The Tiger and the Wolf (13 page)

They struggled out into the snow again, which was now settling
steadily. Hurrying almost on the heels of their guide, neither
Maniye nor Hesprec were in any position to watch out around
them, nor did they have any animal senses to call on.

From between two of the Horses’ round huts, a wolf watched
them, pale enough to be almost invisible in the snow, save for
the darker fur about his shoulders. Narrowing his eyes against
the thickening flakes, Broken Axe considered his next move.

The hut they were led to was smaller, and empty, with the
embers of a central fire retaining just enough warmth for comfort. A raised platform furthest from the door bore a mess of
furs and woollen blankets for sleeping on.

The tall young Horse man clasped his hands together before
him. It meant nothing to her, but Hesprec echoed the gesture.
‘I am Alladei, hand-son of the Trading Master Ganris, who
directs all you see,’ the Horse announced, although he wore a
slightly complicit expression, as if to say,
Yes, grand words for so
little
. Maniye found herself warming to him, perhaps just
because he was the first person to show them some apparent
kindness.
‘I am Hesprec Essen Skese, priest of the Serpent and one
who has travelled far. Perhaps too far.’ The old man spoke with
a careful dignity that Maniye knew was to hide his ravaged
gums. Again, his accent matched that of the man he was speaking to.
‘My hand-father wishes to speak with you without many ears
to hear. I shall find you food and drink and all else you might
require.’ Again he brought his hands together, and then he was
backing out of the hut. All that time his attention had been only
on Hesprec, but his eyes sought out Maniye just as he was leaving, and she thought she caught a smile in them.
‘What is a “hand-son”?’ she wondered aloud. She had almost
thought he’d said ‘handsome’ at first.
‘He will not be of this Ganris’s blood, but adopted into his
family. In the Horse, they do all things their own way.’ Hesprec
was sending birdlike glances about the interior of the hut, and
now he hobbled over and sat on the platform, drawing one of
the furs about him.
Maniye frowned. ‘Of course they take care of their orphaned
– who would not?’
‘No, no, they
buy
them.’ Seeing her expression the old man
cackled. ‘The Horse buy children – some say steal them, but this
I do not believe. It can be a good life, to be of the Horse. When
there is no food, where a child might die otherwise, sometimes it
is done to sell them to the Horse.’
‘But . . . when they learn to Step . . . ?’
Hesprec shook his head. ‘There are ways, rituals . . . you
know this, surely? They sever them from their totems, then find
them new Horse souls, so that they become Horse tribe in
truth.’ He said it very matter-of-factly, but Maniye cringed at
the thought.
‘That’s horrible! How can they . . . ?’
‘What is in here that makes us
us
, it survives the loss of the
soul. It is only if no new soul comes that there is danger. The
Horse is generous, it has many souls to spare, no doubt.’ The old
man stared at her pensively. ‘Wolf girl, Tiger girl, you must know
that
you
too will have to wield that knife.’
For a terrible moment she thought he meant he would sell
her to the Horse. Then – more terrible still – she understood.
She had two warring souls within her. One day soon she would
have to sever one and cast it away. Tiger or Wolf: it was the
choice that had lurked in ambush for her since the day she was
born.
‘I don’t want to . . .’ she began stubbornly, hopelessly.
Hesprec opened his mouth to say something, whether reassuring or prescriptive she did not know, but the words failed
him and he said nothing. Pity looked wholly out of place on his
pallid countenance.
Then Alladei was back, ducking into the hut to spread out
another skin by the fire. On it he placed leather bowls: berries,
dried meat, quamash meal. His big, long-fingered hands worked
with exaggerated delicacy.
‘Please, eat,’ he invited them. ‘My hand-father is coming.’
Maniye had hoped he himself would stay, but he was already on
his way out, backwards again with his hands clasped together.
This time she mimicked the gesture.
She had a berry halfway to her mouth when the broad man,
Ganris, arrived. ‘Welcome to my home!’ he boomed. ‘Greetings,
strange travellers with special trades to make.’ He was so loud he
seemed to fill the whole hut. ‘You, old grandfather, may the sun
warm your bones! And you, little daughter, swift be your hunting and let the winter smile on you!’ His congratulatory smile
was more for himself, Maniye felt, for so thoroughly putting his
