The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (16 page)

They tramped along, all of them. Hill after hill,
snow and trees. Downhill for now, which should have been easier
than uphill, but somehow wasn’t. Snow sucked at his feet, he had to
fight for each step. His uncles, guilty and solicitous, had
outfitted him with a parka and a second pair of legwals, to keep
him warm. Quilted wool, woven in the swan pattern of Lost Swan
clan, stuffed with goose down. Unfortunately, the parka wasn’t
water-resistant in the least. Snowflakes melted into wool, and once
the damp sank into the stuffing, it never dried. It smelled fungal
and weighed him down like a vest of rocks.

The mass of travelers were clumped closely for now,
but Hadi knew that once they each found their pace, the line would
stretch along the path until they were out of sight of one another.
The leggy Green Woods folk already pulled ahead. Hadi’s folk
bunched together, still waiting on the omen. Why was it just when
you needed a fourteen-point buck, none would appear? Though, come
to think of it, Hadi had never seen a fourteen-point buck. Only a
ten-point. And even then, he’d had a better view of the stag’s tail
than his antlers. Another failed hunt.

Sigh.

“THERE!”

Tamio’s bray, unexpectedly close, made Hadi
jump.

“There, there!” Tamio jabbed his finger at the hill
across from them.

A lot of bustle, a lot of cries of, “Where,
where
?” “I see it!” and “What is it?” before the collective
established it was a lamb. Not a fuzzy, cute, mewling baby lamb,
but a reedy, leggy thing, which had found purchase on a scrape that
looked to Hadi impossibly vertical.

As they watched, an eagle swooped down from higher
up the hill. The lamb bleated—its mother answered from lower down,
hidden in the brush, but there was nothing she could do—and began a
mad scramble along the precipice.

The eagle dived. It shoved the lamb with its talons
and knocked the little body right off the rock. The lamb flailed
and plunged, more than a thousand paces. Hadi’s jaw dropped almost
as far. The poor little lambkin hit just short of the bottom of the
canyon. It flipped, bounced and rolled the last twenty paces. It
would have been comic, except he pitied it too much to laugh at it.
The eagle swept up the corpse at leisure.

“What an omen!” Tamio pumped fists in the air.

“That was ‘good’?” Paro sounded bewildered. “Eagle.
Ram. Two totems of the enemy?”

“One destroyed the other. That’s got to be good for
our side.”

Hadi wished he could take a swig of Tamio’s
confidence.

Interpreting the omen provided the travelers with
their afternoon topic of conversation. Lots of theories. Hadi
didn’t share his own: Whether or not their revenge raid achieved
victory, predators would feast and innocents would suffer.

After he sent Hadi back to the tribehold, Finnadro
unlaced a section of his legwal, and pulled back the green-stained
leather. On his thigh was a welt of shiny, purplish scar tissue,
many months old now, where a section of his skin had been flayed
from his flesh.

The Deathsworn had done that to him.

The physical injury had not hurt as a much as what
had followed. The Deathsworn had also
drained
him. Like a
tick, but instead of blood, the man in black had leeched away his
magic. And also unlike a tick, which anesthetized its victims,
Finnadro had felt every agonizing minute of the theft.

The memory rose like bile, sour and filthy, which he
could not swallow back down, his throat was too dry. He had never
shared the incident with anyone, because he could not bear the
shame. He, the big man with a Shining Name, the Wolf Hunter, the
Green Lady’s Henchman, was secretly a coward.

Why had he not pursued the Deathsworn those many
moons ago? He had told himself it was because he had needed to save
the White Lady. That came first. The truth was, he had welcomed the
excuse. He was as much a slave to his fear as any weakling who
pissed himself and fled a battle.

The Deathsworn had drained him and left him for
dead. That was all that had spared Finnadro the fate of the others,
the ones who had been tortured to death. Finnadro remembered
exactly how the bodies had been left, entangled in their own offal.
A shudder rippled down his spine. He tied his legwal back
together.

Now he had no choice but to face the Deathsworn
again.

At least he would not do it alone. Leaning back, he
howled like a wolf.

