Around her, the Wild Dog people – the Black Eye tribe who were her hosts – were leaping up, spears and hatchets in hand. She smelled their fear but also their awe, because she was their Champion too. Only out in the open, her head beginning to clear, did she know for certain she had Stepped, and she had left the Godsland.
But the hooks . . .
She rounded on Kalameshli as he approached her, the old man with his hands out. Her jaws were full of words she could not say: she was angry with him for tormenting her one last time; she was ashamed at herself for failing the Wol’s trial. For a moment she just snarled and scored the earth with her claws because that was easier than taking on another shape and having to explain how she felt.
And there was a part of her that had always wanted to strike at Takes Iron, for all he was not quite the mean old man of her memories.
But she was not the angry child of those days, either. If she was the Champion, she must act like it. She Stepped, ready to receive whatever reproach he deemed fit.
The moment she did, the fire of the hooks was spread across her back and limbs like a net. They were still caught in her, and for a moment she panicked, wanting to tear them free, until she forced herself to be still.
The look on Kalameshli’s face was not the long-familiar disappointment she had expected. Instead there was a simple happiness there: a priest whose god has been propitiated; a father whose daughter has done well.
She had taken the hooks into herself, inhered them, when she Stepped. She had freed herself from the ropes. She had brought back the secret of iron from the Godsland.
She remembered seeing the bare back of Akrit Stone River, shortly before she fled his shadow forever. The twin lines of puckered scars that had adorned him were hers now, just as they were the badge of every Wolf hunter who had entered into that final mystery.
Kalameshli found her an axe with a grey blade and she Stepped with it, feeling the slight tug of its unnatural metal before it became part of her, bound into her teeth and claws. He had a metal coat, too, that had belonged to one of her warband who had died on the river. It was too large for her, but Kalameshli was wise in the ways of iron. He would shorten it and unravel it until just enough was left to be strapped about her skinny human frame. That would become the strength of her hide, to turn away blade and arrow. She would be a true Iron Wolf.
Whether it would turn away the unknowable weapons of the Plague People, she could not say.
The Black Eye village was a strange piece of work: the buildings were up on low mounds and shaped like the longhouses she had grown up in, but with roofs of grass. The Wild Dogs had been Wolves once, and kept hold of some of their ancestral ways. Right now, of course, it was the heart of a great camp of Plainsfolk – men, women and children from a half-dozen villages to the east who had fled ahead of the Plague People. Maniye had always heard of how the Plains-dwellers loved nothing more than to kill each other, but here they were, Lions, Horse and Boar all within a spear’s reach of each other and yet not drawing blood. Whether or not their fractious reputation was deserved, it was not hard to recognize the common enemy when that enemy went on human feet and lacked a soul.
That night, she sat in the Wild Dogs’ largest hut, wrapped loosely in a blanket so it would not aggravate the little puckered wounds the hooks had left. The Plains-dwellers had made her an honoured guest, but she had little to say. She knew nothing of the Plague People save what she had seen, and there were plenty of others who could tell similar stories.
A starveling-thin little coyote sat with her head in Maniye’s lap, listening to the counsel of the Wild Dogs but not understanding the words. This had been one of her warband once, just a Coyote girl who never had the common sense of a stone. Then she had run ahead too close to the Plague People and the unnatural terror of them had taken the irrepressible girl and locked her away. And Maniye wanted to say, But Sathewe feared nothing, but in the end even she had feared the Plague People. Then Maniye thought of the foam-lathered horses running wild and mad about the Plains, and wondered which of them were truly born as beasts, and which had once walked on two legs as men and women in Where the Fords Meet. One, in particular, she thought of: Alladai, who had been kind to her when she had been in need, and dear to her later, when she was strong.
The chief of the Wild Dogs was a weathered old man, tough as leather without being as flexible. He was having a hard time believing what he had heard – without his own eyes as witnesses it all seemed like a trick to him. His fiercest hunter, a lean man named Grass Shadow, argued with him back and forth – not caution, but wanting to bring a warband to the Fords. Grass Shadow wanted to fight, and some of the others wanted to fight. The chief wanted nothing to do with it – or rather he wanted life to go on as it had until he was old enough to walk out of his human life and leave it all behind.
