Otayo fed them in his own hall, that had been built in the shadow of his father’s. A fit image for the man’s whole life, though he did not seem to begrudge his role. Seven Skins had not been wanting for children, Akrit knew. Four sons and three daughters he had sired who had survived to adulthood. Akrit remembered his second son well, a fierce warrior who had led the fight against the Tiger many times, until they had caught him and killed him slowly. The third son, Water Gathers, had also fought, but only in the war’s final year, a youth who had been desperate to win some small slice of glory for himself. He would likely be the new chief of the Many Mouths, thus the man Akrit would have to outmatch.
Water Gathers has at least one son already , Akrit thought sourly, his thoughts straying briefly to his own troubles. If the girl is dead in the snow, I will have Kalameshli beg the Wolf to torment her soul, to rend it into pieces. I will have him bind her ghost into a rattle.
Who else aside from Water Gathers would be a challenger for High Chief? The man who governed the Moon Eaters was older than Akrit, a clever man but not a fierce one. He would be someone to woo, perhaps, with gifts or with promises. The Swift Backs chief was new, a young hunter who had come away unexpectedly victorious from a challenge; rumour said his own people were already rebellious, and that he might not last long. Still, the Wolf was plainly with him, to raise him up so swiftly . . . and a strong challenge for dominance over the other tribes could be what he needed to secure his position . . .
Otayo granted Akrit and his fellow hunters space in his hall, and Akrit let his people go out into the village, trusting that they would bring him any useful news they heard. He himself had waited long enough. It was time to call upon Maninli Seven Skins. It was time to pay his respects.
He had expected the High Chief’s great hall to be bustling with well-wishers, slaves and family. Instead, there was just a woman kneeling before the door, who Akrit thought must be Maninli’s wife, the new one, after the Tigers had killed his first. He remembered her as young, but she was grey now, and solemn.
‘Stone River,’ she greeted him.
For a moment he paused, unsure of what to say, but then: ‘He must be close to his time.’
She nodded, lips pursed. There was that love that Maninli had always inspired in kin, in friends, even in strangers. Akrit had never known another man his equal for it. Seven Skins could stand up before a hostile crowd and calm them simply with a wave of his hand. He could take the dispirited and the broken and turn them into hard warriors.
‘You are remembering him,’ the woman divined.
Akrit found that he was smiling slightly. ‘I am. I would like to see him.’
‘He may not know you. He is on the Wolf’s trail much, these days. Best that you Step, if you do go in.’
Akrit nodded, and shrugged down into his wolf shape, the world twisting around him as his senses shifted: colours dimmer, sounds sharper, a world of scents rushing in from all sides.
Mostly, as she held aside the skins that covered the entryway, he smelled the sickness of Seven Skins. It was a sour, stomach-turning scent, that of a man too long in the world and whose body had begun to fail. It was a smell of rot, of things gone bad, of excrement and stale urine.
It was a man-scent, though, not a wolf-scent, and within the hall was a wolf. Akrit padded in, seeing the old grey beast lying on a pile of skins before the embers of the last night’s fire. At the intrusion, Maninli pushed himself to his feet, hackles up and his yellowed teeth showing.
Akrit knew the form: he, who had not needed to bow to anyone, man or wolf, in a long time, now ducked his head low, angling it so as to show his throat. He stayed still as the older beast stalked over, shaking out the stiffness in his legs. For a moment he thought that Seven Skins would truly not know him, that he was too far gone into senescence or down the Wolf’s trail.
Then Maninli had Stepped, and was sitting before him with his back to the fire, a wondering expression on his face. He had a hand out, almost touching Akrit’s muzzle.
‘Can it be?’ he asked softly.
Old – he was old. Akrit took a moment before Stepping also, because he could not show Maninli a human face with that look of shock on it. The strength that the beast within retained was always deceptive. It could even hide a weak, hollowed-out man like this.
