The Tiger and the Wolf

by kindle@netgalley. com

  ‘Are they?’ Maniye asked.

  Broken Axe’s face twisted. ‘Once, the answer would have been no. After that – after the war – yes. Now? Hard to say. The Tiger stir themselves more than they used to.’

  ‘So what will they . . . ?’ Maniye felt a sudden clutch of anxiety within her. ‘Have they done it? Have they given Hesprec to the Wolf already?’

  Broken Axe shrugged. ‘I think not. The Wolf is not in this place. Offer a soul up here, and it would end up on the tusks of the Boar, like as not.’

  ‘But you can’t be sure.’ Maniye was thinking of every word that had been spoken before they set off, every wasted moment, of every step, when she could have pushed herself harder.

  ‘I can only go and see how the land lies,’ Broken Axe told her. ‘And you must stay here and keep your head hidden. There will be scouts.’

  ‘Wait.’ A thought that had been nagging at Maniye was suddenly at the front of her mind. ‘What about Shatters Oak? Does she still live?’

  Broken Axe nodded grimly. ‘She does, and if she found my back turned to her, and nobody else to see, she would kill me. But she will not strike before the eyes of others.’

  ‘I thought it was him, that wanted me dead,’ Maniye told him. ‘After the Horse post.’

  ‘He has many plans for you, but not your death yet.’ Then Broken Axe had Stepped back to his wolf shape and went loping off through the trees towards the scents of Wolf and Boar, of hearth, and sheep dung and people.

  Maniye Stepped, if only for the warmth and the security that a wolf shape gave her. She settled down low, belly to the ground and cloaked with another’s scent, and she waited. It was hard, that wait: harder than the long run to catch up with Stone River and his warband had been. Left with nobody but her own company, she found herself looking into the great expanse of the future. Rescue Hesprec. Yes, but then what? Those smoke dreams of going south? Had that ever been a real plan?

  Then Broken Axe was back, slinking through the trees before pausing to lift his muzzle and scent the air.

  ‘They have him in the chief’s house,’ he confirmed after he Stepped, ‘the largest of the huts there. He’s not been well used.’

  ‘But alive?’

  His expression suggested there was not much difference in it. ‘They are holding him cruelly. There is little kindness amongst the Winter Runners tonight.’

  ‘And Stone River?’

  ‘Your father broods in the chief’s hut even now, but he’s in his restless mood. Soon he will go out amongst his people, to remind them who he is. That will be your moment, if there is one.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  He waved a hand. ‘They have the Boar to serve them. Some are guarding another prisoner, I think. Others raid the village larders, or they lick their wounds. All were on two legs when I saw them: after a fight, men love to tell each other how brave they were. You will have to be quiet and clever – just like back home.’

  ‘Then let’s do it.’

  ‘Follow in my shadow; find a place where you are hidden but can watch me. When Stone River sets out, that will be your moment.’

  She envied Broken Axe, who could walk between the Shining Halls and the Winter Runners so deftly. While he strode into the village of the Spined Sons, with only Shatters Oak to worry about, she had to find a path of shadow to follow. In this she was aided by the clouds that chose that moment to break over the village, bringing not torrential rain but flurrying late-season snow. Maniye took that as her cloak and moved in.

  The Boar village was laid out in an oval of low huts, each one little more than a sloping roof that reached from the ridge pole down to the ground, with a floor beneath propped on posts off the ground, to ward off flood and vermin. Each had a firepit dug at its entrance, protected from the snow by the eaves. In most, there would not have been room for an adult to stand up straight, but the Boar crammed their families and their goods inside until there seemed to be not a hand’s span of space left. The chief’s hut was the sole building on a grander scale, so that a tall man could just have stood upright down the house’s centre-line.

  She made her way, shadow to shadow, wolf and tiger, feeling the chill of the snow on her pelt but blessing it for veiling her. She found herself a place to hide, where the earth under one of the huts had been eroded away just enough to fit a very small wolf.

  The air was full of the sounds of people: familiar sounds. She could recognize voices, even: that was Bleeding Arrow, and there the deep rumble of Smiles Without Teeth. It was as though she had never left home.

