A terrible expression appeared on his face. It was not what she expected – not the anger that she almost demanded as her due: here I am – I ran away, I disobeyed. But Kalameshli had only shock and alarm to offer her. It was as though she had become a figure of fear somehow for the man who had tormented all her growing years.
His hands twitched, but almost to shoo her away rather than to reach for her. And then it was too late. There was another man at Kalameshli’s elbow, and it was her father.
Akrit Stone River saw her and his face went dead, every vestige of him withdrawing from it and leaving her no window into his thoughts at all. He was frozen, his body battling itself, and she was still there, still caught on the very point of flight, and around them everyone else continued about their business.
It was the Stone Place, she understood: the sacred place where no man raised a hand against another, save in the name of religion. It was as she had been told: so long as she remained here, and so long as the days of the equinox held, she was safe from the merely worldly ambitions of her father.
But there was a dark and angry look coming to Stone River’s face as he stared at her, and she saw Kalameshli raise his hands in warning, not touching his chief, but trying to draw his attention and tap his ire. By now a few of the traders around them had sensed something amiss. She saw one old Coyote flip his blanket over and bundle his goods away hurriedly.
‘Girl,’ her father got out. ‘Come with me.’
She shook her head, finding that she had no words left when facing him. She remembered the weight of his hand, the quick fire of his rage, the coldness of his regard. These had been the milestones of her years. They were her memories of home and family and childhood, and she had shed them like snakeskin when she had absconded with Hesprec.
‘You are mine,’ Stone River hissed. ‘Come with me.’ Still he would not actually reach for her, but his head twitched, tugging at her with his authority, demanding that she come meekly to heel.
There was a word rising within her. She felt it coming like a nauseous wave and tried to fight it down, but it flooded her mouth with bile and forced its way out of her lips.
‘No,’ she said.
And then she had Stepped, because she saw that word impact on Akrit Stone River’s composure and tear it open. He lunged for her then, with Kalameshli calling out his name to stop him, but all he got was a handful of hairs from her tail.
Then he had Stepped himself and went pounding after her.
25
The Snake priest stood up abruptly, ritual words forgotten. Asmander stared at him uncertainly. Hesprec Essen Skese had been seeking the Serpent within the earth, digging deep with his mind to find and wake his buried god. He had been speaking softly: familiar words of faith that left Asmander oddly homesick. Strange how he had not really felt that strained tether that was trying to draw him back south until he had run into this reminder of that other invisible world. Until then, he had felt more as if he was running away.
Now the old man was on his feet, benediction forgotten, staring off towards the stones.
‘Messenger,’ Asmander addressed him formally, ‘has the Serpent spoken to you?’
‘Something is wrong.’ It emerged as just a murmur from those withered lips, but he caught it.
Without warning, the old priest was off, hurrying away and leaving Asmander caught between a desire to follow and the old understanding that there were deeds of priests that other men were best not knowing about.
In the end he followed though. He thought he heard shouting from the far side of the island. Even as he set off he felt as though the ground beneath him was suddenly treacherous, as though the swamp itself was rising to reclaim it. He felt a great and unseen fracture threatening in the sky.
Hesprec was hurrying – or as much as he could – to where a scattering of huge men loomed around a tent. They were all on their feet, looking puzzled and sullenly angry, but uncertain, too, glowering around for whatever had disturbed them. One or two of them Stepped, surging into even larger forms that grunted and shook their heads and bared their fearsome teeth at each other. Asmander had never encountered a bear, but he knew one when he saw it. The stories he had heard about the north did not do them justice.
The flap of the tent rippled, and then a woman shouldered her way out, as big as the men and clad in a vast robe of hides that was sewn all over with bird skulls. Her broad, flat face was turned up to the clouds, and Asmander saw her sniff the air. Her expression was unreadable, totally closed to outside scrutiny.
