Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named) (18 page)

At an evening gathering around the Named campfire, everyone talked about what to do next. Khushi felt that the Named should make another try to capture a face-tail. The five of them had already been here far longer than intended. Fessran and the others would be starting to worry. Bira agreed. She was also getting restless.

Thakur, however, urged caution. The hunters, he said, might not be as paralyzed as they seemed. Grief and frustration could easily ignite into rage. If the bereaved group did not lash out against the Named directly, they might well take out their anger on the Named one who remained among them—Thistle.

Ratha, torn, agreed on a compromise. On the following day the Named would prepare for another attempt to capture a face-tail, but the hunt itself would not take place until the day after.

She needed to find a way to either get Thistle back from the hunters or minimize the threat to her daughter. Given Thistle’s determination, she wouldn’t return until True-of-voice died. Or Quiet Hunter.

If she even comes back at all. She may hate me for letting this happen to the hunters and then not doing anything to help. But I have no choice. Or do I?

* * *

Before Ratha could make any definite plans or carry them out, however, the hunters showed that they might be grief-stricken, but not rendered completely helpless.

The morning after the campfire meeting, Ratha woke to find Khushi and Thakur gone. Sounds of yowling and spitting from the bottom of the cliff told her that the situation had erupted into a fight.

Telling Bira to take a torch and follow, she galloped toward the foot of the cliff, where the second group of hunters was gathered, waiting for the death of their leader. Remembering Thakur’s warning, she feared the worst.

Before she and Bira were even halfway there, a brown streak shot past her and down the trail. It was Khushi, running as if all the hunters were after him. An instant later, there was the flash of a copper coat, and Thakur dashed into view.

Bira, her torch burning fiercely in her jaws, leaped forward to attack any enemy that might be pursuing him.

“No!” Ratha heard Thakur yowl. “Run. Don’t fight. They won’t go far from True-of-voice.”

Although Ratha felt ready for a good scrap, she turned around, and Bira followed.

As the three fled together down the trail, Ratha cantered abreast of Thakur, asking what had happened.

“It was that idiot Khushi,” Thakur panted. “He tried to take some meat from a face-tail carcass.”

They caught up with Khushi near the camp. The scout was abashed, yet defiant.

“I was hungry,” he confessed. “And I was tired of eating grouse. The face-tail meat was just lying there, attracting vultures. I didn’t think they would care. They weren’t eating it.”

“So you sneaked in there and got the hunters all stirred up,” Ratha snarled. “I should shred your ears and maybe a few more parts!”

Khushi looked sheepish. “I—I didn’t think they cared. They didn’t seem to notice me. At least at first. Then,
yarr!
They were all over me!”

“And you would have been another piece of meat for the vultures if Thakur hadn’t gone in after you.”

“I guess I would have,” the young scout said shakily. Turning almost shyly to Thakur, he said, “I’m grateful, herding teacher. I don’t know why I thought I could get away with it. Perhaps it was because they didn’t seem to notice me, even when I was right at the kill. Then all of a sudden ...” He trailed off.

“They don’t give warning signals,” said Thakur shortly, licking a deep scratch on his foreleg. “That is why what you did was so dangerous.”

Ratha interrupted. “We can’t stay here talking. I want to make sure your stupid blunder didn’t make the hunters turn on Thistle.”

Khushi’s eyes opened wide. “Oh no! I didn’t realize ... Well, she’s in the other group at the top of the cliff, isn’t she?”

“Scout, next time try thinking with your brain, not your guts. Guts are for stuffing with food and making dung. Not for thinking with,” Ratha said brusquely. “Remember that the next time.”

Khushi gulped. “I—I’m sorry, clan leader. I hope Thistle is safe.”

“So do I,” Ratha said curtly.

With Khushi, Bira, and Thakur close behind, she headed for the trail to the cliff top.

* * *

Sitting among True-of-voice’s people, her paw still on Quiet Hunter, Thistle felt her exhaustion and desperation grow as True-of-voice’s song faded.

It had changed several times during the night. First it had spoken of suffering, then of fear for the fate of those it was abandoning. Early in the morning there had also been a strong flash of rage at the doings of the strangers, and Thistle feared that her mother had led the Named across some forbidden boundary.

Now the song had changed for the final time. Now it was saying farewell.

It had grown so weak that many could not hear it. Quiet Hunter was among them. He still lay, like many others, with his nose at the cliff edge. He was no longer trying to crawl over. The call that drew him had faded from his mind. Thistle kept her paw on his back, to keep him beside her and to tell him wordlessly that she still heard the waning thread of the song.

As long as he understood, he would fight to stay alive. As long as he knew that the song continued, even in someone else’s mind, he would not bury himself in the lost blackness of his own.

Thistle wondered how much longer he would struggle if she kept her paw on him after the song had faded out completely. Would it be worth having him beside her for a little more time if she had to lie to him?

No, she thought, and the paw on Quiet Hunter’s back trembled, for the song was getting harder to hear.

She caught glances from some of the others around her. She knew they were watching her, waiting for the moment she would take her paw from Quiet Hunter’s back. The looks were starting to get resentful, and unspoken questions seemed to gather in the air around her.

Why can she still hear True-of-voice when we cannot? We are his people—why do we have to listen to an outsider?

Don’t know where I got this gift. Never wanted it, she answered back silently. She did not speak aloud lest it distract her. Even thinking the words loosened her grip on the last fading vestiges of the song, and she had to scramble wildly to keep hold of it.

And now the mutters were starting.

“The song is not heard. True-of-voice is dead.”

“That one says he is not dead. The paw is on Quiet Hunter.”

“The paw does not work. The tongue does not work. They say things are so when they are not. That is a bad thing.”

