And then she could not stop herself. She looked back, and saw that none of the Winter Runners was there. Instead they were gathered before the stones, and within . . .
She witnessed the last moments of the fight. She saw Akrit Stone River triumph over his enemy, and then throw his bloody muzzle up to the sky to give vent to his victory.
The other throats that joined with him took on a single voice that stabbed at the crowded sky and made it something that usurped all that it touched, driving the gods and spirits before it, pushing them away from their own place until only Wolf was left, ringing in every ear.
She felt it deep inside her, where her wolf soul was. She wanted to add her own howl to that chorus, to become part of the pack that she had just forsworn. The need was something external to her, and yet it was strong. She felt herself being shaken in its jaws.
But she put her head down and forced herself on through it, knowing only now: I am my only master.
Around her she saw the more timid of the others already moving for the causeway. The Coyote and the Deer, the stocky men of the Boar, they packed their tents and left, or else just fled and abandoned what they could not pick up in that moment. She could smell their fear, the rich savour of it. The Wolf was loose and gone mad, after a generation where they had lived mostly in peace even under the Wolf’s Shadow. She saw a handful of men of the Eyrie simply take flight, Stepping up into the air in a clap of wings.
And she dashed past them all and through their camps, leaping over their fires and darting around their sleds and piled packs, and not one of them called after her or tried to stop her. She was Wolf, for all she was no part of what Akrit had done. She breathed out dread and trailed fear behind her.
Then there was another camp ahead, and she saw a sudden flurry of activity there: men and women in bronze-scaled mail spreading out, bearing short, curved knives and hatchets, hefting slender javelins. They did not scatter, nor did they reek of fear. The Tiger, she saw. This was the camp of the Tiger.
My people, and it was only when the first javelin flew that she realized they did not know her: they saw only Wolf, that had been their enemy before – and would be so again.
She twitched aside from the cast, and Stepped – knowing already that she was too close, that the next throw might pin her to the earth. Her panic sent her straight into her human form, abruptly running far faster than she was capable of on two legs, stumbling and tripping, hurtling head over heels.
Instinct took over then, and she realized only that she had landed on her feet, and that they were the feet of a tiger.
The Tiger warriors were staring at her, most of them, save for a couple still gazing out towards the circle. She forced herself into her human shape again, desperate to speak. ‘Please! I’m you!’ She had meant to say, One of you, or One of yours, but it came out muddled. ‘Please –’ and the irrevocable step – ‘take me with you.’
There was a woman there, the same tall priestess Maniye had seen in the circle. The others deferred to her, and her green eyes bored into Maniye’s soul. There was a moment of stillness between them, each studying the other. Like the Bear, the people of the Tiger looked different to the rest of the Crown of the World. Their eyes, their sharp chins, their skins with just a touch of the coppery Plains colour. They wore their hair pulled back and braided into long tails, laced with gold and gleaming stones.
‘We leave now,’ the Tiger priestess declared. ‘She comes with us.’ And, at the snarling looks from some of her followers, ‘There is a story here, and I will know it.’ Not the most reassuring of words, but better than her turning Maniye away.
She was bitterly aware that she was abandoning Hesprec. She could only hope that he would be safe with the Bear tribe – surely they were proof against the depredations of the Wolf? If she could have carried him with her, she would, but there was no chance, no choice. The world brooked no delay.
The Tiger carried what she had taken for large shields or curved drums, but when they reached the water’s edge, they turned them upside down and made boats of them. The eggshell things seemed far too fragile to trust her weight to, but everyone else there was larger than she was, and none of them hesitated.
She did, just for a moment, a heartbeat, looking back at the island, at the stones, at the unseen roiling host of spirits that was rising up like startled birds. She looked for something slender and serpentine, sliding towards her. She looked for a haggard old man with his bald head covered. She saw neither.
So she let herself be steadied in one of the craft, the priestess squeezing up beside her, embracing her close against the chill of her mail. Then the woman had taken up a short paddle, and she
– and all the Tigers there – were making their way across the cloudy waters of the marsh, away from the howls of the Wolf.
