Hunter’s voice was as dry. “Yes, we Tamrani aren’t known for our grace outside the ballroom.”
Fentris lost his smile. Nori cleared her throat, but the slim Tamrani merely shook his head at her, brushed at his embroidered cuff where he’d already picked up a smudge, and said, “I believe I’ll check in with the elders.” He turned his dnu away.
Hunter frowned after the other man. Then he scowled at the wolfwalker. At least three Harumen had been planted among the cozar as guards, and almost no one had suspected. If it had been him, he’d have had still more waiting in the background to watch and report in case Murton and the others failed. He had reason to worry and more to be irritable. The skin around the healer’s staples pulled with every movement, making him sore as a twice-wounded badgerbear. “Aren’t you the least bit tense?” he demanded.
Nori shot him a sideways look. “Three failed attacks are enough to convince anyone to withdraw. That, and Uncle Ki hasn’t come back, so he’s still hunting your Harumen. It’s unlikely there’s anyone else nearby, lying in wait or watching.”
“You have a lot of faith in the Wolven Guard.”
She sobered. “Don’t call them that, Condari. They don’t like to hear it, and it won’t be good for you.”
So she’d hear no bad words against her uncles? That was as interesting as her dependence on her brother. He inclined his head in tacit apology and changed the subject.
Nori didn’t ride out to be with Rishte. It wasn’t the need to give her sore muscles a break or any threat from attack that sent her back to the wagons when she tried to take the trail. It was Rishte himself who sent her packing. She had slathered on the liniment at dawn, and she stank to the wolf like a three-year mint field. He actually growled at her and backed away when she tried to meet his eyes. Then he rubbed his nose in the dirt and fled. Nori gave up, returned to Ki’s wagon, and spent the next three hours dozing away in a sling bed while Leanna sang soft ballads with her driver. Rishte howled incessantly along the inside of her skull, and Nori tried at first to answer, but he refused to come close. She finally closed her thoughts to his gnawing, so she could close her eyes.
Kettre found her a few hours later, sitting on the back gate of Wakje’s wagon, staring off into the forest as she plunked on her guitar.
The brown-haired woman tied off her dnu and plopped down beside her. They rode, legs swinging, for a while as Nori plucked idle tunes. It was an odd view, to watch the world pass by backward, with a team of hammer-headed beasts always five meters away, plodding toward them and never getting close. They watched a ring-runner canter by, then a small knot of riders made up of an older, dour woman and five eager, laughing guild youths. Journey youths, Kettre corrected. Their packs were thick enough to take them away from home, not just there and back to Shockton. Kettre would bet a tenth weight of gold that Nori would have given up her guitar to ride with any of them.
Nori ran through a sequence of particularly minor chords, then paused and said, “If you were a Tamrani, where would you carry your papers?”
Kettre glanced at her. “If you mean Hunter, probably in his belt. It’s too carefully styled, even for him.”
The wolfwalker plucked thoughtfully across the neck, then into a pattern of slides that sounded almost like moaning.
“Gods, Nori-girl. Can’t you play anything in a major key?”
The wolfwalker grinned slyly, shifted into an insipid ditty, and laughed when Kettre groaned.
“I suppose I asked for that.” The woman tucked a stray strand of brown hair behind her ear. “Fentris has three different belts,” Kettre added. “He switches between them depending on which meal and which meeting he’s attending. Hunter wears the one all the time and he’s too careful about it when he’s around some of the chovas. I’d bet that leather is wafer-thin so he can fold his papers inside it.”
“Could you swap out what he has in there for plain paper, then switch them back later?”
Kettre shot her a sharp look. “Not unless the moons step in and he leaves that belt unguarded. But I’d have to know what kind and how much paper he kept in there. And he’d have to leave it unguarded a second time for me to return what we took.”
Nori plucked a soft sequence up the neck of her guitar. “Fentris said the attacks weren’t aimed at the cozar.”
“Aye.” Nori was thinking, and Kettre waited patiently.
“What if they weren’t aimed at us, either?”
