“You’re not curious as to how it happened?”
“Oh, aye, I am.” She stared blindly at the ridge. “I’ve felt . . . watched in the caravan.”
“Watched?” he repeated. “Not just uneasy? Watched like how?”
“Like that time up on Dizzy Ridge,” she said slowly. “When the raiders were waiting at the cut.” She hesitated. “I could swear someone has been in the wagon.”
He stilled. “You didn’t tell me that.”
She looked uncomfortable. “It was a woman’s scent on the gear.”
“Moons, Nori, I’d never bring a woman back there.”
She looked away. “Oliana is being fairly persistent, as is Arsala.”
“Aye, so was Vina. But you know I’d never bring any of them into our wagon. You and I, we’ve always shared berth.”
“Aye, but now you say that the rope’s been damaged. And then there was my knife.”
He frowned. “We found all three of your knives, and except for the ichor that you’ll have to polish off, they all look fine to me.”
“I’ve been carrying four knives, not three.”
“Since when?” he demanded.
She looked even more uncomfortable. “Since a few days ago, when we hit Sidisport.”
“You didn’t tell me that, either.”
She shrugged her apology. “That knife shattered like a dried noodle even though it barely pierced the worlag.”
He nodded curtly. “Your bow was rotted, Nori. Uncle Wakje has the shards to prove it.” They stared at each other. “There’s someone in the caravan who doesn’t want you hunting.”
“Or either of us climbing.”
“Or you using your knife.”
She gazed without seeing down the road. “There have been accidents all up and down the caravan.”
As one, they looked at his jerkin pocket where the thin scout book hid.
Nori cleared her throat. “Perhaps we should watch each other’s backs more closely for a while.”
“Aye,” Payne said dryly. “I was thinking the same thing.”
They started back, and Nori’s mind whirled with exhausted thoughts. She didn’t even notice that she continued to pick the seeds from the few vines that stretched through the barrier bushes. It wasn’t until Payne poked her sore shoulder that she realized she was standing, staring into the shrubs.
She blinked. “Sorry.”
“You can’t get them,” Payne said. “And we need to get back.”
“What? Oh.” She had been thinking about codes and raiders and something on the edge of her mind as she gazed blindly at a full set of seedpods that hung a meter inside the shrub line. “Actually—” She squinted. “—the bushes are fairly thin here, and two minutes won’t hurt. I think I can get my arm through if you let me have your gloves.”
Payne sighed and pulled them from his belt. “You’re going to gouge the heck out of them.”
“You need a new pair anyway. Besides, look at them. Totally in shadow and hard as rocks. They’ve got to be worth an entire silver by themselves.” She pulled on the well-used leather. In the back of her mind, Rishte reached for her thoughts, curious as to what she was doing.
Payne watched her work her arm toward the ripe pods and cocked his head as he caught a sound of drumming himself. “Four riders,” he stated quickly before Nori could speak. “Coming up fast from the south.”
“Three,” she returned absently. She grinned at his obvious sourness and continued to work her arm through the lattice of thorns. One lay in a new, long, shallow scratch, and she halted for a moment. “Dangit, I just need a few more inches.”
“Nori-girl—”
“Hush. You’ll break my concentration.”
“You sound like Mama.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up,” she said instead.
He grinned, but fell silent.
Down at the bend in the road, the riders pounded into view. Payne muttered a curse, and Nori hid a grin as he acknowledged that, yes, there were only three.
Nori’s hand closed on the pods. “Gotcha,” she said smugly. She started to withdraw her arm.
Payne glanced back at the oncoming riders. “You know, those riders seem like the same ones tha—” He broke off. “Dik spit, Nori,” he cried out. “Get down.”
She twisted to see. Thorns scratched her arm and she froze. The riders had suddenly spurred to a full gallop. Grey snapped in her head, and Nori saw bows come up, nocked like a midnight raid. They thundered toward her and Payne.
“Get down.” Payne reached out to jerk her away from the bushes.
“I can’t,” she cried. “I’m not free.”
Payne whipped out his sword. “Hurry, dammit!”
