There were still some travellers abroad. The snows were not so fierce, yet, and the better-trodden paths were clear. A few late Coyotes arrived with goods – or in some cases just to beg. A Crow trader down from the Eyrie braved the mockery and disdain of the Winter Runners in order to trade a welcome bag of salt for meat. And there was a messenger, too.
She rode in on a Horse Society mount, a stern-faced woman of the Wolf swathed in furs and with a woollen scarf drawn up past her nose to ward off the cold.
A woman, but a hunter, too, no doubt about that. She travelled with two spears holstered behind the saddle and a bronze axe at her belt, and she rode as easily as the Horse men themselves, swinging herself off the back of her beast to stand before the Winter Runners.
She was recognized quickly, an older man and woman from the Runners coming forth to greet her. All the Wolf tribes were connected by bonds of kinship, and it was common for messengers to be sent to where they might expect blood relatives to vouch for them. Strangers could find an uncertain reception in Wolf lands.
Her name was Velpaye Bleeding Feathers, of the Many Mouths tribe, and the spray of quills she wore in her hair had come from Eyriemen raiders that had fallen to her spears. She had come to speak to Akrit and, by the time that was known, the entire tribe was aware that something important was afoot. Nobody would send out a messenger at the dawn of winter for small matters.
Akrit received her in his hall with his wives and thralls, with Kalameshli and a score of other households represented. He wanted Bleeding Feathers to go back home with the right impression of the Winter Runners.
The news she brought must wait, of course. First there was food and drink laid before her, and she ate with careful politeness, sampling everything, her eyes on the people about her. Now she was their guest, and they her hosts, and a curse be on whoever might act to break that bond.
All through the ritual, Akrit’s mind was busy. The High Chief of the Wolves spoke for the Many Mouths. Word from that quarter could mean many things. Was it war? Were the tribes being called together for some great campaign? Was it time at last to storm the Eyrie and put those thieving cowards in their place? Thinking of the possibility made Akrit feel like a young man again, or closer to one than he had felt in a long time. What a chance that would be to impress other tribes with his strength and cunning, laying the groundwork for his ambitions!
He found that he would greatly welcome any rumours of war.
At last the woman stood before Akrit’s fire, ready to impart her news.
‘Stone River of the Winter Runners,’ she announced, ‘I bring the word of the Many Mouths.’
Kalameshli shifted beside him, and Akrit nodded, frowning – the two of them were working together, as they were used to, faced with this intrusion of the outside world: knowing each other’s thoughts without needing words. Word of the Many Mouths, indeed? And yet not the word of their chief?
In that moment, the true meaning came to Akrit, but he shook it off, still clinging to his fond hopes for the opportunities that conflict might bring.
‘Maninli Seven Skins, he who forged the iron of the Wolves, Tiger-killer, war chief, father of hosts, great chief of the Many Mouths and High Chief in the Jaws of the Wolf,’ Velpaye recited, ‘now he feels the breath of the Wolf indeed.’ She told it like a story, as such news should be told, and a stir went through the listeners. It was winter: the breath of the Wolf was only cold. The words meant one thing, dress them up as the speaker might.
The High Chief of the Wolves knew it was his time to pass on.
Too soon! Akrit thought, though he revealed nothing of it in his poise or face. Give me a year, maybe two, and the girl to use as I will, and then let Maninli walk off into the winter. But not now!
‘Maninli is strong yet,’ he declared. ‘I remember him when we broke the Tiger at the Field of Many Waters, his bear-killer sheathed in blood. None could face him.’ And yet Akrit himself had been young, so young then, and just coming into his own strength. Maninli had been the man who brought the tribes together, who roused the whole Crown of the World with his victories and his mad courage, a man chasing death into the Tiger’s very throat. And even then he had not been a man in the first of his youth.
And he was old, now. Old enough to fear the death that comes in sleep. Old enough to feel the Wolf’s breath.
