The Tiger and the Wolf (49 page)

The next she knew, she was lying half-conscious in the forest by
the riverside, soaked through and chilled to the bone. Dawn was
still some way off, and someone was trying to prise her out of
her clothes.

She kicked and spat, Stepping into a very sodden tiger, her
back arched and hissing. It was Broken Axe, she realized. He
lifted his head, plainly listening for any suggestion they had
attracted attention, then held up a tunic and a coat, dry clothes
produced from somewhere. He himself was as bedraggled as she
was.

She regained her human form with a quick nod, and stripped
away her river-ruined clothes, struggling into the new garments,
which were far too big for her. Broken Axe had acquired dry
leggings and a thin tunic, and was now tugging them on unselfconsciously. After she had the coat firmly wrapped about her,
she realized that Asmander was still with them, wearing several
layers less than he’d sported before.

There was something important that had struck her about
him during that mad river-ride, but it was gone from her head
now.

‘We can’t risk a fire, of course,’ she guessed. ‘So what happens now?’
‘If you’re fit enough, we travel,’ Broken Axe told her. ‘The
southerner has somewhere to go.’
‘Does he?’ Maniye fixed Asmander with a hard stare. ‘What
do I think about you, Son of Asman?’ His title came to her even
as she spoke. She hoped that using it made her seem even a little
more intimidating.
‘Think what you want.’ He shrugged. ‘But come with me.’
‘You’re going to trade me to the Tiger now?’
‘I was not sent to make bargains with the Tiger. My father
sent me only to the Wolf,’ he replied candidly. ‘I had been promised what I needed, in return for you. Long before I even met
you was that promise made – back at the Stone Place when your
father went mad.’
‘He’s always been mad,’ she told him darkly. ‘So what now?’
‘Now I do not have what I needed. Nor will I obtain it.’
She shivered, and Broken Axe hugged her to him. She
twitched away from him at first, because the stripes on her back
hurt, and because she didn’t know what she thought about him.
He was warmer than she, though, and sharing that with her.
‘We will need to move soon, wherever we go,’ Axe murmured.
She nodded jerkily. ‘So why?’ she demanded.
For a long while he remained silent, his dark face unreadable,
then just tilted his head towards Broken Axe. ‘For him.’
Maniye did not know what to make of that, and she suspected that Axe didn’t either, but it was said now, and apparently
there was to be no more explanation. ‘So what was it your father
wanted anyway? Furs? Timber?’ She was trying to remember
what the Horse had been carrying south on their great barges.
‘Warriors: the Iron Wolves,’ Asmander explained with a fragile smile. ‘Where I come from, they are a myth to frighten
children. Perhaps I shall go home and say they are no more than
a myth indeed.’
‘And where would you lead us now?’ Maniye was reaching
inside herself for strength, finding it bleeding back into her
limbs slowly.
‘This river will take us to a Horse Society camp,’ Asmander
told her. ‘My companions should already be there.’
‘The girl with the laugh and that big man who hates everyone?’
‘Just the same.’ His grin was startlingly white. ‘And there will
be another. One who very much wishes to meet you again.’
She didn’t like the sound of that at all, but at the same time
she had no sense of malice from him. His perverse humour was
back, which meant that he was done with straight answers.
Soon after, they were setting off along the river. Maniye wondered how far the Wolves were ranging; how her father’s new
rage had manifested itself. She wondered about whether the
Tiger had turned back for the Shining Halls, or whether the Fire
Shadow People were also trailing her, clashing with their Wolf
enemies. The world was cast in fog, and the only way she could
discover what was out there was to go to it.

Maniye thought she could not be so far from that very outpost she and Hesprec had fled to at the beginnings of winter.
When she asked, Broken Axe confirmed that would likely make
any Horse they found to be of the same clan or family or band
of the Horse Society. This gave her a little heart, as she recalled
their small kindnesses before: the clothes and the warning.

They followed the river at Asmander’s behest. When she
trusted herself to Step, Maniye’s wolf nose told her once more
where she was, and how to reach places. She felt that she had
been travelling in darkness, both night and day. Now finally
there was a little sliver of light. She tried to look within herself to
find the root of this new hope. Her passage through her father’s
hands had broken some hold on her that he had still possessed
all this time, even when she was sitting at her mother’s feet in
the Shining Halls. She had seen him for the man he truly was.
Even whipping her with his switch, he had been a thing diminished: not the ogre of childhood nor the all-powerful god-chief.
Even as he had expounded his plan for the Tiger, that could
never have worked, she had seen further and understood greater
mysteries. He was nothing more than a man.
And after that had come the revelation gleaned from Kalameshli. Hurrying along the path of the river, Broken Axe and
Asmander at her side, she felt a control of her own destiny that
had been lacking for a very long time.

