Nori looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “He’s got a good seat, carries his blade like he means business. He startled a few times, but he didn’t hint at bolting, even when we crossed the poolah.”
“Poolah?” The other woman poked at one of the scabs on her arm. “You just can’t leave the critters alone, can you?”
Nori shook her off. “You’re as bad as Payne. The poolah didn’t touch me. This is from the brush last night, when I was running from worlags.”
“Worlags.” Kettre’s voice was flat.
Nori shook her head in silent warning. “I’ll tell you later,” she mouthed as the searchers began to dismount and greet her.
Kettre scowled. “Ask Payne,” she returned cryptically.
Nori briefly explained the night to the cozar and chovas who had turned out to look for her. When Hunter would have added to her abbreviated version, she cut him off smoothly, leaving Fentris with a half smile on his face. Then she reassured the searchers, thanking them again as they left to catch up to the wagons.
Kettre stayed behind to wait for Payne and question the two Tamrani. Nori went back to her log pillow to close her eyes, not to sleep—she was too tired and sore for that—but to listen for the yearling.
She hadn’t realized she had dozed off until the grey raked like a nail across her mind. She jerked awake. She was on her feet instantly, her hand going to her borrowed bow. Hunter was half on his feet at her abrupt warning, and Kettre and Fentris barely an instant behind. She poised, listening.
Wolfwalker, Rishte sent sharply. Wake, alert. The pounding. Hooves on the ground like before.
“Nori?” Kettre said sharply.
Nori held up her hand and shook her head. Rishte was close, and the sense of his warning was stronger. He was on edge, too, more twitchy since he’d crept closer to the humans. This time, she knew immediately it was fast, approaching riders. “Yes,” she breathed. He’d keyed in to her need to listen only for a larger group, the one Payne would be with. He had ignored the other single and paired ring-runners who had passed while she slept. So soon into the bond, it was more than she could have hoped for. She sent him a joyful shaft of approval.
Wolfwalker! he returned.
Kettre, watching the change in Nori’s body language, relaxed.
“It’s alright,” Nori told the Tamrani. Fentris gave her an odd look but lowered his bow, as did Hunter.
A few minutes later, a knot of riders pounded into view at a canter. Nori raised her arm, and Payne spurred his dnu into a gallop.
Payne barely came to a halt before sliding from the saddle, and he and Nori banged bows as they hugged until Nori shrugged hers off and thrust it at Kettre. Hunter noted the worry in both Nori’s and Payne’s faces until they exchanged some low words. Then Payne gave Hunter a look that didn’t pretend to hide his protectiveness.
Hunter understood completely. He couldn’t help glancing at Fentris as the other searchers arrived. He still didn’t know whether to put a fist in the other Tamrani’s perfect face for letting his sister get stabbed, or bring the man in to help, since Shae had information of his own that could help Hunter at council.
He looked back at The Brother. The height and lean, broad shoulders Payne had, Hunter suspected, came from the father’s side. Hunter wasn’t a small man, but he guessed he outweighed the youth by barely fifteen kilos. Also like his father, Payne’s face was fairly sculpted. If the ladies thought Payne good looking now, they’d probably swoon over him in two years. No wonder he had a growing reputation as a troublemaker and rake.
Hunter had been expecting to see The Brother as spineless and jealous of his father’s reputation and name. Instead, he saw a young man who moved with much of the controlled energy Nori had, as if Payne had already been seasoned enough to wear away much of the brashness of youth. It made Hunter study him much more carefully. The children of strong parents were often weak, as if they couldn’t define themselves except as shadows of such visible roles. History repeating itself, he thought. The young man had been called a “miniature Aranur” and a “budding Rhom” all his years growing up. If it had been Hunter, he’d have dyed his hair, changed his name, and pretended he really was cozar.
After Payne’s look, he was prepared for the once-over he got from two of the older riders. Those hard faces and trail-toughened rigs could never have been cozar. These, he thought, looking at Wakje and Ki, were part of the Wolven Guard.
