‘Before this happened, I had spoken with other priests from other tribes. There have been many omens in this last year. It seems a testing will come to the people and to the land.’
‘Are we to be that testing? Is it the Tiger war?’
Kalameshli took a deep breath. ‘I think that there are only two ways to meet a test: swift feet, strong jaws.’
‘Let the Coyote run.’
The priest smiled slightly. ‘Before this day, you wanted to become High Chief because it was a role fit for you, and because you are a man who saw it within his reach.’ He held up a hand to forestall Akrit’s interjection. ‘Before this day, you wanted to bring Tiger into the Wolf’s Shadow, because you have never stopped hating the Shadow Eaters.’
‘And now?’
‘And now you must accomplish these things, or fall,’ Kalameshli told him flatly. ‘If you are the man who can do what he boasts, then you shall bear the future aloft. You shall wrestle it and cast it down. And if you fail at these things, if you are no more than just Akrit Stone River of the Winter Runners, then the spirits that marked you here will destroy you.’
‘Do not fear for me.’ But Akrit could not keep his voice entirely steady. Hearing his own uncertainty, he snarled. ‘Fear instead for whoever took my daughter. Tell me you have news of her.’
‘The Coyote saw her go,’ Kalameshli said. ‘She left with the Shadow Eaters. They will make for their strongholds in the highlands, and hide her there.’
‘But?’
‘Broken Axe has gone after her. He will track her, wherever she goes. He will steal her back or else he will tell you where she is, so that you can start your war.’
Akrit felt the world had become a torrent of water, carrying him along, carrying them all. ‘And the other tribes?’
‘Like the Wolf, they watch,’ Kalameshli confirmed.
‘But they must remember the war with the Tiger. Every tribe will have its warriors who fought in it.’ Akrit stood up suddenly. ‘You’re right. This is the time to act, to seize the moment in our teeth and see if we can tear it free. Fail at this, fail at it all: that is what you’re telling me.’
The priest nodded, gaze fixed on him.
‘Tell them to gather their warriors. Tell them the Shadow Eaters have stolen my daughter. Tell them this is an insult to the Wolf, a sign that they mean to come down from the high places and rule over us again. Tell the people of the Wolf to ready themselves for a summer war.’
The Tiger priestess was called Aritchaka, and this was how her fellows addressed her. Later, Maniye learned that she had earned herself a proper name, what a Wolf would call a hunter’s name, but amongst the priests of the Tiger such names were kept secret and used only within their own clandestine rites. She travelled with two male servants, Red Jaw and Club Head. They spoke seldom and stayed very close to her. Red Jaw had a sheath of javelins and a spear-thrower, and Club Head bore a knotted length of polished wood studded with bone and teeth. They wore sleeveless armour of square leather panels stitched together, which fell to their knees, while their lower legs were wrapped in cloth. There were livid marks striping their forearms. Burns, Maniye realized.
Aritchaka herself was clad in a cuirass of bronze scales, and she had donned a helm of the same metal with a red feather cresting it. At her belt was a curved knife and a short-hafted axe with a spike jutting backwards from the head. Altogether, the three of them cut as alien a trio as any Maniye had ever seen. She reckoned that even Hesprec would seem familiar and safe when compared to them.
Maniye had admitted only to the name ‘Many Tracks’.
They travelled hard for the first day, pushing north and east, taking higher ground whenever it was offered. When necessary, they Stepped in order to climb, one or other of the men clawing his way up with a cord about his shoulder, then hauling the boats up after them. Maniye Stepped with them, without hesitation. Amongst other tigers, her tiger soul was like a comfortable garment. The idea of carrying a wolf body on her bones grew swiftly strange and unlikely to her.
They took the water road whenever it was offered, their progress following a string of lakes like stones on a necklace. Each time they did so, Maniye knew, they would be laying their scent to rest, forcing any keen-nosed pursuers to dither about the shore in order to hunt them down.
