Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (14 page)

Thakur circled back to follow their trail, then hesitated. Ratha and Fessran’s arrival meant company and perhaps food, but it also meant that the time the clan leader had allotted him to study Newt and her sea-creatures was gone. He felt now that he might have enough knowledge to try herding the seamares. Ratha would be eager to test his suggestion. But this would mean more intrusion into Newt’s life. Thakur sensed that the place she had made for herself was precarious and could easily be destroyed.

The smell of the two Named females and the tantalizing odor of food teased him onward, and he trotted after them with Aree riding on his nape. Soon after he broke out of thinning forest into coastal meadow, he caught sight of two tawny backs moving ahead of him through the grass. He didn’t need to call, for the wind had carried his smell ahead of him. He saw both figures turn, their ears and whiskers lifting at the sight of him. But although he smelled food, neither Ratha nor Fessran carried anything in their mouths. His belly gave a disappointed grumble as he jogged to a stop in front of them.

Fessran took one sniff at him, then retreated, grimacing. “Herding teacher, you are wearing the most disgusting stink I have ever smelled on anyone.”

“You’d better get used to smelling me this way.” Thakur grinned. “Those duck-footed dapplebacks won’t let me near them unless I roll in their dung. I’m sure there is plenty for you.”

Fessran gave her ruff a disdainful lick, as if the noxious stuff was already on her. “I don’t mind herdbeast dung, but I can tell these beasts don’t eat grass. Ugh!”

“May you eat of the liver and sleep in the driest den,” Ratha said, touching noses with him, but her whiskers twitched back. She rubbed her forehead against his cheek and started to slide along him, her tail crooked over, but she broke off midway, saying, “Fessran may be rude, but she’s right. Phew, that’s strong!”

Feeling like a pariah, he took a position downwind from both and asked them stiffly if that was better. Now that his own aroma was carried away by the breeze, he caught the maddening meat-smell and wondered where it was coming from.

Ratha had only her treeling on her back, but Fessran was festooned with something odd. It looked like she had rolled in some vines and had ended up tangled in strands and bundles of leaves.

Fessran turned abruptly to Ratha and said, “Well, we’ve carried the food long enough. Get your treeling to undo these leaves, and we’ll feed Thakur before his tongue hangs out so far he steps on it.”

At a nudge and purr from Ratha, Ratharee hopped onto Fessran’s back and started pulling a leafy bundle apart. From the covering, Ratha drew a chunk of meat with her fangs and offered it to the herding teacher. Thakur didn’t think about where it had come from; he just plopped down with the food between his paws and began slicing it with his side teeth. It was liver.

The richness of it soon sated him enough so his curiosity arose once again. He got to his feet, licking his chops, and asked how the two females had carried it. Ratha showed him cords of twisted bark fiber that bound large leaves still covering the remaining bundles of food. He saw how the cords were wrapped about the Firekeeper’s body to lash the packets to her sides.

“The leaves keep flies off,” Ratha explained. “The meat isn’t as good as we’d get from a cull, but it isn’t carrion either.”

Thakur sniffed a packet then turned to Ratha. “Did you think of this?”

“A Firekeeper student and his treeling came up with these twisted bark vines. You saw them being used to bind wood. Fessran figured out that we could use them to lash things onto ourselves, and since we knew you’d be hungry... ”

“And we thought we’d be hungry too, after a while,” Fessran reminded her. “Although I’m beginning to wonder if the idea was so clever. I’m not sure I’m ever going to get myself untangled from this mess.”

Thakur stretched, enjoying his full stomach. One thing good about liver was that it was so rich that one didn’t have to gorge oneself to feel sated.

“You can have more, Thakur,” Fessran offered, evidently wanting to be rid of the sticky bundles against her sides. “After all, we did come to see your duck-footed dapplebacks, and the best way to start is to see how they taste. I imagine we’ll have plenty of fresh meat, so there’s no use saving this.”

“I would save it anyway,” Thakur answered carefully, trying not to show the sudden dismay he felt when he heard her words.

