Stone River spared a brief second’s regret for the death of his friend, but then he was standing before the Bear himself, and that became all of his world.
Broken Axe had recognized him and was trying to close, but another pair of young Wolf hunters were at his heels, diverting the traitor’s attention as they snapped at him.
The Cave Dweller’s paws came thundering down, the huge beast truly fighting mad now. Stone River pushed himself aside, scrabbling against the slope of the hill, feeling the breath of that near-miss twitching the hairs of his pelt. Then he was a man again, the bear-killer blade of his falx sweeping in, too close and too soon, so that the beak-point barely grazed his foe’s back and the cutting edge glanced off that thick hide. Then the Bear was a man once more, towering over Stone River still, swinging the axe down in a wide arc.
Akrit Stepped to slip beneath that swing, got his teeth briefly into the Bear’s unprotected shin, then backed off. To lock his jaws would be to fix himself where his enemy could find him. The copper axe swung down again, its great weight of metal swooping through the air swift as a bird. Stone River tried to twist aside again, but the other dog was in his way, and the two of them went down in a snarling tangle of limbs. Furious and desperate, Stone River ripped at one of the animal’s forelegs, tearing a great bloody gash there. He knew the axe would be coming for him again, so he darted before the Cave Dweller, under the swing, Stepping as he came round.
He had wolf speed in a man’s shape just in that moment, and he threw it all into the strike, the arc of the falx cleaving the Cave Dweller in the hip. The cutting edge was foiled by the larded goat-fleeces the big man wore, but the point dug in deep, not a killing wound but a slowing one.
His enemy Stepped again, seeking the greater mass of the bear shape to protect him. Akrit was ready for him to rear up in anger and expose his belly. Instead the Cave Dweller stayed low, swiping at his tormentor and baring his great yellow teeth.
Akrit could see his path clearly now. He had fought men and he had fought tigers – yes, and other wolves – and once or twice he had fought bears, though none as massive as this. He swung again, making a great show of the powerful two-handed blow, and the bear – with its man’s mind – swatted the falx away.
Akrit took the force of that blow, but he took it as a gift, spinning the weapon about at its balance-point, so that it came in twice as fast from the other side. On all fours, the bear had only one paw at a time to act with, already overextended from its first parry.
Akrit put all his strength into that blow. Had a man ever before killed a bear this size with a single stroke? Perhaps he would be the first.
He felt the clean bite of the blade as it chopped the beast’s hide and slammed deep into the flesh beneath. He had been aiming for the neck, but his enemy’s movements or the fickle ground had left the weapon deep in the bear’s shoulder and back, the tip surely in amongst the creature’s ribs. The Cave Dweller roared again – but Akrit heard more pain than anger now, a desolate, terrible sound.
The beast reared up, and if Akrit had not been ready he would have lost his weapon. As it was, the Bear’s own motion ripped the falx out of his flesh, releasing a gout of blood that painted the rocks around them.
For a heartbeat Akrit stood in the Bear’s shadow, falx already arcing inwards again, and braced for the crushing impact of those claws. Then the Cave Dweller dropped back on to all fours again, with a whimper, and the falx’s course raked across his muzzle.
Stone River would have finished it, if not for the dog. The beast was at him without warning, leaping up to his chest, teeth hungry for his throat. Akrit Stepped, took the animal by the scruff of its neck and simply flung it away. He was already flinching from the Bear’s expected retaliation as he turned back, but the Cave Dweller was shambling backwards, lurching and limping. Instead, before him stood Broken Axe.
‘Go,’ the traitor shouted to his injured friend. Stone River found himself grinning, because he had defeated the Bear, because he was about to kill Broken Axe, and after that he would have one of his people open his daughter’s throat – and then none amongst the Wolves would ever doubt his strength.
And Broken Axe’s eyes passed from Stone River to the eleven Wolves who could still fight, and he nodded philosophically.
‘So be it,’ he said. ‘I call you out, Stone River. I challenge you.’
