Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  “A man who drinks till the moon goes down will be hung over the sun at dawn,” Talon retorted.

  “Now that’s an Ancients’ saying. Didn’t know you had the history in you for that.”

  Talon shrugged. The worst part of being unwhole was that he didn’t even know what kinds of things he’d forgotten. He remembered some faces without names, some years by only a single scene. He remembered martial classes with Drovic pounding the lessons into his thin, young body. But he didn’t remember his father giving him the blade Talon knew he had carried for thirty years. He remembered his home with its curved lintels and arched porch, the ground pitted and dust-dry out front and the corral off to the side. But he didn’t recall any of his neighbors, and although he knew he’d had formal education in town, he didn’t know what he had studied. He didn’t even know how many times he’d crossed Ariye or Ramaj Eilif. If there were people important to him, he wouldn’t recognize them if they slapped his face. And he could only guess at some of the scars that marked his body. His was the ultimate ignorance, he thought, for most men knew the types of things they didn’t know or hadn’t studied, and Talon didn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing whether he had explored the basics of any field other than fighting. His voice was sharper than he intended as he answered Dangyon. “I have history enough to know that if you three are out here, it’s because you gave Oroan enough of your whiskey that she’s wild as a wolf in there, and you couldn’t find any quiet.”

  Ki nodded drunk-wisely, and Sojourn carefully enunciated his words as he answered, “She’ll be a surly bitch tomorrow. Always is, after a few drinks.”

  Dangyon leaned back and stretched out his boots, then sighed in relief and wiggled his extralong toes. “Biting,” he agreed. “Always biting the hands that feed her.” He offered Talon the flask again.

  Talon waved it away mildly. “Do you ever speak in anything but clichés?”

  “No need. OldEarthers had a saying for everything—the right word at the right time.”

  “The right man in the right place,” Sojourn put in, getting into the spirit.

  Danyon waved his flask in Talon’s general direction. “A man’s place is in his home.”

  “That’s a woman’s place,” objected Ki.

  “A woman’s place isn’t for speaking of in polite company.”

  Ki tucked his chin and let out a belch that would have done Liatuad proud. The brown-haired man followed up with a hardly less subtle set of borborygmus sounds, and Talon grinned in spite of himself. “Now there’s something you won’t see an oldEarth horse ever doing,” he remarked dryly.

  Ki frowned up at him. “What? Drink?”

  “Belch.”

  “Everything can belch. Even a worlag belches.”

  Talon shook his head. “Horses—they can’t do it. They’ll eat themselves to death, but they just won’t belch.”

  Ki’s whiskey-narrowed eyes slitted further. “Now you’re funning me.”

  “It’s the moon’s truth. Their stomach ruptures like an overblown ball. All that semidigested food goes right into the gut—”

  Sojourn winced.

  Talon grinned. “—and turns into a bunch of toxins. Rots them from the inside out and kills them as dead as a badgerbear if not quite as quickly.”

  “That imagery is great for the digestion, Talon,” Sojourn said dryly. “Anything else you want to share?”

  Talon shrugged, but his gray eyes glinted with humor as he took the flask that Dangyon waved in his direction again. He swigged, handed it back, stood and picked up his bedroll, and frowned as he realized there were no other raiders nearby. “Drovic put you three out on worlag watch?”

  Sojourn shook his head. “No need. They’ll follow the bihwadi’s path.”

  “Probably,” Talon agreed slowly. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. “But they could still swerve close to the house.”

  Ki studied Talon’s face, and Talon wondered if some sign of the wolves was now printed on his features. “How long before they hit us?” the other man asked.

  “Half hour, maybe more.” Talon looked off toward the fields. “Judging by the other signs, they haven’t reached the ridge yet, but they’re usually about an hour behind the bihwadi.”

  Dangyon shrugged. “An hour is as good as a dozen kays.”

  “Not when you’re stopped in place and sitting out like masa bait,” Talon returned. He stepped past them up onto the porch. “Don’t stay out too late.”

  The barrel-chested man grinned. “Don’t worry, Mother. We plan to miss the feeding frenzy—we’ve got ears enough to see them coming; eyes enough to run.”

