Tehena shrugged. “She wants distance.”
“Five kays ought to be enough.”
“You’re thinking about raiders, or the intern back in that town?”
“Both, although I couldn’t tell you which one I’d rather not face.”
Tehena grinned, but the expression didn’t lighten her hard-lined face. “From what I saw of that intern, Dion deserves all the distance she can handle, raider threat or no. She can make it to Caeton. She won’t be able to see the ocean from there, but she’ll be able to smell it.”
Gamon’s shoulders twitched. “Holguin is closer,” he said flatly.
“Dion never liked Holguin.”
“She doesn’t like raiders either.”
The lanky woman shrugged. “They attacked three towns in two days. That’s a lot, even for a bold raider band. You can bet they’re long gone by now. They could be as many as twenty kays from here—they could be halfway to the coast.”
“Could be,” he agreed deliberately.
Tehena gave him a sharp look. “Even if they were actively hunting Dion, it’s not likely they could guess exactly where we’d be at any particular time. They can’t afford to hang around searching for her in this area now that they’ve made a few strikes. It’s more likely that they’ve made their bid for her for the month, and now they’ll crawl back under their rocks.”
“There are other towns through which we must ride.”
“Sure, there are a dozen to choose from, this close to Sidis-port. But you think any of them would welcome a raider gang? This isn’t raider country here. Sidisport is. Dion should be safe till we reach the coast.”
“It’s a risk, Tehena.”
“Not much of one.”
“You heard what that farmer said as clearly as I did.”
“Aye,” she acknowledged. “But they are not actively hunting Dion,” she insisted, “or they’d be on our heels, not striking randomly around us. What happened in Prandton—and the other towns—was simple vindictiveness.”
“Vindictiveness?”
She shrugged. “Find a group of dim-witted risk takers like those villagers back there, and hit them hard. You’re guaranteed some fun, and raiders aren’t known to pass that up when they’re handed that on a platter.”
“Moonworms, woman. Don’t you have any feeling for the healer and villagers who died in that town?”
“As much feeling for them as they had respect for you, Gamon.”
The older man snorted.
“Look, Gamon, if the raiders were hunting Dion with any kind of intent, she’d hear it through the wolves.”
“You have a hell of a lot of faith in her.”
“She’s a wolfwalker.”
“She’s also vulnerable right now,” he retorted in a low voice. “It was no secret that she was badly injured in that lepa attack. If some raider wants her—alive or dead—then he also knows that now, when she is weak, when she is far from Ariye, is the time to try to take her.”
Tehena gave him a thoughtful look. “She might be vulnerable, Gamon, but she isn’t weak.”
“She sure as hell isn’t back to normal, either.”
“That’s what you expect? For her to be normal again after she killed her own son?”
“She didn’t kill her son,” he snapped.
“Tell her that.”
For a moment, the two glared at each other.
It was Gamon who broke the silence. “The last few days, we’ve been moving too directly toward the coast. If the raiders are looking for healers, they’re just too close around us. I want Dion in the bigger towns.”
“She doesn’t want to be in the larger towns.”
“What’s your point?”
Tehena stared at the older man. Then she actually laughed. The sound was harsh, but for all that, it was a laugh.
“That’s six,” Gamon said.
Tehena raised her thin eyebrows. “Six what?”
“Six times you’ve laughed since I met you. You’re making a habit of that, you know—laughing once every two years, whether you need it or not.”
Slowly, the lanky woman lost her smile. Her voice was flat again when she said, “Maybe I don’t have much to laugh about.”
Gamon couldn’t help the glance he shot over his shoulder. “We’ll have less to laugh about if we let her walk into a raider trap.”
“We all have eyes, Gamon.”
“Aye.”
He said nothing more.
Tehena studied him for a moment, then dropped back to ride silently beside Dion. But as the afternoon turned into dusk, Dion’s own shoulders began to twitch. Unconsciously, she projected her concern to the wolf who loped steadily ahead of them in the dusty road.
Wolfwalker, Hishn returned. You feel predator eyes?