  In their own village, the sullen Spined Sons shuffled and scuffed about, seeking refuge with each other, shoulders bowed as they bore the unlooked-for burden of Stone River’s warband.

  Then the skins at the entrance of the chief hut rippled, and Stone River pushed his way out, snarling up at the snow. A human snarl, though: no keen wolf’s nose to scent her out, not yet. She guessed he had been at whatever fermented gourds or mead the Spined Sons had stockpiled, for he had that ugly, belligerent expression she remembered from when he had been drinking. From the way he walked, this was not just a random venture his feet were taking him on: he was looking for someone.

  Let him take long to find them , and she crept out from beneath the eaves and covered the distance to the chief’s hut like a shadow herself. The skins barely moved as she burrowed beneath them.

  The hut had a firepit inside it, the smoke coiling about the centre-line above before escaping through holes at either end. The slope-walled interior was red-lit by those sullen embers, and beyond the fire she saw Hesprec Essen Skese.

  Broken Axe was right: they had used him cruelly. The old man was stripped to the waist, his body seeming just a bundle of dry sticks held together by skin. The firelight played across the bruises and marks that patterned his hide, where the warband had had their fun with him. Now they had him strung up by his wrists, hanging from the centre-pole. A cord was strung taut from wrists to the halter at his neck, hoisting him onto his toes. He was trembling, an old man at the very far shore of exhaustion. His eyes were closed.

  She hurried over to him, Stepping as she did so.

  ‘Hesprec,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me. I’m here.’

  One colourless eye opened and rolled over to stare at her. For

  a moment he did not seem to believe the evidence of his own senses, but then his withered lips crept into something like a smile.

  ‘Again? What bad habits you have fallen into.’ His voice was so faint that the popping of the dying fire almost drowned it out.

  ‘Enough,’ she silenced him. ‘Now let me get you down.’ She had her Tiger-made knife of bronze, that she could now Step with without any difficulty at all. What she did not have was the reach. He was taller than she, his bound wrists higher still.

  ‘I . . . I may have to climb up you,’ she decided tentatively, because he did not look as though he would survive a feather’s weight more burden.

  And yet he nodded minutely, and closed his eyes again, bracing himself as best he could. Still she held back because he was so frail, and she was afraid.

  And then she heard a call from outside.

  ‘Stone River!’ Broken Axe’s voice.

  ‘Axe.’ Her father. ‘If you’ve not found the girl, get out of the way. I’m not in the mood for you today.’

  Maniye froze, caught stretching as high as she could with her knife – which was nowhere near far enough. A moment later she was crouching in the shadow that Hesprec cast in the firelight, waiting for the worst.

  Stone River shouldered his way in, obviously in a foul temper, and there was Kalameshli Takes Iron along with him, the priest looking scarcely happier.

  ‘You’ve had enough time with the Wolf.’ Akrit Stone River cast a look towards the flap, as though fearing to be overheard. Thankfully he did not consider that there might be an eavesdropper already within. ‘Time to tell me what he wants.’ Kalameshli looked sour. ‘What does the Wolf ever want?�
� ‘I ripped out Water Gathers’ throat for him in the sacred place!’

  ‘Not through design,’ Kalameshli snapped.

  ‘But it happened!’ Stone River shouted back. ‘And here we are. The first clash with the Tiger, in how many years? And we lose two and end up running away.’

  ‘It was not—’

  ‘Tell it to them, not to me. What do I need to do, Takes Iron? What is it the god wants?’

  ‘I am only a priest. The Wolf never spoke clear and direct to anyone. But I think he is testing you. I think he is watching you.’ ‘And he’s not impressed, eh?’ Akrit growled.

  Kalameshli did not venture an opinion.

  ‘What, then? This old one?’ And abruptly Stone River was standing right there, staring into Hesprec’s hollow face, while Maniye crouched at the Snake priest’s heels and tried not to breathe at all, not even to think.

  ‘I’ve told you, not here,’ Takes Iron said exasperatedly. ‘This is not our place. The Boar is fat enough already.’

