Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named)

by Clare Bell

  “You and all the other herders I have trained,” Thakur answered. “Together you have enough knowledge. What you do not have is my experience in dealing with strangers outside the clan. I don’t plan to let myself be killed. You and I look enough like the hunters to fool them, at least from a distance.”

  “What about our smell?”

  “Rolling in face-tail dung should disguise it; the stuff is strong enough.”

  Khushi only made a grimace.

  Thakur gazed out over the open plain where the hunters sprawled in scattered groups. “Bira, watch us and keep a torch ready. I hope we will not need it....”

  “But if you do, the Red Tongue will be there,” Bira said fiercely, taking up her post.

  With Khushi pacing beside him, Thakur left the sheltering brush and walked out onto the open plain. The sun sat low behind him and the sky was starting to pale into the colors of dusk. After rolling thoroughly in a fresh pile of face-tail manure, he and Khushi took a wandering course toward the hunters. Sometimes the two lay down or even flopped over on their backs for a little while, imitating the bloated lassitude of the others.

  The smell of the carcass was rich in Thakur’s nose. Next to him, Khushi swallowed, and the aroma of hunger tinged his smell. Thakur could not blame the young herder. His own mouth was watering. They had eaten yesterday, a few ground-birds caught by Bira, but it was not enough to fill their bellies.

  “Don’t think about eating,” he said when he saw the thought in Khushi’s eyes. “We won’t get close to the kill. The chances are that they will smell something strange about us, despite the dung, and chase us away.”

  To Thakur’s astonishment, his deception worked. In the fading light the two managed to pass the outer fringes of the large group without being challenged. To one side, Thakur saw spotted cubs gamboling around their parents. He and Khushi skirted a group of half-grown males all snoring together in a pile.

  “They don’t even post sentries?” Khushi whispered to Thakur.

  “Why should they? Who is going to attack them? As for the kill, it is too heavy to be stolen, and they have eaten all they want.”

  Thakur looked about for someone who might respond to their approach. He chose a group of three who were resting but not asleep. One was toying with a broken piece of rib bone, but none were still eating. As one lifted a muzzle against the sky, Thakur could see that the fangs were long enough to show outside the mouth.

  The sight of those teeth reminded him of Shongshar, the orange-eyed stranger that Ratha had once taken into the clan. Could these hunters be his people? Feeling a chill, Thakur hoped not. Shongshar had turned into a tyrant, overthrowing Ratha and ruling the clan with his savage ways and long saber-teeth. One of his kind was enough.

  But the fangs of these hunters were not as long as Shongshar’s, although their teeth were longer than Thakur’s own. The length seemed to vary in different individuals. It also did among the Named, although not to such extremes.

  He realized that he was delaying, fearful of making the first try at speaking to these people. Was he more afraid of provoking an attack or of losing his hope that this group might be a clan like the Named? He did not know.

  “Khushi, stay close behind me and don’t say anything,” he warned. His mouth, wetted by appetite, went dry with apprehension. His usually eloquent tail felt stiff and clumsy. Swallowing to moisten his tongue, he deliberately approached the other group. Eyes—green, gold, and amber—shone in the fading dusk.

  He feared that his heart was booming loud enough for everyone to hear. His pelt felt as though it would jump right off his body—every hair was standing so much on end. Would the face-tail hunters know him for a stranger and attack, or would they welcome him as a brother?

  Not trusting the manure scent to conceal his smell entirely, he and Khushi positioned themselves downwind of the three they were approaching. He lifted his tail in a friendly arch.

  One, a tawny female with heavy shoulders, got up. He was afraid she would snarl, but instead she extended her muzzle for a nose-touch. His hopes leaped up. This was the same greeting the Named knew and used. Eagerly he answered in kind, breathing in her scent. It was much like that of his own people, though overlaid with the powerful aroma of face-tail.

  The two others in the group roused themselves and also greeted him with the nose-touch. One even rubbed a welcoming chin on Thakur’s shoulder and flopped a tail across his back. Khushi was also accepted.

