Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (6 page)

Enjoying the silken stroking of the water against her skin as she moved, Newt waded deeper, letting herself be floated off her feet. She started to paddle, but the splashing was awkward and she stopped. It felt so easy and relaxing to just hang in the water with legs extended, letting herself be teased along by vagrant currents. She wasn’t afraid. It was so shallow that she could put her feet down and stop drifting any time she wanted. The noon sun above cast her shadow along the bottom, surrounding it with bright, shimmering rings.

So fascinated was she by this that she ducked her head under to get a better look and got a noseful of brine. A spark of alarm and the memory of her near drowning almost made her panic, but she remembered how a blast of exhaled breath had blown the water out and kept her from choking.

She’d done enough, at least for one day. She hauled herself out, dripping, shook off, and went about her business. She had found what she wanted: a place where she could immerse herself in this strange new element and teach herself to master it.

She began to look forward to her daily jaunts to the lagoon for a swim. This way of moving in water allowed her to use her crippled foreleg much more than when walking. As she stroked with the good forepaw, the backwash swirled around the other, gently tugging and stretching stiffened joints and muscles. Often the leg ached when she limped ashore, but she sensed it was a good hurt and one that might lead to healing.

Her fascination with the patterns of light and shadow cast by the sun on the lagoon bottom led her to try ducking her head under again and opening her eyes. Finding that she could keep water out of her nose and mouth by holding air in her lungs, she could soon submerge her head without feeling suffocated. Her sight underwater was blurry but good enough to let her make out objects on the sandy bottom.

Before long, she abandoned her instinctive but ineffective paddling with her head held above water. Now she stretched out her entire body and immersed her head. She discovered that she could pull herself through the water with sweeping strokes of her good forepaw. Though this worked, she had a tendency to veer off to one side, which she countered by using her bad leg as much as she could.

Though she worked hard to gain skill, she often let herself relax by gliding around in the lagoon, feeling the water caress her belly fur and watching sandy shoals pass beneath. It brought a soothing escape from the demands of her life and the painful memories that still lay like a cloud over her mind. Drifting in liquid silence, she was not reminded of her limitations, either of mind or body. Here the water gave only its gentlest challenge, rewarding her with something rare in her life: pleasure.

Though Newt remained wary of the tailed sea lions that had attacked the seamare’s young, she had no idea that a bird might try to take a seafoal. At first she didn’t look up from her early morning prowling when the raptor’s shadow crossed her path. She often saw sea eagles among the birds overhead, but they had never proved a threat.

The whistling of air through feathers made her stare skyward as a huge black-and-white-crested sea eagle dived at the seamare. It dropped swiftly toward Splayfoot’s surviving seafoal, Guzzler, who was sleeping apart from his mother in a sun-warmed hollow of rock. A feeling of guardianship and responsibility as well as the urge to defend her territory sent Newt sprinting to meet the diving bird. The power of her hindquarters drove her so hard and fast that her good foreleg nearly collapsed under the strain.

She charged straight into the mass of feathers and flapping pinions that filled her vision. Talons struck down at Guzzler, but Newt hit first. Leaping high with her good foreleg stiffly extended, she punched the big bird out of the air. The crested eagle flopped to one side, beating its great wings and screaming its wrath. It righted itself on its curved talons and mantled its wings at Newt, turning its head quickly from side to side as if assessing this new threat.

With a defiant scream, it hopped toward the squirming seafoal. Newt dug her nose under Guzzler, shoved him up and over a lip of rock to get him quickly out of the way.

Lowering her head and hunching her shoulders, she stalked toward the raptor, feeling her frustrations bubble up into a gleeful rage.

With a flap that sounded like a crack, the sea eagle spread its huge, white-tipped wings, startling Newt. Behind her, Splayfoot trumpeted indignantly, but the noise faltered, as if the seamare were having second thoughts about tackling such an unfamiliar enemy as this. Newt couldn’t spare a glance at the seamare; the bird flattened its feathered crest and hopped at her, beak open and hissing.

