Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  “Am I?” He searched her face. “Am I a fighter or a killer? My father’s son or Gamon’s? And am I the man who wanted to be free of the wolves, or the man who now accepts them?” His voice grew harsh. “By the moons, Dione, am I anything on my own, or am I defined only by others?”

  “You are yourself,” she whispered. “Aranur—my beloved.”

  He stared at her. “My youth, my life, was a lie. Even our Promising and Mating was a lie.”

  “No—”

  “I fathered our sons with a lie, and this child—” He gestured savagely at her belly. “—is as much a lie as them. I am a mate with you, a raider with my father, a weapons master for Ramaj Ariye; and all of these things are falsehoods.” He shook his head. “I am nothing without the structure of others to define me. I am no man at all.”

  “No,” she protested. “Your heart, your goals, your beliefs never wavered. You were not corrupted by your fathe—”

  “Hush!” He cut her off so harshly that she stepped back almost involuntarily. Hishn’s head rose and watched him steadily. He almost snarled at the wolf. “You assume too much, Wolfwalker. You think that your words can reassemble me into some core that has not changed through time? My uncle redefined my lineage when I was eleven, and now I know it was for shame, not pride. My father rewrote me when you left me to die. And now you . . .” He stared at her. “You haunt me with your voice and your wolves as if you can drown me in eternal gray, while Ariye steeps me again in obligation.” His jaw tightened to a whitened line. “I have only glimpses of my life with you, but you tell me it will return. And then who will I be?”

  Her words were low. “You will be yourself, as you have always been. You have simply lived in different settings.”

  “Yes,” he agreed sharply. “I am the same no matter where I am. A killer in one context, a killer in another—the only difference is the goal. I rode for months as that kind of man, and not the sword, the dnu, the men, or the attack felt wrong— only the incompetence of the victims who laid themselves out for slaughter. The goal was everything. The goals of Ramaj Ariye, of Drovic . . . I am a man who does not lead himself, but lets his surroundings define him.”

  Dion felt her own anger rise as he rejected his strengths. “A healer is no less a healer because she does not always have patients. A soldier is no less a soldier for being peaceable at home—”

  “And a raider is no less a murderer for those few hours he is not killing.”

  Her voice sharpened. “You cannot believe that, not after what you said to the Lloroi. What about your . . . riders?” she stumbled over the term. “You said they followed you because you gave them purpose, and that purpose came from the conviction that what you did would have value. Even those . . . men and women see that. You believe in them, and they want to live to that belief. You expect, and so they deliver.”

  “And they ride with Talon, not Aranur.”

  “You are the same man.”

  “Am I?” He stared at her. “Look at my hands, Dione. Look at my heart.”

  She shook her head. “Some part of you knew, even with the pain, the drugs, your father, that what you did was not right.” She laid her hand on his arm. “You are here now, and still yourself because of that strength of belief.” She caught her breath as her emotion surged. “I will not lose you again.”

  “I will not be lost,” he reassured, but his voice had a tint of bitterness. “Your wolves will see to that.”

  She glanced down at Hishn, and the gray wolf looked up, yellow eyes gleaming agreement. “They have bound us again.”

  “To each other or to them?”

  “We owe them, Aranur,” she said quietly.

  “Aranur,” he repeated softly. Not Talon. Aranur.

  She nodded. “They brought you back to me.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  She hesitated again. This admission was more painful. Finally, she said simply, “Our lives in exchange for a cure for the plague.”

  He stared at her.

  She nodded soberly. “You do not remember, but the fever burned in you, tightened your muscles like wood, blinded you with pain. We were trapped—”

  “In the snow. In the mountains.”

  She quelled the flash of eagerness. If he remembered anything, then he could remember it all—if she could heal him from the drugs. “Yes. The wolves helped me heal you, and I promised to find a cure for the plague that they still carry within them. It is a promise I haven’t kept. It has been almost fourteen years, and still, the wolves are waiting.”

