For the people of the Crown of the World, fall meant a time of
sacrifice. Winters came hard enough to kill experienced wildsmen as well as just the old and the young. If a tribe had
miscalculated or had suffered a poor year, or if vermin got at the
stores, then winter was a killing time. None knew it more than
the Wolf, and those that died in winter were the Wolf’s due.
Offering sacrifice as the nights grew long, might persuade the
Wolf to act as messenger to the greater powers of storm and
snow and cold, and thus persuade them to stay their hands.
Such intervention could make the difference between a winter
that took only a few of the weak and one that took all but the
strongest.
Journeying with Hesprec Essen Skese was not easy, Maniye
had discovered. It was not like travelling with some sorcerer
priest of the mysterious south. It was like travelling with an old,
old man, and one with far too many quirks that slowed them
down.
For a start, and while it was still dark – their best chance to
put distance between themselves and Akrit’s hall – he had called
a halt, lurching into his human form and shivering in the thin
robe they had left him, out of all his belongings. She had been
forced to Step likewise and delve in her pack for what little she
had brought for him: soft hide shoes that would surely not last
long before wearing through; an old sheepskin jacket, much
mended; a very thin woollen cloak. He struggled into them all
gratefully. The first spots of rain were lancing down from the
louring clouds above, and she had to watch as he sat and fought
with the shoes, forcing his too big feet into them, then fumbling
with the bindings. And all the while their time was wasting, and
they were still close enough that she felt tethered to the Winter
Runners and her home.
About that time Maniye realized that she had not really been
heading anywhere in particular. In fact, she had been taking
them north, into friendless climes where the weather would get
no kinder. What had drawn her there was the treeline. The cover
of the woods lay closest in that direction, for the uneven landscape made felling difficult. Now she would have to pretend that
was her plan, or else lose what little faith the Snake priest might
have in her.
It made some sense: get into the shadow of the trees, then
curve east, because she was heading for . . .
‘You said the Horse men would listen to you . . .’ She
frowned. ‘What are you doing?’
The old man had torn up the hem of his thin robe, exposing
his bony ankles, and was binding the ripped cloth about his bald
head with meticulous care.
‘Sshowing due deference,’ he told her, and he was certainly
taking his time about it, no matter how his hands trembled in
the cold, or how blue his lips were. That was the first time she
wondered if he might just die on her; if she would leave his emaciated corpse behind her, not enough meat on him for a
Coyote’s belly.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said flatly.
‘It is our way,’ he told her.
‘The Horse men, will they do what you ask?’ He had nothing
to barter with, but she was desperate. If he had told her that he
could magic them to obey his will, she would have believed him
readily.
‘The Horse Society, yes, they might,’ he agreed, closing his
pale eyes. ‘If I can promise them enough profit in the south, they
might.’
‘And can you get them to take us away from here?’
His eyes flicked open. ‘I am not ready to leave.’
‘I don’t care. My f– Stone River will be searching every span
of Winter Runner land for us.’
‘I came here with a purpose,’ he protested mildly.
‘Then you have failed in your purpose,’ she snapped, scowling down at him as he sat on a stone and fiddled with the
bindings about his brow. ‘I freed you so you could help me.’
‘Is it ss-so?’ At last his hands were still, indeed all of him was
still: a Snake that might strike at any moment, if only it had
teeth.
‘Yes, it is
ss-so
,’ she retorted, mimicking his mumbled speech.
‘And I swear that, if you betray me now, if you will not take me
to the Horse and beg their aid to get away from my people, then
I will abandon you. I will leave you for the cold or for the Wolf,
whichever finds you first.’
‘Do you even know where you want to go?’ he asked her, still
calmly, but the words stung.
‘Yes, I . . .’ And now she must name somewhere, but she did
not know where.
My mother’s people
, but she found that she was
almost as afraid of that idea as of going back to the Winter Runners. She had no image of her mother, no connection at all to
them save her tiger soul, and she could not even say for sure that
she would possess
that
for much longer. Perhaps the wolf inside
her would overcome it soon, maybe even before the end of
winter, and then where would she be?
‘What about south?’ she asked faintly. ‘
Your
south?’
‘You have no idea what that is, nor how far away, nor what
you might do if you should find yourself there.’ The weight of
those words seemed to exhaust him.
‘Take me where I ask or—’
‘I know, I know.’ He sighed. ‘Let us find the Horse Society.’