And there were others invited to sit at the fire within the chief’s hut and give more counsel to be ignored. A scar-faced Boar woman was there, whose refugee people were camped outside the Wild Dogs’ village. She joined her voice to Grass Shadow’s, saying something must be done. At the same time, a lean Lion woman just shook her head and drank from a jug of Riverman beer. She was Reshappa, and her people had fought, she said, and the Plague had broken them. Their Champion had been pierced over and over by invisible arrows that filled the air like bees. Their people had fled – and those who had not fled quick enough had lost themselves to the Fear. She said the word as though it was a name, a living thing separate from the soulless Plague People themselves.
The great chiefs and warriors of the Lion – their men – had been too proud to come to the Black Eyes’ fire, but Reshappa had slunk in of her own volition. She had no counsel to give, it seemed, but had come only to tear down the words of everyone else.
And there was Shyri, the Laughing Girl. She had travelled a long, long way – from her people in the western Plains up to the Crown of the World, and halfway across that before making her way down the Sand Pearl to Where the Fords Meet and the Tsotec estuary. Her people were the Hyena, who took the woes of others less than seriously. None of the other Plainsfolk liked them much, which Shyri repaid twice over. Maniye looked to Shyri for wisdom, or else to laugh. Neither was forthcoming, and indeed the woman’s usual derision was so absent that Maniye shuffled her seat closer until she could lean into the Laughing Girl’s shoulder and whisper, ‘Why so silent?’
Shyri gave her haunted look. ‘Just thinking of the stories my people tell, that these fools don’t want to hear.’
‘So tell me.’
‘Oh, you don’t want them either,’ Shyri promised her.
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘My people are the bone-crackers, those who dance on graves,’ Shyri whispered, voice shaking ever so slightly. ‘We don’t contest the Lion’s kill, or throw ourselves onto the tusks of the Boar. We know they’ll have our paw on their neck sooner or later. We tell stories of those people who knew their moment of greatness and then fell. Where are the Aurochs now? Where are the Horn-Bearers, raisers of walls? Worse than we have gnawed their bones, and nobody tells their tales.’ Her whisper gave her words the cadence of a ritual. ‘The end of the world will come, and find only the Laughing Men atop a mound of broken bones.’
‘And you think this is that time?’
‘It was never supposed to be a time,’ Shyri hissed. ‘It was just a story we told each other because the Lions were strong or the Boar were many. But now . . .’
‘Will your people fight?’ Maniye asked her.
‘Everyone fights when there’s no other choice. Will they fight with these fools? Why should they?’ For a moment the firelight made her look desperately unhappy.
They argued back and forth, Grass Shadow, Reshappa, the Boar woman and the Dog chief, and in the end Maniye dozed fitfully, huddled in her blanket and woken every time she slumped too far and the hook-wounds bit. In her dreams she was still hanging from the iron, and beneath her was some vast and terrible abyss –
but not bottomless, for there was something swarming up out of it and she hung on the hooks and could not get away . . .
She woke suddenly – finding herself alone at the ashes of the fire, the light of morning streaming in through the chinks in the thatch. Kalameshli Takes Iron had touched her shoulder, and for a moment she couldn’t remember whether she was still scared of him, or angry at him, or what.
He led her outside, and she found her warband waiting for her, a circle of them and all of them geared for war, fierce painted faces, armour and blades. Spear Catcher, with his scartorn face; his mate Amelak who had become the band’s uncomplaining mother; mad-eyed Feeds on Dreams, the Crow. And all the rest, the misfits and the outcasts who had given themselves over to her because being a Champion’s follower gave them back some measure of pride. Even Shyri, who was none of Maniye’s, yet was given place and honour by the rest.
