Dion's voice caught his attention finally, and he looked up.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “We'd like to bathe,” she said pointedly, motioning with her chin at Namina and Shilia. The two girls had already dropped their burdens and were tugging their boots off.

  His face dripping, Aranur looked around while Dion un­buckled her sword and lay the weapon on the ground next to her bow. She was careful of her hand, but he knew that she would not hesitate to pick up either weapon if there was need. “Where's Gamon and Rhom and Tyrel?” He asked.

  Dion pointed downstream.

  He nodded and started off.

  “Don't you think you'll be wanting this before you get too far downstream?”

  He accepted his pack from the wolf­walker with a grin. “Sorry.”

  “I'll bet,” Shilia whispered.

  He raised his eyebrow, and his sister giggled.

  “Get out of here,” she ordered peremptorily. “And don't come back till you're cleaner.”

  He grinned. “That'll take awhile.”

  “And don't bring Rhom with you until he looks like himself again.”

  He made a mock bow. “As you command, my sister.” He glanced at Dion as he slung his pack back over his aching shoulders. “Shilia, Namina, don't forget to put on Tyrel's extra tunics when you're done bathing. They're in your packs.”

  “You mean we might see people by tonight?”

  “If we're lucky,” he returned. “Maybe even find a farm­house.”

  Shilia's eyes widened. “Does this mean we could actually sleep on a bed? Eat off real plates? Shower?”

  He grinned before striding out of sight. “If you need any­thing, just yell.”

  An hour later, the girls looked even more like waifs than Dion, dwarfed as they were by their borrowed clothes. Aranur stared at them. But Shilia just laughed and braided her hair up under a cap.

  “Come on, Namina,” Shilia said ruefully. “Let's hide your hair, too.”

  “I don't want bugs getting in it,” the other girl protested fretfully as Shilia went to unbraid her hair first before braiding it to fit under the warcap.

  Shilia forced a smile. “No bugs,” she promised.

  Namina did not smile back. She looked thinner, Aranur realized. And the shadows under her eyes had not lessened. He watched his young cousin for several minutes before touching Dion on her arm.

  “What is it?” the wolf­walker asked, glancing up, one hand full of short green twigs, and the other holding a soft brown pouch.

  He motioned his head. “It's Namina.”

  She set the pouch back in her pack. “Yes?”

  “Isn't there anything you can do for her? Say to her?”

  “Something that hasn't already been said?” Dion shook her head and carefully wrapped the twigs in a fat yellow leaf, not looking up until she was done. Then she sat back on her heels and looked up at him soberly. “She's carrying a lot of guilt, Aranur.”

  “If it's about the trail—”

  Dion shook her head. “Namina knows what she did on the trail, but that's only a small part of what's bothering her. The death of her sister is what eats at her so badly, Aranur. And everything about that has already been said.”

  “I can't let her continue like this. There has got to be some­thing you can give her to make her right again.”

  “Guilt and loss cannot be treated with pills or lotions.”

  “What about Ovousibas?” he returned. “You've done mir­acles of healing with that. Why can't you do it again?”

  Dion shook her head again. “That was a healing of physical, not emotional wounds. It's time Namina needs now, not mir­acles or orders or advice.”

  “No.” He rejected her statement flatly. “She's had time. Three ninans—twenty-seven days—and she still won't look any of us in the eye. She needs help, Dion. The help of a healer.”

  Dion frowned. “Looking into someone's mind is not the same as healing someone's body, Aranur. Namina and her sister were close the way Rhom and I are close. The way you and Shilia are close.” Dion shook her head. “When Namina lost her sister, she needed to be surrounded by familiar things, not strange valleys and glacier worms and poison masa and swamps. She's feeling lost and alone, Aranur. And she's on the edge. Don't judge her by Shilia or Tyrel—she's not like them. She's terrified by the death and the pain she's seen.”

  He stared down at the healer, his gray eyes cold. “She is the daughter of the Lloroi of Ramaj Ariye. She cannot escape life by ignoring it.”

  “You're wrong, Aranur.” Dion gestured with her chin. To their left, Namina sat gazing blankly into the distance while Shilia fussed at her hair under the warcap. “Look at her. She's already escaped. She's so withdrawn that none of us have reached her in a month.”

  The tall man's eyes narrowed. “I won't allow it, Dion. She has no right—'' He took a step toward Namina as if to catch the girl and shake her till she snapped out of it.

  But Dion caught his arm. “She's young, Aranur. Young and inexperienced. Listen to me.” She forced him to look at her.

