Wolf in Night

by Tara K. Harper

  One of the men glanced at the river’s maw. “Damn lucky, neBentar.”

  He glanced at the grey, greasy flood and hid his own shudder. “Lucky enough,” he agreed.

  “Best get changed,” Wakje said curtly. “You’ll slip more easily now.”

  Payne nodded. His heart was still pounding, and his breath was quick. That outrider had almost slammed him off the bridge. If Wakje hadn’t been so close, so ready for anything . . . He shook his head at the moons. Nori would give him hell about his clumsiness when she heard. She would never have slipped like that.

  He made his sodden way across the span, then slogged up the bank. Ahead of him, the caravan stretched out with long, black gaps. The last of the wagons would fill those holes as they were put back into order. In the meantime, the cozar were taking the chance to check tack and pick river gravel out of hooves. Test youths and inexperienced chovas milled around, while older outriders talked in low voices and cantered back and forth with messages. With the lanterns sharpening the dark, it was a demonic dance of shadows.

  Payne caught a hint of movement to the side and instinctively stepped back behind a footbox. It was just a young woman sneaking out of a wagon, her long braid swinging slightly as she dropped softly off the gate. Payne grinned to himself as the slim shadow listened furtively, straightened her tunic, then disappeared into the night. Passion, he thought, was hard for even the chovas to deny. He glanced ahead to Vina’s wagon, then sniffed his sleeve and made a face. He wouldn’t be that lucky tonight, not before a shower.

  He took an outrider’s offer of a ride gratefully as he trudged along. By the time he was dropped off at his wagon, he smelled like wet dnu, not just river rot. He waved his thanks, ignored the cozar and chovas who wandered through the wagon line, and clambered up on the gate. There he stripped off most of his wet clothes. There was a faint scent already inside the wagon when he opened the door, and he drew his breath in deeply, but all he smelled was himself. “Hells,” he muttered as he held the dripping clothes over the gate. He was getting more than paranoid. Nori always had some odd-smelling craft in the works or some dusty herb drying.

  He tossed his own clothes over the drying rope. The threads were packed with silt, and he fingered them with sober realization. Few men lived who went into floodwaters. There was too much soil in the flood. The waters tumbled a man, packed the silt into his throat and lungs, till he couldn’t even choke out the silt plugs to breathe. Payne let out his breath carefully and savored the taste of the air. Luck of the moons, he thought.

  He had changed and was heading back to the bridge when he realized that there were only ten wagons left to cross the river, and he still hadn’t seen his sister.

  III

  Night Hunt

  Dry, your mouth where breath rasps out;

  Numb, your thighs which strain;

  Bruised, your feet that pound the earth;

  Black, your blood—night stains.

  Trapped, your heart which climbs your throat;

  Clenched, your fists on steel;

  Wild, your eyes that pierce the dark;

  Fear, which claws your heels.

  Harsh, the hungering sounds that chase;

  Chill, the fog that hides;

  Grey, the granite earth and graves;

  Grey, the wolven cries.

  —from Night Mares and Wolfwalkers, Tales to Tell Children

  Just shy of midnight, west of Willow Road . . .

  She wasn’t fully panicked, not yet, but she was tiring hard, and her breath now choked her like flour. She bit at the growing fear as though she could spit it out. They were close behind her. They had to be. They would not have abandoned her trail at dusk. Not with her blood to mark it.

  Shadows leered before and behind her, shapeless monsters that breathed themselves bigger and blacker in the deepening night and reached down to whip her arms. Nori ducked, shoved through a menacing spring growth. Tripped on a half-buried boulder and skidded a meter in slick spring clay before she regained her balance. Another thin bough snapped at her, split her skin in a short, shallow slash. In the gloom, the smell of the blood on her arm was hard and hot and sweet.

  Wolves growled around her, and she snapped back. She had nothing to protect her shoulders. Her trail pack had been clawed off her back by the beetle-beasts when they attacked the Grey Ones’ den. Her shirt was now a crude sling for the two tiny wolf pups she’d saved. Gods, what she’d give for another bow. Hers had cracked in half when she’d drawn the third bolt. Her quiver, her jerkin, her belt and its pouches, she’d lost them all to the worlags—the beetle-beasts. With them, she’d lost her scout book. She’d actually stopped as she’d scrambled to safety and had reached back down to snatch it. A worlag claw had raked up, slashed the back of her arm, another had snagged on her belt—

  She couldn’t go back, not now. She could only clutch what was left of her shirt and run through the deepening night.

