The River Wall (22 page)

The men walked forward to meet their sha’um, and I felt my heart go out to them for their gladness and their distress. The beautiful cats, gray or tan or some combination, were uniformly sooty, their eyes sunken, their bodies thin, their steps uncertain. I saw Liden reach up to Poltar’s neck, hesitate, then wrap his arms around the cat in a way that would support, rather than lean on, him.

So far, things had happened as they had been planned. I was just thinking that it was all going too smoothly when I heard the roar of challenge from just downslope. Another sounded, and another, and before we had time to react, a second line of sha’um appeared behind the first. These were narrow-shouldered females, the striping in their darker coats obscured by the settled ash their fur had collected.

“They are frightened,” Tarani whispered to me. “Their dens are corrupted, the only security that remains to them is their mates. And they see that the Riders have changed the attitudes of the males, turned them away from den and family.”

“Is Yayshah telling you this?” I asked.

“She sees it,” Tarani admitted. “But I interpret it. Rikardon, they are terrified and angry. There is more risk for the women than I imagined.”

The women themselves saw it, and were moving cautiously backward.

“Yet they
must
try,” Tarani said. Her hand, clenched into a fist, struck the boulder on which we were leaning. “And now is the moment, their only chance.”

She stood up. I grabbed for her, panicked, and sprawled out on the dusty ground as she dashed forward, running down the hill.
This isn’t in the plan!
I thought desperately.
Keeshah, Yoshah, Koshah, protect her!

The attention of all the sha’um was drawn to the noise of Tarani’s skidding and running. Three of the closest females edged around their mates to face the woman, their neckfur lifted and their tails thickening. Their tusks were exposed, and a low menacing sound rolled out of their throats as they spaced themselves and held their ground.

But Tarani did not run to meet them. Instead, she angled off to her right, toward the main body of the column. She grabbed the arm of one of the women, and dragged her back toward the three female sha’um. One of the Riders—her husband, I supposed—caught the woman’s other arm and yelled something. The woman, not young by any means, argued for a moment with the man, then freed her arm from Tarani’s grasp and swung it full-force at the Rider, knocking him loose and sending him sprawling. She paused a moment, looking remorseful, then turned back to Tarani, who hugged her briefly. The two women ran toward the females, who had watched all this with growing suspicion. On the hillside above, Keeshah, Yayshah, and the two cubs were arranging themselves for battle.

*Don’t fight unless you have to
,
* I ordered my three sha’um.
*Try to follow what Tarani wants you to do.*

I considered joining the mess, and was ready to launch myself downhill, when I spotted Thymas—much closer—doing the same thing. He ran and slid down until he collided with the Rider who had just gotten up, nearly knocking him flat again. Thymas grabbed him, talking earnestly, then he turned and shouted to Tarani.

“The one in the center,” he said, and we all knew what he meant. Thymas had asked the Rider to find out from his sha’um which of these females was his mate. The man’s sha’urr moved slowly toward his Rider, pressed his forehead into the man’s chest, then with a spurt of energy climbed the hill to join Keeshah and his family.

Later, I wondered whether Tarani really did have some element of telepathy in her mindpower, because the next few minutes saw a degree of teamwork that seemed impossible without some such unifying factor. Five sha’um faced the three females. Four of them were
not
bonded to Tarani, but they did the right thing at the right time. I directed three of them, am I was sure the Rider-husband of the woman was directing he male. There was no way for Tarani to tell us—or even to speak to the sha’um directly to tell them—what she wanted the sha’um to do, but we all worked together as if we had practiced it a hundred times.

The female sha’um in the center of the group lunged forward, not so much attacking the two women as challenging and questioning her mate behind them. But the movemen brought her much nearer the women than the other two, and said:
*Koshah, Yoshah, get down there on either side of the center female.*

They obeyed immediately, and the sudden arrival of the young sha’um set all three females to sidestepping and growling. Apparently because these sha’um were cubs, the females saw no threat in them, so Koshah and Yoshah were able to get into place without causing an uproar.

