Ratha’s Creature (The First Book of The Named) (13 page)

He circled her, his tail twitching.

“Too late, bone-chewer,” she said hoarsely.

“Lie with your whiskers in the mud, then, clan cat” he said scornfully, his own bristling. Ratha closed her eyes and buried her nose in her forepaws. When she opened them again he was gone. She listened to the wind threshing the swamp grass and the cries of birds high overhead.

Who is he?
she wondered, but then, as she drifted off to sleep, decided that now it really didn’t matter.

A smell woke her. Musky, rich, intoxicating, the odor filled her nose and her whole hungry being. It lured her back out of a sleep that was letting her slip closer and closer to death. She plunged her fangs into the furry body lying beside her. Not until she felt the warm flesh between her jaws did she realize she was awake. She sank her teeth in to their full depth but she was too weak to manage a shearing bite. She squeezed the meat between her jaws, sucking the salty juices. Her stomach jumped in astonishment and began to churn greedily.

Where the kill had come from, she didn’t know and didn’t care. It was here, it was hers, and to her hunger-sharpened senses, it was the best thing she had ever tasted. Once she gained enough strength to start eating in earnest, she started at the head and had devoured half of the carcass when a now-familiar smell and familiar step made her freeze.

She hunched over the prey. She began to eat rapidly, with both paws guarding the carcass, gulping chunks that still had fur attached. He sat down and watched her. She shot wary glances at him between bites.

“Eat slowly, clan cat, or it will do you no good.”

Ratha’s ears started to flatten, but they pricked up again as she thought of something.

The prey ... she hadn’t caught it. Had be?
She stopped eating, turned the remains over with her paw and inspected it for the marks that might be left by a broken fang.

“Don’t bother, clan cat. I caught it,” he said.

Ratha raised her chin and eyed him. “Why?”

“For the same reason I pushed you away from that tainted water.”

Ratha lowered her head and slowly finished her meal. “The Un-Named do not give help without a reason. What is it you wish from me, raider?”

“The Un-Named do not speak either, according to the great wisdom of the clan,” he replied with a grin, but the yellow in his eyes had turned slightly bitter. Ratha pushed herself up on her forepaws and stretched, feeling the fullness of her belly and the returning strength in her legs. The fur on her face felt stiff and tight, caked with filth and dried fluid. With mild dismay, she realized she was mud-spattered from nose to tail. She licked one paw and began to scrub at her muzzle. After several strokes she stopped, dissatisfied with the results.

“You, clan cat, are a mess.” The young male stood up and arched his back, showing off sleek copper-gold fur. “I’ll show you the stream. You’ll never get all that mud off with your tongue.” With a wave of his tail, he trotted off. Ratha heaved herself to her feet, growling irritably.

The stranger led the way along a narrow trail, marked with deer and dappleback prints, edged with moss and mushrooms. Gradually the marshy ground gave way to a drier track, leading them uphill to a brook emerging from a cleft in the grassy slope. Ratha went to the spring and lapped the upwelling water. It was cold and clear, and she dipped her chin in and drank until her teeth ached. Once her thirst was slaked, she let the water flow over her tongue, from one side of her jaw to the other, cooling and rinsing her mouth until the last taste of sickness was gone.

She waded downstream and crouched in the shallows, letting the bubbling current ruffle her fur backwards. With chattering teeth she leaped out of the brook, wriggled on the grass and shook herself dry, sending a small shower in her companion’s direction. He sneezed and trotted uphill beyond range. There he sat, on the slope above the spring, something unreadable in his eyes.

Ratha turned her tail to him and walked away.

“Where do you go now, clan cat?” His voice came from behind her. She stopped, lowered her tail and looked back at him. It was nearly sunset and the slanting red light set fire to his coat as he glanced over his shoulder at the sinking sun. Ratha caught herself thinking that he was very beautiful and immediately squelched the idea.

“To hunt, raider. My belly is full now and I am strong.”

“What do you know of hunting?” he asked scornfully. “You’ve never hunted anything except grasshoppers and wayward herdbeasts.”

“I know how to stalk and pounce. I know how to wait until the prey has left its hole and then fill the hole with dirt. I almost got that shrew.”

