The Tiger and the Wolf

by kindle@netgalley. com

  And yet she followed the southerner, Broken Axe coursing alongside her. There were jaws nipping at her heels and she saw an arrow darting almost lazily above her, close enough that she could have jumped and caught it. She could hear her father’s furious bellow.

  A man came at them with a spear, driving it for Broken Axe’s side. Axe twisted away, almost belly to the earth to avoid it, and Maniye leapt into the attacker’s face, snapping jaws one moment, then Stepping to her tiger shape to slap him down with her greater weight, raking him a little with her rear claws even as she kicked away.

  But there was nowhere to go, and Asmander was at bay now, his back to the river. Still, he was calling to her, calling to both of them: ‘With me! With me!’ An arrow clipped his arm and hung in the thick fabric of his coat.

  And by then there were enough of the Wolf close behind her that all she could do was head towards him. All her options in this whole doomed venture had narrowed to that.

  ‘Step,’ Asmander yelled, ‘and hang on!’ He had slipped his blade away and was reaching out with empty hands.

  Broken Axe reached him first, clasping wrist to wrist and being yanked closer, and then Maniye just threw herself forwards. For a terrified moment she did not think she could resume her human form – the souls within her twisting in rebellion – but then she slammed into Asmander, arms about his waist, hard enough to knock him into the water.

  She felt him Step. His body thickened suddenly, her grip slipping and scrabbling over ridged and rugged scales. She thought she would lose her purchase on him altogether, but then she had hold of a stubbly limb, her legs wrapped about the strong barrel of his torso. He was driving forwards into the water with great flexing contortions of his spine. She could barely snatch a breath of air, held underwater half the time. Arrows and even spears were lancing into the river like murderous kingfishers. She saw at least one strike solid against Asmander’s armoured back but simply glance away.

  And then they were out of the camp, even though there were wolves trying to pace them along the banks. With the current and his thrashing strength, Asmander was making them run hard to keep up with him. All the while the banks grew higher, the forest more snarled.

  From then on, simply getting herself a half-breath of air was all Maniye could concentrate on.

  The next she knew, she was lying half-conscious in the forest by the riverside, soaked through and chilled to the bone. Dawn was still some way off, and someone was trying to prise her out of her clothes.

  She kicked and spat, Stepping into a very sodden tiger, her back arched and hissing. It was Broken Axe, she realized. He lifted his head, plainly listening for any suggestion they had attracted attention, then held up a tunic and a coat, dry clothes produced from somewhere. He himself was as bedraggled as she was.

  She regained her human form with a quick nod, and stripped away her river-ruined clothes, struggling into the new garments, which were far too big for her. Broken Axe had acquired dry leggings and a thin tunic, and was now tugging them on unselfconsciously. After she had the coat firmly wrapped about her, she realized that Asmander was still with them, wearing several layers less than he’d sported before.

  There was something important that had struck her about him during that mad river-ride, but it was gone from her head now.

  ‘We can’t risk a fire, of course,’ she guessed. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘If you’re fit enough, we travel,’ Broken Axe told her. ‘The southerner has somewhere to go.’

  ‘Does he?’ Maniye fixed Asmander with a hard stare. ‘What do I think about you, Son of Asman?’ His title came to her even as she spoke. She hoped that using it made her seem even a little more intimidating.

  ‘Think what you want.’ He shrugged. ‘But come with me.’

  ‘You’re going to trade me to the Tiger now?’

  ‘I was not sent to make bargains with the Tiger. My father sent me only to the Wolf,’ he replied candidly. ‘I had been promised what I needed, in return for you. Long before I even met you was that promise made – back at the Stone Place when your father went mad.’

  ‘He’s always been mad,’ she told him darkly. ‘So what now?’

  ‘Now I do not have what I needed. Nor will I obtain it.’

  She shivered, and Broken Axe hugged her to him. She twitched away from him at first, because the stripes on her back hurt, and because she didn’t know what she thought about him. He was warmer than she, though, and sharing that with her.

