The Tiger and the Wolf

by kindle@netgalley. com

  And he was still on her heels. She could hear the regular panting of his breath, almost feel the heat of it on her haunches. The crisp thud of his footfalls in the snow were so very close. There was panic in her heart and she could not but give it rein, letting it whip her faster and faster. She would tire, she knew, but she did not have the ability to pace herself. That was a luxury so seldom granted to prey.

  She twice tried to cut back south, desperately hoping to barter a brief burst of speed into something that would do her some good. He was there both times, mouth open in a wolf’s easy grin, heading her away, making all the decisions over where this chase was going.

  Somehow she was able to form the cogent thought: He knows the ground already.There was not a hand’s span of the Crown of the World that had not known Broken Axe’s tread. Even with the snow masking the tell-tale scents and muddling the scenery, he knew where he was. He was forcing her to head exactly where he wanted her, as a shepherd would nip at the edges of his flock, and she could do nothing to stop him.

  The going was harder now, and she understood that Broken Axe was forcing her uphill, tiring her out further while he himself just dipped into what seemed an inexhaustible well of ready strength. The ground underfoot became more uneven, riven by stones and outcroppings of rock that the snow turned into ankle-breaking traps for the unwary. She kept her eyes ahead, legs still pounding away as she leapt and shouldered her way through the snow, burning with exhaustion a little more with each breath. The skew and disposition of the trees ahead were a hidden language telling her where the rock lay, where the ground was earth and roots. She spurred herself on, scrabbling and darting. Every time a tree passed on either side, she cast herself that way, trying to put obstacles in his path.

  He did not seem overly concerned. Sometimes he was almost abreast of her, his sinuous progress at the corner of her vision, on the left or the right, steering her adroitly by the menace of his very presence. For him, the trees and rocks might almost not have been there.

  Then she saw, ahead, where the land would call a halt to the chase; where she, exhausted and terrified, would be brought to bay against a wall of upthrust grey stone. As though a god’s stroke had severed the earth, the shallow, uneven rise that he had been hounding her up met with a weathered and cracked cliff face three times the height of a tall man. The barrier extended on either side as far as she could see, a grey gash in the white expanse of the world. Only now did she know how close she was to the uplands, because here they were. This was where the Wolf’s Shadow grew fainter. Here were the first few jagged points that lined the northern edge of the Crown of the World.

  Here was where Broken Axe sought to break her. He was even slowing down, letting her dash herself against the rocks; letting her drive out the last few sparks of defiance that still burned in her.

  She increased her speed, and for the first time had the sense that she had caught him off guard. The stone loomed over her, as though it would crash down and obliterate all trace that there had ever been such a thing as Maniye, Stone River’s daughter.

  A plan formed in her head: a mad plan but the sane ones had all failed her. There was no wolf-test at which she would better Broken Axe, but she could do something he could not. This cannot work, but she guessed that Broken Axe had not been interested in the Testing. Certainly he was not the sort to engage in idle gossip with the Winter Runners, and there were drawbacks in being a man alone.

  But it was very high, and she had never tried something like this.

  She Stepped. For a moment her pounding paws became feet in Horse-gifted hide boots, going far too fast for a human, about to trip over herself and plant her face straight in that rough spread of stone.

  She jumped, kicking off with all her strength, and as soon as she had cleared the ground she was a wolf again. It was Broken Axe’s trick to leap the stream. The distance her human strength would throw her human body was far less than it would throw the smaller wolf that she became. For a second she was a terrified animal, scrabbling at the rockface.

  She had already worked through the sequence in her mind. In the next eyeblink she let her tiger out, its claws already hooking at whatever chink or fracture the rock would grant her, finding impossible purchase for a half-breath that would let her rake her way higher up the stone. She sensed Broken Axe at her very tail, leaping up with jaws bared, but falling away, falling short of her.

