Scarlet and the White Wolf [01] - Scarlet and the White Wolf (5 page)

Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

Shining Ones feared it. I should have known about the raiders, for certainly there was no shadow on these people as there was on me. They seemed happy and well fed and unafraid of what tomorrow would bring. All the usual tragedies were here: misfortune, cold marriages, stillbirths, disease and old age. But there are no Minh with blood on their spears, and no children in the well. I should have been thanking Deva for her mercy, realizing that she tempers all things, but instead all I could do was resent these good people for their peace. There was no sense in my feelings, but it was the way I felt, and I told myself that I would not be able to live here."

Annaya stirred. "And then you met Scaja," she chimed in.

Linhona laughed and switched back to Bizye. "And
then,
I took a job at Rufa's
taberna
clearing tables and serving bitterbeer. One night, just about this time of year, a man walked in. He had shoulders like my father and was plainly of pure Hilurin blood. He had a boy with him, a little thing no bigger than my thumb!"

Annaya giggled and Scarlet rolled his eyes. "I wasn't
that
small."

"Oh, but you were, and loud,
and
demanding, kicking the table for attention. Your poor father was beside himself."

"So instead of bringing him ale..." Annaya coaxed. They all knew the story by heart, line for line. It never offended Linhona, and she seemed pleased.

"Instead of serving him, I went over to his table and picked up the struggling, fussy, thumb-sized boy, and gave him a big kiss."

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Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

"And he quieted right down," Scaja put in softly. Scarlet had given him back the pipe and he clenched it between his teeth and looked on Linhona with gentle eyes. It warmed Scarlet to see it, their love, and he thought to himself of how seeing two people you love also love and care for each other is a kind of rare peace. The world makes sense, then.

"And I quieted right down," Scarlet added, joining the story at last. "And you helped Scaja carry me home that night."

"And you never left again," Annaya yawned, more asleep than awake.

"True as rain," Linhona said, ending the tale in the Byzan way.

Scarlet thought about that later as he went to his bed, sleepy with food and with the sureness of being safe and surrounded by familiar things. It was good to be loved in the world. He had never known a life without love, and hoped never to learn that lesson, having seen the folks who could not tell love from lichen, how their eyes were hard as bits of flint and their hearts like stones. He remembered all the times on the road when he had felt frightened, how many times he had almost been robbed or worse, or when the weather had turned so foul that he actually feared for his life. Through all of that, it was his memories that brought him through: Linhona in the kitchen or garden, her competent hands busy at whatever task, Annaya bouncing around, always so small, and Scaja's solemn face by the firelight. True as rain, they were his life.

* * * *

37

Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

A week and a day Scarlet stayed in the village. Then, on the eighth morning, a cold wind began to blow from the northeast and a light layer of frost crunched under his boots when he went to fetch water from the well. If he did not leave soon for Khurelen, he would have a hard time getting through the Snakepath into the lowlands. It was just as well. The soles of his feet had already begun to phantom-ache with the want for travel. The fence was fixed, the roof was patched, and he had helped Scaja put a new wheel on a freight carriage that broke down two leagues from the Salt Road. The night they returned from fixing the carriage, after a long dinner as Scaja lingered over his pipe, Scarlet told him he would be trying Whetstone Pass the next day.

Scaja looked at Scarlet through a wreath of smoke, his black eyes narrowed but soft, and he nodded. If he had objections, he knew well enough to keep them inside. Scaja left to tell Linhona that her son would be leaving.

Scarlet's bedroom was just a cot behind a curtain next to the kitchen, and later, as he packed and the smell of the waybread baking for his journey filled the house, Scaja pushed aside the curtain. There was a linen-wrapped bundle in his hands. He sat on Scarlet's bed, unfolded the linen, and began to carefully lay out the bundle's contents on the covers. Scarlet stared in astonishment, and Scaja gave him a small smile.

