Maniye ate next, and the women of the Eyrie were left to satisfy their hunger with whatever remained. A prisoner ranked above them, it seemed. At first Maniye assumed they must forage for themselves, but it was plain they were forbidden to Step, prisoners of this plateau even as she was.
‘You were at the Shining Halls?’ Maniye asked one. In truth they all had a similar look to them, these women: not in the features so much as the downtrodden expression that gripped them.
She thought the woman would ignore her, but the Eyrie girl paused and then shook her head quickly.
‘But one of you was?’ Maniye pressed. ‘She even spoke for you. So she’s your leader?’
The Eyriewoman’s eyes widened in shock. Maniye was ready for her to flee, but instead she dipped her head closer and murmured, ‘Yellow Claw cannot speak direct to the Tiger. There are only certain ways a Champion of the Eyrie may speak to such a woman, and still retain his dignity.’
‘Threats and bullying?’ The words came out before Maniye could plan them.
The Eyriewoman’s look was solemn, though. ‘If you anger him, you will find out.’
‘Do you have a name?’
The question, coming out of the blue, seemed to take the woman completely by surprise. Maniye hoped perhaps she might have an ally here: a fellow sufferer under the tyranny of Yellow Claw.
‘I am Many Tracks – that is my hunter name.’ She had so little to barter with. ‘I am Maniye . . . I was born Maniye.’ It was a great gesture of trust for her to tell that to a stranger.
For a moment words formed on the Eyriewoman’s lips, but then they died and she backed off, as though Maniye carried something contagious.
Yellow Claw came back towards evening, strutting through his men, giving some of them a shove to remind them of who he was. Maniye had hated a lot of people in her time, not least her own father and the priest Kalameshli, but she decided there was nobody she had come to dislike quite so swiftly as this Eyrieman. He was strong, and marked out in that odd way that lent him a fierce grandeur, and his Stepped form was majestic and proud enough to put the other hawks to shame. And yet it was wasted, Maniye thought: great gifts given to a small man.
He stared at her with something of a sneer on his face, and she found she could read the sequence of his thoughts there quite easily. He was impatient; he wanted to start on her. He was – she realized, with a mouth abruptly dry with fear – wondering if there was sufficient chance that she was unimportant. If she was just being pursued as a criminal, a thief or oathbreaker or the like, then nobody would complain at her fate.
‘So what are you?’ he murmured.
She wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her, or just to himself. There was a great temptation to blurt it all out: I am the daughter of the Winter Runners; I am the daughter of the Shining Halls! I am not for you! She could save herself the horrors of his touch, for this night at least. But if he learned that, how would he then use her? Would he sell her back to her father, or turn her against her mother? Or would he take her, anyway, and crow to his men how he’d had a Wolf chief’s daughter and the child of the Tiger Queen all in one night?
That last seemed very plausible.
But his patience held, for now. The chance that there was some great value in her, which could be bartered for his own advantage, lent him a fraying line of restraint. A cruel man and a bully he might be, but no fool.
That night she did not dare sleep in case it was the hard hands of Yellow Claw that woke her. She lay and shivered, and tried to pick at her collar where it had been woven together. Or she made plans to creep to the edge of the bluff and find a way down, human hands and feet grappling with the jagged rock. And she did none of these things, because she knew that defiance from her, the wrong look, the wrong word, would cut that straining thread that held Yellow Claw back. An excuse was all he needed.
Late that night, with the moon high in a chill and cloudless sky, someone moved very close to her, sending a shock of fear through her. Yellow Claw? Or one of the women? The thought of rescue did not even occur to her.
And it was not rescue. Instead it was Grey Herald. She could make out his cloaked form, the moonlight pale on his bare barrel chest. He had sat down within arm’s reach of her, and had done so with only one small scuff to betray him. His eyes watched her from their white-stripe mask.
‘In the Other Lands dwelt all the People once,’ he said, his deep voice soft, the intonation one of ritual and rote-learning. ‘Where there was always game for a hunter’s bow, and the water was sweet, where every tree bore ripe fruit, and there was no summer nor winter.’
She craned her neck to blink at him, because this fierce warrior was crouching there reciting children’s stories with great gravity. His eyes were fixed on her so fiercely that she thought this bizarre recounting must somehow be the prelude to an assault.
‘In those days the People had many shapes between them, and many souls, and great was the number of their Steppings and their forms, and all were of one people,’ Grey Herald informed her sincerely. ‘But there were some amongst them for whom all these forms and all these souls were not enough and, in seeking more, they grew less and less, until they had no souls at all.’
‘The Plague People,’ Maniye breathed. The contrast between this man and his words was fading with the intensity of his telling. She felt like a child again.
‘They had no souls,’ he went on, ‘but power they had, for they became sorcerers and bent the world and the spirits to their will. And they consorted with monsters that had come into the world, and that sought to devour all the People, all the mute brothers, every living thing. And so they were called a plague.’
He paused at that, as though lamenting the loss of such paradise days, and then sighed. ‘Those of the People who escaped their devouring tide realized that the Other Lands were lost to them, and they begged the sun to lead them to a land where they might be safe from the Plague People. And the sun bent low and red to the earth, and those people who yet lived followed that light into another place that is these lands that are ours.’
