Wolf Justice

by Doranna Durgin

  Reandn took a long look at Arik — at the cut of his clothes and the trim of his beard. “He’s not one of you. Not really.”

  “Naya,” said Fiers. “Came with a big lot of money behind him, though. Too much to turn away.”

  Reandn exchanged a glance with Vaklar. Kalena glared down at him, wavering between curiosity and great offense that he’d dared to step into the conversation. Finally she snapped, “What?”

  “Just thinking,” Reandn said. “Be interesting to know where that money came from. Might be more interesting to know who first came up with the idea of taking Kalena. And who decided that the Knife would start killing?”

  Everyone looked at Arik. Fiers glared at Reandn. “Naya,” he said. “Don’t think to distract me.”

  “From what?” Reandn said. “Taking Kalena because that’s what you set out to do and you can’t see beyond it to what she’s offering you? Although I feel obliged to point out that you’re now close to outnumbered.”

  Kalena cleared her throat. She was, Reandn noticed, another step or two further back from the edge, and oh-so-casual about it. She seemed to have no notion that Teya was inserting herself, Wolf-quiet, into the sheltered spot that Madehy had so recently vacated.

  “ You can still try to take me,” she told Fiers. “In which case more of you will die, and you’ll still have little chance of getting back through the pass with me. You can quietly go away — we won’t stop you — and return home to continue burning storehouses. Or you — just Fiers — can come with us and tell your side of things at court. Once they’re listening here, they’ll have to listen at home. No Resioran Highborn will let themselves be outdone by Keland’s Keep.”

  Fiers grunted. “That much, we have in common.” He glanced at Arik’s scowl, and then sent a meaningful look at Reandn and Vaklar. “Were anything to happen to me, the Knife at home won’t stop at burning coal anymore.”

  Coolly, Kalena said, “So I assumed.”

  “Well, then.” Fiers looked around at his fellow Knife, and got shrugs and mutters.

  Finally one of the women muttered, “I never did like that we started killing.”

  “Aya, and getting killed,” a man said. “We’re not truly fighters, then, are we? We just had numbers.”

  “But they’ll take more notice of us, now,” someone pointed out. “Once they know we’ve this much strength behind our convictions.”

  “They already know,” Reandn said. “But I’m not sure it’s the kind of notice you want.”

  “Even a fool can kill for his beliefs,” Kalena said. “But it won’t convince anyone of anything other than the fact that he’s a fool.”

  One of the Knife instantly scooped up a small rock and winged it at her. Vaklar stiffened, but Reandn only smiled, a small and tight smile. As impressive as she’d been up on that cliff, as persuasive and quick-thinking, she was still... well, she was still Kalena. Kalennie. Spoiled Highborn bitch.

  “Here, now,” Fiers said mildly, not looking particularly concerned. “Leave off a minute, at least until we decide. What’s it to be?”

  “You’ve been at the head of us since the start, leastways till Arik came in,” the woman said. “We’ll stand by your decision.”

  Fiers gave Kalena a long and pensive look, and then did the same to Arik — who, bound and nearly sat upon by his babysitters, returned the favor with cold regard. “Your way’s no good,” Fiers said. “And I’d not be following it naya more — of cert, not until we find out more about the money that came with you.”

  “That didn’t seem to concern you when I offered it to you.”

  “Might be that was a mistake on our part, and maybe no little one.” Fiers turned to the woman who had stayed by his side through all the scuffling. “Calova, ’tis your job to wrench some truth from this man and his wizard, while I’m gone.”

  “Gone?” said the woman, her impassive face looking like it came at a price.

  Fiers nodded, glancing up at Kalena. “Oh, aya, we could all go back to the hills and keep on as we’ve been, but over the last two years that hasn’t gotten us far, has it? Have we anything to lose with tryin’ something new?”

  “You,” Calova said pointedly, but offered no other protest.

  Arik snorted. “Fool.”

  Up on the cliff, backed up into a mountain glory, Kalena seemed a tad less pale. “Good. Then let’s end this.”

