The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked sourly.

  His eyes fixed her against the stone. Even now that she knew some inner part of him, she could not say just who or what he really was. He was the Wolf that walked alone. He did what he did for his own reasons.

  ‘I wanted to see how you were,’ he told her.

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ she demanded. ‘I thought you didn’t need to hunt me any more.’

  He shrugged, and then lowered himself until he was sitting close by, looking down. ‘You are a strange creature, Many Tracks. You are something that should not have come into the world.’ He said it matter-of-factly, without any sign that he intended to hurt her. ‘To bring a thing into existence is to be responsible for it. Whose hands are behind the fashioning of you, then? Stone River, for sure. Kalameshli Takes Iron also, for his was the thought behind it. And your mother, too, for all she had little choice. And me.’ Meeting her fierce glare, he shrugged again. ‘Or do you not think so? That I saved your mother, there is the mark of my wood-knife in carving you. That I never told you, there is another. That you grew up believing I had murdered her, a mark there. I did not bring your shape from the wood, but I have helped finish you.’

  ‘You’re responsible for me?’

  ‘In some small way.’

  ‘You don’t need to be,’ she told him harshly. ‘I – what? – absolve you. You are nothing to me. I am happy to be nothing to you.’ It wasn’t true, of course, and she felt they both knew it. He still frightened her, but she could not cut him away from her history. In that, he was right.

  He stretched, prior to changing the subject. ‘I have travelled from the Swift Backs,’ he said, naming the closest tribe of the Wolf.

  ‘You lie to them like you lied to the Winter Runners?’

  ‘I lie to nobody. I am the Wolf alone, and I serve the Wolf in my own way. If they believe that I must be a slave to their path, it is not my place to enlighten them,’ he said softly. ‘Of all my responsibilities, the chiefest to me is that I tread a path that bears neither guilt nor shame. Those are the things that the Wolf cannot endure.’

  ‘Did you . . . ?’ Asking a question of him was putting herself in his debt, drawing back into his shadow that she claimed to be free of, and yet . . . ‘What have you heard, of my f—of Stone River?’

  ‘That he is strong with the Many Mouths now, and that the eldest son of Seven Skins has given many gifts to Stone River. That the Moon Eaters and the Swift Backs have exchanged many messengers, and it seems that they are halfway into Stone River’s camp, each for fear that, if the other joined but not they, then standing alone they would fall prey to the rest. You know how Stone River got his name, Many Tracks?’

  ‘I . . . the landslide.’ She knew the story, of course: the most told tale amongst the Winter Runners, or at least of those recounted within earshot of her father. During the war with the Tiger, Akrit had come to a battle in a canyon. He had lured the Tiger to where he had seen a great slope of loose scree and, when they had chased him, he had brought it down on them, killing many of their best. He had been barely older then than she herself was now.

  ‘The words of the Swift Backs were only the first stones of the landslide,’ Broken Axe told her. ‘You know what I mean.’

  For a long time she stared at him, and then she finally found the question that had been stalking her mind since she first saw him in Joalpey’s throne room.

  ‘How did it happen? When did you become . . . not a Winter Runner? Was it in the war?’

  ‘I was just a boy during the war.’

  ‘You didn’t fight?’

  ‘I fought. Boys fight, but they don’t ask questions. They believe what they’re told. I fought well, scouted well. That’s what they used us for, mostly. Of all the youth of the Winter Runners, only I could walk alone into the trees and take back the night from the enemy. I was noticed because I killed Tiger warriors. When I left an axehead in the skull of one of their war chiefs, I was not much older than you. If you could have met me in those days, you’d not have found a more devoted member of Stone River’s warband.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Afterwards, after the Tiger’s power broke – when your mother had been captured, and they were forced to give tribute to Seven Skins and your father, there was a hunt. Stone River entrusted it to his best warriors – and I was one. Tell me, girl, how many tigers have you seen in your life?’

  ‘Tigers?’