He paused, and Maniye had to restrain herself from urging him to continue. It was an old tale, and she had heard it many times, in various incarnations. Not like this, though. Grey Herald spoke as though it was a true article of faith to him, deeply and direly relevant to every day of his living. This ancient tale had no dust on it, for him.
And she realized he was waiting for her to speak the next words and, though she did not know his precise way of telling it, she could bridge that gap.
‘But the Plague People came after,’ she said, and he nodded briefly.
‘The Plague People came after,’ he echoed, ‘for they could not abide the thought of there being a land free of their hungers, be it never so cold, never so dry, never so barren. And as the last of the people crossed from the Other Lands to the lands that are ours, three there were, who turned to face them and held them back. And these three fought them from sunset to sunrise, and stood against all the monsters that the Plague People had compacted with. And on the next morning, the sun arose with such a fierce fire that it scorched the land away, all that stood between the Other Lands and our lands. And the sea rushed in, of such depth and such width that even the monsters of the Plague People could not cross it.’
And she realized that she was not the only listener. For all that he spoke quietly, there were more than a few of the Eyrie with their eyes open, tilting their ears towards Grey Herald to catch his words.
‘And those few who had escaped their hunger spread across our lands,’ the storyteller went on, ‘and found that the game was scarcer, and the water less sweet, and that the winter brought cold, and the summer drought. And they fought, and they divided – from one tribe of many forms to many tribes each of a single Stepping.
‘And of the three who had fought the Plague People during that long night, what of them?’ He raised his eyebrows sharply at her. ‘It is said those three, and all their children w
ho came after them, kept the secrets of the Other Lands and formed brave societies to teach them, lest they be needed again. And they painted their faces in the colours of their enemies, to remind all who saw them of the old dangers. And they never forgot what had been lost. And each remembered who had stood beside them, be it never so long ago. So it is that there shall always be an understanding and a friendship and a shared burden between the men of the Owl and the Bat and the people of the Serpent.’
He uttered the last words very deliberately, staring at her intently, and Maniye’s heart leapt. For the Eyriemen it was just a story, well known and well told. For her it was a message.
Hesprec. Hesprec, somehow. He is giving me hope.
***
Akrit had expected to meet resistance from the Swift Backs. They were a tribe that had few links with the Winter Runners and bad blood from a couple of generations back. When the Wolf had risen against the Tiger, the Swift Backs had not been easy under Seven Skins’ leadership, Always they had followed their own paths, never where they were supposed to be. But still they were of the Wolf, and their lands were closest to the Tiger. He could not ignore them.
And the girl had been brought this way, for he had followed her trail this far, with his warband at his heels.
He had fought Water Gathers for the loyalty of the Many Mouths, and he had come with the expectation of more blood in his mouth before this day was out. Instead, he and his people were welcomed as guests. For once somebody was pleased to see them.
He and Kalameshli Takes Iron stayed the night in the long-house of the chief. Word was running through this part of the Crown of World like the wind: the Tiger was on the move. Hunting parties were coming down out of the Shining Halls, driving the game of the Swift Backs before them. There had been raiding parties, stealing both thralls and food. A burning stand of the Wolf’s wood had been scattered and despoiled. Scouts and lone hunters were missing.
The Swift Backs were between the claws of the Tiger, Akrit found.
Word had come to them from the Stone Place, outstripping Stone River’s own progress. They looked at him with a measure of fear, a measure of respect. He felt as though he could almost reach across to them, to take them in hand and make them his.
Despite it all, though, they were waiting. They watched him eagerly, but in anticipation of what he might become.
He went to see Takes Iron the next morning. ‘What do they want? Should I have come here wearing Water Gathers’ skin? Do they want the spirits to take flesh and kneel before me?’
The old priest grimaced a little at the words. ‘They have heard stories, and tales grow in the telling.’
‘I am less than they expected? Is that what you now tell me?’
Kalameshli took a deep breath, glancing sidelong about him in case any of the Swift Backs was too close. ‘If word has come, then it will be word of all, the good and the bad.’
Akrit hissed through his teeth. In that moment he wanted to tear down the Swift Back village with his bare hands and scatter the earth of their mounds. ‘The girl, still?’ He had a terrible sense of a story being told here, one of the old tales: The Chief who Hunted His Daughter. And how did that story end? ‘What do they expect me to do? Stride into the Shining Halls and seize her?’
‘I think that is just what they expect.’ Takes Iron shrugged. ‘They have lived close by the Tiger’s Shadow, all this time. Year after year they have watched it creep down from the heights to inhabit their woods. All this time, the Winter Runners have told stories of the Tiger’s defeat. The Swift Backs have told stories of what they once did when they were strong.’
‘And now they think they’re strong again?’ Akrit spat.
‘I think, for the Swift Backs, every darkness has a tiger in it,’ said Kalameshli, shaking his head. ‘They want someone to rise up and lead the war against the Shadow Eaters, but they will not raise their spears unless they believe they can win. As the shape of the enemy has grown in their minds, so they need a great leader – one who does all he sets out to.’
