Asmander looked Yellow Claw in the eye and tried to find some cutting rejoinder, but no words came. He was drawn bowstring-tense by what he was about to try, and there was no room for wit.
He wanted to say, Yes . . .Yes I have learned to fly.
He Stepped. It was not to his Champion’s fighting form nor to the low-slung water shape of Old Crocodile. It was to something else, something that Hesprec had invited into him: a new soul enticed into his body.
He could not say what it might look like through someone else’s eyes. He knew only what it felt like: the feet that gripped the post beneath him were fiercely taloned, the barbs gleaming with the black lustre of obsidian. His arms were long and attenuated, hands reaching out until the last finger of each was longer than his whole body. When he shook them out, the webs of skin between them and his narrow body snapped sail-taut, twitching and rippling. His head was like a crested spear, forming a razoredged beak longer than a man.
When he spread his wings, they were almost as vast as Yellow Claw’s own. When he gave voice, it shook the peaks above them. He was something like a bat, something like a crocodile, nothing that the eyes of men had ever seen.
The transformation struck Yellow Claw as hard as a sword blow. He Stepped to his bird form, stuttered back to man, then bird again spreading his own wings and keening, but a moment later he was crouching on human feet, the two knives held out. His eyes were wide enough that Asmander could see the white all around them, could stare right into their depths to Yellow Claw’s mean and bitter souls, and see his own reflection ravening back out of them.
Asmander beat his wings and pushed himself forward, gliding two posts closer to Yellow Claw and managing a creditable landing with his hooked feet and the fingers of his wings. Part of him was trying to exalt in this new form, but far more of him was terrified of getting it wrong. The body’s shape knew the air, but there an understanding of the air that Yellow Claw had and Asmander lacked. Some things only came with practice. And the moment he slipped, the moment he looked a fool, his hold on the other man would be gone.
If it came to it, and if Yellow Claw fought fierce, then the Eyrieman would still win.
So Asmander came on strong, hop after hop, shrieking and thundering with his wings. He made that unfamiliar body into a death threat aimed straight at his enemy. I too can fly! There is nowhere you can go I cannot follow. And he thought: If all my life I’d had mastery of the sky, uncontested, then would I be a brave man still? If I had the luxury of living where none could attack, of attacking only where I chose. He was maligning the Eyrie, no doubt. Surely there were many brave warriors there, for they had to strive against each other to prove themselves. Their Champion, though . . .
And he made that final lunge. Yellow Claw was a man until the second before he struck, and then spread his wings and kicked away, flight over fight. Asmander became the Champion and caught him in the moment that he took to the sky. Sickle-talons raked across the eagle’s body, ripping feathers and scoring lines of blood, and then the bird was free of him, wheeling and tumbling in the air, circling down awkwardly, one wing trailing. He was a man again as he landed, clutching an arm to his chest, bloody where the claws had raked.
For a moment Asmander wanted to stoop on him, to finish him off, but that was not the way between Champions – for all such niceties were probably unknown in the cold north. Instead, he Stepped back to human form, standing tall and proud and high.
‘I claim my victory,’ he called. ‘Free the girl, and if I see a wing-speck in the sky following us, then I shall rise to meet it.’ Empty words, but he gave them force.
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Maniye cast more than one nervous look up at the sky as they scuffed and slid their way down the treacherous path that was the only land-bound escape from the Eyriemen’s camp. There were clouds aplenty, eager to gift the world with rain, but she spotted no winged shapes wheeling against them. It seemed the Eyrie was licking its wounds.
They made wordless progress for some time. Hesprec was chancing the walk down, feeling his way with his staff and choosing his footing wisely – of the three of them, he never stumbled or slipped once. On her other side, Asmander seemed deep in thought, stealing a suspicious glance at her every so often. He must surely be brooding over the same question that Yellow Claw had asked: Why her?
Maniye wanted to ask it, too. She remembered the lie Hesprec had told the Horse, that he had come north to seek her out for a prophecy. Was he just repaying a debt? Her rescue of his old bones from the Winter Runners paid by his bringing this exotic warrior to defeat Yellow Claw?
