Stubbornly, Monteverdi hung onto her arm. Hishn snarled at him, but the intern snapped, “Back off, Gray One. I’m helping, not hurting her.”
Woljwalker— Hishn’s voice was caught between protecting Dion and her instinctive fear of humans. The wolf recognized the intern, but Dion’s need for protection colored her response so that she stayed and snarled instead of slinking away.
Back down, Hishn, Dion projected. Ease off now.
But the wolf’s projection was strong, and Dion was drowning with the sensation of lupine muscles, seeing foggily through two sets of eyes. Some part of her mind tried to draw back from that strength, pulling away from the gray bond. She took a deep breath and finally swallowed the eagerness that threatened her and the urge to spring away. How much of her mind was her own anymore? Had that puppet master been right? She wrapped her arms around herself and hugged herself till she quelled the violence. By the moons, she whispered to herself, was she more woman or wolf?
Your heart is gray as mine, said Hishn, baring her teeth at Dion. You fight with the fangs of the pack.
She tried to concentrate on her shaking hands as the violence worked its way out of the set of her teeth. I run with the pack, Hishn, she acknowledged. But I’ve grown too used to your blood-lust. You swamp me with emotions that I must control
Violence is the way of life. You cannot hunt without it.
Dion’s hands clenched. Peace is also a way of life. And you can hunt from necessity, not violence, and still find your prey with your fangs.
The wolf seemed to shrug. Gray thoughts blended with others until a mixed song filled Dion’s head. Violence, peace … the gray wolf said. Each defines the other.
Dion shook her head, and Monteverdi misunderstood. “Dion—” He tried again to catch her arm.
“It’s his blood,” she forced herself to say. “Not mine—”
“Some of this is from you,” he said stubbornly. He ignored her half-hearted gesture. Quickly, efficiently, he tugged a cloth from a pouch and wrapped it expertly around the light gash. By the time he had finished, Dion was pulling away, her mind again clear, her hands already reaching for one of the healer’s kits he had brought. They moved quickly toward the other wounded Ariyens.
“Extra bandages are in here,” he told her, jamming a bundle into her hands.
“Extra salve?”
“Couldn’t get it. The lab workers are down with spring fever.” He stopped and knelt by another wounded man.
A hard voice cut into their words. “Where’s the Healer?”
“Over there—by the cliff,” another voice responded.
Dion moved quickly through the figures who stood strangely isolated now, after the fight. There were bodies—some sprawled, some huddled, some like lumps of dough on the ground. One man half crawled toward another; one thrashed against the branches that, like hands, caught the last of his blood. A woman sat on her knees, trying to breathe, while another archer felt along her arm for the break they knew was there. But even the figures beside each other seemed somehow separated. Dion’s chest seemed suddenly heavy, and the distance closed again over her eyes so that she wondered absently if there was something wrong with her bond to the wolves that she was having trouble with her vision. But she could see the tight expression on Tule’s face clearly enough as the man beside him waved urgently for her attention.
It wasn’t Tule who was hurt—or Royce, she realized in relief. Then she cursed under her breath as she saw the woman, Mjau, who lay behind one of the boulders.
Aranur was beside the archer, speaking steadily into the woman’s wild, unfocused eyes, while Tule’s single hand captured some of the guts that had spilled from the woman’s split belly. The stain of fluids had washed across Mjau’s jerkin, darkening it like paint; and the dawn mist was gathering on both the leather and the woman’s gray-white hair like tiny stars. Mjau was barely conscious, but her hands cupped desperately around Tule’s single hand, holding her own entrails.
Aranur didn’t look up as he heard Dion shout for the intern. Instead, he kept his eyes on the archer. “Keep conscious, Mjau,” he said firmly. “That’s it. No—look at me, woman, not at your stupid belly. Don’t close your eyes!” he said sharply. “Look at me. Look at me,” he repeated urgently. He barely shifted as Dion dropped to the ground beside him. “Stay with me, Mjau. Keep your eyes open.”
Quickly, Dion broke open the healer’s kit. Gray Hishn sniffed Mjau’s torso, then sat expectantly across the body from Dion. Her yellow eyes gleamed as she followed the wolfwalker’s movements.
