Wolfwalker - Wolf In Night Part 16

"And just like her, you'll need your brother and father and the Wolven Guard-" he spat the term.

"-and even those Tamrani forever at your side to keep you safe, if that's how you'd use the bond."

"I'd never-I don't-" She felt a spark of anger herself. She drew herself up, refusing to back down.

"You don't know what you're saying."

He leaned forward, heedless of the wolf. She could see him now, he thought. She could see the killer he really was, and the wolf would tell her to turn on him like a lepa. She was different from her mother, more feral since birth. She'd always been on the edge.

"I've watched your mother for twenty-three years," he ground out. "I've seen a dozen wolfwalkers.

They all use the bond, but she's the worst. She relies on that link for everything from her sight to her strength to her reaction times. She's more wolf than woman, and she goes into a fight that way-like an animal, not the ranking master she is. She lets them in, and they fight inside her hands, and she doesn't think. Half her scars are from the wolves, because it wasn't a woman fighting."

"I'm not-"

"Your mother?" he cut in. "Aren't you?" He cursed her long then. "Were you thinking when you started down that trail?"

She stared at him while Rishte snarled through her head. She stared while her face burned like fire. He saw the instant she realized he was right. Her gaze changed, sharpened, as if the wolf had been thrust back.

The yearling snarled audibly, but Nori snapped back with her mind.Don't interfere, she sent harshly.He is pack leader here, not me, and this is my lesson, not yours.

Wakje waited.

Her voice was low. "I am not my mother."

"There is wolf in your eyes right now."

She seemed to straighten farther. "And I don't need him. I don't need Payne or you or anyone else on the trails. You're right, I wasn't thinking for a minute. But I am now. And I have not forgotten anything you've taught me, neither for me nor for Payne."

"Prove it." He glared at her. "Defend yourself." He struck her like a club.

She barely had time to slide the blow to avoid some of its force. She was only distantly aware that Payne and Kettre had thrown Hunter back. She barely had time to snap at Rishte to stay away before Wakje struck again.

It was an overhand right with a left hook to the head, blindingly fast. She didn't see it; she only felt it coming. She ducked inside, and his knee caught her in the gut just as her double fist hit up under his ribs.

He grunted and brought an elbow down across her back. She staggered, but she was already into a twisted horse, and the blow slid off. His club-hands reached over her back for her throat, but she whipped around and caught the one and wrenched the pressure hold. Her heel snapped up into his inner thigh even as he spun her away.

They stared at each other. Wakje was balanced almost casually on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet; Nori was half crouched before him. Wakje wasn't even breathing hard. Nori's heart was a hammer. The ex-raider nodded. "Better," he said curtly. "That was you, not the beast in your body."

Nori straightened. Rishte had slunk back to the edge of the barrier bushes, and his golden eyes gleamed with rage.

He cut her off with a gesture. "Remember," he ordered harshly. Deliberately, he ignored the wolf. He could already feel its fangs biting into his flesh, ripping his ribs free of his torso. He forced his voice to remain steady. "You'll know them again?" he demanded coldly.

She knew what he meant. "I saw them all clearly."

He glanced at Payne. "And you?"

"The lead rider only."

Hunter gave Wakje a hard look. "One of them was from my caravan. He's out of Sidisport. Name of Hoinse."

They looked at him in surprise, as if they'd forgotten his presence. He smiled grimly. He wasn't usually overlooked, and the feeling was irritating-almost enough to cover his sense of guilt at bringing this down on Nori.

Nori looked to the wolf, then the woods. "I could track them, Uncle Wakje."

He regarded her coldly. "Even without the wolf in your eyes, it's too dangerous. One rider as bait to draw them in, the other sets up the ambush. We did that all the time when we expected a venge to follow."

Hunter felt a chill at the ex-raider's expression. The man's voice was calm, but his eyes were still flat and hard. It was almost as if the attackers were already dead, and that catching them would be an afterthought.

"Mount up," Wakje said shortly. "We'll discuss this tonight with Ki."

Silently, belatedly, Nori pulled Payne's glove from her belt and handed it back to her brother. There were blood drops spattered on the fingers, and the scratches were deep enough that the leather would probably soon tear. It was the arrow hole in the seam of the middle finger that made him shiver. He made his voice light. "I should make you replace these. Do you know how much a good pair of gloves cost?"

She smiled faintly. "Good thing they weren't good gloves." She untangled the reins of her dnu and swung up into the saddle. She was still twitchy from the attack.Follow, she sent to the wolf.

Rishte snarled in her mind but loped onto the frontage trail.

