Hesprec’s eyes held no assurances, but something had hooked the Snake girl’s interest. And so emerged the words: ‘I cannot promise you that it can be done, but together we might try. If the Serpent will offer up his secrets; if you will follow where I guide you; if you are strong enough; if, indeed, this thing is possible at all. But it cannot be done quickly, and it cannot be done here.’
‘Where, then?’ Maniye demanded. Already she was feeling tremors through her, as her souls stretched and shouldered against their confinement and against each other. Another attack from them was on its way, she knew.
‘We will be petitioning the invisible world,’ the Serpent girl announced, with an echo of the elder Hesprec’s grandeur of speech. ‘That Stone Place of yours is too far, but there will be others: places where the sky reaches down to touch the earth, or where the depths of the earth are laid open to the sun. Places where the priests have gone, generation on generation. Some ancient stone or a hill or a cave – some place visited year on year, yet where nobody would ever live. Some place so old and strong that people have forgotten why it was first picked out, knowing only that it has always been there.’ She smiled fondly as she spoke, and in her eyes Maniye thought she could see the reflection of ancient shrines beside a southern river, of deep ravines where the coils of the Serpent moved within the rock.
So Maniye thought hard on all she had been told, and then she sought out Broken Axe and explained what Hesprec was looking for. Who knew the Crown of the World better than he?
‘A place like the Stone Place,’ he echoed. ‘Some place near here. A sacred place; a spirit place.’
‘And not the place of any one god,’ she added. ‘A place of great spirits. There must be somewhere.’
‘And you will flee there, and hope Stone River does not follow you.’
She saw his intention in his face. ‘And you will be with me, to guide me.’ And you will not try to lead my father away, and shed your blood for me.
A moment’s battle of wills, with her meeting his stony gaze and refusing to look away, and he nodded tiredly.
He surprised her then, because he knew of no place of ritual anywhere nearby; this was not his land and he had only a passing familiarity with its ways. Instead, he moved amongst the people who had been working for the Horse. They were men and women who had long hunted and foraged the riverside here, and all the lands around. They were nervous around Broken Axe, as well they might be near any Wolf. Maniye realized that she herself had not even considered asking them: Deer and Boar, what could they know?
But that was Stone River inside her, like yet another soul. Seeing them through Broken Axe’s eyes, she discovered just how much of her father was embedded within her. Hearing him speak to them, simply as one human being to another – something she could not imagine any of the Winter Runners doing – she was disappointed with herself. I will never be myself until I rid my mind of him.
In the end, they were directed to a broad-framed old Boar man whose long hair was mottled light and dark grey, and whose cheeks were tattooed with tall upward-pointing darts.
‘There is a place,’ the old Boar had conceded, once he understood what Maniye wanted. ‘There is always such a place. Only a fool would seek these places out, save on certain days, and then only by certain ways. But of course there is a place. A high hill, with two fallen stones and one still standing. The Eyriemen bring their dead there sometimes, and lay them out on high platforms for the crows to pick apart. My people bring offerings when the year turns towards winter. Our priests approach with their faces masked by the skins of the Boar – when I was young, I witnessed this – but we shun the place at all other times. The Path of Fallen Stones, we call it. It has been there longer than my people – perhaps longer than any people. It is a place for spirits to dwell, not men.’
He had told them where they would find these stones, which hills to head into, which winding path would lead them there. His expression said plainly that he thought them mad.
‘None who go there escape being changed,’ he warned, but to Maniye this sounded more like a promise than a threat.
‘You have been kind to me, even when you had no reason.’ Maniye had not wanted this conversation with Alladei. She was clawing for control of her own destiny, though: even the kindness of strangers could not go unquestioned.