26
‘So what now?’
With the taste of Water Gathers’ blood in his mouth he had been exultant, defiant. He had faced down the whole invisible world. He had howled, and the Wolf had howled back.
Now Akrit Stone River sat and stared into the fire, and felt the same leaden despondency that often came to him after his fights and rages. The world seemed a dark and uncertain place again. He had done a terrible thing. It had been a bold thing, when he was doing it. It had been what a Wolf warrior should do. But now it seemed more and more a terrible thing, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.
‘The signs are . . .’ Kalameshli looked grave and drawn, and yet with a new edge to him. ‘The spirits of this place are in turmoil.’
We are all in turmoil. Let them for once experience how a man lives. ‘I don’t care about them,’ Akrit made himself say. It was not true, but if he said it often enough then it might become true. ‘I don’t care about them, and they’re too big, too far away, to really care about us. Isn’t that what you’ve said? They’ll just forget.’
The priest’s shoulders rose and fell. ‘This is where they come closest to the earth, where they can hear our voices. A deed done here in their full view cannot but bring repercussions. You are marked, Akrit Stone River. The powers of the world have marked you.’
‘Let them. They mark great men, do they not? Every hero of our stories was marked out by the world as a man apart.’ And how many of them came to a happy end? But it was true: the wise man avoided the attention of the invisible world, but it was a sharp-edged knife, if he could only avoid the blade and grasp the hilt.
Kalameshli’s thoughts had probably run through the same twists. ‘The gods—’ he started.
‘Only one of them matters,’ Akrit said forcefully. ‘Do I care that the Deer resents me? Do I care if the Boar carries ill will? Or even the Bear? How do I stand with the Wolf, Takes Iron? I thought . . . when it happened, I thought I felt him. I was inside the circle and I felt him there. And I had done the right thing, I knew it.’ That blessed moment without doubts . . . but doubts always crept in, in the end.
‘The Wolf is watching you,’ Kalameshli told him. The priest had been seeking the future ever since Water Gathers’ death, and it was almost evening now. They had the island to themselves, the people of the Wolf, for the other tribes had left with speed. And that had felt good, too. They had all been reminded who the true masters of the Crown of the World were. The Wolf had grown soft and slack, before. Now the message would go out to every village: that those born within the Jaws of the Wolf did not fear even the great spirits.
‘Watching me? What does that mean?’
‘He is following your tracks,’ old Takes Iron said. ‘He is following to see where you will take him. If he finds you wanting, he will bring you down.’
‘Or?’
The old priest’s gaze was level. ‘Or he will hunt alongside you.’
Akrit forced a smile. ‘So: this is good, is it not?’ He cast the priest an exasperated glance.
‘Before this happened, I had spoken with other priests from other tribes,’ Kalameshli advanced carefully. ‘There have been many omens in
this last year: of a great time of strife, the overturning of many things. It seems a testing will come to the people and to the land.’
‘Are we to be that testing? Is it the Tiger war?’
Kalameshli took a deep breath. ‘I think that there are only two ways to meet a test: swift feet, strong jaws.’
‘Let the Coyote run.’
The priest smiled slightly. ‘I think that we are already at the heart of the trouble. I think that to run is not a choice we can make. Doing what you have done, you have turned us all to face the storm. If the other tribes will follow you, then they will face it along with us.’
‘Speak plainly,’ Akrit directed.
‘Before this day, you wanted to become High Chief because it was a role fit for you, and because you are a man who saw it within his reach.’ He held up a hand to forestall Akrit’s interjection. ‘Before this day, you wanted to bring Tiger into the Wolf’s Shadow, because you have never stopped hating the Shadow Eaters.’
‘And now?’
‘And now you must accomplish these things, or fall,’ Kalameshli told him flatly. ‘Now the future will weigh upon your shoulders and make a trial of your strength. If you are the man who can do what he boasts, then you shall bear the future aloft. You shall wrestle it and cast it down. And if you fail at these things, if you are no more than just Akrit Stone River of the Winter Runners, then the spirits that marked you here will destroy you.’
