The Moon Eaters had gone quiet and still, recognizing that moment in a fight where wrestling and blows are no longer enough, and the knives are drawn.
‘He was a honed blade, your father. Even in his last days he had a keen edge to him. Even sick, he was a man I would follow into the fire. And you are no blade, but a maul. You are a blunt striker, without wisdom or subtlety. You are not the man to follow Maninli Seven Skins.’
The words struck home like arrows, but Water Gathers was still standing firm, braced against them. There was only one brief moment when his mask cracked, and Akrit could see into his soul. He saw there more self-knowledge than he had expected. He saw that Water Gathers knew all of what his father had thought of him, and that becoming High Chief in Maninli’s place was the only way he could erase the burning venom of that knowledge.
‘And yet I am a man,’ Water Gathers spat. ‘I say my father loved me, and he saw himself in me. And in my sons, Stone River, my sons who shall carry the blood of Seven Skins down to their own sons. We have heard the wind of your words. Now show us your sons. Show us what the loins of the Winter Runners can fruit.’
‘I will show you,’ snarled Akrit, and yet he had none, and not even the girl to bring before them. And if I had her, I’d tell them precisely what I would bring for the Wolf, with her at my side. If I had her, I’d have her here to beat them with. If . . . If . . .
Amongst the Stones was a bad place to be, Asmander had decided. They all felt it: the northern spirits of place bending their gaze upon the three travellers. Shyri was skittish, jumping at shadows. Venater brooded and glowered, his flinty eyes stabbing out at anyone who looked his way, meeting the savagery of the north with savagery of his own.
A spirit place. And of course the Riverlands had such places of their own, but most of them had been built upon, weighed down with stone and garlanded with priests until they became something else, something that was a part of the Sun River Nation. Asmander had no sense that this place was a part of the Crown of the World in the same way, if for no other reason than there was no single Crown of the World. Just like the Plains, this was a fragmented place where men had never learned to live together. And just like the Plains, it was a foolhardy place to venture unprepared.
Asmander felt unprepared. He had come to treat with the heart of the north, but found it had no heart. The invisible presence that swathed this place like a miasma, and pricked up the hairs on his arms, was a divided and many-faced monster.
The two Coyote had left them as soon as they crossed the causeway, as though being seen with the southerners would be bad for their own reputations. The pair were priests, he had realized. All this time travelling with them, thinking of them as itinerant pedlars, when they had come here for their own devotions. Asmander tried to work out just who had used whom the most, in getting here.
‘Wishing you’d not come?’ Venater’s rough tone grated in his ear.
‘The lucky man’s wishes are ignored by the world. The luckless man’s are granted,’ Asmander replied, the old saying falling from his lips by rote.
‘You’ll go hunting this Stone River, if he’s even here?’
‘He’s here,’ Shyri’s voice broke in. ‘I saw one of his people – one of his warriors from the Wolf place. And he was watching us.’
‘We cut such fine figures, who would not?’ Asmander remarked drily. The three of them were indeed attracting a lot of attention. Leather-skinned northerners stared at them as though they were ill-loved figures from legend, stopping in their tracks to glower at the three travellers. More than that, though, there was a constant pressure about them, a flexing of the air, a bristling of the ground. The Stone Place did not know them; the Stone Place did not like them.
‘First things first: we will set a fire,’ Asmander directed. ‘In the morning, we shall see what we can accomplish.’ He looked up at the louring sky, feeling that same great presence bear down on him. He wanted to fight it. He wanted to run. He wanted to shed his human form.
‘I will not perform for you,’ he whispered.
The next morning he woke slowly. Whatever the northern spring might be like, the world was still bitterly cold, and none of the Horse Society’s gifted clothing could change that. The fire had died, and the three of them had been huddled close together, Shyri curled into him, and Venater’s broad back against his own.