Akrit shook his head. ‘We will tear you apart, traitor.’
‘Who is the traitor?’ Broken Axe called out. ‘Here we stand, two men born of the Winter Runners, and which has betrayed his people? What are my wrongs? That I have gone my own way, and helped a girl who chose to do the same.’
‘And what do you suggest are mine?’ Akrit knew he should just strike, but he wanted Broken Axe to know that he was wrong before he died.
‘You have placed yourself above the Wolf,’ Broken Axe declared, and loud enough for all to hear. ‘You have followed a dream where the Crown of the World was in your shadow, and you have ever sought to make it real. You sought to rule.’
‘To rule in the Wolf’s name!’ Akrit snapped, feeling the tension stretch the moment until surely the pack would flow past him to bring Broken Axe down for his killing stroke.
‘In your name. In your name you have shed blood at the Stone Place. In your own name you have sought to dig up the war with the Tiger. You have ever sought to be a taller man than you are, and to do so you have piled up the bodies of others. That is not the Wolf’s Shadow you cast, it is your own.’
‘Bring him down!’ Akrit snapped, and the tide of grey bodies . . .
They milled and moved about, but did not advance. Those in wolf shape whined and kept their heads low, and the men would not meet his eyes. If Smiles Without Teeth had been there to set an example . . . But Smiles was dead.
‘You are not fit,’ Broken Axe said, each word heavy as a stone. ‘I challenge you. For the leadership of the Winter Runners, I challenge you.’
Maniye kept searching from hill to hill and yet, whenever she turned back, there was the Wolf or there the Tiger, the twin poles between which her life was strung, picked out by the light of an unseen moon. Between them, the landscape of gods and monsters was shrouded by eternal night, denied to her. If Hesprec spoke the truth, here was the country that stretched from Wolf to Eagle, from Tiger to Serpent, to Asmander’s Swift Lizard. In that dark there were great beasts of time and legend waiting to gift her with their souls. She felt she was tethered, even as her father had once leashed her. Her realm was just a small circle of light in that great midnight landscape. She could not break free from her heritage. And within her she could feel her souls uncoiling, pressing against the walls of their prison. This was their place far more than it was hers. Here was where their strength arose from. Here they were stronger than she was. Once that understanding filtered through to them, she would not be able to keep them tied within her. They would break free from her, break away from her, and then . . .
And then there was noise and shouting, all too close, intruding from the world outside so that she lost her image of the Godsland, lost that sense of the great spirits standing close by. The wheeling stars drew together to become the fire, and she jerked away from it, feeling the ground tremble as though the whole hill was stirring.
But it was not the hill. It was Loud Thunder. The huge man sat slumped by the fire, his skin and the fleece of his armour glistening with his own blood. His face was clenched up like a fist but, when he met her eyes, he still tried to smile.
‘He’s a fast one, your father,’ he murmured, just a rumbling in his chest. ‘And my Mother will not be pleased with me.’
Maniye leapt up and went over to him, but the sheer scale of his body – and his wounds – dumbfounded her. She did not know what could possibly be done. It was like trying to heal the land itself.
‘Back to the fire!’ Hesprec yelled at her. ‘Maniye, we’ll have no other chance than this.You have to find the Godsland again!’
‘But he
’s hurt!’ So obvious a statement, and yet what else could she say?
Hesprec shook her head frantically. ‘If not now, then you’re lost. Maniye, please!’
That shadow-landscape was still there, in the back of Maniye’s mind. And yet Loud Thunder was right here, with Yoff whining and sniffing at him, the dog as helpless in his misery as she was, and . . .
She sensed the vast breadth of the Godsland. For a moment she was falling back into it as both her souls tore at her. Vast and without boundaries, the tether fraying that had kept her at the feet of her totems. Her legs lost their strength and she collapsed, knotting her hands in Loud Thunder’s goat hides.