Ratha glanced at him curiously, and he knew she sensed his change in mood. He might be able to conceal his feelings from Fessran, since she often paid little attention to such things, but not Ratha.

She took him aside and said, “Thakur, have you found that these animals are not suited to our purpose after all? If that is true, I won’t be angry. You did say you needed to study them before we arrived, and you have done so.”

Thakur looked back at her, knowing she had grown well into her role as leader. “No, that is not what troubles me.” With a wary glance at Fessran, he explained his concern that a Named invasion of the seamare herd might frighten away the young cripple who lived among the creatures. And too much disruption might cause the herd itself to flee from the jetty.

“It would be better for us to learn with just a few animals,” he said. “There is a smaller group of duck-foots who make their homes in the rocks north of the jetty itself. If we work with those, we will do better.”

Ratha agreed that his plan sounded wise and asked him to take her and Fessran to see the creatures. But first, she said, she wanted to see the spring. If the Named were to bring their herds here, she must be sure that there was forage and water to sustain them.

Slightly inland from the beach lay a scarp whose face was cut in a sheer cliff. A forest of mixed broadleaf and small pine grew in the cooling shadow thrown by the cliff. From cracks in slate and blue bands of rock, the water came, bearing the scent and taste of earthen caverns. It did not gush but ran in a steady, even stream without faltering.

“The smell of this water tells me it will never dry up,” Ratha said, squinting up through the rich, slanting light between the trees. Thakur watched her crouch on a stone and dip her chin into the pool that collected beneath the spring. “The gravel bottom won’t muddy when the herdbeasts drink. You have done well to find such a place.”

Then she and Fessran began inspecting low-hanging boughs to be sure none of the new foliage could harm herdbeasts. Nosing through brush and grass, Thakur helped them search for poisonous weeds or plants with white berries. He also kept a lookout for an annoying herb with leaves that grew in clusters of three, which could cause the Named to itch if it got through to the skin beneath their fur or on their noses.

He walked with Ratha between thickets, looking at the quantity and freshness of the leaves, then wandered through the scattered clearings where grass grew, watered by seepage from the spring.

At last she gave a satisfied grunt. “This will be the clan’s ground until the drought passes,” she said finally. “Now, show me the animals.”

Thakur led the two females behind the bluff overlooking the seamare terraces. He deliberately circled inland, giving the cliffs a wide berth so that the scents of his two companions would not betray their presence to Newt, who patrolled the rocks below.

He brought Ratha and Fessran to another, smaller headland area that overlooked a steep graveled beach. From an overlook above, he stretched out a paw toward the seamares.

Fessran wrinkled her nose at the sight of the creatures sprawled out all over the beach. “They don’t look like much to me. Such lazy lumps. I like a creature with some spirit. And that smell is worse on them than on you.”

“I think you will find they have spirit, especially when you try to taste their flesh,” Thakur retorted.

Fessran wrinkled her nose again, but he ignored her. She wasn’t the one who would decide.

“How would you keep these creatures?” Ratha asked.

“I would do as I saw the young stranger doing. I would gain their trust by defending their young from other meat eaters and take only those who have died.”

“That will take much work and many days and provide only scraps while we do it. I think we should begin the way the first ones of the clan did with herdbeasts: catch and gather them in a place we can keep them.”

“They must live in water,” Thakur argued. “They will die if we drive them onto land and don’t let them swim.”

“Well, we certainly can’t herd them on this beach. One sniff of us and splash—off they’d go.” Ratha turned, scanning the landscape. “Look,” she said, pointing with her muzzle. “There’s another river emptying into this salty lake, and its waters look shallow. Perhaps we could keep the animals there.”

They investigated the river mouth. Thakur judged the water salty enough for seamares, and holes on the muddy shore indicated the presence of the heavy-shelled clams on which the creatures fed. One channel in the river delta had made a deep meander into the side of a cliff, creating a crescent-shaped beach surrounded by sandstone walls on one side and the river on the other. The shallow and slowly flowing water allowed Ratha, Thakur, and Fessran to wade close to the center of the channel before their bellies even got wet.

