Wolf's Bane

by Tara K. Harper

  The elder came close to Dion’s dnu, and Gray Hishn was there instantly, snarling as she glared at the elder. The woman gasped and stumbled back.

  Hishn, Dion snapped. Back down.

  The gray wolf’s eyes gleamed. Wolfwalker, the creature acknowledged. But Hishn slunk only slowly from the elder.

  Tule eyed Dion. The anger that tautened the shoulders of the wolfwalker was palpable even in the darkness. He hid a humorless grin. Had it been he, not the wolfwalker, who dealt with the elder, there would have been blows flying between them by now. The wolfwalker was still trying to talk—if one could call that near-growl talking—and he eyed her curiously. Dione was as he’d heard her described: slender, dark-haired, lean as a wolf. Her clothes were drab and stained in patterns that melted into the background; the silver healer’s circlet he knew she wore was hidden beneath a dull warcap. The hilt of her sword was wrapped with worn leather, and her bow and quiver were dark. Even her boot knives were barely visible against her legs. Nothing glinted; nothing reflected light except her teeth—white and sharp as she bit her words out to the elder—and those flashing violet eyes. “Healer Dione?” he asked without preamble.

  Dion nodded curtly, returning his look with one of her own. With Hishn’s aggression coloring her words, her voice was as low as Tule’s, though his was as gravelly and bitter as if he’d drunk too much grog on a cold day. His words held a slight tone of irony. In the faint light from the elder’s house, she could see that the man’s tunic was not that of a scout or fighter, but the heavier fabric of a farmer; yet his warcap and jerkin, obviously old, were well stitched and well worn, still supple for his movements. On one side his wide shoulders ended abruptly in a shortened sleeve, but the sword that hung down his back showed which hand he now used in a fight. He didn’t bother with the reins that were looped loosely around the saddle horn; instead, he controlled his dnu with his knees.

  Dion nodded almost imperceptibly to herself. The beast this man rode was as lean as a dnu could get, its eyes small and mean, and its neck barely more than bone in its hardness. The second beast was nearly as lean, scarred across its rump and back, with its tail twisted and raggedly cut as if it had been broken twice. Its neck had the barest shape, as if the fat layers had begun to shape up last ninan, but the definition on its hammerlike head spoke of long-distance endurance. The third beast, lean as the others, was marked with half-patches and stripes. The size of the third dnu’s saddle spoke of someone other than Dion, and she raised her eyebrows at Tule. He nodded slightly at the youth.

  The elder, seeing the bare relief in the wolfwalker’s manner, missed Tule’s motion toward her great-grandson, and angrily gestured at Tule. “He has only one arm!” The old woman spat toward Dion. “Royce at least has two! He’s more than qualified to ride as your escort—”

  “As student, not escort.” Tule’s voice, harsh and cold, cut the elder into silence. “Or he’ll ride not at all. The fighting rings have their own authority, Elder Lea. It’s not you who decides who’s ready to ride out on a raider venge. The day Nulia releases your great-grandson is the day Royce can ride out alone. Till then, he will ride with me.” He glanced at Dion. “With your permission, Healer Dione.”

  Dion looked at the youth. The expression on the young man’s face was not that of anger, but of eagerness. It was the elder, not Royce, who objected to the one-armed man. For an instant, time seemed to stand still, and she saw not Royce’s face, but those of her own sons. Someday, Olarun and Danton would stand like that—as eager to ride out as this youth. And someday, if the moons willed it, they would be ready to run with the Gray Ones—to hear the packsong in their heads, not just human song in their ears.

  “I’d be honored,” she said to the one-armed man, including the youth in her answer. She threw her leg over her saddle and slid to the ground, her numbed thighs refusing her weight. She barely caught herself on the stirrup before Royce’s hand steadied her arm.

  “It’s an honor for me also, Healer Dione,” he said quiedy.

  She saw he meant it. She nodded. “Dion,” she corrected, giving him her nickname.

  The young man drew himself up, his pride almost palpable. When he withdrew his arm, Dion forced her legs to work, pushed past the elder, and mounted the second dnu. The youth vaulted onto the third animal’s saddle, and Dion envied his energy. Then Tule wheeled his beast and flashed into a canter. A few minutes later, they were swallowed by forest as dark as the elder’s rage.

