Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  Dion studied Batayon’s calm expression and realized that he had deliberately drawn her into the sparring ring. It was his bid to save her from herself, she realized, and she felt a spurt of anger. But she had certainly given them no other image to deal with, she admitted, just the “wounded wolfwalker,” the “legend” in need of mending. She rolled the phrases in her head as if the wolves that gnawed at her mind would shred the words and make them more palatable. She shook her head. “With my skills, to let the wolves that far into my head . . .” Her violet eyes were sober. “I could have hurt you badly.”

  He cut his gaze meaningfully at her lower torso. “As I could have hurt someone else.”

  She glanced down in spite of herself, even though her belly had barely begun to swell. “A womb is a comfy, padded place. Even at the worst, you’d have hurt me, not my daughter.” She gave him a wry smile. “Others spar until the fifth month, the cozar ride until the seventh, and it’s said that the Yorundans will work the fields till they feel the labor pains set in. I’m not even four months along. Besides, I’m Randonnen. We—” She touched her abdomen gently. “—have a reputation to maintain.” She looked back up, and her gaze sharpened speculatively. “You wouldn’t have hesitated if it had been real.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But it wasn’t.”

  But to her, for those interminable, infinite seconds, it had been real, and his blood had pulsed at her fingertips, waiting to be torn and tasted. She pursed her lips and bit back her recrimination.

  He shrugged as if he heard the words she didn’t say. “I have no intention of being cursed for a thousand years in the memory of the wolves by harming a pack leader—” He nodded at her. “—or her cub.” He tossed his towel toward a hook. “I’d rather lose the match. Besides,” he added, gesturing with his chin at the students, “it was a good lesson for them.”

  She cocked her head. “To watch me lose control?”

  “Aye,” he said calmly.

  She raised her eyebrows at his bluntness.

  He nodded at her expression. “They need to see that kind of intensity, to feel that edge of danger. They won’t get that here in the village, safe within these walls. They’ll get that only from facing something real. You brought that sense of peril inside the ring, gave them a hint of what waits. It will serve them well, teach them to attack without holding back. It will also teach them the value of centering as I did, to control a situation as much by what they don’t do as by what they do.”

  “But?”

  He smiled faintly at her expression. She had never been one to shirk truth—no Randonnen was. She knew there were things he wanted to say, things to which she must listen, regardless of her reluctance. “You’ve been on the trail too long, Dione. You’ve run too much with the wild wolves, too far from your home. You’re beginning to forget how to step away from their reality and back into your own world.”

  Dion was silent for a long moment, watching the students as they struck and blocked in two ragged lines while the drill forced them back and forth. As Batayon had said, their use of energy was obvious, external, and flat. They knew they didn’t face a real threat. None of their partners clawed at them with desperate worlag jaws or starving badgerbear fangs. None of them faced a raider whose only goal was to skewer their entrails on steel. Dion felt herself clench when one student missed a block, even though his partner’s kill-strike fell short. She cursed herself as Batayon noted her instinctive tensing. Now even strangers saw through her like a window. Batayon was right. She had been drinking danger for too many years. It had become all she knew until she breathed it like an animal, waiting always for the talon to strike, instantly ready to dodge or hit back, knowing that the moons—and the Ariyens—could take what was left of her life at any time they focused on her again.

  If she was honest with herself, she would admit that she had been riding to avoid the Ariyen elders as much as to avoid admitting to her own inner wounds. Those elders would not wait much longer to bring her back to Ariye. The skills they wanted were in her hands, linked to Ariye through the wolves and to the other wolfwalkers that she could hear in the gray, mental packsong. For a moment, she indulged the sense of the Gray Ones so that it washed through her brain like a murmur. Then, quietly, she drew back. For months, there had been others in that howling, hunters who did not belong to the wolves but who had somehow pierced the packsong. They were seeking something—possibly Dion herself—and had flavored the gray with urgency. She had faced enough predators that she could not mistake the intent. But before, she had faced those hunters willingly; now she had someone else to protect.

