Part 9 (1/2)
As they reined in, Nori started to slide off the dnu, but realized too late that her legs weren't yet working. NeLivek caught her arm as she sagged, then lowered her easily, holding her weight till she could stand. ”I've seen more than one ring-runner run his legs off,” he said easily as she managed her thanks.
He dismounted and shook out his own long legs. ”Give us a few minutes, and we'll have the gelbug wash warmed up. Hunter or I will give you a rubdown to keep you from cramping up.”
A few minutes later, she had settled the sling and pups into a crude nest in the darkest corner of the wayside. Nori hid a smile as Grey Vesh stalked onto the remnants of the s.h.i.+rt. The female glanced at Nori like a disdainful queen. Then the pack mother sniffed her pups, lay down, and waited while the two blind b.a.l.l.s of fur squirmed instantly toward her teats.
Nori stood and tried to ignore the gazes of the Test youths who watched from the corral. She rubbed her throbbing temples. There were too many eyes on her here, and not just from worlags and raiders.
She tried to reach out past the spikes pounding her brain. Payne, she thought, be patient. I'm alright.I'm alrightalright . . .
Rishte slunk to her side, and she opened her eyes. In spite of the headache, she smiled faintly. After barely ten hours, the yearling's voice was an easy grey, as soothing as her humming was to a cat. Vesh's was still salt on gla.s.s, and Helt was a coa.r.s.e file on her thoughts. The other wolves were like pumice on Nori's skin. To them, her voice must be similar, a raw foreignness that made them jittery and defensive.
And they weren't beyond showing it, she realized, as Vesh growled at her from the nest.
She carefully backed away. ”Come,” she murmured to Rishte.
He slunk a handspan after her into the light, but the sounds from Hunter's group made his ears flick constantly, and his teeth were partly bared.
She stopped and squatted down. She ignored the sense of her leaden limbs as his golden gaze met her violet eyes. Like a waterfall, wolf and human fell mentally toward each other again. They hit, clashed, then meshed out into a smoother weave. Nori reveled in that sense. Rishte was snarling, but it was like a purr, not a threat to her. She was snarling back, but it was a hum of pleasure, not just a projection of need.
He stretched his nose to touch her thigh. Her hand floated at the tips of his ruff. There was still tension.
With the other humans near, the instinct to leap, run, snap at her hand was like tw.a.n.ging a wire. At the same time, there was an eagerness to touch back, to snap and wrestle.
”We are bonding,” she breathed in wonder. She kept her voice soft and let it slow into the rough humming that came so naturally. ”Easy, grey. Pretty grey.” She met the golden gaze, sucked in a breath as his voice became abruptly clear, and let her hand descend toward his fur.
The yearling's growl lowered into an almost continuous sound. There was a sense of fire in her mind, like a blindness of heat and smoke. There were the human smells: sweat-scent, musk, a thick, cloying perfume, soap-scent and lotion, oils and warming food. In the back of her mind, she could hear her own breathing through the wolf's ears. Payne, she thought, you should feel this. Her hand lowered till finally, like the lightest breath of wind, she touched the tips of the fur.
Rishte bristled, but suffered it for the second time that night. Suffered it, and let Nori move her hand along the ruff, smoothing the rising scruff. Suffered the urge to bite and taste blood, and fought that to revel in the pressure of the petting like a two-month pup playing with Pack Mother. ”Yes,” Nori breathed. ”Just like that.” She s.h.i.+fted her fingers, and the young wolf lost the battle.
You are mine,Rishte snarled. He twisted to catch Nori's hand gently in his teeth.
Nori almost laughed at the possessiveness. She gripped the Grey One's muzzle, wrestling him until he jerked his head free. The creature snapped at her wrist, and though he didn't break the skin, he marked it clearly with indents.
Nori grinned. ”Possessiveness” was too simple a word for what was growing between them. Rishte now clung to the inside of her skull like a tick on the haunch of an eerin. She could not breathe without taking in air from lupine lungs, could not move without feeling lean, ropy muscles flex. Every movement of every leaf near the circle caught her eye so that the entire circle danced. Her brain was too full of vision.
Her mother's words came to her: ”It will ease. It will overwhelm you at first, but then you will sort out the grey.”