  Yet as soon as the nose-touching and rubbing were finished, the three turned back to lazing or grooming or playing, without a word to the newcomers. Thakur found this disconcerting. They must have recognized that he was a stranger. Why, then, hadn’t they attacked him or chased him away?

  Or, if for some reason they had chosen to accept him anyway, why wouldn’t they say something to him?

  He rolled over on his side, nudging Khushi to follow suit. He would have to speak first. A dismaying thought seized him. He had not heard any of these hunters talk. Suppose Bira was right and they couldn’t.

  No, that can’t be true, he argued to himself. They could not have organized that hunt if they couldn’t tell each other what to do.

  Perhaps their language was all gesture and scent. As Thakur considered that possibility, he heard a voice that was not Khushi’s.

  “Give the bone,” it said. The heavy-shouldered female was trying to paw the rib fragment from the male who was playing with it.

  “No. Go get another. There are plenty left in the carcass,” came the irritable reply.

  Thakur’s heart leaped in excitement. Not only did these ones speak, but they used a language so close to that of the Named that he could understand what they said. He waited tensely, hoping someone would speak to him.

  The female yawned. “The meat was tender.”

  “Salty,” said the other.

  “Go drink,” the male advised. “There are places at the water hole.”

  Thakur’s ears, which had been sharply pricked, started to sag. Surely they had more interesting things to say than this. He made himself stay quiet and listen, but he heard only more of the same.

  Khushi, bored, yawned widely, showing all his teeth. He snapped his mouth shut self-consciously.

  “Open it again,” said the male who was playing with the bone. Thakur blinked when he realized the command had been given to Khushi. Khushi was startled, too. Thakur had to nuzzle him before he responded.

  The male peered into Khushi’s mouth. “Those fangs are too short. Stop eating bones. They wear teeth down. The song says good teeth are needed for the hunt. Listen to the song.”

  “The ... song?” asked Khushi, but he spoke so softly that the male didn’t hear him. Thakur listened, but he could hear nothing like the courting yowls the Named called songs.

  Puzzled, he asked the hunter, “What are you listening to?”

  He thought he spoke clearly, but the male only gave him a baffled look. “Those words are confusing,” the other said. “Speak again.”

  Thakur had no idea why his question was not clear. “The song,” he faltered.

  “The song is always being sung,” the other stated.

  “Why can’t I—”

  “Stop speaking!” the male ordered sharply. “Those words make no sense.”

  Puzzled and slightly irritated, Thakur closed his mouth. He noticed that the others in the group were eyeing him as if he were something noxious that had walked into their midst. What had he said? He wondered if it had been wise for him to confess he could not hear this “song” or whatever it was that they were making such a fuss about.

  Perhaps if he stayed away from that, he might make some headway. With a sinking heart he realized that it was already too late. His easy acceptance and anonymity in the group were gone. Now he was the subject of attention and discussion.

  “The ears don’t work,” said the female, looking at him with a grimace and turning to the male.

  “The ears do work. The words are hear
d.”

  “The song is not heard.” The female stared at Thakur with molten-gold eyes.

  Without answering her stare directly, Thakur tried to get a good look into her eyes. He expected to meet a gaze that was much like his own. He felt the fur prickle up and down his tail when he could not find what he sought. The look in her eyes was neither the blank, unknowing stare of the animal-like Un-Named, nor the sharp, aware gaze of his own people. It was aware, yes, but the awareness was somehow ... different.

  “The song is heard,” Thakur put in quickly, imitating the odd style of speech.

  He hoped his answer would mollify the hunters, but the suspicion in the female’s face grew deeper as she stared at him. “The form is not known to True-of-voice. The eyes are not known; the voice is not known.”

  What did she mean? Thakur could make no sense out of what she was saying. Perhaps True-of-voice was her name.

  “True-of-voice,” he repeated. “Is that you? Is True-of-voice your name?”

  He did not know if she understood him or not, but he saw he had made a major blunder. She flattened her ears and spat.

  The other hunters traded looks, bristled, and growled. Thakur noticed that the misunderstanding was starting to draw attention from groups outside their own.

