by Clare Bell
Thakur looked amused. “You would remember that. He became a good herder, although he was late in learning. He fought beside me in the raids and he has fathered the two new cubs we have in our little group.” He paused, watching Ratha’s face darken. “What is it, yearling?”
She glanced at him, aware she had betrayed herself. “Something I will tell you later. Go now, if you don’t want Cherfan to find me.”
“Wait here,” Thakur said. A moment later he was gone, leaving only swaying grass to mark where he had been.
Ratha waited. Far above her a bird looped and dipped. Insects chirped monotonously and droned back and forth overhead, making her feel sleepy. The light slanted between the grass stems and a late afternoon breeze rustled the leaves. A worried tittle voice inside Ratha’s head kept asking her why she trusted Thakur. He could easily bring Meoran or a hate-filled pack that would fall upon her and tear her to pieces. Or he could circle behind her and attack her through the grass curtain, she thought, feeling very vulnerable. He trusts me to wait for him and not run away, even though I could. I think he is asking me what I choose.
She lifted her muzzle, hearing him coming through the grass. He poked his head out, saw her and looked pleased. “Good, you stayed. I told Cherfan I chased the raider away. He’s looking after the dapplebacks. I told him I was going to make sure the raider is gone.” He grinned at her. “Is the raider gone, Ratha?”
She looked back at him, feeling very empty. “I could give you a better answer if I could fill my belly.”
“There will be meat tonight,” Thakur said. “Not much, for our kills have to last many days.”
Ratha sat up. “The raider isn’t gone,” she teased, feeling some of her old spirit coming back. “The raider is Thakur. It will be good to eat from Meoran’s herd. Bring me a good piece, Thakur. Steal the liver if no one else has eaten it. I’ll wait for you by the stream.”
“No, yearling. What you want, you may take yourself. I want you to come back with me.”
“Come back to the clan?” Ratha was aghast. “If Meoran is there, he’ll rip me in half!”
“He is there, but I have reason to believe he will keep his claws sheathed. If you keep your mouth shut,” Thakur added meaningfully and continued, “You speak of us as the clan, but we are only the remains of it; scarcely enough to fill a well-dug lair. The Un-Named took many lives, Ratha.”
She swallowed. She was not yet ready to tell him that she had been there and watched her people die.
“Every one that remains is precious to us,” Thakur said. “Meoran knows that now.”
Ratha only wrinkled her nose. Thakur saw it and said, “You will find him much changed. Even I, who bear the scars of his teeth on my neck, can say that about him. It was he who saved those of us who did survive.”
“It was he whose stupidity gave you to the jaws of the Un-Named,” Ratha spat back.
“Yes. That too, he knows,” said Thakur. “It is bitter meat to him.”
“And you still keep him as leader? Ptah!”
“What has died is dead, Ratha. He is strong. We need his strength. We need yours as well. Come back to us.”
She looked at him, seeing in his eyes what he had not been able to say. It has been lonely without you, Ratha. Come back... come back to me.
She lowered her head, seeing too much of Bonechewer in the face before her. Could she put the bitterness behind? Here, again, was a new trail before her, one she never hoped she’d find. She thought she had nothing left to give anyone, but now....
“You say there are new cubs,” she said slowly. “How old are they?”
“Old enough to train as herders, but I haven’t had time to teach them.”
He looked at Ratha and she could see the hope rising in his face.
“It will be hard for me to see cubs again, knowing they are someone else’s.”
As Ratha watched him, she knew she had betrayed herself. Before she finished speaking, she wished that she could bite off her treacherous tongue and be mute for the rest of her days.
Thakur spoke. “I am wrong to call you ‘yearling.’ I see that you have grown older. You have been gone from us long enough to have birthed a family.”
“To have birthed them and lost them.”
He looked at her keenly. “I see that you have ended a trail. One too painful to set foot upon even in memory. I will not ask what happened.”
“When I can, I’ll tell you, Thakur,” she said, and she was thankful it had been he who found her in the meadow. “If I help you with the herding, will you have enough time to teach?”
