The Tiger and the Wolf (55 page)

Broken Axe was swift, as man or wolf. He danced and darted
and yet never fell back. The blows of his enemies cut through
the air past him, and the iron edge of his hatchet was quick to
respond. Stone River watched one of the younger hunters try
him – darting in on four feet, all snarls and defiance. Broken
Axe met the youth in the same shape, twisting aside from his
teeth to worry viciously at the back of the boy’s neck, flipping
him over and sending him rolling down the hill. His next assailant got close and then Stepped to human, bringing the grey
edge of a knife towards Broken Axe’s gut. Nimble as a warrior
half his age, Axe got his shoulder beneath the upward-cutting
blow and guided the attacker’s knife-hand away. His own
weapon lashed in, not a killing strike but a powerful blow with
the flat to his opponent’s temple. Stone River’s warrior collapsed
to the ground, stunned or worse, while Broken Axe still stood.

And no wonder, for he was fighting in the shadow of the
largest Cave Dweller that Akrit had ever seen. The huge Bear
had not been shifted an inch since the skirmish began. Three
Wolves had gone up against him, with spears and axes and
fangs, but all of them had fallen back limping and mauled.
Arrows and throw darts had not even penetrated the monstrous
creature’s hide. At the Bear’s feet were two dogs fighting with
the coordination of warriors, lunging out from behind their
master’s ankles to snap and bark and growl, a constant threat
and distraction to any enemy that might dare come close.

On open ground, the entire pack could have descended on
them, surrounded them and dragged them down – even the
Bear. With the tumbled stones lending them a hard flank, the
Wolves could not concentrate their numbers to finish the fight.
Broken Axe stood in the Bear’s shadow, and to enter the Bear’s
shadow meant broken bones.

Stone River had hesitated, on seeing that great mass of
muscle and hair and claws blocking the way. He was not reckless;he wanted his followers to wear the monster down first – though
there was precious little sign of that happening as yet.

‘Bear-killer,’ he snapped, and one of his warriors handed him
the weapon. It was a favourite of the Wolves: long-hafted with an
inward-curving iron blade honed to a razor edge, and terminating with a piercing point like a beak. The Horse called it a falx,
but the Wolves knew it as the bear-killer. And killing a bear was
what Akrit needed to accomplish.

But now it was the turn of Smiles Without Teeth, and if
Akrit’s most faithful follower was smaller than the Bear, still he
was the strongest of the Winter Runners. He loped up the slope
with another couple of hunters to back him, stopping outside
the Bear’s reach to survey his enemy.

Arms spread wide, the Cave Dweller reared up on his hind
legs and bellowed, and Smiles seized his moment to dart in. He
Stepped as he came close, dropping down to one knee and striking in with his axe, with the other two Wolves right behind him.
Broken Axe was there too, though, lunging forwards even as
Smiles’s blow went swinging in. Their hafts locked together,
deflecting Smiles’s stroke up and away, but for a second Broken
Axe was left exposed to the next hunter in.

Akrit hissed in triumph, envisaging the death-stroke before it
happened. The dogs got in the way, though, snapping and leaping at the hunter so that he flinched away, striking too late.

The Wolf’s knife ripped into the side of one of the dogs,
opening the wretched creature up. It was a meagre victory, but
Akrit heard his follower cry out in triumph nonetheless. It was
the last sound he made, though, for then the Bear saw what he
had done. With a roar of fury the Cave Dweller came down on
him, all his awful weight concentrated in his forepaws, splintering the man’s bones like kindling.

It will be me, then.
Akrit hefted the bear-killer in one hand,
then Stepped and was heading up the hill at a run. Before him
he saw Smiles Without Teeth Step and go for the Bear’s legs
with his teeth, forgetting that there was a human mind behind
that mountain of animal power. The Cave Dweller Stepped to
meet him, kicking him in the stomach hard enough to bowl him
over, then swinging furiously with that great axe of his. The blow
had been meant for Smiles, but the other hunter got in the way
as he lunged at Broken Axe with a spear, not paying attention to
anything else. The Dweller’s axe-head caught him across the
shoulder and chest, shattering his arm and spinning him away.

Then Smiles was back. His iron coat had kept him from any
real harm, just a solid bruise where the bigger man had kicked
him. He had his axe upraised, ready to bring it down with all the
power both mighty arms could manage.

He had always sought to win his battles with strength, had
Smiles Without Teeth, and amongst the Winter Runners it
had sufficed.

The Cave Dweller stepped back into his bear shape and
slapped a claw-studded paw with crushing force under Smiles’s
strike. The blow hooked the Wolf off his feet, hurling him away
with the bear’s vast strength and sending him through the air like
a stone, end over end. Just as the ground fell away from the hilltop, so Smiles Without Teeth seemed to fall away from the
ground, falling
upwards
until the world remembered him and
brought him down. From that impact, iron could not save him.

Stone River spared a brief second’s regret for the death of his
friend, but then he was standing before the Bear himself, and
that became all of his world.

