The Tiger and the Wolf (46 page)

A moment’s thought told her it could not happen. They had
baggage with them, hides and tents and provisions, and loot
from the Boar village. They had a pair of travois that they bundled their burdens on, to be hauled by the younger hunters. Of
the rest, many did Step, running ahead or falling away to either
side to keep an eye and a nose ready for any enemy, leaving a
handful to stay with Maniye and the baggage, led by Smiles
Without Teeth.

Smiles stooped low to speak in her ear, putting her in his
shadow.
‘Stone River says he wants you to live, for now,’ he told her.
‘But he says, “If she runs, break her leg.”’ His dark eyes pinned
her. ‘I asked him, “Why not do that now? No running then.”
But he says there’s too much we need to carry already. But I will
– give me the chance, girl, and I will.’
She fully intended to meet his ugly gaze, but the deep rumble
of his voice pitched itself right to the fear in her mind, and she
could not. He took her leash himself, his hand almost eclipsing
the metal stake.
Her wounds were dressed roughly, leaving her feeling as
though they had lit a fire on her back. Then they headed westwards, away from the Tiger, and there was no talking between
them. Despite their loads, Akrit’s warband set a swift pace, further reinforcing Maniye’s suspicion that the Tiger were not
keeping to their own places now.
And I have caused that somehow.
I am a weapon so fierce that my mother cannot let her enemies grasp
me. I am the spark that sets the fire.
But that was merely a sop to her own vanity. Even helpless,
she was trying to spin a tale that gave her some sense of control.
She had been swept before the rush of events like broken wood
in the river during the spring thaw.
Akrit dropped back occasionally. He would encourage Smiles
to keep up the pace, but his eyes were ever on Maniye. When
they camped that night, the stake was hammered in again, but
she lay out in the open, surrounded by wolves on all sides, without any true camp being pitched.
Several of the warriors had been sent ahead.
My father has a
plan
.
Some time during that same night she woke into a darkness
relieved only by the fire’s last embers and a sliver of cloudy
moon. A man stood over her, and she recoiled, assuming it must
be her father. Then, for a mad moment, she thought it was
Broken Axe, for it lacked Stone River’s broad bulk. This was an
older man, though, shorter and leaner, and one she should have
known sooner: Kalameshli Takes Iron.
She was not going to speak at first, although he must know
she was awake. He just watched and watched, though, and at
last she got out, ‘You must be very happy, Takes Iron. You were
right all along. I am no true daughter of the Wolf.’
‘Nor of the Tiger yet.’ His voice startled her, for she had not
expected an answer. ‘You were wolf enough, when you were
caught.’
‘Your chief is a fool,’ she said softly, wondering if any other
was awake to hear. ‘He needs me to be a Wolf, so as to be his
own, yet he thinks the Tiger would follow me if I was not a
Tiger?’
‘He has cherished some dreams a long time.’ Takes Iron did
not say ‘too long’ and yet it was there between his words.
Maniye frowned, because she had never heard him even come
close to criticizing her father.
‘The Tiger will not have me anyway, no matter how much
Tiger I am,’ she added bitterly.
‘I think your father understands as much,’ he agreed. His eyes
had never left her, and she felt a crawling sense of unease born
of that rigid scrutiny.
‘Then what?’ she hissed.
She saw Kalameshli’s shoulders rise and fall. ‘His thoughts
are close about him now. The eyes of the Wolf—’
She made an exasperated noise, because Akrit himself had
told her all that, and it gave her no clues as to what her father
would actually
do
. In the wake of that, she heard someone
nearby stirring, woken by her frustration. Kalameshli melted
away into the dark silently, and in the morning she was not sure
she believed any of it.

They travelled two more days, moving with all the speed the
travois could manage, swapping bearers and scouts, and never
giving Maniye the least chance to escape. When Smiles was not
holding her leash, the job fell to Shatters Oak, the other veteran
amongst them. She was a worse captor, if anything. Smiles
Without Teeth was a man of little imagination, and able to plod
along in silence for hours without growing bored or fretful.
Amiyen Shatters Oak had a harsher streak to her. Even if
Maniye had not killed her son, she had still been
there
, connected to that death by a trail of blood. Amiyen would yank on
the lead viciously, hauling Maniye close, her teeth almost to the
prisoner’s ear.

