The woman just shook her head, and Effey pretended not to understand her, speaking over her whenever she tried to plead and beg, goading and goading until suddenly she mimed revelation.
‘Oh, it’s this!’ she exclaimed, as if seeing the five-year-old for the first time. ‘Of course you can’t run with this dragging behind you!’ And she laughed, and Shyri saw the woman relax slightly. Something kicked inside her then: the knowledge of how this would look to any of her new friends. Even to my own people surely? We were never like this. But who knew what her own Malikah was up to, off in the west? We tell ourselves we were wronged and it gives us the right to take our vengeance however we want, and on everyone.
Effey stopped laughing and skewered the child on her spear. Moments later the only sound was the Boar woman’s keening cry of grief and loss.
‘Now.’ All the laughter was gone from Effey. ‘Run, piglets. Give Hyena something to hunt. Or we will kill the other little piglet.’
There were words in Shyri’s throat, words the Hyena would not have owned to. She wanted them to stop. But if she so much as spoke, they would hunt her along with the Boar. Effey was right about her. She was a poor daughter of Hyena.
The pack had their spears out, and were pushing the Boar stumbling beyond the huts, out into the open grasslands. The old man broke first, abruptly just a hairy back rushing off. The other two followed, the boy already falling behind his mother. In a heartbeat the pack were all Stepped and spreading out, and Shyri saw the plan immediately. They were not just hunting, they were herding. Ahead, spreading its deathly light across the grass, was the luminous domain of the Plague People. Effey was curious, perhaps, or she reckoned she would enjoy the spectacle. Or she had chosen to make an end to her captives in a way that would torment their souls instead of just their bodies.
Something twisted in Shyri that had been lodged there a long time. To her surprise it felt like Hyena speaking to her after all. Not Save the innocents, but Take no more of this.
* * *
When Maniye heard the screaming she thought it must be some victims of the Plague People, that they had learned how to take human prisoners without driving their minds away and making animals of them. In the next heartbeat she knew otherwise: the voice yelling itself hoarse and waking all the camp was familiar to her – more so now it broke into a high gabbling of alien language. It was one of the two curious Plague People: the male.
She was standing in her cell, trying to see past the entrance to the tent. The guard was craning out to see too. Past him there was a shadowy gathering and she heard dozens of their stuttering voices raised in shock and horror.
Good.
Then Hesprec uncoiled from beneath the cell and Stepped, becoming a girl with a sharp flint blade in her hand. She dug it into the side of the cell and made hard work of cutting the silk, one eye always on the guard. Maniye watched her work and despaired. This was their chance, and it would surely last only a few breaths, but even flint’s keen edge struggled against the Plague People’s work. The blade was just not strong enough; it would take Hesprec forever to cut a hole large enough for Maniye to creep through.
But that was not her plan. Instead she tore a gash just a few fingers wide and then pushed the knife through so that it fell at Maniye’s feet.
Their eyes met and Maniye understood. She took up the knife, and let the Champion rise up within her, bulking out into its great burly bear-dog body, its boundless strength held in hooked claws now sharp and hard as knapped stone.
Hesprec was already darting for the guard, like a woman running towards her own death. Maniye rose up on her hind legs and raked her foreclaws down the wall of her prison, throwing all her weight and power against the unnatural material, feeling it resist and resist and then suddenly part like the gossamer it resembled, unseaming from top to bottom and letting her spill out into the tent with a thud.
The guard whirled, already fumbling for his weapon, and Hesprec lunged for him. Maniye was lumbering forwards, seeing only a slight River girl with an empty hand thrust at the Plague warrior. Then Hesprec was a serpent, her hand the snake’s gaping jaws latching onto the man’s arm, fangs scraping at his armour. Her narrow body whipped about his throat, and then it was not so narrow, growing and growing as coils thicker than a man’s leg wound round about the hollow man’s body. Maniye saw the loop about his throat tighten, cutting off his cry of pain or warning. His eyes bulged and his face darkened, and she heard ribs shatter as Hesprec constricted with every breath he took.
