His father would be very proud of him, or at least that was the ideal. Tecuman would smile on him, for returning home with such a savage and indomitable bodyguard. The rulers of the Sun River Nation had always relied on foreigners to protect their leaders – an elite warband divorced from local factions and politics. In Atahlan, the sister Tecuma would have warriors of the Stone People to protect her, but Tecuman’s stronghold at the river’s mouth lay far from their lands. And everyone had heard of the Iron Wolves and their fearsome ways. Yes, Asmander had done well.
He worked patiently and carefully, fingers delicate in placing the razor-edged flakes. Still his mind did not clear, but surged and roiled like rapids in flood. Then, after plenty of time had passed, there came the scuff of a footstep nearby. Not Shyri but Venater.
‘What?’ the pirate demanded bluntly.
‘Is it not you who have come to me?’ Asmander asked him, his hands still busy at work.
‘Let it go,’ Venater advised. ‘I would.’
‘Would you?’ No sense in denying what was eating at him.
‘Don’t you think you did it right?’
At last Asmander’s fingers stilled and he looked up, saying nothing.
‘You know what I think?’ Venater went on, squatting down on his haunches.
‘No doubt you will gift me with it.’
The pirate smirked. ‘You did it right. You surprised me. I didn’t think you had that in you. But you led her right to her daddy.You got what you were after, no matter how. That’s good. That’s the way things are done in proper places. My people know that. The Wolves know it, too, I reckon. It all worked out perfectly.’
‘And that’s what you think?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t anyone? Life’s a killer. The only way you win is be a killer back, twice as hard. Biggest bastard at the end of the day wins the morning.’
Asmander looked into his face: lantern-jawed, traced with lines and scars, the eyes like flints, long greying hair bound back. There was more going on behind that face than the barbarian whose words he aped. Who else would believe that, from somewhere in there, a keen intelligence was peering slyly out? Not the learning of letters, not the mysteries of the priests, but a man who knew people, if only because it was easier to kill them if you did.
‘So we rejoice,’ the Champion half asked.
‘I do.’ Venater grinned. ‘Does you good to be more like a real man, like me.’
Asmander stood up suddenly, the maccan clutched tightly in one hand, the other knotted into a fist. Venater just leered up at him, utterly unworried.
Asmander took a deep breath. ‘You’ve always known, haven’t you?’
‘Since you got back from selling the girl? I know you, Son of Asman. I’ve had to put up with you all the way from the Riverlands. When you’re pleased with yourself, I know it – which is rare enough ’cause you’re a gloomy streak of piss. When you’re eating yourself up inside, I know that too. And you are now. So just say it.’
‘I believe I am having second thoughts.’
‘Oh, how terribly civilized of you.’ The pirate mocked his tone perfectly. ‘Did you even work out why yet? I take it you don’t think it’s really about the girl. Tell me you’ve not decided you love her or something.’
Asmander shot him a sharp look. ‘She’s not my type. It’s not her. She’s nothing to me.’ Actually speaking the words made him feel better than anything else that evening. ‘I owe her nothing.’
‘It’s the old Snake, then? Because he liked her, you have to?’
Again Asmander shook his head. ‘Maybe you don’t know me so well after all.’
Venater just frowned at that, like a hunter who has lost the trail. Because he is, in the end, just enough of what he seems to be: a bloody-handed old man of the Dragon who would not understand. And Asmander smiled at the pirate, because it was good that there were constants in the world, even if some of them were evil ones.
It was not Hesprec. It was certainly not Maniye. Oh, he sympathized with her, but that was life: duty and loyalty and family and society, all cages within cages. Believing in freedom was just a knife the girl had made and given to the world to cut her with.
Except . . .
In his mind was a man he had barely met, who had uttered only a handful of words. But those words! The Wolf had no true Champions, but there was a man who should have been one. When he had spoken, the soul within Asmander had resonated with what he had to say. He had no shackles on him to drag him down, to make him less than he should be.