  ‘Of wolves, there are many, but you will find few tigers in these parts or anywhere west of here. We were ordered to trap and kill every one of them we could find. We were told to strip the Tiger of its souls.’ He gave her a bleak look. ‘I cannot even say what might happen then, whether the Tiger souls must travel many miles to find a new body to be born into. And what if there were not enough? What happens to those souls then? And I thought about it all too long, what we were doing. And I knew that if I just did what I was told, and it was wrong, then being told to do it would not save me. If the Tiger himself should stand between my soul and a new life, and demand to know why I slaughtered so many of his kind, what could I say? That it was Akrit Stone River who gave the order? What would that matter to a god-spirit? More, what could I say to myself, when I asked that question of my reflection in the waters? So I became Broken Axe, the Wolf that walks alone. I thought Stone River would be angry.’

  ‘Why wasn’t he?’ Because to Maniye, it seemed her father had always been on the point of anger.

  ‘When I came back from the hunt, he saw how I had changed. He saw how the change made the others in the village feel about me. They knew me for a strong hunter and a warrior, so they feared it. And Stone River used that. He let me go my ways so long as I went his ways, too. He made me his huntsman, his messenger to other tribes, his fist to lift in threat against those who uttered words he did not wish spoken. And each time I weighed his orders, but mostly I did what he asked. Because it did not offend me, and because, for all a man wanders, having a home is still a good thing.’

  She was going to ask it then, but he was already going on. ‘And there was your mother, of course. Your father . . . you know what was done, what his plans were, for her, and for you. And after you came, he gave me that order: to take her into the forest, far enough that her ghost could not find its way back to the village of the Winter Runners. And to kill her, while she was in her human shape. He wanted her spirit to wander a long while before it could be reborn, if it ever was.’

  ‘And that was wrong.’

  A shrug, once more. ‘It seemed so to me. And Stone River never did understand me. He never saw that I was not his creature. He gave me the name of Broken Axe, but he never realized I was not his weapon.’

  Her next question took much longer to emerge. She did not want to think about it at all, but it could not be kept down. ‘And what my father did to her, was that not wrong?’ She forced herself to look at him, and caught the raw, hurt expression on his face. But he had no answer for her.

  A few days later, a commotion summoned her from her solitary practice after the other students had gone. Since watching the duel between the priestesses she had been taking every spare moment to work through as much of the fighting dance as she could remember, over and over until every muscle ached.

  The noise, to her surprise, was the Eyriemen. They hadn’t seemed the boisterous types when she had seen them stalking about the Shining Halls previously, but now they had something to celebrate. Or else, she considered, they were making sure that their hosts appreciated them.

  She followed the sounds of their rhythmic whooping and clapping until she found them outside the front gates of the temple. There were half a dozen of them, and they had a prisoner between them. She felt an odd twist inside her when she recognized the man as a Wolf.

  It was not anyone she knew, no Winter Runner at all. From his dress and markings she guessed he must be a Swift Back: a short, stocky man dressed in furs and quilted leather. The Eyrie-men had a r
ope collar about his neck, and his hands were bound behind him. They were pushing him about between them, sending him reeling from one to another, with kicks and blows whenever he stumbled or fell.

  She watched, and told herself that she was glad, because he was a Wolf and an enemy. That was what any child of the Tiger would feel in her bones.

  ‘A gift!’ The speaker was the woman the Eyriemen had with them, although, behind her, their leader held his hands up. ‘The Wolf are growing bold again! They come sniffing up to your very walls. Be glad you have the keen eyes of the Eyrie to keep you safe! A gift for your queen, here!’

  And then Joalpey was there, revealed in the opening temple doors with a dozen of her priesthood. At her arrival a little of the scorn went from the Eyriemen, though not all of it.

  ‘You give him to me, Yellow Claw?’ Joalpey asked. The Wolf had been forced to his knees.

  ‘He is yours,’ the Eyriewoman confirmed after a glance at her chief.

