‘Brother!’ came the abrupt call from outside, and to Loud Thunder it might have foretold a death. ‘Your brother is hungry! Will you let him starve at your very gate? Come, a meal for your brother who waits for you!’
Loud Thunder gave a long sigh, like a man waking up none too willingly. Wordlessly he found smoked meat and berries, sweet chestnuts and a pot of salted deer fat, then looked again to Maniye.
She went outside – the sun was gleaming bright on the snow, and all around her was the sense that the world was turning, new life stirring itself in an orgy of change. The Cave Dweller regarded her solemnly as she brought him the food.
‘He wants you to go away,’ she told him. Although she had no place here, she still felt as though she was playing a role in some great story she had no understanding of.
‘He is my brother,’ the huge man said again.
Back inside, Loud Thunder shook his head. ‘This man,’ he went on, for obviously the fire needed to know, ‘visited many other people and lands, because his own were not enough. He lived amongst the Deer and the Boar, he fought alongside the Wolf. He went to where the land is flat and open as the sky, and where the Plains people have their battles and their hunts. He took strange brothers amongst the people of those lands.
‘He saw more than any man of his tribe, in all living memory,’ Loud Thunder told the fire and the walls and the timbers of his home. ‘But home remained like a hook in his thoughts, and so at last he went back to a people who did not want to hear his stories of what he had seen. But it was his home, and that was where he knew he should be. And those stories were like another hook in his mind when he went home, so that he could not just settle there and forget. And so he made his home at the very edge of where his people lived, and he lived alone, as his people did.’
‘Brother!’ came the call again, and this time Maniye had been expecting it. ‘Your brother is cold! Will you let him freeze at your very gate? Come, a roof for your brother who waits for you!’
And Hesprec said quietly in the silence that followed, ‘For they are strong and solitary, all of them. Each could mean the death of another very easily, by intruding into a den without welcome. And so they call, and build the bond of guest and host between them most carefully, don’t you think?’
‘But what does he want?’ Maniye asked.
Loud Thunder looked at her, and it was as though he had not seen her properly for a long time. Abruptly he was here and now again in a way that had been lacking since before midwinter.
‘And this man who had travelled was shunned by his own people –’ and he had stood up – ‘because they could no longer understand him, for all the things he had seen.’ He reached the door in one stride. ‘And yet he knew that one day the world would change so that even those who dwell in caves must be aware of it. And on that day they would come to him and offer . . . and offer . . . things he did not want.’
He pushed his way outside, and in the same moment he was Stepping, looming up and outwards into the vast form of a bear, now standing out in the waning cold and shaking itself. For a moment he was on two legs, a tower of dense flesh and bone and claws. Then he fell forwards and slouched forth on all four paws, head held low.
The stranger had stood as soon as he came out, and Maniye saw him also Step, almost lazily, stretching up into an equally massive beast.
Maniye scrambled out to see Loud Thunder slope towards him, feeling that a clash between them would level the forest for miles around, would be heard all the way back to the Horse post, even to the village of the Winter Runners.
When they were close to each other, they both pushed themselves up as tall as they could go, tottering on their hind legs and bellowing into each other’s faces, great yellow teeth bared like swords. The echoes of their roaring came back to them from the forest, from the mountain peaks, resounding from the sky itself. Each of them was on the very point of mortal violence, cuffing at the other with blows that would have shattered every one of Maniye’s bones. They dropped down, snarled and circled, bawling murder at each other, stamping and clawing at the snow. Then they were up again, grappling, measuring weight and strength, each always an inch from sinking his teeth into the opponent’s throat.
And yet, after three of these exchanges, not a drop of blood had reddened the snow, and Maniye thought of what Hesprec had said, how they could destroy each other. The newcomer could simply have torn open Thunder’s carefully constructed home to get at him. They could have flayed each other with their claws, bloodied their fangs on each other’s lifeblood.
It was an argument, she saw: an argument between brothers who happened to be bears.
