The Tiger and the Wolf (39 page)

They achieved another day’s hard journeying. At first they followed the Plains girl Shyri’s best guess, and Maniye trailed
behind on her wolf feet, mostly so she would not have to speak
to anyone. Past midday, though, she came out of herself enough
to object to the path.

‘Where are you even going?’ she demanded.
Shyri regarded her narrowly. ‘Away.’
‘Where would
you
head for?’ Hesprec asked her gently. They

had stopped to eat in the shadow of a great fallen stele, a carven
obelisk that might even have marked some key Tiger tribe
border.
‘The further west we travel, the more the Shadow of the Wolf

falls on us,’ she warned them simply.
‘These things are known: a stranger is always short of friends,’
Hesprec said.
‘Yet we may find some,’ she insisted. ‘If we find the river and
follow it, there are the Horse traders.’
The old priest frowned. ‘But your people . . .’
‘We would brave the Wolf’s jaws to do it, yes.’ She closed her
eyes, breathing in the land around her. ‘Winter Runners or Swift
Backs – if there were Wolf scouts at the doors of the Shining
Halls, then they will be everywhere south as well. We could run
into them at any time, but more and more so, the further south
we tread.’
‘Then what?’Venater demanded, sounding as though running
into a few enemies on the road would be just the thing for him.
‘North,’ she said.
‘What is north?’ Asmander asked her.
‘
Cold
, is what’s north,’ put in Venater. ‘More cold even than
this.’
She looked at him blankly, because this was a warm spring
promising a fierce summer. ‘Do you think Loud Thunder would
help us, Hesprec?’
The old Serpent looked troubled. ‘The Cave Dweller we wintered with, yes. The man he now is, after his Mother has taken
him to task – that is a different man.’
‘But?’
‘But these are quite the most hostile lands I have ever travelled,’ he admitted, and then added, ‘Yes, even including the
Plains, Laughing Child: your people have no monopoly on
unpleasantness. So we will see if the Bear will take in the Tiger’s
quarry . . . and the Wolf’s.’
‘And then, Messenger?’ Asmander demanded.
The old man plainly knew what he meant, though he looked
so weary at the thought that Maniye could feel the weight of his
age dragging at her, too. ‘Then it will be time to look to the
south’s needs, Champion. And whatever I can do, I will do.’
They set out again, and this time Maniye, as wolf, led them.
Shyri relinquished the vanguard with nothing more than a shrug
of her shoulders. Her scent, when she Stepped, was harsh and
strange in Maniye’s nose.
Their path took them into broken ground, where the cover of
the trees was patchy and unreliable. That was her error, she realized in retrospect. She was trying to find the shortest path, and
thought this must also be the best.
When the attack came, it was unheralded: not a scent, not a
sound until it was too late. She was running their little band
across a rugged stretch of land creased deeply by the path of a
stream that was still swelled by late meltwater from the northern
reaches of the highlands. The crossing was difficult, the waters
high and fast and hungry, too much so to swim in any shape.
Shyri and Venater were already across, and Asmander was just
about to make the jump, with Hesprec slung inside his tunic.
Then there was a rush of wind – she assumed it was just that at
first, but it grew louder and louder far too swiftly. Abruptly the
sun was blotted from the sky by a vast shadow.
The great bird struck, coursing at head height over the
uneven land, angling its wings as it took her, its talons, hot and
strong as metal from the forge, seizing her about the body. She
had time for one shriek – more of surprise than pain or fear –
and she was airborne.
There were other birds, lesser creatures circling overhead, but
the vast-winged eagle made them seem sparrows. It hoisted her
into the air with ease, and the blustering beat of its feathers sent
Asmander toppling from the stream’s edge. She caught a wheeling glimpse of him kicking away from the rock, one arm out for
the others to catch him, and then she was already too far from
them, jolting and jostling in the air as the eagle shifted its grip
on her. The points of its hooked claws snagged in her clothing
and pierced through all her furs and hide, to prick at her skin.
In mid-air she had tried striking out at the eagle, thinking that
she might be able to hurt him, and so bring him down. At the
first blow, though, he simply let go with one claw, leaving her
dangling wildly from the other over what was now a fatal drop.
The message was clear.
She was not carried so very far, and she could feel the eagle
beginning to labour, for all the great span of his wings. Could he
