Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (5 page)

Newt hadn’t expected the seamare’s sudden transformation from belly-dragger to walker. Splayfoot had a clumsy gait, with out-thrust elbows and turned-in feet, but it served well enough. Now the seamare was a four-footed behemoth lumbering toward the enemy that threatened herself and her young.

With a mouth full of sandy clamshells and meat, Newt couldn’t use her teeth, but she wasn’t about to drop her takings. Gathering her hind feet beneath her, she leaped as high as she could, clinging and scrabbling at the rocks above.

Once she had gained a secure perch, she started to eat, looking down at the seamare. Unable to hold the shell down with both forepaws, she wedged one side of it under a boulder and held it there with her good leg while she worried the meat away with her side teeth.

Splayfoot strained her head back as far as her thick neck would allow and gave a bellow that almost made Newt choke on the rubbery clam flesh she was gulping. The agile youngsters scrambled back to their mother’s side as the seamare pointed her muzzle in the air and sniffed suspiciously. Splayfoot lumbered along on her belly, probing the way ahead with the long bristles on her muzzle and stabbing the sand with her tusks, as if she thought the menace might still be lurking there.

She snuffled among the scattered shells, putting back her ears and rolling her eyes. But instead of retreating from the place, as prey animals would when they caught the smell of meat eaters, the seamare gave a bubbling roar and knocked all the remaining shell fragments away with a powerful sweep of her foreleg. She opened her jaws and waggled her head, giving the lurking meat eater a good look at her tusks and teeth.

Newt decided that she’d had her fill of clam scraps. She smelled other things that might be edible, such as carrion and seabird eggs. But first she wanted to rest. She retreated as fast as she could limp back to her refuge at the foot of the weathered sandstone cliff.

Several days later, Newt was picking her way back down through the rocks after a successful egg-hunting expedition. As she licked yolk from her muzzle and turned toward her cave, she heard barks and growls, followed by the seamare’s bellow.

On the beach in the cove below, she saw Splayfoot with her two seafoals huddling at her sides. Five small animals with sleek, wet pelts and sinuous shapes surrounded and menaced the family. These small sea lions reminded Newt of the otters she had seen in the ocean, lolling in wave troughs. The otters swam with webbed toes and long, powerful tails, whereas these animals had clawed flippers and much shorter tails. Their ears were small and lay close to their heads, and their eyes bulged. Their muzzles were tapered, with powerful jaws and teeth.

Their bark was hoarse and throaty, unlike the cry of any creature she knew. Both forelimbs were short, the forefeet joining almost directly to the shoulder to form front flippers. The two rear feet lay so far back on the body that they suggested a fishlike tail, but the creatures could bound along at surprising speed by arching their backs. Newt wrinkled her nose at the fishy undertone in their smell.

Splayfoot heaved herself up on her hind legs with bubbling roars and honks, swinging her head with its armament of forward-thrusting tusks. The attackers answered with barks and yelps while they wove about their prey.

Newt felt a growl rumbling in her own throat. She had prowled among these rocks and terraces enough to think of them as her territory. For an instant the growling and barking made her hesitate. A creature bold enough to attack Splayfoot might well prove a threat to her. This made her snarl and put back her ears, rage washing away fear.

Newt sprang down from the terrace and skidded onto the beach in a spray of wet sand. A sleek form slithered at her and struck like a snake, driving its teeth into a rear foot. Yowling, she leaped, twisting herself to pounce backward. One paw landed on the beast, but one wasn’t enough. Newt’s opponent bared its teeth and barked at her with a blast of fishy breath, then scooted free to bite her on the tail.

Another barking raider grew bold and rushed Splayfoot in a series of bounding jumps. The seamare swung one leg in a clumsy blow that knocked the beast over. As the animal rolled, its forelimbs flapped in the air. In a bound, Newt was among the pack, lunging on one forefoot and challenging gaping jaws with a snarl.

She found out quickly that the enemies looked clumsier than they were. They dodged her raking kicks and worried her hocks, writhing around and underneath her. She seized one attacker by its thick scruff and threw it aside. Another, trying to tear her crippled foreleg, was met with a hind-foot kick full of open claws that left it squealing and bleeding, but still willing to fight. Newt found herself close to Splayfoot as the seamare clubbed the sleek forms that darted at her from under and around the rocks.

