The Tiger and the Wolf (33 page)

The next morning they had visitors. A handful more Tigers
arrived, and with them came a stout, copper-skinned woman
dressed in a long sheepskin coat of the Horse style. They
appeared with a pair of stocky horses, shorter and shaggier than
the beasts that Maniye was used to.

‘There has been a change of plans,’ Aritchaka explained to
them. ‘We have a third to come with us – the girl.’
The Horse woman nodded, unperturbed. ‘Let her ride
behind me. All she needs to do is hold on.’
The priestess took Maniye’s shoulder, pulling her close. ‘I
had planned to withdraw to our lands carrying warnings of the
Wolf. Now it seems I shall bring them something more, no?’ She
stared into the girl’s eyes. ‘I see here no second thoughts or
regrets. Do I see right?’
Maniye swallowed and nodded. There was a great deal in her
mind about what she was leaving behind, but so few scraps of it
were good and so much was baggage she was glad to shed.
She had never known her mother, for it had been right after
her birth that Stone River had given the Tiger woman over to
Broken Axe to dispose of. In all her years, the people of the
Tiger had seemed nothing but a night terror, an enemy, the victims in tales of heroism in battle, a name to curse by, a byword
for cruelties and dishonours since avenged. That they must
exist, as a real people with a real history, she could surmise, but
they had never seemed as such to her. Not until she saw them at
the Stone Place.
Now here she was, leaving the Shadow of the Wolf, crossing
its penumbra into that other Shadow that her mother had once
cast.
The other Tigers would disperse by their own paths, leaving
plenty of trails for any Wolf hunters to follow. They would go
over rugged, rough country, by water and by rock, and yet still
they might be overtaken by the swift feet of the Winter Runners.
Maniye and Aritchaka, in contrast, would take a wider route
along paths that the emissaries of the Horse Society had beaten
out of animal trails, winding back and forth up the face of the
highlands, through the dense forests to where the snow still lingered, and the Tiger held court.
The journey for her was a numbing one: holding tightly to
the thick coat of the Horse woman as the two beasts picked their
way up tracks that were nearly invisible, passing like ghosts
through a landscape that grew ever more still and frozen the
higher they climbed. The horses were astonishingly sure-footed,
and the stocky woman whispered to them and chided them
whenever they baulked, promising them rest and good feed and
the respect of the Horse Society if they did their duty. She went
in front, Maniye clinging gamely on, and behind came Aritchaka,
riding with the ease of long practice, her boat slung from her
saddle like a shield.
When the night drew in, there was always somewhere close
that the Horse woman already knew: a cave, a secluded hollow,
a skeletal frame of wood that she pulled hides over to trap their
body heat. She never spoke to Maniye – probably sensing the
uncertain position the girl currently held – nor gave her name.

They drew ever further from any lands that Maniye knew, travelling more east than northwards until the hills had become
forested foothills, and the sun rose over a horizon toothed with
mountains. They were south of the Bear lands, she guessed, but
still climbing to where winter yet lingered, scowling down at the
tides of spring that had driven it from the lowlands. Considering
how matters stood between the Tiger and the Wolf, the image
seemed appropriate.

Surely by now they had left any Wolf pursuit behind, and yet
Maniye kept her eyes on the gloom between the trees, expecting
at any moment to spot a pale wolf with a dark patch across his
shoulders. In doing so, she began to notice other things.

The people of the Wolf built with earth and with wood, and
while the Cave Dwellers lived beneath stone ceilings, such roofs
were found and not made. Aside from monuments and monoliths, Maniye had never thought that anything substantial could
be raised out of such uncooperative stuff. She had not known
how her mother’s people had made stone their slave.

There was not much to see at first, just traces of a people
vanished from these lands. Sometimes there would be a pile of
rocks that seemed oddly squared-off and regular. Once, butting
onto the trail, she saw a big block, rounded a little by the weather
but with its uppermost side still bearing grime-highlighted carving.

