Ratha's Courage (2 page)

Sandstone grit scraped beneath her pads as she pushed her front paws out, bowed her back, and indulged in a good long stretch. She enjoyed the feel of her body: her long powerful hind legs that launched her into a swift charge at a herdbeast; her slim but muscular forelegs that could wrap around the animal’s neck and pull it down. Her neck and shoulders drove the force of her bite, but her forequarters were flexible enough so that she could lick most of her back.

Her longer hind legs raised her hindquarters slightly above her forequarters so that her back sloped gently down from hips to shoulders. When Ratha galloped, she could feel the arch and bow of her spine, giving her strides additional length.

She thought about the herding teacher, and his place in the clan. Shifting from hunters to herders helped the Named, but others had taken advantage of the change. Raiders of Ratha’s own kind, but lacking the self-aware gift of the Named, attacked the herds. The Un-Named ones far outnumbered the clan and could devastate the herd, driving the Named to starvation. Clan cubs had to be well trained in the ways the Named used to defend and protect their animals.

While thinking about Thakur again, she caught the distant flash of morning sun on his copper coat.

Ratha watched the shapes moving against the sky and trees at the meadow’s edge. She saw spotted cub-students cut in and out of the small teaching herd of three-horn deer as Thakur dashed alongside, yowling instructions. Other cubs practiced stare-downs with the young deer.

One youngster instantly became a ball of fluff as an aggressive half-grown buck broke the cub’s stare and charged. A whiff and taste of cub fear-scent made Ratha tense, but Thakur had already plunged in and headed the buck off. She watched, tail flicking, as he confronted it with bared claws and teeth. For an instant it challenged him with its forked nose-horn and pronged antlers, then backed off.

At least he didn’t have to kill the animal, Ratha thought, again remembering the day when a three-horn stag had nearly gotten the best of her. Thakur had not let that deer live with its dangerous knowledge that it could defy its Named keepers. It had swiftly become clan meat.

From a closer part of the meadow screened off by brush came another ruckus, accompanied by strange smells and puffs of dust. Ratha couldn’t see the source, but brassy bellows and yearling cub-cries told her that the older herding students were practicing their skills on a leathery-skinned baby beast with legs like young trees.

She remembered when she had first seen one of these creatures. At first she had the odd thought that they were built backward, for the tail on their rumps was far less impressive than the one that curled down from their faces and waved about in front of their tusks.

This “face-tail” trunk was as impressive as it looked, as several of the Named had learned by being suddenly plucked from the ground and hurled into a thornbush. It had earned the beasts their name.

The Named decided to start slowly with baby face-tails but even so, the huge, boisterous infants kept the herders busy. The young face-tails used their domed heads as well as their trunks and many a Named herder had been butted from behind and sent rolling across the meadow.

Ratha listened to the assorted screeches, bellows, and yowled commands and thought, Thakur sounds like he is losing patience with them, but he never does.

The wind shifted, bringing Ratha another scent, acrid and ashy.

Cubs, herdbeasts, and skirmishes with Un-Named raiders; these were all we knew. Until . . .

She gazed upwind, to the source of the smell. From the open forest bordering the meadow, smoke twisted into the sky. Ratha could almost imagine that she saw the flicker of fire through the leaves. She looked down at the remains of the campfire from the previous evening.

Training cubs, caring for herdbeasts, and fighting off marauders had been the life of the Named until a young she-cub dared to bring something new to the clan.

Ratha’s skin prickled as if flakes of hot ash and embers were falling into her fur. She remembered the eerie, almost-alive thing she had tamed and called “her creature.” Even though the clan did not see the fiery color as well as they did other hues, the flame shone intensely enough for them to call it the Red Tongue. It now burned on torches carried by Named Firekeepers and in guard-fires that frightened Un-Named ones back. It held a strange power that warmed and sheltered, yet had terrified, tempted, and corrupted. The old way of claws and fangs gave way to the new power of fire. Remembering, Ratha felt her whiskers rise and pull back as her lips drew back in a half-snarl and her ears flattened. Though she had not wished for it, the death of the old clan tyrant Meoran and her own ascension to leadership began the change.

Guard-fires, campfires, the Firekeeper’s den dug in the meadow, wood gathering, and tending the Red Tongue had become the Named way.