Fentris and Kettre reined in after the three. Hunter brought up the rear with a thoughtful expression. He wasn't sure which had angered him more: being an afterthought to Nori, or being ignored by the Wolven Guard. What he was beginning to realize was that the Wolfwalker's Daughter was more tightly bound to her family than even he had suspected. In some ways, it was rea.s.suring. In others, it made him uneasy. If Payne or Wakje or someone else she cared for was threatened, Hunter suspected that she would throw away every secret she knew to save her family. Absently he fingered his belt. For the rest of the ride, he was silent.

XVII.

"If it startled you, Then you really weren't watching well at all, now, Were you?"

-Grasp's mother inPlaying with Swords, traditional staging They caught up with the caravan in the early afternoon. Nori let Payne give their report and her apology to the Hafell while she headed for her sling bed. They didn't tell Brean of the attack, and even Nori agreed with that. Admitting that raiders wanted them dead wasn't likely to make them more welcome.

And it wasn't all that surprising, not with parents like theirs. The Ell and Hafell would have taken that into account when they offered thekeyo berths.

In spite of her exhaustion, she didn't sleep easy. Every ring-runner who cantered past the caravan made her flicker awake with her heart pounding and her hand grabbing for a knife. Wagon sounds that had been lullabies to her as a child-the snap and creak of leather, the sighing of wagon springs, the stressing of wall panels as they slipped and eased back into position-were now startlingly loud. Like watchers themselves, she could feel Wakje and Payne, then Ki and Liam, taking turns riding close outside, beside the cozar wagon. That, and her dreams were haunted by snarls.

She woke again fitfully to darkness. The wagon had been parked; she could hear the sounds of fireside, smell the rich blends of stuffed hostina baking on the lids of the ubiquitous stew pots. She could smell the spicy Diton cooking and hear the nasal voice of an evening teacher above the conversations.

It disturbed Rishte that she had not leapt away from the humans now that he'd finally awakened her. He pulled like a tether, and she had to fight not to jerk to her feet and race to him. All afternoon, he had loped along the ridges to keep pace with the caravan. By evening, he was twenty kays away from his pack, and uncertain of Nori so far below in the wagons.

I'm here,she returned, but he howled again, as if he couldn't hear her. She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts into a single spear.I'm here. I'm hereimhereimhere.

Lonely,he seemed to send.No pack. No trees or dirt or warm darkness. Come to the ridge, wolfwalker. Lonelylonelylonely.

Trees? Dirt? There was a possessive note to the sending, as if he'd lost land or, rather, the sense of safety of known territory.Soon, she returned.Soon, soon. But the noise of the evening cookfires intruded.

Cutlery clattered, voices clumped and rose and subsided, dnu chittered in the stables. She lost her focus.

She fought to find it again, squeezing her eyes shut to see and hear only the grey. For a moment, she thought she had him.

-wolfwalkerwolfwal- Then it was just the faint sea of the packsong, subsiding and seething at the far corners of her mind.

She winced as she swung her legs down, stood, and turned up the lantern. She had bruises on her knees and thighs, and she bit back a groan as she pulled off the shirt she'd slept in. She was alone, but still couldn't help glancing around surrept.i.tiously before slipping Hunter's shirt from under her pillow.

Quickly, she pulled it on. Its softness was a sin over the scabs that tightened on her back. She reveled in it for a long moment. Then she stuffed a knife in her waistband, caught up a towel, some clothes, and her toiletries, and jumped stiffly down from the gate.

Outside, Payne straightened. "You look like the second h.e.l.l."

"h.e.l.l is as h.e.l.l does," she returned automatically.

"And we'll be there and back before dawn," he finished the quote. "Heading for the showers?"

She nodded, and he fell into step beside her. In spite of the overcast night, the circle wasn't really dark.

Lanterns hung at every other wagon, yet the shadows that lurked beneath the wagons were like monsters under dozens of beds.

There were few who preferred a shower to dinner, and Nori had the bathhouse to herself, while Payne waited discreetly outside. As usual, she washed quickly, scrubbing her skin aggressively and dressing quickly in clean clothes. Then she washed out Hunter's dirty shirt and her own soiled garments.

"Ready?" Payne asked as she met him at the door.

Both of them studied the aisles warily as they walked. With three wagon trains, the circle was crowded.

As usual, half the outer wall was a series of corrals, open-air stalls, stables, and firewood bins. The second half was a line of fountains, bathhouses, washhouses, and waste and fire pits where debris and trash were dealt with. Payne raised a hand in a silent wave at the repair pavilion as they pa.s.sed. It was still busy, which wasn't unexpected, given the number of mishaps they'd had.

Inside the circle, the wagons were lined up in double rows in loose groups of four. This close to the Test ninan, the quads had been crushed together until there were only narrow aisles between them. One access road led in to the circle on one side, and another one led out. Both gates were always guarded.

