Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  Ebi and Strapel reached the far bank, surged onto the bluff, and gave the all-clear signal. Drovic was moving before they finished. He guided his dnu across the rocky river in a series of plunging leaps until it stretched out to swim the deep run. Near the other side, the older man’s dnu lost its footing, but Drovic forced the beast’s head perfectly toward smoother water so that it regained its footing within seconds. Talon watched without expression. The dnu was no living thing to Drovic, only a means to reach the shore. His father thought of the raiders the same way—as tools, not people who could be led to reach for a better goal. The thought ground against the insides of his skull like the packsong, and he was curt as he motioned his group into the water. No one spoke except to curse softly at the chill.

  Oroan and Cheyko made it across without difficulty. Ilandin’s dnu faltered but recovered. Talon let Weed reach the midstream before he eased his own dnu in. The shock of cold water hit him hard, and his shivers made him angry. “Soft as a broken beast,” he snarled under his breath as the frigid water plunged down into his boots. “Swim, you moonwormed weakling.”

  He kicked hard, keeping himself afloat across the back of the dnu as the creature nearly submerged. Roc and Ki reached the shallows, but Mal was having trouble, and just as Talon spared the other man a glance, his own dnu lost its footing on the rocks. The roan’s middle legs lost their weaker grip; its forelegs were lifted by a wave he did not see coming, and the beast went under. Talon was submerged to his neck before the dnu struggled back to the surface. The dnu grunted to clear its nose, and Talon gasped as he regained his seat. “You want a bath? I’ll give you a bath—” His voice broke off as they were washed downstream and slammed into a rock. For a moment, the weight of the dnu crushed his leg against stone. Then he wrenched its head toward shore, and the beast grabbed its footing back from the river and fought its way over the rocks.

  Talon was grinning when upstream, Mal’s dnu stumbled into the hole where Drovic’s beast had lost its footing. For a moment, Mal dragged in the current, one hand gripping the reins. Then the dnu shook free of the man and plunged ahead, leaving Mal to the water. Instantly, Mal went under.

  Talon didn’t think. He shoved himself from his saddle and, one hand clutching the reins of his dnu, plunged back into the river. The current pulled like a poolah. Mal dunked and was swept toward Talon. Talon kicked against the anchor of his dnu, and the beast grunted in fear as his grip on the reins forced its wedge-shaped head after him. He didn’t hear the shouts. Didn’t see his father plunging back down along the bank, cursing and clawing at the brush as Drovic fought to match the speed of the current that tried to kill his son.

  Talon kicked hard and choked on a wave. Gray howls seemed to hit his brain with a burst of power, and he snarled wildly as he struck out. His weakened left hand was wrapped in the reins so tightly that the dnu chittered in growing fear as his weight dragged its head back toward the deeper water. He reached blindly, caught a glimpse of something dark. He caught fabric. Dunked, he sputtered as Mal’s weight swung awkwardly in a half-circle, pulling Talon into the heavier current. He kicked with all his strength. The dnu was fighting him now. Its forelegs scrabbled to regain the shallows, while its other legs churned the river. One of its middle hooves caught Talon a wicked blow on his sore thigh. The leg went dead. He refused to let go of the other man. His knee scraped rock, then his shoulder struck, and then Drovic was pulling him out. Someone was shouting at him, but for a moment, all he could see was churning water and striking hooves in his face.

  “Talon, let go.”

  “Grab him!”

  “Watch his head!”

  Talon was dumped unceremoniously to all fours. Water cascaded off him. Drovic’s words made no sense in his ears as he stared up and saw, for the first time, a crack in his father’s hardness. He reached up and gripped his father’s forearm, caught his breath roughly, coughed, spat water, and managed, “Can’t drown today. Got to make the border.”

  Drovic’s eyes glittered. Then the older man shouted to the others, “Five minutes.” He turned back to his son, took a breath to calm himself, and slapped Talon so hard that Talon fell back on his butt on the rocks.

  “Son of a worlag,” Talon cursed. He pushed himself to his knees. The water weight of his clothes made him stagger. “You moonwormed, dag-chewing poolah—”

  “Of all the idiotic stunts.” Drovic’s voice was hard again, as if fear for Talon had never touched his expression. “You have the brains of a spotted beetle,” the older man hurled back. “If you weren’t my only son—” He broke off and dragged a hand through his hair. His words were low and so intense that each one was almost a curse by itself. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Do what?” Talon got to his feet. “Save a life?” he shot back.

