The Wolf grimaced. ‘How long do Snake rituals take in your land?’
‘It varies. Sometimes they are over in as little as three days.’
‘And your big friend’s gone.’
‘He had pressing business elsewhere.’
‘Do you southerners ever give a straight answer to anything?’ Broken Axe asked exasperatedly, eyes still fixed on the warband below.
‘Yes. I am here and I will fight, for Hesprec and for you,’ Asmander told him flatly.
He earned a curt nod. Perhaps there might have been further words, but just then Shyri was calling out, ‘I see tigers, many tigers coming!’
Asmander attempted a brittle smile. ‘So: everyone is here. We can start now.’
45
Maniye and Hesprec sat in the shadow of the stones, in this spirit-heavy place, with a fire burning between them and with Asmander’s glyph-carved pebbles arranged between the bases of the monoliths, the standing one and the two fallen. Hesprec had covered Maniye’s hair with a shawl of bright-dyed Horse linen. She had mixed up an ink of charcoal and water, and had dabbed it on Maniye’s face, tracing the dotted path of coils there, making them sisters, light and dark. And Maniye told herself that she could feel the hill shift and shudder minutely beneath her as the Serpent rose within the earth, summoned from its unthinkably distant southern haunts, from its sunning places alongside the warm river. For the coils of the Serpent ran everywhere – had she not felt its presence and seen its rainbow scales in dreams? She might dare to hope so if it would help her now.
‘You and I, we will go on a journey,’ Hesprec told her softly.
Maniye was aware of her other friends moving – spreading out around the hilltop, sudden tension in them. As though she was truly connected via the coils in the earth, she knew that Akrit Stone River was nearby, and that Joalpey the Tiger Queen was close. The jaws that had been gaping for so long were preparing to snap shut, and she was where the teeth would meet.
‘There is a landscape known only to the wisest,’ the Serpent girl whispered, ‘in whose number, of course, I count myself.’ Her voice was slow and rhythmic, becoming almost hypnotic. ‘It is not a land of rivers and marshes or of deserts and plains, or even of cold northern mountains and the jagged teeth of broken rocks. It is a landscape of gods. That is where we must travel to petition for your soul.’
And the yowling of the Tiger cried out its warning from the trees, chilling Maniye’s blood. She shivered and made as if to jump up, but Hesprec reached about the fire and caught her wrist.
‘You must listen to nothing and nobody save for me. If our friends fail, then we will be caught and killed here, because our own minds will be far away, gone in a direction that nobody else can ever follow. Our souls will be with the gods, and whether that is a good thing or a bad depends on how you comport yourself before them. So you must attend to me or you will be lost, understand?’
Maniye nodded.
Hesprec’s eyes flicked sideways. ‘The Stone Place would have been better,’ she sighed. ‘Two or three could have stood off an army on that causeway. Here, well, we are sheltered and the hill is steep. Perhaps our handful will keep them back for long enough.’
There were raised voices now: the sound of men working themselves up for the fight, swearing the oaths and boasts that prefigured bloodletting. Maniye forced the sounds from her head and looked straight into Hesprec’s copper eyes.
‘Now I will tell you something of this land we must travel to, and thus you will see it in your mind and let it become real to you, and this shall become our steed to take us there.’ The Serpent priestess was still gripping her hand. ‘Are you ready to see your gods for what they truly are?’
Matt and Yoff were very still, very focused. There was none of the running about and yapping that might have been expected of them. Their master was going to war, and they understood it. Their eyes were pinned on the enemy down below.
Loud Thunder wore his stinking armour of grease-hardened hides, surely enough to deter the noses of any number of wolves. His great axe, with its weighty copper head, rested over his shoulder as he peered down at the Winter Runners. Beside him, Broken Axe seemed a frail figure, even with an iron hatchet in his hand.
‘Down there they look like little ants,’ the big man grunted. ‘I think they won’t look much bigger when they get here, eh?’
Broken Axe couldn’t raise a smile.
