Part 5 (1/2)

There was a quiet belch from the man beside her, and Payne glanced across. Ed Proving had his bow tip balanced on his toe, a quiver of light arrows at hand. The string of wing feathers strung across the front panel swung hypnotically by his knees. The man glanced at Payne, lifted his flask, and, as Payne watched expressionlessly, took a sip, held it a moment, then swallowed. Even with the light breeze, his breath stank of parskea.

Payne kept his voice steady. ”I've called the search. If you're willing, I could use a tracker.”

Ed Proving didn't answer immediately. Instead, he raised his bow and took aim at a dark shadow that angled out from the trees directly for his wagon. He let the light arrow fly. There was a faint squawk, and the palt veered off. The man grunted in satisfaction.

Payne waited, but an outrider cantered up and said Kettre had sent her back. ”Fifteen minutes,” Payne told the woman curtly. ”We'll meet at the end of the line.” The cozar woman nodded and trotted away, and he turned back to the tracker.

Ed Proving looked after the cozar. ”She's steady. Doesn't know the first thing about tracking, but she's got good eyes. She can learn.”

”Good eyes are all I've asked of her.” He got a warning look from One For Brandy and tried to make his voice less sharp. ”I'm grateful for her help.”

”She won't ride with your uncles.”

”Few will,” Payne said dryly. ”That's why we'll be in two teams. Wakje and Ki and you, if you're willing, will ride out with me from Four Forks and track Nori north. Kettre will take the others and work the frontage trail back from one of the crossings, in case she's gone ahead.”

”Won't be able to start till morning.”

”We can get to the trailhead tonight.”

Proving didn't look at him. ”There are other trackers among thechovas. ”

”Aye. I'll be speaking to them, too. But from what I hear, it's you I want with me.”

”From what you hear?” The older man laughed outright, swirled the flask deliberately, then lifted it again, watching Payne over the rim as he sipped. ”Been a while since I've been out.”

Payne smiled sardonically. ”Brean recommended you.”

”You must have made an impression on him.” Proving belched again, a soft sound nearly lost among the wagons, and tucked the flask under his thigh. He raised his bow as a pair of palts flew across the road ahead, then lowered it as he lost the shot. ”Why the rush to call the search? You worried about your Test, boy?” Payne tried not to bristle, and Proving added, ”It's only been eight hours. She can't have gone more than fifteen kays, two dozen by dawn on foot. Trains like this move slowly. We could take five days to find her, and you could still reach Shockton on dnu.”

Payne snorted. ”Sure, by riding four days straight. I'd be the only one at Test with a b.u.t.t shaped like a saddle. Payne Saddleb.u.t.t. Now there's the rep-name I want.”

Proving chuckled, then gave him a surprisingly sharp look in the faint light. ”You're d.a.m.n protective of that girl. Overprotective, some say. You ever cry wolf?”

”No.” The word came out flat and hard. Payne forced his jaw to relax. ”Eight hours gone without a word, near worlag hunting grounds?”

Proving fingered his bow. The boy was right: the girl could be hurt or worse. In a bad-luck spring like this one, she could be cut off from the road by a dozen things, from flooded creeks to poolah. ”There are old raider haunts back in there, hunter meadows, dozens of loop trails, and Black Wolf doesn't usually leave much sign. You'll need the luck of the moons to find her.” He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and studied the darkened canopy for wing shadow. Then he reached for his flask again.

”Help me make that luck,” Payne said softly.

Proving's hand arrested, then he took a deliberate sip, got to his feet, stretched stiffly, and disappeared into his wagon.

Payne glanced at One For Brandy.

”He'll go,” she replied to his unspoken question.

Payne's voice was flatter than he thought as he thanked her and reined away.

VII.

Run fast, for night runs with you -Randonnen saying Nori ran loosely now, well into her second wind.

Wolfwalker?Rishte called out faintly as the wolves picked up her scent.

They were moving fast, and in spite of her fear, in spite of the need for safety, a flash of joy hit with his voice. The bond she had tasted so faintly through other wolfwalkers, it could be hers now if she wanted it. The grey was almost leaping at her, st.i.tching itself into her mind.

The yearling caught sight of her and howled.Wolfwalker!

