Before Ysabet could stand again, the oldest iron wolf, Siv, rose from the shale behind Kiv.
Ashaun shifted her weight at once, but Kiv raised two fingers without turning his head. “Leave him be, Ashaun. Siv’s fourteen winters old and his lower left back tooth aches when the frost comes down. If he wanted a throat, he wouldn’t walk like an old carpenter with a bad knee.”
Siv came up the path at a slow, stiff-shouldered walk. Up close, he was nearly as tall at the shoulder as a marsh pony, his heavy ribs plated with natural iron-grey horn under coarse guard hairs. Scars from old rockfalls and quarry hooks crossed his flanks, and his broad muzzle was rubbed completely silver and smooth from decades of nosing cold tracks.
Pip did not retreat behind Ysabet’s boots, and it did not flare its interior lights in warning. Instead, it dimmed the green glow under its patchwork shell to a faint ember and took two small steps forward onto the level gravel.
Ysabet stayed still. She kept her bond-attention quiet and open, careful not to push urgency or caution down the link. Seven years ago with Oru, her own tightened hand had turned two nervous animals into a disaster; she had learned the hard way that a handler’s fear traveled faster than teeth.
