“He just hit her,” Hunter snapped. “For no reason.”
Wakje ignored the Tamrani. Payne glanced at his uncle and said softly, “There’s always a reason.”
“A reason to beat a lady?”
Payne just tightened his grip. “She’s a scout out here, not a Sidisport lily. Do not interfere.”
The wolfwalker stared up at her uncle in disbelief. Then her lips curled back and she flew to her feet. Her eyes were blinded by lupine violence, and her mind was a tumult of snarls. Wakje waited until she was almost fully up. Then he slapped her again, reaching through her guard with the ease of a man who had spent five decades killing for a living.
This time, she half spun before hitting the ground like a rock.
It stunned her. Her uncle had shoved her more than hit her—he’d have broken her cheek if he’d used force—but her palms and knees were bruised from the roots and the small rocks on the side of the road. Her cheek burned from his hand. She got to her feet more slowly.
Hunter’s hand had snapped to his blade. Payne had an even harder grip on the Tamrani’s arm. “Don’t,” he repeated sharply, softly. “It is a lesson.”
“He could kill her,” Hunter snapped.
“He’d never hurt her.”
“Are you insane?”
Payne shifted so that he was between the man and his uncle. “And he could have his sword in and out of your gut three times before you could draw that blade.”
“You coward.” Hunter almost hissed the curse. “You’re her brother.”
“Shut up, Tamrani. You know nothing.”
Hunter stared at Payne. The young man had not backed down. In fact, Payne’s face had lost all semblance of youth and was now as hard as his uncle’s. The young man’s fingers were digging so hard into Hunter’s bicep that he’d need a prybar to get himself loose. Hunter forced himself to still. This wasn’t his family. It wasn’t his fight. Not yet, he promised silently.
Wakje ignored them both. He stared at Nori. “Idiot.” His voice flayed the grey from her mind like a knife. “Pag-brained idiot.”
The curse shocked her even more than the slap. “Uncle Wakje?” She formed the words uncertainly.
Her voice was still too low, too close to a growl. He hardened his eyes. “I’d rather be uncle to the brain-dead egg of an assworm than to a piss-minded bollusk like you.” He pointed to the forest. “Track two armed men who have already targeted you. In heavy brush on an obvious game trail. With your eyes blinded by a godsdamn mutt of a wolf? By the spoiled curds of all nine hells, you show the judgment of an infant fresh from the womb.”
Nori swallowed. She was beginning to understand.
“You’ve borrowed the few weapons you’re carrying,” Wakje went on in a hard, relentless voice. “You haven’t reset your draw weight or rebalanced your blade, and like a boy green from the city heights, you left bow and blade behind—” He jerked a nod toward Kettre. “—as if your teeth and nails would do. Then you stuck yourself on the barrier line like a tin can in a target match, and trusted your reflexes to duck. By all nine moons, you missed the one knife throw you did get off when the raider was right before you.”
A spot of color appeared high in each of her cheeks.
“By the piss of a dozen poolah, you can’t even answer a question without reacting like an animal.”
Her flush deepened around the pale marks of his hand.
He took a step forward until he towered over her like a brick wall. “Where is your trail kit?” he demanded harshly. “Your aid kit? Your rations and shelter? Where are your extra war bolts? By the seventh hell, you’ve thrown away everything I’ve taught you, everything you’ve learned from birth, in less than twenty hours.” He was so angry his heavy bones were lined and white, and his cold eyes were like axes over his cheeks.
Nori’s face burned, but she couldn’t look away. She could see the killer in him clearly. She’d always known it was there inside him. But this time, it was full-face, bared, and stark, and all she could do was bite her lip and take it.
He gestured sharply at her. “Is that what the wolf-bond does for you? Makes you brainless as a hairworm?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Sorry?” He cut off her apology like a cook chopping rot from a carrot. “Will sorry save your life? Will sorry save Payne if he followed you down that trail? Out here, it’s you who is responsible for the both of you. When the hell were you thinking of him? And wipe that sorry off your lips. Sorry never changed the act. It never grew back a hand or an arm. The best that sorry ever did was fill an open grave. By the spit of a two-headed lepa, I taught you better than that—”
The growl behind him made him whirl.