  She splashed through a glinting puddle and fought the urge to look back. For a devolved species with only ratlike intelligence, the worlags were clever hunters. She’d managed to climb to safety on the short cliff behind the wolf den, but the worlags had found her trail again barely an hour later. She’d been herded away from the lake path almost as soon as she’d left the ridge. Now she was racing for Cotillion Cliffs and praying the rocks were close.

  Never run under worlag moons . . .

  She ducked under a forked bough too quickly, and her black braid caught in the brittle branch. She jerked free and snapped the wood like teeth. She didn’t bother to curse. She’d already left so much sign on her trail that a blind man could have tracked her at a dead run. The beasts behind her were much more competent.

  Fear sharpened her thoughts, and a slitted gaze flickered in the back of her mind, watching from a distance. Nori tried to ignore it. It wasn’t the golden, predator-hot gaze of a wolf. It was cold and sharply yellow, alien and eerie as a moonghost. She felt a flash of hysterical laughter as the gaze touched the edge of her consciousness while the forest scratched at her body.

  Centuries ago, the yellow-eyed birdmen called Aiueven had allowed humans to stay on this world only because of the worlags. In exchange, humans had engineered the barrier bushes to protect the Aiueven breeding grounds. The telepathic birdmen couldn’t sense worlags as they could humans and other life-forms; the minds of the beetle-beasts were simply too different. The Aiueven had barely managed to strip the worlags of their technology before they could fully decimate the Aiueven population. Slow to breed and centuries old themselves, the birdmen were now only a fraction of their former number, while the worlags continued to spread. The worlags’ hatred of the birdmen seemed bred into their very ichor. Now that hatred was aimed at Nori as if they could sense the taint within her.

  Nori had been linked to the birdmen since she’d been in the womb. That was the taint that chilled her thoughts and made the Grey Ones growl. That cold spot could watch her thoughts, shift her perceptions, even punish her if it wanted. It had saved her more than once. But the worlags weren’t of this world, and Nori couldn’t feel them any better than could the birdmen. Now she ran a kay, just one kilometer, ahead of the worlags. And the beetle-beasts behind her were gaining.

  She pressed the ragged sling to her chest and ducked blindly under branches. Slashed through a wide puddle that the wolves leapt like deer. Dodged a half-cracked rock and vaulted a fallen tree one-handed. The trail straightened, and three wolves flashed past her. In the patchy moonlight, she threw herself after the ghosts. She didn’t bother to watch for forest cats or poolah traps. The noise she was making would scare almost everything away, and the wolves would sense a poolah trap or badgerbear like a hound dog does old cheese long before she ran over them.

  Gods, she was an idiot. She had thought to leave the wagons for just a few minutes. She hadn’t questioned the sudden, selfish need to keep that haunting wolf Call to herself instead of sharing it with her brother. And when she’d reached the trailhead
, the yearling had been waiting. He had loped away, just ahead of her, always just in sight, but slipping away through the forest like a grey will-o’-wisp. Her twenty-minute run had turned into a five-hour hike. Two more hours at the den, watching Rishte and First Mother until the rest of the pack returned. By the time she’d finally been accepted, the worlags had already set their trap. They had rushed the den like a flood. It had been all the wolves could do to slow them down while Nori tore the pups from the earthen den and ran for the rocks.

  Now her fists clenched futilely. She had no weapons to protect the pups or herself, just her hands, scraped by rocks and branches, and her mind, with fear strangling her thoughts.

  Grey Ones growled and she snarled instinctively back. She had no energy for words as she thrust through a tangle of ferns. The mix of weeds and hotflowers burned, and she hissed at the silk slime that slapped her forearm, blistered and raised her skin. The blisters would go down on their own in forty, fifty minutes—if she lived that long.