Still, there was one moment that she looked back, as they scaled a jagged-edged scarp of rock, and she spotted him: a pale wolf with dark shoulders, effortlessly keeping pace. She did not see him again, but after that she knew that Broken Axe would be there marking their trail.
She did not say anything to Aritchaka, for she was terrified that they would turn on her and drive her away if they thought she was a liability.
They pushed on hard like this for two days, putting much distance between them and any pursuers, before Aritchaka seemed to relax a little. On the night of the second day they lit a fire, rather than the four of them just Stepping to their feline shapes and huddling close together for warmth. Club Head built what looked like an altar over the little patch of flames, with a flat stone crowning it, laid out some fish on it and let them cook.
Aritchaka now regarded her impassively, loosening the sash at her waist and beckoning Red Jaw over to lift off her cuirass. ‘Tiger girl,’ she began, ‘Wolf girl. What does the chief of the Winter Runners want with you, that he would tear down the gods to get to you?’
Maniye felt her chest clench. She had expected questions, of course, but not that they would be so well informed. A hundred lies squirmed in her mind: she had been a sacrifice; she had been caught spying or stealing; she was promised to the Horse Society and must return to them . . . But who could say how much this priestess already knew?
She took a deep breath, aware that she had already been silent for too long, and that her silence was the only sound aside from the crackling of the flames and the sizzling of the fish. All three of them were studying her intently, their eyes glittering in the firelight.
Without speaking, without acting, they stripped her of layer after layer of lies-that-might-have-been until she was left only with telling the truth. Or the truth as she knew it, which was all the truth she had.
‘I am Stone River’s daughter,’ she informed them, seeing Aritchaka’s eyes go wide in shock. The two men shifted posture slightly – first as if to ward against a threat, but in the next moment ready to seize her, her role now transformed from refugee to enemy. And of course the Wolf told many stories about what the Shadow Eaters did with those they captured during their raids.
‘He said that he got me on she who was once the Tiger Queen,’ she forced herself to say.
Red Jaw hissed, baring his teeth, and Aritchaka cuffed him across the face – a movement so swift and without thought that it seemed mere force of habit. Then her hand lashed out and had Maniye by the throat – no, by the chin, turning her face slowly in the firelight, staring, staring . . .
Then the grip slackened, leaving Maniye gasping out, and still pinned by that green gaze.
‘There is not much of her in your face. You look like a Wolf.’ And yet Aritchaka was thoughtful, clearly troubled.
‘Did you know her?’ Maniye pressed.
‘Know her?’ The priestess weighed the words in her mouth before voicing them. ‘She who rules the Fire Shadow People is also closest to the Tiger spirit. Whose will else should I obey?’
It took Maniye surprisingly long before she could say it. ‘Will you tell me about her?’
‘No,’ came the swift answer. ‘Or not now. There will come a time for many things.’
The next morning they had visitors. A handful more Tigers arrived, and with them came a stout, copper-skinned woman dressed in a long sheepskin coat of the Horse style. They appeared with a pair of stocky horses, shorter and shaggier than the beasts that Maniye was used to.
‘There has been a change of plans,’ Aritchaka explained to them. ‘We have a third to come with us – the girl.’
The Horse woman nodded, unp
erturbed. ‘Let her ride behind me. All she needs to do is hold on.’
The priestess took Maniye’s shoulder, pulling her close. ‘I had planned to withdraw to our lands carrying warnings of the Wolf. Now it seems I shall bring them something more, no?’ She stared into the girl’s eyes. ‘I see here no second thoughts or regrets. Do I see right?’
Maniye swallowed and nodded. There was a great deal in her mind about what she was leaving behind, but so few scraps of it were good and so much was baggage she was glad to shed.
She had never known her mother, for it had been right after her birth that Stone River had given the Tiger woman over to Broken Axe to dispose of. In all her years, the people of the Tiger had seemed nothing but a night terror, an enemy, the victims in tales of heroism in battle, a name to curse by, a byword for cruelties and dishonours since avenged. That they must exist, as a real people with a real history, she could surmise, but they had never seemed as such to her. Not until she saw them at the Stone Place.
