The Tiger and the Wolf (20 page)

He found that he would greatly welcome any rumours of war.
At last the woman stood before Akrit’s fire, ready to impart
her news.
‘Stone River of the Winter Runners,’ she announced, ‘I bring
the word of the Many Mouths.’
Kalameshli shifted beside him, and Akrit nodded, frowning
– the two of them were working together, as they were used to,
faced with this intrusion of the outside world: knowing each
other’s thoughts without needing words.
Word of the Many
Mouths, indeed? And yet not the word of their chief?
In that moment, the true meaning came to Akrit, but he
shook it off, still clinging to his fond hopes for the opportunities
that conflict might bring.
‘Maninli Seven Skins, he who forged the iron of the Wolves,
Tiger-killer, war chief, father of hosts, great chief of the Many
Mouths and High Chief in the Jaws of the Wolf,’ Velpaye recited,
‘now he feels the breath of the Wolf indeed.’ She told it like a
story, as such news should be told, and a stir went through the
listeners. It was winter: the breath of the Wolf was only cold. The
words meant one thing, dress them up as the speaker might.
The High Chief of the Wolves knew it was his time to pass
on.
Too soon!
Akrit thought, though he revealed nothing of it in
his poise or face.
Give me a year, maybe two, and the girl to use as
I will, and then let Maninli walk off into the winter. But not now!
‘Maninli is strong yet,’ he declared. ‘I remember him when we
broke the Tiger at the Field of Many Waters, his bear-killer
sheathed in blood. None could face him.’ And yet Akrit himself
had been young, so young then, and just coming into his own
strength. Maninli had been the man who brought the tribes
together, who roused the whole Crown of the World with his
victories and his mad courage, a man chasing death into the
Tiger’s very throat. And even then he had not been a man in the
first of his youth.
And he was old, now. Old enough to fear the death that
comes in sleep. Old enough to feel the Wolf’s breath.
‘Never was there such a war leader,’ Akrit went on, because
such a eulogy was expected. ‘Never was there a man to follow
but Seven Skins. Fierce he was, swift as storm winds, strong as
the rivers in thaw.’ He found that he was genuinely sad, mourning not for the lost man but those lost days. ‘Do the Many
Mouths call?’
‘Will the Winter Runners hear?’ More ritual exchange. She
meant that old Seven Skins was turning his back, walking away
from all that he had known and been, walking into the wordless
dark. A hunter or a hearth-keeper might call to immediate
family. A figure greatly admired might call upon a whole tribe.
Seven Skins, High Chief of all the Wolves by the agreement and
support of the leaders of every tribe, called upon the whole
Crown of the World to witness his passing.
There was a fulcrum moment in which Akrit Stone River’s
world hung about his trust in Kalameshli Takes Iron. He cocked
a sidelong glance at the priest, who was already nodding, an
unspoken, spontaneous plan of action coming to both of them
simultaneously – one that would require Akrit to put the utmost
faith in the old man.
They had argued over Maniye’s loss; indeed the priest
seemed to take the business far more personally than Akrit
thought reasonable. In the end, though, they were still like
brothers, as they had been when they led the warriors of the
Winter Runners against the Tiger to cut them some new stripes.
‘The Winter Runners hear,’ Akrit announced. ‘Akrit Stone
River, their chief, he hears also.’ The words quietened the
murmur of discussion that had arisen around him. The Winter
Runners would not just send an emissary, some blood-kin of the
Many Mouths, to honour the High Chief. Akrit himself would
make the difficult journey. He would witness the old man’s passing with his own eyes. He would spend the winter amongst
another tribe, and Kalameshli would guide the Winter Runners
in his absence. If there was some conspiracy, some ambitious
challenger prowling at the edge of Akrit’s firelight, that would be
their time. If Kalameshli was not loyal, Akrit might find the tribe
turned against him when he returned.
But he trusted Kalameshli. Despite harsh words, he found
that a world without the priest by his side was beyond his imagining. And he would take Amiyen’s elder son with him in his
retinue, when he travelled.
There
was one who badly needed to
be separated from his mother.
