The Tiger and the Wolf (52 page)

Only after they had gone did Maniye herself come out from one
of the Horse tents. She wore a quilted coat dyed in faded colours of red and mauve, a garish and much-darned garment. Her
original coat was now fast receding on horseback, worn by a
Horse girl only a little larger than herself.

The deception would not work for long, but she was hoping
for Akrit’s fury to take him a long way from the Horse camp
before he realized it. The riders had a good head start and were
making off across open country. When their pursuers came
close they would Step, and four unladen horses would outstrip
all the wolves in the world. They had undertaken this task without complaint when Alladai had asked it of them. Hesprec had
purchased a great deal of loyalty from the Horse Society, it
seemed.

The rest of the camp was packing up now, ready to return to
the trading post, where the Society would have the numbers
to withstand the rage of the Winter Runners if need be. Alladai
was dismissive about such a confrontation, and yet at the same
time he was going among his people, enjoining them to be
brave. Maniye worried for him.

But her path and his must separate for now. She was departing for the sacred place, this Path of Fallen Stones. She was
going to confront the madness in her souls, to conquer it or to
be conquered.

‘Are you ready?’ The new Hesprec was at her side, teeth
gleaming as she smiled. The young energy that ran through her
now was the most alien part of the Serpent’s transformation.
Maniye was amazed at how much of the elder Hesprec’s character had simply been a factor of the years that burdened him, and
that his rebirth had stripped away.

The others were already gathered. Broken Axe and Loud
Thunder were talking quietly – she saw the Bear grin, a boyish
expression that only emerged when he was happy and with his
old friend. To see it was almost a relief: if the big man was to risk
himself, it would at least be for Axe, and not for Maniye herself.

The three southerners stood apart, and Asmander’s eyes
flicked between the two women as they approached.
‘Messenger,’ he said, and glanced at Maniye again, not quite
guiltily. ‘I am here to serve you.’
Hesprec nodded. ‘Champion, always I am glad of your company but do not confuse my path with your own.’
Asmander lowered his eyes. ‘When I was told you were dead,
I knew despair.’ There was a wealth of pain in his voice, a
sudden open wound, but Hesprec held a hand up to forestall
him.
‘No more of that,’ she said. ‘Enough has been said. If Many
Tracks will challenge you, then that is her business. What about
your fellows though, Champion? Are they so happy to walk in
your tracks?’
‘No,’ Venater snapped immediately, arms folded.
‘Quiet, you,’ Asmander told him. ‘You are my shadow until I
set you free.’
‘And you, laughing sister?’ Hesprec asked.
Shyri smirked. ‘No sister of yours, old man, whatever face
you now wear. But I am not yet bored of this river-boy and his
stupidity. I will stay.’
Alladai came next. Hesprec clasped her little hands in front of
her and he matched her.
‘May your road be smooth underfoot,’ he intoned, and then,
‘though that is a poor blessing for the Crown of the World.’
‘May the earth carry your burdens,’ Hesprec matched him,
‘and the Serpent’s back lead you home.’ She tugged her scarf
tighter over her hair.
‘Many Tracks,’ Alladai called out. ‘We’ll meet again. Stay
well.’
She carried his parting smile with her a long way, once they
had set off.

Moving north again, a day’s travel took them to the sacred place
of the Boar. At first they were following the river into the woods
but then they broke off into tangled, cluttered country, hunting
for the tracks they had been told of. Broken Axe sniffed out the
scent of boars and led them to a narrow trail half overhung with
the knotted branches of trees.

They should have moved faster, for even Loud Thunder
could make a good pace when Stepped. Maniye had hoped to
take the trail on wolf feet, to range alongside Broken Axe with
her nose open for danger. When the time came, though, she
could not do so. She took a deep breath to Step, and instantly
those two souls were welling up like pus inside her, poisoned
and corrupted, pressing and swelling against her. She fought
them down though they racked her body, forcing themselves up
in a mouthful of bile and trying to make her vomit one or the
other out. She was a prisoner of her human shape.

So they were limited to a human’s speed – and less even than
that, for Maniye felt feverish, shivering. The fits came and went,
each one tearing at the tenuous hold she was keeping on the
world.