Within moments, he smelled them. Several pairs of
gleaming green eyes appeared in the shadows around the clearing.
One after another, wolves trotted into view. They were wolflings
who had proved themselves able to balance the beast and the man
inside, to hunt as animals, yet retain their understanding of human
words. If they preferred to spend most of their time as wolves,
that was their business, as long as they retained the hearts of
men. Finnadro knew them all, both by their wolfling names and by
their secret human names, which he would not say out loud.

He nodded to them, and the wolves cocked their
heads.

Two more wolves appeared, females. Finnadro welcomed
them as well.

Whitepaw, the pack chief, changed. Human, he was a
powerfully built but grizzled elder, with a white beard and
baldpate, keen jade eyes.

“Why are we meeting at a Deathsworn rock? Even
wolves stay clear of their taboos.”

“I respect Deathsworn taboos when they respect ours.
This particular Deathsworn is a Rogue.”

Whitepaw whistled. “Rogue.”

When an ordinary man abandoned the law of light and
shadows, they called him a Rover, a man without clan and tribe.
Deathsworn had no clan or tribe to begin with, but they were still
hooped to the law. If a Deathsworn abandoned the law of light and
shadows, they called him a Rogue. Anyone in Faearth was permitted
to slay a Rogue on sight, but almost no one except another
Deathsworn could hope to actually do so.

“Get the scent,” Finnadro said. “We’ll need to hunt
by night as well as day, napping only, until we catch up with him.
He’s got a strong lead on us, and we have to close it as quickly as
possible. He has a girl with him. Get her scent too.”

He didn’t need to tell them they would rescue the
girl if they could. They had worked with him before, and new his
priorities.

Whitepaw changed form and all six wolves sniffed
around the Deathsworn altar. Whitepaw barked like a dog, and then
all six of them began to run. Finnadro followed them. The sun had
set and by night his tracking skills paled compared to theirs.

The wolves led him back to the river, almost to the
exact spot he had chased Hawk. Finnadro cursed silently. If only he
had known, he would not have had to double back and lose more
time.

Moonlight illuminated the Ottermark; the waters ran
red. Most of the captives who had participated in the Chase earlier
in the day had been caught, and their bodies had been dumped here
at sunset. They had been hunted down like beasts, and their bodies
had be left to rot like beasts, not given with honors to the
Deathsworn. A few bloated forms bobbed along the shore, caught in
brambles.

Finnadro waded knee deep into the ford, but then he
paused and commanded the wolflings to stop.

“Change form,” he commanded them.

The others shifted except the pack chief, Whitepaw.
The old wolf stood still for a long time. Finnadro wondered if
Whitepaw disdained human form these days…or if he found the change
harder after years as a wolf. The river shush-shushsed through the
reeds.

Finally, Whitepaw changed. Finnadro cleared his
throat.

“We will be crossing into no man’s land, and
possibly into Orange Canyon tribelands. We will be going against a
foe who spits on honor, who lies, tortures, rapes and murders
without a care. We will cross this river to catch that foe and
bring him to justice. But there is another river we will not cross.
We will walk on the shore of honor; we will not cross to the other
side. We are not beasts, but men and women. We will not shame our
tribe with either cowardice or wanton cruelty. We will stand by
each member of the pack. And we will not stop until we hunt down
our foe.”

He took his dagger and cut a slice of his palm. He
dripped the blood in the river. Each of the wolflings bit into his
or her own arm or hand and let a few drops of scarlet wash away in
the water. The seven of them were now one pack. They held their
blooded arms up in the air, fists clenched, and shared a howl,
Finnadro as loudly as the others.

Then the six wolflings changed into wolves and
splashed across the ford, with Finnadro sloshing swiftly
behind.

One of the bloated bodies broke free of the brambles
and drifted downriver.

Many naughty little boys think their mothers can eat
their thoughts.

Mine actually could.

She knew better what I was thinking than I did
myself. She would grab me by the ear, yank a thread from my aura
and put it to her tongue.

“Is that what you think?” she’d scream.