Velpaye Bleeding Feathers stared at him, keen-eyed, as
though she was hunting for hidden motives. And of course,
there
were
hidden motives. Placing himself amidst the Many
Mouths at Seven Skins’ passing would put Akrit’s name on
many lips, and if he ever hoped to be High Chief in turn, then
the love of other tribes was essential. The honour he showed
them would be remembered and respected. And he would be
able to see who the other tribes sent, and who his competition
might be.
And all this, supposing that his plan could be brought to fruition, that Maniye even still lived, that she could be brought back
under his control with the Tigers whipped into service. Without
that, who was Akrit Stone River but just one man among many,
and a man without sons?
But, aside from all such concerns and even in the midst of
such feverish plotting, Akrit Stone River found that he was also
a man who wanted to say a last farewell to a mentor and a
friend.

For a long-drawn-out moment nobody spoke. Maniye’s mouth
was crammed with objections, but she had frozen up, unable to
move, unable to look at the man now sitting almost within arm’s
reach.

The only real movement came from the dogs. They did not
bark – she had not heard them bark at all yet – but they were
agitated, standing now, fidgeting back and forth, uttering almost
inaudible whines through their teeth. They had plainly not liked
Maniye or Hesprec much, but Broken Axe was something else
again, like a figure out of their nightmares. Those born in the
Jaws of the Wolf kept no dogs, and wherever their Shadow fell,
dogs remained only on sufferance. It was something done often
if a tributary village of the Deer or the Boar had displeased Akrit
in some mild way that did not merit the shedding of human
blood: a band of hunters would go forth and come back with the
pelts of their sheep-dogs and their watch-hounds and the swift
rabbit-catchers. Hardly worthy prey, but it taught a lesson:
next
time it’s you.

Dogs possessed souls, albeit small souls that would not bear
the weight of a human body. Although their mute minds could
not know what Axe had done, perhaps they sensed their kin’s
blood on him somehow. Or perhaps it was just that long enmity
between the Wolf and the Wolf’s tame bastard.Whichever, Maniye
clutched desperately at it, for Loud Thunder’s dogs perhaps had
some influence on him. Was he guided by his instincts? All this
was faint hope when he plainly
knew
Broken Axe somehow. But
then Axe did travel all over the Crown of the World and beyond.
Perhaps everyone knew him, and knew to fear him.

‘There’s no more fish,’ the huge man blurted out suddenly.
‘Didn’t think there’d be such a grand gathering.’
For an instant his forlorn expression made her feel guilty: the
fish he had shared out had been intended for his stomach only.
Then another ember of hope flared within her. She had some
claim on him, under the laws of hospitality. He could not feed
Broken Axe, so surely he would have to take her part against the
man, no matter what their previous association?
But Broken Axe had a bag at his belt, and he stripped off his
gloves and dug inside it, coming up with some bundles of meat,
not much but fresh, the remains of some luckless creature he
had happened on along the trail.
Loud Thunder nodded appreciatively. ‘Good, very good. You
are welcome to my fire.’ He almost snatched the flesh from
Broken Axe and quickly put it on bone skewers propped over
the flames. ‘So,’ he went on, this task accomplished, ‘Broken
Axe, the Wolf who walks by himself, and not seen in these lands
for . . . two years?’
‘Three.’
‘So long, is it? And now here you are.’
Maniye was hanging on every word, trying to comb out what
manner of shared past united the two men. Both were of an age,
and both were plainly quite happy with the company of the
wilds. Was that it: some chance meeting in the forest years
before? She could not read fondness in Thunder’s quiet tones –
but there was enough reserved caution to suggest they had been
more than simply passing acquaintances.
‘You always knew I’d be back this way some time,’ Broken
Axe said easily.
‘And now here you are,’ the big man repeated.

Not pleased to see him. Not scared of him but . . . scared of what
his being here means, perhaps?
‘It’s a small matter.’ The Wolf hunter’s tone was almost flippant, but Maniye could tell he was choosing his words carefully.