have plucked up someone larger – Asmander or Shyri, perhaps?
Venater? Surely not. But Maniye had always been small.
Abruptly the hard grip of those talons loosened and she
yelled out in terror, before landing on hard rocks. The drop had
just been a second’s worth, and she found she had taken her
tiger shape, four legs cushioning the landing as best they could.
For a moment she was snarling, swiping at those around her,
full of fighting spirit. Then the eagle landed on her back, driving
her savagely to the unyielding ground. She twisted and clawed at
him, but his grip was horrifyingly strong. A second later he had
effortlessly shifted a claw to her neck, choking her, and she was
again in her fragile human form beneath him.
He keened and shrieked, deafeningly loud, and people nearby
were hurrying forwards. Even as she gasped and gagged, a
noose was about her neck, pulling tight, and then his wings
boomed in the air, lifting him up and then dropping him down
a handful of paces away. She reached for the noose instantly, but
hands were laid on her, hauling her to her feet. There was an
Eyrieman on either side of her, twisting her arms back painfully:
lean, hard men with half-painted faces.
The eagle stretched its neck back and spread its wings, a gesture of triumph beyond mistaking, and became a man: Yellow
Claw. Of course, it was Yellow Claw.
‘What do you want?’ she shouted at him. Surely it was
enough that her mother’s people and her father’s would be
hunting her, and that neither meant her well? What did this
creature want with her? ‘Did she send you? Did the priesthood
send you?’
‘Nobody
sends
Yellow Claw,’ the Eyrieman leader scoffed.
‘Yellow Claw is his own master. Yellow Claw is a
Champion
,
Many Tracks Wolf girl.Your people do not even know what that
means.’
He spoke the word as Hesprec had, when referring to
Asmander. There
was
something about the big Eyrieman, and
there had been a similar sense about the black southerner,
although the general strangeness of the latter’s appearance had
taken more of her attention.They both cast greater shadows than
other men.
As though a greater spirit stands behind them?
Yellow Claw’s wings had taken them north to a high place, a
stony shelf jutting high and sheer out of the trees, with the
mountain slopes above. Here the Eyrie had carved out a roost
for themselves within Tiger lands. There were at least a dozen
warriors in her sight, and a handful of women. The former were
eyeing her with brash stares; the latter had eyes downcast, some
cooking, some mending or making things. With a jolt, Maniye
saw that each woman’s long hair was looped about her own neck
like a halter: nothing they could not have undone with a little
effort, but a mark of slavery nonetheless.
‘As for what I want?’ Yellow Claw muscled closer to her, so
that she could smell the raw-flesh stink of him, feel the heat
rising from his body. ‘I want you, girl, and so I have you. So it is
with all that the Eyrie’s gaze lights on.’ He was glaring at her
from his war-eye. ‘I have the little mongrel girl that Stone River
is hunting, and that the Queen of the Tigers demands back. But
I do not think I will give you to her, not yet. Not until I know
what is so important about such a meagre-looking morsel. And
then I will decide whether you should return to our faithful
allies, or whether I fly you to the Eyrie as my prize, or whether
I cast you from the heights to see if the Hawk will save you. I do
not think that he would.’
He cocked his head at some of the women. ‘Make sure that
collar stays on her, or you’ll feel my talons, every one of you.
She’s a valuable cur, this one – for now, she is. Fleeting Light, fly
to the Shining Halls, see what they say about their missing mongrel. But don’t take too long.You know how easily I grow bored.
I might give this one the Hawk’s test.’ He thrust his tattooed face
into hers, close enough that she could have bitten him, had she
dared. ‘Do you fly well, Wolf girl, Tiger girl? Do you leave many
tracks in air? I didn’t think so. Whatever god you speak to, ask
him to make you useful to me.’

Maniye sat miserably, with a braided collar tight about her neck.
A day had passed since her capture, and Yellow Claw was still
awaiting the return of the man he had sent off to the Shining
Halls. In the meantime she had been held here under the watch
of the women, eating thin stew once a day. Right now she was
watching two of the warriors play some sort of game. The Eyriemen had plainly camped here for some time. They had a row of
wood-framed hides to shelter in, lined up against the rising rock
furthest from the edge, and there were jagged stakes bristling at
the one place where their bluff could be approached on foot
from below.

