***
Akrit Stone River was leading his pack through the dense forest, following a curving path towards the Stone Place. He had seen the look in Water Gathers’ eyes, and he had weighed the odds. Seven Skins’ son could bring more warriors than he himself had, certainly, but could he bring the strength of will? The chance of turning that suspected ambush back on itself was tempting, just to rid the world of his strongest rival.
But, in the end, he set his path away from the easy trails leading from the Many Mouths village. He told himself he did not like the odds. He told himself that if Water Gathers escaped, then there would be open war between their tribes and that would profit nobody except the Tiger.
Akrit’s people travelled armed and armoured – the weight of iron and bronze did not slow down the wolf in them once they had shed their human shapes. They took the nights without fires, huddled together for warmth. They brought down what game they came across, and stayed as briefly as they could to gorge on it before setting forth again. Young deer, they took: bucks too reckless to know fear, too slow to escape. And some of the deer they took were men: errant herders and foragers caught unawares between the trees. All were as one to the Wolf.
They travelled by night and by day, breaking to sleep at irregular intervals, two or three days apart, making up in speed what they lost by their tortuous route. Always one or two were ranging further from the pack, pushing themselves ahead or stringing outwards to the sides, keeping a sharp eye out for the Many Mouths.
It was not Water Gathers’ people who eventually found them. Towards the end of their journey, after many days travelling, a familiar figure was abruptly pacing Akrit, loping easily alongside him as though he had never left.
Akrit fetched to a halt, his people forming an uncertain scattering behind him. For a moment he looked into the pale eyes of the wolf before him and fully expected a challenge. What has changed since I was last home?
But then the newcomer Stepped, hands open to signify peace, and Akrit followed suit.
‘Broken Axe,’ he named the man. ‘How goes your hunt?’
23
Where three rivers and the run-off from a score of hillsides met, the land was boggy all throughout the year, and the first melt of spring transformed it into a great swamp so vast and hungry it could have swallowed the world. No tribes lived here, though the swamp was rich and fecund enough that many came to gather and fish. And sometimes they died there, when the shifting ground ebbed suddenly from beneath their feet. It was said that the quicksands did not even let animal souls escape. True or not, enough had died there in their human shapes, smothering in the mud, that the swamp was crowded with ghosts. Priests travelled there to draw secrets from that buried mother-lode of the dead. On some nights even the least sensitive could see the lost souls drifting over the treacherous ground, glowing with pale fire.
In the heart of the swamp there was a great island: no natural thing, it had been raised by the hands of men in an earlier age, earth set upon earth until they had conquered even the hunger of the swamp. Those ancients had raised a causeway towards it, a narrow processional path that was the only fixed and safe road through the quagmire. They had fetched the stones, the monoliths of bluish rock hewn from the mountains of the north. They had hauled them over the miles of rugged, broken ground, and they had floated them across the marsh, and then had set them upright on the island.
Knowledge of whose hands had wrought all of this was lost. Every tribe claimed the marvel for their own forebears. Looking down the causeway’s length to that island, Maniye felt an abrupt certainty that it had been not one tribe but many. Somehow there had been a time, forgotten over the generations, when the peoples of the Crown of the World had come together united. And when they had stood together in one place, not even the earth nor the seasons nor the great spirits had been able to curtail their ambitions. They had remade the world.
That thought came to her almost with the force of a physical thing, stopping her in her tracks so that Hesprec and Loud Thunder walked on a little and then turned, each wearing his own frown. For a moment she felt that she had come upon an absolute certainty, although she could not have mustered a single argument to defend it. She felt that some invisible ghost of the marsh had whispered a secret truth to her.
She also had no intention of exposing herself to the mockery of either of the men, and so she skipped along to catch them up, and would not respond to their questions.
