You are blind?
—from Journey East to Far Away, by Dici Criana
On Willow Road . . .
Payne’s jaw was tense as he yanked open Nori’s duffel to see what was missing. If she had gone out to run trail, she would be wearing her lightest jerkin, not the one she used for doing lead-rider duty. He pulled out a shirt—his, he noticed, and tossed it toward his own bag, but her lighter jerkin wasn’t in the bag, nor were her scouting mocboots.
He pursed his lips, thinking, then stuffed the mess back in the bag and turned to his own gear. Quickly, he stuffed in a fresh set of clothes, then transferred his long knives from weapons rack to pack. He hesitated at the newer quivers, then finally took another one, this one for badgerbears and worlags, not raiders. He had grabbed a second emergency kit when he halted with a frown. Then he twisted and picked up his old hunting quiver again.
One by one, he pulled the arrows and examined the points. He ran his fingernail around the base of the fletching, but the glue was set on each quill and the binding was firm. Still, he frowned as he put the bolts back in the quiver.
He had his saddlebags in hand as Kettre reined in. “Aren’t you packing a bit heavy for lead-rider duty?” she teased. “I mean, it looks like you’ve got something old, something dnu, something borrowed, and something blue all in one place.”
He snorted as he tossed one of his sister’s blue-edged bags over the rump of his dnu. “No one’s seen Nori in hours.”
Kettre abruptly lost her smile. “She’s missing?”
“She sure as hell isn’t in the caravan.”
“Well, hells, Payne. Have you checked with the healer? Nori does have her first bar in human medicine. Your mother insisted. She might be helping with the—”
He cut her off. “I’ve checked with the healer and the message master, and with every wagon between. She’s not here.” He lashed a bag behind his saddle. “After pulling that leaf prank, she should at least have come by to gloat.” He slapped the second bag behind the first.
Kettre eyed the doubled gear. “Maybe she went to check trail conditions, or the water levels for crossings.”
“I thought of that, and it would make sense, if we were back at Four Forks. The creeks run close to the road there.” He untied his dnu from the wagon, then swung smoothly into the saddle. “But that’s a twenty- or thirty-minute run, and it’s on the frontage trail. She wouldn’t be gone eight hours for that. It’s midnight, Kettre. She wouldn’t have left the train so long, not at night, not without me, and not in the wilderness.”
“She knows what she’s doing out there, Payne.”
“Aye.” More so than Payne ever would. “But this is spring in Ramaj Ariye, and Ariye is always hungry for blood.” A knot of messengers cantered past, heading north. He glanced at the barrier hedge from which they carefully kept their distance. There were eyes in those bushes, eyes that watched irritably while the caravan passed. Every hunter clung to the shadows, waiting for the forest to return to its natural state, waiting its chance to strike. His sister was out there among them.
He cast a silent prayer to the moons. At least bring her to the Grey, he told them, but he knew a sinking sensation. Even if the wolves accepted Nori into the pack, they would be a precarious safety. She couldn’t know if the wolves would protect her or turn on her like a swarm of lepa when they sensed what was deep in her mind.
Kettre watched the worry flicker across his face. “It’s Test time, Payne. Almost everyone’s on the road. Maybe she simply saw someone she knew and stopped to trade news.”
“Aye,” he agreed shortly, though Kettre didn’t know the half of it. Nori was a mobile way station for anyone passing things on to their parents. She’d received half a dozen messages just since they’d left Sidisport from their parents’ web of informants. Her own reports were not unimportant, either. Trail conditions, predator patterns—sure, she reported those things like every other scout. It was the other notes that were beginning to raise some eyebrows. The movements of unusual riders on backtrails, the signs of meetings held out beyond towns, cryptic messages that were intercepted, and fragments of code collected while doing tower duty. With Payne’s council notes in there, her scout book would be an interesting read for more than one set of merchants.
He frowned, thinking back. There had been that night spider in Nori’s sleeping bag, and the mold in their trail food last ninan. If Nori’s nose hadn’t been as sensitive as a badgerbear’s, they’d both have been stuck in some healer’s clinic, sick in bed for months. They had chalked it up to the usual travel hazards, but perhaps Nori had grown suspicious. She might have tried to look into something alone. For all that she let him lead in town, she was two years older, and as protective of him as he was of her. She didn’t always tell him everything.
