The Roads of Taryn MacTavish, page 43
part #3 of Lords of Arcadia Series
Damned human.
Kruin glanced her way and caught her removing her plant-stuffed tumbili from the coals. She noticed his stare and paused, her hands heavy with meat.
When he said nothing, she went ahead and put the roast down to cool.
Nakaroth shifted so that he could see what Kruin saw. He growled. It was a chief’s task to portion out the day’s kills. But when Kruin continued to do nothing, Nakaroth settled back. “I’ve been to the borders of the Wood,” he said.
“No one is there.”
Kruin turned all the way around to stare.
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“I suppose it could be they do not care if she dies,” Nakaroth continued thoughtfully. “But I suspect they have withdrawn for fear their presence should be misconstrued as threat and so imperil her.”
Kruin frowned. He had not thought the Valley Lord would give his mate so easily, and though he knew no effort would be made to win her back, he had expected a camp to be made there in the plains to give him trouble until the moon rose full. To hear that they had left, truly left, was an unsettling show of trust.
“Doesn’t look like much.” Nakaroth ran his claws over the rock he stood on, considering Taryn through narrow eyes. “Ugly, clawless, little thing.”
“Yes.”
“Keen eye, though. Quick hand. Fierce, in her toothless way. And trouble for you.” Nakaroth glanced at him. “You’re frowning.”
Kruin grunted. He said, “She thinks eating plants will keep the sore-mouth sickness away.”
“It will,” Nakaroth replied in his detached, growling way. He sounded so indifferent that Kruin almost could not believe he’d heard the words correctly, but he knew he had, which left only one question.
“How do you know this?”
Nakaroth flicked both ears at once in a predator’s shrug. “Dark Water Den floods in spring and autumn, freezes in winter, scorches in summer. Our chief tells us to eat the plants that grow there so that we hunters do not become too weak to run.”
“You’ve had sore-mouth since you came to High Pack,” Kruin observed.
“Yes.”
Kruin waited, but Nakaroth said nothing more. Thoughts of Taryn, of her wolves of Earth, briefly clouded his mind. He shook his head to dislodge them. “If you know this, why do you not eat the plants here to prevent it?”
Nakaroth looked at him. “Because they are plants,” he said. “And this is High Pack, where I am your second.”
Kruin’s gut knotted and he scratched at it, frowning. In his mind, a certain separation was occurring. A part of him, wolfish and direct, understood Nakaroth completely. Plants were for prey to eat. The other part, a swollen, sickly-throbbing awareness, could only comprehend Nakaroth’s words with pity and something worse—the human disdain for an animal.
Kruin retreated in the face of this awful schism. He found shade to lie in and stretched out, trying to shut his mind to darkness. He listened for the song of Endless and could not find it. He closed his eyes and saw growing leaves and bleeding gums.
“My chief?”
Kruin sighed and looked down. Sakros was waiting for his acknowledgment, chin submissively raised. The meat was ready, demanding a 335
chief’s hand to portion out. Even Taryn was waiting next to her plant-stuffed creation. He let a growl slip before he could stop it. She rolled her eyes.
Kruin did not stand or even straighten. He pointed at Taryn’s stuffed kill. “That to Ararro,” he said. “And then divided among the Fringes.”
Those Fringes rippled as surprise passed through them. A chief did not portion to Fringe-wolves, but it was there that bald spots and bleeding gums were most evident.
“From this day, there should always be one so prepared.” Kruin frowned, baring his teeth briefly before rubbing the sour expression away. “No wolf of High Pack, not even those at our Fringes, will suffer sore-mouth. There is pride…and there is hollow vanity. We are wolves, but we are people. We shall eat with honor, for as our prey provides us with meat, so this world provides us with growing things to cure the weaknesses of our bodies.”
No one argued. Kruin watched the division of meat and plants, feeling a vague sense of satisfaction. He glanced at Taryn, braced for a gloating, but she merely smiled and gently so, bending her head to him before returning to oversee her smoked hides. Damned human, indeed. He wondered if Sliver Moon’s chief really knew what he was getting into. Kruin closed his eyes, fought his way to the Endless, and let its soothing song take him into sleep.
