Loud Thunder had certainly made it plain that the old man used far too many words, and was quick to shrug off his more florid utterances, so Hesprec’s campaign to win him started with the old Serpent telling stories to Maniye. He did so as they sat about the fire after dark, the smoke coiling about the sloping eaves above them. Sometimes Loud Thunder was there, sometimes he was already in his cave at the back, but Hesprec had a trick he used, where his voice seemed to carry wherever he wanted it, not loud but always clear. He was playing his games with words, too, so that the more he spoke, the more the stresses and accents of his speech resembled their host’s.
He would talk of the River Lords of the south, of how their heroes and their princes had divided the world between them, and then fallen out over the division. He would give the flawed rulers different voices to illustrate their shortcomings, and sometimes Maniye would hear, like an echo, a deep chuckle that escaped from Loud Thunder, no matter how straight-faced he seemed. Then Hesprec would tell Serpent stories of how the heroes of his people had gone into the dark, buried places of the world to learn wisdom. Sitting in the Cave Dweller’s lair, surrounded by the earth, his words carried a particular resonance. Maniye fancied she felt the god’s coils moving slowly all about them.
Another time, Hesprec spoke of what he called the Oldest Kingdom. Why was it called that, Maniye asked, and Hesprec would gather his dignity and frostily explain that it was the very oldest, the first time ever that many things had been done. Also, came the apologetic sequel, because the great fallen dominion of the Stone People was called by them the Old Kingdom, and so Hesprec’s people had to make plain to them that their own lost empire was older still. He called it the Land of Snake and Jaguar, where his people had ruled the world, the first people to set stone on stone and to till the soil. He spoke of this Oldest Kingdom often, weaving it into all his other tales.
So it was that eventually Loud Thunder’s voice rumbled out from close by, ‘So, what happened to this Snake-Jaguar place?’ Hesprec glanced up, as if surprised that their host had even been listening. ‘Gone, more generations ago than even my people can count,’ was his answer. ‘Gone, and we are scattered
– to carry our wisdom wherever we can. The Pale Shadow People came from the sea, fair in person and with fair words, but they were without souls and they seduced the men of the Jaguar and turned our own warriors against us. The Pale Shadow rules there to this day, and we may never return.’ And his voice had grown wintry and distant, not like his usual voice at all, carried a little too far off into his own soul by the thoughts of that lost and ancient place that perhaps had never been real.
From that night on, there were three sitting at the fire when the tales were told, and Maniye was surprised to find that Loud Thunder could tell a tale as well as the old man himself. He did not tell of myths and ancient heroes but of his own exploits: escapades in the Crown of the World as it must have been before Maniye’s birth, or venturing south to the Plains. There was a wistful look in his eye while speaking of those days and his comrades. One of them had been Broken Axe, at that time just one more warrior whose tribe needed less mouths to feed and fewer aggressive young men.
She tried to imagine that man as young, her own age. It was not uncommon for bands of youngsters to leave a village for a few years, to go seeking blood and trinkets and the chance to hone their skills. Those that returned frequently became great hunters, even chiefs, and certainly they found themselves good wives or hearth-husbands. Had Broken Axe himself ever really been the sort of rough, bright-eyed chancer that Loud Thunder described? She found it hard to believe.
And then at last, one night, Thunder turned to her after finishing an innocent-enough story, and told her, ‘Your turn.’
She blinked, as panicked in that instant as if he had grabbed her by the throat. ‘What?’
‘Your story.’
‘But I haven’t . . . you want a Wolf story?’ She knew it was not what he meant.
‘I want a story of you.’
‘But I’m . . .You’re both older than me.You’ve done more . . . I haven’t . . .’
‘You’ve done one thing, at least,’ Loud Thunder told her, and she knew it was time: the time she had been putting off ever since Broken Axe had slunk off into the trees.
Before their combined gaze, and with the weight of the guestbond on her, she could not refuse.
