Dion caught the half smile on his face and wondered if he was thinking of his Promised now. The intern had been sharing Kum-jan with Sena for months, the two of them sneaking off in the night or late afternoon. And now they were Promised. Her smile twisted wryly. Ariye was so formal compared to her own county. In Randonnen, one would simply choose to find a private place to be together. Here in Ariye, intimacy between friends was Kum-jan, intimacy between two Promised people was Kum-kala; and intimacy between two mates was Kum-vani. According to Ariyen custom—and much to her own brother’s chagrin—she and Aranur had shared two of those intimacies before she knew their formalities. Her brother had not cared about the formalities as much as he had—at that time— distrusted Aranur. Aranur, however, had assumed Dion knew the differences between Ariyen intimacies. It was an ignorance he had swiftly corrected when he took her back with him to Ariye.
She fingered the reins as if she could feel Aranur’s hands, not leather against her skin. This last scouting assignment had taken her far west of their home, and she was as eager to get back as her dnu was to run. It was not enough to get a message ring from her mate, or to hear his voice through Hishn. The faint link that had grown between them, as happened with many wolf-walkers and their partners, was not enough for her. This ride was as much an excuse to go home as it was to ride as venge healer.
Yellow eyes gleamed, and Dion shook herself in the saddle. She cut herself off from the link. The predawn was cold enough without longing to compound it.
Half an hour out of the Kitman hub the fog was left behind in the lower valley, and a thin breeze crept over the hill. It dissipated her weariness like a soft alarm. Gray Hishn, up the road and out of sight, was only an echo in Dion’s mind. Hooves beat, and heads didn’t nod. Hands rested loosely on hilts. No one spoke, and the dnu didn’t snort. The wary tension that filled their arms began to cross into their shoulders.
They hit a stretch of old road where the. roots, hard as stone, had turned brown with age. The tiny streaks of new root growth that had begun to stretch in like needles from the edge of the road caught at Dion’s mind. White walls, white light … The domes of the Ancients, pale in the skies, hung in her memory like moons. Just beyond this ridge, she knew, she’d be able to see the mountain. Truncated by the Ancients and flattened off, it was a landing place where the tethers came down from the stars, and the skycars soared back up. Empty now, with vacant sailplanes and the ever-present humming, that landing place was a taunt to this county—a reminder of what they could try to regain, but could never quite reach. Saturated with plague, but always within sight… Someday, she thought, she would find a cure. Get rid of the alien plague. And Aranur would have his domes again, while she had the lives of the wolves.
She stared at the trees that hid the mountain. Beyond them both, to the north, were the peaks of the alien birdmen. Aiueven: the will of the moons, the eyes of the stars … Alien spacefarers who had settled here first and had claimed the planet for their breeding grounds. The Aiueven had not wanted humans to join them on this world. But the colonists had landed, and the aliens had coped—at first—as had the humans who began to build homes.
The Ancients had said this world was enough like OldEarth to disguise itself with treachery. Yet in the end, it had not been the world, but the Aiueven who had decimated the colonists. A plague that raced through the human-built domes, and a slow death for the wolves … Anything that would keep humans out of the skies, away from the alien stars.
Over time, the Gray Ones, like humans, had recovered and spread across the nine counties, but the wolves would have spread more thickly and farther had they not lost half their litters to stillbirth. That the centuries of stillborn pups were connected to the alien-sent plague—of that, Dion was sure. That there was a cure for the plague that lay dormant in the wolves—that caused those stillborn cubs—of that Dion had only hope. She stared up at the blue-dark sky as the lupine echo followed her thoughts. Had the Ancients known how much they would lose, would they have dealt with the Aiueven differently?
As though the thought triggered Gray Hishn’s own memories, the wolf snarled in Dion’s mind. Soft at first, the bond between them hardened into a link of steel, and the rush of howling that burst out from the back of the wolfwalker’s skull struck her like a whip. Lupine memories stretched back more than eight hundred years. Opened to their history, the Gray Ones howled together. Not just Hishn’s voice, but a hundred wolves sang out the images of time. New memories faded into old lines of thought; old memories fled into ancient ones. Back, and back again, through the decades, then centuries, of life the packsong wove its threads. Wolves did not forget, and what each one experienced in its life, it sang back into the packsong or passed on to its young. Now there were hundreds of years of lupine lives sewn into the distant howling.
