Ratha's Courage

by Clare Bell

Scent says that the red-gold and the sand-coat are returning. It is good that the tawny is not with them. Muscles launch this body free of the torment. Night wind cools the burning, but its touch intensifies the pain.

  Want the comfort of the song. Can’t have it, for the singer will know about the glowing eggs in the sand-filled log. The singer will know about the thick-skinned prey being both drawn and repelled by the sky-licking thing.

  Fleeing now, the fiery eggs hidden in the log between the jaws. Fleeing now, not only from the two returning females and the eye-clawing light, but also from the song and the singer.

  Now is for distance, silence, fur flattened to hold in scent. For seeking out food for the stolen morsels of brightness and feeding them wood so that they stay alive.

  Now is for waiting until the singer once again hungers for the thick-skinned prey. Now is for this coat that swallows stars to be swallowed itself by night . . . .

  Ratha was dozing on the sunning rock after the morning’s patrol when she felt two clan members spring up beside her. She scented Bira and Fessran. An acridness in their smells told her both were distressed. She forced her eyes fully open and faced the two Firekeepers. Uneasiness stalked down her back to the base of her tail.

  “I’ll set his guts on fire and then I’ll make him eat them,” Fessran growled. “Bira, quit looking like a swatted cub. It wasn’t your fault. You only left the Red-Tongue-nest long enough to nose-touch with me.”

  “He, I assume, is our black fawn-killer,” Ratha said, keeping her tone mild.

  “I let him stay.” Bira looked miserably at Ratha. “He only watched. Remember? You saw. I thought everyone should be able to warm themselves.”

  Ratha lowered her own head and rubbed Bira’s cheek. “There is no wrong in wanting to be kind,” she said. “We need more of that, not less.”

  Bira closed her eyes and her trembling eased. “You understand. You are also kind, clan leader.”

  You have helped to teach me, Ratha thought.

  “Ratha’s right,” Fessran added gruffly. “It isn’t your fault. I didn’t yowl at you and I’m not going to, so lift those whiskers.”

  “Can you tell me what happened? The black hunter meddled with the Red Tongue?”

  “Yes. You know the way Cherfaree and I set the wood up. We like to make it tidy. When I came back from greeting Fessran, it was all a mess and someone had been pawing at the coals.”

  “He tried to scuff out his tracks,” Fessran added, “but he missed a few and old eagle-eyes here spotted them. He’d torn his front toe pad in the scrap with Bira and me, and the mark was as plain as the tail on a tusker’s face.”

  “Clan leader, it wouldn’t be so bad if he had just messed up the fire. But I think he stole some of it.”

  “Bira, are you sure?” Fessran asked.

  “There’s a bare patch where coals and embers are missing. I’ll show you.”

  “I believe you, Bira,” Ratha said.

  “I don’t know how he did it. If he’d used a torch, I’m sure we would have seen the flame. We weren’t that far away, and when I leave the Red-Tongue-nest, I often look back.”

  Ratha’s gaze went to Fessran. “You’ve tried other ways of carrying my creature.”

  “Yes, but none of them have really worked. We keep going back to torches. What rumples my fur is how can Night have figured out a way to do it when we can’t? We’re the ones who are supposed to have the smarts, right?”

  “I don’t know, Fess. If he is a face-tail hunter, he has that song-thing of theirs and True-of-voice. We both saw what they can do.”

  “Excuse me, clan leader,” said Bira, her voice soft but determined. “When he was watching the Red Tongue, he didn’t always look as if he was listening to their song. You saw that, too, didn’t you, clan leader?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Ratha, denying the temptation not to admit it. “And it was my decision to let him stay.”

  “Well, don’t claw at yourself for it,” said Fessran.

  “Yes, if I need clawing, no doubt you’ll do it.” Ratha paced restlessly. “We have to think hard about this. If the black hunter took the Red Tongue, he means to use it.”

  “How could he know anything . . . ?” began Bira.

  Ratha turned abruptly, sweeping the air with her tail. “That doesn’t matter. We must find him and take the Red Tongue back. We also must tell True-of-voice what has happened. Fessran, you assemble a tracking party, since you know the black one’s prints. Bira, find Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter. Let them know what has happened and send them to True-of-voice. Ask him to help us find the renegade before Night harms anyone. I’ll get Thakur and join you.”

