The Tiger and the Wolf (31 page)

The Snake priest stood up abruptly, ritual words forgotten.
Asmander stared at him uncertainly. Hesprec Essen Skese had
been seeking the Serpent within the earth, digging deep with his
mind to find and wake his buried god. He had been speaking
softly: familiar words of faith that left Asmander oddly homesick. Strange how he had not really felt that strained tether that
was trying to draw him back south until he had run into this
reminder of that other invisible world. Until then, he had felt
more as if he was running away.

Now the old man was on his feet, benediction forgotten, staring off towards the stones.
‘Messenger,’ Asmander addressed him formally, ‘has the Serpent spoken to you?’
‘Something is wrong.’ It emerged as just a murmur from
those withered lips, but he caught it.
Without warning, the old priest was off, hurrying away and
leaving Asmander caught between a desire to follow and the old
understanding that there were deeds of priests that other men
were best not knowing about.
In the end he followed though. He thought he heard shouting
from the far side of the island. Even as he set off he felt as
though the ground beneath him was suddenly treacherous, as
though the swamp itself was rising to reclaim it. He felt a great
and unseen fracture threatening in the sky.
Hesprec was hurrying – or as much as he could – to where a
scattering of huge men loomed around a tent. They were all on
their feet, looking puzzled and sullenly angry, but uncertain, too,
glowering around for whatever had disturbed them. One or two
of them Stepped, surging into even larger forms that grunted
and shook their heads and bared their fearsome teeth at each
other. Asmander had never encountered a bear, but he knew
one when he saw it. The stories he had heard about the north
did not do them justice.
The flap of the tent rippled, and then a woman shouldered
her way out, as big as the men and clad in a vast robe of hides
that was sewn all over with bird skulls. Her broad, flat face was
turned up to the clouds, and Asmander saw her sniff the air. Her
expression was unreadable, totally closed to outside scrutiny.
Hesprec stumbled to a halt, head turning left and right but
plainly not finding what he was looking for. Asmander stood
apart, still with no idea what was happening.
Then he saw a flurry of movement over towards the stones
themselves: a fleet, low shape skimming the ground, a small,
grey-pelted wolf – with a greater beast behind it. He took it for
a ritual: a mock-hunt invoking of the greater Wolf they set such
stock on here.
Hesprec let out a sharp hiss, and Asmander understood that
this was no piece of religious theatre.
The smaller wolf tried to break away towards them, but its
pursuer got in front of it, herding it away, driving it towards the
stones themselves. Hesprec took a deep breath and began to
hurry towards them, but he was slow and old and Asmander
could see that the hunt would be at an end long before the Serpent could intervene. And here, old and frail and far from his
own places of power, what could he do anyway?
Then the little wolf was at bay, trapped with its back to the
ring of stones, and Asmander saw it shift into a girl, and its pursuer turn into Akrit Stone River.
By then, Venater and Shyri had caught up with him, both of
them equally baffled by what was going on.
‘Wondered when he’d show his face,’ the old pirate grunted.
‘You going to ask him to lend you some warriors? Looks like a
perfect time.’
‘Stop your lips flapping for once,’ Asmander told him tautly.
‘Can’t you feel it?’
It was plain that Venater couldn’t, but to Asmander it was as
though the entire island, all the invisible, roiling presences that
had gathered here, were bending close to see what the two
Wolves would do next.

Maniye could feel the stone circle at her back, like a fire. She
had only been hounded a short way, but her heart was hammering as though she had run herself ragged for two full days.
Before her, her father appeared like a monolith himself, as heavy
and intractable as the stones.

She could see careful movement as the others fanned out to
ensure she did not try to slip aside. There would be Smiles
Without Teeth and her father’s other hunters and old Kalameshli – all the antagonists of her childhood.

