Akrit knew the form: he, who had not needed to bow to anyone, man or wolf, in a long time, now ducked his head low, angling it so as to show his throat. He stayed still as the older beast stalked over, shaking out the stiffness in his legs. For a moment he thought that Seven Skins would truly not know him, that he was too far gone into senescence or down the Wolf’s trail.
Then Maninli had Stepped, and was sitting before him with his back to the fire, a wondering expression on his face. He had a hand out, almost touching Akrit’s muzzle.
‘Can it be?’ he asked softly.
Old – he was old. Akrit took a moment before Stepping also, because he could not show Maninli a human face with that look of shock on it. The strength that the beast within retained was always deceptive. It could even hide a weak, hollowed-out man like this.
Here was Maninli Seven Skins: the man who had brought the war host of the Wolf together and beaten the Tiger out of the heartlands of the Crown of the World. Yes, he had burned through his best days to do it, but he had always been strong, unbreakable. And yet the years since Akrit had last seen him had broken him. His skin was jaundiced and he looked as though he had not slept forever, the white of his eyes pink with misplaced blood. He trembled constantly, as though simply sitting there and holding his head up was taking all the strength he had. He was thin, the furs they had clad him in to keep him warm just hanging off his skeletal figure.
‘I know, I know.’ The roaring voice of Akrit’s memory was a hoarse whisper. ‘Look at me, old friend. I know.’
And Akrit forced himself to look. He owed Maninli that much.
‘It’s good to see you one more time. And you braved the winter for me. That’s a thought to take with me when I go.’
Akrit reached out gingerly and laid a hand on his arm, feeling it bone-hard, bone-cold, fragile as a stick beneath his touch. ‘You’re waiting for midwinter?’
Maninli shuddered. ‘I’ve waited too long already. I should have gone before the snows. I’m the wolf almost all the time now. The wolf isn’t cold or tired like this. The wolf doesn’t hurt like this. The wolf can eat, even. Only, when I become a man again, I cannot keep it down.’ When he shook his head, it seemed to sway loosely on his neck. ‘Eat . . . ? I’m being eaten, Akrit. It’s the death that comes to us, the gnawing death picking at these bones. But it’s difficult to let go . . . Even though I make things worse for everyone, the longer I stay, it’s hard.’
Akrit had always thought that, when the time came, he himself would go bravely and be no burden. That was the hunter’s way after a long life or a crippling injury. Now, looking at Maninli, he did not know for sure. Seven Skins had always been a brave man. If even this carious human existence was precious to him, what could Akrit truly know?
‘I will retell your stories,’ Akrit said softly.
‘There are few left who can.’ For a moment a new expression came upon the old man, a sly alertness that was something of the past creeping back. ‘Otayo tells me you will raid the Tiger next summer.’
‘Does he?’ Akrit held his face still.
‘They say he should have been a priest, that one,’ Maninli managed a thin chuckle. ‘They say the invisible world whispers to him. They don’t realize all you have to do is listen and think, and you can predict the future well enough. So, will you?’
Akrit had not planned to talk about such things with anyone beyond Kalameshli, but here he was, and he could not just refuse his old friend. ‘We have unfinished business,’ was all he said. Besides, if Otayo was thinking of a mere raid or two, then he was thinking too small.
If the girl is alive. If the girl is brought back to me.
He shook off his doubts angrily.
Maninli was watching him from under half-lowered lids. ‘Too late, too late. I would have been glad to have a few more of the Tiger given to the jaws of the Wolf before my passing. It would sweeten my path, surely. What meat would he savour more?’
‘When chance brings me one of their warriors, then the Wolf will have that meat, and in your name,’ Akrit promised.
The gap-toothed smile he received was almost senile in its bloodlust. He could see the focus draining out of Maninli’s eyes, and so he straightened his shoulders. ‘Old friend, do not spend all your strength before your time.’
A terrible, hunted look came to the old man’s face, and in the next moment he had Stepped: not even a farewell, just a flight to the refuge of a wolf body that still had some strength in it. The animal stared at Akrit with yellow, unblinking eyes, and he could not say whether it knew him or not.
