And yet, after three of these exchanges, not a drop of blood had reddened the snow, and Maniye thought of what Hesprec had said, how they could destroy each other. The newcomer could simply have torn open Thunder’s carefully constructed home to get at him. They could have flayed each other with their claws, bloodied their fangs on each other’s lifeblood.
It was an argument, she saw: an argument between brothers who happened to be bears.
And, at the end, Loud Thunder had dropped down again, seeming almost baffled and shaking his head. He had not lost – indeed Maniye thought he had got the upper hand, older and heavier than the newcomer. He had not driven the other bear off though. It had endured the worst of him, and was still there.
Loud Thunder turned, then, and stomped back towards his home, Stepping from brooding bear to brooding man as he did so, and the newcomer followed suit, walking almost in his tracks.
He was called Lone Mountain, she discovered. He was not Loud Thunder’s brother by birth, but a cousin. The aunt they had in common was the Mother of all the Bears.
Hesprec was listening intently, as though this all made perfect sense to him, but for Maniye it was hard to follow. The Cave Dwellers did not live together as a tribe, like all the other people of the Crown of the World that she knew. They lived here in this harsh country, and they spaced themselves far across it, allotting to each one or two or few a territory. They were a tribe, though, and they had their ways, their gatherings and meetings. And they had their mother. Of all the powerful women born within the Arms of the Bear, one was acknowledged as pre-eminent, by secret ways that were obviously as much of a mystery to the two Cave Dweller men as they were to Maniye. What marked out the Mother of the Bear people was her strength, but also her wisdom. The Mother saw many things, Maniye understood. What the Mother asked for, the Mother usually received.
‘And she has asked for you,’ Lone Mountain declared. ‘You must go to the Stones once spring comes. You have been apart from your people long enough. Many have said it.’
Loud Thunder merely grunted, and stared at the fire.
‘Did you think a son of the Bear could live always on his own, one such as you?’ Lone Mountain did not seem entirely pleased about this whole business himself.
‘I do not want it.’
‘Your wanting does not matter,’ Lone Mountain told him.
‘It should be you she calls for.’
Maniye looked from one to the other, trying to decipher what they meant.
‘I had always thought so.’ Mountain scowled. ‘But the world is changing. Her dreams and seeing have led her to call your name, so you must go.’
‘What is it? What are you talking about?’ Maniye demanded. She fully expected to be ignored – too small and insignificant for these two vast creatures to notice. Loud Thunder glanced at her, but said nothing. It was Lone Mountain who graced her with an answer.
‘Mother has said that the Bear seeks a war leader.’
‘War?’ Now it was Hesprec chiming in. ‘War against the cold? Against the trees?’
Lone Mountain shrugged ponderously. ‘This is what Mother hears from the Bear. And of all of the hunters in the Bear’s Shadow, it is your name she speaks. And you must go.’
‘I will say no.’
‘Say it to her face, if you dare,’ Lone Mountain challenged. ‘But go to her you shall. None will then say I did not do what was asked of me.’
What irked her was the change in Hesprec. He had been like a grey shadow all the winter, until she was convinced that he would not see the spring. Aside from his stories, there had been nothing to be got from him: as if he had retreated to the last spark of warmth inside himself and shuddered his way through each cold day, each long and freezing night.
Now a new brightness had come into his eye, and it was not just the promised spring. He was looking smug.
‘This was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?’ she accused him. ‘It’s the real reason you were here in the Crown of the World – seeking wise counsel or whatever. Did you make this happen?’ She would have believed it, too, for who knew what the minions of the Snake could accomplish, or how their magic worked? Perhaps everything following her rescue of him from sacrifice had been twisted into place by the movements of the Serpent’s coils.
‘Does it suit my purpose? Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Can a poor, worn-down stub of a priest bring such things about, no matter how the Serpent favours him? Such things defy possibility.’ And, when she still looked on him with suspicion, ‘And does this not serve your purposes too, little hunter?’
‘How can it?’ she demanded.
‘Before spring comes, our host here must set out for your Stones, or else risk offending his Mother,’ Hesprec pointed out. ‘What was your plan for the coming of spring? To flee into the wilderness until the hunter tracks you down? Better travel with Loud Thunder. Seek for your new escape amongst the people who will gather at this place. You shall find more chances there than amongst the trees.’
She pictured Broken Axe on her trail again. He would follow her all the way to the Stone Place, but that was a magic place at a magic time. The division between spirits and ghosts, totems and men, it was frail there. The priests of many tribes met and held back their hatreds. A rash act in that company could curse the culprit for life or mark them out for the greater spirits to torment.
In her heart she did not feel that such considerations would dissuade Broken Axe any more than the winter had.
22
Maniye had assumed that Lone Mountain would travel with them, to ensure that Loud Thunder did not go astray. Apparently either Thunder’s word was unquestionable or the Cave Dwellers were simply not people who lied to one another. As soon as Thunder had agreed to travel, Lone Mountain was already departing. He strode to the shadow of the trees, then cast a single look behind him before Stepping into his great-muscled bear form and loping off.
