Broken Axe was swift, as man or wolf. He danced and darted and yet never fell back. The blows of his enemies cut through the air past him, and the iron edge of his hatchet was quick to respond. Stone River watched one of the younger hunters try him – darting in on four feet, all snarls and defiance. Broken Axe met the youth in the same shape, twisting aside from his teeth to worry viciously at the back of the boy’s neck, flipping him over and sending him rolling down the hill. His next assailant got close and then Stepped to human, bringing the grey edge of a knife towards Broken Axe’s gut. Nimble as a warrior half his age, Axe got his shoulder beneath the upward-cutting blow and guided the attacker’s knife-hand away. His own weapon lashed in, not a killing strike but a powerful blow with the flat to his opponent’s temple. Stone River’s warrior collapsed to the ground, stunned or worse, while Broken Axe still stood.
And no wonder, for he was fighting in the shadow of the largest Cave Dweller that Akrit had ever seen. The huge Bear had not shifted an inch since the skirmish began. Three Wolves had gone up against him, with spears and axes and fangs, but all of them had fallen back limping and mauled. Arrows and throw darts had not even penetrated the monstrous creature’s hide. At the Bear’s feet were two dogs fighting with the coordination of warriors, lunging out from behind their master’s ankles to snap and bark and growl, a constant threat and distraction to any enemy that might dare come close.
On open ground, the entire pack could have descended on them, surrounded them and dragged them down – even the Bear. With the tumbled stones lending them a hard flank, the Wolves could not concentrate their numbers to finish the fight. Broken Axe stood in the Bear’s shadow, and to enter the Bear’s shadow meant broken bones.
Stone River had hesitated, on seeing that great mass of muscle and hair and claws blocking the way. He was not reckless; he wanted his followers to wear the monster down first – though there was precious little sign of that happening as yet.
‘Bear-killer,’ he snapped, and one of his warriors handed him the weapon. It was a favourite of the Wolves: long-hafted with an inward-curving iron blade honed to a razor edge, and terminating with a piercing point like a beak. The Horse called it a falx, but the Wolves knew it as the bear-killer. And killing a bear was what Akrit needed to accomplish.
But now it was the turn of Smiles Without Teeth, and if Akrit’s most faithful follower was smaller than the Bear, still he was the strongest of the Winter Runners. He loped up the slope with another couple of hunters to back him, stopping outside the Bear’s reach to survey his enemy.
Arms spread wide, the Cave Dweller reared up on his hind legs and bellowed, and Smiles seized his moment to dart in. He Stepped as he came close, dropping down to one knee and striking in with his axe, with the other two Wolves right behind him. Broken Axe was there too, though, lunging forwards even as Smiles’s blow went swinging in. Their hafts locked together, deflecting Smiles’s stroke up and away, but for a second Broken Axe was left exposed to the next hunter in.
Akrit hissed in triumph, envisaging the death-stroke before it happened. The dogs got in the way, though, snapping and leaping at the hunter so that he flinched away, striking too late.
The Wolf’s knife ripped into the side of one of the dogs, opening the wretched creature up. It was a meagre victory, but Akrit heard his follower cry out in triumph nonetheless. It was the last sound he made, though, for then the Bear saw what he had done. With a roar of fury the Cave Dweller came down on him, all his awful weight concentrated in his forepaws, splintering the man’s bones like kindling.
It will be me, then. Akrit hefted the bear-killer in one hand, then Stepped and was heading up the hill at a run. Before him he saw Smiles Without Teeth Step and go for the Bear’s legs with his teeth, forgetting that there was a human mind behind that mountain of animal power. The Cave Dweller Stepped to meet him, kicking him in the stomach hard enough to bowl him over, then swinging furiously with that great axe of his. The blow had been meant for Smiles, but the other hunter got in the way as he lunged at Broken Axe with a spear, not paying attention to anything else. The Dweller’s axe-head caught him across the shoulder and chest, shattering his arm and spinning him away.
Then Smiles was back. His iron coat had kept him from any real harm, just a solid bruise where the bigger man had kicked him. He had his axe upraised, ready to bring it down with all the power both mighty arms could manage.
