The Tiger and the Wolf

by kindle@netgalley. com

  She struck, and heard Shatters Oak’s surprised yelp, and then the two of them were tumbling over and over. They bounced off a couple of trees, one that caught Maniye in the ribs, one that bruised Amiyen’s haunches, and then the wolf had scrabbled to her feet, snapping at Maniye’s throat.

  She sprang back, swatting at the wolf’s muzzle as she did so. A moment later she was human again, knife coming out as she fell into a fighting stance. But it had only ever been a dance for her, and Amiyen was as determined to kill her as a woman could be.

  The wolf regarded her with cold, hating eyes, and then Amiyen Stepped as well, pulling an iron hatchet from her belt.

  Shatters Oak attacked straight away, three swift cuts with the axe, left, right, then a vicious hack across Maniye’s midriff that had her leaping back. She made it a dance though, turning on the ball of her foot and driving back in, cutting down the line of Amiyen’s collarbone, one hand up to catch the axe-wrist.

  The slash fell short when Amiyen twisted aside from it with a surprised snarl, yet she had still drawn a thin line of red close to the other woman’s neck. Catching hold of the axe was harder, though. Amiyen was stronger than she was, stronger than any of the Tiger girls Maniye had trained against. She had been taught all sorts of lessons about using strength against itself, but none of them were in her head right then, and her feet almost slid out from under her.

  Instantly she was a tiger again, and she scored three lines across Amiyen’s leg before the axe came down. Her Step had taken her in close, so the hatchet’s haft slammed hard into her shoulder, and then Amiyen was a wolf with teeth of iron gnawing for purchase at the back of her opponent’s neck.

  Maniye bucked and threw herself aside, feeling those fangs draw blood yet not lock. She writhed out from under her enemy, turning back with a savage snarl, all finesse forgotten, looking for the wolf but finding the woman.

  The axe threatened: she flinched back from it, and Amiyen kicked her beneath the ribs, bowling her over onto her back. The sudden wrenching pain yanked Maniye into her human shape again, gasping for breath that would not come, and Amiyen dropped onto her, a hand at her throat, a knee crunching down on her knife-arm. She was smiling.

  ‘Now I kill you, as you killed my son,’ she crowed triumphantly. ‘And your ghost shall rot in your corpse.’

  Maniye tried to protest that she hadn’t, but Amiyen’s grip was choking off all the words in her throat. With her free hand she fumbled with that clenching grasp, but she might as well have tried to bend iron.

  Then someone was standing behind Amiyen, though by then Maniye could make out none of the details. She heard the voice, though.

  ‘Many Tracks didn’t kill your son. I did.’

  A voice she knew: Broken Axe’s voice.

  Amiyen had gone still, but not relaxed her grip. ‘You? How could it be you . . . ? You were not . . .’ But her eyes had narrowed and she must have been casting her mind back to the Horse camp. In amongst the twisted skein of scents that had knotted the air there, had she scented the spoor of Broken Axe? Surely she had . . . ‘The girl was there. Iramey was on her heels.’

  ‘Because he sought to kill her. And because you did.’

  Silence from Amiyen Shatters Oak.

  Broken Axe stepped round until Maniye could see him. He seemed eminently unhurried.

  ‘Why would you?’ Amiyen said at last. ‘If I told Stone River you had turned on your own—’

  ‘And if I tell him you would have killed his daughter, against his word?’ Broken Axe raised an eyebrow. ‘He will say I was doing his will.’

  Maniye could feel Amiyen growing tenser and tenser, poised to Step, to spring. She tried to warn Broken Axe with her eyes, but he gave no sign of noticing her.

  ‘And now?’ Amiyen’s tone was low and dangerous.

  ‘Now you seek her death again. And you have no sons with you.’ Broken Axe spread his hands wide. ‘But here I am, Iramey’s Bane.’

  Amiyen screamed out her hatred, throwing herself off Maniye and Stepping at the same time, so that her hind claws gouged and tore at the girl as she scrabbled for purchase.

