The Tiger and the Wolf (47 page)

Venater snickered at that, but Shyri just frowned.
‘Well, then, when do we go? What is your plan?’
‘I have no plan.
We
do not go. I go.With my lack of plan.’ And
then, ‘You’d go, too, would you?’
‘Someone has to watch and laugh,’ she replied defensively.
He stood. The time for it was now, he realized, or he might
change his mind. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me.’ She tried to back off, but he caught her
wrist before she could do so, and held on for a moment before
she tugged it free. ‘You’re stupid. You want to die so much, let
me
open your throat.’
‘So kind an offer, but I owe that honour to Stone River’s
Wolves.’
‘Then tell us where we can meet you.’
He almost laughed at that, but she was desperately serious
about it, just as he had been. ‘So now you think it’s a good plan,
and it will work?’
‘No, but tell us anyway.’
‘I have nowhere to suggest for you.’ Asmander spread his
hands. ‘This is not my land. What can I say?’
And a new voice broke in, a girl’s voice, ‘Let me say it for you
then.’
They all three whirled round to confront her, and for a
moment Asmander thought it must be Maniye herself, somehow
free and come to accuse him. He found himself looking into a
different face, though: a strange face and yet one that he knew.

The Tiger came to her in dreams, but only to express its disappointment. As she slept, her mind was wandering out in the
dark, with only the fire-glimmer of her mother’s god to light her
way.

You should have tried harder to cast out the Wolf within you
,
came the low rumble of the Tiger’s voice.
If you had only pleased
your mother more, she would have taken you in.You could have been
the golden child of the Shining Halls, if only you had been better.

And when she fled from it, into the darkness – on human
feet, for the leash restricted her even in her dreams – there was
the Wolf, a greyness shifting through the midnight forests of her
imagination.

You could have been High Chief’s daughter
, it growled.
If you
had truly wished, you could have been one of my children and run
with my pack. Instead I will feast on your soul.

