The Tiger and the Wolf (37 page)

It was not anyone she knew, no Winter Runner at all. From
his dress and markings she guessed he must be a Swift Back: a
short, stocky man dressed in furs and quilted leather. The Eyriemen had a rope collar about his neck, and his hands were bound
behind him. They were pushing him about between them, sending him reeling from one to another, with kicks and blows
whenever he stumbled or fell.

She watched, and told herself that she was glad, because he
was a Wolf and an enemy. That was what any child of the Tiger
would feel in her bones.

‘A gift!’ The speaker was the woman the Eyriemen had with
them, although, behind her, their leader held his hands up. ‘The
Wolf are growing bold again! They come sniffing up to your
very walls. Be glad you have the keen eyes of the Eyrie to keep
you safe! A gift for your queen, here!’

And then Joalpey was there, revealed in the opening temple
doors with a dozen of her priesthood. At her arrival a little of the
scorn went from the Eyriemen, though not all of it.

‘You give him to me, Yellow Claw?’ Joalpey asked. The Wolf
had been forced to his knees.
‘He is yours,’ the Eyriewoman confirmed after a glance at her
chief.
‘Great are the hunters of the Eyrie,’ Joalpey recited. ‘All will
have their reward.’ The words were a shade less than sincere
and, from her look, her alliance with Yellow Claw and the Eyrie
was a difficult one. Two priestesses stepped forward and hauled
the prisoner to his feet, manhandling him into the shadow of the
temple at a nod from their queen.
Maniye held still, watching and waiting, but Joalpey’s eyes
never turned to her. The Queen re-entered the temple without
ever glancing her way, although Maniye’s gaze bored into her
every second.
When she turned away, after Joalpey had gone from view, she
was staring directly at the chest of Yellow Claw. The Eyrieman’s
gaze flicked over her, predatory and keen. His woman stepped
forward to speak his words, but he yanked her back by her
collar.
‘So, this is the Wolf girl,’ he said. A handful of his people were
at his back, but he was a big man, and there was an aura about
him of a strength more than physical, Maniye thought. He
hardly needed his followers to give weight to his threats.
Nonetheless, she could not let that accusation lie. ‘I am no
Wolf.’
‘You are no Tiger.’
‘I am.’
‘Your face says you lie to me,’ Yellow Claw observed. He
reached for her, as though to cock her head back, but she
flinched away, feeling both her souls rise with a fighting anger
within her. It was all she could do to hold a human shape right
then.
‘I lie to no one,’ she spat at him. ‘I am Tiger. This is my home.
More so than it is yours.’
He angered quickly, the emotion darkening his face instantly.
‘The Wolf girl is full of words,’ he observed. ‘They cram her
mouth so much, they leak. Perhaps it would be a kindness if a
hole was cut in her, so they could all fly free.’
She felt her feet slide into the ready stance she had been
taught. Her heart was hammering, infecting her blood with fear,
but she held his gaze. ‘You challenge me?’
Yellow Claw sneered at her boldness, but there was an exasperation to him because she would not simply bow her head and
back down. She thought of the only Eyriewomen she had seen,
all of them meek, and haltered too, denied even the chance to
give voice to their souls.
How are my mother’s people in league
with these creatures?
A hand fell on the Eyrieman’s arm: one of his compatriots,
short and broad-shouldered, with half his face plain black and
the other half painted a pale grey. White paint slashed a band
across his eyes. It was a simple mask, but the sight of it awoke a
deep fear in Maniye – a fear of something she could not name.
He wore a drab woollen cloak of no particular colour, and
beneath it his chest was bare, ridged with old, carefully inscribed
scars.
The sight of him seemed to jolt Yellow Claw as well, for all
the newcomer said nothing. He had the authority of a priest,
though: a man who it was unwise to cross. For a moment, the
leader of the Eyriemen warred with himself, but then he hissed
between his teeth and stalked away.
The grey-faced man stayed on, staring at her with wide,
round eyes. She felt far more scared of him than she had been
of his leader. Then he turned aside and nodded once, and she
saw Hesprec standing there.
She did not have to ask the question, for it was writ large in
her expression.
‘This is Grey Herald, who spoke for me,’ Hesprec explained.
‘His word brought me into this place. There is yet remembrance
in the Eyrie of the oldest tales, when the Serpent and the Owl
Society stood shoulder to shoulder.’ The words rang a distant
echo within her, one of stories seldom retold. Tales of the soulless Plague People, and the loss of many things.
That night, she dreamt – a broken, twisted string of images
informed not so much by Hesprec’s talk as by the things he did
not say. She was chasing after her mother, running through a
landscape made as though the Shining Halls had been sunk
deep within the earth. She called out Joalpey’s name, and even
her secret huntress name, but the woman still would not look
back, rushing full-tilt through the broken, buried streets. Stepping to her tiger shape, Maniye ran and ran, but the distance
between them only grew. A terrible convulsion in the earth’s
bones was occurring all around them, stone cracking, ornate
carvings shivering into shards. Looking up towards the cavern
sky – lit by some greenish radiance that emanated from precisely
nowhere – she saw Hesprec standing atop one of the buildings,
and others like him: men and women, old and young, and all
with the tattoos of the serpent making tracks across their faces.
Grey Herald was there too, and others painted like he was, and
more still. They held their hands up as though warding off some
presence that sought to intrude through the rock above.
And then she knew how she could catch up with her mother,
and she had Stepped into her wolf shape, swift paws carrying
her eagerly in the pursuit, but when she was at Joalpey’s heels
the woman looked back with a stricken, terrified expression, and
Maniye saw that the shadows on all sides of her were other
wolves, and that
she
had been what her mother had been running from all along.
Then she woke, because there was screaming, and it was
coming from somewhere outside her head.