guests in their place.
He wasted no time in sitting down by the food, one hand
already reaching for it without the need to look. From somewhere he produced a skin of something, and he unlaced it and
took an ostentatious sniff at the contents.
It turned out to be goat milk, when it reached Maniye,
although warmed and spiced with something. Once she had
tried it she was highly reluctant to surrender it back to Ganris.
Hesprec, for his part, had taken the tiniest sip, just enough to be
a good guest, before passing it on.
‘Now, speak of your special trading,’ Ganris invited them.
‘Out of the great respect I have for the Sun River Nation and its
revered priesthood, I will listen.’
‘Out of the respect I have for the Horse Society and its traditions, which is no less, I shall speak,’ Hesprec agreed, twisting
his thin lips to get the words right. ‘Winter has come to the
Crown of the World, as all can see. This is no time for the civilized and the sensible to let themselves freeze here. You must be
ready to travel south for the Plains, and two such as we would
hardly slow you, on land or water. It would be a grand honour
to travel with the Horse.’
Ganris nodded self-importantly, his manner indicating that
such would indeed be a grand honour for them. ‘I would hesitate to inflict the hardship of our travels on two so distinguished
travellers. No doubt you would find our ways coarse, our hospitality mean, compared to what you are used to.’ He took in
Hesprec’s mismatched clothing, and the general feel of dirt and
weariness that hung over the pair of them.
‘We are hardy, we will endure,’ Hesprec replied unflappably.
‘And this is not all, surely?’ Ganris prompted. ‘Two such as
you would not trouble yourselves for such a meagre matter.’
The old man took a deep breath, and in it Maniye saw just
how tired he was. Her feet had carried them here from the
Winter Runners, but the sheer effort of talking was wearing him
down.
‘We would impose on your hospitality for new clothing, perhaps, and I am sure the matter of provisions need not even be
discussed, so sumptuous are your riches.’
‘Sumptuous.’ Ganris rolled the word over his tongue, plainly
pleased with a new acquisition. ‘But the gratitude of the priesthood of the Sun River Nation would no doubt put what little aid
we can render into shadow.’
Maniye felt a tightness within her. Now they were talking
about what Hesprec had to bargain with. That had always been
the hole in their plan. If the old man was as ragged and wretched
as he looked, then they might as well barter for the sun and the
moon as for some new clothes and passage south.
‘Opulence,’ Hesprec said precisely, ‘shall be yours when you
return this son of the south to the Serpent’s coils.’
‘And the girl, too?’ Abruptly the florid-speaking Ganris was
gone, and someone shrewd and calculating was in his place.
Does he think I’m a slave?
Maniye thought, tense and growing
tenser, tiger and wolf both clamouring to rise up and reshape
her.
Will he offer to buy me?
And then:
Would Hesprec sell me?
After all, she had travelled with the old man for just a few days.
She did not know him. She could not trust him.
‘The girl, too,’ Hesprec agreed firmly.
‘She is not of the south,’ Ganris observed.
‘Her soul has flown far from its last resting place,’ the old
man revealed. ‘Why else would one such as I travel so, save to
return to my home a soul dear to the Serpent that has been born
into the cold jaws of the Wolf?’ He said it with utter assurance.
Ganris, finding the skin back in his hands, took a deep
draught from it. ‘Remarkable,’ he gasped, at the end.
‘Such are the ways of souls. Even a priest such as I cannot be
said to understand all things.’ Hesprec managed his thin smile.
‘Can we be said to have a bargain?’
Ganris’s mouth twisted. ‘The gratitude of priests . . .’ he
prompted.
‘Gold, jade, obsidian, greater than all of these is the gratitude
of Serpent for those that restore one of his own.’
‘And the girl . . . ?’
‘We are inseparable,’ Hesprec confirmed politely.
Ganris nodded, then stood up smoothly, rising from crossed
legs despite the bulk of him. ‘Well, I am only a humble Trading
Master, barely Hetman in anything but name. I must speak to
my people and plead your case, to persuade them that our journey south shall be observed by strangers.’
‘The Serpent’s eyes are hooded. He sees only that which is
wise,’ Hesprec pronounced – overly mystically in Maniye’s opinion.
‘Even so.’ Ganris did the same thing with his hands as Alladei
had, and then he backed out.
Maniye locked eyes with Hesprec, studying him just as he
was studying her.