There were others travelling to the Stone Place, but not so many. This was not a gathering for all the tribes, just priests and their retinues. She could see tents set on the island already, in separate little huddles. There would be plenty of old rivalries there around the ring of the stones. Everyone would be very careful not to draw down the ire of the spirits, not to foul the coming year for themselves and their people. But, at the same time, everyone would keep one hand close to a knife hilt while the priests indulged in their contests of magic, riddles and lore.
If the other two had shown the faintest reluctance, then she would have allowed herself second thoughts. Loud Thunder just kept shambling along as though he had not noticed where they were, though. His dogs trotted at his heels, with the empty sled dragging behind them.
And Hesprec . . . a change had come over the old Serpent ever since they had reached the edge of the marsh. She wondered what he saw now with his priestly eyes. For him, did the waters hold the empty faces of the drowned dead? Did the air glow palely with the power of this place? His spine was straighter than it had been, his head held high. A look had come to his face that she did not like: hard and cruel and old, in a way he had not looked old before. Old like stories. Old like the Stone Place itself.
Then he caught her looking at him, and something in her expression made him smile and shrug, just the same old vagrant she had fled across the Crown of the World with. But that other look returned once he thought she was not looking.
‘What will you do?’ The sound of her own voice seemed an intrusion, and she felt the still waters soak it up and resent it. She needed to break out of her own thoughts though. She had never counted herself as someone sensitive to the invisible world before, but their approach to the Stone Place was weighing on her in a strange way.
‘I must speak to my Mother,’ Thunder muttered sullenly. ‘But perhaps there is somewhere I can take you, before then?’
There was pitiful hope there, as he seized on any excuse to put off his own duty, but she could think of no answer. She had hoped that she might just tag along with him. Apparently that was not an option.
‘There are people Hesprec must see,’ she announced proudly, trying to show off at least a little reflected glory. Then she caught the Serpent’s expression and flinched from it. ‘What?’
‘Little one,’ he told her carefully, ‘I seek the secret wisdom of the priests, if they will part with it. To my ears alone they may speak.’
A shock of betrayal went through her. ‘Then what am I supposed to do?’
‘I would ask that you wait for me.’ He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I am sorry, but you are no priest. These matters are deep and terrible. Happier for you that you do not know them.’
‘So it’s better for me to know that something “deep and terrible” is going on, but not what it is?’ Maniye demanded.
Loud Thunder chuckled. ‘I think she is more than ready for your secrets, old man.’
Hesprec hissed in exasperation. ‘If I go as a priest from the River, and alone, then perhaps they might speak to me – if they do not kill me. If there is any respect left in all of this cold land. If I go with a fugitive Wolf girl, then they will see me as part of their feuds and rivalries and little wars, and they will judge me, and close their minds against me, and I shall learn nothing. And they will have one more reason to do harm to me. I have travelled—’
‘For a thousand years over a hundred mountains and twenty deserts and under the earth, and all the rest of the nonsense,’ agreed Thunder. ‘
Girl, when I go to my Mother, I will find you a hearth amongst her people. They will feed you and shelter you, while I do what I must do there.’
Maniye took a few quick steps until she was ahead of him and could look up into his face. ‘Why?’
He smiled a little – which was as much as he ever really smiled. ‘Why are you not dead in the snow, Many Tracks?’
The words, and his using Broken Axe’s name for her, made her skitter backwards, until her heels were at the causeway’s very edge. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you not back with your kin, as their prisoner? Why did I not cast you into winter’s teeth after you outstayed your welcome?’ Still he was smiling, but for a moment she could not read him, or square his words with that expression. Then he made an expansive gesture, taking in himself, and her, and invisible connections to the rest of the world. ‘Look at you: how you will not give up, you will not go away. Everything in the world you take between your teeth and shake it, to see what use to you it will be. You are a fierce little hunter, Maniye Many Tracks. You remind me of why I went south when I was young.’
She saw Wolf tents on the island, several groupings of them. The sight had her creeping in Loud Thunder’s shadow, almost under his feet. Of course there would be Wolves here: the Moon Eaters lived close, and she saw banners that she thought were Swift Backs, too. And the Winter Runners, of course. Her home was south of here, but not so very far. Most likely Kalameshli himself would be present.
