Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  Talon caught the girl as she spun around the barn door. She started to scream again, but he covered her mouth and hauled her up against him into the shadows. “Quiet,” he breathed harshly. “Quiet.”

  The terror was too deep in her for her to do anything but struggle, but there was also a growing anger there now. He shook her again. In his mind, he saw eyes, dark eyes in the violet night. Eyes with no fear, but only anger, strength, and will. This girl was barely an infant echo of the strength he really sought. Wolves howled, and he closed his mind to their packsong and shook the girl again.

  He dragged her quickly back into the shadows as Kilaltian left the barn. A few moments later, Fit followed the other raider, limping slightly and cursing all nine hanging moons. Talon found himself watching with narrowed eyes as the smaller man paused, rubbed a bruise on his thigh, and stared after Kilaltian. The hatred in the smaller man’s stance was almost palpable, and Talon had to force himself not to move and give away his position as Fit looked over his shoulder. For a moment, the smaller man studied the yard; then the raider limped on toward the farmhouse.

  The girl stood limply, half hanging in Talon’s grasp. Her eyes were huge as she gulped her breath, but she no longer struggled against him. “Breathe,” he said sternly, pushing her away from him to stand more on her own. “And hold your head up. Hold onto your pride.”

  Color began to burn in her cheeks, and she writhed to get out of his grip. He did not release her, even though he knew he bruised her further. “I will not harm you,” he said sharply, though the words did nothing to calm her. “Now breathe, in and out.” He captured her eyes with his cold gray gaze. “Men like us—we smell fear. We follow it like a blood trail, feed off it like badgerbear. Control your fear, and you control half a man’s reaction.”

  The girl trembled. “What—what about the other half?” she choked out.

  Talon lips twisted grimly. She wasn’t so frightened that she couldn’t think. “That you control with your pride,” he returned. “Stand straight. Hold your head up. Only the moons should know what you’re feeling. Show strength, not weakness, to men like us. And if all you have is a silent defiance, then show us that instead.”

  She shuddered, and slowly, he released her, keeping his gaze on her. Instinctively, she covered her breasts with her arms, but she did not run. Talon stripped off his jerkin, and she made a mewling sound and backed against the barn as the terror began to flood back. “Stop it,” he said sharply. He stripped off his undertunic and held it out. “Go on; take it,” he commanded. “It’s not clean, but it’s better than being naked.”

  She hesitated, then took the tunic in her small hand and struggled to put it on. Talon roughly pulled the oversized shirt over her head, automatically guiding her arms into the sleeves and her head into the neckhole. The instinctiveness of the motion made him pause, and he found that his jaw was tight as a wire. He had had sons, he thought. He’d shown them how to saddle a dnu, ride like a raider, and work a knife like a weapons master in training. Moons, but he had had sons until that twice-damned woman had left him and given his boys to Ariye. The wolves howled, and the image of the dark-eyed woman made his lips thin to bloodless lines. He knew he would take his fury out on the wolfwoman, and he found he didn’t care.

  He forced himself to step back. “Go,” he ordered curtly. The girl stared at him as if she didn’t quite believe him. Then she took him at his word and started to bolt for the house. Talon barely caught her, but he jerked her to a stop so abruptly that she stifled a half scream.

  “Walk, don’t run,” he said harshly. “Stand straight. Hold onto your pride. Show no man fear.”

  She stared at him, a hare before a wolf. Finally, she gave him a tiny, jerky nod. She took a deep breath. She forced herself to walk away while her bare feet itched to flee like a mouse. He watched her, her thin shoulders tense as a bird’s, as though he would grab her again from behind. His gut twisted: fear, always fear before him.

  He waited till she slipped into the house past the dogs, then spat into the dust. He gathered his gear and strode across the field instead of back to sleep at the house. It was a small rebellion against his father, to sleep away from the others, but his slight smile held no humor. He would be sleeping even farther away if Drovic didn’t turn east.

  Three of the moons had cleared the trees. They shone across the field where the swath of grass dipped toward the forest. The farmhouse was out of sight, and only the moonlight brightened the grass. He tossed his bedroll on the flattened stalks and plumped some grass for a pillow. By the time he finished, the first of the wild wolves had arrived.

