She cast what she hoped was a fierce glance back towards him. It had no discernible effect.
There were over a score of others to take the Test today, every youth of Maniye’s age in the whole of the Winter Runners. Seventeen she knew by name but the rest had gathered from everywhere under the Runners’ Shadow. They stood, all of them naked except for a loincloth, backs braced against the punishment they knew was coming.
Now Kalameshli was striding forwards, the thick staff in one hand ridged with the blades of flints that the wood had grown around before it was cut. The myriad bones stitched to his robe – animal and human – clattered and chattered.
He singled out one of the hopefuls wordlessly, a boy. There were some calls of encouragement, rather more jeers and mockery. That was the way, part of the ordeal.
Kalameshli barked out permission, and the youth was off, springing instantly onto all fours but stumbling a little, having to compose himself before he could master the transformation. Already the handful of beaters were throwing missiles: Maniye heard a wolf’s yelp as the boy’s hindquarters were struck by a stone. He flinched back as he reached the felled trees, knowing he should Step to two feet to clamber across it, yet fearful of being struck.
The beaters were already moving in behind, though, with staves and rods. Any contender who hesitated too long would soon regret it. When Maniye was ten, she had seen one boy frozen with fear – of pain, or of failure – until they reached him, hailing blows upon him until they drove him forwards, meeting every obstacle unprepared. He had been bruised and bloodied by the end, barely standing, unable to meet the glowers of his people.
He was a hunter now, though. He had survived, and grown stronger.
She watched the youth Kalameshli had chosen, knowing that he was at a disadvantage, the first to discover the course and its ways. Then he was struck full on by a rotten yam, and he would be dubbed ‘yam-head’ for at least a month after, his shame written in the tribe’s collective memory, a joke that might hound him all the way to old age unless he accomplished something remarkable to wipe it out.
Then he was through, having run and crouched, jumped and balanced his way to the far end. Now his parents and uncles and aunts went to him, showering him with congratulations, welcoming him to the world of adults, giving him gifts.
There will be no one there for me, Maniye reflected, but even to think that far presupposed that she would survive the course.
The others were picked out at Kalameshli’s discretion, and Maniye was not remotely surprised to find herself being left till last. All she could do was watch the others, learning what she could from their mistakes. Some of them were slow, some too timid, others reckless. They fell, they were struck, they tripped, they rebounded off the obstacles. One girl was hit with a stone so hard it shocked her out of her wolf shape, leaving her kneeling on the ground, clutching at her bloodied scalp and wailing, and yet she got back on her feet and went on, because to let the beaters catch up with her would be worse. One boy forgot himself so much he left his loincloth behind as he Stepped, arriving at the far end completely naked, for a moment horribly abashed, but then – realizing that he had passed the important test – strutting and whooping with his adolescent manhood dangling and dancing between his legs.
Then they had all gone, all of them except Maniye.
She watched the last of the pack, a girl she didn’t like, haring off, Stepping from human to wolf with the confidence of those who have seen the game played out plenty of times before. Even the beaters seemed content to let these last go with only a desultory barrage. Everyone was waiting for what came next. Everyone was waiting for her.
She fixed Kalameshli with a stony gaze which he met readily enough. From his expression, he might be looking at his worst enemy.
He shouted out an order, and something was brought out from behind the temple. His three acolytes, brawny young men all, were sweating and straining to manhandle it, and the crowd eddied aside to let them through.
It was a wall, she saw. A wall of logs lashed together, rising ten feet straight up, and the acolytes dragged it to the middle of the course, securing it by ropes to the other obstacles. The crowd surged forward on either side until it formed a completely impenetrable barrier that divided one half of the training grounds from the other.
The assembled tribe had gone very silent. No beaters had come forth for her, but every one of them fixed her with their eyes. She saw plenty of dislike there – those that felt she somehow wallowed in unearned privilege, and who were sufficiently mistaken to envy her relationship with the chief. They saw this as yet more special treatment, some sign that she was being accorded a special status.
How about tomorrow’s sacrifice? Is that status special enough?
Kalameshli gestured imperiously, jabbing his staff at the course, and she walked over with deliberate, mulish slowness.
Remember, his eyes seemed to say.
She clenched her hands into fists. She had no wish to come so close to him, but no choice either. She could smell him distinctly, even with her human nose: smoke and sweat and hot iron.
He held out his flint-ridged staff and one of his acolytes took it from him, handing him instead a razor-edged switch three feet long. She saw the sunlight glint off it, and knew that there would be stones bound into the last few inches.
‘I will be right behind you,’ he said softly. ‘Now, run.’
She was not going to give him the satisfaction, until he cracked the switch, the flexible greenwood making a sound like branches snapping. The fright of it had her Stepping to wolf without thinking, because the wolf was the fastest, and abruptly she was running from him, retreating back ten feet and leaping up the first low barrier before she dared to turn and look.
With no great hurry, Kalameshli was walking after her. His steps were slow, and yet every one of them seemed to eat up the ground between them. The stone-toothed branch twitched at his side. There was no expression whatsoever on his face.