  ‘We can make this not a Boar place,’ Stone River mused. He had turned back to the fire and was fumbling with his belt. Maniye assumed he was about to piss in it, but there came no hiss of steam. ‘Round them up and give them all to the fire: the greatest sacrifice the Wolf has tasted for twenty years.’

  Kalameshli sighed. ‘If we’d found a Deer tribe, then perhaps yes. We’d take whoever we could catch, and the rest would run. But the Boar . . . you know how the Boar people are. They bow their backs readily enough, but you can only push them so far. And we’d not get out alive if they all Stepped and came for us at once. You know that.’

  Stone River spat, still crouching by the fire. His mood was not improved when Takes Iron went on, ‘If you hadn’t given the prisoner to the others . . .’

  ‘They need to think we’re winning,’ Akrit told him sharply. ‘What better way than someone to play with?’ And then he turned from the fire. In his hand was an iron knife, its handle wrapped in skin, the heated blade glowing a baleful red. With a convulsive movement he thrust it at Hesprec. For a moment Maniye thought he would kill the old man then and there, and she had to fight down a scream, but then the flat of the hot blade was laid against the Snake priest’s brittle ribs.

  Hesprec made a sound. Not a hiss or a yell or anything so identifiable, but a whimpering noise of pure exhausted agony. It made Maniye sick to hear it, more even than the smell of burning; her nightmares would be haunted by that sound for a long while to come.

  Then the chief of the Winter Runners, the would-be High Chief of all the Wolves, stormed out of the hut, taking his priest with him.

  Again she was left with the impossible task of reaching Hesprec’s wrists, but this time he got out, ‘The halter, girl. That is all I need.’

  And she saw it at once, and cursed herself for being so foolish. His hands were bound, but a snake has neither hands nor arms. She sliced through the thong that was looped about his neck, desperately delicately to avoid cutting him, even though she was on her toes to reach. A moment later he was a serpent, coiling and writhing lethargically on the floor of the hut.

  The flap moved again, and she was in her Tiger fighting stance, blade raised, because if Stone River came back now there would be no avoiding it. She saw Broken Axe instead, though, nodding with brief satisfaction to see that she had got the old man down.

  ‘Good work,’ he said softly, and would have said more, but the air was rent by a terrible scream. It was a woman’s scream, and what was worse was that it was not a first-scream, made from a first-hurt. It was the scream of someone who has been hurt and hurt, and held on and held on, and now cannot hold the scream in any longer.

  There was a look that came to Broken Axe’s face, then.

  ‘They said they had a prisoner,’ Maniye whispered. She was gathering Hesprec’s sluggish form to her, bringing his cold coils next to her skin. ‘A Tiger warrior, it must be.’

  Still Broken Axe said nothing, but he did not need to. Another scream tore through the air, followed by a chorus of jeers from the same direction.

  ‘We have to go,’ Maniye told him. ‘Please, Broken Axe. We have to go. We can’t do anything. I have to save Hesprec.’

  Then she flinched from the look he turned on her. Most of all, in that look, was disappointment. A revelation struck her then. The last time he had heard a woman of the Tiger scream, he had not acted to stop it then, only waited until later, and saved whatever he could. She had not known it before, but she saw how that delay had eaten into him, had made him the man he was: determined to follow his own path.

  And yes, she must save Hesprec, or why else had they come? Yes, they could not save everyone. Perhaps a dozen Boar girls had already suffered the same, perhaps a dozen of their menfolk too. The world was cruel and callous, as were its people.

  But they were here, and that pain and shame and agony was here, and there was nobody else. She saw, in that moment, how very hard it was to be Broken Axe.

  ‘I can run,’ she said. He thought she was abandoning him, but that was not her meaning. ‘I can run, fast as any. I will run for Loud Thunder’s home and the lands of the Cave Dwellers. I will run from here, but I shall call out before I go. I shall call out to show Stone River he has failed and that the Wolf hates him.You must do what you must do, when they chase me.’

  He weighed and measured her with his gaze, and then put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I will bring the southmen to Loud Thunder, if I can,’ he told her. ‘Look for me there.’

