Wolfwalker - Wolf In Night Part 1

Tara K Harper.

Wolf in Night.

For my beloved niece, Anne, who was brave enough to go canoeing with me atmidnight and who loved forging through the big waves at dawn.

Wolf in darkness Wolf in night Wolf in shadow Wolf in light -fromResist the Mist

Prologue

South, on the coast, in a city called Sidisport . . .

The dark-clothed man watched the black, glistening bay with the patience of an oldEarth Job. His gaze flicked toward each movement in the dark, and his body was poised against the cold seawall with deliberate negligence. His well-trained ears were tuned to the slapping of water on the rocks and wall below, to the couples who strolled behind him. To the soft laughter and murmured words as lovers pried at shuttered hearts beneath six of the glowing moons. He noted and discarded each couple automatically as they pa.s.sed the wall where he waited. Not them, and not those two. Not that couple, either . . . It was a constant mantra, a steadying of his heartbeat in the dank spring air. It wouldn't be long now. An hour at most. The Tamrani woman liked dancing enough to stay late, even if she was with the dandy, but she was almost always home by two. He glanced at another couple who stepped up onto the waterfront. Too tall and thin, the hair too light . . .

His small boat waited in the slick water below. He had no worries that it would be seen. It was just another smudge against the seawall, a thicker edge in inky shadow cast harshly by the hovering moons.

The only thing to draw the eye to his boat was the sea ladder that stretched down the stone wall. The ladder rungs glinted faintly, but since there were ladders all along the wall, no one paid attention. This one was even darker than the others. He'd sanded it himself to make sure his slide would be smooth, then had darkened it again with blackwash. No metal splinters there, though he'd have to watch his footing on the rocks near the boat. He could still get sc.r.a.ped up, and one didn't go into the water with wounds. Not near the sh.o.r.e, anyway, not after the spring currents s.h.i.+fted. The parasites that bred in the bay would eat a wounded man alive, leave him screaming, begging for the death that could be days, even ninans away.

He'd seen it before. It was a cla.s.sic lesson-killing, to dip a slashed man in the bay.

A closed carriage pulled up to the left, waited a moment, then took two couples away while the Haruman stared out at the water as if lost in thought. No one spared him more than a glance. It was understandable. His coat was well cut but of chancloth, not of silk. His boots were s.h.i.+ned but neither rich nor new. His gloves were white and spotless, but cut in last year's style. Everything about him said acceptable but unimportant, not someone to notice. Even the city guard had done no more than nod as they pa.s.sed him twenty minutes ago. They wouldn't be back for an hour. It was a good time for the Tamrani to show. There were few people left on the waterfront to watch or interfere, and those he saw were drunks, not paladins. That was another luck of the moons. The first thing his father had taught him was how to avoid the eager heroes and blend in with the drunks and darkness.

Soon, soon. Footsteps faded off to the right: a gentleman walked quickly, nervous in the night, his thick cloak flapping in the chill marine air. The Haruman dismissed him with a glance. The Tamrani lady, she was out with someone like that: slender, aesthetic, concerned with his clothes. Fentris the Fop, they called her dancing partner. Rumor said he'd killed his older brother in an alley, stabbed the man in the back with his own knife. The word was that the fop had backed away from every challenge he'd received since then. Gossip also had it that the fop was lucky the Tamrani's brother hadn't caught the two of them together, but that if the brother had, the fop would have run like a hare before worlags. A coward like that would be no trouble.

The Tamrani lady, now, she was a different piece of work. He'd have considered negotiating other terms for her, but the Tamrani were powerful, they protected their own, and her House wasn't one in decline. He had no wish to bring that down on his head. Quick kill, quick silver, that's what his father had said, and his father had managed more than four dozen targets before he was taken down. Whatever the lady knew that had bought this kill tonight, it would die with her in the dark.

In the distance, a carriage let another couple off on the elegant waterfront and drove away. In the night, the Haruman glanced their way and felt himself tense. Ah, there were the two he sought. He turned back to the bay and made himself breathe slowly, softly as he heard them strolling toward him. He timed the steps and the soft murmur of her voice. His heart rate was up, but it made him poised, not skittish. Fast heart, fast reflex; fast hands, fast catch. His father had known all the old sayings.

