Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named) (8 page)

There was bafflement in the herding teacher’s green eyes. “Thistle, what makes you feel so strongly?”

“Don’t you think you were right?” she asked, afraid that he was going to change his mind.

“Yes, and I’m glad you think so, too, but I’m just surprised. After all, these hunters have repeatedly attacked us.”

Thistle couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure. When had this conviction come to her—that the strange clan were more than savage killers? She tried to cast her mind back, remembering. Yes, she had screamed and run away, but she was fleeing from the Dreambiter, not from the strangers. And before that had happened, there was something else, dim and weakly sensed, but powerful.

“They gave me something,” she said. “What they call... the song.” She had looked into a hunter’s eyes. She had breathed his breath, touched his whiskers, inhaled his smell. And in all of that was the knowledge of the song; that he heard it and that he knew that she also heard it, however briefly.

She struggled to explain this to Thakur, but the words she found were not the right ones, and her newly made hold on language began to slip.

“
Arrr!
How can I say it? How?” she blurted in frustration as Thakur tried to soothe her. “Something comes from them. From them into me. And I know that they know... Oh,
arrr,
that isn’t right either.” Her tail flipped irritably back and forth, but Thakur seemed to have infinite patience.

Finally she said, “I have heard my mother talk about a ‘gift’ that you Named ones have. That it shows in the eyes. These hunters have something like it, but instead of looking out, they look in. Instead of speaking, they listen. Instead of trying to make sense, they make dreams. Do you understand, Thakur?”

“Only a little.”

She stumbled on. “How do I know this? I can’t tell you. What they have ... is like the sea when you swim in it. All around you. Moving into you. Making voices in you. Making you feel the same as when you look up to the sky. The fierce red thing ...” She fell silent.

“The Red Tongue,” Thakur said.

“It would destroy all of that. Wish my mother would understand.”

“Perhaps you can help her understand.”

“And perhaps you can scratch the stars,” she said wryly.

“Thistle ...”

“Oh, Thakur, how can I lead anyone on this path when I am so lost?” she burst out, feeling an anguish that made her want to cry aloud. She leaned her head against the fur on his breast. He was so gentle, so wise, so eloquent....

She sighed. “Wish I could talk better. But sometimes the words—they run away. Because I am not Named?”

“Thistle, you
are
Named.”

“Only through my mother.”

“Through your father as well. He was not a clan member, but he had the same gifts. Perhaps he was more gifted than any of us.” Thakur paused. “Ratha called him Bonechewer. He was my brother.”

Thistle listened to Thakur’s heart—strong, steady, and comforting. She had always sensed that he resembled her lost father. Now she knew why.

“If he was what you say, why didn’t he pass it to me? Why did my mother think we were all so stupid”—her voice caught—“and drive us away?”

“Thistle, he did pass his gift on to you, but it took a long time to show. I think that is the reason you were slow in growing up. Because you weren’t with us, you didn’t learn to speak as a cub. That is why you find it difficult now.”

“And ... the driving us away?”

“Ratha told you once,” Thakur said softly. “Don’t you remember? She couldn’t bear the idea that you couldn’t be like other Named cubs. But it wasn’t your fault, and she told you she was wrong.”

“Yes, she did,” Thistle admitted. “But it is hard to make her words feel real.”

“You may need to hear them again. It may take you many seasons of hearing them.”

She let the silence stay for a little while before chasing it away with a question. “I had a brother, didn’t I?”

“Two. There were three of you in the litter.”

“Are my brothers like me?”

“We don’t know, Thistle. We never found them.”

“Does my mother... want to find them?”

There was a long pause before he answered. “I think you should ask her.”

“Maybe I will. But not here. For my mother—too many things to think about.”

“Too many,” Thakur agreed, yawning. “I feel I can fall asleep now.”

Thistle felt her own mouth stretch in a sleepy gape. She followed Thakur back to the campfire and curled up beside him.

Chapter Eight

It was morning. Thistle no longer slept by Thakur. Instead, she had gone away quietly, without waking anyone. Now she crouched, alone in the brush, spying on a band of hunters as they stalked a face-tail. Her mottled coat might be ugly, she thought, but it made her blend in with the background when she didn’t want to be seen. She watched, quivering with fright and fascination.

This hunting party was a small group. Its members looked young, some of them perhaps just out of cub-hood. They didn’t seem as well organized as the larger hunting band that Thakur had described. Thistle also wondered about their judgment, for they had chosen an older female face-tail with a nursing calf. But perhaps the younger clan-cats did know what they were doing, for they had already managed to separate the pair from the main herd.

A ring of feline hunters now surrounded the beasts. Thistle could see that they were trying to maneuver their prey onto swampy ground, where mother and calf would bog down. But the mother face-tail seemed aware of the danger. Each time two or more of the attackers dashed in to drive her into the trap, the shaggy black-and-brown face-tail gave ground only briefly, then lunged at its tormentors, nearly breaking through their ring.

This is the wrong animal to try for, Thistle thought. This one has been hunted before and knows the tricks.

She watched the young hunters struggle with the wary old face-tail. They seemed unwilling to give up, as if something drove them to try again and again, despite knowing that this creature was the wrong prey.

Even Ratha, for all her stubbornness, would have surely given up by now, Thistle thought. The Named would have recognized they had met their match and chosen another beast.

The old female face-tail was tiring, but so, too, were the hunters. Thistle could see frustration and exhaustion in the rise and fall of their ribs beneath mud-streaked fur. Their feints were becoming slower, and each time one dodged the face-tail’s lunges, the tusks came closer.

Why do they keep choosing this animal? I am not a hunter, but even I can see...