  She staggered out of the thicket on the heels of the small pack. Dashed through another grass clearing. Back under the trees, a rise in the trail, a sharp dip, a switchback that almost defeated her as its edge crumbled away. She felt it give and grabbed at branches, dirt, roots that dangled like twisted fingers as the earth collapsed beneath her. Her knees hit the edge of the trail, but the dank soil broke away. A tiny stream had cut the trail back under the clay, and what was left of the ground scrabbled away beneath her kicking feet. She grabbed at muddy roots and tried to jam her knee up onto the soft edge. Instead, the slick clump gave way. She cried out as her hands stripped the roots. Acidic sap burned her fingers. Mud skidded past, and the roots stretched out like coarse wires as her weight dragged them down. They would snap and drop her on the boulders below. She knew they wouldn’t hold. They couldn’t hold. Instinctively she started to cry out toward slitted eyes—

  The wolves howled in through her skull like a storm.

  Like a stiletto, her mind sharpened. Energy surged in her strained muscles. Her left toes caught on a knob of rock exposed by the fresh slide. She thrust up, dug her free hand into the raw edge, and clawed into the soil. The other grabbed a fist-sized root just as the knob of rock let go. A wash of earth dragged at her boots, but she kicked and scrabbled up, hunched like a cripple over the sling as she elbow-crawled onto the trail.

  The Grey Ones circled, dashing in and out, blinding her with movement. She didn’t have to be linked to their minds to hear them: Get up, hurry. Hurry, run. She shoved herself back to her feet. She was sucking air like a chest wound. Her legs were shaky and her hands were raw with root sap. Half bent, she glared at the yearling who got too close. He shied away like a slal bird. They were wild creatures, these wolves, not raised with men. They would never trust a scout like her, not with the taint in her thoughts, but they’d bargain with the seventh devil to save their precious pups. She looked toward the yearling again and caught a glimpse of golden eyes. For a moment, they were tight in her mind like a noose. Then the Pack Mother growled from up ahead.

  “I hear you,” Nori snarled back. She kicked the mud off her moccasin-boots, then clutched the wolf cubs close to her chest and threw herself back to a run.

  How far had she come? Three, four kays in the last thirty minutes? At night, with the worlags, with a pace too fast to maintain, her stamina had fled like fire.

  One of the wolves dropped back until its smell was harsh in her nose. Golden eyes gleamed as it turned its head to meet her gaze. There was a harsh shock of intimacy. Engineered nerves triggered like sparks, and wolf thoughts hit like a fist: Hurry. Danger. Closing.

  The creature broke the visual contact and stretched back into darkness. Nori stumbled with the loss of the link. The voice had been like a blast of air that rushes past one’s mouth. Too much, too fast to bring into the lungs. It taunted her with the power of the pack. She cursed them for keeping it from her.

  How far now? Her thoughts worried the distance like a rat on rawhide. She heard something hard behind her and whirled. The stitch in her side stabbed like a knife, but she forgot it as her own breath choked her with the clicking sound of the hunters in the shadows.

  The worlags were closing.

  She trembled in place, tried to catch her breath as she stared. She saw nothing, nothing. Just the swaying branches she herself had slapped aside while a flash of grey frayed the edge of her mind. It was them, the wolves, she realized, not she who had heard the beasts. The pack knew where the worlags were: Each slick and callused carapace that scraped along those boughs, each hardened, brown-black leather arm with its eager claw, impatient to slit her skin. Each black and lidless, bulbous eye that sought her now bloody trail.

  She turned and ran. Around her, grey wolves snarled like a winter storm and crawled inside her skull to probe what was left of her strength. Without eye contact, they were only impressions that blued and yellowed the edge of her vision, so that she saw contrast more sharply, branches like streaks of black in a lighter blue-black sky. When they knew she could keep going, they left her as subtly as they had entered. It took seconds to realize that the night had not become deeper. Instead, it was simply the wolves giving her back her own dimmer, duller human sight.

  Protect. Hurry. Water. Hurry. Without eye contact, the mental images weren’t even words, just growls in the back of her head. She’d heard it all her life, that howling. It had grown stronger last year with each term at the university. She’d been more than impatient to finish her third bar so she could return to the trails at home. Wolves in the wilderness, just out of reach. Wolves on the edge of her mind. Gods, she had almost tasted it. Then the pack itself had Called. She had Answered like a shot, but was only now starting to understand them.