And now Kalameshli was taking his place at their head. His face was painted with the jagged maze of a Wolf priest standing before his god, and his robe sewn with bones rattled about his spare frame. He held for her an iron shirt that he must have been all night tailoring to her, removing links and resealing them with the tools that were as much a part of his calling as sacrifice and devotion.
She donned the iron, feeling its weight, less than the bronze scales she had worn before. Kalameshli had done his work well, and it lay across her shoulders evenly, ready to become a part of her the moment she Stepped. She had a great sense of the Godsland at her back – she who had walked there more than once. Iron was Wolf magic, after all.
‘Are you ready, Champion?’ he asked her.
Out there to the east, the Plague People were spreading their strange poison, unmaking those who could not flee and spinning their white walls to make the world theirs. How could anybody be ready for that?
3
They descended into the forested valley along paths narrow enough that the horses had to be led. Therumit seemed locked in her own thoughts, but Hesprec, the traveller of old, kept her eyes wide. What she could see of the cultivation looked slipshod. Whole swathes of forest that had once been carefully cultured by human hands had grown wild and untended. As she descended, so most of the buildings were hidden from her, but those she could see looked vacant, unlit, no sign of movement, and the vines reclaiming them.
‘They have not been good stewards of what we left with them,’ she remarked drily.
Therumit glanced back, and there was a blankness in her face that made Hesprec wonder whether they were even seeing the same sights.
Since being driven from this place, the Serpent had dwindled. A few hundred lived along the River, of whom perhaps a third performed active priestly duties. Children were yet born to them, but not often – most were very old indeed, and the urge to create new life and bring fresh souls to human form had waned in them. Hesprec had sired a daughter and borne a son in her time, but that was long ago, other bodies, other lives. The gift of shed skin, which let those born to the Serpent’s coils live on and on, brought a strange, slow perspective on events. No wonder, when we had to make a sudden decision, we panicked. All that time spent building a civilization on the banks of the Tsotec, and then one day the most ancient and terrible enemy was at their doorstep with no warning.
Except there was plenty of warning, but we would not believe it. I had to go all the way to the Crown of the World, and I was almost too late returning. She had left a skin in the cold earth of the north – the old man who had been Maniye’s fellow fugitive – and become this young girl who felt so ill equipped to meet the storm.
And Therumit was a generation older, at least. But surely not so old . . . ?
‘You were not here, before.’ A statement, not a question. She would not believe Therumit was that old.
‘No . . .’ The old face turned towards her again, and Hesprec saw it then. Not of that lost generation who fled the usurping Pale Shadow, but perhaps the generation that came after. What tales would the infant Therumit have been raised on, save We will have it back, and How golden were our halls? And then time had swept back and forth across the Tsotec, and the River Lords had been woven from individual clans into a great Kasranate. The Serpent had gone amongst all the priests of the River and become a part of their creeds and teachings, not the ruling divinity, but the god that underlies all. There had been lessons in agriculture and architecture, mathematics, writing and government, and most of the Serpents had lost that dream, sloughing it away with one shift of skin or another. And most of Therumit’s generation were dead, for the knife or the fever or just the weariness of too many lives still claimed the Serpent’s long-lived children.
And through the centuries, one face after another, old to young to old to young, Therumit had guided the Estuary peoples and never lost her childhood dreams.
I am less than confident we are doing the right thing. But the revelation was too late. Here they were. The path was too narrow even for her to turn her horse around, and she had a feeling Therumit might not let her go so freely.
Onward then, but still, not blindly. ‘Therumit, do you not feel the servants in these halls are remiss in their duties?’ She pointed at the heights of a tower emerging from the trees and the swathing sheets of white. ‘I see a statue there that’s nothing but two feet and broken shins, and the tower-top’s not much better. And that tiered palace beyond it has gone back to the jungle. The roots pry between its stones. Do you not think this says something about the hospitality we shall receive?’
‘Perhaps it says this place is ready for us to return,’ was Therumit’s dry response. ‘The Pale Shadow were mighty once, to drive us out. Perhaps they have weakened to the point where mere force will win back our legacy for us.’