Akrit had assumed that Maninli intended to hold out for midwinter to pass on. Having seen the old man, that seemed unlikely now. The Many Mouths were holding themselves in constant readiness. Each night the cold’s grip on the Crown of the World tightened, and surely their chief must simply wish to let go and leave them. And yet he held on, a little of the man clinging within him as if fearful of the great dark that was waiting for him. His soul had grown used to his hands, was the saying that Akrit heard most often.
He and his Winter Runners settled down for a stay of uncertain duration, penned in by the growing strength of winter.
In truth, there was little to do save talk. The people of the Many Mouths told stories, while their hunters contested in races and wrestling. Akrit stalked about their village, constantly skirting the circle of influence maintained by Water Gathers, who seemed just as conscientious in avoiding him. The mood soured slowly. Nobody seemed to know what Maninli was holding out for.
‘But it has to be something,’ Otayo explained to Akrit one evening. ‘You have seen our new priest, Catch The Moon, who the Wolf chose after old Singing Branch passed on? He is young but he has many visions. He has spoken to my father much. There is something yet to come.’
‘What?’ Akrit demanded in a hushed voice. They were the last two still sitting awake by the fire. Most of Otayo’s family was asleep.
His host gave him a calculating look. ‘He will not tell me – and do not think I haven’t asked. I do not believe he has told Water Gathers either, which eats at my brother.’ A slight quirk of the lips: it was no secret that the sons of Seven Skins did not always see eye to eye. ‘Who would he tell then . . . ?’
The next morning Akrit went to visit Maninli one last time.
It was hard to persuade the man’s wife that he should be allowed a second audience. She was terrified that her husband might die in human form, and so prevent his soul from passing on. There was a fragility about her eyes that made Akrit wonder if it was not the prospect of Seven Skins’ angry ghost haunting the family hall which most frightened her.
When Akrit finally talked his way in, he approached the old grey wolf as warily as before. This time, though, Maninli did not Step, but just turned away and settled down by the fire, shifting mournfully every so often in an attempt to find a kind of comfort that time had stripped from him.
Akrit settled down beside him in human form, knowing that now he must talk and hope the wolf ears would still convey his words to a human mind. He recounted what Otayo had said, fishing for some sign that his suspicions were right, hoping that the bond of one-time comradeship between them would be enough.
But he had more to say than that, when the wolf remained a mute animal beside him. It was time for Akrit to share his own dream with Seven Skins: a pledge to the Wolf that the old man could carry with him when he passed on.
‘I will take the Tiger,’ he explained softly. ‘Not just raids. I will bring them into the Wolf’s Shadow at last. After that, perhaps the Eyrie will bow to us, or we will starve them out. The work you began, old friend, is not done. The people of the Wolf have a destiny.’
There was a sound beside him, and Maninli was sitting there, old head loose on his neck, eyes almost closed. He looked measurably older than when Akrit had seen him before.
But he spoke, and Akrit leant closer to catch the mumbled words.
‘Catch The Moon has seen it. There is a tim
e coming, a Great Dying Time.’
Akrit shivered to hear it, and the failing man’s sour breath suddenly seemed to bring with it a chill, the sense of invisible presences looming near. Maninli’s soul seemed perched on his very lips, clinging to the last threads of his human existence as his body consumed itself. There would always be spirits hovering close at such a time. Many of them would be wicked, and some would hope to poison Maninli’s soul if it was trapped in a man’s dead flesh, to turn it into something that would sicken and corrupt all of the Many Mouths, even all those of the Wolf. But such spirits whispered prophecy to the dying, too. The words of a man this close to passing on were pregnant with divination.
‘Catch The Moon has seen a shadow that might stretch all the way to the world’s end. He says that those who do not submit to it will pass from this world. Whose shadow can that be save for the Wolf’s? That is what it must be.’ He coughed thinly, a feeble and miserable sound. ‘Water Gathers, my son . . . he thinks that the world will never change through all his lifetime, that every tomorrow will be as yesterday once he is chief. But you can see further. You know the Wolf must grow stronger. I should have sent for you before. The Wolf has guided you to come to me.’