He had always sought to win his battles with strength, had Smiles Without Teeth, and amongst the Winter Runners it had sufficed.
The Cave Dweller stepped back into his bear shape and slapped a claw-studded paw with crushing force under Smiles’s strike. The blow hooked the Wolf off his feet, hurling him away with the bear’s vast strength and sending him through the air like a stone, end over end. Just as the ground fell away from the hilltop, so Smiles Without Teeth seemed to fall away from the ground, falling upwards until the world remembered him and brought him down. From that impact, iron could not save him.
Stone River spared a brief second’s regret for the death of his friend, but then he was standing before the Bear himself, and that became all of his world.
Broken Axe had recognized him and was trying to close, but another pair of young Wolf hunters was at his heels, diverting the traitor’s attention as they snapped at him.
The Cave Dweller’s paws came thundering down, the huge beast truly fighting mad now. Stone River pushed himself aside, scrabbling against the slope of the hill, feeling the breath of that near-miss twitching the hairs of his pelt. Then he was a man again, the bear-killer blade of his falx sweeping in, too close and too soon, so that the beak-point barely grazed his foe’s back and the cutting edge glanced off that thick hide. Then the Bear was a man once more, towering over Stone River still, swinging the axe down in a wide arc.
Akrit Stepped to slip beneath that swing, got his teeth briefly into the Bear’s unprotected shin, then backed off. To lock his jaws would be to fix himself where his enemy could find him. The copper axe swung down again, its great weight of metal swooping through the air swift as a bird. Stone River tried to twist aside again, but the other dog was in his way, and the two of them went down in a snarling tangle of limbs. Furious and desperate, Stone River ripped at one of the animal’s forelegs, tearing a great bloody gash there. He knew the axe would be coming for him again, so he darted before the Cave Dweller, under the swing, Stepping as he came round.
He had wolf speed in a man’s shape just in that moment, and he threw it all into the strike, the arc of the falx cleaving the Cave Dweller in the hip. The cutting edge was foiled by the larded goat-fleeces the big man wore, but the point dug in deep, not a killing wound but a slowing one.
His enemy Stepped again, seeking the greater mass of the bear shape to protect him. Akrit was ready for him to rear up in anger and expose his belly. Instead the Cave Dweller stayed low, swiping at his tormentor and baring his great yellow teeth.
Akrit could see his path clearly now. He had fought men and he had fought tigers – yes, and other wolves – and once or twice he had fought bears, though none as massive as this. He swung again, making a great show of the powerful two-handed blow, and the bear – with its man’s mind – swatted the falx away.
Akrit took the force of that blow, but he took it as a gift, spinning the weapon about at its balance-point, so that it came in twice as fast from the other side. On all fours, the bear had only one paw at a time to act with, already overextended from its first parry.
Akrit put all his strength into that blow. Had a man ever before killed a bear this size with a single stroke? Perhaps he would be the first.
He felt the clean bite of the blade as it chopped the beast’s hide and slammed deep into the flesh beneath. He had been aiming for the neck, but his enemy’s movements or the fickle ground had left the weapon deep in the bear’s shoulder and back, the tip surely in amongst the creature’s ribs. The Cave Dweller roared again – but Akrit heard more pain than anger now, a desolat
e, terrible sound.
The beast reared up, and if Akrit had not been ready he would have lost his weapon. As it was, the Bear’s own motion ripped the falx out of his flesh, releasing a gout of blood that painted the rocks around them.
For a heartbeat Akrit stood in the Bear’s shadow, falx already arcing inwards again, and braced for the crushing impact of those claws. Then the Cave Dweller dropped back on to all fours again, with a whimper, and the falx’s course raked across his muzzle.
Stone River would have finished it, if not for the dog. The beast was at him without warning, leaping up to his chest, teeth hungry for his throat. Akrit Stepped, took the animal by the scruff of its neck and simply flung it away. He was already flinching from the Bear’s expected retaliation as he turned back, but the Cave Dweller was shambling backwards, lurching and limping. Instead, before him stood Broken Axe.