His eyes brightened. He raised his head and yowled at the sky. “Arrowoo!”
“Thakur! You’ll bring the others!”
“I don’t care. Now they can see you.”
Ratha swallowed again. His happiness was starting to infect her, and she wanted to let it in, but she was still afraid.
“Are you sure Meoran will listen?” she asked.
“If he has any wits at all, he will,” Thakur said. “Just don’t say anything to anger him.”
He turned and pranced away through the grass, his tail high. Ratha followed.
Ratha climbed over water-smoothed stone, the sound of the stream below beating in her ears. Or perhaps it was her own heartbeat she heard, seeming to echo back and forth between the rocks. She looked up at the cliff face overhead, painted in streaks by the sun’s last rays. In seasons past, when she was a cub, the stream had run much higher, undercutting the cliff, sculpturing and polishing the rock that now lay far above its banks.
Thakur’s tail disappeared around a worn boulder and she hurried to catch up. She could smell the odor of a well-aged kill.
She emerged to find him standing on a sloping gray table of rock looking up into a water-carved cavern. There were shapes in the cave, and they stirred as she approached behind Thakur. Eyes fixed on her. The meat smell came from the rear of the cavern. At the front, a husky dun-colored male stood over a fragile-looking female and her two spotted cubs. The dun coat came forward as the female nudged the cubs further into the cavern.
“Hold, Thakur,” he said. “Who is that one with you?” As he finished, Ratha caught a flurry of motion inside the cavern. A face appeared between two seated forms. The dazed eyes grew wide with joy and the ears pricked up. It was Fessran. Ratha saw her give a wary glance to one side, calm herself and begin sidling toward the entrance.
“Come smell her and tell me yourself, Cherfan,” Thakur answered, nosing Ratha ahead of him. She approached Cherfan. Another movement brought her eyes back to the cavern and the large gray-coat standing beneath the center of the arch. Ratha froze. Cherfan looked back over his shoulder.
“I can tell you who she is,” said a harsh voice, and amber eyes were fixed on Ratha. “Cherfan, stay back.” The dun coat obeyed and retreated. Meoran turned to Thakur. “You know I have little patience with you these days, herder, yet you dare to push me further. Where did you find her and why do you bring her?” He sat, waiting for Thakur’s answer.
“I found her in the high grass of the meadow. I thought she was a raider stalking our dapplebacks.”
“Then do with her what is done to raiders,” Meoran snapped.
“Wait, Meoran,” Thakur’s voice was stronger and louder, rising above the muted roar of the stream below.
“Hear me. She has not returned to us as an enemy even though you stripped her of her name and made her outcast. She wants to join again with her people.”
Meoran curled back his lips, showing fangs like tusks.
“She wants to come back. Accept her. We of the Named are so few that to cast one aside is foolish. Once you would not have listened to words such as these, but I know you have changed.”
“So it is your new knowledge of me that makes you bring her drooling to my den.” Meoran sneered. “I would use that knowledge in a wiser way, herder.”
Ratha swallowed and tried to hide her hunger. Thakur’s front claws scraped on stone.
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“I hear your words, Thakur,” Meoran answered at last. “The wisdom I have learned from the Un-Named makes me admit what you say is true. Every one of our people we can gather in will help us to survive.”
“Then may we accept her?” Thakur’s eyes were bright, eager. He leaned forward.
“Hold, herder,” Meoran growled, narrowing his eyes to amber slits. “There are more things to say.”
Thakur lowered his muzzle, slightly abashed.
“You, Ratha, stand before me.”
Slowly Ratha walked toward Meoran. The gray-coat seemed as massive as the stone he sat on. Cherfan and his mate came and stood beside him. More survivors from the broken clan peered out from behind him. They were sons and daughters of clanfolk Ratha had known. Here was a young male with the crooked tail of Srass, the grizzled herder. Of the older clan members, the only one that remained was Meoran. He sat upright beside Cherfan, towering over the young father.