As I have lessened myself.
In the end, it was because Asmander felt bitterly ashamed of disappointing Broken Axe, a man who should mean less to him than a stone underfoot.
Venater sighed. ‘Knew it was too good to be true,’ he muttered, and then, ‘Oi, Laughing Girl!’
Shyri ventured over, looking from one to the other. ‘You two lovers finished your spat, have you?’
‘We have,’ confirmed Asmander.
‘He’s got something to tell you,’ Venater leered.
There was a tiny fraction of a moment when her expression was unguarded, but then the usual snide smile was back in place. ‘Oh?’
‘He’s going to get that girl back.’
Shyri laughed, head thrown back. Then, realizing nobody was joining in with her, she stopped. ‘No, he’s not. That would be a stupid thing to do.’
‘No argument here about that,’ agreed Venater.
‘Or here.’ Asmander sighed. ‘But it is true, even so.’
She tried another laugh, but the resulting sound was an uncertain one. ‘There’re more than a few of those Wolves there, Iron or not. Is the great Champion going to fight them all?’
‘Who can say? Perhaps they will line up for me sideways on, like in the carvings.’
Venater snickered at that, but Shyri just frowned.
‘Well, then, when do we go? What is your plan?’
‘I have no plan. We do not go. I go.With my lack of plan.’ And then, ‘You’d go, too, would you?’
‘Someone has to watch and laugh,’ she replied defensively.
He stood. The time for it was now, he realized, or he might change his mind. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me.’ She tried to back off, but he caught her wrist before she could do so, and held on for a moment before she tugged it free. ‘You’re stupid. You want to die so much, let me open your throat.’
‘So kind an offer, but I owe that honour to Stone River’s Wolves.’
‘Then tell us where we can meet you.’
He almost laughed at that, but she was desperately serious about it, just as he had been. ‘So now you think it’s a good plan, and it will work?’
‘No, but tell us anyway.’
‘I have nowhere to suggest for you.’ Asmander spread his hands. ‘This is not my land. What can I say?’
And a new voice broke in, a girl’s voice, ‘Let me say it for you then.’
They all three whirled round to confront her, and for a moment Asmander thought it must be Maniye herself, somehow free and come to accuse him. He found himself looking into a different face, though: a strange face and yet one that he knew.
40
The Tiger came to her in dreams, but only to express its disappointment. As she slept, her mind was wandering out in the dark, with only the fire-glimmer of her mother’s god to light her way.
You should have tried harder to cast out the Wolf within you , came the low rumble of the Tiger’s voice. If you had only pleased your mother more, she would have taken you in.You could have been the golden child of the Shining Halls, if only you had been better.
And when she fled from it, into the darkness – on human feet, for the leash restricted her even in her dreams – there was the Wolf, a greyness shifting through the midnight forests of her imagination.
You could have been High Chief’s daughter , it growled. If you had truly wished, you could have been one of my children and run with
my pack. Instead I will feast on your soul.
And still she fled, but the two of them were always with her, snarling at each other and at her.
She knew it was a dream; that was the worst part. She fled and she fled, knowing it for one of those inescapable dreams that would pursue her to the very shores of waking. And, at the same time, the Tiger and the Wolf were truly within her and still at war. She knew that some men and women had dreams that told them the future or let their souls speak to the gods. When Maniye dreamt, she spoke only with her own fighting souls as they grew more and more savage within her. In the dream, her feet bled and her skin was lashed with briars, yet still they made her run.
Then there was something ahead that was not just gloomy ghost-forest or the shades of remembered hills. She saw open water and an island crowned with stones: the Stone Place, and yet not quite. At first she stumbled to a halt at the water’s edge, finding no causeway there, and the Tiger and the Wolf came to her and loomed above her, their eyes like stars in a clouded sky, baring their teeth like the curve of the moon.
