The Tiger and the Wolf (57 page)

But still she ran, the instinct stronger than reason or religion.
She skittered fleet-footed across the Godslands, and the gods
looked down, disinterested, and turned their muzzles and their
snouts away from her frantic cries for aid.

And at last she could run no more, scrabbling halfway up a
steeper hill that was far from any landmarks she might recognize.
She slipped back down, feeling her nails break and skin tear;
railing at the terrible frailty of a mere human form; knowing the
hot breath of her own birthright as it prepared to devour her.

And so she turned, standing at bay at last, and saw those two
familiar shapes pad out to confront her, one grey as shadow, the
other flickering with red embers. These were the beasts of the
wild, the killers and eaters of men, the howlers and snarlers in
the dark: the Winter Runner and the Shadow Eater. And she had
nothing but blunt human teeth and clawless human hands.

They closed with her lazily, keeping a distance between them,
the wolf to her right, the tiger to her left. Her feeble hands
clawed at the substance of the Godsland for aid.

There was something hard under her fingers.
Her hand closed on it. That was what her hand was for. She
hefted the stone and in a heartbeat she had thrown it, hearing
the wolf yelp from the unexpected impact. That was what her
arm was for.
She had been crouched and cowering. Now she forced herself to stand tall, to stand on her own two legs. Her hands were
reaching again, drawing the shadows into other shapes, as
though even those mute things had soul. She had a knife; she
had a spear; she had a club; she had a bow.
But the two beasts were still closing in, though there was
something cautious in their step now, a hint of wariness.
‘I am not yours.’ Her voice sounded tremulous and high, but
it was the only voice in all the Godsland.
She had a stick in her hand now, that was just a slender wand.
She lifted it high. Part of her had caught its breath at what she
was about to bring into this place of spirits.
‘You are mine!’ she challenged them, the wolf and the tiger.
‘You were born from me and you shall go back to your place! I
am your master. You shall hunt at my bidding, or not at all!’
And she struck the stick against the ground, and it blazed
forth with fire.
She saw its light gleam back from their startled eyes. She saw
it race across the Godslands, and the lesser beasts there shied
away from it. Only those great, implacable creatures of myth she
had come to seek were able to stare without any fear at the spectre of a human hand holding a blazing brand.
‘I am Maniye! I am Many Tracks!’ she yelled to her recalcitrant souls. ‘And you are mine! You are no more than my
shadow!’
And she brandished the flame at them, first one and the the
other, forcing them backwards, showing them that she was
strong.
She knew what must be done now, though she could not have
said how this knowledge came to her. She planted the brand in
that dark earth and stepped past it, letting her two-legged
shadow stretch long and tall across the undulating ground. And,
where it touched them, it showed the two beasts before her to be
no more than shadows themselves: wolf, tiger, human, all three
just the shapes that the firelight cast outwards from her.
And when they were back inside her – when she knew she
had mastered them in this place, and they would not drive her
mad any more, or fight each other within the confines of her
skull – only then did she turn back towards the fire.
On the far side of the brand, the flaring light was reflected in
two eyes bigger than her fists, on teeth like ranks of knives. A
beast had come down from its hilltop to gaze at her, at long last.

The
maccan
was twisted free of Asmander’s hand, its stone teeth
gashing the fingers of the man who took it from him. He saw a
knife curved like a claw raised up above him. Kicking out won
him a second’s respite as he got a heel into a Tiger woman’s
knee, throwing the whole tangled knot of them off-kilter. But
then they had him again and he stared into the narrowed eyes of
his killer.

Something black came amongst them then, like a long streak
of night speckled with the glint of stars. Yellow teeth flashed in
its jaws, shearing at flesh and leaving ragged wounds in their
wake; claws dug and ripped and pried, prising the scrum apart
as though opening a clam.

Aritchaka still had Asmander firmly by the neck, but abruptly
his limbs were unencumbered, and he gripped her arm, twisting
it away. Her knife jabbed at him, but it slanted off the quillscales of the Champion as he slipped out of her grasp just in
time. Then she had fallen back along with the others, forming a
loose ring of warriors and tigers with their queen in the centre,
facing the Champion and his Dragon.