‘When we catch Broken Axe, we’re going to skin him,’ she
would hiss. ‘Kalameshli says he has spat on the Wolf, so his
ghost can’t be allowed to leave his body. We’re going to wear his
human pelt and leave his flesh for the coyotes. He’ll never come
back as wolf or man.’ From her first sally she had realized that
simply threatening Maniye herself with pain or death would
barely register, Akrit having already run her to exhaustion on
that front. Instead, she noticed the flinch when she first brought
up Maniye’s ally. ‘He will come,’ she had crowed. ‘He’ll come for
you, do you think? I will be waiting. When he’s ours, I’ll wield
the knife myself. I’ll beg Kalameshli for the chance. I am owed,
girl. We’ll roast him alive on the fire and feed you his human
flesh.’

She was endlessly inventive in the fates that they had in store
for their former kinsman, each of them whispered viciously into
Maniye’s ear. It was a pastime the woman never tired of.

At last they stopped, because they had caught up with the hunters Akrit had sent ahead. They had been crossing open land,
following a young river’s descent out of the highlands and
onwards west, but there were more trees ahead. Maniye had lost
all track of where they were: without her wolf nose, she felt disconnected by so much travelling.

At the edge of the trees and in the crook of the river, a fire
was already going and the hunters had not been idle. There was
a mess of wood there, and they were building something too
small and irregular for a dwelling. When the travois party
arrived, Kalameshli took himself off to view it immediately,
mostly to berate them and have them dismantle much of it.

They had been hunting, too, because there was a pit dug and
within it a sow and a boar were pacing angrily, leaping up at
their captors whenever a human face showed itself. At first
Maniye feared she would be thrown in there too. Instead, the big
tent-shelter they had originally kept her in was reassembled
here, and she was leashed inside, kept blind to what was going
on without.

Her ignorance lasted only until nightfall, for most of which time
she had simply lain there, feeling the ache in her legs and feet,
the taut tugging of the welts across her back, not even trying to
uproot the stake. Kalameshli’s voice came to her, calling instructions peevishly, and the harsh shout of Akrit when something
went wrong. If anything, the tension between the Wolves was
spun tauter than ever. Maniye had been desperately looking for
any sign that someone was getting close to standing up to her
father – for surely any challenger would have no particular interest in her fate – yet Stone River’s reputation still held them in
check.

Then, once the noise and mutter outside had died down into
uneasy sleep, Akrit and Kalameshli backed into the tent. The
priest glanced at her once, her father not at all.

‘Two pigs are no sacrifice,’ Akrit stated. He had brought a
brand with him, and he jammed it into the ground for its light.
‘The scouts say the only people close to here are the Horse, who
they fear to touch.’

‘Well, they are wise,’ Kalameshli murmured. ‘If we are to war
against the Tiger, we would be fools to seek more enemies. The
Horse are dangerous, not because they have many warriors, but
because they have many friends—’

‘All this I know,’ Stone River cut him off sharply. ‘So, not
even a hunter of the Deer or some Boar woman out looking for
mushrooms. Then you know the answer to your question.’