Amiyen Shatters Oak was one of the Winter Runners’ greatest
hunters, and for that, she was bitter. Though Smiles Without
Teeth might be stronger, and Hare Killer might be fleeter, there
were few who could so claim to have all the gifts of a hunter in
one body. Perhaps there was none.

In her human form she was stocky and powerful, her bristling
dark hair cut close to her scalp to afford no purchase for grasping fingers. As a wolf she was the equal of any of them in size
and ferocity. Stepping could be a great equalizer.

Yet, she would never be chief of the Winter Runners. She
could prove herself as good as any man, or twice as good, and
the honour would still be barred her. That was what made her
grind her teeth.

She had sons, though. The honours denied to her, she could
still secure for them. She had taught them ambition and
patience, how to stalk with care, then to seize the prize in their
jaws and not let go.

And sons were something Akrit did not have, take as many
wives as he liked. Only one woman had borne his get, and he’d
had her killed the moment the squalling creature was pulled
from her womb. Amiyen was willing to wager he was regretting
that now.

She had two sons – two more than Stone River would ever
have. Rubrey was the elder, not the best of hunters and yet to
earn a name for himself, but he was blessed with a dogged
determination to see things through, and already had a following
of young hunters. Her younger son, Iramey Arrow Taker, had
earned his name after he had gone off into the highlands to take
a tiger skin, and come back with a shaft in his leg to mark his
recklessness. He had learned little from the experience, to Amiyen’s frustration, least of all that enthusiasm was no substitute
for planning and forethought. It was to cure him of his foolishness that she had brought him here with her.

Rumour amongst the traders placed the girl here – or at least
identified the old Snake, who was more easily spotted. She could
not have said what prompted her to take Iramey and run swiftpawed all the way to the trading post: one of those decisions she
made mid-hunt, little hunches and suspicions leading her to an
elusive quarry.

And now the quarry was Akrit’s own daughter. Now
there
was a hunt worth exerting herself for.
If only the girl could be mated to one of Amiyen’s sons, that
would solve so many problems. Akrit had scoffed at the idea
when she had brought it up, though. He had other plans, it
seemed. Any man who became Maniye’s mate would be in a
strong place to become chief after Stone River. Amiyen had no
interest in anyone gaining such an advantage over her own
brood when the time came.
The Horse Trading Master was all polite niceties, at first
committing himself to nothing, asking for a more detailed
description of the girl, Maniye. Then at last the fat man was
admitting to having heard some rumour, perhaps seen some
glimpse . . . ? Yes, they had been here. Yes, perhaps they were
still here – he did not know. Except that he
did
know. He was
just trying to find a way to betray a guest without sullying Horse
honour. In the end he had said nothing, yet at the same time
told her everything. Amiyen stood up and stretched, tugging at
the collar of her hide jerkin to show she was too hot, and ducked
outside with Iramey padding at her heels.

‘Did you mean what you said?’ Maniye asked, after letting the
silence between them stretch out as long as it could without
snapping.

