Wolf's Bane

by Tara K. Harper

  Dion’s cheeks paled. He was furious—as furious as she had ever seen him. His voice had bitten out the words as if he were biting at her. “This has been … building up in you for a long time,” she said finally.

  He nodded curtly as they reined in at the elders’ hall. “It has been building up since I met you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Sorry doesn’t change your habits, Dion. You have to do more than apologize if you want anything more out of life.”

  She stared down at her hands and fingered the leather of the reins.

  He dismounted, then looked at her, his voice quiet. “You get so caught up in the here and now—in what you think needs fixing this minute. But the world can’t be fixed in a single lifetime. Or by any single person. You have to look ahead, to choose what you fix today so that you build tomorrow stronger.”

  “I know that,” she said sharply as she slid from her dnu.

  “But you don’t five that,” he cut back in. “Moonworms, Dion. You always have a choice: You can spend your life all at once, or you can spread yourself out over time. Sometimes I think the wolves fill your mind with history more than vision—you don’t even see the future, just a past so long that you feel you don’t want it to go on any longer.”

  She touched her sternum, where two gemstones had been studded into her bone. Aranur stepped forward and covered her hand with his, his long fingers touching the bumps made by the gems. “We’re bonded, Dion, as tightly as stone to the mountain. That’s what these studs represent One for the Waiting Year we lived with each other, and one for the Promise itself. You try to shoulder your burdens alone, but we are two together.” His gray eyes were intense as a wolf’s, and she stared deeply into his expression. His voice was soft. “No matter what you see through the eyes of the wolves, you have your own eyes too. Your future is with me, not just them. In the present, not just the past.” He pulled her hand to his own sternum so she could feel the two matching studs there. “Remember me, Dion, not just the packsong you hear through the minds of the wolves. You can seek the future through the past, but you can live only in the present. Choose that present—choose your direction—well. There are futures you can barely even imagine just waiting to be discovered.” He looked at her for a moment more, then went into the council chambers.

  Dion remained silent while Aranur gave his report to the elders. The circle of faces listened intently, asked their questions, listened to Aranur’s answers, then went into their usual argument. Dion and Aranur escaped. They were met outside by a gray-haired man and a lanky, hard-faced woman.

  The older man, his grizzled beard trimmed short as a fingernail, studied Dion as she moved to her dnu. “It was bad?” he asked.

  “Bad enough, Gamon,” she returned.

  Aranur met his uncle’s gaze. “Mjau took a deep cut in the gut, but Dion got to her in time. Mjau will live, though she won’t be up to riding or walking anytime soon. NeHendar was killed.”

  “Moonwormed raiders,” the older man muttered.

  Absently, Dion rubbed her elbow before mounting, as though the joint still rang with the force of the raider’s blows. Aranur caught the movement and frowned at her. “There was something else,” he said to Gamon and the lanky woman. “One of the raiders cut Dion off from the venge.”

  “Cut her off?” Tehena’s voice was sharp.

  “It was deliberate,” Aranur said, answering the unspoken question. “And the raider trying to take her knew her name.”

  The grizzled man eyed Dion thoughtfully. “You said ‘take her,’ not’kill her.’”

  Aranur nodded.

  Dion met the older man’s frown with a steady gaze. “He was stronger than I, more skilled, and more focused.” She shrugged at Aranur’s suddenly hard look. “He … startled me enough that I made mistakes. He had two chances to kill me because of it, but his blows were disabling, not mortal. Even when he had me against the ground, he tried to hit me with the hilt of his sword, not the blade. When he couldn’t completely disarm me, and when Hishn went after him, he dropped me like a hot coal. By then our venge was getting the upper hand of the raiders, and he fled. He blocked the pass route behind him.”

  “But he didn’t try to kill you on his way out?”

  “Didn’t throw a blow.”

