by Clare Bell
Thakur seemed to sense her distress, for he left his nest in the ashes and came to her.
“Thakur, what have I done? I thought the trail that led us to the Red Tongue was done, but it isn’t. What unbearable thing will come next? Maybe I shouldn’t have—”
“Then we would have perished, clan leader,” he answered, his whiskers brushing her cheek fur. “And all our uncomfortable thoughts with us.” He licked the nape of her neck; his scent started to make her head swim. Oh, no. Not this. Not now . . .
As if he sensed the effect he had on her, he moved downwind, staying close enough to be comforting, far away enough not to be distracting.
“Yearling,” he said, “if it helps, I believe that you will lead us through this and we will be better because of it.”
His words made her want to wrinkle her nose, yet it touched the needy part of her and soothed it. “That is a lot of faith, herding teacher.”
“Faith based on knowing you,” he answered simply.
She shifted. “It is going to be hard pulling those dead ones out of the canyon. My nose and my tongue won’t like me for it. And knowing that it was my creature that killed them. I’m afraid when I pick them up, they will just fall apart, like dead coals . . . like Meoran did when the Red Tongue finally let him go . . . .”
“I was beside you then. I will be beside you tomorrow.” He paused. “Don’t take this all on yourself, yearling. You did all you could to prevent it. If there is blame, it lies with the one whose pelt eats stars.”
“He . . . he . . . fascinates me, Thakur. I can’t help it. He draws me like the Red Tongue draws a dazed dappleback. How can that be, when he has done so much harm and I hate him? I would bring him down with a throat-bite, yet I have to know who he is, where he comes from.”
“I thought you believed he was True-of-voice’s son.”
She turned, stared into the emerald of his eyes. “He couldn’t be. Not after what he did to his own people.”
“Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he was trying to help and the fire got away from him.”
“Help?” This time her nose did wrinkle in disbelief.
“They were hunting face-tails in that canyon. Remember several days ago when the tusked ones ran into the fire? You told me that Night was there and watching. Maybe he thought he could help the hunters by drawing the face-tails or driving them.”
Ratha sat, thinking. “That’s true, Thakur. I saw the look in his eyes. He understood what fire would do to the beasts.” And I saw that, and failed to act.
“If Night-who-eats-stars is alive and out there, he may be in as much pain as you are now. That is another reason to find him.”
“Well, his ‘help’ has caused a mess that I have to clean up. An ugly one, and I am not just thinking about the corpses in the canyon. I hope Fessran can find Night-who-eats-stars. I need to know why and how he did this.”
Ratha lay down, her nose buried in her tail, but she didn’t sleep for a long time.
In the morning, Fessran and her search party returned, tails switching in frustration. They had found no trace of Night-who-eats-stars, no scents, no footprints, not even a hair. Bira had a small hollowed out log, part of it burned away, but still containing sand and ash. She carried it in her mouth and placed it before Ratha.
“I think Night used this to keep the Red Tongue alive. Look at the tooth-marks on it.”
Blinking sleep away, Ratha studied Bira’s find. “If he did use this, and we now have it, does that mean he no longer has the Red Tongue?”
“He could make or find another log and scoop coals into it,” Fessran said, interrupting Bira’s reply. “No, my guts tell me that he still has the Red Tongue’s cubs. You were right, Ratha. This black fawn-killer is too smart.” A yawn muddled the Firekeeper’s last words, and she stretched her jaws open and arched her tongue, the tip curling up between her two lower fangs.
Ratha stared at the remains of Night’s hollow fire-carrier, lying between her paws. Its charred bark reminded her of the task that lay ahead: finding those who had been slain by the blaze. “Keep this safe,” she said finally, rolling the log back to Bira.
She felt Fessran’s gaze on her and lifted her head to meet it.
“Ratha,” her friend said abruptly, “let me lead the hunt for the dead. You take the search party and look for Night. You might do better than I did.”
“And I would be spared the smells, sights, and tastes of the ones my creature killed. You would do this for me?”