They were almost on him when he sighed as if bored, straightened, and turned. "Excuse me," he murmured, and made as if to step past them. The knife in his left hand came out of its sheath like a silent snake. His arm moved smoothly, swinging up as he turned, and the razor steel slid into her heavy clothes, unopposed and unseen, like a needle through layers of lint. And in, in, cutting the bodice, the tip on her ribs, starting to sink in, slick as sweat, so easy, so fast, and the woman made no sound. She stiffened like a doe caught in light. He didn't look, but he knew her eyes had shocked wide as the tip slid into flesh. He started to press the thrust in and out to cut through her lungs as he slipped past- Something clamped around his wrist and jerked before the steel could sink in halfway. There was a sting on his arm, and his body reacted before thought was formed. He tried to twist the blade out to rip flesh as much as possible, but he couldn't hold on to the hilt. Sloppy. Too much blood; his fingers were nerveless. He went for his other knife. Then he choked out a scream. His left hand was half severed at the wrist. It was the Haruman's blood that spurted out, not that of the Lady Jianan.

Lamplight bleached the motion like a black-and-white drawing. The fop slashed the Haruman's upper arm like a flash of light, then back-cut across his neck in the other fraction of a second. The carotid vein split like an overripe plum. Rich, red blood arced out. Kerien staggered back, clutching the hand that dangled by a strip of tendon and flesh. G.o.ds-the fop? The fop was cutting him again, shoulder, arm, chest. He kicked out desperately, twisted and flailed back in defense, slashed hard and fast, but it was already too late.

With one steel hand on Jianan's arm, Fentris jerked her out of the way and side-kicked the other man's knees. He back-slashed at the blader's arm even before the man started to fall. Then he spun Jianan back and hilt-punched the Haruman's face as the blader began to drop. Bones splintered; the a.s.sa.s.sin screamed again.

Jianan's green eyes were wide and frozen, and she was sagging onto his arm. "Jianan," he snapped. He dragged her back farther. The a.s.sa.s.sin was on his knees, crawling, his good hand pressed over his carotid. Blood washed out in pulses from between the man's fingers, but he could still be a danger. It would be seconds before he was fully unconscious, minutes before he was dead.

Fentris cradled Jianan, his hands over hers to keep her from jerking the knife free. "Leave it," he said urgently. "It has to stay. Let the healers take it out."

"It . . . hurts," she whispered.

"I know. I'm going to set you down now and try to stop the bleeding." The knife hadn't gone all the way in, but she was a slender woman. It could have pierced her heart.

"a.s.sa.s.s . . . sin."

"A robber," he soothed. "A second-rate blader. Don't talk." He yanked his handkerchief from his pocket and wadded it over the wound. He looked quickly around. "Help us," he shouted. "Guards, anyone!" The two couples in the distance didn't even glance back.

Jianan cried out as he s.h.i.+fted her, clutched his black jacket weakly. "Not . . . robber."

"We're on the boardwalk, late on a Pendian night, strolling around like anyone's prey." His handkerchief was soaking through. Her dress was silk and useless as tissue for stopping the blood. He said sharply, "And if he isn't just a robber, what could you possibly have been doing to make yourself a target?"

"Don't be . . . angry," she whispered. She was having trouble seeing. And cold. She was icy cold. She forced her lips to make the words, but they came out at a great distance. "Did you . . . hurt him? Is . . .

he dead?"

He glanced at the other man's body. The a.s.sa.s.sin was weak enough now that his left arm lay limply across the sidewalk, and his other hand barely covered his neck. "Yes." There was a cold note in his cultured voice. "I'd say he's well on his way to the moons." He shrugged quickly out of his jacket and rolled the tailored garment into a pillow for her head.

"Oh, G.o.ds," she gasped as he s.h.i.+fted her. "Hurts."

"Lie still, love. Don't worry. You'll be fine."

"You'll ruin . . . jacket."

"It's for a good cause." He tore the sleeve off his s.h.i.+rt and folded it into a thick pad over the handkerchief. "Dik-sp.a.w.ned streetsc.u.m," he cursed, not quite under his breath. "I'll see him rot in the seventh h.e.l.l."