Loud Thunder looked unhappy. ‘Mother calls for me. She should call for Lone Mountain. He is the better man. He is the one who stayed to serve his kin, not me. But it is my name on her lips, and I must go. You should go also.’
‘Where?’ Maniye demanded.
Thunder shrugged massively, the vague gesture of one hand describing the great expanse of the world.
‘I . . .’ Now that she must leave, she found herself far more attached to this little house, this ice-locked glade, than she would ever have thought.
‘Will you come to the Horse with me?’ she asked Hesprec uncertainly.
Hesprec looked solemn. ‘I had a purpose that drew me to the north.’
‘You were looking for wisdom. I thought you’d worked out there wasn’t any.’
Loud Thunder snorted at that, and she glared him into silence.
‘These Stones, this gathering . . .’ Hesprec explained. ‘This was the lure that drew me here so long ago. I had not imagined the path would be so long, to get me there. Or so cold.’ He grimaced, showing his scarred gums. ‘But I would go with Loud Thunder. If the Serpent preserves me from this cold, and from these people, then I shall gather what wisdom I find and carry it home.’
She nodded. ‘Then I come with you: to the Stone Place and then to the south. After all, were you going to walk? Or did you think Loud Thunder would carry you in his pocket or about his neck, old Snake?’
***
‘So, man-with-a-child’s-name,’ Shyri said, letting her long stride take her close to Venater, ‘why have you not cut his throat yet?’
The old pirate cocked an eyebrow at her then glanced ahead at Asmander, who was walking with their Coyote guides.
‘It must be simple living on the Plains,’ was his only reply.
Around them, the Crown of the World rose and fell, as though once the land had rolled like the waves of the sea, and then the gods had put out their hands and frozen it in place.
‘In the Plains, we know that life will set enough burdens on us, without our inventing more of our own,’ the Hyena girl pointed ou
t.
Venater’s expression made it clear that ignoring her was a tempting option, but then he rolled his shoulders irritably. ‘You mock me for my name, so you know how it is between us.’
‘And what would you do with your name anyway?’ she answered. ‘If he should hurl it at you, like a bone thrown to a dog, do you even know what you would do?’
‘I would kill him.’ The words came out with a certainty and suddenness that seemed to surprise even Venater. Then, the qualification: ‘I would try.’
Shyri was silent for a handful more steps, and a fresh flurry of fine snow blew past them, drifting onto white ground that already bore scars of bare rock and the first shoots of green.
‘You do not give him much incentive to free you,’ she noted diplomatically.
‘These things are known,’ the pirate grunted, that oft-used saying of the south. ‘But no doubt you’re glad of it.’
‘Why is it mine to be glad of?’
‘You’re sweet on him, aren’t you?’
She gave a quick laugh at that, although he had a nasty, knowing expression on his face – and it was a face made for just such a look.
‘Steer clear of him,’ Venater cautioned, with his brown teeth grinning back at her. ‘You’re not what he’s looking for in this land. And, even if you were, he’ll be promised to some Crocodile girl by his father, just like his father pulls all his strings.’
‘I have no interest either in him or his father.’
‘Well, then, why haven’t you killed him? Feeling the loin-pain for him’s the only thing I can think of that balances out how annoying he is,’ Venater said disgustedly.
Her laughter at that sally was more natural, less forced.
‘And what are you looking for, in this land?’ She made herself grin at him, just to see if he would bite.
‘Girl, I had your mother.’
‘The Malikah’s not my mother – not in that way.’
‘Enough so for me. I’ve no wish to go sticking myself in the Hyena’s Shadow any more than that.’
‘Is this honestly the best topic of conversation the two of you could come up with?’ Asmander called out from ahead. Shyri started, missing her footing, and would have skidded off down towards the abode of the local river god had not Venater caught her arm in a tight grip.
‘Oh, and he has really good ears, the malingering bastard,’ the pirate added with some satisfaction, before setting her back on her feet.
Meanwhile, Asmander himself just shook his head and then took a handful of quick strides, to catch up with the two Coyotes.
‘What was that your friend was saying?’ Two Heads asked him.
‘Just that he wishes to kill me.’
‘That’s normal, where you come from?’ Evidently nothing would surprise the Coyote about the barbarous practices of other lands.
‘It’s normal for him.’ He grinned abruptly. ‘Do you have no such friends where you come from?’
‘None we stay near to.’ Two Heads rolled his eyes. ‘There is a lot of wide open world, and no reason to stay in any part of it that displeases you, let alone to fight another for it. If only all men realized this truth, then the world would be a good place to live.’
‘And nobody would ever spend two nights in one place.’
‘Also no bad thing.’ The Coyote shrugged. ‘Roots are for trees.’
‘You fill me full of envy.’
Two Heads glanced at him in surprise. ‘Yet here you are, more of a traveller than we have ever been.’
‘If you’re not where you would like to be,’ Quiet When Loud pointed out, ‘then just keep moving. There will be a better place.’