‘Do not fear for me.’ But Akrit could not keep his voice entirely steady. Hearing his own uncertainty, he snarled. ‘Fear instead for whoever took my daughter. Tell me you have news of her.’
‘All streams lead to the same river,’ Kalameshli said, with an almost-exasperated twitch of his hands. ‘The Coyote saw her go. She left with the Shadow Eaters. They will make for their strongholds in the highlands, and hide her there.’
‘But?’
‘Broken Axe has gone after her. He will track her, wherever she goes. He will steal her back or else he will tell you where she is, so that you can start your war.’
Akrit felt the world had become a torrent of water, carrying him along, carrying them all. ‘And the other tribes?’
‘Like the Wolf, they watch,’ Kalameshli confirmed.
‘But they must remember the war with the Tiger. Every tribe will have its warriors who fought in it.’ Akrit stood up suddenly. ‘You’re right. This is the time to act, to seize the moment in our teeth and see if we can tear it free. Fail at this, fail at it all: that is what you’re telling me.’
The priest nodded, gaze fixed on him.
‘Tell them to gather their warriors. Tell them the Shadow Eaters have stolen my daughter. Tell them this is an insult to the Wolf, a sign that they mean to come down from the high places and rule over us again. Tell the people of the Wolf to ready themselves for a summer war.’
The Tiger priestess was called Aritchaka, and this was how her fellows addressed her. Later, Maniye learned that she had earned herself a proper name, what a Wolf would call a hunter’s name, but amongst the priests of the Tiger such names were kept secret and used only within their own clandestine rites. She travelled with two male servants or guards, and she called them Red Jaw and Club Head. They spoke seldom and stayed very close to her. Red Jaw had a sheath of javelins and a spearthrower, and Club Head bore a knotted length of polished wood studded with bone and teeth. They wore sleeveless armour of square leather panels stitched together, which fell to their knees, while their lower legs were wrapped in cloth. There were livid marks striping their forearms. Burns, Maniye realized.
Aritchaka herself was clad in a cuirass of bronze scales, and she had donned a helm of the same metal with a red feather cresting it. At her belt was a curved knife and a short-hafted axe with a spike jutting backwards from the head. Altogether, the three of them cut as alien a trio as any Maniye had ever seen. She reckoned that even Hesprec would seem familiar and safe when compared to them.
There were others of the Tiger fleeing the Stone Place, but they were well spread out, each carrying a little boat on his or her back, and each ranging wide in search of enemies. They occasionally ghosted out from between the trees or from behind rocks, to give Aritchaka a brief signal by nod or gesture before vanishing off again.
Maniye had admitted only to the name ‘Many Tracks’. They travelled hard for the first day, pushing north and east, taking higher ground whenever it was offered. When necessary, they Stepped in order to climb, with one or other of the men clawing his way up with a cord about his shoulder, then hauling the boats up after them. Maniye Stepped with them, without hesitation. Amongst other tigers, her tiger soul was like a comfortable garment. The idea of carrying a wolf body on her bones grew swiftly strange and unlikely to her.
They took the water road whenever it was offered, their progress following a string of lakes like stones on a necklace. Each time they did so, Maniye knew, they would be laying their scent to rest, forcing any keen-nosed pursuers to dither about the shore in order to hunt them down.
Still, there was one moment that she looked back, as they scaled a jagged-edged scarp of rock, and she spotted him: a pale wolf with dark shoulders, effortlessly keeping pace. She did not see him again, but after that she knew that Broken Axe would be there marking their trail.
She did not say anything to Aritchaka, for she was terrified that they would turn on her and drive her away if they thought she was a liability.
They pushed on hard like this for two days, putting much distance between them and any pursuers, before Aritchaka seemed to relax a little. On the night of the second day they lit a fire, rather than the four of them just Stepping to their feline shapes and huddling close together for warmth. Club Head built what looked like an altar over the little patch of flames, with a flat stone crowning it, laid out some fish on it and let them cook.