But something glimmered within the water that was not a mere reflection, and she saw scales sliding past scales there, reflecting rainbow colours even in the darkness. As the animals inside her howled and spat, she stepped out over those measureless depths and, wherever her feet touched, those looped coils rose from the depths, ridged and somehow dry, and bore her weight. Each step was taken with a faith that she could not imagine copying in her waking life, but the Serpent was there for her each time she entrusted her weight to the waves.
And she found herself on the island, which was so small that two men lying head to foot could have spanned it, with a handful of tumbled old stones, as if it was what the Stone Place had once been in the unimaginable mists of time, before it had grown into what it was now. The Tiger and the Wolf were swimming after her now, for the Serpent would not consent to bear them.
You should have cast out the cat from you! came the vicious cry of the Wolf. And now you will burn!
And from the Tiger: What mother could want a creature such as you! What are you if you will not make up your mind?
Something rose in her with that barb, as though she had acquired a third soul from somewhere, possessing the strength to face down the other two. ‘I am Maniye! I am Many Tracks! And I will walk my own path, and I will be nobody’s slave!’
And she woke to the sound of her own voice crying out, and found herself staring into the eyes of Kalameshli Takes Iron. The old priest was kneeling beside her, far too close for comfort, and she shrugged and elbowed herself away from him until she was right at the tent’s sloping edge, at the limit of her leash. He stayed where he was, illuminated by a strip of moonlight shining through the open flap.
‘You were calling out to the Wolf,’ he observed.
Maniye bared her teeth at him. ‘There were three gods in my dream, old man. It was not the Wolf that helped me when I was in need.’
‘The Wolf does not help,’ he replied, surprisingly mildly. ‘The Wolf wants us to be strong. We cannot be strong if we live our lives on crutches. The Wolf chases away the summer stars and brings the winter: you know this. The Wolf sends the ice and the snow, and makes the game scarce. And the other tribes grow weak, as they shiver by their fires, and only we remain strong.’
She could not say where the next revelation came from, but the words were on her lips already. ‘There are two ways of seeming strong: to build yourself up or to throw all others down. But only one of these is truly a way of being strong.’ The thought felt like sacrilege, but it tasted like truth on her tongue. She imagined Kalameshli’s face darkening, because he would not value that kind of truth. She thought he would reach for a switch and beat her just as her father had, and so she burst out, ‘What does it matter? You’ll burn me anyway, tomorrow or the next night.’
‘It may not be so,’ Kalameshli said quietly.
But she knew him of old. If he held out any hope to her, it could only be so that she would grasp it by the sharp edge and cut herself. ‘You will do as Stone River bids you,’ she said. ‘And you will do it joyfully. You have always hated me for what I am. This chance now must be a thing made from your dreams.’
And he replied: ‘How can you think that?’
She was silent a long while, feeling that she had not understood, that he had said one thing and her ears had misheard it entirely. And yet he was sitting there peacefully with no angry words, no blows. And this was the same man who had whipped her through her trials, pacing after her with dreadful patience, and waiting for her to fail.
‘You have hunted me my whole life,’ she told him. ‘I lived each day in fear of you. When I came to Step, you knew I went as a tiger where no one else saw. And you hated it.’
‘Of course,’ he snapped, as though this was too obvious to need saying.
‘And you hated me for it because I offended the Wolf.’ She had wanted to say ‘your Wolf’, but it was her Wolf too, no matter how she might fight it. ‘So you punished me at every chance you got. Don’t blame me for seeking a life outside the Winter Runners. Blame my father. Blame yourself.’
‘You idiot child,’ he began, with an edge of familiar anger that she welcomed. But then he continued: ‘I drove you hard so that you became a strong child of the Wolf. I tried to whip the tiger out of you because, if you had slipped just once and been a tiger before the eyes of the Winter Runners, they would have torn you apart.’ And abruptly his voice was fierce with emotion, though he forced himself to keep it low. ‘So you had to be forced to be a Wolf above all things, no matter what! I drove you to make you strong, you stupid girl!’