And Kalameshli’s eyes slid inexorably to Maniye, sitting up
and staring at them. ‘This also is unwise,’ he observed.
‘I have asked you for wisdom but your well has run dry,’ Akrit
told him flatly. ‘I can feel the Wolf’s breath on my neck, old man.
He is waiting for me to prove myself to him. I need to show him
that in me are all the qualities he values: that I am fierce and
strong; I baulk at nothing.’
‘There are other qualities that the Wolf values. Loyalty to
kin—’ Kalameshli started, trying to sound mild but the strain in
his voice betrayed him.
‘Yes, loyalty!’ Akrit interrupted. ‘And she has shown none! So
she deserves none. She fled the tribe. She stole meat from the
Wolf’s own jaws. She has been the guest of the Shadow Eaters!
The Wolf must be hungering for her.’
Kalameshli glanced at her, the fire catching his eyes. ‘Akrit, as
I am your friend, this is not the way.’
‘She will be given to the Wolf.’
What Maniye felt was some terrible variant of relief. Her
fears had come to pass. The nightmare that had chased her all
the way from the village of the Winter Runners had caught up
with her. Outside the tent they had been building an altar: jaws
of wood in imitation of the iron teeth of home. They would burn
her inside them, and the Wolf would consume her.
But Kalameshli continued shaking his head. ‘She is your kin,’
he insisted. ‘No god will protect a kinslayer. Is this what you will
have the Wolf see?’
Akrit even smiled at that. ‘But I will not be a kinslayer.
Because you are my priest, and you shall carry the flame.’
The older man’s face went dead in an instant, utterly without
expression. ‘It cannot be done,’ he said quietly.
‘You’ll do it,’ Akrit told him. ‘As I am your chief, you will do
it. Because the Winter Runners need me, Takes Iron. I will make
us first of all the tribes, and I will make the Wolf the first of all
the peoples. It starts here, with this. This is how I show the Wolf
what I dare. This is how
you
show the Wolf your loyalty. Don’t
think he isn’t watching you as well.’
Kalameshli would have argued further, but Akrit abruptly
grabbed him by the robe, yanking him forwards in a clatter of
little bones.
‘Do not challenge me,’ Stone River growled into the old
man’s face, and then dropped him, the old priest falling to his
knees. A moment later Akrit had stomped out of the tent, the
parting of the hide flap giving Maniye a glimpse of the flames
outside.
Kalameshli got to his feet and stood there for a long time,
long after the brand had burned out, thinking in the darkness,
and then he, too, left.

Before now, Venater had shown no interest whatsoever in the
ways of the Crown of the World. He had happily fought against
the place’s natives, but even the Stone Place had barely
impressed him. Now, though, he seemed suddenly interested in
the ways of the Wolf.

Asmander would rather not have spoken of it, but at the same
time he knew that silence would only encourage the old pirate.
Sensing weakness was meat and drink to the Dragon.

‘I don’t think so.’ His voice seemed remarkably conversational, to his own ears. ‘He has not killed the chief of these . . .
Swift Ones? Swift Feet, Swift somethings. And there is some
other tribe he says will join him. It is these Moon Faces who are
not decided. He needs to impress them, I think.’

‘Better than
your
lot,’ was Venater’s verdict. ‘When you told
me what that was about, I thought it was arse backwards both
ways.’

Shyri smirked at that, eyes flicking between the two of them.
Seeing Asmander being baited came second only to baiting him
herself in her list of pastimes, or so he surmised.

‘All that ceremony. Fasting, invocation, sacrifice, just to make
someone Kasra, but you’ve already decided who gets to do it:
always the eldest brat of the last one.’ Venater was watching him
keenly for any crack in the facade.

‘You’d rather everyone fought until only one of them stood?’
Asmander asked him with a superior look. ‘That is how life is
amongst the Dragon?’

‘No ceremony, no certainty.’ Venater grinned. ‘When we get
back, maybe that’s what I’ll do: cut a few throats and make
myself chief. About time I settled down with a few wives.’

Asmander glanced at him sharply, fighting down a flare of
real anger, and found himself meeting the pirate’s amused stare.
More bait, always more bait, until he found himself lunging at it.

‘I would think those women would rather cut their own
throats than settle down with you,’ he managed, knowing it for a
weak rejoinder.

‘You don’t understand what women want,’ Venater replied,
still coolly jabbing away with a patience that said he could do
this all day.

‘Who would not want to lie with the son of Venat,’ Shyri
added slyly. ‘The muscles of his arms are like hard melons. His
teeth are so yellowed you’d think them nuggets of gold,’ and
then, just as Venater was about to expand on her words with
more of his attributes, she added, ‘Alas for his name, though: it
has entered its second childhood. Have I got it right?’

