The Tiger and the Wolf (51 page)

She could not imagine what Alladei would say to Stone River
when the wolf warband Stepped into human form within a
spear’s cast of the camp. To her, the man’s options seemed brutally simple: hand Maniye over or bare his throat to the Wolf.

But perhaps the Horse Society always enjoyed more options
than anyone else. Alladei went out to speak to Akrit, and he
invited the Wolf over to his fire to talk.

Stone River came with Kalameshli and a hunter known as
Sunset Spear. That Smiles Without Teeth had stayed back with
the warband gave Maniye something to think about. Had Akrit
told his strongest supporter to stay behind to keep the rest in
line? How unruly were the warriors of the Winter Runners
becoming?

She had intended to hide herself away – perhaps even to flee
unnoticed if the chance arose, but Alladei himself found her and
guided her to the fire where her father was waiting. He was
polite but he was firm. He had Broken Axe there as well, and
Hesprec – though hers was not a face Akrit would recognize any
more. Loud Thunder and the southerners were close by, within
earshot but not within the circle at the fire – hence without a
voice.

The Horse people made a great show of hospitality: they had
milk and meat and honey for all their guests, and Akrit was
served first, his status explicitly acknowledged. In all things Alladei was the gracious and compliant host, until the formalities
were observed and Akrit spoke.

‘You have something of mine,’ he said shortly. ‘The Horse are
not thieves and I know they will return what they find if they
know it is already promised to another.’

Alladei nodded thoughtfully. ‘I will not insult you by pretending I do not know of what you speak,’ he replied slowly. Indeed,
Akrit’s glower at Maniye was unmistakable.

‘Then let me take her, and let me go.’
‘Set out your claim to her.’
Stone River stared at the Horse man narrowly. ‘She is of my

tribe, and is fleeing my judgement. I am chief of the Winter
Runners. I am High Chief of the Wolves.’ Though many expressions about the circle said
Not yet
, none gave voice to the
objection, and Akrit smiled at that. ‘The Horse are welcome in
the Crown of the World. I know they will do what is right.’

‘Well, it is not for a foreign visitor to your lands to argue the
laws of the Wolf,’ conceded Alladei calmly. ‘As you see, I have
her in my hands, and now you ask me to give her up to you.
Gladly would I do so, but I find a wall between us, that I cannot
fetch her through,’ And, seeing Akrit’s impatience at his speech,
he continued, ‘You are my guest, Chief of the Winter Runners.
She also is my guest. My duty to her is unyielding.’

Stone River snarled and started to say something heated, but
Alladei went on, more forcefully, ‘The duty of host to guest is
known to all peoples, in all lands. I would be cursed if I forsook
it.’

The Wolf chief was colouring with anger, but Kalameshli
leant in and murmured something that restrained him. At last he
got out, ‘And how long is she to remain your guest?’