And still she fled, but the two of them were always with her,
snarling at each other and at her.
She
knew
it was a dream; that was the worst part. She fled
and she fled, knowing it for one of those inescapable dreams
that would pursue her to the very shores of waking. And, at the
same time, the Tiger and the Wolf were truly within her and still
at war. She knew that some men and women had dreams that
told them the future or let their souls speak to the gods. When
Maniye dreamt, she spoke only with her own fighting souls as
they grew more and more savage within her. In the dream, her
feet bled and her skin was lashed with briars, yet still they made
her run.
Then there was something ahead that was not just gloomy
ghost-forest or the shades of remembered hills. She saw open
water and an island crowned with stones: the Stone Place, and
yet not quite. At first she stumbled to a halt at the water’s edge,
finding no causeway there, and the Tiger and the Wolf came to
her and loomed above her, their eyes like stars in a clouded sky,
baring their teeth like the curve of the moon.
But something glimmered within the water that was not a
mere reflection, and she saw scales sliding past scales there,
reflecting rainbow colours even in the darkness. As the animals
inside her howled and spat, she stepped out over those measureless depths and, wherever her feet touched, those looped coils
rose from the depths, ridged and somehow dry, and bore her
weight. Each step was taken with a faith that she could not
imagine copying in her waking life, but the Serpent was there
for her each time she entrusted her weight to the waves.
And she found herself on the island, which was so small that
two men lying head to foot could have spanned it, with a handful of tumbled old stones, as if it was what the Stone Place
had once been in the unimaginable mists of time, before it had
grown into what it was now. The Tiger and the Wolf were swimming after her now, for the Serpent would not consent to bear
them.
You should have cast out the cat from you!
came the vicious cry
of the Wolf.
And now you will burn!
And from the Tiger:
What mother could want a creature such as
you! What are you if you will not make up your mind?
Something rose in her with that barb, as though she had
acquired a third soul from somewhere, possessing the strength
to face down the other two. ‘I am Maniye! I am Many Tracks!
And I will walk my own path, and I will be nobody’s slave!’
And she woke to the sound of her own voice crying out, and
found herself staring into the eyes of Kalameshli Takes Iron. The
old priest was kneeling beside her, far too close for comfort, and
she shrugged and elbowed herself away from him until she was
right at the tent’s sloping edge, at the limit of her leash. He
stayed where he was, illuminated by a strip of moonlight shining
through the open flap.
‘You were calling out to the Wolf,’ he observed.
Maniye bared her teeth at him. ‘There were three gods in my
dream, old man. It was not the Wolf that helped me when I was
in need.’
‘The Wolf does not help,’ he replied, surprisingly mildly. ‘The
Wolf wants us to be strong. We cannot be strong if we live our
lives on crutches. The Wolf chases away the summer stars and
brings the winter: you know this. The Wolf sends the ice and the
snow, and makes the game scarce. And the other tribes grow
weak, as they shiver by their fires, and only we remain strong.’
She could not say where the next revelation came from, but
the words were on her lips already. ‘There are two ways of
seeming strong: to build yourself up or to throw all others down.
But only one of these is truly a way of being strong.’ The
thought felt like sacrilege, but it tasted like truth on her tongue.
She imagined Kalameshli’s face darkening, because he would
not value that kind of truth. She thought he would reach for a
switch and beat her just as her father had, and so she burst out,
‘What does it matter? You’ll burn me anyway, tomorrow or the
next night.’
‘It may not be so,’ Kalameshli said quietly.
But she knew him of old. If he held out any hope to her, it
could only be so that she would grasp it by the sharp edge and
cut herself. ‘You will do as Stone River bids you,’ she said. ‘And
you will do it joyfully. You have always hated me for what I am.
This chance now must be a thing made from your dreams.’
And he replied: ‘How can you think that?’
She was silent a long while, feeling that she had not understood, that he had said one thing and her ears had misheard it
entirely. And yet he was sitting there peacefully with no angry
words, no blows. And this was the same man who had whipped
her through her trials, pacing after her with dreadful patience,
and waiting for her to fail.
‘You have hunted me my whole life,’ she told him. ‘I lived
each day in fear of you. When I came to Step, you knew I went
as a tiger where no one else saw. And you hated it.’
‘Of course,’ he snapped, as though this was too obvious to
need saying.
‘And you hated me for it because I offended the Wolf.’ She
had wanted to say ‘your Wolf’, but it was her Wolf too, no matter
how she might fight it. ‘So you punished me at every chance you
got. Don’t blame me for seeking a life outside the Winter Runners. Blame my father. Blame yourself.’
‘You idiot child,’ he began, with an edge of familiar anger that
she welcomed. But then he continued: ‘I drove you hard so
that you became a strong child of the Wolf. I tried to whip the
tiger out of you because, if you had slipped just once and been
a tiger before the eyes of the Winter Runners, they would have
torn you apart.’ And abruptly his voice was fierce with emotion,
though he forced himself to keep it low. ‘So you
had
to be forced
to be a Wolf above all things, no matter what! I drove you to
make you strong, you stupid girl!’
‘But not so strong as to break away from your hold,’ she challenged him. ‘Not so strong that I couldn’t still be a thrall in
Stone River’s mad plans that could never have worked.’
‘If the woman really had been dead, they might have worked.
If she dies now, they still may.’
Maniye felt a stab of pain and outrage.
My mother!
No matter
how she had left the Shining Halls, no matter that the Tiger
were probably still hunting her with murder in mind, she had
found her mother once. She felt a loyalty there, where Akrit
stirred nothing in her. Perhaps it was just a loyalty to the ideal
mother she might have dreamt of, rather than the all-too-real
father that she knew.
‘I have seen your altar, priest,’ she told Takes Iron. ‘The Tiger
Queen will outlive me.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘I heard my father. He thinks my death will win him the
Wolf’s love.’
‘
A
death – but perhaps not yours. I have spoken to him.
Another throat has bared itself to us now. I will make him spare
you.’
‘What other throat?’ Maniye demanded, and he told her.

The clash of champions, open combat under the sun, that was
one way for the Sun River Nation, yet there were others. When
his father’s people had surprised Venat’s pirates, they had blown
no trumpets to alert their foes. Sometimes an attack must proceed by the moon’s rules.

The moon was too grand and bright for his liking, but there
was plenty of the cloud that seemed never to leave these northern skies. So it was that the light faded in and out, and great
bands of shadow passed over the world, as though Asmander lay
in clear water as vast fish swam above.

