Sometimes, surrounded by the wounded, the starving, the despairing, Feeds had to work very hard on not thinking about it all. Most of his mind cared nothing but for the next toy or diversion, the next wild idea for a game. Usually he could jeer down the little bit of him that understood the way others saw the world. He had to work hard at it here though.
It was not the hunger – just enough hard bread and dried fish was coming from the River, just enough weak beer and water from tribes to the west, that everyone’s belly rumbled but only the weakest died. Feeds on Dreams had gone hungry himself – long nights with nothing but dreams indeed to fill his belly. The north was as hard as the Plains, just in a different way. Everyone starved sometimes. What threatened to break through to him was the sheer defeated misery. Everyone here had seen the Plague People or heard those who had. Everyone had lost their toys and tools; everyone had been driven from their homes; most had some friend or relative unaccounted for, or dead, or locked away in their Stepped form like Sathewe. But it was more even than that. Something was stalking the camp on sightless legs, not the Plague People but the shadow they cast. Nothing could live in that shadow. That was the truth Feeds worked so hard to ignore. Where that shadow was cast, there were no tribes or villages, no Stepping, no gods, no dancing or singing, no ritual, nothing of all of the people of the world. There were only hollow human-seeming bodies without souls, building their webby little villages without any understanding. The Plainsfolk in the camp had seen their lives wiped away, like lines in the dust before a broom.
But Feeds’ ability to ignore the world was truly vast, and boredom was a greater terror to him than the Plague People, and so he skipped off with Sathewe anyway to go and make trouble, following the little coyote as she sniffed and yipped her way through the broken lives of the Plainsfolk.
When she stopped, at first he thought she was just tired. After that he tried to invent a dozen other reasons she might abruptly have her tail between her legs and her head low, when there was no Kalameshli there actually telling them both off.
At last, though, he crouched down with her and tried to understand what she had seen or smelled or heard. Sathewe had never known fear for longer than it took to escape a threat. That had been why they were so well matched. When the Terror of the Plague People had caught her, she had not been able to escape fast enough, but even as a coyote she was bold and swift and careless. He often thought her soul was right behind her eyes, right at the back of her tongue – that any moment he would turn and see the skinny Coyote girl there, not the starved-looking animal. If anyone could find their way back from the Terror it would be Sathewe.
But now she was scared, and yet she fixed him with a look and he knew she was tracking something and wanted him to see it.
She led him to a tiny tent, just an awning held up by sticks and twine, like a child might build. It was tucked away at the back of a Boar tribe camp, hidden in the shadow of a lean-to where too many families crouched listlessly, talking in low voices.
There was little to see, though Sathewe growled at it, almost too soft to hear. Feeds saw some feathers and some bones – tiny ones. Something had been burned there, some minuscule offering. Officiating over it all, like the world’s smallest priest, was a skull that would fit in the palm of his hand.
Feeds fought it, but the world seeped in anyway, sending a cold streak down his spine and twisting his bowels. He knew what this was. Not often it was seen, in the Crown of the World – especially not in the high reaches of the Eyrie that was his home – but everyone knew the stories. Everyone knew the one god who had no tribe, no people, but was always scratching about for the lost and the disaffected, to make them his own. And where better than here, to foster a nasty little cult of despair and picked bones? Someone had been invoking the Rat.
20
They made as swift time as they could. Galethea would have slowed them – she had no fleet shape to take on, nor would Maniye ever have consented to carry her. Tecumet had thought of this, as she thought of everything. Galethea rode, shrouded and cowled against the sun and against curious eyes. Those few Plains-dwellers who came close must have found them a strange sight: a lean woman without an inch of skin exposed to the sun, riding a Horse Society steed badly enough that the beast was constantly kept in place by a wolf and a hyena and the warning hiss of Asman’s Swift Lizard Champion. Behind, a score of River Lord warriors kept up a punishing pace on foot, for the whole of the Sun River Nation could spare few mounts now the Horse Society had fallen.
