“Vaklar!” Kalena called, her voice full of its usual demand. Vaklar came around the end of the barn at a run, a dim figure in the darkness but full of intent and concern for Kalena despite the unevenness in his gait that spoke of his own stiffening wounds.
“You’re to be in the house!” he cried at her, but then stopped short, blinking hard into the wet, driven snow. “Dan?” he said. “What — how — are... you all right, then?”
“Alive,” Reandn said, trying out his voice and finding it hoof-rasp rough. He clilmbed to his feet, wincing as he rose into the full strength of the wind. “The healer’s doing.”
“Aya?” Vaklar said with distracted surprise, shifting uneasily as he glanced from the road to Kalena. “You’re to be under bloody damn cover, Kalennie!”
He pulled her to her feet, ignoring her startled outrage, and marched her to the barn, leaving Reandn dazed and staring at the girl. Vaklar emerged from the deep shadows around the barn. “You, too, Dan. Naya be standing there like a target.”
“They lost us at the last turn,” Reandn said, not thinking about the words. “Else we’d be found by now.”
“There’s sense to that, especially with the sudden-like way we took that turn.” Vaklar narrowed his eyes at the mention of their precipitous path, but let the thought pass. “Lucky the snow’s melting as fast as it falls; they’ll naya track us at night. But don’t push it, aya?” One meaty palm fell on Reandn’s shoulder.
Reandn didn’t lift his eyes from the figure in the doorway. “She saved my life...”
“You’re not thinking clear, ladaboy —”
“What’s her name?”
“Madehy,” she said, the word muffled. She gave a moist sniffle, barely audible in the wind.
“Madehy,” Reandn murmured, his thoughts as buffeted by what he’d been through as his body by the wind.
But Kalena was safe. And so were they all, at least for the moment. “How do we stand?” he asked Vaklar, and then barely listened to the answer.
“The wounded still live — Ardrith’s mercy, surely, after what they’ve been through this day. Horses are settled and covered — there were plenty of blankets in there, and not for you to worry, Meira Madehy, we’ll leave it all just as we found it.” Madehy appeared oblivious to them, and Vaklar turned a questioning eye on Reandn. “Tell me, ladaboy, just why was it we took that one? No shortcut trail, this, or I’m a Keep man.”
Reandn shook his head, and froze in mid-gesture, closing his eyes. Don’t do that again. “I’m not sure. You’ve seen... I don’t take well to magic.”
Vaklar frowned at him a moment, his broad, pocked features caught in a lack of understanding.
“It’s an illness,” Reandn said, quoting himself from their first evening together. “It comes and goes.”
“Aya,” Vaklar said suddenly, shifting sideways to the wind. “I have you now. Was magic that night, too?”
Reandn nodded. “Elstan, letting the Keep know we’d met up with you.”
“I didn’t feel naya a twinge of it,” Vaklar said. “Ladaboy, that’s a fair skill to have, an you not being a wizard.”
Reandn snorted. “It’s a curse.”
Vaklar nodded. “I’ve seen that, too. But I’m not seeing what it has to do with being here.”
Reandn shook his head. “Perhaps nothing,” he said. “Or maybe everything.” Under Vaklar’s gaze he faltered, realizing the impossibility of a simple explanation. “At... home, there’s a healer who helps me with it, and there’s a certain feel to her presence.”
“Aya,” Vaklar said, intent enough on the conversation that he ceased his constant glances back to the barn. “I’m with you, though not understandin’ you at all.”
“Madehy has something of the same feel. I must have done something to make Sky think I wanted to come this way, toward what I felt. I’m not sure.”
“You mean,” Vaklar said, a meaningfully incredulous look on his face in the shadowed lamplight, “we’re here by accident?”
Reandn shrugged; it was a weary gesture, and carried all the weight of magic’s insidiously constant presence, the strain of a Wolf trying to fit into a system that no longer quite accepted him. “It might be the best thing we could have done. We did lose them, whoever the Hells they are. That gives us some time. And I have to say I’m damned glad to find myself alive.”
