Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (13 page)

Thakur watched. When she surfaced, he blew back at her. She grinned, slapped her good forepaw on top of his head, dunked him under, and held him. For one confused moment, he struggled, wondering why she was trying to drown him. Then he knew that she had decided to teach him in her own fashion. With a strong breath, he blew out the water flooding his mouth and nose. She let him up.

He dunked Newt in turn, watching her breath surface as bubbles. Moving away from her, he tried putting his face in the water. The first few times he ended up with brine in his throat, but he began to master the trick of controlling his breathing to overcome the feeling of suffocation and keep water out of his mouth and nose.

Thakur opened his eyes in the clear water of the lagoon. He could see somewhat blurrily, but he could make out objects. There was Newt, hanging in the water nearby, her fur forming a soft halo about her as currents teased it away from her body. He felt the water push against his face, tug unpleasantly at his sensitive nose and brow whiskers, and seep over his jowls into his mouth. Lifting his head, he shook the water out of his ears. This was interesting, but it would take some getting used to.

Newt drifted into the shallows near him. She looked up at him, then pawed the water with her forefeet in imitation of his paddling. Both forefeet. He stared at her two paws, the good one splashing vigorously, the other feeble but moving. It hadn’t been just his imagination or wishful thinking. Her leg wasn’t as useless as it appeared.

“Newt,” he said softly, nudging her. “Look.” She stared down, following the odd jerks of her crippled forelimb through the water. With a self-conscious grimace, she tugged the leg to her chest and held it there.

“No. What you were doing before; that was good.” Gently, Thakur pawed her foot away from her chest, coaxing her to let the forelimb drift free. He batted her limb back and forth in a small arc beneath the water, then took her foot in his mouth, trying to see how far the tightened muscles would stretch. This time she did not jerk away.

With his nose underwater, Thakur moved the shrunken limb back and forth until Newt caught on to the idea. “Good,” he said, sneezing brine out of his whiskers. “You do it now.”

She managed several short, jerky sweeps. He saw it was harder for her to move the leg intentionally than it had been when she was just swimming. She persisted, even when the leg began trembling. He made her stop, then encouraged her to swim again by making a few clumsy paddle-strokes. She glided around him, then looked up. Again she pawed the water. “Newt... ?”

Thakur grinned. She was so good at this water play that of course she would want to know the word for it. “Swim,” Thakur told her.

“Newt swim,” she said. “Thakur swim.” She glided around him, twisting and turning.

“Good.” He purred and gave her a soggy nuzzle.

“Good,” Newt echoed.

He licked her behind the ears, then ducked to avoid another splash.

Later he had her do more exercise with the leg, sweeping it back and forth as far as it would go against the resistance of the water. He felt he had found something important, although he was not exactly sure how it might work.

Chapter Eight

Fessran and Khushi were gone from clan ground for many days. For Ratha, those days dragged like the weary herders’ feet, as the weather grew hotter and the trails dustier.

She lay in late-afternoon shade that felt as hot as open sun. She panted, feeling worn out and worried. She wished she had delayed Thakur from returning to the lake-of-waves and its odd inhabitant. The task of controlling herdbeasts made restive by thirst and flies was a wearying one, in addition to her other duties as leader. And the new water source she thought would last had begun to fail.

Both Thakur and Fessran were gone. She let her jaw sag as she panted. Letting them both go had been a bad decision. But how was she to know that Khushi would turn up with a stolen cub from the ranks of the Un-Named, who might well have sprung from the loins of her bitterest enemy? Could anyone blame her if she wanted that litterling off clan ground as fast as possible and shred the consequences!

Letting Fessran go with Khushi was only a quicker way to speed him off with his unwanted burden. Ratha sighed. Not a good decision. Even if all Fessran wanted was her lost treeling—but Ratha couldn’t bring herself to believe that.

She lay with her tail flicking, thinking about the good and bad parts of what Thakur had told her before he left. The good part was the spring. Thakur had described how underground water flowed from a series of cracks in a cliff that lay just behind the beach where he had found the duck-footed dapplebacks. With its source deep in the earth, the spring would run even when everything else went dry. The spring watered thickets where three-horns could browse and patches of meadow that would do for the dapplebacks.

The bad part was that the Named would have to leave clan ground for as long as the drought lasted. Ratha laid her chin down on grass that once would have cooled but now crackled. The journey there would be exhausting. She thought of the river drives and the prospect of increasing the tumult, dust, and weariness over days of traveling.

Before she uprooted the clan, she must see the spring for herself, to be absolutely sure it would support the needs of the Named and their herds through the drought. She wanted to study the wave-wallowers themselves, along with the Un-Named one who lived among them.

Soon she would follow Thakur’s tracks to this great, brine-filled lake. She itched to be gone. But she meant to take Fessran with her, and the Firekeeper had not yet returned. She sighed and laid her nose on her paws instead of the scratchy grass.

Though the clan would be losing its leader and chief Firekeeper for a short time, Ratha felt that this journey was essential, and she needed Fessran’s opinion as much as her own. She had already spoken to the older herder, Cherfan, about taking over clan leadership while she was gone. And Bira, Fessran’s second-in-command among the Firekeepers, had overcome much of her shyness and had grown skilled in the management of the Red Tongue and those who kept it.

Fessran’s absence would give Bira a chance to emerge from the chief Firekeeper’s shadow and show her abilities. Cherfan was a strong, experienced herder and respected by all. Ratha did not think her own and Fessran’s absence would be long enough to cause difficulty; at the slow rate the river was dropping, things would remain stable enough until she had found a place for the clan.

Fessran and Khushi surprised her by arriving later that same afternoon. A herder ran ahead, bringing the news to her and waking her from her sleep in the shade. As soon as the two travelers came into sight, Ratha saw Fessran was still missing her treeling. Khushi’s jaws, thankfully, were empty. With a rising purr, she invited them to stretch out beside her.