Without a free forepaw to clout the bird, Newt was at a disadvantage. As if it sensed this, the eagle sidled toward its foe. Newt remembered how she had knocked it from the air, centered her weight on her rear legs, and launched herself. Again she hit the big bird, raking loose a cluster of black feathers from its breast. Its beak sliced down, grazing the side of Newt’s head. Dancing on her hind legs, Newt made a wide slap with her good paw that connected with the sea eagle’s neck. It returned a bruising blow with one wing, then lurched around and tumbled into a flopping, flapping run that finally lifted it off the beach. Gaining altitude over the heads of the seamares, the beaten raptor made one last overhead circle, raining excrement on Newt.

She shook herself, snarled at the retreating bird, then turned, panting, to face Splayfoot. There was a certain spark in the seamare’s eyes that made Newt fear the seamare’s protective anger over the threat to Guzzler might spill over onto her. She saw Splayfoot make a sudden movement, as if she were about to charge, but something in her eyes changed, and she only grunted and tilted her head to one side, uncertain. Then she swung around and left with Guzzler.

So intent was Newt on Splayfoot that she neither saw nor smelled the stranger who had crept up on the bluff above and crouched, watching.

Chapter Four

Thakur’s way of reckoning direction by the sun held true and brought him to the shore he’d seen only from a distant peak. Taking Aree on the journey slowed him down, but he wasn’t going to part with his treeling, even for this. Although he had eaten enough at the clan kill to sustain him for several days, he made stops to hone his hunting skills, long left unused by his life in the clan. He also halted to sleep, relieve himself, or let Aree forage for berries and beetles.

They reached the sea coast just before sunset several days after departing from the sunning rock. Thakur had begun to think he had gone astray, for the way led him through a forest of great pines whose fibrous red bark and enormous girth were new to him. But when he kept to the deer trail that wound through these hills and brush canyons, the redwood forest gave way to a lighter growth of strong-smelling bay laurel. It ended abruptly at a meadow.

The grass was high and whipped by a salty breeze. Walking slowly, Thakur left the trees, turning his head to catch the sights, smells, and sounds of this new country. Ahead he heard the muffled crash and sigh of breaking waves. The sound reminded him of some great creature breathing. A bird sailed above him, its underside a dazzling white against the dark-blue sky, its wings constantly shifting to ride the wind that sent it slipping sideways. As the gull winged overhead, Thakur felt Aree flatten against his neck. With a quick nuzzle, he reassured the treeling.

He walked until the wind was strong in his face and the grass thinning beneath his feet. The meadow ended, tumbling away into sheer cliffs with waves pounding at their base. At first, Thakur thought he should taste the water, but night was coming and he could see no way to climb down. Thakur looked down into the frothing surf until he grew dizzy, then gazed outward.

Before him lay a shimmering expanse of silver, where the setting sun’s light danced in colors like light from the Red Tongue. At first it appeared to be another land, a vast plain spreading toward the horizon with sunlight painting new trails to lead him onward. The shimmer became the ripple of water, of traveling wave crests that swept toward him.

The first time he’d seen this great water from a distance, he had thought it must be an enormous lake. But now, standing on the cliff and sweeping the horizon for some glimpse of a distant shore, he sensed that even if he journeyed for a lifetime, he would never be able to travel around it. Many a closed circle of pawprints had he left about the lakes near his home ground, but a circle of pawprints about this expanse of water would always remain open.

He gazed out over the water, watching its hues and texture change with the sinking sun. He felt the same awe that touched him when he sat gazing into the heart of a flame. Both were things he knew he would never understand, but he sensed they came from the same source and had the same underlying power. It was a feeling that made him want to stay quiet while evening came to this new and almost sacred place. Even Aree remained still, containing her usual tendency to fidget.

At last the feeling faded into simple loneliness, and the wind began to bite. Thakur got up from the place where he had settled and stretched himself. He padded back through the grass to the edge of the forest and found shelter in a niche between two logs that had fallen across each other. There he and the treeling passed the night.