‘Child, come here,’ Stone River ordered her flatly. He was
holding his temper by a thin thread, but he still held it.
She bared her teeth, those silly, blunt human teeth. ‘I’m not a
child. I passed my trials.’
‘You are my blood. You are my tribe. You are born within the
Shadow of the Wolf,’ he told her. ‘You have a purpose, for the
Wolf and for me.’ He threw a hand out towards her. ‘Come
here.’ It exerted a terrible gravity, that hand. It tugged at her and
at all her memories, reminding her of every time she had tried
to defy him; reminding her of why she had gone from day to
day trying to stay out of even the corner of his eye.
But she fought against it, that hand. ‘I am Maniye Many
Tracks. I hunt alone.’ She did not say,
Like Broken Axe
, and she
was uncomfortably aware that Broken Axe himself was nowhere
she could see.
‘You are no hunter.’ And he was a step closer, not with a
sudden movement, but just a casual shuffle, till that hand was
within a lunge of grabbing her. She could feel the Stone Place’s
presence all about her. She felt as though the whole island held
its breath.
‘I am Maniye Many Tracks,’ she repeated. ‘I do not accept
you as my – chief.’ She choked off the word ‘father’. ‘I leave the
Winter Runners. I am a tribe of one alone until I choose
another.’ She did not know how she knew the words so well.
When had she ever heard them recited? Still, they were the correct words. They were the words of her rights, as one born to the
Wolf. Let her leave her tribe: they might hunt her, they might
drive her away or even kill her, but they could not force her to
be one of them.
But she saw from her father’s face that this was not his
understanding, and that in his mind she was still a possession of
his. He had his use for her, and he would not let her go. She
learned then how fragile tradition was when set against human
ambition. He was the chief of the Winter Runners, so who
would gainsay him?
‘Girl,’ he said, and then he had lunged for her, the hand darting in to claim its property, and she Stepped and ran in the only
direction he had left to her. She fled inside the circle, and he
followed on his own wolf feet.
The feeling was like a hammerblow. It was like running into a
gale. She had made a terrible mistake. She was no priest, able to
run through the eye of the gods like this. She was cursed, surely
she was cursed.
Time seemed to stretch, her dash across the stone circle
becoming a trek of hours. She could feel them all and their
sharp-edged scrutiny: the hungry, drowning spirit that made
this place its own; the killing cold gaze of winter; the impassive
distance of the mountains; the mind-wreckingly vast expanse of
the sky; the stars; the moon. Beneath all these, the little huddle
of totems that actually recognized the people of the Crown of
the World seemed terribly small. Still they were closer, though,
close enough to touch. She sensed their hostile regard, their outrage: Bear, Deer, Boar, Seal, all of them drawing back in horror,
preparing their condemnation of her.
Beyond them, two others circled, always at opposite edges of
the circle, constantly stalking one another: Wolf and Tiger. For a
terrible moment she thought they might make her choose then
and there. But, no, they kept at their pacing, watching her. They
waited to see what she would do. She had made the challenge,
now. She had called out to the whole world by trespassing here.
They were judging her.
And they were not helping her. There was a groaning weight
of fear on her shoulders, the moment she understood what she
had done, and yet Tiger and Wolf just circled and watched. She
was at the very centre of the circle, and her legs wanted to give
up. She was ready to lie down on her side and simply die. This
was the will of all the great and distant spirits. A speck had
crossed into their sight, and they wanted it gone.
She faltered, mis-stepping, feeling something clench about
her heart like a clawed hand. The inside of the circle became like
a maze of unseen walls. Abruptly she had lost her bearings. She
could not find her way out. The hot breath of Akrit Stone River
behind her seemed infinitely less frightening that what she had
blundered into.
But there seemed to be a line across the ground, within her
sight. A crooked line, but a path nonetheless. It was picked out
by a shadow, as though something long and twisted was coursing beneath the earth. A foreign presence, as unwelcome as she
was, and yet, though the Wolf might dig and the Boar root, they
could not bring it into the light.
Her feet lit on the track of that shadow and then she had
found her stride again. Akrit’s teeth closed on thin air, and she
was out of the circle.
She had only seconds. The other Winter Runners, Akrit’s
entourage, had split on either side of the stones to flank her, and
Akrit was right at her back still. She had been driven away from
the Bear camp – as if they would have aided her – and surely at
any moment Broken Axe would appear before her to head her
off. It was what he did, after all. He was the hunter who knew
the mind of his prey every time.
And then there was a sudden flurry of violence behind her,
and Akrit was no longer at her back. On her left, Smiles Without
Teeth veered away to help his chief, and she cut across where
his path would have taken him, pulling away from her pursuers
on the other side. She had a brief, blurred glimpse of Akrit and
another wolf tumbling over and over, snapping at one another’s
throats.

Akrit had seen the brief blur of motion from the corner of one
eye, even as he was about to edge into a final burst of speed and
overrun the girl. Something in that flash of grey told him
everything he needed to know: not one of his people coming in
to head Maniye off, but an enemy. An enemy born also in the
Shadow of the Wolf. There was only one man it could be.

He veered away, so that Water Gathers’ fangs just grazed his
flank instead of latching onto his leg, and then he had twisted to
lunge back, the two of them rising briefly to their hindlegs to
snarl and snap at each other, before going down, locked
together, forepaws tearing, muzzle twisting past muzzle, as they
tried to get their teeth around something vital of their opponent.