  “Not so fast.” Fiers moved a few paces away from his Knife to assess them, and then nodded at a man. “I’ll have my own escort, then. Comin’ with ye isn’t near the same thing as trusting you.”

  “Oh, Goddess Grace,” Kalena snapped, setting her hands on her hips with feeling. “What kind of future will I have as ambassador if the very first thing I do reeks of betrayal?”

  Fiers ducked his head; it seemed to Reandn that he hid a smile in his weathered face, albeit a small and wry one. “I take your point. And I’ll take my escort, regardless.”

  Kalena flung up her hands in dramatic display of exasperation, completely destroying her ambassadorial dignity. There was, Reandn thought, nothing better she could have done at that moment, for it was honest and human, without any trace of calculation.

  Fiers actually chuckled, as quiet as it was, but when he spoke, it was all business. “Calova, see what you can do about quietin’ the other Knife squads. Won’t look good for us if the raids continue while I’m tryin’ to impress the Highborn.”

  “You want me to return home... to leave you here alone?”

  “I’ll have Pevro here,” Fiers said brusquely. “And you take care with that wizard.”

  “Wrap her fingers together,” Reandn said, and earned a scathing look from the woman. “Most of them can’t put a spell together without the finger-twisting.”

  Fiers assessed the woman, ignoring the fury on her face. “Aya, I suppose we might drug her at that.”

  Teya’s voice startled them all but Reandn; as one, Knife heads swiveled to locate her where she casually crouched beside Madehy’s tree. “She’ll be fine without. Her magic’s too coarse to come from anything but mnemonics.”

  “Took you on well enough,” the woman said scornfully.

  “Startled me, that’s true. But it was —” Teya closed her mouth on whatever other words had been hovering there, giving Reandn an enigmatic and somewhat accusing look.

  But magic whispered in the air. Teya glanced at the Knife wizard and made a quick gesture; the tingle of her shielding dropped over Reandn. Beyond that she merely waited, the one calm soul in the middle of a suddenly tense camp.

  After a moment, she offered them a hint of a smile; the shield dropped away. “You see? She’s not school-trained.” She glanced at Fiers. “Consider that. I wouldn’t want to be in the Resiores relying on this woman instead of a fully trained wizard. Not when there are plenty of us about who do have training.”

  The woman only smiled tightly. “You’re not half so smart as you think you are. You’ll see.”

  Fiers snorted at Teya. “You don’t really think any of the Knife would consider inviting formal magic schooling into the hills, d’ye?”

  Teya shrugged. “Magic is here, Fiers. Schooling it is one way to control its use.”

  Fiers shook his head, amused at the very outrageousness of the suggestion and turned away from her. “You,” he said, and looked at Reandn, “take your wizard and your Highborn and set yourself to wait up at the top of the hill. I’ll be along shortly — Pevro and I.”

  Across camp, the hunter tipped his bow at Madehy, and moved off into the trees.

  Reandn glanced back up the hill. The woods looked empty, but he knew Kacey waited for him there.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 16

  Kacey winced as Rethia cut her boot away from her swollen foot and ankle and tossed the useless footwear at Madehy’s scrap pile near the barn supply cabinets. Rethia gazed at the exposed limb and made a sound of dismay.

  “Don’t tsk at me.” Kacey scowled and tried to get a gli
mpse of the ankle herself. “I didn’t do it.”

  Reandn hesitated, a handful of bridles slung over one shoulder as he moved from the horses to their meager jumble of supplies beneath the cart. He crouched to rest his hand lightly on Kacey’s knee and look at the offending limb. “Tsk.”

  Kacey narrowed her eyes at him, searching for a suitable response. In the end she just sighed and turned away. The ankle already felt better, free of the boot and under Rethia’s innately soothing touch.

  “It might just be a bad turn,” Rethia said. “We’ll poultice it tonight and wrap it tight for travel tomorrow... and you’re not to walk on it. Not at all.”

  “But... Rethia!” Kacey lost her veneer of composure, for she’d been wondering where Madehy’s privy was ever since they’d returned. Rethia eyed Madehy’s cabinets with a speculative gaze, and Kacey knew right then that she was going to get a horse poultice.