So she told them: about her mother, her father. She told them what Akrit had revealed to her, of the destiny he had planned for her as his obedient wolf-child, from before she was even born. She recounted every word she could recall, not like a storyteller but in a quiet, dead-sounding voice.
The worst thing was listening to herself, hearing these things set out properly, in a coherent fashion. Since she had left her father’s shadow she had been hunted, she had been attacked. A woman had tried to kill her, and so had the weather and the world. ‘And,’ she said, in just a whisper, ‘should I . . . ? Was all this the right thing to do, only for that? Surely people endure far more, and they survive. Would it have been so bad to stay? What would it have cost me?’
‘Well, I for one applaud your bold decisions,’ Hesprec said drily.
‘Your tiger soul, it would cost,’ Thunder considered.
‘But . . .’ She did not need to say it. She had passed through the Testing now. She had one soul too many within her body, each of them growing and warring between themselves. Choose, or go mad.
As the days grew shorter, and the cold locked them ever tighter into the cramped space of Thunder’s hall, Loud Thunder took to sleeping longer – sometimes for whole days and nights. When he awoke it would take him longer to recognize them or, in turn, become a person that they recognized. At his worst he would blunder about the interior of his home and ignore them completely, or just shamble past and head straight outside, Stepping to his bear form and leaving the hall to an uneasy truce between Hesprec and Maniye on one side and the dogs on the other.
Then he was gone for three nights running, so that Maniye began to wonder if he was coming back at all. On the third night, though, she heard distant sounds on the still, cold air: singing and whooping, and distant roars and bellows. Then she knew that Loud Thunder had gone to be with his own people, the first time all winter that he had sought them out.
‘It is the longest night,’ Hesprec murmured. ‘Hard to calculate, with all these clouds you are so fond of, but I think it must be midwinter. Shorter nights and longer days from here, and warmer, I sincerely hope.’
Thunder came back the next night. When he stripped off his robe, she saw the marks of claws and teeth on his skin, all shrunk and puckered compared to broader gashes they would have made on a bear’s hide. One ear was torn, and there was a welter of bruises across his face and shoulders. He seemed unbothered by it. Certainly she had no sense that he had been defeated in any way. Instead, this was what the Bear tribe did. She wondered if, in fighting each other, they were fighting off the winter.
He was drunk, too, soaked in sweat and the sweet smell of mead. Despite looking dead on his feet, he did not sleep all through that night but built up the fire until it blazed high, then drank some more and sang. They were long, strange songs about fallen warriors, the passing on of great men, souls being reborn, and the turn of the year. To be with him then, to share that space with him, was almost impossible. It was not the fear of him but that he had brought the Bear with him, the unseen spirit of the Cave Dwellers crowding out everything else in its battle against the cold season.
After that, he slept – and it looked plain that he would be sleeping for days. He had eaten almost everything they had, but by now Maniye had learned a little of trapping from Hesprec, a little of ice fishing from Loud Thunder himself. She wrapped herself up as warmly as she could and set out to restock the larder.
It was then, wandering far afield to look for tracks in the snow, that she found the campsite.
The smoke caught her wolf’s nose first, impossible to ignore. When
she got there, the fire had long burned out, with only a little heat clinging to the ashes. It had been built in a sheltered hollow beneath an overhanging stone, not too far from the lake. She could see where hides had been hung to enclose the space and contain the warmth.
There was a single set of tracks leading away from it. Wolf tracks. Half a day old, and the snow did not hold his scent well, but she knew whose they must be.
She had thought he had gone back to spend the winter with her father before setting out again. She had known that, beyond argument, because who would simply wait out the winter like this? Who was that patient and that determined?
Broken Axe. Broken Axe could fight even the highland winters to a standstill. All this time he had been there, keeping his distance, holding to the word of promise he gave to Loud Thunder.
But that word cut her as much as him, for midwinter was past now, the year climbing back towards the warmth of the sun. Spring was on the distant horizon and, with spring, he would come for her.