  Sojourn took another swig and breathed out the fumes with silent pleasure. He looked sadly at the sloshing flask and confessed, “Besides, the whiskey won’t last that long.”

  Talon rolled his eyes.

  Inside the farmhouse, half the raiders were bedded down. The other half were still drinking what was left of the farm woman’s store of grog or were sipping her flavored teas. The farm woman herself and her two children were huddled in the kitchen. As Talon glanced that way, he noted that the boy’s face looked pinched even in sleep as he rested against his mother. The bare-legged girl still wore Talon’s tunic and nothing else. He realized that the mother had been afraid to walk through the raiders to get the girl other clothes. He glanced at Drovic’s snoring form, the knot of raiders playing stars and moons, then began to walk toward the farm folk.

  Roc had been waiting for him and got to her feet as he turned toward the kitchen. She might have been drunk—it was never easy to tell with her—but she wanted to fight. He could see that in her eyes. He glanced at her, at the farm woman, then up toward the loft. Someone’s boot was visible near the ladder, and Talon held up a hand to tell Roc to wait, then climbed up the loft ladder. It was Fit sprawled in the hay. Talon scowled and grabbed the smaller man’s boot. Then he crushed the leather and the ankle within until the sleeper cursed himself awake. Fit saw Talon, grabbed for his knife, and found himself flipped over by the grip Talon now had on his leg.

  “You piss-watered worlag—”

  “The loft is for the farm folk,” Talon said mildly. “Sleep it off somewhere else.”

  “Might as well be our farm now,” the man muttered.

  “But it isn’t.” Talon’s voice was soft. He released the wiry man, and Fit glared at him and rubbed at his knee and ankle where they had been wrenched. Talon gave him a minute, then made as if to come all the way up to the loft, and Fit moved quickly to get to his feet and climb back down the ladder. The shorter man did not look at Talon as he threw his bedroll down between Al and Morley.

  Talon glanced at Roc, who watched him with glittering eyes. Then he made his way through the room without speaking to her, gestured to the farm woman and her children to follow him. The woman barely touched her son before he jerked awake. The girl sucked in her breath as she saw Talon, but all three of the farm folk walked with seeming calm as he escorted them to the loft while the other raiders watched. He waited at the foot of the ladder until the woman and children were settled, then turned back to the room. His expression was cold. None of the others taunted him. Slowly, they turned back to their talk. Except for Roc.

  The slender woman stalked toward him, her body swaying slightly so that his gaze—and half the others’—were drawn to her hips and breasts. Wakje’s eyes narrowed, and Ebi’s gaze lazily followed Roc’s hips as the woman slipped between Kilaltian and Ilandin. Roc’s lips were curved, but it was the smile of a lepa before it darts in for the kill.

  Talon merely waited.

  She put her hand on his arm. Her voice was a purr. “Talon, I have missed you.”

  It grated on his ears. Deliberately, he removed her hand. “I’m not interested tonight.”

  Roc’s voice remained sultry. She glanced deliberately at the loft, where the girl had been bedded down, then traced her hand up his arm again. “You seem to have been interested in something tonight.”

/>   “I’d lie down with eleven lepa before I’d bed a child,” he retorted coldly.

  “Aye, you wouldn’t bed a girl like that—” The woman started to press her body against him, and even as his loins responded, her flesh felt like that of a worlag. “Not if you valued your manhood.”

  He thrust her away hard and abruptly, and she hit the wall of the house before she regained her balance like a cat. Instinctively, she whipped her hand up, but he moved faster, and he both blocked and then backhanded her with his right as negligibly as if she were a child. He caught her across the cheek, and her head rocked back like a toy. He struggled to contain his instant, blinding rage. Speed, he thought. It was coming back to him.

  And then another thought hit: He had struck a woman.

  The thought echoed in his head in shock. For a moment, neither one moved.

  Roc’s voice was low and vicious. She didn’t care about the blow. “The girl wears your tunic and nothing else.”