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61. Sticks and Stones
“What in the hell is this?”
The sound of a hand slapping over a muzzle was nearly as attention-catching as the question itself. Kruin rubbed summer sleep out of his eyes and looked around, seeing first Burgash’s guilty face (and his hand still clamped over his mouth), and then the object of the wolf’s confusion.
What in the hell was that?
He had been aware of Taryn doing something at the firepit, of course.
Had dozed off, in fact, to the hypnotic sounds of scraping stones as she emptied it of ashes. He hadn’t minded. If it made her happy to clean out the pit, let her do so. The pit needed cleaning now and then, and human skin was surely easier to clean than lycan fur.
But she hadn’t stopped at cleaning it.
She had changed it.
Kruin looked over his clearing, but the human wasn’t in sight. He sought Nakaroth next. His second jerked his chin up toward Gef’s cave and the spark of Kruin’s alarm died. He looked down at the firepit.
No longer a wide trench, it was now a stone-lined thing with many shapes to it—round and deep at one end, narrow in the center, wide and square at the other end. There were sticks planted up around it in places, and a low, flat-topped stone right across the middle. She had taken away his perfectly serviceable firepit and replaced it with something mannish and complicated.
His pack was looking at him.
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“It’s fine,” he said gruffly, and lay back down. If he decided that it bothered him, he’d change it back after she was gone, but if it made her happy to play in the firepit, for the gods’ sakes, let her.
Eyes shifted from him, fixed further up the slope. He didn’t turn, didn’t have to. He knew Taryn had appeared. She came carefully down the slope, all her attention on her footing, but when she climbed down from the raised rock into the clearing, she seemed to notice the stares of the others. Oddly, she brightened, as if this attention were a good thing, and turned to him. “Do you like it?” she asked.
What a baffling question.
“Is it for liking?” Kruin asked cautiously.
“It’s a lot more efficient for cooking. Look, I made some spits here, so you can cook your meat without charring off the outer inch.”
The words flowed by, but the meaning of the last few hooked him.
Kruin sat up. “How?”
“Just put it on the spit instead of in the actual fire. You—” She stopped, seeing his lack of comprehension, then puffed out a breath of frustration. She brought out her stone-thrower, aimed it high, and landed a bloodfeather in the ground at Kruin’s feet.
Just so easy. Just to show him how to work the firepit. Kruin’s mind reeled, but Taryn merely moved past him to spark a fire and make wood ready to burn into coals.
Her knife made short work of the bird’s skin, feathers and all, but she was not so hurried to teach that she neglected to first empty the bird of offal and then fill it again with plants, berries, and the bird’s own minced innards. When she had it the way she wanted, she impaled the thing upon a long stick. She balanced this on other sticks and there the meat sat, hovering unnaturally in the air.
“See, I made it so you can cook four things at once,” she said, stepping back. “And you can warm things up on the slab, even fry on it, if the fire’s hot enough.”
Kruin stared at the meat, at the sticks. It wasn’t cooking. It was just…floating there. He reached out a hand, then lowered it again. Hot.
Very hot.
It was going to cook…in the air. Because the sticks held it up. And because the sticks held it up, the meat would not burn before it was cooked through.
Kruin nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “I think I do like this.”
She smiled broadly and went to fetch her brain-curing hides.
Kruin returned to the shade. He watched through heat-heavy eyes as Taryn settled herself at the roots of her tieneedle tree. She looked cheerful, borne up by the success of her firepit, perhaps. Her hides had been opened, scraped 338
clean, and set to smoke and she seemed pleased with them, poor things that they were (not that Kruin could make better, but then, he was lord. Hides came to him perfected. He did not have to cure them). Now she was engaged in some other human craft, carving at some sticks with her knife and connecting them together with pegs and cord. He had no idea what she was doing, but was content to watch.