Jianan almost fainted as he pressed the pad down on the wound. She barely had breath to speak.

"Fentris, he was an a.s.sa.s.sin. Not . . . robber. Have to know . . . who hired him. Find out. It's important.

Promise."

He packed the cloth tightly around the blade. "If he was an a.s.sa.s.sin, I'll find out." His usually calm face hardened. "You can trust me on that."

There had been no bubbling in the blood on her chest, and she wasn't bleeding from her mouth, but it could be free-flowing inside. He looked desperately around. There was a carriage in the distance, but it had turned away down the street, following the path his own carriage had taken to the lot where it would wait. The waterfront businesses were closed, and the few apartments over them were dark. Four blocks away, the city guard had just stepped around the corner as they circled the blocks farther and farther away. "Guard!" Fentris shouted. "Help us! Guard, she's been stabbed-"

The two men looked his way, seemed to peer through the dim light, then finally broke into a run as he waved urgently with one arm. One stopped for a moment at the lamppost to release a warning bell, and the peals clapped out across the stone streets like the pulse of the G.o.ds of the dead.

Jianan's fingers clutched his wrist weakly. "Fentris. Listen. Papers, notes," she breathed. "Secret place."

He felt a chill. "The lockbox in the courtyard?" If she was hiding something important enough to kill for, that was the worst place to put it. He himself could count six people who knew which bricks to move.

But she surprised him. "Bedroom," she whispered. She breathed raggedly for a second. "Closet . . .

door."

He stared down at her. They had talked once of hiding places. He'd been twenty-five, he remembered, two years ago. The month before his brother had died, the month before he'd become an outcast in his own family. He recalled every detail of that time with the clarity of gla.s.s. It was only in the two years since that he'd ceased to care about remembering anything.

Two years ago, they'd been in the courtyard, and Jianan had showed him the lockbox hidden in the bricks beneath her window. He'd scoffed and said that if he had something to hide-papers, letters, deeds-he'd put them someplace obvious. Inside something that everyone looks at but no one sees. The closet door, perhaps. Or inside a handle. People look into the s.p.a.ces beyond such things, not at such things themselves. He said lightly, "You have six closets, Jianan."

She couldn't smile. "Fourth closet, fourth door. Lift it . . . off the tracks. Hollowed out from the bottom.

Papers there. Take them to . . ." But each breath she drew in was a blast of crus.h.i.+ng pain. "Oh, it hurts.

Fentris, it really hurts."

By the moons, how long did it take two men to run two hundred meters? The lights had gone on in an apartment over a milliner, and in the distance another pair of city guards appeared. "Get a healer," he shouted at the first two. "For moons' sake, get a healer." He didn't ease off the pressure on her ribs.

"The pain is a good sign," he told her firmly. "It means you're going to be fine."

"How . . . would you know?" She smiled weakly. "You've . . . never been . . . stabbed."

He had-twice-but it wasn't something he spoke of. "I'll find the papers," he said instead. "Stop talking now."

"Feels like . . . being crushed."

He hid his unease. That could be a sign of heart damage. "Help is coming. You'll be with the healers soon, and everything will be fine."

"Listen," she whispered. "Get the papers to my brother. No one . . . else. Promise me."

"To Ero? He's at sea. It would take me months."

She started to shake her head, went bone white even in the pale lamplight, and barely managed, "Con."

c.r.a.p on a stickbeast, Fentris cursed silently. Condari Brithanas had been one of his brother's best friends. Brithanas had been out in the western counties for the past two years, but he would have heard every story and rumor before he left Sidisport again. The man's one day in town had been short enough that Fentris had easily avoided him. Fentris had already sent his secretary ahead to listen in on the Ariyen councils, just so he wouldn't have to face the other man. After all, according to everyone down to the tailors and the cooks in the poorest homes in town, he'd murdered Condari's best friend. To seek him out deliberately, after Jianan had been stabbed in his care?

"I don't think-" he started.

"Yes." Her nails dug in. "Promise. Catch him . . .Deepening Road . Stay with him till he . . . gets to Shockton. Fentris." She clutched him weakly now. "Keep him safe."

It was Fentris, not Condari Brithanas, who would need safety. Fentris looked down at his b.l.o.o.d.y gloves. He said flatly, "You don't know what you're asking."