  He followed her gaze to her belly. His voice was quiet. “What will you teach her, if you know only danger yourself?”

  She stared at him for a long moment as he echoed her thoughts. Then she nodded, a curiously courteous gesture that acknowledged the question, yet left the answer hanging.

  She turned away and quietly gathered her things: the over-tunic, the belt and knives, the silver healer’s circlet, the herb pouches she was never without. She slipped her feet into worn trail boots and gathered up the gray cloak with its blue-trimmed edge. Then she buckled on the sword belt and long knife as if she no longer noticed the dichotomy of the healer’s circlet against the steel. She breathed life and death through both, and when she left, it was as if the studio exhaled power, leaving the merely human behind.

  Dion didn’t look back. She made her way along the stone walk toward the boardinghouse as her workout-warmed body chilled hard. Overhead, two of the nine moons seemed spitted on the jagged, snow-draped mountains that made up the horizon, while three more crossed the cold sky. She pulled her cloak more tightly to her. To the west, a wolf howled thinly at the moons. It was a sharp call, even at that distance, and Dion’s head whipped around at the sound. The wolf howled again, and she changed direction without thinking.

  Moving quickly, she wove between broad alleys and homes toward the western fields. She returned a woman’s nod absently, the greeting of a few men with irritation as if their words were somehow in her way. Two wolves howled now, and her feet quickened on the cold stone. Her nostrils flared as if she could smell the musk in her own nostrils, not theirs.

  She passed the outer ring of homes and common corrals where the six-legged dnu grazed the last enclosed pasture. With their engineered, slightly segmented bellies, the dnu looked like double bubbles perched on spindly legs with comically overlarge feet. They were a distortion of aesthetics that had never been meant as riding beasts, but as beasts of burden and breeders for the original colonists’ livestock. If the Ariyens had their way, the dnu would also carry soldiers and swords, not just elders and farmers and scouts. Her lips thinned at the thought. There were already enough graves on this world; they had no need of more. She had fled her own ghosts and graves to Randonnen, then to Kiren and Kiaskari, riding north until she was stopped at the base of the impassable alien mountains. And yet she had not run far enough. It had served no purpose to curse the Ariyen elders. In the end, it hadn’t been they, but her own sense of duty that was bringing her back to the counties.

  Oaths, the gray whispered.

  She stared at the rounded fields of untrampled snow that surrounded the alpine village. While Ariye had used her, the wolves had waited patiently for her to fulfill a promise she’d made to them long ago. They too had tried to save her, filling her mind with ghosts as if those lost voices would make her whole. Now they pushed her back toward Ariye, toward the single wolf she had left behind. She smiled grimly. The Gray Ones or the Ariyens . . . If, or rather when, the Ariyens caught up with her, they might be surprised at the choice that she would make.

  A snarling deep in her skull answered the unspoken thought, and her smile widened to a feral grin. They unnerved her, these wild ones, but they were strong as a band of worlags. They made her growl at humans who drew too close, made her howl at night with the pack. It had been useful, she admitted. No one pushed questions on a wolfwalker who bared her te
eth too often. Too close to the wolves, he had said . . .

  She ducked quickly through the split rail fence into the near field. No one was working the sweetrye. The fields had been cut to red stubble and were now dusted with the first light snow of summer’s end. The ground was hard and slick along the smooth ruts, and halfway across the outer field, she paused, closed her eyes, and listened. The late-summer clouds filtered the sky between the ragged peaks. The wind was bitter, and behind her, the gray expanse swallowed the thin village smoke trails like barren thoughts. She could hear the wolves clearly now. They curled around her mind, tasting her thoughts, drawn to her even though she did not Call. She waited. The wickedly barbed barrier hedge was thick, but it would not stop the Gray Ones. They would come through the S-curved channels like sly men, undaunted by the odors that repelled other predators like worlags and poolah and broo. To her left, the chunko birds called sharply, and she knew the Gray Ones were just on the other side. Then two of the wolves trotted silently out from the hedge, and slunk through the rails to the field.