“No matter how good you were at stalking and pouncing, and no matter how clever you were, you would never have caught that shrew. And you won’t catch any other animals either,” he said.

Ratha dug her foreclaws into the ground. He was still waiting, still wearing that maddening grin that showed his broken fang. She wanted to knock out the other one. “All right, raider,” she said, taking a breath, “tell me why I won’t catch anything.”

“You don’t know your prey. That striped shrew. What do you know about it?” he asked.

“I know what it smells like. I know what its prints look like. I know where it hides and what it eats. Isn’t that enough?”

“You didn’t know the one thing that might have saved you from eating mud instead of shrew. That shrew has many holes and they are all connected.”

Ratha eyed him suspiciously. “What would a shrew want with so many holes? It can’t sleep in more than one at a time. I would only want one. Everyone at home has only a single den. Some have to share.”

The stranger sighed. “You are thinking like the clan herder you are. To catch a shrew, you must think as the shrew does.”

Ratha wrinkled her nose. “Shrews can’t think, can they? Not as we do.”

“Oh yes, they can. They can be quite clever, as you will learn.”

“But they don’t have names ... or clans either,” Ratha spluttered.

“Must all who are clever have names and clans?” he asked, looking at her intently.

Ratha felt uncomfortable under his stare. “No,” she said at last. “You have neither clan nor name, but you are quite clever. And that shrew was also clever.”

“Not all animals have tunnels,” he said, continuing. “Many hide in other ways. What you know now may let you hunt marsh shrews, but you’ll get pretty sick of them.” Ratha flicked her tail irritably as he paused. “There’s a lot you need to know,” he said and added, as if to himself, “I almost think I should teach you.”

“You?” Ratha backed away, her tail fluffed. “I’d rather go back to the clan than have you as a teacher!”

He stared at her intently. His eyes held hers. He walked up to her and thrust his muzzle into her face. She tried to break the intensity of his stare, but could not and sat down nervously on her tail. “You can’t go back to them, clan cat,” he said. She sensed, as she looked past her reflection into the yellow depths of his eyes, that he knew much more about her than one of the Un-Named should know.

“You can’t go back,” he said again, softly. “And you can’t live here without my help. No other among the Un-Named will aid you.” He withdrew his face and she pulled her tail out from underneath herself and glared at him defiantly.

“I can find another clan. They’ll take me in.”

“There are no clans among our kind.”

Ratha started to spit back a reply, but she knew deep inside that he spoke truth. However far she might wander, she would never find another herding community such as the one she had left. It had never been a real hope and it died as soon as it arose.

“Why? Why will you do this for me?” she demanded, knowing that she had no choice but to take his help if he offered to give it.

“Because of what I am, I suppose.”

“You?” Ratha’s spirit came back. “You are a raider and a bone-chewer!”

He ducked his head and grinned ruefully. “I am indeed, clan cat. But you may find I am something more.”

“Hah! If you are the only one of all the other bone-chewers who will help me, why did I meet you instead of one of the others?”

“You didn’t find me,” he said, yawning. “I found you.”

“Found me?” Ratha’s jaw dropped. “You were looking for me? Why would an Un-Named bone-chewer be looking for me?”

“Perhaps to teach you some manners, young one,” he snapped, giving her an irritated cuff. Ratha jumped away and shook her head. Her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t think you are an Un-Named One. You are far too clever. You remind me of someone in the clan, although I can’t remember who.” Ratha felt the fur rise on her nape. “Did Meoran send you to find me and kill me?”

“If he had, the marsh birds would be picking at your dirty pelt. No, clan cat. I bear no name and I obey no one.” He grinned again. “Except my stomach.”

“That I can believe,” she said sourly, letting her prickling fur soften.
He must be telling the truth,
she thought.
Meoran would never have anyone like him in the clan.

“Time to hunt, clan cat,” he said, turning his face toward her. “We’ll start with marsh-shrews. Later I’ll teach you how to catch bush-tails and diggers. Are you ready?”

“Yes ...” she said, and her voice trailed off.

“Mmm?” He crooked his tail.

“What do I call you?”

“Don’t call me anything. I don’t have a name.”

