The Tiger and the Wolf

by kindle@netgalley. com

  He remained very still, looking at her. If he had Stepped to his wolf shape, then she would have fought or run. She could not have said, right then, which course she might have taken. He remained human, though, with no weapon to hand.

  ‘My oath still stands,’ he said.

  There was sufficient distance between them that, if he lunged for her, she would have time to find a form in which to meet him, or so she hoped. She knew she should simply flee, but here he stood, Broken Axe, and between them the iron barrier of his word.

  She let go of the tiger within her, and her human feet took a single step back, widening the distance just that little bit more. ‘And you’ve never broken an oath before, is that it?’

  ‘Only once.’ Ill fortune dogged the oath-breaker, just as it would the treacherous host, the ungracious guest, the kinslayer. These were the great crimes that even the most powerful took note of. But then he was a lone wolf, a man who ran without a pack. The stories agreed that such hunters were broken inside, so that their word was a twisting and slippery thing.

  ‘I won’t go with you,’ she told him.

  ‘You think so.’

  ‘You bring back my corpse, or nothing at all.’ Even as she said it, she wondered if she herself was making oaths she could not keep.

  ‘Many Tracks, you’re young still. Is it a happy thing to fall back into your father’s shadow? No, but neither is it the end of the world. There are worse fates.’

  ‘My father will never have me for a daughter.’ She realized that something had shifted in her over the winter, something learned from Loud Thunder or from Hesprec, or from her own two warring souls. She would be as good as her word: she would not go quietly, nor become the meek daughter or hearth-wife. ‘And if there are worse fates than being Stone River’s get, how about Broken Axe’s mate?’

  She caught the flinch in his expression, swiftly disguised. He doesn’t know!

  ‘My father promised it – or threatened it – to punish me. To bind you.’

  For a long time he stared at her, and she could read precisely nothing of his thinking in his expression. Those eyes of his seemed to anatomize her, and eventually his silence became the most fearful thing about him, growing and growing until it filled the world.

  ‘He will have you for his dog,’ she said. She had meant it as a barb, but the silence had got to her, and it came out closer to a whisper.

  ‘That is between Stone River and myself,’ he said at last. ‘But you cannot be my mate, not even if either of us found it a thought to rejoice in.’

  It was her turn to frown but say nothing.

  ‘Many Tracks,’ he reminded her mildly. Through all this speech he had not moved, not so much as to shift his balance.

  At first she could not see what he meant, and he was plainly willing to wait until the world froze over before saying more. Then the revelation descended on her like a storm, so that she actually staggered slightly. A hunter would take a mate to keep his hearth.Yet on the shores of the lake, when he had caught up with her, he had given her a hunter’s name.

  Many Tracks? She had not thought how he had meant it. She’d thought it was just the mockery of a man who believed he had caught her.

  He must have seen the leap of hope in her face. ‘Do not mistake me,’ he warned her. ‘When the last day of winter dies, then I will come for you. This I swore, even as I swore to Loud Thunder that I would wait just so long. But of your father’s plans for you – or for me – then know that you shall be spared the fate of being the mate of Broken Axe.’

  ‘And you shall not be bound to my father’s hearth.’

  ‘Just so.’

  There were parts of her that were still urging that she flee, but she mastered them. ‘You have lived all the winter here, without even a roof.’

  A nod from him.

  ‘Why do you even bother with the tribe or with my father? A man who can triumph over winter should need nothing from them. If I could do that myself, I’d just . . .’

  ‘Go into the wilds? Live as the wolf lives?’ he asked her.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I wish I were that strong. But the call of kin, of blood, of company, it gets to you, if you give it long enough. It’s easier to live alone when there are people you can live alone away from.’ His small smile made him young just for a moment: the youth who must have shared adventures with Loud Thunder long ago. ‘Perhaps one day you’ll be stronger than me.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good luck to you. But do it after I’ve brought you back to Stone River. After that you’re no longer my concern.’

