She bellowed again and tried to see a way out of the maze, but the wound was already sapping at her, draining even the Champion’s strength. She thundered forwards another three steps, the Plague warriors dancing back to keep out of her reach, and then, abruptly, it had all gone from her. She felt her grip on her souls slipping, and the next step she took was with a bare human foot. She reached for a knife, for a stone, for anything, but there was nothing, and the white walls were spinning around her, the sun revolving madly in the sky. Maniye dropped to her knees, seeing the Plague People all around her awaiting their moment.
‘Come, then!’ she screamed at them, hearing her own voice thin and scratchy from disuse. ‘Finish me!’ But they stared at her, somehow more aghast to see her there as a slight, broken girl than their man had been when she became the Champion.
And he was the last thing she saw before her wounds got the better of her and she lost the world again: the stocky dark man with his stained apron and his sharp little blade.
10
‘It’s always this way,’ Loud Thunder grumbled. ‘Always I have to go tell people things they don’t want to hear.’
The scent of woodsmoke was on the air: not far off, a great host was encamped. The forest south-west of the lands of the Tiger had suffered a plague of axes: wood for tonight and wood to float south. Everyone in the Crown of the World knew there wasn’t a single decent tree once you got onto the Plains.
Thunder had not rejoined his people yet, and Kailovela could see that he wasn’t keen on it. Of all his qualities, perhaps she liked that the most: his awkwardness within his own skin; his unwillingness to become what they wanted him to be. He had said more than once that he’d go off and live in his cave, away from his people, if only the world wouldn’t keep making demands of him.
And now he was bringing one of the enemy into the heart of his people. Just a little enemy, it was true, but he was sure they weren’t going to like it. He had sent Lone Mountain ahead to bring word to his Mother, the forbidding woman who ruled all the Bear by sheer force of personality. And while Lone Mountain was away, he paced and fretted in a clearing.
At Kailovela’s side, the little hollow woman also fidgeted and shifted from foot to foot. She had told it what was going on, but how much it had understood she wasn’t sure. It knew some of her words, she could understand a few of the sounds it made. Kailovela felt that they were both striving across a gap that actively did not want to be bridged.
She really did not know why the little monster stayed with her. It could fly, after all, and it had kinfolk somewhere south. Why hadn’t it just scudded away like the weather, never to be seen again – or appeared at the head of some Plague army come to avenge those killed by Thunder’s warband . . . And yet it had helped her through the tearing pain of the birth, and stayed with her when she was weak, and was still here now. When it looked on her son, the expression on the creature’s face was indistinguishable from human tenderness, save that there was no soul behind it to give it true life.
And that made her think of Empty Skin, the soulless Seal girl. Is that why she wants to talk to them, not fight them? Because they are like her? It was a mean-minded thought, but the girl scared Kailovela. She should be hurt and screaming from what she’s been through. How can she stand there like a normal person?
When Empty Skin met her gaze, the girl just smiled. But then everyone smiled when they saw Kailovela. Thunder paced ponderously back and forth, butting his fists together as he waited. ‘It should be someone else’s turn,’ he complained to himself – though he was making sure the words could be heard by everyone else. ‘Why make me do all the work again?’
‘Are you fishing?’ Kailovela asked, because she could only take so much self-pity. ‘You want me to say, “Loud Thunder, it’s because you’re so strong? You’re the great war leader of the Crown of the World”? Is that what this is for?’
He stopped, looking so wounded that she knew he would be angry – that was how men covered their hurts and humiliations. But then a sheepish grin broke over his face and he said, ‘Well, if you want to say that, I’m not going to stop you.’
She laughed at him, a single bark before she bit down on it. But she couldn’t strangle the smile altogether. Even the little monster seemed to understand the joke, despite knowing none of the words.
‘You say what you will,’ she told him, an apology that was not quite an apology. ‘Your Mother scares me too.’