Thakur had told her on the trail that Meoran’s rule was no less harsh than before, yet the harshness now was of necessity, not the petty tyranny it had been. His errors had cost him all of his sons and nearly all of his people; knowledge was imprinted as deeply on him as the gashes that Un-Named claws had made across his face. Cherfan looked at him as a son might look at a father and Ratha sensed he had earned that devotion.
The amber slits opened suddenly. “I do not forget the night when a cub carried the Red Tongue among us. And I see by your eyes that you have not forgotten either.”
“It is gone, Meoran,” Ratha answered. “It perished in the creek. By my foolishness.”
“And not by the claws of the herder Fessran, as I was told.” Meoran turned his head. Ratha followed his gaze to Fessran, crouching nervously in the shadow near the inside cavern wall. Meoran eyed her and yawned, showing the back of his tongue and all his teeth. “Sit up, herder, and don’t cower like a cub. Ratha’s tracks betrayed her. After I spared you I went back and saw where she slid and fell into the stream.”
Fessran shot Ratha a fierce glance that stabbed her with joy and fear.
Meoran grinned. “Did it amuse you to think you fooled me? I spared you, Fessran, because I needed you. With the Red Tongue gone and the she-cub driven out, you were no threat to me. So you lived.” He turned to Ratha. “So you wish to return. To be a herder once again. To eat at the clan kill and obey clan law.”
“Yes, Meoran.” Ratha looked down at her paws.
“You ask me to forget the night you and your creature shamed me before my people. That is asking much.”
Ratha lifted her head and stared into the glowing orange eyes as she had stared into the heart of the Red Tongue. “Most of those who remember that night are dead now,” she said softly. Everyone was still, listening. “There is no shame left in dead memories, Meoran. Now it is only between you and me.”
“Ratha, be careful!” hissed Thakur behind her.
“Quiet, herder!” Meoran roared, startling everyone. In the rear of the cavern, a cub began to wail. “You come to me asking to share my meat and my den, yet you speak to me as an equal,” Meoran said to Ratha.
“What I ask is to serve again as a herder and work for my meat.” She felt her whiskers bristling. “I will obey clan law.”
“Obeying clan law means obeying me,” Meoran said in his deep voice. “That you must do without question.”
“I will obey.” Ratha clamped her teeth together, feeling her hatred build again.
“Look at me as you speak and let me see what your words really mean.”
Ratha brought her gaze up to his.
The orange eyes semed to blaze out and devour her. She fought back, quietly, deep inside, hoping he couldn’t see.
After a long moment, he looked away.
“You will obey me in words, perhaps, and in deeds, but not in heart. Every time I look at you, I will see challenge in your eyes.”
“No!” Ratha cried miserably, knowing he saw what she could not hide. She would never forget that he too had bowed his great head before the power of the Red Tongue.
“Listen, you who were once of the clan,” he said to those assembled around him. “I will hear other words. Shall she come back among us?”
“Shall we invite a tick into our fur? Or maggots into our meat,” cried the young male with Srass’s tail and ears.
“Yet, she is young and strong and could bear cubs,” Cherfan argued, turning to Meoran. Mutterings grew and spread. Ratha listened and heard with dismay that most were against her. Fessran got up from her crouch against the wall and came toward Ratha. Her joy at seeing Ratha again was so obvious she could not hide it, and it was no further risk of Meoran’s wrath to run to Ratha’s side and welcome her openly.
Fessran sat close beside her and she felt her warmth and her fast breathing.
“Meoran!” Thakur cried. “Hate begets hate. Let old trails be covered with grass. If you turn her away, you will regret it. I need another herder. Cherfan’s cubs need a teacher. The Un-Named are enemy enough. Why make another?”
Meoran raised his paw and pointed at Ratha. “The hate is not mine. She chooses the trail she will run. Look at her!”
Ratha stood, quivering, trying to quench the rage boiling inside her, trying to be the humble herder she was asking him to believe she was. She knew that the voice that had so often lied for once spoke truth.
