‘That means you, then,’ Venater told Asmander, stretching.
The Champion eyed him with half a smile. ‘Of all the slaves in the world, you are the least satisfactory.’
‘There are worse ambitions.’
Maniye had wanted to put herself forward to watch out part of the night. It had hurt when Broken Axe had overlooked her, though she knew she would not have been capable of it. In a sudden reversal of perspective, she understood how he saw them all: they were his pack, his tribe. They were here because of an odd network of loyalties, but all focused on making one of their number well again. While she was weak, Broken Axe had arranged the pack around her, their strengths covering for her. When – if – she was strong again then he would lean on her to precisely that degree that she could endure. That was how he led, and that was how a Wolf leader ought to.
Lying on the cold ground, huddling close with Hesprec’s slight form tucked against her, and Asmander’s back against her own, she indulged a fantasy in which Axe, and not her father, had risen to become chief of the Winter Runners. How the world might then have been different! And her own life, how might that have gone if her father had been no more than a strong hunter of the Wolves . . .
But without Stone River and what he had done to her mother, surely there would be no Maniye Many Tracks. Knowing what she now knew about her origins, perhaps there would just have been Akrit, childless. Her wolf soul would have found some other body to be born into, her tiger soul likewise. The unlikely and traumatic combination that had given rise to her would never have arisen. If she had a destiny at all, she shared it with him.
And she shivered, and tried to sleep, but she was still awake when Loud Thunder pushed his mountainous way in to share their warmth. Only then, with Broken Axe lying alert atop one of the rocks, his muzzle on his paws and his ears cocked, did she find a little rest.
Her sleep was troubled with dreams, but then she had been their plaything ever since she came to the Shining Halls. Asleep, the cages of her souls were thrown open and they ran about the spaces of her mind, hunting one another, hunting her too. Their battlefield was every place between her home village and this hilltop, all jumbled together inside her mind. She had expected to dream of great spirits, to be touched by the powers that inhabited this place. They did not come, though, and she was left to her own mercies until morning.
Dawn’s light found Broken Axe pacing restlessly about the hilltop, scrambling up to find a high perch, then dropping down again. When enough of them were awake, he Stepped into his grim-faced human shape.
‘I scented tigers overnight,’ he confirmed. ‘I didn’t see them but they were out there, down at the treeline.’
‘Then why didn’t they attack?’ Shyri asked. ‘They weren’t shy about it last time, and we don’t even have a cave to hide in now.’
‘Two, maybe. Three at most,’ he informed her. ‘Scouts, but they’ll be back in force. Tonight we’ll have to face them, I think, if we’re still here. So tell me that we won’t still be here.’
Hesprec looked unhappy. ‘The Serpent’s path involves many twists—’
‘Just plain words,’ Broken Axe told her flatly.
She pursed her lips in exasperation before snapping, ‘You want words you can understand? Then know this: what Maniye is seeking, it cannot be done. Neither amongst Wolves nor Tigers is such a thing known. Even if she were of the Eyrie, say, or one of the Patient Ones, it could not be achieved without cleansing and ritual, fasting, meditation and the goodwill of her totem – or her totems, I suppose. None of this has been accomplished in the whole history of the world.’
Faced with that statement, Broken Axe blinked. ‘Then what are we doing here?’
‘I am of the Serpent, who were the first people in this world to undertake a great many things. And so perhaps I will be the first to accomplish this, if Maniye remains strong.’ She held up a hand to forestall his next question. ‘But it will take time. Maniye must go on a great journey, one that laughs at all her wanderings until now. I need water to be fetched for me. I need a fire going. Champion, do you know the Seven Figures?’
Asmander grimaced. ‘Perhaps I can remember them.’
‘Do your best. Scratch them on stones – big stones. Make a circle of them. And after all that is done, and after I have washed and prayed, and let the spirits of this place walk into and out of my mind and grow accustomed to my scent, then perhaps I will be ready.’