“Why not? I’ve seen similar things. I’m older, harder, meaner; it won’t bother me.”
For a tail-wave, Ratha was tempted to take Fessran’s offer. She dreaded the grisly job that loomed ahead. But she knew that the Firekeeper also would hate the task, even if she showed and said nothing. There was a core of kindness deeper than the streak of ruthlessness or the surface toughness in that soot streaked sandy coat and those fire-stung eyes. She didn’t want to damage that well-hidden but precious reserve.
“No, Fess. The Red Tongue is my creature and this is my task. Rest a bit, then please, if you can, take the search party out again.”
Fessran paused, holding Ratha’s gaze as if she meant to argue, but then she lowered her head, brushed past Ratha in a silent acknowledgment, and padded away. Bira followed, Night’s fire-carrying log in her jaws.
Ratha groomed herself briefly, just enough to get the worst of the ash out of her fur. A few last swipes, and she was ready to face the day and her people, who were waking and gathering around her.
“True-of-voice has asked that we help recover the bodies of the hunters who were slain by the Red Tongue. Anyone who feels they can’t do it may return to clan ground, especially the younger ones. I won’t just be directing the search; I will work among you.”
“Why must we do this?” Cherfan asked. “We didn’t set the fire. The fawn-killer did.”
“We do it because True-of-voice has asked. Yes, we did not start the fire, but we are responsible for taming and keeping it.” She paused. “You may be excused, if you wish, herder.”
“No. I may grumble and sneeze, but I’ll help you, Ratha. Just don’t ask me to climb any trees. I’m too big for that.”
She picked out the younger clan members. “You half-grown ones should be spared this. Go back to clan ground and wait for us there. Bundi, you lead them.”
“Clan leader, let me stay and help,” Bundi asked, unexpectedly.
“Why?”
“Because I have felt the Red Tongue’s touch. Because of this,” Bundi said, lifting his head to show the burnscars that ran down his neck and shoulder.
Because you know the pain that the hunter dead felt before my creature took their lives.
Ratha took a breath. “You can stay then, Bundi. Ashon, you lead the older cubs back. Go to Drani. She’s taking care of the nurslings.”
The silver-gray youngster gathered up his peers and departed for clan ground.
Ratha then found Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter, asking them to go over to True-of-voice’s group so that they could learn where the dead were to be taken. Thistle wanted to stay with the Named and work alongside her mother.
“No, I need you to go with the hunters,” Ratha told her firmly.
Thistle was stubborn. “Am as strong as Fessran. Won’t get belly-sick at smells. If, maybe, follow you as clan leader, need to take on same duties.”
“Thistle, I know you are willing. Right now I need you to go with the hunters and not argue.”
“Won’t argue, then. Will do.”
Ratha rubbed her forehead against her daughter’s. They had only begun to approach the idea that Thistle-chaser might lead the Named one day, when Ratha grew too old and feeble. Initially it had seemed ridiculous, but as Ratha watched Thistle growing, recovering from the injuries received as a cub, and, most of all, developing in character, the possibility had grown stronger.
Thistle rubbed alongside her with the affectionate tail-flop, then joined Quiet Hunter, who ha
d been waiting nearby. Both headed across the intervening distance to True-of-voice and the hunter tribe. Ratha let her gaze rest on them only briefly, cradling the joy that the young couple gave her, then letting it go.
She turned to the remaining clan members.
“We’ll start at the canyon entrance. Space yourselves across so that we don’t miss anything.”
Heads lowered, shoulders hunched, the Named started up the fire-scoured canyon. Ratha was in the center, and they spread out to either side of her. Some hunters came across and joined them, filling up the gaps. Ratha noticed that Thakur took up a place downwind of her and two positions away, so that his scent wouldn’t distract her, but he could still speak to her.
The air was still, heavy with haze.
The first body they found was not burned or heat-damaged. The hunter lay on her side, as if she had fallen asleep.
“Killed by the Red Tongue’s breath,” said Thakur.
Ratha knew the sting of smoke in her throat. Sometimes it got so thick, it made her cough and gasp.
