Wolfwalker - Wolf In Night Part 15

XVI.

Sometimes the lesson hurts -Randonnen proverb Payne whirled. Nori yanked herself free from the last of the thorns. Her mind was still clouded. The grey had come up like a tide of animal reactions, and she shook her head, trying to regain her sight.

"Are you okay?" Payne snapped. His hands ran down across her shoulders, twisting her forearms until he saw that the blood was from new scratches, not arrows that had torn through flesh.

She jerked free. "I'm fine. But you were hit." She yanked his jerkin open in turn, pressed on his ribs to find the wound. The hole in the thick leather was smooth as a mine shaft, but she couldn't see the blood.

Payne shook his head, his eyes still burning with the adrenaline rush. He dug a finger into his jerkin and turned the hole out for her to see. "Skewered my-your-scout book like a s.h.i.+sh kebab." He pulled out a bundle to show her the torn covers. The bolt had gone completely through both books and the packet of papers before stopping on his rib. The trickle of blood inside his s.h.i.+rt testified to that. "I'm barely scratched," he said quickly. "I'm okay, Nori-girl." He sucked in a breath with the realization.

"Moonworms, they missed us," he said in wonder. "They missed us both completely."

She touched her hair where the cap had been torn from her head. But she could see that it was Payne's sleeve, not flesh, that had been cut where a bolt had slashed the leather. The back of his jerkin had a long gouge where another had cut across as he ducked, and the jerkin now gapped open like a mudsucker mouth. Wakje pounded toward them, and Nori looked at her hip. She had a similar groove on the leather hip of her trousers. Her pant leg was barely hanging together, but there was only a welt on her skin.

Payne plucked her war cap from the shrubs as Wakje thundered toward them. The older man caught sight of the blood on Nori's arm, and his face went hard, but Payne shouted, "We're okay, we're not hurt-"

Wakje didn't bother to nod. He just wheeled his dnu in a tight circle and spurred it after the riders.

"Wait-" Nori cried. But Wakje was already gone. Fentris half pulled up a few seconds later. "Go with him," she cried. "Don't let him face them alone."

The slender Tamrani obeyed and spurred his dnu back to a gallop. He didn't have much hope of catching up with Wakje, but he didn't think the ex-raider would catch the attackers, either.

Nori jammed her war cap on her head and sprinted after Payne, back toward Hunter and Kettre.

Hunter cut toward the wolfwalker and reached down. "Catch on."

She grasped his wrist, and he slung her up behind him. She slid into place like a latch clicking home.

"Our dnu-"

"Your uncle," he snapped back, half jumping the dnu forward.

Her eyes flashed, but he didn't see it. She fisted his tunic. "Dnu first," she snarled.

Hunter glanced back, saw her expression, and cursed as he whirled his dnu the rest of the way around.

At the same time, Kettre caught up with Payne. The Tamrani charged back toward the grazing verge with Kettre and Payne on his heels.

By the time they reached the nervous beasts, Wakje and Fentris were out of sight.

"Dammit to the eighth moon," Payne cursed, vaulting into his saddle.

Nori had one foot on the ground, one in the stirrup, when she slapped the dnu. She was on the rootroad before hitting the saddle, Hunter right beside her.

They'd gone only two kays when they pa.s.sed the body. It was the one that Payne had sunk his knife into. The man was sprawled across the road, his dnu breathing heavily on the verge. The war bolt in the man's back would have testified to Wakje's shooting from the saddle, but the blood on the barrier bushes proved the attacker had been on the ground long enough to run before he was skewered. That, and the pool of blood that had spilled from his throat, was the statement of a knife.

They found Fentris and Wakje half a kay later, studying a break in the shrub line. The growling in Nori's throat was still choking her, making her words hoa.r.s.e. Rishte was close, approaching warily.

"They've gone off-road," Wakje told them shortly, barely looking up as they reined in.

Nori slid from her dnu and tossed the reins around a branch. She could almost smell the trail through the wolf. She stared into the forest. "I could track them."

"Not this time." Wakje didn't even look at her.

"I can track them," she repeated, her voice half growl. She took a step forward to move past him on the trail. She sniffed the air like a wolf. It was Rishte's breath she sampled, and there was man-scent in his nose. She clenched her hands open and closed as if to stretch her fingers into wolf paws, then started to step through, onto the trail.

Wakje snagged her elbow. "Not by the second moon, Nori-girl."

Rishte snapped in her mind. In the tension, the thought was clear:Male, strong, challenger. Fight.

Like an animal, she jerked free. Her face twisted into a snarl, and her violet eyes were unfocused.