  Gamon touched her shoulder, rubbing it absently, and Dion looked from the gray-haired man to her mate, caught by their similarities. Both were tall, lean, straight-haired, and strong-boned. Aranur was simply a taller, younger copy of Gamon. They had the same exacting eyes, which could turn to ice in a second, but Gamon’s were more often filled with wisdom where Aranur’s gaze was driving. She loved the older man deeply, not just because he was Aranur’s uncle but because he listened more than anyone else to what she couldn’t say.

  Now Gamon ran his hand through his hair. “So did he want you as a slave or hostage?”

  She shook her head. “The raiders tried before to use wolf-walkers against the counties, and that mobilized us like the threat of plague. They wouldn’t try that again. It would have to be as a slave or healer that they wanted me—but I’m not sure that really makes sense either. I’m not so valuable that a raider would risk what this one did simply to take a slave. And there are dozens of healers that would be easier to get at.”

  Thoughtfully, Tehena fingered her stringy hair, twisting it one way, then the other. “You’ve made a lot of enemies, Dion. Maybe it’s simple revenge.”

  Aranur shook his head. “I can’t see that. Most of Dion’s enemies are dead.”

  “We’ve been rather… thorough,” the lean woman agreed.

  He scowled at her. “No simple raider would want revenge against Dion so badly that he would plan a series of raids into Ariye on the chance that he might catch her up in them.”

  “What about revenge against you?”

  “We’re talking about Dion.”

  “Aye,” Tehena said meaningfully. He gave her a sharp look, and the woman shrugged. “Using her to get to you is not an original idea,” Tehena added. “The question is whether they have a goal in mind, or are just working the spur of the moment.”

  Dion eyed first one, then the other. “Raiders are hardly more than cutthroats and slavers. They’ve not got the organization to plan so far ahead or the cohesiveness to stick together on a long-term plan.”

  “They’ve had charismatic leaders before,” the other woman returned flatly.

  “Aye,” Gamon put in. “But in every case, they were political leaders who used the raiders as a disorganized army. They weren’t raiders themselves. And there hasn’t even been anyone trying that since Longear died.” He paused. “Well,” he amended, “that’s not quite true. But the two who did try that were dead the day they made their bid for power. The raiders themselves saw to that.”

  Tehena shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking of a political leader from the outside using the raiders, but one from within the raider ranks themselves. They’ve got their own hierarchy. Who’s to say that they can’t grow their own leaders in time?”

  The four looked at each other soberly. Gamon cleared his throat and indicated with his chin the Lloroi’s house, in which the elders still met. “Did you tell them about Dion?”

  “No.” Aranur ran his hand through his own black hair in a gesture identical to Gamon’s. “I don’t want them to know.”

  “If Dion’s in danger…”

  He sighed. “The raiders have made two attempts to take me also, Gamon.”

  Dion stared at her mate. Gamon’s eyes narrowed. “You never said anything about that to us,” the older man said sharply.

  Tehena shrugged. “We didn’t know it was anything more than a fluke. Not, at least, until this happened to Dion.”

  Dion rounded on the other woman. “You knew about them and Aranur? And you never told me?”

  Aranur caught her arm. He nodded at the Lloroi’s house. “Keep it down, Dion. This isn’t something my uncle—my other uncle—should kn
ow.”

  “Why not?” she demanded hotly.

  “What do you think the elders would do to you if they thought you were raider bait? Neither they nor the Lloroi would allow you to take such risks, whether or not you would take them yourself. I have to live with the fact that the one thing in your life that gives you a break from everything else is running with the wolves. But I know you like myself. They think of you differently. You’re the Gray Wolf of Randonnen to them. The Heart of Ariye. Their own wolf walker and scout and healer. You think they would give you any more scouting assignments if they knew about today? Let you run around in the wilderness as you’re used to doing now?”

  Her eyes sparked with violet fire. “Your uncle may be Lloroi, but he has no right to keep me away from Hishn—”

  “No,” he agreed. “But he can make sure that you have so much to do here that you cannot get away. The elders could easily find some reason to require you to stay.”