The larger seafoal jabbed out with its small, sharp tusks, while the smaller one clung to its mother’s flank. Splayfoot wheeled abruptly to fend off attack from the side, leaving the smaller seafoal unguarded. Bullet heads with large, bulging eyes turned toward it. Three sets of jaws seized its legs. The raiders hopped and scampered backward, dragging the bawling seafoal.

Splayfoot clumped after them, honking her rage as the creatures yanked the seafoal over the jagged rocks, battering its body as they went. By the time they dragged it into the surf, the foal no longer struggled or cried out. Newt saw the seamare halt, show her tusks at the killers, and then swing around to defend her remaining youngster.

Two raiders now remained, the one Newt had tossed aside and another. Newt cut off their charge toward the seamare and seafoal, driving them back. One raider hesitated; the other recklessly attacked Newt’s flank. In the heat of the fight, it had forgotten Splayfoot.

The seamare was on it like an angry, rolling boulder, gouging and trampling. With a powerful clout from a forelimb, she belted the raider into the jagged rocks and broke its back. Still twitching, the body slid until it was caught by a spike of rock, where it hung like a stranded mass of sea kelp.

The last raider’s barks turned into frenzied yelps. It bounded toward the surf with Newt and Splayfoot after it. In a few steps Newt had outdistanced the seamare, and the chase was all hers.

Too angry to stop herself, Newt galloped into the ocean after the escaping enemy. She slapped and swatted at the sleek, brown form as it bobbed before her on the back of a rolling breaker. She tried to lunge but was thrown off balance by the current and the sand drawing away from beneath her feet. With a wriggle of its glistening body, the enemy disappeared.

Scrambling wildly to keep her footing, Newt fell face first into the next wave. The swirling water pulled her down and spun her around in a gritty whirlpool of brine mixed with sand. It banged her against rocks on the bottom and spewed her up again. Choking on seawater and panic, she paddled on the back of another wave as it lifted her up, dropped her, and sucked her under once again.

She had no idea that moving water possessed such power. River and stream currents tugged at her belly and limbs when she crossed, but these waves tossed her around, playing with her as she would toy with small prey.

Panic ran through her, drumming loudly in her ears. It became the sound of the Dreambiter’s feet behind her, compressing her vision to a narrow tunnel, through which she saw the swirling water as if from a distance. Now the image of the Dreambiter mixed with the surging ocean, but the bite, when it came, was as painful as ever, and the shock made her stop struggling. The currents became claws, pulling her under, and the sound of the waves a triumphant hissing, saying that the Dreambiter had won.

Rage suddenly punched through her growing stupor. She coughed explosively with the air remaining in her lungs, then thrashed with legs and tail against the undertow until her head broke the surface. Gulping air, she felt the frenzy of panic die away and with it the Dreambiter. Her vision opened again; the drumming in her head faded.

With a savage twist, she righted herself, pointed her nose toward the beach, and paddled. In the short intervals between fighting breakers, she noticed something that she hadn’t had time to realize: She was stroking with her crippled foreleg. She could feel the unused muscles pull painfully as her limb strove to answer the demands made of it.

Abruptly, a downward stroke of her good forepaw scraped sand. She swung her hind feet down, gained purchase, and pushed hard to climb ashore. The drop-off was steeper than she had expected, but soon the surging water had fallen to her breast, then below her belly. She staggered up the beach, out of the surf, trembling with exhaustion. Her bad foreleg throbbed, but from the ache she gained understanding. If she were forced to use the leg, it would respond. Though its motion was crabbed and constricted by shrunken muscles, the leg would move.

With brine streaming from her coat, Newt limped up the beach, the crippled foreleg tucked against her chest. She was so accustomed to getting around on three legs that the discovery that it would move slipped from her mind.

The episode with the flipper-footed enemies disgruntled her. They escaped her so easily by diving into the ocean. She wanted to master this powerful, surging, rolling water that seemed so much like a living creature. And once she had learned to swim in it, what a surprise she would give those raiders if they attacked again!