Beside the three men, the wolfwalker seemed not just slender, but almost willowy. Hunter gathered his gear and tried not to remember how her muscles had felt when he’d massaged her legs. In the wind, his soft jerkin and baggy shirt pressed against her figure. He felt his loins tighten again. Slim she might be, but there was strength in that long, lithe body. He stifled an urge to run his hands inside the garment, over her smooth skin, and shock her out of her reticence.
Wakje glanced at Hunter, then studied his niece as she briefly explained again where she’d been. He didn’t miss the tautness of exhaustion, or the long scratches and gashes on her arms and neck. She was leaving out a few details. Payne, too, gave her a sharp look, but accepted her story without protest. When she’d finished, the younger man turned to the rest of the searchers. “With our thanks, and if you’re willing, you can ride back to the caravan. We’ll follow in a bit.”
Ki nodded to Payne and Nori, but Wakje made no move to leave; nor did Hunter or Fentris. The outrider, Murton, made as if to stay also, but Ed Proving simply handed Murton the man’s reins and commented dryly, “They can manage, Outrider neKien. This road is fairly easy to follow, even for full-fledged scouts.”
The chovas flushed, nodded curtly, and reined away, but not before Nori caught a flash of something cold in his brown eyes. It seemed directed at her, and she felt a chill. Rishte echoed it into her mind, and howled up on the hill. The other riders stilled, then glanced at Nori, but her violet eyes were clear, not unfocused as a wolfwalker’s gaze often was. Still, there was speculation in their gazes as they waved their ride-safes. Uncle Ki studied her for a moment, then nodded to her and rode away with his sons.
Nori glanced at the Tamrani, then murmured to Payne, “Shall we?”
They walked away to talk in privacy. He glanced back and kept his voice low. “You’re gouged up good, Nori-girl.”
“It was an . . . interesting night,” she admitted.
Payne heard the growl under her voice. His hand shot out and gripped her arm. “That howl. It’s happened then? That’s . . . is that your wolf on the hill?”
She couldn’t help smiling. Payne’s voice was so carefully steady that he had to be biting the insides of his cheeks. She disengaged his fingers. “The pack Called. One chose to stay.”
Payne started to grin. With the wolves so wary of the taint in her mind, Nori had been terrified she would never find a partner. “It’s happened,” he murmured. “They Called, you Answered, and now you’re really bonding.”
“You would have done less, big brother?”
He mock-punched her shoulder and grinned when she couldn’t quite hide her flinch. Served her right for adventuring without him. “Hells, you know I wouldn’t have ignored a Call. Are you going to tell?”
“Not before we leave on your Journey assignment.”
He nodded. What the elders didn’t know, they couldn’t control. Wolfwalkers weren’t as rare as they had once been, but their skills were still in high demand. The Ariyen elders had been chewing their nails waiting for Nori to bond. Once she did, they could put more pressure on her to shift from the scout lists to the council lists. She could end up like their mother, drowned in county duties. Unless, he added to himself, she stood up to them or was already out on Journey.
He glanced back toward the Tamrani. “Do they know?”
“They suspect, but I don’t think they’ll tell.” She hesitated, then asked more sharply than she intended, “Payne, how far did you get on my trail before you heard the recall?”
He said in disgust, “Moons, Nori, you didn�
�t need to worry about me and the worlags.”
But she surprised him. “I wasn’t worried about that. You’ve never been afraid of them like I am.” Rishte growled faintly as her thoughts turned back to that midnight run. She glanced back at the two Tamrani. “Let’s walk a bit,” she said softly.
She led him almost a hundred meters down the road before taking the papers from her pocket and handing them to Payne. “I took those from the raiders at Bell Rocks.”
Payne unfolded them carefully. “They’d be more useful if they weren’t torn.”
“Aye, and I’d be more perforated,” she said dryly. “The raiders were armed, you know, at the time.”
He flashed her a grin. While she waited, she peered into the bushes and idly picked a few seedpods hidden back in the thorns. The pods had escaped the spring sun and hadn’t yet burst, so they were both hard and aromatic. Payne handed her a belt pouch automatically as he read, and she dropped the pods inside. As with most scouts, it was habit to supplement their scouting wages. This time, they’d need the extra silver to help replace her gear.