She let part of her mind filter back through the faded harmony. It was an old exercise for her—the searching out of the Ancients’ voices and the alien overtones. She had made a promise once, years ago, and the Gray Ones still remembered. Since then, when she ran the hills with them or rode the black road at night, they opened to her like a book. Distant memories, ancient songs … Always in the backs of their minds were the clues to the cure she sought. Yet she never quite touched it—the cure for the wolves. Never quite understood …
Wolfwalker, Hishn sent.
She found the single thread that was the wolf she knew and drew back from the ancient voices. She felt the windchill, cold as steel, as it hit her bared teeth, and realized she was grinning. Hishn was eager and focused. Dion shook herself. She had to remember to keep the wolf away from the fighting this time. The Gray One was growing aggressive.
But Hishn tugged at her hands, making her fingers clench on the reins. Run with me, the gray wolf sent. The hunt is close. Run with us in the dawn.
“Soon, Hishn,” she murmured. “But this time, you will only scout. When the fighting starts, you stay behind.”
Wolfwalker…
“You’ll stay behind, Hishn. I mean it this time.” She ignored the wolf’s mental protest. “Besides, I’ll be on the outskirts of the action anyway. I’ll be in little danger.”
The gray wolf howled beside her, and this time the sound was real. One of the other riders started, his dnu skittering away. The man gave her a wary look. She shrugged a smile and tasted the chill air like a cup of cold rou, rolling it around on her tongue. Dawn, she thought, was getting close.
Ten kays out of Kitman, they swung onto Red Wolf Road. There were fresh marks there from Aranur’s group, which had come in from the east. Two kays—maybe four—Dion thought, and she’d feel Aranur himself in the song of the wolfpack. Hishn’s voice would ring with his energy, and then Dion would see her mate for herself. Strong hands, stronger arms; broad shoulders and back. His face was not handsome as her brother’s face was; Aranur’s cheekbones were too high and his chin too strong, his eyebrows too heavy over those gray, icy eyes. But those features caught and held the eye, as if they forced attention to them the way a magnet pulled at iron.
She stretched her mind and let the packsong float there like a mist. It was thick here, so she knew there were wolves in this rocky, mountain forest. Like layers of gauze, the distant voices overlapped until they formed a chorus of rising and falling tones. Hishn raised her own voice, and Dion felt her throat open up. She had to choke back the howl that she wanted to cry out.
How far? she asked the gray wolf in her mind.
Soon, Gray Hishn answered. The eerin ahead were chased from their beds, and your prey has gone on beyond them.
Aranur, or the raiders?
Your mate is close; the prey near the rocks. I hear nothing over the ridge.
Dion nodded absently. The ridge that Hishn pictured, flattened in the gray wolf’s mind, was Missive Ridge. The southern side was a series of broken cliffs split by old, collapsed draws; the trail the wolf projected was of the narrow path that cut up through a split in the stone. One dnu wide, heavy with overhan
gs, rough with slabs of rock—it was a dangerous place to ride and a deadly place to enter if one was going after raiders. That Hishn knew raiders had not crossed the ridge meant that there were other wolves already on the heights and that those wolves had not seen humans.
Dion projected her thanks to the wolf, then urged her dnu along the line until she caught up to the leader. Dacarr spared her a glance. “News?” he asked tersely.
“I think the raiders have stopped at the cliffs.”
“Then they’ll face the venge there?”
She nodded.
“Well, raiders are rough, not stupid. That’s good fighting ground. What about Aranur?”
“We’ll see him within the next two kays.”
The short man grunted his acknowledgment.