  * * *

  With die moons overhead for a guide, Pacceli and Merai worked their way warily down the track. The rootroad was new and still growing, barely hardened and still filled with gaps. Rounded roots and soft potholes tripped up their dnu so that there were few places they could ride faster than a lope no matter how well they knew the way. That and the fog kept them from anything but a slow trot.

  Merai couldn’t help the look she cast at the line of rootroad trees. They were not yet full-grown, and their spindly trunks were like sticks, not bands of reassurance. Behind them, outlining the new road, the line of barrier bushes had sprouted but was thin and patchy. The shrubs wouldn’t thicken up for years. Merai swallowed and tried to force her eyes back to the track, but the unevenness of that thorny wall gave it uncomfortable humps so that it looked like a line of waiting worlags hunched against the ground. The moonlight glinting off glossy thorns gave the impression of squinting eyes, while the pale white roots, over which they rode were like skinny white arms in die dark.

  Something cried out to Merai’s left, and she started, jerking at the reins. Her dnu skittered, and she soothed it automatically, though her own voice was not calm or steady. Her hand clenched one of the message rings until the wolfwalker’s name rang out in her mind. Dione, the healer. Wolfwalker Dione, riding in like the wind. No night-beast sounds would frighten that one from the woods. Merai rubbed the slashes of the healer’s name and straightened her back and shoulders. She had signed on to ride the black road, and no beast sound would scare her either. If she were Dione, she told herself, she’d pass Pacelli and ride on like a wolf. If she were a wolfwalker herself…

  The sharp forest cry came again, and her bravado abruptly fled. She felt the sweat start on her brow. “Pacelli?” she asked softly.

  His voice was confident and curt. “Night-beating birds.”

  But his sword, she saw, was loose in its sheath, the holding thong gone, and his hand didn’t stray from its hilt. “Are you sure?” she blurted out before she could bite at her tongue.

  “More sure than you are that you’re ready to ride the black road.” He glanced back. “For someone who wants to be like Wolfwalker Dione, you startle like a city girl.”

  She knew he was just teasing her to make her less afraid, and she opened her mouth to retort. Then the sound came again, and she was suddenly crowding his dnu. It skittered slightly; the young man cursed over his shoulder. “Moonworms, Merai. What are you trying to do? Bolt my dnu off the road?”

  She reined in too hard, and her own dnu grunted sharply. Apologetically, she soothed it. The riding beast was fast, but skittish—like her this night, she admitted. She dropped back again to lope just off Pacceli’s flanks, grinding her teeth as though the bit were in her mouth, not in that of her dnu.

  Inside her boots, her feet had begun to sweat as the clammy leather warmed up with the ride. But the chill that hit her as the night-beating birds cried out crawled down her legs to her heels. Night-beasting birds? Or bihwadi? The question echoed in her head while her mind conjured up a nightmare vision of those doglike predators. Pink, slitted eyes guided sharp, curved fangs that could tear through leather as easily as skin. She’d seen them twice in the northern meadow last ninan, up behind the tower. They had been moving fast, like wolves on the hunt, but nastier and lower. They hadn’t loped—they’d slunk through the grass, leaving it somehow dirty. The second time she had seen them there, the bihwadi had stopped at the treeline, turned, and looked right at her. Even at that distance she’d felt t
heir gaze, the speculation in it. Like looking a six-legged rast in the eye, she had thought, and had quickly stepped back from the window.

  Now the night-beating birds cried out again, and Pacceli’s dnu snorted softly. He soothed it, then said over his shoulder, “It’s all right, Merai—it’s just the birds. We’re only a kay away from the road.”

  She didn’t answer, but her dnu felt her uneasiness and began to fight the reins. She cursed herself and urged the beast forward, struggling with herself to do it. Her right hand closed on one of the message sticks so that the wooden edges cut into her hand. Raider strike, and they needed fighters, and Wolfwalker Dione was coming …

  But the barrier bushes, scrawny and thin, seemed to move on the road beside her. The shadows, which pooled like the mist in the gullies, almost seemed to breathe. “Pacceli,” she whispered.

  He didn’t hear.

  “Pacceli,” she tried again, louder.

  And then the road erupted.