“I have to call you something if I’m going to talk to you. If you can call me ‘clan cat,’ I should be able to call you something,” she said stubbornly.

He flicked an ear. “Very well.”

She hesitated. “What do you want me to call you?”

“You want the name. You choose it.”

“
Arrr,
it isn’t really a name,” Ratha haid doubtfully. “Only the clan can give someone a
real
name, such as mine.”

He looked irritated. “All that means is that it was bestowed upon you by some fat whelp that everybody bares their throat to. For no good reason I can think of,” he added scornfully.

Ratha began sorting through possibilities. None of the names of those in the clan fitted him at all. The only one that even came close was one she had invented. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. And there was nothing wrong with it.
After all,
she
thought, it isn’t a real name.

She saw him peer into her face and knew he had caught the glint in her eye. “I’ve got one,” she said.

He drew back his whiskers. “I should have known better. Very well, clan cat. What am I to be called?”

“Bonechewer!”

“Arrr
,
”
he grumbled. “I suppose it suits me. Very well then. Follow me to the marsh and I’ll see if I can make you into a hunter.”

Ratha followed him, cheered by her minor revenge. Bonechewer. It really wasn’t bad.

* * *

That evening he and Ratha caught more striped shrews and she managed to trap and kill one by herself. By nightfall, she was full and drowsy. She wanted a den where she could sleep. Instead, Bonechewer took her to a moonlit glade beneath the slope where the spring ran and told her to hide amid the ferns.

“We aren’t going to hunt,” he said in response to her grumble that she was stuffed right down to her tail. “Just stay here with me and watch.”

He crouched beside her and they watched as the glade began to stir. Ratha had run trails and herded animals by night, but she had never stopped to notice how the darkness brought so many small creatures out of their dens. Even though Ratha’s hunger was sated, she quivered with excitement and felt Bonechewer’s paw descend on her to keep her from wreaking havoc among the night denizens of the meadow.

Tiny feet pattered back and forth through the underbrush, rustling last season’s brittle leaves. Bonechewer listened and told her what creatures made which sounds. Some of them she knew, from her nights of guarding clan herds. Most, however, she didn’t and had difficulty telling one animal’s noises from those of another. Her ears were tuned to the calls of lost or straying herdbeasts or to the sounds of raiders lying in wait in the brush.

She started when a little blacksnake emerged from its hole almost between her forepaws and slithered away, its scales edged with silver. She watched it crawl through the grass and onto a rock still warm with the day’s heat. As the blacksnake coiled itself with a soft scrape of scales, an animal with dingy gray fur, a pointed nose and a long bare tail ambled by the base of the rock. The blacksnake raised its head, tongue darting and scanned the bare-tail as it went by. The snake sank down again, loosening its coils. Ratha wrinkled her nose at the bare-tail’s rank odor and agreed with the blacksnake that there were better meals to be had. A second bare-tail followed the first, the tail arched over its back. Several gray bundles dangled upside down by their own small tails wrapped around the larger one. The smelly bare-tail, Bonechewer said, often carried her young that way.

Bonechewer didn’t take Ratha back to his den until sunrise and she slept until midday. Again they hunted marsh-shrews, and when both had killed and eaten their fill, he took Ratha to another place where she could hide and watch. They spent several evenings hidden together. Each evening Bonechewer showed her the creatures that made up his hunter’s world. He told her about their lives and habits and drilled her until she knew them. Not until she understood every quirk and characteristic of a prey animal did he let her hunt. She complained bitterly at first, for her instincts told her to pounce.

As she learned more, however, she complained less, for she began to see the wisdom in his method. Once she turned seriously to the task, she became so absorbed that it threatened to distract her from the business of filling her belly. Bonechewer varied things by showing her other hunters who shared his territory. One of Bonechewer’s neighbors was the flightless bird that had attacked her on her first hunt. From afar, she watched it stride across the marshland, the furred carcass of its catch dangling from its hooked beak. That limp pelt could have easily been hers, she thought, shivering. When the great head lifted and the lizard eyes stared her way as if they knew exactly where she was hiding, Ratha broke cover and fled, ending the lesson for that day.