Danger, threat.
“No!” Nori cried out.
The yearling skidded to a halt and now poised, caught by the wolfwalker’s cry. But his bristle was up and his fangs bared as he eyed the ex-raider like prey.
Wakje froze like ice.
The wolf edged closer like a bihwadi before it leaps.
Nori shoved herself between the wolf and her uncle. No, she snarled. Back down. Back off.
The yearling didn’t budge.
Wakje stared at the wolf. In his fear, he didn’t see its youth or the lack of breadth in its chest. He saw only his demon, but fear had always made him furious. His face tightened till the heavy bones now stood out like stone. “You call the animal to save you? You’d use the beast in your head instead of your brains—just like your mother. Just like Ember Dione.” He said it deliberately, knowing it would sting. “And just like her, you’ll need your brother and father and the Wolven Guard—” he spat the term. “—and even those Tamrani forever at your side to keep you safe, if that’s how you’d use the bond.”
“I’d never—I don’t—” She felt a spark of anger herself. She drew herself up, refusing to back down. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
He leaned forward, heedless of the wolf. She could see him now, he thought. She could see the killer he really was, and the wolf would tell her to turn on him like a lepa. She was different from her mother, more feral since birth. She’d always been on the edge.
“I’ve watched your mother for twenty-three years,” he ground out. “I’ve seen a dozen wolfwalkers. They all use the bond, but she’s the worst. She relies on that link for everything from her sight to her strength to her reaction times. She’s more wolf than woman, and she goes into a fight that way—like an animal, not the ranking master she is. She lets them in, and they fight inside her hands, and she doesn’t think. Half her scars are from the wolves, because it wasn’t a woman fighting.”
“I’m not—”
“Your mother?” he cut in. “Aren’t you?” He cursed her long then. “Were you thinking when you started down that trail?”
She stared at him while Rishte snarled through her head. She stared while her face burned like fire. He saw the instant she realized he was right. Her gaze changed, sharpened, as if the wolf had been thrust back.
The yearling snarled audibly, but Nori snapped back with her mind. Don’t interfere, she sent harshly. He is pack leader here, not me, and this is my lesson, not yours.
Wakje waited.
Her voice was low. “I am not my mother.”
“There is wolf in your eyes right now.”
She seemed to straighten farther. “And I don’t need him. I don’t need Payne or you or anyone else on the trails. You’re right, I wasn’t thinking for a minute. But I am now. And I have not forgotten anything you’ve taught me, neither for me nor for Payne.”
“Prove it.” He glared at her. “Defend yourself.” He struck her like a club.
She barely had time to slide the blow to avoid some of its force. She was only distantly aware that Payne and Kettre had thrown Hunter back. She barely had time to snap at Rishte to stay away before Wakje struck again.
It was an overhand right with a left hook to the head, blindingly fast. She didn’t see it; she only felt it com
ing. She ducked inside, and his knee caught her in the gut just as her double fist hit up under his ribs. He grunted and brought an elbow down across her back. She staggered, but she was already into a twisted horse, and the blow slid off. His club-hands reached over her back for her throat, but she whipped around and caught the one and wrenched the pressure hold. Her heel snapped up into his inner thigh even as he spun her away.
They stared at each other. Wakje was balanced almost casually on the balls of his feet; Nori was half crouched before him. Wakje wasn’t even breathing hard. Nori’s heart was a hammer. The ex-raider nodded. “Better,” he said curtly. “That was you, not the beast in your body.”
Nori straightened. Rishte had slunk back to the edge of the barrier bushes, and his golden eyes gleamed with rage.
He cut her off with a gesture. “Remember,” he ordered harshly. Deliberately, he ignored the wolf. He could already feel its fangs biting into his flesh, ripping his ribs free of his torso. He forced his voice to remain steady. “You’ll know them again?” he demanded coldly.
