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

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘What do you want, Black Man? Or perhaps you have come here to learn to fly?’ Yellow Claw’s glance encompassed the nearby sheer drop that made up most of the bluff’s edge.

  Asmander managed to force out a snort of amusement, although he had decided on the way up that he was very much not fond of the heights that most of this cold country seemed built from. ‘I’m here to fetch the girl.’

  Yellow Claw went still. ‘Why?’ he hissed. ‘What is this girl, that the world wants her? This ugly little Wolf brat?’

  ‘She is dear to my friend,’ Asmander said, with a sideways nod at Hesprec. ‘And, besides, if not for her I would have not have been given this chance to challenge you.’

  The Eyrieman laughed, and Asmander was not heartened to see that it was a genuine laugh, rather than something put on for his followers. ‘I am the Great Eagle, Black Man. I am a Champion of the Eyrie. Nowhere in the Crown of the World will you see such a terror as me!’

  ‘I am a Champion of the Sun River Nation,’ Asmander told him mildly. ‘I will fight you for the girl.’

  There was a gleam of cunning in Yellow Claw’s eyes. ‘But we already have the girl, do we not? What does the Eyrie stand to gain, save painting our ground with your blood? But this your friend, this dead stick beside you, he can tell us the girl’s value, yes? Why would he seek her, unless he plans to sell or use her? When you are dead, he will tell us all he knows. Or he will go to meet the Hawk.’

  Asmander cocked an eye at Hesprec, and the old man nodded tiredly. Last night’s business had clearly taken a great deal out of him.

  ‘Enough bragging.’ The south’s Champion squared his shoulders and drew out his maccan. ‘Let’s fight.’

  Yellow Claw made a derisive face. ‘Look, your wooden sword has stone teeth. Is that so you will be able to eat when your real ones are broken, Black Man?’

  The Eyrieman sauntered over to that snaggle of logs jutting out over the drop, plainly expecting dismay from his opponent at the sight. Asmander was forewarned, though, by Hesprec’s informant. He had always known how this was going to go.

  That didn’t mean he had to like it.

  Yellow Claw leapt out into thin air – the action of a maniac if he had not become an eagle at the apex, mighty wings shadowing the ground as he lazily flapped and circled until he found a roost atop the furthest pole, where he became a man again, balancing without effort.

  ‘Come, Man of the River!’ he called. ‘Come bring your challenge.’

  Asmander looked once more at Hesprec, hoping to see a suggestion in the old man’s expression that the plan he knew of was only some small part of the Serpent’s scheme. The pallid Snake priest looked ashen, though, drawn and haggard. His colourless eyes met Asmander’s and there was no help to be found there.

  The other Eyriemen were drawing closer, eager to see this foreigner beaten. Asmander reached the closest pillar and inched out along it, arms extended for balance. There, he managed to at least approximate Yellow Claw’s enviable poise.

  At the bluff’s edge, the Hawk warriors were spreading out, and plenty of them had knives. There was no going back that way until the fight was over, and the only other exit was straight downwards. And, of course, Yellow Claw himself could just fly away.

  The Eyrieman Champion had a knife in each hand now: long tapering blades of bronze, styled like feathers. Asmander found himself almost obsessing over their craftsmanship, which was beautiful, because the alternative was actually starting the fight.

  But he had to fight. It was not about the girl. It was about being a Champion.

  The step to the next pillar was a long one, but manageable. Beyond that, they were more spread out, some surely beyond a man’s ability to reach without jumping. Yellow Claw was like his reflection, moving as he moved. The sun gleamed along the length of his knives.

  The next step was more of a stretch, and Asmander was forced to teeter for balance as he made it, to jeers from the Eyriemen. Yellow Claw came rushing for him in the same moment. The Eyrieman had not Stepped, but just ran across the posts with great, sure strides that Asmander would never have been able to match. He had closed the distance between them in an absurdly brief moment, one dagger snapping out. Asmander could not just feint aside as he might have done on the ground. Instead he struck at the blade, stone scraping metal and deflecting the thrust, throwing them both off balance. Yellow Claw just took a long step to the next post, not even looking back, whilst Asmander swayed in place.