The Wolf pack was at the treeline, scaling the hill, ignoring the twisting path and scrabbling directly up the steep side, using human hands and feet. It was heavy going for them, especially those wearing coats of iron. Loud Thunder looked around speculatively, hauled up a decent-sized stone in both hands and bounced it down the hillside with a roar. The Wolves scattered to either side of it, but when they started up again, their ascent was slower, and they spread themselves out more.
Another few stones failed to hit any of them, and then they were past halfway up, whereupon Stone River halted and shaded his eyes, looking up at them.
‘Broken Axe, I see you there,’ he called out, and one by one the other Wolves paused, waiting. They were just outside the distance where they might have rushed the two defenders.
‘It needs no good eyes for that,’ Axe replied, still weighing his hatchet in his hand.
‘Shatters Oak is dead.’
‘I saw it,’ Broken Axe conceded.
‘It was she who wanted your blood. I have claim to it, for you’ve betrayed me and the Wolf. But I’ll let you go – and your fat friend, too,’ Stone River told him. ‘You’re not why I’m here. I can forget the bad blood between us. You’ve made a mistake. All men make mistakes. Wise men seek to amend them.’
‘I did make a mistake,’ Broken Axe admitted.
‘Go then. Mend that error of yours. The girl is nothing to you.’
‘That’s not the mistake I meant.’ Broken Axe took a deep breath. ‘My mistake was not calling you out, ten years ago and more. How far have you chased, just to catch one frightened girl, Stone River? We both know you have no claim on her. Yet because she has defied you, you cannot walk away. That is your mistake, not mine. My mistake was turning my back on the man you became back in the war.’
‘The war with the Tiger,’ the chief of the Winter Runners echoed. ‘You don’t remember how it truly was.’
‘I remember enough,’ Broken Axe replied harshly. ‘Now come, if you’re coming. Or go.’
He was almost too slow; he had been focused too much on Stone River, but a handful of the Wolves on either side had been inching up the hillside, drawing slowly nearer. Only Loud Thunder’s roar saved him as the Cave Dweller Stepped, bulking out into a bear that seemed to blot out the sun. Then there were three warriors clambering for him, fighting to get close enough to Step and close the last of the distance on wolf paws.
Maniye was in a shadowed land of undulating hills that fell away in every direction she looked. Above her was the night sky, but the constellations were not those she recognized. Instead the stars drifted past one another, hunting the sky for . . . she could not say what for, but there was something threatening about those mobile motes of gleaming light. She was terribly afraid that they were hunting for a way in.
‘This is the Godsland,’ came Hesprec’s soft voice. ‘This is the secret known only to my people, and some few others. This is what we saved.’
‘Saved? From your Oldest Kingdom?’
‘Before that, even. We took this into our hearts and carried it away from the lands we had lost to the Plague People. And then we burned all the land behind us, so that they could not follow, and the sea rushed in to fill it. This is the land of souls, Maniye Many Tracks. When we die, this is where our souls return, and whence they depart to be born again. This is the heart of our dream.’
Maniye knew she still sat atop the hill, with the three stones about her. She knew that what she saw was built from her own imagination and Hesprec’s hypnotic voice. And yet, with her eyes closed, she saw it: it was
as real to her as the world of grass and trees and the sun which she had left behind.
‘You are not alone,’ Hesprec told her, and she realized it was true.
Close beside her was a shadow standing under that restless dark sky. Eyes like green gems regarded her imperiously, and fire rippled down the great beast’s flanks in shimmering stripes. A tiger. The Tiger. The suggestions, the mere shadows and breath she had seen within the Shining Halls, were nothing to it. Seeing the beast before her, standing so close, she could barely breathe. Its scale and magnificence exerted a pressure in her mind. Away from it, a thousand half-seen reflections seemed to recede in all directions, mirror-tigers, each one of them less and less like the original as it fell further away.
It regarded her imperiously, and distantly she heard Hesprec ask her what she saw, and her own voice stammer out an answer.
‘Look beyond. Find another hilltop. What do you see?’
