Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (22 page)

He tried to halt the fear racing through him. “Fessran, she was raving about killing the Dreambiter. I think she’s gone after Ratha.”

“Newt?” Fessran howled derisively, but her voice shook. “She couldn’t take a newborn herdbeast! If she tries to fight Ratha, she’ll get ripped in so many pieces we’ll never find them all.”

Thakur heard her fall silent under his stare. She looked away from him, then back again.

“Don’t tell me you think that lame little half-wit could... ”

“Newt is not a half-wit, Fessran. Far from it.” Thakur kept his voice and his gaze even. “I warned Ratha not to underestimate her, and she didn’t listen. It may cost the Named dearly.”

The Firekeeper raked the ground, glared at Thakur. “I want Mishanti back. I want Ratha to see she is wrong. But I don’t want her to have to die for it!”

“Then you and I will have to find her before Newt does,” Thakur said, his voice icy.

“Can Newt really... ” Fessran faltered.

“She can,” Thakur answered grimly. “I’m the one to blame for that. I helped her heal her leg.” He remembered how wildly Newt had fought when in the grip of her fit, how he had to hold her down with all his strength. And he knew how brightly her rage burned against the Dreambiter.

“All right. I’m coming,” said Fessran. “For Mishanti’s sake, if not Ratha’s.”

“And for your own, though you’d never admit it,” Thakur snapped back. “Hurry!”

He heard Fessran’s feet behind him as they galloped off together down the path. Thakur had a good idea of where Ratha might be headed. If she’d taken Mishanti, she probably intended to make the journey to the same place where she’d abandoned Shongshar’s cubs several seasons ago. She would have to use the same trail back up to the coast range that he had used on his first journey to the beach. The way was a little different now. Instead of having to ford the inlet of the estuary that lay across the trail, she would cross on the floating bridge moored to the bank. It occurred to Thakur that such a crossing would be a good place for an ambush.

He begged more speed from his paws as he headed toward the raft-bridge, planning to catch Ratha there or at least find her footprints. It wouldn’t be easy. Newt had a head start. He could only hope that her healing foreleg would not stand the strain and that she would falter despite her revenge-madness. But he knew hoping wasn’t enough to save Ratha. He ran faster.

Chapter Thirteen

As Ratha padded through the salt grass with Mishanti in her jaws, she eyed the floating bridge with mixed feelings. She was glad she would not have to make the trip around the inlet. Her jaws already ached from carrying the cub by the scruff, and her conscience hurt her almost as badly. The bridge would save her some travel, but she didn’t like the way it shifted and strained against the cords that anchored it to stumps on the bank. Currents riffled water against the upstream side as the retreating tide drew water from the inlet.

The Named had crossed the floating bridge enough times to prove its worthiness. It was her own bad luck that she had to cross on an outgoing tide, but the bridge would bear her.

Lifting her chin to hold Mishanti high, she took several steps down the bank. Was that a splash in the water upstream, she wondered, and what was that eddy? She cocked her head to one side so she could see past the cub in her jaws. A shadow seemed to cross the bottom, but it went swiftly and was chopped up by the small whitecaps. She stared hard but could see nothing.

Clouds scudded by overhead, casting fleeting shadows along the ground and over the water. The cub sagged in Ratha’s jaws. With a toss of her head, she heaved him up again and strode onto the floating bridge.

With the first step, the raft-bridge rocked, as she had expected it to. The next few steps were staggers; the mass of bound driftwood and rushes heaved as if it had been struck from beneath. Ratha nearly lost her hold on the cub in her mad scramble to keep on her feet on the plunging raft. But she lost her balance, flopping on her side and clawing wildly to keep atop the mass of thatch and sticks. Mishanti squealed in pain from the pressure of her teeth in his scruff, and her neck muscles strained with the effort of keeping him from tumbling off.

Angrily she vowed never again to use this flimsy crossing during an outgoing tide. Her anger turned to alarm as she felt one end of the raft-bridge swing downstream. She snapped her head around, causing a squall from her small charge. Surely the other tether would hold. But she saw to her horror that the cord lay loose on the surface of the water. The raft surged beneath her and floated away free, carrying her with it.

