‘You said,’ she went on, ‘that you came all the way here, to the Crown of the World, for me. Because of my soul.’ In the face of his closed lips, the words tumbled out of her. ‘And why would you be here? Why travel so far? And . . . and you’re a priest, a magician. You might see . . .’ She was disgusted by the hope in her own voice.
Would some southern madness result in everything she had done, all those lonely years of childhood, gaining a significance and justification it had always lacked? Until that moment she had never quite realized that such a hole existed in her.
But Hesprec was just shaking his head slowly. ‘I am sorry, Maniye, it was just a story.’
‘You’re lying.’ She was clinging to a sinking boat just one moment longer.
‘It was simply something to say, to the question Ganris asked me. I apologize if my powers of invention have misled you. And, while I cannot claim any grand destiny led me to you, believe me when I say I am very, very grateful that blind fortune nonetheless did.’
Then Alladei was thrusting his way back into the hut with a sack over his shoulder.
‘Get up,’ he ordered them tersely. ‘You have to leave here.’ He upended the bag and shook loose a wad of bundled clothing. ‘Get these on. They will warm you more than what you have. Especially you, old Serpent.’
There were fleece-lined sheepskin robes there, and fur hats and boots, all fashioned in the Horse style. None of it fitted overly well – too large on Maniye while too short and too wide on Hesprec, but they donned them hastily. There was a bag of food too: dried fruit, nuts and shreds of meat jerky all mixed together.
‘What is going on?’ the Snake priest asked mildly, as he pulled on a boot.
‘The Winter Runners are here in the camp,’ Alladei told them tersely. ‘They are seeking you. You are our guests.’ Every line of his body was urging them to hurry. ‘We do not take sides, and we do not know why they want you, and we do not want to be a part of a war within the Winter Runners, still less some business between them and the south. So: we clothe you, we invite you to leave. We tell them you were here but – ah! – gone now, who could have thought it?’
‘And then?’ Maniye asked him.
‘They track you, they do not track you. They catch you or they do not catch you,’ he said. ‘But it is not here inside our walls that it happens. Our duty as hosts is not breached. For what value I can give my wishes, I hope you stay a step ahead, all the way to where you are going. And perhaps, if this turns out to be the right thing to do, you will remember your friends of the Horse Society in a better year.’
‘And where should we go?’ she demanded.
‘How can I say?’ He shrugged. ‘But downriver in Swift Back lands there is a larger trading post, big enough that we keep people there all year.’
For a moment, Maniye wanted to be angry at him, but she saw that it could just as easily have been Akrit’s hunters bursting in on them, and that would probably have been the safer course for Ganris’s people. And Alladei seemed sincere when he wished them well. She could read in him that he wanted to do more, but he was caught by the bonds that laced him to his people and his hand-father.
‘We will go,’ agreed Hesprec. He was fully attired now – perhaps the two of them could even have walked through the trading post and passed as Horse people, with the falling snow to shadow their features. Their disparate heights would betray them though – such a small girl, such a tall, gangling man – too suspicious not to draw a closer look. There was only one way to go.
‘In the bag, old Serpent,’ she instructed, far more bravely than she felt.
Hesprec Stepped into that same reptile form and slithered into her satchel, and she slung it over her shoulders.
‘Our thanks,’ she told Alladei. ‘My thanks.’
He nodded soberly. ‘Swift roads and fair forage,’ and then, ‘and look out for us in the spring.’
Then she had shifted her own form, reducing down to that small wolf that lived within her, tugging at the bag’s strap with her teeth to tighten it. And there was nothing for it but to nose past the hanging furs and out into the same snow that must even now be falling on Akrit’s hunters as they searched for her.
For a moment, surrounded by the scents and structures of men, she could not get her bearings: no idea which way was north, which south – all her wolf senses bewildered. Then she found the river that the trading post was built against, cluttered with the log rafts and canoes that the Horse Society would soon use to carry themselves and their goods south for the winter.