Then the Snake priest croaked out, ‘I imagine you must be full of questions.’ He had paused to catch his breath, and she felt pinned suddenly by his gaze.
She should ask why, so she might know whether he was still on her side, or whether he would take up with his strange friends and abandon her.
She would not ask him. She would remain ignorant until their parting forced the knowledge into her. For all he was old and frail and strange, she wanted him to be her friend. She needed him.
So she asked of Asmander, ‘What were those animals you Stepped to? Were those things of the south?’ She already knew in her heart they were not. They were something special: part of that way he had of seeming bigger, weightier than he was.
He was already shaking his head. ‘What you saw first, that was the Champion of the Sun River Nation.’ He frowned at her expression. ‘Just as Yellow Claw’s shape was Champion of the Eyrie. You understand me?’
‘Most of the peoples in these lands have no such thing, and the Eyriemen keep to themselves,’ Hesprec suggested. They had all halted alongside him, within the cover of the treeline, to let him recover his strength.
‘I am chosen,’ Asmander tried explaining.
‘By who?’
‘By Old Crocodile. By the Tsotec – river of my homeland. By
the spirits.’ His hands made nebulous gestures. ‘Just . . . chosen. And so a new soul came to me, or maybe it is a part of a greater soul that all Champions can touch.’
‘You sound like you don’t know,’ she accused him, because he scared her a little, and she needed to challenge that fear within herself.
To her surprise, he grinned sheepishly. ‘It is something that happens. Of course, you ask for it when you’re a young warrior and learning to Step. Everyone does so. But why me? Who can say? I never felt I deserved it. And the Champion can be hard. The Champion has his own way to live, his own rules.’
‘And you have a flying Champion as well?’ Maniye pressed.
Asmander shook his head fiercely. ‘Never before; most likely never again. It is in me, but I am not sure I will Step that way. Ask me when I’m next falling off a cliff.’ Another bright grin, quickly on, quickly gone. ‘The Messenger, he is the man who knows about that.’
Hesprec spread his bony hands. ‘Entirely the wrong time of day to talk theology. Let me say no more than that a Champion’s soul is more open than any other’s. There are rituals, very old, very sacred, that can invite another soul in. It is as though . . . your soul has cousins and uncles, Asmander, and with the proper invocation he can be prompted to reach, to call out for them, to ask them to muster in his warband and hunt along with him. I was not sure it would work, not in this cold, harsh place where the Serpent’s coils are few and far-flung. But it did, and I’m proud of you. You are a Champion for your people to take pride in.’
Asmander seemed to take the compliment awkwardly, waving it away. ‘We should move on. I don’t trust these Bird men.’
Hesprec managed a snort. ‘If they wanted to catch us up, you think I could walk fast enough to prevent them?’ He sighed. ‘I wanted to walk down, for once. I thought going down would be easier. But it seems my many years will have to beg another ride.’ He chuckled ruefully. ‘“Many Years”, that can be my name here in the Crown of the World, Many Years and Many Tracks.’
‘Messenger,’ Asmander held out a hand, but Hesprec had been lo
oking at Maniye.
‘Gladly,’ she confirmed, and took his fingers in hers. In a moment he had done his trick of casting himself up his own arm, the ribbon-thin serpent he had now become winding its way up the sleeve of her threadbare Horse-made coat.
She and the southerner set off down again. She wanted to be a Wolf or a Tiger, and make better time, but she was not sure she could run with Asmander’s stalking monster beside her. The Champion. Hesprec had used the word as though it was Asmander’s title, but the man himself had spoken of the Champion as though it was a different creature entirely.
‘Did you come here seeking Hesprec?’ Asking him anything was an act of daring, and she fully expected to be rebuffed haughtily.
Instead he gave her a surprised look, and for a handful of moments there were frank emotions visible on his southern face, though she could not quite follow them. Then he gave her a smile that seemed slightly sad.