Maniye Stepped to her wolf shape and padded silently to the entryway. There was still a great deal of fuss, and a half-dozen of the Plague warriors were trying to bring something out from one of the larger tents. Many others had gathered, and she saw a shudder pass through them as they laid eyes on it. Despite the precariousness of her position, she found an unlooked-for curiosity rising in her. What can horrify the Plague People?
‘Come.’ It was Hesprec whispering in her ear, and she knew they should just leave, as swiftly as possible. She slipped from the tent into the night, hoping that the noses and eyes of the enemy were no better in darkness than any human’s.
Hesprec, now a ribbon-thin snake again, slithered past her and Stepped in the tent’s shadow, eyes glinting. And she’s right, we have to go, but a thorn jabbed Maniye even as she thought it. I am leaving too much here. There was plenty she wanted to be rid of, but some things belonged to her. Some things she had earned.
Without explanation she turned and slipped away into the camp, looking for that other tent, the house of dead things where she had first awoken. That was where the curious Plague People kept the human things they had found, and not just the corpses.
She paused at the threshold, scenting the bitter stink of whatever stopped the piecemeal bodies rotting. A stab of the old fear cut into her, as though her wound was back, but she shook herself from nose to tail and threw it off. Then she was inside, nosing through the reeking exhibits for that subtle scent that only the Wolf knew.
Her coat. She had been wearing it when they took her, but not when she woke. Swiftly she hunted across the nooks and platforms of the place, hoping and hoping. She had hung on the hooks for that coat. It was her inheritance, the one gift she would take from her true father.
The faintest scent of metal came to her amongst such a cacophony of other odours, but she felt it was her Wolf soul that truly let her find it. It had been discarded in a heap of broken arrows and bronze knives – the greatest secret of the Wolf just a commonplace trinket to the Plague People. Quickly she Stepped and shrugged her way into it, shivering at the cold metal. When she turned, Hesprec was at her back, wide-eyed and anxious to be gone.
She spared one thought for the children. They also represented something the Plague People had stolen from her own. Probably she could find them in the camp, but she could never have freed them. And perhaps some would already be too far gone, and not want to escape. It was a cold thought.
So, a Wolf once more, she darted from the camp, and stopped. The great gathering of the Plague People had begun to disperse, but the curious man and a handful of others were left there, standing before . . . something. The sight of it brought Maniye’s gorge up, and she knew she was feeling a kindred revulsion to that of the Plague People themselves. It was a pooled thing, a malformed, lumpy thing that glistened wetly in the pale lamplight. Parts of it were shiny brown shell, and here and there joined legs jutted from it, crooked and useless. Other parts of it showed dark skin, and she saw a hand there, though two of its fingers had become a barbed claw. A bulbous compound eye glittered from the midst of the amorphous mass, but it was set in part of a human face.
The other Plague People were angry, disgusted, arguing fiercely with the curious man, but he – some different emotion had him in its jaws. He was jabbing a hand at the hideous mass and though he was plainly shaken and saddened, there was a weird exultation in him as well.
‘Maniye,’ hissed Hesprec, and she knew the Serpent
was right. They had overstayed their welcome. Even as she took off, she heard a shout from across the camp and caught a fleeting glimpse of white eyes set in a grey face. Their priest had sniffed her out and was calling for pursuit.
A thin scaled body looped itself about her and Maniye ran with all the speed a wolf can muster, the presence of Hesprec reminding her of all the other times the two of them had run from danger’s mouth just before the jaws closed on them.
16
Loud Thunder’s problem was that he couldn’t stand his own war host. Part of this was that his war host couldn’t stand his war host either, but he had already chipped away at that problem until all those sharp edges between the Tiger and the Wolf, and between the Wolf and everybody else, had been smoothed away just enough. They would never be friends but they could be foes of the Plague People together.