  “Namina was kidnapped by raiders. She watched two of her own friends die during the raid. She was sold into a harem, rescued, caught again, freed once more, and then forced to watch her sister die under another slaver's blade. Yes, we escaped from Red Harbor, but being shipwrecked wasn't a calming experience either, nor was crossing the glaciers or facing the plague at the dome of the ancients. Namina had no experience to prepare her for facing those things. She was taken from a sheltered village and thrown headfirst into a world of blood and pain and death. How do you expect her to feel? How do you think she should react? You can't expect her to embrace the things you've shown her?”

  “I expect her to act like who she is,” he returned coldly.

  “And just who do you think she is?” Dion returned, her voice low but heated. “She's the daughter of the Lloroi of Ariye, yes, but have you ever understood what that means? Look at her. She's never had close girlfriends—her station in Ramaj Ariye prevented that. And she hasn't had a boyfriend in her life—they're all terrified of her father. Her only close friend was her sister. When that raider's sword fell, both her family and her only friend died, and she can't see beyond that. And so you, Aranur, have to look beyond what you expect her to be and let her be what she is.”

  “It's Namina who needs your advice, not me,” he returned coldly.

  But Dion stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “You deny your own grief, Aranur. It's how you deal with what you can't handle.” He opened his mouth to reject that, but she cut him off. “Tyrel,” she continued, “he recreates his grief with his eyes every day, every hour, every minute. And Gamon wears his like a heavy cloak. Your own sister Shilia hides her pain and smiles and pretends she is brave, because that's what she sees her brother doing. And Namina—”

  Aranur stared at her. “Namina withdraws.”

  “Yes.” Dion said it forcefully, as if by her voice alone she could convince him. “Namina escapes to her memories. The only place where her sister is still alive. Aranur, don't you see-—”

  The tall man's face closed off, and Dion looked at him for a long moment.

  “Can you even admit to yourself how you felt as a child when you saw your parents die?” she asked softly.

  The question startled him.

  “Do you remember?”

  He nodded slowly, his face still and his gray eyes boring holes in hers, but seeing only his own memories, not the woman he stood before.

  “Then think of that,” she said softly. “Remember the way you felt at their deaths, and give Namina time.”

  Wordlessly, Aranur stared at her. Finally he turned and started slowly—almost like a blind man—down the trail.

  Dion, with a glance at the others, fell in behind him, as the rest of the group dragged themselves to their feet and straggled after them.

  The land began to roll into low hills covered with thicker stands of leafy trees, their greenery rustling continuously in the breeze that brushed the thicker clouds across the cooling sky. The sounds of the branches rubbing gently against one another kept Aranur company as he strode with that bleak look of silence on his face. He paid little attention to the wind. It would rain later, he knew, but not for several hours. The dark thunderheads that clumped over the mountains and billowed across the gray sky would take a long time to reach the far side of the valley in which they trekked.

  As the ground grew drier, the stands of silverheart and black­thorn gave way to piletrees, the trees that dropped their branches each spring and fall to build up soft hills that sheltered the trunks and roots from summer drought and winter freezes. So they trudged raggedly among the trees, ducking under the dead lower branches that caught in their hair and broke off, brittle and dry, while Aranur paused every few minutes to take a new sighting and put them back on course.

  Suddenly the ground at his feet erupted. A brown, spotted shape exploded from the dug-out hollow, and a badgerbear leapt out in an explosion of flying leaves and dirt. The man's startled heart froze at the bloodcurdling scream even as his arms fairly ripped his sword from its scabbard. A black hole, ringed by curving yellow teeth, led down the badgerbear's gullet in the middle of its red, dripping maw, and Aranur's instant thought was that he would be suffocated and torn apart by its brown spreading fur and sharp yellow fangs. Namina screamed as Gamon shoved her away from him and the crea­ture. The old man shouted, and then two long knives sliced through the beast's flattened neck, jarring it midair. As it fell frantically toward him, Aranur stabbed the hard shell of bone in the badgerbear's midsection that cased its brain, the creature's claws catching on his mail and jerking him forward with tremendous force. He yanked himself free. As the beast shud­dered, thrashing to the earth, he jumped back, careful to stay out of reach of its death throes.

  “Aranur!” Shilia darted past Rhom, who let go of her when he saw that the bear was no longer a threat. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, though I just about jumped out of my leggings for a moment. Thanks, Rhom, Gamon.”

  At the back of the line, Tyrel had his arms around Namina, but she thrust him away.

  “I want to go home,” she said tightly. “I don't want to follow game trails and sleep on the ground and cook on open fires and—'' her voice was rising ''—eat raw roots and dried jerky and get b-blisters on my feet and d-dirty hands and there was a—” Her voice shook and rose even further in pitch. “—a gellbug in my blank-ket this morning and the g-ground comes apart when you step-p on it and horrib-ble creatures jump out to eat you an-nd—” She sat down on the ground and put her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Aranur looked down at his sword, which dripped blood and an entrail that clung grossly to the stained steel, and absently wiped the blade. He stared at her for a moment. “I'm sorry, Namina,” he said finally.