The body might be untouched, but Ratha knew that the death had been as wretched as any other in the canyon.
“Put that one where we can find it on the way out. No sense in dragging it up and back,” Ratha instructed.
They came across two more, both smoke-killed. Ratha recognized the face, but she couldn’t remember the name.
“Bent Whiskers,” said Thakur softly. “I knew her. I’ll take her.”
I knew her, too. Just a little.
Before Ratha could move, Cherfan grabbed the scruff of the other. “This may not be as bad as I feared,” he mumbled through his mouthful of fur.
“Just put them aside,” Ratha said, ignoring the clenching sensation in her stomach. “With the first.” She listened to the soft sounds as Thakur and Cherfan dragged the slain away. She didn’t watch.
The line of Named and hunters moved carefully up the floor of the ravaged cut in the earth.
When they found the next few dead hunters, Cherfan admitted that he was wrong. It was as bad as he had feared, and worse.
Ratha had seen Un-Named ones wounded or killed by her creature, but she never realized how bone could be so twisted by intense heat, how flesh and skin could be roasted, seared, charred into an ugly black crust that bled when it broke open.
A growing numbness in her mind offered an escape, but she chose not to take it. Instead, she forced her senses to accept it all, the beyond-bitter taste of the charred crust that covered the bodies, the way it broke beneath her fangs and the gritty crunch of it in her teeth. The acrid, corrosive smell ate its way into her nose. Her eyes blurred so that she couldn’t tell if the red beneath the crust when it crumbled was still-glowing ember or once-living flesh.
Next to her, someone retched, and that smell joined the other foulness.
She tightened her belly against sickness. The offer of numbness rose again, but this time she drove it off with rage against the black renegade. He was the one, not she. He stole coals from the watch-fire, he hid them and tended them, and he tried to use them to assist the hunters in capturing and killing face-tails. This hellishness that surrounded her now was of his making, not hers. She imagined what she would do to him if she caught him, adding to Fessran’s expressed intentions with a few of her own.
She made a shield of her anger and cast it all about her, willing it to harden and defend her from all other feelings, but even as she fanned rage’s flame, she felt it falter. The thoughts she coaxed from her anger began to repulse her, and then sicken her until she, too, retched and drooled on the ground.
Her will made her shaking legs move, stretched her neck out, made her mouth open so that she could fasten her teeth in the next one of the slain, but a paw appeared in her tunneling vision, stopping her. She thought at first it was Thakur—and, yes, he stood nearby—but the paw was Bundi’s.
“Clan leader, let me take this one,” the herder said, and a flash of memory told her why he was in the line of searchers.
The horrible thing was pulled out of her vision and away from her nose. She could only gasp her gratitude since her tail had become so heavy that she couldn’t lift it in acknowledgment. Now it was Thakur beside her, steadying her.
“I doubt if it helps to know this, yearling, but True-of-voice hasn’t shirked this duty either.”
Her tongue feeling the acid-etched surface of her fangs, Ratha turned her head to one side. Thakur was right. True-of-voice was in the line with some of the other hunters. Even as she watched, he had found another of his dead and was pawing at her to turn her over. It wasn’t an easy task, for the heat had shortened the ligaments in her back so that she was bowed, the back of her head touching the base of her tail. Her mouth was frozen open, revealing teeth that were nearly sabers. One had broken, the fracture line sparking another of Ratha’s memories. Tooth-broke-on-a-bone.
She watched True-of-voice. He positioned the body so that he and another hunter could pick it up. Although it was a struggle, he moved so gently, so carefully, so . . . reverently . . . that Ratha felt her throat tighten. What was he thinking, feeling? Did he understand why this had happened? Did he hate Night-who-eats-stars? Did he hate the clan now, and was he planning revenge on them?
“Can you go on, Ratha?” Thakur asked softly.
She could and did, again taking up her position in the line. Thakur rolled in ash, disguising his scent so that he could stay beside Ratha without distracting her.
She saw True-of-voice’s people working alongside her own and wondered what they thought and felt.
