The Tiger and the Wolf (41 page)

Maniye cast more than one nervous look up at the sky as they
scuffed and slid their way down the treacherous path that was
the only land-bound escape from the Eyriemen’s camp. There
were clouds aplenty, eager to gift the world with rain, but she
spotted no winged shapes wheeling against them. It seemed the
Eyrie was licking its wounds.

They made wordless progress for some time. Hesprec was
chancing the walk down, feeling his way with his staff and choosing his footing wisely – of the three of them, he never stumbled
or slipped once. On her other side, Asmander seemed deep in
thought, stealing a suspicious glance at her every so often. He
must surely be brooding over the same question that Yellow
Claw had asked:
Why her?

Maniye wanted to ask it, too. She remembered the lie Hesprec had told the Horse, that he had come north to seek her out
for a prophecy. Was he just repaying a debt? Her rescue of his
old bones from the Winter Runners paid by his bringing this
exotic warrior to defeat Yellow Claw?

Then the Snake priest croaked out, ‘I imagine you must be
full of questions.’ He had paused to catch his breath, and she felt
pinned suddenly by his gaze.

She should ask
why
, so she might know whether he was still
on her side, or whether he would take up with his strange
friends and abandon her.

She would not ask him. She would remain ignorant until their
parting forced the knowledge into her. For all he was old and
frail and strange, she wanted him to be her friend. She needed
him.

So she asked of Asmander, ‘What were those animals you
Stepped to? Were those things of the south?’ She already knew
in her heart they were not. They were something special: part of
that way he had of seeming bigger, weightier than he was.

He was already shaking his head. ‘What you saw first, that
was the Champion of the Sun River Nation.’ He frowned at her
expression. ‘Just as Yellow Claw’s shape was Champion of the
Eyrie. You understand me?’

‘Most of the peoples in these lands have no such thing, and
the Eyriemen keep to themselves,’ Hesprec suggested. They had
all halted alongside him, within the cover of the treeline, to let
him recover his strength.

‘I am chosen,’ Asmander tried explaining.
‘By who?’
‘By Old Crocodile. By the Tsotec – river of my homeland. By

the spirits.’ His hands made nebulous gestures. ‘Just . . .
chosen.
And so a new soul came to me, or maybe it is a part of a greater
soul that all Champions can touch.’

‘You sound like you don’t know,’ she accused him, because he
scared her a little, and she needed to challenge that fear within
herself.

To her surprise, he grinned sheepishly. ‘It is something that
happens. Of course, you ask for it when you’re a young warrior
and learning to Step. Everyone does so. But why me? Who can
say? I never felt I deserved it. And the Champion can be hard.
The Champion has his own way to live, his own rules.’

Asmander shook his head fiercely. ‘Never before; most likely
never again. It is in me, but I am not sure I will Step that way.
Ask me when I’m next falling off a cliff.’ Another bright grin,
quickly on, quickly gone. ‘The Messenger, he is the man who
knows about that.’

Hesprec spread his bony hands. ‘Entirely the wrong time of
day to talk theology. Let me say no more than that a Champion’s soul is more
open
than any other’s. There are rituals, very
old, very sacred, that can invite another soul in. It is as though
. . . your soul has cousins and uncles, Asmander, and with the
proper invocation he can be prompted to reach, to call out for
them, to ask them to muster in his warband and hunt along with
him. I was not sure it would work, not in this cold, harsh place
where the Serpent’s coils are few and far-flung. But it did, and
I’m proud of you. You are a Champion for your people to take
pride in.’