‘That would have been a mission of great honour,’ he told her. ‘I should just tell you, “Yes”, and have you think better of me. But it was not so.’
‘Why, then?’
‘If you had three days and a desperate need to sleep, I could tell you much about the Sun River Nation, how it is governed, and what threatens it. But these are problems you do not have in the Crown of the World: politics, taxes, hereditary rule. You are better off without these things.’
In truth Maniye found the words difficult. ‘Is that where the child always gets what the parent had?’ and then, at his nod, ‘Then the Tiger have that.’ She almost went further but caught herself, saying only, ‘Their daughters become what their mothers were.’
‘Hence you run from them,’ Asmander noted drily. ‘That, I approve of. They are much wiser, most of your tribes and villages here. Avoid such foolishness.’
‘Your people’s foolishness.’
‘Exactly.’ He was plainly making some joke for his own amusement, at his own expense.
‘We have our own foolishness.’
‘No doubt. That is how people are. Once they have food and drink and shelter, the next thing they must find is a quarrel.’
They carried on picking their way downwards, beneath the intermeshed needles of the trees. The southerner was a contradiction, a study in strength and self-mockery. She wondered what he would have been without the mantle of Champion weighing on his shoulders. Something less? Happier? The same?
Her eyes were still on the sky, waiting for Yellow Claw and his warriors to return. She had forgotten her other enemies, and in her human shape she could not scent them out. How long they had followed her footsteps before striking, she never knew.
She was trying to think of something to say to Asmander, to untease a little more out of him. She asked about the south, but his answers meant nothing to her, and questions about his purpose here seemed to slide off his shoulders, so she said, ‘Tell me about your priesthood,’ feeling the slender serpent shift its coiled grasp about her wrist.
He opened his mouth to answer, but the wrongness struck her all at once, and she cried out: no words, just a warning. The instant they knew she had sensed them, there were wolves bursting out from cover, weaving between the trees with their jaws half-open, eyes burning her with their yellow gaze.
And she cried out, because she knew them. No strangers these, who might be fooled or reasoned with. At their head was Akrit Stone River himself. Her father had come for her.
She had Stepped to her own wolf shape instantly and was away, feeling Hesprec shift awkwardly to stay clasped about her. Asmander had his stone-toothed sword out, eyes wide in that dark face, but it was plain the wolves were happy to avoid him and ignore him, if only they could have her.
She went scuffing and scrambling away between the trees, but the gradient was taking her further downslope any time she was not actively pushing upwards. The Winter Runners knew it, running below her, one or other of them pacing her at every moment, the rest closing the jaws of the trap. They were wolves: as a pack they could run forever. As solitary prey she could not.
It seemed to her that she had always realized it would end like this. These were just the last moments of a hunt that had begun the moment she had abandoned her home village. If she had only looked far enough behind her, she would surely have spotted the patient form of Stone River loping along her trail.
But still she ran. Like every hunted thing, she ran until they caught her.
She had lost track of Stone River, but Amiyen Shatters Oak was pushing towards her from down the slope, inching closer and closer. Then another couple of wolves were almost falling upon her, two young hunters shouldering at each other to be the one who caught her. They lost their purchase on the root-strewn ground, nearly taking her with them. She veered, and then was a tiger, clawing and climbing straight upwards swifter than Amiyen could follow, kicking dirt and mats of dead needles down at the wolf behind her.
Another of the pack was above her, had overshot her in trying to second-guess her course, but was now turning back. She saw the grey of an old wolf still strong, and her heart shot her through with dread: Kalameshli, surely? Stone River had brought the priest along, and why would he do that, unless the hateful old man had a special vengeance in mind for her?
They will give me to the Wolf.They will give me to the fire.
She turned back the way she had come, from tiger back to wolf as soon as she had found a level course, leaving Amiyen and Kalameshli and the rest scrabbling to match her shift in direction.
Then Smiles Without Teeth was there before her, a huge dun wolf with spittle-strung jaws. He lunged for her and she twisted aside, knowing that she was going to make it, that those teeth would close only on empty air.