Kettre turned and looked at her. “You were nearly killed twice. Three times, if you count Elder Connaught.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking of.” Nori plucked a minor sequence that left Kettre’s ear vaguely dissatisfied. “Did you know that the chovas Wora, the one built like Uncle Wakje, gets reports from every Sidisport outrider in the train, as well as a couple of others?”
Kettre frowned. “Wora is from Sidisport himself. Why wouldn’t he talk with the others? And how do you know it’s reports that he’s getting?”
“Have you watched Fentris?” Nori asked instead. “He goes around from one group to another, chatting, trading compliments. He’s gathering information.”
“That’s what Tamrani do.”
Nori nodded. “Wora does the same. He checks in with every chovas, or they go to him. He gets to every one of them over the course of a day.” She played a sharp ditty that left Kettre almost on edge. “He never sends a message himself by the ring-runners. Three times, though, other chovas have sent a message soon after he’s talked with them.” She stopped cold and looked at the other woman. Her voice was soft. “Fentris asked what we all had in common, but there’s nothing among us: no business, no allies, no enemies, no goals. I don’t think that that’s the right question.”
“What is?”
Nori paused. In the silence, she said, “It’s what could motivate so many Haruman to masquerade as chovas?” Kettre stared at her, and she ran a discordant scale. “They’re Harumen,” she added softly. “They work for the Houses. Someone has to pay them.” Her voice grew even softer. “Someone had to tell them to try to stop Connaught from reaching the council. To stop us and delay the cozar.”
“To do what? Delay the entire council? That would take dozens of Harumen in dozens of caravans. Somebody would notice.”
“As we have?” Nori smiled without humor.
The other woman frowned and absently turned her bracelet on her wrist. “Have you brought this up to Brithanas?”
She shook her head and played a mournful, almost angry run. “I don’t think he’ll tell me anything. It took a war bolt to the shoulder to get him to admit he even carried the papers he got from Fentris. And he is Tamrani.”
Kettre glanced at her face. “If he wants you enough for a riding partner, you could make a bargain with him. A few days’ scouting for a read of what’s in that belt. You’ve got two ninans to work on him.”
“Aye, two ninans.” Nori agreed quietly. “Till Payne gets his Journey assignment.” She plucked a discord and didn’t resolve it.
Kettre tried not to wince. “You wish that assignment were yours, don’t you?”
“More than you know.” Nori straightened and finally, to Kettre’s visible relief, played out the sequence into a resolution. “But unless I make a deal with the elders, that isn’t likely to happen.”
When Kettre left, Nori stayed where she was, thinking. Then she got out her carving tools. She had felt whipsawed the last few days, and carving, like the guitar, was calming work that let her body recover and her emotions settle, while the smell of liniment faded from her skin. A few more hours, and she could run trail again with the yearling. In the meantime, she watched the chovas.
At noon, she took the chance to run the frontage trail with Payne and Rishte when the path dipped close to the road. At first, Payne had suggested the wider west trail, but Rishte refused to go, even though it was rough ground—cliffs and swamps—and no one would be using those trails for another month or two. The yearling almost closed his mind to
Nori when she made the suggestion. His fear wasn’t new, but it was still recent enough in the packsong, and through him, Nori could tell that many forest creatures had avoided the section of cliff. Nori didn’t mention the reason to Payne, but they took the east trail instead.
They saw only two other scouts on the path, no chovas. Pleased with the quiet, Rishte finally began hunting, sniffing here and stopping there, disappearing for moments at a time, then reappearing like a shadow ahead. When a rabbit sprang up, Nori shot three bolts that cut grass, not fur; Rishte couldn’t seem to snap on a limb. It wasn’t until Payne started laughing at them that she finally realized they were influencing each other in subtle ways that affected their vision and balance. They had to draw back from each other just so Rishte could catch enough woodmice to fill his growling stomach. Nori left him in a meadow ahead of the train where he could hunt for the next few hours.
The pale roads were never empty this time of year. Riders passed on both sides of the caravan, and the verge was dotted with family wagons stopped for one reason or another. Small villages opened up, then closed again behind the wagons, while loose village dogs chased the dnu. Berque, Bustor, Lilly Camidon—the small grain towns were known for simple waysides and for some of the strongest liquor made in Ariye. There was Veragin, known for its oldEarth herbs, and Kalama for its smoked fruits. Turkinton was set back at the base of the western ridges. Nori was more than nervous when she slipped away to ask Rishte about the plague sense near those cliffs. Plague, near or even in a town? It would be the county’s worst nightmare.
