it was an edgy sort of contact. To them, she was like a young lepa. Not lethal, not yet, but a creature who would be deadly once the talons within her sharpened and matured. She said she couldn’t tell sometimes if it was wolves or worlags on her heels. He suspected that, when the bond did occur, it would require the approval of all the pack, not just of the partner wolf.
“If you’re willing—” He spoke the cozar request phrase automatically. “—Proving, Murton, and my group will ride south with me to Four Forks where Nori was last seen. Kettre will take the rest of you north to one of the crossings and work back along the frontage road in case she’s trying to come back over.” He glanced up at the moons to judge the time. “Ride in to the trailhead tonight and start your search at dawn. Stay together, leave message rings at the cairns in case you miss her, and keep your ears open for the foxhorns.” He reined into the lead position. He glanced back at the chovas to watch them fall in, and prayed that Nori didn’t have half the worlags on her trail as he seemed to have at his back.
As they reined after Payne, more than one rider studied the darkening shadows. Once into the trees, the trails would be dark as a bitter man’s heart. Kettre murmured a quick prayer to the
moons as she took her group north past the wagons. She stared at the thin shield of thorn-spiked shrubs that stood between her and the wilderness. That barrier would repel most predators, unless they had the scent of blood. Predators, like badgerbears and worlags. It would be one or the other, she thought. Badgerbears or worlags. She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until Gallo, beside her, shivered.
IX
Bind yourself,
Blind yourself to your fear;
Bind yourself to your strength.
Find yourself,
Bind your thoughts with your will;
Wind yourself into strength.
Find yourself,
Align yourself like a blade, like a knife;
Wind yourself into life.
—from Resist the Mist, by Mari maDeenan
Nori didn’t stop running when she fled the raiders’ camp. She tried to close her ears to the shrieks as she ran, but they echoed like foxhorns trapped in her head. The nausea was rising hard. But she wasn’t sick, she wouldn’t be sick. She refused to let herself vomit. She kept on, finally remembering to stuff the handful of papers into the sling before she lost them. Then she pressed the sling close to her body while the pups mewed with the pressure.
The darkness, the blackened trees, the ring-runner bodies and odor of death . . . With the wolves in her mind, it was a nightmare mosaic. Plague fevers flushed through her thoughts, while the smell of decomp clogged her nose. Worlags chittered endlessly while they slashed apart the raiders. She didn’t realize that her own horror had strengthened the death sense. The taint deep within her and the fresh link to the wolves both opened her to images her mind could not interpret, and they warred for her consciousness. For the engineered wolves might run with humans, but it was the birdmen who owned the world, and it was the telepathic birdmen who lashed out at the wolfwalker when she turned on her own kind.
The slitted eyes flashed icily deep in her mind. She staggered, then fell to her knees, retching among the ferns. “Gods,” she whimpered. Tears mixed with the bile on her chin. She wiped her face with grass. The scent of the crushed stems mixed with the heavy, acid odor of the vomit. She felt her stomach try to heave again and cursed at the fear that crippled her. For the daughter of a weapons master, for the child of a wolfwalker, it was the ultimate in shame.
Close. Too close, Rishte sent worriedly. He snapped at her heels. Get up. Get up and run.
She dropped the soiled grass and forced herself back to shaky feet. She took one unsteady step, and then stretched that into an even shakier trot. The other Grey Ones loped before her. She could not see their eyes and couldn’t hear their directions except as an insubstantial wavering. Much stronger was the sense of those other eyes, watching and silently judging. Those yellow eyes had a foothold now. She had opened to the alien when she had opened to the wolves, and the taint and the plague sense were stronger.
Plague. She focused on that as she ran. If she did nothing else this night, she must get word of that cliff seep to Payne. He’d make sure word reached Mama and Papa. More than her scout notes, more than the ring-runner deaths, more than the raiders at Bell Rocks, the news of a wolf sense of plague, no matter how old, must reach her mother and father.
But her brother would be on her trail by dawn, away from Willow Road. On the one hand, that would be useful. He’d find her scout book with the rest of her broken gear. Between what she’d grabbed from the raiders’ camp and what would be left of her scout notes, they should be able to salvage enough for a credible report to their parents. Most of the information, the older notes, had already been passed along to the councils. At worst, she would lose some recent details and the ciphers she’d collected. The worlags would leave something, after all. They might tear the book because of her scent, but they sought human flesh, not paper. The beetle talons that had caught her back and ripped shallow flesh with leather . . . What had the raiders felt when she left them to the worlags? Slitted eyes flickered, and Nori swallowed hard.
Rishte gnawed uneasily at her thoughts. He was unable to understand her sickness at giving the worlags some other prey to kill. He’d sniffed her vomit and was puzzled. There was no food in it; it was a sickness, not a meal for a young pup. That her weakness was linked to the icy mind-taint disturbed him. It was like the scent of a lepa cutting through her thoughts. Through him, it created a tension in the packsong, like a raw claw that rags across silk. The older wolves knew she was bound in some way to the taint, not just to the Grey Ones, and they knew she would eventually seek out that taint, just as they sought her. They were not pleased about either bond. Oh, aye, she could go into the grey to reach the yearling, but she could not bring the cold with her.