  Time to shift the odds . . . and he Stepped.

  The shape he took was something the Eyriemen did not know, and did not like now that they saw it. Asmander’s Champion shape, with its sickle-clawed feet, its heavy jaws, was something beyond even their stories. Yellow Claw gave ground swiftly, putting a half-dozen posts between them, but Asmander was the Champion now: a new soul had taken hold of his limbs. A little distance was not going to dissuade him.

  He sprang, the great strength of his hind legs sending him sailing forwards three posts, to land almost next to Yellow Claw with a scrabbling of talons, straight tail out for balance. The post gave dangerously beneath him, sagging towards the abyss. The Eyrieman swiped at Asmander’s snout with a blade, but he was backing away as he did so, three jumps and the last one almost a fall. Asmander screeched at him, riding a wave of defiance.

  He had one more chance, another spring with an almost flat trajectory, bringing him down to rake a post that Yellow Claw had just vacated. The Eyrie Champion was shaken, but he was not beaten. A vicious grin had forced its way onto his face.

  ‘Very fine, Black Man,’ he called, ‘but can you fly yet? I think not!’

  Before Asmander could pounce again, he had Stepped himself, hunching as an eagle on his own post, wings half-spread. The River Champion paused, muscles tense to spring, knowing that the bird would be in the air before he landed.

  Then Yellow Claw was airborne anyway, his spread of wings seeming to shadow the whole bluff, rising up with indolent slowness, untouchable, and then abruptly snapping into a dive.

  Twin clutches of bronze talons stooped on Asmander like a sudden storm. He threw himself out of the way, almost missed his footing despite all the nimble balance the Champion’s form lent him, and then the eagle was swooping for him again.

  For a moment he was preparing to fight back, to risk everything to try and take the bird in mid-air as it came in. Then either his nerve broke or his rational mind told him that he must fail, and he was hopping away again, awkward and graceless – and pursued.

  They went through the same game three more times, and by then Asmander knew that it was a game, that the Eyrieman was having great fun chasing him around and demonstrating his superiority to his followers. And it told Asmander what sort of a man he was, which was useful for what came next.

  Yellow Claw broke off and settled on a further post, Stepping back to his human form with his arms outspread just as his wings had been.

  ‘Well, Black Man?’ he demanded. ‘Have you learned to fly yet?’

  Asmander assumed his human shape, breathing heavily. His heart was battling within his chest in what seemed to be a determined bid for freedom, but it was not the exertion nor fear of death at the talons of Yellow Claw. This was the plan. It was Hesprec’s gift.

  They had sat up late, that last night, and the old Serpent had looked into his soul. ‘A Champion is touched by the invisible world,’ he had said. ‘There are paths that have been trodden once. Perhaps they might be travelled again.’

  Asmander looked Yellow Claw in the eye and tried to find some cutting rejoinder, but no words came. He was drawn bowstring-tense by what he was about to try, and there was no room for wit.

  He wanted to say, Yes . . . Yes I have learned to fly.

  He Stepped. It was not to his Champion’s fighting form nor to the low-slung water shape of Old Crocodile. It was to something else, something that Hesprec had invited into him: a new soul enticed into his body.

  He could not say what it mig
ht look like through someone else’s eyes. He knew only what it felt like: the feet that gripped the post beneath him were fiercely taloned, the barbs gleaming with the black lustre of obsidian. His arms were long and attenuated, hands reaching out until the last finger of each was longer than his whole body. When he shook them out, the webs of skin between them and his narrow body snapped sail-taut, twitching and rippling. His head was like a crested spear, forming a razor-edged beak longer than a man.

  When he spread his wings, they were almost as vast as Yellow Claw’s own. When he gave voice, it shook the peaks above them. He was something like a bat, something like a crocodile, nothing that the eyes of men had ever seen.

  The transformation struck Yellow Claw as hard as a sword blow. He Stepped to his bird form, stuttered back to man, then bird again spreading his own wings and keening, but a moment later he was crouching on human feet, the two knives held out. His eyes were wide enough that Asmander could see the white all around them, could stare right into their depths to Yellow Claw’s mean and bitter souls, and see his own reflection ravening back out of them.