He plainly insisted on the formal title, however hard it was for
him to say. ‘Let us see what my little stock of influence may buy.’
He stood up, wincing. ‘Go, lead on.’
She Stepped to her wolf and ran for the treeline, because the
rain was beginning to turn from a few light spots to something
fiercer.
All the better to hide our scent
, she tried to tell herself, but
the sheer misery of having to be out in such a downpour outweighed any such advantages.
Whenever she turned, he was even further behind. Sometimes he was a man, stumbling along in her wake. Sometimes
she had to hunt back to find the snake winding its laborious way
across the uneven ground, half lost amid the grass. It seemed to
take forever for him to reach the trees.
‘You need to move faster,’ she told him, when he finally
arrived and Stepped into his gaunt, bony human body.
‘Is it sso?’ he got out.
‘As man or as snake. You can’t just hobble along like that.
They’ll catch us easily.’ It had all seemed such a good idea
before. She had envisaged a swift flight across the night-time
country, greeting the dawn somewhere far away from Akrit’s
hall. She had not considered how old he was, how pale and
ill-looking. He looked like something sent by fate to slow her
down so that her father’s hunters would be able to amble along
her trail and find her standing over the old man’s frozen corpse.
She had never seen someone so ill-suited for travel.
‘How could you even get so far from your home?’ she
demanded, almost in tears. ‘How did you not die before I ever
saw you?’
‘Warmer clothes and setting my own pace,’ he replied tightly.
‘If you will leave me, leave me now. I cannot go faster. I cannot
get warm.’
‘You’ll die here.’
‘It ss-seemss likely.’ He shuddered. Then his head jerked up,
his eyes wide and fixed on her. ‘Or perhaps you will trust me?’
She regarded him cautiously. ‘Trust you how?’
‘Your little pack, that your wolf can carry. Let me ride there,
between your shoulders, girl. I will weigh sso little, and I will be
warm . . .’ There was a dreadful longing in his voice.
The thought made her squirm. ‘You . . . want to ride me like
a beast, a horse?’
‘We must be swift. You are swift on four feet, as I will never
be.’
‘But . . .’ She remembered his serpent form – slender, yes, but
surely too large to coil itself into her small bag. ‘You won’t . . .’
‘I can Step into a shape as thick around as a strong man’s
thigh, or slender as a whip,’ he told her. ‘We are not so rigid as
you, where I am from.’ His expression was naked, stripped of
the wise humour he had pretended to in the pit. ‘Please, if we
are to move on . . . Or leave me.’
She recalled that he would not have been fed in the pit –
growing weaker and weaker because the Wolf would not care,
when he ate the old man’s soul, how thin the sacrificed body
had been. Perhaps Hesprec Essen Skese had been fit to wander
at his snail’s pace across the Crown of the World, wearing snug
clothes and relying on the hospitality of strangers. Now, though,
he was at his lowest ebb, with neither strength nor wit enough to
save himself.
His life was in her hands, just as it had been when she came
to cut him loose. And yet she needed his intervention with the
Horse if she was ever to get far enough from her father to be
free.
She had abandoned her kin and thrown herself on the world’s
mercy, so perhaps mercy was what she should show.
‘Step,’ she told him. ‘Step, and climb into my pack if you can.’
‘I cannot bite,’ he told her, misinterpreting the pause. ‘You
need not worry.’
‘Old man, I do not fear you.’
To her surprise, that brought a thin smile. ‘Brave child,’ he
whispered, and then he was gone, gathering his clothes close to
him and Stepping down into something ribbon-thin, a patterned
snake perhaps half as long as she was tall. Even then she thought
he must be too bulky to do what he had claimed, but when she
opened the bag he slid into it, and on into it, feeding each hand’s
breadth of his slender body further in until the delicate line of
his tail had vanished inside, and he was gone competely from
her sight.
She picked up the bag, feeling his unfamiliar weight, and
feeling strange to know that the man she had been speaking to
was now entirely tucked within. The thought was an uncomfortable one. She felt that somehow she was giving him power over
her, for all that he had put himself entirely in her hands.
When she first felt him move sluggishly within the bag, she
almost dropped it. It took her three tries before she could secure
the bulky pack on her back. Then she Stepped to her wolf form
and contorted her jaws until she could draw the strings tight,
still feeling that unwelcome and unfamiliar weight. It was all too
easy to imagine the thin lash of his body drawing itself about her
neck, strangling her slowly to death no matter what shape she
might try to fight him in. Yes, such an action on his part would
make no sense, and yet he was a foreigner, and a priest of a
foreign god-spirit, so how could she trust him? None of her own
people’s stories about Snake were happy ones.