He must be mad, to dare this!
Akrit was now on the defensive,
giving ground and stunned by the sheer presumption. Impressed,
almost: he would not have thought that Water Gathers had the
warrior’s courage to brave the taboos of the island like this.

Another thought came, and he lost another handful of paces,
retreating from his antagonist, knowing that some of his people
were hanging back around him, unsure whether to aid him or
not – or kept back by Water Gathers’ own bodyguard.

What if he isn’t the transgressor?
What if it’s me?
There had been Kalameshli plucking at his sleeve, trying to

restrain him, but the girl had been right in front of him, and she
had disobeyed him: she had the temerity to tell him
No
. She was
his daughter, wilful runt that she was. She was
his
, to do with as
he wished.

He lunged without warning at Water Gathers, a brief low
duck, as though he was about to submit, and then jaws agape at
the othe wolf’s neck, forcing him back.

And yet the girl was an adult now. By the Wolf’s ways, she
was free to take up the lone life, and to come and go as she
pleased – to live or die by her own meagre skills, if that was what
she chose.

But Akrit
needed
her. He needed her as his weapon against
the Tiger. In his mind his three prizes circled and circled like
distant hawks in the sky: the high chiefdom; control of his
daughter; final victory over the Tiger. He had lost track of which
he wanted most. He knew only that these three goals were interdependent, and that he was Akrit Stone River of the Winter
Runners and he would have them all. The Wolf was always
hungry. The Wolf was never satisfied.

With that, he gained an access of strength and speed, leaping
on Water Gathers and drawing blood about the other wolf’s
snout, tearing with his teeth, heedless of the claw-raking that he
took in return. Then Water Gathers Stepped, a human in an
instant, his hand coming down and the morning light gleaming
on his axe-blade. Akrit matched him shape for shape, catching
the arm and wrestling him over the weapon, the two men staggering back and forth, now one of them in control, now the
other.

There were voices, he knew; he heard them distantly. Voices
of men, though, and right then he was not interested in their
opinions. Priests were calling for them to be stopped, but the
warriors of both Wolf tribes were guarding the fight, the decision
coming upon them all at once that this personal conflict had
become something more, something divine. The chiefs of the
Winter Runners and the Many Mouths were mad for each other’s blood, here at the Stone Place, and surely this was the gods’
plan.

Then Water Gathers had twisted away from his grip, with the
axe cocked back to strike or to throw. Akrit sent a kick thundering into the hard muscles of his opponent’s stomach, so that the
other man reeled away, gasping, swiping weakly with a blow that
Akrit deflected with his forearm. For a moment his hands found
purchase: behind the knee, at the elbow. Then he had dropped
his weight under Water Gathers and thrown him in a perfect
demonstration of the warrior’s art, a display of experience over
youth.

Maninli’s son landed well though, on one knee, and then
lurched back onto his feet, drawing the axe back again.
But Akrit was a wolf once more, even as Water Gathers had
been flipping through the air, and he came up under the man’s
striking reach, too close for the axe-blade, and clamped his jaws
about his enemy’s throat.
The rush of blood down his throat filled him with fire. He
could not have said if he had planned to kill the other man,
rather than just shake him into submission, but with that blood
in his mouth a terrible rage rose in him: the Wolf’s own fury. He
shook and he worried and he slammed the man down, so that
the axe bounced away and clinked against the altar. Water Gathers was scrabbling at his eyes with soft human fingers, but Akrit
twisted and savaged and choked, until the struggles of his enemy
grew weaker and weaker, lack of air, loss of blood. And he himself grew stronger. He felt the Wolf decant the man’s strength
into him, a ladleful at a time.
And when the son of Maninli was dead, he saw at last that his
throw, his leap, had carried them both back into the circle of the
stones, and he felt the whole world of the invisible poised above
him, like a mountain waiting to fall.
He knew he should despair that he had done such a thing in
this place. He knew he should cower in terror.
But he was born in the Shadow of the Wolf. He was the
hunter, the warrior, the spiller of blood. Fear was not his way.
So he lifted his head to the angry, purpled skies and howled
out his defiance, his triumph, and outside the circle the other
Wolves howled too: Winter Runner and Many Mouths together,
and the cry was taken up across the island, tribe by tribe, until
every son and daughter of the Wolf was giving vent to that long,
lonesome call: triumph and melancholy in one, the voice of
winter, the cry of the Wolf.