Back on the verge, Wakje and the others had idly watched the trio pass. When the riders’ bows came up, Wakje didn’t even hesitate. The ex-raider rolled to his feet and sprinted for his dnu as if he’d expected an attack from the get-go. Fentris, standing by the dnu, was three full seconds behind him. Hunter and Kettre, back on the verge, had to run to reach their mounts.
The three riders thundered down on Nori and Payne. Payne took a high guard in front of Nori, but it was a useless gesture. One sword on the ground, against three bows on target? Nori felt the yellow, slitted gaze deep in her mind watch the threat like a man tied down, like a man who must wait for the blow. Grey howls burst through in her head. Wolfwalker—
She saw the bows, the bent tension of each nocking, the lead rider’s intense expression. She saw the instant in which each dnu hit that perfect moment of stability in its gait. She smelled the sudden fear in her brother as he shoved her farther behind him, almost thrusting her into the thorns. Then the riders’ bolts released.
Time unstuck. Her mind broke free and submerged into grey and yellow. Like water, she slid Hunter’s knife from her belt and slung it at the lead rider. The movement jerked her arm in the thorns, and they ripped shallowly across skin. Blood-scent filled her nose. Rishte howled. The knife guard caught on the lead man’s bow and tumbled through his jerkin. It slashed leather, not flesh as the rider jerked himself back. The first war bolt tore past her shoulder. She twisted, left blood on the thorns.
The second man’s bolt whapped toward them. Payne cried out. Nori stifled a scream as the third bolt slapped past her face. Rishte howled again as he raced toward her through the forest. She twisted and yanked, frantically now, bent and shoved at the thorns. Her heartbeat was a racehorse. She saw a bolt aimed. She shifted like water. The arrow ripped through shrubs at her hip. The lead raider drew again. She tucked, and a fifth arrow tore the mesh cap from her head instead of skewering her eye. She saw movement to the side and knew her uncle was at a dead gallop. The ex-raider jammed his bow tip in his stirrup and nocked it in a movement perfected with decades of raiding runs. He fired almost before the third wave of bolts reached their marks.
The grey sharpened in Nori’s head. Her eyes hurt with black and white. Movement, angle. She saw Wakje, intent as a badgerbear coursing its prey. The lead attacker: a dark face, swarthy face, yellowed teeth and mustache. Another bolt that split the leaves between her arm and torso. Twenty meters behind Wakje, Fentris nocked his bow like her uncle. Far behind, Kettre leaned hard on her dnu, screaming her war cry. Hunter was already even with Kettre’s tired dnu, nocking his bow and standing in the stirrups as he brought up a bolt. She saw the second raider: tanned, narrow face, and long, bony hands. She saw his eyes as he thundered past, terrifying eyes that burned at her: die, die. She reached and yanked at her brother. He slid with the motion. The bolt passed between her arm and his side. Payne twisted, ducked back, and the other cut across his back. The third raider: a tall man, heavy shoulders, jerkin old and worn, and his hands, steady, steady on the bow, and the bolt piercing air like lightning—
Wolfwalker! Rishte’s iron legs flew across dirt, logs, long grass, ferns. Nori’s hands grabbed for her other knife, but it wasn’t there, wasn’t there. Her lips curled back. Her free hand clenched.
She didn’t know she was snarling.
Payne jerked up his sword like a shield and threw his own short knife hard. It sank into the third man’s gut and stuck. There was a cry, but the rider didn’t fall off, and the dnu were away, away down the road, the riders hunched low for speed.
XVI
Sometimes the lesson hurts
—Randonnen proverb
Payne whirled. Nori yanked herself free from the last of the thorns. Her mind was still clouded. The grey had come up like a tide of animal reactions, and she shook her head, trying to regain her sight.
“Are you okay?” Payne snapped. His hands ran down across her shoulders, twisting her forearms until he saw that the blood was from new scratches, not arrows that had torn through flesh.
She jerked free. “I’m fine. But you were hit.” She yanked his jerkin open in turn, pressed on his ribs to find the wound. The hole in the thick leather was smooth as a mine shaft, but she couldn’t see the blood.