The thought seemed to strengthen the faint, slitted gaze, and as the nausea rose again she staggered to a halt. She reached out, found nothing to support her, and almost toppled before she grabbed a thin tree. The headache was pounding in on top of the sickness now. Holding her breath didn’t stop the bile from coming up, and she swallowed convulsively, over and over. She had never stood up to those alien eyes, but something in her stiffened as her stomach clenched again.
“They were raiders.” She choked the words out in the darkness. “They killed six people on this trail alone. They’d have been sentenced to death on the trial block.”
The slitted eyes were too hard, too sharp.
“If not me,” she cried, “it would be someone else who must do it.”
Beside her, Rishte growled urgently. Then Grey Vesh howled through Nori’s thoughts. The stronger voice washed over Rishte’s thin, young tones and, like an ax, slashed through that other, yellowed gaze. For a moment Nori was blinded. Then the ululations of Vesh’s voice drowned out Nori’s self-loathing and self-disgust. The fear, the gashes, the wobbling numbness of her legs, the needles that pierced her temples, the bile that burned her throat—all were swallowed by grey. She almost whimpered in her relief. The wolves were still helping her. Not for her or Rishte, but for their days-old pups. She dragged in a breath. “Gods,” she managed. Her hands unclenched, and she pushed herself upright.
Within seconds, she was drowned again in the black trunks that held up the glowing sky. Beneath them, like a dark tabby, the trail alternated in patches of reddish white, then shadowed, black-grey earth. The colors were not reassuring. The night sounds were also louder than before, more immediate, more . . . threatening.
The third time she startled at a crackling in the brush, she nearly bolted from the trail. Rishte dodged instinctively and snarled at her sudden heart rate. It was a nightrail, already gone, hardly worth chasing at all. Nori cursed under her breath and tried to calm her pulse. It was the wolf-bond, she realized. It was strengthening and letting her hear just enough through Rishte’s ears that every sound seemed closer, louder, caused by a larger beast. She had to get hold of herself.
Somewhere up ahead was the other group of humans, the small group, the one on Deepening Road. If she had interpreted the wolfsense right, they were five, maybe six kays away. They were a decently sized pack; there was enough sense of noise that there must be several riders.
Rishte’s golden eyes gleamed at her. He had felt that thought, the way she had swayed toward the grey, and it pleased him.
She tried to focus on that, on the grey. The pack memory of the men came to her faintly: brash energies that flanked a deafening, slow-moving monster, like bihwadi around a bollusk. Nori found her lips quirking. That would be the riders and a wagon. The impression was the same as the one Rishte had had of Nori’s own caravan, just smaller. As with the raiders, the group had been noted by another wolf pack moving its own pup east. Both that pack and Rishte’s would have to restake their claims east of Willow Road. Rishte growled softly, agreeing in her mind. He flashed her an image of scratching and urinating to mark a new boundary, and Nori’s bladder tightened. “I don’t think so,” she retorted. “That’s for you to do.” But she couldn’t help the flash of image of herself with her pants down around her an
kles, trying to pee on the rocks.
Rishte laughed in her mind.
It eased some of her tension. She looked down the trail, and their contact broke. A single wagon . . . Probably a fallback, delayed from the rest of its caravan. If she was lucky, one of their outriders would be willing to take a message up to a mirror tower, where it could be flashed across to Willow Road and ridden down to the Ell. Even if she didn’t make it back to Payne before his search went out, the ring-runners would let the cozar know to sound the recall. That would keep him safe. He wouldn’t reach the death-seep before the recall sounded. All she had to do was jog another five kays. She tried not to cringe at the thought. Five, six kays to the wagon? She could make that. She had little choice, she thought.
She picked up the pace again, slowed within ten steps, and tried to force herself back into the running mind-set. Two dozen steps, and she was back to a numbed jog. She cursed at her trembling legs. At this rate, it would be an hour before she reached Meridian Trail, and another hour to gain the tag end of the wagon group that rolled down Deepening Road.
Grey Rishte pushed up beside her. Like an adult prodding a child, he urged her to return to the trail-eating lope that the rest of the pack now wanted. The sense of firm command from the yearling made her snort. Rishte might be just one year old, but he was already trying to wield the assertiveness of a full-grown alpha male.
In spite of herself, she did shift to a slightly faster jog. She held that pace until her breath was in tatters. Still, she did not allow herself to slow much until she hit Meridian Trail. Only then—and she could not fully stop, or her muscles would collapse—only then did she drop again to a slow, loping jog, more long-legged walk than run, which the wolves paced easily.
She raised her arms over her head as she quick-walked to control what was left of her breath. Rishte dropped back beside her, and without thinking she gripped the hot, grey fur as she had done as a child with her mother’s partner wolf. But the wild wolf twisted.
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