Wolfwalker - Wolf In Night Part 4

Nori cried out.

The worlags raised their voices.

With dull human sight, Nori plunged toward the stream. She glimpsed the tiny whitecaps that topped its slick black expanse. The light of the fourth and seventh moons glistened dully on the waters. She risked a glance back.

Forty meters.

Moons help her, but the worlags had seen her even as she saw the stream. They were spreading out to trap her, to catch her against the bank. Their chittering grew as they closed.

"Rishte," she cried out. "Upstream, quickly. Two-Log Crossing."

Rishte howled back into her mind. There was an instant's struggle, as if they pulled at each other with their teeth. Nori snapped the command. Abruptly, the younger wolf obeyed. He disappeared into shadow. Four of his packmates went with him, but Helt and Vesh hovered by Nori, lunged away, and came back to their pups again. Vesh snarled with the desperate need of a mother who will do anything, use anything to save her cubs. Grey Helt felt his mate's need, but like the others he hated the nearness of the human. Even as he had been engineered to trust that wolfwalker bond, he feared the taint in Nori's mind. But the human had his cubs. It was an intolerable tension to the male, and Nori's own fear made it worse.

He leapt in front of her, planting his feet. Nori stumbled to a halt.

Wolfwalker,he snarled, glaring into her eyes.

"I can cross," she snapped back. "Get to safety."

Our pups- "I have them," she snarled. "Now go, if you want us to live!"

She ducked past him, slipped in the clay, and dodged through the rocks toward the stream. It was fast and thick with spring runoff, but the worlag's chittering was almost loud enough to hear over the rush of the water. She grabbed up a thick, muddy branch that was jammed among the rocks and splashed in without looking back. Her shoulders were tight as if the worlags' claws would catch in her skin before she abandoned the bank.

The icy water was a shock to her heat-tightened skin. Her calves cramped like hammers. She gasped, staggered over the rocky bottom, knee-deep in the black surge. Quickly she jammed the stick in the rocks to catch her balance. She risked a glance over her shoulder. "Dear G.o.ds." She backed almost blindly.

Ten meters separated them, the woman and the worlags.

Ten bare meters between her and those claws, between her and the beetle fangs. In the moonlight, it could have been inches.

But the worlags halted on the bank, pacing, chittering, watching her in the water. One tested the creek, but jerked its claw back from the white-tipped water. Another eyed her and scuttled upstream, seeking a shallow crossing. Its six legs carried it over the rocks like an exaggerated skeleton.

Two worlags dropped to their fours as they watched her wade farther out. Their smaller, middle arms wrapped around the notches between their bellies and upper bodies. The semi-vestigal limbs would stay out of the way until they were needed to climb over boulders or rocks, or to start carving up her flesh with their more articulate claws.

A fifth beast chittered sharply and tested the few rocks that stood above the water near the bank. Nori's hand clenched on the branch as if her fingers would somehow find a knife, a sword, any kind of blade instead of brittle wood. The wolf cubs were very still in the sling. She hugged them closer, then steeled herself and turned her back on the worlags.

The frigid water in her boots burned grittily on her hot feet even as it chilled them. She refused to look back at the beetle-beasts. Instead, using the branch for balance, she worked her way into the stream.

The worlags chittered, scuttled, watched with unblinking eyes while swift water wrapped her trousers tightly around her legs. A broad, flat boulder squatted in the middle of the stream, tall enough that its upper half was dry. It tempted her as a place to rest, but she moved away from it, angling upstream toward a broader curve. There were deep pockets at the base of such rocks, places where the stream had eaten away its bed. A raft or kayak could be pulled in and under. Nori would be sucked down like a twig.

She forced her breathing to slow. In the gloom, it took her a moment to realize that the worlags were gone from the bank. If they weren't scuttling after the wolves, then they were seeking some other ford.

They couldn't swim, but they went into the water often enough. They simply let the current sweep them along till they fetched up on the other bank.

In the distance, Grey Rishte felt her thrill of fear at the thought. Even without eye contact, his faint voice was still with her. She reached, focused, strove toward the grey. Before, there had been nothing to grasp into but a wispy sense of fog. Now she felt something more concrete. Now she felt an Answer.

The voice disappeared, wisped back in, then began to solidify. It wasn't just the young wolf, she realized. The other wolves had recognized the link that was forming between Nori and Grey Rishte. They put their own strength behind the yearling and pushed that force at Nori.On. Move on.

The wolves felt urgency, not fear now. The worlags must not have followed them upstream, but found some other ford, or she would have sensed the wolves' need to flee from an immediate danger, not just to return to the cubs.

Meet, need,agreed Rishte.

"To meet up?"

Rishte seemed to acknowledge that, and Nori's calves almost cramped again with the force of the grey wolf's sprint.

"Hurry," she tried to send in return. Her boots slid on slick rock, and she stumbled in the stream. "I need you to see for me." She didn't know how much he understood, but at least she knew he was coming.

She staggered out of the water and collapsed on a log. She took precious minutes to empty her moccasins, wring out her soggy trousers. Then she worked the limp clothes back on, adjusted the sling with its tiny b.a.l.l.s of warmth, and scrambled up toward the trail.

VI.

Who rides closer on the road: The friends at your side, The ghosts in your mind, Or the dangers to which You are blind?

-fromJourney East to Far Away, by Dici Criana OnWillow 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 s.h.i.+rt-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 h.e.l.l isn't in the caravan."

"Well, h.e.l.ls, 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'smidnight , 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sing 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed only four wagons when a hunting bolt tore into the black brush in front of them.

Kettre's dnu s.h.i.+ed, and Payne reined back abruptly. "G.o.dsdammit 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 h.e.l.ls 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 p.o.o.p on his wagon top."

She glanced angrily back at the man. "He's going to shoot somechovas someday."

"Only if he's lucky."

As if Proving's bolt had been a trigger, Payne wanted to snap at each wagon driver they pa.s.sed. 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 ma.s.sive 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.

"G.o.dsdammit, neBentar, we're still an hour fromChileiwa 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 G.o.dsd.a.m.ned 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 thechovas 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. Thechovas, or hired-on guards like Kettre, rode escort in exchange for meals and the safety of the caravan.

Payne and Nori weren'tchovas, they werekeyo. Technically, they were also hired-ons orchovas, but since they had been raised with the cozar, they had guesting orkeyo berths, notchovas 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 hards.h.i.+p. Most duties were as simple as was.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.dsd.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+ver. 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 pa.s.sed. "You want ourchovas 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 nearmidnight , but his sister was out on the trails, in the thickening dark, poking her nose where it didn't belong. d.a.m.n girl might be two years older, but she sure as h.e.l.ls 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.