Ratha’s Creature (The First Book of The Named)

by Clare Bell

  For a moment, Ratha stood staring at his pawprints in the flickering light and smelling the sour traces of his smell. Behind her she could hear Fessran licking her coat. She listened to the tongue strokes and the muted guttural sounds as Fessran routed fleas and combed out snarls and mats. At last her voice came from behind Ratha’s back. “He is a good herder. You did wrong to shame him.”

  Ratha spun around, all patience gone. “Go with him then. I can herd the Red Tongue by myself.”

  “You would do better, Ratha, if you herded your own tongue behind your teeth and kept it there for a while.” Fessran finished grooming herself, shook her pelt and got up. “Now show me how you feed this creature of yours so I may keep it alive while you sleep.”

  Ratha swallowed the rest of her anger. Fessran was going to stay. That was enough. She showed Fessran her bundle of twigs and how to poke them one at a time into the Red Tongue’s lair. When Fessran had mastered the task to her satisfaction, Ratha curled up in the ash, buried her nose in her tail and slept. The last sound she heard before she fell asleep was the soft crackle-purr of the fire burning.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Ratha woke in her nest in the ash, morning had cleared the haze from the sky and deep blue arched over the burn. Slivers of green dotted the grounds; new shoots had come up overnight from fire-ripened seeds; each one so fragile that it bent beneath the weight of a single drop of dew.

  Ratha sat up, yawned and brushed ash from her fur. She looked for Thakur before she remembered why he wasn’t there. Half the night spent tending the Red Tongue had made her peevish, and the hungry rumbles in her belly didn’t help her temper. A haunch of dappleback or some of those river-crawlers might be nice, she thought, feeling warm saliva filling her mouth. She swallowed and tried to turn her mind away from food. There was nothing to eat here. She would have to wait until she returned to clan ground.

  “This place has food only for the Red Tongue.” Fessran’s voice came from behind her and the tang of smoke stung her nose. “And not enough, either. Your creature is a greedy thing; I grow weary of feeding it.”

  Ratha stretched one leg at a time and arched her back to get the stiffness out of it. She groomed her belly, glancing now and then at Fessran, who was poking the last few sticks into the Red Tongue’s nest.

  The morning breeze shifted, sending smoke into Fessran’s face and she shook her head, blinking, her eyes tearing. She backed away, grimacing. “Arr, you ungrateful creature!” she growled. “I feed you and feed you and then you make my eyes sting!”

  “Stand on the other side.” Ratha yawned. “And you’re feeding it too much. Keep it small.”

  “I will feed it no more; there is nothing left to feed it.” Fessran rubbed her face on the inside of her foreleg, leaving the fur damp and spiky. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “There. I can see again.”

  “I can get food for it.” Ratha pointed her nose at the tree. “Up there.”

  “Unless you can knock down the whole tree, you won’t get very much,” Fessran said, eyeing the stunted saplings dubiously. “Even if you can feed your creature for a while, we can’t stay here.”

  “And if we go, what happens to my creature?”

  “We’ll have to leave it, Ratha.”

  “No!” Ratha planted her paws in the ash. “It kept me warm last night. It kept you warm too. It is a cub; it must be looked after and fed. If we go, it will die.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Fessran repeated.

  “Why did you keep it alive last night if now you say it must die?” Ratha wailed.

  “I was cold last night and I’m not now. I don’t want your creature to die either, Ratha, but staying here isn’t going to fill our bellies.”

  Ratha circled the fire, pacing frantically. An idea struck her. “I want the clan herders to see my creature,” she said, turning to Fessran who stood waiting, flicking her tail from side to side. “I can stay here with the Red Tongue while you bring them. Can you bring them, Fessran? I can stay.”

  “And be meat for the first hungry beast that comes along?” Fessran snorted. “If I left you here, I’d find only your bones when I got back, even if the clan herders would believe my words. Arr! What are you doing?” she cried in alarm as Ratha tried to snap at the flame and was driven back by heat and pain.

  “I can’t catch it. There is nothing to catch. I see it, but my teeth can’t feel it.”

  “Do you think you can carry the Red Tongue by the scruff?” Fessran wrinkled her nose. “I may not know much about it, but I know it is not that kind of creature.”