Payne shook his head, his eyes still burning with the adrenaline rush. He dug a finger into his jerkin and turned the hole out for her to see. “Skewered my—your—scout book like a shish kebab.” He pulled out a bundle to show her the torn covers. The bolt had gone completely through both books and the packet of papers before stopping on his rib. The trickle of blood inside his shirt testified to that. “I’m barely scratched,” he said quickly. “I’m okay, Nori-girl.” He sucked in a breath with the realization. “Moonworms, they missed us,” he said in wonder. “They missed us both completely.”
She touched her hair where the cap had been torn from her head. But she could see that it was Payne’s sleeve, not flesh, that had been cut where a bolt had slashed the leather. The back of his jerkin had a long gouge where another had cut across as he ducked, and the jerkin now gapped open like a mudsucker mouth. Wakje pounded toward them, and Nori looked at her hip. She had a similar groove on the leather hip of her trousers. Her pant leg was barely hanging together, but there was only a welt on her skin.
Payne plucked her war cap from the shrubs as Wakje thundered toward them. The older man caught sight of the blood on Nori’s arm, and his face went hard, but Payne shouted, “We’re okay, we’re not hurt—”
Wakje didn’t bother to nod. He just wheeled his dnu in a tight circle and spurred it after the riders.
“Wait—” Nori cried. But Wakje was already gone. Fentris half pulled up a few seconds later. “Go with him,” she cried. “Don’t let him face them alone.”
The slender Tamrani obeyed and spurred his dnu back to a gallop. He didn’t have much hope of catching up with Wakje, but he didn’t think the ex-raider would catch the attackers, either.
Nori jammed her war cap on her head and sprinted after Payne, back toward Hunter and Kettre. Hunter cut toward the wolfwalker and reached down. “Catch on.”
She grasped his wrist, and he slung her up behind him. She slid into place like a latch clicking home. “Our dnu—”
“Your uncle,” he snapped back, half jumping the dnu forward.
Her eyes flashed, but he didn’t see it. She fisted his tunic. “Dnu first,” she snarled.
Hunter glanced back, saw her expression, and cursed as he whirled his dnu the rest of the way around. At the same time, Kettre caught up with Payne. The Tamrani charged back toward the grazing verge with Kettre and Payne on his heels.
By the time they reached the nervous beasts, Wakje and Fentris were out of sight.
“Dammit to the eighth moon,” Payne cursed, vaulting into his saddle.
Nori had one foot on the ground, one in the stirrup, when she slapped the dnu. She was on the rootroad before hitting the saddle, Hunter right beside her.
They’d gone only two kays when they passed the body. It was the one that Payne had sunk his knife into. The man was sprawled across the road, his dnu breathing heavily on the verge. The war bolt in the man’s back would have testified to Wakje’s shooting from the saddle, but the blood on the barrier bushes proved the attacker had been on the ground long enough to run before he was skewered. That, and the pool of blood that had spilled from his throat, was the statement of a knife.
They found Fentris and Wakje half a kay later, studying a break in the shrub line. The growling in Nori’s throat was still choking her, making her words hoarse. Rishte was close, approaching warily.
“They’ve gone off-road,” Wakje told them shortly, barely looking up as they reined in.
Nori slid from her dnu and tossed the reins around a branch. She could almost smell the trail through the wolf. She stared into the forest. “I could track them.”
“Not this time.” Wakje didn’t even look at her.
“I can track them,” she repeated, her voice half growl. She took a step forward to move past him on the trail. She sniffed the air like a wolf. It was Rishte’s breath she sampled, and there was man-scent in his nose. She clenched her hands open and closed as if to stretch her fingers into wolf paws, then started to step through, onto the trail.
Wakje snagged her elbow. “Not by the second moon, Nori-girl.”
Rishte snapped in her mind. In the tension, the thought was clear: Male, strong, challenger. Fight.
Like an animal, she jerked free. Her face twisted into a snarl, and her violet eyes were unfocused.
A flicker of shock hit the ex-raider. He froze. That wasn’t the face of the girl he’d considered his daughter. What faced him wasn’t human at all.
Fentris and Hunter looked from Wakje to his niece. Kettre’s mouth made a silent O as she began to realize.