  “They did not wait for me.”

  “No,” she agreed. “They drove you to me so that I could be whole to heal them.”

  “But they will wait another year now.” He placed his hand on her belly. Aranur. “You carry our child, Ember Dione. We will not sacrifice her to the needs of this day or the next, not when the wolves have already waited eight hundred years.”

  Her voice was low. “You used to call me Dion.”

  “You used to call me your love.”

  Dion bit her lip. In the harsh light, his bones seemed sculpted from anger and grief. His jaw was tight with control, and his gray eyes bored into hers. Her voice was low as she answered. “Your father stole you from me, and I stole you back from him. Can you forgive me this?”

  Aranur looked down at her hands. They were slender, tanned, scarred. They were strong hands, gentle hands, and even here in the mountains, they smelled like clean musk and forest. He looked back up to her eyes. Violet eyes, tinged with yellow, unfocused with the gray . . . His voice was hard and flat. “The wolves have kept you from me, and I will take you back from them. Can you live with that?”

  She tried to speak. Her voice broke.

  The last wall between them cracked. He yanked her to him and crushed her against his chest, seeking her mouth with his. His words were lost against her lips. “Gods, Dion. I need you—” She was crying, snarling, tearing at him to get closer. He roughed her, trying to hold her too close, bruised her with his hands. He didn’t notice. She didn’t care. Time had divided them, then thrown them back together. They simply moved together, two people, alone among the swords, while the snow beat down on the passhouse.

  Epilogue

  Ride with me, where the white moons light our way;

  Sing with me, where the gray wolves herald day;

  Be with me, so our lives can now be started;

  Love with me, so our hearts cannot be parted.

  —From White Wolf and Sky, by Alla maRaine

  Over the course of two days, the storm left a meter of snow behind to clog the mountain roads. Dion’s head rested on Aranur’s shoulder as they watched the fire. The child moved beneath his hand. “She is strong,” he murmured.

  “Like you,” Dion murmured back.

  “Like us,” he corrected. He pulled her to a sitting position and began to gather their clothes. She pulled his shirt on instead. She smelled the fabric and inhaled the scent of him. Already Aranur remembered more of his life. She had healed some of the pain, some of the memories, and had cried last night as he recalled their Promising.

  He grinned as he put on his trousers and boots. “You leave me to freeze in the night air?”

  “If the hells we have been through have not frozen you yet, a bit of thin air won’t hurt you. Besides, I want our child to feel you around her as I am.”

  “There are better ways to do that.” He pulled her to her feet and held her close, his arms sliding inside the shirt to circle the warmth of her body. His fingers ran along the lines left by the lepas’ claws; he noted the lithe strength of the muscles that still knitted beneath the scars. On him, she felt the deep indent where scar tissue had flattened his shoulder, felt the tension that still coiled his arms. She would work more on that tension today, softening it, forcing his body to start healing away from the drugs. The gray shield against the pain and convulsions was maintained now by Hishn and Yoshi and the pack of wild ones that still hovered around her ma
te. In time, that tension would fade, the lines on his body would fade, his memories would return, and their hearts would find the way back to kum-tai . . .

  He murmured into her hair, “I could stay like this forever.”

  “We must ride out today. We’re almost out of meat.”

  He was not concerned. “We can hunt down some snoweels for the wolves. The eels will be active for a few more ninans. Or are you so anxious to return to Ariye, to the duties of the elders?”

  Dion pulled away and regarded him for a long moment. “We will not raise this child in Ariye.”

  He looked down at her soberly. “Ariye is our home.”

  “And our obligation.”

  He took her hand and rubbed her fingers between his. His gray eyes were sober. “You ask me to give up my home, my family, just when I have recovered them.”

  “I ask you to build a new one, and to create a life where our child can be raised without duty and burdens for toys, not be used up before her time. I have lost two children to Ramaj Ariye. I will not lose another.”

  “You cannot keep our daughter safe forever.”