‘Long way to come for a small matter,’ Loud Thunder muttered. ‘This pair now, they come to bother me as well, eat my
fish, disturb my dogs. All sorts of strange, they are. Did you ever
see such a man as this in the Crown of the World?’
‘Not in the Crown of the World.’ Broken Axe’s face wore a
mild, polite smile, his hands still resting in his lap. Maniye had
the sense of him stalking: a measured and delicate approach into
striking distance.
‘And in such company,’ the huge man fished.
Broken Axe just shrugged. ‘A small matter.’ Somehow, in his
nod and intonation, he was plainly referring to Maniye – little
Maniye sitting on the far side of Hesprec and feeling cold to the
core, where the fire could not reach.
‘Ah.’ A neutral sound from Loud Thunder at having the situation confirmed.
‘She is far from home,’ Broken Axe explained pleasantly. ‘She
is looked for there.’
‘Is it so?’ Loud Thunder nodded, as though reflecting on the
fecklessness of young girls.
Maniye made a noise. It was meant to be a word, a denial, but
instead it was just a noise. Still, the big man cocked a shaggy
eyebrow at her.
‘Hrm?’
He will kill me. He killed my mother.
Her mouth was open, but
the dark stone gaze of Broken Axe transfixed her, and all that
came out was a sort of croak.
‘Why do you care?’ Thunder asked the hunter, as if any sane
man would let runaway girls die out in the snow to teach them
a lesson.
‘For myself, why should I? But her father cares.’
That was too much. At last Maniye found her voice.
‘He doesn’t!’ Her squeak of protest seemed to echo about the
hollow. ‘He’s never cared except to use me.’ And it was a bizarre
relief to put her new understanding of her father – and her
whole life – into words. ‘I’ve been nothing to him, ever, but a
thing, a tool.’
If she thought that revelation would somehow wring compassion from the giant’s heart, her hopes were broken in the shrug
of his massive shoulders.
‘Life,’ he grunted, ‘is hard. Why make mine harder? I don’t
want to know any of it.’ And yet he was still not letting go.
Maniye pictured the two of them in their Stepped forms, teeth
sunk in her body, tensing themselves to pull.
‘Just so,’ Broken Axe agreed, and he too was obviously still
aware that he had some work to do. ‘But I am sent, and she is
her father’s daughter, and he is chief of the Winter Runners. So
I hunt her.’ And a tacit threat, perhaps:
that is who you will make
an enemy of.
Loud Thunder sighed enormously, voicing a mountain of
sorrow at all the ill ways of the world. ‘And him?’ A cock of the
head towards Hesprec.
‘I don’t care about him.’
‘Probably no one does,’ Thunder agreed.
The old Serpent sighed. ‘If I were permitted to speak, I would
say that I am a priest much beloved of Snake – who moves
beneath us all – and when I was last within the Crown of the
World there were yet some who knew that to harm a priest was
to open the way for a hundred curses.’
Loud Thunder shrugged again. ‘So Little Feet here is a runaway and Many Words is all sorts of lost, and proud along with
it, and you’re doing the Winter Runners’ running for them.’ He
began taking the meat from the fire, obviously satisfied with its
condition. The dogs got fed first, and then he cut strips for
everyone, a swift and equitable division. ‘Tracked her a long
way,’ Thunder got out, around a crammed mouthful. ‘Good
hunt, that. Good run from her too. Till now.’
‘Until now,’ Broken Axe agreed.
Thunder glanced at Maniye, meeting her gaze, seeing her
unable to eat, sitting there with her hands crooked into claws,
rigid with tension.
‘Said you killed her mother, too,’ he observed idly.
‘It’s not true,’ came Broken Axe’s smooth reply.
‘Liar!’ She spat out the word too fast for her fear to stop her,
and the rest followed. ‘You took her and killed her, when my
father had done with her! Everyone knows it. I’ve seen it in his
face, and in your face every time you visited his hall! It was the
first thing I ever knew about my mother, that she was dead –
and by your hand.’
Broken Axe made a wry face:
Listen to the foolishness of
women!
‘Thunder, you know me.’
‘I
do
know you.’ And it was a pronouncement that came
down on neither side of the argument.
‘You think–?’
