Ratha's Courage (20 page)

Bira brushed her whiskers along Ratha’s cheek. “You are still trying to be kind, clan leader. I respect that.”

“Too much kindness may hurt us. You have to understand that.”

“I know,” said Bira. “I’m glad you are clan leader, not me.” With a wave of her tail, Bira went to help Fessran and Thakur recall the scouts to discover what they had learned.

Ratha didn’t realize that she had fallen into a doze until she felt a lick on the back of the neck, combined with a claw-poke. She knew even before she had tried to focus her eyes that the former had been from Thakur, the latter from Fessran. Both helped make the summary that Ratha had requested.

Quiet Hunter was still missing. Thistle was still out with several scouts, searching. The young males were still leaving True-of-voice’s tribe. The only new thing was unsettling, although it confirmed Quiet Hunter’s last frantic words. The renegades were joining together in small groups. They were finding one another, made brothers by being outcasts of the song. Quiet Hunter had also spoken of finding a similar brotherhood, but he had not yet joined them, although Thakur felt that he soon would. Thakur also thought that the smaller groups would coalesce into a single one. Scouts reporting later in the day proved him right.

“Herding teacher,” Ratha said when she met with him again the next day, “could True-of-voice have somehow changed, maybe gone . . . rotten? I know that leadership can do such things. I’ve had to fight hard against it.”

Pausing in his quick grooming, Thakur spat out some loose fur. Ratha jumped in again before he could reply. “We thought he was bad for a while, then we found he was good. Could he have turned again?”

Thakur stopped his grooming. “You think he has
become
. . . evil?”

“Well, you said yourself that he was unpredictable.”

The herding teacher looked at her, and she felt a strange kind of sadness in his gaze. “Yearling, True-of-voice may have changed, but the ideas of good or evil belong to us, not them. They are things that neither True-of-voice nor his people understand.”

Ratha argued, laying back her ears slightly. She felt if she accepted Thakur’s words, she would just be floating, with no place to put her feet. “You don’t drive your own young away, you don’t deliberately hurt them, and you don’t do that unless there is something in you that is wrong, bad . . . evil.”

“Or unless you are so swept away by events that you feel you have no choice,” said Thakur, his eyes steady on hers.

Ratha felt her teeth snap together. Was it fair of Thakur to throw her old mistake in her face? She didn’t want to fight with him, though, and she sat on her response, forcing herself to say instead, “You think True-of-voice has no choice in what he does? You don’t think he’s angry . . . or evil?”

“Whatever moves him, yearling,is far more powerful than either.” was Thakur’s reply.

“We have no right to judge him?”

“No, yearling. We don’t have the capability to judge him.”

Ratha could do nothing more than fall silent. After a while, she said, “Why do we have these ideas . . . about good and evil? Herdbeasts don’t, treelings don’t, the Un-Named don’t, you say that the hunters don’t. . . .”

In answer, Thakur drew a line in the dirt with one claw. “Because we are awake to see differences in things and are aware that we can choose between them. We see opposites and they somehow have to balance, like your tail and your head when you leap to a branch.”

Ratha fought to absorb and understand this. The question might seem very remote and abstract, but she suddenly knew that it wasn’t.

“Thakur, you stretch my thinking until it hurts.”

“Good,” he said, and then licked the nape of her neck again, reminding her that she had a body and all was not just thought. “I just hope that it doesn’t hurt too much.”

Later Thistle returned, looking disgruntled. Thakur had gone and there was only Ratha there to meet her.

“Found Quiet Hunter, but can’t reach him,” Thistle said. “Went with the other black-song-hearers. Making new group. Separate from True-of-voice.”

“You can’t go to Quiet Hunter and ask him to return?”

“No.” Thistle’s voice was harsh with frustration. “Others won’t let me near him. Yowled, but he didn’t answer. Is not like him. Being stopped, maybe?”

“That’s the only thing I can think of. He wouldn’t stay away from you by choice. I know he wouldn’t.” Ratha looked at her daughter, fur tangled with sticks and thorns, pads worn until blistered, but eyes still full of crashing-wave strength. She both pitied and marveled at this beloved stubborn creature who was somehow her daughter. “Thistle, if we have to free him by force, I promise that we will.”