The old pirate found himself abruptly on the other end of the
joke, snarling at her, which bred only laughter.
Asmander did not join in.
‘Well, what now, longmouth?’ she pressed him. ‘You trust this
Stone River to give you your due, now he’s got his cub back?’
‘We move like his shadow. When he travels to visit these
Moon Faces – no, Moon Eaters – I will follow his tracks. I will
remind him of his promise.’
‘And if he just sends his hunters out to kill you?’
‘Then I will kill his hunters, until he remembers his promise,’
Asmander said dully.
‘And if he sends his Iron Wolves, his great warriors that even
the Sun River Nation has heard of?’ she pressed.
‘Then I will see whether they were worth me travelling so far.
And perhaps I will die.’
Killing one was hard enough.
‘Is that really it?’ Shyri asked.
He could not tell what she meant. ‘Dying?’
‘Why your chief sent you here, your . . . Tecuman?’
‘My Tecuman, yes. For his cause, yes. But it was my father
who sent me.’ And enough said about that. Asmander must be a
dutiful son and do what he was told. Even when he was told to
cross the whole world in search of a mad myth.
Who would have
thought the Iron Wolves were actually real?
Not for the first time he wondered what had happened back
home since he set off upriver. Perhaps Tecuman had defeated
his sister. Perhaps he was dead. No word would have come to
him here, in these cold lands.
‘Well,’ said Venater, eyeing him. ‘You’ve done it, anyway.
Think of the look on the old man’s face when you bring him
what he asked for. Like something out of that story.’
Bizarrely, Asmander knew exactly the story he meant, or
what sort of tale anyway. There were many variants, but there
was a young man given an impossible task by someone supposed to be their ally – stepfather, uncle – yet finds some way to
complete it. The hero’s return was always a triumphant scene of
virtues rewarded, and evil unmasked. Somehow Asmander did
not feel that his own exploits would fit into that pattern.
But he said, ‘Yes,’ trying to make himself sound enthusiastic.
‘I will have done my duty.’
Shyri snickered at that, and he glared at her. ‘The Laughing
Men know nothing of duty, then?’
‘There are things you must do, and things you must not do.
We know this.’ Her smile was blithely unconcerned with his feelings. ‘You river people find it so complicated, so hard to tell one
thing from another. You use so many words.’
‘Loyalty,’ he snapped at her. ‘Duty. Family. These are just
words to you?’
She exchanged a sidelong glance with Venater, as though the
two of them were conspirators in Asmander’s torment. ‘All
words are just words. They are not the things they are used for.’
Asmander opened his mouth to argue, then found her point
too unexpectedly philosophical to make headway with. This was
the sort of talk the Serpent priests debated in the temple.
Venater had at last grown bored. ‘Home soon, anyway,’ he
suggested.
Asmander nodded.
‘Gratitude of the Kasra, I reckon. Or half a Kasra, anyway.
Good way to make your mark, that. All those snapping fools at
your Tecuman’s feet, each one giving all their strength to fighting the next man for the least scrap from his table. And in you
come, Asmander the Champion, with your Wolfguard, ready to
swear the iron savages into your Kasra’s service. Good way to
make everyone realize you’re on top.’
‘Is it?’
‘Not as good as biting some throats out, true, but – oh, no,
you’re all too
civilized
for that. As if it wasn’t always the best
way.’
‘Enough, Venater.’
The old pirate merely chuckled. ‘Now what your man really
needs is Dragons.’
‘He has them. Or do you think your people will be in rebellion against the whole of the Sun River Nation, when we
return?’
‘
Half
,’ Venater corrected, almost absently. ‘And we might.
Hadn’t thought of it, but we might. Even if not, though, your
man has us, but he doesn’t
have
us. There’s not-fighting-against,
and then there’s fighting for.’
He was angling for some concession, but Asmander was not
in the mood. ‘If the Dragon have betrayed Tecuman, then I will
send you out to kill them. To kill your own kin until they kill
you.’
Venater went still. It was not really the kinslaying: the Dragon
were notorious for simply not caring about all sorts of concepts
that were the basis of human life everywhere else – even in the
Crown of the World it appeared. It was a threat of a new order
from Asmander, though. It was a promise to abuse the old
pirate’s freedom more harshly than before.
‘I’d be careful what plans you make,’ was Venater’s quiet pronouncement.
‘Because one day the Dragon will rise up from the delta and