“This is far enough from the waves so that the creatures couldn’t escape us,” said Ratha. “And the cliffs trap them on all sides but one. It won’t be easy, but we can keep them here.”

Thakur agreed, although the thought of forcing the creatures to move from their graveled sea-beach bothered him a little.

The next task was to capture some seamares and move them. Thakur knew that the Named couldn’t just go down on the beach, surround the creatures, and drive them alongshore to the river mouth. The beach was too narrow for the herders to maneuver, and the seamares could easily escape by diving into the breakers. But if one animal might be lured apart from the rest, the three could surround it.

The problem was how to lure the beasts. Thakur knew they ate large clams, but his efforts to dig one up and open it had so far failed. It was Fessran who pointed out that if the seamares ate such smelly things as fish, clams, and seaweed, they might be tempted by the meat she carried, which by now was also taking on an unmistakable odor.

To everyone’s surprise, the idea worked. Using her treeling’s dextrous paws, Ratha scattered a trail of meat fragments to lure a seamare into ambush. The first creature they captured was small and didn’t put up much of a struggle. With three of the Named surrounding the beast, it humped and heaved itself from the graveled beach upriver to the site Ratha had chosen. The creature arrived, ruffled and blown, but in good enough shape to immediately start rooting in the mud for clams. Leaving Fessran to guard the first captive, Thakur and Ratha went back to bait the trail for another.

Soon a second, larger seamare started the trek to the river beach. This one gave the two herders more trouble.

“By the ticks on my belly, these duck-foots can move fast if they want to,” Thakur yowled as he lunged to block the beast from wheeling and taking off back down the path.

“Watch the tusks,” Ratha called over the seamare’s outraged bellowing. An irritated jab just missed his hindquarters as he skittered away.

“Yes, they’re not as long as herdbeast horns, but they’re down lower, where they can cause more trouble. Yarr, you stinking wave-wallower—go this way, not that!”

Soon there were more seamares than herders on the river beach. Thakur wanted to call a halt, but Ratha and Fessran had gotten excited. The bait was working well, and plenty remained. Both females had long since stopped complaining about the animals’ fishy reek and were stalking and tricking the beasts with eager mischievousness.

Finally Thakur pointed out that if the Named collected too many more, they’d be spending too much effort chasing the creatures out of the river and trying to keep them from escaping back downstream. Reluctantly, Ratha agreed, for it was getting toward sunset. Thankfully, the sea-beasts slept by night, letting one of the three take each watch while the others slept.

The next day, Thakur found Ratha gone, while Fessran watched the seamare herd through sleep-reddened eyes. “How do I know where she’s gone?” the Firekeeper growled irritably. “She said she was going to find some prickly bushes, and no, I don’t have any idea why.”

He found out when Ratha returned, her back laden with thornbrush, with Ratharee holding the branches on her. She also carried several rather gingerly in her mouth. Thakur could see the scratches on her muzzle.

“This may solve the problem of straying wave-wallowers,” she said, dumping the brush and arranging it in a narrow heap as the Named did with firewood. Thakur could see that the prickly branches formed a low but effective barrier.

With his help, she fetched more brush and started to build a low wall. Thakur was dubious at first, but when he saw a seamare lumber up to the construction then retreat from the sharp thorns, he became convinced. They added thorny vines of wild blackberry, extending the barrier out toward the river.

Following Ratha’s confident lead, he helped her build the wall into the lapping shallows. Then he saw her stop and stare in dismay as the gentle current stole every branch she had placed in the water, wafting them away.

She sat down, scratched herself in puzzlement. On her shoulder, Ratharee lifted her ringed tail in a questioning curve.

“Well, the branches need to be held down, somehow,” Thakur began, but he was interrupted by a call from Fessran, who needed help to keep several seamares from humping themselves past her into the river.