Her mate moved forward then, forcing the women to step aside to give him room. He touched noses with the female uttered a low sound from his throat, and rubbed the side of he face along her jaw. Her ears twitched forward, and she raises her head slightly so the male could lick the lighter fur of he throat. I saw her close her eyes as she relaxed and crouches down, offering the back of her neck to the attentions of he mate.

*Now
,* I ordered the cubs. They darted closer to the female and leaned their weight against her, effectively limiting he mobility.

The females eyes snapped open, and we could see he muscles gathering for a lunge out of the trap, but her mate swung around. Instead of licking the fur on the back of he neck, he opened his jaws. He caught a fold of skin at the nape of her neck in his teeth, and pressed the female down to immobilize her. We could all see he was being careful not to hurt her. He lifted one heavy foreleg and laid it across Yoshah’s hindquarters and his mate’s shoulders.

The female roared; the male’s jaws twitched; she fell silent. The other females, alarmed by what was going on, roared and paced, but now Keeshah entered the picture, taking a protective position behind the female.

Facing the big, healthy male sha’um was more than the two other females wanted to handle. They backed down the hillside, crouched and watched.

Gradually, as the female realized she was not being hurt and no one was threatening to hurt her, the wild look disappeared from her eyes, and she stopped trembling. Tarani lifted her arm, and Yayshah walked slowly down the hillside, passing under Tarani’s arm, crouching slightly and rippling fur and muscle, obviously enjoying the body-long caress.

Yayshah stopped close to the trapped female and crouched down. Both women went forward then, stopping on either side of Yayshah. Tarani mounted Yayshah, who stood up and carried Tarani off a short distance. The other woman walked forward boldly, and knelt in front of the furry head with its heavy teeth and silver-gray, suspicious eyes.

The woman seemed very small in comparison with the mass of sha’um around her, but she moved with deliberation and courage.
Please
, I prayed—to the woman, or to the God of my grandmother Marie, I was not sure which—
this is the first one, the keystone. Please let this work.

The woman reached toward the female, keeping her hand always in the sha’um’s visual range. Even at this distance, I could see the male’s head twist slightly, to watch the woman with as much care as the female was watching her. Either instinctively or at Tarani’s earlier direction, the woman held her hand very still in front of the female’s face. Carefully, the triangular furred head extended itself, sniffing. The woman’s hand moved closer; the female’s ears twitched back, forward, back. The hand touched fur between the female’s eye and the top ridge of teeth. The female’s whole body flinched, but she made no hostile move. Her eyes were on the woman before her, even her captors forgotten.

Another hand came forward, and both stroked fur. The dark ears came forward, the eyes half-closed. The woman stood up slowly.

*Koshah, get out of the way
,* I ordered the male cub, who stood up cautiously. The dark sha’um made no attempt to break away The woman moved to the sha’um’s side, stroking fur along her jaw, across her head, down her shoulders—behind the jaws of the male, who still held his mate’s skin in his teeth.

The male still watched the woman warily. The woman laughed softly, and spared a caressing stroke for his sloping forehead.

The male released his mate, and when Yoshah felt the weight of his foreleg go away, she, too, moved off. As if it were an ordinary, everyday sort of action, the woman slid a leg over the female’s back and settled into a slightly awkward, but conceptually accurate, imitation of a Rider’s position. The female stood up carefully, turned to touch noses with her mate, then moved to stand beside Yayshah.

Only seconds later, the female’s mate—mounted by the new Rider’s husband—joined the two females.

It had begun.

It was an inexpressible relief to lie down. The pallet beneath me was thickly padded with vlek hair and, while not the soft comfort of a feather mattress in Ricardo’s world, it was more comfort than I had known since Ligor and I had left Inid. I thought of the tenacious old man, and resolved to send a message, telling him that I was all right. I had the feeling that in spite of having his hands full with rebuilding Chizan, he was worrying about me. He was that sort of a man.

Tarani lay beside me, sleeping. We had dismounted our sha’um in the clearing that was our home among the Sharith, and sent them into the surrounding forest for a well-deserved rest. Then with one mind, we had staggered toward the stream, stripping off clothes as we went. The clear, cool water had rinsed away the accumulation of soot and dust, and we had been able to walk with more control into the house.