  And it was the strangest thing, but she could detect the falsehood there. She was his concern, somehow. It was not any desire for her – she had seen that plain enough when she had told him Akrit’s plans. There was something else, though . . .

  My mother . . .Was there some guilt there, that he had been the one to take her mother out into the woods and cut her throat? Surely guilt was for men other than Broken Axe.

  Then he moved, and even though it was away from her she was instantly a wolf, skittering away from him.

  ‘I’ll be with you soon enough,’ he called back to her. ‘You must know that Loud Thunder will not stand in my way again. You’ve run well, and you’ve made good use of your chances, but where can you go now? What will you barter with next, for just a little more time?’ And he seemed almost to be inviting her to think of something. Is it that he enjoys the chase and wants to prolong it?

  Abruptly he had Stepped, becoming the pale wolf with the dark mane, and went loping easily off through the trees, lost to sight in moments.

  Her head was so filled with Broken Axe’s words, and their veiled implications, that she just ran back towards Loud Thunder’s home, taking no care and keeping no watch. So it was that she was caught completely by surprise as a huge hand fell on her shoulder, arresting her almost by its very weight, so that her feet skidded out from under her. For a moment she was falling, but the hand closed tighter on her, an immovable anchor that held her upright, letting her regain her balance – but then would not let her go.

  Her instinct was to pull away but the grip could not be broken. Even when she Stepped to her wolf form, it had her by the scruff of the neck, dangling her off the ground. For a few pointless moments she snarled and snapped and twisted. Then he had shaken her once, not even very hard compared to the heavy, solid strength she could feel in that arm, and she lurched back to her human form, toes just touching the ground, twisting to look at him. And look up at him, and further up.

  Another Cave Dweller, no doubt of it. Loud Thunder was broader and more massively built, but this newcomer was taller, towering so far above her she half thought there should be a white snowcap to him, far up the slopes of his body.

  He was close to clean shaven, just a fuzz of stubble about his jowls and chin and neck, and he stared down at her dolorously, as though she was some poor omen. He wore hides, like Loud Thunder, but over them was a fur-lined, sleeveless robe of some fine material, coloured a green that Maniye had never seen before, and faintly edged with gold. Threadbare and ancient it was, but only amongst the Horse had she seen anything so fine. Hanging over his chest was a pendant of stones, flat and oval, black and painted with white lines, each of them the size of her open hand and all of them strung on a cord so thick it was almost a rope.

  ‘What do you want,’ she got out, trying to keep her voice steady. He had this in common with Loud Thunder: in the silence, his attention seemed to wander, so that only with her speaking did his eyes and face remember her. His hand, though, never forgot.

  ‘You go to the cave of my brother,’ he told her sonorously. ‘Tell me then: what are you to him?’

  She wondered what he might have guessed. Slave, perhaps? ‘A guest,’ she said forcefully.

  ‘Hrm.’ The same dubious growl that Thunder had made that first time. ‘Guest of my brother then: take my words to him. Tell him that his brother is here. Bid him let me in,
for I have words for him from our mother.’

  She tugged to escape his hand, and he released her with a frown of surprise, as though he had not expected to find her there at the end of his arm. Retreating from him, she tried to think of some alternative to doing what he had just instructed. Loud Thunder’s home was her only point of reference though. She backed away another few steps, keeping her eyes on him, and then she was a wolf again, bounding off over the hardpacked snow as swiftly as she could.

  She knew, even then, that this was the thing that Loud Thunder had been fearing, this personal doom he had been hiding from. Even as the year turned towards spring, so it was waking up and remembering its grievances. Broken Axe would come for her, and Loud Thunder’s brother had already come for him.

  21

  ‘Water Gathers has a journey he will take. He will go to the Stone Place when spring comes,’ Otayo confided to Akrit, two mornings later.

  ‘To the priests?’ The chief of the Winter Runners rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. ‘But will it help him, do you think?’

  Seven Skins’ eldest son regarded him with a humorous expression. ‘My brother has every chance of following our father and becoming chief of all the Wolves,’ he pointed out. ‘You think the priests will not welcome him?’