Thistle let her eyes fall shut. “Know what you would do for me. And him. But don’t think it would work. Feel that something else, not True-of-voice, is happening.”

Ratha pricked her ears so far forward and so hard that it made the muscles along the sides of her face ache. “What kind of ‘something else’?”

“Don’t know. One thing, though. Don’t think that hunters in new group can hear True-of-voice anymore. Too distant.”

Ratha felt as though she were being spun off her feet again. “Thistle, from what you’ve told me, and from what I know, those hunter males can’t exist without True-of-voice’s song. Maybe Quiet Hunter can, because we taught him, but not the others.”

“Know that,” said Thistle.

“Then how . . . ?” Ratha faltered.

“Maybe . . . new group has . . . own song?”

“Can you sense it?”

“No.”

Ratha stepped on all the other questions she badly wanted to ask. “Thistle, you’re worn out. Go rest, eat, and let Biaree groom you. Other scouts will be reporting back; we have to wait for them.”

Thistle, for once, didn’t argue. She wobbled off to collect her treeling, her tail barely clearing the ground. Ratha could see that she had given nearly all she had in the search for the one she loved. Thistle would if there was something she really cared about. Perhaps being so single-minded was a weakness, running to absolute exhaustion out of passion. Ratha knew she was like that once, but she had learned to conserve, to pace, to balance. She hoped that in doing so she had not lost the passion that burned like the Red Tongue in her daughter.

Now is for fleeing. The song-hearers have given this night-black coat stars that it cannot eat; red stars that dry to dull on stiffened fur. Fur stiffened also by sweat between the pads, the pads that have run again and again.

The wrath of the song-hearers stinks and blasts and blinds. Their claws make the red stars.

These eyes cannot seek the hunting tribe, for it is split with two true voices and both push aside the star-eater.

The star-eater, who will die if not joined to something. The only something left is the clan of the talking ones. They gave life to another who lost the song, the quiet hunter.

Among the talking ones is the yellow-gold fur. The eyes do not want to see the yellow-gold fur. The heart will beat too fast. Not just because the yellow-gold brought the searing gift to the talking ones. The yellow-gold left burning tracks inside what once lived inside this night-black coat.

The black fur swallowed stars. The yellow-gold swallowed hope.

There must be something other than the yellow-gold fur’s clan. There must.

The returning Named scouts had seen things that confirmed Thistle’s odd prediction. There was something new in the all-male splinter group: another like True-of-voice. The new singer was the oldest one in the bunch, the scouts said, and his coloring and scent marked him as one of True-of-voice’s sons. He was a darker gray than his sire, with faint vertical barring along his sides, black ringing his tail, and white on his lower jaw, chest, and feet. This new singer’s presence in all senses was dominating the group—the individual members’ scents were being submerged in his.

To avoid confusion, the scouts had started to call this individual New Singer. Ratha continued using the name, and the usage soon spread.

For Ratha, New Singer’s appearance added new complications to an unstable situation. She felt she had to pull back and concentrate her resources on clan ground. As she had already told Bira, there would be no more warming fires on hunter land or anywhere else except on Named territory. If things improved, perhaps they could resume.

She half expected Bira to protest, but the young Firekeeper took this in her usual calm manner. She had already told those who came to the fire that the Named couldn’t keep this favor going. She had explained why, although she wasn’t sure if they understood. She also hoped that if this filtered through to True-of-voice, he might act.

As well as redoubling their effort on home-ground tasks, the Named also kept a careful watch on both the old and new groups of face-tail hunters.

“I don’t think New Singer and his gang can survive apart from True-of-voice,” Fessran said to Ratha a day or so later, after the clan had started an intense watch on the new group. “They’re all one age—they don’t have any old ones to give them advice, they don’t have any cubs, and they don’t have any females.”

“Is that Night-who-eats-stars with New Singer?”

“No, he isn’t. The last time I caught his scent, it told me he was on his own now; he’d lost any trace of his original group-odor, and he hadn’t taken on any of the new. In fact, I haven’t seen or caught a whiff or taste of him for days. I think he’s gone for good.”

“Well, that would help prevent New Singer and his bunch from using the Red Tongue,” Ratha said, then looked over her shoulder as Thakur approached. He had shortened his herding classes so that he could help Ratha and Fessran.