  Merai screamed. Her dnu half reared. Its front legs flailed out against the shadows that leaped from the dark. The middle legs kicked out, humping its back in the middle. Merai screamed again and realized that her throat was clenched tight with terror, and it was Pacceli’s voice, not hers, that she heard. Something slammed into her riding beast’s neck; something else yanked hard on her foot, unseating her from the saddle. She caught the pommel with one hand, her other hand tangling in the reins. Her dnu whirled, striking out with its hooves. The weight on her foot was suddenly gone. A pair of slitted eyes flashed in front of her, missing her midflight. Pacceli screamed again. His dnu, riderless, screamed with him and bolted into a patch of moonlight. Merai caught a glimpse of bloated shadows clinging to its flesh. Pacceli was on the ground, staggering, and there was moonlight on his sword, then none, as blood covered his blade.

  Merai’s dnu staggered, and she lost her grip on the pommel, falling beneath the hooves. She hit the road hard on her back. Her breath slammed out. Hooves flashed above her head. Then something pink and slitted stared into her eyes. She couldn’t move. Its fangs spread out and lashed down toward her throat— And suddenly it was gone, torn from her as it would have torn her throat. Pacceli was dragging her up, yanking his sword free of the beast, and hauling her at a dead run up the road. He staggered, half turned as he ran, his sword arm heavy as he tried to keep the blade up and pointed out. Merai’s legs didn’t seem to be working—she couldn’t keep up at all. She didn’t notice Pacceli’s fingers digging through her shoulder; she didn’t see the blood on his face. She grabbed the message sticks and pressed them close to her side. Her other hand found the hilt of her knife and yanked the steel from the sheath. As she was dragged back from the dnu, from the feeding bihwadi, she held the blade out like a sword between her and the snarling darkness.

  * * *

  The gray wolf prowled the small clearing, then disappeared into the forest while they watered their dnu at the well. The riding beasts needed the five-minute breather; they had run hard the first half of the ridge route. To the east, the cold air falling from the cliffs brought with it the smell of yarrow. There were no barrier bushes here. No rootroad trees either—both barriers and rootroads had petered out three kays ago; this road was solid rock, not root. She stretched her ears through those of Gray Hishn and heard the owldeer hooting. Down the valley, a herd of eerin bolted away through the trees. The herd was spooked, and their pace was swift; even Royce caught the sound of their hooves.

  “The night is restless,” Tule murmured, taking his turn at the well.

  “Raider fog and worlag moons,” Dion agreed softly. “Everything is out hunting.”

  “Yes, but hunting us or other game?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’d like to think it does.”

  Dion chuckled, a soft, low sound, and swung back up in the saddle. “Thinking gives you an edge only when you’ve had time to do it, Tule. In the night, life is simple: It’s hunt or be hunted, as it has been throughout time. Of all that we learned from the Ancients, there was this first: We’d be less than we are without the stimulus of survival.”

  “Philosophy in the moonlight—now that’s something, Healer Dione, that I hadn’t heard about you.”

  “Dion,” she corrected automatically. “I don’t ride on formality.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward Royce, who was waiting for them at the road. “I noticed,” he returned dryly.

  This time, Dion didn’t smile. “I’ve a reputation I can’t fight, Tule—I’m learning to live with that. But I won’t allow my presence to be used as a status symbol by anyone, elder or not. I won’t carry that weight as well.”

  “A job is a job, eh? No matter who does it that day? And you’ll be treated like any other rider?”

  Dion gave him a sharp look. “You disagree?”

  He gave her a one-armed shrug. “I think it’s foolish to deny the way people think of you when you’re different—to deny the effect you have on those who are around you.”

  “People want a legend,” she said shortly. “Not a human being.”

  “You think that makes a difference? You’re a figurehead for a dozen stories. Those stories have to be based on some sort of truth or they wouldn’t have been told in the first place.”

  She snorted. “Truth is the first thing that gets lost in the translation from history to story. You heighten this emotion and indulge that fantasy for your listeners, and suddenly, you have a fable with heroes and heroines and not much room for real people. Reputations are expectations, not realities.”

  Tule patted his dnu as it finished drinking, then mounted in a single smooth motion. “And what is your reality, Wolfwalker?”

  “That I’m far too simple to be the stuff of legends.”

  “Simple? Temper and drive can appear simple in themselves, but judging by the quantity in which they appear in you, they mask something more complex.”