Then there was their testing ground – or whatever name they
had for it. They had hauled up a dozen tree trunks and then
wedged or roped them to the rock so that they projected out
over the sheer drop, jutting at various angles. The task must
have involved a considerable effort, but then Yellow Claw would
have had a band of fractious warriors on his hands, and an
urgent need to find them something to do. She watched the
Eyriemen play a game where they fought and wrestled at the
ends of those precarious posts, darting and dancing to tag each
other without having to resort to their wings.

A shadow fell across her: one of the women, come to check
on her – or check that she was not escaping the rope.
Not that I
would have anywhere to go. Yellow Claw was right. I can’t make
tracks on air.

There came another little wooden bowl of stew, containing
the last scraps of whatever the hunters had caught. The Eyriemen had a strict hierarchy of eating:Yellow Claw would be first,
or whoever he had left in charge. Then, if he was present, would
be the sinister Grey Herald, although Maniye had seen little of
him, and he had shown no sign of knowing her. After that, the
other warriors ate, jostling to be first with much joking and cursing.

Maniye ate next, and the women of the Eyrie were left to
satisfy their hunger with whatever remained. A prisoner ranked
above them, it seemed. At first Maniye assumed they must
forage for themselves, but it was plain they were forbidden to
Step, prisoners of this plateau even as she was.

‘You were at the Shining Halls?’ Maniye asked one. In truth
they all had a similar look to them, these women: not in the features so much as the downtrodden expression that gripped
them.