She turned and ran, coursing swiftly, in her wolf shape, across the clear ground and putting distance between them. Then there was an earthen barrier to scramble up – human hands better than animal paws for that – and the tree to balance over, but she did it without thinking, without a moment’s hesitation, and all the while Kalameshli was following patiently and without hurry.
Then the wall was before her, seeming twice as high now as when the acolytes had brought it in. The crowd thronged at either edge, watching her eagerly.
She backed off, casting a look over her shoulder. Kalameshli was just reaching the tree.
The wolf could never make it, she knew, but it could still jump surprisingly high. She took a few more steps back and then dashed forwards on all four feet, leaping up and then Stepping even as she hit the wall, scrabbling for purchase, feet kicking, fingers clutching at the slick trunks.
She fell back heavily, Stepping to wolf before she hit the ground and twisting to get her paws under her.
Kalameshli was close now. Impossible, surely, with all the lead she had won herself, but there he was. Seeing he had her attention, he cracked the switch again, making that broken sound.
She faced the wall, feeling her heart speed. She tried scrabbling at it as a wolf, getting nowhere. She Stepped to human, Stepped back, dashing to either side, hurled back by the animosity of the crowd.
And within her, the tiger was awake and demanding its hour. She would be up and over the wall in seconds with its claws. It knew no walls or bounds. It was proud and fierce. It wanted to show them all just how fierce it was.
Again the switch lashed, and this time she felt the breeze of it, whirling round and backing away from Kalameshli’s steady progress, her tail between her legs, snarling at him in terrified defiance. His expression was disapproving but not really disappointed. After all, surely this was what he had planned. Perhaps he had nurtured the thought of this moment for years, knowing that a time would come when not even her father’s name would shield her
from his hatred.
She had no idea why he loathed her so, only that he always had. Something in him had looked on her, at the moment of her birth, and judged her unfit, as if their spirits had been enemies in past lives, human or animal or both.
Her back, her human back, was against the wall, and the voice of the tiger was loud in her ears, demanding to be released from the prison of her flesh. Before her stood only Kalameshli.
His face twisted in a nameless expression she had never seen before, on his face or any other’s, and he struck out at her.
She screamed and flinched aside, and the switch scarred the wood beside her head. That could have been my face. That could have been me.
He drew back his arm again. Everyone there, the entire tribe, was silent, almost reverent, watching their priest at his work, driving weakness from the Wolf.
She found that she could do nothing. She would have Stepped to tiger then, if she could, because she was beyond any thought of her future in the tribe, but fear of Kalameshli had frozen her in a strangling grip against the wall.
Then he lashed out again and the flint-barbed head of his whip tore into her arm and shoulder, splashing blood across the wood behind her, and he was already preparing for another blow.
She let out a sound that was girl and wolf and tiger all at once, all in pain, and was up the wall, finding purchase from nothing, scrabbling and kicking with her breath coming in shuddering sobs. At her heels, the switch descended again, striking splinters just below her heels.
And she was at the wall’s summit, crouching there and staring down at him, and for a moment she had no idea what shape she was in, or where her Stepping might have taken her.
But those eyes with which she now glared down at Kalameshli, they saw the world in human colours, and what held her to the wall were her human fingers and toes, crooked into every little crevice and crack she could find, bleeding from the rough wood, her nails ragged and broken.
And Kalameshli looked up at her, and where she expected to find bitterness was instead a kind of triumph, for she had mastered the personal Testing he had set her, and somehow the tiger remained caged. He had made her his creature, a thing of the Wolf only.
She slipped down over the far side of the wall, feeling numb. The rest of the course, she walked. Nobody threw anything at her. Kalameshli did not follow any further. His point was made, and he was satisfied.
At the course’s end, nobody was there to greet her and exult with her, but she had expected that. By then her shoulder was agony, and she went to make a poultice to bind over it that would dull the pain. It would be grim work, one-handed, but nobody would do it for her, nor would she trust them to.
Later, when the tribe had begun the raucous celebrations that came after the Testing, Smiles Without Teeth came for her, and told her that her father demanded her presence.
5
Asmander was awakened by the sounds of fighting.
He and the Horse delegation had been gifted one of the smaller huts to curl up in, presumably leaving some of the more wretched Laughing Men to shiver outside in the dark. With so many sleepers laid out close together around the circle of floor, like interlocking pieces of a puzzle, the cold of nightfall did not touch them; and besides, Asmander had a gift for sleeping well, yet waking when he needed to.
He was on his feet in an instant – some of the Horse were already about, judging from the vacant spaces on the floor, and there was no sign of Venater at all. No surprise there: from the sound of it, Venater was one of those doing the fighting. The pirate had been awake still when Asmander retired, conversing in guarded, hostile tones with the Malikah of the Laughing Men. Asmander was only surprised it had taken the man so long to get into trouble.
In nothing but a loincloth, his stone-toothed maccan sword in hand, Asmander hurried up into the morning light.
There were three of them pitched against Venater. Three men, though, and it was plain that amongst this tribe the men were given no place of honour or respect. Nonetheless, they were game fighters, from what Asmander could now see, teaming up to try and bring the big southerner down.