Broken Axe had recognized him and was trying to close, but
another pair of young Wolf hunters were at his heels, diverting
the traitor’s attention as they snapped at him.

The Cave Dweller’s paws came thundering down, the huge
beast truly fighting mad now. Stone River pushed himself aside,
scrabbling against the slope of the hill, feeling the breath of that
near-miss twitching the hairs of his pelt. Then he was a man
again, the bear-killer blade of his falx sweeping in, too close
and too soon, so that the beak-point barely grazed his foe’s back
and the cutting edge glanced off that thick hide. Then the Bear
was a man once more, towering over Stone River still, swinging
the axe down in a wide arc.

Akrit Stepped to slip beneath that swing, got his teeth briefly
into the Bear’s unprotected shin, then backed off. To lock his
jaws would be to fix himself where his enemy could find him.
The copper axe swung down again, its great weight of metal
swooping through the air swift as a bird. Stone River tried to
twist aside again, but the other dog was in his way, and the two
of them went down in a snarling tangle of limbs. Furious and
desperate, Stone River ripped at one of the animal’s forelegs,
tearing a great bloody gash there. He knew the axe would be
coming for him again, so he darted before the Cave Dweller,
under the swing, Stepping as he came round.

He had wolf speed in a man’s shape just in that moment, and
he threw it all into the strike, the arc of the falx cleaving the Cave
Dweller in the hip. The cutting edge was foiled by the larded
goat-fleeces the big man wore, but the point dug in deep, not a
killing wound but a slowing one.

His enemy Stepped again, seeking the greater mass of the
bear shape to protect him. Akrit was ready for him to rear up in
anger and expose his belly. Instead the Cave Dweller stayed low,
swiping at his tormentor and baring his great yellow teeth.

Akrit could see his path clearly now. He had fought men and
he had fought tigers – yes, and other wolves – and once or twice
he had fought bears, though none as massive as this. He swung
again, making a great show of the powerful two-handed blow,
and the bear – with its man’s mind – swatted the falx away.

Akrit took the force of that blow, but he took it as a gift, spinning the weapon about at its balance-point, so that it came in
twice as fast from the other side. On all fours, the bear had only
one paw at a time to act with, already overextended from its first
parry.

Akrit put all his strength into that blow. Had a man ever
before killed a bear this size with a single stroke? Perhaps he
would be the first.

He felt the clean bite of the blade as it chopped the beast’s
hide and slammed deep into the flesh beneath. He had been
aiming for the neck, but his enemy’s movements or the fickle
ground had left the weapon deep in the bear’s shoulder and
back, the tip surely in amongst the creature’s ribs. The Cave
Dweller roared again – but Akrit heard more pain than anger
now, a desolate, terrible sound.

The beast reared up, and if Akrit had not been ready he
would have lost his weapon. As it was, the Bear’s own motion
ripped the falx out of his flesh, releasing a gout of blood that
painted the rocks around them.

For a heartbeat Akrit stood in the Bear’s shadow, falx already
arcing inwards again, and braced for the crushing impact of
those claws. Then the Cave Dweller dropped back on to all
fours again, with a whimper, and the falx’s course raked across
his muzzle.

Stone River would have finished it, if not for the dog. The
beast was at him without warning, leaping up to his chest, teeth
hungry for his throat. Akrit Stepped, took the animal by the
scruff of its neck and simply flung it away. He was already
flinching from the Bear’s expected retaliation as he turned back,
but the Cave Dweller was shambling backwards, lurching and
limping. Instead, before him stood Broken Axe.

‘Go,’ the traitor shouted to his injured friend. Stone River
found himself grinning, because he
had
defeated the Bear,
because he was about to kill Broken Axe, and after that he would
have one of his people open his daughter’s throat – and then
none amongst the Wolves would ever doubt his strength.

And Broken Axe’s eyes passed from Stone River to the eleven
Wolves who could still fight, and he nodded philosophically.
‘So be it,’ he said. ‘I call you out, Stone River. I challenge you.’
Akrit shook his head. ‘We will tear you apart, traitor.’
‘Who is the traitor?’ Broken Axe called out. ‘Here we stand,
two men born of the Winter Runners, and which has betrayed
his people? What are my wrongs? That I have gone my own way,
and helped a girl who chose to do the same.’
‘And what do you suggest are mine?’ Akrit knew he should
just strike, but he wanted Broken Axe to
know
that he was wrong
before he died.
‘You have placed yourself above the Wolf,’ Broken Axe
declared, and loud enough for all to hear. ‘You have followed a
dream where the Crown of the World was in your shadow, and
you have ever sought to make it real. You sought to rule.’
‘To rule in the Wolf’s name!’ Akrit snapped, feeling the tension stretch the moment until surely the pack would flow past
him to bring Broken Axe down for his killing stroke.
‘In
your
name. In
your
name you have shed blood at the Stone
Place. In
your
own name you have sought to dig up the war with
the Tiger. You have ever sought to be a taller man than you are,
and to do so you have piled up the bodies of others. That is not
the Wolf’s Shadow you cast, it is your own.’
‘Bring him down!’ Akrit snapped, and the tide of grey bodies
. . .
They milled and moved about, but did not advance. Those in
wolf shape whined and kept their heads low, and the men would
not meet his eyes. If Smiles Without Teeth had been there to set
an example . . . But Smiles was dead.
‘You are not fit,’ Broken Axe said, each word heavy as a stone.
‘I challenge you. For the leadership of the Winter Runners, I
challenge you.’