She crouched, digging her claws into the thatch and holding the cub in her mouth. Her muscles tensed for a jump to the bank, but the shore retreated. She faced the green-gray water, ready to plunge in and stroke for shore. But she knew she could not keep her head above water with Mishanti in her jaws. All she could do was cling to the raft as it headed seaward, bucking and bounding as if it were alive and rejoicing in its escape.

Seeing the tether from the front end streaming alongside her, Ratha extended a claw and snagged the twisted bark-cord. It looked stout, but it must have frayed. Then she looked more closely at the soggy end draped across her paw. Yes, the fiber looked worn, but the final cut was clean, as if someone had chewed on the rope to weaken it and then, at the final moment, bitten through.

She guessed that the other tether would look the same. Crouching, she ground her back teeth while her fangs held Mishanti’s scruff. He was a mute, wet little ball of fur by now, hanging limp in her jaws, too terrified to struggle or mewl.

The raft gave an odd lurch that wasn’t part of the rhythm of the water bearing it. Ratha loosed her mouth-grip on Mishanti, pressing him down with her chest and hoping he would have enough sense to dig in his claws. She risked a glance over her shoulder at the back of the raft.

Two paws stuck up out of the frothing water, with claws driven deep into sodden thatch and driftwood. One paw was smaller than the other, the leg shrunken. Soaked fur revealed the bony outlines of the leg and the corded tendons in each foot.

From the instant she had recognized that the raft’s tethers had been bitten through, Ratha had known her opponent was Newt. Now the knowledge hit her again, this time with such bitter force that it threatened to jolt her off the raft. To Newt, she was a nightmare, a tormentor. And Newt was Thistle-chaser, the daughter she had bitten, then deserted. She could no longer deny to herself that this vengeful enemy was her own flesh and Bonechewer’s legacy. How could there be anything between them except hate?

Ratha felt ice freeze in her belly. She was no stranger to hate. Many had opposed her and tried to thwart her rise to clan leader or topple her from leadership. She had faced Meoran, the old clan leader, and then Shongshar, but neither could claw as deeply to her heart as this water-soaked, green-eyed revenge that fought to hang on to the raft.

She will give her own life if she thinks she can take mine,
Ratha thought, and knowing that sent the ice creeping out along her limbs.
Thakur and Fessran, why did you meddle? You did her no favor by finding a mother who should have stayed lost.

The raft slid with the tidewater toward the sea. Ratha stared numbly at the white surf line ahead and flattened her ears against the increasing rumble and crash of the waves. A roller crested ahead of the raft then broke, drenching her. The sea’s churning whitecaps took the raft and spun it around so rapidly that Ratha closed her eyes from dizziness. One whirl took the craft so close to shore that she tensed to jump, but before she could get her feet beneath her, a strong seaward current swept the raft away again.

Though Newt might be smaller and lame, she had maneuvered Ratha into alien and treacherous surroundings, where she held the advantage. Ratha, the proud bearer of fire on land, was but a ragged wretch clinging to a few sticks in the sea.

The current weakened, giving the raft less forward motion, but the chop and roll tossed it about more than ever. Ratha clung to the slithering mass of thatch and driftwood. Drenched and cold to the point of numbness, she nestled Mishanti between her forelegs, holding his nape in her jaws and trying to shield him from the spray. Even now she was wondering if she could manage to swim ashore without drowning him.

The fierceness of the attack told Ratha that Newt was ruthless and remorseless enough to kill her. Was her daughter mad, like one taken with the foaming sickness? No, Newt’s illness was not the foaming sickness, for that killed rapidly. It was something slower, more subtle, and even more destructive. Newt’s attack was more than purposeless madness. It had been planned with a cold cunning that had outdone the best of the Named.

Knowing that there was a deep and painful reason for Newt’s hatred drew Ratha’s strength from her. She closed her eyes again, not from dizziness but from despair.
I sought the light in Thistle-chaser’s eyes. I have found it now, but it is a light that sears me more than the touch of the Red Tongue.