He had some rejoinder to that, but Lone Mountain was back before he could give it, announcing, ‘Cousin, put on your serious face, our Mother is here.’
The Mother of the Bear filled the clearing. It was not just that she was huge – though all the Cave Dwellers, the Bear’s children, were taller and more heavily built than other peoples. She was old, her hair shot with grey and white, but still a little black in there too. Her face was craggy and heavy-jawed, yet with a commanding beauty – the kind normally reserved for mountains. She was vast and bulky and moved with a deceptive slowness, leaning on a gnarled staff, but then you could never hurry a bear, and this bear least of all.
Standing before her, Kailovela felt Mother was a natural force more than a woman. Until the woman looked on Loud Thunder, at least, and a very human expression of exasperation came to her face.
‘When you set out on your diversion, I was against it,’ she said, as though continuing a conversation from last time they had met.
Thunder shuffled. ‘Would I do a thing you were against? You were . . . unconvinced.’ Even that much rebellion seemed to scare him. He was a chastised ten-year-old in the body of the Bear’s strongest warrior.
‘And can you convince me, yet? Why do I feel you have not even done the thing you said, but some other worse thing?’ That imperious gaze swept the clearing, passing over Lone Mountain, who stood to one side with all his body saying, This is none of my fault. Mother’s eyes rested briefly on Empty Skin, who met them quite without fear, and then found Kailovela.
‘So here she is, the woman who talks the Plague language.’
Kailovela bowed her head. The sheer force of the woman’s personality compelled her.
‘Well?’
She looked up sharply. The Bear woman had taken a single step, and now made up Kailovela’s whole world. ‘Well?’ she demanded again.
‘I . . . have made myself understood to one of them, and she to me.’ She was aware that the little monster was hiding behind her, crouched in her shadow to avoid the stone weight of Mother’s gaze. Kailovela could only envy it.
The Bear rumbled, deep in her chest. ‘My war leader believes there will come a moment when you will be useful.’ She spared Loud Thunder a sidelong look. ‘Or that is the excuse he has given for seeking you out.’
Kailovela hunched her shoulders, making herself smaller, looking away: all the tricks she had used to survive being the property of one warrior or another. ‘I can’t say what he thinks.’
‘Like that, is it?’ Mother looked sharply at Thunder and Lone Mountain. ‘What are the two of you doing, just standing around? Go show your faces at the camp, remind people you still exist! Not you,’ she added, stopping Empty Skin mid-stride. ‘You stay. We’ll talk sense, we three, where it won’t addle the heads of the men.’
The baby woke then, and began to fuss. Kailovela knew his moods enough, now, and nestled the boy inside her robe, letting him find her nipple and feeling the dull ache as he latched on. Mother stared at the child as though he was just one more complication.
‘Not Yellow Claw’s get,’ she murmured.
‘Five Cuts, the man that Claw killed.’ She wondered if she was supposed to feel sorrow about the death of her son’s father. When she reached for it, though, there was nothing.
‘Yellow Claw is still the Eyrie’s Champion, and still causing trouble,’ Mother told her sourly. ‘You will have to face him, and Thunder will not always be there.’
Kailovela looked her in the face. ‘Will you?’
‘If you hi
de from everyone behind me, who will save you from me when I’m tired of you?’ Mother countered, but her face softened slightly. ‘If you come to help against the Plague, then my word will shelter you until we’re done. After that, nothing. The Bear will return to its cave and sleep again.’ Her eyes narrowed, and she stepped back abruptly. ‘You brought it with you?’
‘She has stayed with me. She won’t go to its people.’
‘Stand aside.’
There was no refusing that voice; it shoved her away as easily as if the huge woman had put out a hand to do it. Before Mother, the little monster seemed tinier still.
‘Loud Thunder’s idea was foolish from the start,’ Mother said, staring at the creature. It looked up at her defiantly, but Kailovela could see the tension in every line of it: one threatening move and it would take to the air and flee.