Lura did not like his attention. She tried sulking, then growling, then presenting, and finally stalked off toward the pond. It was better with her gone, anyway. Peaceful.
Taryn got up to take her hides out of the smoke. She laid three of them aside, brought the last to her nesting place, and there called to Sangar.
Interested, Kruin tipped his ears to catch their words, still with the appearance of dozing.
“I made you something,” the human said.
“Sticks?”
“Not exactly. It’s for your leg.”
Kruin opened his eyes fully.
“It’s going to help your bone set,” Taryn was saying. She was smiling, showing one empty hand to Sangar while displaying the sticks in the other.
Without ears or hackles or a tail, it was very difficult to read her, but there was a sincerity in her somehow, and Sangar seemed to respond to it. “But first, I need to put it right.”
“It will heal,” Sangar said.
“No,” Taryn said gently. “It won’t.”
Sangar huddled low, trying to ignore the human, to feign sleep. Taryn accepted this for a short time, and then she came forward a step and laid her hand upon Sangar’s shoulder.
Instantly, all eyes were on them. Touches passed from higher to lower.
Sangar ducked her head. She looked once, pleadingly, up at Kruin. He stared back at her and kept his frown inside where it could not sway her. He waited.
Sangar drew in a breath and let it out as an unhappy, whining sigh. She showed her throat, tail tucking in shame. And suddenly the human was not the least of his mates anymore, whether she knew it or not.
“I can help you,” Taryn went on, oblivious to the silent speculation of his watching pack. “But it’s going to hurt a lot, and it won’t do any good if you don’t have something like this on afterwards. Sangar, please. If you don’t let me do this, you’re never going to get better.”
A shiver stole its way up Kruin’s spine. To have one’s weaknesses spoken outright before the whole pack…
But Sangar’s weakness was surely no secret thing, and any request from a higher co-mate was as good as command. She looked down, rubbing at her 339
knee and whining, and when she looked up again, her eyes were wet. She raised her chin, showing throat to Taryn.
“Okay.” Taryn lowered herself to the ground and set her sticks aside.
“Do you need something to hold on to?”
Before Sangar could answer, a black shape came out from behind Kruin and jumped down from the raised rock. Nakaroth crossed the clearing, seemingly unconcerned to be the center of High Pack’s stares, and stood over Sangar. “Tell me what you need,” he said.
Under Taryn’s instructions, Sangar was rolled onto her back. She lay flat, her chest heaving with silent, tearless sobs as her belly was shown to all the pack. Nakaroth knelt behind her, his hands enclosing her wrists and pushing them firmly down, preventing any struggles. Taryn sat straddling Sangar’s broken leg, one foot pressed for leverage against Sangar’s sex and the other braced against the tieneedle tree.
“This is going to hurt,” Taryn said again.
“I am ready,” Sangar whispered.
Kruin stood up. “Hunters,” he said harshly, and all his pack startled and looked toward him. “Go,” he commanded.
With low growls and curt gestures, Burgash and Sakros swiftly divided the pack into two parties and led them out and away from Sangar’s disgrace.
When they were gone, Kruin returned his gaze to Taryn. She was already looking at him, motionless, awaiting his signal.
He gave it in a short nod.
Taryn pulled. In the silence of the near-empty clearing, Sangar’s jaw-locked screams scratched his ears, but it could not obscure the sound of her bones scraping against each other. Taryn’s face flushed with strain; she heaved backwards, her hands shaking in their grip on Sangar’s foot. A dull snap, and suddenly Taryn sagged forward, breathing hard as she ran her fingers down the new, straight line of Sangar’s leg. Sangar still wept, but even Kruin could see relief in his mate’s face.
Now she would be healed, he realized, and relief came to him as well, hot as a red coal. She would walk again and she would not die. Sangar would be healed.
“That was the worst of it,” Taryn said, rubbing Sangar’s other knee.
“Give me a deep breath. Good. Another one. Good. Let’s finish this.”