To think was to move her gaze, to look was to travel. The hilly land was crowded, she now saw. Every hilltop had its master, surrounded by myriad shades of itself. From the feet of the Tiger, now she found herself before the Wolf. A stare composed of moon-silver pinned her, crouched almost between its paws. The gape of its teeth could have swallowed the sun.
‘Good,’ came Hesprec’s dry tone in her ear. ‘But, tell me, what lies beyond and between? Whose domain is nearby?’
‘You must know.’
‘I cannot know. The Serpent’s lair is far from there. You have gone to your own place in the Godsland. I may not travel there. Maniye, listen to me. Because you saved my life not once but twice, I will tell you the secret of the world. I will tell you what no other priest or chief or sorcerer would wish you to learn. It is power, this knowledge, if you can only use it. But then again, all knowledge is power if it is not wasted . . .
‘So tell me, what do you see near the Wolf? Turn your back on him and search the nearest hills.’
‘I see . . .’ There was a lean, half-starved shape looking back at her from the next peak, like Wolf’s thin shadow. ‘There is Coyote there.’
‘Of course, Coyote that would be Wolf if he could,’ Hesprec confirmed, amused. ‘But further, look further.’
‘I see . . .’ There was an animal beyond, something like a big-eared dog with a spotted hide, but quite unlike the creature that Shyri Stepped to. Maniye described it uncertainly, but it seemed to make sense to Hesprec.
‘That is the hunting dog of the Plains. His people were Wolf tribe once, before they were driven south. Find yourself at the feet of the Tiger once more. Surely there will be something there . . .’
She sought out the Tiger, thinking that it must be on the next hill, or the next. But when she found it, she had lost the Wolf, skipping over a vast gulf that lay between them. The hillsides about the Tiger were strewn with other cats, large and small. She saw Lion watching her with haughty stare, and the sly, cruel smile of Jaguar, and others still, but none to her purpose, not even the great sword-toothed cat that was the Lion’s Champion.
‘Where is the creature Asmander Steps to? Where is his Killing Claw?’ she demanded. ‘You must know the path that leads there.’
‘No, no, no,’ Hesprec broke in. ‘That is not the way of the Godsland. Open your mind to me and hear my words. The Godsland is the land of the possible. It is the landscape of every animal that is and ever was, perhaps every beast that there could be. Travel from the Tiger and you shall reach first those beasts that are its brothers and sisters and cousins. Travel on from them, and you find totems like them, but less like Tiger, you see? So travel the land between Tiger and Wolf and tell me what you find. Surely there is some unknown shape lurking there that will be your Champion!’
And Maniye walked that land, hill to hill to hill, and she saw cat-likes and wolf-likes, and many shapes in between that were like nothing she knew. But many of them were small, more hunters of mice than of men. There were no giants, no savage killers that she could find, and between the two halves of her being was that great yawning darkness, where she could find nothing at all.
Asmander crouched atop the boulder-strewn side of the hill. He could hear the voices of Axe and Stone River shouting at each other. Perhaps that was the tradition in the Crown of the World, before a formal fight. He’d heard the same went for the Plains.
‘Perhaps you should insult them,’ he suggested.
Shyri shrugged. She had pulled out some armour of layered linen, which had been folded almost flat inside her pack, but now hung on her in starched panels: a cuirass and plates hanging down to her knees. To his eyes, it made her seem younger and more fragile.
‘Insult who?’ she asked.
Asmander had been noticing shifting movement at the treeline for a while and, even as he opened his mouth, he heard the calls of the great cats to one another. He narrowed his eyes, watching for that first move, wondering if he would leap down amongst them, or if he would let them come to him.
Then Shyri yelled a cackling battle cry, and dropped past him with her axe descending. He heard the furious snarl of a tiger from right beneath his feet and realized the enemy were already upon him; that the Shadow Eaters had ghosted right up to the stones without him seeing.