Well, he had only this night, so no sense complaining about
his preferences. The world did not care.
And it would be cold. Even with this ‘summer’ they were so
proud of, even with the clouds to hug the day’s heat in, he was
under no illusions. He had clothed himself and donned his
armour, and then clothed himself again, layer after layer, and
still knew it would be cold.
There was a fire within the Champion: it hunted under sun
or moon indifferently, burning up its strength for warmth, for
speed and strength. But Old Crocodile, he was a creature of the
warm days of the south who loved nothing more than to lie in
the sun on the banks of the Tsotec. Show him the cold air of the
Crown of the World and he grew slow in mind and body.
And yet, Stone River had set guards all about his camp –
scouts who were men and scouts who were wolves – and left one
gate wide open, unbarred and unwatched. There was a slender
whip of a river that curled into his camp at the forest’s edge
before passing under the trees, and that would be Asmander’s
road.
The wolves’ noses were keen, but the water would disperse
the scents of both reptile and man. How good were wolf eyes in
the dark? Asmander could not say, but Old Crocodile saw well
by moonlight and possessed keener senses besides. Many had
been lost beside the Tsotec because of a shadow or a log with
hidden teeth.
Asmander had warmed himself as much as he could, and
sealed in that warmth with hides and furs and cloth. When he
Stepped to that long, ridge-backed shape, the hoarded heat of
his human body would be the only fire he had to warm himself
with. Old Crocodile would provide no more for him.
Enough
, he told himself, knowing that now he was simply
taking up time to avoid having to act.
Go now.
And so he did, sliding headlong into the river, Stepping even
as he went, so that he barely made a ripple. Gliding in the waters
with only his eyes and nostrils above the surface, he felt the
thickness of his clothes become a barrier within that crocodile
body, keeping out the chill of the river. He let the current carry
him, drawing silently near to where the Wolves had their camp.
The Champion would have ambushed them – every one of
them. How many of the Wolves could he have fought, catching
them unprepared and without their iron hides? All of them?
Probably not, and yet the Champion was nothing if not confident in his own abilities. He had stood in the dark, after leaving
the others, and felt himself on the brink of calling that shape to
him, and decided it was not permitted. He had committed a
shameful act, unworthy of what he was. It did not matter that he
had fulfilled his duty to his family, or even to Tecuman his
beloved leader. The Champion held him to a higher standard.
Until he had lived through this night, he was locked in his body
with only Old Crocodile for comfort.
Knowing this in his heart, he did not call for the shape of the
Champion, in case he was right and it would not come. Better
to simply believe, and not be forced to face the truth, either way.
He could scent the camp as he drifted closely, just a little
sculling with his tail aiding the flow of the water. His eyes, halfclosed so as not to reflect the firelight, marked the presence of
sentries along the bank. Old Crocodile brought the news of
them to him with a rumble of hunger: any warm, living shape by
the water’s edge spoke to the animal within him. He fought that
instinct down.
And if the wolves looked into the river, even in the full lambent paleness of the moon, they would see only a log drifting . . .
He left himself glide a little further, well past the ring of sentries that Stone River had posted in case the Tiger was stalking.
There was a grand fire ahead that the camp was built around,
and with a structure of stones and wood set before it. There
were some tents pitched – neat little things that spoke to him of
economy and warmth – and there was a larger and more untidy
shelter strung about one of the trees. That must be Stone River’s
domain, surely? And yet it seemed a rough piece of work, with
gaps where the cold would creep in, and no sign of a fire inside.
He slowed himself and his long form drifted towards the riverbank, where he clawed into the mud for anchorage. The cold
of the water had begun creeping into him, and he would have to
get out soon, to return to his human shape and restore some
heat.
His nose was telling him a lot, but he did not have any
memory of the girl’s scent. The big tent looked too flimsy to be
a prison but, still, where else to keep a prisoner? There was also
a big pit up where the ground rose away from the river, but that
stank strongly of pigs. Would they put the girl in such a place?
Asmander realized he had no idea if such a thing might be done
in the Crown of the World.
He had been hoping they would just have her out in the open,
tied to a tree or similar. But then this was a test, after all, and the
world expected him to exert himself. Nothing was supposed to
be
easy.
Except . . .
Except, looking towards the treeline, surely there was something there? Old Crocodile was not so good at seeing distances
in the dark, so Asmander let himself slide back into the water.
With a sinuous ripple of his spine, he let himself ease closer,
passing invisibly through the heart of the camp before beaching
himself once again. The cold was beginning to slow him now.
He must make a plan and act on it.
There was a prisoner tied there. It was almost as if he had
dreamt it, and the dream had become real. There, from the
nearest tree, was a captive hung by the wrists. And yet it was not
the girl. Within his barrel body, Asmander’s heart stuttered.
A man: Broken Axe.