Hesprec cocked an eye at her and said nothing.
‘You said,’ she went on, ‘that you came all the way here, to the
Crown of the World, for me. Because of my soul.’ In the face of
his closed lips, the words tumbled out of her. ‘And why would
you be here? Why travel so far? And . . . and you’re a priest, a
magician. You might see . . .’ She was disgusted by the hope in
her own voice.
Would some southern madness result in everything she had
done, all those lonely years of childhood, gaining a significance
and justification it had always lacked? Until that moment she
had never quite realized that such a hole existed in her.
But Hesprec was just shaking his head slowly. ‘I am sorry,
Maniye, it was just a story.’
‘You’re lying.’ She was clinging to a sinking boat just one
moment longer.
‘It was simply something to say, to the question Ganris asked
me. I apologize if my powers of invention have misled you. And,
while I cannot claim any grand destiny led me to you, believe
me when I say I am very, very grateful that blind fortune nonetheless did.’
Then Alladei was thrusting his way back into the hut with a
sack over his shoulder.
‘Get up,’ he ordered them tersely. ‘You have to leave here.’ He
upended the bag and shook loose a wad of bundled clothing.
‘Get these on. They will warm you more than what you have.
Especially you, old Serpent.’
There were fleece-lined sheepskin robes there, and fur hats
and boots, all fashioned in the Horse style. None of it fitted
overly well – too large on Maniye while too short and too wide
on Hesprec, but they donned them hastily. There was a bag of
food too: dried fruit, nuts and shreds of meat jerky all mixed
together.
‘What is going on?’ the Snake priest asked mildly, as he
pulled on a boot.
‘The Winter Runners are here in the camp,’ Alladei told them
tersely. ‘They are seeking you. You are our guests.’ Every line of
his body was urging them to hurry. ‘We do not take sides, and
we do not know why they want you, and we do not want to be
a part of a war within the Winter Runners, still less some business between them and the south. So: we clothe you, we invite
you to leave. We tell them you were here but – ah! – gone now,
who could have thought it?’
‘And then?’ Maniye asked him.
‘They track you, they do not track you. They catch you or
they do not catch you,’ he said. ‘But it is not here inside our
walls that it happens. Our duty as hosts is not breached. For
what value I can give my wishes, I hope you stay a step ahead,
all the way to where you are going. And perhaps, if this turns
out to be the right thing to do, you will remember your friends
of the Horse Society in a better year.’
‘And where should we go?’ she demanded.
‘How can I say?’ He shrugged. ‘But downriver, in Swift Back
lands, there is a larger trading post, big enough that we keep
people there all year.’
For a moment, Maniye wanted to be angry at him, but she
saw that it could just as easily have been Akrit’s hunters bursting
in on them, and that would probably have been the safer course
for Ganris’s people. And Alladei seemed sincere when he wished
them well. She could read in him that he wanted to do more, but
he was caught by the bonds that laced him to his people and his
hand-father.
‘We will go,’ agreed Hesprec. He was fully attired now – perhaps the two of them could even have walked through the
trading post and passed as Horse people, with the falling snow
to shadow their features. Their disparate heights would betray
them though – such a small girl, such a tall, gangling man – too
suspicious not to draw a closer look. There was only one way to
go.
‘In the bag, old Serpent,’ she instructed, far more bravely
than she felt.
Hesprec Stepped into that same reptile form and slithered
into her satchel, and she slung it over her shoulders.
‘Our thanks,’ she told Alladei. ‘My thanks.’
He nodded soberly. ‘Swift roads and fair forage,’ and then,
‘and look out for us in the spring.’
Then she had shifted her own form, reducing down to that
small wolf that lived within her, tugging at the bag’s strap with
her teeth to tighten it. And there was nothing for it but to nose
past the hanging furs and out into the same snow that must
even now be falling on Akrit’s hunters as they searched for her.
For a moment, surrounded by the scents and structures of
men, she could not get her bearings: no idea which way was
north, which south – all her wolf senses bewildered. Then she
found the river that the trading post was built against, cluttered
with the log rafts and canoes that the Horse Society would soon
use to carry themselves and their goods south for the winter.
South was where she needed to go too, and for a moment she
paused at the water’s edge, cringing back from the boots of the
Horse men and women who were already loading tightly bundled packages on their boats. Should she leap aboard and find
some place to hide herself? But the Horse men had not given
Hesprec their agreement – she would be like a thief, uninvited
and outside any protection of hospitality. She could be dumped
in the river as quick as thought once they discovered her, and all
their fair dealings with Alladei, their talk with Ganris, would
mean nothing. She did not know these people well enough, nor
could she trust them.
She would have consulted with the old Snake if she could but
he was coiled inside her pack, and she did not dare take her
human form, not now she was being hunted. There was no
escape here, save the water, and that was cold and swift enough