‘Why did you let him go then?’
‘Hmm.’ Mother’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. ‘Can I stop him, when he’s being a fool? Perhaps. But after he had gone, I brought the Wise together at my fire and told them of this foolish thing my son had set his heart on. I spoke with the Coyote and the Wolf and the Tiger. Many were angry, or else they laughed. But there were a few who had words worth hearing. One of the Moon Eaters said he had travelled further north even than the children of the Bear would go, to where all the land is ice. He said that there are shining people there, who live where there is no tree, no blade of grass, no beast or bird. He said they dance beneath the cold sun and are beautiful, yet as hollow as the Plague People. And there is an old woman of the Horse, one of those who fled Where the Fords Meet. She had travelled past the Tsotec once, and said there was a land of monsters living amongst a cat tribe, far, far away. All hollow, and yet they did not disturb the earth like these invaders. So Loud Thunder went to do a foolish thing, but while he was away that thing became less foolish. And now you have your own tame hollow child to speak for you. Does it have a name?’
It did, though Kailovela could never quite say it properly. She put a hand on the thing’s narrow shoulder, seeing that so human face turn to her.
‘Speak your name,’ she prompted. ‘Your name.’
She felt that brief connection with it, as she had felt with so many things before – which had brought wild beasts of all kinds to eat from her hand, and then men to contest ownership of her.
It spoke, a sound most like ‘T’k’.
Mother rolled her eyes at that, but the exercise had not been about learning what the creature called itself, so much as seeing whether it could be bidden by Kailovela.
‘Well, it’s here. We will bring it before the war host and perhaps they will kill it and hoist it on a spear.’ Her lip curled a little, seeing Kailovela step closer to the creature. ‘The Owl’s priests had it leashed.’
‘It doesn’t need to be.’ Kailovela tried to stare the huge woman down. ‘It will stay with me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘She will.’
Mother rumbled contemplatively again, deep in her throat, but said nothing, and so Kailovela went on, ‘Will you really bring all the warriors of the Crown of the World south to the Plains?’
‘The Crown of the World, the Highlands, the Eyrie. And we have some three score of the Horse Society with us, and a handful of Plainsmen who have fled north begging for help. The Horse, at least, are earning their keep. They have good minds for moving things from place to place. I have left feeding the host to them. You’ll travel with me,’ Mother told her shortly. ‘I don’t intend walking all the way to the Plains. Your monster can travel in your shadow, or someone’ll put a knife in it no matter what the Wise decide. And now you’ll present the thing to everyone.’ She turned and bellowed off into the trees. ‘Mountain! I know you’re skulking out there. Round them all up!’ Her voice seemed loud enough to echo from the far peaks.
Yellow Claw stood front and centre, at the gathering. All the chiefs, the great hunters and warriors, the priests and wise women and just people who had somehow made enough nuisance of themselves, they were all there. At first she thought it was the whole war host, but no – just its leaders. How large was the force, then, that Loud Thunder commanded? She could not guess. Behind the gathering the sky was smudgy with the smoke from all the fires.
In truth perhaps there were a hundred who had come at the summons, but to Kailovela it might as well have been thousands.
Loud Thunder stood to one side, arms folded and giving Yellow Claw filthy looks, which the Eyrie Champion ignored. Her former mate was still bruised from the time that Thunder had called him out and bested him, but he stood straight and proud and arrogant, as he always had. Mother was already stepping from the trees, holding her staff high to quiet them, and Kailovela began desperately looking for friendly faces.
There was Seven Mending, the Owl priestess who had first given the little monster into Kailovela’s care. Her eyes were blind-looking, her face painted with the Owl’s mark: grey with a white band across the eyes. There was power in that mark: a shiver of fear that came to all who looked on it. There would be no friendly welcome for Kailovela there; Seven Mending would still be smarting at the loss of her diminutive captive.