A flicker of shock hit the ex-raider. He froze. That wasn't the face of the girl he'd considered his daughter. What faced him wasn't human at all.

Fentris and Hunter looked from Wakje to his niece. Kettre's mouth made a silent O as she began to realize.

Male,sent Rishte.Bristle, defend. Back him down. Back down, he sent.

The words were a weapon in Nori's mind. It was the same kind of challenge Grey Vesh had made when Nori had approached their den. Her lips curled slowly back at her uncle, and her fingers started to clench.

Wakje read the wolf in her eyes and stepped back so quickly he almost hit Hunter. "Wolfwalker," he whispered harshly.

Hot blood seemed to burn in Nori's veins. Poised like the wolf, she nearly bit after her uncle to press the point. She breathed raggedly, too fast for her lungs. Then she shook her head, blinked, and let her breath out more slowly. The tension drained away like a creek.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. She closed her eyes for a moment and let the world settle back into focus.

"My apologies, Uncle Wakje. I didn't mean to snap at you." She reached for his arm, but he stiffened.

She halted.

His face was expressionless, but it wasn't his forget-it, it-didn't-happen, and don't-bring-it-up-again face. This was something else. Nori had seen this expression before on a venge, when he'd killed three raiders in their ambush overlooks. The three men had tried to throw down their bows, to give up. Wakje hadn't even twitched as he'd shot them out of their perches. She'd seen that expression again on the coast, when Wakje had broken a man's solar plexus. The mugger had drawn a knife on Nori. Uncle Wakje had disarmed the man with a slap, then had driven his fingers straight into the other man's torso.

Then he'd walked her away, leaving the mugger to suffocate as his lungs forgot to work. She'd seen it, too, when Wakje put down a dnu, as if the creature was nothing. This time it was directed at her.

She tried to school her face to the impa.s.sive mask she'd learned so young, but Rishte snarled at the hurt from Wakje's rejection.

"Wolfwalker." Wakje said the word like a flat curse. "You've bonded, like your mother."

"Yes, Uncle Wakje," she said quietly. "I am bonding to the wolves." She had to force her voice to be steady. She knew he had always feared her mother. Papa said it was because he feared what Dione saw when she looked at him through the eyes of the wolves.

Payne stepped forward. "It happened last night."

Wakje looked at the young wolfwalker as if she had sprouted claws.

Nori saw the expression settle deep in his eyes. The rejection was a physical thing, like a fist to the gut.

Wakje had been with her and Payne almost constantly since their birth, guarding, teaching. He treated her as if she was blood-kin, not just the child of a man he followed. He was a second father to her, but he looked at her now as though she were a lepa.

"It's new, Wakje," Payne said quickly. "She's still getting used to it. She'll be better in a few days. You know that. By end-ninan, you won't even notice."

Bonded. To the wolves. There was a hole in Wakje's chest, as if a war bolt had struck through him without his knowlege. And fear-there was fear when he looked at the wolfwalker. He'd been a caravan guard for more than two decades, but a raider for almost three. It was wolfwalkers who had tracked him then, wolfwalkers who had scouted for the venges that tried to kill him for the rabid animal he'd been.

The Wolfwalker herself, Nori's mother, had always made him uneasy. He'd always known that his Nori-girl would turn in time to the wolves, become a wolfwalker like Dione. Now he saw the grey in her eyes, felt the breath of the wolf curl her lips. She had become the one thing he feared, the thing that had judged him before and found him barely worthy to live.

He sucked in a slow, cold breath as he saw how she poised at the trailhead. Something tightened in his jaw, and he was surprised by a flare of anger. He'd taught her from birth, taught her everything he knew about tracking, riding, weapons, surviving. This was what she did with it? The fury that blasted over his fear surprised him as much as her bond. He savored it and let it color his voice till it was hard as iron.

"This-this bond is why you think you can track them. Why you would start off now on the trail."

Nori nodded, keeping her face as expressionless as his.

He slapped her.

Her eyes widened before the blow struck, but she didn't block. His thick, callused hand was the flat of a shovel against her cheek. She actually hit the ground on her behind.

Payne sucked in his breath. Fentris and Hunter started to slam forward, but Payne grabbed Hunter's arm and jerked him back. Fentris halted uncertainly. "Don't," Payne said sharply.

"He just hit her," Hunter snapped. "For no reason."

Wakje ignored the Tamrani. Payne glanced at his uncle and said softly, "There's always a reason."

"A reason to beat a lady?"

Payne just tightened his grip. "She's a scout out here, not a Sidisport lily. Do not interfere."

The wolfwalker stared up at her uncle in disbelief. Then her lips curled back and she flew to her feet.