  ‘Go!’ Broken Axe snapped, and then he was a wolf as well, and the two were meeting each other, fang to fang.

  And Maniye followed suit, running once again, wolf nose in the air to warn her of any of her kin who might be close.

  That was how, much later, she found the camp of Venater and Shyri, who had been waiting with less and less patience for someone to tell them what was going on.

  By that time, Maniye was half dead with running, sorefooted, hungry and parched with thirst. By the time she was ready to tell them what had happened, Asmander had arrived too, stalking into the clearing as the Champion, proud and terrible and strange. Only when he Stepped back did he show that he was just about as tired as she was.

  His look at her was accusing, and she hung her head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘The Messenger.’

  ‘There was nothing I could do,’ she told him, and then, noting his expression, ‘He was my friend! I don’t know what he was to you, but he was my friend. My only one!’

  Asmander looked as though he had a lot more to say, but he held it and he held it, and then it let it go, just breathing it all out and leaving behind a man who was calm and in control. ‘We should move on,’ he decided. ‘Your Wolves, they will be sniffing after you with their long noses, yes?’

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ Shyri said, standing up abruptly with a knife in her hand. Maniye Stepped instantly, but without deciding to what. Something within her chose tiger over wolf. Too tired to run, she would fight.

  The three southerners were all ready to make a battle of it too, so she had to Step very swiftly and call them off when she saw it was Broken Axe.

  He regarded them narrowly, taking in the foreigners.

  ‘Your old man, the Snake,’ said Broken Axe. ‘Stone River has him. They will give him to the Wolf.’

  35

  ‘Who is this?’ Asmander demanded, seeing only another Wolf. The air between Broken Axe and the southerners was tense as a strung wire

  ‘Calm,’ Maniye said, drawing their taut gazes onto her. ‘Broken Axe is a Wolf who follows his own path. He keeps many counsels and we need to know what he can tell us.’ She was sensing out the balance of power between the southerners: who cared about Hesprec, and who was spoiling for a fight.

  ‘So speak,’ Asmander said at last. ‘If your people have the

  Messenger, tell us why they won’t have shed his blood already.’ ‘They’ll want to do it properly,’ Broken Axe explained. ‘The

  old man, he was due for the Wolf’s jaws once before. They have

  no idol here to sear him on, but Takes Iron will do what he can

  to make it a proper sacrifice, to appease the Wolf. They say that,

  after what happened at the Stones, the Wolf’s eye is fixed on

  Stone River right now. He’s being measured. Anything he can

  do to win favour, he’ll do.’

  ‘Then they must’ve done it by now,’ Maniye argued. ‘A big

  fire, a few words, what else is there?’ After her time spent

  amongst the Tigers, all the rituals of the Wolf clans seemed no

  more than brutal muttering.

  ‘They would have to stop for it,’ Axe explained. ‘Stone River

  is on the move. They have come too close to the Shining Halls.

  Tiger scouts have been playing games with them, and they already fought off a Tiger warband – one that was also hunting you, like as not. There was a fight, wounds on both sides. The Tigers slunk back to the Halls to lick their wounds, but this is still Tiger land, and Stone River is making for another camp of

  his, heading west.’

  ‘How far?’ Maniye demanded.

  ‘Less than two days for a wolf, but the old man is no wolf.

  With a halter about his neck he’s no snake, either. So they must


  pull him on a sled, and that slows them. Slows them so that a

  wolf could catch them.’

  Maniye stared at him. ‘Would you lie to me, Broken Axe.’ ‘If it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘The right thing to do is to tell you what I have told you.’ ‘Why?’ Asmander demanded suddenly. ‘Why do you care?

  Yes, I will do all I can to save the Messenger from your people,

  but why tell us this, save to trap us? Surely any sacrifice to the

  Wolf god must be music to you.’

  ‘The Wolf I follow is in here.’ Broken Axe tapped his chest.

  ‘He wants no sacrifice. He needs no man to die in agony by fire.