A soft thump drew her attention to the body of the one that Splayfoot had killed. It had fallen in a tumbled heap from the rock that had caught it to the sand below. She went to the carcass and nosed it until the body lay on its side.

A grunt made her look up. Splayfoot hunkered a short distance from the carcass, with her seafoal at her flank. Turning her head from side to side, she eyed the dead animal. Newt started to withdraw, afraid that Splayfoot might claim the kill, since she had made it. If the seamares ate clams, they might eat flesh as well. But the seamare satisfied herself with only a few half-hearted pokes, then turned away.

Newt needed no further encouragement. Growling possessively, she seized the prey, sank her teeth deep into its neck, and scuttled off to her cave.

During the next few days, Newt stayed near Splayfoot and her foal. The seamare chased her off only when she ventured too close to the youngster and gradually allowed her to come closer. Splayfoot dredged shellfish from the shoals and brought her catch back to the terrace, where she ate in her usual messy fashion, leaving scraps for Newt to filch.

Splayfoot often left her isolated beach to join with others of her kind, who formed a loosely associated herd. Gradually Newt began to follow her. At first her presence made the herd restless, but soon they became used to her.

After loss of her smaller foal, the seamare lavished all her attention on the larger one. Some of this seemed to spill over toward Newt, who wondered if the seamare was deliberately leaving scraps within easy reach, as if to encourage her.

She made the most of the opportunities Splayfoot gave her, but without thought of gratitude. As she limped back to her cave with a mouthful of clam scraps, she even considered how to distract the seamare and take the surviving seafoal. But that idea soon faded from her mind. Splayfoot and her seafoal became neighbors rather than prey. Without competition from a sibling, the large seafoal could nurse as much as he wanted. Whenever Newt thought of him, she remembered how greedily he guzzled his mother’s milk. As the seamare had become Splayfoot to her, so the seafoal became Guzzler.

Having nearly drowned in the rough surf, Newt was fearful of venturing into it again. But she hungered for revenge against the barking raiders who had attacked Splayfoot and then escaped into the ocean.

Several days after the incident, Newt’s fear had faded enough to let her try wading in the sea. She chose a long, shallow slope where the waves broke before they rolled in. With her tail flipping apprehensively, she limped into the ocean until the surge came up to her belly. But even gentled surf had currents that tugged at her legs and threatened to unbalance her. The undertow stole the sand from beneath her pawpads, making her feet slide and twist.

As if to demonstrate that there was nothing to make a fuss about, Splayfoot humped herself to the waterline, slipped in, and stood up, the sea helping to buoy her and take the weight off her rear legs. Her stout forelimbs, however, remained firmly planted, unaffected by the strong currents that threatened to wrench Newt’s legs out from under her. Newt had already noticed that the seamare’s front legs were rigid from elbow to foot, allowing no twisting of the lower leg. This resulted in her clumsy land gait. In the surging currents of the shallows inshore, it became an advantage, for Splayfoot’s stout forepaws could not turn beneath her.

Newt staggered on three legs, struggling to keep herself upright. At last she gave up and hobbled up the cove beach above the surf line. The water was too rough. Her ears twitched back with irritation as she watched the seamare cavorting in the breakers. She turned her back on the sea and went foraging.

After satisfying her hunger on seabird eggs, she did not return to her usual sleeping place for a nap but wandered south. Her way led onto the large crescent beach that lay between the seamare’s natural jetty and another point to the south. She paced through the crusty sand of the backshore, guided by a dim recollection of the territory she had crossed to come here. Though she did not know what she was looking for, she kept on until she stood atop a low bluff, looking down onto a wide, shallow lagoon.

Unlike the green foamy surf of the jetty, the water here was so clear that she could see tiny wave ripples in the sand at the bottom. It lapped gently against the shore, sheltered from the wind that lashed the open ocean. She came to the water’s edge and let it wash the toes of her good forefoot while the intricate lacing of sunlight on the wavelets dazzled her. She waded in, feeling the water seep through her fur. Here in the shallows, it was warmed by the sun and felt tepid instead of cold.