Ratha's Courage (12 page)

Even if True-of-voice and his tribe didn’t express gratitude other than contributing food and fuel, Ratha accepted this limitation. The sight of cubs curled up together, comfortable and warm, felt better than words. Some cubs were from Named families, especially those of the Firekeepers.

Both Fessran and Bira encouraged Named youngsters to play and sleep among the hunter cubs. Ratha approved of this, agreeing that the two sets of cubs might understand one another better if they grew up together.

“Our hopes lie with them,” Ratha said to herself softly, as she watched one of Drani’s young sons sleepily patting a female hunter cub who licked him on the nose. Both looked so much alike in their cub-spots that Ratha had to study whisker patterns to tell them apart. Even their scents weren’t that different. This mingling of young convinced Ratha that she guided the Named along the right path.

It also helped Ratha to watch Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter affectionately grooming one another. They had opened that path, proving that two from very different worlds could meet and love. Their young would be a blending of herder and hunter; Named thinker and song-hearer. The thought helped ease the old pain of what had happened to Thistle-chaser herself and her lost siblings.

When True-of-voice asked, through Thistle and Quiet Hunter, for a fire on the hunters’ ground, Ratha thought long and hard before directing Fessran to go ahead with a small one. She asked Bira to take charge of this encampment, as Fessran was busy with the two on clan ground.

Among the first to approach the new flame was the black fawn-killer. When Ratha visited the site, with Ratharee on her back, she saw the black-coat as well as Bira, Quiet Hunter, and a scattering of others. Ratha felt alarm start up in her belly, making her ears twitch back and her nape fur ridge up. Ratharee, on her back, stiffened and crouched. Bira, her color deepened by the firelight, touched noses with Ratha and then spoke softly.

“Clan leader, the black one been coming here since we started this Red-Tongue-nest. He hasn’t done anything. He just sits and watches.”

Ratha greeted Quiet Hunter, who was minding various cubs. He seemed to enjoy them, for he was bathing one with his tongue. Another youngster wrestled with his foot while two others hunted his tail. Good preparation, Ratha thought, for having his own family.

She left him among the wiggling bodies, flailing paws, squeaks, and tiny growls. Settling beside Bira, Ratha felt the brush of the Firekeeper’s pelt against her own. Ratharee hopped from her back to Bira’s, chirring and starting to groom Cherfaree. Ratha’s gaze traveled, almost unwillingly, to the midnight shape that crouched apart.

“I thought about driving him off, but I really didn’t want to,” Bira said. Ratha felt the young Firekeeper’s whiskers tickling the inside of her ear as Bira spoke. “It wasn’t his fault that True-of-voice chose him to take down the fawn. These spring nights are still cold.” Ratha listened, trying hard not to flick her ear. “If you tell me to chase him off, clan leader, I will.”

“No,” Ratha answered, not wanting to dampen Bira’s generous spirit. “At least not yet.”

“He doesn’t talk. I haven’t heard him make any sound. I call him Night-who-eats-stars, because of the way his black fur swallows up the little white sparkles.”

Night-who-eats-stars, Ratha thought, looking across at the solitary form whose pale blue-green eyes stared into the fire’s heart. She found Bira’s made-up name strange, even silly, but in watching the black hunter, and seeing how ghostly specks appeared and vanished in his fur, she also found it appropriate.

“Of course, we don’t have to call him anything if we—”

“Shhh, Bira.” Ratha made her voice low. “Night can stay . . .
for a while. I’m curious about him.”

She let her crouching hindquarters flop over so that she lay in a half-twist on one flank while Ratharee climbed over onto her ribs. Spreading her forelegs out, she crossed her rear paws and stretched, extending herself so that the fire warmed the length of her belly. Even though she had done this many times, she still marveled at her creature’s ability to breathe out heat.

Bira laid herself out in a similar way, keeping her head and forepaws toward Ratha. Bira’s treeling, Cherfaree slept beneath her chin. A cub bumbled its infant way from Quiet Hunter to Bira, seeking a full teat. Ratha watched as Bira curled around the litterling, as she herself had once curled around an infant Thistle-chaser and her brothers. Thistle had returned to her; would any of the others?