Broken Axe sighed, sharing a look with Loud Thunder. ‘So, by noon? Midnight? Winter?’
‘Every word you speak drives it further away,’ Hesprec told him darkly.
* Asmander had finished scratching the Seven Figures, or at least as well as he was ever going to. They were part of every child’s education, or of those who got an education. The Snake priests taught them as an aid to contemplation, as the basis for the written script of the Sun River Nation. They were a relic from the Oldest Kingdom – that lost land the Serpent people still talked about with such bitter nostalgia. Ah, yes, what a land we had, what magic and majesty, before the coming of the Pale Shadow People . . . It came to Asmander now that a great deal of what he had so faithfully learned as a child had not served particularly to prepare him for his present circumstances. There had been, for example, a notable paucity of information about surviving the cold north.
There had been too many tales of heroes, and too little on how to act like one when the time came.
He set to repairing his maccan, which lost its teeth as often as Old Crocodile but sadly could not grow new ones on its own. He was almost out of the gum he used to reattach them, and it came to him that he had no idea what materials the Crown of the World might furnish for providing more. It was unlikely to be a problem that the Wolf tribe ever needed to solve.
He glanced back at the three great stones. Hesprec was kneeling there, hands on her knees, her head bowed. Chains of obligation. Axe felt himself responsible for the girl because of something to do with her mother. Thunder was here out of loyalty to Axe, and perhaps because he liked the girl also. Hesprec was bound to Maniye by cords of obligation. And I . . . ? It was time to admit that Asmander had so far made enough of a mess of his life that serving Hesprec seemed the only honourable path. But, as paths go, probably not a very long one. And, like all storied heroes, my death seems unlikely to be a private matter. I have invited my friends along.
Even with this thought there was a footstep nearby, and then Venater squatted beside him. Asmander studied his leering face: the heavy jaw, the cruel, flinty eyes, the broken nose never quite set right. There was a majesty to this man’s ugliness that the heroes of old might kill for.
‘The Wolves will be with us long before nightfall,’ the old pirate offered.
‘It seems likely.’
‘And the Tiger are already here – so says Axe – and more on the way. Reckon they’ll fight each other? We’ll have a good view of it.’
‘I think that they will mostly fight us,’ Asmander decided quietly. ‘Each other as well, but they will throw their greatest strength into seizing the girl.’
‘We should just let them take her.’
‘I am not arguing.’
Venater sighed. ‘You are, though. Because of the Snake and Broken Axe.’
‘Well, then I suppose I am.’
Venater nodded philosophically, chewing away at a strip of jerky. ‘This is the bit,’ he spoke around a wad of soggy meat, ‘where you tell me the Serpent possesses some great magic in this place that means somehow we win.’
‘That would be a good thing to be able to tell you, yes.’
‘Or that this thing that the Snake girl is doing turns out to be real knife-point magic at killing wolves and tigers.’
‘That doesn’t seem likely, does it?’ Asmander continued at his task, but cocked an eye at the other man. ‘Did you have something else you wanted to say?’
‘I wanted to say how stupid it is to have so many grown men wasting their time over one ma
d girl.’
‘Were I a priest, I would write your words in the Book of Truths so as to last for all times. Alas, I am not, so they will be lost when we all get ourselves killed by angry northerners.’
Venater snorted, but there was a coal of anger behind his eyes still, a look of resentment.
Asmander sighed. ‘I think it is time that we were honest, you and I. My father felt the hook of envy when the Champion chose me. It was something he himself had sought all his life, yet never found.’
Venater grunted.
‘And he has used my Champion well in pushing the interests of our clan, but there was ever a distance between us from that day on. A distance he would not speak of, and so it grew. And I think we both know that, in sending me to find the Iron Wolves, there was more than a little hope that I would not return. As with so many of my father’s plans, he wins every way. If I do not come back, he is rid of me; if I return with Wolves, then he gains in Tecuman’s eyes. If I return without them, I lose that same respect.’
‘He’s a clever bastard, your father.’