  From the other side of the cart, Elstan’s exclaimed protest briefly punctuated the air, reacting to Vaklar’s explanation of their new arrangement with Fiers. Teya hovered, harboring an obvious need to talk to Reandn, and Madehy had disappeared into the woods outside the Knife camp.

  And Kalena... Kacey had seen her head for the barn loft, and thought she was off in a corner crying somewhere.

  Not such a bad idea, now that she came to think about it. But after a visit to the privy.

  Reandn kissed her forehead, shocking her into silence. “I’ll get you there,” he said. Curse him, anyway, for knowing just what she was thinking.

  Although she wouldn’t have taken that kiss back for all the bent-up ankles in the world.

  Rethia pushed Kacey’s trouser leg up and worked a rough towel under her ankle, twitching it straight as she glanced up at Reandn. “How did you do that? At the camp, I mean.”

  Reandn stood, hip-shot. “Do what?”

  Much more tense than that casual stance would suggest. I know you, too.

  “Manage the magic.” Rethia’s gaze settled on Reandn for a brief and piercing moment. “When Teya lost her shield and you were trying to get to Kacey.”

  “Manage the —” Reandn shook his head. “I didn’t. I spent most of that time on my hands and knees, remember? I’m not sure, but I think there was some bellying, too.” His bitter voice reminded Kacey of days past, when he could think of nothing but revenge upon the rogue wizard who had killed his Adela.

  Rethia took his strong reaction in stride. “But that wizard — so sloppy! You may have been with unicorns yesterday, Danny, but it wasn’t enough to protect you from that woman.”

  “How —”

  Rethia tipped her head in annoyance. “If there’s one thing I do know, Reandn-the-Wolf, it’s how much magic you can handle.”

  Reandn stood his ground. “Not this time. Blame it on the damn unicorns and the mess they left behind.”

  “This mess is human fault,” Rethia said sharply, and didn’t give him a chance to reply before heading for the supply cabinets.