"Busy as bees, all of you!" Scarlet exclaimed. He touched the treasures that Scaja had presented: silver-plated pins and buckles, iron needles and tin spoons, and a handful of small, 38

Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

delicate buttons carved from bone. There was more: three linen lapels richly embroidered in blue and green by Annaya, and two lace collars stitched in a dragonfly pattern by Linhona, fully as good as any he had seen in the cities. He touched the buckles, admiring the light chasing of fine scrollwork Scaja had set into the metal.

"How did you ever...?"

Scaja shrugged. "Well, making a buckle is not so different from welding a wheel spoke. Easier, in some ways." He began gathering the wares up. "Work's been slow," he ended the subject brusquely. "I had the time."

"Scaja, is there anything—"

"Hush, lad, and let me help you pack."

Scarlet packed as carefully as he could without knowing how rapacious the Kasiri horde would be. Nothing too costly for a trip to Khurelen, except a small bottle of perfume he hid in his boot. The fine lace, the embroidery, and the better silver-plate he stowed under his bed, showing Scaja where it was for safekeeping. He wore his old gray woolen shirt, threadbare at the elbows but still warm, beneath the crimson leather coat and hood that denoted a pedlar throughout the world. It came down to his knees and the red dye was still bright after three years of use. He wrapped a length of faded wool around his neck and pulled on the storm-gray leather gloves that Masdren had crafted to fit his mismatched hands.

Scaja nodded his approval at Scarlet's appearance and kept his doubts to himself.

"Just have a care," Scaja growled as they stood together in the yard before he set out.

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Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

"I always do," he answered, knowing that Scaja didn't believe him. He had half a mind to say that it was Scaja who being reckless now, but again held his temper and kept mute.

Scaja gave him a brief, fierce embrace and Annaya kissed his cheek. Linhona was pretending to be busy in the house, not ready to speak to him yet. She had sent the waybread round, parched loaves rich with nuts and dry, tough grains that would not spoil so long as they were kept dry—through Annaya. She could be as stubborn as him, sometimes. He wished she would come out to bid him farewell and was angry and resentful over her refusal to see the truth, as well as Scaja's.

He pinched Annaya's cheek a last time. She was nearly as tall as him now. "I like your Shansi," he said.

She gave him a secretive smile. "So do I."

His eyebrows went up and he grinned. He tapped her nose.

"Behave yourself while I'm gone."

Annaya snorted and tossed her glossy hair over her shoulder. "Take your own advice before handing it to me."

He left them reluctantly and started on the road that led through the village and up the mountain pass, where the perilous Kasiri and their Wolf-chief were encamped.

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Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

2.

Lia

Liall, the White Wolf of Omara, strove always for an atmosphere of calm to reign during his robberies. To meet an enemy in the dark is one thing, to challenge folk in the open, under the blue sky in the melting snow is quite another.

There is a trick to keeping order on a highway: keep the road open and paying while preventing the rough and naturally-disorderly Kasiri from running wild through the women and the goods, spreading terror and mayhem. The woman who set up a strident screaming in the early afternoon threatened the fragile peace of the prosperous toll road, and that warranted Liall's attention.

He looked over his shoulder to check on Peysho's progress with the short line of journeyers waiting to take the well-tended pass through Nerit Mountain. Peysho Ar'sinu was his enforcer, a handsome, brawny bear of a man in his fortieth year or thereabouts. Whenever he approached, Liall invariably got the impression of a slow tide rolling toward him, but he was never fooled: Peysho had a mind like a precise clock, with never a detail forgotten or mislaid.

Though he kept them hidden by a gaudy Kasiri jacket, Peysho bore on both of his beefy upper arms the red tattoos of Om-Ret: a serpent devouring her own tail. He had recently shaved his hair down to dark brown stubble on his head, and Liall thought this vanity, since Peysho's hair had lately begun to turn gray from his years of living hard and fast in outlaw 41

Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

camps. His skin was the color of pale bronze and his one undamaged eye was a mirthful hazel.