  Fading out of the field, the first male circled the bedroll, then sniffed the open-sided bag. Its voice was clear as the moonlight. The night is hot and clear for hunting, but you wish to den instead?

  Talon shrugged, but the mental sense of his answer was clear, and the wolf whuffed softly.

  The sixth and eighth moons were rising close enough together that the sixth would half eclipse the other. Talon nodded toward the sky. “Howl if you’ve a mind to,” he offered, knowing the wolf in his skull understood. “It won’t bother me.”

  A second lupine face appeared, then a third. Lanth, the oldest male, barely bothered to sniff the sleeping bag before curling up at the end. Paksh was last as usual, her left ear so torn that it looked like two spikes. Talon reached toward the old wound, but the female snapped and shied away, and the tall man stilled. These wolves spoke with him and haunted his sleep, but they suffered his touch only lightly.

  Talon shivered as his gaze met that of Lanth’s, but he found himself grinning at the same time. He lay back on the bedroll, shoved Lanth aside with his feet, grimaced as the old male snapped at his boot and he felt the wolf roll back onto his leg. The old male looked longingly at his boot. “Gnaw at your peril,” Talon warned.

  Lanth raised his head and met his eyes. The blurred, black-and-white double vision that suddenly expanded his own sight made Talon blink in the moonlight. One gnaws to keep one’s fangs sharp and clean, the old male returned calmly.

  “Not on my boots, you don’t.”

  Lanth whuffed and put his head on his paws, but his yellow eyes gleamed, and Talon knew he would have to watch the old wolf all night to protect his footgear. He was comfortable, he realized. This pack had been with him long enough that they almost seemed like partners.

  Faren, the younger female, regarded him with tired but curious eyes as she caught the edge of his thoughts. She was barely a yearling, and after following the riders all day, she had energy only to sprawl on her back, but she tilted her head to watch him carefully. Behind Faren, Thoi—the lead female—simply sniffed his face and then rolled on her back in the grass. Faren and Vrek snarled at each other as the other male tried to take her place; then Vrek settled down with Chenl, and Faren closed her eyes.

  The wolves growled softly in his skull as he dozed off, the sound becoming a wave of gray that surrounded him like a sea. He Called into it, and it Answered, surging back like a giant maw. It curled and blotted out the sky so that even the moons dimmed into a fog . . .

  He woke suddenly. The wolves were slipping away with urgency, and the rustle of their passage was warning enough even without their voices. He rolled to one knee like a cat, his right hand drawing his sword, then groaned as the pain hit sharply. Instantly, the gray fog thickened along the edge of his mind. Moons! he cursed silently. Without the herbs, the pain was just as bad as the foggy memory before. Night sweat clung to his hands, and he shivered as if the breeze that dried it had come off a glacier instead of through the fields. Slowly, he straightened again.

  He strained to hear what had frightened the wolves. There was a light breeze, but it was not strong enough to rustle the grasses so incessantly. Talon stiffened. Like a wave across the grains, the wash of sound swelled softly. He tensed.

  The rustling became a subtle hissing, and he stood, waiting, his sword bare while the wind seemed to grow and the grasses waved with mov
ement. A dry year, a swarm year . . . He was too far away from the farmhouse. If he ran, he’d draw the swarm after him. If he remained still, if he made no sound . . . Moons glared from the sky. The leading edge of the doglike creatures swept toward him in a rush.

  They came in like a wave, the bihwadi. Slinking, rushing creatures whose fangs gleamed and whose breath stank with fetid sweetness. Talon froze. The first bihwadi sprinted toward him, breaking down the grains. His lips tightened to wire. It would kill him. He knew it. It would tear his flesh, teeth in his chest or arms, fangs in his throat. It would spatter his blood in the grass like chicken feed. It leaped forward. It would—

  It leaped past. The pink-eyed beast blindly brushed his legs and raced on. Ten bihwadi followed it, sprinting through the grass. Ten, twenty, a hundred bihwadi swept at him through the fallow field. It was a putrid wash of prancing fur and half-bared claws; slitted eyes, lean-ribbed bodies, night-dirty fur, and the stench . . .