But he had called her ‘brave child’, and she must be brave.
Forcing down her qualms, she set off into the woods, passing
swiftly as a wolf walks, hearing the rain beat on the overhanging
needles above and drip all about her, scenting the complex book
of the forest and its myriad denizens, that was written afresh
each night and blotted out by the raindrops.
Fasting and drinking were a powerful combination. In the predawn there were only a handful up and out in the rain to witness
what Maniye had done.
At first neither Akrit nor Kalameshli had made the connection. The priest had been furious that his prisoner had somehow
escaped, storming back and forth and beating the two luckless
sentries mercilessly with his flint-studded staff.Yes, their job had
been pure formality, because no sacrifice had ever made it out
of the pit before, but, still, theirs were the eyes and they were
responsible. He stopped only when he had clubbed them both
to the ground and broken one’s arm.
By that time, half the tribe had been awakened, but few felt
much like venturing outside.
Kalameshli had stood there with the rain streaking the halfdone paint on his face – the start of his preparations for the
day’s festivities and ritual. By that time someone had roused
Akrit, who could still drink all night and yet be up with the
dawn. The chief of the Winter Runners stormed over, wrapped
in a bearskin, with a seal cloak over it to keep out the wet. He
surveyed the scene grimly, standing at the brink of the pit and
noting the absence.
‘How can he be gone?’ he demanded.
Kalameshli did not answer. Whatever thoughts snapped and
danced within his mind did not show themselves on his face.
Akrit looked up at the low leaden sky, wondering if any trace
of the old Snake’s scent might remain. ‘He was old. How far can
he have got?’ He stared at the handful of his people who had
braved the elements and Kalameshli’s wrath. ‘Get me every
hunter fit to track! He could still be coiled up somewhere in the
village.’
‘He’s gone,’ the priest said softly, even as the spectators ran
off to do their chief’s bidding.
‘You don’t know that. He was frail,’ Akrit argued. ‘How long
could he last out there, with winter coming on? He’ll stay by the
warmth.’
‘He wasn’t alone,’ Kalameshli pronounced carefully.
‘What do you mean?’ Akrit’s eyes narrowed. ‘A rescue? Is
there a whole nest of Snakes in the Wolf’s Shadow?’
Abruptly, Kalameshli had Stepped, his wolf form lean and
strong, like the younger man he had once been, the chains of his
years left behind. Without even glancing at Akrit, the beast went
padding away, nose kept low, moving round the pit in widening
circles. Akrit watched, wondering what the priest could possibly
find, and yet the wolf was moving with a purpose, looking for
something
specific.
A few of his hunters had arrived by then, including the reassuringly loyal presence of Smiles Without Teeth. Akrit had not
even begun to think about what this meant, the theft of a sacrifice on the Wolf’s own day. As omens went, it could hardly be
worse – and then he needed to think what that meant for his
continuing rule over the Winter Runners, and where he would
stand when the High Chief died. None of it was good. It was
events like this that could break even a strong man like Akrit
Stone River.
By then Kalameshli had Stepped again, kneeling thirty yards
from the pit, gesturing for Akrit to join him.
He had found some tracks that the rain had filled but not yet
washed clear. Akrit himself might have missed them, hunter as
he was, but the priest had known. Somehow he had divined the
truth as though the Wolf had breathed it into his ear.
‘Tiger,’ he stated, for Akrit’s hearing only.
For a moment the chief was on the edge of the wrong conclusion, picturing some warband of the Shadow Eaters come down
from the high places to attack their enemies. Would not stealing
the Wolf’s meat be the sort of coward’s revenge they would try?
But then Kalameshli said simply, ‘A very small tiger,’ and
Akrit finally understood.
Even then he did not want to believe it. He Stepped to his
wolf shape and rushed back up to his hall, headed inside and
then up the shallow incline of the ladder to the store where
Maniye had made her lair. She was gone, and so was some of
her clutter. She was
gone
.
He raced back to Kalameshli, springing back onto his human
feet even as he reached him.
‘I don’t understand . . . she passed the Testing. You . . . you
tested her yourself, you made sure . . .’ He was perilously close
to accusing the priest, stretching the bonds of their alliance.