  ‘We will need to move soon, wherever we go,’ Axe murmured.

  She nodded jerkily. ‘So why?’ she demanded.

  For a long while he remained silent, his dark face unreadable, then just tilted his head towards Broken Axe. ‘For him.’

  Maniye did not know what to make of that, and she suspected that Axe didn’t either, but it was said now, and apparently there was to be no more explanation. ‘So what was it your father wanted anyway? Furs? Timber?’ She was trying to remember what the Horse had been carrying south on their great barges.

  ‘Warriors: the Iron Wolves,’ Asmander explained with a fragile smile. ‘Where I come from, they are a myth to frighten children. Perhaps I shall go home and say they are no more than a myth indeed.’

  ‘And where would you lead us now?’ Maniye was reaching inside herself for strength, finding it bleeding back into her limbs slowly.

  ‘This river will take us to a Horse Society camp,’ Asmander told her. ‘My companions should already be there.’

  ‘The girl with the laugh and that big man who hates everyone?’

  ‘Just the same.’ His grin was startlingly white. ‘And there will be another. One who very much wishes to meet you again.’

  She didn’t like the sound of that at all, but at the same time she had no sense of malice from him. His perverse humour was back, which meant that he was done with straight answers.

  Soon after, they were setting off along the river. Maniye wondered how far the Wolves were ranging; how her father’s new rage had manifested itself. She wondered about whether the Tiger had turned back for the Shining Halls, or whether the Fire Shadow People were also trailing her, clashing with their Wolf enemies. The world was cast in fog, and the only way she could discover what was out there was to go to it.

  Maniye thought she could not be so far from that very outpost she and Hesprec had fled to at the beginnings of winter. When she asked, Broken Axe confirmed that would likely make any Horse they found to be of the same clan or family or band of the Horse Society. This gave her a little heart, as she recalled their small kindnesses before: the clothes and the warning.

  They followed the river at Asmander’s behest. When she trusted herself to Step, Maniye’s wolf nose told her once more where she was, and how to reach places. She felt that she had been travelling in darkness, both night and day. Now finally there was a little sliver of light. She tried to look within herself to find the root of this new hope. Her passage through her father’s hands had broken some hold on her that he had still possessed all this time, even when she was sitting at her mother’s feet in the Shining Halls. She had seen him for the man he truly was. Even whipping her with his switch, he had been a thing diminished: not the ogre of childhood nor the all-powerful god-chief. Even as he had expounded his plan for the Tiger, that could never have worked, she had seen further and understood greater mysteries. He was nothing more than a man.

  And after that had come the revelation gleaned from Kalameshli. Hurrying along the path of the river, Broken Axe and Asmander at her side, she felt a control of her own destiny that had been lacking for a very long time.

  And then the Horse were ahead, and this was not the trading post, though she knew by now that it was the same river. Instead, they had arrived at a point where the river was shallow and wide. There the Horse Society were camped in force and busily engaged – with two dozen of the Boar and Deer – sieving and trawling the sands of the shallows with nets, for their own mysterious purposes.

/>   The three of them were spotted at a distance: a black man with two wolves trotting at his heels. She saw that the Horse people included a fair number of men and women armed with little curved bows and spear-hafted axes that would surely give even a bear pause. They recognized Asmander, though, and the arrows were returned to their quivers. Soon after, as Maniye’s party neared the camp, the other two southerners turned up and with them a figure whose bulk put even Venater into shadow.

  Maniye broke into a run, Stepping to her human form so close to him that she almost collided. ‘Loud Thunder!’ She was aware that many of the Horse had stopped playing with their nets to watch, but she decided that she didn’t care what others thought. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘The Sons of the Bear travel where they like,’ he replied, somewhat defensively. He had his axe in hand, and wore foulsmelling armour of grease-hardened fleeces: a Cave Dweller ready for war.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Venater was saying to Asmander. ‘You actually came back with her. I was heading south today, maybe tomorrow. I was going to tell old Asman that his favourite son had died attempting something stupid, just to see his face. You ruin everything, you do.’