  He had struck a woman and not to save her life, but simply to get her away. He stared at the raider woman. “Yes.” His answer was harsh.

  “Did you take kum-jan with her?”

  She used the term for friendship-sex, not full intimacy, and Talon’s voice was curt. “No.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  He felt his thoughts chew down on a new idea. It did not bother him to strike Roc, only to strike the farm folk. It was respect, he realized; he had no respect for Roc. He couldn’t imagine hitting the farm woman, the wolf-woman, or his aunt with her sad, blue eyes—not unless it would save their lives. But Roc had thrown her own humanity away, and she was nothing more than a killer. His voice, when he answered, was hard. “If you do not believe me, you’ll cut the girl and take away her youth and doe-eyed looks, and everything else you think I want.” His voice grew very soft. “And then I’d have to kill you.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, and her green eyes glittered like gems. “Swear you did not take kum-jan with her.”

  “No.” He had struck Roc like a raider. And he would strike her again if he had to.

  “Swear,” she hissed.

  His expression was icy. “If you doubt my word, then ride with—and on—someone else.”

  She stared at him as if she saw through him. Something changed in her eyes. It took him a moment to realize that it was a sort of desperation, as if she realized she could lose him. The gray din in his head became a howling. For an instant, he saw through to the woman within, to the need for strength, the offering of herself to compensate for the hollow-ness of her heart. There was grief there, as strong as his own, and rage behind it. It shocked him.

  “Talon,” she whispered. She half held out her hand.

  Wolves surged in his skull. He felt their need like a fist. The woman, the bond. Den, home, mating . . . He reached out and grabbed her, yanking her close to his muscled chest like she needed. Like he needed. He kissed her brutally, knowing he crushed her lips against her teeth, knowing that he left bruises on her wrists. Prickles howled along his neck with the fury that fed him, and he cursed it and bent her farther back, ravaging the mouth that felt too thick to his lips, dug into the arms that were all wrong. And when he was done, and she opened her eyes, she smiled at him like a snake.

  He cursed himself silently and thrust her away.

  She watched him go, but she almost preened as she returned to the other raiders.

  XXIV

  Rhom Kheldour neKintar

  To strive, to seek, to find,

  And not to yield

  —Epitaph on the marker of Captain Scott,

  Antarctic expedition, oldEarth

  (from the oldEarth poem “Ulysses” by Tennyson)

  Rhom’s lips were white-chapped and cracked. They didn’t bleed; he was too dehydrated for the tissues to do more than split and dry again. He forced himself not to rub his burning eyes as he stared at the moonlit canyon. Desert suns, he thought of the moons. Enough light to see, but not enough to burn. It was the dark day that burned their skin. Moonworms, he muttered under his breath. His brains were getting scrambled.

  Gamon squatted just back from the edge of the cliff. They weren’t on the road. They had left it days ago when even the deepest well was dry. Now they followed a zigzag line from the road to springs and cave ponds that Gamon tried to find in the dark.

  Rhom waited. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Squinted at the moonlit cracks that ran the deep ravine. It was a steep drop, overhung where the rocks had fallen away, and he could barely see the bottom. They’d be lucky to get down in one piece. His voice was hoarse from the lack of water. “Moonworms, Gamon, I’ll be a mummy before we go on.”

  The other man did not turn.

  “Gamon?”

  The older man let out his breath with an almost inaudible curse. “I made a mistake.”

  “A mistake.” Rhom glanced down at the ravine floor, then back along the print-pocked soil that now marked their path through the rocks. His voice was suddenly careful. “What kind of mistake?”

  Gamon gestured with his chin. “We can’t get down from here.”

  “Why not? We have eighty meters of rope.”

  “It’s not the rope.” Gamon pointed more clearly. “Those patches aren’t shadow. They’re blind lichen.”

  “Blind lichen,” Rhom repeated.

  “Touch them, and the powder gets into the air. Blinds you permanently.”

  “We could go down at a different spot.”

  “If they’re in this canyon, they’re likely to be all along it. Which would you rather have: a little thirst or blindness?”

  “You might have mentioned these lichen before.”

