minute breather; they had run hard the first half of the ridge route. To the east, the cold air falling from the cliffs brought with it the smell of yarrow.

There were no barrier bushes here. No rootroad trees either-both barriers and rootroads had petered out three kays ago; this road was solid rock, not root. She stretched her ears through those of Gray Hishn and heard the owldeer hooting. Down the valley, a herd of eerin bolted away through the trees. The herd was spooked, and their pace was swift; even Royce caught the sound of their hooves.

"The night is restless," Tule murmured, taking his turn at the well.

"Raider fog and worlag moons," Dion agreed softly. "Everything is out hunting."

"Yes, but hunting us or other game?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd like to think it does."

Dion chuckled, a soft, low sound, and swung back up in the saddle.

"Thinking gives you an edge only when you've had time to do it, Tule. In the night, life is simple: It's hunt or be hunted, as it has been throughout time. Of all that we learned from the Ancients, there was this first: We'd be less than we are without the stimulus of survival."

"Philosophy in the moonlight-now that's something, Healer Dione, that I hadn't heard about you."

"Dion," she corrected automatically. "I don't ride on formality."

He glanced over his shoulder toward Royce, who was waiting for them at the road. "I noticed," he returned dryly.

This time, Dion didn't smile. "I've a reputation I can't fight, Tule-I'm learning to live with that. But I won't allow my presence to be used as a status symbol by anyone, elder or not. I won't carry that weight as well."

"A job is a job, eh? No matter who does it that day? And you'll be treated like any other rider?"

Dion gave him a sharp look. "You disagree?"

He gave her a one-armed shrug. "I think it's foolish to deny the way people think of you when you're different-to deny the effect you have on those who are around you."

"People want a legend," she said shortly. "Not a human being."

"You think that makes a difference? You're a figurehead for a dozen

stories. Those stories have to be based on some sort of truth or they wouldn't have been told in the first place."

She snorted. "Truth is the first thing that gets lost in the translation from

history to story. You heighten this emotion and indulge that fantasy for your listeners, and suddenly, you have a fable with heroes and heroines and not much room for real people. Reputations are expectations, not realities."

Tule patted his dnu as it finished drinking, then mounted in a single smooth motion. "And what is your reality, Wolfwalker?"

"That I'm far too simple to be the stuff of legends."

"Simple? Temper and drive can appear simple in themselves, but judging by the quantity in which they appear in you, they mask something more complex."

"I think," Dion said with a slow smile, "I'll take that as a compliment."

He chuckled. "I'm not sure it was meant that way." He gestured for her to

lead them back onto the road.

"I'm sure of that," she tossed back. "All I am is too damn blunt, too prone to act before I think, and moonwormed lucky to be alive. Everything else is window dressing-" Her voice broke off. A wolf howled far up the ridge, and Hishn's mental projection caught her at the same moment the faint sound hit her ears.

"Healer?" Tule's voice was low and sharp, and his sword was already out of its sheath. He'd heard nothing, seen nothing, but he felt her alarm as clearly as if she had shouted.

"We need speed," she said shortly. "Now," she snapped, glancing at Royce.

She tightened her knees. The relay beast responded, leaping forward.

Dion's face was suddenly whipped by fog. Something burst out on the road behind Royce, and he, startled, fumbled the reins.

"Sprint it!" Dion yelled.A crude roar-an ayah-chuh-chuh sound-hit their ears. A massive shape flowed over the road. Tule hunched low, his one-armed torso a blur as he matched Dion's pace. Behind them, Royce leaned in like Dion until he was almost flat against his beast. Dion didn't have to look back-the image in the Gray One's head was as clear as day to her sight. The badgerbear, spring-starved like a raider's slave, cried out its challenge again. It flowed across the stones, its claws glinting blackly in the night. It gained at the curve, then gained again on the flat, and Gray Hishn's snarl filled Dion's head so that she felt as if she were running like the wolf, not riding on top of a dnu.

Another curve, and the badgerbear was suddenly only ten meters back from Royce's dnu. The harsh predator cry that filled their ears brought a cringe to all three necks. Its fur, a red-tipped brown in daylight hours, made the badgerbear a blackened demon at night. Its sharp, pointed teeth gleamed like tiny lanterns, catching at their urgent vision. Its limbs were loose and intent. And its heavy breathing was suddenly far too close to Royce. The young man, panicked, viciously spurred his dnu. The animal surged ahead.

And then they were suddenly alone on the road. The badgerbear was gone. Royce began to slow. Dion glanced back, saw him, and cursed at him to keep up. The hooves of their dnu pounded the road like their hearts, but they did not slacken their pace until they had raced another kay. By then the badgerbear was far enough behind that it would not follow even when they dropped back to the distance lope.