  Tehena nodded. “Mjau and her gut wound. That blind ring-runner in Kitman. Whoever else they dig up for you to tend. We have enough moon wormed raids to deal with that I’m sure they can keep you busy.”

  Dion stared at them mutely.

  “You’re off duty for the half month?” Gamon asked her gggfinally.

  “For four ninans,” she answered. “Until the boys go back to school.”

  He raised his gray eyebrows. “I thought you were being reassigned in two ninans.”

  “Two ninans?”

  “They’ve got a tricky scouting job coming up in the northwest. If you can’t go, neFored will have to take neCeltir, and he’s not half as good at leading that cliff trail as you are. But, if you’re off duty …” Gamon shrugged.

  Dion’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “Aranur asked for the time so that I could stay home with the boys while they were out of school.”

  Gamon touched her arm. “I’m not complaining, Dion. I’m just surprised. You don’t usually get so much time off when the raiders are getting active.” He glanced meaningfully at his nephew. “Let me know if you want to come over for a game of stars and moons then,” he said. “I’m getting tired of beating Tehena.”

  The other woman snorted. “I only let him win because he outranks me.”

  Gamon shrugged. “A win by the moons is as sweet.” The two strode off.

  Dion was left to stare after them. Aranur looked at her soberly. “You earned the break, Dion. Gamon knows that.”

  “I earned it,” she agreed slowly, “but I can’t have it, can I? Knowing that the elders are already wanting me to go out again even when they give me time off—that puts the pressure there already. How can I enjoy these ninans when I know that, as I take time with my boys—and with you—someone else is at risk by my absence?”

  “You think you’re the only one who should take risks?”

  “You know I don’t think that,” she retorted.

  “Do you want to quit?”

  “No,” she returned sharply. Too sharply, she realized. Her voice already betrayed her. She took a breath. “I want our sons to learn duty and discipline, and the only way I know to teach them that is by example. But how can I teach them if I’m not where they can see me?”

  “They understand your duties, Dion.”

  “Do they? You see them more than I do. You’re their father; I barely feel like an aunt. What kind of example do I set?” She looked up then, meeting his gray gaze with eyes filled with self-loathing. “I don’t know how to nurture them. I never had a mother from whom to learn mothering. I had a father and a twin brother and a roughhouse life in the mountains. I wasn’t prepared for motherhood, but to run and explore like a wilding. I’m the perfect wolfwalker, but even with Hishn’s four litters of pups I haven’t learned how to nurture my own except as a distant healer. I am a mother, yet I have no mothering to give to my sons. What do they get from me?”

  “It’s the way you were raised, Dion—”

  “Aye,” she threw it back. “I was raised to act and yet think, to fight and to heal, to run trail yet need my home, to want nurturing but be too independent to accept it. Everything I do— eveiything I am is dichotomy. What balance can my boys get from me when I cannot balance myself?”

  He pulled her close. She resisted for an instant, then went almost hungrily, violently into his arms. He crushed her to him. Then, lightly, he stroked her hair. “You are yourself, Dion. That’s all they need from you.”

  Dion shook her head, but Aranur pressed her closer. The strength of his arms sunk like teeth into her body, and she pressed herself against him as if he were all that she sought. Deep in her mind, Hishn howled. In her head, Dion snarled with the Gray One until her mind was blank and echoing with the packsong. Her need built like waves, smothering Aranur’s words until all she could feel were his arms like steel bands.

  They didn’t speak as they rode out of town, though Aranur frowned as he studied her. She was changing, he realized—her joy was being squeezed away. Some of it was disappointment in herself; but some of it was from him. She was trying to please him, to be what the county expected her to be as a weapons master’s mate. And she was taking risks with the raiders because she saw it as her duty. He wondered if what she needed wasn’t to mother the boys, but a mother to nurture herself.