Asmander seemed to take the compliment awkwardly, waving
it away. ‘We should move on. I don’t trust these Bird men.’
Hesprec managed a snort. ‘If they wanted to catch us up, you
think
I
could walk fast enough to prevent them?’ He sighed. ‘I
wanted to walk down, for once. I thought going down would be
easier. But it seems my many years will have to beg another
ride.’ He chuckled ruefully. ‘“Many Years”, that can be my name
here in the Crown of the World, Many Years and Many Tracks.’
‘Messenger,’ Asmander held out a hand, but Hesprec had
been looking at Maniye.
‘Gladly,’ she confirmed, and took his fingers in hers. In a
moment he had done his trick of casting himself up his own
arm, the ribbon-thin serpent he had now become winding its
way up the sleeve of her threadbare Horse-made coat.
She and the southerner set off down again. She wanted to be
a Wolf or a Tiger, and make better time, but she was not sure she
could run with Asmander’s stalking monster beside her.
The
Champion.
Hesprec had used the word as though it was
Asmander’s title, but the man himself had spoken of the Champion as though it was a different creature entirely.
‘Did you come here seeking Hesprec?’ Asking him anything
was an act of daring, and she fully expected to be rebuffed
haughtily.
Instead he gave her a surprised look, and for a handful of
moments there were frank emotions visible on his southern face,
though she could not quite follow them. Then he gave her a
smile that seemed slightly sad.
‘That would have been a mission of great honour,’ he told
her. ‘I should just tell you, “Yes”, and have you think better of
me. But it was not so.’
‘Why, then?’
‘If you had three days and a desperate need to sleep, I could
tell you much about the Sun River Nation, how it is governed,
and what threatens it. But these are problems you do not have
in the Crown of the World: politics, taxes, hereditary rule. You
are better off without these things.’
In truth Maniye found the words difficult. ‘Is that where the
child always gets what the parent had?’ and then, at his nod,
‘Then the Tiger have that.’ She almost went further but caught
herself, saying only, ‘Their daughters become what their mothers were.’
‘Hence you run from them,’ Asmander noted drily. ‘That, I
approve of. They are much wiser, most of your tribes and villages here. Avoid such foolishness.’
‘
Your
people’s foolishness.’
‘Exactly.’ He was plainly making some joke for his own
amusement, at his own expense.
‘We have our own foolishness.’
‘No doubt. That is how people are. Once they have food and
drink and shelter, the next thing they must find is a quarrel.’
They carried on picking their way downwards, beneath the
intermeshed needles of the trees. The southerner was a contradiction, a study in strength and self-mockery. She wondered
what he would have been without the mantle of Champion
weighing on his shoulders. Something less? Happier? The same?
Her eyes were still on the sky, waiting for Yellow Claw and his
warriors to return. She had forgotten her other enemies, and in
her human shape she could not scent them out. How long they
had followed her footsteps before striking, she never knew.
She was trying to think of something to say to Asmander, to
untease a little more out of him. She asked about the south, but
his answers meant nothing to her, and questions about his purpose here seemed to slide off his shoulders, so she said, ‘Tell me
about your priesthood,’ feeling the slender serpent shift its
coiled grasp about her wrist.
He opened his mouth to answer, but the wrongness struck
her all at once, and she cried out: no words, just a warning. The
instant they knew she had sensed them, there were wolves bursting out from cover, weaving between the trees with their jaws
half-open, eyes burning her with their yellow gaze.
And she cried out, because she knew them. No strangers
these, who might be fooled or reasoned with. At their head was
Akrit Stone River himself. Her father had come for her.
She had Stepped to her own wolf shape instantly and was
away, feeling Hesprec shift awkwardly to stay clasped about her.
Asmander had his stone-toothed sword out, eyes wide in that
dark face, but it was plain the wolves were happy to avoid him
and ignore him, if only they could have her.
She went scuffing and scrambling away between the trees,
but the gradient was taking her further downslope any time she
was not actively pushing upwards. The Winter Runners knew it,
running below her, one or other of them pacing her at every
moment, the rest closing the jaws of the trap. They were wolves:
as a pack they could run forever. As solitary prey she could not.
It seemed to her that she had always realized it would end like