Did that mean that they marched uncomplainingly south along the bank of the Sand Pearl? It did not. Tribe did not war against tribe, but individual most certainly had grievances against individual, and these grievances hunted up and down the river looking for a pair of ears to trouble. And if Loud Thunder was present, those ears would be his.
And his own people were worst of all. Of course they were! They couldn’t even live with each other, let alone anyone else. Loud Thunder sympathized deeply, but when the Bear fought, even if it was no more than shoving, breakable things got broken. Things like the people of smaller tribes.
And so he went ahead with the vanguard as much as he could. Sometimes he was called to speak to Mother, which meant he had to wade back through the great migrating mass of the host to her sled. Mother rode in a sled; nobody else did. It was a privilege that not the proudest warrior or most august priest had argued. She was hauled in it by eight of the Bear, and everyone said what a grand honour that was, except for the expressions of whoever was doing the hauling which said something else entirely.
When he was called to Mother, he generally had to wait, ambling along beside her sled as others of the Wise got to talk to her first. Waiting, he could at least steal glances at Kailovela as she sat in Mother’s shadow or walked along with her child in her arms. Her look for him was wary, but sometimes she smiled. The smiles hurt him, because a part of him always wanted to take them in its teeth and run with them, far further than they were meant to go. She smiles at me; that means she’s mine. He could at least recognize the fallacy in that. But it was a smile, nonetheless.
He had been to Mother yesterday, answering her questions about the land ahead, and who had joined the war host. That was the other thing – they were still taking on new warriors. Another band of Tigers had come in yesterday, and a few Swift Back hunters, and another half-dozen Horse who’d fled Where the Fords Meet. And they always lost a few too – some sick or hurt, some just too far from home and losing their nerve. Loud Thunder knew that as war leader he should do something about this, but he did not have the heart to. Most of those with him had already fought the Plague People once, on the Seal coast. The memory of that battle made him shudder even now; plenty had not come back from it. Let the chiefs and priests keep their people on the path. He would not be shepherd to every hunter who found one more step south one step too many.
In the vanguard, he could almost pretend none of it was there. So long as he didn’t look back, he didn’t need to acknowledge the great tail of warriors he was dragging behind him, stretching back along the river. They Stepped to move swiftly, so he really was trying to herd wolves and boars, deer and tiger and bear. If he didn’t look left he didn’t have to acknowledge the fleet of rafts that the Horse had built to carry everyone’s tents and tools and baggage. (Could Mother not have ridden on a raft? No, apparently that was not dignified enough.)
The vanguard changed constantly. Loud Thunder would go to one tribe or another and give them the honour, and then two score or so of warriors would run forwards with him, to become the point of the long twisting spear that they were bringing south to stick in the Plague People. Ahead of those two score, another score or so of the best scouts would already be moving through the countryside, keeping a wise eye out for any sign of the enemy.
Now some of the scouts were coming back with company: at first Thunder thought it was more Wolves, but when they Stepped they had the coppery tone of Plainslanders. There were a dozen of them, mostly men, with the look of people who had travelled far and slept little.
He listened to their story for just long enough to understand how bad things had become. The Plainsfolk had already fought the Plague People, who were apparently pushing deep into the Plains. Fought, and lost.
Only these Plainsfolk, he told himself. There are plenty more to the west. We just need to join up with them somehow. Part of his mind was running through what he’d say to the Eyriefolk – sending their Crow out in all directions to find the limits of the land the Plague had already touched. The rest was with his mouth, telling the Plainsfolk to come with him, because Mother would need to know.
They were resting one night out of two, a pace that was punishing but possible. When they got closer to the enemy, Thunder knew they’d have to slow to give people time to catch their breath. Every day spent travelling was another day for the foe to grow stronger. He saw in his mind’s eye their web walls expanding outwards from Where the Fords Meet, creeping like a fungus across the world and bringing the devouring Terror that was the enemy’s greatest weapon.
