Stormrider (29 page)

Born of true warrior stock, Song Dog was conditioned to follow orders even under extreme duress and he reacted with unparalleled speed.

Raptor knew the instant Song Dog squeezed the button that they were jamming all communications between the remaining fliers. Whatever was happening would be a mystery to them, and mystery equaled chaos. Hopefully chaos equaled retreat.

Raptor rolled onto his belly, dodging a bit of flying metal, which sizzled on the wet ground and died, then he armed the device again. The fog thickened even further. Coalescing. Raptor found another shadowy form for a target and fired a second time. Something cracked and flared with the brilliance of a small sun. The results were not so spectacular as the first, but the forward progress of the ship was arrested and it hung, listing badly, in the air. The thick, gagging smell of burning machinery filled the air around them as well as the lungs of both Raptor and Song Dog.

Raptor still wasn’t satisfied. He wanted a full retreat. In fact, he demanded it. Trouble was, the moon-blessed fog was so thick he could barely make out shadows and now, if he showed his head above the ceiling of the mists, he had no doubt the Dinh Dinh would blow it off for him.

“Come on,” he said to Song Dog. “We have to move or they’re going to trace the laser back to its source, and that’s us.”

“What of this?” Song Dog held out the Dinh Dinh communications device in the palm of his hand as if it burned, fingers half curled, hand trembling.

Raptor looked at him. Despite the swirling, intensifying depths of the mists, he was able to make out the youth’s face clearly enough to see that just holding the device intensely disturbed the young warrior of The People. “Leave it. It doesn’t matter now.”

Song Dog’s sigh of relief whistled softly across the space dividing them just before they darted off ahead of detection.
 

Raptor took three strides in that awful stooped-over, loping gait he’d adopted for remaining below the mist, his back screaming its protest. Then he was hit by Starwalker’s distress. It reverberated like a scream throughout his body and shook him to his core.

Death lies ahead! Stormrider! Stop her!
The pony’s swift uneven stride over the unpredictable ground, risking breaking a slender leg, emphasized his mental shout.

* * *

Stormrider witnessed the explosion of the flier overhead, and it was a helluva shock, but she reacted swiftly and dragged the young girl to the humus littered ground. Janissary reflex drove her to cover the girl with her own body to protect her from the hot debris that pelted the earth around them. The Janissary’s prime credo was, as always, to protect.

She huddled on top of the girl, head buried in her arms, breath rasping in her chest, lungs convulsing, rebelling against the sparse amount of air wrapped in heavy toxic smoke and thought of the bounty hunter.

Raptor. He had to have had something to do with the explosion though only the Goddess knew how. Stormrider flinched as the debris continued to rain down all around them, a small bit bouncing harmlessly off her back leaving a tiny scorched spot on her leathers. She would have liked to discover how he had pulled off that trick, but the Dinh Dinh weren’t giving up their search. They swept the area constantly, even while the debris of their demolished comrade screamed across the sky and scorched the earth. Stormrider knew she and the girl dared risk remaining still only so long as there was greater danger of dashing headlong into the pinwheeling shards of metal.

No sooner had the flaming shower subsided than Stormrider and the girl pressed forward again, plunging, tripping, and running through the clinging mists.

And this time they passed through them, ripping twin holes in the clinging, milky fog. They plunged beyond dampness left behind, out to a clear, sun-warmed slope that grew steep so suddenly they were unable to stop and tumbled into a skittering slide down the dizzying incline.

“Hela take it!” Stormrider exploded, one hand locked onto that of the girl and the other scrabbling for a handhold on rock, branch or soil.

The air was completely devoid of damp, swirling mists. The fog was a solid white, sensuously moving, wall behind them where the wolves moved as shadows, swiftly toward them. She and her charge had exited so suddenly it took a few heartbeats for Stormrider to realize they had actually cleared the fog while she slid, out of control, down the bluff.

She smacked the pack bond with an involuntary, jerky cry of distress and she was sliding swiftly toward the precipice, all of her best efforts having done nothing to slow that slide. She let go of her involuntary companion. The girl might have a better chance on her own.
 