‘But not so strong as to break away from your hold,’ she challenged him. ‘Not so strong that I couldn’t still be a thrall in Stone River’s mad plans that could never have worked.’
‘If the woman really had been dead, they might have worked. If she dies now, they still may.’
Maniye felt a stab of pain and outrage. My mother! No matter how she had left the Shining Halls, no matter that the Tiger were probably still hunting her with murder in mind, she had found her mother once. She felt a loyalty there, where Akrit stirred nothing in her. Perhaps it was just a loyalty to the ideal mother she might have dreamt of, rather than the all-too-real father that she knew.
‘I have seen your altar, priest,’ she told Takes Iron. ‘The Tiger Queen will outlive me.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘I heard my father. He thinks my death will win him the Wolf’s love.’
‘A death – but perhaps not yours. I have spoken to him. Another throat has bared itself to us now. I will make him spare you.’
‘What other throat?’ Maniye demanded, and he told her.
The clash of champions, open combat under the sun, that was one way for the Sun River Nation, yet there were others. When his father’s people had surprised Venat’s pirates, they had blown no trumpets to alert their foes. Sometimes an attack must proceed by the moon’s rules.
The moon was too grand and bright for his liking, but there was plenty of the cloud that seemed never to leave these northern skies. So it was that the light faded in and out, and great bands of shadow passed over the world, as though Asmander lay in clear water as vast fish swam above.
Well, he had only this night, so no sense complaining about his preferences. The world did not care.
And it would be cold. Even with this ‘summer’ they were so proud of, even with the clouds to hug the day’s heat in, he was under no illusions. He had clothed himself and donned his armour, and then clothed himself again, layer after layer, and still knew it would be cold.
There was a fire within the Champion: it hunted under sun or moon indifferently, burning up its strength for warmth, for speed and strength. But Old Crocodile, he was a creature of the warm days of the south who loved nothing more than to lie in the sun on the banks of the Tsotec. Show him the cold air of the Crown of the World and he grew slow in mind and body.
A
nd yet, Stone River had set guards all about his camp – scouts who were men and scouts who were wolves – and left one gate wide open, unbarred and unwatched. There was a slender whip of a river that curled into his camp at the forest’s edge before passing under the trees, and that would be Asmander’s road.
The wolves’ noses were keen, but the water would disperse the scents of both reptile and man. How good were wolf eyes in the dark? Asmander could not say, but Old Crocodile saw well by moonlight and possessed keener senses besides. Many had been lost beside the Tsotec because of a shadow or a log with hidden teeth.
Asmander had warmed himself as much as he could, and sealed in that warmth with hides and furs and cloth. When he Stepped to that long, ridge-backed shape, the hoarded heat of his human body would be the only fire he had to warm himself with. Old Crocodile would provide no more for him.
Enough, he told himself, knowing that now he was simply taking up time to avoid having to act. Go now.
And so he did, sliding headlong into the river, Stepping even as he went, so that he barely made a ripple. Gliding in the waters with only his eyes and nostrils above the surface, he felt the thickness of his clothes become a barrier within that crocodile body, keeping out the chill of the river. He let the current carry him, drawing silently near to where the Wolves had their camp.
The Champion would have ambushed them – every one of them. How many of the Wolves could he have fought, catching them unprepared and without their iron hides? All of them? Probably not, and yet the Champion was nothing if not confident in his own abilities. He had stood in the dark, after leaving the others, and felt himself on the brink of calling that shape to him, and decided it was not permitted. He had committed a shameful act, unworthy of what he was. It did not matter that he had fulfilled his duty to his family, or even to Tecuman his beloved leader. The Champion held him to a higher standard. Until he had lived through this night, he was locked in his body with only Old Crocodile for comfort.
Knowing this in his heart, he did not call for the shape of the Champion, in case he was right and it would not come. Better to simply believe, and not be forced to face the truth, either way.
The Tiger and the Wolf Page 48