And the going grew harder and harder, the upward slope of
the land weighing on her like stones. She was awash with sweat,
her heart skipping and dancing to rhythms that seemed to ape
those of the Tigers’ dance. There was a pressure within her head
born of too many eyes trying to peer out from the same two
sockets.

She did not stop, though. Even though she knew that she was
slowing them all, she would not call out for aid, and she would
not give in to herself. Whenever the ground tilted up beneath
her, she went on all fours, climbing with human hands and feet
where she would have leapt like a tiger not so long before. When
the land was flatter, she stumbled and lurched along, with the
wolf inside her snarling and clawing for the freedom of the far
horizons.

But then the way was more steep than not, and the forest was
rising upwards ahead of them, following the slope of a hill.
‘Hold!’ called the high voice of Hesprec. ‘Not another step
until I’ve studied our way.’
‘Our way is up,’ Venater pointed out.
Maniye squinted upwards, and there, within her sight, rose a
hill crowned with stones – and not just the three the Boar had
mentioned. There was a clutch of enormous boulders, as though
some giant spirit had plucked them from the mountains and set
them down here where they had no business to be. She thought
she saw more, too: odd suggestions of regular lines that might
have indicated the work of man, but overtaken by enough time
to bury them. And there were ridges running around the hillside
that almost seemed like . . .
‘There’s a path,’ she croaked. ‘It goes round, round and
round and up.’
Venater made a disgusted noise. ‘That’s not a path, not for
people who want to get anywhere fast. We’ll go straight up.’
‘We will not,’ Hesprec said quietly but firmly. ‘We will
approach this place as its creators intended. Perhaps they were
wiser than we. Certainly they were wiser than you.’ She raised
an eyebrow at Venater, who loomed over her, big and mean
enough to tear her in two. The old pirate just looked surly,
though, and took a step back.
The path spiralled up the hill, in and out of trees at first, and
then they had left the forest behind, climbing out of it onto
rocky slopes, with each lessening turn bringing them closer to
the huge stones above. Squinting upwards past the glare of the
duskbound sun, Maniye’s mind jumped back and forth: natural
or made; made or natural? She could not decide which. The
greater boulders were too vast to have been moved there, too
unworked to have been intended. And yet, as they drew near,
her earlier conviction returned to her. Someone had built here
once, laid stone on stone just as she had seen in the Shining
Halls. She remembered the intricately carved stonework of the
Tigers, and how so much of it had fallen to ruin. Whoever had
made this hill their temple had done so in an age that made all
the works of the Tiger seem mere follies of yesterday. The earth
– the grass and moss and mounded soil – had almost completely
swallowed all signs of it. Only the occasional protruding block
remained there as mute witness; a certain regularity that led
Maniye’s gaze along the secret, hidden lines of the place.
She remembered how the Stone Place had first seemed to
her, with the spirits louring low in the sky, their twisting scrutiny
anchored to that island in the swamps. As they approached the
summit, she knew this was a kindred place. Not so grand, surely,
but perhaps older. Those spirits that dwelled here, sleeping
within the earth or spread across the wide sky above, they were
powers that had been drifting away from human affairs for centuries. Yet there was strength here: she felt it in the hairs at the
back of her neck; in the clutch of her bowels. Or else she was
simply desperate to believe so, because if there was nothing
here, then all Hesprec’s lore and wisdom would accomplish
nothing.
The three stones themselves seemed almost nothing. One
stood, barely more than a man’s height; two were fallen, and one
of those cracked in two. Together they formed two sides of a
triangle inside a little round space that was half walled off by the
mounded boulders. This small stretch of mystery was what their
long spiralling progress had led towards.
Feeling the strength of those quiescent spirits, though,
Maniye knew that Hesprec had been right. To approach as the
Boar did; to approach as the ancient architects had intended,
that was how to win one’s way to the sacred site without gathering the ire of those whose power suffused the place. If they had
just scaled the hillside as Venater had suggested, then they would
have reached the top amid an invisible tempest of offence. Any
ritual conducted against that anger could only have gone badly
wrong.
And now they were at the top, and Maniye collapsed onto her
knees at the summit’s edge, looking around her at where those
old, old stones cut through the turf like loose teeth. They had
been carved once, but time had smoothed over whatever message human hands had incised in them.
Hesprec, though, was looking downwards with a speculative
air.
‘One might wonder just whose hands raised this place, and
when,’ the Serpent girl murmured, echoing Maniye’s own
thoughts. Her copper eyes were narrowed in thought, and
Maniye could see the world as she did, just for a moment. The
spiralling path that encircled the hill was like the coils of a serpent, so that they now stood at its head, here where the stones
were. And was that just a coincidence or was this some distant,
cold splinter of the Serpent’s history that even Hesprec did not
know of?
‘So you’re going to go straight on with this business, are you?’
Venater demanded.
The Serpent girl shook her head. ‘Preparation is ever the
friend of the ritualist.’
‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’ the pirate demanded.
‘It means priest business,’ Asmander decided. ‘And we have
travelled far and, while the Messenger works, we will sleep, save
for those who watch.’
‘And when the Wolves sniff out the truth and come for us?’
Shyri asked.
Asmander put a hand to his ear. ‘What’s that I hear? Laughing Girl wants to take first watch? Then, of course, she must.’
‘Dung-eater.’
‘Not laughing now?’ Asmander challenged her.
She shrugged. ‘At least you’re not moping and groaning
about your honour any more. Selling that girl to her father was
the one clever thing you ever did, and after it you were no fun
at all. I prefer you when you’re stupid and happy.’
Venater smirked. ‘You didn’t know him back home. He’s all
smiles half the time, and about to cut his own throat the rest.
You try being his slave, see how much fun it is.’ And then, seeing
Asmander’s gaze on him, ‘What?’
‘A slave?’
‘Slave with no collar’s still a slave,’ the pirate replied with a
rebellious look.
‘Enough,’ Broken Axe intervened. ‘Laughing Girl, you keep
watch with Loud Thunder until the moon’s high. I’ll see out the
rest of the night with one of these Rivermen.’
‘That means you, then,’ Venater told Asmander, stretching.
The Champion eyed him with half a smile. ‘Of all the slaves
in the world, you are the least satisfactory.’
‘There are worse ambitions.’