And then the Horse were ahead, and this was not the trading
post, though she knew by now that it was the same river.
Instead, they had arrived at a point where the river was shallow
and wide. There the Horse Society were camped in force and
busily engaged – with two dozen of the Boar and Deer – sieving
and trawling the sands of the shallows with nets, for their own
mysterious purposes.

The three of them were spotted at a distance: a black man
with two wolves trotting at his heels. She saw that the Horse
people included a fair number of men and women armed with
little curved bows and spear-hafted axes that would surely give
even a bear pause. They recognized Asmander, though, and the
arrows were returned to their quivers. Soon after, as Maniye’s
party neared the camp, the other two southerners turned up and
with them a figure whose bulk put even Venater into shadow.

Maniye broke into a run, Stepping to her human form so
close to him that she almost collided. ‘Loud Thunder!’ She was
aware that many of the Horse had stopped playing with their
nets to watch, but she decided that she didn’t care what others
thought. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘The Sons of the Bear travel where they like,’ he replied,
somewhat defensively. He had his axe in hand, and wore foulsmelling armour of grease-hardened fleeces: a Cave Dweller
ready for war.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Venater was saying to Asmander. ‘You
actually came back with her. I was heading south today, maybe
tomorrow. I was going to tell old Asman that his favourite son
had died attempting something stupid, just to see his face. You
ruin everything, you do.’

And the woman, Shyri, cackled and smirked. ‘Ignore him. He
was fretting all this time for fear you’d take his name with you to
the Wolf’s belly.’

Maniye ignored the southerners and their banter. Instead she
drew Loud Thunder aside, because him, at least, she was glad to
see.

‘Always.’ She felt her whole life since the Testing had been
one long flight.
‘Not from Broken Axe these days?’
‘Not any more.’
His look caught her utterly by surprise with its childlike happiness. ‘Good, that’s good. Broken Axe, he’s a good friend. You,
you’re a friend, too. It’s not right for friends to fight.’
She nodded at that. ‘You came when he called – when the
Tiger was attacking?’
He shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. ‘I am all sorts of
stupid sometimes, the things that I do.’ He went wandering off
towards the fire, where some of the Horse were cooking. ‘For
many days since the Stone Place I have been teaching war to the
men of the Bear. Very slow, very dull. Much more interesting to
follow Broken Axe.’
That made her laugh as she followed him. ‘Surely the Bear
don’t need teaching how to fight?’
He grimaced. ‘We brawl, we are rough with each other, we
hunt. But fighting? That is hard work. Hard work does not come
easy to my people.’
‘And your Mother chose you for this?’
‘Because I once fought. After the Tiger was beaten . . . so
many warbands in the Crown of the World then, working for
meat, for mates, for glory. I was young.’ He sounded very apologetic. ‘We went many places – me, Broken Axe, Peace Speaker,
Storm Born, Restan Bastard.’ Across Thunder’s broad face, a
gentle tide of memories washed like a lake’s shallow ripples. ‘We
went all over, even to the Plains when the Lion were still trying
to rule. But always we returned . . . or most of us. Peace Speaker,
he was killed, and Restan too. And Storm Born went south. He
was mad, though. He had destinies like a dog has worms, that
one . . . But I fought, so they make me a teacher of war.’ His
expression showed exactly what he thought about that.
‘And now you’ve run away from your Mother again,’ she
divined, and the Cave Dweller cast his eyes sideways, as though
the rest of the Bear might spring out from the Horse tents to
accuse him.
‘I have not forgotten what I was told,’ he mumbled. ‘I have
come here because I am concerned for my old friend Broken
Axe, that is all.’ His display of nonchalance was unconvincing.
‘And also for my new friend, Many Tracks.’
She stared at him, unable to tell how serious he was being.
She found inside herself a sudden desire not to be important.
She remembered Hesprec joking with her about prophecies and
destinies, and how she had wanted there to be some mystic star
above her head – one that would give her a purpose in the
world. Now she was wiser. She had witnessed Asmander fighting the purpose his father had laid across his shoulders like a
yoke; she had seen how Broken Axe lived, who knew no destiny
but the dictates of his own heart. She had known how it felt to
have others risk their lives for her. Perhaps she had yearned for
the eggshell crown that was a destiny, the year before, but now
it was summer and she was grown, and childish things were left
behind her. That the world had a purpose for her, she had no
doubt, but the chief use most of it seemed to have for her was as
a corpse.
Thinking further on that, she had it in her mind to warn
Loud Thunder that he should go back to the quiet of the highlands, to his lakes and his cave. Akrit Stone River had killed bears
before.
She thought she had said it, then, but from his puzzled frown
she realized that her words had not come out properly. A
moment later she was swaying, as the tiredness of several days
descended on her. She waved off his huge hands as they reached
out to support her. She was fine; she was well. She was just
weary, so very weary. All that time she had spent locked tight
about herself, binding herself with iron bands to keep out the
fear and be ready for the least chance. She had been strung taut
for so long, and now she could relax, just for a while.
And within her the Tiger leapt and seized hold of her.
Abruptly her mind was in its jaws. She felt its fangs bite, its
claws raking and ripping at her, as it tried to get at the Wolf. The
Wolf had the other half of her, worrying and dragging at her
entrails so that she clutched at her stomach, the pain now so
intense that she was sure she had been torn open then and there.
She dropped, very distantly feeling herself fall into Loud
Thunder’s hands, whilst her two souls ran madly about her
mind and body, stalking, ambushing each other, skirmishing
furiously and then breaking apart. Her limbs were twitching and
shuddering and there were distant voices crying out in alarm,
advice being offered. She felt something forced between her
teeth and she gnawed and savaged at it, feeling wood splinter
against her gums.