But they were north by kays from the last point at which the yearling had felt nervous. There was nothing near the Turkinton cliffs. Counting her midnight run with the worlags, Rishte had felt the death sense four times, each time near a cliff. It was a blessing of all nine moons that the ridges that bound the low hills were so rugged that few would ever go there, even in the scouting season. In spring, with the ground slick and treacherous, and the creeks swollen and hungry, even fewer would risk those trails. Turkinton and the other towns along Willow Road were safe.
Still, she had a hard time ignoring her chill as she looked toward the line of ridges. They ran almost due north, right up to the mountains, right into the heart of Ariye, exactly opposite the mapped arrowhead of raiders and Harumen that pointed to Sidisport. It was as if the one had been fired back out of the other darker, more subtle problem.
Nori was making her way back along the colorful wagon line to help Mian with the exotics again when she was distracted by two chovas women. At first, there was nothing she could put her finger on as the women trotted over to a pair of ring-runners who waited at yet another crossroads. One messenger had already been engaged by two traders, but the other greeted the women. It looked casual, but Nori suddenly became more alert. The ring-runner—he had that watchful stillness that spoke of anticipation. A moment later, the outriders handed over a message tube with almost no ceremony, wheeled their dnu, and trotted back to the line. On the verge, the ring-runner spurred away toward the tower trail. With the thick trees darkening even a daylight forest, he was out of sight in seconds. And the messenger hadn’t been paid.
She started to guide her dnu back toward Payne to tell him about the two chovas and the ring-runner, when there was a flurry behind her. She whipped around.
“Look out!” cried Nonnie.
“Don’t hurt them,” screamed her daughter.
“Cy, watch out!” The woman ducked as two vari birds and a small, furred tano blasted out from the front wagon opening. A flurry of brilliant, chameleon purple-green feathers exploded from around a clump of brown-and-black fur. The two birds flapped frantically past the driver’s head. Their clipped wings turned them into tangles of color as they struggled to stay aloft over the rootroad. Their wings were already fading to a pale yellow-white, and the black-and-tan predator behind them screeched and launched itself after the two birds. Like a handful of needles, the tano hit Cy’s shoulder and clung for the barest instant. “What the—”
The tano sprang forward like a fist. Cy’s hand closed on air. “By the moons—” Slitted leather wings stretched out instinctively, but like the vari birds, the tano couldn’t take flight. It landed at Cy’s feet on the footboard and clawed for a precarious grip. “The tano’s loose,” yelled Cy.
The shrieks of the vari birds startled the team, and Cy’s young outriders cursed as their mounts skittered away. With a screech, the tano launched again, landed on the rump of one of Cy’s dnu, and dug its hind claws into flesh. The harnessed beast squealed and started to buck. The tano was already jumping again, right onto the dnu’s head. Its claws sank into thin ears, The dnu half reared in shock.
Cy fisted the reins and grabbed for the brake, but the team bolted—straight into the wagon ahead. “Free team!” shouted Cy. He braced his thick legs and hauled back on the traces, but the dnu were already out of control.
“Free team!” Nori yelled with the others as Cy’s team plunged into the next wagon—Ki’s wagon, with Leanna beside the driver. Startled, Hunter looked back just as outriders all along the line jumped their dnu out of the way.
Cy’s wild team hit Ki’s wagon like a stampede. Ki’s rear wheels banged up and slammed down as the dnu crashed into it. The tano screeched as it was flung onto the gate. Its claws clung to the wood as the wagon shaft jammed forward. Ki’s team leapt like sprinters as the post rammed against their legs.
“Free team!” shrieked Nonnie as she clung to her wagon.
Chase, run them down . . .
Nori was almost blinded by the rush of eagerness. “No,” she cried out through clenched teeth. But she jumped her dnu after Cy’s wild wagon before it tore through the rest of the line. Hunter saw what she intended—she could never hold that team by herself—and whipped his beast around.