The thought made Maniye shudder. What if the beast Galethea rode had been human once, had spoken and known and loved? Asman swore it was from the stables the Horse kept at Atahlan, but as far as Maniye was concerned there were no certainties any more. She had left a Horse youth at Where the Fords Meet, Alladai, who was lost and gone with the rest of his kin. For all she knew, some Plague warrior had a saddle on Alladai’s back or had him drawing a load, no more than a beast of burden.
Hesprec kept her sane. Sometimes the little Serpent priest was a comforting pressure looped about Maniye’s wolf ribs. At other times Maniye let her Champion out to prowl, and Hesprec rode on her shoulders like some tiny queen of the world. Hesprec said they needed Galethea. Maniye could not tell if she trusted the pale woman or if she was just keeping a close eye on her, but the two of them had walked a long enough road together that Maniye would follow her lead.
Feeds on Dreams flew over twice, Stepping to remark on how little ground they had covered, and how he’d told the warband she would be there already. Maniye reached inside herself each time, to see how she felt about rejoining them. They were her people; they had followed her as far south as she had ever dreamt the world went. But because she was their leader, they would expect her to lead them.
She flinched a little from the thought. She had failed them before, and the thought of being taken by the Plague Men, dragged back under their pall of fear, before their cold curiosity, was a dread to her. But I am their Champion. I have no choice.
Today she expected to see Feeds circling over them as though waiting for them to die, but he was absent. A worm of unease started turning in her, thinking that perhaps they were too slow, too late. Had the Plague come to the Plains camp already? Or had he just forgotten, as he was wont to do?
Towards day’s end, though, she could make out a great shadow on the land that must be the camp. There was smoke there, but from cookfires, not from desolation. She almost fancied she could hear them, such a great gathering of humanity. Had it not been for the others she might have blithely assumed that such throngs were the normal business of the Plains – after all, she had heard of Atahlan and its many thousands, so why not here? Shyri was dumbstruck by it, though, shaken to her very core.
‘Oh,’ the Laughing Girl whispered. ‘Not a good place, that. A dying place.’
‘What’s that?’ Asman asked her.
‘In the Hyena stories, in the hard times, he finds where the people of other tribes go. They gather together and they gnaw at each other, great chains of the hungry, until there’s nothing left but carrion, and Hyena calls his people to . . .’ She twitched and grimaced. ‘Anyway, some of our stories. We have others. But that is a dying place.’
‘That is an army,’ Asman decided, but his voice lacked conviction.
‘What about that?’ Maniye Stepped to point at a great mound out to the east, its near side painted bright by the sunset. Her eyes tried to make it a rock, and then a hill, but at last the regular contours of it brought home that human hands had raised it, though not recently.
‘Horn-Bearer fort,’ Shyri said shortly. ‘They’re all over the Plains. From when they were many,’ and then, an unnecessary addition, ‘from when they were alive.’
‘It looks strong,’ Maniye said. ‘Why aren’t your people there, ready to defend it? Surely the Plague can’t be far.’ She heard her own voice catch a little, and hated the fear in it.
Shyri stared at her. ‘Didn’t help the Horn-Bear
ers. You don’t know that story, truly?’
‘How many north-stories do you know?’ Hesprec pointed out.
They Stepped to make the most of the daylight. When Shyri shook out her blanket she stared off towards the great mound of the fort. ‘My people tell their story the way it should be told, but there is a place for it. To tell it elsewhere calls to their ghosts, and nobody wants that. Say just that they were strong and that they feared. They went mad behind their walls. They sealed themselves away and never came out.’
Maniye digested that. ‘And they’re waiting in there, to come out and fight one last battle?’
Shyri cackled. ‘Oh no, Many Tracks. We know the death that came to the Horn-Bearers. We of the Laughing Men know that most of all. We stole into the shadow of their forts after they were all dead. We know what tasted the meat of the Horn-Bearers.’ She gave the words such a sepulchral edge that Maniye wanted to hear no more. In the dark, the great bulk of the fort seemed to loom larger and larger, until Maniye could not tell whether it was clouds that blotted the stars, or the haunted stones of the Horn-Bearers.