It was something in her, something that burned deeper than the Red Tongue. It was something she did not want, for it betrayed all her wishes; all her hopes to be united once more with her people.
“Meoran is right,” she said in a low voice. “I have chosen the path I run. He has not made me outcast, it is I who have made myself.” She raised her head. “I say it in words now so that it will not be said in blood tomorrow. Take care of your people, Meoran.”
She turned, choking on her last few words, and the hunger that twisted her belly. For a moment she saw the pain in the faces of her two friends; then she was beyond them and running down the stone slab. She heard Fessran leap up and run after her and she redoubled her speed. She heard panting just behind her and a voice. “Ratha, if you don’t stop, I’m going to pull you down like a dappleback!”
Ratha slowed, jogged to a stop.
“Go back, Fessran. He needs all of you,” she said.
“He’s wrong!” Fessran cried, her face wild with agony. “We need you. For what he has done, I swear I’ll seek his blood!”
“No!” Ratha hissed. “He’s right, Fessran. Didn’t you listen? Your people can only survive if they stay together, under one leader. The Red Tongue has tainted me, made me want something I was never meant for and should never have. You are still free of the taint, Fessran. Go back to Meoran, obey him and your people will live.”
“Ratha!”
“Go back, Fessran,” she said softly, touching the other with a paw. “And tell Thakur he is forgiven.”
Then, before Fessran could speak again, Ratha bounded down the trail, leaving her friend behind. Darkness closed about her, seeming even to block out the stars overhead, and as she ran she felt as though she were plunging down the maw of some hideous thing that had risen up to swallow her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ratha fled to the edge of clan ground. There, by the stream bank amid the trees, she dug a den and lived by herself. Often, as she hunted shrews and bare-tails, she heard the sound of fighting in the meadow and the shrill cries of herders and raiders. She would turn her back on the noise and hunt elsewhere, for she hated both sides equally.
She thought that all the clan would shun her, for her friends would face Meoran’s wrath if they came to search for her. That Thakur or Fessran might find their way to her den was too dangerous a hope to allow herself. She thought often of leaving again and becoming a wanderer, without people or territory. There was much to see beyond clan ground and even beyond the land held by the Un-Named. Once she had climbed up a peak and seen a sparkling line of blue where the hazy sky met the land. Wild new sme
lls in the wind blowing into her face made her long to journey that way.
Soon, she knew, she would be gone. There was nothing holding her to this place and its pain. She would run free across new plains and valleys; see beasts that even Bonechewer had never showed her, and if she ran far and fast enough, she might even escape her memories.
One morning Ratha returned from a night’s prowl to find someone waiting at her den. Thakur.
Ratha’s throat tightened. She had been longing to see him, but now that he was here and looking into her eyes, there was nothing for her to say.
Thakur lowered his head and nudged something on the ground near his foot. His nose had a smudge of red as he lifted his muzzle. Ratha sniffed and almost drowned in her own saliva, for her hunt had been unsuccessful. He had brought half a liver, fresh enough so that it was still dripping. Ratha dared not ask how much it cost him to take it.
“Meoran will know,” he said in response to her look. “I may pay for it later, but that is my choice, yearling.”
Ratha ate rapidly, shearing the juicy flesh between her teeth.
“I cannot stay long. Cherfan has taken my place; he does that much for me,” Thakur’s voice said beside her. “I will come and see you when I can, for as long as you stay near clan ground.”
Ratha eyed what was left of the liver, wondering whether to eat it all or save some for later. Something made her glance at Thakur. His eyes and his smell told her he was hungry. There was not much food for the clan these days, yet he shared what there was with her.
“My belly is full,” she said, nosing him toward the meat. “Eat.”
He snapped at the liver. She listened to him chew and tear the food. When he was finished, she said, “I won’t stay past this season.”
Thakur’s whiskers drooped. “I know, yearling. There is nothing for you here. I was wondering when your paws would seek a new trail now that this one is done.”
“This one is done,” said Ratha softly. She lifted her eyes to his. “And you, Thakur. Do your paws seek a new trail?”