South was where she needed to go too, and for a moment she paused at the water’s edge, cringing back from the boots of the Horse men and women who were already loading tightly bundled packages on their boats. Should she leap aboard and find some place to hide herself? But the Horse men had not given Hesprec their agreement – she would be like a thief, uninvited and outside any protection of hospitality. She could be dumped in the river as quick as thought once they discovered her, and all their fair dealings with Alladei, their talk with Ganris, would mean nothing. She did not know these people well enough, nor could she trust them.
She would have consulted with the old Snake if she could, but he was coiled inside her pack and she did not dare take her human form, not now she was being hunted. There was no escape here, save the water, and that was cold and swift enough to be more than a match for her ability to swim it. Mind made up, she was darting off, heading for the landward gate of the trading post.
Everything was a shadow in the swirling snow until she came within a few yards of it. Save for the labouring Horse people, there was nobody abroad, and she hoped that any of Akrit’s people were similarly resting out the weather under Horse Society roofs. She dodged and scrabbled around the curved walls of the Horse huts, hunting for the way out into the open.
She spotted the other wolf all too late.
He had been waiting patiently, standing quite still as though he had somehow known she must come this way. She was going fast enough that she almost ran straight past him, within reach of his jaws. As it was, she scrabbled and slipped in the piling snow, skidding over onto her side as she desperately tried to stop.
He stared at her, head high. She recognized him. Man or beast, she would know Broken Axe.
Her guts turned to ice within her, and for a moment she could not move, shocked rigid with fear as he began to step calmly forwards, lifting his feet fastidiously to reach over the drifts.
His eyes – pale and clear as no wolf of the wilds would own to – lanced into her, and her mind was flailing frantically, wondering whether he would seize her in his jaws or Step into his lean, hard human body with axe already in hand.
Something broke inside her. Either she fought down her fear or it consumed her utterly, but she was on her feet, under his very nose, and launching herself off, one of her rear feet raking a claw across his muzzle as he lunged forwards.
She zigged and zagged, hoping to gain enough distance that the snow would lose her. She felt no breath at her heels, and guessed that he was already trying to flank her, to head her off – and that he would appear before her any moment, lunging out of the weather like a nightmare.
She dashed around the wall of another hut, seeing an openness before her that she hoped was the gate, and an arm caught her about the throat, dragging her off her feet, tight enough around her neck that she was ripped straight into her human form, hauled kicking and yelling into the wind-shadow of the hut.
Something cold pressed at her cheek. She knew it for iron instantly – no child of the Wolf would not: the long, narrow chill of a knife blade.
‘If it’s not Stone River’s child,’ a woman’s voice said softly in her ear. Stripped of the speed of her wolf shape, Maniye was suddenly terrified in a quite different way – worse even than almost running into Broken Axe’s open jaws. Her human hide seemed far more fragile and vulnerable than any animal’s, and with the arm close about her neck she could not Step away, like a thrall w
earing a collar.
Another wolf crossed her view: not Broken Axe but a young male – and a moment later she recognized his slightly awkward loping as that of Arrow Taker, Amiyen Shatters Oak’s youngest. Which meant that the voice and the arm belonged to . . .
‘Amiyen,’ she got out, ‘please . . .’ No more than that, for what could she say? What did she have to barter with, after all? Yet still the hopeless words emerged. ‘Not back to my father, please.’
The huntress chuckled in her ear. ‘Is that your last true wish, Stone River’s child?’ The knife moved, just a minor readjustment but it had all of Maniye’s attention. Abruptly the edge of it was at her throat.
‘But he . . .’ Her world lost what little balance it had left. Through all of this, she had been convinced of one thing: the fate she was fleeing was that described to her by drunken Akrit that evening after the Testing. She was fleeing Broken Axe. She was fleeing her part in her father’s plan to use her to somehow bludgeon the Tiger into his service. What she had not thought she was fleeing was death itself. Oh, death for Hesprec, certainly, but he had been staring that in the face already. Death for herself had never been a possibility. Until now.