  “It’s not easy to make her that mad,” Kacey observed. “Now, quick, before she ties me down with that poultice — help me outside!”

  ~~~~~

  Madehy lay in the dark with her eyes open, her arm trailing over the edge of the bed to rest on Kendall’s back. She scratched along the back of his ears; he groaned happily.

  She’d slept plenty already. She’d reached home before the others and tended her sheep; she’d mixed up requested potions. Hops poultices with sangrel root and scrubgorst for Vaklar and his people, penstemon effusion for a wary ’steader expecting two cows to calve, several mixtures of powdered balmony and flagroot for late spring worming. The requests were written on precious scraps and left in the small, flat copper box by her gate.

  For two years, those notes and an occasional word exchanged with the hunter had been her sole contact with people. Sometimes she caught sight of someone dropping off an animal; sometimes when she gathered herbs she discovered others doing the same.

  But they never saw her.

  For two years, this house had been a barrier against all others, protecting her from their unwanted intrusions of self. Now, lying in this bed, awake after hours of dream-plagued sleep and with no desire to return to it, she had come to realize that the house had never been any barrier at all. That she, like Rethia, had determined her own way to deal with the unwitting threat other people represented to her.

  She’d thought the house a barrier, and in doing so, had made it one.

  Madehy gave Kendall a final pat; he lifted his head and gazed at her in the darkness. She slid from the bed and took herself barefoot through the dark house. At the door she hesitated, but only for an instant, and then she moved through it and out into the middle of the midnight yard, the ground gone from mud to cool dirt after two days of sunny warmth. She fancied she could feel the oval ridges of a hundred overlapping unicorn tracks beneath her toes.

  In the barn, everyone slept. Madehy let their muted emanations of self wash through her — and then imagined that the house was around her, applying her newly learned sense of barrier to the image.

  The night turned quiet around her, offering only the rustle of some furtive thing in the woods across the road. Of those in the barn, she heard nothing. Felt nothing.

  She opened the door to her house; just a crack. Quiet whispers of exhaustion, of murky dreams and leftover fears, made her heart quicken. And then she closed the door, and it quickened even more.

  The answer had been within her all along.

  Instead of elation, Madehy found herself struggling with sudden and overwhelming sorrow — sorrow for the lost time, the hiding and the unspeakable, incomprehensible affliction. If only she had tried harder to understand... if only she’d been the one to call back the unicorns...

  Maybe then her life would be different.

  Or maybe not. In defiance of the swelling pain in her throat, Madehy again opened the door to the house, the door to herself, and opened it wide. So much easier when they were asleep, and muted, though she hated to think what it would be like to get caught in a nightmare.

  No no no!

  She oughtn’t to have thought it, she oughtn’t to have even thought about thinking it! With only the barest flash of a warning, she found herself reeling in a sudden onslaught of pain and fear and humiliation, Kacey’s captivity come back to haunt the both of them in dreaming. Hands tied, ankle in anguish, huge and faceless guards chasing her from tree to tree —

  Madehy slammed the door closed and watched in horror as it sprang open again — while everyone laughed and she lurched along on hands and knees, crawling, groveling, trying to fend them off — Madehy threw herself on that door, curling her toes against the plain wood boards of her imaginary floor until only the barest crack of an opening remained, a whisper — they laughed and loomed over her and surrounded her —

  With a only a quiver of warning, the house shuddered, it creaked, and it split wide open, disintegrating around her, leaving her fully exposed as —

  — Their hands plucked at her clothing, pulled her hair, pinched her breasts and bottom —

  She threw her arms over her head and screamed.

  The splinters of Madehy’s house lacerated her soul, and she was Dan’s fury and worry, and Kacey’s broken-hearted sobs, and she was her own overwhelming grief, left alone in the dirt with nothing more than the ghost of Dan’s arms as they gathered up Kacey, arms that weren’t meant for her and meant nothing to her.

  Until, through the pattern of her sobs, Madehy heard the soft, swift sound of bare feet, and felt the touch of someone’s hands, felt the arms that encircled her and hugged her and rocked her, wrapping her mind in a soft warm quilt of silence.

  Rethia’s arms. Rethia’s silence. The only peace, the only true safety, that Madehy had ever known.

  And tomorrow it would be gone.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 17

  It took a day to reach Pasdon; two more days for Kalena to rest and resupply. Now — da
ys into the journey south — they rode in clusters of trust and wariness, nine travelers in an uneasy alliance.

  Teya rode behind them all, watching with an often bemused gaze — imagining how they’d first look to the Keep Dragons and Wolves Elstan had summoned to meet them. Worn, ragged... disparate.

  Their young ambassador rode in the center of the group, starting to fray around the edges. Her single Resioran escort rode beside her, a big man with the seasoning to know his job and know it well — and with the recent proof marks on his gear and his person.

  An intense man in an ill-fitting and blood-stained shirt rode point, his eyes ever wary and his horse a tad unpredictable. Beside him, a substantial woman sat on a easy gelding, one foot hanging free of its stirrup. Every once in a while she gave him a good, long, searching look, and every once in a while he gave her a rakish grin; both were expressions of great promise.

  Another man rode to the side, his light brown hair recently braided into side locks that hung stiff and uneven — and somehow suited the uncertain expression that often settled over his features.

  There was another couple of sorts — two men who rode toward the middle of the group without ever actually being part of it. They answered the questions put to them and otherwise had the look of men committing an act of great and desperate foolishness.

  And then there were the two women who rode together. One sat slender upon a docile horse, her eyes often shuttered and always stunning. The second young woman and her huge tawny dog had caught up with them two days out of Pasdon, without word or explanation, and fallen in with her friend. The party’s string of laden pack horses followed these two without lead or word.

  The Dragons, Teya thought, would find them all... unexpected.

  And the Dragons would be here soon enough, joining them under another day’s sky of low, gloomy clouds and occasional cool gust of wind. The scant sun never made it through the trees arching overhead — a rare sight in this part of Keland.

  Teya figured she’d be lucky to escape serious trouble for taking the Keep’s horse — even if she was returning it. But mostly her thoughts tumbled around her failures during Kacey’s rescue — that which she’d wanted to discuss with Reandn for days, and never seemed to find the right moment.