20
After midwinter and the secret revels of the Cave Dwellers, a change came over Loud Thunder. Never talkative, there was a despondent character to his new silence. Often he would just sit staring into the fire, a dog either side of him, brooding on something. Only Hesprec’s stories could bring him back even a little bit, and their charm was clearly lost soon after the last word was spoken.
‘Let me tell you about the time that Mongoose and Serpent tried to out-trick each other,’ the Snake priest would begin, and the tale would be swift and convoluted as the two rivals sought ever more ridiculous means to outdo the other. And Loud Thunder would laugh, a rumble big enough to fill the inside of his home. But then the story would be done, and he would grunt and nod, and Maniye would almost see the mirth draining from him, down some hole he was powerless to stopper.
Or: ‘This is a story of Sees Forever, whose eyes knew neither darkness nor mist, and who went beneath the earth and rescued the Corn Sister with Serpent’s aid.’ And the tale would be one of sudden ambush, of impossible guardian monsters, of a man pitting himself against the greater spirits, and prevailing. Then Loud Thunder would become inspired, and grin, and his hands would twitch whenever Sees Forever fought, as though some ghost of the myth-hero touched him. But in the end his great shoulders would shrug, all the purpose sloping off them as if to say, It was all very well in those days, but now we have other worries.
Maniye had seen what oppressed him: not the details of his worry, but when it must befall him. They were inching through the second half of winter, and nothing of any great import would stir while the white season held its dominion in the frozen world outside. Like a distant star, though, spring was coming. Loud Thunder feared the spring.
One morning she was bold enough to ask him, ‘Is it because Broken Axe will come?’
He glanced at her, frowning. ‘Is what what?’
‘The thing that troubles you,’ she pressed. ‘Only, I think he was your friend, and I know he will come for me.’
‘That’s your doom,’ he replied harshly. ‘Yo u plan for that. When he comes, am I to stop him?’
‘But . . .’ Something lurched within her, as if a chasm opened up under her. ‘I thought that you . . .’
‘You have been my guest, this winter,’ Thunder told her ponderously. ‘Until winter’s last day, you are my guest still, and Broken Axe will keep his distance. But you are his prey to hunt once more when the days have grown long enough to challenge the nights again. And, when that time comes, I’ll not be a man to have guests.’
‘What is it?’ she asked him. Her own need was hammering within her, but she fought it down.
‘Nothing . . . maybe nothing.’ But it was plain he did not believe so.
‘Your own people?’ she divined. He just stared at her, but she saw in his expression that she was right.
Over that winter she had many nightmares. Her twin souls were turbulent within her, sometimes one ascendant, sometimes the other. She had dreams where her tiger was carried away from her in the waters of a furious, icy river. She woke with a start from a sense of having leapt up a cliff, as she had done to escape Broken Axe, only the wolf had been left behind, the threads that bound it to her snapping abruptly.
She had made no choice. To take one would be to betray the other, and they were both her. And yet she could feel a roiling instability within her, a loss of control. She would go mad, she knew. In the end those two souls would fight, and perhaps she would lose them both and have no shape to Step to at all.
So it was that she found a night when Loud Thunder slept but Hesprec was still alert, performing some devotion before the empty gaze of the fire. He had a hundred of these little rituals: burning things, burying things, drawing spiral patterns in the ash. She wondered if he was trying to catch the tail of the future, so that he could know what the new year would bring. Or perhaps he was speaking with his subterranean god, feeling its movements through the frozen earth.
She knelt on the other side of the fire from him, head down to show a due deference that was a marked change from her usual manner towards him, and waited for him to finish. She had a sense of him casting a pale eye at her, ever curious, but he carried on with his secret business, whispering to the flames, then watching them leap as though he saw an answer in their dancing.
At last his conversation with the fire was done, and she was itching to ask him what it had all been about. He would not have told her anyway, and her questions would have made him defensive and irritable, but normally that would not have stopped her. This time, though, she was going to ask for something perhaps bigger than anything before. She was trying to approach him with the reverential respect that she imagined his own people might show.