“The best thing!” Madehy said, her voice rising fast, surprising them. “The best thing! Not for me, it’s not! This is my place, my haven, and you came charging in and... and... and you made me — you made me —” Her words, progressively incoherent through sobs, dissolved altogether, and she hid her face in her hands and cried without restraint. Gravely, the dog nudged her, his brow furrowed; it didn’t stop him from keeping a meaningful eye on the strangers in his yard.
“Oh, now,” Vaklar muttered uncomfortably. “We didn’t mean to cause you such trouble.”
“Madehy,” Reandn said, and took a single toward her. The dog growled, a deep rumble from the depths of his broad chest.
Madehy didn’t even look up. “You stay away from me — all of you!” she cried. “You’ve done enough already!”
Reandn found Vaklar just as uncertain as he. He suddenly wondered Madehy’s age, and why there was no one here to hold her but a dog. He took another unwitting step forward.
Vaklar gave him a wry look and said, “Naya, Dan, leave her be. That’s her choice, and we’ve done enough already, aya?”
Aya. Right. Reandn dragged a hand back through his hair, gummy now with the fallen snow and dried blood. Vaklar said, “There’s a forge shop off the end of the barn; we’ve a fire started in it and water heating. For all it’s good to see you standing again, I’ve not much faith you’ll stay that way. Come in, eat something, and get cleaned up some. And sleep. We all need that.”
Reandn shook his head. “I’m going to backtrack along the trail, make sure we didn’t pick up any unwanted company.”
“No,” Vaklar said, and he meant it. “That’s for me, this night. I may not have your ways among the trees, but I’m standing upright — and you’re listing.”
He what? Hells, he was.
Vaklar gave the barest of grins at Reandn’s disgruntled response, and nodded toward the barn. “Eat. Clean up. Sleep. We’ll have plenty to do tomorrow.”
“You won’t be here tomorrow,” Madehy said in a ragged voice, but there was more desperation than confidence in her words. Reandn rubbed his eyes with his fingers and deliberately, reluctantly, stepped away from her.
Sleep, he thought, might be long in coming tonight, no matter how heavy exhaustion lay on him.
~~~~~
Kacey woke to the earliest hours of a clear day and the sounds of Lamar saddling horses; she stuck her head out from beneath the blankets, awkward in a full set of clothes underneath, and discovered Rethia watching her. Waiting.
“And?” she asked of her sister.
Rethia gave a little frown, and shrugged her shoulders in a gesture Kacey couldn’t quite interpret.
She emerged abruptly from beneath the blankets, throwing them off altogether. “Is he there?”
“He’s there,” Rethia said quietly, but without any relief in her voice. “I just can’t tell... well, we’re close, now, you know. If we can find the right trail, it won’t take long.”
A chill ran down Kacey’s spine; she wasn’t sure if it was the cool morning air or fear. What if they didn’t reach Reandn in time? What if Rethia’s quiet meant it was already too late?
And what if things turn out just fine? Kacey scowled at herself and struggled to get a grasp on the practical outlook that had ever been hers. To her astonishment, it remained out of reach. She felt only the worry, the sensation that things were completely out of her control.
“Hurry,” Rethia said, apparently unaware of her sister’s emotional jumble. She held out a lump of pressed nuts, raisins, and honey. “Find a bush and let’s go.”
Kacey struggled up from the bedding
, grabbed the nut ration, and stumbled off into the woods. Behind her, Rethia attacked the bedding with purpose, and when Kacey returned, she found Lamar and Rethia mounted and waiting, and her own horse ready to go. Without comment, she mounted up, barely able to swing her leg over the bulging packs behind her saddle.
Rethia didn’t wait for her to settle in the cold saddle. “This way,” she told Lamar, pointing northeast, where the road didn’t go. “The amulet is there. Reandn... he’s too quiet for me to hear well over the amulet.”
“We’ll take the first trail that breaks off in that direction,” Lamar said. “Or we’ll make one, if we can’t find one. Don’t worry, meiras, we’re almost there!”
Kacey took a deep breath, squashing down all her misgivings. They would find Reandn soon, and then everything would be all right. It would.