I feel as if we’re being followed, she returned.
Leader? the gray wolf sent. Hishn’s image of Aranur was clear in Dion’s mind.
I hear his voice, Dion acknowledged, but this is something else. Instantly, the gray wolf turned back, but Dion stopped her. “No, Gray One. I’d rather you stayed with us.”
“Dion?” Kiyun asked.
She motioned with her chin. “Something or someone’s following us.”
“Raiders?”
“I don’t know. It’s familiar, and yet not familiar. Like hearing Aranur’s voice at a distance.”
Kiyun nodded. “The trees are thick along this stretch, and there’s a hillock up ahead. We can pull off and wait there to see who it is.”
She nodded in turn. The prickling along her shoulders did not dissipate, and Gray Hishn warily snarled at the trees into which they took their dnu. Tehena and Dion dismounted, drawing and stringing their bows. Then, with the dusky sun already down among the coastal hills, they climbed the hillock and lay down in the brush to watch the road. Kiyun and Gamon waited below. Gray Hishn started up the hill with Dion, and the wolfwalker caught the gray wolf’s scruff for a moment. The dusk eyesight of the wolf was sharper than hers would ever be, and she let herself fall into Hishn’s mind.
Warm dust, the gray wolf sent. Movement on the road. The pound of the dnu’s hooves were faint in Dion’s ears, but loud in the ears of the wolf. Dion found herself relaxing, letting Hishn’s eyes and ears work for her.
It was not long before the rider approached. It was a single figure, riding fast. “Woman rider,” Dion murmured to Tehena.
Tehena’s pale eyes narrowed. “Quirt musk in a worlag’s den,” she swore softly.
Dion glanced at the lanky woman, then back at the rider. Suddenly, she understood. “Even the moons wouldn’t be that cruel,” she muttered.
“Want to bet?” Tehena wormed back from the hillock but didn’t unstring her bow. Dion gave her a sober look. She followed Tehena more slowly.
Kiyun, noting their actions, peered around the hill. Then he jammed the arrow back in his quiver and slung his bow over his shoulder. A moment later, he spurred his dnu out onto the road.
He came out of the hill-hidden forest like a heavy worlag. Asuli screamed. The intern’s dnu reared its two front legs uncertainly, nearly dumping her in the road. Kiyun, leaning out of the saddle, grabbed the reins from Asuli’s hand. He hauled the six-legged beast around, his face cold. “Just where, by all nine moons, do you think you’re going?”
The young woman stared at him, recognizing him finally as he spoke.
Kiyun bit the words out. “You’d better have a damn good reason, woman, for risking raiders to ride alone on this road.”
Asuli tried to jerk away, and her dnu half reared again. Her curse this time, as she fell out of the saddle, was vicious. She hit the road like a sack of coal, hard on her buttocks and back. She gasped. It was a full second before she scrambled back to her feet. Automatically, she reached for her dnu, but the riding beast skittered away from her flapping cloak. She chased Kiyun back, grabbing unsuccessfully at the saddle horn, then at the reins he held. “Let go of my dnu, you worm-boned, lepa-faced dung beetle,�
�� she snarled. “I have the same rights to this road that you do.”
Kiyun again backed her dnu out of reach. “Where’s your escort? If you’re so incompetent as to fall out of the saddle at the first start of your dnu, what makes you think you can use the road to which you claim to have travel rights?”
“You mock-eared bat. Give me back my dnu!”
She made another grab for the beast, but Kiyun danced the two dnu out of reach of her hands again. He realized suddenly that she was wearing a traveling cloak, not a lightweight, summer work cloak. Startled, he glanced at her saddle. The bags lashed to the saddle were full and heavy, judging by the way they barely shifted with the beast’s movements. “Just what are you up to, Asuli?”
She made a lunge and caught the reins. Angrily, she held on until the beast, frightened, chittered and threatened to stomp on her feet. “Damn you,” she snarled. “Let go of my mount. I’m a licensed intern. I have the right to study with whomever I wish.”
“The right to study …” Kiyun stared at her.