  “Throw your life after one already gone.”

  Talon bit down hard on his fury. Mal sat on the bank some distance away, out of earshot for the noise of the river. The dour man was shivering, his head in his hands as if his fingers were all that held it on his neck. Talon thought he knew how the other man felt. His voice was flat. “So I should have let Mal drown?”

  Drovic’s eyes narrowed. “We’re not riding to a county fair. We don’t have time to coddle a wounded man.”

  Something bit deep inside Talon. He carefully reined in his temper. “He stays with me. You want loyalty, you can’t go around abandoning men just because they’re wounded.”

  Drovic’s voice was uncompromising. “He rides or he dies.”

  The gray edge in Talon’s icy rage startled him, and he struggled to hold in his anger. “I didn’t save him from drowning just to lose him now. I’ll be damned if I let him fall off his dnu or die by your blade because of a dizzy spell.”

  “You’ll be damned if you let him slow us. And you’re still weak, boy,” the older man spat the word, and Talon flushed. “If he can’t sit his saddle, you think to ride for two?”

  A woman—his mate in his arms . . . A muscle jumped in his bony jaw. “I’ve done it before.”

  “Not with a venge behind us.”

  “Either way, I won’t leave him for dead. He’s a good man—”

  Drovic stared at him. “Good? He’s a raider, Son. He’s not ‘good’ except with a sword. He’s no more moral than you are, with your bloody blade and that violence burning in your guts. Don’t narrow your eyes at me, boy. I’ve seen the rage in your soul—it’s my own. I gave it to you the day you were born, and I’ve cultivated it like a bull. It’s a skill, like any other, so don’t waste it on a dead man. You’ll need it more when we reach Ariye.”

  Talon glanced at Mal. The pale man was wringing out his tunic while Nortun brought Mal’s dnu downstream. “We can’t keep bathing our goals in blood.”

  Drovic cut him off again with a sharp gesture. “You think it matters to the moons how we reach our goals? The end and the means is a tired argument and not worthy of a soldier. We have a goal. We achieve it. It’s that simple.” Drovic watched his shoulders tense. “You want something to save?” he demanded. “Something worthwhile? Something historic and great? It had best not be a raider’s life. I trained you better than that.”

  Talon regarded his father for a long moment. “Still. Mal’s life is mine to take or leave. If I have to tie him to his dnu to keep him in the saddle, I’ll do so, but it will be my decision, not yours. Mal rides with me.”

  Drovic nodded slowly. “And you ride for me. Never forget that, boy.”

  Talon watched him stalk away and stared down at his hands. They were long, lean hands—hands that had seen more of riding and fighting than farming or business work. Forty-year hands that were scarred with a dozen white lines where steel blades and claws had gotten through his guard. The dust was devouring decades as they rode, and forty more years from now, he and Drovic would look like brothers, not like father and son. He saw himself through his own eyes and through the eyes of the raiders, and he knew both portraits were true: He was his father, in habit
and history and heart, and that, he realized with loathing, was what he hated most. He looked after Drovic, then over at Mal. He would take Mal with him when he left his father. Mal and maybe Weed.

  He had not lost his sword, and that seemed a minor miracle. He no longer had his war cap, but his pockets still held his compass and striking bar. Only his herb pouch and cornlids had suffered. He rinsed out the soggy masses and crumbled cornbread flats out of the pouches, and shook the water out of his boots.

  He was not surprised when he heard a low growl that caused his dnu to chitter. The gray wolf was almost hidden by the brush, but those yellowed eyes gleamed. Quickly, Talon turned his dnu and stepped forward so that its body hid him from the other raiders.

  Gray Ursh snarled, and Talon could see his lean sides. Like the rest of the pack, the wolf had run hundreds of kays in months, and the male’s hunger gnawed Talon’s gut. The tall man fumbled at his belt until he found his soggy pouch of jerky. Without taking his eyes from the wolf, he opened the bag and threw some of the jerky to the Gray One.

  As usual, the creature caught the jerky in his jaw, but did not fade back as the wolf had done before. Instead, the male worked and gulped the jerky, then snarled more loudly. The dnu, nervous at the closeness of the wolf, danced on the stones. The wolf met his gaze, and the shock of the contact made Talon stiffen. Come, the wolf snarled. The hunger calls you. Den to den. Fire to fire. Blood to blood. It is for all our cubs, and for yours.