The next day they reached the outskirts of the camp that seemed to be growing and spreading even as they came to it. Ragged little bands of Plainsfolk were still arriving, carrying what they could, and few enough looked like complete families. Confronted with that great tangled snarl of humanity, Maniye and the others stopped, unwilling to just plunge in and be lost beneath its surface. It seemed impossible that they would ever find a familiar face in the midst of it all.
Then Feeds on Dreams was flying over them, low enough that Asman could have reached up and plucked a feather from his wings. He croaked out a welcome and then Stepped, dropping down into their midst.
‘What’s this?’ Shyri demanded of him. ‘This is going to fight the Plague?’ as though it was his fault. She spoke loud enough to be heard by everyone around, and Maniye looked for an angry response in those nearest, but they just looked away. Everyone here looked so worn out and thin, as though, if you held them up to the sun, the light would shine through. The thought put her uneasily in mind of the hollowness of the enemy.
Feeds cocked his head at the Laughing Girl. ‘Others fought,’ he said simply. ‘These lived.’ His tone made no judgements, because Feeds’ criteria for good and bad were different from sane people’s, but the meaning came through anyway.
Asman needed to find some leadership within the great sea of people. Feeds claimed he could help. There was some council of chiefs or elders trying to accomplish something, he said. Shyri would dog Asman’s footsteps, no doubt, and Hesprec would need to bring her pale guest to them and try to explain why the creature should not be killed out of hand. And Maniye . . .
She took a deep breath. ‘Takes Iron and the warband,’ she said to the Crow. ‘Show me to them.’
She had expected to find just the bare bones of her people – the priest and whoever had survived of her band of followers – huddled miserably round a fire like an island of the north in the midst of all these Plainsfolk. They would look up at her, and she would read the demand in their eyes, that she somehow turn the world on its head and lead them to certain victory. Each step she took at Feeds’ heels was slower, until he had to stop and wait, stop and wait, hopping from foot to foot impatiently.
Then there was a yip, and a stick-thin little creature bounded past the Crow and jumped up at Maniye. For a moment she could not understand who it was, because no coyote ever behaved so like a tame dog before. But it was Sathewe, who plainly knew her still. Maniye felt a deeper stab of pain, seeing her. All my failures. She had let the Coyote girl down, and then later she had let all her warband down, leading them into fear and death and gaining nothing.
But Sathewe yipped and danced; Maniye could see the girl so clearly in the eyes of the beast, her soul so bright there. She knelt down and put a hand on the coyote’s head.
‘Many Tracks . . . ?’ Feeds on Dreams asked.
She was waiting for the Champion to just loom within her mind and magically dispel all her sour memories, her knowledge of her own fear and failings. She wanted to go before her warband cleansed of what had gone before, pure and worthy of them. Except the Champion slumbered at the back of her mind and she hesitated at the threshold. She had been given some small time when she need not be Many Tracks at all, just Maniye, as she used to be. Now that time was done.
She looked up, mouth open ready to deny them all. She would go. She would vanish into this huge maze of tents and camps and bodies.
Feeds seemed to cast a vast shadow, enough to block out the sun. A moment later she reinterpreted what she was seeing, and leapt to her feet. Behind the Crow stood the biggest man she had ever seen, and a friend.
‘Loud Thunder!’ And abruptly all the dark clouds fell away from her, seeing him there: his slightly bewildered smile, the awkward way he had of standing that was a futile attempt to seem smaller. Even his dogs were at his heels as she remembered, staring suspiciously at Sathewe.
She ran to him and tried to throw her arms around him, but there was always too much of him for that.
‘The Crow kept saying you were here,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But you know how it is with him. He’ll say anything.’