When both had rested and groomed, Ratha asked how they had fared on the journey. She noticed that Fessran let Khushi do most of the talking.

“We didn’t find the cub’s mother. I didn’t expect that we would,” Khushi said matter-of-factly. “We left him in a safe place. If she’s still in the area, she’ll find him.”

Ratha glanced at Fessran in surprise. “You agreed to let Khushi do that?”

Fessran seemed preoccupied. She was slow to respond, and her voice sounded distant.

“We couldn’t think of anything else,” she said. “The mother was gone, and we couldn’t find her. We would only have frightened her more if we had. And you would have chewed our ears to scraps if you saw us bringing the cub back.” Fessran stretched out in the shade and began grooming her belly. “Anyway, I did some thinking while I was on the trail and decided you were right. There was no use in making a fuss about this Un-Named cub when we will have our own.”

But you won’t be having cubs this season,
Ratha thought.

She tongued her own fur, wondering where her feeling of uneasiness had suddenly come from. Nothing in Fessran’s smell or manner alarmed her, yet she had the sense that something wasn’t right. Well, it wasn’t like Fessran to give up fighting for something she cared about. Not so abruptly.

What are you complaining about?
she asked herself crossly.
I made Fessran obey me, which is something I’ve had trouble doing ever since I became leader.

Yet this time Fessran’s willfulness had seemed to echo her own conscience. She might just be wrong about this litterling. Her judgment might have been too hasty and too harsh. And not just with him...
 

She felt slightly dismayed, as if her conscience had given in too easily, just as Fessran had. As if the stronger and not so likable part of her had won out.

I don’t like it, but that’s what made me clan leader.
 

She decided to forget about the cub. There were other things to think about; new journeys to plan. Fessran would come with her, and perhaps the time together would allow her to mend the rift in their friendship. Warming to the idea, she laid out the prospect of the coastward journey to the Firekeeper.

Fessran, however, was curiously unenthusiastic, and when Ratha said she wanted to leave the following day, the look in Fessran’s eyes was one of reluctance.

“Are you sure you want to leave so soon?” Fessran asked.

“I have to see Thakur’s spring for myself, and that must be done quickly.”

“That makes sense,” Fessran agreed, though her voice sounded flat. “Why do you want me, though? I’m not a herder. You and Thakur are more skilled at judging if a place is fit for keeping three-horns.”

“You were a herder before I gave you Firekeeper leadership. Fessran, I can’t make this judgment alone. You and Thakur are the ones I trust the most. If I must tear the Named from clan ground, let me have some hope that I am doing what is right.”

“You haven’t had doubts about other things, clan leader,” Fessran replied, and the way she said it told Ratha she had not forgotten the Un-Named cub. Before Ratha’s ears could flatten, Fessran yawned widely. “All right, I’ll come. But give me at least a day to rest. My shoulder aches and my pads feel like I’ve walked across every rock in the world. I just want to be left alone to sleep.”

Fessran got what she wanted, and Khushi soon joined her in the dense shade beneath a pine that stood apart from the other trees in and around the meadow. It was Bonechewer’s grave-tree. Ratha wondered if Fessran had chosen the spot deliberately, so that the clan leader would not come near.

She was surprised by the strength of anger and sadness that weighted her steps as she padded away. She remembered her dead mate too well: the gleaming copper coat, the amber eyes, and the voice that was sardonic yet caring. And she remembered the faces of their cubs and especially the face of their daughter, Thistle-chaser. The blank, bewildered stare of her own litterling suddenly became the equally empty gaze of the Un-Named orphan she had ordered Khushi to abandon.

Toward sunset something drew her to the pine again. If Fessran was as weary as she had sounded, she would still be asleep, and Ratha planned not to wake her. But when she arrived near the grave-tree, she heard only one set of rumbling snores, and they were Khushi’s. Fessran had gone.

Ratha sniffed the ground around the pine. Her first instinct was to track the Firekeeper, but suddenly she grew disgusted with herself. Being clan leader was turning her suspicious and sour, ruining an old and valued friendship. Did she really have a good reason not to trust Fessran? Did she have to know where everyone was and what he was doing at every moment?

She shook herself, grimaced, and trotted away.

Fessran returned, in good time to supervise the lighting of watchfires for the night. Ratha watched the slim, sandy form trotting from one Firekeeper to the next, giving advice, instructions, and seeing that the fires were kept properly fed yet contained. Ratha let her suspicions drop with a sigh of relief. Wherever Fessran went was her own business. She worked hard and well for the clan. There might be mutterings about what she had done in the past, but she had done more than enough to redeem herself, and no one could fault her now.

In the morning, Ratha woke Fessran and met with Cherfan and Bira. If this journey yielded the refuge the Named sought, she said to the older herder, then Fessran would return with instructions to guide the clan, and Cherfan was to bring them under her direction. After the Firekeeper leader gave some brief advice to Bira, Fessran and Ratha set out on their journey to the coast.

Days later, Thakur approached the lone tree at the clearing that lay inland from the beach. He smelled places where two of the Named had chin-rubbed against rough bark. Ratha’s scent he knew well, and Fessran’s had an acrid, smoky undertone that told of her place as Firekeeper leader. They had both passed this way not long ago.

He also sniffed an odor that surprised him and reawakened his belly-rumbles: fresh meat. Either the two females had just eaten or they were carrying prey. His ears cocked forward. He knew Ratha had learned to hunt during her exile from the clan, but the smell told him that this was no wild prey. The meat came from a herdbeast. How could they have dragged it all that way and kept it from turning rank? Perhaps one of them was just carrying a small piece for him in her mouth. His own watered at the thought.