An oddly comforting philosophy. And yet in Asmander’s mind there existed something like a knot: a snarl of relationships and decisions that had brought him here. Travel as far as he might – to the highlands above the Crown of the World, to the jungles of the Pale Shadow People – he could not escape the tether that led him back to the Sun River Nation. Here was Tecuman: his friend, the man who would rule the Riverlands. Here was the sharp-edged snarl that was his father, the Patient One, a man leathered by the sun until nothing was left in him but desire and ambition. And here . . . here, like a hot coal in his head, was Venater’s name.
He had thought often of speaking it aloud and returning it to its owner. He had imagined that moment as a scene from legend, when the hero utters the names of the great spirits and unleashes them. He had pictured something invisible but unmistakable returning to the pirate’s long-jawed face, to his stony eyes.
And then they would fight, as they had fought before, only this time Venater – Venat – would not be hungover or caught unawares.
The thought made Asmander shiver. Always the same astonishment: How did I ever beat him?
And now, without his name, that fire was lessened within him. Not Venat, but merely Venat’s son, as Asmander was Asman’s. If he died as Venater he would go to the Dragon as a boy – no deeds, no glory, no bloody-handed history – and only Asmander could give him back the name he had surrendered. How the hate must be stoppered up within him like a beast penned. Asmander found himself staring at the lock of its cage, over and over, and knowing he held the only key.
‘I’ve never really moved at all,’ he said, voicing the trailing end of his own thoughts, but the two Coyote seemed to understand him. I’m like the river. I seem to be driven ever onwards, and yet here I am always.
***
Loud Thunder travelled with his sled, Matt and Yoff pulling it swiftly over ground that was still deep with packed snow. He travelled on his human feet, and Maniye loped alongside him, outpacing him and coming back for him, with Hesprec sleeping or plotting inside her pack.
The bear would have moved faster, she reckoned, and, when they camped on the first night, she asked Loud Thunder if he stayed human because of the dogs.
His face took on one of those slightly embarrassed expressions of his, a big man making a small admission. ‘The bear, it gets distracted: smells, hunger . . . and it doesn’t care about time. It’s been on lean pickings all winter, or it’s slept. It needs more to eat than a man. If I Stepped, I’d be foraging all the time. I’d forget.’
She stared into his face, understanding that, living alone, he must hear the call of his bear soul asking him to give up his hands and his language and walk off into the wilds forever. It was the fate of the old and the grieving. Before now she had not thought of it as the fate of the lonely.
She guessed that there were not so many Cave Dwellers compared to the people of the Wolf or the Deer or the Boar, and perhaps that was one reason why. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have such a powerful totem as the Bear, and to be able to take on a body of casually superhuman strength and endurance. The temptation never to return to human form must grow strong in these harsh places.
Most nights, Loud Thunder fell asleep as soon as the camp was laid, trusting to the fire to keep away inquisitive beasts. Maniye and Hesprec were both more concerned about inquisitive people – and of course Broken Axe would be trailing them, invisible and silent and yet always present in her mind. The equinox, at the Stone Place, would mark the end of his promise, the return of his hunt. She could only hope that he would not try to seize her in front of all the priests of the Crown of the World. It might seem an act to invite bad fortune, but Broken Axe was a man who would dare anything.
They shared the watches, the two of them. Her keen wolf nose alternated with whatever alien senses a coiled serpent could muster; that was all they had against the hostile world. When it was her turn to sleep, she tucked herself against Loud Thunder’s slumbering bulk for warmth. When it was Hesprec’s, he slid his sinuous form into her pack and curled up there.
Most nights, when she was left the only one awake, she tried to think of what best to do. Living in Loud Thunder’s shadow, she had not needed a plan, and each day had drawn in the next without any concern save to survive the winter. Now she was forced to confront the f
act, once again, that she had no thought for the future save to move on into it and never retrace her steps. She was aware that everything she did only bought her a little more sunlight. That night must close on her was inevitable: whether it was captivity or death at the hands of her own people, or the inexorable rift between her souls.
But, while I can run, I’ll run.
***
Elsewhere, following his own path, Water Gathers and a band of his hunters travelled on wolf feet towards the Stone Place.
He had already lost valuable time because he had bid his retinue lie in wait for Akrit Stone River. It was plain that the shedding of one man’s blood now might spare the lives of many others later, if the Wolf should find itself tearing at its own.
But Stone River was a canny hunter, a man who had grown old and cunning during times of war and peace. He had found another route, even here in the heart of Many Mouths territory, so that Water Gathers had waited in vain.
The southerners and their guides had passed by, and he had been on the point of ordering an attack on them, remembering the death of Sure As Flint and the humiliation that it had brought with it.
Recollection of that yellow-eyed monster which the black man had turned into had stayed his hand. Who knew what losses such a creature might inflict; who knew what the black man’s friends could do? He had been burned before by not knowing. Now he found that something else held him back. He would not acknowledge it as fear, so perhaps it was wisdom.
Every tribe of the Wolf, indeed every tribe of the Crown of the World, would have eyes present at the Stone Place. Water Gathers would speak to them all there, one by one, in the name of his departed and respected father. He would court the Swift Backs and the Moon Eaters, and he would tell stories of Stone River’s weakness. What was a man without sons, after all? Be he never so great a warrior or a hunter, how could he call himself a man when his seed was weak?
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 27