  He wants the clean joy of the hunt, the fresh snow, the wide sky

  and the moon. He wants a simple life that isn’t stained by other

  men’s ambition and greed.’

  It was hardly enough to win over Asmander, Maniye thought,

  but at the man’s words the southerner nodded thoughtfully. ‘If

  this is true, then we must travel now.’

  ‘We must.’ Broken Axe’s nod took in Maniye and nobody

  else. ‘Stepped, we’ll overtake them. Can you run with the Wolf?’ ‘How will I find out save by trying?’ Asmander replied. ‘You

  two,’ he turned to his southern companions, ‘track us, and make

  what pace you can.’

  Shyri, at least, looked rebellious at that, and who knew what

  pace she could keep up, but the life of Hesprec was apparently

  not something she was willing to exert herself for.

  They Stepped then: Broken Axe, Maniye and the southern Champion. Two wolves and a stalking lizard creature left the

  camp, heading west.

  During that first stretch it was plain that Asmander could not

  only keep up, but could have sprinted far faster than they if he

  wanted. He was constantly having to rein himself in, cocking his

  head back towards them and scratching at the ground while they

  caught up. Then Broken Axe was human again and signalling a

  halt, though they had covered almost no distance. They were on

  the same slopes where the Winter Runners had attacked previously, and there was a stench in Maniye’s nose: a personal scent,

  familiar and yet somehow changed.

  ‘Why’ve we stopped?’ Asmander demanded. ‘You’re going to

  camp here for the night?’

  ‘I must retrieve something, that is all.’ Broken Axe searched

  about, Stepping into and out of his wolf shape, until he had

  found the right place. Then he reached up with human hands

  and hauled himself into a tree, coming down again with something bulky draped over his shoulder.

  Maniye, who had remained a wolf through all of this, knew it

  for a pelt. Some part of her was desperate for this to be the last

  remnant of Amiyen Shatters Oak, but it was not. The scent was

  familiar, but she could not immediately put a name to it. ‘Dirhath,’ Broken Axe supplied, and she remembered: a

  young hunter, scarcely more than a boy, strutting and unsure

  but desperate to win the approval of his elders. He had not yet

  won himself a hunter’s name. Now he never would.

  ‘He was caught by the Tigers, separated from the pack. They

  killed him, and his spirit is flown.’

  ‘So . . . you skinned him? This is a Wolf thing?’ Asmander

  enquired with a frown.

  ‘I am still welcome amongst the Winter Runners,’ Broken Axe

  said, though the echo to those words was, For how long? ‘You,

  though, Many Tracks . . . let Stone River decide to Step, and

  catch the scent of the child who fled him, and you’ll be theirs.’

  He nodded to her. ‘You know what we will do with this.’ ‘I . . . have heard of it being done.’ In stories, even in fireside

  recountings, but she had never witnessed it. It was a grisly thing,

  to wear two skins and carry another’s scent. ‘They will not think

  me Dirhath. I cast a smaller shadow.’

  ‘Then do not been seen by them. It is enough that they scent

  what is familiar,’ Broken Axe told her.

  ‘And me? You have another magic skin for me, perhaps?’

  Asmander’s tone suggested they did not do such things in the

  south, even in stories.

  ‘You . . .’ Broken Axe scratched the back of his head. ‘I don’t

  know what to do with you. I don’t know this creature that you

  Step to. But I have watched you run. You’re very swift, but you

  are not a Wolf. You will not match us for the long haul.’ ‘Will I not?’

  ‘If you fall behind, go find your fellows. When it comes for us

  to bring the old Snake back, we will try and sniff you out. Perhaps we will have company when we return.’

  Then he took the pelt of Dirhath, still sticky with the dead

  man’s blood, and laced the paws together so that it could rest on

  Maniye’s shoulders like a cloak, the unskulled head flopping and

  flapping behind her, the tail and hind legs dragging on the

  ground.

  ‘We will not know human shape again until we have caught

  them,’ Broken Axe pronounced.