Dion looked up at the other three fighters who sheltered the downed archer from the falling mist. “Leave us,” she said curtly, and they fell back without comment, their place taken by the intern. “Edan, wait,” Dion called after them. “Bring a bota of water, and—” She tossed the short man a vial. “—mix this in it when you do.” She turned back to Tule and Aranur. “Is this her only wound?”
The one-armed man didn’t move his hand from the archer’s guts. “There are two scratches on her leg, but both superficial. She took a clubbing blow to the upper back, but there was no blood on her jerkin, and she still moved fairly well after it.”
Mjau still stared at the guts that pooled and slid in her hands. Dion thrust the tools at the intern and took the bota from the man who scrambled back over the boulders. “Mjau,” she said to the archer as she poured the solution over her hands. “It’s me, Dion. I’m with you.”
The woman sucked in a ragged breath. Her lips moved. “Wolfwal—” Mjau’s eyes rolled wildly. “Dio—”
“I hear you, Mjau.” Beside her, Monteverdi grabbed the bota and, after rinsing his own hands, began to bathe the entrails. Swiftly, Dion began repacking the archer’s guts. The white-haired woman burbled a scream, and only Aranur’s hands on the woman’s shoulders kept her down on the ground. Monteverdi froze at Mjau’s hoarse cry, and Dion snapped. “Get the ointment on the rest of her skin.”
He reached for one of the vials, and Dion elbowed his hand away. “Not that one. Not yet.”
“Are you …” He glanced at Tule, and his question trailed off.
But Dion answered tersely, “Yes.”
In an instant, Monteverdi’s manner changed. He put away two herb packets and reached for others. His hands, still gentle, seemed also suddenly eager. Tule watched the intern without speaking, but when Dion had set the last of Mjau’s guts back in her belly and gestured for the one-armed man to leave, he merely sat back on his heels.
Dion, already pinching the edges of the wound together and clamping them in place, didn’t glance up. “It would be easier for me if you stepped away, Tule.”
The one-armed man nodded. “Easier,” he agreed. But he didn’t move. Aranur looked up and met the other man’s eyes, and Tule shrugged. “Heard some interesting stories about the way Wolf-walker Dione works. Thought I’d see some of it for myself.”
Dion snorted, her hands working quickly as she crimped the clamps into semipermanent clasps. “It’s window dressing, Tule. Remember?”
“/remember,” he said meaningfully.
She looked up then. Aranur made to get up, but Dion made a small sign with her hands.
“Dion,” Aranur said softly, for her ears alone. “It’s too many people.”
She spoke as quietly, projecting her words through the wolf so that Aranur heard her voice as a faint echo in the back of his head. He’s already seen the damage up close, she whispered into his mind. He’ll be more danger with suspicions and questions than he will be with a few straight answers.
“You don’t know him.”
“No.” Her hands stilled for a moment. “But Hishn does.”
Aranur eyed the wolf, then the wolfwalker. Hishn’s yellow eyes gleamed. The Gray One’s lips parted to show the white teeth against blood-pink gums, and Aranur shivered as a faint sense of howling drowned out Dion’s voice in his mind. Abruptly, he nodded.
Tule had watched their exchange without comment, but now he
added his own voice. “How can I help?”
Dion’s answer was terse. “Be ready to take Aranur’s place.”
“And do what?”
“Do what he does. Keep your hands on my shoulders, your eyes shut, and be quiet. Don’t fight me, no matter what happens. I will do the rest.” She thrust the crimping tools aside. “Monteverdi, are you ready?” The intern nodded and placed his hands over hers so that he could follow her movements. “All right, then.” She looked up. “Aranur—”
He placed his hands on Dion’s shoulders.
“I’m going to need to go in fast,” she said softly.
He nodded.
She looked down into the archer’s still-wild, barely focused eyes. “Mjau, listen to me. Listen to my voice. I’m here. I won’t leave you. Just close your eyes and trust me. You’ve known me many years, Mjau. You know what I can do.”
She reached mentally to feel the presence of the wolf. Hishn?