‘Never was there such a war leader,’ Akrit went on, because such a eulogy was expected. ‘Never was there a man to follow but Seven Skins. Fierce he was, swift as storm winds, strong as the rivers in thaw.’ He found that he was genuinely sad, mourning not for the lost man but those lost days. ‘Do the Many Mouths call?’
‘Will the Winter Runners hear?’ More ritual exchange. She meant that old Seven Skins was turning his back, walking away from all that he had known and been, walking into the wordless dark. A hunter or a hearth-keeper might call to immediate family. A figure greatly admired might call upon a whole tribe. Seven Skins, High Chief of all the Wolves by the agreement and support of the leaders of every tribe, called upon the whole Crown of the World to witness his passing.
There was a fulcrum moment in which Akrit Stone River’s world hung about his trust in Kalameshli Takes Iron. He cocked a sidelong glance at the priest, who was already nodding, an unspoken, spontaneous plan of action coming to both of them simultaneously – one that would require Akrit to put the utmost faith in the old man.
They had argued over Maniye’s loss; indeed the priest seemed to take the business far more personally than Akrit thought reasonable. In the end, though, they were still like brothers, as they had been when they led the warriors of the Winter Runners against the Tiger to cut them some new stripes.
‘The Winter Runners hear,’ Akrit announced. ‘Akrit Stone River, their chief, he hears also.’ The words quietened the murmur of discussion that had arisen around him. The Winter Runners would not just send an emissary, some blood-kin of the Many Mouths, to honour the High Chief. Akrit himself would make the difficult journey. He would witness the old man’s passing with his own eyes. He would spend the winter amongst another tribe, and Kalameshli would guide the Winter Runners in his absence. If there was some conspiracy, some ambitious challenger prowling at the edge of Akrit’s firelight, that would be their time. If Kalameshli was not loyal, Akrit might find the tribe turned against him when he returned.
But he trusted Kalameshli. Despite harsh words, he found that a world without the priest by his side was beyond his imagining. And he would take Amiyen’s elder son with him in his retinue, when he travelled. There was one who badly needed to be separated from his mother.
Velpaye Bleeding Feathers stared at him, keen-eyed, as though she was hunting for hidden motives. And of course, there were hidden motives. Placing himself amidst the Many Mouths at Seven Skins’ passing would put Akrit’s name on many lips, and if he ever hoped to be High Chief in turn, then the love of other tribes was essential. The honour he showed them would be remembered and respected. And he would be able to see who the other tribes sent, and who his competition might be.
And all this, supposing that his plan could be brought to fruition, that Maniye even still lived, that she could be brought back under his control with the Tigers whipped into service. Without that, who was Akrit Stone River but just one man among many, and a man without sons?
But, aside from all such concerns and even in the midst of such feverish plotting, Akrit Stone River found that he was also a man who wanted to say a last farewell to a mentor and a friend.
16
For a long-drawn-out moment nobody spoke. Maniye’s mouth was crammed with objections but she had frozen up, unable to move, unable to look at the man now sitting almost within arm’s reach.
The only real movement came from the dogs. They did not bark – she had not heard them bark at all yet – but they were agitated, standing now, fidgeting back and forth, uttering almost inaudible whines through their teeth. They had plainly not liked Maniye or Hesprec much, but Broken Axe was
something else again, like a figure out of their nightmares. Those born in the Jaws of the Wolf kept no dogs, and wherever their Shadow fell, dogs remained only on sufferance. It was something done often if a tributary village of the Deer or the Boar had displeased Akrit in some mild way that did not merit the shedding of human blood: a band of hunters would go forth and come back with the pelts of their sheep-dogs and their watch-hounds and the swift rabbit-catchers. Hardly worthy prey, but it taught a lesson: next time it’s you.
Dogs possessed souls, albeit small souls that would not bear the weight of a human body. Although their mute minds could not know what Axe had done, perhaps they sensed their kin’s blood on him somehow. Or perhaps it was just that long enmity between the Wolf and the Wolf’s tame bastard. Whichever, Maniye clutched desperately at it, for Loud Thunder’s dogs perhaps had some influence on him. Was he guided by their instincts? All this was faint hope when he plainly knew Broken Axe somehow. But then Axe travelled all over the Crown of the World and beyond. Perhaps everyone knew him, and knew to fear him.