The last body was up in a tree. True-of-voice circled the scorched pine, looking up. Ratha saw that he wanted to climb it, but like Cherfan, he was too large.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “I haven’t done a lot yet. Let me at least do this.”
“I’ll get Thistle,” said Thakur. “She’ll tell True-of-voice what you want to do.”
“Hasn’t she gone with the hunters?”
“No, they haven’t left yet.”
Still fighting off the numbness that wanted to seduce her into its comfort, she went to the tree, sank her claws into the scaly bark, and started to climb. Reaching high with her forepaws while standing on her rear legs, she embraced the tree, sinking her foreclaws deep. With a spine-arching bound, she got her rear claws up and fastened. Freeing the foreclaws, she used the power of her hindquarters to drive her up the trunk. She repeated the forelimb clasp, feeling the tendons on the top of her forepaws pull against her weight as the claws sank in. Hanging by her front claws, she jumped her rear paws, took the weight off the fronts, and surged up again. Using this bounding motion, she ascended into the branches.
Chapter Twelve
The Red Tongue had not licked as far up this pine as it had many others. Once above the zone of charring, Ratha saw green and smelled pine needles. Above her, partially wedged between a branch and the main trunk, was a still form whose tail dangled and swung as Ratha’s climbing made the tree sway. The hunter had climbed high in a frantic attempt to escape the blaze but had perished anyway.
Now Ratha had to thread her way through the branches, spiraling up the tree until she reached the dangling tail. With a grunt and another surge of effort, she hauled herself up level with the body. She saw that this hunter was only half grown, barely out of cubhood. Trying to ignore the twist that this thought gave to her belly, Ratha grabbed the scruff and pulled. At least this one wasn’t burned, and it was more flexible, but somehow it was stuck in the tree. Then Ratha saw the forepaws and the claws driven deep, through the bark into the sapwood. She imagined how the tree would have been rocking, lashed by the in-rushing wind. Choking, terrified, the young hunter would have clung until death froze her claws in an unbreakable hold.
Not looking at the face, Ratha tried pulling at the scruff again. No good. She would have to release the feet, and that meant biting off the deeply embedded claws. Prying with her teeth wouldn’t work, and she might break a fang.
&n
bsp; Ratha took a deep breath. The pine-needle scent was the smell of life that had survived the fire’s assault, and it gave her the strength of will to begin the grisly task. She had to take the whole foot in her jaws, maneuver it with her tongue, and use her side teeth to bite off each claw close to the toe. It was a slow and difficult task. If the hunter had been alive, it would have hurt her badly, for Ratha had to cut into the sensitive quick.
She had freed one foot and was halfway though the claws of another when she felt the claw she was cutting move in her mouth. Startled, she pulled back, stunned with the realization that the young hunter might still be alive.
Quickly she turned herself so that she could see the face. Licking it with her rough tongue, she felt the flicker of eyelashes and again pulled back so that the eyes could open. One did, barely a slit, but it showed there was still life.
Ratha swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. It was hard to speak, yet she had to. “Release your claws. Can you hear me? I’m trying to get you down, but I can’t if you won’t let go.”
Both eyelids fluttered now and the tear-lines crumpled in a grimace of pain.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. Pull your claws back so I can bring you down.”
She saw one forefoot tremble with effort, then the other. The claws were too deeply embedded. Getting her jaws around the forefoot, she pulled while the young hunter strained, trying not to taste the blood seeping from the remains of the claws she had bitten off.
The forefoot came free. Trembling, Ratha started on the other, but as the claws pulled out, the forefoot went limp in her mouth. Again she looked at the face, but saw that the life had slipped free, along with the claws.
Ratha shut her eyes and tried to control her trembling, which was turning into waves of shudders. It was all she could do not to leave the body and back down the tree, but she had promised True-of-voice to bring the young hunter down.
Digging her own claws in deeply, she grabbed the scruff, feeling the skin and hair stiffening in death. She dragged the body out of the fork where it had stuck. She had to weave it through the branches as she retraced her course down the tree.