The fates threw a slender sapling in the girl’s path and released from Stormrider’s grip, she grabbed at it, caught it, and arrested her fall with a protracted squeak.

Strongheart. Solid. Dependable, but wolf nonetheless, with no hands to catch her, reached out to her through the bond from far upslope.
Coming.

Space opened beneath her in what felt like a yawning abyss. Stormrider felt it as a peculiar coolness, an emptiness that took her breath away. Her heart lodged in her throat strangling the scream she would just as soon have freed. It died there in a gurgle and a grunt as she bounced hard and landed solidly on a rocky ledge, the air forcibly ejected from her lungs. The mosses growing thickly there absorbed most of the force of her fall. She remained still a moment, allowing breath to return to her lungs, the buzz to leave her rattled brain, her bones and muscles to telegraph a message of damage. Nothing cried out to her. She lifted her head. She was intact. Trapped on an outcropping of rock now wider than two of her normal strides, but undamaged.

Stormrider. You are hurt?
One Eye anxiously paced the edge of the steep slope above the ledge, paws padding softly, breath drawn deep, panting his anxiety while soil and small rocks fell in a light rain upon her ledge.

“I’m all right,” Stormrider assured One Eye.

Stormrider—
One Eye beginning again, anxiously.

“Don’t worry . . .”

“I won’t.” A silky voice, smooth and slow as syrup, for an instant strange to her, yet familiar, issued from a little above One Eye’s position.

Stormrider heard One Eye’s low growl. First warning. Then came the shifting of the great wolf’s tense body in the vegetation littering the ground above. Rustle. Scrape. Sound whispers.

Then she recognized the voice. Jarrel. A terrible chill of foreboding raced through her.

Warning! Caution! Deadly!
Stormrider hammered the impulses at One Eye, foreboding replaced by stark terror ripping through her even as she heard the unmistakable hum of a charging laser weapon.

She scrambled to her feet, threw herself at the rock outcropping and clawed her way up. She hauled her body upward with speed born of adrenaline, reached the top in time to raise her eyes high enough to see the steep slope above, to note Jarrel’s spraddle-legged and exposed stance. And then, before she could do more, the horrible sound ripped at her soul.

A hissing, searing, pop so familiar to a trained Janissary.

The rest happened so swiftly she could barely comprehend. One Eye growled in savage challenge, then yelped and went down, legs pawing frantically at moss, leaves and twigs as if attempting to run. Strongheart howled, the eerie sound piercing from above not near enough.

Stormrider had her momentum and she didn’t stop. Nothing mattered but One Eye. She had to reach One Eye. Had to put herself between Jarrel’s laser weapon and the valiant wolf.

Packbond. Lifeline. Continuance. Survival.

“You’ve outlived your usefulness, Janissary!” Jarrel barked. “We know the location of The Amulet. It is ours!”

She saw him clearly as her head topped the ledge, saw his handsome face twist into a smug expression of conquest.

Again the long drawn out hissing pop. A chunk of rock blew from beneath her fingers sending stone shards into her palm. The smarting sting was barely noticed and slowed her not at all as she regained her grip and climbed again.

“The gift of Nashira is nothing compared to the gifts of Antaris!” He let forth another blast that tore away a chunk of earth, playing with her, emphasizing his belief in the superiority of the technologies over the natural, laughing as she pressed on.

“Your sacred connection with the wolves The People speak about with such awe—what good does it do you against this?”

Another ground-shaking shock as Stormrider heaved herself over the top and gained her feet, filled with no fear for herself, shuddering with One Eye’s pain and confusion. His overwhelming weakness as struggles slowed, then ceased. Within the bond of the pack she could feel him slipping away.