Now here she was, leaving the Shadow of the Wolf, crossing its penumbra into that other Shadow that her mother had once cast.
The other Tigers would disperse by their own paths, leaving plenty of trails for any Wolf hunters to follow. They would go over rugged, rough country, by water and by rock, and yet still they might be overtaken by the swift feet of the Winter Runners. Maniye and Aritchaka, in contrast, would take a wider route along paths that the emissaries of the Horse Society had beaten out of animal trails, winding back and forth up the face of the highlands, through the dense forests to where the snow still lingered, and the Tiger held court.
The journey for her was a numbing one: holding tightly to the thick coat of the Horse woman as the two beasts picked their way up tracks that were nearly invisible, passing like ghosts through a landscape that grew ever more still and frozen the higher they climbed. The horses were astonishingly sure-footed, and the stocky woman whispered to them and chided them whenever they baulked, promising them rest and good feed and the respect of the Horse Society if they did their duty. She went in front, Maniye clinging gamely on, and behind came Aritchaka, riding with the ease of long practice, her boat slung from her saddle like a shield.
When the night drew in, there was always somewhere close that the Horse woman already knew: a cave, a secluded hollow, a skeletal frame of wood that she pulled hides over to trap their body heat. She never spoke to Maniye – probably sensing the uncertain position the girl currently held – nor gave her name.
They drew ever further from any lands that Maniye knew, travelling more east than northwards until the hills had become forested foothills, and the sun rose over a horizon toothed with mountains. They were south of the Bear lands, she guessed, but still climbing to where winter yet lingered, scowling down at the tides of spring that had driven it from the lowlands. Considering how matters stood between the Tiger and the Wolf, the image seemed appropriate.
Surely by now they had left any Wolf pursuit behind, and yet Maniye kept her eyes on the gloom between the trees, expecting at any moment to spot a pale wolf with a dark patch across his shoulders. In doing so, she began to notice other things.
The people of the Wolf built with earth and with wood, and while the Cave Dwellers lived beneath stone ceilings, such roofs were found and not made. Aside from monuments and monoliths, Maniye had never thought that anything substantial could be raised out of such uncooperative stuff. She had not known how her mother’s people had made stone their slave.
There was not much to see at first, just traces of a people vanished from these lands. Sometimes there would be a pile of rocks that seemed oddly squared-off and regular. Once, butting onto the trail, she saw a big block, rounded a little by the weather but with its uppermost side still bearing grime-highlighted carving.
Then, one night, they stopped in what had been a tower before it became a ruin. The forest all about was scattered with dismembered fragments of stone but the lower level of the structure was still mostly intact – a jagged stump like a broken tooth. It was squat and square, with each corner buttressed out with fantastical carving. They had reached it after dusk, so Maniye had only the sense of it being a pale bulk between the trees, the stone seeming faintly luminous in the moonlight, despite the encroaching fingers of moss and lichen.
The Horse woman did her best to stretch some blankets over the uneven stones at the top, leaving them a cramped, dark space beneath, the ground under them lumpy and uneven from the detritus of the tower’s collapse. Maniye gathered in all the driest wood she could find – for the rain had not quite been their constant companion, though a frequent guest. Still, she worked hard at it, because only for the last two nights had she been trusted to return if she wandered.
Once a fire was lit, Maniye had a chance to view their surroundings more clearly. The nascent flames threw a leaping, ruddy light across the truncated walls all around them, and everywhere seemed carved into images that led the eye one to another. She felt that, wherever she looked, she was immediately plunged into the midst of an unfamiliar story told using alien conventions. This carving had been intricate once, whole panels of the walls given over to abstract representations of forests where the spaces between each tree were deeper trees, and where the forms of men and women and beasts were constantly hinted at. If she let her eyes be led, she could see battles there, and hunting and the gathering of crops. She could discern worship and bloody sacrifice, the raising of great halls, the veneration of heroes and gods. And then she would become too absorbed and refocus her eyes, and not know what was truly there, or what had just been drawn out of her head.