Aritchaka now regarded her impassively, loosening the sash at her waist and beckoning Red Jaw over to lift off her cuirass. ‘Tiger girl,’ she began, ‘Wolf girl. What does the chief of the Winter Runners want with you, that he would tear down the gods to get to you?’
Maniye felt her chest clench. She had expected questions, of course, but not that they would be so well informed. A hundred lies squirmed in her mind: she had been a sacrifice; she had been caught spying or stealing; she was promised to the Horse Society and must return to them . . . But who could say how much this priestess already knew?
She took a deep breath, aware that she had already been silent for too long, and that her silence was the only sound aside from the crackling of the flames and the sizzling of the fish. All three of them were studying her intently, their eyes glittering in the firelight.
Without speaking, without acting, they stripped her of layer after layer of lies-that-might-have-been until she was left only with telling the truth. Or the truth as she knew it, which was all the truth she had.
‘I am Stone River’s daughter,’ she informed them, seeing Aritchaka’s eyes go wide in shock. The two men shifted posture slightly – first as if to ward against a threat, but in the next moment ready to seize her, her role now transformed from refugee to enemy. And of course the Wolf told many stories about what the Shadow Eaters did with those they captured during their raids.
‘He said that he got me on she who was once the Tiger Queen,’ she forced herself to say.
Red Jaw hissed, baring his teeth, and Aritchaka cuffed him across the face – a movement so swift and without thought that it seemed mere force of habit. Then her hand lashed out and had Maniye by the throat – no, by the chin, turning her face slowly in the firelight, staring, staring . . .
Then the grip slackened, leaving Maniye gasping out, and still pinned by that green gaze.
‘There is not much of her in your face. You look like a Wolf.’ And yet Aritchaka was thoughtful, clearly troubled.
‘Did you know her?’ Maniye pressed.
‘Know her?’ The priestess weighed the words in her mouth before voicing them. ‘She who rules
the Fire Shadow People is also closest to the Tiger spirit. Whose will else should I obey?’
It took Maniye surprisingly long before she could say it. ‘Will you tell me about her?’
‘No,’ came the swift answer. ‘Or not now. There will come a time for many things.’
The next morning they had visitors. A handful more Tigers arrived, and with them came a stout, copper-skinned woman dressed in a long sheepskin coat of the Horse style. They appeared with a pair of stocky horses, shorter and shaggier than the beasts that Maniye was used to.
‘There has been a change of plans,’ Aritchaka explained to them. ‘We have a third to come with us – the girl.’
The Horse woman nodded, unperturbed. ‘Let her ride behind me. All she needs to do is hold on.’
The priestess took Maniye’s shoulder, pulling her close. ‘I had planned to withdraw to our lands carrying warnings of the Wolf. Now it seems I shall bring them something more, no?’ She stared into the girl’s eyes. ‘I see here no second thoughts or regrets. Do I see right?’
Maniye swallowed and nodded. There was a great deal in her mind about what she was leaving behind, but so few scraps of it were good and so much was baggage she was glad to shed.
She had never known her mother, for it had been right after her birth that Stone River had given the Tiger woman over to Broken Axe to dispose of. In all her years, the people of the Tiger had seemed nothing but a night terror, an enemy, the victims in tales of heroism in battle, a name to curse by, a byword for cruelties and dishonours since avenged. That they must exist, as a real people with a real history, she could surmise, but they had never seemed as such to her. Not until she saw them at the Stone Place.
Now here she was, leaving the Shadow of the Wolf, crossing its penumbra into that other Shadow that her mother had once cast.
The other Tigers would disperse by their own paths, leaving plenty of trails for any Wolf hunters to follow. They would go over rugged, rough country, by water and by rock, and yet still they might be overtaken by the swift feet of the Winter Runners. Maniye and Aritchaka, in contrast, would take a wider route along paths that the emissaries of the Horse Society had beaten out of animal trails, winding back and forth up the face of the highlands, through the dense forests to where the snow still lingered, and the Tiger held court.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 32