“If The Amulet is not in your hands, it is not yours!” Stormrider yelled back, holding her hand out before her, fingers curling into a clenched fist for emphasis as she tamped down the fury which threatened to be all consuming, fighting for a balance which could yet save them both. She faced Jarrel’s laser weapon. “It will choose its own master. Or it will choose none! It is more than you believe it to be and I cannot accept that it will choose you!” She teetered on the impossibly steep slope, feet braced against the persistent slide of pebbles and forest floor debris while Jarrel stood more firmly above her.

Another flier burst into flame above them, higher up the slope. It hung suspended on the air a few moments, explosions dotting its hull, before beginning a slow, smoking spiral to the ground.

Distracted, Jarrel cursed, large gray eyes darkening as he glanced away from Stormrider for an instant, and in that instant focused on Strongheart lunging down from between the trees toward the enemy, flying, belly close to the ground.

Jarrel reacted quickly enough to keep his neck from being snapped, but that was all. The laser gun flew from his hand in an impressive arc, skittering off down-slope out of sight as he threw both hands into play, trying to keep the massive wolf from his throat. He hit the ground on his back, wolf on top, and the pair of them slid uncontrollably down the nearly perpendicular incline, stones clattering with a rush of soil.

Wolf growled and snapped, the sounds of his teeth clashing sharp against the drone of flier engines as Song Dog and Raptor came plunging out of the fog.

Raptor threw himself into the slide, pursuing Strongheart and Jarrel down the oblique. One glance at the downed One Eye was all the bounty hunter needed to explain what Strongheart was after. And Jarrel’s death would do them no good. They needed him alive, for now. Stormrider knew that, yet she did nothing.

In fact, she turned her back, giving up the fight to others without thought other than those for One Eye. There was very little left of him in the bond. It was weak. So very weak. The feel of it in the bond chilled her and caused her own limbs to tremble.

On hands and knees, Stormrider crawled to the wounded wolf, scrambling up the steep slope as Song Dog descended and, above him, Starwalker picked his way down in a delicate zigzag course, small pebbles clattering before his course.

“One Eye!” Stormrider gasped as she climbed. “One Eye, hold on, I’m coming!”

The golden wolf, once powerful and vibrant, groaned, reaching out into the bond with his pain, but offering reassurance as well. A softening.
I await you, Stormrider.

“Don’t let go . . . don’t let go . . . I’m coming. I’ll help.”

You always do.
The same softening. Almost a stranger in One Eye’s place.
Strongheart is right. You have a kind heart. You belong with Nashira.

Stormrider reached him at a frantic crawl, dragging herself desperately upward with hands and feet. And, when she joined him she saw the evidence of Jarrel’s deadly accuracy with the laser. The wound in One Eye’s side was gaping. Blood was spilling everywhere. There were tiny flecks of blood and foam speckling his snow white muzzle and he was panting, breath coming hard.

“Oh Hela take him, One Eye, what has he done to you?” The words were wrenched from her throat past a lump of rising grief. She knew what she saw before her.

You cry in your heart.
One Eye said gently.
Please do not cry for me.

Tenderly, Stormrider edged herself close enough to One Eye to lift his noble head into her lap, smoothing the blood and spittle from his muzzle. His long, pink tongue came out to lick her once. She buried her hand in the rich luxuriousness of his pelt, feeling the fast, irregular beat of his great heart, knowing it would not beat for much longer.

Without reservation, she went fully into the pack bond, abandoning speech, communicating only with feeling and thought. She felt his love and returned it with nothing held back. She felt the physical pain wracking his badly damaged body and his wrenching emotional distress at the realization that he would not be able to stay with her. She comforted, holding him close yet, despite her own pain, releasing him into the arms of the Goddess. And in another moment the harsh, rasping breath quieted and he was gone.

The bond surged with a blinding flash of white light, resembling a shooting star. For the barest instant, Stormrider held on, the letting go too painful to bear and she saw with One Eye all that he had been. The cub, half blind and rejected by his kind; the sturdy young male, a loner, but powerful and independent; the bonding of the pack, cynical but searching; finally the days among the Kadlu, the play on the beach, the new insight to what he was which he’d found among the Ancient Ones.