She grinned ferally. It wasn't the t.i.tleWolfwalker that she heard from him, but an image of the Noriana half of the NoriRishte bond. It was a pulsing thought, filled with a humanwolf power. It was tentative, but it was feeding on their fear and urgency like a starving man on bread. Every kay the two of them ran, the yearling's voice was stronger.

She sent her answer:The worlags should be crossing downstream by now.

The rest of the wolves flooded out of the trees and turned to flank her. She tried to think as they ran.

With raiders, she'd have to go around the Bell Rocks camp and hope she wasn't seen. It would add time, too much time. The worlags would not be limited to those trails. They could cut right across to get her. She needed a distraction. The wolves, perhaps, to rouse the raiders? Or something else instead? She gripped that thought. Go around or . . . go through? They were raiders, after all. Men who murdered, maimed, enslaved.

Men like her uncles.

The thought hit with a harder fist. She couldn't turn on her own kind. But the thought remained. The men at the camp were raiders.

Still human, her mind whispered back. What right did she have to lead the worlags into them like a stampede over a sleeper? To let others be killed in her place? Her uncles had been raiders once, when they ran the counties with her father. Now they were better men, men with ideals and convictions, or at least men and women who lived within law. That last thought caught. The elders of the trial block might send raiders to death for murdering messengers, but Nori was not an elder.

Cold, slitted yellow eyes seemed to flicker in the back of her mind. Bile began to roil in her stomach, and her gut clenched hard to quell it. The men at Bell Rocks had murdered, even if they hadn't murdered her.

The wolves saw the trail clearly from corpse to copse, from ring-runner carca.s.s to raider. This close to the source, it was sharp in Rishte's mind. Death, fresh death, right under her feet, all the way up to Bell Rocks. Another wolf pack had traveled this way hours ago, fleeing the gathering worlags. The odors had clogged the packsong. Rishte growled his agreement, and Grey Vesh echoed it hard. The one thing a predator always knew was the scent of death on another.

The cubs,Vesh sent urgently.

Nori shook her head. The choice didn't matter. There were only two ways pastBell Rocks: around the raiders or through them. If the wolves had made a mistake, if they were wrong, they would tell her when they reached the camp. If the men were other scouts like her, she could still call out the warning and wake them to shoot at the worlags. If not, if the odors of torture and death were on their clothes and gear, if the kill sense was in their minds, then the men at the rocks were raiders. Killers. Murderers. Not her kind, not even like her uncles. Scavengers, like bihwadi.

She made her decision and felt her stomach twist. ”Moons forgive me,” she whispered.

Rishte didn't understand the guilt she tried to swallow, but her sense of purpose was clear. He raced ahead on the trail.

She figured her speed, the worlags' pace; the distance to the raiders. Not far. Not too far. Just two kays now. She could do that. Only two more kays to run.

Black trees rose out of blackened ground. Night did more than blind her: shadows taunted, branches grabbed. She used her own fear as leverage.

Speed. Urgency.

She hadn't realized that she'd slowed. She tried to pick up the pace again, but her legs were breathlessly numb. What strength she had caught from her rest by the creek was gone again like wind. She could use the bond to pull strength from the pack, her mother had told her once. But Nori wasn't yet bonded. The beginning of the bond was there, aye, between she and Rishte, but it was just a thread of grey. It took time to build the kind of link over which she could focus the grey. Time to learn to interpret the packsong, time she didn't have.

The wolves had no such problem. Rishte felt her need, felt the weakness in her legs and the threat to the pups. He howled into the pack. Grey Helt snarled back, and the wolves closed in around her. Grey energy surged. It hit and flushed through her body like angry blood that suddenly boils.

”Rishte,” she gasped. She didn't question why he'd done it. She simply ate the wolf pack's strength as a starving man sucks at a broth-soaked crust of bread.

A dip, an open stretch, a tangle of vines, a washout. The trail turned, this time south around a small, crumbling ridge. South, toward the worlags. In the wolves, tension spiked and Vesh snapped, and Nori put on speed. The trail would turn north again, but not for half a kay.

Hurry. The pups. The voices of the other wolves were a steady, blinding rhythm.