A bare scuff of leather on leather, and she whipped around in a fighting crouch, one hand protecting the vest pocket. Rishte was gone, s.n.a.t.c.hed up by shadow.
”Easy,” Hunter said quickly, freezing in place. ”It's just me.”
Nori slowly dropped her hands and sank back on her heels.
He kept his eyes on her face. ”I'll rub down your legs,” he offered. ”Rocknight Styne's daughter, Lispeth, will help wash the scratches. In the meantime-” He held out a bundle, a carving knife, and a blank message stick.
She nodded her thanks, then slashed a quick message into the soft wood: all well; back after dawn; Black Wolf. She could have written her terse note on paper, but wood was more durable. If the message had to be left in a cairn, better it was wood. Beetles ate paper like candy, but wouldn't touch wood for ninans.
She finished as voices rose behind them, and Hunter glanced back at the Test youths. ”They're choosing a rider,” he explained dryly.
Nori kept a straight face as she handed back the knife. ”A difficult decision.”
He snorted. ”Three days on the road, and they have yet to do any duty, including care for their own dnu.
I caught them paying a couple of cozar boys to do it for them at the last two camping circles.”
Nori's lips twitched. ”There is a simple solution to that. Let them go a day on foot in their fancy riding boots.”
He chuckled. ”Now, that's something I want getting back to my mother, that I made her darlings walk.”
”Why you?” she asked. It wasn't as idle a question as it sounded. He was too comfortable with his wealth to be riding guard for a cozar.
”One of them-that one, with the sorry mop of hair-is a cousin of some sort, according to my mother.
The son of my grandmother's half sister's daughter.” Or was it her aunt's half sister's cousin? He shook his head. ”The others belong to my mother's friends.” He wasn't about to leave them unsupervised, not with a shapely cozar girl trying just about every trick he'd ever seen to get up in the saddle behind both Nefsky and Vidon. He'd bless the moons nine times over when they reached Shockton and he could turn them over to the martial masters. Nine more days with those spoiled youths and he'd be ready to kill someone. ”You should eat,” he said abruptly.
She tapped the stick. ”This first, if you're willing.”
He nodded. As they approached the argument, he narrowed his green eyes and cut in, ”Vidon, Eteli, what's the problem?”
”We rode all day,” Vidon returned sharply. ”And we're already unsaddled. Besides, she's cozar. One of the cozar should take it.”
”They'd be more polite about it,” neLivek said mildly from the side where he was currying his own dnu.
Two of the youths flushed, but Vidon gave thechovas a dirty look.
”We're trying to decide how to cast lots,” Hunter's cousin explained defensively.
A blond youth had been studying Nori as she approached, and something flickered across his face as he caught his first real look at her. But his voice was diffident as he said, ”h.e.l.ls, if it's that much of a burden, I'll do it.” He stepped toward the wolfwalker and held out his hand.
Nori looked into his steady blue eyes. She didn't know she'd started to s.h.i.+ft into a fighting stance until Hunter's tanned hand closed over hers. The shock of his warm, callused skin made her jerk back.
Hunter firmly slipped the stick from her grip and handed it to the ring-runner. ”Still jumpy?” he murmured into her ear.
The familiarity made her yank away. She stopped, let out her breath, and stepped back more casually, only then realizing her other hand was on the vest pocket again. She dropped it abruptly.
There was a knowing look in the young man's eyes as he lashed the stick onto his belt. ”The circle below the Tendan Ridge hub, right?”
”Aye.” NeLivek answered for her as he handed up the young man's bow. ”You don't want a riding partner?”
The youth grinned as he vaulted onto his dnu. ”Don't need one onDeepening Road , and I won't be riding the ridge route. Duty rider will take this on.”
”Ride safe, then,” neLivek told him.
”With the moons.” He spurred out of the circle.
Nori stared after him. NeLivek took the rest of the youths back to the fireside, but a slender man, the one dressed even better than Hunter, gave her a thoughtful look as he caught her expression. ”What is it?”
She shook her head, and Hunter paused to study her, too. She said uneasily, ”He's not as young as the rest of them.”
On her other side, Hunter snorted. ”You mean he's not as spoiled.”