  Fessran leaped up, her whiskers bristling. “We’ll get that belly-biter!”

  “Fess,” Ratha paused. “Don’t kill him unless there is no other way to stop him. We have to find out why he did this.”

  “Trust me, clan leader,” Fessran answered. Ratha then looked at Bira, who said, “I’ve put my fire out and get Thistle,” and galloped away, Fessran following.

  Ratha looked after them, thinking, I have often feared that the Red Tongue would be stolen from us. Now it has happened. She found herself panting, and then she shook her pelt and slowed her breathing. She couldn’t waste time in panic.

  Thakur, I need you. Please be there.

  At the meadow’s far end, she found the herding teacher, with his students and the practice animals. As soon as he heard her, he sent the younger cubs back to their mothers and asked Cherfan and the herders to take charge of the older cubs and the animals. Fear quickening her steps, Ratha ran beside Thakur toward the tail leading to the hunters’ land. On the way they joined up with Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter. Bira took everyone’s treelings, promising to hide them safely in the trees. Ratha agreed with Bira that this task was not for treelings.

  There was no need to seek out True-of-voice. He and his people met the Named at the boundary of the hunters’ territory. The solemn look in his eyes made Ratha’s stomach sink.

  Quiet Hunter and Thistle approached the gray hunter leader, but the intensity in his gaze turned them back. He clearly did not want to talk.

  Without words or gestures, he turned abruptly, looking back, his eyes commanding her and the Named to follow.

  Ratha led her people slowly after him. Thakur paced beside her, slightly behind and so close that his whiskers brushed her shoulder. Quiet Hunter walked as close to True-of-voice as he could get, while Thistle-chaser took up the same position as Thakur on Ratha’s opposite side.

  Ratha hoped that it wasn’t Fessran’s tracking party that had inadvertently caused trouble by invading the hunters’ land too suddenly.

  “I don’t think it was Fessran,” Thakur said quietly. “I am sorry, but what you tried to prevent has happened. We are no longer the only ones who have the Red Tongue.”

  Ratha could only lean forward into the wind and keep walking, wondering what she and her people would find. From the look on True-of-voice’s face, it was not something he welcomed.

  Had the black renegade set a blaze that destroyed the other tribe’s hunting ground? Or worse?

  Their destination was a canyon that cut into the rolling hills east of the hunters’ plain. Ratha saw it first from a distance, the tumbling smoke that belched from the canyon mouth. When they got closer, she stepped in the water of a creek that was gray and turbid with ash. The creek was spilling down from the canyon. As she shook the mud-ash from her feet, she smelled and heard the fire.

  When they got closer, she saw her creature gone wild and raging in the dry, resin-filled pines that filled that cut in the earth. It was a blaze no longer, but a storm of flame, creating its own strong wind up the canyon.

  Enveloping and devouring brush and trees, the firestorm made a sound no longer a hiss or a roar but a ground-shaking thunder. It left no blackened crags or stumps but burned and blasted entire trees to coals and powder that thickened the air. Ratha braced herself back against the wind that wa
s trying to suck her off her feet and into the firestorm. It flew the tip of her tail nearly to her ear and her whiskers nearly straight in front of her face.

  Frantically she thought of Fessran. Had she sent her friend into this maelstrom?

  True-of-voice led his group to the side, out of the strongest wind. Ratha and the Named followed. He stood still on a small rise. Ratha, peering through the roiling smoke, saw Quiet Hunter’s dun coat moving among the hunters’ browns and grays. He was leaving True-of-voice and coming to her. Thistle-chaser joined him when he reached the clan.

  Ratha, searching the surrounding hills for Fessran and the trackers, spotted movement and caught familiar smells. Soon Fessran and her party were close enough to see. They were ash-dusted and soot-streaked, but none looked injured. Much as she wanted to run out and greet the Firekeeper and her searchers, she needed to hear what news Quiet Hunter had brought from True-of-voice.

  “Thakur,” she said to him softly, “meet Fessran and make sure everyone is all right.”