Taryn picked up the hide she’d taken from the fire and wrapped it around the injured length of Sangar’s leg. She took up her sticks and began to tie them over the hide. To the front, the back, the sides, until all the broken bone was bound in sticks and cord. At her orders, Nakaroth lifted Sangar and supported her while Taryn tied yet more sticks to this boneset-thing, crawling on her hands and knees as she worked, utterly absorbed in this unfathomable thing she did.
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The thought came suddenly that if not for the curtain of her clothing, Taryn would be presenting to him right now. Kruin scratched at his muzzle, musing on this. It was a good time for it, he decided. She had healed his mate.
She had earned the honor of his attentions. True, there were none now to see it apart from his second and the other females, but at least there would be none to witness if her strange body unmanned him. He would mount her now, and thus know better how it would be when he mounted her again before all the pack.
But first, she must finish with Sangar.
“Okay.” Taryn struggled to her feet, smiling broadly. “Let her go, Nakaroth. Sangar, find your feet.”
Nakaroth stepped away, folding his arms and watching with undisguised interest as Sangar shifted for balance. The boneset was now carried in a kind of cradle made of pegged sticks. Even though she stood tall, her injured leg remained bent, supported, while sticks acted as a kind of extra foot for her.
Gods, that was clever. He’d never seen anything like it, never imagined something of the sort could be made. Ribs could be broken and survived, and Kruin had a fuzzy memory from his own youth of an old wolf who had lost an entire arm to wyvern’s jaws, but a leg? A leg was death Sangar took a step, swayed, and took another with greater confidence.
Her ears raised. Her tail swept back and forth, lifting slowly. At last, she smiled.
“Ha, a healer!” Lura detached herself from the edge of the forest, where she must have been watching for some time. She came to the raised rock beside Kruin, sneezing contempt in Taryn’s direction.
He ignored her.
Taryn ignored her also. A far more dangerous response than his own.
“The Farasai use these,” the human said to Sangar. “I’ve seen them, but never actually made one before. How does it feel?”
“Strange,” Sangar replied. But she moved about on it with decreasing difficulty, pacing all the way to the firepit and back to the tieneedle tree where Taryn waited. Her head cocked. She looked at the human closely. “How would you know the ways of Farasai healers?”
“I’ve been living in kraal-Rucombe.”
“And are named kin to its chief,” Nakaroth remarked.
Old Graal, lying in the shade at Kruin’s feet, sat laboriously upright and peered at Taryn as through a thick fog. Her eyes must be failing. There had been other signs. Graal said, “You don’t look like any of the humans I’ve ever seen come out of the Valley. You don’t sound like them, either.”
“I’m not surprised. I wasn’t born here. I’m from Earth.”
Nakaroth glanced around, his gaze inscrutable.
Kruin felt himself frowning.
“You can’t be,” Graal said, startled. “Earth’s children are here!”
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“I know I sound different from the other humans here,” Taryn said, laughing. “But it’s true. I’m from Earth.”
Kruin growled to silence his pack before anyone else could speak. His mind was racing. There was no lie in the way Taryn spoke, no lie that he had power to detect, but did that make it truth? And even if it did, what did it mean?
“They have humans on Earth?” Ararro asked, blurting out her words in lycan-speak. She rubbed her cub-swollen stomach, distressed.
Graal was quieter, more pragmatic. “They have Roads as well, it seems.” She searched Kruin’s eyes, silently and intently wondering what he had brought among them.
Kruin had no answer for her. This human seemed to him an honest one.
She had already proven herself resourceful and strong-minded, and she could well be a wizard for all her fair seeming. He did not know her, did not trust her, and was determined not to underestimate her.
“Did I…Did I say something wrong?” Taryn asked now, uncomfortable as the focus of this new distress. “Is Earth—”
“Enough. You are in my Land now,” Kruin announced, staring her down. “And that is the world to which you belong. We will not speak of Earth here.” He turned his eyes out over his people. “Or its children.”