  ‘Great are the hunters of the Eyrie,’ Joalpey recited. ‘All will have their reward.’ The words were a shade less than sincere and, from her look, her alliance with Yellow Claw and the Eyrie was a difficult one. Two priestesses stepped forward and hauled the prisoner to his feet, manhandling him into the shadow of the temple at a nod from their queen.

  Maniye held still, watching and waiting, but Joalpey’s eyes never turned to her. The Queen re-entered the temple without ever glancing her way, although Maniye’s gaze bored into her every second.

  When she turned away, after Joalpey had gone from view, she was staring directly at the chest of Yellow Claw. The Eyrieman’s gaze flicked over her, predatory and keen. His woman stepped forward to speak his words, but he yanked her back by her collar.

  ‘So, this is the Wolf girl,’ he said. A handful of his people were at his back, but he was a big man, and there was an aura about him of a strength more than physical, Maniye thought. He hardly needed his followers to give weight to his threats.

  Nonetheless, she could not let that accusation lie. ‘I am no Wolf.’

  ‘You are no Tiger.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Your face says you lie to me,’ Yellow Claw observed. He reached for her, as though to cock her head back, but she flinched away, feeling both her souls rise with a fighting anger within her. It was all she could do to hold a human shape right then.

  ‘I lie to no one,’ she spat at him. ‘I am Tiger. This is my home. More so than it is yours.’

  He angered quickly, the emotion darkening his face instantly. ‘The Wolf girl is full of words,’ he observed. ‘They cram her mouth so much, they leak. Perhaps it would be a kindness if a hole was cut in her, so they could all fly free.’

  She felt her feet slide into the ready stance she had been taught. Her heart was hammering, infecting her blood with fear, but she held his gaze. ‘You challenge me?’

  Yellow Claw sneered at her boldness, but there was an exasperation to him because she would not simply bow her head and back down. She thought of the only Eyriewomen she had seen, all of them meek, and haltered too, denied even the chance to give voice to their souls. How are my mother’s people in league with these creatures?

  A hand fell on the Eyrieman’s arm: one of his compatriots, short and broad-shouldered, with half his face plain black and the other half painted a pale grey. White paint slashed a band across his eyes. It was a simple mask, but the sight of it awoke a deep fear in Maniye – a fear of something she could not name. He wore a drab woollen cloak of no particular colour, and beneath it his chest was bare, ridged with old, carefully inscribed scars.

  The sight of him seemed to jolt Yellow Claw as well, for all the newcomer said nothing. He had the authority of a priest, though: a man who it was unwise to cross. For a moment, the leader of the Eyriemen warred with himself, but then he hissed between his teeth and stalked away.

  The grey-faced man stayed on, staring at her with wide, round eyes. She felt far more scared of him than she had been of his leader. Then he turned aside and nodded once, and she saw Hesprec standing there.

  She did not have to ask the question, for it was writ large in her expression.

  ‘This is Grey Herald, who spoke for me,’ Hesprec explained. ‘His word brought me into this place. There is yet remembrance in the Eyrie of the oldest tales, when the Serpent and the Owl Society stood shoulder to shoulder.’ The words rang a distant echo within her, one of stories seldom retold. Tales of the soulless Plague People, and the loss of many things.

  That night, she dreamt – a broken, twisted string of images informed not so much by Hesprec’s talk as by the things he did not say. She was chasing after her mother, running through a landscape made as though the Shining Halls had been sunk deep within the earth. She called out Joalpey’s name, and even her secret huntress name, but the woman still would not look back, rushing full-tilt through the broken, buried streets. Stepping to her tiger shape, Maniye ran and ran, but the distance between them only grew. A terrible convulsion in the earth’s bones was occurring all around them, stone cracking, ornate carvings shivering into shards. Looking up towards the cavern sky – lit by some greenish radiance that emanated from precisely nowhere – she saw Hesprec standing atop one of the buildings, and others like him: men and women, old and young, and all with the tattoos of the serpent making tracks across their faces. Grey Herald was there too, and others painted like he was, and more still. They held their hands up as though warding off some presence that sought to intrude through the rock above.