Venat Stepped, rolling his broad shoulders, weighing the
greenstone
meret
in his hand. The weapon of a chief, Asmander
knew: lesser warriors would use bone or wood or flint, not that
hard jade rock that took long seasons to craft and retained its
edge like nothing else. How hard it must have been for the man
to bow his head, to relinquish his name and become a servant to
a boy. When Asmander had given it all back to him, he was sure
the old pirate would kill him, or try. Some part of him had been
hoping for it.
And now here he was, with his back to the rocks, his unnerving grin towards the Tigers. Those coal eyes of his took in the
fire-shadow stripes of them, the shining bronze plates of their
mail, the feathers cresting their helms.

Asmander Stepped, feeling the Champion still just a breath
away and eager to resume the fight. ‘Did you forget something?’
he managed.

‘That’s how they do gratitude in Atahlan, is it?’ Venat bared
his teeth: maybe a smile, maybe not. ‘How are you still alive,
boy?’

Venat squared his shoulders as the Tigers expanded their
half-circle, taking their places on both flanks. One had a javelin
drawn back to throw, and the big cats were drawing themselves
up to leap.

Asmander Stepped again, the Champion’s bow-taut form
closing about him. The Tigers flinched back a little, confronting
the alien majesty of that shape as though they were looking into
the sun. A Champion’s soul burned fierce and free, torn from
the deep time when its avatars had once walked the earth.

And then it happened; they felt it, every one of them. The
ground did not shake, but each of them, Tigers, Venat and
Asmander himself, they all shifted their balance slightly and all
at once. Something had changed.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Standing over the body of Broken
Axe, one foot planted on the dead wolf’s blood-matted hide,
Akrit Stone River bellowed to his followers. ‘Go get the girl,
bring my daughter to me! Or is there another who would challenge me?’

And they were still staring, and only then did he realize that
they were not staring at
him.
The Winter Runners stood in awe
of something, and it was not their chief. Old Kalameshli Takes
Iron’s old face was slack behind its tattoos. There was shock in
his yellowed eyes, and there was fear, but there was something
else to be read there too. Akrit was abruptly aware that it was
reverence.

When he turned, he half thought he would behold the Wolf
himself. What came down from the hilltop was grander and
more terrible even than that.

It walked like a bear, on flat feet, with curved talons that
gouged the earth where they touched, and it possessed a bear’s
heavy-shouldered bulk – not quite the size of the Cave Dweller
Akrit had just dispatched, but not so far from it. The monster’s
head was not the squat muzzle of a bear, though, but a long,
grinning gape that had a great deal of wolf in it, were it not for
the size. Those were jaws that could reach out into the night sky
and pluck down the moon. Its eyes held the gold fire of the sun.
Its pelt was black as a panther’s, with a shimmer-sheen of silver
to the dense hairs, and its tail lashed the air like a cat’s. There
was something of a tiger’s grace to it, too, despite its size.

And, more than that, there was an aura that surrounded the
creature, of something more than natural. As it advanced down
the hill, Akrit backed away until he was almost amongst his followers, for there was a terrible cold radiance that seemed to limn
the creature, perceived only by the mind.

The creature had halted at Broken Axe’s body, staring down
at it, and Akrit was half convinced this prodigy must have been
sent by the Wolf himself to bring home the soul of his fallen son.
For the first time in a long while he had a stab of doubt, beginning to wonder if he had done the right thing.

And the huge monster Stepped, and it was just slight Maniye
standing here, gazing with gleaming eyes at the dead animal, at
the empty vessel that had once been Broken Axe.

Akrit was finding it difficult to draw breath. He had reclaimed
his bear-killer, hands clutching white-knuckled on its haft.
There
she was!
He had only to rush her now and he would be rid of
her. And yet, if he shed her blood, the whole world would
denounce him as kinslayer. None of them would
understand.

‘Kill her,’ he croaked. ‘Takes Iron, Tree Striker, any of you,
kill her. Kill her! Kill her
now
!’
At the sound of his voice, Maniye glanced up and looked him
in the eye. She was shaking, and if was grief that had struck her,
she wore it like armour. It was a grief that peeled her lips back
from her teeth, and made of her expression something terrible
and savage.
She was saying something – he could not hear what it might
be. She was speaking, and then she cocked her head as though
something answered back.
But she was
his
child, disobedient and wayward as she was.
She was
his
. He bared his teeth at her, and saw their history
reflected in her eyes; her life spent under the shadow of his hand.
And he knew he could master her again, and he hefted his falx.
If it had served as a bear-killer, it would serve well enough to
bring to heel whatever Maniye had become.
Then her eyes narrowed, and she Stepped.