Maniye had slept poorly these last two nights. It was not the
dreams, though. It was the sound of the Wolf scout that the
Eyriemen had brought in. The priesthood were torturing him.

The people of the Tiger knew that gods were not of the
world: above it and beyond it, things of pure spirit. That was
why they would not commit the image of their deity to stone or
metal or wood. Smoke, shadows, these were fit intermediaries
through which to glimpse the spirit world.

She had learned all this, of course. She remembered carefully
committing to memory that, for a soul to be prepared for the
Tiger, it must be brought to a height of spiritual awareness,
drawn from the body until it was almost visible in the air. In her
lessons, the logic of this had seemed unassailable.

And there were different methods of arriving at such awareness. The year-kings of the Deer Tribe had their every want
sated until it was time for them to kneel at the altar; the Wolves
hunted their Running Deer to exhaustion. Drugs, deprivation,
death at the point of physical exultation; the gods could be
reached in many ways.

For the Tiger, when it came to offer up its enemies, there was
only one way. Fear and pain were the hammers they used to
forge a fine sacrifice. And so the Swift Back writhed and wailed
deep inside the temple, his voice carried out to all, echoing his
despair along the halls and the corridors. And in the temple’s
heart, in the room of smoke and pierced stone, the Tiger licked
its insubstantial lips and waited.

When he cried out, there was a distant echo deep within
Maniye, the return call of her receding wolf soul. She hated it,
yet it kept her awake. No matter how much she told herself that
these were her ways now, still that lonely voice would not be
silenced.