He felt a cold finger on his spine. Beyond the verge, the wilderness now stretched its arms into full darkness. Somewhere out there, his sister had vanished like a chill in the sun. If she had fled there deliberately, thinking it was safer to lead a danger away than toward him . . . “Arrogant, moonwormed idiot,” he muttered.
Kettre hurried her dnu to catch up. “You’re not going to call a search, are you?” He merely glanced at the woman, and she scowled. “Moons, Payne, you don’t always have to know where she is and what she’s doing.”
He shrugged.
“At least wait till we reach the camping circle and can check with the other trains.”
His jaw firmed, but he refused to answer. Instead, he spurred ahead.
“You’ll catch hell from the Hafell,” she called.
A moment later, she reined in again beside him. This time, she didn’t try to dissuade him. She just eyed him with a frown. If she hadn’t seen the deep concern he’d let slip a few times when he’d lost track of Nori before, she would have suspected him of being unhealthily possessive of his own sister.
They had passed only four wagons when a hunting bolt tore into the black brush in front of them. Kettre’s dnu shied, and Payne reined back abruptly. “Godsdammit to all nine moons,” the woman snapped. Ed Proving was shooting the palts again. She glared back at the older man and got a half wave of satisfaction in return as Proving set his bow back between his legs and pulled out a small leather flask. The two shadows of night birds that had circled overhead were out of sight, and a single black feather fluttered down in their wake. “Why the hells does he do that?” she demanded.
Payne chuckled at the exasperation in her voice. After three days in the caravan, he’d have thought Kettre would be used to it. “He says they poop on his wagon top.”
She glanced angrily back at the man. “He’s going to shoot some chovas someday.”
“Only if he’s lucky.”
As if Proving’s bolt had been a trigger, Payne wanted to snap at each wagon driver they passed. But the men and women were content to urge their tired teams on in their plodding pace with clicks and low commands. Merchants rattled behind family wagons, and families sang softly to children. The scent of hay and grain clung to the feed wagons and clogged Payne’s nose so he couldn’t test the air. The cold-storage transport smelled of sweet insulation. That cleared his nostrils of the hay scent only so they could be filled again with the dark, dusty odor of the herb wagon. The entire line rumbled down the glowing road like a massive centipede writhing through the dark, uncaring, unstopping for anything as trivial as a scout out late on the trails.
When the Hafell, Brean, saw them coming up at a canter, the lanky man took one look at Payne’s face and pulled away to the side of the wagons. Brean muttered a quick curse. NeBentar was young, but still the son of Aranur of Ramaj Ariye, and he rode with two men who had decades of judging and dealing with threats that Brean could only imagine. The Hafell wasn’t about to ignore The Brother and, through him, the Wolven Guard. The best he could say for the uncles was that Payne spoke for them as much as Payne did for his sister. Brean rarely dealt with the uncles himself. Now he barely waited for Payne to rein in. �
�Well?” the man said irritably.
The younger man didn’t bother with preamble. “I’m calling the search.”
The Hafell’s lean hands tensed on the reins, and his dnu chittered uneasily. He muttered a curse at the six-legged beast. If he didn’t know better, he’d have accused the dnumaster of slipping dried choudi weed into half the feed to make them as antsy as their riders. He pulled his beast irritably back. “Godsdammit, neBentar, we’re still an hour from Chileiwa Circle.”
Payne shrugged tersely.
The Hafell looked at the set of Payne’s chin and knew the young man wouldn’t change his mind. “Moonworms on a rabid dog,” he snapped. “I’d like one day, just one godsdamned day without some kind of emergency. One day without a broken ankle or axle. Twenty-six hours without some harebrained scout getting lost.”
“Nori would never intentionally—”
The man cut him off abruptly. “Intentional or not, it’s one more chak-driven delay. Of all the chovas whose bids we accepted, I’d have thought you two—” He jabbed his finger at Payne. “—would be the least of my problems.”
