Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named) (17 page)

Her daughter’s eyes were filled with agony as she gazed at Quiet Hunter. “Their pain ... his pain ... my fault,” Thistle moaned. “Showed his people ... bad way to kill face-tails. Didn’t mean to. But couldn’t hide from True-of-voice. Became part of the song, but learning not complete enough.”

The words were jumbled, but Ratha understood them. Firmly she answered, though her voice was threatening to shake as much as Thistle’s, “It wasn’t your fault. I won’t let you blame yourself.”

“Happened ... because I became one of them.”

“It happened because of what you are and what they are. I was the one who said you could try. And it worked, Thistle. You became one who could walk on both trails, theirs and ours. So we could speak instead of fighting.”

“Cared much ... for Quiet Hunter. Didn’t want to hurt him.”

“I know,” Ratha said softly. “Thakur is trying to heal him. ”

Thistle’s voice broke in a sob as she watched Thakur crouching over Quiet Hunter. “Kindness ... caring ... from the Named, even Thakur ... not enough. Only the song can heal Quiet Hunter. Song died with True-of voice.”

Again Ratha drew Thistle to her.

Suddenly Thistle gave a strange gasp, and her pupils widened. She pulled away from Ratha. “No ... Can’t be. Thought it came again ... an instant. No. Imagining because I want it. Not real. Only hope.”

“What is it?”

“The song. Thought I ... heard.... No. Can’t be. Can’t be. Not if True-of-voice is dead.”

Looking at the intense expression on her daughter’s face, Ratha wondered if Thistle’s longing was responsible for what she now sensed. That would be one way to face the situation. Yet she had learned enough about her daughter to know that Thistle would not delude herself.

Thistle gave an odd little twitch, as if something had touched her. She looked to her mother, a question forming in the depths of her eyes.

Ratha looked back, her gaze steady. “You are all assuming that True-of-voice is dead. Maybe he isn’t.”

A tangle of conflicting thoughts made Ratha’s belly churn as she followed Thistle to the edge of the cliff where True-of-voice had fallen. Things were happening too fast. She felt as though she were being jerked one way and then another.

It had been easy to find sympathy for Quiet Hunter’s people when she thought that the source of their power and direction was gone. In the instant that they had become vulnerable, they were no longer alien, no longer enemy. The Named, too, had experienced loss. At least they had that much in common.

Now, with the chance that True-of-voice still lived, Ratha felt that she was on much more treacherous ground. She could no longer return to her previous stance of viewing Quiet Hunter’s people as completely alien and easy to hate. Now things were more complex. Thistle and Quiet Hunter had shown that there was shared ground with her own people. Ratha could not and would not deny that.

Yet if True-of-voice lived, the leader of the Named would have to be on her guard. She had to keep the interests of her own clan foremost. The hunters had already shown that they could be frighteningly powerful. And if there was a chance that they could regain True-of-voice ...

This is not going to be easy. I want to help Thistle and Quiet Hunter without betraying the Named.

She looked ahead to where Thistle crouched, peering down over the cliff edge. Near Thistle the ground and the scrub bushes were trampled or torn up. There were dark blood spatters drying in the dust.

“Here. This is where he fell,” Thistle said, her voice flat.

Ratha felt a shiver as she passed between blank-eyed hunters who could only stare at her dully. She felt a surge of scorn mixed with revulsion. They had all given up. Just like that. Take away their powerful leader, and their initiative died.

In that way, they were very different from the Named.
If my people lost me, they would grieve, but they would choose someone else and go on.

And even before the other clan had confirmed that their leader was really dead, they had fallen apart. Thistle was right. These people seemed to get stuck or paralyzed in the strangest ways. Didn’t anyone even look to see if True-of voice might have landed on a ledge or something below?

She found herself curling one side of her lip up over her fangs. How could she respect these people? They really could not think for themselves. They had to be told what to do. Even trivial things. Everything was ruled by True-of-voice, through the strange, unifying bond of something Thistle could only call “the song. ”

I hate it. I hate even the idea of it.

Ratha crouched beside Thistle and peered over, studying the rock face that dropped away from the edge beneath her feet. It looked pretty sheer ... yet there were some ledges. And some bushes growing right out of the rocks, which someone might catch and cling to in desperation. And halfway down there was a shelf and something dark on the shelf....

Ratha’s heart began to pound. Could it be? Or was her imagination painting that sprawled cat-form on the rocks below?

The shape lay still. It would do the hunters no good to recover True-of-voice if he was dead.

But Thistle had felt ... something. A brief echo of the song? Was it just self-delusion or was it real? Ratha knew her kind were tough. She herself had survived wounds and falls. Thistle had once run right off a cliff during one of her strange fits and had not even been badly hurt.

There was only one way to find out whether True-of-voice still clung to life.

Ratha herself could not run the paths to where the answer lay.

Her eyes met her daughter’s. She did not have to ask Thistle to leave the trails of the Named for those of Quiet Hunter’s people. She could see that Thistle was already journeying inward, seeking the source of the song.

And at last, when she came back, her eyes were wide with astonishment. “It is there,” she whispered. “Oh, so faint. But it is there. True-of-voice lives.”

* * *

Thistle was not the only one who could sense the flickering flame of life on the ledge below, although she was the most sensitive, Ratha noted. Only after she had led Ratha to the cliff edge did some of the hunters start to drift in the same direction. True-of-voice’s feeble call had reached them too—Ratha could tell by the startled expressions of hope that broke through the dull resignation.

But his touch was weak and sporadic. Ratha could almost read the resurgence and waning of his strength in the eyes of his people. And in her daughter’s eyes as well.