And, at the end, Loud Thunder had dropped down again, seeming almost baffled and shaking his head. He had not lost – indeed Maniye thought he had got the upper hand, older and heavier than the newcomer. He had not driven the other bear off though. It had endured the worst of him, and was still there.
Loud Thunder turned, then, and stomped back towards his home, Stepping from brooding bear to brooding man as he did so, and the newcomer followed suit, walking almost in his tracks.
He was called Lone Mountain, she discovered. He was not Loud Thunder’s brother by birth, but a cousin. The aunt they had in common was the Mother of all the Bears.
Hesprec was listening intently, as though this all made perfect sense to him, but for Maniye it was hard to follow. The Cave Dwellers did not live together as a tribe, like all the other people of the Crown of the World that she knew. They lived here in this harsh country, and they spaced themselves far across it, allotting to each one or two or few a territory. They were a tribe, though, and they had their ways, their gatherings and meetings. And they had their mother. Of all the powerful women born within the Arms of the Bear, one was acknowledged as pre-eminent, by secret ways that were obviously as much of a mystery to the two Cave Dweller men as they were to Maniye.What marked out the Mother of the Bear people was her strength, but also her wisdom. The Mother saw many things, Maniye understood. What the Mother asked for, the Mother usually received.
‘And she has asked for you,’ Lone Mountain declared. ‘You must go to the Stones once spring comes. She will be there.You have been apart from your people long enough. Many have said it.’
Loud Thunder merely grunted, and stared at the fire. ‘Did you think a son of the Bear could live always on his own, one such as you?’ Lone Mountain did not seem entirely pleased about this whole business himself.
‘I do not want it.’
‘Your wanting does not matter,’ Lone Mountain told him.
‘It should be you she calls for.’
Maniye looked from one to the other, trying to decipher what they meant.
‘I had always thought so.’ Mountain scowled. ‘But the world is changing. Her dreams and seeing have led her to call your name, so you must go.’
‘What is it? What are you talking about?’ Maniye demanded. She fully expected to be ignored – too small and insignificant for these two vast creatures to notice. Loud Thunder glanced at her, but said nothing. It was Lone Mountain who graced her with an answer.
‘Mother has said that the Bear seeks a war leader.’
‘War?’ Now it was Hesprec chiming in. ‘War against the cold? Against the trees?’
Lone Mountain shrugged ponderously. ‘This is what Mother hears from the Bear. And of all of the hunters in the Bear’s Shadow, it is your name she speaks. And you must go.’
‘I will say no.’
‘Say it to her face, if you dare,’ Lone Mountain challenged. ‘But go to her you shall. None will then say I did not do what was asked of me.’
What irked her was the change in Hesprec. He had been like a grey shadow all the winter, until she was convinced that he would not see the spring. Aside from his stories, there had been nothing to be got from him: as if he had retreated to the last spark of warmth inside himself and shuddered his way through each cold day, each long and freezing night.
Now a new br
ightness had come into his eye, and it was not just the promised spring. He was looking smug.
‘This was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?’ she accused him. ‘It’s the real reason you were here in the Crown of the World – seeking wise counsel or whatever. Did you make this happen?’ She would have believed it, too, for who knew what the minions of the Snake could accomplish, or how their magic worked? Perhaps everything following her rescue of him from sacrifice had been twisted into place by the movements of the Serpent’s coils.
‘Does it suit my purpose? Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Can a poor, worndown stub of a priest bring such things about, no matter how the Serpent favours him? Such things defy possibility.’ And, when she still looked on him with suspicion, ‘And does this not serve your purposes too, little hunter?’
‘How can it?’ she demanded.
‘Before spring comes, our host here must set out for your Stones, or else risk offending his Mother,’ Hesprec pointed out. ‘What was your plan for the coming of spring? To flee into the wilderness until the hunter tracks you down? Better travel with Loud Thunder. Seek for your new escape amongst the people who will gather at this place. You shall find more chances there than amongst the trees.’