‘I suspect your coming here will prolong it,’ Alladei said, with
every appearance of regret.
‘A guest that brings trouble to her host is no guest.’
Alladei spread out his hands, appealing to the sky and then to
the horizon. ‘That is not a distinction that any god will make
when my soul is weighed. I have taken her as my guest. I must
live with that. I told the Tiger the same.’
Akrit went very still. ‘Did you so?’
‘They were equally unhappy with my words.’
Maniye kept her own face devoid of expression, knowing that
any words Alladei had given the Tiger had taken place before
she had ever become his guest, but of course Akrit could not
know that.
‘The Horse would be unwise to anger the High Chief of the
Wolves.’
‘The High Chief of the Wolves would be unwise to cut himself off from the Horse, or to give the men of the Horse more
reason to aid the Tiger. All know the Shadow Eaters – that is
your term? – are now down from their high places. We of the
Horse have traded with Wolf and with Tiger freely, as we trade
with Boar and Deer, with Seal and Hawk, and even with the
Bear sometimes. Many are the goods we bring from all the lands
south of the Crown of the World and, of all the families of the
Horse, my hand-father Ganris heads one of the greatest. So let
us not rattle spears, my guest.’
Maniye’s abiding memories of her father were of his short
temper, but here he mastered his rage, husbanding it until he
could use it. ‘So what says the Horse?’ he demanded.
‘Amongst my people we have found ourselves in this position
more than once,’ Alladei said patiently. ‘It is my duty, as Hetman
here, to see if the grievance between my guests may be settled
by trade or by promises. I would have to know the faults laid at
the feet of Many Tracks.’
Hearing her hunter’s name mentioned, Akrit’s lip curled, but
he did not try to strip her of it. ‘I do not choose to recite her
wrongs again,’ he replied, affecting boredom, ‘save to say that,
wherever she travels, she raises enemies against the Wolf. How is
it that she now turns the Horse against me?’ And now a little
genuine frustration was leaking into his words. ‘For that alone, I
would hunt her down.’ Then Kalameshli touched his arm, cautioning him, and he subsided. ‘There is nothing to be offered by
you that can cool my need to have her. The Wolf demands her.’
‘And if I was to take her away from the Wolf, and from all the
lands of the Wolf?’ Alladei asked softly.
Stone River frowned. ‘Away where?’
‘Out of the Crown of the World, to other lands where neither
Tiger nor Wolf hold sway. To Where the Fords Meet, joy of the
world, or to the Riverlands that lie further still. She can work no
ill to you if she is so far beyond your horizon.’
Maniye expected her father to throw those words back in
Alladei’s face almost immediately, but though his face twisted
darkly, he said nothing for a few precious seconds. Even for
such a short time, that idea was something he considered.
Have I truly become so much of an annoyance to him that he
would simply be glad to see me gone?
she thought, with sudden
hope.
Or say an embarrassment rather than an annoyance. He
cannot use me against the Tiger, but so long as I am alive and free in
the Crown of the World, I am something that another tribe could use
to shame him.Yet if I am gone . . .
But Akrit was shaking his head. ‘It cannot be. How could I
believe she was gone,’
unless I saw her corpse
, was the unspoken
addition that perhaps only Maniye heard. Alladei was opening
his mouth, perhaps feeling that he could press his case further,
but then Akrit added, ‘And, even if she were gone, what about
the other betrayer?’
‘Of whom do you speak?’ Alladei was baffled.
‘Of me,’ Broken Axe put in. ‘He speaks of me.’
‘I do,’ Akrit agreed. ‘I do not know how the men of the Horse
regard oaths, but this man swore many times to do my service,
and yet he betrayed me and lied to my face. In the lands of the
Wolf, that gives me the right to his pelt. How stands that behaviour with the Horse?’
‘It . . . is not recommended,’ Alladei said, glancing at Broken
Axe. He was instantly on more unsure footing now that a real
crime had been named. ‘How do you answer?’
‘These claims are true,’ Broken Axe acknowledged, ‘and my
reasons for doing so are nothing that would satisfy the Wolf. But
if it is I whom Stone River has run so far to catch, then let him
hunt
me
. Let the girl go south.That is fitting. I have made all this
come about, through my choices. Let him hunt me alone.’
He said it with such careless calm that Maniye was almost
angry with him. Seeing Alladei about to answer – perhaps even
to condemn – she burst out, ‘I’m not going south.’ Everyone was
staring at her now, but she squared her shoulders and went on.
‘Stone River has not caught me for two seasons, he will hunt me
for two more, and two more after that. And I will run beside
Broken Axe, and I will kill the Winter Runners if they are at my
heels – just as I will kill the Tiger.’ They were brave words, as
wildly overstated as if a coyote had threatened a bear, but she
said them with absolute conviction. ‘So I will run and be free, or
I shall die hunting for my freedom.’
Akrit stared at her and she waited for the raging, the hard
words and invocation of the Wolf. Instead she saw a strange sadness there, quite alien to his usual expression. For just that
moment – never before, surely never again – he was looking into
other futures, where he and she had not grown so far apart. He
was seeing the daughter he might have had, and might have
valued.
She held her breath, but already his face was turning sour. ‘It
seems you cannot bring harmony to your guests,’ he growled at
Alladei.
‘Then my guests must leave in their own time. If Many
Tracks will run, then I may not stand in her way,’ the Horse
Hetman stated. ‘As I am your host, I swear that, before tomorrow dawn, she will be gone. As you are my guest, swear that
until then you shall camp beyond an arrow’s flight from my fire,
and make no move against her.’
Akrit said nothing, but his eyes roved the camp, plainly
weighing up the prospects of forcing the issue. His warband
were surely fiercer fighters than any the Horse could muster.
They had iron to strengthen them. They comprised a number
close to that of the Horse. Surely it was only the guest bond
itself that was now holding Akrit back and, if he returned to his
warriors, would that deter him?
But Maniye saw that, of the men and women of the Deer and
the Boar who had been assisting the Horse, most of them had a
weapon to hand. They had clubs and spears, and some had
bows; they had axes and knives, and of course they had horns
and tusks. With their numbers added to the Horse, the odds
against the Wolves were much poorer, worse than two to one.
Maniye felt as if the ground beneath her had shifted in some
strange, foreboding way. The Deer and the Boar had once been
subjects of the Tiger, and they were subjects of the Wolf tribes
now: farmers and gatherers and fishers bowing the knee before
the greatest hunters of the Crown of the World. But they were
many, even so, and here they had come to work for the Horse,
learning foreign ways like
resistance
.
Nothing was revealed on Akrit’s face, to show that he had
made the same observation, but he nodded and said, ‘You have
my word on it, as your guest.’ And with that, Maniye had
another sunset gifted to her, another night in which to plan.
When the Wolves had left the Horse camp, she went straight
to Hesprec, because she had one last chance to free herself from
her shackles and her rebellious souls. And if she could not do
that, then she would not even be able to run.

