The Tiger and the Wolf (54 page)

Matt and Yoff were very still, very focused. There was none of
the running about and yapping that might have been expected
of them. Their master was going to war, and they understood it.
Their eyes were pinned on the enemy down below.

Loud Thunder wore his stinking armour of grease-hardened
hides, surely enough to deter the noses of any number of wolves.
His great axe, with its weighty copper head, rested over his
shoulder as he peered down at the Winter Runners. Beside him,
Broken Axe seemed a frail figure, even with an iron hatchet in
his hand.

‘Down there they look like little ants,’ the big man grunted. ‘I
think they won’t look much bigger when they get here, eh?’
Broken Axe couldn’t raise a smile.
The Wolf pack was at the treeline, scaling the hill, ignoring
the twisting path and scrabbling directly up the steep side, using
human hands and feet. It was heavy going for them, especially
those wearing coats of iron. Loud Thunder looked around speculatively, hauled up a decent-sized stone in both hands and
bounced it down the hillside with a roar. The Wolves scattered to
either side of it, but when they started up again, their ascent was
slower, and they spread themselves out more.
Another few stones failed to hit any of them, and then they
were past halfway up, whereupon Stone River halted and
shaded his eyes, looking up at them.
‘Broken Axe, I see you there,’ he called out, and one by one
the other Wolves paused, waiting. They were just outside the
distance where they might have rushed the two defenders.
‘It needs no good eyes for that,’ Axe replied, still weighing his
hatchet in his hand.
‘Shatters Oak is dead.’
‘I saw it,’ Broken Axe conceded.
‘It was she who wanted your blood. I have claim to it, for
you’ve betrayed me and the Wolf. But I’ll let you go – and your
fat friend, too,’ Stone River told him. ‘You’re not why I’m here.
I can forget the bad blood between us. You’ve made a mistake.
All men make mistakes. Wise men seek to amend them.’
‘I did make a mistake,’ Broken Axe admitted.
‘Go then. Mend that error of yours. The girl is nothing to
you.’
‘That’s not the mistake I meant.’ Broken Axe took a deep
breath. ‘My mistake was not calling you out, ten years ago and
more. How far have you chased, just to catch one frightened
girl, Stone River? We both know you have no claim on her. Yet
because she has defied you, you cannot walk away. That is your
mistake, not mine. My mistake was turning my back on the man
you became back in the war.’
‘The war with the Tiger,’ the chief of the Winter Runners
echoed. ‘You don’t remember how it truly was.’
‘I remember enough,’ Broken Axe replied harshly. ‘Now
come, if you’re coming. Or go.’
He was almost too slow; he had been focused too much on
Stone River, but a handful of the Wolves on either side had been
inching up the hillside, drawing slowly nearer. Only Loud Thunder’s roar saved him as the Cave Dweller Stepped, bulking out
into a bear that seemed to blot out the sun. Then there were
three warriors clambering for him, fighting to get close enough
to Step and close the last of the distance on wolf paws.

Maniye was in a shadowed land of undulating hills that fell away
in every direction she looked. Above her was the night sky, but
the constellations were not those she recognized. Instead the
stars drifted past one another, hunting the sky for . . . she could
not say what for, but there was something threatening about
those mobile motes of gleaming light. She was terribly afraid
that they were actually hunting for a way
in
.

‘This is the Godsland,’ came Hesprec’s soft voice. ‘This is the
secret known only to my people, and some few others. This is
what we saved.’

‘Before that, even. We took this into our hearts and carried it
away from the lands we had lost to the Plague People. And then
we burned all the land behind us, so that they could not follow,
and the sea rushed in to fill it. This is the land of souls, Maniye
Many Tracks. When we die, this is where our souls return, and
whence they depart to be born again. This is the heart of our
dream.’

Maniye knew she still sat atop the hill, with the three stones
about her. She knew that what she saw was built from her own
imagination and Hesprec’s hypnotic voice. And yet, with her
eyes closed, she saw it: it was as real to her as the world of grass
and trees and the sun which she had left behind.

