The Tiger and the Wolf (58 page)

Up here in the highlands the winter was gathering its pack,
ready to go hunting in the lowlands. Maniye could hardly
believe that, back in those lands she called home, summer had
only just spent its store of days. What a time to be travelling in
this hard, cold country!

But she had been called to where few outsiders had ever
gone. Of all the people she had ever known, perhaps only
Broken Axe had travelled into the high country of the Cave
Dwellers. Perhaps not even he had been summoned here by
their great Mother.

Long months had passed since the death of Stone River, of
Broken Axe . . . and of much else. At the autumn equinox she
had gone to the Stone Place and shown herself to the priests
of all the Crown of the World, who had already heard rumours
of what had come into the world. She had stood before them in
that great bear-dog shape, burning with the strangeness of it,
walking the circle of the stones on feet the world had not known
since before the memories of man. And then she had stood
before them as a small Wolf girl of tangled provenance, and seen
in their eyes the fear and speculation. They had thought that she
would come to hunt them, or to challenge them, or to rule over
them. The most ambitious had thought on how to use her, the
least on how to destroy her. She had seen it all in their eyes.

And they would grow used to the idea, and perhaps she
would only be the first, for Asmander had told her that he was
by no means the only Champion of the Riverlands. Hesprec said
that when she stood in the Godsland and looked into those
moon-round eyes, a new door had opened.

At the Stone Place there had been too many questions, and
she had let most go unanswered. Only those which would have
tied her to one place, to one tribe, had she rejected outright.
Those who simply said she would be welcome, that she could be
their guest, she thanked. Those who came to her with their allegiance . . . well, that had become complicated.

And there had been a command. Only one had been strong
enough and self-contained enough to make demands of the
new Champion of the north, but when the Mother of Bears
demanded her presence, Maniye went to her.

Here she was now, up in the mountains, many days’ travel
past Loud Thunder’s home. Here she had come, passing
through high prairies already past their brief and frantic time of
bloom and growth, following the streambeds until she came to
cliffs that were pocked with caves.

Lone Mountain had greeted her solemnly. He was just as she
remembered: taller even than the bulk of his people, and wearing linens and wools of bright colours to mark him out. The look
he gave her was that of an equal: no deference for what she had
become, but nothing in his eyes to acknowledge that the crown
of her head did not reach much past his navel.

She had tried her authority, then, surrounded by these huge
people, overshadowed on all sides, virtually underfoot. She had
demanded to see Loud Thunder first, to know how he was healing. And they had frowned and shuffled and exchanged looks
over the top of her head, but at last they had given in, with poor
grace, and taken her to him.

He was on his feet again and well: well enough for her to feel
a wash of joy come over her. She had known men crippled by
lesser injuries, but Hesprec had more than one lifetime of healing lore at her disposal, and she had done well with treating
those fresh wounds. He still limped a little, and sat stiffly, one
hand resting on Yoff’s loyal head.

They spoke of many things: of his Mother and her plans; of
the journeys of his youth; of those waiting in her future. And
then word had come that she was wanted, that the woman who
ruled these high lands was growing impatient. So here she now
sat, cross-legged at a fire, while the Mother of the Cave Dwellers
regarded her thoughtfully. The woman was even greater than
Maniye remembered: a huge, slope-shouldered shape clad in the
hides of a score of animals, stitched and overlapping.

