Storm runner, p.27
Storm Runner, page 27
Far away, the gray wolves’ hunger-lust grew. Even though she had closed her mind to the other wolves, the link through Hishn was still open, and Dion let herself revel in the feel of muscles bunching and stretching. For a moment, she was caught in the hunt. An old buck was cut from the herd, forced toward a thick, tangling stand of silverheart trees. Raking, slashing, at the haunches of the deer, the wolves lunged in. A female wolf leapt forward, dodging under the antlers and catching the deer on the throat. The buck screamed, staggering with her weight, and instantly, the other wolves were on his haunches, dragging him down. Dion blinked. She shuddered, closing her mind more firmly.
A kilometer later, they wound their way up the last switchback, urging the dnu over the branches that had fallen across the trail. It was obvious they were near the top. The treeline thinned; the sky opened. Dion was not sure how close they were to the main Slot Trail, but they would be within at least a hundred meters. One of the Gray Ones sniffed its way to the main trail before running off with the pack, and Dion, with the linked images still echoing in her head, knew she could find the main trail within minutes of achieving the ridgetop. From there, she should be able to see the Slot itself.
When they topped the rise, they halted, gazing at the entrance to the Slot. From where they stood, they could see the wide, open flange that marked the ancient place. The bermed mountain on either side rose up until it was cut off abruptly in a smooth plateau on top. Flattened like a trapezoid, the mountain was then split in two, with a wide opening that tapered into a narrow channel. It was as if the ancients had taken a knife and first topped the mountain, then cut down through it to make a smooth conduit to the other side. The channel’s opening had rounded lips that funneled into the three-sided cut, and in the center of it, a shallow groove deepened and narrowed as if to provide a guide for the ancients’ knife.
The Slot was old—as old as the first days of the ancients on this world. It was not unique; there were Slots in all the counties. Their flat tops were a constant reminder of the skyhooks the ancients had used to come down from the sky and return again to the stars. Unlike the domed buildings of the ancients, the Slot was not cursed with plague, but people still avoided the area as if just being near it would put one on the path to the moons.
Still, Dion gazed at it in wonder. Three times, she had seen the entrance to the Slot. Each time, seeing its scale against the mountain, she felt like a gnat. The opening in the mountainside did not look large until one remembered that it was a third as wide as the mountain itself. As they drew near, the sides of the Slot would begin to tower, stretching up along the mountain with a vertical rise impossible to comprehend in its sheerness.
The ancient road that wound up the bermed mountainside would take her two hours to climb. When she reached the top, she could crawl to the edge and look down and stare into the depths of that straight, smooth channel with the hair rising on the back of her neck and arms, and her braid like a spiked snake as the loose ends strove to push each other away. She could lie on that smooth, cool lip and gaze at the groove that sliced the floor of the Slot, and the hum of the ground would tickle her bones and bring an anxious shiver to her gut.
As she stared at the outer lips of the Slot, she calmed her stomach. Unlike the others who made the sign of the moons’ blessing surreptitiously near the Slot Trail, she had no fear of plague. She was herself immune. The inoculations she was developing would someday, she hoped, make all of Ariye safe from the deadly ancient plague. No, it was not sickness that brought such fear to her belly. It was the scale of the thing. Who could comprehend such might as it would take to shear the top off a mountain off? Who could imagine a channel through solid stone? This Slot was not worm-carved—it would have taken millennia to do it that way. The ancients had built their installations with the power of the stars, not the slow and solid strength of the earth.
“All right?” It was Rafe, his voice concerned, and Dion shook herself, glancing wryly at the other scout.
“It gets to me,” she admitted.
He nodded. “I’ve seen it a dozen times, and each time I swear I’ll never take the Slot Trail again, and each time I find myself drawn back.” He indicated the entrance with his head. “There is a power here that you find only around the sites of the ancients.”
Dion forced her gaze away from the view. With a sharp word, she urged her dnu on.