For his part, Kalameshli seemed more than ready to pull
against him. ‘And you saw what I saw: there was nothing but the
Wolf in her after she finished the course.’ His words were hard
like stones, quiet enough that nobody but Akrit would hear. ‘But
then you called her in when you were in your cups and told her
far too much all at once.’
‘Because she was supposed to be
ours
, then,’ Akrit hissed, but
before he could say anything that might strain the space between
them to breaking point he held up his hands. ‘You truly believe
my daughter has taken the sacrifice and run off with him?’
A single sharp nod confirmed it.
Akrit stared past him for a moment, feeling the wound tear
within him. Not a wound of love, no: what he felt for the girl
had never borne that name. A wound to his pride, though. For
any hunter of the Wolf, pride was a tender organ. Especially for
a chief, for a man who would be Chief of Chiefs. Bad enough
that Akrit had no sons to strengthen his name. Now even his
daughter had turned against him. Who would follow a chief that
could not rule his own blood?
Seeing Kalameshli’s derisive expression he snapped, ‘I’ll send
Smiles into the Roughback lands to take some of the Boar.
They’ve been left alone too long. The Wolf won’t go hungry.’
The priest’s look showed how inadequate he thought the gesture would be.
By then his hunters were up, no matter how hungover, and
were ready to do his bidding. His first instinct was to simply
send them out immediately, without any plan, to all quarters.
Even with the rain hammering down, her trail would be out
there. Having his people charging back and forth like ants would
make him more of a fool, though, and what did the girl know,
truly? How long could she really survive in the wild and the
wood, either as woman or wolf? But she was cunning, and cunning would lead her to where there were other people. There
were villages of the Boar and the Deer, the small homes of farmers and herders, and there were trading posts of the Coyote and
the Horse. With or without the old Snake, she would make for
somewhere that offered food and shelter.
He delivered his orders, giving each man a destination. His
pride wanted to limit word of this disgrace to the village, but
such secrecy would only aid Maniye’s escape. He must spread
word of the girl, and let everyone know that her return would
buy the gratitude of the chief of the Winter Runners, a rich
commodity indeed.
As he had promised Kalameshli, he dispatched Smiles Without Teeth and two warriors to attack the Boar, because the Wolf
must have something to grind between his burning teeth, even if
it was just thralls and farmers. The meal would not be as rich as
they had both hoped – neither the antlers of Running Deer nor
the skinny body of that foreign trespasser – but Akrit needed to
husband all the goodwill he could manage.
And last he turned to Broken Axe, who had been waiting
patiently there, never mind the rain. The lean man was already
dressed as if to set off into the wilds, cloaked against the weather
and with a sack of food tucked under his belt. His cold, pale
eyes met Akrit’s stare in that manner unique to him: neither a
challenger nor one ready to submit to another man’s will,
self-sufficient in all things. And yet a hunter and a tracker without peer.
‘You know what has happened here?’ Because by now the
word would be in the ears of every Winter Runner. Akrit had
coloured the tale in the telling, saying that the old Snake had
freed himself, through magic perhaps, and had enchanted his
girl, stolen her away. The truth could look just as convincing
when turned backwards and inside out.
Broken Axe nodded. What he believed, or even if he cared
enough to believe anything, stayed hidden behind his closed
expression.
‘Track them down,’ Akrit instructed him. ‘Find the girl, bring
her back here alive. If the Snake is with her . . .’ Akrit shrugged.
‘Use your discretion. But I must have my daughter back.’ He
almost said more, because of course Broken Axe would know
why the girl was so important. He would remember the mother,
and Akrit’s orders all those years ago. But, no, perhaps some
things were best left unsaid.
The hunter weighed Akrit’s words, looking away for a
moment, and then back with a questioning glance.
‘Whatever you ask, within reason,’ Akrit promised him. ‘Perhaps more than you could ever think of asking for.’ Because this
was still the most advantageous match for Maniye, once the girl
was safely back. The girl would bind Broken Axe to Akrit’s
plans, just when he might have most need of such a man. Similarly, Axe would no doubt tame the wild cunning in her, even if
he had to whip it out of the girl.
At last, Broken Axe nodded, eyes still weighing Akrit and his
gratitude against future need. A moment later he had dropped
to all fours and Stepped into the shape of a gaunt, pale wolf
with dark hackles raised about his shoulders. Without a
moment’s hesitation, he was padding off with so much certainty
that Akrit wondered if he had already scented the trail out
before presenting himself here.