  Her satchel strap snapped, and for a moment she felt sure that she would lose Hesprec again, and that he would fall into the waiting teeth of the hunter. Something like a chill whip coiled about her shoulder, though, and she knew he had lashed himself close to her for all his old snake body was worth.

  Then her battle with the stone and with the yawning pull of the earth below consumed all her attention. She was fighting for a hold with all four feet, lurching upwards in uneven bursts, knowing that to fail was to fall. Her enemy was waiting to tear into her the moment she allowed him to.

  But it was for her to allow. For the first time she was in control: she would succeed or fail by her own merits, not merely fall victim to Broken Axe’s long-learned skills.

  Then, halfway up, she lost her purchase and felt herself parting company with the treacherous rockface, almost as if it was shaking her off. She felt herself in fierce contention with its stone spirit, the stubborn and uncooperative entity that slumbered within it. Then it had shuddered, like a vast beast that feels the itching of some insect on its hide, and she was falling.

  She twisted as only a cat can twist but, instead of poising herself to fall on her feet, she thrust herself away from the stone, imagining Broken Axe watching her arc overhead with a blank stare.

  The outer branches of the pine tree whipped at her, and her weight shattered them as she half leapt, half fell. Then she hit a branch that was solid enough to bear the small tiger that she had become. She flailed madly at the bark, claws digging in wherever they could. The trunk bent under her, but she gave it no time to realize the lunacy she had inflicted upon it. She scrabbled and scratched up another six feet, shifting her weight to lean in towards the cliff, and then let the tree spring away as she jumped again. Below her, Broken Axe jumped away from the explosive shower of snow she released.

  This time she had spotted her target – the higher reaches of the cliff were riven and messy with roots and grass. For a moment she thought that only one set of claws had caught – not enough to keep her anchored there – but then both hind feet had found just enough roughness in the rock to boost her up, and it needed only three heaving breaths’ work to see her over the top.

  She turned, then, to look down. It was not exactly a gesture of defiance, and when she collapsed into a crouch it was because she was shaking too much to run any further. Still, she faced her hunter, and in doing so shook off the role of prey, at least for now.

  The pale wolf that was Broken Axe looked up at her. She had thought he would Step to his human form and try to coax her back again, but there was just the beast below with his pale eyes and his dark shoulders. He sat back on his haunches and stared, and she tried to read many things into the language of his lean body, and could not be sure of any of them.

  Then he stood and shook himself and trotted off along the line of the cliff, his intention plain. It would take more than the intervention of the earth itself to put him off his hunt.

  She thought about trying to climb down then, but he was still there, somewhere below, and, if she thought of it, so might he have second-guessed her, as he seemed so apt at doing. Instead, when she had recovered her breath, she turned and set off again away from the fractured side of the earth. She had meanwhile returned to her wolf shape, but by now she had no clear destination left to her. The pursuit itself was the only thing that was keeping her moving.

  When she grew tired, worn down by covering the broken ground, she sheltered wherever she could find, hunching in whatever nook the land would give her: under rock shelves or in the wind-shadow of trees. Hesprec made no a
ppearance, having stowed himself back in her satchel. She felt as lonely and lost as if she was the last soul on earth.

  Sometimes she went uphill, because she hoped Broken Axe would assume she would go down. Sometimes she went downhill, because she was tired and it was easier, and she was not thinking. The wind remained cold but the snow did not return, and the weakening sun began to eat into that which had already fallen, slowly restoring the world to her, and erasing her tracks.

  On the third day, Broken Axe still not having caught up with her erratic wanderings, she broke into the clearing, and halted.

  In one sinuous movement, Hesprec unwound himself from her satchel and Stepped into his old man’s body, drawing his robe tight about him.

  ‘What is this place?’ he hissed, one hand making a quick gesture at the sight ahead of them, as if to ward off some hostile and very present power.

  She had been running tired for some time, her head low, implacable feet drawing her on despite the bone-weariness in her limbs. She had not noted all the stumps of felled trees that had lined her path towards this place. She had not realized that, out of the domain of the wilds, she had come to a place of man.