Hesprec stumbled to a halt, head turning left and right but plainly not finding what he was looking for. Asmander stood apart, still with no idea what was happening.
Then he saw a flurry of movement over towards the stones themselves: a fleet, low shape skimming the ground, a small, grey-pelted wolf – with a greater beast behind it. He took it for a ritual: a mock-hunt invoking of the greater Wolf they set such stock on here.
Hesprec let out a sharp hiss, and Asmander understood that this was no piece of religious theatre.
The smaller wolf tried to break away towards them, but its pursuer got in front of it, herding it away, driving it towards the stones themselves. Hesprec took a deep breath and began to hurry towards them, but he was slow and old and Asmander could see that the hunt would be at an end long before the Serpent could intervene. And here, old and frail and far from his own places of power, what could he do anyway?
Then the little wolf was at bay, trapped with its back to the ring of stones, and Asmander saw it shift into a girl, and its pursuer turn into Akrit Stone River.
By then, Venater and Shyri had caught up with him, both of them equally baffled by what was going on.
‘Wondered when he’d show his face,’ the old pirate grunted. ‘You going to ask him to lend you some warriors? Looks like a perfect time.’
‘Stop your lips flapping for once,’ Asmander told him tautly. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
It was plain that Venater couldn’t, but to Asmander it was as though the entire island, all the invisible, roiling presences that had gathered here, were bending close to see what the two Wolves would do next.
Maniye could feel the stone circle at her back, like a fire. She had only been hounded a short way, but her heart was hammering as though she had run herself ragged for two full days. Before her, her father appeared like a monolith himself, as heavy and intractable as the stones.
She could see careful movement as the others fanned out to ensure she did not try to slip aside. There would be Smiles Without Teeth and her father’s other hunters and old Kalameshli – all the antagonists of her childhood.
‘Child, come here,’ Stone River ordered her flatly. He was holding his temper by a thin thread, but he still held it.
She bared her teeth, those silly, blunt human teeth. ‘I’m not a child. I passed my trials.’
‘You are my blood. You are my tribe. You are born within the Shadow of the Wolf,’ he told her. ‘You have a purpose, for the Wolf and for me.’ He threw a hand out towards her. ‘Come here.’ It exerted a terrible gravity, that hand. It tugged at her and at all her memories, reminding her of every time she had tried to defy him; reminding her of why she had gone from day to day trying to stay out of even the corner of his eye.
But she fought against it, that hand. ‘I am Maniye Many Tracks. I hunt alone.’ She did not say, Like Broken Axe, and she was uncomfortably aware that Broken Axe himself was nowhere she could see.
‘You are no hunter.’ And he was a step closer, not with a sudden movement, but just a casual shuffle, till that hand was within a lunge of grabbing her. She could feel the Stone Place’s presence all about her. She felt as though the whole island held its breath.
‘I am Maniye Many Tracks,’ she repeated. ‘I do not accept you as my – chief.’ She choked off the word ‘father’. ‘I leave the Winter Runners. I am a tribe of one alone until I choose another.’ She did not know how she knew the words so well. When had sh
e ever heard them recited? Still, they were the correct words. They were the words of her rights, as one born to the Wolf. Let her leave her tribe: they might hunt her, they might drive her away or even kill her, but they could not force her to be one of them.
But she saw from her father’s face that this was not his understanding, and that in his mind she was still a possession of his. He had his use for her, and he would not let her go. She learned then how fragile tradition was when set against human ambition. He was the chief of the Winter Runners, so who would gainsay him?
‘Girl,’ he said, and then he had lunged for her, the hand darting in to claim its property, and she Stepped and ran in the only direction he had left to her. She fled inside the circle, and he followed on his own wolf feet.
The feeling was like a hammerblow. It was like running into a gale. She had made a terrible mistake. She was no priest, able to run through the eye of the gods like this. She was cursed, surely she was cursed.