Maniye kept searching from hill to hill and yet, whenever she
turned back, there was the Wolf or there the Tiger, the twin
poles between which her life was strung, picked out by the light
of an unseen moon. Between them, the landscape of gods and
monsters was shrouded by eternal night, denied to her. If Hesprec spoke the truth, here was the country that stretched from
Wolf to Eagle, from Tiger to Serpent, to Asmander’s Swift
Lizard. In that dark there were great beasts of time and legend
waiting to gift her with their souls. She felt she was tethered,
even as her father had once leashed her. Her realm was just a
small circle of light in that great midnight landscape. She could
not break free from her heritage. And within her she could feel
her souls uncoiling, pressing against the walls of their prison.
This was
their
place far more than it was hers. Here was where
their strength arose from. Here they were stronger than she was.
Once that understanding filtered through to them, she would
not be able to keep them tied within her. They would break free
from her, break away from her, and then . . .

And then there was noise and shouting, all too close, intruding from the world outside so that she lost her image of the
Godsland, lost that sense of the great spirits standing close by.
The wheeling stars drew together to become the fire, and she
jerked away from it, feeling the ground tremble as though the
whole hill was stirring.

But it was not the hill. It was Loud Thunder. The huge man
sat slumped by the fire, his skin and the fleece of his armour
glistening with his own blood. His face was clenched up like a
fist but, when he met her eyes, he still tried to smile.

‘He’s a fast one, your father,’ he murmured, just a rumbling
in his chest. ‘And my Mother will not be pleased with me.’
Maniye leapt up and went over to him, but the sheer scale of
his body – and his wounds – dumbfounded her. She did not
know what could possibly be done. It was like trying to heal the
land itself.
‘Back to the fire!’ Hesprec yelled at her. ‘Maniye, we’ll have
no other chance than this.You have to find the Godsland again!’
‘But he’s hurt!’ So obvious a statement, and yet what else
could she say?
Hesprec shook her head frantically. ‘If not now, then you’re
lost. Maniye, please!’
That shadow-landscape was still there, in the back of Maniye’s mind. And yet Loud Thunder was right here, with Yoff
whining and sniffing at him, the dog as helpless in his misery as
she was, and . . .
She sensed the vast breadth of the Godsland. For a moment
she was falling back into it as both her souls tore at her. Vast and
without boundaries, the tether fraying that had kept her at the
feet of her totems. Her legs lost their strength and she collapsed,
knotting her hands in Loud Thunder’s goat hides.
Hesprec was still calling her name, but when she tried to find
the Serpent priestess, all she saw were those stars, that land.
‘I . . . I see,’ she got out. ‘I am there, and I . . .’ She was
moving away from the Wolf, crossing towards the Tiger, passing
through the valleys of wolfkin, moving into the fiefdoms beyond.
There was the vast shadow of the Bear, a hill atop a hill. She
could see all the shapes in between, the succession of beasts that
she could pass through, in order to turn a wolf into a bear, a
bear into a wolf, a wolf into a tiger . . .
‘You must go on without me,’ came Hesprec’s whispered
voice. ‘But I understand now. I will help you. I will help Loud
Thunder too, if he can be helped. Trust me. Find your new
totem.’
And then, from a greater distance still, the distantly heard
summons of the Serpent girl: ‘Laughing Girl! Come here now!’
Can I choose the Bear as my champion?
But Maniye knew she
could not, for it had its people already, living and dying and
being reborn: animal to human, human to animal in a constant
round. She must find some great warrior-spirit in the space of
Bear and Wolf and Tiger that would make her its avatar.
And she searched and she searched, and the tether was back,
its cord stretched longer, and yet still she was leashed, and what
time was there, if Loud Thunder had been taken from the fight?
And the world opened up for her.
Perhaps there was a tether still that would have kept her from
the lands under the Eagle’s wings, or the lazy shadow-river
where Old Crocodile basked, but abruptly she was let loose into
the land beyond, a land of a thousand thousand god-spirits,
each one showing its claws and sharp fangs to her. She was in
the great empire of the killers, where before she had been bound
to the little village domains of a mere handful. The profusion of
shapes about her bewildered her. There were shadows of beasts
that never were, or were no more. There were bears greater than
the Bear; wolves that doubled and redoubled the Wolf; there
were cats that overshadowed the Tiger, with teeth longer than
falx-blades. And there were hyenas as great as horses, gathered
next to Shyri’s spotted and high-shouldered, laughing god.