Then, one night, they stopped in what had been a tower
before it became a ruin. The forest all about was scattered with
dismembered fragments of stone but the lower level of the
structure was still mostly intact – a jagged stump like a broken
tooth. It was squat and square, with each corner buttressed out
with fantastical carving. They had reached it after dusk, so
Maniye had only the sense of it being a pale bulk between the
trees, the stone seeming faintly luminous in the moonlight,
despite the encroaching fingers of moss and lichen.

The Horse woman did her best to stretch some blankets over
the uneven stones at the top, leaving them a cramped, dark
space beneath, the ground under them lumpy and uneven from
the detritus of the tower’s collapse. Maniye gathered in all the
driest wood she could find – for the rain had not quite been
their constant companion, though a frequent guest. Still, she
worked hard at it, because only for the last two nights had she
been trusted to return if she wandered.

Once a fire was lit, Maniye had a chance to view their surroundings more clearly. The nascent flames threw a leaping,
ruddy light across the truncated walls all around them, and
everywhere seemed carved into images that led the eye one to
another. She felt that, wherever she looked, she was immediately
plunged into the midst of an unfamiliar story told using alien
conventions. This carving had been intricate once, whole panels
of the walls given over to abstract representations of forests
where the spaces between each tree were deeper trees, and
where the forms of men and women and beasts were constantly
hinted at. If she let her eyes be led, she could see battles there,
and hunting and the gathering of crops. She could discern worship and bloody sacrifice, the raising of great halls, the
veneration of heroes and gods. And then she would become too
absorbed and refocus her eyes, and not know what was truly
there, or what had just been drawn out of her head.

Aritchaka gave a satisfied grunt, plainly waiting for the question. ‘An outpost of . . .’ a moment’s pause, ‘
our
people. Your
father’s warriors destroyed it, burning its beams so that the
stones fell.’ Her face was fierce and angry in the firelight. ‘There
are many such places as this, relics of the golden days, the Days
of Plenty.’

She meant when the Tiger had ruled, before her father and
the other chiefs of the Wolf had broken them – in the days of
Stone River’s youth and the years before she was born.

Interpreting her expression, the priestess said, ‘You yourself
will have heard only the lies of the Wolf about those days. When
we are at the Shining Halls, you will instead hear many truths.’
After a thought, she added, ‘And you will tell us many truths.’

The Shining Halls had been mentioned before: their destination was the stronghold of the Tiger that the Wolf’s rampage had
never approached.

‘Will you go to war against my father’s people?’ Maniye asked
in a whisper.
‘Would you like that?’ Aritchaka turned the question back on
her.
Maniye regarded her across the fire for a long moment, and
then nodded.

Asmander was not really surprised by the company they found
at the campfire. Since leaving the Riverlands, his journey had
become less and less the steps of a man in the physical world,
more the passage of a figure from myth. He had hunted a vanished tribe on the Plains, and stood amongst the ruins of the
Old Stone Kingdom. He had bared his soul to the gods of
the north. He had borne mute witness as the Wolf tore through
the heart of the Crown of the World and stood, howling, on its
corpse.