‘I thought you’d be bigger,’ the woman muttered, almost a
complaint. ‘Show me what you have with you.’
So many times, Maniye had been asked that. There had been
plenty who had wanted her to perform for them: to dance from
shape to shape just to prove that she could. She remembered
what Asmander had said, when he was asked the same, and she
knew it to be true. The Champion was not for casual display. It
was not called on lightly.
But she guessed that the Mother did nothing lightly, and so
she Stepped into the shape of the Champion, her bear-dog, and
crouched there, head raised a little above her paws, looking the
huge woman directly in the eye.
Eventually the Mother nodded, not seeming daunted, but just
weary. ‘All I’ve heard is true. Take it away.’
‘Mother,’ Maniye said, when she had Stepped back, ‘I have
heard it said that you see the future.’
The great woman snorted derisively. ‘No art to that,’ she
muttered. ‘Tell me the sun will rise and you’ve told the future.
But some see further. Some have better eyes. That old Snake
who was at the Stone Place back in spring, he had good eyes,
and good ears too, for he listened to every tribe.’
‘Hesprec said something was coming,’ Maniye agreed, ‘something bad. He said that everyone he spoke to had some piece of
it, some glimpse. And you, you’ve seen the same?’
The Bear Mother grunted. A child came in just then – ten or
twelve, and taller than Maniye – with a wooden platter of meat
and fish hot from the fire. For a while the big woman just ate, as
though she had entirely forgotten her guest, but at last she
grudgingly invited Maniye to join her, her calculating eyes
showing that she had been turning over her thoughts.
‘Something, yes. Enough word, enough signs. Birds flying out
of season or on new paths, news from the Seal that the fish are
schooling differently, flowers in bloom not seen for a lifetime,
too many bad dreams, too many frightened children. And so we
know something comes, but we’re blind as to what. So we try to
prepare.’
‘You had Loud Thunder as your warleader?’
The Mother laughed. ‘And what use did we have of him?
Some half-hearted lessons in war to our hunters, and then he
must go chasing across the Crown of the World after his lack-wit
Wolf friend. And yet . . . so many changes in the world, and one
of them sits right before me now. And so perhaps that was what
we chose Loud Thunder for: to see that you became what you
have become. You see? Prophecy is even easier if you offer it
after the event.’ She worried some more meat off a goat leg and
chewed thoughtfully. ‘I had thought a war between the Wolf and
the Tiger might be the start of it, but now it seems this will not
be.’
‘With Stone River dead, there is none left so very desperate
to be High Chief over the Tiger’s corpse. Perhaps the Wolf begin
to see that they need none,’ Maniye said. ‘And the Tiger keep to
their places, for now.’
‘And this you have accomplished?’
The girl shrugged. ‘It is just a madness that passed from the
world when my f– when Stone River left it.’
‘And the Coyote and the Horse bring word and trade,’ the
Mother mused. ‘And who knows what tomorrow’s tomorrow
may bring?’ She leant ponderously forwards, casting Maniye in
her shadow. ‘And now what will you do, little one? For I hear
you make the people of these lands nervous.’
‘The chiefs fear that, if I am not theirs, I will threaten their
power. They make me their guest, they speak kind words to me,
some even offer themselves or their hunters as mates. But when
I tell them I am not ready to settle, I see the worry in their eyes.
The Wolf tribes, yes, and the others, too. I am too new in the
world, and they remember Stone River and see him in me. They
think I am ambitious.’
‘And of course they have no reason to think so?’
‘I cannot control what young fools do,’ Maniye snapped
bitterly.
The Bear Mother chuckled deep in her throat. ‘How disappointed they must be, those bold hunters, when you send them
away.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or do you?’
‘Most times, they will not go. They skulk like dogs at the edge
of my firelight, or hunt and bring me meat and hides.’ One or
two at first, and then a handful, and surely there were more on
the way: misfits, mystics and bravos out for glory and adventure,
and all of them had decided that their best trail was the one left
by her new footprints. They came to the Champion and offered
their weapons in her service. And so the chiefs of the Crown of
the World were growing nervous, and Maniye could not keep
from wondering what she might gain if she mustered these followers. What sort of power could she become, with a warband at
her back?
And even before the equinox – where she had stood before
those chiefs and priests and seen that she had gone in their eyes
from being a bringer of peace to a harbinger of strife – she had
seen her path. She wanted to give no man cause to strike out at
her but, more, she wanted to give herself no way to yield to
temptation and strike first. She was no daughter of Stone River
but she had grown up in his shadow, and that shadow moved in
her mind sometimes and whispered about what she might do.
‘When I first fled the Winter Runners, I had a plan. The
Snake priest and I, we would fly south to his homeland. I know
a man who brings a handsome offer to any Iron Wolves who
might come to aid his chief, there by the river they love so
much. I will go south for a time. I will go with Hesprec and the
southerners and any who will follow me. I remember Broken
Axe telling me that, when he was young, he and Loud Thunder
did just that, fought battles and had adventures and saw strange
lands. Now I shall do the same. And when I come back to the
Crown of the World, it will be more ready for me, I hope.’
‘When you come back, it may need you.’ There was a great
deal of foreboding in the Mother’s voice, but Maniye just
shrugged.
‘I’ve had enough of being gifted with futures. None of those
I was offered ever appealed to me. Broken Axe, he made his
own – and so will I.’