  Talon breathed. “My son is dead.”

  As are ours. But there are other cubs.

  Talon shook his head, rejecting the images that seemed to claw directly into the grief and rage he could feel but not remember.

  Gray Ursh, skittish for all that he had followed Talon for months, darted forward and nipped at Talon’s leg. Talon jerked, and Ursh flinched back. Gray eyes again met yellow. Colors shifted. Memories merged. Fever blistered Talon’s veins with fire, and his eyes went dark with remembered convulsions and pain. He knew that he had faced death before and that the wolves had been there to save him. It had been Talon, but not Talon. The memories were not his. And the woman was there, he realized. The woman whose hands were gentle, but who carried a lethal power. A woman who, like a witch, injected his mind with Gray Ones, and then bound them there so that none of them could escape. She wore a gray cloak like the pelt of a winter wolf, winter boots, a war cap like his. A woman with eyes as soft and dark as violet dusk. What kind of power did such a woman hold to call him across the mountains? Talon slowly stiffened. And what could he do with that strength? The wolves wanted him to find her, protect her; and what the Gray Ones wanted, they got. Talon knew suddenly that what Drovic sought would come to his own hands instead.

  “The woman,” he breathed harshly.

  You need her.

  “You drive me to that need.”

  She needs you.

  And she held power in her hands. Power to fight himself, the wolves, the world. He grinned coldly. “Then she will be mine.”

  The wild wolf’s yellow eyes gleamed as he tasted Talon’s sudden determination. Then the gray beast broke their link and leaped up on the eroded bank. Ursh turned and looked at Talon for a long, silent moment. Then he faded into the brush.

  Talon jammed his feet in his boots, jerking his socks as they caught in the soggy leather. For a moment, his feet had felt like paws, and his hair like fur. He shuddered, then shook it off and tested the strength of his left hand before carefully wiping his face of all expression. He’d take Mal and Weed, he told himself, and maybe Wakje with them.

  He rejoined the other raiders.

  XIII

  Ember Dione maMarin

  “I hear death in my mind,” the wolfwalker said desperately.

  The Eighth Moon answered, “That is only my brothers and sisters.”

  “But why is it so constant? Cannot they ever be silent?”

  The moon shrugged. “They always speak in the dark, for there are many souls there to guide.”

  “Then blind me, so that I see only the light.”

  “That I can do, but I cannot deafen your ears, for what you hear is part of you, and until it dies, it will continue to fill your heart.”

  “Leave me then,” she said sadly. “For if it is part of me, I cannot escape myself.”

  The Eighth Moon stepped back into the dark and watched the wolfwalker mount the wind. “You cannot escape,” murmured the Moon as she watched the wind blow away. “But you can destroy yourself or ride till you find purpose, and there is always hope in that.”

  —From Night Mares and Wolfwalkers: Tales to Tell Children

  Dion stared into the fire, deliberately letting the light blind her eyes to the night. She had been tense all day, as if she wanted to strike out at her companions, and only now, with the dnu bedded down and her thighs aching from hours in the saddle, did she seem to be relaxing. Her leg ached more than usual, and her left hand seemed weak from the ride.

  Tehena poured broth into three mugs and set them on a log to cool, then turned back to cutting up tubers. Kiyun worked quietly, mending a stirrup that was beginning to crack. It was Dion who broke the silence. “Have you ever noticed how the wolves come to me, unlike other wolfwalkers?”

  Tehena gave Dion a speculating look, but Kiyun shrugged. “Your mind is strong,” he said simply. “You’re a skilled scout. You were born in and love the mountains. Why wouldn’t they come more to you?”

  “There are other wolfwalker-scouts. Five in Ariye, three in Randonnen, half a dozen in the eastern counties. The other wolfwalkers are mostly village folk who stay in town, but there are plenty of other scouts like me. No, the wolves have been different in me for years—stronger than in the others. They come easily when I Call, they soften my sleep, they bring me what I need before I know it myself.”

  Tehena paused with the knife in her hand. “Dion.” The woman cleared her throat. “Does this have anything to do with what happened up north?”

  The wolfwalker’s lips twisted in what might have been called a smile. “It all started there, I suppose.”