The Horse Hetman looked slightly embarrassed, hands out as though to defend himself. ‘I have risked, it is true,’ he admitted. ‘When I tell my hand-father what choices I have made, he will either embrace me or turn his back on me. But if we bow our backs even once to the Wolf – or to anyone – then they will always hold the lash in their hands whenever they come to us. The strength to run far, the freedom of all horizons, that is the creed of the Horse. Where other people try to tame us, to bar our way or make us their slaves, then they will find that the Horse too can fight.’ He said the words proudly, and just for a moment she saw there the man he was waiting to become, the man his father perhaps saw in him. ‘But the Horse understands profit, also. Your friend the Serpent, she has promised. I have sent men south already, with certain words and secrets she has given me. Great are the rewards for my family, whatever should befall this solitary son. I do not regret standing up for you.’
‘You’re a fool, then.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I am wise beyond my years.’
‘I have brought too much trouble to you,’ Maniye muttered, biting at her lip.
‘Yes, you have.’ Alladei grinned suddenly. ‘To hear Stone River tell it, you are a trouble to the whole world. But perhaps only a little trouble for all that. Over the winter, our wise people were speaking of a great trouble. The Serpent girl tells me she has heard the same wherever she has gone, from the River to the Crown of the World. I do not think they were speaking of you, Many Tracks.’ He shook his head. ‘Change is coming upon us like the north wind from the mountains, like the sand wind from the south. So I will be kind to a strange girl who doesn’t know what skin she should wear, because who knows what will grow from that seed tomorrow? And because I think that being kind to Stone River is like planting a seed in dust.’
‘You Horse are very stupid.’ She tried to say it venomously, like Shyri would, but her voice shook and she heard herself sounding close to tears.
‘Not all of us – just me, perhaps.’ He was still smiling. ‘How will you outpace your father when you leave here?’
‘Somehow.’
‘You cannot run south, leaving this land as I suggested?’
‘I would. I cannot.’ With the very thought, the souls twisted inside her. She felt unsteady on her feet, her human form momentarily alien to her. ‘I would not last. I need to . . . to cut, or . . . They are both too powerful within me now. I cannot cast either of them out, yet I cannot keep them within me . . .’ She looked at him, wide-eyed. I’ve said too much. These are secret things.
There was only sympathy in his face. ‘Then there is one more favour I can do for you, to help you on your way.’
Towards evening a messenger arrived, a young hunter of the Winter Runners, who had tracked cold news from post to post across the north until he had finally picked up the trail of his chief.
Akrit Stone River listened without reaction as the breathless youth recounted it all, standing rigidly straight and obviously fearing an angry response. Stone River just stared, though – not at the messenger but into the distance of his own imagination, and then he dismissed the youth and turned to Kalameshli, the only other listener.
‘What do you think now,’ Akrit asked, ‘of the Horse plan to let the girl flee southwards, and thus be forgotten in the Crown of the World? You spoke for it, after we departed their fire.’
The Wolf priest nodded wordlessly.
‘And you see now why it cannot be. But I think you should have seen so before.’ Abruptly Akrit’s rage – like his knife, never far from his grasp – was rekindled. ‘Even you – the girl pulls even you from me.’
Takes Iron said
nothing.
‘Or perhaps you’d say it is I who push you?’ Akrit demanded, working up his anger further. ‘But this is what it is to be a Wolf: to be strong, to drive my own path through the world, never to be led or herded or penned. You have always taught so. Each year of new hunters, this is the message you put into their hearts. This is the truth about the Wolf, that we are the strength of the world. I have only sought to be that strength! And this girl – my own daughter! – goes about the world unpicking my work, smearing my deeds, placing ill words in the mouths of those whose support I rely on. Even you!’
‘Akrit,’ Kalameshli said softly. ‘You are my chief, I am your priest. We are old friends, you and I.’
‘And yet she is here between us! You would protect her from me, if you could.’