Of course, the news from the south was all through the camp by nightfall, and nobody was happy about it. The young and the brash cursed the Plains warriors for being weak, and Thunder had been ready for that. What surprised him was that only the young and the brash were saying it – and of them, mostly those who had not fought on the coast. The mood amongst the rest was grim. Everybody remembered how hard it was to fight the Plague, with their lethal weapons, their sea monster, their flying ship and their fear.
That night, the two Coyote, Two Heads Talking and his mate, Quiet When Loud, came to his fire. He was old enough to have grey in his beard, a ragged-looking wanderer who was also probably a priest – with the Coyote it was always hard to tell. She was younger, and rounder now, with a child swelling her belly. She rode with Mother a lot, or on the rafts, but she could Step and run with the best of them when she needed to.
‘I know all the stories about what happens when Coyote comes to your hearth,’ Thunder remarked, nonetheless beckoning them forward, making them his guests. ‘I don’t want to wake up and find out you stole all my teeth while I slept.’
‘It wasn’t stealing,’ said Two Heads, who knew everyone’s Coyote stories. ‘Wolf agreed to it in the wager, he just didn’t realize that was what the wager meant. And besides, he got them back eventually.’
Thunder managed a smile at that, but it was short lived. ‘What bad news are you bringing?’
Quiet When Loud grimaced. ‘The Wild Dog that you brought, their words are guests at everyone’s fire.’
‘That much I know.’
‘The worst sort of guests,’ she went on. ‘Fear is all through the camp before we even see the enemy.’
‘They’ll get over it,’ Thunder decided.
‘They will,’ Two Heads agreed. ‘But when it’s darkest, they’ll look for something to burn.’
They told him what they had heard, the words flowing from camp to camp like poison, and his heart sank. One more problem he should have foreseen.
‘Mother won’t allow it.’
But the Coyote just looked at him, and he knew that Mother would expect him to deal with it before it came to trouble her.
The only thing that remained was to see who would broach it with him. The next day, as he ran ahead with a score of Razorbacks, a tiger came to pad alongside him. He knew her, and his heart sank: easy enough to argue down a warrior of the Wolf, less so Aritchaka, priestess and war leader of all the Tiger.
If she had just Stepped and started speaking, he could have remained a bear and pretended not to listen. She said nothing, though,
just padded pointedly beside him, as impossible to ignore as a thorn in his foot, until he gave up and Stepped, human ears to hear her human words. She followed suit, becoming a lean woman in mail of bronze squares, a feather-crested helm on her head.
‘Well then, let’s have it,’ he said gruffly.
‘The Bear is a long way from here,’ she remarked.
‘The Bear is right here, as far as anyone needs to care about.’ He struck himself in the chest to show where he meant. ‘Not that the Bear is much use to anyone at the best of times.’
‘The Tiger is closer, but still not close,’ she went on. ‘The Wolf too. We are leaving the places where they are strong.’
Thunder rumbled, deep in his chest.
‘When we fought the Plague People, our gods were with us,’ Aritchaka said. ‘The Tiger brushed past me, in the fight. I felt his pelt against my hand. The storm that covered our attack was his breath. Or the Eyriemen would say it was the Hawk’s wings casting their shadow over us, and probably the Wolf have some story too, and the others. But all our gods dwell in the Crown of the World, and we must find a way to bring them with us.’
‘Good luck getting the Bear to go anywhere or do anything,’ Thunder grumbled, but he knew what she meant. ‘So what are you saying? What will bring the Tiger on our path?’
‘A sacrifice. Proper meat laid before him.’
The sacrifices the Tiger made to their god were the stuff of campfire stories, and not the funny Coyote ones. They were called Shadow Eaters; they devoured the souls of their prisoners so that their god might feed, or so people said.
‘Well then,’ Thunder said heavily. ‘You have something in mind for this proper meat?’
‘The blood of our enemy will bring the Tiger from his temple to run with us,’ Aritchaka said. ‘The Wolf too, and the rest.’
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 17