this. These were just the last moments of a hunt that had begun
the moment she had abandoned her home village. If she had
only looked far enough behind her, she would surely have spotted the patient form of Stone River loping along her trail.
But still she ran. Like every hunted thing, she ran until they
caught her.
She had lost track of Stone River, but Amiyen Shatters Oak
was pushing towards her from down the slope, inching closer
and closer. Then another couple of wolves were almost falling
upon her, two young hunters shouldering at each other to be the
one who caught her. They lost their purchase on the root-strewn
ground, nearly taking her with them. She veered, and then was
a tiger, clawing and climbing straight upwards swifter than
Amiyen could follow, kicking dirt and mats of dead needles
down at the wolf behind her.
Another of the pack was above her, had overshot her in
trying to second-guess her course, but was now turning back.
She saw the grey of an old wolf still strong, and her heart shot
her through with dread: Kalameshli, surely? Stone River had
brought the priest along, and why would he do that, unless the
hateful old man had a special vengeance in mind for her?
They will give me to the Wolf.They will give me to the fire.
She turned back the way she had come, from tiger back to
wolf as soon as she had found a level course, leaving Amiyen
and Kalameshli and the rest scrabbling to match her shift in
direction.
Then Smiles Without Teeth was there before her, a huge dun
wolf with spittle-strung jaws. He lunged for her and she twisted
aside, knowing that she was going to make it, that those teeth
would close only on empty air.
But he Stepped as he lunged, the reach of his teeth suddenly
extended by the length of his arm, and his huge hand got the
scruff of her neck, and then he had her by the throat.
She was human again, no fangs, no claws, and he lifted her
up with a triumphant grin. Then Hesprec flashed out from her
sleeve, toothless jaws gaping right in the Wolf hunter’s face, and
he howled and dropped her, losing his footing and sliding away
down the slope. She hit the ground on four feet, Hesprec on
two.
‘Asmander! Here!’ the old man managed, a quavering cry
that surely the Champion would never hear, and then he lunged
desperately for her, knotting his scaled length about her even as
she was off, wolf-shaped again, feeling the net close in on her.
Seconds later three wolves were nipping at her tail, each
pushing at the others for a chance of being the one that brought
her down, and she could scent the fierce, hot reek of the pack
– not the individuals but the single creature they made when
they came together. She dodged and danced between the trees,
keeping her few heartbeats of a lead, but one stumble from her
would finish it, and they were inexorably bending her path so as
to bring her into the jaws of the others.
Then Asmander was amongst them in the Champion’s shape,
striking down with sickle-clawed feet and scattering them,
shrieking out his challenge. The wolves bolted in all directions,
one of them tumbling over and over down the slope, and
Maniye was running, still running. Abruptly there was no other
wolf behind her, and she was leaping free, of her own volition
and not driven by their storm.
Two, three breaths the world allowed her, when she thought
she was clear of them. Then Stone River pounced from the
higher ground, the cunning old hunter who had guessed where
the hunt would take her, and had waited, fresh and alert, for her
to come to him. He struck her in the side, knocking her from her
feet with his weight, and then he had his forepaws on her, pinning her to the ground, his breath hot and stinking in her nose.
He lunged, jaws gaping, but it was just to set them about her
throat, not enough to pierce her wolf hide, but sufficient to jolt
her back into her human form.
Then he was human too, looming, monstrous, one of her
childhood’s two tormenting demons. He hauled her up and,
when she tried to twist out of his grasp, he slapped her across
the side of the face, hard enough to loosen her teeth and blur
her vision.
‘Now,’ he growled, and Hesprec struck at him desperately,
first an open-mouthed lunge at his face, then whipping his body
about Akrit Stone River’s throat, a living noose that grew and
grew, thickening and tightening as Hesprec Stepped and
Stepped through a spectrum of greater and greater serpents,
fighting for the strength to overcome this man.
Then Akrit had a hand about the snake’s head and neck, as
he tried to wrench the creature away, and abruptly there was no
longer a crushing serpent there, but just a fragile old man with
his withered and impotent hands at the Wolf chief’s throat.