Time seemed to stretch, her dash across the stone circle becoming a trek of hours. She could feel them all and their sharp-edged scrutiny: the hungry, drowning spirit that made this place its own; the killing cold gaze of winter; the impassive distance of the mountains; the mind-wreckingly vast expanse of the sky; the stars; the moon. Beneath all these, the little huddle of totems that actually recognized the people of the Crown of the World seemed terribly small. Still they were closer, though, close enough to touch. She sensed their hostile regard, their outrage: Bear, Deer, Boar, Seal, all of them drawing back in horror, preparing their condemnation of her.
Beyond them, two others circled, always at opposite edges of the circle, constantly stalking one another: Wolf and Tiger. For a terrible moment she thought they might make her choose then and there. But, no, they kept at their pacing, watching her. They waited to see what she would do. She had made the challenge, now. She had called out to the whole world by trespassing here. They were judging her.
And they were not helping her. There was a groaning weight of fear on her shoulders, the moment she understood what she had done, and yet Tiger and Wolf just circled and watched. She was at the very centre of the circle, and her legs wanted to give up. She was ready to lie down on her side and simply die. This was the will of all the great and distant spirits. A speck had crossed into their sight, and they wanted it gone.
She faltered, mis-stepping, feeling something clench about her heart like a clawed hand. The inside of the circle became like a maze of unseen walls. Abruptly she had lost her bearings. She could not find her way out. The hot breath of Akrit Stone River behind her seemed infinitely less frightening that what she had blundered into.
But there seemed to be a line across the ground, within her sight. A crooked line, but a path nonetheless. It was picked out by a shadow, as though something long and twisted was coursing beneath the earth. A foreign presence, as unwelcome as she was, and yet, though the Wolf might dig and the Boar root, they could not bring it into the light.
Her feet lit on the track of that shadow and then she had found her stride again. Akrit’s teeth closed on thin air, and she was out of the circle.
She had only seconds. The other Winter Runners, Akrit’s entourage, had split on either side of the stones to flank her, and Akrit was right at her back still. She had been driven away from the Bear camp – as if they would have aided her – and surely at any moment Broken Axe would appear before her to head her off. It was what he did, after all. He was the hunter who knew the mind of his prey every time.
And then there was a sudden flurry of violence behind her, and Akrit was no longer at her back. On her left, Smiles Without Teeth veered away to help his chief, and she cut across where his path would have taken him, pulling away from her pursuers on the other side. She had a brief, blurred glimpse of Akrit and another wolf tumbling over and over, snapping at one another’s throats.
Akrit had seen the brief blur of motion from the corner of one eye, even as he was about to edge into a final burst of speed and overrun the girl. Something in that flash of grey told him everything he needed to know: not one of his people coming in to head Maniye off, but an enemy. An enemy born also in the Shadow of the Wolf. There was only one man it could be.
He veered away, so that Water Gathers’ fangs just grazed his flank instead of latching onto his leg, and then he had twisted to lunge back, the two of them rising briefly to their hindlegs to snarl and snap at each other, before going down, locked together, forepaws tearing, muzzle twisting past muzzle, as they tried to get their teeth around something vital of their opponent.
He must be mad, to dare this! Akrit was now on the defensive, giving ground and stunned by the sheer presumption. Impressed, almost: he would not have thought that Water Gathers had the warrior’s courage to brave the taboos of the island like this.
Another thought came, and he lost another handful of paces, retreating from his antagonist, knowing that some of his people were hanging back around him, unsure whether to aid him or not – or kept back by Water Gathers’ own bodyguard.
What if he isn’t the transgressor?
What if it’s me?
There had been Kalameshli plucking at his sleeve, trying to
restrain him, but the girl had been right in front of him, and she had disobeyed him: she had the temerity to tell him No. She was his daughter, wilful runt that she was. She was his, to do with as he wished.
He lunged without warning at Water Gathers, a brief low duck, as though he was about to submit, and then jaws agape at the othe wolf’s neck, forcing him back.