  Ratha glared at Fessran, winced and licked smarting jowls. She turned once again to the enigmatic thing still dancing over its breakfast of twigs. Fessran had placed several small branches awkwardly, leaving broken ends sticking out. Gingerly, Ratha took one of these into her mouth and drew the branch from the fire. It was shorter than she expected and she shifted it in her jaws, fighting the urge to fling the thing away as it burned close to her face. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Fessran raise a paw to bat the branch out of her mouth. Ratha held her torch as long as she could before having to drop it back in the fire.

  “There!” she panted. “I can carry my creature.”

  Fessran lowered her foot. “You wouldn’t go very far before you dropped it. The sun is high, Ratha. We don’t need the Red Tongue.”

  “No! You are just like Thakur, telling me to leave my creature. I found it, I fed it, and I’m going to take it back with me.” Ratha flopped on her belly and stared into the fire.

  There must be a way ... there must ... yes, there is.

  Ratha caught Fessran peering into her face. She sat up abruptly, almost bumping the other’s chin. “I know, Fessran! Look at the Red Tongue. See how the creature crawls along the branch? Do you see how the Red Tongue’s passing turns the wood gray and feathery?” Ratha leaned over Fessran’s shoulder as she snagged a charred stick with one claw and pulled it out of the fire. “Once the wood turns to feathers, the Red Tongue won’t eat it. If I pick my branch up by this end,” she said, tapping the blackened bark, impatient for it to cool, “I can carry it.”

  When the wood stopped glowing and smoking, Ratha got her jaws around it and lifted the branch out of the fire. She raised her head, holding the torch triumphantly. An instant later, the charcoaled end collapsed between her teeth and the lighted end fell on the ground. It flickered out. Ratha spat out a mouthful of embers, gagged and drooled on the ground, trying to cool the burning bitterness with saliva. Through pain-blurred eyes she glared at the Red Tongue, retching as fluid ran down her chin.

  She panted rapidly and stuck her sore tongue out into the morning wind.

  “Arr! I thought it would work,” she said when she could speak.

  “You did better the first time,” Fessran answered. “Perhaps a longer branch not yet touched by the Red Tongue would serve you. Wait. I’ll climb up and break one off.”

  Ratha stared, open-mouthed, as Fessran hitched herself up the sapling’s slanted trunk. “You’re helping me?”

  “I prefer that to leaving you here.” Fessran’s head appeared in a crotch between two limbs. The tree’s crown swayed as she balanced herself. She seized a nearby branch in her jaws, cracked it loose and tossed it down to Ratha. Several more followed, the dry wood snapping cleanly away from the trunk.

  “My teeth weren’t made for that.” Fessran landed beside Ratha, sending up a cloud of flaky ash.

  “Why did you knock down all those?” Ratha asked. “I can carry only one with the Red Tongue at the end.”

  “Yes, but I can carry the others. And when the Red Tongue creeps to the end of your branch, I will coax it into one of mine and give that one to you.”

  “Ah, but you are clever, Fessran,” Ratha said.

  “Not clever. Just hungry. Take the large branch for your creature.” Fessran waited as Ratha lit the stick. “What about the rest of your creature?” she asked, her voice indistinct through the stick s
he had picked up.

  “We will leave it and it will die,” Ratha said. “But my creature has given birth and its nursling dances at the end of my branch. So will it always be with the Red Tongue.” She paused. “Are you ready, Fessran?”

  The other flicked her tail in answer and the two set off across the burn, Fessran in the lead, Ratha following, bearing the torch.

  As the two traveled, the grass grew thicker underfoot, hiding the burn beneath a new carpet of green. Wild wheat stems stroked their bellies and flanks as they passed through, and Ratha had to hold her torch aloft to avoid setting the new growth alight. A sea of waving grasses covered what had been forest floor, swirling around the fire-blighted stands of pine and fir. Only the great red-woods still shaded the land, their heartwood still living, their fibrous bark only scarred by the Red Tongue’s passing. The wild grasses grew thin in their shadow and the torch seemed to burn brighter in the cool, still air beneath their boughs.