Maniye had wanted to put herself forward to watch out part of
the night. It had hurt when Broken Axe had overlooked her,
though she knew she would not have been capable of it. In a
sudden reversal of perspective, she understood how he saw
them all: they were his pack, his tribe. They were here because
of an odd network of loyalties, but all focused on making one of
their number well again. While she was weak, Broken Axe had
arranged the pack around her, their strengths covering for her.
When –
if
– she was strong again then he would lean on her to
precisely that degree that she could endure. That was how he
led, and that was how a Wolf leader ought to.

Lying on the cold ground, huddling close with Hesprec’s
slight form tucked against her, and Asmander’s back against her
own, she indulged a fantasy in which Axe, and not her father,
had risen to become chief of the Winter Runners. How the
world might then have been different! And her own life, how
might that have gone if her father had been no more than a
strong hunter of the Wolves . . .

But without Stone River and what he had done to her mother,
surely there would be no Maniye Many Tracks. Knowing what
she now knew about her origins, perhaps there would just have
been Akrit, childless. Her wolf soul would have found some
other body to be born into, her tiger soul likewise. The unlikely
and traumatic combination that had given rise to
her
would never
have arisen. If she had a destiny at all, she shared it with him.

And she shivered, and tried to sleep, but she was still awake
when Loud Thunder pushed his mountainous way in to share
their warmth. Only then, with Broken Axe lying alert atop one
of the rocks, his muzzle on his paws and his ears cocked, did she
find a little rest.

Her sleep was troubled with dreams, but then she had been
their plaything ever since she came to the Shining Halls. Asleep,
the cages of her souls were thrown open and they ran about the
spaces of her mind, hunting one another, hunting her too. Their
battlefield was every place between her home village and this
hilltop, all jumbled together inside her mind. She had expected
to dream of great spirits, to be touched by the powers that
inhabited this place. They did not come, though, and she was
left to her own mercies until morning.