  Wolfwalker! The mental call of the wild ones was almost abrasive. Three other wolves threaded in, and Dion felt herself smiling. There was no danger to the corralled livestock near the town. Unlike badgerbears and worlags, wolves rarely bothered a healthy herd, and never did so when the herd was fenced. That, and the fact that the wolves ate the field rats and mice made them friends, not enemies of farmers. Yet even with easy field pickings, the wolves rarely penetrated the barbed hedges. The packs preferred the less-cultured, more isolated forests. They were engineered to bond to humans, but they were still wild animals, and most humanity unsettled them. The presence of a wolf near the village could mean only one of three things: a sick animal in the herd, a wolfwalker nearby, or a Calling that men must Answer.

  Dion’s smile grew at the invitation to hunt, and the sense of her expression transmitted automatically to the wolves who listened to her mind. The Gray Ones did not hear her specific words, but rather received an impression of what she sent. Over time, they had learned to interpret her human thoughts in lupine terms. In turn, she had learned to focus her own thoughts so that they were more easily read, and to translate the gray senses to human images and concepts. It had been fifteen years since she bonded with the wolves. She heard them now like family.

  A gray-and-white female gulped a mouse and prowled for another scent. A young male snuffed at a mole hole. The old male with the darker haunches lifted his head and stared across the field. Come, he sent. Run with us.

  Too close to the wolves, Batayon had said. But she felt her legs tense to answer.

  Wolfwalkerwolfwalker . . . The voice of the dead echoed softly. It was an offering from the Gray Ones, an answering of the need she unconsciously projected.

  Dion shivered and stared blindly back. They would take her into their memories if she wanted, back to the deaths, the graves, the blood on her hands. Any wolfwalker could follow those threads, could see what went on in the past, could hear again the voices of those long gone. That was a journey Dion did not want. She carried her reminders with her. Her sword was rough where steel had chipped steel. The edge on her long knife was thin from years of sharpening, and the handles on her weapons were black and shiny with use. She no longer felt comfortable without them, no longer slept deeply when she lay down. The wolves offered the past as if it were yesterday, as if those ghosts would assuage her overwariness, her sense of loss, and although she desperately wanted to reach for those lost images, she closed herself to that curse. If she ever hoped to release the dead, she must turn away from the ghosts. She would give her child to the future, not the past with its grief and graves.

  Another wolf lifted his head as they waited for her answer. Do you run with us? There was eagerness, but also a hint of impatience in the words. Dion’s expression softened. The wild wolves seemed brutally simple. Without the intimacy of a true bond, the impressions she received were crude and rough, lacking the smooth, complex weavings she had with her own partner wolf.

  Three of the wild ones stared at her. Wolfwalker, they howled. Do you run? The rest of the pack poised at the white-fringed forest as they waited for her answer.

  They were restless. She grinned suddenly: So was she. The urge to cut her cloak free and sprint through the trees was in her blood, not just in theirs. There was a call to baptise her unborn child with the wolves, to set in that fetal blood the need for wilderness. She had lost much in the past few years. Now she held tight—too tightly perhaps—to the child that grew in her womb. She could simply stop, she realized, and let the hunters catch up, for winter would come early to this town, earlier than in Randonnen. It would trap her in the peaks for the Ariyens to retrieve at their leisure. Or she could run with the wolves and let the hunters live as she did, with frigid mornings and sweating trails, blistered heels and aches. She smiled grimly to herself. She made the decision even as she thought the choice. She saw no reason to make it easy for the Ariyens to take her back. Besides, they were not the only ones to whom she owed a duty.

  One of the Gray Ones raised his head and howled into the wind. Back near the corral, a boy and three men climbed up on the fence to watch. A shiver of unease crept into the pack as they became aware of the villagers. The baying rose and fell, fell, and others began to howl with him. It was the pack call, the call to gather and reaffirm each one’s place in the group. From the field, the five wolves loped away through the twisted hedge and joined the rest of the pack. They howled again, reminding her of her promise to them. Her throat tightened as she fought the urge to answer.