  “No,” Dion agreed quietly. She shrugged out of his shirt and took her own clothes from the pile on the floor. “But I can make sure she is raised as a child, not as a tool. She is not a piton or a knife or a pair of boots. She will not be forged into the sword of any elder’s goal.”

  Aranur watched her dress, then followed Hishn with her to the great room, where Dion let the wolf out. Some of his men were already up; others were back in the kitchen—Weed was actually playing a game of chess with Gamon while they tasted the morning rou. Those in the great room nodded to him as he went to the open door. He watched the wolves with Dion.

  Dion trudged into the snow and simply stood, her face raised to the dark sky, breathing in the scents. The stars still shone faintly; the moons were still bright. It would be an hour before the sun rose. Hishn nudged her impatiently and bounded out to meet Yoshi. The two wolves sniffed and then found clean spots to pee; the yellow stains were like poxes in the expanse. Dion didn’t smile, but her wry attention made the wolfsong shiver. The Gray Ones were close, strong in her mind.

  Icy crust, sharp scent of dnu dung, hay dust over the snow . . . They crawled on the inside of her skull.

  Yoshi glanced back and growled at Dion.

  I have not forgotten, Dion told him steadily.

  The wolf echoed her words to the wild pack. Hishn snarled in return, and the other wolves keened into the dawn. A gray voice rose up, then fell, fell, and Yoshi tumbled Hishn. Hishn snapped playfully at his shoulder. They were both snow-dusted when they finally bounded out of sight, leaving a drag-trail where they didn’t quite clear the drifts. Dion trudged back to the shelter where Aranur waited. He gave her his arm for balance as she kicked the bootstop to knock the snow from her trousers and break it off her boots.

  His studied the top of her head, then finally said, “No matter what we feel for the elders, Ariye is still our home.”

  She looked up. “It is, but it cannot be that any longer.”

  “Why? We can keep our daughter away from the elders if that is what worries you. I am a weapons master. My word carries weight.”

  Dion straightened. Her voice was quiet. “I have discovered truths about myself, not just about you in these months. I have found that I cannot say no to the elders, to the needs and pain they offer to me to fix. I have tried to refuse them, but I see the dying, or the maimed, or I see the trail that only a wolfwalker could run well and so reduce the risk to others, and I think that if I just give a little more, work a little harder, do a bit more healing, another life can be saved.”

  He didn’t smile. “I can say no for you.”

  Dion laughed softly. “You love leading too much. You love the authority, the challenge.” She nodded as he did not deny it. “You’ve never said no to the elders yourself, Aranur. And it was you who assigned my scouting duties on top of the clinic work.”

  He got an odd look on his face.

  “If I cannot say no to you, to the elders, and you are so eager to lead,” Dion said softly, “how will our daughter learn to keep herself safe from a circle of endless duties? Every child she meets will know our names, and will want to emulate us in play. Every teacher will encourage her to be like us; every adult will imply the duties they expect her to grow into, just as your uncles groomed you to be a weapons master for the ramaj. If we don’t want to give this child to the elders, we must take her away from Ariye.”

  “If they cannot reach you, they cannot manipulate you,” he murmured with sudden understanding.

  She nodded soberly. “I find myself too easily swayed by others’ desperation. Away from Ariye, our daughter will not be pushed into being another pawn for the elders unless she truly desires that for herself.”

  Aranur was silent for a moment. “Where do you wish to go? Randonnen?”

  She glanced at him, then regarded the men in the room. They were carefully not watching her, not listening. “It would be too quiet for you.”

  He nodded. He studied the snow trail of the wolves. “Ramaj Eilif?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “For you, that would be like Ariye. After riding as a raider, you cannot simply return to either county. There would be too many grudges, too many sidelong glances, too many rumors that you will turn again. You need time to prove yourself before you return to the Ariyen elders or settle in any county.”

  He gave her a wry glance. “You leave us few choices.”