When she came back to herself, every part of her hurt. She was
within a tent and, for a dreadful moment, she thought she had
not escaped her father after all, and that the fire that glimmered
in from outside had been lit in the mouth of the Wolf’s effigy.
The tent was smaller and neater, though, and the memories
came back to her piecemeal: this must be in the Horse fishing
camp.

All was quiet outside. No doubt there would be a few Horse
sentries watching through the dark hours, but the rest – all the
people that her presence had somehow drawn together – would
be sleeping.

She felt gingerly within herself for her souls. She had a sense
of Tiger and Wolf glowering at each other from opposite ends of
her mind. They had run themselves ragged within her: every
muscle hurt from where she had thrashed and strained, and
there was a fierce knot of pain within her skull. For now, though,
those beasts within were exhausted, and she was free to step out
under the stars.

The Horse had no walls here. There was nothing between her
and the world beyond.
Her father would be hunting her, somewhere out there. He
would find this camp sooner or later. Probably her mother’s
people would as well. She was the loose end that everyone
wanted to tie off or cut away. Left to herself, she might go mad,
run ragged across the hills by her two natures. To simply walk
away from anyone who could help her was something close to
suicide. But she did not really believe that any of them could
help her. None of them possessed that kind of wisdom.
She took a deep breath, knowing it was time for her to leave.
The anxiety that had descended when she spoke with Loud
Thunder remained with her. She did not want these people to
come to harm, and harm seemed to be all she had to gift the
world with. She had spent a winter with Loud Thunder, lived on
his hospitality and become his friend, and yet she dragged him
before the claws of the Tiger. She owed Broken Axe far too
much, not least for all the years she had hated and misjudged
him, and he had been caught by Stone River because of her.
Even the southerners had risked far more than they should:
rough Venater and snide Shyri had fought for her. She even felt
she owed Asmander, who had changed his mind in the end.
She owed it to all of them to leave.
She reached for the shapes that twisted inside her, but she
could not say what might happen if she favoured one or other of
them right now: better let them sleep. Instead she padded off on
bare human feet, weaving her way through the tents, and away
from the river. She could only hope the sentries would not cry
out an alarm at seeing someone
leaving
the camp.
There was a shape in the darkness, eyes glinting in the firelight as it watched her. For a heart-stopping moment she thought
it was a wolf; that her father was already
here
and about to take
her. Then she saw it was just a dog – one of Loud Thunder’s
dogs, in fact, Yoff or Matt. The animal’s gaze was on her, but it
made no sound, nothing to wake its master. If it could think like
a man, no doubt it would be glad to see her go.
A few more steps, and the last of the tents rose before her.
The air was full of quiet breathing, a few snores, the crackling of
guttering fires . . . and her name.
‘Maniye.’
Not a voice she knew: a woman’s voice – no, a girl’s. Maniye
crouched, reaching for a knife she didn’t have. A small figure
was standing close up, seemingly sprung from nowhere.
‘There you are, Maniye.’
Her eyes slowly gathered in the firelight, picking out details
from the shadows before her. This was a girl a little younger
than she, but very different. A girl of Asmander’s people, she
assumed: dark of skin and with a pale headscarf pulled over her
hair. She wore a shift, and an over-large winter coat above it,
though the summer night was mild. Her face seemed a little
familiar, as if Maniye had once known the girl’s mother.
‘I don’t know you.’ Maniye was still motionless. Inside her,
she could feel the first stirrings of her souls reacting to the surprise.
‘But I know
you
, a little at least,’ the girl said, taking one small