She took the opportunity to rip the reins from his hand and jerk her dnu away. She was mounted in an instant. “The Healer Dione is obligated to teach me,” she spat at the burly man. “Get out of my way. You’ve no right to stop me from riding to find her.”
From the trees, Dion sucked in a breath. Tehena took one look at her face and found her own hand on her knife.
“No right, perhaps,” Kiyun said flatly to the intern, “but plenty of rationality. From what I saw of you back in your village, you couldn’t make good with the wolfwalker even if you were dying. Turn around and go back before you run into real trouble.”
Asuli merely looked at him.
“Go back,” he repeated.
Abruptly, she spurred her dnu straight at him. Kiyun’s dnu, of T-guard, skittered sideways.
“You daughter of a lepa—” he cursed.
But she was past him. She ran her dnu straight around the hillock and right into Gamon’s beast. The older man’s beast, startled, shouldered hers, and the two dnu slammed together. The intern went flying. For the second time, Asuli landed in the dust, her too-large cloak tangled in both brush and limbs. This time she lay still several seconds.
Hishn eyed the woman as she would an eel, and Dion found her own lips curling. “Easy,” she murmured, though she didn’t know if she calmed the wolf more for herself or for Hishn.
Asuli got slowly to her feet. She refused to rub her ribs or buttocks, but she bit out her words as if they hurt as much as her bruises. “So. You were all just sitting here, watching that man harass me.”
Kiyun looked down at her from his saddle. “You’d have preferred an arrow to an insult? No one has business traveling alone—not with raiders about.”
“I have the right to ride however and wherever I wish.”
Dion asked quietly, “Why?”
Asuli didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I have the right to apply for internship, Dione. I choose to do so with you.”
Tehena and Hishn moved forward as if one. “Excuse me?” said the lanky woman. “What idiot’s babble is this?”
Asuli ignored Tehena and addressed herself only to the wolfwalker. “You have no intern with you, so I have the right to apply to study with you. You are obligated to give me a trial period before you can say no to me—”
Gamon stared at her. “The Healer Dione has over a dozen interns,” he corrected. “All of whom work hard and treat their patients—and their teachers—with respect. She has no need of someone like you.”
“She wears the healer’s band. She is bound by the healer laws. One of those laws says that she must take on any student that asks to study with her if she has no students with her. She is obligated to me—”
“Not true.”
“Ask her.” Asuli’s voice was flat. “Ask her if she is or not.”
Gamon gave her a long look. “Is this true?” He turned to Dion. “Can you be obligated to take this … this … on when you already have so many back home?”
“Those rules were set to make sure that healers trained interns,” Dion said flatly. “They were meant for those few healers who didn’t want to be bothered with sharing their knowledge, not for those of us who have a dozen in training already.”
“You have no such interns with you,” Asuli shot back.
“I do not work right now as a healer,” Dion returned forcefully.
“Oh no? What about Prandton?”
Dion looked mutely at the intern. Finally, she said, “I would only be cheating you if I took you on now. You’d learn little in a ninan before you returned home, and I plan no research, no in-depth work. You’d get as much from any healer as you would from me. There’s no reason for you to travel with us when you could stay safely in a town.”
The intern eyed Dion knowingly. “You’re as selfish as you say I am,” the other woman said slowly. “The only way you could cheat me is if you don’t take me on. After what you did in Prandton, you owe me explanations.” She gestured at her saddlebags. “I don’t request pay, and I’ve brought my own gear and supplies. I add no burden to your party.”
Gamon looked at Dion. The question in his eyes was clear.
Asuli caught his glance. “She has to take me on.”
“The weapons master,” Kiyun said quietly, dangerously, “is speaking to the wolfwalker, not you.”
“You could dispute this,” Tehena said in a low voice.
“I could,” Dion agreed, “but it wouldn’t matter. I took her patients away from her. I healed them, thereby challenging her treatments of them. She has the right to request training with me so that she can learn what I felt she was lacking. And according to the old laws, unless I already have students with me, I must accept any intern who wishes to train with me.”