He had not slept well, waking often to stare up at a sky full of scudding clouds, at the cold and distant constellations. He could pick out plenty that he had a name for, but they seemed different here, refusing to acknowledge him. This was a northern sky and, like the Stones, it did not know him.
And he knew that the local people would be the same, unless he did something about it. If he just went from hearth to hearth and badgered them for aid, then it would not matter what he promised them. He first needed to cut himself a place in their world. And not just the craggy, boggy, freezing hell that was the Crown of the World. He needed to engage with the world of their traditions and their observances. He needed to touch the invisible here at the Stone Place.
With a chill, clouded dawn clawing at the eastern sky like a corpse from its grave, he kicked the other two awake.
‘I am about to do something reckless,’ he informed them.
‘What’s new?’ Venater responded promptly, but the old pirate’s eyes flicked towards the jutting fingers of the stones, and Asmander nodded.
‘What if you die of it?’ he asked – not quite an angry demand, yet certainly nothing as human as concern.
‘If the locals kill me, I expect you both to go down valiantly before their blades in an attempt to prolong my life,’ Asmander told him, eliciting a snort of derision. ‘If I am struck down or driven mad or whatever by . . . by the powers here, then you’re just plain out of luck, Child of Venat.’
‘You’re serious? You’re going to piss on their gods?’ Shyri demanded.
‘What? No!’ Asmander snapped back. ‘That is how you go about things on the Plains, is it?’
‘Certainly it is. We find a holy place of another tribe, piss on it’s the least we do. How else to keep our enemies’ gods weak?’
Asmander shook his head. ‘Well, thank you. Suddenly this desolate place seems somehow more civilized in comparison.’ He was about to go marching off towards the stones, when she snagged his shoulder.
‘Wear this.’ It was a necklace of polished discs, weirdly textured. He had seen it on her sometimes. She had a bag of similar pieces and swapped between them, for unspoken reasons of her own.
‘If this is another pissing-contest thing, then I won’t.’
‘This was passed to me by my mother – my real mother, and she had it from hers. The horns it is cut from belonged to a tribe wiped from the Plains in the story-times, the long-ago times. Like the Aurochs, they have gone back to their beasts, and my people drove them to it. So: this is strength, this trinket. This is triumph. I am lending it to you I lend you the strength of the Laughing Men through all the years. We know no masters and there is nothing we will not do. That is our creed. Wear this, and carry our strength to the northern gods.’
Genuinely touched, Asmander took the cord and looped it over his head. The horn discs were an unfamiliar burden on his chest, heavy in a way their mere weight could not account for.
‘That’s a fine creed, girl,’ Venater said softly.
‘One your people would recognize,’ Asmander noted, and the pirate nodded solemnly.
Then it was time: the sun was dragging itself clear of the horizon, a finger’s breadth at a time, as Asmander strode towards the stark pillars at the heart of the island. The other two fell in behind him and, both at once and yet with no spoken signal, they Stepped, so that he approached the heart of the north with a spotted hyena padding to his left, and a sprawling, whip-tailed dragon on his right, the dawn light glittering on its black scales.
They stopped on reaching the stones themselves, though. It was only Asmander who stepped through into that
circular space, to drop to his knees before the altar. By then, a great many eyes were fixed on him.
He bowed his head: not in reverence but merely as an aid to concentration. With his eyes closed, he could feel the hostility surging in on him in waves from all sides, from every stone. It was not a personal dislike, not the price of anything he had done. It was the place itself reacting to the child of another land, of different gods.
So, here I am, he addressed the stones in his mind.
I am the First Son of Asman. But that will mean nothing to you. Why should you care who my father is, after all?
I am born of the clan of the Bluegreen Reach – and on the banks of the Tsotec that is a good thing to be. But it is nothing to you, and who would blame you?
I am a Champion of the Sun River Nation. I am a scion of Old Crocodile, bearing a warrior soul within me, a soul from out of time. I can Step into a shape you never saw, a beast of the myth-times that no man ever hunted.