ravage all the Tsotec?’
‘One day, maybe.’
Asmander’s smile was like a knife. ‘But first you must learn
how to work together. You must stop killing each other over
petty slights and women. You must become more than murderous children, Venater – become more like us. And you never
will.’
And there was the spark, alight again in the old pirate as
though it had never gone out. There was the fierce, fighting rage
that Asmander remembered from when he had fought and
bested this man. And this time Venater was not drunk and suddenly woken into a fight. This time he was fresh, and ready to
bloody his hands.
‘No reaver of the Dragon would shed so much skin as to be
like you.’
‘Reaver is a fancy word for a thief. Even
her
people are more
honest.’
‘What?’ Shyri had been following the exchange keenly, plainly
not sure how serious they were.
For a moment Asmander wondered if he could bait
her
into a
fight, and at the same time he knew he was trying to do just that
with Venater.
And why?
But he knew why. Venater trying to kill
him was something that was simple and comprehensible. He
would welcome the Dragon’s teeth in his throat, or his own
claws in the old pirate’s gut.
‘I will forget your name,’ he spat.
Venater’s fists were clenched.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Shyri complained.
‘You will be a child forever. I will cast your name out of my
mind.’ Asmander tried to make every word a javelin to hurl at
the man. ‘There will be none who can give it back to you.’
‘But I know what his name is,’ the woman put in, baffled,
ruining Asmander’s moment of triumph. ‘I even know what it
was before you did whatever thing . . . you just made a new
sound on the end of it. That’s just some stupid river thing. It
isn’t
real
.’
They were both staring at her now. She glanced wide-eyed
from one face to the other and for the first time seemed genuinely off balance.
‘It is? That’s a thing you can
do
?’ And, as they continued to
stare at her, ‘You people are crazy.’ But she sounded impressed,
too, as if she had finally found a secret of the river worth knowing. ‘So what happens if he’s stuck with his baby name forever?’
And Venater went for her, but she was absolutely ready for
that and Stepped away from him, reviling him with her high
cackle. Venater had Stepped too, and now he was very still, a
long black shape with scales that glittered in the firelight, its blue
tongue lashing the air angrily.
Would he really have fought me?
Asmander fretted. Shyri had
achieved what she had set out to, though. She had cut the tension between them, playing the pair of them. No doubt she had
thought she was doing the right thing.
And we all know what comes of doing the right thing.
She was grinning, and her self-satisfaction irked him like sand
under his eyelids, like broken shards underfoot. Even as she
opened her mouth for some witticism or other he pushed himself up from the fireside and sloped off to the dim periphery of
its light, sitting there alone. He thought one of them might come
after him, told himself he didn’t want them to . . . then was
honest enough with himself to admit just why he had stopped
short of the deeper darkness.
Conduct unbecoming of a Champion.
Another sore point.
He took his
maccan
from his belt, letting his fingers touch
lightly alongside the sharp stone teeth, finding any loose flakes,
investigating the gaps left by those that were missing. He had a
pouch of new blades – obsidian from home and flint that he had
knapped here in the Crown of the World. He set about repairing
and replacing, a constant duty with such a weapon but one that
he hoped would settle his mind.
His father would be very proud of him, or at least that was
the ideal. Tecuman would smile on him, for returning home with
such a savage and indomitable bodyguard. The rulers of the Sun
River Nation had always relied on foreigners to protect their
leaders – an elite warband divorced from local factions and politics. In Atahlan, the sister Tecuma would have warriors of the
Stone People to protect her, but Tecuman’s stronghold at the
river’s mouth lay far from their lands. And everyone had heard
of the Iron Wolves and their fearsome ways. Yes, Asmander had
done well.
He worked patiently and carefully, fingers delicate in placing
the razor-edged flakes. Still his mind did not clear, but surged
and roiled like rapids in flood. Then, after plenty of time had
passed, there came the scuff of a footstep nearby. Not Shyri but
Venater.
‘What?’ the pirate demanded bluntly.
‘Is it not you who have come to me?’ Asmander asked him,
his hands still busy at work.