to be more than a match for her ability to swim it. Mind made
up, she was darting off, heading for the landward gate of the
trading post.
Everything was a shadow in the swirling snow until she came
within a few yards of it. Save for the labouring Horse people,
there was nobody abroad, and she hoped that any of Akrit’s
people were similarly resting out the weather under Horse Society roofs. She dodged and scrabbled around the curved walls of
the Horse huts, hunting for the way out into the open.
She spotted the other wolf all too late.
He had been waiting patiently, standing quite still as though
he had somehow known she must come this way. She was going
fast enough that she almost ran straight past him, within reach
of his jaws. As it was, she scrabbled and slipped in the piling
snow, skidding over onto her side as she desperately tried to
stop.
He stared at her, head high. She recognized him. Man or
beast, she would know Broken Axe.
Her guts turned to ice within her, and for a moment she could
not move, shocked rigid with fear as he began to step calmly
forwards, lifting his feet fastidiously to reach over the drifts.
His eyes – pale and clear as no wolf of the wilds would own
to – lanced into her, and her mind was flailing frantically, wondering whether he would seize her in his jaws or Step into his
lean, hard human body with axe already in hand.
Something broke inside her. Either she fought down her fear
or it consumed her utterly, but she was on her feet, under his
very nose, and launching herself off, one of her rear feet raking
a claw across his muzzle as he lunged forwards.
She zigged and zagged, hoping to gain enough distance that
the snow would lose her. She felt no breath at her heels, and
guessed that he was already trying to flank her, to head her off
– and that he would appear before her any moment, lunging out
of the weather like a nightmare.
She dashed around the wall of another hut, seeing an openness before her that she hoped was the gate, and an arm caught
her about the throat, dragging her off her feet, tight enough
around her neck that she was ripped straight into her human
form, hauled kicking and yelling into the wind-shadow of the
hut.
Something cold pressed at her cheek. She knew it for iron
instantly – no child of the Wolf would not: the long, narrow chill
of a knife blade.
‘If it’s not Stone River’s child,’ a woman’s voice said softly in
her ear. Stripped of the speed of her wolf shape, Maniye was
suddenly terrified in a quite different way – worse even than
almost running into Broken Axe’s open jaws. Her human hide
seemed far more fragile and vulnerable than any animal’s, and
with the arm close about her neck she could not Step away, like
a thrall wearing a collar.
Another wolf crossed her view: not Broken Axe but a young
male – and a moment later she recognized his slightly awkward
loping as that of Iramey, Amiyen Shatters Oak’s youngest.
Which meant that the voice and the arm belonged to . . .
‘Amiyen,’ she got out, ‘please . . .’ No more than that, for
what could she say? What did she have to barter with, after all?
Yet still the hopeless words emerged. ‘Not back to my father,
please.’
The huntress chuckled in her ear. ‘Is that your last true wish,
Stone River’s child?’ The knife moved, just a minor readjustment but it had all of Maniye’s attention. Abruptly the edge of it
was at her throat.
‘But he . . .’ Her world lost what little balance it had left.
Through all of this, she had been convinced of one thing: the
fate she was fleeing was that described to her by drunken Akrit
that evening after the Testing. She was fleeing Broken Axe. She
was fleeing her part in her father’s plan to use her to somehow
bludgeon the Tiger into his service. What she had not thought
she was fleeing, until now, was death itself. Oh, death for Hesprec, certainly, but he had been staring that in the face already.
Death for herself had never been a possibility. Until now.
‘Oh, your father . . . your father will not be chief forever,’
came Amiyen’s sharp-edged voice. ‘Your father has no sons,
Stone River’s daughter. But he has you, and while he has you,
who knows what might happen after he is gone? But without
you . . .’
Maniye actually felt the steeling of the muscles that was
Amiyen drawing together the will to kill her chief’s flesh and
blood. She was not the only one.
Something thin and hissing reared furiously at her shoulder,
striking with gaping jaws at Amiyen’s face.The huntress shrieked,
fearing the venom, no room in her head for the memory that the
old Serpent had been thoroughly de-fanged. She fell back with
her hands out to shield herself, her head striking hard against
the wooden side of the hut and the knife falling away.
The arm was gone from about her neck, and Maniye Stepped
instantly, racing past Iramey and away, feeling the shifting and
sliding of weight that was Hesprec being jolted back into her
pack.
The gate was ahead, and she bolted for it, seeing Iramey’s
sleek-furred form at the edge of her vision as he moved in on
her flank with fangs bared to bite. She shied away from him,
feeling his teeth catch at her fur. He was forcing her away from
the gate, even if he could not get his fangs in her. Amiyen must
be close behind. In their Stepped shapes, with their blood up,
they would tear her apart.
Then he was gone with a yelp, tripped or stumbling, and she
dashed ahead and out, beyond the palisade and into the furious
teeth of the snow – but still better that than the teeth of the
Winter Runners.