Would he try to seize her, even here, under the stern gaze of the invisible world? If he could catch her alone, she guessed he might, but not as long as she stayed in company. Likewise Broken Axe, who must surely either be here or be close behind her. They would have to wait until the gathering was over.
She thought this, and then she examined her own thinking. Kalameshli Takes Iron was a cruel man, the tormentor of her childhood, the man who drove her before him with a switch. He would not be here alone: a handful of hunters, at least, would have come as his pack. Would he not just take what he wanted, as the Winter Runners so often did?
And yet she did not quite believe it. It was the aura of the Stone Place; the air was thick with it. She could feel the tenuous balance of this place, and she knew nobody would wish to disturb it, to have it lash back across them like a bowstring. I am more of a priest than you know, old man, she thought, remembering Hesprec’s dismissive words.
There were other little camps too. One was just a single ungainly tent composed of overlapping hides stitched over a round frame that stood almost twice Maniye’s height. There were a couple of hearths set out in the open nearby, and some mounds of fur that Maniye assumed were just piles of hides. Then one of them moved, and she realized that she was looking at the Cave Dwellers.
There were no more than half a dozen there, and all of those she saw were men. There were none quite as big as Loud Thunder nor as tall as Lone Mountain, but every one of them was huge, nonetheless.
‘Old man,’ Loud Thunder said, as they drew near, ‘you had best come meet my Mother. If you are looking for wisdom, then she is more wise than any other in the Crown of the World. If I ask it, she will speak with you – and probably not kill you.’
‘How kind,’ Hesprec replied faintly.
They arrived among the Cave Dwellers in a flurry of dogs. As Matt and Yoff drew close, there were a dozen of them already on their feet and barking uproariously. Thunder’s dogs were no better, the pair straining at the sled’s traces until he let them run free. Maniye feared the animals would tear each other apart, but it was simply that she had never lived with dogs before. The yapping chaos was resolved as simple greetings, Matt and Yoff renewing their acquaintance with their relatives. The Bear tribe themselves had a rather more reserved greeting for their wayward son. One by one, the big men stood up, faces closed and sullen, staring as Loud Thunder drew near. Then, with shocking suddenness, they were all bears, standing tall on their hind legs. Maniye remembered then how he and Lone Mountain had fought when they met, and she stopped walking and started backing away. Hesprec was right beside her.
Loud Thunder Stepped as well, but did not slow his pace, and then all of the Cave Dwellers were bellowing at him, some dropping down on all fours, some standing as tall as they could. They seemed to be working themselves up for a fight, and Maniye could not imagine how Thunder imagined he might win against so many. He just ambled on, though, and they roared and shook their jaws at him, and yet none of them quite stood directly in his way. Then one got too close, and Thunder cuffed the smaller bear across the muzzle, sending it loping off sideways. The defiance of the others petered out slowly, until Loud Thunder reached the middle of them and sat down, blithely unconcerned, scratching at his belly. One by one, the Cave Dwellers gave up their show of protest, returning to their hulking human shapes and grudgingly giving the newcomer room. Maniye had the impression that the natural Cave Dweller demeanour was dour to the point of sulking, a people slow to demonstrate their emotions and slow to act. Looking at them now, the gathering together of such a weight of muscle and dense bone, she was glad of it.
‘This girl has my protection,’ Loud Thunder declared, directing a broad hand at her. ‘The old Snake, too. My hearth is their hearth. They are my guests.’
That went down as poorly as she had anticipated but, now that he had arrived and established his place amongst them, his word obviously carried sufficient weight. When she moved to sit by the fire, they regarded her with dull curiosity, but made room.
‘Now you wait,’ Thunder advised the pair of them. ‘Now we all wait. Mother will send for me, and she and I will have our talk, at last. She will tell me how the world is going to be, and what it wants with me.’