She pictured Broken Axe on her trail again. He would follow her all the way to the Stone Place, but that was a magic place at a magic time. The division between spirits and ghosts, totems and men, it was frail there. The priests of many tribes met and held back their hatreds. A rash act in that company could curse the culprit for life or mark them out for the greater spirits to torment.
In her heart she did not feel that such considerations would dissuade Broken Axe any more than the winter had.
22
Maniye had assumed that Lone Mountain would travel with them, to ensure that Loud Thunder did not go astray. Apparently either Thunder’s word was unquestionable or the Cave Dwellers were simply not people who lied to one another. As soon as Thunder had agreed to travel, Lone Mountain was already departing. He strode to the shadow of the trees, then cast a single look behind him before Stepping into his great-muscled bear form and loping off.
Hesprec was standing at the flap to Thunder’s home, looking out. ‘Sad that brothers keep each other at arm’s length,’ he mused. ‘Will you speak of it?’
Loud Thunder looked unhappy. ‘Mother calls for me. She should call for Lone Mountain. He is the better man. He is the one who stayed to serve his kin, not me. But it is my name on her lips, and I must go. You should go also.’
‘Where?’ Maniye demanded.
Thunder shrugged massively, the vague gesture of one hand describing the great expanse of the world.
‘The Horse Society will return to the north along with the thaw,’ Hesprec said softly. ‘Not yet, and not soon, for the rivers are still full of snow melt, so they must crawl their way overland, but they will return to all their places in time. You could go to them.’
The Horse would not venture as far north as this, of course. Maniye would have to travel back into the Shadow of the Wolf before she could find a trading post and, even then, would Hesprec’s bluster work a second time? She had spent a winter listening to his stories of the south, and now it had become just a story-place to her. She had ceased to believe in it.
‘I . . .’ Now that she must leave, she found herself far more attached to this little house, this ice-locked glade, than she would ever have thought. A worm of doubt found her, writhing in from Hesprec’s words.
‘But you will come to the Horse with me,’ she suggested uncertainly.
Hesprec looked solemn. ‘I had a purpose that drew me to the north.’
‘You were looking for wisdom. I thought you’d worked out there wasn’t any.’
Loud Thunder snorted at that, and she glared him into silence.
‘These Stones, this gathering . . .’ Hesprec explained. ‘This was the lure that drew me here so long ago. I had not imagined the path would be so long, to get me there. Or so cold.’ He grimaced, showing his scarred gums. ‘But I would go with Loud Thunder. I am sorry, girl.’
She stared at him, hard-eyed, for a long while, while Thunder shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.
‘And then?’ she demanded.
Hesprec took a breath, and she heard it wheeze inside his chest. ‘If the Serpent preserves me from this cold, and from these people, then I shall gather what wisdom I find and carry it home.’
She nodded. ‘Then I come with you: to the Stone Place, and then to the south. After all, were you going to walk? Or did you think Loud Thunder would carry you in his pocket or about his neck, old Snake?’
‘So, man-with-a-child’s-name,’ Shyri said, letting her long stride take her close to Venater, ‘why have you not cut his throat yet?’
The old pirate cocked an eyebrow at her then glanced ahead at Asmander, who was walking with their Coyote guides.
‘It must be simple living on the Plains,’ was his only reply.
Around them, the Crown of the World rose and fell, as though once the land had rolled like the waves of the sea, and then the gods – all of them together, it would have to be – had put out their hands and frozen it in place. The land had a hundred little rivers, and every one of them had carved its dominion out of the rock, holding on to its own hard-won territory for a half-mile or so before being swallowed by some greater watercourse. Nothing like this existed in the Riverlands. Where the Tsotec held absolute sway, almost no lesser streams paid it tribute at all. It ran its solitary course all the way to the sea, where it broke apart and flowered into the net of islands and channels that was Venater’s home.