  There were no men here now though: the start of winter had driven them lower to warmer ground. She wondered if they were thralls of the Winter Runners or if she had wandered close to some other pack’s territory – the Moon Eaters perhaps. Whichever, this was Wolf tribe work. No others did this.

  Here, the felling of trees had cleared a great circular space containing the wreckage of a dozen mounds. Where the snow had melted, she could see the char of ash left behind, and there was plenty of half-burned wood scattered about, the shell that had been peeled away when the thralls had dug at the treasure within.

  She had always known that the Wolf had marked her – and probably as prey. Here, she felt his presence keenly, his spirit lingering even after his work was done.

  When she Stepped again, exhaustion fell on her like a hammer and she sagged to her knees. ‘This is a sacred site.’ She felt that she should be very scared to intrude here – as Hesprec must be, for certainly he had sensed the god of his enemies hanging about the place. Instead, though, she felt unnaturally calm. The Wolf was watching her but had yet to bare his teeth, and she was too sapped by her long run to show either deference or defiance.

  ‘What do they do here?’ the old Serpent asked, eyes narrowed.

  She should not tell him, she knew. No child of the Wolf should divulge such secrets. But the rebellious streak that had driven her so far flared up again, and she looked the invisible Wolf right in its eye and said, ‘This is where they make the magic wood. Kalameshli has scores of thralls employed for it. They do something special in the burning of it, and this normal wood becomes magic wood, the Wolf’s wood.’

  She glanced at him to see what he might make of that, and noticed a thoughtful expression under the shadow of his hood. ‘This is the iron-magic?’ he guessed.

  ‘It is the iron-magic,’ she confirmed. She did not know the secret, of course; only Kalameshli and his acolytes – and their counterparts in other tribes – could claim that knowledge. She knew the magic was only the Wolf’s to use, though, a secret knowledge that had seen her father’s people cast down her mother’s, and that no outsiders must ever know. The iron was that unnatural, terrible metal that made tools that could shatter stone and weapons that could crack bronze; iron that no man could attune himself to and carry with him while Stepped, without going through terrible ordeals as secret as the metal’s working.

  ‘Your god is here.’ Hesprec’s voice seemed remarkably steady. ‘Or one of them, at least. How does he look upon you, tell me?’

  Wolf filled the clearing, towering high as the sky, his sightless paws planted as far apart as the furthest trees. She felt his vast attention on her, watchful and considering.

  Well, O Wolf? she asked, inside her head. Speak to me of your disapproval. She knew the stories of those who betrayed the pack: hearth-husbands who were greedy when food was scarce; chiefs who led their people astray; hunters who were clumsy or over-proud; kinslayers – most of all kinslayers. In the stories, they found themselves in the wilds and they came face to face with Wolf, and they were judged.

  There were many qualities Wolf despised, but many that he valued, too. Not all his people ran with the pack. Some walked alone, after all.

  Wolf weighed her and scented her and marked her trail – all of her trail all the way back to Akrit’s hall, and she felt no condemnation, not yet. Wolf was waiting to see how she would survive, now she had cast herself into the wilderness. She would know his judgement: it would be expressed in her living until spring, or in her frozen corpse being buried by the winter snow. Wolf despised betrayal and cowardice, but she felt neither of those rods descending upon her back. Instead, she knew that Wolf valued determination and perseverance, the endurance of the long chase, the will to survive the lean season of the ice.

  ‘He is waiting,’ she said softly. ‘He wants to know what I will do next.’

  Hesprec sighed and sat down beside her, stiffly enough that she heard his joints creak. ‘And what will you do?’

  ‘Survive.’ The word came to her unbidden.

  ‘Excellent. Always it is good to have a plan.’

  She glanced angrily at him, but saw the slight smile there, the sign that he was baiting her.

  ‘And you have a plan too, O Serpent?’