‘When we were young and we roamed with a warband,
strange lands, strange faces . . . we saw many things. Some terrible things. Some that were made so by our own hands. Do I
know what you’ve done or not done, since? How can I?’
‘And do you care? This is a matter for the Wolf to bother
himself with.’
‘I saw how she was a tiger when she Stepped,’ Loud Thunder
said carefully. If these two men had been wrestling or brawling,
this would be the moment that a blade was drawn. Broken Axe
went very still.
‘Loud Thunder,’ he said softly, ‘this need be no burden to
you. It is a trouble of the Wolf.’ And, seeing the bigger man’s
raised eyebrow, ‘and the Tiger, if you wish. None of yours.’
‘And yet now I’m curious,’ Thunder replied implacably. His
eyes flicked from the hunter to Maniye herself.
‘He will kill me,’ she got out.
‘Not true,’ Broken Axe put in quickly.
‘Amiyen—’
‘I am not Amiyen.’
A wave of Thunder’s hand, the big man obviously not wanting to deal with the names of any not actually there with him.
‘Tiger,’ he stated flatly, and then, ‘Wolf,’ as though he were
weighing up the two names. ‘No, this makes me all sorts of curious. Tiger and Wolf had their war, yes. Yet both sides’ve kept
beating that same drum ever since. You think
we
don’t hear it?’
Broken Axe closed his eyes, summoning his strength. ‘Do I
care about the war? I do not. But I am tasked with bringing this
girl safe home, and I will do it.’
‘Will you?’
‘Thunder, you don’t care.’
‘I’m curious,’ the huge man said again, more forcefully.
‘Tiger. Wolf. And this thing, whatever he is . . . Snake . . . thing.’
‘A sacrifice,’ Hesprec said sibilantly, ‘but saved from that
death by the girl. A priest bound for sacrifice, did you ever hear
such a thing?’
‘And worse,’ Loud Thunder grunted. ‘Sounds like Wolf work
to me, yes. Take
him
if you want.’
‘I don’t want him. You can keep him, but I’ll have the girl.’
And Maniye could see the tension deep inside, drawing Broken
Axe taut like a bow. He sat just the same, appearing easy, and
with his hands in plain view, but in his fire-shadow she could see
the wolf poised to pounce.
Loud Thunder looked deeply disappointed with himself. ‘No,
I’m curious. She and I will talk.’
‘Thunder—’
‘No.’
And they had Stepped, the both of them, in the same instant.
Even though Maniye had been waiting for it, the moment
caught her unawares. Broken Axe was a pale wolf with dark
hackles, teeth bared and his whole body bunched to leap. And
Loud Thunder . . .
He was huge even as a man. As a bear he was head and
shoulders again as tall, and surely three times the weight, a vast
red-brown mountain of furred flesh, his claws gleaming in the
firelight with the copper of his axe-blade, the weapon swept up
into the mountain of his animal form. He stood three, maybe
four times Maniye’s height, bellowing and with his arms outstretched as though he would encircle the world, and the sky
and the stars too.
Before him, Broken Axe seemed tiny, but he gave no ground.
He snarled a warning, pale eyes fixed on the bear’s throat, showing every indication that he would leap over the fire and attack,
no matter the difference in size.
Hesprec had been bowled into her when Broken Axe
Stepped, and now she wriggled out from under him, shifting her
own form through sinuous wolf to burlier tiger and then to wolf
again, her shape dancing with panic as her mind flitted between
fight and flight. The dogs were going berserk by then, not wanting to go anywhere near Broken Axe, but barking fiercely: deep,
chesty sounds that were a savage threat to Maniye’s animal ears.
Of them all, only the old Serpent kept his human form. A
toothless snake was hardly going to be of use here, and if he left
the fire he would freeze. Instead he just huddled, one arm protecting his head.
Broken Axe and Loud Thunder locked eyes. The wolf showed
his fangs, feinting forwards, trying to spark a reaction. His teeth
were the dark iron of the axe he wore at his belt. The bear
slammed down onto his forepaws and bellowed again, right
across the fire into the wolf’s face. Maniye could feel her two
souls both struggling for control over her, fighting as though
they were imprisoned together inside her, scratching and clawing and biting at her innards. The sheer proximity of bloodshed
was sending the pair of them into a directionless frenzy. She did
not know what to do. Too much choice now, and too little
understanding.