‘Let it go,’ Venater advised. ‘I would.’
‘Would you?’ No sense in denying what was eating at him.
‘Don’t you think you did it right?’
At last Asmander’s fingers stilled and he looked up, saying
nothing.
‘You know what I think?’ Venater went on, squatting down on
his haunches.
‘No doubt you will gift me with it.’
The pirate smirked. ‘You did it right. You surprised me. I
didn’t think you had that in you. But you led her right to her
daddy.You got what you were after, no matter how. That’s good.
That’s the way things are done in proper places. My people
know that. The Wolves know it, too, I reckon. It all worked out
perfectly.’
‘And that’s what you think?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t anyone? Life’s a killer. The
only way you win is be a killer back, twice as hard. Biggest bastard at the end of the day wins the morning.’
Asmander looked into his face: lantern-jawed, traced with
lines and scars, the eyes like flints, long greying hair bound back.
There was more going on behind that face than the barbarian
whose words he aped. Who else would believe that, from somewhere in there, a keen intelligence was peering slyly out? Not
the learning of letters, not the mysteries of the priests, but a man
who knew people, if only because it was easier to kill them if you
did.
‘So we rejoice,’ the Champion half asked.
‘I do.’ Venater grinned. ‘Does you good to be more like a real
man, like me.’
Asmander stood up suddenly, the
maccan
clutched tightly in
one hand, the other knotted into a fist. Venater just leered up at
him, utterly unworried.
Asmander took a deep breath. ‘You’ve always known, haven’t
you?’
‘Since you got back from selling the girl? I know you, Son of
Asman. I’ve had to put up with you all the way from the Riverlands. When you’re pleased with yourself, I know it – which is
rare enough ’cause you’re a gloomy streak of piss. When you’re
eating yourself up inside, I know that too. And you are now. So
just say it.’
‘I believe I am having second thoughts.’
‘Oh, how terribly civilized of you.’ The pirate mocked his
tone perfectly. ‘Did you even work out
why
yet? I take it you
don’t think it’s really about the girl. Tell me you’ve not decided
you love her or something.’
Asmander shot him a sharp look. ‘She’s not my type. It’s not
her
. She’s nothing to me.’ Actually speaking the words made him
feel better than anything else that evening. ‘I owe her nothing.’
‘It’s the old Snake, then? Because he liked her, you have to?’
Again Asmander shook his head. ‘Maybe you don’t know me
so well after all.’
Venater just frowned at that, like a hunter who has lost the
trail.
Because he is, in the end, just enough of what he seems to be: a
bloody-handed old man of the Dragon who would not understand.
And Asmander smiled at the pirate, because it was good that
there were constants in the world, even if some of them were
evil ones.
It was not Hesprec. It was certainly not Maniye. Oh, he sympathized with her, but that was life: duty and loyalty and family
and society, all cages within cages. Believing in freedom was just
a knife the girl had made and given to the world to cut her with.
Except . . .
In his mind was a man he had barely met, who had uttered
only a handful of words. But those words! The Wolf had no true
Champions, but there was a man who should have been one.
When he had spoken, the soul within Asmander had resonated
with what he had to say. He had no shackles on him to drag him
down, to make him less than he should be.
As I have lessened myself.
In the end, it was because Asmander felt bitterly ashamed of
disappointing Broken Axe, a man who should mean less to him
than a stone underfoot.
Venater sighed. ‘Knew it was too good to be true,’ he muttered, and then, ‘Oi, Laughing Girl!’
Shyri ventured over, looking from one to the other. ‘You two
lovers finished your spat, have you?’
‘We have,’ confirmed Asmander.
‘He’s got something to tell you,’ Venater leered.
There was a tiny fraction of a moment when her expression
was unguarded, but then the usual snide smile was back in
place. ‘Oh?’
‘He’s going to get that girl back.’
Shyri laughed, head thrown back. Then, realizing nobody was
joining in with her, she stopped. ‘No, he’s not. That would be a
stupid thing to do.’
‘No argument here about that,’ agreed Venater.
‘Or here.’ Asmander sighed. ‘But it is true, even so.’
She tried another laugh, but the resulting sound was an
uncertain one. ‘There’re more than a few of those Wolves there,
Iron or not. Is the great Champion going to fight them all?’
‘Who can say? Perhaps they will line up for me sideways on,
like in the carvings.’