They wound their way up the side of the mountain, working along the cliff when it was bared by erosion, and plodding back on the earth trails in relief when the rocks were once again behind. A half hour passed, then an hour until they reached the entrance to the Slot, and they had to soothe the increasingly skittish dnu to force them onto the high trail. This close, the lip of the Slot extended half a kilometer down and three kilometers across. The road on which they traveled ran up to the very edge, where the bedrock suddenly ended and the smooth Slot began.
Up, and up again, they directed their dnu. Dion stood in the saddle, leaning forward so that she almost lay along the dnu’s neck, clicking and chirruping to urge it on. Another half hour, and she sighted the trail marker that indicated the turnoff for the other scouts’ camp. It was not quite at the top of the Slot. Instead, tucked below an overhung section of the cliff, it could not be easily seen from above, the rocks and canopy of trees hiding the corral.
Dion dismounted. As she glanced around, she felt a pang of worry cut into her guts. Sobovi or one of the others was supposed to meet them so that the dnu were cared for while they were gone. So where were they? She looked more carefully at the camp. To the right, along the side of the mountain, a line of tiny caves held waterproof packages. Ahead of her, the corral was tucked against the cliff and formed, as the other forest corrals, out of the owlbark-tree branches. This camp had been used years earlier, when people still traveled between the counties. In the last several years, it had become overgrown, so that now, as Dion regarded the corral dubiously, it was more jungle than clearing. Still, she and Rafe had to leave their dnu somewhere. At least here there was grass enough in the corral to feed them for a day. By then Aranur would arrive.
Leading her mount by the reins, she found the corral opening and urged the dnu inside. Once there, she removed the saddle and blanket, took the bridle, and slapped the creature on its rump to indicate that it could feed at leisure. When she finished, Rafe moved his mount up and duplicated her motions.
The two looked around warily. “Nobody home,” Rafe said softly.
She picked at one of the caves, noting that the package inside had not been disturbed. “No sign of a struggle. They were not forced away.”
“Then where are they?”
She shrugged. “We haven’t time to wait. Leave a ring message at the corral. They will see it when they return.”
He nodded. Pulling out a small cylinder of wood from one of his belt pouches, he began carving a design. In the meantime, Dion took their scant packs from the backs of the saddles. Since they were not planning to spend much time in Bilocctar, they would travel light: enough dried food to last the first day, and then only an emergency ration; no sleeping bag—rather, a thin blanket that could double as a cloak if the weather turned foul; one bota bag apiece for water; Dion’s herb pouches; and Rafe’s trail gear. They did not need more; they would sleep little, and eat on the run on their way back. By the time she finished, Rafe’s message was carved, and he was staining the wood with the tiny package of oil crayons he carried. He glanced at her, holding it up for examination.
“Nice,” Dion commented. The design was simple and bold, with quick slashes to indicate travel along the trails—such as the shortcut to the Slot—and smooth lines for the ease of the trip so far. The colors he added spoke of the weather, blending over the carving so that the whole stick, no longer than Dion’s middle finger, was an eloquent statement of the journey.
He held it up. “Bet you wish you could make a message ring like this.”
She grinned, touching her healer’s band. “The only carving I’m good at is body carving, and you should be glad that I’m not needed here for that.”
“Amen.” Rafe got to his feet, picked two flexible blades of grass, and tied the message ring onto the upper corral post by the gate. When Sobovi and the other scouts returned, they would read the message and, if necessary, contact Dion through Hishn. The contact would be weak, Dion had warned, since it would go through two wolves and cross far too many kilometers, but in an emergency, it would do. Satisfied, the scout regarded his handiwork, then slung his pack on and followed Dion out of the camp again. They scrambled up where the dnu had taken long steps and, when they reached the main path, turned back onto it, making their way on toward the top of the Slot.
In Bilocctar, a few ninans before…
Usu stared at the aftermath of the battle. Another raid. Six more slavers dead. A goodly store of cloth and wood for buildings, but little food.