‘What is this place?’ she asked at last.
Aritchaka gave a satisfied grunt, plainly waiting for the question. ‘An outpost of . . .’ a moment’s pause, ‘our people. Your father’s warriors destroyed it, burning its beams so that the stones fell.’ Her face was fierce and angry in the firelight. ‘There are many such places as this, relics of the golden days, the Days of Plenty.’
She meant when the Tiger had ruled, before her father and the other chiefs of the Wolf had broken them – in the days of Stone River’s youth and the years before she was born.
Interpreting her expression, the priestess said, ‘You yourself will have heard only the lies of the Wolf about those days. When we are at the Shining Halls, you will instead hear many truths.’ After a thought, she added, ‘And you will tell us many truths.’
The Shining Halls had been mentioned before: their destination was the stronghold of the Tiger that the Wolf’s rampage had never approached.
‘Will you go to war against my father’s people?’ Maniye asked in a whisper.
‘Would you like that?’ Aritchaka turned the question back on her.
Maniye regarded her across the fire for a long moment, and then nodded.
27
Asmander was not really surprised by the company they found at the campfire. Since leaving the Riverlands, his journey had become less and less the steps of a man in the physical world, more the passage of a figure from myth. He had hunted a vanished tribe on the Plains, and stood amongst the ruins of the Old Stone Kingdom. He had bared his soul to the gods of the north. He had borne mute witness as the Wolf tore through the heart of the Crown of the World and stood, howling, on its corpse.
Leaving the Stone Place, after that, had been interesting.
And in truth, he would not have known that any of it was unusual, save for the reactions of the locals.
For a variety of complex reasons they had taken the east road, once they had extricated themselves from the Stones and the marsh and its suddenly agitated denizens. The causeway had become a chaos of jostling and sudden violence, but water was no hindrance to a son of the Tsotec. He and Venater had taken turns in searching out a pathway of firm land for the other and Shyri to follow, both of them just as at ease in the marsh as they were on dry land, but neither of them able to bear the chill for a long stretch. Asmander wondered, later, whether that careful journey
might not have gone differently had he not already squared himself with the local gods and totems. The spirit of a marsh was a poor thing to be on the wrong side of, if one were crossing it.
On the marsh’s edge they had found a disintegrating little band of priests and traders and acolytes all come together to find their kinsmen and then depart. There they met the Coyote woman, Quiet When Loud, looking for her mate.
There were many there who were desperate, many who were grieving. Asmander was not truly sure who else the Wolves had killed – save that one of their own that everyone knew about – but every missing face seemed to provide cause to fear the worst. Likely there were another half-dozen such temporary camps about the edges of the marsh, each full of people looking for absent others.
Quiet When Loud was not panicking, but her eyes certainly lit up when she spotted the three southerners. Because that was a notably better reaction than they got from most of the locals, Asmander gladly wound his way to her.
‘Where are you heading?’ she asked them, and seemed satisfied with the answer. ‘I will lead you east. My fool mate has set off already on some errand.’
‘And you’d rather not travel on your own,’ Venater finished for her, with a leer. ‘You’re so sure we’re safer?’
Quiet When Loud gave him a simple frown that quite silenced him – it was a remarkable trick that Asmander would have paid gold to learn. ‘But you’re right,’ she said, ‘normally I would range to all the edges of the Crown of the World, either with Two Heads Talking or without. But right now . . .’ Her look was troubled. ‘I’ve not known anything like what happened back at the Stones. And everyone is talking of great change – all these priests gabbling about it. Not good change, either, to hear them. An escort would be welcome.’
Two Heads Talking had cut some signs, she revealed: the Coyote had a secret language of marks that they left for one another, the collective memory of a travelling people. Asmander did not say so, but he reckoned this was the closest to actual writing the north possessed.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 32
