collar. Free and safe, he’d curled tight against the cold –
sleeping lightly, dreaming of thirst and hunger as a thin
veil of clouds came from the east to hide the stars.
Now the shadows had softer edges and the darkness
was deeper. The wind told him that water was no great
distance away – clean and cold by the smell; by the sound,
no more than a streamlet. It would be enough to provide
thirst’s ease. And there was another scent, not close yet,
only faintly woven into night, but the wolf knew it –
human-scent, burnt meat and smoke and old skins; sweat
and the light, sweet odor of flesh; running beneath that,
the warm smell of blood; over it all, the tang of fear, sharp
and enticing on the cold night air. He’d seen this young
female not long ago, and he had the mark of her steel fang
on him. Hers was the least of his wounds, for she’d been
distracted by fear and not very strong.
With his lean god for company, the wolf rose stiffly
from his warm nest.
*****
Una knelt to examine the dark blot marking the faded
earth of the deer trail, and by the thin light of the moons
saw that it was no more than shadow. Cold wind blew
steadily from the east, carried the smell of a morning
snow. Una shivered and got to her feet. She’d not seen a
blood-mark or the imprints of the wolf’s limping passage
for some time now, but the last real sign had been along
this game-trail, a path no more than a faint, wandering line
to show where deer passed between high-reaching trees in
their foraging. Lacking a better choice, Una continued
along the path.
The wolf had not proven as easy to track as she’d
thought, and now she wondered whether she’d ever find
him. She wondered, too, whether it would turn out that the
beast found her, or was even now stalking behind. She
tried not to think about that. All she needed was a clear
shot. She’d put plenty of arrows through the straw-butt,
she could put an arrow through a wolf. She could free
Thorne. She could free them all. But she had little
confidence ruling her thoughts, and so, her attention was
focused behind her rather than in front when the deer trail
ended abruptly at the muddy verge of a shallow stream.
Una and the wolf saw each other at the same moment,
and she knew – as prey knows in its bones – that she might
have time to nock an arrow to string, but she wasn’t going
to have time to let the bolt fly.
*****
Guarinn tried to maintain a narrow focus, to shut
down all thinking and track like an animal, using only
sight and scent and hearing. He measured his success by
the nearness of dead voices. At best, the haunting dead
were never wholly gone, only banished to a distance he
could endure. The protection Roulant had shown him was
working, but only just. How fast would the Spoiler’s trap
catch them if they came upon the wolf?
Soft – a whisper shivering across the night – Guarinn
heard the rattle of brush. He stopped, keeping his hands
fisted and well away from the axe in his belt while he
waited to hear the sound again.
“The wind,” Roulant said, low.
Guarinn didn’t think so. That one soft rattle had been a
discordant note. When the sound came again, Guarinn
knew it wasn’t wind-crafted. Nor was it soft now.
Something was running through the brush.
“It’s Una!” Roulant cried and bolted past Guarinn.
She wasn’t alone. Like a dark echo, something else
came crashing through the brush behind her.
Fleet, eyes huge as a hunted doe’s, Una burst through
the brush, frantically trying to nock arrow to bow as she
ran. She was having little luck, and even at a distance
Guarinn saw her hands shaking, fumbling uselessly at
shaft and string.
“Una,” Roulant shouted. “Here!”
Seeing them for the first time, she redoubled her
speed. Relief and joy and – last – panic marked her face
when her foot turned on a stone and she fell hard to the