Tarani had kissed me tentatively; I had responded tentatively; we had both laughed.

“One would think,” she said, “that we had only just met, since neither one of us is honest enough to plead fatigue.”

“Every day with you,” I had said, running my fingers across the delicate bone beneath her left eye, “I seem to meet you for the first time. And desire for you is always with me, even when I’m too tired to demonstrate it.”

She had drawn me down, then, to the pallet, to hold me tenderly. “It is decided, is it not, my love, that we shall never be parted again?”

“Never,” I had promised, and then I had held her until her breathing slowed and she slept.

But I was in that state of utter fatigue that defied sleep. We had stayed the rest of that day and part of the night in and near the Valley. As I had hoped, that first bonding had been a breakthrough. It had convinced the Riders that it could be done, and their sha’um in turn had encouraged their own mates into similar bondings.

When the wives of the Riders of the Valley sha’um had achieved their bonds, every one of them following the first woman’s careful approach, we were greeted with some surprises. The oldest Thagorn sha’um had left us one by one, to return later with not only one, but three or four sha’um—his mate, and the last batch of cubs, now grown. Where the wife of an active Rider had been with us, the male had controlled and threatened the cubs in order to give his mate the chance to bond to his Rider’s mate.

When all the bondings had been achieved—not totally without damage, but at least with no sha’um or Sharith having been killed—we had ridden back to our camping spot and spent the night in the fresher air, allowing the Valley sha’um to recover some of their strength.

On the following day, the bonded sha’um—males and females, unbonded cubs accompanying them out of family loyalty—had reentered the Valley and herded out all the sha’um that could be found. Though it had hurt us to see them so weak and ill, we had not hesitated to take advantage of their condition. Mounted, the Sharith had herded the protesting sha’um away from the place that had been their home. They had begun to recover as soon as they reached clear air, and though there had been a few breakneck attempts to circle back to the Valley, for the most part they had seemed content to move along with us.

The Sharith had opened their confining circle of bonded sha’um just north of Thagorn, and the ex-Valley sha’um had bolted for the overgrown hillsides.

The mood of the Sharith had been subdued—due as much, I had suspected, from thoughtfulness as from fatigue. Their lives had changed—drastically, irreversibly. They had accepted the change without question for the sake of the sha’um, but had not yet taken the time to assess the nature of that change.

Tarani and I had left a weary Thymas at the gate of Thagorn, declining the offered hospitality of his own home. Now that Yayshah was not the only female outside the Valley of Sha’um, there was no reason to forbid her presence in Thagorn. But this house was the only real home Tarani and I had known together.

Sheltered by the warmth of Tarani’s closeness, I closed my eyes and, at last, let myself feel the pain. Outside the Valley I had told Tarani that we would never forget the sha’um we lost. I had not foreseen how personal that sense of loss would be.

As we were gathering up the camp after making the painful decision that any sha’um left were beyond saving, something had drawn my gaze to the western hills.

Doral had been there, at a level above the worst of the haze, watching us. Dharak’s sha’um had no distinguishing marks, and the sha’um crouching on the hillside might have been any sha’um—but I had known it was Doral. I had almost called to Keeshah, tempted to ride after him and corral him like a wild stallion, but Doral had stood up just at that moment, had issued a heart-rending cry of loneliness, and had jumped down to appear in flashes, running among the rocks of the hillside. Running away from us—not into the Valley but parallel to the line of haze.

It was as if he knew the danger
, I thought now.
Maybe some part of Dharak understood what went on in the Hall, and was able to warn Doral. But that sound the cat made—it was good-bye to us, and good-bye to the Valley. If there were any trace of Dharak left, surely Doral would have come back with us.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and became aware that I was physically shaking my head in denial of that vision.
Doral will be one who survives—for a while. He’ll cling to the area until he starves, or becomes so weak that other survivors, driven mad by hunger and poison, gang up on him and kill him for food. I couldn’t face Dharak tonight. I couldn’t do it.