  The twisted roads skirted the fields of grains and new tubers. In the flatter part of the county the towns were built in hubs, with the houses around the commons for livestock. Here, where the rising mountains folded the earth into ridges, the layout of the towns seemed haphazard. Contour farming gave the county the look of an Ancient painting: Lush lines of rootroad trees shifted the flat, striped texture of the fields to a doubly arching canopy, and the dirty white lines of the roads themselves brought stark delineation.

  Their own home was in a small cluster of four houses, halfway up the hill that overlooked the town. The wild growth that reached almost to the sides of their home hid the excavations of Gray Hishn and her packmates so that the ground appeared smooth, not pitted and sunken as it really was. By the time Dion and Aranur rode up the narrow track that led to the stable, their two boys had climbed down from the watch point and were running across the commons. Suddenly, Dion found her eyes blurring. She had to turn away from Aranur to get a grip on her emotions.

  But he caught her arm. “Dion?”

  She took a breath and shook him off. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Are you?” he asked steadily.

  She took another breath. He was right. Tule was right. She needed to back away. She watched him almost blankly as she realized that even she herself believed it. “I’d like…” She paused. “I’d like to take the boys with me back to Kitman tomorrow—if the skies are clear of lepa.”

  Aranur studied the way she stood, still half poised as if ready to leap back on her dnu—or as if she had not even stopped running trail. “What about Still Meadow? The boys have been on Gamon’s case daily for a hint that he would take them out there.”

  Her smile was crooked, twisted by bitterness at the thought that her boys would beg Aranur’s uncle for the trip she should have been there to give them. “I’ll take them across the grassland on the way back—as long as it’s not still too boggy. Still Meadow is a stone’s throw from Kitman.”

  His lips firmed as he read the set of her expression. “You’re going to finish up with that ringrunner yourself, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, watching the boys scramble through the gates. “Her eyesight depends on it. I told her I’d come back.”

  He studied her. “Dion, the raiders … I won’t be able to come along this time.”

  “You know they never strike on the main roads. And even if they came back for a second attack, they couldn’t reach as far as Kitman with all the crews on the roads.”

  He watched the boys race toward the commons fence. “And the boys?”

  “Do you really think there is danger?”

  “No. But it still bothers me.”

  She t
ouched his arm. “It’s the thought of the raiders’ intent that bothers you, not the reality of their position.”

  He sighed. “I think you know me too well. Still Meadow is as safe as anywhere else,” he agreed.

  “The boys could use the time in the woods. They’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to simply run trail for the fun of it.”

  “Like you?”

  She looked up. A faint smile touched her face. “Like me.”

  “Momma!” Olarun cried as he vaulted the commons fence. “Look at me!” He sprinted toward his parents.

  “Look at me, Momma!” Danton echoed. The smaller boy dove between the rails, scraping one shoulder and half twisting as his forward motion was arrested. He ended up in a tumbled pile of lemon grass. He sat up, his lower lip trembling, and Dion thrust the reins in Aranur’s hands and sprinted to his side. But by the time she got there, he was standing, shoulders back, pretending not to feel it, and she was left to hug Olarun awkwardly while respecting Danton’s control.

  Aranur watched them drag Dion off to show her their textile patterns. He wondered later, as he sat at the kitchen table and watched her with the boys, if she knew how much they needed her. Just as she pushed herself to please him, they vied for her approval: the fabric patterns both boys shoved in her hands for her perusal; the look on Olarun’s face when she praised the bandaging he had done on the barn cat’s open puncture; the way Danton tried to string his own bow to show Dion that he could … Aranur found himself wondering if Dion was right— if she had done enough for the elders. The more she did for them, the more ingrained her duty to them became, until it overshadowed everything else. Even now, as she showed their freckled younger son how to feather an arrow, her eyes were half focused. He knew that Hishn was in her mind, and that she automatically read the patterns of human movement across the hills near their home. But if she simply ran trail without purpose, without scouting, just to enjoy the forest, would that be enough?