Growling, the wolf’s yellow eyes met Dion’s violet gaze. She is close to the moons. Her breath is weak; her blood too quick in her belly.
Dion nodded and spread her hands over the wound, not quite touching the half-stitched gash. Beside her, Aranur’s hands felt cold on her shoulder, but beneath his grip she felt a chill all her own. What she was doing was not of the Ancients and not of the human science that had brought the Ancients to this world. What she was doing was alien, from the heart of the Aiueven. Here, human and not-human met through the mind of the wolf. And the lupine memories of what had once been a gift of the aliens were the only guides she had.
What science the humans had managed to keep was theory without technology. Technology meant activity; visible advances beyond growing houses and roads were a guarantee of death from the watchful alien eyes. But Dion’s teachers had been old lupine memories locked into the packsong, not the old technology. And the medical theory she had learned all her years was suddenly life in her hands.
For more than a decade, she had been experimenting and manipulating chemical patterns. She had learned to recognize the feel of different kinds of energy. Once she understood it, she began teaching others to push a patient’s heart, to seal tissues, to melt and mend shards of bone. And through the years, she had grown in strength and sensitivity. She was so sensitive now that Mjau’s blood flow was like ten thousand threads in her fingers. She gathered those threads, let herself feel where the pulse was strong or weak. Let herself reach out for the woman’s heartbeat. Then she looked up into the yellow eyes of the wolf.
Take me in, Gray One.
Then run with me, Wolfwalker.
Between them, the thread of gray thought became sharp. Dion let her mind flow along that thread until her consciousness sank into the mind of the wolf. Odors filled her mind and nose; colors shifted in her eyes. The sickly sweet scent of blood and bile almost overwhelmed her. Automatically, she blocked both off.
Hishn growled in her head. Then her mind was caught in a sudden wrench. Her vision rushed inside, to the left, spun dizzyingly, and dropped. And then the wounded woman’s body opened up before her.
Mjau’s pulse became hers, the ragged breaths her own. She steadied herself against the shock of the archer’s pain. She could feel every aspect of the woman’s body, every inch of flesh and bone. The wolf blanketed her senses with Aranur’s strength until their presence was a thick, gray, pain-killing fog—a shield against the agony that wracked the archer’s torso. She could feel Monteverdi’s presence too, but it was as an observer, not as part of that fog. And in Mjau, she felt the blood. Bile. Muscle contractions. Raw edges of tissue that had pulled apart.
Lower. Farther. Deeper. In. She sank her consciousness lightly into the slashed belly. Sound faded from her ears—now she felt, deep in her own bones, the throbbing heartbeat of another life. Bone, tissue, fluid, blood … all became one with her consciousness. She followed the flow of life through the wound as blood spurted from severed blood vessels and fluids spilled into the torso. Blood, bile, white cells, pollens … On OldEarth, the pollens stayed in the lungs; but here they could force their way into blood vessels before they were broken down. In a healthy person, the body could compensate; but the tiny holes they tore in Mjau’s body would make this healing worse. Dion followed the blood, calling more white cells to her, breaking down pollens, and forcing the spills and leaks of bile into tiny, stable pockets. She touched vessels, drew edges together so that the blood flowed smoothly again. She bound the breaks tightly against the pressure that threatened to break through their new, unstrengthened walls. Then, as the vessels set, she began to reach farther to the severed threads of tissue. She touched, then bunched the intestinal tubes so that they nestled together again. The tiny threads of supporting tissue were woven back into place. Not strong enough yet to hold the woman’s jumbled guts, the tiny threads lay flaccid against the movements from Mjau’s quick and shallow breathing. But Dion pulled at the tissues, melting and melding them together until thin membranes formed to hold the shape of the organs. Piece by piece and strand by strand of tissue she wove and placed and secured the archer’s body. Mjau’s lungs breathed with hers; Dion’s pulse pushed blood for both of them. And slowly, gradually, the archer’s heartbeat strengthened enough to stand by itself again.