Mother was speaking to them, but Kailovela could barely understand the words. The massed regard of all those powerful men and women was buckling her knees and she knew she could not leave the shelter of the trees. She found more faces, stern and hostile all. There was Aritchaka, the priestess who led the Tiger warband. She had eaten souls in the name of her god. There were two dozen Wolves of different tribes who would be sniffing for the first hint of weakness. They stood beside the Tiger like comrades, united by a greater enemy, by shedding blood together.
When Kailovela stepped forward they would be united against her. Mother had finished speaking; the moment had arrived.
Just before her nerve broke entirely, Kailovela caught sight of two unassuming faces in the crowd. They were Coyote, the only two of that people present. She knew them; when the tribes had come together at Loud Thunder’s invitation they had been guests at every fire, spreading rumours and telling tales. His name was Two Heads Talking and hers was Quiet When Loud. The Coyote woman was already growing large with the child inside her, and setting eyes on her brought much-needed calm. Allies. The least of the least, perhaps, but Coyote accomplished more in the shadows than the mighty could beneath the sun, as they said.
So she stepped forward, her son cradled in one arm, and the other hand on the little monster’s shoulder.
Afterwards she was most surprised about Yellow Claw. He had been there, eyes boring into her with a cold, patient hatred: the man who had claimed her, finding her almost within arm’s reach again. And yet he did not reach out. When she spoke, he did not speak over her. His mocking humour hung like a ghost over the meeting, and yet never quite reached his lips.
She told them Loud Thunder had brought her here. She used his own words, mostly, about speaking with the Plague People after they had been bested in battle. For the warriors of the Crown of the World had already routed the enemy once. They knew they could do so again, and she must assure them that her presence was not to diminish theirs. Then her words broke free of the little Thunder had said. She spoke of the old stories – the first flight to Our Land from The Place Where We Were, the pursuit of the Plague People who devoured whatever they touched. There was another land beyond the sea, she told them. Did her listeners think these Plague Men were the last of their kind? Their very numbers were at the core of the old tales, a locust swarm of them across the land.
So there must be words, when spears and axes had done their work. The Plague must be made to bind themselves by whatever gods they followed, never to come back. That was her role, and that was what her little monster, her T’k, would aid in.
Some doubted her. Aritchaka of the Tiger was openly scornful. Hunters of the Wolf spat, and Yellow Claw just stared and stared as though willing her to burst into flames. Yet others murmured and nodded, the wise seeing wisdom, the strong seeing
strength. And Mother stood close by, her great shadow behind everything that Kailovela said. But there was more than that. She felt the power in her, that unwanted gift, as it reached out to them. Usually she could move just a single mind to like her – often even when she did not want to. This one time, she felt the curse-magic expand to all of them, tilting them just a hair’s breadth towards her. And in the end there were more who nodded than spat, and it was decided.
She only started shaking after. She sat on a stump amongst the trees and held her child, who had been miraculously quiet all through, oblivious to her tension. But then he was a solemn child, not serene but watchful.
She had been a fugitive when she bore him and perhaps he had come into the world with the knowledge that sometimes to go quietly was life. Certainly Yellow Claw would have dashed the boy’s brains out, had she still been his. That was the Hawk’s prerogative.
A step close by made her look up; it was Loud Thunder with his usual awkward approach.
‘That was good,’ he said, fumbling with his hands. ‘Better you than me.’
‘I live another day,’ she agreed, and saw his face darken. ‘It is not as it was with Yellow Claw. Did I ever thank you, for standing between us? Did I thank you for letting me out of your shadow, once you had taken me from his? I am thankful, Loud Thunder.’
‘Less thankful for being dragged back into this nonsense.’
‘Your nonsense, yes.’ But she couldn’t help smiling a little. ‘But I am a warrior in your war host now. I will do my part when the time comes.’ She looked at the little monster, who was sitting cross-legged beside her, eyeing the Bear suspiciously. ‘We both will.’
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 11