  “I leave us the one that matters. But the choice means nothing if you won’t be there with me.”

  He nodded and asked her question for her. “Can I leave Ariye behind?”

  “Aye. Can you let go of the position you once held? Can you give up being weapons master of Ramaj Ariye?”

  He glanced back at the raiders. “It seems I have already released that title.” He looked back down at her, at her violet eyes, at the neutrality of her expression. “I do not lose my rating or skills as weapons master simply because I set foot outside of the county. And I suspect that the Lloroi would willingly hand back the title should I wish to return to Ariye.”

  Dion’s heart clenched suddenly at the familiar wry tone. She had not heard him so since she thought he was dead; she had had only his voice in the wolf pack, crying her name for company for months. “Then there are the cozar,” she managed.

  “You want us to live like gypsies? Like nomads?” He couldn’t help raising his eyebrows. Dion wanted to touch them, touch his face and memorize it again.

  “They move often enough that any duties that find us will be of our choosing.”

  They would see many places, he thought. Explore much of the world they had never seen.

  Dion nodded as if she read his thoughts. “There is a caravan on the western road, still close enough to catch. There was smoke in the lower passhouse yesterday.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. The western road was the one that Drovic had taken to reach his son. Only the moons would know if his father had made it down that road during the storm, if Drovic lived at all.

  “It will take an hour to pack and ready the dnu,” he said finally. “If we hurry, we can catch the cozar before they reach the last shelter.”

  Her voice was low. “It means leaving your home.”

  He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Do not worry, Ember Dione maMarin. My heart is not in Ariye. It is here.” He touched her sternum, where he could feel the studs set in her bone as deeply as they were in his. “Besides, we have to return the wild wolves to the coast, or they will not forgive you for binding them to this journey.”

  Dion felt the heat of his hand, the pressure of the gems that had grown into her sternum, and the softness of the packsong. “What of the—your . . .” She fumbled for the right word and glanced meaningfully at the great room.

  “Riders,” he suggested.

  She understood what he said. “They are your duty,” she said
slowly, more to herself than to him.

  “Yes.”

  She was silent for a moment, accepting his words and his own obligations. “Then you will lead them, and they will come with us.” She smiled with a sudden glint of humor. “There is always a need for guards on a caravan. After all, there are raiders about.” She walked away to the room where their gear was stored.

  Aranur turned to his men. “Pack and get ready to ride. Harare, Ki, Cheyko—ready the panniers—” He broke off as Rakdi stopped him.

  The ex-elder waved his mug of rou in the direction Dion had taken. “You talked to her about us? The wolfwalker didn’t seem to say much.”

  He nodded, but answered, “She said enough.”

  “Just like that—we’re in with her?” Rakdi frowned. “Either she’s ignoring the fact that we’re raiders, or she’s blind as a winter eel. Either way, there will come a time when whatever grudges and anger she holds against us will cut loose, and someone will get hurt.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “She understands.”

  Mal stirred uncomfortably. “How can you be sure?”

  The dour man broke off as Dion came back through the doorway, a set of saddlebags on one shoulder and a sleeping pack in her hand. She raised one eyebrow at the man. “I know,” she said simply. Then she nodded to Rakdi and made her way out to the barn.

  The hook-nosed man looked after her for a long moment. “She is not what I expected,” he said finally.

  Aranur rubbed absently at his sternum, where the gemstones studded his bone. “She never is,” he returned. He gave the other men a nod, then strode away to pack his own gear.

  Dangyon and Mal looked at each other. “She’s got ears like a wolf,” Mal said.

  “Like a badgerbear,” the other said.

  “Can’t curse around a baby.”

  “Can’t pee on the fence line either.”

  “Moonwormed rules.”

  “Goddamn civilization,” the heavy man agreed. But Dangyon’s voice was as mild as Mal’s voice, and both men hid their grins.

  “Might as well saddle up,” Dangyon said to the rest of them. “Got to follow a man through the counties.”