Dion dropped back past Tule and Royce. If the raiders were this close and staying on the roads, she wouldn’t be needed till they reached the cliff. She looked ahead, but could see neither Hishn nor the venge. The way was shadowed by the rootroad trees, and the dawn, barely lightening that blue-dark sky, turned the road into a muddy mess of contrasts. In the end it wasn’t she who spotted Aranur, although she knew where to look. It was the man riding beside Dacarr who caught a glimpse of the riders.
No one called out, and it wasn’t needed. Within minutes the two groups had merged. Aranur looked back to catch Dion’s eyes, but the two rode far apart. Not until they approached the low, foggy stretch where the road began to swing by the cliffs did Aranur halt the group.
One minute, there were only men and women and riding dnu on the road. The next minute, the gray wolf had joined them. Instantly, the group’s posture changed. The fighters, except for Tule and Royce, pulled away from Dion, giving the gray wolf room to join the wolfwalker. Tule, catching Dion’s eye as she slid off the dnu, nodded almost imperceptibly at Royce. The youth had deliberately stood his ground when the gray wolf stalked up beside him, but the young man’s eyes followed the wolf as carefully as a hare follows a worlag’s teeth. Dion hid her smile.
“Ready?” Aranur asked softly, moving over to touch her arm briefly, lightly. There was an intimacy of years in that touch. Tule and Royce, with a glance at each other, moved quietly away.
Dion’s ears automatically took in their footsteps, but she had eyes only for the man with the icy gray eyes. “There’s a wolf pack on the heights,” she said. “They have no sense of humans up there.” She loosened her jacket, peeled it off, and bundled it into the small pack on the back of her saddle.
He rubbed at his chin. “They have to be close, then. If they didn’t take the cliff route, I can’t see them going on down the road where we could catch them on the flats. You can get close enough here to see them?”
She murmured agreement. For a moment, her scarred left hand rested on the pack. Aranur’s hand covered the seamed flesh, his strong fingers rubbing along the ridges. The faint white lines on his own tanned skin made an old pattern in his flesh, and Dion’s right hand covered his. Then Aranur squinted at the brightening sky. “Make it quick,” he said simply.
“As the fourth moon,” she promised. But she didn’t move. “I miss you,” she said softly.
“I’ll miss you more when you go.”
“I’m always going.”
“Always?”
“Here, there … The council points, and there I go, trotting off like a dog to do their bidding.”
“You wouldn’t want to trade the council’s bidding for that of a weapons master’s bidding, would you?”
“I’ve heard you’re a hard taskmaster.”
“I’ve heard you’re a tough scout.”
His hand pressed hers. There was an instant where the gray ice of his eyes shattered into a gaze of intensity that hit her like a fist. The riders around them faded to fog. Violet eyes stared into gray. The yellow gaze that gleamed through both their minds brought a howling from the distant pack, blindingly intense.
“Soon,” he promised softly.
Some of the other riders shifted as a group, catching the tall man’s attention, and his expression hardened again into a distant focus. Dion dropped her right hand. Her fingers brushed against the hilt of her sword, and the chill of the steel mirrored the expression on Aranur’s face. For a moment, the world tilted. A dozen years rushed by her eyesight. There were faces and ghosts that cried out in memory, only to be blinded by wolfsong. Lupine threads wove through her mind, tightening across and around her brain until she felt as if her very skull were honeycombed in gray steel. Aranur’s voice was one of those threads; Aranur’s hands were her anchors. And yet that touch, strong and firm, which still rested on her left hand, was a promise not yet kept. Like the one she had made so long ago to the wolves, this was one that hung between them like time on a dangling thread. He looked down again, and she heard his voice as if he had not spoken out loud, but had projected through the packsong. Soon, he said again.
She moved her lips to speak his name, but no sound came out. She looked at him oddly. Time, she thought, was not a friend; it was insubstantial hope. Then the voice that had ordered the riders to the venge spoke her name instead. She shook her head, then shrugged at his raised eyebrow. A moment later, she was gone, swallowed by the thin fog.
“Aranur?” one of the men asked at his elbow.
He stared after the wolfwalker. “I missed something,” he said softly. “Something important.”
“Dion?”
“Dion, and not Dion,” he murmured, more to himself than Dacarr. “She said she missed me.”