  Tyrel, his young face straight and grim at his sister's out­burst, let her cry for a moment, then turned away, reshouldered his pack, and hefted hers to his thin shoulders, too. Rhom lifted the girl to her feet and placed his hand under her arm to steady her shaking body, but she shrugged him off, the tears running down her dirty face, and her hands, equally filthy, wiping ineffectually at them as she stumbled after her brother. After a while, she took her pack back from Tyrel without a word and followed him down the trail.

  From the front of the ragged line, the old man glanced back. “Aranur—” he started.

  “We'll stay at a farm tonight if we can find one,” Aranur answered flatly. “An empty field if not.”

  Gamon dropped it. Aranur must have been twice as tired as the rest of them, but he was still driving himself like a demon, hunting twice as much trail, carrying twice as much weight, and the moons knew that the lean meals they had had through the mountains had given Aranur little enough energy to work with. As if he thought he could lead them like shadows out from under Zentsis's reach and back to the peace of Ariye, the old man thought to himself. He did not worry about Rhom; the young blacksmith was as tough as they came and, he reminded himself, knew when and how to take a break. But of the rest of them, Tyrel was still gaunt from the fever that had held him too long in its grip, Shilia had not the strength to begin with, and Gamon was too old to push his body like the younger men. Aranur was driving them all near collapse, especially the healer and her wolf, sending them to scout before and behind them as they hiked. Gamon looked after Dion for a long moment. Each day they struggled through the mountains left the violet-eyed woman ever more lean and dangerous, as if she became closer to her wolf with each passing hour. She would stand and wait sometimes for long moments, saying nothing, just sensing the trails through the Gray One, and then, when someone moved, she would start, realizing she was on the path with other peo­ple. He wondered how much she relied on the wolf now, and how much she relied on herself. He shook his head, rubbing his knee where it had begun to ache more constantly than before. It would be a long way home.

  An hour later, when the sky sent its drizzle down to dampen their spirits as well as their skins, and twilight began to seep through the trees and strip the color from the woods, they straggled out of the last thick stand of forest and climbed the rude fence of a farmer's unused pasture. In the distance, they could see the tiny lights of a small house whose windows winked from the top of a low hill. From the edge of the trees, Aranur motioned wearily at the dwelling, pointing out the lights to Namina. The tiny glows were the cheeriest thing they had seen in a long time, and he could only thank the nine moons for seeing the group through the mountains safely.

  Gray grass lay clumped in the fallow field, and the deep shadows that were flung from the tiny knolls left by dnu drop­pings turned the pasture into a patchwork of black-and-gray holes. The lean fighter strode a few steps, sank into the damp ground, stumbled over a harder knoll of dirt, and caught him­self before swearing.

  The Gray One at Dion's side nudged her hand, and the wolf­walker pointed toward a deep ditch that cut across the grass from northeast to southwest. “Fresh mud. Hishn can smell it from here.”

  “Probably just irrigation.”

  She nodded and would have continued, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “Dion, Hishn can't go up to the house with us.”

  She shrugged. “It's dark, Aranur. I'll send her away when we get close.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “All right.” His muscles ached, his stomach cramped with hunger that refused to be relieved by the jerky he chewed continuously, and his pack weighed twice as much as it had that morning. Although he knew he should tell Dion to send the wolf away now, he was just too tired to argue. She was right: it was near dark, and who was there to see? So they trudged across the field, their feet slipping in the wet earth and the misty rain dripping from their warcaps and noses as it found its sly way like a thief into their clothes.

  They reached the next fence and clambered over, and Aranur paused, taking Dion's pack as she vaulted the wire-and-wood structure behind him.

  “Good strong fence,” she commented, resting her hand on one of the poles and giving it a tug. “Whoever built it must have taken pride in his work.'' The wolf lunged easily over the fence beside her and landed with a muddy thump.

  “If only my legs could jump like that at this time of night,'' Aranur muttered under his breath.

  Dion took her rucksack back and slung it over her shoulder, shrugging the other arm through the straps and accepting Ara­nur's help gratefully when it caught on her thin poncho and the weatherized cloth began to tangle as well. “How many people live here, do you figure?”

  “Looks like a small house, but there's a lot of land. The house must be bigger than it looks, or the fields end at the top of that hill.”

  “Will they accept us?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know. If they recognize us, they'll probably turn us in to save their own skins from Zentsis's men.”

 

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