~~~~~
Teya breathed deeply of the morning air, grateful beyond words for the warming, sunny day. She needed only for the travelers ahead to move on; she’d followed them all the previous day and stopped when they did, unable to go further in any event.
Accordingly, she’d kept her morning spells quiet and direct, locating Reandn without any trouble — he hadn’t moved from the night before. Either he’d done fine without her, or he desperately needed help; in either case, he probably wasn’t going to be pleased to see her.
Not that it mattered. Teya mounted her worn horse and gently pulled its head away from the buds it so desperately jerked off the trees, almost faster than it could chew and swallow. “Soon,” she told the animal. “Later today. Then I’ll let you rest.”
Assuming she didn’t stumble into the middle of something too big to handle — or, worse yet, find Reandn already dead. She gave the horse a pat and amended her promise with a heartfelt, “I hope.”
~~~~~
Reandn woke to the quiet shuffling and jaw-grinding noises of relaxed horses picking at their hay and the occasional low groan of someone in pain. Though the barn was swathed in low, diffuse light, the daylight showing under the sliding main door shone bright and undeniable.
He sat bolt upright, instantly regretted it, and sank back down to his elbows. Daylight. Why was he still in here sleeping when there were patrols to run and plans to make?
Because I’m still just the wrangler.
More carefully this time, he sat up again, discovering all the bruises and cuts from the day before, well-buried beneath his clothes. Nothing deep, he thought, other than the ongoing trickle at his brow.
He meant to get to his feet then, but instead he just sat there, considering the depth of his sleep and the feel of magic in his system.
Of the last, there was little, nothing but the ordinary background noise to which he’d grown accustomed.
Heavens, it was nice to feel right again.
Except something deep within him spoke of things not right. Things profoundly not right at all. Things so important...
The sense of it kept him sitting there, chasing his thoughts through the night — through the evening before, and those moments between life and death — to what had been missing.
Adela.
Alone in the barn, Reandn froze, as though he could avoid the inexorable direction of his own thoughts.
Adela.
He hadn’t seen her when he’d struggled in that in-between place. No, she’d come to him during the night instead, slipping into his dreams to answer the questions that tumbled within him.
You were going to die or live, no matter what I did or where I was, she’d told him. If you’d died, I would have been here for you. But if you lived... then touching you so closely would only have done to you what I’ve already done too many times before... .
Even with the distance she kept between them, he felt her distress — he reached for that, too, to soothe it from her.
She only slid further out of reach. Forgive me, Danny, she said. I’ve been too selfish, too long. Just remember... that I love you.
And she slid away entirely, buffering her words with his exhausted and dreamless sleep.
She wouldn’t be back.
She hadn’t said as much, but Reandn knew it — knew it as well as he knew the ache in his heart. He drew his knees up, resting his forehead against them, awash in the familiar frustration of sorrow and yearning. As little as he’d felt of her over the past two years, somehow having that sense of her within himself... it had been enough.
Losing it suddenly seemed like losing her all over again.
But even as he floundered in the sensation of loss, new understanding spread stubborn roots. He saw her face again — not as he so often saw it, locked in terror at the moment Ronsin’s twisted magic stole her life away — but saddened with regret. Regret for him.
In an instant of clarity, he saw himself through her eyes — and realized that somehow, hidden behind the intensity with which he had flung himself into his role as Wolf Remote — tucked amongst the homespun moments that came along with his tentative acceptance of Teayo’s little family — he’d only been faking it.
Faking life.
Somewhat to his surprise, he realized that had the situation been reversed, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted Adela to live her days out alone in the small tower room they’d had together.
He thought of her then, lost in the memory of all the delightful little things about her — the silly giggle that made her sound so young, the heat in her eyes when he did some Wolfish thing that angered her, and the entirely different heat that still made his body long for her. Without him, she would still have been all those things. The thought of her without someone to recognize and appreciate those facets hit him as hard as any sorrow he’d endured in truth.
She wanted only the same for him.
She wasn’t abandoning him — she hadn’t stopped loving him at all. Years after death, she was finally letting him go — as unhappy as he was at how their past had trapped them.