And in truth, he would not have known that any of it was
unusual, save for the reactions of the locals.
For a variety of complex reasons they had taken the east
road, once they had extricated themselves from the Stones and
the marsh and its suddenly agitated denizens. The causeway had
become a chaos of jostling and sudden violence, but water was
no hindrance to a son of the Tsotec. He and Venater had taken
turns in searching out a pathway of firm land for the other and
Shyri to follow, both of them just as at ease in the marsh as they
were on dry land, but neither of them able to bear the chill for a
long stretch. Asmander wondered, later, whether that careful
journey might not have gone differently had he not already
squared himself with the local gods and totems. The spirit of a
marsh was a poor thing to be on the wrong side of, if one were
crossing it.
On the marsh’s edge they had found a disintegrating little
band of priests and traders and acolytes all come together to
find their kinsmen and then depart. There they met the Coyote
woman, Quiet When Loud, looking for her mate.
There were many there who were desperate, many who were
grieving. Asmander was not truly sure who, if anyone, the
Wolves had killed – save the one of their own that everyone
knew about – but every missing face seemed to provide cause to
fear the worst. Likely there were another half-dozen such temporary camps about the edges of the marsh, each full of people
looking for absent others.
Quiet When Loud was not panicking, but her eyes certainly
lit up when she spotted the three southerners. Because that was
a notably better reaction than they got from most of the locals,
Asmander gladly wound his way to her.
‘Where are you heading?’ she asked them, and seemed satisfied with the answer. ‘I will lead you east. My fool mate has set
off already on some errand.’
‘And you’d rather not travel on your own,’ Venater finished
for her, with a leer. ‘You’re so sure we’re safer?’
Quiet When Loud gave him a simple frown that quite
silenced him – it was a remarkable trick that Asmander would
have paid gold to learn. ‘But you’re right,’ she said, ‘normally I
would range to all the edges of the Crown of the World, either
with Two Heads Talking or without. But right now . . .’ Her look
was troubled. ‘I’ve not known anything like what happened back
at the Stones. And everyone is talking of great change – all these
priests gabbling about it. Not good change, either, to hear them.
An escort would be welcome.’
Two Heads Talking had cut some signs, she revealed: the
Coyote had a secret language of marks that they left for one
another, the collective memory of a travelling people. Asmander
did not say so, but he reckoned this was the closest to actual
writing the north possessed.
They set off east, and made two days’ clear travel before
catching up with Quiet When Loud’s mate. Approaching the
fire, they found the Coyote sitting with the ancient Serpent
priest, debating theology.
The wizened old man looked up at them, eyes glinting with
mischief.
‘Who is this that rides in on the back of the Snake?’ he asked
them with a crooked smile. ‘Come, share our fire.’
Quiet When Loud sat herself down next to her mate. Wordlessly she took his hand in hers and held it a while. No words
passed between them, and apparently none were needed.
‘You’ve made good time, Messenger,’ Asmander remarked
carefully.
Hesprec’s gaze was narrow, perhaps wondering what business
had delayed the Champion at the Stones. ‘And your path here
has been solely to reunite these two children of Coyote? An act
of benevolence that the cold gods of this land will, no doubt,
entirely ignore.’
Asmander found a place across the fire from the old man,
then glanced up at the others. ‘You should bed down. No doubt
we two will be talking a while.’
Venater grunted, cast a suspicious look at Hesprec, and then
threw a blanket down on the ground. It was not his blanket – or
had not been until recently. Asmander assumed he had made off
with it during the confusion at the Stone Place. After a moment’s
consideration, Shyri laid herself beside him, tucking in close for
warmth, as they had learned to do.
‘How long is it since you saw the banks of the Tsotec, Messenger?’ Asmander asked.
‘The best part of two years.’ Hesprec’s wondering tone made
it sound a great age. ‘I guested with the Horse at Where the
Fords Meet before I came north. But news finds me still. I know
the clan of the Bluegreen Reach yet.’
‘Do you know Asman, my father?’
‘Not the man, though others of his line.’
Asmander smiled bleakly. ‘If you do not know him, you do