Maniye was a tiger, in that instant, snarling and yowling and
ready to defend her friend, but the old priest cried out, ‘Run!
You’re their prize, not me!’
Even then she would not have gone, but another wolf was on
her, jaws gouging long grooves in her haunches: Amiyen Shatters Oak had caught up with her. Without thinking, Maniye
smacked the newcomer across the snout with a rake of her claws
and was a wolf again, already darting away. She left Hesprec
behind. She hated herself, but she left him.
But Shatters Oak would not be thrown off. Pelting through
the trees, she felt that she had left the pack behind, perhaps even
left Akrit behind, but the hot breath of Shatters Oak was always
at her back. Now Maniye found herself remembering the Horse
camp: how it had been Shatters Oak and her son there who had
tried to kill her.
She tried for another sudden burst of speed, but she was too
tired, and Amiyen was running a little downhill of her, forcing
Maniye to spend her strength against the slope.
I cannot run like this much longer.
She was slowing. When she
had slowed enough, been worn down enough, Amiyen would
strike. That was the Wolf’s way.
So she turned to fight.
She was a tiger again when she turned, claws digging for purchase, given a tantalizing glimpse of a clear path beyond Amiyen
when the other wolf overshot, but now she had decided to fight,
it was a fight she would make of it. Even in this form she was
smaller than Amiyen’s wolf, but it was a closer match, and her
position upslope had become a weapon.
She struck, and heard Shatters Oak’s surprised yelp, and then
the two of them were tumbling over and over. They bounced off
a couple of trees, one that caught Maniye in the ribs, one that
bruised Amiyen’s haunches, and then the wolf had scrabbled to
her feet, snapping at Maniye’s throat.
She sprang back, swatting at the wolf’s muzzle as she did so.
A moment later she was human again, knife coming out as she
fell into a fighting stance. But it had only ever been a dance for
her, and Amiyen was as determined to kill her as a woman could
be.
The wolf regarded her with cold, hating eyes, and then
Amiyen Stepped as well, pulling an iron hatchet from her belt.
Shatters Oak attacked straight away, three swift cuts with the
axe, left, right, then a vicious hack across Maniye’s midriff that
had her leaping back. She made it a dance though, turning on
the ball of her foot and driving back in, cutting down the line of
Amiyen’s collarbone, one hand up to catch the axe-wrist.
The slash fell short when Amiyen twisted aside from it with a
surprised snarl, yet she had still drawn a thin line of red close to
the other woman’s neck. Catching hold of the axe was harder,
though. Amiyen was stronger than she was, stronger than any of
the Tiger girls Maniye had trained against. She had been taught
all sorts of lessons about using strength against itself, but none
of them were in her head right then, and her feet almost slid out
from under her.
Instantly she was a tiger again, and she scored three lines
across Amiyen’s leg before the axe came down. Her Step had
taken her in close, so the hatchet’s haft slammed hard into her
shoulder, and then Amiyen was a wolf with teeth of iron gnawing for purchase at the back of her opponent’s neck.
Maniye bucked and threw herself aside, feeling those fangs
draw blood yet not lock. She writhed out from under her enemy,
turning back with a savage snarl, all finesse forgotten, looking
for the wolf but finding the woman.
The axe threatened: she flinched back from it, and Amiyen
kicked her beneath the ribs, bowling her over onto her back. The
sudden wrenching pain yanked Maniye into her human shape
again, gasping for breath that would not come, and Amiyen
dropped onto her, a hand at her throat, a knee crunching down
on her knife-arm. She was smiling.
‘Now I kill you, as you killed my son,’ she crowed triumphantly. ‘And your ghost shall rot in your corpse.’
Maniye tried to protest that she hadn’t, but Amiyen’s grip
was choking off all the words in her throat. With her free hand
she fumbled with that clenching grasp, but she might as well
have tried to bend iron.
Then someone was standing behind Amiyen, though by then
Maniye could make out none of the details. She heard the voice,
though.
‘Many Tracks didn’t kill your son. I did.’
A voice she knew: Broken Axe’s voice.
Amiyen had gone still, but not relaxed her grip. ‘You? How
could it be you . . . ? You were not . . .’ But her eyes had narrowed and she must have been casting her mind back to the
Horse camp. In amongst the twisted skein of scents that had
knotted the air there, had she scented the spoor of Broken Axe?
Surely she had . . . ‘The girl was there. Iramey was on her heels.’