  Talon’s neck was rigid. His toes clenched in his boots as he willed his feet not to run. They swept around him as though he were a tree, not a man, not for eating—not prey. They brushed against his legs and did not care. Tiny, pink-eyed bundles clung to their mother’s foreshortened backs. Yearlings ran with stiff-legged gaits and tongue-lolling, spittled exhaustion. And the males—the larger, long-backed males with their deceptive, slinking sprint . . . They panted and hissed as they sucked air into their lungs and plunged past in streaks of grayish brown, churning what was left of his bedroll and snapping the grasses like dnu.

  Dust clouded above the meadow as grain sacs split and disgorged their pollenlike powder. Something burned in his lungs, and he thought it was some kind of acid from the grass until he realized he was holding his breath from the stench of the slit-eyed beasts. He stared at the sea of pink-frothing jaws. With infinite slowness, he let out his breath till he thought he would pass out. Took in another one as another two dozen passed. Let it out. And breathed, slowly and carefully as if even that tiny sound amidst the rushing and hissing and snapping would be noticed by the bihwadi.

  They raced like fish to the spawning ground, all rancid fur and brutal paws, and still they did not care that he stood amidst them. A hundred males and females swept through the summer grasses, and Talon stood his ground, breathing slowly while the sweat beaded up on his skin. To his left, the stalks swayed more violently; to his right, barely ten meters separated him from the stillness of untouched field. The path of the bihwadi swarm cut through like a giant reaver.

  Dust hung like fog. The thick scent of ripe grasses choked him. Three creatures brushed against his knees like greasy dogs—dogs with pink eyes, slitted eyes. Dogs that swept blindly out of the broken grasses and whispered and hissed back into the stalks behind the time-stilled Talon. The pollens clogged his throat, and he held his cough until he thought he would burst, then realized that the moonlight led another wave of beasts across the meadow.

  It was a gap. It was not his imagination. Another tiny gap appeared, as if the trailing groups could not keep up. He tried not to suck in his breath as a bihwadi was shoved into his legs before careening off and going to its exhausted knees. It fell beneath the feet and claws of those that trampled it blindly, then got to its feet in the gap that followed and staggered after the flood.

  The gaps grew larger until Talon realized that the main body had passed. The stillness that seemed to sweep after it was broken only by the beating breaths of three exhausted yearlings who forced themselves after the swarm. The dust shifted slightly with the breeze, and another lone beast charged past. The rush receded. Talon waited, unmoving. His tongue cringed from rancid air.

  Finally, he let out his breath. He started to put his sword away, but his hand was cramped on the hilt of the blade and it took seconds to release it. He massaged his palm and stared at the trampled grass. A massive swath sliced across the corner of the field where the farmland had cut squarely into forest; then the road of fallow, broken grains disappeared again into blackness.

  He became aware of something breathing nearby and moved cautiously toward the sound. It was a terrible, raspy laboring, and he knew before he finally saw the beast what it was: it was a diseased bihwadi whose mucus froth stank with the putrescence of decay, and he edged away from it as soon as he knew it was too dangerous to dispatch. Alone and away from the swarm, the predator followed him with weeping eyes, weakened from its run but still hungry for human flesh.

  Talon circled and found another one, wheezing, head-down in the grass. It stood on three limbs, the white bone of its other foreleg sticking crudely out of its fur. Again, he left it standing. There would be other predators in the wake of the swarm who would not care that the beast was diseased or still vicious from its pain. Predators like the beetle-jawed worlags who would snack on these bihwadi like a starving man on an oldEarth piece of candy.

  Talon made his way back to his bedroll—or rather, to what was left of the roll. He gathered up the rags—there were no diseases a man could catch from the indigenous bihwadi— and rolled them into a bundle. Then he made his way on not completely steady legs back across the fields.

  When he reached the barn, he found five of the raiders sitting on bales of hay in the middle of a near-silent game of stars and moons. “Bring in the dnu,” Talon ordered without preamble. “Worlags will be coming through soon.”