But he Stepped as he lunged, the reach of his teeth suddenly extended by the length of his arm, and his huge hand got the scruff of her neck, and then he had her by the throat.
She was human again, no fangs, no claws, and he lifted her up with a triumphant grin. Then Hesprec flashed out from her sleeve, toothless jaws gaping right in the Wolf hunter’s face, and he howled and dropped her, losing his footing and sliding away down the slope. She hit the ground on four feet, Hesprec on two.
‘Asmander! Here!’ the old man managed, a quavering cry that surely the Champion would never hear, and then he lunged desperately for her, knotting his scaled length about her even as she was off, wolf-shaped again, feeling the net close in on her.
Seconds later three wolves were nipping at her tail, each pushing at the others for a chance of being the one that brought her down, and she could scent the fierce, hot reek of the pack
– not the individuals but the single creature they made when they came together. She dodged and danced between the trees, keeping her few heartbeats of a lead, but one stumble from her would finish it, and they were inexorably bending her path so as to bring her into the jaws of the others.
Then Asmander was amongst them in the Champion’s shape, striking down with sickle-clawed feet and scattering them, shrieking out his challenge. The wolves bolted in all directions, one of them tumbling over and over down the slope, and Maniye was running, still running. Abruptly there was no other wolf behind her, and she was leaping free, of her own volition and not driven by their storm.
Two, three breaths the world allowed her, when she thought she was clear of them. Then Stone River pounced from the higher ground, the cunning old hunter who had guessed where the hunt would take her, and had waited, fresh and alert, for her to come to him. He struck her in the side, knocking her from her feet with his weight, and then he had his forepaws on her, pinning her to the ground, his breath hot and stinking in her nose.
He lunged, jaws gaping, but it was just to set them about her throat, not enough to pierce her wolf hide, but sufficient to jolt her back into her human form.
Then he was human too, looming, monstrous, one of her childhood’s two tormenting demons. He hauled her up and, when she tried to twist out of his grasp, he slapped her across the side of the face, ha
rd enough to loosen her teeth and blur her vision.
‘Now,’ he growled, and Hesprec struck at him desperately, first an open-mouthed lunge at his face, then whipping his body about Akrit Stone River’s throat, a living noose that grew and grew, thickening and tightening as Hesprec Stepped and Stepped through a spectrum of greater and greater serpents, fighting for the strength to overcome this man.
Then Akrit had a hand about the snake’s head and neck, as he tried to wrench the creature away, and abruptly there was no longer a crushing serpent there, but just a fragile old man with his withered and impotent hands at the Wolf chief’s throat.
Maniye was a tiger, in that instant, snarling and yowling and ready to defend her friend, but the old priest cried out, ‘Run! You’re their prize, not me!’
Even then she would not have gone, but another wolf was on her, jaws gouging long grooves in her haunches: Amiyen Shatters Oak had caught up with her. Without thinking, Maniye smacked the newcomer across the snout with a rake of her claws and was a wolf again, already darting away. She left Hesprec behind. She hated herself, but she left him.
But Shatters Oak would not be thrown off. Pelting through the trees, she felt that she had left the pack behind, perhaps even left Akrit behind, but the hot breath of Shatters Oak was always at her back. Now Maniye found herself remembering the Horse camp: how it had been Shatters Oak and her son there who had tried to kill her.
She tried for another sudden burst of speed, but she was too tired, and Amiyen was running a little downhill of her, forcing Maniye to spend her strength against the slope.
I cannot run like this much longer. She was slowing. When she had slowed enough, been worn down enough, Amiyen would strike. That was the Wolf’s way.
So she turned to fight.
She was a tiger again when she turned, claws digging for purchase, given a tantalizing glimpse of a clear path beyond Amiyen when the other wolf overshot, but now she had decided to fight, it was a fight she would make of it. Even in this form she was smaller than Amiyen’s wolf, but it was a closer match, and her position upslope had become a weapon.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 41