She had not believed it possible until she saw the body: only a
wolf with a dark flash of fur across its shoulders, but just as the
spirits here were an invisible presence, so the death of Broken
Axe left an absence, a gap in the world. There was a man who
had walked with Wolves and Tigers, who had fought alongside
the Bear. There lay the Wolf who walked by himself, owning to
no master save his own judgement. There was the man who had
saved Maniye’s mother from the hands of the man who still
called himself her father. There lay the man who had hunted
her across the Crown of the World; the man who had been her
friend in the Shining Halls and who had fought for her freedom,
even though it had cost him everything.

And at last she looked up at Akrit Stone River, who was staring at her with his face clenched into such a tangle of hate and
fear, horror and rage that surely the knot of it would never come
undone unless it was cut straight through. He was pointing at
her, making demands of his warriors, of Kalameshli and of the
world. And for once the world was not listening to Akrit Stone
River. For once, the sun and moon did not move about his
drives and wants and ambition. Instead, the world was watching
her
.

‘Can I do this?’ she asked, as though Broken Axe might hear
her. Within her breast, the tiger and the wolf that she was inheritrix to were both waiting. They did not strain against her any
more; there was no rebellion left inside them, and if there was a
madness in her, it was of a different order, a thing divine.

‘Can I face him?’ she whispered. A lifetime of blows, of spite,
of callous little cruelties spread before her like a path of thorns.
She looked on Akrit’s face, and he still meant
Fear
to her, as if
her frightened, beaten past could have its own separate soul. If
he raised a hand against her, she would cower back, she knew it.