One of the hunters turned, letting Thistle catch a glimpse of his eyes. Even from the distance, she could see that his gaze was still strangely turned inward, as if he was listening intently, even while he stalked.

“It is the song,” Thistle muttered to herself. “It is telling them what to do. And they have to do it.”

As she watched, she realized that the hunters had not only chosen an unsuitable animal, but they were trying the same tactics over and over again, even though the beast was wise to them. There was something strangely pitiful and even horrifying about the scene before her, as if the hunters as well as the prey were caught in the trap.

Why was True-of-voice doing this? Thistle wondered.
Thought leader cared about people. Or does care, but somehow gets stuck... can’t understand why hunting didn’t work. Can’t change.

She knew what would happen almost before it did. The attackers’ lunges and feints were slowing, narrowing their escape from the slashing tusks and trampling feet. And then, as one lithe, fawn-colored shadow darted in, the face-tail’s great head dipped down, the tusks thrust, and she heard an anguished yowl.

Thistle did not know what seized her legs, making her leap out of the bushes. Or what seized her will either, sending her in to bite and claw at the pillars of the face-tail’s rear legs. Looking forward beneath the great shaggy belly, she saw the cat-form of the stricken hunter twist and turn, trying desperately to avoid the huge feet slamming down on the ground.

For an instant Thistle feared the face-tail would ignore her attack, as if she were too small to bother with. It was too intent on the wounded hunter, and even the attacks by the other cats could not turn it away. The bright ribbon of blood on his side was a flag that drew the beast to him. The trampling feet were right above him, and his squall of terror filled the air.

Something whiplike yet heavy struck Thistle’s side, sending her tumbling. As she sprang back to her feet she saw that the face-tail had spun away from the wounded hunter and was thundering at her, trunk raised for another blow. She jumped, flattened as it flailed over her back. Her mind was whipping around as fast as the beast’s trunk, seeking an escape.

Pure panic made her run for a bluff and sail off the edge. With a bellowing roar, the face-tail came crashing down behind, and she was sure that it would land right on top of her, crushing her. But she landed clear, splashing into a mud puddle.

She shook herself, casting a wary glance at the face-tail, tensing as if she expected the beast to come charging out of the morass beneath the bluff. But the creature was down on its side, thrashing, beating its great trunk against the ground. A fall that was nothing to her had crippled it.

Her fur still on end, she watched the face-tail struggle to rise. The hunters were already appearing on the bluff. She could see their faces, their hunger. The first one leaped down, landing on the heaving mound of the face-tail’s body. She heard claws start to rip through woolly hide.

Soon all of the hunters were on the creature, swarming over it as if they had downed it themselves. Thistle felt hungry, but she knew she dared not venture among the horde that was already stripping off the face-tail’s flesh.

But one was missing from among them. The young male the face-tail had stabbed with its tusks.

Above the noises of eating, she heard a low moan. It came from up above, where she and the face-tail had gone off the bluff. Her ears flattened.

They leave one of their own to bleed while they feast.

She skirted the great corpse with the hunters tearing at it. Ears still flat, tail low and twitching, she circled back up to the top of the bluff. Where was the wounded one?

There. Under a bush. A trail of blood on the trampled ground told her he had dragged himself there to die hidden. She halted in midstep, one forefoot lifted. Why should she go to him? There was nothing she could do, and he might just attack her.

It was cruel of them to leave him to suffer while all the others filled their bellies. If he died his life would have paid for that meat. Among the Named that act would have been acknowledged.

Thistle tried to turn aside. Every step that might have taken her away instead brought her closer, until she was within nose-touch of him. Crumpled beneath the low branches of the bush, he looked dead, until she caught the fine tremor of his whiskers and the slight movement of dry leaves before his muzzle that told her he was still breathing.

A shudder went through the wounded hunter. He gasped and cried out like a cub. But there were words in the cry, and Thistle understood them.

“Away ... from True-of-voice. Dying away ... alone ...”

She glanced nervously at the bluff, at the sounds of feasting. Hunters of this same tribe had chased her away. If she had any sense, she would be gone by now. But they seemed engrossed in their prey. She could stay beside the wounded one at least for a little while, offer him warmth and words, if they helped. She knew how it felt to be hurt and alone.

As she crouched down beside the wounded hunter, his head lifted and his eyes opened. They were a molten gold and seemed to swirl, like water draining inward through a hole.

Inward, thought Thistle. Always inward. These ones dream as they die, dream as they suffer. Aloud she said, “Don’t be frightened. I will stay with you as long as I can.”

The wounded one’s head jerked. The eyes went to her, yet never seemed to fix on her. Thistle wondered if he was blind.

No. All the hunters have eyes like this. Thakur said that I once had eyes like this.

The young male was in a funny half twist that looked uncomfortable. After nudging him to make sure that he had no other injuries besides the tusk wound, she got him arranged so that he was lying on his belly. She had to put herself beside him to prop him up, for he kept wanting to flop over onto his side.

“No,” she scolded softly. “Better for you to stay on your belly.”

She studied his wound. It was no longer bleeding freely, and it didn’t look too bad. There were no bones showing or guts or anything else that should stay inside a body, except blood. But he was trembling and his nose felt cold against hers. The trembling and the coldness. And the fear. The fear could kill, even if the hurt didn’t.

She made him keep his head down. Thakur had told her some things about how to take care of the injured. He was a skilled healer. How she wished he were here now!

She looked at her charge critically. On his belly, with his head down, the wounded young male seemed to be doing a bit better. His nose wasn’t so cold and his trembling was less violent. Maybe he wouldn’t die after all.