‘You say so little I can argue with that I feel disappointed.’
‘You’ll get to argue with the Wolves soon enough. We all will.’
Asmander laughed briefly. ‘The famed Iron Wolves! If only I could tell my father: they are real, yes. Also: they want to kill me. And they are just men – even as we are men. They eat different food and follow different gods but, like men everywhere, they quarrel with one another, and their stupid quarrels end in bloodshed. How like us they are – almost as bad as the Dragon.’
‘Nobody’s as bad as the Dragon,’ Venater stated with pride.
Asmander tried another laugh, couldn’t manage it, and so took a deep breath. The Champion stirred within him watchfully, sensing a moment of crisis coming but one it could not help him with.
‘I am now ready to fight,’ he declared.
‘Not sure about that,’ the old pirate jibed. ‘Give it another ten years.’
‘I was good enough to defeat you.’
He had been expecting an angry response, but Venater just looked away, his mouth twisted.
‘Yes, yes, you were drunk and half asleep,’ Asmander prompted.
The pirate shrugged.
‘But we have walked a long road together since then. And I have gained great joy from knowing that you would cut my throat while I slept, every night we have been together, if only you were free to do so.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘But we are here now in this stupid land, and I am proud to have you with me for one more dawn, Venat, though it seems likely there will not be another.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ the pirate snarled. ‘I’ll still be . . . still be . . .’ His jaw worked. ‘What did you call me?’
‘You heard.’
In the quiet falling between them, the laughter of Loud Thunder rolled in from across the hilltop, startlingly loud and intrusive.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ Venater – Venat – demanded.
‘Whatever you want. That is the point of freedom.’
‘Why would you . . . ?’
‘Because I remember fighting you, at the mouth of the Tsotec. Because I should have killed you – or not killed you.You were mine. I should not have let my father chain you.’
It took the smallest motion for Venat’s stone blade to appear in his hand. ‘And if I slice you open right now?’
‘Then we will fight, and I would welcome it.’ Asmander felt himself tense, feeling the Champion crouch about his shoulders, awaiting its moment.
‘It’s a long way to the River,’ Venat said softly.
‘Not too long for you.’ He could not read the other man at all, had no clue whether to expect an attack. But then Venat shook his head, looking oddly lost, and a moment later he had turned away and was picking his way towards the treeline, weapon still in hand and his tread uncertain.
‘And you should go too,’ Asmander told the air. And sure enough there was Shyri, dropping down from her eavesdropping post atop one of the boulders, and Stepping back to human as she did.
She just looked at him, blinking a few times. ‘How could you let him go?’
He knew she wasn’t talking about the loss of Venat’s blade to help them in the fight to come.
‘The right thing to do,’ Asmander muttered. And then Broken Axe howled, loud and long. Relieved of further explanations, t he Champion rushed over to see what had emerged from out of the trees.
They saw the Wolves: Akrit’s warband, that had plainly not been fooled as well as anyone had hoped. There was a good score of them there so far, some in one form, some in another. A handful of those who wore a human shape were clad in shirts of metal: the Iron Wolves whose fame had spread all the way to the banks of the Tsotec.
Look, Father! thought Asmander drily. It’s your army.What can I buy them with now, though? The only thing they want is my blood, will that do?
‘They’ve started.’ Broken Axe was abruptly at his shoulder. For a second Asmander thought he was simply stating the obvious, but then he glanced back to see Hesprec and Maniye sitting together between the stones.
The Wolf grimaced. ‘How long do Snake rituals take in your land?’
‘It varies. Sometimes they are over in as little as three days.’
‘And your big friend’s gone.’
‘He had pressing business elsewhere.’
‘Do you southerners ever give a straight answer to anything?’ Broken Axe asked exasperatedly, eyes still fixed on the warband below.
‘Yes. I am here and I will fight, for Hesprec and for you,’ Asmander told him flatly.
He earned a curt nod. Perhaps there might have been further words, but just then Shyri was calling out, ‘I see tigers, many tigers coming!’