  ‘And yet here you are talking to me.’

  ‘Even so.’ Otayo’s Deer tribe thralls had brought them food: hard cheese and smoked meat and dried fruit, a slice of what the winter had left them.

  ‘You and he are no great friends.’

  ‘If I were chief, I would guide the tribe away from his path. But I am no hunter.’

  For the space of a moon, the nights had been long, grappling with the sunlight and strangling it before its time, but now the days were regaining their strength, wearing down their enemy until there came a time when they were evenly matched, like two brothers. On that day, on that night, the priests of many people would gather to read omens, to share knowledge, united briefly in a bond that was supposed to know neither tribe nor shape. Kalameshli would travel there, if he could, and Akrit knew he would meet with Deer and Bear, the farseers of the Eyrie, even with the blood-priests of the Tiger. There would be sacrifice, contest, ritual combat and invocation, each of them trying to control the fortunes of the coming year.

  Those who came there without the aegis of a priesthood took their lives and futures in their hands. The spirits of the Stone Place could curse, the priests could kill, but some might come away blessed, the star of the hero shining above them. Water Gathers sought the benediction of the priesthood to strengthen his claim – after that disastrous business with the southerners, he needed something more than just his bloodline to recommend him.

  As for Akrit himself, he had not thought to go there, but Otayo had achieved his aim in making the idea irresistible. The benediction of the Wolf priests would speak loudly of Akrit’s virtue, and surely Kalameshli held some influence over them.

  And, while there, he could seek the omens for his campaign against the Tiger, and perhaps plant some seeds of his own. When the time came to raise a war-host, how much better if there were those, priests especially, who were already thinking fondly of such an idea.

  ‘Will I go?’ He shrugged, in a great display of indifference. ‘All things may come to pass.’

  ‘You have made no friends amongst the Many Mouths,’ Akrit pointed out. The little camp of the southerners was considerably shrunken now. The Horse Hetman woman and her people had left immediately after the fight, plainly sensing the expiry of their welcome. Such a cautious people – which explained why they seemed to end up everywhere and profiting from everyone, of course. And yet sometimes a man had a venture, a bold and grand venture, where caution might only be an impediment.

  The two Coyote who had come along with them were still slinking around somewhere, but they were seldom seen consorting with those they had guided here.Thus far, the Many Mouths had found no way to express their anger, for their man Sure As Flint had been killed in a fair fight, and one of their making. The Coyotes could sense that this could not last forever: a handful of foreigners who had roused the ire of the Wolf could not be safe for long. Akrit knew that the priest Catches The Moon was already talking with Water Gathers and some of the elder hunters, trying to find some interpretation of recent events that would justify revenge.

  The black man, the Champion, looked up at Akrit and smiled brightly. ‘I am not good at making friends,’ he admitted cheerfully. ‘People say so everywhere I go.’

  ‘These things are known,’ rumbled the big man beside him

  – another southerner, but of some different breed, with yellow skin and blue-black hair that was long and lank. Their third was a Plains woman, young and very fierce – as more than one of the Many Mouths hunters had discovered.

  ‘Why are you here, First Son of Asman?’ Akrit asked him. ‘I come to learn about the Wolf.’

  ‘And what do you learn?’

  ‘That he fights. I hear that he wears the Crown of the World

  about his brows, and ventures into the Plains as he wishes, and fears nothing.’

  Akrit shrugged. ‘Sometimes the Wolf goes south, sometimes the Dog Pack comes north. And any man who fears nothing is a dead fool. But there is some truth in what you say.’

  ‘You are not of the Many Mouths, I think?’

  ‘I am Stone River, chief of the Winter Runners, come to witness the passing of my friend Seven Skins.’

  ‘Are the Winter Runners any better at making friends than the Many Mouths, I wonder?’ the son of Asman enquired.