“Since some of the herders are working as scouts,” he said after he nose-touched with the two, “I’ve turned some of their duties to the older cubs, especially Ashon.”

“Good,” Ratha answered. “We need to stay alert until we know how this new hunter group will act as neighbors.” She paused, then told him about Fessran’s speculation that New Singer’s band would collapse and probably be reabsorbed into his sire’s tribe.

“That isn’t going to happen,” Thakur said bluntly. “Not if New Singer is half as strong as his father. I’m worried about the fact that they have no females.”

“Maybe True-of-voice lost so many in the fire that he couldn’t let any go,” Ratha suggested.

“That may be a part of it.”

“Then why did he and his dung-eating song drive the young males away if they can’t survive long-term?” Fessran asked, sounding irritated.

Ratha responded, “Well, if they don’t, that eventually lessens the threat to us.”

“Not if New Singer’s bunch gets desperate and tries for the Red Tongue or our herdbeasts. Remember, we have face-tails now.” Fessran’s tail made a few lashes.

“We’re all aware of that and working to prevent it,” Ratha answered.

She saw Thakur turn to Fessran. “You are absolutely sure that no females joined New Singer’s band.”

“The scouts are watching out for that. Bira says she’s sure, and she’s reliable.” Fessran breathed deeply through her nose.

“Why are you both still clawing this question around?” Ratha asked. “If they don’t have females, it helps us.”

“I’m not sure about that, Ratha,” Thakur said slowly.

“I’m not either,” Fessran added. “Something about this mess is really bothering me, though I don’t know what or why.”

Ratha studied both of her friends. Thakur looked as if he had begun putting some pieces together and didn’t like the result. Fessran’s reaction seemed hazier and more instinctive, as if she knew where the answer lay but was having trouble tracking it.

“Having both of you agree on something isn’t usual,” Ratha said. “It also makes me want to do more, but I don’t know what. We’ve got all the scouts out that we can spare from the usual duties.”

“Pull the scouts back,” Thakur said suddenly. “We’re going to need them here.”

“Fessran?” Ratha’s gaze went to the Firekeeper leader.

“For once I’m with Thakur. That itch between my shoulders is getting nastier.”

Ratha felt resolution settle over her. “All right, I’ll take your counsel. So you both think that the threat is not True-of-voice but New Singer. And that if he strikes us, he will try to seize the Red Tongue and the herdbeasts.”

“Given that we don’t know how the hunters think, we have to assume that would be his intent,” said Thakur.

Fessran agreed. “We must protect the fire and the animals.”

“All right, bring your Firekeeper scouts back in. Tell Thistle I want her as well. Thakur, you and Cherfan have the herders get all the herdbeasts into the meadow. Fessran, set up guard-fires around the herd and the fire-den. Have torches ready.” Ratha paused. “We won’t strike first, but we’ll be ready if New Singer does.”

Fessran left, but Ratha asked Thakur to stay. “Herding teacher,” she said, “I am surprised you haven’t suggested that we try to speak with New Singer. Or True-of-voice, either.”

“If it was just the one group of hunters, I would,” he replied. “Having to deal with a second is too much—it stretches us too thin.”

“Also, we don’t have Quiet Hunter. And Thistle is distracted. Look, if nothing happens in a few days, I will try to speak with True-of-voice or New Singer. I don’t want to lash out at either without cause. At the same time, we can’t leave ourselves vulnerable to attack.”

“Reasonable, yet responsible,” Thakur said.

“I learned from you,” Ratha said softly.

“That pleases me, yearling. I’ll go get Cherfan and secure the animals.”

A tense stillness lay on the air as the Named prepared for the unknown yet still attended to the necessities: the cubs, the animals, and the fire. Ratha hoped that this would last only a few days, but she was ready for conflict. She tried not to get anyone angry or excited. A mistake by an over eager torchbearer could plunge the clan into an unwanted fight. Instead, she sought her own calmness, blended it with determination, and spread it among her people.

If New Singer held off, then perhaps she could approach him. And/or, perhaps, True-of-voice, asking him to change the song that drove his son and his peers out, and receive them again. If the Named had unintentionally caused this split in the hunter tribe, they could help heal it.