The woman he had named the Siker was still bent among the bodies, moving from one raider to the next while some of the resistance fighters held down the struggling forms, waiting for her to kill them. She had been with them for—what? Four ninans? Five? She never spoke. Sometimes Usu forgot she was there, but the raiders did not, he reminded himself with grim satisfaction. Already her name was feared among them. It had been a good strategy to keep her with his group. He did not worry about losing her in the battles—unable to fight, she stayed back until the first volleys flew. When she did walk out, it was as if the moons kept the blades from her skin. The only time he had seen her wounded was when one of Usu’s men could not hold back the raider who snatched a knife and sliced shallowly across her ribs. The Siker did not seem to notice. She just waited patiently for Usu’s man to disarm the raider, then cut his throat as calmly as if she were sitting down to tea.
Usu did not think the Siker was dumb—she crooned at night sometimes, rocking herself back and forth, her hands clenching air as if they were still tied in the hair of that head. Her eyes were no longer blank, but her face was still. No emotion played there.
It had taken days for the swelling to go down from her face after they found her. Blein said that the siker barbs that had punctured her face had missed the eye pouch, and that the woman had the use of the sight in that eye. Blue eyes. Beautiful, Usu would have said, but blank like a mooksim stone in the light.
A kinee bird called, and Usu started, shutting off his wanderings at the bird’s irritated warble. He gestured for the supplies to be sorted. What they could not themselves use, they carted back to the caves and cached. Nothing was burned or thrown away. Everything they took from the raiders represented work that someone—their brothers, their daughters—had suffered for. Everything would be saved.
One of the men who had been a trader checked the lashings of the supplies on one of the wagons. He looked over his shoulder, catching Usu’s attention. “Which cache?”
Usu bit his lip. “Gray Rocks,” he decided. “It is dryest, and we will want to keep the moisture from this load. If it soaks, it will take a year to dry out again, and we will need it to rebuild.”
The other man nodded. He climbed up to the driver’s seat and took the reins, clucking to the dnu, urging them to turn around. Usu stared after him. When the moons gave their lands back from the raiders, when they began to rebuild their homes, they would do it from these tools, these woods. When they were free…
It took a full twenty minutes for Dion and Rafe to reach the summit. The sudden exit from the trees took the wolfwalker’s breath away, and she gazed out at the expanse below her. There was no fear here. The height was not exposed the way a cliff was: at her feet, the treetops stretched out like a gentle green slope. The lepa that circled the sky had disappeared, and, catching her breath, Dion glanced toward the Slot. With the raptors no longer hunting, she and Rafe would not need to worry about an attack from above. Instead, she thought wryly, they could worry about the place of the ancients.
A kilometer away, the edge of the Slot severed the mountain in half. It was barely visible, but she could feel her hair prickling on her skin. She walked slowly toward the dropoff, dodging the loose rocks and clumps of shrubs. The wind, cold and cutting across the flattened mountain, reached into her bones with the hum of the Slot, and she shivered. Her sword and knife edged slowly toward each other on her belt. Beside her, Rafe grimaced. Both of them pulled their jerkins closed as another gust blasted across the plateau and brought a pale color to their once-flushed cheeks.
“Cold as a digger’s hell,” he muttered.
Dion did not ask if he wanted to skip looking at the Slot. Like the waterfall at the Devil’s Knee, one could not help being drawn to the spot.
“Moons make my passage safe and sure,” she whispered as the far wall of the Slot came into view. Her sword and knife were pressed against each other as if lightly glued. They tugged toward the ground, making Dion sway in the wind until she dropped to her knees. When she reached the place where the soil and growth gave way to the smooth material of the ancients, the tip of her scabbard was drawn to the smooth, magnetic lip like a moth to the flame. In her quiver, her arrows bunched together, their steel points an awkward bulge against her back. She would have to crawl from here to the rim. Rafe was already easing forward, but Dion did not hurry. As the expanse of the Slot became visible, the fist that gripped her gut tightened, and she quelled her shiver with difficulty. She crawled forward another body length, closing her eyes for a moment as she centered herself on the cliff. In her bones, the hum grew until it seemed to vibrate the very air around her. Where her tunic rasped against her arms, the hairs tickled, rising against the cloth, and Dion caught her breath, forcing herself closer. When she reached Rafe, she dropped to her belly and wormed forward until the channel lay open before her. She had to fight the tendency of her blades to remain vertical.