  “Wasn’t any to show you.”

  “What exactly does this mean, Gamon?”

  Gamon stared across the bone-dry canyon. He could see the silhouettes of tenor trees kays away in the distance. “It means the water is over there, and there’s no way in hell we can reach it.”

  “And that means?”

  Gamon did not turn around. “It means we must go back.”

  Rhom looked at their pitted tracks in the soil. “Back to where?”

  “Back to the fork in the trail.”

  “That was almost eight kays ago.”

  “Aye.”

  “That will take all night.”

  Gamon nodded.

  “We’ll have been two days without water by then. And it will take another day to cross the canyon and find a tenor tree.”

  “Aye,” Gamon said simply.

  Rhom looked at him through his burning eyes. Ariye was close, and the chill that ran down his spine had nothing to do with the dropping temperature. He nodded jerkily. He said nothing more as Gamon turned and trudged back along their trail.

  XXV

  Talon Drovic neVolen

  Hammer it to a point and the sharpness cannot be preserved forever

  —Lao Tzu, oldEarth philosopher

  Talon woke sweating and shuddering, his mind blinded by pain. His heart drummed like a running dnu. His muscles were cramped with rock-hard convulsions; his eyeballs felt like exploding. Knives cut through his temples, slashing his thoughts into incoherent screams. In the dark, with his lips curled back and his jaw nearly white from the pressure, he could not even make a sound.

  An echo of gray wolves answered the binding pain he projected. Gray voices washed in, bringing with them a chaotic mixture of emotions and images he could not understand. Then the voices merged—focused into a single knot of will. A gray shield seemed to soften the blades of pain. The pressure on his eyes relaxed, then the rigid muscles of his face. Coolness, then a raging cold, fought against the burning. Fire and ice mixed into a soothing gray that swept like hands across his body, smoothing the knotted muscles of his arms and legs, his belly and his heart. He lay without moving, his limbs still shuddering, his hands clenched against the leftover rictus. His heartbeat slowed to a rolling thunder; his lips moved in a prayer. He stank of swe
at.

  It was a long time before he trusted himself to roll out of the sleeping bag. Then he simply crouched in place, waiting for the pain to settle. His hand clenched at his waist where his empty belt pouch would have been. If it were not for the wolves . . . His jaw tightened with icy fury. Damn the moons and murder—he would withstand this if it killed him.

  “If you’re up, you’re awake enough to make rou,” Wakje muttered from his own sleeping bag.

  Talon did not answer, but he got to his feet gingerly, waiting for the blinding ax to fall across his mind. When it fell like a blunt hatchet instead, he cleared his vision and picked his way through the sleepers to the front door and the outside, moonlit porch. At the edge of the courtyard, he relieved himself against the fence. A few moments later, Liatuad and Ki joined him. Ki merely shrugged a greeting as he performed his morning duty, but Liatuad gave Talon a second glance as the skinny man caught the pinched look around Talon’s gray eyes.

  For a moment, they leaned companionably against the railing and watched as the second moon crossed the fourth. Neither Liatuad nor Ki was inclined to talk. Talon was grateful. It was enough to stand out in the chill air and breathe without having his head split apart by sound. With the wolves in his mind, he could smell the bihwadi musk from the night before and the acrid scent of worlag piss that had been laid down over the musk. He could smell another dusty insect scent that he could not identify, as if a third swarm had followed the worlags. He cursed colorfully under his breath. In a swarm year, it was madness to travel west of the Phye River, regardless of one’s goal.

  In the farmhouse, lamps were being lit in the kitchen, and the farm woman went out the back door to get an armful of firewood. The dogs greeted her with whines as they dragged their chains along the dusty ground. “Woman has some liniment,” Liatuad commented, jerking his head toward the widow. “Saw it in the kitchen.”

  Talon abruptly quit rubbing his shoulder and shot a cold expression at the other man.

  Liatuad was not intimidated. Instead, he gave Talon a faint leer. “Bet she would rub it on you willingly, seeing as how you set yourself up to protect her.” From Liatuad’s left, Ki watched Talon’s reaction closely.