  Wakje gave him a speculative look, but none of the five hesitated at his tone. They simply tucked their stars and moons in their belt pouches—none of them trusted the others not to shift the game in one or another’s favor while a back was turned—and followed him back to the fields. Ki had some trouble using his left arm, but it did not take long to gather the dnu. For all that the raiders used their dnu hard on the road, they treated their riding beasts well. They fed them grains, combed them for lice, and called them with tubers and sugarcane. They could not afford to have uneager dnu when the beasts were their livelihood.

  Pen was the only one who spoke. Her nose wrinkled as she came abreast of Talon with a line of dnu, but she said merely, “Bihwadi?”

  “Lower fields,” he returned.

  She nodded. He looked after her as she strung out her line of dnu going back into the barn courtyard. She was the same age as Talon, but she would not last much longer, he thought. Her eyes were hard and tired and old. She reminded him of someone, but the face he tried to envision was elusive, and he knew it would not be the raider’s looks that reminded him of the past. He frowned after the raider woman: curly, dirty-blond hair, thin chin, strong cheekbones, and wide-set, exhausted eyes. Pen would never have been called beautiful, but each year of her life seemed to show in her face. That was what Talon was trying to remember—the unnatural aging that showed in the eyes, the stubborn clinging of a woman to the only life she had. He had known other women like that, who rubbed him against the grain with their very existence and yet who had earned his respect with the desperation of their loyalty. If he could win Pen that way . . .

  He watched Pen speculatively while Ki went to the house to warn the other raiders. There was enough space for all but three of the dnu, and Wakje automatically tethered those three creatures at one end of the barn. Then the raiders resumed their game, holding Ki’s place until the other man returned. Talon left them to it. He stank of sweat and musk, and he dug his other set of clothes from his gear bag and headed back into the night.

  He stripped and dunked in the bathing trough, scrubbing the rancid musk from his skin before dressing again in his older clothes. Then he washed out his trousers and the dust from his jerkin before hanging them in the barn. They would have dried faster and with less of a musty smell if he left them out over the fence, but worlags would tear apart anything that smelled of humanity. Following the swarm as they should, he didn’t expect them near the house, but if he was wrong, he’d have little enough to wear. He sniffed the air carefully and secured the barn on his way out.

  He heard Sojourn, Dangyon, and Ki before he saw them. They were disc
ussing fighters, sharing descriptions and styles so that each would know the others by sight and method. It was not an uncommon dialog. Raiders—and venge men, he acknowledged—who wanted to survive learned as much as they could about their potential foes.

  “. . . a new jack out of Randonnen—Cluss Ram neBorkt,” Ki said.

  “Fit ran into him a few months ago,” Sojourn answered. “Gave a good description: Kilaltian’s height, wavy brown hair—waist-length and always braided, heavy eyebrows, sharp chin, left dimple, flat scar on his right wrist. He’ll go to jowls in a decade.” Sojourn took a drink, and his voice, when he continued, was carefully enunciated. “I heard neHarn was cut up in Langdon. Three slashes to the chest, diagonal; a straight cut from left cheekbone to the corner of his mouth; and an S-cut on his left arm. They say it was an Ariyen who did him.”

  “For fun?”

  “Of a sort. He lost a game of stars and moons and refused to pay up.”

  “The Ariyens always did turn out fighters,” Dangyon agreed. The man’s voice was slightly slurred, and Talon grinned to himself as he approached. The barrel-chested man liked his whiskey as much as Fit loved his knife. Dangyon belched quietly. “Trust them to put a sword in the hands of each babe and suckle the child on a worlag.”

  “Aye. The whole lot of the Lloroi’s family is weapons-master graded, from the brothers to the youngest son. Drovic always—” Sojourn’s voice broke off as he caught sight of Talon. “Drovic always said they were the hardest on a raid,” he continued smoothly as if he had never touched the flask that now sloshed half-emptily. “And the most likely to kill for justice.” He waved at Talon casually to join them on the flattopped cutting logs.

  Dangyon chuckled. “You can run a raid through the other eight counties easier than through Ariye.” He noted the glint of moonlight in Talon’s damp hair. “A man bathes by moonlight, he’ll be frozen by midnight.”