Male, sent Rishte. Bristle, defend. Back him down. Back down, he sent.
The words were a weapon in Nori’s mind. It was the same kind of challenge Grey Vesh had made when Nori had approached their den. Her lips curled slowly back at her uncle, and her fingers started to clench.
Wakje read the wolf in her eyes and stepped back so quickly he almost hit Hunter. “Wolfwalker,” he whispered harshly.
Hot blood seemed to burn in Nori’s veins. Poised like the wolf, she nearly bit after her uncle to press the point. She breathed raggedly, too fast for her lungs. Then she shook her head, blinked, and let her breath out more slowly. The tension drained away like a creek.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. She closed her eyes for a moment and let the world settle back into focus. “My apologies, Uncle Wakje. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She reached for his arm, but he stiffened. She halted.
His face was expressionless, but it wasn’t his forget-it, it-didn’t-happen, and don’t-bring-it-up-again face. This was something else. Nori had seen this expression before on a venge, when he’d killed three raiders in their ambush overlooks. The three men had tried to throw down their bows, to give up. Wakje hadn’t even twitched as he’d shot them out of their perches. She’d seen that expression again on the coast, when Wakje had broken a man’s solar plexus. The mugger had drawn a knife on Nori. Uncle Wakje had disarmed the man with a slap, then had driven his fingers straight into the other man’s torso. Then he’d walked her away, leaving the mugger to suffocate as his lungs forgot to work. She’d seen it, too, when Wakje put down a dnu, as if the creature was nothing. This time it was directed at her.
She tried to school her face to the impassive mask she’d learned so young, but Rishte snarled at the hurt from Wakje’s rejection.
“Wolfwalker.” Wakje said the word like a flat curse. “You’ve bonded, like your mother.”
“Yes, Uncle Wakje,” she said quietly. “I am bonding to the wolves.” She had to force her voice to be steady. She knew he had always feared her mother. Papa said it was because he feared what Dione saw when she looked at him through the eyes of the wolves.
Payne stepped forward. “It happened last night.”
Wakje looked at the young wolfwalker as if she had sprouted claws.
Nori saw the expression settle deep in his eyes. The rejection was a physical thing, like a fist to the gut.
Wakje had been with her and Payne almost constantly s
ince their birth, guarding, teaching. He treated her as if she was blood-kin, not just the child of a man he followed. He was a second father to her, but he looked at her now as though she were a lepa.
“It’s new, Wakje,” Payne said quickly. “She’s still getting used to it. She’ll be better in a few days. You know that. By end-ninan, you won’t even notice.”
Bonded. To the wolves. There was a hole in Wakje’s chest, as if a war bolt had struck through him without his knowlege. And fear—there was fear when he looked at the wolfwalker. He’d been a caravan guard for more than two decades, but a raider for almost three. It was wolfwalkers who had tracked him then, wolfwalkers who had scouted for the venges that tried to kill him for the rabid animal he’d been. The Wolfwalker herself, Nori’s mother, had always made him uneasy. He’d always known that his Nori-girl would turn in time to the wolves, become a wolfwalker like Dione. Now he saw the grey in her eyes, felt the breath of the wolf curl her lips. She had become the one thing he feared, the thing that had judged him before and found him barely worthy to live.
He sucked in a slow, cold breath as he saw how she poised at the trailhead. Something tightened in his jaw, and he was surprised by a flare of anger. He’d taught her from birth, taught her everything he knew about tracking, riding, weapons, surviving. This was what she did with it? The fury that blasted over his fear surprised him as much as her bond. He savored it and let it color his voice till it was hard as iron. “This—this bond is why you think you can track them. Why you would start off now on the trail.”
Nori nodded, keeping her face as expressionless as his.
He slapped her.
Her eyes widened before the blow struck, but she didn’t block. His thick, callused hand was the flat of a shovel against her cheek. She actually hit the ground on her behind.
Payne sucked in his breath. Fentris and Hunter started to slam forward, but Payne grabbed Hunter’s arm and jerked him back. Fentris halted uncertainly. “Don’t,” Payne said sharply.
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