Here was Maninli Seven Skins: the man who had brought the war host of the Wolf together and beaten the Tiger out of the heartlands of the Crown of the World. Yes, he had burned through his best days to do it, but he had always been strong, unbreakable. And yet the years since Akrit had last seen him had broken him. His skin was jaundiced and he looked as though he had not slept forever, the white of his eyes pink with misplaced blood. He trembled constantly, as though simply sitting there and holding his head up was taking all the strength he had. He was thin, the furs they had clad him in to keep him warm just hanging off his skeletal figure.
‘I know, I know.’ The roaring voice of Akrit’s memory was a hoarse whisper. ‘Look at me, old friend. I know.’
And Akrit forced himself to look. He owed Maninli that much.
‘It’s good to see you one more time. And you braved the winter for me. That’s a thought to take with me when I go.’
Akrit reached out gingerly and laid a hand on his arm, feeling it bone-hard, bone-cold, fragile as a stick beneath his touch. ‘You’re waiting for midwinter?’
Maninli shuddered. ‘I’ve waited too long already. I should have gone before the snows. I’m the wolf almost all the time now. The wolf isn’t cold or tired like this. The wolf doesn’t hurt like this. The wolf can eat, even. Only, when I become a man again, I cannot keep it down.’ When he shook his head, it seemed to sway loosely on his neck. ‘Eat . . . ? I’m being eaten, Akrit. It’s the death that comes to us, the gnawing death picking at these bones. But it’s difficult to let go . . . Even though I make things worse for everyone, the longer I stay, it’s hard.’
Akrit had always thought that, when the time came, he himself would go bravely and be no burden. That was the hunter’s way after a long life or a crippling injury. Now, looking at Maninli, he did not know for sure. Seven Skins had always been a brave man. If even this carious human existence was precious to him, what could Akrit truly know?
‘I will retell your stories,’ Akrit said softly.
‘There are few left who can.’ For a moment a new expression came upon the old man, a sly alertness that was something of the past creeping back. ‘Otayo tells me you will raid the Tiger next summer.’
‘Does he?’ Akrit held his face still.
‘They say he should have been a priest, that one,’ Maninli managed a thin chuckle. ‘They say the invisible world whispers to him. They don’t realize all you have to do is listen and think, and you can predict the future well enough. So will you?’
Akrit had not planned to talk about such things with anyone beyond Kalameshli, but here he was, and he just could not refuse his old friend. ‘We have unfinished business,’ was all he said. Besides, if Otayo was thinking of a mere raid or two, then he was thinking too small.
If the girl is alive. If the girl is brought back to me.
He shook off his doubts angrily.
Maninli was watching him from under half-lowered lids. ‘Too late, too late. I would have been glad to have a few more of the Tiger given to the jaws of the Wolf before my passing. It would sweeten my path, surely. What meat would he savour more?’
‘When chance brings me one of their warriors, then the Wolf will have that meat, and in your name,’ Akrit promised.
The gap-toothed smile he received was almost senile in its bloodlust. He could see the focus draining out of Maninli’s eyes, and so he straightened his shoulders. ‘Old friend, do not spend all your strength before your time.’
A terrible, hunted look came to the old man’s face, and in the next moment he had Stepped: not even a farewell, just a flight to the refuge of a wolf body that still had some strength in it. The animal stared at Akr
it with yellow, unblinking eyes, and he could not say whether it knew him or not.
Akrit had assumed that Maninli intended to hold out for midwinter to pass on. Having seen the old man, that seemed unlikely now. The Many Mouths were holding themselves in constant readiness. Each night the cold’s grip on the Crown of the World tightened, and surely their chief must simply wish to let go and leave them. And yet he held on, a little of the man clinging within him as if fearful of the great dark that was waiting for him. His soul had grown used to his hands, was the saying that Akrit heard most often.
He and his Winter Runners settled down for a stay of uncertain duration, penned in by the growing strength of winter.
In truth, there was little to do save talk. The people of the Many Mouths told stories, while their hunters contested in races and wrestling. Akrit stalked about their village, constantly skirting the circle of influence maintained by Water Gathers, who seemed just as conscientious in avoiding him. The mood soured slowly. Nobody seemed to know what Maninli was holding out for.