Hesprec was still calling her name, but when she tried to find the Serpent priestess, all she saw were those stars, that land.
‘I . . . I see,’ she got out. ‘I am there, and I . . .’ She was moving away from the Wolf, crossing towards the Tiger, passing through the valleys of wolfkin, moving into the fiefdoms beyond. There was the vast shadow of the Bear, a hill atop a hill. She could see all the shapes in between, the succession of beasts that she could pass through, in order to turn a wolf into a bear, a bear into a wolf, a wolf into a tiger . . .
‘You must go on without me,’ came Hesprec’s whispered voice. ‘But I understand now. I will help you. I will help Loud Thunder too, if he can be helped. Trust me. Find your new totem.’
And then, from a greater distance still, the distantly heard summons of the Serpent girl: ‘Laughing Girl! Come here now!’
Can I choose the Bear as my champion? But Maniye knew she could not, for it had its people already, living and dying and being reborn: animal to human, human to animal in a constant round. She must find some great warrior-spirit in the space of Bear and Wolf and Tiger that would make her its avatar.
And she searched and she searched, and the tether was back, its cord stretched longer, and yet still she was leashed, and what time was there, if Loud Thunder had been taken from the fight?
And the world opened up for her.
Perhaps there was a tether still that would have kept her from the lands under the Eagle’s wings, or the lazy shadow-river where Old Crocodile basked, but abruptly she was let loose into the land beyond, a land of a thousand thousand god-spirits, each one showing its claws and sharp fangs to her. She was in the great empire of the killers, where before she had been bound to the little village domains of a mere handful. The profusion of shapes about her bewildered her. There were shadows of beasts that never were, or were no more. There were bears greater than the Bear; wolves that doubled and redoubled the Wolf; there were cats that overshadowed the Tiger, with teeth longer than falx-blades. And there were hyenas as great as horses, gathered next to Shyri’s spotted and high-shouldered, laughing god.
Asmander watched the Tigers approach, sliding in shadow up the hillside. He had Stepped to his human shape and calmed his breathing, feeling the familiar grip of the maccan in his hands. As they picked up speed, closing the distance, he rediscovered his winged soul, spreading his great vanes so that he became the cloud that blotted out the sun, his shadow like an eclipse, screaming at them in his hoarse, harsh voice. And then there was the Champion, crouching atop the rocks, exuding its invincible confidence, master of all the killers of the earth.
And they slowed, not one of them wanting to be the first, and when they had slowed enough, they stopped. Probably they thought they were still too far off for him to pounce on them, though they were wrong.
There were some javelins hurled then. He danced aside from two of them, then one came in that was sent high – enough to land close to where Hesprec was. And so Asmander sprang up, Stepping to catch it in human hands and cast it back, then landed back on the Champion’s scythe-clawed feet. His return throw had been wild and awkward, but he had still made an impression.
Then one of them was suddenly human, a stern and handsome woman armoured in bronze plates, an axe in one hand and a knife in the other. She had about her a sense of command, and before that solemn gaze Asmander regretted his showmanship, and Stepped so that he could hear her with human ears.
‘I am come for my daughter,’ the Tiger Queen told him. Asmander made an awkward face. ‘I know that.’
‘Why stand in my way, black man? Why do you harm my
people? What is this to you?’
‘It’s complicated,’ he admitted, keeping a narrow eye on
where those people of hers might be fanning out to. ‘I don’t care
for your daughter; I would throw her to you myself. But she is
beloved of one I respect, so I am here.’
In the Tiger’s face he thought he saw a spark of pride that,
even in defiance, her daughter had found strong allies. What she
said finally, though, was, ‘I am not afraid of you. Take as many
shapes as a sorcerer, and I am still not afraid of you.’ It was not what he had expected from her. It was not what
her followers had expected either, to judge by the sudden uncertainty amongst them. Asmander racked his brains to remember
what he knew of the woman. What had Maniye said . . . ? ‘You have heard the Wolves howl,’ he observed. ‘They have
come for her, too.’ There was a flinch in response, though the
woman covered it well.