‘Oh, your father . . . your father will not be chief forever,’ came Amiyen’s sharp-edged voice. ‘Your father has no sons, Stone River’s daughter. But he has you, and while he has you, who knows what might happen after he is gone? But without you . . .’
Maniye actually felt the steeling of the muscles that was Amiyen drawing together the will to kill her chief’s flesh and blood. She was not the only one.
Something thin and hissing reared furiously past her shoulder, striking with gaping jaws at Amiyen’s face. The huntress shrieked, fearing the venom, no room in her head for the memory that the old Serpent had been thoroughly de-fanged. She fell back with her hands out to shield herself, her head striking hard against the wooden side of the hut and the knife falling away.
The arm was gone from about her neck, and Maniye Stepped instantly, racing past Iramey and away, feeling the shifting and sliding of weight that was Hesprec being jolted back into her pack.
The gate was ahead, and she bolted for it, seeing Iramey’s sleek-furred form at the edge of her vision as he moved in on her flank with fangs bared to bite. She shied away from him, feeling his teeth catch at her fur. He was forcing her away from the gate, even if he could not get his fangs in her. Amiyen must be close behind. In their Stepped shapes, with their blood up, they would tear her apart.
Then he was gone with a yelp, tripped or stumbling, and she dashed ahead and out, beyond the palisade and into the furious teeth of the snow – but still better that than the teeth of the Winter Runners.
Amiyen had been a handful of heartbeats behind, just a few moments reeling from the knock to her head, Stepped back into wolf form but still groggy. When she got to the gate, there he was, and she felt a terrible, ripping sensation within her.
Her child, her youngest, her reckless Iramey.
He lay, human, curled into a ball, and the snow about him was melting red with his blood. He was still alive, just, shivering and shuddering.
Maniye had torn open his leg – the inside near the groin, where the blood ran fierce. Amiyen had seen enough people and animals die to know it.
She crouched beside him, on human knees now, feeling dead and cold in her heart. The loss was like a hammer raised, waiting to come down and spark her rage.
‘Mother.’ He clutched for her, but she drew back, shaking her head. It was very, very important.
‘Iramey, listen to me, you must Step. You must.’
‘Mother, it hurts! Please . . .’ And he was twisting, trying to reach out for what comfort she could offer, despite the agony. She wanted desperately to gather him in her arms, but she needed him to obey her this one last time, for his own sake.
‘My son, listen to me.’ Her voice shook with the same erratic rhythms as his ravaged body. ‘Iramey, son, please. You lived within the Jaws of the Wolf, so you must end. Please, Iramey, please, this one last time.’ Tears left freezing trails down her cheeks. She could see Iramey fighting for another breath, another heartbeat.
‘Mother . . .’
She opened her mouth, and knew that no words would come out, that it would be a sound of grief and loss – and all the more so if he died like this.
And then the dying boy was a dying beast, whimpering and trembling, Stepped at last into the form that all Wolves must hope to hold to, as they passed away. To die human was to deny the soul its exit, to trap it within the decaying corpse. Thus were ghosts made, tormented and twisted spirits denied rebirth.
Now she went to him and cradled his wolf’s body in her arms, whispering in his ear, telling him it would be well, that he would live again, be born again, as man or as beast. Her words jumped and shuddered with her grief and his faltering breath.
The girl would be getting further away, she knew, and the snow would hide her tracks. This was more important though. Family always came first.
But even if she lost the trail now, she would find Stone River’s daughter over winter, or in the spring, or in twenty years of searching, and she would tear open that girl’s throat and gorge on her blood.
In her arms, Iramey faded at last, and she felt that moment when the soul fled from him. In that instant she had Stepped, because human grief was shallow and pale compared to the grieving of a wolf. She flung back her head and howled out the incandescence of her anguish and her fury.