Tule pulled his dnu back beside Dion's and gave her a thoughtful glance. Her warning had been all that had saved them. Without it, at least one of them would have gone down when the badgerbear attacked. His voice was dry in the fog. "Window dressing," he called to her ears. "I see what you mean, Wolfwalker."

Dion didn't answer.

Carston was barely a blur in the night. "Message came through half an hour ago," the stablewoman told Dion as the wolfwalker dismounted. Dion nodded and stamped her legs to get her blood moving. "A bit brief," the stablewoman added dryly.

"My fault," Dion said shortly. "I offended one of the elders."

"I heard. Yet you made off with her grandson, so it couldn't have been all that bad." The woman handed Dion the reins. Dion cast a glance over her shoulder. "You know him?"

"Royce? He's young, but he'll do, if that's what you're asking." Dion smiled faintly. "I wasn't, but I was. Thanks." She swung up on the new relay beast, feeling the dnu's muscles bunch as it skittered awkwardly sideways. In the distance, waiting in the shadow, Gray Hishn began to move. Dion felt the wolf lope just off the center of the road. Barely visible, Hishn touched the edges of shadow and extended them with her lupine shape.

The stablewoman caught the unfocused expression on Dion's face and watched the wolfwalker with interest. "This dnu's fast and headstrong.

Don't let him run your arms off, Dione, or the legs off your gray wolf."

Dion's gaze sharpened. She looked down at the woman. "Considering what's been on the trails in this fog, I might be glad of his speed in spite of the ache on my arms tonight."

"Raider fog," the woman agreed. "Ride safe."

"With the moons," Dion returned. She reined the dnu in a tight circle and spurred the creature forward. Within seconds, its hooves struck a sharp rhythm from the stone road. The sounds doubled, then tripled, as the two

other beasts matched its pace. Dion knew who rode behind her. "Ontai is the other way," she shouted over her shoulder.

"I think you can assume that we know that," Tule called back across the

sound of the hooves.

"I've an escort waiting for me in Kitman."

"And this one to get you there."

"It's a long ride you're taking, Tule."

"Aye."

She glanced at his face, then back, meaningfully, at the young man who

rode behind them. "It'll be a dark dawn for Royce to ride into."

"It's time," Tule called back.

"Time?"

"For him to see dawn for what it is."

Dion's eyes flickered to the black horizon. To see dawn for what it was-a

bloody sky reflected on land? A morning of death on a world that was theirs by birth, but not by breeding? Her lean jaw tightened. Aranur might be able to look beyond the dawn to see the stars, but for Dion, whose mind was already filling with the lust of the lupine hunt, the morning heralded a bloody dream, not one of moons and freedom.

Night had progressed, and only four of those moons now rode in the sky.

Their light gave that blue-blackened expanse a purity she knew was false.

In two hours, the chill she felt now would be full of dawn shadow, and the now-bright moonlight would be a faint sky and gray. There would be wolves in her mind, pushing the hunt, while her human side held herself back, and the mist would cling like a shroud to the trees where it hid raider swords and death. In the end, she knew, when the steel was still, it would be blood, not rain, that made mud of the ground; and it would be youth that was sacrificed. Swords, she thought bitterly. After starships and sky cars and tethers to space, they settled their violence with steel. And all because of an alien plague that turned the ground into graves. Her fingers tightened

spasmodically. By plague, by steel... It didn't matter. Blood, she thought. Always blood on her hands. And no moonlight could wash it away. She stiffened the walls of her darkening heart and braced herself for the dawn.

They were early into Kitman. Their dnu had been fast and eager to run, and the moonlight bright enough to urge them on. But even though the Kitman relay had had hours to prepare for the riders, the Kitman stables were not ready. Men and women were still saddling up as Dion, Tule, and Royce pounded in, and there was a rush of people back and forth on the street, like a marketplace in the dark. Hishn took one look at the bustle, snarled like a badgerbear, and fled back into the night. Dion grimaced after her.

Tule's voice was amused. "No escape for the wolfwalker? Only the wolf?"

"That's the truth," she returned. She slowed to avoid hitting one of the running men. "What's going on?" she called out as she slid off her dnu. Someone grabbed the reins from her hands. At the same time a woman took her arm, pulling her away from the dnu almost before she had time to release the reins to the hostler. "Healer Dione-this way," the woman said urgently, propelling Dion before her. "They'll get your dnu ready for you." The woman's hands were tight on Dion's arm. "Through here, Healer."

Dion knew that tone of voice: the edge of urgency, the careful control, the unvoiced need to run rather than walk. She didn't resist. Instead, she shouted over the noise, "Tule, Royce, make sure there's enough gear for all three of us for at least four days-just in case. I'll be a few minutes here."

"Thank the moons you're early," the woman worried, ignoring Dion's shout to Tule and Royce. "There's time to see them before you ride out on the venge. No, not that way, Wolfwalker. They're in the elder's house. We've got spring fever in the clinic."