She listened to Bira’s purr and the soft gurgle-snort-smack of the cub suckling. Watching Bira made her remember how it felt, the tugging at her belly, the warm flow of milk through her teats into the mouths of those tiny furred bodies, the warmth and tingling that echoed the arousal of mating, but most of all the feeling, as she gazed down at her family, that she wanted to bathe them in endless, boundless love. Until they had been torn from her, not by a foe, but by her own blind devastating rage when she learned . . .

Ratha stiffened; eyes squeezed shut so hard that she felt eye fluid welling up beneath the lids and gathering in the corners to seep down the channels on each side of her nose. No, I will not think of that!

She opened her eyes, panting slightly at the rush of emotion. She had Thistle back and those once-clouded sea-green eyes were now alert and aware. It was enough. It had to be enough.

The weight of a small wiry body and a whiff of treeling scent told Ratha that Ratharee sensed her distress. Slender arms went around her neck, and she felt tufted treeling ears against her cheek, small careful hands stroking her face. She nuzzled Ratharee and then turned her head for a quick look at Bira. The young mother was so absorbed in nursing her cub that she hadn’t noticed Ratha’s reaction.

Why am I thinking of this? I thought the feelings were long dead, but they are wakening. Why?

Because it’s nearly mating season, dung-for-brains, she scolded herself.

But Thakur’s not even here. It doesn’t matter anyway. I can have any clan male; the matings have never taken. Not since Bone-chewer.

She shook out of her reverie and distracted herself by watching Night-who-eats-stars. Ratharee was curled up against Ratha’s chest fur, sleeping on her forepaws.

Night-who-eats-our-fawn, she thought, trying to take refuge in a bout of ill temper. It didn’t last, and she found herself watching him intensely.

Though Night shifted occasionally, the inky gloom of his coat creating and destroying the sparks of white, his gaze remained immobile, fixed on the fire. Within those eyes, something shifted, rising and falling like a restless sea. His eyes seemed as distant and dreamy as the eyes of other hunters, but every so often Ratha saw a pinpoint sharpness even more intense than the light in the eyes of the clan. It vanished instantly, like the white in his fur. Ratha blinked and wondered if both the stars in fur and eyes had existed only in her imagination.

She decided that he had to be a son of True-of-voice, perhaps the gray one’s heir. But if Night was, he showed no understanding of fire, as True-of-voice did. Nor did he ever speak, not even the stunted half language the hunter tribe used.

Opening her mouth and extending her tongue slightly, Ratha tried to catch his aroma. Dominated as it was by the hunter group-scent and masked by the burning fire, she could only smell and taste enough to tantalize her. Again she attempted, inhaling deeply through nose and mouth. She had learned how to enhance her scent-detection by trapping the air high in the most delicate and sensitive part of her nose and holding it still while she continued to breathe through her mouth. Closing her eyes, she focused attention on her smell-sense, sampling every part of the trapped air wfor the slightest odor trace that might reveal more about Night-who-eats-stars.

He must have heard her breathing change as she struggled to place him by smell, for he turned his head, letting his gaze fix briefly on her before it returned to the fire. His stare was at once icier than the most freezing wind and at the same time hotter than the fiercest of the Red Tongue’s flames.

Heat-sweat started from Ratha’s nose leather and paw pads, then cooled and dried.

Who was he? What was he? And why did he have such an effect on her?

She abandoned her questioning by bidding Bira and the others farewell, coaxing a sleepy Ratharee onto her back, and continuing on to the fire-site on clan ground. There she spoke to Fessran and then lay down. With the treeling nesting in her fur, she slept in the Red Tongue’s glow.

She woke to the sound of rustling and snapping followed by a soft but growing roar. It created a strong light that Ratha could see even through closed eyelids. Blinking, she saw Bira and her treeling Cherfaree coming to feed the fire. The sky was still black, shading to violet in the direction of sunrise.

Ratha rolled from her side to her front, taking care not to squash Ratharee. She nibbled a front toe pad that itched. She tasted salt, remembering her feelings from the previous evening. Furtively looking for Night, she remembered that she had left the other fire-site and felt abashed.

There were none of True-of-voice’s people here, only clan herders and Firekeepers sleeping near her. Thistle-chaser and Fessran were among them.

“It is still early, clan leader,” said Bira as her treeling added a trilling chirr. “I came to take Fessran’s watch so she can sleep.”

Ratha stretched her jowls and arched her tongue in an enormous yawn. Ratharee settled on Ratha’s nape as she asked Bira where the hunters had gone.