11
Twin rivers were the bonds that tied the cold north to the warm south. In the east, the Sand Pearl fed into the Marl, which coursed southwards until the dry plains swallowed it up. To the west a skein of rivers mustered their forces to become the back of the great Tsotec. Neither the inhabitants of the Sun River Nation nor those of the Crown of the World truly understood how these rivers linked their worlds. Few had realized that the freeze and thaw of the northern winters caused the flooding of the Tsotec that inundated the fields of the south, bringing another year’s prosperity and life.
But what they did know was that the river was a road. To walk from Atahlan to the lands of the Wolf would take many moons and expose the traveller to all manner of dangers, natural and human. Even the roads that the Horse Society had trodden out were safe only for large and well-guarded parties. The rivers were the swifter, safer path between north and south throughout the heart of the year, when they were not frozen or running mad with meltwater. So it was that travellers on the Tsotec heading north into the first days of winter must always hurry, for the ice would not wait.
Where they could, the Horse drew their boats up on the western shore, hauling them by main force up little trails or else the treacherous inclines left by rockslides. Across the river the Plains began, and the Horse seemed to have no more friends there that they were anxious to visit.
The western shore of the Tsotec’s back was in the Shadow of the Stone Kingdoms, whose people lived closed lives, on the stepped plateaus of the high ground.
There were men and women of the Stone Kingdom in Atahlan, in some numbers. They came to work, and they stayed because they were paid well and valued. They were craftsmen and quarrymen, whose understanding of the moods and movements of the earth was unparalleled. Moreover, they were the arm of the Kasra: foreigners without ties to any of the great clans, they made perfect enforcers of the laws. Recruiting the Stone men to be the shield and the sword of the Sun River Nation’s ruler was an old tradition. In return, the Snake priests had made their way even into the Stone halls, conquering ancient enmities with cunning words.
All of which was relevant to Asmander’s purpose for one reason: this outside force, these spears hired from beyond the Nation’s borders, would be a key factor in what happened next. And for all he hoped desperately that the near future would be one of peace succeeding peace, he did not believe it.
Hence his mission to the north, and he was not alone. Even as his prince, his beloved Tecuman, sent out
trusted men such as Asmander, so there would be others . . .
When there was enough wood for a good fire, the whole travelling party clustered about it, and the chief entertainment then was telling stories. Everyone took their turn. The Horse told stories about far places, everywhere but their own home. So it was that one would tell a tale of the Crown of the World, how some hero tricked the sun into returning, and yet offended it so that it would always go away again. Another would tell some familiar Riverlands myth, or perhaps there would be a badly remembered history of the coming of the Pale Shadow, a myth Asmander had heard recounted far better by the Snake priests.
When his own turn came, he felt embarrassed. He was no great storyteller: his voice would always go dry, and he forgot key parts of the tale so that the whole made no sense. When he had demurred enough, and everyone else –Venater and Shyri too – had made it plain he had no choice, he had lamely fallen back on one of the old children’s stories, about the Crocodile and the Serpent. He muddled through it, how Serpent had come to the river and sought passage on Old Crocodile’s back, and been refused three times. Who, after all, would carry a venomous reptile willingly? Here, Asmander found himself mimicking his long-ago tutors, bringing their expressions and gestures to life, sparking smiles from his audience. Simpler tales for simpler times, he thought. At the last, of course, Old Crocodile is tricked into carrying Serpent across anyway, and when he gets to the far side he’s very surprised that the snake has not bitten him. More, Serpent has guided him to a new place where the herds come to drink. And so Old Crocodile learned to trust Serpent’s guidance, just as Serpent had trusted his strength. Asmander thought he had done quite a good job of the telling, for all it was just a fable for the very young. When he had been that young, the world had seemed fit for such tales.
What will they tell about us, after we are gone?
After that, Venater wanted to give a blood-and-butchery retelling of some act of pointless villainy, but Asmander elbowed him sharply, and instead another of the Horse told a midnight story of the Old Kingdom – the first dominion of the Stone People – and how it had been eaten away from the inside by the Rat Cult, by poison and disease, and of the ruins still standing today where none would dare go again.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 13