Payne frowned as he studied the last sheet. “This isn’t House code.”
“No. One of the raiders was writing that when I ran through the camp. I think it could be the same as the other samples we saw a month ago.”
He refolded the papers thoughtfully and tucked them inside his jerkin. “I’ll find a rider and send these on after we copy down the code. The next contact I know is two days away, but he’s solid. We can trust him with this.”
Nori glanced back at the Tamrani and lowered her voice. “There was something else last night, Payne. At the base of Cotillion Cliff, a death-place, like the domes. Like the plague, but recent.”
He stilled, his hand in his jerkin pocket. “So that’s why you didn’t want me following your trail, and why you don’t want to confess the bond.” He secured the pocket. “Plague.” He said softly, “You’re sure about this?”
“Sure as a rock set in stone.”
He didn’t doubt her. Mama had taken him to the same ruins as Nori. Like old sweat, a chill crept down his spine. Plague, and the wolves remembered it clearly enough to tell Nori before she’d fully bonded.
After eight hundred years, plague was still carried by the wolves. It was the reason their litters were so small, their pups often stillborn. It lay dormant in the Grey Ones until they did Ovousibas—the internal healing—but then it erupted like fire. It was why Ovousibas was forbidden. The intense energies of the inner healing killed the wolves, and then burned out the brains of the wolfwalkers who tried to do it with them. Mama was likely the first person in three centuries who had figured out how to use the alien healing technique without killing herself or her wolf.
Nori had the same knowlege of botany and biology as her mother, and with her vet skills and the taint in her mind, Nori could be the perfect person to help find a cure for the wolves. But seeking such a cure wasn’t a goal to admit to—not with the tombs of the martyrs lining the Ancients’ roads. Any hint that Nori could recognize plague or survive it or, moons forbid, cure it, and she would be inundated with hopefuls. Even the Lloroi couldn’t stop that kind of flood. She could be the death of hundreds who would try to return to the domes and die instead at the plague sites. Nori couldn’t even know yet whether she could do Ovousibas at all, let alone do it well enough to survive the plague, as Mama had barely learned to do.
Payne’s voice was low. “Did the wolves tell you how many died?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t get to any real memories. We’re not that closely bonded.”
“Not yet,” he agreed. “It took Mama years to be able to read the Grey Ones’ memories well. You could give yourself a few days.” If she had managed to read any memories at all, her wolf must not be a pup. It would be harder for her, then, to stay among men if the Grey One was already wild.
The sound of drumming hooves reached them faintly from around the wide curve in the road, and both cocked their heads to listen. “Two riders,” guessed Payne automatically. It was an old game.
“Three,” she countered. “There’s not enough distinction for two.”
He caught the hoarseness in her voice and gave her a cross look. “You’re cheating.”
She grinned. She could hear the rustle of a dik-dik lizard, the flutterings of tree sprits as they swooped overhead, but she couldn’t quite hear Rishte. “I would if I could,” she admitted. “But your group scared him back up the hill. He can’t see any better than you can.”
“And I should believe you?”
“When have I ever tricked you?” she asked virtuously.
He raised his black eyebrows. Then he began ticking off the examples on his fingers. “Two months ago, when you slipped red pepper into my morning rou, told me I was late, and I gulped half of it down before I noticed. Then there was last ninan, when you got old Martonne with her sagging lips to say she was mooning after me in front of the entire fireside. And then there was the day after that, when you got me to challenge you—”
Her grin widened.
“—and chose puffballs for the weapons.”
Her grey-violet eyes sparkled. “A man going up for Test should be ready for anything.”
He snorted. “Anything like a weapon, okay. But puffballs? It was the stupidest challenge I’ve ever had. I looked like I’d been in a feather fight. Vina’s brother has been calling me Featherhead.”
“Payne Featherhead,” she teased. “I like it.”