  The herding teacher was away almost before she had finished. She turned to face Quiet Hunter. His expression was also solemn, almost stern.

  “True-of-voice tells this one that female hunters had trapped face-tails in this canyon. Then the Red Tongue appeared and filled the canyon. The female hunters did not come back.”

  Ratha swallowed, trying to ease the dry scratchiness in her throat. “Did True-of-voice send any searchers? Is there a chance those females escaped?”

  “No. The song was torn by their death-screams. The Red Tongue has eaten them.”

  “One hunter? Two? A few?” Ratha forced herself to ask.

  In answer, Quiet Hunter sat, lifted both paws and spread the toes.

  Again Ratha turned her head to the canyon’s entrance. She could see flames leaping over the rocky walls. The air above shimmered with waves of heat. Soon there would be nothing alive in the canyon, nothing moving except ash settling and dying coals breaking apart.

  Ratha caught sight of Fessran butting her way through other clan members.

  “It was him,” she panted, when she reached Ratha. “We followed his tracks here. That whelp of a belly-biting hyena let the Red Tongue loose.”

  “Fessran, Quiet Hunter says that many of the other tribe’s hunters died in this fire.”

  “I smelled burned face-tail hide,” the Firekeeper answered. “I wondered why the beasts would be in a canyon. So they were driven in there by hunters and then that black devil started the fire?”

  “Accidentally or deliberately, yes.”

  “Rrrr, if I was True-of-voice, I’d be spitting mad.”

  “Well, I hope he isn’t, since I need to talk to him and tell him what happened.”

  As she turned away to summon Quiet Hunter and Thistle, she heard Fessran growl, “Night-who-eats-stars, rahrrr! It’s more Night-who-lacks-brains.”

  I’m afraid it’s the opposite, Fess. If anything, Night-who-eats-stars has too many brains. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Who, by the Red Tongue’s flame, is he?

  Chapter Eleven

  With cinders filtering through her fur and still uncomfortably hot under her feet, Ratha sat, surrounded by the Named. More of the clan were present, for she had sent a messenger to fetch those who could be spared from the herdbeasts and the cubs. The firestorm had died down, but the smoke and ash were thicker than ever. It would not burn beyond the canyon, for the in-rushing wind now forced it deeper into the rocky cleft.

  She had not seen the Red Tongue rage like this since the forest fire that had brought “her creature” to the clan. It made her realize how unpredictable and dangerous it was, and how familiarity with it had made the Named careless.

  Ratha looked the other direction, through haze, to where True-of-voice sat surrounded by his tribe. Close by were Thistle and Quiet Hunter, eyes closed, noses lifted, speaking wordlessly to True-of-voice through the mystery called only “the song.”

  I gave birth to her, Ratha thought, yet I am totally deaf to whatever she can hear. How can that be? Her gifts must have come through Bone-chewer‘s line, not mine. If he were still alive, would he be able to reach True-of-voice?

  Part of her wanted to snort with derision. If there ever was an independent, irreverent son of a rutting three-horn, it was her first mate. She remembered all too well that copper-dark face with amber eyes. It resembled Thakur’s, for the two were brothers. But Thakur never had Bone-chewer’s sardonic expression which was softened only briefly by caring and passion.

  Even though she let the thought run only briefly, it opened the old ache in her belly. How she had loved Bone-chewer, raider and loner that he was, and how wrenching it had been to lose him. He was slain in the long-ago battle between the clan and the Un-Named.

  It was then that Thakur had placed the flaming branch in her teeth, though she would have refused it if acceptance had not meant survival for her people. And now she was learning anew what the choice meant.

  Again her gaze sought out Thistle and Quiet Hunter. Her daughter still had her eyes closed and her muzzle raised. Now she was shivering. So was Quiet Hunter. What was True-of-voice telling the two?

  Ratha set her teeth, feeling the top fangs slide over the lower ones, the small teeth between the fangs scissor together. Her strong will brought her through so many trials—it would get her through this as well.

  Thistle and Quiet Hunter were getting up, touching noses with True-of-voice, turning, looking to her, coming back. She forced herself to wait until the pair reached her. Both looked shaken. Thistle gave intermittent shivers. Stolid Quiet Hunter was not shivering, but the fur ridged along his back and tail. He also looked baffled.