Someone blew the running call, but the entire line seemed to unravel. One moment, the wagons were rolling, their teams trotting placidly along. The next, outriders were plunging off the road, Cy and Ki’s teams were bolting right and left, and dnu reared and tore at the traces.
Nonnie clung to the wagon as Cy wrestled his team, but they hit the edge of the road, and the wagon tilted like a slide. Nonnie saw the trees, managed to grab her daughter by the arm. Then the team skidded up onto a root-bulge. The outside dnu shrieked as its middle leg caught between roots and snapped like a toothpick. The other dnu reared. Leather strained like a hair stretched too tight. Both dnu came down and bolted.
The wagon bounced over the mounded roots like a sled over knee-high boulders. Nonnie lost her grip on her daughter. Mian tumbled out and Nonnie fell back, scrambled to her feet again, and was slammed up hard on the wagon’s hardshell portal. The woman clung for a second, blanking out. Then blood washed down her part line. Cy’s team spooked off the roots. The front edge of their wagon clipped the back end of Ki’s again as Ki’s team hauled left to avoid another wagon. Wood splintered and Leanna cried out. Payne’s head whipped around. Cy stood braced back against his footboard, fighting the maddened dnu. “Free team!” he screamed. The wagon lurched like a bottle. And Nonnie Ninelegs lost her grip and flew forward beneath the hooves.
Nori watched it all in slow motion. She spurred her dnu, but she was meters away, the wheels were too fast. Hunter was in the way—
Payne blasted up like a badgerbear. He kicked his leg over the saddle horn, grabbed the edge of the saddle in one hand, and swung down like a hunting lepa. He snagged Nonnie’s arm as the woman tumbled limply. For an instant, he thought he had her. Then the massive wheel of Cy’s wagon caught the end of the woman’s loosened shirt. Like a steel trap, Payne was jerked back and down. His grip almost ripped free. But the moons were watching, because Nonnie’s shirt ripped like a leaf. Her torso slapped up against Payne’s dnu, her legs dragging the road. Then thick hands plucked the woman from Payne’s hand and swung her up and away. Payne spurred his dnu after the cozar, away from the panicked team.
Ahead, drivers had whipped their teams
, pulling to the right, desperate to get out of the way. Caravan dogs bolted and barked between the dnu. Cy’s team laid their necks low and shot forward into the open just behind Ki’s wagon.
Fear, fear, panic. The chase. Cut them out and course them.
Nori kicked her dnu hard. Ki’s team, not Cy’s, she snarled. The hunt-lust was strong. She caught up to the end of Cy’s wagon just as another outrider attempted to force the team left, and veered off between the trees. She was barely in time. The team swung back, knocking the outrider aside like a dog and slamming into another wagon instead. Repa’s wagon tilted like a half-crazed drunk. “Haw, haw,” Repa yelled. Her beasts twisted back, away from the rest of the line. Hunter leapt his dnu forward to grab at the harness and actually got one hand on the trace. Then Repa’s transport slammed into the back end of another wagon. Steel felloes crumpled like tin. One of Repa’s wheels popped off. The axle cracked. The opposite wheel snapped, and the tirewood split and whipped out like a snake. The back end of the wagon slammed down on the road like a hammer, and Repa flew off the footboard. Hunter was almost trampled as her team plunged left, dragging shattered wood and metal straight into the barrier thorns.
Cy’s team leapt over the debris and through the opening like rabbits. “Gee,” Cy yelled. “Gee!” He hauled with every ounce of strength, but he hit the end of Repa’s transport. The wagon smashed over, and the Z-fold walls splayed out like cards. Boxes came loose and smashed through the thin walls, bouncing across the road. Hunter barely had time to dodge off between the trees before he was into the debris. He leapt the beast over the root-balls and into the other lane, cursing under his breath as the motion jarred his shoulder. Then he whipped the mount in a tight circle and forced it back toward the cozar.
Cy’s team was now rearing and chittering madly as the outriders tried to calm them. Blood streamed down into the one dnu’s eye, spattering the cozar. Ki’s team was away, out-and-out racing down the open stretch with Leanna clutching the driver and the seat, and the driver fisting the reins.
Wolf in Night Page 34