Ratha's Courage (7 page)

Ratha could feel the excitement building among the rest of the clan, and she admitted she felt it, too. This event would be fun and draw the two tribes closer together.

Perched on the sunning rock, Ratha craned her neck for the first view of True-of-voice and his people. Below, she heard Fessran yowling, “Your tail looks fine, Bira. You don’t need to groom it again . . . .”

Other Named voices blended with the chatter of treelings and the bellows, hoots, and neighs of the animals that Thakur and his students were holding in readiness for the performance.

True-of-voice paced at the head of his group, flanked by Thistle and Quiet Hunter. His stride was easy and supple, showing that he had completely recovered from his nearly fatal injuries. His gray coat shone with highlights of silver. Behind him was the old female whom Ratha recognized as Bent Whiskers and another called Tooth-broke-on-a-bone. The rest fanned out about him, reminding Ratha that the face-tail hunters formed a larger group than did her clan. This tribe had been a formidable threat once and could be again.

Some of them had fangs so long that a good portion showed outside the mouth.

“Reminds me of old Shongshar,” Ratha heard Fessran hiss. “How do they eat with those things? Can they open their mouths wide enough?”

The other group halted, and Ratha saw True-of-voice looking up at her. Other gazes followed his.

Ratha sat up and lifted her chin, suppressing a strong urge to give her fur a few quick licks. She hoped she looked as impressive to True-of-voice as he did to her.

While the clan took their places to one side of the sunning rock, Thistle and Quiet Hunter showed the face-tail hunters to the other. Ratha had asked everyone to sit so that she could see faces and forepaws as well as tails and backs. From her perch, she had a good view of the assembly.

Ratha watched Thistle and noticed that her daughter was moving in an odd, slow, gliding manner, as she sometimes did while in the trance she used to communicate with True-of-voice. Was she already speaking to him through the mysterious song? Was she so deep in her trance that she wouldn’t be able to leave it in time for her part in the display?

Well, if she didn’t, it wouldn’t be that much of a problem. It was more important to have Thistle-chaser as an interpreter than a participant. But Thistle would be disappointed, and Ratha herself was curious about what her daughter planned to present.

From atop the sunning rock, the clan leader called, her voice calming and stilling the Named as well as welcoming their guests.

“We of the Named greet you again on your return visit. We have already shown you some of our ways. Many are like yours, but many are different. Today we will show you how we live by keeping and tending beasts rather than hunting them. It is our hope that what you see here today helps you understand us.” Ratha paused, allowing the two interpreters to convey her meaning to True-of-voice and give his reply.

It was Quiet Hunter, not Thistle, who raised his voice. “The hearers of the song greet those who preserved True-of-voice. The sharing of ways is awaited with interest.”

“There is food, if any of your people wish it,” Ratha offered.

“The song will sate one of its hungers,” the other leader replied through Quiet Hunter. “There is acknowledgment and pleasure.”

Not quite gratitude, Ratha thought, but perhaps close enough. She wondered if curiosity was one of the song’s hungers. What others did it have?

She hopped down, approached True-of-voice, and gave him a formal nose touch. His scent was powerful, musky.

“May the song of the Named well up within,” said True-of-voice, this time through Thistle.

“May you eat of the haunch and sleep in the driest den,” Ratha answered, giving the ritual greeting of the clan. She waited as Thistle interpreted her words to True-of-voice. Her daughter sat eerily still and silent, her muzzle lifted, her nostrils flared, her eyes distant. How she did so was a mystery to Ratha, but Thistle was clearly communicating with the other tribe’s leader.

The Named and their guests still took up separate areas. The only mixing so far was between Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter, who were now licking one another’s cheeks and talking quietly. They took their places, sitting to each side of True-of-voice. Soon they would be helping him and his people to understand what the clan was showing them.

Ratha also regained her seat on the sunning rock. She wondered if, even despite the interpreters’ aid, True-of-voice or his people could comprehend the event to come. She always had the frustrating feeling that these folk were far different than the Named. Now, being near, scenting them and able to watch closely and compare them with her clan, she felt the differences intensify.