She thought the woman would ignore her, but the Eyrie girl
paused and then shook her head quickly.
‘But one of you was?’ Maniye pressed. ‘She even spoke for
you. So she’s your leader?’
The Eyriewoman’s eyes widened in shock. Maniye was ready
for her to flee, but instead she dipped her head closer and murmured, ‘Yellow Claw cannot speak direct to the Tiger. There are
only certain ways a Champion of the Eyrie may speak to such a
woman, and still retain his dignity.’
‘Threats and bullying?’ The words came out before Maniye
could plan them.
The Eyriewoman’s look was solemn, though. ‘If you anger
him, you will find out.’
‘Do you have a name?’
The question, coming out of the blue, seemed to take the
woman completely by surprise. Maniye hoped perhaps she
might have an ally here: a fellow sufferer under the tyranny of
Yellow Claw.
‘I am Many Tracks – that is my hunter name.’ She had so
little to barter with. ‘I am Maniye . . . I was born Maniye.’ It was
a great gesture of trust for her to tell that to a stranger.
For a moment words formed on the Eyriewoman’s lips, but
then they died and she backed off, as though Maniye carried
something contagious.
Yellow Claw came back towards evening, strutting through
his men, giving some of them a shove to remind them of who he
was. Maniye had hated a lot of people in her time, not least her
own father and the priest Kalameshli, but she decided there was
nobody she had come to dislike quite so swiftly as this Eyrieman.
He was strong, and marked out in that odd way that lent him a
fierce grandeur, and his Stepped form was majestic and proud
enough to put the other hawks to shame. And yet it was wasted,
Maniye thought: great gifts given to a small man.
He stared at her with something of a sneer on his face, and
she found she could read the sequence of his thoughts there
quite easily. He was impatient; he wanted to start on her. He was
– she realized, with a mouth abruptly dry with fear – wondering
if there was sufficient chance that she was unimportant. If she
was just being pursued as a criminal, a thief or oathbreaker or
the like, then nobody would complain at her fate.
‘So what are you?’ he murmured.
She wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her, or just to himself.
There was a great temptation to blurt it all out:
I am the daughter
of the Winter Runners; I am the daughter of the Shining Halls! I am
not for you!
She could save herself the horrors of his touch, for
this night at least. But if he learned that, how would he then use
her? Would he sell her back to her father, or turn her against her
mother? Or would he take her, anyway, and crow to his men
how he’d had a Wolf chief’s daughter and the child of the Tiger
Queen all in one night?
That last seemed very plausible.
But his patience held, for now. The chance that there was
some great value in her, which could be bartered for his own
advantage, lent him a fraying line of restraint. A cruel man and
a bully he might be, but no fool.
That night she did not dare sleep in case it was the hard
hands of Yellow Claw that woke her. She lay and shivered, and
tried to pick at her collar where it had been woven together. Or
she made plans to creep to the edge of the bluff and find a way
down, human hands and feet grappling with the jagged rock.
And she did none of these things, because she knew that defiance from her, the wrong look, the wrong word, would cut that
straining thread that held Yellow Claw back. An excuse was all
he needed.
Late that night, with the moon high in a chill and cloudless
sky, someone moved very close to her, sending a shock of fear
through her. Yellow Claw? Or one of the women? The thought
of rescue did not even occur to her.
And it was not rescue. Instead it was Grey Herald. She could
make out his cloaked form, the moonlight pale on his bare barrel
chest. He had sat down within arm’s reach of her, and had done
so with only one small scuff to betray him. His eyes watched her
from their white-stripe mask.
‘In the Other Lands dwelt all the People once,’ he said, his
deep voice soft, the intonation one of ritual and rote-learning.
‘Where there was always game for a hunter’s bow, and the water
was sweet, where every tree bore ripe fruit, and there was no
summer nor winter.’
She craned her neck to blink at him, because this fierce warrior was crouching there reciting children’s stories with great
gravity. His eyes were fixed on her so fiercely that she thought
this bizarre recounting must somehow be the prelude to an
assault.
‘In those days the People had many shapes between them, and
many souls, and great was the number of their Steppings and
their forms, and all were of one people,’ Grey Herald informed
her sincerely. ‘But there were some amongst them for whom all
these forms and all these souls were not enough and, in seeking
more, they grew less and less, until they had no souls at all.’
‘The Plague People,’ Maniye breathed. The disconnection
between this man and his words was fading with the intensity of
his telling. She felt like a child again.
‘They had no souls,’ he went on, ‘but power they had, for
they became sorcerers and bent the world and the spirits to their
will. And they consorted with monsters that had come into the
world, and that sought to devour all the People, all the mute
brothers, every living thing. And so they were called a plague.’
He paused at that, as though lamenting the loss of such paradise days, and then sighed. ‘Those of the People who escaped
their devouring tide realized that the Other Lands were lost to
them, and they begged the sun to lead them to a land where
they might be safe from the Plague People. And the sun bent
low and red to the earth, and those people who yet lived followed that light into another place that is these lands that are
ours.’
He paused, and Maniye had to restrain herself from urging
him to continue. It was an old tale, and she had heard it many
times, in various incarnations. Not like this, though. Grey
Herald spoke as though it was a true article of faith to him,
deeply and direly relevant to every day of his living. This ancient
tale had no dust on it, for him.
And she realized he was waiting for her to speak the next
words and, though she did not know his precise way of telling it,
she could bridge that gap.
‘But the Plague People came after,’ she said, and he nodded
briefly.
‘The Plague People came after,’ he echoed, ‘for they could
not abide the thought of there being a land free of their hungers,
be it never so cold, never so dry, never so barren. And as the last
of the people crossed from the other lands to the lands that are
ours, three there were, who turned to face them and hold them
back. And these three fought them from sunset to sunrise, and
stood against all the monsters that the Plague People had compacted with. And on the next morning, the sun arose with such
a fierce fire that it scorched the land away, all that stood between
the other lands and our lands. And the sea rushed in, of such
depth and such width that even the monsters of the Plague
People could not cross it.’
And she realized that she was not the only listener. For all
that he spoke quietly, there were more than a few of the Eyrie
with their eyes open, tilting their ears towards Grey Herald to
catch his words.
‘And those few who had escaped their hunger spread across
our lands,’ the storyteller went on, ‘and found that the game was
scarcer, and the water less sweet, and that the winter brought
cold, and the summer drought. And they fought, and they
divided – from one tribe of many forms to many tribes each of
a single Stepping.
‘And of the three who had fought the Plague People during
that long night, what of them?’ He raised his eyebrows sharply
at her. ‘It is said those three, and all their children who came
after them, kept the secrets of the other lands and formed brave
societies to teach them, lest they be needed again. And they
painted their faces in the colours of their enemies, to remind all
who saw them of the old dangers. And they never forgot what
had been lost. And each remembered who had stood beside
them, be it never so long ago. So it is that there shall always be
an understanding and a friendship and a shared burden between
the men of the Owl and the Bat and the people of the Serpent.’
He uttered the last words very deliberately, staring at her
intently, and Maniye’s heart leapt. For the Eyriemen it was just
a story, well known and well told. For her it was a message.
Hesprec. Hesprec, somehow. He is giving me hope.