Akrit sat very still. Was this what he had been seeking? Yes, surely, and yet how much more weight did it place on his shoulders? How much more important that he become High Chief and that he bring the Tiger into the Wolf’s Shadow? And for this, for all of this, he needed the girl Maniye, who might already be dead . . .
He leant close to Maninli, despite the reek of the man’s decaying body. ‘My friend, is this what you have stayed for? Know that you may go, you may pass on. You need not torture yourself in this flesh any more.’
The shake of Seven Skins’ head was barely perceptible. ‘There is one more I must see,’ the withered lips moved again. ‘They are coming to us now, those who can help this destiny to come to pass. When they are here, then I shall know my time is right. Strangers, Akrit. Strangers in winter. Mark them. It may be their deaths that you need, or it may be their lives. Make your decision wisely.’
A day later, a band of the Horse Society stumbled into the Many Mouths village, led by two Coyotes and a Crow, and in their midst were three strange figures, two southerners and a Plains woman – and Akrit knew the time had come.
18
‘I expected tents, for some reason,’ Asmander remarked. ‘Or maybe huts.’ His eyes flicked over the artificial hillscape before them, studying the earthworks raised by the Many Mouths.
‘Or holes in the ground,’ Venater said, easily loud enough for Shyri to hear, but even he sounded slightly impressed. There were plenty of northerners outside and staring as the travellers approached, and a handful of sleek grey wolves were trotting to either side of the newcomers as an impromptu honour guard, but to Asmander this did not look like a place where real people lived. The mounds that the northerners built upon had the same sense of ancient weight and scale as the ruins of the Old Stone Kingdom. This felt more like a place for the dead to be interred rather than for any sane human beings to inhabit. Of course, the cold rather adds to that. I wonder if dead northerners actually get warmer after life departs.
‘It’s not Atahlan,’ he said bravely, ‘but I confess it’s quite a sight.’
‘No fear among them, either,’ Venater stated.
‘You mean no walls?’
‘They don’t care about keeping men out, nor beasts. I reckon any who come uninvited would find out why.’
‘They say the men of the Crown of the World believe that only the blood of their enemies will bring spring again,’ Shyri declared.
‘If it would do that, I’d open some throats myself,’ Asmander responded.
The crowd was growing, even as they wound their way between the smaller mounds. Ahead of them was one far greater than the rest, the domain of a leader as plainly as was the Kasra’s palace at Atahlan.
‘What has brought you to the Many Mouths at such a time?’ enquired a Wolf man, stepping forward from the pack. ‘Or do the Horse go wherever they wish across our lands?’ There was a confrontational tone to his question that Asmander found himself warming to.
Eshmir pressed her hands together. ‘I come to honour the High Chief of all the Wolves. I come with gifts from the Horse Society.’
The Wolf spokesman spat, apparently placing little value on this. Asmander was watching the rest of them though, seeing that this man spoke for some but by no means all of them. He sensed divisions, factions, observing the way that the northerners clumped and eddied.
Two Heads Talking kept his shoulders hunched, avoiding the massed Wolf gaze as though this would make him invisible. He leant in towards Eshmir and murmured, ‘This one is Water Gathers, son of the chief.’
‘We know your father must pass on,’ the Hetman said simply. ‘We bring the respects of the Horse, as one so great makes his last journey.’
There was precious little grief in Water Gathers, Asmander reckoned, but at least this seemed to be the right thing to say. The majority approved, and the chief’s son went along with them, giving ground grudgingly.
The Horse people had brought their own tents, and that would apparently have to be enough. Under Two Heads’ direction they pitched them at the foot of one of the smaller mounds, whose residents were known to him. His trade-wife made the climb up to the hall above to barter for news and for hospitality. Asmander was keenly aware that they were not quite guests, not yet, nor strangers either. He had a sense of having only a tenuous place in the world here, surrounded by unseen laws that he might break with the least mis-step.