The rustle of leaves nearby and a rising chirr reminded Ratha of other, gentler changes. Her ears and whiskers relaxed when she caught sight of a small agile climber scrambling down from a sapling. The creature clung to branches with fingers and toes that had flat nails instead of claws. Lifting its head and balancing with its long ringed tail, it pointed its sharp muzzle at her. Gently mischievous, yellow eyes blinked at her from the black-and-gray mask over the face. Tufted black ears pricked. She answered the chirr with one of her own and called, “Come to me, little treeling.”

The lemurlike creature bounced down from the sapling and into the high meadow grass. Ringed tail held high, it bounded to the sunning rock, jumped up, and perched on the edge. It cocked its head, widened its large eyes at Ratha, and said, “Aree?”

“Good Ratharee,” she praised, lowering her head so that the treeling could climb onto her nape. It wound its fingers in her fur. They felt slightly sticky.

Ratha often found herself talking to her treeling, even though she knew Ratharee could not speak, at least not in the clan language. The treeling did respond to the various sounds of Ratha’s voice, as well as Named paw-and tail-waves.

“At least you can’t dribble fruit juice on me,” Ratha said, nuzzling her little companion. “That tree doesn’t have any ripe fruit.”

Her whiskers lifted with amusement as she remembered how Thakur’s treeling often gorged on overripe autumn fruit, making a sticky mess of his fur.

As Ratha had brought a new creature to the clan, so had Thakur, in the form of a ring-tailed sharp-nosed fuzzball he called “Aree” after the noise it made.

Aree turned out to be female and was now the mother and grandmother of all the treelings who were companions of clan members. Ratha’s treeling, Ratharee, was also female, but had no young.

Not all the Named kept treelings, but Ratha and others who did felt that their little friends brought an additional richness to their lives. Treeling companionship had a soothing effect on the often-restless nature of the Named.

Treelings can offer more than just companionship, Ratha thought, as Ratharee scurried up the slope of her back to groom the troublesome area at the root of her tail. The treeling chittered as her fingers combed Ratha’s pelt. She found several ticks and gleefully ate them.

When Ratharee finished, she groomed herself with a flurry of quick, short strokes, and then crouched expectantly on Ratha’s nape. Yes, you’re right. It’s time to rejoin the others.

Ratha pivoted, lifted a forepaw to take a step down. As she lowered it, she felt the spur whisker behind her paw pad stroking the rough rock. She touched the stone with the outside edge of her forefoot, rolling the foot inward and using the whiskerlike hairs between her pads to judge the surface underfoot before putting her weight on it. She did the elegant yet important move without thinking, as did the rest of her kind. Thakur, who often thought about such things, said this manner of walking prevented the Named from stepping hard on anything that might give way beneath them.

The swish of grass past legs drew Ratha’s attention. She saw a line of clan females carrying tiny cubs and smelled milky scents. Some spotted youngsters hung by their scruffs from their mother’s or a helper’s jaws, others stumbled or romped behind, and several even sat atop feline shoulders and backs. In front walked a rangy sand-colored female with a light foreleg limp, flame-shortened whiskers, a long tapered tail, and green eyes. Like Ratha herself, the newcomer had white fur around her whiskers and a black patch behind them. Dark tear-lines ran from the corners of her eyes along her nose, snaking back to the corners of her mouth to join the black patches on either side of her muzzle. Her underside was also white, from her tail to her throat and her lower jaw.

It was Fessran, chief of the Firekeepers who tended the Red Tongue. She was also Ratha’s friend and, this season, a mother. She had two fuzzy, blue-eyed cubs: one riding on her shoulders and one dangling from her mouth.

Ratha felt her treeling scurry up to her hindquarters as she leaned down from the sunning rock to greet Fessran and the cub-carriers.

“Are you raising little treelings to perch on you?” Ratha teased.

Fessran, impatient as always, didn’t want to set the cub down and instead tried to speak through a mouthful of spotted fur.

“Mmmph. Bira,” Fessran sputtered to the young female behind her, “take this little son of a dappleback.”

Lifting her long plume of a tail, red-gold Bira took Fessran’s burden. She had muzzle-patches, tear-lines, and a lighter color underneath. She also had a treeling riding on her nape.