He did not hesitate, jumping down from the boulders and Stepping halfway, so that what landed before a startled Tiger warrior was the Champion, rattling its quills and shrieking like death. His opponent was a man, a cat, then a man again, thrusting at him with a spear, but Asmander leapt at him, springing high over the lunge and coming down across its shaft, shattering the weapon and knocking its wielder to the ground. There were more coming at him already, just flurries of movement in his peripheral vision, so he kicked the disarmed spearman hard in the stomach, catching him just as the man Stepped to his tiger shape and bowling the striped cat down the hill.
Shyri had her bone-crushing teeth about a tiger’s foreleg, shaking her spotted head back and forth as it raked its other claws down her side. Then both of them had Stepped away, the Plains woman’s axe sweeping past the northern warrior’s face as the Tiger retreated, ruined arm held close.
Another woman came for Shyri with fluid movements like dancing water, cutting at her with the curved bronze edge of a knife. The Laughing woman skidded away, losing a foot of hillside, but then Stepped and went for the throat, teeth snapping just short of her target before finding herself facing off against a tiger considerably bigger than she was.
Asmander was about to go to her aid when he saw that one of the Tigers had gained the top of the rocks, with nothing between her and their quarry but a jump down. With a hiss of anger he took three quick steps and leapt, clearing the vertical distance in a single bound and landing off balance beside his enemy. She flinched away, but a moment later she was on him, claws hooking at his hide and her jaws gaping wide. She was going for his throat, but all she managed was to graze the flesh over one shoulder before he sank his own teeth into her. She Stepped, using the shifting of shapes to twist from between his jaws: this was the Tiger priestess who had led the hunt against them the time before. Then she had got her knife into him, just a glancing line of pain down his ribs. In an instant he had followed her, striking down with the stone points of the maccan. She swayed out of the way of the blow, sliding to one side in a move that put the point of her blade at his gut. Striking down, he caught her forearm with the heel of his off-hand, ramming the pommel of her weapon into her leg and trapping her arm against her own body. Before he could use the leverage she had pushed a hand into his face, almost toppling him from the rock. She was a tiger in the next instant, and he was the Champion again.
Shyri was facing three – two big cats keeping her at bay, and a man beyond them with a fistful of javelins. They had all dropped some way down the hill, closer to the treeline.
The priestess swatted at him a couple of times with a paw, trying to put him off balance, but suddenly he had no time to fight properly. He struck out with his feet, not trying for a disembowelling stroke with hi
s claws, but simply kicking the tiger hard under the ribs, spilling her from atop the rock and hopefully winding her. Then he had leapt out into space.
He let his mind fall into the Champion’s well of calm, reaching out for a feeling, a way of experiencing the world . . .
The breath leapt in his lungs. His great leathery wings caught the air and he shrieked for the sheer joy of it, the hideous cry of the shape that Hesprec had sent against the Eyriemen. He dropped onto the tigers like a monster from the old stories and they scattered, darting back for the trees.
‘Back to the rocks,’ Shyri yelled – there might have been some gratitude in her eyes, but there was no time for it to form proper words. A moment later and they were both Stepped and running again. There was a cry from Maniye – he heard it clearly, not of shock or pain but a wail of lament. For a terrible moment Asmander thought that Hesprec must be hurt. Even as they scaled to the base of the rocks, though, he heard the Serpent priestess’s voice calling out.
‘Laughing Girl, come here now!’
Shyri, human once more, met Asmander’s lizard eyes.
‘That’s not a good plan,’ she declared.
Asmander forced himself back to humanity, though the Champion resisted him, knowing bloodshed was coming and wanting its share. ‘You must go,’ he got out.
‘But—’
‘The Serpent calls, and you must go. That is how it is.’
‘For you, maybe.’
‘Shyri, please.’
She looked frightened, but not for herself. Fearing what his own face might show in answer to that, he let the Champion take hold of him again, assuming his post atop the rocks once more, watching Shyri weave her way around to reach the others.
The Tiger were coming out from the trees again, only a handful, but there was only one of him.
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The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 54