Reandn held himself very still, very quiet, trying to understand the enormity of the transition, and comprehending only that it was a deep truth. In the silence of the barn, his heart pounded as if he had just run down a fugitive... or as if Adela was settling into his arms, her panting breath cooling his bare skin and her eyes aspark with the pleasure they’d given one another.
Someone groaned, a pained sound and unduly loud sound against the silence of Reandn’s thoughts. He jerked his head off his knees. For the briefest moment he felt as if he’d been caught with the privacy of his passions spread bare to the world, but he took hold of himself, realizing he didn’t have to do anything with those passions but let them exist while he attended to the world pressing in around him.
Stiffly, slowly, he stood, and looked around the barn for his boots and half chaps.
What he discovered was a small herd of horses, scruffy with sweat and heavy shedding, milling in a sectioned corner of the barn. He and the cart were crammed into the middle section — along with a plow, a harrow, and a pile of edged gardening tools. Wooden cabinets lined the back of the space, their doors ajar and supplies spilling out — blankets and soft, thick ropes and leg wraps; hobbles and bandages and jars of salves and powders.
I don’t deal with people, Madehy had said.
Reandn moved over to the cart, stepping carefully on the cold, packed dirt floor. In it, the two Resioran guards lay aflush with pain and fever; Varina was gone. Up and about, Reandn hoped, since her injuries had been the least severe — a cut on the leg, a bad bump on the head.
For these other two, he didn’t have much hope. But they’d obviously been treated, and aside from resettling the tangled blankets over them, there wasn’t much he could do.
On the other side of the cart, just out of reach of several curious goats and a disinterested striped sow, he found cold flatbread — Elstan’s particular hand, by the taste of it — and a handful of dried apple slices. He helped himself, washing the meager meal down with generously watered wine, and, upon finding his boots, braced himself to go out in the
cold.
Two things struck him as he slid the door aside just far enough to squeeze through — that the day was warm, a bright blue sky over just the hint of a breeze, and — startlingly — that Rethia was somewhere near by.
Or... was it just Madehy? Madehy’s presence, when he thought about it, played a constant undertone through the natural currents of drifting magic. But wasn’t there another presence in there, one with which he was more familiar? Just not as close, and not nearly as conspicuous?
Vaklar came around the corner of the barn and discovered him. “Dan! Fine day we’ve got here, aya?”
“You tell me,” Reandn said. “Did that dog eat Elstan? That would be a good start.”
“Oh, tsk,” Vaklar said reprovingly, though his broad face seemed to be holding back a grin. “You ought to be in a good mood, for all we let you sleep.”
Reandn found the sun, and blinked to realize it was halfway up in the sky. Vaklar added, “In truth, then, Dan, we couldn’t wake you. Stopped trying after a while. I went out and had myself a good look around the area.”
“And?”
Vaklar shrugged. “Found no signs of anyone lurking around, though our own sign is plain enough. I had a go at muddling it, where we turned onto this path. You might have a see, yourself, if you’re truly well.”
“Well enough,” Reandn said. “Kalena?”
“Wants to go home,” Vaklar said, and the sun-hewn lines in his face deepened with his quick frown. “She won’t, though, not without an escort, and by Tenaebra’s cold hand, I’ll finish what I started, here.”
“I did make a promise to the Hounds,” Reandn agreed without thinking.
“A promise, was it?” Vaklar narrowed his eyes. “Come around to the yard, then. I think we’ve all got some talking to do.”
They did at that. Reandn fell into step around the end of the barn to the same little yard they’d occupied the evening before. Kalena and her personal were by a well he hadn’t noticed the night before, within the fenced area around the house. Kalena sat on the edge of the wooden well and chattered on while Varina, her leg propped awkwardly out in front of her, rinsed bloodied pieces of what had been the silk tent. At the fence gate, the dog sunned himself, relaxed and panting, and just as big as Reandn remembered. In the daylight he was a handsome creature, a short-coated, light fawn dog with crisp black points on his face, ears, and lower legs.
Wolf Justice Page 18