‘There is no need—’
‘There is need! If there was ever doubt, then now we see the need. I am called, Takes Iron. I am summoned. On the shortest night, I am summoned so that all the tribes can meet to choose their high chief. And who summons me? Otayo of the Many Mouths, the son of Seven Skins. He who gave his voice to me after I killed his brother, and now he declares he must choose, and the other chiefs must choose, and no doubt there are half a dozen who they shall choose between, where once there would only be one. One, Takes Iron! And it is because this girl shames me that they do not already have my name in their mouths!’ He lifted his fists as though to strike the old priest – or the world at large. ‘What shall they say, then? Here is Stone River whose girl-child flouts him. Why should a man rule the destiny of the Wolf when he cannot even control his own get?’
‘We will take her again,’ Kalameshli murmured. ‘Bring her before the other tribes with a halter about her neck, if you will.’
Something like a laugh escaped from Stone River. ‘And can I even hold her, if I take her?’ He was speaking too loud – enough for all the rest of the warband to hear. ‘I have had her in my hands already, and where is she now? Vanished and fled to her many allies! If I tried to parade her before the tribes – if I dug a pit for her a hundred men deep, or built a cage of iron without a door – she would be gone in the moment I sought to bring her forth. She would be rescued from the earth by moles, or spirited away by songbirds. What is she, Takes Iron? Is she even my child?’ He was so caught in his ranting that he missed the old man’s flinch. ‘No capture this time. I’ll tear her throat out myself. She is no kin of mine. She is a thing of the invisible world, a changed child, a thing as soulless as the Plague People. When I go before the tribes I will throw her pelt at their feet – be it wolf or tiger or human.’
Then the voice of Smiles Without Teeth boomed out, ‘She’s moving!’ and Akrit Stepped instantly, darting over, with his eyes shining in the last rays of the sunset.
Two horses had broken out from the camp, heading west. One small figure, one greater one, they were already moving at a gallop.
Akrit threw back his head and let out an air-rending howl, and then forced himself into his human shape, and into human thoughts. Undue haste now could mean defeat later, and Maniye might have more friends waiting for her – perhaps Tiger friends.
‘Weapons and armour, as much iron as you can carry, and leave the rest!’ he roared. ‘Let us be Iron Wolves, fast as you can, and then we shall run them down.’ No wolf could outrun a rider in the short term, but wolves ran on when laden horses tired, especially on the uneven ground of the Crown of the World.
In what seemed a few heartbeats, the warband was on the move, picking up the track of the horses, knowing them through their scent even though they had ridden off into the concealing dusk. There was the spoor of Broken Axe. There was that of the treacherous Maniye, plain to every nose. Silent and grim the pack went after them, murder on their minds.
Only after they had gone did Maniye herself come out from one of the Horse tents. She wore a quilted coat dyed in faded colours of red and mauve, a garish and much-darned garment. Her original coat was now fast receding on horseback, worn by a Horse girl only a little larger than herself.
The deception would not work for long, but she was hoping for Akrit’s fury to take him a long way from the Horse camp before he realized it. The riders had a good head start and were making off across open country. When their pursuers came close they would Step, and four unladen horses would outstrip all the wolves in the world. They had undertaken this task without complaint when Alladai had asked it of them. Hesprec had purchased a great deal of loyalty from the Horse Society, it seemed.
The rest of the camp was packing up now, ready to return to the trading post, where the Society would have the numbers to withstand the rage of the Winter Runners if need be. Alladai was dismissive about such a confrontation, and yet at the same time he was going among his people, enjoining them to be brave. Maniye worried for him.
But her path and his must separate for now. She was departing for the sacred place, this Path of Fallen Stones. She was going to confront the madness in her souls, to conquer it or to be conquered.
‘Are you ready?’ The new Hesprec was at her side, teeth gleaming as she smiled. The young energy that ran through her now was the most alien part of the Serpent’s transformation. Maniye was amazed at how much of the elder Hesprec’s character had simply been a factor of the years that burdened him, and that his rebirth had stripped away.
The others were already gathered. Broken Axe and Loud Thunder were talking quietly – she saw the Bear grin, a boyish expression that only emerged when he was happy and with his old friend. To see it was almost a relief: if the big man was to risk himself, it would at least be for Axe, and not for Maniye herself.