It was not a feeling she liked or wanted, at least not the rational part of her. But she could not deny the truth or depth of her feeling.

Turning back to her own people, she spotted Cherfan, who was already springing up on an outcrop near the sunning rock.

“Face-tail hunters and song-hearers, you have come here not just to learn but to enjoy as well.” Cherfan’s resonant voice had warmth as well as power. “Are we ready, herding teacher?” he asked Thakur.

“Yes,” came the reply.

Cherfan turned back to the crowd of the Named and their guests. “We are showing these herding methods with the simplest and easiest first, the more challenging later. This is the way we teach our cubs.” He stopped for the interpreters to communicate with True-of-voice, then said, “To show that these skills can be mastered by those who are not clan-born, here is your own Quiet Hunter with one of our dappleback horses.”

Ratha saw True-of-voice lean forward, his eyes widening.

Quiet Hunter moved to the edge of the performance area. The herders released the horse, which trotted into the center, flicked its tail and looked slightly bored. Ratha knew that this dappleback was another of Thakur’s practice animals.

Though very new to Named ways, Quiet Hunter had transformed the skill and control of a face-tail stalker into that of a herder. For safety, Ratha had stationed the herder Mondir nearby.

Quiet Hunter closed with the little horse before the animal noticed it, but instead of making the dappleback start and bolt, he eased his way toward it from behind. He stayed low, coming into its vision very carefully and slowly. He was patient, letting the creature’s own curiosity draw it toward him.

Then he began to press the little horse, using his presence to move it to one side, then the other. He walked it forward, turned it in a circle, and then made it back up, using a very creditable version of the Named stare-locking technique. He then delivered it to the clan herder, waved his tail at the audience, and strutted off, looking quietly pleased.

Catching Thakur’s eyes, Ratha could also see that he also looked pleased by the performance.

That should help convince True-of-voice that our ways are not so strange, she thought.

Next, a small herd of dapplebacks trotted into the show area. Fessran, Bira, and Drani cantered onto the field, followed by a strutting Mishanti. Working together, they rounded up the dapplebacks. Mishanti made good use of his speed, darting out to head off would-be strays while the others kept the herd tight and moving. Each herder cut out individual animals and maneuvered them to the brush pen, using rushes and feints to get them inside. Mishanti’s performance was slightly unusual; he ran one little horse so fast that it jumped the bush fence instead of going in the pen’s entrance.

When he seemed intent on doing it again, Fessran swooped down and lifted him by the scruff. The other three gathered up the dapplebacks and drove them into the brush-ringed corral.

“Well done,” boomed Cherfan. “Although that part wasn’t in the plan, was it, Fess? Now our herding teacher will perform something new he’s been perfecting. Thistle-chaser will show her own variation with help from her treeling, Biaree. First, Thakur.”

Again she turned her gaze to True-of-voice. She noted that he leaned forward with interest, and his eyes were alive with curiosity.

Yet this was not a trait he shared with his people. They were attentive, but not absorbed. Their real fascination was turned inward; they perceived instead the strange entity that came from True-of-voice, who called it “the song.”

It was not “his song.” It seemed to exist almost independently of him. Even though he was the immediate source, he seemed as caught up in it as the others. It was like a river flowing into a pool and then out again, but split into many smaller tributaries. He was the intake, they were the outflow, but all were bathed in the flowing water.

Her own Thistle had somehow managed to capture the song’s character when she said, “It sings through him. Those of his line, long dead, sing through him.” She had also said, “It isn’t just hearing. Not just ear-hearing. Or nose-smelling or tongue-tasting, or whisker-touching. It is all those, but it is more. It is with me behind the eyes. I am no longer one behind the eyes.”

How hard Ratha herself had fought to understand, to overcome the instinct to withdraw, pull back, cut off. Her choice had been in conflict with her feelings when she had directed the clan to rescue True-of-voice from the ledge where he had fallen. She still felt the conflict now.