The words stung. The cozar weren’t nomads, but craftsmen who, during the trade seasons, traveled in family groups and shared road duties, knowledge, trade skills, and profits. They thought of their wagons as rolling homes, or rather as rolling stockades that kept their goods and families safe. The chovas, or hired-on guards like Kettre, rode escort in exchange for meals and the safety of the caravan.
Payne and Nori weren’t chovas, they were keyo. Technically, they were also hired-ons or chovas, but since they had been raised with the cozar, they had guesting or keyo berths, not chovas berths with the wagons. They were like distant cousins, not strangers to the cozar. They were expected to do cozar duties like any family member, but that was no hardship. Most duties were as simple as washing dishes, watching the children, sharpening tools, or currying dnu—mundane tasks that anyone could do. With Nori now on the trade rosters as an animal healer, and both she and Payne in the lists as scouts, the Ell and Hafell had been happy to accept their bid for the train. For the cozar, who feared to leave their wagons, two fully ranked scouts were more than welcome, especially the children of Aranur and Dione.
It was also the reason the Hafell was furious that Nori was now missing. For any scout to be so careless as to run trail without leaving word? Brean would have her up at fireside the minute she got back, and the Hafell would be doubly harsh because of her skills. To lose a scout, let alone the Wolfwalker’s Daughter, from a caravan spoke poorly for a man. Payne forced himself to say steadily, “She’s been gone almost eight full hours, Hafell.”
The lean man snapped, “I know how long she’s been godsdamned gone. You’ve been asking every outrider, driver, and child down the line if anyone has seen her. I just heard from Giveaway Gaesel myself.”
Payne clamped down on his retort.
The Hafell closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath, let it out, and rubbed his forehead. “Call your search. Take whom you need, trail riders, chovas, whomever. And neBentar,” he added, as Payne turned away. “You may not like Ed Proving, but you’ll want him with you. He was a damn fine tracker once.”
Payne nodded curtly as the Hafell cantered back to his post.
Kettre looked uneasily up the line toward his two uncles. “You’ll tell them?”
The young man snorted. “You think they’re not aware? They’re just waiting for the word.” His uncles were nearly as protective as he was. They had always been uncomfortable around their mother, the Wolfwalker Dione, but Nori had wormed her way into their hearts with the acceptance only a child can give. It would be different when she became a wolfwalker, since such scouts were often used to track raiders down for trial, a fact their uncles seemed to see every time they looked at Dione. But until that day, Wakje and Ki could ignore Nori’s lineage and think of her as a daughter.
Kettre glanced forward toward Wakje’s wagon and hid a shiver. Payne and Nori treated their adopted aunts and uncles like best-loved blood relatives, but the Wolven Guard were cold men and women, hard-faced, old with killing and maiming. They had a way of watching people that made one think a man was a threat first, a target second, and third, a walking corpse.
“Take the front of the line, but I’ll tell my uncles,” Payne told her. “I’ll take the rear of the line till then.”
Behind her, as she spurred ahead, she heard Payne tell the first driver, “I’m calling the search.” He was terse in the cozar way, and the other man nodded slowly and answered as briefly, “I can spare Brenna to help.”
“With my thanks.” Payne pulled away and headed down the line.
He would have talked more with the message master, but the old woman was looking for a note she must have misplaced. Yesterday it had been two of the carved message sticks; today it was a thin piece of paper. The white-haired woman told him curtly that no ring-runner had seen Nori. Even before Payne rode away, the woman had gone back to sifting futilely through the notes with her thin, bony, blue-veined hands, like a spider knitting paper.
He nodded at the outriders posted by Cy Windy Track and Nonnie Ninelegs’s wagon, but didn’t stop. He didn’t envy that riding post, not with the fanged animals huddled inside the wagon walls, glaring through their cages.
Cy nodded back as he passed. “You want our chovas to help?”