‘You are not alone,’ Hesprec told her, and she realized it was
true.
Close beside her was a shadow standing under that restless
dark sky. Eyes like green gems regarded her imperiously, and
fire rippled down the great beast’s flanks in shimmering stripes.
A tiger.
The
Tiger. The suggestions, the mere shadows and
breath she had seen within the Shining Halls, were nothing to it.
Seeing the beast before her, standing so close, she could barely
breathe. Its scale and magnificence exerted a pressure in her
mind. Away from it, a thousand half-seen reflections seemed to
recede in all directions, mirror-tigers, each one of them less and
less like the original as it fell further away.
It regarded her imperiously, and distantly she heard Hesprec
ask her what she saw, and her own voice stammer out an answer.
‘Look beyond. Find another hilltop. What do you see?’
To think was to move her gaze, to look was to travel. The hilly
land was crowded, she now saw. Every hilltop had its master,
surrounded by myriad shades of itself. From the feet of the
Tiger, now she found herself before the Wolf. A stare composed
of moon-silver pinned her, crouched almost between its paws.
The gape of its teeth could have swallowed the sun.
‘Good,’ came Hesprec’s dry tone in her ear. ‘But, tell me,
what lies beyond and between? Whose domain is nearby?’
‘You must know.’
‘I cannot know. The Serpent’s lair is far from there. You have
gone to your own place in the Godsland. I may not travel there.
Maniye, listen to me. Because you saved my life not once but
twice, I will tell you the secret of the world. I will tell you what
no other priest or chief or sorcerer would wish you to learn. It is
power, this knowledge, if you can only use it. But then again, all
knowledge is power if it is not wasted . . .
‘So tell me, what do you see near the Wolf? Turn your back
on him and search the nearest hills.’
‘I see . . .’ There was a lean, half-starved shape looking back
at her from the next peak, like Wolf’s thin shadow. ‘There is
Coyote there.’
‘Of course, Coyote that would be Wolf if he could,’ Hesprec
confirmed, amused. ‘But further, look further.’
‘I see . . .’ There was an animal beyond, something like a bigeared dog with a spotted hide, but quite unlike the creature that
Shyri Stepped to. Maniye described it uncertainly, but it seemed
to make sense to Hesprec.
‘That is the hunting dog of the Plains. His people were Wolf
tribe once, before they were driven south. Find yourself at the
feet of the Tiger once more. Surely there will be something
there . . .’
She sought out the Tiger, thinking that it must be on the next
hill, or the next. But when she found it, she had lost the Wolf,
skipping over a vast gulf that lay between them. The hillsides
about the Tiger were strewn with other cats, large and small. She
saw Lion watching her with haughty stare, and the sly, cruel
smile of Jaguar, and others still, but none to her purpose, not
even the great sword-toothed cat that was the Lion’s Champion.
‘Where is the creature Asmander Steps to? Where is his Killing Claw?’ she demanded. ‘You must know the path that leads
there.’
‘No, no, no,’ Hesprec broke in. ‘That is not the way of the
Godsland. Open your mind to me and hear my words.The Godsland is the land of the possible. It is the landscape of every
animal that is and ever was, perhaps every beast that there could
be. Travel from the Tiger and you shall reach first those beasts
that are its brothers and sisters and cousins. Travel on from
them, and you find totems like them, but less like Tiger, you see?
So travel the land between Tiger and Wolf and tell me what you
find. Surely there is some unknown shape lurking there that will
be your Champion!’
And Maniye walked that land, hill to hill to hill, and she saw
cat-likes and wolf-likes ,and many shapes in between that were
like nothing she knew. But many of them were small, more hunters of mice than of men. There were no giants, no savage killers
that she could find, and between the two halves of her being was
that great yawning darkess, where she could find nothing at all.

Asmander crouched atop the boulder-strewn side of the hill. He
could hear the voices of Axe and Stone River shouting at each
other. Perhaps that was the tradition in the Crown of the World,
before a formal fight. He’d heard the same went for the Plains.

Shyri shrugged. She had pulled out some armour of layered
linen, which had been folded almost flat inside her pack, but
now hung on her in starched panels: a cuirass and plates hanging down to her knees. To his eyes, it made her seem younger
and more fragile.

Asmander had been noticing shifting movement at the
treeline for a while and, even as he opened his mouth, he heard
the calls of the great cats to one another. He narrowed his eyes,
watching for that first move, wondering if he would leap down
amongst them, or if he would let them come to him.