Her fear hardened despair into harsh resolution. This ex-cub might have good reason to vent revenge on her. That didn’t matter anymore. If Newt attacked, she must fight back, not only for her sake but for the sake of the Named, who would be left without a leader. Perhaps, she thought, she might be able to somehow talk to Newt, and if the chance came, she would take it. But if it came down to teeth and claws, the fact that Newt was Thistle-chaser, her own daughter, would no longer matter.

It was that decision that made her sidle backward, trying to gauge whether she could lash out with her rear claws and break Newt’s grip on the raft. If she could do it without wounding her, then Newt could swim to shore. That might make managing the runaway raft and Fessran’s adopted cub a little easier.

Ratha’s impulse was to strike quickly and get Newt off the raft. Her hind paws trembled but didn’t move. She was certain that Newt meant to seek her life, yet something in Ratha still held to the hope that it was only a threat.

She couldn’t attack. Not without knowing.

She secured Mishanti once again and craned her head back over her shoulder. The raft had slowed now. Newt was still in the water, hanging on with her claws, but the surging current no longer buried her. As Ratha peered back at her, Newt lifted her chin above the water, her ears flat, her gaze the color of serpentine.

She may understand words. I have to try.

“Thistle-chaser,” Ratha said. The ears twitched and flattened more against the brine-slicked head. The chill in the eyes went beyond the cold of the sea. They looked like marble or green-frosted ice.

“Dreambiter,” Newt answered, never taking her gaze from Ratha’s. Ratha could not control her flinch.

“We can tear each other apart well enough with words. Let it stop there.”

“You tear me with teeth, Dreambiter. I answer.”

“Leave the raft and swim to shore. I promise none of the Named will hunt you or seek you out,” Ratha said.

Newt slitted her eyes. “I hunt you, cub-slayer.”

“You have given me to this angry water. I will never reach shore. Isn’t that enough? Or will you force me to stain myself with your blood... ?”

“Again,” Newt hissed, ending the sentence with the word Ratha could not say.

Newt loosed her grip and slid back into the sea. For one hopeful instant Ratha thought she had persuaded her to go. Then she saw a shape glide alongside the raft. Newt lifted her head, bared her teeth, then ducked under. Again Ratha hoped she had gone. She felt the raft lurch once more and sag beneath her. Newt surfaced, her jaws tangled in bark-cord lashing from the bottom of the raft. Ratha watched, feeling numb. Newt was tearing her floating refuge apart.

With slow, deliberate malice, Newt continued to destroy the raft-bridge. She slashed reed bundles, chewed off bindings, and pried driftwood sticks apart. Now Ratha fought back, striking out with bared claws from the narrow and increasingly cramped area that remained to her. But Newt could easily duck into the sea to escape and rise on the raft’s far side to plague her again.

Ratha knew that Newt could mount a sharp, quick attack, tearing her throat or pulling her into the sea and dragging her under. Newt wanted more than just her death: She had discovered the savage pleasure of tormenting an enemy.

The sea behind the raft was soon littered with shreds of driftwood, rushes, and bark-cord. Gray water welled up through the floor, soaking Ratha’s feet and half covering Mishanti. She tried to hold the fraying mass together with her claws, but Newt relentlessly pulled away one piece after another.

Ratha found herself clinging to the last fragment of the raft, holding the cub in her mouth and staring at the foam-streaked back of a wave. As the swell lifted her, she caught sight of white surf in the distance. Waves breaking meant land of some sort, even if it was no more than a few rocks. She held to the raft as long as she could, then launched herself over Newt’s head into the sea.

The shock of cold water punched the breath from her. The weight of the struggling cub dragged at her jaws as she fought to get her nose above water. For one panicky instant, she almost let him go in order to get a precious breath.

She suddenly wondered why she was fighting so hard to save the youngster. Hadn’t she taken him from Fessran’s den to exile him from the clan?
To abandon him, not kill him,
a hurt part of her cried. The irony of that claim made Ratha cringe with shame as she shivered and struggled in the ocean. Had she really fooled herself into thinking that young cubs taken from their mothers and abandoned far beyond clan ground would survive?
Quit fooling yourself. You were going to kill him. And now you probably will whether you intend to or not.