Then she would smack me on the other ear. I was
never beaten for what I did; I was always beaten for what I was
going to do.

One day, when I was six or seven, shortly before all
children are Tested for magic in the Labyrinth, I was playing with
my cousin Kavio and she came to collect me. I knew she didn’t like
me to play with Kavio, and figured she might beat me for it, but
she was all smiles and squeezes. She offered me my favorite treat,
honeyed nuts.

She tugged a little orange thread of light from my
aura, but even then, she didn’t care that I’d told Kavio I hated
her and planned to run away. He’d loved the idea—he felt just the
same about his father, he said. He offered to go with me.

Neither of us meant it, but I figured my mother
would beat me anyway.

But no. She only wanted to know one thing: If I
suspected what she was planning.

I hadn’t suspected anything…until that moment.

That’s when I discovered a secret: the thread runs
both ways. She could taste my thoughts, but today I found I could
also taste hers.

And no wonder she didn’t want me to know what she
was thinking.

She was planning to kill me.

It’s for your own good, it’s for your own
good,
she kept repeating in her mind.
Better to kill you
than let
him
get you. He can have the other one
.

I did not know what to do. She took me into the
kitchen, bid me sit on the platform by the beehive shaped adobe
oven, the oven which was taller than me, and handed me a bowl of
honeyed nuts. She turned her back to me and sharpened her stone
dagger on the sharpening rock in front of the oven.

“I’ll just crack some more for you,” she said
loudly.

I sucked on the nuts. I hid my fear. The cloying
treat choked me, and I had to cough it out. She still held the
thread of my aura; but I let nothing flow from me. Instead, I
pulled, as softly as I could, from her.

An image hit me, a clear Vision, of what she planned
to do. Turn around. Pretend to hug me so she could pin my arms to
my side. Slit my throat. Catch the blood in a bowl, the very bowl
of honeyed nuts I held in my lap. When I stopped gurgling—she knew
how long it would take, she had killed this way before—she would
chop me up and stick pieces of me into the oven.

I’ll say the boy ran away
, she thought.
No
one will know
.

She turned around.

I threw the bowl of nuts in her face and ran from
the house.

I ran to Kavio’s house. I told him my mother planned
to kill me and we must run away together. For real. At once.

He refused. In the meantime, he’d ended whatever
fight he’d had with his father, and now insisted that I return
home. Said my mother loved me, wouldn’t ever hurt me. I knew
better. I kept saying, “She wants to kill me,” but he wouldn’t
believe me. He threatened to tell his father.

My mother and older sister arrived at Kavio’s house,
with Kavio’s father. Now it was too late. I had no way to escape.
They were all against me. They all trusted her; no one trusted me.
And so I couldn’t trust any of them.

My older sister took my hand and whispered for my
ears alone. “It’s safe. She’s changed her mind.”

I still trusted my sister—a little. I couldn’t
forget that she was the one my mother wanted to keep alive. She was
the one my mother favored. I saw an orange thread on her and
touched it, and saw an image of my mother weeping and telling her
to help bring me back. So I went home with them.

At home, mother served us the evening meal as if
nothing had happened. My father came back from wherever he’d spent
the day. I used my new skill to taste a thread from my father. No
clear thoughts, but I sensed a woman who smelled of cloves. He
suspected nothing.

For dessert, my mother served the rest of the
honeyed nuts.

Even the smell made me sick. I could not eat any of
them. I have never eaten them since.

Zumo dipped his fingers into the mix of blue powder
and rendered fat, which he daubed into careful stripes on his face.
He strapped on his blue beaded headband and tied it at the back of
his head. His room was a fine one, with bright white walls, a blue
ceiling with white spots like stars. It was on the third floor so
two large windows allowed wind to pass through and cool the room,
even when, as now, the afternoon sunlight made the walls and the
blue-and-white striped blankets glow.

He would miss this room if he never saw it
again.

“Aren’t you done yet?” His mother Nangi stood in the
doorway to his chamber. “Fa, but you are vainer than a virgin
bride. How neatly you paint your face isn’t going to impress your
uncle.”