Aside from the gates, there were only narrow channels through the spiky barrier bushes that created the circle's outer boundary. Nori scanned the two breaks she saw by the firewood stacks. If she was careful, she could slip out later to the yearling, and no one else need know. Once the firewood bins were closed, this part of the circle was unused till dawn.

All three firesides were hidden by the crowded wagons, so the aisle they went down was barely more than a black column of lowered gates, sling beds staked out like sagging fishnets, and a line of posts from which dangled the guild and family markers. Besides the sleeping dogs and a single woman who climbed down from a gate in the distance, there was almost no movement. There wouldn't be, Nori knew, not till dinner was over.

There was a murmur of voices to the left of the stables, and Nori listened before dismissing them. Elder Connaught was always being hit up for favors, even while he tended his dnu. "Is Uncle Wakje at dinner?"

she asked Payne.

"He and Ki went into town to ask around. They took Mye and Liam for color." Instinctively, Payne kept his voice low. "Most folk won't go into town till after dinner, when the festival really fires up."

"Speaking of dinner, I can smell the pelan from here."

"Leanna is saving you a plate. By the way, I traded off your tower duty today for one tomorrow."

"With my thanks." Her towel bundle loosened, and she rolled the clean clothes up more tightly, then stretched her shoulders to keep them from stiffening up. "I don't think I could sit a saddle if my life depended on it."

Payne refrained from pointing out that it just might. "Don't thank me yet. Brean's got a list ofandyen duties for you to work off for disappearing." He hid a grin at her mutter. He could have sworn she'd said he should do them with her since it was he who'd called the search.

She said instead, "So what did you find out about Hunter?"

"Hunter," he frowned. "That's the shorter one, right? The skinny one?"

She raised one eyebrow, then looked down at her legs, her arms, and finally at her scratched-up hands.

"What are you doing?"

"Just checking to see if I was born yesterday."

Payne gave her an old-fashioned look. "Alright, so I talked with Memory Dahl."

She hid a smile of her own. The most important people in a cozar train weren't the Ells or Hafells, but the memories, the people who had inherited the engineered genes for perfect recall. They had become the walking libraries on whom the fortunes-and lives-of a caravan could rest. Payne almost always bid for their caravan based on the memory talker, just as Nori bid based on route.

These days, Payne was always bargaining for a position on the memory's wagon seat. Kettre said it was to learn as much as he could file away in his far-too-organized brain. In Memory Dahl's case, that was considerable. The woman could recite the structure of four of the original nine counties, from Lloroi to elders, to guild and trade leaders, to merchants and craftsmen, even to the outlying farmlands. Memory Dahl even understood the tangled hierarchy of the Houses of Sidisport, where House leaders juggled status the same way young boys juggled excuses.

This year, Payne had bribed Memory Dahl with a fine-tooled, leather-backed comb, a packet of eastern tea, and an oddly wrapped package from Nori. It was the latter that had made the old woman's eyes light up enough that she granted Payne two full afternoons, not just two hours, for their scheduled travel.

He scowled at his sister. At the time, he'd have given two fingernails to know how she'd found out that the old woman's driving seat could use new shocks. When he'd said that to Nori, she'd bargained him first into doing her fireside duty, and only then confessed that old bones were like those of tree sprits, brittle and easily rattled. Memory Dahl always needed new shocks. Payne had been stuck on fireside cleanup for two days while Nori lounged on the wagon gate and plunked on her dinged-up guitar.

He knew he shouldn't complain. By the end of the fourth day riding, he'd had a list of merchants and fighters who had bid and lost out on berths in Ell Tai's caravan, a gossip tally of the ten Sidisportchovas who had won this caravan's guest lottery, descriptions of five raiders supposedly causing trouble in this district-not that he expected to see them himself, what with the crowd of outriders in the train-and the detailed history of a pair of frauds. The last two had earnedbok'vah among the cozar several years ago for abusing the aid they were offered.

"So, what did you find out?" Nori prompted.

Payne gathered his thoughts. "Condari's out of Wyakit, one of the first Tamrani Houses, but you knew that. If you didn't," he added dryly, "you deserve another Wakje-slap." He nodded at her flush. She hadn't bruised, but that was only because it was Wakje giving the lesson. Had it been Aunt Oroan, she'd have been marked far into next ninan. "The short take is that your Brithanas has been in the western counties for the last four years, is well respected among the traders, and is said to be a fair hand in a fight."

"He's not my Brithanas," Nori said sharply, but she was disgruntled. "A fair hand-did you get that from the memory or from one of your new girlfriends?"