Then Broken Axe Stepped again: nothing but a man once
more, his hands out for peace. And for all that she hated and
feared him, more even than her father or Kalameshli the priest,
she could not help but be struck by the courage that must have
taken. Loud Thunder had reared back onto his hind legs, and a
single swipe of his paw would have smashed the Wolf hunter
beyond recognition, for in Axe’s human form he could neither
fight nor dodge such a force of nature. And yet Thunder stayed
his hand, and Broken Axe waited, sparing his words until there
were human ears again to hear them.
At last the gigantic bear became the man – seeming diminished now, for all that he was still the biggest man Maniye had
ever seen. ‘So,’ he pronounced.
Maniye herself was a wolf at that moment, and a wolf she
remained in case this should turn against her. Hesprec carefully
reached out a hand and laid it gently on her back, and she knew
he would be able to come with her if she chose to run.
‘Speak,’ Thunder prompted, crouching down to put a hand
out to his dogs, letting them sniff at it, quieting them.
‘I see winter upon us,’ Broken Axe observed, as though the
seasons had shifted during their confrontation.
‘Looks that way,’ Thunder agreed.
‘No time to be travelling south with a girl to look after,’ the
hunter observed reasonably.
The Bear tribe giant grunted.
‘I will return for her, come the thaw,’ Broken Axe stated.
‘Will you?’
‘I, Liosetli Broken Axe, say this.’
Maniye realized she had never heard anyone mention his
birth name before now. It made it a powerful thing to swear by.
‘You expect me to play host all through the winter?’ Loud
Thunder frowned, just the simple man once more, faced with
unwanted complications.
‘Or I shall take her now. Or else the winter will have her, and
keep her.’
Thunder’s head swung in Maniye’s direction. ‘Well?’ And,
when she wouldn’t Step into a form that could answer him:
‘One yap for yes, two for no, is it?’
Reluctantly she came back to herself, human voice and all.
None of the three options before her was overly attractive. The
Bear might kill her, and Broken Axe could also be intending to
finish Amiyen’s work. Winter, though . . . She had come a long
way, but all her journey had done was teach her that she was not
ready to face the winter alone and without shelter.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she told Loud Thunder, knowing that she
could be making a fatal mistake. What did she know of him, save
that he was a sometime comrade of Broken Axe? In her mind
were all the fates that he might have in store for her: rape her,
tear her apart and eat her, sacrifice her at some Bear tribe altar
. . . She knew so little.
But of her father’s people and Broken Axe, she knew more
than enough.
‘You too, I suppose?’ Thunder rumbled at Hesprec resignedly.
‘Kindness in a strange land to a chosen priest shall not go
unrewarded,’ the old man replied, regaining his feet, but not
quite his dignity.
‘So many words,’ Thunder complained, mostly to Broken
Axe. ‘And the fire’s going out now. Get some wood, if you’re
here for the night.’ Just like that, it seemed the men were friends
again, or at least no longer about to kill each other.
‘I’ll not disturb your dogs further,’ Broken Axe said, sounding
sad. ‘I can find my own shelter, make my own fire.’
‘The Wolf that walks by himself. Good, good,’ Thunder
agreed. ‘Just like always.’
Maniye glanced between the two of them, sensing the edges
of their shared history, however long ago it had been.
Then the hunter’s dark eyes were turned upon her, and she
did her best to face up to him bravely, easier to do so now that
he was departing.
‘Farewell, Many Tracks,’ he told her, seeming almost fond. ‘I
shall find you come spring, if you still live.’ And he had tracked
her so indefatigably, so far, that she had no cause to doubt it. It
would take more than a harsh winter to discourage Broken Axe.
Only after he had gone did she consider that he seemed serious about the name, her hunter name.
Many Tracks.
Despite its
source it felt like a garment that fitted her body well.
Maniye
Many Tracks.