Ah, I have your interest, then? For he could feel the vast, invisible attention of the place shifting around him, like great stone blocks.
I have come a long way to stand before your people. You are mighty and I am but a man, yet I have seen sights that most of your people cannot dream of. I have seen Atahlan the beautiful and fought pirates amongst the estuary islands. I have hunted with the Laughing Men, and have stood in the dead city of the Stone People.
With his eyes closed, it was easy to believe that a ring of people surrounded him, close enough to touch. Perhaps they did. Perhaps killers of the northern tribes had crept up to avenge this slight offered to their holy place. The temptation to open his eyes, to reach out for them, was like a fire under his skin. To do so would ruin everything though.
I have earned my place here, he told the stones. I have fought Sure As Flint, champion of the Many Mouths tribe, and I have sent his soul onwards to be reborn amongst the wolf packs. As who I am means nothing in this land, recognize me for my deeds.
And he stood up smoothly, with his eyes still tight shut. One hand found the steel dagger he had killed Sure As Flint with, and he drew its blade across the back of his arm, feeling the sensation as cold more than pain. He held the metal in place there, letting his blood slick it, turning it so that both sides were greasy with redness. Then he laid it on the altar. What belongs to the Crown of the World, I return to it. Take it, take my blood. Know me and recognize me.
Stepping away, the sudden absence of that fierce pressure almost made him stumble. He felt a gathering of powers knotting with the louring clouds above, twisting and coiling across one another.
There was thunder, but it was distant as the mountains, dismissive like the shrugging of gods. Nothing struck him down. He felt no curse descend upon him. The north did not have to like him, but it had withdrawn its enmity a little, giving him some time and room.
He turned and walked back to the other two, meeting none of the northern gazes that lit upon him.
‘Who knows?’ he told them, as he made that last step, the one which took him out of the circle, out of the direct focus of the Crown of the World. Who knows what I have accomplished?
Venater twitched his head sideways pointedly, and only then did Asmander see a third figure there, lurking in the shadow of one of the stones at the outer edges of the circle. His eyes went wide when he saw what manner of man the newcomer was.
A Serpent priest: just about the last man Asmander would have looked for here in the cold north. An ancient Serpent, his skin gone pale and brittle, grey beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his sunken cheeks, his skin crossed by the faded snakeskin tracks of his devotion. He wore Horse Society castoffs, just like Asmander and his fellows, but here was a withered old man of the south, nonetheless.
‘You dare more than I would, Champion of the Riverlands,’ the priest said softly. For a moment the hair stood up on Asmander’s neck, that this man should know him and his soul so quickly. In the next, he guessed that such information had come from the loose lips of Shyri or Venater.
He realized that he had tensed up, waiting for some terrible pronouncement from the old man, but the priest merely shook his head slightly.
‘My name is Hesprec Essen Skese, and I have been travelling a long time, and it is good to see faces that I recognize. Let me be a guest at your hearth, just for a brief while, and I will ask for the blessing of Serpent for you, and then we may talk of warmer places.’
It was close to midday the following day when Loud Thunder’s Mother finally sent for him. Lone Mountain ambled up, and Maniye wondered if the pair would start fighting again, but they just stared at each other until Thunder nodded and sloped off towards the single tent. Maniye tried to trail in his wake but he turned and looked at her in a way that told her she was not welcome there. This was the heart of the Bear’s mysteries and not for outsiders.
Lone Mountain now sat down almost exactly where Thunder had been, looking as disconsolate at being kept out as the other man had been unwilling to be called in. She went and sat near him, and tried to think of some way to open a conversation. The great brooding bulk of the Bears warned her off, though. They were all of them built on a different scale to her; they could smash her with a single ill-thought gesture.
Then he glanced towards her, expressionless, and she blurted, ‘I like your robe,’ before she could stop herself.
He grunted. A moment later she read the sound as amusement. ‘I traded many skins for it, to a Horse man. I thought it would make me . . . different.’