She knew what he meant. “I saw them all clearly.”
He glanced at Payne. “And you?”
“The lead rider only.”
Hunter gave Wakje a hard look. “One of them was from my caravan. He’s out of Sidisport. Name of Hoinse.”
They looked at him in surprise, as if they’d forgotten his presence. He smiled grimly. He wasn’t usually overlooked, and the feeling was irritating—almost enough to cover his sense of guilt at bringing this down on Nori.
Nori looked to the wolf, then the woods. “I could track them, Uncle Wakje.”
He regarded her coldly. “Even without the wolf in your eyes, it’s too dangerous. One rider as bait to draw them in, the other sets up the ambush. We did that all the time when we expected a venge to follow.”
Hunter felt a chill at the ex-raider’s expression. The man’s voice was calm, but his eyes were still flat and hard. It was almost as if the attackers were already dead, and that catching them would be an afterthought.
“Mount up,” Wakje said shortly. “We’ll discuss this tonight with Ki.”
Silently, belatedly, Nori pulled Payne’s glove from her belt and handed it back to her brother. There were blood drops spattered on the fingers, and the scratches were deep enough that the leather would probably soon tear. It was the arrow hole in the seam of the middle finger that made him shiver. He made his voice light. “I should make you replace these. Do you know how much a good pair of gloves cost?”
She smiled faintly. “Good thing they weren’t good gloves.” She untangled the reins of her dnu and swung up into the saddle. She was still twitchy from the attack. Follow, she sent to the wolf.
Rishte snarled in her mind but loped onto the frontage trail.
Fentris and Kettre reined in after the three. Hunter brought up the rear with a thoughtful expression. He wasn’t sure which had angered him more: being an afterthought to Nori, or being ignored by the Wolven Guard. What he was beginning to realize was that the Wolfwalker’s Daughter was more tightly bound to her family than even he had suspected. In some ways, it was reassuring. In others, it made him uneasy. If Payne or Wakje or someone else she cared for was threatened, Hunter suspected that she would throw away every secret she knew to save her family. Absently he fingered his belt. For the rest of the ride, he was silent.
XVII
“If it startled you,
Then you really weren’t watching
well at all, now,
Were you?”
—Grasp’s mother in Playing with Swords, traditional staging
They caught up with the caravan in the early afternoon. Nori let Payne give their report and her apology to the Hafell while she headed for her sling bed. They didn’t tell Brean of the attack, and even Nori agreed with that. Admitting that raiders wanted them dead wasn’t likely to make them more welcome. And it wasn’t all that surprising, not with parents like theirs. The Ell and Hafell would have taken that into account when they offered the keyo berths.
In spite of her exhaustion, she didn’t sleep easy. Every ring-runner who cantered past the caravan made her flicker awake with her heart pounding and her hand grabbing for a knife. Wagon sounds that had been lullabies to her as a child—the snap and creak of leather, the sighing of wagon springs, the stressing of wall panels as they slipped and eased back into position—were now startlingly loud. Like watchers themselves, she could feel Wakje and Payne, then Ki and Liam, taking turns riding close outside, beside the cozar wagon. That, and her dreams were haunted by snarls.
She woke again fitfully to darkness. The wagon had been parked; she could hear the sounds of fireside, smell the rich blends of stuffed hostina baking on the lids of the ubiquitous stew pots. She could smell the spicy Diton cooking and hear the nasal voice of an evening teacher above the conversations.
It disturbed Rishte that she had not leapt away from the humans now that he’d finally awakened her. He pulled like a tether, and she had to fight not to jerk to her feet and race to him. All afternoon, he had loped along the ridges to keep pace with the caravan. By evening, he was twenty kays away from his pack, and uncertain of Nori so far below in the wagons.
I’m here, she returned, but he howled again, as if he couldn’t hear her. She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts into a single spear. I’m here. I’m hereimhereimhere.
Lonely, he seemed to send. No pack. No trees or dirt or warm darkness. Come to the ridge, wolfwalker. Lonelylonelylonely.