‘Serpent guide you,’ Hesprec said softly.
‘Old man, this is the Mother of Bears. She could break your Serpent in one hand. Only thank your god that he drew out your years long enough to see the Stone Place and its business.’
The Snake priest lowered himself down beside Maniye and closed his eyes. She wondered if he was preparing himself for his own promised meeting, whenever that might happen, and tried to imagine how formidable this woman must be. Certainly all the Bear tribe were keeping a respectful distance from that single tent.
‘Will you tell her your stories of Serpent?’ she asked Hesprec.
The old priest shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Who can say?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Stories of Serpent?’
‘Tell me what you’ve come here to find. Tell me what you think she knows. Make me understand.’ Because the unseen was pressing on her eyes, and she felt it was trying to tell her something beyond her comprehension.
But Hesprec just hunched his shoulders and began coughing again, long enough to leave him weak and gasping.
Thereafter he was plainly too deeply lost within his own priestliness to have any more time for her, so she got up from the fire and padded over to where she felt the edge of the Cave Dweller camp must be. The sky was darkening now, and a little stubborn snow was feathering down to become one with the chill waters of the marsh. Little fires had sprung up everywhere around the island, save for the darkness between the stones themselves. A grand bonfire was set there, she had seen, but plainly it was for other purposes than keeping anyone warm.
She narrowed her eyes, examining the other supplicants arrived here for the equinox. There were broad, heavy-set Boar people, all layered hides and necklaces of teeth and tusks. She saw the long limbs of the Deer tribe, a familiar sight to her. Antlers graced the brows of their priests, and at the neighbouring fire a handful of them were stepping through the movements of a dance to the low patter of a drum.
A handful of Wolves passed nearby, and she forced herself not to shrink back. They were Moon Eaters, from their paint and clothes, and talking quietly amongst themselves. One of them barked out a brief laugh as they passed, but none spared her even a glance. Crossing from the other direction came a trio of Eyriemen, and there was a tense
moment when one or other needed to give way, and neither group would. Then some unspoken accord was reached, and both bands took an exaggerated step aside, and in the space now between them was the secret of this place, the same spirit that hung about the stones, strong and wise and unforgiving.
There were other camps, too, and in the growing dusk it was hard to make out who kept which hearth. One drew her eye, though, as if there was a presence at her elbow pointing it out. The figures there seemed to be warriors, armoured in bronze polished to a gleaming shine that threw back their firelight. Somehow she knew they were priests as well. She saw gold glinting at their wrists and, wherever the fire picked out their skins, it found them striped with painted shadows.
People of the Tiger. And a spark was lit in her then that would not go out.
‘How long will you wait?’ she asked Loud Thunder.
He shrugged morosely. ‘Always, with Mother, it is others who do the hurrying.’
‘Days?’
‘Most likely.’
She looked across the island, sounding out her own daring. This was the Stone Place. This was the still centre in the roiling turmoil that was the Crown of the World.
The voice of the invisible sounded strong within her. It told her to go explore, to step out from the Bear’s Shadow. The island seemed alive with it, with a host of sightless entities that wanted her to move amongst them so that they could see her better. She could almost feel their spectral fingers trailing across her skin.
At first she meant to wait until morning. The sun was falling to earth in a welter of spilled red, and soon there would be darkness, with the treacherous marsh on all sides.
And she could not sleep anyway. She lay there, with Hesprec’s bony body curled up on one side of her, and the vast snoring mountains of the Bears all around, and her mind was like a leaf bobbing in the waters, constantly dancing and dancing. It came to her then that she had no plan for the future. Hesprec’s south was a fool’s dream to hold on to, and one that the old man himself would surely never attain, let alone some vagrant Wolf girl he might choose to bring along with him. It came to her then – or at least she finally admitted it to herself – that Hesprec would die soon. He was hard and stubborn enough to fend off the winter, but the Crown of the World made all its guests work hard for the privilege of their keep.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 28