  Asmander beat his wings and pushed himself forward, gliding two posts closer to Yellow Claw and managing a creditable landing with his hooked feet and the fingers of his wings. Part of him was trying to exalt in this new form, but far more of him was terrified of getting it wrong. The body’s shape knew the air, but there was an understanding that Yellow Claw had and Asmander lacked. Some things only came with practice. And the moment he slipped, the moment he looked a fool, his hold on the other man would be gone.

  If it came to it, and if Yellow Claw fought fierce, then the Eyrieman would still win.

  So Asmander came on strong, hop after hop, shrieking and thundering with his wings. He made that unfamiliar body into a death threat aimed straight at his enemy. I too can fly! There is nowhere you can go I cannot follow. And he thought: If all my life I’d had mastery of the sky, uncontested, then would I be a brave man still? If I had the luxury of living where none could attack, of attacking only where I chose. He was maligning the Eyrie, no doubt. Surely there were many brave warriors there, for they had to strive against each other to prove themselves. Their Champion, though . . .

  And he made that final lunge. Yellow Claw was a man until the second before he struck, and then spread his wings and kicked away, flight over fight. Asmander became the Champion and caught him in the moment that he took to the sky. Sickletalons raked across the eagle’s body, ripping feathers and scoring lines of blood, and then the bird was free of him, wheeling and tumbling in the air, circling down awkwardly, one wing trailing. He was a man again as he landed, clutching an arm to his chest, bloody where the claws had raked.

  For a moment Asmander wanted to stoop on him, to finish him off, but that was not the way between Champions – for all such niceties were probably unknown in the cold north. Instead, he Stepped back to human form, standing tall and proud and high.

  ‘I claim my victory,’ he called. ‘Free the girl, and if I see a wing-speck in the sky following us, then I shall rise to meet it.’ Empty words, but he gave them force.

  34

  Maniye cast more than one nervous look up at the sky as they scuffed and slid their way down the treacherous path that was the only land-bound escape from the Eyriemen’s camp. There were clouds aplenty, eager to gift the world with rain, but she spotted no winged shapes wheeling against them. It seemed the Eyrie was licking its wounds.

  They made wordless progress for some time. Hesprec was chancing the walk down, feeling his way with his staff and choosing his footing wisely – of the three of them, he never stumbled or slipped once. On her other side, Asmander seemed deep in thought, stealing a suspicious glance at her every so often. He must surely be brooding over the same question that Yellow Claw had asked: Why her?

  Maniye wanted to ask it, too. She remembered the lie Hesprec had told the Horse, that he had come north to seek her out for a prophecy. Was he just repaying a debt? Her rescue of his old bones from the Winter Runners paid by his bringing this exotic warrior to defeat Yellow Claw?

  Then the Snake priest croaked out, ‘I imagine you must be full of questions.’ He had paused to catch his breath, and she felt pinned suddenly by his gaze.

  She should ask why, so she might know whether he was still on her side, or whether he would take up with his strange friends and abandon her.

  She would not ask him. She would remain ignorant until their parting forced the knowledge into her. For all he was old and frail and strange, she wanted him to be her friend. She needed him.

  So she asked of Asmander, ‘What were those animals you Stepped to? Were those things of the south?’ She already knew in her heart they were not. They were something special: part of that way he had of seeming bigger, weightier than he was.

  He was already shaking his head. ‘What you saw first, that was the Champion of the Sun River Nation.’ He frowned at her expression. ‘Just as Yellow Claw’s shape was Champion of the Eyrie. You understand me?’

  ‘Most of the peoples in these lands have no such thing, and the Eyriemen keep to themselves,’ Hesprec suggested. They had all halted alongside him, within the cover of the treeline, to let him recover his strength.

  ‘I am chosen,’ Asmander tried explaining.

  ‘By who?’

  ‘By Old Crocodile. By the Tsotec – river of my homeland. By the spirits.’ His hands made nebulous gestures. ‘Just . . . chosen. And so a new soul came to me, or maybe it is a part of a greater soul that all Champions can touch.’