  “I think,” Dion said with a slow smile, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  He chuckled. “I’m not sure it was meant that way.” He gestured for her to lead them back onto the road.

  “I’m sure of that,” she tossed back. “All I am is too damn blunt, too prone to act before I think, and moon wormed lucky to be alive. Everything else is window dressing—” Her voice broke off. A wolf howled far up the ridge, and Hishn’s mental projection caught her at the same moment the faint sound hit her ears.

  “Healer?” Tule’s voice was low and sharp, and his sword was already out of its sheath. He’d heard nothing, seen nothing, but he felt her alarm as clearly as if she had shouted.

  “We need speed,” she said shortly. “Now,” she snapped, glancing at Royce. She tightened her knees. The relay beast responded, leaping forward. Dion’s face was suddenly whipped by fog. Something burst out on the road behind Royce, and he, startled, fumbled the reins.

  “Sprint it!” Dion yelled.

  A crude roar—an ayah-chuh-chuh sound—hit their ears. A massive shape flowed over the road. Tule hunched low, his one-armed torso a blur as he matched Dion’s pace. Behind them, Royce leaned in like Dion until he was almost flat against his beast. Dion didn’t have to look back—the image in the Gray One’s head was as clear as day to her sight. The badgerbear, spring-starved like a raider’s slave, cried out its challenge again. It flowed across the stones, its claws glinting blackly in the night. It gained at the curve, then gained again on the flat, and Gray Hishn’s snarl filled Dion’s head so that she felt as if she were running like the wolf, not riding on top of a dnu.

  Another curve, and the badgerbear was suddenly only ten meters back from Royce’s dnu. The harsh predator cry that filled their ears brought a cringe to all three necks. Its fur, a red-tipped brown in daylight hours, made the badgerbear a blackened demon at night. Its sharp, pointed teeth gleamed like tiny lanterns, catching at their urgent vision. Its limbs were loose and intent. And its heavy breathing was suddenly far too close to Royce. The young man, panicked, viciousl
y spurred his dnu. The animal surged ahead.

  And then they were suddenly alone on the road. The badgerbear was gone. Royce began to slow. Dion glanced back, saw him, and cursed at him to keep up. The hooves of their dnu pounded the road like their hearts, but they did not slacken their pace until they had raced another kay. By then the badgerbear was far enough behind that it would not follow even when they dropped back to the distance lope.

  Tule pulled his dnu back beside Dion’s and gave her a thoughtful glance. Her warning had been all that had saved them. Without it, at least one of them would have gone down when the badgerbear attacked. His voice was dry in the fog. “Window dressing,” he called to her ears. “I see what you mean, Wolfwalker.”

  Dion didn’t answer.

  * * *

  Carston was barely a blur in the night. “Message came through half an hour ago,” the stablewoman told Dion as the wolfwalker dismounted. Dion nodded and stamped her legs to get her blood moving. “A bit brief,” the stablewoman added dryly.

  “My fault,” Dion said shortly. “I offended one of the elders.” “I heard. Yet you made off with her grandson, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.” The woman handed Dion the reins. Dion cast a glance over her shoulder. “You know him?” “Royce? He’s young, but he’ll do, if that’s what you’re asking.” Dion smiled faintly. “I wasn’t, but I was. Thanks.” She swung up on the new relay beast, feeling the dnu’s muscles bunch as it skittered awkwardly sideways. In the distance, waiting in the shadow, Gray Hishn began to move. Dion felt the wolf lope just off the center of the road. Barely visible, Hishn touched the edges of shadow and extended them with her lupine shape.

  The stablewoman caught the unfocused expression on Dion’s face and watched the wolfwalker with interest. “This dnu’s fast and headstrong. Don’t let him run your arms off, Dione, or the legs off your gray wolf.”

  Dion’s gaze sharpened. She looked down at the woman. “Considering what’s been on the trails in this fog, I might be glad of his speed in spite of the ache on my arms tonight.” “Raider fog,” the woman agreed. “Ride safe.” “With the moons,” Dion returned. She reined the dnu in a tight circle and spurred the creature forward. Within seconds, its hooves struck a sharp rhythm from the stone road. The sounds doubled, then tripled, as the two other beasts matched its pace. Dion knew who rode behind her. “Ontai is the other way,” she shouted over her shoulder.