  To whom do you bind your life-debt? It was not a question from the wolves. It was a layered voice, an icy inhuman voice that spoke deep in her mind. The wind bit tauntingly at her cheeks, whipping the forest birds up and over the trees. There was nothing menacing in the flight, but Dion was suddenly afraid. She was too far north, too close to the alien breeding grounds. If humans had originally thought to share the planet with the aliens, the birdmen had had other ideas. Promises bound the wolves to Dion, so the mental link between them was strong. If the telepathic birdmen could hear the wolves, they could also hear the wolfwalker. Dion shivered. No matter how many others were bound into the packsong, the oaths had been made with her voice in the gray, and it was she who held the internal power the Ancients had once wielded. Now, just as men hid their science underground, Dion must hide her mind in distance from those alien peaks, even if it turned her south into the hands of the Ariyens. She stared north. Nightmare images rose from deep in her mind, and talons seemed to slice her body . . . Her lack of motion suddenly seemed like fetters. She made her decision abruptly: some promises were best kept at a distance.

  The gray song seemed to read her determination, for it became sharp and focused. Automatically, Dion reached for the wolf she had left behind. She stretched toward Ariye, seeking the voice she knew as well as her own. Hishn, she breathed into the gray. The wolf pack seethed with the name.

  Hishn, Hishn. A female wolf echoed the name into the mental packsong. The image of Dion’s partner wolf howled back like ripples across the hundreds of kays, across mountains, through forests, and into the racial memories where threads of other wolves had carried that lupine name. The call diluted, wavered, and passed on until it was lost. The distance was deafening.

  Dion closed her eyes. She had been gone too long from her gray half, and her need for the wolf had been growing like an addiction. If she was ever to meet her promises, she must be whole again. She threw back her head and let her human throat mimic the lupine call. “Hishn,” she howled.

  Wolfwalker! the wolves bayed back.

  As if bidden, they flowed back toward Dion from the forest. Like a gray wave, fourteen wolves loped through the wicked barrier hedge, across the stubbled field. Dion stretched out her hands to pull in those threads of gray. Gray-white, gray, gray-black. It was a flow of power that swept her with almost frightening intent. The wolfwalker did not flinch. Yellow eyes gleamed. Fanged teeth
bared to the cold. They struck her position like a solid wall of gray, then melted against her. Like a dustdevil, they swirled at her thighs, not quite brushing her trousers. Musk, hot breath, grinning jaws, golden eyes . . . Then they streamed away.

  Dion’s cloak hit the ground before she was aware that she had shed it. Then she was sprinting after the wolves, unbuckling her sword on the run and slinging it diagonally across her back. Her boots crushed stubble, slicked ruts, crunched snow. Her breath left clouds in the air. She vaulted the rail fence at the end of the field, then dodged through the barrier channel. Iron-hard thorns reached out for her sleeves when she cut the S-channel too short, but she laughed and snarled in return. On the other side of the barrier hedge, the trees swallowed her like a gnat.

  Ahead, a young male paused on the edge of the pack, and his voice spiked the clouded sky. Rising, falling, falling. Dion grinned at the trail between them. She dodged an overhanging branch and felt twigs snap off in her braid. She didn’t care. The cold air was huge in her lungs, and the ground like a lover, demanding her pace, her pulse, her sweat. She jumped a short boulder, then balanced for an instant on a larger one beside it.

  Wolfwalker!

  Her throat answered the wolves, her human tone rising, falling, falling. Four of the Gray Ones answered.

  Her legs stretched and she jumped, staggered slightly, and leapt after the pack. Ahead, the lead wolf caught the scent of a mountain cat, and as far behind as she was, Dion’s hand went to the hilt of her knife with the leader’s mental stiffening. But the tawny cat merely watched the pack flow past its perch, its nostrils filled with their musk. As she passed, Dion looked up and met the mountain cat’s gaze. Oaths, the voices whispered. The wolfwalker snarled and ran faster.