‘There’s no more fish,’ the huge man blurted out suddenly. ‘Didn’t think there’d be such a grand gathering.’
For an instant his forlorn expression made her feel guilty: the fish he had shared out had been intended for his stomach only. Then another ember of hope flared within her. She had some claim on him, under the laws of hospitality. He could not feed Broken Axe, so surely he would have to take her part against the man, no matter what their previous association?
But Broken Axe had a bag at his belt, and he stripped off his gloves and dug inside it, coming up with bundles of meat, not much but fresh, the remains of some luckless creature he had happened on along the trail.
Loud Thunder nodded appreciatively. ‘Good, very good. You are welcome to my fire.’ He almost snatched the flesh from Broken Axe and quickly put it on bone skewers propped over the flames. ‘So,’ he went on, this task accomplished, ‘Broken Axe, the Wolf who walks by himself, and not seen in these lands for . . . two years?’
‘Three.’
‘So long, is it? And now here you are.’
Maniye was hanging on every word, trying to comb out what manner of shared past united the two men. Both were of an age, and both were plainly quite happy with the company of the wilds. Was that it: some chance meeting in the forest years before? She sensed they were more than simply passing acquaintances.
‘You always knew I’d be back this way some time,’ Broken Axe said easily.
‘And now here you are,’ the big man repeated.
Not scared of him but . . . scared of what his being here means, perhaps?
‘It’s a small matter.’ The Wolf hunter’s tone was almost flippant, but Maniye could tell he was choosing his words carefully.
‘Long way to come for a small matter,’ Loud Thunder muttered. ‘This pair now, they come to bother me as well, eat my fish, disturb my dogs. All sorts of strange, they are. Did you ever see such a man as this in the Crown of the World?’
‘Not in the Crown of the World.’ Broken Axe’s face wore a mild, polite smile, his hands still resting in his lap. Maniye had the sense of him stalking: a measured and delicate approach into striking distance.
‘And in such company,’ the huge man fished.
Broken Axe just shrugged. ‘A small matter.’ Somehow, in his nod and intonation, he was plainly referring to Maniye – little Maniye sitting on the far side of Hesprec and feeling cold to the core, where the fire could not reach.
‘Ah.’ A neutral sound from Loud Thunder at having the situation confirmed.
‘She is far from home,’ Broken Axe explained pleasantly. ‘She is looked for there.’
‘Is it so?’ Loud Thunder nodded, as though reflecting on the fecklessness of young girls.
Maniye made a noise. It was meant to be a word, a denial, but instead it was just a noise. Still, the big man cocked a shaggy eyebrow at her.
‘Hrm?’
He will kill me. He killed my mother. Her mouth was open, but the dark stone gaze of Broken Axe transfixed her, and all that came out was a sort of croak.
‘Why do you care?’ Thunder asked the hunter, as if any sane man would let runaway girls die out in the snow to teach them a lesson.
‘For myself, why should I? But her father cares.’
That was too much. At last Maniye found her voice.
‘He doesn’t!’ Her squeak of protest seemed to echo about the hollow. ‘He’s never cared except to use me.’ And it was a bizarre relief to put her new understanding of her father – and her whole life – into words. ‘I’ve been nothing to him, ever, but a thing, a tool.’
If she thought that revelation would somehow wring compassion from the giant’s heart, her hopes were broken in the shrug of his massive shoulders.
‘Life,’ he grunted, ‘is hard. Why make mine harder? I don’t want to know any of it.’ And yet he was still not letting go. Maniye pictured the two of them in their Stepped forms, teeth sunk in her body, tensing themselves to pull.
‘Just so,’ Broken Axe agreed, and he too was obviously still aware that he had some work to do. ‘But I am sent, and she is her father’s daughter, and he is chief of the Winter Runners. So I hunt her.’ And a tacit threat, perhaps: that is who you will make an enemy of.