But the voice rose up within her – the
other
voice as vast and
measureless as the horizon, and it told her that she could.
‘My father,’ she murmured . . . but of course he was not her
father, he had never been her father. He was only the man who
had tried to make her
his
.
Her heart was rattling in her chest – her human heart – but
she made herself meet Akrit’s eyes, forced herself to do so as
though she held a knife to her own throat. She had intended
defiance, but there must have been some yielding emotion on
her face, because his eyes gleamed and he brandished the
weapon at her, the blade that had carved up Loud Thunder, in
the hand that had struck down Broken Axe. Here was the man
who had harried her mercilessly back and forth across the
Crown of the World.
And so she Stepped, and called that Champion whose lair she
had found in the Godsland. Its form enveloped her, the iron
strength of its muscles, the thick leather of its hide. She
stretched, and felt a sullen, enduring power in every sinew, felt
her new claws rake furrows in the earth, licked the jagged fence
of her teeth with a black tongue.
The great weight of it, the sheer power of her new shape,
made Akrit Stone River take a pace back as she closed with
him. She tried to build on that: rearing up and stamping on the
ground, bellowing in a voice not like a wolf’s or a bear’s or any
animal’s. His eyes were very wide, but he held his ground, and
then abruptly he had Stepped again, darting to one side and then
towards her flank as a big grey wolf. She turned on the spot and
swatted at him, missed his fleeting shape and then felt the nip of
him at one side. His teeth closed on nothing but thick tufts of
her pelt, and a moment later she lurched at him, bringing her
bear-claw feet down where he had been and forcing him to back
off.
But she could not fight well. Asmander, despite all his winged
glory, had never flown. Just so for her: the shape was unfamiliar,
its tolerances and capabilities unknown to her. For all her new
body’s strength and speed, she was like a woman drunk and
unable to use it to its fullest, slipping, overreaching, chasing the
swift-footed wolf but never catching him.
He would realize that soon, she knew. So far he was surely
congratulating himself on his nimble speed. But he was no fool,
and when he understood . . .
And again he was a man, the falx biting down towards her,
but he had made the move too swiftly, still unnerved by the
Champion’s reek of deep time that cloaked her. She shouldered
into him, the haft of the weapon bouncing off her ribs, and then
he was down, rolling frantically to get out of her way. She
charged him, lumbering forth with a sudden access of speed,
but he was Stepped and out of reach long before she got to him.
They faced one another, both panting. Downslope their audience was the Winter Runners and Kalameshli. Upslope, Hesprec
was standing in that gap Broken Axe had held for just long
enough. The Serpent girl would die too, if Maniye failed.
She growled and slashed at Akrit, batting with her claws like
a cat, sending him scuffling backwards, but then he was at her
again. He rushed straight into her jaws, it seemed, but, as she
snapped at him, he was past her, dodging up the slope. For a
moment she thought he was after Hesprec, and she wheeled
clumsily. He was only after height, though, Stepping back to
human for that leap, then to wolf form for the extra distance its
lighter frame would lend him, and then he was a man once
more, and onto her back.
She reared up onto her hind legs, snarling: it was exactly what
he wanted. The hard wood haft of his falx slid under her throat
until he had a hand at either end of it. His arms were only just
long enough to manage it; to put a collar about that great neck.
But in the next breath, the neck was not so great, and he was
pulling her human head against his mail-clad chest, the weapon’s shaft crushing into her slender throat.
And yet he held off: he did not make that final twist or pull
that would finish her. Instead he roared at Kalameshli. ‘Bring
your knife, priest, now! Finish her! Give her to the Wolf!’ And
she realized that, enraged as Akrit was, he did not want to bring
the curse of kinslayer down upon his name.
Her mind was very calm then, somehow. The Champion was
at the back of it, awaiting its moment, passing on to her mouthfuls of its strength. She gazed down at the Winter Runners, and
met the eyes of Kalameshli.
The old priest shambled forwards, the little bones of his robe
clicking and rattling. He had an iron knife in one hand, a piece
he must have crafted himself, sweating at the forge as he acted
out that secret knowledge known only to the Wolf. Akrit held
Maniye rigid, just able to breathe, unable to give voice to more
than a choke . . . but her eyes spoke.
Kalameshli stood in front of her: the other scourge of her
childhood who had whipped her and pushed her and challenged
her. The man who had known of the Tiger in her heart, and
hated it, but never told her father. And she had hated him back
– with reason! – for a long time, but at least she knew
why
he
had been that man.
He had been like iron, hard as his name, through all her
childhood. There had been no love, no give in him. Now he
looked like a wretched, defeated shadow of himself.
‘Akrit . . .’ he murmured. ‘Not your daughter’s blood.’
‘Do it!’ Flecks of Stone River’s spittle arced close past Maniye’s face.
The old priest raised his knife and lunged forwards with it, a
movement so jerky and sudden that both Akrit and Maniye
assumed he had stabbed her – instead of forcing its leather-wrapped hilt into her hand.
She could not sever Stone River’s mail, she knew, not even
with iron on iron. He wore no helm, though, and she stabbed
back past her shoulder with the blade, close enough to draw a
line of red across her own ear. It bit solidly into Akrit’s face and
abruptly he was screaming, and the pressure was gone from her
throat.
And the Champion was waiting for her, just like family, gathering her up in its might and power, and she swiped at Akrit
with a paw and sent him tumbling back down the slope.
He scattered his own men gathered there, but then found his
footing, staggering upright with half his face clad in blood. He
screamed at her; he raged, and she raged right back at him.
And he was charging her again, first as a wolf to make up
speed, and then as a man, with falx raised high. He was the chief
of the Winter Runners; he was the terror of her childhood.
She looked down on him – yes,
down
! – and realized that the
fear had gone from her at last. She roared at him in a thunderstorm of sound that slowed and slowed him further, until he