He shrugged. "Does it matter? City gossip has it that he came back to Sidisport on a summons from his mother. Now he's heading up to Shockton, and he's already got two slots in the council meetings, early in the ninan. That means he's offering or proposing something, and that he wants the answer fast, before he goes back to town. It also means he's powerful. Two slots early on gives him a chance to go before the council again if he doesn't like the answer. That's two slots more than most elders get."

"It's amazing," she said dryly, "how much you learn from your doe-eyed liaisons."

"If you'd try a few liaisons once in a while, you might learn something of interest yourself."

She ignored that. "First House, first century," she murmured.

"Aye. They're not as rich as some, but they've been around, well, forever." Payne pulled her to a stop, glanced around the deserted firewood bins, and lowered his voice even farther. "They're powerful, Nori-girl. You want to know how he got his rep-name? Three years ago, he was taking a trade caravan across Bilocctar. He'd gone ahead with one of his people to negotiate a crossing, and the wagons were hit by raiders. For some reason, Brithanas had no gold to his name at the time, but he put together three different venges on favors alone and started hunting raiders. He tracked down every one of the attackers within two ninans, and then he hit their backers-and you know that caused some ripples. He said it would make them think twice before looking at his cargo again. He's had almost no trouble since. He used to be called n.o.ble Hunter. Now it's just Hunter." Payne shook his head. "Nori-girl, he's got ties to half the councils in half of the original counties. You might as well have asked an elder to guard your back as ride the night with him."

She hid her growing unease. "I'm starting to realize that-" She broke off. As the noise from the fireside got louder, she had been absently straining to hear the softer night sounds. Now the sense of what she'd not quite heard finally filtered up to her consciousness.

Payne's hand went to his knife at her stillness, but she held up her hand to freeze him. She turned, listened, and took two steps back toward the stables. It had been a small sound almost lost against the distant noise of fireside, but it had not been a natural one. She c.o.c.ked her head. A flurry of small scufflings came from the right. Her violet eyes narrowed, but as realization hit, her feet were already moving.

Payne didn't waste breath to curse. He was on her heels when she skidded around the stable corner. He had a single glimpse of the struggling figures-one tall, grey-haired, gagged, and wild-eyed, with his arms bound behind him; and the other, just as tall but built like a stevedore, hauling the first along. Nori launched herself like an arrow. Silent as she was, the husky man sensed her. He whipped his head around, had time to shift. All three went down in a tangle of flailing limbs. Nori grabbed for the elder.

Payne saw the attacker's arm rise, the sheen of steel, the knife begin to fall. His heart froze even as he felt his legs bunch and go. Then Nori twisted off the elder, slammed her knuckles into the thick man's gut, kicked his knee out, and bared her teeth like a wolf. In the darkness, her growl shocked the man for the hair of a second. Then her claw-hand struck the inside of his arm and tore deep into muscle, and she slammed her other elbow up under his knife wrist. The raider jerked. His blade cut cloth instead of flesh.

She stiff-fisted his gut as the blade slashed back, and jerked away just in time. He missed with the knife, but not with his other fist. She tumbled back, and he lunged to his feet.

Then Payne tackled him like an ax on a log. The kick meant for Nori missed, and the man's knee smashed into Payne's hip; a fist glanced off Payne's cheekbone. The two men broke apart, scrambled back to their feet barely long enough to leap for each other. The knife cut jerkin and scored Payne's ribs, and Payne grabbed the man's forearm. Nori lunged in for his wrist. Her hand slid over a meaty fist, caught one thick finger, and wrenched it back hard. She felt the bone tear free through tendons and tissue. Then his elbow hit her ribs. She missed the full pressure hold, and staggered back to her knees, unable to catch her breath. Payne's other fist slammed again and again up into the man's gut. The knife finally dropped, and the two men crashed into the barrier hedge.

Well-shorn bushes cushioned their fall, but spikes inside the hedge grazed Payne's scalp; another pierced the top of his shoulder. The other man jerked as thorns cut his face. Neither cried out. The thick man thrust Payne sideways and scrambled to his feet, bleeding from his cheek and hand. He pulled a second knife from his boot and threw it at the bound form of the elder even as he turned to run. Nori shoved the old man down hard. The elder fell awkwardly to his knees, and the blade split the air between them. Payne struggled out of the shrubs, and Nori lunged back to her feet. The raider pulled a third knife and poised, ready to throw.

On the b.a.l.l.s of her feet Nori stilled. Payne froze. The raider backed carefully away. He didn't want to throw his last knife, but if he had to, he would. Nori slid one step toward him, and he shifted menacingly.

"Nori-girl, no," Payne breathed. In the dark, he couldn't tell if her violet eyes were clear, but he could almost see the growl deep in her throat, not quite under her breath.

Challenge. Fight,Rishte snarled.

Her lips curled back.I want him. Want his flesh in my teeth. Want his blood for my brother's.