  But the trees were few and the grass triumphant as it spread far in the open sunlight. Ratha walked behind Fessran, watching her tail swing back and forth in time to her pace, listening to the fire snap and hiss. The only other sounds were of grass swishing past legs and the muted hammer of a woodpecker from its faraway perch.

  The sun reached its zenith and began to fall again. Fessran had replaced Ratha’s torch as many times as there were blackened stubs left along the trail. Ratha could hear Fessran’s stomach growl and her own, she was sure, would meet her backbone by the time they arrived on clan ground.

  Ratha slowly became aware that the continuous low gurgle in the background was not coming from her stomach or Fessran’s. It was the sound of running water. She tried to scent the stream, but the acrid tang of torch smoke made her nose useless. She could only follow Fessran’s lead.

  Soon they were walking along a grassy stream bank. Fessran found a ford where the stream ran shallow over gravel. They began to wade across, Fessran still leading, Ratha behind.

  Fessran reached the other side and scrambled up the steep bank, shaking mud and pebbles from her feet. “Here is where we swam with the deer away from the Red Tongue,” she called back to Ratha, who still stood in midstream.

  Ratha remained where she was, letting the water flow over her paws. The creek looked different in the open sun with grass instead of trees on its banks. But there, upstream, were the potholes she’d swum across and above them the waterfall she’d tumbled down. Her flank ached momentarily at the memory.

  “I know your feet are weary, Ratha”—Fessran’s voice cut into her thoughts—“but we have only a little farther to go.”

  Ratha’s jaws loosened in dismay and she almost dropped the torch in the water. Only at little farther to go? She wished that she was back on the burn, still traveling; the goal of her journey too far ahead to have to worry or think about. Now, suddenly, she had arrived. Ratha looked up the bank to where her companion was standing. Clan ground. And she wasn’t ready.

  “Are you going to let your tail drag in the water all day?” Fessran sounded annoyed.

  Ratha glanced down at her reflection. Herder of the Red Tongue, she thought wryly. A thin forlorn face stared back at her, holding the torch in its jaws. An echo of her own voice rang in her ears. Clan leader, hah! Who is he compared to....

  “Ratha, hurry.” Fessran leaned down the bank. Ratha jerked her head up and sprang, dripping, onto the slope. Her paws slid on the muddy bank but Fessran seized her ruff and hauled her up.

  Ratha paced back and forth on the stream bank while Fessran shook herself off. This was home ground, but very much changed. The forest no longer reached the stream and the meadow had altered shape and grown larger. The grass felt new and crisp underfoot. Ratha looked across the open land and remembered the cool dimness of the old forest.

  The meadow stood empty. No beasts grazed; no herdfolk stood guard. Ratha shivered. Where are they ... ?

  “Fessran, could the clan have gone somewhere else?” she asked, turning to her companion and speaking awkwardly around the branch.

  “The meadow grass is not thick enough for beasts to graze,” Fessran said. “And the dapplebacks like to browse in thickets. Our folk may have taken the animals further away to graze, but I am sure they will return to the dens at sunfall.”

  Fessran found the overgrown trail that led to the clan dens.

  “The grass is bent here,” she said, nosing about, “and here are the marks of large pads. Meoran and the others came this way not long before.”

  Ratha stood on the stream bank, her soggy coat still dripping. She stared across the meadow. She thought it was empty, but what had caused that patch of weeds to wave when the rest was still? The motion died out and though Ratha searched intently she could see nothing else. Her wet coat made her shiver again.

  “Someone is stalking us,” she muttered in response to Fessran’s questioning look.

  “Some clan cub out hunting grasshoppers.” Fessran wrinkled her nose. “Come out of the weeds, weanling, and give greeting to your betters,” she called. The meadow remained still.

  “That isn’t a cub,” Ratha said.

  “How do you know? I thought you couldn’t smell anything with the Red Tongue’s breath in your face.”

  “My nose isn’t telling me. I just know,” she growled.

  Fessran lifted her tail and waved the white spot at the end of it. No cub in the clan, Ratha knew, would disobey that signal. No one came, however, and Fessran lowered her tail. “Shake yourself dry,” she said irritably to Ratha, “and leave whoever it is to their games.”