step forwards.
She must be one of the children that the Horse trade for
, Maniye
realized, recalling something of this sort she had been told. ‘You
were at the trading post? Or you’ve heard them talk of me from
Thunder and the southerners?’
Is it just because she’s of
Asmander’s people that I think I recognize her?
The girl nodded. She seemed to be very amused about something, but then Asmander behaved like that too, so maybe it was
a Riverlands habit. ‘I wanted to talk with you.’
‘Why?’ And then, because she did not want to get drawn into
a rambling conversation with a stranger, ‘I can’t.’
‘Please, do not leave until we have spoken. It’s very important.’
Maniye bared her teeth. ‘What’s it to you?’ she hissed. ‘I need
to go. It’s safer for everyone.’ Even that was more than she
should have said, but that maddening sense about the dark girl
was drawing out the words. It was not that she was like
Asmander: in fact, the more Maniye studied her, the less like
Asmander she became, and yet the more familiar.
The girl took another step, as careful as if she was approaching a wounded animal. The firelight touched further on the
brown of her skin, striking rainbow colours there. Maniye
started in surprise: there were patterns tattooed on to her skin,
gleaming where the light revealed them – endless loops of scales
that wound about her forehead, cheeks and neck.
The sight brought a lump of loss to Maniye’s throat, for of
course someone already
had
died for her. ‘I have to go,’ she
whispered.
‘Maniye, there’s no need.’
‘Don’t use my name! I don’t know you. I owe you nothing!’
Maniye was fighting to keep her voice down, sure that there
must be people stirring into wakefulness in all the tents around
them.
‘But I owe you, Maniye. I owe you more than a life can
repay,’ the girl told her solemnly. ‘Won’t you sit with me just a
little, and talk? And if you still want to go, you can be gone long
before dawn. But I hope you will stay, for me.’
Maniye opened her mouth, and what came out was: ‘You
look like . . .’ Her legs were suddenly unsteady. ‘You came to
find him, didn’t you? You came looking for Hesprec Essen
Skese.’ Abruptly her heart was pounding in her chest, and just
drawing in a breath had become a struggle. The far horizons she
had set her aim at contracted to the here and now. She lurched
into a gap between the two last tents of the camp and sat down
there, almost collapsing. ‘You’re . . . you look like him: granddaughter, or granddaughter’s daughter, or . . . ?’
‘We are close. Not as close as we should be, I sometimes
think.’ Still the girl seemed amused, and Maniye had a horrible
feeling that nobody had told this child about the old man’s
death.
‘I’m sorry,’ she got out.
‘Of all things, you have no reason to be sorry.’ The girl sat
down beside her, hugging her knees for warmth.
‘He was taken by my father’s people. I tried to rescue him but
. . . it was too late.’
‘It was not,’ the girl told her with absolute assurance.
‘He . . . they had hurt him. He was weak, and we ran so far,
so fast, but it wasn’t enough.’ Inside her, the Wolf was howling
mournfully at a remembered moon, while the Tiger lay smouldering in shadow, its head down on its paws.The simple thought
of all she had gone through had cowed them both. She was not
weeping, she refused to, but inside, her souls mourned on her
behalf. ‘I thought I could do it.’
The girl’s thin arms encircled her cautiously. ‘Ah, forgive me.
I am too cruel,’ she whispered. ‘I am too fond of jokes that
amuse only myself. Maniye, none could have done more than
you did. A death in the mouth of the Wolf is a death for all time.
Preventing that is all that the world asked of you, and you did it.
You have no weapons against time and old age.’
Maniye stared at her, bewildered by the words, the tone. The
girl’s light voice was speaking as though Hesprec’s ghost was in
her.
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered, staring into the other
girl’s eyes, seeing there such a weight of experience and wisdom
and dry old humour that she could hardly stand to look.