  He decided that the time had come to withdraw and think things out before he got himself and Khushi into more trouble. With a poke he got the young herder on his feet. They both backed away from the now-hostile hunters, turned, and jogged in the direction they had come.

  Though no one had noticed their initial approach, heads now lifted and eyes followed as they passed. It was as if word of the intruders had somehow spread instantly throughout the group, even though Thakur had heard no cries of alarm.

  “Don’t run,” he warned Khushi, even though the muscles in his own hindquarters were twitching with the impulse to turn tail and flee.

  Only when he had put the group at a distance did he and Khushi break into a bounding run. It carried them to the bushes, where Bira met them.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Thakur sighed. “I said something wrong. I don’t know what.”

  “So they do speak like us?”

  “They use words, but not the way we do. Bira, we had better not stay here. We’re too close, and they’re angry. ”

  Quickly the Firekeeper packed up the coals in an old bird’s nest filled with sand. Khushi helped, taking the resinous pine branches that served as firebrands.

  Once Thakur decided they were a safe distance from the hunters, the Named made camp. Bira lit a fire from the embers she carried, and everyone drew close around it.

  “I think we should give up on that bunch,” said Khushi, disgusted. “They may speak, but they are as stupid as the Un-Named. And crazy too. They kept mewling about some song. I couldn’t hear anyone singing. Could you, Thakur?”

  “No,” the herding teacher confessed. He was disappointed at his failure. Khushi’s dismissal of the hunters as witless and crazy provided an easy escape from his own responsibility. For an instant he was tempted to take it. Perhaps no one could talk to these people. If so, he could not fault himself for failing.

  Yet he knew the answer was not so simple. He had been close enough to look into their eyes. He had seen an alertness there, not the blank unawareness of the Un-Named. But it was directed strangely inward in a way he did not understand.

  And it echoed something that he had seen and knew well, though at first he could not think what it was. Then he remembered another pair of eyes, sea-green and once shrouded by pain. Those were Thistle’s eyes when he had first found her.

  He remembered how he had coaxed Thistle back outside herself, had given her not only words to speak with, but hope. How those eyes had begun to brighten and clear, showing that she was truly of the Named. Yet even now, her gaze would sometimes become opaque and she would retreat where none of the Named could follow. To Thakur it seemed as though Ratha’s daughter walked two paths, one with the Named and another in a cave world of mist and entrancement, where strange voices echoed.

  Voices. The hunters had spoken, in their puzzling way, of a voice, a song that Thakur could not hear. Perhaps only they could hear it. The one name they had said was True-of-voice. In some way speech was vital to them, yet why did their grasp of it seem so limited and stilted?

  It was clear that they did not walk the same path as the Named. But there was one among the Named who might be able to follow them. Thakur sensed that he would never be able to speak to these hunters by himself. He needed Thistle.

  But she was not a clan member and did not have to obey Ratha or anyone else. If he sent for Thistle, the decision to come or not would be hers alone.

  Was this the right thing to do? Thakur wondered. Would such a contact with the group of strange cats bring joy or disaster? The hunters could be a formidable enemy, but what if they were an allied clan who could help the Named survive?

  He would send for Ratha as well as Thistle, he decided. Experienced as he was, he could not be alone in decisions that involved the future of the Named. Ratha must see these hunters for herself.

  When the herding teacher came out of his reverie, he was slightly chagrined to find that Bira had banked the fire and that both she and Khushi had gone to sleep. Try as he would, Thakur could not close his eyes. He remained awake long into the night, thinking.

  Chapter Two

  Days later, wind was kicking up sand on a coastal beach, stinging Thistle’s eyes and nose. She felt lonely and cross, for her friend Thakur had been gone too long. The haze that had once clouded her mind came less often now, but today it was here, making her feel remote and withdrawn.

  Keeping her claws fixed in the driftwood log, she pulled at her injured foreleg to make the muscles stretch, as Thakur had taught her. From a short distance away came a splintering sound. Ratha was using the same log to sharpen her claws.