  ‘You sound like you don’t know,’ she accused him, because he scared her a little, and she needed to challenge that fear within herself.

  To her surprise, he grinned sheepishly. ‘It is something that happens. Of course, you ask for it when you’re a young warrior and learning to Step. Everyone does so. But why me? Who can say? I never felt I deserved it. And the Champion can be hard. The Champion has his own way to live, his own rules.’

  ‘And you have a flying Champion as well?’ Maniye pressed.

  Asmander shook his head fiercely. ‘Never before; most likely never again. It is in me, but I am not sure I will Step that way. Ask me when I’m next falling off a cliff.’ Another bright grin, quickly on, quickly gone. ‘The Messenger, he is the man who knows about that.’

  Hesprec spread his bony hands. ‘Entirely the wrong time of day to talk theology. Let me say no more than that a Champion’s soul is more open than any other’s. There are rituals, very old, very sacred, that can invite another soul in. It is as though . . . your soul has cousins and uncles, Asmander, and with the proper invocation he can be prompted to reach, to call out for them, to ask them to muster in his warband and hunt along with him. I was not sure it would work, not in this cold, harsh place where the Serpent’s coils are few and far-flung. But it did, and I’m proud of you. You are a Champion for your people to take pride in.’

  Asmander seemed to take the compliment awkwardly, waving it away. ‘We should move on. I don’t trust these Bird men.’

  Hesprec managed a snort. ‘If they wanted to catch us up, you think I could walk fast enough to prevent them?’ He sighed. ‘I wanted to walk down, for once. I thought going down would be easier. But it seems my many years will have to beg another ride.’ He chuckled ruefully. ‘“Many Years”, that can be my name here in the Crown of the World, Many Years and Many Tracks.’

  ‘Messenger.’ Asmander held out a hand, but Hesprec had been looking at Maniye.

  ‘Gladly,’ she confirmed, and took his fingers in hers. In a moment he had done his trick of casting himself up his own arm, the ribbon-thin serpent he had now become winding its way up the sleeve of her threadbare Horse-made coat.

  She and the southerner set off down again. She wanted to be a Wolf or a Tiger, and make better time, but she was not sure she could run with Asmander’s stalking monster beside her. The Champion. Hesprec had used the word as though it was Asmander’s title, but the man himself had spoken of the
Champion as though it was a different creature entirely.

  ‘Did you come here seeking Hesprec?’ Asking him anything was an act of daring, and she fully expected to be rebuffed haughtily.

  Instead he gave her a surprised look, and for a handful of moments there were frank emotions visible on his southern face, though she could not quite follow them. Then he gave her a smile that seemed slightly sad.

  ‘That would have been a mission of great honour,’ he told her. ‘I should just tell you, “Yes”, and have you think better of me. But it was not so.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘If you had three days and a desperate need to sleep, I could tell you much about the Sun River Nation, how it is governed, and what threatens it. But these are problems you do not have in the Crown of the World: politics, taxes, hereditary rule. You are better off without these things.’

  In truth Maniye found the words difficult. ‘Is that where the child always gets what the parent had?’ and then, at his nod, ‘Then the Tiger have that.’ She almost went further but caught herself, saying only, ‘Their daughters become what their mothers were.’

  ‘Hence you run from them,’ Asmander noted drily. ‘That, I approve of. They are much wiser, most of your tribes and villages here. Avoid such foolishness.’

  ‘Your people’s foolishness.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He was plainly making some joke for his own amusement, at his own expense.

  ‘We have our own foolishness.’

  ‘No doubt. That is how people are. Once they have food and drink and shelter, the next thing they must find is a quarrel.’

  They carried on picking their way downwards, beneath the intermeshed needles of the trees. The southerner was a contradiction, a study in strength and self-mockery. She wondered what he would have been without the mantle of Champion weighing on his shoulders. Something less? Happier? The same?

  Her eyes were still on the sky, waiting for Yellow Claw and his warriors to return. She had forgotten her other enemies, and in her human shape she could not scent them out. How long they had followed her footsteps before striking, she never knew.