not truly know my clan, for he is a man alone – a singular creature.’
‘And you, being his son, love and honour him,’ Hesprec concluded.
‘I am dutiful.’ Not quite a confirmation, not quite a denial.
‘And your father is no doubt a dutiful servant of the Kasra,
as any clan head should be.’
‘The Kasra is dead,’ replied Asmander flatly.
The old man sat silently, watching him across the flames,
digesting the news. What he knew of what occurred at Atahlan
– of the division between Tecuma and Tecuman, the old Kasra’s
children – was hidden behind his veiled stare. Perhaps he
already guessed at the need that had dispatched Asmander to
this forsaken country, but the Champion only hoped he would
not ask. To speak with a priest of the Serpent was like trying to
navigate the shifting channels of the estuary itself. To
lie
to one,
however, would be far worse. The priesthood of the Serpent was
powerful and respected across all of the Sun River Nation. Their
word carried a weight that could crush a man to death.
‘Tell me of your own purpose here, Messenger,’ Asmander
fished.
‘I came for word from the wise men and women of the north.
And, thanks to the gathering at the Stone Place, I have it.’
‘And what word did you find?’ Asmander asked.
Hesprec sighed: just a simple sound but it sent a shiver down
Asmander’s spine that all the fires in the world could not have
dispelled. That sound spoke of
ages
, great stone volumes of history that had come and gone, filled with the lives of men who
thought that their ‘now’ was the only now that mattered.
‘Do you know what it is like to try and see what the future
holds?’ the old man asked him. ‘It is like looking into choppy
waters at night, and trying to read the march of the stars
reflected there, save that you can see only one wave’s worth of
them, just so small a span of the sky. How, then, can any man
know with any certainty what is to come? You look, and you
think, “Can it be? No, surely I am mistaken. That fragment I
glimpsed, that looked all fire and broken things, that could have
meant
anything.
”’ He was smiling but it was a skull’s smile, especially on that near fleshless, parchment-skinned head. ‘But if a
wise man were to travel to many lands, and speak to the wise
men of those lands – and avoid being sacrificed to the Wolf,
which is always a danger, apparently – then a man might hear
many views of the future, view many different handfuls of stars
seen in the waters. And, from those tales and divinations and
half-understood glimpses, a truly wise man might stitch together
the whole cloth.’
Asmander was sitting very still, feeling inside him a deep cold
that had nothing to do with the north. ‘And what might such a
wise man see?’ he whispered. In truth, he wanted the Serpent
priest to do what his kind normally did, snatching the revelations back at the last moment. He did not expect Hesprec to just
speak on.
‘When all those little fragments of tomorrow show fire and
ruin, Champion, what then?’
‘Tecuma and Tecuman . . . will it come to war, then? In truth,
is that what it means?’
‘And what would a river war mean to the Crown of the
World?’ Hesprec asked him. ‘And, anyway, wars . . . there are
always wars, especially here. Is it the war the Wolf now want to
bring against the Tiger, then? Is it both these wars and more
besides? What question must we ask of these signs, to put them
in perspective?’
‘What has gone before, that was prefigured by such omens?’
Asmander asked promptly, earning an approving nod.
‘The Fall of the Stone Kingdoms to the Rats,’ came a voice
from an unexpected direction. Shyri, who had been lying still
and breathing easily as if asleep, now sat up without warning.
‘What have you heard?’ Asmander demanded.
‘You think I could sleep with all this yattering?’ she asked
lazily. ‘This one,’ with a nod at the snoring mound that was
Venater, ‘could sleep through the world breaking, but not me.
Besides, what are you saying? That the end of the world is a
secret just for you?’
Asmander threw Hesprec an exasperated look, but the old
man was smiling.
‘Daughter of the Laughing Men, welcome to our counsels.
The fall of the Stone Kingdoms, is it? You’ve been there? You’ve
seen their ruins?’
Asmander nodded along with Shyri, remembering.
‘Then think on this: if I read these futures right, the doom
they speak of is at least as grand and final as that. And wars on
the River, or the spitting and yowling of wolves and tigers, all
these disputes mean only that the people of
all
our lands will be
at each other’s throats when the axe falls on them, instead of
standing together. The great enemies of history always thrive on
chaos and rivalry: the Rat cult, the Pale Shadow, even the Plague