Peysho's name suited him, as it meant
red-eye
. He had a small red star in his left eye from a Minh mace that had crushed his cheekbone twenty years ago, and the eye had filled with blood and never fully healed. He seemed to see well enough with it. On occasion, Liall wondered how he looked to Peysho through such an organ; if his amber skin and white hair was colored with a mist of bloody crimson when he gazed at him. It seemed fitting.

Peysho's one constant companion was his countryman, Kio, a fellow Morturii many years his younger, deceptively kind of face and slight of body, but an artist with a blade of any type. Kio had wide, tawny-gold eyes like a lion and wore his feathery chestnut hair to his shoulders. There was a scattering of beard on his cheeks that he refused to take off, believing it made him appear more masculine.

Alas, Liall thought, his face is as sweet as a girl's, and that soft beard only makes him that much prettier. These facts caused Kio a great deal of embarrassment, for he was as much a soldier as rough Peysho, with whom he had roamed untold cities and camps together before landing in Liall's tribe of Kasiri five years ago. The Longspur
krait
had been home to them ever since.

Like the Byzans, the Kasiri were a gaudy lot, but rather than show off their artistic inclinations in architecture and gardens, they expressed themselves through dress. Set against the stark landscape, they could blind one with their colors: purple and red and orange silks, black velvets, fine 42

Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

striped linens of blue and silver knotted with pearls. The men wore tasseled coats of satin and gold-cloth over mud-stained breeches and wide-topped, high-cut boots that were a Kasiri trademark. The women wore the boots, too, but under the long dresses of highborn ladies, dripping with rhinestones and ribbons. Their dresses were considerably more worn and patched than any noblewoman would be caught wearing, but Kasiri women took the fading and fraying in stride. When a dress finally fell apart, they simply tore it into rags for patching brilliant quilts or braiding into sleeping rugs. Kasiri girls wore their hair shorter than most, for it was a hard life and a long mane of hair would only complicate things. To compensate, they wove stunning headdresses out of long, brilliant threads of silk and decorated them with bits of semi-precious stones and flecks of gold and silver and copper. The headdresses were a few inches high, square with a long back that covered the neck, and from the hem hung long strings of faceted crystals and polished crimson beads. Women pinned their short locks under the headdress and swayed their strings of crystal as they walked, arching their necks and preening for the rough, handsome men of the krait.

In temperament they were like beasts that had been only lately domesticated. Kasiri men were simple for the most part; content to take their share of spoils and women and food and wine and mostly never thinking to ask for more.

Power and intrigue did not interest them, and they were happy that Liall, the strange and powerful Northman, had challenged for the right to lead some twenty years ago. Since then, he had never failed to protect them or lead them wisely.

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Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

Wisely
, to a Kasiri, meant coin and meat and goods, and Liall knew that his authority was secure only as long as the Kasiri were well fed and warm. If they were not provided for, they would begin to roam and be dissatisfied, like dogs belonging to a careless master who thinks little of their welfare.

There was no rancor or bitterness in Liall when he pondered these facts. Like many scholars of great intelligence, he believed he had learned that men are greedy, soulless beasts, intent only on what they can gain for themselves. There were few men in the camp he spoke to beyond the cursory words of command, and none he considered his true equal. Peysho was the closest thing he had to a friend.

The camp was deceptively scattered-looking and unkempt, but in fact the Kasiri were very well-organized, with wagons on the outer rim, armed toll posts at each road leading in, and yurts in the center. The mountain pass was a perfect place for a toll road: a high, clear promontory of wind-swept dirt and packed snow. At its center was a wide space of eighty paces or more, surrounded by rough monoliths of porous, rust-colored rock thickly veined with white quartz.

Chipped into smooth blocks, the stone was excellent for sharpening knives, which was how the pass had derived its name. The stones also kept the worst of the wind from assailing the encampment.

The three roads leading down from the promontory—one to the Skein River that flowed into the Channel (the Sea Road, it was called), one to the road to Khurelen and the southern lands beyond, and one back to the village of Lysia, 44