  Hurry, water—the stream? The faint grey din snarled approval as she interpreted the image correctly. Ironjaw Creek? It was still four kays away.

  The lead wolves disappeared over a small rise. A moment later, a faint eagerness came back through the packsong. Her ability to read the wolves was growing, in spite of the taint inside her. It lurked like a poolah, that taint, just waiting to tear at the grey. It frightened the pack as much as it frightened her. But the taint was from a distant source, and the wolves were with her now. She focused on the image they sent and let her mind go grey. Eagerness . . . The hunted turning, biting? The hunted becoming the hunter? An odor sent to her from the wolves tickled a mental nose.

  “Ahh,” she breathed. There was something on the trail ahead, something that loomed and waited. Something that didn’t want the hot flesh of wolves or the iron-red blood of a human, but the dark, cool ichor of a leathered beast. She felt a feral grin stretch her lips. Blackthorn. It had to be a thicket of blackthorn.

  When the trail split again, she followed the wolves without hesitation. Through a stand of silverheart, past a wash of thistles, and then she could smell the thorny shrubs as clearly as licorice. She sprinted toward the thicket, ducked under the first thin vines, and found herself in a nightmare weave of growth. A long thorn tore at a boot lace, and her hair caught in a vine. Blackthorn odor, acrid-sweet, now clogged her mouth like blood. She ripped free without slowing her pace. It was a mistake. Black vines clutched at her shoulders and feet. She stumbled in the dark, caught herself on a branch, and had to stifle her cry as two soft, bright green thorns pierced the palm of her hand. Silent—she must be silent.

  She shoved through, and three more barbs raked her neck by her ear. They were spongy from the early rains and eager to feed after winter, but she tore away and ignored the shallow wounds. The thorns were not deadly, not, at least, to her. Three months, and they would harden into finger-long spikes. By fall, this track would be closed to all but the smallest creatures. Right now, the thicket would trap the beetle-beasts, if only for a few moments. The barbs that had torn her softer skin would catch in the worlags’ leathered joints, and the venom that had no effect on her would slow the predators.

  The wolves caught the triumph in her tho
ughts and howled in her head. She lifted her head and laughed wildly. It was powerful, seductive, the animal strength they projected. It was like growing fangs and biting at a meaty fist that tried to grab one’s pelt.

  Taste that, she snarled silently at the worlags. Behind her, the vines that had pierced her human blood writhed and shrank and shriveled up, and turned a pallid black.

  Night leached light and vision as much as it did her breath. Shadows hid uneven ground; roots were ropes at her ankles. The pups were mostly silent now, enduring the jolting run. She went toe-heel with her knees loose to take up the shock when, in the dark, the ground wasn’t where she expected it. Twigs snapped beneath her weight, and wolves snarled at each crack.

  Danger, worlags. Faster.

  She bit back in her mind. To them, she ran like a one-ton bollusk, but it was her hands, not her silence they needed.

  She burst out onto a more open stretch. It was unexpectedly wide, and in her confidence she went to a heel-toe stride for speed—for two paces. Then she half tripped on the slick edge of an old wagon rut and nearly went face-flat across the ridges. She caught a branch on the way down, stripped the bark and more skin with it, and hit the rutted ground on one hand and knees.

  “Dammit to the seventh moon,” she burst out. What the hells was a wagon track doing out here? The cliffs, she realized with a spike of hope. She had to be close to the cliffs.

  The wolves growled uneasily as she shoved herself back to her feet. They didn’t like the turn of her thoughts. One of them—the mother wolf—snarled as she met Nori’s eyes. The punch of lupine dread of the cliffs made Nori almost bolt from the ruts. She had to fight her gaze away. Pack memories could be years old, but the beetle-beasts were behind her right now. Whatever had bothered the wolves at the cliff wouldn’t be worse than the worlags.

  The mother wolf snarled again. Grey Vesh, Nori realized. She was beginning to distinguish the names of other wolves, too. Grey Helt was the pack leader, and the wolf who ran there to her left, the one who had Called her, was Rishte.