Hesprec heard her out, as Maniye presented her plan. She had
so little to work with, just odd scraps of things the Serpent priest
had said, and a few things he – she – had done. Most of all she
remembered how the old Snake had come along with Asmander
to free her from the Eyriemen. Was that the moment the idea
had been planted in her mind?

‘You made him take another shape when you took me from
the Eyriemen.’
‘Asmander? Yes, I did.’
‘You gave him another soul.’
‘We invited one in together, he and I.’
And Maniye gripped the other girl’s hands and said, ‘Then
do it for me.’
Hesprec regarded her warily. ‘The gods of the River, their
totem, their souls . . . there is a flexibility that I think you northerners do not possess.’
‘I could not choose when the choice was before me. Now . . .
they are running wild in me. Asmander said that the Champion
was a chief of souls, a ruler.’
‘I suspect he did not say such words,’ Hesprec noted with a
small smile. ‘But yes, you understand it right. The Champion’s
soul is of a different order.’
‘Then that is the way I can stay who I am. I cannot retain my
mind with two souls. I cannot drive one of them out. Even if
both could be cut away from me, they would take
me
with them,
and leave . . .’
‘Do not speak of that. It is too late for such things . . . perhaps it was too late before we ever spoke in the pit, back in your
village.’
And Maniye considered Kalameshli and all his tests and his
cruelty.
He was trying to drive the Tiger out of me. He was trying to
force me to make the choice.
‘Then . . .’ But she had no words to
go after that ‘then’. They had all been spoken.
But there was a contemplative expression on Hesprec’s
young face. ‘Take this dilemma to one of your Wolf priests, they
would say it cannot be done: there are no Wolf Champions. Take
this to a priestess of the Tiger, she would say the same.’
And hope had leapt into Maniye’s mouth: ‘But the Serpent is
ancient and wise, and his people know better.’
Hesprec’s eyes held no assurances, but something had hooked
the Snake girl’s interest. And so emerged the words: ‘I cannot
promise you that it can be done, but together we might
try
. If
the Serpent will offer up his secrets; if you will follow where I
guide you; if you are strong enough; if, indeed, this thing is possible at all. But it cannot be done quickly, and it cannot be done
here.’
‘Where, then?’ Maniye demanded. Already she was feeling
tremors through her, as her souls stretched and shouldered
against their confinement and against each other. Another attack
from them was on its way, she knew.
‘We will be petitioning the invisible world,’ the Serpent girl
announced, with an echo of the elder Hesprec’s grandeur of
speech. ‘That Stone Place of yours is too far, but there will be
others: places where the sky reaches down to touch the earth, or
where the depths of the earth are laid open to the sun. Places
where the priests have gone, generation on generation. Some
ancient stone or a hill or a cave – some place visited year on
year, yet where nobody would ever
live
. Some place so old and
strong that people have forgotten why it was first picked out,
knowing only that it has always been there.’ She smiled fondly as
she spoke, and in her eyes Maniye thought she could see the
reflection of ancient shrines beside a southern river, of deep
ravines where the coils of the Serpent moved within the rock.
So Maniye thought hard on all she had been told, and then
she sought out Broken Axe and explained what Hesprec was
looking for. Who knew the Crown of the World better than he?
‘A place like the Stone Place,’ he echoed. ‘Some place near
here. A sacred place; a spirit place.’
‘And not the place of any one god,’ she added. ‘A place of
great spirits. There must be somewhere.’
‘And you will flee there, and hope Stone River does not
follow you.’
She saw his intention in his face. ‘And you will be with me, to
guide me.’
And you will not try to lead my father away, and shed
your blood for me.
A moment’s battle of wills, with her meeting his stony gaze
and refusing to look away, and he nodded tiredly.
He surprised her then, because he knew of no place of ritual
anywhere nearby; this was not his land and he had only a passing familiarity with its ways. Instead, he moved amongst the
people who had been working for the Horse. They were men
and women who had long hunted and foraged the riverside
here, and all the lands around. They were nervous around
Broken Axe, as well they might be near any Wolf. Maniye realized that she herself had not even considered asking them: Deer
and Boar, what could they know?
But that was Stone River inside her, like yet another soul.
Seeing them through Broken Axe’s eyes, she discovered just how
much of her father was embedded within her. Hearing him
speak to them, simply as one human being to another – something she could not imagine any of the Winter Runners doing
– she was disappointed with herself.
I will never be myself until I
rid my mind of him.
In the end, they were directed to a broad-framed old Boar
man whose long hair was mottled light and dark grey, and
whose cheeks were tattooed with tall upward-pointing darts.
‘There is a place,’ the old Boar had conceded, once he understood what Maniye wanted. ‘There is always such a place. Only
a fool would seek these places out, save on certain days, and
then only by certain ways. But of course there is a place. A high
hill, with two fallen stones and one still standing. The Eyriemen
bring their dead there sometimes, and lay them out on high
platforms for the crows to pick apart. My people bring offerings
when the year turns towards winter. Our priests approach with
their faces masked by the skins of the Boar – when I was young,
I witnessed this – but we shun the place at all other times. The
Path of Fallen Stones, we call it. It has been there longer than
my people – perhaps longer than any people. It is a place for
spirits to dwell, not men.’
He had told them where they would find these stones, which
hills to head into, which winding path would lead them there.
His expression said plainly that he thought them mad.
‘None who go there escape being changed,’ he warned, but to
Maniye this sounded more like a promise than a threat.