Payne shook his head. He wanted the outriders on the twenty-year lists, not the youths whose gear was still so new it shone with fresh layers of varnish. The wilderness wasn’t kind to the inexperienced. Scouts like Nori might continuously map the counties for danger spots to the human settlements, but changes happened quickly. A map made three months ago could be obsolete today. Ring-runners disappeared every spring on supposedly well-traveled routes, more this year already than in any other recorded. Raiders attacked out of new game trails and disappeared into areas that had fallen into disuse. Worlags and badgerbears and bihwadi still worked their way through the barrier bushes. And then there was the forest itself. Every year, at least a dozen gatherers were lost when they simply stepped off of the trail.
His hand tightened on the reins. It was now near midnight, but his sister was out on the trails, in the thickening dark, poking her nose where it didn’t belong. Damn girl might be two years older, but she sure as hells needed a keeper.
He reined in at Proving’s wagon, and the man’s driver, One For Brandy, gave him a sharp look. “It’s on, then,” the older woman guessed.
There was a quiet belch from the man beside her, and Payne glanced across. Ed Proving had his bow tip balanced on his toe, a quiver of light arrows at hand. The string of wing feathers strung across the front panel swung hypnotically by his knees. The man glanced at Payne, lifted his flask, and, as Payne watched expressionlessly, took a sip, held it a moment, then swallowed. Even with the light breeze, his breath stank of parskea.
Payne kept his voice steady. “I’ve called the search. If you’re willing, I could use a tracker.”
Ed Proving didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he raised his bow and took aim at a dark shadow that angled out from the trees directly for his wagon. He let the light arrow fly. There was a faint squawk, and the palt veered off. The man grunted in satisfaction.
Payne waited, but an outrider cantered up and said Kettre had sent her back. “Fifteen minutes,” Payne told the woman curtly. “We’ll meet at the end of the line.” The cozar woman nodded and trotted away, and he turned back to the tracker.
Ed Proving looked after the cozar. “She’s steady. Doesn’t know the first thing about tracking, but she’s got good eyes. She can learn.”
“Good eyes are all I’ve asked of her.” He got a warning look from One For Brandy and tried to make his voice less sharp. “I’m grateful for her help.”
“She won’t ride with your uncles.”
“Few will,” Payne said dryly. “That’s why we’ll be in two teams. Wakje and Ki and you, if you’re willing, will ride out with me from Four F
orks and track Nori north. Kettre will take the others and work the frontage trail back from one of the crossings, in case she’s gone ahead.”
“Won’t be able to start till morning.”
“We can get to the trailhead tonight.”
Proving didn’t look at him. “There are other trackers among the chovas.”
“Aye. I’ll be speaking to them, too. But from what I hear, it’s you I want with me.”
“From what you hear?” The older man laughed outright, swirled the flask deliberately, then lifted it again, watching Payne over the rim as he sipped. “Been a while since I’ve been out.”
Payne smiled sardonically. “Brean recommended you.”
“You must have made an impression on him.” Proving belched again, a soft sound nearly lost among the wagons, and tucked the flask under his thigh. He raised his bow as a pair of palts flew across the road ahead, then lowered it as he lost the shot. “Why the rush to call the search? You worried about your Test, boy?” Payne tried not to bristle, and Proving added, “It’s only been eight hours. She can’t have gone more than fifteen kays, two dozen by dawn on foot. Trains like this move slowly. We could take five days to find her, and you could still reach Shockton on dnu.”
Payne snorted. “Sure, by riding four days straight. I’d be the only one at Test with a butt shaped like a saddle. Payne Saddlebutt. Now there’s the rep-name I want.”
Proving chuckled, then gave him a surprisingly sharp look in the faint light. “You’re damn protective of that girl. Overprotective, some say. You ever cry wolf?”
“No.” The word came out flat and hard. Payne forced his jaw to relax. “Eight hours gone without a word, near worlag hunting grounds?”
Proving fingered his bow. The boy was right: the girl could be hurt or worse. In a bad-luck spring like this one, she could be cut off from the road by a dozen things, from flooded creeks to poolah. “There are old raider haunts back in there, hunter meadows, dozens of loop trails, and Black Wolf doesn’t usually leave much sign. You’ll need the luck of the moons to find her.” He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and studied the darkened canopy for wing shadow. Then he reached for his flask again.
Wolf in Night Page 7