‘Go,’ the traitor shouted to his injured friend. Stone River found himself grinning, because he had defeated the Bear, because he was about to kill Broken Axe, and after that he would have one of his people open his daughter’s throat – and then none amongst the Wolves would ever doubt his strength.
And Broken Axe’s eyes passed from Stone River to the eleven Wolves who could still fight, and he nodded philosophically.
‘So be it,’ he said. ‘I call you out, Stone River. I challenge you.’
Akrit shook his head. ‘We will tear you apart, traitor.’
‘Who is the traitor?’ Broken Axe called out. ‘Here we stand, two men born of the Winter Runners, and which has betrayed his people? What are my wrongs? That I have gone my own way, and helped a girl who chose to do the same.’
‘And what do you suggest are mine?’ Akrit knew he should just strike, but he wanted Broken Axe to know that he was wrong before he died.
‘You have placed yourself above the Wolf,’ Broken Axe declared, and loud enough for all to hear. ‘You have followed a dream where the Crown of the World was in your shadow, and you have ever sought to make it real. You sought to rule.’
‘To rule in the Wolf’s name!’ Akrit snapped, feeling the tension stretch the moment until surely the pack would flow past him to bring Broken Axe down for his killing stroke.
‘In your name. In your name you have shed blood at the Stone Place. In your own name you have sought to dig up the war with the Tiger. You have ever sought to be a taller man than you are, and to do so you have piled up the bodies of others. That is not the Wolf’s Shadow you cast, it is your own.’
‘Bring him down!’ Akrit snapped.
The tide of grey bodies . . . they milled and moved about, but did not advance. Those in wolf shape whined and kept their heads low, and the men would not meet his eyes. If Smiles Without Teeth had been there to set an example . . . But Smiles was dead.
‘You are not fit,’ Broken Axe said, each word heavy as a stone. ‘I challenge you. For the leadership of the Winter Runners, I challenge you.’
Maniye kept searching from hill to hill and yet, whenever she turned back, there was the Wolf or there the Tiger, the twin poles between which her life was strung, picked out by the light of an unseen moon. Between them, the landscape of gods and monsters was shrouded by eternal night, denied to her. If Hesprec spoke the truth, here was the country that stretched from Wolf to Eagle, from Tiger to Serpent, to Asmander’s Swift Lizard. In that dark there were great beasts of time and legend waiting to gift her with their souls. She felt she was tethered, even as her father had once leashed her. Her realm was just a small circle of light in that great midnight landscape. She could not break free from her heritage. And within her she could feel her souls uncoiling, pressing against the walls of their prison. This was their place far more than it was hers. Here was where their strength arose from. Here they were stronger than she was. Once that understanding filtered through to them, she would not be able to keep them tied within her. They would break free from her, break away from her, and then . . .
And then there was noise and shouting, all too close, intruding from the world outside so that she lost her image of the Godsland, lost that sense of the great spirits standing close by. The wheeling stars drew together to become the fire, and she jerked away from it, feeling the ground tremble as though the whole hill was stirring.
But it was not the hill. It was Loud Thunder. The huge man sat slumped by the fire, his skin and the fleece of his armour glistening with his own blood. His face was clenched up like a fist but, when he met her eyes, he still tried to smile.
‘He’s a fast one, your father,’ he murmured, just a rumbling in his chest. ‘And my Mother will not be pleased with me.’
Maniye leapt up and went over to him, but the sheer scale of his body – and his wounds – dumbfounded her. She did not know what could possibly be done. It was like trying to heal the land itself.
‘Back to the fire!’ Hesprec yelled at her. ‘Maniye, we’ll have no other chance than this. You have to find the Godsland again!’
‘But he’s hurt!’ So obvious a statement, and yet what else could she say?
Hesprec shook her head frantically. ‘If not now, then you’re lost. Maniye, please!’
That shadow-landscape was still there, in the back of Maniye’s mind. And yet Loud Thunder was right here, with Yoff whining and sniffing at him, the dog as helpless in his misery as she was, and . . .