  Akrit examined him, thinking on Seven Skins’ words. The dying man had taken the arrival of these strangers as a sign, and yet desperation made a sign of anything. Water Gathers had taken that sign and made it into a thing to destroy, to overcome. That had not gone well for him.

  ‘I shall depart soon for the Stone Place,’ Akrit informed the southerners. ‘There we will see the spring in, and hear the signs read, for there the wisdom of the Crown of the World is gathered.’ Because Kalameshli would be there too, and right now Akrit felt a keen need for his counsel.

  ‘Wisdom is a thing I always lacked, my father said,’ the southerner remarked. For a moment Akrit thought he would ask to accompany the Winter Runners there, although no doubt they would slow the wolves considerably. The man’s dark face was unreadable, though, thoughts moving unseen behind it like dark waters.

  And yet, later, Akrit saw the black man speaking with the two starveling Coyotes again, and it was plain that he was negotiating some service from them. What else could it be? Perhaps this First Son of Asman was wise enough not to arrive at the Stone Place in Akrit’s shadow, but he would go there nonetheless. Akrit had a sense of great things moving invisibly in the sky, of the spirits of the world bending low to take notice of human affairs. Always such times were fraught with danger, but out of hard days were hard men made, and great ones.

  ***

  Maniye delivered the stranger’s message word for word. Even though she felt safe within the home of Loud Thunder, beneath his roof and at the mouth of his cave, the presence of the new Bear hunter was like a pressure at the back of her head. He was out there still, and she could not ignore it.

  The dry eyes of Hesprec drifted towards her as he sat hunched before the fire – it seemed he had barely moved from it all winter, feeding it twigs and scraps, consuming their firewood in small mouthfuls until Maniye had to go outside with the hatchet again.

  On her return, Loud Thunder had been staring at her from the deep shadows of his cave, his gaze like a trapped animal’s. He still had the fug of winter about him, that made him ill-tempered and clumsy and only half present, but her message had aroused his fear again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him, and those great rounded shoulders shrugged.

  She had expected him to have her invite the stranger in, but Thunder just hunched in on himself even further, a man clinging to the few barricades he has left before the enemy arrives.<
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  Soon after, she could hear a voice calling from outside: ‘Your brother is thirsty! Will you leave him to parch at your very gates? Come, fetch a cup for your brother who waits for you!’

  There was something ritualized about the words, and something lonely too. If it had been night outside then Maniye’s thoughts might have turned to ghosts and spirits, those who died locked in a human shell, cut loose from their animal souls and forced to wander forever seeking succour.

  Loud Thunder’s head had lifted sharply at the voice, and his face twisted in resentment. She had thought he would ignore the call, but a heavy gesture to her indicated the waterskin hanging from the ceiling.

  Outside, the new Cave Dweller had seated himself on a mat laid out in the snow, sitting patiently as though nothing was more usual for him. She handed him the cup and he drained it in one, giving her the barest nod. She had the sense that he did not really see her, or at least as nothing more than Thunder’s agent.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, still somewhat in awe of the sheer bulk and height of him, ‘he doesn’t want to come out.’

  No anger from the visitor, only a brief, disinterested glance. ‘He is my brother.’

  She retreated inside and tried to busy herself with some small chores, but the presence of the stranger seemed to deform the very ground outside, as though he had a weight to him that pulled down the land about him: her thoughts were constantly sliding away towards him.

  She was not alone in that, and eventually Loud Thunder shambled out of his cave to squat by the fire and cast angry looks at everything and nothing.

  ‘Once there was a man,’ he told them, ‘who travelled too far and saw too much.’

  He poked the fire with a stick, and his dogs whined at his dark mood.

  ‘This man came from a hard land of winter, where his people lived a hard life of winter, and they were few but strong. Seldom indeed did they find the need to venture to other lands and meet other people, for they knew all the ways of their home, and it provided for them,’ Loud Thunder addressed the fire. ‘But there was a son of this land who found even so few too many, and for whom the land of his birth was yet not hard enough, and so he took to his feet and left his mother and travelled south into the bowl that men call the Crown of the World.’