‘Then stand aside so that we may take the girl before they do.
Or would you fight us on their behalf?’
Asmander grimaced. ‘Not any more.’
‘I do not fear the Wolf,’ she spat at him, though he heard the
hurt in her voice.
‘I would hunt Stone River for you, if I could,’ he decided, for surely that would be the correct action. ‘But what little honour I have left is committed to another’s service. So fight me, Queen
of Tigers. I shall come down to you.’
He relinquished his greatest advantage, just slipping to the
ground rather than leaping down amongst them. The Tigers
were still bunched uncertainly there, held back by what they
were hearing and seeing. He had them spellbound.
And their queen gestured them away. ‘I am not afraid of you,’
she repeated.
‘I do not want you to be,’ he confirmed. ‘I want you to fight
me. That is what I am meant for. I have tried other purposes in
my life. I have proved ill-suited for them.’
He got a smile from her then, just a faint one, but it was well
worth the effort. Then she was before him, settling into a fighting stance with the ease of long practice, knife held low, axe
across her body. He followed suit, maccan sloping at at his shoulder, his right foot back, knees a little bent.
He had the reach, but she struck as he tried to use it, her axe
hooking his weapon away and then the dagger darting in. He
gave ground, back and sideways, trying to use her own hold on
the axe haft to drag her off balance. She was a step ahead,
though, the knife still driving for him, persistent as an angry bee.
He swept a foot towards her legs, forcing her to step away, and
followed up with a strike cleaving at where her neck and shoulder met, moving to complement the maccan’s weight and balance. She passed through those moments of the duel as perfectly as
a dancer, eyes always on his face, matching aggression with
aggression, yet calm as still water. He could not land a blow on
her.
It was an admission of defeat of sorts, but he was the first to
Step.
He took the Champion’s shape, leaping abruptly so as to
come down on her with his talons. Instantly she was a tiger
ducking beneath him, so that when he landed she was almost
behind him, a woman once more and her axe hacking towards his neck. He was a crocodile then, belly to the earth and lunging forwards with open jaws. She va
ulted him, came down on his back as a tiger with her claws drawn in. She lost her grip a moment later, the Champion kicking her off and pursuing. He took a rake across his flank and another along his snout. For a moment he had her, the deep bite of his jaws fixed at her neck, his clawed hands hooked into her striped hide. There was bronze beneath that fire-and-shadow fur, though, and then she was a human woman twisting from his grip, her knife drawing a
shallow line across his leg.
The Champion loved her, Asmander could feel. Not he himself, not his human heart, but the Champion was smitten. It
wanted to kill and devour her, but it was love nonetheless. Then the rest of the Tigers were there. In that moment, when
she had been within his jaws, their loyalty had overcome their
honour and they rushed forth. Abruptly he was surrounded.
Their queen stepped back, face a mask of frustration and anger,
but she did not call them off.
He fought; of course, he fought. The Champion gutted one
with a rip of his claws. Old Crocodile’s jaws closed on the leg of
another, as his armoured back shrugged off the blow of a
stone-studded club. He spread leather wings and cowed them in
his shadow, forcing them to fall back. Then Aritchaka tackled
him from behind, wrestling and reaching until she had his throat
gripped in her arms, bearing down his suddenly human body as
another fought his hand, contending for a hold on the maccan.
47
Stone River glared back at his followers, willing them to descend on Broken Axe and clear the way to reach Maniye. They would not. Some would even look him in the eye, and still not rush to support him. Even Kalameshli would not come at his bidding. Their faith in him had been unravelling ever since the girl had run away, and every twist and turn of the trail had eaten into Akrit’s place in the world until the footing beneath him was suddenly treacherous.
Kill the girl , that was the answer. Even if another’s hand held the knife, the girl must die at his order. He would show the Wolf and the entire world that he was not to be denied, not even by his own blood.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 56