“Aye, now there’s a name I want to live with for a long time. All I can do is pray you get us into another scrape so I have a chance at another rep-name.” An edge entered his voice. “And not another scrape like last night. Moonworms, Nori. Raiders, worlags, and plague?” He pushed her chin with one finger to get a better look at a long scratch.
She jerked her head away. “I wouldn’t have done it, but Rishte—”
“Called,” he finished shortly. It would have been strong, that Call. He’d seen it in other wolfwalkers, when their partners pulled them out of the cities. Nori was more sensitive than most, and if Rishte was at least a year old, his voice would be strong already.
The riders came into sight down the road, and Nori hid a grin at their number. “Well?” she prompted.
“Three,” he admitted sourly. They were riding heads-down in a tight knot, hunched low, their features obscured as manes whipped around their faces. Two glanced over at Nori and Payne, then tucked their heads down again.
“Older sisters are always right,” Nori said smugly.
“It won’t be that way when I bond.”
“You’ll probably do it sooner than I,” she admitted. “The Grey Ones have always liked you better.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But they hound you more closely.”
“They want another Dione.” They exchanged wry glances. “Here,” she said, picking another set of seedpods.
“Here, yourself.” He pulled out her scout book and handed it over. “It’s a bit worse for the wear, but still usable. Best mark down the—” He automatically dropped his voice to a whisper. “—plague place.” He watched her make her quick, neat notes. He forced himself to ask, “You think we should check out the site before we report to the council?” He dreaded her answer. They were still days from Shockton, the Test town. His Test, his Journey assignment—she could take them away with a single word.
She understood his carefully casual tone. No matter what her brother did, no matter which venges he rode, where he studied, how well he fought or scouted or worked, no one ever said, that Payne neBentar, he’s a good man to have at your side. Instead it was, neBentar, he really takes after his father. Or, neBentar, bet he got that move from the Wolven Guard. Worse, Payne had had to look out for her all their lives, and it was her fault he’d been raised that way. Fear made her unreliable, violence made her sick, and both dogged her like the wolves. Payne had earned the rep-name The Brother because of her. If they weren’t careful, they’d b
e tied together till the day she died.
She shook her head. “It’s plague, Payne. If it’s not just a memory, neither one of us could survive it. Mama’s the only one who can check it out. We can’t even risk sending word of it ahead. If the message was intercepted . . .” She shrugged. “There’s time enough to tell Mama in person and let her take care of it.”
“Someone else might find that spot accidentally.”
“I doubt it. There was a wagon track in the area, but it was at least two winters old.”
“Harvesters wouldn’t go back in there till fall.”
“Aye, and the trails in that area are years overgrown. If it wasn’t for the wolves, I wouldn’t have known where I was.”
He snorted. She always knew where she was. It was one of the few things he envied about the taint in her mind.
She finished her notes and handed the book back. “My thanks for finding that. I was afraid I’d have to try to re-create everything. I borrowed a map from Hunter to mark the trails just in case.”
“Looks like you borrowed more than that,” he teased. He nodded toward the knives at her belt. “We found all your blades,” he added, and lost his teasing tone. “But your bow is so much kindling.”
She shrugged. “An easy loss.”
“Maybe a better loss than you know,” he said darkly.
She laughed, not understanding. “I never liked that bow.”
“Neither did someone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“The rope’s been damaged.”
She was surprised by the non sequitur. “You fell on it at the cliff?”
“Not me. But there’s a flat spot, about ten meters in from one end.”
Ten meters. Far enough in that it wouldn’t be immediately noticed when knotted. She regarded her brother soberly. A flat spot in the rope wasn’t a trivial problem. When someone fell on a roped climb, the falling body picked up momentum on the descent. When the climber hit the end of the rope, the rope stretched until either the fall was stopped and the body began to spring back, or the rope broke instead. Even when a rope held, a few strands usually broke inside the protective sheath. It was why one never used a rope—or other gear—that had taken a fall. One never knew how many strands were still good inside that sheath. But this rope was almost new, and neither she nor Payne had fallen.
Wolf in Night Page 17