‘You have been kind to me, even when you had no reason.’
Maniye had not wanted this conversation with Alladei. She was
clawing for control of her own destiny, though: even the kindness of strangers could not go unquestioned.

The Horse Hetman looked slightly embarrassed, hands out as
though to defend himself. ‘I have risked, it is true,’ he admitted.
‘When I tell my hand-father what choices I have made, he will
either embrace me or turn his back on me. But if we bow our
backs even once to the Wolf – or to anyone – then they will
always hold the lash in their hands whenever they come to us.
The strength to run far, the freedom of all horizons, that is the
creed of the Horse. Where other people try to tame us, to bar
our way or make us their slaves, then they will find that the
Horse too can fight.’ He said the words proudly, and just for a
moment she saw there the man he was waiting to become, the
man his father perhaps saw in him. ‘But the Horse understands
profit, also. Your friend the Serpent, she has promised. I have
sent men south already, with certain words and secrets she has
given me. Great are the rewards for my family, whatever should
befall this solitary son. I do not regret standing up for you.’

‘You’re a fool, then.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I am wise beyond my years.’
‘I have brought too much trouble to you,’ Maniye muttered,

biting at her lip.
‘Yes, you have.’ Alladei grinned suddenly. ‘To hear Stone
River tell it, you are a trouble to the whole world. But perhaps
only a little trouble for all that. Over the winter, our wise people
were speaking of a great trouble. The Serpent girl tells me she
has heard the same wherever she has gone, from the River to the
Crown of the World. I do not think they were speaking of you,
Many Tracks.’ He shook his head. ‘Change is coming upon us
like the north wind from the mountains, like the sand wind from
the south. So I will be kind to a strange girl who doesn’t know
what skin she should wear, because who knows what will grow
from that seed tomorrow? And because I think that being kind
to Stone River is like planting a seed in dust.’
‘You Horse are very stupid.’ She tried to say it venomously,
like Shyri would, but her voice shook and she heard herself
sounding close to tears.
‘Not all of us – just me, perhaps.’ He was still smiling. ‘How
will you outpace your father when you leave here?’
‘Somehow.’
‘You cannot run south, leaving this land as I suggested?’
‘I would. I cannot.’ With the very thought, the souls twisted
inside her. She felt unsteady on her feet, her human form
momentarily alien to her. ‘I would not last. I need to . . . to cut,
or . . . They are both too powerful within me now. I cannot cast
either of them out, yet I cannot keep them within me . . .’ She
looked at him, wide-eyed.
I’ve said too much.These are secret things.