“Gods,” she breathed.
“And more gods,” Rafe added. “Look at it. Think of the minds that created this.”
She nodded, staring down. From where they lay, the distance to the other side of the Slot was almost three kilometers. It was four wide at the outer lip, and it tapered to no more than forty meters across at its narrowmost point. The two sides of the taper blended into a single box, glistening in the daylight, with only a thin line of light—where it opened to the other side of the mountain—splitting it vertically.
Eventually, she shook herself out of her reverie and eased her way back. When they were well away, they exchanged a long, wondering look, shaking their heads at the massive channel. It was not easy to put its vision from their minds. As they gathered their packs and shook out their tangled arrows, they found their gazes drawn back. Finally, they hiked away, the hum in Dion’s bones fading so that only the itchy sense of her hairs on her arms reminded her that she stood on a place of the ancients.
She crossed to the edge of the cliff, standing on its rim. The clutch of her vertigo swayed her for a second, then settled into a tight grip on her guts. She fought it, stepping up on a rock ledge that hung out into space.
“You look like a goat,” Rafe said with a chuckle, “who is viewing his favorite weed on a far-distant slope.”
“If I look like a goat,” she laughed, “then you—” Her voice broke off, her eyes widened, and she cursed. “Moonworms!” She flung herself on her belly, crawling forward until she could see over the edge. Rafe was instantly down beside her.
“My gods…”
She nodded. “Look at that camp. Right below us—a hundred meters.”
“Raiders,” he breathed, staring at the sight. “Moons, but we could spit on them if the wind would not carry it away before it hit.”
“You can throw spit,” Dion muttered. “I’d rather throw a rock.”
“Or several rocks,” Rafe agreed. “How many do you think there are?”
She shook her head. “Fifty-five? Sixty? A hundred or more?”
“Did they see you?”
“I don’t know.”
They were silent for a moment. “There—to the west.” Rafe pointed. “A wagon is rolling in. Maybe supplies?” he guessed.
“Or more building materials. Those are serious cabins. If they were any more sturdy,” she added slowly, “they would be forts.”
Rafe let his breath out. “Forts. And look at their location.”
“Right on the ford of the Phye.” She scanned the river. “No one can cross without them knowing about it. That one camp just closed off the north border like a cork in a bottle.”
“Except for the Slot itself.”
“The Slot…” Her voice trailed away, and as one, she and Rafe glanced behind them.
There was no one there. With slightly embarrassed smiles, they returned their gaze to the camp.
“So how,” Dion voiced her worry slowly, “do we bring the Bilocctar wolves and their wolfwalkers across?”
“Over the Slot?” Rafe sounded dubious.
Dion shook her head. “I can’t see myself running full-tilt up this trail, can you? And even if we did take the Slot Trail, the raiders would know it. It wouldn’t take them more than a few hours to set up an ambush on the other side where we would have to come down. We would walk right into their arms again.”
“Moonworms,” he muttered. “It was not a complicated plan. How could this one thing—this camp—make it impossible?”
Dion laughed softly. “Maybe it doesn’t.” She pointed at a snag that was bobbing down the river; it ground to a halt a hundred meters south of the ford, turning slowly as its rootball stuck and its trunk fetched up between two large rocks. There was other debris cluttering that part of the river, but this one was larger, and its bulk made a bridge that stretched three-quarters of the way across the race.
Rafe grinned. “Do the moons always bless you this way?”
“Can’t you see my ancestry in my eyes?” She batted limpid violet eyes at him, and he chuckled.
“If you are a moonwarrior, I am a dnu.” He shook his head. “But that snag is luck itself. If it holds…”