‘Hesprec . . .’ No doubt there was some title for a Snake priest in the River Nation, but he had never mentioned it.
He regarded her alertly, perhaps warily, as though something of her purpose had already reached him. Perhaps the fire had told him.
‘I cannot choose,’ she said simply.
He nodded soberly. ‘These things are known: your dreams leak out of your mouth, most nights.’
‘I need help.’
That cautious look of his returned.
‘Hesprec, I cannot choose,’ she repeated. ‘I cannot let either of them go to please the other, and they fight – they fight inside me. So I thought of another way, a new way.’ It was a terrible thing to think, worse to say, but now she squared her shoulders to confront it.
‘Perhaps you will tell me?’ he invited.
‘You said with the Horse . . . how they took in children and gave them new souls. Made them belong in their tribe.’
‘It is a shocking thing, but no less true,’ he agreed.
‘And I thought . . . I thought that if the Tiger will not let me be a Wolf, and the Wolf will not let me be a Tiger . . .’ She faltered, then pressed on, desperate to get to the part where she actually asked him: ‘Make me a Serpent.’
He froze, mouth slightly open, staring at her as though she bore a dreadful wound and he did not know how to heal it without hurting her even more. ‘It cannot be,’ he said at last, in just a whisper.
‘Please,’ she insisted. ‘Whatever I need to do, I’ll do it. I’ll make offerings. I’ll swear oaths. I’ll give myself over to your god and learn all your things that you do. It must be possible.’
‘But it is not.’ His face creased in pain. ‘What did I say to you, one of the first ever things? We of the Serpent are special.We are the scions of the Oldest Kingdom. There is no becoming one of us.’
‘Why? What don’t I have?’ she demanded. ‘I’ll work, I’ll take your trials, whatever—’
But he held a hand up, and that hand signified finality, in a way she could not define. ‘It is not done. It has never been known. I cannot do it,’ he insisted. ‘If there is some way, then it is a secret held by some other priest, one closer to Serpent than I am.’ A toothless grimace. ‘I am sorry, Maniye. I canno
t describe the sorrow in me that this thing cannot be, but you must seek elsewhere for your answer.’
She had a horrible sense of being a very ignorant girl asking something very stupid, and that he was being far too kind in his mild response. Facing that old, old gaze she felt callow and foolish. Before he could say anything else comforting, she stood up abruptly, almost kicking the fire, and struggled outside, dragging her Horse coat around herself.
She cut wood. It always needed doing and the work involved no thought. She was good at it now: the winter had taught her all sorts of skills that her life in the Winter Runners had not gifted her with. She could see now, with the benefit of hindsight, that her father had always had her in mind for someone’s hearth-keeper, someone’s wife. There was no dishonour in that: to gather and tend, to clean and stitch, to raise children, to meet with the other wives and hearth-husbands and make the hundred small decisions a community relied on. These were valued tasks and many, and yet she had tasted the wilderness now. She had run with the vanguard of winter. She would never be content to keep a hearth.
After that, she still did not feel she could face Hesprec, and so she took the leather bucket and headed for the lake. She was so wrapped up in her own embarrassment – and a kind of dawning horror as she imagined what she might have felt had he somehow said yes – that she did not realize she was not alone until the lakeshore became visible through the trees. Only then did the quiet get to her: not even those muted animal sounds that full winter could not stifle. She was advancing into a world already plunged into that still silence that spoke of the fear of man.
And he was there when she looked for him; not even keeping pace but just standing a little ahead of her, as though he had been waiting there all night or all winter. Broken Axe.
She started back, dropping the bucket. She could only think that she had miscounted the days, that the spring was already come, that it was time.
Then she Stepped, first to wolf, backing away with bared teeth, then to tiger, bulking out as big as she could, snarling and hissing and bristling every hair.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 25