She sensed the vast breadth of the Godsland. For a moment she was falling back into it as both her souls tore at her. Vast and without boundaries, the tether fraying that had kept her at the feet of her totems. Her legs lost their strength and she collapsed, knotting her hands in Loud Thunder’s goat hides.
Hesprec was still calling her name, but when she tried to find the Serpent priestess, all she saw were those stars, that land.
‘I . . . I see,’ she got out. ‘I am there, and I . . .’ She was moving away from the Wolf, crossing towards the Tiger, passing through the valleys of wolfkin, moving into the fiefdoms beyond. There was the vast shadow of the Bear, a hill atop a hill. She could see all the shapes in between, the succession of beasts that she could pass through, in order to turn a wolf into a bear, a bear into a wolf, a wolf into a tiger . . .
‘You must go on without me,’ came Hesprec’s whispered voice. ‘But I understand now. I will help you. I will help Loud Thunder too, if he can be helped. Trust me. Find your new totem.’
And then, from a greater distance still, the distantly heard summons of the Serpent girl: ‘Laughing Girl! Come here now!’
Can I choose the Bear as my champion? But Maniye knew she could not, for it had its people already, living and dying and being reborn: animal to human, human to animal in a constant round. She must find some great warrior-spirit in the space of Bear and Wolf and Tiger that would make her its avatar.
And she searched and she searched, and the tether was back, its cord stretched longer, and yet still she was leashed, and what time was there, if Loud Thunder had been taken from the fight?
And the world opened up for her.
Perhaps there was a tether still that would have kept her from the lands under the Eagle’s wings, or the lazy shadow-river where Old Crocodile basked, but abruptly she was let loose into the land beyond, a land of a thousand thousand god-spirits, each one showing its claws and sharp fangs to her. She was in the great empire of the killers, where before she had been bound to the little village domains of a mere handful. The profusion of shapes about her bewildered her. There were shadows of beasts that never were, or were no more. There were bears greater than the Bear; wolves that doubled and redoubled the Wolf; there were cats that overshadowed the Tiger, with teeth longer than falx-blades. And there were hyenas as great as horses, gathered next to Shyri’s spotted and high-shouldered, laughing god.
Asmander watched the Tigers approach, sliding in shadow up the hillside. He had Stepped to his human shape and calmed his breathing, feeling the familiar grip of the maccan in his hands. As they picked up speed, closing the distance, he rediscovered his wing
ed soul, spreading his great vanes so that he became the cloud that blotted out the sun, his shadow like an eclipse, screaming at them in his hoarse, harsh voice. And then there was the Champion, crouching atop the rocks, exuding its invincible confidence, master of all the killers of the earth.
And they slowed, not one of them wanting to be the first, and when they had slowed enough, they stopped. Probably they thought they were still too far off for him to pounce on them, though they were wrong.
There were some javelins hurled then. He danced aside from two of them, then one came in that was sent high – enough to land close to where Hesprec was. And so Asmander sprang up, Stepping to catch it in human hands and cast it back, then landing back on the Champion’s scythe-clawed feet. His return throw had been wild and awkward, but he had still made an impression.
Then one of them was suddenly human, a stern and handsome woman armoured in bronze plates, an axe in one hand and a knife in the other. She had about her a sense of command, and before that solemn gaze Asmander regretted his showmanship, and Stepped so that he could hear her with human ears.
‘I am come for my daughter,’ the Tiger Queen told him.
Asmander made an awkward face. ‘I know that.’
‘Why stand in my way, Black Man? Why do you harm my people? What is this to you?’
‘It’s complicated,’ he admitted, keeping a narrow eye on where those people of hers might be fanning out to. ‘I don’t care for your daughter; I would throw her to you myself. But she is beloved of one I respect, so I am here.’
In the Tiger’s face he thought he saw a spark of pride that, even in defiance, her daughter had found strong allies. What she said finally, though, was, ‘I am not afraid of you. Take as many shapes as a sorcerer, and I am still not afraid of you.’
It was not what he had expected from her. It was not what her followers had expected either, to judge by the sudden uncertainty amongst them. Asmander racked his brains to remember what he knew of the woman. What had Maniye said . . . ?
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 55