"I'll . . . do it myself, then."

She struggled to sit up, gasped, and he barely had to press her down before she collapsed back onto his jacket. "Don't be an idiot," he snapped.

"Promise."

"I swear, by the rust on a silk hat, you'll be the death of me." He looked skyward for a moment.

"Alright, I'll do it, though after your brother finds out how I've left you, I'll come back as a ghost, not a man."

"You'll . . . go tonight."

His lips tightened as he felt the heat of her blood.

"Sw-swear," she whispered.

"I swear on the seventh moon I'll ride out as soon as you're safe in the hospital. Now shut up, love."

A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. "Not your love."

"Might as well be after the way we were dancing tonight. We shocked Lady Seigan like two mudsuckers in her sink. We'll have to do that again."

Jianan choked out a laugh, gasped at the pain, and fainted.

Fentris was left pressing his white-gloved hands into her bright red blood while the city guard came running.

I.

A wolf doesn't choose his wolfwalker, He can't help being drawn to your side; There's a tiny place in his brain and yours Which seeks the other's mind.

It's a need, a desire, a hunger in both, An addiction that pulls like a chain, It resonates between you, like the sun Blinding and swamping your thoughts, Like the wind rising and falling, falling, Like the packsong calling, calling.

It binds you like two halves of a knot That cannot come undone.

-excerpt fromWho Hunts the Wolves Afternoon, just west ofWillow Road . . .

The wolf watched from the shadows with a predatory sense, an animal tang of hunger. Evening was approaching fast, when color would s.h.i.+ft into shades of grey and the air would grow cool with danger.

The young wolf knew what would come with the darkness. He was a year old, experienced enough that the hunt was no longer fearsome, but still young enough that it was something he eagerly sought. This time, he hunted alone.

He hunched beside the roots with a waxleaf tickling his fur. He flicked his ears absently. The yearling liked the weak warmth of spring. Deep winter was hard hunting, especially since it would be two more years before he came into his full strength. Spring meant creatures weak with hunger or heavy with their young. It meant easy running in soft earth, not deep drifts of snow. He inhaled quickly, trying to catch the scent of his prey. From the shadows, his golden eyes stared unblinking, seeking even a blurred glimpse of movement, but the thick hedge remained impenetrable to his gaze.

Overhead, dark vines climbed along the spiny barrier bushes. The vines here were old enough that they stretched up into the arch of trees that hung over the man-made trails. They were two wide streams of white, those man-trails, made of wood so firm it was hard as stone. He'd run on such trails in winter when their wood-warmth kept them from freezing. At night, they glowed like the moons, and the humans used them like highways, clattering this way and that. They didn't seem to care that any hunter could hear them. They didn't care about scents, either, for dozens of strange, nose-clogging odors clung to that long line of movement.

It was hard to separate out the things from which the odors came. Some were forest smells carried along with the man-things, like the smell of the danger-fang, the tano, and that of the tiny, venomous weibers.

Others were strictly man-scent: sharp smells, unpleasant ones, metal grease and oils. Then there was the smell of the spiny barrier that the yearling crouched behind. It was a man-thing, too, planted deliberately, according to the pack elders. It stank to keep the beasts away and wouldn't harm the wolves.

Unpleasant, yes, but the other side meant safety.

The yearling's ears flicked again at an impression of motion much closer to his position. He was not mistaken. At the base of the bushes, slow blue flowers closed their soft, hungry mouths on the gnats that fluttered nearby. Everything was thickening and strengthening, not just with spring, but with the coming dusk.

On the other side of the hedge, the behemoths rumbled, unaware, unflinching, unstoppable. Rishte could hear little over their noise, but he knew his prey had moved beyond him. He scanned the roadside fruitlessly. He could feel the creature like the p.r.i.c.kling of fur when one steps up to a trap. It was waiting, faintly wanting him as much as he wanted it. Calling for him to approach. Like an itch just under the skin, it clawed at his consciousness.