“For how long?”
“The old laws may put us in untenable situations sometimes, but they don’t lock us into them forever. I must accept her for a period of one ninan—”
Asuli had been listening, and she cut in then. “At the very least, you have to accept me for one ninan.”
Dion merely looked at her. “There is not enough weight on my shoulders, but I must carry you as well?”
The intern did not flinch. Instead, her lips firmed, and she set her jaw.
Tehena scowled. “Dion, you don’t have to let her back you into a corner like this. Those laws were intended to protect, not punish, people like you.”
Dion didn’t take her eyes from the intern. “Yes,” she admitted, “but the intern is right. I am obligated.”
Tehena spat to the side. Her voice was cold and hard, and the look she gave the young woman was as venomous as a mud-sucker. “We’re stuck with her?”
Dion shrugged.
“I’d as soon sleep with a lepa,” Tehena muttered.
Two bright red spots burned in Asuli’s cheeks.
Gamon eyed her as he would a roofbleeder. “You, Asuli, claim to take internship rights with Dion?”
She nodded.
“Then you obey Dion in all matters of healing. You obey me in matters of everything else.”
“Gamon—”
“Weapons Master,” the older man snapped. “You will address me with the respect of which you are so obviously ignorant, or you will not travel with us, internship rights or not.”
“The old laws—”
“Older laws than the ones you claim state that your rights do not usurp the rights of others. You put Dion in a hint of danger, and I’ll boot you back on the road. The old laws bind you as well as Dione.”
Asuli regarded him for a long moment. Finally, she nodded.
Hishn eyed the intern with baleful yellow eyes, and Dion followed the gray wolf’s gaze. A ninan only, Hishn. Then she will be gone.
Nine days can be nine centuries in the memories of the wolves.
Dion didn’t answer. But the low howl that she projected was caught up by the wolf in her lupine mind. Hishn rubbed her head against the wolfwalker, t
hen disappeared into the forest.
The ride was silent after that. Asuli did not bother to make conversation; she merely eyed Dion now and then as if studying her.
They barely made it to Caeton before night was full upon them. It was a dark night, with the moons still hidden behind the overcast sky. There was no sense of impending rain; rather, the heat was heavy with humidity, and the salt air, so close now, was sticky on their skins.
Dion’s shoulders still twitched, but she said nothing to the others as they stopped at one of the inns. Instead, she hung back in the stable as the others trooped toward the main house.
Wolfwalker? Hishn asked, standing at her side.
“It’s nothing,” she said softly.
It is Leader, Hishn returned. Gray Yoshi runs with him on the road.
“I know.”
Hishn growled, deep in her throat, and the soft sound grated on Dion’s ears. The gray wolf’s longing for Yoshi was strong, and it pulled Dion to the door of the barn so that she too stared down the dark road. Her hand automatically dug itself into the thick scruff.
Hishn strained beneath her grip. Come with me, Wolfwalker! Your need to run is as strong as the pull of the packsong.
Dion felt the softness of the hair beneath the gray wolf’s greasy overcoat. She felt the sticky warmth of the lupine pelt on her summer-hot hand. The wolf’s breath whuffed against her legs as Hishn nipped at her thigh, and Dion let herself revel in the discomfort. Her own legs tensed to leap forward; her chest expanded as if to take a breath to run. Her eyesight shifted subtly so that she saw clearly through both the gray wolf’s yellow gaze and her own, and the night was alive with contrast.
The howl that hit Dion’s ears was not from Hishn, but from the wolves who had gathered outside the small town. Like a ghost, the howl rose, floating beneath the clouds. It hung over the inns and houses till Hishn lifted her head and howled back. The gray wolf’s long, lean body trembled.
Abruptly, Dion released her. The wolf almost leaped into the courtyard. “Go, Hishn,” Dion whispered. She sucked in the hot air until it felt as if it scorched her lungs. “Gamon is right,” she breathed. “You would be with your own mate right now if it wasn’t for me. And you are one of the only wolves who has litters of more than one.”
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