She nodded warily. ‘Because you want . . .’
‘I am her real blood, the son of her son,’ Lone Mountain said softly, ‘but it is not to her blood she listens. It is to the spirits: to Winter and Storm and the Bear. In another season, in a different year, I would be enough. She would call me, and tell me to become war leader, because all the wars would be small wars.’
Maniye felt a curious cold feeling run down her back. ‘Wars . . . ?’
Lone Mountain’s voice dropped lower, until it became a whisper for her ears only. ‘Mother is old. For ten years now we have thought she would soon pass on and leave her human shape behind her. She is close to the spirits, as only one of so many years can be. But is she wise now, or has she gone beyond wisdom into the foolishness of age?’ He was not looking at her, but talking as if to order his own thoughts. ‘She speaks of a great war and a time of broken laws. She says it will be soon now. She says she has looked in the sky and the water and the earth, and they tell her Loud Thunder must be war leader, or none at all.’ His broad shoulders rose and fell.
Maniye was peripherally aware of a low rumble of voices from within the tent, deep enough that she almost felt it through the ground. Now one voice was raised, angry and insistent: as resonant as Thunder’s own but a woman’s voice nonetheless. Lone Mountain shifted uncomfortably. The other Bear men were paying no heed, some sleeping, one feeding sticks to a fire with a child’s all-consuming focus, another knapping a flint with careful, measured strokes. Only Mountain himself seemed to detect the shift of mood. She had the impression that he had travelled more than the rest, spent more time with human beings of other tribes.
She wondered if he had been trying to be like Loud Thunder.
She could hear Thunder’s slow tones sounding as though he was patiently explaining something. The other voice cut him off in mid-flow. There was nothing to the rhythm of their speech that suggested they would be finished any time soon. Maniye put a hand briefly to Lone Mountain’s arm, a tiny gesture of commiseration, and then backed away from that solitary tent, seeking somewhere where the air was less taut and tense.
There was quite a milling of people in the space between the fires. She saw a handful of the Coyote had laid out blankets, setting out their stock in trade. This would not be their usual goods and gear that they had hawked between villages of the Crown of the World from spring to fall. Instead, here were their special wares: scrimshaw from the Wetback people of the coast; translucent sharp-edged st
ones stolen from the earth; blades of black glass; glittering statuettes of jasper and greenstone and shining grey false-iron stone. These were trade goods fit for priests, objects of ritual, and the men and women who had brought them here were not pedlars but votaries playing their part in the great dance between spirits and men.
She watched the acolytes of a dozen tribes crouching to pore over the assembled wares, as though divining the future in that scattering of items on the blankets. Everyone here was consumed with purpose, desperate to lure the favour of the coming year. There would be propitiations and ceremonies, dancing and drums. Some would don masks, others would paint their faces. There would be promises made, and sacrifices of precious things. Perhaps the Deer people would have a crowned yearking whose reign was come to an end, or the Eyriemen a girl-child clad in gold to become their messenger to the other world, or the Boar would bring the makings of a god-feast. Every tribe of the Crown of the World had come here with its own traditions and ways, but nevertheless they were all seeking the same thing.
Her eye lit on one particular piece amidst the ceremonial clutter. From somewhere, after how long a journey, had come to the north a carving in a rich green stone. Its shape was foreign, a twined and knotted serpent that seemed to tunnel in and out until it had honeycombed the material that it was composed of. She knew instantly this must be southerner-work, some token of Hesprec’s own faith. Although she had nothing to trade for it, she drew closer, thinking what a fine gift it would make for him.
When she had squatted there long enough, knowing that she was wasting her time and yet fascinated by the delicate workmanship, she looked up and found herself staring into the eyes of Kalameshli Takes Iron.
The priest of the Winter Runners had plainly noticed her in the very same moment. For a moment they just stared. She was close enough that he could have reached out and grabbed her, and she felt every muscle tense, ready to Step, ready to spring away.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 30