‘But it has to be something,’ Otayo explained to Akrit one evening. ‘You have seen our new priest, Catch The Moon, who the Wolf chose after old Singing Branch passed on? He is young but he has many visions. He has spoken to my father much. There is something yet to come.’
‘What?’ Akrit demanded in a hushed voice. They were the last two still sitting awake by the fire. Most of Otayo’s family was asleep.
His host gave him a calculating look. ‘He will not tell me – and do not think I haven’t asked. I do not believe he has told Water Gathers either, which eats at my brother.’ A slight quirk of the lips: it was no secret that the sons of Seven Skins did not always see eye to eye. ‘Who would he tell then . . . ?’
The next morning Akrit went to visit Maninli one last time.
It was hard to persuade the man’s wife that he should be allowed a second audience. She was terrified that her husband might die in human form, and so prevent his soul from passing on. There was a fragility about her eyes that made Akrit wonder if it was not the prospect of Seven Skins’ angry ghost haunting the family hall which most frightened her.
When Akrit finally talked his way in, he approached the old grey wolf as warily as before. This time, though, Maninli did not Step, but just turned away and settled down by the fire, shifting mournfully every so often in an attempt to find a kind of comfort that time had stripped from him.
Akrit settled down beside him in human form, knowing that now he must talk and hope the wolf ears would still convey his words to a human mind. He recounted what Otayo had said, fishing for some sign that his suspicions were right, hoping that the bond of one-time comradeship between them would be enough.
But he had more to say than that, when the wolf remained a mute animal beside him. It was time for Akrit to share his own dream with Seven Skins: a pledge to the Wolf that the old man could carry with him when he passed on.
‘I will take the Tiger,’ he explained softly. ‘Not just raids. I will bring them into the Wolf’s Shadow at last. After that, perhaps the Eyrie will bow to us, or we will starve them out. The work you began, old friend, is not done. The people of the Wolf have a destiny.’
There was a sound beside him, and Maninli was sitting there, old head loose on his neck, eyes almost closed. He looked measurably older than when Akrit had seen him before.
But he spoke, and Akrit leant closer to catch the mumbled words.
‘Catch The Moon has seen it. There is a time coming, a Great Dying Time.’
Akrit shivered to hear it, and the failing man’s sour breath suddenly seemed to bring with it a chill, the sense of invisible presences looming near. Maninli’s soul seemed perched on his very lips, clinging to the last threads of his human existence as his body consumed itself. There would always be spirits hovering close at such a time. Many of them would be wicked, and some would hope to poison Maninli’s soul if it was trapped in a man’s dead flesh, to turn it into something that would sicken and corrupt all of the Many Mouths, even all those of the Wolf. But such spirits whispered prophecy to the dying, too. The words of a man this close to passing on were pregnant with divination.
‘Catch The Moon has seen a shadow that might stretch all the way to the world’s end. He says that those who do not submit to it will pass from this world. Whose shadow can that be save for the Wolf’s? That is what it must be.’ He coughed thinly, a feeble and miserable sound. ‘Water Gathers, my son . . . he thinks that the world will never change through all his lifetime, that every tomorrow will be as yesterday once he is chief. But you can see further. You know the Wolf must grow stronger. I should have sent for you before. The Wolf has guided you to come to me.’
Akrit sat very still. Was this what he had been seeking? Yes, surely, and yet how much more weight did it place on his shoulders? How much more important that he become High Chief and that he bring the Tiger into the Wolf’s Shadow? And for this, for all of this, he needed the girl Maniye, who might already be dead . . .
He leant close to Maninli, despite the reek of the man’s decaying body. ‘My friend, is this what you have stayed for? Know that you may go, you may pass on. You need not torture yourself in this flesh any more.’
The shake of Seven Skins’ head was barely perceptible. ‘There is one more I must see,’ the withered lips moved again. ‘They are coming to us now, those who can help this destiny to come to pass. When they are here, then I shall know my time is right. Strangers, Akrit. Strangers in winter. Mark them. It may be their deaths that you need, or it may be their lives. Make your decision wisely.’