Asmander attempted a brittle smile. ‘So: everyone is here. We can start now.’
45
Maniye and Hesprec sat in the shadow of the stones, in this spirit-heavy place, with a fire burning between them and with Asmander’s glyph-carved pebbles arranged between the bases of the monoliths, the standing one and the two fallen. Hesprec had covered Maniye’s hair with a shawl of bright-dyed Horse linen. She had mixed up an ink of charcoal and water, and had dabbed it on Maniye’s face, tracing the dotted path of coils there, making them sisters, light and dark. And Maniye told herself that she could feel the hill shift and shudder minutely beneath her as the Serpent rose within the earth, summoned from its unthinkably distant southern haunts, from its sunning places alongside the warm river. For the coils of the Serpent ran everywhere – had she not felt its presence and seen its rainbow scales in dreams? Had she not walked along the Serpent’s back? She might dare to hope so if it would help her now.
‘You and I, we will go on a journey,’ Hesprec told her softly.
Maniye was aware of her other friends moving – spreading out around the hilltop, sudden tension in them. As though she was truly connected via the coils in the earth, she knew that Akrit Stone River was nearby, and that Joalpey the Tiger Queen was close. The jaws that had been gaping for so long were preparing to snap shut, and she was where the teeth would meet.
‘There is a landscape known only to the wisest,’ the Serpent girl whispered, ‘in whose number, of course, I count myself.’ Her voice was slow and rhythmic, becoming almost hypnotic. ‘It is not a land of rivers and marshes or of deserts and plains, or even of cold northern mountains and the jagged teeth of broken rocks. It is a landscape of gods. That is where we must travel to petition for your soul.’
And the yowling of the Tiger cried out its warning from the trees, chilling Maniye’s blood. She shivered and made as if to jump up, but Hesprec reached about the fire and caught her wrist.
‘You must listen to nothing and nobody save for me. If our friends fail, then we will be caught and killed here, because our own minds will be far away, gone in a direction that nobody else can ever follow. Our souls will be with the gods, and whe
ther that is a good thing or a bad depends on how you comport yourself before them. So you must attend to me, and go wherever I go. When I walk in the gods’ land, there you must walk. When I return here, you must follow hard on my heels. Or you will be lost, understand?’
Maniye nodded.
Hesprec’s eyes flicked sideways. ‘The Stone Place would have been better,’ she sighed. ‘Two or three could have stood off an army on that causeway. Here, well, we are sheltered and the hill is steep. Perhaps our handful will keep them back for long enough.’
There were raised voices now: the sound of men working themselves up for the fight, swearing the oaths and boasts that prefigured bloodletting. Maniye forced the sounds from her head and looked straight into Hesprec’s copper eyes.
‘Now I will tell you something of this land we must travel to, and thus you will see it in your mind and let it become real to you, and this shall become our steed to take us there.’ The Serpent priestess was still gripping her hand. ‘Are you ready to see your gods for what they truly are?’
Matt and Yoff were very still, very focused. There was none of the running about and yapping that might have been expected of them. Their master was going to war, and they understood it. Their eyes were pinned on the enemy down below.
Loud Thunder wore his stinking armour of grease-hardened hides, surely enough to deter the noses of any number of wolves. His great axe, with its weighty copper head, rested over his shoulder as he peered down at the Winter Runners. Beside him, Broken Axe seemed a frail figure, even with an iron hatchet in his hand.
‘Down there they look like little ants,’ the big man grunted. ‘I think they won’t look much bigger when they get here, eh?’
Broken Axe couldn’t raise a smile.
The Wolf pack was at the treeline, scaling the hill, ignoring the twisting path and scrabbling directly up the steep side, using human hands and feet. It was heavy going for them, especially those wearing coats of iron. Loud Thunder looked around speculatively, hauled up a decent-sized stone in both hands and bounced it down the hillside with a roar. The Wolves scattered to either side of it, but when they started up again, their ascent was slower, and they spread themselves out more.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 54