The Firekeeper leader sneezed twice and scrubbed her nose with a charcoal-stained forepaw. Her facemarkings emphasized her grimace. “I can’t believe he’s already shedding,” Ratha heard her friend complain. “Rrrraatchooo!”

“Ho, singe-whiskers,” Ratha greeted. “Is it already time to move the litterlings?”

“Ho yourself, clan leader. Yes, the new nursery is finished.” With an upward jerk of her tail and a slight sharpening of her scent that told Ratha the Firekeeper was mildly annoyed, Fessran added, “I don’t suppose you remembered you were going to help us this morning.”

“I said that before all of you kept me awake last night,” Ratha retorted. “And I still want to talk to Thistle-chaser.”

Fessran gave a snort, and Ratha knew it wasn’t just cub fur up her nose. “The decision is made, and we’re going to carry it out. I don’t see why we have to keep pawing at it over and over.”

“Yes, but I still wanted to speak to her.”

“Well, even if she is your daughter, she isn’t going to change things,” Fessran said, licking her sand-colored coat.

Especially things that you want, singe-whiskers
,
Ratha thought, half-fondly and half-sourly.

“For once we’re following the right trail,” the Firekeeper argued. “Letting True-of-voice and his hunter tribe use the Red Tongue is good for them and us. You were right when you made us rescue him. This is one more step along a better path.”

Ratha made her reply mild. “I know, Fessran, but we’ve already made some mistakes. I don’t want any more.”

Fessran stopped to swat a pair of cubs playing tag around her forelegs.

“I’m glad you are doing this, Ratha,” the Firekeeper said, her voice becoming softer. Her face relaxed and her tear-lines straightened. “I imagine how their litterlings’ eyes will glow when they curl up near the Red Tongue, safe and warm.”

Even if the light in their eyes differs from the light in ours, Ratha thought. “Just be careful. As for moving our cubs to the new nursery, you don’t need me—you’re doing fine.”

“We’ve picked a good site. It’s sheltered, but open enough so that cubs can run and pounce. We can also bring in some three-horn fawns and dappleback foals for the cubs to play with. So they get used to the herdbeasts.” She paused. “It was Thakur’s idea.”

Cub scuffling around Fessran’s legs made her jump. “Yow, you little daughter of a dappleback! Clan leader, be glad you didn’t have a litter this year. Bira, let’s get this bunch to the nursery before they make me climb a tree.”

“I’ll come to visit,” Ratha offered.

“Just you, though. Not Thakur or any of the other males, or someone may get their ears shredded.”

“Fess, no clan male would hurt a cub.”

“You know that, and the sensible part of me knows that, but the mother part of me just goes wild. Bira’s does, too. We’re all like that.”

Ratha let her gaze travel down the line of Named females as she sampled their scents. There was a milky overlay, but she caught and enjoyed their individual smells. Fessran: spicy, sharp with an acrid touch of soot and ash. Bira: sun-warm earth and cinnamon bark. Drani: grass awns, sycamore, horse dung. Chika, Fessran’s older daughter: flowery with a slight fruitiness of pride in her first litter. The first-litter mothers and helpers had the clean freshness of youth, the older ones, steeped and aged in their own odors, had deeper, darker, richer scents.

Closing her eyes briefly, Ratha bathed in the aromas of her friends. When she opened them, she saw whiskers lifted and nostrils widened as the other females sampled hers in return. She knew her scent didn’t have the milk-odor of motherhood and felt a little sad.

Fessran grabbed her spotted culprit gently but firmly around the neck and hoisted the cub. Ratha noticed the short, soft, silvery mantle of fur that formed a crest just behind his ears and swept down his back. She had seen this before in Named litterlings, and some kept it even after weaning. The ones who had it often had longer legs and could sprint faster.

As Fessran lifted him, the youngster mewed, paddled oversize paws, and then settled into a submissive curl. Ratha sniffed him, catching the beginning odor of maleness in his baby-scent.

Fessran moved off with the other Named females, each with one or more squalling or wide-eyed burdens. Soon they were gone.

Ratha settled back on the sunning rock while Ratharee groomed her. Along with ticks and fleas, the treeling could somehow pick out and get rid of Ratha’s troubling thoughts. One, however, remained.

Yes, I would be like Fessran if I had another litter. I wonder if I ever will.