  Asmander shrugged. ‘The Crown of the World has no shortage of stupid ways to die. You’ll get your chance.’

  And the woman, Shyri, cackled and smirked. ‘Ignore him. He was fretting all this time for fear you’d take his name with you to the Wolf’s belly.’

  Maniye ignored the southerners and their banter. Instead she drew Loud Thunder aside, because him, at least, she was glad to see.

  ‘Maniye Many Tracks,’ he addressed her. ‘Running again?’

  ‘Always.’ She felt her whole life since the Testing had been one long flight.

  ‘Not from Broken Axe these days?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  His look caught her utterly by surprise with its childlike happiness. ‘Good, that’s good. Broken Axe, he’s a good friend. You, you’re a friend, too. It’s not right for friends to fight.’

  She nodded at that. ‘You came when he called – when the Tiger was attacking?’

  He shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. ‘I am all sorts of stupid sometimes, the things that I do.’ He went wandering off towards the fire, where some of the Horse were cooking. ‘For many days since the Stone Place I have been teaching war to the men of the Bear. Very slow, very dull. Much more interesting to follow Broken Axe.’

  That made her laugh as she followed him. ‘Surely the Bear don’t need teaching how to fight?’

  He grimaced. ‘We brawl, we are rough with each other, we hunt. But fighting? That is hard work. Hard work does not come easy to my people.’

  ‘And your Mother chose you for this?’

  ‘Because I once fought. After the Tiger was beaten . . . so many warbands in the Crown of the World then, working for meat, for mates, for glory. I was young.’ He sounded very apologetic. ‘We went many places – me, Broken Axe, Peace Speaker, Storm Born, Restan Bastard.’ Across Thunder’s broad face, a gentle tide of memories washed like a lake’s shallow ripples. ‘We went all over, even to the Plains when the Lion were still trying to rule. But always we returned . . . or most of us. Peace Speaker, he was killed, and Restan too. And Storm Born went south. He was mad, though. He had destinies like a dog has worms, that one . . . But I fought, so they make me a teacher of war.’ His expression showed exactly what he thought about that.

  ‘And now you’ve run away from your Mother again,’ she divined, and the Cave Dweller cast his eyes sideways, as though the rest of the Bear might spring out from the Horse tents to accuse him.

  ‘I have not forgotten what I was told,’ he mumbled. ‘I have come here because I am concerned for my old friend Broken Axe, that is all.’ His display of nonchalance was unconvincing. ‘And also for my new friend, Many Tracks.’

  She stared at him, unable to tell how serious he was being.

  She found inside herself a sudden desire not to be important. She remembered Hesprec joking with her about prophecies and destinies, and how she had wanted there to be some mystic star above her head – one that would give her a purpose in the world. Now she was wiser. She had witnessed Asmander fighting the purpose his father had laid across his shoulders like a yoke; she had seen how Broken Axe lived, who knew no destiny but the dictates of his own heart. She had known how it felt to have others risk their lives for her. Perhaps she had yearned for the eggshell crown that was a destiny, the year before, but now it was summer and she was grown, and childish things were left behind her. That the world had a purpose for her, she had no doubt, but the chief use most of it seemed to have for her was as a corpse.

  Thinking further on that, she had it in her mind to warn Loud Thunder that he should go back to the quiet of the highlands, to his lakes and his cave. Akrit Stone River had killed bears before.

  She thought she had said it, then, but from his puzzled frown she realized that her words had not come out properly. A moment later she was swaying, as the tiredness of several days descended on her. She waved off his huge hands as they reached out to support her. She was fine; she was well. She was just weary, so very weary. All that time she had spent locked tight about herself, binding herself with iron bands to keep out the fear and be ready for the least chance. She had been strung taut for so long, and now she could relax, just for a while.