Then Shyri yelled a cackling battle cry, and dropped past him
with her axe descending. He heard the furious snarl of a tiger
from right beneath his feet and realized the enemy were already
upon him; that the Shadow Eaters had ghosted right up to the
stones without him seeing.

He did not hesitate, jumping down from the boulders and
Stepping halfway, so that what landed before a startled Tiger
warrior was the Champion, rattling its quills and shrieking like
death. His opponent was a man, a cat, then a man again, thrusting at him with a spear, but Asmander leapt at him, springing
high over the lunge and coming down across its shaft, shattering
the weapon and knocking its wielder to the ground. There were
more coming at him already, just flurries of movement in his
peripheral vision, so he kicked the disarmed spearman hard in
the stomach, catching him just as the man Stepped to his tiger
shape and bowling the striped cat down the hill.

Shyri had her bone-crushing teeth about a tiger’s foreleg,
shaking her spotted head back and forth as it raked its other
claws down her side. Then both of them had Stepped away, the
Plains woman’s axe sweeping past the northern woman’s face as
the Tiger retreated, ruined arm held close.

Another woman came for Shyri with fluid movements like
dancing water, cutting at her with the curved bronze edge of a
knife. The Laughing woman skidded aside, losing a foot of hillside, but then Stepped and went for the throat, teeth snapping
just short of her target before finding herself facing off against a
tiger considerably bigger than she was.

Asmander was about to go to her aid when he saw that one
of the Tigers had gained the top of the rocks, with nothing
between her and their quarry but a jump down. With a hiss of
anger he took three quick steps and leapt, clearing the vertical
distance in a single bound and landing off balance beside his
enemy. She flinched away, but a moment later she was on him,
claws hooking at his hide and her jaws gaping wide. She was
going for his throat, but all she managed was to graze the flesh
over one shoulder before he sank his own teeth into her. She
Stepped, using the shifting of shapes to twist from between his
jaws: this was the Tiger priestess who had led the hunt against
them the time before. Then she had got her knife into him, just
a glancing line of pain down his ribs. In an instant he had followed her, striking down with the stone points of the
maccan
.
She swayed out of the way of the blow, sliding to one side in a
move that put the point of her blade at his gut. Striking down,
he caught her forearm with the heel of his off-hand, ramming
the pommel of her weapon into her leg and trapping her arm
against her own body. Before he could use the leverage she had
pushed a hand into his face, almost toppling him from the rock.
She was a tiger in the next instant, and he was the Champion
again.

Shyri was facing three – two big cats keeping her at bay, and
a man beyond them with a fistful of javelins. They had all
dropped some way down the hill, closer to the treeline.

The priestess swatted at him a couple of times with a paw,
trying to put him off balance, but he suddenly he had no time to
fight properly. He struck out with his feet, not trying for a disembowelling stroke with his claws, but simply kicking the tiger
hard under the ribs, spilling her from atop the rock and hopefully winding her. Then he had leapt out into space.

He let his mind fall into the Champion’s well of calm, reaching out for a feeling, a way of experiencing the world . . .
The breath leapt in his lungs. His great leathery wings caught
the air and he shrieked for the sheer joy of it, the hideous cry of
the shape that Hesprec had sent against the Eyriemen. He
dropped onto the tigers like a monster from the old stories and
they scattered, darting back for the trees.
‘Back to the rocks,’ Shyri yelled – there might have been some
gratitude in her eyes, but there was no time for it to form proper
words. A moment later and they were both Stepped and running again. There was a cry from Maniye – he heard it clearly,
not of shock or pain but a wail of lament. For a terrible moment
Asmander thought that Hesprec must be hurt. Even as they
scaled to the base of the rocks, though, he heard the Serpent
priestess’s voice calling out.
‘Laughing Girl, come here now!’
Shyri, human once more, met Asmander’s lizard eyes.
‘That’s not a good plan,’ she declared.
Asmander forced himself back to humanity, though the
Champion resisted him, knowing bloodshed was coming and
wanting its share. ‘You must go,’ he got out.
‘But—’
‘The Serpent calls, and you must go. That is how it is.’
‘For you, maybe.’
‘Shyri, please.’
She looked frightened, but not for herself. Fearing what his
own face might show in answer to that, he let the Champion
take hold of him again, assuming his post atop the rocks once
more, watching Shyri weave her way around to reach the others.
The Tiger were coming out from the trees again, only a
handful, but there was only one of him.