And there were more surprises in store for her. She followed Thunder’s heavy tread to a camp much grander than she had been expecting. By then she understood that the Bear had brought a grand war host down from the Crown of the World, and it sat close by the Plainsfolk camp even now. There were plenty of visitors at her warband’s fire, come to swap tales of the north. When Maniye walked in, a cheer went up that must have sparked a panic through all the neighbouring camps. She looked around her, seeing faces from what seemed like a lifetime ago. Each one of her band came to greet her, eager to re-swear their fealty to her. Where was all the blame she had been waiting for?
But here was one face who surely had some criticism for her. Kalameshli Takes Iron, standing back and waiting for the others to get it out of their system. No effusive welcomes from the Wolf’s strictest priest. She looked into his leathery features, almost desperate for the condemnation she knew she deserved.
But she knew him too well now. Behind that harsh mask she saw the relief of a father whose daughter had come home.
It was too much, but she could not simply go and find somewhere quiet. All eyes were on her. She had to play the leader even if she wanted anything but.
‘What welcome is this?’ she announced to them. ‘No salt, no meat? What sort of guest do you make me?’ And they laughed at that, and Amelak scrambled to find her some token of hospitality so that things were done properly, and Maniye felt that the role of leader was like a cloak, shielding her from them, so that she could be with them and not be overwhelmed.
And there were others at the fire, too, Thunder’s people. There was a pair of Coyote, and a limping old Wolf priest who had come to speak with Kalameshli, and there was one other.
Maniye felt the sight of him like a blow, like a spear going through her. He was a tall man, coppery like a Plains-dweller but with different features, angular and long-limbed. But he was handsome, still, and she remembered how kind he had been, when they first met up in the trading post on the Sand Pearl. He was Alladai of the Horse Society, and she had known him for dead the moment she had seen what the Plague had done to his home. And yet here he was.
Breathing was hard, abruptly, talking harder, but he seemed to understand that and just sat beside her and ate a little while she gathered herself.
He had been in the north, he said. When the Plague came to Where the Fords Meet, Alladai and an expedition of his fellows had been upriver. His family was gone, his hand-father and the rest, but he lived. He was glad to see her. He was here.
That was what finally let her move on and accept that the world would let her heal. She had no precise words for what she felt for Alladai, but all the colours in her world were brighter now she knew he lived, the fire warmer, the food had more savour.
/> For the first time in a long, long while she let herself relax and be safe.
She spent the next day hearing all their stories of what had happened since their parting, and then hearing Loud Thunder’s own tales of how the Crown of the World had changed since she left it. When he told her how they had driven the Plague People from the Seal coast she dared to feel a stab of hope. Thunder talked dolefully about how that fight had gone – how many had died, even though they had attacked by surprise out of a blizzard; how many of the Plague People had survived to fight another day.
‘And yet here you are,’ she pointed out. ‘You brought all these spears to the Plains.’
‘Because they must be stopped, and even though we are strong, we are not strong enough on our own,’ Thunder said. ‘You say the Riverlanders are sending soldiers, and there are Plains warriors who will bare a tooth still, and there are Stone Men come down from wherever they live. And it must be enough.’
Maniye nodded, but she was thinking of all she had seen of the enemy. They will not care, she thought. Their killing darts will not care, and their flying fire-ship. And the fear will not stop, for all our numbers.
‘What if it is the end of the world?’ she asked him.
Loud Thunder shrugged massively. ‘I don’t know. Are we supposed to do things differently if it is?’
Towards evening Hesprec sent to them. There would be a gathering of chiefs and the wise. Thunder and Maniye should both be there.
She felt like neither a chief nor one of the wise, but once she reached the heart of the camp and saw the assembly there, it didn’t matter. It seemed that anyone who felt they had something to say had come, a great jumbled mass of priests and warriors, old women, young men, every tribe in the Plains rubbing shoulders uncomfortably, side by side.
Hesprec found them – no real art to spotting Loud Thunder in a crowd, after all. The Serpent priest led them over to where Shyri sat watching the proceedings with her Laughing Man sneer fully on show.
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 22