‘I trust you’ve brought a force of invisible soldiers then,’ Hesprec commented. ‘It might tax just the two of us.’
‘If soldiers are needed then the River will provide,’ Therumit told her. ‘But for now we have an invitation, or did you forget?’
Not something I am ever likely to, Hesprec knew. One of the Pale Shadow had come into the Estuary. A pale, hollow woman naming herself Galethea, she had been colluding with Therumit and some others of the Serpent there, with promises that the Oldest Kingdom was theirs for the taking. The Pale Shadow sought the Serpent’s teaching, she had said. Hesprec believed not a word of it and, if that had been all, she would not be here about this foolishness. But of course there had been more, for Galethea had spoken about the Plague People. The Pale Shadow were less than overjoyed to find their distant relatives on these shores. They spoke of common enemies – and enemies that they understood as even the Serpent never could.
Another lie, probably. But the news from the Plains had been dire enough to spur Hesprec on. And I should admit it to myself: one more journey; one more place so few have ever seen. I always knew wanderlust would get me killed.
And now they were down, in amongst the trees, following a stone-clad track that was humped and broken by the hungry roots, furred by moss. Around them, the deeps of the forest were shrouded, webs stretching in a maze of solid mist until look far enough in any direction and all you saw was white: the Pale Shadow.
There were animals – Hesprec heard the birdcalls quiet as they neared, start up again behind them once they had passed. She heard frogs creaking in the silted-up irrigation channels and there would be jaguars and capybara and peccaries winding their ways between the trees. None of these were seen though, knowing the presence of man enough to flee it. What she did see were the spiders.
They were small, for the most part. Tiny eight-legged motelets drifted on the faintest breeze, trailing silk. Thumbnail-sized skitterers crept on every leaf and branch. Hairy hand-sized monsters bumbled across their path, their ambling turned to a sudden flailing rush as the hooves came close. And none of this was what concerned Hesprec, who was only thinking, None of these spun those great webs I see, not alone, not all together, not in a hundred years of weaving.
And at l
ast, after hunting the branches and canopy, she spied one, and tapped Therumit’s bony shoulder to draw her attention. The creature squatted in the crook of a tree, its bulbous body as great as Hesprec’s own, its short legs drawn in and kept so still she might have missed it – as she had perhaps missed many of its kin already. A Kasra of spiders, architect of the enshrouding sheets and nets that hung all about them.
Therumit just grunted, unsurprised.
Do they have souls, I wonder? But the question was not one Hesprec would voice to her companion. There were sacrileges even the most irreverent priest should not consider.
Then Therumit stopped, swiftly enough that Hesprec’s mount jostled hers. The old woman took out a gnarled cane from the sling on her saddle, holding it like a switch for striking.
Hesprec let herself down to the earth, spiders or not, because she was not the rider Therumit was. In case of trouble she would trust to her fangs and her coils.
There was movement about them – the sense of large creatures moving quietly. For a moment Hesprec was still thinking of spiders, but long experience told her this was a more familiar threat. She knew the scent of a big cat, the soft pad of its feet. The People of the Jaguar had raised this city along with the Serpent, in the distant past. Serpent had been wise and Jaguar had been strong. Strong, but ultimately dissatisfied and easily suborned, as history had borne out.
‘I don’t think they’ve come to welcome us home,’ she murmured.
Therumit said nothing, but her visage was terrible. It would be a brave warrior who would face that gnarled countenance, all the bottled scorn and bitterness of a dozen lifetimes. Still bravery was a crop raised from numbers, and Hesprec reckoned there were a dozen men and beasts out there, at least.
Then one made himself known: a tall, broad-shouldered man with skin as dark as the Serpents or the Rivermen, but features distinct from either. Others were slipping out from between the trees on all sides. The Jaguar were heavy-jawed, heavy-browed; they wore their hair in long plaited tails. Some of them had spotted pelts slung over their shoulders; others wore quilted tunics. A few had faded rags and swatches of silk given pride of place about their bodies that said to Hesprec favours or cast-offs. They had stone-beaked clubs and jagged spears.
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 3