It was all in friendly contest, that much he saw. When they were in human form, their hands were empty of weapons. Still, the Laughing Men possessed jaws that could grind bones, and fights like these were seldom won or lost without blood being drawn.
Seeing that there was no real danger to Venater, and that the Laughing Men had not decided to butcher their guests, Asmander just stood back and watched his companion fight.
He moved like strong waters, this old pirate: deceptive when he was still, unstoppable once he struck. Sometimes he wore his human shape, with sallow skin gleaming in the bright sunlight. More often he was Stepped into the true form of his soul, the savage creature he called the dragon. Long and black, he was, as heavy and powerful as when he walked on two legs, and his scales were like black pebbles. His blunt head gaped wide in threat, showing a horrific array of curving fangs, and he could rush with a terrible swiftness even on those sprawling, ungainly looking legs.
The three Laughing Men tried to surround him, to nip at him from behind while he chased whoever was before him, but Venater was an old warrior, wise to such tricks. More than that, there was no part of him that was easy to attack. Asmander winced as one would-be ambusher was lashed across the muzzle by the sharp whip of Venater’s tail, while one of the others got too close and was hooked about the foreleg by the monstrous lizard’s claws. Instantly Venater was a man again, lifting the startled hyena up and flipping the animal over his shoulder. The Laughing Man Stepped in mid-air and managed a creditable landing on hands and knees, whereupon Venater kicked him in the stomach and sent him rolling away. The third hyena leapt for him, aiming to connect with his chest, but Venater had Stepped again, dropping down to his lizard shape so that his enemy sailed overhead.
With calculated indolence, Venater turned to face them, blue-black tongue lashing at the air. Then he was a man once more, trying to lure them closer, and Asmander met the stone force of his gaze, recognizing the challenge there and waving it aside. Another time, perhaps.
Seeing him there, Asmander was swept up in the memory of when he had first set eyes on the pirate; remembering when the two of them had fought.
Back then, Asmander’s father had taken a warband of the clan’s warriors out with the specific intention of ridding the Tsotec estuary of its most troublesome pirate. The Dragon were ever-troublesome vassals of the Sun River Nation, and more than one had turned outlaw and raider in the past. Venater had been the boldest in living memory, striking even within sight of the prince’s own palace at Tsokawan.
The warband had tracked the pirate Venat – as he was known when his name was still his own – to one of the innumerable estuary islands. There, they approached under cover of the murky water, Stepped into the long, ridge-backed shapes of crocodiles. There were two score of them, and the pirates were less than a dozen, and mostly drunk. The fight as a whole was no great victory to carve on the walls of the mighty, but Venat . . .
Asmander remembered him leaping up, roaring his defiance, the stone blade of his meret cleaving spears in two and splitting shields. He had been as drunk as the rest, but that had not stopped or even slowed him. And Asmander, who had newly found his role as Champion of the River Lords, knew that the moment had come to test the shape of his soul against this foe.
He had Stepped into that fleeter form, the obsidian of his maccan becoming his teeth, the jade of his spurs his claws, and he had rushed from the midst of his father’s warriors to do battle. They had wanted to stop him, but he was a Champion. They dared not lay hands on him, not even Asman his father.
And the fight – so fierce a contest! Venat had struck at him with his bone-breaking tail and claws strong enough to tear open bronze. He had snapped his teeth against the scaly quills of Asmander’s hide, which were reinforced with the cotton and stone of the armour he wore. A shallow bite would have been debilitating, a deep one fata
l, for the dragons of the estuary were venomous as well as merely savage. Legend said that dark spirits of the early world had created them to be as inimical to all other beasts as it was possible to be.
Asmander had let speed become his ally, leaping to drive his claws into the great lizard’s back, always a step aside, a step ahead. He had known exactly the risks he ran, and he ran them gladly. He had never lived, as when he had lived next to the death that dwelled in Venat’s jaws.
And at last the man was beaten, sprawled bleeding and cursing, shifting from writhing lizard back to man, and eventually just staring up at Asmander with hate-filled eyes, expecting nothing but death. And death was what he deserved: no noble robber of the stories, he, but a villain, a murderer, a rebel against prince and nation.
Asmander had placed one clawed foot on his defeated enemy’s neck and waited for his father’s command.
It had not come, and for a moment he had thought – he remembered this clearly – Is he dead? Am I Asman now? along with all the little attendant thoughts that whirled and spun in the wake of that huge one. But then he had cocked his head, while keeping one eye on his prize, and seen his father standing amongst his men, staring at his son with such an expression . . .
Pride, yes, but there had been depths to that expression, as clouded as the river. Anger that Asmander had so risked himself; calculation at how this proven asset that was his son might now best be used. And envy. Asmander remembered that plainly. The envy never left his father’s face, from that moment on, that his son should be so honoured by the gods as to be a Champion, whilst he . . . he grew older and no stronger, and some day this boy before him would bear his name.
But Asman was a man of politics, above all. He had lived his life navigating the hazardous waters of the Sun River Nation’s powers and factions. Not for nothing were his people known also as the Patient Ones.
‘What, then?’ he had asked his son. ‘Will you stay your hand?’
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 6