  And then she knew how she could catch up with her mother, and she had Stepped into her wolf shape, swift paws carrying her eagerly in the pursuit, but when she was at Joalpey’s heels the woman looked back with a stricken, terrified expression, and Maniye saw that the shadows on all sides of her were other wolves, and that she had been what her mother had been running from all along.

  Then she woke, because there was screaming, and it was coming from somewhere outside her head.

  31

  The bronze knife clattering to the ground at her feet was the loudest sound in the world.

  Maniye had slept poorly these last two nights. It was not the dreams, though. It was the sound of the Wolf scout that the Eyriemen had brought in. The priesthood were torturing him.

  The people of the Tiger knew that gods were not of the world: above it and beyond it, things of pure spirit. That was why they would not commit the image of their deity to stone or metal or wood. Smoke, shadows, these were fit intermediaries through which to glimpse the spirit world.

  She had learned all this, of course. She remembered carefully committing to memory that, for a soul to be prepared for the Tiger, it must be brought to a height of spiritual awareness, drawn from the body until it was almost visible in the air. In her lessons, the logic of this had seemed unassailable.

  And there were different methods of arriving at such awareness. The year-kings of the Deer Tribe had their every want sated until it was time for them to kneel at the altar; the Wolves hunted their Running Deer to exhaustion. Drugs, deprivation, death at the point of physical exultation; the gods could be reached in many ways.

  For the Tiger, when it came to offer up its enemies, there was only one way. Fear and pain were the hammers they used to forge a fine sacrifice. And so the Swift Back writhed and wailed deep inside the temple, his voice carried out to all, echoing his despair along the halls and the corridors. And in the temple’s heart, in the room of smoke and pierced stone, the Tiger licked its insubstantial lips and waited.

  When he cried out, there was a distant echo deep within Maniye, the return call of her receding wolf soul. She hated it, yet it kept her awake. No matter how much she told herself that these were her ways now, still that lonely voice would not be silenced.

  And now this: the dancers and their knife.

  She had been up early, red-eyed, trailing towards her lessons, when four of the other girls had blocked her path.

  ‘You,’ said one who stood in front like t
heir leader. Maniye had looked her in the eye and groped for her name. Imshalma, or something like that. Tiger names were still strange to her.

  Maniye did not answer, merely waiting. She could sense the ill-feeling amongst them, and yet they were nervous, too.

  ‘I understand you now,’ said Imshalma or whatever her name was. ‘I have watched you, all the days since you came. I have asked myself, “What is this Wolf they have brought among us?” There must be a reason, I knew, but I could not see it. But now I understand you.’

  Maniye had no sense that her relationship to the Queen had become known to these girls, but plainly something had changed.

  ‘I have seen our teachers watching you. I have seen the Queen watching you. I know you, Wolf girl. You are a test.’

  Maniye’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am not a Wolf.’

  ‘You are a test for us, to see if we possess the mind to be warriors. Our teachers have watched just to see if we would act against this enemy they have brought into our midst. They have been disappointed, because we accepted you so meekly. The Tiger is not meek. The Tiger takes his prey without hesitation, without mercy. So, I will take you. I will pass the test.’

  That was when the daggers came out, one to stay in Imshalma’s hand and one cast at Maniye’s feet.

  Maniye weighed the girl’s words, hunting for truth and finding not a trace of it. But there was another possibility. There might be a test, after all.

  ‘They are testing me,’ she told the other girl. ‘I am Tiger but they doubt me. And I have been meek. As you say, the Tiger is not meek.’ She picked up the dagger, noting an eddy of movement through the other girls. Imshalma’s eyes were a little wider than before, and Maniye wondered if she had been expecting the ‘test’ to be passed simply by making the challenge, perhaps thinking the Wolf girl would flee when confronted with a blade.