  ‘It may be so. This is not my land but these things are known: what we have just lived through was the least hatchling of winter’s brood, no? When the season comes in earnest, we will die.’ He saw her stubborn expression, and amended that to: ‘I will die

  – of that I am sure.’

  ‘I hear no plan,’ she told him curtly.

  ‘We are reaching the far bounds of your people, here? I had always thought that the highlands were not Wolf lands?’

  ‘The Wolf walks where he wills,’ she replied archly, but then: ‘I think we must be at the very edge of the Wolf’s Shadow here, though. This camp may even mark it. The Wolf-wood takes much normal wood to create, I think, so the camps are far spread.’

  Hesprec closed his eyes and bowed his head. ‘Let us head north, then.’

  ‘Further north?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘North, into the highlands proper,’ he confirmed. ‘Use that nose of yours to sniff out some habitation that is not Wolf tribe. Let us claim some right of hospitality, and hope that whoever dwells here is kinder to a wandering priest than your kin were. Seek out the scent of smoke, and let us then trust to the power of our words to win us a place for the winter.’

  ‘That is no plan,’ she decided.

  ‘It is my only plan. And yours is . . . ?’

  She tried to sense what the Wolf might think. Was it craven to creep into some stranger’s good graces just to ward off the chill? Should she not brave the utmost winter to show how she was the Wolf’s child?

  Except that she was not only the Wolf’s child and, anyway, even the Wolf told stories of the clever as well as the strong and the swift. Wolf valued the crafty even as he valued the mighty.

  She half felt that Hesprec’s suggestion was doomed anyway. Surely they could wander all over the highlands and not find a single campfire kept burning. But there was no harm to scent the wind for the taste of smoke, after all. In the end, even if the Wolf did disapprove, she wanted to live. A stranger’s hearth was better than a cold grave.

  It rained soon after, adding a new misery to the rest. As well as the wet chill that soaked into her pelt, they had run out of the food gifted to them by the Horse, and the hunting here was meagre. With the world’s scents washed away and its creatures under cover, they might as well be in a desert, for all the prey she could scare up. This time it was Hesprec who saved them, setting little traps of thread unpicked from his robe edge so that a dozen small creatures – squirrels and mice – were caught overnight while they slept.

  ‘The Serpent has other ways to b
e fed than all this chasing about,’ he explained in that manner of his that trod the line between dignity and self-mockery.

  He kept a single mouse for himself and let her take what meat she could from the rest of the diminutive catch. His own meal he swallowed whole and raw, Stepping into his snake form to digest it. He had explained that he could live for a week on such a repast, if he needed.

  She had not thought she would come to rely on him. In the pit of the Winter Runners, he had seemed such a frail and helpless creature.

  Later it snowed again, overnight, so that the white world was waiting for them once more when they awoke. By then, Maniye felt her ribs tight against her skin, her skin loose over her shrunken belly. She could not live on a mouse every handful of days, nor could Hesprec save himself from a freezing death without her wolf-warmth each night. Their co-dependence would not be enough to beat back the encroaching winter.

  But that very same day, even as the sky was purpling, bruising down towards sunset, she scented smoke.

  The taste of it, that lone evidence that she and Hesprec were not the sole surviving humans in the whole of the world, gave her back a little fire and set her feet bounding and scrabbling through the snow, even as a fresh feathering of white began to descend. Someone had lit a fire. A fire meant warmth. A fire meant food. A fire meant home. Right then she was prepared to kill a stranger for those things, if only she found the strength for it.

  She was not so maddened with hunger that she just went charging right in: when she spotted the fire’s red eye, deep off in the forest, she Stepped to her human form and shook her satchel until Hesprec awakened and slung his coils out, spitting and cursing at the chill the moment he resumed his bony old human shape.

  A simple pointing finger was enough to bring him up to speed.

  ‘A campfire, I think,’ he murmured, squinting into the twilight. ‘Some other wanderer, perhaps. Who would be abroad this night? The dangerous and the desperate, none other.’