She noticed that True-of voice’s tribe resembled one another more than did the clan. On the Named side, Thakur’s copper coat contrasted with Fessran’s pale sandy fur; Bira’s rich red-gold pelt and plumed tail shone against the grassy background. Silken blue-gray Ashon, head and feet haloed with glowing silver; Cherfan’s dark sepia brown; Thistle’s mix of white, brown, tan, and rust; Ratha’s own fawn, gold and cream; and the other pelt and eye colors were each as individual as each personality.

But Tooth-broke-on-a-bone and Bent Whiskers could have
exchanged pelts and still looked the same brindled gray-
brown. There may have been some slight difference in shade or pattern, but besides the riotous colors of the clan, that varia
tion was insignificant. The only one who stood out at all was True-of-voice.

She put the thought aside and turned her attention back to the show.

Chapter Five

Cherfan came next, Thakur taking over as announcer while the big herder performed. Cherfan’s display used a three-horn buck, and he had to step on the beast’s Y-shaped nose-horn to keep its head down and the antlers away. Though not unusual, it was very well done, and Cherfan earned the yowling applause he got from the Named side.

After Cherfan came Thistle-chaser, her treeling Biaree on her nape. Biaree held a coiled length of vine in one small hand, the other wound tightly in Thistle’s fur. The herders released a dappleback mare.

The treeling hunkered low between Thistle’s shoulders as she stalked belly-down through the grass. Ratha wondered whether her daughter would try the stare-down. Thistle chose the classic technique, using her sea-green gaze to immobilize the dappleback until she could get her forepaws around the horse’s neck. She pulled the animal over, but Ratha was startled when her daughter did not go for the throat.

Instead, Thistle spread herself across the beast, holding it down. Biaree hopped off her back, dodging the horse’s hoofed toes. With her rear foot behind the dappleback’s rump, Thistle pushed the hind legs forward while using a forepaw to swipe the front legs back until both sets crossed. Biaree sprang onto the uppermost hock and wound the vine around the crossed fetlocks. Pulling it tight, the treeling made a knot, and then bounced back onto Thistle’s nape. When Thistle climbed off the dappleback, the mare stayed on her side, feet tied together. Struggle as it might, the dappleback couldn’t escape. At last it lay, spent and heaving.

Ratha listened to the clan herders’ voices. They were impressed by this way of restraining a beast so that the herder who made the capture didn’t have to keep fighting the animal or kill it. How Thistle had combined Biaree’s skill at making knots with her own newly learned herding abilities, Ratha had no idea. As she watched, she decided that her daughter had contributed something else valuable to the clan. Thistle’s use of a treeling was so strange, however, that clan herders might take a while to understand and accept it.

Ratha wondered about True-of-voice’s reaction. Could he be thinking that treelings and vines could be used to hunt face-tails? No, Thistle’s technique worked far better on smaller animals such as the dapplebacks.

She imagined that True-of voice would have a difficult time understanding Thistle-chaser. Of the independent Named, Thistle was the most individualistic. One would never think that she could also reach True-of-voice well enough to translate the hunting tribe’s song into clan speech.

Well, she does have Quiet Hunter as a partner. It is not Thistle alone, but the two of them together.

Wondering what the hunting tribe thought of the display, she surveyed their numbers. Again she was struck by how alike the other tribe’s members were as compared to the clan.

These differences might be even greater than she knew, Ratha thought. Thistle and Thakur had been playing around with the idea that the Named couldn’t see reds and oranges as well as their treelings could. Thakur suggested that one could collect some of a reddish fruit that had equal hues (at least to Named eyes), but had varying degrees of ripeness. By blanking out a treeling’s sense of smell, perhaps by scattering strong-scented leaves nearby, one could show that treelings selected the ripest fruit by the depth of its rosy color.

For Ratha, it felt odd to think that she might not be seeing the true color of the ember within a flame, or the burning intensity of Bira’s luxurious fur.

What did Bira look like to a treeling, Ratha wondered. Perhaps only Thakur and Thistle had the imagination to even ask such a question.

And herself? She might well have enough imagination but limited opportunities to indulge it. She had to pay more attention to practical questions, such as whether the differences between her people and True-of-voice’s were dangerous.