Dacarr shrugged. “She’s been in the Black Gullies for a month.”
“It wasn’t that.” Absently, Aranur rubbed his jaw, but his voice was once again firm when he said, “She’s gone to check their positions. She’ll send word back with the wolf.”
Dacarr nodded, but neither man moved. For a moment both looked out, studying the wisps of fog that clung to the forest. Then they turned back, gathering the other riders while Aranur outlined the approach to the cliff.
Moving silently away, Dion no longer heard them. The forest had swallowed their voices as if they’d been battened with cotton, and her ears, tuned as they were to what was natural, heard only the woods’ sounds now.
The underbrush was damp and cold. Dew, caught on waxy leaves, wetted Dion’s sleeves and darkened her clothes in patches. Hishn’s feet padded softly, making a talalike rhythm as she moved over the fallen logs and around the half-buried boulders. Morning birds, awake before dawn, were already calling shrilly, and tiny flocks of treespits swooped through the foggy canopy like bats fleeing the light. And even though she was working her way toward the rocks that would soon be bathed in raider blood, she felt a sense of freedom. There was nothing here but Hishn and her. Nothing but forest and sky. These moments were clean and cold and quiet, and she savored them like a kiss.
When she neared the cliff, Dion dropped to her knees, lowering her profile to that of the ferns around her. The dampness pressed instantly through her leggings, and the scent of the soil hit her nose. Ahead of her Gray Hishn snorted, and Dion cleared her own nostrils. A wide swath of young sticky trees were growing back from an old burn, and their sap stung like fireweed where it caught and clung to her skin. But the low branches hid her shape, and the fog hid her slight movements like music hiding a message.
They are here, Hishn projected into her mind.
see them, she returned. Carefully, she pulled an arrow from her quiver.
She felt her mind shift from wariness to anticipation, to the heat of fear or fury. Time blurred and ceased until only her senses were left. She knew her ears caught sounds, her eyes saw movement. She felt her own feet shift as a dawn breeze rose. She caught the odor of wood smoke that clung to the raiders’ clothes. The fog shifted and began to dissipate. She picked four of the raiders out from the rocks. Six, seven, nine, eleven, she counted so far—more than what they had expected.
Hishn picked up the thread of her concern. Your pack—you need their fangs to strengthen you
rs. You cannot flank a herd by yourself. You need Leader to help you here.
Hishn’s image of Aranur was clear, and the wolf’s concern about the raiders was thick behind that mental picture. Dion smiled without humor, her expression one of grim intent. I don’t intend to flank anyone, Gray One. I’m just the eyes of the venge. Go to Aranur, Hishn. Show him what I see, and tell him it’s time to move in.
An instant later, like a ghost in the trees, the wolf was gone.
A few minutes, and Aranur’s voice touched Dion’s mind, and she knew that Gray Hishn had reached him. She didn’t have to see Aranur begin to move his people through the trees. With the early breeze clearing the fog, he knew enough to hurry. And with wolf eyes watching through the woods, his figure was clear in her mind. Eleven men and three women, who crept like snakes, were a wash of movement to Dion. The healer intern had stayed behind, with Hishn to guard his safety.
Dion still moved forward, low to the ground. Gray fog; gray voices. Hishn snarled in her thoughts, and Dion opened her mind to the wolf. Left behind with the dnu, the wolf snarled again, and the dnu around her snorted.
Wolfwalker! she called.
Stay. Dion’s voice was firm. This hunt is mine, not yours.
The gray creature growled. I am your packmate. This hunt is as much mine as you are my wolfwalker.
No. Not when the fight is with humans, Hishn. Its not for you anymore. You know what it does to you to attack men. You cannot stay with me.
Hishn snarled again, anger and frustration thick in her mental voice, but Dion didn’t weaken.
Wolfwalker! the gray creature howled.
Dion read the eagerness of the wolf for the hunt, the instinctive wariness of strange humans, and the hunger that growled in Hishn’s belly. She closed herself off. The focus that Hishn had strengthened still remained in her mind, but the hot lust for blood was leeched from the intensity of seeking her prey.
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