  And within her the Tiger leapt and seized hold of her. Abruptly her mind was in its jaws. She felt its fangs bite, its claws raking and ripping at her, as it tried to get at the Wolf. The Wolf had the other half of her, worrying and dragging at her entrails so that she clutched at her stomach, the pain now so intense that she was sure she had been torn open then and there.

  She dropped, very distantly feeling herself fall into Loud Thunder’s hands, whilst her two souls ran madly about her mind and body, stalking, ambushing each other, skirmishing furiously and then breaking apart. Her limbs were twitching and shuddering and there were distant voices crying out in alarm, advice being offered. She felt something forced between her teeth and she gnawed and savaged at it, feeling wood splinter against her gums.

  When she came back to herself, every part of her hurt. She was within a tent and, for a dreadful moment, she thought she had not escaped her father after all, and that the fire that glimmered in from outside had been lit in the mouth of the Wolf’s effigy. The tent was smaller and neater, though, and the memories came back to her piecemeal: this must be in the Horse fishing camp.

  All was quiet outside. No doubt there would be a few Horse sentries watching through the dark hours, but the rest – all the people that her presence had somehow drawn together – would be sleeping.

  She felt gingerly within herself for her souls. She had a sense of Tiger and Wolf glowering at each other from opposite ends of her mind. They had run themselves ragged within her: every muscle hurt from where she had thrashed and strained, and there was a fierce knot of pain within her skull. For now, though, those beasts within were exhausted, and she was free to step out under the stars.

  The Horse had no walls here. There was nothing between her and the world beyond.

  Her father would be hunting her, somewhere out there. He would find this camp sooner or later. Probably her mother’s people would as well. She was the loose end that everyone wanted to tie off or cut away. Left to herself, she might go mad, run ragged across the hills by her two natures. To simply walk away from anyone who could help her was something close to suicide. But she did not really believe that any of them could help her. None of them possessed that kind of wisdom.

  She took a deep breath, knowing it was time for her to leave. The anxiety that had descended when she spoke with Loud Thunder remained with her. She did not want these people to come to harm, and harm seemed to be all she had to gift the world with. She had spent a winter with Loud Thunder, lived on his hospitality and become his friend, and yet she dragged him before the claws of the Tiger. She owed Broken Axe far too much, not least for all
the years she had hated and misjudged him, and he had been caught by Stone River because of her. Even the southerners had risked far more than they should: rough Venater and snide Shyri had fought for her. She even felt she owed Asmander, who had changed his mind in the end.

  She owed it to all of them to leave.

  She reached for the shapes that twisted inside her, but she could not say what might happen if she favoured one or other of them right now: better let them sleep. Instead she padded off on bare human feet, weaving her way through the tents, and away from the river. She could only hope the sentries would not cry out an alarm at seeing someone leaving the camp.

  There was a shape in the darkness, eyes glinting in the firelight as it watched her. For a heart-stopping moment she thought it was a wolf; that her father was already here and about to take her. Then she saw it was just a dog – one of Loud Thunder’s dogs, in fact, Yoff or Matt. The animal’s gaze was on her, but it made no sound, nothing to wake its master. If it could think like a man, no doubt it would be glad to see her go.

  A few more steps, and the last of the tents rose before her. The air was full of quiet breathing, a few snores, the crackling of guttering fires . . . and her name.

  ‘Maniye.’

  Not a voice she knew: a woman’s voice – no, a girl’s. Maniye crouched, reaching for a knife she didn’t have. A small figure was standing close up, seemingly sprung from nowhere.

  ‘There you are, Maniye.’

  Her eyes slowly gathered in the firelight, picking out details from the shadows before her. This was a girl a little younger than she, but very different. A girl of Asmander’s people, she assumed: dark of skin and with a pale headscarf pulled over her hair. She wore a shift, and an over-large winter coat above it, though the summer night was mild. Her face seemed a little familiar, as if Maniye had once known the girl’s mother.