stumbled to a halt outside of her reach. He looked into her
beast’s eyes, and saw that she was not his any more.
She advanced with one stomping step after another, swinging
her head and baring the daggers of her teeth. Something went
out of him then, as though his mastery of her had been his last
crutch, and now she had broken it. He had nothing left to hold
him up.
He backed off a couple of awkward steps, and then he
became a wolf, fleeing like a swift grey shadow for the trees. He
did not reach them.
Maniye could not have kept up with him, but another had
been waiting for her chance. A form of fire and shadow dropped
upon Akrit, raking and savaging, and then it was a woman in
bronze mail with knife and hatchet, and then a tiger again, her
teeth crushing, her claws ripping until the weak points of his
iron hide gave way. And sometimes he was a man, fumbling
desperately against her savage jaws, and sometimes he was a
wolf shuddering as she stabbed and stabbed at his grey hide.
But it was the end of him, in either shape. And so it was that
Akrit Stone River came to die.
He died a wolf, in the end. His soul would not be a feast for
the Tiger. And that was the best that could be said about the
demise of Stone River.
When she had done, Joalpey stood and confronted Maniye,
first looking up into her great amber eyes, then down, into her
human ones. The Tiger Queen’s reddened weapons were still in
her hands and there was a fighting tension in her to match.
Maniye took a deep breath. ‘Do you seek to kill me, now?’
Joalpey just stared at her, still wound up for bloodletting.
From around the hill slunk her Tigers: Aritchaka and a handful
of others, on two legs and four.
‘If you feared that I might be a weapon used against you,’
Maniye continued, ‘then the hand that would have held that
weapon is no more.’ She was very aware of the Winter Runners
bunched together and nearer to her than the Tigers were – inching closer, too, as though they were going to stand alongside her.
That threw her, because she had expected nothing but enmity
from them. Apparently she was still theirs, when Tigers were
about. Without her father to feed them his hate, they smelled the
Wolf on her.
‘If it is just that the sight . . . the knowledge of me,’ Maniye
went on, hearing her voice shake slightly, ‘is impossible to live
with, after what was done, then . . . Then you have killed the
man who did it. I ask you to leave the hatred there with his
corpse. Do not bring it to me. I have not earned it.’
And the Tigers Stepped back and forth, shifting to keep the
Wolves in sight, and then again as a handful of people descended
from the hilltop. Hesprec was there and the three southerners,
and last of all came the slow and limping figure of Loud Thunder, a great bear with a single dog at his heels. The balance of
power shivered and danced between them all: a ring of three
warbands, with Maniye at their centre.
At last Joalpey took a long breath. ‘It is not over,’ she declared.
Maniye felt the Champion looming large in her mind, ready
to come to her aid. ‘Let it be over,’ she urged.
‘He –
he
is part of this.’ Joalpey jabbed with her knife, and it
was Kalameshli Takes Iron that she singled out. ‘I will have this
man’s blood. I will have his soul for the Tiger.’
And, of course, she was right. Of course, the old man had
played his part. Maniye was living evidence of that.
She glanced back at Kalameshli. The priest was staring levelly
at Joalpey. Would he go forth and meet her, knife to knife? Perhaps, and he would die. He was old and, though he was strong,
he was no warrior.
He had saved Maniye, at the end. She had left the iron of the
knife behind when she Stepped, but not the memory of his
actions. If he had remained true to his chief, she would be dead.
Maniye wanted Hesprec’s wisdom and Broken Axe’s calm.
She had only herself, though.
‘It is your right, to ask it,’ she replied quietly, thinking through
all the words she might say. ‘How can I say that you’re not owed
your revenge?’
‘Then give it to me,’ Joalpey demanded.
‘Because I owe him my life. I owe him that debt. And because
he is my kin, my blood. Because he is my father. The very act
you are owed vengeance for is what put me here – what made
me.’
‘What are you saying?’ the Tiger Queen growled.
‘I cannot ask you to forget, but I am asking you, just this
once, to stay your hand. For no other reason than your daughter
asks it. I have nothing more than that, nothing to bargain with
save for that.’
For a long, silent moment Joalpey said nothing, and all eyes
were on her. Her lips twitched once, a muscle clenched in
the corner of her jaw, her hands tightened on the hilts of her
weapons.
At last she spoke. ‘What is this new shape you have, daughter? Is it some Champion of the Wolf that you have called out of
the darkness? Is this what will hunt my people when the moon
is high?’
And Maniye found she could answer, for that was the one
thing she had a full understanding of when she returned to her
body from the Godsland.
‘I am a mother to wolves,’ she said softly. ‘I am sister to cats.
The blood of bears and hyenas runs in my veins. If I am a
Champion of anything, it is of all the beasts that rend flesh with
tooth and claw. No one tribe has a claim on me. I am for all the
Crown of the World and beyond.’ Saying the words and knowing the truth behind them, she felt a sudden thrill of joy.
‘And whose flesh will you rend?’ Joalpey asked her.
Maniye took a deep breath. ‘Whoever lifts a hand against my
people.’
And who are my people? Everyone and no one.Whoever I
decide.
The Tigers were watching their queen doubtfully, sensing the
shifting emotions within her. Asmander and Venater were poised
to fight, Maniye recognized, and Shyri as well. The Wolves were
strung as taut as bows.
Hesprec, though: the dark girl caught her gaze and nodded,
just the once. Centuries of watching the world gave the small
motion weight. Hesprec, at least, felt that Maniye had found the
right words to say.
And then Joalpey took another long breath, and cast her knife
down before her, point first into the earth.
‘It is over,’ she declared, and a great invisible burden seemed
to slough off her shoulders. ‘For you, my daughter, I grant this.
Let the old man be kept far, far from the lands of the Tiger, and
I will renounce my claim on him. I grant you this, because there
is nothing else that I can give you. I have nothing else for my
daughter but this.’
The words were said without remorse, flat and empty of feeling, but Maniye’s hide was thicker these days. They did not sting
her as they once might.