Akrit turned his mind to the Shining Halls, remembering his one sight of the place when he was young. Yes, Seven Skins had driven the Shadow Eaters back to the highlands, but even he had not brought the fight to the very heart of their power. A dawn had come when even he had turned around and said, ‘Enough.’
‘Enough.’ Akrit’s voice echoed his thoughts. ‘Give me the warbands of all the Wolf tribes, and I will tear down the stones of the Shining Halls gladly. But not now.’
He was still brooding the next day when a Swift Back scout came hotfoot back from spying out the edge of the Tiger’s Shadow. There were warbands come down from the Shining Halls, she said, and the craven panic that went through her people was pitiful to see.
But there was more: they were not come to raid the Wolf, the scout announced. Instead they were hunting strange fugitives. The scout had seen that with her own eyes.
Long before he had heard all, Akrit knew the truth, and he was calling for his people to hunt too.
***
Next day, Yellow Claw’s messenger flew back on swift wings from the Shining Halls. He made his report out of earshot of Maniye, but she could watch them between the trunks of the testing ground. Yellow Claw was not exactly overjoyed with what he was hearing, but plainly his man had learned something. The Eyrieman leader’s gaze slid across to her, again and again.
Then he came striding across the bluff towards her, slipping a copper knife into one hand.
‘The Tigers are searching the forests for you. The priesthood women are all very upset you have gone,’ he announced with a sneer. ‘But nobody says why. So it seems I must dirty my hands with you, after all. Have you stolen something of value that you’ve hidden from us? Is it some secret you discovered, that they wish no one to know?’
Maniye just stared up at him stubbornly. She did not know why she was protecting Joalpey, after what had happened. The bond was still there, though, a new-forged link that could not be cut by just one pair of hands.
Yellow Claw sighed theatrically, raising his eyes to the sky. ‘I will find this knowledge in you, even if I must cut you open and read it in your entrails,’ he declared, matter-of-factly.
Still she said nothing. She would gladly have answered him with something scathing, an insult even, but fear kept her from it.
Then the cry went up from one of the Eyriemen, ‘Coming up the path!’
Yellow Claw rolled his eyes at this distraction. ‘I shall be brief, little one,’ he told her, as though she was his lover, and then he strode over to a spot at the bluff’s edge that must be the sole accessible point, with sharp stakes thronging on either side of a narrow gap. A handful of other Eyriemen had gathered there, some with bows, but Yellow Claw was plainly not impressed by what he saw. He was curious, though: Maniye could read that in him. And Grey Herald was speaking there, too, giving some quiet piece of advice.
The Eyriemen backed off, enough to allow the newcomers to reach the top of the path. Maniye caught her breath. It was them. Not the whole mob of them, who would probably have been riddled with arrows by now, but two had come. One was Hesprec, leaning on his staff, nothing but bone-stretched skin in the shape of an old man. He looked exhausted just to be there, even though he had surely been carried up the path in his serpent form. The other was the black man, the true southerner. He was Asman or Asmander, she could not remember which.
The young southerner rolled his shoulders, looking over the Eyriemen but mostly at their Champion. Yellow Claw was the same brute of a man he remembered from their journey to the Stone Place – perhaps his presence there had been required for some Eyrie supplication.
Asmander wore the proper regalia of Old Crocodile’s chosen warrior, as he had fighting the Wolf, Sure As Flint. It did not make him feel any happier.
There were enough warriors here to do away with him without much of a fight, and he could hardly outrun a flight of hawks if things went badly. Hesprec seemed confident, though. Ju
st two nights ago he had been in solemn conference with a shadowy figure who had flown in on silent wings, and departed the same way. From that he had conceived a plan, little of which he had been inclined to share.
The night after that . . .
Shyri and Venater were down at a camp at the base of the slope, far too distant to provide help. Asmander hoped the pair of them weren’t killing each other even now. Venater had been particularly bitter, saying the whole business was a fool’s errand and that, when Asmander got himself killed, who would give him back his name?
‘You will just have to beseech the Dragon to grant me health,’ had come the Champion’s dry reply.
There had been real anger and fear in the pirate’s eyes, at that remark. The reaction had been oddly reassuring.
And he’s right. This is a stupid thing to be doing. If the old man wasn’t of the Serpent . . . But a life spent in the Sun River Nation had taught Asmander to respect the priesthood. Their true intent was seldom obvious, and almost never what they claimed it was, but it was usually for the best. Or so they taught, at least, and history had borne them out.
What lay ahead of them was knotting his stomach. Not the challenging of Yellow Claw, but what that challenge might force him to do.
His head was full of Hesprec’s words, the preparations they had made, the ritual he had undergone. He was frightened by it. Fear of pain and death was something he had the shoulders to shrug off – those were things outside him, and he knew how to brace himself against them. This new thing which Hesprec had gifted him with, though, it was buried within him, alien and eager.
‘I remember you,’ Yellow Claw said, eyes like stone for all he affected a mocking tone. ‘No woman to do your fighting for you this time?’
‘I thought I should leave you at least a small chance,’ Asmander acknowledged.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 39