‘In the Plains, we know that life will set enough burdens on us, without our inventing more of our own,’ the Hyena girl pointed out.
Venater’s expression made it clear that ignoring her was a tempting option, but then he rolled his shoulders irritably. ‘You mock me for my name, so you know how it is between us.’
‘But I am beginning to think that I do not,’ she answered. ‘And what would you do with your name anyway? If he should hurl it at you, like a bone thrown to a dog, do you even know what you would do?’
‘I would kill him.’ The words came out with a certainty and suddenness that seemed to surprise even Venater. Then, the qualification: ‘I would try.’
Shyri was silent for a handful more steps, and a fresh flurry of fine snow blew past them, drifting onto white ground that already bore scars of bare rock and the first shoots of green.
‘You do not give him much incentive to free you,’ she noted diplomatically.
‘These things are known,’ the pirate grunted, that oft-used saying of the south: That is how the world is; that is its nature. ‘But no doubt you’re glad of it.’
‘Why is it mine to be glad of?’
‘You’re sweet on him, aren’t you?’
She gave a quick laugh at that, although he had a nasty, knowing expression on his face – and it was a face made for just such a look.
‘Steer clear of him,’ Venater cautioned, with his brown teeth grinning back at her. ‘You’re not what he’s looking for in this land. And, even if you were, he’ll be promised to some Crocodile girl by his father, just like his father pulls all his strings.’
‘I have no interest either in him or his father.’
‘Well, then, why haven’t you killed him? Feeling the loin-pain for him’s the only thing I can think of that balances out how annoying he is,’ Venater said disgustedly.
Her laughter at that sally was more natural, less forced.
‘And what are you looking for, in this land?’ She made herself grin at him, just to see if he would bite.
‘Girl, I had your mother.’
‘The Malikah’s not my mother – not in that way.’
‘Enough so for me. I’ve no wish to go sticking myself in the Hyena’s Shadow any more than that.’
‘Is this honestly the best topic of conversation the two of you could come up with?’ Asmander called out from ahead.
Shyri started, missing her footing, and would have skidded off down towards the abode of the local river god had not Venater caught her arm in a tight grip.
‘Oh, and he has really good ears, the malingering bastard,’ the pirate added with some satisfaction, before setting her back on her feet.
Meanwhile, Asmander himself just shook his head and then took a handful of quick strides, to catch up with the two Coyotes.
‘What was that your friend was saying?’ Two Heads asked him.
‘Just that he wishes to kill me.’
‘That’s normal, where you come from?’ Evidently nothing would surprise the Coyote about the barbarous practices of other lands.
‘It’s normal for him.’ He grinned abruptly. ‘Do you have no such friends where you come from?’
‘None we stay near to.’ Two Heads rolled his eyes. ‘There is a lot of wide open world, and no reason to stay in any part of it that displeases you, let alone to fight another for it. If only all men realized this truth, then the world would be a good place to live.’
‘And nobody would ever spend two nights in one place.’
‘Also no bad thing.’ The Coyote shrugged. ‘Roots are for trees.’
‘You fill me full of envy.’
Two Heads glanced at him in surprise. ‘Yet here you are, more of a traveller than we have ever been,’ he pointed out.
‘If you’re not where you would like to be,’ Quiet When Loud pointed out, ‘then just keep moving. There will be a better place.’
An oddly comforting philosophy.And yet in Asmander’s mind there existed something like a knot: a snarl of relationships and decisions that had brought him here. Travel as far as he might
– to the highlands above the Crown of the World, or to the jungles of the Pale Shadow People – he could not escape the tether that led him back to the Sun River Nation. Here was the knot that was Tecuman: his friend, the man who would go to war against his own kin’s blood in order to rule the Riverlands. Here was the sharp-edged snarl that was his father, the Patient One, a man broiled and leathered by the sun until nothing was left in him but desire and ambition. And here . . . here, like a hot coal in his head, was Venater’s name.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 27