  Kiyun frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She did not answer directly. Instead, she said, “Gray Hishn does things for me, as I do them for her, because she and I are bonded. The other wolves, they do them because I am their . . .” She searched for the word.

  “Pack leader?” Kiyun suggested. Tehena remained silent. In the minds of the wolves, Dion was no pack leader. The healer was something more.

  Dion smiled crookedly at the man. “When I was with the . . .” She hesitated again. With whom? The aliens who killed the Ancients? The birdmen who taunted her with an internal power she could not hope to match? The alien who was now her mother?

  “Aiueven,” Kiyun supplied quietly.

  “Aiueven,” she agreed finally. “They heard the wolves in me and thought I was one of their own—a young one who couldn’t form my thoughts well. They thought I was lost, abandoned perhaps—they didn’t know. But they took me in, and when they finally realized I was human and saw me with their eyes, not their minds, it shocked them. They tried to kill me.”

  Tehena hid her shiver. Her first glimpse of Dion back then, with the splash of frozen blood across her belly and the staggering run across the ice field—it had stopped her heart. Carefully, she continued cutting the tubers. Her voice was dry. “They almost did kill you.”

  “In some ways, I think they did.” She shrugged at the other woman’s suddenly sharp look. “I am no longer the woman I was before.”

  “And dnu fly with worlag wings.” The woman dropped the tubers into the pot and threw in some extractor root so that the liquid hissed with sudden turmoil. “You’re still a healer, a wolfwalker, a fighter, a scout. You change only as much as you allow it.”

  But Kiyun had felt an edge in the wolfwalker for ninans. Ever since she had contacted the alien birdmen, she had seemed different, as if she now held power in her breath, not just when she focused her hands. “What are you now,
Healer Dione?”

  Staring into the fire, she did not notice his expression. “A ghost with a shadow goal.”

  “And the goal?”

  She didn’t look up. The fire burned with tiny pops as moisture expanded in the wood. Wolves growled low in her head. Warmth, the den, the bonding. South. Destroy the fire that burns us.

  She poked the blaze to stir the coals that had begun to glow. Her voice was soft. “I made a pact once, with the wolves.”

  Kiyun and Tehena exchanged glances. “In Changsong?” Kiyun asked.

  “No. Before that. Before Still Meadow, before Ramaj Bilocctar. It was in the mountains off the coast, the first time I left my home. Years ago. We were on Journey, Rhom and I. We were so very young,” she said softly.

  Kiyun eyed her warily. “What kind of pact, Healer?”

  “A simple one, born of the need to survive.” She tapped the stick on one of the looser coals and watched it break apart. “We were trapped in the mountains. Namina had a broken leg, Tyrel had been bitten by rastin. My twin, my friends—all of us were dying. Bodies were burning up with fever, muscles convulsing, eyes going blind. Bones beginning to break.”

  “And the pact?” Kiyun repeated.

  She poked the fire again, watching the sparks whirl up.

  “Dion?”

  The gray fog growled low in her mind, shifting her thoughts along the inside of her skull. She finally spoke, her voice flat as shale. “That the wolves would teach me Ovousibas so I could heal my friends, and I would find a cure for the plague that still lay dormant in their bodies.”

  Tehena sucked in a breath. Kiyun held his for a long moment. His voice was carefully neutral, when he said, “A cure? For the plague?”

  South, south and west . . .

  Dion pushed the stick into the blaze and watched it begin to blacken. When she raised her gaze, the firelight glittered in her eyes and flickered on her silver circlet. Her voice, when she spoke, was the voice of the master healer she still was, not the grief-etched woman she had been. “You think it was arrogance to make such a deal? No one has cured the plague in eight centuries, so who was I to claim I could in exchange for my brother’s life? You forget, I was also bound to Hishn, and so I could feel the wolves’ pain as clearly as that of my twin, as clearly as my own. The plague still affects the Gray Ones just as it does us when we go to the Ancients’ domes. We don’t carry the plague, but the wolves do. It settled in their wombs and has been killing their unborn pups ever since. Did you know that, on oldEarth, the wolves had litters of three and four pups? Our wolves are lucky to have one cub apiece. But with a cure, the Gray Ones would no longer burn from fever or lose their cubs to stillbirth. With a cure . . .” She shrugged and picked up another stick to poke irritably at the glowing fire. “They accepted the pact, and we lived.”