  Thistle could not help a glance sideways at her mother. Ratha was on top of the log, raking backward with the powerful muscles in her shoulders. Half fascinated, half resentful, Thistle watched. Ratha looked so beautiful and strong. She was all one tawny color that flowed over her head, down the bowed arch of her back, over her hindquarters, and out the long sweep of her tail.

  Thistle wondered if anyone would ever watch her sharpening her claws and think that she was strong and beautiful. No. Even if her limp went away, she would still be small and awkward. And ugly, for her pelt was rusty black, mottled with orange.

  She looked quickly away before Ratha could notice her gaze. The hard green light in her mother’s eyes burned too brightly today. Only when those eyes were half-closed or dulled by suffering or illness did Thistle dare approach and touch or lick her mother. When Ratha was strong and well, Thistle kept her inside thoughts well hidden.

  Thistle gazed down at her outstretched leg. It was much stronger now. She could almost walk without a limp along short paths. Soon she hoped she would be able to walk for short distances without a limp. The leg no longer hurt either. At least most of the time. Only when ...

  No. Thistle flattened her ears. She wasn’t going to think about the Dreambiter that appeared to her in nightmares. Thinking about it could too easily bring it, as if thoughts were meat laid on a trail that it prowled. But not thinking sometimes brought it, too.

  Today, for some reason, it was hard to think and hard not to think. The wind and blowing sand seemed to catch everything in her mind and whirl it away. She sank her claws deeper into the gray driftwood and stretched her leg muscles until she felt the good healing hurt that promised to make that leg, once shrunken and crippled, as sound as her other limbs.

  She heard a yawning sound as Ratha opened her jaws and curled her tongue upward in pleasure. Thistle saw the white sharpness of her teeth. She remembered, before she could catch herself, that the nightmare also had such sharp teeth.

  And the nightmare, thus summoned, came.

  The Dreambiter’s soft tread quickened, e
choing along the caverns within Thistle’s mind. Thistle’s eyes and cars filled with blackness, and she felt herself being pulled deep into those caves. However she might struggle and scream and cry out, she could not break free. The sound of the Dreambiter’s feet became louder and faster.

  Dimly, a voice cried out from beyond the cave, but she couldn’t understand it, for words had been lost to the rising howl of the Dreambiter. The blackness that was deeper and harder than anything outside pounced on her, green eyes flaming, mouth open, teeth bared. The upper fangs sank into her shoulder, the lower fangs into her chest, for she was suddenly small enough in the nightmare for her forequarters to fit within the Dreambiter’s mouth.

  With the shock came the flooding pain that raged from her shoulder and chest to her foreleg, drawing the leg up in a cramped knot. Writhing, screaming, she clawed at the Dreambiter with her good forepaw, but her foe was made of nothingness, and her claws found no hold. Then the jaws released her, but the release was almost worse than the bite, for when the teeth pulled out, it hurt more than ever, and the hurt flamed and seared until the pain burned away everything—herself, the caves, the Dreambiter—until all were ashes.

  And the ashes were picked up by the wind and swirled high into the sky. They slowly drifted down.

  * * *

  Ratha yanked her claws from the driftwood as soon as she saw Thistle stiffen. She was beside her daughter in an instant, seeing the milky sea-green color of her eyes swirl, closing the pupils to points. With a jerk that freed her claws from the log, Thistle staggered backward on her hind legs, overbalanced, and fell on her back.

  “Fessran!” Ratha yowled her friend’s name, thanking the impulse that had drawn the Firekeeper leader to come with her on this visit to Thistle’s beach. Fessran was a short distance down the beach, looking after Mishanti, the young cub Thistle had adopted. Ratha wished Thakur were there, but he was gone on the search for the face-tailed beasts.

  Thistle’s tail lashed the sand; her claws raked it. She writhed, hissed, and spat, striking with bared claws at an enemy only she could see. Then she screamed aloud with pain, and the foreleg she had been stretching pulled up against her chest and locked there, as if once again crippled and shrunken.