That night, he huddled about a fire with Venater and Shyri. ‘Our hosts do not like us,’ he noted.
‘That’s fine,’ the pirate growled. ‘I don’t like them.’
‘You don’t like anyone.’
Venater shrugged.
‘Yet these are the fabled Iron Wolves,’ Asmander considered, ‘and here we are.’
The pirate grunted. ‘Good luck, then.’
‘I think we’ll not just throw out a purse of coin and buy ourselves a warband or two. I think it doesn’t work like that here,’ Asmander decided.
‘Worked that much out, have you?’ Venater’s look was derisive. ‘Let me guess, old Asman didn’t give you much to go on.’
‘My father has faith in my initiative.’
This time Venater said nothing. Shyri looked from one to the other.
‘Someone tell me what you’re both not saying,’ she said at last.
‘It’s a small matter.’ Asmander made a dismissive gesture.
‘With so many enemies around us, no matters are small matters.’
‘So you think them enemies too?’
She laughed, uttering a brief high yap of a sound, always disconcerting to hear from a human throat. ‘Of course they’re enemies. Everyone’s an enemy until you make them a slave or a friend. And friend’s harder.’
‘How lovely it must be to be a Plains dweller,’ Asmander remarked. ‘Such carefree lives of constant happiness.’
‘Happy indeed,’ she agreed. ‘For it is not I who am sent here to beg. Such security you southerners must know, that you invite in even the Wolf to keep the peace.’
‘These things are known,’ Venater murmured.
‘Enough from you,’ Asmander told him, more sharply than he meant, but the older man just chuckled.
Because he could not sleep, the night found him later outside their tents, in a chill that seemed to have banished even the Wolf tribe to their hearths and halls. Above, the sky had the hallucinatory clarity of a scene viewed through a drop of water. He felt that he could count every star.
When he heard the scuff of someone approaching behind him, he was not surprised to find Shyri there.
‘I begin to think I must have killed you back in the ruins,’ he said softly. ‘No ghost ever haunted a man more diligently.’
‘Yes, yes, it’s all about you,’ she replied dismissively, arm
s folded. But then her next words were, ‘So, the father who sent you, he loves his children, yes?’
‘It is a great honour to have a Champion for a son.’
‘He takes great pride in it, no doubt.’
‘He is a proud man,’ Asmander told her.
‘Having a son greater than yourself, that sounds like the sort of honour that could rub badly against a man’s pride,’ she observed. Her attempt at an innocent expression was pitiful.
‘You have been listening to Venater too much.’
‘He doesn’t like your father.’
‘Being liked is not my father’s aim in life.’ Asmander immediately wished he had not said it. The cold here seemed to draw words out of him as though speaking hard truths was the only way he could keep warm. ‘Venater has his reasons. My father took his name from him.’
‘I thought you did that.’
‘Well, Venater doesn’t like me, either.’
She regarded him doubtfully, taking a step closer. She reminded him of someone stalking small game, trying to get as close as possible before it spooked.
‘Let me guess, your own father is a paragon of mercy and kindness,’ he suggested.
She snorted. ‘Mercy and kindness are things the Laughing Men have no use for, longmouth. And it’s the least of a girl’s worries, where I come from, to know her father.’
‘I envy you,’ he murmured.
‘Then you don’t know my mother. I’d trade her for your father any day.’
He found he was grinning, despite having come out here with the express purpose of indulging his melancholy.
Then: ‘Lie with me,’ she said.
He gave her a very appraising look, and she laughed at him.
‘Longmouth,’ she said, ‘it is freezing, and the Horse tents are worth nothing. Come lie down, and share your warmth, at least, instead of pissing it out into this big sky. Or do I go fit myself into Venater’s armpit instead?’
‘Ah, romance,’ he said drily, and took her hand when she extended it to him. ‘Let the three of us entwine ourselves then. Perhaps we can scandalize the locals.’
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 22