She had been up early, red-eyed, trailing towards her lessons,
when four of the other girls had blocked her path.
‘You,’ said one who stood in front like their leader. Maniye
had looked her in the eye and groped for her name. Imshalma,
or something like that. Tiger names were still strange to her.
Maniye did not answer, merely waiting. She could sense the
ill-feeling amongst them, and yet they were nervous, too, about
something illicit.
‘I understand you now,’ said Imshalma or whatever her name
was. ‘I have watched you, all the days since you came. I have
asked myself, “What is this Wolf they have brought among us?”
There must be a reason, I knew, but I could not see it. But now
I understand you.’
Maniye had no sense that her relationship to the Queen had
become known to these girls, but plainly something had
changed.
‘I have seen our teachers watching you. I have seen the
Queen
watching you. I know you, Wolf girl. You are a test.’
Maniye’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am not a Wolf.’
‘You are a test for us, to see if we possess the mind to be
warriors. Our teachers have watched just to see if we would act
against this enemy they have brought into our midst. They have
been disappointed, because we accepted you so meekly. The
Tiger is not meek. The Tiger takes his prey without hesitation,
without mercy. So, I will take you. I will pass the test.’
That was when the daggers came out, one to stay in Imshalma’s hand and one cast at Maniye’s feet.
Maniye weighed the girl’s words, hunting for truth and finding not a trace of it. But there was another possibility. There
might be a test, after all.
‘They are testing
me
,’ she told the other girl. ‘I am Tiger but
they doubt me. And I have been meek. As you say, the Tiger is
not meek.’ She picked up the dagger, noting an eddy of movement through the other girls. Imshalma’s eyes were a little wider
than before, and Maniye wondered if she had been expecting
the ‘test’ to be passed simply by making the challenge, perhaps
thinking the Wolf girl would flee when confronted with a blade.
The Shadow of the Wolf clung to her, and it made them fear.
Just as Wolf children grew up on tales of the Shadow Eaters, so
recent history had given these girls plenty of reasons to fear the
Wolf.
She shifted her back foot, dropping her weight lower. Her left
hand came up before her face, fingers crooked, whilst her right
held the curved blade extended at waist level. The mantle of her
lessons settled on her, and for once she felt each part of her in
its proper place. If Aritchaka had come by just then, she would
have found no fault at all.
But the priesthood were not present to arbitrate. The other
three girls had backed off to give Imshalma space, and it was
just the two of them in the whole world. Maniye’s opponent had
adopted a counter-stance, blade held high and jutting forwards,
offhand low, halfway to reaching for Maniye’s weapon. The girl
had been learning these stances and moves for years: her technique would always be better. If this was a dance, or the slow
measured steps of a lesson, then Maniye would always be stumbling to keep up.
Some part of her mind had frozen –
What comes next?
– just
as she sometimes found in practice. The animal inside her knew
that she could not afford to be the one reacting, though. Even as
Imshalma moved forwards, so Maniye’s feet were already dancing. She passed backwards three quick steps, because over a
short distance it was always possible to go backwards faster than
the opponent could advance. That was Lesson One. Lesson Two
was when she braced against her back foot, pushing herself
towards her opponent as Imshalma was trying to close the gap.
In the moment after, she had reversed her motion, but before
she was within reach of that bronze claw, she Stepped.
She managed the pounce badly, the dagger nipping her
across the foreleg, and her impact coming at an angle, so that
she made Imshalma stagger without knocking her down. Then
she had leapt off, ending up on the far side of her opponent,
knowing that, without that dagger pinned, she could not stay
within its reach.
They both Stepped in the same instant, Imshalma to Tiger,
Maniye to girl, her blade sweeping so that it cut her opponent
across the muzzle, sending the animal reeling away, pawing at
the shallow wound.
She felt her heart racing within her. For a moment she was
fighting against her own body, trying to settle back into her
ready stance. If Imshalma had been able to break through her
own pain to mount an attack, things could have gone badly.
Instead she was retreating again, now on human feet and dabbing at a line of blood that traced the bridge of her nose and ran
along one cheekbone. For a moment Maniye thought that her
opponent lacked the will to go on, but then some metal came
into the other girl’s eyes and she was striding forwards, passing
with the dagger, changing stances fluidly, all her years of practice flooding back into her.
Maniye Stepped, Stepped back, retreating before the darting
bronze that kept coming for her. Abruptly her tiger eyes could
not see a way past the blade. She tried a feint to give herself
room, got her footing wrong and took a raking scratch across
her forearm. She was aware that she had been backing up for
too long – that she might hit a wall at any moment.
Something made Imshalma pause: it was Maniye’s expression, all bared teeth and frustration and Wolf features. In that
moment, Maniye struck back, slapping for Imshalma’s knife
hand, letting her own blade find the lines that she had been
taught: belly, throat, armpit, flank. Imshalma fell back rapidly,
and they both Stepped at once, pushing forwards into a grappling embrace of tigers, a lightning exchange of claws that
marked both of them. Then Imshalma had twisted aside, shrugging out of the clasp and Stepping back to drag her blade past
Maniye’s eyes. It left a slight wound, a scalp wound, but the
shock of it threw Maniye back to her human form, out of position and off balance. Imshalma had a hand bunched in the collar
of her tunic, holding her down, with her dagger drawn back to
thrust.
Maniye Stepped, without conscious decision, and got her
teeth into the other girl’s wrist. Had Imshalma held to her purpose she could still have stabbed and ended it, but instead she
jerked away with a yell. Instead of holding – as every instinct
was howling at her to do – Maniye broke away and made a
snarling, defiant retreat, blood in her jaws. Her wolf jaws.
She Stepped to human instantly, standing in her best approximation of a ready stance, and Imshalma was still facing her, still
nominally fighting, but the other girl’s eyes were wide, the
expression of someone whose fears have been made flesh: seeing
the Wolf brought to life right there in the temple.
She found her balance, though, levelling her blade at Maniye
once more, although there was a terror still lurking in her eyes.
She would not back down.
Then there was only Aritchaka’s voice calling out, ‘Enough!’
The priestess stood at the far end of the passage, the same
direction the four girls had come from. Maniye felt sure she had
been watching there for quite long enough.
‘Your dedication to your studies is admirable,’ Aritchaka said,
in a sharp-edged voice. ‘However, I feel you both require more
practice so as to master the proper forms. Have those injuries
washed and tended to.’
Please don’t tell her. Please don’t tell my mother
, but the words
could not be spoken and Aritchaka’s expression was stern.