People back in the very beginning – they could never have
gained a victory if we were not forever turning against each
other.’ His tone had become bitter, bitter and old, a man whose
withered hands are no longer strong enough to put things right.
‘So if this axe must fall, who wields it?’ Shyri asked. Even she
seemed impressed, shorn briefly of the irreverence that was
practically the air she breathed.
‘Oh, I don’t know. You think visions ever told anyone anything
useful
,’ Hesprec hissed exasperatedly. ‘You think there was
a face of some warlord or sorcerer, and a map to where he lived,
so that I could just go and poison his well or strangle him while
he was still a child?’ He laughed quietly. ‘I cannot point the
finger, Laughing Girl. I cannot say this leader of the Wolf will
become the doom of the world. I cannot say that the rift between
the royal twins in the Riverlands will be the spark to set the grass
ablaze. I cannot say that it will not be the Horse, or a great
union of the Plains peoples, or . . .’ He waved a hand. ‘I am like
the god’s offering: I see the knife and not the priest.’
‘And your journey now,’ Asmander said softly. ‘The road east,
that is because of these visions? You go to prevent this doom?’
‘Wouldn’t it be grand if that were the case? You’d be honoured to come, of course. You, the Champion, would have your
part to play. Perhaps the fate of the world would rest in single
combat between you and the enemy of all the peoples?’
Asmander felt a curious sensation inside him, a lifting, reaching feeling.
Ye s
, it seemed to say. ‘And can it be so?’
Hesprec laughed again. ‘Oh, no, no. I have no idea what can
be done – or if anything can be done. I have heard the wisdom
of these lands. My place is back home, not haring off into the
cold wilds like a fool. And yet here I am.’
‘So why?’
‘Because there is a girl . . . a young girl,’ Hesprec said simply.
‘She is fleeing the Wolf, and it is possible she has found safety,
or perhaps she has found only danger wearing a different mask.
And I want to
know
. I find I do not wish to return to the south
without that knowledge, even though it is not part of the wisdom
I came here to gather.’
‘A girl,’ said Asmander flatly. ‘A girl of talents, of significance? Has she magical powers? Or she is so beautiful that men
would give their all for her? Or a great warrior, perhaps? Or
beloved of the gods?’
‘None of that. Just a girl,’ the old priest replied softly. ‘But she
saved my life – for her own selfish reasons, but nonetheless –
and I find I do not wish to abandon her now. I am old. These
fond foolishnesses are permitted me.’
Shyri made a derisive noise, and Asmander found himself
perilously close to agreeing with her. ‘This does not sound a fit
task for a Messenger of the Serpent,’ he said as strongly as he
dared.
‘Set not your foot upon the Serpent, lest it bite.’ For a
moment the old man seemed about to summon up a great aura
of presence and power from somewhere, but then he smiled,
and it made him look older than ever, because Asmander saw he
had no teeth, not one. The soft lisping that prowled at the corners of his speech was more than just age. And he was mocking
himself, because it was better to mock oneself than have the rest
of the world do it.
‘You are a long way from home, Messenger,’ the Champion
said softly.
‘How observant you are.’
‘And set to go further, you say?’
‘It seems inevitable. And you will come with me, will you not?
If I ask?’
‘This one?’ Shyri chuckled with a deep and earthy sound. ‘He
wears duty like a belt.’
Asmander nodded. ‘I am tasked . . .’ and then he caught the
meaning behind her words: how a belt held in a man’s desires;
that he was trapped by his duty.
And there was Hesprec Essen Skese pinning him with a gaze
full of pent-up years.
‘You went to the temple when you were young, I’m sure.Your
father, he’s a man who remembers Serpent in his prayers,
because it is the done thing. But you . . . what must it have been
like to feel the mantle of Champion fall upon you, to know that
other
within your soul, that ancient shape scratching to be free?
That it was
you
so chosen – not your father, not the votaries of
Old Crocodile? It was the Serpent who showed you the path
through the darkness in those days, am I right?’
Asmander nodded convulsively. ‘You are, Messenger.’
‘And, after that, I see a young man of the Bluegreen Reach
who listened more to the words of the priests, who thought
more about the way the world turned, now that he found himself part of it. I see there a soul that the Serpent spoke to.’
‘This does not assist you,’ Asmander objected stubbornly.