“Thistle told me last night that True-of-voice was leading the most able hunters after face-tails. His people will be gone for several evenings, so we don’t have to make as many fires. Just enough for the mothers and the old. I made the other fire-creature die, since we won’t need it. Then I brought everyone who was there over here.”

Bira nudged her treeling, purring a request. Cherfaree responded, feeding several sticks into the Red Tongue while Bira crouched alongside, coaching him. As the pair worked, Bira waved her plumed tail in enjoyment but carefully swept it away from the leaping flames.

Sleepily, Ratha licked her nose, grimacing slightly at the taste of salt there as well. She was glad Night-who-eats-stars was gone and would be for several days. She disliked the feelings he provoked in her.

The air had the cold taste of predawn, making Ratha move closer to the fire and settle near Bira. Close by, Fessran snored, whistling every time she inhaled.

“Go back to sleep, clan leader,” Bira said. “I’ll tend the fire-creature.”

Ratha had curled up on her side, her tail between her forepaws, and the tip beneath her chin. She was already starting to drift back into slumber.

With True-of-voice and most of his tribe away, Ratha could devote more attention to her own people. She did her regular patrolling and marking, joined Thakur in helping the herders, and made sure that Bundi and Mishanti were keeping the rumblers from trampling any more dens. A three-horn doe had a difficult birth, and Ratha was present as Drani and Thakur attended. The doe had twins, and while the fawns staggered around on their stiltlike legs, their fur still wet and spiky, Ratha nosed them, grateful to the doe for providing not only a replacement for the slain fawn, but for increasing the three-horn herd by one. The event cheered her, and she enjoyed the days that passed while True-of-voice’s people were gone.

The wind announced the hunters’ return late one afternoon. It brought a rich meaty smell that told of a successful kill. It also carried the leathery, dried-dung smell of live face-tails along with the trace of milky-scent that identified the animals as calves.

The Named needed little urging to follow Ratha to the fire-site on the hunters’ ground. She was glad to see Thistle-chaser by her side. “They’re bringing us face-tail meat,” said Cherfan, licking his chops as he sat down to wait for True-of-voice and his returning band.

“They are also bringing us more young tuskers,” Thakur said, pacing at Ratha’s other flank. “Those beasts will keep my cub-students running.”

“Not only your students,” Ratha teased, knowing that Thakur himself would be scampering frantically around, keeping his students from getting speared by tusks, trampled, or clubbed by trunks.

Fessran and Bira brought torches to relight the campfire. Other Firekeepers brought wood. Thistle and others helped Ratha scuff away grass and weeds, making a clear area around the Red-Tongue-nest. Ratharee also helped, then scrambled back up on Ratha. The long grass on this open plain felt and smelled drier than the growth in the clan’s meadow. She knew that the Red Tongue liked this dryness and would devour it eagerly, spreading out of control.

They were half done when a pounding grumble started. Ratha saw Thakur raise himself up on his hind legs, looking intently into the distance.

“Arrr, they are bringing young face-tails, but the beasts are getting away!”

Ratha jumped to his side and reared up to see over the long grass. Ratha recognized True-of-voice and Night-who-eats-stars. She also saw a group of young face-tails breaking away from their captors. The hunters were burdened by the raw meat they carried in their jaws and couldn’t act quickly enough to stop the beasts.

As the sounds of turmoil reached her ears, Ratha realized that the young face-tails were stampeding directly toward the Named and the Red Tongue.

“Dung-worms!” she heard Thakur curse as he plunged ahead. “They’re acting like stupid dapplebacks; they’re attracted to the Red Tongue!”

Even as she launched herself after him, calling for the rest of the Named to follow, she had a flash of memory, the shape of a little horse rearing in terror before the Red Tongue, but paradoxically turning to plunge into the fire. Why some creatures ran toward the Red Tongue rather than away, Ratha didn’t know.

The rumble of feet erupted into thunder. Looming from the late haze of afternoon, gray shapes filled her vision. Snarling, “Thistle, run!” she shoved her daughter away from a descending foot. The skin on Ratha’s tail tingled as the hairs bottle-brushed. With Ratharee clinging to her back, Ratha ducked under a leathery belly, was banged by a knee, butted by a head, and finally twisted herself free of the animals. Looking frantically around for Thistle, she found her daughter safe with Bira.