And yet the girl was an adult now. By the Wolf’s ways, she was free to take up the lone life, and to come and go as she pleased – to live or die by her own meagre skills, if that was what she chose.
But Akrit needed her. He needed her as his weapon against the Tiger. In his mind his three prizes circled and circled like distant hawks in the sky: the high chiefdom; control of his daughter; final victory over the Tiger. He had lost track of which he wanted most. He knew only that these three goals were interdependent, and that he was Akrit Stone River of the Winter Runners and he would have them all. The Wolf was always hungry. The Wolf was never satisfied.
With that, he gained an access of strength and speed, leaping on Water Gathers and drawing blood about the other wolf’s snout, tearing with his teeth, heedless of the claw-raking that he took in return. Then Water Gathers Stepped, a human in an instant, his hand coming down and the morning light gleaming on his axe-blade. Akrit matched him shape for shape, catching the arm and wrestling him over the weapon, the two men staggering back and forth, now one of them in control, now the other.
There were voices, he knew; he heard them distantly. Voices of men, though, and right then he was not interested in their opinions. Priests were calling for them to be stopped, but the warriors of both Wolf tribes were guarding the fight, the decision coming upon them all at once that this personal conflict had become something more, something divine. The chiefs of the Winter Runners and the Many Mouths were mad for each other’s blood, here at the Stone Place, and surely this was the gods’ plan.
Then Water Gathers had twisted away from his grip, with the axe cocked back to strike or to throw. Akrit sent a kick thundering into the hard muscles of his opponent’s stomach, so that the other man reeled away, gasping, swiping weakly with a blow that Akrit deflected with his forearm. For a moment his hands found purchase: behind the knee, at the elbow. Then he had dropped his weight under Water Gathers and thrown him in a perfect demonstration of the warrior’s art, a display of experience over youth.
Maninli’s son landed well though, on one knee, and then lurched back onto his feet, drawing the axe back again.
But Akrit was a wolf once more, even as Water Gathers had been flipping through the air, and he came up under the man’s striking reach, too close for the axe-blade, and clamped his jaws about his enemy’s throat.
The rush of blood down his throat filled him with fire. He could not have said if he
had planned to kill the other man, rather than just shake him into submission, but with that blood in his mouth a terrible rage rose in him: the Wolf’s own fury. He shook and he worried and he slammed the man down, so that the axe bounced away and clinked against the altar. Water Gathers was scrabbling at his eyes with soft human fingers, but Akrit twisted and savaged and choked, until the struggles of his enemy grew weaker and weaker, lack of air, loss of blood. And he himself grew stronger. He felt the Wolf decant the man’s strength into him, a ladleful at a time.
And when the son of Maninli was dead, he saw at last that his throw, his leap, had carried them both back into the circle of the stones, and he felt the whole world of the invisible poised above him, like a mountain waiting to fall.
He knew he should despair that he had done such a thing in this place. He knew he should cower in terror.
But he was born in the Shadow of the Wolf. He was the hunter, the warrior, the spiller of blood. Fear was not his way.
So he lifted his head to the angry, purpled skies and howled out his defiance, his triumph, and outside the circle the other Wolves howled too: Winter Runner and Many Mouths together, and the cry was taken up across the island, tribe by tribe, until every son and daughter of the Wolf was giving vent to that long, lonesome call: triumph and melancholy in one, the voice of winter, the cry of the Wolf.
Maniye had not looked back: the absence of her father in immediate pursuit was not enough to make her slow. He would be there right behind, she knew, or some of his people. If she slowed – if she let curiosity best her – then he would take her.
But then she was seeing the murkiness of the marsh ahead of her, the heaped earth of the island running out, and her straight course became a curve that brought others into her sight. She had thought that they would be looking at her: she had pelted between the stones, stirred up the gods. But no, they were still looking towards the circle, and a single fleeing Wolf girl was nothing to them.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 31