Gradually the hunters at the top of the cliff gathered in a cluster, as if they were moving as close as they could to True-of-voice. Those at the bottom, who had begun halfheartedly eating the carcasses of the slaughtered face-tails, abandoned their kills and crowded to the base of the cliff, staring up at their marooned and dying leader.

To Ratha’s surprise, Thakur’s skill, or the tenuous return of the song, or both, had revived Quiet Hunter enough so that the young male could stagger to the cliff edge. Ratha had an instant of alarm when she thought he was going to stumble right over, but both Thistle and Thakur blocked Quiet Hunter and pushed him firmly back.

True-of-voice’s people gazed down at their leader with forlorn expressions and drooping whiskers. Even those whose age should have given them some wisdom looked as lost as the yearlings. And at the bottom of the rock face, more of the grieving clan looked up in hopeful and hopeless longing.

They know they can’t reach him, Ratha thought. They know he is dying. They can feel it.

For Ratha it was a heartbreaking yet eerie scene as more and more of the hunters gathered, as if to hold vigil for their lost leader.

No. He is more than their leader,
Ratha thought.
He is their life.

To command such devotion ... Ratha felt a strange flash of envy toward the distant True-of-voice. To be so loved ... without hesitation or question.

She glanced at her daughter, who was sitting beside the crouching Quiet Hunter. Thistle had laid her paw gently on his back, as if to make sure that he would not lean too far over the cliff in his attempt to get closer to True-of-voice.

Thistle was trembling, her eyes closed. She who could be safe “outside” had chosen to go within, to share the grief and suffering of Quiet Hunter’s people. Yet she was not totally entranced, for she pressed down harder on her paw each time a surge of grief made Quiet Hunter try to crawl dangerously close to the drop-off.

Ratha found herself wishing that she had even a tiny part of Thistle’s strange gift ... so that she, too, could share in the powerful emotion that was binding the other clan even closer to their leader. Yet she knew she would always be watching from outside. Even if she had the ability, she would not use it.

The gift of the Named, the one that had so shaped her people, was wakeful awareness. Ratha knew it was so precious to her that she would fight and kill to preserve it. She already had.

We who are Named will never walk in dreams,
she thought, with a strange mixture of pride and sorrow.
Except for Thistle.

She felt someone coming alongside her. Familiar fur rubbed against her own and a wonderfully familiar smell replaced the odors of mourning strangers. Thakur. Wonderfully Named, sensible, wide-awake Thakur.

She leaned against him with a grateful sigh. For a while he seemed to be content to provide quiet companionship, but then he spoke in a calm, yet serious voice. “Clan leader, we probably should take Thistle and back off a bit. I’m starting to get some resentful looks.”

“I don’t think she’ll come. Not while Quiet Hunter—” Ratha broke off. Yes, some of the hunters were sending distinctly black looks in their direction. She knew how easily grief could flare into rage. And it could be argued that the Named had indirectly caused the tragedy.

“All right,” she heard Thakur say. “Thistle should be safe, but it would be better if we retreated.”

Ratha did not want the reminder that as long as True-of-voice remained alive, the hunters were a threat.

She agreed to back off, but insisted on staying near enough to keep an eye on her daughter. They took cover in some brush that had not been trampled.

“How long do you think they will stay?” she asked Thakur.

“Until True-of-voice dies,” he replied softly.

“It may take days!”

“I know. He was strong.”

After those words Thakur was quiet for so long that Ratha was startled when he spoke again.

“Clan leader, how do you feel about this?”

She found it very difficult to answer him. On the one side, the Named would benefit if True-of-voice’s death destroyed the hunters. No one would stand in the way and the Named could take all the face-tails they wanted. On the other, she understood too well the wrenching impact of the tragedy.

“It helps us,” she said at last. “If only Thistle weren’t caught up in it.”

Thakur looked toward the other clan. “Thistle told me that their leaders are usually older and have cubs that can succeed them. True-of-voice had a mate, but she was killed before she had her first litter.”

“This must have happened before,” Ratha protested. “They can’t be so ridiculously vulnerable or they wouldn’t have survived.”

“Maybe things are changing for them, clan leader.”
Perhaps things are. And perhaps we are part of the change.
The idea was not comforting.

She had a sudden odd thought.
Would I help them if I could?

She stared out at True-of-voice’s people. They were drawn so strongly by the need for their leader that they risked falling from the cliff. And her daughter was sitting among them, one paw still on the male called Quiet Hunter.

I don’t know.

* * *

The vigil for True-of-voice continued. Weariness at last made Ratha and Thakur withdraw to their own camp, but the following day, she moved the base so that she could be closer to Thistle. She and Bira were careful to site it downwind of the mourning clan so that the smoke of the Red Tongue would not alarm them.

Although they are so wrapped up in True-of-voice that they wouldn’t notice,
she thought as she helped Bira gather tinder for the fire.

The next question Ratha thought of was one she had trouble answering. How long would the group remain there? Certainly until True-of-voice died; but what would happen once they were leaderless?

She suspected that they would continue with the vigil, even after it had become pointless. Without direction, they might stay there indefinitely. And Thistle—how long would Thistle stay with them?

Probably as long as Quiet Hunter survives, she thought, feeling her throat tighten. She had learned how painful it was to lose someone beloved. Ratha’s chosen mate, and Thistle’s father, Bonechewer, had died in the struggle between the Named and their enemies. Now her daughter would soon know the same loss.

She tried to shake herself free of the impending tragedy. She had to look ahead, into the future. The Named had come to capture face-tails. The hunters had blocked them. Now, with the other clan paralyzed and distracted, there would be no more interference.