  ‘You cannot hide this from the Winter Runners,’ she warned him. ‘Someone will see you. They will mark you for death from now.’

  ‘Nothing is forever,’ and then he Stepped, always his favourite way of avoiding questions, and he was gone.

  Maniye braced herself. I can run, she told herself, and she took off the skin of dead Dirhath and Stepped, feeling Hesprec wind himself tighter around her.

  Outside, the snow was swifter, starting to settle. Perfect. Perhaps the Wolf really was on her side.

  She bolted through the village and, as she cleared the last hut, she howled out a cry of challenge and knew that her father would recognize just who it was that called him out.

  36

  She did not see what Broken Axe did next, after that fractured moment when she had called out the whole of the Winter Runner warband. What went through her father’s head then, she could not imagine. He had chased her, nearly caught her, lost her – and yet here she was again just outside his circle of firelight, howling her defiance.

  And she ran, and did not see, but in her mind it played out: Broken Axe entering the hut where the warriors were amusing themselves with the Tiger woman. Perhaps they thought he had come for his turn. They would greet him. He would reply, jovial and easy, but with a tightness to his jaw they would not mark. Then he . . . would he kill the woman to put her out of her shame and misery? Maniye did not think he would. He was more than that. He would take his blade and bend towards her

  – and perhaps she would even recognize him, from the Shining Halls – and with one deft move he would sever the halter that held her confined to her human shape.

  Then there would be a tiger at large in the village of the Spined Sons, angry and hurting. Perhaps she would hunt.

  But others were also hunting: others were on the trail of Many Tracks. Even as her mind toyed with the thought of what the strength of Broken Axe might accomplish, her feet were speeding her further and further away from him.

  And the snow fell thicker as she ran. Snow was of the Wolf, who claimed winter for his own, his breath sent to test the world. When last she had been fleeing the Wolf’s people, he had sent her this cloak of snow, but then her pursuer had been Broken Axe, who could not be thrown off the trail by a little adverse weather. Instead the snow had nearly killed her, a punishment for her disloyalty. Now . . .

  Now the Wolf exhaled, and she fled into that shifting labyrinth of white, and felt that she had a god’s favour. Her heart was hammering high, but there w
as a jagged blade of excitement lodged there, rather than the fear she had been living with for so very long. Let Shatters Oak rage, let her father curse, let Takes Iron mumble his platitudes. She had challenged the Winter Runners.

  Despite the snow, her nose still guided her swiftly towards Loud Thunder’s home, though it would be another long and draining trek across rugged country. She would tire eventually, she knew, but right then she felt as though she could run forever, like the wolf in the stars.

  They were close behind her, she knew. She could not put names to them, but glimpses and instinct told her at least three, perhaps five, were on her trail. Would Stone River be one of them? Surely his pride would have urged him out. Was Broken Axe clear of the village by now?

  She could not know, and she might never know. Running was all she could contribute to his success.

  About her narrow wolf chest the bonds that were Hesprec’s body tightened. He must be cold but she could do nothing about that. She had no pack for him to crawl into. Better the cold than the fire, if the worst came. If he perished even as she tried to rush him to safety, he would at least die in a fit form, and his spirit would pass on, and some hatchling serpent elsewhere in the world would inherit all that he was.

  Abruptly there was a figure racing almost beside her, and she realized that she had been running for the long distance, whilst her hunters were flogging themselves in a quick sprint, desperate to catch her up. Not Stone River, this; not Shatters Oak or Smiles Without Teeth, just some young hunter she could not immediately name, but he was snapping at her flanks, trying to force her aside to where others of the pack might intercept her.

  She put on more speed, spending her strength, but he matched her, a boy who had not had to run and run as she had the day before. The snow waxed and waned, curtains of white shifting and drawing aside before her, but it would not hide her from this persistent youth. Perhaps he saw in her a chance to win his name, or perhaps he already had a name that was less than complimentary, and needed deeds to offset it. He was determined, though. His eyes were set on nothing but her. His breath was on her haunches, his teeth at her side.