Loud Thunder sighed enormously, voicing a mountain of sorrow at all the ill ways of the world. ‘And him?’ A cock of the head towards Hesprec.
‘I don’t care about him.’
‘Probably no one does,’ Thunder agreed.
The old Serpent sighed. ‘If I were permitted to speak, I would say that I am a priest much beloved of Snake – who moves beneath us all – and when I was last within the Crown of the World there were yet some who knew that to harm a priest was to open the way for a hundred curses.’
Loud Thunder shrugged again. ‘So Little Feet here is a runaway and Many Words is all sorts of lost, and proud along with it, and you’re doing the Winter Runners’ running for them.’ He began taking the meat from the fire, obviously satisfied with its condition. The dogs got fed first, and then he cut strips for everyone, a swift and equitable division. ‘Tracked her a long way,’ Thunder got out, around a crammed mouthful. ‘Good hunt, that. Good run from her too. Till now.’
‘Until now,’ Broken Axe agreed.
Thunder glanced at Maniye, meeting her gaze, seeing her unable to eat, sitting there with her hands crooked into claws, rigid with tension.
‘Said you killed her mother, too,’ he observed idly.
‘It’s not true,’ came Broken Axe’s smooth reply.
‘Liar!’ She spat out the word too fast for her fear to stop her, and the rest followed. ‘You took her and killed her, when my father had done with her! Everyone knows it. I’ve seen it in his face, and in your face every time you visited his hall! It was the first thing I ever knew about my mother, that she was dead – and by your hand.’
Broken Axe made a wry face: Listen to the foolishness of women! ‘Thunder, you know me.’
‘I do know you.’ And it was a pronouncement that came down on neither side of the argument.
‘You think—?’
‘When we were young and we roamed with a warband, strange lands, strange faces . . . we saw many things. Some terrible things. Some that were made so by our own hands. Do I know what you’ve done or not done, since? How can I?’
‘And do you care? This is a matter for the Wolf to bother himself with.’
‘I saw how she was a tiger when she Stepped,’ Loud Thunder said carefully. If these two men had been wrestling or brawling, this would be the moment that a blade was drawn. Broken Axe went very still.
‘Loud Thunder,’ he said softly, ‘this need be no burden to you. It is a trouble of the Wolf.’ And, seeing the bigger man’s raised eyebrow, ‘and the Tiger, if you wish. None of yours.’
‘And yet now I’m curious,’ Thunder replied implacably. His eyes flicked from the hunter to Maniye herself.
‘He
will kill me,’ she got out.
‘Not true,’ Broken Axe put in quickly.
‘Amiyen—’
‘I am not Amiyen.’
A wave of Thunder’s hand, the big man obviously not wanting to deal with the names of any not actually there with him. ‘Tiger,’ he stated flatly, and then, ‘Wolf,’ as though he were weighing up the two names. ‘No, this makes me all sorts of curious. Tiger and Wolf had their war, yes. Yet both sides’ve kept beating that same drum ever since. You think we don’t hear it?’
Broken Axe closed his eyes, summoning his strength. ‘Do I care about the war? I do not. But I am tasked with bringing this girl safe home, and I will do it.’
‘Will you?’
‘Thunder, you don’t care.’
‘I’m curious,’ the huge man said again, more forcefully. ‘Tiger. Wolf. And this thing, whatever he is . . . Snake . . . thing.’
‘A sacrifice,’ Hesprec said sibilantly, ‘but saved from that death by the girl. A priest bound for sacrifice, did you ever hear such a thing?’
‘And worse,’ Loud Thunder grunted. ‘Sounds like Wolf work to me, yes. Take him if you want.’
‘I don’t want him. You can keep him, but I’ll have the girl.’ And Maniye could see the tension deep inside, drawing Broken Axe taut like a bow. He sat just the same, appearing easy, and with his hands in plain view, but in his fire-shadow she could see the wolf poised to pounce.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 20