Trees? Dirt? There was a possessive note to the sending, as if he’d lost land or, rather, the sense of safety of known territory. Soon, she returned. Soon, soon. But the noise of the evening cookfires intruded. Cutlery clattered, voices clumped and rose and subsided, dnu chittered in the stables. She lost her focus. She fought to find it again, squeezing her eyes shut to see and hear only the grey. For a moment, she thought she had him.
—wolfwalkerwolfwal—
Then it was just the faint sea of the packsong, subsiding and seething at the far corners of her mind.
She winced as she swung her legs down, stood, and turned up the lantern. She had bruises on her knees and thighs, and she bit back a groan as she pulled off the shirt she’d slept in. She was alone, but still couldn’t help glancing around surreptitiously before slipping Hunter’s shirt from under her pillow. Quickly, she pulled it on. Its softness was a sin over the scabs that tightened on her back. She reveled in it for a long moment. Then she stuffed a knife in her waistband, caught up a towel, some clothes, and her toiletries, and jumped stiffly down from the gate.
Outside, Payne straightened. “You look like the second hell.”
“Hell is as hell does,” she returned automatically.
“And we’ll be there and back before dawn,” he finished the quote. “Heading for the showers?”
She nodded, and he fell into step beside her. In spite of the overcast night, the circle wasn’t really dark. Lanterns hung at every other wagon, yet the shadows that lurked beneath the wagons were like monsters under dozens of beds.
There were few who preferred a shower to dinner, and Nori had the bathhouse to herself, while Payne waited discreetly outside. As usual, she washed quickly, scrubbing her skin aggressively and dressing quickly in clean clothes. Then she washed out Hunter’s dirty shirt and her own soiled garments.
“Ready?” Payne asked as she met him at the door.
Both of them studied the aisles warily as they walked. With three wagon trains, the circle was crowded. As usual, half the outer wall was a series of corrals, open-air stalls, stables, and firewood bins. The second half was a line of fountains, bathhouses, washhouses, and waste and fire pits where debris and trash were dealt with. Payne raised a hand in a silent wave at the repair pavilion as they passed. It was still busy, which wasn’t unexpected, given the number of mishaps they’d had.
Inside the circle, the wagons were lined up in double rows in loose groups of four. This close to the Test ninan, the
quads had been crushed together until there were only narrow aisles between them. One access road led in to the circle on one side, and another one led out. Both gates were always guarded. Aside from the gates, there were only narrow channels through the spiky barrier bushes that created the circle’s outer boundary. Nori scanned the two breaks she saw by the firewood stacks. If she was careful, she could slip out later to the yearling, and no one else need know. Once the firewood bins were closed, this part of the circle was unused till dawn.
All three firesides were hidden by the crowded wagons, so the aisle they went down was barely more than a black column of lowered gates, sling beds staked out like sagging fishnets, and a line of posts from which dangled the guild and family markers. Besides the sleeping dogs and a single woman who climbed down from a gate in the distance, there was almost no movement. There wouldn’t be, Nori knew, not till dinner was over.
There was a murmur of voices to the left of the stables, and Nori listened before dismissing them. Elder Connaught was always being hit up for favors, even while he tended his dnu. “Is Uncle Wakje at dinner?” she asked Payne.
“He and Ki went into town to ask around. They took Mye and Liam for color.” Instinctively, Payne kept his voice low. “Most folk won’t go into town till after dinner, when the festival really fires up.”
“Speaking of dinner, I can smell the pelan from here.”
“Leanna is saving you a plate. By the way, I traded off your tower duty today for one tomorrow.”
“With my thanks.” Her towel bundle loosened, and she rolled the clean clothes up more tightly, then stretched her shoulders to keep them from stiffening up. “I don’t think I could sit a saddle if my life depended on it.”
Payne refrained from pointing out that it just might. “Don’t thank me yet. Brean’s got a list of andyen duties for you to work off for disappearing.” He hid a grin at her mutter. He could have sworn she’d said he should do them with her since it was he who’d called the search.
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