  He spoke first, in answer to Ratha’s expectant look. “This one, this . . . I . . . asked True-of-voice about the black eater of stars. The reply was strange.”

  “How?”

  “The song said that the star-eater was known, but is no longer. It does not sing of that one. It will never again sing of him. He is gone from the song.”

  “Claw-rip the song!” Ratha hissed. “Did you ask if True-of-voice would find the renegade so that we can take the Red Tongue back? Then he can do what he likes with that black fawn-killer.”

  “I tried,” Quiet Hunter said calmly. “This is the only reply. To True-of-voice, the black hunter no longer exists, so he can do nothing.”

  “No longer exists? You mean the renegade is dead?”

  “No, although he could be. It means only that True-of-voice cannot reach him.”

  “Then we have to find him ourselves. Arrr!” Ratha felt her tail wanting to lash and put a firm forefoot on it.

  “Something we have to do first.” The lighter voice was Thistle-chaser’s. Ratha stared at her daughter, and then dropped her gaze to avoid implying challenge. “What?”

  “Red Tongue in the canyon—soon it will die. True-of-voice asks something hard.”

  Ratha waited. Thistle hardened her voice to stop it from trembling. “Wants us to stay, help find dead ones, give them to . . .” She halted, the fur between her eyebrow whiskers wrinkling. “Hard to understand. Maybe Thistle-mistake. Says he wants us to help give them to . . . the air?”

  Ratha wanted to throw her head back and forth and howl with frustration. She felt as though she were being shrouded with this maddening mystery, as though threads were wrapping around her until she was immobilized, cocooned. She wanted to act, to leap, to claw, to bite, to shred . . .

  “Easy, yearling.” It was Thakur’s shoulder against her, his words calming her.

  “This is like trying to bite mist,” she growled. “I can’t get hold of it.”

  She caught Thistle glancing up at her. “Having hard time, too. Like getting across fast-running water, but am finding rocks to step on. One rock is, True-of-voice wants dead ones found and brought. By his people . . . and us.”

  “Dead ones? You mean bodies? Thistle, there won’t be anything left! You saw how the Red Tongue’s wildness blew the trees complet
ely apart. What could remain after that?”

  “Of some hunters, nothing. But others not burned up. Climbed canyon walls. Up trees. Died from heat, from smoke,” Thistle said. “Wait with True-of-voice. When Red Tongue finally lies down, must search.”

  “We have to find the renegade. Or make sure he is dead. We can’t chase our tails scuffing in the ashes to find . . .” Ratha couldn’t go on. The images in her mind were bad enough, and she dreaded that the reality would be worse.

  She looked away from Thistle to Quiet Hunter. His calm gaze was soothing rather than disturbing, but it held the same message. He answered, “This one, at least, must join in the search. I must help those who were, and still are, my people.”

  Ratha was momentarily distracted as Fessran entered the group and came alongside. “Well, clan leader,” the Firekeeper said, evidently having heard part of the conversation, “it could be worse. True-of-voice might have wanted revenge by killing some of us.”

  “If he means this as punishment, it is. Do you really want a mouthful of . . . ?” Ratha broke off. “Fess, keep looking for the black hunter. Take anyone you need. We’ve got to keep him from setting the Red Tongue loose again.”

  Waving a soot-streaked paw, Fessran added more of the Named to her search party, which already included Bira and other Firekeepers. She took Thistle, leaving Quiet Hunter as interpreter, saying that Thistle had been on hunters’ ground so often that, of all the Named, she knew it best. Quiet Hunter might know it better, but Thistle’s young mate felt he needed to join in the search for the hunter dead. Ratha was grateful that the usually impatient and demanding Firekeeper leader would respect that.

  Then Ratha and the Named settled down to wait until the fire had burned itself out. Waiting, for her, was the hardest part. Too many thoughts crowded into her head, memories of finding the Red Tongue, bringing it to the clan, of killing the old clan leader Meoran by jamming a lighted torch through the bottom of his jaw. Then she felt triumph. Now it made her shudder and she suddenly wanted the comfort of her treeling very badly.