When Thakur awoke at dawn, the sound of breakers was fresh in his ears and the sunlight brilliant. The shoreline country now had an exuberant quality that infected both travelers. Frolicking and scratching with energy, Aree pounced aboard Thakur’s back, and they set off.

With a flick of his tail, he turned from the westward path he’d been on to a northward course that led him up the coast. He hoped to find a way down to the water’s edge, but the cliffs remained too forbidding. He trotted along windblown scarps with Aree munching berries and dribbling the juice on his fur. He crossed wild clifftop meadows and paced over the flanks of hills whose slopes were cut off by the sheer drop of the sea cliffs. He paused to rest in groves of coast pine where the trees leaned the way of the prevailing wind, their shapes stunted and twisted by spray and storm.

The variety and abundance of birds amazed him. They wheeled about him in raucous flocks or glided silently overhead. Fork-tails hovered in midair by beating their pointed wings into a blur and shifting their tails to balance the wind. Sea gulls swooped so low over him that he had to fight his instinct to spring up and bat one out of the air. Though he forced himself to ignore the birds, his tail twitched, and he could not keep his teeth from chattering in excitement as he trotted along.

By midday the stark cliffs had given way to friendlier country that hosted river valleys and winding estuaries. As Thakur descended with Aree from the clifftops, he saw sandy shores and mudflats. Droves of stilt-legged shorebirds rested or waded there, probing the bottom with their bills.

Some of these birds were so odd that he halted to gaze at them. He knew the long, sharp bills of herons and the broad ones of ducks, but here he saw beaks that curved up, down, or even sideways.

The shorebirds looked so clumsy and gawky that he was tempted to stalk one. But Aree would be in the way, and there was no convenient tree where she could wait safely until he had finished his hunt.

At one estuary, there was a place that looked shallow enough to ford. There he tried the water, but gagged at the briny taste. Disappointed, he waded across, the current tugging at his legs, while Aree made wordless treeling noises as to what she would do if he got her wet. Shaking his paws dry on the far side, he found himself behind a line of scrub-covered dunes. He climbed them and stood looking out on a crescent beach that reached to a rocky headland.

He had set one paw into the crusted sand when a swell of noise rose above the soft wailing of the wind. Abruptly he froze, ears swiveling to catch and identify the sound. It was a mixture of animal cries: grunts, bellows, screeches. What made him turn from his intended path was a faint but unmistakable caterwaul that sounded like one of the Named in a squabble.

He listened, his ears strained far forward, his muzzle pointing toward the rocky terraces that formed the promontory north of the beach.

There it was again. Could one of Ratha’s scouts have gone astray and ended up here? He doubted it, but he had to make sure. Rather than follow the sweep of the beach, he decided to circle back behind and climb up the bluff, where he could peer down at the rocks and ledges below.

Soon he was trotting through the short grass and scrub brush of the headlands, heading for the point. He could hear more clearly the commotion of the fight going on among the rocks below. Screeching, yowling, and a powerful roar made him quicken his pace, but it was the female voice rising in a battle cry that made his whiskers stand on end.

He broke into a canter, jolting Aree along. Behind an outcropping of sandstone, he slithered to a stop and peered down onto the wave-cut terraces and tumbled rocks that spilled out from the point in a natural jetty. In a cove along the spit, he saw a female of his own kind facing a huge black-and-white-crested eagle. Nearby was a large web-footed creature. Close to the bird lay a smaller animal that looked like a youngster.

At first he thought the strange female was fighting for her own life against the eagle and readied himself to charge down into the fray. But he saw that the bird hopped toward the small creature every chance it could get, while the female beat it away. When she abruptly turned and nosed the clumsy young animal over a lip of rock and out of the bird’s reach, Thakur realized this was no simple conflict of hunter and hunted. This stranger, whoever she was, fought to defend the young of the sea-beast just as Named herders protected dappleback foals and three-horn fawns.