“That one made the first face-tail fall off a cliff. The face-tail died. True-of-voice saw. Then the song commanded that other face-tails be killed that way.”

“The song changed because of what that one did. It caused hurt. True-of-voice is lost.”

“That one” felt her fur start to prickle in apprehension. Her ears twitched back. She wished she could speak her feelings as clearly as she thought them.
Was all a mistake. Never meant to show True-of-voice anything. Was all an accident. When I jumped off the bluff, the face-tail followed.

“The song would not cause hurt. Those who hear would not cause hurt. Outsiders do. That one has caused hurt. That one is an outsider, a stranger.”

Thistle felt her eyes starting to flame with rage. Whose fault was it that the tragedy happened? Who chose to copy her, even though the face-tail’s death was an accident ? True-of-voice himself. He made all the decisions for the group. He laid his will on his people. He had created his own downfall.

She struggled to put away the anger and the urge to protest aloud. It would do no good. And distractions would only hasten the moment when she lost the last tenuous filament of the song and had to lift her paw from Quiet Hunter’s back.

“Those who stay with harmful ones also cause hurt. Quiet Hunter stays with the stranger.”

This time Thistle could not help turning her head to give the speaker a hard stare. She could accept the slights against herself, but not against Quiet Hunter. He had done nothing wrong. And he was, perhaps, enduring more than any of them, for he refused to take refuge in rage and hatred.

Oh, gentle one, beloved one. Wish you would get angry. Even anger against me, I could bear. Would know then that you choose to struggle rather than suffer.

She heard more mutters. Those who were sitting near her drew away.

“She killed True-of-voice. Drive her out.”

“Drive Quiet Hunter out, too. He is with her.”

Tension and fear snapped Thistle’s concentration. She felt the song slip away. It was no good to pretend.

Quickly she bent to whisper in Quiet Hunter’s ear. “Can’t hear song anymore. Leader isn’t dead. Just can’t reach him. Everyone so angry, noisy. Understand?”

Dully he replied, “It is understood.”

She took her paw from his back just as one of the others took an aggressive step toward her. The low background mutter grew into a rumble, then a roar.

“Drive her out! Drive him out!”

Drive us out from what?
she thought, wishing she could speak to them as eloquently as she did to herself.
You have nothing left. All you had was True-of-voice, and he will soon be gone.

She suddenly felt a deep pity for the hunters. Forlorn, lost, they were reaching for anything that might comfort them. Even hate.

Calmly she said, “Leader still lives. But you so noisy, angry. Makes him hard to hear.”

“Hear her speak!” someone yowled. “The song does not know those words. Stranger! Stranger! Slayer of the song!”

Thistle had seen how the creature the Named called the Red Tongue could spread swiftly through dry wood. With equal speed rage flared up in the group as they yowled and chanted the same words over and over. “Stranger, stranger, slayer of the song. Bleed for True-of-voice. Die for True-of-voice.”

Feeling her fur rising all over, Thistle backed away from those closing in on her. “Will go,” she snarled. “But leave Quiet Hunter alone.”

“No. He has been made a stranger.”

“He is mated to the slayer of the song.” The voices were ugly. Teeth were starting to show.

Before Thistle could say anything else, claws flashed in a stroke across Quiet Hunter’s side. Her own rage leaped up and it was all she could do to keep from flinging herself at the attacker.

If I fight, I’ll die. If I leave him, he’ll die.
With her jaws, she grabbed Quiet Hunter’s scruff. Startled by the sudden pain of the claw slash, he was fighting his way out of his trance. Someone else raked his flank. He screamed and shuddered, but whirled to face them, jerking away from Thistle’s hold.

“No, run!” she hissed at him. “With me. Away.”

The look of horror that he gave her told her that the idea of leaving his people was so shattering that he was paralyzed.

“Hunters will kill you,” she cried, and rammed her body into him, forcing him to stagger a few steps away.

Her heart cried out for him. He had done nothing wrong except allow her to care for him.

The look in Quiet Hunter’s eyes told Thistle that he knew he had no choice and, unfairly or not, he was being cast out. On top of the pain of losing the song, he was losing everything else he knew.

Fending off flurries of slashes and bites, he backed away until he was alongside Thistle. She could barely meet his stricken glance.

“So wrong. Because of me,” she whispered.

“Life here is ended,” Quiet Hunter said, his voice dead. “Lead, Thistle.”

And when she bounded away, he followed.

* * *

As Ratha galloped along the upper reaches of the cliff trail, she heard the sound of someone descending. The noises of fighting had already drifted to her from above, making her belly jump with fear for her daughter.

She was about to leave the trail and leap into the bushes when she recognized the pattern of the approaching footsteps.

“Thistle,” she said.

Thakur, running beside her, cocked his ears. “Somebody’s with her.”

“Or chasing her.” Ratha felt a growl creep into her voice. She readied herself to defend her daughter if necessary.

Rocks broke loose on the switchback above, and Ratha saw a pair of sea-green eyes glow. Another pair, golden yellow, shone from the face of the form behind her.

“Who is that?” Khushi hissed in surprise.

“I can guess,” Ratha heard Thakur answer. “Quiet Hunter.”

But Ratha was looking only at the sea-green eyes and smelling the scent of her daughter as Thistle came down the last stretch of trail. Then a familiar set of whiskers brushed hers; a small, sinewy body rubbed briefly alongside ; and a voice breathed a single word: “Mother.”

Ratha felt a warm tingling sweep over her as she rubbed her head against Thistle’s flank, eyes closed in happiness. “My cub. My strong, brave, clever daughter.”

“Is anyone following you two?” Thakur asked.