It had been there all day. At dawn it had begun to tug like a packmate on the rough edge of play. In the grey light of morning, it had crept through the forest. It had grown stronger as the pack moved out warily to hunt the thin eerin that grazed eagerly on fresh spring gra.s.s. It wasn't like the danger sense of the beetle-beasts that was making First Father so worried. It was more subtle, like a fern touching an ear or the sweep of wind-gra.s.s across the back, and it was stronger to Rishte than the others. Then the midmorning warmth had begun to saturate the air, and the sense of it had become sharper and harder to ignore. Since then, it hadn't stopped pulling, digging at his mind.

The young wolf flexed his paws as if ready to run. He stayed low, where it could not see him. He feared its eyes, the binding eyes. Pack Mother said that human eyes could trap a wolf like a dog. They could fill a mind with nightmares, split him off from his pack, and starve him for the grey. He believed her. There were images in the older songs of things the Grey Ones feared. He could feel that in his prey. But still he watched its pa.s.sing. He couldn't help it. Nor could he help reaching out toward its mind. It pulled like a tether, and he howled back, scratching at its mind.

He rose and slunk along the road, slipping through the brush like a ghost to follow the deafening monsters. For a quarter day's run, he had followed his curiosity, till he'd been all but run over with sound. He'd had to force himself to approach the hedge that stank like rotting stingers. The noises didn't hurt his ears, but they masked other sounds so that he felt uneasy and vulnerable. Another monster banged by, and he cringed at the rumbling that his human ignored. He wondered how it could hear anything, even its own thoughts under that torrent. A lepa flock could descend on them all like a rockfall without them knowing.

The line of monsters curved again, and he knew they were starting to circle the den-hill. He was actually closer to his pack home now than before. The thought gave him some comfort, although he wished the human would leave the monsters and follow him to a quieter place. Its eyes would not be so terrifying if he met it within the pack. He was beginning to feel a need, not just a desire, to explore this odd and itching packsong.

The dying breeze ruffed the grey-and-white fur unevenly across his back. He had disturbed a monkeybush that morning, and two spurs were now caught back by his shoulder. He twisted and bit at them irritably, but they were hard-tangled and sharp as the human's mind. He snarled quietly, then turned back to the road. His paws itched to run, to flee from the monsters and scent of men. But that mental needle stuck in his thoughts, changing the tone of his voice in the packsong to one of longing and distance. The sense of muted smells, oddly sharp tastes, and smoothness instead of fur-they confused him. They had blinded his mind all day so that he'd actually slipped off a boulder at dawn when crossing a stream with the pack. Grey Helt and Second Mother had laughed, but Pack Mother had been grim as if facing a full-grown worlag. After that, Helt-First Father-had turned the pack back to the den, cutting off their hunt. Rishte had lagged behind, first slowing, then turning east, away from the pack, as he heard the strange voice in his mind.

Now he was close, close enough to smell what he sought. He saw them now, the humans. He could see their eyes. Flat, wary, they looked his way often, and there was no trap, no binding. He barely even felt them, just the one human he sought. Even amidst the musk of the riding beasts, even above the man-scent, he could smell that one in his mind. The feel of legs moving, tottering, never quite falling forward-it made his ropy thighs tense. He crept closer to a break in the brush. The grey shades s.h.i.+fted.

He could see the monsters now. Huge-they were bigger than badgerbears, bigger than the boulders at the base of the cliffs. They made a line as long as a glacier worm.

Fear knotted his belly as if he were still a cub. Humans. Danger. The mind that seemed so close to his seemed to turn and look out to the forest. Instantly Rishte backed deep into green-black shadow. He tasted the edge of those thoughts. It could feel him, yes. It was seeking the predator who watched it, the wolf who gnawed at its mind. Rishte flattened down like a poolah against the soil, but the sunlight glinted in the human's eyes, and it was blind as it looked toward the shadows. Then it was moving on, moving away, leaving him behind.

He didn't realize how far he'd slunk back until his hind leg slipped on a slick pile of leaves. His black-rimmed eyes stared toward the road. It was looking back again, he could feel it. He scrambled to his feet, but did not run. He had to see its eyes, but fear held him fast. The human was more focused now, as if it knew where he was. Poised on the wide trail, he wanted to race back to First Mother and the strength of the pack. He was too far out of the hunting grounds, where even the poolah were wary. A wolf alone, without his pack? His thoughts stretched out like grey spiderwebs to test the air for hunters.