Dion’s focus began to slow. Around her the gray fog thinned. There was energy lost to the archer’s body that had come dangerously out of hers. She weakened, and the wolf urged her out. Aranur ’s voice pushed behind the wolf, tugging at her brain. The strain pulled at her concentration like taffy. The pain-killing barrier thinned. She could feel the ache in her mind that signaled the start of deep weariness. Long before she lost herself to exhaustion, long before the fog could form hands to yank her from the body, she let herself be drawn away, drawn back. Her consciousness began to withdraw, feeling Mjau’s body again as a layer of threads, not as something within herself. Her pulse split into two: hers and Mjau’s; her breathing was once again her own.
She opened her eyes. For a moment she was disoriented. The fog swirled at the edges of her vision, and the chill she felt was like the end of strength. Then her sight cleared, and she realized that the fog was in the Gray One’s mind, and the chill was merely the cold touch of moisture that had settled on her skin.
Monteverdi caught her glance. “Is it enough?”
She nodded.
Aranur absently chafed Dion’s hands, checking on their temperature. The wolfwalker ’s tunic was damp with dew, mud, and blood, and her hands were colder than they had been before. “All right?” he asked softly.
She nodded again. Aranur got to his feet, giving Tule a significant look. “I’ll get her a cloak. Watch her for a few minutes.”
The one-armed man nodded. As Aranur left, Tule eyed Dion thoughtfully. To his gaze, the wolfwalker looked no different than before. But he had felt the energy she had drained from his own body. When, for a few minutes, his hand had taken the place of Aranur’s, that pull had been sharp as a hook. And the howling that had echoed on the inside of his skull had been like an eerie song. He had heard the wolf packs singing late at night to the distant moons. But this had been different—it was as if he had been drawn into something that lay behind the howling. Wolf voices had spent their words in his head; wolf tones had caught at his mind. Wolf limbs had stretched along trails he didn’t even know. For the first time since he had lost his right arm, he’d felt the weight of one hang from his shoulder. “Moons,” he said under his breath.
Dion glanced up.
He shook his head silently. He had seen no change in the archer’s body, but Mjau now breathed with more ease. The woman’s heartbeat was stronger too—he could see the pulse in her pale neck—and when Mjau’s eyes finally opened, they were pain-filled, but calm instead of wild with fear. The raw, crimped gash in the archer’s belly being bandaged by the intern spoke of a dangerous wound. But the woman lay quietly on the ground, and it was the wolfwalker who shivered.
His voice was uneven, and he steadied it careful
ly. “Your jacket’s back at the road; Aranur’s bringing a cloak.”
Dion nodded. “Any others this bad?” Her voice sounded flat to her ears, and she forced herself to put more energy in it, bringing it back to the steady, brisk tone she had used before.
“Not that I saw. One broken arm, one gashed leg that’s already been bandaged. Scrapes and cuts. One dead.”
She didn’t ask who. She had seen the dead man with Monteverdi.
Tule watched her eyes, but the glaze he saw there was not exhaustion, he realized, but distance, as though the wolfwalker was pulling back and away. Her face seemed suddenly remote, and he felt as if he studied a mask. “Dione,” he said sharply.
She looked at him, but her eyes were not focused.
He grabbed her arm. “Wolfwalker—”
She looked down, but he didn’t remove his grip, and he saw the anger build in her eyes. The wolf, who had moved away, was suddenly back beside her, its yellow eyes gleaming into his.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
Dion just looked at him. Abruptly, her eyes focused.
The one-armed man released her. “Don’t stop feeling,” he said softly. “Don’t remove yourself like that.”
“You don’t know what I feel, Tule.”
“I can see it in your eyes.”
“See what?” she asked sharply.
“That you’ve been too long on the trail, Wolfwalker Dione. Too long behind the steel.”
“Aranur needs me with him.”
“Then he can need someone else.”
“He is my mate, Tule.”
“That doesn’t change what’s happening to you.” He nodded at her. “I’ve seen that expression on others. You need to back off from all of this. You’ve carried enough life and death for your years. It’s time to put it aside.”
Dion stared at him, then almost laughed. “Tut it aside? With the elders calling me to scout every other month? With the council adding healing jobs every other ninan? I stay out of more venges than I ride on, Tule, and I try to stay back from the action.”
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