  Ratha shook her pelt and followed Fessran onto the trail. It wound among the few trees that had been spared by the Red Tongue and forest giants that had fallen across the path. Fessran seemed unsettled, even though this was a trail she had once known well.

  She stopped, one paw lifted. Ratha halted behind her.

  “They watch,” Fessran hissed. “All along the trail they watch and they hide themselves. If you be of the clan, come forward and give greeting!” she called, but again no one came out, although Ratha sensed motion between the trees and caught the phosphorescent gleam of eyes.

  “Are they the Un-Named?” Ratha asked, shivering again although her coat was almost dry.

  “No.” Fessran’s muzzle was lifted. “I smell scents I know well.”

  “Then why do they not come out and offer greeting?”

  “I don’t know.” Fessran walked ahead a short distance and called again. “I am Fessran of Salarfang Den, a herder of the clan. I walk by right on this ground. Do you hear me, those of you out there? Srass, that rank odor can only belong to you. And, Cherfan, I smell you along with Peshur and Mondir. Come and show yourselves!”

  Her roar rang in the air, but once it died, the afternoon continued to slip into twilight in silence. Her ears and whiskers drooped. She crouched and picked up the branch she had dropped.

  “Wait, Fessran,” Ratha said. “My creature grows weak. It wants food. Give it the branch you carry.”

  Fessran laid her stick across Ratha’s until it caught. She held it while Ratha kicked dirt on the dying old one and then gave the new torch to Ratha. The fire snapped and roared, gaining hold in the wood. Ratha carried it high as she trotted down the trail after Fessran.

  Again there were rustling sounds in the forest near the path and again sudden glimmers of eyes in the growing darkness. Faraway calls told Ratha and Fessran that the news of their coming was spreading far ahead of them. Fessran paced on, her head lowered, her tail stiff.

  “I smell a kill,” she hissed back to Ratha. “The clan will meet us before we reach it; of that I am sure.”

  Ratha felt her saliva dampen the wood between her teeth. The hunger had become a dull pain in her belly, drawing the strength from her limbs so that she trembled as she walked and she could see that her companion too was betraying her hunger. Only the Red Tongue was strong.

  They went up the grassy rise and over the knoll, past the ancient oak with li
mbs low to the ground, where, Ratha remembered, she had first seen the Un-Named raider.

  Fessran’s gait slowed. Her footsteps became quieter, then ceased. Ratha crept alongside her. “There. Up ahead.” Fessran’s whiskers brushed her face. “Do you see? There they are.” Ratha felt the whiskers twitch and slide away. “Stay here, Ratha,” Fessran said. “I will have words with them.”

  Ratha dug her claws into the ground to anchor her shaky legs. She stared back at the eyes watching her. They had come out of hiding and were assembled together in mute challenge. Ratha smelled the scents drifting to her on the night breeze. She searched for the remembered scent of the clan, of kinfolk, of herdfolk who had taught her their skills and those she had run beside in the meadow when the Un-Named, their enemy, were attacking. The scents were there, but not as she remembered them. The smell of the clan had become the smell of the pack.

  As soon as Fessran had taken a few steps downtrail, a single hoarse voice rose from the front of the group. “Come no further unless you wish to feel our teeth in your unworthy throats!”

  “Are you growing blind with age, Srass?” Ratha heard Fessran yowl. “You know me and you know Ratha, who stands behind me. Let us pass and eat at the kill.”

  There was only silence and burning eyes.

  “The clan knows you, Fessran,” said a deeper voice, and Ratha’s hackles rose, for she knew that voice and hated it. “But the one who follows we do not know. Turn that one away and you may come and eat.”

  “The one behind me, clan herder, is one you know and know well,” Fessran said. Her voice was strained and Ratha knew she was trying not to anger Meoran. “The smell that is mingled with mine is of the herder Ratha, the she-cub that Thakur and I taught.”

  “She-cub? We smell no she-cub,” Srass howled, and Ratha could imagine that Meoran stood next to Srass muttering the words into the old herder’s tattered ear. “We smell no she-cub. We smell only that which burns, that which we hate.”

  “Yaran!” Fessran called, startling Ratha by naming her lair-father. “If you stand among these mangy fleabags, answer me! Do you turn away your own, the she-cub that you and Narir bore?”