A day later, a band of the Horse Society stumbled into the Many Mouths village, led by two Coyotes and a Crow, and in their midst were three strange figures, two southerners and a Plains woman – and Akrit knew the time had come.
18
‘I expected tents, for some reason,’ Asmander remarked. ‘Or maybe huts.’ His eyes flicked over the artificial hillscape before them, studying the earthworks raised by the Many Mouths.
‘Or holes in the ground,’ Venater said, easily loud enough for Shyri to hear, but even he sounded slightly impressed. There were plenty of northerners outside and staring as the travellers approached, and a handful of sleek grey wolves were trotting to either side of the newcomers as an impromptu honour guard, but to Asmander this did not look like a place where real people lived. The mounds that the northerners built upon had the same sense of ancient weight and scale as the ruins of the Old Stone Kingdom. This felt more like a place for the dead to be interred rather than for any sane human beings to inhabit. Of course, the cold rather adds to that. I wonder if dead northerners actually get warmer after life departs.
‘It’s not Atahlan,’ he said bravely, ‘but I confess it’s quite a sight.’
‘No fear among them, either,’ Venater stated.
‘You mean no walls?’
‘They don’t care about keeping men out, nor beasts. I reckon any who come uninvited would find out why.’
‘They say the men of the Crown of the World believe that only the blood of their enemies will bring spring again,’ Shyri declared.
‘If it would do that, I’d open some throats myself,’ Asmander responded.
The crowd was growing, even as they wound their way between the smaller mounds. Ahead of them was one far greater than the rest, the domain of a leader as plainly as was the Kasra’s palace at Atahlan.
‘What has brought you to the Many Mouths at such a time?’ enquired a Wolf man, stepping forward from the pack. ‘Or do the Horse go wherever they wish across our lands?’ There was a confrontational tone to his question that Asmander found himself warming to.
Eshmir pressed her hands together. ‘I come to honour the High Chief of all the Wolves. I come with gifts from the Horse Society.’
The Wolf spokesman spat, apparently placing little value on this. Asmander was watching the rest of them though, seeing that this man spoke for some but by no means all of them. He sensed divisi
ons, factions, observing the way that the northerners clumped and eddied.
Two Heads Talking kept his shoulders hunched, avoiding the massed Wolf gaze as though this would make him invisible. He leant in towards Eshmir and murmured, ‘This one is Water Gathers, son of the chief.’
‘We know your father must pass on,’ the Hetman said simply. ‘We bring the respects of the Horse, as one so great makes his last journey.’
There was precious little grief in Water Gathers, Asmander reckoned, but at least this seemed to be the right thing to say. The majority approved, and the chief’s son went along with them, giving ground grudgingly.
The Horse people had brought their own tents, and that would apparently have to be enough. Under Two Heads’ direction they pitched them at the foot of one of the smaller mounds, whose residents were known to him. His trade-wife made the climb up to the hall above to trade for news and for hospitality. Asmander was keenly aware that they were not quite guests, not yet, nor strangers either. He had a sense of having only a tenuous place in the world here, surrounded by unseen laws that he might break with the least mis-step.
That night, he huddled about a fire with Venater and Shyri. ‘Our hosts do not like us,’ he noted.
‘That’s fine,’ the pirate growled. ‘I don’t like them.’
‘You don’t like anyone.’
Venater shrugged.
‘Yet these are the fabled Iron Wolves,’ Asmander considered, ‘and here we are.’
The pirate grunted. ‘Good luck, then.’
‘I think we’ll not just throw out a purse of coin and buy ourselves a warband or two. I think it doesn’t work like that here,’ Asmander decided.
‘Worked that much out, have you?’ Venater’s look was derisive. ‘Let me guess, old Asman didn’t give you much to go on.’
‘My father has faith in my initiative.’
This time Venater said nothing. Shyri looked from one to the other.
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