The three southerners stood apart, and Asmander’s eyes flicked between the two women as they approached.
‘Messenger,’ he said, and glanced at Maniye again, not quite guiltily. ‘I am here to serve you.’
Hesprec nodded. ‘Champion, always I am glad of your company, but do not confuse my path with your own.’
Asmander lowered his eyes. ‘When I was told you were dead, I knew despair.’ There was a wealth of pain in his voice, a sudden open wound, but Hesprec held a hand up to forestall him.
‘No more of that,’ she said. ‘Enough has been said. If Many Tracks will challenge you, then that is her business. What about your fellows though, Champion? Are they so happy to walk in your tracks?’
‘No,’ Venater snapped immediately, arms folded.
‘Quiet, you,’ Asmander told him. ‘You are my shadow until I set you free.’
‘And you, laughing sister?’ Hesprec asked.
Shyri smirked. ‘No sister of yours, old man, whatever face you now wear. But I am not yet bored of this river-boy and his stupidity. I will stay.’
Alladai came next. Hesprec clasped her little hands in front of her and he matched her.
‘May your road be smooth underfoot,’ he intoned, and then, ‘though that is a poor blessing for the Crown of the World.’
‘May the earth carry your burdens,’ Hesprec matched him, ‘and the Serpent’s back lead you home.’ She tugged her scarf tighter over her hair.
‘Many Tracks,’ Alladai called out. ‘We’ll meet again. Stay well.’
She carried his parting smile with her a long way, once they had set off.
44
Moving north again, a day’s travel took them to the sacred place of the Boar. At first they were following the river into the woods but then they broke off into tangled, cluttered country, hunting for the tracks they had been told of. Broken Axe sniffed out the scent of boars and led them to a narrow trail half overhung with the knotted branches of trees.
They should have moved faster, for even Loud Thunder could make a good pace when Stepped. Maniye had hoped to take the trail on wolf feet, to range alongside Broken Axe with her nose open for danger. When the time came, though, she could not do so. She took a deep breath to Step, and instantly those two souls were welling up like pus inside her, poisoned and corrupted, pressing and swelling against her. She foug
ht them down though they racked her body, forcing themselves up in a mouthful of bile and trying to make her vomit one or the other out. She was a prisoner of her human shape.
So they were limited to a human’s speed – and less even than that, for Maniye felt feverish, shivering. The fits came and went, each one tearing at the tenuous hold she was keeping on the world.
And the going grew harder and harder, the upward slope of the land weighing on her like stones. She was awash with sweat, her heart skipping and dancing to rhythms that seemed to ape those of the Tigers’ dance. There was a pressure within her head born of too many eyes trying to peer out from the same two sockets.
She did not stop, though. Even though she knew that she was slowing them all, she would not call out for aid, and she would not give in to herself. Whenever the ground tilted up beneath her, she went on all fours, climbing with human hands and feet where she would have leapt like a tiger not so long before. When the land was flatter, she stumbled and lurched along, with the wolf inside her snarling and clawing for the freedom of the far horizons.
But then the way was more steep than not, and the forest was rising upwards ahead of them, following the slope of a hill.
‘Hold!’ called the high voice of Hesprec. ‘Not another step until I’ve studied our way.’
‘Our way is up,’ Venater pointed out.
Maniye squinted upwards, and there, within her sight, rose a hill crowned with stones – and not just the three the Boar had mentioned. There was a clutch of enormous boulders, as though some giant spirit had plucked them from the mountains and set them down here where they had no business to be. She thought she saw more, too: odd suggestions of regular lines that might have indicated the work of man, but overtaken by enough time to bury them. And there were ridges running around the hillside that almost seemed like . . .
‘There’s a path,’ she croaked. ‘It goes round, round and round and up.’
Venater made a disgusted noise. ‘That’s not a path, not for people who want to get anywhere fast. We’ll go straight up.’
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 52