Her eyes were blinded by lupine violence, and her mind was a tumult of snarls. Wakje waited until she was almost fully up. Then he slapped her again, reaching through her guard with the ease of a man who had spent five decades killing for a living.

This time, she half spun before hitting the ground like a rock.

It stunned her. Her uncle had shoved her more than hit her-he'd have broken her cheek if he'd used force-but her palms and knees were bruised from the roots and the small rocks on the side of the road.

Her cheek burned from his hand. She got to her feet more slowly.

Hunter's hand had snapped to his blade. Payne had an even harder grip on the Tamrani's arm. "Don't,"

he repeated sharply, softly. "It is a lesson."

"He could kill her," Hunter snapped.

"He'd never hurt her."

"Are you insane?"

Payne s.h.i.+fted so that he was between the man and his uncle. "And he could have his sword in and out of your gut three times before you could draw that blade."

"You coward." Hunter almost hissed the curse. "You're her brother."

"Shut up, Tamrani. You know nothing."

Hunter stared at Payne. The young man had not backed down. In fact, Payne's face had lost all semblance of youth and was now as hard as his uncle's. The young man's fingers were digging so hard into Hunter's bicep that he'd need a prybar to get himself loose. Hunter forced himself to still. This wasn't his family. It wasn't his fight. Not yet, he promised silently.

Wakje ignored them both. He stared at Nori. "Idiot." His voice flayed the grey from her mind like a knife. "Pag-brained idiot."

The curse shocked her even more than the slap. "Uncle Wakje?" She formed the words uncertainly.

Her voice was still too low, too close to a growl. He hardened his eyes. "I'd rather be uncle to the brain-dead egg of an a.s.sworm than to a p.i.s.s-minded bollusk like you." He pointed to the forest. "Track two armed men who have already targeted you. In heavy brush on an obvious game trail. With your eyes blinded by a G.o.dsd.a.m.n mutt of a wolf? By the spoiled curds of all nine h.e.l.ls, you show the judgment of an infant fresh from the womb."

Nori swallowed. She was beginning to understand.

"You've borrowed the few weapons you're carrying," Wakje went on in a hard, relentless voice. "You haven't reset your draw weight or rebalanced your blade, and like a boy green from the city heights, you left bow and blade behind-" He jerked a nod toward Kettre. "-as if your teeth and nails would do.

Then you stuck yourself on the barrier line like a tin can in a target match, and trusted your reflexes to duck. By all nine moons, you missed the one knife throw you did get off when the raider was right before you."

A spot of color appeared high in each of her cheeks.

"By the p.i.s.s of a dozen poolah, you can't even answer a question without reacting like an animal."

Her flush deepened around the pale marks of his hand.

He took a step forward until he towered over her like a brick wall. "Where is your trail kit?" he demanded harshly. "Your aid kit? Your rations and shelter? Where are your extra war bolts? By the seventh h.e.l.l, you've thrown away everything I've taught you, everything you've learned from birth, in less than twenty hours." He was so angry his heavy bones were lined and white, and his cold eyes were like axes over his cheeks.

Nori's face burned, but she couldn't look away. She could see the killer in him clearly. She'd always known it was there inside him. But this time, it was full-face, bared, and stark, and all she could do was bite her lip and take it.

He gestured sharply at her. "Is that what the wolf-bond does for you? Makes you brainless as a hairworm?"

"I'm sorry-"

"Sorry?" He cut off her apology like a cook chopping rot from a carrot. "Will sorry save your life? Will sorry save Payne if he followed you down that trail? Out here, it's you who is responsible for the both of you. When the h.e.l.l were you thinking of him? And wipe that sorry off your lips. Sorry never changed the act. It never grew back a hand or an arm. The best that sorry ever did was fill an open grave. By the spit of a two-headed lepa, I taught you better than that-"

The growl behind him made him whirl.

Danger, threat.

"No!" Nori cried out.

The yearling skidded to a halt and now poised, caught by the wolfwalker's cry. But his bristle was up and his fangs bared as he eyed the ex-raider like prey.

Wakje froze like ice.

The wolf edged closer like a bihwadi before it leaps.

Nori shoved herself between the wolf and her uncle.No, she snarled.Back down. Back off.

The yearling didn't budge.

Wakje stared at the wolf. In his fear, he didn't see its youth or the lack of breadth in its chest. He saw only his demon, but fear had always made him furious. His face tightened till the heavy bones now stood out like stone. "You call the animal to save you? You'd use the beast in your head instead of your brains-just like your mother. Just like Ember Dione." He said it deliberately, knowing it would sting.