  Maniye nodded shortly, knowing that when she Stepped, her

  wolf form would be trailing the dead Dirhath’s scent; that some

  part of him would be carried with her, not his ghost but something of him nonetheless.

  They ran as the wolves run, that can travel night and day when they have to. For most of that night, Asmander kept up, although the scent of him told Maniye he was flagging, all his lightning speed nothing compared to the constant grind of their own progress. This was how the pack brought down the fleet deer: not being faster, but never slowing, never giving up, running the prey ragged and staggering, then circling for the kill.

  In the end, Asmander slowed, then Stepped, resuming his human form on one knee, raising a fist at the dark sky, perhaps in frustration, perhaps in salute. It was only Many Tracks and Broken Axe now.

  She had run from Broken Axe for so long, before. Now he broke fresh ground and she followed, although her nose already warned her of the passage of many of her kin. She knew that Broken Axe was right: the Winter Runners were not moving swiftly.

  In her mind was no plan, and that was what frightened her most. She had no idea how Stone River would have set his people when she and Broken Axe came upon them. They might still be on the move; they might be camped. If camped, they might have all eyes watching the dark, every nose alert for the stink of ambush. Perhaps the Tiger was still on their trail, after all.

  And even if they felt themselves secure, away from the diminished reach of the Shining Halls, would she still be able to go creeping amongst them undetected? What of those who had been mourning Dirhath? What of . . . ?

  Her body ran on, tiring, tiring slowly, with a wolf’s stubborn stamina. Her mind wheeled and battered like a trapped bird, but Broken Axe was always ahead of her, and so she followed, the second member of a pack of two.

  She had feared him so much. He had seemed like Death to her, inescapable and always waiting. She still could not quite understand this drive in him to do whatever was right, not in the eyes of Wolf or Tiger or other people, but only his own. And yet he was surely the most gifted hunter she had ever known: a man swift and certain, sure in his judgement, at ease in both his skins.

  It was that last she truly envied. She had three skins; none of them fitted her, and two of them were at war.

  Then she would worry again about the choice still hanging over her like a blade: Wolf or Tiger; Tiger or Wolf. Small wonder she would risk this much for a chance to rescue He
sprec and receive his counsel once again. Of all the world that knew her, perhaps only he did not care which path she took. Or he and Broken Axe.

  Would he have taken me as a mate?That had been Stone River’s drunken threat. Would it have been so bad? But make her the hearth-wife of Broken Axe, and she would never have got to know him. He would have been a mystery, more absent than present, close-mouthed and secret-eyed. Only this way could she have come to discover the man he truly was.

  She lost track of the distance they covered, giving herself over to the long chase for its own sake, weariness her constant companion but not yet her master. Still, when Broken Axe finally slowed to a halt she was grateful. It was midday by then, the skies close with clouds, pregnant with rain on the very point of falling.

  Broken Axe Stepped to his human form and beckoned her near, but she first took a moment to draw in a great breath of all the world’s secret knowledge. She inhaled the forest and the earth, the sky and the distant peaks, renewing her connection with it all, finding herself again within its vastness. I have been here, or close to here.This is known to me.

  With a leap of hope she found the answer in her mind. The Tiger had driven Stone River west and north. Close to the lands of the Cave Dwellers. And Loud Thunder dwells on the border of those lands. For a moment she had a desperate thought of rushing straight to that cave-house and petitioning the giant himself. Too far, though. Days more of running to take her there. Hesprec would not have that long to live.

  In her nose was the scent of Wolf, but other scents too: other people. Stone River had found company out here.

  At last she crept closer to Broken Axe, shifting from wolf to a woman with a heavy pelt about her shoulders. ‘What is this place?’ she whispered.

  ‘A village of the Boar people,’ Broken Axe explained. ‘They call themselves the Spined Sons – they were Roughback once, but split from them and came out here.’ He plainly saw that Boar tribe squabbles were lost on her. ‘They are few. Stone River’s warband will have mastered them. He will be in the chief’s lodge by now, served by the best of their women. The others likewise. To have stopped here, they must think themselves out of the reach of the Shining Halls.’