Towards evening a messenger arrived, a young hunter of the
Winter Runners, who had tracked cold news from post to post
across the north until he had finally picked up the trail of his
chief.

Akrit Stone River listened without reaction as the breathless
youth recounted it all, standing rigidly straight and obviously
fearing an angry response. Stone River just stared, though – not
at the messenger but into the distance of his own imagination,
and then he dismissed the youth and turned to Kalameshli, the
only other listener.

‘What do you think now,’ Akrit asked, ‘of the Horse plan to
let the girl flee southwards, and thus be forgotten in the Crown
of the World? You spoke for it, after we departed their fire.’

The Wolf priest nodded wordlessly.
‘And you see now why it cannot be. But I think you should
have seen so before.’ Abruptly Akrit’s rage – like his knife, never
far from his grasp – was rekindled. ‘Even you – the girl pulls
even you from me.’
Takes Iron said nothing.
‘Or perhaps you’d say it is I who push you?’ Akrit demanded,
working up his anger further. ‘But this is what it is to be a Wolf:
to be strong, to drive my own path through the world, never to
be led or herded or penned. You have always taught so. Each
year of new hunters, this is the message you put into their
hearts. This is the truth about the Wolf, that we are the strength
of the world. I have only sought to be that strength! And this girl
– my own daughter! – goes about the world unpicking my work,
smearing my deeds, placing ill words in the mouths of those
whose support I rely on. Even you!’
‘Akrit,’ Kalameshli said softly. ‘You are my chief, I am your
priest. We are old friends, you and I.’
‘And yet she is here between us! You would protect her from
me, if you could.’
‘There is no need—’
‘There
is
need! If there was ever doubt, then now we see the
need. I am called, Takes Iron. I am
summoned
. On the shortest
night, I am summoned so that all the tribes can meet to choose
their high chief. And who summons me? Otayo of the Many
Mouths, the son of Seven Skins. He who gave his voice to me
after I killed his brother, and now he declares he must
choose
,
and the other chiefs must
choose
, and no doubt there are half a
dozen who they shall choose between, where once there would
only be one.
One
, Takes Iron! And it is because this girl shames
me that they do not already have my name in their mouths!’ He
lifted his fists as though to strike the old priest – or the world at
large. ‘What shall they say, then? Here is Stone River whose girlchild flouts him. Why should a man rule the destiny of the Wolf
when he cannot even control his own get?’
‘We will take her again,’ Kalameshli murmured. ‘Bring her
before the other tribes with a halter about her neck, if you will.’
Something like a laugh escaped from Stone River. ‘And can I
even hold her, if I take her?’ He was speaking too loud – enough
for all the rest of the warband to hear. ‘I have had her in my
hands already, and where is she now? Vanished and fled to her
many allies! If I tried to parade her before the tribes – if I dug a
pit for her a hundred men deep, or built a cage of iron without
a door – she would be gone in the moment I sought to bring her
forth. She would be rescued from the earth by moles, or spirited
away by songbirds. What is she, Takes Iron? Is she even my
child?’ He was so caught in his ranting that he missed the old
man’s flinch. ‘No capture this time. I’ll tear her throat out
myself. She is no kin of mine. She is a thing of the invisible
world, a changed child, a thing as soulless as the Plague People.
When I go before the tribes I will throw her pelt at their feet –
be it wolf or tiger or human.’
Then the voice of Smiles Without Teeth boomed out, ‘She’s
moving!’ and Akrit Stepped instantly, darting over, with his eyes
shining in the last rays of the sunset.
Two horses had broken out from the camp, heading west.
One small figure, one greater one, they were already moving at
a gallop.
Akrit threw back his head and let out an air-rending howl,
and then forced himself into his human shape, and into human
thoughts. Undue haste now could mean defeat later, and Maniye
might have more friends waiting for her – perhaps Tiger friends.
‘Weapons and armour, as much iron as you can carry, and
leave the rest!’ he roared. ‘Let us be Iron Wolves, fast as you can,
and then we shall run them down.’ No wolf could outrun a rider
in the short term, but wolves ran on when laden horses tired,
especially on the uneven ground of the Crown of the World.
In what seemed a few heartbeats, the warband was on the
move, picking up the track of the horses, knowing them through
their scent even though they had ridden off into the concealing
dusk. There was the spoor of Broken Axe. There was that of
the treacherous Maniye, plain to every nose. Silent and grim the
pack went after them, murder on their minds.